Jacob squeezed through the crowded aisles and picked a spot. He watched as others moved through the hatch and filed into the room. Everyone in the galley sat quietly, looking at the floor or their watches or scribbling aimlessly on notepads. The man in front did a quick head count, then held up four fingers to the sailor at the door. The man opened the door and relayed the message to a guard outside.
“Some things never change. Hurry up and wait,” Murphy said under his breath, getting some laughs from others nearby.
There was another knock at the door; the sailor opened it and a group in civilian clothing filed through. Jacob recognized Michael, the man that he’d spoken to earlier. The civilians worked their way through the room and found seats in the back. The man in front did another head count then faced the group.
“Gentlemen, I am Captain Nelson. By now, I am sure you have figured out that the world is a shit sandwich and we are all taking a bite. The fifty men in this room—military, law enforcement, veterans, and civilians—along with groups of men scattered among this ragtag flotilla of ships are all that’s left in the region. We are all that’s left to stand against them.
“A very high-level overview is that the city is lost, and the state is lost. Our forces have been pushed back; the lines we thought we held even twenty-four hours ago have now been dissolved.” The captain paused and walked across the room to put his hand on a table.
“I know some of you have heard the rumors that we’re withdrawing to the north. I’m afraid it’s true. In less than eighteen hours, we will all be moving north to the upper peninsula of Michigan. That being said, we have eighteen hours to get the remaining people out of the city; eighteen hours before the Air Force finishes what they started and bombs those things back to hell.” The captain stopped talking and looked down at the silent faces at the tables. He looked away and pointed to a young officer in the front row.
“Lieutenant Richards, the floor is yours,” he said, stepping to the side and finding a seat in the corner.
A clean-shaven young man dressed in a khaki uniform and carrying a dark, leather folder moved to the front. He dropped the folder on a table and turned around.
The young officer cleared his throat, and then looked nervously at the captain. “This is a classified briefing, sir.”
“Lieutenant!” the captain interrupted. “Please continue.”
The young officer looked at his notes before looking back up at the men in the crowd. “Under these extenuating circumstances, the captain has ordered me to pass on this information. I would appreciate it if—”
“Lieutenant, keep it moving!” the captain said.
“Yes, sir. Petty officer, please dim the lights.”
The lights were lowered, and a large map of the earth was projected on the wall. The officer removed a laser pointer from his shirt pocket and shot a line running parallel through Chicago.
“Fourteen days ago, the NASA space weather bureau reported a meteor shower that encompassed the 42nd parallel. What made this event atypical is that it ran a straight, precise line down the 42nd as if deployed from a high Earth orbit. NASA, through radar and satellite analysis, confirmed that neither we nor any allies—or enemy, for that matter—had any birds on that trajectory.
“Six hours after the event, the anomalies began. Data collection now confirms the earliest reports were simultaneously recorded in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and overseas in Europe and Asia.” As the officer spoke, his laser pointer drew a straight line across the world map marking spots as he read them off.
Jacob looked at Murphy. “Is this for real?” he whispered.
“Just listen,” Murphy answered, not looking away from the screen.
More sidebars broke out in the room. “Gentleman, hold questions and conversations to the end!” the captain shouted over their voices.
The young officer turned away from the map and looked back at his notes. “Thank you, sir,” he said as he flipped pages and looked back at his audience.
“Twelve hours after the event, mass disappearances were reported. Eighteen hours after the event, civil disturbances and riots broke out; at forty-eight hours, we began losing communications with remote areas; by seventy-two hours, the condition had spread one hundred miles north and south of the 42nd.”
“Lieutenant, let’s skip ahead,” the captain said.
Richards leafed through his stack of papers and placed them back in his folder. “Yes, sir; next slide please.” The men in the room gasped as a fully dissected naked male body appeared on the screen. The young officer moved his pointer over the display. “As you can easily see, the anatomy of the aggressor is not human. Next.”
A new slide showed the same man, but the chest cavity had been cleared away and the top of its head removed. “As you see on this slide, organs do exist at early stages. Although very rudimentary—and with the exception of the brain, eyes, and some sort of lungs—they are not recognizable. They have no identifiable circulatory or nervous system; a sort of single-cell caustic gel has replaced them. The gel consumes the human organs and systems then uses the energy produced to transform the carrier. At the stage in this photo, the carrier still holds a high percentage of measurable human DNA.
“Gentlemen, what you are seeing is a previously unknown, and most probably alien, parasite. It infests its victims via the eyes, nose, and mouth through direct contact with seeder ponds. We believe that explains
