Scott nodded.
“We had a few comets hit our atmosphere, a few right over our heads even. Literally,” he said, looking at Lauren, who nodded. “You could see them burning up in the sky above. Most probably disintegrated, but a few touched down, some too small to do any real physical damage. I’m sure you could find a few small craters out in the woods today, but probably not too many. There’s at least one in the bay. A big one, though, landed on the old McClellan farm.”
Scott nodded again. The farm was little more than the remains of ramshackle buildings. The walls of the house had collapsed ages ago, leaving what little was left of the roof to sit atop the mess of lumber and get grown over with grass. Most of the barn was still standing, although the roof had caved in right in the middle, obliterating a large chunk of the west-facing wall. A meteor wasn’t bound to hurt the property all that much.
Jacob stood and began pacing the room while he spoke.
“There’s been an increase in objects hitting Earth’s atmosphere over the last few years, but with all the budget cuts and a lack of decent funding for NASA, nobody really pays much attention to it, unless something big gets through, like the asteroid that splashed down in Russia a few years ago. Now, that one, nobody ever saw that coming. Everyone was focused on another asteroid called 2012 DA14, which had absolutely no danger of hitting Earth. But this other asteroid, nobody ever knew it was on its way. It was coming at us from the direction of the sun, and we were completely blindsided by it.
“So, these last few nights, we were all caught up in the meteor shower, thinking it’s just any other celestial event, perfectly normal, perfectly harmless. But there was shit out there we couldn’t see, stuff we didn’t even know about it, coming at us from an entirely different direction.”
“A double-whammy,” Jeff said.
“Okay,” Scott said, “but what does that have to do with this? You’re saying the animals are freaking out over space rocks?”
Jacob’s lips twisted into a grimace. “Yes and no. This is all completely hypothetical, but I think it’s possible, and it’s the best I’ve got. Did either of you watch the news this morning?”
Both Scott and Lauren shook their heads.
“An asteroid hit Russia, a big one. Bigger than the Tunguska event of 1908, which, in case you didn’t know, was fucking huge…like bigger than the nuke we dropped on Hiroshima in World War II. And there have been a few others, too. Some big, some small. None as big as the one that splashed into Russia, but big enough.
“The Russian blast was enough to disrupt cellular communications over most of the world. This power loss now, that’s because of the asteroids pummeling us. When these suckers hit, there’s a huge release of thermal and electromagnetic energy. Basically, we’ve been hit with a bunch of big EMP bombs all day, with more and more of these shockwaves pummeling our planet. We’re looking at a sort of cascading effect.”
A noisy ripping halted Jacob’s speech for a moment as Jeff undid the Velcro straps of his batting pads.
Scott was confused, still trying to wrap his mind around all this. Comets and meteors and asteroids and EMP pulses. This was all crazy.
Before he could open his mouth, Jacob held up a hand and hurried on.
“But that’s only part of what’s happening here. It’s not just comets, okay? These rocks, they’re like little petri dishes of bacteria. When the Philae lander touched down on a comet, we learned all kinds of stuff about these rocks within hours. The surface was rich with organic material, which means there was organic life on the damn thing…probably still is under all the ice.”
“You’re saying this is some kind of alien invasion?” Scott said.
Jacob laughed. “If you want to look at it that way, sure. I guess it is. I was thinking more of an outbreak than an invasion. These rocks have been hitting Earth for the last few days, breaking apart or crash landing, and spreading bacteria all through the atmosphere, hitting our lakes and oceans, some coming down right in the middle of a city, like in Russia today. Or in the bay or out at McClellan’s.”
“And infecting the animals?” Lauren said.
Jacob nodded, slowly, less enthusiastic than he’d been during his pseudo-lecture. “I think so, yes. And with amazing rapidity, at that. Whatever this bug is, the way it just moves through hosts, it’s seriously unlike anything else on Earth.”
“And you think this is happening everywhere?” Scott added.
Jeff propped himself onto the desk, swinging his legs. “Over the ham radio, we were hearing from people about animal attacks. Before the phones and internet went down, there was stuff on Twitter and Facebook. Crazy stuff. And then, I guess, it finally caught up with us.”
“Not just caught up,” Jacob corrected him. “Overtook.”
“Does the ham radio still work?” Lauren asked.
“It wasn’t in a Faraday cage,” Jacob said. “So, no. The EMP shockwave would have killed it, too, along with the power grid, our computers, phones, everything.”
After a moment of silence, Jeff moved around to the opposite side of the studio, to a cooler tucked under the desk by the operator’s station. He pulled free a twelve-pack of Miller Lite and began distributing cans to everyone. Once he had a brew in hand, he clinked his can against the others with false cheer.
“Welcome to the end of the world as we know it.”
11
SHAY HENDRIX MANEUVERED THROUGH traffic, en route to Government Plaza. Thankfully it was in the opposite direction of the decimated downtown, north of the hospital where she had left Dec and Sarah, in what had once been Old Downtown.
Driving was slow going, the streets jammed with stranded vehicles. Many of the stalled cars were still occupied and trapped between unmoving, deserted autos, drivers and passengers sitting inside and plainly worried. They waved for her to stop, and she felt guilty as she rolled past, trying not to watch as they slammed their hands against the windows in anger.
Then there were the bodies. Too many bodies. Corpses dotted the shoulder, or had simply fallen in the middle of the street. These she tried to go around, but one particularly dense stretch of road had made that impossible. Slowly, her car crept over the dead stretched across the shoulder, and she tried to ignore the awful thumps her tires made as she rolled over the bodies, the car slightly raising and then lowering as she passed. She tried not to make eye contact with the people still in the vehicles beside her, pounding on the windows, their muted screams managing to find her. Tried not to think about the skulls popping under the weight of her police cruiser, meat sacks exploding with a bony crunch as if she were running over a full pop bottle instead of murdered people. She had to close her eyes for a moment as she caught sight of the Realtor who helped her buy a house, just before the woman’s body cracked under her tires.
Pop, pop, crunch, crunch.
Too many similar sightings worked her nerves raw and she wiped away a tear as she realized she was driving through the apocalypse. She understood the frustration of those few remaining drivers and trapped families as they frantically waved to get her attention, their eyes wide in desperate pleas. She couldn’t stop and help them though, no matter how badly she wanted to. She saw what they didn’t, or maybe what they simply didn’t want to. On either side of the road, lining the shoulder and tucked away in the tree line beyond, black watchful eyes tracked her.
A sigh of relief escape her as she crossed into Old Downtown.
A product of a bygone era, the area was quiet, its storefronts smaller and always less bustling than their more expensive counterparts along the newer strip. This was where the locals came to shop when they wanted to avoid the tourists that flocked to the main drag, and its land-locked nature and the absence of beachside views or easy access to the lake made it an urban oasis.
Even miles away from the decimated strip of the newer downtown area, she could see the columns of black smoke darkening the sky, could still smell the putrid rank of burning insulation and human flesh and scorched met
al.
Her patrol car died suddenly outside the squat, weather-beaten library. Her car coasted briefly, until she pumped the brakes and brought it to a halt. The library’s windows went dark. So, too, did the buildings on either side of it, and across the street from her.
The Grand Traverse County Sheriff Department. City Hall. Little Tot’s Daycare. All dark.
She put the car in park, turned off the vehicle, and tried to restart it. Nothing. Tried again. Still nothing. Putting it all together, she knew it wasn’t a dead battery or any kind of internal malfunction.
Whatever was happening to the world around her, it just got that much worse.
She stared out the windows, turning her head to get the full one-eighty, checking her mirrors to see what, if anything, was happening on her six. The coast was clear.
She pulled her phone free and saw that it, too, was dead. The phone wasn’t merely lost in the No Service oubliette, but dead-dead. She pocketed it, then checked her surroundings once again, looking for those eyes watching her as she watched for them.
City Hall was five blocks away, straight ahead. That was where Old Downtown ended, with a roundabout that fed back onto Averly Street in the opposite direction. Old, large conifers encircled the seat of local government, the building oddly modern in comparison to the surrounding relics, and a full story taller than anything else in the vicinity.
I can do this, she thought. Easily.
Another glance at her surroundings. No animals. No people.
Plenty of blood, though. Like US 31 and everywhere else she had seen, the streets were slick with it, the sidewalks stained in ruddy darkness. Mangled bodies dotting the landscape, torn apart, clothes rent, limbs gnawed on, and organs spilled.
That wasn’t going to be her, though. Of that, she was bound and determined.
Her heart knocked loudly in her chest cavity, not merely thudding, but booming and banging, ready to punch through her breastbone and leap free of her body by sheer force of will and unstoppable momentum.
Sweat-slick fingers pulled the door handle and she shoved her way out, running as soon as her boots hit the ground. A mental tally ran through her head as she ran.
Five blocks.
Four blocks.
The noise of her hammering heart was loud in her ears, the breathy whooshing of her aspiration an echo in her skull.
Her countdown barely hit three blocks when the sound of barking crashed into the air and the padded thuds of gray wolf feet slapping asphalt gave chase.
She couldn’t outrun them, she knew. There was no way. Going over the cars would be fruitless, since the beasts could make the jump just as easily, if not better than she could, and it would only slow her down in the end. She kept her eyes forward, kept her legs pumping.
Run, you bitch! Just fucking run!
Sunlight glinted off glass overhead and a thunderous boom sounded over the wolves’ noises. A painful sounding yelp rang out, too close, and then a dull thud as an animal hit the ground. She didn’t look back, just kept running.
Two blocks.
More gunfire, more yelps, and—she hoped—more dead wild dogs.
The shooter was on the second floor of City Hall, dead ahead. She couldn’t make out who it was, but she was grateful as all hell for their support. His aim—at least she thought it was a he—had been true and had given the wolves a little something to think about. Barking sounded behind her, but fainter, enough to ease her mind as she realized they were no longer pursuing her.
She gave a quick glance back to confirm, and sure enough the pack left standing—four of them—were stock still in the road, their teeth bared but otherwise unmoving. One decided to take his chances and bolted forward. Another crack of gunfire ended the chase, and Shay found herself considerably more grateful. The wolves looked to their fallen comrade, the anger clear in their eyes as they snarled and shouted at her.
One block.
She ran down the middle of the circular drive fronting City Hall, trampling over the mound of fresh flowers at its center, and bounded up the stairs to the glass doors. She grabbed for the handle, barely registering the tacky slipperiness of the metal bar, and pulled.
Locked.
“Motherfucker!”
She turned back to see the three wolves cautiously stepping forward.
“Come on,” she whispered, waiting for the booming gunshots to ring out from overhead and cut them down.
“Come on, come on.”
Sweat lined her forehead and her legs burned. Moving ever so slowly, she reached for her gun and slid it from its holster, never taking her eyes off the wild dogs. She knew well enough to avoid making eye contact with them, lest it spur them on even further. The last thing she wanted was to challenge a rabid wolf.
Why wasn’t he shooting? she wondered. Why wasn’t he opening the door? Where was he? Her body slipped into a shooter’s stance, holding the gun in both hands, one leg in front of the other.
A metal snick rang loudly in her ears and she turned as the door opened.
A greasy hand reached out quickly, snatching her hair, and pulled her back into the darkness of City Hall.
Dec’s head throbbed from the noisy buzzing of the packed emergency room. Those places where he’d been bitten and scratched burned and itched with an annoying tenacity.
The growing crowd was making him uncomfortable, and his personal space was routinely trampled upon as people nudged, bumped, and shoved past, knocking into his knees, shoving their asses right into his face, and one had even elbowed him in the forehead.
The hum of activity was a hornet’s nest of thrumming, angry warnings, the chattering of nervous conversation and painful moans piercing his ears, drilling right into the middle of his brain, digging, digging, digging, the veins in his temples pumping mightily, beating against his skull, hammering away with baleful punching sting and twists.
And the people.
Jesus Christ, the people.
The television had mollified most, and even Dec had been able to escape into the news coverage that reported the same stories over and over. Whatever exuberance there’d been over last night’s sky show was buried under reports of the Russians breaking their cease-fire and invading Chechnya. Gaza erupted in flames as open season was mutually declared between Israel and Palestine, the two sides trading suicide bombings for blitzkrieg runs, tit-for-tat. Eventually, the twenty-four hour news network caught wind of animal attacks breaking out across the nation, across the world in fact, and briefly reported on that before interrupting with the news that now Lebanon and Egypt had joined in against Israel in defense of the Palestinians.
What the fuck is going on? he had wondered. The whole world had picked a hell of a time to go crazy.
An hour ago, the power cut out completely. He couldn’t see the panic of the nurses, but he could hear their faint, hushed worries. His smart watch and Android were dead. The TV winked out, along with the lights, but thankfully there was enough daylight filtering in from the windows to see by. When power did not come back on soon enough, people became antsy. Antsier still as more bodies found their way to the ER, cramming into the already overcrowded pillbox of a waiting room.
Conversations grew strained as voices snapped. People turned red-faced with tension, their cheeks burning hot enough to fry an egg. Quarters tightened so that he couldn’t even stretch out his legs, and his arms were held tightly to his chest cradling Sarah, trying to shush her screeching wailing. The room had grown into standing room only hours ago, and proceeded to get worse from there. Trapped body heat raised the temperature to what felt like more than one hundred degrees.
Sweat beaded his forehead. His shirt was soaked, massive dark rings staining his armpits and neck, gluing the fabric to his wet torso.
And, on top of all that, he had a fucking kid’s song stuck in his head on an unending loop. Sarah’s play mat loudly sang Itsy Bitsy Spider, This Old Man, and Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. This last song was what had taken up permanent reside
nce in his mind, the shrill, too-loud electronic noise playing over and over and fucking over.
Sarah had been crying for at least an hour. He tried feeding her again, uncomfortably contorting himself to reach the bag stationed between his legs. Digging around, he found the bottle and—
The god damn fucking thing popped right out of his hand, propelled away by the slick of sweat coating his palms.
He wanted to scream, felt the roar building in his chest, torn between venting his anger and giving up completely and breaking down in a flood of tears. His eyes stung and he squeezed them shut.
Why couldn’t anything go right? he wondered. Why could nothing ever go his way, just this fucking once?
He watched with a sad mixture of resentment and desperation as the bottle rolled across the ground and settled against a pair of Converse sneakers.
He half-rose from the chair, holding Sarah close, as he reached toward the bottle. His fingers found empty air, the bottle just out of reach. He knew if he stood, he would lose the chair immediately. He had already seen that happen to a few others, and a fistfight had nearly broken out over the trespass. The security guard that had broken up the intense argument won a broken nose and a hell of a shiner around one eye for his trouble.
“Hey, excuse me,” he said, trying to get the attention of the kid across from him. “Could you please?”
The teen looked at him, dazed, face pale and coated in a wet sheen. He held his stomach in both arms, bent over in a rictus of pain. Eventually, he leaned down and grabbed the bottle from between his feet. He stared at the foreign object with a look of both confusion and concern, his eyes bobbing between Dec’s outstretched hand and the bottle of breast milk. Then he nodded, and handed over the bottle. Just as the plastic hit Dec’s open palm, the man bent to the side and vomited between his legs and those of his neighbor, splashing them both with his upchucked sickness.
Sarah screamed and howled, and Dec tried to ignore the rotting stench of whatever it was that had come out of the man, wanting to get away from all of this, from all of these people, but he couldn’t. He and Sarah were trapped. He was literally wedged into his seat, a bloated man on his right and a heifer of a woman on his left, their excess fat spilling over the wooden armrests and crowding him. Both stank of blood and sweat.
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