Prehistoric Survival | Book 1 | Doomed City

by Sander, K. G.

  All this secrecy was going to cause an aneurysm.

  But at least there were no news cameras.

  “Well,” she said to Lindsay, putting the car in park. “Let’s go change the world.”

  Lindsay beamed at her, and Maggie almost found a smidgen of hope that all this would work out.

  Almost.

  Chapter Ten

  Mason

  Mason took his time going to school.

  Damn near two hours.

  His mom didn’t care. As long as he did well and was in the top five of the Grade 12’s she wouldn’t give him any more shit than a text message or two.

  His dad was an entirely different story. He’d care that Mason wasn’t at school.

  “You gave a commitment to finish out this year before you went to University,” his dad would say after he’d skipped. “In the Porter house, we honor our commitments.”

  Mason wasn’t as noble as his father was. Nor, apparently, was his mother. She’d taken to not telling his father about Mason’s absences. They shared long looks over the dinner table at the decreasingly important family meals. And his mom would give him a half smile and never mention it.

  It was their secret.

  Mason wasn’t a child. He knew his mom was trying to bond with him. Really, the only way she knew how. But Mason appreciated the effort.

  Even though he wasn’t just at Ellis’ playing video games like he told her. Or at the skatepark.

  He was making connections. Connections that, tonight, he’d turn into one hundred thousand dollars.

  The thought made his heart lurch, and he almost fell off his skateboard. The money would have to be separated in different accounts. They would have to say they’d gotten business grants. Ellis was already designing a website to look like a foundation for young entrepreneurs. But it had to get through more than a cursory glance.

  Because, Mason knew, as stressed as his mother was, she’d dig. It would piss her off that Mason hadn’t told her he’d “applied” for the grant.

  And Maggie Knight did not like to be left in the dark.

  Mason skateboarded to his sister’s school, Prince Philip Elementary. He’d gone and gotten his little sister a slushy.

  The hours his parents kept were brutal. And Mason took care of his little sister.

  He may not have the highest morals, but he made sure Kennedy had someone. Because, without Mason, she’d be all alone.

  It was lunch hour, and a ton of kids were outside when Mason rolled up to the chain-link fence surrounding the playground and soccer field.

  Narrowing his eyes, he scoured the playground, looking for his little sister in her rainbow leggings and pink spring coat. Concern grew when he failed to see her in the throng of other nine and ten-year-olds that were playing a game that resembled tag on the jungle gyms.

  Finally, he found her. Sitting underneath a lone tree at the far corner of the schoolyard, head in her hands.

  Mason flipped his skateboard over the fence and expertly scaled the six-foot obstacle in one fluid motion, not spilling a drop of the slushy. Smirking, he flipped his skateboard back into his open hand and made his way over to the lonely girl by the tree.

  Mason could hear her sobs before he noticed the tears staining her cheeks.

  “Squirt,” Mason said, flopping down beside her and holding out the slushy. “What’s up?”

  Kennedy rubbed the tears off her face and sniffled, smiling at Mason and the slushy.

  “You’re… supposed… to be at… school,” she hiccupped, taking the slushy from Mason and slurping it through the straw.

  “It’s my free period,” Mason said with a sly grin.

  “You don’t have a free period,” Kennedy said, shoving his shoulder, flashing her smile.

  At least he could still cheer her up relatively easily. Soon, she’d be a teenager and Mason would be off having adventures in places that at least had a mountain or two. His heart ached at the thought, and he pushed it aside. They’d deal with that when the time came, and they had to. Until then, Kennedy needed someone in her life.

  “What’s up, munchkin?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Kennedy said, lowering her head and looking at her shoes as she tapped them against the ground.

  “That bitch McKenzie made fun of your coat again?”

  Kennedy looked at him sharply, a frown turning into a slow smile at the shared “bad word” that Mason just dropped.

  “She says it makes me look like a cow in glitter,” Kennedy said.

  Mason looked around them, making a show to Kennedy. “I don’t see any cows here. Even ones covered in glitter. Maybe that bitch needs to get her eyes checked.”

  Kennedy shoved him again and sipped her slushy.

  “But really, squirt. It’s not up to them to decide what you want to wear. That you wear shit that makes you happy means you’re way cooler than any of those sheep over there,” he motioned towards the happily screaming kids on the jungle gym. “Plus, you were dropping a mean ollie the last time I saw you on a board.”

  Kennedy turned bright red. “Sorry. I know it’s yours, but I really want to learn.”

  Mason smiled and rose to his feet, lanky frame almost hitting the lowest branches. “You’re killing it, squirt. Soon I’ll be able to take you to the skatepark.”

  Kennedy brightened. “You’d really do that? I won’t embarrass you?”

  Mason gave a big goofy grin. “You’d never embarrass me, squirt.”

  The bell rang and the screaming of the kids stopped and headed for the building, disillusioned with the education process on such a nice day. Mason pulled Kennedy to her feet, then started walking away.

  “Have a good day, squirt,” he called, walking backwards. “I’ll come pick you up after school, alright?”

  “Wait!” Kennedy called, holding up his skateboard. “You forgot your board!”

  “Keep it,” he said, grinning at the enormous smile that spread over her face. “I just came into some coin; I’ll buy a new one.”

  “Really?” She had to yell it.

  “GO TO SCHOOL!” Mason yelled back. “AND WORK ON YOUR OLLIE!”

  Kennedy shrieked with glee and, gripping her now most prized possession, ran towards the door being held open by a teacher.

  Mason’s grin faded as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Someone needed to actually parent this kid. There was only so much he could do.

  And today, there was only one option.

  Chapter Eleven

  John

  All hell had broken loose.

  “We are NOT the trauma center,” John said fiercely into the phone that worked as a radio to the Ambulances. “Take the patient to RUH.”

  “The Royal University is on bypass,” the paramedic retorted, with just as much attitude seeping from his voice. “Not my call.”

  John slammed the receiver back into its place and held his head in his hands. Of COURSE, RUH was on bypass. It was his last shift before five off. Why wouldn’t it be on bypass? Not like he wanted to be on time heading home for once in his life.

  Angrily, he pulled the phone from the receiver and pressed the INTERCOM button. “Trauma team to Trauma 1. Trauma team to Trauma 1. Trauma team to Trauma 1.”

  With that, he slammed the phone back down and rose, holding a finger out to the kid in the chair in front of him with a clearly fractured wrist. The line waiting for triage was at least ten deep, with an additional twenty in the waiting room. There were five ambulances with patients on their stretchers waiting for beds in the hallway beside triage. And RUH was on fucking bypass.

  “Wait-” the kid’s mother started to say.

  “It’ll be a minute,” John snapped. His phone started vibrating in his pocket. Mason’s long short long text vibration.

  Mason would have to wait for this major trauma to be done.

  John walked through triage, ignored the ten paramedics who all looked up from their phones in hope, and strode to the trauma bay.

 
; “What’s coming in?” Abby squeaked as she got into her trauma gear.

  “Fifty-seven-year-old semi-driver,” John said. “Coming in with EMS. RUH is on bypass so we have to take him. Guess there was a big wreck on Circle that overloaded them. Semi ran over a couple cars. This one is the driver; Paramedic said it’s a tension pneumothorax. The ACP in the back decompressed on route.”

  Abby nodded and Becky rushed into the trauma room and started throwing on her yellow protective gown over her scrubs. Chucky, the respiratory therapist, hustled into the room with his intubation set. Closely following was Dr. Hassan and Dr. Soole.

  Trauma team ready, Soole looked to John for him to give them a reason for dropping everything and calling a trauma code.

  “Fifty-seven-year-old semi-driver,” he started, quickly rattling off the information that the paramedic had given him.

  Hassan and Soole nodded along.

  They didn’t have to wait long for the trauma bay doors to burst open to reveal a paramedic doing compressions as another ran the bagger at the head.

  “Coded right outside,” the Paramedic doing compressions, a friend of John’s named Floyd said breathlessly. John and Becky rushed to the side of the stretcher and helped them push the dying man into the room. They ushered the stretcher to the side of the hospital bed. Chucky took over the bagger at the head while Floyd continued to do CPR.

  Abby came across the other side of the bed and grabbed the sheet from under the patient. John joined Floyd across from Abby, patient in between.

  “One, two, three,” Chucky counted. On three, they moved the patient to the hospital bed. Without asking, John took over compressions, leaving Floyd to give his report.

  “Code Blue, trauma one,” came over the intercom.

  John focused on counting and listening to Floyd. The ribs moved under his arms as he pushed hard and fast, humming “Stayin’ Alive,” by the Bee Gees in his head to keep the tempo.

  “Okay,” Floyd said, taking his gloves off and wiping the sweat from his forehead as two other nurses, Jan and Tindy, rushed in. “Fifty-seven-year-old male, a Mr…” he took a moment to look at a driver’s license, “Bloomfield. He was driving a Semi down Circle when a truck rolled. He ran over the truck and two more vehicles hit him. The passenger in the truck was DOA. The others have been taken to RUH, who told us to bypass with Bloomfield.”

  Floyd looked at the annoyed faces around him, “I know, I know. I told them I thought it would be serious but, as Bloomfield was walking around and speaking to us on scene, they assumed his was stable. Chest versus steering wheel. Went from up and talking to the stretcher. I listened to the lungs and heard that the right side was slightly diminished. We went bravo, just in case.”

  “Good call,” Hassan said.

  “Thanks. Pressure was fine until about five minutes ago when he sneezed. He went white, tacky, sats crashed, pressure crashed. He turned blue, increased work of breathing. As I listened again, I noticed that there was a deviation of the trachea. I decompressed on route,” he gestured to the large-gauge needle still sticking out of his upper chest. “I think there’s something else going on. His pressure dropped outside and he coded. Didn’t have time to try for a tube.”

  Chucky nodded. Floyd went to grab the bagger and Hassan stepped in with the intubation blade.

  The rest of the code was a blur. Once they got the tube and a round of epinephrine in, they got a heartbeat back. Blood was hooked up, and medication was given to keep him from fighting the intubation tube.

  John left the room, peeling his gloves off.

  “We will cover your triage desk for a bit,” nursing manager Hannah said, meeting him outside the door of the trauma room.

  “Anyone call his next of kin?”

  “Not yet,” Hannah said, “I was just on my way to do it.”

  “I’ll do it, then take a break,” John said. A yell sounded from the waiting room and security rushed out of their post. “You’re going to have your hands full in there.”

  “Hell of a day,” Hannah said, shaking her head.

  John flashed a smile and went back into the trauma bay to grab the chart and call the emergency contact listed on his file.

  Hannah was right. It was a hell of a day. And it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  Officer Bennett Kura

  Officer Bennett Kura surveyed the grisly scene.

  He’d been called to this accident because, let’s face it, Saskatoon Police Service was understaffed and there were no units available. He should have been working on his case, finding the John who’d killed the prostitute and dumped her in the empty field outside of Saskatoon. It was his first genuine case, and only the fifteenth murder of the year.

  He’d been miffed that Sergeant Porter had all but kicked him out of his office. This case wasn’t as cut and dry as Porter thought it was. Kura thought it was the boyfriend and not a John.

  Guess he would just have to prove his boss wrong.

  Kura had been on his way from interviewing the shop owner who’d last seen the victim to the dump site when the call for this accident had come in. And, as he’d already been on Circle when it had, going North, he flicked on his lights and raced to the scene.

  The paramedics had just left with the last patient, the truck driver from the semi. Traffic had cleared, the road was closed, and now Kura and the other four Officers on scene could get to work.

  “RCMP coming with their Traffic Accident Unit,” Kura asked Officer Clambet.

  “Yupp,” the young Officer said, taking her head out of her notebook to look at him. “Gonna be an hour or more. Coming from Prince Albert.”

  Kura nodded. He gestured to the accident in front of him. “Anyone find a VIN or a license plate or anything of that poor bastard underneath this mess?”

  “Fire is still working on it… Speak of the devil.”

  The fire captain walked towards them, notebook in hand. “We still can’t confirm there’s only one in the pickup truck,” he called, “At least what’s left of it. It’s a fucking mess.”

  “No doubt,” Kura agreed.

  “Got a license plate number, though.”

  “Shoot,” Kura said, pulling his pen and notebook out.

  “783 SQD.”

  Kura went white. His breath hitched in his throat.

  “You sure?”

  Clambet shot him a look.

  “Yupp. Pulled the whole thing out intact. The others were still on the vehicles. I left it over there for reconstruction, but I can grab it if you want.”

  “No, no,” he said, face ashen, heart below his knees.

  “Buddy of yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kura shot a look at Clambet and pulled out his phone.

  “Yeah, I think it’s our boss.”

  Kevin was enjoying his conversation with Sarah-Lynn immensely. She had a lot to say about Kevin and Jake’s relationship, most of it good.

  “You’re both growing and it’s the peak of both of your careers,” she continued, fully engaged and book forgotten in front of her. “Just make time for each other. Try not to work on his days off.”

  “But what if he thinks I’m boring,” Kevin said. The truth poured out of his mouth. He snapped it shut, embarrassed that he’d just told a colleague his darkest secret.

  Sarah-Lynn smiled gently. “Kevin, we’ve been speaking for over two hours. Nearly the entire trip. You are anything but boring-”

  Her sentence was cut off by Kevin’s phone vibrating loudly on the table tray in front of him. Quickly, he silenced the ringer and looked at the screen. PRIVATE NUMBER.

  “Sorry,” Kevin said. “Not important. They can call back if they really need to.”

  “It’s fine,” Sarah-Lynn said warmly. “I was just saying that you love Jake.”

  “More than anything. But the silences… they’re so loud right now.”

  “Play a card game. Phones off,” she said pointedly.

  Kevin smiled at her she
epishly.

  “Good day, folks,” the Captain said above them. “The time is noon on the nose and we’re beginning our descent. Should be in Saskatoon before one. Table trays up, seatbelts on.”

  Kevin put his phone back into his jacket pocket and raised his tray table.

  “A card game sounds like a great idea,” he said. Visions of showing up at their house with a bottle of gin for them to share and a cribbage board. “You know, you really are good.”

  Sarah-Lynn shot him a smile.

  “I know.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maggie

  Maggie leaned over Lindsay’s shoulder, watching her input the final coordinates of the Carbon-11 radioisotope into the computer. The magnets that would gradually accelerate the proton and guide it to the carbon isotope needed an exact coordinate to aim the beam. Any tiny variation would cause the proton to miss, and they’d have to do it all over again.

  As it took almost a day to reset the magnets, cool the pipe and create the Carbon-11, this would cause a delay and, with budgetary restrictions, a delay was not favorable.

  With the morning’s events with Dr. York, Maggie knew a delay would have him out for her job.

  At least he hadn’t shown up. Yet.

  They were in the primary research facility of the Saskatoon Supercollider Project. A cramped concrete room eight feet underground. It sounded like it would be nicer than it was. The billion-dollar project was just computers, a nitrogen-cooled room for processing power, a concrete tube and a plexiglass viewing window that allowed them to view the actual metal piping. There was no viewing into the actual collider. It didn’t matter; the particles were subatomic. Not like you’d be able to see anything. The two hundred sensors in the collider that measured everything from temperature to teraelectronvolts. Coolant was pushed into the magnets that accelerated the proton through the one hundred and fifty kilometer metal tube. Instead of two particle beams that CERN was using in their research, Maggie’s was focused on accelerating a proton into a stationary radioisotope.