“When will you know?” he replied.
“No idea. We’ve never had something like this happen before. They’ll probably have to call every plane of ours currently airborne and ensure they are where they should be.”
Sam stepped up. “Why is this so hard? That plane had to be on the radar, or whatever, with a little number by it. How could something crash in front of your tower and nobody knows who it was?”
The woman turned on the empathy. “I’m so sorry, you guys. We really are trying to answer that question for you. If the airport doesn’t tell us all very soon, we will be swamped with questions like yours.” She touched Sam’s arm, then recoiled a tiny bit. “I, uh, promise you we’ll know soon.”
“Thanks,” Sam replied. “I know. I stink.”
The woman’s smile was uncertain, but her professional demeanor came roaring back. “Why don’t you two stand right over there and we’ll let you know the second we do, okay?”
That seemed reasonable.
He poked Sam in the ribs. “That time, she thought you were the one who filled your drawers.”
They laughed together, but it was forced.
Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station, Pennsylvania
Carl hurried to the end of the corridor and went outside into the heat and humidity of central Pennsylvania. It was a shortcut that saved him a few seconds as opposed to walking the winding hallways. He sped up when he heard shouting from the containment safety office ahead of him.
He burst through the swinging door, expecting trouble, but when he charged into the classroom-sized office, he encountered nothing but cool air.
“What the hell? Pete? You here?” He first checked the safety inspector’s phone attached to the leftmost wall; the detached handset twirled near the floor at the end of the spiral cord. His eyes were drawn downward toward a pair of feet sticking out from behind a desk.
Carl pawed his radiation badge. It remained silent on his breast pocket.
After a few moments of indecision, he ran over to the boots, sure it had to be Pete. Right as he turned the corner on the desk, his badge chirped.
“Fuck!”
He took a few steps back but managed to get a better view of the downed man. He was face up with closed eyes, and there was no movement in his chest. Carl’s first thought was heart attack, which might also explain Pete’s crazy talk on the phone. However, the other guy’s rad badge told a different story.
Pete and the safety guys had a different style of badge than the audible electronic versions plant operators like Carl used. Pete’s was the older photographic film type. Pennsylvania Power probably figured there were so many sensors around the plant that it didn’t pay to suit up guys like Pete with the more sensitive, and expensive, version of radiation badges. If the badge was white, you were safe. If it darkened, there was radiation in the area.
He leaned in to confirm what he thought he spotted on the dead man’s chest.
The badge’s film was solid black.
Seven
Wollemi National Park, New South Wales, Australia
Destiny and the feral dog went over the side together, but she managed to grip the ledge at the last second. The dog’s momentum and lack of hands made it impossible to stay attached to her, and she heard a satisfying yelp from below when it struck the rocks. Her knees and boots smashed into the rock face. An instant later, her scalp blossomed with pain, like tape had been pulled off, ripping her hair out.
“Ow!” she grunted through gritted teeth.
Smoke swirled around her head, indifferent to her pain.
Beads of salty sweat stung her eyes as she struggled to pull herself back to the top. She wasn’t a weakling, but it had been a while since she’d done any strenuous exercise, and her lungs were choked with smoke dust, making it harder to get oxygen to her tortured muscles.
She didn’t even grunt as she slid herself up and over the top of the ledge. All she could do was roll to her side and put her hand to the pain on her head.
Holy shit, Destiny thought. The dog’s bite had yanked out a tuft of her hair, leaving a bloody puddle in its place. It hurt like a bitch. She wanted to know that her attacker was dead. She held the wound as best she could while peeking over the edge.
“Not good.”
The feral hadn’t gone down as far as she expected. Instead of falling a long way and dying, the dog only fell about six feet onto a wide boulder. It looked stunned, but otherwise unhurt.
“Good doggy,” she said mostly to herself.
The fire blazed bright, as if it wanted to get all its energy out before dawn broke over the horizon. For a few crucial moments, she got a good look at the animal. It was on its feet and appeared to be searching for a way back up the steep hillside.
Dingoes were like domesticated dogs, but their heads were a bit wider and longer than the average mutt. Their bodies were long and sleek, like they were built for the wild rather than man’s hearth. The animal below was no dingo, nor was it a dog, but the animal professional in her remembered seeing the odd duckling in a book a long time ago.
“No freaking way,” she wheezed before taking a few shallow breaths.
The wobbly four-legged beastie could have made her rich a few years ago. There were bounties offered by wealthy benefactors, including Ted Turner, for anyone who found one of the endangered animals. The creature looked a lot like the sleek dingo breed, with an even larger and more wolf-like head, but the stripes on its back and hips were the real clue to its heritage.
She pulled her phone from her back pocket and took several blurry photographs while it paced below. As she suspected, the fire drove out all kinds of animals from their hiding places, but this one was a real gem. No one in modern times had ever found one in the wild, despite many rumors of sightings on mainland Australia. The last one in captivity died in the 1930s.
“Tasmanian Tiger,” she said with pride. “Gotcha!”
She pocketed the camera, hoping she’d be able to produce evidence for wildlife researchers. Destiny got back on her feet and reached for the walkie to tell her team she was coming in, but the animal became frantic.
“Stay there, pup,” she said in a soothing voice.
It jumped from its rock to another ledge on the steep incline.
“Oi. Shit.” The walkie talkie was no longer so important.
She took several steps back from the edge, but knew she had waited too long. The smart tiger figured out how to use the uneven rock ledges to head back for the top. Some of the gaps were wide, but the animal was desperate, same as her.
Destiny scanned the scrubby ridgeline for a weapon, though there was great conflict inside while she did. Almost without thinking, she’d managed to get the attacking animal away from her by lunging for the edge. She probably couldn’t do that twice. If the Tasmanian Tiger attacked again, she might have to hurt the last living specimen on the continent. Probably in the whole world.
“Don’t come up. Don’t come up.” She repeated the words over and over as she searched for a weapon to defend herself. A few sticks lying in the brush might have sufficed, but she wanted something with more heft. She tried to scoop up a large stone, but she couldn’t lift it any higher than her waist.
Not high enough.
The tiger came over the edge as she threw down the rock. They locked eyes for a second until she remembered her training to avoid such combative postures. It was too late, though, and the beast came right for her with a series of high-pitched barks.
She reached for a stick she’d spotted earlier in the shadows nearby. She thought it would make a decent-sized poker, but when it came out of the weeds, it was more like a thick staff.
It came right for her. There was no time to do anything more sophisticated than take a swing.
“Ompf,” she gasped as the wood struck the side of the tiger. The animal yelped and recoiled, the end of the staff breaking off, leaving her with nothing more than a weak billy club.
She tried to get bett
er footing while the tiger kicked up dust and debris to get its paws beneath it. Once balanced, it snarled and came at her again. She felt the hyper-awareness from a surge of adrenaline. The world started to slow down.
It arrived before she was ready. The busted staff moved too slowly. She watched, almost like a spectator. Her swing was clumsy and late. The endangered monster closed.
“Back off!” The club glanced off the tiger’s neck. It made straight for her leg, past her club, and with a snap, locked its jaws onto her long pants, burying a fang into her calf.
“Holy ass!” Destiny howled, jumping back and trying to kick it away. Of the innumerable bites she’d suffered at the hands of the animals she’d worked with, the tiger’s wasn’t so bad. The teeth caught part of her boot, so they were less damaging than they could have been.
“Don’t make me hurt you, you little bitch.” Destiny shifted her grip as she backed away from the animal.
The tiger paid no heed to her human words. It slunk from side to side as she held out her broken staff, and for a moment, they seemed to find a mutual understanding. However, more smoke blew up from below and cloaked them both in its gray confusion.
The tiger lunged.
She swung with about seventy-five percent power but whiffed it. As she did, the exertion made her take a stumble-step to her right, and the animal bounced harmlessly off her knee.
“Oh, god.” Her breathing was labored, like she was fighting on a high fourteener with thin mountain air as her only fuel. Even the act of dodging was consuming all she had left.
The tiger’s ribcage heaved in and out, too, but it hadn’t slowed the beast. The creature paced the dirt for a few seconds, then reached a decision. As soon as her staff moved slightly to the side, it charged straight toward her.
There was no time for complicated attacks on her part, either. The Tasmanian tiger didn’t know it was special or nearly extinct. It was just fighting to stay alive in the face of the fire engulfing the forest around them. Her sister would personally rip her a new one if she died because she went easy on a member of an endangered species.
She swung the three-foot club with everything she had left.
“Die!” she screamed.
La Guardia Airport, New York City, NY
Garth and Sam waited impatiently for the airline to update them about the downed flight. They paced around and stayed quiet, but only made it about ten minutes before they lost their cool.
“How friggin’ hard is it to walk out there and check?” Sam asked.
“Maybe they don’t want anyone to know,” Garth replied, channeling his dad’s tendency to go right to conspiracies.
“What the hell good would that do? We can all see it out there. Surely there’s a YouTube of the crash already.”
“Yeah, probably,” he agreed. He couldn’t think of a reason they’d hold anything back, but he was getting bored and needed to talk about anything that came to mind. “We should—”
Before he could finish his thought, the power in the terminal went out. The signs above the ticket counters went dark and caused a stir among the loitering employees. Garth thought the complaints were stupid since giant windows surrounded the outer edge of the terminal and provided plenty of daylight.
He had more sympathy for the riders of the escalators. When the power went off, several riders were thrown forward. A man in a gray suit was still on his knees at the top of the nearest.
“Now why do you think they did that?” Sam asked. “Wait! Don’t tell me. They shut down the entire power grid so we couldn’t watch the news. Then they shut off the phone system so we wouldn’t give any reports from inside the airport.”
The two boys looked at each other like they’d been let in on the secret. Each of them pulled out their phones and tapped feverishly. Garth pulled up his dad’s avatar and clicked off a simple message: ‘Yo.’
He stared at the word like it was a bobber at the fishing hole.
“Come on, Dad. Answer.”
“Fuck,” Sam whispered. “Network is down.”
“Mine doesn’t say that. Oh, wait. Now it does.”
“So, is this all part of the plan? Crash a plane. Shut off the power. What’s next? Line us up against the wall and shoot us?”
Garth rolled his eyes. “Leave that dark helicopter stuff to me. I think the most likely problem is they wanted the power off at the airport to prevent further damage from the fires and shit. We watched a video in science class about the fire department.”
“Where was I when you saw it? It doesn’t ring any bells.”
Garth laughed. “You don’t remember? Maybe you were in the bathroom playing kissy-face with Trish Todd?”
“Damn. You’re never going to let me live that down, are you? I only went out with her twice.”
He nodded with excitement. “Yeah, but you went out in a blaze of glory.” Garth didn’t hold it against his friend for trying to date; he hoped to stir up the courage to do the same someday soon. Sam freely admitted he got into the dating scene way too early, but sometimes his lack of maturity resulted in hilariously disastrous failures.
“Hey! You two.” The feminine voice of the airline ticket agent brought them back to the moment.
The boys jogged over to her.
“I have some good news. The downed plane wasn’t one of ours. We’ve contacted all of our flights scheduled to land at this airport today, and none of them are missing. Most diverted to other airports or headed back to their point of origin.” She said it in a loud voice, so the dozens of other airport visitors heard the news.
“Please feel free to go home. Don’t worry. Once the airport re-opens, I’m sure those diverted flights will resume service to our beautiful New York hub here at La Guardia International.”
Several people shouted out questions about lodging vouchers, local transportation, and traveler information he didn’t need to know. It did make him appreciate how many people were affected by that one plane crash, even beyond the poor souls who died on the flight.
Garth placed his attention back on his friend by doing their mutual told-you-so gesture: a firm punch to the meaty part of Sam’s upper arm.
“Ouch! What the fuck, dude?” Without parents around, they both reveled in wielding the words of adulthood.
He laughed. “I told you there was nothing to worry about. Your parents are fine. They are probably back in Chi-town.”
Sam rubbed his arm but made no effort to conceal his grin. Garth privately wondered if his arm was as sore and bruised as his own, but neither boy would ever admit it hurt as much as it did. “Yeah, I guess you know some stuff, jackass.”
“So, what do we do now?” Garth replied. He wondered about very basic life questions that didn’t seem important when he thought he’d be taken care of by Sam’s folks today. His dad always reminded him that survival depended on finding food, water, and shelter, even if you were just going to spend the day in the city.
“I’m not one to let a crisis go to waste,” Sam said matter-of-factly, “but I’d like to point out to my esteemed colleague that it looks like we have the day to ourselves. And probably one more night.”
His buddy saw the same facts but came to a totally different conclusion. While he was worried about what to eat and where to go, Sam seemed to focus on the freedom they would enjoy. They did just dodge a bullet, almost literally in his case with the flying debris, so he assumed his mind went right to worst-case because of that. Maybe he needed to let this one go.
He exhaled. “Indubitably, Master Sam.” He used a British voice to amp up his fake sophistication.
The crisis was over. They could go back to acting like two teens turned loose on the city.
Sam pointed to the powerless down escalator that would take them to the exit. “Let’s get to the subway in case they think about shutting it down, too. On the way, I’ll tell you about Tammy again. I know you like that one.”
“Yeah, I could use a good laugh.”
The boys headed
for the exit without a care in the world.
I-5 North of Modesto, CA
Freddy the GPS helped Buck get to I-5, but it wasn’t the high-speed Mecca he’d expected. He threw the shifter back and forth as he worked up and down the gears. For a trucker, there was almost nothing worse than stop and go traffic.
A charcoal-colored sedan sped in front of him. “Make up your mind, dammit!” There was always that one asshole who weaved back and forth between lanes to try to jockey himself to the front of the pack. Those mentally-deficient drivers loved to pull ahead of his truck, since he always left a wide gap between himself and the next vehicle. His motor-assisted Jake brake relieved some of the mechanical wear on his pads, but it didn’t reduce his stress.
He did have one advantage that helped dull the pain of traffic. Buck’s height allowed him to see over the tops of the four-wheelers ahead of him. “Hell yeah, Big Mac, we’re getting ready to open up again.”
His pup whined when he heard his name.
“Ah, you’re up. Great!” Buck smiled, glad to have his little friend awake. After he delivered the pup to Garth, he was probably going to get a dog pal for himself, because he’d come to love having someone to talk to on the long hauls.
A few minutes later, as expected, the traffic jam busted open. He mashed the pedals and twisted the gears just like all the other vehicles, but his heavy payload took a lot longer to get up to speed. Eventually, he matched the pace of most of the others, and the wide expanse of endless fruit orchards of the central California valley started to roll by.
His blood pressure was almost back to normal when a cherry-red Mustang convertible caught his eye in his side mirror. The silver running pony in the front grille twinkled as it approached, but the driver’s blowing blonde hair made it so he couldn’t look away.
“Well, hello,” he said in a practiced “cool-guy” voice.
His blood pressure spiked once again, but it had nothing to do with traffic.
The young woman looked up and flashed a smile that seemed meant only for Buck. Her long blonde locks blew wildly, which made her seem like the water nymph attached to the prow of a Viking ship.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 6