Rage (6 page)

The soldier turned and headed down to give the bad news to the once hopeful Ark survivors, now all turned prisoners until the end came.

They walked hurriedly to the Ark.

Casey pressed on his earbud, hearing something.

“Then, yes, yes. We’ll be right there.” Cross looked at the colonel, questioning. Casey said, “General, something’s interfering with communication. Hope we didn’t wait too long.”

“Less time, less chance of a fuck-up, Colonel.”

“The others are getting in place. Cryo procedures begun.”

Cross nodded.

Their Ark would enter its shaft right at the Ark station site, close to a massive cache of weapons and supplies.

“Good,” Cross said.

He had the thought: this day of global disaster could be the greatest day of his military career.

•  •  •

Cross watched Casey lay down on the cryo bed.

The Ark door had already been shut. The computer soothingly told them how long until insertion began.

Cross had been hands-on in all the preparations. No bit of tech would screw up his plans. He made one last check to confirm that the date change for emergence had been fully locked into the system.

A tap of the button brought the confirmation of the soothing voice.

“Ark emergence … set for 2105.”

Cross watched as Casey received the nanotrites injection. The colonel’s eyes closed, the deep sleep beginning.

Outside … had all discipline begun melting away? Would the guards sworn to protect them hold steady, ready to shoot and kill as needed?

No matter.

In seconds the Ark would lower. In minutes it would be buried.

As Cross lay back, he thought of the one thing that worried him:

Their Ark would emerge first. Years before any of the others.

But would that date be too soon?

Was there any way to know, to even guess?

He felt the needle at his neck puncture his skin, the burning sensation intense as the nanotrites were injected into him.

He felt the heat and then the tingling that the scientists—all watching outside on a monitor—unquestioning, dutiful—had told him about.

Eyes started to close.

He heard rumbling, the Ark beginning its journey down below the substrata of the ground.

He never saw the pod cover close over him.

He never heard the sound of the Ark’s drill system taking it
ever deeper into the ground at the same time as the excavated rubble buried it, a seal of rock and dirt.

The plan was done. The die cast.

The future, now altered, now something imagined, to be created by the
vision
of one man.

But for now that man slept like thousands of others around the planet …

H
ow many cameras around the world were kept running, trying to capture every moment when Apophis hit?

Well before it even got within fifty miles of the surface, advance shock waves had flattened whole forests, created mountain-sized wave surges, triggered violent shifts in geological plates worldwide as tsunamis erupted in all the world’s oceans, water and land rising madly to greet the asteroid as it came close.

And still … it had not yet hit.

Some people burrowed, some went to high ground. Some got drunk, some made love amidst tears. Others took their own lives before anything happened.

Many did nothing.

And those waiting cameras? Most stopped working well before impact. But a few—specially built and placed in fortified
steel bunkers with the same portholes found on the deep submersibles—kept recording and transmitting up to the very last moments.

Apophis had become three asteroids, yet its power had been diminished.

A direct hit could trigger shifts in the undersea mountain ranges, the mid-Atlantic ridge rising as plates violently moved and new volcanic fissures sprouted everywhere.

A direct hit could destroy cities, even entire countries, instantly killing all life for hundreds, even thousands, of miles while changing the very terrain of the planet.

A direct hit could trigger mammoth fissures and cracks in the volatile plates of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Nearly a third of the earth’s crust would swell and crash together in just a few violent moments, matched in violence only by the original fiery formation of the planet itself.

Still—a few cameras resisted the first shock waves, the massive blasts of winds that dwarfed hurricane speeds.

They continued to record right up until the moment of impact.

Sending their images out via satellite until that communication link ended, all the satellites rendered useless.

And then at last the cameras would be turned into powder, dust.

Like the billions of people.

Like the millions of buildings.

Like the continent-size swaths of land that, in an instant, turned much of Planet Earth into a landscape that resembled the moon.

Desolation, devastation.

Those last cameras finally vanishing along with it all.

It seemed like the end of the world.

And for most living things, it was.

ONE
THE WASTELAND
2112

T
he first thing Raine felt was a stabbing pain at the back of his neck.

Instinctively, he reached up with his right hand to rub that spot as if it might ease the way-beyond migraine level of agony.

But his hand didn’t even respond.

Then, confused by what seemed to be a clear command to
rise
, his hand finally did pop up, as if released from invisible netting.

It rose only inches. Then it hit something.

He realized then that his eyes were shut. It hadn’t even occurred to him to open them. If he could make the pain simply stop, maybe he could go back to sleep. Sleep seemed like a good thing, something he wanted, needed. And he couldn’t help thinking it would be easier to slip back to sleep if he kept his eyes closed.

But he heard someone talking.

The voice was muffled at first. A woman. Talking to him? A dream? He wondered.

“Emergency extraction of Ark 1138. Revival procedures begun on remaining vital pods.”

The voice sounded familiar. He had heard this voice before. Someone he knew. But her words made no sense to him.

None at all.

“Evaluation of pods complete. Pods one through eleven have had essential systems destroyed. Revival impossible. Pod twelve undamaged. Revival progressing normally.”

No sense. Wait …

Ark. Pods.

Still, the fiber of memory was so
thin.
He could barely connect what those words meant. Ark? Pods? He mulled them over and over.

Until—he opened his eyes.

He saw something only inches above him through the clear protective mask of a helmet. Swirls of smoke, tinged purple and green. And he heard a whooshing sound. On, then off. Then again.

Ark. Pods.

And then he remembered:
I am in a pod. Inside this thing, this Ark.

He licked his lips and tasted something strange. Something had coated his lips—a slick, metallic-tasting balm.

“Opening pod twelve,”
the woman said.

Now he remembered that, too. It was the computer.

He heard the sound of things moving. Felt a rumbling under him. Then the thing that had him sealed in here, the cover that restrained his hand from moving up, began to slowly open.

And the sounds suddenly became louder.

•  •  •

“Caution: emergency fire system in operation. Remain in your pod unit until complete.”

Another bit of memory came to him. Along with Ark, pods, computer … 
I’m Lieutenant Nicholas Raine.

I was
sent
here.

More
shooshing
noises. Raine turned left, a slight angle of the head, to see a whitish cloud being shot out, aimed somewhere in the back of the Ark.

He tried to sit up.

Again his body seemed glued in place, but eventually he could raise his head, only making the pain at the back of his neck worse.

Then his hand moved over to the edges of the pod. His fingers closed on the edge, grabbing as best they could with gloves on. His actions were deliberate, like his body was planning some terribly complex strategic move.

He lowered his head and then brought it up again, this time pulling himself up, performing the incredible feat of sitting up.

Sparks shot out from a wall ahead of him. From above, a sharp cracking sound. More sparks flew from where he saw exposed wires.

The colored smoke … that came from the automated fire extinguishers hitting the fiery spots, picking up the ghostly lights from the computer. Until they stopped.

Pod twelve.
That’s me, he thought. Pod twelve is okay. Pod twelve survives.

He looked at the other pods. One was cracked, matching a crack that ran straight across the floor … and stopped only a foot from his pod.

Another pod was split open. But whoever was in it just lay there. It dawned on him:
I’m the only one alive.

Something had happened deep underground. The Ark had been damaged, the pods malfunctioning or wrecked by whatever had occurred.

Maybe not a good idea to just stay here, he thought. Despite the computer’s advice.

Getting his legs to move, though, was proving to be as difficult as moving his head had been.

But with thinking and planning, he eventually got to a standing position … and walked over to the computer.

He opened the face mask of his helmet. The extinguishers putting out the fire had slowed, then stopped completely.

Good—I won’t be cooked in here.

The computer talks.
And he remembered that he had been told he could talk back to the computer.

“What happened?”

The computer didn’t answer. He started to repeat the question.

“What—”

“Seismic occurrence, marked at a depth of 219 meters. Pressure exceeded Ark specifications. Electrical and control systems began to fail. Emergency extraction begun at 0930 hours.”

Raine nodded. Guess one didn’t have to thank a computer.

“Anyone else survive?” he asked, a question he was pretty sure he knew the answer to.

Another hesitation.

Then:

“No.”

Yes, lucky me, he thought. Then, another question:

“The year?”

“By the Julian calendar, June 11, 2114. That calendar is no longer accurate.”

The calendar was wrong. How could a calendar be wrong? How could time be different?

What could happen that could change time, days, months?

Then a last word. The last bit of a puzzle. Falling into place in his mind like a wooden jigsaw.

He said the word: “Apophis?”

The computer showed video. Appearing on the big screen high above the pods.

He saw the asteroid racing through space.

The screen went black.

“Attention: systems unstable. Immediate evacuation of Ark 1138 is necessary.”

Were there fires still burning somewhere within the Ark? Could this still turn into a tomb for him?

He heard a sound, turning.

The Ark’s porthole door was opening. He flipped down his mask. Even with that amount of time passing—accurate calendar or not—he wasn’t sure if it was safe to breathe outside. It disturbed him, to think he could have traveled all this time only to die once he stepped outside. Radiation. The air. Whatever the hell the world had been transformed into.

The door kept opening while he stood there, watching, nearly petrified by the idea of leaving this.

Like being born, he thought.

The stairs had cascaded down to the ground. He heard the sound of rock crunching, a grinding noise. The Ark, he noticed, sat tilted at an angle to one side.

Could be goddamn anywhere.

But with the door open, at least he knew … 
I’m not underwater.

“Evacuate now. All systems shutting down.”

The door to the future—his future—lay open.

With his legs wobbly, his whole body still weak and undependable, he walked out.

Step after tentative step.

The light outside was blinding.

Raine brought a hand up to shield his eyes. His shaky legs were barely up to getting him down the steps, and he felt as though he might tilt forward and fall flat on his face.

He heard his own breathing in his mask.

Heavy, labored sound.

Can all my organs work okay after sleeping for so long? My heart, lungs, everything? What about muscle atrophy?
And yet, for someone who just slept a hundred years, he didn’t feel too bad. It certainly seemed as though his brain was sluggish to respond, though. Memory shaky. Thinking more cloudy than clear.

It was—

He looked up. No clouds here, just brilliant sun.

A sunny day.

Raine took another step down.