CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel (2 page)

Once they were all inside, Preston closed the door behind them.

“So what the hell’s with all the squatters on our land?” Max crossed his arms and glowered at his aide.

Preston walked by them, opened a mini-refrigerator, pulled out five bottles of water and handed them out.

“It’s cold!” Sally moaned, pressing it up against her sticky head.

Lisa gulped hers down as she noticed the room was air-conditioned. “Mmmm.”

“Where are the radios, and do they even work?” Bill took in the comfortable two-story space with welcoming sofas and inviting armchairs, worthy of an upscale doctor’s reception area and belied by the complex’s plain exterior.

“The Comms room and our offices are up the stairs behind me. This is the reception area, but I thought you would be more comfy here.”

“So, explain the squatters,” Max insisted.

“If you haven’t noticed, they have guns,” Preston answered sarcastically, apparently forgetting who was the boss and who the employee.

“That’s why we have the sonic weapons among the many defenses
you
designed into Cicada for everyone’s safety.”

Bill, now relaxing a little, sat down and watched the fireworks.

“Mr. Thompson”—Preston sank into one of the couches—“I’m afraid that none of our high-tech weapons are working. When we step out of our shielded environments, most of our electronics short out when we try to use them.”

“So shoot the bastards that come too close. Others will learn pretty damn quickly not to come close again.”

“There’s just too many of them to sit on top of the walls and shoot each one.”

“Okay, fine. So, what are you doing instead?”

“We’ve just let them be, hoping they would grow weary and finally go away.”

“How’s that working?” He was very close to losing his temper.

“Not very well, Mr. Thompson.” Preston looked down, feeling the full weight of his boss’ scorn.

Max realized he was losing control and all eyes were on him. He decided this was neither the time nor the place for this argument. “Who’s manning Comms now?”

“A young man, Sally’s age, named Webber. You wouldn’t know him. He came to us by solving the Cicada puzzle: a computer and electronics genius.”

Sally’s ears perked up; she was interested in this part of the conversation, and at the mention of something normal, her frayed nerves calmed a little.

“He usually works with a woman named Magdalena. She’s—”

“Magdalena Garcia’s here?” Max sang, his face instantly changing from irritated to gleeful. “Is she in Comms now?”

“That’s right; I forgot that you helped her with some trouble in Mexico.”

The Kings’ heads moved back and forth, watching the argumentative volleys like a verbal tennis match. The ball was now in Max’s court. Since none of them had heard
this
story, they watched expectantly for his next swing.

Max forfeited the match and was already mounting the stairs along the west wall to the Comms room.

“She’s not there right now. She had swing, and then was up late working on a project all last night. She’s probably asleep. Would you like her room number?” Preston didn’t even try to hold back a smirk.

Max snorted just a little. Truth was he would have loved to have seen Magdalena, just not in that way. “Hi Webber, I’m Maxwell Thompson.” Max was sincerely interested in meeting Webber—the man who solved the Cicada puzzle—knowing what a vital role he played at Cicada. Mostly, though, he wanted to get away from being the object of their attention. He just didn’t want to have to explain Magdalena. At this point, he was wondering about his feelings for a woman who was way too young for him.

Sally followed him through the door while her eyes took in all the equipment in the immediate room and beyond. Communications had a half-moon console desk at its center, bound by a dozen or so monitors, which looked out to another room separated by a floor-to-ceiling Plexiglas wall. This was where they kept the good stuff; it was a clean room, with probably the nicest equipment Sally had ever seen. And she had seen some nice gear, as she had often tested the latest gadgets with the most cutting-edge tech before anyone else. Back before the world ended.

Max felt sorry for her because until now, she had been out of place in this world without much technology.

“Holy shit, is that a Cray XK7?”

“I wish. It’s a CS though. Still pretty powerful,” Webber said, getting up from his desk chair to meet his boss and Cicada’s newest residents, especially the pretty one.

“I should say so, with an Rpeak of six petaflops… I’m just amazed to even see a working computer, much less what was among the ten fastest on the planet before the Event.”

“Mr. Thompson, I sure as hell hope she’s working with Mags and me,” said a beaming Webber. “Warren Webber.” He offered his hand enthusiastically.

“Sally. Sally King.” She shook quickly, a faint blush on her skin.

Preston was leaning in the doorway. “Let’s give the Kings some time to get settled first, then maybe—”

The first bang sounded like a paper bag popping outside.

However, the second was a thundering boom that shook even the solid structure around them.

“What the hell?” Preston chirped, his head lifted, as he tried to get a sense of what and where the explosions came from.

“Preston, with me! The rest of you, stay here.”

Max jogged outside with Preston in tow. Sally and Lisa nervously looked at each other, then at Webber, but they didn’t see Bill, who had followed the other two.

Max ran toward the north gate, but Preston rushed ahead and veered off toward the nearest wall, using it for cover. One man stood on the top of each side of the gate, above them now, both firing their automatic weapons at the combatants on the other side. The massive gate was pitched slightly outward; the bottom was bent equally inward, one of its huge hinges twisted and mangled—the obvious focus of their blast. Max could see movement through an opening to the other side.

He started to follow Preston to a safe position out of the open, when he heard someone right behind him. Spinning around and seeing it was Bill, Max barked, “I told you to stay put in Comms.”

Preston screeched a warning their way.

“I wanted to help.”

Max had his back to the gate, seemingly uninterested in the affairs behind him. “You are my best friend and if something happened to you or your family, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Hey, I know about the promise to ol’ great-grandpa, but I’m good now, so let’s drop the protective friend act and move on. You can’t protect me twenty-four seven. That’s obvious even here.”

Max reeled from the verbal sucker punch.

More gunfire, and then someone yelled, “Incoming.”

Max instinctively dove away from the yelling and tackled Bill, who was mid-sentence, finger pointed outward, when Max’s full weight hit him, knocking all the air out of his lungs. Then there was a loud explosion.

Grenade. Close range.
Thompson was no stranger to the sound. This one was so close that he felt the blast wave hit him, along with a heavy weight coming to rest on top of him. His ears screamed and he waited for the searing agony to hit the rest of his body wherever the shrapnel would have buried itself inside him. But there was no pain, only a heavy weight on top of him, his ringing ears, muffled shouting around them and wetness.

He realized his eyes were squeezed tight, and he opened them to see Bill coughing and pushing against him, hollering something he couldn’t hear. More wetness, which now started to obscure his vision and dripped onto Bill’s face. He winced, trying to keep it from his own eyes, whatever it was…
blood, a lot of it
.

Max felt the weight lift off them.

Freed now, he rolled off Bill and faced what was weighing them down; it was the body of some pudgy man, whose face—now mostly gone—and body had taken most of the grenade’s blast.

If this man had not been in between them and the grenade, both of them would have been casualties.
Dammit, Bill, for disobeying my order
.

A shadow fell over him. Preston reached down and grabbed Max by his sleeves. His mouth said, “Are you all right?” but Max could only hear muffled sounds, like he had cotton packed in his ears, and loud ringing. He sure as hell hoped this wasn’t permanent. These things usually only lasted a few days. Every time, though, he wondered if this would be the one that did in his hearing.

Preston shouted something else at him. His hearing was already coming back.
That’s a good sign
. Max could almost understand what he was saying now. It wasn’t a wellness check question; Preston was pissed.

“Sir, what the hell were you thinking?” Preston was still a little agitated. Max was cleaning the dead man’s blood from his head, neck and face in the washroom of an empty apartment next to the two they had given the Kings, in a mostly empty wing of the Residences building—sort of a glorified dormitory. Max had excused himself while Preston showed the Kings their apartments, after which he suggested they clean up a bit too while he checked in on Mr. Thompson.

“You realize that Dr. Sampson died trying to save you because you were standing in the open? He ran after you when he saw that one of the Squatts had tossed a grenade through that damaged gate. What were you doing?”

Max was dumbfounded. He had been in the middle of many battles, yet he had ignored all that he knew and had been taught because of Bill. And because of his actions, someone had died? He splashed more water on his face.

He was going to say something to justify his actions, but there really was no justification for what he had done. His overt worry for his friend, originating from his great-grandfather’s commitment to watch over Bill’s family, had gone too far.

Max looked once more at his reflection and didn’t like what he saw. He wiped his face with a towel, leaving more gore on it.

“Was this a normal attack?”

“No, this was more coordinated. And they purposely hit the north gate as if they knew it was the weakest point in Cicada’s defensive wall.”

“That explosion sounded like C4, and the one that killed Dr. Sampson… that was a grenade. Ordinary
Squatts
, as you call them, wouldn’t have tools like those.” He roughly rubbed at his beard, trying to get the blood out. The washbasin was a gruesome sight.

“I was thinking the same thing. Wish there was a way to find out where they’re getting the military surplus,” Preston said, leaning with a shoulder against the bathroom doorway.

“Maybe I can…” Max paused and looked up at his reflection; steam, dust and blood spray covered most of the mirror, but he could see enough. This was as good as it was going to get.

He walked past Preston, slapping his shoulder, and headed to the front door.

“Where are you going? I wanted to… talk to you some more.” Preston fidgeted. Had Max been paying attention, he would have seen his manager acting like a child about to reveal something to his parents.

“I’m going to pay a visit to the apartment of the man I got killed. Then, I’m showing the Kings around. We’ve struggled to get here for a year. I owe them a few moments of enjoyment. Then, I’m going find out personally where this military hardware came from and maybe put a stop to these attacks. Can we talk later?”

Preston didn’t speak, but nodded and smiled.

Max opened the front door but paused. “Please see to it that the gate’s shored up. And for God’s sake, tell the damn guards to shoot the next person that comes close to that thing.”

Neither of them could have guessed the threat that would arrive at their gates next.

Senator Brian P. Westerling was up for re-election in six months, but he didn’t care; he wasn’t even campaigning. When the world was about to end, running for a third term in the US Senate was a trivial matter. He just intercepted the notification—sent only to a few select scientists—announcing the Cicada Protocol had started. A giant solar flare would end it all. This was no surprise to him; after all, he knew what was coming and with it, he would be the one responsible for bringing this chapter of humanity to a close. It was a moment of pride for him.

Enveloped in the comfort of his supple leather lounge chair and the buzz from a bourbon and ice smoothing his pre-speech jitters, he took a drag from his Cohiba Robusto and released white swirling puffs of wispy smoke circles. He grinned at his airborne creations as they appeared to float out from the lonely confines of his office to the outside environment he created. Ringing beside him drew his attention.

“Sir, everyone is ready,” the voice on his intercom announced.

“Thanks, Reynolds.” Resting the freshly lit cigar on his polished stainless-steel ashtray, a gift from one of his many mistresses, Westerling popped out of his chair. Its butter-soft arms released their squeaky embrace. He stood, then straightened his tie and buttoned his jacket while walking across his vast office. Past his desk, he stopped in front of the giant floor-to-ceiling, forty-five degree angled windows that were his office walls; like the control tower of an airport, it gave him a view of everything. Looking down to a street polished and marble-like, he took note of the several hundred men and women who looked up at him, seemingly at attention.