Ted looked up the road again and could just see three women walking across the intersection. Recognizing them, he called out to Kayla, “Hey babe, your mom, your sister and Natalee are walking up the road here.”
Kayla stopped and turned around, “Why are they walking?”
Ted looked at his wife with the expression that had always let her know that he was about to be a smart ass. “Gee, Kayla, it is hard to tell, perhaps I will be better able to read their minds when they are a bit closer.”
Kayla was not as amused as he had hoped, she cocked her head to the side, “really, funny man?” Then she shouted out, “Max! Can you hear me? Where are you?” She walked around the side and toward the woods, “Oh God, Max! Get away from it!”
Ted ran around the corner, his heart pounding with the unmistakable fear he heard in Kayla’s voice. He ran out to see their daughter about twenty-five yards away, walking right toward a pitbull that was growling, baring its teeth and its hair was raised on its back. He began to run toward her. Just before he got there, the dog fell over to its side and showed its belly, submitting to her. It didn’t attack, it submitted. It was the craziest thing he had ever seen and now his little girl was petting its belly and giggling. When he got close the dog reared up in a defensive stance, but Max just kept her hand on its back and pet it. Within less than a minute, it reached up and licked her hand and then walked around sniffing things.
Max walked over to her parents. “She won’t hurt anyone.”
Kayla hugged her daughter close, “Baby, you don’t know that dog. You can’t be sure it is safe. Please don’t do that again.”
Max just smiled, “But I do know her. It’s okay now, she was just scared.”
Ted tousled her hair, “I know the feeling. What is her name?”
Max turned and looked at the dog who looked right back at her, “Princess.”
Ted and Kayla exchanged a smile, and Ted responded, “Princess the Pitbull, very fitting.” They all turned and walked back around the front of the building, but Ted occasionally glanced back at the dog who seemed perfectly at home in their yard.
The three women had arrived just as he came to the front. Kayla walked up to give them all a hug. Her mother, Beth, was sweating from their short walk in the heat, and she and Ted both knew she would have to hear about it for the rest of the day. Her sister, Kate, smiled the broad smile she gave to everyone she met and hugged her closely before moving on to meet Max’s new dog. Her niece, Natalee, looked more miserable than anyone. Natalie was a prom queen, a real one. She was not having any of this walking, Natalee Ward did not walk to her destination. She barely put up with her family, and only when forced to by her mom.
“The car just stopped up the road.” Beth began, “It was the strangest thing, the power brakes didn’t work. I thought we were going to die and then it just rolled to a stop. And when we tried to call you to pick us up, we found out none of our cell phones work.”
Kayla looked back at Ted, “Yeah, ours either. The power is out at the house, it looks like it is up at the bar and the store also, is it?”
Her mother wiped the sweat from her neck with a handkerchief, “Yes, and the light. Kate, what are you doing? Pitbulls are dangerous.”
Kate just looked back over her shoulder while rubbing the pit under the chin, “Her name is Princess, isn’t she beautiful?” Kayla saw the big smile on Max’s face and was again about as thankful for her sister as one is capable of being. Kate had a way of making everyone feel special and okay. She was a bright ray of sunshine, regardless of the storm of other people’s day.
Ted walked up to Beth and kissed her on the cheek, “Hi, Mom. Strange events, huh?” He led her to a bench, where she could sit in the shade and they talked for a bit. Ted always knew how to distract Kayla’s mother so the complaints were less and she was very grateful.
Kate looked up at Kayla and asked, “Can I use your land line? I want to call Cal and make sure he is okay, and at some point touch base with Kyle also.”
Kayla just shook her head. “It doesn’t work. Nothing does. Do you want to walk to the corner and see if we have any better luck with their phones…if they will let us use them?”
Kate nodded, “Sure,” she said, “Natalee, do you want to walk to…”
Natalee gave her mom a look that only a parent of a teenager knows. It was a look that simultaneously dismissed the question and called Kate’s sanity into question. “Seriously” is all she said as the prom queen walked to the shade and sat down, still trying to get her smartphone to power up. The difficulty of being a teen today, who is suddenly without access to information, is that they don’t know what to do with themselves. They have always had access to everything at their fingertips. Natalee was in a huge state of confusion, like she had suddenly gone blind.
The sisters gave each other a knowing look. They knew that they had both been that same girl. They were popular in high school but it is very hard to explain to a teenager how little that means in the rest of your life. Teens have to become adults and figure that part out for themselves, then try to convey that to their own children. It is a vicious cycle. They shouted back to Ted and their mom and told them where they were headed. Max just hung out at the edge of the woods and that dog was never more than five or six feet from her side.
Ted looked in the opposite direction, up across the street to where a small chapel sat. He didn’t know them, but wanted to check on his neighbor and he let the ladies know he was going. Max chose to come along, and to no one’s surprise the dog came also.
As they walked, Ted reached out for his daughter’s hand. He had known that the time when she would let him hold her hand was soon to end, with her coming within a few years of puberty and the hatred of parents that comes with the age, so he took every chance to still be with his little girl as a little girl. He cherished this time, and so far, Max didn’t seem to mind.
“Where do you know that dog from?” He asked.
“Princess? From now. She walked up a few minutes before, while I was looking for pine cones in the woods.”
Ted smiled, “You have a good rapport with her. Does her collar say her name is Princess?”
Max looked over at the pit and pet her on top of the head. “No, she told me her name was Princess.”
Ted laughed. That was another thing that would most likely not last, his daughter’s imagination and playfulness. He cherished that as well.
They came up to the front of the small church and knocked, but a voice called out from the side of the church. “Knockin’ don’t help. That door is always open.” The southern drawl was very pronounced, but so was the good nature behind it and Ted, Max and Princess walked around to see a bald man in his fifties working on the engine of a truck.
“Hi there. The name is Ted Craven, this is my daughter Max and this is Princess.”
The man came out from the hood, wiping the soot off his hands and he approached, “Rich Carson,” he said, as he held his hand out to shake Ted’s.
“You the pastor here?” Ted pointed back at the church.
Rich smiled and nodded, “Yep. I think I saw you opening that karate school in town yesterday, right?” Ted nodded. “Just moved into the house yonder?” Ted nodded again. “Well, welcome to the neighborhood. We have church services Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. I hope you will come pay us a visit.”
Ted smiled, he instantly liked the guy, even if this wasn’t his thing. “We aren’t really church people, Rich, but I appreciate the offer.”
Rich stepped up close, “Can I tell you a secret, I am not a church person either.” They both laughed. “For some reason my car won’t start.”
Ted grimaced a bit, “I don’t think you will be able to fix that. None of the cars work, all of the power is out and the phones don’t work. It is a bit of a mystery. The only thing I could think of was an Electromagnetic pulse. I hear that solar flares could do that, but I always thought that was an old wives’ tale.”
“Hmm,
well that is unfortunate. I guess there is nothing left to do but grab a beer and wait it out, huh?”
“I like the way you think, Rich, I think we are going to be fine neighbors.” Ted shook his hand again.
“And good friends as well, I hope” Rich replied. Ted smiled and they walked to the back of the church where Rich’s cottage was and each grabbed a beer from a cooler he had out.
Rich took a decent draw on the long-neck bottle of his Sam Adams, “So, in those old wives’ tales, how long do these things last?”
Ted shrugged, “No idea. I am not sure that part is covered.” Princess walked up and licked the condensation off the bottom of Ted’s bottle and Ted rubbed her behind the ear.
CHAPTER TEN
Specialist Jordan Kane had barely made it into the botanical lab before he might have passed out from lack of oxygen. The power in “the Mountain” had gone out very suddenly, but the generators had not come on as they were supposed to come on. When everyone else ran in the dark toward the doors, Jordan remembered what he had learned in High School biology, plants produce oxygen. He also remembered that the lab was much closer than the doors that were across a huge area and up a couple of floors. In the pitch dark of the lab, he had breathed in the sweet oxygen the plants put off and realized he was not alone. Though he couldn’t see them, there were three others in the room – the research scientist, Dr. Pare; her lab tech Private Jose Rio and a guard who was normally stationed in another area, but liked to talk to Dr. Pare about gardening, PFC Donna Harris.
Jordan knew a lot about the survival aspects of the base, because it was his job to maintain many of them. He had switched from infantry to mechanical last year when he re-enlisted, and was responsible for generators, filters and such. What he didn’t understand was why none of them had worked. The power had simply disappeared. That was not supposed to happen.
“Dr. Pare, do you know when they will come and get us?” Rio had asked, but it wasn’t the doctor who answered, but Jordan.
“They aren’t coming. The generators never came on. The oxygen was depleted pretty quickly. I am sorry, there is no chance they made it.”
Dr. Pare answered him, “No, that’s not right. It is not oxygen depletion that is causing the problem you experienced.”
“Hey, Doc, I know what I felt. I couldn’t breathe out there.”
She continued, “It seems counter-intuitive, but it isn’t the oxygen. It is the carbon dioxide. With all of those people out there panicking, they are forcing carbon-dioxide into a sealed space. They are poisoning themselves.”
Rio popped in with a question, “Why are we okay?”
Jordan answered, “The plants, right Doc? They eat Carbon-Dioxide.”
Dr. Pare was quiet for a moment and Jordan wasn’t entirely sure whether she was sad or laughing at his stupidity. Eventually, she said, “Pretty much. They also consume more carbon dioxide when the lights are out, so they are eating up our refuse air at the moment.”
Harris spoke up suddenly, “Wait a minute. There are hundreds of people in this facility, are you saying they have all died?”
Jordan was just stunned as he thought about it, “On any given day, there are around thirty-two hundred people working in this facility. Unless this is some strange test, we are the only four who will still be alive in a very short period of time. People screamed in the darkness and all clamored to get to the main doors, which absolutely will not open in a power outage. That is not the way out.”
He heard her sob quietly, or it may have been the doctor, but the fear in Rio’s voice when he spoke was as palpable as the tears from the others. “But, it has only been what, an hour or two?”
Jordan had no good news to give, but he didn’t want to give false hope either. “With the doors closed and a full complement of workers, they will suck the air out…or I guess press the CO2 in, until they die. The panic levels I experienced on the way here make me think it was not a long time. There were people collapsed on the floor already by the time I got here. You know what they say on a plane, get your own oxygen before you help anyone else or you’ll both die. I thought there was plenty of time for the generators to kick in. But they didn’t. That is not supposed to be possible. I don’t understand it. But they didn’t come on. All of those people are gone.”
“Oh, Jesus,” was all Rio could say in response.
“We have these plants to thank for not being dead.” It was all he could think to say to give them hope, but the doctor dashed that hope in moments.
“The bad news,” she started, “is that these plants won’t last without the generators either.”
“What do you mean?” sobbed out Harris.
The doctor’s voice was calm and Kane realized that it must have been Rio who was the other crier. “Without power, there are no sun lamps. Without sun lamps, these plants will continue to put out oxygen, and take in carbon-dioxide for maybe a day. Additionally, we have no food. The edible plants are in the outside garden right now. We rotate them to give certain opportunities for growth.”
Jordan just hung his head, it seemed his escape into the lab was only a temporary reprieve from the angel of death. Even in his despair, though, his curiosity was peaked. “I have never heard of an outside garden, where is that?”
“Up the stairs two floors and out the door right there.” Rio was the one who answered. The wheels began to spin in Jordan’s head and a plan formed.
Jordan steeled himself, he knew he would have to motivate the others to his plan. It really was the only way they made it more than one day. “Okay, there may be a way out for us. There are reasons why power goes out here, it isn’t supposed to take all power, but that is actually a better scenario than the others. It probably isn’t a nuclear attack, because that wouldn’t affect the generators at all. In fact, this catastrophe may just be in the Mountain. If that is the case, or if anything is the case, other than nuclear attack, we are way better off outdoors. I think we should make a run for it.”
There was a long pause, clearly the others were thinking about it. Harris was the first to speak, “I am with you. I don’t want to die here without even trying to get out.”
“Thanks Harris,” Jordan replied, “Anyone else have thoughts?”
“What if the door has sealed in some way?” Rio asked.
“Due to accidental shut down, the doors of the facility are made to open from the inside and only seal to the outside. Most people don’t know that because they didn’t want anyone to try. However, it would help to have something to bust the door down just in case.”
The doctor finally spoke. “There is an axe in the fire extinguisher area in this room. That could help. If we hurry, we should be able to get up there and out the door just holding our breath, it really isn’t that far. But, if we have to bust down the door, with no air? It won’t be good.”
Jordan considered the doctor’s words. “I am willing to take those odds.”
“Me too,” said Harris.
“Okay,” the doctor replied, “It sounds like our best option.”
There was a long pause. The doctor then asked, “Jose?”
Rio sniffled, “I am not going.”
Dr. Pare pleaded with him, but in the end, he would not change his mind. He said he would seal the room up, but be inside to let them back in if they could make it back. The three of them gathered their items near the door, crawling and reaching out in the pitch black. Jordan took the axe. In the dark, they had traced in each person’s hand the route they would take and had tied a string to each person’s belt to keep them together.
Jordan did a last check and they were all ready. “Rio, there is no way to come back for you. This is the last chance. Are you certain this is what you want?”
Jose Rio patted him on the shoulder and just said, “Go.”
They opened the door and quickly walked to the right, opening the first door into the stairwell with the simple push bar. They headed up the stairs in pitch black and Jordan tripped over a body t
hat he tried unsuccessfully to steer those following him away from and Harris gasped. This little intake of a bad air mixture made her short on breath, and Kane had to pull her up the last flight as he kicked open the door with an axe in his left hand and his right arm around Donna Harris.
As they collapsed onto the ground, gulping in the fresh outdoor air, they would have been in relative darkness. But the few hours (it had really only been close to two by this point) in the pitch black of the facility had made the darkness of the outdoor lab in the afternoon seem downright bright in comparison. Though it could not have been more than four in the afternoon, it was pretty dark, because this section of the facility was right up against a cliff. Its small openings were not enough to compensate. Jordan was surprised that enough light came in to keep the garden alive. The stress, the lack of oxygen, and the run for life from the lab had exhausted all three of them and they decided to wait until morning to plan out their next move. They were each able to lie down in the dirt, close to one another. They barely knew each other, but they were together now and had a bind that would last.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kyle heard the rattling and knocking at the store door, but with all that had just happened, he was not very interested in opening the door at this point. It seemed that he and Jessica were better off with that particular barrier between them and the outside world. He looked back to where his boss, Jeff, was tied and gagged in the corner. Jeff had tried to attack them, maybe even kill them, when the power had gone out. Kyle just didn’t understand it; he had always got along with Jeff. Then the power goes out, and after a short period, Jeff just went nuts. He had gone to the gun section of the store and opened the cases, loading a shotgun and a pistol with ammo and ordering Kyle and Jessica out.
He heard a muffled call, “Kyle!” It was his dad. A huge relief washed over Kyle as he ran forward, yelling out to Jessica that it was okay, and unlocked the security gate, then the door to let Kyle’s dad Cal in. Along with his dad were his Dad’s friend, Adam, and two blonde women he had never seen before. He let them all into the store. After letting them in, he immediately locked both door and gate back up. Once he had done that, he turned and gave his dad a long hug.
Age of Mystics (Saga of Mystics Book 1) Page 3
