Roger and Tammi exchanged their vows. Their wedding rings were made of recycled copper washers, refashioned by friendly volunteers in the machine shop. Tammi blushed bright red as Ernie informed Roger he could kiss the bride. Cheers and applause echoed throughout the chapel.
Geir squeezed Molly’s hand. He kissed the top of her head.
What a softy, she thought. She wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed that he was actually falling for all this mushy hearts-and-flowers crap. You’d think the machines would have stomped it out of him by now.
Tammi raised the plastic bouquet. Several of the younger women rushed forward to vie for it.
Molly stayed right where she was.
“Don’t even think about it,” she whispered to Sitka.
“Never crossed my mind,” the girl assured her. “Better things to do.”
Thank God for small favors, Molly thought. As she joined in the applause—for form’s sake—her mind drifted back to more important matters.
Forget the train for a minute. How are we going to get past that fucking HK?
One of the perks of command was a private bedroom above the manager’s office, as opposed to the crowded bunkhouses that served as home for the rest of the cell. The flickering light of a kerosene lamp cast dancing shadows on the log walls. A bearskin rug carpeted the floor. A shuttered balcony window offered an alternative escape route. Molly slept better with multiple exits.
She kicked off her boots and got ready for bed. The king-sized four-poster, with its mismatched comforters and quilts, looked warm and inviting. It had been a long day and then some. She was ready for it to be over.
“Admit it,” Geir teased her. He was already down to a flannel shirt and jeans. His aviator’s jacket hung on a hook by the door. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
She knew he was referring to the wedding.
“I suppose. Like you said, it was good for morale.” She placed her rifle by the door. A loaded semi-automatic pistol already rested on a table next to the bed. “Beats being shot at by T-600s, I guess.”
“That’s one way to look at it.” He deposited his own weapons on the opposite side of the bed. “And speaking of weddings....”
Uh-oh.
Before she could stop him, he dropped down onto one knee.
Oh, fuck, Molly groaned inwardly. Not this again.
He fished a polished metal ring from the pocket of his shirt.
“Molly Roxana Kookesh, will you marry me?”
She recognized the ring. It was the pin from a hand grenade he had hurled at a Terminator during that raid on a Skynet interrogation facility in 2015. Her team had liberated more than two dozen POWs, including one grounded bush pilot. After she’d freed Geir from solitary confinement, they’d ended up fighting a whole passel of T-70s, side-by-side. Their “first date,” as it were.
Geir had hung onto the ring ever since.
“For God’s sake, stand up,” she told the kneeling pilot. It was hardly the first time he’d pulled this stunt. “You look ridiculous.” As usual, she treated the ring as though it was radioactive. “How many times do we have to go through this?”
He rose to his feet again, but didn’t put the ring away.
“C’mon, Molly. We’ve been together, through all kinds of hell, for three years now. What are we waiting for?”
“Are you kidding?” She couldn’t believe they were actually having this discussion again. “There’s a war on, remember? If Skynet has its way, the human race is kaput. Marriage and white picket fences and all that shit will have to wait until the machines are scrap metal—if and when that ever happens. What’s the point in planning for the future? Today is all that matters. Tomorrow’s a long shot at best.”
He flinched at her harsh words.
“Roger and Tammi didn’t think so.”
“Roger and Tammi are a couple of stupid kids who don’t know any better. They’re just foot soldiers. Cannon fodder. They can afford to cling to their starry-eyed illusions, at least until the Terminators get them.” She made sure the bedroom door was securely locked and bolted. Sleigh bells hanging from the doorknob would jangle loudly if anyone tried to force their way in while they were sleeping. Then she turned to face him.
“I’m in charge here, Geir,” she said. “I can’t allow myself to forget what really matters.”
“Neither can I,” he said stubbornly. Visibly disappointed, he dropped the ring back into his pocket. “That’s why I’m not going to give up.” His hurt expression got to her, although not enough to make her change her mind.
“I know,” she said softly. She peeled off her sweater. A scar across her flat belly was a souvenir of a close encounter with a Hunter-Killer. Geir liked to trace it with his finger sometimes. “Just be happy with what we have, okay?” She undid her ponytail. Long black hair tumbled past her bare shoulders. “I don’t want to think about tomorrow anymore. Just tonight.”
The rest of her clothes hit the floor. She climbed into the bed and threw back the covers.
“Now get over here and keep me warm.”
Geir was smart enough to know an invitation when he heard one. He shrugged in defeat.
“Beats being shot at by machines, right?”
Molly watched him undress.
“You know it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
2003
Something crunched beneath Losenko’s boot.
He looked down. A charred human jawbone lay in pieces atop the cracked and broken pavement. The grisly relic elicited only a rueful grimace. He was inured to such remains now. The port was nothing but bones.
A small fishing community situated near the mouth of the Ponoy River, it had not taken a direct hit from the enemy missiles, but it was a ghost town nonetheless. All that was left were the gutted remains of burnt-out homes and buildings. Torched vehicles, their windows blown out, rusted in the streets. Truncated iron beams jutted from the wreckage of an abandoned cannery. Industrial machinery had melted into shapeless heaps of solid slag. Thermal blasts, shock waves, and radioactive fallout had reduced the village to a rotting corpse.
Preliminary scouting teams had discovered evidence of looting as well. Losenko took that as a good omen. It meant that someone had survived the initial attack, at least for a time.
The Gorshkov was moored at the village’s one surviving pier, which an engineering detail was busily reinforcing. Armed sentries, hand-selected by Master Chief Komarov, stood guard over the work crew. Losenko wanted no more deserters. He wondered if he should post guards to watch the sentries.
Flak jackets and helmets protected the security team. Losenko wasn’t expecting an attack, but it paid to be cautious. Desperate survivors could be dangerous.
The captain paced along the shore. A bullhorn rested in his grip. He stepped onto a blackened concrete foundation and again raised the bullhorn to his lips. His amplified voice echoed across the desolate wasteland.
“Attention, citizens! This is Captain Dmitri Losenko of the Russian Navy. If you are hiding, please show yourself. We are here to offer you whatever assistance we can provide. Do not be afraid. We mean you no harm. Repeat: do not be afraid. Please let us help you.”
He lowered the bullhorn and listened expectantly, but without much hope. This was not the first time he or his officers had made such an announcement.
As before, there was no response. Was the village truly deserted, or were there still survivors huddled somewhere in the wreckage, afraid to come forward?
Who could blame them? Losenko mused. The military had failed to save them; indeed their unfortunate proximity to the naval base had brought this disaster down upon them. Why put themselves in the hands of strangers with guns? They had to assume that civilization had collapsed. It’s every man for himself now.
Duty compelled him, however, to make his best effort to locate any survivors.
A truck engine roared to life a few meters away. The sub’s mechanics had salvaged the abandoned pickup from the b
ottom level of a local parking garage. A dozen armed seamen were seated in the bed of the rundown vehicle. Its scorched blue paint job was cracked and peeling. Improvised patches kept its tires inflated. Ivanov kicked them, just to be sure.
Scowling, the XO crossed the pavement to join his superior. A Kalashnikov assault rife was slung over his shoulder. A dosimeter was pinned to the lapel of his heavy overcoat; the treated plastic film measured his exposure to radiation. Earlier scans had found the level of radiation higher than they would have liked, but not immediately life-threatening. Losenko suspected that they were going to have to live with a revised definition of “acceptable” from now on. At the moment, the threat of cancer was the least of their worries.
“Scouting team is ready to depart, sir,” Ivanov reported. “Request permission to lead the reconnaissance mission.”
Losenko shook his head. An identical dosimeter was pinned like a badge to his own lapel.
“Permission denied.” He lowered his voice to avoid being overheard. “We’ve already discussed this, Alexei. I can’t risk you. Zamyatin is more than capable of leading the expedition.”
Now that the truck was up and running, Losenko was dispatching a team to search further inland, looking for signs of life and foraging for supplies. The town itself appeared to have been stripped clean already, and what canned food remained was dangerously irradiated.
“Is that the real reason?” Ivanov challenged him. “Or is it that you don’t trust me out of your sight? Do you think that I will desert, to go searching for my family?” A bitter smirk twisted his lips. “Let me assure you, sir, you need not worry on that account. I have no illusions that my loved ones survived the Americans’ treacherous attack.” He spat upon the ground, barely missing the charred skull fragment. “I know they are dead.”
The starpom’s surly tone bordered on insubordination. Losenko’s right hand fell discreetly upon the grip of the semi-automatic pistol that was holstered on his hip. Conscious of Ivanov’s heart-breaking losses, he had made allowances for the younger officer’s sullen attitude, but he was not about to have his authority questioned— not even by a man he had once thought of as a son.
“I do not need to justify my decisions to you, Mr. Ivanov,” he said brusquely. “Do not forget that I am still the captain here. If you have a problem with that, I am more than willing to relieve you of your duties.”
As he spoke, Losenko kept a close eye on Ivanov’s rife. He held his breath, waiting to see if the combative XO would back down. He felt the eyes of the other crewmen fall upon them both.
“That won’t be necessary, Captain.” Ivanov stepped back and saluted Losenko, albeit grudgingly. “I will instruct Deputy Commander Zamyatin to commence scouting further afield, per your orders. Will that be all, sir?”
Losenko’s hand came away from his gun.
“Thank you, Mr. Ivanov. Go about your duties.”
Stone-faced, the captain watched silently as the XO marched back to the truck and gave Zamyatin some final instructions before waving them on. The tactical officer rode shotgun in the truck’s cab beside the driver. The pickup disappeared down a cratered highway heading west into the heart of the Kola Peninsula. Its spinning wheels raised a cloud of grey dust and ash. Scattered bones, human and otherwise, crunched beneath its tread.
Soon the truck disappeared into the distance.
Not for the first time, Losenko chided himself for not organizing a detail to collect and bury the strewn remains. It was a crime to leave the skeletal fragments exposed to the elements like this. But the sheer enormity of the task forced him to confront the futility of any such effort. The dead outnumbered the living now, and the whole world was their crematorium.
He wondered if there were enough people left on Earth to bury them all.
My duty is to the living, he concluded, not to lifeless bones.
He prayed that the scouting party would find survivors—perhaps clusters of refugees fleeing the former population centers. He desperately needed to believe that some remnant of the Russian people endured, that he and his crew were not entirely alone in this godforsaken new world. They had not even been able to make contact with another Russian sub. Whether this meant that all of them had been destroyed in the fighting after the attack, or that they were simply laying low as submarines were designed to do, remained unknown.
Where did his duty lie if there was no nation left to defend?
He surveyed the devastation, unable to escape it. Was this what Alaska looked like now? His own role in the holocaust still haunted him. Should I have launched those missiles? Did I retaliate against a computer glitch?
What if the American general, Ashdown, was telling the truth?
“Captain! Captain!”
A young ensign came running down the gangplank from the sub. Losenko recognized him as Alyosha Mazin, a trainee currently assigned to Operations. He sprinted toward Losenko with more energy than the captain had seen in any of the crew for weeks. His eyes were wide with alarm. He shoved his fellow sailors aside.
“Out of my way! Coming through!”
What the devil? Losenko instantly went on the alert.
“Something’s coming, sir!” The breathless ensign skidded to a halt in front of him. “Radar’s detected an incoming aircraft, heading this way fast!”
Adrenalin shot through Losenko’s veins.
“What kind of aircraft?”
“Undetermined, sir!” The messenger labored to catch his breath; weeks of sedentary life aboard the sub had left him out of shape. His pale face was flushed. “Bearing northwest, sir. From the sea.”
The Americans? Losenko bit back a profanity. Docked at the pier, the Gorshkov was a sitting duck. Even if he could get everyone back aboard K-115 in time, and rig the sub for immediate departure, the narrow inlet was too shallow to allow them to submerge entirely. And unlike the old days at Murmansk, there were no anti-aircraft emplacements to defend the vulnerable submarine. If this was indeed an American bomber approaching, the Gorshkov presented a tempting target.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
“Take cover!” he bellowed into the bullhorn. Even if his ship was defenseless, he could still try to save his crew. “Out of sight—now!”
The men scrambled to obey, ducking beneath the rebuilt dock or darting into gutted buildings. The security team crouched within the rubble, aiming their guns and rifles at the sky. Several more men started up the gangplank toward the sub, but Losenko called them back.
“Belay that! Stay clear of the boat!” If the Gorshkov came under fire, the massive vessel would rapidly become a watery tomb.
Losenko considered evacuating the sub, leaving only a skeleton crew aboard, but time deprived him of that option. He and Mazin took cover behind an overturned garbage truck. His eyes turned upward, searching the sky, but he heard the aircraft coming before he saw it, flying at a high altitude several kilometers to the north. It was hard to make out at this distance, but it appeared to be some sort of wide-bodied cargo plane, possibly a military transport—perhaps bearing enemy troops and equipment, or simply emergency relief supplies.
It was too far away, and moving too fast, to discern its insignia. Losenko could catch only a glimpse of it.
So he waited for the large, fixed-wing aircraft to veer toward them. And waited, and waited....
To his surprise, the plane did not alter its flight path. Seemingly oblivious to the exposed sub, it passed by in a matter of minutes. Losenko watched intently as it left the coast behind, heading further west.
In roughly the same direction as the scouting party.
Mazin laughed out loud, unable to contain his euphoria. Death had passed them by. He wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand. He looked at the captain. Relief gradually gave way to confusion on his youthful face.
“Whose plane was that, sir? One of ours? Or the enemy’s? Where is it heading?”
Losenko wished he knew.
***
&nbs
p; “K-115 to search party. Can you read me?”
Losenko hovered in the radio shack behind the seated operators. More than two hours had passed since the reconnaissance team had headed inland. They were overdue to check in.
“K-115 to search party, please come in.”
Transmitting from the sub was a calculated risk, especially after sighting that unidentified aircraft, but the captain was anxious to know the status of his scouts. To his dismay, at least a half dozen men had taken advantage of the crisis to desert; after scrambling for cover, they were nowhere to be found. No doubt they had chosen to take their chances on their own, rather than spend another moment in the service of an extinct navy.
I should be furious with them, Losenko thought. But instead all he felt was fatigue and disappointment. He, too, was sick to death of this endless voyage. Who could blame the runaways for wanting to escape? Why spend your last days trapped inside a metal tube? He shook his head ruefully. At this rate, I will soon be the commander of a ghost ship.
Was that what had become of Zamyatin and his scouting party? Had they also struck out for parts unknown, leaving their duties and responsibilities behind?
A signal light flashed. A burst of static broke into his bitter ruminations. Pushkin fiddled with the controls on his receiver. He tapped his headphones.
“I think I have something, sir!”
“Put it over the speaker,” Losenko instructed. He wanted to hear for himself.
“Right on it, sir!”
Pushkin pressed a button. Zamyatin’s voice entered the cramped compartment.
“Search party to K-115.” The transmission was scratchy and faint, but audible. Pushkin did something to increase the volume. “Lieutenant Zamyatin reporting.”
Good man, Losenko thought. His heart swelled with pride. It was good to know that there were still dedicated officers within his crew. He took the mike from Pushkin and pressed down on the speaker button.
“Losenko here. What is your position and status, Mr. Zamyatin?”
Static punctuated the officer’s reply.