“Pull over, mister,” she insisted with a twinkle in her ocean-blue eyes.
He was worn out, and she knew it.
Buck picked up the CB mic. “Ladies and gents. I’ve been informed that I have to take an unscheduled overnight here in West Wendover.”
“You and the little lady getting a room?” Sparky asked with a laugh.
His face went nuclear red. “No,” he replied instantly, sounding like a teenager lying through his teeth. He kept talking. “Can I get you guys to stop with us so we can continue east in the morning? I’d like us to stick together.”
Buck went with the soft touch despite wanting them to remain as a convoy. They’d talked about it on and off ever since Monsignor and Eve had discussed dropping their trailers. He’d been able to defer the decision for a while, and he figured he could get them to at least make it to Salt Lake City, but the decision had to be made now.
“Why don’t we all get dinner in West Wendover and plan what comes next?” Buck suggested.
Ten minutes later, they were all parked at the town’s McDonald’s because it had a massive parking lot designed for tractor-trailers. Buck and Connie let Mac out for a much-needed potty break and were pleased to find the restaurant was pet-friendly. The Golden Retriever fit right in with the four other drivers.
After a few minutes of levity and dog petting, he got them on topic.
“I propose we sleep here tonight, then get up early in the morning,” Buck explained. “Tonight, let’s forget the talk about dropping cargo. We’ll see what things are like in the morning.”
The McDonald’s appeared perfectly normal, as did the town around them. People went about their business, and nothing seemed amiss.
“We heard a lot of radio chatter about jacked-up things in other cities and countries, but nothing appears wrong here. If the chaotic problems aren’t everywhere, then we still have a good shot of making it where we need to go. If things are normal here, we can top off our tanks, too. You never know when you won’t be able to get fuel.”
“If we stick with you,” the Monsignor suggested.
“Look, I’m no one special. I’m simply a guy hauling chili across America. I’ve mentioned my son several times during the last few hours. He’s the reason I’m pushing east no matter what, so I won’t lie to you and say I’m dedicated to my cargo. However, I plan on carrying this freight as long as I’m able because…”
He had a premonition that the chili would be useful no matter where he ended up. There was enough food back there for ten lifetimes. He’d either get it to the depot where it belonged or hold onto it if things got dicey. Dumping it was not even in his wheelhouse.
Of more immediate interest, he was pleased to see a normal town again.
“I believe us truckers are the ones who will ultimately decide if life breaks down on the highway. As long as we continue to haul our freight, life goes on as normal. People eat their chili. Consumers buy televisions.” He looked at Eve and the Monsignor. “And welders get their acetylene to keep on building things.”
“I’m with you,” Connie said, chucking him warmly on his shoulder.
The others joined in with nods and hands slapping the table as they devoured too many calories of everything on the Mickey D’s menu.
The convoy was his.
Somewhere in New Jersey
A crack of lightning spurred Garth into action.
“We have to hurry! What do you need me to do?”
Lydia was now as drenched as he was, but she somehow didn’t seem bothered by it. “I don’t understand how this machine works,” she stated dryly. “What pulls it out? With a wagon, we would push the wheels and put logs and sticks underneath to give it support.”
“That’s it!” he shouted over the next clap of thunder. He almost felt stupid for not seeing it earlier, but he’d been focused on getting someone to push. “We can throw sticks and junk underneath the back tires. Those are the ones that drive it.”
The muddy evidence of the spinning was all over the side of the car, although much had been washed off in the downpour.
“Spin? But how?” Lydia studied the tires, but he tugged at her sleeve to get her to come with him.
“We have to hurry!” he yelled. “This way!”
He ran into the woods and immediately found some fallen branches that looked suitable. When he had them in his arms, he showed them to her. “Will these work?”
She shrugged at first with a look that said, “how the hell would I know?” but then she nodded. “I think so. Anything to get them to grip.”
The storm’s intensity built with each passing minute. The wind kicked up too, but it blew in multiple directions as if it couldn’t make up its mind. He figured it was because they were between the two storms.
He ran back into the woods after dumping some branches. Lydia passed him with a load of five or six big rocks in her arms.
We’ve got this.
When he got back with the next load of sticks, it seemed like they had enough piled up. He looked inside the cab for anything that might add gripping power and ended up pulling out the two floormats from the front. He laid them on top of everything else since they seemed to provide a ramp for his extraction.
“All right! Let’s try it.”
Lightning danced just to the south in the sky above them, and the wind began to drive steadily in that direction.
He jumped into the car, but then hung his head out the broken window. He was going to tell Lydia to stand clear, but she’d taken up a position near the rear of the car like a supervisor.
“I still don’t see—” she started to say.
“Just watch!” he cried out.
Once the car started, he gave it a little gas. He prayed it would pop right out, but he wasn’t that lucky. The tires whirred in the soupy mud and shot thick brown sludge inside the windshield again.
Come on, he willed the taxi.
He let off, then jammed the gas pedal again, hoping something would happen.
Rain came in through the broken window in buckets, but it only made Garth more anxious to succeed. However, no matter how much gas he gave it, the tires kept slipping in the mud.
“Rock it back and forth,” Lydia advised. “That sometimes helps the horses pull it up and out of the mud pit.”
Garth accelerated until the tires rose a little on the front part of the pit, then let off the gas so the wheel would roll back into the ditch. When it reached the farthest point in the rear, he hit the pedal again. At first, he had no luck, but after a few tries, he realized there was a rhythm to it.
“That’s doing it!” Lydia shouted over pounding of the rain.
He rocked it back and forth many times, and finally he felt the car rise up onto the top of his rock and branch pile. With that, he gave it more gas, and the car jumped out of the slop.
Garth pulled it onto the shoulder of the roadway, then stopped and got out.
Thunder rolled across the landscape with hardly a break. He ran up to Lydia and shouted, but he couldn’t even hear himself. She stood there with a confused look on her face, so he got right up to her ear to talk to her.
At first, she recoiled at his touch, but then seemed to recognize his action.
“I have to get something in the woods,” he announced. “You can get into the taxi and wait for me. We’re leaving!”
She nodded, and he ran off.
It seemed to take an eternity to find the bushes where he’d put the rifle cases. The rain was now an overbearing downpour, but it was the gale-force winds that made the trees and underbrush appear different. Sometimes they bent nearly sideways.
Once he found them, he took off at a fast walk. He came out of the woods to find Lydia exactly where she was.
“Oh, shit!” He ran over to her, surprised to find her sobbing. “I’m here!” he shouted.
She seemed surprised and relieved at the same time.
The thunder didn’t allow conversation, so he set one of the cases do
wn and took her hand so he could guide her toward the car.
“Come on,” he said, although she couldn’t possibly hear him.
Her face responded, however, and she seemed to recover as they walked the thirty or forty feet to the taxi.
First, he opened the passenger-side back door and tossed the gun case inside. Then he opened the front door and gently pushed her in.
She was reluctant, he could see, but she finally sat down on the soaked front seat.
The lightning was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It branched out in long tendrils too close over his head. He looked at the case sitting by itself on the highway behind the taxi and wondered if it was worth the risk to grab it.
What would Dad do?
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith and the general ran up the steps of the emergency exit.
“Where are you taking me? I can’t be away from the control room.” The general huffed up the steps a few risers behind her.
“We’re almost there,” she shouted.
A tremor forced her to stop and hold on to the banister, and her stomach churned from the fear coursing through her insides. All she could think about was how CERN had blown up and SNAKE was next. That rumbling was the buildup to her death.
“It’s getting worse,” General Smith lamented.
“I know, but we have to get up here. Trust me.”
She started running again as soon as the shaking stopped.
“Hurry!”
Faith was proud to have beat the military man to the top flight, but she hesitated before going through the door. Her heart rode high in her throat as if it too was anxious to see what she was doing.
“Dr. Sinclair, I hope you have a damned good explanation for this.”
“Sir, you can call me Faith now. I think first names are appropriate for two people who have basically fucked up the world.”
He shook his head in dismay. “I’m trying to save it.”
“Uh huh,” she said in an agreeable voice. “Then I hope I’m wrong about this.”
Faith opened the door and walked out onto the concrete platform and metal shack called “the treehouse” that served as the top landing for the emergency exit. She continued outside.
“Almost there!” she shouted to him.
The pair ran through the woods a short way until they came to an overlook above the SNAKE parking lot. The location gave her a good view of the sky, the Hogback, and the city of Denver to the northeast.
Faith held her breath in anticipation as General Smith trotted up behind her.
“What are we here to see?” he asked.
Nothing, I hope.
Moments went by before she saw anything unusual, then the breath wheezed out of her lungs and amplified her horror at being right.
“There!” she cried.
Red bands of lightning seemingly clawed out of the earth in a line behind the Hogback. The energy flared up, then fell back on itself like spouts of magma in a volcano. As she and the general watched, the number and intensity of the branches of red lightning increased by several orders of magnitude. It became a frothy wave of tangled lightning bolts a hundred feet tall and sixty-two miles around.
From her position, she could only see a portion of the collider ring, but the red energy traced the infrastructure below the ground perfectly.
Before the general could respond, the ground shook under their feet, nearly knocking them over.
The red energy shot upward in a single wave and took off across the plains. In mere seconds, it was almost too far away to see.
“It came from all the way around the collider ring,” she said wonderingly. “But it wasn’t inside it. We ARE safe in here.”
The red light disappeared over the horizon.
“Did we fix things?” the general said with hope.
“Not in the least, General. You think the blue wave was bad? That bastard there is going to make the blue wave look like a walk in the park.”
Twenty-Eight
Somewhere in New Jersey
Garth longingly gazed at the second gun case, trying to decide if it was worth going to grab it. It was only forty feet away, but the lightning swirled overhead like angry sharks looking for a quick bite. One of them could zap him in an instant.
The darkness of the radiation-saturated storm was upon them. The wind gusted hard from the north, and he imagined they were already getting burned by it. When the blustery rain kicked up another notch, it nearly knocked him over, but it also gave him his answer.
“Screw it!”
He kept to his feet and ran around the back of the car. The wind slammed him into the back quarter panel, but he kept low to the ground and slipped into the open door. The driver’s seat was saturated from hours of rain, and the last few minutes had put a couple of inches of water on the front floorboard.
“I don’t understand how this is going to work,” Lydia complained.
He didn’t have time to answer; he was deep in his own thoughts while he raced to get the car in gear.
Will I feel the radiation burn me? Did I get Lydia out of the rain in time?
Garth mashed the gas pedal, but let off when he felt the muddy tires spin. The last thing he wanted was to drive off the road again because he was in a careless rush.
“Hold on,” he advised.
He set the wipers to full speed, but they couldn’t keep up with the deluge. Between the thunder, the roar of rain, and the wind blowing and howling through his window, he couldn’t even hear himself think.
“There are more of them!” Lydia pointed as they merged onto the Garden State Parkway. Other cars flew by at speeds he judged to be insane given the road conditions.
“Hang on,” he replied. A knot formed in his stomach as the opportunity to merge approached.
One lesson he’d learned from his short time driving was that he couldn’t get on a highway unless he matched the speeds of the other cars. He crushed the gas pedal and felt the vibration of the motor, although it barely registered over the nightmare of other noises.
Garth had the taxi up to sixty when he ran out of onramp. He merged into traffic just ahead of a pair of headlights. The driver flashed them in anger, but there was nothing Garth could do but hold up his hand and wave.
“Sorry!” he shouted to the wind.
“How are we moving?” Lydia asked.
Garth was still afraid he’d been touched by the radiation, so he wasn’t in the mood to explain things. The only thing that mattered was getting her away from the nuclear storm. He didn’t want her introduction to 2020 to include radiation sickness.
Not that he fully believed her story, but she looked as terrified as he felt. He stopped glancing at her and focused on the road. It was the only thing that mattered at that very moment in his life. They could think about things later when they were safe. If they’d been affected, there was nothing he could do about it. It was already done. If they hadn’t been? Then driving at that moment was even more important.
Control what is in your control, he could hear Dad say.
Hurricane Audrey bore down on them, although it was like no hurricane he’d ever heard about. The clouds ahead were almost pitch-black, with lightning continuing like fireworks all around them. The wind now blew from directly behind as if it wanted to push his car into the mouth of the billowing storm.
They drove past a tractor-trailer that had been blown off the roadway. The trailer was bent around a giant tree, the cab wrenched sideways and high-centered on a root bundle. It illustrated the power of the storms ahead and behind, but his concern after seeing the wreck was for another truck driver.
Dad, I hope you’re okay out there.
West Wendover, NV
“Do you really want to get two rooms?” Connie asked as they stood at the motel desk.
“I don’t want to presume. I mean, you know...”
She laughed. “You’re right to not presum
e. Maybe it’s for the best.”
If things were getting back to normal, as Buck hoped, then he didn’t want to ruin it. He could argue it would be safer to stay in the same room, and she could counter that it was equally as safe in adjacent rooms. All the while, it would hide the truth that after spending the entire day with her, he didn’t want to let her go. Or he could spend the entire night overthinking it.
Maybe she’ll try to go back home.
He put the thought aside and tried, as always, to appear calm and collected. If the town was peaceful and things were going back to normal, it was a good thing.
“I’ll pay for them,” he remarked to the proprietor. To her, he added, “It’s the least I can do for smashing your car to pieces.”
She hesitated, considering if that was fair, but in the end, she accepted his offer. “I’ll get the next one.”
“Done,” he replied immediately.
They walked back to the Peterbilt to collect his gear as well as his dog.
“Hey, when we’re settled, we can walk over to the convenience store to get you some of the stuff you’ll need. New clothes. Toothbrush. Whatever.”
She looked across the street. “Yeah, that sounds—”
Buck was already on high alert, so he whipped his head to look at Connie when she stopped talking. She was facing the convenience store, her eyes focused on the sky.
From West Wendover, you could see a hundred miles into Utah. The pure-white Bonneville Salt Flats spread out before them, and the Great Salt Lake was far beyond. It was a lot like looking out over a flat, dry ocean.
Connie’s focus was on the lone band of red energy streaking across the sky like an endless wave.
“Fuck,” he blurted. “That’s just like the blue light I saw yesterday.”
“Uh huh,” she replied without emotion.
She turned to him and stood close. He pulled her to him and hugged her tightly as they both watched the sky.
“Buck, am I going to disappear?”
“What? No!” After he said it, he admitted there was no way to know.
Connie glanced at the approaching wave for a second, then seemed to gain strength so she could look right into his eyes.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 46