Day by Day Armageddon: Shattered Hourglass Read Online Free PDF Page A

safety.
    She vividly remembered the marines blasting away at the hordes, instantaneously disassembling masses of them, gunfire tossing rotting limbs in all directions. Some of the bullets looked like laser beams, she thought, as the marines swept down thousands on the undead front. Even so, legions more advanced beyond the gun’s sweeping lines.
    There were just too many to stop.
    The helicopter flew south and she caught her first look at the USS George Washington, a speck on the horizon growing by the second as they flew quickly inbound to the ship.
    A man named Joe Maurer debriefed her yesterday. She was politely asked to start from the beginning—months ago, the car where she was found and rescued. She had felt a small hint of embarrassment when Joe asked her how she survived so long inside the vehicle.
    Her blushing intensified when he asked, “How did you go to the bathroom?”
    It wasn’t just embarrassment, but fear that struck her like a bolt when he asked that question. She remembered the creatures. They watched her inside the car as she slept, watched her as she cried, watched her as she cursed and spit at them, and even watched her as she relieved herself in a large McDonald’s cup. Thank goodness they were not strong or intelligent enough to break the glass using rocks, like she had seen before. They kept pounding on the glass with bloody, pus-filled stumps—what was left of hands. They even used their heads as rams, trying to get at her. One of them pried its own teeth out of its rotting mouth attempting to bite through the glass to reach her through the cracked window. They are primally driven, she had thought.
    She had been in the early stages of heat stroke when he rescued her. Kil was not her only savior, but it was Kil whom she saw first as her eyes focused from the brink of death. Now he was gone, ordered away on an assignment that probably wouldn’t make a difference. The mission really didn’t matter to her—she just wanted him here. Tara now understood how her grandmother had felt when Papa had been ordered away to Vietnam.
    At least she had John and the others.
    John was what held the group together. He had stood by them all during their darkest times—the day at Hotel 23 when the helicopter never returned. She cried for days after that. Never giving up, she lived near the radio. Every waking moment she monitored the distress frequencies; every sleeping moment she made John promise to do the same. John did so without complaint or question. It was very likely he’d have been dead if it had not been for Kil.
    Truth be told, they’d all probably have been dead if it had not been for John himself. His network engineering and general Linux computer savvy were what had enabled the survivors of Hotel 23 to take advantage of at least some of the complex and classified systems. His ability to control the security cameras, satellite imagery feeds, and communications gear was crucial to the group’s situational awareness.
    Tara heard the bells again and wondered what they meant this time.
    •   •   •
    John had made it a point to keep himself busy since Kil’s departure. He was still somewhat angry, and maybe a little hurt, but he understood the reasons for Kil’s decision to choose Saien. Putting that behind him, he was quick to volunteer to help the ship’s communication division keep the critical communications circuits up and running. The ship’s email systems were useless, as there was no World Wide Web with which to connect. There was, however, a robust radio communications network established between the USS George Washington and several other information nodes still active both at sea and on the mainland. Although John hadn’t been given access to the circuits, it was only a matter of time before the shipboard communications technicians became familiar with him and let their guard down, granting him full access. His knowledge of basic RF theory and computer systems made him a crucial