“Oh, it matters.” He turned on his patented death gaze and focused it into Howard’s eyes. “I don’t care what your man on the ground has to do. He’s got fifteen minutes to kill Asher and his park ranger friend. If he fails, tell him we’ll track down his entire family and give them a free ride into space on the outside of a rocket.”
“I will,” Howard replied.
Petteri risked a look over to Dorothy. She’d heard the whole exchange; would she think he was the villain, or the hero for wanting to protect his beloved company? It was a peculiar feeling, caring what she thought of him. He quickly concluded it didn’t matter to her. All she cared about was staying alive.
He could use that to his advantage.
Yellowstone
Grace’s conscience was less encumbered after talking to her parents, but the call did nothing to help with her short-term problem. It wasn’t like she could ask her dad, either.
Dad, what would you do if a man with a gun was chasing you?
The thought made her laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Asher asked from the passenger seat.
She sobered up. “Nothing. We’ve got to devise a way to get to your safe place, while getting rid of our shadow.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. We should pull the truck over once we get into the woods. I’ll jump out and make a run for it, and I’ll ensure he sees me, like we did for the dispatcher. He can’t chase us both, and I’m willing to bet my life he’ll chase me, if forced to pick. You’re just an accident in all this.”
“An accident?” she said sarcastically.
“You know what I mean,” he replied quickly. “None of this would have happened to you if you hadn’t met me. Once you drop me off, you can get safe from the meteorite, then get back to saving the owls, bed bugs, or whatever you guys do here in the park when you aren’t being shot at.”
Above, as she drove, another streak of light soared across the evening sky. More followed, quickly changing the sky into a light show like the previous night.
“It’s starting,” she said dryly.
She noticed movement in her rearview mirror. Misha’s truck was in the opposite lane of traffic; he passed the two cars immediately behind her, running the closest one off the road while doing so. After establishing his position on their bumper, she saw him lean out his side window with a black object in his hand.
“Get down!”
The broken windows made it easy to hear the pop of the gun behind them. The pling of metal indicated they’d been struck. A second shot went through the open back window and punched through the windshield between her and Asher.
“You have to pull over,” Asher said from low in his seat. “He’ll never give up.”
The shooting stopped, then the roar of Misha’s truck followed. He rammed their rear bumper, causing her to clutch the wheel to keep the truck pointed forward. “Oh, God, I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Pull over!” Asher repeated.
She didn’t think the city boy would make it a hundred yards in the woods. He’d barely kept up with her on grass and pavement. He’d get tangled up in the undergrowth and Misha would put a bullet in him before she could drive away. The hitman would chase her again; then, they’d both be dead.
A large chunk of rock blazed across the sky. It didn’t look as big as the one she’d seen head off for Paducah, but they were growing in size and destructive potential. If they kept getting larger, as Asher’s sister had warned, she needed to get them to safety before it was too late.
“Hang on,” she said as she pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The truck drifted into the opposite lane of traffic and she sped around the next car ahead of her. She tried to ignore what they must think, seeing a beat-up park service truck passing at sixty-five miles per hour.
Misha followed, but they both were forced to jump into the right lane to avoid a semi-truck going in the opposite direction. Grace managed to get her vehicle into the lane with plenty of time; the Russian almost hit it head on.
“That would have been too easy,” she remarked.
The turnoff for the road to the alpine hut came up quick. On any other day, the gravel road would have been shut down due to the forest fires in the area. Now there was no one left to do the job. If she’d had the orange barrels handy, she could have set them out herself. Today, the lack of oversight worked in her favor. She jammed the wheel to the right, braked a little, then drifted onto the gravel road like a rally car driver.
Misha tried to make the same high-speed turn; he came in too fast and the rocks carried him sideways, almost making him spin in a one-eighty. He immediately worked to straighten out and follow, but she wondered if that gave her enough time to make good on Asher’s request.
With all the trees around, maybe he could hide himself before Misha knew he was gone. Then, she could save Asher’s life by driving away.
Another white-hot rip of light tore across the sky. It was bright enough to cast shadows behind the tree trunks next to the roadway. As she admired the fury of Mother Nature, she rounded a bend and reached the edge of the burn zone.
“Whoa!” Asher gasped.
The whole valley was visible from the spot. The fire had stripped the trees of their leaves, pine needles, and all other greenery. The forest was now a blackened field with thousands of tree husks pointing to the sky, like a blackened hairbrush.
Neither of their plans had any chance of working.
There was no place left to hide.
Kentucky
Susan came back over once she’d put Babs in her place. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and say how much he loved what she’d done, but the streaks in the sky were warnings for him to keep it moving. There was an entire roadway of people he might save.
“Suze, you get the Jeep started. As soon as I fill it with kids, you drive them down to Roger’s. I’ll follow with the adults and anyone else I find.”
“I’ll be ready!” she shouted as she ran away.
He’d been to the intersection a few times during the day, so he had a pretty good sense of the number of refugees in the area as well as who they were. While Butch and some of the other men ran to the nearest vehicles in the line, he ran about a hundred yards back on the two-lane road to the van full of kids he’d seen before.
On the way, he shouted like a madman and pointed to where he’d come from. “You’ve got to get to shelter in basements. Go that way!” He estimated he’d passed at least twenty or thirty people loitering in and around their cars, and word spread fast ahead of him as people shouted and ran, so he hoped he was right about his neighbors. Some of them would have to help out, or the fleeing people were going to be packed in like sardines in Roger’s basement.
Most drivers left their doors ajar or had their windows down, so they could stay relatively cool while waiting for the traffic to move again. Because of that, the refugees easily heard what he’d said, and the fireworks in the sky only backed him up. When he reached the large white passenger van, the windows and doors were sealed. Ash had settled on the roof and hood, and on the bottom half of the front window. Ezra didn’t wait to be invited in; he opened the door, climbed into the passenger seat, and looked around. His first impression wasn’t favorable.
“Where’s the driver?” he said to the first child he saw.
A young boy sat up. He was covered in sweat and his hair stood up on one side, and was matted on the other, like he’d been sleeping. “Mr. Akers went for help. He put me in charge.”
“Stranger danger,” a girl said from the back seat. She repeated it over and over, like a chant.
The van was full of about ten children who might have been seven or eight, at the oldest. The markings on the side of the van said they belonged to a church group. He didn’t have time to figure out if the driver was coming back. As the chant of “stranger danger” caught on with some of the other children, he knew there weren’t any good options.
“Mr. Akers found me, kids,
but he fell down and got hurt. He asked me to come and get you so we could all go to him. He’s at my house waiting for you. Now, come on. It’s a lot easier to breathe out there, too.” The air inside the bus was stale and smelled like some of the children might have had bathroom incidents.
“He said to keep the windows shut or the bad air would get us,” the little leader in the front seat responded dutifully.
“And that was smart,” he shot back. “But I came from the outside, right? I could breathe just fine.” He hoped he wouldn’t start coughing. The air was still filled with the dust and haze, though a lot of it had settled down over the course of the day.
Ezra hopped out, then went to the side door and slid it open. He held out his hand to a little blonde-haired girl who happened to be closest to the doorway. He also stomped his foot, creating a small cloud. “We’re going to go for a fun little jog in the dust. Want to go?”
She didn’t seem interested, but as he searched for a new method of coaxing her out, a man and a woman ran by, heading for the intersection ahead. When the woman saw him standing at the door scratching his head, she came over to him.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
Ezra shrugged. “I’m trying to get these children off this bus and into our subdivision. We have to get them into a basement before we’re hit by the meteorites.” He pointed to the skies, where the number of streaking objects had grown into the hundreds.
The motherly young woman seemed to know what to do. She came over and stood next to Ezra; the little girl took her hand immediately. After that, the floodgates opened, and the children all scrambled to get out of the van. They immediately ran where Ezra pointed, reveling in how much of the gray ash they could kick up along the way.
As he ran with the kids back to his Jeep, he spoke to the woman. “Thanks for the assist. You two came along at the perfect time. Their driver left them in there, and they were too wary of strangers to jump out for my rescue attempt.”
She laughed. “I’ve got one in the oven. God bless you for doing something. We’ve been on this stretch of blacktop all day and no one has shown up to help us. When we saw you yelling for people to run, we ran.”
For a few strides he imagined himself a hundred feet tall and king of the world, but shortly before reaching the entrance to his neighborhood, the sky went hyperactive. Overhead, one of the falling stars created a thick plume of smoke that looked like a dirty factory was dragged behind it. The air seemed to resonate, as if a deep rumble was being generated as it went by.
What are the odds of two meteorites hitting the exact same spot?
“Come on, kids, just a bit farther!”
Chapter 21
Yellowstone
The fire had burned through everything in the valley, though many small pockets of ash still smoldered, like fire still burned the very soil below ground. The gravel road was blackened with ash, too, but she didn’t dare slow down, even on the rough rocky sections.
“This is suicide,” Ash complained. “You should have let me out when we had the chance.”
She bounced in her seat after hitting another large rock. The situation made her laugh. “Should I ask him if we can have a do-over?”
“This isn’t funny,” he said with sadness.
“I know. Don’t sweat it. We’ll figure something out.” The point on his map wasn’t far. If they had no pursuer, they could probably park at that moment and begin walking off the path toward their destination. With Misha back there, she wasn’t sure what to do.
Her passenger side mirror shattered as a loud bang echoed behind them.
“He’s still shooting!” She wished she could tell the guy they were all in danger. If he didn’t find shelter, he’d be as dead as the two of them. Was there a way to broker a truce until after the rocks fell to Earth?
She goosed the gas pedal to get over another sketchy section of rock. Misha fired his gun again, causing an explosive bang from under the truck. She lost control as if the steering wheel stopped working. The truck slid on the gravel, went off the road, and slammed sideways into a couple of dead trees. The jerking action gave her whiplash.
Misha’s truck rumbled over the same steep patch of rocks, but he kept coming for her once he was up. In response, she reached over to Asher, who had apparently struck his head on the door frame. “Hang on!”
The truck slammed into them doing about twenty. The steep and uneven road prevented him from getting up to killer speed, but it had enough force to kill her engine and shake them like ragdolls.
“Get out!” she yelled at Asher while pointing feverishly to his door handle. He only looked back at her with glazed eyes.
“I can’t believe we’re still alive,” he said distantly. “You are the toughest park ranger I’ve ever met. I don’t even care that you’re on probation. You’ve earned full status as far as I’m concerned. Just let me talk to your supervisor, okay?”
The crash had clearly rung his bell. Getting him out and running was going to take a miracle. On her other side, Misha had to back his truck a bit down the road before he was able to park it and get out. As she watched him struggle up the steep incline, she realized there were no more options besides fighting.
Grace glanced over to Asher. “Get out if you can. I’m going to distract him.”
“I’ve got double vision!” he yelled way too loud. “I can’t even walk!”
She rolled her eyes; Ash was terrible at stealth.
“Come on out, you two. This is the end,” Misha called out from about thirty feet down the road.
She pushed the driver’s door, a creaking sound rattling her teeth. All the hinges were bent from the side impact, and she had to shove hard to widen the gap. When it opened enough to fit through, she slid out.
Misha stood in the roadway with his gun at his side. It was impossible to know what would have happened if she’d been given a gun, red tape ensuring she wouldn’t have the opportunity to fight back on equal terms. Instead, she had to make do with what she had; Grace reached around her waist to find the laughable canister of bear spray.
Never bring bear spray to a gun fight. She’d paraphrased a saying her dad often told her about bringing knives to a gunfight. She didn’t even have a knife on her.
“There’s an asteroid about to fall on us,” she began in a reasonable tone of voice. “We can all get to safety if you let us live.”
The red-shirted man took a few steps forward and spoke in accented English. “Sorry, I cannot do that. I like you two, truthfully. You remind me of an old girlfriend who showed me around the forests near Bryansk. But if I do not kill you right now, my family is going to die.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, secretly keeping her hand on the bear spray. The canister still had plenty of liquid left and if she could get him a little closer, she’d have the perfect opportunity to use it again. It wouldn’t be nearly as good as a gun, but it was a weapon.
Asher yelled from inside. “Don’t tell him you’re on probation!”
Misha took a few more steps. He was about fifteen feet away, which was the edge of the effective range of the bear spray. She needed him closer to be sure she struck him in the eyes. “Probation? It makes sense, now. You did nothing how I would have expected.” He slid a bit on the loose rocks, somehow keeping his feet.
“My job is to protect this land and these people. You shouldn’t be out here trying to harm anyone.” As empty threats go, she viewed hers as pretty epic.
He aimed his pistol at her. “I am sorry kids. Orders are orders.”
The streaks in the sky winked in and out with a strobe effect. The burned-out forest allowed her to see most of the sky, save what was behind the mountain ranges on the edges of the valley. It would have been beautiful if she were safely inside a bunker and watching it on television.
“Wait!” she yelped. Grace stepped forward, slid, and lost her balance. The downhill slope took her a few extra feet and splayed one leg in front of the other like
she’d fallen on ice skates. Misha looked at her with a clenched jaw, like he wanted to laugh at her but couldn’t. “You wouldn’t shoot someone this clumsy, would you?”
A plan developed in her mind as she slowly got back to a standing position. She was a lot closer to him; maybe it was close enough. As she righted herself, Misha pulled a pair of safety goggles out of his dress shirt pocket and slipped them on.
No!
“You think I was born yesterday? In Russia, we learn to read our opponents. You are a simple girl. You show some promise with your surprises, but I knew you would go back to your bear spray. It is all you have.” He smiled broadly, and casually waved his gun at his side before aiming it at her again. “I am sorry.”
She took his words to heart. She’d evaded him every step of the way, and it couldn’t go on forever. There had to be some way to surprise him a final time. She only needed to knock him out for a little while; enough to get her and Asher to the hole in the ground. If the bear spray didn’t work on its own, perhaps there was another way to use it.
Grace felt around for the object in her front pocket.
Kentucky
It was no simple matter to get all the kids from the van into the back of the Cherokee. Susan sat up front in the driver’s seat and cajoled them to hop into the cargo area of the back, but the kids had been trained well on stranger danger. It took a couple of extra minutes for Ezra to convince them she wasn’t a stranger. She was his wife. They only got in when she explained how her daughter was a park ranger and that she was going to tell them all about her once they got to safety.
He shut the back hatch of the Jeep and Susan slowly followed its ashy tire tracks back down the hill. Butch and the others from the roadblock brought their own groups of refugees from the cars, too. They’d found men in business suits. Mothers and children in pajamas. Retail store and fast food workers, each with their distinctly colored polo shirts. It was a cross section of the city of Paducah.
Impact (Book 1): Inbound Page 18