They also all needed to process what occurred and because of the need for that, along with the night, they returned to the safety of the shuttle.
Sipping his own drink from a paper cup, Reese couldn’t determine what was causing him more grief, what they returned to or the state of the crew.
He could only imagine what they were thinking and feeling. Truth be known, Reese could only imagine what they were going through because he couldn’t really empathize with them. He had no one in his life. He wasn’t feeling the loss that they were feeling.
He had to figure out what to say to them, all of them. He would somehow.
Downing the last sip, Reese refreshed his drink, and sought out the crew member who probably had the best theory as to what had happened.
Hawk.
Hawk had said him not long before, ‘when you get a chance, we need to talk,’ and it was now time to have that talk.
Just outside the shuttle, Hawk had a small fire going. He sat before it, staring with a dazed look at the flames, holding his own drink, the cell phones set up beside him on the blanket.
“Waiting for a call?” Reese asked with a nod at the phones.
“Yep.”
“Seriously?” Reese walked closer. “Don’t fuck with me, Hawk.”
“I’m not.”
“You think someone is going to call those phones?”
“I’m hoping. They already gave me answers, I didn’t want.”
“Like?”
David closed his eyes.
“Hawk, what’s going on?” Reese dropped down to the sand, sitting next to him. “Was this it? Was this what Burgess said would happen? Because I have to tell you, when I saw that first flash, it was what immediately went through my mind.”
“Mine, too.” Hawk said. “Then my second thought was that since we had the heat shield up, we’d be safe.”
“So it was what Burgess predicted.”
Hawk shook his head. “I told you, what I saw was synthetic. It was weird, you know. I don’t know what it is. But it wasn’t Martin’s prediction.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Um, New York,” David stated as if Reese should have known. “Martin was predicting two solar flares, big ones. First of all, any flare that was strong enough to evaporate the ocean would destroy buildings, totally destroy them. Those building were barely damaged. We’ll know more when we go in, but I know for a fact they weren’t blown apart. Second, where’s the snow?”
“What do you mean?”
“Check this out. Two flares, strong enough to evaporate the ocean, would cause heat and destruction, along with causing debris to go far up into the atmosphere. What goes up comes down. Those oceans would flood the earth or at least cover it with ice and snow.”
“So we’re back to the beginning. Any theories?”
“A few, but I’ll know more when we get into New York. Or at least hope to.”
“But for now, you don’t have answers.” Reese said.
“Sadly I do. Like I said,” he nodded at the phones, “they gave me an answer.”
“To what happened?”
“Nope.” David reached for a phone. “To where we went.”
“New York.”
“Not place. Time.”
Reese questioned him with his eyes, blinking with a pleading ‘tell me more’ look.
David cleared his throat and lifted the one phone, the bigger of them. “Remember I got a signal?”
“Yes.”
“Ok, so, when hoping to get a signal, what do you look at on the phone?”
“The bars.”
“Exactly. I was watching the bars. Then I noticed the time. I didn’t think much about it. After all, you said we were in Africa.”
“Time adjustment.”
“Yeah, typical. You know. Get on a plane in New York, land in Los Angeles, turn on your phone; the time adjusts when you connect.”
“What were you getting a signal from?”
“Ah . . .” David held up a finger. “A satellite, and that’s what tells me someone out there in that fucked up world is watching things.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, and they are watching for a reason. There’s communication open. Bet me.”
“So getting back to what you were saying about the time?”
David nodded. “I looked at the time, but not the date. I looked at the date after we discovered what had happened to New York.”
“When is it?”
“September 28. That’s why it’s so cold.”
“Holy shit.” Reese cocked back. “How the fuck did we lose time?”
“Space hole? Who the hell knows? We did though.”
“Jesus. How the hell did we go three months, four days into the future?”
“We didn’t,” David stated.
“But you said it was September?”
“It is. When I saw the date on the top, I went into my organizer and opened up the calendar. It’s September 28 all right. But we didn’t go three months four days into the future.” David handed Reese the phone. “We went five years, one month, and twelve days into the future.”
<><><><>
Lucy sobbed. Perhaps the alcohol only made her feel worse. It certainly didn’t make her sleepy or put her into a zombie state like it did Ken and Paul. They lay on their backs, both in similar positions, arms above their heads, staring up.
There was little anyone could do to comfort Lucy. She sat on the floor, her knees bent to her chest, head against her arms.
‘How about getting some air, Lucy?” Gene asked.
She shook her head and with a long sniffle, lifted her eyes above her folded arms. “How did this happen? We all saw New York, that’s not four days. That can’t be.”
“Time travel,” Kip said. “Dude, that has to be it.”
With a heavy sigh, Gene laid his hand on Lucy’s back. “I don’t believe in any of that, but I’m forced now to look at this world.”
“Has anyone looked beyond this?” Thaddeus asked. “Really. Yes, we went through some sort of time pocket, but what if this is a dead zone? We don’t know if this extends beyond New York. We haven’t a clue. Maybe a meteor hit the Atlantic, who knows. But we can’t draw conclusions until we go into that city.”
“Dude, come on,” Kip said. “You really believe that? If that was the case, Hawk would have been able to reach 911 with the signal or hell, 411, and he tried.”
Thaddeus gave Kip a look that conveyed to him it would be a good idea to keep quiet.
Lucy wiped her face. “I know what you’re trying to do, Thad. I do. It’s not gonna work. I know what my gut is telling me. But I can’t figure out why I am left here? Why any of us are left here to face this.”
Gene pulled her into him and Lucy’s head fell against his shoulder. “God’s Will, Luce. God’s Will. He had His reasons for us being chosen, I believe that. We won the lottery and were saved, for some odd reason.”
Thaddeus scoffed at that. “This isn’t a big religious thing, Gene, come on. Like one hundred, forty three thousand, nine hundred and ninety two people are at the new Jerusalem waiting on the missing eight.”
“Son, you never know.”
Sobbing, Lucy peered up at Gene. “How are you doing it? How are you being so strong?”
“I’m not. Don’t let this rough exterior full you. I’m torn apart about my kids.”
“Oh, God, my babies.” Lucy fell into him again. “I don’t want to live without them. I just wanna die. My babies are gone.”
David’s voice carried into the cabin. “That . . . that may not necessarily be true.”
As quickly as David spewed forth that comment, Reese barked out a warning. “Hawk!”
“What?” David looked over his shoulder.
“What are you going to tell her? That her children survived this global catastrophe?”
“It’s possible.”
Lucy whispered out a ‘what?”
Reese cringed. “Don
’t. Don’t do that. You don’t know.”
“No, Reese.” David pointed at him. “You don’t know. None of you do.”
Gene looked up to Reese. “What’s going on Commander? What do you know?”
“We know by the clock on Hawk’s satellite phone that it’s September, but five years in the future. Whatever happened, it happened five years to the date from when we were supposed to land.”
Gene directed his question to David, “Forgive me, but how is being five years in the future supposed to give Lucy hope, or myself, that our children are alive?”
Reese replied, “It’s not.”
“Gray!” David yelled.
“No, tell them!” Reese snapped. “How about I do it? What you people don’t know, none of you, is that Hawk’s friend, top scientist, was watching the sun. He was predicting that two massive solar flares would strike earth on or about the time we were in space.”
Lucy’s hand shot to her mouth. “You guys knew this and still let this mission go on?”
Reese nodded. “Because it wasn’t probable. And that’s what Hawk is talking about.”
David shook his head. “It wasn’t a flare, we know that. It was something else. We need to find out what. A fucking ocean has disappeared. But, listen to what I’m going to tell you, all of you. Martin Burgess is an eccentric scientist with an infatuation for the end of the world. His office is in Texas. Buried beneath his research center some four hundred feet is what Martin calls his time capsule. What it is really, is a bomb shelter that he has stock piled with everything he needs to survive in the event of a global catastrophe. With this event he believed he saw coming, he thought he would have a day and a half warning to get to the capsule.”
Reese huffed. “How’s this supposed to make these folks believe their families are alive?”
“Because I broke protocol,” David replied. “I took all contact information for the families from NASA and gave it to Martin. If he believed it was going to happen, he was going to contact your families and get them to the capsule. If they would go, that is.”
Ken finally snapped out of his daze. “Oh my God. My wife said he called her and told her to confirm through me, who he was. He called her.”
David nodded. “That was part of our chain reaction plan. She was the confirmation. She would be the backup for when he called let’s say Gene’s family, Lucy’s family, so they’d believe he was serious. He’d tell them to call her for confirmation of who he was.”
Lucy released a small sob. “It’s possible.”
David nodded.
“Hawk,” Reese warned again. “Please. You and I don’t have kids. We don’t know what this woman is going through. To give her false hope...”
“It’s not false,” David snipped. “It’s possible.”
“Not probable,” Reese said.
David gave a quick, aggravated shook of his head. “Fuck you. Any hope is better than no hope. And you don’t want me to mislead her? Why don’t you listen to what you’re doing right now?” He threw out his arm. “I’m heading out.”
An air of silence filled that cabin as David stormed out of there and outside.
Lucy used her sleeve to wipe her face, and stood up. “Excuse me.”
Reese grabbed for her arm. “Where are you going?”
“I need to talk to him.”
Reese leaned down, keeping his face close, his voice low. “Please. This is hard for you. Let’s face everything one day at a time without holding on to something we don’t even know exists.”
Lucy puckered, nodded in a nervous manner, started to leave, but stopped. She lifted the half empty bottle of Jack Daniels and walked out.
<><><><>
When she stepped outside the shuttle, David was scuffing his foot against the sand near the fire, one hand in his pocket, the other on his head.
She cleared her throat to catch his attention.
David stopped, and looked over his shoulder at her.
“I uh . . .” she walked to where his cup perched on a box, lifted it, and poured as she spoke, “I spent the last seven hours crying. This is the first I’ve stopped.” She sipped from the cup, cringed a little and offered it to David as she neared him.
He hesitated, and then took it. “I would never tell you anything to mislead you, any of you, but especially not you, Lucy.” He took a drink. “Not you.”
“Why, especially not me?”
“Because you are pure, you believe, and I wouldn’t play with your naivety, even unintentionally.”
“I want to believe this, David. I do.” She set down the bottle. “Oh, God, do I want to believe that this friend called my family, gathered them, and saved them.”
“If anyone could pull off saving a sector of civilization . . .” David lifted the cup. “Martin could.”
“What’s the plan? You have to have a plan to check this out. Would it be to go to this place in Texas?”
“I’m not in charge, but I would think we have to have a direction. It’s a good place to start. That and finding transportation, because, let’s face it, it would take 66 days to walk to Texas.”
“So that’s what you want to do?”
“What I want to do is go into New York first, see what we can find out. Newspapers, anything we can find. Then look for who might have lived while we’re in route to Texas.”
“Check all our homes?”
“Yep. Then head to Texas to check the time capsule. If no one’s there, I can guarantee, if Martin lived, he left a document, diary, something. That is . . . If there’s anything left of the country outside of New York.”
Lucy closed her eyes.
David moved closer. “We have to think of that.”
Her head lowered. “I have a hard time not thinking about dying if my kids didn’t make it.”
“Lucy, reality check,” David said, using his index finger, lifted her chin. “You survived. For some reason, you survived.”
“But I don’t want to live if they aren’t . . .”
“Stop. Stop. Lucy, as hard as this is to face,” David locked eyes with her. “God forbid if your children are gone, life goes on. So will you. And if I have to hold your hand, not leave your side to ensure that, I will. I will help you through this.”
Lucy’s lip quivered as she watched the seriousness on his face. “What does your gut tell you, David?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“Please. What is your gut telling you?”
David hesitated. “Martin pulled it off. He did. He got families. I believe that.”
“Then I am going to hold on to that.”
“Luce, that’s great that you trust me, but what if . . .”
Lucy shook her head. “I need something to hold on to. I need to be strong, and if this is the only way, if this is my focus, then it will be. If things turn out differently,” she cringed in pain and continued, “I’ll face that bridge then.”
“Like I said, I’ll help you anyway I can to get through this.”
“I know you will. Just . . . just help me find out what happened to my babies, first.” Lucy leaned into him. “Help me find out about my babies.”
Her body leaned more and David took her into his arms, comforting her, saying nothing. Just . . . holding her. And more than he realized, he was already helping her, like he said he would.
COMMANDER’S LOG GAL-024 – 0230 hours
The purpose of the commander’s log is to document the mission of the shuttle for future generations.
At this point in time, I am in doubt if there will even be a future generation.
We returned to earth. Obviously, we hit some sort of warp or were tossed into one, which cascaded us five years into the future.
Earth is not the same. Although, we’ve yet to venture any further than the nonexistent Atlantic Ocean and the cusp of New York City. But from what we have witnessed, I fear what lies ahead.
It appears as if New York lies in the middle of a new desert. How long the de
sert blankets west, I don’t know.
The buildings are still intact, just window damage from what I could see. But we are still at a distance.
There were numerous ships tossed about where the Atlantic Ocean once resided. If a tidal wave overturned the ocean, where is it? West? Gone?
Tomorrow we go into New York to find clues as to what happen. Who knows what answers we will find there?
The fact is we are here. So our purpose should be not only to discover what happened but also find others who may have survived. We need a goal, our own mission, and an agenda to carry it out.
Most of my crew is distraught over the loss of family. Thaddeus Hall has been up to something since a little after 2200 hours. He asked my permission to utilize the shuttle in any means to aid in our journey. I told him to do what he needed to do if it would help. He is focused, but it sounds like he is tearing the damn thing apart.
I spoke with the adamant David Hawk, and he and I are detailing out a plan. He believes and hopes that Martin Burgess has succeeded in preserving civilization down near his Texas institute. Problem with that is, if Burgess succeeded, that was five years ago. Are they still there, have they moved on, or worse?
Tomorrow is day one of our journey and adventure. Hopefully it breeds something less bleak than the world we faced when we arrived.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was a reason he was the ‘Made for TV’ king. Since he was a kid, Thaddeus Hall was able to take what he had within his means and build the oddest contraptions. In his younger days, it was anybody’s guess if they would work. But as he grew older, wiser, usually anything he invented did work.
If he saw it in his mind, Thaddeus could build it. Fast, too.
Thaddeus saw something in his mind.
A barren world lay buried beneath 100 feet of sand. At least there was New York, but to get anywhere, it was going to be a trek.
He started just after ten PM. By three AM he had what he believed he needed. By seven in the morning, he had accomplished his task.
The Last Mile Trilogy Page 41