Final Days

by Jasper T. Scott

  “That’s a long shot,” he said.

  “Still… it’s more than most people could do. It’s more than I was able to do,” she said.

  “You made it.”

  “Only because I trailed you,” she said glumly.

  “That’s a skill. You adapted, went with your gut, and made it the same as I did. Mine was a fluke too. If Roland hadn’t been here, or if his website hadn’t been working, I would have been driving around in circles somewhere else.”

  The town was ahead; a few billboards for chain restaurants and low-end hotels lined the treed edge of the ditches. Kendra didn’t know what to expect from the town, and was almost surprised to see stop lights at all. Once they entered the city limits, they could no longer see the water, and Andrew drove more slowly, probably trying to get the lay of the land. It was desolate. The streetlights flickered on even though it was only noon, a mixture of the overcast sky and the dense fog lingering in the air.

  “The recruiting office was in the mall,” he said, pointing to his left. She followed his finger over to a strip mall, with the usual businesses’ signs showing them what to expect from the main road.

  “When you said Marine office, I was kind of hoping it was somewhere we could hop onto a destroyer and arm ourselves to the gills,” Kendra told him.

  He laughed. “More the kind where you stamp paperwork and measure recruits for clothing sizes.”

  “Where’s the Coast Guard?” she asked.

  He passed his phone over and showed her the long skinny peninsula. “We have to cross a bridge and backtrack.”

  “There’s no other way?”

  “Not if you want a decent boat,” he told her.

  There were a few cars stopped without visible damage, and some completely demolished in the next intersection, and Kendra idly scanned the area, trying to see if she could spot any people. It seemed devoid of life, like this was a picture of the world to come. It hit her then how real and dire their situation was.

  The ground rumbled again, and she heard the grinding of the road as it split open behind them. She craned her neck and watched a lamp post as it crashed down in front of their truck. Andrew cursed and slammed on the brakes, sending her flying forward. Her seatbelt snapped taut, holding her from hitting her head on the dash.

  The truck came to a halt, and the ground shook again, this time with slightly less ferocity. The road shifted in response, and Andrew drove forward, narrowly avoiding sinking into the crevasse that had opened up. A car parked on the side of the street fell in, swallowed like a rock into a pond.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Kendra patted her chest instinctively and nodded. “We have to keep moving. There isn’t going to be much time.”

  “For what?”

  “That was a decent quake. We’re right on the San Andreas fault line, Andrew. Tsunamis are a real threat here.” She leaned over him and looked toward the ocean, which was blocked from her view by half a mile of industrial properties.

  “Wouldn’t that send the waves out into the water?” he asked.

  Kendra didn’t know enough about it to be sure, but she’d seen enough graphs and images on the TV over the last week to have an idea. “They’re saying multiple fault lines are active. We don’t know that the earthquakes are starting here. They might be coming from the middle of the ocean. Or Japan, for all we know.”

  “We don’t have time to reach the Coast Guard. Damn it. We’ll have to check the local harbor and hope there’s something useful still docked there.” He pressed the gas, careful to avoid the jagged cracks in the asphalt. With a sharp turn, he swerved past a grocery store, steadily driving faster as the roads cleared out. He stopped at an intersection, and Kendra checked the map on his phone.

  “Go left. There’s a shipping company on the water two blocks further. Maybe something’s docked there,” she suggested, and Andrew nodded.

  A minute later, they pulled into the parking lot and saw the empty pier.

  “Marina will be a few blocks over. If there isn’t anything large enough, we can borrow whatever we find and head to the Coast Guard from there,” Andrew suggested.

  He tore down Waterfront Avenue, narrowly missing a cat that darted in front of them. The ground shook again, violently, and Kendra half-expected a kraken to rise from the ocean. They exited the truck, and Andrew pointed to the peninsula to their left. The bridge was almost overtopping them on the right, and that meant he was accurate. They were running out of time.

  “We need a cruiser, something with the biggest engine we can find. It has to be strong enough to withstand a little battering, and have enough power to move us quickly.” Andrew headed for the marina, where dozens of boats were docked. Most of them were covered boats, though a few fancy sailboats stood out among the others. The whole area was gated, but Kendra knew they could pass through with ease.

  He made for the fence when something caught her ears.

  “I don’t think that’s a great idea.” Kendra’s breath caught in her chest. The waves were loud, their sound terrifying, and then she saw it, rising above the peninsula. “The tsunami. It’s coming…”

  Andrew stared at the inevitable rush of water for a second before his eyes snapped to hers. “We need to find high ground!”

  Twenty-Six

  Lewis

  3 Days Left…

  Lewis Hound stared at the screens in the drone monitoring room. There were hundreds of them divided across a dozen different security stations, but he had his eyes fixed on just one in particular. It showed a bird’s eye view into his warehouse on the Lost Coast. A young man sat hunched over a desk in the warehouse control center. Lewis leaned forward to zoom in on the screen sitting atop that desk.

  “Shit. He’s using a data recovery program,” Eric Keller said. “I told you we should have killed him.”

  “I thought we erased all of the data when we left,” Lewis said.

  “We did, but nothing is ever really erased. Not until it’s overwritten. We should have taken all of the servers with us.”

  “No. We have weight and storage limits to think about. There’s no point in taking more than we can carry.”

  “Well then, we should have melted the ones we left behind,” Eric said.

  “We couldn’t have known they’d find the warehouse.”

  “We had a clue when one of the guards went missing,” Eric argued.

  Lewis shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late. Even if people found this place, who could actually reach us in time?”

  “How about the three idiots who are busy poking through our servers?”

  Lewis smiled. It was interesting to hear an idiot call other people idiots. “Let them come. I’ve already sent a team for Roland.”

  Eric’s brow furrowed in confusion, and he scratched his chin through his beard. “Why do you care about him?”

  Lewis glanced over to the screens. “He’s important. Everyone I chose is here, but Roland is the one who got away.”

  “One man is worth risking an entire security team? We have enough people to worry about as it is. You should forget about the kid.”

  “You forget, Mr. Keller, that everyone here was chosen for a reason. They’re all pieces of a puzzle that fit together into a perfectly unified whole. Even if you can’t see how the pieces fit, just trust that they do. Trust me.”

  But he wasn’t going to let it go. “What is it about them that fits? Eugenics?”

  Lewis nodded. “Among other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Knowledge, Mr. Keller. Preserving the human race isn’t only about people. It’s also about preserving their knowledge. Roland has unique skills that the others will need, skills that he must pass on to future generations.”

  “A future generation of hackers,” Eric snorted. “Just what we need.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what they’ll need,” Lewis said, missing the note of sarcasm in Eric’s voice.

  “They, sir? You say that
like you’re planning to leave us.”

  “Leave you?” Lewis shook his head. “No. That’s not my purpose. I must shepherd you all through the coming storm to safety. We can’t have humanity going extinct, now can we, Mr. Keller?”

  “No, sir,” Eric replied.

  * * *

  Andrew

  Andrew and Kendra ran back to his truck as fast as they could. Andrew kept glancing towards the islands in the bay and the peninsula beyond. A frothing wall of water was roaring over the peninsula, sucking low-rise one- and two-story buildings under and knocking down trees. It was still far away, but he could hear it coming, like a distant roll of thunder.

  The peninsula would slow it down, but it was only a matter of minutes before the tsunami crossed the bay and hit them, too. Even if it wasn’t moving fast by then, it would be carrying plenty of debris, and it would flood the entire region.

  High ground. We have to find... His thoughts trailed off and his heart sank as he noticed that all of the buildings in Eureka were just one or two stories high. They reached his truck and he turned the key, over-cranking the ignition.

  “Drive!” Kendra said.

  Andrew stomped on the gas and raced down the divided coastal road. The truck skidded through a flashing yellow traffic light, and then he braked and hooked a right at the next. The tires squealed, and Kendra braced herself. “You’re going to wreck us!” she screamed as they careened toward the sidewalk and a ransacked convenience store.

  “Let me drive!” Andrew said through gritted teeth.

  The truck jumped the curb and mowed over a trash can before Andrew regained control and stomped on the gas again. They flew along a two-lane road, running flashing yellow stoplights and stop signs at almost a hundred miles an hour.

  “You need to slow down!” Kendra cried, gripping her thigh and the door in white-knuckled fists.

  “Relax! I’ve got this!”

  She let out a shaky breath as they flew past homes, small businesses, and restaurants. A gas station and a church were coming up. Andrew debated the church. It looked to be about three stories with the steeple.

  “There!” Kendra pointed up ahead to a boxy concrete building that was four stories high. There was a big blue cross at the top next to the name: St. Peter’s Hospital.

  “Best we’re going to find.” Andrew slammed on the brakes as they came within sight of the parking lot entrance. It was up a slight hill. He took them through another skidding turn, up the ramp, and crashed through a boom gate. They lurched to a stop in front of the ER, and Andrew shifted into park and threw his door open, not even bothering to turn off the engine first. “Let’s go!” he said, barely remembering to grab his gun from the door before he jumped out of the driver’s seat and sprinted for the hospital.

  The approaching wave sounded like a freight train. The ground was shaking and car alarms were going off, only to be suspiciously silenced a split second later. Andrew spun around just before he reached the sliding glass doors of the ER to wait for Kendra. She raced by him in the same instant, her eyes wild with fear.

  “Get inside!” she screamed.

  Hers wasn’t the only scream he heard. A handful of other people were running into the parking lot, converging on the entrance. Behind them, Andrew saw the tops of a row of silver oak trees that lined the street shiver and then vanish with a crashing roar. Then came a wave of cars, bobbing on a muddy black river.

  “The doors won’t open!” Kendra screamed.

  Andrew whirled around to see at least eight others hammering on the glass with their palms and fists. Three of them had their fingers worked into the gap, trying to pry them open.

  “Stand back!” he yelled. The crowd parted momentarily, and he aimed his gun at the doors, pulling the trigger three times fast. One of the doors shattered under the barrage in a pile of gleaming pearl-sized fragments.

  “Everybody inside!” he said, but no one had to be told. They surged through the broken door, pushing and shoving each other in their hurry to escape. It only took a few seconds, but it felt like forever. Andrew watched the swirling river of debris go racing by the hospital and down the street. Water was pouring steadily up the short hill into the parking lot, rising fast. His heart rate rose with it. A frothing wave broke over the body of his truck, spraying above the roof and raging on to the entrance of the ER.

  Kendra grabbed his arm and pulled him into the darkened waiting room before it could reach them. The water hit them anyway, spraying through the broken door like a giant fire hose. It knocked them over, followed by several others running down the corridor up ahead. Rocks and debris pelted Andrew, and his mouth and nose filled with grit and salt water. He pushed off the floor, coughing and gasping for air. He grabbed Kendra’s arm and yanked her up, bracing himself against the front desk to remain standing amidst the river now raging through the hospital. “We have to get higher!”

  The leader of the survivors was bracing himself in the open door of a stairwell and waving people toward him.

  “Come on!” Andrew stumbled ahead, with Kendra’s arm around his waist for support. He clung to the desk and then the walls to avoid falling over, but it wasn’t enough. They slipped and fell several times along the way, as did several of the others. The survivors were crying and screaming to each other as they went. One man was pushing a couch ahead of him, using it like a walker as his daughter clung to the edge of it like a life raft. They crashed into the open door and jumped through into the stairwell with a splash. The man who’d been holding the door disappeared, but the couch was lodged in the doorway, holding it open.

  Andrew and Kendra were the last to get there. He helped her over the back of the couch ahead of him, just in time to hear something like a bomb going off. Windows exploded all throughout the first floor, and a wave of water as high as the ceiling came barreling into the corridor.

  “Shit!” Andrew leapt over the couch and landed hard in a puddle of dirty water about two feet deep on the other side.

  “Come on!” Kendra screamed down to him from the second-floor landing.

  The flood tore past the doorway, ripping the couch away and blasting into the stairwell before Andrew could even blink.

  The torrent slammed him into the concrete wall opposite the door, dazing him, and then the flood whipped him around like a rag doll. He kept seizing the metal banister before his hands were ripped away. His head slammed into something hard, and he swallowed a mouthful of dirty salt water. His lungs burned and heaved, and he felt himself drifting away in the cold black water. His body grew blissfully numb, as though he’d fallen off the wagon after a spectacular bender. Oblivion beckoned to his battered brain. He struggled to resist, but suddenly he couldn’t remember why that was important. He’d been searching for something… or was it someone?

  Twenty-Seven

  Roland

  3 Days Left…

  Whoever had done the cleanup was impressive, and Roland would have delighted in meeting them to see how they’d accomplished hiding the files so well. Of course, he was better, and after a few hours of banging away at the borders, he found what he was searching for. The breach was tiny, almost like an impossible entrance into a solitary time stamp of the data.

  It would do the trick. The fog had crept through the warehouse, beneath the bay doors and through the edges of the doorways. Roland now wore his respirator, after the fumes had nearly made him lose his breakfast.

  The ocean was loud. While his program was plucking and prodding as per his instructions, he decided to take a stretch and see what was going on outside.

  He meandered through the staff quarters, and ended up at the main warehouse. From there he opened a bay door, and it lifted with the sound of a rolling chain. What he saw was ominous. The water was churning, the sky pitch-black beyond. It looked like hell’s mouth was about to come swallow him whole, and he fought the urge to run. He had a job to do, and people were relying on him. For once in his life, it wasn’t only about him.

  Sure,
he didn’t know Andrew and Kendra from Adam and Eve, but he felt an uncanny obligation to them and the missing group of people. He also needed to uncover what Hound had done, and why two assassins had been sent to his house to kill him. Had Hound’s people found out he was searching for them? Had he left a trail of breadcrumbs? The only person that knew anything was PiedPiper19, and Roland had been dealing with them for years now. He couldn’t fully trust an online name, but if he could, it would be PiedPiper19. He had no idea if it was a man or woman, but it didn’t matter. Their information during the last two years had led him to this spot, so he could find the coordinates for the secret project.

  He was so close he could smell it, except he couldn’t smell much at the moment, not with the respirator nuzzled over his nose and mouth.

  The fog had dissipated slightly, and Roland thought he could see a shiny glimmer in the air, a hundred feet or so up. As quickly as he’d spotted it, whatever it was vanished. Panic hit him in a flash. Had that been a drone? Or maybe nothing, a glint of sunlight from above, pushing through the clouds, then the fog.

  Roland walked out farther away from the building, hoping to find it again, and realized his stupidity. If there was a drone watching the warehouse, he was surely being filmed by the thing. He ran back, heading for the open bay door, when the ground shuddered so hard he fell to his knees, scraping them against the cold concrete. His hands spilled out in front of him, skidding on the rough surface.

  “What the…” He stumbled onto his knees and felt the ground rumble again. His hands weren’t bleeding, only red and raw from the impact. He stood, feeling the ache in his joints as he limped the rest of the way inside. He slammed the side of his hand against the button, closing the doors. Roland knew what to expect. A tremor of that size wasn’t too devastating. It would stir the ocean, sending waves toward the coast.

  If anything stronger hit, he’d be in serious trouble hanging out inside this warehouse. He needed to obtain the coordinates and move inland. How far he had to be depended on the severity and placement of the earthquake. A bad one could travel as far as ten miles inland, but he didn’t expect quite that much damage from this quake.