Impact (Book 2): Bounce Read online

  BOUNCE

  Impact Series

  Book 2

  By

  E.E. Isherwood

  Mike Kraus

  © 2019 Muonic Press Inc

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  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

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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!

  IMPACT Book 3

  Available Here

  Chapter 1

  Yellowstone National Park, WY

  “I’m on fire!” Grace shouted as she glanced all around. Her eyes didn’t register anything beyond a veil of black, which was good, since her legs burned like they were in a pool of hot oil. Seeing herself die in flames was part of her darkest nightmare.

  “You’re fine,” a man’s soft voice replied.

  In one flash, she remembered she was inside an extinct geyser. Did it come back to life?

  “Burning!” she mumbled, sure the man was wrong.

  The meteorite had fallen to Earth, blowing hot ash into the hole. Was she currently sitting in a pile of hot coals?

  “My legs!”

  “Are fine,” the man insisted. “Wake up, Grace.” His voice was from close by, above her.

  “My legs must be a million degrees,” she complained.

  “They’re asleep,” he said dryly, “but not on fire.”

  “I can’t move them.” As her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the three-foot-wide pit, she got her first look at the dim light coming in from the hole ten feet above. Asher was standing next to her, and she was effectively wrapped around his legs like a cat. She looked up at him, not sure what to make of their positions. “Why are you standing?”

  He chuckled tiredly. “We couldn’t both fit at the bottom. I stood up last night so you could get some sleep.”

  “And you’ve been standing ever since?” she said incredulously.

  “I was able to lean,” he responded.

  If it was light up above, he must have been on his feet for seven or eight hours. It seemed impossible she’d fallen asleep after the unearthly roar of wind last night, but the pins and needles in her legs indicated the truth of it. “Help me up, please.”

  Asher shifted, stifling a groan of pain. The curly-haired young man smiled and handed down her straw hat, which now had a two-inch chunk out of the rim. “I didn’t want you to crush it.”

  She took it hurriedly. “I have to move my legs right this instant or I’m going to die.”

  They played an intricate game of Twister, trading handholds for their arms, legs, and feet as they maneuvered her off the ground. In any other setting, the intimacy might have been welcome. Asher was a big city boy, but he’d been instrumental in helping her survive the meteorite impact and did pretty well helping her escape Misha and his gun. He wasn’t unattractive, either. Still, she stank to high heaven from all their running yesterday, and she was technically still on duty for the National Park Service. She wanted nothing more than to put a football field between her and Mr. Creighton.

  He helped her get upright, the pins and needles feeling in her bottom half making the earlier nightmare about fire seem horribly real. It took all her concentration to keep from screaming as the blood found its way back into the empty buckets masquerading as her legs. She used humor to try to distract herself from the pain and their closeness. “Thanks for saving my hat. I was so worried about it.”

  Asher rolled his eyes, then reappraised her. “You’re joking, right?”

  She forced a laugh, putting the damaged hat back on. “Yeah, but seriously, thanks for taking one for the team. You didn’t have to stand for me. Now, if you don’t mind, I have to move some more. Let’s see if it’s safe outside.” She indicated he should climb out. “When my legs start working, I’ll come up after you.”

  As the ranger, it was probably her duty to go up first and check it out, but she needed Asher out of her way to free up some space so she could move around and wake up her muscles.

  Asher shrugged, then started his ascent. He made it look easy for a few steps, even with his dress shoes, before he seemed to tire and go slower toward the top. Still, it was impressive after the night they’d endured.

  “You’re pretty nimble for a city slicker. Where’d you say you were from again?” All she knew was he was a city boy. It was obvious in every mannerism he’d displayed over the past day. He had to be told to take off his heavy suit jacket. He couldn’t run very fast. He smoked, despite the high elevation. And, worst of all, he’d actually gone on a hike into the woods wearing his gray business suit and dress shoes.

  “Denver.” He spoke as he neared the top of the tube. “I lived in a suburb called Aurora; middle class, mostly. Did my undergrad work at the Colorado School of Mines. Now I’m doing my doctorate at MIT. And I—” His feet went over the top, leaving her momentarily alone.

  “Asher?” she asked quietly. For about ten seconds she waited for him to show up, but he’d stepped away from the hole. He mumbled words, perhaps meant for her, that were swallowed by the shaft. “Are you there?”

  “Yep,” he replied as he reappeared, breathing hard. “The climb was a piece of cake. You won’t believe what it’s like up here.”

  She recognized male braggadocio when she heard it, but she didn’t hold it against him. She planned to one-up him. Her legs were no longer bathed in nuclear fire, so she hopped up to the first rock, though the movement brought back severe needling pain; she yelped as silently as possible. “I need another minute,” she said louder, and in a nothing’s-wrong tone.

  She jumped a little to try to increase the circulation and found it helped a lot. When she tried to step up again, the pain was manageable. She waited another twenty seconds, then lifted herself to the next foothold. A few moments later, her legs and arms finally worked as intended and she climbed fast with her normal dexterity. She’d made it all the way to the top when a hand appeared.

  “Thanks,” she said as he pulled her up and out.

/>   The morning air was cool, as she expected, and the light was weird. Plumes of black smoke choked the forests to the south, throwing up a roiling wall of clouds that seemed to rise to outer space. The sun was above the horizon, largely blocked out by the spectacle. By contrast, most of the sky to the north of them was merely a gray haze, lit by whatever sunlight made it through the edges of the barrier.

  She got out her phone, expecting to dial the number where her dad had called her from yesterday, finding there was no signal. After staring at the useless device for a few seconds, she pocketed it and took in what remained of the scenery. “My God. The entire park is on fire.” Bridge Bay Campground was out that way. So was Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, and almost every spring, geyser, and mud pit. Plus all those people, including her fellow rangers. Her voice turned distant. “I was supposed to be down there.”

  Asher acted like he was going to wrap his arm around her shoulder, then he switched at the last second and patted her back. “I’m so sorry. Really, I am. Whatever fell last night, it was big enough to burn all those trees. Who knows how far south it goes?” He took a deep breath. “There is a bright side, you know.”

  “I have my hat?” she replied with dry wit.

  He cracked up. “Yes, there’s important stuff like that, but also—” He turned her around to face up the valley. She easily saw through the trees; the forest had been thinned out by the burn the previous day. “The fire you rescued me from came through here and sucked up all the fuel. The other fire will never reach this valley.”

  Grace reflected on how Randy had sent her on the late-night rescue to the alpine hut. At the time, it irked her to be the one called to do it—a job for the low woman in the pecking order. Turned out, that call accidentally saved her life. Randy was probably dead.

  You’re still on duty, girl.

  She snapped back to reality. “You’re right, but it could go around us. Trap us here for who knows how long. Mammoth is north of the burn line; we should head that way. If people survived there, we have to get them out before the fire burns through.” They’d been at the visitors’ center and tourist village the day before; it would be the place to find someone, if anyone was left alive.

  The impact did have an effect on the landscape around them, even if the fire hadn’t reached them. About half the trees had been pushed over, facing north, and dirt, detritus, and billions of charred pine needles created two-foot debris drifts toward the road. When her eyes were drawn that way, she caught sight of white metal.

  Asher saw it, too. “The truck!”

  They jogged through the wrecked forest for about a hundred yards until they got to the gravel road. Her eyes were drawn to the Chevy Suburban. She also sought another shape which should have been in the open a bit down the hill. She stared intently, hoping to see evidence of a dead body—it wasn’t there.

  “Do you see Misha?” she wondered.

  Kentucky

  The sun came up for Ezra, too, but he’d barely slept the night before. After losing his dear Susan, he’d gone back down the steps and collapsed in exhaustion. The hole where the door used to be was like an open wound, and smoke and dust blew in, causing endless coughing fits for the fifty people crammed in the basement. He drifted off a time or two, even with the hacking fits and his painful sunburn, and then the rain began.

  He’d gone upstairs right away to wrap Susan in a giant spill-proof tablecloth from Roger and Ethel’s basement. There was no way he’d leave her exposed to the elements, but as the night went on, he wondered if anything could possibly keep her dry up there. They were like no thunderstorms he’d ever heard.

  The skies were already unsettled from the cracks of hypersonic rocks screaming to Earth, and the world rumbled for a solid hour afterward as if to shake out all the vapor in the atmosphere. Once the deluge began, it sent too much water down the steps; they had to find an old tarp and stretch it over the hole up top. A short time later, the tarp collapsed under the weight of the storm, which sent more water splashing down the stairs. They’d set it up again, putting it at an angle so the water would flow sideways into whatever was left of the kitchen. He sat near the steps to keep watch, always sure the tarp was one wind gust from blowing away. The torrential storm dumped pools of rain for hours afterward.

  Finally, when daylight signaled the end of the night and the rain was only a drizzle, he stood and took a few steps toward the top. He had no rain gear, or an umbrella, but he didn’t much care about getting wet. He needed to see his wife in the light of day.

  Butch grabbed him before he got to the tarp, rifle in hand. “Don’t go out without this.” He handed over Ezra’s Bushmaster.

  “Thanks. You, uh, can have that one, for now.” Ezra pointed to the second rifle, unable to speak the name of the previous owner. He’d made a point of saying it was temporary, as if Susan might return, though he immediately knew it was impossible.

  Butch went back and grabbed the rifle. When he returned, his eyes were filled with concern. “You all right, sir?”

  “Call me Ezra,” he said sadly. “And yeah. I just need to get up top, you know?”

  Butch, the giant ex-soldier, gave him a martial nod, then followed Ezra up the steps. As he pulled back the tarp and stepped out, he looked everywhere but the corner where he’d left his wife. Maybe she was sitting up elsewhere in what was left of the house. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen, admiring the wreckage of the big RV that had once been the source of neighborly disputes. Maybe she’d gone back to their own house, despite it being a smoldering ruin. Eventually, when he finally glanced over to her corner and saw her wrapped in the colorful holiday tablecloth, he choked up all over again.

  Ezra crouched next to her and prayed. It wasn’t anything fancy; he asked God to take care of her soul and get her to heaven, where she belonged. He also asked if He’d keep a seat warm for him, too. Ezra desperately wanted to see her again, and he dwelled on that happy reunion for an unknown length of time…

  When Butch tapped him on the shoulder, he snapped out of his reverie. Some of the others had come out of the basement, and people moved in small groups out on Happy Cove Street. He would willingly stay at his wife’s side forever if he didn’t make himself move. “Hey, we should see what’s going on up at the top of the hill. I’d like to know if everyone in the cars made it to safety.”

  “I’m with you, sir.”

  Ezra forced himself to chuckle, then looked over his shoulder at the young man. “If you call me sir one more time—” he couldn’t think of a suitable threat that was more ominous than the blast zone around them.

  “All right,” Butch reached an arm to help him up, “E-Z. I won’t call you sir.”

  “Easy? Are you trying to tell me something?” He let Butch pull him up and lead him away from Susan’s resting spot like a walking robot. They went down the three steps of the front porch. He was shocked to be standing in six inches of water and his autopilot switched off. “Butch, this is impossible!”

  He sloshed through the water to get a look to the backyard. The lake had gone over the three-hundred-seventy-five-foot-above-sea-level elevation line behind the houses, which was the top of the spillway at the dam. Water should never be higher than that, much like water in a tub would never rise above the height of the rim. The flat surface of the lake was broken up by millions of bits of debris floating toward the dam.

  “Either we dropped several feet, or the dam went up. This water can’t be here!” Ezra tried not to panic, but the lake was already at full summer pool before the meteorite impacts. Even so, the hurricane-like deluge must have driven the lake level off the charts. He remembered a record rainfall a few years back; it drove the lake up four feet in twenty-four hours. Looking down the line of houses on the lake-side of the street, many foundations were surrounded by water. The back of his property was swamped, too. The lake must have shot up ten or fifteen feet overnight…

  “How high will it get?” Butch asked.

  “No idea. At som
e point, the water will reach the roadway on top of the dam and drain over. There’s a physical limit, I’m sure of it, but I don’t know exactly where the line is. Nobody ever thought of drawing it.” The first floor of Roger’s house was still about three feet above the waves. If it kept rising, he’d have to move Susan’s body. “Let’s go find someone who knows what’s happening.”

  They hustled toward the end of the Happy Cove Avenue. The houses on the far side of the street weren’t flooded, but most of them had suffered the Big Bad Wolf treatment; they’d been blown apart. The two-story homes seemed to take the brunt of the wind gust from the asteroid impact. They’d been reduced to a few walls, or, at best, had their top floors and roofs ripped off. The single-level ranch-style models fared better. Their roofs were stripped of shingles and the plywood backing, although the framework was still there. Those few landmarks helped him navigate along houses he no longer recognized.

  The wet, misty air smelled like campfire ash mixed with the earthy odor of lake water. As they walked along Happy Cove, he noticed a line of debris filled the street, as if a big wave had placed it there.

  “The impact sent a shockwave over the lake, and that blast picked up water as it went. Yesterday it did the same thing the other way; Susan and I were on our boat. We dove in before the wind and water tossed it ashore on the far side of the lake.” He pointed to where he remembered losing his boat. Did the blast of wind send it back in his direction? Maybe it was now out on the lake, or under it, or in a neighbor’s yard. “It must have pushed a giant wave close to the street. It also probably helped rip Roger’s house down to the foundation.”

  Butch nodded appreciatively. “We did get splashed with water in the basement. Ruined my phone, too. I guess we barely noticed while we suffered the earthquakes, thunder, and howling wind.”