The Olympus Device: Book Three

by Joe Nobody

  The Olympus Device

  Book Three

  By

  Joe Nobody

  introducing Major West

  Copyright © 2015

  Kemah Bay Marketing, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by:

  E. T. Ivester

  D. Allen

  www.joenobodybooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. Characters and events are products of the author’s imagination, and no relationship to any living person is implied. The locations, facilities, and geographical references are set in a fictional environment.

  Other Books by Joe Nobody:

  The Archangel Drones

  Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart

  The TEOTWAWKI Tuxedo: Formal Survival Attire

  Without Rule of Law: Advanced Skills to Help You Survive

  Holding Their Own: A Story of Survival

  Holding Their Own II: The Independents

  Holding Their Own III: Pedestals of Ash

  Holding Their Own IV: The Ascent

  Holding Their Own V: The Alpha Chronicles

  Holding Their Own VI: Bishop’s Song

  Holding Their Own VII: Phoenix Star

  Holding Their Own IX: The Salt War

  The Home Schooled Shootist: Training to Fight with a Carbine

  Apocalypse Drift

  The Little River Otter

  The Olympus Device: Book One

  The Olympus Device: Book Two

  Secession: The Storm

  The Ebola Wall

  Foreword by Joe Nobody

  In writing Olympus III, I solicited the help of an aspiring young author, Major West.

  Major’s work had been recommended to me by a friend, and the young man’s talent was immediately obvious. It was a gratifying endeavor, and we both hope the reader will enjoy our combined efforts.

  All the best,

  Joe

  Chapter 1

  Dusty sauntered to the hotel room’s sliding glass door and peered out from behind the blackout curtains. Sporting a popular geometric pattern, the bourgeois, mass-produced drapes reminded him of the upholstered chairs in his hometown coffee shop. A twinge of melancholy enveloped him as he longed for the familiar aroma of his favorite blonde roast with room for cream and four raw sugars. Decaf, of course, since it was past lunch. He had been drawn to the window by a half-hearted concern that his watch had started gaining time. It seemed far too dark outside for the indicated mid-afternoon hour.

  He ascertained the timepiece was indeed reporting correctly, a fact reinforced by the parade of yellow school buses cueing just a few blocks away. His gaze drifted skyward, noting the line of dark, threatening storm clouds on the horizon. Satisfied with identifying the culprit responsible for the low light conditions, he elected to entertain himself by scanning the small Kansas town surrounding his fishbowl existence.

  The bank tower’s clock told the same story as his wristwatch. The dime store was having a sale on work boots, and the small cafe up the street was busy as usual. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary, just a typical, slow-paced day in America’s heartland. Two cars were parked at the laundry across the street, one with a basket of whites resting on its hood. Dusty couldn’t tell if the clothes were soiled or freshly washed.

  He sighed, expelling the frustrations of his existence with the cleansing breath. He waited for the clamoring bell that signaled an oncoming flood of bouncing, giggling, squirming youngsters released from the public school. He delighted in their joy and exuberance. It was one of the few connections to the outside world he afforded himself, an event he’d grown to anticipate on weekdays.

  In a way, he felt a kindred spirit with the little ones. Like him, they were cooped up most of the day, no doubt many of them daydreaming of being elsewhere rather than focusing on the finer points of grammar. Like no time before in his life, he could relate to the restrictions associated with their mandated attendance. Just like them, his sequestered existence forced him to remain secreted and soundless.

  The Texan wasn’t quite sure if his daily habit of observing the conclusion of the school day was healthy or not. The children were allowed to go home, scurrying to their buses or waiting parents, after being released from another day’s incarceration. He couldn’t escape his isolation.

  Their boisterous and rowdy voices filled the air, boundless energy driving the lungs and legs as they poured out of confinement, free at last. Dusty couldn’t avoid his self-imposed captivity. Was it troubling that he experienced freedom vicariously through the little ones?

  In the two weeks since he’d arrived in the small Kansas town, the Texan had become a recluse. Daylight hours were spent indoors, holed up inside what amounted to a voluntary prison cell. He had become a creature of the night.

  Coveted strolls to maintain his sanity and exercise his limbs were all conducted after the light had faded low in the west. Occasional excursions to the local used bookstore were timed to coincide with dinnertime for most of the sleepy town’s residents. Supplying his grocery list was a chore best scheduled well after dusk when the store was lightly staffed and attracted few customers. His was a lonely, miserable existence.

  An abundance of time on his idle hands, Dusty frequently found himself in introspective thought. Was he really free? Were the children?

  His brooding was interrupted by a marked change in the earth’s cerulean canopy, the advancing, ominous thunderheads drawing his eye. It was the most menacing front he’d ever seen. “I hope the kids get to their buses before that monster cuts loose,” he whispered, scowling at the ever-darkening clouds.

  The elevated vantage of his second-floor hotel room provided an extensive view of the flat, midwestern landscape, a fact that had been unimpressive until now.

  Between the school and the next blocking structure, an open corridor stretched for miles, providing an unobstructed view. There wasn’t really much to look at - a white farmhouse, a red barn, and a collection of grain silos providing the only spatial relief. Trees, like in his native West Texas, were rare here. Acres of cornfields were not.

  There wasn’t even a hint of hill, valley, or dale.

  When the siren began wailing over the small berg, a fearful jolt surged through Dusty. After all, he was a wanted man, and such unexpected events weren’t welcome.

  Quickly recovering from the start, his mind rushed to identify the threat. He first considered a fire, a similar-sounding signal used to rally the local volunteers and usher them off to battle the flames. But this blare was different… a sinister, foreboding, steady pitch that made his heart race.

  It took his anxious mind a few moments to realize his ears were being assaulted by some other sort of alarm. “Storm warning,” he finally deduced. “That took long enough.”

  As if to compete with the man-made alert, hailstones began falling from the sky, generating a roar that made the cautionary alarm nearly inaudible. Lightning flashed; sheets of electricity slashed through the air in brilliant strobes. The thunder’s rumbling was almost continuous, rattling his room’s thick glass doors with its sonic wrath.

  Dusty watched the marble-sized balls of ice strike concrete and pavement, an inch-thick ground cover forming in no time at all. It blanketed the ground like snow.

  Although intrigued by the all-out display of nature’s fury, the Texan’s attention returned to the children. They would be marshaling just inside the school, readying for the stampede to the buses and then their journey home. The hail might be painful or slicken their path; the lightning was always a worry.

  It was a relief when the mayhem outside subsided. Like God had flipped a switch, the elements seemed to be taking a break.
No hail, little wind, not even lightning or thunder. An old phrase surfaced in Dusty’s mind – the calm before the storm.

  And then fury surged from the sky.

  Watching, frozen with fear, Dusty recognized instantly what was happening. He had heard of tornados, watched numerous video clips of the omnipotent phenomenon on television. But nothing had prepared him for the sight of the real thing.

  The swirling formation streamed from the belly of the now black clouds, its dominion and potential violence unlike anything Dusty had ever experienced.

  Despite the funnel’s presence several miles away, he initially stepped back when it appeared, feeling both fear and awe at the squall’s unimaginable scale. It took several seconds to gather himself, standing motionless as the dancing tip of the twister finally slammed into the earth below.

  It must have been a quarter of a mile wide at the bottom, three times that girth at the top. A dust cloud erupted where the dark, whirling wind met the soil.

  “Take refuge in that central bathroom,” Dusty whispered. “Or you’re not going to be in Kansas anymore.” But his body hesitated, refusing to acknowledge the command, his conscious mind mesmerized by the approaching beast.

  He started to turn away, some instinct or instruction from long ago telling him to shelter far from the glass doors and seek sanctuary beneath the ground. Then something caught his eye.

  The tempest had reached the white farmhouse, the front edge of its dark form beginning to engulf the property.

  Against the cloud’s blue and black background, the white clapboards stuck out like a neon sign in the desert night. Dusty’s eye was drawn by the optical oddity, his mind exploring the potential danger to the family that might be inside.

  Unexpectedly, the home exploded. As if suffering a direct hit from an artillery shell, the entire structure just vanished, an expanding cloud of white clapboard-scrap and green shingles the only physical remnants of what had been the center of a family’s life.

  Dusty was stunned by the instantaneous, complete devastation. It was as if he’d fired on the property with his rail gun. Maybe worse.

  A moment later, the barn suffered a similar fate, its tin roof visible as it was sucked into the sky, swirling around as if it were an autumn leaf enjoying a ride on a late afternoon breeze. “Unbelievable,” Dusty whispered, never having seen Mother Nature flex her muscle with such intimidating force.

  Motion, this time closer, drew his attention away from the existing carnage. “What the hell,” he snapped, watching the school doors fling wide and the children scramble toward freedom as they did every weekday afternoon. “Oh, God! No!”

  With his eyes darting back and forth between nature’s wind-sledgehammer, and the stream of kids pouring outside, Dusty tried to calculate the distance, direction, and timing. The prognosis wasn’t good. There was no way the children and the buses could make it to safety. Not even close.

  One of the bus drivers was scurrying in front of the herd, screaming and waving his arms for the children to get back inside. The older gent must have sensed the oncoming storm, or maybe he had heard the warning siren. Regardless, his gestures grew desperate and frantic.

  The driver was too late, Dusty quickly surmised. Like a lone cowboy trying to turn stampeding cattle, the kids were too loud to hear his words, too excited to grasp the warning.

  A couple of the escorting teachers got the message, Dusty watching as their eyes darted skyward. All the while, the twister whipped closer, crushing anything in its path. A new noise joined the fray, the rumbling moan of a distant freight train. The Texan knew the sound wasn’t from any locomotive.

  The teachers darted here and there, waving the children back into the building. The wind was gathering momentum, now howling across the prairie, making their shouted commands and desperate efforts even more problematic.

  “Maybe it will miss,” Dusty prayed. “Maybe it will zig or zag… or lose steam and fade away. Please just go somewhere else.”

  But the twister doggedly continued upon its trek, barreling across the field just outside of town, growing larger and more ferocious as the distance closed. In a matter of seconds, it became clear that a collision with the school was unavoidable.

  Dusty had never felt so helpless. There was nothing he could do for the children, dozens of the scrambling little ones still trapped between the school and the parking lot. Panicked teachers were trying to corral them back inside, the storm’s gale making the effort nearly impossible. The Texan couldn’t help the town. He couldn’t help himself. A lot of people were about to die.

  “That tornado will level the school,” Dusty realized, watching a male teacher carry a smaller child under each arm. “Even if they all make it back inside, it’s a death trap.”

  Onward the tempest whirled, now towering above the town like a titan posed to crush an insect. Despite the impending doom, the storm incited a swelling fountain of rage inside the Texan. It was so mighty in its wrath, yet seemed entirely unconcerned about the death and suffering it was about to unleash. It was a bully, pushing its way through, indifferent of the lesser creatures under its heel.

  It wasn’t logic or rational thought that compelled Dusty to rush to the counter and yank the rail gun from its case. Anger drove the Texan’s movements, his ire growing to equal the fury of the storm.

  The weapon’s LED glowed its reassuring green hue, the powerful magnets rotating with a comforting hum. He managed to drop the ball bearing into the breech, despite damp, shaking hands.

  His thumb hesitated at the power setting, unsure how much of the universe’s mass to unleash on the approaching killer. His thumb moved the lever until the red numerals read 25%.

  It was an afterthought that prompted him to reach for his earmuffs. After the last battle in Texas, he’d suffered a ringing in his head for days. With the higher power setting, he worried about becoming deaf – if he survived.

  By the time he had bounded to the hotel room’s small balcony, the twister had reached the edge of the town. Some clarity of thought made it through the Texan’s racing head, a realization that he needed to be careful or the rail gun would cause more damage than the imminent collision with the storm.

  He aimed high, selecting a target where the shoulders of the funnel met with the flat ceiling of black clouds that had originally spawned the leviathan.

  Dusty squeezed the trigger.

  Electric current surged through the gun’s magnets, pushing and pulling the steel projectile down the muzzle. The sound barrier was broken before the third ring, friction turning the tiny cannonball into a molten stream of slag just a few inches later.

  Dusty couldn’t see the black tunnel into another dimension, the dark backdrop of raging thunderheads making such a sighting impossible. Instead, a hole of bright blue appeared, the universe opening its defensive portal with enough force to separate the clouds and allow a view of the clear sunshine above.

  The cyclone’s 300 mph winds were met with a blast wave of atmospheric particles moving at near the speed of light. The battle was wholly one-sided. A shearing effect pushed outward from the rail gun’s wake, confusing the tornado’s focused energy and dispersing the low pressure at the center of the formation.

  And then, in a thousandth of a second, the dimensional tunnel collapsed, leaving a vacuum where just a moment before had been a tube of overpressure. It was a vacuum that couldn’t be allowed to exist, an empty space that violated all of the laws that held the fabric of time and space together.

  With more violence than the expansion, the planet’s entire gravitational field surged to fill the impossible void, pushing the sea of surrounding air inward from all directions at once, and at incredible velocities.

  Dusty didn’t notice the exploding glass doors next to him on the balcony, the heavy units pulverized by the shock wave tearing through the air. His gaze remained intent on the twister, the prayer on his lips soliciting a higher power to grant success to his desperate action… to persuade the storm to r
age elsewhere.

  The twister seemed to pause, like a giant staggered by a thunderbolt. It became disoriented, the outline of the funnel collapsing, struggling to form again, and then vanishing almost as quickly as it had appeared.

  The wall of wind and debris still contained momentum however; and Dusty was pushed back into his room as the gale’s leading edge struck the hotel’s balcony. Swirling foliage, splinters of wood, and stinging rain chased him inside, and for a moment, he was sure he’d failed.

  Shingles were ripped from some rooftops. A few trees toppled over. Glass windows, impacted by wind-driven missiles, shattered in blizzards of snow-like shards. But the tornado’s assault was weak and disorganized, its punch-drunk blows flaying like the fists of a dazed and beaten prizefighter.

  And then there was silence.

  For a moment, Dusty thought his ear protection was responsible for the lack of noise. After removing the cover, the only sound that reached his ears was the gentle runoff of rainwater.

  He managed the balcony again, ignoring the glass crunching under his boots. His eyes sought one image – the school.

  The relief that surged through his core was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. The brick building was still standing, surrounded by blown limbs, a scattering of uprooted vegetation, and melting hail. The structure was undamaged.

  One of the school buses hadn’t fared as well, flipped on its side like a large, yellow animal in the later throes of death. People were already rushing to help the driver, hopping over downed limbs while moving with the purpose of rescue.

  A voice broke the calm, “Hey! Hey! You at the hotel… I saw that. What the hell….”

  Dusty peered down to see a police car, the uniformed officer half out of the door. The fugitive recognized the man immediately, the sheriff’s face adorning every storefront in town with campaign posters asking for a vote in the upcoming election.

  The most wanted man in the world froze, unsure of what to do. The sheriff was apparently suffering the same dilemma.

  The officer hesitated, his head pivoting among the scenes at the school, overturned bus, and Dusty standing above him. He struggled to make up his mind.