Fantastic Stories Presents: Science Fiction Super Pack #2. Randall Garrett

impulses on hold. But for God’s sake, they barely escape being killed, and what’s the first thing he does? Stare at her tits.

      Enough. Cindy had heard his dejected sigh as she picked up the carton of single-serving cereal boxes she’d found and left the kitchen. She could have cared less. It was times like these when she wondered whether she wouldn’t be better off being a lesbian.

      By the time they reached the pool, though, she’d almost forgotten the incident. As soon as she and what’s-his-name walked in, the kids were all over them, jumping up and down in their excitement to see what she’d found. Cindy couldn’t help but smile as she carried the carton to the poolside terrace and put it down on a table. There were a half-dozen children among the refugees, the youngest a four-year-old boy and the oldest a twelve-year-old girl, and none of them seemed to mind that they didn’t have any milk to go with the Cheerios and Frosted Flakes she handed out. Even kids can get tired of Spam and candy bars if that’s all they’ve had to eat for three days.

      Once they’d all received a box of cereal, Cindy took the rest to the cabana room she was sharing with Officer McCoy. She’d never thought that she’d welcome having a cop as a roommate, but Sharon was pretty cool; besides, sleeping in the same room as a police officer assured that she wouldn’t be bothered by any horny middle-aged guys who’d holed up in the Wyatt-Centrum.

      Sharon was dozing on one of the twin beds when Cindy came in. She’d taken off her uniform shirt and was sleeping in her sports bra, her belt with its holstered gun, taser, and baton at her side. She opened her eyes and watched as Cindy carefully closed the door behind her, making sure that she didn’t accidentally knock aside the pillow they’d been using as a doorstop. With the power out and even the emergency generator offline, there was nothing to prevent the guest room doors from automatically locking if they closed all the way.

      “Find some food?” Sharon asked.

      “A little. Ready for dinner?”

      Sharon sat up to peer into the carton put down beside her. “That all? Couldn’t you find something else?”

      “Sorry. Didn’t have a chance to look.” Cindy told her about the cook. Sharon’s expression didn’t change, but Cindy figured that cops were usually poker-faced when it came to that sort of thing. And she left out the part about what’s-his-name. No point in complaining about that; they had worse things to worry about.

      “Well … anyway, I’m glad you made it back alive.” Sharon selected a box of Cheerios, but didn’t immediately open it. One of the hand-held radios the cops had borrowed from the hotel lay on the desk; their own cell radios no longer worked, forcing them to use the older kind. Sharon picked it up and thumbed the Talk button. “Charlie Baker Two, Charlie Baker One. How’s everything looking?”

      A couple of seconds went by, then Officer Overby’s voice came over. “Charlie Baker Two. 10-24, all clear.”

      “Ten-four. Will relieve you in fifteen minutes. Out.” Sharon put down the radio, then nodded to the smartphone that lay on the dresser. “What’s happening there? Any change?”

      Cindy picked up her phone, ran her finger down its screen. The phone would become silent once the charge ran down, but there was still a little bit of red on the battery icon. She pressed the volume control, and once again they heard the only sound it made:

       Tick … tick-tick … tick-tick-tick-tick … tick … tick-tick…

       Like a cheap stopwatch that skipped seconds. That wasn’t what she immediately noticed, though, but instead the mysterious number that appeared on its screen: 4,576,036,057, a figure that decreased by one with each tick.

      For the last three days, Cindy’s phone had done nothing else but tick irregularly and display a ten-digit number that changed every second or so. What these things signified, she had no clue, but everyone else’s phones, pads, and laptops had been doing the same thing ever since the blackout.

       It started the moment she was standing on the curb outside the airport, flagging down a cab while at same time calling her friend in St. Paul to tell her that she’d arrived. That was when the phone suddenly went dead. Thinking that her call had been dropped, she’d pulled the phone from her ear, glanced at the screen … and heard the first weird ticks coming from it.

      She was still staring at the numbers which had appeared on the LCD display when the cab that was about pull up to the curb slammed into the back of a shuttle bus. A few seconds later, the pavement shook beneath her feet and she heard the rolling thunder of an incoming airliner crashing on the runway and exploding. That was how it all began...

      Cindy glanced at her watch. Nearly 6 pm. Perhaps the atrium would cool down a little once the mid-summer sun was no longer resting on the skylight windows. Unfortunately, the coming night would also mean that the robots would have an easier time tracking anyone still outside; their infrared vision worked better than their normal eyes, someone had explained to her. Probably Dale. He seemed to know a lot about such things.

      Almost as if she’d read her mind, Sharon looked up from strapping on her belt. “Oh, by the way … Dale asked me to tell you that he’d like to see you.”

      Cindy was halfway to the bathroom; its door was closed against the stench of an unflushed toilet. She stopped and turned around. “Dale? Did he say why?”

      “You said you’re carrying a satphone, didn’t you? He’d like to borrow it.”

      “Yeah, why not?” Cindy shrugged. “We won’t get anyone with it. I’ve already tried to call my folks in Boston.”

      “I told him that, but …” Sharon finished buttoning her shirt. “C’mon. I’d like to see what he’s got in mind.”

      Dale’s cabana was on the other side of the pool. Like Cindy, he was rooming with a cop: Karl Overby, Sharon’s partner. In his case, though, it was a matter of insistence. Cindy didn’t know much about him other than that he worked for some federal agency, he knew a lot about computers, and his job was important enough that he requested – demanded, really – that he stay with police officer. Dale was pleasant enough — he faintly resembled Cindy’s old high school math teacher, whom she’d liked — but he’d been keeping a certain distance from everyone else in the hotel.

      “Cindy, hi.” Dale looked up from the laptop on his desk when she knocked on the room’s half-open door. “Thanks for coming over. I’ve got a favor to ask. Do you…?”

      “Have a satphone? Sure.” It was in the backpack Cindy had carried with her on the plane. She’d flown to Minneapolis to hook up with an old college roommate for a camping trip in the lakes region, where cell coverage was spotty and it wasn’t smart to be out in the woods with no way to contact anyone. “Not that it’s going to do you any good.”

      Dale didn’t seem to hear the last. “So long as it’s battery isn’t dead —” a questioning look; Cindy shook her head “—I might be able to hook it up to my laptop through their serial ports. Maybe I can get through to someone.”

      “I don’t know how.” Sharon leaned against the door. “Internet’s gone down. My partner and I found that out when we tried to use our cruiser laptop.” She nodded at the digits on Dale’s laptop. “We just got that, same as everyone else.”

      “Yes, well…” Dale absently ran a hand through thinning brown hair. “The place I want to try is a little better protected than most.”

      “Where’s that, sir? The Pentagon?” Sharon’s demeanor changed; she was a cop again, wanting a straight answer to a straight question. “You showed us a Pentagon I.D. when you came over here from the airport. Is that where you work?”

      “No. That’s just a place I sometimes visit. My job is somewhere else.” Dale hesitated, then he pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Opening it, he removed a laminated card and showed it to Sharon. “This is where I work.”

      Cindy caught a glimpse of the card. His photo was above his name, Dale F.