Lt. Darren pressed some keys, and the screen changed slightly. The dots representing satellites were color coded.
“The red ones went out of sync first. Then the blue. Finally, the yellow.”
The data representation was clear. The satellites closest to North America and the bordering oceans were red.
The junior officer continued with his presentation. “I’m sorry for the quality, but I kept things simple, so I could get this in front of you as soon as possible. Using the time-shift data, we drew this concentric ring as a stand-in for the blue light that went around the planet.”
He pressed a button and a white oval showed up over North America like a big halo.
“If you use the trackpad, you can expand it, sir. Like this.” He moved the ring, so it got larger and spread in all directions over the part of the globe facing them. “We can go all the way to the other side and see where the ring ended up.”
It was someplace in the Indian Ocean.
“I don’t care about that. Show me where it came from!”
Lt. Darren reversed the path of the light until it was back over North America, but it stopped when it was about as big as the state of Colorado and Kansas put together. “I’m sorry, sir, but the ring represents fixed satellites in the constellation, not ground data.”
The general growled deep in his chest.
“But I see what you want, sir. I’ll have the programmer detach this ring and close it down to a point. That should be the source.”
“Hmm. That’s a start. Get your team to go over the data and get me the precise location of the earliest effects. Then we’ll know who loaded up this bag of dicks.”
“On it, sir.”
Nineteen
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith felt like she was a teenager again, sitting at the table and waiting for her parents to come home. She’d gone to the front patio of the big underground complex to get some air and, she admitted, to wait for Dr. Perkins to come back from his run to town. It had been several hours since her world was turned upside-down, and Donald seemed to be the only scientist who had genuine feelings for what she was going through.
“Hi, Dr. Sinclair.”
“Heya,” she replied to the young technician before he sat down with a group of his peers at another table.
Before she went back to reading emails on her phone, she took a moment to enjoy the view. The Red Mesa location overlooked the Dakota Hogback, which was a long, thin ridgeline that ran the entire length of western Denver. It was only about a hundred feet tall, but it was steep and pointed. Almost like a giant had taken a sharp knife and cut the rock from below. The upturned rocks made it a great place to find dinosaur bones, go hiking, or, as it turned out, use as the starting point to build hundreds of miles of tunnels for a scientific endeavor called SNAKE.
“Dammit, Donald, where are you?” She’d waited for over forty-five minutes and began to think he’d stopped somewhere for dinner.
She almost went back to reading her phone when his maroon sedan drove into the shady parking lot. None of the landscaping trees had grown much beyond saplings, yet, but the sun was already behind the Front Range Mountains and adjoining foothills because it was late afternoon. He pulled into the nearest handicap parking space.
“Ahoy!” the man said as he got out of his car.
“Ahoy,” she repeated with a touch of regret. She didn’t want to come across as too eager, but there she was sitting at the bench ready to pounce on him.
“Did something happen?” he asked as he came up the walkway. He glanced down at his pager to see if it had gone off.
All the other staff had smartphones if she needed to get in touch, but Donald refused to carry a phone. As a compromise, he accepted a pager. If she needed him in an emergency, she could dial him up and he would find a pay phone to call her back. She’d never needed to call the number, but she often wondered if he would bother to find a pay phone if she had.
“I didn’t page you. Mindy said you’d gone to town for your meds. Look, I’m sorry for catching you like this, Donald, but I’m running out of ideas for how we were shut down.” She let him come over and sit next to her, but she never stopped talking. “I’ve asked Bob if he was willing to share anything, and you already know what he said to that. Then I asked Sun for her opinion, but I get the feeling she is content to let me deal with this political quagmire. I even had Mindy give me printouts of every piece of news she could find that might have affected us, but that has done nothing but made me aware of all the problems in the rest of the world.”
She turned to look at him. “I need the answers to the problems in my world.”
He nodded grimly, but she didn’t think he looked right.
“Are you okay, Donald? You look like you’ve eaten a sock.”
He belched politely. “I got my medicine, just as Mindy said, but a wave of nausea struck me on the drive back and I had to pull over for a short while. It went away until I sat down here with you.”
Faith held off recommending he go lie down, which was what she thought he needed.
“Do you have any ideas, Donald? I could really use an assist, here.”
He sat up as if he was going to answer her, but then he squirmed like something was wrong with his stomach.
“Oh, Donald, I’m sorry. I’m not being a good friend. You really need to lie down. My problems can wait.”
Donald tried to stand up, but he flopped back on his butt before he got all the way up.
“Here, let me help you.” She held out her hand, and he immediately grabbed it.
“I’m fine,” he whispered. “Been a busy day, right?”
Both of them stood about five-foot-nine, but he was mostly skin and bones, so she pulled him up almost effortlessly.
Dr. Perkins was impressed. “Whoa! You’ve been lifting weights, Faith.”
“No, I don’t know how my arms got this strong,” she lied. “I mostly ride bikes.”
She walked him across the patio toward the front door, but he stopped her a few yards short.
“Faith. I’ve been thinking about the wave of blue light. Where did it come from? Where did it go? Was it affected by clouds, or by mountains? Did any air traffic travel through it and gather any data for us? If we can figure out how the light affected other locations, we can extrapolate how it affected us.”
That was what she wanted to hear. “Jackpot!”
She reached for the glass front door to help get Donald inside, but as she leaned forward, she happened to notice one of the men sitting at a nearby table. He kept his back to her and wore a nondescript lab-coat, but she recognized the dirty blond hair and the first hint of a bald spot.
Bob heard me.
Supercenter Walmart, Modesto, CA
Buck stepped away from the ammo counter like he’d seen a ghost. Someone had come in and spooked the people of Walmart. Alarms rang throughout his brain.
It couldn’t have been me, could it?
The fight in automotive was the first sign of panic caused by the exaggerated rumor. He was certain the storm itself was miles away. No one was in danger.
There was nothing to be gained by hanging around. A bloody fight was in progress in modern-day Walmart. That shouldn’t ever happen.
Let’s skip the soda.
He went toward the center of the store, directly away from the violence. The sounds of the fight faded after he made a few turns down different aisles. He passed the vacuum cleaners and pots and pans and came out in a section devoted to picture frames. A young mother stood by a cart with an infant in a car carrier strapped into the seat. He noticed the woman’s smile and how her face lit up as she looked at an empty picture frame, oblivious to the danger around her.
“Ma’am, there’s a fight in the back of the store. Get your baby out of here, okay?”
She seemed startled at first when Buck touched her cart, but she turned and listened for danger l
ike a prairie dog on the high plains.
Buck waited to see what she’d do.
The woman tossed the frame onto the bottom shelf. “Thank you. We’re leaving.”
He resumed his swift trip to the checkout.
“We now have a code 99 at the ammo counter,” the intercom lady blurted out.
His survivalist instinct asked him to consider dropping the basket and getting clear of the store immediately, but everything was calm at the front, and he still wanted the leash. He figured if things got worse, he would be the first person to run out the door. Helping others while on the run.
He made his way to the ten-items-or-less lanes. He chose the line with the least people, but that still put him third behind an elderly woman and a young woman with a little boy standing next to her.
The old lady had her stuff in bags, but she whipped out a checkbook to pay.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
The older woman looked back as if she heard him thinking. “I’m sorry. It’s all I have.”
He smiled politely, intent to mask his ill-tempered inner monologue.
“Code 99. Sporting goods. Code 99. Automotive. Code 99. Paints.”
It’s spreading.
The little boy stood on the bottom shelf of the display stand next to the conveyor belt. Buck waited for the woman to tend to her charge, but she was staring daggers at the old woman.
The elderly lady fumbled for twenty seconds as she gathered the two small bags she needed, which made his inner voice scream endless obscenities. But when she looked back one last time, he retained his outward smile.
“I’m sorry again. I usually have cash dollars, but it is so dangerous to carry these days.” She smiled at Buck, but her demeanor went right to fear when she looked at the young mother. Buck couldn’t see the woman’s expression from behind, but it must have been bad for the kindly old lady to change so dramatically.
The mother tossed her blue basket on the conveyor and made no effort to unload her stuff for the clerk.
Buck tried not to formulate an opinion about her. If she was fast, she could look at people any way she wanted.
“Momma, look what I did!” The toddler pulled at the hem of his mother’s shirt.
“No,” she deadpanned.
“Momma!” the kid screamed.
“No,” she repeated.
He tried not to judge, but the clerk pulled several bottles of hooch from her basket and not much else, leading him to wonder if she watched her kid when drunk. Was she already drunk? She sure didn’t seem to care about her young one. However, Buck forgave her right away, because she paid for the liquor with a wad of cash.
“Code 99. Breakaway protocol 11. Code Black.” The woman on the intercom sounded nervous, almost like the code names she said were close to death sentences for someone she cared about.
“Momma, dammit, look at my fuggin’ picture.”
The mother finally looked. “Shit, kid. Curtis is going to give you a proper spankin’ when we get home. You are cruising for—” She froze when she saw what he’d done.
Buck looked at it, too, because despite the chaos in the rear of the store, the woman and child were the biggest spectacle on lane 5.
The kid had taken the liberty of opening a pack of scissors, grabbing a sharp one, and then using the edge to scratch the blue paint right off the side of the checkout lane. He’d done it without anyone noticing until he was ready.
The five-year-old didn’t seem bothered by the threats of his mother. He jumped back and pointed to his masterpiece.
“Elmo!”
The kid had drawn the character’s furry smiling face with uncanny precision. Buck thought the boy was a natural artist and was going to compliment him on it, but before he could open his mouth, a gunshot exploded in the back of the store.
“Oh, fuck,” the mother said.
The cashier pointed to the woman’s stuff. “Take it. Breakaway means we’re supposed to get out of the store!”
Buck held up his basket to ask if he could still check out, but the cashier took off before he could catch her eye.
The mother threw her stuff into a bag and dragged her son toward the exit.
Screams came at him like a wave from the back of the store. Shoppers poured out of the clothing racks and housewares aisles as if the shooter was directly behind them.
He intended to pay cash, so he threw a pair of twenties on the counter and held up the basket with two leashes and jerky treats to the black orb on the ceiling nearby. If anyone looked at the tape of what happened in the store, at least they’d know he’d paid for his goods.
Buck joined the crazy mob heading for the exit. The pop-pop sound of a small caliber gun continued as he neared the front doors, and daylight.
“I’m coming, Mac!” he said to bolster his spirit. I should have left when I saw the first person running. I’m sorry, Mac. Sorry, Garth. What’s wrong with me? He’d been in the store for less than ten minutes, but his feet pounded the ground like sledgehammers as he tried to make up for lost time.
Twenty
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for gathering. Yet again.” Faith looked at her team stuffed into the large conference room. She thought it ironic that the builders of this scientific facility didn’t include a conference room big enough to hold all the top-level people who would be required to run the program.
“It looks like everyone is here but Dr. Perkins. He’s feeling a bit ill, so we’ll carry on without him, for now.” She expected him to come in at any second; he never missed a staff meeting, no matter how bad he felt.
Dr. Stafford raised his hand. She pointed at him to indicate he could speak. Deep inside, she wished she had the power to keep him silent.
“It has been five hours since Mr. Shinano’s Izanagi Project was shut down. Can you give the team an ETA on when we can expect to turn the power back on, so we can complete what we need to complete?”
Dickhead, exhibit fifty.
“Thank you, Dr. Stafford,” she said through gritted teeth, “for bringing that up.”
“You’re welcome, Dr. Sinclair.” Bob smiled, but his eyes remained fixed on her. They carried no happiness.
“Well, we’re still not sure what ended the experiment. I’ve been working with the facilities people and both science departments to try to pin the exact cause of our shutdown, but so far, we haven’t come up with anything solid. If we go live again without knowing why we were shut down, we could be right back where we started.”
“But isn’t it worth the risk? Maybe we get shut down. But that’s where we are now. If we don’t, we get some more experimental time in the books. It’s a win-win, right?”
She couldn’t refute his logic, so she held her response while she thought it over. Maybe she was holding back, just to stick it to him. She tried to search her feelings to eliminate that possibility, but she was unable to do so. Faith couldn’t decide if that was morally right or wrong.
“The shutdown protocols were written by you guys.” She pointed to the room, not just at Bob. “Those protocols dictate that each shutdown must be cataloged so that if a similar problem occurs in the future, we’ll have a template from which to work. If we restart now, we may lose the opportunity to learn the cause of the shutdown or if something is wrong with the machine. We could create a catastrophic failure, destroy billions of dollars’ worth of equipment. That would be a crime.”
“Are you saying it was a criminal act?” a woman from the computer team asked.
“No, not at all. I’m sorry for taking the conversation there. The point I’m making is that I think we’re close to figuring out the cause. We’ve certainly got enough data on what didn’t shut it down. It wasn’t a meteor or North Korean nukes like I thought during our last meeting. Once I have a firm answer about what it was and am confident the machine isn’t going to fail, we can get back to doing what we came here to do.
”
She looked around the room and tried to make a connection with each person. One on one, she could talk to anyone on the face of the earth, but in groups, she lost the ability to read their body language. She didn’t know if she was getting through to them.
“Are you going to talk to Benny?” Dr. Stafford asked in his most charming voice. “Our young friend from the Denver Post is still waiting outside the facility on the patio.”
She had a panicky thought wondering if Bob had already talked to the reporter. He’d been on the patio earlier, and the reporter was there now. He seemed adamant that she go to the press and bare her soul, but he didn’t threaten to do it himself. She hoped he would give her that small courtesy.
Bob went on. “Well, if we don’t tell Benny what happened today, he may get the idea that we’re hiding something in here, you know? He might decide to write a story that paints us as the bad guy, instead of as the victim. We don’t want that, do we?”
Faith swished her tongue around her closed mouth as if deciding where to park it. Whatever Bob was angling for, she wasn’t going to fall for it. Earlier, he brought up the idea that she was responsible for the blue light and all those problems stemming from it. The pile of documents Mindy gave her showed the results of that blue light, so its effects were considerable. She was now convinced that was the angle he hoped to use to drive her from the lead position.
And here he was in another meeting, ganking her, just like he said he wouldn’t do.
Don’t give him an inch.
“I’m in charge of public relations, Doctor, and I’ll decide when any member of my team speaks to the press. Is that understood?”
“Crystal clear, ma’am,” Bob said dryly.
They both knew he’d succeeded in forcing her hand.
Benny had been at the facility all day because he was going to report on the ending of SNAKE’s first experiment. She asked him to wait outside as a precaution. Her intention was to talk to him after the experiment wrapped up and she had something to tell him, but when it ended early, she had different priorities than dealing with a reporter.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 16