Anaz-Voohri (35 page)

The bright crown of electric bolts linking the vessels fizzled and ceased.

“Increase altitude." Kavak struggled to keep her voice detached, but anger boiled inside her synthetic circuits.

The fleet complied. From much higher above the storm, Kavak witnessed the inexorable descent of the unfortunate ship. Once again she cursed the lack of personnel that rendered her vessels so unreliable. The ship crashed on the mountain slopes below, in a bright flash of white fire. A low humming started and amplified quickly, hurting Kavak’s sensitive ears. “Infra-sound!” she yelled “Escape maneuver!" Such a destructive wave could tear apart the fleet.

Like one, the six vessels shot out at a tangent toward the stratosphere.

“That’s enough." Once above the atmosphere, where the dangerous infra-sound wave could not reach, Kavak stopped and adjusted the instruments that would allow her to see what happened on the planet’s surface. She couldn’t identify the unfortunate ship. It had disintegrated upon impact or
lay
buried deep in the soil. Fire raged all around the crash site, and there could be no survivors, or anything for curious humans to find.

What Kavak witnessed, however, gave her a thrill. The infra-sound generated by the crash was spreading. Like an invisible wave, the devastating breath propagated in an ever expanding radius around the impact point, with a domino effect.

The cataclysmic infra-sound pervaded every stone, every cell of solid matter, destabilizing mortar, reducing bricks to dust, bending metal structures and toppling every building. Planes fell from the sky, major cities collapsed in a thick fog, instantly reduced to a pile of ruins. Then the wave started to weaken, and hundreds of miles from the epicenter, it gradually lost its power and died.

Soon, the windfall swept the dust clouds over the destroyed area, and the downpour drowned the devastation in flood water, reducing the clouds of concrete dust to gray silt. Good. Although the final destruction was much greater than anticipated as a result of the accident, it fully served Kavak’s purpose.

Still, the price of one ship and its precious crew was too much to pay. Damned
be
the insolent Shaman who dared to curse her mission from the very start, even if he’d already paid with his life.

*****

Checking the latest news in his New York loft, Zack couldn’t believe the devastation. Even blurry images from satellites in high orbit made him gasp. Nothing was left, no roads, no houses,
no
train tracks. It happened suddenly overnight and no one knew how. Some talked about a storm, others about an earthquake although the instruments had recorded no seismic activity.

The fact that most of the vegetation had survived fed the theory of an infra-sound wave, a vibration so low on the sound scale that the human ear couldn’t detect it. “Like the trumpets of Jericho that sent the walls tumbling down,” said a CNN anchor, a fitting analogy. So, the Anaz-voohri had mastered infra-sound weaponry.

France
, Italy and Russia remained largely untouched, but every manmade structure in between had been damaged beyond repair or obliterated. Tens of millions of people must have died, others probably still struggled under the rubble, and those who escaped unscathed had no shelter and would soon perish of exposure or starvation if they were not rescued. It was late October, and the harsh winter came quickly in central and eastern Europe.

Zack felt helpless. He wanted to volunteer with the Red Cross, but he knew his duty resided elsewhere. He had to make sure the Anaz-voohri wouldn’t get away with this despicable contempt for human life and civilization.

And in all this turmoil, his mind kept returning to Tia. Where was she? God he hoped she was safe. Although she’d not answered his previous messages, he sent her one more.

*****

At her temporary US military base in Afghanistan, Tia’s epad beep interrupted her breakfast. Her body flushed as she recognized Zack’s address. She should just delete the message without reading it, but she wanted to know. It was selfish of her to hear from him and not reciprocate, but she couldn’t possibly correspond with a hybrid hunter without jeopardizing her life. Pushing away her plate of unfinished eggs, she opened the file and read, her heart beating faster.
Are you safe, my love? Take care, these are dangerous times.
Zack.

Dangerous times indeed! If Tia didn’t know better, she’d think he knew her for a hybrid. More reasons not to respond. Deep down, however, she relished the fact that he still loved her. She loved him, too, never stopped loving him, even when she thought him dead. But some things were just not meant to be. She struggled with the urge to reply and ease his mind. No. She finally deleted the message. She’d be safer if he believed her dead.

As she closed her epad, the electronic device beeped again, and the official stamp of military headquarters appeared on the screen. Her orders... Tia’s unit would deploy in a few minutes as part of the first rescue wave to parachute food, water, blankets, tents, and medicine gathered in haste, while more supplies found their way to the base. It was about time. The survivors of the worst disaster in human history needed help, fast.

The first flight over the edge of the devastated zone left Tia numb with shock. So much destruction... The extent of the damage and the sheer size of the area affected made her rescue efforts seem futile. A few survivors here and there walked the rubble like zombies, probably looking for loved ones.

Tia’s throat tightened at the sight of so much despair. She wanted to tell the pilot to land the transport and pick up these unfortunates to bring them back to base, but she had explicit orders. She could only fly over and under no circumstances should she land. The military brass probably feared some kind of contamination. In other words, they suspected an Anaz-voohri attack, but they would never admit it to the troops or the population.

Tia’s faith in the military had weakened in the past years, but this stupid order condemned innocent victims already stricken beyond human tolerance. How unfair. She tried to close her mind to the human drama playing on the ground and focused on the job of dropping the emergency supplies where they seemed needed.

For the next two days, while she flew longer missions further inside the devastated zone, Tia’s anger against the leaders of the spared nations grew. Between drops, she checked the news on her epad. They all looked for excuses not to participate in the rescue effort, saying the cataclysm threatened their own economy, and they couldn’t afford to pitch in. What a bunch of
mierda!
Had the world forgotten all human compassion?

The United States took the lead in starting the job, but even among the military and civil organizations coordinating the efforts, politics prevailed. Everyone had an agenda.

For some it was glory and recognition, for others media coverage or political propaganda, an opportunity to shine and get promoted or elected. Some even saw a chance to make a quick fortune by selling much needed emergency supplies at outrageous prices.

For others yet it had religious implications. God had made an example of those who had abandoned him, and the populations spared would do well to return to the righteous faith. The problem was, no one agreed upon which faith that might be. Every radical religious group on the planet took credit for holding the key to salvation, at the exclusion of all other faiths, and there were dozens of them.

To make things worse, ORION still pushed to test the DNA of everyone working not only for the Global Security Sector but for any functioning government, and that included the US military. Tia’s unit was next on the list.

To dodge the systematic DNA testing, Tia volunteered to lead one of the advanced teams of rescuers to be parachuted near the larger cities leveled by the cataclysm. Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Vienna, Bucharest, Kiev, had been leveled. Tia’s objective was Prague, in the Czech Republic, if such a country still existed.

With a team of eighty that included medics, search and rescue personnel with sniffing dogs, sturdy soldiers to do the hard work, and weapons in case of riots, Tia’s transport reached her assigned zone at daybreak. From the sky, without landmarks for reference, Tia couldn’t believe what she saw. “Are you sure this is Prague?” she asked the pilot through her communicator.

“It’s the coordinates, there can be no doubt, Captain,” came the voice over the roar of the engines.

What had once been the city of a hundred steeples looked like a thick blanket of gray stones and
gravel.
Strangely enough, most of the surrounding trees still stood. The devastation seemed worse than the aftermaths of World War II, at least according to the photographs Tia had seen at the History Museum.

She hoped the trees would offer some cover. Despite the surrounding desolation, the turning foliage at sunrise gleamed golden and red. But Tia had little time to admire the miracles of nature.

In the absence of usable roads, the most reliable thoroughfare would be the Vltava River that crossed the city from south to north on its way to the Elbe that emptied into the North Sea. Although the largest part of the ruined city lay on the east bank and all the bridges had collapsed, the park on the western shore offered the healthiest location for the camp.

“Let’s drop on the west bank!" When the transport veered about, Tia directed the first dumping of cargo then jumped.

Around her in mid air, more people and crates followed. Red, white and blue chutes opened, filling the sky. The rain must have washed away the dust because the air smelled clean. Cages descended slowly, among the whining of dogs not used to this kind of transportation. Heavy crates, each harnessed to several parachutes to slow their fall, contained the equipment the team would need for the task.

Medical supplies, emergency food packs, blankets, generators, batteries, crates of shovels and axes, danced around in a graceful ballet that contrasted with the desolation below. Private corporations had stamped their boxes with very large logos. It made for good PR on the ten o’clock news, when the goods were loaded on the military transports.
 
Tia would accept any help she could get, even for the wrong reasons.

Having secured enough tents, civilian and military, to shelter a small city, she hoped there would be enough survivors to fill them. The surveys estimated that at least ninety-five percent of the population, sleeping indoors when the disaster struck, had perished under collapsed buildings.

Upon touching ground, Tia quickly un-strapped her chute to discover that some crates had spilled their contents. Food! “We can’t afford to lose any food. Salvage whatever you can from these open containers! Don’t let the wrappings get wet.”

“Look!" A soldier pointed to the top of a tree where a load marked with a red cross still swung from its chute, caught in the highest branches.

“Get that crate down immediately, soldier,” Tia shouted. “Medical gets first priority.”

As she took her bearings, Tia observed with dread precious parachuting crates, being pushed away by gusts of wind toward the stormy river. Helpless and frustrated, she watched them hit the water then sink into the Vltava. Ironically, by the looks of it, one seemed to be an inflatable Zodiac. Tia could hardly spare it as they only had two. But she’d have to cope.

As the last rescue crews extricated themselves from their chutes, Tia pointed to the cages. “Free these dogs and calm them down, then start searching the closest ruins for survivors."

Tia directed other soldiers to erect the tents in the park. “Pitch them high enough on the slope, where the ground isn’t soggy, but low enough so the hill will shelter them from the wind. Our first priority is the hospital, then the kitchen and the dorms. The rest will follow later.”

As she gazed across the swollen river of gray waters, Tia spotted a dozen survivors on the opposite bank. They waved pieces of clothing to catch the rescuers’ attention. Tia flagged the corner of a parachute to let them know they had been spotted. Between them, the river carried drifting debris and corpses.

At the water’s edge on Tia’s side, she noticed wooden rowboats painted in bright red, blue and yellow, still secured vertically to their winter board under a wooden shelter. Some had come loose and lay beached on the grass. As she approached the shack, Tia noticed a large wooden box. She marveled at the selective destruction that had preserved most of the wooden structures.

She motioned to the closest soldier. “Pry the coffer open.”

The young man produced a metal bar from his belt and forced open the lock.

When it popped, Tia discovered with satisfaction dozens of oars inside. “As soon as the water slows a little, we’ll also use the recreation boats to ferry the survivors across. I fear our single Zodiac won’t be enough.”

Tia didn’t expect help from the outside world anytime soon. The briefing had been clear. Once dropped inside the affected zone, the rescuers would have to fend for themselves along with the survivors. With the roads erased, blocked, or washed away, no relief would come by land. At first, there could only be air assistance, and given the size of the disaster area, the drops would be few and far apart. The best hope remained the river.

Even before the soldiers finished erecting the tents, survivors, who had seen the parachutes fill the sky at dawn, converged toward the relief camp and started streaming in, bewildered. Few looked unharmed. Most had ugly gashes. Others exhibited makeshift bandages soaked with dark blood. The valid carried wounded children or supported adults who could hardly walk. Soon the Zodiac team crossed the river and ferried in more survivors, bringing the sick and severely injured on stretchers.