Part 6 (2/2)
Hammer fought with everything that was left in him, emptying his magazine, allowing one creature through to attack the others near the hovering helicopter. Doc bagged the creature and all three men hurriedly dragged it inside the flying machine. Hammer was right-these radiated abominations were stronger than anything he'd encountered. It nearly breached the fresh net in the time it took the three of them to throw it in the steel cage. It was now no mystery how the second specimen got through the net; it had a hundred feet of winch ascent to rip and claw before getting to Hammer. Doc estimated that the strength of the second specimen must have been many times that of the first from the causeway.
The rest was a blur. They had both their snarling, powerful specimens securely stored in the hardened, part.i.tioned steel cages. The helicopter gained alt.i.tude. Doc asked Sam to hold at two hundred feet. The team watched the scene below as Hammer was making his last stand against the undead with only his knife. He stabbed and slashed and killed three more before they rushed him. Doc moved to the rack, grabbed the scoped LaRue 7.62 and went p.r.o.ne. Through the gla.s.s, he confirmed that Hammer was dead, the creatures viciously feeding on his warm, radioactive remains. Anger shot through Doc's body and he cursed them all to h.e.l.l before paying final respects to Hammer with a sniper round through his skull. Hammer would not become one of those things down there. He hoped that Hammer would have done him the same courtesy. Doc looked out over the decimated and decaying NOLA skyline.
Doc sat up in his rack and checked his watch out of habit. It was 1400. He was confused for a second. Is Hammer alive? Where am I? he asked himself until the total recall made a retreat back to the dark nook of his mind. Doc was back in his Hotel 23 bunk, where Hammer was dead and the undead still ruled.
11.
Kil, Saien, and Monday stepped into the secure compartmented information facility. There was nothing special, no supercomputers whirring in the corner, no real-time video satellite feeds for an army of a.n.a.lysts to sift through. The equipment was old and overengineered. Kil entered a room marked SSES.
The four men that had fast-roped onto the sub with them were inside.
”I know this place,” said Kil.
”How so?” Monday asked.
”Transmitted a few messages to SSES in better times,” Kil answered reluctantly.
”Well, we're not exploiting many foreign signals in here these days. We still have a linguist spinning and grinning in the corner over there when we need him, but no one seems to be transmitting much of anything anymore.”
”What's he speak?” asked Kil.
”Chinese.”
”I guess that'll come in handy in a few weeks, huh?” Kil probed.
”Yeah, maybe sooner. Sit tight-you'll be happy to know that the navy still runs on PowerPoint in the apocalypse. We'll need to boot up our systems and log in to the standalone JWICS computer before we start. Might take a minute.”
Leaning over to Kil, Saien whispered, ”What's JWICS?”
”It's another Internet, one you've never seen and likely never heard of. It wasn't a secret that the government had it before this went down. It's just a secret what information is shared on it. Nothing too conspiratorial; back in the days before this, you could get most of it from mainstream news or other online sources.”
”Like who killed Kennedy and all that?”
”No way,” Kil said, briefly reminded of his mother. She'd had a habit of asking him about those kinds of conspiracy theories, considering his vocation. ”Nothing like that, just regular old sensitive information. The good stuff was on the White House Situation Room LAN or on some intranet in some unmarked Northern Virginia building. I never wanted access to that. Fewer fingernails I'd lose if I got shot down somewhere.”
Monday stepped to the front of the room, interrupting Kil. ”Good afternoon. For those that don't know me, my name is Commander Monday. I'm going to talk to you for a bit before you go through the formal read-in process. I can count the number of times I've given this brief on one hand. For the four of you from our special-operations community-I want to thank you for your service.”
One of the men nodded a response from the back of the room.
Monday gestured to Kil and Saien. ”Also, for those of you that don't know . . . these two survived on the mainland for almost a year. Pretty remarkable, considering the odds.”
”Bulls.h.i.+t,” one of the other men muttered.
Monday continued. ”Let's get to business. It may seem a little unorthodox for a naval intelligence officer to just come out and ask, but please raise your hand if you believe in G.o.d.”
Neither Kil nor Saien raised their hands; only one from the other group broke from the majority. Kil wanted to, he just wasn't quite ready.
”I see. I suppose that might make this at least a little easier in some ways. You see, what I'm about to tell you cannot be untold. I'm going to be saying that again in the next few minutes. You must understand that from childhood to adolescence to adulthood many of you were raised on certain paradigms and unshakeable principles-established cultural norms. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, what goes up must come down, the house always wins, etcetera, etcetera. Sometimes when we are exposed to template-altering data that cannot be refuted, it has odd effects on the mind. Do any of you remember the day you discovered that there was no Santa Claus?”
Everyone in the room nodded that they remembered, even though Saien didn't.
”Well, imagine that multiplied a few dozen times.” Monday paused for a long minute, looking at each and every man in the room. ”This may be the last time I say it or I may say it a hundred more times, it depends on if I think you need to hear it again. Once you are told this, you cannot be untold. Do all of you understand this?”
They all nodded as if they might, but Monday didn't seem so sure.
”Okay, that's it. You're about to get punched in your philosophical gut. I've reviewed your records, all but yours, Saien, but we've already discussed that. You're only seeing this by the direct authorization of the admiral, and subsequently, this boat's captain. If it were up to me, you wouldn't be here, I want that to be clear.”
Saien gave no reaction to Monday's statement. The four special operators whispered back and forth. Kil couldn't understand what they were saying.
”All right, here goes.”
Monday activated the display. A yellow banner at the top and bottom of the large, wall-mounted LED screen showcased numerous warnings.
”The overall cla.s.sification of this briefing is top secret, SI, TK, G, H, SAP Horizon, and everything else you can think of. I'd like to welcome all of you to the Horizon Program.” Monday clicked to the next slide.
08 JUL 1947-Recovery Activity Uintah Basin, Utah T O P S E C R E T // CRITIC CRITIC CRITIC.
YANKEE 08 JUL 1947.
FROM: SECRETARY OF WAR.
TO: PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
SUBJECT: RECOVERY ACTIVITY.
VESSEL RECOVERED. FOUR IN CONTAINMENT. ONE ALIVE, EN ROUTE, WRIGHT FIELD.
DECEPTION OPERATION UNDERWAY. DEBRIS STAGED, ROSWELL, NM.
. . . PATTERSON SENDS . . .
T O P S E C R E T // CRITIC CRITIC CRITIC.
12.
Somewhere Inside the Arctic Circle-Outpost Four Minus 70. Cold enough to freeze a man's bare face in seconds. Life existed here at U.S. Research Outpost Four at the mercy of technology and fifty-five-gallon diesel drums. Nearly a year had pa.s.sed since the dead broke the known laws of nature and physics. The remaining survivors of the outpost were now inside their second wintering over without resupply. Most of their forty-five-man crew had abandoned the outpost last spring, choosing to hike a hundred miles south to the nearest thin ice and what they hoped might be pockets of surviving civilization. Most of them were never seen again. A few did wander back to the outpost, perhaps out of instinct or habit. They looked the same as all the others: milky white and frosted eyes, heads frozen forward, hungry.
Outpost Four experienced the fall of civilization one high-frequency transmission at a time. High frequency was the only semi-reliable means of communication this far north. The sat-phones had worked in the first months after the anomaly, but they eventually failed as satellite orbits decayed with the rest of technology dependent upon a complex and fragile infrastructure.
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