End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Come on, let me sneak through here.” He wove through the traffic and dodged the people until he got to where he’d started.

  The blue electrical energy field was now as tall as a building, and it created a miles-long wall, like a tidal wave about to crest. The soldier with the flag was just inside the strange wall, still waving people through it.

  Smart bastard. Showing people it’s safe.

  He had a grudging respect for the Army guy, but that was short-circuited when he finally saw Garth in the center of the crowd. Unlike everyone else, he stood still, as if looking around for something.

  Buck worked the gears to get over to him, but there was a lot of foot traffic.

  He hit the horn in short squawks to get his son’s attention.

  “Get out of there!”

  In an instant, the entire wall of energy doubled in intensity. The land beyond the parked cars on his right shimmered like a desert mirage.

  The beam sparked again, making the whole virtual wall of energy wobble.

  His head felt woozy, and he had a suspicion about what was coming.

  “Garth! Run!”

  He was still a football field away, but he was fairly certain a Golden Retriever and a girl in a bonnet ran up behind Garth.

  Buck’s vision blurred.

  At the last possible moment, the kids locked hands, made sure the dog was with them, and ran for the blue light.

  Then the whole world went blue.

  Twenty-Six

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

  “They’re all gone, Faith. Every scientist who came with Dr. Johnson when he teleported or whatever from CERN disappeared when the blue light collapsed the time anomaly.”

  Faith stood at the glassless window in her old office.

  “Thanks, Bob. I think they went back where they came from when the dark energy link was shut off. It serves them right for nuking their twins in CERN.”

  “Sheesh. You think that’s what happened?”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off the new landscape outside.

  “I saw Johnson get sucked into the blue energy myself. He simply vanished when he touched it. I tried to get away from it too, but eventually, there was too much.”

  “You made contact with it?”

  “Yes,” she said dryly. “We all did.”

  “It didn’t take you away,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “No, the transplants were special. I think he had some kind of anti-dark-matter charge like he didn’t belong here. This reality couldn’t handle two of him.”

  They shared a chuckle.

  Faith turned his way, sounding less enthusiastic. “I tried calling my sister, but there isn’t a network signal. It’s like there’s nothing out there. Boy, Benny’s going to be pissed. He knows everything, like I promised, but there are no more newspapers.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Really, I mean that. I’m sorry a hundred times over for my role in all this.”

  She wasn’t ready to forgive him.

  “Do you think people can change?”

  Bob flashed a fraction of his smile. “I certainly have.”

  “No, I don’t mean this to be about us. You are still the jerk who wrote that stupid neutrino joke on the conference room table. Your hands are dirty from all this.” She spoke with a little less snark. “Though I will admit … you aren’t even close to Dr. Johnson when it comes to credentials in the field of asshattery.”

  “I had no idea he was like that,” he said in a contrite voice.

  She gestured out the window. Sedalia was several miles away on the plains beyond the Hogback. The buildings and cars in and near the town glistened in the sunshine, providing a visible landmark for her. “He wanted to kill all those people. I’m not sure how they did it, but the people fought back. They weren’t the sheep he thought they were, and boy, am I glad about it!”

  “And what about the rest of it?” He swept his arm across her view.

  The city of Denver had vanished, and the high plains of eastern Colorado were gone. There was now a giant blue sea with several small, tropical islands dotted along the near shore.

  “If there are still people out there, they will have no choice but to change. I have a feeling our experiment did more than return this supercollider to a normal place in time. To keep us as we were, it had to destroy the rest of the world.”

  “No, you can’t think of it like that. The rest of the world was going to die anyway. We managed to find the one place where the experiment was successful. And thanks to people like you, and those who broke the fences along our perimeter, humanity has a chance to survive what would have been sure death.”

  Faith looked at her ex with a newfound sense of gratitude. There was a good person somewhere down deep inside. Her question about change hadn’t been meant for him, however, but for her.

  The old Faith might have seen Bob in a new light and decided the worldwide calamity was reason enough to get back together with him. Countless books, movies, and television shows had ingrained the notion to the point it was almost automatic in her psyche. But she remembered being in that blue light. In those few seconds, she had seen countless possibilities for the new world, and had imagined herself thriving and surviving in them. Nothing in her visions suggested settling for a man like him was the path to a happily ever after.

  “Thanks, Bob. It means a lot to hear you say that.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “I know.” She chuckled. “Now, let’s go get the others and show them how much work we have ahead of us.”

  The Four Arrows experiment was finally over.

  The experiment called humanity was starting from scratch.

  Somewhere at sea

  “Destiny, wake up!”

  She’d been dreaming about a forest fire and woke up with a pounding heart and a nose searching for smoke.

  “Zandre? Are we on fire?”

  “What? No. Look up there.”

  She sat up and saw the blue light streaking through the nighttime sky out of the northeast.

  The ship was full of Sydney Harbor people and their families, so she and Zandre had to sleep on the deck. Since the lingering animosity from when they had left her at the fire still drove her nightmares, she didn’t mind keeping her distance from them.

  “I saw this light four days ago,” Zandre whispered. “It kicked off all of our problems.”

  “Is this the end of it?” Dez asked, desperate to catch her breath.

  The light moved fast, like a rogue wave in the air. It had been halfway across the sky when she woke up, and now it blazed off toward the horizon while she still blinked the sleep from her eyes.

  Faith!

  She pulled out her phone and tried to dial her sister, but there was no signal. That could have been because they were far from shore—

  A claxon blared from the bridge.

  “Collision! Collision! Brace yourselves!”

  She’d been looking at the pretty lights in the sky, so she’d missed what was going on at the water’s surface. Land was a few hundred meters ahead. It was a black silhouette against the backdrop of starry sky, but it was there. White froth provided a clue about the rocky shore.

  The engines roared, and the deck rumbled with it. The ship slowed as the captain fought to keep her from ramming land.

  “Hang on, Dez,” Zandre said dumbly.

  She held her breath as the ship slowed.

  Several crates of cargo shifted on the deck, pushing her sideways toward the railing.

  “Bloody hell!”

  The deck shuddered with the engine strain, but they were almost stopped.

  “A little more,” Zandre whispered.

  For a couple of seconds, they were in between forward and reverse, and it felt like an eternity. Then the engines started them backing up.

  More cargo shifted, but Dez didn’t care.

  “The bastard did it,” she said joyously.
“We’re safe.”

  She let out a long sigh when it was certain they’d be all right.

  “Phew! That would have ended our trip before we got started.”

  Zandre patted her on the back. “I couldn’t have said it better, mate.”

  A few minutes later, the pair entered the bridge because she wanted to know if they’d heard anything on the shortwave about the blue streak in the sky.

  “Ah, you two are all right. We wondered about you sleeping on the deck. Things shift from time to time.”

  Dez was almost touched.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” she asked. “Can we still get to America?”

  The captain looked at her with uncertainty in his eyes. “I can’t say. We’re off the charts right now.”

  “What does that mean?” Zandre inquired.

  The captain pointed at a digital radar screen. “This just updated. The shoreline doesn’t belong here. We are in the middle of the Coral Sea, and there isn’t supposed to be land for five hundred kilometers in any direction. Now we have this.”

  She wasn’t a nautical person, but it looked like the screen showed a long piece of land going from one side of the readout to the other. It was as if they’d pulled up next to a continent.

  “Are we at Papua New Guinea?” Zandre asked.

  “Nope, not unless we moved a thousand kilometers in the last five minutes.”

  She and Zandre exchanged glances.

  Destiny was crestfallen. “Captain, I told you we had to hurry. I think…maybe…we can take our time now, because we missed our chance.”

  “The engines are fine. We can keep going once we get around this blockage.”

  She looked again at the radar screen. “You can try, but I think you’ll find this isn’t New Guinea. At least, not in the modern era.”

  “Whatever does that mean?” the captain asked with impatience.

  “It means we’ve watched animals come back from the past. We’ve watched land reclaim itself by blinking out modern structures, like the Opera House, or the shoreline by the docks. My sister was telling the truth when she said the only place to truly be safe was SNAKE. Now we’re stuck in the reclaimed world, along with all the treasures dredged up from the past.”

  “So we got mixed up,” the captain went on. “I think this big landmass might be Australia again. It makes a little sense, right?”

  “Are the stars correct? Can you use them as a guide?” she asked. “I saw the Southern Cross as clear as could be just now. It hasn’t moved, as far as I can tell.”

  The captain looked out a side window. “Yep, still there. I checked it not long ago, too. I do it from time to time on night watch, since it is easy to tip off when I get tired. That’s good thinking, young lady. It proves we haven’t moved.”

  “So what does it tell us?” Zandre asked. “The land moved to us?”

  She was unwilling to let one more challenge bring her down, so she laughed to lighten the mood. “I guess we’re going to have to wait until the sun rises to see what we’ve got, right, mates? Who knows, we might already be sitting off the coast of California. Wouldn’t that be a cracking good time?”

  She made a promise she didn’t intend to break.

  I’ll make it to you, sis, no matter what’s out there.

  Red Mesa, CO

  “Am I going to stay with you now, Garth?” Lydia sat next to him on a log as he tended a small fire.

  “I think so. The blue sparks are gone and the whole planet has changed, but you and Connie are still here. That makes sense, right, Dad?”

  His father sat across the fire. “I’m calling this done. No one is taking my woman away from me.”

  Garth bumped Lydia. “I’d like to keep mine, too.”

  “Hmf,” Lydia blurted. “Don’t I get a choice in this?” She acted stern, but she was terrible at it. She constantly had to squelch her giggles.

  “Oh, sure, if you can find anyone willing to ride cross-country with you, I’ll happily let you go with them.” Garth pointed to the crowd of survivors around them. “You said you are from Wyoming, right?”

  “Indiana. We were going to Wyoming, but I don’t want to go there,” she said quickly, as if he might put her on a bus at that moment.

  He softened. “I’m kidding. I said I’d try to get you home, and I stand by the statement, but I don’t want you to go back. I’ve, uh, had fun with you.”

  Out of the blue, she leaned over and kissed him briefly.

  “I agree to a courtship!”

  Garth’s emotions were a whirlpool. He hadn’t exactly come out and asked her in those terms, but once the surprise was over, he realized he was happy she had spelled it out for him.

  He looked at his dad, wondering if he needed his approval, but it seemed silly after all that had happened.

  Buck winked at him.

  “Garth, do you think we could start a homestead out there?” She pointed to the shoreline across the new body of water.

  His heart did a backflip.

  “I, uh…” he stuttered.

  “One thing at a time, kids,” Buck said with a laugh. “First, let’s talk about finding a preacher. Then we’ll start building cities.”

  Nice save, Dad.

  He wanted everything with Lydia, but he also wanted to take it slow. It looked like the fast-paced world was gone, at least for a while by the looks of things, so there was plenty of time.

  “Dad, do you think we can live out there? What do you think we’ll find?”

  The cars that had been parked on the far side of the highway were gone, as was much of the pavement of the road. Now, the highway was beachfront property at the edge of a large ocean.

  “I have no idea. We saw Lake Bonneville fill up with water like it was eons ago, so maybe this used to be a giant lake sometime in the past.”

  They all agreed that the blue light had reverted things back to how they had been in the past, except for the people and things inside the SNAKE supercollider ring. It had happened exactly as Mr. Shinano and Doctor Sinclair had warned.

  As to what was out there, they could only guess, based on what they could see.

  Garth spoke quietly. “I could definitely live on the beach.”

  He spun around to look at the other big change. The hills and pine forest above their location still looked like the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, but now the mountains in the background seemed twice as tall as they had been before. If the inland ocean was supposed to be what that area looked like in the past, it made sense that the mountains now looked like they had at a far distant time in history.

  Buck spoke before he could say what was on his mind. “Nobody’s going anywhere until we talk to someone at SNAKE. We want to make sure the changes are over, and that if we step outside the circle, we aren’t going to be sent into the past ourselves.”

  Garth took Lydia’s hand, which made them both start to laugh.

  Slow and steady.

  “I already have all I need right here.”

  Buck’s Rock

  “Aww.” Connie swooned at Garth’s profession of love. “You two make such a cute couple. I’m glad we all made it together.”

  Buck read her emotions and wanted to steer her away from the ditch that was her lost son.

  “The old America is gone,” he said with resolve, “so I’m free to start renaming things. I’m going to call this place Buck’s Rock.”

  He tapped a large sandstone outcropping, which was where they had gone after getting clear of the blue light. Since there were thousands of people in the fields near Sedalia, he and his friends had moved their vehicles right up against the Hogback. It gave them a degree of privacy while they planned what to do next.

  “You can’t claim rocks.” Connie laughed.

  “Oh, yes I can. This is a new land, and there is no law. No busybodies at the government labeling office. We can call things whatever we want.”

  “I call that!” Garth pointed to the water. “I’m going to call
it the Lydian Ocean.”

  Lydia gave him a strange look.

  “What? Too soon?”

  “You named a whole ocean after me? No one has ever done anything close to that. Not even my pa would have done such a thing.”

  Garth seemed embarrassed. “Well, it’s not official. Not really…”

  “I’m good with that, son,” Buck said proudly. He wanted Garth to take things seriously, but there was also an element of fun that existed with life. If what he saw outside the collider ring had happened all over Earth, there whole way of life had changed forever. There was plenty of time to be serious later.

  There would be no more fuel.

  No more pre-packaged food.

  No more help.

  He wondered how many doctors had been inside the perimeter. How many police. How many criminals. What was the balance of men and women? The Marine in him started a ledger of supplies and what they would need to scrounge for daily survival.

  And we’ve got to have a lot of kids.

  Buck glanced at Connie. She gave him a look, then stood and walked away from the fire.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said to Garth and the others. Evelyn, Clarence, and Mel Tinker sat at the fire too. He figured there was no point in using their CB handles because there were no more highways.

  After a short jog, he caught up with his cowgirl friend.

  “Howdy, partner,” she drawled.

  He knew what was on her mind.

  “Hey, I’m getting ready to go back down to the crowd and look around. Will you go with me? I want to look for your son.”

  “Buck—”

  “No, I want to, okay? I said I would, and I meant it. We can do this.”

  He’d been coming to terms with why he had pushed so hard to destroy the fence. It wasn’t only to prove a point over the Army guy, although that made a convenient excuse. His real reason had to do with wanting to rescue every human he possibly could, so he could prove he had tried with all his soul to find her missing son. And, because so few people had made it relative to the whole country, he was prepared to deal with his failure.

  “It’s not that. I think I saw my son when we came in.”