Shattered Hourglass Part 13

"No worries there, mate. Three corpsickles coming up to you in ten minutes."

Mark was a dog lover, which was why he asked Crusow to make the first trip a light one. He didn't want the dogs to get hurt pulling the weight.

Crusow swung his axe, slamming it into the ice, climbing up the face to the ropes. He grabbed the bitter ends of the rope and tossed the slack down. Back at the pile, he tied the three bodies using a bowline under their arms, carefully avoiding their mouths even though their brains were destroyed. He could feel the warmth of the fire and was happy he'd thought to bring the fire log. Just as he'd finished securing the bodies, Bret was returning, dragging a corpse through the ice behind him by the tip of his axe.

"Mark, you there?"

"Yeah, I'm up here. Kung is on the sled. You ready?"

"Yeah, three bodies secured to the ropes. Go ahead and pull 'em up."

"Okay, say good-bye."

"Very funny, Mark."

"I try."

Five seconds later, both Crusow and Bret could hear the ropes take slack and slap against the ice face. The bodies began their journey up the sheer face and slowly out of view. The corpses seemed to move on the ropes as if some great spider had slung ma.s.sive webs, pulling the bodies up into its spindly legs.

"My turn to warm up. Another fifteen minutes digging those bone sacks and I'd be looking at frostbite."

Crusow nodded, leaving the safety and security of the small but warm fire. Even with the fire's radiant energy, the area around it remained frigid. Nonetheless, the fire helped to ward off the creeping death of the Arctic. As Crusow moved away from Bret and the fire, the temperature plummeted quickly, a reminder of where he was. He removed the ice axe from its sheath, gripping it tightly in his gloved hand. He moved into the darkness for a bit, seeing nothing. Crusow peeked over his shoulder back at the fire-only a pinpoint of light now-deciding it best to turn on his headlamp and find more bodies. He was far from the cliff face; the ground transitioned from hard ice to snow. He pondered whether or not he needed to retrieve his snowshoes hanging on his pack, back at the fire. After a few more meters, the snow was much deeper. He was far away from the face and the fire. Time to turn around; I'm too far, he thought.

He turned and started to walk back to the fire and tripped over a leg, falling to the snow. He lay there for a while and lost track of time.

He looked up and caught a glimpse of a break in the clouds above. The vastness of the Milky Way peeked through the overcast sky for a moment, bright and majestic.

The cold eventually jolted Crusow out of his meditative state and he sat up. He realized his headlamp was still on, and panned it over to the body part he'd tripped over. He began the laborious work of removing the corpse from the ice. Crusow hacked and hacked until the half-naked thing was free from the ice. He dug his axe into the creature's armpit, wrapping the paracord tether around his wrist, and began to make his way back to the firelight, dragging the miserable block of muscle, fat, and bone behind. The light grew larger as he slogged toward the makes.h.i.+ft corpse camp.

How long was I gone? he thought.

The body was heavy and the thin paracord hurt his wrist even through the thick anti-exposure gear. He was fifty yards out when he saw the green glow of chem sticks. Crusow wasn't sure if Mark had sent the rope down again, or if the glow belonged to Bret's stick.

He called out to Bret for help with the heavy corpse.

The wind howled. He can't hear me.

Crusow would need to drag it a little farther. The body was heavy, probably two hundred and fifty pounds. Forty yards out he could see Bret, still standing near the fire. It looked like he held one of the creatures upright as if inspecting its condition. At twenty-five yards, Crusow called out again. This time Bret responded.

"Bret, this f.u.c.ker weighs a ton. Drop that thing and help me pull this to the pile."

Bret slowly turned to face Crusow. The frozen creature that should have fallen to the ice did not-it remained upright. Crusow stepped back, turning up his headlamp to the brightest setting. Bret's throat and face were torn open, and his Adam's apple lay flapping to the side. Bret's eyes-not yet milky from death-locked on Crusow, and his undead body moved forward.

Crusow reacted, yanking off his left glove, grabbing for his Bowie knife. With the Bowie in his left hand, and the ice axe in his right, he went for the thing that was once Bret. The searing cold shocked his exposed hand as it gripped the frozen stag handle of the Bowie. Using his large knife to keep the creature at a distance, he came down with the ice axe like a great thunder G.o.d. He dug deep into the creature's left shoulder, spattering fresh blood to the ice below. The creature, feeling nothing, attempted to grasp Crusow with its right hand but could not gain purchase; it still wore the thick Arctic gloves. Crusow reamed the axe free from the creature's shoulder and tried again, this time swinging the axe on a haymaker trajectory. The blade penetrated the temple, immediately and forever switching off whatever synapse lights remained in Bret's brain.

The creature collapsed, and the momentum pulled the embedded axe-along with Crusow-down to the ice. Snow from the impact flung up into Crusow's face, blurring his vision. His left hand was frozen around his Bowie knife when he saw the other undead creature approach. With his axe embedded deep into Bret's temple, Crusow had to engage his attacker with his knife. There was no time to de-glove and switch hands. Crusow stood up quickly and moved in, slas.h.i.+ng and pus.h.i.+ng the terrible thing back away from the fire.

As Crusow's vision cleared, he saw evidence of what had gone down. The thing's brain was obviously intact, the fire warming it enough to thaw its long-dead appendages. As he parried with the wraithlike thing, he noticed no evidence of head trauma; only a small bullet hole in its chest told the story of the creature's original demise. Must have been early on, before we knew for sure, Crusow thought.

The half-frozen creature lurched forward-mostly naked-flailing about in tighty-whiteys. Crusow slashed at the creature's chest, digging in deep enough to feel the frozen flesh at its core. The Bowie was razor sharp, a gift from his father twenty years ago on his fifteenth birthday.

A dull knife is far more dangerous to its owner than a razor-sharp blade, Crusow recalled his father preach time and again over the years.

With his numb left hand, he thrust forward into the naked creature's eye. It wailed in protest as Crusow shoved the blade deep through the splitting eye socket, striking the back of the skull with force. Lights out. Bret's killer took Crusow's weapon to the ice with it.

Though there were no more undead foes hiding in the darkness, Crusow began to panic. At the very least, he always had his knife for protection. He frantically went for the precious Bowie, bracing his boot on the creature's head, giving him leverage as he yanked it from the skull. He cleaned the blade as best he could, stropping it on the creature before sliding the heirloom back into its custom leather home.

With his anxiety and feelings of defenselessness temporarily abated, he sat down on the ice, warming his numb left hand on the flickering fire. He would need to rig two more loads of bodies before beginning his dog-powered climb back to Outpost Four.

With Bret gone, Crusow planned to strip his corpse and leave him down here at the bottom of the gulch. He didn't have it in him to butcher Bret for fuel, and didn't really think anyone else would be up to the task either.

He clumsily took the radio from his pocket and keyed the transmit b.u.t.ton while he looked up into the sky, toward the top of the gulch. "Mark, we have a situation here."

There was no answer.

Crusow's fear swiftly returned. His thoughts ran wild about the creatures that Mark and Kung pulled topside on the first load. Ice-climbing the sheer face in front of him would be a death sentence without a top rope. What if their brains were not completely destroyed, like the thing that tore Bret's up? What if- The radio crackled. "This is Mark, what's going on, you okay?"

"No, man, I'm pretty d.a.m.n far from that. Bret's dead. One of the frozen things down here killed him. I had to finish the job."

Mark keyed his radio but said nothing for a few seconds. "Uh, how in the . . . I'm sorry. Are you okay, man? You ain't bit, are you?"

Crusow blasted back, "No! Let's just get these things up topside. I'll explain it to everyone when I get back. Let's just get the job done. I'll strip Bret, throw his s.h.i.+t in his pack, and send his gear up with two more bodies. The temperature is dropping and I can only handle another hour or so down here. That's enough time for two more loads, not counting myself."

"Okay, I'll radio Larry and tell him to have some tea and hot soup ready. He'll need it, too; he ain't getting any better. Listen, I know this isn't the right time to bring this up with what happened to Bret and all, but we have a request for support from the s.h.i.+p."

"I can't imagine we'd be able to do much of anything for them. We'll talk about it topside. One more thing," Crusow said.

"Go ahead?"

"Don't get those bodies near heat unless you're d.a.m.n sure they're full-on dead, got me?"

"Yeah, I got you. We'll make sure."

Crusow began to follow his plan, checking all the bodies at the bottom for head trauma before sending them up the sheer ice face to Mark. He gave most of them a hard chop to the head for good measure, taking out some anger on them. Still deeply shaken, his hands vibrated almost uncontrollably as he rigged the bodies and Bret's kit to the ropes. It was nothing a half dozen rations of whiskey wouldn't fix. Bret wouldn't mind.

One day from paradise.

We will have Oahu in sight tomorrow evening. Hard to believe I have been writing in this journal since the beginning. Sometimes I go back to the first pages, because on those pages are remnants, hints of what things were like before. Sometimes I need to remind myself of how things were so that I can hold on to some of it. It would seem foolish to most.

Saien and I have decided that we like it better when the submarine is submerged. The d.a.m.n waves knock the h.e.l.l out of the boat, rocking us back and forth as if we were sitting in a kayak during a hurricane. One of the crew members tells me that submarines were not designed to cruise on the surface, their shape is not conducive to surface stability. We surface only when we need to transmit on shortwave, which is daily, sometimes twice per day.

I've put in some time in the radio shack and have been successful at establis.h.i.+ng comms with the flags.h.i.+p and John on occasion. John told me yesterday via shortwave that another station might be coming on line to help with relays, somewhere in the Arctic. He'll pa.s.s a frequency list and schedule soon.

We have a complement of Scan Eagle UAVs...o...b..ard and will be launching them tomorrow to recon the island before the team goes in; that is, after the techs set up the launch and recovery gear. I've spent a combined one hour in the same room as the SEALs and don't even know their names. Don't really care either. They stick to themselves, go to the gym, eat, and hang out exclusively, like a fraternity. They seem to look down their noses at Saien and barely notice I'm here. Probably just another officer getting in the way as far as they are concerned. I can't say that I envy them going feet dry in Oahu. I think the plan is to patrol the island coast and park the boat off the North Sh.o.r.e. From that point, the team will ingress along Highway 99 to Wheeler Army Airfield and then to the Kunia facility, where they'll secure it, bring up the systems, and drop off the resident expert before exfiltrating to the sub. Two days of operations sitting off the coast of Oahu, then we're headed farther west to Chinese waters.

Maximum pull-ups: 8 Push-ups: 68 1.5 mile treadmill run: 11:15

27.

Hotel 23-Southeast Texas "They're back," Hawse told Disco as he reached for his M-4.

Although he was pretty sure it was Doc and Billy, Hawse didn't take a chance. While escaping Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., he'd witnessed the undead open doors and climb stairs.

Hawse was the only special operator to make it off the North Lawn alive. He vividly recalled the day he'd escaped.

Hawse had been forced to go full auto on White House grounds, fighting waves of creatures, clearing the way for the vice president and first lady to escape to the helicopter. He shot everything he had from the door of Marine Two, just before the dead toppled the black iron perimeter fences and overran the White House. Flying over D.C. with some of the last remnants of national command authority, he looked upon the nation's capital for the last time.

The creatures looked like maggots crawling over cars and through houses, over the corpse of D.C. Weeks before the creatures took the North Lawn, FEMA had raised the Woodrow Wilson drawbridge and demolished the other links that spanned the Potomac, cutting off Virginia from D.C. and Maryland. Despite these extreme initiatives, the anomaly eventually crossed the Potomac. From the affluent homes in Northern Virginia to the ghettos of Suitland, Maryland, the undead reigned. No more Republicans, Democrats, or other ineffective factions. The politics of death ruled America now. Virginians fared far better than those in Maryland; the draconian gun laws in place before the anomaly a.s.sured Maryland's quick decimation. The dead were gifted the benefit of so-called gun-free zones, the same benefit that lunatic gunmen and thugs enjoyed before the undead walked the streets.

Doc and Billy were now at the door, bringing Hawse back to reality.

Hawse held his carbine up to the low ready as the door wheel spun around from the other side to the open position.

"What's the secret pa.s.s phrase?"

"f.u.c.k you, Hawse," Doc said, stepping through the door to the control center.

"Correct, you may enter," Hawse p.r.o.nounced with a terribly fake British accent.

Both Hawse and Disco noticed the extra gear the returning men packed in.

"Well? What happened out there? Sun is coming up in an hour-we were starting to get a little punchy in here thinking about going out there after you two a.s.sholes."

"We missed you too, ol' chap," Doc said in his own horrible fake accent.

Doc and Billy debriefed the other two on the happenings on the way to the drop, including the mile-long undead river that flowed beneath them on the overpa.s.s.

"You guys must have had to change your diapers after that one," Disco said.

Billy was never much of a talker-when he had something to say the team listened. "I've never seen so many in one place. This was worse than New Orleans. You weren't there for that, Disco. You never knew Hammer, we lost him there. Good operator. One lapse in noise discipline and me and Doc would be part of the river right now, coming for you." As usual, there was no emotion in Billy's voice, but the words. .h.i.t their intended target.

"What's that gear all about?" Disco asked, changing the subject.

Doc pulled the doc.u.mentation from his leg pocket and tossed it at Disco as he began his explanation. "It's sort of like that crowd control foam that they were going to give us in Afghanistan before the s.h.i.+t hit the fan. The only difference is that this stuff cures to concrete hardness in a couple seconds, instead of just being sticky. There is a compound that de-cures the foam, and here it is." Doc held the bottle of clear liquid up so everyone could see.

"What are we going to do with it?" Hawse asked. "I guess I mean, what good is it? What can it do that my M-4 won't?"

"Can your M-4 stop a hundred of those f.u.c.ks in less than ten seconds and create a concrete wall of bodies in the process?" Doc said.

"Well, if it works. I don't want to be the one in front of a swarm trying this thing out for the first time," Hawse added.

Billy glanced down, checking the action on his M-4, and said, "I hope we don't have to use it at all. Doubt it would have stopped that river we saw. Maybe slowed it down."

The words set in with Hawse for a few moments before anyone spoke.

"What's the plan now, Doc? From the sounds of things, it took all night and a near-death experience to bring back a gadget that we might never use," Disco said.

"You may be right, but me and Billy grabbed some intel from the drop that we'll all need to a.n.a.lyze. There was doc.u.mentation in the equipment boxes and another drop map that we can cross-reference with the one we have. My point is that we got more than the gadget."

Doc pulled the recovered doc.u.ments from an outside zipper pocket on his pack. "I've only had a second to look at this stuff, but check this out."

Doc pointed to a map with a transparent overlay showing all the previously executed drops. "When you compare this new map to ours, we see some pretty big differences. This new map has quite a few more local drops listed than the one we jumped in with. There seem to be a couple places within twenty klicks, mostly north of Hotel 23. Disco, you and Billy send the SITREP to the s.h.i.+p. We only have a few minutes before sunup. Make it happen."

"You got it, boss man," said Hawse.

Hawse and Billy left the conversation and headed over to the SATcom burst terminal to transmit a short report on last night's mission.

Doc continued, "So when we look at the date stamp of both maps, we see that the drop we reconned last night happened right before the noise device was dropped on Hotel 23. So the question remains: Why would the same organization that brought a swarm down on Hotel 23 drop a prototype weapon that could be effective, at least short term, against a swarm?"

"I'm not sure we'll ever find out or if it even matters at this point," Hawse said, placing the map back down on the desk.

"It may not matter, but these maps can tell us something. The drops seem to occur around the same time of day every time. If the aircraft that drops the gear takes off at the same time from the same airfield for every sortie, we might be able to find the originating airfield, at least within a few hundred miles using some basic math, a map of the U.S., and a straight edge."

"SITREP transmitted, boss," Disco said.

"That was quick."

"Well, I only say what needs to be said. They'll ask a dozen questions no matter what I send. Might as well put the basic SITREP down and wait on the flood of questions. I shut down the circuit though. Don't want any RF tempest leaks giving us away."

"Good call," Doc said. "We've been lucky so far, but don't count on that to last. The next item on our checklist is to spin up that nuke, run the diagnostic program, and make sure we're ready for the new coordinates. Don't ask because I don't even know where they'll be."

"What if they're U.S. coordinates?" Hawse asked seriously.

"Depends on the target. I hope they're not, but if they are, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Hawse briefly thought of the Const.i.tution, displayed in its bulletproof case in downtown D.C., surrounded by the undead.

28.

USS George Was.h.i.+ngton They were closing fast. Danny attempted escape by scurrying under the air circulator in a large fan room; he wasn't sure exactly where, as things were foggy and seemed to move at an odd pace. The creatures were unrelenting and pursued with determination. Danny's knees were raw and b.l.o.o.d.y; it seemed to him that he had been crawling for miles.

He felt the cold grip of death on his heels. The creature's meatless claw closed around his foot and squeezed like a vice. Danny could no longer move forward; the thing was dragging him back for the kill. A peculiar-looking rat watched him with glowing red eyes from a dark corner.