The Dying of the Light: Interval by Jason Kristopher Read Free Book Online Page A

was tired, and he didn’t spot it until it was too late.
    It started as a mumble, heard through the layers of her coat and reflected off the table, so no one understood it.
    “What was that, marshal?” asked Burke, turning toward her from his post at the end of the table.
    Shaw realized what was about to happen and laid a hand on her arm, but she stood up, never noticing his implied restraint. And then it was far, far too late for him to stop her.
    “You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots!” she yelled, stunning everyone in the room—and no doubt those sitting on the phone—into silence with her vehemence. “There’s what, maybe a thousand, twelve hundred, of us left down here in Hell? Across the most God-forsaken landscape this world has ever come up with, a goddamn desert of ice, there are twelve hundred of us. Twelve hundred real humans left.”
    Jennifer moved closer to the speakerphone in the middle of the table, no one thinking to restrain her.
    Burke had had just about enough. “Marshal, please sit down,” he said, rising from his seat, his voice strained from his attempt at civility. “Now.”
    Jennifer completely ignored him. “Three years ago, there were seven billion people on this planet. Think about that for a second. Seven billion . And now we’re down to just over one thousand . But we’re not just down to a thousand, are we? Because those other six billion and change didn’t all die, did they? They’re still out there, roaming and eating and killing.”
    “Just a moment, marshal,” said Nigel Mackey, the UK delegate. “What about those bunkers you Americans were building? That’s another hundred thousand people right there.”
    “Sure, fine. That’s another hundred thousand. But do they really matter? Sealed up tight inside their bunkers, waiting for the world to calm down? And all of them tens of thousands of miles away, with no way to help us. They might as well be on the moon. Hell, we might as well be on the moon.”
    “Marshal, sit down!” Burke began to move toward Jennifer, but Shaw stood and caught his eye, shaking his head slowly. Something about the look in Shaw’s eyes must’ve told him it would’ve been a losing battle, and Burke blinked twice, shocked, and stayed where he was, sitting back down. As Shaw returned to his own seat, he knew he was going to hear about this later, and might even lose his commission, but right now he didn’t even care.
    Because Jennifer was right.
    “We are the last surviving humans on the face of the earth,” Jennifer continued. “We’re it , folks. Monroe, how long has it been since we got any transmissions from outside?”
    Jackson Monroe, the base’s head of communications, took off his glasses and threw them on the table. He massaged the bridge of his nose, thinking before he spoke. When he answered, his voice was strong and confident. “Three months.”
    “And what was the source?”
    Jackson sighed. “An automated SOS signal from who knows where. We tried to trace it, but we think it bounced off some unusual activity in the atmosphere, and could’ve come from anywhere. Since it was Morse Code, there’s no way of knowing the origin.”
    “And before that?”
    “We got a satellite relay from the folks at Christchurch about six months ago. They were… well, unhinged would be a good way to put it.”
    Jennifer nodded. “Thanks, Jackson. What about the rest of you? Anyone else have any transmissions more recently? Or more important?”
    The silence from the speaker was deafening.
    “That’s what I thought. We are alone down here . And all this nationalistic crap about who should send supplies to whom, or who should seek refugee status, it’s all moot. There are no more countries for us to be loyal to . They’re gone. And they’re damn sure not coming back anytime soon, maybe not ever if we don’t survive this.”
    She took a deep breath and sat down as one of the other department heads stood up and offered her the seat