Table of Contents
Characters of Note
Acronyms
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
Interval
By Jason Kristopher
Text ©2012 by Jason Kristopher
Illustrations ©2012 by Grey Gecko Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This book is a work of fiction; any resemblance to real persons (living or dead), events, or entities is coincidental unless otherwise noted.
Published by Grey Gecko Press, Katy, Texas, USA.
Grey Gecko Press thanks Mr. John Aydelotte and Mr. Dominick D’Aunno for their generous contributions to independent publishing and creating a brighter future for authors and readers everywhere.
www.greygeckopress.com
Design by Grey Gecko Press
Illustration / cover art by Oliver Wetter / Fantasio Fine Arts — http://fantasio.info
Additional illustrations by Dennis Fanning / Fanning Creative — fanningcreative.carbonmade.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The dying of the light: interval / Jason Kristopher
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012950919
ISBN 978-1-9388212-3-3
First Edition
Characters of Note
Military Personnel
McMurdo Station
Maj Bill Shaw, Command Pilot, USAF
Lt Timothy Fraser, First Pilot, USAF
Lt Mark Evans, Co-pilot, USAF
Staff Sgt Charles Keith, Loadmaster, USAF
2nd Lt Rodrigo Lopez, Flight Engineer, USAF
Bunker One
Col Kimberly Blake, Special Forces, CO
Cpt Marcus Potter, US Army
Alpha Squad
David Blake, XO
Gunnery Sgt Dalton Gaines, USMC MSOR
Cpt Tom Reynolds, USAF 1st Spec Ops Wing
Lt Jonathan Barnes, USMC MSOR
Lt Jake Powell, SEAL
Lt Elizabeth Montero, USMC MSOR
Cpt Nathan Armstrong, Special Forces
Bravo Squad
Cpt Angelo Martinez, Ranger
Petty Off 2nd Class Edward Ames, SEAL
Cpt Janet Turner, USAF 1st Spec Ops Wing
Sgt Arkady Ivanovich, Special Forces
Lt Adrian Masters, SEAL
Sgt Joshua Barrents, Special Forces
Sgt Samuel Techman, USAF 1st Spec Ops Wing
Bunker Four
Maj Malcolm Dagger, USMC MSOR, CO
Bunker Seven
Brig Gen George Maxwell, Ranger, AEGIS CO
Bunker Eight
Com Frank Anderson, SEAL, AEGIS XO
Sgt Douglas Mahoney, US Army
Non-Military Personnel
McMurdo Station
Dr. Jim Atkins, Geneticist
Jennifer Michaelson, US Marshal
Dr. Jack Warner, Area Director
Dr. Sabrina Tanner, Communications
Bunker One
Angela Gates, Governor
Daniel Taylor, Governor’s Assistant
Others
Arthur Beoshane, Rebel Leader, Seattle Ruins
Driebach, Rebel Officer, Seattle Ruins
Dr. Mary Maxwell, Research, Bunker Seven
Arturo Onevás, Administrator, Marambío Base
Acronyms
AEGIS
Advanced Experimental Genetics Intelligence Service
ACU
Army Combat Uniform, standard Army uniform
CO
Commanding officer of a unit or group
REAPR
Real-time Enemy Assessors & Physiology Readers
USAMRIID
United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases
XO
Executive officer, second in command of a unit or group
Z-Day
The day the world at large was informed of the existence of walkers, through a speech by the US president.
Prologue
Z-Day - 6 weeks
Becoming a zombie was much more painful than he had expected.
He’d assumed it would be a momentary pain, and then… nothing. He would be gone, a mindless monster.
Instead, he felt every stretched sinew, pulled taut from endless cramps. Every torn and bruised muscle, worked beyond endurance. Every cough and rattle, as his tongue rasped against a throat gone dry from screaming.
Pain was a constant companion to him, a seemingly old and dear friend reminding him that he was still, against all odds and hope, miserably alive. He longed for death with each passing nanosecond, the sweet release of oblivion calling to him as if she were the most earnest of lovers, and he wanted nothing more than to fall into her arms, to rest at long last.
But the hunger… dear God, the hunger.
It gnawed at him, the core of his being turned and twisted into a craven and craving beast, possessed by a singular, overpowering urge to rip and tear into the sweet, sweet flesh of anything and everything that came within grasp of the claws that had replaced his fingers.
The hunger did not come without its own benefits, however. It began to supersede the pain, not to extinguish the horrific agony but rather to embrace it, to enfold it and make it a part of itself. The hunger made the agony a part of who he was now, who he would forever be.
There in the dark, his mind ran screaming.
Whether it was months, days, or only seconds later when he came back to himself, he couldn’t tell. He knew only that the hunger had gone from crippling to merely frustrating. He knew, on some level, that it would never leave him completely now, but at least, he was able to function, able to think.
He sat up on the narrow bunk built into the wall. Raising one hand against the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights, he saw clearly for the first time in who knew how long, and noticed the gloves that encased his hands and the dark robe-like clothes he’d been given. A flickering at the edge of his vision gave away the presence of a hood, and his feet were in heavy black boots.
He stood, wavering a little as his equilibrium adjusted. Shaking his head to clear it, he took another look around. The bars of what was obviously a cell gave him a view of a corridor and nothing else. He noticed the lack of any reflective surfaces immediately, and his mind shied away from the thought of what he might look like now.
He took a few cautious steps, and as the world ceased spinning around him, he realized that he felt stronger than he ever had before. Not just stronger, but better, faster, more powerful. The leather of his gloves creaked as he clenched a fist in wonder, the pain presented by the action merely background white noise,
thanks to his mind’s defensive filtering.
He was just ready to start yelling for the guard he assumed was nearby when a man in a US Army uniform strode into view on the opposite side of the bars, a nondescript aide following close behind.
“I see you’ve survived,” said the man in uniform, smiling coldly. “That’s good, even if it did cost us the others in the process.”
He tried to speak, to ask the uniformed man where he was, who he was, and what had been done to him, but he couldn’t form the words. His damaged throat would not comply with his wishes, so he was left standing mute before the shorter man, who now held up a hand.
“No, no. Don’t bother. You’re not ready yet. You’ve got some healing to do.” He frowned, crossing his arms. “I suppose I can’t very well call you ‘thing,’ so let’s find out your name, shall we?” He snapped his fingers, and the aide handed him a slim folder, which he opened and scanned. “Ah, here it is.” He snapped the folder closed and handed it back to the aide, moving forward to look at the man in black a bit closer, yet still well out of range of the bars.
“You and I have a lot to discuss, Mr. Driebach.”
Chapter One
Over the Southern Ocean
Z-Day - 6 days
“So, what’d they promise you, Fraser?”
Fraser didn’t turn from the controls of the C-5M Super Galaxy as he answered the co-pilot, Evans. “Promise me?”
“Yeah, what’d they promise you to get you to fly to the ass end of the world trading supplies for a load of half-frozen civilian scientists? I heard we’ve been losing guys like us left and right, what with those superflu crazies.”
Fraser finally looked over. “I was ordered to fly, so I flew.”
“Yeah, but what about your family, man?”
Fraser shook his head and did his instrument check. “Don’t have any.”
“None? What about a girlfriend?”
“She left me—said I loved planes more than her.” Fraser glanced over at Evans. “She was right.”
“All right, Fraser, Evans, cut the chatter,” said Major Bill Shaw, the C-5’s command pilot, as he walked onto the flight deck. He’d been in his rack for the last two hours, but you’d never have known it to look at him—his uniform was neat and tidy and he was well groomed. He took a long sip from a mug of hot coffee, the aroma of it perking up everyone on the flight deck. “Where are we?”
Evans spoke up first. “We’re about an hour out, sir.”
Shaw had over twenty years experience flying these big bastards, and he wasn’t about to lose one now. “Good, good. Get on the horn and make sure we’re not heading into a shitstorm down there.”
“Yes, sir,” said Evans.
Shaw looked over the notes of the flight engineer, Lopez, checking for anything out of the ordinary. “Looks good, Lopez. Go grab some joe, and some for these yahoos, too.”
“Yes, sir,” Lopez said, clipping his log to his station before heading to the galley.
Shaw gave a final glance at the cockpit, then headed down to the cargo deck, passing through the mostly empty passenger compartment to the rear service ladder. There was only a single scientist there, already bundled up in his cold gear and passed out. Shaw shook his head and snorted. Civilians, he thought. Can’t get used to the noise and the cold. Going to be a long flight for him!
The cargo bay was even colder. Pallets, drums, and other containers of cargo filled every square inch of space, and on a C-5, that was a lot of inches. Looking around, he finally spotted the loadmaster Charlie Keith off to the side, checking a strap.
“How we doin’, Charlie?” he asked, knocking on the wooden crate next to the tall, super-skinny loadmaster.
“Fine, sir. Just fine. She’s packed to the gills, but we’ll make it…” Charlie trailed off as he looked down the long cargo bay. “At least, I think we will, sir.”
“You think we’ll make it?”
“Well, sir, it’s just that some of these materials are… well, dangerous, sir.”
“I thought you cleared everything.”
“I did, sir. I’m not saying there’s anything against regs on board. Just… well, some of it makes me nervous, that’s all.”
“Charlie, if there was something out there that didn’t make you nervous, I’d be surprised,” said Shaw with a smile.
Charlie grinned. “Yes, sir, I know, sir.”
“How’s the President?”
“Not good, sir. I suggested he get some rack, but he didn’t want to. Said he could handle it. I didn’t want to make it an order, but… well, he’s pretty bad off, sir.”
“Any idea how he got sick?”
“No, sir. He was like this when he got onboard.”
“He tell you anything?”
“Nope. Just that he’d gone off-base for a personal matter.”
Shaw glowered. Off-base jaunts had been canceled for weeks. “A ‘personal matter,’ eh? Probably some girl in the city.” He noticed Charlie was looking even more uncomfortable than usual, and sighed. “Never mind, Charlie. Where’s he at? I’ll check up on him.”
“He’s just down the other row, sir,” said Charlie, pointing.
Shaw nodded, throwing back the last of the sugary coffee in his mug. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Just keep an eye on those ‘dangerous’ things you mentioned, clear?”
“Crystal, sir.”
Shaw moved into the next row, looking for the other on-duty loadmaster, the man with the unlikely name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—hence his nickname, ‘The President.’ He finally spotted the big man, hunkered down near one of the pallets of frozen meat they were transporting. The irony of bringing frozen anything to Antarctica was not lost on the greying pilot. He gently put a hand on Franklin’s shoulder.
“How you doin’, son?” he asked quietly.
Franklin started, as though he hadn’t heard Shaw tramping over the metal grating, and stood up. At six feet four inches, he was not a small man, and he was almost as wide as he was tall. Barrel-chested didn’t seem to quite cover it. Shaw knew only a little from his file: born in southern L.A.’s Willowbrook neighborhood to a black preacher and his devout wife, Franklin was only a stone’s throw from Compton, but he’d managed to avoid getting sucked into the gang life and found his way out through the Air Force.
“I’m not doin’ too hot, sir,” said Franklin, coughing. “Just can’t seem to get cooled down. It’s so hot in here!”
Shaw wasn’t one to worry about nothing, but when one of his men started complaining about the heat in the cargo area of a plane most of the way to Antarctica, it was a bad sign.
“Look, Franklin, why don’t you get some rest. Hit your rack, son.” The loadmaster started to object, but Shaw cut him off. “That’s an order.”
Franklin finally nodded, then moved toward the ladder as Shaw went to the wall intercom and called the flight deck. “Lopez, go wake Rhinehardt. Tell him he’s pulling some extra duty today.”
“Yes, sir.”
Shaw looked over the cargo bay. Even the overhead lights were having a hard time getting down between the boxes. They really packed the stuff in here, he thought. Operation Deep Freeze. What a pain in my ass. At least this is the last trip to McMurdo Station of the season. Not that a bird full of scientists who haven’t seen the world in a year will be any better.
Marambío Base
Argentine Antarctica
The hundred-thousand-pound C-130 Hercules wasn’t idling—it was chomping at the bit, ready for its pilot to let the four spinning propellers claw their way into the air. The same pilot—Matías—who was fighting on the flight deck, yards away from the controls, trying to escape Antarctica.
“Stand down, Matías! We cannot leave. There’s nothing to go back to anymore,” his leader, Arturo, shouted.
“I’m going home, Arturo. I’m going to see my wife and children before they die! The superflu is killing everyone. I won’t let that happen to them!” Matías, the bigger man, landed a so
lid punch to Arturo’s jaw, sending him flying backward into the bulkhead.
Arturo landed with a loud clang and groaned. He put a hand to the back of his head. It came away bloody, and he looked up at Matías with scorn evident in every line of his features.
Matías leaned over with an outstretched hand. “At least there we have a chance, amigo. At least there we can choose death on our own terms, rather than waiting to freeze.”
Arturo ignored him, pushing himself to his feet against the bulkhead. “Fine, go. Abandon your post.” He looked around at the other men, watching from a safe distance. “You know what is waiting for you back there. The dead, the dying, and the rumors… rumors that not all of the dead are staying dead. If you go back, you too will die. All of you!”
Arturo moved toward the hatch. As he stood at the doorway, he took one final look at the twenty-three men who were leaving—nearly half of his people. Some of them were men he needed to stay: engineers, mechanics, one of his two doctors—even the psychiatrist was going. He shook his head and spat at their feet. “Leave, cowards. You’re no longer welcome here. Don’t come back,” he said, straightening as he stepped out of the plane onto the rock and gravel of the runway.
He didn’t look back as he heard the hatch slam; he just clutched his parka closer and held a hand to the wound on his scalp. Getting inside was paramount now, as a bleeding wound in sub-zero temperatures would cause hypothermia in record time. The engines of the big plane roared behind him, and he paid no attention as the ground vibrated beneath his feet.
He reached his truck and got in, seeing the plane finally get off the ground as he gunned the engine. His engine sputtered a bit, threatening to stall, but he feathered the gas, gave a quick finger to the departing plane, and roared off toward the base infirmary.
A few minutes later, he was inside.