Final Days

by Jasper T. Scott

  “What about me?” Jack asked.

  “You stand there and make sure not to touch anything,” Kendra said, wondering if this might be a mistake. “On second thought, can you break into the vending machine and bring waters for everyone? We need to stay hydrated.”

  He grunted and moved toward the machine, staring at it inquisitively.

  Kendra found her way to the patient room, where Andrew was wrapping Laurie’s ankle tightly. Laurie swallowed a pill, followed by a cup of water.

  “How’s our patient?” Kendra asked the woman.

  Andrew answered for her. “Don’t think it’s broken, so I splinted it and wrapped it up tight.” He turned his attention to Laurie. “I’ll find you some crutches.”

  “Thank you, Andrew,” Laurie said.

  Kendra led him out of the room, and leaned against the wall.

  “Looks like you have everything under control out here,” Andrew told her.

  “They needed some direction.”

  “You have a real knack for this kind of situation,” Andrew said.

  “What about you? Playing doctor.”

  “I had some practice as a kid.” He laughed, and she saw a new side to the Marine. His exterior was a rock, but beneath it was a man trying to help. A man who only wanted to get the most important thing in his life back.

  “I won’t ask,” she said.

  Twenty minutes later, they were all sitting in the staff kitchen; a few of the battery-powered emergency hall lights had been brought in to light the room. They’d use them sparingly, aware of the limited amount of energy they possessed.

  “What are we going to do?” Bert asked as he munched on some chips. They’d raided the shelves and fridge, and had a surprising amount of options. Kendra made sure they were rationing, though Jack had already eaten at least two people’s worth. She didn’t say anything. He was already agitated enough, with her usurping his feeble power.

  Jack took the lead on this one. “We’re going to stay here, and wait it out. We’ll be fine.”

  The radio was on, and Andrew was slowly moving through the stations, hoping to pick up some kind of transmission. Kendra wasn’t counting on it. All they’d had so far was the crackling of radio silence.

  “I hear something.” Andrew held the small silver box to his ears, and turned it up.

  “…there’s no telling when it will erupt, but it’s on the verge. Godspeed, America. Godspeed.”

  The radio cut out again, and Kendra gauged their reactions. “We can’t stay here.”

  “There might not be a choice,” Andrew whispered. She saw something click in his eyes, and he stood up, trying to be inconspicuous. He locked gazes with her, and told the group he was going to the bathroom.

  Kendra waited a minute and excused herself. Even before she left the room, Pennycoat was telling them that everything was fine. That the government would send help soon. Somehow, most of them appeared to be buying it.

  She curved towards the hall, and bumped into Andrew.

  He pressed a finger to his own lips, and pointed up. She followed his finger to the ceiling. “What?” she asked.

  “The roof. There might be a helicopter. It is a hospital, after all. Most of these cities have one, especially along the coast.” Andrew’s eyes were bright.

  “You check. I’ll keep the peace.” He started away, and Kendra turned to him. “I assume you know how to fly one?”

  He smirked. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Twenty-Nine

  Andrew

  3 Days Left…

  Andrew found the roof access near a room with hyperbaric units in it. The entrance was connected to a separate stairwell, so there was no sign of water flooding it. That was good, at least. He went sprinting up the stairs, and crashed into the metal door at the top. It wasn’t locked. A quick turn of the handle and he was out, stepping into the acid tang of the foggy air. The sky was dark with angry clouds, and the city was gone. He walked up to the near edge of the roof and peered over the side. Black, debris-covered water was racing by two floors down.

  He glanced about and saw more of the same everywhere he looked. No trees, no buildings; no cars, streetlights, or signposts. The town was gone, everything sucked under by the tsunami. The hospital was the only building left.

  Remembering why he’d come up here, Andrew turned around, searching.

  Jackpot. Right behind him, sitting on a helipad, was a red and white helicopter. He ran over to it and tried the side door. It slid open, revealing a roomy interior space with stretchers on the floor, four seats in the back, and two more up front.

  Andrew’s brow furrowed. He did a quick mental calculation of the space. There would have been more room for seats if it weren’t for the stretchers and medical equipment. Take that out and they could all fit. They’d have to cram in on the floor, but it could work.

  Problem was, they’d be flying too heavy. Their range would be limited. How far was it to that place Roland had found? He opened the co-pilot’s door and rifled around under the seat. He felt a book tucked into the webbing with the inflatable life vest, and pulled it out: the operation manual. It didn’t take long to find the helicopter’s specifications. Range was listed as 370 nautical miles / 426 miles, fully loaded. And the “ferry range,” with maximum fuel and minimum cargo, was listed as 530 miles. A difference of about a hundred miles. It might not be important, but that would depend on how far they had to fly.

  * * *

  Andrew found Kendra downstairs in the middle of a heated argument with the mayor.

  “You need to take this seriously,” she said. “All of you.”

  “That’s exactly what a good little government agent would say.” Jack eased off the floor and took everyone in with a sweeping look. When he spoke again, his voice was booming and commanded everyone’s attention: “I’m tellin’ you all now—and you can see I’m not stupid, I don’t wanna die—but this is all just a government conspiracy to remove us from our homes.”

  “For what purpose?” Kendra demanded.

  “I don’t know, but I don’t trust it. Mother Nature doesn’t work on a schedule. They keep saying we got so and so many days left, and it’s all gonna happen on such and such a date. What was it? September thirtieth? Well, I call bullshit.”

  A murmur spread through the room, most people bobbing their heads in agreement, a couple others scowling and biting their tongues.

  “This is our town!” Jack said. “And we’re not leavin’ ‘less a bomb blows us outta here!”

  “That’s right, Jack!” Calista said. “You tell ‘em.” She glanced around, her rosy cheeks twitching nervously, as if she’d suddenly realized all eyes were on her. “We have to be patient,” she said in a quieter voice. “This will all settle down soon.”

  Andrew was just about to march them all up to the roof to see what was left of their town, when the old lady spoke up from where she stood leaning against a wall. There was a fiery gleam in her blue eyes, and she had a familiar-looking leather-bound book in her hands. A Bible.

  She cleared her throat.

  “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal!” she said. “And, lo, there was a great earthquake! And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.” She glanced up from the book. “Should I go on, or is that enough to convince you fools that this is the end?”

  Silence reigned for a moment. Jack and the old lady glared at each other across the room, two regents warring over the same petty kingdom. Kendra shook her head.

  “What if she’s right?” Laurie whispered into the silence. She was back with the others now, lying on a bed of pillows, her twisted ankle elevated.

  “Listen up,” Andrew began. “This isn’t the biblical apocalypse, all right? But there is a big earthquake coming. If anyone has any doubts, they should take a look outside. Your town is gone, and that quake and the tsunami that flooded this town are just the opening act.”

  “Scaremongering!” Jack spat. “Don’t li
sten to it! It’s over. We’ve weathered the worst. It ain’t gonna get any worse. We just have to wait it out. That’s it. Wait and rebuild.”

  “Maybe all those people who disappeared were raptured?” Laurie suggested.

  “That’s right,” the old woman said, nodding sagely. “They’ll come again. On the clouds of Heaven. And the whole world will tremble. Amen?”

  “Amen,” a few people muttered.

  “What’s your name?” Andrew snapped.

  “Reverend Shelley Morris, but you can call me Reverend.”

  “Shelley works for me,” Andrew replied, smiling tightly at her.

  The old woman’s eyes flashed, but she inclined her head to him. “However you like.”

  Andrew turned to address the others once more. “It doesn’t matter if you think this is the apocalypse or not. It is definitely the end of something. Us, if we don’t get out of here.”

  “What’s the point of scaring us if we all know that we’re stuck here until the water goes away?” Jack demanded.

  “Because we’re not stuck. There’s a helicopter on the roof. I can fly it out of here, and there’s enough room for everyone inside.” Andrew sucked in a breath. He didn’t want to suggest this next part, but he couldn’t insist that they fly to that billionaire’s floating refuge to pursue his own personal agenda. He couldn’t risk their lives along with his. “I can fly us inland, somewhere safe.”

  “Where?” Bert asked. “If everything that’s been on the news so far was right, then nowhere will be safe!”

  “The mountains,” Andrew suggested, thinking fast. “The Sierra Nevada range. We’ll fly as far south as we can and hide in the mountains.”

  The reverend started up again: “And the kings of the Earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains!

  “And said to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from—”

  “That’s enough!” Kendra said. “Are you going to suggest a better idea, or just stand there preaching about the end without an actual plan?”

  “What makes you think I don’t have a plan?” the reverend asked.

  “Then what is it?”

  “I agree with the Marine.”

  “How do you know I’m a Marine?” Andrew asked.

  “I’ve seen enough of your type in my day to recognize a jarhead when I see one. How else could you fly a helicopter?”

  Andrew decided that now probably wasn’t a good time to point out how little flight experience he actually had. “It’s settled, then. I’m going to discuss a flight plan with Agent Baker. Everyone else, try to remain calm. We’ll be leaving soon.”

  Andrew took Kendra aside into one of the patient rooms and closed the door. She nodded to him. “So you found a helicopter.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you can fly it?”

  He hesitated before nodding.

  Kendra caught that, and her eyes narrowed. “How does a Marine corporal know how to fly?”

  “I logged a few dozen hours as a co-pilot in Afghanistan. When I came home, I took lessons. I was going to become a search and rescue pilot, but then I had to give up on that dream and become a mechanic when Val was born. Life has a way of shitting on dreams.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Don’t be. She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Andrew’s cheek twitched as he said that, and he clenched his jaw.

  “We’re going to get her back,” Kendra said.

  “Yeah.” He swallowed. “I know.”

  “What’s this about heading to the mountains? We have the coordinates,” Kendra said.

  He shook his head. “We can’t take them all with us over open ocean. What if we run out of fuel, or we can’t find the place?”

  “They’re GPS coordinates, Andrew. We can’t miss it.” Kendra held up her phone and showed him a blinking red dot over the ocean.

  “Is that a map?” he asked, peering at the screen.

  She nodded.

  “You still have cell reception? How is that working?”

  “I don’t need it. My phone uses a government network, and it’s all satellite-based. How do you think I got Roland’s message?”

  “Good point. How far is it to those coordinates? Can you tell?”

  “Give me a second. I’ll have to estimate based on the longitude...”

  Kendra turned the phone around and spent a moment scrolling back and forth with her fingers. “About four hundred miles from here.”

  Andrew blew out a breath. “That’s going to be close. How good is that estimate?”

  “Give or take about fifty miles, why?”

  “Because that helicopter up there can only fly four-twenty. If we’re flying light, we might make it to around five hundred, but that means we can’t take everyone.”

  “We can’t leave them here, either,” Kendra pointed out.

  “Now you know why I suggested we head for the mountains.”

  “Andrew, if we lose the trail now, we might never have another chance to see what’s out there. All the ships will sink with the next quake. We’ll have to find another helicopter, and all of them will be tied up indefinitely, doing emergency search and rescue.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” he asked.

  “I’m suggesting that we go back out there and tell people about this billionaire’s refuge and convince them to come with us.”

  “What about the range?”

  “You said we can make it to four hundred and twenty miles fully loaded, but those helicopters are designed to carry a lot of weight. We’ll ditch as much of the equipment as we can and lighten the load. We’ll make it.”

  Andrew nodded uncertainly. “Maybe. But what if there’s nowhere to land out there?”

  “It’s a billionaire’s floating safehouse. How do you think he made it there and back while he was building it? There’s a reason it’s only four hundred miles off the coast. He needed to have fast access in case of an emergency. That means helicopters.”

  Andrew sighed. “You’re right. Okay, let’s go talk to the others.”

  “Something tells me we’re going to have to drag the mayor away.”

  Andrew snorted. “He’s trouble. So’s that reverend.”

  “Give two dogs a bone...” Kendra said.

  As they left the room, all eyes turned to them. “Well?” the mayor prompted.

  “We have a new plan,” Andrew said before the man could say anything else. “There’s a refuge out on the water, built by the billionaire Lewis Hound. It’s only four hundred miles from here.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Jack asked.

  Andrew felt his blood pressure rising with an angry rush of heat.

  Kendra placed a hand on his arm to stop him before he could start a fight. “I’ve been investigating him, along with the disappearances in the state. It all points to the same place.”

  “Here”—Jack sounded dubious—“off the coast of Eureka? How come no one else knows about it?”

  “It’s off the Lost Coast, actually,” Kendra said. “We had a guy searching their data for coordinates.” She held up her phone to reveal the blinking red dot. “We have those coordinates now, and we can make it out there in the chopper.”

  “Said the government agent. Don’t listen to her. They’re gonna take us all into some kind of black site and run experiments on us!”

  Some people frowned at that suggestion, but everyone looked worried. Andrew studied the reverend. She was smiling faintly. “Or maybe, they’re going to force us all to take the mark,” she suggested.

  Andrew did a double take. “The what?”

  “The mark of the beast.”

  “I’ll die first,” Laurie said.

  Andrew gritted his teeth. “Listen! There’s no mark, and there’s no government black site. We’ve considered all the options, and this is our best bet
.”

  “What about the mountains?” Reverend Morris asked, tilting her head, her blue eyes pinched to suspicious slits. “What happened to running to higher ground?”

  Andrew took a moment to reconsider that option before he replied, but Kendra beat him to it.

  “The mountains will be cold. There’s no food. And the water will be snow, or ice, and that will only freeze us further. You don’t want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with no supplies. We’ll die out there just as surely as we will in here.”

  Reverend Morris had her Bible open again.

  Andrew held up a hand to stop her. “Before you start, this is not a debate. I’m not asking anyone where we should go, I’m telling you. If some of you want to stay, I can’t force you to come, but I urge you to consider the consequences. You will die here if you stay. So who’s coming?”

  Jack drew an old revolver from behind his back. Andrew’s hand flew to his own gun; Kendra’s too. But they were too late.

  “Don’t listen to them,” Jack said. “They’re trying to trick us.” His gun was shaking.

  “No one is trying to trick anyone!” Andrew cried. “If you want to stay, you can stay! If you want to go, you’re welcome to come with us.”

  “Into perdition,” Reverend Morris scoffed.

  Andrew was just about to explode, but before he could, something else did. There came a ground-shaking BANG, followed by a long, low roll of thunder.

  “What was that?” Kendra asked in a quiet voice.

  Thirty

  Kendra

  3 Days Left…

  Andrew hurried over to Jack, and the man lowered his gun abruptly. Kendra was surprised the Marine didn’t demand he hand it over.

  “This isn’t going to be a democracy, Pennycoat. You’re officially demoted as leader of this town,” Andrew told him.

  “What gives you the right?” Jack shouted, his gun pointed to the floor.

  “Tell you what,” Andrew started. “You keep the town, but Special Agent Baker is in charge of the hospital. How does that sound?”

  “That’s preposterous,” Jack said.

  Andrew indicated the stairwell leading to the roof. “All you have to do is go up there and swim to the next building. You can be in charge of the next place you find.”