It was the secret weapon for killing all the dead.
But that was only if Aliyev could convince them of… well, of anything. His whole story was so batshit crazy, he didn’t believe it himself half the time.
But, anyway, that was too much to agonize about right now. One impossible task at a time. Next was… which frequency to use. Luckily, he had spent so much time futzing with his radio at home, eavesdropping on their forlorn military broadcasts, that he knew their frequencies by heart – including the long-range ones they used for units deployed overseas.
And then, with a crash of despair, he remembered what kind of channel those were again: military ones. Which meant they were encrypted. Now, he had long ago cracked CentCom’s encryption key, using nothing more than off-the-shelf cracking tools. And they had stopped updating their encryption protocols entirely about six months into the shit coming down. So Aliyev already had their encryption key. The only trouble was…
He didn’t fucking have their encryption key!
His damned radio, back in his dacha, had the encryption key.
His dacha – the one that was gone, burned to the ground, nothing but smoldering embers, plus coated with a hundred über-deadly pathogens, the former contents of his Fridge of Death, and now trod upon by an army of dead Mongols.
He’d even had it scribbled on a scrap of paper, which he’d taped to the front of his radio set the day he entered it – and never bothered to take down again.
Why, oh why, the fuck didn’t I think to grab that scrap of paper on my way out? But, agonizing and tantalizing as it was, this was another question with an easy answer: because he had been running for his life, and had only barely escaped, with less than seconds to spare. Hell, there’d been any number of things he desperately regretted not being able to grab on his way out. (At the top of that list: forty boxes of shotgun shells.)
And, hell, if he was honest with himself, there was no way it would have occurred to him at the time, even if he’d had a few more seconds to think about it.
And so, just like that, there he was – totally fucked again.
But one thing about Aliyev was that his mind was restless – even when there was no point to its activity. Especially then, he thought with a mental slap to the back of his own head. Nonetheless, his mind ranged on.
Could I even have used the code if I had it?
He started digging in and around the radio. Sure enough, there it was, in a tiny drawer underneath the radio set: a keyloader – or, in Motorola-speak, a “KVL” for “Key Variable Loader”. He had one almost like it at home. It was a simple handset, like a point-of-sale terminal a waiter might bring you, with an LCD screen and a ten-digit keypad. It had a special cable that attached to an interface port on the radio. Once it was plugged in, it allowed the user to enter encryption keys into the radio, typing them in by hand.
Aliyev slumped down in the radio operator’s seat. He looked ruefully up at the hatch above him, upon which the dead soldiers – hell, for all he knew, they were the original owners and operators of this vehicle – continued to energetically bang and slap, without evident boredom or fatigue.
Now, squinting up into the green glow reflected off the dull steel of the hatch, his restless brain had another thought – one perhaps not so idle as it seemed.
That encryption key… it was only twenty two-digit numbers… And it had been taped to that radio for many months – including many long afternoons he had spent staring at it while listening to the ridiculous survivor broadcasts from London. His mind often wandering, he had idly read it over and over, probably hundreds of times. Now, he almost felt he could call it up in his mind’s eye.
Was it… possible he could remember the whole thing? Maybe it was actually burned into his visual cortex, on some deep level. And, once again, he had the rest of his life for the project. And if there were any other remote chance of him getting out of this tank alive, it wasn’t occurring to him at the moment.
He got out a small pad of paper and a pen from his bag.
And he started transcribing from memory.
* * *
Two hours later he had his answer: No – no, there isn’t any way I can remember twenty fucking two-digit numbers just from having stared at them a lot.
Even if he had any high degree of confidence in any of the dozens of versions he tried to scribble down, there was no way he could test them. If he entered one in the radio, and tried to broadcast, it would go out on the air. But if it was incorrect, anyone listening on the other end – this was assuming that by some miracle the signal even carried that far – would hear only an awful shrieking noise. And, even if for some unimaginable reason they responded, all Aliyev would hear would be shrieking in response.
And with the likely amount of charge left in that radio battery, he’d probably get about two chances at this before it died.
And, not long after that, he would die right along with it.
Basically, he’d blown it. He was done for. It turned out there was one absolutely critical thing he needed from the Temple of the Lone Apocalypse Survivor he had built in the mountains at the very ass-end of the Earth. And he had failed to bring it with him. He’d just had absolutely no way to predict that he’d soon be stranded in the middle of Red Square, holed up in a lemon of a tank and surrounded by the Dead Army, his only hope of survival being to make a radio call to the only people who might, theoretically, be able to come and rescue him.
It was more evidence, if any were needed, that it only took one oversight, one tiny misjudgment, to take you out of this game entirely. And that was him now. He was out. He’d almost made it. But he was done for. And this was going to be how he ended.
He let his hands fall into his lap.
Where he felt the familiar shape of his phone in his front pocket. Even now, two years later, he still felt, very slightly, the urge to pull it out – to check for messages, check for a signal. Ha. What a ludicrous impulse to still have. He no longer knew a single person in the world who might send him a message. And there were no signals anymore – at least not when he got out of range of Wi-Fi at the dacha.
God, he never should have left there.
Goddamnit – this was the single stupidest idea I’ve ever had… and I’ve had a few. Fly to London? He’d have had as much success trying to fly to the sun. And the result would have been much the same.
And thinking about his dacha now just made his heart ache all the more: his beautifully appointed, safe, secure, comfy villa – luxurious, even, the place that had been his home. It was lonely, the neighborhood was a shithole – but it had been his refuge for two years, and it had kept him alive. And he would give anything to be back there right now. Even just to see it one more time…
His hand still resting on the phone, he remembered he’d have pictures of the dacha on it. Mainly photos of his dead test subjects, but there’d be a few other random ones from around the property. He pulled it out, to look upon all he had lost, just one more time, to simultaneously lacerate and comfort himself, in what were sure to be his last hours on this Earth…
He thumbed the power button, which brought up the home screen – screen lock went out the window when there were no more muggers, identity thieves, or living people of any sort – and tapped to open his photos. And the very first one that came up was one he had taken only yesterday – of that crazy-ass snowstorm that had been chucking it down outside, a nearly complete whiteout.
He’d taken the shot through his living room window.
He peered down at the photo, his eye moving from the external snowscape… down to the ledge of the bay windows… upon which perched his radio set. And in the top right corner of the radio set was a blurry little white square.
Not even daring to hope, having no idea what the camera resolution was set at, Aliyev tremblingly two-finger zoomed in on that corner. It swelled and resolved… and there it was – the little paper scrap with the encryption key handwritten on it.
And it
was just barely legible.
Well – fuck me.
“Yeah!” Oleg Aliyev shouted aloud, pumping his fist in the green darkness. “Yeah! Ha, bizzles – I’m not going to die here!
“YEAH!”
* * *
Okay, maybe he was going to die here. Actually, he probably still was. He figured a tank radio was intended for pretty long range, and he guessed it had a big-ass antenna on top, though he hadn’t actually seen it. And London wasn’t that far from Moscow. Still, realistically, he knew he was still probably going to die here.
Though now he at least had some kind of a chance, the comfort of a dwarfy hope.
But it was nearly immediately punctured.
His heart surged in his chest when he got, very quickly, a response to his hail. It was staticky, and the volume went up and down, but it was comprehensible. It said:
“CentCom HQ. State your call sign – or branch, unit, and rank.”
“Listen. Hello. I haven’t got any of those. But it’s vitally important that you connect me with someone – a senior milit—”
“Please state your call sign – or branch, unit, and rank.”
The person on the other end sounded frazzled, busier than hell – and distinctly displeased to hear from Aliyev.
He tried to control both his breathing and his tone of voice. “As I say, I haven’t got a call sign. But I’ve got something you need, something absolutely critica—”
“This is a secure military channel. How did you get the encryption protocols for this channel?”
“Not important. Listen, I don’t have much time. The battery on this thing is going to die. So you have to li—”
“Stay off of this channel and military comms. Or there will be consequences.”
“Please, no, just listen to me for one minute! Hello? Hello!”
They’d hung up on him. He didn’t even bother powering down the radio again. There was no point.
He was done for. Absolutely hosed.
But then, pondering the matter in glum silence, Aliyev realized there actually was one other person on Earth whom he knew – and could, just maybe, try to call. It was completely crazy, but there was one guy. Aliyev had heard him mentioned by name, along with his purported vaccine, when eavesdropping on CentCom’s long-range frequencies – and it was the mention of him that had started him on this whole insane misadventure in the first place.
And Aliyev knew the man personally.
How Green Was My Ferret
JFK - Bridge
“No, no, no,” the ensign at the radio station a few feet in front of Commander Abrams said. “You cannot just talk to Dr. Park. You need to clear this channel. CVN-79 out.”
Commander Abrams watched him put down the handset, then mutter to the man at the station next to him, “Fucking survivors, man.”
“If he was a survivor, how’d he get on an encrypted military channel?”
“…That’s actually a pretty good question. He also knew our hull number.”
“Ensign Jones,” Abrams said crisply.
“Sir,” the ensign replied, twisting at the waist.
“What I’d really like to know is… how did he know Dr. Park’s name?”
“Yes, sir. That’s not a bad question, either.”
Abrams picked up his own phone handset. And dialed the hospital lab.
* * *
“Who did this guy say he was?” Dr. Park asked, rushing onto the bridge, even before reaching the captain’s station.
Abrams gestured down at the ensign on the radios, who looked up and answered, “He claimed to be a bioscientist, from Uzbekistan or somewhere – and he was babbling something about having some designer disease. Said it would kill all the dead. He just sounded like a crazy person.”
Park’s mouth went for his shoes, and just hung there for a good two seconds. When it closed again, his face was a mask of determination. “You’ve got to get him back on the line – right now.”
The ensign looked up at Abrams, who nodded his assent. So he picked up the handset, tapped his touchscreen, checked the frequency, then put the phone on speaker. Finally, he spoke crisply into the open air: “Unknown station, this is CVN-79, are you still receiving on this channel, over?”
“Yes, yes! For God’s sake, I’m here. But I don’t have much time.”
Five minutes later, most of it spent listening, Park’s mouth was hanging open again. Abrams, who had also been listening raptly, motioned to the ensign to turn off the speaker, then said to Park: “Okay. Is there any chance this guy is who he says he is? Or that he could have something like what he describes?”
Park nodded. “I don’t know who else it could be. I don’t know how else he could know these things. And if it is him… well, I worked with him pretty closely at the biotech in Dusseldorf. And he might just be the one guy on Earth who could produce a bioengineered disease like that. Designer pathogens were his whole thing – and he was good. Seriously good. Like, to the point that we worried about what he was going to do with them.”
Abrams paused and cocked his head. “But the world is a very tricksy place, Dr. Park. We can’t be taken in. You’ve got to try and verify him somehow.”
Park nodded, and the ensign flipped the speaker switch. “Dr. Aliyev,” Park said. “What’s the molar mass of adenine?”
“What…? Okay, okay. About a hundred and thirty-five grams per mole.”
Abrams looked down at Park, who nodded – close enough. “What does the MC1R recessive gene variant cause?”
“Redheads!” The Kazakh sounded like he was getting into it now. He spoke in an easy, competent English, with an accent that sounded kind of Russian but kind of not – the Rs weren’t so hard, and the Hs were heavier.
“What color was the ferret owned by the director at the lab in Dusseldorf?”
“Trick question. It wasn’t a ferret, it was a badger. And all badgers are black and white. Hint of brown maybe.”
Park exhaled. His look to Abrams said it all. “And you’ve really got a designer pathogen that will destroy the dead?”
“I swear on my life. Kills zombies dead – better than Raid on cockroaches. Massively virulent – and as contagious as freshman dorm flu.”
Park paused and took a deep breath. “Okay. Just tell me one last thing. Who were you really working for back in Dusseldorf?”
Long pause. “The FSB.”
“I knew it! You were a goddamned Russian spy.”
“Yes. Sorry. I swear I will spend the rest of eternity making it up to you – if you just get me the ever-living fuck out of here. Please, Simon. Save me – save humanity. Between your vaccine, and my pathogen, we can fix all this. You just have to come and get me.”
Park looked up to Abrams, his expression twice as serious as it had been when he first came up here to talk him into something – namely the mission to retrieve the DNA sequencer from Saudi Arabia.
He said, “We’ve got to go get this guy, Commander. Whatever it takes. This will change everything.”
* * *
“We’ve lost the transmission,” the ensign said.
Park nodded. Aliyev’s radio must have died, as he’d warned them it would. But they’d managed to get some details out of him before the end. And what he told them about his location, bizarre as it sounded, jibed with what radio direction-finding told them. They’d been triangulating from the carrier and from their airborne F-35, giving them a reliable transmission source.
Park repeated himself, a foot away from Abrams’s face. “Seriously. We have got to go get him out of there.”
Abrams exhaled wearily. “Who exactly is we?”
“I don’t know. Someone in Britain, I think. CentCom. They’re a lot closer.”
Abrams shook his head. “We’ve already been through this with them. They don’t have any more long-range air transport. Their only refueling tanker is halfway to us right now.”
Park looked down to the map display already up on Abrams’s screen. “But th
is is a much shorter flight. Look…” He scrolled and zoomed out the map, then eyeballed the map scale, and pinched off the distances. “It’s nearly four thousand miles from London to us here in the Gulf of Aden… But it’s probably no more than… fifteen hundred from London to Moscow. Plus it doesn’t have to be an aircraft that can land on a carrier.”
“Yeah,” Abrams said, unimpressed. “Instead it has to land in Red Square. With God knows how many undead on the ground there. Quite a few, if your guy is to be believed. Wait a minute – how do you know him again?”
Park shook this off. “It’s not important. Look, they’ve got to make this happen – whatever it takes. Professor Close and I have already talked about this, and nobody else has any plan for getting rid of the seven billion walking dead plaguing our planet. Infecting them with a lethal virus or bacterium is probably the only way we’re going to get the Earth back in our lifetime. I’m telling you, if this works, it could be the salvation of the world. And if we don’t get this guy, that could be it. This could be the one thing that actually— listen, they said the noose is closing on London, right? That Britain is hanging on by a thread. That they’re out of time.”
“Yeah.”
Park nodded, touched the corner of his eyeglasses, and steeled himself. He said, “Okay. Well, listen, the vaccine’s going to take a few days even to start protecting people who are inoculated with it. And that’s after we finish perfecting it – and get it back to Britain. Which is only going to happen after Alpha gets back with the sample I need. These are all critical-path tasks – a delay at any stage pushes the whole thing back.”
Abrams seemed to slump slightly in his chair. Great, more bad news.
“But if this guy, Aliyev, has a working biowarfare agent that destroys the dead, and is highly contagious among them… well, that starts working, and having an effect, almost instantly. Picture thousands of undead just spontaneously falling over. It could take the pressure off London. It could relieve the siege. It could save Britain.”
The Flood Page 8
