Stone Age (13 page)

Max
’s iPhone buzzed where it sat, announcing a call, but not audibly because its ringer was silenced.  He halted his march back from his largest gun cabinet, already placing 5 Glocks and 2000 rounds of .45 ammo on his bench, beside the rifles and extra magazines.  All were ready for transport to the Beach Warehouse.  His phone buzzed again.  He picked it up seeing no picture to reveal the caller, just the letters “L.H.O.”  El Gordo was calling him directly, which never happened, as El Gordo always had his henchmen contact him when he wanted something.  “Now what?” mumbling and sliding his finger across the screen to answer, “Bueno, Señor Luis.  What can I do for you?” He asked respectfully.

“Bueno, Señor Max.  I am calling you as a favor.  Rodrigo knows what is in those boxes we helped you with,”
El Gordo said very cryptically knowing the Mexican government was probably listening.  Max glared at the half-opened crate by the wall, while still listening. “He has control of your webcam and can see inside of your house.  So-” Max jerked his head to his left, away from the phone to his largest computer screen and the webcam resting above,
pointing directly at him
.  The light wasn’t on, but he read that once you had control of someone’s webcam, it was easy to turn the light off.  “...open the box in front of the camera and be careful.”

“Chingado,” erupted the Mexican profanity from his lips before he could stop it.  “Compermiso, Señor Luis.  It is too late.”

“Am sorry to hear that, my friend.  I must protect my investment then.  Do not leave your house.  I have two men in front, watching you now.  I will call again soon.”  With that, El Gordo hung up.

Completely unnerved, Max roughly put his phone down.

His computer yelled some sort of warning tone out to him, unlike any of its normal announcements.  He shakily walked over, first grabbing the violating webcam cord and pulling it out of the computer.  He focused on the screen and recognized the warning he never wanted to see.  “Chingado,” he said once again, vocalizing his dread while tossing the dead webcam away from him.  It skidded across the floor, coming to a rest up against the same crate of guns it was so interested in earlier.

Grabbing his mouse, he clicked the large “CLICK HERE” below the red pulsating warning, knowing what would come next.  “Attention!  The Cicada Protocol has been initiated…
” Max dropped into his leather work chair.  He had no time to lose now.  He knew what the rest said.  Hell, he wrote the first protocol message, and he doubted it changed that much. 

But the information wasn’t for him.  So, he played along and reviewed the message, opening the instructions and map and printing them.  After examining both printed pages, he reached under his desk beside where his soon to be dead computer currently resided. He grabbed a satchel and placed it reverently on his desk.  He blew on the top
, disbursing a thin layer of dust above and behind his desk.  Opening the satchel with his left hand, he reached in, grabbed the wrapped package with his right hand, and pulled it out.  It looked just as he left it a few years ago.  Quickly opening up the flaps of the package, he opened the book it sheltered, admiring it for just a moment, and then slipped the pages into it.  He wrapped everything else up and placed it back in the satchel, leaving it there for the moment.

“Time for that Mission Impossible thing,” he announced.  He reached down and yanked the cords out of the computer, and dragged the computer case to the middle of the floor, its little rubber feet trying to hold onto
its position on the floor, screeching its discontent.

He opened a recently purchased MacBook Air, booted it up, opened Microsoft Word - he still never liked using Apple’s equivalent – when it was fully booted,  a message he had never seen popped open.  It said, “Your computer has been infected with the Zombie Computer Virus.  It will now eat itself and all of your other computers…”

A smirk broke out on his lips.  “Sally?  Dammit.  I wish I could enjoy this.”  He remembered her borrowing his laptop the last time she was here at the house to install some new software she was able to get free.  “Zombie virus?”  He shook his head once more.

The smile ebbed as he refocused on the job at hand.  Closing the window on the fake program, he chose his “From the Desk of…” template and started to write, “To my family (William, Lisa & Sally)…”

The computer in the middle of his concrete floor started to emit a hissing sound, mimicking the deflating mood he felt as he continued to write.  A small cloud of smoke, no more than a puff or two from a good cigar, exhaled out of the back, signaling his trusty computer’s exit from this world.

Turning away from the show, Max finished his letter, printing it out.  He re-read it to make sure it said what he wanted it to say, scratching his nickname they all used rather than his initials on the bottom – his
normal method of signing to make it “official”.  Then he placed the letter on top of the wrapped package, slipped both into the satchel, and then placed it in its normal resting place under the desk.

“What am I forgetting?”  He asked his laptop, before closing it.  He spun around in his chair 90 degrees to look out into his secret workshop, hoping something would stand out.

He stared first at his dead computer, close to a small organized pile of things he heaped onto the floor taken from other parts of the house.  He hoped Bill had a similar pile in his “protected” room.  A couple of Mexican cell phones, a watch, a few solid metal sculptures, his favorite alarm clock – anything with value that was electronic or had a large amount of metal or other conductive material. 

“It should be anytime now.”  He blew out a large breath.  He felt a large weight bearing down on him.  In addition to the end of the world occurring any moment, enough for anyone, he knew it was a matter of minutes or hours before one or both of the two drug lords he knew considered him too much of a liability.  He just hoped that he thought through this scenario enough to protect his best friend,
his family, and with a little luck, himself.

So intent was he that he didn't even notice his muted phone was attempting to give him other warnings.

Stacy Jenkins’ face crinkled into a smile, the recognition of her phone speaking to her, alone in a sea of people at the airport.  Five passengers from the next flight sat behind her at the gate’s waiting area, each engaged with their devices, while also disconnected with everyone else they were sitting with.   Stacy stood outside the area in the path of hurried travelers, who breezed by her as if she didn’t exist.  She watched intently for an signs of her friends.

She pulled her phone up to her face, trying to see if it was Dar calling or texting, but it was only a spam email, “You may qualify for low priced term insurance.  Get a quote now before…”  She ignored the rest, clicking the phone’s hibernate button.  Her face and shoulders hung in disappointment.

She expectedly scanned the throngs of people coming at her from all directions.  Dar texted her an hour ago saying that she was running late and they'd see her at the gate.  But her subsequent texts went unanswered. She tried calling Dar too, but she never picked up.   "Where are you, Dar?  I need you," she said to the crowd, who never acknowledged her pleas. The thought of flying without Dar to hold her hand brought her close to panicking.  She wasn’t sure how she was going to fly, and even considered cancelling, but when Dar said she would be on the same flight, Stacy was ecstatic.

"Last call for flight three-six-three to
Dallas."

"Oh no.  What am I supposed to do now?   Maybe I can get a later flight."

"Stacy Jenkins, is that you?”  An out of breath but familiar voice emerged from the crowds in front of her, dragging a little boy behind.

A big grin broke out on Stacy's lips, "Thank God."

ISS Dead to the World

June 29, 1:20 A.M. E.S.T.

In orbit, over Australia

From a porthole, R.T. stood, arms tightly crossed, glaring at the auroras blanketing the Earth below.  Those damned CMEs ruined everything, dooming his last mission in space.  If it was possible to hate something inanimate and ethereal, he did.  The ISS had gone dark for almost 24 hours now.   He and the other astronauts onboard had tried everything they could think of to jumpstart their systems, but nothing worked.  There was no help for them below, as the Earth had its own problems now.  R.T. knew they were hours away from death if they did nothing further.  The only unknown was whether they would freeze to death, run out of oxygen, or burn in a fire.  His money was on freezing to death.  For warmth, each wore every layer of clothing brought on board; perhaps four total and their suits, without helmets.  Regardless, deprived of any electronics, there was no way to heat what was left of the ISS. 

What else could they do?  Electromagnetic pulses from the sun’s coronal mass ejections had taken out their communications and then fried everything, including all their other electronics, in spite of their shielding.  R.T. figured that the induced currents, still found their way inside to the electronics all connected and integrated into each module.  Their handheld electronics and most importantly, their suits unconnected to the modules
’ structure, were protected and still worked, but would only sustain each man or woman for a couple of hours.  It was kicking the can down death’s road of inevitability. 

He supposed he should feel lucky, because only ten minutes earlier they almost lost the whole
space station to fire, manually casting off several modules to save the whole.  The CME’s induced electrostatic charges ignited the fire.  These particular modules were older and didn’t have very much shielding, as they were built by the Russians. 
Enough said
.  R.T. figured the next CME, due any moment, was probably large enough that it would have the same effect on the remaining, better shielded modules.  He wanted to change his vote now,
definitely fire
.

It was cold.  They were huddled together in Melanie’s research module in hopes of creating a little more warmth.  They were tired, spent; most wearing a thin layer of blackness from fighting the fires minutes ago.  They silently stared at each other or out the aft porthole of their module, counting the seconds until the next sunrise, which would heat their module up just enough to take the sting out of the cold.  Then darkness, and with it the bitter cold of space would soon follow.

The escape modules were out because someone would have to stay behind to release each manually.  Even then, there was still very little chance of survival, because each module had to manually deploy their chutes at the right time, something normally done automatically by computers at the correct altitude.  Then there was the little matter of running out of oxygen before they could escape their modules. 

“I think we all know the situation we are in,”
R.T. broke the silence, speaking as their Mission Commander.  “Best I can figure, we have only one shot for any of us coming out of this alive.   We draw straws for someone to stay behind.  The rest of us split up into the two escape modules, and the winner will manually release each of the modules.  As you know, each escape module’s occupants will have to guess correctly at the exact moment to pull their chute.  If wrong, either you’ll burn up during re-entry or you’ll crash to Earth at 10,000 miles per hour.  Further, you’ll have to set your suit’s O2 on a barely passible setting, and then have enough left to be able to pop your helmets off before passing out and then suffocating.  Any of you surviving that long will probably still die of hypercarbia.  Any questions?”

Everyone was silent, their highly intelligent and educated brains already deducing the same scenario long before their commander spoke.

R.T. held out eight strips of paper, the bottoms covered by the palm of his hand, waiting for someone to start their lottery of death. 

Melanie reached first. “I guess I’ll get us started.” She drew a long strip of paper, but held back any outward sign of her happiness.  No one but R.T., who watched her response, could see it.  R.T.’s resolve was strengthened, knowing she would have a chance.

Each participant’s strip of paper drawn appeared long.  Their reactions were similar, not as reserved as Melanie’s, breathing a long release of air upon realization, and then taking in oxygen and momentary relief into their lungs.  When the last participant waited an extended measure of time to choose from what was believed to be a fifty percent chance at death or a remote possibility of life, he too breathed a long sigh of relief.  Then, all looked at their commander, all but one of their knowing faces full of acceptance, and relieve it wasn’t them.  Tears filled Melanie’s eyes.

R.T. held onto the last long strip of paper.  To complete his shell game, he stealthily folded the bottom portion of his strip of paper in half with his other hand and presented the now shortened ‘straw’ to the group quickly, then he thrust it into his suit pocket.  “It’s on me then.  Let’s head to the modules,” he announced deadpan.

The Kill Order

4
:05 A.M.

Rocky Point, Mexico

“Si mi padre” Rodrigo said very animated over his cell phone.  “I will do as you say.  Gracias papi.”  He pulled the phone from his ear and pressed the end button.  His father, Felix “El Chorro” Menendez just gave him the “orden de muerte” or the kill order.  It was his first one, although he had killed before, but never as a result of a kill order.  The Death Squad always handled these, but after Ortega Inzunza was taken out by the Mexican government’s gunships on the beach a few months ago, he knew his day would soon come.  He couldn’t have imagined a better kill order than Max Thompson. 

Ever since the day he saved Miguel, Max Thompson has been a thorn in his side.  If it weren’t for Max’s own stupidity, he may have never gotten the chance.  Hard to believe he would sell guns to the Ochoas.  He dug his own hole, and he would be buried in it soon.

He imagined the moment he would point his nicked 45 Colt Commander at Max’s face and then pull the trigger.  He was relishing this moment, when he realized there were three faces staring intently at him. 

“Puto, stop staring at me,” Rodrigo yelled at all three at once.  “What are you, a bunch of dogs?  Get everyone.  We have our order to kill Señor Max and take his guns and drugs. We meet outside in cinquento minutos.”

With orders given, one of the three henchmen, tasked with additional orders ran outside the office to another room and announced in Spanish to the other men to get their weapons and meet outside in fifty minutes.  The other two called the remaining assassins not at the compound, demanding their immediate return.

“Ernesto “El Papá” Fernandez, so named because he was the father of 18 children, was also the oldest of Rodrigo’s henchmen.  More importantly at this moment, he was a friend of Maxwell Thompson long before Rodrigo’s feud with Max started.  He knew the reason for Rodrigo’s hatred for the man, and so he kept his friendship with Max a secret.  Rodrigo also didn’t know that their last load of guns actually came from Max. Again, no need to tell Rodrigo.  He was a loyal lieutenant to Rodrigo, but a kill order for Max?  He couldn’t stand by without helping Max.  While standing by the Tahoe waiting for the rest of his team, he discretely pulled out his phone and texted Max, warning him of what was coming his way.

“Donde Julio and Pacco?”  One of the group of asinos asked from the vehicle behind El Papá.  “El Hefe already sent them out
yesterday to watch Señor Max and to make sure he didn’t run when we go there,” he answered in Spanish.

Ernesto hoped that he would reach his friend in time.

Less than fifty minutes after the order was given, Rodrigo walked out to find thirteen of his fifteen men in five vehicles idling and ready to pull out.

“Let’s kill ourselves a gringo,” he yelled jubilantly as he climbed into the second vehicle, a shiny black Cadillac Esplanade SUV.  His men cheered back at their leader as the caravan of killers drove out of the compound.