Eleven
Jack Mason entered what looked like a large office on the second story of the house on the opposite side of the hall from the master bedroom. He moved quickly to a sliding glass door and peered out onto a balcony. Opening the door he saw a number of spent shotgun shells on the tiled floor. Next to the shells sat an automatic Skeet-throwing machine with a few clay discs left in its rack.
“He shot skeet from his office balcony? What a Dick.” Mason said out loud.
If there’re shells, there must be a shotgun
. Jack thought as he closed the curtains and turned on a standing lamp. Next to a bookcase was a large oak cabinet. He opened the cabinet and smiled. Inside he found two double-barreled shotguns. One was a very expensive looking over-under twelve gauge shotgun, the other an old double barrel Remington. In a drawer underneath, he found two full boxes of shells and an old World-War II era, German Lugar as well as a half-f box of loose shells. The Luger was easily recognizable. He was never a fan of the Nazis but they did manufacture some fine weapons. Though the pistol was most likely actually used in the war, making it over sixty-years-old, he knew its reputation as a reliable weapon. There was an empty magazine for the Luger but no nine-millimeter bullets for the vintage pistol. He pocketed the pistol and examined the over-under shotgun. It was the finest, most expensive shotgun that he had ever seen. He had no idea how much it might have cost but the ornate design etched into the silver plating said to him that it was worth quite a bit. Stamped in its side, he read the manufacturer’s name; Browning Citori. He ran his hand over the polished silver and felt the intricate etching of the design work. He released the lock and cracked open the breach. The front part of the barrel dropped towards the floor and Mason quickly pulled two shells from the half-open box. He loaded the long barreled shotgun and flicked it closed with a very satisfying metallic snap. It wasn’t an automatic rifle and a mound of ammunition, but a few boxes of shells and a shotgun this beautiful was better than nothing.
Downstairs, in the family room, Nikki’s eyes grew wide when they fell on the Television. She quickly snapped up the remote control from the coffee table. The large display mounted above the fireplace hummed to life. As the image became clear, she recognized the actors, one a beautiful redheaded English woman and the other a floppy haired blond young American. The film was a romantic retelling of the ill-fated voyage of the Titanic. She frowned as she watched Leonardo Dicaprio pretend to draw Kate Winslet. She remembered that this film had played in their small local theatre for an entire summer when she was a kid. She hated the film for its sappy, unrealistic romance. How in the world could a woman as beautiful as Kate Winslet ever fall for a boy like Leo? The movie was too much of a silly fairytale for her, though her friends ate it up.
She tried to change the channel but the television only responded with the word, “Input,” on the screen. She thought that she must be on preprogrammed movie channel.
Why else would this sappiness be playing during a disaster?
She wondered. Nikki found the button labeled TV on the remote and pressed it. The television erupted into a Breaking News story; the volume so loud that Nikki jumped and fumbled to turn it down. She looked behind her with nervous surprise, not wanting to appear foolish in front of the others. When she realized that she was alone she turned her attention back to the broadcast. The studio was brightly lit and expansive, like all major network newsrooms. A beautiful woman sat at a table with two men, as if it were any other normal news day. Nikki slowly increased the volume.
“So we will air the Vice President’s remarks live at ten a.m. eastern time tomorrow. “ The woman looked to the side and nodded, clearly receiving instruction.
“Now we are going to re-run a press conference from earlier today by the Secretary of Defense, concerning the return of overseas troops.”
Nikki shook her head and pressed the channel button. She wasn’t interested in world events at the moment. What she needed was local news. She stopped on the Oregon station but it only played a washed out rebroadcast of the previous network’s feed.
“…hastily assembling at ports and airbases with an emphasis on force protection…” She changed the channel again; trying the Sacramento station. An onscreen graphic said ‘Please stand by’ and underneath, just as had been with the other channels she scanned, a black strip with white letters crawled across the screen. The crawl used words like ‘National Emergency’ and ‘Await further instruction.’ Nikki changed the channel again to an independent station out of San Francisco.
A very serious woman sat at a cluttered news desk sorting through a handful of papers as she spoke. A large half empty bottle of Evian stood on the desk. The woman looked out of place as she lacked the highly styled hair and make-up of a network newsreader. The top of the screen flashed ‘Evacuation ordered for San Francisco.’ At the bottom a graphic said, ‘Avoid any infected persons.’ An image of a man in white silhouette with a flashing red target on its head was in the lower right hand corner of the screen with the words, ‘Susceptible to head-trauma,’ underneath. The woman drank from her bottle and furrowed her brow as she read.
“Do not attempt to leave safe areas without a plan and some sort of protection. The Bay and Golden Gate bridges have been sealed. There’s no access through those routes. The ferry landings have been completely over run by infe...” The woman stopped, lowered her head and then rose back up to look directly in the camera.
“…Over run by what ever these things are. The government is saying infected, others say they’re dead. Whatever they are, they’re deadly. If you’re still in the city and have the means, get out. Get together with your neighbors and arm yourselves. What we’re hearing from law enforcement is that there’s hardly any law enforcement left; just a few cops hunkered-down here and there.” Something caught the woman’s attention off camera.
“She’s back? Okay. We’ve established contact with Allison…”
Nikki remembered that the boys were from San Francisco. She dashed up the stairs and called out to them.
Tony jogged into the office and saw Jack standing behind the desk.
“Can we get this place secure?” Jack asked without looking up.
“Yeah,” Tony said looking around the room and out the balcony, “I wasn’t sure about the sliding glass door in the back. Usually that’s a pretty big weakness but its not made outta glass either.”
“Like the mansion, huh?” Jack said looking up.
“Yep, I think its bullet-resistant Lexan.”
“Weird. Cool, but weird.” Jack said. “With that and the outside fence, I guess we’re pretty safe here tonight.”
“I searched the garage and the other rooms. All I found was this Forty-five and a single walkie-talkie” Tony said ejecting the magazine and locking back the slide. “Only one clip though. Did you find any Forty-fives?”
“No. None. Did you find any Nine-millimeters?” Jack asked.
“No, no other ammo anywhere.” Tony answered looking around the room. “Why wouldn’t this cat have more ammo?”
“I know I would.” Jack grumbled. He picked up the Luger and tucked it in his belt. “I’m gonna keep this one. I got a few hundred rounds at home. You think a guy who ran an ammo factory would have more shit?” Mason said looking at the hardware on Lance’s desk.
Tony spun the .45 and reinserted the magazine, “I’ll hold on to this.”
Jack snatched up the Citori over-under shotgun. Tony grabbed a box of twelve gauge shells and the Remington double-barrel shotgun.
“We should give this to Veronica.” Tony said. Jack nodded and stared at the remaining ammunition heaving a heavy breath. Footsteps pounded up the stairs and Nikki’s voice called out.
“News is on; they’re talking about San Francisco.” Her voice cracked.
Tony set down the shotgun and shells then headed to the stairs. Jack paused and looked at the telephone on the desk. He slowly reached for the phone, lifted the handset to his ear and heard nothing. He tapped on the buttons and heard the tones but the phone made no connection. Jack tossed the handset onto the cradle with a hard plastic crash. He tightened his right hand into a fist and left the room.
Twelve
Alexandra sat at her desk in her suite trying to decide if she had all her ducks in a row. Her briefing was complete and sent off to the leader of Richardson’s personal security team, her laptop and spare batteries were ready, her satellite link and sat-phone were packed. All that was left was to make a few calls and try to get some sleep; if that was possible. She didn’t like the idea of accompanying Richardson and knew that she would be expected to serve as little more than his assistant. But there was more than just resentment at what could be seen as a temporary demotion; Alexandra was finding herself reluctant to leave her staff at the facility. She snapped up the phone and dialed the extension for her Chief of Security. The phone answered after a single ring.
“Security.” Said the voice of Keith Cavanaugh.
“Good evening Cavanaugh.”
“Evening ma’am. What can I do for you?”
“The Old Man ordered me to accompany him tomorrow. I’m leaving you in charge of the facility until I get back.” She said fishing a Camel light out of a pack on her desk.
“Affirmative, he informed me of that himself; any special instructions?” He said.
“Just keep everyone safe. I can get him to sign off on an Aries Team for back up if you like.” The phone was silent.
“Cavanaugh? Are you there?”
“Yes ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “No, I think my team will be just fine.”
“You don’t like Aries do you?” She lit her smoke.
“I don’t like Mercenaries. I had the displeasure to work with some contractors in ninety-one. They’re undisciplined, sometimes out of shape, and frankly a little too barbaric for me.” He said unapologetically. “And they’re paid too damn much to be working next to enlisted personnel.”
Alexandra nodded. She liked Cavanaugh. He was an old soldier, what they used to call
Regular Army
, who put in his twenty before going into security. She set her cigarette in the ashtray and smiled at his candor.
“Anything new in the world?” She asked as she kicked her heels off under her desk. She stood, stretched, unzipped her pencil skirt and allowed it to fall to the floor while listening.
Gonna need some jeans and hiking trainers for tomorrow
, she thought.
“The boys have been listening to French military traffic. A mixed company of infantry and law enforcement refused to fire on a group of people in Paris. They couldn’t tell who was infected and who wasn’t. They ended up overrun by the crowd.”
“Jesus!” She said sitting back down.
“Television coverage was graphic. The French called in ground-attack helicopters supported by Mirage jets. They’re strafing the Left-Bank at this moment.”
Alexandra put a hand to her forehead and rested on the desk. She had lived in Paris during an internship at the U.S. Consulate while in grad school; Six months of free labor for the government. She looked at her cigarette; the very habit she had picked up on the
Rive Gauche
. Paris wasn’t as clean as she thought it would be but she still found it a beautiful city. She never could have imagined it becoming a war-zone. She cringed at the thought of fifty-caliber fire pulverizing the grand mirrors of the Café de Flore, where she would study in the afternoons while smoking Gauloises and drinking coffee that could cure narcolepsy. The café had survived the Second World War, but she wondered if it could survive this.
“Chief.”
“Ma’am?”
“I’m filing a company order. It won’t carry any real legal weight but it will shift any responsibility to me if we get into trouble.”
“Ma’am?” he asked.
“I’m officially authorizing you to take any an all measures to keep the staff of this facility safe. You have full access to all arms and armament, even R&D ordnance.” She said suddenly feeling guilt that she was leaving her crew.
“Don’t worry Ma’am. We’re surrounded by desert and double fenced. We’ll be okay.” He assured.
“I want you to requisition a supply drop tomorrow. Whatever you can get your hands on; put it on the company tab.” Alexandra said.
“I’ll see what I can do.” He said.
“You sure you don’t want some help?” She asked reaching for her cigarette. She noticed that her fingers trembled as they found the smoke.
“I’d sooner teach the Skunks to shoot.” He scoffed. “We’ll be fine Ms. Devereaux, and if you don’t mind me saying so, thank you for your concern.”
Alexandra nodded solemnly and closed her eyes.
“Good night Chief.” She said feeling her jaw tighten with stress.
“Night Ma’am.”
Thirteen
A map of San Francisco flickered on the screen with red shaded areas to the north and east. The rest of the map slowly faded from red to orange to yellow as it went south. Thick black lines slashed across the throats of both the Golden Gate and Bay bridges out of the city. A voice spoke over the graphic.
“Thank you very much Allison, and please thank your guest for us. Stay safe.”
The image switched to a low lit newsroom bustling with activity in the background. All pretense of a glitzy broadcast under normal circumstances had been dispensed with. This was news; functional, raw, and as it breaks. A young man dashed towards the woman at the desk and whispered in her ear while handing her a paper. He left and she spoke.
“Okay, we have a tape from a network broadcast that we want to show you. It’s from our competition but we think the information is important so they can bite me about rights and clearances. “
A muffled voice in the distance said something to the woman. She shrugged and another voice said to her, “The cell phones.” She nodded.
“Yeah, while we cue that footage I want to remind you about what we have learned about cell phone service across the state. The cellular network is understandably overwhelmed right now but we have some suggestions. The network attempts to route calls around areas of outages so service that isn’t working at one moment may work later on.” The woman said setting down her notes. She looked directly in the camera and pleaded.
“I know you want to reach out to loved ones. I do, I really do, but please take some of the burden off the network by using your phone; cell phone or land-line, as sparingly as possible. If you can’t get through, don’t try again right away, wait an hour, or two, or try at four in the morning when the load will be lighter. You’ll save your battery and you’ll help us all.” The woman gave a tired smile. Another voice called out to her from off camera.
“Oh yeah, this is important. If you get through to a cell phone but there‘s no answer, leave a voicemail. We have heard more than a few instances of individuals who couldn’t get cell service to connect a call but they could get their voicemails. So that’s another hint. Text messaging is working on and off in this same manner.”
The same young man from before dashed back into the scene and handed the woman a torn piece of facsimile paper, then moved off as fast has he had appeared. She read it for a moment then spoke,
“This is an advisory from Oakland P.D. Apparently they are using civilians and other non-law enforcement personnel to coordinate the securing of the Bay Bridge.” The woman looked off camera and asked, “Is this serious?” Her face looked reluctant and she nodded before continuing.
“They are advising their personnel to place identification with the names and address of their next-of-kin in the front right pocket of their pants. “ A heavy weight washed over the woman’s face, “Somebody at OPD is thinking ahead, but Good Lord, that’s bleak.”
Another shout came from the studio and the woman, reached for her bottle of water. She opened the cap and said.
“Now let’s look at the tape from our conservative friends in New York.” The woman mumbled something inaudible but clearly derogatory and leaned back to drink from her bottle, the screen faded out.
Nikki couldn’t help but notice the tension in Jack Mason’s posture. What started out as him leaning against the back of the couch quickly turned into a mangling of the cushions as his hands clenched harder with the ongoing newscast. Tony was another story. He spoke.
“That’s not a bad idea about the notes.” He said nodding, “We should all do that.”
He sat down on an ottoman and leaned towards the television, watching closely. Nikki noted how his face changed in a funny expressive way to certain things being said by the broadcast. It was subtle; a pinch of the eyes, a raising of the brow, or the way he turned his head to the right just a little bit to listen closely. She was starting to pick up on his manners. She wondered if his left ear didn’t hear as well as the right or if it had something to do with the different sides of the brain. She knew one side was good at math and the other was good at lying, but she couldn’t remember which one was which. She liked that she was able to make an observation about Tony. For some reason, she was happy to be able to read him, even if just a little.
The television cut to a beautiful doe-eyed newsreader with blonde hair sitting on a couch in a brightly lit studio. The camera approached low in a full-shot that showed her long tanned legs and short skirt. Exciting up-tempo drums and trumpeting horns played in from the break. Nikki saw Tony cock a half smile at the woman’s appearance. The woman spoke.
“With us now via satellite is Professor Neil Bryce from Nasa-Ames Jet propulsion laboratory. Professor, I’m sure the first question on everybody’s mind is; why was there no warning of this meteor?”
The Professor, a middle aged man in a blue sweater, lifted his eyes behind thick glasses thoughtfully and nodded.
“Well, what fell to earth were meteorites, they came from a very small asteroid; three actually that the French have named Cerberus. The problem has to do with something called Albedo, which is the reflectivity of a celestial body. These objects are essentially completely black and reflect no light at all; hence, they’re impossible to see unless they transit, or pass, a bright object. Now we also scan the heavens with radio telescopes but the unique composition of these asteroids, their shape and size, were not detected until it was too late.” He lifted a large piece of film to show to the camera. The image was not unlike a huge x-ray. It showed a white banded area of a planet with a small fleck of dirt in a corner. He pointed to the tiny fleck.
“Cerberus most likely left a belt of asteroids around our solar system called the Kuiper Belt, oh around the time of Christ. We believe that this asteroid was seen as a whole about fifteen years ago on a few frames taken of Jupiter, here. The only reason we could even see it was because it was so unreflective and stood out in contrast to the gas giant.” The professor showed another image, this time with three smaller flecks in place of the first.
“Here we see that the super gravitational forces surrounding Jupiter tore the first body into three smaller pieces.” The professor put down the images and removed his glasses. “We thought that it was destroyed as so many strays from the Kuiper belt are by Jupiter. But it must have been slingshot out of harms way and towards us.”
The television changed to a two-shot of both interviewer and the Professor underneath a graphic that said, ‘Why didn’t we see this coming???’ The interviewer nodded and spoke.
“So what can you tell us about its composition? If it is thousands of years old as you say, how can these meteorites make people sick?”
“The Meteorites are what we call Carbonaceous Chondrites. They’re very old, perhaps left over from when our solar system formed. The samples we have seen show a high metal composition such as carbonized iron and the mineral Olivine.” The professor said while the interviewer continued to nod as if she had the slightest idea what Olivine was. He continued.
“But what is most interesting is the almost honeycombed structure. There are spaces within that contain a number of organic molecules; complex nucleic acids and proteins that have yet to be identified.” With this the interviewer became visibly curious.
“Are you talking about germs?” she asked.
“We don’t know. There is still much to study, but the basic elements of life may be inside these meteorites.”
“This sounds incredible. I find it hard to believe that anything could live in space.” She dismissed.
“Not life as you know it, but a beginning. One of the men who discovered DNA, James Watson, was a believer in the theory of Panspermia; that life here had its beginnings out there. It’s only after such organic compounds were introduced to the primordial earth that they began to thrive and evolve into the biodiversity that we have today.” The professor smiled and the woman frowned while a skeptical look came over her. The professor added.
“Then again, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, so who knows.” He smiled again. “You do believe that there were Dinosaurs once, or do you?”
The woman with big hair scowled.
“Then why haven’t we ever heard of organic compounds in Meteorites before?” She challenged smugly.
“Well we have, it just doesn’t get same exposure as war and gossip. The Murchison meteorite recovered in nineteen-sixty-nine had as many as seventeen different amino acids and other organic compounds present. Not to mention the Martian meteorite ALH-Eighty-Four-double-oh-one, which contained what appeared to be fossilized bacteria.” His smile faded.
“But the Martian meteorite was debunked. They couldn’t prove that it was bacteria inside.” She smiled.
“But we couldn’t disprove it either.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “The fact of the matter is that these most recent meteorites are infecting people. The mechanism through which it is doing so is not important right now. What is important is that the people stay away from any of these meteorites. Their composition after entry into our atmosphere makes them highly volatile. They can just explode for no reason at all and throw their Organic Material, some distance. You certainly don’t want to get any of that on you.” He emphasized the words “Organic Material” almost mockingly.
“Well, thank you for your time professor.” The woman said smiling. He interrupted.
“And avoid contact with the infected. They’re carrying the same compounds in their blood. If you hit one with a bat or a stick, be careful, you could infect yourself by careless contact.”
“Thank you very much sir. And now let’s have a look at a tape from earlier today at the Pentagon.” The newsreader smiled as if all was fine with the world.
Nikki saw Jack leave through the front door. Tony stood and began to follow. Suddenly Nikki became very worried.
“Where’re you going?”
Tony turned, “Gonna see what clothes I have left. I gotta take a shower.”
“That sounds like a good idea.” She sighed
“You wanna take one?” he asked. She lowered her eyebrows and stiffened.
“There’s a shower in the upstairs guest room.” He said and pointed up towards a door. “Veronica and the nice lady are staying in the master bedroom. Jack and I’ll stay down here so that leaves you your own room. I’m gonna use the shower on this floor.”
“Oh.” She said looking up the stairs, “Okay, thanks.” She said and started up the stairs. Tony turned and almost walked into Mason returning through the door with his sword in hand. Tony stopped and let him pass.
“That freaked her out.” Mason said. Tony didn’t understand what he referring to. He watched Mason head to the kitchen then through the back door and decided that he didn’t care.