The Dying Time (Book 1): Impact Read online

  “But, dad, I….”

  “Father!” Joseph Scarlatti roared at his son, John. “You will always call me, father.” To emphasize his point he grabbed John by the neck with one enormous hand and pinned him against the wall. “I grow tired of your disrespect.”

  John flushed angrily, and at that small sign of rebellion Joseph’s hand squeezed.

  John’s eyes bulged. His feet dangled in mid air. At seven foot tall, three hundred forty pounds, his size and strength occasionally led him to forget how much larger and stronger his father was, and what a hair trigger his temper could have. This was, after all, the man who had pulled the arms off John and Anthony’s mother as easily as another could pull wings off flies.

  Joseph’s ice blue eyes blazed at his son. “You lack manners, John, social graces. You should take lessons from your brother. He not only looks like a Prince, he acts like one.”

  John’s face was purpling, his vision dimming, but raw fear kept him from striking out at his father. The last time he’d tried to defend himself the beating he’d received had left him bed-bound, pissing blood for a week. And his father had added insult to injury by chopping the legs off John’s favorite toy. The girl lived and John found himself strangely excited by her deformity. Still he’d tired of her after a month and sold her to an exotic sex farm.

  “You can be a real waste of air, son,” Joseph eased his grip, allowing John to breathe. “You argue constantly, and while I value your opinion on military matters, you are never again to dispute with me in public! You are a Prince, but I am your King!”

  He lowered his son until John’s feet touched the floor. “Understand?”

  John nodded, rubbing his sore throat, keeping his eyes averted so the anger, shame and humiliation coursing through him wouldn’t show.

  “Good,” Joseph allowed. “Now, as I was saying before you challenged my orders in front of my generals….” Joseph droned on.

  John swallowed painfully. His ears burned. His father had literally yanked him out of the meeting to this private audience, leaving precious Anthony to continue the briefing. God, his brother would be even more insufferable after this.

  “Are you listening?” Joseph’s icy eyes were glowing again.

  “Yes, father,” John’s voice was rusty and his heart jumped. The old bastard was too perceptive. To head off another humiliation, John continued. “My men and I are to search Edwards, Vandenburg and the Jet Propulsion Lab for the Sunflower. Jamal Rashid and Nicolo Bonetti will take a small force up to Lawrence Livermore. Anthony and Carswell’s troops will check out Van Nuys, the U.S Naval Weapons station by Seal Beach, then swing east to March Air Force Base.”

  Joseph nodded. “Next time pay attention without your eyes glazed over; and get your teeth fixed. Your breath smells like tooth rot. A prince’s breath shouldn’t offend.” He waived his arm in dismissal. When John didn’t leave, Joey said, “Well?”

  “Now that we’re alone, father, am I permitted to ask questions?”

  Joey decided to let the kid save face. The boy would never be an intellectual giant, but he shared Joseph’s talent for military planning as well as a few perversions. “Yes.”

  “Why are we spending (he’d almost slipped and said wasting) time checking out areas near the waterfront? Everything within ten miles of the ocean was destroyed by tsunamis. If Sunflower was near the coast it’s gone. The inland bases are our best shot.”

  Joseph decided this was worth an explanation more informative than his usual, “Because I said so.”

  “We’re being thorough, John. Some buildings are still standing in those areas and one of them may reveal the location of Sunflower Control. And while there are a finite number of military space-launch facilities there are hundreds of places they could control the weapon from. We have to find the control center. We get that weapon, son, we get the world!”

  He pointed to a large map of Southern California and added, “Besides, our scouts report that Camp Pendleton survived largely intact, probably because San Clemente Island absorbed the worst of the tidal waves, and those Marines won’t sit on their asses forever. We need that laser before they come for us.”

  *

  Edwards Air Force Base Launch Facility

  “Carl, we’ve got another problem.” General Roland Mabry’s face was solemn.

  “What is it, Roland?” What was one more problem on top of so many?

  “The fires are closing in. We have to get out.”

  Carl shook his head. “We can’t leave, Roland. Our equipment, the computers….”

  Soldiers were filing inside, looking purposeful.

  “We’ll take the gear with us in trucks. We can reinstall it later. You finished the backup last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but….”

  The General grabbed Carl’s arm. “Come with me.” He half-dragged the protesting scientist up to the roof. “See for yourself.”

  Raoul and Ariel Garcia were up there with Sara. All of them were staring at a solid wall of flames. Buildings and homes on the outskirts of the base and brush-choked canyons blazed furiously.

  Carl stood dumbstruck. He hadn’t been up here for days, focusing on his calculations. Trying to determine how rapidly the skies would clear once the rains began.

  He turned 360 degrees. The only way not blocked by fire was a small gap to the Northeast. The troops had cut down every tree and shrub within a quarter mile of the facility. All superfluous structures had been flattened and hauled off. A three hundred yard wide ring of dirt surrounded the facility like a moat. A firebreak, Carl realized. The only things left inside that could burn were the main buildings, the vehicles, and the people. Even the grass had been plowed under. Humvees and six-wheel-drive army transports were backing up the loading docks and main entrance.

  “You don’t think the firebreak will stop the flames, Roland?”

  But it was Raoul who answered. “Carl, the heat from this firestorm will suck up all the air in this area and suffocate us even if the flames don’t jump to the buildings.”

  Carl was nodding, the scientist in him coming to the fore. Yes, the heat could even melt the metal structures. He looked the General in the eye and said, “Get us out of here, Roland. We’ll come back after the fires pass.”

  *

  Edwards Launch Facility--Two days later

  John Scarlatti and his men rolled their motorcycles to a stop and were immediately enveloped in a cloud of hot ash.

  “Jesus,” John coughed as the ash settled and the view cleared. “This place is toast.” The buildings were seared. The gantry leaned drunkenly, half melted.

  “They made a real effort to save it though,” Richard Marsh, John’s right-hand man said. “See where they cleared a firebreak. That took a lot of work. Must be something important there.”

  “So take a look,” John ordered. But privately he was betting they wouldn’t find anything. Hell, we don’t need a space-based laser weapon. We need more men in our army, undamaged tanks, intact munitions depots, a fucking airport with planes that fly, enough food and fuel to get through the winter. He sniffed at the murky air. Some decent damned air to breathe. That’s what we need.

  Suddenly his sense of smell caught up with his thoughts and he sniffed the air again. What’s that? Something he hadn’t smelled since his boyhood in Michigan. A snowflake settled on his nose.

  Snow? In Southern California?

  Chapter 21: Impact Winter

  The Freeholds

  Michael squinted down the valley into the blowing snow. Sometimes it thinned enough for him to see smoke plumes rising from drifted over homesteads. Other times it blew so hard he had to wipe his goggles to see the next tree.

  He leaned into the wind as he trudged forward, swinging his feet wide with each step so his Bear Paw snowshoes wouldn’t tangle. The lines of his sled harness bit into his shoulders. His mustache and beard were coated with hoarfrost from his steaming breath.

  The sled he pulled was the hood off his
’67 F250, turned upside down and stabilized with two sheet metal runners. It clanked as gas cans jostled against each other. He crested the last hill north of his house and stopped.

  Randy McKinley drew up along side, puffing and wiping his ski goggles. “Thank God,” Randy wheezed. “I wasn’t looking forward to another night in the open.”

  Michael just nodded. The gale they endured the past four days reminded him of a hurricane he’d been through during a brief stint as a shipboard marine. But who’d ever heard of a hurricane in Colorado, much less in winter? Didn’t they need heat to form?

  Randy eased out of his harness. “I need to adjust my load.”

  Michael looked back as he slid out of his harness. Randy’s sled was leaning precariously to one side. “I’ll give you a hand.”

  Randy grabbed a pair of heavy gas cans and shifted them to the middle of the sled. “How much longer can we keep this up?”

  Michael shoved smaller cans and boxes of food toward the uphill side of the sled, settling it back level. “As long as we have to.”

  “We were almost to Fairplay, Michael.”

  “Look, Randy, I know we’ve drained every gas tank and scavenged every unburned farmhouse between the Freeholds and Fairplay. Hell, we’ve gone as far as Florissant the other way.”

  “I’m just saying we’re running out of options as fast as fuel.”

  Michael nodded as he helped lash down the load. Without sunshine their solar panels weren’t producing. Their wind generators had been flattened by quakes and storms. The Tarryall River had frozen solid, ending their hydro-power, and in this cold, their methane digesters couldn’t keep up with demand. He’d been pushing for a large scale scavenging expedition into Denver or Colorado Springs. With enough people he could bring back adequate food and gasoline to last months. Besides he wanted to find our what happened to Jim and Jill Cantrell.

  “I’m with you, Randy, but going to Colorado Springs or Denver in this weather? And there are probably survivors there. What’ll they think when we show up and start helping ourselves? Remember that old lady who shot at us?”

  Randy grinned, the smile easing the hollows under his eyes. “Yeah, and I remember the hot chocolate and biscuits she made us when you gave her that box of canned food, too.” He shook his head. Tough old bird, going it alone on her ranch, miles from town; but kind enough after she figured out we weren’t out to steal from her. But Michael had a point. How would the locals react?

  “Any idea how long it’ll take Aaron and Terrell to get the snowmobiles working again?”

  Michael shrugged into his harness. “Already been too long.” He leaned into the load and started trudging down the hill. The snow was so wet the sleds simply bogged down any time they tried to slide them downhill, so they had to pull them both ways, up and down.

  Two weeks, he thought, hoping that was right. He’d told Ellen it shouldn’t take longer than that; but with the constant snow and darkness it was hard to count days. He tugged forward feeling the lines cut into his shoulders again. Two weeks seemed like a long time to get forty-five miles to Fairplay and back.

  They shuffled past the Goldstein place, and Michael noticed the drifts were so high now that stairways and ramps cut into the snow led twenty feet up to the surface. Hot stovepipes formed huge funnels, like ant-lion traps in the snow covering the homesteads. Firewood was getting scarce simply because most of it was buried too deep to get to. Like the farm and ranch houses out in South Park he and Randy had dug down into, finding them only because a chimney or part of a second story still stuck up out of the snow.

  Out there in the open, with nothing between them and the continental divide, the wind swept parts of the valley floor clean, while in other places drifts one hundred feet high and miles long moved like dunes. The sky was too dark to see the fourteen thousand feet high peaks that lined the western skyline, and the sun was at best a blueish ice ball, rarely glimpsed. Navigation was by dead reckoning, following vaguely familiar terrain, much of which had changed during the quakes, all of which was coated with ice and snow. He couldn’t even use his compass because of all the iron ore in the local mountains.

  Michael shook his head. In the entire time he and Randy had spent scavenging he hadn’t seen a single animal track of any kind. How could the four-footed survive something like this without help? He thought of the bales of willow tips he and his neighbors scattered in sheltered areas of the valley and of the small herds of deer, elk and bighorn sheep who gathered there each day. Some folks put out hay, but while elk managed okay on it, many deer, whose normal winter feed was aspen and willows, lacked the enzymes to digest hay and starved to death with full stomachs. The few horses and cows they’d managed to keep alive could never consume all the hay baled up in South Park the summer before the disaster. It was a miracle the hay hadn’t burned.

  And what about birds? Not even the brave chickadee sang in this storm. He paused in his thoughts, trying to remember the last time he’d seen a bird. Months! God, he hoped this disaster hadn’t wiped out the birds. The world would be a poor place without the warners of the woods, whose silences and cries of alarm alerted prey to predators, whose song and cheerful colors lightened hearts.

  He sighed and pulled harder. Just because he hadn’t seen them didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  He and Randy eased up at the Community Center where people looked at them like they were ghosts.

  Mariko McKinley swooshed down the road on cross-country skis, spraying snow as she slid to a stop. She just had time to unclip her bindings before Randy swept her into his arms.

  Ellen burst from the store, blonde hair flying and wrapped Michael in a huge hug. Her shoulders shook with sobs.

  Michael stroked her head and held her tight, mumbling, “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.”

  Ellen pulled back and looked up into his eyes. Hers were still streaming tears. “We thought…” she couldn’t finish. “You were gone so long.”

  Something in the way she said that made him ask, “How long?”

  “Almost a month now, Michael. Aaron and Terrell got the snowmobiles running last week. They’ve been out searching for you every day since then.”

  Michael just nodded and pulled her to him again, astounded at how much time he’d lost. No wonder she’d been worried. Next time he’d take a calendar and mark off the days.

  *

  Denver

  The crosshairs centered on Shark’s head and Jacques’ finger tensed on the trigger.

  “If you kill him now, we’ll fail,” Jim Cantrell whispered softly so neither his voice nor steaming breath would give him away to those below.

  “But Mon, he be…” Jacques’ voice died with a strangled gasp.

  Below their rooftop perch, in the courtyard of the hotel Shark was stripping Denise Lachelle while the rest of his patrol urged him on.

  “He’s distracted,” Jim’s voice was as cold as the snow he lay in. “Kill the guards, they’re armed. You take the two on the left.”

  Jacques nodded and took a deep, tremulous breath to steady himself. He eased his sight picture over to one of the guards. The falling snow was light enough not to interfere with aiming. He had to make these shots count. He had to! Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jim bring his rifle to bear.

  Denise had run for freedom on her own and she’d almost made it. In the weeks since Jacques escaped she’d schemed, wheedling her way into the position of trustee among the female slaves. Allowed at long last to accompany a security patrol as their “comfort girl.” She knew Jacques was out there waiting for a chance to help her. And she’d resolved to give him at least a fighting chance. But then Shark reached for her and she’d snapped, raking her fingernails across his face, running for her life. If it had just snowed a little harder and covered her tracks…

  Now she stood with her back against a dead tree while Shark sliced buttons from her blouse to the leers and cheers of his companions. Her jacket already lay in tatters on the snow. Her ski
n prickled, shrinking from his blade as he cut the elastic band and her pants slid down around her ankles. Her only consolation was that they’d end it now. The penalty for attempted escape was death.

  He grabbed her and pushed her down roughly, kicking her pants away and spreading her thighs with his knife. He bent over, tugging at his own pants and as he pulled them down her eyes went not to his member, but to the two rifles she saw sticking over the edge of the roof.

  “Smilin’ won’ save yo ass, bitch,” Shark snarled as he stabbed his knife into the tree.

  Then the shooting began and when he straightened up, surprised, she kicked him in the balls and scrambled away.

  Jacques swung his rifle back to Shark in time to see him jerk his knife from the tree and lunge at Denise. He pulled the trigger and was rewarded with a bloodcurdling scream. Shark writhed on his back, legs splayed, privates missing, arterial blood jetting into the sky.

  Jim’s rifle spoke and the last enemy died diving for cover. He looked over at Jacques, but his friend was already running for the stairwell, and Denise.

  *

  “You hear that?” Josh’s head snapped toward the sound of distant shots. They echoed strangely in the stillness.

  Chad Bailey nodded and continued rubbing his hands together for warmth. He and Josh and the rest of the group sat around a small fire, carefully built to be smokeless, in the detached garage of the house they were staying in. The only house they’d found that was relatively undamaged.

  “Think they were after one of ours?” Josh was still concerned about the shots.

  Chad shook his head. Who knew?

  Of the thirty-two men and women who crawled out of the wreckage of the MCI building after the Impact only twelve stayed together. The rest left to see about their husbands or wives, sons, daughters, or parents--or died running from those black bastards who shot at anything that moved. It hadn’t taken long to learn to avoid them.