A New Dawn_Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series

by Mike Kraus

  “Plastic still holding tight?” Commander Palmer kneels down on the float across from Ted, looking at the motor in the water.

  “Seems to be. Haven’t had anything short out yet.”

  “Excellent. At the rate we’re going we’ll be there in a few hours.”

  “What’ll we do once we reach shore?” Ted looks up at Commander Palmer.

  “We’ll secure the module and supplies and look for someone who can tell us what’s going on.”

  “Are we going to land at Virginia Beach?” Jackie emerges from the module.

  “If the current and wind is in our favor, I think we should try to push around through to Norfolk in the module. It’s going to be a hike from the beach over to the Naval base otherwise. I don’t want to get stranded out in the water, though, so it all depends. We’ll play it by ear.”

  Ted shivers involuntarily and Commander Palmer looks over at Jackie. “Any luck finding the emergency blankets?”

  “Not yet. I think they must have gotten stored in the outer lockers.”

  “All right. With the temperatures like they are I don’t want anyone out here for more than thirty minutes at a time, starting now through dawn. Ted, get back into the module and warm up. I’ll take the next thirty minutes, then it’ll be Jackie’s turn. Bundle up in your suits and amongst the supplies as best as possible; I’ll shout if I need anything.”

  ***

  “Heave!” Soft sand shifts underfoot and taut lines dig into shoulders as Commander Palmer shouts. He, Ted and Jackie all groan as they strain against the weight of the module, working with the rushing of the waves to pull it farther onto shore. The module shifts several more inches, falling slightly to the side then collapsing down into the white sand as the wave retreats. The three astronauts stand against their lines, panting and gasping while they wait for another wave to come rushing in.

  “Once more! Heave!” Again they pull, dragging the module a few more inches before the wave retreats. Instead of ordering another pull or resting, though, Commander Palmer takes up the slack of his line and runs forward along the beach. “Come on, let’s tie off!”

  Ted and Jackie jog behind him, their boots churning up sprays of sand as they pull their lines, each of them headed for a separate bollard that stand at the edge of the beach. Put in place to stop vehicles from roving off of the road and onto the sand, the bollards are strong enough to stop a tractor-trailer hitting them head-on at sixty miles an hour—more than adequate to keep the module from drifting back into the ocean.

  Once the module is secured, the trio collapses onto the sand, panting too heavily to talk about what they just accomplished. It had taken a full five hours to get the module to shore and another two of coordinated pulling to get it far enough up that they could tie the lines off. With the module—and their supplies inside—finally secured, though, they can rest.

  Sleep comes fast for the trio, and it isn’t until the early afternoon that they wake. Jackie is the first to sit up, checking to make sure the module is still there and smiling when she sees the gleaming silver, white and black contoured shapes of it resting in the sand. Aches and pains from both the labor of dragging the module through the sand and the effects of gravity make her groan as she stands to her feet, and she is soon joined by Ted and Commander Palmer. They make their way to the module and begin going through their supplies while constructing a strategy for their next steps.

  “We should head for Norfolk as soon as possible,” Commander Palmer says. “We can leave most of the supplies here and take enough for a day or so’s worth of travel time.”

  “Shouldn’t we hide some supplies away from the module?” Jackie looks at Commander Palmer. “This thing’s a pretty big, obvious target for anyone around here.”

  “Are we really assuming that this is some kind of an apocalyptic scenario here?” Ted joins in the discussion as he pops out of the module, throwing a bag of dried food out into the sand.

  “We all know it is, Ted.” Commander Palmer looks back toward land and the burned buildings beyond the sand. “Denial won’t do any good. Facing the situation head-on and rolling with whatever punches come our way will, though.”

  “It’d be nice if we had some way to defend ourselves.” Jackie shook her head. “Us walking around with sacks of food and water are going to draw attention if there’s anyone left around here.”

  Commander Palmer looks up at Ted. “Did you find it yet?”

  “Yep, just dug out that compartment.”

  “Good. Bring it down, then close the hatch up tight. We’ve got enough food and water out now to make it to Norfolk and back, if necessary.”

  A black case lands in the sand next to Jackie and she picks it up, handing it to Commander Palmer. “What’s this, then?”

  “Something to deal with anyone who might be unfriendly. Courtesy of the Russian portion of the ISS. Ted grabbed them before we left.” Commander Palmer opens the black case to reveal two Makarov 9mm semi-automatic pistols, along with four extra magazines.

  Ted drops down into the sand outside the module and glances in the case, then looks at Jackie. “Russians always carry firearms of some sort in their survival kits. I didn’t think they would leave any on the ISS but Commander Palmer was right.”

  The commander picks up one of the pistols, ejects the magazine, racks the slide, inserts the magazine and racks it once more. He then hands it to Ted before looking at Jackie. “You want the other one, or you want me to take it?”

  “You go right ahead. I never did very well in the mandatory firearm training sessions.”

  Commander Palmer smirks and nods as he takes the pistol and spare magazines. “Neither did I, but that’s okay. With any luck we won’t need to use them.”

  “I think we’ve just about used up our fair share of luck just getting back to dry land in one piece, don’t you?” Ted shoulders his bag and looks toward the ocean. “But who knows? Maybe it’ll keep holding out.”

  Chapter 12

  Washington, D.C.

  “Heads up!” Rick leaned over the edge of the roof and let the coil of cable drop while keeping a tight grip on one end. It hit the ground with a gentle smack before Oles scooped it up and hurried over to the police car. Rick watched as Dr. Evans and Oles connected the cable to the system sitting atop the hood of the police car. Once Dr. Evans raised his good arm with a thumbs-up gesture, Rick took the end of the cable he was still holding and turned his attention to the array of antennas mounted next to him.

  From atop the roof he could once again see a large portion of the city laid out below, but unlike the previous time he had been up on top of the building he had not a second to spare. After securing the cable to a nearby support pole with a length of rope he clambered around amongst the antennas, looking for the best way to connect the cable to the multi-spectrum transmitter.

  Around the size of a shoebox, the LKN Series VI had a protective panel on the side that Rick removed to expose a small touchscreen control panel next to several data ports. Rick removed the three cables already plugged into the device and attached the new cable before leaning back over the edge of the roof.

  “Good to go!” Rick shouted down at Oles and Dr. Evans. They both waved at him and Dr. Evans slid behind the driver’s seat of the car and started up the engine. Oles then connected the power strip to the power inverter and turned on the server and monitor. Rick turned back and watched the transmitter’s control panel, and after a few seconds his patience was rewarded. The screen flickered to life, displaying the LKN company logo and Rick pressed down on two of the buttons next to the screen. A moment later a debug boot screen appeared and Rick rubbed his hands together to try and get rid of some of the chill.

  “We’re in business,” he whispered to himself as he read over the information displayed on the screen. It had been a few years since he had put his hands on an LKN transmitter, but the interface was a lightweight Unix/Linux variant, something he was intimately familiar with. Before proceeding to a full b
ootup of the transmitter, Rick tapped out a few commands and popped open another access panel on the other side of the device. He manually pulled out three connectors and checked the panel again, satisfied to see a message saying “Receiver Offline. Check Connections.”

  With the receiver’s wiring pulled, the device was physically incapable of receiving incoming transmissions, including those from any potentially infected systems. Rick tapped out a few more commands and the device continued its normal bootup sequence. When the device finally finished turning on, Rick began tapping through menus, examining each one for signs that Damocles had infected the system. While early infections were nearly impossible to detect, Damocles had moved far beyond the stage of being subtle, and infections were pronounced and obvious.

  “Rick!” A shout drifted up and he leaned over the side to see Dr. Evans with a hand cupped around the side of his mouth. “How’s it look?”

  Rick glanced back at the screen and raised a thumb in the air at Dr. Evans before returning to the transmitter. He powered it off, replaced the pulled connections and powered it back on into debug mode. With the device fully operational again, Rick stood up and waved to Dr. Evans and Oles. “I’m coming down!”

  A few moments later, the trio stood clustered around the monitor sitting atop the police car. With Oles and Dr. Evans injured, Rick had taken the lead on the keyboard, though he was merely entering in commands that were being given to him by the other two. Twenty minutes into a session digging deep into the transmitter’s core system files, though, Rick had finally had enough.

  “All right, that’s it,” Rick snapped as he exited from the low-level files. Oles and Dr. Evans glanced at each other before Oles spoke.

  “What do you mean? We need to check all the files, to ensure that it’s not—”

  “It’s not. Okay? It’s not infected. I checked it, we’ve been in the system for a while now and nothing’s popped up. If Damocles had a tendril in here it would have infected the server and we’d know for sure.”

  “We can’t be sure, Rick, unti—”

  “Doc.” Rick turned and glared at Dr. Evans with a stare that unquestionably communicated what he was feeling. “We’ve got more pressing concerns, like finding out exactly how much time’s left before Damocles starts its final stage and starting the distribution of the shutdown commands. How about we get those all keyed in and hey, even if Damocles is on the system it’ll read the shutdown command and it’ll be gone anyway.”

  Dr. Evans raised a finger to argue, but what Rick said suddenly clicked with him and he and Oles exchanged a sheepish look. “I… uh… yes. That would work, I suppose.”

  “We didn’t think of that,” mumbled Oles.

  “Well, that’s why I’m here.” Rick ground his teeth together as he forced a smile and pulled out the thumb drive he had taken earlier. “Now walk me through how to get these commands written up.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Evans began to instruct Rick in what to do, and a few minutes into the process Rick stopped and looked at the pair with a quizzical expression.

  “You’re having me enter all this into a text file.”

  “…yes?” Dr. Evans appeared confused, as though the question was completely alien to him.

  Rick rubbed his eyes, trying to keep from saying anything that might be taken the wrong way. “Dr. Evans… can you explain how this will work? Don’t we have to use a specific piece of software to interface with Damocles and issue commands to it?”

  “What? No, of course not. The commands can be embedded into any type of file, so long as the authentication key properly surrounds them. Damocles will read the key and commands and act accordingly.”

  “That… okay, that’s surprisingly smart,” Rick nodded slowly as he thought about what Dr. Evans was describing. “It ensures that you can always communicate with Damocles no matter what system it’s on or where it is. I assume it’ll read the authentication key in multiple formats?”

  “Of course.”

  “Huh.” Rick raised his eyebrows approvingly. “Well, all right. That’s pretty clever.” He continued working away, taking instructions from Dr. Evans and Oles. The command’s formatting was complex, but the results would be simple enough. Once read and digested by Damocles, it ordered the program to first broadcast the commands to every other instance of Damocles that it could connect to. The second instruction was for Damocles to stand down from any and all system attacks and then delete itself from the device it was on. This self-replicating chain would act precisely like Damocles did when it spread outward, except the spread this time would be a cure, not the disease.

  When he finished, he saved the command file to both the system and to the thumb drive before popping the drive out and slipping it into his pocket. He was about to ask the other two what the next step was when the sound of scraping footsteps off to the side followed by the harsh staccato crack of gunshots caught everyone off-guard. Rick turned to look at the building where Jane had lost her life and saw, bloodied and staggering, an impossible sight. Jacob stumbled out of the entrance, his pistol in hand as he howled in pain and rage.

  “Stop what you’re doing and give me the codes!”

  Chapter 13

  The Waters’ Homestead

  Outside Ellisville, VA

  “How is she?” Jason stood next to Sarah, his arm wrapped around her shoulder and her head on his chest as he looked at Dianne. Dianne glanced behind her at Tina, who was lying on the couch looking smaller and frailer than ever.

  “Alive, still.”

  “Any idea how serious the wound is?”

  Dianne shrugged. “My emergency response class was a long time ago. If Tina hadn’t pointed out that I needed to seal the wound to keep air out, I wouldn’t have even remembered.” Dianne pulled her jacket to the side and pushed two fingers up against the soft part below her right clavicle. “She got hit right about here. She’s not coughing up blood and her breathing’s improved a bit so I don’t think that her lung got punctured, but I really have no clue. Any guessing I’d be doing in the course of trying to repair the damage might do more harm than good. We’ll take shifts watching her tonight and keeping guard. We need to be monitoring her temperature and making sure she’s breathing and not bleeding out.”

  “We just have to wait and see what happens,” Sarah looked up at Jason before wrapping her arm around him. He winced slightly and she pulled back, an apologetic look on her face. “Sorry, hon. Sort of forgot about your wound in all of this.”

  “How are you doing, Jason?” Dianne focused on him, studying him closely.

  “Hanging in there, like us all.”

  “You look like crap. I’ll take first watch. Mark can take second, then you, then Sarah.”

  At any other point in time, Jason would have vigorously argued with Dianne, insisting that he could stay up the whole night keeping guard and watching over Tina. His body, older than he wanted to admit, wasn’t having any of it. “Fine,” he sighed. “Two hours each. We’re all so sleep-deprived that we need to keep these shifts short.”

  Dianne smiled and nodded at him. “Get some rest, you two. I’ll wake up Mark in a couple hours and he’ll wake you.”

  After Jason and Sarah slowly made their way upstairs, Dianne was left in the dark, quiet living room. Tina’s gentle wheezing was the only sound that was audible and, for a moment, Dianne seriously contemplated how cozy and comfortable her chair was. Before the urge could overtake her, though, she stood up and shook it off.

  Rifle in hand, Dianne walked over close to Tina and pulled back the blanket to check the bandages on Tina’s shoulder. “Stay with us,” Dianne whispered. “We need you. Now more than ever.”

  ***

  Out beyond the Waters’ homestead, past where the dirt road turned to gravel and then to asphalt, beyond the turn at the edge of town leading past the forest, fields and the long ditch, more whispering was happening. As the five men loaded their gear into a pair of trucks, they did more than a small amount of quie
t talking amongst themselves while stealing quick glances at the silhouette that was still stomping around inside the community center.

  “We should just leave. He’s clearly lost it.”

  “If he hears us, you know what he’ll do to us, right?”

  “There’s five of us and one of him. Why are we even listening to him?”

  “He did manage to set up a pretty good thing for us. Maybe he can do it again.”

  “He’s just out for revenge. I don’t blame him; he’s supported us and we should support him back. That bitch’s luck has got to run out at some point. That’s two of theirs that’ve been shot, now, thanks to him. Now’s the perfect time to get them.”

  “You remember what happened the last time we tried that? They kicked our asses!”

  “Sh! Quiet, here he comes!”

  Nealson walked out of the community center standing tall in spite of his injury, his eyes ablaze and his expression hardened. Though he hadn’t heard any of what his five remaining men were saying while he was inside, he could sense by their body language that they weren’t happy with the situation. Fear had already been put into their hearts. Now it was time for something else.

  “All right men,” Nealson smiled broadly, “gather ‘round!” They glanced at each other as they shuffled toward him, murmuring questions to themselves under their breath.

  “Now,” he continued, “I know you all are tired of all of this. You think this is a fool’s errand. You think that we’re just going to end up losing again if we charge in there.” The five said nothing, but looked at each other with expressions that showed that they agreed with everything he said. “That’s fine. I don’t need you to believe me. I just need you to believe in me.

  “Remember when I found each and every one of you?” Nealson began addressing each man in turn. “You two in the prison in Blacksburg? Trapped by that old man you were trying to rob? Stranded in a firestorm? I took each of you in and helped you, just like the rest.” Nealson made a half-turn and swept his arm across the sight of the bodies still lying in front of the center. “Just like your fallen brothers. Now it’s time for revenge. Two of them are hurt, and the rest are exhausted. They’ll be weak and hurting and unable to defend themselves come morning. And that’s when we’ll go in, kill the bitch!” He spat out the word with fury uncontained. “Then we’ll chain up the rest and rebuild again!”