Final Days

by Jasper T. Scott

  Back in his truck, they raced down the highway to the local Malibu police precinct. The GPS app on Andrew’s phone said it was in Calabasas. It was hard to believe he’d been there watching a movie with Val only a couple of days ago. He should have kept her safe, but he’d been in jail, so how could he? Andrew recalled the crime he was accused of, and the police’s assumptions that he’d imagined the whole incident with the burglar. The pieces clicked into place then, and his jaw dropped.

  “It wasn’t a burglar,” he said.

  “What?” Selena turned to him, her eyes glassy in the dark. Streetlights strobed orange through the windows.

  “That guy who broke into my place. It wasn’t a burglar. Ten to one he was after Val. He must have followed us from Malibu, or even from the theater. Whoever it was, he’s probably been stalking her for some time already.”

  Selena’s hands flew to her mouth, and she shook her head in silent horror.

  “Yeah.” Andrew nodded to himself. “He broke into my place because there’s less security, but he had to assume I was there. God knows what would have happened to me if I hadn’t heard him in the hall.”

  “Did he have a gun?”

  Andrew frowned as he struggled to remember. “If he did, he didn’t use it. He just ran.”

  “But that should help us find her, right? We know who did it!”

  “No, we don’t. The police didn’t believe me because there was no sign of the intruder, and I didn’t see his face because he was wearing a ski mask.”

  “There has to be something we can do!”

  “Yeah,” Andrew said, already turning over options in his head, working the problem.

  He pulled off the highway and parked in the lot in front of the police station. Selena ran inside the station ahead of him. He found her screaming at the policewoman behind the desk. The woman stared blandly back at her, waited for her to finish, and then pushed a form through the slot in the bullet-proof window. “Fill this out and a detective will see you as soon as possible.”

  “How soon?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “We need to see a detective now! My girl is missing, do you understand me? She’s missing. They broke into her father’s house and tried to take her on Friday night, but when he tried to report it, you arrested him instead of taking the incident seriously!”

  The woman behind the glass blinked once. “Fill out the report, ma’am. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

  Andrew pulled Selena away by her shoulders before she could fly through the glass. They sat on a plastic bench and leaned against the cinder-block wall. Selena’s hands were shaking too badly to fill out the form, so Andrew took over.

  Half an hour later they were sitting in front of Detective Allan Styles, recounting everything that had happened so far. The man sat quietly and listened to their story, stolid but for the occasional twitch of the thick black caterpillar sitting on his lip. When Andrew mentioned the break-in at his house, the detective pulled up the report from that night on his computer, and scanned it with a furrowed brow.

  “Says here you were charged with negligent discharge... you fired once inside your home, and then once more from the front porch.”

  “How is that relevant?” Selena demanded.

  The detective shrugged. “I’m simply reading aloud, ma’am. The report doesn’t help us. Even if the intruder was real and he was the one who later took your daughter, we have nothing to go on. Unless you found some new evidence from the break-in, we’re going to have to start from scratch.”

  “Fine, but what are you going to do about it?” Selena demanded. “What are you going to do to find my little girl?”

  Allan laced his hands together and leaned across his desk toward them. “I’m going to be honest with you. We have over a dozen missing people in this county alone, all of them within the past few weeks, and with everything else that’s going on, I’d be surprised if we’re not all evacuated from the coast in a few days. That’s not enough time to do much.”

  Andrew blinked in shock.

  The detective regarded him with a grim smile. “You seem surprised.”

  “I...” Andrew shook his head. Maybe he needed to start watching the news, or at least start talking to people. “It’s that serious?” He’d felt the tremors, but when weren’t there tremors in California?

  Allan nodded slowly. “The San Andreas fault line is bucking like a dog in heat, and there are so many earthquakes going off under Yellowstone that every damn geologist has crawled out from under their rocks to say that she’s going to blow her top in a matter of days. According to the eggheads, the only part of the country that’s going to be even halfway safe is Texas.”

  Andrew could feel the blood draining from his face. “Yellowstone and the San Andreas?”

  “Yeah, it’s a perfect F-ing storm, and the rest of the world is experiencing it too. Somehow it’s all coming together at once. This is the big one. The big D. As in doomsday. The apocalypse.”

  Selena jabbed a finger at the nameplate on the detective’s desk. “Is that yours?”

  The man’s brow furrowed and his mustache twitched. “Yes?”

  “It can’t be, because that plaque says detective, and you’re clearly a news reporter.”

  Allan Styles leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Well, ma’am, you can pretend that the end of the world shouldn’t stop me from doing my job, but the reality is, if everything we’re hearing is even halfway right, you’ll probably find out that your daughter is missing because she was taken by the rapture.”

  Selena’s eyes flashed. “You’re useless!”

  “We’ll look into her disappearance, but there really isn’t enough time to solve a case like this one,” Detective Styles said. “My advice is that you forget about her and save yourselves. I’m sorry if that sounds callous, but it’s the truth.”

  Andrew’s blood was boiling. He didn’t trust himself not to reach across that desk, yank the man out of his chair, and beat the life out of him, so he grabbed Selena and pulled her up as he stood. “Thanks for your time,” he said quickly, then turned and walked briskly away.

  Selena wasn’t doing much better than he was. Her whole body was trembling with rage as they left. “Did you hear that? They’re not going to do a damned thing!” she said.

  Andrew nodded to her as they left the police station and crossed the parking lot to his truck. “Maybe they won’t, but I will.”

  “How?” Selena cried.

  “I need you to take me to Val's friend’s house.”

  * * *

  Andrew parked in front of the house—another Malibu mansion. Streetlights flickered as he and Selena crossed the street.

  Andrew spent a moment looking around. Sports cars and mansions lined both sides of the street, which curved away sharply beneath them, a winding street leading to the beach. “Which way to Mike’s place from here?”

  Selena pointed down the hill. There weren’t any alternate routes to take, so Andrew nodded and started for the sidewalk. Selena hurried to keep up with him. He was walking fast, but his eyes were everywhere, scanning the sidewalk, the street, the hedges and driveways, parked cars...

  It wasn’t long before Selena was panting in exhaustion. She wasn’t a gym rat like him. The restless energy of a frustrated addict is great fuel for workouts.

  “How much farther?” Andrew asked.

  “A few blocks. What are we doing?”

  “Assuming we’re right, and Val was telling the truth about going to her friend’s house to study, then she came this way. We’re retracing her steps.”

  “How does that help?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  They walked on, winding down the hill for another block. Andrew began to think he was wasting his time. This was a dead end, just like the ski-masked burglar.

  But then he saw it, lying in the dirt beneath a flowering hedge, gleaming gold in the vermilion glow of a streetlight. He ben
t to retrieve it: a .50 caliber round. He held it up for Selena to see.

  It wasn’t real, of course. It was the novelty pen that Andrew had bought for Val when he took her to the shooting range for her fourteenth birthday. There was an inscription on it that read, HBD #14! Love, Dad.

  “She dropped this,” he said.

  Selena’s hand flew to her mouth. “But how does that help us find her?”

  “It means this is where she was taken,” he said.

  Selena made a strangled noise in the back of her throat.

  Andrew turned away from her, his head on a swivel, checking their surroundings. There were houses on only one side of the street. The other side was a cliff, a hairpin bend with only three houses in sight. Whoever had taken Val had chosen this spot for its relative isolation. Fewer potential witnesses.

  “We need to ask the neighbors if they saw anything,” Andrew said, already stalking up the driveway of the nearest home.

  “You can’t just go knocking on people’s doors in the middle of the night!” Selena objected.

  “Sure I can.”

  Andrew reached the door and banged on it half a dozen times with his fist. Dogs began barking from the house next door. The frosted glass windows flanking the door lit up with a golden light, and then they heard footsteps.

  “Go away or I’m calling the cops!” someone yelled through the door.

  “My daughter’s missing!” Andrew yelled back. “She disappeared yesterday morning in front of your house.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. The background was a picture of Val, so he simply touched the power button and placed the phone to the peephole. “Did you see her?”

  “Please,” Selena added. “We’re just trying to find her.”

  “Mrs. Lewis?” the muffled voice asked.

  “Yes! Is that...” Selena’s brow furrowed. “Bill?”

  The door swung open, and Bill stood in the entrance, wearing nothing but fuzzy slippers, boxer shorts, and the white hair on his chest. He regarded them with bleary eyes. “I’m sorry, I haven’t seen Valeria,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Are you sure?” Andrew pressed, leaning around Bill to get a glimpse inside his house. “We found her pen in front of your house, in the bushes. She must have dropped it when she was taken.”

  Bill frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t even here yesterday.”

  Suddenly suspicious, Andrew took a step toward the man. “Do you mind if we take a look inside?”

  “What? No, I’m sorry.” The door swung shut, and caught on Andrew’s foot.

  “I’ll only take a second,” he said.

  “Get your foot out of my door before I break it off and shove it up your—”

  Andrew cut him off with a burst of laughter.

  Selena pulled him back. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Bill.”

  The door slammed and locked in their faces.

  Andrew rounded on her. “Hey!”

  “Bill didn’t take her.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because he has no reason to, and he’s almost seventy! Val would have beaten him within an inch of his life if he’d tried to abduct her.”

  She was right. Damn it. Andrew stood listening to the dogs barking next door. “What about that house?” He pointed to it.

  Selena shook her head. “I don’t know them.”

  “Time to change that.” Andrew ran back up Bill’s driveway and crossed over to the house next door. Again, he hammered on the door with his fist. This time the lights didn’t snap on, and no one spoke to them through the door; it just swung open to reveal a middle-aged man in a monogrammed robe, pointing a shotgun at them. “Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded.

  This time Selena explained. Andrew showed the picture of Val again, and the man lowered his shotgun. “I think I might have seen her.”

  Andrew’s heart skipped in his chest. “When? Where?”

  “Just down the street. I was out walking my dogs. On my way up the hill I saw her walking up ahead of me, but she wasn’t alone. There was a young man in a black hoodie accompanying her.”

  “Did you see his face?” Selena asked.

  “They had their backs to me, but it seemed like they knew each other. He had long blond hair in a ponytail.”

  “So how do you know it wasn’t a girl?” Andrew asked.

  “Broad shoulders. Masculine walk. I guess it could have been a girl, though. Tough to tell these days.”

  “Then what happened?” Selena asked.

  “Nothing,” the man said. “They walked around the corner together, and I lost sight of them. By the time I got here, they were both gone.”

  “Shit,” Andrew muttered.

  “I did see a car come down, though. Maybe not related, but it was...” The man’s brow furrowed as he recalled. “Black. Yes, definitely black. A Tesla, I think. Tinted windows.”

  “Did you catch a glimpse of the driver or the plate?” Andrew asked.

  “No, sorry. I wasn’t really paying that much attention.”

  “This is already a lot to go on. Thank you,” Andrew said. “You’ve been a big help.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The door swung shut, and Andrew started jogging up the driveway. Selena kept pace beside him. “So we’re looking for a boy with long blond hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that could be anyone!”

  “Doesn’t sound like someone you know from around here?” Andrew asked. “One of the neighbors’ kids?”

  Selena shook her head.

  “Probably a friend from school, then. We need to find her friends on social media. Maybe find someone who can hack into her accounts.”

  Selena was huffing beside him, struggling to keep up as he ran up the hill to his truck. “I can do it,” she said.

  He glanced at her. “You?”

  “I installed a backdoor app on her computer and her phone. It gives me access to everything.”

  “Nice job.” A thought occurred to him. “Does the software track her phone?”

  “No.”

  “Pity.”

  “Do you think the blond-haired kid abducted her?” Selena asked between gasps for air.

  “Maybe. Or maybe he’s working with whoever did. The bait. And even if he’s not involved, he was probably the last person to see Val before she was taken, so he might have seen something.”

  “What if we can’t find him? Or what if whoever it was took them both?”

  Andrew grimaced. “Then we find the kid’s parents and see what they know.”

  “But what if they don’t know anything?”

  Andrew stopped running. He grabbed Selena by her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Stop it. You’re spinning. We’ll find her if it’s the last thing we do.”

  Selena nodded, her eyes wide. It was a poor choice of words. She didn’t say anything, but he could tell that she was remembering what the detective had said about the news and the looming disasters. At this rate, finding Val might actually be the last thing they ever did.

  Seven

  Roland

  7 Days Left…

  Two days. Roland had stayed at the house for another two days, and he was regretting it. His messages to PiedPiper19 had gone unanswered, and he was done waiting. If something big was happening in seven days, he wasn’t going to be holed up in his grandmother’s house. He had to act.

  Roland didn’t know why he was doing this, but he needed to reach Capetown, to find out what was at the end of the rainbow he’d discovered. Someone was in that warehouse, building something, but what? A boat? An underwater city? Capetown was half a day’s drive from here, and with the current conditions outside, he had no idea how long that would translate to.

  He’d watched countless feeds of news footage showing everyone getting out of Dodge. It was pandemonium out there. Last night the air had been riddled with gunshots and sirens, and he doubted today would be any different.


  No, he was kidding himself. Things were about to get worse. With the ever-growing fear of the coming maelstroms, the public was scared. The wealthy were the first to leave, as always; the poor who relied on food stamps and public transportation were left behind to fend for themselves. It was over a week away from happening, but already, conditions were worsening across the world. If ever there was a world-ending event, it was coming. Roland was sure of it.

  He’d be heading up the coast like a madman, while everyone else traveled inland. He hoped this meant smooth sailing on the highways.

  Roland scanned the map of Capetown again, agreeing that this really was the perfect place to build. It was out of the way, hours from any real cities. Nothing but empty coast for miles and miles. A person could do a lot out there without prying eyes. It was the exact spot someone like Lewis Hound would use for a foundation.

  “He’s built his survival shelter, and I’m going to find it,” Roland said to himself as he crossed the living room. It was messier than ever. He’d managed to eat everything in the place, and empty water bottles littered the floor. His grandmother would be so upset with him. She’d loved to keep it clean.

  Roland missed her. She was the only person who’d shown him kindness, through and through. His own parents had thought he was a waste of breath, but she’d always protected him, had taken him in, and when she died, she’d left him the house. He still could hardly believe it. The lawyer had estimated the place was worth one and a half million, and that was five years ago. He doubted it was worth anything now, though, and soon it would be sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

  His bags were partially packed, but there were a few loose ends he needed to take care of before he left. He found a box of garbage bags and began to clear the debris from the living room. The least he could do was clean up, in a final gesture of thanks to his grandmother. Soon four bags were filled to the brim, and he wiped his hands, moving for the patio door. The entire house was stuffy, and he wanted to air it out.