Cannibal Reign (14 page)
Authors: Thomas Koloniar
P
rivate Shannon Emory ran around to the other side of her overturned Humvee and dragged Sergeant Flynn out through the window. The four female troopers in back were either dead or so close to death that it didn’t matter, doomed the minute the rear window of the vehicle had been struck by a 66mm LAW rocket fired by their male counterparts from within the company.
The six women crammed into the lead Humvee had stopped to come back in support, the roof gunner firing the .50 cal machine gun. Orange tracers streaked through darkness as the heavy, half-inch rounds easily pierced the hulls of the lighter armored Humvees driven by the men. The female gunner killed the driver of the closest vehicle, setting it on fire and forcing the other two pursuing Humvees to retreat back down the highway. “How bad are you, Sarge?” Emory said, collecting their carbines from inside the Hummer.
The machine gunner opened up again with a long burst, spotting three survivors from the burning Humvee as they advanced up the median. Their bodies virtually exploded from the hydrostatic shock of the .50 cal rounds.
“Shannon, let’s go!” the gunner screamed. “Before they bring up the javelin!”
“Can you walk?” Emory said to the sergeant.
He held onto her shoulder, putting one foot forward. “I’m okay.”
They packed themselves into the armored Humvee with the remaining six female troops, and the driver sped off down the highway.
“Take the first exit,” Sergeant Flynn said. “We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to lose them.” He smacked the gunner on her leg, and she ducked down inside to see what he wanted.
“Be careful with that barrel. It only takes a four-second burst to warp it!”
“Hooah!” the gunner said, and stood back up to cover the rear.
The driver raced along in the night at fifty mph in the fast lane, where there seemed to be fewer cars out of gas. Two travelers tried to flag her down by stepping right out in front of her, and got themselves run over for their efforts.
“What the hell was that, Sheree?” someone asked from the back.
“Muthafuckers in the road, girl.” Sheree was weaving in and out of the stopped cars, trying to keep her speed up.
“I guess Lieutenant Boyle didn’t like us taking the only two armored Humvees,” Flynn said.
“Fuck ’em!” Sheree said. “We know what they was plannin’.” She slowed down as she pulled off the highway and drove up the exit ramp. “Which way we goin’, Sarge?”
“South. That’s all I know to do.”
“Contact!”
the gunner screamed from above, and the .50 cal began to hammer away once again.
The others craned their necks to see out the thick back window, but all they could see were the tracers streaking off to the rear and to the left. Suddenly, a brilliant fireball behind them illuminated the countryside, revealing half a dozen civilian silhouettes near the road with hunting rifles and shotguns.
“Roadblock!” Sheree shouted, hitting the brakes and cutting the wheel to skirt a number of cars parked across the road.
The gunner collapsed and fell down inside on top of them, a bullet through her head.
“Goddamnit!” Emory swore, feeling the dead gunner’s brain oozing into her hands. “She’s gone, guys.”
Sergeant Flynn took a helmet from one of the women and stood up to man the gun. “This mission sure went to shit in a hurry.”
Emory opened the back door and allowed the woman’s body to fall out as they sped along. “Sorry, Carmen, we’ll see you soon.”
From the turret above, Flynn scanned the countryside through a night vision device attached to the front of his helmet. There wasn’t much to see except empty terrain. Thirty miles later they came across an abandoned silver mine, and Sheree pulled off the road and drove up the hill, shining the lights on the gate. There were close to twenty motorcycles parked outside the entrance to the mine.
“Shit, I know who that is!” Emory said. “Get us out of here, Sheree!”
There was a rifleshot, and Sergeant Flynn fell down into the Humvee, hit in the neck. Blood was spurting from his carotid artery, and Emory clamped her hand over the wound as Sheree jammed the vehicle into reverse. The other women in the Humvee shouted an instant before they were rammed in the front right by a black Dodge van. The steering wheel spun wildly in Sheree’s hands as the vehicle whipped around, catching her thumb with the cross bar and snapping her wrist.
“Dismount!” shouted the soldier in the passenger seat, deciding their only chance now was to fight it out.
“Don’t!” Emory warned, but it was too late, the others were already piling out on either side of the vehicle. She covered Flynn’s body with her own as the bullets began to fly, the staccato sound of their M-4s met with a fusillade of shotgun blasts at close range. Her comrades screamed as they fell, and moments later there was no sound except for the idling engine. As Sergeant Flynn died under her, Emory grabbed for her weapon, but someone caught her ankle and jerked her out the back door. She landed hard on her chin and saw stars as she rolled to her back, trying to kick away the hairy blond man dragging her across the gravel toward the entrance to the mine.
A biker chick swore at her viciously and kicked her in the side of the head, and the lights went out.
“S
ealing blast door number one,” Forrest announced over the radio, pushing the door shut, pulling the lever hard to seal it tight, and turning the bright red wheel to extend the sixteen three-inch steel pins around the entire jamb. “Door one sealed.”
“Roger that,” Ulrich answered from Launch Control, watching him on the monitor.
Forrest then withdrew twenty feet to the second blast door, holding the barrel of his slung carbine with his hand to prevent it from scraping against the wall. He stepped into the stairwell and allowed Kane to push the door closed and seal it.
“We’re a hundred percent,” Forrest announced. “How do we look above?”
“No contacts . . . everything’s nominal.”
“Welcome home, gentlemen, and congratulations. Phase one is finally complete.”
“Hooah!” came the unanimous reply.
Forrest and Kane made their way to Launch Control, where they stashed the carbines in a locked steel cabinet, hopefully never to need them again. Each man had a key to the cabinet, which he would wear on a chain with his dog tags twenty-four hours a day for the next two years.
“I imagine the ladies are all glued to the televisions?” Forrest said.
Ulrich confirmed this. There was a TV in Launch Control too, but the volume was down. Forrest and the others had seen so much violence in their days overseas that watching it on television held no special appeal for them. They were interested in updates, but the endless repetition only annoyed them.
“Well, that should hold their attention for a while,” Forrest said. “How long do you think before the power grid begins to fail?”
“So far they seem to be keeping the fires stoked up there,” Ulrich said. “There haven’t been any blackouts reported yet, which I find remarkable. But after tomorrow’s impact I expect the entire grid to fail in a cascade effect all the way to the eastern seaboard. There’s no way it’s going to be able to sustain itself after such a large part of it is blasted out of existence.”
“I hope the aboveground cameras survive,” Vasquez said. “I don’t like the idea of being blind down here.”
“After the fires go out, we can go up and replace them,” Danzig said.
“I’m not too keen on that idea either. What if that nuclear blast of theirs radiated the whole damned asteroid?”
“That’s what the NBC suits are for,” Forrest said. “What time do you plan to lower the antenna array, Wayne?”
“Just before sunrise. I’d like to leave it up right to the end, but in case the damn thing jams again I want to leave some time for us to go up and fix it.”
“That’s what we’ll do, then.” Forrest checked his watch against the clock in the console: 0505 hours. “Almost exactly four hours to go. Are the kids asleep?”
“The women put them to bed in the cafeteria for tonight,” Danzig said.
Dr. West came into Launch Control and gave them each a time-released Benzedrine capsule. Forrest wanted them all as alert as possible, and after a day and a night of drinking, amphetamines were the only solution. They had all used amphetamines numerous times during special operations overseas and were aware of the sleep debt they were accumulating, but there would be plenty of time to repay that debt in the coming days. For now, they were on a war footing and needed to remain sharp.
“Doc, talk to you a minute?” Forrest said, beckoning him into the blast tunnel.
West followed him in and pulled the door closed.
“Is there anything going on with Lynette I should know about?” Forrest asked. “Has Price said anything to you?”
West frowned. “I think Price is worried she may not handle this very well. I’ve already talked to Mike about her. I told him I’m more than willing to let him treat any mental health issues that arise. Hey, are you . . . well, you and Veronica seem—”
“Nothing’s going on. Why, are people talking already?”
West smiled. “This place is wall-to-wall with women. What do you think?”
Forrest laughed sardonically. “And this looked so easy on paper.”
“Who I’m worried about is Oscar,” West said. “When his insulin finally runs out, he’s done for. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I do,” Forrest said heavily. He had been there when Vasquez was shot during a mission in Afghanistan, losing part of his pancreas. “One day at time, Doc.”
Forrest patted him on the shoulder and made his way to the common chamber where the rest of the adults were watching two different news channels on two different televisions. All were absorbed, and a few looked downright frightened. Joann was holding Renee’s hand. At the age of twenty-three, she was the youngest mother in the group, and she looked petrified.
Lynette was the oldest woman at thirty-eight, and she appeared on the verge of tears as well. Forrest caught her attention and gestured for her to join him.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, expecting to be in trouble for something.
“Hey, Lynette, would you keep an eye on Michelle for me? She looks terrified.”
“Me?” she asked in surprise.
“You’d rather not?”
“No . . . I mean, sure, I—”
“I’d go over and sit with her myself,” he went on, “but I’m going to be moving all around the installation during the hour building up to impact.”
“No, no,” she said, suddenly finding confidence. “I don’t mind at all.”
“Thanks,” he said. “She’s one of the younger mothers, and you wives have all known each other so long . . .”
“No, I understand. It’s no trouble. Thanks, Jack.”
Price winked at Forrest from across the room as Lynette went to Michelle. Forrest smiled back and slipped into the cafeteria for a peek at the children, all nestled in their sleeping bags in orderly rows on the floor. Laddie stood up from the floor, where he’d been keeping guard among them.
“You’re fine,” he said quietly, and the dog settled himself back in.
Melissa was in the cafeteria as well, but she wasn’t asleep. She sat at one of the tables reading a book.
He sat down and offered her a stick of gum.
“Thanks,” she said. “How much longer now?”
“About four hours.”
“Do you think there will be earthquakes?”
“There sure could be,” he said. “Some of them might even be pretty big, but they won’t hurt the silo. We might jiggle around in here, but this installation is resting on giant steel springs.”
“What if the asteroid hits nearby, though?”
“Well, either everything’s going to be just fine . . . or we won’t know what hit us.”
“But what if we’re right on the edge of the crater or whatever?”
He couldn’t help chuckling. “Then this place will probably crack in half, and we’ll be looking out that wall over there at the biggest hole in the ground any of us has ever seen.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet you were a good dad.”
And just like that, his eyes flooded with tears. “That’s a nice thing for you to say,” he said thickly. “I don’t know if I was or not.”
“You were. Taylor said so.”
“Okay,” he said, blinking the tears away. “How about we stick to earthquakes?”
She looked over at Laddie and patted her leg. The dog jumped up and immediately came over to her. “Do you think maybe you could be my stepdad?”
Forrest was so overcome that he excused himself. He went straight to the lavatory and splashed water on his face at the sink, drawing a deep breath as he looked at himself in the mirror. “Well, you’re a fine figure of leadership.”
When he stepped out, Melissa was there waiting, a worried look on her face.
“Come here,” he said, giving her a hug. “Don’t worry. It caught me off guard. I’d be happy to.”
She hugged him tighter. “I asked Uncle Michael if he minded and he said no.”
“Well, I’ll have to be sure to thank old Uncle Mike,” he said quietly.
“You’re not mad at him, are you?” she asked, looking up at him. “I asked him not to say anything until I was sure I wanted to ask you.”
“No, no,” he said. “I’m very flattered. Thank you for asking. But you’ve only known me a couple of weeks. You may change your mind later.”
She stood back and shook her head with a smile. “I know I’m a kid, but kids know a good dad when they see one.”
He choked up again. “You’re going to have to stop that,” he said softly.
She stepped forward and lifted herself up onto her toes, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
On his way back to Launch Control, Forrest passed Michael in the corridor. “Thanks for the heads up,
fucker
.”
Michael stopped and turned. “You didn’t tell her no, did you?”
“Yeah, douche bag,” he said without looking back. “I told her no.”
Michael chuckled and stood watching as Forrest turned the corner. “Sorry, Jack, but you brought this on yourself.”
W
hen the asteroid struck the Earth’s atmosphere, it was traveling at nearly a hundred thousand miles an hour and burning at nearly one million degrees Fahrenheit. Jack’s wife and the horse ranch were vaporized before they were ever aware of its arrival. It struck near the Montana-Canada border with a force three-quarters of a million times more powerful than the Soviet Emperor bomb, the most powerful man-made bomb ever detonated. It blasted a crater nearly a mile deep and fifty miles wide in the Earth’s crust, hurling millions of tons of dust and rock into the atmosphere and sending out a blast wave hot enough to kill every living creature aboveground for six hundred miles. Winds traveling at thousands of miles an hour flattened trees and buildings for at least half that distance, pulverizing them. A massive heat wave spread out from there, setting fire to large swaths of land within a radius of fifteen hundred miles.
All of which took place in seconds.
Within the next few seconds massive earthquakes emanated from the epicenter for a thousand miles, triggering lesser quakes all across North America and down into Mexico. Massive cracks appeared in the Earth’s crust over Yellowstone National Park, and the geysers there shot giant plumes of boiling water hundreds of feet into the air even as the park was devoured in flames. Rivers shifted and changed direction, giant landslides occurred all across the northern Rockies, and a dark cloud of smoke and dust began to envelop the continent, fed by the ash borne up from flame-driven winds.
The continental power grid began to fail immediately, and a massive blackout spread across both the United States and Canada in all directions, killing the power to every city within minutes after impact. Cities at the outer edges of the blast zone were set ablaze, and rescue workers were hard-pressed to even breathe in the heat, much less fight the fires. Three hundred million Americans and Canadians were dead within sixty seconds of the asteroid hitting the atmosphere, at least half of whom had been obliterated by the initial blast.
Tremors were felt the world over within the first half an hour, and though the asteroid did not strike the sea, tsunamis occurred as fault lines along the ocean floor shifted and distorted the water depths to send twenty-foot waves across the ocean surface, swamping the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia within the first few hours.
Horrifying satellite images were beamed down all across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and South America as the ring of destruction spread across North America, and the continent was blotted out over the first couple of hours. Everyone watching now understood with absolute certainty that the shroud of darkness would soon blanket the world. Theirs would be a less cataclysmic end, a slow and methodical procession of starvation and disease, a horrific return to the Dark Ages on a global scale.
The long winter had not quite begun, but it was coming.
