The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Read online

  Still, amid the chaos, shell-shocked individuals and families struggled to survive.

  Chapter 16: Immediate Effects

  Washington DC

  A slightly disheveled Monica Helms looked into the camera and said, “Once again, the asteroid has struck Albemarle Sound off North Carolina. Anyone who can hear this broadcast should evacuate coastal or low lying areas and head for high ground. Earthquakes and tidal waves are expected, and our best estimates indicate they will be severe...I repeat, severe.”

  An assistant ran on camera, handed her fresh copy, and darted off. The Teleprompter was broken, smashed in the last quake.

  “Angela Tremont reports another squall line of fireballs approaching from the South. Take cover immediately.”

  Monica grimaced, aware she had just told people to flee and take cover simultaneously. She swallowed and began again. “After the fire squall passes head for high ground. Several fires are already burning out of control and from the sound of things more are on the way. Do not stop to fight them. Get to high ground.

  “Those of you on high ground should either remain in your homes, or turn out and help your local fire departments control the blazes in your areas.

  “We've already had a magnitude 8.4 quake in the DC area and the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, that's I-95 and 495, is closed. All other area bridges are holding, though reports are that freeways are jammed. We now take you live to Barry Saberhagen at Ronald Reagan National Airport.”

  Monica Helms paused for a sip of water. She'd been broadcasting continuously for more than four hours and her voice was failing. She picked another piece of glass from her left arm and dabbed at the blood with a tissue. Too close to a window when a shock wave hit, but she'd been lucky. One of her cameramen was killed.

  Another aftershock rocked the studio and the lights flickered. After the jolting they'd received earlier she was amazed the emergency generators were still working.

  The picture cut to a wind-whipped Barry Saberhagen, standing on a runway with the Potomac in the background. “Monica, the winds are vicious out here. Airlines have suspended operations for the duration of the emergency. All flights were canceled yesterday and customers stranded at the airports are not happy. We've heard reports th--”

  The camera swung wildly as the cameraman danced to keep his balance when the earth jumped. The picture steadied on a growing crack in the runway. Barry's off camera voice was saying, “Get that on tape...the river, man, the river.”

  The camera showed water flowing swiftly from the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay until only a mud flat remained. Fish trapped in puddles flapped crazily. Somewhere in the back of his mind the cameraman recalled that the land on which the District was built had originally been a swampy coastal plain, and that the draining of tidal basins often occurred before a tidal wave. He realized it was too late for himself, or anyone left in DC to evacuate; but with the detachment of his breed he continued to record.

  Barry Saberhagen whispered, “Oh, My God.”

  Monica's eyes widened as she saw the horizon bulge on the monitor. Rippling and swelling the tsunami grew to monstrous proportions, thirty, fifty, then one hundred stories high, as it raced up the river channel like an express train from hell. The monitor went black.

  She turned to the camera, smiling, calm and elegant, like Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. “This is Monica Helms for the American Broadcasting Network saying goodbye, and good luck.”

  She unclipped her microphone and walked to the broken window. To the south a line of volcanic fire rained toward her, backlit by an eerie glow along the entire southern horizon. She turned to the East and watched the flames in the city go out as the wall of water came for her. With her last thoughts she prayed Carl would be safe in California.

  *

  “Mr. President?”

  Farley's voice jerked Hammond Powell's mind back from scenes of ruin he had witnessed moments before as Air Force One took off for points west--the Capitol Dome cracked like an egg, the Monument toppled onto the mall, the White House in flames.

  He had failed to preserve the nation, to protect his people. His ancient eyes sought those of his closest advisor and friend. “Yes, Farley?”

  Their seats jumped and the seat belts pinched them as the pilot desperately fought the howling winds.

  Farley laid a hand on the President's arm. “You did everything possible. We just didn't have the technology to prevent this.”

  “No, Farley.” The President shook his head. “We just didn't make it a priority soon enough. Scientists warned us this could happen years ago and we didn't listen.” He shrugged. “I suppose we thought God would protect us.”

  “Mr. President?” Donna Markwright spoke up from the seat on the other side of him. “I was with you when you chaired that committee as a senator, and you did listen. You overcame your colleagues objections and got Spacewatch funded. Without that project we wouldn’t have had any warning at all.”

  Hammond Powell took her hand in his, delighted at her sudden smile. “Thank you, Donna, and you too, Farley. I know you're both trying to help, but no President has ever faced such a disaster and failed. We did too little, too late. It's all up to Carl, now; but I haven't--”

  Air Force One was hit by a fireball the size of a bus and punched out of the sky, extinguishing the thoughts of all aboard.

  *

  New York

  Three Hours Before Impact

  Corporal Otha Gladson listened to the phone ringing. Be there, please be there. He hung up after the fortieth ring. How could he find her? His eyes were drawn back to the television set. Monica Helms broadcast was being run on all stations now. The streets of the city were filled with panicked people who had changed their minds about staying and were trying to get off the Island. Where would she be?

  A thought came to him and he laughed. Why not? He snagged a six pack of beer on his way out the door. He checked his watch. 11:57 p.m. He looked at the Empire State Building. If he walked and the crowds weren't too vicious, he'd make it.

  It was 1:37 a.m. when the elevator doors opened onto the main observation deck on the 86th floor and he saw her standing near the railing, poised as if a fashion photographer had placed her there.

  “I hoped you would come,” Dikeme said, and beckoned.

  She wore a creamy white loose sleeved shift that flowed over her body like water and ended above her knees. Otha’s breath caught at the sight of her and his pulse quickened.

  She waved her arm and said, “Look at this.” Below in the streets ant people were rioting while on a rooftop another group was having an end of the world party, dancing and toasting each other.

  “I tried to call,” he explained, his voice suddenly hoarse, but she shushed him with a finger over his lips.

  “So did I. Your phone was busy, then I couldn’t get a signal. It doesn't matter now. We're both here, together, as it should be.”

  He smiled and handed her a beer. “The lady on television says the waves will come from the Southeast.”

  “So?” She shrugged. “The world is ending tonight.”

  “We should have left during the evacuation,” he said. He would have but he couldn’t find her and couldn’t leave without her.

  “Why?” She pointed to the chaos in the streets. “People are behaving like animals. You want to live in a world like that?”

  “If I’m with you, yes.”

  She looked at him, standing tall and strong, his arm still in a sling.

  “You're serious,” she said raising her finely sculpted eyebrows.

  “Damn right! Somebody needs to think past this disaster. See the other side. Things'll be nasty for a while, but the world will be full of opportunities.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “Not past being here with you. I just think that if we keep our heads cool and our feet fast we'll do all right.”

  “You're an optimist,” she said, doe-eyed, full of wonder. Then she grinned. “In Zululand we say an opt
imist is someone who simply doesn't know enough.”

  He looked out over the city. “I learned a lesson a month ago on a bridge in Arizona.” He turned back to her and lowered his eyes. “I learned I want to live badly enough to take any chance at life. And I just can't believe God spared me then just to kill me off now.”

  “But the world will be...” she spread her arms at a loss for words.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “It’ll probably be worse than we can imagine, but we'll be together.”

  She shook her head slowly, but granted him one of her amazing smiles. Eyes closed, their lips met in a tender, lingering kiss. A blinding flash lit the horizon to the South.

  The Earth moaned, a bone deep sub-aural, nerve jangling sound that no one living had heard before. Then the building heaved.

  Otha's memories of the next few moments were never clear. He grabbed Di and fell to the floor as the earth bucked and rippled, blowing out glass in every building in the city, sending razor sharp shards slicing through the crowds below.

  He clung to her as the Empire State Building swayed and shuddered. The ground convulsed and they rolled against a wall, under shelter. More glass rained down from the upper area. Skyscrapers twisted and bent like willow trees and some toppled like tenpins, but the grand old lady stood. Air screeched through the gaps in her windowless shell. Clouds clashed together, spinning and tearing apart like demons unleashed from hell. An unholy shriek of wind split the air, mingling with distant human screams and explosions.

  Dikeme and Otha dragged themselves to their feet, clutching at each other and the handrails, and surveyed the damage in stunned silence. Smoke from countless fires spiraled upward, twisting through skeletal ruins. Broken gas mains, Otha thought.

  A fireball streaked out of the heavens and smashed into the car-packed street below igniting dozens of people and vehicles that hadn’t been crushed by falling debris. And suddenly the sky was full of them; blobs of fire, some small as a fist, others house-sized, flashing downward, splattering against the sides of buildings, advancing across the broken city like a rain squall.

  Otha pushed Di back into the shelter of the elevator as the fireballs arrived. Red-orange droplets of molten lava plopped onto the concrete observation deck, splattering the glass shards already there, flaming brightly and filling the stifling air with a sulfurous stench as they darkened and dulled.

  The fire squall passed. Unable to resist the pull of disaster, Glad and Di stepped back out onto the deck carefully avoiding the still-hot chunks of magma. Screams, wailing wind, roaring flames, an inferno of hellish sound overwhelmed them. The rooftop partygoers were dead, crimson-splashed corpses shredded by glass knives, blackened crisps, roasted by the magma. That building seemed to sigh as its west wall gave way and the whole structure twisted in slow motion and toppled over into its neighbors. A cloud of dust billowed up, ignited where it brushed searing magma and mushroomed into the sky.

  Dikeme clenched her eyes shut, unwilling to see more. Glad’s hand closed over hers and hot tears leaked from her eyes. Otha Gladson couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t look away. Something deep within him forced him to witness all the destruction, as if duty bound to record it in his mind and on his soul. He knew someday he would set this down in writing.

  Eventually the sounds subsided and a strange quiet descended, like the calm at the eye of a hurricane.

  Something else was odd.

  Hudson and East Bays were empty. Otha pointed this out to Di, and then they felt it, deep in their bones, an almost unheard rumbling that quickly grew to a roar a thousand freight trains strong. The skyline rippled and swelled and they watched in astonished horror as the tsunami rose from the Atlantic and rushed toward Long Island. Larger and larger, until it loomed fifty stories high. The closer it came the faster it seemed to move and the more gigantic it appeared until it filled their vision.

  Like a primeval fury the wave swallowed the city, raging, tearing structures loose from foundations and sending them careening about gouging concrete, slapping some buildings flat and disintegrating others. The grand lady trembled and groaned as the wave crashed against her. She'd already stood against amazing forces and Otha wondered if this would be the final straw. She shook, moaned as cracks split her sides, swayed alarmingly…and held.

  *

  Fort Dix, New Jersey

  As the ground shuddered and bucked, Ethan Hamilton struggled to close Pandora’s box. He was deep down in level 4 of the Army’s Biological Warfare Facility--a facility that by Presidential order should have been closed for more than a week. But there he was, struggling to free himself from a rather heavy lab bench that had fallen on him, pinning him to the floor in the containment lab.

  Containment. What a joke. Cracks ran through the walls. Test tubes were smashed, their occupants free, and several of his colleagues were already dead.

  Ethan was also dead and he knew it. His sterile suit was torn in several places and in this environment one small tear was all it took to assure his fate. He didn’t know which bug would kill him first; he just knew he didn’t have much time. But, he heaved himself from under the bench, before he went he had to reach the self-destruct switch. His experiments must not escape.

  Feverishly, he tore at the housing of the destruct mechanism, battering it off with a broken lab phone. With shaking hands he set the timer to zero. A phlemgy cough wracked his body and almost dropped him to his knees. God no! Not that one! He pressed the switch on the detonator; thankful the explosives would kill him before the virus. With his last thought he wondered if his father, Morgan Hamilton, the President’s National Security Advisor, would ever learn how he died.

  The powerful blast incinerated almost every bug that had escaped, but some were propelled up the elevator shaft and out into the atmosphere where most were blown out to sea toward Europe. Others were sucked down south into a monstrous, heart-bursting, low-pressure area forming over the three thousand foot deep crater that once was Albemarle Sound--a hurricane larger than anyone had ever seen, with winds exceeding 350 mph. And when Hypercane Havoc broke loose, it ripped through the Southeastern states, crossed the Gulf and slammed into Mexico, then veered down Central America before continuing into the Pacific and on to Asia, it brought more than a hideous 500-mile wide swath of total devastation. It spread a gift of death from Fort Dix.

  *

  Denver

  Temple of the Dark Lord

  Mustapha ben Muhammad, known to the police as Leroy Parsons, and to his followers as Viper, stood with arms outstretched sacrificial knife in one hand, head up, eyes rolled so only the whites showed. Before him, bound to the altar, lay the police officer, Sergeant Nick Dobbs, who had come to arrest him. His congregation was armed with M16's, grenades and LAWS rockets.

  Like Viper, they stood, because their pews were piled against doors in barricades, a line of defense against the police surrounding the building.

  Viper shuddered in the grips of a light seizure; spittle trickled down from one corner of his mouth. The fit passed like a bat fluttering by a street lamp, and he began to speak.

  “The last time The Dark Lord destroyed the world was in the time of Noah and the Great Flood. The Book of Revelations tells us the next time Our Lord destroys the world he will use Fire. But we have listened to The Dark One these past months and we are prepared.” He began pacing back and forth and his flock's eyes followed him like love-starved puppies.

  “The Great One hears us, brothers and sisters. He listens to our pleas for justice. He has revealed to me that He will no longer allow the white man to grind us down. No longer will our women work as whores to satisfy the white man's lust. No longer will our children poison their bodies and souls with the white man's drugs, selling their lives for a few grams, their futures for a few dollars.” He stopped behind the altar.

  “No, brothers and sisters. Never again. For even as we meet the Dark Lord raises his arms and prepares to smite our oppressors.” Viper raised his arms over his head, both fis
ts clenched around the hilt of the blade of sacrament.

  “Even as we pray our Black God strikes!” He plunged the knife into Nick Dobbs throat and slashed, unleashing a torrent of blood. But as his helpers came forward to hoist the man onto the hook that previously held goats, the shock wave hit, triggering petite mal in Viper, and panic in his flock.

  The voice in Viper's head drowned out the cries of his people, the roar of falling buildings and thrashing earth. “NOW!” It screamed. “The time is NOW!”

  *

  Jim Cantrell had just swung his new Midnight Black Mercedes 350 SL over to the right lane of I-25 and slowed to take the 38th street exit when, what would ever after be known simply as “The Sound” hit. It was like nothing he'd ever heard or felt before, knifing through him, jarring his body and jangling his nerves. He didn't know it then, but “The Sound” was the shock wave, closely followed by the mother of all sonic booms, generated by Havoc when it entered, and zipped through the Earth's atmosphere at seventeen miles per second, too fast for friction to have any noticeable effect.

  His car was picked up and tumbled off the road like a child's toy in a tornado. Trees blew down while roofs kited skyward and houses collapsed. A few seconds of intense chaos that took an eternity passed with the blast of air.

  Jim climbed unsteadily from behind the wheel of his new Mercedes, which was lying upside down. He was dazed and trembling, utterly confused. He looked across the railroad yards and South Platte River toward Coors Field and the skyscrapers of Denver, a front row seat from which he watched the death of the downtown area. Broken panes of glass exploded from the tall buildings to the streets below. The deadly rain minced the few people out and about at that hour.

  Entire buildings quivered and disintegrated in harmonic response. Like an operatic soprano, whose voice can shatter glass, “The Sound” shattered lives. Close to the point of impact, at distances up to six hundred miles away, depending on sheltering terrain, people and animal bones and organs were literally pulverized by the sheer magnitude of the vibration. Puddles of organic material belonging to human beings ran like liquid Jell-O over the pavement, mixing bloodily with the remains of their mates, children and pets. Farther away, living beings were cooked by what amounted to a sonic microwave, their eyeballs gelling like boiled eggs, their skin rupturing as steaming body fluids burst through. Almost every survivor within a thousand miles of the impact was deafened permanently.