Read Online Day by Day Armageddon: Shattered Hourglass by J. L. Bourne - Free Book Online
Authors: J. L. Bourne
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stalked them.
It moved with hungry purpose, arms clenched, claws gripping. Billy noted that it lacked lips. Its stained teeth shined brightly with reflected and intensified moonlight. He smoothly squeezed the trigger. The magnified muzzle flash illuminated the bullet impact. Billy was so close he felt the earth thud under his feet when the creature hit the ground.
That was a big one, Billy thought.
“Thanks, man,” Hawse said a little too loudly. Hawse was closer to the creature than he was.
Billy gave a hang ten sign with his support hand, in a You’re welcome gesture. “Who’s got the comms?” he whispered.
“Fuck.”
Disco ran back to the door; Billy followed without being told. No one went anywhere alone—that was the most important rule. A few minutes passed before the men returned with the heavy communication equipment.
They went to work quickly, choosing a spot out of the way so the gear would not be accidentally rendered inoperable by the undead. Using some debris, they constructed a makeshift enclosure out of a section of damaged fencing. Disco worked inside the small confines. He opened the comm box and arranged the power panelsso that they would have maximum southern exposure. Booting up the system on battery power, he connected to the ruggedized laptop within seconds.
He then sent out a burst message to the USS George Washington : “GW DE TFP, INT ZBZ . . . k/disco.”
Again he sent: “GW DE TFP, INT ZBZ . . . k/disco.”
After a few minutes the laptop beeped loudly, indicating a new burst transmission had been received from the ship: “TFP DE GW, you are spittin’ nickels . . . Admiral wants your status . . . k/IT2.”
Disco responded, “DE TFP, Hotel 23 up and online, systems green, confirmed zero one (01) bolt in the quiver . . . k/Disco.”
“DE GW, be advised sun up in 58 mikes . . . this station req you check back in 24 hrs . . . AR/IT2.”
Disco shut the clamshell on the computer and slid it into his pack. “Comms are full up, Doc.”
“Good to know. Let’s get below before sunup and lock the place down. No one goes out during the day. Those things plus the other event that happened here make it too dangerous. No RF transmissions unless it’s burst. I doubt we were lucky enough to go undetected but we’ll keep trying to stay out of sight and mind, if able.”
“Good fucking plan. Don’t want one of those huge lawn darts dropping on us,” Hawse said half-jokingly.
No one gave an approving laugh. They all wanted to deny the possible deployment of what the intelligence briefers referred to as Project Hurricane, as there would be no convoy or helicopter evac for these men. The carrier was still far to the south, near Panamanian waters.
Billy was again last man as he spun the wheel securing the door to the world outside. They would all now live as vampires.
10
Doc lay in his rack, drifting somewhere in a world just before sleep. Since the fall, most of his dreams had involved the undead. His special-ops team had been haphazardly thrown together by national command authority after he and Billy escaped Afghanistan. When their ship finally arrived in U.S. territorial waters, a giant swarm of undead stood fast on the eastern shore to greet them.
Before it got this bad, Doc heard stories of people burning money to stay warm, and using two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports cars as road barricades. Hawse told a tale of a Washington, D.C., street vendor trading candles and antibiotics from an armored car in exchange for ammunition and bottled water. That was before the undead population exploded to the point that it wasn’t even safe to look out of your boarded-up windows.
Hawse joined them sometime after he fled Washington, D.C. Disco showed up after they lost Hammer. Doc moved slowly toward sleep as he recalled Hammer’s last mission.
A helicopter screamed up the Louisiana coastline, well inside the New Orleans hot zone. Doc knew Sam, his pilot, as this
It moved with hungry purpose, arms clenched, claws gripping. Billy noted that it lacked lips. Its stained teeth shined brightly with reflected and intensified moonlight. He smoothly squeezed the trigger. The magnified muzzle flash illuminated the bullet impact. Billy was so close he felt the earth thud under his feet when the creature hit the ground.
That was a big one, Billy thought.
“Thanks, man,” Hawse said a little too loudly. Hawse was closer to the creature than he was.
Billy gave a hang ten sign with his support hand, in a You’re welcome gesture. “Who’s got the comms?” he whispered.
“Fuck.”
Disco ran back to the door; Billy followed without being told. No one went anywhere alone—that was the most important rule. A few minutes passed before the men returned with the heavy communication equipment.
They went to work quickly, choosing a spot out of the way so the gear would not be accidentally rendered inoperable by the undead. Using some debris, they constructed a makeshift enclosure out of a section of damaged fencing. Disco worked inside the small confines. He opened the comm box and arranged the power panelsso that they would have maximum southern exposure. Booting up the system on battery power, he connected to the ruggedized laptop within seconds.
He then sent out a burst message to the USS George Washington : “GW DE TFP, INT ZBZ . . . k/disco.”
Again he sent: “GW DE TFP, INT ZBZ . . . k/disco.”
After a few minutes the laptop beeped loudly, indicating a new burst transmission had been received from the ship: “TFP DE GW, you are spittin’ nickels . . . Admiral wants your status . . . k/IT2.”
Disco responded, “DE TFP, Hotel 23 up and online, systems green, confirmed zero one (01) bolt in the quiver . . . k/Disco.”
“DE GW, be advised sun up in 58 mikes . . . this station req you check back in 24 hrs . . . AR/IT2.”
Disco shut the clamshell on the computer and slid it into his pack. “Comms are full up, Doc.”
“Good to know. Let’s get below before sunup and lock the place down. No one goes out during the day. Those things plus the other event that happened here make it too dangerous. No RF transmissions unless it’s burst. I doubt we were lucky enough to go undetected but we’ll keep trying to stay out of sight and mind, if able.”
“Good fucking plan. Don’t want one of those huge lawn darts dropping on us,” Hawse said half-jokingly.
No one gave an approving laugh. They all wanted to deny the possible deployment of what the intelligence briefers referred to as Project Hurricane, as there would be no convoy or helicopter evac for these men. The carrier was still far to the south, near Panamanian waters.
Billy was again last man as he spun the wheel securing the door to the world outside. They would all now live as vampires.
10
Doc lay in his rack, drifting somewhere in a world just before sleep. Since the fall, most of his dreams had involved the undead. His special-ops team had been haphazardly thrown together by national command authority after he and Billy escaped Afghanistan. When their ship finally arrived in U.S. territorial waters, a giant swarm of undead stood fast on the eastern shore to greet them.
Before it got this bad, Doc heard stories of people burning money to stay warm, and using two-hundred-thousand-dollar sports cars as road barricades. Hawse told a tale of a Washington, D.C., street vendor trading candles and antibiotics from an armored car in exchange for ammunition and bottled water. That was before the undead population exploded to the point that it wasn’t even safe to look out of your boarded-up windows.
Hawse joined them sometime after he fled Washington, D.C. Disco showed up after they lost Hammer. Doc moved slowly toward sleep as he recalled Hammer’s last mission.
A helicopter screamed up the Louisiana coastline, well inside the New Orleans hot zone. Doc knew Sam, his pilot, as this
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