Prometheus and the Dragon (Atlas and the Winds Book 2) (50 page)

“The
Michael
is providing air coverage and is on-station five thousand feet above the exit. They have been advised that you are en route and will watch for you before they come in to pick you up,” Mica said.

“I’ll take point,” Shapiro offered.

“This will be the last time I can communicate with you on the internal com system until you reach the gun turret,” Mica said. “My sensor grid and com links have been damaged by the repetitive shocks to the structure. From here to the surface you will be on your own.”

“Thank you, Mica,” Tom said, almost feeling like he was saying good-bye to an old friend. “For everything.”

“It has been a pleasure to know you, Thomas Stevens. Please take care of Colton, and know I will miss you both, my friends.”

Tom looked at Cole, who was struggling with something inside. His eyes showed pain but he just shook his head.

“Proceed quickly,” Mica said. “You have thirty-six minutes until Antu enters the atmosphere.”

Together they started up the four flights of stairs to the exit.

The fifth floor landing was pockmarked and covered with bloodstains. On the next balcony to the north three bodies laid where they’d fallen. Doug had been in Stormhaven long enough to know that they weren’t good guys, but it also told him that they were behind enemy lines, so to speak. The fighting sounded to be several hundred yards to the north, at least on this level, so he signaled Tom and Cole through to the next set of stairs while he kept watch. As soon as they cleared the balcony, he vaulted ahead of them and repeated the process, sticking his head up and looking around. More blood. Lots more blood, and the sound of voices. Around the edge of the patio, out of sight but close enough to be a problem.

He signaled for them to wait, easing up the last several steps as Tom slid into position to watch. Shapiro squeezed against the wall and slipped to the corner, making eye contact with Tom and nodding. He poked his head around the corner and jumped back, holding his pistol at the ready. He made a fishhook gesture, indicating that the men were standing on the other side of the wall, immediately behind him. He nodded, pointing to the hidden doorway to the emergency exit, and watched as they made their way across the open space and pressed the latch to swing the door open. It made a faint dragging sound, like a millstone grinding wheat, and Shapiro winced.

Behind him the two men stopped talking, and he waved Tom and Cole frantically through the door. Tom shoved Cole forward just as Shapiro hit the first of the men in the face with both hands and his gun, then pushed him backward into the second man.

Doug stepped around the corner as the second man drew his gun and fired. The shot went wildly to the right, but Shapiro’s two were precise. One for each man. On the next two balconies at least ten men spun around to check out the commotion. Tom stood in the doorway and hollered, but the former agent was already diving back behind his cover.

A half-dozen shots shattered the concrete beside Tom, and he dove up the steep ramp toward the outer door. Cole stood at the far end watching Tom come barreling toward him. An explosion blew him backwards out onto the apron, and piled him under the base of the gravity laser. Tom, who was twenty feet closer to the blast, was slammed forward, then caught in the back draft, and fell down the ramp. A second explosion went off, shooting him out of the tunnel like a cannonball. He arced over the top of the gun and landed on the rocks just beyond the turret mounting.

Cole shook himself back to consciousness as Shapiro came running at full-speed out of the door. He held his arm over his face and his shirt looked singed and was smoldering.

The
Archangel
Michael
dropped behind them, its nose pointing toward the doors, the front airlock ramp hanging barely above the edge of the rocks. Shapiro grabbed Cole, picking him up bodily, and threw him over his shoulders as he dashed toward the ship. He dumped him on the ramp and, hearing voices coming up the corridor behind him, turned and dropped three shots through the still open door. He looked around frantically for Tom and saw him lying in a crumpled heap almost under the ship.

“Shit,” he hissed, crawling down the rocks and picking him up. A shot exploded a rock beside him and he stumbled, grabbing the rail and flinging Tom in before him. Someone had hauled Cole in.

Another set of hands reached down and grabbing both of them, hollered, “They’re on! Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The ramp under them folded upward, sliding them into the small airlock. The inner door stood open, and Colton sat on the floor, looking dazed and thoroughly confused. Tom’s head had landed in his lap. It was only then that Shapiro saw what had happened.

Tom’s lifeless eyes stared up into Colton’s face. He was gone.

***

Outside Stormhaven:

For an instant there was silence, and then it seemed the air itself howled in rage, as Mica no longer fought to cover their retreat, but to defend herself and those who still stood with her, and just possibly to avenge the death of a friend.

The beam weapons that had been used with surgical precision, instead unleashed wholesale destruction on the ground itself, piling a ridge of rocks and debris into a wall, and sweeping bodies and earth along with equal ease as it pushed outward like a wave two hundred feet high.

Even the Army of the Holy Right fell back in the face of this one, final miracle. She had been given life. And it was not to be taken lightly.

***

Section Three: Ashes and Dust

“
The Angel took the censer and filled it with fire of the altar and cast it onto the Earth, and there fell a great star from heaven. It was as a mountain, burning with fire, cast into the sea, and lo there was a great earthquake.

“
And the Angel opened a bottomless pit and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke. A third part of the sun was smitten, and a third part of the moon, and a third part of the stars, and the day shone not.

“
The sun became black as sackcloth, and the moon became as blood. There followed hail, and fire, mingled with blood, and they too were cast upon the Earth. The heavens themselves departed as a scroll, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

“
These are the realities of the Revelation, yet we need not fear them, for we are the Chosen of God.”

Nathaniel Sommerset

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was a silence in heaven about the space of a half an hour.

Rev 8:1

Chapter Thirty-Two:

Embers in the Dark

Seattle, Washington:

Twenty-one trucks sat alone in the parking lot, one for each of the scientists. They had been spending their last days on Earth setting up a vast array of sensors to capture the moment of Antu’s arrival, and to send the data to the scientists on the moon. It was a noble effort, sacrificing oneself for the greater good of scientific understanding, and it was this nobility of purpose that kept their meeting here upbeat, in spite of their eminent end.

They’d agreed to meet on the last morning at Catfish Charlie’s Wharf, a seafood restaurant near the beach that had been one of those places you saved a month just to afford dinner. Of course the place was closed, long abandoned, but they carried amongst all their other tools bolt cutters, and a plethora of other implements that made short order of getting inside.

There was still power in most of the city, meaning the lights worked, and so did the sound system. Fortunately the beer cooler was stocked and cold as well, but they’d expected as much. Most of the business owners had evacuated in such a hurry they’d left almost everything behind.

Decorated in the style of a traditional seafood house, with fishing gear and nets on the walls and fish mounted on huge plaques, they’d chosen the place because it sat above the water, with windows looking straight out toward ground zero. Although they might have found locations much closer, this was to be their front row seat on the biggest spectacle in human history. And it was still more than close enough.

Jocelyn Deurson, a geophysicist from UC Berkeley, had been the first to arrive at Charlie’s, rolling in just before sunrise. She’d been working across the border in British Columbia and had spent the night driving to get here. She’d already pried open the door, turned on the lights and cut the lock on the cooler before anyone else had arrived. The neon anchor on the front of the building glowed its friendly greeting to anyone that happened to be out on the streets, though there were probably less than a hundred people left in the city.

“Pardon me, do you have reservations?” she asked, trying to look serious as Leo Walsh, the project leader, arrived about twenty minutes later. She already had a Corona in her hand and was smiling like it hadn’t been her first.

“Yeah, we called ahead for a table for twenty-one,” he said, rubbing his hands together. The heat was on, but the building had been shut down for months. The winter chill took a while to retreat.

“This way, sir,” she said, winking. “We’re setting it up for you in the bar.” She led him to the room with the best view to the west. She’d started pushing tables together and he helped her finish.

“The cooler’s over there,” she pointed to a room off the side of the massive oak bar when they’d finished.

“So, what is there to eat?” he asked, ducking behind the bar and coming up with a bottle of Bailey’s and a glass.

“I’ve still got MRE’s left,” she said, making a face like a kid eating liver for the first time. “But I don’t mind cooking, and believe it or not, there’re still live lobsters in the tank. The walk-in freezer’s full of stuff,” she said.

“How good is it?” he asked.

“Probably fine,” she shrugged. “It’s not like any of us are going to be around long enough to worry about food poisoning.”

“Good point,” he said.

Three hours later they’d all arrived, and were enjoying their last supper, most of them well on the way to anesthetized and enjoying a high-spirited debate about what they were going to see in the last few moments of their lives. They’d cranked up the music and some were dancing, as the jukebox churned out a loud and obnoxious mixture of thumping bass and crooning love songs.

Three months ago, when they’d all volunteered for this project, none of them had ever met, coming from universities all over the country. But now, as they shared these last few moments together, they had become family. Perhaps laughing a little too loud, and a little too long, but at least they were not alone. They shared intimate secrets no longer relevant, and dreams no longer possible.

Leo Walsh sat comfortably numb, with his feet up on the edge of a table. From his vantage point he could see out the windows, and the clock on the wall above the dance floor. He’d been keeping track of time even if no one else had. But hell, he was twenty-five years older than the rest of them, and if he wanted to sit and think, while they wanted to do anything
but
think, who was he to get in their way?

“Hey Leo,” Jocelyn said, walking up behind him. She’d disappeared, and he’d figured she was out with one of the other guys, who’d also gone missing. Instead, she handed him a bright red t-shirt. She held an armload of them.

“What’s this?” he asked looking up at her.

“The Official Uniform of the Last Supper Club,” she said, tossing the remaining ones at the others in the room.

Taking the lead, she slipped out of her blouse and shimmied into the skintight shirt. Stretched across her breasts in bold lettering it read, “After
no fear,
comes OH SHIT!”

***

Outside Stormhaven:

They’d moved away when that group of religious fanatics had started arriving. Almost ten miles back from the fences. It meant they’d never be seen, but at least they wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire. It had been clear, when the televangelist had arrived, there was going to be a war. They’d been unloading weapons and rockets for days.

Tandy Hillcroft and her brother Regan had spent months outside the gates of Stormhaven, hoping to catch the eye of someone, anyone in a position to offer them a chance to go to the colony, but after the preacher arrived no one had been outside. They’d given up their life in Flagstaff. Not that it had been much of a life, supporting her brother and her five-year-old daughter Lexxi, as a single parent, but they’d done it willingly to try to give themselves a future. All they’d had to offer was their honest labor, but apparently that hadn’t been enough.

Now, along with the few hundred that’d accumulated along the fences of the Community, they’d gone up to the highest ridge they could find, to watch over the battle and to wait for the end. They didn’t have money enough to buy anything except their food, so they knew when Antu came they’d not have long to wait.