Part 16 (2/2)
A week ago, Doc had started the launch drills. At first the exercises were very unpopular to the other three men-Doc woke them up at all hours for a practice launch against a notional target. They were starting to get acclimated to the drills and understood the reasons behind them. Doc was right all along-they could have very short notice to strike.
Last night, Disco and Hawse headed outside the wire to check the launch doors. On arrival, they observed that the doors were overgrown with foliage, and covered with weathered and cracked camouflage netting.
”Hawse, rip that s.h.i.+t off the doors. I'll cover.”
”What? You think I'm gonna trust an army guy to watch my a.s.s while I play minimum-wage landscaper?” Hawse said, laughing.
”Whatever, swabby meat-gazer. How happy are you that don't-ask-don't-tell was abolished before the s.h.i.+t hit the fan?” Disco said.
”Pretty f.u.c.kin' happy-leaves me more women. As long as it doesn't scare the horses, I don't give a d.a.m.n what another dude does in his house.”
”Just clear the launch door so we can get the h.e.l.l-”
Both men heard a noise-something too loud to be wind.
”What was that?” Disco said in a near whisper.
”s.h.i.+t. Get 'em up, Disco, I'll take east, you take west.”
”Yep.”
They scanned their areas for any movement.
”Not too far, stay near the missile doors,” Disco said.
Minutes pa.s.sed as the wind picked up some, swaying the trees back and forth ten meters out.
”I got something,” Disco said quietly over his shoulder to Hawse.
Hawse was instantly shoulder-to-shoulder with Disco. He brought his carbine up and activated the IR laser. ”Where is it, man?” he asked.
Dis...o...b..ought his own carbine up to high ready and activated his laser. ”There, that. What the f.u.c.k is that?”
A cloud pa.s.sed, revealing a full moon, illuminating the expanse. Minds of men have a tendency to degrade and flounder in stressful situations like this. So naturally, Hawse's first instinct was to pull his trigger.
FUMP, FUMP, FUMP.
The rounds struck meat; the sound was tragically too familiar. The creature came at them from the darkness of the tree line. Disco and Hawse instinctively put three rounds into the creature's skull; its head exploded, sending rotting chunks of the top third into the night sky. It fell to the ground ten feet from them, the sound of skull pieces falling through the foliage coming shortly after.
”Holy f.u.c.king h.e.l.l!” Hawse exclaimed.
”Dude, don't. Want more coming? Save it.”
”Sorry, man, that was way f.u.c.king close. Was that thing stalking us? That sound-and I only took the shot because I felt something looking at me.”
”I heard it, too,” Disco said.
”Okay, f.u.c.k. Cover me again. I'm gonna clear the launch doors and then we'll haul a.s.s. It might be nerves, but I feel like I'm being watched again.”
”Look at that thing. Looks fresh,” Disco commented, staring at the corpse.
”Concentrate. Keep your distance; it might be hot. Intel said that the bombs preserved 'em-twisted.”
Hawse cleared the door, removed the brush and the camouflage netting, and tossed the rubbish aside. The two double-timed it back inside Hotel 23, ignorant to the dead that might be watching from the tree line, and the evidence they left behind-a cleared launch door that could be seen by anyone or anything that spied from above.
Remote Six Two Weeks Post-Outbreak ”Status?” a voice called out from the shadows.
”Well, um, the cities are now what I would consider uninhabitable.”
”Elaborate.”
”G.o.d, what the f.u.c.k do you want me to tell you? D.C., New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle . . . nothing to elaborate. They are all dead!” The operator hit a sequence of b.u.t.tons on his touch screen and a satellite view of an island metropolis appeared. He manipulated the zoom while the ominous figure over his right shoulder looked on.
The operator panned and zoomed to Manhattan.
Scattered debris and sporadic fires defined the scenery on the screens. Slow figures lumbered through smoke, moving about in the streets. Faster movement caught their eyes as a small group of survivors armed with baseball bats were weaving around the creatures and between abandoned cars.
The orbital mechanics of the reconnaissance satellite above New York caused the viewing angle on the screens to skew oddly.
Both men silently watched the survivors. Doomed. The phenomenon was spreading too quickly and there was nowhere to run. The Lincoln Tunnel billowed smoke from both ends. Fighter aircraft had already destroyed the bridges in a failed attempt to keep the contagion from spreading, locking the barn after the horse had bolted.
It was being reported by remaining news feeds that even those who had died from natural causes were turning. The men at Remote Six had no answer for this phenomenon. The data a.n.a.lyzers could only propose one solution: Everyone exposed to the open air must contain a dormant rendering of the anomaly.
The dark figure standing over the status screens was known as G.o.d. Real names were a useless and forbidden taboo here. The codenames that were given in the tank were used to loosely represent the positions of the people to whom they were given.
G.o.d began his career in the Central Intelligence directorate of operations, developing and executing black-ops programs inside the United States. He had been trained by the best, the nastiest. His long-dead mentor had the dubious but extremely cla.s.sified honor of creating the playing rules behind Operation Northwoods-a plan to execute false-flag attacks inside the U.S., murdering civilians and blaming it on radicals in order to garner American backing for the military invasion of Cuba.
G.o.d was the prodigy of true tyranny. His shadow organization had fronted the startup money that gave birth to Google and other DARPAnet giants. At the highest levels of compartmented intelligence, his agency, in partners.h.i.+p with NSA, had pure and unadulterated access to all-private email, individuals' Web searches-everything. G.o.d's old ident.i.ty had been erased and replaced with a star on a wall somewhere in Virginia. Shortly after erasure, he was ordered to command what only very few inside government officials knew as Remote Six. G.o.d only knew the rest.
Many covert think tanks in and around the Beltway region dealt only in information. Remote Six did that, of course, but they were also an executing ent.i.ty. They could make decisions, carry out kinetic operations with the resources and power granted to them by fearful elected officials-people that didn't want to get their hands dirty and didn't want to know the details. This covert decision node was not located anywhere near the District of Columbia-it existed far from the political radar and influence of any Beltway bandit or dreamy-eyed, newly elected politician. Remote Six, established before World War II, had been a variable in everything from dropping the atom bomb on j.a.pan, to a.s.sa.s.sination of key NVA leaders in the Phoenix Program, to similar and more recent destabilizing operations in the Middle East. Remote Six made the big decisions. The three branches of government ensured the balance of power and illusion of Const.i.tutional leaders.h.i.+p, but covert ent.i.ties like Remote Six pulled the strings behind the wizard's curtain.
Twin advanced quantum computer systems existed deep underground inside Remote Six, under G.o.d's control. Multiple and redundant quantum hologram storage drives held every piece of the human knowledge base from how to make fire to the technical details of the Large Hadron Collider, and far beyond.
Every song ever written and every movie ever made was stored and archived here. The entire Internet was regularly crawled and chronicled on the quantums' storage as well. When humanity fell, precious scientific knowledge and art would not.
An incoming message indicator flashed on the flat panel, addressed to Chief of Station. G.o.d walked over to the flas.h.i.+ng screen and ordered an aide to print the doc.u.ment. As the message spun off the printer, G.o.d began to read.
Situation dire and unrecoverable. Request R6 option package, uploaded all viable options to Pentagon II Situation Room LAN.
G.o.d laughed out loud, imagining the president on the other end of the transmission at the alternate site in the Shenandoah Mountains sweating f.u.c.king bullets. He would do what was asked of him, for now. G.o.d would feed the quantums.
<script>