LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation Read online

  He could do nothing to prevent it.

  The impact of the Russian torpedo splintered several plates at the stern of the ship, and the cold Pacific water began to pour into the already doomed boat. As the dark liquid filled the stern quickly, driven by water pressure that was only increasing as the massive boat was pulled down by the ballooning weight of thousands of gallons of water, Marcus shook his head and rose from the cold deck. Blood spurted from his injured arm, and his vision was tunneling.

  He heard the rush of water behind him. He groaned and pulled himself forward. The deck was now at a forty five degree angle, and he knew he didn’t have much time. The boat would implode in minutes—possibly seconds—at this depth.

  Ahead of him, the fire controls were undamaged, levers and touch screens showing normal readouts, counting down to the launch of the boat’s full compliment of thermonuclear weapons. If he didn’t act now, twenty-four nuclear weapons with fourteen warheads packed into each missile would rain fire and death on millions of people, both alive and dead.

  He couldn’t die like this. Even in the face of the world’s own disease, he couldn’t end it in murder.

  The boat groaned beneath him as he reached a shaking hand for the controls and a sudden impact threw him to the floor as the unmistakeable sound of shattering metal and protesting steel echoed in the small space. The bow had ruptured, and the deck was pitching forward as water poured into the lower compartments. He had less than a minute to cancel the launch.

  Nuclear missiles have two key components: the launch sequence, which actually pushes the projectiles from their tubes, and the detonation command, which detonates the nuclear warheads. Both sequences can be overridden, but on the newest version of command software, they had to be overridden separately.

  But Marcus only had time to enter one sequence of commands.

  Water was pouring into the bridge from the corridor outside, and a crewman was struggling to his feet directly in front of the fire control panel. Water began to push up from beneath the deck, and he glanced at the depth monitor and winced—they were well below their maximum rated depth, and still falling.

  Marcus did the only thing that could sooth his conscience in the face of imminent death.

  He cancelled the launch sequence, keeping the live missiles in their tubes.

  As the depth gauge read nearly 1800 feet, Marcus fought the tide of frigid water to push himself back into his chair. The chair in which he had spent countless hours thinking about his family and the sun. He reached for the photo that was no longer there, and felt the water reach his waist and crawl toward his chest.

  Beside him, a hand burst from the roiling saltwater, gripping his arm tightly with a cold, white hand.

  At least he died with a clear conscious, he thought to himself. No one would perish because of his actions. The world would have a chance.

  He allowed himself a smile, even as the frigid water reached his mouth and the pain of a new jagged bite wound in his stomach reached his brain.

  The USS Kentucky met her end as the water overtook her Captain in his chair. The sleek, now ruined boat slammed into the ocean floor at a depth of nearly 1900 feet, the bow crashing into a layer of thick silt and volcanic rock. She came to rest with the lip of a wide, and very deep trench, directly to her port side. A trench that had yet to be mapped by the U.S. Navy due to its narrow mouth and recent birth. Seismic activity in the area had pushed this unusual formation into existence within the last four months, and the mouth of the narrow canyon was barely seventy feet wide—just large enough to swallow an Ohio-class nuclear submarine.

  The Kentucky pitched onto her keel and swayed briefly in the dark water before the weight of the boat shifted as it filled completely with seawater, pushing it to its port side. As the boat rolled over slowly, like the last throes of a dying whale, it groaned once more before toppling into the deep canyon. The boat fell slowly and silently, twisting slowly and sinking into a dark abyss that was more than a mile deep.

  The trench, had it been discovered, would have been unique in its attributes. It was deep, and it lay no more than seventy miles from the coast of the United States. Almost directly due west from the city of Seattle, Washington.

  But what would have been truly significant, had this long, deep abyss been mapped, would have been its location directly upon the Cascadia subduction zone. This subduction zone, known to geologists as a megathrust fault line, stretches nearly 600 miles along the coast of Canada and the United States, and converges with two other major fault lines to the north (the Queen Charlotte Fault) and the south (the San Andreas Fault). This subduction zone—the area where a fault line in the earth separates two tectonic plates—was created as the floor of the Pacific Ocean slowly slips beneath the large North American plate, the mass of land upon which the United States of America is situated.

  This large, deep canyon into which the Kentucky was now falling, led into the bowels of the earth merely a mile from where these two plates intersected. On a typical day, the stored energy of these two plates moving slowly past one another could erupt into a standard or devastating earthquake at a moment’s notice.

  With these earthquakes, the massive string of volcanoes along this fault line, including Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens (which had already shown its dangerous potential in a small show of petulance in 1980), could be persuaded to erupt. Massive tsunamis could be pushed into the West Coast of Canada and the United States by the drastic shift in sea floors. The potential devastation from a natural release of this pent-up energy was mind boggling.

  Combined with the potential to cause a ripple effect due to its connection to the San Andreas and Charlotte Fault lines, the Cascadia subduction zone has long been one of the most closely watched geological areas in the Northern hemisphere.

  On any ordinary day, thousands of monitors across the world would be listening for disturbances along that line, mapping seismic ripples that might portend the next ‘big one’—which scientists knew was already far overdue.

  But today was no ordinary day.

  Today, a doomed nuclear submarine, carrying the undead bodies of one hundred and fifty-four sailors and twenty-four armed thermonuclear missiles was falling deep into the earth, directly adjacent to the fault line.

  Today, the Cascadia subduction zone would have some help reaching a horrible, earth shattering destiny.

  Only five minutes from when the launch order was issued, three hundred and thirty six high yield thermonuclear warheads detonated simultaneously from inside their tubes. The explosion occurred as the crushed, mangled wreckage of the Kentucky lodged itself near the bottom of the narrowing ravine, only three quarters of a mile from a particularly unstable stretch of the subduction zone.

  In the history of the world, there has never been a larger explosion.

  The cold, dark water around the site vaporized and churned, the rock walls of the canyon imploded. Beneath the ship, the vibrations rocked the very bedrock of the fault line, sending waves of energy through the fragile and unstable earth.

  Had Captain Marcus lived, he would have wept. For it was by his hand that the entire west coast of the United States would now be unmade.

  CHAPTER TWO

  You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here ...

  Our faithful companions…

  Approximately 100 miles north of Seattle, Washington.

  Approximately 15 miles east of the Pacific Ocean.

  “You’re holding it wrong.”

  “Shut up, I’m a grown-ass man. I’ve got this shit.”

  “Fine. Just don’t blame me when you shoot that poor squirrel.”

  “I’m not going to hit a squirrel.”

  “Do you even see the squirrel?”

  “There’s no squirrel.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, dammit, now let me do this…”

  I held the crossbow up, sighting it with one eye closed.

  “Don’t get your face that clo
se—I told you, it could snap back at you.”

  I sighed.

  “I heard you. I’m not effing deaf, for God’s sake. Don’t you have some angst to work out or some boy bands to swoon over?”

  My hand tightened on the grip.

  I got this.

  No problem.

  Forty yards to the tin can, using a weapon that had been designed by men who only bathed once every four fortnights, millennia ago. A weapon designed to be passed out to illiterate conscripts so they could kill the horses of knights during battle from twenty feet away.

  No problem.

  Thwap.

  “Ouch! Mother fu—“

  Squeal.

  Shit.

  “What was that?”

  Ky was already on the ground, rolling in laughter.

  That was fast. How did she get down there that fast?

  “Oh…my…God” she managed, between gasps for air. “You actually hit the squirrel and you cut your face—I totally win! I told you so!”

  I touched my hand to my face and looked at my fingers. Blood.

  Man, this kid wasn’t going to let me live this down.

  “Let’s go see about the squirrel,” I said begrudgingly, starting downrange and searching on the ground for the wounded animal.

  I heard an outraged chatter above my head as I approached the tree line, and looked up. A large, dark brown squirrel was glaring at me reproachfully, glancing back at its full tail—a tail that was now pinned to a tree branch several yards from the unmolested tin can I had been trying to hit.

  “Well, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I muttered as Ky walked up. “Thanks for nothing, Rocky.”

  The squirrel returned the sentiment with what I was sure was the squirrel version of “go fuck yourself.”

  “You know, you might want to promise him that you’ll aim for his tail next time. He could hang out here all day.” She was still smiling as I reached up for the arrow.

  “Yeah, yeah. I get it. I suck.”

  The squirrel chittered angrily as my hand hit the arrow, sending vibrations along the shaft.

  “Hold on,” I cursed and yanked the arrow free of the branch.

  The small creature bolted from the limb, jumping several branches higher before examining its wounded tail.

  “You’ll live, dude,” I said wryly, tossing Ky the arrow.

  “So, I’ll just stick to my carbine if you don’t mind,” I said, trudging back toward the small clearing. “I obviously can’t be trusted with weaponry that pre-dates the wheel.”

  “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” she shouted, wiping squirrel blood from the arrow head and sighting it to make sure it wasn’t bent. “You were within a few yards. If there were hundreds of those things around you, you would have hit one.”

  I grunted as I waded through the last of the tall grass and sat down heavily on the tailgate of the truck. The wind shifted slightly, bringing the faintest hint dry, cold air from the mountains.

  We were in a small clearing on the side of a large hill overlooking the I-5 corridor—the main artery of interstate highway between Seattle and the Canadian border. We had been following rural roads paralleling the massive roadway since we had left the Seattle suburbs, eager to avoid urban areas and large collections of vehicles. The stretch of highway we could see was mostly abandoned, with the odd vehicle pulled over to the side of the road, many with doors open to the chilly air. In the far distance, I could see the flat blue expanse of the Pacific between the shore and a series of larger islands beyond, as the sun began to highlight the details of the terrain around us.

  “Okay, kid. Playtime’s over. Time to pack it up. Kate’s waiting for us.”

  Last night, we had passed near a small town—Big Lake to be exact—and claimed a farmhouse outside of the tiny town center for our own. Every day we found a place to rest and hide from the sun, and every night we moved on. Today, Ky and I had escaped for some target practice while Kate raided the pantry of the house and tried to turn canned tuna into a meal. I didn’t envy her. There were only so many recipes that one could create with canned everything. I wonder if that squirrel was still around…

  “You think she found any chocolate?” Ky asked, jumping onto the tail of the truck and tossing her gear into the bed.

  “You should be so lucky,” I answered, pulling her cap over her eyes and jumping down again. “Let’s go find out.”

  I took one last look at the wide vista, enjoying the slight breeze despite the chill in the air. The evergreens swayed slightly as the sun began to touch the top of their branches, and I took in a deep breath before turning to the driver’s side door of the large truck.

  We had been on the road for nearly a week. The battle in Seattle was still fresh in our memories, and we talked of it often. The militias, the fortified base, the survivors, and the massive explosion that nearly annihilated more than a million undead. We had escaped into a destiny of our own making, choosing the road northward, in search of Kate’s daughter.

  We were making good time, despite the rural roads. Having made the decision to avoid the interstate, and the bottleneck it entailed, we moved surely and steadily along two lane highways paralleling the foothills of the Cascade mountains. On clear mornings like this one, we could see the ocean sparkle in the distance—a reminder that the world would continue to turn, with or without the human race.

  Fuel and food were our worries now, and in the sparsely populated areas through which we traveled, we had been lucky so far. Though the hybrid truck used less fuel than our very first ride many months ago—a capable, but environmentally disastrous box truck—we had found it on less than a quarter tank. Small additions were necessary as we plodded along, and when we couldn’t siphon it from abandoned cars or trucks, we raided tool sheds and landscaping companies.

  Food was a little bit more complicated. Large grocery stores had been picked clean long ago. They were obvious targets, and most people lacked the imagination to look elsewhere. Convenience stores were mostly a bust too, but we got the odd bag of chips or bottle of beer that had rolled under a shelf when we did stop. No, we were a little more creative.

  Judging by the bumper stickers on the abandoned cars, we could tell we were in area of the country that valued self-reliance. Much like the folks in Idaho, the good people of Northern Washington had a penchant for survivalism and guns, and a quick stop at a few gun stores gave us more than enough information for some successful forays.

  No guns were left, of course, but there’s one thing that looters never seem to check when they steal weapons and ammo: customer records.

  Gun stores like to pride themselves on not sending information to the feds, or keeping records that could be used to identify anyone keeping enough arms in their home to power an African coup. But they were still businesses. And businesses run on mailing lists.

  A few addresses later, and we were making our way down long winding driveways to the front doors of homes with broken windows and bullet holes to match. Inside, we normally found a respectable pile of truly dead bodies, and a mother load of MREs and bottled water.

  God bless the dead preppers. The foresight to store up food, and the incompetency to stay alive. I just wished they had laid in fewer bundles of useless seeds and huge packs of made-in-China “military grade” crap, and more bags of Doritos.

  For shelter, we usually just holed up in the houses we tracked down. On a rare occasion, like today, we found a house with a view, rested on our laurels, and hunkered down for the day. All in all, it had been a quiet week.

  Oddly enough, we hadn’t seen a single living soul. This was unusual. Since the disease started its run, we had always encountered someone in the wild. In the rural areas far away from popular centers, we assumed that we’d see more people, not fewer. But that hadn’t been the case.

  We had passed a few areas that looked like they had been used as campsites recently, and there was no sign of the undead. No cars, no lights, and no soun
d. It was a truly peaceful—and a little more than slightly eerie—world.

  The undead were still out there. In larger numbers than we had hoped, but nothing threatening for those in our—unique—position. We had put down a few, but usually just moved away. It was a shame to waste the ammunition.

  The truck started smoothly, and I still smiled at the gently persistent chime that alerted me that my seatbelt was unfastened.

  Silly truck. There are zombies outside. Seat belts are for kids.

  “You think we’ll make it to the border tomorrow?” Ky asked, sticking her feet up on the dashboard and pulling her cap down over her eyes. I squinted and dropped my sunglasses down and applied the gas. We had stayed out a little too long and were going to regret it if we didn’t get home quickly. The sun was still painful to our eyes and our skin, and while the cloudy weather helped, and the shortening days were a godsend, we still had to plan our time outside carefully. Several days ago, I had been trapped briefly in a small building with an inconveniently located skylight while searching for propane—and my face was still tender where the sun found a direct path to my skin.

  “There is no border anymore, kid.” I said, pulling onto the road and checking my rearview mirror out of habit. “I’m not sure whether the notion of countries even means something anymore, but I’m damn sure that no one’s standing at the line asking for passports and checking for citrus.”

  In a habit that she knew bothered me on a strangely visceral level, she blew a huge bubble with the gum perpetually lodged in her mouth and popped it, sucking the candy back into her mouth and making a loud clicking noise.

  “Huh.” She grunted once. “Well, to the area that used to be the border, then. I’ve never been to Canada. I heard they’re real nice there. And they say things funny.”

  I smiled briefly and turned into the small road that led uphill to the cabin we had found for the night.

  “Yeah, well. They used to be nice. But odds are that circumstances have changed some.”