Fade to Grey (Book 1): Fade to Grey (50 page)

“Yeah,” Thompson said, “I grabbed the keys and the ID badge
from the guy up on the sidewalk and jump into the SUV. It started right up, but
damn it, Andy’s truck was blocking me in. And I didn’t want to lay on the horn
for obvious reasons. So I’m sitting there, squirming in my chair because we
never checked the back of the SUV for occupants, and I had this creepy feeling
that something was going to reach up out of the darkness from the back seat and
tear into me. But I also didn’t want to move. I figured if I did it might
attract some unwanted attention, so I just sat there with my hands on the
steering wheel and eyeballs locked on the little kids having a Doc burger.”

Michelle took a sip of her water before continuing. “It
probably seemed a lot longer than it actually was, but after an eternity Andy
said, ‘Let’s not push our luck, OK?’ Well, that brought me out of my trance PDQ
and I pulled forward and did a U-turn. Thompson backed out and followed. I took
some different side roads as far as I could before catching the last
intersection that would take me back to my house without going about fifty
miles out of the way. And believe it or not, we were back in my living room
exactly twenty-seven minutes after we had left. So now we had the dark blue
suit and the black SUV. We still needed some type of passable ID though. The
guy that was laying near the truck, his was practically ruined with blood and a
bullet hole, but the other guy’s was pristine. Problem was he looked nothing
like Andy. So we waited until 6:00 AM and then drove over to talk to Mr. Glass.
We knew he had a computer and a generator. I have a computer here, but no
generator and none of the programs that Andy thought he’d be able to make a
passable fake ID with. Oh, while we were waiting for six o-clock to roll
around, we practiced, well mostly I practiced . . . acting tough. To be honest,
in hindsight I don’t . . . that is I can’t even believe what we were thinking,”
Michelle let out another sigh, accompanied by a barely perceptible shudder
before continuing. “OK, so we went over to see Mr. Glass. He was more than
happy to let us use his computer, and it had a program that Andy said he could
work with. At that point it sort of became a comedy of errors. Andy looked up
at me and says, ‘We need to take some digital pictures of our faces. You got a
camera?’ Well I did, but it was back at my house, so Thompson and I drove over
and got it. When we got back we discovered the battery was dead. So now was
another trip back to my house to find the charging cable. That took about ten
minutes, and then once we were back at the Glass’s, we had to let it charge up
for another fifteen minutes or so. So we finally got some pictures and Andy
downloaded them into the computer and did, well whatever he did, and then he hits
the print button. Fifteen seconds later out pops two reasonably accurate
forgeries of an NSA ID badge. Except they’re in black and white. As it turns
out, Mr. Glass was out of color ink. So now it’s back to my house one more time
to grab my printer.

It was about 7:15 AM by the time we had two passable IDs. Andy
used, if I may say so, some very artfully applied clear packing tape to give
then a laminated look. At 7:30 AM we were ready to go. The Glass’s had a small
bible reading and said some prayers with us as we were getting ready to leave. We
still had a little time to kill though, for some reason Andy didn’t want to get
there too early, so we borrowed some sponges and soap from Mrs. Glass and used
their well water to give the black SUV a bath. By 8:00 AM we were back at my
house going over some final plans and contingencies. At 9:00 AM we showed up at
the school.”

Michelle went to the kitchen and refilled her cup of water
from a spaghetti pot sitting on the countertop. She was still tired, even
though it was technically much earlier than her typical bedtime of midnight. Besides,
she was itching to know what Andy was thinking. Returning to the living room,
it took her less than five minutes to tell Sam what happened from the time they
entered the school until the time they pulled out with him in a body bag.

“I normally don’t say this to a lady,” Sam replied, “but you
have a big a set of brass balls.”

Michelle let out a screech of disbelief. “Are you kidding
me?  I don’t think I’ll be able to take a shit for the next month because I was
so clenched up the whole time I was there. I’ve literally never been that
scared in my life, and that’s counting the firefight in my office and at the
campground. If Andy and Thompson hadn’t spent so much time grilling me on how
to act and what to say, I’d be in cuffs right next to you in the equipment room
about now. Heck, I said more prayers in the couple hours we were at that school
than I did from kindergarten to grad school, and that includes AP algebra. And
let me tell you, I just about sank our boat the first five seconds we were
there.”

“How?” Sam asked.

“When we got to the school and the first soldier came up to
me, I realized I had no clue on how to tell what rank they were. I just about
fumbled it right there, because that was one thing we didn’t cover in the
briefings. I had to wait for Andy to call it out each time, and unfortunately I
couldn’t just pull him aside and ask for a crash course on reading rank insignia.
Andy was leaning halfway across the truck trying to get a look at Lieutenant
Estes’s uniform when we first got there. It’s a damn good thing that truck had
dark tinting or we would have screwed the pooch before we even got in the door.
And thank God that Lieutenant Estes, well ‘Captain’ Estes now,” she laughed,
“turned out to be the person he was.”  Michelle buried her face in her hands
and gave a combined sigh and groan. “There were so many things that could have
. . . should have gone wrong.”

“Like what?” the mound of blankets asked.

Andy stood up and rubbed his hands together in an effort to
warm them as he spoke. “Like we didn’t even know if it was actually you, and if
it wasn’t we were still going to have to come out with a body. I’d like to say
we had a plan for that contingency, but like most of our master plan it was
following the ‘wing it’ philosophy. And then there was the potential to get
into a shooting match. There was absolutely no doubt in our minds that we would
lose if that happened. And the worst of that would have been that Michelle may
not have been able to shoot back.”

Even the dim light of the single candle was enough to
illuminate Sam’s confused expression.

“Our hope was that you would be where Thompson thought you
would be. And in order to maintain our cover of being bad MOFO’s, we knew we
were going to have to shoot you. Lucky for you we weren’t going to use a real
bullet.” Andy laughed.

“Yeah, I’m relatively glad of that myself,” Sam replied. “You
know, when I first saw you I was so . . . I don’t know . . . disoriented maybe
. . . that I couldn’t put two and two together. I knew where I had seen you
before, but as much as I ‘knew’ that, my mind was also telling me that I was
about to bite the big one and I was too stupid to figure out why, and how. But
then you said the magic words . . . ‘executive conference room’.”

“I was trying to figure out a way to get a message to you,
one that everybody else listening wouldn’t recognize for what it was.”

“I caught it, but it was still not one hundred percent sunk
in when you were chewing me out. And then you came up and whispered to me,” Sam
popped his head out of his blankets enough to flash a bright white gap toothed
smile.

“You never told me what you said to him,” Michelle said.

“He said, ‘If you want to live, get ready to die,’ and then
the old fart winked at me like I was a virgin on prom night and he was the
captain of the football team,” Sam replied, still smiling.

Thompson started chuckling, and his deep resonating laughter
soon spread to the others.

“Believe it or not, you wouldn’t have been the ugliest girl
that I’ve ever asked out before,” Andy shot back.

When the mirth had settled down to the occasional snicker,
Sam repeated his question. “What were you saying about Michelle not being able
to shoot back?”

“Well,” Andy said, “we had the 22. We had a silencer. But we
didn’t have any blanks. So we had to make some. I pulled the bullets out of a
dozen shells to start with. The 22 pistol we had was a semiautomatic. You pull
the trigger once and the explosion of gases force the slide back, which ejects
the spent case and allows another round to be loaded when the slide returns
forward. Just like your SIG and about a billion other guns in the world. The issue
was that when we removed the powder charge, all we were left with was the
ignition charge of the rimfire ammo. That put us in a bind a couple of ways. First
off, the force of a little rimfire cartridge with its powder removed wasn’t
enough to cycle the action of the gun. So you’d hear a little ‘pop’ but the
spent case would still be in the chamber and you’d have to manually rack the
slide to kick it out and load another one. We sort of figured that wouldn’t
look too professional. Anyhow, the second problem we had was the noise level. With
the silencer attached and firing subsonic ammunition, that little gun makes
just about the same noise as without the silencer attached and firing a
cartridge with no bullet or powder, only the rimfire ignition charge. Somebody
seeing us shoot the gun with a silencer would expect a muted sound. On the
other hand, without the silencer it needed to go bang. So the problem was how
to make it go ‘bang’ loud enough to be believable, but without using loaded
ammunition. And on top of that we wanted the gun to cycle the next round into
the chamber. The gun holds ten shots in the magazine plus one in the pipe. I
pissed around with the ammo I had pulled apart, but the best we were able to
come up with was to use about half of the normal powder charge held in place
with a thin wax plug. Unfortunately, when we tested the design in the Glass’s
backyard, it only cycled the gun about half the time. The other times it would
stovepipe the spent case. So there was a fifty-fifty chance that if Michelle
had to pull the gun and shoot for real, the first round would of course be
ineffective, and the second round may not even make it to the chamber. As it
turned out, the one shot I fired worked correctly. Not too shabby for some spur
of the moment Yankee engineering.”

“So, I’ve got one final question before I shut up, at least
for awhile,” Sam said.

Michelle, Andy, and Thompson looked his way and waited.

Sam shucked the upper third of the blankets off, wedged to
his elbows against the couch and propped himself into a slightly more elevated
position. Meeting each of their eyes with another nod of appreciation, he said,
“Why?”

“Why what?” Andy asked.

“Why did you risk your life for someone you barely knew?”

“We’re kinda dumb that way. I’ve always wanted to spend my
retirement dodging bullets and charging uphill against impossible odds, and the
young lady here, well, she was hoping she could get a date with some hunky
soldier boy before the world ended or she got all old and fat.”

Michelle reached into the small bookshelf behind her and
flung a book at Andy. Not lightly. The resounding
thunk
was quickly
drowned out by Thompson, Sam, and Andy’s hilarity.

When things had settled down, Michelle turned back toward
Andy and said, “OK smartass, time to earn your supper, which was the cream of
broccoli soup you ate about an hour ago by the way. What are you thinking . . .
come on, spill it.”

Andy propped the recliner into an upright position, cracked
his knuckles and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He started to say
something then paused, looking around the room at each of them. Finally he said,
“It just doesn’t make sense. I mean I don’t even know where to start. And I
know that I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but there’s no way
around it . . . we need more information. If I didn’t firmly believe that we
had already pushed our luck well past the breaking point, I would have liked to
grab a bunch of the dispatch folders and intel reports from the colonel’s
office at the school. But even that . . . ahh . . .”

“What?” Michelle asked.

Andy held up a hand, silencing Michelle while he composed his
thoughts. “All right, hear me out, and try not to interrupt too much because
I’m still working this out as I go. This . . . situation . . . sickness,
epidemic—whatever the hell it is—I think we knew about it. And by ‘we’ I mean
the U.S. government. At least the possibility of the existence of this sickness.
If you can believe the original reports we heard, it started off as some
chemical or biological weapon released in Korea. From there, ‘x’ number of days
later, we heard about outbreaks here in the U.S. While this is going on, we
have no Internet, satellite TV or anything really, other than some supposed
local radio stations. Now maybe it was different in states with much larger
population areas like New York and California, but up here we had squat. And
I’m betting it wasn’t any different anywhere else. Since then we’ve learned a
couple things. The first thing that comes to mind is that the Internet and
television, and even the radio stations did not come back on when the president
said they would. That brings us to a fork in the road. On one path we have the
question of why it did not come back on. On the other path we have the question
of how they got shut off in the first place, at least in what appears to be a
very coordinated manner. That Samantha girl—who we need to get in touch with
asap—said that at the cell phone provider she worked at, a couple of agents
from some dot gov. bureau came in and shut them down. Let me put it this way. Have
you ever known our government, hell, any government, to move that fast and that
efficiently without some type of standing plan in place?”

When nobody answered Andy continued, “Me either. And having
some . . . ‘experience’ in this area, let me tell you it doesn’t happen without
a very carefully thought out and coordinated effort. What I’m trying to say is
there is no way, absolutely none in my opinion that what we’re seeing here is a
reaction by the Federal Government to a mysterious plague or infection . . . whatever
you want to call it. What we are seeing . . . it’s not a reaction, but an
action. And that means we either knew about this sickness and its potential, or
even worse than that, it might even be ours. And while you’re chewing that one
over, remember this—the fax that Sam scooped up before he left the barracks,
well hell, they even had a name for it already. MKCP-variant Z. Whatever the
case is, our government must have had plans in place for the event of the doggy
poop hitting the fan. And I’m guessing those plans started with a coordinated
effort to cut off communications. And that brings me to another problem. I’m
fairly sure that the majority of communication and media systems were not shut
off at the source, but rather at the choke point in the relay satellites. It’s
the only reasonable explanation, because without uplinks, most communications
are limited to line of sight. But that doesn’t account for the lack of radio
coverage. There’s still plenty of FM stations that broadcast from a transmitter
tower up on a hill somewhere to their listening audience, in some cases out to one
hundred miles away or more. AM can go even further. I’m not even going to get
into shortwave stuff. The point is, those stations should still be broadcasting.
But they’re not. Everybody at the campground said that all they got was that
‘stay tuned for an important message’ crap. Eric told me that the only station
he could get on the way up here was playing country music, the really old kind
like banjos and moonshine jugs. When he told me that, it triggered something
that I heard a while back. There’s an old coot somewhere south of Ghost Echo
Lake that runs his own little broadcast station. It’s kind of sporadic with
when it’s on, but I’ve picked it up a few times. I’ll bet that is what Eric
tuned in to.”

“I’m not following. I mean I understand what you said about
maybe our government had something to do with this sickness, but you’re
starting to lose me with some old guy playing banjo music on his own radio
station,” Thompson said.

“Bear with me, I’m getting there,” Andy said. “If you
remember about ten years back, the FCC mandated that all broadcast signals be
switched to digital by a certain date. Well, that date was two years ago. So
with the miracles of modern technology and everything being computerized, I’ll
bet that our lovely Uncle Sam has had the know-how and equipment in place to
shut off all digital communications, at least the mainstream ones whenever they
wanted. The old guy with the banjo and the jug, I’ll bet he’s still using
analog broadcasting equipment, or maybe he’s just too small of a fish for them
to worry about. In any event, it all points back to a specific plan.”

“Maybe they’re jamming the signals somehow,” Michelle said.

“I thought about that, and while it’s possible, I don’t think
it’s likely. At least not in the traditional sense as I understand it. If they
have the ability to do a blanket jamming over the entire country, then why do
our marine radios work?  And the little GMRS and FRS walkie talkies, as well as
Michelle’s Fish and Wildlife radios?  Don’t get me wrong, I’d bet my third nut
that the boys at Langley have some type of gizmo that could jam selective
frequencies on a large or even very large scale. I just think it’s more likely
that some type of ‘just in case safeguard’ has been in place and ready to go on
all of the major communication systems for quite some time. Think about it . .
. they obviously had the capability to turn it back on for the president’s
‘Don’t panic’ speech. And that, boys and girls, brings us to the most important
question. Why?”

“Why what?” Thompson and Sam echoed in stereo.

“Why . . . would they want to eliminate, or limit public communication?
If you think about it, we live in a country where everybody has access 24/7 to
information from practically unlimited sources. We depend on it. We need it. In
a lot of cases it makes us who we are. I’m not trying to rant about the evils
of technology, but there are people who couldn’t even tell you their parent’s,
or their child’s phone number. It’s not ‘xxx-xxx-xxxx,’ it’s ‘speed dial two on
my smart phone.’  I read somewhere that the average teenager sends over 500
text messages per week. PER WEEK!  It’s instant gratification, instant
communication, instant access to what’s going on, where it’s happening at, and
who’s involved. Except now.”

Andy stretched, then rubbed the sides of his face with his
calloused hands before draining the last of his tea. “Now, we’ve been rocketed
back to the stone age information wise, and that same little question still
remains. Why?  The government had to know that a communication and information
blackout would result in a mass panic. Anybody want to hazard a guess at the
answer?”

The faint jangle of wind chimes was the only reply until Sam
cleared his throat and said, “I’ll take a shot. When I was a kid I lived on the
reservation. There was one television. Not one in our house, but one on the
whole reservation. It was a nineteen-inch black and white model that belonged
to Miss Rose, the schoolteacher the Feds shipped in to teach us red kids how to
survive in the white man’s world,” Sam teased. “One of the treats of my youth
was that one Saturday a month we’d get to go to her house and eat popcorn and
watch movies. My favorite was Godzilla. Nothing quite like a big dark-skinned
creature stepping on a bunch of pasty white dudes,” Sam kidded, but everybody
laughed out loud, especially Thompson. “Anyhow, another show that I got to see
from time to time were the older reruns of some Twilight Zone rip-off. There
was this one episode where they were designing a supercomputer that would
defend the earth from alien attack. In order to make it work they had to have
an actual human brain wired to it. There was a roomful of candidates. Politicians,
generals, doctors, lawyers, a whole mix of the elite, all of them trying to
sell themselves as the best choice. There were a few other people too . . . blue
collar types. In the end, they chose the brain from a young mother. She had
four children. Of course, a short time after the surgery to implant her brain
into the computer, aliens attacked. Now remember, this was the classic television
episodes I’m talking about. They were in black and white even if you had a
color TV. Anyhow, you’d see a clip of laser beams blasting buildings into
smithereens, and it would cut to this brain in a jar. There’d be a lot of
clunky mechanical sounds and then two options would pop up from the computer. The
brain would then have to choose which one, like fire missiles at spaceship ‘A’
or launch jet fighters towards spaceship ‘B.’  With each choice you’d see a
flashback memory of the mother with her children. As it went on and on, it
became clear that we couldn’t win the war. Then the aliens communicated by
telepathy straight to the brain. They showed a picture of a planet-sized
spaceship in orbit above the earth. There was a huge weapon getting ready to
fire that would totally annihilate the world and everybody on it. The countdown
to firing was reading two hours. Well, the computer whirled and buzzed and
beeped for quite a while before spitting out the two options the brain had to
choose from. The options were simply ‘tell the people they will all die in one
hour’ or ‘don’t tell the people anything.’  So the end scene was of this brain
thinking back to when she was human. She was tucking her children in at night
and one of the kids asked her to leave the light on so the monsters under the
bed didn’t come out. Well, the mom was standing in the doorway with her hand on
the light switch. She smiled and told her kids that there wasn’t any such thing
as monsters, but the whole time she’s telling them that, you can see these
glowing eyes underneath the bed, and you know, you just know that she sees them
as well. Then she turns out the light.”

After a pause Thompson said, “I don’t get it. Are you saying
. . . shit the . . . I’m lost.”

“What I’m trying to say is that the reason they chose a
mother’s brain is because they knew that ultimately, she would want to protect
her children. And sometimes people need to be protected from the truth. When
she was faced with a no win situation, she picked the ‘smaller monster’ if you
will, of keeping the population of earth in the dark about their impending
demise, as opposed to the ‘larger monster’ of telling everyone they only had an
hour left to live.”

Andy nodded and said, “That’s what I’m thinking. They’re
choosing the panic that they know will happen with a communication and
information blackout over the panic of letting everyone have access to what’s
really going on. Or at least that’s my thought.”

Their eyes had fully adjusted to the dim candlelight, and
silent glances were exchanged for the next few minutes as they tried to digest
what Andy and Sam had said. Finally Michelle spoke.

“Will that really work?  I mean, does our government really
have the capability to shut down communications worldwide?”

“EMP?” Thompson asked.

“No. Even with a global saturation of high altitude EMP
bursts, you would still have unaffected systems. And we also wouldn’t be having
stations broadcasting the ‘stay tuned for an important announcement’ loop. Whatever
happened was deliberate and surgical. But as to the question of whether we can
do it on a global scale, the answer is no. Which is why I’m hoping that
Samantha has been able to find a functioning satellite somehow that will give
us some sorely needed information,” Andy said.

“Anything else?” Michelle asked him.

“Yeah,” Andy replied, “there’s been something bothering me
about the school, specifically about the military units there.” When no one
interrupted him to ask for details he continued, “The thing about it is, there
should have been no way in hell that you and I could have pulled off what we
did. And that means that they’re as muddled as we are. I would be willing to bet
that the situation is very similar at other locations. Major military bases and
other high security complexes may be a different story, but outside of them,
it’s going to be the same as what we saw at the school. Disorganized chaos. Broken
supply chains. Incompetent command structure, that sort of thing. And that tells
me that this infection has either caught us with our pants down, or it’s so far
beyond our ability to deal with effectively that the government is just
reaching into whatever mud bucket they can grab and throwing stuff up against
the wall, hoping that something will stick.”

Andy looked around the room for a few seconds before
shuffling back to the recliner. The faint ‘
sssss
’ of air being forced
out of the puffy cushion reminded Michelle of the hiss of a venomous snake. She
checked her watch again. It was almost 11:00 PM.