Overture

by Mark Wandrey

  “What’s going on?” Samantha, the closest to the door, asked.

  “All hell’s breaking loose on the island. A mob just set fire to most of Wall Street.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Intermission

  As the sun rose on the 12th most of the world with access to news knew what was coming, and that there wasn’t anything the various governments could do about it. The governments tried to cover the truth in one way or another, with varying levels of success and failure.

  Within hours of Excalibur’s demise, riots began to sweep the globe, breaking out in more than 100 major cities. Millions didn’t report for work, either staying home in fear or preparing to flee in terror.

  Egypt declared war on Israel, sending tanks rolling across the Sinai Peninsula. Within hours, Syria joined in the fighting. The Israelis expected this, and met the advancing forces with withering fire and mowed them down. As the day advanced, thousands of burning tanks sent curls of black smoke over the Sinai.

  Minor conflicts flared all over the planet. One of the few areas largely unaffected was the Indian subcontinent. Those that survived the portal explosion were busy searching for food and trying to stay alive. Survivors in Kathmandu had been killing each other over stale bread for days. Thousands of refugees from Bangladesh invaded Myanmar in search of food and shelter. Roving bands of civilians, quietly led by government consultants, slaughtered thousands.

  The unused portals quickly became centers of activity. In Buenos Aires, the government had kept the portal a complete secret. On the afternoon of May 12th, they used all 144 transits in a matter of hours, in a carefully coordinated, well planned operation. Fifty-two men and 92 women left Earth, all staggering under loads of tools, seeds, medicine, and other colonization equipment. All 92 women were pregnant, some very recently, and none by any of the men who were going. Every member held at least one advanced degree, some had many. The public never knew it happened.

  In Japan, the lights on the government-controlled portal in the dense wilderness of the Imperial garden of Tokyo were out. A group had used all the transits, without leaving a trace.

  Someone also used the portal transits in South Africa without anyone in the government knowing, as officials there were unaware the portal existed since it had appeared in a private park in Johannesburg.

  The portal in St. Petersburg had been under intense scrutiny by the Russian Republic, quite like the operation under way in Central Park. That evening, the rebel military elements launched a coordinated attack against the compound. There were extensive casualties, and the city became a war zone. After eight hours of intense combat, the rebel forces took control of and quickly used the portal. The majority of those who passed through were military men, along with a few conscripted women. They took large quantities of weapons, ammunition and survival gear with them. Loyalist reinforcements eventually retook the portal, hours after the rebels used it up. The government publicly executed survivors of the rebel unit.

  As the sun set, the crew of the International Space Station admitted defeat and abandoned the vehicle in a pair of Russian Soyuz capsules. Hours later, the $100 billion-dollar station burned up on reentry. From space, it looked as though many of the world’s greatest cities were sparkling. It wasn’t from electric lights, but from fires.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  May 13

  Detective Lieutenant Billy Harper sat in his dented, wheezing car at the corner of 3rd Avenue and 42nd Street, eating a chicken falafel. It had been two days since a delivery truck made it onto the island, and it didn’t taste like chicken. The vegetables were stale, and the sauce smelled suspiciously close to spoiled. He devoured the sandwich quickly and fished out a couple Tums from his jacket. Rain had pelted the city for the last day and showed no signs of relenting. Water dripped onto the dashboard through the windshield, shattered by a brick during his attempt to quell the downtown riot the night before.

  Billy hadn’t been home in two days, partly because there were rolling riots around his house, and partly because the city needed every officer who would report. Almost 40% of them hadn’t. The bridges were blocked, and the subways shut down, but the Feds were still letting people board ferries to leave town. The ferries leaving from the three Manhattan terminals overflowed. They’d return a couple hours later with a few Feds, maybe a truck or two of food, and a few dozen people. Most people returned to get more of their possessions, packing them back out on carts, bicycles, or their backs.

  “Where are they all going?” his fellow officer, Leonard Tall, asked over the phone. Surprisingly the cellphone networks were still running. “I mean, I can see them wanting to get out, only there’s nowhere to go.”

  “I heard some crazy guy saying he read on the internet that the government has a huge underground bunker up in the Adirondacks,” Billy said. Leonard just laughed. Billy could hear Leonard eating, and he hoped it was better than the mystery-meat falafel he’d just consumed.

  “Any idea where in the Adirondacks?” Leonard asked. Billy took a sip of warm Coke and considered the phone, clipped in a hands-free holder on his dashboard. Leonard had a five-year-old daughter, and his wife was six months pregnant. He hadn’t said much about the asteroid. Most of the officers who stayed didn’t talk about it, either.

  “No,” he admitted. “Why, are you thinking about it?”

  “That would mean abandoning my post,” Leonard said.

  “I didn’t hear a thing.” The line was silent for a while.

  “Eh,” Leonard finally said and snorted, “you can’t get your car off the island, so what difference does it make? Can you see me trying to march little Shirley and six-months-pregnant Anne 100 miles on foot?”

  “No,” Billy admitted. “I’m gonna catch an hour or two of sleep,” he said, “things seem quiet.”

  “You got it buddy. Lock your doors.”

  “Always.” Billy hung up and checked the security of his car. For safety’s sake, he took his backup Glock out of the locked glove compartment and tucked it under his right thigh, out of view, but within easy reach. Then he grabbed his coat, wadded it up and stuck it behind his head. Around him, the city was shaking itself apart like a Rube Goldberg contraption. He liked the sounds of the city though, so he slept. In his dreams he saw the pretty redheaded astronomer he’d apprehended trying to sneak into Central Park. She was his wife, and they were happy. They had a little house in Queens and three kids.

  The shrill wail of his radio woke him up. There were a couple thousand crazy people trying to take over the subways. No one knew why. They had gunned down four transit cops at the 34th street Metro, next to Penn Station. All available units were responding. He checked his watch. Just over three hours had passed. That would do.

  Putting the battered cruiser into gear, he steered south and drank the rest of the now flat Coke for the caffeine. Halfway there a call came in about two grocery stores being looted and a blaze at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The quiet had ended.

  As he drove, he thought about Mindy Patoy, and the life he’d dreamed about. He had her number in his laptop. If he had enough time later, he might just give her a call. He didn’t like the idea of facing the end of the world alone.

  * * *

  It didn’t take portal access to realize that something catastrophic had taken place at the center of the project. More than a thousand people worked in and around the portal camp, and hundreds had at least some knowledge of what ‘it’ was. Up until the evening of the 10th, they had had purpose and direction. People knew it was a secret operation. They also knew, thanks to the way rumors migrated (even in the top-secret community), the secret revolved around a way to save people. Exactly what that meant, not many really knew.

  Mindy knew, and those working with her knew that she knew. That little dome symbol on the ID she wore on a lanyard had a profound meaning to everyone working in the camp. It was like a religion around the dome, and the symbol on t
he ID granted the high priests and acolytes entrance to the holiest of holies. The badge meant she was an acolyte.

  She didn’t like keeping her mouth shut. When she looked around her work trailer, there were no obvious security cameras or recording devices, which meant they were well hidden. The NSA was at the heart of the operation, and spying was in their DNA.

  The logistics work they’d assigned her to do after she discovered the planet on the other side of the portal was Bellatrix had ground to a virtual halt. Not that she’d ever done more than make sure truckers received the waybills and proper credentials necessary to pick up loads around the city and get them back to the island. The first day, she’d processed a dozen orders, all with cryptic number sequences to identify the goods. When she got in on the morning of the 13th, only one order waited.

  The use of numbers to code the goods made her smile. Whoever had the brilliant idea of using harmonized tariff numbers for security should have been working at Walmart. To Mindy, a licensed customs broker, the coded numbers were as good as neon signs.

  She’d used her ‘picture tools’ days ago to drill into the supposedly secure system at the camp. She’d been ahead of the wave, when whoever set up the network was still establishing security protocols. Thanks to her toolkit, establishing a dozen false network IDs with permissions varying from the lowest to the highest levels had been child’s play. Now, with plenty of time and little supervision, the entire system was her playground. Only, what she found didn’t sound like fun, at all.

  Officials had put a plan in place to evacuate certain key figures and personnel shortly after they revealed the portal’s purpose. It surprised her to see who was on the list, and who wasn’t. There were three sets of personnel, and those on and off seemed to change daily. Since the portal appeared out of business, no one had touched the list.

  More disturbing than the list of people who would save humanity, was the list of what they planned to bring with them. The early shipments taken over by the soldiers were incredibly well planned. They were heavy on guns and ammo, sure. But after she’d seen images of the Komodo sloths, she didn’t begrudge them the weapons. However, the plans for the final 120 people and gear shocked her with their shortsightedness.

  The list included things like medical supplies and implements to grow food. But, the seeds they planned to take were crazy. She was no expert gardener, but she knew that hybrids were a poor choice. The only live animals on the list were chickens and pigs. What were they thinking? And, there were thousands of pounds of high tech tools and other equipment that, when broken, would be nothing more than junk. It had the look of a list assembled by the most incompetent being known to man; a committee.

  Just like there were alternate personnel lists, there were alternate equipment lists, which went from bad to worse. One included four disassembled motorcycles and an ATV, none of which were solar- or alcohol-powered. They ran on regular gasoline. That version of the list also included a hundred gallons of gas. She threw up her hands in frustration, making several people in the trailer wonder what was wrong.

  Mindy prided herself on being a goal-oriented person, and this was one of those cases that called for just such a person. That morning she’d taken one of her false system IDs and modified it to allow “Joe Straight” to begin his own list. The authorization she created allowed Mr. Straight to delve into the inventory of all the equipment stored at warehouses under the purview of Operation Bifrost. She’s smiled at the name, which she approved of.

  Thanks to the way the goods were categorized, and the fact that everything she needed was in super lightweight polypropylene shells (another good idea; they could be reused on Bellatrix), Mindy finished most of her tinkering in a day. She played Tetris with the weights and assigned each person 220 pounds of crates to take through with them. She put lighter stuff in Nomex and nylon duffel bags, which were also reusable. Someone on the project used their half a brain when they started using those.

  The problem she ran into was that a lot of the goods she wanted weren’t in the immediate distribution chain, although the government bought almost everything the people had suggested before the committee could remove items from the list. Her scheme involved getting everything within reach, without anyone finding out about her meddling. She set about that slowly, adding a few pallets to each truck. After the 10th, she started having trouble because fewer trucks arrived. The secure warehouses were nearly full, too. With riots all over Manhattan, she didn’t dare put any of the supplies in a public warehouse.

  She got bold and started moving some of the crap back off the island. By lunch on the 13th, the first truck left Manhattan with gear on it. She ate her lunch as she watched the system, looking for signs of discovery. The food was getting bland, a bad sign. When the truck cleared the bridge, she knew she was home free. She issued the next dozen orders, and moved on to something else.

  The big computer monitors she’d used to analyze star patterns now showed a mysterious redheaded woman in a lab coat making unusual sweeping gestures toward the portal. Repeatedly, Mindy played the images, studying, memorizing, and looking for discernable patterns.

  It was well after 8pm before she looked up and realized the others were standing by the door, grumbling. She realized she was hungry.

  “Where’s our escort?” she asked Samantha.

  “He never showed up,” she replied.

  “They never brought dinner, either,” another girl yelled.

  Mindy had been so busy she hadn’t noticed; she’d eaten a protein bar from the stash in her desk for lunch.

  “Is the door still locked?” she asked. Several said yes, or nodded their heads. “Let me call—” She started to say she would call Osgood when they heard the click of the lock. Everyone backed up. An agent opened the door, then took a surprised step back when he saw them standing there.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “You’re three hours late,” someone said. There were mumbles of agreement and a few under-the-breath angry words.

  “If you haven’t noticed, the city’s a mess,” he said, looking annoyed.

  “How could we notice?” another man said. “We’ve been locked in here all day.”

  “Come on. When you get to your rooms, pack. We’re moving you in the morning.”

  “Where?” Mindy asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just be ready.” Grumbling and mumbling to each other, they followed their escort out the door.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  May 14

  Mindy had her Osprey packed and ready by seven a.m., as their escort came down the hall banging on doors. She considered herself lucky she’d sent almost all her clothes to the laundry the day before, and they were in her room last night when she got back. If they hadn’t been, she’d be down to one set.

  “Let’s go, let’s go,” the agent said, beating on each door. He did a double take when he got to Mindy’s door and saw her standing there.

  “What about our keys and the bills?”

  “Leave the keys in the room, Uncle Sugar is picking up the bill.”

  “Who the hell is Uncle Sugar?” asked a man in the room across from hers.

  “The government,” Mindy said. His mouth made a big O.

  Down in the lobby, there was a small circus in progress. All it was missing was clowns. There were at least 100 people who worked in the camp, bags in hand, wandering around and looking confused. The diminished hotel staff looked completely overwhelmed. Within 15 minutes, there were five NSA agents and more than 100 employees standing around. The grumbling and complaining rapidly increased.

  “Everybody shut up!” someone roared. All eyes turned to a man in a suit by the door, his lower left arm in a cast. Mindy recognized Volant. After a second the room quieted, leaving only the sounds of some shuffling feet and a few coughs. “That’s better. Now, because of the deteriorating situation on the island, we’re moving those of you who are vital to the program into
the camp.”

  “What about the rest of us?” someone yelled. Volant didn’t react the way Mindy expected. He half smiled as he spoke.

  “Your services are no longer required.” It was quiet for a handful of breaths, then there was an explosion of outrage. A few people shook fists and moved toward the man. The two agents standing next to him pushed in closer. For a moment Mindy thought it would get ugly, as the boldest of them tried to assault the agent. But then, he casually reached into his coat with his good arm and pulled out a pistol. That did the trick. Everyone moved back. “Good, now we’ll read off names. If you hear your name, come stand by agent Anderson.” A man held up his hand. “The rest of you may leave.”

  For the next few minutes, he read names from a clipboard. After a few minutes, those not yet called became increasingly unruly. Mindy was among those. She didn’t feel unruly, she felt a growing sense of panic. The loaded Osprey bag on her back started to feel heavier and heavier.

  “Patoy, Mindy,” Volant finally said. Mindy gasped and let out a nervous laugh, before she saw the look of anger on many of those around her and quietly moved toward Agent Anderson. Before long, Volant finished reading the names and two-thirds of the crowd was not near Mindy.

  “Follow me,” Anderson said. “Now!” He turned and pushed through a side door. Everyone followed quickly as those left behind began to yell in protest. Outside on the sidewalk, a light rain fell in the warmth of the May morning. Mindy thought she heard a gunshot inside the hotel and a few screams. Four police cars were parked on the street.

  NYPD police vehicles often looked like they had come from a used car lot, with numerous scrapes and dents on them. These looked more abused, as several had cracked or broken windows. One looked like someone had tried to burn it. Eight police officers waited by the cars. The men looked just as abused as their vehicles. Several sported bandages, and they all looked deathly tired.