The End The Beginning (Humanity's New Dawn Book 1)

by Ryan Horvath

  Amanda shook her head, “We may never get answers to all of this so let’s just have some dinner, drink our drinks and just try to enjoy each other’s company. It’s all we can do anyway.”

  Karen smiled at her sister but the image of Amanda in chains in the garage popped into her head again and her smile was quickly erased. She loved her younger sister with all her heart and was desperately afraid of what may happen to her. She couldn’t lose Jack and Amanda. The thought of this possibility sent shivers throughout her body. She added more wine to her glass and took a big swallow, trying to steady herself.

  “Hey,” Amanda said, noticing her sister’s agitation. She squeezed Karen’s hand again. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. Now let’s get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  “Okay,” Karen said weakly.

  Karen and Amanda made dinner and fed Blaze as well. The two sisters were even able to laugh some while they passed the time. They included Blaze in their conversation, telling him stories from their past. His tail wagged often. Karen translated Blaze for Amanda but Amanda quickly grew to recognize some of Blaze’s barks, like “yes, no”, and her and her sister’s names.

  Finally, due to the stress of the day and the whisky and wine, they grew tired enough to go to bed.

  Amanda retired to one of the guest bedrooms while Karen went to the other one. She had not been the least bit interested in going back into the bedroom she and her husband had shared for so many years. Karen did her nightly rituals in the small bathroom next to the room she was using and when she was finished and climbed into bed, Blaze barked.

  “Master Karen, can I do sleep with you where you do sleep?”

  Karen’s heart softened. “Of course you can. Hop on up here.” She patted the bed and Blaze was on it a second later.

  He woofed, “Thank you.”

  Blaze circled three times, evening out a spot on the comforter, laid down and so did Karen. She was asleep almost immediately and she slept long and deeply. When she awoke, it was very bright outside. She looked at the clock on the wall. It was after 2:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday. She had slept more than fourteen hours. She would have to chastise Amanda for letting her sleep so late. As she sat up, a horrible image flashed before her eyes. Another vision.

  It was of Amanda’s green eyed man; her husband’s assassin. She was sure of that even though she had never seen the man. The shade of his eyes was riveting and terrifying at the same time. It wasn’t so much seeing him that jarred Karen. It was seeing what he was looking at that disturbed her. He was watching someone. A woman. And that woman was Amanda. He was watching Amanda and she was walking into the Great Falls Grocery Co-op which was not more than three miles from Karen’s house.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Karen exclaimed, throwing the bed covers off of her and jumping out of bed.

  Blaze was startled and he yipped, “What’s wrong, Master Karen?”

  But Karen barely even heard him.

  “Amanda!” Karen shouted as she dashed out of her room and down the hall to where her sister was staying. She looked into the open door way, her hands on both sides of the jamb. Amanda’s room was empty.

  “Amanda!” Karen exclaimed again, as she hurried to the kitchen, which was also vacant. On the kitchen table, however, she found a short note written in her sister’s hand:

  Karen, went to the market to get some stuff for lunch. You were sleeping so soundly, I didn’t have the heart to wake you. Back soon! Amanda P.S. I let Blaze out to do his business.

  “Damn it!” Karen exclaimed.

  Blaze had joined her in the kitchen. He was agitated and looked alert. He barked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Amanda,” Karen answered. “She’s gone. I think the bad smelling man has her.” She paused, her mind racing. Finally, “Blaze, I’m going to get dressed. Be ready to go in two minutes. If these visions are of the future, maybe he doesn’t have her yet.”

  Karen suddenly felt stupid. Call her! Karen raced to her purse and retrieved her smart phone. She called Amanda and her call went straight to voice mail.

  Not a good sign Karen thought.

  24

  THE OBJECT

  The object that no one on Earth knew how to identify was not a sentient thing by any means. It did not know where it came from or who or what had created it. But it did know one thing: it had purpose and function.

  The object had come online or become aware of its purpose, if you will, centuries ago and it immediately began roaming the unfathomable vastness of space, searching. It had an unthinkably powerful scanning ability that allowed for a range of approximately five billion miles in any one given direction at a time. And that’s what the object did. It cruised through space sending its invisible scanning probe out in different directions, looking for a way to fulfill what it had been tasked to do. It searched and searched, passing all kinds of different stars, planets, and moons and in the centuries of its seeking, it had covered the better part of what is known as the Orion Spur section of the Milky Way galaxy.

  However, the object had been unable to encounter what it needed to complete its mission. It had come close on two occasions. On each occasion, the object stopped its journey and scanned and assessed, scanned and assessed. Unfortunately, neither of these encounters ended up meeting the exact and specific criteria that had been programmed into what passed for the object’s central processing unit, or CPU.

  And so, after the second failed scan and assessment, it resumed its journey onward, continuously exploring as many directions and as much of space as it could.

  When the object had first been released, it had been a large metal disc, the length of approximately four football fields, the width of a city block, and the thickness equivalent to the height of a standard flight of stairs. Its outer shell was made from a metal so very smooth and shiny and only found where the object had begun its mission. The hull was also somewhat magnetic and over the centuries, the object had accumulated tons of space rock of many varieties all over its hull giving it a craggy and sharp appearance. There was a hole, about ten feet in diameter on the bottom side of the object. This area was not magnetic, and thus, no space detritus had collected over it, allowing it to remain exposed for when it encountered the thing it needed to complete what it had been tasked with.

  The inside of the object was hollow and filled and though filled, its innards only contained four things. The first was its CPU. The CPU was responsible for keeping the object on its purpose, scanning and assessing the galaxy and making sure the object didn’t waste time scanning areas of space it had already scanned. The space inside the object that the CPU occupied was very small.

  The second thing inside the object was a simple cloaking device that really only served to keep the object invisible to any naked eyes. The device refracted light in such a way as to allow the object and anything attached to it to blend in with its immediate surroundings. The cloaking device also took up almost no space within the object.

  The third and fourth things inside the object encompassed the remainder of it. The two things were two liquids, separated from each other like oil and water. About sixty percent of the object’s insides were taken up by the heavier liquid somehow on the top and the remaining forty percent held the lighter liquid on the bottom. The two liquids held perfect surface tension and never once did the liquids mix with one another.

  Nearly seven decades had passed since the object had had an encounter that merited its attention but then one day, it finally had another.

  The object’s scanning direction at its particular location in the cosmos could have been pointed anywhere. While the object’s scanning range was immense, it was only able to scan in one place at one time and it very easily could have missed this encounter and not found it for another thirty, forty, of fifty years possibly, if at all. It was really all up to chance when scanning the immeasurable enormousness of space essentially one look at a time. It would be like trying to empty an ocean with an
eyedropper.

  But, for the third time in its centuries long quest, the object had found something.

  Just past the former planet known on Earth as Pluto, the object stopped. Its scanning equipment was trained in the direction of this solar system’s central star but it wasn’t the star itself that the object picked up on. The object had picked up on something approximately ninety three million miles from the system’s perfectly healthy star. It was a planet. This planet had one orbiting satellite.

  The object scanned and its CPU processed and assessed what the scans revealed.

  Pollution: Levels excessive.

  Natural resources: Heavily depleted.

  Infectious diseases: Numerous detected.

  The object scanned and scanned.

  Balance of species: Disproportionate.

  Dominant species population growth: Exponential. Dangerous levels.

  Planetary projection: Poor.

  The object’s CPU deduced from the scans that this particular planet, one of so few that generated forms of life, was on the fast track to annihilation. One of the planets species had grown too high and too fast causing that species to be out of balance with the natural order of that particular planet. That exponential growth of that species was causing drastic reduction in the planet’s resources. This species was also susceptible to various diseases on the communicable and genetic levels.

  The object’s CPU calculated the rate of reduction in resources against the rate of the exponential population growth. It determined that in approximately seventy-five years, the dominant species will have over populated the planet and exploited the last of its resources. The dominant species would then begin to go extinct but not without taking almost everything on the planet with it in the process.

  The object started to move again, this time in the direction of the planet billions of miles away. The object’s CPU had confirmed that this planet was a sure candidate for the object to fulfill its purpose within minutes of its course change.

  The object’s purpose was simple.

  Seek and correct. Seek and correct.

  The seeking was obvious and the object had now completed that part of its purpose.

  The liquids contained inside the object would complete the second part of its purpose. Correct. The object’s CPU determined that the small, azure planet was in a terrible and dangerous state of unbalance and unless that unbalance was rectified, all life on the planet would cease to exist.

  So, it was up to the object to correct that imbalance. And its CPU clearly indicated that the object was not designed to fail.

  25

  ART

  Tuesday, early afternoon, after he’d woken up, Art checked himself in the large mirror again. No changes from the night before. Whatever was happening to his body must have completed. Art liked seeing himself as he was when he was at the peak of his sexual maturity. He dressed and ate a much smaller meal at the same Chinese buffet around the corner.

  After his lunch, he walked back to his building and around to his car. He tried lifting it again with the same results. The rear was doable but the front was not. So it appeared his new strength had also maxed out. Art got into his rear bumperless car, started it, and pulled away from the curb. He joined traffic and found himself going northwest on the Georgetown Pike and away from downtown.

  Art had killed five people in the past two days but he hadn’t gotten to take his time with any of his latest victims and savor the thrill of torturing them before their deaths. Art really wanted to acquire a victim that he could spend some time with. Two days would be ideal. He wanted to find a pretty woman and make her plead to him, force her to tears, make her whimper and moan and groan. And then, when she begged him for her death, Art would stop for a while and leave her before returning a few hours later and resuming new tortures.

  Raping women had never been in Art’s character in the past and was a form of torture he had not used. As he studied his naked form in the mirror, and thought about his rape fantasy from the previous evening, his eyes landed on his penis. He decided he might change that.

  Art’s thoughts turned to Karen Thomas. He’d wished he would have been able to execute her along with her husband.

  But wait! Art’s mind began to race.

  I could kill her now. There’s no reason I can’t… Is there? His mind asked itself.

  Art puzzled as he drove. His thoughts about Karen Thomas made him realize that he was driving in the same direction as her house. He wondered if that meant something.

  But I can’t take her from her house. That would be too risky. Too good of a chance that some investigators might still be poking around or could show up in the process. Art had no way of knowing that as of nine o’clock this morning, the CIA had effectively ended the investigation of Jack Thomas’s assassination as well as the murders of George and Ann Lewis. They had simply claimed “national security involving a congressman” and snatched the cases along with the very little amount of evidence there was right from local law enforcement.

  I’ll have to follow her when she leaves Art thought.

  But then he remembered the somewhat remoteness of the neighborhood Karen Thomas lived in and the location of her driveway in relation to her road into town. There wasn’t anywhere he could park his car and not be seen while he waited for her to leave. He’d parked his stolen getaway car nearly a mile away at a park when he came to kill Jack Thomas. He certainly couldn’t do that and hope to catch a glimpse of her leaving.

  I could lie in wait somewhere Art mused. But where?

  The bank? he thought for a moment. No… too many cameras. Art also remarked to himself that Karen Thomas was probably the kind of woman who kept up with technology and did ninety percent of her banking online. It could be weeks before he might catch her there.

  Gas station? Art had snatched victims from gas stations before but only at night and only in rural areas where the station was less likely to be brightly lit and crowded. Gas stations in Great Falls were not likely to fit the bill.

  Then it dawned on him. Of course! Art remembered something he’d read from the intelligence file he’d been given on Jack and Karen Thomas when Jack Thomas’s hit had been ordered. It was a useless factoid to him then but now it was invaluable.

  Karen Thomas preferred to eat fresh food as much as possible and visited the grocery store often, as much as three times a week.

  Jackpot! Art said to himself. He used the GPS device affixed to his dashboard and did a search for grocery stores in Great Falls. There were many to select from and Art scanned the list until he found what he was almost certain would be his target destination.

  The Great Falls Grocery Co-op was the closest grocery store to the Thomas residence. It took about fifteen more minutes to get to Great Falls due to the increasing Tuesday afternoon traffic. When he arrived in town, Art guided his sedan stealthily to the grocery store nearest to his latest sanctioned hit. He pulled into the entrance to the parking lot that was farthest away from the store. He found three vehicles parked here in a triangle. Art pulled his car into the middle of the triangle and put it in park. He used the lever by the driver’s seat to open his trunk. He got out of his car and retrieved a screwdriver from the small tool box in the trunk. He looked around the parking lot but no attention was drawn his way. He walked to the vehicle parked on what would be the opposite side of his car if viewed from the store. Art removed the car’s rear license plate and returned to his car where he replaced his own with the stolen plate. He put the screwdriver back in the trunk with his original license plate, got back in his car, and moved to a parking space closer to the entrance of the store. And there he waited, thinking both about how to get Karen Thomas and what he would do to her once he had her in his clutches.

  He knew where he was going to take her. There was an abandoned building, Art knew of a lot of abandoned buildings and this one was a deliciously creepy den. True it was about twenty hours outside of DC to the north and west but it would be worth
it and the body would never be found. It had a perfect basement to break someone in and Karen Thomas would be broken there and her body would be left to rot in the damp dark while the rats and roaches and maggots made short work of her corpse.

  Five minutes later, much to Art’s surprise, he saw a car approach from the direction of the Thomas household. Art recognized the vehicle from the intelligence file on the congressman. Art believed the vehicle belonged to the late Jack Thomas. As the car pulled into the parking lot, he confirmed via the license plate that is was indeed Thomas’s car. Art looked hungrily at the individual behind the wheel.

  It was not Karen Thomas but it almost could have been if she’d been about ten years younger with longer and auburn hair. Not to his surprise, he found this woman more appealing to him than Karen Thomas. Her younger appearance suggested to him that she would take longer to break and this thought filled Art with anticipation.

  As this new woman looked for a parking space, Art watched. To his incredible luck, the woman found a space in the same row as Art only four spaces farther from the store. His plan was instantly formed. He’d wait until she was coming back out of the store when she would likely be distracted by her bag of purchases and fumbling with keys. Art watched this woman get out of her car and head to the store. He ducked as she passed him, unaware that she was being watched.

  As the woman passed Art and he got a better look of her, he deduced that she must be Karen Thomas’s relative, by the resemblance coupled with the fact she was driving Jack Thomas’s car. She must be in town for the late congressman’s funeral.

  Too bad she won’t get to go! Art thought to himself in his car.

  The woman had made it to the store’s doors and gone inside. Art sat tense in his car waiting for her return and contemplating what he would do to this newly targeted victim.