End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Garth took a second to wave, uncertain if he was doing the right thing after all, but then he gave it some gas and slowly reversed his way up the gravel drive. He was no expert at going backward, but he tried to convey the sense that he knew what to do, if only for Lydia’s sake. When he reached the road, he did his best to look both ways, but then he goosed the gas and backed out onto the blacktop roadway.

  He turned so the car faced away from the looters.

  “We can finally relax,” he advised her. “We don’t stick out like a sore thumb, anymore, and people won’t constantly flag us down for a ride. With this disguise, we might be able to get home before nightfall. All we have to do is get back to the ferry.”

  “I can’t wait,” she said happily.

  He drove forward, almost positive he’d thought of everything.

  I-80, Wyoming

  Connie and Buck sat side by side on top of the Peterbilt. She’d come up after he showed her how. The herd of buffalo continued across their path, and the brown dust blew everywhere around them like they were inside the herd.

  “You aren’t very good at patience, are you?” She sneezed a few times in a row.

  “Bless you!” he replied.

  They had to speak loudly to hear each other over the clopping of hooves on the concrete.

  “Thanks,” she replied with a sniffle.

  “No. I hate waiting more than anything. For years, my job has depended on moving the ball forward. Get to the next truck stop. The next town. The next state. Ever since I left Modesto, I’ve been forced to go slow, and now we’re stopped. It’s a hundred times worse because Garth is counting on me to get back home.”

  He pointed indiscriminately at the galloping mass. “And stuff like this could delay me for days.”

  “Well, I want you to get to Garth as soon as you can, so don’t doubt that for a second. However…” Connie scooted closer. “I don’t think it’ll be days. You’re not bad company to keep in the meantime.”

  Buck smiled, remembering their almost-kiss in the water, but he didn’t dare lean over to repeat the attempt because there was nothing romantic about sitting in the dust cloud.

  “If Garth were here, I’d pull off the highway, find an out-of-the-way patch of forest, and live off the land until everything got back to normal. I can hunt. Fish. Trap. But each time things like this happen,” he gestured to the buffalo, “it proves time is broken, and maybe there is nowhere to hide. It also seems to be getting worse.”

  “Uh-huh,” she replied before sneezing one more time. “I was thinking the same thing. Ever since yesterday morning, we’ve seen amazing things, each bigger than the last.”

  “Bless you again, by the way. And now the threats have gone all the way up to nukes,” Buck explained. “What can be worse than that?”

  Connie seemed to take it as a challenge. “Zombies. Plague. An extinction-level meteor impact. A—”

  “I get it,” he interrupted with a laugh. “I’ve listened to books about all of those. But there’s something about nuclear war that seems to be worse than them all. I think that’s because it is so preventable. If a giant rock hits the Earth from space, you say it’s terrible but unavoidable. If we blow ourselves up, all you can say to describe it is ‘stupid-level event.’”

  Connie leaned over the windshield as if to slide down. “Come on, let’s get down to Mac and see if your fancy truck can filter this air. I’m breathing in God-knows-what filth from those animals, and I think I might be allergic.”

  The blowing debris seemed to get thicker, but when he looked to his right, the dust cleared a little.

  “Hey!” He nudged her before she slid down the windshield. “Look!”

  Connie halted and turned to where he pointed.

  The herd of buffalo was still incredibly massive, but the thick stream of running animals was now about half as dense on the right side of the highway. There was suddenly less dust in the air, and visibility improved to the point that he saw to the horizon in that direction. “This is the end.”

  “The end?” she replied hopefully.

  “Yeah! Let’s get down. I’ve got to tell the others to be ready. Once the last animals cross, we have to lead the whole highway, or we’re going to get stuck here until everyone else passes.”

  “That is not going to happen,” she insisted before sneezing once more.

  Seventeen

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

  Faith and her team worked for two hours, using her theory of a second energy field wrapped around the planet. She opted to stay in the conference room and work on her laptop, but most everyone else went either to the computer lab or the physics lab, which was essentially another computer lab filled with supercomputers.

  She looked at her watch every ten minutes, certain she was about to get a call from General Smith about the team sent into CERN, but no joy.

  “Mind if I sit for a while?” Bob asked as he hovered at the door. “We’re hitting brick walls in my lab. None of this makes any sense.”

  “Funny, coming from the guy who set it all up,” she replied dryly.

  “Ha, ha. I get why you would say that, but I’m serious. None of the effects we’ve seen around the planet can be explained by shifting magnetic fields. Yeah, it would affect anything dependent on having a correct relationship with the natural field created by the planet, but it wouldn’t bring planes from the past, it wouldn’t shift the weather, and it certainly wouldn’t change the landscape. Did you hear Salt Lake is filling up?”

  Faith absently tapped her keyboard. “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “Yeah, I-80 is under ten feet of water. Closed, maybe forever.”

  “What’s your point, Bob?”

  “I don’t have a point. Well, maybe I do. I think you’re wrong.”

  She pushed back from the table. “It took you long enough to work up to that. Do tell.”

  “Your energy-field scenario looks a lot like a magnetic field, and the magnetic field of the Earth is being upset by something, but I don’t believe the link between CERN and SNAKE is purely magnetic. If it was, we’d be able to measure it with precision, like any other source of magnetic interference. The Four Arrows experiment was designed to tap into dark energy.”

  “So this is a dark energy field?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly. The problem is, I can’t enter it in my equations because we don’t know enough about it. Hell, the experiment was designed to give us clues to its existence inside the mass of the planet. If it had been successful, we might have been able to measure it and explain its properties. That knowledge would have really helped with our issues.”

  She laughed without mirth. “So, if your experiment wouldn’t have broken the world, we would know more about the root cause of what did break the world? Talk about a closed loop!”

  He sucked air through his nose. “Please don’t start. I’ve said I was sorry. I’m only trying to help.”

  “We’ll have our come-to-Jesus moment after this is all over. If you don’t think we’re dealing with a magnetic field, I need you to tell me where I went wrong. What the fuck is going on here?”

  “Faith, you have to understand. I can’t measure energy that defies classification and avoids our existing equipment. Aside from the brightness of the beams, I can’t even quantify what we’re looking at.”

  She shared his pessimism. “I understand that you supported this thing and then installed it without my knowledge, and you aren’t sure what it does. How does that work, Bob? You personally are responsible for everything that is happening out there. No one else, you. I need you to figure it out, and I need that to happen right fucking now.”

  Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. When she pulled it out, she saw the name on the screen. It was from her office phone, which meant it was the call she’d been waiting for from General Smith. “We may know something more.”

  “Hello?” she said.

  “A
h, good. The phones are working,” the general remarked. “I’ve been trying to call you for ten minutes.”

  “What is it, General? Any news?”

  “Yes. I wanted to inform you that my team is inside Geneva city limits. They are approaching the facility now. We should have some answers inside the hour.”

  Her stomach did a somersault. She wasn’t sure what answers would help her, but anything would be better than what she had.

  “Very good. I could use more information. I’m running on fumes here,” she said in a measured voice.

  “Yep.” General Smith hung up without saying goodbye.

  She hung up too.

  “That’s it?” Bob asked. “Did he hang up on you? Kind of a dick thing to do.”

  “No, it’s fine,” she replied. “His team is going in. We’ll know our colleagues’ fates soon.”

  Geneva, Switzerland

  Phil Stanwick stood next to the Fox armored personnel carrier and looked through a pair of binoculars. It was just after midnight, but the place was well-lit, with many overhead lights.

  “What do you see?” Ethan asked.

  Phil scanned the campus of CERN, noting the numerous low, flat buildings in the mile-long arrowhead-shaped property. The driver had brought them to a hilltop with a perfect line of sight to most of the grounds.

  The long front side of the place was lined with a tall hedge along a busy suburban roadway. Farmland and houses surrounded the rest of the property, making it easy to discern if anything was damaged or destroyed, even in the darkness.

  “It looks like nothing is wrong. I don’t see any people running around. There are cars parked in the lots. The civilians I can see are standing around or walking between buildings like nothing out of the ordinary is going on.”

  “That’s my assessment, too. It’s almost like they don’t know they are the focus of an international missing person alert.”

  Phil focused the lenses of the binoculars. If terrorists had taken over the facility, they might want people walking around so things looked normal, but he’d expect furtive glances from the hostages or telltale shifts in blinds from upper windows as the overseers kept watch. He saw none of that.

  “Something is going on,” Ethan went on to say. “No one has come into or out of the parking lots since we got here.”

  “Like there’s an experiment in progress?”

  “Bingo.”

  “Do we proceed?” Phil wasn’t in charge, but they had one job to do, and he expected the other colonel to order it.

  Ethan nodded. “We don’t have enough men for anything fancy, but I’m not going to drive in the front gate and allow us to get ambushed. I want to split the team. You’ll take three men on foot. Go in through the hedge running along the border of the property. That will give you concealment, and you can be ready in case we need support.”

  He’s assigning me the duty of reporting to HQ if he gets killed.

  They spent fifteen minutes driving in a long route out of the direct view of the campus. The driver brought the Fox down the roadway next to the hedge, then pulled onto the dark sidewalk as far as possible between two light posts.

  “This isn’t going to be very stealthy, but there isn’t a better option,” Ethan remarked as the back door opened. It was the least exposed approach. It wasn’t decent cover since bushes didn’t stop bullets, but they wouldn’t be out in the open.

  Phil ignored the Swiss traffic and scrambled into the tangle of bushes that signified the edge of CERN’s property. When he and the other three men were in position, he radioed for Ethan to move the Fox.

  After it was gone, he got the sensation that something big was about to happen. It was at odds with the normalcy of local traffic or the birds chirping in the nearby bushes and trees.

  The others’ expressions showed the same worry.

  “You guys feel that?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” a corporal named Barry Grafton replied. “My hair is standing up straight on my arm. Look.” He held out his bare wrist to prove his point.

  Phil did everything he could to fight the unsettling feeling. It was like he was being watched by a hidden camera while also holding two live wires that must never be joined. One misstep could kill him.

  “This wasn’t in the brief,” Grafton added.

  The other two chuckled nervously.

  “We’re all on edge. Have you ever trained doing MOUT when everything was normal except a major case of the willies?” He smiled at his fellow soldiers. “We have it easy. Knight has to go into the parking lot and walk up to the front door.” He tapped his M4 to signify why they were there. “So let’s find a position we can live with, then get ready to support their arrival.”

  They’d arranged it so Phil would have three minutes to get set up. Right on cue, the Fox’s engine roared, and it bashed through the hedge about a hundred yards to the south. The driver kept the speed at about twenty miles per hour, but he drove right for the front entrance of the main building. The path took him over a pristine lawn and through a small executive parking lot.

  “Ten seconds,” Phil relayed.

  Private First Class James MacIntire set the M249 light machine gun on its bipod and aimed it at the target building. Their role wasn’t to crush the opposition, but if the Fox got into an ambush, they would be able to provide covering fire so the truck could back out of the kill zone.

  “He’s pulling up to the door,” he relayed. “We have bystanders watching.” Phil leveled his M4, although it seemed small and useless given the powerful energy he imagined was swirling around them.

  “Showtime.”

  I-80, Wyoming

  Buck popped the Peterbilt into gear when he saw daylight between most of the buffalo trotting across the highway.

  “We’re not waiting until they all cross?” Connie said with reservation.

  “No, we’re going to push into the back of the herd and lead the procession of vehicles behind us.” To that end, the Peterbilt lurched through the first few gears and stuttered forward.

  “Break 4. Follow me. Don’t fall behind.” Buck had three trucks trailing him, and he couldn’t afford for one of them to get pinched by the traffic. Most of the people were still out of their cars talking to each other, so he was confident his plan would get them ahead.

  Ten seconds later, his tail gunner checked in. “Sparky here. We’re all moving with you.”

  “Roger,” he shot back before putting the mic in the cradle.

  “Holy shit,” Connie exclaimed as they headed into where the buffalo were still clearing out. “Where is the highway?”

  Now it looked like the interstate had been draped with a rocky blanket. Millions of hooves trampled over the roadway and kicked up rocks and dirt as the animals crossed the lanes.

  The tires of his truck crunched the rocks like they were on a primitive gravel road.

  “Probably a few cow pies out here, too.” Buck laughed.

  “Yuck. Remind me never to follow a herd of buffalo,” Connie declared.

  “There’s safety in the middle, but you get rocks and dust in your face. That’s why you want to be in the lead. The frontrunners probably don’t know how good they have it.”

  “Or maybe they do,” Connie surmised.

  Mac stood on his hind legs next to Connie. He’d been disinterested in the mammoth herd of animals until there were only a few left, then he whined and panted like he wanted to go out and play with the stragglers.

  Connie settled him down. “We’ll get you a friend soon, but we can’t stop here.” She wrestled him off the sill of the window and guided him back into the space under her legs. At first, Buck imagined he was pissed at being denied a view of the buffalo, but he laid down, curled up, and sighed a few moments later.

  “Good boy, Mac,” he said aloud.

  We’re both putty in her hands.

  He laughed to himself. Being at the mercy of the redhead cowgirl was the last thing he had ever expected, and he was certain Mac
hadn’t seen it coming, either.

  The heavy truck cut through most of the debris with no problem, but the deeper he got into the path of the herd, the more frequently he had to maneuver around the remaining buffalo still trying to get across. Much like driving in snow, his tires slid and shifted on the debris.

  “Whoa!” he said when the steering wheel grabbed in his hands like the tires wanted to go hard to the left.

  A baby buffalo hopped off all four feet to avoid getting branded by Buck’s bumper.

  “Sorry, lil’ dude!”

  Buck looked back and saw his friends sliding around on the rock-strewn pavement too. None of the cars had begun to move, even after they were hundreds of yards across. Some of the rocks kicked onto the roadway were almost as large as soccer balls and would be hazardous to smaller cars.

  “See?” he said while purposefully looking at his side mirror. “We’re doing them a service. We get to go first, but we have the job of smashing the rocks and clearing the way.”

  The situation improved as they neared the far side of the stragglers. There were fewer rocks in the lanes, and only a few of the slowest buffalo still plodded across the roadway, desperate not to fall too far behind their herd.

  Brown rumps shuffled to the north, destined to disrupt whatever towns and highways were in that direction. The cumulus-style dust cloud would herald their arrival.

  He scanned the horizon, suddenly aware he would see other herds if they were out there. Getting stopped multiple times by more buffalo was something he wished to avoid, so he had to stay vigilant.

  The phone rang in its cradle.

  “It’s working again!” he shouted.

  “Who is it?” Connie asked with excitement.

  “Garth!”

  Eighteen

  Near Georgetown, Delaware

  “I feel like a million bucks,” Garth said as they drove through the quaint tree-lined countryside in rural Delaware. His broken window created a harsh draft inside the modified taxi, but it felt good to be alive and safe on the open road.