The barista shouted after him, but he didn’t pay any mind. Kendra watched it all with a disconnected gaze. She needed to focus on her task at hand.
She needed to reach this Mr. Tesla. He was the man that had the answers. If she found him, she’d find her missing people—the doctors, nurses, naval commanders, and biology professors. They were relying on her, and it was the only solace she could give herself before, as the raving man outside could attest, the end of days struck.
Kendra figured it was time to go home, as the sun was setting and the clouds were becoming even angrier. She gathered her papers and laptop from the tabletop, and spotted the older Silverado through the window. She’d seen the same truck at the university, and the man’s eyes bored into her soul from the street.
The moment her eyes met his, she recognized him. He averted his gaze and peeled off down the street. She ran outside, leaving her things, rain quickly drenching her. She chased after the truck, but he ran the stop sign and continued on. She hadn’t caught his plates, but that wouldn’t do any good anyway, not at this rate. Had that man been telling her the truth about his daughter going missing? A teenage girl didn’t fit the profile of the other abductees.
Kendra, wet and tired, picked up her things and headed home, her cell phone close at hand, waiting for the call with the Tesla’s address. She was so close.
Eleven
Andrew
6 Days Left…
That was close, Andrew thought as he ran a stop sign to get away from the FBI agent. The idea was for him to follow her, not the other way around. The last thing he needed was to distract her from the investigation or make her think that he was somehow tied to the missing people.
A crack of thunder boomed as he turned up away from the coast, and a blasting wind whistled around his truck, competing with the throaty roar of the Silverado’s old V8 engine.
Andrew wound through the city, weaving through the dense knots of traffic snaking out of the city. Most of those cars seemed to be headed for the interstates. He checked his rear-view mirror periodically to make sure the FBI agent wasn’t following him in her silver Prius, but there was no sign of her. After about half an hour, he realized he was just driving around aimlessly, so he pulled into a deserted strip mall and drove around the rear of a building that stood like an island in the middle of the vast parking lot.
He took a minute to check the sightlines around him. No line of sight to the main drag, and he could only see slices of the side streets. Good. That ought to keep the FBI off his tracks. Looking back to the fore, Andrew noticed that he’d parked in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts. It was closed, the windows broken and donuts scattered all over the floor. A donut burglar? he wondered. The looters were getting desperate.
Another peal of thunder boomed. The storm raged on overhead, rain cascading in solid sheets, turning the world to a hazy white blur.
Now what? Andrew wondered. He leaned over the steering wheel and peered up at the black sky. Nothing to do but wait.
He was waiting for a call. Prior to leaving the university, he’d dialed his buddy, Rian Drake. They’d served together in Afghanistan, but Rian was working with the LAPD now. He’d caught Rian just before the guy left the precinct. Back in Afghanistan, Andrew had pulled him out of a mess of rubble in the middle of a firefight. With that on Rian’s tab, it had been easy to persuade him to run the partial plates from that FBI detective’s files. Unfortunately, with two digits missing, they were bound to uncover a lot more than one hit for a black Tesla sedan.
A dazzling flash of lightning lit up the inside of Andrew’s truck, followed by a cracking boom that shook the vehicle. The rain hammering on the roof was so loud that he would never even hear it if Rian actually returned his call.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone to check. Two missed calls, but both were from Selena.
“Damn it,” he muttered under his breath, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice over the raging storm.
He needed a place to lie low and wait. He thought about going to another motel, but his experience with the last one made that thought less appealing.
The Dunkin’ Donuts looked like a good place to hunker down. If he was lucky, the power would still be on and he’d be able to make himself some coffee. Of course, if he was unlucky, another group of donut burglars would show up and blow his brains out over a freshly-brewed Box O’ Joe.
Reaching over to the glove box, Andrew yanked it open and pulled out his Sig Sauer P320. Best to be cautious this time. He ejected the clip—already full—and then checked the safety to find it on as it should be.
He shut the glove box and stared out at the raging storm. He didn’t have an umbrella, but it would only take a few seconds to reach the eaves of the restaurant.
Andrew removed his keys from the ignition and slipped them into his pocket. Taking a deep breath to steel himself for what was to come, he threw the door open and jumped out.
He was drenched in an instant. Cursing loudly to himself, he slammed the door and ran up to the broken windows of the donut shop. His exposed skin began to tingle, then burn. For a minute, he thought that was because of the cold, but then he realized that it was the rain.
Acid. Andrew stared at his bare arms in shock. Since when does acid rain actually burn? he wondered. Probably about the same time that deadly toxic fog became a thing. He had to get it off. Ducking through one of the windows, he ran behind the counter and searched frantically for something he could use to dry himself. He found a dirty, dough-crusted apron on the counter and used it to wipe his arms and neck dry. His skin was still tingling, but at least it was no longer burning.
A few seconds later, he found the light switches and flicked them all on. His arms were pinkish, but there was no sign of bubbling skin. His jacket was wet, but the shirt underneath was dry, and his jeans... well, his legs were also tingling, but not burning, so the acid was probably softening up the fibers instead of him.
“Damn,” Andrew muttered, shaking his head. He grabbed a pair of stale jelly-filled donuts that the burglars had left, and went to sit at one of the tables in the far corner of the place. Blinding sheets of acid rain poured down, turning the world white. Rain that actually burns exposed skin. What’s next? he wondered as he checked his phone again. Still nothing from Rian. He thought about calling Selena back, but he didn’t have any good news yet.
The hours passed slowly, and the storm showed no sign of letting up. He ended up brewing himself some coffee, but it took him the better part of an hour to find the beans, grind them, and figure out how to work the machine. By then, the parking lot was flooded with several inches of water.
“This is ridiculous,” Andrew muttered as he sat sipping his coffee and eating another stale donut. He passed the time obsessively checking his phone. The battery was only at 25%, and he’d left the charger in his car.
No way was he going out there to get it now. The rain had pooled up over the sidewalk and was starting to seep in through the entrance.
“If this keeps up, I’m going to need a boat to make it out of here.” A flash of lightning and a burst of thunder punctuated that thought, and then the lights died. “Great.”
After another hour, Andrew had to prop his feet up on the opposite chair just to keep them dry. Half an inch of water was sloshing around on the floor.
Dusk had fallen, and the rain wasn’t letting up. Andrew wondered if he should make a run for his truck before things got any worse.
But then the steady roar of rain pounding the roof and sidewalk began to fade. Within minutes it was done, and all that remained was the flood slowly trickling into the storm drains. Andrew stared out into darkness, sipping a cold cup of black coffee. He checked his phone again—
And blinked in shock at the time. 1:09 a.m.
Somehow he’d whittled away an entire day, and he still hadn’t found Val. A breathless surge of panic rose inside of him. That’s it.
He dialed Rian’s cell number, and waited while t
he phone rang in his ear.
“Andy?” the man answered in a groggy voice.
“Yeah. What do you have for me?”
“Two hits in California with the partials you gave me, but the system was giving me grief. It’s too busy, or I don’t know, maybe IT left ahead of everyone else.”
Andrew thought he could hear a car engine in the background. His eyes pinched suspiciously. “Where are you, Drake?”
“Sitting in traffic!” A horn honked. “Listen, I had to evacuate. They shut the place down and locked it up, but I have two addresses with me. I was just about to call you. You have something to write with?”
“Uh, hang on.” Andrew ran over behind the donut counter, his boots splashing in the leftovers of the flood. There were napkins, donut boxes, and... he spied the ragged edges of a receipt sticking out of one of the credit card readers. Popping the back of it open, he yanked out the roll of paper and unfurled a length of it. Another car horn went off, followed by Rian’s curses.
“You still there, Andy?”
“Yeah, yeah...” Casting about once more, Andrew found a pen attached to a chain on the customer’s side of the counter. He ripped it free. “Ready.”
“All right, the first one’s in San Diego. The other’s up in San Francisco.”
“Give them to me, Drake.”
Rian dictated the two addresses, and Andrew scrawled them down in a hurry. “You get all that?” Rian asked.
“Yeah,” Andrew said.
“Good. Hey, listen man, I understand that you’re worried about Val, but I don’t need this biting me in the ass later. What are you planning to do when you find these guys?”
“Less you know, the better. If anyone asks about you running the plates, say you got an anonymous tip. Some looter seen fleeing a 7-Eleven, or something.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I have to run, Drake.”
“You owe me after this, Andy!”
“I’m good for it.”
“Assuming we live long enough for me to cash in. Reporters are saying we’ve got seven days before the big one hits.”
“The big what?” Andrew asked.
“Everything! Quakes, eruptions, the whole shebang. Make sure you get yourself away from the coast before then.”
“I’ll try.”
“You’d better do more than try if you want to live, man. Anyway, see you on the other side, buddy.”
“See you.”
The call ended with a beep. Andrew stared at the receipt roll with the two addresses on it. The light in the store was barely enough to see by, but a quick check with the light of his phone’s screen revealed that his writing was legible, at least.
He’d check out the one in San Diego first. Hopefully the guy hadn’t evacuated yet. Andrew read that name and address aloud, committing it to memory: “David Wilkes, 1960 Edgemont Street, South Park, San Diego, California.”
Andrew took a moment to tap that location into his phone’s GPS app. It was six point three miles away.
“Got ya, you bastard,” he muttered. Andrew tore off the piece of the roll he’d written on and went back to the table where he’d waited out the storm to grab his P320. Dumb mistake, leaving it there while he ran around looking for a pen and paper. He needed to be smarter than that if he was going to live through the coming days.
Moments later, he was turning out of the parking lot and then roaring down the street, splashing through residual puddles and pools of water. The streets were a lot emptier now that it was after midnight.
When the app reported he was under a mile away, Andrew glanced at his P320 sitting on the passenger’s seat beside him. Val used to tease him about having a gun in the car, saying he was paranoid. If Selena had known about the weapon, she’d have refused to ever let their daughter ride with him. As it turned out, though, it was a good thing that he was a paranoid bastard who never left home without a gun.
Who knew, he thought with a smirk.
But his expression iced over a split second later as he contemplated what he might actually do with that gun if he found Val in Mr. Tesla’s house.
Andrew turned on the radio to distract himself from the dark turn his thoughts had just taken.
“...the entire West coast is being evacuated as we speak. What we’re looking at is unprecedented in the history of humanity. We’re not dealing with one isolated disaster. This could be an extinction-level event. It’s as if Mother Nature has finally had enough, and she’s conspiring against us.”
Someone else spoke next: “Surely you don’t mean to suggest that the planet is actually consciously aware of us and causing these calamities in order to rid itself of us.”
“Maybe, maybe not, but this sure as hell isn’t random. One disaster looming on the horizon—that’s normal. Two predicted for the same date? That’s just an unfortunate coincidence. Three, well, that’s a pattern. But we’re talking about hundreds of major disasters all commencing at once. That doesn’t happen naturally.”
“So someone might be causing this?”
“Someone or something. Whatever it is, it’s trying to wipe us out, and we have seven days left to figure out how to stop that from happening.”
“How can we stop it? You can’t stop a volcano from erupting, or a tectonic plate from slipping.”
“There’s some experimental tech in the works for the volcanoes, but no, we probably can’t stop any of it.”
“Sobering thoughts. Dr. Cole, do you have any specific advice for our listeners? What would you recommend that they do right now?”
“Take shelter—inland, as far as you can get from Yellowstone and Wyoming. Gather as much food and water as you can. Fuel and guns, too. The people who make it through this will be the ones who are the most prepared, and whatever you do, don’t trust your neighbors. People will be killing each other over a jug of milk soon.”
“Let’s hope not. But I’d like to take a second to answer our more religious listeners. What if this is all supernatural and this really is the beginning of a biblical apocalypse?”
The speaker snorted. “Then someone better find the Antichrist and string him up before we’re all dead.”
Andrew scowled and stabbed the power button on the radio. He didn’t have time for that sensationalist shit. It’s probably all overblown, anyway, he decided. Just another damned Y2K. But that acid rain made him wonder.
He drove down a residential street and pulled up in front of David Wilkes’ house. It was at the end of a cul-de-sac. He could see the number 1960 emblazoned clearly next to the garage door, and on the mailbox out front. Andrew circled around and parked a few blocks over the way he’d come. Grabbing his gun from the passenger seat, he left the truck and locked it with the key. Sticking to the shadows between street lights, he ran down the deserted street. None of these houses had their lights on, or cars in the driveways.
When he reached the house in question, Andrew pasted himself to the garage door, keeping out of sight of the home’s front-facing windows. Then he worked his fingers under the garage door and tried to pry it open. It was a hell of a job to force the door to roll up that first inch, but after that he had a better grip, and the rest was easy. He opened the door enough to slide under. The garage was dark inside. He rolled over, aiming his gun around blindly, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Fuzzy shapes became clear around the sides of the garage, along with the obvious fact that the black Tesla wasn’t in here.
Andrew stood up and pulled his phone out, shining the flashlight around to find the garage perfectly empty—except for an old chest freezer, boxes of junk stacked on shelves, and a workbench with scattered tools on it.
He went straight for the tool bench. It didn’t take more than a few minutes to find what he needed to break open the garage door and get inside the house. A club hammer and a chisel, perfect tools to destroy any wooden door frame. Once inside, he was more careful not to make any noise, but all of the lights were off, and there was no sign t
hat anyone was home. He wasn’t really expecting otherwise. The Tesla was missing, and there weren’t any other cars around. Andrew’s own truck was probably the only vehicle parked in the entire neighborhood.
A quick survey of the house didn’t reveal much. No laptop, no phone, no hints or clues anywhere that might indicate where David Wilkes had gone. There was no basement, and the giant firearm safe in the main bedroom was locked. Even if there was something in there besides guns, it would be impossible to access it.
“Damn it!” Andrew screamed. He made a fist and lashed out at the wall of the upstairs hallway, hard enough to put a dent in it. He could go up to San Francisco and check the other address, but chances were it would be abandoned, too. San Diego seemed to be a more likely location anyway, especially with Professor Hughes and Adriana Claremonte’s brother both missing from the area. So what now?
Maybe David didn’t leave, he thought. Maybe he’s just out stalking his next victim. That thought and all of its sinister implications sent a chill down his spine. That was definitely possible. After all, it was the middle of the night.
He needed to wait around and see if time bore out his theory. If David wasn’t gone yet, then he’d be home soon. And if not, then Andrew would head up to San Francisco and check out the next dead-end lead.
He absently checked his phone. He’d been half-hoping to receive a call from that FBI agent. Nothing, but there was another missed call from Selena. Maybe now was a good time to call her and get her up to speed—and to find the charger in his car. His phone’s battery was down to 7%.
Andrew had a few other preparations to make, too, just in case David Wilkes did return. Couldn’t have him tipped off by the busted side door leading to the garage. He’d jam the garage door shut and make sure that Wilkes had to park in the driveway. That would force him to come through the front door instead.
Final Days Page 9