Defeat (9 page)

The analytical part of her mind
was in overdrive, calculating the devastation along the entire West
Coast such a wave would cause. San Diego, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver. All would be destroyed. If
it was this big in Central America, it would probably cover entire
countries.

She turned her attention back to
the monster, knowing there was no hope for her. The thought flashed
through her mind that she should pull out her sidearm and shoot
herself before the wave hit. Make it quick.

Zombie went down on one knee and
fired his MP23 into the oncoming water. His magazine emptied, he
replaced it, and began firing again.

Shane pushed her backwards towards
the buildings. The roar of the approaching wave, the firing of the
carbine, the thought of her impending death was too much for
Christina. She crumpled on the ground.

“
We’ve got too
move, Captain,” Shane said, frantic now, trying to pick her
up.

“
It’s no use,”
she cried.

The water towered over the
buildings around them. It was taller than the Empire State
Building. Christina closed her eyes as it reached the building next
to them, tearing it to shreds. She heard Zombie still firing and
felt Shane dive on top of her. She appreciated his desperate act to
try to protect her. These were good men, and she was proud to have
served with them.

She felt herself picked up and
turned over, completely unable to control her body or her
movements. She couldn’t feel Shane anymore; he had been torn away
from her. She didn’t want to drown. She didn’t know how long that
took, but it seemed a terrible way to die.

She struck something. Her body
felt pinned against concrete, her limbs twisting in unnatural ways,
but she felt no pain. Her mind felt dark and she knew she was
losing consciousness. At least it would be quick, she felt with a
touch of gratitude.

I love you, John, she said in her
mind, willing the message to reach her husband.

4

Shortly after her connections to
every network went down, the power went out in Jayla’s father’s
cabin.

“
We gotta get
back to civilization,” she muttered to herself. “Where is that
girl?”

Jayla went out to the deck and
yelled for her little sister for a while. No response.

She looked up at the sky, peeked
through the door at an old German cuckoo clock on the wall, and
thought the sun would be setting soon. Jada would have to return by
dark. Jayla didn’t think the sixteen year old had taken a
flashlight with her.

She just wished she would hurry
up.

Jayla fixed herself a small meal,
bored without her sister and without a connection to the outside
world. Even though the power was out, they had a propane tank, and
the stove still worked.

She thought about cooking enough
for her sister as well, but if the girl wanted to wander around the
woods all day by herself, she could cook for herself
also.

Jayla brought her dinner out onto
the deck, watching for her sister, and watching the sun set in the
sky. The horizon turned a deep purple, the sky dimming to a navy
blue, and Jayla grew more worried.

Eating mindlessly, she decided she
would have to search for her sister. The thought of wandering
around the woods at dusk did not excite her. There weren’t many
bears anymore, but the wilderness continued for hundreds of miles
around them. Who knew what wandered around it?

There were a few cabins like
theirs. Perhaps Jada was sitting in one, jawing with the residents,
completely oblivious of time. Jayla was going to kill
her.

She went back inside, put her
plate in the sink, and dug through drawers until she found a
flashlight. She also found extra batteries and put them on the
counter along with matches and a small lantern she pulled out of a
closet.

It was still early summer, so she
put on a sweatshirt, wool socks, and boots. Armed with the
flashlight, extra batteries, and her phone, which had no signal,
Jayla went out into the night in search of her sister.

At four in the morning she
returned to the cabin, desperate, cold, hungry, afraid, and
exhausted. She fell on the couch and cried herself to
sleep.

Eva Gilliam found the end of the
world quite boring.

A week alone in a safe house was
enough to drive anyone crazy. She did what she could to stay busy.
She worked out mostly, running on a treadmill, lifting weights,
practicing yoga, and using the punching bag. She read books in the
evening.

The apartment had a living room
that looked normal from the entryway. A couch and a love seat, a
fake, electric fireplace, and a painting of a ship at sea on the
wall. A well appointed kitchen with a dining alcove was on one
side, and a door leading to a hallway was opposite the entrance.
Everything looked like a standard apartment.

Behind the hallway door, the
normalcy ended.

There were three large rooms,
besides the bathroom, off the hallway. The first had bunks enough
for six people nailed to the walls, and dressers filled with
clothing for both men and women. The second was the well equipped
gym where Eva tried to keep herself occupied. The third held
stockpiles of food, water, weapons, books, paper goods, and
underwear. Fortunately there was women’s underwear, as well as
men’s, and feminine products. The Agency was thoughtful.

The windows were bricked over.
Curtains probably still hung on them on the other side of the
brick, giving them the illusion of a normal apartment, but there
was no way for Eva to see or contact the outside. Even her phone
had lost signal as soon as she arrived.

She couldn’t leave. The code on
her phone had worked once to let her in. However, the lock cycled
on a regular basis, and if she left, she wouldn’t be able to get
back in. Only the correct code or a significant quantity of
explosives would open the door from the outside.

She hoped for another agent to
show up so they could take turns leaving the apartment and
gathering information, but no one did.

Without sunlight, the designers of
the safe house knew there was the possibility of going crazy. A
tanning bed had been provided and it sat in a corner of the gym.
She used it liberally the first day.

But it didn’t work without
electricity.

The second day into her residency
at the safe house, the power and water both stopped
working.

Eva flipped switches on and off in
frustration, then finally felt her way into the storage room. In
the dark, she sorted through containers until she found batteries
and a battery operated lantern.

With a little light, she could
look around more, and found kerosene and several kerosene lamps.
She lit one, but worried that without power there’d be no air
handling and she’d suffocate. She reluctantly put the lamp
out.

Days came and went in the dark,
and Eva’s frustration came and went with them. She worked out, ate,
and read by the light from the battery lantern. She used bottled
water to bathe, then took the bath water and used it to flush the
toilet. She didn’t know how long she could live this way, but she
wanted to be a good agent, a professional.

At least there were vitamin D
tablets in the food storage to make up for the lack of sunlight or
a tanning bed.

On the second day of darkness, Eva
looked at her eerie reflection in the bathroom mirror, lit
strangely by the tiny lantern, and she asked herself who she
was.

“
Eva Gilliam,”
she replied weakly.

“
What’s that? I
can’t hear you,” she bellowed like an instructor.

“
Eva Gilliam,”
she screamed back at her reflection.

“
Still can’t hear
you!”

“
Eva
Gilliam!”

It felt surprisingly good to
shout. It relieved the oppressive quietness.

She went through the routine again
on the third day, then added, “What are you doing here?”

She didn’t know the answer to that
question. Obeying orders? Obeying lack of orders?

“
Saving the
world!” she shouted at the mirror. Where had that come
from?

Just like every reporter wanted to
be like Woodward and Bernstein, every scientist wanted to be like
Einstein, or Pascal, or Curie, every agent had a tiny, unspoken
desire to be like Bond. James Bond. To not just do her duty, but to
make a difference somewhere. Not just fulfill an obligation, but to
make a difference, to save thousands of lives like Marie Curie or
to break an enemy code and win a war, like Joan Clarke.

Every day she yelled at the
mirror.

“
Who are
you?”

“
Eva
Gilliam!”

“
What are you
doing?”

“
Saving the
world!”

The yelling helped.

Not knowing how long the power
outage would last or how long it would be until she received new
orders, she patiently soldiered on.

Major Vincent Jai-Singh throttled
back his F-35, radioing in the massive heat signature that showed
up on his display and waiting for confirmation.

His wingman confirmed.

Combat Control acknowledged and
gave him permission to engage an intercept course. An AWACS was
also on its way.

Vincent ordered military power,
and the two craft bucked in response, streaking to engage what had
to be a certain enemy, a craft blazing into the
atmosphere.

There was a remote possibility
this was another meteor, like the ones that had been plummeting to
Earth, laying waste to bases and cities. But it came in at a
different trajectory, and something told Vincent it looked more
like a spacecraft on reentry than it did a meteor heading straight
down for a target.

He hoped it was a spacecraft. He
could fight a spacecraft. He and the other combat pilots of the
United States Air Force, along with Navy, Marine, and Army
counterparts, had been completely helpless against the
meteors.

Bases were destroyed. Cities
burned. The oceans heaved themselves beyond their bounds and
millions died.

And Vincent, flying the most
advanced fighter jet in the world, had been helpless.

Now he had tone.

He requested permission to fire
and Combat Control told him to do what he wanted. He was at extreme
range for his missile, and his target, if it was a spacecraft on
reentry, would still be protected by a fireball. But he could try
if he wanted to.

Vincent armed the missile,
confirmed lock, and called, “Fox Three.”

The missile separated from his
plane, and streaked off, leaving a thin contrail heading up into
the clouds. He watched it for as long as he could, aware that his
wingman would be tracking his scope for other bogeys.

He wondered about the craft. How
powerful were these aliens, anyway? They could redirect asteroids
towards the Earth, hitting targets with precision, and when they
decided to attack a highly mobile, well defended target, they only
sent one craft to do it.

Vincent knew who he protected. He
didn’t know for sure; he wasn’t deemed to have a high enough
security clearance, but everyone in the fighter wing knew they had
orders to protect a group of aircraft at all costs. Only one such
aircraft could be flying such erratic patterns over the heart of
Alaska, and that was Air Force One.

Accompanied by refueling tankers,
combat drones, and its own squadron of F-35s, no other asset could
be that important.

He prayed his missile would find
its target, making him a hero. He wasn’t sure who he prayed to,
though. An Indian muslim with a Sikh sounding last name who grew up
in New York, Vincent had confused thoughts about religion and God.
Prayer couldn’t hurt, though.

So he prayed.

“
That’s a
negative, Major,” he heard on his radio.

“
Acknowledged.”

The missile no longer read on his
scope, meaning it had detonated, yet the fireball still approached
them, screaming towards them at many times the speed of
sound.

“
Cap Three, this
is Eagle.”

Eagle was an AWACS, or Airborne
Warning and Control System aircraft. It could control entire aerial
battles from a safe distance.

“
Roger, Eagle,
this is Cap Three.” Vincent and his wingman, Lieutenant Travers,
were the third combat air patrol pair circling hundreds of miles
from what was presumably the President’s
squadron.

“
Cap Three, the
brainiacs on board have calculated that you are in perfect position
for this bogey. Loiter at your current location and altitude and
wait for it to get below 50. Then cut loose. Copy
that?”