“Are you hurt?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said with a wince. “Think my ribs are busted.”
I undid the Velcro on the Kevlar and probed his sides. The hissed intakes of breath told us both the news.
“Your whole side’s cracked. Five, six ribs.”
“Fuck me,” he said, and tried to reach his right hand across to feel for himself, and then another jab of pain shot through him. “God damn it…”
I felt wetness under my fingers as I continued to probe. “You’re bleeding.”
Very gingerly I lifted his shirt and looked at his back. I was almost sorry I looked. The brown skin of his side was slick with red blood, and in the midst of it two white and jagged ends of bone had torn through flesh and muscle.
“Is it bad?”
“It ain’t good.”
“Tell me, Cap’n.”
“You have a couple of compound rib fractures. I can stop the bleeding, but we can’t set them right now.”
“God damn it… I want to be
“Dude,” said Bunny, who was standing above us now, checking our perimeter, “you were just in a firefight with mutant monsters. You’re going to be able to brag about this shit for-like-
“If there’s a world to brag to, Farmboy. We ain’t caught up to them Nazi psychos yet, or did you forget?”
“Point taken.”
“You want painkillers, Top?” I asked after I was finished with a quick patch job.
“Just say no to drugs,” he grumbled.
“Let’s see if you can stand.”
We helped him up and there was no way to do it that didn’t hurt. Top called us names I won’t repeat. Bunny steadied him as he tried to walk. He could manage it, but there was no way he was going to get back into this fight. We all knew it.
“Look, Cap’n, you and Farmboy gotta get going. I’ll guard the stairwell.”
“You can’t fire a gun-,” Bunny began, but Top cut him off.
“I can shoot a pistol, son. Want me to show you? Bet I can kneecap you from here.”
“Okay, okay,” Bunny said, “grouchy old bastard.”
“Clock’s ticking,” Top said to me. “You need to be gone.”
“We are gone,” I said, and turned away to head into the complex. After a moment I heard Bunny coming behind me.
I looked back once and saw Top standing there in the doorway. The dead monsters were all around him, and he looked like an ancient warrior on some battlefield out of legend. He sketched a small wave, and then Bunny and I rounded a bend and he was gone.
Chapter One Hundred Nineteen
The TOC
Tuesday, August 31, 2:39 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 21 minutes E.S.T.
“Blackwing Three to Deacon.”
“Go for Deacon.”
“Package has been delivered,” said the pilot. “It’s the night the lights went out in Georgia.”
“Roger that. Well done, Blackwing.”
Church leaned back in his chair and stared at the array of screens that had, until moments ago, relayed images from helmet cams of every DMS field operative on Dogfish Cay. Now all of the screens were dark except for the night-vision image from the satellite.
He heard someone come up beside him.
“What just happened?” asked Rudy Sanchez.
Church explained about the electromagnetic pulse bomb. “If we’re lucky, then Cyrus won’t be able to access a working computer terminal in order to send out the code for the Extinction Wave.”
“If we’re lucky?” repeated Rudy.
The satellite image showed hundreds of bright dots, milling around across the island. Every few seconds a brighter spot would flare.
“What’s that?”
“Thermal scans of the battle. Each dot is a signature for a combatant. The flares are explosions, probably grenades.”
“Which ones are ours?”
“We’ve lost all telemetric feeds from the island,” said Church.
“Which means what?”
“Which means we don’t know which ones are ours.”
The collision of the hundreds of dots made no sense to Rudy. Everyone seemed to be right on top of everyone else. All those soldiers, each person dressed in black, out of communication even with their own teammates. It was a frightening thought to him, and he could only imagine the terror the men on the island must be feeling.
“You’re a religious man,” said Mr. Church. It wasn’t framed as a question, but Rudy nodded.
“Yes.”
“Now would be a useful time for prayer.”
Chapter One Hundred Twenty
The Chamber of Myth
Tuesday, August 31, 2:41 A.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 19 minutes E.S.T.
For the second time in twenty minutes the lights went out in the Chamber of Myth.
“What now?” growled Cyrus.
“I… don’t know,” said Hecate.
“It’s that woman,” said Otto.
“No. There’s no bypass in here for the security lights. They’d have to be turned off from the security office. Your men must have done this.”
“No,” insisted Otto. “They are under strict orders to leave all systems in operation.”
“Why?” Hecate asked, then answered her own question. “Oh… you need a working computer terminal for your device.”
“Why don’t you say that a little louder?” said Otto icily. “Just in case the female agent didn’t hear you.”
Hecate ignored him. Instead she said, “Listen… can you hear the blowers?”
They were all silent in the absolute darkness. “I can’t hear anything except a few birds,” said Cyrus.
“Damn it! The blowers are offline.” Her voice was shrill with tension. “They’re on a dedicated system with their own generator. The controls for that are in my office.” She paused. “That means the main power is out as well as the security systems and auxiliary systems. All at once?”
Cyrus opened his cell phone. There was no light.
“Otto, try your phone. See if the light comes on.”
“It’s dead.”
“Something took out all electronics in a single burst,” said Cyrus, his voice low. “Either the island has been nuked or someone hit us with a precise EMP.”
“Our teams don’t have anything like that,” said Otto.
