SecondWorld (47 page)

Miller flung himself to the left, ducking down the last aisle just as twin
twang
s sounded out behind him. Were there two more men in suits? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t hear any heavy feet behind him, just the crackling hum of some kind of bell device. When the sound grew suddenly louder, he knew that whatever it was had entered the aisle. He looked over his shoulder and nearly tripped.

The thing was huge.

At first, Miller thought he was looking at something organic. It had four metallic limbs—tentacles really—each at least fifteen feet long. They reached out and pulled the thing along, moving quickly. For a moment, he thought the limbs were holding it up, but that couldn’t be true, because they never really touched anything. They just wriggled hyperactively, moving only to avoid direct contact with the physical environment. The thing was floating.

The body was shaped like an eagle’s head sans the curved beak. The base glowed with flickering energy as some kind of bell device kept it aloft. But it was the two weapons mounted on either side of the thing that held Miller’s attention. They were identical to the flesh-melting weapons the two mechanized men had carried. Of course, the two miniguns mounted to the bottom were pretty intimidating, too, but they weren’t firing, or even spinning up. Miller’s first impression was that he faced an automated drone like the thing outside the NSSB, but then he saw a pane of red-tinted glass at the core. Through the glass he saw a face. Kammler’s. The man looked amused. Miller fired three shots, but the rounds just ricocheted off the thick, curved glass. Kammler laughed, his voice amplified through a speaker.

“What do you think?” Kammler asked. “We have thousands of them ready to search the country for survivors.”

Miller knew the man was trying to make him think about talking when he should be running. It was a clue that the man was about to fire. Miller had fifteen feet before he reached the end of the aisle, where who knew how many soldiers waited for him. And he was boxed in on either side. He made the only maneuver he could—spun around and ran straight at Kammler.

Both weapons
twang
ed loudly. But missed.

Miller noticed the miniguns had yet to power up and wondered why Kammler wasn’t using them. Were they not loaded? Then he realized the answer. The strange weapons melted flesh, but not other elements. If Kammler’s shots struck the relics stored here, they wouldn’t do any damage. But the miniguns, those would wreak havoc.

“They don’t seem very accurate,” Miller taunted, but then had to dive to the side as one of the flailing limbs snapped down toward him. He caught a glimpse of the barbed tip as it took a chunk out of the polished stone floor. It looked like it had been designed to punch through a man, but then not come out, not cleanly anyway.

Kammler’s voice echoed in his mind.
We have thousands of them ready to search the country for survivors.
They were designed to quickly pick off or tear to shreds any survivors they came across.

Including
the
Survivor.

Miller ducked to the side as a second arm sprang toward his head. It cut a slice in his cheek, punctured the G4 box behind Miller, and stuck tight. Another arm shot out and missed, striking the box as well.

Kammler let out a frustrated grunt.

He’s new to this,
Miller thought.
He might know how to use the machine, but he’s not very good at it.
Why would he be? Generals never get their hands dirty.

Miller was slammed from behind as Kammler retracted the tentacles and yanked the wooden panel off of the large crate. For a moment, the heavy slab of wood covered his body, and if Kammler had been thinking, he could have easily crushed Miller beneath it. Instead, the weight lifted as Kammler tried to free the limbs. As the wooden panel rose up and away, Miller caught sight of Hitler’s big, black, solid metal, six-wheeled Mercedes G4, designed to tour battle zones and protect the Führer. The thing was a tank. Without a gun. But still a tank.

Miller dove across the aisle, yanked open the car’s passenger’s side door, and jumped in. He slid across the seat to the driver’s side and found the key in the ignition. He hoped that the car had only recently been crated, perhaps transported from Antarctica with the rest of this stuff, and turned the key.

The power came on, but the engine just coughed and died. He tried again. Nothing. Then he remembered. No oxygen!

“Like a fox in a hole,” Kammler said. “No place to go.”

But he didn’t strike, either. The car must be important. Miller shoved open the driver’s side door. It clunked against the wooden box, but there was just enough room for him to squeeze out. He got down and slid himself beneath the car, quickly finding the large gas tank. He rapped on it with his fist. The tank was full.

“I can wait,” Kammler said. “In minutes, the world’s fate will be sealed and your failed heroics will entertain the Führer when he returns.”

Miller drew his knife and stabbed it into the side of the tank. Twin streams of fuel poured out and flowed slowly toward the open end of the crate. He pushed himself back to the other side of the car and stood. Moving in the tight space was difficult, but Miller made his way around to the back of the car as the smell of gasoline wafted into the air.

Kammler wouldn’t smell the fuel, but he would see it once the puddle emerged from beneath he car, which it would in just a moment.

Standing at the rear of the car, Miller saw the fuel peek out and made his move. He jumped out of the box, hoping that Kammler would have his weapons trained on the car doors. But he didn’t wait to see if he was right; he dove forward into a roll, just as the weapons twanged, and missed. Again. Kammler cursed in German, his composure melting away.

Miller knew he had just a few moments before the weapons recharged, and this time, he ran away. Toward the end of the aisle. The crackling hum grew louder as Kammler gave chase, but came to a quick stop as Miller turned around to face him, handgun aimed at the gas.

Kammler laughed again. “Your people never knew when to keep running,” the man said.

“And you never know when to shut up and pull the trigger.” Miller adjusted his aim down and to the right. He squeezed off three quick rounds. A flare of orange light followed the third shot, and then a massive explosion as the gas tank ignited. The powerful blast knocked Miller off his feet and smashed Kammler’s machine into the metal frame of the next warehouse stack.

Miller pushed himself up and took a breath. His chest ached. The pony bottle had been knocked from his face. He found it dangling around his neck and pulled it back on.

There was a loud grinding of metal and a crackling hum as Kammler’s machine righted itself and yanked its arms free from the large warehouse shelves. The explosion had been powerful, but not powerful enough, and the flames died immediately for the same reason the car wouldn’t start. The twin weapons lowered toward Miller. There would be no banter this time. No delay.

But Kammler never got to pull the trigger. The three-story-tall warehouse shelf above the car buckled and dumped its contents. Miller didn’t know what the crates held, but when they landed atop Kammler, they struck like a runaway truck. Kammler, and the robotic suit, slammed to the floor as more heavy crates toppled down. Miller doubted the man was dead, but there wasn’t time for that anyway.

Not wanting to expose himself to more gunfire, Miller found a gap in the crates of the shelving unit between him and the control center. He slid through and found Adler waving him over. “I cannot get in! The programs running the satellites are protected. The settings are locked.”

She tapped on the keyboard, trying something else.
“Scheiße!”

Miller entered the control center and ran to her side. On the screen he saw a display that showed the status of several satellites. Bars rose and fell, monitoring various systems, none of which Miller could discern since everything was in German. “What is all this?”

“The system is monitoring the satellites, adjusting power, altitude, everything from here. But it’s locked. I can’t boost the power.” Adler slammed her fist down on the keyboard.

Computers were not Miller’s forte, but thinking clearly under pressure was. “What would happen if the satellites were no longer being controlled?”

“In theory, without their energy intake being controlled, they would take in more energy than they could handle. Different method. Same result. They might also just shut down. But I can’t do that either,” Adler said. “Everything to do with the satellites is locked. I’d need a password.”

“But you can access other functions?”

“Yeah, everything else, but—”

“Fork bomb,” Miller said.

Adler’s eyes went wide. She mouthed the word “fork bomb” and then her fingers became a blur over the keyboard, but the windows he saw on the screen looked nothing like the command prompt he saw in Antarctica.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Have something to do first.”

“What? There isn’t—”

“Done,” she said. The command prompt opened and Miller saw the fork bomb code scroll onto the screen.

$ :(){:|:&};:

She hit Enter and then said, “We need to get out of here. Now!”

“We should make sure it works,” Miller said. “If they get here, they could—”

“They’re never going to get the chance,” Adler shouted. “Listen!”

Miller focused on his hearing. There were boots. Voices—muffled behind rebreathers. Weapons being cocked. The occasional gunshot seeking them out. And he heard crates being shoved aside from the aisle where Kammler had been buried. But behind it all, there was something else.

Something persistent.

And rising.

A buzz.

Like a beehive.

61

Miller’s head snapped up. A much more modern-looking Bell hung from the ceiling. It was at least half the size of the one in Antarctica. Adler had managed to activate the fail-safe device—what was no doubt meant to be used if the facility was overrun by a hostile force—using Brodeur’s own tactic against him.

“Take off your weapon’s sound suppressor,” Miller said as he twisted his off. “Let’s make as much noise as we can.”

Adler removed her silencer. “If we’re going to get out of here, we need to leave now.”

“We’re not leaving,” Miller said.

“What!”

He pointed to the set of double doors that led to the vault door. “You better believe that’s locked down. There’s no way out.”

Adler looked at the floor. “Then it ends here.”

“Actually,” Miller said with a morphine smile, “I was thinking it could end in there.” He pointed to the cryogenic chamber. The short hall connecting the two spaces was open. “The cavern in Antarctica was one big open space, so I don’t think they had much choice. But this place is man-made. It will be shielded. I’d bet my life on it.”

“You are,” she said.

Miller gave a laugh, forced away his smile, and said, “Sorry. Morphine. Ready?”

She nodded.

Miller peeked over the partition and saw an army. A hundred men at least.

Bullets zinged over his head as he ducked.

Adler saw his wide eyes. “That bad?”

“Don’t look. Just point your gun in back as you run and you’re bound to hit someone. Don’t stop shooting until you run out of bullets.”

Adler braced herself, ready to make a suicidal sprint over two hundred feet of open space.

Miller looked back at Adler and a flicker of light behind her caught his attention. The computer screens—all of them, including the big display—went black. The fork bomb had worked, but would the satellites overload? And would it be soon enough? There was no way to know, unless they lived. “Go!” Miller shouted, breaking out into a limpy sprint with Adler on his heels.

The pair started firing right away, which gave them a few seconds to build speed while the enemy flinched. At his best, Miller could finish a hundred-yard dash in just over twelve seconds, two longer than the world record. Injured and hopped up on morphine, he figured it would take twenty.

Five seconds into his run, Miller ejected his spent clip and slapped in another. The enemy opened fire.

Adler shouted in pain, but stayed on her feet and kept firing.

Miller dove into a roll, allowing Adler to pass him, and came up facing the enemy. The control center in the middle of the room had helped block a lot of the fire, but the SS men were running around it now, shooting wildly as they ran. Miller focused, fired several times, and took out the two lead men. But the rest didn’t slow. They had numbers and cultlike conviction on their side.

He caught sight of Brodeur, just three men back, shouting for his men to press forward. He lined up the shot, but never took it. A round struck his side, tearing skin and muscle before ricocheting off a rib, which broke.

Miller fell back with a shout.

Brodeur ordered his men to fire.

Adler appeared by Miller’s side, yanking him to his feet.