"Griff, strength fifty, about twenty meters right behind you. I'll call out when danger close."

No response.

Although Kil could not be sure from the feed, it appeared that Griff was ignoring everything and resigned to the prospect that nothing mattered but getting the door closed. Kil watched the video feed as if it were a rerun; he had seen this play out before, but not in the black-and-white monochrome of the IR video on screen before him-he'd witnessed it in living color. It never ended well. The creatures moved, frenzied-they didn't know where Griff was in the darkness, exactly. He zoomed in on the door, just as the UAV orbit shifted to allow a good look angle. Six inches of gap. Too small for any undead to fit.

"Griff, danger close, danger close! That's enough! They can't fit through that gap!" Kil exclaimed.

Griff gave the crank another full turn and looked over at the door, verifying Kil's report. Jumping to his feet he pulled his back-up weapon, a Glock 34 pistol. His rifle sat empty, propped on a wall inside the cave. Griff began working the crowd. With only a single magazine remaining, he thought of saving one round for himself.

His decision was made when he slammed the full magazine into his handgun, slapping the slide forward. His ears rang from 9mm reports. The final round from his last magazine dropped the nearest threat-but there were hundreds, possibly thousands more coming. He re-holstered his sidearm, reaching for his tertiary weapon. In his right hand, wrapped with a paracord lanyard, was a large, razor-sharp, fixed-blade knife; in his left was another frag. This was Griff's life-insurance policy, payable in death to any undead thing within fifteen meters.

Another frenzied creature wandered too close and sensed Griff in the darkness. Swinging his knife from far right to left he beheaded his attacker, dropping the severed head and body to the ground at his feet. He reached over with his knife hand and pulled the pin on the grenade in his left, leaving the spoon in place-dead man's switch.

Hundreds more poured up the steps like a bizarre reverse-flowing waterfall. There was nowhere to flee, and Griff was so tired of running anyway.

"Griff, I'm sorry, man," Kil transmitted, watching the last stand play out from above.

Griff looked up into the sky, waving his knife, and then did what only a few men had the fort.i.tude to do in past wars fought over land, freedom, or money.

He charged.

Griff picked the largest group and ran screaming and slashing at their heads in a bid to kill every creature on the island. Kil could not see what was happening beneath the maelstrom of flailing undead appendages, but many of the undead fell before Griff's insurance policy was paid out in full. In a white flash of frag and guts, Griff held the line to the very end.

36.

Arctic North Making biofuel was a gruesome and nauseating effort. With Kung's help, Crusow hacked away at the half-frozen bodies, removing the precious fat. The skin was freezer burned and blasted by the Arctic wind. Kung was at first confused by what Crusow needed during the butchering process; he had too much muscle in his first lops of flesh.

Crusow explained what he needed by grabbing what little fat he had on his midsection and pointing it out to Kung.

"This here, Kung, not this," Crusow said, now pointing at his bicep.

After harvesting a couple hundred pounds of fat from the bodies, Crusow began the tedious chemical process of converting the fat into biofuel. The smell was abhorrent and took some getting used to. Careful heating of the fat was required to properly process the fuel. Crusow wore a mask and goggles to protect him from the boiling fat. His first few batches turned out well and seemed to work fine when tested indoors.

Crusow brought a small amount outdoors, away from the heated lab, to test it on one of the generators modified to accept alternative fuel. After leaving the fuel in the generator shack for half an hour, he returned to find that it had solidified to a gel-like consistency inside the container.

Crusow brought the fuel back in, placing it near a heating vent. The fuel eventually returned to a liquid state. Crusow's solution to the solidification problem was to use the Sno-Cat's primary diesel tank to start the engine and mount a secondary tank near it. He installed heating coils on the secondary tank to keep the fuel in a liquid state. It wasn't ideal, but he didn't have access to a full-on refinery or the luxury of complaining about it.

Crusow and Mark had kept a close eye on Larry the past few days. He was bedridden, teetering closer to death since Bret was killed at the bottom of the gulch. Despite the encouragement of the other three, Larry was giving up. They moved Larry's quarters near the radio room, where he could be monitored more conveniently. As a countermeasure, they leaned chairs and other things against his door-they would not be surprised if he returned from death. This made the watches interesting, when their improvised warning devices fell unexpectedly.

The odd-hour radio watches were necessary, resulting in several successful communications relays from USS George Washington to USS Virginia and vice versa. Arctic Outpost Four was now an information nexus between the warships.

Via shortwave radio, Crusow was becoming more familiar with John as well as his friend Kil. He even started his own chess game with John after learning of the ongoing matches. It was a good way to pa.s.s the time; Crusow was anxious to make radio contact at every opportunity. With the extra chessboards from the outpost game room, Crusow was able to follow John's game with Kil while he played his own game. It was surprising the lengths a man went to in the attempt to fight boredom.

Crusow had already seen every movie at the outpost several times; at least the ongoing games were fresh content. If you included the players, these radio-broadcast games would have the highest per-living-capita Arbitron ratings in broadcast history.

Chess and military communications were not the only things being pa.s.sed via shortwave. News from the outside was always good to hear, no matter how bad. In the past week, Crusow learned that Oahu, Hawaii, was a nuclear wasteland, that America still had aircraft flying in limited capacity, and that the Virginia was continuing her rescue operation west after leaving Hawaii. Some of the military brevity made the messages unclear in meaning but Crusow and Mark were able to put most of it together when it wasn't encoded.

Now that the Sno-Cat had been modified with dual tanks, they could make the trip to the thinner-ice zones to the south, where an icebreaker might be able to rescue them.

Eventually, Crusow distilled fifty-five gallons of biodiesel, a convenient amount, as the modified heated tank installed on the Cat was a fifty-five-gallon steel storage drum salvaged from the outpost dump.

In Crusow's dealings with Larry, Kung was a valuable amba.s.sador. He felt bad for Kung, realizing that he had been dealt a bad hand. Although he was improving, English was still a distant-second language for him and he found it difficult to communicate his thoughts and feelings to the others. He was truly a stranger in an odd and unforgiving place.

The stress from the encroaching cold was causing a group mental breakdown. There was a clock ticking down to the date they would run out of fuel and freeze. This date could not be slid to the right, rescheduled, or put off any longer that the time the generators would run dry. To Crusow, spirits seemed to be crumbling fast.

Since his horrible but necessary trip to the bottom of the Gulch, Crusow's nightmares had returned in full force. The long darkness of the winter north only fueled the feelings of fear and hopelessness that heaved him into torturous and unrelenting dreamscapes. He would not soon forget the hand-to-hand combat with Bret or the other creature with a face that was familiar but forgotten-wiped from memory by the horrors endured since his incarceration on this ice rock.

USS Virginia-Hawaiian waters I'm off duty for the moment. The sh.o.r.e element of Task Force Hourgla.s.s is still inside the cave facility. I've instructed the watch to wake me if they hear or see anything on the Scan Eagle picture. Another UAV launch is scheduled soon to relieve the bird that is airborne. We haven't heard from the team in six hours since Griff- Well, since he fought to the death; I suppose that's the best way to put it. Saien and I have been discussing the current situation on the ground and thinking of all possible outcomes.

One possibility: We never hear from the team again and proceed to China without a SOF team, or Chinese interpreter. Saien and I know the second and third order effects of that; neither of us are fans of that outcome.

Another more favorable possibility is that they make it out of the cave, reporting that it's secure, well stocked, and operational. Saien and I have already given a warning order for a ready boat.

With the sun high in the sky earlier, we went topside with the binoculars to check the beach.

I could see the creatures standing in and around the team's RHIB, seemingly waiting for them to return. A large percentage of the landma.s.s had been nuked. The effects of large-scale radiation on the creatures is likely still not understood by anyone, or at least anyone I know of.

I received another cable from John today-more chess moves. The first pair of numbers was intuitive, but the second series was like another I received a few days ago-strange.

Along with the mystery numbers was a question. "Read Tunnel in the Sky?"

Actually I had. I sent Crusow (the man running the Arctic Outpost relay operation) a reply, and we talked a bit afterward. Crusow was my usual contact when I conducted the relays.

Late one night, Crusow and I switched to a higher alternate and clearer frequency and had a conversation about our past and the events that led up to now. Crusow told a harrowing story of recent capers at the bottom of a cliff near the outpost, and how they lost another man as a result of a thawed corpse. The story was disturbing, but did give valuable insight on the undead. Crusow was beginning to seriously worry about his survival up there. His fuel states were running low but he'd taken gruesome measures to produce more. Only four souls remained at Outpost Four with one very sick and close to death as Crusow described.

John seems in good spirits, Crusow informs me. Crusow pa.s.ses that John says Tara is well also. Even though the vast distance has disabled voice comms in all but the most perfect atmospheric conditions, this is still better than nothing, and keeps me going.

About to catch some shut-eye, Saien is already sawing logs in the bunk below.

37.

Hotel 23-Southeast Texas The four-man team had been out twice since Doc and Billy's encounter with the river of undead. They were lucky on the first excursion; they didn't encounter more than a dozen creatures, easily enough for two men to handle under the cover of darkness. The team hadn't seen the sun since the days before parachuting into the Texas wasteland. Despite that Remote Six had not shown itself thus far, the broken bee stinger of Project Hurricane still remained where it originally impacted, partially destroyed by Warthog GAU-8 cannons weeks ago. This was a daily reminder to the team, an obelisk of warning that they were not alone.

Hawse and Disco grew restless, prompting Doc to let them have the second outing. They followed the same procedure-no radio calls, and stick to the planned route.

The coordinates were a bust, and the drop was gone, or had never even existed. Hawse and Disco decided to scavenge the area on the way back so that the mission wouldn't be a total loss. They recovered a twelve-volt battery charger, a twelve-volt air pump, some painkillers, and a crossbow with ten bolts. That was it.

They ran into trouble during one of their stops, forcing the mission to go a little longer than expected. Hawse convinced Disco that they should scavenge a home that sat a quarter mile off the main road. The damaged home had visible solar panels and expensive SUVs parked in front-probably rookie preppers with money. Through their optics, they observed that one wing of the home was burned, indicating abandonment or possibly siege. They hopped the fence and approached cautiously, intending to verify abandonment before entering through the damaged McMansion wing. They both hoped that this would be a rescue operation instead of justified theft.

Approaching the wing, they saw charred skeletons scattered about. The corpse nearest the house was also burned, but some flesh still remained. It lay facedown, wearing a military surplus flamethrower. The fuel reservoir on its back was damaged; jagged parts of the tank pointed outward. They neared the corpse.

It began to move.

The creature's head c.o.c.ked sideways at the two. Its eyes were burned out, but it somehow sensed their presence. It tried to crawl but what was left of its lower body was buried in rubble and ash. Hawse approached close enough to kill it with his knife. He saw that the creature wore a leather bandolier of ammunition across its chest.

"Looter?" he said.

"Not sure, maybe. Let's get this over with," Disco said.

"The walls aren't as damaged as I thought, we'll need to get in somewhere else," said Hawse.

They walked around to the front. The home was much larger than it appeared from the road. There were bullet holes in places, concentrated around the window frames. The front porch was littered with tarnished bra.s.s, most of it 7.62x39. AK-47 or SKS, Hawse thought. The screen door sat near the front door, torn from its hinges, covered in grime. A sign hung on the front door.

INSURED BY 1911.

"Looks like they needed a better insurance policy," Hawse said.

"Yeah, something like that."

Hawse reached for the k.n.o.b and began to turn. The door was unlocked. He paused, listening.

Nothing.

Hawse turned the k.n.o.b and pushed the door inward. He caught a glimpse of something, a small wire, just as the door swung open.

Ping A familiar sound. Both men instinctively dived from the porch onto the ground, and covered their ears before the explosion.

b.o.o.by trap.

The ground was two feet below the plane of the grenade detonation. Disco suffered only minor splinter injury from the damaged porch. They both heard the moans as soon as their ears stopped ringing. The sounds came from behind the house. There must have been dozens, maybe a hundred back there.

Hawse and Disco hoofed it back to Hotel 23, pursued by a respectable horde of undead. They beat the creatures, and the sun, barely.

The third outing was an operational order coming from the carrier, and required vehicle transport. Doc and Disco were to acquire transportation and meet another team for supply pickup and intelligence exchange. The other team was stationed at Galveston Island, ninety miles east of Hotel 23. Both teams would split the mileage and meet at midnight at a bridge on a county road spanning the Brazos River. They would each bring high explosives as a precaution, providing them the ability to deal with a sizable undead ma.s.s. If a swarm pursued either team, they would rig the bridge and call it even on the safe side.

On the night of the mission, Doc and Disco checked and re-checked their gear. They had a fully charged car battery-heavy but essential in starting a long-dead vehicle. They also had two gallons of good stabilized fuel that Hawse had scavenged on the previous mission.

Forty-five miles on foot would be a death sentence; there was no doubt that a vehicle would be an absolute requirement. There was only one type that would give them the speed and power they needed with two gallons of fuel-a motorcycle.

Both men said their good-byes to Billy and Hawse and closed the hatch behind them. They moved east to the nearest road, eyes open for vehicle possibilities. The weight of the car battery and fuel pulled heavily on their backs as they tried to keep a good pace. Their NODs had fresh batteries, and the stars lit the cool December night quite well.

The first prospect they found appeared to be a winner. A black Kawasaki KLR 650 sat parked on its kickstand between two cars. There was no undead movement in the immediate area, so the two decided to make a move on the bike. Doc led and kept his carbine high, adjusting his optic brightness to his NODs. The bike's tires were low. The men modified the twelve-volt air pump with alligator clips so that they could connect it directly to the car battery they had with them. There were drawbacks, as the modified battery-powered air pump made a h.e.l.l of a lot of noise.

There was no point in pumping the tires if the engine wouldn't start. They checked the oil via the window on the right side of the engine. Probably old, but it would work. The keys were missing but these bikes didn't have overly complicated ignition systems. Disco was able to defeat the ignition and the gas cap with his multi-tool and some ingenuity. The bike battery was confirmed dead-no surprise to Doc. He was a motorcycle rider and every time he returned from deployment, he would need to charge the d.a.m.n battery, even after some of the shorter, ninety-day detachments.

Reaching under the headlight, Disco snipped the wires for light discipline. He did the same for the brake lights and turn signals as they were often accidentally activated while riding. They poured a quarter gallon of fuel into the tank and shook the frame, sloshing the good gas in with whatever was left in the tank. Looking inside, Disco could see that it was about half full. They'd need more at some point in the night. Disco checked the tank switch, verifying it was switched on.

They ripped the plastic side panels off, revealing the dead bike battery, so they could quickly attach the alligator clips from the charged battery. The bike had a choke, so Doc preemptively pulled the lever; it would need it after sitting out in the elements this long. They decided to air the tires and start the engine simultaneously. Both would make noise, so they might as well save time. Before they began either, Disco took point and started the watch-they would definitely attract undesirables now. The tires were not completely flat but would need a lot of air to support their combined weight and keep the motorcycle stable.

"Okay, Disco, here goes," Doc said quietly, attaching the clips from the charged battery to the dead motorcycle. Nothing happened, Doc thought. Then he remembered-gotta push the starter b.u.t.ton. He depressed it and the engine cranked over but didn't start. He repeated for a minute or two, adjusting the choke lever. He also managed to air both tires in between attempts.

The engine started to show promise. Doc was not startled by the sudden sound of Disco's suppressed carbine-the dead were near. The engine finally started fully, prompting Doc to remove the clips and stow the car battery in the side pannier compartment of the bike. The dead were still blinded by the darkness, reacting to Disco's carbine. What Doc wouldn't give for a huge pack of Black Cat firecrackers to toss down the highway. He adjusted the choke lever and the bike began to sputter, but soon adapted to the new setting, growling with health.

"Get on, b.i.t.c.h!" Doc said to Disco.

Disco didn't seem to care; he worried more about the approaching mob. They jutted forward as it began to get crowded on the road. Doc called back to Disco to go over the memorized directions again. They had forty-three highway miles to clear with a fuel stop somewhere in between.

The road was as they expected, cluttered with debris and abandoned cars and the undead. They had to move at least thirty miles per hour, or the engine sound would draw the undead to the road ahead of them. All along the way they noticed the details of desperation. SUVs that had attempted to go around traffic jams and were stuck in medians; cars flipped over, burned out, and filled with undead. Ambulances sitting, back doors wide open, with undead strapped to gurneys. Huge, unserviced potholes were also a menace to them on the motorcycle. If they had been riding a sport bike, they would have already dumped it in the numerous foot-deep holes in the road.

At the top of a hill, they saw a fuel truck jackknifed at ninety degrees with mostly flat tires. There were bullet holes in the cab, but the tank trailer appeared undamaged.

Doc remained on the bike, keeping it running. Putting the kickstand down would activate the engine cutoff, and Doc didn't trust the battery. Not worth it to take any chances.

"Disco, knock that tank and let's see if there's any juice. I'll cover."

Doc fought the bike into neutral-a difficult task while the engine ran-activating the bright green light on the display panel of the bike. The light burned out his NODs for a moment. Doc covered the light with his glove while Disco checked the tanker.

"She's got gas, man!"

"Okay, what are you waiting for then?"

Disco started the transfer process. Hopefully the fuel sitting in the tanker had not gone bad. The bike didn't have a gauge on the panel so they were guessing at this point. Doc reached down to the reserve lever to make sure it wasn't actuated. He wanted a failsafe.

Using a piece of hose he cut from the trailer, Disco was able to siphon gas from the tank access. He filled the fuel can up, topped the bike off, and then filled the can once more. The markings on the tanker did not indicate whether or not the fuel was mixed with ethanol additives, important for the shelf life. Disco closed the access and suggested that Doc mark this wreckage on the map. Slightly relieved, and with fuel concerns out of the way, they reset their odometer and kept riding to the bridge between them and Galveston Island.

38.

USS George Washington "How far along am I?" Tara asked Jan.