PRIMAL SHIFT

Episode 1

Copyright © 2013 Griffin Hayes

Cover design by Griffin Hayes

Edited by Andrea Harding

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

PRIMAL SHIFT

SOME HELPFUL DEFINITIONS

Links

PRIMAL SHIFT

The apocalypse strikes without warning. A mysterious geomagnetic event that sweeps the globe, leaving a powerful amnesia in its wake.

In the blink of an eye, the human race is robbed of the most basic skills learned in childhood: reading, writing and the ability to speak. Civilization crumbles, plunging the world into an age of unparalleled barbarism.

From the ashes emerge a handful of survivors, largely unaffected by the change. Alone, they must brave a dangerous and chaotic world in order to reach the only known refuge: a camp set in the foothills of Salt Lake City, Utah. There lies food, shelter and maybe even answers.

But standing between them and safety is more than bands of armed thugs and bloodthirsty cannibals. A new evil is gathering. One that’s eager to destroy the last vestiges of life on earth and finish what it started, once and for all.

SOME HELPFUL DEFINITIONS

Procedural memory:

Remembering how to perform a learned skill (i.e.: riding a bike).

Declarative memory:

Recalling past experiences or information.

Retrograde amnesia:

The most common form of amnesia which involves the loss of declarative memories gained before an injury, trauma or the onset of a disease. Therefore, learned skills are retained (i.e.: reading, driving etc.), but the subject will not recall how those skills were acquired.

Alzheimer’s disease:

The slow erosion of both procedural and declarative memories.

Subject: Unknown

Date: Unknown

Location: Unknown

Inside the empty room, the capsule split open, releasing a torrent of pink liquid. With it came a man, his nearly naked body washing up against the wall. He rolled onto his stomach where he lay coughing and spluttering, trying to breathe. It sounded as if he were drowning. Already, the amniotic fluid that had rushed from the capsule was retreating toward the narrow space beneath the door. The man propped himself up on one elbow and vomited lungfuls of the same pink liquid, drawing in fresh oxygen to replace the fluid exiting his system. He wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and that was when he noticed the black tattoo. Eight numbers in a neat little row: 92574301.

What those numbers might mean he didn't have a clue, nor could he recall what the hell he was doing there, lying on a cold hard floor clad in a pair of soaking wet underwear.

A single memory dangled before him. An open field with tall grass, the height of a man's chest. The sun, bright and blinding and it bathed him in warm, nurturing light. He felt a calming peace linger in his body as he cradled the memory, the same one he’d been dreaming about inside the capsule, before it tossed him out onto the cold, hard floor.

He enjoyed a nice cold beer. He knew that much, but he couldn’t say what brand or whether he preferred it in a glass or in a bottle. It was only the sensory memory of the brew rolling over his tongue and down his throat that he could recall. What he also knew was that it tasted a hell of a lot better than the pink crap still floating around in his mouth. He spat, thinking about that cold beer and that was when he realized how much of his past had simply vanished. His own name, for example. He couldn't remember what it was, although he knew he surely had one. It was the strangest feeling, as though someone had reached into his mind and stolen all of his memories, only to leave as residue the very imprint on his personality that those memories had created.

Slowly, he rose on unsteady legs, struggling to make sense of this strange new environment. The concrete room around him was small and dimly lit by emergency lighting. The most prominent object in the room was the capsule: a smooth edged coffin standing on end, with a mass of wires trailing up into the ceiling. A hatch at the bottom was open and pooled around it was a puddle of that pink crap he’d barfed up a minute ago.

The man scanned his fingers in the dim light. They looked pruned. How long had he been stuck in that black box, his lungs filled with disgusting goo?

A thread of smoke tickled his nose.

Something was burning.

He glanced around and spotted a yawning crack in the wall. His eyes followed it all the way to the ceiling and that's when he heard the faint sound of a siren.

Where the hell am I?

He scanned the tattoo and the rest of his body for clues and he finally found it stitched into the band of his boxer briefs.

FINN

A name. His name? He wasn't sure, but it sure beat the crap out of the other one he'd found: Fruit of the Loom.

Finn heard the sound of rumbling only a second before the room began to shake violently. His legs were too weak to keep him balanced and he went slamming up against the wall.

Without warning, a giant slab fell from the ceiling, crushing the upright coffin he'd been trapped in not less than a minute before. Chunks of plastic sprayed him in the face as the concussion from the falling debris knocked him to the ground.

He stood with some difficulty, his body white with the concrete dust that was swirling through the room, making it hard to breathe.

Wherever the hell he was, he couldn't stay here. Not if he wanted to live.

Another slab fell against the door, pinning it shut. There was some kind of earthquake or explosion and if he didn’t get out now, this room would soon become his crypt.

He peered up through the hole in the ceiling. Wisps of light filtered in from the opening. If he couldn’t go through the door, he’d go through the ceiling.

Finn climbed onto one of the fallen concrete blocks, his legs still shaking, sharp bits of gravel and rock biting into his bare feet. He was higher now and could see a narrow shaft through the concrete and something on the other side. A room or part of a hallway.

Grasping at the protruding edge, he pulled himself up and swung a leg over the lip. The muscles in his arms and abdomen quivered violently, begging him to stop. Clenching his teeth through the lactic acid burning in his muscles, Finn spotted a metal rod inside the hole. He grasped it and pulled himself up and into the narrow shaft. If another quake hit right now he’d probably be squished flatter than a crepe.

The soft light ahead gave him hope though and Finn scrambled to pull himself forward.

Soon, his fingers were curled around the outside rim. He was nearly there. Peering down, his mind registered that he was about to make an eight foot drop, head first, with nothing but his hands to break his fall. But staying here or turning back wasn’t an option. Finn pushed himself out and tucked his head, rolling his body and landing in a crouched position.

He stood and dusted himself off, surprised that he hadn’t broken his neck and positively shocked that he had managed to land on his feet.

There you go Finn, maybe you were in the circus.

He doubted it very much, but the thought still managed to cause a smile to spread across his face.

Looking about him, Finn saw that the hallway was beat to all hell. Pipes and wires hung from the soft paneled ceiling like black intestines. Shattered cinderblocks were scattered everywhere. A trail of smoke snaked out from a room in the distance.

Thirty yards away, Finn spotted the body of a man, hunched forward as if in prayer. The man was wearing a lab coat covered in blood and grime. Finn drew closer and as he did, he realized he was mistaken. The man in the dirty doctor's coat wasn’t dead and he wasn’t praying. He was digging, tearing at the ground, his fingers covered in blood.

Finn’s left hand had been waving, now it stopped and dropped to his side, unsure. “Buddy, you all right?”

The man suddenly turned, glaring at him. His eyes didn't look normal.

He was licking the blood that dripped from his fingers, his eyes locked firmly on Finn. But something about his glare and the way the man was acting seemed a hell of a lot more feral to Finn than it did frightened. Sometimes people in shock did strange things, but this had to be one for the books. Without dropping his gaze for more than a second, Finn reached down and scooped up a piece of broken pipe that lay at his bare feet. The man grunted as he rose to his full height, the way gorillas sometimes do as a warning against threats. Something about the way this guy was standing, hunched forward, chest out, told Finn he was about to attack. Finn could feel his legs shaking under him, as much out of fear as out of weakness. His hair was still slick with that pink crap. Who knows how long he’d been soaking in that liquid coffin, pruning like a worm in a tequila bottle? And now here he was, about to be attacked by monkey boy. He took a step back. If he was right and the guy in the white lab coat was ready to start clawing at him with those mashed up fingers, the way he’d been clawing at the floor, Finn hoped to high hell he had enough strength to defend himself.

Dana Hatfield

3:00 pm (PST), July 4th, 2017

San Francisco Bay

The call about the floater had come in less than five minutes ago.

Dana Hatfield held on to one of the side rails as the Coast Guard 47-MLB (Motor Life Boat) sped toward the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. High winds meant the Bay was particularly choppy that afternoon and the craft bobbed and weaved as it cut its way through the waves. Dana glanced at the towering structure in the distance as they approached. It was one of the world’s longest suspension bridges, though few people knew that in 1937 eleven men had died building it. Ten of them at once, after a section of scaffolding gave way and sent them tumbling through the safety netting below. Hard to believe that since then, close to two thousand people had voluntarily ended their lives by leaping over the edge.

Dana took a deep breath, savoring the salty air and the strong wind buffeting her closely cropped dark hair.

She hadn’t joined the Coast Guard with the intention of collecting dead bodies; suicide victims no less. Floaters, was the rather ungracious name they were given. Not that she had much choice in the assignment. If every sailor got to choose their posting, dead bodies would be washing up on shore at least twice a week. It didn’t matter to her commanding officer that her own brother, Gregory Hatfield, had taken his life on this very spot less than five years earlier.

“It might be therapeutic,” her CO had suggested in a hushed tone. Keiths was his name and he was the kind of CO you wanted to please, because you hated the look of disappointment on his face when you let him down.

But the truth was, she was in the Coast Guard, not the Ice Capades and she took that very seriously. Damn right she didn’t like the assignment, not one bit, but she did as she was told. Hell, there was a ton of stuff about life that she didn’t like. But obedience was all that separated an ordered world from chaos. Keiths had taught her that.

Still, she always reserved a special place in her heart and mind for the memory of her brother and the close bond they had shared.

Gregory had come back from a second Marine tour in Afghanistan. He’d seemed normal enough, if not a bit tired and withdrawn, but at the time, nobody knew that something deep inside of him was broken.

And that’s how they had found her Gregory. Floating in the Bay, his body shattered from the impact with the water.

It was amazing how few people understood the grisly reality of suicide by bridge. The average Joe thought it was like taking a jump off a really high diving board or flying with the angels, when in reality, it was like hitting a brick wall at 80 mph. When the body impacted the water, inertia caused the organs to keep going, tearing them loose. Broken bones were common. Fractured skulls, sternums, pelvises. Ever since starting in retrieval less than a year ago, she’d already seen dozens of victims and almost every one of them looked like their bodies had been broken on a medieval rack. The few lucky enough to survive the fall drowned in a matter of minutes, since their bodies were far too traumatized to be able to swim. Frothy mucus bubbles at the nose was usually a dead giveaway that a jumper had drowned.

A shout rang out from Stratton, the Coxswain. “Floater, dead ahead.”

Stokes, the helmsman, set a course.

An MLB had a crew of four, which meant that Dana did the retrieving and Coons, standing next to her, acted as medic. Normally, after Dana did her job of snagging the body, Coons would help pull it on board and begin administering CPR. Coons’ one claim to fame was that he’d revived a kicker, although in all the time Dana had been on this assignment, the truth was they were a rarer sight than giant squid. Besides, Coons had a tendency to sling bullshit on a regular basis.

As the boat slowed, Dana leaned over the side and peered ahead searching for the body.

“See it,” she shouted. “Eleven o’clock. Come about.”

She could already tell from the muscular build and the short bobbing hair that it was a man. They came alongside him and Dana swung an arm down and grabbed a hold of the light jacket he was wearing. A second later Coons was by her side, pulling the man onboard by the arm. Dana turned to tell him to ease off, he was about to rip that arm right out of its socket; the words froze in her throat when she noticed the sky fill with the strangest lights she’d ever seen.

Beside her, sea water shot out of the dead man’s mouth as he started coughing and shrieking. He was alive—a real life kicker—but no sooner had the realization hit her, than Dana heard the burst from high up in the atmosphere. The concussion struck her body a moment later, sending her tumbling head first into the water.

She came up splashing. The Bay was cold even in summer. Her training had prepared her for an eventuality such as this and she quickly grabbed hold of the guide rail at the back of the boat and fought her way out of the water. She was surprised that Coons hadn’t been right there to help pull her back on board, that was standard procedure, but what surprised her even more was the state of things on board the MLB when she finally got to her feet. The kicker lay flat on his stomach, screaming and in a corner where they kept the spare life vests was Coons, his hands over his ears looking as if he suddenly didn’t have a clue where he was.

Above, on the MLB’s open bridge, Stratton and Stokes were tearing at one other as though they had suddenly become mortal enemies.

The dunk in the Bay hadn’t lasted longer than a few seconds but somehow, in that time, all hell had broken loose.

“Coons,” she yelled. “What the hell is going on?”

Coons looked up at her with a stupefied expression on his face.

Dana went and shook him. “Coons!”

No one was home.

She climbed up onto the open bridge just as Stratton and Stokes, still locked in battle, went tumbling off the side. She rushed to the safety railing, but all she saw was a thin layer of foam.

They’d sunk like a pair of stones. On the deck lay a pair of life vests, discarded or torn off during the struggle. She couldn’t tell which.

Then came the rumbling sound. Low at first, but Dana recognised it instantly. It was the sound of an earthquake.

The Golden Gate began to moan and creak above them, under the violent onslaught of geologic forces. The water all around her quivered and frothed as unbelievable surges of energy were released from below.

Barely a second later, the bodies began to fall. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them. Loud, piecing screams followed shortly after that by the slapping sound of flesh hitting water, kicking salty spray high into the air. She looked up. The Golden Gate outlined against a backdrop of what Dana could only describe as the northern lights.

Weren’t those only visible at night and high up in the arctic?

Oh, but the bridge didn’t appear to be collapsing.

With an ear shattering boom, the body of woman with long blonde hair crashed onto the ship’s foreword storage compartment, the impact made a sickening noise.

Dana screamed and ran for the helm.

She had to get the MLB out of here before they took another direct hit. She didn’t have the faintest idea if it was the earthquake or the weird lights in the sky, but somehow, everyone in San Francisco had suddenly gone insane.

The Cartright family

4:00 pm (MT), July 4th, 2017

Salt Lake City Airport on board flight 317

The plane was pulling back from the gate at the Salt Lake City Airport and Carole Cartright couldn’t shake the strange feeling that something wasn’t right. The feeling itself was odd, given that they were about to embark on a week long stay with relatives in Dallas. She’d taken an aisle seat, as she always did when they travelled. That way, if the kids needed something, she could get up without disturbing everyone around them. Fifteen year old Nikki and thirteen year old Aiden were peering out the plane window.

Aiden turned to his mom, his thin fingers brushing through a set of bangs he thought made him look like Justin Bieber. “Hardly feels like we’re moving.”

Carole forced a smile. “Just wait till we get rolling down the runway. You’ll feel it then.”

Nikki rolled her eyes and turned on her iPod. It was clear that her little brother’s enthusiasm bored her, but lately it was as though life itself bored her.

A flight attendant checking seatbelts stopped when she saw Nikki using her iPod. She leaned over and touched the girl’s shoulder.

“Can you please stow that away until after take-off?” The request was followed by a polite if mechanical looking smile.

Nikki sighed and switched it off. The flight attendant continued on and no sooner was her back turned, than the iPod reappeared.

“She asked you to turn that off, Nikki,” Carole said. “It’s a safety precaution. Do you want to be responsible for crashing the plane on take off?”

“Maybe.”

“Unless you’d like to start the week grounded, I suggest you start showing a little more respect.”

Nikki glared back at her mom.

“Nikki why are you always such a bitch?” Aiden asked, clearly hating to be the one stuck in the middle.

“Mom, did you hear what he called me?”

Carole turned to her son. “Aiden, don’t call your sister a bitch.”

“Well, that’s how she’s acting.”

“I told you to turn that iPod off. Don’t make me bring your father into this.”

“Fine, fine. Look it’s off.” She held it up, wiggling it around in the air. “Happy now?”

The threat of bringing Jim into the argument had become a tactic of last resort for Carole, but nine times out of ten it had the intended effect. It wasn’t that Nikki was scared of her father; her real concern was disappointing him.

Over the last few years, Nikki seemed to have come to the conclusion that everything her mother did and said was just flat wrong. A contrarian. That was perhaps the only way Carole could describe her daughter’s need to disagree with absolutely everything that came out of her mouth. It was part of adolescence, she supposed. Although Nikki didn’t have a clue, she was really trying to break away from the nest and become her own person. But understanding that didn’t make running a household any easier, especially when one member refused to do as she was told.

What probably frustrated Carole most was that Jim had proven time and again to be part of the problem and not part of the solution. Nikki was his little princess and wrapping daddy around her tiny little finger had become something of a specialty for her. But part and parcel with that came the fear of losing daddy’s approval. Only Carole wasn’t sure how much longer the threat of even that would last.

“Oh, come on hon, don’t be so hard on the girl,” Jim said from across the aisle.

Carole adjusted her seat belt. “Yeah, why don’t you try getting Nikki ready for school on time when her door’s barricaded from the inside.”

Jim smiled. “I know babe, but she’ll grow out of it soon enough. Just give her time.”

Jim always had a way of putting things that made the problem shrivel up and disappear. Of course Nikki would grow out of it.

Carole reached across the isle and took Jim’s hand and kissed it. Even dressed casually in jeans and a navy golf shirt, he was a sight to behold and Carole realized that she was more attracted to him now than she’d ever been. His dark hair was specked with flakes of grey and it gave him the distinguished air of a congressman. Except Jim had the build of a laborer. His body was still as hard and tightly muscled as it had been when they met, nearly twenty years ago. A fact hardly surprising, given that he was a building contractor.

They’d met at a party thrown by a mutual friend nearly 20 years ago. Jim had arrived wearing a pair of acid washed Jordash and the sight of him had made her giggle.

But even in acid washed jeans he was hot and when he had approached her in the kitchen, his voice deep and sonorous, well, she knew further resistance would be futile.

If Carole’s role in the family was as the glue that held everything together, then Jim was the resident expert that helped to guide the way. She sometimes called him Google.jim because there was hardly a question you could throw at him that he didn’t know the answer to. She felt safe with Jim, no matter where they were or what was happening, which was why Carole was even more perplexed by the nervous energy she felt coiled in her limbs. Gooseflesh was running down each of her arms and up into her scalp, which had contracted into what felt like a hat many sizes too small. The feeling was almost primitive. The way animals could sense natural disasters before they happened.

The flight attendants had just started the in-flight safety demonstration when Carole leaned over to Jim. “I think something’s wrong.”

He lowered his magazine. “Wrong? D’you forget something at the house?”

“No,” she paused. Jim wasn’t crazy about feelings that couldn’t be quantified or explained. She smiled weakly. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

Jim went back to his Popular Mechanics magazine. “I think you watch too many of those plane crash reality shows. I told you they’d make you a nervous wreck.”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” She hadn’t thought of that, but Jim might just have hit the nail on the head. She’d recently been captivated by a marathon of a show called Mayday, about air crash investigations. The kind of show that sent subtle but undeniable messages to your brain.

PLANES CRASH AND YOURS WILL TOO.

There was certainly something sad and fatalistic about Mayday. You met the captain and got to know the passengers and the whole time you darn well knew the plane was gonna crash and there wouldn’t be any survivors. Like that Titanic movie with Leonardo DeCaprio that Carole must have watched over thirty times. The boat was gonna sink, damnit, no two ways about it, and somehow that made what happened on board all the more tragic.

The Boeing 737 was on the runway now, ready for take-off. Beads of sweat were rolling down her forehead and into her eyes. This was a normal biological reaction whenever she became nervous, she called it ‘sweating like a pig’, but normal or not, perspiring like a truck driver was embarrassing. She patted her forehead with the sleeve of her blouse and it came away dotted with sweat.

The engines roared to life and Carole felt herself being pushed back in her seat. The plane swayed from side to side ever so slightly and she glanced over at Jim who was still immersed in a world of torque and zero to sixty in five seconds. He must have felt her watching him because he turned and smiled at her, his lips mouthing the words: “We’ll be fine.”

Beside her, Aiden was tapping her arm. “Whoa, Mom, look outside.”

Carole glanced out the tiny plane window. The sky was filled with dazzling green and blue lights. A blinding pulse nearly blinded her and Carole knew right away she hadn’t been overreacting. Something was dreadfully wrong and they were all about to die.

The plane continued to barrel down the runway.

Carole glanced to her left and saw a panic stricken Jim fumbling with his seat belt, as though he hadn’t a clue how to work it.

“Honey, stay in your seat,” she yelled out.

He didn’t respond. His eyes darted around, brimming with fear.

She put a land on his shoulder and Jim shrugged her off as though she were a stranger. A second later Jim was out of his seat along with a handful of other passengers and they were running for the front of the plane.

“Honey, what the heck are you doing?”

Jim was acting like a crazy person. None of this was making any sense. But when she looked around, it seemed like every one on board the plane had lost their minds. To Carole’s left, an elderly woman began to shriek. The man sitting next to her covered his ears and when the woman didn’t stop, he brought his fist down on top of her head. Her voice wavered and he hit her again until she slumped back into her chair.

Jim wasn’t anywhere in sight and Carole was hit by another terrifying realization. Terrorists must have snuck on board and taken over the plane. Maybe even gassed people so they’d lost their minds. There was no other explanation for why everyone around her was acting crazy. It also explained why Jim had raced to the front. Was he charging the cockpit? Had he seen something she had missed? They were running out of runway fast and she hadn’t felt the nose of the plane lift into the air yet. If it didn’t take off soon, they’d go off the end and into certain disaster. But that was where Carole was wrong. The hundred and thirty thousand pound Boeing didn’t go skidding off the end of the runway as she’d feared. Instead it veered sharply to the left at nearly 200 miles per hour and clipped one of the yellow runway signs. The sound of twisting metal as the landing gear tore off was deafening. The plane shook as the fuselage hit the ground, shearing away both engines. Carole grabbed the back of Aiden’s head and pushed it down between his legs. Nikki did the same. Bags from the overhead compartments were raining all around them. Smoke began to fill the cabin. Outside their small window all Carole could see were flames. The plane skidded on its belly and the sound of screaming passengers and the aluminum fuselage peeling back like a tin can filled her ears as the aircraft tore into two pieces. Wires and cables spilled out from the breach like intestines.

Soon it all came to a grinding halt and Carole could swear she heard a rumbling, even over the moans from the wounded and dying all around her. It was only when the plane continued shaking that another dim realization struck her.

We’re having an earthquake?

Could that have caused the funny lights in the sky and forced their 737 to go skidding off the runway?

The heat was becoming more intense. All around Carole, passengers writhed in their seats, many struggling with their seat belts. She didn’t have the time to save them. The flames around them were growing, threatening to kill them in any number of horrible ways. Carole couldn’t even waste a second worrying about Jim, who had taken off toward the plane’s now detached forward section. For all the help she could offer him right now, he might as well have been on Mars. Carole’s first priority was getting her children to safety. Everything else would have to wait.

Larry Nowak

5:58 pm, July 4th, 2017

Nutrilife head office

Manhattan, NY

Larry was pacing back and forth in his office, wondering how he had let things get so fucked up.

He stopped in front of a large window that looked down onto the call center, buzzing below him. Rows of cubicles manned by drones, all of whom had a single purpose: to make him money. The haters called it telemarketing. Larry called it a frikin’ gold mine. Telemarketing was a nasty way of putting it. He much preferred the newer, less innocuous term: Direct Sales. Sort of had a professional ring to it too. Of course it didn’t really matter that the product his company sold didn’t do a damn thing. Crushed herbs and dried leaves, ground into a fine powder and imbued with healing properties. Yeah, crock of shit. Anyone with half a brain could see that. Except for those new age health nut types. If Larry had learned one thing in his fifty years, it was that people were gullible. They wanted to believe in magic, the way kids wanted to believe in the Easter bunny or the Tooth Fairy. And why? The reason was obvious. Greed. Free chocolate eggs, money under your pillow and fat men crawling down chimneys with bags of presents. Those were the children who would grow up to become his customers.

Larry chewed on the toothpick in his mouth. Feeling the wood splinter between his grinding teeth somehow relaxed him.

Sales calls to suckers, however, was only a drop in the bucket for Nutrilife. In private, Larry wouldn’t deny he was a scammer, but one thing he didn’t do was mince words. Nutrilife was a pyramid scheme, plain and simple. His phone agents were paid to pitch the product to potential ‘distributers’, who then bought loads of the useless crap to sell at a hopped up price. For their part, the distributers would then recruit friends and family who would buy more of the useless powdery shit. But here was the real magic: each distributor received a cut from the person below them. Like any pyramid scheme, the money always flowed uphill and the losers at the bottom got exactly what they deserved. A big fat fucking zero.

Larry’d grown Nutrilife from the ground up almost twenty years ago, and now, within a matter of days, thanks to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the whole goddamned thing was about to come crashing down around him.

A melodic voice called out over the speakerphone on his desk.

“Mr. Huff from Legal is here to see you, Mr. Nowak.”

Larry didn’t react right away. He was still eyeballing the sales floor. It was Independence Day and he’d been forced to pay his direct marketers time and a half. But that wouldn’t matter, not since his company’s lead lawyer, Sam Huff, had discovered plenty of creative ways of evening things out.

Each and every second that his employees were late signing back in from lunch or break was deducted from their pay checks. The policy had an almost criminal edge to it and that was exactly why Larry loved it. If his employees only knew how much dough they were docked every year, most of ‘em would shit themselves.

The secretary’s voice again.

“Mr. Nowak, are you there?”

Larry cleared his throat. “Yeah, Diane, show Mr. Huff in.”

Sam opened the door right away, looking like an overgrown kid who’d just spent time at the principal’s office. His grey suit looked creased and that wasn’t at all surprising. He’d just spent the entire day in a chair being grilled by those SEC bastards.

“They’re shutting us down, Larry,” he said, skipping the pleasantries.

Larry removed the toothpick from his mouth. “When?”

“Tomorrow. Maybe the day after. It’s the holidays, so there’s no saying for certain.”

“Is that it?”

Sam combed nervous fingers through a set of thick white hair. “They’re talking about laying charges, Larry. Fraud. We could go to jail.”

Beads of sweat were collecting on Larry’s brow and he wiped them away with the back of his hand. He had a small bathroom connected to his office and he swung open the door and turned on the tap, splashing cold water on his face, as if that might wash away the sinking feeling that was creeping up from his gut.

Larry kept a .38 snub nosed revolver in his desk. He knew his way around guns well enough.  Not that he was one of those know-it-alls who would rattle off specs the way computer techies creamed themselves over motherboards. Point and pull the trigger. What else was there to know? He’d had reason to carry a gun back in the early days, running numbers for bookies and later when he owned that strip club; now the SEC was closing them down, well, drastic times called for drastic measures, didn’t they? Larry knew right as rain he wasn’t like those other Wall Street suits he saw prancing around Manhattan, flaunting their degrees from Princeton and Yale. He’d grown up in one of the shittiest neighbourhoods in Chicago and he knew perfectly well the law of the streets. Kill or be killed.

Larry was still splashing the water on his face and pulling it through his thinning hair when something strange happened. Sam was over by Larry’s desk, cussing out the lead SEC investigator and the way the prick had practically threatened Sam’s family with jail time, when the lights flickered and went out. Larry had his head buried in the sink and didn’t quite notice at first, but he did see the brilliant flash that seemed to shoot a blazing trail right through his closed eyelids, burning his cornea. He straightened and reached for a hand towel. That was when the room started to shake violently. Pictures on the wall crashed to the floor, the glass shattering on impact.

Larry blinked as his desk shuffled across the room and then lurched forward, slamming into the plate glass window. Huge razor sharp slabs fell two dozen feet to the sales floor below and Larry was sure he heard the garbled screams from injured employees. But it wasn’t just the earthquake and the resulting damage, rare occurrences in NY, that were freaking him out. It was the sudden blank expression that had crept over Sam’s face.

“Sam, get over here before something falls on your head,” Larry shouted.

Sam looked over without an ounce of recognition. The bastard was either having himself a brain freeze or a heart attack. Larry lurched under the bathroom door frame; he’d once read that it was the safest place to be during an earthquake and the first rule of Larryland was: always look out for numero uno.

Another surge struck, shaking the room even more violently. The sounds of fear, pain and confusion carried through the hole where the window had been, Larry could hear them more clearly now. But there was something about those voices that sounded strange, even from here. Strange in a way that Larry couldn’t quite put his finger on. Then, as his fingers clung to the door frame for dear life, it hit him. No one was saying anything. No calls for God or some other imaginary being to swoop down and save their sorry asses. No shouts of “run!”. Just grunts and groans and guttural noises, not a single word. They all seemed to be tongue tied too, like Sam, who was crouched now on the floor, hugging his knees, looking like a caveman who’d found himself beamed on board the star ship Enterprise.

Larry heard the cracking nearly a full second before it happened. A support beam followed by a pile of rubble, smashed through the ceiling and crushed Sam, crushing his quivering body into the floor. One second he was there and the next, Sam was somewhere under a pile of rubble. The rumbling stopped shortly after, and Larry used the towel to wipe the dust and dirt off his face.

Sam was dead, no doubt about it. No one could have withstood the impact of a metal beam smacking them on the noggin and live to tell the tale. Which made searching through the rubble that was now piled in the middle of his office a definite no-no. Who could say if the ceiling might open up again, squashing him too?

He had to get out of the building before the whole thing collapsed. He was about to rush out but stopped, remembering the newscasts back in 2005 when hurricane Katrina had turned New Orleans into a wild west shoot out. It had taken FEMA almost a week to get food and water to some people and Larry sure as hell didn’t expect them to do any better this time around.

The problem was that Larry’s gun was in his desk and his desk was hanging half way out the window that overlooked the sales floor. If another aftershock hit at the wrong time, it might all go tumbling down. And that would mean going to the sales floor below and climbing over the dead and wounded. Not that he would mind doing that, he just wasn’t sure how the newspaper headlines would read once this was all cleaned up.

Nutrilife CEO Steps on Dead and Dying to Get Gun

Just what he needed.

Larry reached for the desk drawer, careful not to look at the squirming shapes of the wounded below. Even through peripheral vision he caught sight of a handful of bodies and forced himself to focus. Pulling open the drawer, he spotted the .38 and the box of ammo he kept beside it. He didn’t think he was going to need it, but there wasn’t any point putting on your swim trunks if you weren’t planning on getting wet. Deal with the reality at hand. That’s how Larry had fought his way out of one of the worst neighbourhoods in the country to become the CEO of a publicly traded company.

He slid the revolver and the bullets into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and headed for the door, cutting a wide swath around the pile of debris that had once been the head of his Legal Department, Sam Huff.

“Sam, you sly bastard. You always did find a loophole when your ass was in a sling.”

Larry left his office and paused at his secretary’s desk. She was nowhere to be found. But that wasn’t why he’d stopped. Something outside the window behind her desk had caught his eye. Strange colors in the sky, a lot like those northern lights people sometimes saw up in Alaska. Pulsating and changing shapes and colors. Green, pink, blue. Larry blinked hard and then opened his eyes. From here it almost looked like those strange colors in the sky had formed into a face and he coulda sworn it was watching him.

Finn

Time: unknown.

Location: Unknown.

Finn and the guy draped in the bloody lab coat stared at one another, both men breathing heavily.

Whether he was nervous or hurt or just had scrambled eggs for brains, Finn wasn’t sure.

He slid the pipe out of sight behind his back and spoke:

“I won’t hurt you. I just wanna know where I am?”

The man’s head tilted like a dog, listening to its master.

“Do you speak English?”

Nothing.

Finn stepped forward and the man with the bloody fingers took a single step back. Another step and the man turned and ran, a series of strange throaty sounds trailing behind him as he fled.

What the hell is going on here?

He wasn't crazy about heading in the same direction as someone who had clearly taken a shot to the skull and lost his marbles. People under enormous stress would sometimes do strange things. He wasn't sure exactly how he knew this, but the idea had occurred to him as a fully formed piece of life experience. Except in Finn's case, he didn’t have a clue what those experiences might be.

Still clad in his sopping underwear, Finn was doing his best to avoid the bits of rock and shards of glass on the floor. Even so, his feet were hurting terribly. He needed shoes and clothes and judging by the pain stabbing in his belly, something to eat and drink.

Up ahead and to the right was a sign that read Lunch Room. Finn entered it and found vending machines lined against the opposite wall. In front of them was a dead guy in overalls. Beside him was a piece of concrete that must have come loose from the ceiling during the quake. A patch on his overalls revealed the man's name.

JP

Nearby was his yellow hard hat. It had a whopper of a dent in it. No doubt, JP must have been trying to decide which sandwich to have for lunch when all hell had broken loose. Once the ceiling had opened up and dumped a load on his head, there wasn't much even his hard hat could do to save him.

Finn kneeled down and ran his fingers over the back of JP's neck.

Broken in three places. But how do I know that?

Finn stripped JP's boots and overalls off and was stepping into them when the rumbling started again. He jumped away from the hole in the ceiling and braced himself for more debris from above, but nothing came. Concrete dust hung in the air like a fine mist. He had been lucky this time and now that Finn had boots and something to wear, he needed to hightail it out of there as soon as he could.

He caught his reflection in the glass from one of the intact vending machines. The sight startled him at first, unable to recognize the face looking back at him. Strong jaw and narrow eyes. Hair kept short in a brush cut.

Was I in the army or the looney bin?

Finn’s mouth was bone dry. His knees were wobbly too. He needed water and something to eat before he left, just in case the world outside was in a worse state than it was in here. No doubt EMT workers would be responding soon, treating the wounded, removing the dead. They’d almost certainly set up some kind of triage tent nearby, if space would allow. Maybe even a place with a warm meal and a nice cold beer. The thought was so delicious it was almost painful. But who the hell was he kidding? This was the government he was talking about. Those things would happen, minus the beer, but it might take days, or weeks. In the meantime, Finn was going to do what JP never got the chance to do. Grab something to eat.

With the lead pipe, Finn smashed though his reflection on the Great Snacks! vending machine and plucked out three sandwiches. After that he kicked in an Aquafina machine and grabbed a bottle, twisting off the cap and taking a long swig. The water was still cold and he could feel it trickling down his throat and into his empty stomach, his dehydrated cells rejoicing with every drop. He snatched up as many water bottles as he could carry.

JP was wearing a white undershirt and Finn peeled it from his pasty skin and used it to wrap the sandwiches and water in an improvised carrying sack.

Hefting the makeshift sack over his shoulder, he made his way back down the corridor. Glass and bits of rock crunched under the soles of his new boots. There was no sign of the man in the lab coat with the bloody fingers. In fact, there was no sign of anyone and Finn was beginning to wonder if he had the frightening distinction of being the last man on earth.

Up ahead was an elevator and he ducked under dangling electrical wires as he approached it. On the ground nearby was a thin metal bar and he used it to pry the elevator doors apart. The elevator car wasn't there, but an emergency light on the wall lit the shaft enough for him to see it several floors below. The siren continued to pierce his eardrums.

Jesus, how big is this place?

The empty shaft above him seemed to stretch on forever. At the top was a shaft of light. Below him was darkness. He figured up had to equal out. He had to slap a hand against the inside elevator shaft wall several times before he found the crude metal ladder he somehow knew would be there. Grabbing the shirt with the food and water, along with his lead pipe, Finn tucked it all into his overalls and began climbing.

If another earthquake hit now, Finn was sure he'd fall to his death and join JP and everyone else in this place who’d rolled the dice and come up shit out of luck. But that didn't happen and twenty minutes later, tired and even thirstier, Finn finally reached the top. The elevator door was open enough for him to slide a hand in and yank the doors further apart, all the while doing his best not to look down as he struggled out.

He found himself in a small dark room. On his left was a desk beneath a pile of rubble, where a security guard might have sat. He quickly searched the desk without finding anything useful. The only way out led to a room with a single set of double doors. Finn opened them and stepped out into blinding light.

Intense heat was the second thing that assaulted him. As though a hot, wet blanket had been suddenly tossed over him.

Finn took in his bizarre surroundings.

It didn’t take him long to realize that he was in the desert. He could tell that much from the barren landscape and scalding heat. But the sky. All kinds of pastels cascading into one another. Like some kind of fireworks display.

Was it caused by the same earthquake that had done a number on the complex below?

Stranger still, around him were hundreds of giant mirrors, all of them pointed toward the sun. Several of the mirrors lay shattered on the desert floor. In fact, now that he took a closer look, even the main building he’d just come out of was leaning to one side. A plume of smoke rose into the air from something just beyond view. The earthquake had really done a number on the plant.

Plant.

Yeah, that’s what it was. A solar plant.

Was he a worker here? Maybe he’d been hurt in some kind of accident and they’d thrown him into the pink vat of goo to heal his wounds?

None of this was making any sense.

Finn spotted a desert camo Land Rover SUV parked beside a beige shipping container that looked to have been converted into a building. He went inside the container, looking for someone, anyone who might be able to explain what the hell was going on.

“Hello, anybody in here?”

No reply.

Dust motes floated through stale dead air.

It looked like an office. Yellow hardhats, like the one that had failed to protect JP, hung from hooks on the wall. Some had fallen to the ground during the earthquake.

Next to that was a clock; the time read 3:37. Finn removed it from the wall, held it next to his ear and found that it was still ticking, which meant it was probably battery powered and most likely accurate. Below where the clock had been hanging was a calendar. Pictures of Caesar’s Palace, the Bellagio, the MGM Grand. Another clue, telling him that he was probably in Nevada.

Then he saw the date.

2017.

Seeing the year should have jogged something in his memory, at least he hoped it would, but nothing came. Whenever he tried to think back to a time before the oversized coffin that had barfed him out onto the floor, all he could come up with was the field of tall grass and the sun warming his skin.

He studied the calendar. It seemed like he be able to piece together the date by studying the notes left on each day of the calendar. They stopped abruptly on Tuesday, July 4th. July 5th onwards was blank. Finn flipped back through the calendar. Not a single day went by where someone hadn’t made some kind of note.

May 7, 2017

Lost 10 more solar

collectors last night.

Mr. Thomson wants

them replaced ASAP!

June 23, 2017

Power requirements

from the LHC is putting

too much strain on the

heat exchanger.

July 1, 2017

Now the cooling tower’s

on the fritz!

Most of this went clear over Finn’s head. Solar collectors, LHCs, cooling towers. Sounded like Chinese to him; but then again, so did his own name.

On the desk, next to an ashtray littered with a half dozen butts was another clue. A piece of paper with a name.

Tevatron.

Looked like an internal company memo of some kind, but that wasn’t what had made the smile form over Finn’s rugged features. The memo had a letterhead and right underneath that was an address for Tevatron’s regional office in Las Vegas.

950 Owens Avenue, Las Vegas, NV

Finn was on his way out of the office when he spotted some keys dangling from a magnetic strip on the wall. More than likely, they were the keys for the Land Rover parked outside. Finn stuck his head out into the desert heat and punched a button on the key ring. The soft sound of car doors unlocking came back in answer. Now he had wheels.

Something strange struck him. Earthquake or not, there hadn’t been a single sign of any first responders and Finn wasn’t exactly sure why. Was it because the plant was way out in the middle of nowhere? Had the quake been a local, isolated event? He guessed he was about to find out. He finished loading up the truck with the food and water he’d been carrying around, wishing suddenly he’d brought a whole lot more up with him.

He returned to the shipping container at least two more times, scouring the place for anything useful. In one corner, behind a filing cabinet was a five gallon water cooler that had fallen on its side. The jug still contained about a half gallon. He took that, shoving in upright behind the driver’s seat, so it wouldn’t fall over and spill. In one of the drawers was a map of Nevada – bingo! - along with a compass and a screw driver. Those he threw onto the passenger seat, deciding that he would take his chances by heading south. With any luck he’d hit Las Vegas before he ran out of gas.

Dana Hatfield

3:30 pm (PST), July 4th, 2017

Coast Guard Station, Fort Baker, Golden Gate

Dana nosed the 47 MLB parallel to the dock and killed the throttle. Almost too late came the realization that she was coming in faster than she should be. She’d been in such a rush to race back to base that the idea of stopping honestly hadn’t occurred to her. The ground came racing toward her and she jerked the throttle into reverse. Her body thrust forward as the powerful twin 435 hp motors spun in the other direction, churning up frothy water behind the boat.

Before her was Fort Baker; or what was left of it. Originally an army base, it was officially handed over to the Coast Guard in 1990. Several large beige buildings ringed the shore and at least one of those was on fire. From here it looked as though it might be the mess hall.

There were forty-three other sailors and one officer stationed at Fort Baker and Dana wasn’t sure how she was going to explain how two of their own, Stratton and Stokes, had gone overboard and she hadn’t done a thing to save them. The truth was that they sank like stones. Then the bodies had started falling around her like human meat bombs. The horrible remains of one of them was still painted all over the bow.

Dana slid down the ladder and hopped onto the dock to tie the cleat.

Coons was still on deck, curled into a ball, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, his eyes wide and darting as though he’d just found himself on the surface of an alien planet.

In front of him was the man they’d retrieved from the Bay. He wasn’t moving anymore. She climbed back on board and felt for a pulse.

Dead.

Must have happened on the way back to the station.

Dana looked up and held out a hand to Coons.

“Let’s go, it’s gonna be all right.”

There was blood on Dana’s hand and when Coons saw it, he hid his face.

This wasn’t making any sense. Not under any circumstance had she ever known Coons to be a pussy. Nor had she known Stratton and Stokes to ever fight or forget how to swim. They hadn’t been wearing their life vests. Nothing was adding up.

Dana turned her attention back to Coons. If he was too shell-shocked to function, there wasn’t much she could do for him right now. She had to see if anyone else was hurt.

Jumping from the boat, she became aware of the stillness around her. She hadn’t processed the strangeness of the scene as she motored back to base, on account of all the puzzling questions jumbling her mind. Why was the sky lit up like a Christmas tree? Why had dozens of people suddenly decided to take their own lives by jumping from the bridge? And what had happened to her crewmates? She’d expected to arrive back to Fort Baker to find men in blue uniforms rushing around, getting a handle on the situation and yet the station looked like a ghost town.

Her pulse pounding in her neck, she rushed across the grounds and headed into the station headquarters.

The emergency lights were on, which meant the main power was offline and the generators had engaged.

Before her, the reception window was empty, along with a mass of tangled desks and chairs behind it. This was where they filled out reports and took care of the far less glamorous side of Coast Guard rescue work. One of the thick wooden beams from the ceiling had dislodged during the earthquake and crushed a row of desks.

She spotted a shape toward the back of the room that looked out of place, rounded and soft in a sea of hard edges. It looked to her like the top of someone’s head.

“Anyone in here?” she called out.

The shape stirred, but didn’t get up.

She made her way toward it and discovered a man, who rose as she approached, wedging his body into a corner. His eyes danced around nervously, as though searching for an escape. He wore the same expression she’d seen on Coons aboard the MLB.

Dana recognized who he was, even before she saw the sailor’s name stitched into his shredded uniform.

“Hodge, where the hell is everyone?”

Hodge watched her without blinking. A bloody knot sat on the side of his head.

“Hodge,” she said again, stepping toward him and that’s when Hodge bared his teeth.

Dana stepped back.

Everyone’s lost their fucking minds. That’s it, isn’t it? Everyone’s bonkers, except for me.

A shattered desk stopped Dana from retreating anymore.

The space gave Hodge an opening and he bolted from the room, tearing off down the hallway that led to the barracks.

Dana sank into the pile of rubble and fought back tears. The feeling of utter helplessness was truly overwhelming. She’d lived in a structured world where every word and action was scrutinized for so long. For some people, that kind of rigid control would probably have driven them crazy, but for Dana, a life without a proper command structure was hard to fathom. She buried her head into the palms of her hands and began sobbing. Crying wasn’t her thing, especially not in front of the other sailors. She’d made that mistake once before, during basic training and the other cadets had labelled her a marshmallow, the term they used for sailors who were too soft and gooey to hack it. But at the time, it hadn’t been the difficulty of the drills or the training that had gotten her down. It was the death of her mother. It had come not long after her brother’s suicide, a wound that was still raw and festering. Their class was learning how to tie a bowline knot when a cadet had arrived to deliver the bad news. For nearly ten agonizing hours Dana had choked back the tears with stoic determination. If her brother had been her best friend, then her mother had been her Gibraltar, the family’s CO and her loss left a space within Dana that had never been filled. Her father had been crushed and now spent most of his time sitting at the family home in Bernal Hill, drinking straight vodka and watching CNN.

“It’s Hatfield, sir. Looks like she’s gone too.”

Dana lifted her head and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her uniform. Standing before her was Alvarez, a former boatswain and Keiths, the station’s commanding officer.

Dana snapped to attention.

“I’m sorry sir, I didn’t think anyone was left,” she said, cringing inside at how weak she must look.

Alvarez shook his head with disdain. Even during an emergency such as this, he couldn’t bother to hide his hatred for her. Unbelievable, especially considering her only crime was that she stood nearly a foot taller than him and could do nearly twice as many push ups.

“Sitting there with the snot running down your face,” Alvarez spat, “you looked like one of them.”

“I did you a favor when I let you out of the brig,” Keiths cut in. “Don’t make me regret it.”

Alvarez bit his lip. He’d been put away for assault with a deadly weapon, when poker night had ended in a brawl. Alvarez thought the new guy was cheating and stuck a pen in his chest, collapsing a lung and sending the kid to the intensive care unit. He’d been stripped of his rank and tossed in the brig. Was scheduled for transfer to the SF County jail two days from then, where he would face criminal charges.

Dana wasn’t sure why Keiths had let him out in the first place. It could only mean they were seriously short on manpower.

Keiths turned to Dana. “You okay, sailor?”

Dana nodded and straightened. “Yes, sir. Tip top.”

“At ease, save your energy, you’re going to need it.”

“Any idea what’s going on, sir?”

Keiths brushed his palms together to knock the dust away. “By the looks of things the city’s been hit by an earthquake.”

“Earthquake my ass,” Alvarez shouted. “Everyone’s turned into a fucking Cro-Magnon man.”

Alvarez was a pathological liar, no doubt about it; but even Dana had to admit he was speaking the truth. People were acting weird. Almost animalistic. “Hodge was growling at me and took off when I got close,” she offered.

Keiths seemed to consider this. “And your crewmates, what happened to them, Hatfield?”

Dana’s eyes swept the floor in shame. “Stratton and Stokes didn’t make it. Coons is still on the MLB, rocking back and forth like he got hit on the head with a hammer. I rushed back to see if I could help and that’s when I found Hodge.”

Alvarez spat on the floor. “What do you mean, Stratton and Stokes didn’t make it?”

“They were fighting and fell overboard.”

“Over what?” Alvarez was making this feel like an inquisition.

“I have no idea. I got knocked over myself and by the time I got to them, they...” Dana paused. “Went straight down. Never seen anything like it.”

Al’s arms flew in the air like the low life drama queen that he was. “And you didn’t dive in after them?”

“How could I? By the time they hit the water...” she felt the tears welling up and struggled to keep them at bay. “People started jumping and one of them hit the MLB.”

“From the Golden Gate?” It was Keiths now and Dana was happy he was asking the questions.

She nodded. “Dozens of them, maybe more, hitting the water all around us. I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t have a choice.”

“No, you did the right thing.” He laid a hand on her shoulder and somehow the touch helped to calm her down.

“I still think you’re a chicken shit, Hatfield,” Alvarez said with a scowl. “You never leave a sailor behind. Never.”

Keiths looked more than annoyed. “Give it a rest, will you?” The CO turned to leave.

“So what now?” Dana asked.

Keiths stopped. “We put out those fires and look for casualties, that’s what.”

“Shouldn’t we radio for help?” Dana asked.

“Help? Good one Hatfield.” It was Alvarez again and his voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “We already checked. There’s no one out there. It’s just us.”

Carole Cartright

4:35 pm (MT), July 4th, 2017

Salt Lake City airport

“Nikki,” Carole shouted a second time.

Her daughter glanced over at her in a daze. She was in shock and Carole wasn’t sure what to do. Slap her across the face? Shake her by the shoulders? It worked in the movies, but this was less like a movie and more like a living nightmare.

Thick black smoke billowed through the mangled cabin. If they moved now they could make it to the rear door, trigger the inflatable slide and make it a safe distance before the rest of the plane went up in flames. But before any of that could happen, Nikki had to move.

“Honey, are you hurt?”

Her daughter’s eyes rose to meet her. “My leg hurts, but I think it’s just banged up.”

Carole’s insides were churning with fear and anxiety. The plane might blow sky high at any second. “Can you walk?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s go then.”

Nikki rose and limped into what was left of the aisle.

Aiden was behind Carole clinging to her belt as though they were walking through a violent wind.

The dead body of an elderly woman lay across the aisle, her head twisted all the way around.

“Oh my God,” Aiden shrieked.

“Don’t look down kids. Keep your eyes up and focused on that door just ahead.”

Carole could hear Nikki whimpering with fear.

“We’re almost there.”

The ground shook violently, throwing the three from side to side.

Was the plane about to roll over? Carol wondered. Had there been another earthquake?

Slowly, they clawed their way to the rear exit. At the top was a sign that read:

PULL EMERGENCY USE ONLY

Right above that was a slit into which Carole inserted her hand and tore off the panel to expose a handle.

“Mom hurry!” Aiden cried, the terror in his voice thick and palpable.

Carole used the handle to pop open the rear door. A slide at their feet rolled out and inflated at once. For a moment, Carole stood unable to stop staring at the strange colors in the sky, pink, blue, green and yellow, dancing around. A frightening thought suddenly occurred to her.

This is the rapture. The end of the world.

Aiden was the first to jump, followed by Nikki. Carole was last and took a final look inside what remained of the cabin.

It looked like a bomb had gone off. Then movement on her left. A middle aged man with a receding hairline was struggling to remove his seatbelt. Blood trickled down his forehead, covering his face. Carole went to him and reached down to help undo his restraints. He grabbed hold of her arm with crushing strength.

“Are you mad?” she screamed. “I’m trying to help you.”

He was grunting and swung his free hand at her face, striking her on the side of head.

Her vision filled with starbursts.

A second blow knocked her backwards onto a dead body. The smoke, coupled with the fist to the side of her head, was making Carole’s vision swim in and out of focus. She struggled to keep from passing out, unable to fathom what had just happened. She’d risked her own life to help this man and he’d tried to attack her. She stumbled back to the slide and jumped.

Fifty yards away, Aiden and Nikki sat huddled together.

Aiden ran to meet Carole once she’d reached the ground and took her firmly by the shoulders. “We can’t leave dad,” he said pointing to the plane’s detached forward section. “He’s still in there somewhere.”

Nikki watched them both with a disconnected look on her face.

Through the haze of flames, Carole could see a tiny yellow slide in the distance. Someone else had escaped the front of the plane and jumped down, just like them.

Was it Jim?

They ran to the forward section, Nikki limping not far behind, doing her best to keep up. A silver haired woman lay on the ground, her face upturned to the sky.

Carole dropped down on one knee next to her.

“Where are you hurt?”

The woman turned to Carole and began to sob.

“Take care of her will you,” she told Nikki, as she limped over. “I’m going to look for your father.”

“I’m coming with you,” Aiden said at once.

“I need you to take care of your sister. Please.”

Aiden’s lips drew into a thin line and Carole could see he was fearful he’d never see her again.

She reached the slide and realized rather quickly that climbing up there wasn’t going to be easy; this thing was meant for one way travel. She remembered her childhood, climbing up the wrong end of a slide at the park and how tough it had been.

Smoke was pouring out from cracks in the fuselage and broken windows.

If she didn’t make it out, who would look after the kids? That was her main concern, but the truth of the matter was, none of this had ever been up for debate. Jim would have done it for her in a heartbeat. She at least owed him that much.

Carole took a running start and then jumped at the last minute, clinging to the slide’s inflated edge. She wedged her foot in the crease and used it to push herself up.

Since the plane had landed on its belly, the angle wasn’t nearly as steep as she’d feared. A minute later she was up and into the darkness.

Moans of pain from the wounded assaulted her ears from every direction. Parts of the ceiling had either collapsed completely or split open during impact, creating a strange window to the world outside. The lights dancing in the sky above cast their strange glow through the cabin, giving the place an almost psychedelic feeling. It reminded her of old summer nights when she and Jim would lay on the hood of his car, smoking weed to Pink Floyd and giggling up at the stars.

As she made her way down the row strewn with wreckage, Carole noticed flames on her left, slowly licking up the cabin wall. Next to them, on the floor, a figure, lay face down, wearing blue jeans and what looked like a navy blue shirt.

“Jim!” she shouted.

A hand from a nearby seat reached out and grabbed her ankle. Carole looked down and gasped. A young man was wedged under the middle row of seats. Both of his legs had been severed.

The cabin shook again and Carole went flying into an armrest. At the last minute she raised her hands to block a blow that surely would have knocked her unconscious. It pained her to leave the legless man, but there was nothing she could do for him.

She reached Jim a minute later and struggled to turn him onto his back. All of his hair had been singed off, along with the first few layers of skin on his face. He was almost unrecognizable. Carole grabbed him by his feet and dragged him toward the emergency slide, stopping every few feet to catch her breath. Now thick pockets of black smoke hovered over the ceiling, stretching lower and lower every minute. She coughed and did her best to hold her breath.

By the time she reached the exit, her body felt as though the final burst of adrenaline had all but been used up. She nudged Jim over the edge and watched his limp body roll down the slide and onto the grass.

An explosion from inside the cabin knocked her down the slide and careening onto the hard ground. She rose to her feet in a daze, a new pain in the shoulder that hit the ground first. Nikki, Aiden and the silver haired woman were flat on the ground. The plane was now completely engulfed in flames.

“We need to get away from the wreckage,” she heard herself say from what seemed like miles away. She had found Jim and pulled him to safety. Her family was alive. The euphoria was overwhelming.

They stopped a few hundred yards from the crash site. Jim was unconscious, but breathing in short gasps of air.

Aiden was pacing around them. “Where the hell are the all the rescue people. I mean, can’t they tell a plane just cra—”

Carole noticed Aiden stop short and she glanced over to see him pointing. The smoke from the burning plane had initially obscured the view of their surroundings, but now things were much clearer. With a look of disbelief, Aiden pointed to a half dozen other trails of smoke billowing into the sky.

It was clear that something terrible had happened and their Boeing 737 skidding off the runway had only been part of some larger disaster.

“W-what the hell is going on here mom?” Aiden muttered under his breath.

“They’ll come help us honey, don’t worry. They have to. Until then, we need to keep it together and do what we can to help your father.”

Nikki was examining the burns on Jim’s left hand. She turned to look up at Carole. “Thank you for saving my life,” she said.

“Honey, you’re my flesh and blood, I could never leave you behind.”

“Flesh and blood?” Nikki said.

“I would never dream of leaving my little girl behind.”

“We’re related?” the way Nikki’s question came out sent a shiver of unease down Carole’s spine. She sat down next to her. Nikki was still holding Jim’s hand.

“Nikki, you’re in shock or maybe you hit your head...”

“You keep calling me Nikki.”

Carole tried not to show her alarm. She put her hands on Nikki’s head to feel for an injury, wondering if she had concussion from the accident.

Nikki shrugged her off. “My head’s fine.”

“She might have a concussion,” Carole told Aiden, who moved in and put an arm around his sister.

“You’ll be fine sis. Just lie back and rest.”

Nikki did as she was told, which indicated to Carole straight away that something was very wrong. Nikki never listened to anyone.

That was when Carole spotted Jim’s hand, the one Nikki had been holding. His wedding ring was missing. There wasn’t even an indentation.

She studied Jim’s other hand and shook her head. Not there either.

Carole’s brow creased as she grabbed hold of the belt loop on Jim’s jeans and rolled him over, removing the wallet from his back pocket. She flipped it open and all the blood suddenly drained from her face. Fire danced across her pallid features as she looked up at the plane that had became a roaring inferno.

Carole let the wallet tumble from her hand, hardly able to contain the scream pounding against the back of her lips before she was finally able to choke out the words.

“I saved the wrong man.”

Larry Nowak

6:40 pm, July 4th, 2017

Manhattan, NY

Larry Nowak was 49 floors up, looking for the stairway with nothing but emergency lights to guide him and all he could think about was World Trade Center building number 7. It had also been 49 floors high and that sonofabitch had come down like a house of cards, even though it barely had a scratch on it. If the government had something to do with it, and Larry wasn’t entirely convinced one way or another, they’d done one hell of a job. Seemed to him that the tremors that had just destroyed his office and pile driven Sam into mush before his very eyes, were far closer to a good old fashioned earthquake than they were to an act of terror.

Larry used the walls to guide himself along the corridor in the dim pools of light.

Of course, if those terrorist bastards ever found some way to fuck with the Earth’s crust, then you could kiss to the whole enchilada goodbye, couldn’t you?

Damned exit had to be around here somewhere.

A man in an Armani suit bolted past him, breathing heavily and making noises that didn’t quite sound normal.

“Watch it, asshole!” Larry shouted through the darkness after him.

Whoever that guy was, when this was all over, his ass was as good as fired.

He was the fourth person Larry had seen since escaping from his office and each of them had either been running around randomly, like chickens with their heads cut off, or wedged under desks, cowering and covering their faces.

Like children, was how they were acting. Little children in a goddamned daycare center.

New Yorkers were supposed to be tough sonsabitches. Even though he’d grown up on Chicago’s West Side, he’d always respected the generous size of their kahunas. More so after 9/11, when the whole city had come together to show Osama their middle finger.

You can hit us, you can even knock us down, but you’ll never beat us.

Was enough to bring a fucking tear every time. But the jerks he’d seen running around were a different story altogether. Those pricks were starting to make Larry reconsider his earlier appraisal.

To see the expressions on their faces once they found out who they were pushing aside in the dark.

Oh, Mr. Nowak, I didn’t know it was you.

And that’s when a scary thought crept into Larry stream of consciousness.

After a disaster, when it was every man for himself, nobody gives a shit how much money you have or what kind of car you drive. This was the only time when everyone truly was equal.

The idea sent a jolt of fear through his ageing bones. He was fifty on the nose, but that didn’t make him any more willing to lay down and die. Hell, inside he felt about thirty and it was only when he gazed in the mirror and saw the way his skin had started wrinkling up around his eyes that the grim reality tended to settle back in.

But Larry had one thing over these young punks. He’d hit rock bottom at least twice in his life, had rubbed shoulders with the lowest of the low. If nothing else, those experiences had taught him how to survive. Throw enough rats in a hole and sooner or later you’ll only have two left. Larry was that second rat. Not because he was smarter or stronger than the others, but because he’d do whatever it took to stay alive.

The exit sign loomed out of the darkness and Larry suddenly felt a sense of joy lift his spirits.

“Mr. Nowak, I’m so glad you’re alive.”

The voice startled him. He hadn’t noticed the figure limping toward the exit from the other direction. It was too dark, but as the man came into view, so too did his right foot. It was twisted grotesquely inward, making the guy walk like something out of a Romero zombie movie.

Glancing behind him, Larry realized there wasn’t anyone he could pawn the gimp off to.

“Tom, from marketing?” Larry asked, pulling at the door, trying not to appear as if he were in a hurry.

“No, it’s Josh,” the other man replied, “The intern. We need to get out of here right away.”

“I hear ya Josh, but that foot of yours looks pretty mangled. There’s no way you’ll be able to make it down 49 flights of stairs. Why don’t you wait right here and I’ll send for help?”

Even in the dim light, Larry could see the reluctance forming on Josh’s face.

“Mr. Nowak, you’re the only one I’ve come across who hasn’t completely lost his mind. It isn’t safe here, I’m telling you. I just saw Bob Morgan from accounting crush another man’s skull with a fax machine. Sandra from HR’s trying to eat her leather briefcase. People have lost their fucking minds.”

“Okay, Josh, just relax, you’re hyperventilating.” Larry could feel his own pulse beginning to elevate with fear and frustration.

“Don’t leave me here,” Josh said. “I’m begging you,” And the prick was already limping through to the emergency stairwell as he said it.

Larry sighed, feeling an almost overpowering urge to pull his revolver and put one right in Josh’s head. Didn’t this putz realize the building could come down at any minute and here was Larry, stuck with a gimp. It was tantamount to a death sentence.

Reluctantly, Larry hooked an arm around Josh and helped him one excruciatingly slow step at a time.

Josh grimaced from the pain. “Thank you Mr. Nowak, I really, really appreciate this.”

“Yeah, less talking and more walking,” Larry said eyeing the walls as though they might come crashing down at any second.

“Will do,” Josh said wincing. “I guess this foot’s a lot more painful than I let on.”

They’d made it down nearly ten floors when they saw the precipice, a section of the concrete stairwell that must have collapsed during the quake, leaving about a fifteen foot drop to the section below.

“For Christ’s sake,” Larry swore as he held onto the railing and leaned over for a better look.

Josh, braced himself against the wall. “Oh crap. So what do we do now, turn back and look for another way?

“Don’t be a jackass, Josh. It won’t take much more than an aftershock to bring this whole building down, just like it did to those stairs.”

“But I’ll never make a fifteen foot jump,” Josh said and Larry could hear all the moisture had gone out of the kid’s mouth. “Unless we can find something to cushion the fall, both of us are just as likely to break our legs. We have to go back.”

The two men were no more than two feet apart when the features of Larry’s face settled. He could feel Josh’s warm, sour breath tickling his nose and the smell of it infuriated him. Gone was the crease of anxiety that had slowly been forming on Larry’s brow the minute he’d hooked up with Josh. The same crease that had become even more pronounced as they’d approached the gap in the stairs. The kid had made a great point when he’d argued for turning around and going back up. There wasn’t anything to cushion their fall, except, up was no longer an option for Larry.

The owner and CEO of Nutrilife swallowed hard. “I don’t think it’s nearly as far as you think Josh. I’ll bet it isn’t more than an eight foot drop. Why don’t you have another look-see.”

Josh held the wall and he glanced over. “No, way Mr. Nooooo...”

And that’s when Larry jabbed his palm into Josh’s spine, thrusting the intern over the edge. The kid’s screams trailed away for maybe a full second before Larry heard the crunching sound. It was quiet after that. Larry had been worried the kid might survive the fall and try to crawl away. He’d been ready to use the .38  if it had come to that. But, Josh had been right. Fifteen feet was a dangerous distance to jump. Larry needed something to break his fall. Now he had it.

Finn

Nevada desert?

July, 4, 4:30pm (PST)

It didn’t take Finn long to figure out he was heading in the right direction. All the people in the world might have either disappeared or gone bat shit crazy, but the interstate signs had stayed behind, telling him that Las Vegas still lay another hundred and fifty miles ahead.

The very noticeable absence of people had slowly started to cause him concern. He hadn’t crossed paths with a single car on the highway since he’d left the power plant forty five minutes ago.

But to call the 95 a highway wasn’t entirely accurate. It was a route; a two lane job with a solid yellow line running down the middle. If cars were few and far between, sections where the road was torn up were plentiful, created, no doubt, when the earth’s crust began shifting and churning beneath them. Most of the gaps weren’t anything he couldn’t simply drive over in the Land Rover, although one had gaped open like a grinning mouth full of stone teeth, forcing him to cut a wide swath around it, through the desert shrubs.

Looking left or right, that was all a man could see out here; endless sagebrush, punctuated by barren mountain ranges.

Finn glanced down at his fuel gage. He had enough in the tank for another hundred miles which meant he’d break down in the scalding desert heat, about 50 miles short of his objective.

The radio hadn’t been much help either. Finn must have scanned every station on the AM and FM frequencies and all he’d found was static.

Up ahead, the shapes of approaching structures broke the monotony of the landscape. He accelerated, hoping to run into someone who might tell him what the hell was going on. A big blue sign came into view.

Last Service Station Before Las Vegas.

Finn rolled toward an intersection with a gas station on either side. The AC wasn’t an optional kind of luxury while driving through the desert and unsurprisingly,  it had guzzled through a good chunk of his gas. Gone too were the bottles of water and all of the sandwiches he’d brought with him from the plant cafeteria. He still had what was left inside the 5 gallon jug; he could hear it sloshing around behind him. But out in the desert, you didn’t want to gamble with your life.

Finn pulled the Land Rover into the service station on the left. In part because it had a Nevada Joe’s convenience store connected to it and also on account of the number of cars there compared to the handful he saw scattered across the street. Without electricity, the pumps weren’t going to do much more than dribble out a few drops of precious gas and he needed to be ready for plan b. That’s why he’d brought the screw driver.

The Land Rover inched through the parking lot, while Finn surveyed the area. Most of the cars he saw weren’t so much parked, as they were abandoned. The driver side window on a Ford pick up truck was busted out. Blood ran along the serrated edges as well as a thick glob of gore that trickled down the side of the truck. On the asphalt beneath the driver’s door sat a small mound of safety glass. Looked from here like someone had kicked the window to bits in order to get out. But why not just open the door?

That’s when Finn remembered the man in the lab coat digging at the concrete with a set of mangled fingers. This looked like so much more than just a case of people in shock after a natural disaster. Slowly but surely, it was taking on the strange and disturbing shades of mass insanity.

But the blood running down side of the truck really wasn’t sitting well with Finn. He wanted, no he needed, to stop and get some fuel and a few supplies, but the thought had occurred to him that this could be some sort of ambush.

The metal pipe he’d taken from the plant was on the back seat. Finn parked the car and grabbed it, along with the screw driver.

He exited the SUV, greeted by an oppressive heat that seemed to weigh on his chest and cut off his air.

He wanted to think he’d never felt anything like it, but how could he? For all he knew of his past, the Nevada desert may very well have been his home.

Finn hit the button on the keychain to lock the car. But only once. A second time would have sounded the horn and he didn’t want anyone lurking in the vicinity to know he was here yet.

With the pipe in his hand and the screwdriver in the pocket of his overalls, Finn approached the gas pumps. On the other side sat a Dodge Charger. The driver’s door was ajar. He came up from behind and peered inside.

Empty.

Next, he stepped over to the pump and removed one of the nozzles, pulling the trigger. A few drops of gas trickled to the hot pavement, but that was it.

Quake must have knocked the power out.

He would use the screw driver to gas up first, before he investigated the convenience store, just in case whoever had smeared that blood along the pick up truck was somewhere inside, waiting for him.

On a rack between pumps, Finn spotted bottles of windshield washer fluid. He removed ten of them, spun off the caps and poured them onto the ground. He then lay on his back and slid under the Charger’s trunk. There he held the screw driver to the gas tank and punched a hole by hammering it as quietly as he could with the metal pipe. Gasoline gurgled out at once and Finn slid the first empty windshield washer bottle underneath to catch it. He did that with all ten bottles, afterwards pouring them into the Land Rover’s thirsty tank.

He repeated the process twice more, running back and forth between the two cars before he was satisfied and more than a little tired. That, along with the hundred miles of gas the Land Rover still had, should get him to Vegas. There he would hopefully find himself a gas can large enough to make the enterprise even more efficient, although, he was still hopeful that as he made his way into the city, he would find that things there were back to normal.

Once the gas issue was resolved, Finn crept toward Nevada Joe's. The scorching sun was beating down on Joe's front window, making it difficult to tell if anyone was inside. A dark blur moving inside gave him his answer a second later.

People were probably camped inside, scared out of their minds. Finn pulled the door open, heard the tiny bell overhead announce his presence and knew right away that something terrible had happened here.

On the right was the convenience store section. On the left was the diner and that was where the shit had gone down.

The body of a man lay sprawled face up across a table, not three feet from where Finn was standing. His arms and legs were splayed, making him look like a human starfish. At least one blast from a scattergun at close range had opened a hole in his chest the size of a baby’s head. The dead man's right-hand was curled into a fist around the handle of a fork, spokes down, as though he'd been using it as a makeshift weapon. The man's eyes were open, blank and staring, and the ghastly sight nearly made Finn sick to his stomach.

Seeing the dead man's body had sent waves of anxiety shooting through his nervous system. Whoever had killed that man and turned this place upside down might still be here. Finn would try the gas station across the street, he decided and turned to leave and do just that.

Finn was turning the door handle when he heard the shotgun rack behind him.

"Drop that head beater in yer hand, turn the fuck around and don't even bat an eyelash or you'll end up just like your friend Billy."

The man with the shotgun stepped out from the batwing style doors that closed off the kitchen, his weapon levelled at Finn’s chest. He looked like he got by mostly on a diet of candy bars and soda. The tail of his Nevada Joe’s uniform was untucked, but the expression on his face showed he meant business.

Finn motioned to the body on the table. “I don’t know this guy.”

“The hell you don’t. Yer dressed like twins, so stop yer bullshitting and drop the head beater.”

Finn did as he was told. The table he laid the pipe on was wobbly and the pipe rolled off smacking the ground with a loud clang. The shotgun snapped to attention.

“Take it easy,” Finn said, his hands stretched out before him. And that’s when he noticed what the dead man was wearing. A pair of blue overalls identical to his own except the name on his chest read Billy and not JP. On the opposite breast was the company name, Tevatron and above that, the symbol of a circle with a splash of light at the top. Almost looked like a wedding ring with a bead of sunlight blinking off the edge.

“You ready to start telling the truth?” the man asked.

This wasn’t looking good and Finn thought of bolting. He knew he could outrun the fatman, but not the shotgun he was holding. “I came to at the solar plant. Everything was busted open from the quake and I made my way outside to find the sky lit up like it is now. I can’t remember a damned thing about who I am or how I got there, but I still know what’s normal and what’s not and a sky like that can’t be good.”

The man’s gun sagged. “If you’d spoken gibberish I would have blown yer head off, you know that?”

“Gibberish?”

The man offered his hand. “Name’s Jackson. You just leave that head beater where it is for now until we’re completely square.” He pointed the end of the boomstick to the dead man. “Billy here was something of a regular, although I never did know his full name or where he’d come from originally. Vegas’d be my best guess. That’s where most of ‘em come from, looking for work at the plant.”

Finn pointed to a seat at an empty booth littered with broken dishes and half eaten food.

“Knock yerself out.”

The hamburger had three solid bites taken out of it and was ice cold, but it sure hit the spot and Finn knew he needed the nourishment. The way his stomach was kicking up a racket, you’d think he hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe he hadn’t before today.

“What’d Billy do to get himself shot?” Finn asked through a mouthful of fries.

“That’s the strangest part. Betsey, one of the waitresses, came running back to say there were weird lights in the sky and I figured she was having a go at my expense. More of that Roswell crap. You know, since area 51 ain’t too far off from here. Then I saw like a flash fill light up the whole rest stop and suddenly Betsey wasn’t talking English no more. It was like someone had turned off her brain and she looked at me all strange. I was flippin’ burgers at the time and had a metal spatula in my hand and it seemed like she thought I was gonna come after her with it. Anyway, she ran off making all kinds of weird noises. I chased out after her and that’s when I seen a handful of people fighting. Billy here was going after a woman with that fork in his hand. Turned on me when I yelled at him to stop, so I did what I needed to do. But none of them were speaking anything but gobbledegook and if you’d done the same, I’m sorry to say I probably woulda dropped you too.”

Mouth full, Finn pointed at the phone on the wall.

“Dead or I woulda called the cops already.”

Finn wiped his lips on the sleeve of his overalls, remembering how the man he’d seen back at the plant had scurried away from him like a wild animal. “Don’t hold your breath on the cops showing up anytime soon. Whatever sent these people over the edge, probably did the same to the local sheriff and his men.” Finn shifted in his seat. “I noticed the cars outside are all empty. You see anyone drive off?”

“Can’t say that I did. I seen just about everyone run outside after I layed Billy out on the table and I expected them to jump in their cars and peel away, but most of them scattered into the desert. Poor saps won’t last a day out there.”

“Betsey run off as well?”

“No sir, she stayed cowered in a corner. I got her in a back room now, but she ain’t said a word since it happened.”

“Let’s go talk to Betsey.”

“I sure hope you’re not gonna try something silly.”

Finn stood up. “Listen Jackson, if Betsey has even the slightest idea what the hell just happened, then we need to hear what she has to say.”

“Well good luck. You’re gonna need it.”

Jackson led Finn through the kitchen. Ahead of them was a small office. Soft light trickled out from under a closed door. Jackson switched the shotgun over to his left hand and opened it up. Inside, a woman sat on a couch, wrapped in a blanket. She glanced up at them with wild eyes and the blast of fear Finn saw on her face was startling.

They stepped inside and both men noticed the strong smell of ammonia at once. The crotch of Betsey’s pants was wet.

“Ah shit, Betsy pissed herself again and all over my favourite couch.”

Jackson’s favourite couch looked to Finn like a Salvation Army reject. “She do that often?”

“Only after everything went wacky. First time it happened I figured she’d just wet herself with fear. Now I’m starting to think she forgot how to use the bathroom.” Jackson turned to the woman on the couch. “Bestey, you mind if this man asks you a question or two?”

Betsey seemed to watch Jackson’s lips move as though he’d just rattled off a sentence in Mandarin.

“Betsey, can you hear what I’m saying?”

“She hears you just fine,” Finn said. “She doesn’t understand is all.”

“You don’t think she’s just in shock, do you?”

“Not sure. But people in shock appear dazed and disoriented. Betsey almost looks strung out. She do drugs?”

“Hell no, she’s a grandmother, taking care of her entire family.” Jackson saw the puzzled look on Finn’s face. “You said yourself you don’t remember a thing. Amnesia is the technical term. Saw it on a TV show once. You think Betsey here has the same you got, only worse? Like one of them total resets on the computer.”

Finn nodded. “Looks that way.” His eyes fell to the desk and a piece of paper with a drawing made in pen. Finn snatched it up, studied the image and then turned to Jackson. “You do this?”

Jackson took the paper and held it about two feet out, squinting. “No sir, must have been Betsey. She’s always doodling when things with her Granddaughter aren’t going well. Poor child has Cystic Fibrosis and the doctors’ bills been piling up all summer. Guess it’s something of a stress reliever for her.”

Finn took the picture back and studied every angle. The quality was rough, but even from here it was clear what he was looking at; a meadow with tall, flowing grass up to a man’s chest and a sun, bright in the sky.

But it was the next thing that Finn said that made Jackson’s face drop. “I know this place.”

Dana Hatfield

4:45 pm (PST), July 4th, 2017

Coast Guard Station, Fort Baker, Golden Gate

The barracks at Fort Baker were filled with late afternoon shadow as Dana swung the flashlight from side to side, searching through the wreckage for any more survivors. They’d found nearly a dozen already and each of them seemed to be exhibiting the same bizarre symptoms. Inability to communicate. Paranoia. They found Hodge in the mess hall, trying to break into the kitchen and had rounded him up without too much trouble. A few of the others, like Rogers and Nash, had become violent when approached. That was why her CO, Keiths, had suggested she carry a side arm. With only three of them unscathed - Alvarez, Keiths and herself - they didn’t have the luxury of sticking together. Each of them took a task. Keiths hit the comms and tried to get hold of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. The Coast Guard had merged with DHS back in 2003 and now whenever the shit really hit the fan, they were who they called. If anyone had any idea what was going on or how they were going to get out of it, headquarters would. Even though the power had gone out, the walkie talkies still had a charge left, which meant the three of them could keep in touch on site. Keiths had diverted the generators to powering the comms equipment, but from the reports he was making every ten minutes, it didn’t sound like he was having much luck getting anything other than static.

Shining the light underneath each of the cots, it wasn’t long before Dana saw that the barracks were empty. They hadn’t sustained the same amount of damage as the rest of the base, but somehow she’d felt sure she’d find at least one of two stragglers hiding under their beds, or trapped beneath a piece of collapsed ceiling.

She brought the radio to her lips. “Barracks clear.”

Alvarez’ voice came back in response. “Roger that.”

He was on the other side of the base, collecting Coons and any of the others he found outside. Keiths hadn’t given him a gun and Dana was glad. Al should just be counting his lucky stars he was out of the brig and not locked away, watching them do the big boy work. If he played his cards right, maybe when things returned to normal, Keiths would see fit to give him some kind of pardon. Maybe even write a recommendation to have him reinstated.

But try as she might, something inside her continued to niggle. On the one hand was her deep desire to stay and do her duty by helping her fellow sailors. On the other was her father, at home in Bernal Heights, about a twenty minute car ride away, all alone now that her brother and mother had passed on. Was he hurt somewhere or dead? Worse still, had he ended up like Coons and Hodge and all the others, babbling incoherently like a mental patient?

Dana was pushing her way into the gymnasium when her walkie talkie came to life.

“Dana, get over here right away. Something’s happened.”

It was Alvarez.

Spinning on her heels, she charged back through the barracks and into the main reception area, where she ran past the overturned desks Hodge had been hiding behind when she first returned to base. Past that was the hallway that led to the comms room and the brig.

No sooner had she turned the corner than she saw the body lying on the ground. A few steps later and she saw that it was Nash – one of the violent sailors they’d rounded up not long ago. His skull has been crushed by a blow to the head. Alvarez stood over him, clutching a Mag light covered in blood.

“What the hell did you do?” Dana shouted.

In the background radio static crackled.

“I heard a scuffle and ran in and saw him attacking Keiths. Nash hit him over the head and when I got close, he came after me. Woulda killed me too if I hadn’t layed him out.”

Dana’s hand was covering her mouth in disbelief. Her insides were quivering as though something in her belly wasn’t sitting well. She was going to be sick and she fought her way through the nausea.

“Where’s Keiths?” she asked, trying not to sound panicked or fearful. “Is he...?”

Alvarez glanced underneath the desk and Dana stepped into the room following his gaze. There was Keiths’ body. The CO’s right leg was bent at a strange angle. His head covered in dark, clotted blood.

Dana felt her legs begin to give out. Alvarez caught her. He was still holding the bloody flashlight.

“I-I don’t understand,” she said faintly. “All the survivors who’d been affected were secured away. How did Nash get out?”

“Beats the shit outa me. I haven’t even checked the room we were holding them in.”

The one cell they had was just off the comms room, but that was far too small for the numbers of sailors they’d collected.

When the blood was flowing back to her head and the sparkles flashing before her eyes began to fade, Dana stood, removed her pistol and aimed it at Alvarez.

“What the hell are you doing, are you crazy?”

“You let Nash out on purpose, didn’t you?”

Al’s hands were in the air. “Dana, you’re not making any sense, why would I do something stupid like that?”

“You were afraid Keiths would throw your ass back in the brig as soon as we were done. There was a reason he didn’t give your sorry ass a gun and now I know he made the right decision.”

Al removed the silver cross from around his neck and kissed it. “Dana, I swear to God I had nothing to do with Keiths’ death. You’ve got to believe me.” Beads of sweat were rolling down his forehead and into his eyes. He blinked them away, wincing, but his focus never wavered.

Could he be telling the truth?

Just then the radio came to life. It was a woman’s voice, but the words were hard to make out.

The message stopped and then played again. It seemed to be on a loop.

“What’s she saying?” Dana asked, her eyes glued to Alvarez’s every move.

He let the flashlight fall to the floor with a loud clunk and sat down, adjusting the nob, careful not to disturb Keiths’ body at his feet. The signal was weak and it wasn’t coming from DHS headquarters, that much was clear.

Alvarez’s ear was practically pressed to the speaker. I think she’s saying “The end of the world is here. The rest sounds like coordinates.”

“Coordinates to what?” Dana asked.

Carole Cartright

4:35 pm (MT), July 4th, 2017

Salt Lake City airport

“He’s dead,” the silver haired woman said solemnly, her fingers searching for a pulse at the man’s neck and not finding one.

The words didn’t register. The love of Carole’s life was still on board the wreckage of flight 317, surely dead by now. With no one to put out the flames, the fire in the cabin continued to burn. No one could live through that. She’d had a single chance to save her husband’s life, had done more than most would have dared, but it had all been in vain.

Beside her, Aiden wiped the tears from his eyes. But crying was a luxury Carole didn’t have. Not anymore. She had to stay strong, for the kids. Nikki looked sad, a feeling that would soon turn to devastation, once the fog in her head began to clear. She was daddy’s little girl and when the loss finally hit her, it might prove to be more than she could bear.

“Alice Reed,” the woman said, planting a hand on Carole’s shoulder. Carole laid a hand on top of hers. “I’m so sorry about your loss,” Alice said, “but we do need to get moving.”

Carole nodded solemnly. With plump cheeks the color of cotton candy, Alice had a kind face and Carole was thankful for that. She was well dressed, but not extravagantly so. Mid to late fifties. Her glasses were cracked, but otherwise, she didn’t appear to be hurt.

In the distance, against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and a multi-colored sky that was quickly filling with thick black smoke, was the control tower and concourse B. Although little more than a blur from this distance, that was where they were headed, in the dim hope of finding someone that might help them.

Aiden stepped across the skid marks on the runway where their plane had veered off and crashed. A deep gouge mark cut into the ground where the wheels assembly had been torn off.

“I’m really thirsty mom,” he said.

“We all are, honey. We’re heading back to the terminal and we’ll find some water there.”

Nikki wasn’t saying anything, though her left leg was already showing improvement.

Alice leaned toward Carole. “I’m worried about your daughter. She didn’t seem to know who you were.”

Carole agreed. She’d already considered the idea. Her daughter was displaying signs of retrograde amnesia. She’d seen a program about it on the news not long ago. Sometimes things like this were short lived after traumatic events. Sometimes they weren’t. Carole remained quiet, perhaps hoping that ignoring the problem might make it magically disappear. It was terribly foolish, of course, but right then there weren’t many options available, apart from hoping and praying

Alice struggled to keep pace. She was slightly overweight and definitely out of shape. “I don’t know how the people were in your half of the plane,” Alice said, “but most of them couldn’t undo their own seat belts.”

“Maybe they froze with fear.”

Alice seemed to contemplate this. “I don’t think it was just fear. I think somehow they simply forgot how to do it. One guy near the exit needed help and when I reached out to grab his arm, he tried to attack me.”

Carole was biting her thumbnail. “Aiden, don’t run too far ahead now.” She turned back to Alice. “The same thing happened to me. I chocked it up to plain old panic.”

“I think it’s something else,” Alice said. “I run a home for the elderly, mostly folks with degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. It’s eats away at the memories, but it also takes the stuff you thought you’d never forget, like how to eat or speak or unfasten a seatbelt. As if they’ve become children again.”

“But Nikki isn’t like that. Isn’t like those others on the plane suffering from the Alzheimer’s.”

“No and she’s lucky, but look at us. We weren’t affected at all, neither was Aiden and yet look at everyone else. Maybe there are varying degrees of it.”

Nikki was ahead of them now, walking next to Aiden and Carole watched her, hoping that if Alice was right, that her daughter had suffered some mild form of Alzheimer’s and that she’d snap out of it soon.

Concord B was getting closer and Carole couldn’t see any movement, either from the planes still docked at each terminal, or from any of the ground crew vehicles, which all appeared to have been left running.

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Alice went on. “Maybe I’m just in shock myself and don’t know it yet. Crazier things have happened.” She patted Carole’s hand with one of her own. It was dotted with age spots and bits of dried blood. “Your daughter’s amnesia,” she started to say.

“It’ll pass,” Carole cut in firmly. She appreciated Alice’s concern. Heck, she knew herself something was terribly wrong, but her mind would only allow her to deal with one trauma at a time. The crash and resulting loss of her husband still hadn’t relinquished their grip on her. Maybe they never would.

Before long, they were in the shadow of a giant airliner, parked at the gate.

“Oh my goodness,” Nikki said pointing up toward the windows.

There were people inside, writhing in their seats. Some were running up and down the aisle.

“What’s wrong with them, Mom?” Aiden asked.

“I’m not sure honey, I think they’re just scared.” The words came out effortlessly, but even she no longer believed it.

A pair of sliding glass doors loomed ahead of them. Beyond that were stairs that led up to the various gates for Concourse B. It looked dark inside and the group paused when they reached the entrance.

Carole waved her hand in front of the sensor and nothing happened.

“The power’s off,” Alice said. “We’ll need to pry it open.”

Aiden pushed between them and slid his fingers into the cracks, straining to push the two halves apart. A slim crack appeared. “Stick your hands in and help me,” he squealed.

They did and slowly the two doors began to part.

Inside, the blast of frightened voices hit them at once.

Would this place be any safer than the plane they’d barely escaped from? Carole wasn’t sure, but the right now the airport represented shelter and that beat sitting on the tarmac, waiting for help that may never arrive.

They crested the stairs and their noses were immediately assaulted by the warm smell of sewage, as though every toilet in the airport was backed up.

Or maybe people forgot how to use the bathroom.

But the thought didn’t have a chance to do more than glance fleetingly across her mind because the scene before them was sheer chaos; people were running in every direction, some cowering between the rows of airport seats. There was something odd about each and every one of them and it took Carole less than a second to spot what it was. None of them were carrying any suitcases. How many times had she heard stories of passengers dying in accidents because they’d refused to release a bag of clothes? It didn’t make any sense, but seeing suitcases left scattered the length of the concourse like worthless pieces of trash made it obvious these people weren’t thinking clearly.

Maybe they’ve forgotten the suitcases belonged to them, a little voice told her.

The sound of grunting behind them drew their attention at once. Two figures had entered from outside. A man in a torn Hawaiian shirt, blood smeared across his face, reminding Carole of a Plains Indian, smeared in battle paint. Beside him was a black man in mechanics’ overalls. They were wielding enormous socket wrenches the size of medieval maces. Fixed in the men’s cold glare, Carole knew at once that these men weren’t here to help. They were here for an altogether different purpose and judging by the snarls on their faces, it was a purpose that wouldn’t end well for anyone in their way. And that predatory look in their eye, as though they’d spotted an easy kill and it wasn’t a moment later when they began charging up the stairs, grunting like a pair of cavemen, that Carole screamed the only thing she could.

“Run!”

Shadows whipped by them as they ran for their lives. Thin strips of light bled in from outside, casting long, distorted shadows, Concourse B stretching out to an almost nightmarish length before them.

The two men, Hawaiian shirt and Mechanics’ Overalls, had set their sights on Carole, Alice, Nikki and Aiden for no discernible reason and were unrelenting in their pursuit, other than to occasionally club an innocent person who had strayed too close to them.

Bodies were strewn everywhere in the shattered guts of the airport. Some under rubble from a collapsed sections of roof. Others had gone over railings and had obviously died when they hit the floor below. More than once, a prone corpse appeared out of the gloom and forced the group to jump over it or risk falling to the ground and face being captured by the psychos chasing them.

They had escaped the burning plane where Carole’s husband had perished, only to find themselves trapped in this new hell. Carole was sucking air in greedily and running at a pace she knew she couldn’t keep up forever. Beside her, Alice was struggling to keep moving, and it was clear she’d be the first to run out of steam.

The men were maybe thirty yards behind them. A distance they could cover in less than ten seconds.

An airport transportation cart used to move the elderly and the handicapped from gate to gate had crashed into the wall on their right. A figure lay dead underneath the front tires.

“Keep running,” Carole shouted as she jumped onboard. She had exactly ten seconds to figure out how this thing worked before her head was opened up like a watermelon. Jim had taken her golfing a few times in years past and he had been the one to drive the cart, the way he always drove the family van when they went anywhere, but she knew there was a lever at her feet that needed to be flipped, if only she could only find it in time.

The others had continued ahead, but were slowing down.

Aiden turned and shouted through cupped hands. “Mom forget that thing, just come,”

She glanced back and saw the two men, bearing down on her, both of them grinning menacingly, their chests heaving. They were glad she’d stopped and also angry that she’d run in the first place and more importantly, they were eager to show her who the boss was around here.

So was Carole.

She jerked the lever and floored the accelerator.

A loud methodical beeping cut through the air as the cart shot backwards, up over the dead body and right into Hawaiian shirt and Overalls. The cart shuddered as Hawaiian disappeared underneath, his muffled cries becoming shrieks of pain. Then she crashed into Overalls and the impact threw him back toward the large glass windows where he hit his head, leaving a bloody smear. But he didn’t fall. The large wrench dropped from his hands and went clanging to the floor. His eyes became dazed and Carole flipped the switch, the wheels spinning for traction as she headed in the other direction.

She felt the cart pass over Hawaiian Shirt once again before it spat him out the back end, leaving a mangled and bloody mess. She glanced back and saw he was moving, albeit barely, and comforted herself with the knowledge that they’d left her no other choice.

Slowing only long enough for the others to hop onto the cart, she could see the intersection where Concourse B met Concourse C. There were people in there, darting around the shadows like frightened spirits. All Carole wanted was to get the hell out of there and find someplace safe. She was in a nightmare that she couldn’t wake from. A nightmare that had already taken her beloved husband. A nightmare that was only just beginning.

Larry Nowak

7:45 pm, July 4th, 2017

Manhattan, NY

The sunlight outside was starting to fade by the time Larry finally exited through the fire escape into the alley. The smells of New York in the summer were all there, assaulting his senses almost at once. Urine mixed with hot dogs from the street vendors nearby. Except that was where the normalcy ended. In the distance, the wail of car alarms blared in a cacophony of competing rhythms. Beyond that were the screams.

At the end of the alley, he saw a group of people running, but from what?

Even from his limited vantage point, the city looked like a war zone. Chunks of debris from skyscrapers mingled on the ground with shards of broken glass and bodies.

Larry glanced up, past the towering buildings, into the late afternoon sky. The shimmering lights he’d spotted as he left the shattered hole he’d once called his office were still dancing, high in the atmosphere. Orange, green and blue, all weaving in and out of one another. He stood in awe for a moment, oblivious to the death and the mayhem going on all around him. A shriek pierced the air and his hand instinctively went for his .38 in his suit pocket.

Nowhere was safe. If he’d opted to stay in the building, something was bound to fall on his head. Out here was double trouble. Crap falling from fifty stories up and people scrambling over one another to get to safety. It was like the Twin Towers were tumbling down all over again.

He’d watched the whole thing from his office that day, back in 2001, until the call had come to evacuate the building. Outside, the sound of sirens was all they’d been able to hear. And that’s when Larry noticed the next strange thing. Beneath the squawk of car alarms, he hadn’t heard any sirens. Police, ambulance, fire department. The men and women who had saved hundreds and maybe thousands of people that day were nowhere to be seen.

Larry stumbled out of the alley, toward what he assumed was Pine Street. There hadn’t been more than one or two aftershocks so far, but he knew enough about earthquakes to know that was usually when people assumed they were safe, they learned otherwise.

Only when he reached the sidewalk was Larry suddenly convinced he wasn’t in New York at all, but instead on the streets of Fallujah.

Or maybe he was dreaming. Back in his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, stretched out on his king sized, pillow top mattress sawing zees and settling into the kind of nightmare you can’t wake up from fast enough.

Then another smell hit him, one he hadn’t caught before and he knew he wasn’t dreaming.

Blood.

It was pooled around a pair of soft white legs protruding from under the mangled remains of a giant letter N. An N from the Nutrilife sign 49 stories up, that must have fallen and shattered at about the same time the entire city was being bitch slapped by Mother Earth. And by the looks of those legs, it had nailed the wicked witch of the East and split her wide open.

Larry covered his nose.

If what remained of her wasn’t turning his stomach, Larry might have hung around to see if those legs shrivelled up and retreated from view the way they had in the movie.

The flashing lights of a police cruiser up ahead caught Larry’s attention and his shoulders sagged as he breathed a noticeable sigh of relief.

He’d been wrong about the emergency responders and he was happy to admit it. The cops were out all right, trying to restore order. They’d had one hell of an uphill battle on their hands, given that at peak hours Manhattan alone contained over 11 million people.

He pointed his feet in the cop’s direction and began walking determinedly before hesitating, the soles of his brand new Tistonis sliding on the bits of dust and gravel that caked the streets and seemed to be floating down the boulevard in a giant cloud.

Larry’s initial hesitation hadn’t been rational of course. How could a simple beat cop know he’d pushed Josh, the gimp intern, to his death? Hell, how would anyone know? The answer was simple. They wouldn’t. Nor would they, once all of this was finally sorted out. And sorted out it would be. The government would surely call in the National Guard or something and that’s exactly what Larry was thinking as he approached the officer from behind.

The cop was down on his haunches, bent slightly at the waist and underneath him was a man. The cop was trying to revive him.  Maybe he was doing CPR or something.

“Excuse me officer...”

The cop turned and grunted as he rose to his feet and came at Larry, swinging his police baton. In the cop’s other hand was a loaf of Wonderbread. The guy lying on the ground hadn’t been receiving CPR at all. He’d been receiving enough blows from the cop’s baton to make his skull look like a punch bowl. And spilled on the ground beside him, some of them trailing under the police cruiser, were the groceries the man had been walking home with when all hell had broken loose... when this deranged policeman had decided he wanted whatever food was in that bag and was perfectly willing to break a stranger’s head open to get it.

The cop came at Larry in a series of feigned charges, before bringing his baton down against Larry’s shoulder. The pain was sharp and blinding.

This asshole was insane. Larry could see that now, from the dull look in the cop’s eyes. There wasn’t anyone home. At least, no one with any sense of right and wrong, although the irony of him passing judgment wouldn’t come home to roost until much later.

Larry turned to run away and the cop buried the end of his night stick into Larry’s spine, sending Larry sprawling to the ground where he received a mouthful of concrete dust, his face sliced by pieces of glass and everything else that littered Pine Street.

Larry rolled onto his back, arms raised, his tongue working overtime to clear the crap out of his mouth.

The officer had thrown away the Wonderbread now. He seemed to know on some deep primal level that with the club he was wielding, he would be able to eat whenever he wanted to.

Larry was still on his back, hands propped in the air, wondering what the hell he had done to trigger this guy’s rage, not entirely sure how the world had suddenly gone bonkers. Then he remembered the gun in his pocket.

He stuck a hand out to the cop. “Hold on!” he shouted. “I got something for you. All the food you want. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his Emporio Armani wallet, packed to the brim with a wad of crisp new hundred dollar bills got from the ATM on his way to work this morning.

The cop snatched the wallet and put it in his mouth, grinding the leather between his teeth. He seemed to chew on it for a second or two before realizing it tasted like shit.

“You like that, don’t you?” Larry asked. “Well, if you like that, then you’re gonna love this.” Larry raised the .38 and pulled the trigger twice. The first slug made a perfect hole in the cop’s forehead. The second grazed his skull, tearing away a flap of skin as it sped away. The cop’s eyes rolled up to whites and his jaw dropped open.

If he hadn’t been brain dead before, he was now.

Larry quickly rolled out of the way as the policeman collapsed to the ground.

No rescue workers. Crazy cops acting like Neanderthals. If this was any indication of how things were gonna be before full order was restored, then Larry knew without a doubt he needed to get the hell out of New York City as soon as possible. He stood, dusted himself off and removed the Glock from the cop’s holster. Why on earth the crazy bastard hadn’t used it instead of that silly night stick, Larry didn’t know, but he never was one to look a gift horse in the mouth. His back and shoulder were sore as hell, but Larry didn’t think anything was broken.

What he did know was that darkness was fast approaching and he would have to move quickly. He still wasn't sure what was wrong with everyone. This was way beyond that post-traumatic crap disorder those talking heads on CNN were always crying about. It was as though people had suddenly taken a noticeable step backward on the evolutionary tree. The new world order, run by a bunch of frikin’ apes. Larry glanced up at the dancing lights above him. Whatever destroyed his city had also somehow destroyed people’s minds. The how part he didn’t have just yet. If New York wasn’t the only place affected, if the rest of the country or rest of the world was the same, then that nagging fear he’d been trying his best to ignore might be right after all. That without a hint of warning, the end of the world had come and the lucky ones were already dead.

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