Shatterbones Read online

  “We have been fortunate that the mutants have decreased their activity today. It won’t be easy making it out of this area for us, but at least you won’t have as difficult a time getting out.”

  “Aren’t all of you coming with me?”

  “I wish we could. Our job is to get you to a park seven blocks away where you’ll be picked up by a Harrier that will take you to see the president.”

  “At the park? Is it some type of helicopter?”

  “No, ma’am. We don’t have enough helicopters left after yesterday, most of them were taken out during rescue operations. The Harrier is a jump jet that can land and take off vertically. You’re lucky the Marines have some of their two-seat trainers in the area. These jets are the only things we have left that can come into tight spots to pick people up and get out before the fliers arrive.

  “Here come the trucks, let’s go!”

  The group crowds into the assortment of trucks after shoving the doctor into the backseat of the first one and they drive off.

  “What have you seen out there?” the man in charge asks the driver.

  “They’re all over the place, it looks like they’re still gathering survivors. I think at least one of the behemoths is out there getting rid of the bodies. We drove back the way we came, and the streets were empty except for a few overturned cars.”

  “You didn’t see what it was?”

  “We didn’t stop to check it out. When I saw the cars on their sides, I left that route and came back this direction.”

  “We’ve got one up ahead!” the front passenger yells when a red car flies out of a side street and collapses the face of the building it crashes into.

  Instead of stopping to avoid the danger lurking around the corner, the lead truck Dr. Usachova is in speeds up and she grips her hand tightly into the leg of the man sitting next to her.

  “Don’t worry; if it’s throwing cars, it’s probably fighting the pale ones,” the soldier tries to reassure her, but his words are meaningless until they breach the intersection and she can see the fight taking place as they speed past.

  A giant creature is spinning around to face them. She sees pale naked men and women climbing all over it and hitting it. The image appears and vanishes so quickly, she isn’t certain she has actually witnessed what took place.

  “What was going on back there?”

  “The pale mutants don’t like those giant ones and that’s a good thing for us. The big ones will eat anything they can grab and destroy everything in their path. The pale mutants only seem to attack humans right after they change. After they stop attacking, they work at collecting the remaining humans into groups.”

  “I need you to turn around.”

  All of the men, including the driver, turn to look at her in disbelief. The driver sideswipes a car on the side of the road and shakily regains control.

  “Our orders are to get you to that plane, not a sightseeing tour of Hell.”

  “Look, if we can drive by that road again, maybe from a distance, it will help me figure out what’s going on. I need some information, I need to observe those things if I’m going to give the president any useful information.”

  “I’m not turning us around, if she needs to see those things, you’ll have to give her your phone, Critter.”

  “Damn it!” Pulling a phone out of his pocket, the soldier nicknamed Critter turns on the phone and hands it to the doctor. “I’ve been shooting videos of what’s been going on out there. I’ve captured three different kinds of mutants so far. I don’t want to see these videos on your own YouTube page, okay? Those videos are mine!”

  “This idiot thinks he will get famous by uploading videos to his page. We keep telling him this shit is going on around the world and the internet is toast, but he won’t believe us.”

  “You’re all just jealous that I had the brains to record what’s going on outside.”

  A deafening roar of engines over their heads announces the arrival of the Harrier jet. It lands a block in front of the trucks and the men quickly climb out to escort Dr. Usachova the final few yards to her escape. As she climbs up the side ladder into the cockpit, Critter yells to her one last time.

  “Remember those videos are mine! I don’t want to see them on your own page.”

  *

  “Mr. President, this is Dr. Usachova.”

  “I hope you have information we can use.”

  She lowers her outstretched hand, realizing the president isn’t going to shake it.

  “Thank you for sending those soldiers to rescue me, Mr. President. I think I will be able to help.”

  “I hope so. You should realize a few things right off the bat. Ten men lost their lives to bring you safely here, and we haven’t sent rescue parties out for anyone else. If the information you provide is useful, then I will extend my gratitude to you for coming.”

  “I… I understand. I do appreciate what it took to get me here, and I will help in any way I can.”

  “Well, why don’t you start by telling me what we are dealing with and try to keep in mind that not all of the people assembled here are scientists. We need to know what this is and how we can deal with it.” He stretches out his arm offering her a chair at a large table with seven other seated people. A large group of others are sitting at various other tables all with notebooks and awaiting her input.

  She takes a seat and looks confidently around at the other people in the room. “First, you should know there is nothing we could have done to prevent this from happening and likewise, there is nothing we can do to change it. Everything occurring is due to two main influences beyond our control: solar winds and magnetic fields. Depending on how our survival as a species results, we happen to be alive at the right or wrong moment in time.

  “As for the ‘what’ in what is happening. Some form of mutating radioactive cosmic particle is causing what has happened. What the particle is will take testing to determine, but its presence is evident with the blue hue to our sky.

  “Mr. President, I need to know, are there any secure facilities or underground structures that have remained immune to the effects of the mutating particles?”

  The president and several advisors look with uncertainty toward the assembled group in the room.

  “I’m not asking you to disclose any secret locations to me, I just have to know if humans in any location you control have been spared the effects of this mutation. It is vital to understand if the particles are abated by soil, steel, concrete or any form of protective structure you are aware of.”

  One of the advisors in the room offers, “We haven’t been able to determine that completely. There is no known location or base, above or below land or sea, that has not been affected. While we do have locations where no children are present, such as submarines or certain underground facilities, we have received information from certain underwater and underground locations that did have children mutate.”

  “Thank you. That means we are possibly dealing with a new subatomic particle which can travel through objects with little interference at the atomic level. The change in visual hue in the sky could be due to immensely heavy bombardment that is interacting with air particulates or it is interacting with the visual centers and processes of our brains causing us to see the sky as heavily blue. Either way, we are receiving intense bombardment of this unknown cosmic particle at the moment.

  “Now, the why. Earth’s magnetic field has been weakening quite rapidly over the last hundred years. Our magnetic field plays an important role in keeping out most cosmic radiation. In this case, however, even if it were still at full strength, it might be somewhat ineffective at preventing our bombardment from subatomic particles. Our Sun’s magnetic field and solar output are in part to blame for this as well.

  “The solar winds our Sun produces normally help clear the space around our planet of cosmic rays. So a weak magnetic field on both the Earth and the Sun, along with our particular position in the galaxy, are causing us to
be bombarded by the particular cosmic particle that is causing these mutations.

  “So you see, there is nothing we could have done or can do to change the outcome we are in. Unless you find some substance that these particles cannot penetrate, then we are at an impasse with protection from continued mutation. Our only other option, which is impossible, would be to strengthen the Sun or Earth’s magnetic fields or change our planet’s current position in the universe.”

  “Based on the presentation you gave the military previously, we were under the impression that some of the historical accounts of defenses against the mutants would work. Is it still your opinion that previous accounts of vampirism were the result of exposure to cosmic rays?”

  Dr. Usachova’s brow wrinkles and her eyes open wide in confusion.

  “I am sorry, Mr. President. I made no claim of the sort. During my briefing to your military leadership, I spoke about historical data regarding mass extinctions and possible mutations in the past. I said nothing regarding recent history or fictional characters of literature.”

  The president slams his fist on the table and looks at General Gutfeld.

  “Mr. President, if I may?” Dr. Usachova inquires trying to regain his attention. “I never mentioned vampirism specifically, but it is quite possible that what we regard as fantastical tales of creative or demented minds could have been factual accounts of previous mutations. If those events were real, then they were localized events, not global as we are currently dealing with. Perhaps small fluctuations in magnetic field strength allowed particles to enter smaller locales for brief times. This would have created the mutations and could easily have been explained in antiquity as connected to whatever natural events, religious beliefs, and animal behaviors they were familiar with at the time.”

  Clearly angry and yelling, “So why is nothing working against these mutants? President Connelly sent four thousand men to deal with a small group of these things and the fire they used just washed around their bodies. Video footage we recovered shows they are almost immune to it instead of it making them weak. Deploying garlic powders and sprays has also had no effect and neither has silver. Even the ones we thought we killed get up after resting for a short time. Their bodies are able to heal from any type of wound we give them. Nothing has worked to permanently stop them.”

  “I can only speculate based on the limited information I have.”

  “Speculate then.”

  “We are still being bombarded. The cosmic wind or cloud our planet has entered is still here. When it passes there may be another change in mutation. It could cause the mutations to revert, it could change their level of regeneration, it could cause them all to die. Unfortunately, without the ability to block bombardment of the particles, we cannot test what will happen when they are gone.”

  “How long will this last, this bombardment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Best guess then.”

  “Mr. President, it could last anywhere from one more hour to thousands of years. I don’t know what particle we are dealing with. I don’t know how extensively it is present in the location of space our planet or solar system are traveling through. I don’t know how much affect the magnetic fields have on the particle. There are far too many unknowns to answer your question. This change could be with us for the remainder of humanities existence on the planet. As I have heard in your decisions, you understand that our race’s current position on survival versus extinction is directly related to how we deal with the mutants. If I knew of some way to stop the mutations or the mutants, I would give it to you. All I can do now is offer my skills in researching it so we can hopefully find some answers.”

  The president rubs his hands over his face and through his hair in frustration. No longer angry, he looks up.

  “I understand what you’re saying and appreciate your offer to work with our scientists. Do your best to discover what this particle is and attempt in some way to measure it and tell us what else we have in store for our future.

  He pauses and looks thoughtfully at Dr. Usachova. “I was actually hoping you would tell me I am wrong and give us something specific we could do to take our country back. With our collective understanding of science, I was hoping for… I was hoping for hope I guess.”

  “Sir, I will do whatever I can, to find out what is going on. Please don’t blame science for not having the answers. Science is young. What we think of as modern science only started forming in the 1870’s, and as recently as the 1950’s, scientists were claiming future researchers would have little else left to discover. True science as we know it is barely older than most of the people in this room. We will figure this out. In the meantime, you need to continue doing what you have been to keep the human race alive in whatever form it currently takes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  How the Mighty Have Fallen

  Undisclosed Location

  My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, I am addressing you tonight as your new president. Last night, after a coordinated effort to retake the Washington D.C. area from the mutants, President Connelly was killed.

  The former president sent four thousand of our finest troops in to wrest control of the area and all information we have from that endeavor is a total loss of all the men and women that were in that battle. Our four thousand soldiers were destroyed by a force of only twenty of the vampire-like mutants. The capabilities of these vampires are too great, no weakness has been discovered, nor do we have an ability to stop them with any of the weaponry we currently have at our disposal. On top of the ineffectiveness of our modern weapons, none of the historical accounts of vampiric weakness to fire, garlic, silver or anything else has been accurate.

  Our inability to defeat them on the battlefield has prompted me to issue this proclamation of the complete and total surrender of all government and military forces within and without the United States territories. All remaining military forces are ordered to stand down and cease attempts to eradicate the mutants. Do not engage them as it will result in greater innocent civilian casualties. I urge those Americans who remain free at this hour to avoid initiating any aggressive or combat stance against the vampires for two vital reasons.

  First, there is no physical way to defeat them. There is no known method of modern weaponry that has any long-term effect on them. They heal too quickly, and in fact, when they are injured, they seek out human blood to replenish their systems, so causing injury to a vampire actually increases the danger to non-mutated humans in the area.

  Second, and this is the primary factor in my decision today: However mutated these children have become, they are still our future. They are the future of humanity. Complete victory over the mutant population would result in the extinction of the human race. Even if we had a way to kill these vampires, which we do not, killing them would result in the removal of our species from the planet. That is extremely important for all of us to remember, not only now, but in the months and years ahead as we work to find some form of consensus under which we can coexist.

  The human race has had an evolutionary leap of what I consider the horrific kind. That does not remove the fact that it is still the human race we are dealing with. There is no guarantee that those children out there who have not yet mutated will not do so in the future. In fact, my scientists believe from information they have gathered, that puberty is the causative agent in this change and all young children will eventually mutate once they reach the age range of eight to twelve years.

  This event is worldwide. No nation is exempt from the mutative effects of the cosmic particles causing the blue haze we see everywhere. There is no place from which we can seek aid, and there is no nation that has achieved any success against the mutants in battle. As horrific as these last thirty-three hours have been, for our survival, for the survival of the human race, we must find a way to work with the mutated children.

  For those U.S. Naval Forces who are in the world’s oceans tonight, I urge you to remain
at sea for the foreseeable future. Return to the coasts of America if you are able, but do not return to our shores. You are the last remaining bastion of free humans on earth. Stay afloat and remain free. There may come a time when we find a way to defeat the mutants or discover a way to reverse the effects of their change. If that time should arrive, your ability to remain outside of the influence and control of our mutated children may be a deciding factor in any success we have.

  *

  As Americans, we aren’t used to failure. There isn’t or hasn’t been until now a situation or event we couldn’t overcome. The American motto is similar to that of the U.S. Marine Corps stating, the difficult we will do today, the impossible will take a little while longer. No task is considered undoable by those raised in this nation, yet today, the president has told us we have failed. The full might of the federal government and our military assets are incapable of dealing with this new form of humanity the blue haze has given us.

  At least in this moment of failure, it is our own children that have managed to bring our nation to its knees. This truth of self-inflicted destruction offers no consolation to the millions of families that have lost loved ones in the last day and a half. Under normal circumstances, the president’s address would have been a severe shock and blow to the psyche of the average citizen. Today, the shock of hearing about defeat is tempered by the fact that most of the nation’s population is already surviving in groups rounded up by the dominant local vampires.

  Very few Americans were outside of the cities and towns in which they lived, and so most Americans listened to the president in groups of several hundred to several thousand as they await instructions on how the new society they are going to live in will be structured.

  In some cases, the humans are actually grateful to the vampire mutants for saving their lives from the rampaging troll-looking mutants that were destroying everything in their path. In all areas, people were witness to the vampire mutants protecting younger children and babies above all else. Those witnessed actions of small children being rescued and protected helped to assuage some of the fears and anxiety that the brutally violent encounters of the day had created.