Final Collapse | Book 1 | Final Collapse Read online

  FINAL

  COLLAPSE

  Final Collapse Series

  Book 1

  By

  KD Downs

  Mike Kraus

  © 2021 Muonic Press Inc

  www.muonic.com

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  www.kddowns.com

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  [email protected]

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  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.

  Thank you!

  Final Collapse Book 2

  Available Here

  Chapter 1

  Berryfield, Maine

  Of all the rides in Pequod’s Traveling Shows, Jerry hated the carousel most. Unlike the tilt awhirl or the roller coaster, the carousel had a canvas top. When it rained, as it had that morning, parents dragged their brats from all over the midway and turned mean when Jerry wouldn’t even let them aboard to stay dry. Lined up in an inch of standing water, they glared at him until the downpour passed. He didn’t care. Carnival season was almost over, and college was only weeks away. He did his job, pushed the big green button, set the timer on his stopwatch, and flipped the page in his biology book as the painted ponies turned. He’d almost reached the end of Unit 8—Plant Reproduction—when something rumbled.

  Jerry lowered his book, and all the fairgoers around him paused and exchanged puzzled glances. As he came to his feet to find the source of the sound, the ground shifted beneath him, and he crashed face down on the steel boarding ramp. “What in—"

  Cries sounded like alarms around the carousel, and he struggled for footing as the floor canted under his feet. The ramp broke away from the ride, and both sections pitched down toward a widening gash in the soggy ground between them. His wet sneakers slipped over the floor’s worn treads, and he gripped the metal railing in both hands to keep from sliding into the dark trench. On the ride’s center column, mirrors shattered, but the calliope piped on, and the horses kept spinning around it. Sinking into the growing hole, the carousel dumped its tiny riders from their saddles and trampled them with its revolving steeds. Children spilled, bloodied and sobbing, into the hole and out of sight.

  He needed to push the emergency brake, but the control panel was too far away. Swinging his foot at the giant red button, the tip of his sneaker came short by inches. The effort made his grip on the steel rail burn, and his fingers ached under his weight. They wouldn’t hold him much longer. With the last of his strength, he pulled his legs up, hooked his feet between the metal slats, and climbed to land as the ramp sank deeper. Palming his forehead, he scooted back on the wet grass to catch his breath, but the disaster continued to unfold.

  The fairground trembled beneath him, and the pit opened wide like a hungry mouth, swallowing the carousel and everyone on it. Electric lights snapped and popped. Flames billowed out from under the ride’s canvas top. Muddy water rose in the hole as it gobbled more and more ground, and the horror spread.

  On the neighboring caterpillar roller coaster, kids screamed. The operator pulled the brake lever, but the green and purple cars rolled right past him. A fresh ditch appeared under the ride, shearing off a stretch of track. The cars reached the end of the line and careened off the rail, down into the open ground. Panicked parents braved the collapsing earth to save them, but Jerry pushed himself up from the mud and ran for his life. Through the carnival labyrinth, across the drenched lawn, he sprinted past the gazebo, where Ben Glazier hardly noticed the commotion as he pled with the police.

  It had been the third best day of Ben’s life until the cops slapped cuffs on the Blueberry Queen. Tiara dangling from her mangled blonde bun, she held her head high as they pulled her arms behind her back. Then the cuffs snapped shut, the sparkly sash slipped from her shoulder, and teary mascara streamed down her cheeks while the police read Bonnie her rights.

  “No!” Face covered in pie, Ben pushed himself up from the gazebo floor and tried to wedge himself between his niece and the two arresting officers. “Don’t! Please! No harm done! Honest!”

  A steel hand clamped down on Ben’s shoulder as the cops dragged her away anyhow. Bixler handed him a handkerchief. “Appreciate you letting the authorities take it from here, Mr. Glazier.”

  Ben turned to follow his niece, but Bixler’s assistant ripped the handkerchief from his hand and put in its place a cashier’s check with more zeroes than his brain could process. “No, see, I—”

  “Ben.” Bixler lowered his voice. “You wouldn’t want the girl’s stunt to risk any bad press that might jeopardize our deal, would you?”

  “Well, no, but…” As Ben struggled to choose between the windfall in his hand and familial duty, movement on the carnival skyline caught the corner of his eye. The distant pirate ship’s flashing A-frame leaned to one side. The glowing sign at its apex exploded with a bang, and sparks rained down to a chorus of shouts as the ride went dark. The massive fiberglass ship soared up into the air farther than he’d ever seen, turning its riders on their heads before swinging back down with a crash. It never emerged on the other side.

  The cops dumped Bonnie on the steps and ran across the lawn for the midway. She yanked on the cuffs at the small of her back. “Don’t leave me like this!”

  “Don’t worry.” Ben tucked the check safely in his wallet and sat down beside her. “I won’t leave you.”

  “Big comfort, Uncle Ben.” She scooted away.

  On the top step, something buzzed, and the man Ben had come to meet pulled his cell phone from his blazer pocket. “This is Bixler.” His eyes trained on the sinking pirate ship, he grunted. “How is flooding in Nebraska, Chittoor, and Minakami a crisis?” His face paled. “The whole district… collapsed? What does that mean?” Rubbing the back of his neck, he surveyed the fairground and the lake with worry etched on his forehead. “Keep it quiet.” He ended the call and snapped at his assistant. “We need to go.”

  Ben left Bonnie on the bottom step and climbed to the gazebo, where the executive and his right-hand man muttered to each other. “What’s going on, Ed?”

  “This
doesn’t involve you, Mister Glazier.” Lip curled, Bixler dismissed him with the turn of his back.

  The zeros in Ben’s wallet burned. If he hadn’t needed every last one of them, he’d have torn the check up and thrown the pieces in Bixler’s arrogant face. “You’re a real—"

  “Uncle Ben!” Bonnie scrambled up the steps on her rear as a surge of fairgoers rushed toward them, away from the midway. “What’s happening?”

  At the same time, chaos erupted on the lake beside them. Its edge receded from the shore, leaving fish flopping in search of water. Swimmers abandoned their floats and swam shrieking from the center of the lake. Mothers rushed into the shallows to pull little ones from the path of the stampede.

  “Move!” Bixler shoved Ben aside and flew down the gazebo steps with his briefcase in hand and his entourage trailing behind.

  Ben staggered as they all sloshed across the lawn. “What are you running from?”

  Screams exploded from the midway as the spinning swing ride’s tall pillar tilted to the side. One-by-one, it swung riders through the air, slammed them face-first into the ground, and dragged them across the grass to lift them up and do it all over again. The carnage didn’t stop until the ride sank to a third of its height and its flashing lights went out with a bang. Beside it, the Ferris wheel’s towering rainbow of umbrella cars sank like a setting sun. Then the ground thundered, and the enormous wheel disappeared from the carnival skyline.

  Bonnie struggled to stand without the use of her arms, got tangled in her skirt, and fell, slamming her head against the hardwood. When Ben hoisted her back up on her feet, blood spilled from her swollen lip, but her eyes bulged at the bedlam unfolding around them. “We need to run!”

  “How?” A screaming tsunami of people rolled across the lawn toward the parking lot. With her hands cuffed behind her back, Bonnie would never keep up.

  “I don’t know—"

  A stone’s throw from the bottom step, a pickup-sized section of grass sank. Water from the flooded lawn poured into the hole like a giant drain and grew so fast he couldn’t see the bottom. In the lake, the water level rose again, and fully clothed bodies appeared on the surface near the bubbling center. The gazebo tilted beneath them, and Ben dropped to his knees on the slanted floor.

  “Help!” Bonnie’s high heels slid down the sloped boards.

  Ben’s boots found traction, and he caught her arm as she passed. But the gazebo pitched too steep, and his soles slipped. He held tight to Bonnie as they skidded toward the ravenous hole. “Stay with me!”

  The structure broke loose from the ground with a snap and a groan, and an eerie calm fell over her. “I forgive you, Uncle Ben!”

  “No! Don’t forgive me!”

  She slipped from his hands as they fell off the edge. A landslide of boards and debris battered him all the way down to rushing water, and he gasped for breath as a pulverizing current dragged him under. Mud filled his mouth and shot up his nose. Something soft floated past his hand, and he grabbed it, praying it was her. Tossing and rolling in the black rapids, he lost track of up and down and found no surface to swim to either way. As the water thrashed and carried him farther, the urge to breathe grew harder to resist. He willed himself to keep his lips shut but prepared to drown. Surrendering to the need for breath, he opened his mouth, but instead of water, air filled his lungs. Instead of a quick death, light shined on his face, and he opened his eyes to a clear blue sky.

  Thanking God he was still alive, he pulled Bonnie to the surface, but Bixler’s head bobbed up in her place. “Help—me!”

  “You?” Ben dropped him and scanned a sea of floating bodies for her big blue dress and blonde hair. “Bonnie!”

  Bixler surfaced again. “Help!”

  “Bonnie!” Ben’s voice echoed over the lake.

  He tried to swim through the human remains, but Bixler grabbed the back of his shirt and held on. “We’re circling!”

  Bixler was right. Worse than circling, like the dead, they were drifting farther from shore. Turning on his stomach, Ben kicked and paddled with all his strength to keep from being sucked under. Corpses spiraled faster toward the watery vortex, but Ben’s feet found soft earth, and he managed to carry himself and Bixler away.

  When they reached shallow water, Bixler let go of Ben’s back and tried to stomp off to the distant beach, but Ben caught him by his button-down shirt. “What about Nebraska and Chittoor?” Bixler pushed, but Ben wouldn’t let go. “You said that right before you got scared and ran away. You said the whole district collapsed.”

  “Get the hell off me!” Bigger and younger, Bixler found his strength, shoved Ben away, and stormed to shore.

  Ben coughed and heaved while bodies popped up at one end of the lake and spiraled down at the other. Behind him, the carnival was quiet—not a buzzer or bell, and only the occasional scream. All the rides were gone, submerged in a pond of the dead as wide as the midway. Where the gazebo once stood, there was only gurgling water. A narrow land bridge was all that remained of the ground, and Bixler was already sprinting across it to the parking lot.

  Ben took off in the same direction as fast as his boots would carry him, praying every heavy step wouldn’t be his last as the bridge crumbled at his back. When he reached semi-solid land, he jumped the fence and splashed through the flooded lot to his rusty old pickup. As he climbed in, the stand of pines between the parking lot and the fair leaned toward the disaster and sank into the ground.

  He turned the key, and the tired starter cranked, but the engine didn’t turn. “Come on, you hunk of scrap!” He tried four more times before it started, and by then, the pine trees were gone. Slamming into reverse, he stomped on the gas, and the truck lurched backwards. He shifted into drive and sped out of the lot and into the road at full speed. A deafening crash threw Ben sideways across the seat. With his face against the passenger door, he braced himself for pain that never came, and pushed himself back up.

  Outside his window, a little blue hatchback sat crumpled with its busted grill against Ben’s door. Blood tinted the spiderweb cracks of its windshield red. He should have stopped to call the police, but in the rearview mirror, the hole’s edge was creeping closer. He sped away from the scene, west up Farm Hill Road for higher ground.

  The engine roared as he raced to the top of the hill, through the blueberry barren he’d sold that very morning to Bixler Agricultural Chemicals, and stopped at the cliff overlooking All Seasons Lake. On the north end, where a row of yellow rental cabins should have been, there was only water. To the east, there was no trace of the beach or fairgrounds. In the distance, land still crumbled and splashed down into the water, taking trees and cars and pavement with it as the catastrophe spread toward the center of town.

  Panting, Ben pressed his hand over his pounding heart, and something sparkled in his eyes. Soiled, torn, and missing half its rhinestones, the Blueberry Queen’s sash hung wrapped around his wrist.

  Chapter 2

  Berryfield, Maine

  The beginning of the end slipped by unnoticed at the Bixler’s summer estate. The garden trembled for a moment, but Annie had bigger problems than minor seismic activity. “The bushes…”

  The groundskeeper grabbed Annie’s shoulder like she might fall over. “Was that a little earthquake?”

  Annie slipped from his hand and lifted the floppy hydrangea head only to watch it droop again when she let it go. Beyond it, tens of thousands of dollars in wilted hydrangeas died the same slow and absurd death. “How could they possibly dry out? It’s rained every day this week. There are puddles everywhere.”

  “The puddles are the problem.” The old groundskeeper tapped his boot in the inch-deep water covering most of the garden. “It hasn’t rained that much. This rain’s standing here because the clay underneath is too dense to let it sink in. Hydrangea roots grow out.” He spread his fingers like roots and moved them horizontally. “Like that. They won’t grow down to find water.”

  “They won’t grow up to fi
nd it, either?” The baby fussed in Annie’s arms. Behind her something splashed, and she gasped as cold mud slapped the back of her bare legs. “Izzy!”

  She turned to send Isobel a warning glare and found the girl ankle deep in a puddle, sludge spattered all over her pink tutu and purple overalls. “It’s okay, Mumma. I’m in my ga-goshes.” In her red and black ladybug boots, she stomped up a wet mess, and a drop of brown water landed on the baby’s clean cheek.

  “Enough.” Grabbing Izzy by the hand, Annie tugged her onto the cube-stone path. With the busy 4-year-old pulling at her arm and the angry infant screeching, Annie struggled to impress upon the old man how serious the situation was. “I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson. I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got eighty people coming to bid on these flowers. The press will be here. Pictures of these rotten things will be everywhere. There’s got to be something you can do.”

  “I’ve got one of the guys working on it.” He pointed to another bush down the aisle, where a kid in jeans and a green t-shirt turned an aerator in the soil. “In time for the auction?” Johnson took off his hat and scratched his head. “Sorry, Mrs. Bixler. Only God can fix hydrangeas, and it takes him a whole year.”

  Holding back tears and a hot stream of curse words, Annie turned back for the house with the girls. She passed one of the groundskeepers on his knees, pounding a numbered sign into the dirt beside one of the dead bushes. “Don’t bother yourself. We couldn’t give those away.”

  Leading Izzy toward the veranda, she told herself to be grateful. No hydrangeas meant no charity auction, which meant no long to-do list she had no hope of completing before the event and no bossy old woman chasing after her with index cards, reminding her of all she had to do. She need only explain to eighty guests that she, Annie Bixler, wife of the world’s most respected agricultural innovator, had managed to kill a 150-year-old hydrangea garden in a single season. She could write a check to cover the library’s lost funding, but the optics were worse than embarrassing. Ed was gonna be pissed.