A man wearing wrinkled blue coveralls, tennis shoes, and a Navy ball cap approached, extending his hand to one of the men. "I'm Captain La.r.s.en, commanding officer of the USS Virginia."

One of the new arrivals reached out and firmly gripped La.r.s.en's hand. "We are-"

"I know who you are and why you are here," La.r.s.en interrupted.

Kil tried hard to hide a reaction before La.r.s.en continued.

"The admiral transmitted a personal message three days ago. He graciously included information on the team you arrived with, as well as information on you and your friend, Mr. Saien. We've heard about you and we've heard about the strange goings-on with whatever this Remote Six might be."

"Well, I guess the admiral saved me some time," Kil responded.

"That he did. Master Chief Rowe will show you to your stateroom," La.r.s.en said, starting to walk away.

"Quick question, sir?"

"Go ahead, Commander."

"What's in China?"

"We'll brief you in the SCIF. Be ready for read in at eighteen hundred."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

La.r.s.en departed in a hurry, speaking something that Kil couldn't understand into a brick-shaped radio before disappearing into a tiny adjacent pa.s.sageway. Master Chief Rowe maneuvered in front of the two, inspecting them with eyes likely calibrated by years at sea. He was a short man, maybe five foot eight, stocky, with a h.e.l.l of a mustache. I've flushed more salt water than you've sailed on was a common saying among senior navy sailors. Somehow it seemed to Kil that this maxim might have started with Master Chief Rowe.

"Well, I'm told that one of you is a commander. It's probably you," Rowe said, pointing at Kil. "Do you want a uniform? We have extras, though none of 'em have wings."

Kil knew instantly that the master chief had done some homework.

"I'd appreciate a set of coveralls or two if you can spare them, Master Chief."

"No problem, sir. You know my name, who are you?"

"Kil."

"Suit yourself, Commander Kil."

Saien laughed, not meaning to.

"And your name, Ali Baba?" Rowe said to Saien.

Kil bit his lip.

"My name is Saien."

Rowe looked at them both with critical eyes as if he had both judged and sentenced them on the bridge of the Virginia. "Commander Kilroy and Mr. Saien, welcome aboard Virginia. Follow me."

Saien and Kil stayed behind Master Chief Rowe as he navigated the maze of pa.s.sageways and ladders. Kil was already beginning to notice that time and s.p.a.ce were peculiar and fluid things...o...b..ard a submarine. He didn't think the boat had looked this big from the outside. They arrived at their new home. It consisted of canvas tarps thrown up against the bulkheads forming a deformed square with racks for sleeping and footlocker storage.

"Enjoy the new apartment, guys. It's a bit drafty, but with some duct tape and zip ties, she'll fix up nice. I'm the chief of the boat; you can call me COB if you want. Shorter than master chief."

Kil nodded at Rowe. "Thanks, COB."

"Very good, sir." Master Chief Rowe bolted away with purpose, screaming something about coveralls and cleaning stations down the pa.s.sageway.

Saien and Kil had met under interesting circ.u.mstances. Kil learned some time after they met that Saien had tracked him for days, observing him make his way south after surviving a nasty helicopter crash. In the process of tracking him, Saien discovered his handwritten note along with a cache of discarded weapons and supplies in the refrigerator of a long-abandoned home.

Kilroy was here.

The nickname stuck just before the swarm.

Kil's stomach sank even now as he thought of that day. They had been attempting to get the car started while thousands of creatures closed fast on their position. Three hundred meters, two hundred meters . . . dust, moans, closer. In a fit of panic and confusion Saien called him Kilroy, from the note he'd left. Kilroy evolved over the days ahead to just simply Kil.

They unpacked and stowed their gear in every nook and cranny they could find. Their racks were small and s.p.a.ce was limited. They placed some of their personal belongings under their mattresses; there simply wasn't enough room for what they had brought over from the s.p.a.cious carrier. Neither had ever lived aboard a submarine, a fact made glaringly obvious by the way they misallocated precious s.p.a.ce.

Kil sat on his rack and listened to the boat. It was designed for silence and felt like a public library compared to the carrier's montage of dragging chains, noisy ventilation, and cycling solenoid valves. He heard dive, dive, dive right before the bow of the boat dipped a few degrees, sending Virginia into the deep. Kil knew what he was up against and that he would most likely not make it back alive. It was simple numbers, logic. There were just too many. He was now up against over a billion, not millions.

It was four hours until the men were briefed on the perilous mission that lay ahead.

This marks my first journal entry onboard USS Virginia. It's been two hours since I boarded the submarine. The sea was a little choppy before we dived. The skipper informs me that we'll stay in the area for the next twenty hours to prepare for the voyage to Pearl Harbor. Saien and I are bunked in one of the berthing areas...o...b..ard converted into sort of a pseudo-stateroom. I'm lucky we were not stuck sleeping in the torpedo compartment, as is the treatment of most outsiders and non-submariners, NUBs.

Although I had served many deployments...o...b..ard ships in the navy, I had never thought I'd hear this being announced over 1MC: "Now muster all available personnel for nuclear reactor maintenance training."

It made perfect sense. We were not making anymore nukes-nuclear-trained naval personnel-in the navy, so it was either train new people or eventually we would run into a problem where the maintenance required on the reactors could not be performed.

Nuclear-powered boats were made for this sort of world-ending event. I can remember serving onboard a conventional carrier. Every few days we would need to pull alongside a re-fueler. Those types of boats would never make it in this new world. There are no refineries up and active to meet the ma.s.sive fuel requirement.

The only real weaknesses to the Virginia's mission are general hull maintenance, food supplies, and reactor repairs. The training being carried out in the reactor s.p.a.ces could abate one of those weaknesses. The Virginia generates her own water and scrubs her own air using onboard equipment powered by the reactor. There is no shortage of electricity. Just as some of the carriers with active reactors are being used as power plants, the Virginia could power a small town with little trouble.

I'm told that Saien and I are meeting with the boat's intelligence officer for briefing on the operation. The only hint about the op that I have received came from Joe before this morning's helicopter ride.

Joe yelled out over the rotors as we left the carrier's bridge island, walking to the helo across the steel and nonskid deck. "You're not going to believe it, Commander. Keep an open mind."

I still wasn't used to being called commander. I wasn't a real commander. I wasn't even getting paid, not that currency matters anymore, I guess. Either way, as of right now, I have no idea what could possibly surprise me after what I've been through the past eleven months. It feels like my first night of boot camp. I'm out of my environment, a little scared, and have no idea what's going to happen next.

6.

Hotel 23-Task Force Phoenix "Hurry up, Doc!" one of the men screamed out from the darkness.

"This little plasma ain't as speedy as the cart; I'm going as fast as I can."

"They are on us, man . . . Get the door open or we're screwed! I can see them in my gogs. They look pretty bad."

"You ain't helpin', man. Focus up."

Doc concentrated through the eye shielding on the white-hot starburst of the plasma torch. He traced the previous weld, slowly cutting through. He heard the undead footsteps and groans behind him while he worked, but would not pause. Either he was getting through the heavy access door or he would be stopped by the cold claws of the undead, ripping him off the entrance. The creatures approached, drawn by the bright light and noise from the cutting torch and the action of the suppressed carbines.

Excitedly, Billy called out over the firefight in progress, "Doc, hurry. I'm serious. I can smell their breath!"

"Dude, I'm moving. Just a few mikes," Doc responded.

"No time. Disco, frag 'em!" Billy hissed.

Disco pulled a grenade from his vest, yanked the pin, and tossed it out into the growing ma.s.s of creatures that approached.

"Frag!" Disco yelled as the grenade rolled to a stop under the canopy of walking undead corpses.

All four men hit the ground. Seconds ticked like minutes before the blast rocked the immediate area, scattering bits of rotting meat and bone everywhere. The blast took out a large number of the undead, or at least rendered them immobile.

Hawse went to town with his suppressed carbine, blasting at the stragglers. He screamed at Disco, "You're on laundry detail, a.s.shole!"

"What?" Disco responded, pulling a foam earplug from his right ear.

Hawse kept firing and lecturing, "Jesus, man, toss those things. You're gonna get bitten on the a.s.s and won't even hear it coming."

"Whatever, man. You know what happened here. When the sun comes up you might be able to see the rest of it sticking out of the ground," Disco responded.

The undead flowed through the tree line from the woods beyond, drawn to the explosion. Wouldn't be long before the team would be beyond the help of a hundred frag grenades-minutes at best.

Doc and the rest had been briefed before the jump. Some time before they arrived, a large, javelin-shaped device, designed to generate devastating barrage noise, had been dropped on this facility. The remnants of the intelligence community concluded that the weapon had been designed to sterilize the area of all life by attracting a mega-swarm of undead by blasting intense omni-directional noise. It was known only by its codename given in a cla.s.sified intelligence report-Project Hurricane. It took a flight of A-10 Thunderbolts and their 30mm guns to disable the device.

Doc listened to Disco and Hawse banter back and forth as he continued to inch through the welds on the thick steel door that led inside. Disco and Hawse continued to talk s.h.i.t to each other, taking shots in between, giving themselves enough time to think of better insults. It was all show, Doc knew. The men were actually terrified.

"Halfway there," Doc said to himself out loud.

He called out to Billy Boy, craning his neck over his left shoulder, "Billy, just to be sure, intel did say that it is empty inside, right?"

Billy replied while he scanned the area for leakers-undead that made it past the defensive line. "Yeah, the marines cleared it before welding the door shut. Nothing inside but maybe a few dead rats and some c.o.c.kroaches."

"Roger."

Doc thought about undead rats for a second and dismissed the idea as nonsense. They'd be too slow anyway, unless . . . Better not to think about it. He concentrated again on the torch.

Doc's cutting tool continued to advance around the steel door while the gunfight intensified behind him. Disco and Hawse ran their weapons until the heat from the gas system began to break down the oil inside. The smell of burning lubrication reminded Doc of the long war against terrorism that had defined his adult life. A war that was ended in just a few short days by the rise of the undead. Disco and Hawse fired relentlessly at the advancing creatures; bone and brain exploded, sending pieces scattering all over the growing ranks farther away in the darkness. They were drawing a crowd now.

The intelligence reports were very detailed about this place. Not long ago, this area had been overrun with hundreds of thousands of creatures. The previous tenants barely made it out with their lives. Some of the undead had remained after the noise device was destroyed. The rest wandered off to parts unknown in a self-perpetuating death march-locust swarms that devoured the living.

Doc finished the last few centimeters of weld and dropped the searing torch to the ground near his feet. "We're in, guys. Billy, watch our six; we're moving."

"Roger."

Their goggles automatically adjusted for the IR-filtered weapon lights shining brightly into the dark compartment ahead. Doc walked through the open door and pa.s.sed Billy the notice to follow.

"Last man," Billy said.

"Roger, close it up," Doc replied.

Billy secured the thick steel door and tried to seat the bolts, making the door as strong as a bank vault. Most of the bolts seated but some didn't. Good enough, Doc thought.

Hawse reached up to the front of his weapon. "Lighting up."

The men pushed their goggles up and off their eyes and adjusted to the new light. The other three flipped off the IR filters of their lights while Doc grabbed his map of the facility.

"This was hand-drawn by the former commander during his debrief on the carrier. He marked an X where he stowed a bottle of whiskey in the ceiling vent of the environmental room. Should be incentive enough to clear the place."

"You know it," Hawse said with a smile.

"Okay, here's the plan: Hawse, you take the living quarters and the halls leading to them. Disco, you take environmental. Billy, you cover me while I work mission control."

Hawse moved quickly down the dark pa.s.sageway. His first impression aligned with the intelligence reports. The facility had been abandoned in a hot hurry weeks ago. Hundreds of thousands of creatures converged on this position as a result of a weapon designed to attract them to its payload. Clothing, trash, and personal effects were scattered about. A dusty family photo alb.u.m sat open in one of the rooms, random blank s.p.a.ces telling a story; select pictures had been removed from the pages posthaste. There was no sign of life or death.

Hawse continued his sweep just outside the living quarters. A mechanical sound startled him, causing a flash of starbursts as his blood rushed into his eyes. He walked slowly, managing his breathing, trying to identify the sound. There were footsteps on the floor leading around the corner.

Hawse called out into the darkness, "That you, Disco?"

He rushed the corner, readying his gun as he rounded it. Expecting to face a corpse head on, he was met with only a dead end. The footsteps were from before, when the facility was still occupied. Hawse continued on to his primary objective, the whiskey bottle hidden in the ventilation. It was there, just as the map had indicated.

The place was completely abandoned, but this didn't matter to any of them. They stood watch and patrolled the facility as if danger were in every room. They were all friends and refused to be responsible for any of their teammates' demise at the jaws of undeath. They had seen more undead than living humans in recent months. It was not really hard to imagine.

During their last intelligence brief, it had been disclosed that they might be outnumbered in the United States by two hundred and ninety-five million and rising daily. There were some survivors holding out in attics and bas.e.m.e.nts around the U.S., but not many, the a.n.a.lysts estimated. Their numbers were diminishing hourly, adding them to the enemy's collective.

Doc transmitted out, "Hawse, how close are you to the generator room?"

"Uh, ten meters, I think."

"Think you can get it going?"

"Depends on how much diesel we got in the tanks."

"Do what you can, man, I'll need some juice."

"Okay, I'm workin' it."

Billy continued to scan. "Doc, you hear that?" he said.