Day by Day Armageddon: Shattered Hourglass (39 page)

“Get down,” he whispered, pointing to something standing near the craft opposite the side they had come in.

The thing was clothed in a suit that matched the craft alloy, or perhaps it just appeared that way because the creature was standing so close to the skin of the vehicle; it was difficult to discern.

“That has to be CHANG. The suit design matches the photos. It’s not wearing the helmet,” Kil whispered to the others. “Blast it with the foam and get this over with.”

The mysterious figure soon took notice of the four and turned to face its intruders.

Every man expected to see what years of pop culture and television brainwashing told them CHANG would be. The creature was no large-headed gray thing with huge, black, almond-shaped eyes. It looked . . . human.

It bellowed from its ancient lungs and sprinted toward them, alloy boots clanging on the floor like a tin man. Rico stepped forward and sprayed it from its waist to the floor with the foam compound. Two chemical streams coated CHANG’s torso and legs. They solidified almost instantly, turning the creature into a half statue.

The men encircled the angry creature, examining it at a safe distance as it thrashed about, fused to the deck. Its arms moved like a cyclone, reaching for them; its legs strained against the foam weapon’s curing fibercrete.

So this is what ended the world, killed everything dear to me, and everything dear to everyone dear to me,
Kil thought.

It became clear to the four onlookers that CHANG looked just like any other undead human Chinese man.

Kil edged closer to the creature, examining the metallic name-plate affixed to its chest. Chinese letters were inscribed finely into the alloy on CHANG’s nameplate directly above the words
MAJOR CHANG.

“What now, Kil?” Rex asked.

Kil stood silent, his anger visibly building. He fixed his stare at CHANG. This creature had killed the world.

“We do this,” Kil said.

He raised his suppressed 7.62 carbine and pulled the trigger. CHANG’s head exploded away from the team, ancient brain matter splattering against the strange, sleek craft.

“What the fuck?!” Rex exclaimed, visibly confused. “You wasted the objective!”

Kil shook his head. “No, I didn’t. CHANG was as human as you are right now. CHANG was never the objective. But all this shit is.” He gestured to the craft and the research tables full of mysterious hardware that surrounded it. “Besides, look down. CHANG is permanently fused to the deck, courtesy of Rico there.”

Rex pulled his knife and stabbed at the resin fused to the floor below CHANG’s headless body.

“Don’t bother, Rex,” said Kil. “That stuff is fiber resin. You’ll snap your blade before you make a scratch. It would take a week with power tools to free the major. Let’s get everything we can and get back to the boat . . . but I’m telling you all right now, that thing was human and you all know it.” Kil grabbed a clear plastic tube vault from his pack, scooping bits of CHANG’s remains inside for transport.

“Just like a direct-action mission in Afghanistan,” said Rex.

“How do you mean?”

“We take weeks, sometimes months to plan a direct-action mission to kill or capture a high-value target, and the mission is over before you know it.”

The team filled their packs with what intel had briefed were the data cubes, as well as anything else that appeared useful. Kil stuffed his cargo pockets with two very exotic-looking pistols.

These might come in handy.

His pack was nearly at capacity when he found two large, football-shaped, color-coded containers sitting side-by-side on one of the research tables near the damaged craft. The markings on the containers were not Chinese, and not like anything he’d ever seen, anywhere. The red container had been severely damaged by whatever tore through CHANG’s ship. The blue sister container appeared undamaged. Kil decided to bring both of them back to the submarine for future analysis.

The team worked their way back to the lobby and exited the front into the courtyard. As soon as they were visible to the sky, their radio crackled to life.

“Hourglass, welcome back. I have some news you may want to hear.”

“Go ahead, Deep Sea,” Kil replied.

“I’m seeing another submarine surfaced near the
Virginia
. The other sub is a good bit larger than your boat. Looks like a boomer.”

“What’s it doing?”

“It’s signaling. I don’t think it’s hostile; it’s too close to your boat and clearly surfaced, not exactly a textbook tactic for sinking an enemy sub. Besides that, you’ve got some paparazzi at the gates around your transport.”

“Copy that, Deep Sea.”

The men closed on the fence where the undead stood waiting.

“Rico, do it,” Rex ordered.

Rico approached the fence and sprayed the undead creatures with the fibercrete foam gun. The substance looked like soap suds to Kil. It was frightening how fast it set, freezing the creatures in a tomb of advanced resin. Rico was careful to avoid the truck, as it would be disabled by the substance if even a part of a wheel were to come in contact. With most of the creatures permanently a part of the metal fence, the four safely negotiated over.

They piled into the truck and enjoyed an uneventful trip back to the boat.

When the team was finally onboard,
Aurora
wished them luck and burned the sky home on her final voyage.

January 1

Happy New Year to me.
After a sobering night of fun on the Chinese mainland, I very much look forward to heading east—going home. Our new Chinese friends intend to escort us back east. Although his English is horrible, the Chinese submarine captain was elated to find us. He had been shadowing the
Virginia
since we entered Chinese waters. Thank goodness he determined that we had no hostile intent, as they definitely had the drop on us. Our new friends have stronger shortwave radios than we do, and once we passed them the frequencies and timetables, they were able to send and receive messages to the USS
George Washington
, now permanently in port at Key West.

I’ve taken a little time to reflect on the past year, to get my mind right and to think of everything I have to be thankful for.

Tara and our baby are fine.

I’m alive.

We’ve mostly accomplished our mission.

Just one small detour and we’ll be steaming for the Keys.

Only a few more blank pages left.

RIP, William. You will be forever missed.

Contrary to the crew’s expectations, hordes of undead did not greet USS
George Washington
when she ran aground in the Keys that sunny Florida day. Long before the carrier’s dramatic arrival, a contingent of armed civilian militias had secured Key West. It took some ingenuity, but it wasn’t long before the remaining nuclear engineers restored power to the island, utilizing the carrier’s two formidable Westinghouse nuclear reactors. A network of barter trade and the beginnings of a humble economy began to emerge on the islands.

With the carrier’s complex burst communications equipment damaged beyond repair, the comm link with Task Force Phoenix at Hotel 23 was forever severed. On a recent reconnaissance mission over Hotel 23, a flight of Warthogs reported sighting a signal arrow pointing east, away from the facility. They searched the area until bingo fuel, but found no further trace of Phoenix. Although still a priority-one rescue operation, recovering the Phoenix operators would be an onerous task at best.

•   •   •

USS
Virginia’s
detour brought her north, up the Russian coast, and through the Bering Strait. After serious discussion, both Larsen and Kil agreed that human life was too precious to let fade out—humans were outnumbered as it was. USS
Virginia
had enough nuclear fuel in her reactor to circle the globe many times over, and was still well provisioned when she broke through the Arctic ice a couple hundred meters from Crusow, Kung, and their sled dogs. Their Sno-Cat had broken down ten miles before, the engine having seized up from dirty biofuel. Luckily their dogs were strong enough to pull them south far enough to the rendezvous. They’d been waiting for nearly twenty-four hours
in a pile of sled dogs inside a make-shift igloo when USS
Virginia
’s sail cracked the ice nearby, homing in on Crusow’s distress beacon.

It was February when USS
Virginia,
along with a Chinese boomer submarine, made port call in Key West. The once lone survivor embraced his love on the pier; the captain sent the submarine’s only expectant father ashore first. Tara’s pregnancy was definitely showing, and Kil beamed with happiness as he rubbed her belly softly. While he held Tara tightly, he caught a glimpse of John standing close to Jan, a bit too close. Kil smiled at them, inviting a wave. Jan gripped the back of Laura’s belt as the little girl pulled forward, yelling for Uncle Kil.

Dean continued her teaching career in the Keys, keeping the likes of Danny, Laura, and a hundred other young people busy learning. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and Constitutional core values replaced the diluted curriculum that had existed before the dead returned. Dean’s wooden paddle did just fine in keeping the juvenile monkeyshines in check.

A new task force was established on the island with the mission of transporting Hourglass’s recovered hardware to various surviving COG facilities for exploitation. Talk circulated around the island that a nuclear warhead from the Chinese submarine was being modified and reconfigured with a new payload, but no one really knew for certain. Rumors spread like wildfire in a small island community like this—they were rarely true.

•   •   •

Kil, John, Saien, and the other Hotel 23 regulars spent much time together; they sometimes played cards and even drank a little moonshine at the only watering hole on the island. John kept the radio communications running between the Keys, and Saien helped out in the guard towers, plinking the undead that randomly washed up on the shores.

A month before Tara had their baby, Kil negotiated for a large sailboat. His barter offer was a Chinese AK-47, four magazines, and five hundred rounds of ammunition. The boat’s owners, an aging couple with no plans of ever leaving the Keys, traded straight across. The boat was designed to endure months at sea, utilizing
automated systems, solar power, and other unique features. Kil didn’t know where they’d go, but knew that nowhere was safe—not even this island paradise.

Kil moved everything he owned onboard his boat before his baby was born; he moved everything he loved onboard after.

BEGIN TEXT TRANSMISSION

KLIEGLIGHT SERIAL 221

RTTUZYUW-RQHNQN-00000-RRRRR-Y

T O P S E C R E T//ECI//SAP HORIZON

BT

SUBJ: TIANJIN FACILITY HARDWARE EXPLOITATION EFFORTS

RMKS: IN THE PAST YEAR SINCE THE RETURN OF HOURGLASS, COG SCIENTISTS HAVE MADE SIGNIFICANT STRIDES IN THE EXPLOITATION OF RECOVERED MINGYONG HARDWARE. AFTER EXTENSIVE DNA TESTING ON CHANG’S RECOVERED REMAINS, WE HAVE DETERMINED THAT ALTHOUGH GENETICALLY ENHANCED/EVOLVED, CHANG WAS HUMAN. DATA CUBE INTERPRETATION THROUGH THE EXTRAPOLATION OF PROBABLE CHINESE LINGUISTICS HAS ENABLED REASONABLY ACCURATE ESTIMATIONS OF CHANG’S TIMELINE ORIGIN AND OTHER REVELATIONS RELATING TO THE MINGYONG ANOMALY.

CONTROLLED NEVADA SPECIMEN TESTING AND RECOVERED DATA HAVE DETERMINED THAT THE MINGYONG ANOMALY IS NINETY-SEVEN PERCENT ACTIVE/EFFECTIVE WHEN INFECTING EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE FORMS, WHILE ONLY FORTY-FOUR PERCENT ACTIVE/EFFECTIVE WHEN INFECTING HUMANS.

INSIDE EXTRACTED ICE CORES, TRACE AMOUNTS OF CHANG’S MINGYONG MATERIAL WAS CONFIRMED PRESENT 20,000 YEARS DOWN INTO THE STRATA. THIS SUGGESTS
THAT EARTH’S MODEST BIPED POPULATION OF THAT ERA, COMBINED WITH THE LESSER EVOLVED DNA CONFIGURATIONS, MITIGATED THE EFFECTS OF THE ANOMALY TO NEAR ZERO. THE MINGYONG ANOMALY WAS REJECTED, SELF DEACTIVATED, AND BURIED UNDER CENTURIES OF STRATUM. MINGYONG TRACES RECOVERED FROM SAMPLES VERIFY THAT THE ANOMALY [POSSIBLY AN ADVANCED FUTURE BIOWEAPON] WAS NOT ENGINEERED TO SURVIVE OUTSIDE OF A VIABLE HOST (CHANG) OR OUTSIDE ADVANCED PROPRIETARY CONTAINMENT SYSTEMS.

RECOVERED CONTAINERS:

THE RED TIANJIN FOOTBALL, HEAVILY DAMAGED IN THE DIRECTED ENERGY EVENT THAT LIKELY BROUGHT DOWN CHANG’S SHIP, IS CONFIRMED TO POSSESS HYPER-CONCENTRATED TRACE AMOUNTS OF THE MINGYONG ANOMALY.

THE UNDAMAGED BLUE TIANJIN CONTAINER HAS BEEN THE SUBJECT OF INTENSE RESEARCH AND DEBATE, AFTER MORE DATA ILLUMINATING THE DAMAGED RED TIANJIN CONTAINER WAS DISCOVERED. EXCEPTIONAL EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY TO DEVELOP A VIABLE AIR BURST DELIVERY METHOD, HOWEVER TESTING HAS NOT YET BEEN AUTHORIZED.

OTHER DATA EXTRACTED FROM THE TIANJIN SITE IS AVAILABLE THROUGH SEPARATE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION REPORTING CHANNELS.

BT

T O P S E C R E T//ECI//SAP HORIZON

END TRANSMISSION

BT

AR

I AM QUANTUM.

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