Saien looked up at Kil with a tinge of disdain on his face. "Now it is you that will give me the nightmares I cursed you to endure. Stupid pig eater."

Kil laughed at Saien and leaned back down to continue reading his book. "Just don't make any noises crying for help-I'm trying to read up here."

A hard thud on his mattress from below indicated Saien's acknowledgment.

25.

Friendships were no longer forged via social networks; they were not born in churches, at parties, or during happy hours. Staying in touch in this time of undead reign harkened back to the dawn of radio. A handful of families still survived, those prescient few that had prepared for calamity. Unfortunately, none had prepared for anything resembling the current state of affairs. Most were concerned about terrorist attacks or financial collapse-a source of mainstream hysteria right before the dead started to walk. Europe and the Middle East were ablaze with civil unrest. The euro had already collapsed; the streets of Spain, France, Ireland, and even Britain were among those littered with police barricades and burning cars, even before the undead filled them.

The survivors huddled quietly in their boarded-over or underground shelters or hidey-holes in Idaho and other non-radioactive places. They tuned their shortwave radios to any frequency that still carried signal-any sound or modulated static that might give temporary reprieve from the permanent terror they endured. This was the new normal.

The majority of the dwindling living U.S. population didn't enjoy the safety of life onboard an aircraft carrier or inside a strategic nuclear missile silo-they lived in attics, abandoned FEMA centers, prisons, rural cell-phone tower perimeter fences, small coastal islands, and even boats. Some even tried their luck in abandoned rail cars or banks on the outskirts of what was once civilization. From handheld walkie-talkies to citizens band radios to HAMs, they attempted contact with each other, with anyone.

Every now and then, it was established, even if only for a fleeting moment-sometimes the sound heard over the airwaves was splintering wood or screams or the sound of a lonely gunshot. The last social networks were falling, node by node.

USS George Washington John was now considered the official USS George Washington communications officer, bestowed full access to the ship's communications arrays. He had a small contingent of civilians and junior enlisted to keep the ship's meager capabilities up and running. His primary orders were to maintain secure over-the-horizon contact with Task Force Hourgla.s.s due off the coast of Hawaii in five days. His secondary mission was to keep a secure laptop SATcom link with Task Force Phoenix, embedded at Hotel 23.

He'd been informed that TF Phoenix's main objectives were to secure the remaining nuke and attempt to salvage some of the Remote Six airdrops. On top of his duties as the ship's communications officer, John had been dubbed caucus leader by the Hotel 23 survivors, a t.i.tle he tried to downplay, but secretly loved.

John made his rounds daily, checking on Tara, Laura, Jan, Will, Dean, Danny, the marines, and others whom he had befriended during his time at Hotel 23. Annabelle, his Italian Greyhound, was still at his side happy and content when Laura wasn't borrowing her. Her hackles had not risen since she evacuated on the helicopter under the death grip of little Laura. Laura told John that she was sooooooo afraid that she would drop "Annie"-that's what Laura called her. It was sometimes inconvenient letting her out to do her business, walking all the way down to the hangar bay, where a dog-loving crewmember laid sod over some topsoil for the animals on-board. Annabelle wasn't the only shipboard canine. A few military working dogs found their new home on the Washington, treating Annabelle like one of their own, as they sensed who the common enemy really was. Any of the undead on the mainland would take down a dog and reduce it to a wet mess if the chance was presented.

John had no shortage of irons in the fire, but there was room for more, he thought. One of his enlisted men, Petty Officer Shure, was a particularly good radio operator. He was having regular luck making contact with Arctic Outpost Four. Last communication was about their fuel supply status and plans to expand it. The rumor going around the radio shack was that the Arctic outpost survivors were actually planning to refine biofuel from the frozen undead they had previously killed and discarded down a cliff, leaving them to freeze solid in the Arctic ice last spring and fall. John had been present during the transmission and knew it was no rumor. The admiral asked that he keep that information confidential; the admiral didn't fancy the prospect of talk circulating around about their Arctic friends behaving like mad butchers. It was too reminiscent of Kil's debriefing after his return from the crash; he had run into a band of cannibals that were using the undead as food-actually cooking rotting flesh-somehow neutralizing whatever caused the things to reanimate in the first place.

The shortwave radio link between the Washington and USS Virginia/Task Force Hourgla.s.s was becoming very unreliable. The ship's SATcom worked fine, but many of the satellites required to bounce the signal back to the Gulf of Mexico footprint had already burned up in reentry, their orbits left to decay without National Reconnaissance Office support and orbital adjustment. The SAT-com birds that still functioned in orbit were operating under access codes that no one had, or knew how to get. Shortwave was the main game in town for the military and the rest of the surviving populace.

John called a long overdue but impromptu meeting in the radio room. In attendance were all of his enlisted communicators as well as the civilian HAM operators who had volunteered their knowledge of shortwave communications.

The purpose of the meeting was simple-to establish and improve on the communications plan. John rolled up the projector mat that concealed his white board and began listing all priority circuits and their individual statuses.

Actively maintained circuits in order of precedence: Secure HF voice circuit with TF Hourgla.s.s-PMC Secure HF teletype circuit with Nevada facility (UKN)-FMC Secure SATcom burst circuit with TF Phoenix-FMC Non-secure HF voice circuit with Arctic Outpost Four-PMC "Now, as you can see here on the board, we have some problems to solve," he began. "Our top priority circuit is only operating in a partially mission capable, or PMC, status. We have been unable to reach Task Force Hourgla.s.s for some time now. We're going to have to offset this problem. Any ideas?"

One of the HAM radio operators in the back of the room spoke up. "We could try a relay."

"That's not a bad idea at all," John said, returning to the whiteboard.

Picking up his black marker, he drew an out-of-scale map of the world, outlining where the different task forces were operating and where the other facilities were roughly located.

"Task Force Phoenix is a no-go. They don't have HF capability up and working. They're using a discreet burst SATcom transceiver with a laptop configuration to send the text to that terminal over there." He pointed his hand at the corner where an operator was monitoring the two-ent.i.ty mIRC chat room. "Besides, Phoenix can't transmit during the day and is under strict emission control conditions anyway. They won't be transmitting unless absolutely necessary. I'm not privy to what is going on in Nevada. Those circuits pipe directly into a KG-84C crypto box sitting in this ship's signals exploitation s.p.a.ce. They only call down here to have us check our patch cables and recycle crypto for their circuits. Those two circuits are out of the running for any relay help. This leaves only one viable option: Outpost Four. I've been listening to the shortwave spectrum and our choices are limited. Rarely do we receive any shortwave coming from the mainland, just some troposcatter bounce and old news relays playing in a loop, probably up on solar power."

The HAM spoke up again. "We can adjust our frequencies for time of year. Use the higher frequencies during the day and the lower frequencies at night. The old sun up, freq up rule. Might have more luck."

"Now we're getting somewhere," John replied. "Let's get a solid plan on paper and in a few hours during our next scheduled contact with Outpost Four, we'll drop the request. Hopefully they have enough manpower left up there to help us out with our relay. One thing to keep in mind is that the outpost is in darkness and will be for some time. I'm not sure how this might affect the frequencies."

Petty Officer Shure, John's sharpest enlisted man, raised his hand.

"Yes, what's on your mind?"

"Well, right now we're using our KYV-5 crypto boxes to go secure voice with Hourgla.s.s. How are we going to relay sensitive data over shortwave to Hourgla.s.s and back using the Arctic station as the middleman?"

"We're going to have to go old school and use paper encryption and onetime pads," said John.

"No one remembers how to do that, boss. The last real radioman in the navy that could do that probably retired twenty years ago. We're a bunch of IT computer geeks."

"We're going to have to relearn the lost communications knowledge and forget what's advanced since it's become obsolete. You all have your marching orders-let's make it happen."

The small crowd dispersed, all except those who manned a radio watch station. John pondered for a moment as people began to clear out of the s.p.a.ce. Walking back over into tech control where all the circuits were patched, he thought to himself, We issue the crypto to SSES, so how hard could it be? The theory floating around in his mind was not one of complexity. In the span of minutes, he figured out how to access the circuit that was fed directly into the SSES from the still-active facilities in Nevada. He would splice the encrypted circuit and run one splice to SSES and run the other splice through his extra KG-84C encryption device loaded with the same crypto that SSES used-crypto that his office had issued.

He would tell no one, as the penalty for network intrusion at this level would be swift and severe. He rationalized it by telling himself that he wasn't doing it to satisfy childlike curiosity-he was doing it for Kil.

26.

Somewhere Inside the Arctic Circle "Slow down!" screamed Crusow.

"What's the f.u.c.king problem? We're a hundred feet in the air above a sharp ice floe. I don't want to slow down. I want to get off this G.o.dd.a.m.ned rope!" Bret yelled over the wind whipping through the darkness.

"Take it slow, you're going too fast. You break your leg or arm, the dogs will be pulling you up the side of this face at their speed, not yours."

The men descended somewhat slower now. The snow curled in horizontal whirlwinds against the ice face. Their spikes dug deep into the ice as they walked backward, traveling deeper. They wore green glow sticks attached to their ankles via the elastic material sewn into their cold-weather pants. They didn't want to risk using their headlamps just yet as the battery supply at Outpost Four was running low with no chance of replenishment.

Crusow thought about the fire log in his pack and how it was so d.a.m.n dark that they might actually need it to see. He tried to think about little details like this but the real subject on his mind was the dead below. He counted them in his head. He thought there might be about ten, maybe fifteen of them, most of them overweight-two of them three-hundred pounders. Fat was real energy and if done right, with the right chemical additives, one could convert those stored food calories to combustible liquid fuel. He thought about what they might look like and what they might- "Watch where you're swinging!" Bret whined loudly. Crusow accidentally banged into him during his short daymare about the dead. Focus, Crusow, he chanted to himself.

They descended slowly for well over one hundred feet. Neither of them knew for sure if that was the real depth, though; they just knew that the ropes were longer than the gulch was deep-at least that's what Franky had told them last spring when he rappelled down the face at the other side of the outpost. The other face was higher.

Now Crusow and Bret approached Franky's final resting place at the bottom of the gulch. Crusow remembered that night. One of the researchers-Charles, Crusow thought his name was-had died of diabetic complications in his sleep and woke up hungry. He tore Franky's throat out before both were shut down by an ice axe to the head and tossed down into the abyss below.

"How much longer you think it is?" Bret asked.

"It's over two hundred feet, or somewhere thereabouts, from top to bottom. I'd say we're now probably close to it."

Just as Crusow finished talking, his feet hit the beginning of the bottom. The ice face lost its vertical grade and began to incrementally angle out away from the wall. The grade continued to angle farther out until both men walked backward down a steep but manageable hill.

"Found one," Crusow said.

"Where?"

"You're standing on its chest."

"s.h.i.t!" Bret exclaimed, jumping to the side, nearly tumbling down the hill.

The outline of what was once a man lay half buried in the ice, its face glowing green by the shine of Bret's chemlight. It was Franky. The body was twisted and broken from the fall, and the gash in his head from Crusow's axe could clearly be seen just above the forehead.

"I'm still sorry about that, Franky," Crusow said loud enough for Bret to hear.

"Sorry for what? That thing wasn't human when you killed it."

"You may be right, and you may be wrong, but I'm still sorry."

They both paused and looked at Franky for a moment before Bret broke the silence.

"How many we bringing up, Crusow?"

"All of them. I'll start digging Franky out of the ice and you start looking for the others farther down."

"Roger," Bret said, fading into the darkness deeper down the angled ice face.

Crusow checked his gloves to make sure the drawstrings were tight. He didn't want any exposed skin while swinging his axe. Although he tried not to look at Franky's corpse, he found himself fixated on its gaping mouth filled with red ice. He forced back laughter when he thought of Han Solo frozen in carbonite. Franky's forearms were protruding in front, perpendicular to its body, as if frozen during struggle. Crusow began to hack carefully at the ice that gripped the corpse. He did so for minutes, missing on occasion, knocking frozen flesh bits into the white powder around his dim sphere of green. Crusow didn't have a weak stomach, but the thought of butchering Franky made him sick enough to take a short break. He pulled the radio out of his vest pocket where it was tied to a b.u.t.ton hole to keep it secure if dropped. Hanging at an awkward angle, he turned it on with his teeth.

"Mark, we're down here, man. Bret is at the bottom and I'm about fifteen feet above him cutting Franky out of the ice."

"Franky? Hardcore, man. How does he-"

"Don't ask, man. Just don't."

"Okay, well, Kung is at the dog paddock and I'm above you at the ledge. The dogs are rigged and we are geared up. I think the most we should lift at once is two or three bodies."

"Yeah, I think so, too. Looks like we'll be down here for a couple hours. My temp says fifty-five below. That's warm for this time of year." Crusow thought he could hear Mark laughing in response from the ledge above. "In a bit, I'm going to flash my headlamp and you mark the spot on the ledge so you know not to drop them on us. Might hurt from up there."

"Okay, Crusow, we won't drop 'em until you say it's cool."

"All right, talk soon. Out."

A double click on the transmitter indicated Mark understood the plan. Crusow called out to Bret.

"Bret, where are you? Find any?"

A faint voice cut through the wind. "Yeah, I found three. Chopping them out. It's f.u.c.ked up."

"I know. Let's pile them in one spot. Careful to stay away from their mouths or anything sharp," Crusow yelled out to Bret below.

"No s.h.i.t, Captain Obvious."

p.r.i.c.k, Crusow thought.

After a few more minutes, Crusow swung his axe down and dislodged the last piece of ice holding Franky to the steep face. The corpse slid down the hill for two or three seconds before hitting something with a thud.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Crusow! That was close."

"Sorry, where is it?"

"It hit the pile," Bret replied bitterly.

"Well, that's good then. How many are piled up now?"

"Four, including that one," Bret said as if somehow it mattered that he had gathered more corpses than Crusow. "Listen, I'm getting cold. We're gonna be down here for a bit and we have enough bodies to call down the ropes and rig a few to go up. Why don't we use that fire log I saw you put in your pack and warm up a bit?"

"I was going to save it until we really needed it, but all right, I'm coming down."

Crusow descended another fifteen feet before the face leveled out to the point that he didn't need to be in a harness. Clicking out of the carabiner, he walked over to the glow of Bret's chemlights.

"I'm switching on my lamp for a sec."

Crusow flipped the red filter over his light lens and switched on the LED. He could see the half-naked corpses piled on the snow as if the creatures were frozen while playing Twister. G.o.dd.a.m.n that's sick, Crusow thought as he dropped his pack onto the ice.

He placed the fire log on the ice. Crusow moved over to the corpses to scavenge a makeshift fire mat. He didn't want the log sinking into the ice, putting itself out. One of the corpses in the pile wore a pair of house shoes. He couldn't recognize the face, probably crushed by the fall. He pried the shoes from the corpse and placed them underneath the log. Crusow started the fire quite easily despite the snow and wind that bore down on them. The bright light from the small fire burned patterns into his sight.

Crusow turned to Bret. "Okay, we dig, pile them here, and take shifts resting, sound good?"

"None of this sounds good," Bret said as he stood up and began the search for more bodies.

Crusow used the time to stand near the fire and warm his extremities. The temperature out here would kill you in a few hours, even when wearing cold-weather gear. The heat would slowly slink out of you and soon your core temperature would creep below ninety-five degrees into hypothermic levels, causing shakes, confusion, fatigue, and eventually death.

The radio crackled. "Crusow, you guys getting close to being ready for the first run? I think I see a fire down there."

Crusow pulled the radio from his pocket. "Yeah, Mark. We're freezing solid down here. Needed the fire. Tie a chem stick to the end of the ropes and throw 'em down. I'll let Bret know they're on the way. Give me thirty seconds before you drop."

"Okay, you got it."

Putting the radio back in his pocket he called out, "Bret, the ropes are coming. Get back to the fire so you don't get hit."

There was no response.

"Bret, you out there?"

Faintly-over the wind-Crusow could hear Bret's voice.

"I'm okay, drop the rope. Be back to the fire in a minute. Almost got one."

Crusow looked up in enough time to see the three green chemlights phase into view as they plummeted toward him. They hit the snow near where he'd dug out Franky and slid down the face fifteen feet off to his left.

Keying the radio, Crusow said, "I see them. Going to grab them and pull the slack over to the bodies and tie them up."

"Okay, man, just pick three light bodies for the trial run. Don't hook up any heavies, all right?"