“I’ve got to get up those steps.” Ezra pointed to the staircase out of the basement. Above, where the door should have been, there was only an orange glare, presumably from a fire. Susan needed his help.
“Can you walk?” Butch asked. “You’ve been out for at least ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?” he slurred. “I’m fine.” To prove it, he broke free of Butch’s grip and took a few steps. Some of the people in the basement set up flashlights pointed at the ceiling, providing the bare minimum of light to see where he stepped. Lots of refugees sat on the floor where he didn’t expect, so it really helped. Once he reached the stairs, his head felt a lot better. Instead of a debilitating migraine, it had gone down to an annoying headache. He glanced back. “See?”
Without waiting, he walked up the steps. There was no ceiling left, and no second floor, either. The sheered-off walls of the house stood next to the gap left by the missing basement door, but the higher up he went, the more he realized there wasn’t much house left. Despair pooled in his gut as he crept to the top.
“Susan?” he asked wearily.
When he reached the landing, all hope drained out of his bones. Happy Cove subdivision was bathed in the orange light from fires raging in the forest across Kentucky Lake. The shockwave had come through like before, except it went in the opposite direction, and it was far more thorough. Whereas the previous one stripped leaves and branches from stout trees, this one stripped houses and garages from their foundations. The brick ranch home across the street was left with nothing but three-foot walls.
“Good God,” he lamented as he scanned three hundred and sixty degrees. Most of his neighbor’s houses were gone. Construction debris and home furnishing remains were strewn all over the lawns and in the street as if each house had sneezed them out in the same direction. Some of the tallest and oldest trees were tipped over, also in that same direction. Oddly enough, his boat dock had blown out of the water and now rested in the front yard of someone a few doors down. Without any landmarks he found it difficult to say whose house it used to be.
“Ezra?” a weak voice cried out.
He jumped into action and followed it to the source. A woman’s foot poked out from a mess of debris piled against what was left of the front wall of the house. He shoved aside half of a leather couch, tossed over the small wooden kitchen table, and pulled drapes and window framing off the struggling woman. When he finally got a look at her, he wished it would have been someone else. Susan had been crushed in multiple places by all the junk.
“Oh no,” he bleated, betraying his normally reserved emotions.
“It’s you,” she said. “Did my little girl make it?”
“Gracie?” he asked, surprised at the question. “She’s in Wyoming.”
“I know, you silly man …” She coughed in a way that appeared painful. “I’m talking about the girl I tossed to you. You caught her, right?”
He chuckled and blocked a sob before it squeaked out. “I fell down the steps with her. We’re both bruised, but we’ll be fine. Now, we have to get you some help—”
“Forget it, bub. I feel like one of those paper cone thingies blowing around inside a cotton candy machine. I can’t feel my legs. I think my left arm is broken.” She wheezed in a way that sounded like a laugh. “On the bright side, my right arm is working, so I can do this.” She reached around and tapped her left hand. When she smiled, there was blood on her lips.
His eyes blurred. Twenty years of jovial back-and-forth in their clapping game was about to end, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. There were a million thoughts flooding his brain, like her life played before his eyes, but she kept talking before he could formulate a sentence.
“When that girl needed me, I didn’t freak out, honey. I didn’t panic. I think I’ve beaten my demon.”
It broke him in half to know she’d been saddled with the burden of that convenience store robbery for the past twenty years. He didn’t want to use up what little time he had talking about the bad times, so he got past it as fast as possible.
“I’m so proud of you for doing that, Suze,” he paused, struggling to think of how to shift back to humor, for both their sakes. “Truth be told, this isn’t how I want to win our game. I always thought I’d be the first to go.”
“Me too,” she said dryly. “Have you seen your parking job with our boat? Jeez.”
He laughed, sending tears down his cheeks.
“Get to Gracie,” she added, sounding serious again. “Please tell her I love her, and that my last wish was to send you to rescue her. I’m sure she’ll give you guff about being too old to need rescuing by her father, but I’m old-fashioned and this mama grizzly can’t make the trip herself. Will you do that for me?”
He had no idea what was over the next hill, or if Wyoming still existed, but he was willing to pledge his undying loyalty to her last wish. “I’ve got Roger’s Jeep,” he said, before looking up and not seeing it. Or the garage. “I mean…I’ll get a car and get out to her. I promise.”
“Never leave her. Protect our baby. Okay?” Her words kept getting quieter. “It’s a dangerous world. Always has been.”
He gripped her good hand. “Don’t leave me, babe. I don’t want to do this alone.” They’d been together for twenty years; he couldn’t easily remember a time when she wasn’t by his side, from their brief time in the city until their happy life on the lake. She was always there providing checks and balances against his worst ideas while being the loudest to celebrate his good ones. Hands down, their best idea was Gracie.
“You won’t be alone. I’m sure Babs survived…”
For a second, given the gravity of the moment, he thought she was serious. When she smiled and winked, he let go of some more tears. How would he make it without their shared sense of humor? He sniffled as he spoke. “I’m going to say hard pass to that one.”
They laughed together.
She looked in his eyes. “I have one last request, if you don’t mind.”
Time seemed to slow down. “Anything, babe. You name it.”
She pulled her hand free and held it up to him, palm out. “I really hate losing. Can we share the last clap and call it a tie?”
He chomped on his lip, desperate not to break down in tears like a toddler. It proved impossible to hold back. Ezra sat on his haunches and lined his hand with hers, sobbing uncontrollably. “I love you with all my heart, Susan Anderson.”
“I love you, too, Ezra Anderson.” Their hands met in a gentle clap, and for a couple of seconds they pushed against each other as if to make sure the judges saw and confirmed its validity for their game, but then Susan’s fell away.
Fires burned and the sky bled orange, while Ezra’s water-filled eyes were only for his wife. He collapsed on her chest, letting all his sorrow spill out, but he never lost sight of his solemn promise to her. Tomorrow would begin a new game.
I have to save Grace.
###
Author Notes
Thank you for reading Inbound. As I write this note, I’m already banging on my keyboard for book 2, Bounce. The disaster never sleeps, so we, as the authors, must always be working on the next adventure.
As of this writing, it’s been almost five years to the day I typed “Chapter 1” in my first novel, Since the Sirens. It was a post-apocalyptic yarn about a teen boy and his one hundred-four-year-old grandmother who must survive the collapse of civilization due to a pandemic. The boy’s grandmother survived the Spanish Flu of 1918, giving her and other centenarians immunity to the new plague. Over the course of the series, while society at large discards its oldest and weakest members, the young man must take up the mantle of protecting them. I tried to make it epic in scope, with likeable heroes, set in a realistic modern-day world, and with moral dilemmas we all might face.
Five years later, after a few side projects, I’m blessed to be writing post-apocalyptic novels again. The major difference now is that I’m no longer on my own; I�
�ve got Mike Kraus as a partner. Writing can be a lonely profession, and it doesn’t help that many of us are introverted and more at home in the soft glow of a computer monitor than out in the world at social meet-and-greets. That’s why I’m grateful for the opportunity to team up with him. Mike gives an extra set of eyes to each chapter, adds valuable life experiences to characters’ motivations, and he doubles the opportunities for penning compelling action sequences. He also provides live feedback and personal interactions which make writing more social and enjoyable.
I’ve had a couple beta readers ask where I got the idea for Ezra and Susan to clap back and forth as part of their long-running game. I actually got it from a birthday party I attended last spring. After the birthday boy blew out the candles, the small crowd of attendees clapped in celebration. I, thinking it would make my wife chuckle, clapped a few extra times after all the others had stopped. Sadly, all I got from her was “the look.” Then, one of my son’s buddies added an extra clap after I stopped, forcing me to one-up him. That went on for far too long for my wife’s liking, “the look” went into dangerous territory, and I had to give up. Down, but not out, every so often I’ll send my son to school and tell him to give his friend a clap for me. I’ll always get one back; the lesson is you can’t beat teen boys at a game involving self-embarrassment.
My background is pretty typical for an indie writer. I graduated from a Midwestern college with degrees in history and geography. I then went into IT for twenty years. Finally, on a whim, I wrote that first book to add some adventure to my mouse-scrollingly boring work weeks. Today, I’m wrapping up book twenty-two. My life didn’t follow a script or a plan, and where I ended up was nothing like what the kid version of me imagined it would be.
That sense of open-ended life adventure is what I try to instill in my stories, but I also like them grounded in facts, realism, and, where possible, science. My background in cartography and geography helps me accurately describe landscapes for my scenes, and I almost always write about places I’ve visited in real life. I’m one of those people who makes plans to travel miles out of their way just so they can bag a particular state, capital, or natural wonder. This past summer I dragged my wife and family one mile into Minnesota so I could say we were there, then I did it again by driving a hundred yards into Idaho after touring Yellowstone.
Speaking of maps, it’s fair to say my whole educational career in geography probably had its origin in JRR Tolkien’s unforgettable map of Middle Earth, from the Lord of the Rings books. As a youngster, I taped a giant version of his map on my bedroom wall because I thought it was so cool, and it made me want to explore those lands inside his novels. I hope I can convey that same special sense of place in my own books, even though mine are set here on Regular Earth.
I’m not just a writer of post-apocalyptic books, I’m also a reader. I love to read stories with disaster themes; some notables being Earth Abides, Alas, Babylon, The Stand, One Second After, and Lucifer’s Hammer. If you’ve read that last book, you’ll undoubtedly note some similarities with Inbound. It’s probably impossible to write about a meteorite striking the Earth without drawing comparisons to that title. Heck, who could forget the scene of the surfboard dude riding that giant wave over Hollywood?
There are no tsunami-riding surfers, or guys named Trashcan Man, but I hope you found something memorable about this story and will stick around for the next books in this series. Mike and I have an epic disaster unfolding in front of us; we’ll see how our challenged heroes fare as the dust settles in book 2, Bounce. For now, I’ll ask that if you enjoyed the novel, please give it a quick review on Amazon. I know every writer asks that question, but it really does help independent authors such as Mike and me to break through the noise of the 5000+ other books published on Amazon each day.
For now, I’d like to personally thank Mike for inviting me to join him on this journey, as well as thanking you, our reader, for spending a few hours in our shared world.
*Last clap*
EE
Bounce
The Impact Series Book 2
Chapter 1
Yellowstone National Park, WY
“I’m on fire!” Grace shouted as she glanced all around. Her eyes didn’t register anything beyond a veil of black, which was good, since her legs burned like they were in a pool of hot oil. Seeing herself die in flames was part of her darkest nightmare.
“You’re fine,” a man’s soft voice replied.
In one flash, she remembered she was inside an extinct geyser. Did it come back to life?
“Burning!” she mumbled, sure the man was wrong.
The meteorite had fallen to Earth, blowing hot ash into the hole. Was she currently sitting in a pile of hot coals?
“My legs!”
“Are fine,” the man insisted. “Wake up, Grace.” His voice was from close by, above her.
“My legs must be a million degrees,” she complained.
“They’re asleep,” he said dryly, “but not on fire.”
“I can’t move them.” As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the three-foot-wide pit, she got her first look at the dim light coming in from the hole ten feet above. Asher was standing next to her, and she was effectively wrapped around his legs like a cat. She looked up at him, not sure what to make of their positions. “Why are you standing?”
He chuckled tiredly. “We couldn’t both fit at the bottom. I stood up last night so you could get some sleep.”
“And you’ve been standing ever since?” she said incredulously.
“I was able to lean,” he responded.
If it was light up above, he must have been on his feet for seven or eight hours. It seemed impossible she’d fallen asleep after the unearthly roar of wind last night, but the pins and needles in her legs indicated the truth of it. “Help me up, please.”
Asher shifted, stifling a groan of pain. The curly-haired young man smiled and handed down her straw hat, which now had a two-inch chunk out of the rim. “I didn’t want you to crush it.”
She took it hurriedly. “I have to move my legs right this instant or I’m going to die.”
They played an intricate game of Twister, trading handholds for their arms, legs, and feet as they maneuvered her off the ground. In any other setting, the intimacy might have been welcome. Asher was a big city boy, but he’d been instrumental in helping her survive the meteorite impact and did pretty well helping her escape Misha and his gun. He wasn’t unattractive, either. Still, she stank to high heaven from all their running yesterday, and she was technically still on duty for the National Park Service. She wanted nothing more than to put a football field between her and Mr. Creighton.
He helped her get upright, the pins and needles feeling in her bottom half making the earlier nightmare about fire seem horribly real. It took all her concentration to keep from screaming as the blood found its way back into the empty buckets masquerading as her legs. She used humor to try to distract herself from the pain and their closeness. “Thanks for saving my hat. I was so worried about it.”
Asher rolled his eyes, then reappraised her. “You’re joking, right?”
She forced a laugh, putting the damaged hat back on. “Yeah, but seriously, thanks for taking one for the team. You didn’t have to stand for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to move some more. Let’s see if it’s safe outside.” She indicated he should climb out. “When my legs start working, I’ll come up after you.”
As the ranger, it was probably her duty to go up first and check it out, but she needed Asher out of her way to free up some space so she could move around and wake up her muscles.
Asher shrugged, then started his ascent. He made it look easy for a few steps, even with his dress shoes, before he seemed to tire and go slower toward the top. Still, it was impressive after the night they’d endured.
“You’re pretty nimble for a city slicker. Where’d you say you were from again?” All she knew was he was a city boy. It was obvious in every man
nerism he’d displayed over the past day. He had to be told to take off his heavy suit jacket. He couldn’t run very fast. He smoked, despite the high elevation. And, worst of all, he’d actually gone on a hike into the woods wearing his gray business suit and dress shoes.
“Denver.” He spoke as he neared the top of the tube. “I lived in a suburb called Aurora; middle class, mostly. Did my undergrad work at the Colorado School of Mines. Now I’m doing my doctorate at MIT. And I—” His feet went over the top, leaving her momentarily alone.
“Asher?” she asked quietly. For about ten seconds she waited for him to show up, but he’d stepped away from the hole. He mumbled words, perhaps meant for her, that were swallowed by the shaft. “Are you there?”
“Yep,” he replied as he reappeared, breathing hard. “The climb was a piece of cake. You won’t believe what it’s like up here.”
She recognized male braggadocio when she heard it, but she didn’t hold it against him. She planned to one-up him. Her legs were no longer bathed in nuclear fire, so she hopped up to the first rock, though the movement brought back severe needling pain; she yelped as silently as possible. “I need another minute,” she said louder, and in a nothing’s-wrong tone.
She jumped a little to try to increase the circulation and found it helped a lot. When she tried to step up again, the pain was manageable. She waited another twenty seconds, then lifted herself to the next foothold. A few moments later, her legs and arms finally worked as intended and she climbed fast with her normal dexterity. She’d made it all the way to the top when a hand appeared.
“Thanks,” she said as he pulled her up and out.
The morning air was cool, as she expected, and the light was weird. Plumes of black smoke choked the forests to the south, throwing up a roiling wall of clouds that seemed to rise to outer space. The sun was above the horizon, largely blocked out by the spectacle. By contrast, most of the sky to the north of them was merely a gray haze, lit by whatever sunlight made it through the edges of the barrier.
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 20