“plague” of madness across the globe. It broke down the neural pathways of the human mind to their most basic core, leaving human shells full of only instinct and violence, unless you were immune, and very few people in the world were.
At first, Def-Con IV retained contact with a handful of similar bases here in the United States and in the United Kingdom—for the first day they had even been in touch with the president and the White House—but they’d slowly lost contact with those bases one by one as the radiation plague and other problems took their toll. For all Geoff knew, Def-Con IV could very well be the last holdout of humanity in the world.
During the first few hours of the chaos when the wave had reached the earth, the base had opened its doors to the locals who had come seeking shelter. Very quickly, the staff of the base learned firsthand of the secondary biological effects of the wave as those same locals succumbed to the radiation.
A mini-war broke out inside the compound. It was a hard fight, but in the end Def-Con IV’s staff prevailed. Only Geoff and a handful of staff survived. Two were badly injured: one in a coma, the other in a wheelchair but healing. Geoff informed Jeremy that if he had come looking for salvation and hope, he’d came to the wrong place.
They went through the high barbed wire fence that surrounded the Def-Con complex, and Jeremy got his first good look at the site. Before the wave, it had disguised itself as an agriculture research facility. Inside the fence, there were only three buildings, two of them the size of toolsheds, but the third was fairly large and very much civilian in nature. Blooming gardens stretched beyond the buildings with flowers planted around their edges, and the rear fence was far beyond eyeshot.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Geoff asked.
“What?” Jeremy asked, as if snapping out of a dream.
“That the gardens survived,” Geoff explained. “Like I said, when the wave first hit, people were flooding up here in droves based on rumors and desperate hopes. Of course, all they really cared about was finding the base and getting inside. I don’t think many of them headed out into the fields. Most of them poured straight into the garage.” Geoff pointed at the larger building. “I guess they thought it had to be the base since it’s the only real building up here. It’s in pretty bad shape now. Most of the vehicles were stolen or damaged by the mob when we stopped letting people into the real base below.”
“How do you get inside?”
Geoff laughed and led him towards the more battered of the two sheds. Its door was new and a sharp contrast to the aged and beaten wood around it. “I had a hell of a time fixing this back,” Geoff said as he opened the door, barely concealing his pride. “Carpentry’s a lot harder than killing people, kid.”
The shed itself was completely empty except for a large metal plate in the middle of its unfinished floor. Geoff squatted and ran his fingertips across the hatch until his fingers felt a crease, the edge of a small lid that popped open to reveal a numerical keypad. He typed in an eight-digit code as Jeremy watched. Somewhere below the floor, a motor came to life and the plate rose up like a tilted manhole cover. Geoff motioned to the hole. “After you.”
Jeremy slid down into a metal tunnel just wide enough and tall enough for two people (no more than six feet in height) to walk comfortably side by side. When they reached the large vault-like doorway at the end, Geoff typed a code into another keypad on the wall, and the door dilated from its center. Beyond lay another series of corridors.
“Welcome to your new home, kid. You can call me Geoff. I don’t think I caught your name.”
“It’s Jeremy, Jeremy Davis.”
Geoff grinned. “You live around here, Jeremy Davis?”
“Not really… Well, I guess I kind of did.”
Geoff shrugged. “Didn’t we all. Well, I guess it’s time you met your new family.”
The soldier led Jeremy deeper into the base.
12
Nathanial Richards punched a button on the control panel in front of him and watched as the test ran again. On the gigantic screen across the room, an image of a translucent wave struck the earth once more.
Troy, sitting nearby, reclined and propped his feet up on a dark, malfunctioned console. He had no idea what Nathanial’s simulation meant, but from the way Dr. Sheena Leigh frowned in her wheelchair, and judging by the grim look on Nathanial’s face, Troy could tell it was nothing good.
The wave shattered as it struck the earth, slowing from the speed of light to a dead crawl in space as its fragments dispersed, each taking a different trajectory. Then the screen went black.
“Run it again,” Sheena ordered, leaning forward in her wheelchair.
Nathanial shook his head. “We’ve run it over three dozen times today alone, Sheena. There’s just no way to know where the pieces are headed. Maybe if we waited until the wave’s aftereffects dissipated in the atmosphere a bit more, we could link up to one of the satellites. Surely at least one of them had to survive. We could—”
“I said run it again,” she interrupted.
Nathanial got up from his seat as Geoff and Jeremy entered the room. He didn’t notice them, too focused on Sheena. “You run it again! I’m through for today. Until we get more data, we’re just wasting our time.”
“Ahem.” Troy cleared his throat and pointed over Nathanial’s shoulder at the newcomers.
Nathanial turned to face them, his features red with frustration. “Who the hell are you?”
“His name is Jeremy,” Geoff responded with an edge to his tone. “He’s not infected by the radiation, so you might as well just go ahead and welcome him aboard.”
“I hope to God he knows something about astrophysics and computers because I fuckin’ quit!” Nathanial stormed out of the room through an opposite entryway.
“That’s Nathanial,” Geoff informed Jeremy. “You get used to him. That guy over there slacking off is Troy. He’s military like me.”
Sheena rolled her chair up to them, and it was clear from the way her arms strained that she was not yet accustomed to her disability. “Do you, Jeremy? Do you know computers?”
He stared at her. Even wheelchair-bound, this tiny woman with flakes of gray in her black, pinned-up hair seemed tougher than Geoff. She met his stare, her eyes unwavering through her thick glasses. “Well?” she urged.
“Um… no, ma’am, I don’t.”
“What did you do before…?” she let her sentence trail off.
“I was an artist.”
Sheena cackled. “You sure know how to pick them, Geoff. What use is he going to be? And more importantly, who’s going to give up their share of the food to feed him?”
Troy hopped to his feet and moved between the doctor and Jeremy, sticking out his hand. “Glad to have you along for the ride. I promise not all of us are as crazy as we seem.”
Jeremy took Troy’s hand and shook it firmly.
“Bring him to the lab later,” Sheena ordered. “We need to make sure he’s clean.”
Troy winked at Jeremy. “Gotta go. Duty calls.” Then he grabbed the handles on the back of the doctor’s chair and rolled her out of the room.
“Who was that?” Jeremy asked as the pair disappeared down a corridor.
“That’s our doctor and science whiz, Sheena. She was in charge here before things went to shit. She still thinks she is, most of the time.”
A pale man, dressed in black and only slightly older than Jeremy, wandered into the control room. He wore thin, sleek glasses and carried himself with a flare of style. He stopped in his tracks when he noticed the two of them.
“Oh God,” Geoff muttered, “not Ian.”
“Good afternoon, Geoff,” the man said with a soft British accent and a smile. “And who might this be accompanying you today?” He didn’t wait long enough for a response, jumping back in as if hoping to interrupt any reply. “You don’t actually have to answer that. I couldn’t help but overhear your encounter with our resident witch
