River of Night

by John Ringo

  Usually, high-tension cables were safely overhead and induced current was a low threat. When powerlines downed by storms weren’t noted in time, linemen could stumble into an induced electrical field and unwittingly serve as a bridge between two points of radically different electrical potential. They would then be trapped and killed, as would anyone else who happened along until the downed lines were de-energized or shorted out. What Brandy Bolgeo had done was to recreate this very situation, intentionally, in order to plug gaps in their perimeter. Wherever Tesla coils couldn’t reach, she’d connected thick copper and aluminum wires to the high tension cables that led from the dam’s electrical switching yard. These unobtrusive wires were lowered to ground level, radically strengthening any induced electrical field once the wires were energized.

  A savvy lineman would’ve been both well trained to note the position of transmission towers and alert to downed power lines.

  The Gleaners were neither.

  * * *

  Freddo the First Time Point Man was twenty-five meters in front of the main body where Harlan Green had placed himself. Ole Freddo never got the chance to recognize the fact of his own death since the current that coursed into his body disrupted every electrical pathway in his brain even as it permanently interrupted his cardiac rhythm. All four remaining scouts imitated Freddo, simultaneously freezing in place and then falling like stones as their bodies strained, rigid and immovable. Stiffened by muscles galvanically locked into place, the bodies remained frozen in place, involuntarily serving as resistors in a circuit containing nearly four hundred thousand volts. In moments, clothing smoldered and then ignited. The water saturating the tissue inside Freddo’s head rapidly heated, then steamed and finally expanded, causing his cranium to lift with a soft pop. It wasn’t the last.

  “Okay, we should probably stop here for a moment,” Harlan said, as another skull popped a few meters ahead. He wasn’t sure of the details, but he recognized cause and effect. He was pretty good with electricity but very high voltage wasn’t a specialty. However, he did know a bit about electrical physics, and reconsidered the naked copper wire. From a distance.

  “Oh, you clever bastards,” he muttered.

  “The fuck is going on?” Berb asked. “What the fuck killed them?”

  “That copper wire,” Green said, pointing carefully. It was hard to see in the dark. “It’s conducting electricity through the air. Somewhere around here is a buried ground. Since they walked under it for a while then it activated, the power plant people presumably know we’re here.”

  “Then we gotta go,” Berb snarled. “Back I mean. I’m not walking into invisible death for anything, man!”

  The gunshot was muted but not “silenced” by the suppressor on Green’s MP7.

  “Then you don’t have to,” Green said to the corpse. “That’s fine. I’m entirely okay with your decision. Anyone else in agreement with the late Mr. Berb?”

  There was a chorus of “Naw, we’re good, sir!” and “I’m fine” from the group.

  However, his law enforcement recruit seemed frozen in place.

  “Mr. Young?” Green asked carefully.

  * * *

  Jason knew that he needed to keep his head in-mission, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful, radiant illumination that bathed the dam until Green’s marksmen started shooting out lights in order to cloak their attack in darkness. What was he doing?

  The Gleaners as the apparently best option. Civilization had come apart. Horror ruled. It made sense that only the most horrible would rule. It was order of a sort. Things were getting together even if they were doing so…horribly.

  But here there was…hope. Light. He knew that civilization existed before electricity but electric light defined, for modern man, civilization. The gleam of golden light revealing the horror of the advancing undead, the swirling nimbus of electricity cast from each of the Tesla coils, the hundred-foot-long spark of energy dancing above the dam, they were all markers that civilization still fought on. And he was fighting for the group that wanted to erase the very survivors who had maintained one small patch of civilization.

  Even the weapon that had just erased a fifth of Green’s little strike group was more technologically advanced than Green himself could contrive.

  The ex-cop had reluctantly gone along with the plan but without any heart or hope. But here was hope. Light against the dark.

  The fuck if he was going to help the dark one more second.

  Jason could feel Green behind him. That man never allowed anyone at his back, save Loki.

  “Mr. Young?” came a soft call over his shoulder.

  Green would kill him in an instant. Jason knew it. Their mad leader wasn’t in position to be able to afford disagreement. To resist would be to die.

  He no longer cared. He would no longer be part of the darkness.

  He would fight for the light.

  Jason clicked the safety on his modified Colt to fully automatic and moved without further hesitation.

  Warned by something in his posture, or perhaps Jason’s hesitation, Green shot first, his rounds cracking into Jason’s armor before the officer’s first shot cleared the muzzle.

  But Green was too late.

  Jason wasn’t trying to aim at the commander of the Gleaners. As the high velocity MP7 rounds cratered and then penetrated his armor, Jason kept his trigger depressed, dumping an entire magazine into the backs of the thugs and former prisoners that made up Green’s special operator group, the very men he was supposed to be leading.

  Fully automatic weapons are difficult to aim accurately, even at very short ranges, but fortunately his group had closed up when Freddo and the leading element hit the electric field. The cop’s rounds ripped into the backs and sides of all four of the Gleaners in Jason’s team. Two dropped limply to the ground. Another suddenly knelt as if overcome with a need to pray, before slumping over. The last spun, clawing at his back, before dropping.

  Young fell to the ground, bleeding out. He was hit…a bunch. Give Green credit: indecisive he was not.

  Jason didn’t even feel his hands relax, dropping the rifle to mingle with the leaves blanketing the ground. His throat filled with blood, and he coughed reflexively.

  * * *

  “Well, I guess I gauged that one wrong,” Green said, again enjoying the feeling of euphoria that accompanied any enforcement of his authority. Working to keep calm, he walked over to the police officer and drew his pistol. “What exactly were you planning to accomplish, Officer Young?”

  “Just to fuck you over,” Young coughed. He smiled through red gore. “Light against the dark.”

  “Really, you come to this after all the choices you’ve already made?” Green said, his control slipping. “You’re already committed. You’re no hero. You die here and it Just Does Not Matter. I will still win and nobody will ever know what a fool you just were.”

  “God knows,” Young said. “I give my soul to God.”

  “Your God wouldn’t have you, Mr. ‘I Do What I Must To Survive,’” Green said, the volume of his voice increasing further.

  Still smiling, Officer Jason Young of the Williamsburg Police Department, badge number 19076, closed his eyes for the last time.

  Green shot the fallen man in the face and paused, then shot him several more times.

  “I HATE RELIGIOUS FANATICS!” Green screamed, his controlled facade cracking under the intense pressure. He tried to master his anger, reloading his pistol. It didn’t work.

  “You could have screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ or SOMETHING. Fucking JESUS FREAKS.”

  He shot the officer a few more times just to express his displeasure then walked over and assessed the dead and wounded operators.

  “What good are you now?” Green snarled, before turning to the remaining men. “Grab their ammunition and let’s go.”

  “I’m right with you, Boss,” one of the Gleaners said nervously. “But…how are we going to get around the magic fields of
invisible death?”

  “There’s one of those Tesla coils over there,” Green said, pointing towards the river. “Noise discipline is forgone anyway. Just shoot it.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Gleaner said, taking careful aim, then shooting the bright silver power-head. “And again sir, not wanting to get shot, there’s no invisible field of death over there?”

  “You can’t have one of these and a Tesla coil in the same area,” Green said, gesturing in the direction of the destroyed coil. “And before you ask why, it’s because…science, understand? Are you going to aggravate me and ask for an in-depth physics explanation, Charlie?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Green,” Charlie said hastily.

  “Good call,” Green replied. “Move out, we’re almost there.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Frederika had lived a long and fruitful life.

  That is, for a blue catfish.

  She was unusually long lived, even by catfish standards. For more than two decades she had survived in Watts Bar lake. She’d dodged anglers or thrown their hooks. She’d detected the sting of industrial pollution and moved to a new hole on the muddy bottom, while her fellows washed ashore. Floods, droughts, heavy construction, she’d outlasted it all.

  She’d spawned uncounted clouds of eggs and passed along her champion genes. In fact, only a few moons past, she’d selected a feisty male and after a gratifying tussle, laid her clutch in the shallow depression he’d prepared before she swam off, leaving her suitor to his guard duty, just as she’d done each time before.

  And the payoff was now.

  She’d felt the rainy season approach, which usually brought with it nutrient rich water and prey from upstream. However, life had been especially good recently. An entirely new food source, made up of tasty baitfish, was prolific in the lake and their numbers steadily growing. She could eat her fill by moving only a few meters closer to shore and slurping down dinner. Since moving her five-foot-long bulk, which exceeded one hundred-and-forty pounds, could be a tedious chore, the short distance to her feeding grounds was a tremendous boon.

  This night, she felt ravenous, and started to rise in the water column, seeking her favorite food.

  Suddenly, a tremendous weight struck her back! Indignant, she spasmed, trying to slap the intruder with her thick body and tail, but a disgusting protrusion invaded her mouth!

  Grabbed her gill cover!

  Punched her flanks!

  Panicked as she had never been before, she swam for her life.

  * * *

  “Hold here,” Paul said quietly as the earlier burst of automatic fire was followed by a series of individual gunshots. They struck a nearby Tesla coil. In the rain and wind the shots might have gone unnoticed. The actinic deconstruction of the charged coil, however, was unmistakable.

  The coil was the landmark Smith had marked as the point to put in the ambush. To the west were various induction traps for the infected. They would be hard for the Gleaners to remove, if they could even detect them. The Tesla coils were more vulnerable, another argument against them. As predicted, the Gleaner team lead, whoever it was, had taken out the coil and thus would be pushing in their direction.

  “Take positions behind the trees. Hold your fire till I shoot.”

  The team spread out with a bit more talking than he liked.

  “Keep your voices down,” he said, sotto voce. Paul gestured for Luke to go left as he went right.

  “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered to Emily Bloome as she filed by nervously. “Just think of them as targets in darkness.”

  “They’re people,” the New York schoolteacher murmured back. “Not just targets.”

  “They’re rapists and murderers and you’re protecting your students,” Paul said, “Just shoot the targets.”

  He continued on and moved Eric Swanson over to a tree.

  “We don’t want to be bunched up,” he said. “Just shoot the targets.”

  “I…will,” Eric said, gulping. “Sorry to say this, Mr. Rune, but I wish Mr. Smith was here.”

  “Me too, kid,” Paul said. “But it’s gonna work out fine. Wait until I fire.”

  He moved to a likely tree and took up a kneeling position, peering through the precious IR monocle.

  Movement.

  * * *

  “Go to the Tesla coil,” Green said. “Then turn right and head for the lights.”

  “Got it,” Charlie said. He was nervous as hell. He wasn’t sure whether he was more nervous about another invisible wall of death or catching a bullet from the psycho boss standing at his back.

  The Tesla coil was on a tall metal pole. It was easy enough to see through the night vision goggles. But the rain was doing something funky with the goggles. They weren’t very good, which quality should have been obvious from the name of that gadget maker that advertised inside an in-flight magazine. There were ghosts or something from the rain getting on them. Almost human figures…

  He paused and wiped at the goggles. It made things worse. He was trying to puzzle out if they were actually people or just smears.

  “I think there’s something…”

  * * *

  Paul realized they’d been compromised when the point stopped. The Gleaner team must be using night vision also. It was the only way the small team could have been spotted with the rain and wind.

  The Gleaners had been following a road that according to the TVA team dated to the construction of the dam in the 1940s. That was where they’d hit the induction electrical trap. They’d turned towards the Tesla coil, which was in an open area between two sets of trees, one of which had paralleled the road, the other of which was cover and concealment for Paul’s team.

  If the Gleaners had come into the open area it would have been one thing. Most of them would have been at short range and sitting ducks.

  In the trees and fifty meters away, the situation was not as great. His team’s marksmanship was not all that good. He’d wanted to get the Gleaner group to within no more than thirty meters before opening fire.

  For that matter, having Smith and the rest of the Army guys with him would have been nice. Might as well ask for a Reaper overhead while he was at it.

  As Smith used to say, there was a time to think and a time to act.

  Paul carefully targeted the point man and rapidly sent three rounds at the target.

  Everyone else immediately followed suit. Some of them might even have made hits.

  * * *

  Green jumped behind a tree as the first pops of rifle fire signaled the presence of the enemy. He risked a quick look. He couldn’t see the adversary, but he watched as his latest point man twitched and died. Again. On the other hand…

  Finally somebody, on the other side for once, to kill.

  “Team Three,” Green yelled. “Lay down a base of fire! Team Five, move forward!”

  His men immediately began shooting, emptying their magazines towards the trees and muzzle flashes across the clearing.

  * * *

  As Tom broached the surface of the river his flailing left arm landed on a decayed infected body. The bloated abdomen burst, releasing a mass of noxious gases and rotten intestines.

  He inhaled the fetid air in a massive gulp as his head rose above the foam and scum at the water’s surface.

  It was the finest of fine wines. No breath from the pine-scented Alps, or fields of wheat in Queensland ever tasted as sweet as the rotten, polluted mix he breathed in. Tom coughed out the stinking water and inhaled again.

  “Farewell, fine fish,” Tom gasped, drawing his arm out of the catfish’s mouth and releasing the massive cat to return to its watery home. “I wish thee well.”

  He struck out for the dimly seen shore and in what seemed like moments, his hand brushed the weeds and brush lining the shore. He allowed his body to rotate vertically and found his feet on the knee deep, uneven rocks below a towering cliff. Still hyperventilating after his extended breath-hold, he paused to listen. Several hundred meters to
his left, the firefight at the dam was in full swing. Red tracers crisscrossed, and Tom could tell that the attackers were well onto the dam and the roadbed itself. Somewhere above him near the clifftop, Paul and the team should be slowly retreating after making first contact, but he couldn’t distinguish between the sounds at the dam and any over his head. Tom knew that he should be thankful for his narrow, improbable escape, but instead he harnessed his accumulated anger that he couldn’t more rapidly reach his team’s position.

  The adjacent bit of cliff was still too steep to climb without specialized equipment, but Tom could see the slope ease only a few hundred meters down the beach. He started splashing in that direction.

  Unlike his more laid back brother, Tom Smith had a slight mental issue. It might have been nature, and he was just born different from his relaxed sibling. It might have been nurture, and his time in the Squadron, in combat and on Wall Street. Regardless, his little brother Steve would grow calm, even jocular as already tense situations went for a ball of chalk. Not Tom. Tom got angry. Very, very angry. Under the tutelage of their heavy-handed father and later in Regiment, he’d learned control. Without control, he could lose track of the mission because the worse things went, the angrier he got.

  Things had been going very poorly so far this night. In fact, things had been going wrong for a good long while now. The ball of rage that he’d squeezed, suppressed and stored away was now descending across his vision like a red curtain.

  He was, therefore, less than fair dinkum. He’d been considering how to properly describe his mood while wondering if he was ever going to find the surface of this bloody lake.