End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  “Thank you for sticking with me,” she began, “and for saving my life. Twice.” A lone tear trickled down her cheek.

  “Connie, I don’t know—” He stole a look at the red wave. It had crossed most of the desert and was seconds away from passing above them. He wiped away the tear with one finger.

  What do I say?

  “I would have liked to have known you better,” he got out as the wave passed overhead, and leaned down to kiss her.

  “Me—” was all she got out.

  A wave of dizziness washed over them. Buck could no longer feel her in his arms.

  Somewhere in New Jersey

  The endless lightning was the only thing bright enough to light up the road for Garth. Delicate strands crackled overhead in monstrous streaks, often sparking all the way down to the trees. Metal signs next to the highway looked like they were on fire; the lightning practically danced on top of them.

  More and more cars went into the ditches next to the road.

  “I can’t stop,” he advised himself.

  Lydia sat on the front edge of her seat as if thinking about diving all the way to the floorboard to hide. To her credit—or out of ignorance of the danger—she continued to watch out the front window with him. He wouldn’t have blamed her for taking cover.

  “Is this normal?” she screamed.

  “Hell, no!” he yelled back. The rain pounded in through the window, forcing him to keep wiping it from his face.

  Garth couldn’t talk; he needed to keep every ounce of his focus on the road. He stuck to the right lane where things moved a little slower, but he couldn’t afford to let off the gas. At least twice, cars raced by on the shoulder of the highway, only to crash into parked or abandoned cars on the side of the road.

  It was almost as dangerous in the lane to his left, especially since passing cars sent rooster tails of water across his car and into his window.

  He stuck to the back of the vehicle ahead of him and rode two car-lengths behind it at sixty-five miles per hour. Garth believed it might have been a tractor-trailer because of its taillight configuration, but the spray coming off their wheels made it hard to say for sure. His driving was mostly about watching the burning red lights.

  If he stops, we stop. If he crashes, we crash.

  There was no other way.

  It was as light as the dead of a cloudy night in the middle of the storm, accented almost continuously by strobes like those in an Eighties disco. It took all of Garth’s concentration to stay on the road. His body strained with the effort, even though his mind was telling him that he was sitting in a soft chair and watching the world go by.

  Should I pull over and wait it out?

  That would definitely be a Dad move.

  He considered it, but after seeing cars get smashed into on the shoulder, he didn’t think it was such a good idea. They were deep in the woods, too, so there were no offramps or pull-offs to use.

  But it seemed crazy to ride the bumper of the person in front of him.

  Garth was still thinking about it when a car passed him, veered into his lane, and sideswiped the vehicle in front of his taxi.

  The knot in his stomach kicked him in the heart. “Oh, shit!”

  The brake lights came on in front of him, and he tapped his in reply. The original car careened to the left, crossed into the median, and rolled over. His guide swayed from side to side like he was about to lose control, but eventually got back between the painted lines and drove arrow-straight.

  The person ahead hit the gas and got back up to speed. After a few seconds, Garth matched the pace of the tail lights, and he held his breath, hoping they would make it through.

  “I think we’re in trouble,” he told Lydia.

  If his hands hadn’t already been soaked by the rain, his palms would be sweat-drenched messes. He shuddered, scared by almost wrecking the taxi. His heart hammered and his vision narrowed. He slowed to three and then four car-lengths behind the vehicle ahead. Garth chanced a look at Lydia, knowing she’d be disappointed.

  Strangely, she smiled at him. “You’re a great carriage driver!”

  The knot in his stomach went away. At that moment, he felt like he could take on the world.

  For the next hour, he did just that.

  West Wendover, NV

  The red wave was gone, but to his great relief, Connie was still in his arms.

  He tried to help her stand on her own, being a gentleman about it, but she seemed to take longer to recover than him, so she remained against the front of his Hawaiian shirt. Her silver bangles fell to her elbow as she held her arms up on his chest.

  “I’m still here,” she said sadly. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  “I wanted you to get back home too, but I’m also kind of glad, you know, that you’re still with me.”

  He supported her for a long minute, until he realized she was the one holding him.

  “Thank you, Buck, for what you said. I would like to know you better, too.”

  “Let’s get to our rooms and see what comes next. The red light could be something worse than the blue.” He nudged her to stand upright, but she stayed where she was.

  “Or maybe it fixed everything,” she said, “except for those of us already in the wrong time.”

  “We don’t know what happened,” he said sympathetically.

  “I do have one request,” she said hesitantly. “Will you let me stay in your room? I don’t want to be alone while I’m here. I trust you, but if you try anything, I’ll sic Mac on you.”

  “Sure. I’d be honored.”

  Garth’s ringtone burst from his phone, scaring them both out of the moment.

  He gently adjusted her so he could pull out his phone.

  “Garth!” he shouted the second he pressed Answer. “Where are you? Are you okay? Did you get out of the path of the—”

  “Dad, I’m fine. Seriously. We got the taxi out of the mud and made it to the ferry to get out of New Jersey. They even had a Geiger counter to check all the cars coming in, and none of them had any. They told us the radiation cloud had stayed close to Three Mile Island, although they had to shut the reactor down.”

  Buck sighed like he’d just been told he’d won the lottery and the rest of his life would be easy.

  “I know. It’s been a wicked ride out of Staten Island. Cars were in ditches. People were standing on the side of every road, looking for rides. You were right, Dad. Taking the taxi was a bad idea. At least I can take it back home. The danger is gone.”

  Buck felt a tickle in the back of his mind. Something Garth had said wasn’t sitting right with him. It wasn’t the survival part of his brain; more like the Dad section.

  He’s hiding something.

  “Garth, are you sure you’re okay? You sound, uh, I don’t know… Different.”

  “Dad, you have no idea how close we came to dying. The lightning in the storm never shut off. And the wind! It was like riding a tornado inside a hurricane.”

  I have some idea. He thought back to how close he had come to going inside the giant storm near Sacramento. It was a testament to Garth that he could survive such a situation.

  But something still bothered him. Once he was sure his son was safe, he allowed himself to be his father again. That was when it struck.

  “Who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about? Is Sam with you?”

  Connie leaned in to hear Garth’s response.

  Buck held her tight.

  “Not Sam...”

  Ferry out of New Jersey

  “Dad, you don’t have to worry about ‘we,’” Garth replied, looking at Lydia. They’d both been given warm blankets to dry off, and Lydia kept hers around her as she watched from the railing of the big ferry. “It’s just some girl I met.”

  He cupped his hands so Lydia wouldn’t hear. “She thinks she’s from 1849. It’s really weird, but she’s kind of cute.” After he said it, he realized how it probably sounded to his father. “Not in that
way,” he added.

  “Son, it’s all right. This blue light phenomenon has time all messed up. She probably is legitimately from 1849.” Dad hesitated for a few seconds. “In fact, I have my own time traveler. She’s from 2003.”

  Garth had never really talked about girls with his dad, and Dad had never spoken about women with him, but he tapped into a connection through the phone line. “You dirty dog,” he said with a laugh.

  “Don’t make me get the belt, young man,” his dad joked.

  Garth heard a woman speak on the line with his dad like she had been listening in. “You wouldn’t!”

  “No,” Dad said to the woman. “It’s our little joke.”

  “Dad, should I go back home now? I have all your stuff out. I think I did a pretty good job getting things ready, but I didn’t have time to board the windows or much of anything else. I wanted to get it ready for the hurricane, but I ran out of the house when they said the radiation was coming. I’m sorry I did that. I know you sent the text for me to stay.”

  “It’s okay. Listen, can you spend the night somewhere? I want to see what’s going to happen with this red light. Maybe things will get better. If that’s the case, then yeah, I’d say start making your way back home.”

  “What red light are you talking about? The light was blue yesterday. Me and Sam saw it.”

  Buck turned serious. “I know. A red light just went above our heads here in Nevada. You didn’t see it?”

  Garth looked at the sky. “No, I don’t—”

  He hesitated when something sparkled on the horizon to the west. The clouds of the hurricane still hung heavy to the north and another batch of clouds was building down south, but to the west, it was sunny and clear.

  “I do see it, Dad. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. It passed over us and didn’t do anything that we could see right away, but the same thing happened with the blue light. It went over and was gone. It was hours before I noticed anything different.

  Garth watched in awe as the band of light raced across the sky miles above.

  “Here it comes,” he said into the phone.

  “You’ll get a little dizzy, son. Hold onto something.”

  Garth held the railing as it went overhead. People on the ferry cheered and screamed at the light display. As promised, he felt a little dizzy, but it passed almost as fast as the light.

  “It’s gone!” he said into the phone.

  “Has anything changed?”

  Garth looked up and down the rail of the ship. People were curious to see the light come and go, but there was nothing otherwise unusual.

  “No, I think we’re… Wait a minute.”

  “What? What is it? What’s wrong?” His dad was all over him for an answer.

  Garth felt the loss more than he would have expected.

  “Dad, Lydia is gone.”

  West Wendover, Nevada

  Buck heard the pain in his son’s voice. His new friend must have meant a lot to him.

  “What did he say?” Connie whispered. “She disappeared?”

  “Garth, I’m so sorry. That didn’t happen here. No one went away.” He held Connie a bit tighter to be sure she didn’t try to fade from his reality.

  He didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t a Hallmark card for time-travel anomalies. Garth might have only known her for a day, but he could sympathize. A day was long enough.

  “You did the best you could, son. You were up against a lot of challenges, and these red and blue lights are beyond anyone’s understanding. You couldn’t have predicted what was going to happen there.”

  “I know,” Garth replied distantly.

  Buck was searching for more words of comfort when his boy shouted. At first, it was a chaotic yelling which sounded more like noise coming through the phone, but it morphed into words he could understand.

  “She’s here! I see her!”

  “I heard that,” Connie said, relieved.

  “She came back?” Buck asked with surprise.

  “Yes! Dad, I’m sorry for freaking out like that. She didn’t disappear. She dropped her blanket and moved down the rail. Now I see her. Hey, I have to let you go.”

  Buck’s emotions had been ground into fine powder today, but he retained enough of his Dad persona to reply with something intelligent.

  “Look, son. I’m glad she’s there. Stay the night somewhere. See what the morning brings, okay? That’s what I’m doing out here.” He paused. “Oh, and Garth?”

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “There’s money in the bug-out bag. Please tell me you have it?”

  “I do.”

  “Good. You can use that to pay for a motel, but this is important, so listen up.”

  “Yeah?” he replied with the gravity it deserved.

  “I’m happy your friend didn’t disappear, but make sure you get a room with two beds, okay?”

  Garth went giddy with laughter. “Aw, Dad, that’s a good one! She’s about my age, but she’s from a hundred and fifty years ago. We have NOTHING in common. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  Buck laughed to himself.

  You have a lot to learn about life, son.

  Connie looked him in the eyes as he thought about the right reply.

  “Well, just do what I would do, okay? You’ll be fine.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow, Dad. I’m glad we’re both okay, and I’m glad the phones are working again.”

  “Me too,” Buck said in a more relaxed voice. “I can’t wait to meet your new friend.”

  “Ditto!”

  He hung up to find Connie smirking at him. “The whole world is on edge, and you are worried about your son’s honor?”

  Buck smiled back. “It’s the little things that will keep civilization wheels-down. I like to practice what I preach.”

  “I’ve noticed.” She finally stepped back from him, but grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the motel room. “Now, let’s get you to bed so you’ll be fresh for more miles tomorrow. Garth said he wants to meet me. Let’s make that happen.”

  To Be Continued in End Days, Book 3

  If you like this book, please leave a review. This is a new series, so the only way I can decide whether to commit more time to it is by getting feedback from you, the readers. Your opinion matters to me. Continue or not? I have only so much time to craft new stories. Help me invest that time wisely. Plus, reviews buoy my spirits and stoke the fires of creativity.

  Don’t stop now! Keep turning the pages as there’s a little more insight and such from the authors.

  Broad America

  One

  West Wendover, Nevada

  Buck woke up, opened his eyes, and saw himself in bed. “Why is there a mirror on my ceiling?” He blinked to clear the fog from his mind. The sleeper cab was nice, but sometimes it was best to get a good night’s sleep in a real bed.

  Even if there was a mirror on the ceiling and rates were by the hour.

  Worth it.

  “They must get clientele who aren’t puritans like us,” a voice replied from nearby. Buck tried to focus. Connie. The second bed was ruffled where she’d slept. Big Mac was still curled up over there with his head on the pillow. Buck had paid for two rooms, but they’d only used one because of the red wave. He closed his eyes.

  “Anything different?”

  “Not that I can tell. Not yet, anyway,” she answered, smiling when she looked at him. He made to get up but stopped.

  “Why am I in my underwear?”

  “It was dark when we crashed. What’s the big deal?”

  Buck had to think about that. He sat up and scratched the growing beard on his face. “You’re up early,” he said. “What are you reading?”

  Connie glanced his way and held up the atlas. “I think my internal clock is set to 2003 time. I woke up at four-thirty. While I was awake, I figured I’d try to understand the route you’re taking to go east.”

  He pointed out the window, which was toward the ris
ing sun. “We drive I-80 that way. I’m happy to say it is pretty much a straight shot to White Plains, New York. Then we’ll hop in my pickup truck and find Garth.”

  “About that,” she said. “It looks like our route goes near Three Mile Island. Will we get irradiated?”

  Buck smiled and wiped the sleep from his eyes. “Boy, you get right into it in the morning. It is still over two thousand miles away. We’ll know more once we get closer, but Garth said they told him it wasn’t as serious an accident as they first thought.”

  Connie leaned back in her chair. “So, this is over? The storm on the East Coast is gone. The nuclear plant didn’t spew radiation over everything. You find Garth and life goes back to normal for you?”

  He detected the worry in her voice, so he slid out of bed, putting on his jeans while Connie giggled. He pulled out a clean Hawaiian shirt from his overnight bag and buttoned it.

  “Are you kidding me?” she exclaimed. “Oh my God, it’s terrible! Didn’t your momma teach you how to dress?”

  “What, this old rag?” He laughed. “What don’t you like about it?”

  His yellow and green shirt was decorated with AK-47s shaped like palm trees and grenades dressed up as pineapples. The guys at truck stops loved it, and he wore it all the time on the road, although he didn’t wear it much in the city because it did upset some people.

  “It’s so damned bright.” She continued to chuckle between words. “People are going to see you coming from over the horizon.”

  He shook his head slowly. “I need to take a shower. Then we can catch some chow and hit the road.”

  “Only one towel,” she told him.

  Buck hesitated. “I’ll use my shirt so you can use the towel.”

  She leaned back, wearing a confused expression. She pointed to herself with both hands. “You think I look like this before a shower? That’s sweet. I already saved the towel for you.”

  “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m kidding. I didn’t save it because I knew what you would say, big tough Marine. How about you just use my wet towel so we can get some ‘chow,’ as you called it. I hope it looks like breakfast.” She motioned for him to get moving. “And whatever you do, don’t think of that towel all over my naked body. Now shoo.”