The Path of Ashes [Omnibus Edition]

by Parker, Brian

  It was during one of these attacks that his shining Army career came to a crashing halt. Colonel Harris, the man in charge of his section, a Ranger who barely knew how to compose an email, let alone defend the nation’s computer networks from a determined hacking effort, ordered him to focus his team’s efforts on the main attack. Rustwood had argued against it, but ultimately conceded and had his subordinates defend against the attack while he searched for the real breach. He found it and stopped it, earning the appreciation of the Army, while also gaining an enemy in the colonel, who viewed his actions as a direct violation of his orders.

  Things got worse for Justin as Colonel Harris made it his goal to punish him for disobeying his orders. One day, during a health and welfare inspection of the barracks, they found the Airsoft gun that Justin had purchased as a gift for his brother still in the package in his room. Everyone knew that it wasn’t a deadly weapon, but the colonel pressed charges all the same and somehow was able to get the JAG to agree. He was busted down to private for having a ‘gun’ in his barracks room and then got chaptered out of the Army without any benefits.

  Over the years he continued to develop his computer skills and nurse his hatred for Colonel Harris, who’d retired and had become an assistant coach for the University of Texas baseball team. Justin formed an online group of Hackers known worldwide as ‘The Vultures’, named after the marvelously adaptive bird of prey that could survive on the world’s leftovers and then attack when enough of them were gathered.

  Most of the members of the Vultures were like-minded. They were disillusioned with a world that rewarded people based solely on their looks, their personality, how fast they could run—all the things that a simple twist of the genetic Rubik’s Cube had given them and not what they’d earned. Our society was based on the lies of the government, reality television programs and performance enhancing drug-addled superstars who pandered to every minority and blamed people of European descent for all the social ills. It was such a farce. The Founding Fathers would be shocked to see what their Great American Experiment had become. The world would be a better place if they could reset the clock and start over.

  It was during a discussion with his disciples one day that the idea came to Justin. The Vultures could reset the clock. It was within their power to do so. All it would take would be to infiltrate the US Strategic Command’s network and initiate an attack. Of course, they’d have to do the same for the Russian General Staff, which had access to their nuclear weapons. The Russians, predictably, would shoot back immediately. However, the primary reason for even bothering to hack their network would be to ensure that none of their missiles were targeted at places where the Vultures would be. They couldn’t help to rebuild the world if they were obliterated in an attack.

  He wasn’t stupid or crazy. Justin knew that in order to achieve his goals, he would need to convince his followers to do unspeakable acts. As a student of history, he’d decided that the easiest way would be through religion. So he began to speak of the Reset in terms of a righteous crusade against evil and people ate it up. His followers grew, both online and off. The first time that he met a small group of Vultures in person he was regarded as a legend, possibly even a celebrity, which he thought was hilarious.

  In order to prepare for the harsh life after the Reset, he worked out for hours each day to achieve peak physical condition and set up secret guarded warehouses full of shelf-stable food that were paid for by hacking the offshore accounts of the rich. He urged his followers to move to Austin, Texas where he’d set up shop so he could observe Colonel Harris. As time wore on and more of the Vultures relocated to Austin, they began to view him as a deity, the savior of mankind. And he’d begun to believe it himself. The females of the group freely gave themselves to him and the males offered their spouses or girlfriends for his use. Life was good, but the distractions couldn’t keep him from moving forward with his plans.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Justin said to the assembled group in his luxurious home. “Tonight, we set in motion the beginning stages of the Reset.”

  He waited until the applause and murmuring died down before continuing. “It is imperative that you move to your safe location within the next few days,” Justin said as the Vulture transcribing his words typed rapidly into their ultra-secure server so that his followers around the world could hear his message.

  “The world has digressed into hatred and villainy. Children idolize adulterous, murdering, drug-using football players who beat their wives. Our youth don’t want to learn about mathematics or science, history or geography, all they want to do is play silly games with balls so they can have the chance to be a millionaire superstar and have paparazzi follow them to the restroom one day. Enough is enough.

  “We have spent years preparing for the next several days. I applaud your secrecy, your ability to disguise our true intentions, and the advancement of your skills which have allowed us to gain access to the United States Air Force’s nuclear network without their knowledge.

  “We all know that the Reset will not be pretty and that millions of people will die. Be not afraid, for I have seen that the way is righteous. We are God’s chosen. We will purge the earth of its evil. Even today, terrorism kills thousands of people a month, our police forces abuse the population, and minorities demand a greater piece of the pie. We are the chosen ones and we will cleanse the globe with fire.

  “I have set in motion the first stage of the Reset. By the end of the tomorrow night, the world will know of the Vultures and the world will rejoice at the freedom from repression that we will give them.”

  Justin looked around the room, appraising his followers’ reactions. Two of them were clearly shocked as if they thought all the work that the Vultures had done was just a game. He’d have to have those two removed before they ruined his plans. His eyes fell upon the trio of his favorite hackers. He stood, allowing his robe to open slightly and reveal the muscles that he’d worked hard to develop, and beckoned the three women to follow him to his bedchamber.

  *****

  “Alright! Who wants to do a shot?” Aeric yelled to the small group that had gathered in their fourth-floor room in Blanton Dormitory.

  “Hey, I’ll do one with you,” Amber, a petite brunette from Katy, Texas, said as she slid her hand up his arm.

  Aeric tried to blink away the fog in his mind. He knew that he’d met her earlier that evening, but wasn’t sure if he’d been talking to her or one of the other girls that had seemed to magically appear in their room once they started drinking. They’d been discussing the merits of whether the government’s response to the growing terrorist threat should be soft and only go after the cells in secret or if they should smash through the neighborhoods where the organizations were likely hiding. Then, the next thing he knew, the room was full of girls and a few of Tyler’s guy friends.

  “What do you want? We have SoCo, vodka or tequila,” he slurred.

  Her hand slid along the crease between his biceps and triceps, then up over the bottom of his deltoid. “Mmm…what kind of tequila?”

  “Uh, we have Patrón Silver,” Aeric replied.

  Amber’s fingernails dug into the back of his arm slightly as she pulled him down to her so she could kiss him. When she broke away, she said, “Let’s do a shot of Patrón.”

  He walked into the kitchen and pulled two short juice glasses down from the cabinet. Even though their RA was really cool and didn’t turn them in for having the alcohol, they couldn’t take the risk of having shot glasses. It was stupid little things like shot glasses that you missed when you hid the booze that would get you in trouble for violating the dorm rules.

  Amber slid up behind him and pressed herself up close while he poured the tequila into the two glasses that he’d selected. A shiver went up his spine as her fingernails trailed along his stomach. “So, you’re a baseball player?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” he answered with a nervous chuckle. Amber was extremely hot and she was totall
y interested in him. This night is on track to end great, he thought.

  “I love baseball players,” she purred.

  It took him a little effort to spin around because she was so close, but he finally turned around and handed the pretty coed one of the glasses. “Cheers!” he said.

  She raised the glass and replied, “Here’s to an exciting evening.”

  He smiled back at her and downed the shot. The Patrón slid smoothly down his throat without the need for a chaser. “Mmm, that’s good,” he said.

  Amber nodded and once again pulled him down to her. They were lost to their kiss when a nearby explosion rocked the building. The lights flickered and then went out completely. People in the living room screamed in terror while car alarms echoed through the night across campus.

  “What the hell was that?” Amber asked.

  “I don’t know,” Aeric replied. “It sounded like an explosion.”

  “Hey, guys!” someone yelled from the living room. “Come check it out, I think the Health Science Center just blew up!”

  “The Health Science building?” Tyler asked as Aeric and Amber rushed towards the window where everyone was gathered.

  “Yeah, I take classes there.”

  “Call 9-1-1!” a girl shouted.

  “I’m trying,” another answered. “The lines are all busy.”

  The partygoers were scared and confused, and Aeric’s buzz quickly wore off. How had the chemistry building exploded? Was someone working on an experiment after hours that went awry and somehow caused a major accident? Was it a planned explosion, an attack? Were the problems that plagued most of the country hitting Austin too?

  “Come on, Aeric. We should go see if anyone needs help,” Amber asserted as she slid her arm through his and pulled him towards the door.

  “Uh, yeah. Okay. Ty, we’re gonna go down and see if there’s anything that we can do. Are you coming?”

  Tyler turned from the scene at the window and said, “Yeah. I’ve got that big first aid kit in my bat bag. Let’s take that and see what we can do.”

  “Good idea,” Aeric replied. Tyler always had his own collection of bandages in case he got injured when one of the trainers wasn’t around. He returned carrying his entire baseball bag and led the way to the door. Aeric fell into step behind him and heard several others following behind him.

  “This is so weird,” Amber muttered.

  “Yeah, I wonder what happened.”

  She shook her head and followed Tyler and Aeric down the stairs. The bigger man pulled out his cell phone and used the screen to illuminate the way. “Good idea,” Aeric praised him and slid his own phone out of his pocket. He briefly checked the signal strength before turning it around. There weren’t any bars on the screen.

  “Huh, I don’t have any signal.”

  “What? Let me see,” Amber said and looked at his phone and then pulled hers out of her back pocket. “I don’t have a signal either.”

  They stepped out of the stairwell into the dorm lobby. Fires burned at various places, not yet generating enough smoke to set off the alarms. “What the fuck?” Tyler yelled.

  “Hey, who’s that guy?” a girl that Aeric didn’t recognize as part of their initial group shouted. He followed her outstretched arm towards a man wearing a ski mask and holding a large red can of gasoline.

  His eyes locked with Aeric’s for a moment and then he dropped the can, running from the lobby towards the street. “Hey! Get back here,” he roared and took off after the arsonist.

  When he exited the building, his senses were assailed by the turmoil. Everywhere he looked, it seemed like fires were burning while sirens screamed through the night. He gagged on the low-hanging acrid smoke and wondered how the fire at the Health Science building had spread so quickly. It must have been the masked man. Had he escaped?

  “There he is!” Amber pointed over his shoulder.

  He saw the man running towards downtown and ran into the street, directly into the path of a huge blacked-out truck barreling down University Avenue. Aeric froze like a deer in the headlights. His mind screamed at his body to react. It wouldn’t respond as he stared at his imminent death.

  “Look out!” a girl’s voice cut through the fog and he was hit hard in the back by her shove.

  He felt her hands close around his waist and then suddenly pull him back towards the truck violently. An impossibly loud thud filled his ears as the truck impacted with the girl. Then he was spinning back around as he bounced off the side of the vehicle.

  The truck slammed on its brakes, filling the night with yet another sound as the tires squealed against the pavement between the dorm and the Health Science Center. Aeric lay in a crumpled heap near the side of the road and his head pounded in rhythm with his rapidly beating heart. He tried to sit up, but couldn’t get his body to respond.

  His head rolled listlessly to the side and he locked eyes with Amber. Had she been the one to push him out of the way of the truck? His vision swam in and out as his body threatened to pass out, but a woman’s screaming brought him back to the present. Only then did his sight clear up enough to realize Amber’s beautiful face was close to his while her body stretched out grotesquely behind her. She’d been ground into the pavement by the heavy truck.

  Her lifeless eyes stared at him in silent accusation. She’d tried to save his life and sacrificed her own instead. From the high point near the center of the road, a dark liquid reflected the fires of the burning buildings as it slowly seeped toward Aeric.

  He squeezed his eyes shut to make the sight of the dead girl go away, to wake up from the nightmare that had descended upon his world. When he opened them, Amber’s body was still there. He tried to move away from the blood that flowed towards him, but his body still refused to respond and he felt the first of it touch his cheek.

  Aeric turned his head to pull his face away and noticed that it was snowing. The giant flakes falling from above seemed surreal to the baseball player. He thought that he’d left the early fall snowstorms behind in Missouri. The ‘snow’ landed on his cheek, but wasn’t cold like snow normally was.

  It wasn’t until the red and blue lights of the emergency vehicle illuminated the road that Aeric realized that it was ash blown up from the burning buildings all around him.

  *****

  The next few minutes were a mix of insane moments interspersed with surprising lucidity for Tyler. He was standing on the sidewalk when his best friend at UT and Amber, the girl from down the hall who’d asked him to introduce her to Aeric, got hit by a big police truck. The damn thing was painted all black speeding down the road with no lights on like it was going on some kind of SWAT raid. They may even have been headed to arrest the arsonists, but there was no reason to be traveling with no lights on.

  It took him less than a second to ascertain that there was nothing that he could do for Amber. She’d been mutilated by the huge tires, so he focused on Aeric. His friend’s eyes were partially open and unresponsive. He instantly went into lifeguard mode. He’d worked as a lifeguard at outdoor pools in the summer and indoor pools during Nebraska’s long winters every year since he was twelve. Having a little bit of a buzz didn’t erase six years of constant training. The first thing you were supposed to do when you came across an injured person was to check for breathing.

  Aeric didn’t have a pulse. He rotated his body so that Aeric’s back was flat on the ground and began CPR. He was cautious not to press too hard initially for fear of breaking the guy’s ribs. If he didn’t get something going soon, he’d go into the full chest compressions, which would probably end up fracturing the delicate rib bones.

  It only took three rounds of compressions and breathing for his friend to begin breathing again. Frankly, he was shocked. He’d never heard of anyone responding to CPR as quickly as Aeric had. He kept breathing and Tyler moved to the next item on the checklist. Check for bleeding.

  Fuck. He had a massive gash in the side of his head and he’d also been laying in th
e girl’s blood, so Aeric was totally covered in it. He used the small first aid kit that he’d brought to try and bandage the cut as several hard-soled shoes came running up. A pair of EMTs took over bandaging his friend while a police officer took statements.

  Tyler stumbled over to the officer in shock, while smoke began pouring from the Blanton Dormitory windows. The officer had everyone move to the far side of the street and one of the people from his party pointed at him, saying that he knew the victim. It wasn’t true. He didn’t really know her that well. Amber was just a girl on their floor who’d come to their impromptu party. He answered the officer’s questions woodenly until it came time to the actual accident.

  “Then, that big fucking police truck came barreling through here without any lights on and hit them both. It didn’t even stop, just kept on going.”

  “That’s under investigation, Mr. Nordgren. Tell me the facts as you saw them.”

  “I told you that the truck came through here without any lights on and hit my friends. Those are the facts as I saw them.”

  “Are you getting lippy with me, boy? Do you want to spend the night in jail for interfering with a police investigation?”

  Tyler knew where this was going. The increasingly hostile police force wouldn’t investigate their own shortcomings. They’d make a public statement about the tragedy of the events leading up to Amber’s death, but didn’t claim ownership of it or punish those responsible. It was part of the price to pay for the increased security in America.

  “No, sir. I’m just upset about my friend’s death.”

  “Good. Now, let’s revisit your statement and tell me exactly what happened before I start asking you about why you’re carrying around a bag with a giant baseball bat in it.”

  He sighed and began again, cautious to avoid anything that could be construed as blaming the police for the accident.