In the back of the truck, their cargo remained firmly in place, although now tilted at that same ten-degree angle. The clamps, designed to withstand thousands of pounds of pressure, were doing their job easily. The bridge, however, was not doing its. Too much had been asked of the old wooden structure and more supports began to split and snap. A long hairline crack raced silently along the center support beam. Suddenly, the bridge lurched sickeningly sideways, sending the Private crashing into the passenger door, cheek pressed against the glass, while the Sergeant hung from his seat belt above him.
At both ends of the bridge, the escorting soldiers paced anxiously, trying to figure out what they could do to help.
"Do we have rope?"
"No."
"Why don't we have rope?"
"Who the Hell cares? We don't."
There was a massive CRACK! and the bridge twisted back the other way causing the truck to slide hard against the super structure. The Private, who was not wearing a seat-belt, slid hard against the sergeant. His lips pressed against the Sergeant's cheek in a forced kiss. The tilt was enough to allow the two soldiers a terrifying view of the abyss. The Private watched as a passing snowflake fell towards the icy black river rushing below.
The Sergeant gently pushed the Private back to his side of the cab. "Okay, we're going to get out of this son, you hear me? We just gotta do it real slow and gentle-like."
The Sergeant pushed the gas pedal down, coaxing the engine to life. Despite the steep angle, the truck rolled forward. Slowly, the truck inched up the tilted roadbed towards the edge of the gorge. The bridge creaked and groaned ominously. The Private closed his eyes and prayed, "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..."
Then came the reassuring sound of tires on gravel as they reached the far side of the gorge. "Oh thank-you, Lord!" The Private turned to the Sergeant and said, "Now do you believe in the power of prayer?"
At that moment the bridge behind them collapsed with a crash and, as only the front tires of the truck had safely reached solid ground, they suddenly found themselves hurtling backwards in space.
"Oh Jesus!" the Sergeant yelled.
"Oh God!" the Private screamed as he literally hit the ceiling.
A moment later, the sixteen-tonne truck careened off the rocks in the river below, rebounded off a gorge wall where an outcrop sheared through its side, and landed in the water with a great splash. The Private was thrown free on the first bounce and hit the granite wall where his skeleton shattered on impact. His body then flopped onto a snow bank and dyed it bright red. The Sergeant's limp corpse hung from the driver's window as if leaning out to stare at the still spinning wheels.
There was now a twelve-foot gash in the steel armoured siding of the truck. Out of this gash, a lone canister rolled and dropped with a small kerplunk! into the water. Despite being made of metal, thirty centimetres high, and of clearly solid construction, the canister bobbed back to the surface and proceeded to float. It was then swept swiftly away downstream with the current.
Back at the top of the gorge the escort soldiers swore, paced, and shouted to one another across the empty space and the tragic wreckage below. They knew something important had just happened. They believed it was the death of those two men. They had no idea.
Chapter 1
Don't worry, it's organic. - Eve
The most unexpected moment at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea was not the result of a surprise medal win or an athlete's triumph over adversity. It didn't even occur during competition. Instead it came during the opening ceremonies. The performance was to culminate, as all such ceremonies do, with the lighting of the Olympic flame. After arriving in the stadium, a team of torch bearers were lifted on an elevator platform to the rim of the massive brazier that was to serve as the centrepiece for the entire quadrennial event. For the hosts it was to be a moment of triumph; for their guests, a moment of inspiration. It was all perfectly choreographed in every respect—except, that is, for the doves. The enormous flock of doves, released earlier in a gallant gesture of peace, had not left the stadium as expected. Instead, they had chosen to alight atop the highest perch available to them, the giant ceremonial torch. Now, as the torch bearers arose, they desperately attempted to drive off the birds, to little effect. What to do? The world was watching, and the show must go on, so the torch bearers did what was required. The horrified audience was thus treated to the sight of flaming doves firebombing the assembled gathering of politicians, dignitaries and Olympic athletes. It was, without doubt, the largest dove barbecuing event in broadcast television history.
It was at that moment that Charlie Draper first suspected that no one knew what they were doing. He was thirteen-years-old at the time and was beginning to realize that adults weren't as in control of things as he'd been led to believe. Now, as a forty-year-old man, sitting on the cold metal seats of the waiting room, Charlie knew that this was true. He was an adult, and had lost any sense of being in control. On a TV in the corner of the waiting room, an older man was playing baseball with his son and grandson while discussing the benefits of a new drug treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. For a brief moment, the man wandered away from his family to talk directly to the camera about the drug's many side effects, including the possibility of a 'fatal event'. His son and grandson seemed oblivious to this odd behaviour. A moment later, the three generations were hugging and laughing in the dugout, while enjoying pepperoni pizza.
Charlie's brain wasn't functioning very well right now. He was trying desperately not to think of anything. Most of all, he was trying not to think about why he was here. He thought about what it meant to be a father. He'd never had a son. He'd sometimes wondered what that would be like. Charlie had had a daughter. Had had. That was the thought he didn't want to think. Had had. He didn't know that for sure. It wasn't official. That was why he was here. The world as he knew it was crumbling like sand, but it wasn't over yet. Charlie tried desperately to hold the castle together, but the sand kept spilling between his fingers.
"You can come in now, Mr. Draper," said the coroner's assistant.
Charlie rose numbly to his feet and walked inside.
A moment later, the world would end. This is the story of what happened next.
Chapter 2
"Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink."
– Thales
Truman Gorge Road, Michigan, Summer, Yesterday.
The gorge looked unchanged from how it had looked fifty years ago. It also looked unchanged from the fifty years before that. In fact, the gorge looked mostly unchanged from how it had looked for the past millennia. This was hardly surprising as, in geological terms, millennia are but minutes. On a cosmological scale, the gorge had only just blinked into existence and, sometime soon, would blink out once more.
"Five bounces!" shouted thirteen-year-old Alex Graham triumphantly as he watched his stone skip across the river's surface, before sinking with a splash.
"Luck," sneered his friend, Gerald Allen. "You just found a good stone is all."
"Yeah? Then, I guess I keep finding good stones."
"Exactly, luck!"
The two boys had been picking their way along the riverbank looking for dead animals. Their goal was to find a still-dying animal that they could experiment with. History, however, had taught them that corpses were far more common. 'Plan B' was to find a fresh corpse they could hook up to a car battery that Gerald had found in a ditch the week before. They would then electrify the dead possum, or whatever it was, and bring it back to life. Alex, who was somewhat squeamish, had raised concerns that such a plan would just cook the creature, but Gerald was confident the scheme could work. He'd seen it in a movie.
"I smell skunk!" Gerald shouted excitedly.
"Ick," said Alex, "won't that just stink?"
"Re-animated skunks don't stink," said Gerald emphatically.
"Oh." Alex couldn't argue with that. Clearly Gerald knew more than he
did about reanimating animals, and Alex didn't want to appear ignorant. The two boys scurried rapidly over the rocks, trying to avoid dipping their shoes in the black water. Alex and Gerald had become friends at school. On the surface, they were an unlikely pair. Gerald was tall and lanky, with red hair and freckles. His height meant that he could pass for sixteen or older. Alex was several inches shorter with sandy brown hair and could pass for younger than he was. They'd met in detention at school. Alex had been caught carving his name inside his desk for "immortality", as he'd explained to the principal. It was Alex's first time in detention, but hanging out with Gerald ensured that it wouldn't be his last. Gerald had 'anger issues' and a long history of after-school incarceration. Most often, this was the result of setting various objects on fire as part of an ongoing experiment to see what was and was not flammable. Alex had always had trouble making friends. Gerald never even tried. So, as a couple of misfits, they'd hit it off and never acknowledged the fact that they were more or less friends by default.
Gerald, with his long grasshopper legs, bounded quickly along the treacherous riverbank. Alex struggled to keep up with him. The taller boy paused to sniff the air before turning to scramble over a boulder twice his height. "It's over here!" he shouted. Gerald stood atop the rock and pointed down the other side. "I need a stick."
Alex tried to climb the sheer surface but found that the handholds that Gerald had grabbed so easily were just beyond his reach. He tried to shimmy up, only to fall backwards onto the riverbank where the gravel stung his hands.
"Help me up!"
"Go around."
This wasn't as easy as it sounded. Between the boulder and the gorge wall was the worst kind of bramble—the kind that tears at clothes and gets Mom mad as Hell. The alternative was to wade into the freezing ankle deep water on the other side. He might have felt like a modern-day Odysseus, caught between Scylla and Charybdis, had he bothered with the assigned reading for history class. Instead, he simply felt frustrated. "Help me up," Alex pleaded once more.
"Jesus, you should see the maggots on this thing!"
Alex considered his options. He could do nothing and be called a "puppy" and a "loser" for the rest of the day, or he could walk around. He considered removing his shoes, but he knew that the water would be icy cold and the river bed was a mosaic of sharp stones that could easily slice open an unshod foot. He looked again to Gerald, but Gerald was gone, no doubt climbing down the other side. Alex needed to get there too, if he wanted to get in on the poking.
Alex stepped into the rushing water and felt it instantly flood his shoes. It was so cold it made his feet hurt. He resolutely trudged forward. He needed to move as quickly as possible, without slipping and falling into the cold current. As he rounded the boulder, the water reached his calves. He was forced to balance against the stone to avoid being swept off his feet by the fast flow. "Son of a bitch!" he shouted.
"That's you!" Gerald shouted back from the other side and laughed.
Suddenly, a stone shifted under Alex's foot. He stumbled, but caught himself with one hand plunged into the river, while the other frantically gripped the boulder's surface. "God damn it!" His sleeve was completely soaked. As Alex sought to pull himself up, something caught his eye under the belly of the rock. It was the cold glint of steel. He peered to see what it might be. It was obviously some sort of a container; wedged under the rock and half-submerged. Alex's arm and feet were freezing and he probably would have dismissed the object as worthless river junk, except for one thing. Where the light struck the steel, two engraved words were faintly visible, 'Top Secret'. "Hey," Alex yelled, "I think I've found something!"
"Better than a skunk with no eyes?"
"Um... yeah, I think so."
* * *
After persuading Gerald that his skunk-poking stick might, in fact, have broader range of function, Alex had used it to dislodge the canister from its place under the boulder. Alex had then carried the shiny steel cylinder to the shore, where Gerald had taken over. Gerald wiped the river slime off with his shirt and opened his eyes in surprise. "Not just Top Secret," he exclaimed, "'Property of the United States Government: Top Secret'. This is awesome!"
They both examined the metal object. It was remarkably pristine. A clear seam suggested where it might open. Gerald gave the top a twist in an attempt to unscrew it. When it failed to budge, he tried again, harder. He grunted and strained until his face flushed. "Goddamn it!"
"What do you think's inside?" asked Alex.
"I have no idea," said Gerald. "Hey, let's smash it with a rock!"
"Wait, it's my thing... let me smash it."
Gerald looked at Alex, fighting the urge to simply shove him into the river. "Sure, whatever." He dropped the canister on the rocky river bank, and both boys cast about for an appropriately sized stone. "There!" said Gerald.
Alex picked up the rock. As luck would have it, the rock in question was a perfect likeness of Henry Moore's sculpture, Composition 1932. Arguably, since the rock had been carved by water and wind over thousands of years, Moore's piece was the replica. Regardless, neither boy paused to appreciate the rock's form. Instead, Alex simply dropped the natural artwork on the mysterious container. The rock bounced harmlessly off with a loud ding!
"No! No, no, no!" shouted Gerald with disgust. "You need to hit it hard!"
"I... I thought it might explode," explained Alex sheepishly. "I mean, we don't know what's inside."
"Never send a boy to do a man's job," said the red haired boy with a sigh.
"What if it contains something radioactive?"
Gerald rolled his eyes. "Then we get super powers! Don't you know anything? Jeez, Alex, sometimes you're such a retard!" With that, Gerald lifted the rock high above his head and threw it down hard. The rock rebounded off and hit Gerald in the shin, causing him to drop to his knees in pain, "Double goddamn!" The metal canister, apparently unharmed, bounced and rolled towards the river. Alex stopped it just as it reached the water's edge. Gerald winced in pain and fought back tears. "Stupid frickin' piece of trash!" he snarled, scowling ruefully at it.
Alex examined the canister closely. "It's not even scratched!"
"Who the Hell cares?"
They both did. After several more attempts to twist, dent and pulverize it, all without causing the slightest abrasion, the two boys stood sweaty and panting over the apparently impervious object. "Well, I guess that's it then," said Alex.
Gerald started to nod—then his eyes lit up. "I got an idea," he said with a devilish grin.
* * *
Alex carefully placed the mysterious canister in the bottom of the metal garbage can. The two boys then began dumping in the fireworks. Gerald had an astounding collection of 'recreational explosives', from Roman candles to something called 'Dragon Eggs'. Alex had no idea how a teenage boy managed to acquire so much industrial-strength firepower. Fireworks were more or less legal in Michigan, but many of the ones Gerald stockpiled were not. Still, he explained, those were the ones most likely to be effective in blowing up their intended target, and anything else for that matter. "Of course, we really ought to be using nitrate fertilizer," Gerald added wistfully.
"Fertilizer, why?"
"That's what McVeigh used, in the Oklahoma City bombing. Ka-boom!" he shouted in Alex's face, waving his arms for effect.
Alex wiped the spit from his cheeks. "Really?"
"Yeah. Don't you know anything, dipstick?"
Alex, rather than risk confirming his dipstickiness, began enthusiastically dumping even more fireworks into the trash can. Once they'd crammed in as many explosives as they could manage, the two boys stood back to admire their handiwork. Gerald pulled out a silver lighter he'd stolen from a pawn shop. On it was a picture of a nude Betty Page looking seductively over her shoulder. Gerald had no idea who Betty Page was, but had declared her to be "hotter'n Hell!" He flicked the wheel and raised the flickering flame above his head. "Ready?"
Alex gave a quick nod. "I was born
ready," he said.
"You were born an idiot."
* * *
Claire Graham stood over the kitchen sink. She was busy banging two store bought pizzas, which had become frozen together, on the edge of the counter. She did so in the hope of separating them, preferably without leaving the toppings from one attached to the bottom of the other. Her attention, however, was on the 13" TV in the corner. On the fuzzy screen, Duke Norman, the televangelist, made an impassioned plea. At well over six feet tall with broad powerful shoulders that stretched the confines of his suit, the African American preacher looked more like a football player than a pastor. "And I welcome each of you to join me, Reverend Duke, and my Holy Church of Preordination, for a very special sermon on how you can help fight the spread of evil in our streets, in our schools, and in your very own home. You have to choose to be chosen, my children! Now, be sure to tune in—"
Claire changed the channel to cable news. A weatherman smiled and waved his arms in front of a computer generated map of a world that wasn't really there. As the meteorologist spoke, tiny smiling suns popped up across the state, winking as they did. "Okay then, as we bring up our Doppler radar long term forecast, we see nothing but sun, sun, sun for the next seven days, and the foreseeable future after that. So, don't forget the sunblock, folks!" The phone rang, and Claire answered. It was her friend Annabelle. "Uh-huh?" said Claire, "Getting dinner ready... Oh, yeah, well, he's hanging out with Gerald again... Gerald? Gerald Allen. All - en. Yup, that's right, Mike and Doreen's kid... No, he's not a weirdo. He's a little weird, but not a weirdo, per say... Yes, there's a difference." The news moved on to a report on the Pō Lights, who were now apparently predicting the end of the world. Not necessarily soon, they said, but eventually. What is it with crazy religious nuts and Armageddon?" thought Claire, tapping the mute button. Annabelle was now listing her suspicions about Gerald and the whole Allen family. There was no interrupting her once she was on a rant. Meanwhile, Claire decided that the pizzas were clearly going to require a little more culinary finesse. She drew a knife from the drawer and began chiseling between the frozen discs. Finally finding good purchase, Claire paused to hammer the knife with a meat-tenderizer mallet. Whack! Whack! Claire suddenly realized that Annabelle had stopped talking and was waiting for her reply. "You're probably right, Ann," said Claire. "I mean, Alex is basically a good kid but—"
Chaos Theory: A Feel Good Story About the End of the World Page 2