CHAPTER 1: Meltdown

  I already hated my job. After eighteen months of training, I sat 200 feet underground, twelve hours on, twelve hours off, five days a week. ICBM Technician sounded super cool when I picked my Military Occupational Specialty, or “MOS”… it was not. A cool-sounding job, coupled with being able to choose a duty station close to home, had me postponing college and going straight into the Air Force after high school. The recruiter had told me I was elite. He told me that the Air Force would practically treat me like royalty for my sky-high entrance exam scores. Of course I was an idiot, but then, what seventeen-year-old isn't?

  For the last three months my "elite" job has basically been to stay awake and stare at a computer screen, monitoring the status of ICBM missiles that will never change. Well, should never change anyhow. I drank 5 Red Bulls a night while watching that idiot Ramirez pick his nose until it bled. Pretty sure the guy only does it so he has an excuse to leave this god-forsaken room.

  This is such bullshit. I’m almost twenty, and I should be passed out in a sorority house bathroom right now. Instead, I watch Ramirez pull something out of his left nostril, holding it up closer to his monitor to get a better look at it. Fuck my life.

  I look at my watch for the hundredth time ... 6:04 a.m. Just fifty-six minutes to go and I can head back to my admittedly decent barracks room, play a bit of World of WarCraft, then head to bed. Nothing more exciting than standing in the middle of Orgrimmar at 7:30 a.m., literally the only person there who isn't an NPC, because anybody with an actual life logged off hours ago, or has never logged on at all. Ironic how much that seems to reflect my actual life these days.

  Fifty-six more minutes of staring at this stupid screen. I shot a quick glance at my watch ... fifty-five.

  Turning my gritty eyes back to the monitor as I reached for the half-empty can of room-temperature Red Bull, I froze. Something was different. It wasn't on the monitor; this was literally floating in front of my face, as if I were wearing a VR helmet.

  "System Message 1.001 Assimilation initialization Protocol 1642.1B is now active. Target planet M1367.3, known locally as Earth, shall begin phase one in 30 seconds. Please read carefully, as this is the last System message you will receive prior to the conclusion of Phase One. Autonomous Multiverse Integration Systems Inc., also known as the System, has started the System integration protocol on your planet. This primarily involves initiating the Mana Core at the center of the planet. However, Earth's system core has a support capacity of only one billion active users. We must reduce population levels to no more than one billion individuals prior to core activation. Per Protocol 1642.1B, a self-conducted purge shall take place. Any individual who eliminates fewer than three other humans shall be recycled for resources. The purge shall last exactly sixty minutes. At the conclusion of the purge, survivors shall be given a class and a System interface. Resource allocation shall be distributed based on purge performance. At the conclusion of the purge, all electronic devices on or in orbit of the planet shall be disabled. All long-range communications and organized commerce shall henceforth be carried out only through System channels.”

  As I finished reading the message for the second time, understanding the individual words just fine, but struggling to make sense of them all in that particular order, the System interrupted, this time audibly.

  “Phase one begins in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... begin.”

  I just stood there, dumb and mute. I knew instinctively that this wasn't fake; how could it be? Everybody was obviously seeing, and now hearing, the same thing that I was, motionless except for eyes rapidly scanning left to right, then down, left to right, down again, still reading and re-reading the message that was now fading away.

  Six pairs of enlisted eyes turned toward Captain Roberts. Still, nobody said a word. Still, everyone hoped there was a reasonable explanation besides "Aliens are here and you have to kill everyone you know to stay alive."

  Slowly, our dimwit captain realized everyone was looking to him for answers. Captain Roberts cleared his throat and rasped out, "I don't know if this is some sort of prank or what, but..."

  A baseball-sized hole erupted out of his forehead as a bang loud enough to make me instinctively reach to cover my ears rang out.

  "Holy shit!" I yelled, too stunned to move beyond a reactive crouch. Captain Roberts, however, was moving, albeit in slow motion. He sank to his knees, then slammed face forward onto the polished concrete floor, revealing a wild-eyed and violently shaking Ramirez ten feet behind him, service pistol still raised, crazy eyes scanning the room frantically, a trickle of blood running down from his left nostril and into his open mouth.

  Ramirez swung the pistol at another target, not at me, thank God, and all hell broke loose. Another shot rang out just as somebody tackled Ramirez; no idea who it was. I ran. As much as I believed the message from the System to be true, I had no intention of killing anyone. There was only one thought front and center in my brain, and that was that I had to get home now. My mother and my six-year-old sister would be home alone, as my father had died a couple of years ago in a car accident. That being said, I still double-checked that my service pistol was still in my side holster as I turned and burned out the door and down the hallway towards the elevators.

  It seemed like every room I passed had either shots ringing out or people screaming for help. Call me a coward, but not once did I consider getting involved in any of it. I am not a hero, a villain, or a white knight coming to anybody’s rescue. “Mom … Lacy” … over and over in my head as I ran. As I approached the elevators, I quickly realized that this would not work; at least not on this floor. There had to be ten or more people shooting from around corners at anyone who dared try to make a run for the elevator doors. There was one young woman, pretty sure her name was Erica something, who was hiding ineffectively behind a hallway garbage can. She was hugging her knees and rocking back and forth as a puddle of blood rapidly formed around her. At the last-second change of plans, I hit the stair doors at full speed, a bullet hitting the wall right beside my face as I went through. A hot and sudden pain in the right side of my face, along with a rapid blurring of my vision in my right eye, let me know that I had been hit, but the pain was just a flash, and then it was gone. Adrenaline is a funny thing. Twelve flights of stairs ahead of me, I took them two at a time. Guns continued to fire as I ran, sometimes so clearly I was sure that I was the target, sometimes muffled. It turns out that a military base may not be the best place to be when the world ends.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  I took the first three floors in a blur. By the seventh, breathing was a full-body affair; my lungs raw and a battery acid taste in my mouth. I finally slowed, hands on knees, and tried to hear anything above my ragged breathing. Above me, boots hammered the stairs—either someone else running for their life, or someone hunting. I had no interest in either. Below, the dark concrete and exposed wiring conduit looked exactly like every horror movie basement ever, except I was the idiot in the story, not the audience yelling at the idiot to make better life choices.

  Twelve floors… I promised myself that if I survived, cardio would play a much larger role in my life. The main lobby sat just past the stairwell exit, maybe twenty yards of checkered linoleum, trophies of Air Force glory in glass cases, historic recruitment posters, and a display of old missile parts welded into something that was supposed to be inspirational. The glass doors across the lobby shimmered with the blood-orange sunrise and, more importantly, the freedom to get the hell out. I checked the peephole window—empty, for now.

  I un-holstered my pistol, not sure if I looked cool or pathetic, and edged out of the stairwell. Maybe six feet in, the elevator dinged—because of course it did. The doors split open, and a sergeant I vaguely recognized as “maybe from the gym” raised his own gun and started firing. The first shot went wide; the second took a drywall chip out of the wall near my knee. I dropped to the floor, returned fire. I’d never shot at a real person before, but apparently beginner’s luck is a real thing. The guy bucked backward in the elevator with a wet slap, a sound I’ll probably hear in my nightmares, and slumped, a red oval spreading beneath his ribs as he collapsed into a pool of other people’s blood.

  As I duck-walked across the lobby, my face was wet and sticky. I tried not to think about the chunk of my ear that was probably still stuck to the stairwell door twelve floors down. I thought about Mom and Lacy. I wondered if Lacy understood what “recycled for resources” meant. Hopefully not. I wondered if Mom had tried to call me; I wondered if she had barricaded the door and was waiting for me to come home. I hoped I would find out soon enough; my phone was in my car, but home was over 100 miles away.

  In the corner of my eye, I noticed something. There was now a number, green, 8-bit font. One. My kill count? I shuddered and tried to ignore it.

  The base’s main parking lot was a wasteland: cars abandoned at odd angles, a couple smoldering, some with doors hanging open. A few bodies lay scattered, but mostly it was empty. It was amazing how much things could change in ten minutes. Two buildings over, an alarm wailed, but no one was listening.

  I sprinted for my beat-up Civic, which looked even shittier next to the SUVs and government sedans, but at least nobody had bothered to mess with it. I fumbled for my keys, hands shaking so hard I almost dropped them. When I slid into the driver’s seat, I realized I’d pissed myself at some point, but who was going to judge? I twisted the ignition, floored it, and tore out for the main gate.

  I barely cleared the main gate before my phone started vibrating in the cupholder, screen lit up with a number I’d memorized before kindergarten. I fumbled it to my ear, nearly dropping it because my hands were still jerking as if I’d been tased.

  “Joe?” My mom’s voice was ragged. “Joe, baby, are you okay? Are you—there’s shooting everywhere, there’s,”

  “I’m fine.” I interrupted. “I’m coming home. Where’s Lacy?” I breathed so hard I could barely get the words out.

  “She’s here, she’s under the table, I’ve got her with me—what is happening? I saw … we both saw the message about the System? Please—”

  “Mom. Turn out all the lights, lock the door, and don’t open the door for anybody but me,” I said, throttle pressed flat, the landscape blurring past in browns and frost-bitten grass. “Take Lacy to the basement. You know where dad’s guns are. I’ll be home in an hour.”

  A pause, desperate sobbing on the other end, muffled by Lacy’s shrieking in the background. “Please hurry,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “I love you, Mom. I’m coming.”

  I hung up before I could lose my nerve, knuckles white on the wheel. I kept thinking about the System’s message. One billion survivors. Kill three or die. I did the math on my family—Mom and Lacy, two—but my brain wouldn’t let the numbers settle. I’d killed one, didn’t even know his name, but my body count needed to be three? And what about them? Did I have to kidnap neighbors and have my eight-year-old sister execute them? As horrified as I was, I knew I would do whatever I had to do for them to survive. But would most likely die trying. I was okay with that. Unfortunately, time was not. I would need a helicopter to get home in time to have a chance of helping them before the purge timer ran out.

  Half a mile down the road towards Minot, the air filled with a long, rising howl—a sound I’d only ever heard in base drills. Missile warning. For a second, I thought I was hallucinating, but then the ground vibrated, and light flooded the dawn sky behind me. I looked in the rearview and saw it: a spear of flame rising out of the missile silo like an angry god’s middle finger. Another followed, then another. I jerked the Civic onto the shoulder, skidded to a stop, and got out, eyes stinging in the cold and wind.

  Missiles, plural. Lots of missiles.

  What kind of lunatic initiates a nuclear strike at a time like this? How could anyone actually pull it off anyway? It takes multiple high-level individuals, including the President of the United States, doing very specific things with very specific timing to launch ICBMs. That just couldn’t be happening … not with the chaos I had just left behind.

  The road was empty, but I heard a car engine in the distance. It was a battered police cruiser, no lights, just barreling in my direction from the direction of Minot. For a stupid second, I thought about flagging him down for help. But if I’d learned one thing today, it was that uniforms mean anything but safety anymore. They meant weapons. I dove behind my car, expecting a drive-by style shooting attempt at a minimum, but the car just roared past, a woman in a paramedic jacket hunched over the wheel, blood streaked down one side of her face. She didn’t even look at me as she rocketed towards the base. I hope that wasn’t Captain Roberts’s wife.

  I got back into the Civic, hands shaking so badly I was glad it was already running, or I would probably have snapped the key off in the ignition. I put my head down for half a second to grab the shifter and put it in drive, then looked back up.

  A fireball bigger than I could have ever imagined bloomed on the horizon, turning the cotton candy pink of early dawn to the brightest noonday sun. I instantly closed my eyes and dropped my head to the shifter knob. My eyes hurt terribly, and I had an instant headache. After a few seconds of hugging the shifter knob, I opened my eyes and tried to look back out the windshield. They were blurry as hell, but I swore I could make out what appeared to be a fucking mushroom cloud in the distance.

  As blurry as my vision was, there was one thing I could still see perfectly clearly. The number one in the corner of my vision had changed. It was now glaring at me in a brilliant 8-bit green… 52,462.