The Risen Storm (After The Rising Book 1) Page 3

  The door of Nelson closest to the library swung open, and she saw a lean and tall, almost stick like, figure burst from the inside and run jerkily across the grass and towards the library entrance. No, she corrected herself. The man, for it was male, did not run so much as shamble at a rapid clip, as if he did not have full control over his appendages but was propelling himself forward by sheer determination.

  But that was not the most surprising thing to her. The surprising thing was that she knew the person. Xi Jinping was one of the lab techs on the other side of the building from her lab, a quiet polite man whose wife was also a graduate student who worked at the Computing Research & Education Building or CORE at the opposite end of Busch campus. Cathy could not imagine a more reserved and composed person, and she suddenly thought that only an emergency would cause him to behave that way.

  She stood up, suddenly alarmed, and at that moment noticed other figures running from the direction of Nelson building and towards the library and the undergraduate student apartments next to it. Richardson, she thought, they're called Richardson Apartments, and that's when the screaming from the first floor of the library started.

  The sound started at a low, almost apologetic “don't mind me while I scream” tone, then pushed its way up the register until Cathy could not believe anything human could possibly make such a sound. This was followed a few seconds later by more screaming, a symphony of screeches and cries that paralyzed her, even while some of the undergraduates close to the center stairwell moved quickly down the stairs, smartphones held in hands, perhaps in readiness for capturing some memorable youtube moment.

  A heartbeat, and then like some bad comedy routine some of those same undergrads came pelting up the stairs, their faces masks of frozen terror. As Cathy finally managed to get her nerveless legs to move her deeper into the tall bookshelves and towards the side exits, she glimpsed a flood of humanity gushing from the center stairwell and into the second floor, their arms and legs moving in uncoordinated fashion, like silent marionettes wound to a frenzy.

  Cathy once watched a Discovery Channel episode about driver ants from Africa, and what she could never get out her mind after finishing the show was an image of the remorseless horde as it poured across an open clearing in pursuit of prey, a black river of hard bodies and shearing jaws that overwhelmed and ate everything in its path.

  That one fleeting glimpse she had of the tide of people washing into the second floor from the stairwell reminded her of this memory, not only because of the sheer number of individuals that came surging in (“Where did they all come from? Where did they come from?” Her mind kept repeating), but because they seemed to flow into the room as a single-minded swarm, with tributaries branching from the main group to encircle and pounce on hapless students who were fleeing away from the otherwise silent horde.

  She run to one of the side exits, where stairs led down to the first floor, slamming the exit door shut just as the first of the human waves hit the door on the other side. As she got to the first floor, Cathy heard the crack of splintering wood as the door started giving way to the mass of people pressing against it.

  She opened the door to the first floor and barely had enough time to think omg they're everywhere before she was physically slammed backwards by a tide of onrushing people. A bright stab of pain flared as her back broke against the sharp edges of the stair steps, and she closed her eyes. Dimly she felt teeth gnashing hungrily at her flesh, felt a big chunk of one breast torn off, felt her fingers bitten off then spit back at her heaving body, felt a strange empty sensation as something burrowed into her lower abdomen, gorging itself on her entrails. But they were all dulled, as if coming from a distance.

  Cathy let herself go, floating away on wings of pain.

  CHAPTER 6

  Day 0 (5 pm EST)

  Milburn Township, New Jersey

  Nanites are devices ranging in size from 0.1–10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale or molecular components.

  Nearly twenty miles north of Busch Campus, Harry Chen decided to close his shop early. It was a Sunday after all, and the big sale of kopi luwak the day before had pushed The Gentle Tea Shop into the black for at least the next two weeks, something that unfortunately was not always a given during the country's prolonged economic malaise.

  Harry was pushing sixty, and he had been considering retiring at the end of the year. His wife Ling wanted to move back to China after he retired to be with their friends and family, now that the boys had graduated from college and were making their way up in the world, but Harry wished at least one of the children would consider taking over his specialty tea shop before then.

  He had once been a C programmer, back in the days when penpals wrote on paper and a smartphone was an oxymoron, but he had left that career to pursue a business selling his true love. He was a consummate tea connoisseur, an avid drinker of organic and specialty teas like Oolong from Taiwan and southern China to Matcha teas from Japan. He had poured most of his savings into the Gentle Tea Shop, and much to the surprise of everyone, especially his skeptical wife, it had flourished as the drinking of tea had increasingly become more popular in the country.

  Harry had tried to instill his love of the drink to his sons, but they had all gravitated towards coffee and the awful blends at the local Starbucks. He shook his head, perhaps he would need to sell the business after all, because he certainly did not want to close it down after all the sweat and tears he had poured into it to make it a success.

  Harry finished his end of day preparations and locked the store, taking in a deep breath and smelling the crisp spring air. It was still quite early, and he considered perusing some food magazines at the Barnes and Noble next door, but he remembered Ling had asked him to get some sugar before heading back to their home in Montclair.

  He sauntered past his parked Toyota Camry and started crossing Central Avenue, the wide main thoroughfare that led to the Garden State Parkway's exit 150. A Shoprite superstore loomed at the other side of the road, its blocky silhouette dominating the smaller fast food chains around it. It was usually packed with shoppers, so much so that Harry preferred the relative calm of the local Pathmark grocery a mile of so down at Milburn, but his wife swore by the slightly cheaper items at Shoprite.

  He was just about to step onto the crosswalk when five Milburn police cruisers shot past going east along Central Avenue, their light bars blazing and sirens blasting an ululating wail. Harry jumped back just as two more cruisers followed, with an ambulance bringing up the rear.

  Harry craned his neck to see better as the police cruisers swung sideways and closed off the road, forming an impromptu road block. Policemen in vests boiled out of the cars and settled behind their cars, aiming their guns east towards the entrance to the Garden State Parkway. Harry noticed some other people from the surrounding restaurants and stores had started to assemble along the avenue as they too wondered what was going on.

  Over the continual wailing of the police sirens, Harry could hear a peculiar background rumbling sound, one that at first he could not identify. Then he realized what it was. A few years back he had taken his family to watch the New York City Marathon, and the sound he now heard was akin to the thumping of thousands of feet on concrete as the marathon runners thundered past their vantage point on that long ago autumn day.

  Confused, Harry moved towards the patrol cars, thinking that perhaps he was mistaken and the police had not drawn their guns. Was this simply crowd control for some event? A benefit to help breast cancer awareness perhaps, or one of the hundreds of other causes that he had seen trumpeted on newspapers and fliers?

  He saw a faint shimmer in the distance as the rumbling grew louder, then suddenly the police opened fire, the blasts from their guns echoing and reverberating in the still air, and driving the lookieloos back inside buildings or into their cars.

  Harry decided they didn't need sugar after all, and he walked briskly back to his parked car, glancing back once just in time to see
a wave of onrushing figures swamp the police line, burying the police cars in mounds of heaving and tangled bodies and silencing the gunfire almost as soon as it had started. He fumbled with the car keys and almost drop them, but then managed to insert the right key. In one smooth motion he dropped into the driver's seat, revved the car to life, then punched the pedal to the metal and screeched out of the parking lot.

  He headed perpendicular to Central Avenue, going north on the smaller Raritan Road at what to him was the manic pace of nearly 50 miles an hour. He did not look back, but concentrated on the road in front of him which was surprisingly free of other cars, and then remembered he had his Nokia cellphone. Their sons had insisted that Ling and him both get cellphones in order to always be a call away from each other. He had objected at first, leery of the monthly costs of owning the new-fangled things, but now he breathed a sigh of relief that he had finally relented and opted for the lowest T-mobile plan.

  He pulled the cellphone from his jacket pocket and hit speed dial, immediately hearing the tinny sound of Ling's own cellphone ringing at the other end. C'mon Ling, he prayed. Pick up the damn phone, please. He was afraid she had left the phone at her bedside table and was busy downstairs cooking dinner.

  But miraculously he suddenly heard her voice. “Yes?” She said, her voice quavering and tentative. Like him, she was still not used to the phones and always dreaded prank calls, or worse, calls from pushy salespeople.

  “Ling!” He shouted in his native tongue. “Something bad's going on here, I'm headed back home. Many police cars, shooting...”

  He realized that he actually no idea what had happened to the police back there and stopped in mid-sentence. Scaring Ling would do no good.

  “Just....just lock all the doors and don't let anyone in until I get there ok?” He told her as a car zoomed past him on the left. Harry thought the driver was going almost twice the speed that he was, and accelerating.

  “Oh Harry!!!!” Ling cried, and he could almost see the creases of worry spreading across her otherwise unlined and youthful face. “Are you ok? Are you ok Harry? What's happening?”

  Harry glanced at his rear view mirror and saw a phalanx of vehicles rapidly catching up to him.

  “I'm okay darling,” He said, trying to reassure her. “Listen I have to go now. Just keep the doors locked and wait for me ok?”

  “Be careful Harry, ” Ling repeated. “Please be careful.”

  “I will darling,” he said, quickly thumbing the connection close as he suddenly noticed a plume of black smoke rising past a bend in the road. He slowed down as he navigated the turn and stared in horror at the surreal scene before him.

  The road in front and the well-tended lawns of homes to either side were completely covered by a heaving mass of pale figures that rolled forward like a monstrous impenetrable tsunami. They formed such a tangled and packed heap that Harry's eyes could not differentiate the individuals that made up the mob.

  He had instinctively slammed down hard on the brakes, and now he realized that was the worst thing he could have done. The drivers of the vehicles that had been racing to catch up to him could not stop in time to avoid colliding with his slowing car. He was jerked backwards as a Ford SUV plowed into the Camry's rear, crushing the trunk and sending the unlucky SUV driver through the Ford's windshield, his body making a loud splatting sound as it crumpled against the rear window of Harry's car. Behind him a line of other cars formed a chain of mangled metal and plastic. A few had managed to avoid the pile up by swerving quickly to the left or bouncing up onto the sidewalks, but all of them stopped dead as their drivers realized what had created the accident in the first place.

  Harry watched as the tide of pale indistinct figures washed over the wrecked vehicles. He supposed he should feel some terror as the Camry's frame groaned under the weight of the masses sweeping around and above it, their taloned feet making visible dents in the metal and creating wide cracks in the stressed windshield. But he felt curiously apart from the swirling events around him, as if all his nerves had short-circuited, and he watched with scant interest as the driver's door was wrenched from its hinges and a stretched silhouette leaned into the car. Clawed fingers wrapped around his face, forcing his chin up to expose his neck.

  Harry thought of Ling in the last few moment of his life. How alone and scared she must feel right now, and how he would never see her again. His last regret was that he couldn't tell her that he would never make it home.

  Oh Ling! Harry cried out, but only in his mind, as a bright blaze of pain consumed him and carried him away.

  CHAPTER 7

  Day 0 (5:30 pm EST)

  Empire State Building, New York City

  Global Ecophagy is the destruction of entire ecosystems due to the proliferation of out-of-control self-replicating molecular assemblers.

  “Look Dad, a fire!” Danny kept tugging on George Sumner's pants leg. He was peering intently into one of the coin-operated binocular viewing machines that were scattered around the the main observation deck of the Empire State Building. George gently pulled his son's fingers free then wrapped a protective arm around the seven year old, who was balancing somewhat precariously on the upper ring of the viewer.

  The observation desk on the 82nd floor was teeming with people, many of whom were foreign tourists who prattled loudly in their respective languages, including large contingents of Chinese who moved together in long lines, herded by perspiring guides who waved their colored flags desperately as some of their eager charges peeled off to explore on their own.

  George couldn't fault them for being a little too over-enthusiastic. The 82nd floor offered a 360 degree unencumbered view of the city from two different levels, and the views from 350 meters up in the air were spectacular. The enclosed upper level was surrounded by wall to wall glass, but gawkers had the option of moving outside to the open air deck, where a tall fence made of iron bars curved inwards to make visitors feel less like being in a fishbowl and more like being in a prison. A very windy prison, George amended, as another gust of wind almost blew his cap off.

  “Ok Danny, let Daddy take a look,” he told his son, who somewhat reluctantly jumped down onto the deck and looked up as his father bent down and squinted into the narrow lenses. George wondered idly whether one could get some exotic eye disease from the viewer, but the thought fled his mind as soon as he saw faint wisps of smoke in the distant horizon.

  He looked up from the viewer. They were facing westwards, and past the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the piers that clustered along the West Side Highway, the broad Hudson river formed the border between New York and New Jersey. George could see smoke was rising slowly from many points along the New Jersey side of the river. Not only from directly in front on his view, where he knew Union City and Weehawken lay, but also farther south towards Hoboken.

  He heard a commotion to his right and realized others had seen it too. People were pointing and talking loudly to one another excitedly. More fires across the river were blooming into life as he stared, and he saw tiny flying objects in the distance, insect-like contraptions that could only be helicopters converging on the disaster that was slowly unfolding before them.

  “Dad, can I see again?” Danny whined, and George relinquished the viewer and looked towards the upper enclosed deck, wondering whether Myrna was also seeing this. His wife had not relished being exposed to the cold air and had elected to stay inside. She was also tired after the grueling lines they had to endure just to get to the observation platform, and had decided she would conserve her energy for the equally exhausting hour long trip back to their farm in Denville, New Jersey.

  He pulled out his smartphone and tried to phone her but got a busy signal.

  “I can't see anything,” Danny complained, and George realized the binocular viewer had shut down. He hurriedly rummaged through his pockets for more change and dropped another two quarters into the coin slot, then peered intently into it. Although its swivel was limited to 45 degrees up
and 22 degrees down, the binocular could be swung horizontally a full 360 degrees, and he noticed with growing alarm that gray palls of smoke had now spread out to almost the entire New Jersey side of the Hudson River and inland.

  He also noticed something strange. Although the ability to discern individuals at such a distance was beyond the capability of the binoculars, he thought he could make out long lines of vehicles strewn in the roadways on the other side, but none were moving. In fact, nothing seemed to be moving in the New Jersey side other than the growing number of hovering midges that were likely news and police helicopters.

  He aimed the binocular down towards the Manhattan streets below, panning along 33rd and 34th streets past 6th avenue and westwards to 7th avenue, and realized that something was happening down there as well. The roads like 33rd street that went west towards the Lincoln Tunnel and New Jersey were clogged with unmoving cars, while he saw vehicles and even tiny dots that he took as human figures fleeing in the opposite direction.

  George wondered briefly whether there was a terror attack in progress, then took Danny's hand and dragged the protesting youngster back into the enclosed deck. He looked wildly around for Myrna in the packed room, and realized that the events transpiring below had galvanized the crowd to an almost animal instinct to get back down to ground level. Instead of neat lines, people were jammed in surging mobs that funneled into the elevators running back down.

  He shook his head, and looked down at his now-silent son, who was looking around in growing panic for his mother.