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handwritten note along with a cache of discarded weapons and supplies in the refrigerator of a long-abandoned home.
    Kilroy was here .
    The nickname stuck just before the swarm.
    Kil’s stomach sank even now as he thought of that day. They had been attempting to get the car started while thousands of creatures closed fast on their position. Three hundred meters, two hundred meters . . . dust, moans, closer. In a fit of panic and confusion Saien called him Kilroy, from the note he’d left. Kilroy evolved over the days ahead to just simply Kil .
    They unpacked and stowed their gear in every nook and cranny they could find. Their racks were small and space was limited. They placed some of their personal belongings under their mattresses; there simply wasn’t enough room for what they had brought over from the spacious carrier. Neither had ever lived aboard a submarine, a fact made glaringly obvious by the way they misallocated precious space.
    Kil sat on his rack and listened to the boat. It was designed for silence and felt like a public library compared to the carrier’s montage of dragging chains, noisy ventilation, and cycling solenoid valves. He heard dive, dive, dive right before the bow of the boat dipped a few degrees, sending Virginia into the deep. Kil knew what he was up against and that he would most likely not make it back alive. It was simple numbers, logic. There were just too many. He was now up against over a billion, not millions.
    It was four hours until the men were briefed on the perilous mission that lay ahead.
    This marks my first journal entry onboard USS Virginia . It’s been two hours since I boarded the submarine. The sea was a little choppy before we dived. The skipper informs me that we’ll stay in the area for the next twenty hours to prepare for the voyage to Pearl Harbor. Saien and I are bunked in one of the berthing areas onboard converted into sort of a pseudo-stateroom. I’m lucky we were not stuck sleeping in the torpedo compartment, as is the treatment of most outsiders and non-submariners, NUBs.
    Although I had served many deployments onboard ships in the navy, I had never thought I’d hear this being announced over 1MC: “Now muster all available personnel for nuclear reactor maintenance training.”
    It made perfect sense. We were not making anymore nukes—nuclear-trained naval personnel—in the navy, so it was either train new people or eventually we would run into a problem where the maintenance required on the reactors could not be performed.
    Nuclear-powered boats were made for this sort of world-ending event. I can remember serving onboard a conventional carrier. Every few days we would need to pull alongside a re-fueler. Those types of boats would never make it in this new world. There are no refineries up and active to meet the massive fuel requirement.
    The only real weaknesses to the Virginia ’s mission are general hull maintenance, food supplies, and reactor repairs. The training being carried out in the reactor spaces could abate one of those weaknesses. The Virginia generates her own water and scrubs her own air using onboard equipment powered by the reactor. There is no shortage of electricity. Just as some of the carriers with active reactors are being used as power plants, the Virginia could power a small town with little trouble.
    I’m told that Saien and I are meeting with the boat’s intelligence officer for briefing on the operation. The only hint about the op that I have received came from Joe before this morning’s helicopter ride.
    Joe yelled out over the rotors as we left the carrier’s bridge island, walking to the helo across the steel and nonskid deck. “You’re not going to believe it, Commander. Keep an open mind.”
    I still wasn’t used to being called commander. I wasn’t a real commander. I wasn’t even getting paid, not that currency matters anymore, I guess. Either way, as of right now, I have no idea what could possibly surprise me