Broad America: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (End Days Book 3)

by E. E. Isherwood

  She looked out her window, then out his. “Maybe the system threw snow on one side of the desert and rain on this side?”

  “That must be it,” he said without conviction.

  Buck picked up the CB. “This is Buck. Anyone ever see water like this?”

  “It reminds me of the bridges over the Florida Keys,” Sparky replied. “A bridge over endless water.”

  “Is this another one of your changes?” Eve asked when the channel was clear.

  During their brief conversations previously, Buck explained his theory about the blue light. As soon as it passed, he had started to notice odd things. The red light apparently didn’t make things return to normal.

  “Maybe,” he replied.

  “I don’t want it to change again,” Eve remarked matter-of-factly.

  “We’ll be fine,” Beans said dismissively. “Right, Buck?”

  “Yeah,” he said, agreeing with Beans to instill confidence in the others. “We’ve got to push on.”

  They drove the first half hour without incident. Ahead, a grouping of hills rose from the vast stretch of flat water like an island mirage in the morning sunshine. Before the roadway made a turn and started to follow the rise in elevation, it seemed to dip down.

  Ahead, water covered both sides of the highway.

  “This ain’t good. Look.” Buck pointed a couple of miles ahead. A handful of vehicles lined up at the transition between dry road and wet. None of them seemed willing to wade into the water to get across the final mile of road before the incline.

  “I’m glad we’re among the first to see this,” Connie said to him. “At least we didn’t have to wait behind fifty miles of a traffic jam just to see that the road is blocked. Now we can turn around and find an alternate route as fast as possible.” She got busy with the atlas.

  He didn’t want to say anything, but his survival instinct kicked in because of how things looked ahead. As he pulled up to the end of the short line of traffic, he felt confident he could tell Connie what bothered him about it.

  “If there were more cars in line, it would mean the water has been there for a long time. Hell, they might even have blocked the highway back at Wendover. The fact that very few people are here tells me this water only recently started to cross the lanes.”

  “It’s rising?” she asked, concerned.

  “Or we’re sinking,” he said to play devil’s advocate.

  “I’ll find you an alternate.” She flipped pages of the atlas to get to Utah, which was near the back.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he allowed.

  He hated the idea of going backward. It would be almost an hour back to Wendover, the last town, and from there, he had no idea where the backroads would take him. Each hour of delay might not mean much over the course of his trip, but if he got home an hour too late to save Garth, he’d never forgive himself.

  “Then again…”

  CHAPTER 5

  Lewes, Delaware

  “We’ll get some gas at this station up ahead, then we’ll get back on the ferry and go home.”

  “Okay,” Lydia replied, distracted.

  Garth wasn’t pushy, so it took him almost an hour to get his teen friend into the taxi and away from the motel. She had begged him to let her take a warm bath, which was a luxury she’d seldom experienced back home. Then she fell in love with the blow dryer because it dried her long hair in record time. According to her, she had never looked better, although she admitted they didn’t have many mirrors back home, so her comparison was only partly valid.

  In the taxi, he showed her the mirror behind the sun visor, and she stared at herself some more. “Your grooming tools are truly from the future,” she beamed. “I’m practically a woman.”

  No kidding, he thought, trying not to stare.

  He allowed her to indulge herself because he felt bad for her. Getting pulled out of your time and stuck in someone else’s would suck, he assumed, and having no parents or family only rubbed salt into the wound. She had to wonder if anyone from her time missed her. It might be impossible to get her back to where she belonged, but he could deliver a few modern luxuries to soften the blow.

  Then again, everything in the twenty-first century was a modern luxury compared to what she was used to.

  The motel breakfast soaked up the rest of the time. She’d never seen such excess, even in the dumpy little breakfast nook of the motel.

  “I’m pretty now. And pretty stuffed.” She laughed at her joke.

  Garth pulled the car next to the gas pump of the filling station and turned off the motor. “Do you want to come inside or stay here?”

  He wanted her to stay in the car, because of her appearance. She was still dressed like a bumpkin from an olde tyme farm, which was fine, but it did make him nervous that she would stand out.

  “I’ll stay with you, Garth,” she said nervously. “I do not want to be trapped inside this machine.”

  “You won’t be—” he started to say, before relenting. As much as he wanted her to stay, he knew she’d be scared by herself. “That’s great. You come with me, and we’ll go check the place out. We’ll be back on the road in no time.”

  Minutes later, he realized nowhere was going to be an easy in and out with her.

  “Oh, my gosh! Look at all this candy!”

  The older woman at the register smiled as if a couple of suckers had walked into her store. “Welcome! We have whatever you need.”

  Garth had been going into gas stations all his life, and he’d never seen a reaction like that. The joke was on the woman, however, because she had no money to spend.

  “What’s your favorite?” Lydia asked him as they stood in front of a massive display of handmade candies in a glass case. There were chocolates and fruit chews of all shapes and sizes. “I don’t think I could ever pick. We have candy stores back home, but we only have a few choices to make. This place…is like heaven.”

  Garth pointed to the rack of packaged candies. Her eyes brightened when she saw the colors on the packaging. She looked closer to see the pictures.

  “It’s like the best party ever.”

  He tried to see things through her eyes, but it was tough. To him, there was nothing remarkable about the store. Sure, it was filled with candy, bags of chips, and refrigerators for energy drinks and soda, but so was every other store.

  “If we ever get to a Walmart or a Costco, you would shit your—”

  He swung his head to see if she’d heard him, but she was engrossed with a giant Kit Kat bar.

  “You would just die if you saw them.” He walked away, hoping she didn’t hear him swear. He figured it would be impolite to talk like it was him and Sam. Besides, he knew a whole vocabulary of curse words she couldn’t possibly understand.

  “I’m sure,” she said distantly.

  Dad’s bugout bag had four hundred dollars in cash, so he had the money to buy her whatever she wanted, but he began to feel the clock.

  “How about I pick one for you, and the next time you can pick whatever you want? I’m going to get gas and get on the ferry before it leaves.” He didn’t tell her he had no idea when that might be, but the most likely scenario is it would leave a few minutes before they got there, especially if they screwed around for the entire morning.

  “Would you? I can’t see what they are besides what’s on the pictures. I’ll trust you.”

  “Do you like chocolate or sugary hard candies?”

  “I’ve had chocolate a few times,” she said in a dream-like voice. “I really liked it.”

  There was no need to shop around. He grabbed the biggest Hersey chocolate bar they had, then picked up a second one for himself. “You are going to love these, but first we have to take them to the counter and pay.”

  “I understand,” she reassured him.

  “These two, and twenty dollars on Pump Five, please,” he said to the smiling woman at the counter.

  “This is all you could find, sweetie?” she said to Lydia.
<
br />   “It’s what he told me to get,” she answered excitedly.

  “Well,” the clerk huffed, “He sure is a big spender, isn’t he? Two lousy bars.”

  Garth understood by her tone that she wasn’t too happy with what he had picked out, so he tried to head off some of the ill will. “We are buying gas. That’s something, right?”

  “I guess,” the woman replied as he handed her a twenty and a ten.

  She looked at the money, then at him. “License, please.”

  His eyes must have rolled around in his head as he tried to figure out what she meant because it made her even more impatient.

  “I need your ID, son. Big spender like you getting a whole twenty dollars in gas? And you drive a taxi? I’m going to need to see your identification before I can sell gas. You look like you might be a minor.”

  It was his first time buying gasoline, so he wasn’t sure how to act.

  “I don’t have ID,” he replied, before thinking they probably thought he was going to buy cigarettes or beer. Asking young people for ID was probably standard procedure. “I just need a little gas, and this candy.”

  The woman turned her whole attention on him. Her brown hair was tied up in a ponytail, and her blue smock covered a T-shirt with what looked like a rock band on it. The name started with Super, but the smock blocked the rest of the name. “Son, the state of Delaware requires that I don’t sell gas to anyone too young to drive. If you drove your taxi into my station, you have to have the proper ID, right?”

  “Right,” he replied. “Let me go get it.”

  He had no idea what to do next.

  Canberra-to-Sydney train, Australia

  Destiny sat on the stopped train for over an hour while the crew took care of whatever delay or obstruction was up ahead. It wasn’t unheard of for a train to strike an animal, and she assumed that was what it had been, rather than a bush fire.

  She had no interest in mingling with the political jerks in the front of her carriage, so she watched through the window. There wasn’t much to see in the darkness, but eventually, she caught sight of someone walking below her beside the train.

  I have to know what’s going on.

  She got up and headed for the exit from her car. Once she got there and made like she was going to go outside, one of the group finally said something to her.

  “You can’t go out there. You’re supposed to wait until you’re told what to do.”

  She looked at the well-dressed woman and could tell by her tone of voice what she was trying to do, but Destiny’s respect for authority was jaded from working under bad leaders for too long. That was why she preferred working with animals. She opened the door while staring at the woman, then hopped down the three steps without looking back.

  A man stood near the back of the train.

  “Oi! What’s the holdup?” she inquired as politely as she could.

  The lights inside the carriage acted as a dim lantern, allowing her to get a good look at the young man’s face.

  “I’m just a trainee,” he whined. “They said this might happen. It’s been happening.”

  “What are you talking about?” Destiny replied sympathetically. “What did we hit?” She figured he was upset about hitting an animal. In her profession, she’d seen lots of pictures of trains and other vehicles after big animals had splattered all over the windscreen.

  He pointed behind the train. “There’s track back there. See?”

  There was no denying he was right. The moon was only half-full, but it gave her enough light to see the parallel metal rails heading off a kilometer into the night. “I do see tracks, yeah.”

  The man hustled toward the front of the train, so she followed. The engine was only pulling one carriage tonight, so they didn’t have far to go. When they reached the front, the giant spotlight on the nose made it possible to see well ahead of them.

  “And what about this?” he said breathlessly, as if the short jog had been too much for him. “Do you see this?”

  The tracks seemed to stop about fifty meters away. She also saw that the sides of the tracks were choked with trees and vines up ahead, like they’d driven into the edge of a rainforest.

  “It looks like a tree fell. You guys can cut through it, right?” Was it unreasonable to assume a train company would have ways to cut trees if the service line went through a forest?

  The man seemed unnerved. “Will you walk with me?”

  She was touched that he wanted her to go with him, but she couldn’t figure out why.

  “There’s a carriage full of political-types back there. You sure you don’t want one of them to help you? They probably fund this line.” She’d help anyone in need, and the guy seemed innocent enough, but she was wary about walking alone far from the train with him. The politicians were an easy way out for her.

  “You came down first. I didn’t think anyone was going to come outside all night.”

  She tried to keep the moment light. “You could have come in and asked for help.”

  He kicked the rocks. “They said we’re not supposed to bother the passengers.”

  She was glad it was dark, because she rolled her eyes so hard, they banked off her eyelids. The guy was not too keen.

  “Fine.” She exhaled heavily. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You’re a life-saver,” he remarked.

  He took off down the path of light thrown out by the engine’s high beam. It took her a few paces to catch up to him, but the guy didn’t slow down until they reached what turned out to be the end of the rail.

  She saw what had him shaken.

  “How the fuck did you know this was here?” she asked.

  “Safety systems, miss. I stomped on the brakes as soon as the warning came on. I had to come out here to see what it was, but then I didn’t know what to do.”

  Ahead, where the train was supposed to cross a steep ravine about twenty meters wide, there was nothing. No tracks. No bridge. Just a rocky crag.

  “The bridge is gone,” she said, amazed.

  “And the tracks. There should be tracks on the other side, but there’s nothing over there besides trees. How is that possible?”

  Destiny was aware of all the changes taking place around her. Ever since the blue light had sent her running from her campsite, nothing had been normal with the world. Faith said SNAKE had time all messed up. If Tasmanian Tigers could come back from the past, then perhaps the land itself was restoring things to how they were before humans got too involved in reshaping things. If it snuffed out a bridge or the Sydney Opera house at the same time, then so be it.

  She stood in silence, absorbing what it meant to see the change taking place so close to her.

  Do we have time, or don’t we? she thought. I need to get hold of Faith.

  Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

  “This may be crazy,” Buck said into the CB radio, “but stick with me.”

  Buck turned the wheel to the left and guided his Peterbilt into the breakdown lane next to the median. The emergency shoulder gave him room to pass the two lanes of stopped traffic. There were only about ten cars lined up ahead of him, so there wasn’t far to go.

  Connie braced herself on the front dash like he was going to try to flip the truck over. “What are you doing, Buck? There’s water ahead.”

  He laughed. “I know that, Connie, and thanks for noticing. I figured you’d like to go for a swim.” Buck revved the motor to tease her.

  “I have to admit, I’m a little worried,” she replied, sounding nervous for real.

  “Trust me,” he said in a soothing tone. “I’d never do anything to panic you, but I’m not willing to turn around until I have no other choice.” He pointed at the long stretch of water ahead. “Look at the perspective of the highway as it goes into the lake. It can’t be very deep.”

  “But no one else is going in,” she responded.

  That was true, but most of them were cars. They sat lower to the ground and from their point of vi
ew, it was more difficult to see where the pavement went. As he neared, the white and yellow lines under the water were distinct and clear.

  He keyed the mic. “This is Buck Rogers. I’m going in.”

  When his tires first hit the water, he held his breath.

  The yellow line wasn’t visible the whole way.

  CHAPTER 6

  Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado

  Faith banged on Dr. Donald Perkins’ door and prayed he opened it for her. He was her mentor, but he had also become a close friend. Recently, he wasn’t getting around as well as he had been, but his mind remained sharp. He often served as a sounding board for her ideas.

  “Come in!” a weak voice replied from inside.

  She went in, and was shocked to see that he appeared worse than the day before. He looked like he was now over a hundred years old, with ghost-white skin and sagging cheeks. Someone had given him a wheelchair, which completed the effect.

  “I’m not going to say it,” she exclaimed when she got close to him. The previous day she’d lied to him and told him that he looked fine. He hadn’t believed it yesterday, and he would not believe it today.

  “Don’t listen to anyone who tells you these are the golden years, Faith. Life was golden when I could walk without a cane. It was a treat when I wasn’t in constant pain.” He coughed three or four times in a row. “And it was especially golden when my heart wasn’t failing.”

  “Why is this happening to you?” Two days ago, before the Izanagi Project had shut them down, he’d been a spry old guy who was always cracking jokes and having fun. Now he would fit right in on a brochure for hospice care.

  “It’s because I’m lucky,” he said in an expressionless voice.

  His delivery threw her off-guard, and it took a few seconds to recognize he was joking.

  “I was lucky to live to see what’s been going on in your collider, Faith. Thanks for sending me the data last night.” He pointed to his laptop on the coffee table. “I’ve been looking at it between naps.”