Final Dawn: Season 3 (The Thrilling Post-Apocalyptic Series) (7 page)

Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry

5:07 AM, April 25, 2038

“Rachel!” Marcus’s voice was low, but he still managed to hiss at her as he spoke, communicating a frightening level of urgency and panic. “Wake up! We’ve got problems!”

Rolling over and pushing herself to her knees, Rachel crawled forward, joining Marcus and David who were each crouched behind a control panel, peeking above it to watch out the side of the train. Sam lifted his head to look at Rachel and she shook her head at him, whispering for him to stay still.

“What’s going on, guys?” Rachel slid in between David and Marcus, who both pointed through the window. After meandering through the woods for a while, the tracks converged with a highway, running parallel to it for several miles. Out on the highway, illuminated both by the glimmer of the rising sun and lighting from the storms, Rachel saw the reason why David and Marcus were both staying hidden. No more than fifty feet away, thousands of creatures were moving together down the road heading south. Changed individuals both old and young made up the group that was larger than Rachel could have imagined. The creatures paid no attention to the train as it passed them by, whipping down the tracks at top speed, just as it had when it was under the control of the creatures previously.

Marcus turned around and sat down on the floor of the locomotive, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly. “Damn… that’s a
lot
of them.”

“These migrations seem to be getting much more common.” Rachel whispered. “I guess it’s time for them to all congregate at the nexus.”

Marcus peeked back up at the window, watching how quickly they were traveling compared to the creatures. “Well that’s no problem. We’ll get there way before the creatures do, going this speed.”

“True, but who’s to say that the AI’s going to wait for every creature to reach the nexus before launching its next step? What about creatures in the rest of the world? I’m not sure they’d be able to make it here, let alone in any reasonable time frame.”

“That…” David turned around as well, trying to think of a good reply, “that’s a very good point. What about those creatures? Separated as they are from the nexus, they won’t be able to get here. So what’s going to happen to them?”

“Couldn’t there be other places where they’re building these nexuses?” Marcus’s question was met with a quick shake of David’s head.

“Definitely not. I would have seen them on the satellite scans. Whatever they’re doing, they decided on this particular location, luckily for us. I’d hate to be stuck trying to get across the Atlantic.”

“So what happens to these things when the nexus is gone?” Marcus looked at Rachel, repeating David’s question.

“Your guesses are as good as mine. They might self-destruct, try to re-form in swarms or who knows what else. It doesn’t really matter, though. Not now, anyway. We just have to destroy the AI before it does whatever next-level bullshit it’s trying to do. We can worry about mopping up the survivors afterward.”

The answer Rachel gave was unsatisfying to the three of them, but with nothing better it was the only one they had. Getting back on their knees, the group resumed their watch of the creatures, occasionally pointing out a particularly disfigured or odd looking one as they tried to make light of the admittedly frightening situation. Though the creatures had no idea that Rachel, Marcus and David were on the train, if they found out they could easily derail the train and ensure that the three wouldn’t make it to the coast.

The tracks continued along next to the road for several more minutes before branching away, back into the woods and fields as it had before. With the creatures long out of sight, the trio all breathed a collective sigh of relief and sat back down on the floor of the locomotive. Too filled with adrenaline, Rachel and David had no more interest in sleeping and instead busied themselves with organizing their supplies. David started to set up his computer and electronics that he had taken from the APC before it was destroyed while Marcus and Rachel took stock of their food and water and examined the controls of the train in detail.

Marcus glanced over at David sitting on the floor, hunched over his computer as he was examining satellite imagery. “Hey David, where do you think we are?”

“Hm?” David turned and looked at Marcus, distracted by what he was looking at.

“Our location? Any ideas?”

“Oh, sorry. These aren’t live images; there’s too much cloud cover for that.” David sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing his temple as he tried to figure out where they were. “Somewhere in the Carolinas, I’d guess. I’m not exactly sure where this particular track goes, though.”

Rachel leaned over David’s shoulder, taking a look at his computer. “That’s something we need to figure out soon. If this train was on its way to the gulf as we assumed, there could be a track changeover that we need to take to get there.”

David nodded. “Two steps ahead of you there. I’m looking through some of this older imagery to try and figure out what track we’re on, then I should be able to tell you exactly how we’ll get there.”

Marcus leaned back against the wall, looking out at the sharp shadows cast from the trees by the flashing lightning. “I wonder how Leonard and Nancy are getting on. It’d be nice to at least know that they’re alive.”

There was no response from either Rachel or David as they all thought about Leonard, Nancy and the submarine, hoping that—somehow—a miracle was being pulled out of a hat. The only sounds in the locomotive for several minutes were the engine, Sam’s gentle snoring, and the tap of David’s fingers on his laptop keys. Locked in a battle with the computer, he worked tirelessly until, finally, he spoke.

“What the hell…”

Rachel looked over at him lazily, then caught sight of what was on the screen. “Hey! You connected with the satellite!”

David nodded slowly as he stared at the screen, a curious expression on his face. “Yes, just temporarily. It’s down again, but… this can’t be right.

“The satellite log shows that there was a login from… the Pacific Ocean. Not too long ago, either.” He looked up at Rachel and Marcus, turning the screen more so that Rachel could see the data herself.

“How on earth can you know that someone in the Pacific was looking at the satellite?” Marcus raised his eyebrow as he asked the question.

“GPS coordinates. The satellite records the location of every access attempt for security, plus a whole host of other information, too.”

“If I had to guess,” Rachel said, interrupting David as a smile slowly built on her face, “then I’d say that Leonard and Nancy are not only alive, but on their way to us as we speak.” She jabbed her finger at the screen, pointing to a collection of letters that Marcus didn’t recognize. “That’s not one of our machines, and it’s certainly not anything I’ve seen from a US government computer.”

Rachel’s smile was infectious, and Marcus and David quickly found themselves grinning along with her, overjoyed at the knowledge that Leonard and Nancy were most likely alive, well, and bringing some much needed backup to the fight.

Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims

11:39 AM, April 25, 2038

In the haze of smoke and confusion, Leonard wasn’t quite sure where things had gone wrong. Thirty seconds earlier, he had been standing at the bottom of the stairwell next to Nancy, watching as the four crewmen launched explosives onto the second bridge while another two crewmen ascended a ladder on the wall of the lock, climbing toward a nearby control room. Thousands of creatures were pouring across the bridge above the Arkhangelsk, but despite the massive size of the vessel and the noise made by the crewmen on her deck, the creatures on the bridge were paying them no mind. Out of nowhere, though, several events unfolded at once that radically changed the situation.

The roar of one of the creatures cut quite clearly through the sound of them walking and running across the bridge, which in turn caused hundreds of the creatures surrounding it to stop walking and look for the source of what had made it cry out. One of the four crewmen on the bridge, frightened by the creatures overhead, prematurely detonated the explosives with an emergency detonator, causing a chain reaction with the rest of the explosives. However, since an uneven amount of explosives had been placed, it did not collapse with the precision that Krylov had planned to happen when they had long since passed the locks.

Twisted shards of metal both large and small filled the air, churning with huge plumes of smoke and flames. Bits of the bridge began to rain down onto the Arkhangelsk and Nancy pulled Leonard back, nearly toppling him over as they ran several feet down the corridor to escape from the debris crashing in through the open hatch. Hundreds of the creatures on the bridge were killed instantly at both ends where the explosives were laid, and the survivors howled in rage, focusing their attention on the destruction to find its cause.

Of the four crewmen on deck when the explosions went off, three were killed almost immediately by pieces of the bridge swinging and falling downward, scraping along the hull of the Arkhangelsk as they went. The fourth was able to dive through the hatch, barely escaping a massive piece of the bridge that hung in the air, swinging back and forth before finally crashing down, sending a shudder through the entire vessel. Alarm klaxons began to howl throughout the ship and Krylov shouted into the radio, trying to figure out what had happened.

With the bridge in tatters—and much of those tatters now on top of and in the water around and below the submarine—there was still the matter of passing through the locks to deal with. The filling and draining sequences were fully automated, yet they required someone in the control room in a tower overlooking the central bridge to start them up. The two crewmen assigned to this task were very nearly shaken off of the ladder leading up the side of the lock to the control room, but they managed to hang on through the turmoil.

Looking back, they were both in shock at seeing the carnage below them. In addition to the bridge having been half destroyed and the creatures injured and enraged, their escape route back through the Arkhangelsk’s hatch was now cut off by the massive pieces of steel that lay twisted on the deck, blocking all entry and exit. Creatures were leaping from the bridge onto the submarine’s deck far below, some of them falling still as they broke limbs while others managed to stay intact and began tearing at the debris that covered the open hatch.

“Move!” The crewman lowest on the ladder shouted at his companion, who was staring at the mayhem with his mouth hanging open. Startled, he looked down and then up before resuming his climb. With another thirty feet to go before reaching the control room, both men hurried as quickly as they could until they reached a metal hatch. The lead man pushed against it with his shoulder and it popped open with a clang. Both men pulled themselves into the control room, the lead man going straight for the controls with a radio in his hand while the other pulled a submachine gun from a bag strapped to his back before taking up a guard position near the main door to the control room.

On the Arkhangelsk, the situation had gone from bad to worse. The sound of creatures landing on the hull above them spurred Leonard and Nancy to race down the corridor, limited only by the speed at which Leonard could throw himself forward with his crutches. The creatures tore at the metal debris covering the open hatch, effortlessly removing enough of it in the space of a minute to allow themselves easy entry down the stairwell and into the submarine itself. Letting Leonard get ahead of her to jump through a bulkhead doorway, Nancy turned and saw a dozen creatures racing toward her, the red alarm lights reflecting in their silver eye sockets.

“Move your ass!” Leonard reached out for Nancy, tugging her roughly through the doorway before raising his hand and firing several shots from a pistol that had somehow materialized there. Nancy held her hands over her ears as the sounds echoed off the corridor walls, making every shot sound like a miniature explosion. Three creatures fell to the floor in the corridor before Leonard pushed against the open hatch door, swinging it shut to block the creatures from continuing through. Seeing Leonard struggle, Nancy crawled forward and pushed as well, giving the door enough of a shove to close just before the creatures slammed into it. Leonard quickly twisted the wheel on the door, locking it tightly before he jammed one of his crutches into it, keeping the creatures from unlocking it.

“We need to get moving to the command deck before those things get there.” Leonard moved his remaining crutch to the right side and balanced on it while motioning from Nancy to move to his left. He placed his left arm around her shoulder for support and started hopping forward, moving as quickly as he could. Behind them, the creatures shattered the thick glass on the door, howling madly as they threw themselves against it, trying to no avail to break through. After they had turned a corner and closed another hatch, Leonard stopped and sank to the floor, pulling a handheld radio from his pocket and thumbing the button.

“Krylov, this is McComb. The creatures are on board. You need to seal up as many hatches as you can and get us the hell underwater,
now!
”

On the command deck, Commander Krylov’s face turned white as Leonard’s voice came over the speakers. Turning to his dive officer, he shouted, resisting the urge to knock the man from his chair and perform the operation himself. “Dive, damn it! Dive! Get us as low as possible!”

He then turned to the rest of the skeleton crew, desperately wishing that he wasn’t running out of men so quickly. “Arm yourselves and begin to seal the bulkheads leading to the surface exits. If you see anything not human, shoot it!” The men he was addressing scrambled to obey, running through multiple exits from the command deck to obtain weapons and proceed through the ship.

Back in the control room overlooking the lock, the lead crewman looked over the controls, quickly finding the one required to begin the filling process. Connected to diesel generators below ground and solar panels strung along both sides of the lock, the control room and the lock itself was still fully operational, and needed only the touch of a single button to operate. “Commander, we’re in position!”

Static filled the radio for several seconds, then Krylov’s voice came through, barely audible over the sound of alarms in the background. “Start it now! Hurry!”

Below them, the massive vessel began to sink into the water. Air bubbles rose to the surface from the open hatch, churning the water and disorienting the creatures around the ship as they continued to try and make their way in. The two men in the control room watched the ship sink for a few seconds as they resigned themselves to their fate before activating the console and starting the automated filling process that would allow the Arkhangelsk to pass through the locks.

Nancy and Leonard had stopped to catch their breath again. Lost in some section of the ship that Nancy didn’t recognize from her earlier explorations, she was doing her best to get them to the command deck, but had so far been unsuccessful. Gunfire and distant voices—both human and not—had echoed through the corridors, making them uncertain as to the current situation involving the creatures.

“Leonard?”

Leonard was sitting on the corridor floor opposite Nancy, thumbing the radio button to no avail. He looked up at her, breathing heavily from his exertion, wincing at the stabs of pain that would occasionally lance through his leg.

“What?”

“Where did you get that?” Nancy pointed at the radio. “And the gun, too. Where did you get them?”

Leonard smiled as he massaged his knee. “Krylov needs to pay a bit more attention when he lets strangers into his weapons rooms. I snagged the gun and the radio on our way out, just in case we needed them at some point.” A loud clang echoed through the corridor, sounding closer than any of the other noises had been. “I wish I would have grabbed more than one pistol, though…”

Leonard pushed himself up with Nancy’s help and they continued on their way, moving as quickly and as quietly as they could. Since sitting down and getting back up again, the noise level had gone down, and there was only an occasional burst of gunfire followed by a howl or scream. All of the wall signs were marked in Russian with arrows pointing in various directions and no clear indication of where the command deck was. As they continued to move forward, though, the sound of gunfire gradually grew louder to the point where the sporadic bursts were coming from behind a doorway in the next corridor down. Leonard and Nancy stopped and leaned against the wall, trying to decide if they would be safer retreating or hoping that whoever was shooting wasn’t being overwhelmed by the creatures.