The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning

by Jason Kristopher

  “Go for Captain Anderson,” he said and adjusted a control before looking at the screen. When he did, his face went white. “Mom? What’s… They told me it was Dad—”

  “Hush, Donald. Here’s your father.” The woman on the screen gestured off-camera, and General Anderson’s stone-faced mien shone from the monitor.

  “Son,” he said with a nod.

  Donald returned the gesture. “Dad, what’s—”

  “Not much time, son, so I have to be quick. I’m not going to make it back. Your mother will explain the details, but know this: there is no other option. You know I’d have found it if there were. Someone has to take care of things here.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “And someone has to take care of things there too. You’re in command now, son. You’re all your mom has left.” There was a hitch in the older man’s voice as he continued. “You… You are everything I could have ever wanted in a son. You make me so proud every day. I can’t imagine how hard this will be for you, but I know, I know, that you’ll do your best.”

  Rachel had never felt more awkward in her life and turned to go until she felt a hand on her arm. Donald wasn’t looking her way, but he held on tight. She relented and stayed, out of view of the cameras.

  “I won’t let you down, Dad. I wish… It won’t be the same.”

  Rachel pretended not to see the tear roll down the captain’s cheek, as did his father, who had a tear of his own. If she lived to be a hundred—hell, a thousand—she would never have thought she’d see General Anderson cry. Yet here it was.

  “I know, son.” Anderson smiled and glanced to the side. “And Lieutenant Maxwell, I trust you’ll keep this to yourself?”

  Rachel coughed and blushed. She thought she’d been out of the camera’s range. “Uh, yes, sir.”

  “Rachel, your father would’ve been very proud of you today. You helped protect the future of thousands of people. He would’ve been over the moon. You are his daughter through and through. Be proud of that.”

  It was Rachel’s turn to let a tear fall now. “I will, sir. And thank you.”

  Anderson turned back to his son. “I love you, Donald. You know that, don’t you?”

  Donald nodded, and his voice cracked. “Of course, Dad. I love you too.”

  “Take care of your mom. She’ll need you now more than ever.”

  “I will.”

  “Goodbye, son.”

  “Goodbye, Dad.”

  The monitor went blank, and Donald sat back in his chair, a motionless puppet.

  “Thanks for staying, Lieutenant,” he said after a moment and sat forward, his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t mean to put you in that position, but I didn’t want to take that call by myself.”

  Rachel nodded. “I understand, sir. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have wanted to either.”

  Donald looked up. “Oh, God, I forgot… Your dad… Wow, what an ass I am.”

  Rachel shook her head and was amazed to find that, for once, finally, she didn’t cry just at the mention of him. “No, no, it’s fine. Your dad was a hero too. Mine told stories about him all the time.”

  “Really? I’d like to hear them.”

  “Only if you promise to tell me some in return,” she said with a slight smile. “It’s going to be a long drive back, after all.”

  Operations

  Bunker Four

  “Warning! Warning! Auto-destruct activated. You have five minutes to reach minimum safe distance. Warning! Warning!”

  Anderson swiveled his chair back and forth as he watched Dagger on the monitor. The man had just shot his tech in a fit of rage and was now pounding on the door in futility. Anderson couldn’t help but smile, and a laugh escaped him before he could restrain it. Now was not the time for control anymore anyway.

  That gave him an idea…

  “Morena, I’ve got one last thing to do. A going-away present of sorts. I’m going to patch this through to you, and I want our people there to record it for later transmission. Can they do that?”

  Morena’s reply was quick. “They say they can, Frank, but what—”

  “I don’t want you to watch this, Morena. Promise me that you won’t.”

  “Frank, I—”

  “Promise me!”

  “Okay, I promise, I promise.”

  “Good. Now once everything here is done, I want our guys there to send this to the Bunker Council, eyes only. They are the only ones who watch this. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.” Anderson typed a few commands, and suddenly, Dagger’s ranting and raving filled the bunker through the PA system.

  “I will find a way in there, you cretin!” Dagger yelled. “My power is unlimited! I will get in there and tear you apart with my bare hands—”

  Anderson muted the PA in Ops but left it running everywhere else. “Can you pick that up, Morena?”

  “Yeah, Frank, they’ve got it. What the hell is it?”

  “Just have them hit record for me and send this out to the Council along with whatever you can get before… before the end.” He paused to collect his thoughts, then smiled. “This is General Frank Ulysses Anderson, broadcasting live from the Operations Center of Bunker Four under lovely Charlotte, Iowa. This record is being forwarded to you as proof of the death of Malcolm Dagger. I don’t want there to be any question that he’s gone.”

  He typed some more commands and brought up a view of the Level Thirty-Nine Driebach lab and entered the codes to unlock both doors. The monitors showed the Driebachs in their pen, listening to the PA.

  “Malcolm Dagger is the creator of the Driebachs and the murderer of more than twenty thousand people. To all of those listening, I give you this, the last words of a madman. Malcolm, do you have anything to say?”

  “—I’m going to send my creations against all of you in your bunkers! You’ll all rue the day you crossed me! My Driebachs will—”

  “Your creations are dead, Malcolm. Or will be soon enough. We’ll be destroying Bunker Nine in about, oh, a day or so, I imagine.”

  “You can’t destroy an enti—”

  “Oh, sure we can, now that our people have the football and the codes we need to launch the missiles. We already control Bunker Five. The president has been found too and is back in control. The real president, I should say. All your little schemes are coming to an end.”

  “My Driebachs will live on! I’ve sown them far and wide, and your army full of little girls won’t—”

  “That ‘little girl’ is immune, Malcolm. Even to your Driebachs. And we’ve used her immunity to develop a treatment for the prion. No one will ever be infected again.”

  Dagger cut off, and Anderson glanced at the monitor showing the hallway outside of Ops. The man had finally heard his own voice coming from the PA.

  “What are you doing, Frank?” Dagger asked as he stepped away from the door as though burned. “What are you playing at?”

  Anderson watched the Driebachs look upward as though they could see through hundreds of feet of concrete and steel. He tracked them as the monsters moved out of the labs and to the secondary elevators.

  “I’m preparing a surprise for you, Malcolm. Some friends want to say hello. You’ve made so many in the last twenty years, killing your people and so many thousands of others. Look what you did to Davies. Since you’re not going to get in here, and you’re too crazy to have run for the exits already, I thought I’d send you some friends to be with in your last moments.”

  Anderson watched as Dagger went quiet and backed away farther from the door. “Oh, don’t run now, Malcolm. The fun’s just beginning.”

  He looked at the door to Ops in horror. The body of Logan lay at his feet, the last man to betray him. Anderson had said he was sending “friends” for him, and Malcolm knew that whatever that meant, it wasn’t good. In a rare flash of clarity, he saw that there was nothing left here for him.

  He had to get out. The emergency ladder would take him to the surface. He hobb
led to the end of the corridor leading to Ops and turned the corner toward the main entrance. Emergency ladders were already down, used by many of the refugees. They were only forty or so feet away.

  The ding of the secondary elevators on both sides of the main platform sounded at almost the same time.

  Malcolm couldn’t stop himself from turning to see what was coming up, even though, on some level, he knew what it had to be. The screams that echoed up the elevator shafts told him exactly what was coming to meet him.

  The doors opened, and they were fast—so much faster than he’d expected, and so much faster than he could move. Even with a head start, he knew he wasn’t going to make the ladder. He raised his gun and fired at the closest to buy himself some time. He saw the remnants of a nametape on one of the bigger monsters and thought he recognized Rickman’s corpse.

  The click of the hammer falling on the spent shell was loud in his ears, even over the screaming of the flood of Driebachs that surrounded him. He’d used the last bullet on that simpering asshole technician he should’ve killed years before.

  The last words of Malcolm Dagger before the Driebachs took him were simple: “Fucking Logan.”

  “It’s almost time, my love,” Anderson said to his wife Morena. He’d had her stop the recording, not wanting their private goodbye to be broadcast. This moment, this last moment, was just for them. “I wish I could see you one more time before the end. I hope you can forgive me.”

  Morena had calmed down, and though he knew she was still upset with him, she had always been a practical woman. “There’s nothing to forgive. I hate that you’re doing this and that no one else could do it, but I’m proud of you too. Proud that my husband is going to save the world.”

  “You’ll see that Donald gets the stuff I left behind for him?”

  “Of course. I’m so glad you got to say goodbye. Wait a second, Roger’s got someone here… He’s telling me…”

  The line went silent, and Frank sat forward. “Morena? Morena?”

  Suddenly, one of the monitors flashed, and he could see her, tearstains on her cheeks but as beautiful as ever. “How?” he asked, though it didn’t matter. He held out a hand to the screen, caressing her cheek as though she were there and not a thousand miles away.

  Morena laughed and smiled through her tears. “One of the techs hacked the bunker’s systems now that Dagger’s men aren’t protecting it. He still couldn’t stop the countdown, though. Oh, Frank, I love you so much.”

  Frank felt tears on his own cheeks for the first time in who knew how long. “I love you too. You’re so beautiful—”

  “Warning! Warning! Auto destruct activated. You have one minute to reach minimum safe distance. Warning! Warning!”

  Anderson glanced over at the monitors showing the hallway and elevator area of the main level. The crowd of Driebachs had ripped Dagger apart, and some were clawing their way up the ladder. It didn’t matter. There was no way they could make it to the surface in time, even as fast as they were. They would die down here, as they should.

  “I don’t have long now, Morena,” he said. “Be strong. Donald will take care of you now. He’s a good man. I’ll see you again one day, my love.”

  He felt the rumbling from below and knew that this was the end. High-pressure, superheated steam was punching through pre-drilled holes in the pipes closest to the reactor. He could smell the acrid chlorine tang of the liquid oxygen as it sprayed into the hallway outside. A moment later, it was raining from the sprinklers in Ops too, and he turned back to say goodbye. Morena’s image was motionless, and he knew that the connection was already gone. He held out a hand to the monitor and closed his eyes, remembering the last time he’d held her.

  A steam line rupture is a nasty thing. In a normal setup for a nuclear reactor, steam lines can be under as much as six hundred pounds of pressure per square inch. The steam can reach temperatures of eight hundred fifty degrees. When shot out of a drilled line at those temperatures and pressures, organic matter has no defense.

  The steam poured into every nook and cranny of the bottom sixteen levels of the bunker, erasing from existence anything alive, not that there was much left. Some plants in hydroponics were about it. Moments later, a combustible cocktail of liquid oxygen and other flammable liquids were released through the base’s sprinkler system as the autodestruct triggered.

  The silos connected to the base were sealed to men, but not air or water. And, like water, the liquids found a way inside.

  It only took one spark per level to ignite the bunker.

  Those on the surface watching from a safe distance heard the rumble first. They braced themselves as the ground trembled, but it heaved up and threw them into the air. Had any of them been present to see the destruction of the CDC over twenty-five years ago, they would’ve noticed a similarity to the destruction.

  As they watched, a section of ground more than three-quarters of a mile long exploded into the air. It showered flaming bits of dirt and concrete down on the onlookers. The explosion then collapsed back upon itself, leaving a burning crater in its wake. Round holes began opening up in a regular pattern, and pilots flying out their last loads of refugees reported a pattern that stretched for miles. The destruction of the silos and the missiles inside had incinerated earth and concrete.

  There was nothing left of Bunker Four, and Eden was at a loss for words at the devastation. She glanced over at Marquez, who wasn’t the only one standing stock still and staring straight ahead.

  Whatever else happened to them from now on, their lives would never be the same. She wiped away a last tear for her friend, her “uncle,” and shook herself clear of the sadness—at least for the immediate future. Anderson had given her a job to do, and by God, she was going to do it.

  “We’ve gotta go, sir,” she said to Marquez, who glanced down at her.

  He just looked at her for a moment, then came out of his own reverie. “Indeed, Lieutenant.” Marquez turned to the few Hunters who’d stayed to witness the destruction of one of the bunkers and whistled to get their attention. “All right, people, it’s time to go. The last plane out is leaving, and we will damn sure be on it! Move out!”

  His voice broke them from their somber vigil, and they piled into the remaining vehicles. Eden looked back from her position as a gunner in the lead vehicle. The fires were burning still and, with everything that had been in the bunker, would be for a long, long time. As long as Malcolm Dagger and his demented dream were dead, they could burn forever as far as she was concerned.

  It would be an appropriately heroic funeral pyre for General Frank Ulysses Anderson.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Abandoned Costco

  Clayton, New Mexico

  They’d prepared and repaired as much as they could, and now the convoy was ready to set out. With five Humvees, two Strykers, and two MTVs full of the promise of the future, it was a large convoy. It would take nearly ten hours to maneuver across most of Texas to the safety of Bunker Eight and the nascent Austin Free Zone.

  Rachel rode in the command vehicle with Donald, and the two talked through most of the journey about their fathers, George and Frank, two of the most influential men in history—at least as they saw it.

  Rachel finished a story her father had told her about Kimberly Blake once upon a time, and Donald asked, “Did you ever hear about Panama?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I heard about American Samoa. Is it true you’re named for someone who died on the rescue flight?”

  The captain nodded. “His name was Sergeant Donald Denson, and he got bit while protecting some scientists. The story Dad told me—” The captain broke off and looked away.

  Rachel noticed the pause but let the captain continue in his own time.

  “Dad told me the guy took a gun and some water and just walked off into the jungle, looking for walkers to take out. He knew he was going to go, so he figured he might as well kill as many of them as he could. Dad said he slipped him a kill pil
l, but he didn’t know if Denson took it.”

  “Tough guy,” she said. “Good guy to be named after.”

  Donald nodded, his gaze far away. “Yeah, definitely.”

  Rachel couldn’t help but console him, so she leaned forward and put her hand on his arm. “Tell me about Panama. Tell me about your dad.”

  Donald focused back on her and smiled. “It was 1988, and Dad was down there working for the DEA—the Drug Enforcement Agency—taking out what they thought was a cartel manufacturing plant, only the walkers had gotten there first…”

  Presidential Command Center

  Bunker Five

  Mount Davis, Pennsylvania

  The room still smelled musty and rank to Ennis, but he knew his people were working on it. Funny to think of them as “his” people. After being on his own with only a few friends in town for more than twenty years, not knowing who he was… It was still taking some getting used to. Even though he’d regained his memories, integrating them with the last twenty-five years would take some time, according to the staff therapists and psychologists at the bunker.

  He glanced over at his wife, seated next to him. Of Cuban descent, Renee was tall with dark hair just going a bit grey and light-brown skin. She had long been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had refused to leave his side since they’d been reunited, and though there was a distance between them that was natural with a long time apart, he knew they’d get through it. She’d always been his lifeline—his anchor—and now was no different, despite the years.

  Madeline and Michael were with their own families, moving into the surface housing that had been cleared in and around New Salisbury. He’d asked Renee if she’d rather be off helping them, but she’d insisted that her place was here, and he wasn’t about to disagree with her.

  The conference room was coming to life as the technicians turned on monitors and brought computers up from their long slumber. It was beginning to look like a command center again, and some of his staff had already taken their seats. The long wooden table in the shape of a horseshoe had chairs for fourteen, and there were more against the walls for the support staff of the men and women who would sit at the main table. The cherry wood had been dusted and cleaned and brought back to its natural shine, and it glowed with the attention.