To Cross a Wasteland
By Phillip D. Granath
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 by Phillip D. Granath
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the expressed written permission of the author.
Contents
To Cross a Wasteland
The Light
Awakening
Coal
Ambush
Homecomings
Council
Miles
Rangers
Black Jackets
Dealings
Vermin
Failures
New Order
Until death do us
Strange Bedfellows
The Nation
Defend your Life
High Wire Act
Hunted
Evicted
Escape
Fireside
Blood & Water
Discovery
Wrath
The Cavalry
Aftermath
Many Happy Returns
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgments
This book is dedicated to my small circle of old friends, war buddies, and part-time proofreaders. Thank you for your unwavering support, encouragement and for putting up with me in general during this process.
Jeremy Wilson
Gregory Mengershausen
Dustin Lambries
Patrick Saunders
Andrew Goddard
Chelsea Graves
Special thanks in particular to Sara Lambries, my sister-in-law, teacher and begrudging editor.
And to my wife Abby and my little boy Gage, without whom none of this would even matter.
Prologue
Cynthia Leonard had lived down the street from Kyle his entire life. Then about the summer of their freshman year, it happened. Seemingly overnight Cynthia had become a woman and even more surprising to Kyle was the fact that he noticed. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been the only one. The next 2 years, as they are for most kids were tough ones. Cynthia’s natural good looks and quick wit made her very popular in high school. She enjoyed herself, dating several boys in those years, all of them older and usually football players. Kyle was forced to admire her from afar. All of that changed their senior year. Kyle found his sideways glances at her returned when they passed in the hall. Cynthia would end up seated closer to him in the classes that they shared, and a few times they even found themselves walking home from school together. Though Kyle could never think of anything worthwhile to say at those times.
Then one night, quite unexpectedly Kyle’s cell rang. It was 11:23pm on a Friday night and to his shame he had been asleep for more than an hour. Not recognizing the number Kyle groggily answered.
“Hello?”
“Kyle? It’s Cynthia, I didn’t wake you up did I?” She had his number, where did she get his number? And she had called him with it!
“Kyle?” Cynthia asked again.
“No, no I’m here, I was awake. Just, you know hanging out tonight, you know at home,” Kyle shook his head embarrassed for himself.
“Oh my god, then so what do you think is going on?” she asked in an excited voice.
“Going on with what? You mean like…us?” Cynthia’s laugh should have cut him like a knife, but her voice curled in a way that made Kyle know she had liked the question.
“Well I guess, if by us you mean the whole country and maybe the world. The sky is Blue!” she said with way more enthusiasm than was called for.
“AAHHHH…Yeah, it sure is,” replied Kyle choking back a grin.
“Yeah it sure is, it just usually isn’t in the middle of the night,” she said, with a matter of fact tone.
Kyle, feeling he was about to be made the butt of some kind of joke, stepped over to the window and pulled back the shades. To his shock, she was absolutely right. The night sky, the entire sky was awash in dancing shades of blue. The colors danced and shifted, they swayed to some unknown tune. They ran from a light sky blue to a dark shadow blue that was almost impossible to see against the night sky. It immediately made Kyle think of the Aurora Borealis he had never seen it himself since they had lived in Arizona his entire life, but this seemed…somehow more.
While Kyle had been marveling, Cynthia apparently had still been talking, so he tuned back in.
“…twenty minutes ago, Alaska, Russia, China, It’s everywhere. Online people are saying it’s even in places that are still daylight, it’s just harder to see. Are you listening to me?” she asked her tone still excited.
“Yeah, I am. I just, I mean, what is it?” he asked.
“That’s the best part! Nobody has a clue. The web is blowing up with theories. Aliens, Space radiation, the ozone layer is collapsing, it’s crazy and awesome!” she was almost laughing.
“The only thing everyone can agree on is that it’s getting brighter and like more intense, everywhere,” she said.
“Well, what are they going to do about it?” asked Kyle, referring of course to the ambiguous they.
“I don’t know, but I know what we are going to do. My parents are out tonight, and my sister’s boyfriend has a new jeep, so we are going up Old Mine Road to get a better look away from all of the lights of town. And you know what else? Rachel says we have room for one more,” Cynthia said in a sweet voice.
Old Mine Road was a dirt track along a ridge that overlooked the whole valley. It was as close to a lover’s lane as the town had.
“I’m in, yes, definitely,” Kyle blurted, and Cynthia laughed in reply.
Thirty minutes later Kyle found himself in the back of a jeep, riding up Old Mine Road with Cynthia Leonard strapped in next to him. Her shoulder bare in her tank top brushed his arm at every bump and ditch. He was in heaven and couldn’t help but be amazed that he was here right now with her. As if reading his thoughts, she cracked a little smile but kept looking ahead.
Cynthia’s older sister was Rachel; she was 2 years older but could have passed for Cynthia’s twin. She had the same long dark hair, athletic figure and was tall enough to intimidate most of the boys growing up. Dean was Rachel’s boyfriend, former captain of the football team, now graduated and doing what Kyle couldn’t say. Dean had mastered the art of saying very little in High School. Learning most people would either think you were tough or maybe mean, but at the very least you kept from making yourself look stupid.
“So your dad is at work?” Cynthia asked.
“Yeah, he was supposed to be on until 1 A.M., but he thinks it’ll probably be later now, with everything,” Kyle said.
Kyle’s dad was a highway patrolman working out on Interstate 8. He had intended to call him and ask about going out, but when Kyle checked his phone, his Dad had apparently already texted him when he was asleep. Telling him that things were crazy on the road, lots of wrecks with people pulled over gazing at the sky. Just the fact that his dad had texted him and not called told Kyle his dad had guessed correctly that he was already asleep. The thought had kind of irritated him at the time, and he left for Cynthia’s without replying. His dad would never know he was out.
“That must be scary? Him being a cop and all, not knowing if he’ll make it home each night,” Cynthia said in a hushed voice.
“I don’t know, you get used to it I guess,” Kyle stammered knowing the very topic had played a role in his parents’ divorce, but he didn’t want to think about that now.<
br />
Dean pulled the Jeep up to a wide point in the road with sweeping views that took in the whole valley. Beneath them, Branard lay out before them, a cross-section of lights and movement. A lot of movement, it seemed as if everyone in town was out tonight. In the distance, the horizon was bisected by a straight line of pulsing lights. It was Interstate 8, and Kyle knew that his dad was out there somewhere on it. Further out he could also see the light of Frankton and what may have been the glow of Phoenix on the horizon.
Cynthia and Kyle got out and moved to a large boulder on the roadside while Dean and Rachel stayed in the Jeep. Kyle could hear them talk in soft murmurs, mostly Rachel as she cruised her phone and looked for updates online. The sky continued to pulse and shift from different shades of blue, while it had seemed an oddity from his bedroom window now took on a different tone out here. The size and scope of it all seemed to settle in as both teens could see the sky was the same blue storm from horizon to horizon. Cynthia moved closer to Kyle as he put his arm around her she leaned into him.
“It’s chilly,” she said
Kyle nodded but suspected her shaking was something else. There was something strange going on, something far larger than both of them. The thrill and excitement in her voice had been tempered by the increasing brightness of the strange light. During the ride up and even just in the few minutes they had sat the speed and intensity of the flashes had seemed to increase.
“Hey you two,” Rachel said as she and Dean joined them. Kyle thought the teasing mirth in her voice now seemed somehow forced.
The older couple moved to join them sitting down next to the teens. Dean was peering into his phone.
“The President and NASA are going to make some kind of joint announcement in a minute. Still doesn’t look like anybody knows what’s going on though,” said Rachel.
The little group sat in silence, all eyes on the sky. As the minutes passed the speed and intensity of the blue flashes seemed to increase exponentially. At first, Kyle had thought the lights had a pattern like they were choreographed to a song no one could hear. An epic classical melody that rose and crashed and danced along with the human spirit. The beat now was so fast it was maddening. As if the composer had put his deep-seated psychosis to paper and his orchestra was made of light and color.
Cynthia dug her head into Kyle’s chest. A few moments later he felt her gentle sobs. He didn’t know what else to do. So he just held her close and gently stroked her back. Rachel and Dean stared up at the sky, both with mouths slightly open their phones forgotten. Like any storm, though this one reached its peak as well, oddly almost enough, exactly at midnight. The sky as a whole flashed a blue light so intense that Kyle had to turn and look away. The night became a strange version of day, all shadows retreated before its intensity. Dean shouted something about a nuke and then just as suddenly as it began the sky went dark.
Rachel screamed, Dean was still shouting something about a nuclear blast, Cynthia was crying uncontrollably into Kyle’s chest. For a moment Kyle thought he was blind. Then slowly the world around him took shape again. The darkness had returned, and the blue light was gone. All four of the teens now stood, Cynthia stopped sobbing long enough to look up from Kyle’s chest and out over the valley.
Kyle heard a small popping sound to his left.
“Oh, damn it. That thing just got hot,” Dean said, as he dropped his phone. The smell of burned plastic and ozone were in the air.
“You are such a girl sometimes,” Rachel mocked him and then began examining her own phone.
“HHHmmmm...,” Rachel said now more concerned with her own phone than helping Dean with his.
Kyle and Cynthia were looking out over the valley as the darkness came. The glow of Phoenix vanished, then Frankton, followed by all of the lights on Interstate 8. As if a wave of darkness swept over the land and drowned out the light. Then Branard went dark.
The Light
Kyle was awake. It had been the same dream, one that he had been having for the last 15 years. Reliving the night that the world had been changed forever. He pulled aside the corner of his temporary shelter. He had found a bit of an undercut on a rock wall and strung up the poncho for added shade. The sun was halfway to the horizon now. Whenever Kyle made these long treks out into the wastes, he would sleep through the hottest parts of the day, saving his body the water and limiting his visibility. If Miles was right about this place, he should find it before sunset, if not then he could turn back for town and travel home in darkness.
Kyle stood, sliding on his worn steel-toed boots then quickly packed away the faded poncho followed by his bedroll. He wore thick brown pants that had been patched many times over, the knees reinforced with thick leather. He held them up with a piece of rope that also held his heavy revolver in place at his waist. His shirt was long sleeved, and at one point it had been plaid but was now faded to grey. He slid on his dirty jean jacket and then tied his length of cloth around his head, giving his neck a little-added shade. He toyed with the idea of soaking it in water, but his canteen was only half full now. He held the canteen considering, then took a quick gulp. He was 2 days out, and he expected before the last day it would be empty.
Shouldering his pack, Kyle walked down the soft sand of the draw and found the washed out bridge. He climbed over the crumbling chunks of pavement and on to what was left of State Route 3. He had traveled on it for most of a day since leaving Interstate 8, though at times he was having trouble following it. Most of the surface was covered in 3-4 inches of loose sand, making it hard to follow sometimes and exhausting to walk on all of the time. Huge sections had been undercut and then had shifted to settle back at odd angles. At times Kyle left the road entirely finding it safer to find his own way down an embankment or wash rather than risk following the tilting road surface.
What remained of the roadways could be dangerous. It wasn’t just the unsteady surfaces or washed out areas, though a broken ankle this far out was a definite death sentence. The real danger was that roadways still attracted men. Before the fall most people couldn’t navigate their own hometowns without a stretch of paved blacktop to guide them. Little had changed. Now people wandered from pocket to pocket of what now passed for civilization, looking for something, anything better than what already had. That, of course, was why Kyle had to be careful, where the people were the raiders would follow.
Kyle pulled a pair of folded pieces of paper from his jacket pocket. The pages had very carefully been torn out of a Popular Science Magazine. He scanned one of the two images in the article. A group of overly happy and healthy people stood together for a group photo, they wore a mix of lab coats and orange flight suits. The group was to the left of the photo, whoever had taken the photo had gone out of their way to include the background. Very specifically it seemed one small mesa, in particular, had been included. He looked up from the sheets several times and compared his view of the mountain vistas to those in the photo. No luck yet, but he was close. One other small but vital piece of information was in the photo’s foreground, a state “Scenic View” sign, the photo had been taken on a roadway.
Kyle read the article for what may have been the thousandth time:
The Mildred Seymour Wildlife Refuge, Arizona - Later this month a small team of scientists, engineers and astronaut hopefuls will embark on a venture that will help push mankind to the very surface of Mars. The team will not be climbing into a rocket for this mission but will be making a trip to the high deserts of Arizona. The team will be there as part of a joint research team from the Mars Society and a private space exploration firm, Space Ventures Inc. The Mars Society has in the past established research sites all over the world in such austere environments as the Canadian Arctic and the Australian outback. The locations were chosen specifically to match different climates that could be encountered on the red planet.
This mission though will be different not in small part due to the backing of Space Ventures but also the scope of what the team is attempti
ng to accomplish. They will attempt to establish a self-sustaining station, complete with food production, water reclamation, and air purification and live in the station uninterrupted for a year. During that time the team will be running a staggering number of scientific tests on every aspect of space habitation.
And if that weren’t enough, they intend to do the whole thing from underground! Space Ventures founder and CEO Mark Deuce explains.
“The current model for all Mars exploration is simple. Bring a collapsible habitat with you and set it up when you arrive. Since we have to get it there it has to be lightweight, easy to put together for our astronauts but still safe enough to live in. As you can imagine they aren’t cheap. Then when the team departs these habitats get left behind never to be used again. This project takes a different approach by using the existing terrain of Mars. The canyonlands of Mars, in particular, are home to hundreds, maybe thousands of caves. Using satellite imagery and unmanned robotics we could locate suitable cave complexes, excavate these sites further and establish permanent dwellings. Dwellings below ground safe from Martian dust storms. The best part is that the robotics stay in place and can continually build dwellings before the first team has even arrived. It’s the real first step in establishing a permanent full-blown colony on Mars.”
Though the team’s focus will be on establishing a self-sustaining station, they won’t spend all of their time underground. They will make frequent trips out into their “Martian” surroundings testing everything from prototype space suit design, sample collection techniques and Space Ventures first-ever privately designed Martian rover.
The article went on from there, sighting the cooperation with the state in selecting the location. Blah, Blah, future uses for the technology on the civilian market, blah blah crop rotation, Kyle skimmed it having committed most of it to memory. The single point of interest that had him risking his life out here in the wastes wasn’t even in the article. It was the date on the bottom right corner of the page. It was dated 3 months before the world had ended.
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