No Mere Zombie: Deathless Book 2 (3 page)

The people would be fine, so far as they knew, but the CME would devastate the world's power grid. There would be no internet, no cable. No food being transported in daily. No modern conveniences. That would lead to a very scared, very aggressive populace and every one of his people knew they were exempted from that chaos. They'd be safe while the rest of the world tore itself apart.

By the time he’d descended the three steps and entered the spacious ring at the foot of the massive wall display a dozen feeds had already sprung to life. He barely noticed as an Asian woman slipped a tablet into his hand. It was the control interface not only for the display, but for the entire complex. Using the simple device he could find data, issue commands or even shut down power. The biometric sensor was keyed to his thumb, of course.

He took a moment to survey each of the twelve feeds, a brief twinge of satisfaction rising as the low hum of conversation resumed behind him. His command crew were the best at what they did, far too professional to allow a superior’s arrival to intimidate them for long. They had jobs to do and every one of them knew failure could cost countless lives. Most probably took solace in the work, focusing on it rather than on what they were about to witness.

“What am I seeing on number six?” he barked, tapping the feed on the tablet and swiping to the data screen. “These metrics are outside tolerance. Get it locked down. Seconds count, people.”

Eleven of the twelve satellites were in the final phases of lockdown, the feeds showing enormous clam-like shells that were slowly covering their vital components. Those components would be cooked instantly if exposed to the fury the sun was about to unleash on their world. Number six, on the other hand, sat perfectly still. Its feed was still being received, but the protective casing remained retracted.

“Sir,” one of the techs piped up, a sandy-haired kid who looked as though he should be serving french fries. “Number six has a damaged servo. Time to repair is just under two hours.”

“Noted,” Mark shot back, turning his attention back to the tablet.

 
He pinched the IRIS feed, dragging it open to cover the entire screen. The deep-space satellite belonged to NASA and had been designed to study the sun. It had been deployed a bare handful of months before, a timely addition to their data-gathering abilities. Gasps sounded behind him as some of the technicians saw the feed he’d pulled onto the main screen. He couldn’t blame them, even if they were supposed to be professionals. No one had ever seen anything like this, at least no one in the last thirteen thousand years.

A fiery wave blanketed space, hurling towards the camera with incredible speed. It drowned out the sun behind it, a glob of plasma that undulated and pulsed as it approached. The image provided no real context, but Mark knew that the coronal mass ejection was many times the size of the earth. That made it far larger than anything in recorded history, and he prayed that their projections of the catastrophic damage it would wreak to the earth's power grid were wrong.

“Get me an estimated time of impact,” he bellowed, pivoting to face the sea of technicians. Most typed furiously on their keyboards, but a few shot him terrified glances. One woman was crying, a young blonde with close-cropped hair and swollen eyes. "Now, people.”

“Eighty seconds until it hits satellite six, sir,” an Asian woman with wireframe glasses spoke up, rising from her desk so he could meet her gaze. It was the same one who'd given him the tablet. Benson, the name tag read. “We have another forty before it reaches us here. It will blanket the entire planet in just under four minutes.”

“At least one of you is competent,” The Director growled, attempting to suppress the irritation at how powerless he felt. “Keep six broadcasting and record all data. If we’re going to lose it, let's at least get what we can. Shut down all monitoring as soon as it goes dark.”

He strode from the pit towards the wide glass desk on the far side of the room. It was slightly elevated over the others, giving him a commanding view of the technicians. It had been placed there to further reinforce his authority, though it did little to help his mood. He slid into the high-backed leather chair behind the desk and keyed in a sequence on the silvered keyboard. His monitor flared to life with the lime-green connecting icon.

“What is it, Mark?” a familiar voice answered almost immediately. The picture showed a stocky blond-haired man with piercing blue eyes, hands steepled on his desk as he stared at the camera. Leif Mohn himself, a man even Mark found terrifying.

“The second wave will be here in three minutes. We’re going to lose satellite six, but the other eleven are protected,” he explained, pausing while he awaited a response. Mohn’s face revealed nothing.

“That’s a shame. Six is responsible for north Africa, isn’t it?” Mohn asked, tone neutral.

“It is. We can bridge the gap if we alter five and seven to cover a wider radius, but that leaves thin coverage in all three areas,” Mark replied. It wasn’t the best solution, but it was the best they had.
 

“As soon as the wave is over, have the artifacts brought below. I want to see if the wave has any effect,” Mohn instructed, reaching for something off-screen. He turned back to the camera. “Do we have an update on the situation in Peru?”

"No, sir,” Mark admitted, though he hated doing so. It made him look incompetent for trusting subordinates. “Last we heard Commander Jordan was in place and awaiting the package, but he hasn’t reported in since this morning. That’s unusual, but given the impending wave we couldn’t send a team to investigate.”

“Inform me if anything changes. Also, I want to be notified the second we’ve compiled footage from the aftermath of the wave,” Mohn said. He didn’t bother awaiting a response, simply terminating the feed.
 

If the Old Man had been upset about losing an eighty-billion-dollar satellite moments before they were knocked back into the Stone Age, he certainly didn’t show it. Mark compartmentalized the conversation. He had to focus on the situation. Time was critical.

“Sir, wave impact in fifteen seconds,” Benson called from her desk. She’d be one to watch in the coming days. She seemed to be keeping it together better than most of the techs.

Mark rose from his desk, watching the feed from six on the giant screen. The wave had blotted out everything, leaving the screen filled with the sun’s fiery wrath. Had the first civilization witnessed something similar thirteen thousand years ago? Or had they lacked the technology and simply been eradicated? He would give anything to know more about that civilization. Mohn had gleaned so little from the pyramid in Peru and even less from Gobekli Tepe. The only solid information they had came from the artifacts, and that was extremely limited.

The screen went dark. Satellite six was gone. The room fell utterly silent, save for the low hum of computers. No one spoke or even tapped away at a keyboard. They all knew that when the feed returned, when the wave was over, they’d find themselves in a strange new world. There was no way of knowing just how it would affect them.

They had projections, of course. The world’s power grid would be severely damaged, though there was no way to predict the exact magnitude of that damage. People would be left in a dark aftermath, fighting for food and possibly shelter as the civilized world tore itself apart. That would leave them unable to respond to the true threat, these werewolves that had begun appearing several weeks after they’d explored the pyramid.

Had that been their true plan all along? Start the plague just before the world faced its worst calamity in recorded history? If so, it was utterly devious. It would give the werewolves the time they needed to spread unopposed. Mohn Corp would resist, of course, but how much resistance they could offer remained to be seen. They had less than three thousand personnel in Syracuse, and every other installation lacked the elaborate shielding they had here. The other facilities would suffer severe damage from the wave. They hadn’t the faintest idea as to the werewolves’ motives and were woefully unable to respond to the threat.

The lights flickered for a split second and then came back on at a slightly reduced intensity. It was the only sign that they’d switched from the local power grid to their own nuclear reactor. That switch was intended to be permanent, since they had no idea how long it would take for the local government to rebuild, assuming that it even survived the disaster.

“Sir,” Benson called. She waited for his attention before continuing. “Satellites are beginning to redeploy. We’ll have feeds in sixty seconds.”

“Excellent,” Mark replied, leaving the desk and heading back into the pit. He studied the black screen for nearly a full minute before it flickered back to life.
 

It now showed eleven feeds, with a conspicuously black spot where six should have been. He tapped a series of commands on the tablet and watched as each of the satellites altered their cameras from the sun back to the earth. The feeds revealed familiar images showing every continent. Those in daylight time zones looked exactly the same, but those on the far side of the earth were dark, save for a thin band of lights around the equator. Every city outside that belt had been extinguished. Power was gone in the blink of an eye leaving them, so far as they knew, the only organization in the world with both satellite access and electricity.

The latter would return in time, but no nation would be able to recover satellite access. Every last one, save for those belonging to Mohn Corp, had just been obliterated by the coronal mass ejection. The world was blind, naked before whatever apocalypse the ancient myths had tried to warn them about.

“Give me points of interest, people. What can you show me?” he asked, folding his hands behind his back. It galled him to know so little, but there was nothing for it but patience.

“Sir, feed five is making a pass over northern Africa. Cairo was listed as a potential point of interest. I think you’re going to want to see this,” a young man with a shock of black hair and a cleft chin said. Mark was close enough to read the name tag. Jacobs.
 

He called up feed five, which dominated the main screen. The camera was aimed at the Giza plateau and provided a spectacular view of the Pyramids and the Sphinx. The ground shook and trembled, sending temple columns and a few stones from the pyramids tumbling to the earth. Odd, since Egypt wasn’t seismically active.

Then a jet black point jutted from the earth between the first and second Pyramids. It grew larger and larger, boring
up through the earth just as the one in Peru had. Only this one was far, far larger. The ground around it roiled and bucked as it continued its ascent. Eventually, the structure hit both the first and second pyramids, knocking them out of its path like children’s blocks. Five thousand years of human history were obliterated in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but rubble at the feet of what must now be the largest man-made structure in the world. Assuming it
was
man-made.

Only the Sphinx had survived the destruction, now perched at the very foot of the newly arrived pyramid, as if it had been made to sit there. Odd that. The pyramid’s obsidian surface was different than its counterpart in Peru. It was decorated with elaborate golden hieroglyphs as large as a man. Thousands upon thousands of them. What did they mean? Who had created them? There were so many damned questions and precious few answers.

“Sir,” Benson barked as she shot to her feet. “There are more of those things. One in Australia. Another in Cambodia. There might be others but those are the ones that we’ve identified thus far.”

The Director walked back to his desk and called the Old Man.

Chapter 3-Zombies

“Director Phillips?” a voice blared from somewhere outside the dream. Mark struggled awake, sitting up in bed. He glanced at the clock. 2:43 am. He'd only been out for about forty minutes. It was more than he'd expected.

An insistent red light flashed at the base of the wall screen. He tapped it.

“I’m awake. Report,” he said, still groggy but already processing. If they’d woken him this quickly after he'd left Ops, something monumental must have happened.

“Sir, I’m piping you the footage from satellite five now,” a female voice said. It was the Asian tech. Benson. “I’ve concatenated the most important parts, complete with our initial analysis.”

He was impressed. She hadn’t apologized for waking him, which most other techs would have done. If it was important enough to wake him she was smart enough to realize no apology was needed, because she was simply performing the duty he’d assigned her.

Mark picked up the tablet from the nightstand and propped the pillow up against the wall. He leaned back, swiping to wake the device. It took a few moments to browse to the footage Benson had indicated. There were four videos, one from Cairo, another from London, the third from Berlin and the final one from Paris. He started with London.

It was a top-down view of downtown, just outside a hospital. Police stood in the street, directing crowds of people. Abandoned vehicles clogged the street and thousands of people streamed between them. It was his first look at a large city after all power had been lost, but beyond the expected chaos he didn’t see anything remarkable.
 

A figure staggered out of the hospital. Then another. Then a third and a fourth. They lurched drunkenly towards the crowd, where they began to attack people. At first most of the crowd barely noticed, but then some of those attacked rose and began attacking others. The violence spread like wildfire, ripping into the crowd in several places.