“Buck, don’t be the hero, you hear me?” She spoke in a stern voice he couldn’t recall her using before.
“Connie, I can’t let that Army asshole save all those people by himself. I’ll get beat up at the VFW hall if this is how my story gets told.”
He spoke in an old-man voice. “Your Granpap was a Marine, by Jove, but he preferred to sit on his ass and let some weak-ass ditch-digger get all the glory while he polished his—”
“Okay, I get it.” She laughed.
“I’m not wearing a uniform, but I’ve got to show him up.” He laughed to hide his feelings about the danger level of what he had in mind.
“Charlie Mike,” she said with a mix of disappointment and pride.
“I won’t do anything stupid,” he assured her, not knowing if he could possibly live up to that promise.
Probably not.
“Oh, and if the college kids ask, tell them this is Amarillo!”
He snickered at the look of horror on her face.
Twenty-Five
Sedalia, CO
Buck unhooked the kingpin and detached the trailer in record time. Without a trailer, his semi-truck was free to go bobtail-style, which made him more maneuverable.
Don’t do anything stupid, he reminded himself.
“Garth? Where are you?”
He and Lydia came around the front bumper holding hands. The furtive look he flashed at the pioneer girl next to him was precisely how he felt about Connie when she took off for the rear of the trailer.
He thinks she’s going away, too.
Buck pointed away from his rig. “Guys, go stand over there. I’m going back to the fence to help the rest of those people.”
“But Dad, it’s already started!”
His heart skipped a beat, knowing he was putting himself in danger, but as long as Garth was safe behind the finish line, he had to live up to his own code of honor. He’d never forgive himself if he sat idle while people suffered a hundred yards away.
“Trust me, this has to happen!”
He hopped up and reached for his door handle, but Garth came over and held him back. At first, he thought it was because he wanted to stop him, but he realized it wasn’t that at all.
Garth gave him an awkward hug. “Thanks for saving us, Dad. Go get ‘em, but be sure to bring yourself back.”
Buck hugged him for a second, then gently pushed him away. Lydia was close by, smiling, so he spoke to her as he climbed into the cab. “Take care of him, okay? Don’t let him out of your sight!”
“I will!” she said as if she’d been given a task she very much wanted.
He got the Peterbilt started, amazed by how messy she had become over the past several days. The outside was a disaster, with the blanket of locusts only being the last in a long line of things splashed and wiped on the paint. However, the inside was a wreck now too. They’d tracked in dirt, rocks, and bug slop over the last thousand miles. Garth’s things were piled in the back, with all the organization of the front lawn of a rural mobile home.
“I need a name for you,” he said to the cabin as he turned the truck around. “I’m not going to call you Locust, because that’s not pretty. How about Lorraine? It’s an L-name and sounds fancy.” Buck’s policy was never to name his vehicles because he didn’t like saying goodbye to inanimate objects after he’d been with them for a long time, but he would make this exception because the Peterbilt had treated him so well. She deserved special recognition.
“All right, Lorraine, we’re rolling hot.”
Buck passed Eve and Monsignor as he headed back to the fence line. Neither had unhitched their trailers, so he didn’t expect any help from them. It wasn’t a knock, he reasoned, because he hadn’t known what he was going to do until the last second, either.
Far to the left, Humvees flew out of the town of Sedalia like angry hornets coming to defend the hive. Some came along the line of fencing, while others went toward his trailer.
“You’re too late,” he said, hoping he was right.
The blue sparks had grown in the short time since they began. The deer fence was crackling with lots of energy, but so were some of the cars on the roadway beyond it.
“Don’t pass out, Buck.” The energy wave reminded him of what had happened back in Wyoming when everyone around him fainted. Now he was heading into an electrical storm.
He blared his horn as he bounced over the field.
The soldier with the flag waved people through the hole he’d created, and some cars came through the gap Buck had opened, but it wasn’t enough. Traffic was piled up as far as he could see on the highway, and most of them likely had no idea what was taking place at that one section of fence.
Riding the horn the whole way, he turned into the barrier and knocked over the closest wooden fence post. Without his heavy payload, the impact with the four-inch piece of wood slowed him down a bit. However, he dumped Lorraine into a lower gear and headed directly for the next one.
Blue ripples of electricity came out of his dashboard, and he held his breath like its presence was going to knock him out, but he remained conscious as he drove Lorraine into another tall post. It cracked and fell over like he’d tackled it on the football field.
Before he hit the next one, he rolled down his window and waved at the people on the road.
“Come this way!” he shouted.
Lorraine bashed the next post with a loud thwack, but something slammed into his undercarriage as he rolled over it.
“Fuck!”
For a few seconds, he thought something was damaged and he almost stalled out, but he figured it was all or nothing, so he gave it more power.
“This way!” Buck waved like a maniac.
He peered into the side mirror, happy to see that some cars were turning as he instructed.
A familiar figure caught his eye, however. Garth had hopped across the downed fence and now ran across the highway. Blue sparks chased him the whole way.
“What are you doing, son?”
Sedalia, CO
Garth watched Buck drive away in the bobtail semi-truck, but he wasn’t content to sit and watch. Though it might have been comforting to let his dad take over all responsibilities and go back to being the dutiful child, he didn’t feel that way anymore. He and Lydia had worked as a team the past few days, and he didn’t want to give it all up.
“I’ve got to help those people,” he suggested.
Lydia stood next to him, watching the traffic.
The other two trucks in the convoy had pulled close to their trailer, and Connie and her Golden Retriever were helping those kids come down from the back, which left the two of them more or less alone in the wild grass.
“We can run over there,” she offered, “but how do we get them to come here?”
He didn’t know, but it was as good a plan as any.
“Run with me, okay?”
She tightened her bonnet like a race was about to begin, and they took off together.
They crossed the field in a couple of minutes, and they had the perfect perspective to watch Buck use his truck to plow over the posts and rip the deer fence to shreds as he widened the entrance to the field.
“That’s perfect!” he shouted. “We only have to show people the way, and they’ll drive or walk through.”
“I hope you’re right.” With less confidence, she added, “That blue light scares me.”
“Don’t worry about it. Those people are already in it. Dad is in it. I don’t think it can hurt you.”
In the back recesses of his mind, he worried she might get swept away inside the blue energy, the same way she’d been delivered to him. However, he did his best to ignore that so he could do what he planned.
“Come on!”
Garth ran and jumped over a twisted piece of the wire fence. A spark of blue electricity nipped at his leg, giving him a tingly feeling.
Oh, shit!
It was too late to change his plans. He ran through the fen
ce and continued onto the roadway. As soon as he was near the parked cars, he started to yell. “Go over there! You are on the wrong side!”
Lydia followed him a second or two later, but they shared a look of concern. “I’m going over there.” Lydia pointed to cars closer to the town. He knew they’d save more people by splitting up, but it started to make him worry.
More electricity bubbled out of the ground by the fence.
“Okay, but don’t take long!” He flashed her a brave smile, wondering if he was doing the right thing. Was he being the hero or putting his friend in mortal danger?
“I won’t!” she said as she ran off.
As she did, several of the students from his dad’s trailer came across the road.
“That cowgirl woman sent us after you,” one of the young women cried. “How can we help?”
“Just tell people to run across this road. Everyone we can get on this side—” Garth pointed to the side with the fence, “will be safe.”
It was impossible to know what was coming, but the blue sparks were a lot like those he’d seen on the first day. If things were going back to normal on the far side of the fence, that was where he had to be.
The students all spread out into the mass of parked cars, and panicky throngs immediately began running out of the lot. More and more people trotted across the road, giving him confirmation that they were making a difference.
Two policewomen ran up to him, each holding a baby. “They told us to come to SNAKE, and we thought this was it. We’re asking for our unit. Will we be safe over there? Why is everyone on this side?”
Garth waved them on. “Don’t take any chances! SNAKE runs under those hills, so how could it be on this side of the road but not the other?” He’d been listening to the radio, and his dad and Connie had talked about the giant ring under the earth. All they knew for sure was Red Mesa was west of Sedalia, so they based everything on geography.
He briefly recalled Officer Jones, back in Columbia, telling him he needed to work on his geography. In ten million years, he never would have thought that knowledge would save his life.
“Trust me!” he shouted over the traffic noise. The truck’s horn was going off every few seconds, although he was far down the road now.
“That adds up,” the officer replied. After talking on a hand-held radio, both women ran for the fence.
Garth took off into the endless parking lot of cars, trying to find people who hadn’t been swayed by the college kids ahead of him. A troubling number of gawkers stood around watching. Many were curious to see the idiot in the semi knocking over the fence like it was a video game.
“Tell everyone!” he shouted to the closest people. “Get to the other side of the fence! You are on the wrong side!”
For a moment, they stood there like deer frozen in headlights, but the college students were shouting the same thing. They’d run up other aisles of cars, and the yelling came from multiple directions.
We’re all in, right or wrong.
He trusted that his dad knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t risk his life or his precious truck if he didn’t believe this was the right course of action.
Garth ran deeper into the field of cars until something caught him by the leg.
“What the hell?”
He looked down to find Big Mac nipping at his jeans as if desperate to get him to stop running.
There was at least a mile of parked cars ahead of him, and lots of people had already set up blankets and pillows on top of their vehicles to wait it out. However, word of mouth caught many of the bystanders like a virus spreading across the field, so lots of runners came back down the long aisles. That was great, but there were so many people left to save…
Mac came around to his front and gave him an urgent nudge.
“I don’t believe it,” Garth exhaled. “Did my dad send you?”
Impossible. Buck was still honking and demolishing fence.
“It’s time to go back, isn’t it, Big Mac?”
The Golden barked, then trotted toward the fence. He paused a few yards away as if making sure he was being followed.
Garth turned around and went after the dog.
“Good boy!” he declared.
As he ran, he studied the thousands of people running in the same direction, desperate to see the familiar bonnet.
“Hey! It’s time to go back!” he yelled when he saw one of the college students.
That guy shouted to one of his buddies, and they both turned around.
“Thanks!” the guy screamed over the noise.
Garth followed the growing crowd of people as they headed into the blue sparks. Some seemed hesitant to enter the electrical wall of energy, which now stretched about fifty feet above the fence line, but most ended up going in.
Now everyone could see the outline of the super collider. The blue light traced the curve on the ground, and neatly drew a circular shape between the town of Sedalia and the Hogback. It looked like a city-sized plate lying on the earth. Anyone looking from the fields of parked cars would have to realize they were on the wrong side of the dinner plate.
“Lydia!” he shouted.
Garth stopped before he reached the blue energy. Masses of frightened people shoved by, crossed the downed fence, and ran into the field beyond.
Some soldiers parked Humvees over in the field, but they seemed like ants about to be overwhelmed by a flood.
“Lydia?”
Big Mac was gone. The students were gone. Everyone was crossing to the safety of the fence.
He couldn’t go back yet.
The crackling sounds of the blue energy continued to surge, and he imagined he was risking his life by waiting for another second, but he couldn’t cross the fence until he had found his friend.
Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado
Faith was trapped in the control room, unable to do anything but watch.
The action at Sedalia was hard to follow. At the start, a lone soldier ran his pickup truck through the fence and used an American flag to wave people to him. Then a man in a black semi-truck cut down the fence longways, which started a stampede toward the safe side.
By the time the blue energy wave was a hundred feet tall on the video monitor, Faith’s fingertips were crackling with the same blue sparks.
The control room came alive with sparkling lights, making her feel like the lone dancer on a disco floor. Dr. Johnson remained fixated on the screen, while the soldiers at the door seemed reluctant to move.
“I think this is going to be amazing, Faith,” Dr. Johnson said breathlessly. “We’ve run this scenario a hundred thousand times on a Cray supercomputer, and each one was different. There is no precedent. No formula. No guidepost. But there will be, once we reach the other side. A new era of science, and for humanity.”
“Go fuck yourself,” she deadpanned. Billions of people were slated to die because of him.
Dr. Johnson laughed and slapped his paunch with both hands. “They never should have put a woman in charge of this collider. You can’t make the hard decisions.”
Blue energy burst out of a nearby control board like a fire hydrant gone wild.
Faith picked up a hardbound technical manual.
What the hell.
She quietly rose from her chair and sidled over to Dr. Johnson. The blue wall of dark energy bubbled out of the ground on two panels of the video monitor. A line crossed the lake in one frame, and it ran down a highway around Sedalia in the other. The third frame, showing the Four Arrows box, now, ironically, had no blue energy in it. The link to the box was finally off…
“Something’s happening,” he said with awe.
“Damn right it is.”
She’d taken years of self-defense training, and had kept herself in shape so she would never become a victim. She had no control over the scientists hiding secret projects behind her back, but she retained full control over this moment.
She swung the hardbound book in a smooth arc, so it impacted squarely on the bridge of his nose.
“Oww!” he cried out.
“That’s for Bob, you asshole.”
“N-no!” he screamed.
She set up for another strike.
He stepped sideways to avoid it, but she used that confused moment to push him into the wild stream of energy burning through the console. She had no idea what would happen when he touched it, but at the very least he was going to smash into the equipment.
He fell where she aimed him, and as soon as he touched the electricity, he disappeared.
“Oh, fuck!” she yelped.
She dropped the book and looked to the guards at the door, but they weren’t there.
At least I did one good thing today.
More sparks emerged from other pieces of the control room, and it became a five-alarm fire of blue energy.
Faith fell to the floor.
Sedalia, CO
Buck ripped a hole in the fence a mile wide, and he felt damned good about it.
This is not going to be another Highway of Death.
When he reached a concrete outbuilding, he decided to turn around and go back. The soldiers in Humvees caught up with him, but there were so many cars surging onto the field that they must have figured there was no point in stopping him. They got out and waved people inside the fence like they should have been doing in the first place.
Fortunately, the people farther down the highway were paying attention to him and the light show now. Once they realized so many people were crossing the roadway, and once they saw him cutting down the fence, people didn’t wait. Cars, trucks, and everything in between stormed the fence and got into the safe zone.
Buck chuckled, thinking about that Army dude waving his American flag. He might have started the trickle, but Buck had used his Marine skills to put him to shame.
Buck smash!
After his few seconds of celebration, he put Lorraine in gear and headed to where he had last seen Garth. On the way back, he had to contend with the torrent of people coming through the smashed fence.
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 87