Solitude: Dimension Space Book One

by Dean M. Cole

  First sleep, now laughter. Angela felt another cry coming. She punched a padded wall. The impact sent her and the jam tumbling across the module. Both hit the far wall. The jam stuck to the JEM.

  "JEM jam!" she said with a snort.

  Then Angela ricocheted off the same wall and floated back across the room, dissolving into a laughing mess.

  It might have been hysteria, but Angela didn't care. The laughter felt good. Even the tears had. The raw emotions felt cleansing. Whatever had happened on the surface was another world away, literally. It seemed illusory, but this was real, JEM jam and all. She was alive! And she'd be damned if she would give up on that. Director McCree had heard from someone in the zone. She had to believe that it hadn't been a mistake, that someone would come for her.

  Besides, if somebody was alive down there on that unreal world, likely they were going to risk a not insignificant percentage of humanity's remaining population just to come rescue her. They would need to know that she was worth the risk, worth saving.

  She wiped tears from her eyes, and took a deep breath. After blowing that ever-loose strand of hair out of her vision, she nodded.

  "You've got some work to do, Commander Brown. Time to earn that title."

  Chapter 7

  Vaughn put the airport maintenance truck in park. He stepped out of the vehicle, leaving the door open and the engine running. Still numb and in shock, the spacesuited man stared at the piled-up smoking hulks that clogged the big intersection. Pointed in every direction, crumpled vehicles of all sizes filled the crossroads, every one of them driverless. As far as he could see, not a single body occupied any of the vehicles.

  Vaughn cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hello! Anyone, please! I need help. My friend … He's … He …" Vaughn's shoulders slumped. What was the use? His friend was dead, and the scene here was no different than what he'd found at the airport after he'd lost Mark. The thought brought the horrible images rushing back. For a long moment, he just stood there, staring at the intersection's apocalyptic milieu but not seeing any of it.

  A shudder ran down his spine.

  Vaughn had watched that second airplane in the pickup's rearview mirror, but his focus had kept shifting to the red-rimmed crater. It lay along the same line of sight, a dark smudge visible just beneath the mirror's plastic rim.

  Vaughn's bloodshot eyes had flicked up to the rearview. The onrushing airliner loomed largely. As its reflected nose swelled, the wingtips scrolled out of view to the left and right. The screech loosed by the metal structures of the Boeing's tortured belly sounded like the battle cries of the Devil's own legion.

  "I'll be back," Vaughn promised as he focused back on the point of Mark's demise.

  He dropped the truck into gear and punched the accelerator, cutting the wheel hard right and racing the pickup away from the runway perpendicularly. The small crater passed to his left. It felt like a betrayal to just leave, but Vaughn had no choice. He had to find help. Had to find someone who could help him with Mark's … remains.

  The pickup bounced its way across the airfield's hidden mounds. The passenger jet slid through the rearview mirror's field of view, passing directly over the spot where Vaughn and the truck had been sitting only moments before. Then, on his left, it disappeared in a brilliant orange fireball as it joined its friends in the wide-body bonfire. Vaughn was thankful to see that Mark's final resting place had not been disturbed.

  After getting clear of the runway environment, he had searched the airport grounds. He'd still found no sign of life or even bodies. Afterward, Vaughn had returned to Glenn Research Center. The gate between the two facilities refused to open. The security detail was nowhere to be seen, so now a broken red and white-striped plank rested on the pavement just inside the checkpoint, and the truck was down one headlight.

  He drove through the entire compound without seeing anyone. Eventually, Vaughn found an open maintenance shed. After grabbing a roll of black plastic sheeting and a shovel, he returned to the airfield.

  Vaughn draped a plastic sheet across the small crater that contained his friend's pulverized remains. He couldn't stand the thought of buzzards gnawing on Mark's shattered body. Not that he'd seen any birds. Vaughn supposed they were keeping their distance from the still burning airplanes … Unless they'd gone the way of everyone else. He piled enough dirt around the plastic's perimeter and its center to ensure the visqueen wouldn't blow away. Afterward, Vaughn fashioned a cross from aircraft wires and two aluminum struts scavenged from strewn wreckage. He pounded it into the ground adjacent to the plastic and then saluted.

  "You deserve better than this, Colonel Hennessy." Breathing heavily, he added, "As soon as I can find some help, we'll come back for you, Mark."

  Then he'd climbed back into the truck and crossed the airport grounds, driving through Glenn Research Center without stopping or slowing down. Heading northwest, he'd passed through the heavily wooded area north of the compound without spotting people or birds or even so much as a damned squirrel.

  What the fuck had happened? How in the hell could people and animals just … disappear?

  He hadn't stopped the truck until he'd come upon this clogged intersection.

  Now Vaughn walked toward it, weaving between the crashed and crumpled empty cars that littered the street as well as the sidewalks.

  Reaching an impasse, he climbed onto the top of a three-foot-long clump of metal that looked more like an accordion than a car.

  In his grass- and mud-stained spacesuit, Vaughn unsteadily stood upright and cupped his hands around his mouth again. "Hello?!"

  He stretched his neck, turning his head side to side, desperately seeking the sound of a reply over the roar of distant fires.

  Nothing, not a goddamned peep!

  He scanned the intersecting roads. In all four directions, to the limit of his vision, nothing moved on the ground or in the air, save the pervasive smoke.

  Vaughn did a double take, his eyes returning to a flat-sided UPS truck. It sat in front of a store a hundred feet from the intersection. The driver had probably been making a delivery when it happened—whatever the hell it was. Just to the right of the vehicle, an SUV protruded from the store's shattered display window.

  Like an island of civility, the brown panel truck stood unblemished despite the near miss with the careening SUV as well as the demolition derby-like destruction that crowded the road and sidewalks for hundreds of feet in every direction.

  For some reason, Vaughn's eyes kept going to the yellow words inscribed on the side of the truck:

  WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?

  He had seen the same question written across the flank of a UPS cargo jet parked on the ramp at the airport. They'd drawn his eyes then, too. It was a popular slogan from over a decade ago, but the shipping company had recently rebooted it. For some reason, the words seemed to hold special meaning today. He could feel something there, something tickling the back of his mind, but the harder he tried to bring it forward, the more elusive it became.

  Vaughn shook his head and dragged his eyes from the UPS truck. He scanned the streets that fed into the intersection. It appeared that, after their occupants had vanished, all of the cars and trucks had simply continued until they'd hit something or been hit.

  Beyond the intersection, on the outside radius of an elevated curving portion of Interstate 480, piled vehicles still burned. As with the crossing roads, the cars and trucks up there had piled up when they ran out of clear, straight road.

  Vaughn flinched as an explosion rattled the ubiquitous pebbles of shattered safety glass. A fresh plume of black smoke rose from behind the building fronted by the UPS truck. It looked like the fire was coming from the next block over. Probably another vehicle's gas tank had cooked off. It was the third one he'd heard since arriving at the intersection.

  Columns of smoke still littered the city's skyline, but some of them now appeared much larger. About a half-mile away, raging flames engulfed an entire condominium complex
.

  Vaughn looked at his smartphone again. The data network was still down. He couldn't access any sites. He'd grabbed the phone upon returning to the NASA facility in search of plastic. He had already called all but one number in his contact list. Even the pharmacy outside of Fort Drum, New York. On that call, Vaughn had navigated through their telephonic maze until it finally gave him the option to speak with a real live pharmacist. He didn't need one, but he'd take anyone he could get at this point. After six rings, a recorded voice told him that no one was available to take his call. Vaughn elected not to leave his name, number, and date of birth. Instead, he jabbed a finger into the screen, ending the call.

  A moment later, he stared at the new name he'd selected, the one number he'd yet to try, unable to bring himself to it.

  A trembling finger hovered over the contact's name.

  What if she didn't answer?

  But if she did…

  He closed his eyes.

  After a long sigh, Vaughn touched the glowing name. The smiling face of a gray-haired woman beamed at him from the screen.

  The warbling tone of the first ring blared from the speakerphone. It echoed off the nearby buildings.

  Then another.

  And then a third.

  Vaughn tilted his head back and stared at the smoke-hazed blue sky.

  Fourth ring.

  The son closed his eyes and whispered, "Please, Mom. Please answer."

  The fifth ring cut out mid-tone.

  Vaughn's eyes flew open.

  "Hello, this is Vera Singleton. Please leave a message after the beep thingy. God bless you."

  Vaughn attempted to swallow down the lump in his throat. He batted away a tear that tried to leak from his right eye.

  "She's probably at her yoga class," Vaughn lied to himself as he ended the call.

  But what if she wasn't, what if…?

  No! She was all Vaughn had. The events that had driven them to Boulder during his adolescence had strengthened their bond. Even before this screwed-up year had taken so much, so many others from him, the man had always been close to his mother.

  And now…

  After a long moment, Vaughn shook his head. "To hell with this."

  He stepped off the crumpled car, almost slipping in the mud that had sloughed off of the spacesuit. Following his muddy trail, he walked back to the airport truck and climbed in. Vaughn slammed the door hard enough to make the rolled down window rattle in its frame. Starting the engine and dropping the pickup into drive, he punched the throttle. Tires squealed their protest. The powder blue and white truck swapped ends enshrouded in the blue smoke of burning rubber. Having reversed directions, the truck fishtailed down the street, racing back toward the NASA facility.

  The truck eased to a stop. Vaughn placed it in park and killed the ignition. He sat there looking through the windshield for a long, silent moment. The man still couldn't grasp what had happened, but it was time to leave Cleveland, to broaden his search.

  But first, there was something he needed to take care of.

  Vaughn stepped out of the vehicle and closed the door. Looking behind the truck, he gazed down the length of the runway. Judging by the wreckage, it had been a while since another plane had belly-landed here. By now, any aircraft that had had its flight director preprogrammed to fly to Cleveland had either arrived or crashed somewhere else.

  Vaughn grabbed a shovel from the back of the truck and walked toward the waiting task. He shook his head. No, this wasn't a task, it was his duty. Mark had been the best friend he'd ever had, and he wasn't about to leave him like this. Obviously, he hadn't found help. He supposed he could've gotten a backhoe for this, but that seemed too industrial, too impersonal. Lieutenant Colonel Mark Hennessy deserved a hell of a lot better than that.

  A few feet from the plastic-covered crater, Vaughn jabbed the blade of the shovel into the ground. On the way there, he'd stopped by the facility's locker room and changed back into his camouflaged Army flight suit. Instead of a spacesuit, tan combat boots now adorned his feet. The beige neoprene sole of the right one slammed into the top lip of the shovel, driving it deeper into the scoured, raw earth. Vaughn wrenched the handle and pried up a wedge-shaped chunk of soil.

  He slung the dirt aside and then speared the earth anew with his pitiful implement. Already, he was starting to breathe heavily.

  An hour and a half later, his uniform soaked with sweat, Vaughn jabbed the shovel into the ground next to the hole. He'd taken several breaks but had finally reached a depth that he judged to be respectfully deep and adequate for the solemn task.

  Leaning against the shovel and panting, he cast a forlorn glance toward the nearest edge of the black visqueen. Vaughn shook his head. "It should've been me!" Pausing, he swept his arm in a long, arcing gesture. "I shouldn't be the one to survive this fucking mess." Leaving the shovel, he walked to the edge of the small crater left by the tumbling turbojet engine. Looking down through tear-muddled eyes, he said, "You should've left me, goddammit! You would've gotten clear if you hadn't waited for my slow ass to start running."

  With the side of his boot, Vaughn shoved the nearest portion of the ringing mound of dirt off of the plastic sheet. Bending over, he grabbed the edge of the visqueen and began to pull it back. The soil he'd put on top of it sloughed off, and the plastic peeled away from the ground wetly, leaving a red stippled surface in its wake. As Vaughn continued the morbid reveal, recognizable parts of his friend came into view.

  "Oh shit," he croaked through his constricting larynx. Gnashing his teeth together, he made a sharp head shake. "Pull it together, Singleton!" he said with a growl.

  Another hour later, he tamped down the last of the earth over Colonel Hennessy's grave. He trudged back to the impact crater in boots that seemed to weigh a ton. Vaughn wrestled the makeshift cross out of the ground. Returning to the mounded earth, he pounded it into place at the head of the gravesite.

  Standing back, Vaughn saluted again. "You were a good man, Mark, a better friend than I deserved, and you deserve better than this."

  Sweat dripped from his face as he lowered the salute. Vaughn wanted to say more, felt like he should say a lot more, but none of this felt real. He half-expected to see Mark come strolling across the field and tell him that it was all just a big joke.

  Ha ha…

  He knew better, knew it was all too real, but it was just too much for one man to absorb.

  Vaughn stared at the sweat that dripped from the hat in his wringing hands. Dragging his eyes from the camouflaged cap, he looked at the provisional cross.

  In choked words, Vaughn said, "I'm sorry, friend."

  The truck came to a sliding stop in front of a large NASA hangar. Vaughn stepped out of the pickup. Standing in the parking lot, he looked to the left of the large blue building. Faint smoke wafted lazily from the heap of broken and burned-out airplane hulls on the far side of the airport.

  Vaughn closed his eyes. A mental image of Mark filled the visual void. The man stood in knee-deep grass. In his spacesuit, he looked like a surreally misplaced astronaut. He still bore the amazed smile generated by their close call with the careening airplane. Then the man's grinning visage disappeared in the blink of his mind's eye. In his wake, a dirt geyser shot into the air.

  Vaughn's eyes flew open. He turned from the field, and another of the day's mysteries scrolled into view. His brows furrowed as he stared at the cargo plane he'd seen earlier. Now it stood just across the fence from him, parked in front of the UPS package processing facility.

  Again, Vaughn's eyes went to the yellow lettering.

  "WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?"

  He felt that nagging realization trying to percolate up from the shadowed depths of his subconscious.

  "Why in the hell does that mean something to me?"

  After staring for several long seconds, he shook his head. It wouldn't come.

  Whatever it was, it could wait.

  The Army aviator walked to the small office d
oor at the front right of the hangar. As he'd suspected, it was unlocked. Vaughn glanced over his shoulder. After looking at the recently reincarnated UPS slogan, he shook his head, unable to make the connection. Finally, he turned and entered the hangar.

  Banal elevator music echoed through the labyrinth corridors of the building's front offices. The smell of burned coffee wafted through its white halls and cubicles. He pushed through a set of double doors and entered the main hangar bay. Here the familiar scents of hydraulic oil and cleaning solvent purged the acrid odors from his sinuses.

  Vaughn walked to the far side of the facility and then pressed a green button. As if announcing a retreating truck, a beeping alert echoed through the hangar, and the hundred-foot-tall steel doors began to roll open on their tracks.

  A few minutes later, an ancient aircraft tug backed out of the hangar. It chased the billowing blue smoke produced by its old engine. The vehicle passed between the fully opened doors with a yellow tow bar hooked to its retreating front end. Then, rolling backward, the tailwheel and tilted tail rotor of a Black Hawk helicopter emerged from the opening. Finally, the rest of the glossy black and gold fuselage of the US Customs and Border Protection UH-60L slid into view.

  The tug's engine roared, and another cloud of blue smoke billowed across the sea of concrete. The boxy metal vehicle's low-geared transmission whined as it attained its top speed of ten miles per hour. When the helicopter reached the center of the tarmac, Vaughn brought the coupled crafts to a stop and then stepped down from the tug's top-mounted seat.

  He squatted next to the helicopter's tailwheel. His knees barked with pain. Vaughn grabbed the tow bar's release pin and pulled. It wouldn't budge. "Damnit!" He felt his face flush with the exertion. He yanked on the handle. His fat jiggled with each pull. Then the pin released with a loud pop.

  Vaughn fell hard on his ass, his teeth clicking together. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He spit a wad of the red stuff onto the white pavement.