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

by E. E. Isherwood

  “No! I’m sorry. I wasn’t asking you to ‘fess up. I was only wondering…oh, forget it. It doesn’t matter. This taxi was already stolen when I got it. I’ll tell you the story sometime when we are safe. I have no intention of stealing. I have money, but I have to find someone who will take it.”

  Garth began to hash through a plan. He drove them around the small town of Lewes, with its three gas stations, but soon came to the conclusion it was too small to have larger stores. Rather than admit he didn’t know what to do, he pulled into a small parking lot, turned off the car, and pretended to plan his next move.

  He fiddled with his phone, hoping to get internet. That would allow him to search for a store close to his location. He tried to get his mapping app to come up, and it seemed like it was going to open a few different times, but then it paused for several minutes before saying the link failed. Minutes went by, then a half-hour.

  After the frustration of technology failures, he decided a text to his dad couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t a surrender; it was using the resources at his command. If Dad had access to the internet, he could look up an address and tell him where to go.

  When he punched in his message and hit Send, he got a “network is down” warning.

  Eventually, Lydia got tired of waiting.

  “Are we lost?” she said, cutting to the quick.

  “Sort of,” he admitted. “I don’t have enough gas to drive around and look for the right store. It has to be somewhere that sells gas cans. I, uh, have no idea where to find a place that does.”

  “Well,” she replied with enthusiasm for the challenge, “when Pa and I went into town, we always looked for the biggest, cleanest road. That was always the one that had the important buildings on it.”

  He looked around. “There’s only one long road in this town. It goes from the ferry landing to who-knows-where in that direction.” Garth pointed into the woods beyond the small town. “I’ve been thinking about driving out there to look around since I parked here, but what if we run out of gas before we get anywhere?”

  She giggled. “We walk, silly. What else would you do?”

  Call AAA?

  She’d dispelled his indecision. They wouldn’t get anywhere if they didn’t take a few risks, and they couldn’t be that far from the next town.

  “Buckle up,” he advised. “We’re rolling.”

  Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah

  “Connie!” Buck screamed out his open window.

  He reacted on adrenaline-fueled instinct. He smashed the emergency brake down, flew out his door, and hopped down into the water.

  “Connie!” he shouted again.

  She was ahead, flailing in the churning water.

  Buck did knee kicks to speed himself through the thigh-high water, and he arrived at the commotion expecting to dive in, but Connie’s head was already in the clear. The look on her face was pure embarrassment.

  He was breathless. “Are you okay?”

  “Buck, I’m sorry. I stepped into a pothole and fell, then I guess I freaked out.”

  “But you are good?” In the few moments he’d lost sight of her, he had experienced a range of emotions, many of which caught him in the feels. “I thought I’d lost you.”

  She stood up, unsteady at first, and he took her hand. A tan shape paddled up to her at the same instant.

  “Mac! Oh, thank you.” She reached down and hugged the swimming Golden. “But I’m fine. Your daddy mistook me for a drowning woman.”

  He gave Mac a wet pat on the head. Garth couldn’t have asked for a better dog.

  “I should probably mention I can’t swim,” she continued. “In fact, you probably already figured out I’m afraid of water.”

  He laughed it off, happy to be having a conversation at all. He didn’t think it was possible for her to drown in such shallow water, but he’d heard of people drowning in bathtubs, so he didn’t take it for granted.

  “Let’s get you and Mac back to the truck. You’ve gotten us far enough.”

  “No!” she declared. “Let me finish the mission.”

  Mac still trod water, so he wanted to make sure he was good. “Mac, go back to the truck. Go!” He pointed to his idling big rig.

  The pup looked at him, then at Connie, perhaps hoping one of them would pick him up, but then he dog-paddled his way back to the truck.

  She held one of his hands with both of hers. “Buck, go back with him. I need to get this done.”

  His attitude softened. “You don’t have to. I’m sure I can drive in a straight line to the dry road ahead.” He gestured with an open hand to show how close they were to the other side of the new lake. “And you don’t have to prove anything to me. You’ve got a spot on the team.”

  She beamed. “Thanks, really, but after all I’ve been through, I need to feel useful. I want to prove to myself that I can beat a little water.”

  It was the perfect moment to lean in and kiss her, but someone in his convoy chose that moment to blow their air horn. The obnoxious noise pulled him kicking and screaming back to reality.

  “I’d better get behind the wheel. I have to dry Mac off. He’s probably going to make a mess of your seat.”

  Connie laughed. “He’s already in the window.”

  They both looked back. His happy face smiled at them from Connie’s side, and his tail wagged furiously in the background. They couldn’t see it moving, but his head tilted from one side to the other as it did when his tail went full throttle.

  “Damn, he’s fast,” he said under his breath.

  “Okay, get out of here,” she advised. “The natives are restless.” She let go of his hand and turned toward the near shore.

  “And all I have to do is watch out for this pothole.” She felt around with her foot, then took a big step over it.

  Buck followed his guide for the next ten minutes as he slowly drove through the last section of water. It did get a little deeper, but it never went above Connie’s waist, which was his cutoff. When she got about twenty yards from the dry road ahead, she began to walk out of the water like she was going up a boat ramp.

  Several minutes later, the convoy was across the water obstacle and parked in a line. All five of them, plus a drying Connie and Mac, held a celebratory meeting by the water’s edge.

  “No one was ballsy enough to follow us,” Sparky announced.

  “I think the water is rising,” Connie added. She wrapped herself in one of Buck’s blue showering towels, her red hair hanging limply on her head.

  Beans motioned to Connie. “We didn’t know you fell in or I wouldn’t have sat on the horn. I was screwing around. Didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “It’s no problem. I panicked. There’s no way around it. Next time I’ll know before I write myself off as drowned. Besides, he would have rescued me. That seems to be his role in my life.” She pointed to Buck.

  “This guy helped,” he said, deferring to Mac. He was off the leash and running around in the median, probably looking for rabbits.

  “I filmed the whole thing, Buck,” Eve said matter-of-factly. “I’m going to use this for my company’s recruiting videos. This is the kind of shit drivers do when they work for us. In fact, if you want to join a new employer…”

  “I’ve already got a boss, and neither he nor the owner of my cargo would be happy to know what I just did.” He laughed. “But really, you guys did the hard part. You followed me in, and you,” he directed everyone to Connie, “made sure it was successful. That’s what I call a team effort.”

  Monsignor snickered. “Buck, I was watching for your trailer to go under. Then I’d know we were beat. I’m glad it worked out, but there was a time I could have sworn my trailer started to float. Some nice Mormon family might have had a nice Christmas present wash ashore. Twenty-eight pallets of potato chips!”

  A few of the others argued back and forth about how far a trailer would float, but Buck’s mind wasn’t following them. He hadn’t considered the weight differentials i
n the other trailers. His was filled to the brim with cans of chili. Some of the other trucks were probably a lot lighter. He was lucky that hadn’t bitten him in the ass. He reminded himself to take everyone’s situation into account.

  Cars and trucks had gathered on his side of the lake and would soon turn around and create traffic for his convoy. He wanted to get out of there.

  “Okay, folks, we got over one hurdle, but we still have thousands of miles to go. I propose we head out and find the next problem.”

  “May this be the last,” Eve suggested.

  “Amen,” Connie replied.

  Buck took one quick glance back at the lake. Cars and trucks stacked up now at the far edge of the water, unwilling or unable to follow him and his friends. Some vehicles crossed the median and drove away. If his people had been a little later, they might have been stuck in the traffic over there instead of pushing forward.

  Garth, don’t do stupid shit like your old man.

  They got on the road for Salt Lake City, and it wasn’t long before they saw a giant plume of smoke rising from one section of the city.

  “Well, we had our five minutes of peace,” he joked.

  CHAPTER 8

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

  Faith felt like a pinball for all the running she did between the general and her team, with side stops to places like Donald’s room. However, when she went back to see General Smith again, he wasn’t in his office. There was no one there.

  “Maybe I could take back my desk,” she mused.

  She went over to the window and immediately saw the man’s uniform as he directed his troops on the parking lot like a traffic cop. For a short time, she deliberated whether to go down there. Was it important enough to risk herself on the outside, or should she wait for him to come back in?

  “Screw it,” she declared.

  Faith went downstairs and onto the patio, but she ran into a pair of uniformed guards.

  “Miss, we can’t let you pass through here,” one of the men said in a stern voice.

  “We’re prisoners?” She knew the general was adamant that her team be protected, but she somehow assumed she had the run of the place and if she wanted to sneak out, she could. But she’d clearly been mistaken.

  I could take the tram and escape through one of the fire exits.

  “General’s orders,” he replied as if it solved the impasse.

  “General Smith!” she shouted. He was on the lot, but not that far away.

  She waved when he turned around.

  “I need a moment!” Faith waved him over.

  She looked at the guard. “We’ll see what happens, won’t we?”

  The general talked to a few more soldiers, and for a few seconds she thought she was going to have to eat her gloating words, but eventually, General Smith headed her way.

  When he got near, he shushed her before she said a word.

  Together, they went into the foyer of SNAKE. When they were inside, and the glass doors were closed, he spoke with his hand partway over his mouth. “The media is using directional mics to record everything I say. I need to be careful.”

  “Why were you out there in the first place?” she asked.

  “Shorthanded,” he said dryly. “Every man and woman has a job to do in holding the mob back until more troops arrive.” He took a step closer. “If they knew how few guards were in this place, the crowd would probably swarm us. Some of them are outright pissed at your facility.”

  “Well, it’s all the news talks about. Is it any wonder the public is up in our grille?”

  “No, and this is what I told you would happen. We’re becoming a bigger target every hour. I might have to put us on lockdown until further notice, Faith. You understand why?”

  She fought the urge to complain because he was her only shield against the outside. It scared her to the core to think there were people who wanted to destroy SNAKE simply to prove a point. There was only one person who was more worried about it than her.

  “I do, General, and thank you.”

  “I have to get back out there,” he replied.

  “Wait. There is one more thing—the reason I came out here instead of waiting. General, you have to send someone to CERN. My team believes that is the only way we’re ever going to have a solid foundation for what our team needs to do at SNAKE. I know I said I was going to call someone there, and I did try, but no one picked up the phone.”

  “It sounds like everyone is dead,” he said without emotion.

  “Possibly, but my team seems united in their stance that CERN is still broadcasting the energy going into those devices. General, you have to send someone to Geneva, so we know one hundred percent whether their facility is still there. If it is, we need to determine if they are still feeding power through the supercollider’s ring.”

  “You would have made a good general,” he replied, “because you and I think a lot alike. The minute you mentioned those blue lights were linked to CERN, I sent a request to the European command asking them to go look at the lab in Switzerland. They should know more by the end of today.”

  “Are they flying? Can’t you get an Air Force jet to go over the lab? Verify if it is damaged? We really need to know as soon as humanly possible.”

  The general ran out of patience as she watched.

  “Faith, that is outside my area of operations, so it would have taken time to bounce planes between the major commands. It was a lot easier to send a small recon team in a wheeled truck. We should have eyes on the ground in about six hours.”

  “Six hours,” she repeated with disappointment.

  “It’s the best I can do. Most of our existing air assets have been diverted to bringing our boys and girls back home. Bases are being evacuated around the world.”

  “Really? I mean, I know it’s serious, but I guess I have to ask. Why now?”

  “I can’t say. The President of the United States gave the order. I presume my Commander-in-Chief has better intel than I do. At best, I would expect it to take weeks to bring them all home, but the process is underway. The resulting chaos has made it hard to assign units to side missions like this gamble in Geneva.”

  “It isn’t a gamble,” she complained. “Knowing what happened to CERN is crucial to our plan to fix things. Sir, we have to know.”

  He turned at a loud noise out on the parking lot.

  “Car backfire,” he said dryly.

  “How do you know it wasn’t a gunshot?”

  “Lots of experience.” He started to leave but turned to her again. “Faith, my men will get to CERN and report back. I’ve managed to track down a small unit of specialist Army boys who can get this done. I’ve made it clear how important this is to me, and to the President. They’re on it.”

  She looked down at her watch and spoke gravely. “I guess we’ll know the fate of the world in six hours.”

  He nodded seriously, then walked away.

  I-80, Salt Lake City, Utah

  Riding the ribbon of interstate through Salt Lake City was nerve-wracking for Buck. He kept the speed at seventy-five, but warily eyed the southern region of the sprawl. Several square blocks of suburban homes burned in one part of the city, and the giant plume of smoke rose to the sky and blotted out the morning sun.

  “Could you turn the air conditioner down? I’m freezing,” Connie asked.

  It took Buck a moment to comprehend that she was talking to him. She’d wrapped herself in his shower towel, but it was now drenched.

  “Oh. Right. You’re soaked. My rig has dual climate zones. You can dial back the air conditioner over there if you’d like.” Buck pointed to the controls for it.

  His jeans and shoes were soaked, too, but he relished the chill. Summer had come back with a vengeance after the snowstorm the previous day. The truck’s outside temperature indicator was stuck at 103 degrees Fahrenheit.

  “Why didn’t you say so?” she snarked.


  He was glad to avoid watching the smoky scene outside, and he kept the speed steady with the other fast-moving traffic. It was as if everyone wanted to get through and out of the city.

  I’m glad I still have her.

  While she fiddled with the controls, he thought back to the moment he had almost kissed her. That brought up thoughts about what her life was like back in 2003.

  “So,” he drawled, “I have to ask…”

  “Yeah?” she replied when he took a bit too long to say it.

  “Are you seeing anyone?”

  She laughed a little. “You mean in my time? No.”

  “You have a son. Are you married?”

  Connie laughed some more. “Getting it all out on the table, are you?”

  “No. Well, sorry. I’m not good at this stuff. If you disappear and go back to your own time, I don’t want to complicate things. I also don’t want to get my hopes up.”

  She turned from him and spent some time looking out her window. Salt Lake City was a broad, flat expanse of buildings and houses with a giant mountain range behind it. He had done a few drop-and-hooks there over the years, and the wide streets and friendly people always made him want to go back.

  After a long pause, she finally replied. “My husband and I split a long time ago. Right after Philip was born. He was in the service—the Navy—and was out on deployments more often than he was home. I was able to handle it, but he confessed to some infidelities in some of his ports of call. We tried counseling for the sake of our son, but one time he went out on his tour and never came back. I got the papers in the mail.”

  “Ouch. What a fuckstick!”

  She glanced at him. At first, he thought he’d put his foot in his mouth, but then she smirked. “Yeah. That’s right. He was a big fuckstick.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help the cussing. I’ve tried to tone it down, especially around my son, but after fifteen years, it is still a work in progress.”