A woman replied, “Does the national weather service have warnings posted?”
“Of course, Dianne, but the storm is growing so large, it would take a long time to list all the counties affected. Even the number of states is considerable.”
He reached over and scratched Mac’s head. “That chick in the Mustang is going to get soaked, isn’t she?”
The news report changed to talk about other storms around the country, which held no interest for him. The only thing that mattered was the growing darkness between him and Sacramento. If he reached I-80 before entering those clouds, he would turn east and leave it behind. He’d be on Easy Street, because the 80 would take him all 2800 miles to White Plains, New York and his boy.
A powerful signal came through his CB. “Break 19. This is Tenstepn riding the I-5 at marker 508. Can anyone near Sacramento tell me about that sheet of pain up ahead? Switching to channel 4.”
Buck listened for a moment and noted the green mile-indicator coming up on his right. The small rectangular signs were like postal addresses for truckers on the move. He went by the 497 marker, which meant he was eleven miles behind Tenstepn.
He flicked the controls on the CB to channel 4. When no other drivers hopped on, he decided to introduce himself. “Heya, Tenstepn, this is Buck Rogers. I’m about ten behind your back door but heading for the same storm. Did you see where those two F-16s went?”
“No, sir. They went into the soup, and I never saw them again.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he replied. It was stupid to think the storm ate up the sophisticated aircraft, but his attitude reflected his mood.
A wild bolt of lightning shot out of the dark wall far in the distance. It bounced like a nimble cat between several outlying clouds before it petered out.
“Holy shit!” Tenstepn cried out. “My hair is standing straight up.”
“Did that lightning hit you?” Buck asked with urgency. “Come back?”
The other man keyed his mic but didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, he sounded panicked. “Negative, but four-wheelers are pulling over everywhere. Somethin’ ain’t right.”
“What is it?” Buck felt odd being the only person responding to the guy, but he wasn’t going to complain. Normally, there would be ten truckers stomping all over each other on the radio.
“Hang on, Bucky, I’ll get back to you.”
“10-4,” Buck replied.
He let his foot drift off the gas pedal like he was hesitant to reach the next mile marker. Ahead, the wall of storm clouds went thousands of feet into the sky and stretched miles to his left and right. He was all ears for even a hint of news.
“The following states are affected.” Buck tapped the volume on the radio because it sounded like they were going to announce how big the storm was. “South Carolina. North Carolina. Virginia. Mary—”
They went through ten more states.
Buck yelled at the radio. “Those are on the East Coast!”
“Summer Storm Audrey is extremely powerful right now, but its core is also unsettled. As of this time, our best guess is that it will track toward Washington D.C., then turn right and continue overland through New York and into New England.”
Garth.
More lightning crackled ahead. Buck waited for Tenstepn to send back his live report about what to expect at mile 508. Leading clouds blocked out the sun, lending a dark aura to the green fields and row-filled orchards on both sides of the highway.
He cast his eyes to the southbound lanes. Every vehicle that went by was far over the speed limit. Even the big guys. “That’s jacked up, Mac. They’re flying.”
His foot let off the gas a little more.
NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
“General, we have more on the blue light. This is the first official report.”
Obadias took it from his lieutenant. “This came from the top?”
“The president’s team issued this one minute ago. I got it here as fast as I could.”
“Thank you, son.” He dismissed the junior officer with a wave.
The entire staff of NORAD shuffled papers, banged keyboards, and talked on phones inside the secure room, but his attention was devoted to the one piece of intel that came from the outside.
“Let’s see what this is all about,” he mumbled.
He scanned the lines until he found the one he needed. “Not a meteor strike. NASA confirms no near-Earth object has struck the atmosphere.”
A few more lines were dedicated to the staff at NASA, he assumed so that he would have faith in their findings. But finally, he read the next point. “No unusual solar activity reported. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirm.”
“Well, that’s two things it isn’t.”
He kept reading until he found the next piece of news. “Not an intercontinental launch vehicle. Multiple confirmations.”
His command sent that piece of intel up the chain. NORAD’s data confirmed no solid-fuel rockets had come off the ground anywhere in the world.
“That’s what it wasn’t. Tell me what it was!”
He eyed the rest of the briefing without getting the satisfaction he sought. Despite the certainty that it wasn’t a ground-based launch from somewhere across the world, he still couldn’t rule out a high-altitude fixed-wing delivery vehicle of a powerful EMP nuclear device. It was the not knowing that kept him uneasy. The Joint Chiefs had already bumped the continental United States to DEFCON 3, so his next response could move the needle closer to war. He had to be sure of the enemy.
“Lieutenant?” His aide was there like magic. “Get me every flight, every satellite, every ground station with eyes in the sky above the central United States during the past twelve hours. If a plane deviated for ten seconds, I want to know. If a satellite glitched for a micro-second, get me its transponder code. If there was a kid videoing his dog humping a scarecrow when the light went by, I want to friggin’ see it.”
“Sir.” The man stifled a grin and hustled off.
“You know what I mean,” he called after him.
Nowhere in the brief did it categorically deny the one thing that probably wouldn’t show up in any of their sensors. He wasn’t a believer, but he had to keep his mind open until the door was shut on every possibility. That was why he included ground-based observations in his data gathering.
Someone please tell me this wasn’t a UFO. Damn Giorgio making everyone think there are aliens.
Queens, New York
The rush of people leaving the airport continued to grow as Garth and Sam got on the bus. The driver waved everyone aboard that could possibly fit, and the boys were the last ones on. They had to squeeze behind the white line and stood body to body with the other riders, which made him instantly glad they’d taken the time to wipe off most of the cologne.
“These people are missing out,” Sam whispered. “We could have nuked the whole bus if we still wore the good stuff.”
“Shh!” Garth shot back in an even quieter voice. “You can’t say nuked on a crowded bus.”
He caught the stink-eyes of a few of the riders standing behind Sam. “We’re cool. We used to smell terrible.”
The driver shut the door before he could gauge their reaction.
A computer voice droned from hidden speakers. “M60 bus service to Manhattan. Next stop, Ditmars Boulevard and Grand Central Parkway.”
Everyone shifted as the driver hit the gas.
There was an unnatural calm for a few seconds as the bus crossed the airport property, but as soon as it turned onto a side street, everyone seemed to speak at the same time. At first, many people complained about the spotty phone service, but that talk died down after people realized it affected everyone. People then talked about their other problems.
Garth heard tiny pieces of many conversations but chose to focus on an elderly couple sitting in the second seat. The woman seemed confident the airport wouldn’t be re-opening. That was his problem.
The woman gave him a harsh look in return. “That’s very rude. I was talking.”
He’d been brought up to respect his elders. Plus, he did interrupt her. “Sorry.”
“As I was saying, Aloysius and I were standing right there when the plane blew up. It was driving across the runway and poof. It exploded into a bajillion bits.”
“That’s not right, ma’am,” Garth replied politely. “It fell from the sky and got destroyed. It wasn’t already on the ground.”
The old woman shook her head. “No, I tell you, it was on the ground. I know what I saw.” She elbowed her companion. “Back me up, Al.”
The gray-haired man smiled. “I cannot tell a lie; I was in the can. My bladder wasn’t happy with me for having two Bloody Marys on the flight in. She had a few as well.”
The woman scoffed. “Just agree with your wife, you old coot!”
The guy looked to a young woman in a business suit standing a few slots behind Sam. “I’m available to start a new life. This one’s about spent.”
“You wouldn’t know what to do with a young thing like her.” The lady looked right at Garth. “But maybe he and I could show you how it’s done.”
Sam cracked up laughing until the old woman looked over to him.
“You too, blondie.”
Garth backed up a few steps out of sheer panic.
“Behind the line, please.” The driver was courteous but insistent.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
He purposefully looked away from the old couple. Two young men in suits sat in the front seat behind the driver. They appeared to be headed to the financial district. One of them guarded a dark leather briefcase on his lap.
“You’re sure your guy knew what he was talking about?” someone from the aisle asked one of the men.
“Yes. I deal with them all the time. Intermountain Systems is the computer supplier for numerous science and tech companies. If anyone would know, it’s them.”
“Know what?” Garth asked.
The guy looked up at him. “Oh, hey. I don’t know if you heard me, but I know people who know people. They told me that blue light was caused by a failure at a nuclear power plant. Full on Chernobyl-type stuff.”
“Bullshit,” someone voiced from a couple of rows back. “There was no meltdown. We would have heard about it.”
“Maybe,” the guy in the front seat allowed. “But the people in charge always try to get their friends out first. That rush can lead to safety protocols being ignored. Such haste might cause planes to drop out of the sky, or it might mean transit buses are loaded well beyond capacity. Take your pick.”
“These are your people,” Sam whispered. “Nutters.”
Garth shushed him. While they rode the M60 to the subway stop, he tried to pick up clues for what caused the plane crash as well as how that blue light shot across the sky. There had to be a simple explanation.
The computer voice announced their arrival at the subway station. The old woman hopped up before the bus came to a complete stop.
“Excuse me,” she said in a demanding voice.
Garth didn’t let her into the aisle until he and Sam cleared out.
I can see why your husband wants a change.
She came off the bus not far behind them but was soon lost in the crowd. Most of the passengers went right for the stairs up to the subway platform, which was thirty yards down the sidewalk.
“Standard seating?” Sam asked.
“Agreed,” he answered. The boys preferred to ride in the last car.
For a short time, they walked with their usual slow pace, but people began to pass them, including the old woman and her husband. There was really no reason for him to feel panicked, but there was an urgency in people’s strides that tapped into a primitive area of his brain. When they’d been passed by perhaps half of the passengers, he suddenly felt the urge to run and get ahead of them.
He pulled Sam by the elbow because he wasn’t moving nearly fast enough toward the steps. They had to be first to the stairs and get up to the top as fast as possible.
Garth’s heart took on the cadence of speed metal as they moved toward the front part of the group of walkers.
“Go faster,” he said under his breath.
Sam kept moving but wasn’t as adamant about the goal. “Dude, we got it made in the shade. We’ll get the last car. We’re already ahead of most everyone.”
“Not good enough,” Garth insisted.
Garth wasn’t afraid of missing the last car.
He was afraid of missing the last train.
Ten
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysics, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith had the conference room all to herself again. It was her chance to use her car key to finish scratching out the lame words etched into the wood. The mindless activity sent her imagination on tangents, but all at once, she figured out something critical.
Bob did this.
It came down on her like a ten-ton hammer. Her ex-fiancé not only tried to undermine her in the meeting, but he was the one who scratched her name into the expensive wooden table. Probably to the applause of some of his computer buddies.
Yep, it was him.
“May I come in?” a gentleman’s voice inquired from behind.
She flung her key away from the scratch-work and slid a folder over the repair effort. “Sure. Come in.”
“Donald,” she said with relief when she realized it wasn’t Bob.
Donald Perkins was a Ph.D. from a time before time, as he often said. The octogenarian had been a mainstay at the SNAKE lab since the day they turned on the lights. During those difficult early times, she grew to think of the man as a mentor, and friend.
“Rough day, huh? May I sit down?”
“Always.”
She rose from her chair, but he waved her not to bother. “Please, Faith. I can handle this part. It’s the getting up where I might need a hand.”
His ability to laugh at himself was a lesson she tried to take to heart.
“I can’t seem to do anything right, at least according to some people.” She twisted a knife into the word ‘some,’ and Donald was smart enough to pick up on it.
“Bob being Bob again? Did he write that, too?” He motioned toward her folder and what it covered.
“You know about that?” she said with shock.
He nodded sadly.
“Does everyone?”
“It’s been there for the past couple meetings. My old eyes couldn’t read it until today, and I didn’t want to call attention to it during your speech. I presume everyone who is not an asshole thinks it is childish and immature. It doesn’t even make sense.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking!” she said with surprising engagement. “They got the charge all wrong.”
Donald laughed with her. “It’s just like you to see past the ill intent and cut to the core of the problem. The writer of that statement is an idiot. He was also an idiot for trying to sabotage the meeting.”
Faith was already high-strung from her talk with Bob, not to mention shutting down a billion-dollar machine earlier, but her mentor’s words hit her in the feels.
“Thank you. I really needed some fucking sympathy today.”
“No problem. Glad to help. But, Faith, we do still have a very serious issue—”
“Can’t it wait? If I have one more failure today, Bob the Asshat says I’m going to lose my job. He’s ready to swoop in and save this whole facility. In the name of science, and all.”
Donald’s distinguished eyes remained fixed on hers. “I’m afraid it can’t. None of the teams can tell us exactly what caused the shutdown of our experiment. Maybe there is a more complicated answer, but we should look first at why the power failover didn’t kick in.”
“Shit,” she said by way of agreement. “Can it be that simple?”
/> The SNAKE complex drew a little over 500 megawatts of power from the main electrical grid running through Denver, so if Denver went down for any reason, they’d go dark, too. However, the system was designed so any failure in Denver would result in power grabs from Pueblo, Colorado, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. That relief valve didn’t work today.
“Is it too late to build our own private reactor?” she said in jest.
“Far too late,” he replied. “You’d have to go back to 1975 to get a permit.”
“Then I guess we are at the mercy of municipal power for the time being. Whatever happened out there today really jacked us up inside here. I only wish someone had the answer for what caused it so we could work up a plan for how to prevent it from shutting us down again. That’s what Bob would do.”
Donald gently put his hand on her wrist. “Don’t base your response around assholes, Faith. You do what Faith would do, okay? You’ve gotten us this far down the road. This is one of the most sophisticated pieces of scientific equipment in the world. Who knows what kind of care we need to give it?”
The SNAKE facility was less than a year old. It was built as a cooperative venture between the University of Colorado and several emergent technology companies, including Mr. Shinano’s Azurasia. The initial meet-and-greet between the science team and the wealthy industrialists had been one of the most nerve-wracking two hours of her life. Each of those powerful corporate leaders was probably now asking their boards of directors what the hell happened at SNAKE.
If the shutdown was due to a grid rollover error, those leaders will crucify me.
“I overlooked something. If I want to save my job, I have to find out why some mysterious blue light overrode our failsafes and shut us down. I’ll need an answer for how we can keep it from wrecking the next experiment. I’d like to do it without Bob’s interference, if at all possible. It can be anyone else on the team, just not him.”
She glanced at Donald, hoping he would slap her on the back and congratulate her for toughing it out. But that wasn’t his style.
“Mind if I help you scratch?” He nodded toward the folder. “It will give this fancy table some much-needed character.”
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 8