by Dean M. Cole
"That's great!"
Angela walked haltingly toward Vaughn. As she drew within a foot, the woman stumbled toward him.
With panicked urgency, the man threw his arms around her waistline, but then her lips were on his.
Shocked, Vaughn froze. Then he returned the kiss, softly pressing his lips to hers.
After a long, wonderful moment, Angela leaned back in his arms and stared at him with her beautiful hazel eyes. "You're my hero, Captain Singleton. You saved me … Twice!"
Vaughn felt his face flush.
She ran a hand across that now-smooth face. "I like this. You clean up nice, Captain."
He'd shaved off the beard two days earlier. "I thought you hadn't even noticed."
"Oh, I noticed," she said, running her hand along his chin again.
Vaughn's empty stomach suddenly joined the conversation, rumbling loudly.
"I see someone noticed my cooking." Angela released him and walked toward the kitchenette.
Good thing. Had the woman lingered any longer, she would've known that her cooking wasn't the only thing Vaughn noticed.
He looked toward the bubbling pot. "How could I miss it? That smells delicious. What is it?"
"Chicken stew. I had to scavenge through several bags of the military rations you found before I had enough to make a meal."
"Well, it smells awesome." He gave her a knowing look. "And it can't be any worse than the gruel I've been making."
Angela stepped up to the countertop. "No comment." She grabbed a wooden spoon and began to stir the stew.
Vaughn set bowls and spoons on the table. Then he opened the refrigerator and pulled out two brown bottles. The man held up the beers. "Feel up to one?"
Angela nodded enthusiastically.
The woman had risen another notch in his already high estimation when she'd previously proclaimed her love of all things beer.
Vaughn set the tall bottles next to the bowls.
Angela stepped next to him and ladled generous portions of stew into each bowl. As they sat down, the woman hoisted questioning eyebrows. "So where have you been for the last couple of hours?"
Vaughn smiled. "I've been working on a little project."
She picked up her spoon and then looked at him with eyebrows that said, "Go ahead."
"Nope, not going to ruin the surprise."
After a long, appraising stare, Angela nodded. "Okay … for now."
"Is this really necessary?" Angela said as she stumbled over another unseen obstacle. "Wearing a blindfold while walking through post-apocalyptic Tripoli just doesn't seem like a good idea."
"I won't let you fall," Vaughn said. Holding her arm, he steered Angela in a new direction. "Just a few more steps to go."
After dinner, the captain had driven her to the port area from their hotel. Before letting Angela out of the car, Vaughn had insisted on blindfolding her. From their parking spot, she had only been able to see a very narrow channel of water. However, since donning the blindfold, she estimated they had walked a couple of hundred yards toward the shoreline.
Vaughn released her elbow. She heard him move behind her. Placing both hands on her shoulders, he turned her a few degrees to the right. "That should be perfect."
"Can I look now?"
"Oh! What was I thinking?" Vaughn said with that familiar smile in his voice. He began to fumble with the knots on the blindfold. A moment later, it slipped from her eyes.
Directly across from her lay the most beautiful ship Angela had ever seen. From their observation point behind and right of the ship, she stared, mouth agape, at its eloquent curving lines. They looked almost organic. Windows and hatchways blended so smoothly into its surface that it was difficult to see where one left off and the other began.
"Oh, Vaughn … It's beautiful."
"It's a mega yacht." The man dangled a set of golden keys. "And she's all yours." He pointed at the back of the ship. "See?"
Angela gasped and then laughed. "I can't believe you did that!"
Vaughn moved to stand next to her. His smooth, handsome face sported a huge smile.
On the back of the boat, a squared-off area of slightly different color made it apparent that its original name had been painted over. A new epithet scribed in broad, flowing letters now adorned the ship's aft bulkhead:
Angela's Dream
"I spent the last week cleaning and stocking it." Vaughn pried open her right hand and dropped the keys into it.
Angela just stared at them mutely.
The man grabbed her elbow and urged her along. "Come see."
They spent the next hour touring the ship's labyrinthine halls and passageways. Its opulence left her speechless. Angela had no doubt that all of the gold trimmings were exactly that, pure gold.
Vaughn beamed as he guided her into the galley. Judging by its overstocked pantry, he had raided all of the kitchens within twenty miles of the port.
Angela smiled. "Show me the bridge."
Vaughn's grin broadened. "This way, ma'am."
A few minutes later, they emerged from a passageway and stepped onto a high-tech control deck.
"This looks more like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise," Angela said. "How can just the two of us control all this?"
"We don't have to. It's all state-of-the-art. I read an article about this ship a few months ago. Some sheik had commissioned it out of a shipyard in Virginia. It can practically run itself."
Angela nodded appreciably. "I don't see any dinghies. Not every place has a port like this. How are we going to get to shore?"
"We have several boats on-board. They're hidden behind retractable watertight bulkheads." Vaughn held up a finger and then walked toward one of the forward panels. "However, there's an easier way." With an exaggerated flourish, he pressed a big red button.
She felt a clunk through her shoes. Something moved beyond Vaughn. Outside, below the bridge's front window, a panel had started retracting.
Vaughn pointed at the revealed machine and then held out his hands just as Angela had after she'd stood in the suite. "Ta-da!"
A sleek, gold, twin-engine four-bladed helicopter with retractable landing gear sat on the ship's green and yellow helideck.
Angela clapped and giggled. "I believe I know someone who can fly that thing."
Vaughn laughed and then turned toward the exit. "Follow me. There's one more thing I want to show you."
Several passages and hatches later, they stood before a large, ornately trimmed door. Like a game show model presenting the next big gift, Vaughn held both hands toward the door. "Your quarters, ma'am."
When the doors didn't open, Angela took a tentative step forward. With silent solidity, the large doors parted, sliding left and right.
Vaughn nodded. "Every door in the living quarters is actuated by an RFID tag." He pointed down. "I took the liberty of installing one in each of your shoes."
Testing it, Angela took a backward step. The door silently closed. She stepped forward and they reopened. This time she noticed the interior. It was incredible. A huge chandelier hung from the center of a twenty-foot-high ceiling.
"Are you sure this wasn't a ballroom?"
Vaughn shook his head. "Actually, I think you could play basketball in there. But no, this was the main quarters for the previous owners, although I've added a few personal touches just for you."
"Really? Like what?"
"I modified one of your five walk-in closets."
"Five?!"
Vaughn laughed and walked into the room.
Angela followed him toward one of the closets. There was something odd about its interior. The room beyond the gaping frame had an amber glow.
Vaughn arrived at the doorway first. He turned and looked at her with an expectant gaze. The man looked like he was ready to burst.
Angela gave him a questioning look. "What?"
He waved her over. "Come see."
Angela stepped to the doorway.
She stared in shock
ed silence, unable to speak. Finally, her voice returned. She turned to Vaughn and pointed into the room. "You did this." It was a statement, not a question. She snickered. "I can't believe you did this!" Then the giggle dissolved into one of her snort storms. "Oh, my God … Where did you find …" She paused and then swept a hand across the entire scene. "… All of it?"
Vaughn was laughing too hard to talk.
Still snorting, Angela stepped through the open door. From floor to ceiling and wall to wall, a maze of yellow plastic hamster tubes filled the garage-sized closet. Within its expansive confines, she eventually spotted all four of the mice. Angela smiled at the largest of the foursome. "Are you having a good time in there, Nate Junior?"
Nate stood rocking in his now stationary exercise wheel, regarding her over twitching whiskers.
Angela turned to Vaughn.
He suddenly looked uncomfortable under the intensity of her stare.
After a moment, she bent over and pulled off one of her shoes. Standing, she held it out to him. With a devilish grin, she said, "Here's your key, Captain. What do you say you bring over a toothbrush, and we call this our quarters?"
Chapter 35
Vaughn stared at the ornate ceiling. Why had it taken the end of the world for him to find this level of happiness?
Angela's head lay on his chest. Her rhythmic breathing told him she'd fallen asleep.
After she had handed him the shoe, they had walked to the room's massive, satin-clad bed. Their slow, tentative kisses had turned passionate. At first, Vaughn had feared he would hurt her, that she might still be so frail that if he gripped her too tightly, she might break. However, Angela had kissed him hard, had clutched the back of his salt-and-pepper hair with a strength and passion he wouldn't have thought she could muster.
Soon they'd been pawing off clothes, and the room's temperature had seemed to rise by several degrees. Slow, passionate lovemaking had crescendoed into sweaty, fervent thrusting. Finally, they had collapsed into one another.
Presently, Angela began to snore lightly.
Vaughn dragged a violet satin sheet across the woman. As he stared at her sleeping form, the man traced the lines of her face with the fingers of his left hand. They glided frictionlessly across her sweat-glistened skin.
"Where do we go from here?"
Angela's eyes fluttered open. She looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then she gave the man a wry smile. "Switzerland."
Vaughn blinked his confusion. Through stitched eyebrows, he said, "What?"
"We need to go to Switzerland. And thanks to you, the first part of that journey will be oh so comfortable." She finished the sentence with a long, contented sigh.
"Switzerland?" He smiled. "Got a hankering for some good chocolate?"
Angela shook her head, and her look suddenly turned serious. "No, that's not it."
"What, then? What's in Switzerland?"
"The center."
"The center of what?"
Angela swept an arm across the sheets in a long, broad arc. "Everything, I think."
"You're not making any sense. Are you still asleep?"
She stared into his eyes intently. "No, Vaughn. Thanks to you, I'm thinking clearer than I have in months." She looked around the room. "And for the first time in a long while, I don't have to worry about how I'm going to live through another day. I can concentrate on tomorrow, but more importantly on what happened two months ago."
A measure of understanding dawned across the man's face. "Okay, but what does Switzerland have to do with the Disappearance?"
Angela sat up and stared at him with her deep, penetrating eyes. "It's the epicenter."
Vaughn shook his head. "I'm sorry, you lost—"
"I saw it," Angela said, cutting him off. Before he could speak, she continued. "I saw the energy wave."
Vaughn nodded. "Yeah. Told me that before."
Angela returned his nod. "Yes, but there are some things I haven't mentioned."
Vaughn raised questioning eyebrows.
"When we passed over the Alps, I couldn't see the wave anymore. When I reported that to McCree in Mission Control, he told me that we were over the epicenter."
Vaughn nodded again. "So what makes you think it's Switzerland? Why not France?"
"Actually, Captain." She paused and then gave him a meaningful look. "It's under both."
Vaughn's eyes widened. "CERN?"
Angela smiled. "Bingo! The fact that the world's largest supercollider just happens to lie at the epicenter of this shit storm strikes me as a little more than coincidence."
Vaughn stared at her for a long moment, mouth agape. Finally, he closed it and then whispered, "Holy shit."
"But there's more." The woman's face darkened. Then she told Vaughn an incredible story about disappearing nukes, gravity wave anomalies, and overflowing lakes and rivers.
Vaughn shook his head. "A gravity flower?"
Angela's eyes cleared, and she focused on him. "Yeah. Looked like a daisy. Big center, long, thin petals."
Vaughn chewed on his cheek for a moment. Finally, he said, "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
Angela pursed her lips. "I thought about it, but you had so many other things going on, I didn't want to add anything else to your plate."
Vaughn nodded thoughtfully and then grinned self-consciously. "Yeah, probably not a bad idea."
"But now that you've nursed me back to health, it's time to find out what happened."
"Okay," Vaughn said. "What do you think we'll find? I mean, what in the hell could they have done at CERN to cause this?"
Angela shook her head. "That's the thing I've been trying to wrap my head around. We weren't doing anything with our supercollider that nature hasn't done millions of times. Cosmic rays regularly collide with far greater energies than we can produce. Then there are the gravity waves. We don't even know how to generate them."
The way she emphasized 'we' made Vaughn pause. Then his eyes widened. "You think there's someone else involved!"
Angela nodded and then looked down. "The way the gravity lines matched those rivers …" she said, suddenly sounding defensive. Her eyes raised to meet Vaughn's. "They almost looked like … I don't know … tentacles reaching out for something."
"Reaching out for what?"
"I don't know!" Angela said. Her gaze fell back to the floor.
Vaughn placed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up.
"I believe you, Angela."
"Do you, really?"
The man nodded. "Yes, of course, I do."
She visibly relaxed. "Thank you."
Vaughn kissed her and then leaned back. "So what do we do next?"
Angela smiled. "Let's go sailing, Captain, get a closer—"
Suddenly, the entire ship rocked as if struck by a huge wave. Then a shadow darkened the room's windows. After exchanging startled glances, Vaughn and Angela ran to the nearest port and threw open its curtains. A torrential downpour fell from a blue sky. Then the strangely confined column of rain moved out to sea, and the sun returned.
Standing naked at the window, the couple exchanged another confused glance. Then a metallic wedge appeared in the sky. As they watched in open-mouthed amazement, an entire supertanker slid into view as it glided northward a thousand feet in the air.
At the image of a million tons of steel flying over their heads, the man and woman stepped back from the port.
"What the hell?"
"Who the hell?" Angela corrected, but then the floor rocked, and another burst of rain fell across the yacht as the sky darkened again.
They inched back toward the window. Looking up, the couple watched torrents of water pour from the bottom of another tanker as it passed over their new home.
Vaughn pulled away from the porthole and dashed across the room to the other side of the yacht.
Angela followed him.
Reaching the far wall, they eased open the curtain on an opposite-facing window. Three of the crashed s
upertankers still sat where they had run aground. However, as they watched, first one and then the other two slowly lifted out of the water. Each departure sent another wave racing across the bay. When it reached them, it rocked the yacht just as the first two had.
Vaughn glanced down at the floor of their ship. Then he cast a horrified look at Angela. "We have to get out of here!" He pointed at the deck. "This ship could be next!"
Angela shook her head and pointed through the open curtains. "Whatever or whoever is moving those ships is being very selective. Look, the wooden boats haven't budged."
She was right. Several other vessels remained. Some were splintered wrecks, but others bobbed in the turbulent wake of the departed tankers.
The man was suddenly thankful for their ship's fiberglass hull. There had been another luxury liner in the harbor, a steel-hulled monstrosity. Just as Vaughn had the thought, the other mega yacht launched skyward.
Suddenly, at the far side of the bay, the northmost burned-out and warped petroleum reservoir began to rise from the tank farm. Then its neighbors began to ascend as well.
Vaughn and Angela exchanged frightened glances as they stepped onto the room's balcony. Peering naked from beneath its overhanging awning, they watched in shocked silence as the surreal fleet of flying steel ships and twisted tanks sped toward the northern horizon.
"Oh shit!" Vaughn pointed at the line. "It's one of the petals."
Angela nodded. "The gravity flower." Goosebumps rose on the woman's skin.
Vaughn felt a shiver run down her body. He squeezed her tightly and then tilted his head toward the surreal line.
"That shouldn't be too hard to follow."
Angela looked at him and then grinned. "What are you waiting for, Captain?"
<<<<>>>>
Multitude: Dimension Space Book Two
Coming Late 2017
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