by Akart, Bobby
“I’ll say it,” said Chapman, who was attuned to her thinking. “The rain coupled with the rapid melting of the polar ice caps will cause an incalculable rise in sea levels. If you add to it significant low cloud cover around the globe courtesy of the Svensmark effect, most of the heat naturally expelled by the planet will be trapped.”
“Primarily in the oceans,” interjected Isabella. “That will expand the ocean, contributing to additional sea-level rise. The combination could result in a two-hundred-foot rise very quickly.”
“How quickly?” asked Tommy.
Isabella replied, “If you dig into the geologic history, you will learn when sea levels have risen in the past, they have not done so gradually, but rather in rapid surges jumping fifty to one hundred feet.” She turned to Chapman and nodded.
“We call these events meltwater pulses because the near-biblical rise in the water levels is oftentimes associated with melting ice and deglaciation. What’s happening now, with the Svensmark effect, can greatly expedite the rise of sea levels.”
Kristi stood and walked to the window, slowly pulling back the curtain to confirm the rain was still falling despite the fact it was pelting the home’s metal roof. The science was a lot to digest and somewhat alarmist. “In medicine, even for veterinarians, a pulse is something regular and predictable. This concept of a meltwater pulse implies something much different.”
“Oui,” said Isabella. “It is quite the opposite—an anomaly. Some scientists believe the world has been witnessing the beginning of the largest meltwater pulse in human history. As the ice sheets fall away from the Antarctica and Greenland, for example, due to the shift in the magnetic poles, the rising water will reshape the topography of the planet.”
Tommy shook his head and chuckled. “Goodbye, Florida.”
Chapman rubbed his temples. “Not just Florida, but any land near the edge of a body of water.”
“Even rivers?” asked Kristi.
“Yes, even the Ohio River,” Chapman whispered as a hush fell over the room.
Chapter 38
Cedar Glade
Billy Clark’s Residence
Corydon, Indiana
William Tecumseh Clark bulled his way past the deputies guarding his front door and ripped into Wanda for not having dinner ready for him. He was in a sour mood, reeking of embarrassment and covered in mud. When Wanda asked him what had happened instead of scurrying off to the kitchen to fix the king his dinner, he pounded his fist into the plaster wall that was two centuries old. It didn’t budge and inflicted further pain on Billy’s hand, and psyche, in return.
Billy took a deep breath and spun around to face Wanda, his right hand throbbing as he tried to shake out the bees that seemed to be inside his knuckles. His tone was sarcastic. “I don’t feel like talking, ’kay? Now’s not a good time to share. I want something to eat and I need a drink, a damned stiff one.”
“I’ll get it,” she sheepishly offered. Wanda had been on the receiving end of Billy’s tirades in the past. He’d never struck her, but she never knew for certain that he wouldn’t. His ability to dole out abuse went beyond getting physical. Mental could be just as bad.
His voice had become eerily calm. “No, Wanda. This is the kinda drink only I know how to make. Get me dinner.”
Billy marched into his study, shedding his mud-caked suit on the foyer floor as he went. By the time he entered the dark room, he wore nothing but his silk boxer shorts and a wifebeater tank top, interestingly enough.
He kept a silk robe hanging on a hook behind the door. He wasn’t one to walk around the house in his underwear, as even he couldn’t stand the sight of catching a glimpse of his body in a mirror. But the silk robe, one that he’d bought for himself at Brooks Brothers during a banking convention in Chicago, was large enough to fit over his regular clothing. He always felt it afforded him a feeling of aristocracy befitting the home in which he lived. When he slipped the robe on, his nerves calmed and he was comforted, much like a beloved security blankie would a child.
Billy could hear the shouts and catcalls coming from the citizens of Corydon who lined the road in front of Cedar Glade. Even though they were nearly a half mile across the rolling front yard dotted with cedar trees, their voices carried over the rain and distance to ring in his ears.
He angrily walked to his study door and slammed it shut in an attempt to close off the world while he stewed in anger. Shuffling through the piles of bank files and legal documents, which were spread in a somewhat orderly fashion around his study, he reached for a tall tumbler and simultaneously opened the small refrigerator tucked into the mahogany bar in the corner of the room.
He was animated as he dropped the ice cubes one by one into the glass, from a distance of eight inches in order to create a clinking sound.
He raised his glass toward the front of the house and said loudly, “None of you assholes have ice now, do you?”
Then he poured the glass full of straight whiskey. “You don’t have this, either!” Billy downed half the glass, perhaps four or five ounces at once, the equivalent of several normal-sized shots.
Wanda gently tapped on the door and opened it. She carried in a tray of food—meat and three, Billy’s favorite. She didn’t make eye contact, clearly hurt from his earlier outburst.
Billy rolled his eyes and did what he always did when he’d lashed out at her. He pretended to be sorry. He wasn’t really sorry, but it was just easier that way to make the peace and to get her to do something else he might need later.
“Thank you, Wanda. I apologize for raising my voice. The funeral turned into a debacle, not that I’m surprised. We’re dealing with the Boones, you know. They’re not civilized like we are.”
Wanda managed a smile. “Enjoy your dinner, and I’ll get your clothes cleaned up. A few minutes ago, the deputy told me Randy was going to do something about those people up the hill. I hope he can quieten them down. That will take some stress off you, I’m sure.”
Billy finished off his first drink and quickly poured another one. “Well, it’ll be nice to see him do his job again. He was a wuss at the funeral.”
Billy’s blood began to boil again as he thought of the way he’d been treated and how Randy seemingly stood down during the entire confrontation. His blood pressure began to rise and his face was turning red. Wanda had seen his changes in mood before and wasted no time in exiting the study, quickly closing the door behind her.
For the next hour, Billy paced the floor, working off his anger while fueling his euphoria with liquor as he recalled serving the notice of foreclosure on Sarah Boone. He’d waited for this moment for more than a year when Squire had had difficulty making the last progress payment on the note. As the drought took hold over the Midwest, Billy began to count the days until he could seize the prize the Clark family had sought for generations—Riverfront Farms.
He scribbled a few illegible notes on his monthly At-A-Glance planner, circling the foreclosure sale date several times. Then he rummaged through the next group of files to address. They held the debt obligations of longtime landowners in Harrison County who also relied upon their harvest or sales of cattle at auction to pay their promissory notes to the bank.
He’d almost consumed a fifth of whiskey when he began to imagine himself a modern-day land baron. The people who once owned the properties would now work for him. He’d be led around in a fancy carriage, surrounded by uniformed guards always ready to administer a smackdown on any workers who got out of line.
His delusional thoughts of a feudal society almost caused him to pass out sitting upright behind his desk when he heard the sound of cheering coming from outside. He stirred himself back into the present when he realized he was sitting in complete darkness.
“What the hell?” he shouted the question. Then it struck him. Joella had warned him about the coming geomagnetic storms. He sat in the dark for a moment and spoke aloud. “Well, shit. Couldn’t this have waited a bit?”
He heard th
e heavy footsteps of Wanda rumbling down the staircase. The cheering sound puzzled him, but he set the confusion aside in search of a lighter in his desk drawer. He found a box of wooden matches and lit one, providing some illumination in the room. Despite all of Billy’s preparations, he was wholly unprepared for the moment of truth—when the geostorm hit.
As he stood alone, holding onto the solitary match to illuminate the room, focusing his attention on the front of the house and the incessant cheering of the townspeople, a pair of steely eyes stared across the yard through the glass doors leading to the back of the house.
They belonged to Levi Boone.
Chapter 39
Riverfront Farms
Southeast Indiana
The group of four had been discussing the ramifications of the river levels flooding Riverfront Farms and their home. The hours wore on, and twice a sleepy-eyed Carly emerged from their bedroom to determine if Levi had returned. On the third occasion, she was fully dressed and prepared to leave.
“I’ve only catnapped,” she commented as she walked through the living room and donned her rain gear. “Otherwise, my tossin’ and turnin’ only serves to disturb the kids. I’ve gotta go look for Levi, and I reckon I’ll start at our place. Even if Randy and his meth-head deputies went to our house, Levi would see them comin’.”
Chapman glanced at Kristi and she returned an imperceptible nod. “Let me and Tommy go with you. Between the rain and Randy, it wouldn’t be a good idea for you to go alone.”
Carly provided an unenthusiastic shrug in response. “I was gonna take the four-wheeler to avoid heading on the road by the river. That water keeps risin’.”
“Okay, then I’ll go with you,” said Kristi. The four-wheeler had two rows of seats, but the back had been folded down to haul farm equipment and manure used for fertilizer. With the constant rain, it would’ve been aggravating to convert it back to a four-seat side-by-side.
“Okay, I’d appreciate the company,” Carly said, relenting to her sister-in-law. She was now remembering Kristi’s ways. She was used to being in charge, so around the farm, she was pretty insistent at times.
After the two left, the remaining adults, including Sarah, who’d woken up because of the conversation, settled in with another pot of coffee. While they were unsure as to whether they should go looking for Levi, they certainly weren’t willing to go to sleep assuming he’d return.
Tommy commented on the gutsy neighbors who’d stood up to the Clarks at the funeral. “They basically drew their weapons on the sheriff and his deputies. If that had happened in Chicago, there would be bullets flying everywhere.”
Sarah managed a smile. “Those folks loved Squire and would lay down their lives for him. Besides, it’s a good thing they had those weapons. None of us had ours, nor are we really fighters. You know, that does concern me somewhat…” Her voice trailed off as she looked past Chapman toward the door where the rifles were leaning against an open gun rack.
“What’s that, Mom?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder to see what had garnered her attention.
“Well, Carly and I purchased those weapons and as much ammo as Allen Edmund would sell us. We bought even more ammo at Walmart right before the power was cut. I suppose you can never have enough guns if things get really ugly, so I wouldn’t mind seeing Allen about more. My bigger concern is only Levi and Carly are regular hunters. You and Kristi had some training around here before you left the house. Despite our rural and farming lifestyle, we’re not really gun savvy.”
“That’s true, Mom, but all of us are familiar with weapons and can learn quick if we need to,” offered Chapman.
“I was trained as a young girl,” added Isabella.
“Same here, in high school,” said Tommy. “Can I add something?”
“Sure.”
“I saw Kristi handle a variety of weapons during our, um, excitement at the zoo. She’s very confident and capable. I wouldn’t discount her abilities.”
Chapman leaned forward to address his mother. “We were trained together. I know she had the guns at her office and home in Chicago, thank goodness. I think she’d go to a gun range in Bolingbrook that was near her home. For me, because I traveled so much, checking a handgun would’ve been too much to deal with. That said, I can still shoot.”
Sarah smiled. “I know, dear. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’m not naïve, though. I know the potential for trouble is there. Our neighbors apparently recognize it. At some point, we need to sit down and discuss what we’d do if someone threatened us with guns.”
Isabella added, “I promise you, I come from a family who believed in liberty and equality in France. My ancestors were willing to fight or die if necessary. You can count on me, Sarah.”
“Same here,” added Tommy.
Chapman glanced over his shoulder because he thought he heard the low rumble of the four-wheeler returning. He glanced down at his old Garmin watch he’d found in his nightstand drawer the day he arrived with Isabella, and noticed its display was dark. He pressed the buttons, but the watch didn’t respond. He furrowed his brow and looked at Tommy’s watch. It was a Casio.
“Hey, Tommy, what time is it? I was just thinking those two have been gone for a while.”
Tommy fiddled with his watch and then tapped it several times with his index finger. “It’s not working.”
“Neither is mine,” added Isabella. “I think it is happening.”
“What?” asked Sarah.
Before Chapman could answer, the door flung open, startling them all. It was Carly and Kristi, and they were dripping wet and their shoes were covered in mud.
“The doggone four-wheeler just up and quit,” complained Carly.
“It was weird,” added Kristi. “One second we were trudging along the trail, headed back; the next second it was completely dead.”
Chapman and Isabella exchanged glances. He stood and waved the Boone women inside and shut the door behind them.
The fact that Levi wasn’t with them answered one lingering question in his mind. He was going to have to find his brother.
The fact the only operable electronics they possessed all quit at the same time explained something else. The first of many geomagnetic storms had struck Earth, and life as they knew it was over.
“Okay,” he began. “I take it Levi wasn’t at the house.”
“He had been though,” replied Carly. “Once we were inside, I went straight for the crawl space access in the closet under the stairs. Normally, it’s covered with a rug and some boxes. All of that had been pushed aside, which means he snuck into the house from underneath.”
“We also found his clothes piled into a utility sink in the laundry room. Carly said Dad’s Bowie knife and that old six-shooter were missing from the gun safe.”
“I remember those,” said Sarah. “We didn’t bring those over here that day, did we?”
Carly shook her head and looked at the wooden floor covered with dried mud from the last two days of traipsing in and out of the rain. “No, ma’am. He’d gone back to change clothes and get his weapons.”
“Well, crap,” said Chapman in a huff. “We all know what that means.”
“My son is not a murderer,” said Sarah forcefully.
Chapman tried to backtrack and soften his statement. “Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t necessarily mean that he is. But you have to understand. He’s been through a lot in the last two weeks. It’s changed him, I think. Is he a murderer? Not in the sense of premeditation and all of that. Would he do something to Billy if the two confronted one another again? Quite possibly.”
“We have to stop him,” insisted Carly, who seemed to agree with Chapman’s concerns.
Chapman raised his eyebrows and looked around the room at his family. “Well, if I’m right about a geostorm taking out small electronics, that means our vehicles won’t run. We can chase him down on horseback if we can figure out where he was headed.”
Kristi spoke up. “His other clothes
were just about dry, as was the mud on the floor that he tracked in. I think he’s way ahead of us.”
“Allen will know,” interjected Sarah. “He lives closer to town and works there. Like us, he’s had trouble with the Clarks in the past, so he keeps tabs on what they’re up to. I’ll betcha he’ll have the names of any of the locals who are willing to stand up to them, too.”
Tommy chuckled and added his opinion. “Hey, I saw a dozen rifles at the funeral willing to defend Levi and Carly against the sheriff’s department. If they were farmers living outside town, I can only imagine how the people in town feel about the Clark family.”
Chapman smiled and nodded. “Mom and Tommy are right. We need to touch base with Allen anyway about more weapons and ammo. Plus, his place is on the way to Corydon. Just to be sure, let me check our cars and trucks, including the motorcycle. I’ve never been able to confirm what would happen to vehicles during a solar event. If the four-wheeler is any indication, we may be spending a lot of time on horseback.”
Tommy added before Chapman left. “I’d be willing to bet my Mustang runs. Because of its age, it’s not saddled with a lot of electronics.”
Chapman thought for a moment. “You know, I think you’re right. I’ll see. But hey, I stand by what I said. We’ll be riding horses for a while, including your Mustang.”
His joke eased the tension in the room. He reached out to touch Isabella’s hand before leaving.
Isabella spoke to him. “I will stay here with Sarah and Carly. Brooke has been well behaved, if Kristi will trust me with her.”
“Absolutely, Isabella,” said Kristi. “Tommy and I’ll go with Chapman to Allen’s house first. Then we’ll ride into town and see what’s going on. My guess is Levi is up there, most likely looking to finish things with Billy.”