Chapter 43
7:00 a.m. Local Time, January 17, 2038
Hillah, Iraq
Holly rose into the air, weightless, as the tank fell from the sky.
The temporal wave had washed over them like a nuclear blast, shaking and spinning their tank and somehow leaving them far above the earth. How far was anyone’s guess.
The control panel and readouts were all going crazy, flooded with streams of bizarre data. Holly had no time to read it and no ability to focus in any way as the tank continued to fall.
A second later they hit something.
Green leaves and a brown tree limb flashed in the window.
Another hit, this one knocking the tank into a spin.
Dark foliage and bright blue sky alternated in the view screen.
Finally they landed with a jarring, shuddering crash. Holly felt the impact all through her back, into her teeth. The left rear of the tank smashed inward and shattered, twisted steel jammed its way into their compartment. Leaves and tree branches rained down around them in a storm of debris after final impact.
“Oh shit.” Melinda groaned in pain. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Holly coughed to clear her throat. “Oh God, what else?”
“You two still alive?” Jeff asked, no doubt trying to lighten the moment. His words let Holly know he was okay.
“Sometimes I wonder.” Melinda said.
“The temporal bubble generator is all shot to hell.” Holly motioned to the crushed side of the tank where the generator had been installed. It was nothing but a mangled set of components now.
Jeff unbuckled his harness and struggled to his feet.
“Well, there’s only one thing left to do. Let’s go out and see this brave new world we’ve created.”
He helped Holly stand, then pulled her close and rested his forehead against hers.
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Good.”
He didn’t move.
“I love you, Jeff.” She stroked his hair. “And I’m with you, the only place I want to be.”
His arms tightened, and he shuddered. Holly hugged back, allowing him his moment. He was a strong, strong man; she’d never begrudge him the need to draw strength from her when he needed it. She did the same with every thought of him and with her memories of the life they’d created together.
He pulled back and grinned, his eyes glassy.
“Does this mean we’re ready, Senator?”
“Ready, Dr. Scarborough.”
He flipped open the tank door, which was on the side now, and climbed out. Melinda and Holly followed.
They emerged into a lush forest of giant palm trees. The Euphrates River was nearby, just through the trees, flowing clear and blue. The dark and dry desert landscape was gone. Vegetation was thick under their feet as they stared in awe at the vast forest. The palm trees climbed high into the sky and were at least eight feet across at the base.
“This is amazing,” Holly said quietly.
Even the air was fresh and pure. She took a deep breath and it filled her lungs, invigorating her. The scene was truly incredible. Whatever had happened to the time stream, whatever Paulson, Mattie, Chen, Claire, and the others had done, had resulted in dramatic changes in the physical world.
Holly couldn’t believe they were actually alive. After everything they’d been through over the last few days, she was still breathing and Jeff was by her side. She wasn’t surprised to find that she wanted to laugh and cry and scream, all at the same time. She settled for stretching her arms wide and twirling until she got dizzy.
“I can’t believe it,” Melinda said in awe, staring up at the giant palm trees surrounding them.
“Are you sure we didn’t go back in time?” Jeff asked, his eyes wide as he tentatively patted the trunk of a palm. “That bubble thing doesn’t work like that, does it?”
“No,” Holly replied. “We’re in the same time, but the temporal wave has changed this landscape entirely. I couldn’t even venture a guess about how long it’s taken this forest to grow. But it doesn’t seem like humans have been here in a long, long time.”
Which was not a good thing. Holly wondered if humanity had managed to wipe itself out altogether.
“Do you think we nuked ourselves to death sometime in the distant past?” Melinda asked, tracking Holly’s thoughts.
Jeff shrugged as he stepped over a large root. “Nukes in the hands of the Roman emperors? Who knows? I suggest we search for signs of human life before we jump to conclusions. We should follow the river downstream; that’ll be our best shot at finding civilization.”
The river had changed course in this new timeline. In their time it had been dammed and its flow altered numerous times over the centuries, with no resemblance to its natural course.
Holly tapped her eye and ear, but there was no stream here, no connection to anything. Just dead silence.
“Why did we appear so high in the sky and not on the ground?” Melinda asked.
“I’m not sure,” Holly said. “Earth’s rotation and orbit around the sun can vary over time, but I’m not sure what would cause it to fluctuate like that. Theoretically, we should’ve been in the same spot.”
They started walking. Holly had all kinds of questions swirling through her mind and no answers. Everyone was hungry and thirsty so they drank some cool, fresh water from the Euphrates and broke out some of the rations from the tank. They found some fig trees as well and gobbled down a few juicy delicious fruits. Reenergized they set off exploring their new world.
After half an hour or so of trudging along the banks of the river—scanning their surroundings and marveling—they came across some ruins. Large rocky outcroppings and collapsed marble columns marked the remains of what must’ve been a great port.
“Let’s have a look at this ancient city and that building over there,” Jeff said, pointing to a large temple-like structure in the forest, some distance from the river. “Maybe they’ll shed some light on what’s happened here.”
“Could this be Babylon?” Melinda asked.
Holly poked at some of the ruins with a stick, still astounded at all the changes around them. What had happened?
“Possibly,” she said. “This should be about where the great city once stood. But in our timeline nothing remained of it but dirt hills. It’d been abandoned for two thousand years and lost to the desert.”
“What about this writing?” Jeff asked, studying inscriptions on one of the enormous marble columns that stood as an entranceway to the former river port.
Holly ran over to see.
“I’m no archeology expert, but I’d guess cuneiform, one of the earliest known forms of writing. But there are other letters mixed in. See here? These letters look like the Latin alphabet.”
Holly pointed at an A, a D, an M, and other familiar letters mixed in with the cuneiform scribbling.
“Let’s keep going—maybe that temple can provide some answers,” she said, pointing up at the large structure towering over the forest.
Sharp fear pierced her heart, eroding the sense of awe that had stuck with her since they crash landed. What if everyone had died? What if the crusades of the high Middle Ages had been fought using nuclear weapons and humanity had extinguished itself a thousand years before they’d even faced their alien foe? She shuddered at the thought that their efforts had been in vain, to come so close and then see everything destroyed by the darker nature of man.
They meandered through the decayed ruins of the once beautiful city, each of them stopping to marvel at sights that caught their eye. Marble statues and frescos still adorned many of the buildings, but vines and trees had torn many of them down.
“At least we don’t have any alien invaders trying to kill us here,” Melinda said, trying to cheer everyone up.
“No, but maybe they’re hiding,” Jeff joked.
“Ready to jump out and eat us, right, Jeff?” Holly added.
They eventually left the n
arrow streets and emerged into a broad courtyard fronting the temple. In the center was a large towering statue of a man gazing out onto the city. It was partially covered in vines and dulled gray from years of exposure to the elements.
They stepped closer, and Holly’s jaw dropped when she saw who it was, a sinking feeling punching her in the gut.
“Oh my God,” she said in disbelief. “It’s Mattie Tedrow.”
Chapter 44
Noon, Early Spring, 331 BC
Babylon
Paulson struggled to get to his feet, his body still reeling from the missile explosion. If he was going to die, then he wanted to go out standing. The masked attacker stood in front of him, rifle pointed at his head. This was it.
Paulson glared at his attacker, not wanting to give the man the satisfaction of turning away, but still he saw the twitch that preceded the squeeze of the trigger. At the same moment, a solid figure hit the man from the side. A scorching burst of plasma streamed out of the rifle and over Paulson’s head, narrowly missing him.
He immediately recognized the chubby body of his savior—Howard Nichols. He was now wrestling with the masked attacker, struggling for control of the gun. Paulson launched himself forward.
“Gretchen, run!”
She tried to move, but her feet and hands were securely tied. Paulson looked for his weapons, but they were too far away and he wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot as Nichols and the traitor wrestled in the grass. He needed to get closer to help Nichols.
Paulson was just a few feet away when the attacker wrested himself free from Nichols’s grasp and rose to his knees. He fired the rifle once, at point blank range, right into Nichols’s chest before Paulson could get there. The plasma pierced the poor man’s body, leaving a burning, gaping hole.
Paulson had no time to think, his heart racing as old muscles dredged up training from decades ago. He was close enough now and reached out and grabbed the weapon as the masked assailant tried to turn toward him. The men struggled for control. Paulson could feel himself losing his grip on the rifle and reacted instinctively, knowing full well if he lost the weapon, his life was lost. He used all his strength to pull the gun up to his mouth, and then he bit down on the attacker’s fingers. Tendons snapped and bone broke as warm blood squirted out and poured into his mouth.
The attacker wailed in agony and lost his grip on the rifle. Paulson yanked it away, and both men fell backwards. A bloody severed finger lay in Paulson’s mouth like a raw sausage. He spat it out before the thought of it made him vomit.
He quickly flipped the rifle around and leveled it at the killer. At humanity’s killer, if they couldn’t stop him.
But his opponent was too fast. Before Paulson could take aim and end the battle, the man had grabbed Gretchen and held a knife to her throat.
“Stay back or I slit her throat!”
“Let her go,” Paulson said calmly.
“Throw your weapon over here, then I’ll think about it.”
Paulson glanced over at the others. Several prisoners had regained consciousness and were attempting to flee into the forest, hands bound behind them. Mattie and Claire were both still down, unmoving.
Paulson knew he couldn’t get a clean shot with the plasma rifle. It was too powerful and not very precise. Firing such a weapon would certainly kill both the attacker and his wife. But if he threw it over, the attacker would kill them anyway. He needed to stall and pray that reinforcements would arrive.
“Okay, okay, just take it easy.”
Paulson calmly threw the rifle into the rich, dark jungle soil on the other side of Gretchen. It was far enough away that the masked man would have to move toward it and perhaps loosen his grip on Gretchen. The man edged forward, taking the bait.
Paulson looked into his wife’s eyes, hoping she understood what he wanted her to do. The man held her tight, knife digging into her throat. He pulled her down with him as he squatted for the gun. He let go, just for a second, as he reached out for the rifle. That was all they needed. Paulson nodded once, still staring into Gretchen’s tearful eyes. She reached up with her bound hands to push the knife away from her throat, leaning away at the same time.
Paulson was already reaching to his side, pulling out his own knife. It was the same blade he’d used as a Navy SEAL all those years ago to kill the evil Chen creature. In one fluid motion he threw the knife, aiming for the traitor’s head.
But his aim was off.
Instead of striking the man dead center of his mask, the knife tore through the top of Gretchen’s shoulder, cutting through her flesh before it embedded in the attacker’s upper chest.
They both wailed in pain, and the man momentarily lost his grip on Gretchen and dropped his knife. Paulson jumped, his old legs already pushed to their limit. He managed to push between Gretchen and the attacker and got on top of the man. Summoning his remaining strength to save his wife, he jammed his knife deep and then forced all his weight on it, pushing it even further into the assailant’s shoulder. The man screamed out it agony. Paulson twisted the handle as the attacker feebly tried to buck him off. He could feel the muscles and tendons snapping as the blade dug into the man’s flesh.
In defense, the attacker reached up with both hands and jabbed his thumbs into Paulson’s eye sockets. The pain was intense, and streaks of lightning pierced his vision. He dropped the knife to grab the man’s wrists, pulling his hands away from his skull.
A sudden blast of plasma flew over their heads, plowing into a palm tree just behind them and bringing a storm of branches and leaves down on them. Both men stopped fighting to look up.
Gretchen was standing in front of them holding the plasma rifle. Her shoulder was bleeding heavily, and she was shaking.
“Th-th-that’s it,” she stammered. “D-don’t move.”
Both men got to their feet, and Paulson stared at Gretchen in shock.
Then, to his incredible relief, he heard men giving orders behind them in the forest. Reinforcements had finally arrived. Three soldiers burst out of the trees, weapons trained on the masked assailant. He raised one arm as the soldiers surrounded him, red dots from laser sights popping up on his chest. His other arm dangled by his side, incapacitated by the knife still embedded in his shoulder.
It was over. Please, God, let him be the last one.
Paulson needed to know who this killer was. Needed to know the identity of the man who would not only threaten Gretchen, but jeopardize the fate of humanity.
He reached out and snatched off the mask.
Glaring back at him, disgust and anger in his eyes, was Dr. Abraham Conner.
Chapter 45
10:00 a.m. Local Time, January 17, 2038
Hillah, Iraq
Holly stared up at the ancient statue of Mattie Tedrow with Jeff and Melinda by her side. It towered over them on a pedestal eight feet high. The actual statue had to be at least fifteen feet tall. Mattie was wearing some type of body armor and holding a spear in one hand and a strange pistol in the other. The statue depicted a man much older than the Mattie they’d last seen less than two hours ago. He looked to be in his mid-fifties and every bit the conquering ruler.
Melinda rubbed her hand along the bottom of the statue, gently touching its feet.
“Looks like Colonel Tedrow found a place for himself in the distant past,” Holly said.
The inscription at the base of the statue had long been worn down from hundreds of years of exposure to the elements, but Holly could make out some of the words.
“I can’t read most of this cuneiform-hybrid language,” she said, fingering the inscription. “But I do see where Mattie is referred to as King Mathew.”
“Great,” Jeff said, “I knew it was a bad idea to send a supersoldier with an alien nanovirus in his bloodstream back into the past. It’d be no surprise to me to find he’d been worshiped as a god.”
“Well, if he was their god, then who is that in the temple?”
Melinda pointed to the large marbl
e-columned building at the far end of the broad open square. A statue stood just inside the structure, hidden from view by the late morning shadows.
“I don’t know,” Holly said. “But let’s find out.”
She walked past Mattie’s statue and toward the temple and began climbing the stairs to the entrance. The building looked a lot like the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.—two flights of stairs leading up to a dozen ornate—and giant—white marble pillars that held the beautifully carved roof in place.
Inside, a massive twenty-foot-high statue sat on a chair atop an oblong pedestal.
It was Claire.
She was sitting comfortably, gazing down at them in a contemplative manner.
“Looks like someone else found a place for herself,” Jeff said.
“Itself,” Holly corrected.
She wondered what sort of setup Mattie and Claire had in the past. Were they both considered gods? Did they rule for centuries?
“Where’s all the new technology?” Melinda asked, obviously frustrated with this search through old ruins.
Holly turned toward her, only now feeling Melinda’s grief. Of course she was mourning Mattie—to her he’d been alive only a few hours ago, and now she discovered not only that he’d lived a lifetime apart from her, but that he was long dead and she’d never see him again.
Before she could reach out to the other woman, Melinda waved an arm and said, “This looks like some ancient Greek ruin, not the product of a technologically advanced society.”
Holly eyed the inscription on the shrine to Claire.
“You’re right,” she said. “If they even partially accomplished their mission, there should be some evidence of a modern society here.” And they must have succeeded. There was no sign of nanobots or rooted cities or the Vorsh.
She wiped away some of the grime from one of the inscriptions and read the words written there. Then she shivered.
“Look at this, Jeff. Oh God, look. Part of it is in English. It says, ‘This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. And government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ ”
NanoSwarm: Extermination Day Book Two Page 37
