“Don’t know. We never went anywhere without strong metal between us and the bad guys. Armored Humvees, military transports, and so on. I’d hate to be the Army dudes riding on boats like this one with nothing between you and the sharks besides a little slab of wood.” He tapped the main deck. It was carpeted with all-weather material, but wood was underneath.
“Dang. You’re making me doubt the plan. We’re heading off into the unknown essentially defenseless. Maybe it would be better to find a car and stick to the roads? At least there we could blend in with everyone else.”
Butch shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’d bet there are more bad guys on the road than there are out here. Plus, I’ve seen you pilot the boat. I’d put you up against anyone on the river.” He reached over and slapped Ezra on the shoulder.
He kept the speed low as he drove alongside the shoreline of the city. People were out in the streets and yards nearest the waterfront, picking through what was left of their homes and businesses. Some of them waved as he went by, but he stayed vigilant for trouble. Ezra looked with nervous anticipation behind flowing debris fields and around the huge bridge pylons, expecting the red boat to jump out and attack. Each time they passed a suspect location he was relieved to see nothing but empty patches of water.
When they made it north of the city, he let out some of the tension he’d been choking down. He did have 350 horsepower in the big Suzuki outboard, but he had no illusions his skills behind the wheel of the pontoon boat would be enough to outrun the purpose-built speed demon. His was built for stability, while the other was designed to go fast.
Only when they were back up to speed on the main channel of the river did he feel like himself again. The hazy sun beat down from directly above, reminding him how nice cruising on the water usually was. Still, there was no reason to let down his guard. “Keep your eyes peeled for that boat, my friend. I’ll look on this side of the river. You look on the Missouri side, okay?”
Butch saluted. “Whatever you say, boss. Keep me on top of the water, rather than in it, and I’ll be a happy sailor.”
He prayed he could make good on such a simple request.
Chapter 6
Billings, MT
Grace kept the truck stopped on the hilltop. “My mom would be freaking out right now. She hated the city. Heck, she’d be freaking if she saw me driving here. I’d probably be grounded.”
“But that’s your mom, not you, right? How is Grace doing?” Asher spoke in a clinical voice.
“To be honest, I’m freaking out a little, too. I can’t decide if I’m terrified right now because my mom taught me to fear the city, or if I’m not scared at all to prove she was wrong.” Internally, she leaned toward the former. After acting cool and collected during the escape from the mall, her hands and arms were jittery, like being cold. She wore a heavy winter coat, and although the weather was overcast, it was not freezing, so blaming the elements was a hard sell. To fight the shakes, she kept both hands on the wheel to steady herself.
“The good news is this isn’t even a city, really,” Asher said sympathetically. “Billings is more of a town. If you ever get to Denver, you’ll see a real city. It’s huge!”
She lifted an eyebrow. “So, you’re saying it’s going to be a lot worse?”
He was taken aback. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. It’s just that—” He squirmed in his seat. “I meant I’m more familiar with cities a lot bigger than this one. I can help you, keep things from overwhelming you here. You know, big-city guy and small-town girl, keeping it real.”
Logan groaned. “Your mom still grounds you? I thought grounding would end when I moved out.” The black-haired boy leaned forward to insert himself into the conversation.
She chuckled, despite the gravity of her dilemma. “No, Mom and Dad don’t do that anymore. I moved out when I went to college, then I moved a few states away from them. Mom never let me go into the city when I was growing up. I did get grounded a few times when she figured out I broke her rule, however.”
“Yeah, you should listen to your parents,” Logan said matter-of-factly. “They’re only trying to keep you from getting into trouble.”
Asher turned in his seat to face him. “Says the kid caught running by with armfuls of video games. Where are your parents?”
His eyes turned distant. “Those boxes were already stolen. We found them on the floor of the mall, like someone else tipped over a shopping cart full of games. Maybe we should have left them there, but Noah and I decided to take a few. Anyway, my parents wouldn’t care if I robbed a convenience store, much less a game one. They don’t get concerned about anything I do. It’s kind of nice.”
After getting to know Logan for even a short time, she was convinced of the need to get him back to his parents the moment he guided them to the BLM office. The kid’s dirty jeans and threadbare coat hinted that his “accidental” theft probably wasn’t a one-off thing. Robbing a convenience store might not be far outside his worldview. He was a victim of the big city, too, and now had nothing to lose.
Grace steadied her nerves, mostly thanks to Logan’s roundabout offer to help guide her through the city. She put the truck in gear and drove forward. Once underway, the neighborhoods quickly changed from residential back into more retail spaces. The roadways reminded her of Paducah, except without the little antique stores. The shops were an eclectic mix of tourist help centers, native American art, and “cash now” locations. They drove for a couple of minutes before passing a fast-food restaurant with a distinctive red fire truck parked in front.
On a whim, she jerked the wheel to the right and pulled into the lot.
“What are you doing?” Asher asked with surprise.
“Logan, are we close to the Cabela’s?” she said over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” he pointed, “it’s a few blocks that way, a little past the interstate.”
“Okay, great. We’ll drop you off with the fire guys and they’ll make sure you get home.”
She expected an argument, but Logan went quiet.
Asher glanced back at him, then over to her. “Sounds like a good plan.”
Grace guided the truck next to the fire engine, then put it in park. She figured it would be an easy sell for the fire department to help one of their citizens, but there was no one standing around. “Hold up in here. I’m going to go inside and talk to them.”
The door creaked as she got out. The lights flashed silently on top of the engine, leading her to believe everything was normal. However, there still weren’t any people visible around the truck, or even in the windows of the fast-food building. On the upside, there was no fire present either.
“I’ll be right back,” she yelled to her people.
Asher’s door screamed as he opened it. “Wait up! Something’s not right. You shouldn’t go inside. We should leave.”
His pleading reminded her of Mom. She was always quick to point out dangers, real or imagined, when near any hint of civilization. As she always did with her mother, Grace waved off Asher’s warning as overblown concern.
She walked around the back of the engine, then crossed the small lot to go to the door of the restaurant. “I’ll only be a few seconds,” she called out over her shoulder.
Grace pushed through the entryway and stood in the vestibule between a second glass door. The firefighters were inside…right in front of her.
“Crap,” she deadpanned.
The firemen were on the ground, dead. Blood was everywhere, on the floor tiles and up the side of the front counter. Her first impression was that they’d been ambushed and then shot, though her brain couldn’t piece together why anyone would do such a thing.
“Mistake,” she blurted.
She backed out through the front door. “This was a mistake!”
Grace fumbled to free her pistol from the holster. She didn’t feel the least bit like an authority figure, but it was what she imagined a police officer doing, if faced with an identical situation.<
br />
“What is it?” Asher shouted, sounding worried.
“I made a mistake,” she repeated, mantra-style.
She hustled across the parking lot, scanning all around for signs she was about to be ambushed. She visualized someone like Misha as being responsible for the slaughter, but strangely, she was unable to put him neatly into that box. He was a hitman, but he had a code of sorts, and seemingly only killed in pursuit of his prey. A guy like him would never conduct wholesale slaughter.
On the way back around the rear of the pumper truck, she noticed a large medical bag sitting on the bumper. Without thinking of the implications, she grabbed it and walked it over to her truck. After tossing it in through the open rear window, she climbed into her seat, waited for Asher to join her inside, then casually drove off the lot. She assumed it was better to play dumb than to rip tires and make it obvious they’d uncovered a major crime.
“What was in there?” Logan finally asked, exasperation in his voice at her mysterious retreat.
Despite the boy’s question, she glanced over to Asher. She needed to see his calm brown eyes, which at that moment weren’t perfectly calm. They spoke to her in a way she immediately understood. “Grace, are you all right?”
She nodded. “From now on, you’re my city tour guide. If you say something doesn’t seem right, I give you permission to grab me and physically drag me away from the situation.” She gathered in a deep breath. “I should have listened to you back there. God, I should have listened.”
He smiled, silently conveying the words, “I’m here for you.”
She finally looked at Logan in the rearview mirror. “I’ve changed my mind. We’ll take you home after the BLM office, okay? We aren’t leaving you with anyone.”
Grace glanced over to Asher again, all the while gripping the wheel with both hands to hide her shaking. “Everything is going to be fine.”
Grand Tower, IL
“Well, there’s a wonder you don’t see every day,” Ezra remarked. Ahead, a huge rocky island jutted about fifty feet in the air, giving the appearance of a Godzilla-sized creature hunched over in the water. The floodwaters had stripped all greenery from the island, reminding him of the barren and toppled forests back in Kentucky.
“I bet this was a nice place to visit before the rocks came down,” Butch added.
Ezra remained vigilant for the red speedboat, but they were twenty miles upstream from Cape, and they still hadn’t seen it. He’d begun to relax, thinking it had diverted to one of the many side channels of the river created by the flood. If looter pirates were looking for big scores, they’d have better luck near the towns, not out in the country where he and Butch were at the moment.
He pointed ahead. “Looks like there used to be a bridge here.” His first impression was that it reminded him of the Golden Gate Bridge, though it was white rather than red. A tall metal tower stood on each shore, suspension wires dipping between them. However, instead of a road, it seemed to hold a pair of pipelines.
“I think it blew up,” Butch said with awe. The white cable was blackened near the middle of the river, suggesting whatever the pipeline had been carrying detonated when it broke apart over the waterway.
Ezra whistled. “I’m glad we weren’t anywhere close when that happened. It must have been a doozy. Not as big as a meteor falling on a city, mind you, but enough to burn us up if we’d been passing underneath at the time.”
They laughed together for a few seconds before Ezra noticed a man waving on the right bank. A large hill ran along the shoreline, contrasting with the flooded, flat farmland which had been almost everywhere else on the Illinois shore. “Hey, there’re people up on that hill.”
He backed off the throttle, unsure whether to acknowledge the man. “Do you think they need help?”
Butch shrugged. “Maybe they have gas we can buy?”
They’d burned through about a quarter of a tank since they’d filled up with the siphoned gas. He’d planned to drive farther north before stopping at another town, but he admitted it was hard to plan anything when he didn’t own a map. A big town might be around the next bend, or there might not be anything until they reached St. Louis, which he estimated was at the far end of their range.
He turned to Butch. “You okay if I go see what they want?”
The big man shrugged. “I’d be happy to be on shore for a little while.”
The decision made, he turned the boat toward the guy. The river was lower than it had been when the wall of water first came through, but it was still fairly high. Small waves lapped at the rectangular base of what had once been a picnic pavilion. A lone metal picnic table remained chained to a link in the cement. The other tables were gone, as was the roof and most of the poles that once held it up. Butch jumped off the front of the boat when the pontoons ran up on the mud-covered foundation.
The waving guy soon joined them. “Ahoy! Thanks for stopping at our campground.” The man’s clothes were covered with dried mud, like he’d been swimming in the brown-colored water not long ago. He was about the same age as Ezra, though his dirty hair held a lot more gray.
“What can we do for you?” Ezra responded in a friendly voice. He realized there were others behind the man. He’d come down off the hillside, but higher up, where the trees still had leaves, there were dozens of people standing around. A few of them trailed the lead guy, perhaps so they could hear the exchange.
The man stood about ten feet from Butch. Ezra was pleased to see his friend carried his rifle on his back; his own rifle was still propped on the dashboard next to him. Not that he could fend off a whole forest…
“We’re from the town of Grand Tower. It used to be right there.” He pointed south, beyond the swamped picnic table. Given the hint where to look, he noticed a few isolated power poles, the frames of shattered houses, and about three feet of the foundation of one lone, red-brick building.
Ezra was impressed. “How did you all get out of there?”
“We had a few minutes’ warning. The dams broke up north, and the weather service was on the ball reporting it, kind of like a tornado was on the way. We got all the people we could and drove over here to the Devil’s Backbone. Most of us are fine, and we can wait for our families to come collect us, but we do have some injured. We’re hoping you can take them downriver to the hospital in Cape Girardeau.”
His heart deflated. They’d come from Cape and he hated the thought of going backwards. At the same time, he couldn’t pretend to be too busy to avoid helping them. He scratched the back of his neck to deflect for a few moments, before coming to the only conclusion possible. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we could get some gas, would you?”
Going downriver was easy. They could float with the current and not expend a drop of gas, if they had unlimited time. Getting back upriver would be costly on fuel, though. He didn’t think it hurt to ask, especially if he was risking his ability to reach Grace.
The man laughed. “We have Mr. Harris up the hill. He owns the local gas station. I’m sure he would have given you all the gas you needed.”
“That’s great,” he said with a flash of excitement.
“Except the gas station washed away. It’s a muddy plot of land now.”
“Oh,” Ezra said dryly.
A young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen, appeared on the muddy hillside behind the lead man. She was obviously limping, but did all right with the help of two of her friends. Even from twenty yards away, Ezra knew her leg was broken based on how it was wrapped. He couldn’t help but think of Grace…
“I’ll take you guys. We’ll figure out the gas situation on the way. Just, uh, let’s hurry.” The last thing he wanted was to encounter the red speedboat again. Not only would they be exposed out on the river, but he’d be carrying innocent children he’d have to keep safe.
Denver, CO
Dorothy sat at a table with what looked like six laptops and two desktop computers crowded around her seat. The young woman was s
upremely skilled at multitasking, and she hit a keyboard as Petteri walked up.
“Okay, I’ve got the data you’ve asked for. Overnight and this morning, using a combination of satellite imagery, lidar, and on-the-ground observations, I’ve been able to draw a picture of the sitch out there.”
“Sitch?” he queried.
“Situation,” she replied, continuously typing. “Sorry, I’m amped up on Starbucks. Luckily, they’re still serving joe here in Denver. I think the asteroid landed on one of them, but there was another one on the next block.”
He had no idea if she was being serious. His understanding of her generation was woefully inadequate, but as long as she delivered for him, he was willing to endure her fits of incoherency.
“So, I’ve got the best imagery here in the plains states. Wyoming, Colorado, South Dakota, Nebraska. That’s because you’ve already got assets in these states and I was able to use them as directed.” She laughed. “Get it? Use as directed?”
Again, he tolerated her mannerisms, atypical for someone in his organization.
“I see,” he said dryly. “You were saying?”
“Oh, right. So, here is where the biggest rock came down. Denver. We were right about this one. It’s the biggest. The next in line is south of Yellowstone. It was probably adjacent to the Denver piece before they both fell through the atmosphere.” She pointed to the screen with a blunt fingernail.
“And the next one?” he pressed.
“Yeppers,” she said before halting, obviously remembering his dislike for the term. “I mean, yep. The next one is north of here, near Cheyenne, Wyoming. The signature is a bit weird there; I’m still trying to figure out why. However, it’s definitely one of the big ones.”
“Great. You’ve done well.”
She went on to show him another dozen different locations, with varying degrees of confidence on the sizes of the asteroid fragments. Her intel became less certain in the Missouri, Kentucky, and Arkansas areas, though the impact near Nashville was well documented by a film crew from Atlanta. It was almost as large as the piece in Denver.
Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6 Page 44
