by EE Isherwood
As he got a few cars over, he poked his head up to confirm mama was lumbering toward her babies. It was the opening he needed. “Kyla, get out of there!” He assumed she’d heard him, so he ducked down and continued his way across the parking lot.
Ten cars later, he was far enough from the scene of the crime. He sprinted to the front of the store, shouting as quietly as possible. “We have to go right this second!” Ted tossed the gas can and hose in the rear hatch of their SUV, then slammed it shut, keeping an eye back where he’d come from.
“What about my shirts?” Emily called from inside.
“There’s a pissed-off mama bear coming to protect her cubs. We have to be out of here in ten seconds! Hurry!”
“Oh! I will!” she cried out.
He scrambled into the driver’s seat, trusting the women would jump in after he started it up. Kyla appeared from around the far side of the building; she’d gone the long way to avoid the bear. Meechum, rifle out, waited until his niece was inside, then climbed in the rear door after her. Emily was the last one in. When she slammed the door, Ted hit the gas, causing her to roll sideways in her seat and almost tumble onto the center console. “Whoa! Let me get buckled.”
“Sorry,” he replied, laughing a bit at her struggle.
Once safe and off the lot, he looked back. The fat mama bear stood next to her den, watching him drive away. She seemed to study him intensely, almost daring him to come back. He slowed to a crawl while looking in his side mirror at the majestic creature.
“Why the hurry for bears?” Meechum asked from the back seat. “We could have blown them away with some 5.56 NATO.”
Emily gasped. “You’d shoot a mama watching over her kids?”
The Marine spoke matter-of-factly. “I wouldn’t take pleasure in it, but we’re in a warzone. We have requirements to fulfill which are necessary for our survival. If we have to kill to keep our people alive, we have to be ready to do it swiftly and humanely.”
After seeing baby bear’s little head stick out of its puffball of fur, he wasn’t sure he could condemn it to death by killing its mother. But there was a lesson in the encounter, and Meechum was the most practical about it.
It was going to take extreme measures to protect those he loved.
Amarillo, TX
Brent Whitman finally made it back to the prison after a long night and early morning evading the enemy forces swarming the city of Amarillo. They’d struck a blow against the enemy by sending those fuel trucks onto the airfield; he expected them to want payback.
“Hey, boss man,” a voice said from the darkness of one of the cells.
There were only six of them, including Brent, which was why they hadn’t left anyone at the prison to guard it. Thus, it came as a shock to find someone already inside. His old heart stopped, took a few seconds to collect itself, then resumed beating.
“Holy shit! Who’s that?” he finally managed to sputter out.
A young man emerged from the cell. His dark skin, long black-haired ponytail, and narrow eyes made him appear foreign, perhaps one of the Asian countries. The distinctive look helped Brent finally make the connection. The man was inside Terry Long’s cell—it had to be him.
“Long,” he said with relief. “We thought you were with these assholes.”
Brent pushed the man in the black-and-brown jumpsuit until he went into an adjacent empty cell. He’d come within a second of killing the man outright last night at the Cadillac Ranch, willing to write it off to the cost of war, but he changed his mind before he could pull the trigger. He’d been wondering if he’d made the right decision ever since. However, he had access to an entire prison. It wouldn’t cost him anything to hold the man, even if temporarily.
“Who is he?” Long asked.
“His name’s Will. He works for the people who wiped out America.”
“Wiped out?” Long looked around at the other ex-prisoners. The five men who stayed with Brent after being given their freedom. The five men who’d done significant damage to the as-yet unnamed enemy trying to gain a foothold in Amarillo. He also caught sight of Trish.
They all nodded. Brent replied. “There are thousands of men like Will. They came to the United States after the weapon erased everyone upstairs.” They all understood he meant the upper floor of the prison. All the men up there—guards and prisoners alike—had vanished on day one. “But it wasn’t only upstairs, and it wasn’t only in Amarillo. This is happening across the entire country.”
Long seemed to get it. “I went to my mom’s place up on Lake Meredith after you let us go. Stayed there for a few days. At first, I didn’t think anything of not seeing people. It was during the week, after all. But eventually, it worried me not seeing a single boat on the water, besides empty ones. I got curious and tried knocking on many doors of other lake homes. Found absolutely no one, but lots of their clothes. Yesterday, I was totally jacked in the head knowing the place had gone super wrong. I came here because you were the last people I’d seen. I thought I’d find someone, anyone—even you, boss—but the joint was empty. I might have been strangled by a bedsheet if you hadn’t come back when you did…”
He laughed, not sure what to make of the guy. Most of the men who served time in the minimum-security prison were a mixture of good and bad. Often, they got caught up in events bigger than themselves, acted stupidly, and ended up in the hoosegow to work it off. But he had a hard time remembering what Long did to get tossed in jail, or what his record was. He’d transferred in only a week or two before the world fell apart.
“You’re welcome to join us,” Brent finally replied, knowing he couldn’t stop him.
Long saluted him from the same cell where he’d done his short stint. “Thanks. I don’t care what you guys have in store for me. I’m only glad someone is left alive to talk to.”
CHAPTER 5
Big Thunder National Grassland, WY
Ted had a couple of hours behind the wheel to think about what happened at Devils Tower. He’d come to the conclusion he hadn’t been weak, but instead was simply being cautious. Sure, he could have shot the mama bear, but a wounded animal was unpredictable and dangerous. The safe play was removing his people from the situation. Since he’d done the retreat with success, his self-imposed after-action report was positive. However, it got him wondering about what was up ahead.
“We need gas,” he said dryly. An abandoned passenger car was a little to the side of the road, as if it stopped soon after its driver vanished. “This looks like a rather unique place to stop.”
He drove around the car, then put the SUV in park and shut it off.
“It’s wonderful, Ted. Nice work finding this tourist destination. Can we get out and walk around?” Emily remarked in a sarcastic tone, stretching her arms.
Ted looked in a three-sixty around the truck. They were on a slight rise in the road, but there was nothing but flat ground from horizon to horizon. They’d passed a sign announcing they were driving through a national grassland, and it lived up to the name. Wild green grasses were the only thing, besides the road, drawn into the landscape. After a quick check to the skies, he decided they could afford to all get out. “Stick close to the truck. After last time, I want to make sure we always have a buddy with us. Kyla and I both stumbled into the bear, uh, situation, because we were by ourselves.”
Kyla laughed nervously. “I don’t see any bears this time. Though I do see…”
He checked out his window. Kyla was looking toward the side of the road, but with bemusement, not fear. He followed her eyes and saw the objects of her delight. “Prairie dogs.”
When he opened his door, the prairie dogs cried out in tiny barks, possibly to warn their peers. The creatures were about two feet tall, thin, with brown fur and curious black eyes. They stood on their hind legs, much like the mama bear, and watched from their piles of dirt to see what he was going to do next. As soon as he stepped on the pavement, the few animals closest to him went into their holes. The others
squeaked their warning cries.
“I’ve only seen these on television,” he admitted.
“I’m on fuel duty,” Meechum remarked, striding for the parked vehicle with the hose and red gas can.
“Roger that,” he replied, thankful for the help. It gave him time to stretch his legs, which, he admitted, were suffering from the endless sitting.
“What’s on your mind?” Emily asked as she walked around the front of the truck.
He looked back to Kyla. She had the door open but stayed inside the SUV as she observed the prairie dogs. When she saw him, she flashed a big smile, happy to be there.
“Walk with me?” he asked, waving her along the shoulder in front of the truck.
They went about fifty feet before he stopped to look at the dogs near the road. He pretended to be interested in them, in case Meechum or Kyla wondered why he and Emily had split off.
“You have me worried,” she said quietly. “Did something happen I don’t know about?”
“No, not at all. You’re the first person I’m talking to about my thoughts.” He glanced over to her. “That bear attack did one thing for me. It made me realize we haven’t even gotten to the dangerous part of our mission. If we’re going to NORAD and if we’re planning to hurt them, I seriously don’t know how I can keep her safe.”
“So, are we changing our plans? We could go to Canada. Eventually, we’d have to run into someone, right?” Emily always impressed him in how she seemed to catch up to his line of thinking.
He made a thoughtful tapping sound with his tongue before answering. “I did have Canada in mind, but not for you and me…”
“You want Kyla to go up there alone? I don’t know—”
“No,” he replied. “Not just her. Meechum, too.”
Emily put her hands on her hips, thinking. After a short time, she seemed to arrive at a conclusion. “Okay then. We tell them what’s up, it’s for their own safety, give them provisions, and that’s that.”
He chuckled. “You don’t have any kids, do you?” She’d never mentioned children. It was a risk bringing up her family situation, but he didn’t mean anything by it. “I don’t, either, mind you, but Kyla is my niece. I’ve seen her and my sister butt heads for years. It’s never a simple matter of telling her what’s in her best interest and expecting her to do it.”
“She’s out of college, Ted. Not a kid anymore. We can be adult with her.”
Ted cracked up. “I love your optimism.”
She huffed. “Well…I could order Meechum to take her. As president and commander-in-chief, it would be a legitimate mission for a Marine.”
“Yeah, maybe. But I had a different idea…”
He explained his rationale over the next couple of minutes. When he was done, he searched her eyes for whether she thought it was going to work. He’d gotten to know her fairly well over the last several days, but even that experience didn’t provide a clue in this instance. He knew enough to guess it was because the plan wasn’t without its downsides.
“Give me some time to think about it,” she said distantly.
The barks of the prairie dogs were no longer so cute.
NORAD Black Site Sierra 7, CO
Tabby allowed herself to be led through the rocky tunnels until she and David arrived at what appeared to be a heavy metal door. David tapped a keypad before stepping back. “NORAD built everything with an eye toward nuclear strikes. It was dogma back in the days of the US versus the Soviet Union.”
She displayed only indifference.
“Through here. You’ll see the weapon responsible for wiping away your people.”
Tabby strode through, heart pounding. If she was being led into the heart of the enemy camp, perhaps there would be an opportunity to disable it. Or reverse it. That was how it went in the movies…
Lights came on, revealing a circular chamber about fifty feet across. Unlike the hallways outside, the walls and ceiling were painted white to brighten the space. A number of futuristic block fixtures glowed on the wall, reflecting light throughout the curved area. The floor was lined with non-skid metal grating, as one might find on the wet floors of a ski lodge. The central section of roof had a ten-foot-wide hole above a similar void on the floor below it…
“Come on, don’t be shy.” David walked up to a stout metal railing, which encircled the dark pit. He pushed on the rail. “See? It’s safe.”
“What am I looking at?” she said with unabashed wonder, looking up and down. The hole went up several stories before it ended in a metal barrier. Down was absolutely black after about a hundred feet.
“Part of my weapon, as I told you.” He leaned over the edge, looking below. “Far down there is one part of the device. Another was built on the roof of this NORAD bunker. And yet another is far above that.”
She reached the for the rail, distressed to learn that destroying his weapon wasn’t as simple as hitting an obvious self-destruct button. David might have mistook her displeasure as discomfort, so he tapped on a small tablet hanging on the metalwork.
“Sometimes it helps to see it.” He motioned for her to keep looking down. As she watched, lights came on in fifty-foot sections, giving her a better sense of what was in the hole. One after the next, sections of the pit lit up and stayed on, giving the impression of a drill pushing far into the core of the earth. The process went on for a couple of minutes before the light seemed to meet at a point at the bottom. “As you can see, the hole is too deep to see it all. This goes down for ten miles.”
“Is that a lot?” she asked, still angry at her interest level. However, she’d spent years in the mine back home, so she had a natural curiosity for rocks. She wanted to study geology in college to help further her understanding of the earth, and what was inside it. Her parents were also experts in earth studies, but looking into the abyss, the deep bore hole was unlike any mining activity Mom or Dad ever talked about during their tours.
“By far. The Soviets, whom I just mentioned, managed to get a thin shaft down about seven miles in their country before they ran out of money. NORAD must have taken their lessons and tried to drill down here in Colorado, but they didn’t get as far. It took a contract with one of my companies to get it done. Ours is ten feet wide, too. Plus, we took it a step farther; there are two elevator shafts next to most of it.” He pointed to the far side of the room. The elevator doors looked like they belonged in any office park, not deep inside a government bunker.
“So you have three shafts going down ten miles? This is your superweapon?”
He laughed. “The elevators don’t go straight through. We had to install waypoints—stops, if you will—since the technology doesn’t exist to get elevator cars straight through to a depth of sixteen thousand meters. Plus, you don’t want to be stuck waiting if it has to go ten miles before it reaches you, right?”
Tabby shrugged, clamming up again.
“Besides, the weapon part is along the walls down there. Don’t you see it?” He pointed down into the shaft. The walls weren’t smooth or rocky. Long vertical pipes hugged the curvature of the hole around most of the perimeter, running to points far below. Small LED lights blinked in various locations, as if there was energy flowing through them. As impressive as it was, it still didn’t seem like a weapon. It certainly wasn’t a weapon she could sabotage.
When she didn’t reply, he kept talking. “We drained a water aquifer by accident. People in nearby towns were furious, but we blamed it on a fracking company.” He snickered mischievously. “We tapped into it during drilling, and it drained to a larger void down the tube. Good thing for us. It saved us having to pump it out. It would have delayed us a long time.”
“That would have been a shame,” she taunted.
“Yes, I’m sure you mean it. But consider what we’ve built here, well, with NORAD’s help, of course. The shaft goes down ten miles. We have superconductors and cooling installed in the walls, giving us ten miles of heavily-shielded pathways for accelerated partic
les. The foundational elements of the universe.” Without warning, he spun around and leaned back against the railing. His golden outfit sparkled from the lights on the ceiling above. “Of course, outside the tube, it’s four hundred degrees Fahrenheit down at the bottom, so it gets difficult to keep it all cool, but my companies did their jobs in that regard. Now, a person could comfortably live down there.”
She brushed bangs out of her eyes after looking straight down. “If this is your weapon, tell me what happened to my dogs. How did…this—” She pointed to the pit. “—kill them?”
David pursed his lips, as if she’d disappointed him. “Is that all you worry about? Everyone else? Your friends. Your dogs. The country.”
“Just tell me,” she insisted.
“Fine. If your dogs were caught by one of our mobile units… Those machines have a lot less power, obviously, than our main gun here. They still tap into the base structure of the universe, but they don’t have the same granular control as—”
“Are they dead or not!”
He looked at her anew. “Probably not. They’ve most likely been punched into a parallel universe.”
“A parallel universe?” she said dismissively. “You expect me to believe that?”
David shrugged. “It’s all ones and zeros as far as I’m concerned. You arrange them in the right order, with enough power behind them, and you can send signals across the universe, you can open doorways between quantum-entangled particles, and you can send puppies into neighboring blocks of the multiverse. You can’t believe it because your people weren’t the ones to figure it out.”
She leaned hard against the railing, thinking. The dark tunnel of blinking lights below took on a new sinister appearance. It wasn’t simply a strange weapon. David and his army had invented technology far beyond the ability of the United States. So far ahead, they were able to defeat her country without anyone knowing about it. And there she was, in the maw of the super gun. “Your weapon can be destroyed,” she blurted out.
He waited a few seconds, as if she might say more, but then he chuckled softly. “Everything can be destroyed. The universe persists under the pain of entropy, as I’m sure they taught you in science class.”
