The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning (4 page)

“Roger, Echo Six. Fast mover scrambled, Ranger Four inbound to your position. ETA seven minutes.”

“Nest, roger on fast mover, Ranger Four inbound. Out.” He turned back to his men. “Prepare secondary positions!” Organized and well trained, the men fell back to the middle of the roof and took up guard positions in a semicircle around the roof door. Suddenly, there was a moan, and the captain spun around. “Fire in the hole!”

The soldiers turned aside or ducked, depending on their location, just as a massive explosion shook the building. The roof access door flew off and spun out over the edge, where it fell clanging to the street below. As they once more readied themselves, they could see the blackened and twisted metal inside the stairwell and the congealed blood that coated the walls. They also heard more moans echoing inside.

The first of the walkers climbed upward, and they saw it was shredded from the waist down and almost all head and arms. The chest was gone below where the heart would’ve been, along with the rest of its body. Powell stepped forward and blew it apart with a quick shotgun blast.

“Nest, Echo Six. Stage One alert. We are engaged.” There were more shots as the zombies lumbered up the stairs, wedging themselves against each other in an attempt to get to the soldiers.

“Roger Echo Six, Ranger Four ETA two mikes.”

There was a crackle and squeal in the soldier’s earpieces. “—ger One, evac approaching. Repeat, Ranger One, evac en route, ETA one mike.”

Powell snarled, blowing another walker’s head apart in a welter of gore. “Prepare for emergency evac!” He readied a grenade as his team prepared to board the incoming chopper. “Grenade!” he cried, throwing the weapon straight into the stairwell, where it bounced several steps and then out of view. As he threw, Powell glanced up and saw the Blackhawk coming in with extraction ropes and harnesses ready.

He let the now-empty shotgun fall, and the straps tying it to his combat vest kept it within reach. He drew his pistol just as the grenade exploded, showering the stairs with shrapnel. A small sliver of metal flew outward to embed itself in his cheek, but he ignored the pain and destroyed yet another walker coming up the wrecked stairs through the smoke. Powell glanced over his shoulder and saw that his men were all evac ready. He clipped the remaining harness rig to his armor and he gave the crew chief the thumbs-up. Those who still had ammunition and a clear shot continued firing at walkers as the helicopter took off.

As he climbed into the helo, Powell saw the F22 Raptor as it sped by overhead. There was the flash of a rocket from the other Blackhawk, Ranger Four, as it destroyed the roof access of the stairwell. The rocket destroyed a big part of the roof as well, trapping the remaining zombies below. He leaned back against the bulkhead and closed his eyes as the helo’s crew chief reported in. He felt the helo turn northeast, headed for Tacoma and the ExForce base.

“Nest, Ranger One,” the chief said. “Evac complete. Echo team is secure. We are RTB.”

Expeditionary Force Command
Joint Base Lewis-McChord
Tacoma, Washington

Powell was a tall man, but his CO, even seated, made the captain feel like a little boy brought into his father’s study for a spanking. He’d only received what the major described as a “talking to” twice in twenty years, but they were both memorable experiences and not ones Powell was eager to repeat.

It seemed Major Gaines had other plans.

“Captain Powell, what the hell happened out there today? How did you let yourself get to a stage one alert?” The major wasn’t shouting, but then again, he didn’t need to. Powell knew from experience that the man was pissed. “I should restrict you to quarters for this. Hell, I should bust you back to private. You’re better than this, man! Hell, you were with us at the beginning. So what the hell happened?”

Okay,
severely
pissed. “Sir, I…”

“You better not be giving me an excuse, Captain. ‘Cause I damn sure don’t want to hear it.” He held up one hand to forestall further discussion and pushed his intercom button. “Marcy, get me Crew Chief Silvera, now.”

The intercom buzzed with Marcy’s reply. “He’s already here, sir. I’ll send him in.”

The office door opened, and the crew chief from Ranger One entered, closing the door and standing at attention. He was a short man with medium-length black hair, dark eyes, and a swarthy complexion. The chief stared straight ahead.

“Crew Chief Silvera, reporting as ordered, sir,” he said.

It took Powell every ounce of discipline he had to keep from decking the chief right there. Gaines stared at Silvera for such a long time that Powell was starting to wonder if the major was having the same struggle. The sweat on Silvera’s brow was a good sign he was wondering as well.

In a calm, low voice that surprised the hell out of Powell, the major addressed the crew chief. “Where were you, Chief?”

“Sir, we were—”

“Because I know where you weren’t,” Gaines interrupted as he stood up, pounding one thick fist onto the desk. “Where you
weren’t
was at your station. We had six men on the ground in walker territory performing a sweep,
and you weren’t at your goddamned post
!”

Silvera swallowed, and Gaines composed himself, straightening his uniform.

“We had a Stage One alert today because you and your crew were off gallivantin’ about while we had a sweep team on the ground.”

“Sir, I’d hardly call it gallivant—”

“Oh really? Let’s hear it ourselves, then.” He leaned over to the intercom again. “Marcy, please bring it in.”

The door opened once more, and Marcy entered. She placed a small disc unit on the desk, turned around, and walked back out, closing the door.

Silvera looked at the disc unit, first puzzled, then nervous. Without further preamble, the major started the playback. There was no static or disruption. The recording was clear. The crew chief and his pilots had flown over a mile away from the sweep team to pick off stray walkers. “Having fun,” as they referred to it.

It was clear to Powell that they hadn’t paid any attention to their radios for whatever reason. Whether it was too much noise from the rotors, the guns, or the walkers, or something else, it didn’t matter why they’d done it. All that mattered was that they had missed the first alert call and that they were far off station.

As the disc played, Chief Silvera slumped, his face growing paler by the moment. It was clear the chief hadn’t known that the helicopters were bugged. He looked down at his boots, defeated.

Powell stood, stunned, listening to the audio and working hard to keep his anger under control. He was a little annoyed that they were all under constant surveillance, but it seemed unimportant right at that moment.

Major Gaines stared at the crew chief and, without looking down, pushed a button on his intercom as the disc began to replay. Powell had never seen him this angry. The door opened, and two MPs entered and stood at attention behind the chief.

“Crew Chief Silvera, for gross dereliction of duty and knowingly endangering the lives of your fellow soldiers, you are hereby remanded to the custody of the military police for violations of Articles 92 and 99 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” The major moved around the desk and approached the former chief.

“If I could, I would deal with you myself. Count yourself lucky that I’m not that kind of soldier.
Your
kind of soldier. You won’t be needing this anymore.” In one smooth motion, he reached up and ripped the AEGIS patch off the chief’s arm, then turned to the MP. “Arrest both the pilots as well with the same charges.” Gaines turned back to Silvera and gave him a look that chilled Powell to the bone, even though he only caught the edge of it. “Now get him out of here. He’s stinking up my office.”

As they left, Gaines returned to the other side of the desk and turned off the disc. He looked up at Powell.

“Stand easy, Captain.”

Powell relaxed into parade rest position, stifling his surprise at the order.

“I apologize for berating you earlier, but I had to know if you were in on it. I didn’t think you were, and your reactions confirmed it.”

He held out his hand, and Powell, stunned, shook it quick and strong, his only response a terse, “Understood, sir.”

“I want you to get that face of yours looked at. No need for it to be even more atrocious than it already is.” Glancing at the major, Powell could see the slight smile on his face and grinned back.

“Sir, no, sir. My girl would skin me alive if she found out I’d been hurt at all. Sir, if you don’t mind my asking…”

“Go ahead, Captain.”

“What’s going to happen to them? Jail?”

Gaines shook his head, grimacing. “Doubtful, since we can’t really spare them or the people to watch them now that recolonization is in full swing. The Advisory Board has been talking about it, and it looks like those who are in the brig at the moment, and any future folks, will be put onto chain gangs. Work groups to help with the recolonization. Guys like Silvera are just screwups who weren’t thinking. As mean and cold as it sounds, they’re still useful, so we’ll use them for as long as we can.”

Powell nodded. “Makes sense to me, sir. Not nearly enough of us left to let them sit on their asses.”

“Exactly. Now hit the infirmary. I’ll need you back bright and early in the morning.”

“Yes, sir. Goodnight, sir.”

Gaines just grunted, and Powell saw him turn back to his desk as he walked out of the office. Gaines’s wife, Marcy, didn’t even look up from her phone call when he passed her desk.

As he strode across the old cracked concrete at JBLM toward the infirmary, he looked southwest toward Lacey. Command was going to need to re-evaluate their whole recolonization plan. ExForce didn’t have enough men and materials to screw up this badly.

Main Research Lab
Bunker Seven
Wheeler Peak, New Mexico
Z-Day + 19 years

Sabrina Atkins opened the door to the lab and looked inside, careful not to disturb her husband Jim or his lab partner Mary. She knew they hated interruptions, but in this case… She smiled as she realized that her suspicions were confirmed. Both were asleep, Mary’s head on her desk and Jim upright in his chair. She’d noticed through the glass walls of the corridor as she walked in, but also because Jim hadn’t come back to their quarters last night.

That was happening more and more often, and he had yet to give her a good explanation. It was about damned time. She knew he was working hard, but she was important too, dammit!

Sabrina walked over to her snoring husband, his head thrown back and arms on the arm rests. She noted the empty and overturned coffee cup on his desk and shook her head. Even with all the caffeine he drank—fake though it was—the human body could only take so much.

She tapped him on the shoulder, and when he didn’t wake, she shook him—not rough, but not gentle either. He didn’t respond to gentle wake-up calls.

“—the cross linker and—” Jim cut off as he awoke and looked around, bleary eyed. “What the… Sabrina, what are you doing here?” He scrabbled for the coffee cup and frowned when he discovered it empty.

“It’s five o’clock in the morning, Jim. You and your work wife fell asleep again.” She smiled and tossed her head in Mary’s direction.

Jim started to object, then saw she was smiling and smiled back. “I think we did it,” he said without fanfare or celebration, tinged with a bit of weariness and, for a wonder, hope.

Sabrina’s eyes widened. “You did it? Really?” She clapped her hands with excitement. Everyone else had been waiting nearly ten years for Jim to prove himself worthy of the rescue trip to McMurdo, even if no one had said it. And no one had wanted it more than she and Jim.

Her clap woke Mary on the other side of the room, who looked up with wild hair and alarm at the loud noise. “Wha? D’you drop something again, Jim?” Mary rubbed her eyes and yawned, then smiled as she saw Sabrina. “Coffee?”

Sabrina laughed. “No, I forgot this morning. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for waking you. Jim just told me the good news!”

Mary frowned. “News?”

“I think you were asleep when the results came in, and I sacked out as soon as my ass hit the chair over here,” Jim responded with a yawn and a stretch as he stood up. “The last batch of results came in. I think we’re ready for trials.”

“Go over it with me, just so I make sure I understand when someone asks me what my brilliant husband has come up with,” Sabrina said, as she took her husband’s hands and gave them a squeeze. “And remember, keep it simple. Not a geneticist.”

“So you know, in general, how an antibody works, right?” When Sabrina nodded, Jim continued, “Good. Well, with our bastard of a proteinaceous infectious particle—”

“Prion,” Sabrina interjected.

“Yeah, prion. We couldn’t find any naturally occurring antibodies for it, which isn’t surprising, since someone would have shown up with them sooner or later if we, as a species, had developed them. David Blake’s mutation notwithstanding, we don’t have any antibodies for this, so we had to create one.” Jim sketched out a rough diagram on a nearby whiteboard.

“And that’s the problem,” Mary said as she walked over and continued the drawing where Jim had left off. “Not just creating the antibody, but making sure it attaches to the right part of the prion and is bound tightly enough to prevent the ‘bad protein’ from causing other proteins to reshape themselves. It’s got to attach to the abnormally folded areas of the prion and keep it from affecting the others.”

“Exactly,” Jim said with a nod.

“And you’ve done it?” Sabrina asked.

“Jim might have jumped the gun a bit.” Mary frowned. “There’s a lot of work, and more important, a lot of trials to be done before we can be sure of anything.”

“How will it work, assuming all that happens?”

“Most likely an injection,” Jim said. “Once when it’s finalized, and then a booster every once in a while for the rest of our lives. It could be every five, every ten, or who knows what. We can monitor antibody levels over time and adjust as needed.”