End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Buck’s mouth worked, but no sounds came out. He was rooted to the floor.

  “Don’t make me eat breakfast without you.” She pointed one finger at the bathroom and returned to her study of the atlas.

  He took three steps to the bathroom door and stopped, then looked over his shoulder and said softly. “I don’t know what just happened, but I like it.” He closed the door behind him.

  When he finished, Connie had the television on.

  Their eyes met for a moment, and she smiled in a way that was comfortable. For her. For him. A movement pulled Buck’s attention away. The fifty-pound puppy was standing on the bed, tail wagging.

  “All right, Big Mac, let’s get you outside.”

  Buck was glad for the distraction. He needed time to think. He’d told her the truth about being glad he found her, because it felt like he’d known her for a long time already. Almost like they’d been friends all their lives, but they’d been away from each other until this disaster. It was strange but overwhelming. He was too old to be swept away. His mission was to get home to Garth, and that would take all his focus. It was true even in normal times, because the road was a dangerous place. One blown tire could be fatal.

  When he came back in, he put some kibble in Mac’s bowl and let him have his breakfast. Connie fiddled with the television while the pup wolfed it down.

  The first thing that came on was a local news channel talking about Denver. She changed it immediately because they wanted something more local, like Salt Lake City news. That was the nearest population center.

  However, when she found the next channel, the reporters were also talking about Denver.

  “What’s this all about?” he said aloud.

  The talking head sat inside five or six graphics streaming across the screen. One was a ticker of stock prices, which showed nothing but red three-digit numbers. Another was a temperature ticker with numerous American cities and numbers behind them. Some cities were in triple digits, but others showed negative readings.

  “Look at that weather!” Connie blurted. “It explains the snow storm yesterday. Well…” She hesitated, “Maybe it doesn’t explain it, but it does confirm that it wasn’t normal.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he admitted. “This is unbelievable.”

  The other ribbons on the screen showed news around the world, but he focused on the anchor hemmed in between all the graphics.

  “If you are just joining us, we are standing in front of the Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes building, which is more commonly called SNAKE around these parts. We have every reason to believe this is where the red and blue waves came from. Aside from the multiple reports from nearby residents, we have eyewitness accounts from several members of the staff of the facility who have told their families what happened.”

  “Aw shit,” Buck said with disappointment.

  “What is it?” Connie asked.

  “It looks like the scientists did it. Their crazy experiments ripped the world a new one, and you and I are the saps who are going to suffer for it.”

  Angry protesters held signs behind the reporter. Some of them had simple messages of doom, much like the guy he had seen back in Modesto, but one in particular caught his attention.

  The hand-painted board said, You killed us!

  “I’ve got to call Garth. I know he’s half a continent away, but I have to make sure he knows not to ever go to Denver.”

  “Agreed,” she said distantly.

  Lewes, Delaware

  His dad’s nyuck-nyuck ringtone woke Garth from a dead sleep.

  “Hello?” he said in a groggy voice. “Dad? What time is it?”

  The shades on the motel window were almost pitch-black, so he had little clue as to the time of day.

  “It is six in the morning here. That means it’s nine there. What are you still doing in bed? You aren’t fooling around, are you?”

  Garth detected the “Dad tone.”

  “We’re at a motel in Lewes, Delaware. We got off the ferry and went right here like you said.” He thought about what was probably in the back of Dad’s mind. “Lydia is in the other bed.”

  Buck sighed with relief but didn’t press the subject.

  “We’re getting underway, son. I wanted to touch base with you in case I lose reception again. We’ll be on some remote stretches of interstate today. We’re shooting to be in Nebraska by nightfall.”

  “Nebraska? That’s like halfway here.”

  Buck laughed. “It feels like it’s still a long way to go. I want you to consider what you’re going to do today. You have the taxi, right?”

  He and Lydia had saved the cab from the mud yesterday. “We’ll need some gas, but at least we have a means of getting around. I’d hate to have to walk.”’

  Garth observed the lump that was Lydia buried beneath all the covers with a pillow wall around her head. She had been impressed with his driving skills and loved the ride, despite the broken window and the massive thunderstorm they had survived yesterday. She’d told him that despite all their issues on the road, it still beat walking.

  “Good,” Buck replied. “It looks like the radiation scare is over. The news isn’t even talking about it today.”

  “Is the hurricane gone?” he asked in return.

  “I don’t see anything about it. All the news channels we have out here are talking about a science facility in Red Mesa, Colorado, near Denver. It looks like that’s where the blue and red lights came from.”

  “Are they going to fix whatever they broke? I think Lydia might like to go back home.” They’d talked about it briefly the previous night, but after she climbed into her own soft, clean bed, she found new enjoyment in modern conveniences. With no one waiting for her in the 1840s, Garth thought she might be more amenable to changing her mind, but everything she had known was gone, and almost none of it had prepared her for the twenty-first-century world.

  “I don’t know. We’ll both stay away from there, okay?” Buck suggested.

  Garth chuckled. “I doubt I’ll ever be in Denver, Dad. I’m anxious to go home and wait for you to get here.”

  “That’s probably the smart thing. While you are in the motel, make sure you watch the news. See what to expect when you walk out the door. Be safe, okay?”

  “I will. Love you, Dad.” He and his dad didn’t typically exchange such emotional goodbyes, but the last couple of days made him realize how much he missed his father. They’d had their argument, and he’d been mad as hell for a little while, but seeing the plane crash and too many dead people had made him appreciate how lucky he was. Plus, Lydia was sound asleep, so he could speak openly, although she didn’t seem to care about the things that teenagers of his era thought were important, like their social image.

  “Love you too, son. Keep in touch.”

  “Will do.”

  He hung up his phone and wondered if he had remembered to bring a cell phone charger.

  That could be a disaster.

  He would check the bugout bag to see if his dad had remembered to pack one, but first, he used the clicker to turn on the television from his bed. He had to check on the world outside the motel’s windows.

  The first channel showed a metallic building surrounded by giant red-colored rock walls.

  “SNAKE is off-limits to reporters, but there are now hundreds of protesters gathered at the front gate. Oddly enough, there is a contingent of Air Force police guarding the scientific facility. We’ve been unable to get any comment—”

  He flicked the channel, careful to keep the volume low, so it didn’t wake up Lydia.

  “Protesters have turned over a car on Deer Creek Canyon Road, but so far, that has been the extent of their anger. We’re trying to find the leader of this unruly bunch, but none have come forward—”

  Garth went to five other stations—the motel had a full spread of cable channels—and they all focused on what was going on in Colorado. After a few additional channels of n
on-news programming, he finally found a weather broadcast.

  A map of the east coast showed storm systems in random locations, including one apparently mislabeled as a snow shower on the coast of North Carolina, but there were no hurricanes to worry about.

  “We can go home,” he said to himself.

  And Lydia?

  He glanced at her, sleeping soundly. He started to consider how to get her home, but he became distracted by her appearance. She looked different without all the dirt on her cheeks, which had come off in another modern convenience last night: the shower. When she came out of the bathroom with a clean face and her blonde hair streaming over her shoulders, her natural beauty surprised him. Seeing her again reminded him of that.

  The thought made him look away.

  Stay on task, Garth. That’s what Dad would say.

  “Get gas for the car,” he whispered. “Get back home. Wait for Dad. Lastly, I’ll see if I can get Lydia back where she came from.”

  Garth took a long look at Lydia to make absolutely sure she was still asleep. Once he was certain, he scooted to the edge of his covers, then ran into the bathroom because he was only wearing his boxers.

  They’d been soaked to the core in the rainstorm, and once they got to the motel, they took turns hanging their clothing to dry in the bathroom. They had used towels for robes.

  He admitted he was a lot shyer about it than she was.

  When he was inside the tiny room, he shut the door.

  “I wish you were here, Sam, buddy, but I’m kind of glad you aren’t.”

  He figured Sam’s overbearing womanizing would have long since chased her away. She’d probably have preferred to stay under the overpass where he found her.

  I’ve got to avoid pulling a Sam.

  Garth looked in the vanity mirror and recited his day’s mission.

  “Gas. Home. Wait for Dad. Don’t be like Sam.” He paused for a few seconds. “And help Lydia go back to 1849.”

  The thought saddened him greatly. As Dad would say, you create a bond with someone you’ve spent your life beside. She was his foxhole partner. Together, they’d pull through.

  Two

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

  It was dawn outside, but the orange light peeking over the distant plains only served as a reminder of how little sleep Faith had gotten in the previous two nights. She looked longingly at the hogback close to her building and wished she could go out and jog for a couple of miles to wake up. On a normal day, that was part of her routine, but General Smith didn’t want anyone to leave for any reason.

  “Thanks for working all night, guys. I mean it more than I can say.” She turned to her staff, who were assembled at the conference table. One of the computer guys sat where her name was scratched into the wooden tabletop, but he’d placed his laptop right over it. No one was joking around this morning, and they all looked as strung out as she felt.

  Dr. Stafford replied first. “We have a better handle on what was happening before the beam was shut down yesterday, but we still don’t know what to expect going forward.”

  Dr. Bob Stafford was the head of Computing, and he was in charge of the handful of computer men and women in the small room. He and Faith had butted heads in the past, but he’d been surprisingly helpful once he’d confessed to having a part in the secret experiment run by SNAKE and CERN. To her, his new attitude suggested things were worse than they seemed.

  She nodded at him. “I was helping with the equations drawn up by the physics team. My mind is jelly after all the late-night work, but I can think straight enough to compliment your people, Bob. They were a big help.”

  Bob looked surprised. “Well, thanks. Glad to be of service.”

  “What did you find?” she went on.

  “The beams were designed to pierce the upper mantle of the Earth and effectively dredge for residual dark matter locked into the atomic structure of the rock. Over thousands of miles, the experiment figured to encounter traces of the substance. However, it appears it struck a lot of it.”

  Faith took it from there. “And that’s what our equations were trying to solve. Unfortunately, we don’t know any of the properties of dark matter or dark energy, even though the blue beams appear to contain the latter.”

  One of the particle physicists on her team piped up, “The beams were co-opted by the new form of energy, almost like tapping into oil deep in the shale with a drill.”

  “Drill, baby, drill,” someone said from the back.

  “Exactly,” Faith replied. “It jibes with what the computer guys and gals have found. There isn’t enough energy in the entire Front Range power grid to produce the scale of energy bursts we’ve seen go out from our collider. It is being amplified in some way.”

  Another physicist joined in. “Without being able to observe and quantify dark energy or dark matter, we can only guess at their properties. We’ve had teams look at the remaining three beams, but we can’t isolate their constituent parts.”

  “So,” she began, “we know the beams go into the ground and travel to CERN under the curvature of the mantle, but we have no way of knowing what we’ve tapped into.”

  Bob broke in, “We’d have to dig a tunnel hundreds of kilometers deep to see what’s down there.”

  “Well, that ain’t gonna happen,” she said in frustration. “We need to beat this thing. Keep working at it. Before those people get too feisty.” Faith pointed outside, but then got up and went to the window again.

  Protesters held signs at the front gate. They were still hundreds of yards away, but she saw a giant sign held high above the others.

  “End Days,” she read aloud.

  Motion caught her eye on the parking lot two stories below. A man came out from behind one of the numerous school buses and threw something. She saw him plain as day.

  The glass shattered a few feet to her left, and a small hole appeared.

  “Shit!” she screamed as she jumped back. “The bastard threw a rock at me!”

  She realized the sun on her blouse had probably made her a bright target for the guy.

  A second rock glanced off a window farther down the row but didn’t have enough force to crack the glass.

  The rock-thrower sprinted for the edge of the lot. Guards came out of the front doors to chase him down, but in the few seconds she watched, it didn’t look like they were going to catch him.

  She was going to write it off as bad luck and resolve never to stand by the windows again, but some loud cracks echoed from the lot below.

  “Oh, fuck,” she blurted.

  Many of the others in the room came up to the windows to see the perpetrator. They reacted in almost the same way as her.

  “They shot that guy,” she said with shock.

  It was now a spectacle. Her entire team lined up against the glass to watch.

  The runner writhed on the pavement about ten feet from the rearmost edge of the paved parking lot.

  “Is he dead?” one of the female computer programmers asked without looking up from her seat.

  The man clearly wasn’t dead, but he was injured. His arm was bloody, and his shirt looked like someone splashed him with ketchup. The guards dragged him toward the front door of SNAKE.

  She realized she had to get involved before things got worse.

  “You guys keep working,” she said as she headed out. “And for the love of God, stay away from the windows!”

  Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

  Destiny rocked back and forth with the gentle swaying of the train, relieved to be leaving Canberra.

  Once she had left Zandre’s property, she’d ridden the four-wheeler until it ran out of gas, then walked the last two miles through the city until she reached the train station. She figured she’d have to spend the night on a hard steel bench, but a late-night train was departing for Sydney and allowed anyone who happened to be there to get on board.

&nbs
p; She recognized the well-dressed people from her trip to Canberra earlier that same day. Zandre had said they were politicians. She had no feelings either way for the leaders of Australia’s government, but those assholes seemed to look down on her because she was the only passenger besides them. It might also have been her dusty attire and wind-blown hairdo.

  Those blighters can go fuck themselves, she thought.

  After almost being shot, and then helping the Duck of Doom escape the hunters, she was in no mood for bullshit from anyone.

  She pulled out her phone and sent a text message to Rodney at the Sydney Harbor Foundation.

  Hey, Rod, I’m coming home from Canberra. Need a favor. Please message back.

  She turned off the screen, figuring he would reply in the morning, but a message came right back.

  Is everyone working late tonight?

  What do you mean? she sent back.

  The phone rang under her fingers.

  “Hello?” she said quietly. The politicians were at the other end of the carriage, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Hey, Dez. You doing all right? I know the Wollemi fire was a monster, but it seems to have burned itself out already.”

  “Yeah, I’m way past the fire. All good on that score. Hey, I wanted to ask. Does SHF still have access to the oceanography lab?” Her employer studied and preserved animals all over the world, but because they were headquartered in Sydney, they brought most of their work back home. They shared time and space on an old freighter that had been retrofitted with research equipment. She’d done a little time on it when they did a company outing at the Great Barrier Reef.

  He sounded instantly skeptical. “The Majestic is moored in Sydney, yes. Why?”

  Rodney was her equal on the company manifest, but he did most of his work at the main offices, while she was often out in the field. To her, it made it seem like Rod had an air of superiority when talking on the phone, so his manner of questioning tested her patience.