by Akart, Bobby
And the noise. The city that never sleeps was also the city that was never quiet. A never-ending supply of taxi cabs, tourist buses, and emergency vehicles created a cacophony of sounds that would make anyone batshit crazy if there wasn’t a means of escaping it.
Central Park had always been one of those places for Bart to get away from the madness. That was where he’d met Jesse.
Bart was seventeen and readying for his senior year in high school. He was a good-looking teen, mature, and acted much older than he was. He was not quite an adult, as his birthday was next month.
But the widow Mrs. Jesse Santore was an adult. She, too, enjoyed Central Park. It had been her escape outlet from an obnoxious, overbearing husband and a mistake of a relationship. While he pounded vodka martinis and caroused with his young secretaries, she remained a prisoner of an intolerable marriage in their condo located on the seventh floor of 455 Central Park West. Then, one day, by accident, fate, act of God, or divine intervention, her husband had the big one—a massive heart attack that took his life right on the living room floor of their condo.
Jesse watched in horror (lie) as her husband fought for his life. She immediately called 911 (also a lie, it took several hours and a bottle of Moet for the piece of crap to die). When the paramedics finally fought through the city traffic to lend assistance, her dearly departed (lie) had passed.
Mrs. Jesse Santore fought back the tears during the wake and funeral (lie). In the estate attorney’s office, she cried tears of remorse (lie) as she accepted the millions of dollars and the condo that he left her in his will. She vowed to remain true to her husband and forsake all others until she too departed this Earth (a whopper of a lie).
Jesse took up jogging. Central Park was alive with interesting people of all ages. They were fit, energetic, and new. Everything the so-called dearly departed was not. Starved for love, the widow Jesse Santore became a sexual predator of sorts.
She wanted to relive her glory days of high school when everything was still in all the right places and teenage boys hungered for the opportunity to have a go at her. She wanted to experience that lust, passion, and excitement that a sexual tryst could give her.
One day several weeks ago, Jesse took up running in Central Park. As she replayed in her head a sexy scene from a novel she’d been reading, she spied the long, muscular legs of Bart Patterson off in the distance.
She picked up the pace as her adrenaline kicked in. She studied his gait and admired him from behind as he ran effortlessly in front of her. Her heart raced, and her feet moved faster so she could catch her mark. He would be her first.
That day, the two of them ran and laughed and talked and did all the things that she could never do with her deceased husband. Including, well, those things. After the run, they walked back to the condos together and she invited him in for a protein shake. The next thing she knew, her world was shaken with a seventeen-year-old boy. Just like the novel said it would.
The two of them enjoyed the summer together, and whenever possible, without the prying eyes of Bart’s parents scrutinizing his activities, or the nosy sister, they hooked up. Today was one of those days.
Under the tree-lined canopy of the asphalt trail that meandered around the perimeter of Central Park, they found one another and enjoyed a passionate kiss. Jesse spent a moment engaging Godiva, but as had been the case from the beginning, the usually amiable chocolate Labrador had no interest in being her friend. On this day, he seemed inordinately hostile.
The trio made the loop, and before they returned to their condo, they stopped near the North Woods of Central Park to drop Godiva off to play with the other dogs. This was Jesse and Bart’s favorite part of their exercise together. This was their spot.
For several minutes, they watched Godiva’s interaction with the other dogs. As soon as they were comfortable, and he was occupied, they slipped off to a maintenance shed nearby. It was a time for their sweaty bodies to become reacquainted. It was invigorating and risky. The prospect of getting caught naked together made the sex that much more desirable for the widow Jesse Santore and her twenty-year-younger conquest.
While they were tucked away, oblivious to the outside world, coupling, something was changing in Central Park. You see, dogs were man’s best friend, until they weren’t.
Chapter 32
Central Park
New York City
While Bart and Jesse leaned against a workbench, enjoying their after-sex moment, a surreptitious crowd was gathering outside the maintenance shed. The sounds of drizzle on the tin roof of the structure turned to the occasional droplets falling off the oak trees that surrounded it. The clouds gave way to sun, and the humidity immediately turned the windowless shed into a sauna. Sweat produced by their jog, and doubled by their romp in the shed, now poured out of them as the heat became stifling.
Bart didn’t bother putting his rain gear back on, opting instead to emerge first from the shed in his gym shorts and tank top. His intention was to give a quick look around, as he’d done in the past, and then relay to Jesse that the proverbial coast was clear for her to leave as well.
This time, the coast was anything but clear.
Greeting him outside the shed was Godiva and his pals from the park. Now, to be sure, the chocolate Lab was the sweetest, most loving companion a family could want. Around the condo, he didn’t walk but, rather, he moseyed about the residence in a playful swagger, one that indicated his level of happiness since being rescued years ago. Always curious and attentive when his human family was around, his ears would prick up, his brown eyes would brighten, and he would gently nuzzle anyone interested in the attention.
Now Godiva stared at Bart, teeth bared and murder in his eyes. Eyes that were staring down the couple as they stood holding one another.
“What’s wrong with Godiva?” she whispered as she squeezed his sweaty arms.
“I don’t know,” he replied. Bart moved Jesse behind him and stepped toward Godiva. The Lab’s lips snarled further, exposing gums and all of his teeth. “Godiva, come here, please.”
Bart knelt down and smiled—his shiny white teeth meant to exude friendship to Godiva. It had the opposite effect.
Godiva lunged in his direction and began to bark relentlessly. Bart pushed backwards and fell down, frightened by the dog’s reaction. Godiva sensed weakness.
He lunged again and then bolted toward Bart, who curled up in a ball and wrapped his arms around his head for protection. It was unnecessary, for the moment.
Godiva leapt over his master and sank his jaws into Jesse’s forearm. She and the maniacal dog rolled backwards before crashing into the shed. Jesse tried to scream for help, but only silence was emitted from her mouth. Eyes wide, she saw Godiva’s powerful jaws close on her throat and latch on. His sharp canines performed as intended, reflecting their meat-eating evolutionary history.
With the first bite, he broke the skin and drew blood. Then he drew back to examine his work, and lunged at her again, severing her carotid artery. Jesse was still alive as he bit off her chin.
Bart was frozen in shock, unable to help his lover escape the deadly attack from the Lab that slept with him in bed at night. Finally, he found his voice.
“Godiva, no! Help! Anyone?”
Help arrived, but it wasn’t what Bart expected. It was more of the dogs—as large as a Rottweiler and as small as the foo-foo dogs he ridiculed. All of them joined in the festivities. Godiva never turned around, as he continued snapping, growling, and tearing at Jesse’s lifeless body.
Bart was now surrounded by a canine attack squad, who stared hungrily at his wet flesh. His mouth was agape as he tried to count the dogs that were easing their way toward him. He looked into their eyes—glazed over with anger. Weird in a Cujo sort of way.
In unison, they began to growl. Their jowls flapped against their teeth, spittle percolating in the back of their throats, and long strands of drool dripping toward the ground.
First, the hundred-ten
-pound Rottweiler crouched, coiled back, the fur bristling high and stiff as steel wool on the back of his neck. He joined the chorus of growls, his deep, gravelly voice distinct from the others.
Evil. Menacing. Primal.
Bart was in denial. What in the hell? This can’t be happening.
It happened.
The Rottweiler shuddered slightly, curled into his hind legs, and let out a string of bloodcurdling threatening barks. He sounded like the junkyard guard dogs that were fed raw meat and the occasional intruder to survive.
In a rage, the Rottweiler launched himself into the air, unleashing a rapid succession of loud, throaty barks that sounded like WAR-WAR-WAR-WAR!
Perhaps it was.
War, that is. But this battle was over in seconds.
Like his companion and new best friend Godiva, the Rottweiler went straight for the jugular, as his ancestors’ DNA taught him to do. Bart never had a chance.
The rest of Godiva’s army joined the fray. They gnashed and gnawed until the two lovers’ bodies were unrecognizable. Even the sirens of approaching NYPD cops and animal control didn’t stop the feeding frenzy.
The last words any of the animals could comprehend, if in their supernatural, crazed state they could even hear, were the words of the head of the K-9 unit at the Central Park Precinct who’d arrived on the scene.
“Blast them to kibbles and bits!”
It took nearly a hundred rounds from the shotgun-certified officers’ Mossberg 590s to stop the carnage. For now, anyway.
Chapter 33
Icelandair Flight 542
Reykjavik to Paris
Chapman settled into the spacious first-class seat of the Boeing 757-300 Winglet aircraft as it lifted off from Reykjavik, Iceland, for the three-and-a-half-hour nonstop flight to Paris. He would arrive at Charles de Gaulle Airport around midnight, giving him another night of sleep before attending the World Climate Change Conference the next day.
He’d recovered emotionally from yesterday’s ordeal at ZERO. Within minutes after the choppers set down from Thule Air Base, the snowmobile patrol arrived from SQUIRE. Both teams of responders had medics, who checked his wounds and administered antibiotics to prevent an infection. After several reminders of how lucky he was to be alive, and a gentle questioning about the events, he was escorted back to Nuuk, where he gave another recap of the events to the administrative team at the Greenland Climate Research Centre.
The troubling aspect of his last night in Greenland was the nightmares. At first, he tossed and turned, replaying every moment of his trip to ZERO. Sometimes, the attack took place in slow motion, every single detail playing out over and over. This was when he slept. However, when he awoke with night sweats, the entire hour of his time on the ground at ZERO swept through his mind in lightning-fast speed. His mind exhibited evidence of post-traumatic stress.
He chose to self-medicate at three in the morning, raiding the minibar for two mini-bottles of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of Icelandic Glacial water. The bourbon, while not his preferred Knob Creek, calmed him, and then he slept hard until his wake-up call.
After taking a short flight from Nuuk to Reykjavik, he prepared for the longer trek across the North Atlantic to Paris on Icelandair. The flight attendant offered him a drink and he generously accepted. He was anxious to get settled into his window seat and dive into Dr. Pruitt’s journals. He’d resisted the urge the night before, knowing that once he got started, he was likely to stay up all night.
He’d argued twice with his executive producer, both yesterday evening and this morning while he waited in Reykjavik for his connecting flight. Certainly, they were concerned for his well-being and offered to send someone else to cover the climatology conference.
Chapman, as was typical, downplayed his injuries and the emotional impact the attack had on him. After vehemently insisting that he was mentally and physically capable of continuing his trip, they gave him the green light and once again upgraded him to first class. He was beginning to sense a pattern with TWC. If he put himself in mortal danger, he could score a seat upgrade. It was a button he didn’t want to push too often.
The plane kicked its heels and took off, zipping out over the North Atlantic as it ascended to its cruising altitude. Chapman ordered another drink and retrieved the journals from his backpack. Before he opened them, he felt the well-worn leather. Dr. Pruitt had dedicated his life to his work, and he obviously cherished these journals. He could only imagine where they’d been and how often they’d been opened for him to make an entry. He took a deep breath and got started.
The first one dated back to 1989, nearly forty years ago. The first few entries related to Dr. James Hansen’s comments before Congress on the subject of man-made global warming. Dr. Pruitt’s handwriting was a combination of scrawled penmanship and printed text. His technique of making notes was unique. His thoughts were written in cursive. His to-do checklist was written in block text. And question marks dotted every page.
Chapman pulled out his laptop and began a new entry in his own electronic journal, marked Pruitt. As he examined the journals, he created a set of questions and to-do list items, also in the block text, italics format. Subconsciously, he was channeling Dr. Pruitt.
Almost three hours later, his head was spinning at Dr. Pruitt’s hypothesis and the scientific revelations upon which they were based. Chapman rolled his head and neck around his shoulders to relieve some tension. He’d unknowingly typed a dozen pages of notes as he furiously flipped through the journals’ pages, during which time he’d hardly come up for air.
He leaned back against the first-class seat, allowing the leather to envelop him. High above the clouds, Chapman noticed a bright, luminous glow entering the cabin from the east. Other passengers began to press their faces against the 757’s porthole-sized windows. The onboard chatter rose to a crescendo as a dragon-like aurora revealed itself above the clouds laid out beneath it like a bed of cotton. The beautiful hues of blue and green intermixed with a white glow dominated the sky as the flight banked to the south toward Paris. The ghostly glow swayed left and then slowly to the right, undulating above the clouds to create the shape of a dragon rising.
Chapman hadn’t taken the time to check sunspot activity because the Sun had been in a prolonged minimum for nearly a decade. A solar minimum was a period of low solar activity that usually ran around eleven years. During this time, sunspots and solar flares diminished and often didn’t occur for weeks at a time. Solar cycles still occurred during these minimums, but at a lower intensity than usual.
The sun was a seething mass of activity, until it wasn’t. That didn’t mean the sun became dull or uneventful during this period of relative calm. It meant the solar activity simply changed its form. During solar minimums, the coronal holes, vast regions in the sun’s atmosphere where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows streams of solar particles to escape as fast solar wind, actually become more long-lived.
Streams of solar wind flowing from these massive coronal holes can have a significant impact on Earth’s magnetic field. These effects include disturbances in the Earth’s magnetosphere, the area surrounding the planet that protects the atmosphere from this damaging solar wind. Without the magnetic field, the Earth would look like Mars.
Dead.
When the solar particles interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere, a geomagnetic storm, or geostorm, can occur. The solar wind shock wave interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field and, depending upon the size and intensity, spreads across vast regions of the planet. Geostorms can cause elaborate aurora to form in the northern latitudes and have a profound impact on electronics.
Chapman was deep in thought. He’d realized things were developing quickly, just like Dr. Pruitt’s notes revealed in his journals. This phenomenon, a scientific aberration, was real, taking hold, and catching the world off guard. The more Chapman learned, the more concerned he became. But there were still far more questions than answers. He closed his laptop and
tapped his thumb on the top, trying to make sense of it all. His thoughts were interrupted by a conversation he overheard in the seat row behind him.
“The color is magical. What is that, Dad?” asked a young girl of maybe seven or eight years old.
Her father was quick to respond, “Honey, those are the northern lights.”
Chapman closed his eyes and sighed.
There’s just one problem. They’re looking due east.
Chapter 34
Paris, France
It had been years since Chapman had traveled to Paris. Charles de Gaulle Airport was as manic as ever, and the taxi drivers were surly toward Americans just as always. He was glad to see that nothing had changed. At least he knew what to expect, unlike his previous stops in Seattle and Greenland.
It was well after midnight, and when Chapman stepped out of the airport to hail a cab, he was shocked by a chill in the air. He’d been sent to Paris to report on the unusual heat wave, with a secondary story on the climate conference. The chilled air was certainly unexpected, but perhaps there might be a story in the abrupt drop in temperatures.
In the taxi, he asked the driver about the sudden chill. He looked into the rearview mirror and shrugged.
“C’est la vie, c’est le temps?” He made no attempt to respond in English.
Chapman understood the first phrase, which commonly meant whatcha gonna do back on the farm. He assumed temps referred to the weather.
TWC’s in-house travel agent had booked him a room at a hotel that was walking distance from the Paris Le Bourget conference center. It was pedestrian, but clean and quiet. Just what the doctor would’ve ordered, had he seen one.
The day of the conference, Chapman woke up refreshed, but sore from head to toe. Wrestling a polar bear on a sheet of ice will do that to you. After showering, he redressed the wound on his leg and then ironed his pinpoint oxford dress shirt. In order to comply with the conference’s dress code, he couldn’t wear his customary khaki pants and Land’s End ensemble. He put on a light gray suit, but no tie, and made his way outside.