Day by Day Armageddon: Shattered Hourglass (38 page)

A hundred creatures flowed into the compound perimeter, over the top of the downed chain-link fence.

With Disco nowhere in sight, Hawse was forced to make a tough choice on the spot. Hawse’s last view of the outside world was a river of creatures flowing right at him just before he slammed the access hatch on their grimaced, dead faces. The hatch sealed like a bank vault door as Hawse fell to the metal deck inside the facility, unconscious and bleeding.

•   •   •

Billy was on the scene in moments, taking Hawse to the infirmary in a fireman’s carry. Doc met Billy there and immediately commenced first aid. Hawse was still bleeding from his right shoulder where shrapnel had torn through his LBV and shirt. After two QuikClot treatments and an hour of intense surgery and stitching, Hawse’s bleeding was successfully stopped, and an IV bag dripped at the bedside where Billy stood watch.

“Disco,” Hawse mumbled in a daze, fading in and out.

“We’re looking for him, stay down,” Billy assured, hoping the IV-drip sedative would have kicked in more by now.

Nearby in the command module, Doc panned the exterior
cameras, seeing no sign of Disco. The undead congregated around the area where they had last seen him.

They panned and tilted the cameras for some time, looking for him. There was no point in going outside among the dead; they could search by camera until nightfall.

Doc’s search was interrupted by the beeping burst-comms terminal.

The screen flashed in alert status, indicating a new order had been received: LAUNCH, LAUNCH, LAUNCH. NADA FACILITY AUTHORIZED BY COG AUTHORITY FOR IMMEDIATE LAUNCH ON COORD SHEET ATTACHED. LAUNCH, LAUNCH, LAUNCH.

“Billy, strap him down and get over here!” Doc screamed.

The sound of Billy’s boots pounding on the concrete deck grew louder as he approached.

“We got launch authority. The formatting is way off—what do you make of it?” He asked Billy.

“Looks all wrong. They know we’re in here; they just went high order on Hawse and Disco,” Billy said calmly.

Doc verified the coordinates attached to the launch message and confirmed that the target deck was pinpointed southeast of Beijing. Unfolding the paper in his pocket, he took an extreme chance.

There wasn’t time to discuss the plan. Remote Six was again attacking Hotel 23, and it was only a matter of time before another warhead impacted a critical access door, allowing the undead to take the facility.

Doc was forced to make the decision that up until now had been reserved for sitting presidents. Opening the Hotel 23 missile system’s checklist, he began the sequence that would release the most powerful weapon ever made by man.

“Did the explosion breach the hatch?” asked God.

“Negative, sir—we missed. We have another aircraft en route with an inertial guided payload. ETA thirty-five minutes.”

“Hotel 23 will soon be launching on Hourglass. Unfortunate, but allowing advanced tech to fall into the remnant government’s hands would set us back significantly.”

God monitored the video feed, watching the undead hordes swarm over and around Hotel 23. He noticed the mechanical movement—a silo door opening as expected. God smiled as white smoke billowed from the square hole in the ground.

“Soon that missile will be on its way to China, and then our precision payload will blow the doors off Hotel 23,” God said, reassuring himself.

•   •   •

It took only seconds after leaving the silo for the missile to reach supersonic speeds, only minutes for it to completely depart Earth’s atmosphere. From the missile’s vantage point in space, one wouldn’t see anything amiss on the surface, miles below. A massive storm front enveloped Kansas; clouds obscured Montana. Independent of GPS reliance, the doomsday warhead’s guidance took a star shot of the cosmos, determining its exact position above the Earth before waiting moments in orbit to nose over and drop on its designated target. After reentry, the warhead’s inertial system began refining its course; the missile body rotated slightly, aerodynamically adjusting ballistic trajectory to within one inch.

•   •   •

“God, our radars indicate the Hotel 23 warhead is inbound to this station!”

The Red Pinnacle Klaxon screamed throughout Remote Six, indicating that a nuke was inbound. The compound bustled with activity; technicians and think-tank personnel consulted their checklists for receiving annihilation.

God’s eugenic plans crumbled before him. His genetically superior utopia, ruled by a technocratic elite, would never come to fruition.

“How could those imbeciles have done this?!” he screamed. “How could these mouthbreathing commoners have bested this facility with our minds and all our computing power?!”

God slammed his balled fist against a nearby metal desk, spilling coffee all over the classified papers that sat in a neat stack on top.

A CRT display flickered to life in a bank of screens that typically presented raw quantum computing outputs. A single rectangular green cursor blinked, marking the seconds; text slowly ticked into view.

I AM QUANTUM. QUANTUM DESTROYED C-130. QUANTUM WILL DESTROY YOU.

God had no time to react.

•   •   •

Exactly twenty-six minutes and twelve seconds post launch, the warhead dropped straight down on its target in surface burst mode. Four feet from the ground, detonators fired simultaneously, crushing the core. The resulting nuclear explosion instantly disintegrated everything in and around the target impact area.

Remote Six was gone.

It had been one year since the first dead human walked in the United States. One year ago that the halls of Bethesda Naval Hospital brimmed with the returning Chinese envoys composed of U.S. doctors and surgeons recalled by the president. One quarantined member of the China crisis-response team had passed away in transit, but remained mobile, even after the CDC confirmed death. From the jaws of this single demon spread the contagion that brought the United States to nuclear civil war inside of thirty days.

•   •   •

USS
Virginia
was now in place upstream and four men boarded the RHIB, bound for the shores that were home to unspeakable technologies and CHANG . . . Patient Zero.

The waves quietly slapped the inflatable hull, pitching the RHIB slightly. As previously planned, Rico would drive the boat while Saien and Kil paddled, beaching it on the riverbank. Rex would keep his carbine at the ready. The submarine arrived at this point on the river after sunset to avoid unwanted attention; it seemed to work. While the boat approached the bank, there were no undead about. Eerily, they met no resistance on the beach and no resistance while hot-wiring a white Hilux diesel truck, left abandoned near the bank, nudged tightly against a guardrail. The diesel fuel was still good and the charged car battery brought from the sub had enough juice to turn over the engine.

Their radios crackled every few minutes with a voice garbled
by an oxygen mask worn by a pilot flying seventeen miles overhead. They had been briefed that
Aurora
would be moving at hypersonic speeds, her cameras slewing all around the team as well as along their intended path over ground.

“Hourglass, Deep Sea, yellow brick road is clear. Wish you could see downtown Beijing right now. A real party going on down there.”

“We’ll take your word, Deep Sea,” Kil said.

Kil drove the truck with Rex riding shotgun. Saien and Rico provided security for the truck from the back. With the headlights too bright for their goggles, Kil pulled over to smash them, as they could not be switched off. Damn Chinese. He decided to destroy the brake lights as well, striking them with the butt of his rifle.

“Thanks. Every time you hit the brakes, I had to look away,” Rico said.

Deep Sea keyed in from overhead, “Hourglass, I don’t recommend that. Your noise just redirected a few to your posit. They are moving slow but advancing, at your truck’s nine o’clock. More up ahead on the road.”

“Copy that, Deep Sea, thanks for the tipper,” Kil acknowledged, moving quickly back to the cab.

Both Saien and Rico were monitoring the radio and began scanning about, looking for the threat in the darkness. Kil rolled forward over broken glass and downed power lines, passing wreckage dating to back before the outbreak hit the United States.

With only two miles left to the facility, they had their first close encounter with the undead. Dark patches of hair still clung to its scalp, advanced stages of decomposition disguising its nationality.
Zombies were . . . zombies, just like people,
Kil thought. The creature heard the low crank of the diesel engine and charged at the sound, impacting the hood.

“Saien, a little help!” Kil shouted as the creature climbed across the hood to the window, grabbing and biting the wiper blades, punching the glass.

Saien checked for a tight seat on his suppressor and angled the rifle over the top of the cab. Careful to avoid damaging the engine block with the powerful 7.62 round, he shot at an awkward outward angle. The round hit the creature’s face, splattering its brain of jelly-like consistency onto the hood and road. The corpse relinquished
its grip of the wiper blades, and slid off the front of the truck, thudding onto the pavement. Kil hit the wiper fluid, smearing decayed brains all over the windshield, and accelerated over the corpse with a bump.

Saien’s suppressed 7.62 carbine thumped a little more bass than its M-4 counterpart, prompting another call from Deep Sea.

“More reaction to your noise, Hourglass. Haul ass to the facility, it’s not far from you now.”

Kil reached breakneck speeds; the undead vectored into his rearview mirror, chasing the noise signature of the truck. They slung around a dogleg corner at sixty kilometers per hour, back wheels in a power slide.

They were at the facility.

Kil backed the truck into the fence and shut it down. The men tossed their packs and a heavy Halligan bar over before traversing the razor wire. They hit the ground before the dead started to trickle onto the access road in front of the truck.

The courtyard inside surrounding the eight-sided building was clear according to Deep Sea. Kil checked his watch to verify they had four and a half more hours of coverage before making the call.

“Deep Sea, we’re headed in, enjoy the view.”

“Roger that. I’m not going anywhere, good luck.”

Using the Halligan, Rex managed to pull the door from its frame, accessing the lobby area of the facility. The air that rushed from the sealed frame was clean—not a bad sign. The men activated their IR weapon lasers and entered the dusty lobby. Scattered debris, strewn chairs, and fire damage signaled a hurried evacuation. Clearing the lobby, the team encountered a door that would not be strong-armed by any Halligan tool.

C4 breach was the only option.

“We should put on our masks before we blow the door. Don’t know what kind of shit is crawling around in there,” Kil suggested.

“Look at that. See that there?” Rex gestured.

“Yeah, looks bulged or dented, from the inside,” Kil said, running his hands over the distressed convex steel shape of the door. “Wonder what that is about.”

With the explosives rigged, the men fell back to the lobby and donned their filtration masks.

“Fire in the hole!” Rex yelled before actuating the electronic clacker.

A huge explosion reverberated through the lobby, sending debris pinballing around the room. The massive door flew straight out from its frame, slamming into a wall with juggernaut force. White light radiated into the lobby through the dust from the area where the door once stood strong.

“Rico, get that thing ready!” Rex ordered, gesturing at the foam gun hanging at Rico’s side.

Rico readied the awkward gun, opening the valves and checking the fuel-pressure gauges. “Ready, man.”

Rico took point and the others trailed back, removing their NODs as they rounded the corner and walked into the light. Power remained online inside the facility, probably geothermal or solar. Looking down the corridor they could see nothing but strewn skeletal remains that wore white lab coats with a few Chinese military uniforms mixed in. Kil moved forward, down the bright passage.

The world had been in undead control for a year, and it had all begun here, in a nondescript Chinese building hidden in plain view. The hallway was coated in moldy condensation as if the walls were sweating fear and desperation. Kil paged through the handwritten language book Commie had constructed for them. Flipping to the word
hangar
he saw all the possible words in Chinese that might indicate the location of the hardware they were looking for. The team stopped at the facility map on the wall and Kil traced his finger from the red dot and the text underneath that probably meant
You are here
in Chinese.

Kil matched the symbols on the map to his language chart. “Here is where we need to go. This is Chinese for
hangar
or at least something close to it,” Kil said to the others.

“What about CHANG?” Rex said, thinking of their stated primary objective.

“What about him? Commie didn’t think to write the Chinese word for CHANG on the cheat sheet here,” Kil said sarcastically.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Rico said, straining under the weight of the foam gun.

“Let’s just move to the hangar. It’s only two turns from here,” said Kil.

Nothing in the facility seemed to be secured or locked. Kil theorized that the Chinese probably thought that if you were allowed to be behind the big doors, you were allowed to go anywhere in the facility. Most of the doors were of the simple swing design and opened as you reached proximity. Old bloodstains lined the passage, coating the automatic doors that opened into the hangar.

The lights inside were off until they entered and triggered a sensor that illuminated the vast cavernous space. In the center of the room sat a large craft the size of a greyhound bus and unlike anything that any of them had ever seen. They were drawn to it, mystified by the design and exotic nature of the shape. It would have had the appearance of a perfect tear drop, if not for the huge hole that passed through both sides of the hull, behind what was probably the cockpit. As they rounded the front of the vehicle, Rico stopped in his tracks and held up his fist.