Callsign: King (Jack Sigler) (Chesspocalypse #1)

That time was drawing near. This also she had dreamed.

She dreamed of a place of death. She dreamed of her destiny approaching like a great gray wall, emerging from the setting sun.

Then, one night, she awoke from the dream.

It was time.

The Old Mother looked around the cave where the clan slept, oblivious to their wondrous future. The dim embers of the cook-fire offered little illumination, but she could make out the clumped shapes of mated pairs and families huddled together in repose.

She struggled to her feet, her age clinging to her withering muscles and creaky joints. It was good that this moment had finally come; in a few more turnings of the moon, she wouldn’t be able to move at all.

None in the clan stirred as she made her way to the mouth of the cave. A half-moon cast a silvery glow on the landscape and a bright river of stars lit up the sky. Yet, the Old Mother did not need illumination; the path she followed was one glimpsed in a dream and she could have followed it blind.

She walked all night, the urgency of her purpose pushing her onward through the pain and fatigue. At last, as the sun broke over the horizon, she found them.

She was not unfamiliar with the great beasts. The land belonged to them. Like her clan, they were herd animals, usually gathering in groups that numbered more than she could count on all of her fingers. From time to time, the clan would hunt them, taking stragglers that were too old or weak to keep up with the herd, but there was great risk in that endeavor. Even the weakest of the great beasts could crush them with hardly a second thought. The clan never approached a herd directly.

This herd was like nothing she had ever seen before.

Their numbers were, despite her gift, beyond her ability to comprehend. They were a great mass, stretching out in the direction where the sun would set at day’s end, farther than her eye could see. And as she drew near, they began to stir.

A shiver of excitement gripped her as the beasts began trumpeting and stamping their massive feet. She was afraid and awestruck, but this was the moment she had dreamed of, and witnessing the great herd, feeling the earth shake as they danced, was strangely satisfying.

Then, from out of the thunderous mass, several of the beasts advanced.

They were old, like her, the matriarchs of dozens of herds. She felt a tremor of fear as they drew close, surrounding her, but they did not attack. Instead, acting in unison, they knelt before her.

Images flooded into her mind, the thoughts not just of the matriarchs, but of the entire assembly, and a scream tore from her throat….

# # #

Felice Carter awoke from her long dream, and opened her eyes in the middle of a nightmare.





7.


King spun away an instant before the thermate compound in each grenade ignited. Unlike the flash-bangs, there was no detonation, no deafening blast. Rather, there was only a flare of light, as bright as an arc welder, followed by a palpable wave of heat that permeated the room.

The carpeted floor instantly erupted in flames, as did the wooden tables nearest the ignition. The molded plastic containers which had been used to transport the CDC team’s equipment began to melt, despite being several feet away from the flames, and as the emerging conflagration began to destroy natural fibers and manmade compounds alike, a miasma of black smoke filled the room.

All of this happened in mere seconds.

King felt the waves of heat at his back and the stinging of chemical fumes in his eyes as he searched the room for some other exit. He couldn’t exit through the door; the gunmen would almost certainly be waiting for him. What did that leave?

Through the persistent ringing in his ears he heard a new sound, the low wailing of a fire alarm, and at almost the same instant, it started to rain in the room. King glanced back, trying to avoid directly looking at the blinding incendiary flares, and saw that the automated sprinkler system was having little effect on the fire. The droplets simply flashed to steam, while under the shelter of the tables, the flames were spreading.

He returned his attention to the matter of escaping the room. There were no windows, but as his vision improved, he saw that one of the walls was different. It was not a true wall, but rather a series of temporary partitions that had been set up to divide a much larger area into two smaller rooms. He dashed past the blossoming inferno to the partition, stepped back and then delivered his best door-smashing kick.

The partition didn’t budge. His heel rebounded and a wave of agony shuddered through his entire body, aggravating injuries that he didn’t even know he’d suffered. A grunt of pain escaped through his clenched teeth.