Impact (Book 2): Bounce Read online

  The drizzle returned, prompting Ezra to stop gawking. “We’ve got work to do.”

  I made a promise to get back to Grace.

  Chapter 2

  Yellowstone National Park, WY

  “He’s not there,” Grace said cautiously, worried Misha might be lurking nearby, ready to pounce. “I know he was burned. He was down on the ground when we ran for the geyser pit. There’s no way—”

  “He didn’t make it,” Asher finished for her. “I saw him there, too. I’m sure the shockwave carried him away.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” she allowed.

  They stood there for a moment, until she was startled by a loud banging of metal. She whipped her head around to find Asher playfully slapping at the side of her truck. “How about this baby, huh? She’s as tough as you are.”

  After pushing her heart back down her throat, she allowed herself to smile. “It’s not a contest, but I think she’s tougher than me.”

  The park service Chevy Suburban had been a rolling junkpile before she and Asher abandoned it the night before. It had been struck by bison, had several windows shot out by Misha, and carried black smudges and melted plastic from her drive through the forest fire. She’d assumed the disastrous wind of the meteorite impact would push it into a ditch, or blow it away, but luck finally gave her a break. The wind had only smashed it against two parallel tree trunks.

  “We’ll have to tell your bosses they made a good choice with this model.” Asher kicked at the rear bumper, which made it creak. He then stepped back, angling his watch in a funny way. When he saw her confused look, he added, “My watch has a camera built in.”

  “A phone and a camera? What else does it do? Serve food?”

  He laughed. “If I was back in Denver, I could use it to order takeout, so, yes. Sort of.”

  “Okay, so why are you taking pictures of my truck?”

  “Oh, I’m cataloging our journey. This is the first trip into the wild I’ve ever taken. I didn’t tell you yesterday. Figured you’d think I was too weird to rescue.”

  “You took pictures?”

  “Yep,” he tapped his phone. “Lots.”

  Grace walked over and pried open the front door, giving her a chance to see it all up close. Flying rocks had broken every side window and pockmarked the sheet metal like the world’s worst hail stones. The only intact glass was the front windshield, though it still carried the bullet holes from Misha’s attack. The motor started, to her relief, but it took some back and forth before the truck got clear of the trunks. One of the passenger-side doors seemed to get wedged alongside the tree, but she didn’t bother to study the problem and dislodge it. She gunned the motor, ripping off the back-passenger door in the process.

  True to his word, the young man had stood there tapping his watch, recording it all. “If you’re done snapping pics, please get in,” she said dutifully when the truck was back on gravel.

  Asher tried to get the passenger door open, but the locking mechanism was bent. He yanked on it a few times, seemingly desperate to prove it could be done. She didn’t want to waste more time, so she pointed to the opening of the missing door. “Just come up through there. We’ve got to roll.”

  Misha could be out there.

  She shivered at the thought. She’d fought him off with the bear spray flamethrower, but his body wasn’t anywhere in sight. Did he slink off and die, or was the hitman proficient in survival situations, even those as serious as a meteor strike? She hoped for the former, while knowing realistically it was probably the latter.

  The hitman’s TKM truck was fifty yards down the road, sideways in a ditch. When they drove by, she pulled to a stop. Asher shoved open the damaged front door and walked to the wreck to confirm it was empty, lending more evidence to the theory the man was dead.

  “Come on back!” she shouted, anxious to leave.

  He climbed in through the front door, though he had trouble pulling it all the way shut. Asher had to slam it a few times to get it closed. The truck had more problems as they got moving. The engine wheezed and a fan belt squealed annoyingly on the short drive off the gravel road, but once they hit pavement, the motor seemed to return to its normal operation.

  “Thank God this hunk of junk works,” Asher said when they were up to speed. “That noise was going to drive me insane.”

  “I’ll take the annoying sound as long as we don’t have to walk with the fire brewing back there. Plus, whatever we’re heading for up that way.” The forest fires to the south continued to send up their plumes, but she pointed out a dark bank of clouds also perched on top of the mountains to the north. Lightning flashed almost constantly inside the blackest clouds, suggesting it was a monstrous storm. Given the time of year, it wouldn’t be unusual to get an early summer storm front, but the severity seemed extreme.

  “Does any of this make sense to you?” she asked while driving around a fallen pine tree almost blocking the entire northbound lane. The blast had tipped over much of the forest, but most trees faced north. A few fell or rolled sideways, into the road.

  “What part?” Asher never took his eyes off the lightning strikes twenty miles away.

  “Was all this caused by a meteor falling to Earth? I didn’t think it would cause fires and weather like that. There has to be something more going on, right?” She swept her hand both ways, to capture both the storm and the forest fire.

  “My sister said all this was coming down; to be honest, I’m shocked we’re still alive. The asteroid was one thousand six hundred meters in length before it broke apart above the moon. The smaller part came down, uh, yesterday, over your hometown…”

  He paused as if to see if she would complain.

  “The rest came down last night. Before they nuked it, that was the bigger piece. Depending on the angle of approach, the remaining pieces could have all come down on the same place, turning us into Swiss cheese.”

  “But it didn’t?” she said, catching on.

  “Nope. It was more like a series of airbursts, blowing up those pieces five or so miles above us. That would destroy everything immediately below it, and in a huge radius around it, but those hits wouldn’t send us back to the Stone Age.”

  “The sky was full of lights before the big one hit us. What if there were too many of them?” They’d both witnessed what appeared to be hundreds of pieces flaring through the sky last night. It was hard to get a sense of scale; some pieces seemed large and close by, but others were far away.

  “I don’t know—” he said before cutting himself off. They’d finally made it back to the edge of Mammoth Hot Springs. Many of the wooden walkways along the terraces of the springs were gone. Where the surface wood had blown away, only the pylons remained sticking out of the calcium carbonate foundation. “Hey, should they be up there?”

  “Those people are nuts,” she said dryly. “We can’t stop to get them down.” It gave her no shock at all to see tourists walking around up near the springs, even without the boardwalks. She was too tired to get out of the truck and issue warnings that would be ignored the second she went on to the next task. Instead, she drove by the springs until they came to the tourist village.

  Lingering people once again crowded the visitors’ center, but they didn’t look nearly as animated as the day before. They sat on the front stoop and on the lawn, as if waiting for something to happen. Some perked up when they saw her truck, though the damaged exterior seemed to obscure its role as an official vehicle. She took off her hat, and she sat low in the seat while driving by, willing them not to figure out who she was. Almost by accident, she noticed an unmistakable line of about twenty bodies in the backyard of the center. They’d been placed under blankets and jackets, probably from other tourists.

  Her heart bled for the people she was supposed to support. “There’s nothing we can do for these folks right now. It looks like no one is helping them, which tells me the other rangers aren’t around.”

  “That’s bad, right?” he suggested. Her pro
blems the day before had as much to do with not being able to contact her superiors as they did with the falling rocks and maniacal killers. If she was going to get ahead of the new day, she needed to think of how to find someone in charge.

  Or be the one in charge.

  She flashed a grave look of concern at Asher. “I know where we need to go. This time, we have a gun.”

  The weight of Misha’s pistol filled her front pocket.

  “My days of being a probie are over.”

  Kentucky

  “Unbelievable,” Ezra lamented as he reached the summit of the hill.

  Cars and trucks still sat along the country road where they’d been before, but most seemed to have broken glass on the side facing them. The land next to the cars was stripped bare of leaves and underbrush, and the corn stalks in the nearby field were all gone. No cows were in the pasture, either, though specks of color were all over the muddy ground, likely trash from houses in his subdivision. Most of the big trees had been tipped over by the wind; the few left upright had their tops broken off. He let his eyes drift near and far over the changed landscape until the color pink caught his attention.

  “Holy crap!” he blurted as he got Butch’s attention. “Over there!”

  They ran into what was once a shady grove of trees at the corner of Happy Jack and the county road. The greenery had been replaced by crashed timbers and windblown household garbage. There was also one injured woman on the ground; her pink lounge chair was wrapped around the base of a tree.

  Ezra experienced a moment of indecision about whether he wanted to find Brenda “Babs” Bowden alive or dead. She’d given him nothing but grief over the years, and yesterday he’d been happy to see Susan finally shut her up. It wouldn’t be fair for his wife to die while the terrible neighborhood busybody survived.

  “She’s still alive,” Butch said as if he was under heavy fire on the battlefield. “We have to get her inside and warmed up. She’s been in the rain all night.”

  Of course.

  Guilt coursed through Ezra’s bones. He didn’t really want her to be dead, but there was one tiny, miniscule, part of him… Before he could allow himself to go too far down that path, he imagined Susan clapping one time right in his face.

  Help the poor woman, you fool. You aren’t like her.

  Ezra closed the distance and crouched next to Babs. “We’re here, ma’am. We’ll get you some help.”

  They slid her out of the vines and mud to find her shivering uncontrollably; she spoke with chattering teeth. “So cold. My arm hurts, too. Do you know why? Is Daddy going to pick me up from school?”

  He and Butch shared a bemused look, then he gave her his full attention. “Yes, he’ll be here. Can you get up?”

  The woman mumbled incoherently, which he took as the okay to lift her, but she screamed when Ezra grabbed her arm.

  “I’m so sorry!” he blurted, meaning it. Her arm was broken below the elbow. It bent at an odd angle, like part of her arm was filled with pudding instead of bone.

  On the next try, they lifted her without touching her broken arm. She still protested and cried, but they got her to her feet. Other than the arm, she didn’t seem to be gravely injured, though there were some nasty scrapes and bruises along the side of her neck and shoulder. Her pink slacks were filthy, though still bright enough they’d garnered his attention. If he hadn’t noticed, she might have never been found. Another pang of guilt surfaced for a second, but he pushed it back down, believing Susan helped keep his anger in check.

  “Let’s get her down the street,” he said to his young partner.

  “I can’t walk,” she whined.

  “But you have to move. We can’t carry—”

  “I can,” Butch interrupted. “If you’ll let me.” The big guy held out his hand to the woman.

  “I just can’t walk. You understand? If you can lift me…”

  Butch was built like a freight train. Though he reminded Ezra of a cowboy, complete with black Stetson, blue jeans, and brown cowboy boots, he also could have been a competitor in a weightlifting competition. He hefted Babs like a rag doll.

  “Ooh, please be gentle,” she pleaded.

  Butch flashed Ezra a what-am-I-in-for look, replying, “I will.”

  As they walked, he surveyed the neighborhood, desperate to find somewhere other than Roger’s house where he could take her. There weren’t many houses near the top of the hill, so the first viable place didn’t show up until they were about halfway down. The two-story house was blasted to smithereens, but the owner, Billy Nelson, originally from Indianapolis, once built his two-car garage so it looked like an old-school Quonset hut. It had a curved roof and walls, and it faced sideways relative to the lake, which meant the wind blew over it, rather than face-on. The silver structure sat toward the back of his lot, which had once been blocked out by trees; now it seemed naked and exposed.

  He pointed. “In there.”

  Babs mumbled. “Mr. Nelson is in arrears. He’s never paid his subdivision dues since he moved in.”

  Ezra chuckled with a touch of fatalism. He and Susan had often spoken about not paying their dues, especially as they felt like they’d been singled out for persecution by Babs and the other trustees. However, he never went through with it. He was convinced she would immediately put a lien on his house. Now he found out another neighbor never paid his dues. Nelson had lived in Happy Cove even longer than him.

  When he opened the small access entrance next to the main set of garage doors, he expected someone to pop out and welcome him, but it was empty inside. The sight of it made him realize they could have gotten all the refugees into the hut last night, far faster than going all the way to Roger’s house. If he’d remembered it was there, Susan might still be alive…

  “You okay?” Butch asked, nudging him forward with the woman in his arms.

  “Yeah. Just thinking about what might have been.”

  “Been there, brother. Let’s get her down and then reassess the situation.” Butch walked Babs through the door, ducking a little so he wouldn’t hit his hat on the top of the frame.

  When he made it into the darkened garage, his eyes fell on the only machine still left inside. It was the tractor he’d been thinking about the night before. The same tractor they’d used to clear debris from the road during normal rainstorms. The same one Nelson shared when other residents needed to dig a hole or clear a garden.

  They put Babs up against one of the flat walls and Ezra went right to the next task. He clicked the button for the garage door opener, then hopped on the small four-wheeled tractor. It already had the attachment he needed.

  He motored out of the garage, still fighting against the unfairness of who was taken and who was saved when the asteroid came down.

  “I’ll be back in a few. I’ve got something I need to do.”

  Isla Socorro, Mexico

  After the worst three days of his life, Petteri Tikkanen’s stomach finally unclenched itself, allowing him a rare moment of peace. He stood on the veranda of his fifteen-thousand-square-foot villa overlooking the sparse vegetation of Isla Socorro. He’d arrived there the night before, after escaping mainland USA, and the falling rocks his company had brought to Earth. For a few minutes, he wanted nothing more than to sip on his designer coffee, feel the breeze, and listen to the silence.

  A man caught his attention from the small road fifty yards away, a little beyond the other side of his well-manicured tropical garden. “Señor! ¿Cómo estás? How are you?” The naval attaché stood next to a small four-wheeler.

  Petteri dropped his head in disappointment. There was no peace to be had, even on a remote island three hundred miles off the coast of mainland Mexico. At least the man switched to English, which was one of his demands when he agreed to put one of TKM’s launch facilities there. All the locals were forced to speak it, or Petteri gave himself the right to send them back to the mainland; it only took a couple of examples before everyone got the message. No one wa
nted to leave the employ of the richest man in the world. The raw power made him feel like one of the drug lords running other parts of Mexico.

  “I’m fine, Alejandro. You’ve done well!” The officer was in charge of the island when Petteri was elsewhere, and he was responsible for keeping things running smoothly when he was present. Other than interrupting his thoughts at that moment, the man had done well.

  Alejandro also knew better than to press him, so he got back in his all-terrain vehicle and rumbled down the road. His road. The narrow asphalt lane ran between his compound and the port, then over to the airport a few miles inland. That upgraded route was named after him, of course. Reporters always asked if he got tired of hearing his name attached to everything on and above the Earth, up to, and including some of the larger asteroids, but he always told them the same thing. There’s no better way to remind people of the tireless work our company does for the human race. To himself, he admitted he loved hearing it, no matter how many things were named after him.

  Though he hadn’t petitioned to change the name of the island yet, it was effectively his, too. After all the upgrades and money he sank into the fifty-square-mile dot in the middle of the ocean, he figured he deserved it. Isla Socorro belonged to Mexico, legally, but he’d paid off all the right government officials. They encouraged him to build his giant house, upgrade the existing airstrip with modern electronics, and use the tiny one-ship dock whenever he needed it. In return, he’d been given around-the-clock protection by a battalion of Mexican naval commandos; they stayed in the nearby naval station, which he’d also conveniently upgraded for them.

  Plus, he had his own men.

  He’d taken another couple of sips of his coffee when a visitor rang the doorbell to his private wing of the house. If he hadn’t recently watched his asteroid break apart over the United States, he would have ignored the person and continued with his rest. However, he’d sent Dorothy off on a task earlier and he was certain it was her, so he made his way to the door.