Zero Day Code, page 17
part #1 of End of Days Series
With this admonition foremost in their thinking, the Committee had armed the drone swarm with shaped charges and directed EMPs to strike at the most vulnerable points of the US military’s undeniably powerful war-fighting machine. The swarm arrowed in so quickly that human eyes could not detect them as anything but a rippling blur in the sky, and an eerie, humming whipcrack at they passed overhead. On land, the smart warheads guided by machine-learning algorithms fell upon USAF airfields and onshore naval facilities with a thunderous uproar, belied by a lack of breath-taking cinematic eruptions of fire and devastation. Instead, the almost supernaturally imperceptible kinetic hurricane swept over and chewed up aircraft wings and engine housings, shredded satellite dishes and fried communication hubs. For many long seconds, the fifteen ships and submarines resting at anchor in Pearl Harbor rang to the tiny hammer blows of thousands of micro-munitions, as though some malign hailstorm had fallen only upon the most delicate components of the vessel’s external sensor arrays.
Very few aircraft, and no warships, were actually destroyed at Pearl Harbor, or in the three other drone missions to the 7th Fleet’s home port at Yokosuka in Japan, and to the naval and air bases on Guam. However, the damage to such sophisticated, technology-dependent platforms was such that American military power in the Pacific was reduced to a merely modest variable in the calculations of the PLA’s war planners.
There were some human casualties.
A Petty Officer First Class and two seamen on the USS O’Kane, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer tied up at the Safeguard Street dock, were all killed while touching up the paint on the forward 5-inch gun. The guidance chip in a packet of tungsten penetrators meant to disable the steering works of the submarine USS Santa Fe was faulty, and instead of fragmenting the intricate machinery at the stern of the sub, they passed cleanly through the hull, Seaman Derek Hanson, and the box of cantaloupes he was carrying to cut up for breakfast in the officers’ wardroom.
All up, twenty-three Americans, and one British naval officer on secondment died in the attack, a casualty count which the planners at the Central Military Commission had determined was below the threshold likely to prompt a declaration of war. Especially not given the chaos consuming the mainland US as the full effects of General Chu’s cyberstrike unfolded across the continent, from sea to shining sea.
Captain Bei Zhihui knew none of this.
He only knew that his mission was successful and it was time, if possible, to escape.
He ordered the helmsman to put back out to sea and lay in a course to the rendezvous with the submarine Yuan. There was no urgency to his instructions or to the crew’s efforts as they made ready to withdraw. Bei had been nominally briefed on the effects of the strike he had just launched. He knew it would land as a heavy, but not lethal blow on the enemy, and he waited now for them to reply.
There was a very good chance, he understood, that he would not even realise when he was about to die. Anti-ship missiles fired from over the horizon would tear the Vancouver apart between one heartbeat and the next. He might just experience a split second of blinding white light and searing heat before everything went dark. Or he might not.
“I will have another cup of tea,” he said to Lieutenant Tu, who now found himself with little to do but to wait on the consequences of what they had just done. “Make one for yourself, Lieutenant, if you wish, and tell the men that they have my permission to drink to the success of our mission and to the People’s Republic. A real drink, for them and for you. There are two bottles of Baijiu in my cabin. Break them out for the crew. But I will have tea.”
The bridge crew cheered and Captain Bei smiled.
Much to his surprise, he did not die then or at any point before rendezvousing with the Yuan. He would die later, at home with his family. Like a billion of his countrymen.
Interlude
Karletta had another three hours to go on her shift when computerised despatch went down. The little unit attached to the dashboard of the taxi just up and died on her. She still hadn't earned back her buy-in for the shift. She needed another eighty-three bucks just to break even, and a whole helluva lot more than that to cover the dentist’s bill for her kid’s wisdom tooth. It was impacted for sure and possibly even rotting way down deep in his gums. Poor little Kevin was a trooper, but Karletta could see how much pain that kid was in. She needed to finish this shift in the black and back up for another one. And she probably needed to do that at least six times this week.
She had just bid on a solid fifty buck fare from downtown KC to the airport when the unit crapped out on her. Everything just froze. She swore loudly and smacked the treacherous little box upside the head. It did nothing. Still swearing, but under her breath now, she pulled into a loading zone out front of the Crown Centre complex to use her radio. She rarely touched the thing these days and didn't trust herself to use it without rear-ending somebody in the stop-start traffic clogging the city centre.
Soon as she turned up the volume Karletta could hear every other driver in Kansas City hammering on the dispatchers via their own radio sets. The airwaves were a hurricane squall of angry voices and static feedback. Most peeps weren’t looking for work. They wanted tech support on their despatch units. She replaced the handset and turned down the volume. A headache building behind her eyeballs and she could feel her pulse racing into the red zone. Karletta took in a deep breath, let it out, and took another one. Time was when she’d have been frantically trying to get a bid in over the air, desperate to replace that lost fifty buck gig as quickly as possible. Now she knew it was time to do some real old school cab driving. If despatch was down then for sure there would be hundreds of passengers needing transport just wandering the streets. Some of them would try Uber or Lyft or even one of those stupid electric scooter things. But plenty would flag down the first cab they laid eyes on. She could pick up her fares the old-fashioned way, by rolling right up on them. Those assholes at Uber hadn’t figured out how to hijack that part of the business yet.
Before she’d even pulled away from the front of the Hallmark building, Karletta had to jam on the brakes as her peripheral vision caught a flash of movement to her left; a white lady in business clothes running down the steps, waving frantically to her. She paused half in, half out of the loading zone to let the woman climb in.
“Oh God, thank you so much,” she said as she threw a shoulder bag on the back seat and all but dived in after it. “I’ve got to get my daughter. Quickly.”
“Strap in, ma'am,” Karletta advised, but the woman was already pulling on her seat belt. Karletta had no trouble keeping her voice calm and level. She was used to passengers thinking it’d mean the end of the world if they didn't get where they thought they needed to be. “Where’s your kid at?” Karletta asked.
“Gordon Parks Elementary, the woman said. “Do you know it? I think the internet is down. There’s no maps or anything.”
“I know it,” Karletta said, careful to keep the sour tone out of her voice. She had tried to get Kevin in there, but the admissions staff had made it pretty obvious that his learning difficulties would be all a bit too difficult for the school to cope with. Perhaps she might try her local public school. Non charter. The city did have some excellent programs for slower children. Karletta ground her teeth at the memory. Still, this woman wasn’t one of them. She just needed to get to her kid.
“You got a sick little one?” Karletta asked as they pulled out into traffic. She would pick the kid up of course, but she wanted to prepare herself for the possibility of puke in the back seat, and the warning she’d have to give this already hysterical lady about the cleaning fee.
The woman just looked at her as though she was mad.
“Haven’t you heard?”
Karletta allowed a city bus and a garbage truck get past her before she slipped into the traffic stream.
“Been working since before sunup, ma’am,” she answered. “And I can’t stand the radio, especially not the news these days. Something wrong at school?”
The woman caught her eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“Oh. You don’t know. The Chinese have attacked. They’re saying they’ve dropped bombs and missiles all over. Schools are being evacuated.”
Karletta felt her stomach do a forward roll. She almost pointed the car in the direction of Kevin’s school, across the other side of town. But her sudden panic abated when she remembered that he was at home with his grandmother, full of kid’s aspirin for his bad tooth. Still, sounded like she would need to get back there as soon as she could.
“I’m sorry I hadn’t heard that no,” Karletta said, feeding the accelerator a taste of her old shoe leather. She had a good flow of green lights ahead. “The Chinese? You sure? That sounds kind of crazy. I know about the trade thing and all, but that ain't worth killing over.”
The woman looked pissed off to be questioned.
“I got a text message from the school,” she said. “And an email from Emily’s home room teacher. It’s a genuine evacuation. We’re not just pulling her out of school, we’re getting out of town. Chinese missiles could be on their way.”
Karletta couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her tone.
“Missiles? I don’t think so, ma’am. That’s crazy talk. But if you don’t mind, I might put on the news radio. Maybe find out what’s what.”
Her passenger didn’t object. She was already stabbing at the screen of her cell phone, trying to make a connection that obviously wasn’t going through. Karletta fiddled with the controls for the car stereo, trying to find a talk news station. There was a lot of crazy talk, she would admit, but not just about China. There was a whole heap of other craziness too. Mostly about some big computer hack or internet thing and something about a bad accident at a warehouse just outside of KC. Four or five workers killed she heard, before flipping the dial again in search of a bulletin that might make sense of the whole thing for her.
Many thoughts tussled for attention inside Karletta Abianac’s head. She was worried about Kevin and her mom, sitting at home and freaking the hell out if they’d heard anything about this China business. She was worried about Kevin’s wisdom teeth. About whether she had the staying power to just keep driving for as long as it would take to get him seen by the dentist. She worried about covering the rent next week even if she did make enough to pay for the tooth doctor. And, to be honest, she was a little freaked out by her passenger who was now arguing loudly in the back seat with someone, possibly her husband, about needing to get out of the city as soon they could.
Perhaps if Karletta had not had so many things on her mind she would have noticed the sudden strangeness of the traffic flow around her.
But she didn’t notice and instead, distracted by half a dozen competing fears and thoughts, Karletta Abianac drove her cab into the four-way intersection, rolling at speed through the green light.
The delivery van that T-boned them was moving at almost the same speed, as were the other eight cars which speared into that crossroad where every light burned a bright, steady green.
Dillonvale was a railroad town that hadn’t seen a train in twenty-five years. Tammy Kolchar had lived her entire life in sight of the tracks on Rice Street. She could only vaguely recollect the last of the trains, heavy with black coal dug out of the surrounding hills. Tammy grew up in Dillonvale, fell in love there and began her working life there. That love soured and went bad, leaving her with two little ones to feed. Not an easy thing on a cashier’s wage at the Dollar General. Especially not when Gutterson, the manager, wouldn't never give her more’n six hours in a shift because that’d put her over the top into full time pay. With benefits.
Nobody working at Dollar General got the benefits, except for Mister Gutterson of course.
So Tammy made do with child support, ten cents an hour over the legal minimum wage and an Oldsmobile she’d inherited when her dad died from the black lung fifteen years past. Sometimes she thought her ex-husband had married that damn car instead of her. Lord knows he’d fought like a pit-bull to hold onto it when he went away to the fracking in Ohio. Hell of a lot harder than he fought to hold onto their marriage. Bobby was hooked up with some waitress now and Tammy’s roommate Roxarne was home watching all of their kids and the Kardashians. Roxy didn’t have much else to do since the Blockbuster in Hermantown went under and took her job down with it. They pooled what little they had and made do. It worked after its own fashion, as her dad used to say.
This morning though, jeez. Tammy Kolchar sorely wished it was her at home keeping up with Kardashians and Roxy in here, riding herd on the tweekers and junkies and the never-ending parade of Dillonvale’s finest.
The customers just wouldn’t quit coming, and the delivery truck hadn’t arrived from Hermantown. Her register wasn’t working right. Mister Gutterson had told her “cash only for the duration of the outage”, whatever the hell that meant. And then of course, he promptly disappeared, leaving Tammy and Wynette O’Farrell to deal with increasing numbers of increasingly pissed off shoppers.
Right now, for instance, Tammy was trying to talk a thin man with meth mouth and prison tats down off the edge of going absolutely postal ‘cause he couldn’t get his favourite brand of cigarette. Pyramids. Which to Tammy’s mind was the preferred choice of those who could not afford more than to suck on a burning stick of floor sweepings and dog hair.
“What d’ya mean I can’t get my pack of Pyramids?” the not-good waste of human skin was complaining, while Tammy was trying to put through Mrs Puller’s weekly mountain of cat food.
She wanted to run and hide in the cold room.
Instead, she said, “I’m sorry, sir, but the machine isn’t doing debit payments today. We’re cash only till the machines are back on.”
“Bitch I need my smokes!” He whined.
Tammy’s eyebrows furrowed around the front end of the monster headache she had coming on. “I’m sorry,” she said, swiping through tins of cat meat and pitching her voice to carry to Wynette at the next register over.
For a wonder, the prison tatt guy simply spun around and left. Tammy let out a breath. Mrs Puller took it all in, her eyes sparking like a squirrel with a secret store of nuts for the winter.
“I have cash, my dear,” she said. “I listen to the news and I got the government warnings. I took out extra cash.”
Tammy bagged her cat food. She was sure the old biddy was eating just as much of it as her army of strays.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she said automatically as she rang her out. “Have a nice day.”
Mrs Puller paid with a few crumpled notes that looked as if they hadn’t been unfolded in the light of day since the 1900s. It didn’t matter. They were legal tender, so into the drawer they went, and the old lady with the wide mouth shark’s grin got to feed her cats and maybe herself for another week.
She was lucky.
The store’s shelves were emptying at such an alarming rate that Tammy was having to tell every second customer they didn't have nothing in stock for them. Not Mac N Cheese. That was long gone. About twelve boxes walked out with Laverne Walters half an hour ago. Not Hamburger Helper. Mrs Ekner loaded up on a whole damn pallet of that and a ton of cheap loose meat from the butchery. Had her simpleton son Erik carry it out to the car for her. And most mysterious of all, leastways to Tammy, they had run out of the bright orange government cheese you could only get with food stamps — and could possibly only want if your station in life had fallen so far that you was living off food stamps, with a little supplemental dumpster diving on the side.
Her cash drawer was filling up, too. She’d have to get Mister Gutterson to put the extra cash in the safe soon. All that paper money made her nervous. Three years ago she had been in the store during an armed robbery attempt, and this day felt a lot like that. People were edgy and weird.
As Tammy rang out the next customer, who complained there was no Mac n’ Cheese left, her hands started to shake. She looked around. The food aisles were packed with people, and they were taking everything. Like, everything. Even the stuff that never sold, like cocktail smoked oysters and Larry the Cable Guy’s beer bread in a box.
Even more people were starting to push into the store. They raised their voices. They argued over who had dibs on the canned German potato salad. Tammy’s eyes cast about. Where was the manager? She rang up a young woman she didn’t know, some out of towner, who had somehow scored a whole case of pork and beans. Tammy was pretty sure they had none on of that on the floor yet. It was sitting out back waiting to be unpacked. But she rang it up anyway and the woman left the store hugging the cans in a protective embrace.
Tammy hadn’t been a good student at school, but she wasn’t stupid. There was something going on here. She couldn’t talk to Wynette about it. She was flat out busy with the unusual rush too. But when Mister Darramore from the hardware place turned up in front of her with an armful of beef flavoured rice and Vienna franks she had to ask as she was ringing up his order.
“Mister Darramore, what is going on this morning? Why is everyone shopping so damned hard?”
Mister Darramore was a nice man. Tammy had been at school with his son Roger, who got killed in Iraq. He looked at her with something like pity.
“You been working all morning, Tam?”
“Yes sir.”
“You should check the news. We’re at war now. With China. Or maybe Russia. Nobody’s really sure. Either way, news says they did a sneak attack. Bombed a bunch of food warehouses and wholesalers. Really made a mess of things. People are stocking up while they can. Some folks are getting out of town, but I don’t see Beijing bothering with anywhere as small as Dillonvale, do you?”
Well, that didn’t make a lick of sense. How could you not know whether you were fighting a war with someone?
