A lot of hunters, including Zandre, were still in the field, so there were fewer men around to welcome the arrivals at the lodge. That was fine with her, because her anger had grown with every minute of her drive.
They stole my bird.
She parked her four-wheeler away from the others and took her time walking over to where the men had tossed the Duck of Doom onto the grass. She stopped at each of the hunters’ rides to see if they’d shot other animals, thankful they had not.
When she approached the celebration, she went over to the downed creature, although a solidly-built hunter kept her from getting next to it.
She pretended not to care, but then she noticed the sedated hunter propped up next to a step.
“Oi. Is he all right?” She pointed to the man.
“Heart attack,” the protective hunter replied. She recognized him as the man who had pulled the Duck of Doom out of the water and put it on his cart. “Called triple zero, but they said it will be a while. We’re on our own, I guess.”
She knew it wasn’t a heart attack, so she didn’t waste more attention on him. However, she found it fascinating that the injured guy had received no medical help from his friends. They seemed more interested in the bird.
That upset her almost as much as the initial theft.
“I shot that bird, you know,” she explained. “You guys found it in a creek, didn’t you? I was away getting my handcart when you came in and took it.”
The lead hunter glared at her. “Sorry, Sheila. No one was there but Dave. We figure he shot it and then had a heart attack. Poor guy.”
The others grunted in support of their comrade as if they believed his story without exception. She saw it would be fruitless to lay claim to the bird, but she’d expected that.
“Well, it is a beautiful creature,” she said, looking it over.
“All I see is ten million dollars,” the big hunter replied. His friends laughed.
“Dave’s ten million, right, mates?” she said innocently. If she wasn’t going to get the credit, she would at least make sure the big lying asshole didn’t get it either.
The man glared at her. “Dave’s injured. Maybe dying. Me and the others found it and drove it here, so who’s to say who really brought it in?”
She checked the Duck of Doom once again; some of its feathers were fluttering. That would easily be mistaken for the effects of wind, but she knew better.
“I shot it,” she insisted. “And I’ll prove it to you.”
“We’d love to see it,” the angry hunter taunted.
She held up her finger to signal she needed a second. “Be right back.”
When Destiny reached her four-wheeler, she sat at the controls to catch her breath. Her heartbeat was running wild. After surviving the forest fire and a brush with being shot, she was no fool when it came to surviving in the outback. At the same time, she couldn’t let these hunters get the best of her. It wasn’t in her nature to be someone else’s doormat.
If she timed it properly, she would prove the truth of what she said and make it clear to the rest of the hunters who was lying.
She started the gas engine.
Destiny was careful to keep the engine revs at a minimum as she slowly drove across the large grassy lawn toward the group of hunters. She paused about ten meters away but gave it a little gas to get their attention.
All eyes were on her.
You can do this, Dez.
A few seconds went by before she saw the Duck of Doom stir. It wasn’t the wind moving its wings. It was waking up.
“I can prove I shot that bird,” she said in a raised voice. “It’s really easy, actually, because you don’t know what type of weapon I used.”
She revved the engine louder, praying she knew animals well enough that she could anticipate what would happen next. It was an educated guess based on her experience with sedating other animals over her career, but it was still a guess.
No one could predict what a thirty-thousand-year-old bird would do.
Destiny let go of the brake and lurched toward the men. They spread out as if fearful she’d run into them, which was what she wanted them to think. One of the men fell over the prone body of the bird, which caused it to hop up.
She continued forward, revving the engine to drive up the noise.
The bird was confused and squawked bloody murder as it bumped into a couple of the hunters. Once it saw an opening, it ran for a clump of trees at the edge of Zandre’s yard.
“I tranquilized it!” she shouted as she avoided hitting any of the hunters.
Destiny chased the white-and-black bird with her ride, and she was amazed by how easily it got away from her. It departed in a fast waddle-hop before it jumped into the brush with a final passionate warble. It was almost like it knew it was free again.
I can’t protect you, little guy, she thought. I need the military.
The Demon Duck of Doom didn’t stop at the trees. It ran beyond them into the open expanse of the Canberra bush, destined for parts unknown. She followed it, content to have won a small victory, but plans were already forming in her mind about what she would need to do to help all the new arrivals. As a naturalist, it fell on her to take care of the time-shifted visitors and get them to safety.
She had just proved to herself that she’d go to almost any length to get it done.
Destiny wondered in those first seconds if the hunters were going to shoot her for scaring them. After staring down the barrel of a loaded rifle at the creek, she feared it might be easier to shoot her in the back. However, she assumed no one would want to kill her in front of witnesses.
Or she was being paranoid.
It didn’t matter to her what the hunters wanted, and they would not be chasing her anytime soon.
She had the keys to their four-wheelers.
I-80, Nevada
The drivers behind Buck still hadn’t made up their minds about staying, but most of his attention was on Garth. He was now receiving an AM station out of Salt Lake City, and the male talk-radio host was discussing the situation on the East Coast.
“As we said last hour, the radiation threat remains high from the Susquehanna River where the Three Mile Island reactor is located, all the way to the eastern tip of Cape Cod. The nuclear regulatory people have been hush-hush about the levels of radiation in the air. Well, radiation in the rain, since it seems that a giant storm is blowing it toward the coast. What do you think is the real story here?”
A woman guest replied to the host. “I believe the main issue is that Federal authorities have no way of knowing where the radiation will blow, and thus they have no way to issue realistic evacuation orders. We’re talking about something like twenty million people in a narrow band between the origin point and the coast. There will be lots of casualties if people head out into the rain. Their best bet is to ride it out.”
“Unless Hurricane Audrey gets there first.”
“True. It could push the blast zone to the north, outside the limits of New York City, maybe to the north of Boston as well. Of course, the new path will create new problems for upper New England and eastern Canada.”
“Is that what you’re seeing on the weather forecast?” the host asked.
“Right now, the cutoff line is in the middle of New Jersey. Audrey is pushing north at a high rate of speed, but I’m not sure it will be enough.”
Buck shut off the radio.
“Fuck,” he drawled. “I should have tried harder to get hold of him.”
Connie held up his phone. “I’ve been dialing his number every few minutes. It never goes through, nor does the number of my son.”
He felt terrible for both of them, but it helped that she was trying.
“Please let me know if you get—”
“Wait!” she exclaimed. “A message came through just now.”
He let off the gas in his excitement. “What does it say?”
“I’m fine,” she replied.
“That�
��s it?”
She watched the screen as if more was about to pop up, but a minute went by and nothing appeared. “Yes, he only said he was fine.”
“I can live with that,” Buck commented, returning his focus to the road. “He’s still in the game and unhurt. It means he’s going to be okay, like us. I’m sure he’s back on the road and heading for shelter.”
“Buck,” Monsignor called on the CB. “We’ve made our decision.”
He glanced at Connie and the oversized puppy at her feet. “Well, let’s see if they’re going to stay with us.”
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith had been pushed to the sidelines because of her white lie about Destiny and her failure to offer compelling alternatives to a shutdown, but she tried to stay close to the action.
She was in the room when the scientists went into their Hobbit hole, as the general had called it. They talked about a variety of ways to destroy the boxes, including smashing them or blowing them up, but she saw the huge flaw in their thinking.
“Won’t that damage the collider, too?” she asked the group.
When they gave her blank stares, she continued, “Does anyone have a come-along? We could use one to pull them away rather than destroy the cases.
The solution was something she had learned from her father back in Australia: a hand-held winch that was designed to pull off-road trucks from obstacles on the outback roads. It turned out that the general’s Humvees each carried one.
When she walked into the control center an hour later, the general surprised her.
“Good thinking about the winches. You’d make a decent government employee, Dr. Sinclair. Your solution cost us nothing. I respect that.”
“Well, your idiots were going to use C-4 to blow up the boxes and a good chunk of my ring, so I had to think of something.”
He gave her a hard look. “It was good that you were there.”
She stepped over to him. “General, this is my last plea. I want nothing more than to protect the world. This is a global situation. I know we’ve cracked heads, but I want to start over. I didn’t see how my sister could threaten our security from the far side of the world, but I was wrong to keep it from you.”
His glare burned into her retinas, but she held firm in the belief honesty was the only thing that could save her. If she as the leader needed to fall on her sword, she’d do it in an instant.
“Sir, you can put Bob in charge. I don’t care anymore who is at the helm, but you have to listen to someone on my team. A total shutdown is going to kill everything.”
He didn’t appear to have been swayed, so she got even closer.
“General. You can kick me out. Kick my whole team out. But if you have one ounce of respect for any of the work we’ve done in our lifetimes, please only destroy one of the boxes and then see what happens. If I’m wrong and life goes on normally, you can destroy the others at your pleasure.”
“You really believe your shifty friend, don’t you?” he asked.
“Sir, you have no idea what he and I have gone through in our lives. We were together a long time, God help me. He’s arrogant. Selfish. And his ego? You can see it from space.” She let out a small laugh. “But he would not endanger us by giving us the wrong information. More importantly, he would not injure himself. Sir, he’s telling us the truth about this. Something bad is going to happen if you shut it all down cold turkey.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt to do a staggered shutdown.”
She brightened, although it was still a defeat. “I don’t suppose you’d start your staggered shutdown with a three-hour delay?”
“Not a chance.”
“I had to try,” she replied.
The general picked up a phone. “Pull out number one. Wait on numbers two, three, and four until I give the order.”
He put the phone down and sat in a plastic chair like a father outside the delivery room. She had to admit he did not look like he enjoyed beating her in their final battle, which took some of the sting out.
A hand-held radio warbled before a man spoke.
“Sir, box one has been moved. The beam is gone!”
“Yes!” the general crowed. “I knew it!”
A rumble like distant thunder shook the control room.
General Smith’s smile wiped off his face. “What was that?”
She looked at a nearby control panel. The energy level inside the collider was active again, which was an impossibility, given that the feeder lines were shut down.
“We have an energy spike inside the ring,” she told him. “It’s nominal, but growing at an incredible rate.”
“What? How?” he asked. “We need to shut down the others!” It was a giant leap of cause and effect she did not agree with in the least.
“No, sir. We have to see what’s going on before we make things worse.”
He picked up the phone and dialed. With the phone at his ear, he looked right at Faith.
“General, you have to trust me. Please. This is exactly what Bob said was going to happen. If you destroy the other links, you’re going to make this worse.”
The rumble in the earth increased like the storm was moving closer. Someone’s coffee cup fell to the tiled floor and shattered.
We are so fucked.
Faith was scared for her life and wanted to run out of the room to save herself, but she held her position to try until the end to dissuade the general from blowing up the world.
He spoke into the phone.
This is it. She nearly closed her eyes.
“Standby on container number two. Do not, I repeat, do not, pull them away until I give the order.”
The shaking was now sustained and rough.
“Power is far beyond the hundred-tera-electron-volt threshold,” she said to the control room. The power inside the supercollider was measured at the subatomic level, so the scale of energy spinning around the loop was still tiny. However, she had a sneaking suspicion that it was much greater than she would have thought possible before today.
“Is this what happened to CERN?” the general asked with a forlorn stare.
Faith spoke over the noise of the earthquake. “The energy is building up. I think I know what’s going to happen next.”
She motioned for him to follow her.
“Come with me.” She turned and walked out without waiting.
Twenty-Seven
West Wendover, NV
As they crossed the remaining half of Nevada, the sunny afternoon gradually gave way to a more subdued evening. Buck was finding it necessary to actively fight his exhaustion. He’d been tired by lunchtime because of the chase with the bikers, and the blizzard had taken the rest out of him. Now, in normal weather, he was lulled into nodding off.
When Connie spoke to him, he nearly sprang out of his seat.
“Buck? You okay over there?”
He pretended it was no big deal. “Yeah, I was just thinking about… We need to carry some food and drinks with us. A bag of chips and a caffeinated soda would hit the spot.”
“Tired, huh? Your eyelids look like they could use toothpicks to hold them open.”
Buck smiled at her. “Is it that obvious?”
“I’m sure you truckers have a superhuman ability to keep awake, but I’ve been in this chair for the last ten hours, and I’m running on empty. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Oh, I assure you, we get tired like everyone else.” He didn’t want to whine in front of her. “But I’m fine.”
She gave him a sideways look, then went back to watching the road. A few minutes later, she pointed out a sign on the side of the desolate highway.
“West Wendover, five miles. It shows hotel and food. Why don’t we stop there for the night?” Connie also pointed to the atlas on her lap, which she’d kept there most of the afternoon, to Mac’s chagrin. “It’s the last town before the Utah state line.”
“Uh huh,�
�� Buck absently replied.
“Or you could let me drive for a while,” she said matter-of-factly. “Looks like it’s about a hundred miles to Salt Lake City from here.”
Hell, no! was his initial reaction.
But then he thought about it. If she was able to drive his truck, they wouldn’t have to stop at all. They could travel night and day, taking turns sleeping and driving, and could be back to Garth in half the time.
He’d never considered letting anyone else drive his rig, even back when he was married. It wasn’t a male chauvinist thing, either. Buck didn’t trust anyone to drive while he sat in the passenger seat or slept. It took away his control of the situation, and on the road, anything could happen at any given second.
Connie seemed to realize she’d said something he didn’t like. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I know we just met.”
“Don’t worry, you’re fine,” he replied. “I do appreciate your offer, and if we stick together for a while, I think I could show you how to drive this baby.”
“But?” she asked.
“But I think our priority right now is keeping this convoy together. We’re faced with a military dilemma here. We can get home fast, or we can get home safe. If you and I tag-team and cannonball run across the whole country, we’ll soon lose the four trucks behind us because they’ll need to sleep. We have no idea what to expect ahead—”
She picked up on his thought. “So, if we stop here tonight, we can all get a fresh start tomorrow and travel in safety.”
“I can make it to SLC,” he insisted. “We don’t have to stop.”
“You are a terrible liar,” she taunted, “but I like that.” Her next words were more serious. “You aren’t fit to drive much farther. Even I can see it.”
“I just need a little caffeine.” He always scoffed at the federal guidelines that mandated how many hours a truck driver was allowed per day. It was a pain in the ass to keep the records in his logbook, but he admitted that once in a while he appreciated being forced to stop. Now, he wasn’t following Uncle Sam’s recommendation, but instead listening to his partner.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 45