Broad America: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (End Days Book 3)

by E. E. Isherwood

  “It’s huge! How do you eat it?”

  He laughed uproariously because it was all coming together. They’d made good time, put some miles on the taxi, and were heading for Dad. He let himself enjoy being with Lydia. But most of all, he wanted to see her face when she got a taste of it.

  Garth pulled out a second burger he’d purchased for himself. “Like this.” He squeezed the top and bottom buns so all the materials in between squished a bit tighter, then stuffed it in his mouth.

  “Ahhh,” he mumbled with a full mouth. “So good.”

  She looked at him sideways.

  He nodded emphatically, his eyes pointed at her sandwich.

  Lydia studied her burger, then followed his lead. She stuffed it between her hands, then took the biggest bite she could.

  A moment later, her eyes lit up.

  “I told you!” he bubbled excitedly.

  She exaggerated her chewing like she wanted to get done as fast as possible. When she came up for air, her radiant smile gave him hope that she found it as satisfying as he did.

  “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” she cooed. “Thank you for getting this for me, Garth. You really are a provider.”

  She tore into the rest of her burger with grunts and sighs rivaling his own enthusiasm. He joined her in the ritual with glee, but his mood was tempered somewhat by being so close to the gas station.

  He wondered how many times he’d have to fill up the tank two gallons at a time before he made it to his dad.

  I-80, Wyoming

  Buck and Connie listened to the radio for another thirty minutes as they continued toward the eastern half of Wyoming. The terrain became slightly hillier, but it remained desolate. He was starting to doubt he’d make it into Nebraska by nightfall because of all the stoppages and slowdowns of the day. He decided that, if nothing else, he wanted to get past the I-25 intersection at Cheyenne, because he worried they’d shut both highways down at the same time.

  He led the convoy, doing eighty miles per hour.

  “Buck Rogers, you got your ears on?”

  He plucked the CB mic from its holder. “Yeah, Sparky, come on.”

  “I-70 just got shut down a hundred miles on each side of Denver. Glad we didn’t take the southern route to the east.” Sparky laughed.

  Buck looked at Connie, then at Mac. His decisions during the past few days had been lucky.

  “Did they say why they closed the boulevard down there?”

  “Road construction,” Sparky deadpanned.

  He grinned at Connie, then spoke to the other driver. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

  “Hell, no. Something is going on. First, a bunch of the 25 goes down for construction. Now the 70 is being worked on. It ain’t right, to be sure, but I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on.”

  “Let me know if you hear anything more about I-25 closing.” Buck placed the mic back in its cradle and glanced between the road and the radio.

  “Roger, Rogers,” Sparky replied, using the last part of Buck’s handle.

  Connie had her feet back up on the dashboard, and she held Buck’s phone in her lap. “Well, I guess we’re heading into more trouble. I may never get hold of Philip.”

  He watched the yellow-striped line ahead, unsure how to respond.

  “I believe you, by the way,” she went on. “I think he did just fine in the Iraq War and is alive and safe here in 2020.” She held up the phone. “I’ve been sneaky about it, but I’ve been trying his phone number all day.”

  “Nothing?” he asked.

  “Not a damned thing. It rings and rings. That doesn’t sound right, does it? I’m sure he would have an answering machine or someone, a neighbor maybe, would get sick of a phone ringing all the time.”

  She sighed heavily. “All I want is to hear his voice. I want to know what he’s doing with his life. I want to know he’s living his dreams and being a good person. Is that too much to ask?”

  He smiled. “It’s what every parent wants.”

  “I was so nervous when he went overseas. For me, it was only a few months ago, but for him, it’s been seventeen years. Do you think he hates me for leaving him?”

  “Fuck, no!” he blurted. Then, with more restraint, he added, “No one could possibly hate you.”

  “Thanks,” she replied sadly. “I guess I’ll never know.”

  “Hey, you can’t be sure of that. This whole thing with the blue and red lights might be like a storm passing overhead. It could clear up tomorrow, and everything will go back to the way it was. It’s what we’re hoping for, right?”

  More than ever, a selfish part of him wanted her to remain, even if the rest of the world went back to normal.

  “Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to work that way. Maybe the universe doesn’t allow family members to talk to each other when one of them skips through time.”

  She sniffled.

  “I’m sorry this is happening to you,” he said in a respectful tone, “but you and I are a team now, right? You’ve said you needed me a few times. Well, I need you, too. Someone’s got to yell at me when I drive through floods and cut across medians.”

  He laughed, hoping it would spark a response in her.

  “Yeah, maybe. I am lucky to be with you, and I know Phil is a strong young man. Whatever he’s doing, he’ll be wonderful at it. I’m a mom. I’m programmed to worry.”

  “You’re not alone. I worry about my boy all the time, too. He’s a good kid, no doubt, but he has a lot of maturing to do. Now he’s with a girl...”

  Connie guffawed. “Still on about girls, are you? What is it that worries you so much about us ladies?”

  He glanced over, to find her wiping away tears.

  “It’s not the girls I fear. It’s my boy. He’s right at the age when he’s going to discover the wonders of the fairer sex, and I’m afraid he’s going to get so distracted by this Lydia person that he drives into the Atlantic Ocean instead of heading west to meet us.”

  “Don’t we make a fine pair?” She grinned. “We’re both worrying about things we have absolutely no control over.”

  “I have a lot of time to think while I drive. It’s probably led to more lost sleep than I could ever make up. I’ll try to get out of my head while I’m with you.”

  “Well, I do know one thing that can take your mind off the heavy stuff for a while.” She dropped her feet off the dash and brushed her red hair back a little. He’d been caught off-guard and couldn’t imagine what she had in mind.

  He caught a twinkle in her eye, but then she called, “Mac!”

  The Golden barked and hopped off the rear sleeper bed.

  “Give me paw,” she said.

  The dog looked between Connie and him, then held out one of his paws.

  “Good dog!” Connie gushed.

  “Have you been secretly training him?” he asked with amazement.

  Connie reached up above his head and pulled down one of the remaining dog treats. Her perfume wasn’t as strong after her time in the water, but it was still there.

  For a few miles, he forgot about his worries while Connie practiced the trick over and over with Big Mac. By the time she was done, he did it without hesitation. She’d started working on getting him to do left or right paw when the CB crackled to life.

  “Buck Rogers, I have news,” Sparky called.

  Buck knew by the tone of voice it wasn’t going to be good.

  His brief moment of happiness was over.

  CHAPTER 21

  Search for Nuclear, Astrophysical, and Kronometric Extremes (SNAKE). Red Mesa, Colorado

  Bob ran up, out of breath. “Faith! Holy shit! Are you all right?”

  Faith heard his voice, and recognized his face, but had trouble replying. She’d mostly recovered from the car bomb outside the window, but her ears wouldn’t let go of a high-pitched squeal. She patted both ears to try to get them to pop and clear up while she and General Smith waited in an interior room.

>   An Air Force guard ran up behind Bob. When he saw the general, he stopped. “Sir, this man ran through our cordon at the end of this hallway.”

  “I had to make sure she wasn’t hurt, you twit,” Bob snapped back without looking at the man.

  General Smith busily conferred with some of his men but dismissed the guard with barely a glance. “He’s fine. Thank you, son.”

  The guard glared at Bob, then spun on his heel and left the room.

  “I didn’t know you gave a damn,” Faith said to Bob when it was just the two of them. Her ears weren’t getting any better, so she picked through her hair, amazed at all the tiny pieces of glass stuck in her tangled locks.

  “Geez, c’mon. I don’t want anyone to hurt you. I’m supposed to be your only bad guy.”

  It touched Faith to know her ex had a tiny bit of compassion, but he’d have an uphill battle if he expected her to forget everything he’d done leading up to the crisis. However, before she could answer him one way or another, General Smith was in her face.

  “Doctor Sinclair, I need you to walk with me. Alone.”

  The general gestured her away from Doctor Stafford.

  “You sure you want to go with him?” Bob asked, as if his date was being stolen at Homecoming.

  “I’ll be fine. Go check on the others.” She hadn’t heard of any deaths, but her staff was shouting about injuries in the hallway. She wanted to go out and check on them herself, but she had to stay with the general. Once he had done his job, she could do hers.

  When Obadias had her alone in the hallway, he began talking in a conspiratorial tone. “Faith, do you have any idea who could have done this? The car is totaled. We’re trying to figure out who it belonged to and how it got on your lot. In the meantime, it would help to know if you have any enemies.”

  She chuckled. “Where do I start? Radical environmental groups have been at our throats since we started up, and they’ve been angry at CERN for years before that. Those are the people who think what we do is going to open a black hole and swallow the Earth or something.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. She realized what she’d said.

  “No, this isn’t a black hole, general. We could measure that easily if it was. Rest assured, the Four Arrows experiment didn’t open one.”

  “Well, okay, then. I feel better knowing that.” He put a knuckle to his chin. “But no one else? Does anyone on the inside feel slighted by or vindictive towards what you’re doing here?”

  “No. Well, I’m not aware of any. Why would one of my own people do this?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s the typical logic in these situations. No one from the outside could have come here this fast, you know? Not unless a terrorist group was based in Denver and rushed to action as soon as SNAKE was mentioned on the news.”

  “Not likely,” she agreed.

  They walked down the hall until they came to the circular ring around the experimental chamber. She looked down at the clean room, which was currently empty and running at low power. Most of the facility was working on the math regarding the energy flowing through the collider and up into the atmosphere.

  “You’ve got to think of all the possibilities, Faith. You know the people working for you far better than anyone else. Even with formal interrogations, it would take forever to weed out a malcontent. There has to be someone you’d consider a threat.”

  “I have hundreds of employees here. I haven’t even met them all.”

  “Faith!” Bob cried out behind them.

  “Not him again,” the general mumbled.

  Bob ran up, holding his phone.

  Smith stopped him before he made it the last ten feet. “I insist we be left alone, Doctor.”

  Bob ignored the general and ran up to Faith. “You won’t believe this! There’s been another explosion.”

  “I didn’t feel one,” she replied.

  “Where?” the general demanded.

  “In the super collider tunnel. Cameras went offline at Transition Point Seven.” Bob peered directly at Faith. “A Four Arrows box was there.”

  “My men!” the general exploded. He’d put guards on each of the boxes.

  “Guys, there’s something else. The guards have been chased away from the remaining two boxes. Someone is down there, and we don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Dammit all to hell!” The general went over to the stairwell to the tram station. “I’m going down there.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Bob announced.

  “No!” Faith insisted. “I need you up in the control room. Find Sun. If all the boxes are destroyed, there is no telling what’s going to go wrong. I need someone I can trust to manage things up there.”

  “Shit, Faith. This ain’t right. I can’t let you go alone.”

  She smiled. “I’m not alone. I’ve got a four-star general watching over me.”

  “I don’t care who, but one of you needs to come with me right now to open the tram doors and drive the damned thing.” The general started down the stairs.

  Bob stood still while she and General Smith hurried away.

  There was no romantic goodbye, but she felt a little like it was a farewell with Bob. If the terrorists blew up the other two boxes, all of reality could unravel. There was no way to know for sure what would result, but she was confident it wouldn’t be anything good.

  “Take care of yourself,” she said as she went into the stairwell.

  “Yeah, you too,” Bob said slowly, disappointment tingeing his words. “I’ll watch over things here until you get back.”

  “You always wanted to be in charge,” she allowed. “Now’s your chance.”

  “Not like this,” he said in a quiet voice.

  She went through the doors and didn’t look back. Her flats slapped on each of the steps as she ran as fast as possible to the bottom, but when she entered the station, the Silver Bullet wasn’t there.

  General Smith faced her. “I don’t suppose there are other tram cars on the line?”

  “There are two, one for each hemisphere.” She trotted to the tracks and looked to the right. “There’s a sister station about a hundred yards that way.” She pointed down the lighted tunnel.

  “I’m not too proud to run.” General Smith hopped into the tram pathway, which was a smooth slab of concrete bracketed on each side by long metal magnets, which acted as the tracks. Without waiting a second for her, he jogged away.

  “Me, either,” she assured him as she got onto the tracks.

  Ahead, the wedge-shaped back of the tram engine pointed right at her.

  Please don’t move.

  European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), Switzerland

  When Philip walked into the lobby of the research facility, it reminded him of being in a library. Ethan conversed in hushed tones with two overnight security guards at the front desk. The sparkling-white floors and metallic walls bounced and warped the echo of the voices.

  There didn’t appear to be any urgency in the conversation, so he strode up to the desk to listen in.

  Ethan saw him and waved him over. “The guards have made a phone call to the director. He should be here momentarily. At first glance, they say we’ve wasted our time, because nothing unusual is going on.”

  “Did they say anything about a failed experiment?”

  The other man shook his head. “Nope. Nada.”

  “Do we report in?”

  Ethan looked at Corporal Grafton. “I want you to report to Battalion. Tell them our first impression is that nothing is amiss. The facility is intact. No reported problems. Waiting for the director. That’s all.”

  Grafton took off his radio to make his report.

  “What are we looking at for time?” Phil asked. “Did they say when the boss is going to get here?”

  “No,” Ethan replied. “But he is in this building.”

  “You want a perimeter?” he inquired quietly.

  “Yeah, go ahead. Give the men somet
hing to do while we wait. Have them pair up and keep eyes outside and down the two main hallways just in case.”

  After setting the men in place, Phil checked on Grafton. “You get HQ on the line?”

  “Still trying, sir.”

  “Very good.” He went back to the main desk to advise Ethan of the delay, but then a scientist walked up to the Colonel.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Tomas Eli. Can someone tell me what the bloody hell all these guns are doing on my campus at this late hour?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Colonel Ethan Knight, sir, and with all due respect, we’re the least of your worries.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Ethan pulled out a piece of paper. “I’ve got some questions that must be answered, okay?”

  The doctor crossed his arms and shifted his glasses as he assumed a defensive stance, arms crossed and leaning backward.

  “Do you have any knowledge of the Four Arrows Project, a covert attempt to piggyback on experiment 7HC?”

  “Four Arrows? No. But I do know of 7HC. We ran the experiment a few days ago.”

  Ethan kept reading.

  “Do you know the whereabouts of the American, Doctor Kyle Johnson?”

  “I do not,” the scientist deadpanned.

  “Why did you say it like that? You seem upset.”

  He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ve been trying to track him down for days. He and his team walked off the floor at a crucial moment during 7HC. We haven’t seen them since.”

  “But you said everything is okay?” Ethan wasn’t reading from the card.

  “And it is. We have over twenty nations represented here at CERN. Each one can come and go as they please. I’m sure the Americans had something important going on, but it doesn’t change the fact that they left without warning during an international experiment.”

  Ethan seemed to think about the next question because he stared at it for a good ten seconds. “Final item here. By executive order of the President of the United States, in cooperation with the Swiss Federal Council, we have been ordered to evacuate and shut down all power to your facility.”

  Doctor Eli’s face dropped before he recovered, clenching his jaw and glaring at the lieutenant colonel.