People left fortunes in cash sitting in banks, home safes, and cash registers, opting instead to take to the road with precious stones, metals, and gasoline for trade or purchases wherever they were going. Road bandits materialized who laid in wait around small exits and side roads for people who tried to find a private place before taking out a gas can to refill their vehicle. Cars were left to rot behind buildings and bodies were tossed into pits and set on fire. When people finally arrived at border crossings, they ran into immovable crowds that extended for miles.
The Japanese had it the worst because their government grounded all non-military flights once tourists and other foreign nationals had disembarked. Boat captains took on passengers and swelled their vessels until they sat low in the water. One captain allegedly charged several beautiful women the price of marrying him, effectively making them concubines, in exchange for guaranteed passage to another country. They had thrown up their arms and tried to walk away from the grinning captain, but the will to live won in the end. The waters around Japan filled with boats and ships heading south toward the tropics.
Sitting there watching it all Jackson turned away and massaged his forehead. “God you know…we’re really lucky. We’re still at home watching all of this unfold on TV. Those people have nothing left. They’re screwed.”
Kathleen nodded her head. “Yeah, we should really give money to some charity or somethin’ when all of this blows over. I feel so sorry for them.”
Jackson draped his arm around her shoulders. “That’s a good idea.”
Kathleen rested her head on his chest. “How long do you think this will go on? When will our lives get back to normal?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say. If I believed everything on the news then I would say anywhere from a couple weeks to a hundred years.”
Kathleen leveled her eyes at him. “This isn’t a very good time to make jokes, Jackson.”
“I’m not joking. People have been projecting figures all over the place. It’s ridiculous! We have no idea how serious this thing will get. It could just blow right over and turn out to be a non-event, or it could change our lives forever. Nobody knows, especially not those assholes that pretend to deliver the news,” he said with scare quotes. “I’m tired of this. And, frankly, I’m already getting a little bored of it. I wish this stupid thing would just come and go, so we can move on with our lives.”
“Don’t say that Jackson!” Kathleen peeled his arm off her shoulders and leaned away. “I wish this wasn’t happenin’ either. But now it is, and there’s nothin’ we can do about it. We just have to make the best of it. How do you think all those poor people in Asia feel? We’ve got it so much better than they do. You don’t see them complainin’.”
“That’s because their runnin’ for their lives. It’s different. They’re right in the thick of it, in survival mode. There’s nothin’ we can do for them now. They’re on their own, trapped in their own fates. I wish we could help, but we have to take care of ourselves. I’m just gettin’ tired of sittin’ here listenin’ to the news lie to us about this. You know somebody knows what’s goin’ on, but they’re not gonna report it.”
“God, you sound like my mother. You should think about what you’re sayin’. Do you really think they would put us in harm’s way? What would that accomplish?”
“It’d give them fewer people to worry about, for one.”
“That’s crazy. If they let us die, we wouldn’t just disappear. Somebody’d still have to clean everything up. The costs would be astronomical. If we’re alive we can shoulder some of the burden ourselves by helping out. If there’s one thing you should’ve learned about the government by now it’s that they leave us to handle our own problems until the last possible second and only step in if absolutely necessary. If it was so dangerous, they would have done that by now. Obviously, the level of danger is acceptable since we’re still here.”
Jackson snapped his tongue off the roof of his mouth and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, or it could be like that water treatment plant over in Buncombe county that the EPA didn’t do anything about. As it turns out it’s massively contaminated the tap water around there. You know this stuff’s not like the movies, Kathleen. If it were that dangerous, they wouldn’t be loading us up in trucks and deliverin’ us to safety zones. Where would the government get the resources for all of that? It’s the kind of thing politicians talk about but never do. The only way the entire population can move is by gettin’ in their own cars and doin’ it themselves, which many have already done.”
“You worry too much. Besides, is it really so bad being stuck in the house with your wife?” Kathleen raised her eyebrows as she studied Jackson’s face.
Jackson sighed and let his head fall down. “No…it’s not you. You’re gonna play the trump card now? Jesus! Why do you have to turn everything around like that and make it personal? I was just sayin’, you know? Of course, I’m happy here with you.” Jackson eased back on the couch and crossed his arms in silence, but his face grew redder with each passing second.
Kathleen watched him for a second then turned her attention back to the TV. “It’s getting late.”
“I know.”
“Are you gonna do anything?”
“Maybe.”
“Fine.”
✹✹✹
Down in Defcon-1 Ron and Ann sat rigidly as they watched the TV unfold the last few moments before the asteroid came so close that it knocked out satellite signals. They could see a model of it flying through the air, a giant ball of hot fury, images of it lighting the sky up with the intensity of ten suns and then—static. The TV screen turned snowy and everything seemed to fall quiet all at once. It was a deafening, paranoid quiet that left them feeling ready to jump at the first noise. They huddled closer together.
Ann stared at the snowy TV screen. “Do you think it already hit?”
“Yeah, I think it did. It got really close before the signal went out.”
“Why haven’t we heard anything?”
“They said we’re so far away we might not feel anything.”
“Thanks for taking my call, Ron.”
He smiled and pulled her in close. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you’re down here with me.”
For the first time since they turned on the TV, they looked at each other and smiled, and their hands found their way to one another and met in a tight embrace. They sat on the couch motionlessly, eyes fixed on the blank TV screen.
Chapter Nine
A group of walking travelers pressing on under the midday sun somewhere in the countryside outside of Seoul looked up and saw a second burning light in the sky. At first it looked as if a distant torch drew nearer, but with each passing second it grew larger until it outshone the sun. Everyone dropped what they were carrying and ran, bolting in every direction, as if sprinting nowhere really fast could save them. As the ball of light crossed over some regions of the planet it caused a brief eclipse and then passed in an instant, leaving daylight in its wake. As predicted, it flew directly toward the middle of the Korean Peninsula, as if an invisible cord pulled it straight into Seoul.
Finally, it got so close that it almost looked like a colossal, pyrogenic, rock eye examining the planet with fiery tendrils trailing in its wake and then—impact. Earth shook and plumes of dust and smoke rose into the air. The asteroid hit at an angle and dug a progressively deeper crater as it slid to a stop. Fire, hot wind, and debris slammed into Seoul’s skyscrapers, and they disintegrated similar to sand castles claimed by the tide. The force of the impact shattered the asteroid, and most of it disintegrated. The crater it made looked like a moonscape recently washed with lava, leaving behind a sizzling earthen muddle, and it had all happened in the blink of an eye.
A series of earthquakes shot out from the epicenter in waves of land that fanned out and leveled anything in their path. Skyscrapers buckled, and their bases broke free leaving, and gravity took over and brought the ruins down into the streets.
<
br /> At the impact site, a huge area covering hundreds of miles of choking dust and foul vapors spread out like a giant quilt shrouding the land. People who had retreated to mountains watched as massive, off the scale, winds flattened everything before them, and the debris cloud billowed up the foothills, collided with the peaks, and overtook them instantly. It impacted with such force that people, animals, and cars flew away, seeming to disappear. The wind pinned every tree to the ground, snapping most of their trunks.
Outside of Asia where the effects of the air blast and earthquake became minimal, and the thermal radiation barely reached, only slight tremors were felt by people in tall buildings, and a little extra wind shook the trees. The farther from the impact site, the smaller the ejecta, until it shrank to a light dusting and finally a condensed vapor over the east coast of the Americas.
✹✹✹
Cassius raised his head and his wide eyes seemed to mimic his alert ears. He pushed himself up on all fours and walked over to the wall, staring at it as if a rodent would crawl out and scamper through the room. He turned his head sideways, almost curious, and then sat down with his nose almost touching the wall.
Ron looked at Cassius and back at Ann. “I wonder if he can sense it.”
Ann nodded. “There’s a pretty good amount of evidence that says he can. Was that a tremor?”
Ron looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “No, I just shifted in my seat.”
“Oh...ah.”
“We’re unlikely to feel anything here. As much as I think the news is full of it half the time, in this case, I think the expert guests they had on probably got it about right. The main reason I decided to come down here was because they said that pollution it puts in the atmosphere could be toxic.”
“When I saw that on the news, I almost had a panic attack. I mean, what do you do if the air isn’t fit for breathing?”
“That’s not supposed to last too long, but they said the atmosphere will be polluted for a long time and block out a lot of sunlight. Now that’s scary. Imagine a decade of winter and dark. How could any vegetables or plant life of any kind survive?”
Ann cupped her face with her hands and started sobbing. “Let’s talk about something else, Ron.”
Ron pulled her close and rested his mouth on her head. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
They sat in silence for a while, and it was only broken when Cassius occasionally raised his head up, whined, and lowered it back to the floor.
After they had sat motionless for a while Ann finally wiped the tears off her face and looked up at Ron. “If we’re not going to feel anything, how do we know when it’s over?”
“Actually, I don’t know, but I remember they gave some time frame that didn’t exceed like an hour for anything noteworthy.”
“How long’s it been?”
Ron pulled out his cell phone. “It’s been close to that long. Hmmm...you know what?”
“What?”
“My phone doesn’t have a signal, check yours.”
Ann rooted around in her purse and came out with hers. “Huh, mine too, is it just being in this bunker?”
Ron shook his head as he held his phone higher in the air. “No, it gets weaker in here, but we should still have at least one bar.”
“Maybe the asteroid knocked satellites out.”
“Or knocked out something important on land, I hope that gets fixed. Maybe we should check and see if there are any reports coming in.” Ron walked over to where his short-wave radio and a monitor sat. He flicked a switch and the monitor came to life and revealed a dark image of the road in front of his house. He watched it for a few seconds but did not see any movement. Next, he decided to check the TV to see if any channels still ran, but found only static. Finally, he turned on the radio and tried to find a channel with some sort of news. He came across a functioning station on the AM band.
The broadcaster spoke uneasily. “Reports are coming in now that the asteroid has made landfall on the Korean peninsula. We don’t yet know of the extent of the damages, but as far south as the Philippines has reported tremors and some increased wind activity. Excuse me, this just in, some cities in eastern China have reported that baseball and softball sized fragments showered down on them like a hail storm. The extent of the damages is not known at this time. We also...”
Ron looked at Ann who appeared to be pushing back more tears and decided to turn it off. “We can check that later if you want.”
“No, it’s okay, just leave it playing. They might say something we need to hear.”
Ron nodded. “Okay, just let me know if you want it off.”
“Thanks.”
Ron looked down at his monitor and saw a pair of headlights pass. “I just saw a car pass in front of the camera. What an idiot. Didn’t they listen to the news?”
Ann looked back toward Ron. “He probably did and still decided to ignore it.”
“I don’t get people sometimes, no scratch that, most of the time.”
Ann smiled at him. “You’re not alone.”
✹✹✹
On the other side of town Jackson and Kathleen crawled out from under their stairwell in the basement. Jackson extended his hand to help Kathleen off all fours. She stuck out her hand and pulled herself up with a short grunt.
Jackson looked at his watch. “It must be over and done by now, nothin’ happened.”
Kathleen walked past him and shrugged one shoulder. “Hate to say I told ya’ so.”
“Everybody was so sure.”
“That’s what ya’ get for bein’ a conspiracy theorist, told ya’ the news was tellin’ the truth.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Probably what they said would happen, Asia’s probably wrecked.”
Jackson went over to the window and opened a peep hole and looked outside.
“Nothin’ to see. Everything looks the same.”
“Anything else? Do you see any people?”
“No, I can see a few lights on though. It looks safe to go out. I mean, nothin’s changed.”
Kathleen shook her head and wagged her finger. “Uuuuuh no, they made it very clear. Do not go outside. Don’t you listen to anything?”
“Sometimes you’re like being married to a skittish cat. You know that?” He turned to look back outside and his face brightened when he saw a beam of light scan across the road. “Hey, I see someone! Some people are walking around now.” More flashlights appeared and he could make out several silhouettes as the lights scanned the neighborhood.
“What are they doin’?” Kathleen asked at the same time that she looked through the other hole.
“Just lookin’ around I guess. Probably as surprised as we are that nothin’ happened.”
Kathleen snorted. “As surprised as you are that nothin’ happened. I listen to the news remember?”
Jackson rolled his eyes. “Yeah I got it, abundantly clear, thank you.” He looked outside again and turned toward Kathleen. “You sure we can’t go out? It looks safe enough.”
Kathleen did not stop looking outside. “Listen, I’m not going out. It’s not like you’re on a leash, but I’m not going. It’s up to you.”
“Well, those people are outside and they look okay.”
Kathleen turned toward him with tight lips and stiff shoulders. “Obviously they didn’t hear the news, or they’re not listenin’. Just because they’re outside doesn’t make it safe. I think we should heed the warnings and stay here for now.”
Jackson patted the air with his hands. “All right…all right, calm down, we can check it out later.”
“Thank you.” Kathleen placed her hand on her belly and grimaced. “Could you make me somethin’ to eat?”
Chapter Ten
As one day turned into two and then three, Jackson and Kathleen watched their supply of food dwindle to a small stack, then just a few cans. Kathleen’s stomach seemed to get exponentially bigger with each passing day, and Jackson
had learned to start preparing some food whenever an hour or two had gone by without her asking.
They had not gone outside yet despite Jackson’s occasional needling of Kathleen’s trepidation. After sunrise the morning after the asteroid strike Jackson noticed that storm clouds covered the entire sky but without rain. People came outside the day after too, but Jackson and Kathleen looked on from their basement windows and stayed inside. Each day the temperature dropped until it seemed to Jackson as though every time he turned around to do something, he ended up putting on another layer of clothing and cuddling up next to Kathleen.
Jackson pulled his coat closer to his body. “Right again, Kat. Damn, it’s getting cold in here.”
Kathleen leaned into him and rested her head. “Thank you for listenin’. I really need you right now, and you’ve been great.”
He kissed her forehead. “You’re welcome.” He sat quietly for a few seconds and stared off into space. “Kathleen.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve noticed something strange outside, not sure what it is.”
“What?”
“I don’t see many people outside anymore. The day after people came out, and I saw cars driving around, and stuff, and people walkin’ around. Now I only see the occasional person and no more cars. Where do you think they all went?”
Kathleen’s brow furrowed as she twirled a string on Jackson’s coat around her finger. “I don’t know. Are all the cars gone?”
“No, that’s the really weird part. I can see cars in driveways still. People just stopped drivin’.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Do you think the air might really be polluted? You think they got sick?”
The Inroad Chronicles (Book 1): Legion Seed Page 9
