Mel Tinker went by the handle Monsignor, which had confused them all. The young guy didn’t dress religiously or talk like a holy man. Nothing about him suggested why he would call himself a man of the cloth, so they had to ask.
His reply had been sobering.
“If you carried the shit I do, you’d be praying all the time just like me.” Mel pointed to the polished-steel liquid-hauler behind his rig. Flammable warning signs were everywhere. “If I ever spark up, it’s goodbye to me and the nearest square mile of souls. I guess I like to be prepared.”
His current assignment was to pull his tanker of acetylene to a chemical plant in Illinois.
“Who is in the rocking chair?” Buck called out on Channel 4, asking about the trucks in the middle of the convoy.
“It’s me!” a perky twenty-something woman replied. Evelyn went by Eve on the CB. Buck hadn’t caught her last name. She was a recruiter for the Parker-Point shipping company, and her bubbly personality undoubtedly convinced many young men to sign up and become over-the-road truckers.
She and her Peterbilt pulled a load of electronics bound for a terminal in Massachusetts.
“Beans is tail gunner,” a man added.
Beans drove the last truck. The heavyset Hispanic man hailed from Southern California, but he’d lived and traveled all over the United States, so he had no accent. He was about fifty, which put him on par with Sparky in terms of years, but Buck thought he was the least serious of the four drivers. He joked about lunch several times even as they talked about their route across Nevada, so Buck assumed “Beans” referred to his appetite.
“Take it nice and slow, guys,” Buck said to the professional truckers behind him. “This snow has to break soon, and then we’ll be at the head of the traffic instead of the rear.”
There were a couple of nice hills on the Nevada crossing, but nothing like the high snow-packed passes of the main mountain ranges. He was betting the snow would clear once they got farther into the desert.
A few miles out of Reno, he finally looked at Connie because there was a commotion on her lap.
“Hey!” he said. “Get down, you silly pup.”
Big Mac, the fifty-pound baby, had curled up on Connie. The dog must have sensed his tone because he raised his head to look over at him as if to say, “Please, Dad, let me stay.”
Connie laughed. “It’s fine, really. He asked politely.”
“Politely?” he replied with surprise.
Mac’s eyes somehow got larger, and sadder. “Pleeeeease?” they said.
Buck shook his head. “That dog is smarter than he lets on. Garth is going to have his hands full.”
Connie was rubbing the Retriever’s flank, and he knew there was no sense interrupting.
“Fine. But you get down the second she asks you, okay?”
Mac’s idea of saying thanks was slamming his head down so he could get back to basking in the attention of the new person sharing his seat.
The snow was nerve-wracking to drive through, but his soul soared ten feet above him as he appreciated how lucky he was. He’d found the perfect dog at the start of this trip. Connie was a great addition, despite how she came aboard. And now he had four truckers backing him up.
He wanted to say something to that effect to Connie, but he couldn’t think of a way to do it without sounding weird. She even looked over at him, a softness in her eyes hinting that she knew what was on his mind.
Be cool, he told himself.
He almost got it out, but she spoke first. “Why are you in the front? Wouldn’t it be safer to be in the middle? I mean, the convoy was your idea, and all.”
Buck clenched his jaw. He had not expected that.
“You’re right. The leader has the most dangerous position because he doesn’t know what’s coming and has to react to changing conditions faster than the others.”
The thought of danger tempered his mood.
“So, why not be in the middle?” She asked it matter-of-factly, like it was a point of conversation rather than an accusation.
He shrugged while holding the wheel with both hands. “Linking up with the others was my idea. It wouldn’t be right to ask them to assume the danger. Besides, do you want one of those other drivers up in the front if we do find trouble?” He chuckled. “I mean it in the nicest possible way. They all seem like—”
“Civilians,” she finished.
Buck glanced over to get a read on her. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“I know you don’t. I can tell you don’t have a mean bone in your body. But it is absolutely true. I think you’re wired to lead, not follow. I saw the same thing in my son. That boy was a handful.”
He didn’t want her to dwell on her missing son, any more than he wanted to dwell on how it had been too many hours since he’d been in contact with his.
“Why don’t we play a game?” he suggested.
She perked right up. “Oh? What did you have in mind?”
He thought of some of the games he liked to play to kill the days.
“Let’s see who can find the most states on license plates.”
Connie thought about it for a few seconds and looked forward on the highway, then in her side mirror.
“Is that your idea of a joke? There isn’t anyone out here but us.”
He pointed to the side of the road. An abandoned car sat in a ditch. “Fine. Let’s play count the wrecks.”
“How about Slug Bug?” The Beetle was covered in snow, but its shape remained distinctive. Connie leaned across and lightly hammered Buck in the shoulder. Mac started to bark.
Buck laughed. “Don’t make me get my gun, because you know I won’t hit you back.”
“I know,” Connie said softly.
Canberra, ACT, Australia
Dez only had a split-second to decide what to do. The man on the other side of the creek seemed to be pointing his gun at her, and she had no cover besides the leaves of the bushes.
She aimed her tranquilizer rifle at him and fired without thinking. The light snap of the gun was followed by the whistle of the dart crossing the creek.
The man’s gun boomed, and a tree splintered just above her head.
“Crikey!” she shouted.
The man fell backward, his bolt-action rifle pointed at the sky, the spent round still chambered.
The Duck of Doom seemed frozen between her and the hunter, the two threats it had to compare and assess.
She shot it before it made its decision.
To her relief, it fell over in the shallow water, so she didn’t have to chase it down.
The creek became still again, and she put her hand over her heart to feel how fast it was beating.
The bloody blow-in made me shoot him.
It was amazing to have shot the bird, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man’s shape in the bushes beyond. She strode through the shallow water and went up the bank to check on him. She grabbed her dart from his shoulder and verified he was breathing, but that was as much attention as she was willing to give him.
She started to second-guess herself immediately. Had he truly been aiming at her? Had she intentionally misread his posture to enable herself to fire on him, so she could get her animal? Was this about the money or self-preservation? She wasn’t certain, but she expected her subconscious drove her to protect the animal as much as herself.
Most of her fears went away when she made her way to the dromornis stirtoni. The animal looked like a cross between a huge Emu and a typical mallard duck. It was ungainly-looking, with black and white feathers that seemed more Dalmatian than duck, but it wasn’t quite as tall as she expected.
The species of ancient bird was known for being three meters tall and up to 600 kilos in weight, but this one wasn’t much larger than her. “You must be a teenager,” she said to it in a quiet voice.
Destiny wanted to celebrate her feat with her sister, so she pulled out her phone and took a photo of the rare creature. Then she texted it to
Faith, although she didn’t know if the strange man still had her phone.
‘Sis. You are right about time being messed up. This Duck of Doom is from at least 30,000 years ago. Maybe a lot longer. I captured it!’
She hit Send.
I’ve got to move fast.
She ran to her four-wheeler and grabbed the folding game-hauler cart. It would allow her to get the animal out of the creek and through the trees, so she’d be able to load it onto the gas-powered machine. Then it would be easy to return to the house.
Everything was planned out in her mind, but when she came back through the trees, two more hunters were already there.
“It looks like he shot it and then had a heart attack,” one of them said when they found the sedated hunter.
Destiny wasn’t one to back down from a fight, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that first hunter really had meant to shoot her. Ten million dollars was a huge amount of money, and hunting accidents weren’t uncommon, especially when there were no friendly witnesses.
She had to decide if she was willing to risk her life again.
Am I doing it for the money or the bird?
Her mind still wasn’t made up when the men rolled their own game cart to the water’s edge.
Somewhere in New Jersey
Garth hiked back to the road and went underneath the Garden State Parkway. The high bridges gave him shelter from the rain, and for a few minutes he stood there and enjoyed the protection.
However, he didn’t dare stay long, so he took a few steps closer to the water dripping from the far edge of the bridge. Garth intended to set out into the rain, but he noticed movement up where the bridge deck met the slope of the earth.
“Hello?” he said. Almost without thinking, Garth put his hand in the pocket with his pistol so it would be easy to pull it out.
“Are you a ghost?” a girl’s voice called out from the shadows.
He wondered if it was a trick question designed to get him into an ambush, but there was nowhere below the bridge where someone could hide. The two-lane road passed beneath it, and that was it.
“No.”
“Oh,” she replied.
He relaxed a little. It was probably a vagrant. They were not uncommon in New York City. “Do you know if there are any shops in this direction? I need to find help. I’ve had an accident.”
The girl came out of the shadows and slid down the concrete embankment. Garth was surprised to see her dressed like one of those reenactors from an old-timey pioneer farm. He’d taken a few field trips to places like them, although he had no clue if there were any in this part of New Jersey.
She was also about his age.
Her light-blue flowery dress reached down to her leather boots, and a bonnet wrapped around most of her blonde hair. “You look like you came from that TV show Little House on the Prairie.” He thought about his words when she showed no reaction. “I don’t mean it as an insult. I think you look awesome. Where do you work?”
Her nose turned up. “Work? I work all the time, every day.” She showed him the wooden stick she held. It had been trimmed with a blade and had a sharp point at the top. “I was in a cave looking for mushrooms and rats when I—”
“Rats?” Garth interrupted.
She put her hand on her hip in a posture he was familiar with from school. “Are you going to listen or not?”
“Sorry,” he replied.
She pursed her lips. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve been here for a while. I was hunting in a cave when I got dizzy and fell over. When I woke up, I saw strange carriages pass under this bridge with ghosts inside. They moved at unnatural speeds with terrible howls. I crawled up into the topmost reach of this odd cave and waited there until I saw you. You are the first person who is not inside those metal monsters. Truly, they must all be dead?”
“They are inside cars, is all,” he said dryly. “I drive one, too.”
He squinted and gave her a hard glare to determine if she was having him on.
“What?” she asked when she saw his look.
“And you don’t work at a pioneer farm? Is this some kind of gag?” It was probably his payback from the universe for leaving those people behind earlier.
“My pa and I were part of a train heading to our land out in Oregon. It was going to be our farm.” Her shoulders slumped. “Until he died. Then my life turned upside down.”
“What about your mom?” he asked.
“She died giving birth to me. It was only me and Pa up until we crossed the Platte River in Nebraska. Then it was just me.”
He gulped heavily, still not sure if she was yanking his chain. There were kids in his school who dabbled with drugs. The little he saw of that made him wonder if this girl was high on something.
“I’m sorry,” he said. It was a safe reply. “I’m Garth, by the way.”
She finally showed a fragile smile. “Thank you. I’m Lydia.”
They shared a moment of awkward silence when his phone vibrated in his pants pocket. He jumped at being startled, which caused her to take a step back.
“It’s okay.” He pulled out his phone. “It’s this.”
Her face turned wonderous. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “You really don’t know? It’s a phone. Here, look. I got a text.”
“What’s a text?”
Lydia came closer as he read the message from his father.
“Well, that bites the big one,” he said with disappointment.
“What?” she said with curiosity.
“I sent a message to my dad earlier. I left home assuming he was going to tell me to get away from the radiation storm, but this is what he says: Stay at home. Will call you with instructions ASAP. Driving.”
“I know I’m not being helpful, but every other word you speak is foreign to me. It sounds like a radiation storm is dangerous. Is it?”
The intensity of the rain increased as if it knew it had him trapped.
“Very,” he said, newly convinced that he’d made a huge mistake by leaving the house.
Twenty-Two
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
The general wasn’t available to see Faith for several hours. Numerous scientists and staff from what she thought of as the NORAD contingent filed in and out of his office until shortly after lunch.
A young airman finally came to her makeshift office with an invitation to see the general. She picked up Benny on the way and had him wait outside the door.
“Come in, Dr. Sinclair,” the general said as he rose from what was once her desk.
“General, I’ve been waiting for—”
He interrupted. “I’m sorry. I know I put you in charge, and time is critical, but I wanted more of my team in place before I felt comfortable making any decisions.”
“And?” she said.
General Smith walked her to the large window facing out over the Hogback and the dry high plains beyond. He pointed to the parking lot below.
It was filled with Humvees and school buses, plus the cars and trucks of her regular staff.
“How many people did you bring in?” she remarked.
“Two-hundred and fifty. Every physicist I could find, order onto a bus, and ship here overnight. Most are from Colorado and surrounding states. I was lucky to get the first batch on an Air Force cargo plane, but there are no more flights. Everything is grounded except emergency military transports, and there aren’t enough of those to go around.”
She tried to think like the military man. “Isn’t it a state secret? What if I go tell the Chinese or Russians our air defenses are down?”
It was supposed to be a joke, but General Smith had no sense of humor right now. “We know this is worldwide. Their air forces are down, too. Every plane in the world is stuck on the ground.”
Faith sensed she’d stepped in it. “I wasn’t implying I would, general. I was trying to lighten the mood.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’re a spy.” He directed her back to the plastic chairs, and they sat down next to each other.
“General,” she began the second they were both seated, “I’d like to give you this.” She pulled a phone out of her slacks.
He took it. “You’ve been holding out on me?”
“No!” she snapped. “I mean, no, not at all. This belongs to a reporter who spent the night in our parking lot. His name is Benny. Works for the Denver newspaper. Good guy. As soon as I saw him this morning, I confiscated this.”
“Oh, that’s different. Thank you.” The general looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t.
She nervously shifted in her seat. “General, I didn’t do it out of altruism. I want you to trust me, so you’ll give me…give us our phones back. Sir, we need them to do our jobs. I have people on the outside I need to call to make simple observations about the causes and effects we’re experiencing. If you—”
“Say no more,” he cut in. “The horse is out of the corral already. You can have your phone back. Call whomever you need to.”
“What do you mean about the horse?”
He pointed with his thumb to the busses outside. “We couldn’t get all these scientists without someone asking a bunch of questions. They make it look so easy in the movies.” He chuckled. “In reality, try sending some dark vans to pick up a professor or two from a college campus and watch the news hounds show up in droves. They followed the buses, so of course, it’s all over the internet now.”
“Reporters are outside,” she said once she figured out the implications.
“Yep. All of them, apparently. Far outside, for now. But they’re watching us.”
She couldn’t have planned it better.
“General, I would like to propose giving Benny full access to SNAKE in exchange for his silence. We can use him as our contact with the news services, so they can’t complain about not providing information. We can tell him what we want him to know, and he can share that with his peers. One man. One message.”
“Will he go for it?” General Smith sounded uncertain.
“May I invite him in? You can ask him yourself.”
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 41