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“Sure seems that way.” Rick tapped his fingers across the buttons in a futile effort to get a response from the transmitter, but none was forthcoming. “But now what? Shouldn’t it have read the commands and disabled itself?”
“Just wait,” Dr. Evans patted Rick on the shoulder, “its first priority is infection. Once it’s secure in the system then it’ll move on to scanning all the data. After that it’ll sabotage the system in a way that makes the most sense based on its instruction sets before it tries to use the system to replicate itself. I’m betting it’s either still ensuring that it has full control over everything bef—ha! See!”
Dr. Evans jabbed his finger at the screen as it flickered again, then turned off. It snapped back to life a second later, white text scrolling fast across a black background. The text was gibberish to the human eye, though, a mix of binary and seemingly random ASCII characters and Rick raised an eyebrow. “Is this a good thing?”
“It’s performing a deep scan of the system. All it has to do is hit the thumb drive and it’ll disable itself.”
“The operating system on these is pretty small. Couple of gigs at most. Shouldn’t take Damocles more than a few seconds to scan everything, right?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Dr. Evans nodded.
Rick sat, staring at the screen for over a full minute before looking over at Dr. Evans again. “You sure those commands were right?”
Oles and Dr. Evans exchanged another glance. “They were precise; we’re sure of it.” Oles replied.
“Indeed.”
“So why’s it not working?”
The trio stared at the screen, the jumble of characters still flying across, each of them consumed with their own private doubts and worries. Oles, over whether he had somehow inadvertently messed things up. Dr. Evans, over whether every single line was given and typed in correctly. Rick, over his family, and wishing that—if the end was going to come—then all he wanted, more than anything else in the world, was to be there holding tight to them until the fire and flames ripped them apart.
Beep.
The sound was soft, created by the tiniest of integrated speakers inside the transmitter and designed primarily to help technicians working on repairs and to give audio feedback on buttons being pressed. Rick opened his eyes and stared at the screen, bright and regular again, no longer the wave of symbols but instead containing a line of text that was the sweetest and most satisfying thing he could have ever imagined reading.
Broadcast in progress. Please stand by.
Chapter 16
The Waters’ Homestead
Outside Ellisville, VA
“Over there! Behind the trucks!” Frantic shouting is followed by the swift fire of shots, followed up by return fire.
“I see him!”
“I need him suppressed or else I can’t get an angle on the other one!”
“Augh!” A scream accompanied by the shattering of glass.
“How bad is it?!”
Jason slid down the wall next to the window he had been shooting from and held a hand to his upper arm. “Just grazed me; I’m fine!”
Rapid, unending fire continued to pour into the upper windows o
f the house as Mark crawled across the floor to examine Jason’s wound for himself. Delays in the fire only occurred when individual assailants needed to stop and reload, and even then there were still at least three or four who were firing nonstop.
The attack had come the next morning, just a couple hours after Tina had awoken. She was still pale and weak, but her breathing had improved and she was able to instruct Dianne in the proper medications to give and how to redress the wound without risking more air leaking into her chest cavity. Jason had just finished up a long-overdue and extremely welcome hot shower when the roar of engines made him abandon his towel as he leapt around, pulling clothes on over his still-dripping form.
The pair of trucks that roared down the driveway ignored the gate and the boards with nails entirely, the lead truck ramming through the gate and both trucks popping all of their tires as they screamed across the traps. Nealson had no plans to make an escape—he would either triumph or he would not be leaving. It was as simple as that.
“Stop playing around and shoot them!” Dianne roared up the stairs at Mark and Jason as she charged through a hall, sprays of shrapnel and bullets whizzing past her. She slid to a stop near the kitchen window and looked over at Sarah, who was cradling Tina in her arms as she tried to move the injured woman and the two younger children to the basement door. “Hurry! Get them downstairs quickly!”
“I’m trying!”
Dianne put her head back against the wall and closed her eyes as the storm of fire continued to rain down on the house. They had been expecting an attack from Nealson—it was foolish not to expect one—but one so ferocious? That was the surprise. The last time, when he had taken all of them except Tina, Jason and Mark, their attack had been coordinated and calculated. This felt completely different, like all Nealson wanted was to use brute force to try and bring the entire place down around them.
