End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4]

by Isherwood, E. E.

  One of the computer guys whistled. “Yes. It looks like a new energy field is being generated around the Earth.”

  “A torus-shaped energy field, slowly upsetting the Earth’s normal magnetic field,” Faith continued. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  The graphed object on the screen was shaped like a sphere, but there was a tunnel through the middle. The simulation showed the movement of energy from one end of the tunnel at CERN through the pipeline, and then its exit at SNAKE. From there, the energy shot up and wrapped around the Earth in all directions until it joined up again at CERN. It appeared as if the Earth was trapped inside a balloon, except for two holes above the super colliders.

  “This is a closed loop,” she noted.

  Donald stared intently at the data on the screen as if it took a massive amount of concentration to stay focused.

  Sunetra picked Faith’s explanation. “We still aren’t able to say for sure what kind of energy we’re dealing with, but my team, with Donald’s help, made basic light magnitude comparisons of each of the four beams. When we shut down one beam, video feeds at the others showed how they grew in brightness by about one-third.”

  “They compensated,” a woman physicist suggested, arriving at the same conclusion Faith had.

  “Indeed,” Sun answered.

  Faith spoke slowly. “You now know what we know. The thing we still can’t answer is what will happen if we remove all the cabinets inside the SNAKE loop. I believe they will keep compensating, but the mystery is what happens when the last one is pulled. Will that cause the closed system to collapse and return the planet to normal, or will the energy continue to flow unimpeded through the link between CERN and SNAKE over the surface of the Earth?”

  She smirked. “This is where you guys come in. You have to find the answer.”

  The mood in the room shifted now that they had a clear problem to solve. Several team members opened laptops and instantly began tapping in data.

  “Have we figured out what’s going on at CERN?” Donald finally asked.

  She shook her head. “General Smith said there is a team going in to find out, but they are still an hour or two from getting there. We have to be patient.”

  A computer team member leaned over the table to see her. “Is the general going to wait until we know more about CERN before shutting off the boxes? Does he have any plans we need to know about?”

  “He said I would have the final say. I think he was surprised when I was right yesterday. I told him not to remove the links until we knew more, but he was in a hurry.”

  Faith glanced to Donald. “Dr. Perkins, do you have any thoughts on what’s going on here?” She pointed to the screen. Much of the meeting had been set up to avoid the need for Donald to go down into the dingy tunnels. Someone his age had no business poking around down there, but she valued his insights.

  “My first thought from looking at the model is the tunnel you’ve drawn should not be in the middle of the sphere, but closer to the edge. SNAKE and CERN are about twenty-five percent of the way around the circumference of the Earth, meaning the tunnel would sit closer to the edge of the sphere.”

  She didn’t want to argue with him. She’d explained to the others that her diagram and simulation were crude approximations.

  “Can we shut down the system?” she asked with some frustration in her voice.

  Donald looked at her seriously, then at the screen, and finally back to her. “Have we heard anything from CERN?”

  She almost cried at hearing him repeat his own question.

  Her friend and mentor’s brilliant mind was no longer as sharp as she had hoped.

  I-80, Wyoming

  After walking Mac and making sure he did his business, Buck waited with Connie and the members of his convoy, but not for long. His nervous energy at the mere thought of being trapped in the line spurred him to think of an exit strategy.

  “Let’s get back to our trucks,” Buck suggested to them when he couldn’t wait another second. “I have an idea.”

  Beans, Eve, and Monsignor stood there for a few moments, looking lost.

  “I’ll explain on the CB,” Buck prompted, giving them a thumbs-up and making the first move to return to the driver’s seat.

  “Roger that, Buck,” Monsignor replied. The others broke up and went back to their rides.

  He and Connie jogged Mac back to the truck. Connie appeared confused, but she didn’t question him until they were back in the cab.

  “What do you have in mind?” she inquired. “Are we going to turn around?”

  He’d been ready. “I will if I have to. We can’t sit here, possibly for hours, and do nothing. Would you mind looking in the road atlas to see if there are any alternate routes in this part of Wyoming?”

  “Sure, Buck, but what if there’s not?”

  He was almost certain there weren’t. They hadn’t passed a major intersection in twenty or thirty miles, at least. It seemed unlikely there were too many parallel highways in the remote landscape. They also couldn’t go to the north, since the buffalo herd was going that way.

  “We’ll see.”

  The Peterbilt was already running, so he adjusted himself in his seat, belted himself in, and put it in gear. He’d left plenty of room between himself and the car ahead, so it was a simple maneuver to get out of the line. He guided his truck to the left and into the breakdown lane as he’d done at the water crossing. There were no cars in the westbound lanes, so he could turn around if that was his decision, but he didn’t want to risk going across the median again unless he had a good reason.

  It wasn’t very courteous, but he drove alongside the two rows of parked cars and got closer to the front like he was butting his way there. The rest of his convoy fell in behind, giving him confidence he wasn’t acting alone. When he reached the line of buffalo trotting over the highway, a few of them moved away, as if he might continue into the herd and run them over. However, he put on the brakes and waited at the edge.

  Dust and debris floated everywhere around the windows of the cabin, making it difficult to see more than a hundred yards into the thick of the passing mass of animals. There was also a dull roar, like a waterfall of hoof clops right on top of them.

  Buck looked at Connie and spoke at a high volume. “Hold your ears.”

  She put her hands over her ears, but then appeared to change her mind. Both hands went over Mac’s floppy ears.

  They smiled at each other.

  Buck engaged the air horn and held it for twenty seconds.

  “Come on you bastards, move!” he shouted.

  He let off, then blasted the horn in many short, sharp, shots.

  A disturbingly small number of buffalo veered away from his noisy truck, but it had no effect on the larger horde. His faint hope had been that he’d blow his horn and effectively part the waters in front of him, but it was a no-go.

  “Fuck,” he said in disappointment. “I don’t want to wait here.”

  “Can we push through, do you think?” Connie suggested.

  He looked ahead, knowing the force of Mother Nature was not to be tested. Three feet of fast-flowing water could sweep his semi away in a flood. Five feet of fast-moving buffalo would knock him and his friends over with no problem.

  “Maybe if we used the cars as meat shields,” he suggested with mirth in his voice.

  “I don’t think you’ll have much luck with that,” she replied flatly.

  He sobered up. “No, I guess not. And no, I don’t think we can push these things out of our way, but I had to try.” He put the truck in park. “Will you look up those routes? I’m going to step outside and see if the end is out there. Then again, as long as they keep moving, they’ll pass. If they stop, then we can bump them out of the way. I think my cool attempt to blast them locked us into going forward.”

  He opened his door but didn’t get down. He closed it, then hopped up onto his hood. For a brief moment he looked in at Connie and the excited Gold
en, but then he jumped up on his roof and stood tall.

  “Come on, guys,” he called out to the brown shapes inside their dust cloud. “Get this over with.”

  He peered into the thick of it, sure there was an end but unable to see it.

  Near Georgetown, Delaware

  The garage door went all the way up, and still Garth remained on top of the taxi. A lone man came out of the shadows of the junk-filled garage, looking a lot like a zombie.

  “Hello,” Lydia said in a happy voice. “We’re spray-painting!”

  “I can see what you’re doing, little lady. But why are you doing it in my driveway?” The man wore baggy jeans that hung off his skinny body. His shirt was similarly too big, like he’d shrunk. When the man walked into daylight, Garth got a look at his sallow old face.

  He was about a hundred years old.

  Garth clambered down. “I’m sorry, sir. We ran out of gas and turned into your driveway because we didn’t want to be targets up on the road.”

  “And you didn’t think you might be targets down here? What if I was a criminal?”

  “Are you?” Lydia asked naively, as was her way.

  The old guy laughed, then rubbed a red bandana over his almost-hairless scalp. It was hot and humid, and he appeared to instantly boil over with sweat. “I served in Italy in Dubya Dubya II. That was the last violence I ever did in my life. No, I’m no criminal.” He held up his finger. “But! I’ll defend my turf.”

  “We mean no harm, sir,” Garth reassured him. “I want to get out of here more than you want us gone.”

  “I’m Elwyn. Don’t worry about time. You two seem like cute kids, not like them damned drug addicts who come to my door asking if they can use the phone. That’s why I don’t answer the door anymore. They always want to come in and scout the place for loot. Then, if they find something they like, they return when I’m not here to get it.”

  Garth was horrified. “My dad warned me about those people, but I never thought it was real. Do they ever come back?”

  Elwyn laughed. “The joke’s on them. I have nothing of value inside. The mobile meals people come in and give me my food, and folks from the food pantry drop off goods, too. But it’s been a long time since I’ve owned anything worth fighting for, ‘cept maybe my wedding pictures. Would you like to come in and see photos of my dear wife Mary Jo, God rest her soul?”

  His mental alarms began to rattle.

  “Sure, we’d love to,” Lydia said without hesitation.

  Garth looked at the half-painted taxi, then at the old guy. “We’ll finish painting, then we’ll knock on the front door. Will that work?”

  Lydia stopped in her tracks as she walked toward the man like she’d done the wrong thing.

  “Suit yourself,” Elwyn said with resignation. “I’ll get out some braunschweiger and swiss. We’ll have a nice lunch.”

  “Sounds great,” Garth lied.

  The hell I’m going inside some old dude’s house.

  He got busy painting before there were any more surprises.

  Sixteen

  Canberra-to-Sydney Train, Australia

  Destiny tripped over some vines and almost slammed her head on the side of the rescue train engine. Becker put it in her head that it was about to leave without them, so she passed the man and ran like her life depended on it. The engine’s diesel motor roared, and the horn blared over and over, but even that wasn’t enough to stop her from hitting the side because the jungle rubbed right up against the metal.

  Becker tumbled into her.

  “We’re here!” he screamed over the noise.

  She motioned for him to precede her to the stairs, which he did. The giant wheels of the train were in motion, leading her to believe they were about to be left behind.

  “Hurry!” she cried.

  Thick vines and giant tree trunks surrounded them. Some of the largest trunks pressed up against the metal exterior of the engine, so they had to run around the base of a couple of trees before they reached the entryway.

  “There’s no carriage,” he said with sudden realization. “It’s just the engine.”

  Destiny looked at him for a moment, wondering what was going through his mind, then pushed. “Get on.”

  Becker hopped up on the step and opened the door at the front of the engine, which was pointed back toward Sydney.

  “Don’t leave!” he shouted to the person inside.

  The engineer was a frumpy-looking woman in her mid-thirties. Her blue jumper and non-matching trackies made Destiny wonder if she was even an official employee.

  “I can’t,” the engineer replied as they climbed into the small engineer’s compartment. “I think I backed into these trees and got stuck. Am I on a siding or something?”

  “No. This is the main line,” Becker exclaimed.

  Destiny took some time to consider. The trees had been close to the outer skin, but she assumed they had been there when the train pulled up. “The trees and the tracks seemed merged here. We have to get out, like right now.”

  The engineer nodded excitedly. “That’s why I was blasting the horn. I wanted to leave, but where are the other passengers? They can ride in the back.”

  “It’s only the two of us,” Becker reported.

  The engineer’s name tag said Gladys. Destiny assumed she was going to ask a host of questions about the missing people, but she wasn’t fazed. She hit some controls, and the engine groaned with the rise in power.

  “Grab a chair and hold on,” Gladys said in her engineer voice.

  She and Becker pulled down a pair of jump seats attached to the side walls, facing each other across the cabin. The pumping sound of the motor increased quickly, as if the train were going at high speed, but they weren’t moving.

  Gladys looked at Becker, then worked the control board again. The straining motor died back, then the engine vibrated and creaked.

  “We must be hung up on a tree,” Gladys declared. “We’ve got to bully our way past it.”

  The motor roared to life again, and the engineer leaned forward like her added weight on the throttle was going to make the difference. The frame shuddered, and the metal wheels squealed below her feet.

  “Come on!” Gladys yelled.

  The motor revved for a few seconds, then the whole machine lurched forward. Destiny used her legs to steady herself on the seat.

  They hit something else, but they had a little momentum now. The warping and ripping of metal became much louder, but Gladys seemed prepared to rip the whole engine apart as long as they got free.

  The powerful spotlight shined into the vines and leafy growth of the forest. Enough of a path remained clear, like a deep, dark mine shaft through the jungle.

  “We’re pushing through,” Gladys declared.

  The jungle outside felt raw and primal, but Destiny found comfort in the reflective surface of the tracks. The twin beams of steel were the only link to civilization. Gladys followed them for many minutes, until the suffocating forest backed off a little. To Destiny, it felt like they’d escaped from being sucked into the primordial past.

  She shivered despite the warm interior.

  “Get us home,” Destiny declared, “and I’ll never badmouth Trainlink again.”

  Near Georgetown, Delaware

  Garth finished with the sixth can of black paint, disappointed in the results. Lydia had done a great job covering the taxi company information on the side of his door, but the rest of the vehicle looked like toddlers had splashed watercolor paints over the yellow base. It was about ninety percent black, but long streaks of yellow were everywhere, and the roof was almost entirely unpainted.

  The only positive was that it no longer looked like a taxi. The top plastic sign was broken, and all the words on the side doors were covered.

  “It will have to do,” he said, disappointed. In his head, he had envisioned that the car would look as professional in black as it had in yellow.

  “We did a fair job,” Lydia added.
“It could use some work here and there, but I think it is pretty good for my first time painting with spray.”

  He gained some perspective. “Yeah. It’s not perfect, but it does what we need. If we look like a dumpy car, fewer people will be interested in stealing it.”

  “You must live in a world of criminals,” Lydia remarked. “You always worry about them.”

  “They aren’t everywhere, but it only takes one to ruin your life. Better safe than sorry, my old man says. I’m trying to make sure you don’t have to walk ever again.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  She smiled at him like he’d saved her life, which made him feel proud. They looked at each other for a long moment, and he was drawn once again to the simple girl’s complex green eyes.

  “Are we going inside for lunch?” she asked. “I’m quite hungry.”

  That brought him back down to reality. “Would it make you mad if we skipped lunch?” He spoke quietly. “I don’t trust him. Who waits for an hour to come outside? He’s up to something. Even if he isn’t, I want to get moving while it is still daytime. I’m going to get in the car and leave.”

  She looked hurt for a few seconds but then became stoic. “I trust you.”

  They split apart and walked to their respective doors. He slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key.

  At first, nothing happened except for a whining sound.

  The second time he turned the key, the engine let out a short sputter before stopping again.

  “He’s there,” Lydia croaked.

  Garth only gave him a cursory glance. Elwyn was inside his garage but moving slow. He twisted the key again, willing the motor to start.

  It cranked for a few seconds, then caught.

  He banged on the steering wheel. “Yes!”

  The motor roared to life. He immediately put it in reverse, then hit the gas.

  The car didn’t move.

  The emergency brake.

  Garth pictured himself in a slasher movie. The old man was the killer, gun in hand, moving in his direction…

  He kicked off the brake and looked over his shoulder to see where he was going, but then he took a chance and peered into the garage. The old man was there, holding out his hand as if to wave goodbye.