by Justin Bell
“She’s a cutie,” Boskwin said quietly, nodding toward Vera. Across the fire, Marilyn could see Scott and Keeler talking to the other Marines. Scott even let out a short burst of laughter.
“Yeah, she is.”
“I’ve got a five-year-old at home,” Boskwin said. Marilyn looked at him.
“Where? Did you live at Pendleton, too?” she was almost afraid to ask.
Boskwin nodded. “Yeah, but my wife had my son at her mom’s house. Sacramento area, and as far as I know, they’re okay.”
“Did you get word out to them before—?”
Boskwin shook his head. “Nope. I keep hoping the radios will start working again or something. They must be worried sick. Not much I can do about it, though.”
Marilyn nodded softly, tucking her knees in tight. She tested the MRE and it felt suitably warm, so she tore open a pouch and removed a fork, digging it into the strange-looking substance that somehow passed for chili.
“My husband is overseas,” she said. “Somewhere, though I’m not exactly sure where.”
“You think he knows about Pendleton?”
“I’m sure he does,” she replied. “He’s with the Marines, too. Word travels fast.”
“Man, he must be freaking out.”
Marilyn didn’t respond, she just sat in silence, placing another forkful of chili in her mouth and chewing it slowly. She cast a look at Vera, asleep under the shirt. An empty MRE wrapper was next to her as well; they’d managed to find her some spaghetti and she’d been fascinated that this strange little pouch could create her favorite homecooked meal.
“She seemed to like the spaghetti,” Lieutenant Drake said, walking around the fire and approaching Marilyn and Private Boskwin.
“What can I say, she’s Marine by birth. She even asked if we could bring some home… then she remembered that we didn’t have a home.” Marilyn’s voice trailed off.
Drake smiled softly. “She’s a kid. They adapt remarkably fast.”
“Tell me about it,” Marilyn replied, looking again at Scott and Keeler who seemed wholly unphased by the situation. “Faster than us old crotchety adults, that’s for sure.”
She sat there, tucking in tighter, trying not to let the weight of the world settle down around her. She needed sleep desperately. Her children needed her at full strength, and if they were going to power through the mountains tomorrow, she couldn’t afford to stay up all night jawing with the soldiers as much as she missed the adult interaction.
Marilyn cast one more long, forlorn look at the sky, as if to make sure nothing was hurtling down toward them, then prepared her mind for sleep.
Chapter 2
Now.
Sunday, June 28th.
Mountain View, California.
How fast the world could change in a matter of days.
Darla Masters had retreated back to her apartment very shortly upon venturing out to witness this new world in the vague light of day, everything edged with a rust colored hue, everything illuminated by the streaks of light coursing across the horizon. She hadn’t gone back inside because she was afraid of falling objects, quite the opposite really, she was afraid of objects already on the ground.
People already on the ground. Darla, by her very nature, was an introvert and someone who chose not to mix well with others, and she suspected the arrival of the signs of the Kessler Syndrome might trigger apocalyptic fears. Riots in the streets. Proclamations of the end of the world.
She hadn’t been far off.
Her area of Mountain View, California was relatively isolated from some of the nearby areas of gangland violence or the persistent drug trade, so she’d always felt safe and protected in her small, but expensive studio apartment. Her SETI salary was not extravagant but did enough to pay her bills and allow her a meager life, and it certainly helped that she preferred to stay at home rather than socialize often, so she spent very little money on meals out or drinks on the weekend. It wasn’t just that Darla didn’t like other people, she had an inherent mistrust of them. She had her reasons, reasons she chose not to think about now, as she looked out of her living room window at the streets beyond, the thick clutches of people aimlessly wandering the dark streets.
It was nighttime now, the sun having set and the darkness encroached, and yet everything was lit in this strange, ethereal glow. She didn’t have a great view of the sky from where she stood in her apartment, but she could almost see the lattice work of streaks and shooting stars like shapes against the dark, flat canvas of night sky. The Kessler Syndrome on its own was scary enough, mostly due to the possibility of it completely destroying communications and satellite coverage worldwide—not to mention making it virtually impossible to send up new satellites—but it was far from apocalyptic.
But it had gone beyond just Kessler. She’d seen it with her own eyes. She’d seen that tungsten rod drop from the sky and pummel the Earth, the Rod from God, a remnant of Project Thor, a whole score of orbital satellites deployed by the worldwide superpowers faster than the UN could regulate them. Even working with SETI as long as she had, there was no clear indication of just how many kinetic bombardment weapons were in orbit right now, but one thing was clear… someone had launched one. And that launch had created a tsunami which had likely killed a lot of people.
So, while the Kessler Syndrome itself wasn’t a sign of the apocalypse, she had some concerns that the events that might result because of it could lead in that direction.
Suddenly she felt as if she could no longer stand in her apartment alone. She couldn’t just remain here and watch the world go by outside her house, let the people out there control her life, and rely on those who she could not trust. She was in a position to potentially do something about this. To discover who had launched the tungsten rod, or whether it had been an unfortunate accident. Stop a potential retaliation before it could begin. But to do that, she had to get to work.
Moving quickly, she grabbed a computer and AC adapter and shoved them in her laptop bag. She snagged a medium-sized duffel and went through her apartment, scooping up various items that she considered necessities. She had to be prepared to be gone for a period of time. Things out in the streets of Mountain View would get worse before they got better, and if she was trapped at the office, she needed some essentials.
After about half an hour of packing the duffel with various items, she changed into blue jeans and a darkly colored leather jacket, slung her laptop bag over one arm and the duffel over the other, then pushed through her front door, locking it behind her.
Nobody was out in the hallways and she made her way quickly to the exit, emerging through the double doors and out onto the street once again, this time into the darkness.
The streets were chaos. All emergency services and law enforcement had been diverted to Southern California, she figured, in response to the tsunami. That left her little corner of the world to be more or less the wild west. People roamed the streets, several of them holding up signs proclaiming the end of the world, screaming for others to repent, telling them God would reach from the heavens and strike down all sinners.
Darla stuck close to her apartment building, walking swiftly along the sidewalk, eyes darting toward the throng of people out in the street. In the distance she could hear glass explode and shatter, spraying upon the roadway and she suspected the looters would be hard at work now that the sun had set. Making her way around the corner of her apartment toward the parking lot out back, she was suddenly face to face with another large group of angry people, men and women alike, shouting at each other, waving signs, and screaming. Darla couldn’t even tell what the two sides were arguing about, but the mob crowds pressed themselves together, threatening to ignite a full-blown battle in the middle of the street.
Darla tried to make her way past them but suddenly found the crowd all around her, pushing at her, clutching at her, grabbing her bag, pulling her in different directions. Kicking out with the thick sole of a combat boot, she drove them a
way and backed off, pulling herself out of the crowd. A bottle arced slowly through the air and exploded onto the pavement, spraying glass and a strange liquid, and suddenly the liquid was alight with fire.
She turned and picked up the pace, trying to ignore the panicked screaming that she heard behind her, and someone pointed a pistol in the air, firing off a handful of echoing shots. Darla ran, tucking her two bags close to her, forgetting for a moment that she had a car in the parking lot, realizing that even if she went and got it, she wouldn’t be able to cross the streets with all of the people. More gunfire echoed, this time from the other side, and she heard more panicked screeches mixed with glass smashing, a metal-on-metal bang and car alarms suddenly wailing. Her entire city was on the precipice and she could almost feel it starting to tip past the narrow ledge into empty air.
More people emerged from an alley in front of her and she turned right, picking up speed, running at full tilt, or as fast as she could while clutching the two bags, and she jerked around the gate to a parking garage, slipping deeper inside, making her way up a level, running, dropping her duffel, gasping for air as she picked it back up before driving even further into the blackness.
Finally she halted, all of the noise and screams and shouting enough in the distance, the car alarms and glass breaking no longer right next to her, but a few blocks away. There were more noises ahead of her and others to the right, though. They were everywhere, the entire city infested with the angry and the violent. She dropped down to the concrete, curling herself up into a ball, closing her eyes, flanked by her bags trying to figure out what was happening and what she should do next.
***
Now.
Monday, June 29th.
In the desert outside Tehran.
Master Sergeant Marcus Gregory stood in the same square of desert, pressing long range goggles to his eyes and looking out over the vast expanse of Iran desert. Where there had been the flat slab of dirt and sand, there was now a roiling cloud of dark smoke, spreading far and reaching high up toward the brightening sky. It was thickest near its base, fading into near transparency as it stretched upward, reaching like a desperate hand grasping for rescue.
The entire sky in the distance had started shifting to a duller gray, the smoke rising and soaking the blue, spreading like oil through the water of the sky, affecting the color of the whole.
“Any ideas?” Agent Xavier asked, approaching Marcus’s right. Agent Ashland had retired to the camp a while ago while Marcus remained out on watch. The sergeant wasn’t all that excited to be outnumbered by the intelligence geeks at K-North, which he had viewed as his little corner of the world.
“It’s coming from the area of Tehran,” Marcus said quietly.
“Was that where the advanced recon team was headed?”
Sergeant Gregory nodded softly but didn’t speak.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing good,” Marcus replied, lowering his goggles and turning to look at the man. The intelligence guy was wearing his sunglasses and a black t-shirt over tan colored khaki pants, a shoulder holster tucked tight, the Glock buried within its leather sleeve. As Marcus looked at him, he saw a handful of the other Highlanders drifting out from the camp, walking toward him, looking out in the direction of the rising smoke.
“Any word?” asked Sergeant Dade as the group approached.
Marcus shook his head. “Not yet.”
Dade glanced out toward the desert, shielding his eyes with the flat of his hand. “You think they were out there when that happened? Whatever that is?”
Marcus drew a deep, haggard breath. “Hope not. It’s been a few hours and we haven’t heard anything. Doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies.”
As he was looking out across the desert, he thought he noticed a billowing cloud closer than the plume of smoke, a light-colored cloud of dust and dirt rising up from the desert sand. Lifting the goggles to his eyes again, he narrowed his glare, slowly moving the binoculars back and forth.
“Something’s moving out there,” he said quietly. “We’ve got a dust cloud incoming. Fast and hard.”
“Is it our team?” Dade asked, reaching to grab the goggles from Marcus, who handed them over.
Squinting through the lenses, Dade took a long, hard look. He could see one small, thick cloud bracketed by a much wider spray of dirt and dust, and he could make out the vague shapes of things within the pale clouds.
“We’ve got a motorcycle,” Dade barked. “Looks like he’s being flanked by some larger vehicles.”
“Flanked?” Marcus asked, gesturing toward him to return the goggles. “Or chased?” He put the device to his eyes again and used the scroll wheel to dial up the magnification. He could clearly see the motorcycle, small and narrow, but far in the foreground, and drifting behind the bike there was clearly a loosely clutched group of what seemed to be pickup trucks. He could actually make out mounted machine guns in the beds of the trucks, one of them chattering gunfire.
“Confirm, we have pickup trucks in pursuit of a motorcycle on a direct approach with K-North!” He whirled on his heels and thrust his finger toward the group that had just accumulated by him near the north border of the encampment.
“Load up! Grab a weapon and get some cover, we’ve got incoming, and we’ve got to be prepared to beat back enemy insurgents! We don’t have a good ID on the bike or the pickups, but I’m seeing active fire and they’re heading this way. Get ready, boys and girls!”
At his order, the other Marines scattered, charging for their weapons and gear. K-North was a Forward Operating Base of modular design, but a smaller one, built for the highly mobile Highlanders, the small subset of the Marine 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Division. It had a fence on the western perimeter, though not a particularly tall or strong one and in fact had little in the way of defensive posture at all, containing mostly prefab steel-frame barracks and a handful of supply shacks.
The barracks were long and flat, situated on the northwest corner of the established F.O.B., with the supply shacks along the southwest border. A communications room sat just east of the barracks, separated by narrow dirt paths moving throughout the fenced-in compound. Scattered latrines sat back away from the western perimeter, where there was a gap in the fence for vehicles to come and go. Sergeant Gregory looked over at the LAV’s parked near the eastern wall, realizing much to his disappointment that they were too far away for them to load up and use to intercept whatever was coming. In fact, he could now hear the motorcycle approach, the tinny whine of the old, poorly maintained bike screaming over the packed dirt surface. Feet slammed on dirt to his left as he started backing away slowly and he turned to see agents Ashland and Reckard bearing down on him.
“Get back!” he shouted. “Get the hell back behind the fence, we’ve got incoming hostiles!” Breaking away from his position he charged toward the fence, ducking his head as he moved, anticipating incoming gunfire, though it didn’t come. The loud, metallic scream of the motorcycle drowned out other extraneous noise as Marcus curled around the edge of the fence and ducked behind it, lifting the M4 he’d left leaning up against its surface. Ashland, Reckard, and Xavier converged at the other side of the opening in the fence, scrambling around, putting the fence between them and the approaching motorcycle. All three of them swept pistols from their shoulder holsters, gripping them in two-handed firing poses, holding the barrels pointed toward the ground.
“Hold your fire!” Marcus shouted from the other side of the opening, screaming to be heard over the approaching engine. “The motorcycle is one of ours! Hold your fire!” Behind the agents, he could see his other Marines emerging out from the barracks, carrying their weapons.
“Severs! I want you on the 249! Grab that SAW, we’re gonna need it!”
Lance Corporal Severs nodded and angled left, charging toward the supply shack, looking for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Marcus swung back around, lifting his weapon and looking through the optical scope toward the approach
ing cloud of dust.
“It’s Francesco!” he screamed. “On the motorcycle! Hold that fire, let Francesco get inside the gates, then open up on those trucks! Get in position, Marines!”
Marcus pressed himself against the fence, looking out over the sight of his weapon as the motorcycle continued its swift trek toward them. He aimed his weapon above the Marine’s right shoulder as he approached on the bike, centering the rifle on one of the approaching pickups and opened fire, the M4 set to full auto. It thrashed in his hand, barking a staccato song, the muzzle flash bursting.
“What’s going on?” screamed Marcus, turning toward Francesco, who skidded the motorcycle to a stop and jumped clumsily off of it, scrambling behind the fence where his Sergeant stood. “Where are the others?” Marcus continued.
“Dead… I think they’re dead!” Francesco breathed, his voice a ragged gasp. “They were almost within the city limits when… when that thing… when it all happened!”
“When what happened?”
Francesco leaned hard against the fence, his head lowered and shaking softly.
“I had to steal a motorcycle. Try to get back here… shot a guy who was trying to kill me. His friends didn’t like it…” his voice was even, but low and brittle, near breaking.
“It’s okay, Francesco, it’s okay,” Sergeant Gregory reiterated, then turned back toward the entrance to the Forward Operating Base. Across the opening, the three intelligence guys had lifted their pistols and were firing at the approaching pickup trucks, which responded with a loud, braying chatter of automatic weapons mounted in the back. Ashland and Reckard pitched backwards out of the way as sand and dirt chunked up from bullets, coughing up in violent, arcing sprays, more shots punching divots into the fence where they grabbed cover.
Severs ran across the opened area, ducking low, the 249 in his hands, and he crouched for a moment, swiveling and lifting the weapon, then hauled on the trigger, blasting a torrent of return fire through the fence opening out toward the approaching trucks. Marcus looked around the corner and saw the 249 chew up desert near the front left tire of one of the trucks, shredding a tire and pitching the truck forward. Rubber grabbed at dirt, and the vehicle lurched left, then jerked and rolled, toppling over and spilling four dark, shadowed figures from the rear of the truck, sending them sprawling. Behind the fallen vehicle, other trucks skidded and spun to a halt. It looked like a half dozen of them overall, narrowly missing the fallen vehicle, but orienting themselves parallel to the Forward Operating Base as figures jumped and leaped from them, scrambling along the desert, many of them lifting automatic weapons.
