Without Warning

by Darrell Maloney

  From a brush-covered hillside overlooking the train yard, Cyndee and Derek saw the two men climb down from the catwalk and start walking alongside the train.

  They’d been doing a lot of research on the internet of late and knew they’d be getting underway soon.

  They started making their way through the brush, knowing this would be their best bet to catch an eastbound freight. By the time the big train started to roll, they’d be a good half-mile east of the yard.

  Far enough away to be able to climb aboard unobserved, but close enough to steal a ride before the train got up to speed and was moving too fast to grab onto.

  They moved pretty quickly to a place they’d picked out a couple of days before: a wide curve

  They figured that by staying on the outside of the curve they could walk right up to the train and climb aboard before it came out of the curve and sped up on the straight track.

  They’d watched at least a dozen other trains departing over the same curve and noticed the engineers always leaned out of the left side of their locos, watching the inside of the curve, and pretty much ignored the outside.

  “I guess that by watching the inside they can see the whole train instead of just part of it,” Jared observed.

  They had their plan, and they had their location.

  The only other thing they needed were their provisions.

  For that Jared overstuffed two large backpacks with food, bottled water and snacks.

  Cyndee brought a third pack which was mostly filled with personal items and the stuffed bear she’d had since she was seven.

  He was well worn and was covered with stitches and patches.

  But he was also well loved and simply could not be left behind.

  His name, appropriately, was Barry. He had a wide patch on his behind where the fake fur was all worn off.

  Jared asked Cyndee what she was going to do about Barry’s “bald spot.”

  She replied she was going to take a pen and write “Nevada” on it as soon as their train rolled into the Silver State. Then she’d add each new state as they went through.

  “Maybe by the time we come back to California Barry will have all fifty states tattooed on his butt.”

  “You may have to settle for forty nine, baby. I doubt the train goes to Hawaii.”

  They enjoyed her silliness until the time came for them to jump their first freight train.

  “Are you ready?” Jared asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied.

  And off they went.

  **************************

  Thank you for reading

  Nowhere Book 1:

  WITHOUT WARNING

  Please enjoy this preview of the next installment in the series,

  Nowhere Book 2:

  A NATION UNDER SIEGE

  **************************

  He didn’t know what in heck was going on. But when PacNorthwest Control calls for a full stop out in the middle of the Nevada desert, it must be something big.

  And what PacNorthwest Control asks for, PacNorthwest Control gets.

  Pronto.

  Jordan pulled the throttles all the way back from notch 4 and shifted the big locomotive into neutral, or the idle position. The big loco had been gaining speed and didn’t like it when the human behind the controls impeded her progress. There was a lurch as the number two loco behind him took up the slack.

  Thompson was sleeping on the job back there, as usual. But he wouldn’t be for long. When the number two locomotive started howling from the extra burden it was suddenly dragging it would wake him up or pierce his eardrums.

  Maybe both.

  A second later the screech subsided.

  Thompson must have awakened and throttled down.

  Jordan hoped he had an earache for days.

  He applied the brakes.

  With four locomotives and one hundred seven cars, at least half of them double stacked with intermodal sea-land containers, it would take more than a mile to stop.

  And they were only cruising at thirty two miles an hour.

  Yes, what PacNorthwest Control wants, PacNorthwest Control gets.

  But it doesn’t happen quickly.

  These babies don’t stop on a dime.

  Jordan was on the two-way now, calling for the pushers: the two additional locomotives at the end of the train, taking some of the workload off the number one and number two locos by pushing the train along.

  “Damien, back off. Throttle down and start braking.”

  “We have been. It’s gonna take awhile to bring this puppy to a stop. What in heck are we stopping for, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, man. I guess they don’t have to explain anything to us peons. Just crack that whip, bark some orders, and we salute them and say yes sir, boss.”

  “Actually, that’s okay with me, as long as that boss don’t forget to sign my paycheck on his way to the country club. What’s our speed?”

  “Twenty one, and dropping.”

  Chase, looking out the starboard engineer’s window, froze. His jaw dropped.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Jordan turned and checked to see what Chase was looking at.

  His face went ghostly white.

  “Holy crap. I can’t be seeing this. No way!”

  “Just like in the movies.”

  It was eerie.

  As though seeing the mushroom cloud wasn’t bad enough. Seeing it from eighty miles away, in total silence… it was absolutely spooky.

  “This can’t be happening. It just can’t.”

  Jordan was back on the two-way.

  “Damien, are you seeing that?”

  “Holy shit, Batman! What direction are we heading?”

  Jordan checked the compass heading.

  “Almost due east.”

  “Holy crap. That’s gotta be Las Vegas. They’ve nuked Las Vegas? You’ve got to be kidding me! I’ve got cousins there!”

  Chase muttered under his breath.

  “Not anymore, buddy. Not anymore.”

  Then his words became a bit more frantic.

  “Hey, those old movies. From when they were doing atomic tests in the desert back in World War II… wasn’t there always like a big shock wave after the explosion?”

  “You’re right. A blast wave. Holy crap, you guys. Find something to hang on to. If you’re in your seats buckle up. This might get ugly.”

  The next two minutes were dead silent, except for Jordan reciting the 91st Psalm under his breath.

  Chase, in turn, started reciting the 23rd Psalm, in a near whisper: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

  That was as far as he got. The only part he knew.

  Chase was a good guy. But not a godly person.

  Those two minutes seemed like a lifetime. The crew didn’t know if they were going to live or die. They didn’t know if the blast wave would pass over them harmlessly or would pick up the General Electric Dash-8 locomotives and toss them through the air like tinker toys.

  As it happened, they needn’t have worried. The blast wave which rolled out in front of the nuclear explosion that took out Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada petered out long before it reached the train.

  All they felt was a rather prolonged passing breeze.

  Damien came over the two-way.

  “Um… guys? Don’t leave us in the dark back here please. Kindly tell us what’s going on.”

  Jordan’s voice cracked. His hands were shaking. He’d just looked death in the face and was still just short of terrified.

  “I don’t know, man. Control just came over Sadie and said to brake hard and hold our position until further instructions.”

  “That’s all they said?”

  Jordan yelled into the microphone.

  “Didn’t I just say that? That’s all they said. Get off my back!”

  “Sorry, man.”

  “No, I’m sorry… I just… I’m sorry, man. But that’s all
they said.”

  Sadie was the nickname the crew had given to their satellite radio. It was the only way to communicate with their control center in the great expanse of the American west.

  “So now what do we do?” Amy asked in a broken and squeaky voice.

  Amy was in loco number four, driving in reverse and the last of the one hundred eleven cars in the train.

  “We wait,” Jordan said. “We do what we were told. We sit out here and we await further instructions.”

  “Where are we, exactly?” Amy asked.

  “We are exactly… out in the middle of frickin’ nowhere.”

  **************************

  Nowhere Book 2:

  A NATION UNDER SIEGE

  will be available at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, Hastings Books, and more than two dozen on line book stores in December, 2019.

  **************************

  If you enjoyed

  Nowhere Book1:

  WITHOUT WARNING

  you might also enjoy

  ALONE Book 1:

  Facing Armageddon

  Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases and had planned for everything.

  It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.

  Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.

  Dave was suddenly alone.

  He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.

  Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?

  This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.

  It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.

  From the author of best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.

  Chapter 1:

  Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.

  Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles rather than rainclouds and foreboding.

  Finally, he’d had enough.

  “Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.

  “I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”

  Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.

  “Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”

  “Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”

  “Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”

  The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”

  Dave coughed. At first he had no words.

  Then he found some, and stated the obvious.

  “Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”

  “Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”

  Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

  “Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”

  Two heads nodded up and down behind her.

  “But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”

  Little Beth made a gagging sound.

  “Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”

  “Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”

  Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.

  In other words, he played right into Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.

  “Okay, here goes.”

  Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.

  It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been Name That Tune champions in another era.

  All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

  Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.

  “Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”

  Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”

  Dave scoffed.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet. Why?”

  “That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet.”

  It was too much for Lindsey.

  “Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”

  She turned to her little sister.

  “Do we have to teach these old people everything?”

  Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.

  Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.

  “Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”

  “No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”

  “I wish you could come with us.”

  “I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Karen get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”

  “Bet I will!”

  Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.

  It was as if he could read her mind.

  “We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.

  He held Sarah close and told her he loved her.

  Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”

  Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”

  Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.

  ALONE, Book 1:

  Facing Armageddon
>
  is available now on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, selected Hastings book stores, and at other fine booksellers.

  Here are some fun facts about the

  Yellowstone Caldera:

  - It’s a real thing. It really does exist

  - It’s a super volcano simmering just beneath the surface of Yellowstone National Park

  - It has erupted in the past, and will erupt again

  - Scientists believe that when it erupts again it will destroy 20 percent of the United States

  - You do NOT want to be in that 20 percent

  *************************

  Please enjoy this preview of

  Darrell Maloney’s new series

  The Yellowstone Event, Book 1:

  FIRE IN THE SKY

  The Yellowstone Event series is now available at Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers. Here’s a preview:

  *************************

  “Come on! What do you have to lose?” she cried gleefully as she dragged Tony by his arm through the carnival midway.

  “Um… how about ten bucks?”

  “I’ll give you a kiss.”

  “I’d rather keep the ten bucks.”

  “Excuse me, mister?”

  He stopped and held her, then laughed.

  “I’ll tell you what, Hannah. You give me just one good reason why I should throw away good money on a fortune teller. If you can give me just one good reason, I’ll give in to your silly demands. But it’ll still cost you a kiss.”

  “And what if I don’t have a good reason? What if I’m just a silly girl who wants to find out once and for all whether you’ve been telling me the truth about marrying me someday?”

  “Oh, so that’s what this is all about. You’re gonna make me pay ten of my hard-earned dollars just to hear some old gypsy fortune teller say what I’ve been telling you all along? That hurts. It really does.”

  “What hurts?”