Impact (Book 1): Inbound

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “We have to go home, Suze. There are fires and destruction all over the place, and people we know and love might be injured. If we can get to our supplies, I’m sure we can make ourselves useful patching people up.”

  “Don’t wait for me,” Susan insisted, a quiver in her voice. “Get over there and get started without me. I’ll be going slow and steady, you understand?”

  Ezra didn’t bother arguing with her because she was as notoriously stubborn as he was; getting the last clap was only one small aspect of her fierce determination. He took her hand and they went back into the water, toward home. His plan was to stick together as far across the lake as possible, because there was safety in numbers while out on the water at night. True, there weren’t any boats left out there, but he expected someone to come along eventually. Murphy’s Law said a boat would pass by exactly when they were in the middle of the lake.

  The only break they caught was that it wasn’t completely dark anymore. Despite being sometime after nine or ten at night, the horizon to the northwest remained orange and yellow, like the world’s biggest bonfire was in progress. The shoreline on the far side was pockmarked with house fires, clouds of dust, and burning foliage, all of which added to the nighttime illumination of the lake. He pumped his arms and legs for several minutes as he watched the action ahead, and it wasn’t long before he pulled away from Susan.

  “Come on, lady,” he yelled to be funny. “I’ve got places to be.”

  She harrumphed in clear frustration. “Please just go! I’ll be there by and by.”

  Ezra did go a bit longer. He wanted to be noble about it, but the closer he got, the more dread he felt that his home on Happy Cove was about to go up in smoke. One of his neighbor’s houses was already an inferno, and several trees between his home and his boat dock burned like tiki torches. He wanted to stick with her as long as possible, and he hoped to get more than halfway before separating, while she fell farther back with each stroke he took.

  “Are you okay?” he shouted from fifty feet away.

  “I’m fine, you fool. Get over there and save our stuff. If my good china teacups burn up, I’ll make you go shopping with me to buy more.”

  He rolled his eyes. She didn’t even have good china teacups. It was another of their shared jokes. Having plates, bowls, and cups just for show was a foreign idea to them. If it wasn’t useful on a day-to-day basis, they didn’t want to be stuck caring for it. “Fine,” he relented. Louder, he shouted, “I’ll save that china if it kills me!”

  “Stop talking about it and get going!” she yelled, while lifting her hands above the surface to shoo him.

  The guilt was strong as he paddled away, reassuring himself she was in a top-notch flotation device, was a good swimmer, and would have no problem eventually making it across. All things considered, they were in great shape, but it struck him that absolutely no one on Earth knew he and Susan had taken the boat out on the lake for the evening. If things had gone a little different, both of them would be wrapped up in the boat wreckage, lost to history.

  He swam faster, intent on getting home and making things safe for Susan. They were not going to die tonight.

  Chapter 4

  Yellowstone

  Grace kept her foot on the brake while she watched the evergreens sway and bend as the unknown animals tromped along the edge of the forest. She wondered if they were more bison, but something about the way the shadows jumped and mingled suggested otherwise. Bears? A family of grizzlies could pose almost as much of a threat as bison, though she felt a bit better being inside the steel cage of the truck. Despite her refuge, she held the steering wheel in a death grip until the new animals came into her headlights and revealed themselves. It took a few seconds to be sure it wasn’t a cruel trick pulled by her brain.

  “I’ll be,” she said with relief.

  Three little foxes jogged along the road, their fluffy red tails caught the high beams as they came her way. After the monstrous bison, they seemed no bigger than house cats and not the least bit scary to anyone or anything, except perhaps small rodents. Those were probably out there, too, fleeing the fire along with the bison, foxes, and everything else in the forest. She watched the foxes long enough to see them disappear into the dust kicked up by the herd behind her truck.

  For the next ten minutes, she continued upward in blessed, uneventful silence. She kept driving the Suburban up the valley, ever closer to the fire. Embers drifted on the wind, leading her to speculate it wouldn’t be long before new fires cropped up on her side of the alpine hut. The falling ash also seemed to drive out more of the animals; another fox ran by, as well as two straggling bison.

  By the time she reached the top of the road and neared the small wooden cabin, the big fire bracketed the shack on three sides. She honked about twenty times as she rolled up to the hut, sure it wouldn’t be long before the road was blocked off. Grace also rolled down her window to listen for a response from inside the hut. The crackle of burning trees created a dull roar around her, giving the night an ominous energy. Still, she listened for a response for ten or fifteen seconds.

  She put the truck in park, hopped out, and charged through the front door of the little shack. “We’ve got to go, whoever you are!” She checked behind the curtain which served as the bathroom door, finding no one there. There were no upper or lower floors, so it seemed obvious her pickup wasn’t inside. To be sure, she strolled over to the emergency alert system; the handle had been pulled, meaning a person had to have been there recently. “Where are you?” she called to the empty room.

  Grace ran outside, then did a quick circle around the wooden structure, assuming the person had to be close. Even though it was the middle of the night, the woods around her were well-lit by the raging fires, and it seemed like it was well over one hundred degrees since those fires were less than a stone’s throw away. She needed to be anywhere but there.

  “Hello!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. She tried to search the brush and undergrowth in a wider circle around the shack, noting the fire had almost reached the rear corner. The little wooden building was going to go up like kindling in the next few minutes, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. There wasn’t any water nearby. No springs. No wells. No snowcaps. Even Yellowstone Lake was forty miles away.

  “Show yourself!” she croaked as she side-stepped a new patch of flames. Fire jumped from tree to tree as it pressed in on her. At the same time, it continued on its way down the gravel road, reinforcing the notion there was no more time to search for anyone. She headed back to the truck, coughing the whole way, continuing to kick at bushes and weeds, hoping to find someone. As she neared the truck, she noticed a small patch of brush space along the road leading up to the hut, which was the last place she’d be able to check.

  Tears filled her eyes from the acrid smoke as she went down one side of the road as far as she dared. Seeing no one, she crossed to the right, intending to head back to the truck at a run. Almost immediately, she caught sight of a man’s gray suit down in the weeds. “Mister! We’ve got to go!”

  The man didn’t move, so she shook him and cried out again. When he still didn’t respond, she watched his chest to ensure he was breathing. Grace sighed deeply when she caught sight of movement, in another situation not covered in any of the manuals. She’d been trained in first aid. Nothing could be done while the fire loomed over them. There was no keeping him there for observation or securing his neck for transport in case he’d fallen and knocked himself out. All she could do was grab his arms, and yank like he was a sack of potatoes.

  “Holy jeez!” she coughed. The wind had changed direction, and smoke poured out of the burning woods and onto the road. She hunched over and dragged him backward to the truck. The guy moaned as his legs scraped the rocks on the gravel road, but he seemed unable to wake.

  When she’d made it to the swing-away back door, she opened it with one hand, then chanced a look at the hut. One half of the roof was ablaze and t
he rest would be gone in seconds. She returned her attention to the man. “Hang in there, friend. I’m going to get you down the mountain.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbled, to her surprise.

  “Hey! I need your help!” She held him in an awkward half-standing position, sure he would come to, but he seemed to pass out again. Out of time, she used a modified fireman’s lift to get the prone man off the ground. He weighed a good bit more than her, though she was in excellent physical condition due to the demands of her job. Instead of piling him over her shoulders in a carry, she pivoted his legs and dropped him into the cargo area of her truck. Once he was inside, she slammed the door.

  She ran alongside her truck, but the inferno all around her stopped her in her tracks. In the minute since she’d checked out the hut, the entire roof had been consumed. The dry summer and old wood of the shack conspired to make it a tasty snack for the big wildfire. It was little better behind her. The fast-moving inferno had been busy while she dragged the man out of the forest. The trees on both sides of the road had flames up in their crowns. The dry bed of pine needles had turned into a sea of fire.

  She jumped inside and put the truck in gear. “Hang on back there. I’ve got to do some stunt driving.”

  Kentucky

  Ezra’s muscles howled with pain by the time he’d kicked his way the rest of the mile. He came out of the water and immediately experienced the excruciating pain of pulling ten different muscles. He’d also gotten sunburnt on his legs for good measure. That stopped him. He held out his leg, then studied his arms. The skin on his front and left side was a livid red, as if he’d been on the beach all day without sunscreen.

  “It really was like the sun,” he said dryly. When the fireball exploded and blew up like a nuclear bomb, it must have doused him with damaging radiation. If he was lucky, it was only a bad sunburn. If he was unlucky, and it was a more deadly radiation, well…

  He put that out of his mind. There was no time to second-guess the past. The fire whipping through the woods around his house was already melting away the vinyl siding on one side. He might die tomorrow, but he didn’t want to die tonight. Assuming Susan would live on, he had to get her some supplies.

  Ezra ran through the back door, and before going to the room with the important boxes, he took a long route toward the bedrooms and front living room, hoping to get the suitcase Suze had packed for herself. Flames greeted him as he went around the corner to their master bedroom, forcing him to stop.

  “Hell’s bells!”

  He’d been unable to see the front of his house from the lake. It was on fire. Apparently, it had been burning for many minutes, and had already gotten into the bedrooms. Susan would be disappointed to know all of her clothes were gone, but she would understand and appreciate his lack of effort trying to save any of them. He backed away from the heat and headed for what really mattered.

  The fire seemed to follow him, as if it knew he was inside the house it had already claimed as its own. When he made it to the kitchen, tendrils of orange and yellow flames greeted him from above. They walked the ceiling, possibly a result of the attic burning all across the house. He didn’t have much time, so he scurried into the adjacent sunroom.

  He’d staged most of the boxes from his basement there, since it was between the downstairs door and the one to the garage. A six-foot-tall pile of boxes was packed and ready to go in the front part of the room. His survival gear was in a smaller pile away from the rest; he’d kept it together, so he’d know where it was when he unloaded it on the Wyoming side.

  Ezra grabbed one of the containers labeled with heavy block letters that said “IMPORTANT.” It was about the size of a forty-pound bag of cement and weighed almost as much. He shoved it through the plate glass window of the sunroom, and it tumbled out onto the back lawn along with the shards. “Only a hundred more ‘important’ boxes to save,” he muttered with sarcasm, mindful how the flames would never let him get that many. The fire spread quickly, and was now at the doorway from the kitchen, as if checking out what he was up to.

  He grabbed a plastic rifle case by the handle and shoved it through the hole next. He was in the process of lifting a second gun case when Susan yelled words he couldn’t quite understand from where he stood. Since he had his hand on it, he picked up the case and shoved it through. After, he took a moment to see if her tone would indicate how much trouble she was in.

  Susan cried out again, and he heard it above the blaze of crackling flames gnawing through the house. “Ezra! Help!” He knew she wasn’t messing around.

  He glanced all around the room, aware how much valuable stuff was within arm’s reach. Firearms. Ammo. Reloading equipment. Hunting gear. Knives. Everything a budding survivalist would need. One good tractor shove could get it all out onto the lawn. Sadly, he’d sold his lawn tractor already.

  “Ezra!” Susan shrieked.

  After recognizing it was impossible to save the gear, his mind was totally on Susan. He shoved one last box out the window on his way, then ducked the flames in the kitchen to get out the back door. He ran on his wobbly legs toward the water and saw his wife out there, not fifty yards away.

  His life jacket was nowhere to be found, and he didn’t have time to look for it, so he fell forward into the shallow water and paddled maniacally toward his wife. His arms were mush, and his legs behaved like lead weights, but he pressed the pain out of his mind. On the way, he only looked up once, to ensure he was on the correct bearing. He adjusted on the fly, noticing she’d fallen over sideways, like she’d gone limp.

  “Suze, I’m coming!”

  Texas

  Petteri spent a good portion of his night watching the cable networks to see what they had to say about the disaster in Paducah. Channel after channel covered the widespread devastation around the city, and they all made it clear it had been caused by a rock that fell from the sky. Even though it had happened during the anticipated meteor shower promoted by his company, no one had said the magic words: This was Petteri Tikkanen’s fault.

  As long as he didn’t hear that, he was convinced TKM would come through the disaster just fine. He could manage thousands of deaths. Untold number of buildings destroyed. Forests ravaged. All of that could be replaced. His reputation could not. He shifted his weight in his leather desk chair, sure each flick of the channel was going to show a reporter talking to one of his trusted people, but so far reporters focused on how the incident was NASA’s fault for not warning the world.

  Howard knocked and stood at the threshold of his office door. “Sir, we cleaned up the mess in Toronto. The—”

  “Come in,” he insisted to the major.

  “Sure. Thanks.” The man came in and spoke in a lower tone of voice. “The North Sea issue should wrap up soon. And we’ve confirmed the geologist in Montana, Asher Creighton, is not anywhere near the corporate office in Bozeman. The secretary there said he spent the weekend in Yellowstone and hadn’t come back to the office today.”

  “What was he doing out there?” Petteri asked with impatience.

  “She didn’t know,” Howard deadpanned.

  “Did you explain the situation?” He put emphasis on “situation,” as part of the unspoken language between them. Petteri wasn’t above a certain level of threats to get the answers he needed.

  “I told the woman who I was, and who I report to, and it didn’t change her answer. She did mention how much she wanted me to get your autograph, though.” Howard laughed a little, as if unsure how his boss would take it.

  Most of the time, they shared the same sick sense of humor, but this day was special. Petteri was already walking barefoot on eggshells, so he wasn’t in the mood for dragging out the capture of the missing technicians a second longer than necessary. “And?”

  The security officer cleared his throat. “Sir, I called Yellowstone park headquarters a few minutes ago and pretended I was his brother and desperately needed to speak with him. The nice ranger on the other end was able to tell me Mr. Cr
eighton signed a trail logbook in the northern part of the park, but hadn’t come back. When I pressed him some more, he admitted a mystery hiker tripped an emergency dialer in something they call an alpine hut. The ranger didn’t know more than that, because they have some kind of park emergency going on. However, before he hung up, he told me someone had been dispatched to find and retrieve the person calling for help.”

  Petteri rocked gently back and forth; a small squeak in his chair suggested it was time for a new one. “And you think it’s him?”

  “It was in the right area. I have a man speeding to the trailhead parking lot and another going to the park headquarters. One way or another, we’ll have eyes on the subject soon, probably before sunrise.”

  “You understand we can’t let him talk to anyone. Anyone at all. Right?”

  Howard nodded. “You want me to bag the ranger who picked him up, assuming it was him who tripped the alarm and assuming they talked when they got together?”

  Petteri shrugged. “I want Mr. Creighton stuffed into a dark room until this difficult period is behind us, and I don’t care what you do with his friends. We can make up a story later.” As long as no one offered the press a scoop before phase two was over, and the rock was safely in Earth’s orbit, the overall plan to harvest the asteroid would remain safe. Despite the last dangling piece, Petteri couldn’t help being pleased at the progress reported on the ground.

  That brightened his mood, and he let out a chuckle. “Go ahead and get that secretary my autograph.” It stroked his ego to do her that favor, but it was all part of his endless efforts to keep his reputation above reproach. What better way to polish the apple than to show attention to the tiniest and least important members of his operation? Charm offensive also helped minimize the risk of a disgruntled employee making a mess of this carefully orchestrated public relations dance.