The general, for his part, was amenable to being shown around. That had probably been his plan all along. She led him and an aide down a long wood-paneled central corridor until they reached a set of double doors.
“We are on the admin level; the science department is below us. The best way to think of the administration level is by gluing the letters E and O together. The upright part of the E is the front offices and the exterior windows facing east. The topmost branch is the library, computer lab, and café. The bottom branch is the dorm wing. We’re standing in the central corridor of the E as it meets the O at these doors.” She pushed through them like a tour guide.
“And this is the race track.” They came out in a well-lit corridor which curved in each direction. Doors lined the outside wall, while windows overlooking a giant workspace were on the inside of the curve.
“This can’t go around the loop for sixty miles, can it?”
“No. Who would want to walk it?” She laughed. “There are many parts to a supercollider, including several smaller rings designed to help with particle acceleration. There are also several detectors spaced around the loop, but this is the largest.” She pointed through the windows.
“There really isn’t much to see when the experiment is taking place since all the action happens inside of a vacuum, but it does allow us to ensure that operations are going as they should.”
She caught her admission.
“And no, there was nothing unusual down there yesterday. The power went off at precisely the time the blue wave beamed out of here.”
The general nodded as they walked to the observation windows. They overlooked a five-story room that was almost as big around as the playing surface of a typical baseball stadium. Heavy equipment sat on either side of what would have been second base.
“This is where the collisions are recorded.”
“It’s massive,” he remarked.
“It is the biggest machine on Planet Earth.” She beamed.
The general whistled. “I am impressed.”
“The proton bunches race around the sixty-two-mile loop about twenty-five hundred times a second—close to the speed of light—gathering energy the whole way. One beam goes clockwise, the other counter. When we have them at the speeds we want, we lock the two halves of the detector and crash them into each other inside.” She pointed to the two bulky machines that appeared to fit together. They made the giant room look small.
“And this isn’t big enough to discover the nature of the universe, like you said before?”
She could tell by his tone of voice he was excited by the equipment. It was difficult for anyone to see it and not get enthused. There were probably few places on Earth where science was done on such a grand scale. Cape Canaveral would be the closest comparison.
“Nope. Can you believe it?” She pointed but walked away from the windows.
“That’s the collision chamber. When the halves are separated, no collisions can take place. The power to them is off. I’d like to take you into the tunnel.” She went into a nearby stairwell on the opposite side of the hallway.
The general paused at the door and talked to his aide. “Get me the coordinates of the power spike, would you?”
Good luck finding one when the power is off.
“Yes, sir.” The aide flipped open his phone and made a call.
“After you, doctor,” the general insisted.
They walked down five flights of steps in total silence, but when they got to the bottom and came out next to an elevator, the general gestured to it. “Why didn’t we take that down?”
“I’m terrified of getting trapped in an elevator that is also trapped in a cave. If we lost power while we were inside that little box, I’d lose my lunch.”
“You’ve never used the elevators?” he said in surprise.
Faith chuckled. “I’ve used them loads of times, but not since noon yesterday.”
They stood on the main experimental floor. Most of Faith’s life was spent looking at spreadsheets of data and computer models of what was happening inside the equipment, so being close to the machinery made it seem real.
“You can see the techs working in there.” She pointed through the window to the giant mechanical devices. There should have been men and women in white gowns taking care of maintenance, but everyone was being held prisoner by the general’s people, so the room was clear. “Oh, my bad. You have them locked up.”
“Take me to the tunnel, please.” He avoided her implication.
“Dammit, general. This place will fall apart if people don’t take care of it. If you are going to keep us here, at least let us do our jobs. If cryo fails, it will take us weeks to re-cool the loop.”
The general did briefly peer through the windows but was intent on moving on.
“General!” she snapped to his backside. “These people have families. They are going to wonder why they didn’t call or come home last night.”
He spun around but wasn’t upset. “Doctor, I need you to show me the tunnel. I can’t risk something happening to this equipment until I know what I’m dealing with or who I can trust. My people say the power for your experiment is on. You say the power is off. What am I supposed to do?”
“Believe me,” she suggested.
He motioned her away from the windows.
“Fine.” She exhaled.
They walked a short way to a place that looked like a small underground subway stop. She slid a keycard to open the doors of a futuristic-looking tram car about thirty feet long. The aerodynamic silver vehicle was angled on both ends like a double-tipped needle.
The general waited outside the door as if there were a problem.
“Don’t tell me you’re worried?” she scoffed. “This tram is perfectly safe.”
“You won’t go into an elevator near the exit of your underground fortress, but you will get into an iron lung and go deeper into it without a problem? Doctor, you have a strange sense of fear.”
She stuck with the facts. “The sixty-mile loop is divided into sections. Each one has emergency supplies, a phone, tools, and a little food and water. The tram has food and water, as well as oxygen tanks. If we stop, we won’t have to walk more than about four miles.”
The general held up his finger to pause the conversation. He picked up his phone and spoke for a few seconds, then hung up.
“Okay, take me to mile 7.8.”
“The first insertion point? What’s there? Who was on the phone?”
General Smith’s blue eyes peered deep into her soul as if he were conducting a human lie detector test. She withstood his withering gaze without flinching because she had nothing to hide. However, when he spoke, she imagined she’d failed his test.
“Let’s go look.”
Pole Line Motel, Mono Lake, CA
Buck’s ploy worked to perfection. The two bikers left the woman alone and ran toward the back of his truck to move their threatened motorcycles. They gave him glares straight from the pits of damnation, which raised the hair on the back of his neck, but he consoled himself that he was doing the right thing. Even assholes didn’t deserve to be shot for no good reason.
He revved the motor, put it in reverse so the lights shown on the soon-to-be-leveled bikes, and waited for the rats to scurry from behind him.
“Come on, lady, get in your car.” The woman was free of the men, but she wasn’t getting into her VW. She just leaned against her door like a wilted flower.
Mac began to whine, probably sensing Buck’s impatience and anxiety.
“It’s fine, boy. We’re leaving. I promise.”
He wanted to believe it was the obnoxiously loud air horn that scared his pup, but things kept spiraling into madness, and the dog knew Buck too well. Once he had threatened the bikers, their own lives were in danger.
He checked his side mirror and discovered the biker with the “Fuck you” helmet coming up the driver’s side of the truck. He held something metal in his hand, which
Buck instantly identified as a gun.
“Son of a bitch!” he said to himself.
Ahead, the woman still hadn’t moved.
The bikers approached along both sides of the trailer like a pack of hyenas looking for easy prey. Buck knew that the negotiation had ended. He experienced a grim calm that came with the certainty of battle.
He had about three seconds to decide how to end it.
The Marine in him took over.
Seven
Staten Island, NY
Garth ran inside and turned on the television. His dad was too cheap to pay for cable service, so all he had were the local channels. Strangely, one of them was off the air, but the other two big networks were still broadcasting.
The first was in a commercial break, but the second showed what looked like a weather map. A large area of red had been drawn over New York City and lots of the cities around it.
“This has to be for the storm.” He turned up the volume.
“…if you are anywhere from the tip of New Jersey in the south to the northern border of Connecticut, you will want to find a hardened shelter or evacuate. Do not remain outside during the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”
He changed channels. The first station had their own take on it.
“Welcome back. If you are just joining us, we have new information on Hurricane Audrey. The slow-moving system built up in the overnight hours and is now a Category Four hurricane in terms of wind speed and precipitation. However, it is about half the size of a typical hurricane.”
A second newscaster asked a question. “Trey, what will that mean for our viewers? How can they prepare?”
“This is a hurricane based on size and sustained wind speeds, but its organization is quite different. There are pockets of high winds and torrential, almost Biblical-sized rain cells. It has no eye like a typical hurricane. We recommend evacuating if you can. If not, try to harden your house and go to a central room or basement until the storm passes. As you can see, it has come up the coast and is now over the Washington D.C. and Baltimore metro areas. It should reach our viewers in the New York City region in about three hours.”
Three?
The other channel advised people to shelter for twenty-four hours. That didn’t seem right for a storm, even a big one. He changed back to the first channel.
“…the reactor core was taken offline, but it continued into meltdown. Radiation leakage has been confirmed, but malfunctioning sensors have made it difficult to say how much has gotten into the atmosphere. Pennsylvania Power advises its residents to plan for the worst. The governor of Pennsylvania has ordered the evacuation of Philadelphia. Yes, folks, this is bad. Get out if you can.”
What the hell?
He flicked to the other channel, where they were still talking about the storm. Another flick and he was back on the broadcast talking about nuclear meltdown.
“Dad was right! The world is going to shit.” It was starting to make sense. “Which of the two are the sirens for?” The horns had turned off after a few minutes, but that didn’t stop the fear from messing up his stomach.
He flipped back and forth on the TV to ensure he didn’t miss anything.
“State scientists have determined a cloud of radiation has escaped and is flowing on the prevailing winds toward the east. At this point, we are unable to predict what will happen when this cloud meets Audrey coming up from the south, but it could compound the disaster. The next three hours should be crucial for New York City. Avoid both, if at all possible.”
The weather department put two projection paths on the map, a red one coming in from a nuclear power symbol near Philadelphia, and a blue one coming in from the Washington, D.C. area. They met and grew in size right over his house.
“No freakin’ way, man,” he said to the television screen.
He tried to text Sam, but that was mostly out of habit, not because he expected his friend to have answers. It concerned him greatly when the network symbol had a line through it, meaning it was down.
Garth tried to call Dad next, but that didn’t go through, either.
He sat watching the TV for another few minutes as he tried to figure out what to do to protect the house and himself. Did it make sense to try to put the boards on the window and seal the place up? Could a house be sealed completely from radiation? He remembered lots of movies where nothing could stop radiation except getting far from it.
And what if the storm came through and blew his house down? Then he’d be in his basement with no roof over his head to protect him from the radiation-filled rain. That would suck.
“Stay or go?” he whispered.
Garth looked at his phone again. There was now one bar of service, so he cut and pasted a new text from his last message.
‘Dad, nuclear fallout is headed this way. Should I shelter in the basement or get out?” He hit Send, then stared at the phone for several minutes until he accepted that an answer wasn’t coming right back. Plus, the more he thought it over, the more he realized how incredible it was going to sound when his dad saw it.
‘Will explain when we talk,’ he texted as a clarification.
He’s probably driving.
Dad hated to text when he was behind the wheel because he never wanted to risk his life looking at useless messages. Garth couldn’t fault him for that since almost every text he’d ever sent over his lifetime had been non-essential, but this time was different.
“Come on, Dad, answer!”
The TV station changed to a series of colored bars, like it had gone off the air, then flickered back into a shot of the newsroom.
Garth understood that he’d already made up his mind about a course of action, almost from the first moment his dad said had something was seriously wrong with America. If he was in charge of things here at the house, he gave himself the okay to make an important decision about his own safety.
The tornado sirens started up another round of warnings.
Garth peeked out the back window.
“Dad, I hope this will make you proud.”
Pole Line Motel, Mono Lake, CA
Buck set his Beretta on his lap, then pressed the button to lock both the doors. It was part of a step by step approach to the coming fight.
He let off the brake, making the reverse lights on the back of the trailer stand out that much more.
“He’s doing it!” one of the bikers shouted. Some of the jackals on the sides of the trailer turned around like they were going to move their choppers, but at least two continued toward the cab.
Buck gave it a little gas and the truck lurched in reverse. He wanted to run over the guys like a steamroller, but if he went too fast, he risked damaging his trailer. He immediately felt resistance back there and imagined the first bike lodged up against the crash guard, which ironically was designed to stop vehicles from going underneath the trailer.
The men screamed—a howl of anguish he heard over his motor.
“Get him!”
“Fuck it,” he hissed as he gave it more gas.
The nearest biker took a shot through his open window from below. The bullet tore into the fabric of his roof. After the fact, Buck crouched lower behind the wheel.
Outside, bystanders jumped in their cars or cowered behind them.
The Peterbilt bounced with the torque of the rapid reverse, and he felt more impacts through the kingpin and fifth wheel. He let the trailer roll backward about ten feet, which was what he had told them he needed. It should have leveled most of the bikes that were in the way. He put the truck into first gear.
He fought the tunnel vision and took a deep breath.
“Here we go!” He spun the wheel to the left and gave the engine some gas.
The man down below took another shot, but it went through the fiberglass frame of the sleeper. He figured the jerky motion of the powerful tractor made him a more difficult target.
A man’s arm appeared on the passenger side. Buck clenched his teeth because he’d
been expecting it. He picked up his Beretta as the big biker appeared outside the far window. The man clearly didn’t expect to see Buck with his own weapon. The shock on his face led to a spastic effort to bring his pistol to bear.
Buck fired once through the lower part of the door frame, which was also center mass of the attacker. He quickly followed with a second shot. A double tap. In close quarters combat, it was standard practice. His Marine training kicked in fully in the fight for his life.
“Fuck you!” he yelled in anger at being forced to shoot the man.
Mac whined from his crate, but Buck heard it only distantly. It wasn’t the ringing from the concussion of the gun, but blood pounded in his ears like a thousand beating drums.
Gun in hand, he checked his left mirror for the guy who’d already shot at him twice. That man tried to climb on the side step as his friend had done, so Buck peeked out. He didn’t waste time with warnings or truce offerings. He aimed.
The first shot grazed the biker’s clothing, but it didn’t stop him from lifting his pistol. Buck didn’t give him a chance to return fire; he loosed a second shot. The man jerked backward, his hand flying to his ruined shoulder. He tumbled from the step, hitting the ground heavily and rolling aside.
The overburdened truck hadn’t gotten far in first gear; he’d only been able to pull his Peterbilt to the side of the VW.
He shifted out of gear and slammed on the emergency brake. Save the cheerleader, save the world. He didn’t know why that catchphrase had jumped into his head, but it was there nonetheless.
Ignoring Mac’s whines and his own screaming ears, he peeked at the far side mirror, then scooted into the passenger seat. His pulse ran wild and his instinct said to give it gas and never look back, but he had one obligation to perform before he could leave the lot.
Buck kicked open his door and leaned part of the way out. One of the men who’d gone back had now returned to the side of the truck as if to pursue the rig. The biker carried a ridiculously large chrome pistol, and he began to raise it when the door opened. Buck put the 3-dot sights on the man’s Trash Panda logo and squeezed the trigger.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 30