At the End of the Journey, page 1
part #8 of Black Tide Rising Series
Contents
Part One November 11
November 14
November 15
November 19
November 22
November 24
November 25
November 28
Part Two December 3
December 4 (entry one)
December 4 (entry two)
December 10
December 13
December 16
December 17
December 21
December 22
December 23 (dawn)
December 25
January 4, 2013
January 10
January 16
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript one)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript two)
January 17 (Willow’s recorder; transcript one)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript three)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript four)
January 17 (Willow’s recorder; transcript two)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript five)
January 17 (Willow’s recorder; transcript three)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript six)
January 17 (Willow’s recorder; transcript four)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript seven)
January 17 (Alvaro’s recorder; transcript eight)
AT THE END OF THE JOURNEY
by
CHARLES E. GANNON
Set in the Black Tide Rising world
created by
JOHN RINGO
At the End of the Journey
Charles E. Gannon
A NEW NOVEL IN JOHN RINGO'S BEST-SELLING BLACK TIDE RISING SERIES BY NEBULA- AND DRAGON AWARD–NOMINATED AUTHOR CHARLES E. GANNON
It was supposed to be fun. Six teenagers and their British captain aboard the ketch Crosscurrent Voyager, headed on a senior year summer cruise to excitement and adventure. Then the world as they knew it ended.
A plague spread throughout the globe, killing millions and turning the survivors into cannibalistic rage monsters—zombies, in so many words. Only by putting aside their differences were the young crew able to survive.
Now, they seek others like them, those fortunate souls who have made it through the zombie apocalypse. After all, maybe it's not the end of the world so long as GPS can help survivors navigate deadly terrain, to link up, and maybe—just maybe—ensure the continuation of the human race.
But the Earth’s GPS systems are failing. It falls to those aboard the Crosscurrent Voyager to keep the unthinkable from happening. In order to do so, they must traverse dangerous seas to a European Space Agency complex in French Guiana.
And thousands of infected stand in the way.
If they succeed, humankind has a chance of rebuilding. If they fail, humanity may well be at the end of its journey.
BAEN BOOKS in the BLACK TIDE RISING SERIES
Under a Graveyard Sky (by John Ringo)
To Sail a Darkling Sea (by John Ringo)
Islands of Rage and Hope (by John Ringo)
Strands of Sorrow (by John Ringo)
The Valley of Shadows (by John Ringo & Mike Massa)
River of Night (by John Ringo & Mike Massa)
At the End of the World (by Charles E. Gannon)
At the End of the Journey (by Charles E. Gannon)
Black Tide Rising (anthology, edited by John Ringo & Gary Poole)
Voices of the Fall (anthology, edited by John Ringo & Gary Poole)
We Shall Rise (anthology, edited by John Ringo & Gary Poole; forthcoming)
BAEN BOOKS by CHARLES E. GANNON
The Terran Republic Series
Fire with Fire
Trial by Fire
Raising Caine
Caine’s Mutiny
Marque of Caine
Endangered Species (forthcoming)
Protected Species (forthcoming)
The Vortex of Worlds Series
This Broken World (forthcoming)
Into the Vortex (forthcoming)
Toward the Maw (forthcoming)
The Ring of Fire Series
1635: The Papal Stakes (with Eric Flint)
1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies (with Eric Flint)
1636: The Vatican Sanction (with Eric Flint)
1637: No Peace Beyond the Line (with Eric Flint)
1636: Calabar’s War (with Robert Waters)
The Starfire Series
(with Steve White)
Extremis
Imperative
Oblivion
At the End of the Journey
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 by Charles E. Gannon
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-9821-2522-6
eISBN: 978-1-62579-826-8
Cover art by Kurt Miller
First printing, March 2021
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gannon, Charles E., author.
Title: At the end of the journey / Charles E. Gannon.
Description: Riverdale, NY : Baen, [2021] | Series: Black tide rising | “Set in the Black tide rising world created by John Ringo.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2020050085 | ISBN 9781982125226 (hardcover)
Subjects: GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3607.A556 A93 2021 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050085
Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic Version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
Truly excellent authors thrill and even startle us with the singular creativity and unique vision that spills from their pages. But in many cases, those same authors cannot or will not take the risk of allowing others to work within their world.
I contend, however, that among these excellent authors, the very best of them do not merely permit, but invite and encourage colleagues to expand that original edifice of imagination. This is because they have the confidence and wisdom to recognize that these enthusiastic additions only serve to enrich and adorn the world they brought into being. And in so doing, honor it.
This book is dedicated to one of those very best excellent authors:
John Ringo
Thanks for letting me play in your outstanding sandbox, John.
Part One
AT THE END OF DAYS
Journal for 2012, Part Two
November 11
It’s funny how getting the thing you want the most can also paralyze you—because the day after all that surprise and happiness, you suddenly find yourself asking questions you never thought you’d have any reason to ask. That’s how it was the day after we heard from Willow and learned that she and Johnnie were not only still alive, but steaming toward us with new friends.
It had been so many months since we’d had to leave them behind, self-quarantined on South Georgia Island, that we’d learned to stop thinking about the two of them. So hearing their coded radio message wasn’t just a surprise; it was like a miracle, a resurrection of loved ones we’d had to accept as dead.
So of course when we got up, it was all smiles and happiness as we looked forward to being together again. Chloe and Jeeza started the day with a hug, which they scooped Rod into: still skinny, he almost disappeared between them. Steve emerged from Prospero’s cabin calling him “Percy” under his breath; I think that was his version of post-intimacy playfulness. And ex-RAF Senior Aircraftman (Technical) Percival Halethorpe didn’t appear to be bothered by the teasing at all; he seemed to like it in fact. But once we’d finished cooking and squeezing past each other in Voyager’s tiny galley and sat down to a community breakfast, it became obvious that we had pretty different ideas about what to do next.
Jeeza, Rod, and even Steve were all for staying put at Rocas Atoll, the weirdest little reef-ring in the world. It was easy to see why they wanted to hunker down there. For once we had enough of the right foods to eat, were on land without any infected for neighbors, and could practice necessary combat skills in complete safety and at a pace of our own choosing.
But it was Chloe who pointed out the problem with that last welcome change. “Yeah, it’s good to practice,” she agreed, “but it’s better to get used to the real conditions we’re going to be facing everywhere else in the world.”
Rod and Jeeza glanced at each other. Steve frowned. “Not sure what you mean.”
Prospero put a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “She means that learning to move and shoot on a deserted island isn’t the same as learning those skills in a—well, a slightly more realistic environment.”
Steve stared at his boyfriend. “Are you saying we should go find a city full of infected to practice on? ’Cause that sounds like suicide.”
“Yeah, and it sounds too much like Ko
I folded my arms, figured I’d jump in when and if necessary.
Chloe leaned over the table toward Rod. “I’m not talking about heading to Kourou. I’m not talking about heading to any city, for that matter. Hell, I’m not even talking about going to a new place.”
“Then what, or where, are you talking about?” Jeeza asked as she folded her arms.
Chloe shrugged. “We turn around and go back to Fernando de Noronha.”
“And do what?” Rod’s voice cracked for the first time in months. “Clear it?”
Chloe looked at Prospero. Then both of them looked at me. So I was going to have to jump in after all. I shrugged. “We’re not talking going house-to-house or room-to-room.” But I couldn’t leave it there. “Not mostly.”
Jeeza threw up her hands. “‘Not mostly’?” She was on her feet with surprising speed. “Why the hell do we have to go back to killing zombies—stalkers—infected—whatever? Why not stay here? Take a break?”
Chloe’s voice was a sure barometer of her rapidly diminishing patience. “Girl, we’ve had a break. A week’s vacation. Now it’s time to get back into the game. And this atoll will be right here where we left it, just a day out from Fernando de Noronha and no chance of stalkers infesting it while we’re gone. Unless they’ve taught themselves how to sail.”
“Well, I could use more than a week.”
I nodded. “I hear you, Jeeza. But here’s the risk: that we’ll lose our edge just when we should be sharpening it even more. Getting razor sharp. And FdN is pretty much like a gift, when you come right down to it.”
“A gift?” Steve repeated the words loudly. He almost never raises his voice. “That gift damn near killed some of us.”
I nodded. “I know. I was there. Right next to you.” And I was the one who almost got us killed. “But I’m saying, yeah, we have to go back. We have to train more. Figure out better tactics.”
“Why?” I couldn’t tell if Jeeza was going to scream or cry or both. “Because we have to get ready? Because Kourou is going to be so much more dangerous?”
“Jeeza,” I said as kindly as I could, “everyplace we go is going to be much more dangerous than Fernando de Noronha.”
Prospero nodded. “Even the smallest Caribbean islands have real towns or even a small city, with the buildings packed in tight against each other. Each one is a warren of blind corners and hidden alleys. They all started with larger populations and usually a fair amount of livestock. And most have far more square miles in which the infected can hunt, hide, and then emerge from where—and when—we least expect it.” His eyes were bright with sincerity and urgency. “FdN is the toddler version. Lots of space around every building we’ve seen and not a single one of them over two stories. We have pretty fair pre-plague population estimates, and we can make some reasonable guesses how many remain alive. Particularly since there was no livestock on the island and no animals larger than a housecat.”
“They could still swamp us,” Rod croaked through a dry throat. “They did that with less than a dozen, at the first pousada.”
Chloe’s fist hit the chart table. “Which is the whole damn reason for going back. If ten stalkers can almost fug us up, then we have to—have to—get better. We have to come up with better plans.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Well,” I said, looking fixedly at Rod, “like your Wizard’s Tower.”
He scoffed, which, for always-kind Rod, was on par with slapping someone in the face. “Alvaro, there’s no Cat Hill on FdN. No fenced-off installation that was just one big sniper’s perch.”
“No,” I agreed. “But we can make plans that apply the same principle. Just don’t get hung up on the specifics of the Wizard’s Tower. The real reason it worked boils down to this: we got the stalkers in a position where we could shoot at them and they couldn’t get to us. We can do that on FdN, too.”
“Yeah?” Jeeza crossed her arms. “How?”
“By finding a place near or on the shore where they can hear and see us, but from which we can retreat easily, and with plenty of time to gun them down before they can close.”
Rod was suddenly frowning. “Yeah…well…yeah: I see some ways that could work.”
Prospero nodded. “So do I. Which means we start by circumnavigating the island, doing a detailed survey. We know where the major clusters of buildings are from the maps we have; they’re not great, but they show that much.”
Jeeza was staring at Rod as if he’d betrayed her. “And how do any of the tweaks and precautions turn this into a good idea?”
Steve shrugged. “Because the stalkers don’t swim. And we have boats.”
I nodded. “If we can find the right kind of place, and make the right kind of noise, we can do Wizard’s Tower Part Two.”
If Jeeza’s eyes had been scalpels, my liver would have been sagging out of my body. “Alvaro, it is beneath you trying to recruit Rod to your side by stroking his ego.”
Well, I was doing that, too, but: “Jeeza, is it stroking his ego to simply tell the truth? Because Wizard’s Tower is the situation we always want to find ourselves in; getting rid of the infected without risking ourselves. If Rod was the architect of that…well, power to him. Besides, we may need the extra food that’s there. And soon.”
After that, it wasn’t so much a debate as it was a case of being grilled by a Congressional subcommittee of one: the right honorable and really tenacious Giselle Schofield.
Which, when the idea of returning to Fernando de Noronha started to emerge, was exactly what we’d been trying to avoid. After only one day on the island and without even talking about it, Prospero and I sensed we were leaning in the same direction: that we’d have to go back there as part of our training. As it turned out, he was thinking of it as preparation for Kourou. I saw it as preparation for the world: for whatever came next. Kourou or not Kourou, we were going to have to get a lot better at dishing out hurt quickly and effectively. We had to be able to shut the stalkers down before they could even reach us, or it was “game over, man.”
After Prospero and I realized we were on the same page, I mentioned the plan to Chloe. After about two seconds, she announced that she was in full support of going back to FdN and “getting rid of those bastard skels.” Bringing her in on it was the right and necessary step, of course, but it was also a fateful one. Because, for good or for bad (sometimes both), if Chloe is anything, it’s passionate. Prospero and I knew that she was likely to lead with her chin if the group discussed the idea too soon, before we’d worked out the details.
Which, thanks to my darling Chloe, took all of a minute to occur, once she and Jeeza started talking about what we were going to do next. Unfortunately, when it comes to Chloe, a disagreement is an impediment, and an impediment is a full-fledged problem. And all problems are the same to her: all nails to be bashed down. With a sledgehammer. Except when she considers that too subtle an approach.
So the day after we heard from Willow was not filled with happiness and celebration, but by the predictable reaction to our prematurely revealed plans: surprise, alarm, and then Jeeza grinding away at them. Why did we think FdN was worth the risk? Why were we so sure that the risk was not as great as it seemed? What did we stand to gain versus what did we stand to lose? And what kind of circumstances or events would be grounds for backing off either temporarily or permanently?
