Cannibal Reign

Prologue

“Ed, wake up!” the woman whispered. “There’s someone in the house!”

Colonel Ed Lucket sat up in the dark listening. “I don’t hear anything,” he said quietly.

“I heard a clunk in your study!”

Lucket listened a moment longer and reached for his cell phone, only to find that it was gone from the nightstand where he put it every night before bed. “Shit. Stay here.”

“But what are you—”

“Stay here!” he hissed, pulling his arm free of her grasp before hurriedly stepping into a pair of pants.

“Be careful!”

He waved at her to shut up and poked his head into the hall, where he saw a light on in the study at the far end, a thin layer of smoke hanging stagnant in the dim glow. What the hell was going on? He made his way cautiously along the wall, a cold sweat breaking out across his chest. His heart skipped a beat when he heard someone shift in his chair, the leather creaking. The only firearm in the house was in the wall safe behind his desk.

He drew a deep breath and stepped boldly into the room, instantly recognizing the man sitting at the desk. “Reeves!” he bellowed. “What the hell are you doing? You scared the billy piss out of me!”

Jerry Reeves sat back in the chair, serenely smoking one of Lucket’s fine Cuban cigars taken from the humidor in the corner. He gestured with it to an open folder on the desk. “This file makes for a rather jarring read, Colonel.”

The colonel saw his pistol and cell phone resting on the desk near the folder, the door to his wall safe ajar. “That’s classified, you son of a bitch! And how did you get past the security system? It’s the fucking best!”

“Indeed it is,” Reeves chuckled, shaping the smoldering end of the cigar against the crystal ashtray. “Though an alarm system’s only as dependable as the man using it.”

Lucket felt his face flush. Reeves was a civilian with Army intelligence, attached to the Pentagon, a crafty bastard he’d been trying to subvert for years. “I asked how you got in.”

“I strolled into the garage right behind you and the—uh… lady. That is General Loughton’s wife, isn’t it? Of course it is, otherwise you’d have gone right for the landline.”

“Get out of my house!” Lucket ordered, pointing at the door, the gray hair on his chest glistening.

Reeves held up the file. “Colonel, who else is privy to this nightmare? Why are they so intent on keeping it a secret?”

Lucket’s eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that rather obvious? The world would tear itself apart. Now get out!”

“In due time,” Reeves said affably. “First, I want the video. The one your CIA pals made of me down in Havana last week.”

Lucket was hard-pressed to cover his shock. “I… I’d say your illicit real estate deal is irrelevant now… given what you’ve just read.”

“Quite the contrary. It’s even more relevant now than it was an hour ago when I stood watching you and the general’s wife have at it.”

Lucket felt a worrisome tightness in his chest, bit back an obscenity. “Why is it more relevant?”

Reeves tapped the file. “It’s obvious I’ll need someplace warm to weather this storm.”

“There’s no place to run,” Lucket sneered. “No place to hide.”

Reeves puffed the cigar as he considered his next move, realizing that Lucket would likely attempt to have him terminated now that he’d read the file. “About the video, Colonel?”

“It’s not here,” Lucket said thinly.

Reeves took the pistol and shot him in the leg, shattering his left knee. The colonel went down swearing: “You filthy bastard!”

“I may be that,” Reeves said, rising, the cigar in his free hand, “but I’m not here to discuss my finer qualities with you. Now where’s the video? I’d like to hold onto my position long enough to honor some old debts.”

The colonel lay over on his side, his chest constricting, gripping his knee and barely suppressing the urge to vomit. “Middle drawer, you son of a bitch! Take it and get out!”

Reeves took a small unmarked video card from his pocket. He’d already found it in the drawer but wanted to be sure of what it was. “May I assume this is the only copy?” he asked, the cigar caught in the corner of his mouth.

Lucket realized he was a dead man. “You’re a filthy coward!” he roared. “Do you hear me? A filthy coward!”

Reeves squatted beside him, a frown creasing his face as he put the weapon to the colonel’s head. “I didn’t come here to kill you,” he said solicitously, “but we both know you would have sent someone to kill me for reading that file.”

“Burn in hell!” Lucket made a desperate grab for the weapon and was very nearly fast enough, though not quite.

Reeves squeezed off the round in the nick of time, glad to have given the colonel a chance to go out fighting. He then wiped down the pistol along with anything else he had touched, locking it back in the safe and taking the file down the hall to the bedroom. He flicked on the light and knelt down to find Mrs. Loughton hiding under the bed.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, offering his hand to the terrified woman. “I’ve never made war on women or children. Come on out of there.”

Mrs. Loughton sat sniveling in a chair a short time later, Lucket’s robe gathered around her as she sopped at her eyes with a tissue. A blonde with nice skin, she was sexy for being almost fifty, around Reeve’s own age. “Is he dead?” she whimpered.

“Very,” Reeves said, setting the cigar down in the ashtray on the nightstand and fluffing one of the pillows. “Were you in love with him?”

She shook her head despondently. “Though I liked him a lot— You’re going to kill me!” she blurted.

Reeves went around to remake her side of the bed. “I’ve already told you I’m not going to hurt you. What I’m going to do is take you home. And then you and I are going to keep one another’s secrets… which I’d say is more than fair.”

She watched him tidy up. “Why would you trust me?”

He finished and picked up the cigar, eyeing the file beneath the lamp. “Let’s just say I’ve learned something tonight that makes much me less worried about the immediate future than I might otherwise have been. Now go get dressed while I make a quick call.”

General Loughton’s wife gathered her clothes and stepped into the master bathroom, closing the door.

Reeves took her chair and pulled a satellite phone from inside his coat pocket, dialing a number from memory. The phone rang a number of times before it was finally answered.

“I hope this is important,” said a tired voice.

“Jack? It’s Reeves. Listen, I’ve got a file here you need to see, and soon.”

“Classified?”

“Oh, yeah, and then some. Looks like there’s a real nightmare headed our way… and this one’s right up your alley.”

One

Jack Forrest raised his head in Launch Control, cocking an eyebrow and listening as the heavy steel door above was pulled to and secured. A slight grin crossed his face as he returned his attention to a textbook on heavenly bodies.

Wayne Ulrich trotted down three stories of a steel staircase and crossed through the common areas into Launch Control, where he stopped in the doorway and stood watching unhappily as Forrest sat reading.

Forrest glanced up from the book just long enough to see the crease in his friend’s face. “What’s got your feathers in a ruffle?”

Ulrich crossed the room and tossed a clipboard onto the console near Forrest’s feet. “Three more names have magically appeared on the roster,” he said, hands on his hips. “Any idea how that happened?”

“I wrote them in with my magic pen,” Forrest said, dropping his feet to the deck and posturing up in the squeaky old government chair to stretch his back. A lean, muscular man of medium height, Jack Forrest was thirty-five, with a relentlessly sarcastic disposition. He had flinty blue eyes and chiseled features, thick brown hair cut high-and-tight in military fashion, and a two-inch scar on his chin where he’d been struck by a rifle butt years earlier during the Second Gulf War. “Got a problem with that, Stumpy?”

Ulrich was the exact opposite. A die-hard pragmatist, he and Forrest had made unlikely friends during their Special Forces training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He walked with an almost imperceptible limp, having lost his left foot in Afghanistan to an IED during the summer of 2006. Tall and slender with wispy blond hair, pale blue eyes, and a thin mustache, he was dressed in digital-camouflage trousers and a black underarmor T-shirt.

“You’re damn right I do.” He pointed at the roster. “Do you realize how much extra food I have to come up with every time you add even a single name to that list? Two meals, every day, for eighteen months. Times three people, that’s 2,190 goddamn meals, Jack! Do you know how much food that is? I can’t just run down to the supermarket, fill up the family station wagon and call it a day.”

“So rent another truck,” Forrest said, tossing the heavy book on top of the roster, then lighting a Camel cigarette with a brass Zippo lighter. “Come to think of it, rent two and take Kane with you.” He tossed the lighter onto the book and rocked back in the chair.

“You’re missing the point,” Ulrich said. “People are going to notice. So when word finally gets out—and it’s gonna get out—somebody could remember us hoarding all that food. And they just might come looking for it.”

“Then drive to Colorado for the food,” Forrest said, taking a drag from the cigarette. “Hell, drive all the way to Vegas for all I care. Only do me a favor while you’re there and visit a hooker, will ya? You get cranky when you haven’t had your ashes hauled.”

“My ashes haven’t got anything to do with it,” Ulrich insisted, though both men knew that he would never cheat on his wife Erin, who was waiting back in North Carolina. “There are forty-eight names on that list. And that’s not counting the five of us and our families. How many more people do you plan on having down here? Eighty? A hundred? This old septic system’s only going to assimilate so much shit, you know.”

“What? You haven’t crunched the numbers on that yet?”

Ulrich bridled. “I haven’t got the slightest idea how much a single person shits in a year.”

“Then I suggest you call one of those septic pumper companies and find out.”

Ulrich hung his head with a weary sigh. “How many more names, Jack?”

Forrest shrugged. “I keep finding people I want to save.”

“You mean women. And how many of them are good-looking?”

“A few.”

“Jesus, you’re something else.”

Forrest stood up from the squeaky chair, exhaling a cloud of bluish smoke as he crushed out the cigarette in a brass ashtray cut from a 76mm cannon shell casing. “Who do you suggest we save, Wayne… if not women and children? Sweaty biker types who’d kill us all the first chance they got? Old men and women who’re gonna be dead in a few years? How about some asshole businessmen? I put single mothers on that list for good reason. We get too much testosterone down here and we’re asking for trouble.”

“Suppose none of these women are interested in repopulating?”

“Oh, that’s got nothing to do with it,” Forrest said with a wave. “Whether they are or not, their virtue will be a hell of a lot safer down here than it will up there once this shit kicks off.”

Ulrich rubbed the back of his neck, remembering the war-torn Middle East. Both men had seen the type of iniquities a woman could look forward to in the absence of law and order. “It just isn’t fair, that’s all. A pretty woman’s got no more right to—”

“Look, if I could save everybody, I would. So would you. We all would. But we can’t. People are going to die up there. They’re going to die by the bushel—men, women, children, ugly or not. And for the record, Stumpy, not every woman on that roster is a beauty queen. What do you think I am?”

Before Ulrich could reply, Marcus Kane came around the corner, having heard their voices echoing along the steel blast vestibule leading from one of the Titan missile silos. A six-foot African American, Kane was recruiting-poster handsome, with a shaved head, smooth skin, and gentle almond-shaped eyes.

“Y’all argue enough, you’d think you were married,” he said, taking a pretzel rod from a bag on the console.

“Anybody on that list happen to be black?” Ulrich asked, wanting to stir the pot.

“Don’t start,” Forrest said.

“You didn’t pick any sisters?” Marcus said. “Man, come on now.”

“As a matter of fact,” Forrest replied, “I’ve picked seven, all with kids.”

“Suppose these folks want to bring their extended families or friends along?” Ulrich asked.

“Tough shit,” Forrest said, shaking another cigarette from its pack. “Needless to say, anyone chosen will have some tough choices to make, and I expect most of them will choose to stay up there and face what’s coming.”

Ulrich nodded, looked at Kane. “How are the countermeasures coming?”

Kane considered. “Well, I figure we’d better count on them getting past the first blast door,” he said at length. “Somebody good could conceivably cut their way in with an acetylene torch. But if we bore some holes in the overhead concrete of the security vestibule, run a line for the accelerant, we can fit a flame nozzle into each hole. That way we can fill the entire vestibule with liquid fire, burn ’em to the bone like a goddamn dragon.”

“I don’t really see anybody getting past the first blast door,” Ulrich said. “The damn thing is ten inches thick with steel pins all around the jambs. Cutting off the hinges wouldn’t even get it open.”

“Marcus is right, though,” Forrest said. “Somebody good with a torch could cut their way through. It would take a hell of a long time, but remember, they’ll be desperate.”

Ulrich reached for the pretzel bag. “What I’m worried about is them poisoning the ventilator shafts.”

Forrest nodded. “It’s a definite chink in the armor. How about the topside silo doors?”

“Those are damn near impregnable,” Kane said.

“What about a torch?”

“Through three feet of solid steel?”

Ulrich took a bite from his pretzel. “Suppose somebody shows up with a ’dozer? Digs down deep to the ceiling. Employs a jackhammer.”

“That’s six feet of reinforced concrete to go through,” Kane said.

“Well, like Jack said, they’ll be desperate.”

Forrest said, “We all know there’s no such thing as an impregnable castle. We can only prepare for what we can prepare for. But just in case, we’d better have some kind of Broken Arrow in mind.”

All three men pondered the unthinkable. A measure of last resort was not something to be overlooked.

“We could plant topside charges,” Ulrich suggested.

“Maybe,” Forrest said. “Where’s the Dynamic Duo?”

“Still working on the wiring,” Kane said. “The generators are in place but they’re not hooked into Launch Control yet. The ventilation system probably needs a lot of work too. Those motors haven’t been run up in years.”

“Well, that goddamn realtor assured me they still run,” Forrest said. “Once we’re powered up, give them a try.”

“You’re the man.”

“And what about that realtor?” Ulrich said. “Say she survives? She knows you went asshole-deep in debt to get this place. She might start asking questions. Might think we knew this was gonna happen all along.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Forrest said, taking a moment to consider the point. “Well, we can’t take any chances. Marcus, you’d better kill the real-estate lady. Make it look like an accident. Toss a toaster into the tub with her.”

Ulrich couldn’t help cracking a smile.

Kane stood chewing. “Know what else we ain’t figured out? Vasquez. How much insulin can we store and how long will it keep if we lose power?”

Forrest looked at Ulrich. “I guess we’ll have to kill Vasquez too. There’s no sense in having him down here eating our food if he’s only going to die.”

Ulrich snorted. “You’re a fucking jerk.”

“This is true,” Forrest said, dropping back into the chair with a sharp squeak. “We need some new chairs too.” He held up the textbook he’d been reading, a work on heavenly bodies by an astronomer named Ester Thorn. “Look guys, prehistoric man already pulled off this exact same mission with nothing more than a double digit IQ and some animal hide. Don’t tell me that five battle-tested Green Berets won’t be able to think their way through this challenge. That’s all this is, another mission, so we knuckle down and we drive on.”

Two

Marty Chittenden stood in the hall outside a classroom at the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory, anxiously waving a red file to get the attention of Professor Susan Denton, who was in the middle of giving a lecture on astrophysics. When she finally noticed what at first glance looked like a lunatic outside her classroom, she paused in mid-sentence, surprised to see a fellow doctoral candidate from her days at Berkeley.

Susan remembered him well, Marty having spent the better part of a school year trying to win her heart. Though they had gone to movies a couple of times and shared some laughs, she hadn’t felt much chemistry between them, but they remained friends until they finished graduate school and then went their separate ways.

Now here he was out of the blue, five years later, fervently beckoning her into the hallway. She couldn’t imagine what could possibly be so important.

“Excuse me for a second,” Susan said to her class, and stepped out into the hall. She was five-six with red hair, freckles, her intensely expressive hazel eyes focused on this visitor from the past. “I’m in the middle of a class, Marty. So please make this quick.”

“I need you to check some calculations for me,” he said earnestly, offering the file.

“I’d be happy to,” she said patiently. “But I need to finish class. Give me half an hour.”

Susan turned back toward the room, but Marty impulsively grabbed for her elbow. She jerked away, suddenly wild-eyed. “Don’t touch me!” she hissed acidly.

He stepped back, stunned by her uncharacteristic viciousness. “I’m sorry,” he said, sensing that she had experienced something terrible since their last meeting. “I didn’t mean to… it’s just that… it’s just that this will be the most significant… most frightening discovery in all of human history.”

Susan went from angry to alarmed and intensely curious. In all the time she knew Marty, she had never seen him as melodramatic. If anything, he verged on being a classic academic bore.

“Well, God… what is it?”

“It’s an NEO, Sue, and it’s got our name on it.” He gestured with the red file folder. “I’ve got all my calculations. I’d like you to review them before I take them over to JPL.” Susan felt a sudden chill run through her. She knew Marty was an excellent astronomer and not someone prone to exaggeration. If he said the world was going to be struck by a near Earth object, chances were good to excellent it was going to happen.

“Well… how long do we have?”

“Counting today? Eighty-eight days.”

She felt her knees weaken. “Jesus,” she muttered. “Let me dismiss the class.”

She returned to the classroom then. “Okay, everybody,” she announced, I’m letting you go early today. We’ll pick up right here on Wednesday.”

The entire class sprang from their seats in a flurry of laptops and backpacks, and in less than thirty seconds the room was empty. Marty stepped in and closed the door, handing the folder to Susan.

She sat down at a student desk and skimmed through it, her almost savantlike mind checking Marty’s computations on the fly. “This can’t be right,” she muttered, searching desperately for a miscalculation. “Marty, are you sure this isn’t a comet? It’s moving at over a hundred thousand miles an hour, for God’s sake.” She sat chewing the end of her hair as Marty had seen her do so many times in the past in the library at Berkeley. The idiosyncrasy was all the more endearing now.

“Why hasn’t anyone else spotted this thing?” she wondered aloud.

Marty had gone to the window to gaze out over the Caltech campus two stories below.

“Because it’s not coming from the asteroid belt,” he said, referring to the asteroid field orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter, where the majority of NEOs were thought to begin their journey. “It’s an ancient rogue, Sue. It came out of deep space, and it’s probably been traveling half a billion years to get here, maybe longer.”

“But at two miles across… it’s huge. Somebody should’ve seen it sooner.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning around. “But remember, Jupiter was hit back in ’09 by a comet so big that it left an impact scar in the Jovian atmosphere the size of the Pacific Ocean… and no one knew a thing about it until after it had happened. What’s more… it was only an amateur astronomer who spotted the scar.”

“How big was the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs?” she asked. “The one that hit the Yucatan.”

“The Chicxulub bolide was nearly six miles across. It hit with an equivalent force of ten teratons of TNT and left a crater a hundred miles wide. This sucker’s only a third the same mass but it’s likely moving much faster.”

“Jesus,” she whispered. “Have you done the math on damage probabilities? Are we going out completely?”

He shrugged. “It’s hard to quantify, but the sun will be obscured for at least of couple years, so you’re talking about twenty-four months of freezing temperatures even at the equator… and with the ensuing famine? Mankind will likely survive it, but only barely. So at the very best, we’re starting over.”

“At least it’s hitting land and not water, less acid in the atmosphere. There’s no time left for anything, is there? Christ, Marty, I never even got married.”

“That’s not my fault,” he said, smiling.

She couldn’t help grinning back. “God knows.”

She closed the file and stared off into space, thinking through his calculations. “No chance your observations are off?”

He shook his head with a frown. “Believe me, I’ve been over it a thousand times.”

“You haven’t told NASA?”

“Not yet, but I’m not sure it matters. It’s right on top of us; even if they slam a nuke right into it, the damn thing’s coming at us so fast it won’t even blink. This is an M-class. Mostly iron, so it won’t fragment much.”

“Why do you suppose it’s moving so fast?”

“Well, half a billion years gives it plenty of time to slingshot around planets, stars, black holes…”

“Any chance Jupiter’s gravity will pull it off course?”

“None. It’s coming in at such a high cosine angle, Jupiter’s gravity won’t factor. Not even close.”

She sighed. “Okay. How about I walk you over to JPL?” She got up and gave him the file. “Linda Creasey’s a muckety-muck over there now.”

“I know. I was headed to her next.”

“So why even come to me? You knew there was nothing wrong with your math.”

Marty held her gaze. “You know why, Sue.”

“Still carrying that torch for me after all this time?” she said, slightly incredulous, but then softening. “It’s very sweet, Marty, but you should have put it down by now and found someone else.”

“Bollocks,” he said with a smile. “I hardly ever leave the observatory. I’m a total egghead. And besides…” He shrugged again, suddenly self-conscious.

“I’m listening.”

“Well, it’s selfish, I know, but I was hoping we could spend some time together these last few months… as friends.”

“And then what?” she said quietly. “Imagine we survive the impact and the subsequent firestorm.”

“I could take care of you,” he offered, his voice thickening. “I could make sure you don’t suffer.”

Susan hadn’t had time yet to think that far into it. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you in the hall.”

“That’s all right. I’m sorry for grabbing you. I wasn’t thinking.”

She shook her head. “No, I overreacted. I was attacked a year ago. Raped, actually. There’s no way you could’ve… I’ve been jumpy as hell ever since.”

“I’m sorry,” he croaked, staggered by the news and hard-pressed to prevent it from showing on his face.

“He grabbed me from behind,” she went on. “Pulled me down between some parked cars… had a knife. I’ve never told a soul.” She looked him in the eyes then. “I can’t believe how easily I just shared that.”

Marty wasn’t sure what to say. All he knew was that he wanted to hold her. “Anything you ever need, Sue, I’ll be there.”

She felt strangely touched by his devotion. “Can you promise you won’t let it happen again? After things get bad…”

“I promise, Sue. I’ll take care of us both if it gets to that point.”

“Thank you,” she said, amazed at how intimate the conversation had quickly become. “I’m not sure I could… in any event.” She shook her head and forced a smile. “You know what?” she said, suddenly hopeful. “I’m so scared now that if you told me you made this all up just to get in my pants, I’d be so relieved I wouldn’t even be mad.”

He smiled sadly. “You know me, Sue. I’m not nearly clever enough to think up a scheme like that.”

She touched his arm. “Let’s go see Linda.”

“Is she still her sweet self?”

Susan laughed. “Even sweeter.”

When Linda Creasey walked into Conference Room 2B on the far side of campus at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she was more than a little surprised to see Marty Chittenden sitting at the table beside Susan Denton. “Oh,” she said, noticeably less than pleased. “Hello, Martin. I wasn’t told you were here. It’s been a while.”

“A few years.”

“I read your piece last year in Astronomy Today,” she replied. “It wasn’t bad… for supposition.” She was an attractive yet somehow unpleasant-looking woman with a slender face and straight black hair that stopped at the base of her neck. “So what can I do for the two of you?”

Marty noted the increased air of superiority about her and sat forward in his chair. “I’m sorry to drop in unannounced, but I’ve got something very important to show you.”

“Oh?” Linda said, taking a seat at the table. “What do you have?”

He pushed the red file folder over to her. She flipped it open and began to read. As she scanned the pages, her features visibly tightened. When she was finished, she closed the file and stared straight at Marty.

“How many others have seen this?”

At first Marty thought she was already plotting to steal his thunder, but there was a look about her that changed his mind, something more sinister. “No one,” he replied cautiously.

“You’re sure?”

“The only other person I’ve told is Susan.”

“Well, these findings are huge,” she said. “If accurate. What are your intentions?”

“To get the word out,” he said. “People need to know so they can prepare.”

“Of course,” she said. “Let me make a few calls.” She stood, keeping the file. “May I take this?”

“Just remember where you got it.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Martin.” She turned and quickly disappeared from the room.

Marty stared suspiciously after her. “What do you make of that?”

“Gut reaction? I think she already knew.”

“Which means the government has to know, right?”

“Yep.” Susan got up from the table and went to the door, peering down the hall. “This may create a problem for them.”

“They’re trying to keep it quiet,” he realized. “Avoid mass panic.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Get the hell out of here,” she said. “I’ll call you later—if I can.”

“What are you talking about?” he said, rising.

“Think about it. How else could they keep this quiet? I mean it’s possible you’re the only astronomer to have spotted this, but what if you’re not? What if there are others and they’ve got them locked up someplace?”

“That’s a little paranoid, don’t you think?”

“Give me your cell number and get out of here. I’m serious.”

“What? But what about you?” he said, giving her his card.

“After you go public with it, they’ll have to release me, won’t they?”

“But she’s got my file,” he said. “And if you’re right, they’ll get to Mesa Station long before I do and seize my computers.”

“True, but you can still tell someone where to look for this thing.”

“Wait a second,” he said, feeling suddenly silly. “Are you sure about this?”

“Linda’s always been a cold fish, Marty, but I’ve never seen her so calculated. Look, if you won’t leave the building, then go wait in the ladies’ room and stay there until I come get you.”

“All right,” he said, “but I’m going to feel pretty stupid if we’re making a big deal over nothing.” He left, entered an empty ladies’ room just up the hall and slipped into a stall to wait.

Barely ten minutes later two men in dark suits appeared in the doorway of the conference room. “Are you Susan Denton?” the taller of the two asked.

“Yes,” she said, her stomach fluttering. “Who are you?”

“Where is Martin Chittenden?”

“He had to step out. Who are you?”

“Check the men’s room,” the man said to his partner. “I’m Special Agent Paulis of the United States Secret Service.” He presented his credentials. “Where did Mr. Chittenden say he was going?”

When she didn’t answer, he repeated the question.

“I don’t know.”

The second agent reappeared, shook his head.

“Ms. Denton? I would strongly suggest that you answer my question.”

“He got suspicious and left,” she said, standing up. “Looks like he had good reason too.”

Paulis took out his Nextel and pressed a button. “Looks like Chittenden smelled a rat and took off,” he announced. “He’s probably still on campus… Creasey says he’s wearing jeans and a green shirt with short sleeves… and he’s got rust-colored hair.”

He put the phone back into his pocket. “Ms. Denton, I’m afraid I must ask you to come with us.”

“Under whose authority?”

“The President of the United States,” he said. “It’s a matter of national security.”

“I want to speak to Linda Creasey.”

“In due time, but for now you’ll have to come with us.”

“This is unconstitutional!” she said louder than necessary as they walked her past the ladies’ room door. “Martin’s done nothing wrong.”

Barely breathing, Marty waited until he was sure they were gone, then quickly fled the building. He was threading his way through the lot to his rental car when he noticed two men in suits coming toward him. He bolted for the car and jumped in, but by the time he got it running, both agents were there.

“Get out of the car, Chittenden!” Paulis ordered, moving around to the driver side door, his partner remaining behind the car to prevent Marty from backing out.

Marty ignored the man’s increasingly strident orders and slowly eased the car back out of the space. He knew he was taking a huge risk, but what the hell, the world was doomed anyhow.

Paulis produced a collapsible baton, used it to smash out Marty’s window and lunged for the ignition key. Marty panicked and jabbed his finger into the man’s eye. The agent swore and pulled back as Marty stomped on the accelerator. The car jumped back, and a pair of electrodes, fired from the second agent’s Taser, bounced off the windshield. Marty hit the brakes, cut the wheel, shifted into drive and sped off.

Several minutes later, as he joined the traffic moving west, he had regained his composure and was mentally running through a list of astronomers he could call to help him, though now he wasn’t entirely sure that was the best course of action. Was there any point in taking what he knew to the public? It would throw the nation into chaos, and in the end, there wasn’t much most people could do to save themselves. By the time he reached the highway, however, he had made a decision. Freedom could be a dangerous thing, but the United States was still a democracy, and Americans reserved the right to control their own destiny to the very end.

As he pondered his next move, he knew he couldn’t go back to his home or to Mesa Station. The airport was equally out of the question. The only thing he could think to do was ditch this car and rent another one along the way, buying himself some much needed time to get out of California. He knew of a retired, very sharp astronomer living in Idaho who would likely find this asteroid of particular interest, but she was up in her years and he had never actually made her acquaintance.

He thought about the agent then, and wondered if he had done any real damage to the man’s eye. He hoped not, but he had broken no laws and was perfectly within his rights to defend himself. Just the same, he hoped he would never cross paths with the guy again.

Three

Forrest swung his green surplus Humvee into the truck stop and drove straight up to the fuel pumps. After he’d stuck the nozzle into the fuel port, he went inside to pick up some chips and beer for the guys back at the silo. They had all been working like mules turning the old military installation into an acceptable living environment. There was a lot of cleaning and painting left to do yet, but if worse came to worst, much of that could be done after they’d sealed themselves inside.

The most critical elements had to be dealt with first. They still needed to fill the old rocket propellant tanks with diesel oil to run the generators, and there was a lot of food yet to be bought and transported to the site. The ventilation intakes still had to be hardened against sabotage, and the lift elevator had jammed the night before. These repairs and supplies were going to be expensive and time-consuming, and Forrest expected to work up to the very last couple of days. All five of the men had taken out second mortgages on their homes and were in the process of maxing out the many credit cards they had picked up lately. They laughed about the huge amount of debt they would all have hanging over their heads if, by some miracle, NASA did manage to stop the asteroid. They knew this was the largest part of why the government had chosen to keep the rock a secret—if everyone took the measures they themselves were taking, the economy would almost certainly implode and total chaos would reign.

Forrest pondered this, along with many other grim realities, as he tugged a case of beer from the bottom shelf of the cooler. When he turned around he was abruptly shaken from these dreary reveries by the sight of a particularly beautiful woman standing in the potato chip aisle. She was slender, with bedroom eyes and long auburn hair full of lazy, natural curls. Wearing a brown halter top, shorts, and sandals, she had a fresh, lithe look about her.

“These are pretty good,” he said, reaching to grab two bags of kettle-cooked potato chips.

She stole a glance at him. “Too much trans fat.”

“You know, that’s what I keep telling those guys,” he said. “Way too much trans fat.” He was looking directly at her now and smiling, the chips the furthest thing from his mind. “I’m Jack.”

A slightly bemused smile spread across her face. “Does this often work for you, Jack?”

He chuckled. “Truthfully, I’m a little out of practice.”

“I can see that,” she said dryly.

“Okay,” he said, feeling silly. “Safe travels.”

“You too,” she said, returning her attention to the task at hand. She heard him muttering to himself as he walked away—My kingdom for some time!—and couldn’t help chuckling.

He stepped up to the counter and allowed the clerk to ring up the chips and beer. “How much do I owe you on pump nine?”

“It shut off at a dollar twelve,” the clerk said. “You pretty much gotta hold the handle the whole time with those pumps. They’re touchy.”

“All right,” Forrest said. “I’ll pay for this stuff and come back after I fill up.”

He was still waiting for the tank to fill when the woman came out with a bag in her hand and walked across the lot toward her car. He watched her for a moment then trotted off after her, unable to help himself.

“Excuse me! Miss?”

She turned as she was about to put her key into the door, looking annoyed. “I’ve got a boyfriend.”

“Never doubted it for a second,” he said, more businesslike now, taking a pen from this pocket and writing his cell number down on the potato chip receipt. “Keep this number for a few months. I know this sounds like another stupid line,” he admitted, “but you may hear something in the news soon, something that frightens you. If you do, I might be able to help.”

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “I knew there was something odd about you. What am I supposed to hear that’ll frighten me into calling a total stranger?”

“If I told you, you’d never believe me. And that’s the truth. Just let the number float around the bottom of your purse. Throw it away in a few months. It can’t hurt anything.”

“How will I know if I’m hearing the right thing? I don’t scare very easily.”

She wasn’t taking him seriously, but he didn’t seem at all dangerous to her, and he was the most intriguing person she’d run into between Nebraska and South Carolina, where she’d been visiting her sister.

“Let me put it this way,” he said. “If you have even the slightest doubt about it… that’s not it.”

She put the slip of paper into her purse. “Thanks… I guess.”

“Drive careful,” he said, and headed back to the Humvee.

Finding that the pump had shut off again, he mumbled an obscenity as he grabbed the handle and squeezed the trigger mechanism. He was watching the digits add up when the woman came walking over.

“Elizabeth never really said that, you know… ‘Time. Time. My kingdom for some time.’”

He smiled at her, feeling butterflies. “Well then she should have.”

“I know I’ve played right into your hands on this, but I need you to tell me what it is… this scary thing.”

“Honestly, you won’t believe me.”

After considering the situation for a moment, she took the receipt from her purse and stuck it under the wiper blade of the Humvee. “I’m over it,” she said, and turned to walk away.

“It’s an asteroid,” he blurted.

She turned back around. “A what?”

“A rogue asteroid. It’s two miles wide and it’s on a collision course with North America.”

“You were right,” she said, her eyes wide. “I don’t believe you. Goodbye.”

“In eighty-seven days it’s going to slam into us somewhere between the Mexican border and the Yukon Territory at a hundred and ten thousand miles an hour.”

She paused and stood looking at him.

“I’m told the resultant explosion and ensuing firestorm will kill every living creature aboveground out to a radius of eight or nine hundred miles. After that the sun’s going to be obscured from the sky for an awfully long time.” He plucked the number from under the blade and offered it back to her.

“Not that I believe you,” she said, sticking the paper into her pocket, “but if this were true, why would I bother to call you about it?”

“My friends and I are preparing a shelter, a good one, and were hoping to save fifty people or so, mostly women and children.”

“And why would I be so lucky?”

He shrugged. “Look in the mirror.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Hey, I know how that sounds, but you asked.”

She studied him for the slightest hint of guile. “Well, you’re either a damn good liar, or you’re crazy enough to believe what you’re saying.”

“I’m going in to pay for my fuel,” he said. “If you’re still here when I get back, maybe we can talk some more.”

When Forrest returned, the woman was back across the lot leaning against her car. He drove over and parked beside her. Getting out, he sat on the hood, popping the top from a beer bottle with a pocketknife.

The woman climbed up onto the hood and sat looking at him. “I’m normally a level-headed, common-sensical person. So why the hell should I believe you?”

“Beer?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Maybe it’s because a good friend of mine at the Pentagon broke about twenty different federal laws telling me what I just told you. Or maybe I just have an honest face,” he added with a grin.

She couldn’t help returning it, trusting him half for real and half for the fun of it. “Aren’t they doing anything about it?”

“You’ve heard about those two high-tech satellites NASA’s planning to launch into space?”

“I don’t watch much television, but I’ll take your word for it.”

“The rockets are actually ICBMs, modified to look the part, but they’re carrying nuclear payloads, not satellites.”

“So they’re going to blow it up?”

“The first warhead will try to blow it off course as it goes by,” he said. “When that doesn’t work, they’ll park the second one in front of it and allow the asteroid to slam into it. Which isn’t going to work either because it’s coming too goddamn fast.”

“Won’t they ever tell us?”

“I expect it to leak, probably sooner than later.” He took a drink from the beer. “But so far they’ve managed to keep it secret.”

“And you’re not lying to me?” she said. “You’re not crazy?”

“Oh, well, I am a little crazy but I’m not lying.”

“How’d you get that scar on your chin?”

“Rifle butt.”

“Did it hurt?”

“I don’t know. I was out cold.”

She chuckled.

“If my buddy Wayne hadn’t shot the guy off of me, I’d be dead.”

“This really isn’t funny, is it?” she said. “Assuming you’re telling the truth, I mean.”

“It’s frightening as hell, if you ask me,” he said, “but what good’s pissing down our leg gonna do?”

“Not much. Where’s this supposed shelter of yours? How big is it?”

“That’s a secret. But it’s not too far away and it’s big enough.” He explained to her how long they would have to live underground and why, and then he told her about his friends and some of the people who would be joining them. “We’re not survival nuts. We’re just five guys trying to save some extra people while we’re busy saving our own asses.”

“Have you given any thought to the psychological effects of living underground for eighteen months?” she asked. “I hope you’ve added a psychiatrist to the mix.”

Forrest had never even considered it. “Damn, that’s probably a good idea.”

“Suppose you’re telling the truth and I decide to take you up on your offer. Can I bring my boyfriend? Or do I belong to you in this little fantasy of yours?”

He laughed, liking her. “You sound like someone else I know. Yeah, you can bring him. So long as he’s not prone to violence.”

“What about our parents?”

He shook his head.

“Just like that?”

“I’m sorry but there’s—”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “I get it. What you’re saying makes perfect sense. I’m just seeing how deeply you’ve thought into this.”

He looked at her. “What do you do? Are you a psychiatrist?”

“No, that’s my boyfriend. I’m a sociologist,” she said. “What you’re proposing is really kind of fascinating. We discussed similar types of hypotheticals in school.” She hopped down from the hood and shook her hair out with her hands, instinctively aware of how that would affect him and not minding. “I sure hope you’re lying, but I’ll hold onto your number.”

“I’m Jack, by the way.”

“It’s been interesting, Jack.” She walked around to the other side of her car.

“No name?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you my name if we ever meet up again. How’s that? Until then you’re just some nut I ran into at the truck stop.”

“Safe journey, beautiful lady.”

“You too, Jack.” She paused before getting into the car. “It’s one of those old missile silos they’ve put up for sale out here, isn’t it?”

He smiled. “I made it all up.”

“Probably,” she said.

He caught a glimpse of her license plate as she drove off: VERNICA. “Veronica,” he said, jumping down from the hood. “That works.”

Four

Even in the dark Marty Chittenden could see the two agents in the gray sedan down the street from the home of Ester Thorn. He suspected they had probably tapped into her phone as well, so he was glad he hadn’t called ahead. He had never met Mrs. Thorn, but he knew she had once been a highly respected astronomer at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii. And he suspected the Secret Service had found her textbook on heavenly bodies in his office.

He took a brand new pay-as-you-go phone from his pocket and dialed Susan Denton’s number, realizing he was taking a risk.

“Hello?” she answered.

“Hey, it’s me,” he said, relieved to hear her voice. “You okay?”

“Marty, where are you? You have to come back.”

“No can do, Sue. I only called to make sure you were okay.”

“I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement,” she said. “Linda said you’ll get the same deal if you come back.”

He snorted. “Sure, I will. Listen, I gotta go. They might be listening. Talk to you soon.”

“But Marty—”

He tucked it back into his pocket and moved off through the shadows. Creeping along between the houses, he made his way through several backyards and over fences. In the night, no one noticed him except for a dog barking in a kennel. Arriving at Ester’s back porch, he waited several moments to be sure no one was watching, then knocked at the door. A short time later the back porch light came on and Ester peered out the window. She was of medium height and wore her long gray hair in a single braid that came over her shoulder. Her grayish eyes were keen and alert, just like the photo on the back cover of her book, only older.

“Who the hell are you?” she said.

“My name is Martin Chittenden. I’m an astronomer with the Mesa Station Observatory in Flagstaff. I’m here because I need your help. I know you from your college textbook—Heavenly Bodies and Their Origins.”

Ester Thorn opened the inside door and stood leaning on her black lacquered cane. She looked him over and said, “Why the hell are you at my back door?”

“Because I don’t want anyone to see me,” he said. “Mrs. Thorn, I need to talk to you about an NEO that’s going to collide with the Earth in eighty-six days.”

“An NEO?” she said, visibly confused. “Why don’t you want anyone to see you?”

“Because the government is trying to keep it a secret. Mrs. Thorn, if you’ll just give me five minutes of your time, I can explain.”

After deciding that Marty looked a little too soft to be a dangerous criminal, Ester unlocked the storm door and let him in. “You try anything, boy, and I’ll crack you over the head with this thing.” She gestured with the cane.

“No ma’am. I’m only here for your help. Honest.”

She led him into the kitchen, where they sat at the table. Ester put on her glasses and took a hard look at him in the light. “Boy, you need some sun.”

“Well, I burn easily,” he said. “And I’m usually asleep during the day.”

“Mm-hm. I remember those days well enough.” She sat back in her chair with her right hand propped on the cane. “I prefer sleeping nights now. It’s better for my constitution.”

“I’m sure it is,” he said.

“Is Ben Stafford still down there at Mesa Station?”

Marty shook his head. “I’ve never heard that name. He must’ve left before I was hired.”

“No, he didn’t,” she admitted. “I made him up.”

Marty smiled.

“What about Ben Gardner?”

“Now that’s a name I remember,” he said. “He retired a year before I came on.”

“So you drove all the way to Idaho just to see little old me, eh?”

“I sure did.”

“Well, I don’t know whether I can help you,” she said. “There have been so many discoveries since I retired, I’m not sure I even speak the language these days.”

“I’m sure you speak the language as well as ever, Mrs. Thorn. I’ve—”

“Call me Ester. Will Thorn died twenty-five years ago.”

“Okay, Ester,” he said, smiling. “So this might be a little hard to believe, but two months ago I spotted an asteroid that has turned out to be on a collision course with Earth. It’s—”

“Which class?”

“M-class, mostly iron.” He was glad she was still sharp-witted. “And after making sure that it was definitely going to hit us, I took my—”

“How big is it?”

“Three point two kilometers across at its widest point,” he said patiently. “And it’s tumbling on three different axes.”

“All three, eh? It must’ve hit something pretty hard,” she muttered. “When did you say it was due?”

“It’s due to hit North America in eighty-six days.”

“Velocity?”

“It’s fast,” he said. “Thirty miles a second.”

Ester made a face. “That’s pretty fast for an asteroid,” she said thoughtfully. “It can’t be coming from the belt.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s coming from the high north, almost straight down from the pole, not quite, but close.”

“So it’s coming from the Great Beyond, then,” she said.

“I believe so,” he said, recalling the term Great Beyond from her book.

“I’m not surprised so few have seen it, nor that the government wants to keep it a secret. How do you know they know?”

“Because there are two agents parked up the block watching your house.”

Ester looked more taken aback over that than she had over the asteroid. “You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. I took my findings over to JPL, and it turned out they already knew. Now they want to keep me quiet.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Advice.”

“On what?”

“On how to take it public. The people have a right to know.”

She looked at him. “Boy, do you know how stupid the people are?”

“I suppose I do, but they deserve a chance, don’t they? I know it’s going to create chaos, but chaos is inevitable. At least if the world is told beforehand, some people will be able to prepare.”

“Oh, well, some people are preparing. You can safely believe that. The wealthiest passengers always get first crack at the lifeboats.”

“I guess that’s the part I don’t like,” he said. “The passengers in steerage deserve the same chance.”

Ester smiled. “You do know that it won’t much matter, don’t you? Mankind is only barely going to survive this—and only the most barbaric of us at that. It’s going to be a lot like starting over from the Bronze Age… only much less civilized.”

“But if we can get word out now,” he said in earnest, “there are people out there with the resources to manage civilized attempts.”

“And they’ll be hunted by the barbarians,” Ester persisted. “But you’re right. A few pockets of civilized people might make it through if they’re able to find a way to feed and defend themselves.”

Marty grimaced. He had conjured a number of repugnant scenarios in his imagination over the past few weeks, but hadn’t yet thought in terms of people hunting people.

“Do you know anyone we can go to?” he asked. “Someone with access to a telescope who can verify my findings and take them to the media? All of my personal colleagues are being watched.”

“I know one or two old-timers still in the business, but that’s not really the problem. The problem is how do I contact them without those government boys knowing about it? I’m an old woman, you know. If they see me suddenly driving off to the airport, they’re going to know something is cooking.”

“And they’re probably tapped into your phone so you can’t call anyone either. We need to think of a way to make them lose interest in you.”

“Well, that’s easy. Get caught.”

“Get caught?” Marty asked doubtfully.

“Sure. After they’ve got you, they’ll forget all about me, and I’ll be able to go wherever I need to without them knowing anything at all.”

“I wonder if they’d take me back to JPL or stick me in some secret government prison.”

“Regardless,” Ester said, “after the asteroid goes public, there won’t be any reason for them to hold you.”

“So you’ll do it, then? If I let them catch me, you’ll contact someone who can verify the story and take it to the media?”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a trip. And if you’re right about this old rogue, it sounds like it might be now or never.”

“So then we have to figure out a way for you to know when I’ve been caught. I obviously can’t just walk up to their car out there and turn myself in.”

“It’s almost that simple, though,” she said. “I assume you’ve got a car around here someplace?”

Marty nodded.

She said, “Well, pull up to the curb across the street there and get out like you don’t have a care in the world. I’m sure they’ll put the old habeas grabbus on you before you can even make it to my front door.”

Twenty minutes later Marty drove past the Secret Service men and pulled to the curb in front of Ester’s house. He shut off the engine and stole a glance in the rearview mirror. Summoning his courage, he got out and started across the street. A few seconds later he heard a pair of car doors open and shut and knew they were coming.

“Chittenden!” a man said. “United States Secret Service. Stop where you are!”

Marty turned to see the same two agents he had escaped from back at JPL marching toward him. He spun and bolted, but didn’t make it more than a couple of steps before he felt a sharp sting between his shoulder blades and every muscle in his body was seized by a great electrical shock.

He crashed to the street, jerking spasmodically about on the asphalt. He was vaguely aware that he was screaming but couldn’t control that either, and after eighteen agonizing seconds he lay on his face with drool running from the corner of his mouth. He had been Tasered and pissed his pants.

“Remember me, dickhead?” Agent Paulis said, kicking his foot. “I’m the guy you jabbed in the fucking eye.” Paulis turned to his partner. “Juice him again, Bruce. He’s trying to escape.”

Agent Bruce pulled the trigger and subjected Marty to another eighteen agonizing seconds of electric shock. When it was finally over, Paulis knelt beside him on the walk and looked him in the face. “How do you like me now?”

Marty mumbled something unintelligible as the two men cuffed his hands behind his back and hauled him to his feet.

“You know, you might as well have drawn us a map,” Paulis said they dragged him off to the car. “You left the old lady’s book sitting right out on your desk. For a scientist, you’re pretty fucking stupid.”

Ester peered through the curtains and watched as they drove away. After she was fairly certain they wouldn’t be coming back for her, she went into the bedroom and packed a small bag, which she took into the garage and put into the backseat of her car. Then she went upstairs to bed, wondering if anybody now working at the Gemini Observatory would even remember her.

Five

Veronica sat up in bed and turned on the light. It was two o’clock in the morning. “Michael, wake up.”

Her boyfriend rolled over and squinted against the lamp light. “What’s wrong?”

“I need to talk to you about something.”

He twisted onto his side. “Okay,” he said sleepily.

“On the way back from Crissy’s I met this guy at a truck stop in Nebraska,” she said. “And he… well, long story short, he told me that an asteroid is going to hit the Earth in like eighty days or something and that he and some friends of his are going to try to save a bunch of women and children. I think they may’ve bought one of those old missile silos the government’s been selling.”

Michael’s face split into a grin. “Let me guess, he invited you to help him repopulate the Earth.”

“Something like that, yeah.”

He chuckled and rolled back over. “That story could have waited until breakfast. The man is obviously a paranoid delusional.”

She sat looking at him, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She wasn’t particularly close to her sister, but Michael had a large extended family and they were very close.

“You don’t want to hear what else he said?”

“Not particularly,” he mumbled. “I talk to crazy people all day, honey.”

“He was very convincing.”

“Paranoids often are.”

“He said that I could only bring you. No one else. Which means you’d have to leave your family.”

He turned back over. “Are you telling me you’re actually taking this goof seriously? Veronica, tell me you’re not.”

She sat looking at him, unblinking.

“Veronica, come on.”

“He said he had a friend at the Pentagon who broke a bunch of laws even telling him about it.”

“Now, hold on a second,” he said, popping himself up on an elbow. “Since when do you suffer fools so lightly?”

“I like to think I never do.”

“Then what’s different about this one?”

She shrugged. “Like I said, he was very convincing.”

Her body language was such that Michael had a sudden realization. “You were attracted to him.” His tone was not quite accusatory.

“I wouldn’t say that. But there was a very definite confidence about him.”

“Which is another way of saying what I just said.”

“I don’t think that’s fair, Michael. And so what if I was? You see women all the time you’re attracted to.”

“But it’s not the same,” he countered. “Men are chemically predisposed to chase after the opposite sex. For women it’s different, it’s cognitive.”

“Oh, I’m so tired of that bullshit argument! Every time I catch you looking at another woman, it’s the same crap.”

He frowned, feeling only slightly guilty for not being able to help himself. “All I’m saying is that you were affected on an intellectual level.”

“And don’t you dare psychoanalyze me. I hate it when you do that.”

He sighed and lay back, looking at the ceiling. “So have you talked to him since?”

“No. Are you going to listen to the story or not?”

He propped himself back up and smiled at her. “I’m all ears.”

When she was finished, he took her hand and held it. “You’re telling me you honestly believed all that?”

“I’m telling you that he was very convincing, and I don’t appreciate being patronized.”

“I’m not patronizing you. How’s this… In the morning we’ll Google the number and see what comes up.”

“I’ve already done that, as a matter of fact, and nothing came up on that specific number, but I did discover that it’s the same exact area code and prefix as the goddamn Pentagon.”

A shadow crossed his brow. “Okay, that’s odd,” he admitted, “but it doesn’t mean that’s really his number.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” she said, rolling out of bed.

“Honey, it’s two A.M.”

“He won’t care if he’s the sort of guy I read him to be,” she said. “And if he was lying, so what if I wake him up?”

“But suppose you get the Pentagon?”

“Oops, wrong number!”

She fished the receipt from her purse and punched the number into her cell phone.

Then she pressed the send button and put the phone on speaker so Michael could hear.

“Hello!” Forrest answered in a shout. There was some sort of drill motor grinding away in the background.

“Is this Jack?” she asked, almost ashamed of the relief she’d felt upon hearing his voice.

“Yeah, who’s speaking?”

“It’s the woman from the truck stop.”

“Veronica?”

“Yeah. How did you— Oh, you must’ve seen my plate.”

“Hey, Linus,” Forrest said to someone in the background. “Shut that fucking thing off a minute, I can’t hear this girl. It sounds like the meteor may have gone public. Okay, Veronica, go ahead. Have they gone public already?”

She gave Michael a gotcha look, and he sat up a little straighter in bed. “No, Jack. No, they haven’t gone public. At least not that I know of.”

“Is something wrong, then?”

“Well, sort of,” she replied. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to talk with Michael, my boyfriend. He doesn’t believe your story.”

Forrest laughed out loud. “Did you really expect him to? Put me on speaker.”

“You already are.”

“Okay, great. Mike, you there, man?”

“Yeah,” Michael said.

“Listen, I’m sorry. The story was bullshit. I was just trying to get in her pants. You know how guys are.”

“Yeah, I know how they are,” Michael muttered.

Veronica turned off the speaker and put the phone to her ear. “You son of a bitch! You tell him what you told me, goddamnit! Don’t make me look like an idiot!”

“Am I still on speaker?”

“No!”

“Veronica, listen to me.” She sat in bed and leaned over so Michael could listen in. “Put yourself in his situation. The story’s going to break soon enough. When it does, call me back.”

“What was that drilling sound when you first answered?” she asked, hoping to garner some more telling information.

“Oh, that… well, we’re busy with lots of arts and crafts right now.” They could hear laughter in the background. “Listen, Veronica, I gotta go. Call me if you hear something.”

“But wait!” she said. “What if it never goes public? What then?”

“Then I was obviously lying to you.”

“No! I’m sorry but you’ve all but convinced me, so you’re going to have to live up to the offer.”

Michael gave her a look.

She could hear the sound of Forrest’s Zippo lighter clicking open and then closed as he lit a cigarette.

“Okay,” he said. “Tell you what. If it never goes public, I’ll call you back at this number two days before the event, how’s that?”

“Do you promise?”

“What the hell would a promise mean, Veronica? You don’t even know me. Now try and get some sleep.”

Forrest broke the connection.

“See?” she said, throwing the phone down between them in the counterpane. “See what I was talking about? Does he sound remotely nuts to you?”

Michael sat looking at her, realizing with mixed emotions that she had already made some kind of a connection with this mysterious Jack, who very definitely had a certain unmistakable je ne sais quoi about him even over the phone. “I’ll admit that he seems to believe what he’s saying. Beyond that… all we can do is wait and see.”

“What do you think they were drilling?” she wondered, settling beneath the blankets. “You have to admit it’s pretty late at night to be up working, and it’s an hour later in Nebraska.”

He chuckled as he reached across her to turn off the lamp. “For all we know, Ronny, the guy was drilling his way out of a prison cell in Guatemala.”

Six

After an exhausting round trip to northern Montana to visit his estranged wife, Monica, Forrest arrived back at the silo a day later, tense and strung out on amphetamines. He pulled up to a modest two-story house that had once been used to house Air Force personnel during the Cold War. The house had been built over the top of the silo entrance to better disguise it from Soviet satellites.

Ulrich stood on the porch of the house watching as a giant black German shepherd jumped out of the Humvee and ran across the yard to pee on a fifty gallon drum of diesel oil that was yet to be taken below.

“We running a kennel service now?”

Forrest gave no indication he’d heard Ulrich’s dig as he went about unloading the back of the Hummer, stacking fifty-foot bundles of NM-B type wire and five-gallon buckets of latex paint neatly off to the side. Ulrich came down the stairs and over to the truck.

“You expecting burglars or something? That’s another mouth to feed.”

Forrest stopped and looked at him in the light of the cab. “Are you intentionally being an asshole or do you really not recognize him?”

Ulrich turned for another look at the German shepherd. “You’ve been all the way to Montana and back? Jesus, you must’ve driven nonstop both ways.”

“Yeah, well, Benzedrine’s a wonderful thing,” Forrest muttered, grabbing up two buckets of paint as if they weighed little more than a pair of barracks bags and heading for the house.

Because of his prosthetic foot, Ulrich grabbed a single bucket and followed him. They set the buckets down in the hall and went into the kitchen, where Forrest took a couple of beers from the fridge, knocking the caps off against the edge of the counter and handing one to Ulrich.

Forrest gestured at the dog with the bottle. “He eats a fifty-pound bag of dog food a month.” He took a pull from the beer. “So we’ll need at least twenty-four bags. And be sure to get Purina. Don’t buy any of that generic shit. And get a bunch of those Milk Bones too. Fifty boxes or so.”

“That’s like six hundred pounds of dog shit somebody’s gonna have to scoop up, and it sure as hell won’t be me,” Ulrich said.

“Nobody’s asking you to,” Forrest replied testily.

Ulrich glanced over his shoulder as the dog trotted through the house sniffing everything in sight. “How did you talk Monica into giving him up?”

“I didn’t talk her into anything. She asked me if I wanted to save my son’s dog and I said yes. Now, are you gonna pick up the food or do I have to go get it myself?”

Linus Danzig stepped into the doorway and stood looking at the wolflike dog trotting around the kitchen. He was a big country boy in his late twenties, wearing nothing but a pair of purple underwear.

“Fuck are you made up for?” Forrest asked irritably.

Danzig shook his head and disappeared back down the hall, realizing Forrest was in one of his moods.

Ulrich drank deeply from the beer and had a seat. “Wanna tell me about it?” He put his feet up on the table.

“Nothin’ to tell,” Forrest said, ripping the cellophane from a brand new pack of Camels. “She don’t wanna live underground and she ain’t gonna, but then I already knew that.” He smacked a cigarette from the pack, lit it with the Zippo from his pocket and stood leaning against the sink staring at the floor.

“I can help you kidnap her,” Ulrich said quietly.

Forrest looked at him, his eyes welling with tears. “I’d never do that to her. She’d kill herself belowground the first chance she got. Hell, if it wasn’t for her horses, she’d have done it by now.”

Ulrich sighed and rocked back, the wooden chair creaking beneath the strain. “There’s a lot that’s unsaid, Jack, but you know I think the world of that woman.”

Forrest nodded, drawing pensively from the cigarette. “She’s just so… full of anger, Wayne. She never shows it but it’s there, right below the surface… Christ, that woman’s angry.”

“And she has every right. You guys lost your son. And who knows? Maybe if I hadn’t talked you into that last mission—”

Forrest held up a finger, banishing the thought. “You never talked me into anything I didn’t wanna do. Monica knows that. She’s no more angry with you than she is me. Who she’s really pissed at is him.” He pointed up at the ceiling.

Ulrich looked at his boots. “Wanna cash it in?” he said suddenly. “We can give the silo to the trio and go to Montana. Erin will agree to it, Taylor too probably. Hell, those women were all thick as thieves at one time… and they miss Monica.”

Forrest smiled wanly at his friend, knowing the offer was genuine. “Even if Monica wanted the company—which she doesn’t—there’s no way I’m letting any of your wives die if I don’t have to. One’s enough.” He crushed out the cigarette in the sink. “I’m gonna go bring the rest of that shit in. I picked up some new office chairs too, by the way, since that request seems to have gone in one ear and out the other.”

“Yeah, I don’t have enough shit to buy without having to worry about your creature comforts.”

“And there’s a lot of assembly required,” Forrest added with a chuckle, “so get the Dynamic Duo to put ’em together in the morning.” He took Laddie outside with him, and the moment he was gone, Danzig reappeared in the kitchen doorway with Oscar Vasquez. Marcus Kane was asleep in the silo below.

“Is he okay?” Danzig asked.

Ulrich tipped his beer and looked at them. “You know who’s gonna have to police up all that dog shit, don’t you? He sure as hell isn’t gonna do it.”

Vasquez grinned. “And that dog’s shit is gonna be biiig, vato.”

Danzig laughed, both of them cracking up at the look appearing on Ulrich’s face.

“Since you two dickheads are up,” he said, dropping his feet to the floor, “we just got some new office chairs that need—”

Both Danzig and Vasquez vanished instantly.

“That’s what I thought!” he called after them, taking another swig and muttering to himself. “Just what we need, the lingering odor of dog shit in those tunnels.”

Seven

Harold Shipman came down the hall outside of his office at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to find Ester Thorn seated in a chair against the wall, her hand propped on her cane, overnight bag on the floor beside her. “Ester?” he said. “My God, what a surprise! How have you been?”

Ester took his hand and used her cane to push herself to her feet. “I’ve been well enough,” she said grimly, tired from her long flight over the Pacific. “But I’m afraid I come as a harbinger of bad things to come, Harold. May we talk privately?”

“Yes, of course,” Shipman said, puzzled but amused to see that Ester had barely changed since the last time he’d seen her nearly ten years before, when she was his senior at the observatory. “You should’ve called, Ester. I could have made arrangements.”

“There’s time enough for arrangements,” she muttered, watching him put his key into the door.

Shipman took up her bag and allowed her to precede him into the cluttered office that had once been hers, inviting her to sit across from him in one of the two chairs before his desk.

“So what in the world brings you all this way?” he asked.

“Thor’s Hammer,” she said, her old gray eyes unblinking as she allowed the silence to gather.

Shipman did not immediately respond, although he knew exactly what Ester meant, remembering well her vehement assertions that the industrialized governments of the world ignored the dangers of near Earth objects at the peril of all humankind. “Yes,” he said. “Well, it’s still out there somewhere, we all know that, but I’m afraid with all of the cutbacks and—”

“Would you like to see it, Harold?”

He went slack in the jaw. “Excuse me?”

“It’s coming out of Ursa Minor,” she said, referring to the northernmost constellation, often referred to as the Little Dipper.

Shipman turned in his chair, grabbing a chart of the heavens from a nearby table piled high with charts and texts. “Who’s spotted it?”

“A young astronomer from Mesa Station. Martin Chittenden. Ever heard of him?”

“I recognize the name,” he said, flipping through the chart. “I think I may have read something of his a while back in Astronomy Today. Something on deep space asteroids. Lots of conjecture. If I remember correctly, he thinks we’re not paying enough attention to empty space.”

“Turns out we haven’t been,” she said, her expression tightening along with the grip on her cane.

“Ester, what’s going on? Are you telling me we’re actually going to be hit?”

“We’ve got about eighty days to impact.”

“Eighty days? How big is it?”

“Three point two kilometers.”

“My God!”

“And it’s coming at us so fast it’ll make your eyeballs roll.”

“But that just can’t be,” he said, scanning the same chart he’d seen thousands of times. “There’s nothing out there, Ester. You know that.”

“It’s coming from the Great Beyond, and it’s maybe as old as the Earth.”

He turned the chart on the desk for her to see. “Show me where.”

She used the tip of her cane to indicate the northernmost star in the sky. “The brightness of Polaris has probably helped to keep it hidden all these years. Like the Red Baron coming out of the sun.”

“Thor’s Hammer,” he muttered. “I take it you’ve seen this creature for yourself?”

She shook her head.

“Well, then how do you know it’s even—”

“The night he came to ask for my help in taking it public, he was abducted from my front lawn by two federal agents. They shot the boy in the back with a Taser gun, Harold.”

“They’re trying to keep it a secret, for Christ’s sake? It’ll never work!”

“That’s not stopping the cowardly bastards from trying.”

“Well, we sure as hell won’t stand for that,” Shipman said. “Not if this fellow knows what the devil he’s talking about. I’ll turn the dome tonight and we’ll just have a look for ourselves. Though it could take weeks to come up with an orbital model that will prove our case.”

“All we need are preliminary estimates,” Ester said. “And those we can come up with in a few days, enough to get everyone on Earth with a telescope looking toward Polaris. Getting word out isn’t going to be the problem. The problem will be in prepping these islands.”

“Prepping the Hawaiians? For tsunamis? Where does Chittenden think it will hit?”

“North America. He’s seems fairly certain of that. So it’s not so much a tsunami of water I’m worried about. Once word gets out that the mainland is under the gun…”

“People will flock here by the thousands. We’ll be overrun,” Shipman concluded.

“That’s right. So I think we need to get the governor’s ear as quickly as possible. Do you know anyone in the local government?”

“I play golf with the mayor of Honolulu.”

“Perfect. I think it’s important that the Islands prepare to quarantine themselves. That might take some convincing at first, but once the insanity begins…” She shrugged. “Desperate times seem to precipitate their own desperate measures.”

“This explains a few things,” he muttered, sitting back in his chair and taking his pipe from a side drawer. “NASA’s been cutting funding across the board and suggesting all sorts of odd things for everyone to look at out there. Even the GLAST telescope has been kept aimed in almost the opposite direction over the past five months or so.”

“During my flight I was wondering about that new satellite program that was fast-tracked out of nowhere. The timing is too close. It has to be related. I’m even doubting they’re satellites.”

“You think they’re trying for a shoot-down?”

Ester sucked her teeth. “It’s all we’ve got, isn’t it?”

Shipman shook his head, saying, “At two miles across, it won’t work unless this thing’s made of butter. What class is it? Did Chittenden say?”

“M-class.”

“Well let’s hope he’s wrong, by God. Ester, you sure know how to wreck an old man’s day.”

“Oh, you’re not even sixty yet,” she said. “And look at it this way… neither of us has to worry about ending up in diapers now.”

He tossed the chart back onto the table. “I’d also like to bring Sam Ash in on this. He knows a lot of people in cable news. That might expedite things once we’ve got some orbital models to offer.”

“We have to keep this an absolute secret until we announce. And here’s something else… when we do announce, we have to be ready to counter the skeptics and naysayers—all those same idiots who are still denying global warming.”

“All right,” he said. “We’ll do our research, and then we’ll get in touch with Sam. He’s here on the island.”

“The situation will deteriorate rapidly after impact,” Ester went on. “First, it will be every state for itself. Then every city, every neighborhood, every block, and finally every man, woman, and child. This country’s headed back to the Stone Age, Harold, and nothing can stop it.”

“I’m afraid our immediate problems here will be of a somewhat different nature.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, Pearl Harbor is home to the United States Pacific Fleet. That’s a lot of permanently displaced sailors and marines. Who controls them after Washington goes out of business? What will the Admiralty decide to do about these islands? We could all too easily become a military state here.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “Obviously, the Navy possesses the facility to be either our saviors or the bane of our existence.” She sat thinking for a short while. “Does President Hadrian still live here on the island?”

“He does.”

President Barry Hadrian was a former president of the United States who had retired with his wife to his home state of Hawaii after two successful terms of office. He was in his fifties now and still very well respected.

“Perhaps your friend the mayor can talk to him,” Ester suggested. “I doubt either of them would like to see us ruled by the military. Who’s the governor these days?”

“Paola Reyes. A flimsy politician, to say the least. I don’t see her standing up to the Navy once disaster has struck.”

“Is she particularly popular among Hawaiians?”

Shipman shrugged. “Fifty-fifty. She goes where the smiles go, caters heavily to the tourists and local business.”

“Then she’ll not likely be missed,” Ester decided. “But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The first thing we have to do is establish that Chittenden’s NEO actually exists. After that we go on the offensive.”

Eight

Dr. Michael Porter was lying on the sofa watching CNN when a BREAKING NEWS bulletin suddenly interrupted the Nasdaq report. Aging anchor Wolf Blitzer appeared and tersely announced that a trio of astronomers from the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii was standing by to make a collective statement, concerning a large asteroid due to collide with the earth within the next few months.

“Fuck,” Michael muttered, sitting up on the couch. “Hey, Ronny? You’d better come listen to this.”

Veronica came quickly from the kitchen. “Is this it?”

He gestured at the television where Ester Thorn stood behind a podium between two much taller male astronomers. She spoke into a cluster of microphones. The caption in the upper right-hand corner of the screen read: LIVE.

“… and if these preliminary calculations are accurate,” Ester Thorn said, reading from a prepared statement, “this object will collide with the Earth in sixty days. We are at this time still calculating the exact point of impact…”

“Holy shit!” Veronica whispered. “He was telling the truth.” She felt a sudden surge of fear and sat down on the couch. Michael put his arm around her as they sat watching.

“… but we have determined with veritable certainty that we will be struck somewhere in or very close to North America. The asteroid is coming toward us out of the northern sky at a velocity in excess of one hundred thousand miles an hour from the constellation Ursa Minor nearest the star we call Polaris. This means it is not coming from the asteroid belt within our solar system, and that it has very likely been traveling millions of years to get here.

“An asteroid of this size is on par with the object we believe ended the reign of the dinosaurs more than sixty-five million years ago. So, with that in mind, we believe it is essential for all nations to begin preparations at once. The time for denial has long since passed. We are a species with the means of preserving itself, but we must work together and we must begin today, this very hour. Thank you.”

The reporters in front of the podium went nuts, shouting their questions, but neither Ester nor the men made an effort to answer as they walked back into the observatory.

“The government’s been keeping it from us,” Michael said. “Did you hear that bit about ‘the time for denial has passed’? She was saying ‘shame on you’ to somebody.”

“I wonder if they’ll arrest her. If you think about it, this wasn’t a very responsible way to tell us. People could well go nuts.”

“That won’t likely happen before the final week or so,” he said. “At least not on a grand scale. Shock and denial have to run their course first. The biggest problem will be getting people to go to work, which is likely the reason we haven’t been told. Anyhow, I doubt they’ll arrest her. She’s an old woman and that would only prove her point. If the government wants credibility, they’ll have to offer us some kind of hope or solution.”

As if on cue, Wolf Blitzer announced the President of the United States live from the White House.

“My fellow Americans,” began the President, an elderly man with white hair, standing before a podium flanked by a pair of officials, “the time has come for me to share with you a discovery of great significance…”

When the President was finished, Veronica opened her phone and selected Forrest’s number, pressing the call button.

“Hello, Veronica,” Forrest answered in a quiet voice a few moments later.

“Jack, the story broke ten minutes ago on CNN.”

“Who broke it?”

“A group of astronomers in Hawaii. The President spoke right afterward.”

“Did he speak live in front of reporters?”

“It was live from inside the White House. No reporters. He only spoke for about five minutes.”

“Were there two other men in the shot with him?”

“You saw it?”

“No. It wasn’t live. That announcement was taped weeks ago. Listen, pay close attention to whatever he says when he’s live and in front of the media. Soon, he’ll have to respond directly to whatever assertions are being made by these astronomers. The White House already has a battery of experts lined up to manage the public fear factor, but it’s going to take a few hours to get them all to D.C. for a joint appearance. They’re going to play it way down, make like it’s just a matter of shooting it out of the sky, but every astronomer in the world will be weighing in over the next few weeks, and the facts will eventually override all their bullshit.”

“How do you know all of this stuff?”

“I’d rather not get into that over the phone. But if you guys would like to meet, that’s fine. We’ve got fifty-nine days.”

“I think I’d like to meet sooner than later.”

“Okay. Make it the day after tomorrow at the truck stop.”

“Well, should we pack now? Do you need us to bring anything?”

Forrest laughed.

“What?” she said. “Don’t laugh at me!”

“You can bring the chips and beer.”

“I can’t believe you’re making fun of me.”

“Veronica, I’ve had some time to come to terms with this. And you’ve had an entire month.”

“Well, I’ve been hoping you were full of shit,” she said.

“Oh, you knew goddamn well I was telling the truth. So, are you gonna ditch your old man now or what?”

“No!” she said indignantly. “Hold on…”

She turned to Michael, who was just hanging up with his father. “Honey, he says he can meet with us at the truck stop day after tomorrow. You okay with that?”

Michael crossed his arms and nodded. “Yeah, yeah we can do that.”

“What time, Jack?”

“Make it nineteen hundred,” Forrest said. “If anything comes up, call.”

“Wait, what time is that?”

“That’s seven P.M.,” he answered with a chuckle.

“I’m glad you find this end-of-the-world stuff so funny.”

“I don’t find it funny at all. I think you’re funny. See you then.” He broke the connection.

Michael stood looking at her.

“How’re your folks?” she asked.

“Dad’s fine. You know him. But mom’s already a wreck, worried about my sisters and all the grandkids.” He put his hands in his pockets and laughed joylessly. “I’m not sure I believe this is happening, Ronny. It’s worse than Pompeii. There’s absolutely nowhere to run.”

She shrugged. “That’s why we dig… well, figuratively.”

Nine

Forrest tucked the phone into his pocket and grabbed a pair of ammo cans filled with .223 caliber ammunition for their M-4 carbines, short-barreled versions of the M-16 assault rifle. He carried the ammo into the house and waited at the top of the basement stairwell for Ulrich to come up and get it.

“Got a meeting with that girl from the truck stop day after tomorrow,” he said, handing the cans over. “Her boyfriend’s gonna be there, so I want you to come along.”

“Suppose the guy’s an asshole?”

“Hence the meeting, Wayne. That’s what I’m looking to find out.”

“Just making sure, partner.”

“The meteor’s gone public, by the way.”

Ulrich stopped as he turned to go down. “It’s an asteroid, Jack. Who broke the story?”

“A group of astronomers in Hawaii, I guess. You’d better turn on the TV down there and find out what they’re saying.”

“I’ll tell Linus to watch it,” Ulrich said, heading down. “He likes sitting on his ass.”

After the ammo was stored belowground, Forrest took a break in the house. He was smoking a cigarette on the couch with Laddie at his feet when Ulrich and Vasquez came into the living room and dropped onto a couple of chairs. The sun was setting and pretty soon the five of them would be gathering in the kitchen to make dinner.

“What are they saying on TV?” Forrest asked.

Ulrich rubbed his eyes, fatigued from lack of sleep. “Exactly what Jerry told us to expect—there’s nothing to worry about, they’re gonna shoot it down and the world will enter into an era of peace and prosperity.”

Vasquez chuckled. “And the five of us will be asshole deep in debt for the rest of our lives.”

“We should hope,” Ulrich said.

Forrest pointed at Vasquez, his mind on forty things at once. “What are we going to do about your insulin habit in the long term?”

Vasquez shrugged. “I’ve got a lot of it down there on dry ice. If we keep it cold, it’ll last a long time.”

“But even if you’ve got enough for two years, there’s a limit, Oscar. What do we do when you run out?”

“I guess you watch me slip into a coma and die, Homes. It won’t hurt. I’ll just go to sleep.”

“I don’t like that plan,” Forrest said. “And neither will Maria or little Oscar. Is there a way we can manufacture it?”

“It’s a hormone, dude. Shit, we may not even outlive my supply.”

“For your information, dude, I plan to make it well beyond your goddamn supply, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like for you to be around when we come back up. Now what do you guys want to eat tonight? I say we grill some steaks and get completely pissed. This is going to be the last sane night on Earth.”

“It’s a damn good thing we’ve finished buying supplies,” Ulrich said with relief. “They’ll put the clamp-down on the food and fuel now. And ammo especially.”

“Yeah, civilians won’t be able to buy BBs after tomorrow,” Vasquez added.

“Which is why we’ve saved the painting and the minor repairs down below for last,” Forrest said. “I think I’ll try getting in touch with Jerry at the Pentagon one last time before he’s up to his ears in emergency protocol.”

“Is there anything more he can do for us?”

“The way I see it, there’s going to be a whole lot of shit being shipped all over hell’s half acre by the government now, which means a logistical free-for-all…”

Marcus Kane came into the room and Laddie jumped up to greet him, wagging his tail. “I’ve seen enough of that bullshit on TV,” he said, rubbing the dog’s ears with both hands. “The President’s calling for a worldwide prayer vigil.”

“That’ll help,” Forrest said dryly. “Anyhow, Wayne, there’s no reason Jerry can’t cut some bullshit paperwork redesignating this site as a government installation long enough to ship us out a truckload of MREs. Maybe even some high-tech comm gear. We’ll all be in uniform when they show up, and I’ll wear my captain’s bars… so long as there’s an officer here to sign for the conveyance, no staff sergeant or even a shavetail lieutenant’s gonna think anything of it. They’ll figure there must still be a missile down there we’re sitting on. G-3 will never catch the glitch before the meteor gets here.”

“Asteroid,” Ulrich said.

“Heavens to mergatroids, if you ain’t the most anal son of a bitch I ever met. What the hell does it matter what I call it?”

“Why can’t you just call it what it is?”

“It can’t have nothin’ to do with wantin’ a rise out of you,” Kane said with a wink at the other two, and the three of them laughed.

“You three can kiss my ass,” Ulrich said, getting up from the chair. “You’ll think meteor when that big bastard slams into our atmosphere. It’s gonna burn so hot that anybody within sight of it’ll be vaporized before it even hits the ground.”

“I got a book downstairs says not necessarily,” Forrest lied easily.

“Well, you can stand up here and let us know then, Mr. Scientist. I’ll pop the hatch and sweep your ashes up after it hits.”

“Will you spread them on the ocean for me?”

“I’ll flush ’em down the goddamn toilet,” Ulrich said on his way into the kitchen. “You’ll get there eventually.”

Ten

Jack Forrest and Wayne Ulrich both stood from the table as Veronica Struan and Michael Porter entered the truck-stop diner. Veronica smiled when she saw Forrest and led Michael by the hand to the table. Introductions were made and everyone shook hands before they sat down. A waitress appeared and took their drink orders, then left them to themselves in a nearly deserted section of the diner.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve got a ton of questions,” Forrest said, mostly to Michael. “So why don’t we let you two begin?”

“Okay,” Michael said, already somewhat relieved by the professional, almost military bearing of the other two men. “I’m still curious how you knew about this so much sooner than everyone else. Do you really have a friend at the Pentagon?”

“Yes, I do,” Forrest said. “And that’s about as much as I intend to say about him or her. Great risks were taken.”

“I understand,” Michael said. “So I guess my next question is why go to so much effort to save a bunch of total strangers? It would be so much easier to save yourselves and leave it at that.”

Forrest deferred the question to Ulrich.

“Is it really so much different than a policeman risking his life to protect his community?” Ulrich asked. “Or a soldier risking his life to protect his nation?”

“Not diametrically, no,” Michael said. “But in actual practice I believe that soldiers tend to fight for one another, rather than for king and country.”

“Yes and no,” Forrest said. “When we were in combat, sure, it was for the team. But it was for king and country that we volunteered in the first place.”

“So you equate military service with what you’re planning now?”

“Wayne, myself, and the other three men in our group have spent all of our adult lives defending people,” Forrest explained. “Be they Americans or the innocents of some other country—which does not make us heroes. We’re just particularly well trained for this kind of thing and we feel a certain amount of responsibility.”

“Particularly well trained how?” Veronica asked.

“We’re retired Green Berets,” Ulrich said. “Special Forces operatives. And in the Special Forces we’re trained to operate in small groups, as small as practical for any given operation. Which means that each man has to be as broadly trained as possible. The training can range widely, from foreign languages to the piloting of rotary winged aircraft.”

“So you’ve been in combat?” Michael asked. “Shot people?”

The two soldiers glanced at one another.

“We’ve fired a few rounds in anger, yes,” Forrest said dryly.

“I’m not trying to sound like an adolescent,” Michael said. “I’m very curious about what sort of people you are, your backgrounds.”

“Maybe we’re a little unused to being questioned about certain things,” Ulrich offered. “I suppose that’s something we’re going to have to get used to now that we’ll be living among nonmilitary personnel.”

“Do any of you have families?” Veronica asked.

“Most of us do,” Ulrich said. “Only Jack and our buddy Marcus are single. Though Jack’s technically…” He looked at Forrest, unsure how to continue.

“What he means is that technically I still have a wife,” Forrest explained. “But we’ve been separated for about eighteen months now and she won’t be joining us.”

Veronica was surprised and even a little disappointed to learn that Forrest was married, but she couldn’t tell whether it was his decision for his wife not to join them or his wife’s. So she asked.

“It’s hers,” he answered matter-of-factly, maintaining the military bearing. “I want very much for her to be with us, but after we lost our son she… well, she’s very different now, and she has no desire to survive what’s coming.”

“I’m so sorry,” Veronica said.

“I’m also very sorry,” Michael said sincerely. “It’s very difficult for a mother to lose a child. There’s no way you might convince her?”

Forrest shook his head, his deadpan demeanor signaling a change of subject.

Veronica wasn’t familiar with this all-business version of Jack Forrest, but she was pretty sure that he was being so soldierly now for Michael’s benefit. The question was whether it was out of respect, or an attempt to convince Michael that he was capable of carrying off the task at hand.

“So you really think you can pull this off?” she asked.

“If we survive the impact, I’m confident that we can survive belowground for as long as the food holds out, which should be anywhere from eighteen months to two years, depending on how many join us. After that, I make no predictions or guarantees of any kind. What we’re offering is a chance. Nothing more. And it’s clearly not an option for everyone. It won’t be easy living underground in such close quarters.”

“How have you screened your candidates?” Michael asked. “Or haven’t you?”

“I gave five hundred dollars to a social worker in the Lincoln area along with a list of criteria,” Forrest answered. “I wanted reasonably intelligent, responsible, single mothers of healthy, underprivileged children between the ages of five and twelve. There were a few other stipulations, but those were the biggies.”

“Because younger children eat less food?” Michael assumed.

“Correct. In all, we’ve tagged about fifty people in addition to our own families and friends.”

“And you’ve contacted them all?”

“We’ve contacted none of them yet. We’ll begin what we’re calling the ‘round-up’ ten days prior to impact, and we obviously don’t expect them all to accept the offer.”

“No other men?”

“There are two,” Ulrich said. “A surgeon and a dentist, along with their wives and children. Otherwise, no males older than ten.”

“You can’t risk having your hegemony challenged,” Michael said.

“Bluntly put, that’s exactly right,” Forrest said.

“It makes good sense.”

“Good to hear we have the psychiatrist’s approval.” Forrest said, grinning. “And you’re a sociologist,” he continued, pointing at Veronica.

“Yes,” she said with a smile, glad to finally see his grin again.

“That’s interesting,” Ulrich said with an enthusiastic glance at Forrest. Up until this point he hadn’t seen much advantage to their joining the group.

“And you don’t think all this preparation is overkill?” Michael asked. “The government seems pretty confident they can stop this thing.”

“It’s a delaying action,” Ulrich said. “They won’t stop it. They know they’re only buying time.”

“Listen, I’ll tell you how it’s going to go,” Forrest said, cutting to the chase. “That meteor—”

“Asteroid.”

“That rock is going to smack into this planet traveling at something like thirty miles a second. After that, it’s good night, Irene. Billions of tons of dirt and dust are going to smother the atmosphere, and much of this continent’s going to catch on fire. So add all that smoke and ash to the mix as well. All of this brings on nuclear winter, and the government’s strategic food reserves—those that survive the firestorm—are going to run out in less than a few months. Soon after that, people are going to be shooting one another over cans of Alpo. And by the time the civilized people have all been murdered or starved to death, the psychopathic alpha males are going to take over, creating their own little fiefdoms, deciding who to keep as enforcers, who to rape and who to eat. Our hope is to outlast those crazy bastards and try to find a way to grow some food through hydroponics and artificial lighting. We admit this last part’s going to be dicey, but we feel a deep desire to at least give it a try.”

“And if by some miracle we’re wrong about how bad it’s going to be,” Ulrich chimed in, “we pop the hatch and go back to our lives. No harm, no foul.”

Michael sat quietly mulling it over. “I know how naive it is,” he admitted, “but it’s still awfully hard to wrap my head around. You two talk about it as though you’ve already been through it.”

“In a sense, we have been through it,” Forrest said. “The only difference was the breadth and severity of the destruction. Large parts of Iraq and Afghanistan were literally obliterated, and cannibalism is about the only atrocity we haven’t seen. Make no mistake—life’s going to be a living nightmare for most of those who survive beyond the first few weeks.”

“Would it be possible for us to see this place of yours?” Veronica asked. “You know, before we make our decision?”

“Most of our potential guests will to have to accept our offer sight unseen,” Forrest said, “but if you two are willing to be blindfolded for the first fifty miles of the drive, I think it’s doable. You’ll have to stay the night with us belowground, however. I’m not making a second two-hundred-mile round trip tonight.”

She looked at Michael and he looked at Forrest.

“What you’re suggesting requires us to have a great deal of faith in what you’ve told us,” he said. “Are the blindfolds really necessary?”

“Mike, if I plan to shoot you and take your woman out there in the middle of nowhere, is it really going to make a difference whether or not you’re blindfolded?”

“We won’t tell anyone where it’s at.”

“I know you won’t,” Forrest said. “But you certainly would if you knew where it was.”

“I want to see it, Michael,” Veronica said. “We’ll probably be dead in two months anyhow. Let’s take the chance.”

Michael gave her a look.

“Listen, Mike,” Ulrich said, “if it’s any consolation, I don’t care whether you join us or not. I mean, we could probably use your psychological expertise, but we’ve already got more names on the list than we can feed long-term, and my biggest fear is that the majority of them are going to accept our offer.”

“Then why ask so many?” Veronica said.

Ulrich thumbed toward Forrest. “Because he won’t listen to reason.”

Michael had paid very close attention to the way Ulrich and Forrest comported themselves from the moment he set eyes on them, and so far neither one had said or done anything to make him believe they were being deceptive.

“Okay,” he said at length. “I guess we’ll take the chance.”

The ride to the silo was long and uneventful, and Ulrich allowed them to remove their blindfolds after they’d gotten off the interstate. In the dark, one cornfield looked exactly like another, and there were no signs along the way to betray their location because they had been removed weeks earlier under cover darkness in case it ever became necessary to show someone the installation, as they were doing now, without betraying its location. There was no point in taking chances, and the last thing the authorities were worried about at the moment was missing road signs.

“Oh, he’s beautiful,” Veronica said, seeing Laddie looking back at her from the front passenger seat. She was seated between Michael and Ulrich.

“I thought I smelled a dog,” Michael said.

“See?” said Ulrich, annoyed that he had been displaced by a dog and forced to sit in the back, though he was enjoying the proximity with Veronica, who smelled like flowers. “I told you he needs a goddamn bath.”

“He hates baths,” Forrest said, pulling a cigarette from its pack with his lips. “He fights so hard it’s not worth the trouble.” He lit the cigarette and winked at the dog.

A mile from the site, Ulrich asked them to put the blindfolds back on. After they had walked both of them into the house and down the stairs to the main blast door, Veronica and Michael were allowed to remove them.

“So there’s a house above us?” Veronica asked, looking around the basement.

“It wasn’t common practice,” Ulrich explained, “but we’re so far away from Tinker Air Force Base out here that they built an off-duty quarters for the aboveground security personnel.”

“This is blast door number one,” Forrest said. “It’s ten inches of solid steel and weighs one ton. This door alone should be more than enough to keep out anyone trying to get in, but there’s a second door just like it twenty feet down the concrete security vestibule. Remember, these installations were designed to survive a nuclear attack, not a direct hit, but anything in excess of three miles would probably have failed to disable the missiles that were installed here.”

He sealed door number one behind them and led them down the lighted tunnel to number two, lifting an eight-pound sledgehammer from the floor in the corner and banging out a code against the door.

“We’ll have to remember to change that code now,” Ulrich said with a smile.

“Whatever,” Veronica laughed. “Like either of us knows Morse code. Doesn’t the intercom work?”

“Not at the moment,” Forrest said. “There’s a short somewhere inside the conduit and we haven’t gotten around to running a new wire yet. We’ll also be installing a number of small fiber-optic cameras. We’ve had more time-sensitive issues to deal with up to now. Like stocking up on food.”

The door opened a minute later and there stood Marcus Kane, a look of surprise on his face. “Already?”

“This is just a tour,” Forrest said. “These are the prospective guests we met earlier tonight. Where are the gamers?”

“Playing Xbox down in Launch Control,” Kane said. “Where else?”

“Launch Control? I thought you said the missiles were gone,” Veronica said.

“We still refer to the chambers by their old names,” Forrest said as he led the way down five flights of stairs spanning three stories. “This way to silo number one.”

The thirty-foot steel tunnel was suspended from vibration dampeners made of coiled steel shock absorbers. The walkway itself was covered with steel grating.

“This is blast tunnel number one,” he said. “It seals at both ends to keep out the exhaust during launch.” He opened the blast door and led them into the actual missile silo. “Be careful on the catwalk,” he warned. “It’s a ten-story drop to the bottom.”

“Holy cow!” Michael said, looking around. “This thing is huge.”

“It had to be to hold a rocket, Michael,” Veronica said.

“I’m sorry, honey. I forgot you knew all about missile silos. Perhaps you’d like to give the tour?”

“Shut up,” she said, looking over the railing to the bottom, where she saw a veritable pyramid of cardboard boxes. “Is that all food down there?”

“Most of it,” Ulrich said, peering over. “Be careful of these railings. We’ve rewelded them, but some are pretty badly rusted, so don’t be overly confident.”

“Is all that food as well?” Michael asked, gesturing at the boxes and crates stacked all around the silo’s many levels, levels originally used to allow Air Force personnel access to the missile’s many systems. There were nine levels, three above where they stood and five more below.

“Most of it,” Ulrich repeated, not being overly informative.

“My God, you guys have been busy,” Michael said. “It’s like a warehouse.”

“That’s the idea,” Forrest said. “Let’s head to Launch Control.”

In Launch Control—a perfectly round room full of steel shelves filled with everything from foam cups to ammunition—they found Kane, Oscar Vasquez, and Linus Danzig all sitting in expensive office chairs before a large-screen television, playing Halo.

Forrest introduced the men around and everyone shook hands.

“This was the brains of the installation and remains so today,” Ulrich explained, showing them the main console. “Once the aboveground cameras are installed, we’ll be able to see what’s going on up there at all times, both inside and outside the house. These three monitors will run on battery power most of the time. There are large dry cell batteries down those spiral stairs, which will be kept charged by bicycle generators. So the more people we have down here, the fewer turns we’ll have to take at riding the bicycles.”

“And suppose the asteroid hits close enough to destroy your cameras?” Michael said. “What then?”

“We’ll be blind as bats down here until we’re able to go up and replace them. Which could be anywhere from days to months after impact.”

“What about fresh air?”

“There are two ventilator shafts with filtration systems,” Forrest said, “but to be honest, those are this facility’s one vulnerability. Fifty people suck a lot of air, and if those systems are compromised, we’ll have to take steps.”

“Steps?”

“Drastic measures. Like lowering the lift elevator or opening the main entrance in order to allow in new air, which may well be contaminated. The blast tunnels, however, will remain sealed at all times, which will allow both silos to stand as fresh air reservoirs in case there is ever a problem with ventilation. They’ll buy us a few days, at least.”

“So someone up there could sabotage the ventilation shafts?” Michael said.

“Potentially, yes. If they find us and if they know what to look for.”

“But it’s not like we have to sit down here and just let them do it either,” Ulrich said. “If they can move around up there, so can we, and with our NBC suits—that’s for nuclear, biological, and chemical—we’ll be a lot less vulnerable to whatever contaminants there may be. And unless we’re vastly outgunned, we’re confident we’ll be able to reduce any such threat without a great deal of trouble.”

“I like the term ‘reduce,’” Veronica said with a smile. “It’s got a such gentle feel about it.”

“We’ll be anything but gentle if and when the time comes,” Danzig remarked, rocking back in his chair and squirting a large glob of Cheez Whiz into his mouth. “You can believe that.”

“So you do have weapons, then?” Michael said.

“Absolutely,” Forrest replied. “Like I said, it’s our intention to survive this thing. Have no illusions. Cruel times are headed this way and in order to live through them we may well be forced to make some heartless and selfish decisions.”

“Like ignoring starving children at the gate?” Veronica said.

“Once we seal door number one behind the last guest, it doesn’t open again until after impact, and then only if it’s absolutely imperative in order to protect the integrity of the installation. I don’t care if fifty starving children come scratching at the door.”

Veronica looked at Michael. “How’s that for a reality check?”

Michael shrugged his shoulders. “Unfortunately, they’re right. That’s why it’s called a holocaust. You can’t possibly save everyone who deserves to be saved.”

Ulrich smiled. “I think you and I might get along, Doc.”

Forrest chuckled. “Two bloodless bastards.” He led them down the hall to the adjoining living and sleeping quarters, each about the size of a classroom, explaining that by day the bedding would be rolled up and stored along the walls.

“It’s going to be a bit cramped,” he conceded, “but I think we’ll manage okay.”

“I don’t think white’s a good color for these walls,” Michael said at once. “Professionally speaking, that is. You might want to consider a bright yellow or a lime green like you’ve used in the tunnels, something to cheer up the environment. White is too stark. And stay away from orange and red. Especially orange. They’re inflammatory colors.”

Forrest and Ulrich exchanged glances.

“Can you think of anything else?” Ulrich asked, interested.

“Well, what do you have planned for recreation?” Michael asked. “Aside from the bike riding.”

“We’ve got a huge selection of DVDs and video games,” Ulrich said. “Lots of books, music CDs.”

“What else?”

The soldiers looked at each other again.

“That’s not enough?”

Now it was Michael and Veronica’s turn to exchange glances. Veronica even laughed.

“Um, no,” Michael said. “Not unless you want these people going stir crazy down here and slitting their wrists after six weeks. You’re talking about twenty-four months of virtual sensory deprivation, and a total lack of sunlight. They’re going to need real stimulation, the opportunity to create, to use their imaginations. Distraction.”

“Hey, Mike, this isn’t a theme park,” Forrest said. “It’s a bomb shelter, man. Nobody said it was going to be fun down here. There’s only so much we can do for good times. Maybe they can get creative in the kitchen or something.”

Veronica laughed again. “I think you guys have been blowing things up for too long. These people aren’t soldiers, Jack. They’re women and children. You know, civilians.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Look, it’s really not that difficult,” Michael explained. “Go buy one of every board game you can find. They won’t take up that much room. You can store them in the silo. And get lots of jigsaw puzzles. Word books, puzzle books. And for God’s sake get some toys down here! Building blocks, Legos, little cars. Some of those plastic army men even. I assume you were kids once yourselves.”

“You might even bring some musical instruments down,” Veronica suggested. “Let some of the kids teach themselves how to play. A few of them are bound to have some natural talent. And what about some puppets? They can put on puppet shows for each other. Little kids love that stuff. Things they can apply their imaginations to.”

Forrest looked at Ulrich. “You getting all this?”

“I’ll send the Dynamic Duo out tomorrow,” Ulrich said. “But I’m drawing the line at musical instruments. I’m not listening to that goddamn racket.”

Forrest chuckled sardonically. “As you might imagine, he’s great with kids.”

“Next up is the kitchen and the mess facilities,” Ulrich said, leading the way. “Both of which are equally cramped…”

When the tour was finished and after the sleeping arrangements had been made for the night, Michael and Veronica sat down in Launch Control with all of five of the men.

“I have to be honest with you,” Michael said. “I think fifty is a bridge too far. I think you should cut that number in half. Tinkertoys and puppet shows not withstanding, it’s going to be very crowded down here. Tempers are bound to flare even if things are going well, and I don’t think you should count on them going well. It’s human nature to complain.”

“You’re starting to sound like him,” Forrest said with a nod toward Ulrich. “Nobody said this was going to be easy or fun.”

“But why not increase your chances for success?” Veronica asked, stroking Laddie’s head as he stood panting alongside her. “It’s better to save twenty or thirty than to almost save fifty. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You’re beating a dead horse,” Ulrich said. “He’s intent.”

“I reiterate,” Forrest said. “I do not believe that everyone’s going to accept our offer.”

“So you’re the supreme commander here?” Veronica said, purposefully asking a potentially provocative question in front of the other four.

“I’m in command, yes,” he replied without blinking. “I was their commanding officer in the Army, but now we’re all friends of equal standing and it’s been agreed that I’m to lead. Only a vote of four-to-one can overrule one of my decisions.”

“And what about your civilians?” she asked. “Do they get a vote?”

“No.”

“Is that fair?”

“Do I strike you as a tyrant?” he asked, digging the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “I’m not in this because I get my rocks off telling people what to do. Authority comes with a lot of responsibility, and the fewer orders you have to give, the better.”

Michael did not fail to notice that Forrest was smoking a lot, and that he was obviously under a lot of stress. “Do you plan to smoke down here after the civilians arrive?”

“I’ll do my smoking in the cargo bay,” he said. “That’s where the lift elevator is located. There are two blast doors separating the bay from the main complex.”

“I take it you’ve stocked up on cigarettes?”

“I’ve been smoking for a long time. I intend to cut back, maybe even quit, but now is clearly not the time for me to attempt to do that.”

“No, of course not,” Michael said. “Only curious.”

“You’re analyzing me,” Forrest said. “I get that. You’re a shrink and it’s probably to be expected. So what’s your evaluation so far?”

“Well, we could talk about that later if you—”

“Lay it on me, Doc. I don’t keep secrets from these guys. Do you think I’m a narcissist?”

“Not at all. But at the risk of offending you, I will say that I think the loss of your family has—”

“Michael…”

“He asked, honey, so I’m telling him… I think the loss of your family has clouded your better judgment in terms of how many people you should try to save. Beyond that, this seems like an entirely worthwhile endeavor to me, considering what’s to come. And you seem to me a capable group of men.”

Ulrich exchanged glances with the others, none of them exactly disagreeing with Michael’s observation about Forrest, though they had not considered the point before. Forrest had always been their leader, and soldiers weren’t generally in the business of questioning their officers’ motivations, though Special Forces operatives were typically allowed a higher level of input than members of the regular rank and file.

“How about you?” Forrest asked Veronica. “What do you think?”

“You know,” Michael said, “I’m not sure she’s entirely capable of offering an unbiased opinion where you’re concerned. She’s attracted to you.”

“Michael!” Veronica nearly shouted. “That’s not funny!”

“I think thou dost protest too much. Are you going to deny there’s chemistry between the two of you? If you are, then there’s really no sense in my being a part of this equation… is there?”

She sat staring at him, her eyes angry and embarrassed. The other men stifled grins.

Forrest, however, admired Michael for bringing it out into the open. It forced them to acknowledge a reality that had been an eight hundred pound gorilla in the room.

“It’s not anything to be ashamed of,” Michael said easily. “Nor is it something to be denied. Not if we’re considering living among these men and so many others in such a confined space for such an extended period of time. Because now we’re getting into your area of study, and you understand the social dynamics involved here even better than I.”

She crossed her arms, painfully aware that her body language, as usual, was confirming what Michael already knew. “This could have waited,” she said thinly.

“I don’t think so,” Forrest butted in. “Not from Mike’s point of view, it couldn’t.” He turned his attention to Michael. “I think Veronica’s one of the most attractive women I’ve ever seen,” he admitted. “It’s why I told her about our little project here. But the truth is that she reminds me of the way my wife Monica used to be. So do I enjoy her company? Absolutely. Is it my intention to try and steal her away from you? No. And for the record, I don’t feel that I could if I tried.”

Veronica realized that this was very probably only the beginning of the gender dilemmas they would all be facing if they chose to continue with this attempt. Women were going to be commoditized the world over; there would be no forestalling that phenomenon after the asteroid hit. Females enjoyed parity with males only as a result of law and order, and while this concept was fascinating to her from a sociological perspective, as a woman she was frightened by it. This was not some collegiate hypothetical case study. Humanity was on the very brink of being thrust into a world where the strong would hold absolute dominion over the weak.

“May I assume that I’m to have at least some say over who I do and do not choose to be with?” she said, looking between the two of them.

Forrest grinned. “I was merely stating my opinion.”

“Well, for everyone’s general knowledge here,” she said, looking at all the men, “I love Michael and—unlike most men—I’m quite capable of controlling myself, even if I happen to find someone other than my mate attractive. So to answer the question, yes, there is chemistry between Jack and I, but it’s not an issue for me. Nor do I believe it will be for him.”

“Well, I have a more important question for you,” Kane said to her.

She looked at him. “Yes?”

“Do you have a sister?”

Everyone laughed.

“I do,” she said, smiling, “but I’m sorry. She’s married with two kids and lives on the East Coast. Now, if no one minds, I’d like to clean up before we turn in. Is there hot water in the shower room?”

“Yes,” Ulrich said. “We’re tapped into a natural gas line and we have our own well, so there will always be plenty of hot water.”

“Excellent,” she said getting up. “This feels a little like being away at camp.”

When she was gone, the trio went back to playing Halo and Forrest turned to Michael, asking, “Does she fully understand what’s going to happen? It’s the ‘camp’ remark that makes me ask.”

“She understands as well as I do,” Michael said. “But then I’m no less a stranger to death and destruction than she is. Regardless of how much we prepare ourselves, it’s still going to be an incredible shock if and when it finally happens.”

“I understand you’ve got a big family.”

“I do.”

“It won’t be easy to leave them,” Ulrich said. “How does Veronica feel about leaving hers?”

“She’s not really close with her sister,” Michael said. “She’s all for this, so if we choose to pass on your offer, it will be because of me.”

“I feel I should apologize for the way this has played out,” Forrest said. “It was purely on a lark that I said anything to her that day.”

“And I appreciate that. But it is what it is. Had you not found her attractive, and vice versa, I wouldn’t be sitting here trying to decide whether I want to take advantage of such an opportunity. And maybe that would be a good thing… I don’t know. But I guess the truth is that hundreds of thousands of people might soon find themselves wishing they’d had such a decision to wrestle with.”

Ulrich leaned over to put a hand on Michael’s shoulder. “There is no ‘might’ in this equation, Doc. The four horsemen are right over the hill… and they’re riding hard.”

Eleven

Michael stood in his parents’ backyard looking north into the night sky, a glass of wine in his hand, listening to his brothers and sisters and their families visiting inside the house. He’d been drinking a lot of wine lately. Many of them had. There were dozens of bottles in his father’s cellar, and there was no point in letting so much expensive wine go to waste. No one knew exactly where the asteroid was going to strike, but Phoenix was almost certainly within the danger zone.

He felt his father’s reassuring hand on his shoulder and turned to give him a smile. “Hey, Dad.”

“Can you see it?” his father asked, looking up with him.

“No, but it’s hard not to look.”

“And even harder to believe,” his father said. “It looks so peaceful up there. But it’s actually a very violent place.” Robert Porter was a retired vascular surgeon in good health, with a head of thick white hair and discerning eyes. He had always been well respected by his friends and neighbors.

“Did you hear about the food riots in L.A.?” Michael asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“And they’re hijacking trucks along the interstate now.”

“It’s only going to get worse,” his father said. “Wait until the food actually runs low. The riots will be ten times as big, and the Army will be shooting people in the streets.”

“There are police in every supermarket now,” Michael said. “To keep people from hoarding. Nobody’s allowed to buy more than fifty dollars worth of groceries at a time.”

“Your mother tried to withdraw a thousand dollars from the bank this morning. There’s a two-hundred-dollar-a-day limit on withdrawals now. People have stopped paying their bills. By this time next month, the banks will probably be busted. First the economy collapses, then society itself. Rome fell in the same order.”

“Yeah, but the Romans only had to deal with the Huns.” Michael took a sip of his wine and looked back up at the sky.

“I understand that you and Ronny have received a rather interesting offer.”

Michael was startled. “She wasn’t supposed to tell you about that.”

“She didn’t say anything to me. She told your mother. And you know how good your mother is at keeping secrets.”

“I didn’t want her upsetting you guys,” Michael said, glancing back at the house for a glimpse at Veronica. He could see the rest of the family talking. His mother was going on about the importance of the prayer vigil again, insisting that God couldn’t possibly refuse to save them if the entire world was joined in prayer.

“We’re not upset,” his father said easily. “How do these people seem to you? Do you think they know what they’re doing?”

Michael shrugged. “I’m not a survivalist, Dad. I don’t know.”

“I’m not asking what you know. I’m asking what you think.”

Michael took another drink and mulled it over a moment. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I’d have to say they do.”

“It’s a pretty generous offer.”

“Hell, the guy made the offer to Veronica, not me. If he’d known I was in the picture he’d never have said anything.”

“She’s a beautiful woman.”

“Well, there you go.”

A few of the youngest grandchildren came scampering out the door, chasing after a golden retriever with a tennis ball in its mouth. The dog was up in his years, but his spirit was willing and he did a good job of keeping the ball for himself. There was a lot of squealing and laughter, and Michael observed his father closely as he watched his grandchildren. From the smile on the man’s face, one would never have guessed the world as they knew it was coming to an end.

“Pa Pa!” said one of the little girls, running over to him. “Chance can catch the ball from way up high even!”

“Yes, he can!” the older man replied. “He’s an excellent ballplayer, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, and do you know what?”

“What, baby doll?”

“My mom said we can get a dog too when I get older.”

“Just a couple more years, honey.”

The children romped about for a while longer and eventually led the dog back into the house.

“That’s the best damn dog I ever had,” his father remarked.

“He’s good with the kids, that’s for sure.”

“So what about these guys?” his father said. “Do you think they’d kill you and take Ronny for themselves?”

Michael shook his head. “No, I don’t. I believe they’re good men trying to do a good thing. They were all in the military, and I got the distinct impression they’re no strangers to violence. They say they were Green Berets.”

“So they can handle themselves?”

“I’d say so, yeah.”

“Hmm. If you ask me, son, I think you and Ronny would make a unique and valuable addition to a group like that.”

Michael stopped short before taking a sip of wine. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think things happen for a reason,” his father replied. “I always have, you know that. And this is one of those rare times in life when I think I can actually see the reasoning.”

“To what?”

“Well, there probably weren’t a handful of men in this entire country who knew about that… that ball of fire out there. And one of them just happened to bump into Ronny at a truck stop in the middle of nowhere? A woman who just happens to be a sociologist who just happens to be shacked up with a psychiatrist?”

Michael couldn’t help grinning. His father always referred to his and Veronica’s living together as being “shacked up.”

“But what about mom?” he asked.

“She would adjust. You’ve got five brothers and sisters in there who will be more than glad to gobble up your share of her attention. Not to mention nine nieces and nephews. You’ve always needed less than the others. You’re the loner. And you’re the only one who isn’t married with a family.”

“This is my family, Dad. I’m not going anywhere.”

“And I’m not telling you to,” his father said equably. “I’m just saying you should consider it.”

Michael stood looking at him, the gears slow to mesh.

“Son, I’m sixty-five years old. And these past few days I find myself thinking in terms I never imagined possible. Do you realize that I may actually have to take your mother’s life at some point within the next year, depending on how things go?”

Michael whirled the wine around in his glass. “I try not to think about it, actually.”

“Now, as for my daughters and my daughters-in-law,” his father went on. “Those decisions will be up to my sons and my sons-in-law. Your mother is my only concern. She’s the one person I have to look after, my sole responsibility. The rest of you are adults and you’re responsible for your own families, though I expect us all to be together until the end. But who knows when that will be? Or how much of a living hell we’ll have to endure just to get to it? I won’t watch your mother starve to death or be violated. I won’t allow her dignity to be taken away from her. And to be perfectly honest with you, I’d much prefer it if at least one of my children was someplace safe when that ghastly type of decision is being made.”

The gravity of his father’s point was not lost on Michael, and he told him so. “But I’d feel like I was running out on you guys, Dad.”

“That’s because you’re still looking at the world as it is, son. Not as it’s going to be.” He pointed into the sky. “That thing is coming, and by this time next year, ninety percent of this country’s population will be dead of starvation. But! During the months leading up to that, do you think your brothers and sisters are going to be taking food from their kids’ mouths and giving it to their nieces and nephews?”

“Dad, come on. My God.”

His father looked at him with one of those fatherly expressions. “Now who’s in denial, Doctor?”

“I hope you don’t start talking like this to any of them,” Michael said. “Jesus Christ.”

“Frankly speaking, son, they’re not equipped to handle the truth. You are. And that’s why I don’t believe it was simply a matter of chance that Ronny ran into that guy. She’ll stay here and die with you, if that’s what you want, because she loves you, but I don’t think that’s a responsible thing for a man to ask of a woman, particularly of a woman so willing. It’s a betrayal of her faith.”

Michael again looked thoughtfully into the wineglass. “And she’d never say so, but I know she feels that way, at least on some level.”

“If you don’t take her, I’ll tell her to go without you. She won’t listen, but I will tell her.”

Michael was ashamed of himself for it, but he was grateful that his father had given him this reprieve. “Okay,” he said quietly.

“And you might want to talk to your brother Stephen about taking your niece along,” his father added.

“Which one?”

“Well, the twins are both a little young, wouldn’t you say?”

“Melissa?”

“She’s as bright as a light,” his father said. “And her future was equally bright until that rock up there happened along. And she’s the most like you of all the others; she lives in her own head. She’d have a lot to offer a new society. Provided that guy will let you bring her.”

“He probably would, but there’s no guarantee that—”

“There are never any guarantees, Michael. It’s a chance—that’s all—but it’s more of a chance than ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world has. And she’s worthy of it.”

“She’s your favorite,” Michael said, taking a sip.

“All the more reason,” his father admitted. “I make no apologies for how I feel about any of you. I’m the founder of the feast.”

It was one o’clock in morning before Michael and Veronica were able to discreetly lure Stephen into the garage, and by the time they finished telling him of their intentions, he was looking at them as if they’d lost their minds.

“What’s with you two?” he said, adding: “And what’s up with the old man?”

“It’s just something to think about, Stephen,” Veronica said. “If nothing bad happens, we’ll come back. But if it does—”

“Ronny, no,” Stephen said. “My daughter’s staying here with us. I can’t believe Dad would even suggest something like that. It had to be the wine.”

“He wasn’t drinking tonight,” Michael said.

“Well, then he shoulda been!”

Veronica gave Michael a look, signaling she thought the time had come for them to play dirty.

“Well, that’s not the worst of what Dad’s got on his mind,” Michael said.

“I can imagine.”

“I doubt it,” Michael said. “Have you thought about what will happen after the food runs out? You do realize people are going to start killing one another.”

“And eventually,” Veronica tossed in, “they’ll be eating one another.”

“Stop it!” Stephen insisted. “You two are insane!”

“Then what do you think is going to happen?” Michael asked again.

“I don’t know, but not that! Christ Almighty. This isn’t Thunder Dome.”

“So where is the food going to come from?” Veronica wanted to know.

“The government. Where else?”

“Stephen, there isn’t going to be any goddamn government,” Michael argued. “That rock is going to obliterate this country. Millions are going to die. Millions.”

“Okay, fine,” Stephen said. “Then we die together. Just like we were all talking about earlier.”

“Suppose we survive the blast?” Michael ventured. “Then what?”

Stephen’s mind was searching, trying to form a counterargument, but he couldn’t come up with anything. “We do what we have to do,” he said. “How’s that?”

“Just like everyone else,” Michael said. “And what happens to Melissa if you get killed by some psychopath over a can of dog food? We’re not talking about a temporary downturn in the economy. We’re talking about the end of society—and it’s going to happen.”

Stephen stood leaning against the fender of their father’s car and didn’t respond.

“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Michael said. “There’s time. But consider this… If the time comes and you find yourself watching your children starve to death—or worse—don’t you think you might end up wishing you’d let Melissa come with us? Just maybe?”

For the first time, it seemed that Stephen had heard him. He came off the fender and went to the garage door, looking out through a window. “Do you really think it’s going to be like that?”

“How else could it be?” Michael said. “This is precisely the same kind of event that wiped out the dinosaurs. I know it’s hard to accept but you need to try.”

Stephen turned around. “This is why you’re the doctor and I’m the pipe fitter. I’m too… I don’t know. Simple-minded.”

“You are not,” Michael said. “And this was Dad’s argument, not mine. I’m only just now coming to grips with it myself.”

“And you’ll bring her back if things aren’t too bad?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to get Cindy to go along with this,” Stephen said. “You’re going to have to really scare the shit out of her—I can’t be the one to do it.”

“Melissa will probably decide to stay anyhow,” Michael said. “But it makes—”

“No,” Stephen said. “She’ll go. She’s smarter than Cindy and I put together. She’s always talking to me about things I don’t even understand.” He stood chewing his knuckle, a nervous habit he’d had all his life. “She’s Dad’s favorite, you know.”

Michael grinned. “Everybody knows. Hell, she’s mine too.”

“That’s because she’s exactly like you two,” Stephen said. “I just wish I understood her better.” And without warning, he broke down and began to cry. “Now it looks like I never will, goddamnit.”

Veronica went to Stephen and put her arms around him. She knew that scenes all too similar to this one were playing out all across the planet, and she couldn’t help feeling slightly detached from it all. Perhaps it was because she had never been close with her own family, but she found the idea of having a front-row seat to the end of civilization morbidly fascinating. And now that Michael had decided they would join Jack and the others after all, she found herself feeling almost excited. This was going to be the ultimate sociological paradigm.

“It’s not fair!” Stephen was moaning. “I have to give my baby away. I can’t fucking believe this is happening…”

Twelve

The asteroid wasn’t due to strike for fourteen more days, but Forrest had asked Veronica if she and Michael would be willing to come early in order help them with the final preparations. There were still certain items that needed to be purchased, like batteries, deodorant, toilet paper—which was bound to run out no matter how much they stocked—and other miscellanea. There was also still a lot of organizing to be done belowground.

Forrest arranged to meet them at the same truck stop where he had met Veronica. Right on time, a black Volvo station wagon pulled into the lot and drove straight over to the Humvee, where he sat behind the wheel smoking a cigarette. The unexpected sight of the pretty teen with curly brown hair in the backseat should have annoyed him, but it didn’t.

“Hang tight, champ,” he said to Laddie and got out, crushing the cigarette on the fender.

“Now before you go off the deep end,” Veronica said, getting out on the driver’s side, “give me a second to explain.”

“Off the deep end?” he said with a grin. “Do I strike you as an off-the-deep-end kind of guy? If I don’t like her, she’s not coming. It’s that simple.”

He smiled at Melissa as she was getting out.

“How ya doin’, Doc?” he said to Michael.

“Not bad,” Michael said, still nervous about the situation. “You?”

“Hello,” Forrest said to Melissa. “I’m Jack. I hope these two haven’t told you what an asshole I am.”

Melissa smiled shyly. She was fair-skinned with an unblemished complexion and light brown eyes.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Melissa.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, offering his hand.

“We only brought her because—”

“Do you mind?” Forrest said. “I’m talking to the kid here.”

Veronica pulled her shoulders back, looking at Michael as he came around the back of the car.

“How did you ever get hooked up with these two?” Forrest asked the girl.

“Michael’s my uncle,” she said, grinning.

“Have they told you about my master plan to take over the universe?”

“Yeah,” she answered, laughing softly.

“And you’re sure you want to join us?”

“Yes,” she said, “but I have a question.”

“Only one?”

“Will I be able to call my parents every day until…”

“Until what?”

Veronica spoke up, “Until the—”

“I’m not talking to you…” he said in a singsong voice.

Melissa giggled.

“Until what, honey?”

“Until the asteroid comes,” she said, her eyes smiling.

“I’m making sure you understand the gravity of the situation,” he told her. “I’m not trying to be a jerk.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

“Okay. And you know there’s no guarantee we’re going to survive?”

“I know that,” she said. “But somebody needs to try.”

“I agree,” he said, deciding he liked her. “And yes, you can call your parents as much as you like until the meteor comes.”

“I thought it was an asteroid.”

Forrest chuckled. “I stand corrected.”

He at last turned his attention to the adults, noting the station wagon was full of boxes. “Bring enough shit?”

“Most of it’s books,” Michael explained. “You know, for helping to pass the time.”

“All right,” Forrest said. “Let’s get the boxes loaded into the Humvee. Your bags you can tie to the roof rack.”

“You mean we can’t take my car?” Veronica said.

“Nope. Can’t leave anything parked above the site to give the impression anyone lives in the house. It needs to look deserted.”

“I told you,” Michael said.

Veronica gave him a look. “Fine,” she said, tossing her hair over her shoulder and turning to open the back door. “This is the first car I ever bought new.”

Forrest exchanged grins with Michael, asking, “Were you planning on driving it around down in the silo?”

“Shut up, Jack!” she said, wrestling a box from the seat.

“I brought all sorts of books,” Michael said.

“Fine. Come on, kid. Let’s go get something to drink while these college pukes do the lifting.”

“Okay,” Melissa, following him off toward the station.

Veronica stood with the box in her arms watching them. “Did you see that? He didn’t complain one bit over her.”

“Did you really expect him to?” Michael asked, pulling another box of books from the rear compartment. “She’s a pretty girl.”

“She’s fifteen, Michael.”

“Oh, for God sakes, Veronica, that’s not what I meant. Melissa affects everybody that way.”

“She likes him too, I can tell.”

“What, are you jealous?” he asked, chuckling.

“Shut up,” she said. “I was just commenting.”

Inside, Forrest picked up an empty cardboard box the clerks had left on the floor and gave it to Melissa. “Load that up with whatever you want. I have to use the restroom.”

“You mean just for me?” she asked, confused.

“Does you mean something different out there in Colorado?”

“No,” she said bashfully.

“I haven’t bought anything for a kid in a long time,” he said, his smile waning. “I’ve got some catching up to do.”

“What do you like?” she asked, glancing around. There were bare spots on many of the shelves but the candy was still plentiful.

“Camels,” he said. “Filterless.”

She laughed. “I’m not old enough to buy cigarettes.”

“Looks like I lose,” he said, heading for the restroom.

Veronica and Michael were standing beside the Humvee waiting when Forrest and Melissa finally came out. All the boxes were loaded and their bags lashed to the roof rack.

Melissa was carrying her box full of snacks.

“Who’s all that for?” Veronica asked.

“It’s for the kid,” Forrest said. “So don’t let me catch your fingers in the box.”

Melissa laughed. “You can have some, Ronny.”

“You’re too easy,” he said, walking around to the driver’s side. “Load ’em up.”

“Didn’t take her long to get you wrapped around her finger,” Veronica said, loud enough for only Forrest to hear.

“You’re just jealous,” he muttered, brushing by her.

“Jack?”

He turned. “Yes?”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed and jumped in to see that Michael was afraid to get in on the other side with Laddie staring him in the face. “Get in back, buddy.” The dog responded immediately, taking up station in the backseat between the two women.

Michael got in and shut the door.

Laddie suddenly started barking at Michael, causing the man to flinch and cower against the door. The dog settled a few moments later and seemed to relax.

“What did I do?” he asked, unsure whether it was safe to move.

Forrest glanced back at the dog to satisfy himself there was no danger and then grinned at Michael and shrugged. “I guess the dog’s a judge of character.”

Veronica laughed, petting Laddie.

“No, seriously. Should I be afraid?”

Melissa said, “He was just letting you know he didn’t like you taking his seat.”

Forrest gave her a wink.

“Is he pissed?” Michael asked. “Because I can sit in the back.”

“He’s said his piece,” Forrest said. “Okay, everyone remember to keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times until the ride comes to a complete and final stop. Remember that Captain Jack Forrest is not responsible for any lost or stolen articles while en route to the secret Army base. And as always,” he added with a quick glance into the back, “enjoy your day at Cedar Point.” Then he tromped the accelerator and wheeled hard around, roaring out of the lot and onto the highway.

Thirteen

Major Benjamin Moriarty, U.S. Air Force, still had no idea why he had been ordered to deliver two truckloads of MREs to a decommissioned Titan missile installation, but he sure as hell intended to find out. If NASA failed to stop that goddamned asteroid from hitting the planet, MREs were going to be worth a thousand times their weight in gold. And no way was he giving away so much of his garrison’s food without a damned good reason—regardless of what some chair shiner back at the Pentagon had to say about it.

“What the fuck is this now?” he cursed from the passenger seat of the Hummer.

“I’m not sure, Major,” said Lieutenant Ford, slowing the vehicle. “They look like dog faces.”

“See?” Moriarty said. “This is what I’m talking about. They’re not even Air Force personnel.”

“Looks like they’re Green Berets,” Ford said, pulling into the gravel lot just inside the old hurricane fence still enclosing the site.

“I don’t give a damn what they are,” Moriarty said, throwing open the door and stepping out into the gravel. “They’re not getting our rations without an explanation.”

Forrest stood waiting with Ulrich and Danzig near the house, all three of them with M-4 carbines hanging from their shoulders.

“Aw, piss,” muttered Danzig, spitting a wad of tobacco juice into the gravel. “They sent a goddamn major.”

“Easy,” Forrest said.

All four men were wearing open mikes so they could communicate with Kane, who was positioned in the upstairs window of the house with an M-21 sniper rifle.

“Looks a little salty, doesn’t he?” Ulrich observed.

They snapped to attention and saluted as Major Moriarty came stalking up to them, armed only with a 9mm Beretta that hung from his hip in a green nylon holster.

“Who’s in command here, Captain?” Moriarty demanded.

“That would be me at the moment, sir,” Forrest replied.

“Define ‘at the moment.’”

“Well, sir, Colonel Vasquez is away at the moment. Are those the MREs we were told to expect, sir?”

“They are, but I’m going to need a good explanation before I leave them.”

“Explanation, sir?”

“Who are they intended for, Captain? This installation is no longer active.”

“I wasn’t told who they were intended for, sir. I was simply given orders to receive them and to secure them, awaiting Colonel Vasquez’s arrival.”

“Which will be when?”

“I was told sometime within the next twenty-four hours, sir.”

“Well, when the colonel arrives, Captain, you can tell him to give Colonel Wells at Tinker Air Force Base a call. I’m not giving up these MREs to an Army captain in the middle of nowhere. I don’t care if he is Special Forces.”

“I was told your orders came straight from the Pentagon, Major.”

Moriarty stiffened, noting that Forrest had addressed him as Major this time, rather than sir, which was acceptable, but it put the two of them on a more equal footing, a nuance that Moriarty did not especially appreciate.

“Captain, exactly what is this installation being used for now?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Major. It’s classified.”

Moriarty stood mulling it over. “I’ll just have a look below, then.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that, sir,” Forrest said, neither he nor either of his men so much as twitching a muscle.

“Excuse me, Captain?”

“I said I cannot allow that, Major. My orders are very specific in that regard.”

“Do you mean to imply you intend to open fire on me if I attempt to go below?”

“It means, Major, that my men and I will do whatever is necessary to carry out our orders.” Forrest could see that Moriarty was considering whether to call his bluff, so he added: “I should also like to inform the major that he is being covered by a sniper positioned in the upstairs window of the structure behind me and to my left.”

Moriarty shifted his gaze to the upper windows of the house, and though he couldn’t see inside, he didn’t doubt Forrest’s word. Green Berets were touchy bastards, the lot.

“Well, then as far as I’m concerned, Captain, this is a typical example of Special Forces trying to avoid protocol, and I don’t intend to subsidize this kind of bullshit. So have your colonel give my colonel a call, and we’ll see which has the bigger dick.”

With that, Moriarty turned and headed back toward the Humvee.

Kane spoke into Forrest’s ear from the upstairs window: “Do you want me to take ’em out? I can hit all four of them from here.”

“No,” Forrest said quietly. “We’d have to go belowground today and lock the door. These MREs were only a bonus.”

Just then an Army green Humvee came into view at the bottom of the hill and started up the gravel drive.

“Shit,” Ulrich muttered. “This might force our hand.”

“Kane, be ready to fire on my word,” Forrest said.

“Roger that.”

“Are you sure about this?” Michael was asking, sitting nervously in the passenger seat beside Vasquez.

“Relax,” Vasquez replied, pressing the Velcro-backed black eagle insignia of a full colonel onto the front of his Army combat uniform. “But be ready to hit the deck.”

“Oh, great!” Michael moaned. “I’m shitting my pants over here, Oscar.”

Vasquez shifted into low gear, climbing the grade. “Get ready to look your part.” He drove up, stopped alongside the nearest truck, and got out smiling.

“Excellent!” he said, loud enough for Moriarty to hear, but pretending not to notice him as he glanced into the back of the deuce-and-a-half at the load of MREs. “Well, what do you think, Congressman?” he went on, gesturing at the compound. “We probably won’t need to utilize the place, but as you can see, there’s no indication of what lies beneath, and I think your colleagues will find the accommodations acceptable.”

Moriarty heard this as he approached, saluting Colonel Vasquez and introducing himself. Vasquez looked a little young for a full bird, but Special Forces personnel tended to hold rank at younger ages than the regular Army, another fact Moriarty resented.

Vasquez shook Moriarty’s hand. “I appreciate you making the trip on such short notice, Major. Please be sure to thank Colonel Wells for his consideration.”

He could see that Forrest was watching him intently from fifty feet away and heard him speak into his ear: “Don’t lay it on too thick, numb nuts.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Vasquez muttered, keeping up his smile. “Major, this is Congressman Ted Strong of Nebraska. He’s one of the congressmen who will be taking shelter here in the unlikely event that NASA fails to stop the asteroid.”

Michael shook hands with Moriarty, trying to appear casually official.

“Pleasure to meet you, sir,” Moriarty said. “I wasn’t aware that this installation had been recommissioned. Most of these old silos have been sold off privately.”

“So was this one,” Vasquez said, “as far as anyone knows. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Moriarty said.

“Good. Well, I think these trucks will be fine right where they are,” Vasquez continued. “We’ll be sure to get them back to Tinker within ten days or so. There’s no sense unloading all these damn cases if they’re only going be driven back after we stop the asteroid. The four of you will fit comfortably enough into your Humvee, won’t you?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” Moriarty said.

“Great,” Vasquez said. “That will be all then, Major, you’re dismissed. And don’t forget to give Colonel Wells my regards.”

“I won’t, sir,” Moriarty said, turning for the Humvee.

“Oh, and Major?”

Moriarty turned back around. “Sir?”

“I don’t think it’ll be necessary for the colonel and I to compare penises, do you?”

Moriarty flushed. “Um, no, sir. And please allow me to apologize for that remark, sir. I wasn’t aware you were on a network, sir.”

“That’s enough!” Forrest was hissing into Vasquez’s ear. “Just let the son of a bitch leave!”

Vasquez smiled and gave Major Moriarty a casual salute. “Vaya con dios, Major.”

“Sir!” Moriarty said, and hustled his men into the Humvee. Within a minute they were down the road, headed out of sight.

Forrest walked over and gave Vasquez a shove. “I told you not to ham it up!”

Vasquez laughed. “He won’t say shit when he gets back to Tinker now.”

“You did okay there, Doc,” Forrest said, lighting up a smoke. “Congratulations. You just helped us pull off a federal crime.”

“Wonderful,” Michael said, feeling slightly sick to his stomach. “And I didn’t even get to carry a machine gun.”

Fourteen

Forrest knocked at Andie Tatum’s door two Sundays before the asteroid was due to strike. Her name was not on the list he had purchased from the Lincoln social worker. She was a widowed mother whose acquaintance he had made months earlier in a health food store, when she saw him rake an entire shelf of vitamins into his cart as she led her six-year-old daughter past him down the aisle by the hand.

“Someone must be pretty sick,” she had remarked.

Forrest smiled. “I’m an obsessive compulsive. I have to buy every bottle of vitamins I see.”

Andie laughed. “May I ask what they’re really for?”

“You wouldn’t believe if me I told you.”

“I might,” she said. “I’m a kindergarten teacher. I hear a lot of creative stories.”

She had not been wearing a wedding band, and at that point Forrest sensed that she found him attractive. “I deal in black-market vitamins.”

“No, really,” she said, laughing. “There’s has to be an interesting explanation.”

“To be completely honest,” he said, suddenly serious, “it’s a secret.”

With that, the conversation trailed off, but Forrest had written her license plate number down in the parking lot. Hers was the last name he added to the roster, aside from Veronica’s.

Andie answered the door, and though she was at first confused by his uniform, she did recognize him, putting her hand on her hip and shifting her weight to one leg. “You’re the vitamin guy.”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s me,” he said with a smile. “My name’s Jack Forrest. And you’re Andie Tatum, correct? Widowed mother of a six-year-old daughter named Trinity Marie Tatum?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little intimidated. “What’s the Army want from me now?”

“I’m actually U.S. Army, retired. The uniform is just to instill some confidence.”

“Confidence in what?”

“In the offer I’ve come to make you. May I come in?”

She stood thinking it over. “I suppose.”

He stepped inside and took the green beret from his head. “This won’t take long.”

“Have a seat.”

They sat across from one another in the living room.

“Is Trinity home?”

“She’s at my sister’s playing with her cousins,” Andie said. “This has something to do with the asteroid, doesn’t it… and all those damn vitamins?”

“It does,” he replied. “Myself and four friends have prepared a large underground shelter here in Nebraska and stocked it with enough food for at least eighteen months, depending on how many people decide to join us. We’ve accommodations for a maximum of fifty.”

“And you’re asking me?”

“I am.”

“Well… why?”

“Because I liked you immediately,” he said frankly. “Aside from a few friends and family, everyone else we’re asking has been selected according to certain criteria. The location is a complete secret, so you’ll have to accept the offer sight unseen, should you choose to join us.”

Andie sat back in the sofa. “You’re serious?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m as legitimate as the asteroid itself.”

“But I don’t understand why anybody would… people don’t just do this for strangers out of the kindness of their hearts.”

Forrest shrugged. “We do.”

“Well… how do I know that this is for real? I mean, you could be anyone.”

“That’s true,” he said. “You’d be taking a complete leap of faith. But if you do decide to take it, you’ll be taking it for your daughter. She’s the future.”

“So there will be other children?”

“Yes. A couple of single mothers have accepted our offer so far, but most have declined—as expected. There are only a few women left to visit.”

“And the government has nothing to do with this?”

“Nothing at all. If they knew, I’m sure they’d try to shut us down. Hoarding food is a federal offense now, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“But you started hoarding a long time ago, didn’t you? Buying all those vitamins. That was months before anyone else even knew… which means you’re connected.”

“After a fashion, yes.”

“So you don’t think NASA can stop it?”

“The shoot-down hasn’t a chance in hell of working,” he said. “That’s just propaganda to try and preserve law and order.”

“Can I bring my sister and her family?”

“No, ma’am. Yours was the last name I added to the list.”

“But you just said some have refused your offer.”

“I made a long list because I knew most wouldn’t accept. It is a hard story to swallow.”

He went on to explain the setup in the silo in greater detail, and at length Andie got up from the sofa and slowly paced the room. “I don’t have any idea what to do,” she admitted finally. “How long do I have to decide?”

He looked at his watch. “What time will Trinity be home?”

“You mean I have to decide right now?”

“No, but before sunset would be helpful.”

“You said your name is Jack?”

“Right.”

“Jack, I can’t just leave my sister and my nephews. My brother-in-law’s a goof but he’s a nice guy. He wouldn’t cause you any trouble.”

“If you decide to stay with them,” he said, getting to his feet, “you’re going to die with them… but I understand that some would prefer it that way.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket. “This is my number. Call me if you decide to accept our offer. Again, sooner would be better.”

“But wait. That’s it? I can’t bargain?”

He looked at her, his face set. “Your husband was a soldier. What would he want you to do?”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “You know all about me and I know nothing about you, about any of you.”

“You know we’ve got plenty of vitamins.”

She couldn’t help smiling. “You know, I was trying to flirt with you that day, and you were rude to me. I never flirt with men in front of my daughter—ever.”

“Would you have believed me had I told you the truth?”

She pushed her dark hair away from her eyes and looked at him. “No, I’d have thought you were being a smartass—and you are a smartass. That uniform doesn’t hide anything from me. I was a camp follower for too long.”

“One suitcase for each of you,” he said, turning for the door. “No more. A bag of Trinity’s favorite toys if she likes—but that’s it. We’ve toiletries aplenty.”

“Did you know Kevin?” she asked suddenly. “Is that why you’re really here? Did he ask you to look after us?”

“I would love for that to be so,” he said with a sad smile. “That would be a beautiful story. But I never had the honor of meeting your husband. I do know, however, that Sergeant Tatum was killed three years ago in Afghanistan and that he was a brave man. I would be honored to save his family from what is coming.”

The unholy image of her daughter dying of starvation flashed through her mind, and she recalled the deep timbre of her husband’s voice. This man Forrest’s voice had that same quality.

“Don’t give our place to anyone else,” she said, her eyes abruptly filling with tears. “I just don’t know what to tell my sister.”

“Some aren’t saying anything,” he offered by way of suggestion.

“I can’t do it that way,” she said. “Don’t take this wrong, but I think I wish you hadn’t come.”

“We’ve heard that from others,” he said gently. “But I think that Trinity should make your final decision something of a no-brainer. At least she would for me.”

“But what happens in two years?”

“Ask me in two years.” He grinned. “I’ll wait to hear from you, Andie.”

“Are you married?” she blurted. “Are you bringing anyone?”

His grin grew broader as he reached for the knob. “No, ma’am. And all flirtations aside, I do hope you’ll accept our offer. We’ve busted our asses getting this place ready. It would be a shame if the only teacher on our list stayed behind.”

When Forrest arrived back at the silo, Dr. Sean West and his wife Taylor were standing on the porch talking with Dr. Price Wilmington, DDS, and his wife Lynette. Both doctors and their wives were old friends, and they had been in on Forrest’s plan from its inception; the doctors were former military men as well.

“Good to see you, Jack,” Dr. West said, shaking hands. He was a thick, barrel-chested man with dark eyes and hair, and stood beside his slender wife Taylor, who had short blond hair and a kind face.

Forrest shook his hand and turned to Dr. Wilmington. “Price, how was the trip?”

Dr. Wilmington was African American, a little shorter in stature than the other men, and had short-cropped hair. His wife Lynette was white and taller than her husband, with long blond hair and bright blue eyes. She was a gossip with an innate sense of bad timing.

“When’s Monica getting here?” she asked before her husband could even respond to Forrest’s question.

“She’s not,” Forrest said, not quite blowing her off, though almost. “How was the drive, Price?”

“Long!” Price said with a smile. “And you know, Jack, I’m not sure we’d have made it all the way across if we had waited another couple days. They’re imposing travel restrictions now.”

“See how the bastards talk from both sides of their mouth?” Ulrich said, stepping onto the porch. “If NASA’s going to stop the rock, why the travel restrictions?”

“I think NASA’s story is losing credibility pretty quickly now,” West said. “Those astronomers from Hawaii were on CNN again last night. They said unequivocally that NASA’s crazy if they think they can stop this thing. Even the B612 Foundation is finally speaking out against the attempt.”

The B612 Foundation had been founded by a group of former astronauts years earlier, dedicated to protecting the planet from near Earth objects. To this point they had been strangely silent on the subject of the shoot-down plan, and it was suspected the government had threatened them.

“The European Space Agency has announced they’re going to fire their kinetic impactor at it,” Price volunteered with a dry smile, sipping from a glass of wine.

“Which will be about as effective as throwing an iPod at a speeding truck,” Ulrich remarked.

Forrest excused himself and slipped inside to get out of his uniform and find a beer. Taylor West followed him, asking, “Jack, why isn’t Monica coming?”

He turned and frowned. “She’s committing suicide without committing suicide.”

Taylor’s eyes filled with tears. “There’s no way… ?”

Forrest shook his head and went below, pretending not to notice Veronica watching him from the kitchen doorway.

Back outside, Lynette said to Ulrich, “Wayne, why isn’t Monica here?”

“She doesn’t want to live underground,” Ulrich said. “And it’s probably best not to bring her up around Jack.”

“Well, he should have kidnapped her if that’s what it took,” Lynette insisted. “My God!”

“I hardly think that would have been appropriate,” Price told her, knowing that Ulrich was not Lynette’s greatest fan.

“Price, you’d never leave me to die. It’s Jack’s responsibility to save that woman from herself!”

Ulrich had never cared for Lynette, having always secretly suspected she had married Price for his money. And there was no time like the present to set her straight on Monica. “Lynette…” he said, noticeably stern.

All eyes went to Ulrich.

“Whatever you’ve got to say on the subject, get it said before Jack comes back upstairs. After that, I don’t want to hear another word about Monica for the next two years.”

Lynette grew red in the face. She had always been a little afraid of Ulrich, because unlike most men, he wasn’t dazzled by her fake tits and long legs. “Wayne, I was only saying—”

“I don’t care what you were you saying,” he said, cutting her off. “You’ve got no idea what the hell you’re even talking about.”

“Jesus Christ, Wayne. Relax!”

Ulrich took a step forward, his gaze cutting into her. “Did you understand what I just said?”

The tension in the air was suddenly thick enough to cut with a knife, and Ulrich could see Lynette looking to her husband for support, but Ulrich didn’t care. He wasn’t about to have their hegemony challenged by this cunt while there was still time to find another pair of doctors.

To his surprise, neither doctor said a word. Apparently, Lynette was on her own.

“Yes,” she said, trying to appear dignified. “I understood you very well.”

He turned to go inside, muttering, “Excuse me,” as he slipped between the pair of doctors.

“Price, you didn’t even try to defend me!” Lynette hissed.

“Honey, I’ve told you before that Wayne’s no one to trifle with,” Price said. “He and Jack are polar opposites. And I warned you about the arrangements here.”

Inside the house, Ulrich saw that Veronica had heard the exchange through the screen door. She was grinning as she followed him into the basement.

“I take it you were nipping that flower in the bud?” she asked.

“Price should have divorced her ass years ago,” Ulrich said. “She’s a fourteen carat bitch. All I can figure is that she’s a dynamo in the rack.”

Veronica smiled. “There’s one in every group, Wayne. If we got rid of her, another would just pop up in her place. Sometimes it’s best to keep the devil you know.”

Fifteen

Ester Thorn stood leaning against her cane, her tired eyes fixed on the television screen at the Hotel Sheraton in Hawaii where she and a number of other astronomers were staying. Harold Shipman stood beside her, teething the stem of a pipe. Their colleagues were seated around them in the conference hall, everyone nervously awaiting the results of the imminent atomic blast meant to push the asteroid off course.

In the preceding weeks, a few halfhearted attempts had been made by the federal government to muzzle Ester and her colleagues, but the Hawaiian governor intervened on their behalf.

“Damn fools,” Ester muttered. “Why don’t they just let it alone? They’re going to push it into the Pacific, Harold. You wait and see. Then there’s going to be some real devastation.”

“Not the least of which will be to the Hawaiian Islands,” Shipman said. “The mega-tsunami will wash every one of us out sea. My God, the wave will be thousands of feet high. Can you imagine it?”

“I half expect them to lie and tell us it worked.”

“No, there are too many watching now. The time for lies has passed.”

Wolf Blitzer was adroitly explaining the many facets of rocket guidance and atomic yield, seemingly detached from the reality that he, along with everyone else at CNN, would likely be dead in the near future.

“The very fate of our world hangs in the balance,” he commented gravely, determined to remain theatrical to the last.

“Which species do you suppose will take over?” Shipman wondered.

“Oh, it’ll likely be the rodents again,” Ester said with a sigh. “I wonder if we’ll do a better job next time around.”

“Wouldn’t it be something if we humans evolved all over again?” he said with a cynical laugh.

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” she said. “In some form or another. Nature will be starting over from nearly the same slate as sixty-five million years ago. Primates are bound to reevolve at some point down the line.”

“It can’t happen the same way twice, Ester. There are too many variables to contend with… climatic, geological, evolutionary… the list goes on and on.”

“All of which were dealt with before,” she said obstinately, “and we still found a way. Though it’s too bad we’ll never know.”

“Well, we’re not extinct yet,” Shipman said. “Some of us may survive.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Ester said. “A few thousand of us survived the Younger Dryas impact, but I don’t know if modern man is up to the task.”

“Did Marty Chittenden ever call?”

She shook her head. “They’ve probably still got the boy under lock and key someplace.”

“I wonder if he regrets his decision.”

“I doubt it,” Ester said. “He was committed.”

Then Wolf Blitzer appeared on the screen, looking almost ill.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have just received word from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the nuclear warhead intended to knock the asteroid off course has detonated successfully but failed to affect the asteroid’s trajectory. Preliminary calculations indicate that the detonation occurred a half second too late for the explosion to have its maximum effect…”

“Well, that’s that,” Ester said, tamping her cane twice against the carpet. “So much for world prayer.”

“There’s still the kinetic impactor,” Shipman said with a dry smile.

“Yes, perhaps our European colleagues will manage to chip its tooth,” she said. “I’m going to my room to lie down for a while, Harold. I’m exhausted.”

“Okay, Ester. I’ll wake you if there’s trouble on the island.”

“I don’t know what I’d be able to do about it,” she muttered.

Shipman chuckled. Ester’s dour sense of humor had always tickled him. Now he would have to go get his wife and aged mother-in-law to move them into the observatory with him; he didn’t want them living in town now with the Earth officially doomed.

He took some limited comfort, however, in the fact that the Hawaiian Islands had remained relatively calm throughout the crisis, the general consensus among the islanders being that they stood a better chance of surviving in the long term than anyone else in the United States and perhaps even the world. And since all flights to the Islands had been canceled a month earlier, the largest increase in population was likely to be at Pearl Harbor once the U.S. naval fleet began to arrive in port.

The entire Pacific Fleet had sortied the week before against the eventuality of an oceanic impact, which would almost certainly have resulted in a mega-tsunami that would have devastated both the Hawaiian Islands and the entire west coast of North America for dozens of miles inland. But with the asteroid still on course, that was no longer a concern, and Dr. Harold Shipman found himself feeling terribly disappointed. A mega-tsunami would have made their deaths quick and painless, and would have been an utterly breathtaking sight to behold in their final moments.

Sixteen

After Marty Chittenden’s apprehension by the Secret Service, Agent Paulis had requested clearance to keep him detained and out of sight on campus at the California Institute of Technology, much in the same manner as two other astronomers who had spotted the asteroid. They were being illegally detained elsewhere in the U.S., one under house arrest in New Mexico, the other involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in Washington, D.C.

Susan Denton had been allowed to visit Marty and bring him food during his detention, and she came to truly detest Agent Paulis, who seemed to take personal enjoyment in keeping Marty locked in a tiny room on the top floor of a deserted dormitory across campus.

Now, she stepped off the elevator and walked briskly down the hall toward a pair of Secret Service agents standing guard outside the room. “Okay, guys, you can let him out. The nuclear warhead didn’t work, so we’re all as good as dead.”

“Are you sure?” one of the men said, strangely surprised.

“Yeah. Call Agent Paulis if you don’t believe me.”

He tried reaching Paulis on the phone but all he got was voice mail. “That’s odd.”

“See? He’s obviously abandoned you guys. Don’t you think it’s about time you started thinking for yourselves?”

A minute later the Secret Service agent was able to reach someone on the phone to confirm that the warhead had failed to divert the asteroid and that most government employees were fleeing D.C.

“The government’s already shutting down,” the agent said, tucking the phone away. “I’m trying for Seattle. My sister lives there.”

“You’ll never make it,” the other said. “The interstate’s going to be total gridlock.”

“I’ll steal a fucking motorcycle if I have to. What about you?”

“I’ll go to Camp Pendleton. I’ve got some friends in the Corps who’ll let me in.”

“And what about Marty?” Susan asked.

One of them gave her the key to Marty’s room. “Good luck to you. Be damn sure you’re off the streets before dark. And tell Chittenden it was nothing personal.”

The men headed for the elevator, and Susan keyed into Marty’s room. “Hey, you.”

Marty was sitting on his bed against the wall, reading a book. “What’s happened?”

“The first rocket failed to push the asteroid off course, and the second never even made it off the ground. The Secret Service guys took off, so you’re free.”

“Then we have to get the hell out of here,” he said, getting up, then leading her out of the room by the hand. “We’ll go to my place. I’ve already stocked up on food.”

She hurried along beside him and they road the elevator to the ground floor. “Marty, we’ll never make it to your place. The highways are jammed.”

The elevator doors opened and they moved quickly toward the parking lot.

“We have to get out of town,” he said.

Her car was nearly the only one left in the lot.

“You’d better drive,” she said, giving him the keys. “I don’t handle heavy traffic well.”

“We’ll stick to the side streets,” he said, getting in and starting the motor.

“We should just go to my house. We’ll never make it to Mesa.”

“We’ll starve in California, Sue. Do you know how many people are here? The food won’t last a month. Nothing’s being produced now.”

“We’ll starve in Arizona too,” she argued. “That’s if we survive the blast.”

Traffic thickened up a mile from campus, but it was moving, and so far motorists were still obeying the traffic signals.

“Okay, we’ll stay at your place tonight,” he conceded. “That will give all these people a chance to get home to their families. Tomorrow it won’t be as bad and we can get out of town.”

She suddenly had a frightening thought and grabbed his arm. “You’re not going to ditch me if things get bad, are you? If I start to slow you down?”

He looked at her. “Susan, no.” He paused and continued, “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m still in love with you.”

She looked down. “I’m sorry I’ve never felt the same. I feel responsible for you being stranded so far from home.”

“Hey, so long as I’m with you, I don’t care where I am. All I’m worried about is not being able to protect you.”

She opened the glove box, took out a Walther PPK .380 pistol, and gave it to him. “Will that help?”

He looked at the pistol in his hand. “I’ve never fired one.”

“I bought it after I was attacked,” she said. “If I can shoot it, anybody can.”

Seventeen

It was the day after the failure of the shoot-down, and Forrest was standing over the grill cooking hamburgers and hot dogs, drinking a bottle of Corona and smoking a cigarette. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, a perfect summer day in June. The children were chasing each other around in the tall grass, and their mothers were busy setting the tables.

“You do know,” Ulrich said, “that if the government shows up, it’s going to be tough getting everybody belowground.”

Laddie came trotting over and dropped a tennis ball at Forrest’s feet. He threw the ball as far as he could out into the field and the dog tore off after it. “The world ends in sixteen hours, Wayne. We’re the last thing on the government’s to-do list.”

Ulrich tipped his beer, watching the dog search the grass for his ball. “I hope you’re right.”

Across the yard, Veronica and Melissa were watching everyone from where they sat in the grass. Veronica was in a detached state of mind, only half present, observing the entire group with an analytical eye. She spotted Michael helping a woman named Karen Schott set the table, and wondered what they were talking about, having noticed with little jealousy the chemistry between them on the day of Karen’s arrival three days earlier. The two West children were playing in the backyard with a little boy named Steven, who Marcus had rescued along with Steven’s mother Tonya from her abusive boyfriend a few days ago.

She could also plainly see that Tonya had the hots for Kane, and that another invitee, Maria Mendoza, did as well. This Maria would be called Maria two to distinguish her from Oscar’s wife, Maria Vasquez.

In the end, only eight women had accepted the offer to join the silo population, bringing nine children along with them, which brought the group’s grand total to thirty-six: fourteen women, eight men, one teenage girl, and a noisy band of thirteen children—six boys and seven girls.

Ulrich was satisfied with the final tally, and Veronica and Michael both were encouraged by the blend of personalities. Tonya was still a little bit withdrawn, but she would likely warm up as time went on. The dentist’s wife, Lynette, was the only obvious phony in the lot and she would be easy enough to deal with.

Besides Tonya, Karen, and Maria two, the women included Andie Tatum—the brunette Forrest had met at the health food store—Joann Parker, a tall, sexy black woman; Jenny Brennan, a redhead with lots of freckles; Michelle Freeman, a bubbly blonde; and Renee Letterman, a less than bubbly blonde.

Michael came over from the table and sat in the grass with Veronica and Melissa.

“Karen’s little girl is a cutie, isn’t she?” Veronica said, unable to help testing the water.

“Which?” he said. “Oh, Karen’s little girl. I forget her name. Yeah, she’s a cutie.”

That was when Veronica felt her first real spark of jealousy. If Michael was pretending to forget the daughter’s name—and he was—it meant he liked the mother more than he wanted her to know. “I think her name’s Terri,” she said helpfully.

“That’s right. Terri. Have you guys tried the potato salad?”

“Not yet,” Melissa said. Seeing Forrest, she got up and walked over.

“She really likes him,” Veronica said.

“He’s a good father figure for her,” Michael said, glancing toward the grill. “Better than me for sure.”

“Don’t say that. That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, what I mean is, Jack’s a lot more like Stephen than I am.”

“Tell me something.”

“What?” He suspected he knew what she was going to ask.

“Are you attracted to Karen?”

He fell back on his arms with an audible sigh. “No more than you are to Jack.”

She looked down into her lap. “I suppose that’s a fair reply.”

“Baby, I love you. You know that.”

“I love you too,” she said, pulling at the grass. “Michael, I’m scared to death.”

“We all are. How could anyone possibly not be?”

“What if I crack? What if I make a complete ass out of myself down there?”

“You won’t. You’ll be too busy comforting everyone else.”

Erin Ulrich and Taylor West came walking up holding two wineglasses each. “No serious faces allowed today,” Erin said.

“You caught us!” Michael laughed.

The women sat down cross-legged in the grass, each offering a glass of wine.

“You know, we really couldn’t be in better hands,” Taylor said, touching glasses with them. “Erin’s husband and the others are as good as they come.”

“And Taylor’s husband is an excellent doctor,” Erin added. “For that matter, so is Price. He’s actually an oral surgeon.”

“Have you known Price’s wife very long?” Veronica asked.

Erin and Taylor exchanged grins, everyone glancing across the yard to where Lynette stood talking with some of the mothers. She was dressed in a skimpy top and tight-fitting jeans with heels.

“How does one explain Lynette?” Erin said with a giggle, having finished off a glass of wine already. “Yes, we’ve known her for about five years.”

“Does she plan to dress like that down below?” Michael wondered.

“Probably,” Erin said, sharing another laugh with Taylor.

“She’s really very sweet, though,” Taylor added.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Erin said. “But she tries. I’ll give her that.”

“Your husband doesn’t seem to care for her,” Veronica said.

Erin looked at Taylor and they both started laughing. “Actually, Wayne can’t stand her.”

“Boy, I need to get caught up here,” Michael said, taking a large sip from his glass. “You two are having a great time.”

“Damn right,” Erin said, touching glasses again with Taylor. “This may be the last fun we ever have.”

“I just wish Monica had come,” Taylor said, suddenly glum.

“Hey, no sad faces,” Michael reminded her.

“You’re right!” Taylor said, brightening quickly.

“Do you two know her well?” Veronica asked, provoking a discreet but disapproving look from Michael.

“We used to be a trio,” Erin said. “But after their son Daniel was killed, the whole world changed. Monica withdrew from everyone… even Jack.”

“How did he die?”

“His den mother was driving him home from a Cub Scout meeting,” Taylor said. “Some drunken teenagers ran a red light. Jack and Wayne were both overseas when it happened. It was an absolute nightmare for Monica… for all of us, really.”

“My God,” Veronica said. “No wonder he’s so intent on saving the rest of us.”

“Jack doesn’t even understand the concept of quit,” Erin said. “He drives my husband crazy. But they have a bond I’ll never begin to understand.”

Across the yard, Andie walked up to the grill and stood quietly listening as Melissa explained to Forrest the nuances of quantum theory and quantum mechanics.

“Okay,” Forrest said. “So basically quantum theory was the big deal until quantum mechanics came along?”

“Yeah,” she said, throwing the ball for Laddie. “But now they’re the same thing… sort of. I wish I could it explain it better. I can see it my head but it’s tough to put into words.”

“No,” he said. “You explained it very well. I’m just too dumb to absorb it.”

“You’re not dumb. If you studied it, you’d get it.”

“I doubt that,” he said, glancing at Andie. “This girl’s a genius.”

Andie smiled at the younger woman. “You learned all that on your own, Melissa?”

“It’s just a hobby,” she said. “They don’t teach it to sophomores.”

“Well, I know who I want for my assistant teacher,” Andie said.

Melissa smiled, concealing her disappointment at losing Forrest’s undivided attention.

“How’s the wine?” Forrest asked.

“Very good,” Andie replied.

“How’s Trinity getting along?” The kids were playing on the swings.

“They’re all wonderful children,” Andie said. “I don’t know how you’ve managed to pull this off, Jack, but you’ve done quite a job.”

“I only get a fifth of the credit… and we’re a long way from pulling this off.”

He turned to see Melissa walking toward the house. “Hey, kiddo!”

She turned around quickly.

“We’re gonna talk some more, right?”

She smiled big and nodded, then trotted toward the house.

“I think I chased her off,” Andie said. “I didn’t mean to.”

“No, she’s fine,” he said, taking the ball from Laddie and throwing it.

“That dog loves to play fetch!”

“My son and he used to play for hours,” he said, turning the burgers. “And Danny was always the first to get tired.”

“Where’s Danny now, with your ex?”

“No, he was killed in a car crash two years ago.” He set his beer aside and started to remove a batch of hot dogs from the grill. “Laddie’s all that’s left of him.”

“I’m sorry, Jack. I had no idea.”

“It’s okay. I’ve dealt with it, for the most part.”

“Is that what… what ended your marriage?”

“In a nutshell… but the life of an army wife isn’t easy. You know that.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “But I understood that Kevin had a job to do.”

“Monica did too.”

“Is it soup yet?” Veronica asked, coming up from behind with her empty wineglass, touching him on the shoulder.

“Just about done,” he said, giving her a smile.

Andie saw the look and realized at once that Veronica had a very definite lead. Oh well, she thought. There’s time, hopefully. “Excuse me. I’m going to go and get the kids ready to eat.”

“If you need help rounding them up,” Veronica said, “give me a shout.”

“Will do,” Andie said.

“So what’s up?” Veronica asked, looking Forrest in the eyes.

“Dunno,” he said, taking the ball from Laddie and hurling it back out into the grass. “What’s up?”

“You’ve been avoiding me today. How come?”

“Just keeping things in perspective.”

“Have I done something wrong?”

“Nope.”

“Have you called Monica?”

He looked at her. “Veronica… please.”

“You should at least call her.”

“With respect… you need to mind your own business.”

“You’ll regret it if you don’t, Jack.”

“Are you going to press this until I say something rude?”

She set the glass down. “I won’t say any more.” She stood for a moment with her hands in her pockets. “I think Michael’s found a girlfriend.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s bonding with Karen.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Well, I’m just saying… I can’t really help being fascinated by this dynamic.”

He took a moment to light up a Camel, tucking the Zippo back into his pocket. “Yeah, well don’t forget that you’re a part of this dynamic too. How are you getting along with your new friends over there?” He pointed over his shoulder with the tongs at Erin and Taylor. Taylor was lying on her back now with her head in Erin’s lap, looking up at the sky, and they were laughing themselves silly over who knew what.

“I like them,” she said warmly. “They’re… real.”

“They always have been.” He took the burgers from the grill and stacked them one at a time on the tray. “Did they fill you on all of my juicy gossip?”

“They care about you and Monica very much.”

“Yes, they do,” he agreed, offering her the tray of hamburgers. “Mind taking these over to the table for me?”

She paused before accepting the tray. “It’s going to be a long two years, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “Yes, ma’am, it is…”

Eighteen

“Oh, my God, look at that!” Susan gasped, pointing out the windshield at a mob trying to overturn a school bus. “That’s a dead cop in the road, Marty!”

“I see him,” he said, making a sharp right turn down a side street.

They had made it almost as far south as San Diego by noon on the day after his release, and this was the most trouble they had seen so far.

“It’s all coming unraveled now.” He made a left and continued parallel to the street they had just turned off of, both of them glimpsing the mob down the side streets as they passed. They couldn’t tell what started the riot, but the mob was comprised of men and women of various races.

“What do they hope to accomplish?” she wondered in dismay.

“Nothing,” he said. “They’re angry and afraid and they don’t know what else to do. They’ve been lied to and they know it.” He swerved around an empty delivery van sitting in the road, then had to slam on the brakes to avoid running over a man pushing a shopping cart filled with bags of dog food.

“Watch where the fuck you’re goin’, muthafucker!” the man shouted, aiming a revolver at them.

“I’m sorry!” Marty said. Then he pointed behind the man. “Look out!”

Another man hit the dog food man in the back of the head with a pipe and snatched the revolver from the pavement, running off down the street with it.

“Jesus Christ, Marty, get us out of here!”

He had to drive up onto the sidewalk to get around the dog food man who was now lying in the street with his skull cracked open. Someone else grabbed the front of the shopping cart and ran off in the other direction. The street was blocked up ahead by a burning police car, and there were hundreds of National Guard troops marching in echelon past the flames. It was unclear where they were headed, but their rifles were fixed with bayonets and ready to fire on anyone attempting to impede their progress. Marty made another right turn, driving up onto the sidewalk once again to get around more deserted cars blocking the side street.

“We’re never going to get out of the city,” she whined. “We should have stayed at my place.”

“We’ll find a way through, Susan. There’s lots of road.”

The next street over was passable, with half a dozen cars racing east toward the highway, ignoring traffic lights all the way. Marty pulled out behind them and drove as fast as he dared, trying to keep up with them, an uncertain herd mentality telling him there was safety in numbers. The cars at the front of the pack mowed down any pedestrians audacious or careless enough to cross the street in front of them, and the sound of the bodies thudding against the bottom of the car—as Marty was forced to run them over as well—made Susan sick to her stomach.

“Marty, I’m going to throw up.”

“Roll down the window or use the backseat, honey. If I stop now, they’ll kill us!”

She powered down the window and leaned her head over the passing pavement, holding her hair and retching twice into the wind at sixty mph. She pulled her head back in and grabbed a bottle of water from the backseat, rinsing her mouth and spitting it out the window.

Marty followed the car ahead of him up the on-ramp to the highway and merged with the speeding traffic. “Well that was definitely surreal,” he said, relieved to be in traffic for the first time in his life.

“You scared the piss out of me!” she said, hitting him.

“But I got us through.”

“You also called me honey. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

He caught her thin smile from the corner of his eye and felt warmth spread through his loins. “It was a figure of speech.”

“Mm-hm,” she said, watching the cityscape passing by. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’ll need to stop for gas again before we get there.”

“We’ll find a place.”

Five miles up the highway they got a flat tire.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, crossing the lanes to the berm. “Can we catch a break?”

“There’s a spare,” she said, watching fearfully out the back window to see if anyone was going to stop and hassle them.

He got out and opened the back hatch, lifting the cover to the spare tire compartment to find a doughnut-sized space saver tire. “Just what I thought.”

“We must have hit something in the road,” she said, joining him at the back of the car, her red hair blowing in the wind.

He looked at her askance, wondering if she’d already forgotten the bodies.

Halfway through changing the right rear tire, a car pulled off the road with two large men inside.

“Oh, crap,” Marty said.

“Need some help?” the passenger asked as he climbed from the car.

“No, we’re fine,” Marty said. “Thanks anyway, man.”

Both men were covered with jailhouse tattoos, and they were watching Susan too closely for comfort.

“Why don’t you let us give you a hand?” the passenger said, coming close. “You gotta make sure you get those lug nuts good and tight.”

“Good and tight,” the driver echoed.

Marty took the pistol from his pocket and pointed at them. “I said no thanks.”

They stopped short but didn’t appear afraid. The passenger looked at his buddy. “I don’t think he’s got the cojones.”

There was a sharp crack and the man grabbed his thigh, stumbling backward. “You motherfucker!” he screamed, his face twisted in anguish, blood quickly gushing through his fingers.

“Chill the fuck out, man!” the driver shouted, pointing at Marty. “All we wanted to do was help, you son of a bitch!”

“Get lost!” Marty shouted, taking a step forward.

“Marty, let them go.”

“Move it!”

The driver helped his bleeding friend back into the car and got behind the wheel, speeding off with the wounded man giving them a bloody finger.

“I don’t think he’ll live long,” Marty said, going quickly back to his work. “Did you see how bad he was bleeding? I must have hit the femoral artery.”

“Do you think they were really…”

“Gonna take you?”

She nodded.

“I’m positive.”

Two hours later, just across the border into Arizona, they began to run low on fuel and started looking for an acceptable gas station. Every station they passed for thirty miles was swarming with motorists, and many of the stations appeared to be more or less under siege. One they passed was fully engulfed in flames.

They finally spotted a Shell station with only a few cars at the pumps. People were running in and out, picking the place clean, but Marty decided to give it a try.

They pulled up to one of the pumps and he got out and swiped his card. To his immense relief, the card was authorized and he grabbed the nozzle from its slot and stuck it into the fuel port.

“Hey, buddy?” a man said, poking his head around the pump. “Do you suppose we could use your card? There’s nobody working in there and all we got is cash.”

Marty glanced into the man’s car to see that he was traveling with a wife and two children.

“I’ll pay you double,” the man said.

“You can owe me,” Marty said, lending him the card. “Pump as much as you need.”

“Thanks a lot.” The man ducked back around.

When Marty was putting the nozzle back into the slot, the man stepped back from around the pump, and even as Marty was reaching for his card, the man jammed a .357 Magnum into his face.

“Sorry, buddy,” the guy said, “but we got a dead battery. Tell your old lady to get out of the car.”

“Hey, whoa!” Marty said, stepping back. “We’re more than willing to give you a jump, man.”

“Get her the fuck outta the car!” the man ordered.

“Bill!” the man’s wife shouted. “Let them give us a jump!”

“We don’t have any fucking cables!”

Marty pointed at the station. “They’ll have some inside!”

The man pointed the weapon at Susan. “If I have to tell you one more time, I’ll shoot her. I swear to Christ!”

Susan got quickly out of the car. “Let them have it, Marty.”

The man trained the gun on Marty as his family loaded into their car. The woman offered to let Susan get their bags of food from the back.

“Don’t let them take a fucking thing!” her husband ordered, never taking his eyes off Marty.

That’s when Marty first noticed the gold star on the man’s belt.

“Protect and serve, huh?”

“Fuck you,” the man said, getting into their car, keeping the gun trained on him. “I got a family to take care of. Get over there where I can see you and keep your hands up. I see the gun in your pocket.”

Marty stepped back and kept his hands up as the man drove away with their car and all of their supplies.

Susan jumped into the cop’s car and turned the key. There was a clicking noise under the hood but that was it. In the backseat there were a few meager rations and two bottles of Gatorade. “At least they left us something,” she said. “Maybe we can get somebody to give us a jump.”

During the confrontation, the looters had cut the pump island a wide berth, not wanting to risk getting shot, but now that the maniac with the gun was gone, a large group of teenage Latino males were taking notice of Susan, loitering about and smoking cigarettes they had stolen, talking furtively among themselves. A few of them were marked with gang tats and had moco rags tied on their heads.

“We’d better just get moving,” he said.

“Okay, yeah,” Susan replied, taking his meaning.

They took the supplies from the back of the car and started off on foot toward the highway. Marty had no idea what they were going to do now, but they needed to get away from the gang because there were more of them than there were bullets in the gun.

“Shit,” he said with a glance over his shoulder. “They’re following us.”

“I’m scared,” she said, grabbing his hand.

Marty could feel her trembling, and his bladder filled with ice.

“Don’t run before they make their move,” he said, spotting half a dozen or so civilized-looking men standing across the street in front of a doughnut shop. “Maybe we can get some help from those guys over there.”

The gang started trotting after them.

“They’re coming!” she said in panic.

“Don’t run!” he hissed, gripping her hand tighter.

The group caught up and encircled them. “Hey, mamasita!” the apparent leader said with a heavy Chilango accent, flicking his cigarette away and grabbing at Susan’s T-shirt. “Let’s see what you got under the hood, esa.”

The others laughed, making exaggerated gestures as they flicked the ashes from their cigarettes or swaggered along combing their hair.

Susan fended off the advance and kept walking, squeezing Marty’s hand.

“What’s the matter, mama, you don’t like young dick or what, eh? We’ll show you a good time.”

They kept walking, but as they drew closer to the doughnut shop, the men on the sidewalk filed inside, and that’s when Marty knew they were in deep shit. The gang knew it too, of course, also watching to see what the doughnut men were going to do. Now confident, one of them grabbed Susan by the hair from behind and another tore at her T-shirt, exposing her bra.

Marty shot the leader in the face at nearly point-blank range, blowing his teeth out the opposite side of his face. Someone stabbed him a glancing blow to the shoulder from behind and he spun around, shooting the youth in the belly as the rest of them dragged Susan off at the run. She screamed for help as they lifted off her the ground and Marty ran after them, shooting two of them in the back before the gun jammed.

Three of the teens turned on him immediately and began to assault him in a flurry of fists and feet, beating him quickly to the ground and stomping him. Marty blacked out, and they left him where he lay on the pavement.

Susan was shrieking now, clawing at her young assailants as they hauled her off toward an alley, kicking furiously in a futile attempt to get her feet back on the ground.

A rescue-green Jeep Rubicon suddenly came streaking into the lot and mowed four of the teens over in one blow. The driver hit the brake and cut the wheel hard, gunning for the rest of them. The gang panicked, dropping Susan to the ground and running for their lives from the Jeep.

The driver stopped and jumped out, firing a single shot after them to keep them running.

“Are you okay?” he asked, offering Susan a bloody hand to help her to her feet.

She was sobbing and trying to remake her shirt and bra in order to cover her exposed breast.

“Come on,” the man said, walking her toward the Jeep. “We need to go.”

“Marty!” she said. “Where’s Marty?”

“That him over there?”

She saw Marty getting to his feet, staggering and bleeding from a gash in his head, and she ran to him, grabbing him and bawling.

“I’m okay,” he said hazily, seeing their dark-haired rescuer walking up in black jeans and a blue denim jacket, his cowboy boots spattered with droplets of wet blood.

“You gave a good account of yourself, partner.”

“Thanks,” Marty said, holding his head.

The cowboy cut the men in the doughnut shop a hard look and they turned away from the windows. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “You two had better mount up. We can’t get caught flat-footed in the open.”

The Jeep had a hard-top cover, and there were four red five-gallon fuel cans strapped to the roof.

Susan climbed into the backseat on the driver’s side and Marty rode shotgun. The cowboy belted himself in and wheeled the Jeep around toward the highway, where the traffic now headed into the desert wasn’t a great deal busier than it would normally have been at that time of year.

“Where ya headed?”

“Mesa.”

“Well you’re in luck,” the cowboy said. “There’s enough gas for the run. My name’s Joe.”

“Where are you going?” Marty asked.

“Down the road a ways,” Joe said, shaking a smoke from a pack of Marlboros and lighting it with the lighter from the ashtray.

Marty glanced into the backseat at Susan. She shrugged her shoulders. There was an M-1 carbine on the seat next to her along with a green bandolier of extra magazines.

“What’s down the road a ways?” Marty asked.

“More desert,” the cowboy said, exhaling a large cloud of smoke, which was blown quickly away by the wind.

“More desert?”

The cowboy stuck the cigarette between his teeth. “Here,” he said, taking his .45 automatic from the small of his back and giving it to Marty. “Better acquaint yourself with that. You’ll likely need it.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, glancing again at Susan.

“The magazine holds seven shots,” Joe went on. “You pull back on the slide to load a round into battery. There’s a slide lock on the side there. It’s like a safety. It kicks some but you and your girl can handle it. The carbine in the back is easy too. I’ll show you how to use that in a bit. Right now we just need to put some real estate behind us. I’ve got some pretty bad hombres after me, and if they ask around back there, somebody’s bound to tell ’em which way we went.”

“Why are they after you?” Susan asked.

Joe dragged deeply from the Marlboro. “Well, let’s just say I gave ’em a good dose of the same medicine I gave those spics back there.”

“Were they trying to rape somebody?” She couldn’t help asking.

“No, they’d done raped her already,” Joe answered quietly. “I killed all seven of ’em, but I didn’t know the bar was full of their friends. It was a Mongol bar.”

Susan gasped. “My God, they were Chinese?”

“The Mongols are a biker gang, Sue.”

“Outlaw biker gang,” Joe added. “And they’re already rapin’ and pillagin’ their asses off.”

“They raped a woman outside a bar?” Susan said, quietly aghast.

“In the back of a pickup.”

“About how many bikers are after you?” Marty asked, looking into the side rearview mirror, half expecting the horizon to be filled with motorcycles.

“A lot,” Joe said. “But don’t worry about it. Where this Jeep can go, their Harleys can’t follow.”

Marty could see Susan sitting forward now with her head in her hands, and he wanted badly to climb into the backseat and hold her, but he didn’t want to do it in front of Joe.

“Where’s the woman now? Did you have to leave her behind?”

“She’s dead. She needed a hospital bad and there just wasn’t one to be found.”

“You mean you had to…”

Joe nodded. “That’s what I mean.”

Ten miles farther on, Joe pulled off the highway, drove right through a fence onto a dirt road and then down into a dry arroyo where they couldn’t be seen from the road.

“End of the line,” he said, climbing out.

Marty looked at Susan and then noticed that Joe’s seat was soaked with blood.

“Oh, no,” he muttered, and got out to find Joe sitting in the dirt behind the Jeep, against a rock.

“Get me that carbine outta there, partner. I need to show you how to work it.”

“How bad are you?” Susan asked, getting out of the Jeep with the carbine.

“Bad enough, darlin’. Lemme see that.”

He made sure they knew how to operate both weapons and had them each take a few practice shots.

“Okay,” he said, lighting up another cigarette, this time with a disposable lighter from his jacket. “Off you go now.”

“No,” Susan said, “we’ll stay with you.”

“Get on,” Joe said. “I need time to talk with my wife before I die.”

“The phones aren’t working,” Marty said. “There’s too many people making calls.”

“I don’t need a phone to talk to the dead. Get on now. And ride parallel to the highway whenever you can. Most road warriors won’t be able to follow you off road. Those that can, you just shoot ’em with the carbine.”

Susan knelt beside him in the dirt and gave him a hug. “We’ll never forget you.”

“I don’t envy either of you what lies ahead, honey.”

Marty offered Joe his hand and then he and Susan reluctantly got into the Jeep.

“Hey, partner! Come back here a second.”

Marty got back out. “What do you need?”

“Don’t you let that girl be taken alive again, hear?”

“It was your wife back there, wasn’t it?” Marty said, his eyes filling with tears, his voice thick. “They shot you and took her, didn’t they?”

“Biggest mistake they ever made was not killin’ me,” Joe said. “Love her long as you can, partner, but don’t you be afraid to do what needs done. Hear?”

“I won’t,” Marty said, wiping his eyes with the tail of his tattered shirt and turning to get back into the Jeep.

“Why are you crying?” Susan asked. She looked out the back window to see Joe resting his head against the rock, eyes closed. “What did he say?”

“Nothing,” Marty said, starting the motor. “He died.”

He drove up out of the wash, back through the hole in the fence, and sped off down the highway, both of them listening to the tires humming against the asphalt. Susan tried the radio. There was no music, just a lot of news. Bad news about civil unrest and the state government’s inability to do much of anything about it. People were being urged to stay in their homes and off the highways.

Nineteen

They hadn’t driven very far before Marty spotted the first of the motorcycles coming over the horizon in the rearview mirror. They were still a few miles back but gaining.

“This isn’t our day, Sue.”

“What?” she said, whipping her head around. “Mongols?”

“Gotta be,” he said, hitting the brakes and pulling quickly off the highway.

“What are you doing, for God’s sake?”

He climbed into the back. “Drive, Sue! Drive as fast you feel safe.”

“But… Marty!” She climbed behind the wheel and shifted into drive, pulling back onto the highway as he prepared to fire the carbine out through the back window. “Marty, I don’t know if I can do this!”

“We’ll talk about it later!”

He watched the Harleys closing on them gradually, dodging in and out of the traffic. They flew past a stopped state trooper’s car. The red and blue strobes on the roof were flashing wildly but there was no trooper to be seen anywhere.

“Marty, they’re getting closer.”

“I’m watching them,” he said, holding the lead driver in the sights of the carbine. “I have to let them get close enough to hit them.”

“I think they’ve got guns!”

“Of course they’ve got guns!” he said, unable to help laughing at the pure insanity of the moment. “‘I think they’ve got guns.’”

“Shut up, Marty! Who are you, Mel Gibson now?”

“Don’t make me laugh, Susan. I have to shoot these guys and I’m trying not to piss my pants back here.”

She swerved wildly to miss a stalled car in the fast lane. “Holy Christ!” she said in terror. “I almost plowed right into that fucking thing!”

“Watch the road, not the mirror!”

There were about forty bikes behind them now, and Marty was aiming for the belly of the lead rider. The guy wasn’t a fat, sweaty, bearded hog as he had expected most of them to be. He looked more like Arnold Schwarzenegger from one of the Terminator movies, and he was driving one-handed, gripping a shotgun like a cowboy on horseback.

Marty fired the first round, shattering the rear window and causing Susan to scream and swerve inside the lane.

The biker began weaving to throw off Marty’s aim, blasting off a round of buckshot that was ineffective at that range. Marty fired again and shattered the headlight. His third shot struck the biker in the chest and the man lost control immediately, dropping the shotgun and fighting to keep from crashing, but he was doomed. The bike went down and flipped over on top of him. One of the bikes coming up ran him over and crashed. Another rider tried to dodge the first bike but clipped the handlebars and flipped over, his bike virtually disintegrating as it slammed into a bridge abutment.

“Got three in one shot!” Marty said.

“I heard three shots,” Susan muttered, checking her speed, not trusting herself to drive much over seventy.

Surprised to discover a gunner in the Jeep, the rest of the Mongols dropped back, shouting back and forth, trying to decide how best to handle this new development.

Marty fired again and hit one of them in the head. A lucky shot, but the rider flew right off the back and his bike continued on for nearly fifty feet without him before heading down into the median and flipping over. The rest of the riders slowed way down after that and allowed the distance between them and the Jeep to increase greatly.

“They’re letting us go. You did it, Marty!”

“I doubt it,” he said, sensing what they were up to. “They’re not turning back. They’ll probably try to shadow us all the way to Mesa.”

“So what do we do?”

“Find a place to get off the highway. Drive cross-country through the desert like Joe told us.”

“I don’t know. What if we get stuck or have a breakdown?”

“And what if these maniacs follow us all the way to my house?”

They continued for another ten miles, the bikers hanging back about a mile or so in the slow lane, letting the faster traffic pass them on the left. Another state trooper streaked by going the other way, lights flashing, but they didn’t think for a minute that he would be any help, and the bikers certainly didn’t seem too shaken up over him.

“Okay,” Marty said, remaining in the backseat. “I know this area. About five miles ahead there’s a rest stop. Pull in and we’ll switch.”

“They’ll be right on top of us by the time we get back on the road.”

“We’re not getting back on the road,” he said. “We’re going over land where those bikes won’t be able to stay with us.”

They passed the sign for the rest stop and a mile later exited the highway. Susan sped up the ramp into an area where military vehicles were gathered. There were armed soldiers wandering all over the place, and a bunch of them aimed their rifles at the Jeep, ready to blast it apart.

“Oh, shit!” she said, getting on the brakes and slowing just in time. She cut the wheel and rolled into a parking spot, then got out and ran toward the soldiers, who were watching her as if she were crazy.

“We’re being chased!” she shouted, pointing back at the ramp. “Bikers are trying to kill us!”

The soldiers looked toward the ramp and stood waiting to see. Within fifty seconds the Mongols came rolling into the rest area smelling blood, but the moment they saw the soldiers they put the coal to the fire and roared right on through toward the exit.

“Shoot them!” Susan was shouting. “You’re letting them get away!”

The troops watched as the last of the bikes rumbled through, and then stood looking at her.

“Why didn’t you shoot them, for Christ’s sake? You could’ve gotten every damn one of them!”

Marty took her by the arm and walked her back to the Jeep. “Sorry, guys,” he said over his shoulder. “It’s been a rough day.” Then to Susan, in a lower voice, “Your breast is showing!”

“Oh, shit,” she said, grabbing at the shirt to cover herself.

“We’ll just hang here for a minute,” he said. “I can get us to Mesa without the highway now.”

“Maybe we can get these guys to escort us,” she said, getting back into the Jeep on the passenger side.

“Susan, they’re not our personal bodyguard. They’re men with guns and they just got a pretty good look at your tit.”

“It’s not a ‘tit,’” she said thinly. “It’s a breast.”

He chuckled wearily. “Do you know how stupid you sound?”

A couple of troops came up to the Jeep.

“What’s going on?” a tall sergeant asked. His name tag read FLYNN.

“We were attacked on the road,” Marty said, wishing he’d hidden the carbine lying across the backseat. “Those bikers murdered our friend and his wife earlier today. They just tried to do the same to us.”

The sergeant stood looking at him, noticing the weapon in the back. “Where did you get that?”

“It belonged to a friend,” Susan said. “This is his Jeep.”

The sergeant stooped so he could get a better look at her. “Are you injured?”

“No, but Marty is. He’s got a stab wound in his shoulder and a gash to his head.”

“It’ll be okay,” Marty said, wishing she would shut up. “We’re going to get going in a minute.”

“Get a medic over here,” Flynn said to the other soldier. He turned his attention back to Marty. “Is that the only weapon you’ve got?”

Marty considered lying but thought better of it, since the pistol was concealed under his shirt, rather than under the seat. He knew he should have thought to stash it there, but Susan had jumped from the Jeep so fast he hadn’t had time to think.

“No, I’ve got a pistol too.”

The sergeant stood looking at him, waiting for the medic. “Where is it?”

“Under my shirt.”

“I’m going to ask you to leave it in the Jeep while you’re being treated,” Flynn said.

“That’s fine,” Marty replied, the feeling of sweet relief spreading through his veins.

A woman in uniform, complete with helmet, appeared at the sergeant’s side with a large green bag over her shoulder. “Who’s injured?”

“This man has a stab wound to the shoulder and a gash to the head,” Flynn said. “See what you can do for him.”

He stood by while Marty stashed the .45 in the glove box, then walked off to join the other troops as the medic began to probe Marty’s wounds.

“Thank God you guys were here,” Susan said to her. “Those maniacs were trying to kill us.”

“If I might make a suggestion,” the medic said. “Woman-to-woman. You need to start making yourself less noticeable.”

Susan self-consciously doubled her grip on the shirt. “I was a little freaked out… but that’s good advice. Thank you.”

“Where are you two headed?” the medic asked, pouring peroxide onto Marty’s head wound and sopping at it with a wad of cotton.

“Mesa,” he answered, wincing slightly.

“Married?”

“We’re just friends,” Susan said.

“Are you prepared to die for her?” the medic asked, her tone very frank.

“He’s almost done that a couple of times already,” Susan said, sounding oddly proud.

“The way you prance around in front of men,” the medic said flatly, “I believe it.”

“She was just freaked out,” Marty said.

For a fellow woman, the medic didn’t seem to have an ounce of sympathy. “You endanger us all by drawing attention. You understand?”

Susan looked down at the pavement. “Yeah.”

The medic opened a foil pack of sutures. “I’m going to sew these up.”

“I appreciate it,” Marty said.

The sergeant came back across the lot and offered a digital ACU jacket to Susan. “Put that on and keep it zipped.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, never having felt so much like a tramp in her life. Didn’t these people realize she was a victim, for God’s sake?

“I put out a call on those bikers,” Flynn said. “But I wouldn’t count on anything being done. When you get back out on the highway, you’d better keep your eyes peeled.”

“Actually, we’re going right out the back of the rest stop,” Marty said. “We’re going to try keeping off the highway.”

“Might not be a bad idea,” the sergeant said, and walked off again.

“Where are you guys going from here?” Marty asked the medic, whose name tag identified her as Emory.

“No idea,” Emory said. “We’re waiting to decide.”

“You don’t have any orders?” Susan asked.

“After that asteroid hits, our orders aren’t going to mean shit. We just plan on getting as far away from the impact area as possible.”

“Call your sergeant back over here,” Marty said.

“Why?”

“I might be able to help you decide which way to go.”

Emory got on her radio and called the sergeant back over.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“Sergeant, believe it or not, I’m the astronomer who took the asteroid public.”

“That so?” the sergeant said, not entirely convinced.

“It is, and I might be able to offer you a suggestion as to where you don’t want to be tomorrow morning.”

“How’s that?”

“Because I work at Mesa Station, and I’ve actually seen this beast with my own eyes. Most of my calculations have it hitting in the tristate area of Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota. I formed a couple of orbital models that predicted it would hit farther north, but none of them predicted that it would hit any farther south than Wyoming. There’s the remotest possibility of it hitting in the Great Lakes, but that’s it.”

“Washington says it could it hit anywhere between Central America and the North Pole.”

“Well, Washington is wrong. If I were you guys, I’d head due south. This thing’s blast radius could be anywhere from five hundred to a thousand miles, and nothing within that distance is going to survive unless it’s deep underground.”

“Washington says closer to five hundred miles.”

“That was before their nuclear blast may have given the damn thing a boost.”

“I’ll talk to the lieutenant,” the sergeant said, turning away. “Appreciate the information.”

“Maybe we could go with you guys?” Marty said to Emory.

She glanced over her shoulder to see if any of the men were within earshot. “You don’t want to come with us, regardless of where we go.”

“What’s that mean?” Susan said.

“There are eleven women in this unit,” Emory said. “And as soon as it gets dark tonight, we’re hauling ass down the highway.”

“But you’re in the Army… aren’t you all like family?”

Emory drew the needle through the flap in Marty’s shoulder wound. “Where did you find her?”

Marty smiled at Susan. “She’s actually a genius in her field.”

“Which is what? Home decorating?”

“Hey!” Susan said. “I’ll have you know I’m a professor of astrophysics.”

Emory drew another stitch through the wound. “That explains it.”

“Well, we can’t all wear camouflage for a living,” Susan snapped.

“Please don’t shoot her,” Marty said. “I know she’s a little mouthy, but she’s the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

Emory finally cracked a smile. “Lucky you.”

Susan shook her head and went to sit in the Jeep.

“She’s pretty,” Emory said quietly. “I’d jump ’er.”

Marty looked over his shoulder at her and grinned. “What happened to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’?”

“Maybe I meant I’d like to beat her up.”

“Maybe it’s both,” he said with a chuckle.

Emory finished stitching and dressing his wounds and turned to close up her bag.

“Are you really in that much danger here?” he asked her.

“Fifty horny guys with M-16s? No law and order? What do you think?”

“They can’t all be animals, can they?”

“No, but we’re not hanging around to find out who is and who isn’t. We’ve got rifles too, and we’re splitting before they’re taken away from us.” She gave him back his shirt. “You’re good to go. Take these antibiotics with you.”

“Thanks,” he said, shaking her hand. “Should I say anything to the sergeant before we go?”

Emory shook her head. “Just go.”

“Want to jump in and go with us?” he asked as she walked with him toward the Jeep.

“I can’t bail on my friends, but thanks for the offer. Look after the princess.”

“I’ll try,” Marty said, opening the door and getting in. “I’m Marty, by the way.”

“I’m Shannon.”

“Good luck, Shannon.”

“Shit, we’re all fucked, Marty.” She shut his door and stepped back as he started the motor, then watched him drive off and crash through the fence at the back of the rest area.

The sergeant and another female soldier came walking over as the Jeep rolled away over the terrain.

“We’re on for eleven-thirty,” Sergeant Flynn said.

“Roger that,” said Emory. “What did you tell the lieutenant?”

“What do you think I told him? I told him the astronomer said we should roll due north.”

As they drove along over the rugged terrain, Susan was grinning at Marty.

“What?”

“You liked her.”

He laughed. “Well, guess which one of us she liked.”

Susan’s smile disappeared. “You’re making that up.”

“No,” he said. “Her exact words were: ‘She’s pretty, I’d jump ’er.’”

“That’s disgusting,” she said, crossing her arms and looking out the window.

He laughed some more.

“It’s not that funny, Martin.”

“Well, considering what we’ve been through today, Susan, I’d say it’s just that funny.”

Twenty

The sun was going down, and though most of the adults in Forrest’s flock were fairly inebriated, it was a sobering moment as each reflected that this could be the last sunset they ever saw. They sat watching it, the foundation of all their sunny days and brightest memories, shading their eyes as it faded to a darker orange, many of them whispering for it not to go. Even the youngest children seemed to be experiencing an instinctive sense of loss.

After it disappeared, the mothers gathered their children into their arms and held them tight, telling them how much they loved them and pledging that nothing would ever change that, no matter what the future held. Forrest stood watching over them all with Laddie at his side, a carbine slung across his back: a lethal talisman to ward off whatever evils might come to pass in the following months.

“By the time it gets dark,” Ulrich announced to the group, “we’d like everyone to be inside the house, but feel free to remain aboveground until midnight.”

“I guess it’s time we started moving this party inside, then,” Erin said, forcing herself to cheer up. “Who wants coffee?”

“I’ll help you make some,” Andie said, her gaze on Forrest for a long moment as she joined Erin on her way to the house.

Forrest watched as Joann Parker came strolling gracefully up to him, looking very solemn, leading her five-year-old daughter Beyonce by the hand.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” she said. “I’d just like to thank you for today. The rest of the world is suffering so badly right now… but you’ve managed to make today special.”

“It’s my privilege,” he said, kneeling to talk to her daughter. “How are you, beautiful? Did you have fun with Laddie today?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling and petting the dog’s ears. “Mommy says you’re an army man. That’s why you have a gun.”

“Well, I’m sort of an army man, yeah. But I only have a gun in case some bears come around and try to eat up all our food.”

“Bears?” she said incredulously, as if the idea of a bear in Nebraska was the craziest thing she had ever heard.

He laughed as he stood up. “Your daughter is apparently unaware of the growing bear population here in the Great Plains.”

Joann laughed, and for a moment she looked as though she wanted to say something more, but she excused herself instead and led Beyonce off toward the house.

Ulrich came over and stood at Forrest’s side. “Did you touch base with Jerry one last time?”

Forrest nodded. “He wishes us luck. He’s back in Havana now.”

They went inside, and the house was crowded even with everyone spread more or less evenly throughout the five rooms.

“Where’s Melissa?” Forrest asked Veronica.

“She’s out on the porch… she’s upset, Jack. It’s been two days, and she hasn’t been able to reach her parents with all the cell phone usage.”

He crossed the house and stepped out onto the porch where Melissa was sitting in a chair. Laddie was beside her, watching the night.

“What’s got you down?” he asked, taking the chair beside her and resting the carbine barrel-up against the railing.

“Can I see that?”

“Not right now. What’s got you down?”

“You know what it is,” she said, petting the dog.

He flicked his cigarette out into the yard.

“You should quit smoking.”

He took the pack from his pocket and set it on the windowsill. “How’s that?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got like ninety cartons downstairs.”

“So when’s the last time you talked to your parents?”

“The day before yesterday.”

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and grabbing the carbine.

Veronica saw them headed for the basement and started to follow, but Michael stepped in front of her.

“Where are you going?”

She pointed after them.

“You don’t have to be in on every little thing,” he said. “Let her have some time with him.”

“Why aren’t you talking to your girlfriend?”

“I thought I was.”

“I don’t want to dance around this,” she said, suddenly frustrated. “Let me know if you decide to get to know her better.”

“I hardly think you’ve got room to criticize.”

Down below in Launch Control, Forrest sat down beside Melissa, switched on the satellite phone and typed in a number from memory.

“But I thought you couldn’t—”

“Shh!”

The phone rang only twice.

“Jack, is that you?” someone answered over the speaker.

“Yeah, Jerry, it’s me. Thanks for picking up.”

“Has something gone wrong?” Jerry asked. “I didn’t think we were supposed to talk again.”

“I need a favor, Jerry.”

“Another one? Jesus Christ, Jack!”

“Hey, this one’s easy,” Forrest said. “I need you to patch me through to a specific cell phone number.”

“We’re on a military satellite, Jack. There are certain risks involved here.”

“What are they going to do, Jerry? Come and get you down in Havana after the meteor hits?”

“Give me the fucking number, you greedy pain in the ass.”

Forrest gave him the number. “Thanks, Jerry. Godspeed.”

“Same to you, old friend.”

A minute later the line was ringing.

“Hello?”

“Mom!” Melissa blurted.

“Oh, my God, baby! Are you okay? Stephen, it’s Melissa! Baby, we’ve been going crazy trying to reach you! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Melissa said, her voice cracking as she began to cry.

“Take all the time you need,” Forrest whispered, touching her on the head and leaving her alone in Launch Control, signaling Laddie to stay with her. He went back upstairs and out into the backyard, and half an hour later Melissa reappeared to find him at the picnic table smoking a cigarette.

“I thought you quit,” she said, sitting down beside him.

“I started up again.”

She leaned against him and rested her head on his shoulder. “We got cut off.”

“Military satellites will do that,” he said. “They prioritize every thirty minutes. I should’ve warned you.”

“At least I got to talk to them. Thank you.”

“You bet.”

She was silent for a moment. “We’re all going to die, aren’t we?”

He smiled in the porch light. “Eventually.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“This has happened before, and mankind snapped right back.” He pushed a curl away from her sad eyes. “There’s no reason to assume we won’t make it.”

“Man hasn’t recovered from something like this.”

“No? Well, I’ve got a book downstairs written by that Ester Thorn lady on CNN. She says an asteroid hit a glacier on this very continent about thirteen thousand years ago during the last ice age—the Younger Dryas, she calls it. She says that’s what killed off the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger.”

“Well, cavemen were a lot tougher than we are.”

“They weren’t tougher than me,” he said. “I’d kick a caveman’s ass.”

She laughed softly, as Kane stepped out onto the back porch.

“Jack! You might want to come down and have a look at the news. Things are really going to shit in a hurry. Federal troops are firing on civilians in New York and D.C.… and it sounds like China just invaded eastern Russia.”

Twenty-One

Ester Thorn took her eye away from the telescope at the Gemini Observatory and looked at Harold Shipman. “It’s so damn close now, just seeing it is enough to curdle an old woman’s blood.”

Shipman helped her to step aside so his friend from the local television network, Sam Ash, could have a look at the asteroid for himself.

When Ash peered through the eyepiece, what he saw reminded him somewhat of looking head-on at a spiraling football. If he blinked his eye, he could capture the briefest glimpse of a rocky-looking surface illuminated by the sun, but not much more. “It’s spinning wildly, isn’t it?”

“On a number of different axes,” Shipman said, “coming right at us at a hundred thousand miles an hour, made of almost solid iron… like an artillery shell.”

“An artillery shell as big as a town,” Ester grumbled, ambling off toward the office.

Ash followed them down the corridor. “Why do you suppose no one ever named it?”

“I suppose because why bother?” Shipman said. “No one knows who was the first to spot it, and that’s who typically names these things.”

“It’s the Chittenden Bolide,” insisted Ester, stopping in the office doorway and turning to rest on her cane. “But the world doesn’t need to hear that. Marty wasn’t looking for fame. He was looking to save lives. That’s why we’ve called you, Sam. We need your help with the media again.”

“You’ve got it. What do you need me to do?”

“We need a propagandist.” She smiled mirthlessly. “Up for it?”

“Well, I guess that depends,” he said with a glance at Shipman. “What am I propagandizing?”

“Opportunity!” she said. “In less than twelve hours the United States will be dead, and that’s going to leave us all alone out here on the ocean.”

“Where exactly is the opportunity in that?”

“In the Earth and its resources, primarily these islands and their waters. I don’t want to get all preachy with you, Sam, and I certainly don’t think we should get preachy with the people, but we’ve got a chance to get it right this time, and I’m willing to cheat to make that happen.”

Again Ash glanced briefly at Shipman. “Well, maybe you need to get a little preachy with me, Ester, because I’m not sure I follow you.”

“All right,” she began. “This has been a profit-based society for the last two hundred years, and that’s why we’re all about to die. Had this been a resource-based society… we would have stopped that asteroid a month ago—or even two months ago—because we’d have been prepared. So tonight we need you to go on TV and stress that very point. You accuse the government of allowing corporate greed to kill the Earth. You get the people angry, and by getting them angry you get them motivated to take action… Then you offer them a course of action to take.

“You tell them we’ll defy the failures of the past by working together to build a sustainable future this time, a future based on a partnership with this planet instead of endless exploitation. It won’t be an easy task, hell no, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Our inexcusable failure to stop this asteroid is testament enough to that.”

She tamped her cane once against the floor and stood looking sternly between the two men. “What do you say to that, Sam?”

Ash was thoughtful for a long moment. He rubbed his chin, then he cast his gaze back to Ester. “I can’t do it.”

“What do you mean, you can’t do it?” she demanded. “You’re in charge of the network! You’re saying you disagree?”

“I’m saying I can’t sell it.”

“Hogwash! All you have to do is put some passion behind it!”

Ash looked at Shipman and smiled. “Honestly, Harold, am I the person to sell this… ‘opportunity’?”

Shipman smiled back, shifting his weight. “No. No, I don’t think you are, after all.”

Ester turned on him angrily. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We mean, Ester, that it’s got to be you. You’re the one who brought us this far, and I’m sorry, but you’re the one who’s going to have to take us the rest of the way.” Shipman looked at Ash. “How soon can you get her on the air?”

Ash shrugged. “Within the hour if we leave now.”

“Now, wait just a minute!” Ester protested as Ash stepped toward her. “I’m an old woman. I can’t start a movement. I don’t have the energy for it!”

Ash put his arm around her shoulder, preparing to lead her down the corridor. “Ester, forgive me for saying so, but that’s bullshit. You’ve already started it, and I’m afraid you’re just going to have to finish it.”

“I didn’t start a goddamn thing,” she griped, taking a reluctant step forward. “It was Marty Chittenden who started it, by God, and now I’m the one left holding the bag!”

Twenty-Two

During the final leg into Mesa, Marty kept the Jeep off the road. He drove parallel to the highway until the Mongols spotted them, then veered deep inland and southeast to terrain that was too rugged for the Harleys. By the time they got into town it was nearly dark, and judging by the loud music blaring from most of the houses, it seemed that the people in his neighborhood either didn’t believe the world was about to end or had decided to go out partying. People were drinking and carrying on, and a few were dancing naked in the middle of the street.

“Wow,” Susan said. “It’s like a rave.”

“It’s nice to see we’ve still got power.” He parked the car on the concrete drive and took the guns inside.

“I need a shower,” she said, dropping down on the couch.

“You’re in luck. I’ve got an electric water heater, but you’d better hurry because the power could go at any time.”

She stepped into the bedroom and crossed to the master bath, closing the door behind her. Marty heated them some canned soup, since the perishable food in the fridge had gone bad during his extended stay in California. She came from the bath a little while later and sat at the table in his robe, eating her soup. Her wet hair was wrapped in a towel, and he thought she looked so amazingly sexy sitting there in his robe that his throat tightened and it was difficult for him to swallow. He was about to compliment her but didn’t trust himself to conceal the intensity of his attraction, so he tried not to look at her as he ate.

“The water’s still hot,” she said, pulling the towel from her head and buffing her hair dry.

“Okay,” he said, his voice throaty. “Thanks.” He was recalling the sight of her naked breast at the rest stop earlier that day, the strawberry nipple, and was looking forward to getting a shower of his own. He got up and took the guns from the table with him into the bedroom, where he set them down on the dresser.

Susan followed him in and sat down on the bed. “Would you mind leaving the bathroom door open so we can talk? I’m still a little scared.”

“Um, yeah… okay,” he said, disappointed; now it would be almost impossible for him to jerk off without her realizing it. He undressed, turned on the shower, and stepped in beneath the water, closing the door to the stall.

“Are you in?” she called.

“Uh, yeah.”

“I need to brush my teeth,” she said, coming into the bathroom. “I found a new brush in the drawer. Can I use it?”

“Absolutely.” He stood in the shower willing his erection to go away, but it wouldn’t. Maybe if he soaped it up and was quiet about it, he could manage without her knowing.

“I wonder if they’ll party all night,” she said, brushing her teeth in the mirror.

“I don’t know,” he said. He loved her company, but she was making this difficult.

She handed his toothbrush and toothpaste over the top of the shower wall. “Here you go.”

“Uh… thanks.”

“You’re not masturbating in there, are you?”

“No!”

“You’d better not be. That would be disgusting.”

“Shut up, Sue.” He began to wither after that, so he went ahead and brushed his teeth, careful to keep his head and shoulder wounds out of the water.

“Hurry up and get out of there,” she said. “I’ve got an idea.”

He made a face at her from behind the smoked glass and waited for her to leave the room, turning off the water and yanking a towel from the ring on the wall as he stepped out. He dried himself and wrapped the robe around his waist before going into the bedroom, where Susan sat on the edge of the bed with the covers turned down.

“If we’re going to do this,” she said, “there have to be some rules.”

“Do what?” he asked in shock, his erection suddenly back on the move.

“Duh, Marty! What do you think?”

“You’re not serious!”

She couldn’t help snickering at him. “Well, if you’re not interested…”

“I’m interested! I just can’t believe it. Susan, you’re—”

“No kissing and no oral,” she said, holding up a finger to cut him off. “And no dirty words.”

“Okay,” he croaked, his throat constricting with the realization that it was really going to happen.

“And you have to promise not to come in me… I can’t believe you don’t have any condoms stashed, Marty. What kind of guy doesn’t have at least one condom in his bedroom?”

“The kind who never gets laid,” he retorted.

“Well, that’s what you get for wasting your time waiting for me.”

“But it wasn’t a waste of time, Sue… you’re here.”

She couldn’t help feeling touched, and was damned if she couldn’t feel herself blushing as well. “Well… get that towel off and let’s have a look at you.”

When he took off the towel, she was startled by the size of his erection. “Oh, Lord,” she said with a laugh, covering her mouth.

He covered himself quickly, turning red. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s… it’s huge, Marty. I had no idea you were so well endowed.”

“Does that mean the deal’s off?”

“No,” she said, secretly thrilled. “But you have to promise to be gentle.”

“Of course!”

“And not just because of your size… you know?”

“I know,” he said quietly, remembering her secret.

She stood up and slipped out of the robe, letting it fall to the floor. Marty went to her and held her tenderly in his arms. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.

“Do you mind if we start with me on top?” she asked, timid now.

“Anything you want, Susan.”

They got into bed and somewhat clumsily found their positions, Marty flat his on back and her straddling his waist, trying without success to mount him.

“I’m sorry,” he said self-consciously. “I’m too big, aren’t I?”

“No,” she said. “I’m just a bit… would you mind going down on me?”

He laughed. “Are you crazy?”

A few minutes later she mounted him again and this time there was no trouble at all.

“God, that feels good,” she said with a sigh. Then she giggled the way a teenager might. “You should’ve told me you were built like this years ago.”

“Yeah, sure. Like that would’ve helped.”

She smiled, closing her eyes and putting her head back as she began to move with him.

It was all Marty could do to hold off. He thought about the asteroid, naked old women, dogs crapping on the sidewalk, even quadruple amputees… anything but how beautiful she was or how much he loved her. He could tell that she was probably thinking of someone else, and while that did hurt a little, it didn’t spoil the experience. She was his fantasy come to life.

It took her quite a while, but he continued to control himself, even as Susan began to moan and to squeeze him with her thighs, rocking with more urgency and starting to shudder deep within, her breath coming in staggered little girlish gasps. Finally she sighed and rolled off, laid her head on the pillow and smiled at him.

“You feel really, really good,” she said happily. “I’m sorry that took so long.”

“You can do that forever if you like,” he said softly. “I know it can’t be easy with someone you’re not attracted to.”

“It wasn’t that,” she said, touching his face. “I wasn’t imagining you were someone else or anything. It’s just that this was the first time I’ve been with anyone since…”

“I understand,” he said, feeling warmth spreading over him. “So, is it my turn?”

“Yep. You’ve earned it.”

He moved between her thighs and she smiled up at him as he entered her. “You can forget the coitus interruptus,” she said bashfully.

“But what about a baby?”

“Marty, we’re not even going to be alive nine months from now. And it wouldn’t keep me from getting pregnant anyway… we might as well enjoy this.”

He began moving slowly, but after a couple of minutes he couldn’t help gasping and touching her face. “Please, Susan,” he finally said. “Can I kiss you just once?”

She took his shoulders and pulled him down to her, kissing him lustfully and causing him to explode inside. She gasped as the startling sensation triggered a second climax, which was so unexpected that she laughed aloud and wrapped herself tightly around him as he groaned like a man put to the rack.

“Marty, that was amazing!” she said after he collapsed beside her, his chest heaving. “Is there always so much of it? My God! You were in the wrong business!” She cackled with delight at her own joke, almost giddy from the release.

He was still catching his breath. “Oh, sweet Christ, Susan. I love you so fucking much!”

She felt between her legs with her fingers and brought them away, looking at them. “Damn,” she said in awe. “I’m amazed.”

He kissed her breast. “Thank you.”

“We’re gonna have to do this again, honey.”

“Honey?” he said in disbelief. “Do you mean that?”

“You know,” she said with a melancholy smile, “it may have taken the end of the world… but I think you may have finally won me over, Marty. This was really something unexpected.”

The smile that came to him was so big that he thought his face might crack. “Was it my gunplay out on the highway?”

“No,” she chuckled. “I’m pretty sure it was your gunplay right here in bed.”

“You’ve got no idea how much I love you, Susan.”

She held up her fingers and giggled. “Actually, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

Neither of them noticed a tall man in a dark suit stride into the bedroom holding a pistol, until he spoke aloud. “That was quite a show.”

“What the fuck are you doing here!” Marty bolted upright. “Get the fuck outta my house!”

Agent Paulis laughed. “It’s not your house anymore, asshole. It’s been mine for days. And I’d like to thank you for stocking my basement with food.”

Marty knew he was a dead man, that he’d never be able to protect Susan now. “You’ve been living down there?” he said, aghast.

“Get out of my bed,” Paulis said, gesturing with the weapon. “The little lady and I don’t want your blood all over the mattress.”

Without warning, three loud cracks rang out. Hit in the chest, Paulis stumbled backward into the wall and slid to the floor. Quickly, Susan pulled the pistol from beneath the sheet and tried to shoot him again, but the Walther jammed just like it had for Marty earlier that day. Paulis made an odd strangled sound and struggled to lift his weapon, but Marty sprang from the bed and threw the lamp at him, then rushed at Paulis and kicked him in the chin with his bare foot.

Paulis slumped over and continued to make the grotesque gurgling sound for almost a minute before falling silent. He still wasn’t quite dead, but Marty didn’t waste any more time. He wrapped the agent in a sheet and dragged him from the room, down the tiled hallway and out the back door, where he stashed the dying man under his deck.

When he returned to the room, Susan was still sitting in bed, staring in disbelief at the jammed Walther in her hand with the empty shell casing stove-piped in the receiver.

She looked up at him disgustedly. “I don’t believe it.”

“Believe what, honey?”

“Those guys at the gun store sold me a piece of shit!”

Twenty-Three

Private Shannon Emory ran around to the other side of her overturned Humvee and dragged Sergeant Flynn out through the window. The four female troopers in back were either dead or so close to death that it didn’t matter, doomed the minute the rear window of the vehicle had been struck by a 66mm LAW rocket fired by their male counterparts from within the company.

The six women crammed into the lead Humvee had stopped to come back in support, the roof gunner firing the .50 cal machine gun. Orange tracers streaked through darkness as the heavy, half-inch rounds easily pierced the hulls of the lighter armored Humvees driven by the men. The female gunner killed the driver of the closest vehicle, setting it on fire and forcing the other two pursuing Humvees to retreat back down the highway. “How bad are you, Sarge?” Emory said, collecting their carbines from inside the Hummer.

The machine gunner opened up again with a long burst, spotting three survivors from the burning Humvee as they advanced up the median. Their bodies virtually exploded from the hydrostatic shock of the .50 cal rounds.

“Shannon, let’s go!” the gunner screamed. “Before they bring up the javelin!”

“Can you walk?” Emory said to the sergeant.

He held onto her shoulder, putting one foot forward. “I’m okay.”

They packed themselves into the armored Humvee with the remaining six female troops, and the driver sped off down the highway.

“Take the first exit,” Sergeant Flynn said. “We can’t outrun them. We’ll have to lose them.” He smacked the gunner on her leg, and she ducked down inside to see what he wanted.

“Be careful with that barrel. It only takes a four-second burst to warp it!”

“Hooah!” the gunner said, and stood back up to cover the rear.

The driver raced along in the night at fifty mph in the fast lane, where there seemed to be fewer cars out of gas. Two travelers tried to flag her down by stepping right out in front of her, and got themselves run over for their efforts.

“What the hell was that, Sheree?” someone asked from the back.

“Muthafuckers in the road, girl.” Sheree was weaving in and out of the stopped cars, trying to keep her speed up.

“I guess Lieutenant Boyle didn’t like us taking the only two armored Humvees,” Flynn said.

“Fuck ’em!” Sheree said. “We know what they was plannin’.” She slowed down as she pulled off the highway and drove up the exit ramp. “Which way we goin’, Sarge?”

“South. That’s all I know to do.”

“Contact!” the gunner screamed from above, and the .50 cal began to hammer away once again.

The others craned their necks to see out the thick back window, but all they could see were the tracers streaking off to the rear and to the left. Suddenly, a brilliant fireball behind them illuminated the countryside, revealing half a dozen civilian silhouettes near the road with hunting rifles and shotguns.

“Roadblock!” Sheree shouted, hitting the brakes and cutting the wheel to skirt a number of cars parked across the road.

The gunner collapsed and fell down inside on top of them, a bullet through her head.

“Goddamnit!” Emory swore, feeling the dead gunner’s brain oozing into her hands. “She’s gone, guys.”

Sergeant Flynn took a helmet from one of the women and stood up to man the gun. “This mission sure went to shit in a hurry.”

Emory opened the back door and allowed the woman’s body to fall out as they sped along. “Sorry, Carmen, we’ll see you soon.”

From the turret above, Flynn scanned the countryside through a night vision device attached to the front of his helmet. There wasn’t much to see except empty terrain. Thirty miles later they came across an abandoned silver mine, and Sheree pulled off the road and drove up the hill, shining the lights on the gate. There were close to twenty motorcycles parked outside the entrance to the mine.

“Shit, I know who that is!” Emory said. “Get us out of here, Sheree!”

There was a rifleshot, and Sergeant Flynn fell down into the Humvee, hit in the neck. Blood was spurting from his carotid artery, and Emory clamped her hand over the wound as Sheree jammed the vehicle into reverse. The other women in the Humvee shouted an instant before they were rammed in the front right by a black Dodge van. The steering wheel spun wildly in Sheree’s hands as the vehicle whipped around, catching her thumb with the cross bar and snapping her wrist.

“Dismount!” shouted the soldier in the passenger seat, deciding their only chance now was to fight it out.

“Don’t!” Emory warned, but it was too late, the others were already piling out on either side of the vehicle. She covered Flynn’s body with her own as the bullets began to fly, the staccato sound of their M-4s met with a fusillade of shotgun blasts at close range. Her comrades screamed as they fell, and moments later there was no sound except for the idling engine. As Sergeant Flynn died under her, Emory grabbed for her weapon, but someone caught her ankle and jerked her out the back door. She landed hard on her chin and saw stars as she rolled to her back, trying to kick away the hairy blond man dragging her across the gravel toward the entrance to the mine.

A biker chick swore at her viciously and kicked her in the side of the head, and the lights went out.

Twenty-Four

“Sealing blast door number one,” Forrest announced over the radio, pushing the door shut, pulling the lever hard to seal it tight, and turning the bright red wheel to extend the sixteen three-inch steel pins around the entire jamb. “Door one sealed.”

“Roger that,” Ulrich answered from Launch Control, watching him on the monitor.

Forrest then withdrew twenty feet to the second blast door, holding the barrel of his slung carbine with his hand to prevent it from scraping against the wall. He stepped into the stairwell and allowed Kane to push the door closed and seal it.

“We’re a hundred percent,” Forrest announced. “How do we look above?”

“No contacts… everything’s nominal.”

“Welcome home, gentlemen, and congratulations. Phase one is finally complete.”

“Hooah!” came the unanimous reply.

Forrest and Kane made their way to Launch Control, where they stashed the carbines in a locked steel cabinet, hopefully never to need them again. Each man had a key to the cabinet, which he would wear on a chain with his dog tags twenty-four hours a day for the next two years.

“I imagine the ladies are all glued to the televisions?” Forrest said.

Ulrich confirmed this. There was a TV in Launch Control too, but the volume was down. Forrest and the others had seen so much violence in their days overseas that watching it on television held no special appeal for them. They were interested in updates, but the endless repetition only annoyed them.

“Well, that should hold their attention for a while,” Forrest said. “How long do you think before the power grid begins to fail?”

“So far they seem to be keeping the fires stoked up there,” Ulrich said. “There haven’t been any blackouts reported yet, which I find remarkable. But after tomorrow’s impact I expect the entire grid to fail in a cascade effect all the way to the eastern seaboard. There’s no way it’s going to be able to sustain itself after such a large part of it is blasted out of existence.”

“I hope the aboveground cameras survive,” Vasquez said. “I don’t like the idea of being blind down here.”

“After the fires go out, we can go up and replace them,” Danzig said.

“I’m not too keen on that idea either. What if that nuclear blast of theirs radiated the whole damned asteroid?”

“That’s what the NBC suits are for,” Forrest said. “What time do you plan to lower the antenna array, Wayne?”

“Just before sunrise. I’d like to leave it up right to the end, but in case the damn thing jams again I want to leave some time for us to go up and fix it.”

“That’s what we’ll do, then.” Forrest checked his watch against the clock in the console: 0505 hours. “Almost exactly four hours to go. Are the kids asleep?”

“The women put them to bed in the cafeteria for tonight,” Danzig said.

Dr. West came into Launch Control and gave them each a time-released Benzedrine capsule. Forrest wanted them all as alert as possible, and after a day and a night of drinking, amphetamines were the only solution. They had all used amphetamines numerous times during special operations overseas and were aware of the sleep debt they were accumulating, but there would be plenty of time to repay that debt in the coming days. For now, they were on a war footing and needed to remain sharp.

“Doc, talk to you a minute?” Forrest said, beckoning him into the blast tunnel.

West followed him in and pulled the door closed.

“Is there anything going on with Lynette I should know about?” Forrest asked. “Has Price said anything to you?”

West frowned. “I think Price is worried she may not handle this very well. I’ve already talked to Mike about her. I told him I’m more than willing to let him treat any mental health issues that arise. Hey, are you… well, you and Veronica seem—”

“Nothing’s going on. Why, are people talking already?”

West smiled. “This place is wall-to-wall with women. What do you think?”

Forrest laughed sardonically. “And this looked so easy on paper.”

“Who I’m worried about is Oscar,” West said. “When his insulin finally runs out, he’s done for. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” Forrest said heavily. He had been there when Vasquez was shot during a mission in Afghanistan, losing part of his pancreas. “One day at time, Doc.”

Forrest patted him on the shoulder and made his way to the common chamber where the rest of the adults were watching two different news channels on two different televisions. All were absorbed, and a few looked downright frightened. Joann was holding Renee’s hand. At the age of twenty-three, she was the youngest mother in the group, and she looked petrified.

Lynette was the oldest woman at thirty-eight, and she appeared on the verge of tears as well. Forrest caught her attention and gestured for her to join him.

“Is something wrong?” she asked, expecting to be in trouble for something.

“Hey, Lynette, would you keep an eye on Michelle for me? She looks terrified.”

“Me?” she asked in surprise.

“You’d rather not?”

“No… I mean, sure, I—”

“I’d go over and sit with her myself,” he went on, “but I’m going to be moving all around the installation during the hour building up to impact.”

“No, no,” she said, suddenly finding confidence. “I don’t mind at all.”

“Thanks,” he said. “She’s one of the younger mothers, and you wives have all known each other so long…”

“No, I understand. It’s no trouble. Thanks, Jack.”

Price winked at Forrest from across the room as Lynette went to Michelle. Forrest smiled back and slipped into the cafeteria for a peek at the children, all nestled in their sleeping bags in orderly rows on the floor. Laddie stood up from the floor, where he’d been keeping guard among them.

“You’re fine,” he said quietly, and the dog settled himself back in.

Melissa was in the cafeteria as well, but she wasn’t asleep. She sat at one of the tables reading a book.

He sat down and offered her a stick of gum.

“Thanks,” she said. “How much longer now?”

“About four hours.”

“Do you think there will be earthquakes?”

“There sure could be,” he said. “Some of them might even be pretty big, but they won’t hurt the silo. We might jiggle around in here, but this installation is resting on giant steel springs.”

“What if the asteroid hits nearby, though?”

“Well, either everything’s going to be just fine… or we won’t know what hit us.”

“But what if we’re right on the edge of the crater or whatever?”

He couldn’t help chuckling. “Then this place will probably crack in half, and we’ll be looking out that wall over there at the biggest hole in the ground any of us has ever seen.”

She smiled. “I’ll bet you were a good dad.”

And just like that, his eyes flooded with tears. “That’s a nice thing for you to say,” he said thickly. “I don’t know if I was or not.”

“You were. Taylor said so.”

“Okay,” he said, blinking the tears away. “How about we stick to earthquakes?”

She looked over at Laddie and patted her leg. The dog jumped up and immediately came over to her. “Do you think maybe you could be my stepdad?”

Forrest was so overcome that he excused himself. He went straight to the lavatory and splashed water on his face at the sink, drawing a deep breath as he looked at himself in the mirror. “Well, you’re a fine figure of leadership.”

When he stepped out, Melissa was there waiting, a worried look on her face.

“Come here,” he said, giving her a hug. “Don’t worry. It caught me off guard. I’d be happy to.”

She hugged him tighter. “I asked Uncle Michael if he minded and he said no.”

“Well, I’ll have to be sure to thank old Uncle Mike,” he said quietly.

“You’re not mad at him, are you?” she asked, looking up at him. “I asked him not to say anything until I was sure I wanted to ask you.”

“No, no,” he said. “I’m very flattered. Thank you for asking. But you’ve only known me a couple of weeks. You may change your mind later.”

She stood back and shook her head with a smile. “I know I’m a kid, but kids know a good dad when they see one.”

He choked up again. “You’re going to have to stop that,” he said softly.

She stepped forward and lifted herself up onto her toes, giving him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”

On his way back to Launch Control, Forrest passed Michael in the corridor. “Thanks for the heads up, fucker.”

Michael stopped and turned. “You didn’t tell her no, did you?”

“Yeah, douche bag,” he said without looking back. “I told her no.”

Michael chuckled and stood watching as Forrest turned the corner. “Sorry, Jack, but you brought this on yourself.”

Twenty-Five

When the asteroid struck the Earth’s atmosphere, it was traveling at nearly a hundred thousand miles an hour and burning at nearly one million degrees Fahrenheit. Jack’s wife and the horse ranch were vaporized before they were ever aware of its arrival. It struck near the Montana-Canada border with a force three-quarters of a million times more powerful than the Soviet Emperor bomb, the most powerful man-made bomb ever detonated. It blasted a crater nearly a mile deep and fifty miles wide in the Earth’s crust, hurling millions of tons of dust and rock into the atmosphere and sending out a blast wave hot enough to kill every living creature aboveground for six hundred miles. Winds traveling at thousands of miles an hour flattened trees and buildings for at least half that distance, pulverizing them. A massive heat wave spread out from there, setting fire to large swaths of land within a radius of fifteen hundred miles.

All of which took place in seconds.

Within the next few seconds massive earthquakes emanated from the epicenter for a thousand miles, triggering lesser quakes all across North America and down into Mexico. Massive cracks appeared in the Earth’s crust over Yellowstone National Park, and the geysers there shot giant plumes of boiling water hundreds of feet into the air even as the park was devoured in flames. Rivers shifted and changed direction, giant landslides occurred all across the northern Rockies, and a dark cloud of smoke and dust began to envelop the continent, fed by the ash borne up from flame-driven winds.

The continental power grid began to fail immediately, and a massive blackout spread across both the United States and Canada in all directions, killing the power to every city within minutes after impact. Cities at the outer edges of the blast zone were set ablaze, and rescue workers were hard-pressed to even breathe in the heat, much less fight the fires. Three hundred million Americans and Canadians were dead within sixty seconds of the asteroid hitting the atmosphere, at least half of whom had been obliterated by the initial blast.

Tremors were felt the world over within the first half an hour, and though the asteroid did not strike the sea, tsunamis occurred as fault lines along the ocean floor shifted and distorted the water depths to send twenty-foot waves across the ocean surface, swamping the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia within the first few hours.

Horrifying satellite images were beamed down all across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and South America as the ring of destruction spread across North America, and the continent was blotted out over the first couple of hours. Everyone watching now understood with absolute certainty that the shroud of darkness would soon blanket the world. Theirs would be a less cataclysmic end, a slow and methodical procession of starvation and disease, a horrific return to the Dark Ages on a global scale.

The long winter had not quite begun, but it was coming.

Twenty-Six

Marty and Susan were in the basement making love, wrapped in one another’s arms at the moment of impact, but they felt a sudden tremor in the concrete floor, vibrating as if an eighteen-wheeler had been dropped in the street right in front of the house from twenty stories.

“Sweet Jesus!” Susan said, sitting up.

“We’re still here,” Marty said. “Holy shit, we’re still here!” He scooted across the mattress to turn on the television, but there was only static, and a few seconds later the power went out.

“That’s it, Marty. We’re dead in the water.”

The wind began to pick up outside the house, and soon it sounded as though a storm had blown in. When they heard a cannonade of massive thunderclaps, they quickly dressed and went upstairs to see a raging dust storm outside the kitchen window. In the living room, they peeked through the curtains, and the houses across the street were completely obscured, the wind now howling like a freight train. They watched in fascination as the dust continued to blow past the house, all sorts of debris soaring by.

“We’d better be careful of the windows,” he warned.

“How long will it blow like that?”

He laughed. “I’ve got no idea,” he said, lifting his arms and letting them fall. “Think of it, Sue. This is what killed the dinosaurs!”

“I am thinking of it, Marty. It’s why I’m ready to shit a brick!”

He put his arms around her. “Don’t worry, I am too.”

A softball-sized meteor struck the roof and shattered the clay tiles.

“What was that?” He looked back outside and saw stone-sized meteors striking down all across the neighborhood. “Oh, shit! The ejecta’s coming down. Let’s get back to the basement.”

After half an hour the worst of the meteor shower seemed to have passed and the winds at last began to abate, but the dust in the air took hours to settle, and by then the sun had begun to vanish behind the veil of smoke and dust in the upper atmosphere. They went back upstairs and watched as the neighborhood was slowly revealed, everything coated in fine brown dust.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in going outside,” she said.

“We’d only leave footprints to show that we’re in here.”

“So what now?”

He stood looking at her. “This is it, honey. I’m sorry.”

“Damn.” She sat on the couch and peered through a gap in the curtains. “I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not.”

He sat down and took her hand. “How could anybody be?”

“Look at you. You’re calm as a cucumber.”

“I’m only being calm for you. Inside I’m shitting bricks too, believe me.”

She touched his face and tears formed in her eyes. “I don’t really deserve you.”

He shook his head. “Not true. That’s my decision.”

“But…” She sat looking at her hand in his. “You deserve to be with someone who loved you… who loved you before this.”

“Hey, if you love me now even a little bit, I’m a happy guy.”

“I do,” she said with a smile. Then she took his hand in both of hers. “I want to tell you something, and then I don’t want to talk about it ever again. Okay?”

He nodded.

“It’s up to you,” she told him. “It’s up to when we… when we quit.”

“Susan, it’s too soon to be—”

“Shush! Sometime between now and when the food runs out—before it runs out, Marty, because I don’t want to see it coming—I want you to take care of it. That means from this moment on, whenever you decide is fine. I just don’t want to know when it’s coming. I know that’s a lot to ask because I know how much you love me, but I’m asking you to promise me.”

His eyes started to water. “Susan, I can’t promise that, not like that. There may—”

“You have to!” she insisted. “Because all I want to do from here on is eat, sleep, and make love. That’s it. And I won’t be able to enjoy our time together unless I know you’re going to take care of it when the time comes. Promise me, Marty. Please. If you love me like you say you do, promise me.”

“Okay,” he said reluctantly, knowing that it would be an extremely difficult promise for him to keep, and that he might well end up reneging when the time came.

“Thank you,” she said, and she kissed him. “You don’t know how much better that makes me feel.”

He was tempted to say that he knew exactly how much better it made her feel because he now felt that much worse… but it was his responsibility to take care of her, and her peace of mind was every bit as important to him as her physical safety. “So what do you want to do?”

“Let’s watch outside for a little while and then go finish making love.”

“I wonder how long before anyone else will come out.”

“They’re probably all thinking like we are,” she said. “Party time is definitely over.”

“Hey, speak of the devil,” he said, pointing.

A few young men were coming out of the house across the street and getting into a van. They were toting shotguns and carrying packs over their shoulders.

“Do you know them?”

“It’s the Gilberts,” he said. “They’re cousins. Normally pretty nice guys, but it’s a different world now.”

“Where do you think they’re going?”

He shrugged. “I’m curious as hell, but I’m not going to ask.”

“I wish we could. Normally I’m pretty withdrawn, but right now I really feel like being around people.”

“How about a shot of tequila instead?”

She smiled then. “That’s what I like about you.” She got up from the couch and began to unbutton the shirt he had given her. “You’re always thinking.”

Twenty-Seven

Ulrich sat at the console in Launch Control with Erin in his lap, counting down the time to impact. Taylor and Dr. West sat beside them in the light of an electric lamp. They had shut down all the generators and disconnected all of the main batteries against the possibility of damage to the silo, wanting to mitigate any chance of fire.

“T-minus sixty seconds,” Ulrich said into the intercom.

Erin hid her face in his neck and he rubbed her back. “We’ll be okay, baby.”

“I’m fucking terrified,” she whispered. “I’m so glad we never had kids, Wayne.”

“Shhh,” he said softly.

In the common chamber, Forrest stood against the wall with his hands clasped in front of him, smiling calmly in the lamplight as the women sat in the center of the room holding their children. Melissa sat against the wall near Forrest, with Laddie between them, and Veronica sat across the room with her back against Michael’s chest. Forrest was mindful not to make eye contact with her.

He did notice that Andie was looking in his direction more than any of the others, so he gave her a wink that brought a smile to her otherwise frightened visage.

Lynette was sitting with her husband, Price, on the floor beside Michelle, as he had asked her to.

Kane was sitting behind Tonya, who sat holding Steven in her lap; it was the first time Forrest had noticed them showing any affection. Vasquez and Danzig sat beside them with their wives and children.

Forrest’s original plan had been to let the children sleep through the impact, but the mothers vetoed that idea unanimously, wanting their children in their arms at the moment everyone they knew and loved was blasted out of existence.

“I’ve made a mistake,” Karen said in a sudden panic. “I should be with my sister where I belong.” She pulled her daughter close and began to weep.

Veronica felt Michael tense up, and felt that her suspicions were confirmed.

Forrest continued to smile calmly, very pleased with how they were all doing so far, Karen’s little outburst having been the least of what he was prepared to deal with.

“Okay, kids,” he said happily. “Everyone get ready to hold your noses like we practiced earlier.”

All of the children and their mothers held their noses.

“Now, when I say, everyone pinch your nose and blow gently until your ears pop.”

Dr. West had suggested this as a precaution against a sudden increase in air pressure within the silo—which no one expected, but then again no one had ever experienced a six teraton explosion before.

“T-minus thirty seconds,” Ulrich said.

All of the mothers told their children how much they loved them.

“T-minus ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four…”

“Everyone blow,” Forrest said gently.

“Two… one… impact.”

A few seconds later the earth shuddered deep within and all around them, groaning as if stricken a mortal wound. There was no change in air pressure, and no sense that the silo was being squeezed or in danger of implosion.

Almost everyone held their breath, waiting.

“Sounds like it hit pretty far away,” Kane said, looking up at the ceiling.

Forrest winked at him and held up his one second finger. Then, as if on cue, the entire complex shook violently as the shock wave passed through the earth’s crust. Forrest pressed hard against the wall, bracing his feet against the floor as the room jiggled back, forth, and up and down on its shock absorbers. The women and the children screamed in terror, all of them covering their heads, but nothing fell and no cracks appeared in the walls, the entire installation having been purposefully built to absorb this very kind of shock wave. Within a few seconds the earth stopped shaking and everything grew silent.

“Well, they apparently knew what they were doing when they built this place,” Forrest said.

“Is it over?” Joann asked, lifting her head.

Lynette and Michelle were crying in one another’s arms, and a few of the children were crying as well, but everyone else was reasonably well composed, considering the circumstances.

“Expect aftershocks,” Forrest replied, “but I think we’ve felt the worst of it.”

He looked down to see Melissa looking up at him, her arm around Laddie’s shoulders. The dog seemed more curious than disquieted. “You okay?”

“No crater,” she said with a smile.

“That should be about a thousand miles north of here.” He tweaked her nose and went about checking to make sure everyone else was all right, asking if anyone felt like they were going to be sick. When everyone said they were okay, he asked one of the men to go below and reconnect the batteries. Then he stepped into Launch Control.

“What do you think, Wayne?”

Erin stood and took Taylor by the hand. “We’ll go sit with the others now.”

The women kissed their husbands and left the room.

“We should be feeling an earthquake any time,” Ulrich said.

Ten minutes later they felt their first real tremor, but it was nothing compared with the shock wave.

“Switch on the cameras,” Forrest said. “See if we’re blind.”

Ulrich turned on the monitor and they were all surprised to see that the house wasn’t yet in flames. When he switched to the outside feeds, however, it was an altogether different scene. The grasslands all around the house were burning.

“Good thing we mowed back all that grass,” Ulrich said. “We may get to keep the house.”

“Is it raining fire?” West asked.

“Sure as hell is,” Forrest said. “The asteroid blasted millions of tons of rock into the outer atmosphere.”

“Then we’ll be lucky to keep the house,” Ulrich said, drumming his fingers.

“The house was always a bonus,” Forrest said. “So were the cameras.”

Taylor came back into the room and said to her husband, “Honey, Lynette’s hyperventilating. Price and Michael have taken her to Medical.”

West looked at Forrest and smiled. “And so it begins.”

Forrest patted him on the shoulder as he passed. “Take good care of her, Doc. She’s the life of the party.”

“Shame on you, Jack Forrest,” Taylor said.

Forrest followed them out on his way to check the missile silos for damage. He went to the end of blast tunnel number one and slowly cracked the blast door, shining a flashlight into the chasm before stepping in. When he turned on the lights, everything seemed to be in order, but he walked every level to make sure, seeing that a few boxes of food had fallen over but nothing more. As he was about to leave the silo, the door opened and Veronica stepped onto the deck, pushing the door closed behind her but not sealing it.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

She stepped into him and began to kiss him. Forrest allowed himself to be backed up against a stack of boxes and sank his fingers into her hair, opening his mouth to let their tongues intertwine as they sucked hungrily at one another. He turned her around and pressed her up against the boxes, giving her one last long kiss and backing away.

“Okay!” he said, breathing deep and straightening his shirt. “Now that we’ve both gotten that out of our systems…”

“You didn’t look at me once the entire time!”

“What did you want me to do, shout, ‘Baby, I love you?’”

She looked at him and put her hands on her hips. “What are we going to do?”

“What are you talking about?”

“About us?”

“What us?”

“Jack, you’re not funny.”

“Hey, you know what?” he said. “The fucking world hasn’t even been dead half an hour. Let’s see if we can get through the first twenty-four before we start acting like we’ve lost our goddamn minds.”

“I need to know if you want me.”

“We’re not having this conversation right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because my wife was just killed by a fucking meteor! How’s that for starters?”

“Oh, Christ,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry, Jack. You’re right. I didn’t even…” She covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Aw, shit.” He jacked one leg back against the wall and fired up a cigarette. “This mission already isn’t going according to plan.”

“I disagree,” she said quietly. “But you’re right. We should wait and talk about this later. I’m sorry I’ve made you angry.”

“You haven’t made me angry, Veronica. I’m hopped up on Benzedrine.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“We all are, in case there’s an emergency.” He took a long drag from the cigarette. “And what do you mean you disagree? You can’t tell me we just acted normally.”

“This is by no means a normal social dynamic. The world just ended. I think we’re entitled to let our inhibitions drop for a minute.”

“You are, but I’m not,” he replied. “What’s Michael going to think about you being gone?”

“Honestly? He’s probably talking to Karen.”

“Oh, okay. So that’s what sent you chasing after—”

“I didn’t chase you anyplace, Jack! You chased me, remember?”

Forrest took another drag and smiled. “Yes, I do.”

“So what happens if I choose wrong?” she wanted to know. “Suppose Michael decides he loves Karen a few weeks from now—which will be my fault, admittedly. Andie is hot on your butt! I could end up alone in this brave new world of ours.”

“Take the time to figure out what you want,” he said. “Either way, you’re not going to end up alone. I promise.”

“You promise?”

“I don’t break promises and I don’t repeat them.”

“I’m gonna hold you to it,” she said, pointing a finger at him before opening the door and slipping back out.

Forrest found an excuse to spend another couple of minutes in the missile silo, then went back to Launch Control, where he found Ulrich smirking in front of the console, watching the grass fires above.

“What the fuck are you smirking at?”

“She didn’t seal either door,” Ulrich replied. “That tunnel’s like a megaphone.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” Forrest said, checking one of the many charts on the wall behind Ulrich to see if the toilet paper count matched the one he’d just taken. “We should probably go ahead and rig some sort of a bidet. Or at least have a plan drawn up for one. There’s no way all these women and children are going to conserve enough toilet paper.”

Ulrich laughed quietly to himself.

“What’s so fuckin’ funny, snickers?”

Ulrich chuckled again, saying in an overly manly voice, “‘I don’t break my promises, little lady, and I don’t repeat them either.’” Then he broke himself up laughing, slapping his hand on the counter. “Fucking priceless!”

Forrest stood looking at the back of Wayne’s head, chewing his cheek. “Break yourself up, don’t you, Stumpy?”

Ulrich continued to laugh. “Oh, man, wait till Erin hears that one.”

Forrest put his finger in his mouth and got it good and wet before sticking into Ulrich’s ear.

“You motherfucker!” Ulrich said, grabbing the side of his head and springing from the chair, wiping fruitlessly at the offended ear. “You fuckin’ cocksucker!”

“Kinda felt like a monkey’s dick, didn’t it?”

Ulrich used the tail of his shirt to dry the inside of his ear, chuckling some more. “I’m still telling Erin.”

“She’d better keep her mouth shut about it too,” Forrest warned, “or I’ll stick my finger someplace else.”

Ulrich stood tucking his shirt back in, assuming a more serious expression. “You know how goddamn sorry I am about Monica, right?”

Forrest nodded. “She’s not hurting anymore, Wayne. And who knows? Maybe they’re really together again.”

“What a party we’ll all have one day, huh? All of us back together?”

“That would be quite a party,” Forrest agreed, heading for the other door. “I’m going down to check number two silo. Try not to stir up any more shit while I’m gone.”

“Hey, Jack?”

Forrest paused.

“I promise, man.”

“Fuck you.”

Later, Forrest returned to Launch Control to find Kane and Ulrich listening to the shortwave radio. “Getting anything?”

“Plenty,” Kane said. “You should hear some of this.”

Andie came into the room and Ulrich quickly switched off the set. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, masking her curiosity about what was being said on the radio. “Some of us are gathering in the cafeteria for a prayer session. Would you guys like to join us?”

The men shook their heads.

“Are you sure, Jack? You’re the leader. It might be nice if you said a few words.”

“I’m not exactly God’s best representative,” Forrest said with a wink. “Besides, I’ll be saying plenty in the days and months to come.”

“Well, it’s never too soon to—”

“Thank you again for the offer,” Ulrich said, stepping forward to put his hand on the door. “Be sure to put in a good word for us, will you?”

“Um… yeah,” she said, backing out of the doorway. “Sure.”

“Thank you.” He smiled and closed the door, signaling for Kane to switch the radio back on.

“… but it looks like the Dakotas are gone! The sky is black and there’s shit raining down on everything! The entire neighborhood is catching on fire! This is the end of the fucking world… God’s wrath, man… Armageddon!”

“Loon,” Forrest remarked, casually lighting a cigarette.

“Should I go get Linus and Oscar?” Kane asked.

Forrest shook his head. “You can fill them in later. I’ve already told them where I want them and why. Keep the dial moving. We can skip the hyperbole.”

Kane turned the dial…

“… since it’s out all over the city, I should say probably not. First CNN went off the air and then the power went out all across town. Nobody knows what’s going on. And don’t even bother calling 911. There’s a lot of smoke outside too. It’s blowing in from the west.”

“That’s from the flash fire,” another replied. “No telling how far that will spread.”

“No sign here in Maine,” said another. “Still a bright sunny day. We still got TV too. The news is showing fires all over Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland… Canada too. People are still rioting in New York City, and the army has pulled out. Wait… they’re showing shots of the sky now. Looks like it’s on fire!”

“Where’s that?”

“Hold on… the caption says St. Louis… Oh, shit! People are running past the camera in flames!”

“Keep that channel, Marcus. Sounds like it might be a party line.”

“On fire? In St. Louie?”

“It’s what it says…”

“Should I lock the door?” Ulrich wondered.

“Dunno,” Forrest said. “What do you think? I hate keeping information from the others. Feels a little like communism.”

“… Oh, now they’re showing somewhere in Southern California… It’s all on fire—nope, they just lost the feed.”

“This shit here might freak the women out,” Kane said.

“I’ll lock the door,” Ulrich decided. “We’ll tell them about it if they ask. People on fire won’t play well.”

“My wife just came in from outside… she says she can see a darkness to the west. Christ, it’s moving fast. We’ll be going to the basement soon…”

“Hey, I’m down here in Jacksonville… It’s raining like hell here. Loudest goddamn thunderclap I’ve ever heard in my life… and the wind! Jesus, the wind!”

“That’s from the asteroid, you’d better bet!”

“Hey, what about the government? Has anybody heard a damn thing?”

“Ha! The government? Remember 9/11? Katrina? They’re running for the bunkers… or out fishing! We’re on our own, pal.”

“Nobody’s fishing today, ass-wipe…”

“But he’s right. We’re on our own…”

“White Horse calling… anyone hear me? This is White Horse calling…”

“Go ahead there, White Horse.”

Kane looked over at Forrest. “White Horse?”

“Capital of the Yukon.”

“Earth’s quakin’ like hell up here, folks. A giant crack ripped right through the center of town. Power’s out too and it’s getting dark. Gonna be a long winter, you betcha…”

The three men listened for the next hour, and the news was all the same, more or less. The continent was dying and, for the most part, people were saying their goodbyes in surprisingly calm and dignified ways. By the end of the hour, Forrest decided to meet with the rest of the population, and he shared with them much, though not all, of what they had heard. To his relief, most of the women were satisfied to hear it from him and made no requests to hear it for themselves, many of them suspecting things were worse than he was letting on and choosing to remain willfully underinformed.

Later that night, as everyone was milling about getting ready for bed, Andie cornered Forrest at the end of the hall near the blast tunnel door as he was reentering the corridor.

“What are you keeping from us?” she asked quietly. “I’d like to know.”

“Ever read Revelation?” he said with a rueful grin.