by Mike Kraus
SHATTER
The Epoch’s End Series
Book 2
By
Mike Kraus
© 2021 Muonic Press Inc
www.muonic.com
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
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Special Thanks
Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.
Thank you!
Epoch’s End Book 3
Available Here
Chapter 1
United States Air Force Base, somewhere in Alaska
A freezing cold wind gusts in from the bay, brushing the backs of humpback whales as it dances across the waves and heads inland. It strikes the shore, flitting up the rocky banks covered with driftwood, cutting low through the pines, spruces, and hemlocks like a low-whistling scythe. Snow shakes from tree boughs, cascading down in a white powder that hits the ground and explodes into dust. A bald eagle clings to a branch high in a Red Alder, crouched against the abrasive air currents with its feathers clenched tight to its body, eyes half shut in the gusts.
The wind whips and twists through the forest before bursting across an open airfield. Crosswinds from airplanes landing at the base create a dusting of snow that hovers a foot above the pavement, the sounds of propeller engines and jets vibrate the solid gray sky as maintenance crews work stiffly in their orange coveralls.
Storage buildings and hangars squat at the northern end of the runway while clusters of radar stations lie to the east with huge dishes sticking up from their roofs, rotating back and forth, monitoring for incoming ICBMs or submarine missiles from Russia. A nondescript watch building squats on the eastern edge of the runway behind a six-foot snow drift. Inside, two men sit at a shared computer desk, staring at a bank of monitors stretched before them, occasionally pecking at their keyboards. The watch leader sits in the back of the room with his own desk and displays, a dead silence hangs in the air except for the low hum of two space heaters.
The three men are pensive as they study their screens, bundled up in jackets and parkas despite being inside with the heat turned to high. The door opens and a fourth man enters along with a sweep of cold air that chills the room. Clint – according to his nametag - carries a cardboard carrier with several foam cups resting in the grooves. He quickly shuts the door behind him and stomps his boots before bringing his burden over to the computer desk, setting it down at his empty station.
“The mess hall is busier than hell,” he passes the beverages around, tendrils of hot steam drift up from the tiny holes in the lids. The men mumble thanks and reach for sugar packets and creamers. They remove the tops, break open the additives, and stir in the contents.
“A lot of stuff happening, huh?” a man with curly black hair, Jed, replies. Clint sits with his own coffee held between his gloved hands, snow-dusted hat still on his head as he takes an experimental sip of the dark brew. “Yeah. You’d almost think we’re a regular airport with all the maintenance folks coming in.”
“We’re packed to the hilt these days,” Jed agrees. “I heard they had to bunk some in the control tower!”
“Poor planning, for sure. Anything happen on the radar while I was gone?”
“Nope. Skies are clear.”
“Good to hear.” Clint switches back to the original topic with a shake of his head. “It’s not just more people arriving on base. I’ve never seen them bring in so much equipment.”
“Any idea what it’s for?” The youngest of them, DeShane, finishes stirring in five packets of sugar and three creamers. The rest of the men consider him ‘one of those guys’, the least experienced and the most easily excitable – possibly due to all the sugar in his coffee.
“I have no idea,” Clint says. “It looks like they’re renovating the radar buildings. They must be in a hurry, because they already finished the ones they started this morning.”
Jed stretches a beanie over his head, stands, and crosses to the door. He pulls it open and quickly steps outside, dragging it shut behind him to keep the cold from lowering the inside temperature too much. He walks to the edge of a snowbank created by the plows and climbs the hardened ice. Hand thrown up to shield his eyes from the bright sun, he peers across the runway. A weighty C-130 descends to the tarmac, propellers rumbling like thunder as its rear wheels touch down with a low squeal of rubber, the front dropping with another squelch of sound. A dusting of snow swirls around the massive plane as it trundles by, passing a dozen parked aircraft in every available spot.
Jed’s eyes shift to the control tower where workers raise a large piece of insulation and plastic to the top and a second group bolts it over the watchtower glass. They refit the doors with short tunnels that extend out several yards - no, not tunnels, he muses. Chambers, maybe.
The massive C-130 slows down at the end of the runway, and flag crews guide it toward the hangar where it will be unloaded. A truck hauls materials along a service road, weaving between radar stations and dropping off supplies. Workers bustle, adding insulation layers and chambers around the doorways to all the buildings.
The wind snaps up and blows down his coveralls, chills skittering across his chest and shoulders and he decides he’s had enough. Jed turns, waddles back to the watch building and enters, letting in a brief punch of cold air as his companions grumble. He retakes his seat and sips his coffee, trying to get his head around what he’s seen.
“It’s weird. It’s like they’re weatherproofing the entire place.”
“Could it be related to the president’s speech yesterday?” DeShane asks. “You know, what he said about upcoming temperature drops?”
“Nah, that’s all BS,” Jed replies, still shivering from the cold, trying to cut DeShane off from one of his usual lectures about climate change. “They’re just making a show for the Rooskies since they’ve been rattling their sabers so much lately.”
“Budem Zdorovy!” Clint raises his cup.
“To your health!” Jed repeats the toast in English, going along with his friend, trying to keep the spirit light. They all lift their steaming drinks high and sip, lost in their thoughts for a moment.
“I don’t know.” Clint
settles in his seat. “We haven’t seen this much traffic since tensions were real high a few years ago. And since when do they double-staff us?” He shivers and shakes his head at the monitors. “There’s literally nothing to look at.”
“Maybe they’re taking climate change seriously,” DeShane offers. “I mean, why else would they be double-insulating the buildings?”
“Oh, here comes the climate change BS again,” Clint scoffs.
“There’s only one climate up here,” Jed agrees with his friend, “and that’s cold as hell.”
The kid held firm. “The average temperature has dropped five degrees already this week.”
“Which is next to nothing.”
DeShane shakes his head. “It’s actually a lot. And we’ve had some high waters, too. My friend down in Port Graham radioed to say the streets are flooded. That’s just a few miles from here.” The young man furrows his eyebrows. “I wish the cable and phones weren’t down so we could get through to someone.”
Clint stares at the screens, eyes flitting from the first to the third and back again. “And still the Russians aren’t even running any drills. Nobody is.”
Someone clears their throat in the back of the room, and Jed turns to see the most senior member of the team stare at them from his desk, the watch leader, Peter, someone Jed’s known and come to trust over the years. He’s dressed in a pair of sharp-looking, all-weather coveralls, yellow with black trim. A grizzled beard clings to his cheeks, and his ice-blue eyes seem somehow colder than the environment outside. His longish hair is pressed back from his forehead from running his fingers through it continually.
Peter’s the oldest of them and has more experience than all three combined. His legs are crossed, and he leans forward with a knowing expression written on his wise face. “Nobody will launch anything...yet. But my bones tell me something’s afoot, and it ain’t good. Something really bad’s on the horizon. Something cold.”
Jed looks around as silence grips the room, a chill tingling his shoulders and causing him to shiver as he considers the man’s words, driven to discomfort by the cryptic warning. He’s heard the old man make predictions before, claiming to feel upcoming storms in his bones. Most of the time, he’s right.
“Sounds like we could use a little global warming right about now,” Jed says, chuckling at his own bad joke, his voice trailing off into silence. No one else laughs as wind whistles through the base, hammers bang, and rattling space heaters underline his thoughts. Jed turns to a small window and watches white powder whip against the glass.
Chapter 2
Tom McKnight, Outer Banks, North Carolina
“Dad? Is...Is it getting colder in here?”
“It feels like it,” Tom replied. He shined his flashlight at the windshield, narrowing his eyes at the bit of frosty glass. “But that’s not a good sign.”
“I should go back and check on Jerry.” Sam got up and made her way to where the young man was lying on the floor in the kitchen area, propped up on his side to help him breathe. Tom attempted to stand but fell back in his seat, still dizzy from hitting his head in the crash. He put his fingers to his right temple and winced at the lump before bringing his hand around, noting a small bit of blood. Don’t need stitches, he thought. I hope. Trying again, he rose slowly and managed to stay on his feet, stepping between the seats to join Sam where she knelt by the young man where he rested against the bench seat on his back, half slouched.
She lifted her ear from his nose and gave Tom a relieved smile. “He’s breathing okay, at least.”
“Great,” Tom said. “I’ll get us some blankets.”
He went to the back and checked the covers on the bed. Holes in the roof had allowed water in and soaked all the bedding, so he turned to the blankets they’d originally stripped off. Piled in a corner, the sheets had stayed mostly dry and were only a little wet on the edges. Holding them out and re-folding them a little, Tom carried them up front.
Sam sat cross-legged next to Jerry with her flashlight sitting on its end so the light hit the roof and dispersed somewhat, giving a sort of inverted lamp effect to the place. Tom laid a blanket on her shoulders and draped another over Jerry, adding a throw pillow from a storage compartment, which he placed under his head. He gently felt Jerry’s scalp for signs of a deeper injury, his fingers working their way around his hairline until he found a raised lump just above the base of his neck.
“He’s got a nasty bump on the back of his head,” Tom said. “That’s probably what knocked him out. I’m a little worried he might have a concussion, but at least there’s no blood and he’s breathing.” Tom took the last blanket for himself and knelt next to his daughter where they huddled for warmth.
“How’s your head?” Sam looked at him, face aglow in the stark light and shadows.
“Hurts like the dickens.”
“The dickens, Dad? Really?” Sam’s expression was a mix of exhaustion and amusement. “That’s such a dad thing to say.”
“Is heck better? It hurts like heck?”
“That’s almost as bad.”
“Sorry.” He reached up and touched his fingers to the spot again. “I want an ice pack.”
“Careful what you wish for.” Sam’s eyes flicked to the front of the RV and the ice-flecked windows. Water dripped around them, plunking on the counters with wet smacks, splashing in a puddle by the door. Tom ignored the closed-in, anxious feeling growing inside his chest and tightened his grip on the blanket as he pulled Sam in closer to his side.
“Do you think he’ll wake up?” Sam asked, glancing down at Jerry, pressing her finger into his side to rouse him.
“I doubt he’s going to just spring up and be fine.” Tom clicked his tongue. “That only happens in movies. In the real world, a hard hit like that usually results in a concussion or severe brain damage.”
“Oh.” With a worried expression, Sam nudged him again, harder and more pointedly. “Come on, Jerry. Wake up.” Her eyes shifted to her dad and then up at the drips smacking on the roof. “I hope he wakes up soon. I don’t want to leave him here.”
“We won’t abandon him,” Tom assured her. “We’ll carry him out if we have to.”
“If we’re able to.” Sam bit her lip. “Is there anything else you can do to wake him up?”
Tom shook his head. “I’m an engineer, not a doctor.”
Sam snorted, poking him in the side. “Thanks a lot, Bones.”
“Wouldn’t that make me Scotty?”
Sam rolled her eyes, chuckling in spite of their severe situation. She sat for a moment then straightened, pulling her blanket tighter around her shoulders. “You probably could have been a doctor, though.”
“Never crossed my mind. Not that I wouldn’t want to help people. I guess I always enjoyed mechanical systems, not bodies. Machine stuff, you know?”
“But isn’t the human body like a machine?” Sam raised an eyebrow. “It has the respiratory, muscular, pulmonary, and nervous systems. They all have to work together for a person to live.”
“Yes, in that way it is very much like a machine.” Tom blinked. “I see your point.”
“Well, maybe you should have gotten a degree in medicine, too. You know, along with your other ones.” Sam lightly gripped Jerry’s shoulder and gave him a little shake. “Come on, dude.”
“I think two is more than enough...” He gestured, tugging at her arm. “Hey, hey, honey, you’re going to aggravate his injuries if you if you keep that up.”
Sam pulled back, eyes wide as she watched Jerry. “Sorry.”
The dripping continued, almost incessant in the half-darkness and Tom sighed, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “I can see how Jerry might be cute to a teenage girl,” Tom suggested with a mockingly matter-of-fact tone. “It’s only natural you’d really care about the guy.”
Sam raised her eyebrows in warning.
“He’s a handsome kid,” he went on. “I’ll bet he has a lot of girls after him. I guess I shouldn’t be
surprised when my own daughter--”
Sam grabbed a wet pillow from the floor and whacked him with it, splattering water across the RV floor. They glared at each other until the girl broke down in a fit of giggles as Tom laughed, too, teeth chattering in the cold.
A low moan rose from Jerry’s lips, and Tom jerked his eyes downward as the young man shifted and tried to sit up. Sam put her hands on him, gently pushing him back down to the floor.
“You took a nasty hit to the head,” she explained, holding him as he struggled. “Take it easy.”
Tom helped adjust the pillow beneath the young man’s head. “What’s your name? Do you remember it?”
“Jerry.” His eyes slipped from Sam to Tom.
“What about the day? Do you know what day it is?”
“Tuesday or Wednesday.” His speech was slightly slurred. “I lost track after the storm hit. Then I fell off my motorcycle.” Lifting his hand, he felt around in the back. “Ow, that hurts.”
“That’s where the bump is,” Tom said. “You should avoid touching that area.”
Jerry nodded and shifted onto his side so he wouldn’t brush the back of his head against the pillow. “What happened?”
“We crashed,” Sam replied. “We’re still in the RV inside the tunnel.”
Jerry’s eyes widened slightly as he glanced around, drawn by the dripping sounds. “The tunnel! We need to get out of here. This whole thing could collapse on us!”
Tom took out his key chain light and held it up in front of the young man’s eyes. “Can you follow this without turning your head?” As the light moved slowly back and forth, Tom watched carefully as Jerry’s eyes tracked it accurately, both pupils the same size, dilating in response to the beam.
“What do you think?” Sam asked. “Can we make it with both you guys hurt, and the RV broken down?”
