He choked up again. “You’re going to have to stop that,” he said softly.
She stepped forward and lifted herself up onto her toes, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
On his way back to Launch Control, Forrest passed Michael in the corridor. “Thanks for the heads up, fucker.”
Michael stopped and turned. “You didn’t tell her no, did you?”
“Yeah, douche bag,” he said without looking back. “I told her no.”
Michael chuckled and stood watching as Forrest turned the corner. “Sorry, Jack, but you brought this on yourself.”
Twenty-Five
When the asteroid struck the Earth’s atmosphere, it was traveling at nearly a hundred thousand miles an hour and burning at nearly one million degrees Fahrenheit. Jack’s wife and the horse ranch were vaporized before they were ever aware of its arrival. It struck near the Montana-Canada border with a force three-quarters of a million times more powerful than the Soviet Emperor bomb, the most powerful man-made bomb ever detonated. It blasted a crater nearly a mile deep and fifty miles wide in the Earth’s crust, hurling millions of tons of dust and rock into the atmosphere and sending out a blast wave hot enough to kill every living creature aboveground for six hundred miles. Winds traveling at thousands of miles an hour flattened trees and buildings for at least half that distance, pulverizing them. A massive heat wave spread out from there, setting fire to large swaths of land within a radius of fifteen hundred miles.
All of which took place in seconds.
Within the next few seconds massive earthquakes emanated from the epicenter for a thousand miles, triggering lesser quakes all across North America and down into Mexico. Massive cracks appeared in the Earth’s crust over Yellowstone National Park, and the geysers there shot giant plumes of boiling water hundreds of feet into the air even as the park was devoured in flames. Rivers shifted and changed direction, giant landslides occurred all across the northern Rockies, and a dark cloud of smoke and dust began to envelop the continent, fed by the ash borne up from flame-driven winds.
The continental power grid began to fail immediately, and a massive blackout spread across both the United States and Canada in all directions, killing the power to every city within minutes after impact. Cities at the outer edges of the blast zone were set ablaze, and rescue workers were hard-pressed to even breathe in the heat, much less fight the fires. Three hundred million Americans and Canadians were dead within sixty seconds of the asteroid hitting the atmosphere, at least half of whom had been obliterated by the initial blast.
Tremors were felt the world over within the first half an hour, and though the asteroid did not strike the sea, tsunamis occurred as fault lines along the ocean floor shifted and distorted the water depths to send twenty-foot waves across the ocean surface, swamping the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia within the first few hours.
Horrifying satellite images were beamed down all across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and South America as the ring of destruction spread across North America, and the continent was blotted out over the first couple of hours. Everyone watching now understood with absolute certainty that the shroud of darkness would soon blanket the world. Theirs would be a less cataclysmic end, a slow and methodical procession of starvation and disease, a horrific return to the Dark Ages on a global scale.
The long winter had not quite begun, but it was coming.
Twenty-Six
Marty and Susan were in the basement making love, wrapped in one another’s arms at the moment of impact, but they felt a sudden tremor in the concrete floor, vibrating as if an eighteen-wheeler had been dropped in the street right in front of the house from twenty stories.
“Sweet Jesus!” Susan said, sitting up.
“We’re still here,” Marty said. “Holy shit, we’re still here!” He scooted across the mattress to turn on the television, but there was only static, and a few seconds later the power went out.
“That’s it, Marty. We’re dead in the water.”
The wind began to pick up outside the house, and soon it sounded as though a storm had blown in. When they heard a cannonade of massive thunderclaps, they quickly dressed and went upstairs to see a raging dust storm outside the kitchen window. In the living room, they peeked through the curtains, and the houses across the street were completely obscured, the wind now howling like a freight train. They watched in fascination as the dust continued to blow past the house, all sorts of debris soaring by.
“We’d better be careful of the windows,” he warned.
“How long will it blow like that?”
He laughed. “I’ve got no idea,” he said, lifting his arms and letting them fall. “Think of it, Sue. This is what killed the dinosaurs!”
“I am thinking of it, Marty. It’s why I’m ready to shit a brick!”
He put his arms around her. “Don’t worry, I am too.”
A softball-sized meteor struck the roof and shattered the clay tiles.
“What was that?” He looked back outside and saw stone-sized meteors striking down all across the neighborhood. “Oh, shit! The ejecta’s coming down. Let’s get back to the basement.”
After half an hour the worst of the meteor shower seemed to have passed and the winds at last began to abate, but the dust in the air took hours to settle, and by then the sun had begun to vanish behind the veil of smoke and dust in the upper atmosphere. They went back upstairs and watched as the neighborhood was slowly revealed, everything coated in fine brown dust.
“I don’t suppose there’s any point in going outside,” she said.
“We’d only leave footprints to show that we’re in here.”
“So what now?”
He stood looking at her. “This is it, honey. I’m sorry.”
“Damn.” She sat on the couch and peered through a gap in the curtains. “I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not.”
He sat down and took her hand. “How could anybody be?”
“Look at you. You’re calm as a cucumber.”
“I’m only being calm for you. Inside I’m shitting bricks too, believe me.”
She touched his face and tears formed in her eyes. “I don’t really deserve you.”
He shook his head. “Not true. That’s my decision.”
“But . . .” She sat looking at her hand in his. “You deserve to be with someone who loved you . . . who loved you before this.”
“Hey, if you love me now even a little bit, I’m a happy guy.”
“I do,” she said with a smile. Then she took his hand in both of hers. “I want to tell you something, and then I don’t want to talk about it ever again. Okay?”
He nodded.
“It’s up to you,” she told him. “It’s up to when we . . . when we quit.”
“Susan, it’s too soon to be—”
“Shush! Sometime between now and when the food runs out—before it runs out, Marty, because I don’t want to see it coming—I want you to take care of it. That means from this moment on, whenever you decide is fine. I just don’t want to know when it’s coming. I know that’s a lot to ask because I know how much you love me, but I’m asking you to promise me.”
His eyes started to water. “Susan, I can’t promise that, not like that. There may—”
“You have to!” she insisted. “Because all I want to do from here on is eat, sleep, and make love. That’s it. And I won’t be able to enjoy our time together unless I know you’re going to take care of it when the time comes. Promise me, Marty. Please. If you love me like you say you do, promise me.”
“Okay,” he said reluctantly, knowing that it would be an extremely difficult promise for him to keep, and that he might well end up reneging when the time came.
“Thank you,” she said, and she kissed him. “You don’t know how much better that makes me feel.”
> He was tempted to say that he knew exactly how much better it made her feel because he now felt that much worse . . . but it was his responsibility to take care of her, and her peace of mind was every bit as important to him as her physical safety. “So what do you want to do?”
“Let’s watch outside for a little while and then go finish making love.”
“I wonder how long before anyone else will come out.”
“They’re probably all thinking like we are,” she said. “Party time is definitely over.”
“Hey, speak of the devil,” he said, pointing.
A few young men were coming out of the house across the street and getting into a van. They were toting shotguns and carrying packs over their shoulders.
“Do you know them?”
“It’s the Gilberts,” he said. “They’re cousins. Normally pretty nice guys, but it’s a different world now.”
“Where do you think they’re going?”
He shrugged. “I’m curious as hell, but I’m not going to ask.”
“I wish we could. Normally I’m pretty withdrawn, but right now I really feel like being around people.”
“How about a shot of tequila instead?”
She smiled then. “That’s what I like about you.” She got up from the couch and began to unbutton the shirt he had given her. “You’re always thinking.”
Twenty-Seven
Ulrich sat at the console in Launch Control with Erin in his lap, counting down the time to impact. Taylor and Dr. West sat beside them in the light of an electric lamp. They had shut down all the generators and disconnected all of the main batteries against the possibility of damage to the silo, wanting to mitigate any chance of fire.
“T-minus sixty seconds,” Ulrich said into the intercom.
Erin hid her face in his neck and he rubbed her back. “We’ll be okay, baby.”
“I’m fucking terrified,” she whispered. “I’m so glad we never had kids, Wayne.”
“Shhh,” he said softly.
In the common chamber, Forrest stood against the wall with his hands clasped in front of him, smiling calmly in the lamplight as the women sat in the center of the room holding their children. Melissa sat against the wall near Forrest, with Laddie between them, and Veronica sat across the room with her back against Michael’s chest. Forrest was mindful not to make eye contact with her.
He did notice that Andie was looking in his direction more than any of the others, so he gave her a wink that brought a smile to her otherwise frightened visage.
Lynette was sitting with her husband, Price, on the floor beside Michelle, as he had asked her to.
Kane was sitting behind Tonya, who sat holding Steven in her lap; it was the first time Forrest had noticed them showing any affection. Vasquez and Danzig sat beside them with their wives and children.
Forrest’s original plan had been to let the children sleep through the impact, but the mothers vetoed that idea unanimously, wanting their children in their arms at the moment everyone they knew and loved was blasted out of existence.
“I’ve made a mistake,” Karen said in a sudden panic. “I should be with my sister where I belong.” She pulled her daughter close and began to weep.
Veronica felt Michael tense up, and felt that her suspicions were confirmed.
Forrest continued to smile calmly, very pleased with how they were all doing so far, Karen’s little outburst having been the least of what he was prepared to deal with.
“Okay, kids,” he said happily. “Everyone get ready to hold your noses like we practiced earlier.”
All of the children and their mothers held their noses.
“Now, when I say, everyone pinch your nose and blow gently until your ears pop.”
Dr. West had suggested this as a precaution against a sudden increase in air pressure within the silo—which no one expected, but then again no one had ever experienced a six teraton explosion before.
“T-minus thirty seconds,” Ulrich said.
All of the mothers told their children how much they loved them.
“T-minus ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . .”
“Everyone blow,” Forrest said gently.
“Two . . . one . . . impact.”
A few seconds later the earth shuddered deep within and all around them, groaning as if stricken a mortal wound. There was no change in air pressure, and no sense that the silo was being squeezed or in danger of implosion.
Almost everyone held their breath, waiting.
“Sounds like it hit pretty far away,” Kane said, looking up at the ceiling.
Forrest winked at him and held up his one second finger. Then, as if on cue, the entire complex shook violently as the shock wave passed through the earth’s crust. Forrest pressed hard against the wall, bracing his feet against the floor as the room jiggled back, forth, and up and down on its shock absorbers. The women and the children screamed in terror, all of them covering their heads, but nothing fell and no cracks appeared in the walls, the entire installation having been purposefully built to absorb this very kind of shock wave. Within a few seconds the earth stopped shaking and everything grew silent.
“Well, they apparently knew what they were doing when they built this place,” Forrest said.
“Is it over?” Joann asked, lifting her head.
Lynette and Michelle were crying in one another’s arms, and a few of the children were crying as well, but everyone else was reasonably well composed, considering the circumstances.
“Expect aftershocks,” Forrest replied, “but I think we’ve felt the worst of it.”
He looked down to see Melissa looking up at him, her arm around Laddie’s shoulders. The dog seemed more curious than disquieted. “You okay?”
“No crater,” she said with a smile.
“That should be about a thousand miles north of here.” He tweaked her nose and went about checking to make sure everyone else was all right, asking if anyone felt like they were going to be sick. When everyone said they were okay, he asked one of the men to go below and reconnect the batteries. Then he stepped into Launch Control.
“What do you think, Wayne?”
Erin stood and took Taylor by the hand. “We’ll go sit with the others now.”
The women kissed their husbands and left the room.
“We should be feeling an earthquake any time,” Ulrich said.
Ten minutes later they felt their first real tremor, but it was nothing compared with the shock wave.
“Switch on the cameras,” Forrest said. “See if we’re blind.”
Ulrich turned on the monitor and they were all surprised to see that the house wasn’t yet in flames. When he switched to the outside feeds, however, it was an altogether different scene. The grasslands all around the house were burning.
“Good thing we mowed back all that grass,” Ulrich said. “We may get to keep the house.”
“Is it raining fire?” West asked.
“Sure as hell is,” Forrest said. “The asteroid blasted millions of tons of rock into the outer atmosphere.”
“Then we’ll be lucky to keep the house,” Ulrich said, drumming his fingers.
“The house was always a bonus,” Forrest said. “So were the cameras.”
Taylor came back into the room and said to her husband, “Honey, Lynette’s hyperventilating. Price and Michael have taken her to Medical.”
West looked at Forrest and smiled. “And so it begins.”
Forrest patted him on the shoulder as he passed. “Take good care of her, Doc. She’s the life of the party.”
“Shame on you, Jack Forrest,” Taylor said.
Forrest followed them out on his way to check the missile silos for damage. He went to the end of blast tunnel number one and slowly cracked the blast doo
r, shining a flashlight into the chasm before stepping in. When he turned on the lights, everything seemed to be in order, but he walked every level to make sure, seeing that a few boxes of food had fallen over but nothing more. As he was about to leave the silo, the door opened and Veronica stepped onto the deck, pushing the door closed behind her but not sealing it.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She stepped into him and began to kiss him. Forrest allowed himself to be backed up against a stack of boxes and sank his fingers into her hair, opening his mouth to let their tongues intertwine as they sucked hungrily at one another. He turned her around and pressed her up against the boxes, giving her one last long kiss and backing away.
“Okay!” he said, breathing deep and straightening his shirt. “Now that we’ve both gotten that out of our systems . . .”
“You didn’t look at me once the entire time!”
“What did you want me to do, shout, ‘Baby, I love you?’ ”
She looked at him and put her hands on her hips. “What are we going to do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“About us?”
“What us?”
“Jack, you’re not funny.”
“Hey, you know what?” he said. “The fucking world hasn’t even been dead half an hour. Let’s see if we can get through the first twenty-four before we start acting like we’ve lost our goddamn minds.”
“I need to know if you want me.”
“We’re not having this conversation right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because my wife was just killed by a fucking meteor! How’s that for starters?”
“Oh, Christ,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, Jack. You’re right. I didn’t even . . .” She covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Aw, shit.” He jacked one leg back against the wall and fired up a cigarette. “This mission already isn’t going according to plan.”
“I disagree,” she said quietly. “But you’re right. We should wait and talk about this later. I’m sorry I’ve made you angry.”
Cannibal Reign Page 16