Cape Girardeau, MO
Butch and Ezra took turns carrying the empty gas container, so the other could suck down his sports drinks. It was about a ten-minute walk back to the boat, but when he wasn’t drinking or eating from his bag of chips, Ezra was thinking about where to go next. If the mayor of the local town had put the hammer down on price gouging, it might mean none of the gas stations in the area would sell him fuel. Plus, knowing how the world worked, he guessed any station selling gas at artificially low prices would already be sold out, since consumers would buy as much as they could physically carry. It presented a major barrier to their journey.
“What do we do now?” Butch asked, his mouth full of Fritos.
“Maybe a boat isn’t the best means of transport these days. The flood washed away the marina here in town, but even if it were there, we might have been refused service. Are we going to have to deal with this every sixty miles for our thousand-mile trip?” He thought back to the 250cc dirt bikes. They didn’t have long range, either, but it had to be easier to find gas on land than it was on the water. Shifting gears in his mind, he added, “I sure hope Mary and her friends made it where they were going.”
“Me, too,” Butch added in a pleasant voice. “I was looking forward to seeing if any of those ladies had friends they could set me up with when we got back. Murray, right? I’ll have to go there sometime.”
“Oh,” Ezra drawled, inserting humor in his voice. “I didn’t know we were on a singles cruise.”
“Well, I…” Butch hesitated. “I don’t want to talk about the ladies around you. I know you’re mourning your wife.”
Ezra winced involuntarily, though he immediately fought the urge to turn negative. “I appreciate that, but I’ve come to terms with her passing, at least on the surface. She wouldn’t tolerate me being a wet blanket this whole trip, and I guarantee if she were here with us, she’d be doing everything in her power to set you up with any pretty girl who came along. It’s just the way she was.”
Butch stopped. “I really am sorry, E-Z. I can’t say it enough.”
The big man was close to bringing him to tears, though Butch probably had no clue. “Thank you.” Ezra forced a smile as he looked back to him. “So, tell me what type of women you like, and I can keep an eye out for you.”
Butch’s face went slack. He was looking past Ezra, toward the waterfront.
“What?” he asked with concern.
Butch motioned toward the boat. “There’s some guys messing with our stuff.”
Ezra spun around, not sure what to expect. He set the gas container on the ground, and also dropped the bag with his food and drinks. There were three men, two on the boat, and one standing on the shore watching his friends pick over Susan’s Grace.
He gestured for Butch to jog over to a broken slab of the flood wall, near a green car that had washed in with the floodwaters. Both of them pulled off their rifles while on the move. On paper, the approach looked professional and scripted, but all his organs felt like they’d broken free inside his chest and sloshed together into a messy pile under his stomach. Fear constricted his windpipe as he arrived at the rock.
“What are we going to do?” he croaked. It wasn’t worth three men’s lives to protect the boat. Other than the machine itself, there was nothing of real value left aboard. They’d taken what little they owned in the two small backpacks. He also had the keys; they couldn’t steal it unless they wanted to float away with an oar.
“You tell me, boss. We talkin’ or shootin’?”
They were fifty yards from the men, who were still oblivious to their approach. It would be child’s play to shoot them. There was nowhere to hide, save perhaps diving into the water. But he wasn’t a murderer. Other than a wild what-if-I-had-no-choice fantasy, blasting the men away wasn’t even in his vocabulary. “No. We have everything of value on our backs. We’ll see what they do.”
A few seconds later, Ezra caught sight of a big speedboat motor. A second boat was parked behind his, but it sat low to the water, making it hard to see from his position. The driver of that boat let it drift in the water, so it briefly came into full view, then he goosed the engine to put himself next to Susan’s Grace again. A man on the boat yelled to his friends, “Come on, this one’s a bust!”
The man on the shore half-turned toward Ezra. He carried a compact rifle close to his chest. It hadn’t been visible while he faced his buddies. As the men on his boat gathered their own rifles, Ezra appreciated how close he’d come to grossly misreading the situation. They weren’t bumbling idiots; they were professionals.
As he watched, the men climbed back to their speedboat, then the loaded vessel shot off. It went north, toward the main part of Cape Girardeau.
“Phew,” Ezra said aloud. “We almost walked into a chipper shredder.”
“You called it right. I was ready to shoot those bastards for threatening our ride.” Butch grabbed his stuff. “I might have gotten us killed.”
Ezra tried to maintain his positive attitude. “I told you, today is our lucky day.”
Please, Susan, get some of your angel pals to watch over us.
Denver, CO
“Welcome to LoDo, or lower downtown,” Howard said as Petteri stepped out of the TKM pickup truck.
They shook hands with the backdrop of Coors Field behind them. The rolling piece of asteroid had sliced the baseball stadium. The fifty-foot tall rock had come to rest next to a four-story red brick building in the old business district of Denver. It made the building look small by comparison, though the bottom third of the asteroid piece later collapsed into the street and whatever pipes and sewers were underneath. It vaguely reminded him of a scoop of ice cream that had fallen to the ground.
“I’m impressed,” he replied, not dawdling over pleasantries. “You’ve managed to get our people into the city and have made considerable progress collecting what belongs to us. Good work.”
Howard beamed. “It was easy once we got the mayor in our pocket. She tripped all over herself when I explained how much a half a percent of the value was worth. Her bank account is going to be very happy when we clean up all the debris from her city.”
Petteri shared a knowing smile with the man. He’d leveraged the value of the rock as necessary. Sharing with the mayor was a worthwhile concession as long as it greased the skids of the clearing operation, which it had apparently done to perfection. They’d even passed a police cordon on the way in, suggesting the mayor was going all-out for him.
A couple of blocks away, the piece of asteroid loomed large. TKM miners had already used explosives to slice off a good chunk of one side. Five or six excavators worked to pick up the payload and dump it into the beds of a line of dump trucks. It wasn’t that much different from any of his normal mining operations, save for the location and time factor. It also helped that he didn’t have to screen any of the source material. Every truck load was worth millions. There was no slag.
He practically held his breath. Things were going better than he ever expected.
Dorothy appeared from a nearby tent. “I’ve got data on the other drop sites. I think we’re ahead of everyone on this!”
It really was too good to be true, but he figured his good luck was due to his own superior planning. It was only way back in his mind, behind the little bucket of remorse he had for being responsible for dropping the asteroid to Earth in the first place, that he worried things weren’t quite as good as he thought.
“Show me the good news,” he replied, content to bask in his own glory while it lasted.
Chapter 5
Billings, MT
“I’ve heard enough,” Grace said nervously. She put the truck in drive and stomped on the gas. The rear tires chirped, giving her a feeling of satisfaction at moving away from the threat. However, a second or two later, gunshots replied from the group of men.
She ducked low, still guiding the truck out of the parking lot. Asher fell to the floorboard, but he already had his pis
tol out of the holster, ready for trouble. She acted as if they were experienced travelers, unafraid of mere bullets whizzing at them. By comparison, the kid in the back seat screamed in panic.
“Hang on!” she shouted, taking a quick left, then a hasty right.
As she turned the vehicle from side to side, she expected bullets to ping off the metal, or zing by her head. Since all the windows in the back were already gone, she wondered if the bullets passed through without doing any additional damage.
“We’re clear,” she reported, sitting up in a normal posture.
The kid stayed on the floorboard behind her seat, though he’d stopped screaming. “Are they chasing us?” he asked in a voice filled with fear.
Grace adjusted the rearview mirror, seeing no pursuit as they traveled along the edge of the parking lot toward the far side of the mall. The shopping center remained a place of chaos, but it was hundreds of yards away, across the entirety of the parking lot. “No one’s back there. We’re cool.”
Slowly, the boy sat up. “Wow, you two are badass. I think I peed my pants back there.”
“You get used to it,” she fibbed. Her stomach was in a tangled knot at that moment, but it was the new normal for her. The improvement came in knowing how not to show it as much.
Asher was back in his seat, too. His pale face suggested he was handling it about as well as she was.
The officer barked in the radio. “I have the address. We need you to go to the Bureau of Land Management on the south edge of town. You’re looking for Director Felicia Nicktov. She needs to be driven to the airport and put on a plane; do you understand?”
“Where’s the BLM office? Where’s the airport? We don’t know where anything is.” She hid her frustration as well as she concealed her fear, but it was close to the surface. It helped when she had to concentrate on driving around a few abandoned vehicles, as it gave her a reason not to think about being helpless in an unfamiliar city.
Officer McCracken replied, “Ask a local. BLM is next to Cabela’s. Everyone here knows where that is. The airport is on the north boundary of town. It’s also impossible to miss.”
“I know where Cabela’s is,” the boy exclaimed. “I can help. Just get me away from the mall.”
She didn’t like the idea of involving the young man, but the mall and everything around it was obviously more dangerous for the kid than being inside her truck. As she drove off the parking lot and went back into the residential neighborhoods to the south, her mind was already made up. She keyed the microphone of the CB. “We tried to get to the mall. You might want to send real reinforcements. A few hundred officers will probably be necessary to save the guys inside. People shot at us while we were still in the parking lot.”
“Understood,” the officer replied. “It was a longshot getting you there. Sorry it didn’t work out, but don’t worry about them. Worry about your new mission. I’d really appreciate if you feds took care of your own, okay? Saves my manpower for local issues.”
“Thanks. We’ll cover for you.” She placed the mic back in the holder, and immediately imagined the day was getting out of her control. They’d spent the night in the church, and she’d figured today they were going to get on the road toward home. The only thing that kept her from finding the nearest highway and driving away was the sense she owed the town a little compensation for allowing her convoy to come inside. Plus, those same folks from Yellowstone were in the city, too. Helping keep the peace could potentially save them some grief.
Grace craned her neck to look behind her. The boy sat as far from the missing door as he could. “Do you live around here? We could drop you off, get you home safe. I’m sure we can find Cabela’s if it’s as popular as he said on the radio.”
“No, man, I don’t want to go home. Noah is dead. How am I going to explain how he died to his parents?” He had to speak louder to be heard over the wind noise.
She settled into her seat, realizing it wasn’t only her life spinning loose. “Kid, I’ve seen things the past few days I never thought I’d see here in our country. Yellowstone Park was a disaster area, and I’m not even talking about the forest fires and asteroids falling from the sky. People always get a little rowdy, but these days they’ve gone bonkers.”
The next words out of her mouth required finesse. She wanted to impart some ranger wisdom to the kid, but they also needed his navigation skills, so she didn’t want to insult him. “We saw you taking those video games. The act is probably something you wouldn’t have done a week ago. And that’s okay. We’re all acting different than we do on normal days. I don’t normally walk around with a pistol on my hip.”
Grace smiled at his partial reflection in the mirror, much as Mom used to do when she was a young girl in the back seat. “So don’t beat yourself up about being responsible for your friend’s, uh, death. Yesterday, he would have gotten a slap on the wrist from the police. Today, the police are gone. You’re at the mercy of those jerks who fired guns at us. As I said, we’re all acting differently.”
The boy broke out of his shell and smiled. “I’m Logan.”
“I’m Grace. He’s Asher. Nice to meet you.”
“Take a left up here. We’re already almost where you want to go.” Billings was a modest-sized city, perhaps ten miles long and three wide. She came to a halt on a small rise, giving her a clear view of her surroundings. Large, smoky fires rose into the skies to the east, at the far edge of the city limits.
“I hope we’re not going that way,” she said in jest.
Logan didn’t say anything.
Cape Girardeau, MO
After the red speedboat left, Ezra suggested they wait fifteen minutes before returning to the pontoon boat. He didn’t think it was a trap designed to get them to reveal themselves, but over the last few days he’d learned not to trust anyone.
Butch pointed to the green car crushed against the concrete slab. “It’s too bad we can’t get one of these abandoned cars to work. We could use it to drive due west. Save ourselves a lot of sailing time.”
He knew as well as anyone how floodwaters destroyed the insides and electrical work of any vehicle they touched. He’d seen it a few times on recovered postal trucks after they were swept away by floodwaters. Sometimes, letter carriers took their duties a little too seriously. Neither rain, nor snow, and all that, was true, but there were limits to what the machinery was built to endure. Being submerged in ten feet of water wasn’t one of them. It was a death sentence for the vehicle.
“Nah, I couldn’t stand the smell for days at a time. It’s going to be soaked into the seats and carpets, for sure.” He loved the smell of Kentucky Lake, which was a mixture of fish, algae, and fresh air. However, the Mississippi smelled more like spoiled fish guts, decades of oil spills, and a healthy dose of raw sewage. The cutaway path left by the overflowing river had left those smells in the open air. He hated sitting on the muddy rocks, but the gunmen gave him no choice. His clothes were going to smell like the river soon enough.
“Although…” Ezra looked over the wreck of the sedan. Water must have sheared off the hood. The exposed engine bay appeared mostly intact, with hoses, belts, and the motor itself muddy, but not destroyed. “I think I see how this wreck can serve our purposes.”
They stood up together. “We can use spare parts for the boat?” Butch asked, interested in what he’d discovered.
“Kind of.” Ezra ripped a long black hose out of the bay. “We can use one of these to siphon gas out of the tank. As long as it’s still sealed, the fuel should be fine to use.”
“We’ll be able to tell if there’s water in there once we drain a gallon or so.”
“Agreed. It will separate nicely in our container, but I think we’ll be fine. Other than the hood and interior being swamped, it doesn’t look like any of the fuel lines were cut, nor was the gas cap ripped off.”
Over the next few minutes they worked together to stick the hose into the gas tank, start the siphon, and fill up the entire
five-gallon container.
“It’s a good thing those guys showed up, eh, boss?” Butch asked, back to his old humorous self. “We wouldn’t have been forced to look at this car.”
“Yeah, I guess,” he admitted, still keeping a wary eye out on the water. “Though I’m sure we would have thought of it eventually. If all the stations are closed, we’re really going to be limited in how we can get gas. Even so, I’m not sure how many abandoned cars we’re going to find on our travels. This was a lucky one because of the flooding.”
“I guess that makes sense, but I bet we can get at least ten gallons out of the tank. Let’s dump the first one out and fill up the next.” Butch held out one of his empty sports drink bottles. “And you can use this to test for water in the fuel.”
Moving fast, Ezra poured some of the gas into the clear container. None of it separated, meaning there was no water in the tank. It was another break, allowing them to collect almost ten gallons in total from the car. They were almost back up to a full tank on the boat, which would give them about sixty miles before they needed to look for the next fuel stop.
After stowing the empty can and rubber hose near the rear, he shoved off from the bank of the Cape Girardeau riverfront. Susan’s Grace backed out into the current, and Ezra lowered the prop back into the water. Ahead, on the wide river, there were no other boats, which was exactly what he wanted to see.
“I hate to say it, but we should keep our rifles where we can grab them immediately.” Ezra laid his weapon against the dashboard, next to the steering wheel. “Those men are out there somewhere, and I doubt they’re the only ones aiming to cause problems for other boaters. Sadly, no part of our watercraft is bulletproof, so it wouldn’t be smart to get into a shooting match with anyone.”
“We’ll just have to scare them off,” Butch suggested.
“Unless you did it differently in the Army?” Ezra prodded.
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 43
