by JE Gurley
It also showed Masowe sacrificing his life to defeat the creature. He wanted that information distributed as widely as possible. The Zulu security guard was a hero and the world should know.
Doctor Tells was recovering in hospital. He was a tough old bird and would soon be driving the nurses crazy. Alan flexed his arm. It was still sore and somewhat swollen, but draining the wound of pus and the series of antibiotic shots the attending physician had administered seemed to be working. At least it hadn’t hampered his and Eve’s nighttime escapades.
“When must you leave?” Eve asked.
He looked over at her and grinned. The past two days with her had been the best in his life. Nothing could erase the deaths of Vince McGill and Bill Bakkerman or the horrors he had experienced, but the side of his life that had suffered the most, his love life, had reached a new level. What he and Eve felt might not yet be love, but it was the first step toward what he hoped would be a lasting relationship.
“Since I don’t have much to pack or ship back home, Trace and I are scheduled to fly out tomorrow morning. The military authorities have hinted that they would appreciate my leaving the country as soon as possible. They’re afraid of what I might say.”
“They can’t shut me up,” Eve insisted. “Someone has to know what really happened.”
He handed her the memory stick. “This might help,” he said.
She looked at his mischievous grin and asked, “What’s on it?”
“Proof. I would prefer you wait until I am safely out of the country before releasing it.”
She leaned over the table and kissed him. “I knew I loved you for some reason.”
“Whoa,” he said. “Let’s not rush this. Sex first, love later.”
She became suddenly serious, nodding her head. “Whatever you say.”
“Here’s another gift for you. I was hoping to get it made into a ring, but …” He handed her the diamond Vince had stashed inside his computer bag. He had found it while checking the computer before packing it for shipment to Vince’s parents. By rights, the diamond was Vince’s, but given the circumstances, he thought Vince wouldn’t mind sharing.
She stared at the diamond with her mouth open. “My God, it’s gigantic.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around lately.
“What am I supposed to do with it? Allen Hoffman, is this a proposal?”
“No, I usually get down on one knee when I do that. I could never sneak it by customs. I thought you might find someone to cut and polish it. I don’t think Vince would mind if you had a jeweler slice off a few carats, just enough for a ring for you. We can call it a friendship ring for now. If you can sell the rest of the diamond, I’ll send the money to Vince’s parents.”
“Alan, that’s so sweet of you.”
He blushed. “Yeah, I’m like that sometimes.”
She frowned as she stared at the stone in her hand. “All those diamonds down there … Do you think someone will ever dig them out?”
“Through all that magma? Let’s hope not. Let whatever is buried down there remained buried.”
“Do you think there are other places like the magma chamber, places deep in the earth with living creatures like the Intulo?”
He smiled. “Vince would think so.” He shook his head. He had given a few hours restless thought to that very subject without deciding. “I don’t know. If we keep boring deeper and deeper, we’re bound to find something inimical to mankind’s welfare. It’s in our nature.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed. “When I finish this lecture in Johannesburg, would you mind very much if I visited you in Nevada?”
“I’m counting on it. The desert can be a lonely place.”
She held out the raw diamond. Though it looked more like a shiny stone than a jewel, the sun glinted from its crystal surface. “Can you afford to give this to me? Are you going to be broke? I don’t know if I can love a pauper.”
“Doctor Tells was right. My father informed me the company has already received six orders for our mining machines, and NASA is taking a closer look at our smaller Charon version for a future lunar mission. I think we can hold off the creditors for a while. I might be busy, but I won’t be a pauper.”
“Alan?”
He looked across the table at her and saw the playful look in her eyes. “What?”
“Since you’re leaving tomorrow and I might not see you for a few weeks, I thought …” Her voice trailed off, as she winked and rose from her chair. On her sensual stroll back into the room, she removed her blouse and bra and dropped them on the floor, freeing her luscious breasts. He skirt quickly followed. He was surprised that she wore no underwear.
As he got up to join her, he thought, I wonder if Van Gotts is still paying for this room. I hope they don’t bill me for a new set of box springs.
The End
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1
Wednesday, August 8, 2018 5:30 a.m. (PDT) San Francisco, California –
If he had known he was going to die, Miles Candicott still probably wouldn’t have changed his routine, but he might have enjoyed his last morning on Earth more deeply. He was a habitual early riser, not for the opportunity to watch the sun rising over Eureka Peak, but to beat the early morning traffic. As on any other day, he left his Outer Sunset two-bedroom, 1950’s bungalow on Noriega Street at five in the morning and jogged to the Great Highway along the coast. From there, his trek would take him one mile north to Golden Gate Park, returning home for a shower and breakfast before leaving for his law office in downtown San Francisco.
He had unfailingly performed this morning ritual for five years. At forty-one, he thought himself in better shape than when he turned twenty-five. He was single, enjoyed a full life both in and outside the gay community, and his salary was in the comfortable upper six-figure range. He embraced his lifestyle with gusto. As a native San Franciscan, he wished to be no other place in the world.
The park was his favorite leg of the route. He relished the two mile jog along the deserted park trails. A light mist had rolled in from the ocean hiding the sidewalk, but he knew the path by heart. The streetlights created undulating pools of brightness. The nearby trees floated on a luminescent cloud. When the tops of the trees began to glow with reflected light, Miles glanced upwards to find the entire eastern sky aglow. Confused, he stopped to check his watch – 5:30 a.m. As he watched dumfounded, the sun grew brighter. Not the sun, he surmised. A meteor, a large one. Make a wish.
The falling star moved quickly, growing larger as it approached, crossing the night sky like a herald of the morning to follow. His heart raced, not from the vigor of his run, but from the fear that he was the target of a celestial object that seemed to be zeroing in on him. Night turned to day, as the object lit up the sky overhead. He held his breath, fighting a growing panic, as the meteor shot overhead at a distance of less than a mile. The warmth of its heat touched his upturned face. A trail of smoke and flame followed the fireball as it descended. When the sonic boom it produced slammed into him, he clapped his hands over his ears and grimaced from the pain. Car alarms began wailing in the nearby neighborhoods. Dogs howled.
Mouth open in awe, blinking his eyes against the bright glare, he watched mutely, as the fireball struck the water near the Farallon Islands some twenty-seven miles distant. Its impact illuminated the ocean, sending a plume of steam skyward, as millions of gallons of seawater vaporized in an instant. Seconds later, the cloud of steam turned to glowing vaporized rock as the object buried into the seabed. Just as the glow died, the ground began to tremble, a low rumble at first, but steadily growing stronger until the tremor knocked him to his knees. He braced himself with his hands. The leaves rustled as the trees around him shook violently. The sidewalk cracked beneath him; then buckled. He had experienced mild 4.0 tremors in his lifetime, and this one was much worse, a 5.0 or 5.5 at least.
As if the gods had decided that quake alone hadn’t caused suffici
ent damage for such a cosmic event, deep beneath the earth, the San Andreas and Hayward Faults began to shift. Under tremendous pressure, rock ground against rock, echoing the impact of the meteor, sending spasms racing outward in all directions. The ground shook more vigorously like a tossed blanket, uprooting trees and knocking down power lines. Sparks flew from damaged transformers, starting fires. Around him streetlamps rocked violently until their bulbs cracked, plunging him into darkness. Soon, the earthquake rattled not only the coast, but the entire peninsula as it grew in magnitude, reaching a 6.0, and then pushing on to a devastating 7.5.
Downtown, buildings constructed to handle the tectonic shifts prevalent in the area, swayed like pendulums. Glass building facades shattered, cascading shards of broken glass to the streets and sidewalks below. Older buildings collapsed altogether. Streets caved in. Fire hydrants ruptured, spraying geysers of water into the air. Fires erupted from broken gas mains.
The Golden Gate Bridge swung wildly, undulating between the towers like a plucked guitar string, but it held, though early morning motorists feared for their lives. The Bay Bridge likewise became a high-tension spring. The pavement cracked and split, as the bridge bucked and twisted along its great length. Cables ripped from moorings, but the structure remained standing.
San Francisco had suffered fire and quake damage once before in 1906 and had learned from the ensuing horrors. Some cities would have been flattened by such a tremor, but the city by the bay was made of sterner stuff. Fire departments rushed to extinguish the flames. Emergency vehicles raced to rescue trapped individuals. Police cars blocked streets and helped direct the injured to emergency medical care facilities. The damage would reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the loss of life was minimal. However, the danger was not over.
Far out to sea, a wave rose. Generated by the force of the impact, the wave rushed toward the coast, climbing higher as it approached shallower water. Miles knew about earthquakes and tsunamis. He rushed north trying to reach high ground on the bluffs along the northwestern point of the peninsula, no longer jogging, but now running for his life. The sidewalk was shattered, too dangerous to follow. He cut across the park, dodging or leaping over toppled trees that rose from the mist like hurdles, scraping his legs on shrubs and flowers.
Around him, people were beginning to recover from the quake, stumbling from their homes, stunned and confused. He saw in their eyes the same fear that pushed him northwards. Perhaps, he should have warned them about the coming tsunami, but self-preservation was uppermost on his mind. He pushed forward in a blind panic, heart racing, his fear lending extra speed to his feet.
He almost made it. He was just south of Sutro Heights Park when the rumble of the approaching tsunami began to shake the ground. At first, he thought it was an aftershock from the quake, but then he looked out to sea. Even in the pre-dawn darkness, he could see a giant wall of water descending on the peninsula. With a sickening feeling, he knew would never reach safety in time. He had nowhere to go. He stopped running and watched. The wave had climbed to seventy feet when it struck the shoreline and ripped into the low-lying structures along the coast with the fury of Neptune’s trident. The wave swept over him, crushing him instantly, and then dragging his lifeless body along with the tons of mud, silt, rock, and debris swept up by the onrush of water, a grinder pulverizing everything in its path.
Within minutes the entire western side of the peninsula from the Presidio in the north to Pacifica to the south was inundated. The waters, laden with bodies and debris, crashed into the hills of Forest Knolls before sweeping back out to sea, carrying with it the litter of a destroyed city.
The wave, most of it still concealed beneath the deeper water, marched through the Golden Gate Channel beneath the still shaking bridge, submerging Treasure Island, most of Alcatraz, and then swept along the wharfs of Oakland like a watery scythe. Moored ships, carried by the wave’s power, careened like giant metal juggernauts through the streets of the city, ending up blocks inland. The wave swept backwards across the bay into downtown San Francisco, washing away the wharves of the Embarcadero and the Presidio before lapping at the feet of the lofty Transamerica Pyramid, 555 California Street, the Millennium Tower, and Forty Embarcadero Center.
Thousands died. Tens of thousands were left homeless, but San Francisco had survived worse disasters. By sunrise, emergency teams had scattered throughout the city. By noon, thousands of volunteers were scouring the wreckage for survivors. The city would recover.
Thirty miles out in the Pacific Ocean the earth was groaning again.
2
Thursday, August 9, 2018 2:30 a.m. (CDT) Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX –
Doctor Robert Wingate Rutherford was familiar with panic. He understood it as part of his equations. It was a measurable number impersonally represented by a letter of the Greek alphabet. However, this time the panic reached out to touch him personally. Cold fingers gripped his heart and squeezed until icy tendrils of fear insinuated themselves throughout his body. It was a chill that sapped his strength and whispered, “Give up” in the ghostly voice of his high school gym teacher. Memories surfaced of a younger Gate Rutherford struggling to climb the knotted rope dangling from the ceiling amid the laughter of his friends. He had not given up then, nor would he now. He fought off the panic attack, dismissing what might happen, and concentrating instead on the facts.
“Girra will hit the central mid-west,” he announced to his colleague, Joseph Palacio, an astrophysicist. The printout trembled in his long fingers as he spoke.
Joe swallowed hard before asking, “Where in the mid-west?”
Gate shook his head. He understood his friend’s concern. Joe’s family lived somewhere in Iowa. “Too many variables to tell.”
“Guess,” Joseph urged with a pained expression, staring into Gate’s eyes with the intensity of a raptor.
“Indiana, Illinois, Missouri … I just don’t know. It won’t matter much. Wherever it hits, it’s going to punch a hole a thousand feet deep and four miles wide.”
Joe’s nostrils flared, as he clenched his meaty fists. “It might miss.”
Gate didn’t share his friend’s misplaced optimism. While his predictions were based on many variables, the mathematics was an exact science. Numbers don’t lie. False hope was worse than no hope. It clouded the mind and prevented a rational exploration of the problem.
He shook his head. “Look, don’t hold out any false hope, Joe. Ishom didn’t miss. Girra and Nusku are coming for us like they were aimed at the Earth.”
Joseph squinted at Gate with his tired brown eyes over the top of his square-framed glasses, while raising a bushy eyebrow. “Aimed?”
“Just a figure of speech. The two objects passed just distant enough from Jupiter and Mars to avoid their gravitational wells, and just high enough above the ecliptic to avoid the asteroid belt. It’s bad luck, but inevitable given the solar system’s violent history.”
Gate grinned, but then thought better of it when he realized he was frightening his friend. Joe had a wife and a child – a family, responsibilities – whereas he was single, throwing himself fully into his work for lack of an outside life. While dying didn’t particularly appeal to him, he wouldn’t be missed. He decided to offer Joe a grain of hope.
“New data might prove me wrong.”
Joe shook his head. “You’re never wrong.”
“I deal in what ifs. That’s a fanciful way of saying, I guess.”
“You guess better than most scientists do research. You’re a natural born star gazer.”
“I haven’t used a telescope in five years,” Gate reminded him.
“I haven’t ridden a bicycle in ten, but I bet I still could. It’s a learned thing you don’t forget. With you it’s number crunching.”
Gate didn’t argue. To him, numbers were pieces of a puzzle, each digit or bit of data fitting neatly together until the complete picture was revealed. This time, the picture looked bleak indeed. He st
ood, stretching his aching muscles. He had been sitting for four hours. He ran his right hand through his short sandy brown hair, leaned against his desk and arched his back, popping his vertebrae. It usually helped relieve the tension in his back.
“Jesus, Gate,” Joe chided. “You keep doing that and you’ll snap your spine.”
Gate laughed. “My mother always told me that’s why I’m so tall.”
At six-one, he was four inches taller than Joe was and thin where Joe was stocky. Some called him lanky. Having once seen himself in a mirror while dancing, he tended to agree with that assessment, but he was not skinny. His slender frame belied his well-toned muscles. He might be desk bound, but he still performed his morning ritual of sit-ups and pushups to keep in shape.
“NASA moved the Disturbance Reduction System satellite into position to get a closer look at the next two objects,” Joe offered.
“Good, the DRS can give us a definitive reading on the object’s mass.” A frown crossed Gate’s face. “I’m of the opinion that the first object, Ishom, massed less than the initial observations indicated.”
Joe looked at him curiously. “Why?”
“From the few radar images we got, it was massive enough to wipe out San Francisco and inundate the entire West Coast.”
“It did enough damage. My God, Gate, thousands of people died, maybe tens of thousands.”
Gate winced at the words tens of thousands. He had often blithely annihilated millions of people in his catastrophe scenarios, but they had been imaginary numbers, not real people. He had even once used San Francisco as a target in one of his disaster scenarios. The strike the day before had been like calling up ghosts. He grabbed his chest and took a deep breath, but a dull ache remained.
