“Nice ‘65,” he mouthed to her. He knew every muscle car from the 60s and early 70s, to which he included the Mustangs, although others did not. That was when America knew how to build shit. Not that he expected the young thing to know such facts.
He felt self-conscious looking down on her because she wore a shapely lime-green dress that barely covered her thighs. She floated her left arm in the wind out her window and sat right up against the door, so the rest of the white vinyl bench seat appeared as a huge, empty snowfield.
“Mind if I drop into that seat?” he said to himself.
He tried to be cool and wave to her, but in the excitement, he misjudged the distance and surprised himself when his hand struck the glass.
Fuck. Real smooth.
The young woman laughed and let her foot off the gas for a moment, maybe to let him have his look, but then she sped up without a glance back.
“Even has the historical plates. That thing is pristine, lady. You need to take good care of her.” He couldn’t speed up to pursue her like Chevy Chase in Vacation, but that was just as well.
“That ‘stang would be a hell of a ride,” he said to Mac. “But no time for distractions like that until we get back to Garth, right?”
Eight
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysics, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith’s meeting with Mr. Shinano was a brief affair. She showed him the fax as if it were her Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. He accepted it but demanded to know what she was going to do to prevent another external event from shutting them down again.
She assured him they would work around the clock to figure out how the blue wave affected the test equipment.
They shook hands and parted ways.
Get the momentum of the day under control.
More faxes came in before she could address her staff. She put out the call for her team to once again assemble in the large conference room.
The computer geniuses arrived with the particle team and quickly filled all available chairs. The facilities and engineering department heads sat at the twelve-person table, with their associates spread around the outer wall of the underground chamber. As soon as her watch said 2pm, she shut the door.
“Thank you all for coming. I’m jumping right into it. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there has been an event.” She used air quotes around the word event. “Mr. Shinano’s simulation was halted, as were several lesser programs running on the mainframe. I got this fax from the United States Federal Science Administration, which mentions a meteorite and electromagnetic interference, but in the thirty minutes since this came in, I’ve seen and heard of no less than three additional theories as to what caused us to go offline. All of them sound plausible, so I need you guys to help me figure this out.”
“You shut us down too soon,” a male voice said just loud enough to be heard but not loud enough for her to see who said it. A few sympathetic chuckles came like spears out of the forest, suggesting some members of her team weren’t solidly behind her.
She sighed heavily and tried to pretend she didn’t care about dissent. Her natural inclination was to search for consensus, but she’d found that nearly impossible with such a diverse team of intellectuals. Normally, when she understood the science, she could wrangle everyone to her way of thinking no matter what opinions were shared. Today, she was working with limited data and had to walk on eggshells around an important client. She had to share the risk of figuring out what caused the problems.
“A burst of energy was seen in the skies from California to New York with other sightings around the world. Some news sources say it was a meteor. Some news channels claim there was a release of radiation at Three Mile Island that made the sky glow. And other channels are saying it was a North Korean nuke that caused an EMP.”
She shook her head. “Any of those are terrible, but that isn’t the end of it. My social media feed is crammed with people who swear the blue light erupted when an alien spaceship penetrated our atmosphere with giant thrusters. Of course, no one has seen the actual ship.”
Her team shared some uncertain laughter.
One of her computer guys responded. “Doctor Stafford and I didn’t see shit in the sky. We took a smoke break up in the treehouse when this mythical blue light supposedly went by.”
Mindy handed her another fax, but she didn’t look at it right away because she wanted to give a good comeback.
She nodded to the computer scientist, letting his mispronunciation of ‘supposedly’ go by without comment. She prided herself on good verbal skills, including minimizing her childhood accent, for the sake of science. The man somehow got through his whole life without anyone correcting his mistake.
“Were you two looking up?” she asked sarcastically. “The treehouse is in a lot of cover.”
Her skills were more on the theoretical side of physics, so she didn’t socialize much with the computer guys, even though they all took breaks in what everyone called the treehouse. It was an emergency exit for the underground science lab but was no more than a corrugated metal outbuilding with lots of windows and a few vending machines.
“Everyone else saw it, so I don’t know how we could have missed it. We always stand and watch nature. You know that as well as anyone because Dr. Stafford and you—”
“Yeah, sure. Let’s stay focused, people. The other thing I didn’t tell you all is that we’ve lost our data feed from the CERN Large Hadron Collider.”
The room became instantly quiet. The SNAKE lab was closely attached to the University of Colorado system, especially for distributed computing and data collection, but it also had all kinds of parallel projects going with labs around the globe. The CERN supercollider was so important to SNAKE research, they kept an American science group on-site in Switzerland to handle the back and forth.
Dr. Bob Stafford seemed as surprised as anyone. “Have you called Dr. Johnson’s team?”
She gave Bob a steady look, doing her best not to feel threatened by him.
“Yes, Dr. Stafford,” she replied tentatively, “once we lost the feed, we tried everything. At first, I thought our power issues might have cut off the link…”
She finally glanced down at the fax sheet Mindy brought in. The CERN logo caught her eye and she scanned a few lines.
One half of her brain absorbed the message while the other half kept her talking. “…but the power is fine now and I still can’t get the line back. He isn’t picking up his mobile phone, either.”
She shifted all her concentration to line after line of bad news.
“Faith,” Bob whispered before she finished the whole sheet. “Is everything all right?” She was almost as shocked at his sympathetic tone as she was with the content of the fax.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She remembered where she was. “I’m sorry. I was reading this communique from the European News Agency.”
She held up the fax like it had a communicable disease.
“It isn’t just us. Apparently, all of Europe has lost contact with CERN.”
I-5 North of Modesto
The big Peterbilt’s engine brake brought the rolling monster to a full halt. Buck was conditioned to hate traffic on the interstate, but this one time, he was okay with it. As soon as the wheels stopped, he jumped out of his chair and opened Big Mac’s cage.
“Come on out of there, Mac,” he said in a soothing voice.
The six-month-old Golden Retriever sprang out of the small kennel like a fifty-pound bullet. He hopped off the sleeper bed and jumped onto the passenger seat in one fluid motion.
“You can’t get out, yet, so don’t get any ideas about doing your business, okay?”
The pup’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth as he panted with innocence, but Buck figured that was his usual ruse. Taking a leak was always on the little guy’s mind.
Buck got back into the driver’s position, buckled up, then glanced over to Mac.
“Don’t you do it. We’re s
topped, but there isn’t enough time to get out.” He pointed ahead, even though the dog couldn’t see over the dashboard. “See? The cars are moving up there. We’re next.”
Mac sat upright, paying canine attention, and even tried to look where Buck pointed, but then he held out a paw to signal he wanted something.
“I know. Here you go.” Buck had traveled with the dog for the past week, so they’d gotten to know each other pretty well. He reached out and gave Mac a good scratch behind an ear.
Mac voiced a low grumble, which meant he was loving it.
“All good? I have to put my hands on the wheel, now. Sorry.”
He half-expected the excitable dog to get down off his seat and put his head on Buck’s leg, but his words seemed to calm him. Mac walked around his perch for a moment then plopped down and curled up into a ball.
“I wish I could lay there and sleep. This traffic is for the—”
Two fighter jets screamed overhead.
“Holy shit!” he yelled.
The roar of their engines shook his ribcage because the aircraft weren’t flying much higher than his roof. They came up from behind and zoomed along the highway mere feet above the stopped traffic. He marveled at the military precision as the two jets shot off toward the horizon in front of him.
“Sheesh. What the hell is going on today, eh, Mac?”
The planes stayed low to the deck as far as he could see, but he lost them when they reached a bank of low clouds several miles ahead.
“What now?” he asked his little partner. Buck wondered if the noise had scared him.
It had. The evidence was already soaking into the seat cushion.
“Well, at least I don’t have to take you outside, now.”
Traffic was about to move once more, so there was no time to clean up. He did his best to grab one of the beach towels he kept for puppy emergencies but soon got busy driving.
“There’s nothing to worry about, buddy. I promise.”
In the distance, angry lightning danced among the dark clouds.
Nothing to worry about, he told himself.
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysics, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith walked out of the conference room after everyone else had left. She would have slipped out first if she could, because she wanted to escape her ex. However, the staff had the usual backlog of questions for her. Some related to the loss of contact with CERN. Some asking about their own canceled experiments. Others, just the normal day-to-day questions related to life in a science lab. If she got lucky, he might have tired of waiting for her.
Fuck, she thought when she saw him.
“Hello, Dr. Stafford,” she said preemptively to the figure leaning against the metal wall.
“We’re back to formalities while in private?” he responded in a tired voice.
“I never left the formalities, Bob,” she said with barely-controlled anger. “And thanks for ganking me over in there. I’m sure that was you trying to undermine me.”
“Oh, come on,” he complained. “Just because I broke it off doesn’t mean I’m out to get revenge.”
She gave him a withering look. He seemed to realize he’d gone too far.
“What I meant was, we ended things in what I thought was a good place. I have no reason to want to hurt you. But, listen, this is some serious shit. Whatever happened with the experiment, you have to be the one to take responsibility. I can’t let our history get in the way of accountability. We both have careers on the line.”
Bob was directly below her on the org chart. He was in charge of the computer team, but he reported to her. As much as it pained her to admit, he was correct. The shutdown had tested his relationship with Mr. Shinano, as it did hers. Both of their careers hinged on figuring out who to blame.
She softened a little, but a passerby would need a microscope to see it. “You and your damned career. Something is happening out there, and you’re worried about being the leader of this facility, aren’t you?”
Bob’s eyes narrowed like an owl homing in on prey. “I promise you, if this job opens up, I’m going to grab it. However, I’m not going to have to lift a finger to remove you from this position. You’re doing that all by yourself. Two mistakes in one week. People are going to notice.”
“Two?” she replied.
The man casually stood up straight. “Yuh huh. You failed to anticipate the power fluctuations in Mr. Shinano’s experiment. That’s an easy one. But then you told the whole team you failed to keep contact with our assets inside the CERN campus. That simple communication could have given us a clue as to their fate. Maybe Dr. Johnson could have told us how our place got shut down. Instead, you were running around micromanaging everyone.”
It was too much. “That’s bullshit, and you know it! I was running the shutdown protocol. You helped write it, for god’s sake.”
“So I did,” he said easily. “That’s how I’m so sure you’ve got two marks against you. One more and maybe your job becomes vacant.”
Her skin bubbled with anger just under the surface, but she fought for control of it. They’d spent many years together, romantically, so he knew her better than almost anyone. He’d always been good at drilling through her professional exterior and laying waste to her emotions. Most of the time it was to get her to do what he wanted, but she was sometimes convinced he did it simply to be an asshole.
This time, it was a little of both.
Queens, New York
“That was some messed up shizz.” Sam slapped Garth on the back, but not with much force.
“Yeah, I hope my dad doesn’t hear about the plane wreck. He’ll call me every five minutes if he thinks I’m in danger.” His father had burned up the phone lines when there was a stabbing near the Staten Island Ferry. Garth wasn’t near the ferry when it happened, nor did he have plans to go near the ferry that day, but his dad wanted to make absolutely sure he stayed away. That was about six months ago, so it was still fresh in his mind.
Sam seemed to think for a few moments as they walked to the bus stop. “My parents didn’t call, either.”
“I’m sure they will once they get back to their airport. You can’t call from a plane.”
“Yeah, you can. They always travel first class. They’ve called me from the air before.”
Garth had never been on a plane. He had no idea what was possible beyond what he saw in the movies.
“Hey,” he said in a way that was meant to distract his friend, “before we get on that crowded bus, let’s try to wipe off some of this god-awful cologne.”
Fifty or sixty people stood in line at the open-air bus stop. Those were the smart ones—they had cleared out of the airport immediately after the disaster instead of waiting around to see what happened.
Sam stopped without hesitation. “Brilliant idea. I’ve got a headache from hell because of this shit. How do you figure we’ll get it off?”
Garth stood for a moment, then pointed to a small patch of residential grass next to the sidewalk. “You ever been deer hunting?”
“You know I haven’t,” Sam replied. “My parents are scared of guns.”
“Right. Well, my dad taught me this one simple trick to fool deer. You roll around in the dirt and grass.” He fell to the lawn and began to wiggle like a snake. “I think it gets the smells of the forest on you, but it also wipes off the detergent and fabric softener smells off your clothing.”
Sam didn’t need to be invited. He dropped and rolled the same as Garth.
“Of course, if you really want to hide your smell, you can pour special chemicals on you.”
“Or douse yourself in deer whizz,” Sam said during a brief pause. “I saw that in the movies.”
Garth paused next to him. “Uh, Jester, that’s not right. You use urine to attract deer to come to your stand. If you wear the stuff, they’ll probably climb your tree to get to you.”
They both cracked up laughing at the imagery.
“What do I know?” Sam continued rolling. “I don’t leave the city. You’re the pro when it comes to this sort of stuff.”
Garth chuckled at the thought of being the professional at anything, because his dad would have another opinion about that. If he asked him about removing cologne the way he’d thought up, Dad would undoubtedly bitch about putting on the cologne in the first place. Then he’d say they were rolling the wrong way.
He sighed heavily as he watched Sam roll back and forth. He wasn’t going to mention any of his adventures when his dad finally called. As far as his father knew, he and Sam were late getting to the airport, so they missed all the excitement.
What his dad didn’t know wouldn’t kill him.
Nine
I-5 Between Stockton and Sacramento, CA
Buck caught the attention of the panting Golden in his passenger seat. “What do you think those planes were doing?” The last time he’d seen jets hug the deck like that, they were chopping up insurgents in the sandbox.
“Aw, it’s probably nothing.” It was uncomfortable to remember his past, so he chose to look ahead. “At least traffic is moving again, huh?”
He glanced at Big Mac because that furry face always cheered him up.
“Let’s see if the news has anything for us.” He turned up the volume on the radio, but he also did the same for his CB. He seldom used the squawk box because it was easier and faster to get road updates from the GPS route-finder on the dashboard. Channel 19 was considered the Romper Room of the citizens' band, filled with every type of handle, often stepping over each other as they tried to chat. That was exactly what they were doing when he tuned in, so he turned it down a little.
“…definitely a freak storm.” Buck turned up his FM radio to hear the man on the news. “The monster weather system exploded out of an existing storm like energy had been fed into it. It is now moving at surprising speeds.”
Buck warily eyed the dark wall of clouds ahead. No shit.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 7