He’d tested that advice with the visitor ringing the bell back at Sam’s house.
“You are talking about your phone?” She pointed to his pants pocket.
“Yes, and he also said ten times out of ten, those people will run away before you get to the phone because they are scammers and jagoffs.”
“Jagoffs? I like that.”
“It’s not polite. I don’t think we’re supposed to use it.”
She smiled, and he thought she was going to push him to explain it. He was glad she didn’t. His dad used the word a lot, and he thought he knew where it came from, but he wasn’t sure he could explain it. He wondered if bad words were similar in the 1840s.
“Let’s get the can and walk to find a gas station. With a little luck, we can be back here before anyone comes home.”
His dilemma was what to do with the stuff in the trunk. If he got out and hid the guns, anyone laying low inside the house would see him and maybe go snoop for them. If he left them in the car, he took a risk that someone would happen along and break in.
“I’m happy to walk with you, though I prefer the comfort of this.” She patted the leather seat.
“Me too. Once we get some gas, we can make good time and get far away. Maybe all the way to my house.”
“I would like that. At least one of us can reach home.”
He heard the anguish in her voice, even though she probably hadn’t intended to reveal those feelings. She was as far from home as anyone could be.
Garth reached over and patted her shoulder to console her. “One step at a time. Gas is what we need now, so let’s go get it, okay?”
She smiled, but her watery green eyes betrayed her deeper feelings.
“Come on,” he insisted with as light a touch as possible.
“I’m coming,” she replied with resolve.
He dropped the keys in his pocket but didn’t bother locking the car. One window was permanently open, so there was no way to secure it. Speed was his best defense, and it was also the reason he opted to leave the gun case in the trunk. Someone could be hiding inside, or someone could accidentally come down the drive, as he’d done.
It was a roll of the dice either way.
“Garth, I understand your words, but I also saw them refuse to sell you this gas you need. Why are they going to sell it to you just because of a little red container?”
He smiled because he’d been thinking through that very problem.
“Come on, and I’ll show you.”
Ramstein Air Base, Germany
“Gentlemen, welcome to the Fox.”
Phil strode up to the six-wheeled armored vehicle with the other men in the unit. He carried a regulation M4 rifle and all the mags he could stuff in a pack. While he loaded up on gear, he’d also found a set of clean BDUs, so he felt like a proper soldier again. He transferred his rank tab and his hook and loop shoulder patches but could do nothing about the name tape. He hoped the group didn’t think of him as Sargent, the unfortunate name attached by the uniform’s previous owner.
Ethan spoke like a used car salesman. “The Mercedes-Benz V-8 liquid-cooled diesel can spit out 320 horsepower without sneezing. This ugly monster was upgraded with the Military Operations in Urban Terrain or MOUT package. Reinforced hull. Spall liner. Everything to keep your privates safe from external hazards.”
The multicolored camouflage paint and its battered appearance made it look as if it had recently come back from duty in a dense forest.
One of the soldiers leaned against the hull. “This is a fine piece, sir, but why are we driving German armor and not a good ol’ Stryker? Doesn’t this mission rate a Bradley with a twenty-five-mike-mike bolted on top?”
The other colonel slapped the hull of the German-engineered armored vehicle. “Guys, I’ll be straight up with you. The US Army is in full-on bug-out mode. They’re heading for home.”
“Sir?”
“Anything not bolted down is making its way to Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg to get on a boat. They’re cycling everyone stateside, including us when we wrap up this mission. We were lucky to get this thing from the Germans, although you’ve already noticed it doesn’t have any external armaments.”
Phil raised his hand, and Ethan nodded to him. “We have to make time on paved roads. A Bradley would be fine for any mission except highway driving. This hideous thing will get us there as fast as possible.”
The others nodded but were unsure of the mission.
“Plus,” Phil added, “the seats are comfortable.” He had trained with one during a joint military exercise.
Ethan pulled at the rear door, and it sprang open like a jaw. The bottom half flipped down to become a ramp with steps, and the top half became an overhead shield.
“Stop your bitching. This is what we’ve got. We’re going to drive south, punch across the Swiss border at Basel, then see what’s shaking in Geneva. This is Task Force Blue 7. We’ve got an important mission to accomplish, and we’ll do it in a Yugo if we have to. Understood?”
“Hooah!” they said in near-unison.
“Load up, monkey asses, and let’s get this over with.”
Phil climbed in. It was like walking into a dank cave because of the cramped quarters and humidity trapped inside. The passenger compartment contained two rows of five front-facing seats, with two additional seats up front for the driver and navigator. He sat at the front of the passenger compartment next to Ethan and settled in.
One of the enlisted sealed the back door.
Two seconds later, guys started coughing like they were dying.
Holy shit! he thought. The Fox was outfitted with nuclear, biological and chemical-scrubbing hardware, but maybe the hardware had failed?
Phil spun around to find the guys laughing.
“Jackson just shit his pants, sir. We’re going to need the air filters kicked on high.”
He smelled it, too, coughing once and covering his face with a sleeve.
“It’s going to be a long six hours,” he said under his breath.
Little America, Wyoming
Buck and the others ran for their rigs, but the lot was huge, so it took a little time to get to his. Faster runners made it to their vehicles and started them up while he and Connie were climbing aboard his Peterbilt. Some a-holes in sportscars screeched their tires and left in white clouds of smoke like it was the start of a race.
The instant panic caused by the radio announcement was irrational and unwarranted, and he told himself not to get caught up in it, but the sight of other people running to get away sparked his own flight response. The threat of death could drive men into Mad Max territory, and it was dangerous to be around that mentality for too long. His books about the end of the world had taught him everything he needed to know on the point.
Once he was behind the wheel, he took a long, slow breath.
“Think, Buck,” he said quietly. “Don’t fucking panic.”
Connie laughed nervously. “I didn’t think you knew how to panic.”
“I’m not, yet,” he assured her, “but people here are wound up tighter than a drum. Everyone is looking for answers, but there aren’t any. They fill information voids with the worst things they can imagine.” He gestured out the window as the big diesel warmed up, then ruffled Mac’s ears. Connie gave Mac an ear massage as well. They smiled at each other. “But not us. We know where we’re going.”
“So, what are we going to do?” she asked.
“Not what everyone else is doing,” he declared.
He picked up the CB microphone. “Guys, follow me. We’re not going into that mess.”
“We’re on you like glue,” Sparky replied a second later.
The other trucks and cars scattered like roaches in the sunlight, all desperate to get back on the interstate, but he didn’t turn right on the outer road and drive the quarter-mile toward the interchange with everyone else. There was a four-way stop sign in front of the motel destined to catch everyone in a huge c
luster-fuck of delay.
To Connie, he clearly stated he knew what he was doing. “We’re going to cut a new path.”
He drove off the parking lot and went into the grass at the edge of the highway.
“Holy shit, Buck, you can’t ignore traffic laws,” Beans complained.
“Just follow the guy,” Sparky barked. “He knows what he’s doing.”
We hope, Buck thought.
The ground was pancake-flat in all directions. There was a slight rise where the concrete lanes had been poured, but it was simple to drive over the grass and cross over the pair of westbound lanes. There were no cars coming from the east.
After a quick glance back to ensure that his friends were tagging along, he looked forward and planned how to traverse the scrub-grass median. The sixty feet between the lanes dipped lower than the pavement, so there was a minor tip-over risk if he hit it at an angle, but the larger threat was bogging down in the loose dirt and rock if he slowed or stopped.
“Hang on, guys,” he said to his cab mates. His faithful dog sat in front of Connie’s seat, facing her like an attentive student. She used both of her legs to steady him while she grabbed the truck’s “oh shit” bar on the glove box with both hands.
The Peterbilt’s nose dipped as they left the westbound lanes and went into the gravel. Buck goosed the motor and shifted like he meant it.
She looked out her window. “Buck! Cars!”
It wasn’t random highway traffic. He’d done a cursory glance to make sure the roadway was clear before he left the grass of the truck stop. “Are you sure?”
“They’re coming onto the highway right now!”
He hadn’t expected the fleeing cars from the truck stop to have reached the highway yet, but he had misjudged their determination and speed. Several sports cars raced off the ramp and jockeyed for positions in both of the eastbound lanes.
For a few seconds, he thought he’d made a huge mistake by rushing into the no man’s land between eastbound and westbound sides, but he wasn’t going to end his journey stuck in the gravel.
“They’ll move for us,” he reasoned. “The law of gross tonnage is on our side.”
Buck angled the truck across the median and aimed for the breakdown lane at the leftmost side of the highway. He hoped the incline onto the pavement wasn’t steep enough to tip over his load. Over the years, he’d been off-camber more times than he cared to admit, and every close call had taught him more about the limits his trailers could handle. This time, he thought it would be within tolerances. He hoped.
A bright red Dodge Hellcat roared by, its driver hidden behind privacy glass. The speeding sports car swerved and missed his front right tire by only a few feet.
“Good night!” Connie exclaimed.
The Peterbilt hopped onto the highway in the breakdown lane and it came up at a diagonal, so the entire trailer swayed on the fifth-wheel behind him.
“Hang on,” he begged his payload of chili.
The left side mirror filled with dust as the rocks and dirt of the median rolled off his eighteen wheels. Three other rigs came out of the haze moments later, duplicating his maneuver.
“Fuck, yeah!” he shouted.
After merging into a proper lane, he picked up the mic. “That was great driving, guys. We saved half an hour or more not sitting in the traffic jam.”
Truck stops were notorious bottlenecks, and he’d spent his share of time getting in and out of them. The sports cars had made it to open road first because they got in front of the traffic snarl. He made it out second because he skipped the jam altogether. He watched the tach as he accelerated, smoothly gliding through the gears. He had every intention of running wide open as long as there were cars passing him to keep the Highway Patrol busy.
Connie rubbed Mac’s ears but glanced at Buck. “I was joking when I said I could drive your truck. There is no way I could have performed your escape maneuver.”
He laughed cautiously. “That was what we Marines call a high risk, high reward maneuver. I should have waited with everyone else, but a half-hour could become two hours could become a whole day. Garth is somewhere out there, and sitting in a traffic jam burning our precious diesel doesn’t get us any closer.”
A dozen cars cruised past them as he merged into the right lane where he could resume his normal cruising speed of seventy-five. Once all the dust cleared and he got a good look at his convoy, he realized they were one short.
“Beans?” he called out. “Where you at?”
“He’s not behind me,” Sparky reported. “I thought he was.”
“This is Beans. Sorry, guys, I’m in the mobile parking lot.” He laughed. “You did a good job going around it. I’ll be here for an hour. Some dickhead t-boned a pig-hauler. It’s a fucking mess.”
“You going to catch up?” Buck asked with reservation in his voice.
“Nah. I can’t follow you; driving in water was more than I was comfortable doing. Going for broke over the median was one step too far. If the world is going to shit, I’m headed back to SoCal. I’ve got to get to my family.”
He wanted to say it was only a rumor and no nation on earth would really use nukes, or that the effects of the blue light couldn’t stop any of them if they stuck together, but he couldn’t deny the guy an opportunity to get to his family. It was what Buck was doing.
“All right, man,” Buck replied. “Take care of yourself. Thanks for riding along while you did.”
Everyone else said their goodbyes, then Beans was gone.
“It looks like I’ve lost one,” he said to Connie, wincing at his own words.
“That’s some serious bullshit right there!” she stated in no uncertain terms. “You didn’t lose anything. An adult made an adult’s choice. You have your truck, your dog, and me. Maybe you can be droopy-faced if you lose one of us, but until then, you’re doing what you need to do, and they’re following. You are this much closer to your son. Look back there.” She pointed to his side mirror. “There aren’t any trucks on the highway but us. They’re all stuck on that lot. Your instinct was right on the money.”
“This time it was,” he said in a more cheerful tone. “But I need to talk to Garth now more than ever. This country is spiraling out of control.”
She reached for his phone, while he thought about what to say.
CHAPTER 12
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith worked with Sun and Bob down in the tunnel for a couple hours. She talked briefly with the NORAD scientists and asked if they could cut into one of the Four Arrows boxes, but they claimed General Smith had advised against it.
She wasn’t in the mood to go begging to him again, so she focused on her laptop and the data generated by Bob and Sun’s research efforts.
“Guys, let’s assume what Bob said is true. The cabinets on both ends are linked via quantum entanglement. Why do you think the energy from inside this box jumped to one of the others? Why didn’t it turn off? To me, it suggests there isn’t a one-to-one relationship between the boxes on each end.”
“Right,” Bob replied. “If the energy was relegated to a certain container, it should have shut off instantly when the box was removed. The fact that it moved to another one would suggest what you say is true.”
“Can we assume, then, that shutting down additional boxes will not stop the flow completely?” It was the working theory she had expressed earlier.
“We can’t disprove that,” Sun said in her quiet voice.
Faith took a deep breath, not sure how her theory would be taken. “I believe the Four Arrows were designed to ensure the energy joined between the two colliders, but they aren’t necessary to continue the relationship.”
Bob’s face was riddled with question-marks and his brow furrowed above his nose.
“Hear me out,” she went on. “I believe the first box showed us the way out of this mess, but not for the reason the general and his people th
ink. While it is true we tracked the energy flow increasing at the other boxes, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever if there is entanglement between the containers themselves.”
“Faith, I know what they told me. I saw the readings between both sites when it was active for those few seconds before the telemetry went bust. There were four links. Four arrows, just like it says in the name.”
Her experience with particle physics ran deep and wide, as anyone in charge of the world’s most sophisticated piece of hardware would need. However, most of the past few days had been spent in damage control mode after having her project usurped by another group. Now that she had time to look at the data and think, she came back into her element.
“It might not matter if we turn off the other boxes. That’s what I think.”
“But Faith, didn’t you beg the general not to turn any of them off?” he asked. “Are you now saying your caution was for nothing?”
“I wouldn’t yank them at the same time like Smith was going to do, but we know more now than we did yesterday.” She let out a fatalistic chuckle. “I’ve said it before: everything we do here reveals more data, no matter how we get it. Kind of like peeling back the onion. Maybe it worked out for the best that he turned one off, because Sun’s data collection revealed this to us.”
She typed in a few things on her keyboard, then turned the screen so they could see it. A sophisticated graph appeared on the screen, with what a bystander would see as a tube drawn at a forty-five-degree angle. One open end was about twice as wide as the other, making it look like a traffic cone with an open top.
“You’ve drawn SNAKE on one end and CERN on the other,” Sun acknowledged.
Faith painstakingly mapped the data onto the graphing program. It required a black box in the middle, since she didn’t know the nature of the dark energy well enough to represent its effects. Instead, she was forced to guess, based on observed results on her end of the equation.
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