Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Don’t get too comfortable. I don’t care what Misha said back there. You’ll still need to ask my dad’s permission to date me.” He’d joked about talking to her father before, so she tossed it back at him in a friendly way. It was, she admitted to herself, a distraction for expressing her emotions, but she had to stay true to her mission. If she got all slobbery with Ash as her heart was constantly asking her to do, she might miss Nerio or a hundred other threats. For now, her focus needed to remain on finishing their battle. Then she’d worry about the peace.

  She really looked forward to it, however.

  Grace clasped his hand and squeezed.

  Kansas City, KS

  “You can’t do this,” the leader of the roadblock said, putting his carbine down.

  Haley and Butch swooped in and took their weapons and phones. Then they herded the three TKM guards into an open area on the highway.

  “After what you guys did, you should be worrying more about what we can do, rather than what we can’t.” Ezra laughed. “We can make you walk up this highway to meet the people injured by the rock blast. We can make you go into the surrounding neighborhoods and apologize for keeping them in the dark about what’s really going on in the city. Or, I guess, we could put bullets in you here and now, saving everyone a lot of trouble.”

  Haley seemed uncomfortable about his acting, but he didn’t blame her. They hadn’t planned what he would say once she and Butch had made it to the roadblock, but he hoped they knew him well enough to know he wasn’t capable of shooting anyone in cold blood. However, he did want to scare the men.

  They raised their hands in surrender.

  Ezra pointed his rifle at their feet. “I want you to walk away.” He pointed behind them, toward the city.

  “Don’t shoot us,” one of them begged.

  “I ain’t planning on it, unless you turn around and make a run at me. All I want to see is you walking in that direction. What you do when we’re gone is your decision. But don’t you dare turn around until you see the sign welcoming you to the state of Missouri.” He assumed there was a Missouri sign close to where he’d spotted the Kansas billboard with the sunflower. It was at least a mile away.

  “We will,” the leader said, slowly backing away from Ezra and his armed friends.

  “Go!” he ordered.

  The three TKM men trotted away for a few seconds, then slowed to a brisk walk. He wasn’t going to nitpick. As long as they moved away, he would allow it.

  “Well, now what?” Butch asked, stoically watching the men retreat.

  Ezra got to work searching the three trucks. He found food, water, ammo, and a gun-cleaning kit. The men had made few preparations for helping the locals, but they came prepared to grease and clean their own weapons. It was the TKM way in a nutshell. When he tossed all the valuable gear into the middle truck, he came up for air to respond to Butch’s question. “Guys, I know where Grace is going to be. I have a pretty good idea what we’re going to find when we get there. I also have a clear idea on how we’re going to get ourselves there.”

  They gave him blank looks.

  He patted the door of the truck. “We’ll drive there posing as a jolly crew of TKM assholes.”

  “To Yellowstone?” Haley asked.

  “Close to there, yes. Grace told me she’s going to TKM’s Wyoming dig site, so that’s my destination. There are two other trucks here. If either, or both, of you wants to turn around, I give you my blessing to take a truck and go your own way. For me, my path lies there.” He pointed west.

  Butch and Haley shared a friendly smile. Butch looked back to him. “I think we’d like to stick with you. Speaking for myself, if we’re finally off the water, I’ll be in a better frame of mind to provide overwatch.”

  Haley jumped in. “And I can help keep the two of you in shape.” She frowned at Ezra. “I noticed you lagging behind when we were on the run.”

  “Please don’t make me pull a huge tire,” he mockingly pleaded.

  “No, but I could hook a rope to the front bumper of a truck and make you pull that.” She remained serious for a moment, then cracked up.

  “You two are okay sticking with me? It really isn’t—”

  Butch cut him off. “You didn’t happen to see wire cutters in these trucks, did you?”

  He wasn’t sure what to make of the question, but he had seen a small toolbox. When they looked inside, Butch grabbed what he needed. Then, without waiting for approval, he walked over to the side truck and quickly cut the valve stem on each tire. The air whooshed out, soon giving the truck four flat tires.

  When Butch saw them watching him, he explained. “They won’t be able to use these trucks until someone comes in with new stems. It will give us plenty of time to escape, and make it hard for those guys to report back in. It looks like these trucks don’t even have radios.”

  “You read my mind,” Ezra admitted.

  “Remind me never to piss you off,” Haley jested as she patted Butch on the arm.

  “This is nothing. I used to put ball bearings in the valve caps of dirtbags I didn’t like back in high school. Over the course of a school day it would slowly let air out of their tires. When they came out to the parking lot, they’d waste so much time airing them back up. I’d laugh the whole time.”

  “Good to know,” she said dryly.

  Butch smiled. “I’ve always been mechanically inclined, I guess. Nowadays, I put my skills to better use.”

  Ezra took a peek at the men far down the highway. They’d made good on their promise to keep going. It gave him the ability to get in the last truck without fear of them coming back to stop them. “There’s plenty of room in the crew cab. Haley, why don’t you take the back seat? Since you have the least experience with guns, maybe Butch can show you how to clean our rifles, plus the new ones we’ve picked up. It will help you learn more about them, for sure.”

  “I can get in the back seat with her,” Butch said matter-of-factly. “Just until we have them all cleaned. Then I’ll get in the front to keep watch again.”

  Haley spoke up before he could reply. “It would be nice to have a teacher next to me. It would be hard for us both if he had to look back from the front seat.”

  Ezra took it in stride. They were making huge concessions in their lives to go on his cross-country adventure. The least he could do was let them have some time together. There was no need to have a girls’ area and a boys’ area, like those lost tents.

  “All right. I don’t care where you sit. Get in before I leave you both behind!” He climbed into the front seat, watching with humor as they scrambled one after the other through the rear door. When they were settled, and he saw them in his mirror, he had a flashback of one of Grace’s first dates to a movie theater. She and some boy whose name he couldn’t remember sat in the back of his Jeep. He eyed the couple warily in his rearview mirror, making sure her date didn’t try anything with his precious daughter. Grace once caught sight of him peeking, but she didn’t scowl; instead, she smiled. It was one of those rare instances where he thought she understood why he and her mother were always so protective of her.

  This time he did not look back again.

  He clapped once, in homage to the game he’d once played with his wife and now his daughter. A game he desperately wanted to continue face-to-face with Grace.

  “To Yellowstone!”

  Dig

  The Impact Series Book 6

  Chapter 1

  Old Faithful, Yellowstone, WY

  “Did you ever think you’d see this place again?” Asher asked Grace, while standing next to the burned-out husk of the Old Faithful Inn. Built in 1904, it was once the largest log hotel in America. As the centerpiece of the Old Faithful tourist area, she’d been taught basic facts about it during her park ranger orientation. She’d been inside a few times, always marveling and gawking at the spacious interior like any other tourist. However, now it was nothing but piles of bed springs, charred logs, and the solemn re
mains of the foundry-sized stone fireplace.

  Grace paused to think it over before replying. “I always knew I’d come back, but I didn’t figure it would be this soon.” It had been three days since they’d survived the attack by Nerio and her husband. She and Asher had split up from Shawn’s people as part of their combined strategy. Shawn and his Crow people stuck with Randy and his train. They planned to come at the dig site from the south. Her mission was to return to Yellowstone National Park and round up all the law enforcement rangers she could find. However, after a quick pass through Mammoth Hot Springs to confirm the place was abandoned, they’d gone to the middle of the park and found the same thing at Old Faithful. Several square miles of parking lot had once provided barely enough room for all the tourists to park their minivans and touring RVs. Today, it was a ghost town coated in black soot.

  Asher pointed with excitement. “There! Look at those people.” He pointed across the flat gravel field surrounding the Old Faithful geyser. The geyser itself sat inside a wide ring of flat benches spaced about fifty yards from the water feature. The rocks provided another hundred yards of buffer between the geyser and the ruined hotel. The trees were blackened on the hillside far beyond Old Faithful, which made the people’s bright clothing stand out.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said with frustration. “The whole world has gone to pot and there are still tourists trying to get themselves burned with scalding hot water.” On the way into the park, she was shocked to find the gates were wide open, with no one manning them. She didn’t have the authority to close and lock them, but she did shut them. Still, she’d assumed closing them was unnecessary. Everyone knew the asteroid had effectively ended the tourist season, right?

  “Come on, we have to hurry.”

  “Why?” He looked up in the sky. “Is the helicopter back?”

  They’d spent part of their journey avoiding Nerio in her helicopter, but the last few days had devolved into a series of cat-and-mouse encounters with other aircraft. Although they weren’t sure they were being watched or followed, they always used caution and assumed they were being hunted by TKM. Whenever they spotted activity in the sky, they did everything possible to avoid it.

  “No,” she replied, now running across the hundred yards of gravel. “But those people are in danger.”

  She yelled ahead, unsure if they would hear her. “Hey! Get out of there!”

  They ran up to the semicircle of benches. Fifty feet away, a crusty white crater started spewing bursts of steaming water from its top in ever larger quantities. It seemed to defy logic that the tourists would stand right where the water from Old Faithful was about to fully erupt. What were they thinking?

  “Hey!” she shouted, hesitating at the bench.

  The hiss of the geyser made it difficult for the people to hear her, or so she assumed. None of them were looking back at her. Instead, they pointed and hopped from rock to rock to get a better view of the steamy stream, still growing in intensity.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we have to go out there.”

  He looked at her. “Won’t they figure it out?” Asher absently slapped his boot in a large puddle. All the seats were wet, as was the soot-stained walkway. It looked like it had rained recently.

  Old Faithful could send water almost two hundred feet in the air. If the people were lucky enough to stand upwind, the spray might not touch them at all, despite being so close. However, the wind seemed to blow in her face; all of them would soon be doused with super-heated water. As much as she wanted to let them learn a hard lesson so she could get on with her more important mission, she couldn’t let them get burned. Then she’d be saddled with finding medical help for them.

  “Come on, Ranger. This is what we do.” She hopped off the wooden walkway and went onto the open ground around the geyser. Unlike the thin crust at Mammoth Hot Springs, people had been standing too close to Old Faithful for over a hundred years. She didn’t have to worry about falling into subterranean channels of water.

  Asher followed a moment later. The ground rumbled as she went. It had such force it was necessary to halt and observe.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Something new,” she said with concern. “It’s never done that before.”

  It wasn’t a random grouping of tourists in front of her. It was three teenaged kids and their parents. The two young boys were hanging out on the white rocks next to the building stream of water, already getting wisps of hot steam blown their way. The teen girl and her mother gave the geyser the most distance. The father hovered between the two groups, as if unsure if he should stay back or move forward. He probably didn’t realize all of them were much too close.

  She still had half the distance to cover, but she needed to get their attention over the increasingly loud roar of water. The last thing she ever would have done a week ago was pull out a pistol, clear the safety, then fire a round into the air, but she did it to save them. When the gun went off, the family’s heads whipped around.

  Grace waved and screamed, “Get out of there!”

  They didn’t respond in the way she expected, though she should have known better. The mother and father flashed her the okay sign, then seemed to shout and wave their kids to one side. Instead of going away from the turbulent chop of spray and steam, they tried to move around it, toward the upwind side.

  “Are you people stupid?” Asher said with despair.

  The ground rumbled with more force than before. A lone jet of water came out of the geyser spout, spraying them all with a hot mist. That’s when the screams began.

  Grace didn’t have the time to explain the tourist mindset. Being outdoors in the presence of Mother Nature didn’t affect everyone the same way. Most people stayed on the benches and watched the spectacle from afar. Others turned off their common sense and walked right up to the edge of the crater to watch it. They were the same type of people who beat their chests or hurled insults to provoke the buffalo, then complained the loudest when the big animals charged them. It happened every season. Despite her private feelings, it was her duty to protect visitors, even the idiotic ones. She bumped Asher. “We have to pull them out. They aren’t getting the picture. I think they’re panicking.”

  “I’m not doing much better,” he said in a loud voice. “Is this shaking normal?”

  Some of the small rocks sitting on top of the bare ground bounced and scrambled, as if a titan were shaking the land to pan for gold. Soon it would be difficult to stand, much less run.

  “No, this is far from normal. I think the falling rock changed something. We have to hurry!”

  The family stumbled on their sideways walk, but she ran toward them to help. Ahead, the normally predictable and well-behaved Old Faithful geyser was now a feral dog, spewing alternating blasts of steam and bucket-like heaves of water over its sides. If the shaking and rumbling was any indication of what was coming, they only had seconds to get clear.

  When she got right up to the family, she roared in a decidedly un-park ranger-like tone.

  “Run for your freaking lives!”

  Green River, WY

  “I can’t believe we’re almost to Grace.” Ezra wiped sweat from his brow. They’d spent the night in a functioning hotel, but walking across the parking lot in the morning sunshine already had him ready for the air conditioning of the truck.

  “Three days on the highway,” Butch replied, not sounding rested at all. “It should have taken us twelve hours, tops, in the old days.”

  He agreed with the sentiment. Much of their trip was taken on side roads rather than the main highways. Part of it was because he was certain TKM was going to come looking for their stolen truck, but there was more to it. The interstates were filled with refugees, construction equipment, and military vehicles. Listening to the radio, he was able to piece together the various dig sites of the fallen asteroid fragments. Those locations were attractive to treasure hunters and miners intent on scoring some of the preci
ous ore, but they were also repulsive to civilians desperate to escape the looting and gun battles common around each of the sites. The National Guard was mobilized everywhere, according to the news, but they weren’t anywhere to be seen in the chaos of the high plains. Ezra had to drive on remote two-lane roads to avoid population centers and traffic jams between Kansas City and the western half of Wyoming.

  Haley came out of the lobby last. “I’ve been studying the map. The turnoff to head north is at the other end of town. We’re basically there if we can get through traffic.”

  They’d done their research. The piece of asteroid which had scraped the treetops of Yellowstone National Park had bounced south and came to a stop in a broad valley between the towns of Big Piney and Boulder. He’d looked at the map, too. They had about seventy-five miles to go. The problem was the highway, as always. She was right about traffic. It was legendary.

  “I think that’s the same truck we saw last night,” Butch exclaimed, pointing to the interstate about a mile away. “The highway hasn’t moved.” It looked like a construction site, there were so many dump trucks, flatbeds carrying tractors, and giant mobile cranes.

  Ezra paused. “You really think it’s the same one?”

  Butch shrugged. “Maybe. It sure doesn’t look like it’s moving. Not even an inch.”

  “The map says we’re getting off the highway and onto a two-lane road again. It will take us directly north to the site.”

  Ezra walked again. “That explains it. This packed highway is trying to merge onto a smaller two-lane strip of pavement to go north toward the dig. Maybe it was a mistake to take the night off. Now we may never reach her.”

  He tried not to get himself down. Ezra had talked to Grace a few times the past few days. He was aware of her choice to go to Yellowstone Park, but they’d agreed it didn’t make sense for him to follow her there since she planned to keep moving. She was going to meet him at the dig site itself with any rangers she could enlist to help her.