End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Sure, but it hasn’t been working reliably for me. Do you know who to contact?”

  She grabbed the phone and dialed. “I’ll start with my son’s number.”

  While she held the phone to her ear, he got Mac’s attention by pulling down one of his jerky treats. “Here, boy. Let’s leave the pretty lady alone.”

  The Golden was a sucker for those treats. He slid off Connie’s lap and made his way between the seats to where Buck held out the meat stick. Just before Mac grabbed it, he tossed it onto the sleeper bed.

  “Go on back there,” he said in a friendly voice.

  It wasn’t long before Connie put the phone back in the cradle. “The line went dead.”

  “Yeah, communications are in the toilet. When we get to a bigger town, we should be able to get a better signal. We can even use a landline as long as those bikers aren’t around to jump us.”

  She brushed the dog fur off her dress.

  “I figured you could use a break,” he added, pointing into the back. “Big Mac can stay off you for a few minutes.”

  “You told him to get off the pretty lady,” she said in a hard-to-read tone.

  Buck sat up straight like he’d been caught napping at the wheel. “I didn’t mean it like that. Well, what I meant was…”

  Connie laughed. “I know how you meant it. Thank you for getting me away from those assholes. It looks like we made it.”

  Buck gripped the wheel like he was wringing out a towel. Even his clumsy attempts at a compliment didn’t distract him from the sense he was wasting time at the expense of his son.

  “You’re welcome, but I don’t think we’re free yet. This road was a mistake.”

  “Are you sure?” She looked in the mirror and then up ahead. “It’s nice and empty.”

  “That’s what worries me. What if the VW parked where it was going to be seen so I’d do this exact thing? The guys in your car could link up with chasers on bikes, and they could come out here and harass us without fear of being stopped by other cars.”

  She thought for a second. “I guess it makes sense, but I haven’t seen any of them. Are you sure?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But this road could go on for a hundred miles. They wouldn’t need to be in a rush to catch us, because I can’t go as fast on these curvy back roads.”

  “Well, what do you propose?” she pressed.

  “Turn around. Get back on the main road. Face those dirtbags in the open if we have to.”

  She seemed uncertain, so he turned to his pal. “Mac, should we turn around?”

  He barked once, which was what he almost always did when he heard his name.

  “See? He agrees.”

  Connie turned to the dog. “Should we keep going forward?” After a brief pause, she added, “Mac.”

  Big Mac barked again.

  Buck gave her a sideways glance. “How the hell did you figure that out?”

  “I know a thing or two about dogs,” she replied with a wide smile that made him wish it was safe ahead.

  “I need to turn around,” he said dryly.

  Connie didn’t complain, as he had thought she would. She adjusted the 10/22 on her lap now that Mac wasn’t there. “It’s okay. I recognize a man in deep thought. You haven’t stopped thinking since I climbed aboard. I know you’re trying to keep me safe.”

  “I have a son I’m trying to get back to. He’s counting on me to get this rig all the way across the continent. It was hard enough with just Mac and me, because the world has changed. It hasn’t been right since the blue light yesterday.”

  “It’s okay. I get it. You can let me out fairly soon; I’m sure of it.”

  He reached over and touched her gently on the arm. “No. It isn’t that. I know you feel lost and alone because of the time issue, but please don’t. Whatever has screwed up the world for you has also done it to me.”

  Buck got his hand back on the wheel, eyeing a place up ahead where he could turn his Peterbilt around.

  His focus was on the U-turn for the next minute. Connie was quiet. He couldn’t tell if it was a good or bad thing.

  Once the truck was faced back toward Bridgeport, he got up the nerve to say what was really on his mind.

  “There is safety in numbers, Connie. I know it means a greater risk of running into those guys in your car, but we can’t cross Nevada on remote backroads with no one to call for help.”

  He wasn’t Mad Max, and this wasn’t a movie. Connie was a survivor, like him, and getting her to safety made him think in more dimensions than only about himself. As he drove back toward the town and its meager population, he steeled himself for what was coming.

  Mac came up and sat between the two front seats, looking at the dashboard as if it were interesting to him. When Buck noticed, he reached for him out of habit, but Connie had done the same thing, so their hands bumped again.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it. He’s a fine dog.”

  The lone wolf part of his brain went back into his den. He glanced over at Connie. A new instinct gripped him, and he knew it wasn’t only because she was a beautiful redheaded cowgirl.

  She was a mother fighting to learn what happened to her son. She was part of their shared drama with the bikers. She was willing to stick around and help him.

  The sheepdog part of his psyche came out and took a seat where the wolf had been.

  I’ll get us all to safety. “We’re both going to find out what happened to our sons.”

  Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado

  Over the next hour, Faith’s team confirmed the beam went directly to CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. It did answer one mystery but created many new ones. The general ordered a meeting in the administration conference room to discuss their next course of action.

  Faith ensured everyone was inside, then shut the door for privacy.

  “Thank you, Dr. Sinclair. Before I get started, I have some news.” He looked at the men and women at the table. “Summer Storm Audrey gained strength overnight as it straddled the coastline in North Carolina and Virginia. It wrecked towns in the same way the giant California storm destroyed parts of Sacramento and Modesto yesterday. Today, Audrey has been upgraded to a Category Four hurricane. Please keep Washington D.C., Baltimore, and New York in your thoughts.”

  “Now,” he went on, “what were the results of the interference test?”

  Faith almost asked what he was talking about, but one of the NORAD scientists spoke up. “We tried putting six inches of lead into the beam, but it had no visible effect. The beam passed through it like it wasn’t there, same as it does for the metal loop.”

  “And what time was that experiment run?”

  The scientist looked at a notepad. “10:05 am.”

  “Wait?” Faith raised her hand, though it wasn’t required. “I wasn’t told there would be an experiment of this nature. Why wasn’t I informed? I’m still in charge here. General, your people may be smart, but they don’t have the experience in this facility. They could damage something. I—”

  General Smith held up his hand and looked at his phone for a few seconds. “Point made, doctor. I think we know enough now to restore you to the top of the chain of command within the science community. We can’t afford to politic the shit out of this program.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said slowly but with appreciation.

  “And I’m releasing your people back into the main complex, doctor,” he said to Faith. “But no one leaves until I get more answers. Is that understood?”

  It was a victory for her. Despite the complaints to the general, she didn’t want her staff released from the auditorium so they could head home. She wanted them to stay in SNAKE. If things were as bad on the outside as she had been told, her critical scientists might never return once they left the property. That could be detrimental to solving the giant riddle.

  And the traitor might be stuck here, too. She
regretted keeping them from their families, but she was driven and single. She only sympathized so much. To her, the job always came first.

  “We’ll get everyone working on this. I promise you.”

  “I expect no less.” He stood up at the head of the table. “You guys are the tip of the spear in this fight. Tell me how this collider device became a weapon. Tell me what that link to CERN is doing. And for God’s sake, tell me how we can fix all this.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “I need immediate options,” he went on. “The first question I want answered is whether we can turn off or otherwise disrupt the metal box in the tunnel.” He looked at his aide over by the door. “Did we find any others?”

  The aide motioned yes. “We dropped off men at each subway station and had them fan out in the tunnels. Our first pass revealed three other devices.”

  “Shit,” Faith mumbled under her breath.

  “Anything else, Lieutenant?” the general asked.

  The aide went on, “They are aligned so that the beams from the four boxes create a plus sign when seen from above. We are also exploring other cavities inside the SNAKE complex, but so far we haven’t found any additional illicit hardware. The search is ongoing, however, and may yield more.”

  The general looked at Faith.

  “Four devices. Someone inside this base is a traitor to your research, Dr. Sinclair. Each had to be placed in your collider ring, apparently at extremely specific locations. Someone wanted things to go nuts outside. If I had unlimited time, I would fire you and every person in this place and scrub it clean of these devices. As it is, I have to put my trust someone because I can’t do it alone.”

  The general didn’t seem pleased with his decision.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she replied in a firm tone. “Even if it kills me.”

  “Uh huh,” he replied indifferently. “I need answers. Meanwhile, you don’t mind if I interview some of your key staff, do you? Did anyone leave the facility yesterday before we arrived?”

  “I don’t mind if you interview my people. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you do.” She screwed up her face in distaste. “I’ll ask my assistant if we had any early departures yesterday. Most of us were here all day to analyze data.”

  “Great. Fine. Look, I think we’ve got a plan. You all can go, except Dr. Sinclair. I need a word.”

  She waited until everyone had left, then shut the door. Bob gave her a wink just before the door closed, making her wonder what his game was.

  General Smith spoke first. “I hate to say it, but you were right. I brought these young geniuses in to help out, but they are going to get someone killed. That experiment with the lead bar was their idea, and I let it go because I trusted they knew what they were doing.”

  “I wouldn’t have authorized it, but it was good data. At least we know there was no harm in it.”

  “An optimist—I like that. I didn’t say anything in the meeting, but something was harmed. Before I say what, I want to point out that while I have given you more responsibility, I don’t fully trust you, nor do I have any trust for the other members of your team. However, a general has to go to war with the army he has, not the one he wants. This thing will go belly-up if I rampage through here like I want to.”

  “I think I understand,” she replied.

  “You are in charge of your people, but I’m in charge of this facility. If you do anything that suggests you aren’t playing for my team, you’re gone. I’ll put Dr. Stafford or the Indian woman in charge. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  Not even Bob could have orchestrated this to enhance his own career.

  She redirected the conversation. “You were saying that something happening?”

  “Yes, thank you.” He pointed at his phone. “10:05. That was when he tried to block the signal with the lead bar. At exactly the same moment, I lost twenty-five of the thirty-one GPS satellites from my constellation. It could have been a coincidence, but I doubt it. Do you know what it means?”

  She sat heavily in the closest chair, which happened to be the one she had been sitting in when she scratched her name off the table’s surface yesterday. Back then, she had believed it was her career going down the tubes. Now the general was showing her that much more was at stake.

  “It means we’re all screwed,” she whispered.

  Fourteen

  Highway 182, California

  “Connie, would you mind trying my son again? I really need to talk to him.”

  She grabbed his cell phone from the cradle and took a moment to study it. “This does look futuristic compared to my Blackberry.”

  He chuckled. “Garth would tell you this phone is yesterday’s garbage. Nothing is ever good enough for him when it comes to tech. He’s always asking for the latest gadgets, laptops, and phones, but I can barely afford the monthly cell phone plans, much less the newest models.”

  “Well, it sounds like you are raising him right. You give him what he needs, not what he wants.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t want to get into his recent change of heart about how he’d been raising him. Spending all his time out on the road. Having his boy stay with another family. Once he was back, he’d have a heart-to-heart with Garth about their future. Connie wouldn’t care about all that.

  “I should press this?” She showed him the redial button and he nodded.

  After they’d turned around and backtracked on the blacktop, he figured it was the perfect time to try to catch his son and answer some of his questions.

  “It’s ringing,” she said with excitement. “Wait…no. It went dead.”

  “Shit,” Buck replied. “Not even voicemail?”

  “No. Just silence.”

  It didn’t surprise him. He told her the number for the landline and she dialed that next, but it also failed.

  He took a deep breath and looked at his two companions. The redhead diligently pressed redial, brushed aside her long, wavy hair, then held the phone to her ear. When the line went dead, she tried again.

  Mac stood between the seats next to Connie as if unsure if he should wedge himself in front of her as he’d done earlier. Maybe he was okay with this new person in his seat.

  “All right. Forget about the phone for now. We’ve got to get back to civilization, and we have to go that way to do it.” He pointed south toward Bridgeport.

  Connie sighed. “It’s kind of like calling a radio station. I was hoping to get through.”

  “I’ll have plenty of time to try once I’m on interstate 80. Reception should be better up there. Thanks for trying.”

  She placed the phone back in the cradle on the dashboard.

  “He’s young. I’m positive he’s safe,” she said. “My son would have hopped in his car and gotten into trouble.”

  Buck felt a sinking feeling but tried to keep it out of his reply. “Yeah, my son is fifteen and doesn’t have his own car, so I think I’m okay.”

  He doesn’t have his own car, but he does have access to one…

  As he gave the Peterbilt more gas, he took comfort in thinking that Garth was most likely in the basement practicing with the guns. He was proud he’d divulged that information in dramatic fashion for his son. The shiny objects would keep Garth distracted until he could get through to him on the phone. He was sure of it.

  Staten Island, NY

  Garth joined the procession of traffic headed for the bridge off Staten Island. He wasn’t the only taxi on the interstate, so he didn’t stand out as much as he had in his neighborhood. However, numerous people walked along the shoulder of the highway and tried to flag down every cab that passed, including his, so he had to stay vigilant.

  “I’m sorry, people,” he said to himself.

  The cloudy skies became darker as he went south, and a gentle rain began a few minutes later. It immediately made it more difficult for him to see the sad-looking people walking next to the road, but the rain also caused some brake lights up ah
ead, which slowed everyone down.

  A mile later, his speedometer needle hovered around twenty as the cars and trucks trudged along the slippery highway.

  “You said I had three hours!” he complained. The news broadcast had advised people to escape or stay inside because the hurricane was about three hours away. He’d barely been gone fifteen minutes before the rain began. That either meant the storm was bigger than they thought, or it was moving faster than they predicted. Either way, he needed to make up time.

  He patted the pistol in his pants pocket and wondered if he’d done the right thing by going out. He hadn’t been able to ask Dad in real time what he should do, so he had taken the initiative. He tried his best to anticipate what he’d need on his journey, and he was loaded down with guns, food, and water, but the sudden rain squalls and crowds of desperate people made him think he’d underestimated the danger.

  “You can never predict what people are going to do,” he mumbled. That was something Dad always said. Normally his father reserved the statement for the lighter side of humanity, such as when people took dumps next to toilets in the subway stations rather than in them, but this time the lesson was more serious. Garth already had encounters with several desperate people trying to get into his car. Hundreds more walked in the nearby breakdown lane, and he had no idea what they’d do.

  I could turn around.

  As if to suggest it was a bad idea, a wave of nausea and dizziness washed over him. It passed almost immediately, but he had no time to think about it because a silver car on his left nearly veered into his lane. He mashed the horn to alert the guy, but his warning was drowned by hundreds of other horns from inside the traffic jam.

  “What the hell was that?” he said breathlessly.

  The rain increased from a light sprinkle to cascading sheets of water in the snap of a finger. Visibility reduced to almost nothing. Ahead, the highway filled with fuzzy red lights.

  “No, don’t slow down,” he demanded of other drivers as he fought the fear. The men and women on the side of the road had no shelter from the storm. He was sympathetic to their plight, but he couldn’t help them. His biggest fear was they would mob him and take the cab.