THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5

by Steven Konkoly

  His wife, Samantha, had salvaged their two-burner propane camping stove and aluminum coffee set from the garage after they had finished cleaning up the glass. The microburst had shattered every backyard-facing window in their house. They spent at least thirty minutes picking up the visible pieces, relying on flashlights and the rising sun to identify the most noticeable shards. Without the use of their central vacuum system, they would have to wear shoes.

  They still had no idea what had happened. The sky was clear, except for the odd reddish glow that had persisted over the southwestern horizon for twenty minutes. Sarah Quinn insisted that she and her husband had seen a brilliant flash while stretching out on the deck for their daily run. By the time they had walked around the house to investigate, the glow had vanished. She thought it had come from the south, but her husband, George, contended that the light had shone from the east. Ed more or less thought that neither of them knew what they saw. He did know that Sarah and George had gotten lucky. Whatever they saw had delayed the start of their run, keeping them sheltered behind their house when the gust hit.

  Ed lifted the mug and took a sip of hot coffee, his eyes spotting something shiny among the apples piled in a bowl on the table. They would have to be really careful around the house. He walked to the sliding patio door, noting its absence. The screen door had been severely warped by the blast, but it remained intact like most of the screens in the house. At least they would be spared the mosquitos. A cool breeze poured through the opening, providing a brief respite from the miserable day that lay ahead. Samantha walked into the kitchen from the mudroom.

  “No cell phone signal yet. I’m worried about Chloe. The same thing might have hit Boston,” she said.

  “This was some kind of microburst. They’re usually very localized. Probably knocked out power to the cell towers,” said Ed.

  “I thought the towers had their own backup generators?”

  “Most of them should,” he admitted. “If we can’t reach her by eight, we’ll leave the kids with Charlie and head to Boston. We can bring her back if there’s a problem down there.”

  Ed had a sinking feeling that there was more to the morning’s power outage than strange weather. He’d retrieved their emergency radio from a box of camping supplies in the garage and taken it out on the deck, hoping to gain some basic information regarding the wind gust. Instead of the choppy, digital NOAA broadcast, he heard static. He anxiously cycled through the AM and FM bands, still unable to located a signal. Ed checked and rechecked the radio, cranking the hand-power generator for at least a minute before trying again. The radio’s LED burned brilliantly green throughout the process, telling him what he already suspected. The radio wasn’t the problem.

  A sharp knock at the front door caused him to jump, spilling coffee on his hand.

  “Damn it. Who the hell…?” he mumbled, setting the mug on the table.

  He opened the door to find Charlie Thornton panting on his stoop. Charlie glanced over his shoulder twice, looking at the sky.

  “They EMP’d our asses. Both of my cars are dead, and nothing works in my house. We’re sitting ducks,” said Charlie.

  “Who EMP’d us?”

  “The Chinese! Who else? They’ll probably start landing paratroopers within the hour, like Red Dawn!”

  Ed regarded his neighbor for a moment, hesitating to invite him inside. Charlie stood there barefoot, dressed in faded jeans and an oversized white Red Sox T-shirt. He clung nervously to a black, AR-style rifle fitted with some kind of scope. Ed wasn’t keen on letting him inside, especially given the fact that Charlie had chosen a rifle over shoes.

  “You gonna let me in or what? It won’t be long before we’re under direct attack,” he said, looking past Ed. “My guess is we’ll be hit by drones first.”

  “Is the safety engaged on that thing?” Ed asked.

  “Do I look like some kind of idiot?”

  Ed glanced down at his bare feet and gave him a pained look.

  “The safety’s on, for shit’s sake,” grunted Charlie.

  Ed let Charlie in, closed the door and followed him to the kitchen.

  “What did you mean about the cars?” he asked.

  “Oh hey, Samantha,” Charlie said. “Sorry to barge in on you like this. Damn. Still glass everywhere,” he said, lifting a small piece off the kitchen island.

  “The cars, Charlie?” Ed prompted.

  “Oh yeah. Both of them are dead. The batteries turn over, but the engine won’t start. EMP fried the electronics. Have you tried yo—”

  “What EMP?” interrupted Samantha.

  “There’s no EMP, honey. I’m sure the cars are fine,” Ed said.

  “You need to check them now,” Charlie insisted.

  “I’m not running out there to—”

  Charlie grabbed Ed’s T-shirt, pulling him toward the garage, but something caught his attention through the kitchen window.

  “What the hell is that?” he said, releasing Ed’s shirt to run to the screen door.

  Ed heard the problem a few seconds before he saw it. A thunderous crescendo of sharp cracks approached, violently shaking the tops of the largest trees visible over the row of houses directly behind them. At first he thought it was another wind burst, but the loud snaps sounded more like entire trees falling. The burst of wind that had knocked out their windows was powerful, but it had left little more than leaves and branches strewn across the yard. This was different. Something slower and more deliberate.

  Before he fully digested the thought, the top of a young maple tree shook and dropped out of sight beyond his backyard neighbor’s six-foot privacy fence. By the time the sound of the tree’s death reached Ed’s ears, he had figured out what they were up against.

  “Get upstairs right now!” he barked at his wife, who reacted immediately, dashing past him for the center hallway.

  Charlie glanced at him with a seriously puzzled look. Beyond Charlie, Ed saw the wooden privacy fence disappear, replaced by a solid wall of water. He didn’t stick around long enough to see Charlie’s reaction, but based on the steady stream of profanities catching up to him in the hallway, he figured that his friend had never moved faster.

  Ed caught the banister and swung himself onto the stairway, making room for Charlie, who had closed the gap quicker than Ed had thought possible. Both of them paused to look over the railing just as the wall of water hammered the back of Ed’s house, snapping the railings on his deck and exploding through the screen door.

  “Get out of there!” said Charlie, pulling him by the arm up the stairs.

  A powerful torrent of muddy, debris-filled water slammed against the front door and quickly filled the foyer in a swirling eddy of dirty foam that lapped against the bottom stairs. The volume and speed of the water terrified Ed. In the next five seconds, he watched the water rise halfway up the door, showing no signs of slowing down. Two of his kitchen chairs rushed down the hallway half-submerged, piling up against the door momentarily before breaking loose and spilling through the foyer. The rest of his kitchen furniture had already streamed past in the initial onslaught. Somewhere below, he heard glass shatter over the incredible roar of the unending flood plowing through his house. His wife appeared from his son Daniel’s bedroom next to the stairs.

  “You have to see this!” she said, with a look of sheer disbelief.

  Ed hesitated, not wanting to take his eyes off the rising water below him. Half of the staircase was submerged.

  “Dad! The whole neighborhood is flooded!” yelled Daniel from the same room.

  Ed stood up, feeling slightly unsteady. “I’m sure Linda and the twins are fine,” he said to Charlie.

  Charlie continued to stare at the floodwaters below. “They were still sleeping when I left,” he replied, nodding absently.

  Ed joined his wife and two children at the rightmost, front window of his son’s room, nearly falling to his knees again. A surging mass of murky brown water covered the ground as far as he could see, car
rying large branches, pieces of fencing, plastic garbage bins—anything that had crossed its path since striking the shoreline. The maple tree that normally blocked his view of the Sheppards’ house had been knocked into the street, providing his only direct view of the tsunami’s effects.

  The Sheppards’ front door had been blown inward by the force of the wave. Water poured into the previously shattered front windows, likely creating the same effect he’d seen inside his own home. A quick, nearly inescapable flood. Water continued to push up against the house, creating incredible pressure along fifty feet of solid frontage, but he didn’t detect any obvious signs of structural failure. He estimated the tsunami’s height to be between five and six feet.

  Over a mile and a half inland, the initial wave had retained enough energy to topple young trees and pound open doors, but lacked the punch to collapse homes—so far. Water continued to rush through the neighborhood at an alarming rate, and Ed remembered reading that tsunami waves rarely traveled alone, and the first wave wasn’t always the largest.

  “What do you think?” asked Samantha.

  “I think we’re lucky we don’t live on the water. I can’t imagine what happened to Higgins Beach,” said Ed.

  “Good God,” she mumbled.

  “Is my house still there?” asked Charlie from the bedroom doorway.

  “I can still see the roof. Take a look. It’s un-fucking-believable,” said Ed, backing away to make room at the window.

  “Language,” Samantha warned.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I don’t care,” said Daniel.

  His daughter Abby, who had moved to another window, said, “Neither do I.”

  “Well, I do,” insisted his wife.

  “Sounds like you’ve been outvoted,” said Charlie, turning his attention to the scene beyond the window.

  Samantha glared at Charlie. “This isn’t a democracy.”

  “Neither is my house—holy shhhh—moley!” said Charlie. “The whole fu—farping neighborhood is fu—fragged to shhhhmeg. Damn it. Can’t they just plug their ears?”

  Both of the teenagers laughed nervously.

  “Can’t you complete a sentence without ten expletives?” said Samantha.

  “Not under these circumstances,” he said, turning to face them.

  “Look at that,” Ed said, pointing out of a window on the other side of the room. “Water is gushing out of the Fletchers’ windows.”

  “The water’s coming out of the top of the windows,” said Samantha.

  They looked fearfully at each other and nearly collided running for the bedroom door.

  “Shit,” Samantha mumbled, peering around the corner of the door.

  The swirling water had climbed three-quarters of the stairway, passing the first floor ceiling level by a few inches. The volume of water pouring into their house through the wide opening created by the shattered slider door couldn’t empty quickly enough through the windows. Ed wondered how high the water would rise within the house. He knew logically that the house couldn’t fill up to the attic like a container, but seeing this frightened him on an instinctual level.

  “Shit, indeed,” he said.

  “I’d throw a few f-bombs in there for good measure, but the good lady strictly forbids it,” mused Charlie.

  “I think the language restrictions have been temporarily lifted,” said Samantha. “Are we safe in the house, Ed?”

  “As long as it doesn’t collapse, we’re totally fine—not that we have any other options. The water will start to go down in a few minutes. You’ll see. I bet your house is doing a lot better, Charlie. Only the right side was exposed directly to the surge. Probably pouring in the windows, but not sweeping through like a freight train,” said Ed.

  “I hope you’re right, not that it really matters,” Charlie said ruefully. “We’re all totally screwed.”

  “How does a tsunami fit into your EMP theory? Can’t offshore earthquakes cause wind gusts?” asked Ed.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe the Chinese threw a nuke at Boston and missed, blew up Cape Cod instead. Everything’s coming at us from the south. I think a ten-megaton bomb could cause a tsunami like this,” said Charlie.

  Ed shook his head. “You totally just made that up.”

  “It’s an educated guess. Sarah Quinn swears she saw a flash, then the wind. Now we have a tsunami? Something big hit us.”

  Ed had to admit that none of this added up. A sudden gust of wind powerful enough to knock out windows; electronics on the fritz; tsunami; possible flashes of light bright enough to turn night into day? Charlie was right about one thing: Whatever this turned out to be, they were most definitely screwed. And that was the least of their immediate concerns. Their daughter Chloe had just moved into an apartment on the outskirts of Boston College, with three other sophomores. Boston College was several miles from the coastline, which eased his fear of a tsunami reaching her, but now they had no way of reaching Boston.

  “I hope you’re wrong,” said Samantha.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw that she had started to walk toward the master bedroom. He caught up with her, and she stopped. He could hear her sniffling, trying to stifle the need to cry. He wrapped his arms around her stomach and pressed his chest into her back, kissing her ear.

  “It’s going to be fine, honey. We’ll figure out a way to get down there and bring her back,” said Ed, nuzzling his forehead into the back of his wife’s neck.

  “What if it’s not fine? What if Charlie’s right and the cars are dead? Shit. They’re probably flooded and useless anyway.”

  “She’ll be fine. Alex’s son is a few miles away at BU. Ryan’s like a mini-Alex. They’ll find each other and survive until we can get them back. Ryan has her address, and unless I’ve read all of the signals wrong, the kid is still crazy about her. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but he’s probably on his way to her apartment right now,” Ed whispered.

  Samantha relaxed infinitesimally and nodded, which was a start.

  “The water’s receding!” Charlie announced.

  Everyone piled into the hallway to verify Charlie’s dubious report. Daniel pushed past them and walked down the stairs to the waterline.

  “This is unreal,” he said, plucking their wooden napkin holder out of the water.

  “Careful, Danny,” cautioned Ed.

  The water’s retreat was barely noticeable, but Charlie was right. The water sat an inch below the ceiling line and appeared to lower another inch while they watched.

  “Samantha?” Charlie called.

  They all looked back at their red-faced, crew-cut neighbor.

  “You don’t worry one bit about Chloe. I’ll help you get her back safe. You can count on me for that. If we have to push a shopping cart to Boston to get her, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Thank you, Charlie. I really don’t know what to say,” said Samantha. Her eyes moistened, but she held back the tears.

  “You don’t have to say anything. I consider you guys family. That’s just what we do,” he said. Ed opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Charlie interrupted. “Don’t get all feminine on me, Ed. One thank you from the family is all I can handle,” he said, slapping Ed on the shoulder.

  “Thanks anyway. That means more than you know. One question, though. Why the hell would we need to push a shopping cart to Boston?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what they do in all the apocalypse movies and books.”

  Chapter 4

  EVENT +03:42 Hours

  Portland Harbor

  Portland, Maine

  The Katelyn Ann cut through the debris-clogged water off Portland’s Eastern Promenade at five knots, as Alex did his best to steer between the larger obstacles, ignoring the smaller ones. His real concern was the quality of the water. Whatever had reached the outer harbor through Portland’s main shipping channel had churned up the bottom, dragging along an incredible amount of seaweed and mud. The seaweed tended
to wrap around the propeller shaft, putting an additional load on the engine. The muddy water congested the filter supplying seawater to the engine’s cooling system.

  Feeling a solid thump against the hull, Alex glanced over the side and saw a partially submerged, overturned motorboat, roughly half the size of the Katelyn Ann, pass astern.

  “That’s the kind of stuff you need to call out!” he yelled to Kate, reengaging the propeller.

  “I didn’t think you could miss that!”

  “Well, I did miss it! I’m watching the gauges!”

  Kate nodded, mumbling under her breath. No doubt a few caustic words, fueled by the tension of their approach to the harbor. Kate had been stationed on the bow for too long. The hour and a half transit turned into two and half hours when they decided to avoid the main shipping channel.

  The harbor was eerily devoid of activity as they approached Portland’s first commercial marina along the Eastern Promenade. It didn’t take long to figure out why.

  The mooring field off East End Beach was in complete disarray. Most of the boats had been flipped, either sinking in the shallow water or floating overturned nearby, still attached to their mooring balls. A dark blue-hulled sailboat stood defiantly at its mooring, appearing untouched by the morning’s disaster, while a similar boat lay on its side, keel exposed on the beach. Off his starboard bow, Portland Boat Service’s mooring field and docks looked the same. Devastated. None of the business’s shore structures had survived the wave, and dozens of boats littered the flat expanse of ground that previously held the Portland Boat Service’s massive storage warehouse. Everything was gone, including the century-old brick buildings that marked the beginning of the Eastern Promenade Trail.

  Kate looked back at him from the bow and mouthed, holy shit, shaking her head. The wave had continued unopposed, sweeping through Portland’s tightly packed “Old Port” commercial district. Many of the older, historical buildings on the outskirts of the Old Port between India Street and Franklin Street had been toppled, but the visible damage stopped there. The taller, more venerable brick buildings and hotels in the same area still dominated the cityscape like nothing had happened. Alex knew differently.