Free Beyond Armageddon V: Fusion by Anthony DeCosmo Page B

containment cells. Beyond the glass doors he saw a burned pile of ashes. The smell of charred flesh—of some kind or another—lingered.
    “Anita?” He realized his call sounded more a whisper. “Anita? It’s me, Omar.”
    He spied a shadow move behind an overturned table. He could not tell—not at first—if that shadow belonged to his wife or one of the horrors inhabiting that vile place.
    “Omar—Omar?” Her voice suggested she did not trust her ears.
    He jogged to her. Anita Nehru lay with her knees pulled to her chin and propped against a side wall below a fire extinguisher. She had positioned herself just inside a rim of darkness as if hiding from all she had done.
    “I’m here, Anita.”
    He snuffed his cigarette on the floor and knelt. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he saw deep bags under her eyes and her hair bundled in tangled mess. She lazily held a pistol in one hand. In the other she clasped a bundle of notes and papers.
    “It’s you. You came.”
    “Of course.”
    She smiled briefly then her eyes stared beyond him at some sight visible only to her eyes. He easily removed the pistol from hand and slid it out of reach.
    “I want to go home, Omar. I want to leave this place.”
    “Yes, of course. This we shall do. Come along, right now.”
    She appeared ready to move but stopped as she remembered something. Her eyes glanced around at the now-dead containment cells. Then she became conscious of the notes in her grasp.
    “Wait, Omar, listen to me. I did all this—I did it all for a reason.”
    “I am sure. But let’s talk of this when we get home.”
    She grabbed his arm and said, “Listen, Omar, I understand now. Do you hear me? Trevor has to know. He has to know that we never had a chance. All of the guns and the armies won’t be enough, Omar. We never had a chance!”
    “Anita, come home with me.”
    “All these years down here—these things have gotten inside my head. I’ve studied them under a microscope, in the lab—most of them are just animals like what we have here on Earth—just a little different in how they look. That’s not important. But the others—I have watched them one little piece at a time. It’s been like a puzzle—coming together. No—more like coming into focus. I can’t explain it, but I know now. I know why the others are so different.”
    “I’m sure they are,” he reached under her shoulder as if to lift her to her feet.
    She burst with a shout that caused him to lose his balance and fall backward onto the floor.
    “GODDAMN IT you have to hear me, Omar! You MUST listen to me. Trevor MUST listen. You have to tell him. I can’t go—not like this—but you have to. You must tell him!”
    “Calm down. We will send a message to him.”
    “NO!” Then calmer, “No. You will go to the front and tell him yourself, Omar. You will tell him what I have learned.”
    She stared at him with hard eyes for a long moment, and then collapsed into sobs as the weight of her work, of her life in the dungeon, of the truth she had learned, came falling hard on her shoulders.
    He whispered in her ear, “What has this place done to you?”
    “I know, Omar,” she answered by telling him exactly what the horrors at Red Rock had finally taught her. “I know why the universe is empty.”

4. Spoilsport
     
    In the world before Armageddon, Wichita, Kansas earned the nickname “Air Capital of the World” due to the volume of aircraft manufactured in the vicinity as well as McConnell Air Force Base, one-time home to the 22 nd Air Refueling Wing.
    A small military contingent of Kansas National Guard and Air Force Combat Controllers kept McConnell operating during that first summer of the initial invasion. They flew re-supply sorties across the country, even topping the tank on Air Force One in late July. Eventually they lost contact with the President after his return to Cheyenne Mountain and the orders—as convoluted as they were—ceased.
    Eventually those who