“You’ve done a remarkable job, sir. You have every reason to be proud.”
Carpenter entered C Block. The Com Center boasted the best equipment his money could buy, all of it state-of-the-art, complete with satellite linkups and GPS. A large screen was flagged with dots, one for every person Carpenter had selected. “Many of them have a long way to come.”
“We estimate a 97 percent success ratio,” Becca Levy reported. “Provided that most of them are clear of the major population centers before the missiles start to fly.”
“What’s the latest on the war front?”
“The United States has responded to the nuking of its Mediterranean Task Force with strategic nuclear strikes against two Middle Eastern countries. China has denounced that as an act of war. Chinese and North Korean forces have been mobilized.”
Carpenter sadly shook his head. “It’s only a matter of time before one of our cities is taken out. That will be the beginning of the end.”
“Not for us,” Becca said. “You’ve stocked enough provisions to last a thousand years. The Blocks are reinforced to withstand everything except a direct nuclear strike. We’re not near any city or prospective military target. We’ll be just fine.”
“You don’t understand, Ms. Levy. Yes, I expect we’ll survive. That’s the whole point behind the millions I’ve invested in this project. But what then?”
“Sir?”
“The world as we know it is about to come to an end. My experts inform me that the mix of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons will wreak havoc with our planet.”
“Need I remind you, sir, that the world survived all those test bombs and the bombs that were dropped on Japan?”
“This time there won’t be a dozen nuclear explosions over twenty years. There might be hundreds, and all that radiation will interact with the chemical and biological agents, with unforeseen results. Mutations will be the norm, not the exception. Creatures and conditions we can’t begin to imagine.”
“You make it sound like nothing will ever be the same again.”
“It won’t.”
Philadelphia
“I don’t want trouble,” Soren Anderson said while easing his right hand around his tool belt.
The five gangstas spread out. Four held knives. The fifth had a blackjack. The tall one crouched and came toward Soren, who balanced on the balls of his feet.
“Give us the keys, man. Don’t make us do you.”
“I can’t. I have a family. I must get to them.” Soren’s fingers closed on the handle of his ball-peen hammer. “Leave me be or I’ll hurt you.”
“Can’t count, can you, sucker?”
The tall one nodded at two others. They came at Soren in a rush. He waited until the last possible instant, until the quicker of the pair thrust a blade at him. Then, sidestepping, Soren whipped his hammer out and around. He was a big man and it was a big hammer. It weighed three pounds; the head alone was thirty-six ounces. Drop-forged and heat-treated, it made for a formidable weapon.
Soren caught the gangsta on the temple. There was a crunch of bone yielding to metal and the youth dropped at Soren’s feet, convulsing violently.
The second gangsta barely slowed. Swearing viciously, he lunged at Soren’s groin. He was so focused on Soren that he tripped over his fallen friend. Before he could recover, Soren swept the hammer against his skull.
The remaining three stood rooted in disbelief. Then the tall one snarled, “Get him, yo!”
All three came at Soren at once.
Backpedaling, Soren swung the ball-peen hammer from side to side to keep them at bay. They weren’t eager to share the fate of their friends and held back. But it was only a matter of time before one of them would bloody his blade. They knew it, and Soren knew it. Which was why Soren did what he did. He charged them.
They were caught flat-footed. Only the tall one turned to flee. Soren clipped one and sent him reeling, then smashed another in the face and dropped him in his tracks. A couple of long bounds and he caught up to the tall one, who shrieked and thrust his knife at Soren’s throat. A flick of Soren’s other hand, and he had hold of the gangsta’s wrist.
“You should have let me go, boy.”
“Please, mister!”
Soren swung a last time. He stood with his chest heaving, more from excitement than the exertion, and regarded the blood and gore smeared on the hammer. “So this is what it feels like.”
The wail of a siren reminded Soren where he was. He ran to his pickup, unlocked the door, and climbed in. He set the hammer on the seat beside him. Gunning the engine, he made for the exit. The construction site bordered Seventh Street. He turned right, intending to get to 676 and take it west to 76. The first intersection he came to was South Street.
Slamming on his brakes, Soren gaped. Vehicles were bumper to bumper and door to door. People were cursing, shouting, shaking fists. A policeman was trying to get traffic moving again, but all of his whistle blowing and arm waving was in vain.
Soren shifted into reverse. No cars were behind him yet and he didn’t want to be boxed in. Placing his arm across the top of the seat, he twisted and backed up until he came to an alley. Wheeling the pickup bed into it, he spun the steering wheel and drove in the other direction.
Soren did some fast thinking. Based on what he had seen from atop the skyscraper and just now, Philly’s major arteries were a mess. It would take forever to get out of the city. His best bet, he reasoned, was to stick to side streets and alleys.
For over an hour that was what he did. Finally he made it onto 676. Traffic was at a snail’s pace. Fuming with frustration, he crawled toward the expressway. His frustration was compounded by worry for his family. Eight times he tried to call his wife. Eight times he got a busy signal.
Soren merged onto 76. He was able to go fifty now, which was still too slow to suit him. He got out his phone, pressed a button, and nearly whooped with happiness when at long last it rang at the other end.
“Hello?”
“Toril!” Soren tingled with relief. He envisioned her golden hair, the lake blue of her eyes, the body he knew almost as well as he knew his own. “Are you and the kids all right? I’ve been trying to get through.”
“My mother called. I couldn’t get her off. She’s scared, Soren. Very scared. She says military convoys have been going by all day.”
Soren’s mother-in-law lived outside of Harrisburg on a hill overlooking Interstate 81.
“The National Guard is being mobilized. There’s talk of sending more troops to the Middle East.”
“That has her scared?”
“She heard on the radio that gas and food will be rationed. And that the Chinese or the Russians have a new biological weapon they’re threatening to use if we don’t recall our forces already deployed.”
“Which is it?”
“What?”
“The Chinese or the Russians.”
“She couldn’t remember.”
Soren smothered a sigh. He liked his mother-in-law. She was a dear lady. But she’d had Toril late in life—at age forty—and now the old woman was pushing eighty and her faculties were impaired. Which was putting it delicately.
“Soren, I’ve heard gunfire.”
“Shots? Where?”
“Not far off. Freya is scared to go outside. Magni wants to, but I won’t let him. I have them both down in the basement.” Toril paused. “Soren, what is going on? The news makes it sound like the country is falling apart.”
The worry in her voice was an icy fist around Soren’s heart. “I’m on my way. Get down in the basement with the kids, bolt the door, and stay there until I get home.”
“How long will that be?” Toril asked anxiously.
“I wish I could say.” Soren had more he wanted to tell her but a dial tone filled his ear. He punched his home number and got another busy signal. Figuring that his wife was trying to call him, he hung up and waited. His phone didn’t beep. He let several minutes go by, then im
patiently tried her again. Yet another busy signal.
Soren almost threw his phone out the window. When he needed it most, modern technology failed him. He supposed he should be grateful he had gotten through at all. He’d read about something called an EMP effect, and that if a nuclear weapon was detonated at high altitude over the center of the United States, an electromagnetic pulse would wipe out electronic equipment from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
Soren prayed that wouldn’t happen. If the panic was bad now, he couldn’t imagine how bad it would become if every phone and computer in the country were suddenly useless.
The driver of the car in front of him applied its brakes. Soren did the same. Beyond the car was a long line of stalled vehicles. A traffic jam, he speculated. He hated this. He needed to be with his family.
A secondary road paralleled 76 on his side of the highway. Hardly any vehicles were using it. But to reach it, he’d have to go over a cement barrier, down an embankment, and up the other side. He thought of the money he had invested in having the pickup body jacked up and in buying the largest tires it could handle. Spinning the wheel, he nosed up to the barrier. Someone shouted and a horn blared but he ignored them. His front tires made contact, and he braked. Then, mentally crossing his fingers, he gunned the 367-horse power Vortec Max 6.OL V8 engine. The front of his pickup leaped skyward, and for a few awful seconds he thought the truck would flip over. He bounced so hard, the seat belt dug into his gut. Then it was the rear end that tilted toward the sky, and a moment later he was roaring down the embankment. He slewed up onto the road and turned west.
“Honey, here I come,” Soren said out loud.
Phoenix
Shock riveted Professor Diana Trevor to the wing of her plane. But only until Harry Pierce’s fingers closed on her throat and his other hand grabbed at her keys.
Diana reacted without thinking. She raked her hand down Pierce’s face, drawing blood with her nails. He shrieked and jerked his head back, and she kicked him where kicking a man always did the most good.
Gurgling and sputtering, Harry sat down hard on his backside on the tarmac and clutched himself.
“What the hell was that?” Diana snapped.
Red in the face and shuddering from pain, Harry rasped, “I told you I need to get to Kansas City.”
“And I told you that’s too far out of my way.” Diana turned to her cockpit. “If you’re still sitting there after I’ve turned her over, I’ll run right over you. I swear to God.”
The last she saw of him, he was hobbling stiff-legged toward the hangar.
Diana busied herself with the preflight checklist. She removed the control wheel lock and turned the master switch on. She checked the fuel. She turned the lights on and off. She moved the flaps and the ailerons. She climbed back out of the cockpit, took off the rudder gust lock, and removed the tail tie-down. She didn’t have time to do a complete empennage check but she did go to the nose and made sure the air intakes were open.
Presently, Diana was strapped in and ready. She tried to raise the tower but no one responded. “What on earth is going on?” she asked the empty air, then decided she wouldn’t wait around twiddling her thumbs.
What she was about to do was against all the rules, but Diana didn’t care. She needed to reach the compound, and she would do what ever it took to get there.
Another five minutes found her on the runway ready for takeoff. She slowly advanced the throttle and just as slowly pulled back on the yoke. Her nose climbed, her wheels lifted, and she was airborne.
She was tempted to circle the city, but every minute was crucial. The missiles might fly while she was in the air, and even if she wasn’t near an impact zone, an EMP or concussive ripple might knock her out of the air.
At seven thousand feet Diana leveled off. She listened to the radio for a while. It was confusion times ten. A near-hysterical announcer declared that the West Coast had been attacked, but he didn’t say where or by whom and the signal gave way to static. Another said that federal resources had been strained to the point of collapse. A parson on a religious station intoned that the end times were upon them.
Diana realized her palms were sweating and wiped them on her pants. She had a long flight ahead of her. She put the plane on autopi lot. Then she opened her briefcase and took out a laptop and a disc marked Endworld. She got the computer running and inserted the disc. Scrolling down the contents screen, she clicked on a file labeled Correspondence w/ Carpenter. A list of letters, e-mails and dates appeared. She clicked on the letter she wanted.
Dr. Trevor,
It is with the greatest satisfaction that I can inform you of the results of your screening. You have passed the physical and background check with impressive scores. I feel you will make a most worthy addition to the enterprise I am undertaking.
You posed a few questions when last we talked on the phone. I didn’t have the time to go as deeply into detail as I would have liked, so now I’ll remedy that.
The idea for a survivalist retreat first came to me seven years ago. There have always been wars and rumors of wars. Despite the global conflicts that took such terrible tolls in lives lost, I became convinced the worst was yet to come. A proverbial “war to end all wars,” as it were. To put it more frankly, I became so cynical as to not put any stupidity past the human race—and that included another world war.
With me to think is to act. So I put into motion the plan that has resulted in the compound you visited, and my grand scheme to salvage something worthwhile from the ruin of modern civilization.
I’m not boasting when I state that I’ve amassed a considerable fortune from my movies. I used some of it on research and development of what I came to call the Endworld Protocol. I needed to find an isolated spot as far from military and civilian targets as feasible. The property near Lake Bronson State Park is ideal.
Construction of the compound came next, and I don’t need to tell you how costly that proved. I refused to skimp. The concrete bunkers—the Blocks, as I call them—are architectural marvels. Each is a self-contained survival habitat. Barring a direct strike, they should withstand any calamity to come.
Next was the step that proved most daunting: finding those I’d invite to come live in my new Eden once war broke out. I consulted experts in every field. It was at this phase that I came into contact with you, principally due to your studies in the field of dominance as it involves human personalities and societal interaction.
That was when another idea occurred to me. The brave new world I envisioned demanded a brave new type of person to adapt and thrive. The key, as I saw it, was to find people who embody that dominant factor you have written and lectured about. Imagine, if you will, a group where the ratio isn’t one in twenty—but a group where everyone is a dominant personality. Some would call that an invitation to friction and disaster. I believe it will result in a group dynamic that will enable us to perform beyond all expectations.
This is where the test you have developed for identifying dominant personalities will prove invaluable.
There was more but Diana went back to the list, scrolled down farther, and clicked on an e-mail. She was particularly interested in certain paragraphs.
You expressed amusement when I told you some of the finer details of exactly what I have planned. “Hokey,” I think, was the word you used, although to your credit you smiled when you said it.
But remember, we’re dealing with a gathering of dominant personalities. By their very nature, they tend to be highly in de pen dent. They tend to do as they please and resist authority. We need a common bond for them to share, a sense of belonging that will knit them into a seamless whole.
The keys, as I see it, are the two basic building blocks of every social structure. Without them, few societies, few governments, last. For those I’ve invited to the compound to mesh as well as I want them to, they must be convinced of a commonality they share. That common thread is brotherhood.
I know, I know. You’l
l say I’m too much of an idealist. You’ll say I’m not being practical. But I respectfully submit that unless we learn to work together as individuals, we won’t survive as a group.
Diana would have read more, but the proximity alarm sounded. Startled, she looked up.
Another plane was on a collision course with hers.
Seattle
Ben Thompson could hardly believe it. The radio announcer was saying there were unconfirmed reports of a nuclear strike on San Diego. There were also sightings of enemy submarines off the West Coast. Add to that word from Canada that a large enemy force had pushed through Alaska into northern British Columbia, and it explained why Seattle had gone nuts.
The streets were a mad house. Guns popped and crackled. Screams pierced the air. Smoke spiraled toward storm clouds gathering overhead.
Ben hadn’t counted on anything like this. But when he gave his word, he kept it. When he took a contract, he saw the contract through. Accordingly, when he came to the end of the block near the ware house, he braked and opened his duffel bag. His babies lay on top.
When he had gotten his honorable discharge from the Marines, one of the first things he had done was buy a pair of Colt Double Eagles customized with nickel plating and wood grips instead of rubber. He was old school, and he liked the feel of wood under his fingers.
Ben took the pistols out of his duffel and placed them on the seat. A pair of clips was next. Then a box of .45 ACP ammo. With practiced skill he quickly fed cartridges into each magazine, then slapped a mag into each of the Double Eagles. He chambered rounds. Setting one pistol next to him, he wedged the other under his belt.
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