Chapter 6-A world so far away…..

     Steve had barely slept all night, between thinking of his family, and dreams that involved nuclear blasts, infected, and cities going black all over the world.  He had finally given up and got out of his sleeping bag at about 6:00am Eastern time.  He spent the better part of 2 hours watching the earth out of a port window.  He had been wrestling with the knowledge that before he was sent to the space station NASA had asked him if he wanted to be informed if anything happened to his family while he was aboard the space station.  He had told them no, but surely this was a different ball game now.  He knew his wife and children were safe at NASA but he wondered about his parents in Orlando. 

     He was starting to worry because the video conference was supposed to start 15 minutes ago.  The crew of the ISS had been sitting there for 30 minutes anxiously waiting to talk to there families.  There had been some idle chatter, but most everyone had been quiet, waiting for mission control to come on-line.

“Good morning crew” mission control said as the screen changed from the static NASA logo into a video feed.

“We were beginning to worry” Steve informed.

“We apologize for keeping you waiting, but we are experiencing  some intermittent power failures here. We know that you all are waiting to speak to your families but we need to get some business out of the way first.”

“Roger that control.”

“First off, anything to report from the night watch?”

The crew commander thumbed through a stack of papers before finding the one he was looking for.

“Lets see, there were 7 more nuclear detonations.  Four above Russia, two above England, and one in the United States.   We also saw 3 more major cities go dark bringing the total to about 23.”

“What about the fires?”

“Western Seaboard is lit up like the fourth of July.  The smoke is still obscuring a large portion of the United States so our blackout count may be a little inaccurate.”

“Can we just cut through the bullshit here?  What the hell is going on down there?”  Steve interrupted “We are sitting up here 240 miles away and you aren’t telling us shit.”

“We know it is frustrating up there but..”

“Fuck frustrating, I want to know what is happening now!”

The man at NASA’s controls could be seen whispering to someone off screen.  His hand was over his microphone so nothing could be heard.  After a few seconds he got up from his desk and was replaced by NASA’s Director. 

“Hello crew.” The director said

“Oh thank god its you Zeke. You have to tell us whats going on down there.” Zeke was short for Ezekiel.  Steve had starting calling him that when they went through flight school together.

“Steve I know it’s tough being up there but, the truth is we need you to hold it together .  We have lost all communications here except you and a small band of survivors using shortwave radios.”

“When can we come home?” Steve asked.

“To be honest, we don’t know.  There was a breach in our perimeter last night.  We lost a lot of people, but don’t worry your families are safe here with us.  The infected made a hell of a mess at our power-plant and that is why we keep losing power.  As far as coming home goes, we are trying to figure something out, but the landing zone here is flooded with infected and the base in California is ashes as far as we know. The most important thing now is information.  We are going to be giving you control of a low orbit reconnaissance satellite to use. We keep losing power and are unable to communicate with it effectively.  We are sending you a list of locations to check out now.”

“Okay, we have the list.”

“Just photo those locations, get any information you can and let us know on the next conference.”

“Roger that.” Steve said

“I know you are all anxious to talk to your famili…” There was a loud bang that interrupted Zeke.

“Zeke what was that? It sounded like a gunshot.”

“Hold on ISS”

Zeke stood up and started to turn away from the monitor.  He turned back and killed the video feed but forgot to kill the sound.

“What happened?” They heard Zeke yell.  “The fence was supposed to hold them god damn it!” Another gunshot rang out. ”Shut the fucking door!”

The crew abord the ISS heard a few more shots, some yelling then a crash and the connection was lost.