Nightmare Factory, page 20
“Any other official references to this Rainier, Ada?” I asked softly as I looked down at Sumo. Talking to your dog was more acceptable than simply talking to yourself, right?
“Negative, Joseph. Nothing by that name is in any of my references, although without a better connection, I can’t access any of Hammer’s internal servers.”
“You know, since the world ended, you are being less and less helpful.”
“That’s a hurtful thing to say,” Ada replied in her best fake, emotionally butt-hurt tone.
Sumo’s ears twitched, then he stood quickly and looked back to the north, back in the direction from where we had come. “Ada, is he hearing what I think?”
“Get your helmet,” the AI replied. “I can verify if it is, but my guess is yes.”
Sumo glanced at me before turning back to the apparent sound. Hair was standing up on the dog’s neck. “I don’t need my bucket to verify anything. Sumo knows. Ada, give me a way to boost these batteries right now.”
“Okay, but you won’t like it.”
Well, fuck, she was right. As I stood next to the truck ten minutes later, I agreed. I didn’t like it. Her solution required me jury-rigging eight of the P-cells in sequence with two completely dismantled ammo packs for the pulse rifle. The ammo pack was essentially just a super dense capacitor; it charged up high voltage and released a small portion with each trigger pull. The issue was that much energy at one time would fry every circuit and motor on the old truck.
I pried the side plate off the second magazine with my knife. “Don’t touch the contacts,” my AI said for the fifth time. It was good advice. A single flechette round from the gun could decapitate an enemy. The ammo packs had enough charge for several hundred shots. So, yeah, touching the contacts could absolutely shorten my already tenuous status as a live human.
Damiana picked up the side plate. “Do not remove— explosive danger,” she read.
“Should I be worried?”
“Worry about that.” I pointed my chin toward the growing noise. To her credit, she’d remained remarkably calm when I told her what was approaching. She packed up the solar blanket and the rest of the meager camp site while I hurried to complete the battery booster.
“The creatures would have overrun West Charles by now, wouldn’t they?”
I remembered seeing a sign with that name outside her neighborhood’s entrance. “Yep.”
“You saved our lives, Kovach. Thank you.”
“You aren’t saved yet, dear. And I don’t know if this will work or just turn us into pixie dust.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. She looked worried, but not scared.
“Carol is coming around. She’s hungry. I gave her some water and an energy gel pack. Probably best
not to overwork her system, you know?”
I felt relieved Carol was awake. Damiana liked to have things she was in control of. I got that. So much seemed so far out of our control right now.
“She’s a good woman. Carol, I mean,” she continued, “A good mom, top-notch at her job.”
Did she think I was going to leave her by the road if she’d gotten a bad performance review? I just nodded and continued to follow Ada’s silent and increasingly complex instructions. A tree fell, not close but close enough for us both to hear. Damiana was standing above me, her gaze back down the gravel road.
“Thunder Vines,” she said. “I can see them crossing the road a few hundred yards back.”
“How in the fuck do they grow so fast, and why does it feel like they’re hunting us?”
“It’s not really a plant anymore, something more like an animal with roots. It can absorb energy from almost any source: the sun, direct current, sugars, and proteins. They can literally absorb other life forms, like a giant Venus flytrap. They were designed to be resilient and aggressive.”
“Too fucking aggressive,” I said. “Get in the truck and lock the doors.” I’d seen those damn vines get into sealed buildings; I had no doubt they could get into an old truck. But it was something, at least.
She looked as if she wanted to protest but nodded and left. I heard the door shut as I continued my work on the battery pack. If I fucked up, we were all dead anyway.
The sound grew steadily louder; it was like a roaring river. I didn’t recall it being that loud yesterday, then remembered I was wearing my helmet then. I picked up the helmet and slid it on and checked my dwindling weapons status.
Full battle suits were great for a lot of things, delicate electronics were not one of them. I saw vines creeping around me on both sides as I did the last of the connections. Sweat was dripping down in my eyes. The suit’s vent system seemed to be failing. I just needed to hook this into the power junction and see if I had managed to kill us all. The two leads I had left free were simple enough. I wired the first one to the frame of the truck with a stud and wing nut, then held the thicker hot wire above the jumper block where Ada said it needed to go.
I felt the vines encircling my feet; these were smaller than the ones yesterday. I could break free simply by changing position. “You sure about this?” I asked, my hand poised over the power block. Then I carefully slipped it…
Something hit me on my right side, and I found myself flying past the truck and a dozen yards farther down the road. Stunned, I was instantly back in a crouch, rifle out, looking for targets. I saw nothing other than the tendrils of thicker vines now beginning to cover the trees, the road, and the old GMC. Faintly, in my suit’s sensors, I could hear a dreaded familiar tapping as well. “The battle bots.” Wherever the vines went, they seemed to follow.
I turned in a full circle, but no targets came up. I glanced at my side and saw three deep scars across my body armor. I hadn’t imagined it, and it damn sure wasn’t a vine. I saw both women inside the truck motioning frantically for me to join them. “Ada, bring the car forward, it should have some power.” I wasn’t sure I had gotten that final wire connected or not.
The pickup began moving slowly toward me. Vines snapped with meaty pops as gobs of blue-green liquid oozed out. I noticed my hand was shaking, and my heart rate was abnormally high. “Ada, replay attack.”
My vision overlay showed a black, gray blur briefly pass in front of me and then another view as I was upside down flying across the road. She tried rendering it multiple times to clear it up, but I couldn’t tell anything about it other than whatever hit me was blindingly fast. This was my night visitor. It had to be. “You were trying to get away from those mutant hordes, too, weren’t you?”
I reluctantly shouldered the weapon and finished making the last connection. Slipping into the truck, I took off, determined to put some serious distance between us and well…all that shit behind us. Sumo, sitting between the front seats, licked my arm affectionately.
It took several minutes for my heart rate to settle. Whatever the beast was, it affected me on a very primal level.
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
BANSHEE
Lieutenant Riggs studied the map. “Can I see it again?” The major had brought her into the war room as part of a larger conversation on Banshee team’s possible ongoing role.
The scene started over, multiple waves of missile strikes on several continents. Although the attack was coordinated and widespread, the number of total targets was relatively small. She studied the time code superimposed above the time lapse graphic. Within three days, the area around a significant number of the targets was colored red, then faded to black.
“Red means lethal to organic tissue, black… well, black means no life signs remaining,” an ensign standing nearby said.
“D.C., New York, Atlanta, Boston…” Bayou said in sad realization. Then she touched another black circle, this one fartherwest. She knew the city name without looking. “Louisville,” she whispered in quiet desperation.
The major walked up and put a hand on her shoulder. “Along with Rome, Beijing, Paris, Amsterdam, and dozens more. We think it was a coordinated attack by the TWC.”
That would make some sense. The Third World Coalition had lots of funding, a brilliant leader, and a fundamentally rational cause. Which was the simple fact that the superpowers seemed intent on destroying the entire world through war, greed, reckless manufacturing, or environmental collapse. The TWC was also very fond of terrorist attacks that made splashy headlines. This, though, was on another level entirely.
“What is happening in the blast zones? Why are they going dark?”
“That’s the question we need answers to, Lieutenant. The destabilizing event was largely conventional. Either nukes, dirty bombs, and Darkstar EMP disruptors or some combination of the three. Those alone would have wiped out our government officials, banking systems, coordinated air traffic control, and cause a massive loss of life. Yet, scattered reports of a Sapphire bomb blast wave in many of the locations suggests something else. Gamma and neutrino detectors registered significant spikes during the attack.”
“Sapphire bombs.”
“That is our assumption, but the payload is very much a mystery,” the major responded. “We dropped some drones over D.C. and Beijing. They had to stay above 15,000 feet or something caused the software to glitch. We lost a dozen of them before we figured it out.” She handed Debra a data tablet.
The video was grainy, the cities barely recognizable, but in several places, Bayou could see something happening. Buildings that were covered with colorful plant growth, others that were collapsing, and piles of what appeared to be dead bodies. The city was in ruins and looked more like the ruins of a thousand-year-old city instead of a modern metroplex.
She handed the tablet back, shocked by what she’d seen. Debra Riggs had fought in some of the nastiest places on Earth, battles that would never be talked about in public, but this was something on an entirely new level. This was Armageddon level shit. “You want us to go down, don’t you? Into one of those death zones?”
“Riggs, we have half a billion people down there in those zones. Maybe they are all dead, maybe nothing is coming out alive. We must know.”
“What about assets already on the ground?” Bayou asked.
“Fleet Command operations is offline,” the major said, as if that answer was sufficient. The senior officer moved to the corner of the room and motioned Bayou over. “Some admiral over at Gateway is trying to assume command, like Luna bases have anything relevant to add to our fight.
We have no contact with ground command. You are the few who were down there we have spoken with. And…”
“And we were deployed nowhere helpful,” Bayou said, finishing the thought.
“Right. Let me lay it out for you, Lieutenant Riggs. This boat has enough supplies to last three weeks, maximum. That’s 1847 souls on board that will starve to death soon after. The other ships out here are all going to be in similar shape. We’ve even broken protocol and called our Russian, Indian, and Chinese counterparts. They are reluctant to admit much, but it’s obvious we are all in the same situation.”
“You don’t want to send anyone down until you know what the threat is? Are hostilities continuing? Is the threat neutralized? And with no intel coming back upstream, you have no way of knowing. Thankfully, fate just handed you a world class drop team of senior operators.”
The major smiled. “Not to mince words, soldier, but yes. You need to get cleared from sick bay and prep for that mission.”
The med-bay bots did their job, and Bayou was back with her men the following day.
“You’re fucking shitting me,” Bishop said, throwing a faded tennis ball against the wall. “Do they not understand what we just went through?”
“Oh, they understand,” Bayou said.
“They just don’t care,” Jenkins said, finishing the familiar line.
“The more you do, the less you matter. Welcome to the military, boys!”
“Did you tell them we had a team member dirt side already?” Jenkins asked.
She shook her head. “That’s the one asset that might keep our ass alive. Personally, I think if they knew Prowler was down there, they would let us starve up here with the rest of the fleet, waiting on him to do the job.”
“I take it you haven’t reached him?”
“Sorry, Priest, no outgoing comms on this boat,” Bayou answered. “Also… I think it might be best we keep that bit of intel private for now.”
“So, we going ballistic, or we taking the taxi?” Halo asked, standing and grabbing his pack.
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
KOVACH
Ada hadn’t waited for instructions. The truck was blasting down the road at speeds the ole’ girl hadn’t hit in decades. I sat back in the driver’s seat and slowly removed my helmet. What just happened unnerved me more than I wanted to admit. I knew that thing was not an enemy that we knew how to fight. Looking in the mirror, I saw Carol awake but scared. She might be my only hope of staying alive, but her priority would be her son. The kid could be anywhere, or more likely, already dead. I felt like a shit for not telling her already about what I knew.
“Ada, get us the best path away from that danger back there,” I subvocalized.
“Routing optimum course based on available power levels.”
I knew she would also avoid other blast centers. While we didn’t know every place the Sapphire bombs hit, we could certainly avoid most of the other kind. I felt Damiana’s touch again; she ran her fingers through the deep gouge marks on my side armor and then looked at me questioningly.
“You didn’t see it?” I asked.
“What?”
She obviously had no idea that the creature from my nightmare had shown back up.
“Nothing,” I answered. No need to alarm them more. “Welcome back, Carol. How are you feeling?”
The woman just held her head and stared out the window.
“She just needs some time,” Damiana said.
Yeah, we all do. Trouble is, that’s the one thing we aren’t going to get. I steered the old truck onto a paved road, a state highway heading southwest, and let Ada handle the driving for now. We needed a better plan. Shit, who was I kidding? We had no plan. I had a name of a mystery place that may not even exist. If it did, it might be in the same shape as Iron River. Even if we could find it, and it was still intact, how likely would it be for us to find the exact medications I needed to stay alive?
Truth is, I am a soldier. I handle the battles as they occur. Right now, I was still licking my wounds from the last few skirmishes. Normally, someone else would advise me on what came next. That had never been a job I’d had to do. I mean, sure, when it comes to battlefield tactics, I could assess and react faster than most, but this was something altogether different.… no, it wasn’t. This was life or death, just like all those other fights. This time, though, I was fighting for myself.
“Ada, whenever you have a signal, update Pops and see if he has an idea on that other facility, what did she call it… Rainier.”
If Carol couldn’t help, maybe my old man could. He seemed to be tied in to just about everything else.
We drove for nearly six hours before the batteries began to flatline again. If the map in my head could be trusted, we’d passed through West Virginia and were now back in Virginia, getting close to rural Kentucky. Looking at the map in my display, I had to ask an obvious question. “Why does Virginia extend father west than West Virginia?” Ada didn’t bother responding.
Setting up the worn charging blanket, I thought again about Bayou’s family. What was it? A sister.
“How far to Louisville?” I asked my AI softly as I moved farther from the two women.
“Two hundred twenty-five miles,” came the immediate response.
That didn’t seem so bad, but did we have time? I began breaking out our gear. We’d have to camp here overnight.
“Louisville is gone, Joe.”
I stopped what I was doing. “Gone?”
“Affirmative,” Ada replied. “I detect fallout from a direct nuclear blast, and despite the radiation in the atmosphere, I can get some internet access. Louisville, Charlotte, and Atlanta all took direct hits. Riggs’ sister would not have made it.”
“You can’t be sure,” I stated flatly.
* * *
Damiana was helping her friend lay out some sleeping mats under a tarp I’d rigged.
“Radiation?” I asked internally.
* * *
“In Louisville or here?” Ada asked.
* * *
“Both… either.” Then thinking better on it. “Here. What is the risk here?” I said with growing frustration.
“You will be fine. Your suit will block most of it, and the Regenerax in your system should nullify any negative effects at the cellular level.”
I nodded. “I meant them, Ada. Will they be, okay?” No matter how smart she was, she was still just a computer. She could miss even the most obvious of human concerns.
“They are in jeopardy. Nothing immediately lethal, but longer exposure should be avoided and treated,” Ada replied.
I knew anti-radiation medication had come a long way in the last fifty years, but that was about all. “Can we find what I have, the Regenerax?”
“No, that is not commercially available yet. It was still in trials.”
“Trials?” I said, concerned, looking down at my bare arm, my real arm, where the infusion had gone in over many days the prior year.
“Mostly in pigs and monkeys, but human subjects were to start soon.”
I wasn’t sure she was being serious and — I didn’t want to find out. “What about more conventional drugs?”
“Yes, there are several with beneficial prophylactic properties. They will help mitigate all but the worst doses of normal radiation.” She then scrolled a list of commercial and generic drugs’ names, most I’d never heard of.
