Day by Day Armageddon: Shattered Hourglass (34 page)

“Open up, it’s me, Ramirez!”

Dean shot up and readied her pistol before unlocking the door and twisting the handle. The door flew open, revealing Ramirez and John standing there with automatic weapons, covered in dirt and sweat.

•   •   •

“Let’s move; the whole deck is overrun!”

“Tara, I owed Kil one. Make sure you tell him we’re square when you see him,” Ramirez said.

Tara hugged him briefly, sobbing with happiness to still be alive as they bolted from the stateroom.

They all moved quietly in single file, protecting the children in the middle. John held Annabelle in his backpack, the white dog zipped up to her neck. She didn’t like it very much, but she didn’t try to escape.

Annabelle was invaluable in confirming the presence of undead
onboard. Just as planned, John took her back to the area where Danny thought he had heard the creatures. When the large steel door opened and the military men walked through, he didn’t hide; he feigned ignorance. He scooped Annabelle into his arms as the guards confronted him. Annabelle gave a terrible howl, urinating down John’s shirt. Her raised hackles further confirmed that the creatures were among them. John played dumb and the guards escorted him and his dog out of the area.

“Hurry, only two more knee-knockers to the flight deck hatch!” John said to everyone.

The adults watched Danny and Laura like hawks as they moved. The passageways could erupt with undead at any moment.

Annabelle’s hackles stood once again, and she tensed in John’s pack, growling.

“Get ready, Ramirez!” John warned.

The undead didn’t appear from the front—they were making ground on them from the rear, where Tara and Ramirez guarded the children. Ramirez turned and opened up on them, walking backward. He was changing mags, slapping the full one home, when he fell flat on his back over a knee-knocker. His gun discharged as he fell, sawing a diagonal pattern across two of the creatures that closed on him. Chunks of flesh, muscle, and bone peppered the steel bulkheads and other undead in the rear of the mass.

The creatures still advanced.

“Duck down, kids, hold your ears!” John screamed as he opened up on the rotting monsters that were set to dog-pile the marine.

Ramirez went full auto from his back, flesh and bone flying around the passageway and littering the blue tile deck.

With his lower body covered in brains and other parts, Ramirez quickly jumped to his feet, firing more rounds down the passageway at the advancing creatures. “Move, John, get out!”

John reached the flight deck access hatch and threw the hatch lever violently. He kicked the door open, and sunlight beamed inside. The smell of oil, salt, and machinery filled the passageway.

“Move!” John said.

The survivors sprinted out the access hatch and up the ladder to the relative safety of the flight deck.

Ramirez kept backing up and firing until John tapped his shoulder.

“Your turn, Ramirez. I’ll secure the hatch.”

Ramirez ran up the ladder to the catwalk, tripping on the way up. John took one last potshot and closed the hatch. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a bit of rope, and tied the hatch closed from the outside.
Should hold for a bit,
he thought.

Stepping up to the catwalk, John had full view of the carrier deck. Most of the aircraft were stored below in the hangar deck. John could see hundreds of people milling about. He was forward near the bow of the ship, near catapult one. Climbing up to the flight deck he could hear a bridge announcement.

“Onboard
George Washington,
this is the officer of the deck with an update. The admiral has informed me that we are to begin clearing operations soon and are now setting course for the Florida Keys. We remain in control of the reactor and bridge. Remain calm, that is all.”

After the announcement, John could hear the creatures beating on the steel hatch below.
Calm, my ass,
he thought. John briefly admired the ocean view around him and was surprised to see a handful of destroyers cruising in formation on both sides of the carrier with a supply ship off the port quarter.

“John, I need help,” Jan said, tapping his shoulder.

“What is it? Are you okay?”

“Dr. Bricker and I have set up triage farther aft near the bridge island. I can’t find William and I think he may be—”

“Don’t think like that. I’ll keep an eye out for him—there are a lot of people up here,” John said in what he hoped was a comforting voice. “Go back to the medical tent and I’ll come by in a bit, okay?”

“Thanks, John.”

He could hear Laura crying as her mother walked back to the group of Hotel 23 survivors.

“Admiral, the creatures control many of the living spaces as well as the supply hold areas. The crew set Condition Zebra on all main hatches early on in the outbreak per the OOD’s instruction, so many of them should be compartmentalized below.”

“How many do you estimate are down there now?”

“By my figures, there are likely at least two hundred, and that number would be much higher if not for the mandatory firearms regulation. I think the number of undead belowdecks will remain flat. As the survivors below neutralize more creatures, more will likely become infected in the process. The only number that will fall is that of the remaining living.”

Admiral Goettleman peered out at his panoramic view of the flight deck below. A large refugee camp formed, sprawling throughout the four and a half acres of steel and nonskid. As a contingency plan formed in his head, the admiral began to plan the
how
of his next move. First priority would be to retake the communications rooms; second, they would need to find a suitable port. He couldn’t risk losing control of the reactor areas to the undead while at sea. It would render the carrier nothing short of drifting hurricane bait. He grabbed the phone and dialed the pilot house above.

“Slight course adjustment, OOD. Make your course for Key West specifically and mind your draft.”

“Very good, Admiral,” the OOD replied on the other end.

After hearing the orders given to the bridge, Joe asked, “Would you care to walk me through your thought process, sir? I don’t follow.”

“I intend to make port at Key West and prepare for a worst-case scenario. If we lose too many personnel, we can’t keep this ship running. If that happens, I’d like to be tied up to an island, a place we can clear out and defend. Key West has a naval air station. We can blow the bridges and isolate. Any word on Phoenix and the recovered black box?”

“Our programmers were attempting to compile the software to pull the GPS coordinates from the box when they lost control of our network. They say that someone attempted to gain access and alter the software. The intrusion only lasted four minutes. The strange thing is, the program was already complete when our people rebooted the ship’s servers and tried to compile it. They didn’t have time to go line by line to verify the code, so they transmitted the software to Hotel 23. Task Force Phoenix is not due back off mission for a few hours and we won’t know of their success until we reestablish comms.”

“That’s a priority, Joe. I want the first teams retaking the radio areas. We can worry about who tried to hack us at another time. Hell, it could be the Chinese version of our CYBERCOM.
Virginia
should be in the Bohai soon—if not now. Hourglass will be feet dry in what was communist China shortly. Larsen and his folks are likely very interested in what is happening here.”

“Yes, sir, the marines will attempt to secure the communications room up forward first. After secured we’ll get the comms back up with Phoenix and hopefully Hourglass.”

“What of the outpost?”

“They have not responded to our comm checks in a few cycles. Probably atmospherics.”

“Probably.” Goettleman again looked out over the camps forming below. “Dammit. We’ll need to post snipers up here on Vulture’s Row, overlooking the camps. Any sign of outbreak and we take the shot.”

“Yes, sir.” Joe paused for a moment, ensuring that no one would overhear him. “Sir, we’re not going to make it.”

“No, probably not. But I’ve never given up on a damn thing in my life. I won’t stop fighting until I’m one of them, or I’m rotting in the ground with a hole in my head. You graduated the farm, and know better. We’ll fight from lifeboats with our bare hands if need be.”

“Chief of the Boat, periscope depth,” Larsen commanded.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

After the order was relayed to the helmsman, the boat began its journey to an area just below the surface of the Bohai waters. The periscope was raised, cutting above and through the blue-green waters of the surface.
Virginia
’s advanced sensors had shown no evidence of any surviving Chinese military power. If remnants of the Sino military remained, they would likely be in the same condition as the U.S. military—spread thin, nearly extinct. Commie monitored the RF spectrum; the only Chinese transmission he intercepted was Beijing International’s Automated Terminal Information Service. Commie determined that parts of the airport must have been on sustainable power for the transmission to remain active. He kept tuning frequencies—“spinning and grinning” the RF spectrum, self-protecting the submarine, and attempting to gather any shred of intelligence that might assist the mission.

Peering through the closed-circuit advanced periscope optic, the captain made an assessment of the mainland.

“Looks like a lot of undead Chinese, COB,” he said, an unlit cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“I could have told you that without looking, sir.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you could’ve. Kil, you in here?”

“Yes, sir,” Kil said, stepping out of the shadows near a bank of equipment.

“Might want to ready the UAV crews. We’ll need airborne reconnaissance of the area and the Chinese airfield.”

“I’ll inform the crew to preflight the birds for launch. Is that all?”

“No, Commander, actually it’s not. I was wondering if you had given any thought to our previous conversations?”

“Yes, sir, I have, and I’m afraid my answer hasn’t changed.”

Larsen leaned closer to Kil. “It’s a shame that Rex and Rico will be working alone, especially so soon after losing Griff and Huck. This’ll be a very difficult undertaking. You want me to inform them or would you like to? I’d like to remind you that our armory is quite extensive, and Beijing was not a target of nuclear weapons.
Virginia
was a special-operations support ship before everything went to hell, and she still is.”

“I’ll tell them myself, Captain.”

“Very well. Oh, one more thing—we’ll have a little more overhead support for Hourglass than has been previously briefed.”

“How do you mean?”

“Shall we?” Larsen gestured for Kil to follow him to the SCIF.

They walked through the door and were now securely insulated from the rest of the boat. Commie sat at his terminal with Commander Monday over his shoulder, examining the haul of information extracted from the Kunia mission.

Commie sanitized his screen as Kil and Larsen entered the room.

“We’ll have overhead support, SR-71 on steroids. The optics on the bird are much more sensitive and cover exponentially more land mass. The team will know what’s coming before it’s a factor,” Larsen said.

“What air base?” Kil asked skeptically. “We’re a long way from home.”

“I can’t say, mostly because I don’t know.”

“What asset then?”

“Lockheed’s
Aurora
. She’s actually called something else, but Aurora has been the code name for all of Lockheed’s hypersonic programs dating from the 1960s to now. She’s fast, with a full IMINT and Ground Moving Target Indicator suite. She’ll be supporting at an altitude of angels ninety plus, for a period of six hours.”

“If this thing is flying in from the states, it must have needed some sort of tanker support. When will it be overhead?” Kil asked.

“The COG relayed five days ago that
Aurora
would be overhead
at one thousand GMT tomorrow. Of course, that’s before the carrier went dark, but somehow I don’t think that will be a factor for this asset. As far as tanker support,
Aurora
doesn’t use JP-5. Maybe when you go talk to Rex to tell him that you won’t be part of the team, you can brief him on it.”

“Thanks for the information, sir.”

“You’re welcome, Kil.”

Kil felt Larsen’s stare as he left the SCIF. The old man was manipulating him, and dammit it was working.

•   •   •

Kil transited aft inside the large submarine, thinking about what Larsen had said. He was going to pay Rex and Rico a little visit. Kil knocked on their door; he didn’t like intruding into the berthing spaces unless absolutely necessary.

“Who is it?” Kil recognized Rex’s voice from behind the door.

“Kil.”

“Don’t you mean Commander Kil?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Sorry, no officers in the clubhouse.”

Kil decided to walk in anyway. “Listen, the captain tells me that you guys are a go tomorrow. We’re gonna have overhead support starting at ten hundred GMT,” said Kil.

Rex stood, taking the weight off his overstuffed bunk. “What about you?”

“What do you mean?”

Rico slid open the blue curtain on his rack, entering the conversation. “Larsen said this morning that you’ve decided to come with us. That true?” he asked.

“That son of a bitch,” Kil said, shaking his head and balling his fist.

“Don’t worry, we know. Larsen is playing both of us,” Rex said. “We sure could use your help though. We have a full load out here, check it out.” Rex pulled back an empty rack curtain and gestured to the pile of battle rifles. “After the shit hit the fan, scavenger units raided the various military arsenals around the states. Most of those government guns were complete shit. Some of our friends
helped us out in one of the last mainland supply raids. They took a couple helicopters and looted a civilian manufacturer’s factory in Central Texas and found these.” Rex pointed at the pile of black rifles, grabbing one and tossing it to Kil. “That’s a LaRue 7.62 with an eighteen-inch barrel. It’ll bloom heads at nine hundred meters if the right shooter is behind it.”