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“Interesting. I would have assumed they’d choose a major highway to be on, though. Just in case there was any foot traffic.”
“What about here?” Dianne pointed to a spot on the map where 407 and the northern 460 business routes came very close to each other. “There’s one of those big gas stations out there that…” Dianne trailed off, then looked over at Jason. “That has to be it.”
“Absolutely. It’s slightly elevated, there’s already a structure there—well, if it didn’t explode like everything else—and it’s close to a highway and road they could actually use to get around on. Yes. Yes that has to be it.”
Dianne nodded. “Okay, we’ll check there.”
“One problem, though.” Jason scratched his chin. “How are we supposed to get close to it without being heard or seen? If we take 407 they’ll spot us half a mile away. We can’t exactly take the highway.”
Dianne held her thumb and index finger close to each other over the scale on the map and estimated out the distance between the spot where they were currently sitting and the spot where they thought the gang might be hiding. “Looks like we’re three, maybe four miles away. Think you can make it half that distance off-road?”
Jason grunted. “Hm. Is that a challenge?”
Chapter 9
Somewhere in China
The Great Firewall is no more. It took Damocles less than thirty seconds to identify a weakness in the firewall’s infrastructure and another sixty seconds to spread to the network of devices on which it operates. Billions of internet-connected devices were next to fall. Those with batteries were overheated and destroyed. Those without were shorted out, locked up or otherwise rendered inoperable. For some of the one point five billion residents of the country their lives are upended. Those living in and around the most populated areas suffer from catastrophic losses as the power goes out and fires rage unchecked through overbuilt cities.
For others, though, their lives continue on much as they normally have. Blackouts—a staple of life in many parts of the country—are thought to be the reason for the loss of electricity. With no cellphone towers up and running Damocles cannot spread to any mobile phones that were not previously infiltrated so the number of injuries and fires from destroyed phones is much lower than in the cities.
Life carries on for the rural residents. They gather together, help each other out, continue to till their fields and go about their daily routines. The first signs of trouble come when the military sends out convoys to collect food. The collections are larger than normal and the farmers cannot get the soldiers to say anything about what’s going on. The farmers are warned at gunpoint not to enter the cities and the soldiers leave, carrying the food back to the cities to be distributed amongst the residents.
The lack of preparation by most of the civilian population for such a catastrophe means that residents not in rural areas begin to suffer immediately. Medicine and food runs out in less than a day. Transportation systems are jammed or destroyed, stranding millions of workers far from their homes and loved ones. Fires bring down miles worth of city blocks, killing many and inconveniencing even more. Starvation looms on the horizon, approaching like a rider on a pale horse.
While the government deploys troops to keep its citizens alive it also works on a solution to the Damocles problem. Uninfected systems are thrown against the virus and different measures are taken to destroy, block or delay it. None of the measures are effective. The best only buy a few extra seconds while the virus analyzes the new set of parameters and adjusts, quickly routing around the blocks and destruction attempts.
Hidden away in isolated bases and bunkers, the leaders of China struggle to cope with the situation. The redistribution of food can only work for so long and with millions upon millions left without homes, jobs or a way of lasting for more than a few days on their own the country is looking at a decimation of its population in less than a week. Looting, rioting and outright civil war has not yet begun but the government knows this is bound to happen before too long given what is going on in other countries.
Three satellites owned by China still operate, sending back images to computers deep underground that have yet to be discovered and infected by Damocles. The operators of the satellites are not in positions of authority and the senior government members are not close enough to reach by any functional communication systems. The operators resolved themselves to documenting the unfolding apocalypse, using the imaging sensors on the satellites to produce highly detailed pictures of as many countries as possible.
One day the images may prove useful to historians. For now, though, they are simply a way to keep boredom and the thoughts of death at bay.
Chapter 10
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
Outside Colorado Springs, CO
It was four in the morning before Dr. Evans had finished giving Rick a crash-course in the details about Damocles. Jane had gone back to her room for a few hours of sleep before bringing in a pot of coffee, three mugs and a few packs of food that were a cross between a breakfast casserole and a pile of mush.
“Any progress?” Jane poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in a chair, curling her legs up underneath herself.
Rick poured a cup of coffee for himself and Dr. Evans and shook his head. “
Not a lot. I understand quite a bit more about this thing but the more I understand the more potential solutions I think of keep going out the window.”
“It is vexing, isn’t it?” Dr. Evans sipped from his mug.
Rick flipped over some papers onto which he had scribbled notes while Dr. Evans was talking. “If Damocles is in pretty much every internet-connected device then that means those devices will infect anything that connects to them. So beyond the fact that destroying every infected device would be impossible from the get-go, once devices started talking to one another all it would take would be one infection to cause the virus to spread all over again.”
“Precisely.”
Rick scratched his head. “Isn’t there a back door into the system? The feds have used back doors into private systems enough times that you’d think they’d have a few into their own.”
“I’m afraid not. Damocles can be accessed but it requires an authentication using a 2048-bit encryption key.”
“Wait. What?” Rick nearly dropped his cup of coffee in surprise. “It can?”
