The five waves of things from the night before — now doubled in size — were back on their original courses.
Omaha was in the process of being eaten alive. The long lines of cars still trying to escape the city were systematically being emptied by the thousands of mutated creatures tearing through eastern Nebraska. He knew Lincoln, roughly an hour’s drive west from Omaha on I-80, would be hit later that night.
The University of Nebraska was there.
So was his daughter.
The cities of Wichita, Springfield, St. Louis, and Des Moines would also be hit that night. Thousands of people had tried to leave during the day, but it was fruitless. The interstates were hopelessly jammed with traffic, and the side roads and state highways just weren’t able to handle the incredible rush of traffic. Most of the evacuees were stuck in place, unable to travel, except by foot. They didn’t have a chance.
The general knew the ground forces arrayed around the threatened cities were going to be lost as well. The lesson from the previous night was all too clear: ground forces didn’t have a chance. They could stand their ground and kill hundreds of the things, but they would only be delaying the inevitable. They would be overrun and slaughtered just like the long lines of fleeing civilians they were trying to protect.
“General, the video-teleconference with the president will start in five minutes.” The aide stood by his general’s side, watching him stare at the map of the advance. Stare at the city of Lincoln. He knew the general had a daughter there. “Sir, is Laura—?”
“Yes. She’s still there.”
“Maybe she left when the sirens sounded, sir. If she was one of the first ones to hit the road, she’ll have a good chance of—”
“I just talked to her fifteen minutes ago. On her cell phone. She’s stuck in traffic, Jerry.”
“We’ll stop them, sir. She’ll be okay.”
Ray Smythe looked up at his aide, a pained look of resignation crossing his face. He knew his daughter probably wouldn’t be alive by the time the sun rose again. “Thanks, Jerry. That’ll be all.”
His direct line to the national security advisor rang, and he picked it up. There was a momentary delay as the line went secure. “This is General Smythe.”
“General, this is Jessie Hruska.”
Ray had grown to like the national security advisor over the last few years. He admired her direct approach to things, her low tolerance for bullshit, and the general manner in which she conducted herself. The last couple of days, however, he’d changed his opinion of her. She wasn’t functioning as well as she should in a time of national crisis. She’d failed to pass important information to the president, and, as a result, made him look like an incompetent ass.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I wanted to talk to you before the conference started. The president is desperate to find a way to stop these things without resorting to… other options. I think you know what I mean.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know exactly what you mean.”
“We’re not going to be able to stop them using conventional weapons, General.” It was a statement, not a question.
“That’s correct, Ms. Hruska. We’re hitting them from the air right now, but it’s not having much of an effect on their advance. Just like last night.” The Air Force was throwing all the heavy and tactical air power they could at the waves. It wasn’t working.
“What do you suggest, General?”
“We don’t have a lot of other options available right now, Ms. Hruska. Our ground forces will try to delay the advances to give the evacuations time to proceed, and we’ll continue to hit them with everything we’ve got from the air.”
“And we’re dropping conventional munitions, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“There are other weapons we should consider, General. Non-nuclear weapons.”
The general paused. He knew what weapons the national security advisor was referring to. Old Russian weapons. Soviet, to be more accurate. Crated up and taken to the United States after the fall of the Soviet Union to keep them out of the hands of the terrorists.
Chemical weapons.
Tons upon tons of the stuff.
Over the last decade, they’d destroyed quite a bit of it, but had only made a dent in the overall inventory. It would take a couple of decades to dispose of it all properly.
“We’re talking about using those ‘other weapons’ on American soil, Ms. Hruska. We don’t even know if they’d work against these things.”
“But they might.”
“Yes, they might. But I’m not ready to make that recommendation to the president. Not yet.”
“We’re running out of time, General. We’ve lost Kansas City, we’re losing Omaha, and we’re going to lose four other major cities by sunrise — not to mention all the small towns and cities that have already been destroyed — and there’s no stopping it!” She paused. “The things should be entering Lincoln within the hour, correct?”
“Yes.”
“General, you have a daughter going to school there, don’t you?”
For a moment, Ray Smythe couldn’t believe his ears. “Excuse me?”
“Your daughter attends the University of Nebraska. Correct?”
“Yes, ma’am, I do have a daughter there.” You bitch! How dare you bring her—
“We have to try to save her, General.”
“Just what the fuck do you want me to do, Ms. Hruska? Poison the entire midsection of the country just to save my daughter?”
“No. I want you to take whatever actions necessary to save not just your daughter, but the sons and daughters of all the other people who will lose their children tonight if we’re not able to stop these things.”
Ray Smythe imagined his commander in chief being compared to Saddam Hussein gassing his own country. The situation was entirely different, but he couldn’t get that vision out of his mind. He also couldn’t get his daughter’s face out of his mind, the face of a tiny baby he could hold in one arm. A little pig-tailed girl learning to ride a bike. Birthday parties. First date. Prom night. Heading off to college.
“General, I want you to offer that option to the president.”
“Ma’am, even if I did, and even if the president approved it, it would take time to—”
“If you don’t suggest it, then I will.”
Their discussion was interrupted by the general’s aide. “Sir, we’ve got reports of something happening in Minneapolis.”
“Hold on, Ms. Hruska.” The general turned toward his aide. “Minneapolis?”
“Yes, sir. It’s happening there, too. Started about thirty minutes ago. The 911 calls are starting to pour in from all over the city.”
“That can’t be! None of the waves are anywhere near Minneapolis right now!”
A young Army sergeant ran up to the aide and handed him a sheet of paper.
“Oklahoma City. It’s happening in Oklahoma City, too, sir.”
“What? There’s no way they could’ve gotten that far that fast without us knowing about it!”
The aide took another sheet of paper. His hands were trembling.
“Little Rock. They’re in Little Rock.”
“Sweet Jesus,” the general mumbled to himself. “This can’t be happening.”
On the screens arrayed on the walls of the NMCC, the faces of the president, vice president, SECDEF, secretary of Homeland Security, and national security advisor suddenly appeared. The video-teleconference had started.
The president spoke. “General, what’s our current status on the ground?”
General Smythe looked at the phone in his right hand — and then at the face of Jessie Hruska on the plasma screen on the wall — and placed the handset back in its cradle. He knew with a sudden clarity what he was going to recommend to his commander in chief. He cleared his throat.