CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  LUX | YESTERDAY

  “Marcie!” the little boy cried out in a pitiful voice, unnaturally full of despair for one so small. He had run, he’d run until his tiny legs felt like they were going to fall off. Then he ran some more. He was beyond tired, and it was getting dark. “Mom!” Then in softer tones, “Dad.” There were sounds after the cars all stopped and Marcie burned up. He heard horrible things, people yelling. A woman crying. Then he saw the people from the highway. Some of them weren’t moving… maybe even dead.

  He knew dead, knew what it meant in ways only an eight-year-old can. His grandfather had told him about it after Nana died. He showed him an antique watch, one you held in your hand and had numbers and little pointy arms. “It’s like this watch, Lux,” his grandfather had said. “When it gets too old, too worn out, it stops ticking. It stops working. It’s still a watch, but it doesn’t serve its purpose anymore. People are a lot like that, too. At a certain point, we stop working, and that is called dead.”

  Lux didn’t like thinking about stuff like that. Nana was pretty when she was dead. The people he’d seen at the highway were not. They were ugly and bloody. One little girl had an arm that was missing entirely. He’d run away from all of that. It had scared him so badly, but now he was lost, and he was terrified.

  Deep down he knew this was something big, something Mom and Dad couldn’t just fix, but he wanted them here. He’d even take Dad’s new girlfriend, Lauren. She and her mean little girl, Alissa. They were the reason he’d asked to go back home early. He was tired of Alissa calling him names and not letting him play with any of her stuff. Worse, he hated knowing his dad was going to take their side against his own son. It just wasn’t fair.

  Thank goodness Marcie had been there to help him. “You’re not real,” he said aloud like he sometimes did. “I mean, not really.” Marcie was kind of like a toy… just a more grown-up version. Still, she was a friend. She took care of him. She was his parent, too, and now she was gone as well.

  Lux ran a sleeve across his face, wiping away the tears and his runny nose. Somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a dog bark. He hoped it was just a dog. What else might be in these woods? “What am I supposed to do?” The child had to rest. Instead, he sat at the base of a tree overlooking a valley far below. He was hungry and so thirsty, but his eyes closed, and he was asleep in minutes.

  The sleep was fitful, and he awoke terrified many times. The night was alive with scary things. Lux sat there with his eyes closed for a really, really long time. He heard sounds like trees rubbing their hands together and smaller, meaner things closer to the ground. The root of the tree he had fallen asleep on was hard, and the ground was cold. His clothes felt wet, he was hungry, and he had to pee. He stayed as still as he could, he was way too scared to move.

  Lux started shivering. He just knew the snuffling, evil thing he heard would come to see what he was. Maybe see how he tasted. It is really hard to make yourself not shiver. It was a very long time before the animal moved on farther away. He could still hear it, or something else, but it was no longer close. He rolled over and opened his eyes. The night sky was playing peek-a-boo with the tops of the trees. He could just make out the Little Dipper. His mom had lain on his trampoline once and pointed it out to him. “No matter where you are, Lux, just look for that. I will look at the exact same stars, so we will kind of be together.”

  Part of him knew she just said that to make him feel better about going to his dad’s for the summer, but… well, it did make him feel better. She was out there, somewhere. He just had to get back home. He drifted back to sleep, unaware that he, too, was being watched.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  CAROL

  The sounds of death seemed to follow her. The moans and the pitiful cries echoed off the ruined buildings. She heard metal clanging, someone trying to get through a door, and in her mind, she recalled her coworker’s ominous warning. Her mouth tasted of bile, and she just wanted to get away. To get to her son, but no, he was still with his father in Atlanta, or was he? At least he was safely away from all this. Still, he would need her. He would want to know she was okay.

  She stared at the parking garage where her three-year-old BMW was parked. The multi-level structure was now a single story of crushed polycrete. She could see metal rods sticking out where the reinforcements had failed. Her car would be a metal pancake deep inside that mess.

  A scream cut through the air from one of the labs to the south. It was almost impossible to tell if that side was as damaged as this end or not. That was the R&D section; she’d never even been allowed over there. Her bosses always referred to it as the ‘money-maker’ of the entire operation. Iron River was a proving ground for Hammer Industries. She and her coworkers developed all manner of exotic technologies into production-ready military assets. Actual production was done elsewhere. Even after four years, she knew only a fraction of the things going on here.

  She wandered through the side streets for an hour until she found an unblocked way out of the complex. Her car always drove her here; she never paid that much attention. Where are the first responders? Where are the other survivors?

  Carol assumed it was a terrorist attack. If so, her federal contract required her to stay onsite to advise the authorities when they arrived, but everything about this place now seemed off and strange. She wanted to flee, needed to get away. Screw everyone else. She had a son to get to, and he was, well, he was 600 miles away, but she needed to know he was okay and… and he would be worried. She tapped her comms again. Still nothing. She tried calling her neighbor, Damiana, on the local WiFi but still nothing. She used the app to try to connect to Marcie, Lux’s nanny service, but it, too, was dead.

  She missed the road by the security gate; there were so many downed trees and debris she could barely see the pavement underneath. Cutting through a ditch, she saw a section of downed fencing and walked out of the secure facility hoping to never see it again. Even topping the next hill, a half mile away, she could still hear the cries of the injured and dying and something else. Something was driving her to put as much distance as possible between herself and her workplace.

  The walk home seemed surreal. The damage in the valley was less severe just a few miles away. Many of the people who worked at the facility lived in the small neighborhood of West Charles that she and Lux called home. She still didn’t know many of her neighbors. All she did was sleep and eat here. It had never been a home. Despite the upscale look, this was a mill village for one of the thousands in the DARPA war machine. Her heart was still pounding as she broke into a run the last half mile. She knew the comms at the house would be working, they had to be. Still… where were all the people?

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  KOVACH

  The road gang had looked a lot worse than they were. I was glad they hadn’t wanted trouble, but I just seem to be the kind of guy that attracts it.

  “We didn’t know what da hell to expect when you popped out on us,” Pete said as they finished up. His brother-in-law was eyeing the old pickup appreciably. I now understood that Hank was the mechanical brains in the family, Peanut the brawn, and Pete, well, he was the talker. They weren’t a bad lot. The kind of people I’d probably want on my side if the shit went sideways. Which it obviously had.

  “You think we’re going to have trouble?” Hank asked as he placed his toolbox in my truck. Since they all wouldn’t fit in the wife’s newly repaired car, I offered him a ride back home. It was along the way, and I was hoping to get some local intel as well. Peanut and Pete had already left in the car. I didn’t like that as I preferred to keep them all where I could see them but felt we had reached an understanding and maybe a modicum of trust.

  “I do,” I answered.

  He slid into the makeshift seat, and Sumo took his place behind him. Hank looked back warily at the dog but stayed silent. “I might have a real seat for this thing if you want,” he offered. “I mean, that’s all it needs, really.”

  “Thanks, I’m not sure, don’t know that I’ll be taking more passengers. Hoping for just a quick run toward the city, you know?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, nodding his slightly oversized head. He’d already figured out I didn’t want to waste any more time in these hills.

  “Any spots I need to watch out for?”

  The man scratched his chin and thought about it. “Honestly, yes. The intersection twenty miles up at Johnson’s Gap. Natural choke point and well...got some right unpleasant and opportunistic characters that tend to hang out at the package store there.”

  I knew he meant the liquor store and caught his drift. “So, they’ll be pretty well agitated by the time I roll through.”

  “Hell, yeah. You know the type, short on brains but long on mouth. You’ll be fine. Just know every valley round here has some. Most of us will leave you alone if you leave us alone, but we’re an independent lot. Now that the law is proly gone, and the power is out, they’s likely as not to be getting a bit antsy, ya know?”

  “I appreciate the information.” I looked over at him. “You ever serve?” Something in the quiet way he talked made me think so.

  He just rolled up a greasy sleeve and showed me the tattoo. An eagle over a globe. I smiled. “Semper Fi.”

  He gave a silent nod. “You’re a Ranger.”

  That was my original training. “Yes,” I offered without elaboration.

  “Think we will go to war? Will they reactivate the standing Alliance Forces?”

  That was a good question. Most ‘wars’ now were tactical skirmishes. An RDT squad, maybe a platoon at most. The standing national fighting force had been deactivated a dozen years ago after years of annual budget cuts. The rationale was the automated forces, along with Space Force and Navy, could handle nearly anything going on with less manpower and fewer risks.

  “I don’t think they have the means to reactivate anyone, Hank. Comms are out. I’d be surprised if anything is still standing in Washington, and no one is going to rush to go fight if doing so is going to mean abandoning their homes and families during a crisis like this.”

  “But you’re going,” he said as he motioned me into his drive. The home was modest, but neat. The other two were sitting on a porch beside the red car, drinking a beer.

  I felt bad letting the man believe that I was rushing to the capital out of a sense of patriotism or duty. “I just need to take care of some stuff.”

  I saw him eyeing my arm; a patch of bare skin was peeking out from under my base layer. I realized he was focusing in on my own service tattoo. He could only see one edge of the black field of stars with the slash, but that must have been enough. “You’re… a drop trooper? RDT?”

  We had a bit of a reputation, even among the other branches. Probably especially among them, as officially, we didn’t even exist. I rolled my shirt sleeve down to cover the ink. “Just a guy trying to do his part, friend.”

  He hopped out quickly, reaching back in the open window to shake my hand. “Hang on one second.”

  He ran into the barn I’d parked near and reappeared seconds later, carrying an old car seat. He placed it in the back of the truck and dug around in his pockets for some bolts and brackets. “That should work for you. No charge, man. Thank you for… you know, everything.”

  I hadn’t done anything except not kill them. I felt bad, but not bad enough to turn down his generosity. I dropped the truck into reverse and waved at them. “You boys stay safe. Thanks, Hank.”

  Now, if all my encounters would go that well… they wouldn’t. I already knew that.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  Ada fed me directions. As I expected, no damn way to bypass Johnson’s Gap. I briefly thought of simply waiting until later and driving through at night. I had night vision that worked reasonably well, so I could theoretically try it without headlamps, but on these mountain roads with stalled cars every quarter mile, well… that seemed risky. My AI could also do it, but that, too, was theoretical, and I knew much of her real-time data processing was still questionable because of the signal outages.

  Risk doesn’t bother me. I’m a soldier. We make a living getting comfortable being uncomfortable. What I don’t like is the unknown. In the Space Force, and even before that back in the Rangers, we never went into an AO without good intel…damn good intel. It was never actually good enough, but honestly, we just liked to complain. The truth was, we generally knew exactly what we were up against. This time all I had was the word of a still untested new friend.

  I watched the green dot approaching the red intersection visible in my mind’s eye. Ada had dialed back the overlay, but I kept studying it to see if there was another play I was missing. The one addition I had made was to pull over and top off my battle armor. My tactical helmet was beside me, and I could have that on in seconds.

  Ada had a limited interface with the old GMC beater, but I got her access to the admin menu. She silenced the artificial engine noise. It was mandatory on smaller roads like these, but I wanted as much stealth as possible. She also hacked into the self-driving mode which was archaic, and only two of the six nav cameras were still attached, but she admitted if her connection held, she could likely handle it if I needed her.

  ‘If I needed her’ meant I was injured or hanging out a door shooting, or you know, no longer among the living. I wondered briefly, if I died, did Ada die? I mean, she’s in my head, at least some parts of her. Her system literally runs off the energy my body creates. Still, it felt odd to even ask, so I didn’t.

  Sumo was leaning on the old box, looking forward. We’d been together long enough that he sensed my mood. “I’ll get that seat put in for you later, Bud.” His quick look let me know that was less than optimal and would likely go on my permanent record.

  “Prowler, target coordinates should be in view just over the next rise,” Ada said, using my combat call sign. She, too, was all business now. I had the Rattler propped on the dash, extra MagPacks lined up beside me, and my service handgun in my lap.

  The intersection was at the bottom of a long, straight descent. In the later afternoon sun, I could see the other roads coming into it from each side and an old store the only structure. A handful of stalled cars marked the area, but no people. Everything was still and lifeless. A few cars were partially blocking the road, but I could still squeeze through. “Ada, anything?” I was about to punch it.

  “No visible threats.”

  I looked at Sumo who seemed to concur. That made it unanimous. I pushed the pedal down, and the high-torque electric motor pushed me back into the seat. The old truck still had some life. We blew through the intersection going ninety.

  Glancing both ways as we passed, though, I didn’t see a soul anywhere. Well, that was anticlimactic, wasn’t it?

  “There is a vehicle moving to block the road a half mile ahead,” Ada said, harshing my good buzz at the same time. In the mirror, I saw another one of the supposedly stalled cars doing the same thing behind. “Shit, they’re boxing us in.” I rolled the windows down on both sides and donned the helmet. “Sumo, be ready to hunt.” He gave an enthusiastic bark. I leaned over and rubbed his armored back for good luck.

  “Take the wheel, Ada. You know where I want to be.”

  I tightened my grip on the rifle and holstered my sidearm. Sumo and I were coming out hot and ready for war. The first shot spider-webbed the windshield just before Ada braked hard and slid us sideways fifty yards from the roadblock. Sumo used the car’s momentum to leap out the window and dart to one side. I stepped out of the truck and let it move away from me as my HUD lined up targets. Two were down before I knew I had pulled the trigger. Sumo leapt over a car hood and tore the throat from another.

  In all the apocalyptic movies I’d seen, society goes to hell in the blink of an eye. I always thought that was bullshit. Hank and Pete up the road had nearly convinced me I was right. These boys here were quickly letting me know the movies had gotten it right. “You fucked with the wrong guys, boys. Sure you don’t want to call it a night?”

  A shout of pain followed by Sumo issuing one of his classic growls. The kind that makes grown men’s bowels go all watery.

  “You shot Steve. I think he’s dead.”

  “Want me to make sure?” I was walking toward the enemy now, sweeping my gun, looking for new targets as I did so. My HUD only showed two other hostiles, then one of those went dark. Sumo had done his job. A round pinged off my shoulder harmlessly.

  “You bastard! You killed my whole family!”

  I smiled. “Trust me, humanity will thank me. You keep shooting at me, and you’ll follow them.” I turned my helmet mic up, amplifying my voice.

  “Prowler, more coming up from your six,” Ada said as she placed an overlay of three more shooters, cautiously making their way up from the intersection we’d just come through. They were using stealth, walking from cover to cover, hiding behind cars and trees to get closer to their friend.

  I motioned for Sumo to finish the hunt; he went after the one who’d been talking. I turned and moved back to the truck, turning my back on the one active shooter up here. That seemed risky, but I needed to neutralize the bigger threat coming from our rear. I flipped the selector on the MK4 for a different ammo, one designed for maximum effect. Banshee squad called it ‘Carnage’ as the charged pulse came out as twin daggers of pure energy connected by a stream of highly charged plasma. The blueish white rounds sliced through whatever it touched. Sometimes not killing is more effective. These three thought they would surprise me. Sadly, the surprise would be on them.