“Tessa, come in. Where are you?”
It took about five minutes for the unruly mob to drive by. By that time, she’d gotten out of the truck and stood next to it, hoping someone would stop and tell her why they all honked. Eventually, she saw the last few cars in the line. All of them had mangled front ends, and back ends, like they’d struck each other in a demolition derby exhibition. The last car in the entire line skidded to a sloppy, snowy stop in front of her.
“What happened?” she asked with incredulity at how fast her situation had changed. Belatedly, she remembered Misha could be inside, so she leaned in far enough to look in the dark compartment. A lone man was behind the wheel. The rest of his car was stuffed with fishing and camping gear.
“A car fell from the sky,” he said breathlessly. “It landed on…well, your other park ranger truck.”
Her heart fluttered. “Is that why everyone shot off?”
He nodded. “I guess. Those of us trapped at the back didn’t want another one to smack down on top of us, so we rammed the others to get them moving. Soon, everyone was honking and ramming their neighbors, trying to move forward.”
Tessa’s dead because I stopped too soon.
“So, the rangers are really dead. Are you sure?”
He bobbed his head. “Yeah, I think so. We didn’t stick around to look. It’s a mess back there.”
She stepped away from the man’s car, which prompted him to speed off the moment she got clear.
“Asher, I’m going back. Get out if you want, but I have to see.” She jumped through her door, slamming it behind her.
“I’ll stay,” he replied, sounding doubtful.
She didn’t want to risk turning around in the snow, so she reversed course a few minutes until she had the accident scene bracketed by her rear window frame. The ghostly headlight of the destroyed RV was there, but the distinctive white and green paint of Tessa’s NPS vehicle sat a bit closer to her. A minivan had come down and crushed the truck to about half its normal height, then it flopped sideways next to it.
It wasn’t a question of finding survivors. The real mystery was whether any bodies could be identified. Still, she jumped out and called for them. “Tessa! Chester!” Maybe they’d gotten lucky, like her, and saw the disaster approaching. At least two other carloads of people had found ways to jump out at the last second…
Asher lingered by the guard railing, perhaps thinking their friends had slid farther down toward the creek. She glanced at him for a second, looked away, then checked again. He was looking up, not down.
“Grace!” he yelped. “Here comes another one!”
Her legs reacted to Asher’s warning on autopilot, but it was hard to move in the snow. Her boots slipped like she was on an ice-skating rink. At the same time, she heard the horn of the approaching vehicle. Somewhere up above, a driver had taken the wrong set of ruts in the deadly noontime darkness. Now, as a last act, the doomed person held on to the horn the whole way down.
It was a freight train of metal heading right for her.
Kentucky Lake, KY
When Ezra and Butch came through the other side of the bridge, he put the motor down, intent on turning away from the main channel. He also figured out there were thousands of dead fish in the water. As they sloshed around and were broken open in the waves, the air became saturated with the foul odor. “We’re getting the hell out of here,” he said with determination.
If he went right, he’d go back toward Land Between the Lakes. If he went left, he’d put himself closer to his old neighborhood. There was only one logical choice. After watching the oozing debris for a few seconds, he aimed the motor to go right, back to Mary and Jean.
Ezra headed for the stretch of shore near the bridge, no more than fifty yards away. As he did, the boat behaved in an unusual fashion, shifting from side to side and going nowhere, like the water was flowing faster than it should. In half a minute, the stretch of shore where he’d been aiming was about twice as far away from where they’d started.
“Dang, the water is moving fast,” he said, mostly to himself.
“More barges are coming through the gap,” Butch gulped, pointing behind them. As they watched the action, two barges shot under the bridge with the other garbage. One was overfilled with coal; the other looked like a sealed fuel-hauler. “Those better not hit us!”
The coal hopper clanged a bridge pylon as it rushed through the gap. The deflection sent it spinning into the other one. A second group of cargo containers came through after the first. As he watched, he was certain they were uphill from their little boat, like there was more water on the other side of the bridge.
The johnboat spun in a slow circle, making it hard for either of them to watch where they were going, but Ezra did see something unexpected. A line of treetops appeared in the water on the western side of the channel; it was a long, thin island that had all but been swamped by the high waters. Now, as they sped by it, the trees of the island appeared to be coming out of the water again. “Oh, God. We’re screwed.” Ezra gestured Butch toward the island.
“What’s happening?” Butch asked, still clutching the side of the boat like he was afraid it would tip at any second. “Why aren’t you taking us closer to shore? I’d like to hop out, if you don’t mind.”
Ezra gave the little outboard as much gas as possible, but it appeared to have no effect on their trajectory. If he tried to go toward shore, the speed of the water flowing north made it impossible to gain any ground. He shifted direction and tried to speed toward home, but the same thing happened. The shore went by, including his old neighborhood, but the johnboat refused to get closer to it.
“Uh, let’s not panic, but I’m beginning to think the lake is draining somewhere down that way.” He pointed north.
“What are you saying? There’s a hole in the dam?”
Ezra was afraid to speculate, though their speed suggested he’d know shortly, anyway. He decided to tilt up the motor again, if only to avoid striking underwater logs and debris at such high speed. A couple of minutes later, it became obvious they were technically below the normal surface of the lake. It was draining so fast they were on the downslope, heading for what had to be a massive hole in the dam.
“Wait a second,” he said with concern. “If we can’t go sideways, maybe we can go forward. If we go downhill and then turn away from the channel, we might be able to slip out of the current and get to shore.”
“Are we going to be able to get back to the ladies?” Butch asked.
“Butch, my friend, we’ll be lucky if we can even make it to shore. If we get to the dam, the water is going to be hitting bridges and power lines and sunken buildings. We’ve got to get off this lake before we reach it.”
He had no way of knowing how fast they were moving, but based on the landmarks whizzing by, it seemed to be every bit of thirty miles per hour. They’d already drifted far from the bridge; they’d be at the dam in twenty minutes, tops.
Ezra set the motor in the water and went toward the dam, cutting down their remaining time even more. He angled it to the left, hoping to make it to shore long before they reached the broken dam.
They weren’t alone out on the lake. Big, rusty barges flowed with them, with lots more still squirting out from under the distant bridge. They provided huge obstacles to sail around as he fought to get out of the main channel. But even those threats weren’t his immediate concern.
“Better get your backpack on,” he said to his friend, keen to give the man a constructive task to do. Butch appeared well beyond terrified as he sat facing forward and toward their approaching doom. “We might have to swim for it.”
He wondered how much of a boater the young man might have been. If he knew about johnboats, he’d know they weren’t made to be used in choppy waters. They were prone to bogging and sinking when struck by heavy wave action…
Ahead, the dam started to become visible, causing a breath to catch in his throat. The water had dropped enough t
o see the top of it again, but there was a huge gap between one end and the other. It was confirmation of what he already knew to be true based on the evidence: the Kentucky Lake dam was gone.
“Susan, babe, I could really use a miracle about now.”
Airspace over Colorado
Petteri sensed his carefully crafted persona evaporating. The plane lurched hard to one side, sending his stomach into a barrel roll. The turbulence had been terrible since they’d entered the dark clouds above New Mexico, and it hadn’t let up for the previous hour. If it got much worse… He would rather kill the pilot and everyone on the plane rather than have them see him throw up.
“I’ve got something, Mr. Tikkanen.” Dorothy’s voice vibrated with the airframe.
“Let me see it,” he said, aware his Dramamine and Lorazepam were still working double-shifts to quell his rebellious stomach.
The woman bounced from seat to seat as she made it down the aisle. He got some satisfaction from the green look on her face; she was being affected by the ungodly turbulence more than he was. “Sorry, sir, I’m trying to work through it. I haven’t needed the airsickness doggie bag, yet.”
The mere mention of puking made him clench his jaw, willing his stomach not to choose that moment to hop out. He spoke as if nothing else was going on. “Just show me what you’ve found.”
She balanced her laptop on his armrest. “I’ve been trawling through satellite feeds for the past couple of hours. There is still a lot of smoke from burning forests and cities, as well as debris clouds from the impacts themselves. A lot of that is drifting east with the prevailing winds, which leaves the western edges pretty much the only place where we can get reliable intel.”
“Please hurry,” he said, struggling between major discomfort and losing his lunch.
“Right. Here’s what I’ve found in Wyoming: one of the bigger pieces made it to the ground, just south and east of Yellowstone National Park. You can clearly see an impact crater inside the park here…” she pointed to the colorful imagery on the screen, “and a second crater outside the park, here.”
“It bounced?”
“Yeppers,” she snarked, seemingly trying to sound like her usual upbeat self.
She’d used that word twice too many times for his liking. “Please. Never use ‘yeppers’ in my presence. Fingernails on the chalkboard would be preferable.”
She turned a bit greener. “I’m sorry. I won’t.”
He acknowledged her and turned to the screen again. “So, this is good news. I already have teams in the area, and it isn’t far from my Utah potash mining operation. I’ll have Howard get our men there as soon as possible. Are you sure this isn’t the mother lode? Are you sure we should be going to Denver?”
Dorothy had proven her mettle by staying behind after her group failed to stop the asteroid from hitting the Earth, but he was still wary of her intentions and didn’t fully trust her. Unfortunately, it would have taken a long time to get a competent team in to do the tasks he’d been giving her, and he wouldn’t trust those people, either.
“I’m positive,” she said quietly. “But there’s something you should know about the Wyoming site.” Dorothy half-turned the laptop to her so she could adjust the screen. When ready, she turned it back to him.
“Someone’s already there?” he said, stunned. “Those are our people, I trust?”
“No, I don’t think so. I used some data from earlier today to follow the progress of these trucks. The excavator equipment came from a construction site on a nearby interstate. I tried to dig around on the parts of the internet still working and found a press release about that segment of highway. It’s being done by a company called Bakersfield Resources.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
She nodded, swaying where she stood. “I figured you might say that, so I took the liberty of researching who they were. I found out their parent company is Chinese. A mega-corporation based in Shanghai called PW Industries.”
He knew them well. PWI was one of the biggest conglomerates in the Asian markets for construction, shipping, and mining. They also had a division dedicated to the stated purpose of asteroid retrieval, though they were a decade behind his company in terms of putting men and ships beyond Earth’s orbit. He wouldn’t have even listed them in the top five companies who could compete with TKM in space. On the ground…
“Howard, I need you,” he called out to his man.
“Wait. I have one more thing.” She tipped the laptop to her again and made her changes to the field of view. When done, she put it back in front of him. “I hope you don’t mind me doing this, but I know it’s important to you.”
She zoomed in. “This is northwestern Wyoming.” With another tap, the resolution increased. “This is northwestern Yellowstone. Mammoth Hot Springs, to be exact.” She tapped it one more time. “And this is a convoy we picked up a few hours ago, before it went under heavy cloud cover. I was able to follow their progress out of the hot springs area and to a nearby canyon, where some of them stopped. Note the lead truck; it’s missing one of its doors.”
He and his stomach weren’t in the mood for riddles. “What are you showing me? People are banding together to leave the park like some kind of wagon train?”
“Not at all. I used GPS data from your employee’s phone—Misha Gagarin. It showed he was here most of last night.” She zoomed out and showed a gravel road surrounded by burnt forest. “You can see a stricken TKM truck down the road from this park service vehicle. I’ve confirmed the company vehicle was Mr. Gagarin’s. This morning, at approximately 4 a.m., he left his truck, walked down the road, and apparently hitched a ride to Mammoth Hot Springs.”
“That’s great news. I’m happy he’s still alive. Are we through here?” He waved her off, anxious to suffer the indignity of flight sickness for a short time on his own, until Howard arrived.
“There’s a big problem. At about 6 a.m., someone gets into the park service truck and drives down the road, toward Mammoth. That truck is now leading the convoy.” She burped a little, patting her stomach a second later. “Sir, based on the evidence, I think the truck belongs to the pair of people Mr. Gagarin was pursuing.”
“No, that’s not possible. Misha called in to Howard. Said his targets were dead.” He realized what he was saying to her. “Why are you even telling me this? Your job description doesn’t include…these types of issues.” If she was already prying into his less-than-appropriate behaviors with Howard’s teams, he would have to keep watch on her even more than he thought. She reminded him of one of his annoying young grandnieces—always getting into trouble.
“I’m only trying to help,” she snarked. “Maybe he was lying when he said what he said.” She flipped back to a prior view. It showed the damaged park service truck. Looking at it again, there were two people standing next to the vehicle. It was all very circumstantial, but something about the pair on the screen screamed out a warning to him. His cultivated image was at stake again. He had to be thorough about following through on Dorothy’s claim, even if he hated that she was being nosey.
“Howard? I need you front and center right this instant!”
The plane dipped and then rose, flinging Dorothy’s laptop onto the floor. She fell to her knees trying to catch it.
A second later, the door of the restroom opened at the head of the compartment. “I’m sick as a dog, sir, but I’m coming.”
Good. You’re about to be a whole lot sicker.
Chapter 19
Beartooth Pass, WY
Grace saw the pair of headlights heading for her; they weren’t aimed down like she would have thought. Instead, they spun end over end, as if the car was doing somersaults on the way toward the ground. The horn blew the entire time.
Her feet became lead weights as she watched it speed toward her, and she only had time to think how bad she’d misjudged its path. At the last second, hands shoved her hard to one side as a loud crack signaled the vehicle’s destruction. A sho
ckwave pushed her down into the snow; a second rush of hot air surged over her fallen body.
Her heart pounded against the pavement, probably registering on a seismograph somewhere. For a few seconds, she breathed in and out, unconcerned with the fact her head was almost buried in snow.
I’m alive?
She summoned the energy to sit up a little. Behind her, the now-crushed car had landed upside down on the snowy surface of the road, perhaps muffling the explosion of metal on concrete. There were no fires, which was a relief, but staying there was a hazard. “Asher?”
“Here!” he replied from close by, also face-down in the snow. He’d raised his hand to show her where he was.
She got up and slid through the snow to get to him. “We have to leave!”
He came to life when she grabbed his arm. “Is there another one coming? I don’t know if I could dodge a second.”
Grace helped him up. “I can’t see another, but…” They stood together looking at the multiple wrecks on the curved road. Tessa’s truck was nearby, flattened by the last car to fall off the cliff. It, and the hunk of metal that almost crushed them, were illuminated by the dull red of her truck’s taillights. It cast a somber glow over the scene. It took her a few moments to realize Asher hadn’t let go of her hand, so she unwrapped her fingers from his. “I’m so sorry, Tessa. And Chester.”
“We should go,” Asher advised, cautiously watching above.
She looked up as well. “Yeah, like Chester said, this is a bad spot on the road.”
Together, they jogged down the snowy roadway, following the distinct ruts created by all the cars in her convoy which had recently come through. When they’d made it about twenty of the twenty-five yards to her truck, Asher slipped and fell.
Bounce: Impact Book 2: (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series) Page 15
