by Scott Todd
Mega Cataclysm:
The Last Survivors Chronicles
Written by Scott Todd
© 2015 Scott Todd
Cover Illustration and Design
© 2015 Scott Todd
1rst Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Introduction
Mega Cataclysm: The Last Survivors Chronicles is a riveting, fast-paced science fiction thriller full of unprecedented chaos, suspense, sexual tension, and much more. It catapults the reader directly into a bizarre, end of the world scenario from the very start.
The world is surprised by an event so devastating that the very survival of the human race and the earth itself are threatened. The few left include a well-connected scientist, and they desperately try to piece together what happened to gauge the extent of the global damage. But all communication is gone, leaving them guessing.
They face constant, extreme dangers from the aftermath. They must plan very carefully their existence with extremely limited resources. They risk dying of starvation, being eaten alive by beasts, and a face whole host of other deadly threats in a changed world where civilization became a mere memory. They are still human though, and humans have inherent needs that are impossible to contain even when the world is ending.
Their driving hope is that whatever's left of the international community will eventually come to their rescue. But from their isolated perspective, they don't know if anyone else has survived the event at all on planet earth, considering the enormity of the catastrophe they just witnessed. Can they hold out long enough to be rescued- perhaps for months or even years- if there is anyone left at all to rescue them?
Find out in Mega Cataclysm: The Last Survivors Chronicles. This work may prove one day not to be entirely fictional...
Acknowledgements
Thanks to a small group of readers for offering encouraging remarks about the first rough drafts of this work, which inspired me to expand and finish it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1: The Desperate Run
Chapter 2: Out From the Shaking
Chapter 3: The Sound From Hell
Chapter 4: Fear to Primal Necessity
Chapter 5: New Company in Hell
Chapter 6: Ben and Beast
Chapter 7: We the Hunted
Chapter 8: Fear Redelivered
Chapter 9: Not Without Me
Chapter 10: Wave Bullets
Chapter 11: Sleeping Bag Surprise
Chapter 12: Help Me
Chapter 13: A New Harsh Reality
Chapter 14: Hacksaw at 6,000 Feet
Chapter 15: One Million Dots of Death
Chapter 16: Pounded Into Fire
Chapter 17: Rotten Eggs and The Mad Dash
Chapter 18: The Million Dollar Cigarette
Chapter 19: Bizarre Theories of Hope
Chapter 20: The Urgent Death Calculator
Chapter 21: Sound The Secret Alarm
Chapter 22: Revenge of the Gods?
Chapter 23: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 24: Ben's Prophecy
Chapter 25: Rumors of Extinction Come True?
Chapter 26: Concessions of a Stealth Predator
Chapter 27: Digging For Life
Chapter 28: Critical Maps of Life
Chapter 29: Rest in Peace
Chapter 30: Quest For A Spring of Life
Chapter 31: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 32: Death in the Window
Chapter 33: The Sinking Feeling
Chapter 34: A Crucial Perspective
Chapter 35: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 36: Nightmares In Steel
Chapter 37: Forced to Swim
Chapter 38: A Morbid View From The Top
Chapter 39: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 40: Bloody Trails of Reunion
Chapter 41: Clinging to Last Hopes
Chapter 42: It's Us or Them
Chapter 43: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 44: The Chronicle Notes
Chapter 45: Radical Radio
Chapter 46: Death From Above
Chapter 47: Car Trap
Chapter 48: Beasts of Burden
Chapter 49: Rotten Hope
Chapter 50: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 51: Shower of Pain
Chapter 52: Naked Reunion
Chapter 53: Unintelligible and Hostile World
Chapter 54: >>>Boom<<<
Chapter 55: Shattered Secrets
Chapter 56: Fire or Die
Chapter 57: TechnoBabble
Chapter 58: The Code of Living
Chapter 59: The Ocean Road To Somewhere
Chapter 60: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 61: Water World
Chapter 62: Save Ourselves or Save the World?
Chapter 63: Data Dogs
Chapter 64: Painful Revelations
Chapter 65: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 66: Waypoint 'Painless Death'
Chapter 67: Seeking A Secret
Epilogue
About The Author
Connect With Scott
Further Information
Prologue
"Start the drilling here," the sea hardy captain commanded in Japanese. The special ocean research vessel dropped its anchor in the rough seas, and the crew blindly followed the order- unaware that doing so would be the last mistake they ever made.
Upon uttering those words, the captain ignored the dire warnings of many international, concerned scientists- in favor of obeying a directive from his political leaders to drill the site in secret at all costs. Because Japan just HAD to know. No matter what. And they sure found out: The hard way.
It's just too bad they had to take the rest of the world with them. What follows are the events shortly after the vessel and its crew were obliterated.
Chapter 1: The Desperate Run
"PLEASE get in the car! NOW," I demanded sternly yet politely. My hands were shaking as I pointed my 38 pistol at her. "Please?" I repeated. I didn't know who she was, and didn't care at the moment, because both our lives were about to be snuffed out like ants under an oblivious hunter's boot. She just didn't know it, but I had enough evidence to send me on a desperate panic run in fear for my life and the rest of the world's- for that matter.
She was dressed in a black shirt and tight jeans. And she was slender, with long dark hair. I did not get a good look at her face until later. She was totally confused by the way I asked while she looked down at my pistol. She stalled, just staring at me, and then looked around for help and started to scream. I quickly grabbed her and had to drag her to the car with my hand over her mouth, because now was NOT the time for lengthy decisions.
Given what I had just witnessed, it was better to kidnap a woman than let our species be terminated. At least there would be a chance this way. And she just happened to be the only woman I saw walking down the street along my escape route. I just hoped she was fertile. Because humanity could depend on it, for all I knew at that awful point in time.
Terrified with wide open eyes, as if she had just seen a ghost, she finally stopped resisting and got in. I jumped in and gassed it hard, with my gun still pointed at her- half watching the road, and half watching her. I knew right where we were going; to as high an elevation as possible. To the moun
tain I had picked out long ago, just in case. But she had no idea. Not yet.
"I'm SORRY. This isn't exactly the way I go about meeting women," I blurted out, trying to lessen the tension. But it wasn't working.
"Yeah RIGHT, you bastard," she barked back at me, mad as hell.
"Look. You need to understand what has just happened," I pressed back, looking her dead in the eyes. "You heard about the massive earthquake on the west coast... It was all over the news... Yes?"
"Yes. So what! What does that have anything to do with you KIDNAPPING me, you bastard!" she screamed, enraged.
"LET ME FINISH!" I yelled back, raising the gun more menacingly. "That earthquake was a 9.4, and within two days, another 9.2 hit way down south on the Pacific Plate near Antarctica. Yesterday another huge quake hit Mexico, and about 20 minutes ago... Well, I can't even DESCRIBE to you what I saw. It's just too complicated. But it's bad. Like VERY bad. And you are about to feel just how..."
I couldn't even get the words out of my mouth before the car started shaking and swerving, out of my control. I slammed on the brakes, hoping to avoid hitting a tree as she let out a shrieking scream. The car came to a screeching halt, but still lurched about wildly.
I glanced out the window and saw the ground rising up like a huge tidal wave. It lifted the car, road and everything around us high up into the air, and then just as quickly, we came crashing back down again. This happened several times, and then subsided. But not for long.
"WHAT is happening?" she shrieked. "Is that an earthquake? Here? We just don't GET earthquakes here. Not like THAT. Damn!"
"Well if you'd be patient a minute and listen, I'm TRYING to tell you," I retorted back, getting impatient to finish my story. I floored it again, weaving in and out of slowed traffic, and passing the grim scene of a car wreck with a man who had gone through the windshield. I figured the cops would have their hands far too full after that quake and all the wrecks to worry about me. Other cars were honking their horns at me though, mad that I kept crossing the centerline. And she freaked.
"You're GOING to get us KILLED!" she screamed, covering her face with her arm. "STOP!"
"Look, we've got all of about thirty minutes to make it to the top of Mount Mitchell, or we are dead. And even then we may STILL be dead. You HEAR ME?" I countered.
"What in the HELL are you talking about? You LIAR! Just let me go!" she demanded. Again I silenced her with the menacing pistol, and just barely missed an oncoming car.
"If we can just make it to the Parkway, we MIGHT have a chance," I said nervously, getting panicked. "There'll be less traffic and we can make better time." My fear was showing, and that was making matters even worse.
"I just can't BELIEVE this," she grumbled, turning to look out the window. My mind raced with questions about what I was doing, but after that intense quake I knew I was probably right in thinking something very bad had happened to earth. But I couldn't be sure. And I also knew that what we had just felt was only the P-wave.
I had taken up earthquake watching as a hobby many years ago, and had developed some connections with a few scientists. I knew what we felt was a P-wave from a very distant catastrophic earthquake, which is the first, and weaker part of a quake. And I also knew we were still going to be slammed by a massive S-wave, which is the strong part that causes the intense shaking and most of the damage.
And if the P-wave was that big, this far away from the quake, then the S-wave was surely going to wreak total devastation. I had no doubts at that point it was the largest quake ever witnessed. I figured we had just minutes before the S-wave would reach us, since S-waves travel slower than P-waves. But I couldn't be sure because I didn't have the time to figure out where the event had originated. And that mattered a lot when trying to calculate these things. All I had was a rough idea.
Just minutes prior back at my place, I saw the unthinkable on a computer program that I used to monitor seismometers. Seismometers are the instruments scientists use to measure earthquakes, and modern ones put out real time data feeds of vibrations in the earth that they pick up. And it just so happened that I was monitoring most of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" when I saw what I did.
After that massive quake in Mexico, which followed those other two huge quakes, I knew that statistically this was way out of the ordinary. We just don't get so many earthquakes in the 9+ magnitude range within days of each other. Something was very wrong, and I had started preparing after that last one, sensing trouble ahead.
I had filled up a bunch of jugs with water, got some basic tools together, piled up most of the food I had in boxes, and put all of it in the car. I was getting ready to bug out, just in case the worst happened and the New Madrid fault went off or something. But no one could have prepared us for this. Not this soon.
The second I saw all those meters clip and stay pegged, I got very nervous. And every last one completely cut off about 30 seconds later. There was a possible explanation if I had only been monitoring one seismic network. But I was monitoring over 100 stations, sourced from many different seismic networks- completely independent of each other. And this just didn't happen unless my internet cut off completely. But my internet was still on and working fine in the brief second it took to check a favorite website.
All those stations and networks were literally thousands of miles apart. And furthermore I checked several spectrographs, and the amount of high frequency propagation to thousands of miles out was just unbelievable. That never happened even in the biggest quakes. The high frequencies should have been attenuated at those distances, but they weren't. I knew that this was impossible, unless we'd been hit by a massive asteroid or something. Whatever it was, it was WAY beyond monstrous.
So I was out of there immediately, convinced that a major cataclysmic event had occurred. And it seemed that whatever it was probably happened in the Pacific, from the little evidence I had. But not necessarily. Still, what worried me most was the ocean. With that magnitude of sheer power, I suspected mega tsunamis were possible- extremely rare waves thousands of feet high. And the only possible salvation against those is the highest mountain you can find.
"Move MOVE!" I told myself, as I ran out the door with one last glance back into my humble little home.
And now I was in my SUV, flying towards a mountain with a terrified stranger in the car, about to get hit with the strongest part of an incredible earthquake. And from all indications that I had seen, this was more than just a big earthquake. This could be it. The end. My mind raced with all kinds of terrifying thoughts, but one thing was clear: Make it to the top of that mountain if we were to have any chance of surviving this at all.
Because the ocean might be coming. And considering we were some 600 miles inland from the ocean, that thought was indeed terrifying. But I had to rely upon what I saw, and I wasn't about to stick around and debate it. With ANYONE. I knew many millions of people had just died, but once it started to sink in and I really started calculating, it was likely much worse than that. MUCH worse.
As we drove frantically down the road nearing the Parkway, the car felt almost uncontrollable. The Blue Ridge Parkway is a well known road that snakes in and out of the Appalachian Mountains in several southern states. The road was moving, and it was all I could do to keep from splattering us into a tree.
"I didn't kidnap you to hurt you at all," I tried to reassure her, but I was panicking myself. "Right now you've got MUCH bigger problems than ME. Right now we just have to SURVIVE."
"Would you just STOP talking like that? It's scaring me," she sobbed. Without hesitation I reached over and slapped her- not real hard, but enough to put her in an extreme state of awareness. I had never hit a woman before, but I HAD to make her understand that I was meaning what I said. And yup, that sure did it. I now had demon eyes glaring mad at me.
"Look, this could be it. The end of civilization," I morbidly concluded. "Forget about everything else right now, ok? I don't have time to explain all this now. We've just GOT to get to
the top of that mountain, or we could be as good as dead. The water could be coming. Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME???" I was too riled and overloaded to understand how all this was not making sense to her.
"WHAT WATER???" she screamed back. "You're CRAZY!!!"
My mind swirled briefly with thoughts about if I had been fair to her, and tried to put myself in her shoes. I definitely owed her more of an explanation after kidnapping the poor woman. "But do I take this time now to deal with her emotions and questions, or do I spend that time trying to save our asses?" I thought. The latter, no question.
Think man think. No, better yet- drive. Keep going. The road looks torn up ahead. Stop, swerve around it. Stop again, put on the four wheel drive. There, ok, back on the road. That strong part of the quake will be here any minute... And if we don't make it to the top soon... Ok, finally. The Parkway is just up ahead...
"PLEASE woman. You're just going to HAVE to trust me for the moment, like it or not." I said it loud and authoritatively, and with a morbid resolve. It seemed to quiet her vicious stare down some.
"Well I guess I don't have much of a choice, now DO I," she complained, looking down at my 38. And then I noticed somehow that she really was pretty. My eyes unwittingly took a path south to notice her shirt had come unbuttoned in the mayhem, and I could see nearly all of her right breast. I could see she had no bra on. I mentally castrated myself for even looking. Something like THAT, at a time like THIS?