“One hundred percent not true,” she insisted. “There was a hitman after us. He tried to kill me and Asher because we knew about TKM’s plans to drop the asteroid on the Earth before the rest of the world did. He’s been chasing Asher for days, and me for about the same amount of time. When we all reached the roadblock, the assassin felt like he owed us for saving his life, so he and his goons held up your men and sent me and my convoy through to Billings.”
The officer stood up and took off his glasses. His blue eyes carefully studied her, obviously searching for the truth of her story. After ten or fifteen seconds he seemed to come to a decision. He looked over to Asher. “So, you pulled your sidearm believing it was the right thing to do?”
Asher nodded his head vigorously.
“I guess I can see why you made that choice. It explains why none of my people would admit to it. This whole city has soiled its drawers and everyone is making poor choices. However, if we have to take in a few more refugees to get two more law enforcement people, I’ll let the iregularity slide. Right now, I need you two to keep the peace at the mall. The fact I’m not kicking you out or throwing you in my jail should tell you how far against the wall we are.” He looked around. “You have a vehicle, I assume?”
“I do. We parked it around the corner so Misha, uh, so we could keep it safe.” She didn’t think it was necessary to explain she’d parked it away from the church on the off chance the hitman came searching for them again.
“Good. I’ll give you a ride to your wheels, then you’re going to follow me downtown. I just hope it isn’t already too late to hold things together.”
Grace gulped at the gravity of the situation, but Asher’s face looked even more grave. Neither of them was actually with cuff-on-the-wrists type of law enforcement, but at least she was a ranger. He was almost as far from a policeman as one could get.
Yet, he was the one who tried to take the blame for what had happened at the roadblock. His attempt at chivalry as a fake officer impressed her in a way she was unable to share with him at that moment. Not when they were being called for duty in their fake jobs.
“We’ll do our best,” she rallied.
South of Cape Girardeau, MO
“We have to keep pushing!” Ezra insisted. “Rock it, like this.” He jumped up and down, each time pulling and pushing the deck of the boat.
Butch tried the same behind his pontoon, getting a lot more play than Ezra. Together, they managed to shake the boat in its place, which he hoped would make it possible to slide it forward when he gave the word.
“Push!” he yelled.
The boat went about ten feet before it skidded to a stop. Ezra hopped up on the ladder to get a better view. “We’re almost there. Not more than a few yards, now.”
The next attempt got them a couple additional yards, but he estimated there was less than two feet of water under the boat. Ezra worked his way toward the front of his pontoon, kicking at the mud below the aluminum cylinder when he got near the end. When it gave way, he kicked at it even more.
“Hey, Butch, do this! I’m kicking the soft mud. It might be enough.”
Butch came to the front, looking around the pair of pontoons to see where he was kicking. When Butch began doing the same, Ezra saw some movement again.
“This has to work,” he said to himself. Louder, he shouted over to his friend, “I think one more good push and we’ll have it.”
They timed it to push together, which did indeed lurch the boat forward. It went over a last bit of the soft ground, and then it cleared the field. Ezra grabbed the ladder and held out his hand for Butch.
“Can’t swim!” his friend reminded Ezra as he pulled him toward the ladder.
They held on for half a minute as the boat gained speed, breathing heavily from the exertion, but he didn’t want the boat to drift too far downriver. The high spray and vortex of energy where the rivers merged were almost gone, but there was still a considerable amount of chop over there. It would be dangerous to revisit the intersection.
“Come on,” he advised as he climbed up. “We’re getting out of here for real.”
Once back in the boat, they took their spots. Ezra dropped the prop into the deep water and fired up the motor. It caught on the first try and sounded healthy as he got it up to speed.
Butch carefully placed his black Stetson back on his head. Ezra sensed the man’s anxiety behind his calm façade, but he was proud of him for doing what was necessary to save the boat. He was glad to have a way to get out west to reach Grace. He’d already had a taste of being on the highways and they weren’t somewhere he wanted to revisit until he was positive society was back to normal. Butch’s help ensured their journey would continue.
A bit later, far from the churn of the colliding rivers at Cairo, Illinois, he pointed to his gas gauge. “There is one downside to taking a boat all the way to Yellowstone.”
Butch leaned over. “We have to be on the water?”
He laughed. “That’s your downside, sure enough. Mine is we only have a twenty-gallon fuel tank. It means we have to gas up about every sixty miles.”
“Sheesh. We only get three miles to the gallon?”
Ezra turned serious. “We get maybe four miles to the gallon, but we have to find fuel before we get too close to running out. If we see a gas station, no matter how many miles we’ve gone, we have to top off again. The good news is this is a major river system with lots of little towns along the way. We should have no problem getting gas.”
“Can we carry extra?” Butch asked.
He smiled. “Keep your eyes peeled. If you see gas cans floating by, let me know.” They could carry as much as they wanted, but getting a gas container would be a challenge. He didn’t expect it to be easy, though thousands of items of junk floated down the dirty river.
About ten minutes later, Butch shouted. “There! I think I see one!”
Ezra stood up to get a better look. Sure enough, a cherry-red five-gallon container floated on the water a few hundred yards toward shore on their right. When he swooped in and grabbed it, he wasn’t even disappointed it was empty.
It gave them options.
“Today is our lucky day,” he declared. “I can feel things turning around already.”
Denver, CO
Petteri Tikkanen started his day with a press conference. He’d come in at the same time as the transport plane full of relief supplies sent by his company, but it took the entire night for the convoy of goods to reach his location near the center of the city of Denver. He wanted the supplies close to his prized dig site, but he didn’t want them too close.
After getting set up with a lapel microphone and sharing some necessary small talk with the network’s eye-candy reporter, she indicated it was time for his on-air announcement.
“In 3, 2, and—” the camera guy pointed at the woman.
“This is Mile-high Action News reporter Angel McAdams on location in downtown Denver. This morning, I’m incredibly honored to be talking to Mr. Petteri Tikkanen of Tikkanen Kinetic Mining.” She gestured toward him. “Thank you for being here.”
Petteri was forced to plaster a smile on his face, despite how wrong it felt. His mind wasn’t the least bit interested in the relief aspect of his operation, though he knew full well how necessary it was. A fake smile was a small price to pay for what he would get out of the encounter. “Thank you for having me on your show.”
“Please, the honor is mine. You are obviously doing your best to get helpful assistance into Denver, and you seem to have gotten the drop on city and state officials. Neither has provided any aid, as of this interview. Can you tell us your secret?”
Without missing a beat, he answered. “Organization. Unlike the messy and lazy layers of useless government officials necessary to run every bureaucracy, I’m able to pick and choose my teams with the sole purpose of executing my mission. In this case, I rounded up all the supplies I could find on day two, loaded them onto a plane, and had them where
they needed to be by the end of day three. I’d wager the federal officials in FEMA are still picking out what kind of toothpaste will be preferred by residents here on the ground. It goes without saying, I get around those delays quite easily.”
He was being uncharitable to Mr. Stricker, his bought-off Secretary of Homeland Security, who was working at that moment to back him up, but every made-up story needed a clearly defined enemy. Stricker would understand.
“Can you tell our audience members, at least those who still have power, where they can come to get these relief supplies?” The babe flashed her pearly whites at the camera, then batted her lashes at him. He’d obviously done well bringing her to his side. Not even any questions about his role in allowing the Tuonela asteroid to fall in the first place. Such things were yesterday’s news.
“Of course. There are four dispersal stations. One at…” He explained where each site was located, though he had Dorothy to thank for picking them out. She said he needed to put one at each corner of his dig site. The official reason was to keep people safe and away from the dangerous space rock, though the real explanation was more basic: he needed those people out of his way while he collected the valuable asteroid fragments.
Overnight, he’d contracted with every dump truck he could find in the Denver region, as well as brought in blasting teams and excavation equipment. The union men were happy to have jobs while the city was otherwise paralyzed, and his advanced care packages for the locals helped keep the politicians off his back. No one asked questions about what he was doing with the rock he was clearing out.
Exactly how he liked it.
The microphone-wielding babe gave him one more smile, then turned back to her cameraman. “Action News will have much more as this develops. For now, this is Angel McAdams wrapping up with my good friend, Mr. Tikkanen.”
He grinned at the camera, anxious to ditch the lady and get back to his multi-billion-dollar prize.
CHAPTER 3
Billings, MT
“You call that a truck?” the officer scoffed when they reached Grace’s beat-up Chevy Suburban.
She laughed it off. “She’s been burned, peppered with rocks, shot at, and been dumped on with black snow. Yeah, she looks terrible, but I wouldn’t trade her in for anything.” The white truck appeared to bleed black dye down its sides. The snow had stopped overnight, and it warmed up, leaving streaks of melted black snow worse than any road grime she’d ever experienced.
The man seemed impressed. “Well, as long as it can get you around town. You’re not going to want to be on foot without a way to get mobile again. The crowds are testing us everywhere.”
“Crowds?” she said at the same time as Asher.
“Yeah,” the officer replied carefully. “I’m assigning you to Big Sky Mall. It’s at the center of town, with some police protection, so it hasn’t been affected like some of the retail stores on the edges of the city. But it will…”
“So, we can expect trouble? How many other police will be there?” She figured any mall was going to be huge, so protecting it would take more than two rookies like them.
The officer put his car in park, clear she and Asher should transfer over to her truck. “Trouble is everywhere. Your job is to slow it down. Don’t get yourself killed doing it, but do all you can short of that, okay? Other officers are already there, waiting for you to back them up. Not sure how many, but definitely not enough.”
She had a million questions, but any of them might reveal they were only pretending to be officers of the law. There was already a black mark next to their names for getting through the roadblock. Dumb questions would only doom them. There was one she could safely ask, though. “How do we get to the mall? We’re not from around here.”
He nodded ahead. “You’re already pointed in the right direction. Go about twenty blocks that way. You’ll run right into it. My name is Officer McCracken. You have a radio?”
“We do,” she replied.
He gave her the frequency to reach him, then gestured for them to get moving.
“We’ll do our best,” she said with bravado as she hopped out.
Asher followed her to the truck, though they both peeked through the broken rear windows to ensure no one was hiding in the back compartment. It was empty, much to her relief.
“Are you sure we should do this?” Asher asked skeptically.
“No,” she admitted, “but he said other officers are there waiting for us. We should at least go make sure they’re doing okay. Maybe it won’t be a big deal.” Looking around, the small ranch homes of the Billings neighborhood were quiet. Most of her anxiety was tied to the sirens and rushed exit from the church.
She got the truck started and went in the direction she’d been assigned. They each had a semi-automatic pistol, pepper spray, and a taser. All things considered, they were prepared to deal with unruly citizens. The only thing missing was legitimate training on how to do so.
The commute started without incident, so she pulled out her phone again. To her surprise, the network symbol was active, meaning she had a signal.
“Whoa!” she veered toward the curb and stomped on the brake. “I have service.”
Asher looked at his watch. “Mine is lit, too.”
She didn’t wait to see who he was going to call. She hit the button to reply to the number where Dad had called her from the day before. It rang a few times before a man answered.
“Hello?” the man said. It wasn’t Dad.
“Hi, um, I’m looking for Mr. Anderson. He called from this number yesterday. He’s my dad.”
“Oh, you mean Ezra?” the guy replied.
“Yes!” she chirped. “Is he there?”
The man went quiet for a few seconds. “No, he and his friend left yesterday with my wife and some of the other ladies. They were supposed to go across the lake and meet in Murray. Do you know if they made it?”
“I don’t know anything. He hasn’t called me since I talked to him on your phone. I was hoping you knew where he was.”
The man sighed. “My name’s Colby. Who am I talking to?”
“Grace.”
“Hi, Grace. Look, I’m getting real worried something happened to your dad and my wife, but I’m not ready to say more than that. The lake has drained down to a small stream, which may be part of the communications issues. I’m going to get the boys together and head out after them, all right?”
“Will you call me when you know more?” she pleaded, aware how empty her voice sounded.
“I definitely will. Hang tight, okay? Your dad seemed like he could take care of himself. His buddy seemed just as tough. Keep your fingers crossed they simply haven’t been able to communicate with us.”
Grace experienced newfound pride the man thought so much of Mom. She had her flaws, for sure, but the calamity out there probably made her a lot tougher. A tickle of uncertainty nagged at the use of the word ‘buddy’ to describe her, but it didn’t seem important in the moment.
“Thanks, Colby. Be safe. Will talk to you soon, I hope.”
She hung up the phone at almost the same time as Asher. They shared a look before Asher spoke up about his call attempt. “Still couldn’t get a hold of my sister. She isn’t answering her phone for some reason.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” she said with a smile. “Everyone is out of sorts with all the issues going on out there. This guy Colby said my mom and dad are out of contact right now, too.” It was all she dared say to him. The growing pit of fear at the bottom of her stomach thrived on how little she knew about her parents in that instant. She almost regretted making the call.
Minutes later, back on the road, the pleasant drive turned into a challenge. Traffic lights were out, and fender-benders became commonplace as the number of cars increased. As they headed deeper into the city, some of the junctions were almost blocked off by damaged and abandoned cars. There were no wreckers or tow trucks within sight to pull them off the road.
“I guess th
e fire engines weren’t going to these places last night, huh?” she mused. Hundreds of car crashes would explain all the sirens, though usually the wrecks would be pulled off the road. No one had made much of an effort to move the ones she passed.
“Makes you wonder where they went that was more important than this, huh?” Asher suggested.
“I don’t think I want to know,” she admitted. “This town ain’t right.” Her mom’s fears about the city were never concerns she took too seriously. However, seeing all the damaged cars out on the road painted some truth into the picture of danger Mom always conjured up when warning Grace to stay out of the big city. Fear crept into her chest as each intersection became more congested with abandoned cars than the last.
She didn’t dare stop to check on any of the people milling about at those intersections. Their craned necks and haunted faces bothered her as she drove by; they were clearly hoping to find someone in charge. Yet there was no point in stopping only to explain who she was and why she couldn’t do anything for them.
Fortunately, her ruined truck afforded them anonymity. No one would suspect she and Asher were in law enforcement unless they really looked at their NPS license plates. The black ashy soot covering the body of her truck made her blend in to the other dirty vehicles still moving on the road.
“Oh, God. Look.” Grace pointed ahead.
The mall was there, as promised, directly in their path. More abandoned cars were stacked up at the doors to the inside, hinting that people jumped out and made a run for the interior. The rest of the parking lot was disorderly, filled with moving cars and running people.
“I think we’ve stumbled into a hornet’s nest,” she deadpanned, pulling to a stop at the entrance to the big parking area.
“Have we seen enough?” Asher replied.
While she observed the mall, a pair of male teens ran toward her truck. They each carried a stack of Xbox games in their arms, though a few slid out and cracked on the pavement. The kids didn’t look back at what they’d dropped, and they didn’t slow down as they sprinted by.
Impact (Book 3): Adrift Page 2