Standing at the Edge

by William Alan Webb

0521 hours, April 16

  Joe Randall finished his seventh slice of bacon, leaving only a smear of egg yolk on his plate. Fresh pork hadn’t made it into the kitchen yet, but reconstituted vegetable proteins had. He didn’t know which was worse, them or the MREs.

  Sitting across from him, Bunny Carlos munched on a piece of toast, momentarily distracted by a certain young civilian scientist he’d noticed months earlier. As he watched her walk by, Randall speared the two link sausages on his place and stuffed them into his own mouth.

  “You did me a favor,” Carlos said when he noticed them missing. “Those things are like eating rocks.”

  “Protein, Bunny, you’re gonna need all you can wolf down.”

  “It’s disgusting… I’ll take my chances.”

  “Never pass up the chance to eat. And I wouldn’t be so obvious about staring at other women if I was you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m just sayin’, she might not like it.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Uh-huh, keep pretending I’m blind and haven’t known you forever.”

  They finished breakfast in silence. Randall downed the last of his coffee before 0530, giving it enough time to cycle through his system before takeoff. It had always been his habit to check every last detail in his pre-flight inspection, and he still did. But despite skepticism about his ground crew when he had first met them, he no longer felt the need to double-check everything. Sergeant Rossi, their scud-running trunk-monkey, a/k/a their crew chief, had proven herself the best in the brigade. She’d whipped the rest of the ground crew into the envy of the hangar deck. Their performance during the battles of the previous summer was the stuff of legend.

  But when he and Carlos entered the hangar and began descending to the deck, she noticed them and walked the other way, as if on some errand.

  “Huh,” Randall. “That’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “Is Rossi mad at you?”

  “How should I know?”

  “For six months, she greeted us every day with a sharp salute and a not-so-subtle smile aimed at you. Now, all of a sudden, we’re persona non grata. Did she catch you staring at somebody’s ass, like I did, and start a fight?”

  “What? No! Of course not. I mean, it wasn’t really a fight. Not a real one.”

  “Shit.” Randall cupped his hands over his mouth. “Rossi! Get over here!”

  He thought he saw her curse before she broke into a jog. She hustled over and rubbed at a smear of grease down her left cheek. She nodded at Randall and then turned a dark look on Carlos. He lowered his gaze and looked to the side. Straightening her back, she gave them both a stiff salute.

  “Whatever’s going on, both of you knock it off. I don’t know what happened and I don’t care. All that matters to me is that Tank Girl is in grade-A condition to fly. Is she, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. I wouldn’t let personal matters affect my performance. Not now, not ever.”

  “All right, I’m giving you both five minutes to clear this up. I don’t care how you do it, but after five minutes you’d better be grinning like it’s the first morning of your honeymoon, you got that? And keep your voices down while you do it.”

  “Joe—”

  “That’s an order!”

  #

  0857 hours

  Without GPS, a proper map, or any guidance signals, Bunny Carlos navigated by dead reckoning. After 65 minutes in the air, he found a flat-topped mountain with a circle of waiting people precisely where he’d calculated it would be. Joe Randall gave him a thumbs-up and within two minutes they put the huge helicopter down on the stone landing pad. It was not by mistake that the two 20mm gun pods aimed in the direction of the only structure on the mountain’s top, a square shed that no doubt housed an elevator down into the base. The welcoming committee stood far away until the slowing rotors no longer threw up dust and pebbles like a vortex.

  As the engine whine died down, all Morgan Randall could think about was getting her mission over with. She was ill-suited to subterfuge of any sort, preferring direct action. The thought of sneaking around an unknown base, even if it was American, made her nauseous. And then to have to remember a cover story on top of it…

  Glide was first out the door. Marine-issue Crossbow ballistic eyewear substituted for sunglasses. The butt of an M-16 rested on her hip as she scanned the dozen or so people standing near a square metal building one hundred feet away. Once satisfied it was safe, she used her left index finger to motion everyone else out of the bird.

  Nipple went next, also armed and ready. Then Major Alexis Iskold gripped the handrails flanking the doorway as if she were drowning and they were the last flotsam on the sea. Norm Fleming’s rarely seen Chief of Staff had never been in combat, and had only once before flown in a helicopter. On the flight over, Morgan had tried to engage her in conversation, but all the major did was nod and put her head between her legs to keep from vomiting.

  Then it was Morgan’s turn to exit. She walked to the front of the helicopter and awaited her husband, who came around the front a few seconds later still wearing his flight suit. Norm Fleming came last.

  Morgan immediately noticed a change in the usually deferential Fleming. His spine seemed straighter and he squared his already massive shoulders like a bronze statue. Nor was the expression on his rounded face the open and friendly one he usually wore, but instead was stern and calculating. As always, his uniform was impeccable, even though his ACUs were as worn as everybody else’s. He pulled his patrol cap low on his broad forehead.

  Morgan had known him since she was a toddler, but not this version of Uncle Norm. This was not the gentle, jovial giant who acted as a counterpart to her father’s gregarious and impulsive demeanor. This was Lieutenant General Norman Fleming, the ranking officer present, a man to be obeyed. At six feet, four inches tall he towered over the rest of them, and Morgan realized for the first time why her father trusted him so implicitly. This was a persona she’d never seen before.

  Leading his small group, Fleming walked toward the little building where the welcome group stood. Halfway there, the dozen officers from Comeback parted and a stocky black woman walked between their ranks and headed for Fleming. Braided dreadlocks fell past her shoulders. Her uniform had no name or insignia. As she drew near to him, she spread her arms in a welcoming gesture. Fleming did likewise, but Morgan could tell that he did it with reluctance.

  “It’s so good to see you here, Norm,” she said. “Aunt Mathea would be so happy to know we’re here together, at the rebirth of our great country.”

  “Hello, Amunet. I should have known you’d be here.”

  #

  Chapter 27

  Be careful who you trust; the devil was once an angel.

  Ziad K. Abdelnour

  Operation Comeback

  0906 hours, April 16

  Morgan Randall overheard Fleming introduce the woman to his deputy, Alexis Iskold, as Amunet Mwangi, his first cousin. Physically there was little resemblance between them. Mwangi stood a foot shorter, with a long face and twenty extra pounds. But an aura of authority hung over her like fog on a river, a palpable feeling that this woman had power and knew how to use it.

  “I’m sorry that General Steeple isn’t here, Norman,” she said. The breeze over the mountaintop wasn’t strong enough to blow away her words, and Morgan heard her clearly from her position behind Fleming and Iskold. “He decided to reciprocate your visit by flying to Overtime. In his absence, I’m base commander.”

  Fleming scouted the flat expanse for a moment. “Do you have hangar doors on the mountainside, like Overtime?”

  She smiled. “Not exactly.”

  She pointed at a man standing in the doorway of the square building. He leaned inside and a second later they heard a mechanical whine. The ground shook and the rectangular outline of a platform formed in the dirt. With a bump, the entire edifice began lowering into the mountain, like the elevator on an air
craft carrier.

  Morgan leaned close to her husband. “Once we’re down,” she whispered, “keep an eye out for any switches to raise the platform. We may need to leave in a hurry.”

  He gave her the look that meant no shit.

  The hangar deck was tiny, especially compared to Overtime. There was just enough room for one medium-sized helicopter to be moved off the platform into a service bay. Tank Girl was not a medium-sized helicopter. The AH-72 Comanche was more of a flying battleship than an aircraft.

  “Functional.” Fleming scanned his surroundings. His deep baritone voice echoed in the metallic shaft.

  “That’s all it needed to be,” Mwangi said. “We weren’t expecting to house Comanches.”

  They exited the hangar through wide, sliding double doors, into a long corridor with closed doors on both sides. Morgan and Nipple brought up the rear and had trouble hearing Mwangi explaining what was what, but the rooms behind the doors were all storage or lockers.

  At the end of the corridor, they came to a large elevator that held them all.

  “Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up,” Mwangi said. She raised her eyebrows and a man standing by the control panel punched five, but there were also buttons for six and seven.

  “Shouldn’t we start at seven?” Fleming said.

  “Six and seven are nothing but CHILSS chambers. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

  “Nevertheless, General Angriff instructed me to see everything, and when he says everything, he means everything, CHILSS included.”

  Mwangi shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Morgan saw her lick her lips.

  At the seventh floor, Fleming’s entire entourage got off the elevator. Corridors led straight ahead and to the left, each framing a long wall with large doors every thirty feet. On the right side of the corridor ahead were more doors, two of which were labeled as restrooms. Symbols indicated which was for men and which for women. Beside them, other doors bore the warning Authorized Personnel Only.

  Fleming pointed to them. “Maintenance?”

  Besides the Overtime group, only two brawny guards had gotten off the elevator. Mwangi leaned halfway out, as if she expected to return within seconds. “Medical supplies mostly, plus storerooms for miscellaneous non-essentials.”

  Fleming nodded, and then opened a door leading into the CHILSS chamber. As Mwangi said, it was a smaller version of the same thing at Overtime. Four levels of mesh steel rose above him, each level spaced with a CHILSS every five feet. Pipes and valves lined the walls and disappeared into larger pipes running between two rows of CHILSS. These, in turn, connected to the pods themselves through smaller conduits. Computer interfaces stood atop a metal pole beside each CHILSS pod.

  With no CHILSS on the ground floor, Fleming could only look up at the bottom of thousands of pods. “How many are still occupied?” he called from the doorway.

  “Most of them,” Mwangi called back.

  Fleming shot a quick glance at Morgan, who stood to his right. He winked. That was her cue.

  “Oh, no,” she moaned, grabbing her stomach and doubling over.

  “Are you sick again, Lieutenant?”

  Morgan covered her mouth. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “The restroom’s right over there. Join us when you’re better. You help her.” He pointed to Nipple, and she followed Morgan toward the restroom.

  Mwangi came halfway down the hall toward them, raising her hand to get their attention, but Fleming didn’t give her the chance to speak.

  “It’s all right; she was sick on the way over here. Probably food poisoning, but potentially something worse. They’ll join us when she’s better.”

  “But—” Mwangi said, watching the two women disappear into the restroom.

  “Come on, Amunet, I thought you wanted to show me this place.”

  Mwangi pointed at one of the guards and then pointed down. He nodded, understanding she meant for him to stay with the women. The other guard joined them on the elevator as the doors closed.

  #

  Chapter 28

  Insanity is a convenient trait among warriors.

  Sergio Velazquez, from Among Warriors

  Operation Comeback

  0946 hours, April 16

  Within a minute of the elevator’s departure, Nipple returned to the hall, waving her hand in front of her face. “Whew! It’s coming out both ends. Be glad you don’t have to go in there.”

  “Been there, done that,” the guard said.

  “What’s your name?” she said, running her blue eyes up and down his frame like he was a hot rack of barbecued ribs.

  “Jerry Denstuhl.”

  “Well, hello there, Jerry Denstuhl; aren’t you the big, handsome boy? Mine’s Melovey.”

  “Mee-luvee?”

  “Yeah, as in me lovey some Jerry Denstuhl.” Nipple’s left hand reached up and caressed his cheek, and he flushed, looking straight into her huge blue eyes, half-hidden under the corn-straw yellow bangs. What he didn’t see was the knife that appeared in her right hand. He only knew of its existence when a sharp blade pressed against his abdomen.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Ssshhh!” Nipple touched her left index finger to his lips. “This isn’t a time to talk, lover. This is a time for you to shut up so I don’t have to cut your dick off and watch you bleed to death while screaming for your mommy. Okay?”

  “You must be nuts.”

  Nipple laughed. “You don’t know the half of it.” One kick on the restroom door brought Morgan Randall out.

  “We alone?”

  “Just me and Jerry here, and he put the move on me so I defended myself.”

  Randall rolled her eyes. “Shame on you, Jerry. If she guts you like a trout, I’ll do what I can to stop the bleeding, but I wouldn’t do anything stupid if I was you. She’s wound pretty tight.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “Ssshhh…”

  Morgan ducked into the chamber and found the layout similar to Overtime, although much smaller. A titanic cavern had been filled with multiple levels of mesh flooring, with CHILSS lined up. Access ladders connected the levels and there were open-sided elevators at either end. Conduits ran floor to ceiling, shielding the pipes and wiring that provided the chemicals and energy required to maintain and reanimate the Long Sleepers. Morgan Randall knew from their stolen data that the two unknown subjects were on the third level, row 22, numbers 14 and 15. Seconds ticked away as she oriented herself.

  Once she realized where she was, it was a quick sprint up three floors of steps, then down five rows to 22, and left ten pods. Slowing, she found number 14 and read the card over the lock, just to be sure it was the right one. J. Doe 1, it said. Nodding, she took a quick look inside… and felt her legs buckle.

  Cryogenic pods were like stainless steel coffins, except with a clear lid. The people inside appeared waxy and stiff, their skin a bluish white, their faces dull and lifeless. Unless you knew they were alive, you would never know they weren’t dead. And when she looked through the clear lid, Morgan Randall saw something she couldn’t believe.

  Stunned for several seconds, she finally shook herself and ran to pod number 15, not as shocked at what she saw this time. And then she ran for the exit. She had to get back to Prime as soon as possible.

  “I’m going back to Overtime. Now!” she said to Nipple. “Stay and don’t let anybody in there until I get back!”

  “Who died and made you God?”

  Morgan had started to leave, but she turned back and poked a finger in Nipple’s face. “You really don’t wanna fuck with me right now!”

  “All right, all right, peace out. So what do I do with hunky-boy here?”

  “I don’t care. Just don’t kill him.”

  #

  “Of all the people I could have encountered after the end of the world,” Fleming said, “somehow I’m not surprised that one of them’s you.”

  Amunet Mwangi glanced up at her cousin and sm
iled a cat-got-the-canary smile. “Of all people, you should know better than to underestimate me. Besides, who do you think went to bat for getting you frozen?”

  “Don’t overplay your hand, Amy. I was a well-respected general in my own right, besides being General Angriff’s deputy commander.”

  “That was the debate, dummy.” Fleming didn’t react to the apparent insult. The rest of their entourage was behind them as they walked toward the armaments storage cavern and they kept their voices low. “Once Angriff was selected as commander, there was strong opposition to you being picked as the number two. It was felt that would give him too much power and he might turn into some sort of tyrant.”

  Why had she said that? Amunet Mwangi never said anything by mistake. Warning bells went off in Fleming’s head. Too much power? Tyrant? Angriff was officially the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military, with all the power he needed, namely, command of any remnants of any branch of the armed forces that might still exist. But she obviously wanted him to pursue that line of questioning, so instead he deflected it.

  “The past is a foreign country I visited once. The future is where I’m headed now.”

  “That is so you, Norm, so stoic and philosophical. But in practical terms, do you really want General Steeple thinking you’re still Angriff’s pet poodle?”

  That’s what she’s getting at! He opened his mouth to respond, but a noise from behind stopped him. The assemblage following them parted, allowing Morgan to pass through, holding her stomach with both hands.

  “General, I’m sorry to interrupt, sir, but I need a minute. It’s urgent.”

  “Of course,” he said, before Mwangi could say anything. Nobody followed as they walked thirty feet down the hallway. Halfway down Morgan heaved a few times as if needing to vomit. “Where’s Nipple?” he asked.

  “She’s guarding the CHILSS chamber. I’ve got to return to Overtime, ASAP,” she whispered.

  “Who are they?” Fleming said, arms folded and head down. He felt her forehead as if checking for a fever.