Begin Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (End Days Book 4)

by E. E. Isherwood

  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.

  H
e 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.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was serious.

  “It’s true.” She poked him in the side. “At least, I hope it is.”

  “Well, uh, let’s go get him. Where is he?”

  “This sounds insane, but I thought he was there when you drove through the fence the first time. The soldier waving the American flag looked like him, but I didn’t think about it until after I had those kids out of your trailer. It got totally crazy for a few minutes, and when I finally got around to looking for him, I thought I saw him disappear in the blue electricity. I passed out when it happened, and he wasn’t there when I came around.”

  They’d all fainted when the final pulse shot out of the ground.

  He gave her a hug, not sure he totally believed her, but ready to back her up no matter what. “The Army guy?”

  She smacked him harder.

  “I just want him back,” she said sadly.

  “We’ll eat and then go, okay? We’ll spend all day if we have to. Talk to every person here.”

  He looked into her teary green eyes and took the conversation in a new direction.

  “I’m glad you didn’t fade out of existence. When I drove over that fence, all I thought about was you and Garth getting sucked away by the blue light.” He chuckled. “Of course, it shouldn’t surprise you that it was Garth who gave me the heart attack. He and Lydia almost didn’t make it back.”

  “Thank God for Mac, right?”

  “Amen.”

  The pup had gone out and brought back his son. He was now convinced that the dog was much smarter than he was.

  They hugged. Then, for much too brief a time, they kissed.

  “Shall we go back to the family?” he asked.

  “I like the sound of that.”

  “That reminds me, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  His guts quivered. He’d only known her for a little over four days, but everything had changed. It appeared as if all of existence on Earth was now different. Connie was an anchor to the old world, but also a sail to guide him into the new. There was nothing that could make him think otherwise about her.

  “I can’t let my son marry his girl before I do…”

  Formerly Sedalia, CO

  Phil was thrilled to still be in Colorado. After the blue light had washed over him and all the people on the fence line, he had assumed he would be beamed back to Switzerland or spat out of existence. The only thing that had kept him from running out of the wall of blue at the last moment was a young boy, a strangel
y dressed girl, and their shaggy dog.

  They ran by him as the blast knocked him on his ass.

  When he woke up, the people and cars across the street were gone.

  The soldiers didn’t bother him. They had regrouped, and were offering water and bits of food to the survivors as if the battle was over. He was going to get to the bottom of who they were, and how a ghost unit like the 130th could even exist here, but once he got to his feet, he had another mission on his mind.

  “That lady looked familiar…”

  The first truck through the fence had had a woman who was the spitting image of his mom. She was young, like the year he had last seen her, so it couldn’t have been her. However, the mere act of seeing the lookalike stirred feelings of loss and guilt he needed to stomp out. He could only do that by finding the woman.

  He saw the truck right away. The bug-covered mess of a semi was easy to spot, even in a field filled with hundreds of cars and thousands of people. However, being a lieutenant colonel worked against him. It took him a long time to get across the makeshift camp because everyone saw him as a person in charge.

  It was lunchtime before he got to the far side of the crowd. During his delay, the trucker had re-attached his trailer and driven it and two other trucks farther across the field, all the way to the rocky outcrop before the start of the hills.

  I should have had Grafton drop me off.

  His partner had taken the pickup truck to go find the other members of Task Force Blue 7.

  He recognized the over-the-road driver the second he came around the back of the trailer. The guy sat at a cooking fire along with a small group of friends. The two young people he had seen in the street were there with them. Even the dog was there. The Golden Retriever cocked its head as he neared.

  The redhead was also seated at the fire, as he suspected, but she had her back to him. The woman wore blue jeans and a white shirt and a fancy belt with lots of bling, as his cowgirl mother would have called it.

  Might be a coincidence.

  “Excuse me. I don’t want any trouble,” he called.

  The truck driver was the first out of his seat. “Can we help you, soldier?” He wore a hideous Hawaiian shirt, but he stood tall in front of his people as if to protect them. Probably military.