Quantum Theorem

by James Wallace

  Mary tilted her head and a smile stretched across her lips. She put the caller on hold she had on the phone, ripped her headset off, and came around her desk arms opened wide. I put my box of food and drinks down on the counter and wrapped my arms around her. She hugged me tight and then released me and stepped back.

  “Mister Welko, are you here to see that pretty wife of yours?”

  “I am ma’am, I thought I would bring her some food. You know how she always forgets to eat.”

  “She, I believe is up on the sixth floor doing rounds. Want me to call up for you?”

  “Nah, I think it’s best if I surprised her.”

  “No problem honey, you know your way around this place,” she came in for another hug. “Don’t be a stranger hon.”

  I patted her back as I hugged her. “I promise ma’am.”

  I grabbed the food and caught the elevator before the doors closed. I knew this hospital well; I had done most of my rehabilitation here. I got off on the sixth floor in front of the nurse’s station and waved at ladies behind it. The head nurse a tall beautiful black woman named Tanay pointed down the hallway and mouthed “Room nine.” I blew her a kiss and moved on down the hall. I had known Tanay as long as I had known Bri. She was my best friend as far back as I could remember. She had the heart and soul of a saint, but the attitude and toughness to rip your balls off if she needed to.

  I stopped at the open door and popped my head in. Kell was visiting with an older patient who had been in and out of the hospital for months. When Kell saw me, she winked at me and showed a finger asking for a quick minute. I stepped back and waited till she came out. She saw the food and then looked up at my face. She got on her tip toes and kissed me.

  “Hey good looking, who’s the grub for?” she asked in her husky voice.

  “I heard there was a hot hungry English Doctor around here somewhere. Have you seen her?”

  She punched me on the shoulder and laughed. “Funny, let’s go up to the roof.”

  “Lead the way my love.”

  We passed the nurse’s station as we climbed back on the elevator. Kell inserted her access card to take the elevator up to the top. When we reached the roof level, the doors slid open on a sunny warm day, a slight breeze coming in from the storm gathering at the mountains, cooled us off. We moved over to a picnic table and sat down to have lunch. We made small talk as we threw french-fries at each other. We finished our burgers and started to suck on the straws of our extra thick milkshakes. We were gazing into each other’s eyes, another little thing we liked doing, when her pager went off. She pulled it out of her white doctor’s coat pocket and stared at the screen reading it. Her face dropped in amazement.

  “What’s up baby?”

  “We need to get off the roof we are going to have rescue coppers coming in soon. There was an airliner that just crashed on the other side of Harrmont. I don’t think I am going to becoming home tonight dear. I will see you tomorrow, if I am lucky.”

  I collected our trash and threw it in the garbage can nearby. I handed her, her shake and moved us toward the elevator doors. We stopped and shared a quick intimate moment. “I love you wife. Work hard and save lives. Call me when you can, if not I will be by tomorrow and bring more food.”

  She nestled her head against my chest and placed an open hand on my cheek. “Thank you for being you.”

  We rode the elevator down to the Emergency room and into organized chaos. The room was run by veterans, who had their shit together. They were prepared for any emergency and professional enough to do the job better than any other hospital. I waved hello to some friends and made my way outside to my car. I pulled out of the slot just as the Sheriff rolled into the parking lot. We waved at each other; he had known me my entire life. My dad was the Sheriff when he had been a rookie deputy. As I drove through town the rescue helicopters appeared on the horizon. There were four of them, they would have to land one at a time taking turns. The hospital didn’t have the space for more.

  I turned on the radio and switched to the AM news station. The emergency broadcasting alert came over the speakers. I pulled off the side of the highway and waited for the message. “This is not a test, a Delta airliner, heading east to Chicago has crashed outside Coomey County near the hamlet of Harrmont. There have also been reports of two separate bus crashes on Highway 305 West. Multiple fatalities and serious injuries are being reported. Please stay off the main highways and allow emergency vehicles passage. Please stay tuned for more reports and alerts as they come in.” There was a slight silent pause before the same recorded message repeated itself. I pulled back on the road and hurried to get home. This was a weird day so far.

  Within twenty minutes I was braking hard to slow down, I had been travelling at breakneck speeds to get home, during my drive I had to move over to allow fire engines and ambulances room to pass. I pulled down our driveway and waited as our Irongate slowly motored open. I had installed this gate as a security measure a while back. I was a paranoid freak after everything I had seen in Afghanistan and in the numerous other places I had gone on my new job. The gate was reinforced with steel and could stop a semi-truck if needed. Two concrete and steel poles could rise or drop down below the road at a moment’s notice. The rest of my property had a six-foot-wide, four-feet-deep trench I called the moat. On both sides of the moat I had strung military grade razor wire. And you guessed it, reinforced hurricane fence attached to six-foot poles. No one was getting on my property, unless they were special forces or had the right equipment. I braked hard to a stop near the house and got out. I unloaded the oil and box of venison jerky.

  I got right to work doing the oil change on the Audi. I finished that job pretty quickly and moved on to Old Bess. I was so engrossed in the work that I had lost track of time. That was until my stomach started growling. I finished putting the new Carburetor on the engine and stepped back to admire my work. I used the lava soap to clean the grease and oil off my hands and wiped them off on one of the many red mechanic towels that were laying around the garage. I stepped outside to deepening dusk, the sun had already gone down leaving just enough light to make it to the house without having to turn the property lights on. I heard a couple of booms far off in the distance. I turned toward the sound and tried to figure out what it was. I had heard booms like that before, in foreign countries as we were shelling the bad guys.

  I pulled out my cell phone and was shocked to find no bars, or signal. I jogged into the house and flipped on the satellite TV. The news anchor of my preferred broadcast was reporting on communication outages throughout the West Coast. I turned up the sound and sat on the arm of my couch. If Kell had seen me she would’ve kicked my ass.

  “To reiterate our urgent story, the six most Western states have gone dark. No internet traffic, planes, or cell phone calls are coming out of the area. Last reported, numerous airliners had been downed in those states. After that nothing…” suddenly my TV displayed a snowy static screen and then black with an error message saying that it had lost signal.

  I rose quickly from the couch and cocked my head trying to work out the seriousness of the situation. I turned to run down the hallway when the power went out and lights blinked off. I kept it together as I made my way to the kitchen. I knew this house well enough to move around it with my eyes closed. I worked my way to the fridge and reached up over my head and opened the small cupboard, found what I was feeling for, and threw a large switch over to the right. I waited till a green light lit up and shone down at me before I flipped a small bank of small switches. The generator outside fired up and the lights in the house came back on. I moved over to the laptop on the small kitchen desk and opened it up. I scrolled through five status pages checking on the generator and battery power status. We looked good for power, and with the diesel on hand we could run it for many days, but my solar panels would take over once the sun came up and give me over a month with continuous power with all my backup plans.

  I strode down the hal
lway and into my bedroom and then into the cavernous walk-in closet, which used to be a fourth bedroom that I had converted. I stepped up and pushed back a row of Kell’s dresses to expose a small keypad. I punched in her birthday and the pad beeped asking for the second pin. I punched in the date my injury had happened in reverse and a panel popped open in the wall. I stepped into the small ante room and surveyed the walls of weapons, a worktable, and racks filled with all types and calibers of rounds.

  I stared at the rifles and was about to pull my new HK MP7A1 submachine gun out but a better thought came to me. I moved my hand over and rested it on the MK 14 Mod 0 EBR enhanced battle rifle. This thing had been completely redesigned over the venerable beloved M14 of the old days. I could use it as either a light sniper rifle or a kick ass battle rifle. I had already loaded some magazines with 7.62mm x 51mm NATO rounds into five, 20 round magazines, and five, forty round magazines. I sorted through my scopes and pulled out something I had just recently purchased, a Trijicon CCAS scope. This thing had an integrated laser range finder and could do all the calculations for me before I even pulled the trigger, thus almost guaranteeing a hit with the first shot. I carried the gun and ammo out of the closet and reclosed the weapons cache door. I reset the lock and dumped my load on the bed. I went back into the closet and dressed quickly in a pair of my work outfits. Basically, I wore black firehose material work pants, a long sleeve button up in the same material, a combat vest and a lot like the classic MOLLE, but I designed this one for my own use. That was another great thing about working for Malleus, they had friends in all the military research and development companies. I pulled out my favorite combat boots and laced them up. I loaded up my tac-vest with magazines, and a couple of smoke grenades I had left over from a previous mission. I connected the MK 14 to my vest sling and slid my Glock 19 into a thigh holster. The last weapon I grabbed were a pair of Karambit fighting knives. While on a couple of missions I worked with some guys from Joint Task Force 2, Canada’s very own spec ops team. They turned me onto their knives. These things were scary awesome, four-inch curved folding knives. They fit in the hand comfortably and were almost impossible to disarm from the user.

  I snagged my backpack from where I had dropped it when I came home the night before. It was still loaded with a medic kit, MREs Meals Ready to Eat, and some other fun things, even a snake bite kit. I was ready for anything that came my way. I was going for my wife, and if something out there got in my way it was going to die a terrible painful death. I went back to the laptop and punched in a series of codes, to set the security system to the house and dropped power to minimum levels. The generator was very quiet and was smart enough to shut itself off and restart when needed to keep the house to minimal power. I stepped outside and moved directly to the garage. I was thinking of taking the Harley, but that thing was too loud. I did though, still have the off-road electric MX motocross cycle. I smiled as I stared at it, a plan forming in my mind. I pulled it out from the back and was relieved to remember that I had painted it flat black to show to the Malleus brothers as an idea. I pushed it outside and leaned it again the house, it didn’t have the range to get me to town, but I could carry it in the back of “Old Bess” all the way to the outskirts of town by staying to old dirt roads. Then once in position I would ride the bike in and collect Kell and ride her back to the truck.

  I used a board as a ramp and loaded the bike up. I threw my bag in the back and jumped in behind the wheel. I fired “Old Bess” up and drove her around the back of the barn and down the back acreage to the dirt roads I needed. I kept the lights off and was thankful the moon was out and bright. I drove for over an hour slowly stopping every time I thought I heard gun fire or screams. I was getting closer to town, but not fast enough for my needs. I needed to get to Kell, nothing else mattered. I kept moving getting closer and closer to town. I moved down a narrow dirt road and stopped in the trees surveying the river that now lay in front of me. I was wondering if I needed to drive the truck through the river and enter town or hide her under the bridge and try and take the bike in. I was about to take my foot off the brakes when I saw lights coming down the road toward the bridge to town. I was so thankful I had pulled the fuse for the taillights, so the bright red lights were not giving away my position. I watched the vehicle approach the bridge when a set of sodium arch lights snapped on in town down the bridge roadway. I heard a voice on a loudspeaker yell in halting English. The passenger door of the car opened and a tall older man with a white beard stepped out with his hands on his hips.

  “Who the hell do you think you are stopping me from entering my own damn town.” The voice floated down to my open window and directly into my ears. I recognized that voice. It was our mayor for the last ten years, Mister Bradley Milligan. He was a tall skinny black man with a short white Vandyke beard and a close cropped white kinky hair. I couldn’t make out the uniform or the race of the military bearing man with the rifle.

  The military man’s voice was soft spoken, so I couldn’t hear his vocal response. What I saw though took me back. The military like man fired what could be described only as a blue bolt of energy? Mister Milligan’s body fell to the roadway, as the gunman’s men behind him fired into the vehicle riddling anyone inside with more of the blue energy stuff. I pulled my MK 14 off the seat next to me and rested it on the door’s sill. I looked through the scope and set the laser finder, I couldn’t make out any more detail of the military men. I didn’t want to shoot just in case they had more men up there, giving them such a perfect target as my truck sitting in the bushes. I punched the inside light bulb and shattered it in the headliner of the truck before opening the driver’s door. I pulled the MK 14 out and closed the door pushing against it with my hip till it quietly closed. I eased the tailgate down and slid the board out of the bed of “Old Bess” and guided the electric motorcycle down to the dirt trail. I grabbed my pack and slid it on cinching it down tight against me. I decided against wearing my helmet, I tied it to the back of the seat of the bike and pushed it down the embankment and under the bridge.

  Once under the concealment of the bridge I started the bike and road away slowly, the slight whine of the electric motor barely breaking the silence, picking the trails out that would take me around the town and to the back side of hospital. All this time I had not allowed myself to think about what was going on or ruminate about who in the world would have the ability to invade our Country. I rode slowly trying to conserve battery power for our escape. About two miles away I pulled off the trail, because I thought I heard a motor. I flipped off the power of the motorcycle and leaned it against a tree near some bushes. I pulled the MK 14 around my shoulder and pulled a metal tube, called a suppressor, from inside my pack. I threaded it onto the barrel of the MK 14, my shots would’nt be silent like in the movies, but they would be masked.

  I moved into the bushes and melted into them, masking my presence. I slowed my breathing like I had been trained and opened my senses. The motor I heard moved closer, I identified it as the kind you would find in one of those off-road Can Am Maverick buggies. I wasn’t sure if this was a patrol party of those soldiers who killed the Mayor or not. The Maverick came around the bend in the trail and started to come toward me, its lights off. I moved forward and prepared to step out to the trail, I brought my MK 14 up and activated the LED light connected to the bottom rail. The light was extremely bright and blinded all the occupants.

  “Stop right there!” I spoke loudly.

  The vehicle braked hard and stopped. I moved very slowly, heel to toe as I approached the vehicle. All the occupants were wearing black helmets. I stared at the driver in surprise, the person was humongous! He looked like he barely fit in the tiny vehicle. The person next to him was a stunning woman who was also very tall, but she was slim and had a fantastic figure. I stared at them for a bit and smiled when I figured out who they were.

  I adjusted my rifle and let it hang from its sling, switching off the light, as I leaned over and rested my arms
on the vehicle’s door sill. I delivered a big smile to them. The big man reached up and pulled off his helmet, exposing my best friend Bri Leeder’s smiling face. The other’s in the vehicle lifted their visors on their helmets exposing the rest of the Leeder family, the mother Athena, and daughter Gidget. The other girl sitting next to her was her good friend Max. The two girls looked a lot like sisters.

  “What in the holy fuck are you doing out here Boss?” Bri spoke.

  “Hmm. First, I could hear explosions all the way out at my place. Secondly, all the power and cellphones have gone out, and my wife is at the hospital.” I counted off on my fingers.

  Athena removed her helmet and shook out her blonde hair. She gave me a killer smile and pulled me down into a hug and kissed my cheeks. “That is so sweet hun, glad you are here.”

  Bri and Athena turned to each other and without a word had an entire conversation. They climbed out of the buggy and Brian came to my side, while Athena moved to the driver’s side and climbed inside.

  “What do you think you two are doing?” I asked.

  “What does it look like little man? I’m coming with you, while Athena takes the girls to your place.” Bri explained.

  I looked over to Athena and she nodded her head. “You need someone to protect your ass, just like old times.”

  “Athena, are you carrying?” I asked.

  “We barely got out with the long gun Bri is carrying.”

  I pulled my pack off and dug around inside it till my fingertips brushed something compact and made of metal. I pulled my backup pistol a Sig Sauer P229 Legion chambered in 9mm. I handed the gun to her butt first. She took it and pulled the slide back partially, checking to see if it was loaded. I trusted her with guns she had been out to the farm many times and shot all my weapons. I dug into the pack and removed my back up, two full magazines and handed them over. “When you get to the house, go in the garage and up to the loft. I have two hunting shotguns up there and about five hundred shells. The house is alarmed so stay in the loft. If you must leave try and head North through the property, there is a small shelter in the back of the field. The hatch is behind the big maple. It is big enough to hide you and the girls. Oh, and do not go any further down this trail. The bridge is guarded by at least a squad of troops. Head over land and through the brush, stay away from the road till you get closer to the farm and cut across,” I leaned down and Kissed Athena’s cheek. I turned to Gidget and patted her helmet, “Take care of your mom hunny.”