Menace from Moscow: The Last Humans, #3

By Steven M. Moore

In the third novel of this post-apocalyptic sci-fi trilogy, the critical and difficult management of geopolitics in a post-apocalyptic world caused by a worldwide bioengineered virus continues: Survivor Penny Castro and her friends' new task is to recover nuclear-armed missiles aboard a US submarine that sunk off Cuba's coast at the beginning of the pandemic. As if the train ride from Colorado to Florida across a dangerous, desolate, and devasted US isn't enough, what awaits them in the Caribbean and beyond will put any fan of sci-fi thrillers on the edge of their seats. From SoCal to Cheyenne Mountain and on to Florida, Cuba, and what remains of the Russian Federation, Penny's adventures are full of mystery, thrills, and suspense.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven M. Moore
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215576755

Steven M. Moore

If you’re reading this, thank you. Not many people find me...or recognize me as an author of many genre fiction novels. Maybe it’s because my name is too common—I thought once about using a pen name...and probably should have. Maybe it’s because I don’t get many reviews. (It's not hard to write one once you've read one of my books: just say what you like and dislike in a few lines, and why.) I know you have many good books and good authors to choose from, so I’m honored and humbled that you are considering or have read some of mine.You’re here on Smashwords because you love to read. Me too. Okay, maybe you’re here to give someone the gift of an entertaining book—that’s fine too. I love to tell stories, so either way, you’ll be purchasing some exciting fiction, each book unique and full of action and interesting characters, scenes, and themes. Some are national, others international, and some are mixed; some are in the mystery/suspense/thriller category, others sci-fi, and some are mixed-genre. There are new ones and there are evergreen ones, books that are as fresh and current as the day I wrote them. (You should always peruse an author's entire oeuvre. I find many interesting books to read that way.)I started telling stories at an early age, making my own comic books before I started school and writing my first novel the summer I turned thirteen—little of those early efforts remain (did I hear a collective sigh of relief?). I collected what-ifs and plots, character descriptions, possible settings, and snippets of dialogue for years while living in Colombia and different parts of the U.S. (I was born in California and eventually settled on the East Coast after that sojourn in South America). I also saw a bit of the world and experienced other cultures at scientific events and conferences and with travel in general, always mindful of what should be important to every fiction writer—the human condition. Fiction can’t come alive—not even sci-fi—without people (they might be ET people in the case of sci-fi, of course).I started publishing what I'd written in 2006—short stories, novellas, and novels—we’d become empty-nesters and I was still in my old day-job at the time. Now I’m a full-time writer. My wife and I moved from Boston to the NYC area a while back, so both cities can be found in some novels, along with many others in the U.S. and abroad.You can find more information about me at my website: https://stevenmmoore.com. I’m also on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorStevenMMoore; and Twitter @StevenMMoore4.I give away my short fiction; so does my collaborator A. B. Carolan who writes sci-fi mysteries for young adults. See my blog categories "Steve's Shorts," "ABC Shorts," and the list of free PDF downloads on my web page "Free Stuff & Contests" at my website (that list includes my free course "Writing Fiction" that will be of interest mainly to writers).I don't give away my novels. All my ebooks are reasonably priced and can be found here at Smashwords, including those I've published with Black Opal Books (The Last Humans) and Penmore Press (Rembrandt's Angel and Son of Thunder). I don't control either prices or sales on those books, so you can thank those traditional publishers for also providing quality entertainment for a reasonable price. That's why you won't find many sales of my books either. They're now reserved for my email newsletter subscribers. (If you want to subscribe, query me using [e-mail].)My mantra has always been the following: If I can entertain at least one reader with each story, that story is a success. But maybe I can do better than that? After all, you found me!Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book preview

Prologue

Off the Cuban Coast

During the apocalypse...

Captain Arthur Iskenderian had grown up in California’s San Joaquin Valley, about as far as one could be from the ocean in that great state without being in the Sierra Nevada. Yet he’d chosen to have a career in the US Navy.

Art was a small man, about five-seven—a lot of submariners were small, not as much as Navy pilots tended to be, but small enough to feel at home in their underwater cave for months on end. As he aged, his muttonchops and hair turned grayer and the wrinkles around his eyes gave him the look of a nineteenth-century sailor. No matter where he and his crew were—on base or at sea—at Christmas time he’d dress in a Santa suit and yell out his ho-hos. The little cups they used to ration their water supply were then used to ration whiskey and have a toast to Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, and the New Year.

His parents had been part of that great Armenian diaspora who had settled in that rich agricultural area that was so much like their homeland, not that they were all farmers and ranchers. Some had become scientists, engineers, doctors, and entrepreneurs, all part of that great melting pot that was the state of California. One of his Californian heroes had been the American-Armenian writer William Saroyan; one of the Californian devils he’d cursed was that congressional representative from Bakersfield who’d spent a lot of time kissing the ass of a certain ex-president.

That grandson of Armenian immigrants was a patriot, though, and he’d used a more reasonable congressman to get into the US Naval Academy. The years had passed quickly, and he became a submarine captain loved by his crew. They were now returning from a long mission. 

The USS Joseph Biden, a nuclear submarine named after the controversial US president who’d been considered both a hero and a flop for different reasons in his first two years as president, had its first mission in the Mediterranean to deter the Russian Federation from using nukes in Ukraine. That president was a hero for rallying the West against Putin’s illegal invasion of its neighbor; earlier, he’d been considered a flop due to his predecessor and his lack of planning the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and afterward because of his coddling of the duplicitous Saudis. People remembered those foreign policy events more than his social engineering successes necessary to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic; even with the historic success of his party in the 2022 midterm elections, after those two first years his administration went off the rails, reliving President Obama’s fate as fascism marched inexorably on in America and worldwide.

The world was still going to hell even as the submarine went on its second mission, a surveillance tour of Venezuela, eastern Colombia, and Cuba, because those three countries’ leaders, pretending to be the ideological remnants of the worldwide revolution on behalf of workers everywhere, were making noises about more collaboration with their ideological Latin American brethren. (Leaders in China, North Korea, and Russia, along with those in many other fascist states, had ceased their claims to oversee workers’ paradises, leaving that charade behind in the dust bins of history.) Off the Cuban coast, the submarine’s last stop before returning to Norfolk, Art had to make a critical decision.

Might be a good time and place to go up for a breather, Art, his XO said, bringing down the periscope. I didn’t even see a Cuban fishing boat.

Art smiled. Old Castro was able to hide out in those southern mountains for years. That area’s still mostly deserted, and the north isn’t all that different, except for Havana. And it’s Sunday. Cuba’s commies couldn’t destroy the simple people’s love for their religion. Even Putin pretends to be religious, Bill. The fishermen are probably at mass.

Shall I take it up? Quiet seas.

Art thought a moment. Maybe. But not for long. We can probe the Cuban airwaves a bit more and refresh our air supply. Anyone want some fresh air? Crewmembers on the bridge either nodded or said their ayes. Take it up, Bill, but keep it low in the water.

Unbeknownst to the captain and his XO, that would occur only three days after North Korea had attacked SoCal with their bioengineered virus, a contagion so virulent that it made Covid-19 look like the common cold. It was well on its way to covering the entire globe.

Art had returned to his stateroom to think about the report he’d have to write after arriving in Norfolk. Not fifteen minutes later, the XO was on the internal com, gasping and retching.

The men are dying, Captain!

Take her down, Mr. Jackson!

But it was too late. Sailors continued to die. And too late Art decoded the Top-Secret message they’d received during that brief time on the surface about how that Korean virus was spreading.

They took that plague down with them into those shallow waters after closing the hatches and diving. There was no protocol about what to do in such a situation. The sub’s hull remained intact in the two-hundred-feet deep water just off Cuba while some of the condemned submariners went wild. One even set off a torpedo.

The USS Joseph Biden became a large and very expensive casket for all the submariners onboard, and its deadly cargo of nuclear-tipped missiles waited in silence for any intrepid salvagers who would come along and retrieve them. 

***

San Francisco, California, not long after the apocalypse...

John Smith had initially felt trapped in San Francisco after the crazy North Koreans had launched their missiles filled with deadly plague to attack the west coast of the US, SoCal to be precise. He’d originally thought that the Russian Federation was responsible, but eventually learned the truth. He had completed his last mission for his masters a month earlier and was set to return home by hitching a ride on a slow Russian freighter bound for Vladivostok. He planned to end up in his home village about one hundred miles east of Moscow.

Born Dimitri Smirnov, John Smith was not a big man. In Russia, most children, especially those outside the big cities, didn’t have the good diets US or West European children had. Only rich Russians truly ate well. His brains were thus better than his brawn. He was also a bit swarthy with some slant to his eyes, so he could pose as an immigrant or someone with an indeterminate ethnic background that was common in diverse California. Most people ignored him as he walked down a street. In Frisco, he dressed well; after fleeing the city, though, he had to be more practical about his clothes, but he even looked good in a tee or flannel shirt, denims, and tennis shoes. And after the Korean plague came down from the sky, no one cared how anyone dressed.

The Russian had harbored mixed emotions about that planned trip home and later about the forced trip south to flee a city gone wild. By then, he loved San Francisco—its people, its laid-back lifestyle, and its progressive politics, all so different from the bleak Russian Federation left behind by incompetent leaders like Putin and others. The American city had erased much of his patriotic fervor and love of country that frankly was a trash pit as bad as any Third World dump. It was as if people in San Francisco lived life to its fullest because the big one could occur at any time. Instead, Death riding in on some missiles had found them.

City leaders had had no idea what was going on as people started dropping dead in the streets. John didn’t either. That bioengineered plague was the great equalizer. Most of those city leaders and then state and national ones had died. The FBI agents and cops who’d been hunting him mostly had disappeared too.

He’d fortunately had several plans for his escape. The route home to Russia was the most complicated one. But he’d purchased a cabin in the foothills of the Sierra as an alternative, which was why he moved south and into the Valley. That move had turned out to be fraught with difficulties as well. He’d first settled near a small town called Exeter, pretending to be just another survivor of the plague who’d found a new home. He was truly a survivor, but an unusual one.

He had no idea why he’d survived, but one of those persistent cops, an SFPD detective, had also survived. John didn’t know that until later, and by then the cop had already left the bay area to follow John to that agricultural area in the Big Valley. John had been shocked to see him in that same little town working as a sheriff’s deputy. He also discovered why the cop was so obsessed with the case: His sister had married a Ukrainian.

John was both intelligent and paranoid. He guessed that in the detective’s little cottage there would be case files the cop had brought with him, bent on bringing the Russian spy-assassin to justice. If he was going to find a new life in what was left of the US, he would have to kill the cop and destroy all the evidence.

Chapter One

Andrews AFB, Maryland

Several  years after the apocalypse...

US President Harold Robertson walked from his small office at Andrews AFB into Dan Murray’s. The new Joint Chief rose and reached across his desk to shake the president’s hand.

Robertson’s demeanor and dress were anything but presidential. He was a soft-spoken man who had never wanted the job; in fact, before he was volunteered for it, he’d never imagined any sort of career in politics. He’d been drafted, meaning that there was no one else they could agree on for the job. The intelligent fellow had fooled them all. He would go down in history, what little was left of it in the post-apocalyptic world, as one of two men who had engineered the rapprochement with Korea; the other was the current Korean president, Dr. Pak Mun-Hee.

Others in his administration identified him by his wrinkled shirt, faded khakis, and soiled sneakers. His clothes contrasted with Murray’s uniform, which wasn’t that grand either but at least was clean and ironed. Murray had replaced his predecessor after he had been tried for treason and sent to an Alaskan prison. Robertson considered the honest but taciturn man quite an improvement. In fact, they weren’t a bad team, one that was probably needed to keep what remained of the US and maybe the rest of the world sane and functioning.

I need to sit, Dan, Robertson said. That sofa over there looks comfortable. I should get one in my office. But where would I put it?

General Murray poured them both a scotch neat and handed a glass to Robertson before sitting down beside him.

We have a problem, Harold.

So, you stated on the phone, said the president. You always have problems. I’m a lame duck now—I think that still might be the correct term to use. Or maybe today the appropriate terminology is ‘dead duck’? Do I really need to be involved in this problem? Can’t it wait for my successor?

We have to keep up appearances, Murray said with a smile. And I’ll continue to respect the initiative you showed to broker that deal with the Koreans. You’re a victim of that success, you know.

It shouldn’t be about deals, Dan. It’s about doing what’s right for the country and the world. I know I’ll never live to see a complete recovery, but I want to do my damnedest while I’m in office to make things better. He took a sip and enjoyed the silky burn. Like the sofa, he wondered where the general got his liquor. He sighed. What’s the problem?

Some fishermen have found one of our nuclear subs in shallow waters just off Cuba. We’re worried that the Russians have learned about the find. Our new Korean friends are too. We’ve confirmed it, but the fishermen there weren’t quiet about their discovery.

The president’s eyebrows raised. He patted his remaining hair down a bit—it was hard to get a decent haircut now—and adjusted his glasses. The hair didn’t bother him; Murray was completely bald except for his monk-like tonsure that went along with his big belly. Losing his eyesight did.

I suppose our missiles are on it. With nuclear warheads? Hell, let the Russians have the damned things. Or anyone else, for that matter. No one’s left there to retarget them or maintain them. We certainly don’t have anyone who could do that.

Yet you have started a program to disarm and decommission the missiles in those northern silos.

Russians can’t get to those, and the same comments about reprogramming and so forth apply. They’re on American soil, though, so disarming them is something we should feel obligated to do.

Precisely. Do you think the Russians will disarm our missiles on that sub?

I’m wondering why they don’t have any of their own on land. They had enough of them if I remember correctly. Hell, that bastard Putin almost used them against Ukraine. And what about all their own subs?

Same problem we had, I suspect. Their subs were on patrol, surfaced to refresh their air supply, and sailors died. Eventually they sank, their hulls crushed by the pressure.

Probably not a bad thing in the big picture. Missiles and reactors deep on the ocean floor are in a safer place. Robertson frowned. You’re wasting my time here. What I first said implied Russians can’t do anything with the damn missiles. Even if they raise that sub. Admiral Anderson will confirm that, I’m sure.

But it’s the same problem as the missiles in the silos. We have a moral responsibility to disarm them. We just need to train some divers to do it.

Robertson paused to gather his thoughts, now stimulated by another sip of the smoky liquid. Okay. Understood. I’m on board. We can’t let the Russians get those missiles so they can blackmail the rest of the world. And I know just the people who can prevent them from doing that. There’s a woman I must convince, though. She’d be a critical asset to make that salvage operation a success.

***

Russian Federation President Yuri Volkov looked up as his aide knocked and entered before Yuri could give him the permission to do so. Georgi Ivanov, his Bulgarian gofer, was one of the worst examples of how informal the remains of the Russian Federation had become. He called it disrespect, not informality, though.

Once Russia had been feared. In the post-apocalyptic political landscape of Eastern Europe, people weren't very satisfied about how he and the Politburo were managing things. Of course, he wasn't satisfied either. He wasn't Putin. How could one govern with an iron hand these days? That uncultured SOB probably couldn't have hummed the theme of Mussorgsky’s Gates of Kiev in the shower if he tried, and he bankrupted the Federation with his war waged against Ukraine. He and his pet oligarchs had been driven by greed, focusing on power and money! And what good did it do them? They were now as dead as Mussorgsky! The great irony was that he, a classical musician and the last director of the Moscow Conservatory, was now president of the Russian Federation.

Yuri might have reminded some people of Brezhnev if they managed to remember that old Russian bear. Yuri was a lot more sensitive and personable, though, running the country as he might a large orchestra, cajoling the best performance out of its recalcitrant musicians. A baton would look like a toothpick in his big hands, and his belly would shake as he bellowed to his players to improve their performance. He’d wanted the directorship of the Conservatory and had enjoyed the guest performances he’d once made around the country and in Western Europe. He’d never wanted to be the Federation’s president. But the Politburo had wanted someone who knew how to lead, and he’d been drafted despite his objections.

This better be worth your insolent interruption.

Georgi smiled. A bit of good news, Yuri, he said in his accented and uncultured Russian. He waved a computer printout. Some fishermen found one of the Americans’ submarines.

Yuri brightened. A submarine of any class would be a welcome addition to the Federation's military readiness. Now more non-existence than readiness, he thought. He knew little about military matters, but he knew the Federation had little protection against their enemies who seemed to be regrouping. Only last month he'd read a Top-Secret report that what was left of Korea and the US had teamed up to help each other out.

He rose from his desk and went to his window to look out upon Red Square. Once a bustling city, Moscow was now more like a ghost town. St. Petersburg had become the effective capital of the Federation all but in name, while Moscow struggled to maintain its ascendancy. A huge distraction interfered with that struggle when hordes from Central Asia periodically decided to attack the capital. That was a constant drain on what little was left of the armed forces that had already been depleted by the war in Ukraine.

That Korean plague had turned once-great states into apocalyptic wastelands. Russia had been hit hard as the plague circled the globe, hitting Western Europe, which was in worst shape, just before Russia. No one had known much about the source of the plague, Korea, and the rest of the orient, and South America and Africa were still unknowns.

Is it good or bad luck that for some reason, probably a quirk of genetics or environment, I was one of the few with a natural immunity? He didn't consider that he was fit for his current job, but they'd needed someone with bureaucratic experience. Above all, oppressive bureaucracy in Russia still ruled. Because he knew how to herd musicians, they’d forced him to herd Russia’s survivors.

He had awoken in the hotel after a long night at the podium as guest conductor of the St. Petersburg Symphony and seen streets there like the ones he now saw below in Moscow, not empty, though, because the ones in St. Petersburg had been filled with the dead and dying. Somehow, he not only avoided a cruel death from the virus but also the brain fog that had turned men, women, and children into angry and wild zombies.

And now I must make a decision about whether to salvage a bunch of American nuclear missiles? He turned to Georgi.

The little man—small compared to Yuri, at least—stood balancing on his tiptoes, waiting for words from his master. He was an inscrutable fellow. Yuri didn’t particularly like this man who reminded Yuri of Boris Karloff, that old Hollywood star. He was able and smart, though, a man who could have been a crafty and devious courtier in an old czar’s court.

Set up an appointment for me with Field Marshal Semenov.

Chapter Two

At El Ranchito, near Exeter, California

Not again! My husband Alex’s birthday party had been rudely interrupted.

I flipped on our one anemic floodlight—yes, there’d been enough juice in some old batteries we’d found to power it if we didn’t use it that much—and I saw the ghostly figures who were chasing our chickens. They were naked except for some old boots, but they’d smeared themselves with ashes and soot as camo.

Dark gray ghosts even in the floodlight!

Our chickens and their eggs didn’t represent our livelihood, but they were our major source of protein. Unfortunately, both were easy to steal. I felt sorry for and hated chicken thieves at the same time. I hated the feral cats that