Overture (Earth Song) (48 page)

The
physician that had given her the death sentence obligingly also gave her enough prescription painkillers to see her through to the end. The e-mail chime brought her back to consciousness and she realized the last batch of drugs was wearing off. Why she hadn’t just swallowed an entire bottle weeks ago she didn’t know. Something was making her hang on.

Wearily,
she rolled over and got to her feet. The bathroom was only ten steps away, but it took her almost a half hour to reach the commode and relieve herself. The trip back was made more quickly, though through a growing mist of pain behind her eyes. She noticed her ankles were wobbly and her toes numb. The doctor had warned her of this. It was the first sign of the end. For a while she’d considered trying to make it to see the end of the world. A dying cancer patient, reclining in a patio chair on the balcony of a multi-million dollar Manhattan condo, watching the planet die.
You watch too much Bollywood
, she chided herself.

As
Kadru stumbled toward her bed she caught sight of the computer. Of course it was the best money could buy. When you made millions from computers, it paid to own the best. The screen continued to obediently flash a note that a message was waiting. The pain was growing, but still manageable, so she let curiosity get the better of her and sat in front of the display.

“
I didn’t close the Followers account,” she said with a horse chuckle. From under the desk she found a bottle of water in the little fridge. She almost wasn’t strong enough to open it. After she’d sipped some of the cool liquid she felt better. She was about to delete it and return to her painkillers when she saw who it was from.
He deserves for me at least to read it,
she thought and did just that. Afterwards, Kadru sat back to think.

Victor
wasn’t there to do what the sender was asking, but she was. There are a few of us left, she knew. She’d stopped at the temporary shelter on her way to her apartment just long enough to give the man in charge of the soup kitchen all the cash she had. A couple dozen of the faithful had been there, mostly the too young, too old, the newest or the sickest. It was a shame because they would all have been made whole in Heaven once they met Vishnu. Still, they were loyal followers.

He
isn’t one of us, she thought, but he is a good man. Several times he could have led the authorities to us, and each time he kept our secrets. The computer offered her no more insights so she got up and walked toward the bed.

I
am not the one to ask for help
, Kadru decided, and picked up the pill bottle. She removed the childproof cap with some difficulty and looked inside. Twenty gleaming white pills rested there. She’d been taking two of the powerful narcotics every six hours to push the pain away. The doctor said that more than five would likely be fatal. She shook out ten of them and stared at them, instruments of a woman’s fate. Such tiny things to end all of your existence. A glass of water from the filtered cooler nearby, a couple gulps and the pain would be gone for good. She’d read about the overdose effects months ago. First a little dizziness, then sleep, then within an hour, complete respiratory failure. A quiet and painless end.

She
put the handful of pills to her mouth, then stopped. Her hand hovered there for an eternity. Finally, she picked up the bottle and returned nine of the pills. Her brow furrowed with pain, she swallowed the one pill. Two pills had been making her catatonic; perhaps one would reduce the pain and still allow her to function.

In
a few minutes, the knife of agony in her brain began to recede. Having become used to the numbing effects of the drug, she felt a deep disappointment as some of the pain remained.
It’s not too bad
, she decided and stood back up,
I can handle this
. A tear ran down her cheek as she stood on wobbly, emaciated legs and tried to come to grips with the pain. “I c-can handle it,” she sobbed and walked back to the computer.

Volant got up from his computer with some effort. The crutches remained where he’d left them as he walked carefully to the trailer door and stood on the steel porch. There was furious activity around the half-dozen temporary warehouses in the near distance. The game was almost up, that much was obvious. The moves he had ordered today told the story as effectively as the action nearby. He’d worked intelligence for most of his adult life, and he’d never done the kinds of things he’d done today. For a moment, bile stung the back of his throat. The list of people he ordered to be killed, graves that there would be no time to fill, it was all there in his mind’s eye. He justified it by telling himself that they would all be dead in less than two days anyway, so what difference was it to the grand scheme of things? Now that the deed was done, there was no comfort to be found in those thoughts.

“
What the hell is going on?” Steve Bradley yelled as he came running around a nearby trailer.

“
They’re getting ready to make the big move,” Volant said calmly. “Want a beer?”

“
No I don’t want a goddamn beer, and I’m not talking about all this shit!”

Steve
was pissed, that much he could tell. The younger man received another promotion yesterday, but it would seem the shine was off. “So what are you talking about?”

Steve
mounted the stairs and came face to face with Volant. They were both the same height while Steve gave up a good twenty pounds to the older man. Volant tried not to let his concern show. He’d been through a lot more of the shit recently than this young, fit man.

“
I was just trying out my new security access and found a sheaf of orders you sent to a group of so-called agents that I bet almost no one knows about. They’re a fucking murder squad, and you’ve been killing people left and right. Good God, Volant, I’ve worked under you for years and seen some major shit but this…”

“
Kinda seems over the top, doesn’t it?”

“
Over the top? The President was killed a few hours ago and I think you did it.”

Volant
turned and went inside. “Come in so we can talk,” he said over his shoulder.

“
Talk? What the fuck is there to talk about? The President and half the Cabinet are dead. An entire FBI headquarters in Seattle was blown to hell!”

“
Would you come in here already? You’re freaking out the neighbors. You do have a security clearance to be concerned about.” Steve looked around, realizing how loud he had been, then followed Volant inside and closed the door behind him.

“
Did you or did you not have the President killed?”

Volant
popped his small fridge open and put a couple cans of imported beer on the table before sitting down heavily in one of the chairs. He may have left the crutches behind but the leg braces were still there and they made his thighs ache. “Have a beer.”

“
I’ll have an answer!”

“
Fine,” Volant popped one of the beers open and took a long drink. It helped clear the bile from his throat and make it easier to say what he needed to say. “I’ve ordered more than a few people dead today.”

“
Was the President one of them?”

“
Yes,” Volant said, looking at his lap. “What are you supposed to do when someone threatens the security of our nation at such a critical moment? This might be our last chance to survive.”

Steve
’s face was ashen and there was sweat on his upper lip. He looked close to losing it. “You don’t kill the President. We’re sworn to protect him!”

“
That’s the Secret Service. We’re sworn to protect the nation and the President was about to take actions that would have shut us down.”

“
We’ve been operating outside of Presidential discretion from the beginning, haven’t we?”

“
I didn’t know until a few days ago, but yes. The President was never informed of what we have here. It was deemed that to allow the President into the bag would have compromised any serious effort to utilize the Portal for national preservation.”

“
He’s the President!”

“
And what is that supposed to mean? Do you have any idea how security clearances work? Do you think the President knows everything? You had a higher clearance than him even before you were promoted. Damn it, the shit the President doesn’t know could fill volumes, and do you know why? Because every four to eight years we get a new one. So this one decided he was going to shut us down a couple days before we are about to preserve an important cross section of our nation. What would he do then? Put it up for a vote to see who gets to go? Maybe himself and all the cronies he can lay hands on. Maybe he’ll decide we shouldn’t use it at all until that fucking asteroid is rammed down our throat and it’s too late. I did what I had to do; I did what I was
ordered to do!
”
Volant pounded his fist on the desk for emphasis. It made his hand hurt, and spilled his beer, two things he instantly regretted. “And I’d do it again.”

“
You and Hipstitch have it all under control, don’t you?” Volant stiffened at the mention of the military commander. “Oh, I know how you two have been working together. I don’t have your level of access, I don’t think anyone on Earth does, but I have enough eyes and ears to know he’s playing you like a puppet. National security my ass, I’m sickened by the very notion of having to kill a President because a lard ass general decided he was in the way! You’ve perpetrated a military coup and figure no one will ever know about it. Well, I think I’m going to do something about that.”

“
Don’t get crazy on me,” Volant said as the younger man turned to the door, “there’s too much at stake here to play Boy Scout.”

“
You were so worried that the President would choose the wrong people to go through the Portal that you had him killed. Well, I’ve seen the lists that your buddy Hipstitch put together and I think you killed the wrong man.”

Steve
grabbed the door handle but froze at the sound of a hammer being cocked. He slowly turned around to stare down the barrel of Volant’s trusty Sig Sauer. “What are you going to do, shoot me too? Don’t you have enough blood on your hands yet?” Volant cocked his head and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

Steve
was younger and decidedly faster on the draw. Volant admired the smooth motion of the younger man slipping to the side, his arm snaking under his jacket to pull out his weapon. Not bad for a kid with little field time. The movement only took a split second before Volant was seeing the other man’s gun come up toward his own head. But he’d been in more than a few gunfights himself. He crouched down and to the side, his stomach crying out in pain. He held his fire a split second until Steve stopped moving. A pair of pistol shots rang out.

Two
agents ran up to Volant’s office in response to the gunfire. They found him sitting in his chair drinking the beer he’d offered his friend. There was a bloody gouge in his right arm that he hadn’t noticed. On the floor was the former NSA Assistant Sector Chief with a bloody hole in his chest. The man’s dead eyes stared at Volant in surprise.

“
What happened, sir?”

“
A slight dispute in the chain of command,” Volant said and crushed the empty beer can. “We seem to have an opening in management, is either of you interested?” Both men shook their heads and backed to the door. “Get someone in here to remove Mr. Bradley.” As he tossed the can in the trash, he felt the wound in his arm. He looked down at it with a detached appraisal, noticing the blood running down the back of his hand and dripping on the floor. “And get a medic to see to my arm.” When he was alone, he looked down at the dead boy. “I wish you hadn’t made me do that,” he said and stretched to get another beer from the fridge, “You gave me no choice.” Steve had nothing to say. “What was I supposed to do?” Volant yelled at the body. Somewhere in the back of his head he realized he sounded a little hysterical.

A
couple of men were moving Bradley’s body onto a stretcher. Volant was watching the paramedic stitch his wound closed. He’d cut the shirt, of course. But the bullet and blood had already ruined it anyway. He was about to ask the guy if he needed a shot or anything when night turned into day outside. The windows blew inward with an unholy roar and the paramedic fell to the floor screaming in pain. Volant got up and went to the door. Portal City was coming alive with the sounds of gunfire and explosions. In the sky Volant could see the insect-like outline of attack choppers. “Shit just hit the fan,” he said. Volant went into his office long enough to retrieve his tactical vest, extra gun and magazines from the filing cabinet before going back outside. “Time to dance!” he laughed at the night. With one last look over his shoulder at his dead friend’s staring eyes Volant walked out into hell.

The attack choppers fell on the city in seemingly endless waves. The skies filled with anti-aircraft rocket and gun fire while buildings exploded when downed craft crashed into them. Still more buildings were blown up as military targets by the attacking forces. The attack was organized with only a few hours’ notice from dozens of different military units. The same ammo dump was hit three, four, even five times as target redundancy was the name of the game. But this was just what Hipstitch planned all along.

Just
as the attacking force's commanders were about to move past the perimeter defenses and launch an assault on the much more heavily defended Portal City, a new force arrived. Hundreds of new helicopters, all fresh and fully armed, swooped down on the surprised attackers and began tearing them to pieces. The few thousands souls still hunkered down in the Big Apple watched by dawn’s early light as civil war came to the city.

In
no time, huge parts of the city were ablaze as the opposing helicopter forces tore into each other. The original forces were more numerous but the newly arrived units used surprise and superior weapons to the best advantage. As the sun climbed above the horizon, the new forces took the victory. Next the battle moved to the ground.

From
the city command center deep under the island, Hipstitch smoked one of his obnoxious Cuban cigars and watched the battle progress. “Excellent!” he roared as the last of the attacking choppers began to retreat back over the Hudson River. “That pussy Alexander and his men were always a pushover in Op Force games!”

“
General, forces are landing on Long Island.”

“
What?”

“
We have nine O’Neil class submersible assault vehicles detected by satellite putting forces aground less than fifty miles from Manhattan.”

“
Don’t just sit there boy, give me the numbers!” Military symbols danced across the computer screens. “Typical loads?”

“
Yes, sir.”

Hipstitch
worked the information in his mind, eyes narrowing and smoke curling from the cigar. “Not good. Can we mount resistance before they get ashore?”

“
The three reserve Super Cobra companies in the Bronx can be there in fifteen minutes, sir.”

“
Those O’Neil boats have quad-mounted phalanx cannon; they would chew those birds into bloody pieces. Order the One-oh-nine to deploy rocket artillery along the East River. Also, let’s get to work on the northern defense…” He moved defenses with his aides for an hour, getting ready to defend Manhattan. He was so busy managing the coming battles that he failed to notice things had begun to happen in the warehouses holding all the equipment for the Portal Project. Or that the building full of scientists and technicians who labored to bring the project to completion was now empty. The soldiers guarding them fled as the bombardment began.

All
across the nation, the last vestiges of civilization burst into flame and shriveled to nothing. The major cities soon were vast firestorms and the countryside was ravaged by millions of refugees looking for food, shelter, or just carnage. Till just before dawn the eastern sky was dominated by a star bright enough to outshine the moon. All but the innocent, young, and the confused elderly knew it was the Angel of Death, now only a quarter million miles away. As the sun rose over the Pacific Ocean, Lebowski hurtled toward Earth and past the moon.

The
final remnants of power in Washington fought on two fronts. The first was a desperate assault on New York City to wrest control of the Portal from rebel elements of its own military. The second was in space where the remnants of Space Command and NASA took on the instrument of their destruction. As the asteroid fell past the moon, all satellites watched it with intense interest. The position and velocity was calculated to the tenth decimal place. Then the final battle began. 

From
all over the world, every nation with the means sent its nuclear arsenal into space. A thousand fireflies climbed into the sky as stunned men and women turned frightened eyes to watch them climb on columns of flame. In command centers, they watched with baited breath as the missiles left the atmosphere and spent the last of their fuel to climb out of orbit and on toward the moon. A few missiles, those sent by the less advanced nations, never made it out of orbit. A few fell back to Earth and burned up, others stalled in orbit, and tragically one made reentry and detonated over northern Africa. There wasn’t enough civilization left on the continent to be outraged or frightened.

The
final attack against LM-245 was desperate and uncoordinated. Most of the weapons were impact fused bombs with no way to control them once launched. The stress was too much for some and they detonated prematurely, destroying hundreds of others. Still more flew off in wild directions. For decades to come random nuclear blasts would pop up all over the Sol system as warheads drifted into asteroids and planets. But a surprising number managed to reach their target, or almost reach it.

One
by one the coasting nuclear missiles that could relay signals back to Earth winked off the scope. The commanders of the missile bases screamed out for answers and eventually orbital telescopes captured images of what was happening in space. As the missiles approached their target, there would be a tiny flash of light, and then it was gone. The missile attack lasted for two hours. Not a single warhead exploded closer than a thousand miles before its target. Those on Earth with clear skies watched the surface of the moon as it was peppered with nuclear detonations while Lebowski continued to bore down on them.

In
his New York bunker, General Hipstitch read the final report as he watched symbols being updated on his status board. The battle on Long Island was going much better than the one in space. The asteroid was coming, and nothing would stop that now.

It was medieval warfare, nothing more. Lt Col. Dan Wilson wiped sweat from his brow and watched as his men returned behind the palisade to rest. Nineteen hours of combat and he was finally seeing some progress. The Komodo sloths were getting the hint and many had moved off. Their solution to the rampaging lizards was simple but elegant. They constructed a pair of turtle-like tanks from their small stash of sheet metal. Around that they placed two inch poles sharpened to a point facing outwards in all directions. Four men under each one squatted and moved it outside the defenses of the palisade. A crazy plan, but a bold one, and it was working.

The
first time they’d nearly been crushed as a dozen of the lumbering six-legged beasts threw themselves at the turtles. The monsters all died, speared through dozens of times. As the other sloths feasted on the dead, the men had retreated with their turtle, replaced the broken spears, and came out again. More than a hundred dead sloths littered the ground outside the palisade and the ground was awash in blood, making footing treacherous. Wilson was forced to admit the plan worked. Unfortunately, it was that nerd Gibson’s idea.

“
Not many left now!” one of his men yelled after he had gotten out of the turtle. Like the rest of them he was bloody from multiple cuts and covered in dried mud. The team was all smiles now.

“
Take them out one more time, get a couple more, then we’ll mop them up with the guns.” They all cheered at the news. “Now, I know you men are dead on your feet, but if we don’t do something about them getting up here it’s all going to happen again. So, as soon as we have them cleared off the plateau we’re heading for that path and are going to build a wall.”

There
were a few moans and curses, nothing worse than that. “Where are the people who are supposed to be coming through that thing?” asked a soldier who pointed at the Portal.

“
I don’t know, but if my watch is right the Earth is going to get creamed in fifteen hours. For some reason, they are cutting it to the wire. In a few hours we’re either on our own, or we’re going to have more than a hundred guests. We cannot have Komodo sloths crawling around at unknown intervals with a hundred green civilians at risk. All we’ll end up with is a bunch of well-fed sloths.” There were laughs from his men but he could also see Gibson looking at him from his commandeered cabin where he was carefully incubating his sloth eggs.

“
It seems like a lot of work but it’s worth it,” Amanda Broadmoore said from where she was getting ready to go out with the next team. Two men had been injured on the first turtle missions and she had stepped up to help, thereby guaranteeing the men’s respect. “It won’t take a wall like this. Just a few dozen sharpened poles aiming down the path should do it.”

“
How is that going to stop one of those?” someone asked and pointed over the wall to where a huge sloth was ripping massive pieces of flesh from a carcass.

“
According to Gibson, the path is narrow and they can only come up one at a time. All we have to do is bunch them up and their own natural aggression will do the rest. We just have to be sure to reinforce it from time to time. It should hold indefinitely.” That seemed to be enough and the men all went back to work.

With
a few minutes to himself, Wilson walked toward his own tiny cabin to take a short nap before the last effort. Gibson intercepted him before he got there.

“
Got a minute, Colonel?”

Wilson
looked past the scientist to his cabin and the lumpy but inviting cot. “Sure,” he said reluctantly and followed the man back to his ‘lab’. “What do you need?”

“
I thought you would want to see this.” Gibson led them inside.

“
I’ve seen the monstrosity you are attempting to hatch, son. While I don’t agree with what you’re doing, I will acknowledge the expediency of it, at least for scientific purposes.”

“
That’s a real progressive thought for you, Colonel, but I didn’t bring you in here to see Junior.” He led the Colonel to the back of the cabin where a table was covered in parts of dead lizards.

“
This is appetizing.”

“
It’s just more research. These lizards are interesting creatures. I still see the hand of science here, not God.” Gibson had forwarded the theory several times that he believed all the life forms on Bellatrix had been designed, not evolved like on Earth. “No, what interested me more was this.” He reached out and flipped over a piece of meat to show Wilson a squirming mass of white maggots.

“
Disgusting, yes. Unique, no.”

“
On Earth maybe, but on Bellatrix there is no native insect life.” Wilson looked at him and cocked his head. Just then a fly landed on Wilson’s hand and he looked down at it in surprise. “Stowaways, more than likely,” Gibson explained and picked up a half dozen vials full of amber-colored liquid to show him. Inside each one was a different bug. “I’ve found seven different species of Earth insect living happily here now.” Suddenly he jumped to the ground and scurried on hands and knees under a table.

“
Are you losing you mind?” Wilson demanded.

“
No, but I just found number eight.” He stood up and held up a squirming cockroach between his fingers.

“
Great, we could have left that one behind.”

“
As the greatest survivor in history, it’s unreasonable to think it wouldn’t make the trip along with us.”

“
But how did they get here?”

“
Oh, in our food, in the boxes, sneaking through the Portal as we came through, who knows?”

“
What’s this going to do to the world’s ecology?”

“
Play hell with it, I’m sure. But there’s nothing we can do about it. The people who will come over later will bring hundreds more species of insects, and thousands of bacteria and virus’. God only knows how many will survive, and thrive. It’s a brave new world for the bugs, too.”

Wilson
watched as the scientist stuck the struggling cockroach into a vial and added formaldehyde then watched as it ended its struggling in the preserving fluid. He pointed at the incubator. “What are you going to do with that thing when it hatches?”

Gibson
looked over at the egg nearby on its improvised incubator, moving over to adjust the heat pack that kept it at the perfect temperature. “What else but domesticate them!” he said with a laugh in his voice.

Mindy moved from building to building as quickly and quietly as she could. Even in the best of times she’d heard that New York City was never a safe place, but not as if it was a killing field. Everywhere she looked there were smoldering cars and burning buildings. As she came out from behind a hundred-year-old brownstone apartment, she almost tripped and looked down at the corpse of a girl no more than ten, her face a bloody mess. She moved on quickly and tried to banish the quick image. The little girl’s dirty panties pulled around her knees. She’d seen dozens of bodies in the few blocks since leaving Central Park behind. Some more dead than others.

Ragged
gunfire tore into the street just behind her as she ran across the open alleyway. Mindy screamed and dove through a missing window. Whoever had fired at her found something else to occupy their time and no more bullets came in her direction. She waited for several minutes, her heart racing, before poking her head up and looking around. There were distant screams and more shots, but none nearby. “Only another two blocks,” she said in a shaking voice and crept out of hiding.