Even before they were intimate for the first time, Mark knew that this was the girl for him. She was perfect. Why would he want anyone else?
So he stopped looking. And he decided that this girl was going to marry him someday.
He just never told her. Not yet.
Hannah had told him once, early on, that the whole concept of family scared her a bit. He was no psychologist, of course, but he assumed it was because she had lost everyone in her life at such a tender age. Perhaps she subconsciously linked the concept of family with death. That would certainly be understandable.
So he’d put the marriage thing on the back burner until the right time.
Later on in their relationship, when the couple did decide to become intimate, it wasn’t clumsy. It was natural, and right. It was as though they had been together forever. And yes, he made her see stars.
When he made love to sweet Hannah the night she made the discovery, he did so with a desperate abandon. He wasn’t sure why, exactly, but with every thrust of his body into hers, he felt a desperation, almost like it was the last time they’d be doing this. He was certain she felt his desperation too. He could almost sense it in the way she held him, and screamed as they rocked back and forth as one. She made love with him quite literally like there was no tomorrow.
-4-
On Saturday morning, Hannah went in to work. It was something she’d never done on a Saturday morning before, and she caught the security guard sleeping at his desk. After rapping on the office door several times, she finally got his attention and he stumbled to the door.
She brushed past him and hurried to her office. No one else was there, of course. No one else in her office was dedicated enough to work on a Saturday, so she didn’t have to worry about interruptions.
She dove into her work. First she examined the new computer scan from the previous night. It showed the same result as the night before. She already knew it would. Then she started examining anything and everything she could think of that might make the computer produce flawed data, or interpret data incorrectly.
She found nothing.
When Hannah left her office just before lunchtime, she carried a copy of the new report, and a series of graphs that showed the projected path of Saris 7 in what would be its last hours, as it sped through the cosmos, entered the earth’s atmosphere, and was sucked toward the earth at thirty two miles a second.
She, and Mark, and everyone else she knew, had a little over two years to live.
Hannah stopped at Freebird’s and got each of them a burrito for lunch. Then she called Mark to tell him she’d be home in a few minutes. She didn’t want to be greeted by a gun as she had been the day before.
Mark, of course, had no clue what he was looking at, so she had to explain exactly what all of the numbers meant. He did have a hundred questions, though. She answered each one in layman’s terms.
Mark started with the obvious. “So what happens when it enters the atmosphere? Won’t it just burn up, like all of the old satellites you read about in the papers?”
“No, baby. This is made of sterner stuff than flimsy satellites. Rock, and not just regular rock, but rock that’s some of the hardest in the universe. The only thing that will burn off of it when it enters the atmosphere are the dust particles it carries.”
He was grasping at straws. “There was a movie, a few years ago, where they sent a nuclear weapon into outer space and it exploded next to a meteorite and changed its course. Do you think they could do that?”
Hannah hated to be blunt, but didn’t want to get his hopes up. “They’ll probably try.” She said. “But it would be a major long shot. With something moving that fast, they would have to time the blast perfectly, like within a hundredth of a second. If they were off by just the tiniest bit, the meteorite would fly right past them and they’d miss. And they would only get one chance unless they sent multiple rockets.”
“Any chance it would break up into pieces when it entered the atmosphere, pieces too small to do any damage?”
“That’s possible,” Hannah said. “but very unlikely. And it wouldn’t matter. Even if it broke up into a hundred pieces, it would still hit the earth at the same velocity. And you’d still have the same amount of tonnage hitting it.”
Mark was getting more and more desperate for a ray of hope. “You said it’ll hit in remote China, right? So all they have to do is get all of the villagers out of there and then put out the fires when it’s done, right?”
Hannah reached out to Mark and held him close. She couldn’t stand to look at his face when she told him.
“Baby, it’s not that simple. The people at the impact site will be vaporized immediately, yes. But they’ll be the lucky ones. Everyone else on the earth will die a slow and painful death.
“It’ll be like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The impact will send millions of tons of dust and dirt into the atmosphere. The sun will be hidden for years. The earth will grow cold. Very very cold. Like the harshest of winters. Only this winter will last for five to seven years.
“When the dinosaurs died, the only animal species that survived were those which lived in the oceans, or could live in burrows, or caves. And they had a miserable existence. They had to eat snow or ice because there was no water. And to keep from starving to death they had to forage all day long for dead roots and grass and anything else they could find to sustain them.
“Baby, the same thing will happen this time, only with humans. No one will survive unless they go underground. And they’ll have to forage for whatever food they can find to stay alive until the thaw comes. For five to seven years.
“No, the ones at the impact site will be the lucky ones. The rest of us are going to suffer terribly.”
Mark said “Honey, there must be a way. I’m not letting you go through that. I refuse to. We’ll find a way to survive, I promise you that.”
Mark and Hannah talked long into the night, and finally drifted off into a fitful slumber in each other’s arms.
-5-
Hannah sat in the office of Harvey Unwin, her Operations Manager. She’d bypassed her supervisor because he took a three day weekend to go fishing. Harvey was his boss, and a man Hannah despised. But he was the next in the chain of command, so he’d be the one who got the news.
“So, what is it you’re in such a big hurry to tell me that you wouldn’t even wait for me to get in my door?” he asked.
“Mr. Unwin, I’ve been concerned for some time that Polaris II only tracked moving objects for the next six months. I thought it would be nice to have a greater view, so I rewrote the program to capture more data.”
“You did what?” Unwin suddenly looked alarmed.
“I rewrote the program. And I found a large meteorite, Saris 7, on a collision course with earth. It’s projected to impact on January 15, 2016.”
Unwin rose from his desk and said “Stay here.”
There was something in his voice that Hannah neither liked nor understood. It was something other than shock, or fear. It was more like anger.
Through Harvey Unwin’s office windows she watched him as he went into an empty cubicle and made three phone calls. Then she watched him pace back and forth in front of his office.
She saw the elevator open on the far end of the room, and she saw the Director and his Chief of Staff meet Harvey Unwin outside the office. They conferred for several minutes, and each of them occasionally stole a glance at Hannah through the office windows.
She was confused by the looks on their faces. They all looked agitated.
The Director, Anthony Pacheco, turned and returned to the elevator, and Unwin returned to his office. The Chief of Staff, Tom Mize, stood outside the office door, almost as though he were guarding it.
Unwin said “We’ve got an appointment with Mr. Pacheco in twenty minutes.”
He took the computer printouts that Hannah brought with her and started reviewing them. He never once looked Hannah in the face.
/> Hannah was getting increasingly worried. And a little bit frightened.
“When did you print this report?” Unwin demanded without looking up.
“This morning.” She said.
“And did you share this information with any of the other analysts this morning?”
“No sir.”
“Why in the world would you think it’s okay to rewrite a program to gather more data without checking with anyone first?”
“As I said, I thought it would be helpful if we had more reaction time in cases such as this.”
Unwin’s phone buzzed and he picked it up.
“Okay, we’re headed up.” He said into the phone.
He told Hannah “Okay, follow me. And don’t talk to anyone on the way.”
Harvey Unwin led Hannah to the elevator. Tom Mize followed closely behind, but didn’t say a word to either of them.
Hannah was very brusquely escorted into Anthony Pacheco’s office and told to sit at a chair directly in front of his desk. Harvey Unwin and Tom Mize stood behind her.
She was confused and didn’t know what was going on, but she started to feel like a criminal.
“Good morning, Miss Jelinovic.” Pacheco said. “Do you remember this form you completed when you took the job with us?”
He placed her nondisclosure agreement on his desk in front of her.
“Yes.” She was starting to feel very uneasy.
“Is that your signature at the bottom?”
“Yes, sir, it is. What’s this all about?”
“Miss Jelinovic, would you read aloud the second paragraph for me?”
Hannah read the paragraph in a shaky voice.
“I agree that any and all information or data I work with is the property of the United States government, and that it is not to be shared or discussed with any other entity or individual. This provision applies during the entire term of employment, and extends for a period not less than ten years after termination of employment. Violation of this agreement is punishable under U.S. Code 45-101 by a fine up to $10,000 or up to ten years in prison, or both.”
She looked directly at Pacheco. “I still don’t understand what this is all about.”
“What this is all about, Miss Jelinovic, is that you have put us in a rather untenable position. You had absolutely no reason to rewrite that computer program, nor to gather the data from it. Listen very carefully to my next question, Miss Jelinovic, because your freedom could very well depend on it. Have you shared any of this information with any of your co-workers?”
“No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Miss Jelinovic, I suggest you remember the statement you just read to me. If you breathe a word of your findings to anyone, inside or outside of this building, I will make sure that you spend the next ten years of your life in a maximum security prison. You can count on that.”
“But why?”
“Because, Miss Jelinovic, this is a matter of national security. And until we get a handle on Saris 7 and what to do about it, no one outside the highest levels of government need to know about it.”
Hannah suddenly felt like a little girl being chastised for not eating her vegetables.
“I’ve already got one of our computer techs restoring the Polaris II program to its original state. You are being transferred to the classification section. Mr. Unwin will escort you back to your old office to gather your things.”
Hannah got up without a word and walked sheepishly toward the door.
“Oh, and Miss Jelinovic,” Pacheco called behind her. “I’d strongly suggest you leave the computer programs in your new section the hell alone.”
Hannah placed her belongings in two boxes, and she and Unwin carried them to another floor in the building. He showed her to her new cubicle without saying a word to her. They placed the boxes on her new desk and he left her there, again without uttering a sound.
Hannah sat down and cried.
-6-
While Hannah was spending her afternoon getting accustomed to her new office, Mark was on his way back from Austin. He’d left early that morning to beat the traffic, and had spent three hours filling out forms at the state lottery office.
He was told that his final payout was just over $221 million, and that it would be deposited into his account within four to six weeks. He asked if he could remain anonymous and was told that he didn’t have to do any television interviews, but that his name was part of the public record.
They gave him the opportunity to pose for a photograph holding a big check. For a souvenir, they said. He chose not to. He had the money. He didn’t need a souvenir.
He stopped at the Exxon station on his way home to buy a soda. As he walked in the door he shouted across the store to Joe Kenney.
“Hey, Joe! You’ll live in lonely rooms I know and watch for my love’s tenderness.”
A little old lady cast an evil eye in Mark’s direction.
Joe was hanging new price labels. He paused for a moment, thought, and then responded “Steppenwolf, ‘Tenderness’”
The old lady decided she didn’t need cat food after all and left the store.
Joe walked over to Mark and said “So, what are you doing here? I figured you’d have butlers and servants and stuff to come and buy your sodas for you now.”
Mark said “Nope. I think it’s important that I mingle with the little people now. You know, to keep my perspective and remember where I came from.”
Then, in a moment of sadness, Mark told his long-time friend “You know, if there’s ever anything you need, all you have to do is ask.”
Joe said “Hey, I’m not one of those so-called friends who’s going to start sponging off of you just because you got lucky and got rich. The only thing I’ll ever want from you is your promise not to change as a person.”
“You got it, Joe. I’ll be the same old self-serving jerk I’ve always been.”
Joe laughed. “Good boy.”
-7-
Mark pulled into the drive and saw Hannah’s car inside the garage. He was glad she beat him home. He was looking forward to hearing what her bosses said when she told them about Saris 7.
He walked into the house and immediately smelled spaghetti sauce cooking on the stove.
Hannah, bless her heart, was like most women in their mid twenties. Her cooking abilities were limited. But she tried hard, and with a little help from Ragu, she made a pretty good plate of spaghetti. And Mark was starving, so spaghetti was just fine with him.
When he walked up behind Hannah in the kitchen, though, his hunger pangs vanished. She turned off the sauce and turned around to hold him. She was sobbing and looked a mess, and he could tell from her puffy eyes and lack of mascara that she’d been crying all day.
“Honey, what’s wrong?”
“I told them, baby. I told Unwin, and he told Pacheco, and they should have been glad but instead they got angry. They demoted me. They moved me down to the third floor, where all I have to do each day is assign names and numbers to new stars that Hubble is finding. It’s the same work that interns do. They told me that maybe I won’t do any damage down there.”
Mark held her close and tried his best to comfort her.
“I just don’t understand, baby.” She sobbed. “I don’t understand any of this.”
She told Mark how she spent most of the day organizing her new cubicle and trying to avoid the stares of her new co-workers in the cubicles around her. She said that some of them looked at her with sympathy. Others looked at her with accusatory eyes, as though she were guilty of something. But all of them, except her friend Sarah Spear, seemed to want to avoid her at all costs. They stared but didn’t approach her, didn’t offer to help her, didn’t try to console her. She felt like an outcast in this new world, like she’d brought the plague in with her, and like the others didn’t want to be infected by her.
“Except for Sarah.” She said. “Sarah, God bless her, came by and asked if I was okay. She said she understood what I was
feeling. She helped me hang some photos of you, and even hung one upside-down to make me laugh. She said you look better that way. She asked if she could come by and visit us later tonight to check up on me. Is that okay?”
Mark said “Yes, as long as y’all don’t make me stand on my head.”
And Hannah smiled for the first time. “Okay, deal.”
They ate in near silence. Each was deep in their own thoughts, trying to figure out what was going on, and why Hannah would be punished for her discovery. And Mark was careful not to push her. She was starting to calm down now, and he didn’t want to reopen the wound before Hannah was ready to talk about it.
And as much as Mark liked Hannah’s spaghetti, on this occasion it was tasteless and bland.
The doorbell rang about 7:30, as the couple was snuggling on the couch watching CSI. Mark answered the door and said hello to Sarah, and invited her into their home.
He’d talked to Sarah a couple of times at office functions, but didn’t know her well. Didn’t even know what she did, really, except that she worked for the same company as his Hannah. So he really had nothing to add to the girls’ conversation. He’d just take a back seat and listen.
He fixed the girls a drink as they sat down in the living room and talked about Hannah’s experience at work earlier that day.
“I felt so bad for you today,” Sarah started. “So did a couple of the other people who knew what happened.”
“But how did you know? Did Harvey Unwin tell you?”
Sarah continued. “No, honey. We knew because the same thing happened to us.
“Not all of us, of course, but myself, Pete D’Ambrosio, Velma Greer, and Steve Weed. Steve discovered Saris 7 more than a year ago. He got sent down to our office the next day. We followed him two days later because he told us about it. If you told anyone else in your old office, they’ll be coming down to join us soon.”
Final Dawn: Escape From Armageddon Page 2
