Begin Again: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (End Days Book 4)

by E. E. Isherwood

  He reached for the phone but looked at the screen before picking it up. It was a number he didn’t recognize, and he was most definitely not in the mood to talk to a stranger.

  Connie leaned over to look at it. “It says the call is coming from Louisville, Kentucky.”

  Garth was in Virginia.

  “Fuck Kentucky. It’s probably a political robocall. That would just fucking figure.”

  He got angry at the thought of a politician trying to secure his vote while the world fell apart. With his luck, and with everything coming out of the past, he would find himself surrounded by dead politicians. It would be his hell.

  “Fuck!” he shouted.

  Connie took the phone from the cradle. “May I?”

  He was too mad to talk, so he motioned for her to take it. From deep inside the rage, he knew she was attempting to help. If she wanted to deal with a call asking for money to fund some Bluegrass State asshole, so be it.

  “Hello?”

  She paused for a few seconds.

  “Really?” she added.

  “Tell them we gave at the office,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Really?” she repeated. “Hold on a second.”

  Connie held the phone toward him. “The call is for you.”

  “Seriously? I’m not in the mood for bullshit, Connie.”

  She smiled at him, but there were tears in her eyes.

  “What?” he snapped. “Did someone else fucking die?”

  It took monumental restraint not to use the F-word a dozen times in each sentence. He wanted to cuss out everyone and everything, but something about her posture made him aware it wasn’t the right time for it.

  “You take it right now, Buck.” She could barely talk.

  “Yeah, okay,” he said remorsefully.

  He gripped the phone, expecting more trauma, but he admitted to himself there was nothing anyone could say on the telephone that would top the bad news he’d already gotten about Garth. Even news of his own death wouldn’t make him as sad.

  Buck took a deep breath. “Hello?”

  Ten

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

  With the lights back on, Faith stood in front of her team. They’d been locked in the office and forced to watch a government film explaining the origins of the secret experiment run out of SNAKE. It had been full of theory and formulas and was chock-full of implications for changing the world, but her people seemed most concerned with the ever-morphing scientist behind the lead plate.

  The physics people and computer technicians peppered her with questions.

  “Please!” she shouted. “One at a time.” She pointed at Bob, which she realized an instant too late probably made her seem to be favoring him.

  He stood up. “Thank you, Doctor Sinclair.” He looked around the room. “You all know me. Some of you know this, but I want to get this out in the open for the rest of you. I was aware of all this before we launched the Izanagi test.”

  A few of his peers gasped.

  “CERN and SNAKE worked together to duplicate what you just saw on those two small colliders. There are obviously some similarities to how the new experiment played out compared to the original attempt, but I think this film is a roadmap for how we can power down our collider and free ourselves of this entanglement. I think that’s why they showed us this data.”

  A woman at the back replied. “Will everything return to normal if we shut it all down, like it did for the man behind the shield?”

  Bob glanced at Faith with an uncertain look on his face. For the past several days, she and the team had been debating the pros and cons of a total system shutdown either at SNAKE or at CERN. Since General Smith had said he was taking care of CERN, her sole focus was here in Colorado. However, the more they studied the problem, the less they understood where the power was coming from.

  The Four Arrows boxes complicated things even more. She’d been lucky she’d convinced Smith to test the removal of one box before doing all of them, because they discovered the unknown power simply transferred to the other three. When the terrorists had come in with C-4, intent on shutting down the remaining boxes no matter the result, she and General Smith had fought to stop them. That effort had only been successful because Smith had given his life to preserve the last one.

  Yet the movie made it pretty clear that things had gone back to normal when the power was shut off. Since the only source of power seemed to come through the last Four Arrows device, it suggested a course of action.

  “Will it?” the woman in the back repeated as if Bob had taken too long to answer.

  “It will not,” a familiar man’s voice replied.

  Dr. Johnson came into the room, causing a stir.

  “Traitor!” someone shouted. Others stood up and talked over each other.

  He appeared calm as he strode toward Faith. She stepped aside since he was obviously there to address them all.

  “Settle,” he said, holding his hands up.

  After a few more insults from the crowd, they finally began to restore order. Everyone sat back down, save Faith.

  “I thought you were at CERN?” she asked when it was quiet.

  “I was,” he began, “until the end of the experiment. My team and I left the control room at the cusp of the critical final phase. A strange burst of blue energy followed us through the main door and interacted with the control boards. I saw it the instant it happened; it was a total system redline. I pushed the emergency shutdown, but it didn’t respond.”

  Dr. Johnson cupped his hands over his nose and mouth like he was suddenly feeling stressed and didn’t want to breathe the air. “The energy wasn’t deadly, like electricity, but it did have an effect on us. I watched several members of my team fall to the floor. Eventually, I did as well. However, when I woke up, you’ll never guess where I was.”

  “Here,” Bob deadpanned.

  “How did you know that?” Dr. Johnson asked while nodding.

  Faith interjected. “This is Dr. Stafford.”

  “Doctor Stafford!” The other scientist beamed. “It’s nice to put a face to the name.”

  Several members of the audience grumbled because it was clear Bob and Dr. Johnson had worked together behind everyone’s backs.

  Bob seemed uncomfortable. “Well, it hasn’t been a badge of honor over here. Your people don’t seem to like me, either.” He pointed to his broken nose before continuing. “To your point, the Four Arrows project was designed to transmit data across the planet, so it only makes sense you got caught up in it somehow.”

  “Bingo.” Dr. Johnson pointed to the wall where the movie had played. “You saw it transmit the laser as part of the initial experimentation. Using that laser, we could have introduced gaps in the beams to tap out a Morse code message if we wanted. The idea of transmitting data was solid. What we did not expect was that the powered system would also pick up matter. Organized matter, to boot.”

  “Organized matter?” a man from the audience asked.

  “Me, to be exact. One minute I was at CERN, and the next minute I was lying in pine needles in the forest above us.” He pointed to the ceiling. “It’s a good thing I landed where I did, too. I could have appeared a thousand feet above the ground, or a thousand below it. I might have appeared in the middle of Highway 85 to the east, or anywhere inside the circle formed by the collider ring.”

  Faith’s sympathy quotient was low for those people who had manipulated her and SNAKE’s equipment, but getting dropped on the busy north-south highway at the border of her collider would be a nightmare she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

  “Why didn’t you come in here when you arrived?” Faith inquired. “You could have saved us a lot of trouble in those first hours. Maybe you could have warned us that there would be a terrorist attack.”

  Dr. Johnson smiled. “I have bosses, like you do. I found a phone and called in, and they sent a helicopter and flew me to
their headquarters in Montana. It took a couple of days, but we’ve been planning to come to your rescue. You’re welcome.”

  Faith wasn’t impressed. She didn’t fully trust that he’d come from CERN in the way he said, nor did she like his chummy attitude with Bob. It was like he didn’t share any of the responsibility for what he’d done to the world.

  “That’s all great. I’m happy for you. Now, tell us how to fix this fucking mess you’ve created.”

  The man turned stoic. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Red Mesa, CO

  Phil had spent considerable time in combat, so the gunfire by itself wasn’t his worry. It was the frightened look on the soldier firing the rifle.

  “Stop right there!” the guard screamed.

  Phil had been prodding him hard to get his full attention, but he’d gone a little too far with it, so now he put his hands up and stood stock-still.

  The second guard put away his radio and joined his partner in aiming a rifle at Phil and Airman Sanchez.

  The first guard walked toward Phil. “Say another word, and you’re going to regret it.” He pulled out some giant zip-ties, designed to secure prisoners.

  A man to Phil’s left whistled. He and Sanchez knew what it meant, so they slowly sank to the ground. The guards turned toward the sound, which was exactly what was supposed to happen.

  The lead guard was fearless. “Who is that? Identify yourself!”

  A second man whistled to the right of the guards.

  The guards spun around, which made Phil plant his face in the pine needles. This was the most dangerous part of their gamble. His split team wouldn’t shoot directly across the path and hit each other in a crossfire, but every rifle inside of fifty yards belonged to the US Army. If he got hit, it would be classified as friendly fire.

  Ethan called out. “You are surrounded. You have ten rifles trained on each of you. Drop your weapons. We’re U-S-fucking-Army.”

  Phil heard the guards mumble to each other, then drop their weapons. By the time he raised his head, Ethan’s team was all over the men. The white zip-ties went on the wrists of the two guards.

  Ethan spoke as he handed Phil his weapon. “Nice ruse, making them believe you were a lost loud asshole.”

  The tension of almost getting shot slowly ebbed away from Phil. Much like his near-death experience with the Taliban soldier during the sneak-attack at Bagram, all he could think about was the stuff in his mind when he almost ate a bullet. “I figured you’d shoot each other across the pathway.”

  “This isn’t my first snatch-and-grab,” the officer replied more seriously.

  Phil looked to a familiar face in the men Ethan had with him. “Corporal Grafton!”

  “Nice to see you, sir. The trip here was a bag of dicks, but it was all good training.”

  “Is your radio working? I could really use it.”

  Grafton had it strapped on his back, but he didn’t appear happy. “No, it’s wasted. Not sure how, though.”

  Phil didn’t want to hold up the whole operation. “We’ll talk more later.”

  He waited a few seconds for Ethan to speak.

  “Good effort, men. Now let’s get these two into the woods.”

  When Ethan pushed at the back of the first captive, he refused to move.

  “We can’t go that way,” the guard said dramatically.

  Ethan gave him a less-friendly shove. “I saw you call this in. We’re getting you out of here, so you’ll go where I tell you.”

  “No!” The guard fell to the ground like he’d fainted. “I can’t go there! Take me in any other direction.”

  Ethan and Phil exchanged bemused looks.

  “What is it about that way?” Phil asked.

  The guard whispered. “It’s too close to the edge.”

  “The edge? The edge of what?” Phil looked in the direction they’d intended to go. It appeared to be pine forest, like everywhere else in the foothills above SNAKE. There were no edges or cliffs within view.

  “Just trust me; you don’t want to go there, either. There are no guards this way. I swear!” Although his hands were bound, he pointed in the opposite direction.

  Ethan wasn’t swayed. “No guards? Nice try.” He tried to lift the man, but he screamed.

  “Dammit, guy! All we’re doing is getting you away from the exit door before backup arrives, so we don’t have to hurt anyone.”

  Phil shared the frustration of his CO. It wasn’t common practice to casually talk to a prisoner like they were doing, but they were theoretically on the same team, so protocol was vague. They weren’t going to hurt a fellow soldier of the United States military, but they had to be sure what they were dealing with before handing themselves over to whoever was in charge at SNAKE.

  The mission came first.

  Ethan nodded to Phil, his message clear. They picked up the two men from the ground and dragged them deeper into the forest in the direction the guard feared.

  “No! No! Help!” the guard screamed.

  Phil searched for material to gag them, but they were traveling light.

  Minutes later, the lead guard got even worse.

  “I can’t go that way! I don’t want to disappear! Do you hear me? We’re going to disappear. Poof!” He struggled against the men restraining him. Phil managed to hold onto his prisoner as they went along, but the guy broke free and threw an arm around a tree.

  “Fuck,” Ethan said with exasperation. “How did this guy make it into the military? Such a baby.”

  That got the guard’s attention. “I only want to live; can’t you see? If you leave the property of this base, you are going to cease to exist when the experiment is over. That was what they told us back at HQ. That’s why we can’t let anyone inside, even assholes like you who claim to be US military.”

  “Hold up,” Phil said, amused. “If we walk outside the supercollider under our feet, we’re going to disappear?” After teleporting across the planet, he was open to the idea of it, but they were in pristine woodlands, not surrounded by modern equipment like they had been when they’d disappeared from CERN. How could it possibly work in a forest?

  The guard nodded. “That’s what they told us. They also said there were no other units within five hundred miles, so you can’t be who you say you are.”

  “No units?” Phil mumbled. That part might be true. The remnants of Task Force Blue 7 weren’t even on the right continent. He gave another look at the man’s unit patch, suddenly realizing it wasn’t anything he recognized.

  “I told you I was with the 75th Rangers. Care to tell me what unit you’re with?” He pointed to the circular blue patch on the guard’s shoulder. It looked like a lizard or a snake with a small pair of wings.

  The guard warily looked him over, then sighed. “If I tell you, do you promise to not put me outside the ring? You can shut me up or torture me if you must, but please don’t make me disappear from existence.”

  Phil raised his eyebrows. “Sure. We’ll go a different direction and keep you inside the ring.”

  “Keep us all in the ring,” the guard emphasized. “I’m saving your lives.”

  “So you keep telling us,” Ethan replied skeptically.

  “Are we good?” Phil asked.

  “Yes, thank God, and thank you,” the guard replied with a satisfying sigh. “I’m with the 130th Infantry Division.”

  Phil and Ethan passed the same doubtful look to each other. It confirmed in Phil’s mind what he already knew from seeing the unusual shoulder patch.

  There was no such unit in the US Army.

  I-80, Nebraska

  Buck took the phone from Connie. “This is Buck.”

  “Dad! I can’t believe it’s really you. Me and Lydia had to look up your cell phone number in this mall. We saw a lady get shot. A nuke was dropped in Las Vegas! We—” Garth rambled on for another half a minute faster than Buck had ever heard his son speak in the past. He had a ton to say. However, it took Buck about that long to reg
ister that the voice on the other end was real.

  “Garth! You’re alive!” Buck glanced at Connie; her tears now made sense.

  “Yeah, of course,” Garth answered in a slower cadence. “Why would you think I was dead?”

  “I talked to a couple of men who have your phone. They said they killed you during a robbery.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Garth laughed. “You’ll never believe what happened to me. I was filling up the car and went in to pay, and then—” He rambled almost as fast as a cattle auctioneer as he described another part of their adventure.

  Satisfied he was talking to his living, breathing son, Buck almost broke into tears again. His need to see the lines of the road ahead was the only reason he didn’t.

  “Garth, I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear your voice. This is the best day of my life.”

  His son laughed as if totally unaware of the emotional wasteland Buck had come through. “Glad I could bring you such joy. We—” Another voice interrupted Garth on his end. The sound became muffled before getting back to normal. “Dad, I have to go. I’m borrowing this nice lady’s phone, and her husband is pulling his truck up to us. The mall is like a war zone.”

  Panic rose in Buck’s chest. It was a real possibility he’d never hear his son’s voice again. “Garth, listen. We’re still coming to you. Where are you?”

  “Louisville, Kentucky. At a mall. I saw the name, but I don’t remember it.”

  Buck pressed the phone against his ear as if he were adamant that his son listen to him.

  “That’s not important. You are on Interstate 64 like we discussed. Good job. Keep going west. We’re still on I-80, but we’re heading south to get on the 64. I don’t have a map in front of me, but I think we’ll meet somewhere between Kansas City and St. Louis.”

  Connie pulled out the road atlas, but he didn’t think they’d have time for that.

  Shouting came from Garth’s end.

  “Dad, I have to go! I’ll meet you at Kansas City.” There was obviously a scuffle going on.

  “Meet at the Blue Springs McTruckStop! Blue Springs.” They both shared a love of the Golden Arches, and there were giant billboards advertising the place for a hundred miles on either side of it. No one could miss the location.