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Instead, she kept her head and chin high to avoid smashing her face against the ground. She kicked furiously with her legs, freeing her right one and slamming the heel of her boot into her attacker’s face. He yowled in pain and she felt his grip loosen, then she repeated the motion to dislodge him fully. As she came to a stop she raised her pistol and fired at him, pulling the trigger as many times as it took for the slide to pop back and stick. The man’s head blossomed blood onto the ground and she pushed herself to her feet as she glanced from him to back inside the facility.
From the bottom and upper floors a hailstorm of gunfire rang out, splintering multiple windows open and raining glass down onto Dianne. She heard and felt the whistle and pop of rounds landing all around her, but she bobbed and weaved as she ran along, ducking to the left and right to keep trees, benches, fences and other obstacles between her and her attackers. She had no specific goal in mind as she ran from the facility; she was just trying to escape.
As Dianne tripped and stumbled down the hill from the LTAC building and neared the road, the shots from behind her gradually lessened, but she still heard the occasional crack of a rifle and the shouts of the men who were scrambling to get out of the building and pursue her. When she reached the chain-link she glanced back and forth, trying to orient herself to find the break in the fence she had made when she arrived. She finally found it and slipped through, snagging her backpack and rifle in the process which forced her to waste precious seconds getting them free.
“There she is!” Just as Dianne freed herself and her gear she heard the roar of one of the men from farther up the hill. He charged down toward her, firing his rifle wildly as fast as he could pull the trigger and sending the shots careening in every direction. Dianne bolted away from the man and his companions, making a beeline for the parking garage where she stashed her truck. With stealth no longer an option it was a footrace, with the grand prize being life itself. Faced with that grim reality, Dianne ignored the pain in her legs and pushed herself faster, hoping beyond hope that she could still make it out of the city in one piece.
Chapter 10
Washington, D.C.
“Uhh…” Rick ran his hands through his hair before looking around and motioning to a couple of ash-covered benches sitting on the sidewalk. “Mind if we sit down?” Recker nodded and the trio sat, with Dr. Evans at one end of one bench, Rick at the other end and Recker leaning against the arm of the other bench, his leg half propped up across its length.
“I have a feeling you’re about to tell me that I won’t believe what you’re about to tell me,” Recker said. “So I’ll start by telling you that I probably will. We’re on our way to Mount Weather, part of a rescue mission to save a bunch of eggheads trapped there.”
“Mount Weather?” Rick’s eyes grew wide as he recognized the name.
“Rick, that’s where—” Dr. Evans started.
“I know, I know. They wanted to send me there.” Rick shook his head before looking back at Recker. “You say there are people trapped there?”
Recker nodded slowly. “A bunch of scientists and government officials. They were working on trying to fix all of, well, this.” He gestured to their surroundings. “How do you know about Mount Weather? You were supposed to get sent there?”
Rick glanced at Dr. Evans. “You think we can tell him everything?”
Dr. Evans shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
“All right,” Rick said, then turned to Recker. “Back before this all started, I was at home down in Ellisville, VA, outside of Blacksburg. I left my wife and three children to fly to Los Angeles and give a presentation for the company I worked for. I landed probably thirty minutes before the cars started exploding.”
“Sweet Mary.” Recker whistled softly. “You’re kidding, right?”
Rick sighed and shook his head. “Not at all. And that’s not even the half of it. We’re here to stop this thing.”
Over the next three quarters of an hour, Rick and Dr. Evans detailed their journeys from the start of the event to the present moment, answering Recker’s questions along the way. As they went on, Rick noticed a change in Recker’s attitude and body language. While he had started off acting aggressively and then softened slightly at the sight of Jane’s injuries, he had still been keeping Rick and Dr. Evans at a distance, unsure whether or not they would turn out to have a hidden nefarious agenda of some sort. By the time their stories caught up to the present, though, he was convinced that the two men sitting next to him were being nothing if not truthful.
“So the NSA’s got the tools to stop this thing, huh?”
“That is our belief, yes,” replied Dr. Evans. “But we won’t know until we get there. Which, again, is what we were trying to do when we encountered you.”
“Captain,” started Rick, “Would you mind telling us what you and your officers are doing out here? With the bulldozers and everything, I mean. You said you’re on your way to Mount Weather, but what’s going on?”
Recker shifted in his seat, feeling his rear end and upper thighs tingling from staying in one position on the bench for too long. “After everything went to hell in a handbasket, we had a few dozen officers who hadn’t either been killed or left to take their family out of the city to safety somewhere else. We linked up with a handful of survivors from the fire departments around the city and started running search and rescue operations, bringing people to the auxiliary police building they shut down on the north side of the city. I guess it was isolated enough that it didn’t get hit by this… ‘Damocles’ thing.
“A few days later we picked up a radio broadcast calling for help from Mount Weather. They were saying they had civilians, military and government officials trapped inside and unable to open the bunker doors.” Recker looked over and pointed at the bulldozers. “We got those suckers running and started clearing a path out of the city so we could try and mount a rescue operation. I’m still not sure how we’ll get through the bunker once we get there, though.”
“I’m really glad I didn’t head off to Mount Weather.” Rick shook his head. “Sounds like that was a one-way trip to hell for a lot of people.”
“No kidding. Hopefully we can pull them out, but it sounds like what you three are doing might actually fix all of this.”
“Fix?” Dr. Evans shook his head. “No. Keep from getting worse? Yes. One hopes so, at least.”
Recker eyed Dr. Evans and Rick closely before nodding at them. “All right. What can we do to help you? I can’t commit any manpower to go with you but I can at least give you supplies and armaments. Those pistols and your one rifle aren’t going to offer up much protection if you run into trouble.”
“Absolutely,” Rick answered enthusiastically. “We’d appreciate any help you can give us. We’ve got food and water for a couple of days, but there’s no telling how long we’ll be digging through the rubble to find what we’re looking for. And yes, some rifles and ammunition would be amazing.”
“How’re you planning on accessing these computer systems if—sorry, when—you find them, anyway? There’s no power in the city.”
Dr. Evans scratched at his nose as he replied. “I’ve been thinking about that. Most of the buildings had backup batteries for running critical systems. My guess is that those systems were shut down by Damocles but there may be some that were shut down without damage. If we can find one of those, then—”
