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“What should we do?”
“The sun will be up in a couple hours. We’ll have to get some lumber and nails from the barn and seal up the downstairs windows so this can’t happen again. You should get back to bed for now, though. Try and get a bit of sleep.”
Mark nodded and stood up before heading back to bed. He kicked off his shoes and flopped down, falling asleep seconds after his head hit the pillow. Dianne took the tablet and went back to sit on the stairs. Unlike before, however, she wasn’t tired at all and she doubted that she would be sleeping well for a very long time.
Chapter 8
Somewhere in Utah
After passing briefly through Arizona Rick found himself in Utah, continuing on along Interstate 15. He stuck to the main road as much as possible but frequently found himself having to either take alternate routes or go off-road when passing through towns and cities. The high volume of destroyed vehicles sitting in the road played havoc with the Humvee which was substantially more difficult to drive and maneuver through tight spaces than the SUV Rick had picked up in Los Angeles.
While on a back road trying to get back to the Interstate Rick came across a large, formerly well-maintained gas station. The pumps had caught fire and burned down but the building looked intact and Rick decided to stop and see what they might have in the way of clothing and food. He drove around the building slowly, watching through the windows for any sign of movement. When none came he parked behind the station and hopped out, taking a rifle and pistol with him.
The air was still chilled and he shivered again as he moved into the building, checking each corner as he went. A flashlight was attached to the end of the rifle and he flicked it on once he got fully inside. The illuminated interior was a complete disaster and looked like a herd of elephants had stampeded through the place. Shelves were knocked over, food and other supplies were trampled on the floor and the drink cases had their glass doors smashed in. Behind the counter the cigarette displays had been torn apart by people stealing as many cartons as they could get their hands on.
Rick wrinkled his nose at the smell of rotting milk and meat as he stepped gingerly through the mess in the store. He scanned the ground and the few upright shelves for anything of use, but anything that hadn’t been taken was either crushed to bits or torn open and rotting. Dismayed and disappointed, Rick started to head towards the back door to the building when a pile of tipped-over boxes caught his eye near the front.
He crouched down over the stack of boxes and picked one up, turning it over to see the front. “GPS, eh?” Rick raised an eyebrow as he looked out the front window at the darkening sky. “I doubt any satellites are still working. But maybe…hm.” Rick took the box back outside to the Humvee and sat in the driver’s seat. He opened it up and popped the included batteries into the back of the unit and switched it on. A pleasant chime accompanied a woman’s voice as a greeting while the device initialized. When it began searching for a signal Rick stepped back out of the Humvee and held it flat in the palm of his hand, staring up at the sky.
“There’s no way you’ll pick anything up. No possible way.” After a few minutes of waiting for the device to try and locate any GPS signals the unit flashed an error message on the screen.
No GPS signal acquired. Defaulting to static maps. Please try to re-acquire GPS signal later.
Rick grinned at the error message text and got back into the Humvee, setting the GPS unit on his leg as he turned the vehicle back on. “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” As he pulled out of the gas station he manipulated the touchscreen with his fingers, zooming in and out to see the level of detail offered by the device. It appeared to contain details for the entire country down to the smallest street and back-country roads. It was possible that the maps were a few years out of date but having something was better than nothing.
A thought passed through Rick’s head and he slammed on the brake pedal, put the Humvee into reverse and stopped in front of the gas station’s front entrance. He hopped out, picked up the rest of the intact boxes and threw them into the back of the Humvee before getting back in and continuing on his way. He hadn’t seen any batteries in the store but since the units each came with a set he figured it would be a good idea to have as many as possible along with a spare unit in case the first one he picked up got broken.
Using the unit’s street search feature it only took Rick another ten minutes of driving to find his exact location on the map. Zooming out he saw that the road he was on would turn north soon as he went deeper into Utah but if he passed through Fishlake National Forest he could cut east onto Interstate 70 and head directly for Colorado. It wasn’t the most direct easterly route he could have taken from Nellis but under the circumstances it was the best he could manage.
Rick stared at the screen as he zoomed out, the roads and highways disappearing as state borders and names were drawn. He felt like he had traveled so far already but Virginia was still so distant. The view of the vast distance he still had yet to cross made him feel like an insignificant speck, breaking down the mental barrier he had put up to try and keep from worrying about his family back home.
He slowed the Humvee to a stop in the middle of the road and closed his eyes, sighing deeply as he tried to keep his emotions under control. “We can do this.” Rick whispered to himself. “We can do this. They’re okay. Dianne’s okay, Mark’s okay, Jacob’s okay and Josie’s okay. We can do this. We can get home.” Squaring his shoulders, Rick gritted his teeth and grabbed the steering wheel with an iron grip.
“I’m coming home.”
Chapter 9
Three days after the Event
Mount Weather, Virginia
“Will someone please tell me why the hell I wasn’t informed about this… this weapon?!” The Vice President of the United States, deep within a bunker at Mount Weather, is furious. He paces the conference room like a lion, pouncing on every hesitant answer as he struggles to understand what is going on.
“The development of Damocles was classified at the highest level, sir. The President himself had limited knowledge of the weapon until—”
“I don’t give two shits what information you held from the President. Have you even heard from Air Force One?”
A man near the end of the table looks around nervously. “No sir. Not yet.”
“Then you’d better give me some answers right now. What is Damocles? Why was it developed? How did it get loose? How do we stop the damned thing?”
A report given to the President six days before the event is produced by another man at the table and copies are passed around. The Vice President snatches one up and flips through it, then shakes his head and tosses it back on the table. “I don’t have time to read this shit right now. Give me what I need to know to make a decision.”
“Well, sir.” A man near the end of the table clears his throat. “Damocles originated as a privately-developed system to experiment with advanced command and control techniques.”
“In English?”
“Damocles knows how to talk to just about any device or system that has a computer. It knows this because it’s a learning system. I
