The Perseid Collapse (The Perseid Collapse Series 1)

by Konkoly, Steven

  “Sir, I need you to step out of the car,” said the officer by the driver’s-side window.

  The second officer had taken position on the front passenger side, while the third officer circled the hatchback, examining the back seat and cargo area of the vehicle, before joining the first officer.

  “Did I do something wrong?” asked the driver. “I stopped where I normally would, even though there’s no light.”

  “Can you please just step out of the car? You’re not in any trouble,” said the officer.

  “Well, I don’t see why I need to get out of my car. I have my license and registration right here,” said the driver, holding up the documents for the officer to see.

  The officer calmly retrieved the man’s driver’s license, barely examining it before continuing.

  “Mr. Reynolds, the Department of Homeland Security has declared a national state of emergency. We need to replace vehicles that were knocked out by the EMP. I’m sorry, Mr. Reynolds, but this vehicle temporarily belongs to the South Portland Police Department. Please step out of your car.”

  The officer standing next to him took a few steps back and rested her hand on her service pistol. The driver saw this subtle shift and received the message, opening the door and stepping onto the pavement. He was dressed in khaki shorts with cargo pockets and a gray T-shirt. Nothing about him raised any alarms or gave Alex concern that this might end badly.

  “Officer Harker will drive you home. We’re really sorry about this, but we have to get the rest of our officers out on patrol. You’re better off at your house anyway,” said the officer.

  “I need to fill a prescription for my daughter at Shaw’s and try to find things—like food. I don’t suppose Officer Harker will be on loan for the next hour or so to drive me around?” asked the driver, staring down the police officer.

  The police officer shook his head and held up the license, which the driver deftly snapped out of his hand. The driver kept both hands in the air, one holding the plastic license, and walked backward, shaking his head, and Alex knew there was far more to the unassuming man in shorts and a T-shirt than met the casual eye. Based on the speed and dexterity of the man’s movement, Alex had little doubt that he could have “repossessed” his car and left the three officers on the pavement in a tangle of limbs.

  He had to remember this critical lesson for his own upcoming trek. Make no assumptions based on appearance. There were plenty of people out there who were quicker, stronger and craftier than he was.

  “I’ll walk from here,” the man said and turned to head north on Ocean Street toward the supermarket.

  He stopped several steps into his journey and turned to address the officers, who had already begun to set up for the next car that might amble into their trap.

  “Hey! We forgot to fill out the paperwork! What, no paperwork? Imagine that. Enjoy the car, assholes!” he said and jogged away.

  Alex slipped away from the tree and located Kate sitting in the shade of the furthest entrance stoop from the intersection. He headed in their direction, nervously looking over his shoulder. The police seemed cordial enough, but they didn’t hesitate to take away a citizen’s property in the name of emergency powers. They would have to be cautious around law enforcement. Within a few hours of the event, whatever it turned out to be, law enforcement agencies had started confiscating cars and disarming citizens.

  Given the circumstances, neither of these actions qualified as a sudden decline into a “police state,” but Alex couldn’t shake distant thoughts about some of the theories popularized by Internet conspiracy pundits. “False flag” came to mind, but based on what he’d witnessed since the initial flash beyond Jewell Island, he quickly dismissed the idea as paranoia.

  To conspiracy theorists, the term “false flag” implied an attack or hostile operation conducted by the U.S. government and subsequently blamed on a foreign or domestic enemy. The most common purpose cited for a false flag attack was the erosion or outright suspension of civil liberties. Conspiracy groups insisted that the United States had been repeatedly subjected to these attacks by the government over the course of three decades to soften the people’s tolerance of government intrusion.

  Many of them believe that the 9/11 attacks were supported or “allowed to happen” by factions in the government looking to expand surveillance and detention powers, in the name of the “War on Terror.” Similarly, the pundits surmised that the Boston Bombing was perpetrated to test the citizens’ reaction to a martial-law-style lockdown of a major city. Would Boston’s population openly tolerate the presence of armored personnel carriers and heavily armed soldiers patrolling the streets, while teams of SWAT officers went door to door, pulling citizens out of their homes at gunpoint?

  Even the Jakarta Pandemic had been linked to a “mystery faction’s” overall effort to condition the American people, desensitizing the population to situations that might result in mass casualties and essential services shortages. They claimed that all of these events would be linked to a singular, “mass event” that would tip the scales and invoke a permanent national police state, which we would welcome with open arms.

  Alex imagined that the conspiracy pundits were going crazy with theories—made even worse by the fact that they had no Internet to propagate them. On a whole, he didn’t buy into these theories, but given what he had just witnessed, it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye on the big picture. He reached Kate, who sat on the first step of the doorway, and saw that the kids were hidden deeper in the alcove, seated against the building.

  “Everything all right over there?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know. The cops just seized that guy’s vehicle in the name of the federal government.”

  “What?” said Emily. “They can’t do that.”

  “Federal government? That doesn’t sound right,” said Kate.

  “I agree, which is why I don’t know what to think. The officer cited Homeland Security and a state of national emergency. Said they needed working vehicles to get the rest of the police department out on patrol,” said Alex.

  “That makes more sense,” Kate said with some relief. “I’m sure that’s all they were doing.”

  Alex shook his head and checked his watch. “That’s the fifth car we’ve seen on Broadway in what—twenty or thirty minutes? How many cars does the department need to replace? If they just started seizing cars, it makes sense, but it’s been over three hours since the tsunami hit. I think we need to avoid any law enforcement roadblocks or checkpoints from this point forward.”

  “How the hell are we going to get to Boston if the police are stealing cars?”

  “Let’s get home first,” he said, extending his hand to Kate.

  She lifted herself off the step and immediately hugged his sweaty frame, burying her head in his shoulder.

  “We don’t even know if our other car will work,” she whispered, lifting her head.

  “We’ll figure something out. I’ll ride a bike to Boston if I have to. Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  Kate shook her head. “You can’t make a promise like that.”

  “I can promise you that I’ll do everything in my power to make it happen. You know I’m good for that,” he said, kissing her moist forehead. “Let’s get moving. If we’re sweating like this at ten in the morning, I’d hate to see us at noon.”

  They took a few moments to adjust their backpacks and CamelBak water hoses before stepping off on the rest of their two-to three-hour hike. They headed south along Ocean Street for less than a block, crossing the street at the end of the middle school’s athletic field. Alex kept his eyes on the police cruiser to the north, wondering how many cars they had added to the department’s inventory this morning. He couldn’t shake the deeply imbedded suspicion that nothing was as it seemed this morning—and the fear that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Turning onto Highland Avenue a few minutes later filled him with a momentary sense of relief. Highland Avenu
e intersected with Harrison Road in Scarborough, at the Pleasant Hill firehouse located less than a third of a mile from their house. All they had to do at this point was follow Highland Avenue for three and a half miles to the firehouse, where they could pretty much stumble into their neighborhood. They had walked for less than a minute before hearing the distant sound of a vehicle. Alex quickly scanned his surroundings and made a decision that surprised him.

  “Honey, take the kids and hide behind that car,” he said, pointing at an older model minivan in the adjacent parking lot.

  “Are we hiding from cars now?” she snapped, grabbing Emily’s sleeve and pulling her toward the minivan.

  “Maybe I’m being ridiculous,” he said, walking with them.

  He barely spotted the white sedan rounding the bend on Highland before a clump of thick bushes blocked his view. He had managed to see that the driver had activated the left turn signal, which meant the car would turn north on Ocean Street, headed right into the police trap. He changed his mind about hiding and moved swiftly to the street, waving his hands over his head.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” hissed Kate, holding her hands palms up in an annoyed gesture.

  “Get behind the car!” he said over his shoulder.

  The car slowed enough for him to yell at a blond woman through the open driver’s-side window.

  “There’s a police roadblock at Broadway. They’re seizing cars!” yelled Alex.

  The car screeched to a halt several feet before the intersection, and Alex jogged along the sidewalk, careful not to approach the car directly and possibly frighten the driver. The woman leaned her head out of the window. She had a laceration on her forehead above her right eyebrow, which had bled profusely at some point this morning given the amount of congealed blood plastered to the right side of her face. Her hair was matted to her head above the wound.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  Alex caught up with her, staying on the sidewalk to keep at least a car’s length distance between them.

  “The police have a cruiser set up in the middle of the intersection at Broadway and Ocean. I watched them stop a car and force the driver out. Emergency seizure,” he said.

  “What about further down at Cottage and Broadway?” asked the driver.

  “We just came from there. It was clear fifteen minutes ago,” said Alex.

  “Good. Did you notice if any of the stores are open?” she asked, glancing around nervously.

  “The variety store on the corner of Broadway and Mussey was open, but they didn’t have power. Cash only. We saw a slow but steady stream of people walking down Cottage toward the shopping complex. What’s the situation like down Highland? We’re headed to Scarborough.”

  “I heard that the water reached Highland across from Wainright Field, but I haven’t confirmed that. We live by the high school. There’s all kinds of weird talk out there. EMP, Chinese invasion, volcano erupting in Boston…”

  “What happened to your forehead?” Alex asked.

  He suddenly felt slightly exposed standing on the side of the road. If the water hadn’t reached her house, why did she look like she had been in a knife fight? What else did they face walking down Highland Avenue?

  “One of my—neighbors—decided that I wasn’t entitled to one of the few working cars on the street,” she said, staring blankly through the front windshield.

  Alex didn’t care to press the question. He knew what had likely played out in her driveway, and that the neighbor had lost the fight.

  “I’d stash this thing as far from the Hannaford parking lot as possible and walk the rest of the way. You might be able to handle one asshole on your own, but every eye in the parking lot will be on your car.”

  “There were three of them,” she said, “and only one of them wanted the car. Fucking savages.”

  “Sorry. I assume you…” he paused.

  “I took care of them,” she said, touching the crusted wound on her forehead. “Keep a tight eye on your family,” she added, nodding toward the minivan to the left of Alex.

  The sedan pulled away and stopped at the intersection momentarily, while the driver undoubtedly confirmed the information he had passed. She accelerated the car down Highland and disappeared behind the chain-link fence that bordered the middle school’s athletic field.

  “All right. Let’s go,” he announced.

  Kate rose from her dubious hiding spot near the rear bumper of the minivan and walked toward the sidewalk, joined by Ethan and Emily.

  “Ethan, turn around and let Emily grab the knife out of your backpack. Outer left pocket, Emily. Then Ethan gets the one out of your pack, sweetie. Turn around, honey, and I’ll get yours,” he said.

  “What did she say?” Kate asked. “She looked like she’d been attacked.”

  “She fought off three guys trying to steal her car,” he replied quietly.

  “Keep the knife in your front pocket, out of sight, and keep sipping water. That CamelBak should be empty by the time we reach the high school,” he announced, then whispered the rest of what the woman had told him about the attack into Kate’s ear.

  Kate’s expression instantly sharpened to an angry grimace.

  “I really wish that Coastie hadn’t tossed my pistol,” he said.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said, snapping open the three-inch serrated blade to examine his choice for their bug-out packs. “Just fine.” She closed the knife and put it into her front cargo pocket.

  Chapter 13

  EVENT +08:15

  Scarborough, Maine

  Kate was starting to have irrational thoughts about ditching her backpack. They were less than a half mile from their neighborhood, and all she could think about was throwing the tan contraption into the bushes and coming back to get it later. The pack’s weight had nothing to do with the problem. She was in excellent physical condition and could hike for hours with one of the equally sized internal-frame backpacks they purchased from Eastern Mountain Sports. The pack Alex had chosen for the family bug-out bag simply sucked for walking long distances.

  Unless you had grown accustomed to working with disgustingly uncomfortable gear, like most marines, the “three-day assault pack” was a killer. It lacked any kind of rigid frame, rendering proper weight distribution nearly impossible, which had the unfortunate effect of rubbing her shoulders raw. Mercifully, she had consumed most of her water by this point, which, according to Alex, had reduced the pack’s weight by more than ten pounds. Small consolation.

  Of course, by the time she had significantly reduced the water weight, the damage to her shoulders and psyche had been done. She wanted to lay into him for defaulting to military equipment, but didn’t see any purpose to picking a fight. The kids weren’t complaining, and Alex wouldn’t admit the pack was uncomfortable if his shoulders were visibly bleeding. She didn’t want to be the only one to bitch about their predicament. They were almost home, where she could toss the pack in the house and lay on the floor for as long as she wanted. If they still had a house.

  The first signs of tsunami damage appeared a few blocks from the Wainright athletic fields. The pattern of damage made sense based on what they had observed during their trek along Highland Avenue, which had ascended gradually from the center of South Portland near the middle school. Roughly a mile from the police roadblock, standing on the sidewalk overlooking South Portland High School’s football field, they could see the green of Portland’s Western Promenade, which towered above Portland’s inner harbor. They looked about even with Portland’s high ground, and Alex had guessed that they were at least a hundred feet above sea level.

  She trusted his judgment when it came to navigation. Alex had an uncanny sense of direction and an infallible ability to get them to wherever they needed to go, often without the help of maps or GPS. After nearly twenty years of marriage, she was a believer. The man was never lost and could read terrain like the back of his hand.

  Even the kids started to
believe when another mapping prediction came true a half mile past the high school, near Fickett Street. Highland Avenue peaked and began a shallow descent into the neighborhoods along the South Portland/Scarborough border. Alex estimated that their house sat somewhere between thirty to forty feet above sea level. A fact he leveraged when everyone began to feel the effects of the two-mile uphill hike on their quads. Incredibly, none of them recalled Highland Avenue descending into Scarborough, but Alex insisted that they were very likely approaching the downhill portion of their trip. True to his word, the street leveled off and began to slope downward, ever so slightly. The difference was barely noticeable on their bodies, but mentally, it rejuvenated them. The temperature had climbed well into the high eighties by that point, and any factor working in their favor was entirely welcome.

  When the mud and debris appeared on the streets and in the yards, they figured they had reached the bottom of the hill. Aside from the ever-present layer of muddy silt, it hadn’t looked nearly as bad as she had expected. Most of the wooden fences had been knocked down, but the high water mark hadn’t reached the first-floor windows. People they encountered along the road reported basement flooding as their worst damage from the tsunami, which had rolled through without any warning at around six in the morning. Roadside watersheds and ditches overflowed with dirty, foamy water, giving a good indication that the area’s natural water runoff system had been completely overwhelmed. No surprise there, along with the observation that all of the sewer grates visible from Highland gushed muddy water.

  Alex had found this to be more alarming than the surface damage. With their sump pump out of commission due to the power outage and the town sewer system flooded past maximum capacity, the water in their basement wouldn’t drain. They still kept most of their supplies and equipment in the basement. As they continued along Highland Avenue, closing the distance to the shoreline, the high-water mark on the trees flanking the road rose significantly, along with the layer of mud covering the road and ground.