End of Days | Book 5 | Beyond Alpha

by Isherwood, E. E.

  He and Lydia had to be shoved forward to keep the line moving.

  “This is amazing,” Lydia said to Garth.

  “So is that,” he said, pointing at the blue light inside the room.

  It was the same blue light as the night before, or that had swallowed them up before the world outside disappeared, but it shone continuously and slowly moved up and down like a wobbly searchlight.

  When it reached the bottom of its arc, the light disappeared into the floor.

  When it touched the ceiling, it seemed to penetrate the rock, perhaps explaining how they’d seen the glow on those trucks up there.

  It moved up and down at a turtle’s pace.

  “Keep it moving,” the lieutenant ordered. “We are going to the next tent way over there.” He pointed at a white tent located most of the way across the room and far from the nuclear facility.

  He had a hard time wrapping his brain around the scale of the place. The pillars had to be a hundred feet tall, though they could have been taller. The cooling tower vented water vapor onto the ceiling, which made it drip down the outer shell from a great height. They walked past three of the massive supports before reaching a fourth and the tent. By then, Garth was only looking at the destination.

  When they got there, all the flaps were pulled up, so it was more like a canopy. A woman sat in a comfortable chair behind a table filled with computers and other electronic equipment. She was flanked by two men and one woman dressed in lab coats as well as five guards.

  “Nice to see you all again,” General Strauss said without getting up.

  The nine prisoners plus Phil filed into the big tent, but there were no chairs for them to rest. Strauss tapped her crop on her knee as if she were impatient.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of time to explain what we’re doing here, but you can rest assured we’re going to take good care of you.”

  “Bullshit,” Garth said under his breath.

  Strauss hopped up. “What was that, mister?”

  “You aren’t going to help us.” He straightened his back to stand up to her. “None of the others came back. Your guards are assholes. One of them tried to rape my fiancée just outside. This is all bullshit.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Strauss answered without emotion.

  He glanced at Phil, who stood quietly near the back of the line of guards. If he’d been trying to give Garth a message, he didn’t understand it.

  “We do need you for a little experiment-y item before we get you settled into your dorm rooms, though.” She pointed at the blue light. “But it’s no big deal.”

  The guards got them moving again.

  Strauss followed as they walked the final fifty feet to the strongest area of the blue glow. Once there, she faced the group of time nomads and coughed to get everyone’s attention.

  “As you can see, we’ve got a bit of a problem in here.” Strauss jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “It was left for us to deal with by the former owners of this complex.”

  Garth examined the area. The concrete was covered with a couple of dozen black spray paint lines that were roughly parallel to each other. Several of the tossed cans remained on the floor in the blue light where they’d been left. Most were whole, but a few were smashed in as if run over by a car…or smushed by the strange light. Was that why the trucks up top were smashed?

  He put that out of his mind.

  The paint lines were shaky and not quite straight, clearly drawn by unsteady hands. Whoever had drawn them had started on opposite ends of where the blue light touched the floor. They’d been drawn at intervals, a few feet apart, and they got about ten or fifteen feet into the beam before stopping well short of the other side.

  The only empty space left to draw a line was near the middle.

  “You and you,” Strauss called, selecting the woman in the red skirt and the Jewish guy. “You’ll take these cans of paint and spray the floor for as long as you can. If you reach the other side, you don’t have to try again.”

  “Has anyone made it across, ma’am?” Lydia asked without a trace of sarcasm.

  Garth knew the answer.

  Strauss’s cagey smile gave it away.

  Twenty

  Alpha Site

  Faith couldn’t believe the trucker was on the line. “B-buck,” she stuttered, unsure how to spit out what had her so worked up. “I don’t know how to explain what’s happening.”

  “Just tell me,” he replied.

  “Have you ever heard of the many-worlds interpretation of space-time?” she asked.

  The radio was silent for a few moments.

  “The what and the what?” he finally replied. “Tell me about my son, Faith.”

  “Something happened when we broke the world, Buck—” She cut herself off, recognizing she had to answer him directly. “Your son is alive and well inside SNAKE. I see him right this second in a tent. He’s with Lydia and some others. He’s about a hundred yards away. But Buck, there’s a huge problem.”

  “Go on,” he replied after a flash of static.

  “I built this facility from the ground up. I’ve seen every invoice. Signed every contract. I know what went into constructing it. But I’m in the SNAKE tunnels right this second, and it isn’t the same place anymore. There’s a giant nuclear reactor that I can assure you wasn’t part of the original plans.”

  She had no way of knowing how it got there, but she couldn’t even come up with a logical guess to share with him.

  “And what does this have to do with anything? The whole world has changed, in case you didn’t know. There’s an ocean—”

  “I know all that,” she interrupted, “but the area inside the collider ring was supposed to be unaffected. It’s why it provided a type of shield for you, me, and everyone else who is still alive here today. If I’m seeing a reactor now, it means that this section of the complex has come from a different version of our local universe. Hell, I might be looking at a piece of another universe jutting into this one.”

  Buck chuckled. “Doctor, you might as well be speaking Greek to me. I’m a Marine who happens to be good at making a circle turn left or right. You get my boy safe, and I’ll talk to you until the end of time about this theory of yours, but right now, there’s only one thing I want to hear from you.”

  She changed her tack.

  “I think Strauss lied to you, Buck. She’s got your son in line with other captives. They are near a streak of pulsating blue light, which I can only assume is blowback or residue from the link between our collider and the one in Switzerland. I’m sorry to say I have no idea what the general is doing with civilians so close to it.”

  A woman came on the radio. “Is my son Phil there? Do you see a soldier in a US Army uniform around?”

  She looked as best she could. There might have been a soldier dressed differently than the others, but they were all far away, and the lights in the large space weren’t that bright.

  “Maybe. I can’t say for sure.”

  “Fu—” Buck started but was cut short by someone letting off the broadcast key.

  She waited for a suitable period before trying again. “Buck, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop anything from happening to your son. I made you a promise, and I’m sticking by it. However, if you can return early, I think that would also be a good idea. Strauss is never going to keep her word with you.”

  “I’m coming back,” Buck said in the Terminator’s voice.

  Static erupted from the radio.

  She thought she’d lost him, but he came back a few seconds later.

  “Stall things until we get there. We’re an hour out.”

  Faith’s heart sank. She might be able to delay Strauss for a short time, but an hour would take a miracle.

  “Wait, you need to know you can’t drive in through the front gate. There is a side road, a gravel road. It’s located not far from where Strauss gave her speech to your people yesterday. You can pa
rk at the top of the hill by the emergency exit. When you come down, run through the corridor to the right for about a mile. That’s where your boy will be.”

  “Roger. Is that all?”

  “Birds. There are giant birds that will look like they want to snack on you.”

  “We can handle birds,” he allowed.

  “I’m sure you can,” she answered.

  “We good?” Buck asked with a touch of finality.

  “Yes. I’m going to take care of this.”

  “We’ll be there,” Buck replied, sounding angry. “See you in sixty minutes.”

  Colorado Springs Fringe

  Buck almost threw the radio out the window, he was so pissed.

  “Settle down,” Connie said. “We can do this.”

  His stomach wanted to step out for a calming drag on a cigarette since he was letting his emotions get the best of him. Hearing Garth was in danger after being promised he would be fine made him lose his edge.

  He put both hands on the kitchen table and took a deep breath.

  Connie put a hand on his shoulder, which helped him back away from the ledge.

  He breathed through his nose a few times, then made up his mind.

  “We’ve got a new mission. It isn’t to get back, get our people, and move down here. We’re going to get back and get my son away from those assholes with guns. If they won’t give him back, I’m going to take him.”

  He sucked in another breath. He still sounded reckless.

  “We’re going to do this right, however. We’ll take what we need from Cy’s stash,” he motioned to the table in front of them, “and we’ll do everything in our power to avoid a firefight. However, once we get to Strauss, if I find out she bent even one hair on Garth’s head, I’m going to lose my shit and kill everyone who ever knew her.”

  Still needed to dial it back a little.

  He exhaled.

  Mac nudged his leg.

  Good old Mac. The pup needed to be with his human, who was Garth, not him.

  “We’re going to fly through this, but we’re not going to be stupid about it. I told Faith we were going to be there in sixty minutes.”

  “That’s impossible,” Sparky advised.

  Buck shook his head. “I kept track. We’ve gone thirty-three miles from Buck’s Rock to this street. Once we retrace our steps and get into the trucks, we’ll haul ass and do sixty-five miles per hour the whole way. We can do it.”

  He knew there were risks to going that fast, but they’d done the route once. It wasn’t the worst stretch of road he’d ever seen, even after the weird earthquake tremors.

  “I’m in,” Eve said right away.

  “Me too,” Mel agreed.

  “I’m with Stupid.” Sparky laughed, pointing at Monsignor. “So count me in.”

  Buck looked at Haley. “You don’t have to fight. Just stick with us back to the trucks, okay? You’ll be fine.”

  “I know.” She nodded seriously. “I do want to help, though. Is there any gun that is easy for a newbie to use?”

  He picked up a shotgun, ripped open a big box of shells, and started feeding them into the tube. “See how I’m doing this?” He inserted one slowly to demonstrate.

  “I do,” she replied.

  “This is all there is to it. Feed them, rack the first round—” He pushed and pulled the slide of the gun, which created the distinctive sound of the shotgun.

  Haley jumped at how loud it was.

  “When you are ready to shoot,” he handed her the gun, “flick this safety.”

  It was the fastest and least thorough gun tutorial he’d ever given.

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “Well, there are some hardcore rules you need to follow when shooting, but you look like a smart girl, so they should come easy to you. Don’t aim at anything unless you want it dead. Don’t put your finger on the trigger until you want something dead. Watch what’s behind your target unless you want it dead. Always assume this thing is loaded even if you know it isn’t. Otherwise, you might—”

  “Be dead,” she finished with a passable chuckle.

  He put his hand on her shoulder, much as Connie had done when he was losing it. “Hey, take some deep breaths, okay? We’re all in this together.”

  “Thanks.” She smiled.

  He loaded his own shotgun, grabbed a lunchbox-sized shoulder bag in which he could carry lots of ammo, then he picked up an AK to match his AR. He figured it would be convenient to have one of each so he could use both types of common ammunition.

  The others did the same.

  “Ready?” he asked sixty seconds later.

  “Almost,” Sparky replied as he stuffed more ammo into his bulging pockets.

  “Hurry,” Buck urged.

  Another ten seconds went by before Sparky said he was golden.

  Buck strode into the sunroom and quietly pulled open the screen door to the backyard. Even before he emerged into the yard, he noticed several of the secretive animals had come up to the tops of their hidey holes.

  Mac let out a rolling growl but kept next to Buck’s leg.

  “I see them,” Buck told his pal as the others came out after them.

  They’d gone about twenty feet before one of the animals lunged out of its spot. It was a cross between a fuzzy prairie dog and a small flat-headed wolf. Its long, thin body was what you’d expect for a creature at home in tunnels, but its flattened head and long snout gave it the ability to lay in wait with dirt on its head at the top of its tunnel. Its wide jaw gave it plenty of room for teeth, too.

  More of them broke cover after the first one moved.

  Mac halted and barked his lungs out at the surging mass.

  “No time for this,” Buck said matter-of-factly. He swung the shotgun toward the approaching threat and unloaded on the soil slightly ahead of where it was running.

  “My God!” Haley yelled in fear.

  He kept jogging forward, intending to make the next one a hit if they kept coming, but the wolf-dog wasn’t suicidal. It scurried in reverse almost as fast as the shot that nearly hit him. As his friends added their firepower, the others in the colony reached the same decision.

  “They respect the boom-stick,” he said to Mac as he ran on.

  Buck skipped going inside the house with the bats since he knew what he was dealing with in the yard. He had to unleash two more rounds to keep a pair of the brave digger dogs from hopping out of their dens, but he kept going.

  They soon arrived at the house where they’d first come in.

  The giants weren’t immediately visible.

  “W-why didn’t you kill them all?” Haley asked. “I thought the rule was to kill what you shoot at?”

  He answered her while studying the street.

  “They’re just animals, and I don’t kill animals for sport. It was equally as effective to scare the dogshit out of those little bastards, so I didn’t have to kill them. It’s a good thing, too, since we don’t have time to shoot at a hundred of these holes. Hell, maybe that’s a rule you should add to your list. Only kill something when you have no other choice.”

  Especially humans.

  “I’m trying,” she said in a sheepish voice. “I had no idea it was going to be like this.”

  “Neither did we,” Eve said sympathetically. “You’re doing fine.”

  “Thanks,” Haley whispered.

  Buck never stopped scanning the neighborhood out the front window. Without looking at it, he reached into his pouch, grabbed three shells, and fed them into his shotgun to restore it to capacity. Outside, a few of the mountain lions lounged near the trucks as if no human threats, or treats, remained. Buck had a feeling Varriss and his men had met a bad end even if they’d survived the initial tip-over.

  He planned to shoot them away, same as he’d done with the dogs.

  If the rhino twins didn’t come back, he figured they had a good chance of escaping.

  “You guys ready?” he asked.

 
; “I’m not going with you,” Cy replied.

  “What?” Buck finally turned around.

  “If you are coming back, I’ll be here getting things ready for you, but I’m not going out there.” He pointed at the mountain lions on steroids. “Even with guns.”

  Buck figured it wasn’t the worst thing to have someone holding down his foothold at the edge of Colorado Springs. Granted, the guy still didn’t seem comfortable with firearms, and he wasn’t much in the way of bravery, but he was the only one around. He’d also had the foresight to gather supplies.

  In the end, it was the lack of time that made the decision.

  “Fine with me.” He held out his hand. “You’ve seen me load a shotgun, so think you could do it, too? We’ll need someone keeping the place safe while we’re gone.”

  Cy shook. “I’ll try.”

  Buck spun, ready to open the front door.

  Location Unknown, Pacific Ocean

  The attack on Tim had begun less than thirty seconds ago, but in that span, he’d essentially touched off two land mines. The voracious animals had leapt out of their hidden tunnels and bitten off two pieces of the young crewmember.

  It was only good sense to back away from the bloody scene, which was why she was shocked to see Bert run toward the stricken man.

  “No!” she yelled.

  Bert grabbed Tim by his good arm and started to drag him away from the giant carcass and the probing tentacles. He’d gotten a couple of good pulls in, but before he could widen the distance, another of the holes opened up, and the snake creature snuck a bite of Tim’s other leg.

  “Ow!” Tim yelped.

  Bert stopped since he didn’t want to pull the biter as well.

  Destiny took a step forward in the wet sand since she didn’t want to stand there and do nothing, but almost in response to her movement, the sand opened under Bert, causing him to drop into a hole up to the rear pocket of his trousers.

  “Fuck me,” she blurted.