Apex Fallen

by C. A. Michaels

  “The term ‘hack’ just seemed to stick, really. It just caught on, and we’ve been running with it ever since.” Eckhart shrugged, almost apologetically as he finished his sentence. There was a brief period of silence between them before Dan could think of a question to ask. It was too sudden and too different to what he’d ever encountered – his head seemed to be spinning, but he couldn’t get a grip on any single thought. It was all too new and terrifyingly different to the world he’d left behind, for good, a day or so ago.

  “How many turned, and do we know why some did and some didn’t?” Dan asked, his mind still struggling to keep up with the meaning of the information he was hearing.

  “Right now we have no idea as to the ‘why’ part, unfortunately. We’ve done some early and rough guess-work on the numbers involved, though. Based off local observations the S2 cell has estimated that around half of the human population went down with coma and convulsion-like symptoms, and of that just under half of those who went down exhibited escalated violence and aggression – true hacks, in other words. The other half were pretty passive and retiring, but from what we’ve seen the hacks have exacted a brutal toll on these ones and they’re all but wiped out, now. Interestingly the ratio of aggressive to passive hacks was higher amongst the military, with it being higher still in the combat trades – the infantry especially. As for the SF – we had the 10th Special Forces group here in Carson – pretty much all of them were aggressive. Which made life hell for their comrades, I can tell you, and has resulted in all our combat units being massively under-strength from the get-go. Not at all ideal, not by a long shot. We could use every trained operator and rifleman available to us, right now. The fact that some of ‘em are now still giving us hell beyond those barbed-wire fences isn’t ideal, I can tell you.”

  “Is it contagious?”

  “Verdict is out on that one. The Int gurus are trying to confirm the picture, but they’re not biologists or scientists and it will take a lot longer than two days to understand this thing. The current understanding is that the activation pandemic or plague or virus, whatever you will call it, is past us and even those folk such as yourself who seemed to have missed it due to being onboard an aircraft at the time seem to be fine. Those of us who were spared, too, seem to be staying that way – In’shah Allah, praise the Lord and may Odin, Zeus and every other deity out there have mercy on us that it stays that way. Normal contact with the hacks doesn’t seem to pass infection unless you get a direct transfusion of their bodily fluids – a bite, infected hack blood or saliva into an open wound, and then it is enough to put you down. So the rumors go, anyway. My advice is don’t go kissing the bastards at any rate.” For the first time the Brigadier grunted with a forced laugh and despite the severity of the situation both Lance and Dan felt themselves grin with him. They needed something to smile at, after all the doom and gloom they had just heard.

  “The hacks, and I don’t think I’ll be telling you two anything new here, are pretty animalistic – that is, if you managed to find yourself a species of all-alpha, aggressive predators intent on battering the hell out of other living creatures to compare them to. They seem to lack any complex group behaviors but do respond to pack instincts and there has been only minimal in-fighting between them. They’re currently scavenging from easily available food sources and it is yet to be seen how they’ll respond when the supply dries up. Hopefully they’ll wither and die, but we’ll be doing our best to push them down the path of extermination, around Colorado at least.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Brigadier Eckhart said, pulling out some chewing tobacco. He pulled out a wad and slipped it under his lip.

  “Well, that’s how it all kicked off – what we know if it, at least. It doesn’t change the reality now, and we are now, to put it bluntly, facing a situation so fucked up it makes a stroll through the streets of Mogadishu look like a holiday.”

  Lance had been wanting to ask a question, and now saw a chance with the Brigadier leaning back in his seat and looking up to the roof.

  “Sir, the 10th Special Forces Group, what happened to them?”

  “Those crazed, courageous fools? They’d been hit incredibly hard by the events of Stalin as it kicked in all over the base, with pretty much the entirety of their casualties becoming violent, rampaging hacks. I think I mentioned that earlier. Anyway, they got their house into order alongside the 4th Infantry Division and the remnants of those units cleared the start of our safe zone, where we rallied. Ike found himself the senior ranking man on the ground and became completely focused on doing everything for the citizens out on the streets and in their homes, as he was adamant that Americans weren’t going to spend a night alone, facing the hell that we have all seen, without the US Army doing something about it. It didn’t work out but understand, he is nothing but a patriot who would give everything for this country and her citizens.

  “Our original plan was for everyone to get into the Springs area and create safe zones that we would continue to build upon. 10th SF, they went one step further and had our resident helo pilots drop them off in Denver itself. We knew Colorado Springs was bleeding, badly, and we put Denver in the too-hard basket because we didn’t have the resources to even begin to approach that problem. We still don’t, and neither did any other US military forces in the state. The Special Forces operators knew that, of course, but they’d taken the General’s intent to stand by the Americans of Colorado to heart. The entire unit – what was left of it, after Stalin – went out the door and was dropped off at various points around Denver with no return or exfil plan. They went in there to fight and to do what they could to protect and defend the survivors. By mid-afternoon they were all, to a man, out of Carson and either en route or in Denver itself. How they fared and what they’re doing now I can’t tell you – we don’t have comms with them and all our resources are focused on our own little slice of Colorado, but that’s what they expected. Pray for them, because that’s all we can do right now.”

  “Surely you can get a glimpse of what is going on, I mean, what sort of eyes have you got out there? Are there still drones up?” Lance’s speech was stilted and his sentences jumbled, but his tone was steady and carried a sense of urgency and focus.

  “Well, we only have a handful of RQ-7 Shadow unmanned aerial vehicles available to us, but they’re all grounded for the immediate future. When we’d secured Nebraska Avenue as part of our advance into Colorado Springs we used some of the highway we’d cleared to operate them from. Right now we just haven’t got the real estate to get them airborne and recover them, and neither I nor the General want to tie down a platoon in securing a takeoff and landing strip for them. We’ll get them back up in the future but for now they’re parked up and offline.”

  Dan nodded. “So no feed from Denver.”

  “None at all, sorry boys. Denver is well and truly off our radar.”

  “So sir, what’s the plan. Here, I mean, in Carson?”

  The Brigadier lent further back in his chair and dropped his head right back, until he was staring up at the roof. He gave an audible sigh then sat up. “Men, no sugar-coating it, we’re border-line fucked. We’re all going to have to do some hellishly fast learning and adapting to this new world we’re in so we don’t push ourselves over the line into the completely, utterly fucked category. We had our first Commander’s Orders-Group this morning, and General Ike set out his first priorities – secure our location in Carson, secure a drinking water supply and sort out some sustainable sanitation. That’s driving everything for our staff here and lord knows we are undermanned, so that’s all we can do in the short term. At least his priorities have set us a purpose to work towards. We’re pushing out more and more clearance teams and will be able to triple our safe zone by this time tomorrow. Drinking water is going to be a real bastard, and there won’t be an easy answer to that problem. The engineers are looking at a range of options but we’ll be enforcing heavy water rationing while collecting rain water for
the foreseeable future. We’ll sink some wells where-ever the ground is viable for drinking water, but it won’t be an easy run. Hand in hand with that is the risk we’re now all at from disease – not the Stalin strain, either, but the more familiar ones. There are too many people packed in and the risk for an outbreak of something nasty is too large to ignore. We’ll fix that problem but it’s going to take time and manpower which we sorely need elsewhere.”

  Lance nodded. “Porta-potties, I bet.”

  “Yep. Only option, really. Besides, it is something we’ve gotten used to from Iraq and Afghan is that we need hundreds of the things with us at any point in time. We’re sourcing them from all over base and assigning units to shuttling them out to the training area, emptying them and bringing ‘em back. I can tell you that the supply company we assigned that task to that didn’t like the sound of their job one bit, but it’s an essential one.

  “While the General is looking at the immediate priorities to keep us ticking over, I’ve been going over the issues we’ll be facing in a few days. And there aren’t tidy answers for us, either. Our food supply is limited to a few warehouses of MREs and they’ll only last us for a month, plus a few extra weeks if we chew into our emergency reserve, and then we’ll be facing starvation. Electricity and power, though, is my biggest concern right now because it will change everything – everything – about how we live and survive out here. We’ve already started working with everything on paper so we aren’t dependent on computers. For now, the base is linked to the town mains which are still humming but we have no idea when it will go off. Tonight, perhaps, or maybe in a month’s time. Once it does go, though, we’ve got base generators but they need fuel.

  “And fuel is what will screw us, royally. The last two days have cost us half of our reserves, and if I had to guess I’d pick that the petrol stations all around us are close to dry, too. We always depended on a constant flow of gas coming into our cities, and without that supply our options are running dry in every sense of the term. I’ve already put out orders to leave the Bradley’s and Abram’s parked up, as they churn through gas like you wouldn’t believe. The Hummers and Strykers aren’t exactly efficient, so were limiting their use, too. Avgas is another nightmare – when you came up I was talking with the commander of the helicopter unit here, and he was working on the assumption that they only had enough gas for another 16 hours of flying time. Cumulative, across all their aircraft. If the citizenry of Colorado expect the cavalry to sally forth and save them they’ll be disappointed – after a few more weeks of this we’ll be walking everywhere. If – when – we start to push back into Denver it will be civil war-type columns marching up to the city, not a mounted or airborne blitzkrieg.

  “While the general is doing his best to stabilize the situation for the next 24 hours, I’ve used the breathing space afforded to look ahead and it’s not pretty, especially in terms of fuel and power as I’ve just explained. If we lose power then our ability to pump water for drinking and sanitation is over, our zones go dark and our perimeter becomes a lot less secure, and our ability to communicate via radio dies. We’re in a precarious position now and it will get a damn site worse when our power goes out.

  “Which leads me to my current dilemma. We can power our base with diesel but that won’t last and we won’t be able to drive, anywhere. And that will mean we can’t scavenge food from the area, which we have already started planning for. No, we can’t rob us of what limited mobility we’ve still got in order to temporarily power our base. Which is what I was discussing when you showed up.” The Brigadier turned around and called out “Scott!” One of the staff officers behind him, looking up from another conversation, told him that the pair he had been talking to had stepped outside for some fresh air some thirty minutes ago.

  “I’ve been talking for half an hour? Hell. Can someone send for them, please?” Brigadier Eckhart turned back to Dan and Lance.

  “Look, I know you guys have just come through a lot but being Rangers –’

  Dan quickly interrupted him. “Sir, I’m not a Ranger, only Lance is. I was... I found themselves with them after we got overrun and my forces scattered on the first night.”

  “Well, son,” Eckhart continued, “Regiment or not, you both have come through a lot and have seen, first hand, what it’s like out there. Since you’re not part of any established command chain I’ll keep you directly under the commander’s staff, working to me. We need a few folk to be able to directly influence the commander’s priorities and who can make quick, informed decisions on the ground, and who can report back and advice. We were discussing today that we could use one or two “tiger teams’ out there – guys we can trust to get eyes on a situation and who can fix it, immediately, on our behalf. There is too much cropping up otherwise. You both are currently unassigned, you’re both smart enough and have sufficient initiative as shown by your survival and you’ve got a grip on the situation – you’ve seen the streets at their worst and you know what we’re up against. After my ramblings, too, you are now amongst the best informed people on the Fort of our position and of what little plans we have right now.

  “We’re all making this up as we go along, at any rate, so it’s not like we’ve got an established play book or SOP. I think that this position will suit you men, and from our perspective I think that it is the best use of your skills and experiences.” Eckhart suddenly changed his posture and it looked as if he was studying Dan and Lance for the first time.

  “I’m sorry; you guys need to rest up, of course. I don’t want you two doing anything immediately, especially not after what you’ve just been through. After this take the time to get some decent chow down you, sort your bodies out and to rest up until tomorrow. I sometimes get so fixated on the tasks at hand I have been losing track of the human factors. There is one job I’ll get you to pick up, once you’ve had some down time, though.”

  Behind their chairs two figures approached. “Sir, you want to get back into it?” A middle-aged man in combat fatigues and a woman in civilian clothing who looked to be thirty were waiting next to them. Dan recognized them as the two people who had been talking to the Brigadier when they had turned up.

  “Scott, Julia, this is...”

  Dan and Lance turned and introduced themselves.

  “Captain Dan Martin”.

  “Sergeant Lance Holland.”

  The man shook their hands in turn. “Colonel Scott Galatchi, I’m in charge of the Combat Aviation Brigade here at Carson. What’s left of it, anyway.” He then turned the women next to him, who also offered her hand.

  “Julia Middleton, or just ‘Jules’. I’m a contractor with Lockheed Martin and was involved in a project working group here when...”

  Eckhart picked up where Julia left out. “Jules here was working on a pretty minor infrastructure project forced on us by the Department of Defense that has suddenly become a lot more important following Stalin. All military bases had been forced to convert a percentage of our energy usage to sustainable sources. We were in the process of getting fleeced for all we were worth by Jules and her team and Lockheed Martin,” – the Brigadier smiled at Julia so obviously they had joked about this before – “and, in exchange, we were getting completely unnecessary and useless solar panels installed. Now, though, we could do with a damn sight more of them.”

  “I’m a research engineer that had been put onto this project to iron out some installation issues,” Julia said.

  “We had won a contract to upgrade the Fort’s existing ‘Solar Farm’, increasing its capacity from generating two mega-watts to six. This was going to be able to handle around 20 percent of the base’s power requirements.”

  “Which is hell of a lot better than nothing,” Eckhart said, “but Julia reckons that she can increase the Solar Farm’s output to just shy of ten mega-watts.”

  “Which should be enough to provide the Fort around four hours of power by day, with the rest of the power being stored to power the perimeter and
interior lights by night, without running the storage and transmission grid into the ground and risking total system failure.” Julia was a tall, Spanish-looking woman who spoke at a fast, almost impatient pace. She gave the impression that she didn’t like explaining basic concepts when she was obviously thinking on a far deeper level.

  “That holds true for summer at least. Winter will be a different story but there are options.” Julia looked to Eckhart, who nodded at her to continue.

  “I normally work from the Lockheed Martin complex in Boulder, north of Denver. I’d only been dragged down to Carson to help trouble-shoot some optimization issues relating to the new photovoltaic, or PV, panels we’d installed. Back in Boulder I was part of a team producing the next generation line of flexible, amorphous PV panels for a USAF contract. A factory close to us was producing thousand of back-pack portable panels that could be used by deployed forces to power or recharge standard devices. AAs, AAAs, 9 volts, military battery types and USB devices could all be charged with ease. That isn’t overly new, though, and you could buy anything that could do that from any radio-shack store. Our system was far more efficient and powerful and was built to military standards. It also incorporated a passive storage array that would sit in any vehicle, holding an almost mega-watt charge for months on end, without having it drain away. The Air Force had planned on fielding them as part of a widespread trial and the first batch should still be sitting at the end of the production line, awaiting quality control certification and delivery.”

  “And Julia here thinks she can rig them up in tandem along our solar farm, ensuring that we will have a more stable power supply for the next few years.”

  “If I can get to the contractor’s production line I can also get my hands on some larger invertors that will allow me to ramp up Carson’s output to 9, 9.5 mega-watts. Right now the solar infrastructure out here isn’t robust enough to handle the demands that will be placed on it over the long-term.”