Pulse: When Gravity Fails (Pulse Science Fiction Series Book 1)

by John Freitas

  He drove through another gap just before the pick-up truck backed into the car behind it, crumpling the hood of a car and blaring the horn of the smashed car in one, endless note.

  Sean dragged along the back bumper of an SUV on his side of the jeep throwing sparks up around his leg. One more gap and he would be over the shoulder and off the highway. From there, he had no idea what to do next.

  One of the men that had been kicking a man on the ground a moment ago grabbed hold of the open jamb of the door on Sean’s driver’s side of the jeep. The man brought one boot up onto the running board and the other dragged the pavement under the jeep. He grabbed Sean’s sleeve. “Get out or I’ll throw you both out on your heads.”

  Sean stepped down on the accelerator while lifting his left foot as high as he could in the seat. He extended his knee connecting with the man’s chin with his heel. The man’s hands came loose and he folded backward in the air from the kick. The fellow landed on his back sprawled across the trunk of a Honda. The man rose up on his elbows and shook his head like he had just woken up from a bad dream.

  Sean left the highway in the air before he let off the gas. The jeep bounced twice going down the small slope. It tilted hard to one side and then the other with each impact threatening to topple with the high center of gravity of the jeep.

  Very high center of gravity if we are still in it when that wave passes through the Earth, Sean thought despite the desperate situation around him.

  It splashed down in the soggy grass off the highway and slogged forward with sluggish weight. Sean stepped down on the gas again spinning black water and muck up into the air behind them. He thought about the mob and the attacker behind him, but he did not turn to look.

  “A little less gravity might be good about now,” Sean said as he shifted gears and pumped the gas.

  “What?” Jenny looked around them as specks of mud landed on the dash and their seats.

  The wheels caught and lurched forward before bogging down again. He prepared to shift again, but the jeep tilted up in the front and bounded forward off the wet ground. Dry grass tore under the tires and sprayed out in their wake on both sides.

  Before Sean could make a decision about where to go next, he swerved around a small tree only to plow through and over a low, wire fence. Metal raked and tore under the jeep as it spun out into a grassy pasture. Sean turned out of the fishtail and ripped the jeep up over the rolling hills.

  As they topped one knoll, they saw a pond and a herd of cattle staring dumbly up at the passing jeep. Sean spotted a gate farther along on the opposing fence. He steered around logs and missed a couple trenches by inches.

  Sean centered on the gate and raced toward it.

  “Lock.” Jenny shouted.

  “What?”

  “The gate is padlocked, Sean. Look.”

  He nodded. “Hang on. Sorry, I can’t afford to stop. We’re running out of time.”

  Sean picked up speed and squinted his eyes. The front of the jeep slammed the gate head on with enough force to hurt his teeth. As the gate flung open with the force of the impact, Sean saw that the lock and chain had held, but the post had torn loose from the ground flying through the air pulled by the chain.

  He thought about every object on the planet being flung up in the air and Sean pressed the pedal down harder. He found a dirt road and turned onto it flinging dust and rocks in a cloud behind them.

  Sean shook his head and said, “Sorry about that.”

  “Not as sorry as the farmer will be when his cows get away.”

  Sean shrugged. “If your father is right about all of this, they may be flying away.”

  “He’s right. He’s always right,” Jenny said.

  Sean cut a glance at her face seeing the deep set concern as the wind whipped strands of hair around her cheeks. The look of concern was not directed at him this time, but it bothered him and scared him more than all the looks of concern he had endured over the years. He looked back forward.

  Ahead he saw a paved road and no farmers had shot at him. I haven’t been shot at for almost a full minute.

  They bounded up onto the road with no lines dividing one lane from the other. Sean drove on the wrong side as he looked at the sky to see which way west was. He seemed to be headed mostly west. The sky was crystal clear blue. Normally that was the perfect day in his book, but he also knew it meant high pressure. He wondered if the comings and goings of gravity were impacting atmospheric pressure. Sean thought lower gravity would mean less pressure, but he didn’t know. It’s not really lower gravity, but gravity moving the wrong direction.

  Sean turned his attention back on the road and steered onto the correct side of the street.

  “Sean?”

  He saw the fire belching out from the crumpled hood of a station wagon crashed into a telephone pole on the side of the road. “I see it.”

  He swerved out wide around it. Jenny looked at him and back at the car. A woman spilled out of the driver’s side and pulled at the back door without budging it. Sean saw a girl beating on the inside of the glass and another in a car seat reaching for her mom.

  The jeep raced past.

  “Sean, the kids.”

  “I saw. Hold on.”

  He swerved to the side and ran up over a curb onto the grass next to a parking lot. Sean jumped out and Jenny started to follow. He grabbed her arm. “No, stay with the Jeep. If we leave it, someone may try to steal it and we’ll be stranded. If there is trouble, honk.”

  “Okay. Hurry. The car is on fire and those kids are inside.”

  He grabbed a fire extinguisher out of the back of the jeep and ran. Sean sprayed inside the engine under the openings in the bent hood. The fire fell back and white smoke billowed out. As the extinguisher sputtered empty, the fire blasted back out again.

  He moved the mother aside and shouted. “Move away from the glass. Cover your sister’s eyes.”

  The girl turned away and put her hand over her sister’s eyes. Sean was impressed. The girl had to be younger than Holden and she was good under pressure.

  Sean swung and shattered the side window with one strike. The mother screamed. Sean swept glass out of the window frame with the body of the extinguisher before he tossed it aside.

  “Come on.” He held his hands inside.

  The girl unbuckled her sister and walked her across the seat to Sean. He pulled the girl out and handed her off to the mother. You should be a firefighter. You have the iron for it, girl.

  Fire and smoke swallowed the front of the car and licked along the sides. He reached back in. “Come on. Hurry.”

  Sean took her under his arm like a sack and guided the mother toward the jeep. Flame wrapped over the car and one of the windows shattered behind them.

  He set the girl down on the grass and the mother hugged them both. Seeing it made Sean feel farther from his boys than before.

  A man approached from the direction of the store attached to the parking lot. Sean looked at Jenny in the jeep and then stepped between the man and the mother and her girls.

  The man said, “I can try to call someone, but I don’t think anyone will come. The whole city has gone insane.”

  “Did you hear the news?” Sean asked.

  “The gravity thing?” The man nodded. “Yes, we’re inside locking everything down so the place doesn’t fly apart around us.”

  “Can they go inside with you until it’s over?” Sean waved back at the family behind him.

  “Yes, of course, what about you?”

  “I’m trying to get to my sons. I have to go.”

  The man nodded. “Good luck to you.”

  Sean turned and ran without waiting for thanks from the family. He jumped into the jeep and hooked back around onto the road. As he looked to be sure no cars were coming, he saw the older sister waving. The mother and the store owner were walking the girls toward the store.

  Sean waved back and raced away.

  “You did the right thing,” Jenny
said.

  “I know.”

  “We’ll still make it. Everything will be fine,” she said.

  Sean swallowed, but did not speak.

  Jenny rubbed the back of his neck with one hand as he drove and Sean started to cry.

  “It will be fine,” she said again. “I’m always right.”

  Sean sniffed and nodded. “Yeah, we haven’t been shot at for minutes and I haven’t been almost burned to death for seconds. We are having a great day.”

  “You left my fire extinguisher back there,” she said. “You’re the one that made me get it.”

  He nodded. “When that wave hits, it will just lift up in the air and fall back on our heads. We’re better off without it right now.”

  He glanced back at the clear sky and kept driving.

  18

  Holden Grayson, Grant Grayson, and Carter Strove – Ouachita National Forest, Black Fork Mountain Wilderness, Arkansas

  Holden picked up another rock and skipped it over the lake from the end of the dock. They had to hike in from where they parked the car and they didn’t have a boat. What’s the point of a dock with no boat? I wish my dad was here. It would be better with Dad.

  Grant handed him another rock. Holden held it up and shook his head. “No, it has to be flat and smooth.”

  Grant dug through the pile of stones they had carried with them to the end of the dock. Grant traded Holden a flat one for the fat, round stone. “This one?”

  Holden held it up above his head like he was inspecting it in the sun against the blue sky. “It will do.”

  “Can you get it all the way to the other side, Holden?”

  Holden laughed. “No, that’s like a mile away.”

  He flung the rock side arm and it skipped five times before plunging below the water.

  “What if you use magic?” Grant asked.

  “There’s no such thing.” Holden blinked against a burn behind his eyes. He did not know why he felt like crying, but he just did sometimes.

  “Yeah, there is. You did it in the car with the block. Remember?”

  Holden looked back and saw Carter on his hands and knees blowing at some smoky leaves in a circle of rocks. Holden shook his head. “I don’t know what happened in the car, Grant.”

  “And with the cows. Like that.”

  “I wasn’t doing that. It just happened.”

  Grant shrugged. “Okay. Throw more rocks, Holden.”

  “You do one, Grant.”

  “I can’t. I’m all little still.”

  “Try. No one will see, but me.”

  Grant held the fat, round rock up above his head and looked at it the way he had seen Holden do. He brought it down and drew his arm back behind his back.

  Holden shook his head. “You need a flat one.”

  Grant threw it anyway. The stone hurled in an arc before plopping down into the water with a high splash.

  “I did it, Holden.”

  Holden shook his head. “You need to use one of the flat stones.”

  The round rock rose up out of the water and hovered just about the surface. It was dark from being wet. A fish with a spotted back jumped out and bit at it in the air. The rock bounded off the fish’s lips. The rock tumbled in the air bouncing slowly off the surface of the water five, seven, fourteen times until Holden couldn’t see it anymore.

  “All the way across the lake. See?” Grant said.

  The fish whipped its tail as if trying to fling itself back in the water. It twisted in a circle just above and opened its mouth over and over. Holden thought about fish flopping in a boat as they died in the air. This is what it would look like with no boat, he thought.

  The fish touched the water again with its side. It flapped in a wild panic splashing water up into the air around it.

  Grant laughed.

  The fish caught enough traction to pull itself back under. The weight of the water seemed to be enough to keep it under this time.

  Carter said from behind them. “Come for a walk with me, boys.”

  Holden gasped and stumbled forward with his toes just inches from the edge of the dock. Would I go under or float above it in the air? I don’t know how things work anymore.

  Grant kicked at the rocks scattering them across the end of the dock. A half dozen tipped over the edge and dropped into the lake. Ripples spread out from the impacts driving out rings that disrupted their inverted reflections staring up at them as they stared down. The ripples crossed one another slicing patterns that were harder to follow with the eye. Out from the center they seemed to combine in a more powerful ripple which traveled out from them and was gone like Grant’s magic rock skipping slowly away leaving them forever.

  “Did you see my rock go?” Grant asked.

  Carter said, “No, buddy, I missed it.”

  “It went forever. All the way across the lake. Tell him, Holden.”

  Holden stared down into the water not saying anything.

  “Wow, all the way across,” Carter said. “That’s amazing.”

  “It was amazing,” Grant said.

  Holden recognized the tone in Carter’s voice that adults took when they humored a kid, but did not believe what they were saying. Grant didn’t hear it and thought Carter really thought Grant’s throw was amazing instead of unbelievable.

  Grant pointed out toward the center of the lake. “Did you see the fish?”

  “I missed that too,” Carter said.

  “It was flying in the air like the flying cows.” Grant dropped his hand.

  “Amazing,” Carter said.

  Holden took a deep breath. “Yeah, amazing.”

  “Let’s take that walk. I need to talk to you boys about some stuff.”

  The boys turned and walked beside Carter off the dock and past the campsite.

  “We’re going for a walk with Uncle Carter, Mom,” Grant said.

  “I know,” she said. “I’ll see you all in a minute.”

  They walked up the hill into the trees. Holden thought about the story of Hansel and Gretel being led out into the woods by the witch’s house because the step mom didn’t want to feed them anymore.

  “Look at those big rocks,” Grant said.

  The outcropping rose above them. Deep slices ringed the sides horizontally. The stratified sections made the formation look like they were stacked on each other in layers instead of being one solid rock.

  “Those are big, buddy,” Carter said.

  “Where are we going?” Holden asked.

  “Here is as good a place as any,” Carter said.

  Holden remembered that the woodcutter was sent to finish the kids off in the woods, but disobeyed the mother by letting them live. I forgot to drop breadcrumbs on the way up here from the car, Holden thought. The birds would just eat them anyway. I should have used stones.

  “Can we climb them?” Grant asked.

  “Maybe in a minute,” Carter said as he sat on the lip of one of the bottom folds of the rock. “I need to talk to you two about something.”

  “Are there caves?” Grant asked standing on the rock looking straight up the side next to where Carter sat.

  “Maybe. We’d have to look. We have to be careful though because snakes will get into the shadows of these rocks to hide and stay warm. We need to watch where we step and where we put our hands.”

  “What did you need to talk about?” Holden asked.

  Carter stared at him a moment, he laughed, and looked away. “Yeah, ugh, well, you guys know your daddy and I are friends, right?”

  “You fight fires together,” Grant said still staring up.

  “Right. And I like your mother a lot,” Carter said. “I love her. Even though that is true, I’m not trying to replace your daddy. He will always be your daddy and I will always be his friend. Do you guys understand what I am saying?”

  “Do the snakes jump out?” Grant asked.

  “What?” Carter shook his head. “No, they won’t. We’ll be fine.”

  Hold
en thought about the snake twisting the air on their way up to the campground and he shivered.

  “What do they eat?” Grant asked.

  Carter smiled. “Like mice and voles and stuff. They eat things that need to be eaten. The snakes get a bad rap. They’ll leave us alone, if we are careful. Listen, what I wanted to talk to you boys about is that I’m going to ask your mommy to marry me and I wanted you guys to know about it before that happened.”

  “Are you going to come live with us?” Grant asked.

  “We are talking about all that, but, yeah, that’s what would happen then.”

  “You would stay in mommy’s room or get your own room?” Grant asked.

  “Ugh, well, see. We’d be married so …”

  “You shouldn’t have told Grant,” Holden said. “He can’t keep a secret.”

  Carter laughed. “That’s okay. Your mother knows it’s coming. I just need to do the actual, official ask is all. I think that will be this weekend on this trip.”

  “Did you get a ring?” Holden asked.

  “Here in my pocket. You want to see it?”

  “Mommy already has rings,” Grant said. “You should get her something else like a crown or maybe a horse.”

  Carter laughed and ran his hand over the top of Grant’s head. “I’ll treat her like a princess though.”

  Holden rolled his eyes.

  “The crown and horse would help,” Grant said. “Does Dad know yet?”

  Carter swallowed and looked away. “Not yet. We’ll get around to that.”

  “Daddy used to be married to Mommy too,” Grant said, “but not anymore. Did you know about all that, Uncle Carter?”

  Carter nodded. “Yeah, that came up.”

  “Some of the kids at school say stuff about you being friends with Mommy,” Grant said.

  “What kind of stuff?” Carter asked.

  “Don’t talk about that,” Holden said.

  “No, it’s okay,” Carter said.

  “Mom told Grant not to talk about it,” Holden said.

  “What kind of stuff are we talking about, Holden?”

  Holden shrugged. “Some of the kids’ parents don’t like black people. Mom says they repeat stuff they hear their parents say. We aren’t supposed to repeat it.”