End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  Something wet nudged his elbow.

  “Oh, hey, boy.” Mac had come out of his crate and sat on his hindquarters like the whole thing was forgotten. He nosed at him, tennis ball in his mouth, ready to play ball. Fetch was his favorite game when they stopped at rest areas.

  Almost losing Mac made him realize how bad he needed a companion on his trip across the nation. He’d crossed the United States countless times over the years, but he’d never felt so far from his son. The friendly dog took some of the edge off.

  They shared a knowing look. He assumed they were thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what I’d do without you, either.”

  Manhattan, NY

  Garth and Sam walked at a brisk pace as they put distance between them and the subway exit. A few subway station entrances lurked down some of the streets they passed, reminding him that other riders might be in danger of being smashed next.

  Sam stopped in front of a small deli. “I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t have any money, but yeah.”

  “I’ll cover you, dude. Just pay me back.” That was Sam’s way. His parents were loaded, and he always had lots of cash. He didn’t flaunt it the way some of the kids at school liked to do, and Garth hated to take advantage of his friend’s generosity, but he really was hungry.

  They walked in the door when a guy at the counter called out. “We’re closed. No power!”

  Sam stopped and looked around. “Can’t we just sit at a table until the power comes back on?”

  The sun was almost overhead, and the eatery had nothing but bright, open windows on the front wall, so it was hard to tell the power was even off. Only when Garth looked at the price board and the food case was it apparent that there was no electricity.

  “No. City says no customers during emergency.” The dark-skinned man was foreign, but so was everyone in the city. He had no idea where he was from but could tell at a glance he wasn’t messing around.

  Still, he tried to break out the logic. “Wouldn’t the city want you to serve us so that you don’t lose your food to spoilage?”

  The man leaned over the high counter and spoke in a quiet voice. “What I want is of no matter. If city inspector walk by and see me feed you, I lose license.”

  “Harsh, dude,” Sam said in an offhand way as he went back outside.

  “Okay. We’ll leave you.” Garth started for the door.

  “Wait,” the man ordered. He walked around his dark food service counter with something in his hands. “Take this. It will be the first thing to go bad. You didn’t get it here.”

  Garth accepted the hand-sized cheese wedge. “Can I pay you for it? I have five dollars.”

  “No. Take. Screw inspector. I live on the edge, like you!”

  Garth smiled and walked out with the food, though he wondered if he and Sam were really living life on the edge. Sure, they’d seen some weird stuff today, but for most of the last year, they’d been nothing more than two boring kids wearing too much cologne to get a rise out of people. However, slicing meat could hardly be called an adventure, so anything he and Sam did would be awesome by comparison.

  He caught up with Sam.

  “Hey, check out what that guy gave us for free.”

  “Cheese?” He crossed his fingers like the wedge was a vampire bat. “If I touch it, we spend the rest of the day chasing unicorn toilets in Manhattan, dude. Is that what you want?”

  Unicorn toilets were what the boys called clean restrooms. They were as rare as unicorns in the city.

  “No,” Garth conceded. “I forgot about your issues with cheese. It seems like you always have problems, no matter what you eat, but how could I forget the Great Cheese Pizza Emergency of freshman year?”

  “Let the record show that was caused by leftover tacos I ate for breakfast.”

  “Oh, come on, man. It’s almost like you want bathroom fails.”

  Sam laughed. “It makes for a hilarious story. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Old Shaky here.” He caressed his stomach like it was a beloved pet.

  “I don’t know...” Garth started to say.

  “Hey! You two!” A female voice called from a second-story window in the apartment building above them.

  The boys looked up to a middle-aged black woman sitting on the windowsill. She was close enough for him to see the fancy white letters stenciled into the chest pocket of her fluffy pink robe.

  “Did Dinkins pay you to go into the Korean deli?” she inquired.

  Garth and Sam glanced at each other, then turned back to the woman. Sam spoke first. “Yeah, he said it would piss off some woman living above the shop. That’s why we went in.”

  Garth laughed for a second, then caught himself. He didn’t know nationalities, but the deli guy couldn’t have been Korean. Maybe Middle-Eastern or Indian, but not Korean. “No. Wait. We...”

  “Smartasses, huh? The mayor shops at Korean stores, too. He’s going to ruin this city sure as shit.”

  “Well, we thought it was great, so we think the mayor is doing a good job. We’re going to vote for him again.” Sam spoke with confidence like he enjoyed the confrontation. Garth knew he was unpredictable when in public, and most times, he could keep his friend from stirring up shit with people, but this caught him off guard.

  Sam smirked when he caught Garth’s attention. “She’s nuts!” he whispered.

  “Don’t encourage her,” he insisted.

  “I can’t help myself,” he said slyly. Sam’s grin broadcast his intentions, then he spoke to the woman. “We’re going to visit every Korean joint from here to Battery Park. We’re real hungry!”

  Garth pulled his arm to get him to clear out, but he wouldn’t move.

  “I’ll show you white bread punks. I’m comin’ down!” Garth watched her abandon the sill with a flourish. Her long robe flowed behind her, like Batman.

  They looked at each other again.

  “You think she’d really come for us?” Sam asked with disbelief.

  Garth couldn’t make himself move. The double front door of the building was twenty feet away, but it was still closed. It wasn’t far from the entrance to the deli, so the woman probably knew she could catch people who lingered.

  Suddenly, the whole interaction seemed stupid.

  “We should run,” he told Sam.

  “She won’t come down. She’s just shitting with us.”

  The doors opened with “Hey you!”

  The big woman came out the front door with a hustle. The pink robe was tied neatly with its companion belt, and she wielded a bright yellow broom as her weapon. She strode forward like she owned the street.

  “Run,” they said at the same time.

  Seventeen

  Modesto, CA

  When he wasn’t shifting, Buck rubbed Mac’s neck as they drove south, away from the storm. An hour later, he pulled into the familiar Modesto Walmart’s parking lot and shut down the motor before giving his dog one final pat.

  “I think we’re finally safe.” To be sure, he let go of the wheel with his other hand and confirmed it was no longer shaking on its own.

  He melted into his captain’s chair while silently replaying the scariest moment during his brush with the storm. It wasn’t the lightning. It wasn’t the wind nearly tipping him over. It wasn’t even the trooper’s delay that put him in mortal danger.

  The scene that played over and over in his mind was Mac springing out the door.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he whispered.

  Mac’s escape was what brought him to Walmart.

  “I can’t let you come in with me, but I think you could use some quiet time in your crate, anyway.”

  He took a deep breath and stood up. Buck tried to motion Mac into his crate, but he wouldn’t go in. That was actually a relief, because it was the dog’s normal behavior. It was easy to get him in at bedtime when the lights were low and the day was winding down, but he resisted going into the cage an
y other time.

  The golden looked up at him with his typical smile of innocence.

  Buck slowly shook his head. “You really are something. Can I leave you out of your cage while I’m gone?” He didn’t plan on being long. “I’m getting something for you, so a little professional courtesy is in order, don’t you think?”

  Mac kept looking up, but he let out several brief whines as if he knew Buck was planning on leaving.

  “Oh, you’re fine,” he stressed.

  The dog barked once with excitement.

  “I know you did. I won’t hold peeing on the seat against you, Mac Daddy.”

  Mac became more agitated, and Buck felt bad for winding him up.

  “It’s cool, kid. I have to get new shorts, too, after all that. Happens to the best of us.” He backed away, but that got the puppy even more excited.

  When Buck left Garth for this latest haul, he’d had no idea he was going to get a dog like Big Mac. Since Buck had to be on the road almost three weeks of every month, it left lots of time for Garth to be lonely. He’d overheard his son saying the summer months were the worst. Even though Garth spent most of his time with his friend Sam, there was still a black hole where his mother should have been.

  “Just stay back there and rest, all right? I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  He scurried out the door and shut it without looking back at his friend. A couple of moments later, he heard the clicks of nails on the window at his back.

  Sorry, buddy.

  He’d found the Golden Retriever at a shelter right on Staten Island. He’d been in his pickup for five minutes, intending to drive to the terminal to pick up his Peterbilt, when he turned into the animal rescue center on a whim. It was a miracle to find a pure breed pup in such a place, and he took it as providence. They’d been together for two weeks as they delivered freight in Florida and along the Gulf Coast, and they’d grown closer in the trip across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. By the time he reached Modesto last night, they’d become inseparable.

  But he still couldn’t take him inside Walmart.

  He ignored the scraping and walked back along the trailer. He told himself it was to check to make sure there was no wind damage in the thin skin of the sidewalls, but it was also to get out of Big Mac’s line of sight.

  Once he made it to the rear doors, he pulled at the lock to make sure it was secure.

  “Keep an eye on things, Mac,” he said quietly.

  He parked at the far edge of the lot, so it took him a couple of minutes to walk to the store. He looked over his shoulder as if the dark clouds on the northern horizon were watching him. The storm was probably still forty miles from the parking lot, but after wasting time with the trooper, he felt the pressure to keep things moving.

  Cars whizzed in and out of spaces on the busy lot, but there wasn’t a true sense of urgency. Average people going about their business, in a hurry with the trivialities of day-to-day life.

  The cool air hit him as he went through two sets of automatic sliding doors.

  “Good afternoon. Welcome to Walmart.” The greeter was about a hundred and wore a blue navy ballcap with the name of a warship he didn’t recognize. Ten or fifteen pins adorned the edges of the golden logo in the middle.

  He’d intended to haul right by the guy but decided to spare a moment. “Thank you for your service,” Buck said. “World War II?”

  “Yeah, Battle of Coral Sea. Ever hear of it?”

  Buck nodded. “Had to study it in OCS.”

  That got the old guy’s attention. “Afghanistan?”

  “And Iraq.” Normally, he didn’t like talking about his service, but he didn’t mind giving a little back to another veteran.

  “Thanks for that.”

  He gave a curt nod.

  A young woman stocked a shelf nearby, so he spoke more quietly to the oldster.

  “Hey, there’s a giant storm coming. Lightning. Killer winds. Dust everywhere. You might want to keep an eye on it.”

  The man tapped the side of his hat. “Thanks, son.”

  “Good luck.”

  Buck raced off into the giant store.

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

  It took Faith an hour to read through the reports on her desk because Mindy kept bringing more. The weather service added new bulletins every ten minutes. The big storms on the coasts were fascinating, but they didn’t relate to her problem, so she asked Mindy to stop bringing anything related to weather. Things moved faster once she could focus on the important news, but at the end of her research, she was still no closer to figuring out what took her experiment offline.

  “That’s all I can find,” Mindy said from the doorway.

  “Thank you, Mindy. Will you see if Dr. Perkins might be available for a short conversation? I’d like to talk about what I’ve found.”

  Or what I didn’t find is more like it. She’d been unable to discover anything newsworthy that happened before the 11:59:58 moment her experiment went offline.

  “He left the complex to go into Castle Rock.” Her friend pulled out a notepad. “Said that he would be quick, but he ran out of his heart meds last night, and he wanted to be ready in case we worked late this evening.”

  Faith and Mindy laughed together.

  “He’s an old pro at this, isn’t he?” Faith asked.

  “I think you’re an old pro, too. You both don’t know when to go home. Do I have to remind you of that time you stayed all night to ensure the new computers got delivered?”

  “I remember it well. I like to make sure my team gets what it needs. Surely you’re not thinking I should go now?”

  “No. Of course not. I’m just saying you both take your jobs more seriously than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  So does Bob. He loves to upstage me.

  “Fair enough,” Faith replied.

  “So, if the dedicated Donald is finally out, would you like me to get Sun? I know she’s free.”

  “That’s a great idea. I should probably tell her what is going on before she thinks I’ve forgotten about her.”

  Dr. Sinclair would hardly forget the leader of the particle physics team, even though she was a diminutive woman who spoke at a volume that would make a church mouse seem loud. She was one of the most brilliant minds in the particle world and probably would have been the leader of the whole project if she had a killer instinct to match her bursting intellect.

  “I’ll have her right in. I believe she is in the library.”

  Her assistant disappeared into the hallway.

  The SNAKE administration level was built with a dormitory wing, recreation room, research library, and cafeteria. It wasn’t designed for long-term stays, like a normal college dorm, but they provided temporary quarters for any scientist running a lengthy trial. The admin sections flanked the central experimental chamber, which was the focal point of everything in their underground world. Because of this, it wasn’t long before Dr. Sunetra Chandrasekhar came in.

  The exotic woman favored light, breezy dresses draped over colorful long pants. The flowery crimson material of her shoulder-to-knee dress seemed to shimmer as the doctor flowed into the office.

  “Please, sit down, Sun.” They were familiar enough that Faith could use her nickname. She waved at one of the two plastic chairs in front of her desk while jotting down the time on her calendar. It was important to keep track of every meeting, especially when someone was gunning for her job.

  “Thank you,” the quiet woman replied.

  “How are you? Everything going all right with your family?” It was difficult getting any information out of the private woman, but she did once mention she was trying to get her extended family to come to America. Her husband and two older teen boys were already here.

  “Just fine, thank you.” Sun sat there with no emotion on her face. Faith wondered about playing poker against the other scientist.

  So much for small talk.


  “I’ve been searching for any external cause that may have taken Azurasia’s experiment offline.” She pointed to the two-inch thick stack of papers at the edge of her desk. “As you can see, I have a lot of data, but no conclusions—”

  “It has only been a few hours. It could take years to parse through all the data and discover the true cause.”

  Faith politely laughed. “If only my bosses would allow that. In the meantime, I need to know if you’ve found anything. I know Dr. Stafford is checking the software, but I figured you might have already discovered something in the hardware.”

  “With preliminary data, I can tell you it was all working to specs until the instant it wasn’t.”

  Sun leaned forward at the edge of her chair with hands on her knees as if ready to get up.

  “Have you checked all the linacs?” The linear accelerators fed energy into the main experimental chamber.

  “Of course,” she mewed. “Everything is working nominally.”

  Faith came close to bending the plastic pen in her hand. She’d heard Sun talk at a hundred miles an hour for half a day when she gave a symposium on dark matter, but tracking down power malfunctions apparently didn’t do it for her.

  Faith sat in an uncomfortable silence for ten or fifteen seconds before making up her mind that this was a dead end.

  “You’ll tell me if you find anything?”

  Sun finally smiled. “Of course.”

  They stood together and looked at each other across the messy desk. Sun turned to leave, then hesitated. “I do hope you retain your position.”

  Her face became a mask as she tried to stop the smile from flagging. “Thank you. Once we figure this out, I’m sure things will go back to normal.”

  Sun tipped her head as a sign of respect, then hurried out of the room.

  Faith felt completely alone.

  Wollemi National Park, New South Wales, Australia

  Destiny floated in the hip-deep pool of water like she was at a day spa. It was freezing cold, but her belly was topped off, and being low to the ground made it so she wasn’t breathing in the worst of the smoke from the nearby fire.