Roland made the decision quickly. “Thank God you’re here. Some guys beat me up, stole my car, and left me here.” His gun was tucked in the back of his pants, and he held his head with both hands. “My head hurts. I threw up a few times… I think…”
“I said don’t move. What are you doing here?” The man stepped into view, and Roland froze. He was big, and his gun even more so.
“I told you… they hit me with a bat…” Roland waited until the gun was lowering, the man’s face confused, and he reached behind him and pulled the pistol, firing it with a wavering hand. The first shot missed, but the second and third rang true. The man stayed there for a moment, blood pooling in his chest. The semi-automatic weapon fell to the forest floor with a soft thud, and the man’s eyes went wide and glassy.
It all happened in slow motion for Roland, but he was already grabbing his pack. He was about to run when he crossed the short distance to the man’s side. The soldier appeared to think Roland was going to help him, but he didn’t. He took the AR-15 and left the man alone on the cold, dew-covered grass as he took his last breath.
Roland’s hands shook as he ran for the truck, and he found a pill bottle in his jacket pocket. He choked two of them down as he approached the stolen vehicle. The engine started fine, and he was about to maneuver the side roads, when his phone alerted him of another message. It was from the ex-Marine.
Be there tonight
Roland headed away from the warehouse. Images of the guards covering people with AR-15s aboard big Zodiacs mixed with the glazing eyes of the alarmed soldier he’d shot as he drove inland.
Nineteen
Andrew
4 Days Left…
Andrew woke up that morning to his phone dinging with a reply from DigitalWizard asking to meet in Capetown, California. It took him a minute to find the place with a Google search. It was in the middle of nowhere, but maybe that was best, considering that all of the populated areas along the coast had been relegated to thieves and psychos.
He departed San Diego and Seth’s motel at first light. Amazingly, Seth had kept to his word and given Andrew his gun back.
“I wish you all the best, brother. And I hope you find your daughter,” Seth said.
“Thanks,” Andrew replied. “I hope you’re right about this doomsday shit all being a hoax.”
Seth shrugged. “Well, if not, I’m gonna get one hell of a show. Fair trade.”
Andrew smiled, and left Seth on that note. The route to Capetown took him back up through LA, and from there to San Francisco. He saw people on the road, and a few on the streets in both cities, but made sure to keep his distance. Three times he had to stop to fill up with gas, relieve himself, and stock up on snacks and drinks, but each time he picked a gas station in an abandoned town. The cities were too dangerous to stop in—or even to slow down when driving through. The last thing he needed was for someone to steal his truck.
Andrew spent the long hours of the drive north alternating between listening to his old CDs of Metallica and the static on the radio. Every now and then he’d catch snippets of doom and gloom from some amateur radio announcer, or of emergency broadcasts on repeat, telling people to evacuate and to where. At last, more than twelve hours later, he was racing down a winding, two-lane country road lined with dark walls of trees and the dying rays of sunlight flickering through them.
According the green highway signs along the way, he was getting close to a place called Fortuna, but no signs made any mention of Capetown. The only way he even knew it existed was thanks to Google and the GPS app on his phone.
Half an hour later, the sun was gone, and darkness swallowed the world. A glow of light on the horizon appeared soon after that, signaling a return to civilization. A wooden sign saying “Welcome to Fortuna!” flashed by, and then Andrew found himself studying the darkened windows of abandoned shops and homes as they scrolled by to either side.
This was Fortuna. The glow he’d seen on the horizon was just the street lights. It was a ghost town, but at least there didn’t appear to be any psychos or vagrants hanging around.
The town was there and gone in a matter of minutes, and then the shadowy trees and open fields of the country were back. On the other side of the town the road signs began counting down to the next one—Ferndale. And soon he was driving through it, too.
A computerized voice from the GPS interrupted his concentration: “In half a mile, turn left on route 211.” Half a mile later it said, “Turn left on route 211.”
He did what the app told him and raced across a two-lane bridge over the rippled, moonlit waters of a broad river below. On the other side, a patchwork of farmers’ fields shone silver with the moon.
The actual town of Ferndale came next. Once again it was just a small town, and utterly abandoned. Andrew felt exposed driving out here in the middle of nowhere, all by himself. He kept glancing in the rear-view mirror, checking for headlights, but he wasn’t sure what would be worse: seeing someone else on the road with him—maybe following him—or more of the same desolate isolation that had blanketed everything since he’d left San Francisco.
Andrew followed more directions from the GPS, telling him to turn left onto Wildcat Avenue. He could see from the sheer lack of illumination that this was the end of Ferndale. Dark walls of trees soared on both sides of the road, and he was forced to slow down because of all the sharp corners.
Glancing at the GPS app, he saw that he was a little over 20 miles away from Capetown, wherever it was. He still hadn’t seen a single road sign for it.
Sparing a hand from the wheel, Andrew grabbed his phone and tapped out a message to DigitalWizard: Twenty miles out. Where to meet?
* * *
Roland
Roland’s body was pressed firmly against the motel room door. He felt every grain of the old wooden slab as he sat there wondering what to do next. They might have caught footage of him killing the soldier; perhaps a drone had tracked his movements here.
Roland was adamant that every passing second would be his last, but they ticked away, and minutes turned to hours. His mind reeled with everything he’d seen, and theories juggled around his hectic thoughts all afternoon.
Was Lewis Hound bringing those people to a private island to do genetic testing on them? Could he be a modern Dr. Moreau, attempting to find a way for humanity to live in a world covered in ash and toxic fog? Skin that could withstand acid rain, and lungs that could breathe in the harmful chemicals and poisons being unleashed by the bowels of the planet?
Then he’d switch to thinking Hound was a humanitarian, selecting a group of people to save based on compatibility for the repopulation of the world. Had other countries experienced the same missing people over the last few weeks? He’d done some digging, but the results were unclear. Europe had seen signs of the coming catastrophes earlier than the others; Africa had been under a drought for ages, in addition to the fog rolling in along the coasts. Only Canada seemed to have any articles about people disappearing, and even then, it wasn’t many.
Roland considered the various components Hound had ordered on all of those shipping manifests he had gathered over months. So many high-tech gadgets and parts. Roland’s blood turned cold. Underwater. Hound had to be building it underwater. He’d thought about that in passing before, but hadn’t given it enough credibility. Now he felt certain.
It could also be a huge boat, one capable of withstanding the elements, and they’d be mobile when the oceans overtook the earth. An ark. Roland was convinced he was onto something.
He opened his laptop, accessing NASA’s system by using an untraceable military-level access portal. He linked to their satellite images of the Pacific coast, and zoomed into Capetown. The warehouse wasn’t visible on the feeds. That was impossible. Roland had seen it with his own eyes, hadn’t he?
For a brief moment, he questioned himself. There were times he’d seen things that weren’t there. That was why his grandmother had him take the pills, but was this one
of those hallucinations?
“You saw it, Rollie. I believe you,” he told himself, now pacing the dingy room. His legs bumped into the bed, and he sat on the musky comforter. “You saw it, didn’t you?”
He closed his eyes and pictured the dying soldier. That had been real, right? He went back to the computer, plucking it from the floor, and kept moving the image, scanning for signs of anything in the miles beyond the coastline. He found a few blurry sections out in the middle of the ocean, but those could be anything, and weren’t uncommon. He flagged them anyway, saved the data, and closed the laptop.
His phone buzzed, and he dropped it to the bed as he raced to pull it out of his pocket.
20 miles out. Where to meet?
At least Andrew Miller was real. It relieved Roland to have proof he wasn’t making this all up. There was something afoot after all. He wasn’t going crazy.
“You aren’t crazy.” He repeated that a few times, as he thought of his reply.
Diner on Mattole.
Roland assumed the old diner would be closed, but he needed food, and he didn’t think the owners would mind someone borrowing their kitchen for the emergency meeting. He hoped the Marine liked grilled cheese, because it was his specialty.
Twenty
Andrew
3 Days Left…
Diner on Mattole.
Andrew wasn’t sure what to make of that reply until he noticed that he was actually driving down a road called Mattole. Somewhere along the way, Wildcat Avenue had become Mattole Road, and he hadn’t noticed.
“So where’s the diner?” Andrew wondered aloud as he scanned the black walls of trees.
He careened through two more hairpin bends, and then he saw it, cresting above the treetops: Poppa’s Diner. The sign was illuminated by a trio of oversized vintage light bulbs. The trees cleared, and the parking lot rolled out beside him. He flicked off the headlights and drove in. A big, gleaming blue truck sat out front, a Ford hybrid.
The lights were on inside the diner, and Andrew saw someone moving around in there. He rolled to a stop a dozen feet away from the back of the other truck, suddenly wondering if this was some kind of trap. He didn’t know DigitalWizard. What if he was a psycho luring him out here to the middle of nowhere for his own twisted ends?
But that seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for nothing. Andrew wasn’t anyone special, and he didn’t have access to any resources that could help anyone through the coming storm. All he had was his truck, his phone, his gun, the two maxed-out credit cards he’d been using to refill his tank with gas, and about sixty dollars in his wallet.
“Stop being paranoid,” Andrew muttered to himself. Val was counting on him.
He parked beside the blue truck, grabbed his gun from the storage compartment in his side door and, almost as an afterthought, grabbed David Wilkes’ laptop and phone.
Swinging his door open, he slipped the gun behind his back into the waistband of his jeans, and strolled casually up to the glass door of the diner. A bell jingled as he opened the door, and a skinny kid with a patchy beard and a Giants baseball cap looked up from behind the serving counter. Shaggy brown hair cascaded from his cap almost to his shoulders, and his clothes were at least two sizes too big.
“DigitalWizard?” Andrew asked from the entrance. He kept one hand dangling close to his side in case he had to reach for his gun.
A massive grin curved the kid’s lips, and his dark eyes lit up with something bordering on manic glee. “Hey, man! Andrew Miller, right?”
“How do you know my name?” Andrew hadn’t given it in their correspondence—only the short version of his name, Andy.
“I have my ways. They don’t call me the wizard for nothing! You hungry? All I have is grilled cheese.”
“Yeah, I could eat.”
“Good! Pick a booth. I’ll bring it over. You want Coke or root beer?”
“Uh. Whatever you’re having,” Andrew said.
“Coke it is.”
Andrew’s gaze never left the kid as he headed for a booth with clear sightlines on both the serving counter and the front door. He set David Wilkes’ laptop and phone on the table, and eased the gun out from behind him. He left it on the bench beside him, shielded from view by the table and his legs.
DigitalWizard darted out of the kitchen a few minutes later, carrying a tray with two sodas in vintage glass bottles, and two plates with blackened grilled cheese sandwiches piled high.
“Sorry if it’s a bit black,” the kid said.
Andrew shrugged. “Thanks,” he said as the kid put a plate and a glass in front of him.
“So. We meet,” Wizard said, grabbing a sandwich and munching on it absently. “I was wondering if you’d actually show. Lots of shit happening out there.”
“I know how to look after myself,” Andrew said.
“Yeah.” There was that manic gleam in his eyes again. “I bet you do,” he said around a mouthful of grilled cheese.
Andrew inclined his head to the laptop and phone on the table. “Can you help me access these?” He didn’t reach for a sandwich. He was starving, but he needed to keep his hands free, just in case this kid turned out to be as crazy as he looked.
“Yeah, sure, but how are you gonna pay me, man?”
“With money?” Andrew suggested.
“No, no, that’s no good. I have money. I need something else. I need...” The kid trailed off as if even he didn’t know the answer to that. “I need to get to the bottom of this. We’ve got less than a week, man. You have any skills? Anything I could use?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Andrew didn’t like the idea of repaying favors with favors, but he didn’t have much choice. Besides, no one was forcing him to repay anything. If it came to it, he could cut and run. “I used to be a Marine. Did a tour in Afghanistan. Since then I’ve worked at a car shop in LA.”
“Marine, huh?” Wizard munched on another sandwich, nodding to himself. “Yeah, that checks out with what I found. So you’re offering to be my muscle if I need it?”
Andrew said nothing to that for a long moment. “Maybe. If you can do what you say you can.”
Wizard squinted at the laptop, then dragged it over and flipped it open. He studied the lock screen for a second, not touching the keys. “Windows,” he said. “That’s good.”
Without another word, he slid out of the booth and ran over to another one. Andrew’s hand landed on his gun, alarmed by the sudden movement. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Gotta get my kit together.” Wizard stopped and bent to retrieve an overloaded laptop bag from the floor under one of the booths closest to the door. He came back with his shoulder drooping under the weight of the bag, and slid in across from Andrew.
He paused dramatically to rub his hands together and flex his knuckles. “Let’s do it,” he said with another giant grin. Then he withdrew a thumb drive from his bag and stuck it into the side of Wilkes’ laptop.
Andrew listened to him tapping keys on the laptop for a minute, and then a beep sounded as the computer rebooted. “Got it,” Wizard said, turning the laptop around to face him. Now it was showing David Wilkes’ cluttered desktop.
“That fast?” Andrew asked.
“I’m no newb at this.”
Andrew scanned the desktop, not finding anything to catch his eye at first glance. Then he pulled up a browser. No internet. “Do you think this place still has WiFi?” he asked.
“Does this look like the kind of place that has WiFi?” Wizard countered.
“No, I guess not. Shit.”
“You have a phone?” Wizard asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Does it have a signal?”
Andrew checked. “Three bars.”
“Then use a hotspot.”
“A what?”
Wizard snorted and dragged the laptop back over. He produced a cell phone of his own from one of his jeans pockets, and his chin dipped to his lap as he configured it. Some more configuring on the
laptop, and about a minute later, he turned the laptop around again and said, “All set.”
“Thanks.”
Andrew checked the browser history first. He saw Gmail there and clicked it. It loaded up in seconds, still logged in. He started scanning the list of e-mails.
“You said you’re looking for your daughter,” Wizard said. “How does breaking into this laptop help with that? Is it hers?”
“Something like that.” Andrew’s eyes fixed on an e-mail with an interesting subject: Lost Coast Loading Zone. He opened it, but it was only a string of numbers. He shook his head, confused. “I don’t understand. What the hell is this?”
“Can I see?” Wizard asked.
“Sure.”
Andrew passed the laptop back, and the kid spent a few seconds studying the screen.
“Holy crap, man! Lost Coast Loading Zone? That’s right around the corner from here. Might even explain what I saw. This has to be related!”
“Related to what?” Andrew asked.
Wizard began rambling about a billionaire and a paper trail, a contact that he had called PiedPiper19, some giant construction project in the area, and a container ship that he’d spotted earlier. He was talking fast, barely making sense, jumping rapidly from one topic to another.
Andrew was getting frustrated. “What does this have to do with anything? This laptop belonged to a man who might have abducted my daughter. I need to know where he took her. I don’t care about billionaires and whatever the hell they do with their money.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man! This is it. This is what it’s all about. That billionaire is abducting people and taking them to some kind of safehouse. He’s building a bunker or a colony or something off the coast to survive the apocalypse. I saw them marching people out to that freight liner. As in abductees. And this e-mail? The numbers in it are coordinates. They line up with the warehouse where the freight liner showed up. We find out where that ship is headed, and we’ll find your daughter.”
Final Days Page 16