Catalyst (Book 1): Downward Cycle

by JK Franks

  He thought about his niece and pulled out a map to Tallahassee and one of the FSU campus. No way he had the gas to get there, so that was problem number one. Second was he wasn’t sure he could even find Kaylie if he did go. She could have tried to get home on her own or not be at her apartment. The final concern was protection. Scott was realizing more and more that he was not a fighter; he had only the one pistol and was probably not ready to face any real trouble. Just seeing a dead guy had royally fucked up his night.

  Deep down he knew he was going to have to go to Tallahassee, but he was definitely apprehensive. He decided he would try to meet up with Jack or one of the other guys tomorrow and talk with them about it. For now, though, he fixed himself another cup of coffee, enjoyed the cool AC, and went to take a hot shower. He dozed off afterward to a rerun of the “Tonight Show” from several months earlier. Shortly after that, up and down the coast, the lights in all the houses went dark. Several hundred miles above, the glowing ribbons of pink and red light danced once again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Day 3

  The early morning salt air felt good—seemed right—Todd thought. Although he did feel guilty having to leave his wife behind today. The fishermen who had booked the charter hadn’t shown, and he had the boat rigged and ready for fishing. His assistant had shown up just long enough to help hand-pump the eighty-six gallons of fuel into the Donna Marie. Then the kid left, claiming some excuse about looking for his granddad who had gone missing.

  His friend, Bartos, had easily been talked into joining him and had shown up with two cases of beer. They needed one more person to make it a decent fishing trip. It took Captain Todd a while to find the third member of the crew. Walking from the docks over to Shirley’s Coffee Shop and then to the church, he couldn’t find Preacher Jack at either of his normal hangouts. Damn phones, Todd thought. How easy it would have been to just call the guy to see if he wanted to go out today. The power had been on earlier, and he had assumed that phones were down, but he now realized he wasn’t sure. He punched the stored number for his friend, who answered on the first ring. As expected, Jack sounded jubilant. He was over at the government building and would be down at the docks in five minutes.

  With the three friends settled in and an ice chest filled with the beer, Todd gathered their smartphones and dropped them into a waterproof gear box. Starting the big twin engines, he pushed the lever to maneuver the beautiful boat away from the docks and into the main channel, which led out past the seawall and into the blue waters of the gulf. There were sailboats out, as well as a few other small boats, but not nearly as many as normal. Getting through the breakwaters and into the open sea, Todd motored down the coast for about five miles. Seeing families out enjoying an early morning on the beach, it was hard to imagine this was not just another day. He knew it was a terrible waste of fuel, taking the boat out like this, but fuel they had, at least for now. Several of the restaurants in town had told him that if they brought in some fresh fish, they would try and continue serving cheap meals for the town’s people, who were running low on food. They were willing to trade beer, ice and other bulk foods as well. Todd also wanted to put some fish back for himself and his friends if he could.

  Stopping several hundred yards off shore at a marker buoy, the three men cast their small lines for baitfish. Todd ran a casting net on the other side of the boat to do the same. Within about twenty minutes, they had a live-well loaded with Spanish sardines, small mullet, shad, glass minnows and more to use further out to sea in catching the larger gamefish. Bartos stowed the lines and net, and Todd steered towards the first fishing spot about five miles out. Once stopped, Bartos began rigging the primary fishing rods. “What are we fishing for today, Cap?” he asked.

  “Whatever’s biting. I’d like to get about 200 lbs. Not sure we can trade or use more than that. King mackerel, Spanish mackerel, dorado, maybe even a yellowfin. Rig yours and Jack’s for top water fishing first. I’m gonna drop some of these shad deeper in the water column and see if I can snag some snapper or grouper.”

  “Gotcha,” came Bartos’ quick response. The three had fished together often, and Bartos had served as a first mate on multiple boats growing up. Jack was less comfortable at sea but was always patient, good company and rarely lost a fish once hooked.

  Quickly, the three men settled down in the fishing chairs with multiple lines in the water and a cold beer in the cup holder of each chair. Todd asked Jack if he had heard any more news.

  “Best information so far was from that young guy at the bar yesterday.”

  “Scott?” Todd asked. “Yeah, I liked him.”

  “Nice guy. Smart, but maybe a bit naive.”

  Todd nodded in agreement, “Are you really going to teach him Keysi?”

  Jack nodded, “If he wants to learn, yeah. He’s in good shape; lower body strength at least. I think he could pick up the basics pretty fast.” Jack was well-schooled in the street fighting techniques of the Keysi Fighting Method, or KFM as it was commonly referred to: a nearly-no-rules, hand-to-hand fighting style almost as damaging as the Krav Maga technique. Jack had picked it up somewhere in his checkered past and become an instructor in recent years. He practiced with a small group of devotees in a gym downtown.

  The preacher went on, “I was over at the sheriff’s office when you called. They have their hands full—a lot of deaths in the county, mostly from existing medical conditions. People who needed ongoing treatments they couldn’t get.”

  Todd grimaced when he heard this, but his friend didn’t seem to notice. Bartos made a noise and nearly spilled his beer as the rod closest to him bent sharply in the holder. The reel began to sing as a fish took the line. Grabbing it, he began reeling it in, grinning broadly.

  “What else did the sheriff say?” Todd asked. Preacher Jack leaned up and looked out to where the taut line from Bartos’ rod entered the water.

  “Just that he’s not expecting things to get better. Power’ll be on in irregular rolling blackouts. We should expect more hours of grid-down than grid-up. About half of his force didn’t show up for shifts yesterday. Some radioed in that their patrol vehicles wouldn’t start, but others were just a no-show. The police chief is also AWOL. He was out of town at an active shooter table session when the flare hit. They and the fire chief have similar issues. The sheriff’s been in touch by radio with the state capital to request National Guard troops, but they don’t feel our area has a lot to protect, so they suggested we muster volunteers to help patrol.”

  Bartos reeled the fat Spanish mackerel over the side and dropped it into the cooler. “Did you mention what we talked about yesterday to him?” Bartos asked.

  Nodding his head, the preacher said, “Yes, I did, and he said he wasn’t sure he could do any of that unless martial law was declared.

  “Why the fuck not?” Todd asked. “If someone doesn’t take stock of whatever supplies are still available, then looters and hoarders will likely take them. He needs to go to the stores and collect whatever could be used for the communal good and find a safe place to store it under armed guard. Food, fuel, emergency supplies…”

  “Believe me, I know,” said Jack. “In fact, he told me someone’d already broken into one of the school lunchrooms and stolen a lot of the stored food. What’s worse is they left the walk-in cooler door open, ruining everything else they couldn’t take.” Another reel began to sing, and Todd reached for it.

  “Sheriff Jones says that it’s too soon to be thinking that way. Said it sounded to him like something that damn fool Bartos might suggest,” Jack continued, winking at Bartos as he said it. “He didn’t think people around here, or business owners, would take kindly to having their inventory confiscated for the public good.”

  Todd reeled in the fish and added it to the box. Taking a pull from his beer before re-baiting the line, he said, “The problem is most people are in denial. There’s just enough normalcy that no one is panicking yet. We know that the shit hit the fan, but
until some more of that shit hits them personally, it’s not going to be real to them. When it does, though, there’ll be a panic like this country’s never seen.”

  The three men sat talking, drinking and fishing for several more hours. The fish were biting well but beginning to slow when Todd estimated they had about two-thirds of what he’d hoped to get today. He was thinking about moving back in-shore and netting the rest in mullet. Not a great tasting fish but easy to smoke, and they’d stay preserved that way for quite a while. Some of the other fish could be salted and preserved as well.

  Bartos had the Steiner Marine optics up to his eyes looking southwest. “What the fuck is that?” he said to no one in particular. Handing the waterproof binoculars to Todd, he pointed to the western horizon. Todd could just make out what looked to be a full naval fleet moving in close formation. Destroyers, cruisers, battleships, escort vessels… even Seahawk helicopters orbiting near the larger ships. The entire battalion was steaming ahead, heading east.

  “It would appear…” Todd said slowly, “that the electronics shielding on our military vessels was much better than the hardening done to other ships or our national power grid.”

  “I wonder where they’re heading,” Jack said.

  “No clue, but once they go by, I can slip in behind them and probably get a fix on the heading,” replied Todd.

  Fifteen minutes later the armada was passing about two miles to the port side of the Donna Marie. One of the loud helicopters thundered over for a closer inspection looking and sounding like an angry hornet. The three men struggled not to act alarmed. They waved from their fishing chairs and held up a beer to the flying war machine bristling with weapons. Apparently they passed inspection, and the crew correctly assumed the small fishing boat was not a threat as it soon resumed to its patrol orbit. Before the last of the ships passed by, the large wake generated by the ships began bobbing the fishing boat like a cork in a bottle. Todd started the engine and drove parallel to the fleet in the opposite direction. The movement of the Donna Marie helped stabilize it against the rocking waves, for which they were all thankful.

  Once the last vessel was about half a mile behind them, Todd turned into the wake and maneuvered the boat directly in line with the trail of the departing ships. Taking multiple readings from the largest of the ships, a cruiser class vessel, he began plotting a bearing on the charts.

  Suddenly he felt something, something definitely wrong. Then he heard a humming coming from everywhere. The sound seemed to be emanating from within the very hull of his boat. He looked aft and saw both of his friends pointing at a huge mound of water moving directly toward the Donna Marie. The sight did not register with what he should be seeing; water just didn’t behave that way. Stepping out of the bridge deck, he noticed that it was not one bulge but two, several hundred yards apart. Todd had spent over twenty years in the Navy, although not all of that had been at sea. He had seen large whales move the water in this way, but this was too large and too fast to be anything natural.

  “Oh shit,” he said. “Submarines!” he yelled. “Brace for impact!”

  One of the behemoths, pushing a nearly twelve-foot wave in front, passed on the starboard side, and the other passed within fifty yards to the port. The combined crushing force of these waves swept over the rear of the Donna Marie, and for a brief moment, most of the fishing vessel was technically underwater. Todd’s mind told him, This is it, I have killed myself and my friends.

  The wave subsided as the subs pushed quickly past, but the damage was done. The Donna Marie was listing at an odd angle. Todd found Bartos wedged up against a rear bulkhead, but there was no sign of Jack. Todd called for him but heard no reply. The noise of the water rushing off the deck and back into the sea drowned out all other sounds. Todd helped Bartos to his feet and began searching the nearby water for their other friend. He saw nothing but flotsam from his boat: cushions, life vests and empty beer cans. He knew Jack could swim, but he might be injured or unconscious. In a panic, he grabbed the Steiner Marine binoculars and glassed the area further out. Nothing.

  Moving along the narrow path to the bow of the boat, his deck shoes waded through the small river of sea water running back from the bow to the lower rear side. As he reached the front, he could see the two humps of water receding into the distance several hundred yards ahead.

  He only saw the smallest part of a conning tower at the surface, which put the main body of the craft about thirty feet below. He knew they must be traveling at top speed to be creating that much of a wave. Just behind the subs, he thought he saw something. He scanned the area again, adjusting the focus dial on the Steiners to sharpen the image. He saw a flash of color again. It moved quickly to the side, then back again. He could just make out a hand on one edge and behind it, the shadow of a person's head. Must be Jack! he thought, momentarily relieved. Fuck.

  Leaping back to the bridge he checked on Bartos as he started the engines. Bartos had a pretty large gash on his forearm, and a goose-egg was forming on his forehead, but he yelled that he was fine. The engines turned over several times, and for a moment, did not sound like they wanted to start. Todd knew the engine, battery compartment and fuel tanks were in dry areas and supposedly waterproof, though that had been a ridiculous amount of water to sweep over the boat. He was not sure what problems it may have caused. At the very least, some had likely gotten down into other areas as the boat was developing a noticeable list to starboard. Finally, the engines caught, and he aimed the waterlogged craft in the direction of the floating white shape where he hoped his friend was still hanging.

  Coming up on Jack on the port side, he slowed to a coast and tried to ease the boat close but not so close as to hit him. He needn’t have worried as it turned out. The white top of an ice chest cooler came sailing from the water over the side of the boat. Bartos was hanging over the transom pulling an arm. Hurrying back to help, Todd saw that Jack was indeed okay. With the two men pulling him, Jack came sliding over the sidewalls and flopped onto the fishing deck like a giant tuna.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Bartos asked.

  Todd, more concerned with his friend, checked Jack from head to toe, but the resilient man appeared to be fine.

  “When I saw the wave coming and heard you yell, “Brace,” I grabbed for a handhold. Unfortunately, what I grabbed was the beer chest, and it wasn’t attached to anything. I went ass over feet right over the boat. Then I got caught in the pull of the subs. I could hear the propellers as they pulled me along underwater. Thought I was going to drown,” the preacher recounted as he gasped for air.

  “Screws,” Todd said.

  “Damn right,” Jack responded.

  “No,” Todd said laughing. “On subs, they’re called screws, not propellers.”

  “Who gives a good, holy fuck?” Jack said, his panic residing.

  “Sorry, old friend, bad habit after a lifetime in the Navy. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  They checked each other out, and then the Donna Marie itself. The bilge pumps on the starboard side were clearing water quickly, and the boat was slowly leveling. It appeared that all they’d lost was the beer cooler, the beer and the baitfish. “So, do you think they were trying to sink us?” Bartos asked.

  “I don’t think they even knew we were there,” Jack said.

  “They knew,” Todd answered. “They had to come up to surface depth to create that wave. I know they weren’t on the surface when we moved in behind the fleet. They weren’t trying to sink us, but they were sending a message.”

  “What kind of message?” Jack asked.

  “Don’t get too nosy, forget we were here,” Todd replied with a shrug.

  Bartos had the go-bag out and was getting a bandage for his arm. He looked at the preacher. “You had one job man, just save the beer …and what did you do?” Laughing, he patted the big man. “Glad you’re okay, Padre.”

  They stripped off their wet clothes to let them dry. After checking out the boat thorou
ghly and finding no serious problems, they decided to continue fishing. Todd suggested they head over to the old #148 oil rig to restock baitfish.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ugh, morning, the house was already suffocatingly hot. Scott stumbled over to open the still shuttered windows, but the morning air outside was humid and still. He poured the rest of the coffee from the night before into a mug and tried to drink it cold, but he couldn’t do it. Standing on the back deck in nothing but a pair of gym shorts, he debated on taking his bike into town for a cup of good coffee and to maybe catch one of the guys there.

  Eventually, the need to ride overrode his need for caffeine. He exchanged gym shorts for his cycling outfit, filled a few water bottles for the trip and pulled the Trek off the wall. The only new addition was a lighter version of his EDC. This one contained the bare essentials, plus the pistol; he had decided to take his new friend's advice and never go anywhere without it.

  Scott planned a bike route that would allow him to pretty safely see many of the main roads coming in and out of Bay County. His trip would also come back through town, so hopefully he could still get in touch with one of the guys. Finally, he had an idea about getting more fuel that he wanted to scope out. Locking the house, he clipped his feet into the pedals and headed out, riding west.

  The ride didn’t seem that different from any other day. The temperature was rising, and already he could feel the heat radiating from the pavement. He could smell the brackish swamp water as he navigated around its perimeter. There was no traffic again today, but he was purposefully avoiding the busier routes. The way he was going would lead him across these roads at several intersections, so he could see if any trouble was ahead. Much of the route would run parallel to the busier scenic highway.

  Far up ahead, he saw a car parked on the side of the road, and immediately his mind fell back to the previous day and the dead man hanging from the car. He slowed as he passed the little hybrid Toyota. Thankfully, no one was inside, alive or dead. Scott considered himself a bit of an environmentalist like most cyclists he knew were. At one time he had considered purchasing a car just like this one. Seeing how vulnerable it had been to the CME, he was glad he had stuck with his gas-guzzling Jeep. He clicked the gear lever and quickly began to pick up speed. While being out on a bike ride this morning may not have seemed like the best way to plan for a rescue trip, for Scott it was essential and allowed him the time to think in transit without wasting any gas.