Overrun: Project Hideaway (16 page)

The picture across the holovid
reverted back to the prisoners in the barren white room.

"To further administer
their punishment, the radiation caplets are not armed together. One will watch
helplessly as the other dies. The first will beg for assistance and mercy from
someone not equipped to offer any. The second will watch helplessly as life
slowly and painfully leaves his body. He will witness firsthand his soon and
imminent fate.

“Further punishment to both for
the heinous crime they have both committed."

The clock hands rotated around
its face until they both almost pointed directly up. The large red second hand
was one rotation away from making the three-way alignment complete.

"Death takes a long
time."

The prisoner pacing the room
looked nervously at the clock. The second hand was only a quarter turn from
reaching the twelve o’clock hour. The second prisoner lowered his head away
from the giant timepiece and rested his forehead across the table.

With a loud crash, the man
standing leapt up and rammed his fist against the protective glass across the
clock’s face. The blow left a large crack across its surface. The sound of
snapping bone was heard easily through the quiet room.

Holding his broken hand limply
at his side, the prisoner stared up at the red second hand and watched it make
its final turn.

When all three hands pointed
straight up, a small green light just below the clock turned on casting an
eerie glow through the prisoner chamber.

The prisoner with the broken
hand stopped moving and stood directly beneath the green light. His body frozen
straight upright, he grabbed frantically at the skin behind his neck.

With his back towards the
holovid transmitter and the other prisoner, he shook once and staggered back.
His body slammed violently into the table almost knocking the second prisoner
from his seat.

The second prisoner braced
himself with his legs to keep from tumbling over onto the floor.

Barnes watched the holovid in
fascinated horror and sat motionless in his seat.

Parker set his jaw and clutched
the arm of his command chair tightly. He found himself morbidly captivated by
what was happening in front of him. He couldn’t look away from the prisoner who
had now started thrashing frenziedly about.

White foam spewed from his
throat and lips. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and then clutched
completely shut. He dropped down heavily to his knees and reached out in
anguished desperation towards the man seated at the table.

The holovid image zoomed closer
in. The prisoner’s face was a sickening white. His skin sunk inside his cheek
bones. Drops of blood and patches of hair dropped from his body across the
white table and floor.

His body jerked one last time
causing his head to fly back and then drop in front of his chest. His mouth dropped
open briefly in a silent scream. The inside of his stomach then broke loose and
forcefully began to expel everything that remained inside.

Green blood and vomit splashed
across the table and the arms of the seated prisoner. The second prisoner didn't
look up. He wrapped his hands and arms tightly around his head and pressed his
face down into the table’s surface.

The dying man lunged out towards
the prisoner at the table and grabbed him hard by the wrists. Jumping
forcefully to his feet, the second prisoner quickly broke his grip and hurled
his spasming body against the wall.

The dying man’s legs buckled out
from beneath him, and he fell down hard to the ground. Blood trickled from his
eyes and mouth, and his entire body convulsed violently.

The second prisoner turned his
back on his dying counterpart and reached towards his overturned chair.
Bringing it back against the table, he sat back down. With sweat noticeably
dripping from his brow, he leaned forward and rested his elbows across the
tabletop which was now stained a grotesque yellowish red.

He sat there for a moment and
didn’t move. He then stood and let out a long bellowing frantic scream. He
grabbed the table and heaved it across the room.

He sat back down in his chair
and stared at the broken trembling figure on the floor near the wall. The
spasms twisting his body had lessened. Death was nearly upon him.

The second prisoner then gazed
up at the clock.

"After the initial time
release of radiation, it takes about an hour for life to terminate,"
Allinson’s voice came again from the holovid. "Another hour from now the
second prisoner's radiation caplet will be armed. After the first one is
completely dead. We wanted this second one to spend time reflecting on how his
actions brought him to this particular personal fate. We wanted him to die
alone. His actions required a much more severe punishment. And we planned to
use him as an example."

"They're going to make him
sit there in that," Barnes said softly.

The prisoner put both hands up
to his face. His body shook from the force of his cries as the holovid picture
faded to black. Colonel Allinson’s image soon reappeared.

"You are looking at the
price paid, gentlemen, for failure. For tampering with the plan. There is too
much at stake. It must be defended and allowed to run its course no matter the
costs."

Parker swallowed hard at the
lump rising again in his throat. His terror was now replaced by something new.
Rage. Raw fiery rage. Rage for ever allowing himself to become a part of what
was just shown to him. And for ever allowing himself to be put in a position
where he could not act.

"Your orders are to stay
hidden. At all costs. Await for instructions. Move to deep space if necessary.
We will find you. No matter where you go. You will not be left to rot in space.
You will be sought out. Trust in that. Wait until you are called upon."

Parker reached up and absently
rubbed at the spot that still stung at the back of his neck. Barnes watched him
in horror. He grabbed for his puke tube and vomited violently.

Parker unconsciously rubbed his
fingers across the loaded Sunszk strapped to his calf. His finger grazed
absently across its trigger.

Barnes was too busy to notice.

"You have been entrusted
with a gravest of responsibilities. Mistakes made by either of you have the
potential to cause the end of our kind. The end of human life. The future of
the world has just been placed in the hands of two men. You two men.

“And men make mistakes. Errors
in judgment. We can’t assume otherwise.

“You are restricted from leaving
this technology or ever landing your ship. Your pilot controls have been
programmed by the ship to respond only after receiving palm print verification.
Unauthorized access to the controls will result in the destruction of the ship.

“The radiation caplets have been
programmed with a proximity sensor which encompasses a two hundred meter radius
from the Beam Cannon Hardware. This is enough to cover the entire area of the
Hideaway. And then a little beyond.

“Exceeding this boundary will
arm the caplets and release the radiation into your system,” Allinson’s eyes
darkened as he spoke. “Causing you to die. And die horribly in punishment. That
is most certain.”

“Good god,” Parker said softly.

“These prisoners left this world
with the knowledge of their own fates. Your caplets have been programmed with a
much slower time-release cycle. Should your mission orders be disobeyed, should
you decide to bring the Hideaway back, you will all but have condemned what is
left of the human race here to extinction. And Earth to its utmost destruction.
The extended release cycle of the caplets will allow you extra time to ponder
what you’ve done.”

Barnes retched violently again
into his puke tube. Parker did his best to ignore the smell.

"You hold the future of the
world in your hands, gentlemen. Hold it. Protect it. Hide it. There will be
another contact. You can believe in that.

“Good luck, men."

And with that the holovid
clicked off. Its blue screen faded to black.

Neither Hideaway pilot moved,
spoke or otherwise disturbed the silence of the cockpit.

"Jeff, I double-checked the
systems in the back,” Parker was the first to speak. “Looking at timestamps on
the software updates, it is 2306. We just came out of a forty-two year
hibernation."

Barnes grabbed at the tube
hanging at his side and again released the contents of his stomach in one large
rush. Red and green substances ran the length of the plastic tube and
disappeared in the floor.

Parker turned away still trying
to ignore the horrible stench floating through the small cabin.

A tear rested in the corner of
his eye. He blinked it away quickly before it could fall.

"So what do you have
left?"

"Not much, sir,"
replied Captain Michael Samuel, leader of what was left of one of the Vulture
squads dispatched to Beuford. "Each man is still armed with at least
something. We have two holovids. Only one that actually works. A few
explosives. And maybe enough food to feed what’s left of my squad till the end
of the week, but only the squad.

“We’ve already begun to ration
the meals,” Samuel motioned with a nod to the twenty or so people that moved
about in the dark.

General Maxwell Tuttle moved his
eyes slowly across the makeshift camp burrowed into the side of the decayed
sandy countryside far from the road leading into Beuford. Dim light poked
through broken rectangular shelters they had dug into a small hill.

Tuttle and Samuel sat and talked
alone atop a giant rock just at its edge.

"Who are these
people?" Tuttle asked already knowing the answer.

There were nine women and ten or
more children of different ages sitting near the corroding hill. Some were
bleeding, and others were heavily bandaged. All moved silently about the
campsite. Their voices murmured softly when a member of the Vulture team
addressed them in the dark.

"Things got real tight near
Science Dome 15,” Samuel said standing and walking with Tuttle through the
center of the camp. “The advance came through Beuford much quicker than
expected. We were sent in to finish it up."

They made their way towards the
shelters many of which had flimsy curtains of plastic over the doorways to
protect against the outside air. Small lanterns burned inside. When the
curtains opened, they cast the only light through the camp.

"Two of my men were rigging
the base of a building when everything already set in the upper floors started
going off. The explosions punched them through the surface of the street. We
were able to fix on them with tracers and go in to get them out. And that's
where we found them."

"Your men?"

"No. My men were dead.
There wasn’t much left of ‘em. That wasn’t much of a surprise. What we didn’t
expect were the tunnels. Lots and lots of tunnels. All the fuck over the place.
And these people hiding in them. Through the years, through someone’s real
concerted effort, they converted the sewers into a series of bomb shelters
beneath the streets."

Tuttle nodded knowingly.

"We reported back and got
the word to rig the sewers. We hauled everyone out we could. Pulled them above
the street. And then blew it."

Tuttle looked down at the ground
and then over Samuel’s shoulder at the people settling down in the camp.

"You took some liberty and
interpretation with your orders, Captain."

Despite the heavy burdens
pressing around his heart like a fist, Tuttle was still a military quadrant
commander. He had to act accordingly if at least to keep the minimum amount of
people from dying in this war. And if that meant keeping his soldiers alive to
maximize their protective effort, then he at least had to go through the
motions of admonishing the officer before him for failure to fully obey mission
instructions. No matter how much now it made his spirit sick.

“I’m sure I don’t understand
you, sir,” Samuel whispered looking at the ground.

“Your timetable didn’t afford
the time of a rescue effort,” Tuttle said coolly. “Occupying and arriving
troops could have come upon you. Highly trained men, irreplaceable assets to
this war effort, were unnecessarily put at risk.”

Samuel looked up at him. The two
stood across from each other at the center of the camp.

The people surrounding them sat
in the dark like spirits of the deceased moving silently about. It was almost
as if they weren't even there at all. Their presence seemed to be just a grim
reminder of what the men of the Vulture squads were actually all out there to
do.

Samuel knocked a square pack of
plastic from a patch on his arm. He opened it, pulled out a cigarette and lit
it. He offered one to Tuttle who refused it with a wave of his hand.

"Our orders were to light
the sewers and make them unfit for use,” Samuel responded quietly.
“Communication links were jammed up. We had a hard time getting anything
through. If there was more instruction, we didn’t receive it.”

“You know the objectives out
here,” Tuttle said back to him.

“I know the objectives,” Samuel
answered silently. “And so do the men. What we did out here, we did as much as
we were ordered to do.”

“These people should have been
dead.”

“That order was never given.”

“That order is always implied,”
Tuttle’s duties as quadrant commander and his battle with his conscience was
making his entire body numb. “It’s always implied and you know that.”

“With all due respect, sir,
that’s not what we’re out here to do.”

“Captain, your position does not
offer you the luxury to make that decision,” Tuttle answered looking past him
into the dark. “Those decisions have already been made for you…for all of us.”

“General…,” Samuel spoke softly.
“Men are deserting all over from the Vulture squads. They do one or two towns
and their consciences catch up. They start to think about what it is they are
actually doing.”

“Captain, your men are not here
to think,” Tuttle answered back.

“Maybe not, General. But they’re
here doing what they’ve been asked. They’re blowing up the towns of our
nation’s past. To hopefully ensure a better future for our country and their
families. Families they will most likely never see again.

“Intel isn’t what it should be
to make this work. We don’t get into the cities much in advance of the troops.
We’ve had lots of problems with premature detonations. We blow the charges
while the troops are still in, even if our men are not yet out.

“Most everyone here has pretty
much accepted that it’s unlikely they will see the end of this war much less
even make it to the next town.”

Tuttle ran his eyes across what
was left of this particular Vulture squad.

Patches of singed hair covered
the tops of their heads, and the fabric of their uniforms was either torn or
badly burned. Many of the men hobbled on flesh-charred legs. And most of their
faces were black from the soot of the scorched earth.

"That kid is the reason a
lot of people are still alive," Samuel said pointing towards one of the
plastic curtains and the light coming from behind it in the side of the hill.
"Everyone knew they were in there and what they were trying to do. When
things started getting tight at the dome, our troops were sent into Beuford
after them.”

"To get them out?"

"No," Samuel answered
almost regretfully. "To make sure it was done.”

Tuttle walked to the plastic
that masked two small caves jutting into the hillside.

"They stalled the J.G.U.
advance long enough for them to get a lot of people out,” Samuel continued to
talk while Tuttle was quiet next to him. “A lot of people at Science Dome 15
that is. Before they lit the wall. Before it was overrun. A lot of important
people owe their lives to the chaos that kid and his father caused there."

Tuttle looked out over the hill
at the flames still burning inside Beuford and the ruined overrun dome in the
countryside behind it.

"These people," Tuttle
said. "You endangered a top secret defense plan by bringing them
out."

"Like I said, General,
that's not what we do,” Samuel said blowing smoke coolly through his nostrils
and lips. “And I know you know what I'm talking about. Or else you never would
have gone in yourself like you did. You wouldn’t have gone in to try and bring
that man and his kid out. Like these people, they were to be dead too."

“There were two of them,” Tuttle
said so softly his words were almost lost within the thin breeze that blew
through the night. “Kirken had two kids that were in there with them. I was
only able to get one of them out.”

“Like I said, sir,” Samuel said
looking at him then. “You know what I’m talking about.”

He sucked away the last bit of
life from his cigarette and threw it on the ground. It briefly cast a tiny dull
glow and finally went out.

"Sir," another Vulture
soldier approached them from behind.

Both Tuttle and Samuel turned to
him in the darkness.

Only the young man’s eyes were
visible through the surrounding night. Most of his skin was soiled or burned
completely black. His eyes did not reflect any of the pain he surely felt from
his injuries.

"Sir," the soldier
said again shaking a half-empty container in his hand. "We're working on
the food. Dividing what we can."

"Good," Samuel said
levelly. "See how far you can spread it. And don't feel bad about making
sure our guys get most of it. We're all dead if one of us screws up out of a
lack of enough to eat."

"Yes, sir," the
soldier answered him.

"We also collected some
meds,” the soldier said again before turning away. “Everyone threw in some.
From what we each had left. It’s not much, but it might be enough to help him
out.”

The soldier motioned with his
eyes toward the covered tunnel at their side.

Tuttle reached for the plastic
covering and pulled it abruptly up. It made a slight crunching sound at being
moved. Light from the cave's interior threw an eerie glow across the outside
camp. Squinting their eyes, all three men peered inside.

"Outer-dome medication is
not going to help this guy," a very bloody man kneeling inside the cave
answered the soldier before Samuel could respond.

Two women knelt on his either
side. They were both equally bathed in blood, blood that was obviously not
their own. One held the hand of the still figure on the ground between them.

"Didn't you say this kid
lived outside anyway?"

"Yes, I believe he
did," Tuttle said swallowing hard at the sight in front of him and
remembering what was going through his head when he had tried to carry Brandon
Kirken out of the city. "At least for most of his life."

"Well, judging from his
skin deterioration and apparent hair loss, I'm going to say he did,” the medic
treating Brandon Kirken reported. “The severity of his burns makes it hard to
tell for sure."

Captain Cornellius
"Corn" Cranden, the only surviving medical officer on this Vulture
team, turned to face the three men waiting outside the cave.

One of Cranden’s own arms was
severely burned, a patch of hair was missing from the side of his head, and a
giant gash was visible beneath a tear in his uniform near his gut. The blood
covering his body was partially that of his patient and partially his own.

"And if he didn’t have it
before, giving it to him now isn’t really going to do him a whole lot of good,
Corporal,” Cranden spoke past Tuttle and Samuel towards the soldier. "That
stuff feeds on your stored body energy to protect from the radiation. It would
sap his strength in an instant, and he’d be gone soon after.”

Cranden turned away from the men
back towards his patient.

“Ozone sickness and the effects
of the outside are really the least of his troubles right now."

The women behind him in the cave
slowly adjusted and replaced sticky red bandages across the boy's chest.
Kirken’s eyes were closed, and his breathing came slowly. The toe of one of his
boots twitched up and down near the front of the cave.

The woman holding his bloody
hand cried quietly.

"Hand that med back out,
Corporal," the medic addressed the tattered young Vulture soldier again.
“Make sure the squad keeps taking it.”

"Yes, sir," the
corporal said quietly and stole back into the night away from the hospital
cave.

For a few moments of silence,
Cranden, Tuttle and Samuel watched him go.

"What do ya got,
Corn?" Samuel was the first to speak.

"Well, this kid's got a
punctured lung, and he's bleeding way more than I can fucking stop. He's only
been conscious for about five minutes since we brought him here. Both his legs
are broken, and he's been going in and out of shock. He’s suffered quite a
beating. Most likely way too much."

Tuttle lowered his eyes to the
ground.

"Jesus Christ."

"This is the kid that did
Beuford, Corn," Samuel said sullenly. “He and his old man.”

The only sound coming from the
cave was that of the young woman weeping. Brandon's foot continued to twitch
next to her. His body lurched as his throat and lungs struggled to make a
cough. His eyes remained shut.

“…and his sister…,” Tuttle said
softly without taking his eyes from the ground.

"I know that, Mike,"
Cranden answered first looking at Tuttle then back at Samuel. “Everybody does.”

And with that, the medic reached
towards the faces of the two men looking in and grabbed at the plastic curtain
resting over the cave opening. With more soft crunching from the material, he
pulled it down between them covering the cave's entrance and separating the
world outside from what was going on within.

"Do what you can,
Corn," Samuel said into the cave through the plastic.

He then turned and walked away.

Tuttle stood there for a second
feeling his eyes grow moist. He didn't follow Captain Samuel right away. He
just stood there hoping for whatever he was feeling to pass.

The failure. His guilt.

He could still hear the voices
inside the cave, the barked orders of the medic and the woman’s soft sobs. In
the distance, he could still hear the rumble of explosions.

Tuttle raised his head and
followed after Samuel.

As he walked, he prayed that the
ghost of John Kirken was not a vengeful sort.