Books

I wrote this story between October 15 and October 31, 2013, working from memory and imagination. It began as a rough draft, and I have returned to it to untangle the writing while keeping the story that arrived in that first rush.

When I was very young, three to be exact, I distinctly remember my brother Randy sitting me down in front of the old black and white TV.

“Sit down and watch this, this is important!” he said, and I have never forgotten those words, or the ones I heard next from the wondrous box of my childhood.

“This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” The imaginations of a generation took root in those few moments on the moon, mine included. — M. E. Douge

Chapter One

The calls crossed every time zone: Russia to the U.S., the U.S. to Britain, China to Russia. All concerned the same troubling news. Mere minutes earlier, an Australian astronomer had confirmed what her observations had begun to suggest. From Washington, D.C., to Beijing, officials were being awakened to something they expected to find only in an old Arthur C. Clarke novel: a celestial object, rather large, was headed straight for Earth.

Professor Anne Kelly knew the object, and more about it than most. For the past few months, she had been researching the near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 at the Sydney Institute of Astronomy’s North Ryde premises. It was her fifth assignment; she had been offered that posting or Hawaii. She had never expected her choice to lead to a discovery like this. An unmanned rover experiment was being planned for the asteroid, and she had been tasked with assembling the research data.

Astronomers with the La Sagra Sky Survey in southern Spain had discovered the asteroid in February 2012. Anne made sure they received her new findings. This was no time to withhold information in the hope of winning the next Nobel. There were few feasible solutions, but someone had to find one.

Complications were already setting in. Her director at North Ryde had never been keen on her work, although it was usually too precise to fault. Peter Quince was narcissistic and stiff as the starch on a priest’s collar. He strode to her station, a cubicle stacked with long readouts and barely enough room for her chair.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he demanded in a hushed, guttural voice, trapping her behind the desk. Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth, and his face turned a curious shade of red.

“You are fired! Dismissed! Get the hell off these premises! You have five minutes. Security has been called to escort you out—forcibly, if necessary!”

Anne tried to show him the data. She had checked it three times.

“What kind of nut job are you?” he went on.

“Do you realize that you have just told people around the world that an asteroid is going to hit us? And not some little one—the big one?”

She could not get a word in before two uniformed officers arrived. They let her take only her purse, which they searched: makeup, cell phone, glasses. Then they escorted her from the building.

A world away from Down Under, a morning fire warmed the kitchen and main room of a cabin in the woods. A few old acquaintances sat drinking coffee in comfortable camping attire. The gathering had begun before the emergency; now none of them could afford to leave without talking. Outside, a crisp fall morning was giving way to the sun. Sentries, seen and unseen, were scattered about. Ordinarily, the security arrangements amounted to a million-dollar training exercise four times a year. The artificial trees were getting harder to spot. Thank Hollywood for that.

The leaders of two of the largest superpowers sat across from each other, sharing gossip about everything from the Middle East to Miley Cyrus. It was a distraction, buying a few more moments to think about the problem newly at hand.

“Eight days,” President Bowman said.

“We need more information now. Start on your side, and I’ll start on mine. I suggest we find this Professor Anne Kelly. She may have something we can use.”

As the Russian president left Camp David, he missed the Chinese ambassador by only moments. An almost identical conversation followed, sans the Miley Cyrus reference.

Chapter Two

Earlier that week, a few minutes after five a.m., Marcus had left for his early meeting. He did that most days: a support group that had helped him kick some very addictive habits. It was still dark, and walking in his neighborhood could be a bit dangerous. Over the years, though, he had seen little beyond the usual: an occasional drunk, younger kids coming home after a night out, the walk of shame for a few, and a worker hustling to an early shift.

Unemployed for the better part of two years, Marcus was struggling to find his next step. He held on to hope and faith for himself and his wife, Lori. Things would get better somehow. Inside, at least, they already had. What he had learned about the human condition—and where his own experiences fit into it—had given him better ways to cope.

Lori had finally got back the man she married, found beneath the scars of a life that had changed his psyche. After twenty years together, they had rediscovered a bond they had thought lost. Serenity, understanding, and the beautiful task of simply loving unconditionally were alive and well, comforting beyond words.

They could not have children, but they had plenty of empathy and compassion for those who did. After losing two longtime feline family members, they had thought another cat would be nice. A beautiful one promptly adopted them. Smart and photogenic, Hobbes soon became their boy, and spoiled at that. Marcus noticed he was acting weird that morning. Well…weirder than normal.

Elsewhere, NASA scientists were being called back to work, along with Pentagon analysts and civilian staff, all wondering what the sudden orders meant. The government was shut down, and the threat of default was already in its eleventh hour. Apparently the universe had decided that wasn’t enough.

Anne’s warning had begun to spread online. Politicians, asked to explain the sudden recalls, supplied the confirmation she had not intended to make public. Rapture-inspired riots broke out in over a dozen cities. In rural areas, people gathered on farmland to witness what some believed was the arrival of their promised savior. Within four hours, the White House Situation Room was full.

In a nearby waiting area sat a dozen bedraggled generals, scientists, and public-relations experts. Readouts, tablets, and laptops lay askew across their laps. The president, vice president, national-security advisers, and Secret Service were gathering; the secretary of state was en route from the Middle East and due within hours. Similar scenes were playing out in governments around the world. An emergency United Nations assembly had been called.

The effort to contain the news had lasted roughly four hours. It was out. The world knew. Eight days until the following Tuesday.

Marcus kept looking for work. A DUI a few years earlier had cost him his driver’s license; getting it back had been only one part of picking up his life at forty-seven. Years of alcohol and drug addiction had followed him through the restaurant industry until he drank his way out of the business. Now he was clean and looking for an opportunity to build a better future.

With time on his hands and his own ideas about what was wrong with the world, he thought too much about stuff. He was just a cook, unemployed. What did he know anyhow? He was kind and giving to most people he met, but an introvert still needed a break. Whenever he could manage it, he headed into the backwoods of the North Cascades.

Marcus had been camping and hiking this area his entire life, and there were a few spooky places that he had heard of over the years. They were myths and folklore because he hadn’t seen them through his many travels through every trail-less acre he could find for over thirty years. Lori had no problem staying home alone and taking care of the cleaning. It was so much easier with Marcus gone. He was sure most spouses felt the same.

By midweek, Marcus had scraped up two days’ work digging a sewer line for a local plumbing company. It was tough work, but he was a digger, and he finished ahead of schedule. Counting out what he would need for his four-day weekend and what he had to leave for his small family, he reckoned it would come down to pennies and nickels. Still, it would work.

Then the plumbing foreman paid him a small bonus for finishing early. A blessing. By Thursday, he would be off to something he had been looking forward to for a long time.

Chapter Three

A swarm of Australian officers and international liaison agents surrounded the North Ryde astronomy premises. Professor Quince saw a few acronyms he had never encountered before. The late Australian sun did nothing for his pasty complexion. Neither did the sudden sweat.

“What can I help you with, gentlemen?” he managed in a somewhat helium-esque voice.

“We need your files and hard drives. Thank you for your service.”

The investigators’ manner left him speechless. The supposedly concealed guns silenced him further. Overwhelmed, he passed out within thirty seconds.

An agent retrieved his ID, pill bottle, and phone, noting the prescribed anxiety medicine. Bennett, the NSA liaison assigned to the international effort, took the lead. He had seniority and connections, but he was no rogue agent; he used every team member available, whatever their acronym.

“This work was signed off by Professor Anne Kelly?” he asked, looking at the files.

“Get the fainter checked out, then find out what he knows about her work. Start looking for Kelly now. Call in whoever you need. You all know what this means.”

Nine months stationed in Perth had put a slight Australian edge on his voice.

By the time Marcus left on Thursday, he had caught only fragments of the asteroid story. He assumed it was another flyby dressed up by the mainstream media. He had a four-day weekend, an old hiking area to revisit, and an invitation to a ceremony with Jonathan after the first part of his hike.

Heck, if the world ended—wink, wink—what better place to be than out there? He had heard that the world was ending for most of his life. Naturally, he had not stayed by the television long enough to hear the international scientific confirmation.

He wanted and needed a break, and to find some serenity on the reservation. Away from civilization away from cell phones and honking horns, that turned him constantly irritated and ready to get away. He purposely parked about ten miles from the reservation. Emptying the car of valuables and the coil wire, he wanted to walk in and clear as much societal bullshit as he could before he got there. Taking his time, he was in no hurry. If he recalled correctly, there was a train bridge near the river that he enjoyed the last time he was here. It had been a number of years since he had been here and it looked as though the trailhead had grown over just enough to hide its location. Ferns and devil’s club were quickly growing to help hide the path, and Marcus wondered how the mountains reclaimed so much so fast.

Being alone in the woods was where Marcus felt really at home. Abundance to do just about anything and the freedom to commune with nature in peace. Marcus took the time to examine the back country of the reservation, connecting to his primal senses and ancient connections. Oh, he was a guru in his own mind, he laughed to himself. He came across a small boxed valley, no larger than a double-wide trailer, but completely enclosed. It made him think it was a cave of some kind in the distant past, the top mostly open to the elements. This is exactly the type of place that Marcus looks for in his hiking trips. A copy of the J. K. Hodges book on Pacific Northwest mining in the late 1800s had brought him to numerous finds.

Old townships long forgotten, mines and their stories of unfortunate mining accidents, and the struggle for life for some in the 19th century. But he was far from the map markings and the terrain seems somewhat older, with a certain indefinable aura. Stopping on a knoll looking out over one of the most beautiful shallow valleys he has seen in his many years he took a small break and sat cross-legged in the fresh, sweet grass that was just coming up to his knees. The dew shining their jewels of light in the morning sun, the valley view was being painted well in his mind.

The recent deep defunding of NASA had left the U.S. with very few options toward resolving this death knell approaching. Everything was either in the process of being scrubbed or underfunded; Space was closed.

NATO and other coalitions of nations have convened via phone, web and messengers of all kinds. If anyone had some kind of secret weapon or technology, they were being called out with threats of war, even genuine groveling. The NSA and Cheyenne Mountain teams were finding no credible scenario for survival. More information was needed. Who had the power to do anything about it if the U.S. can’t? Panic spread like locusts, and human nature was in full view.

Chapter Four

Anne was struggling with the thought that she had become some sort of demon, chosen to tell the world it had only days left. In her data, the object and its dense debris extended over a scale of miles. The familiar designation, 2012 DA14, had become a name for something her old measurements no longer described adequately.

She had followed the asteroid’s uneventful path for over a month, comparing observations with earlier flyby data. Only recently had the picture changed. New debris and faint vapor plumes suggested a collision on the far side of the body. What first looked like an ordinary disturbance had become a terrifying orbital calculation. The uncertainty narrowed with every observation until, that morning, she could no longer dismiss the result: the surviving mass was headed into Earth’s path.

Her findings—and her decision to say something before the official channels had caught up—had caused trouble around the world. Frightened, she had posted a hurried warning intended for family back in Colorado. It spread like hot syrup on pancakes. By the time officials started confirming pieces of it, there was no putting it back.

At home, she set down the small box of desk trinkets that security had unceremoniously tossed after her, breaking a few. Concentration deserted her. Armed with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey and her snuggly blanket, she curled up on the couch.

For a little while, her body relaxed. Then the horror settled properly into her mind. Meltdown seemed a laughably small word for it. Most of her relevant research was backed up on the SD card in her phone, but what the hell would that matter if there was nobody left to use it?

She moved to the cushioned window bench in her leased flat and cried. Why did she have to find out first? What kind of Supreme Creator handed somebody an emotional explosion like this?

She screamed when the locked door opened as though someone had a key. Two well-dressed men stepped inside, badges ready, explanation absent.

“I could have had a gun, you fools!” Anne shouted, retreating into the corner.

“We know you don’t,” Agent Andrews said. He was attached to the Australian intelligence team.

“And ours are bigger anyhow.”

They handcuffed her with professional restraint and hurried her into the middle of three black cars. As they pulled away, other agents entered her apartment carrying white boxes.

They asked her name and where she worked.

“Nowhere at the moment!” she snarled.

That ended the conversation for the rest of the ride.

The car pulled into a secured airport hangar, where a Boeing 757 was already being prepared. Anne recognized several people from the scientific world. There were also Australian soldiers, government agents in suits, and a few people whose presence she could not place. Somehow, that mixture was both troubling and comforting.

The aircraft had been modified for long-range operations, and its interior was absurdly opulent. Her fear had not vanished, but now she could see a purpose beneath the way she had been collected. She knew something they needed. Perhaps that knowledge could save lives. Perhaps even the planet.

Where did they keep the damn Ben & Jerry’s?

Marcus had come to the woods to find the balance he associated with a higher power. On Friday, after the first leg of his hike, he would meet Jonathan Grey Feather. Jonathan had known him since he was young; over the past twenty years, their talks had become something more deliberate, a kind of study. Friend was too small a word for the trust between them. Neither man felt much need to label it. Jonathan had a private nickname for Marcus—“my quiet one”—that belonged to their long acquaintance.

Jonathan had shared stories with Marcus and Lori: warriors, the arrival of settlers, places whose histories lay beyond the maps. Some belonged to his family’s telling; others had acquired their own turns in his voice. The stories of the sky people always brought goose bumps. Listening, Marcus sometimes imagined a bright, snowflake-like corona around the old man.

When Marcus arrived for the gathering, Jonathan welcomed him. That night, beside the campfire, familiar words seemed to point him toward his own life again. To an outsider, a white guy with a troubled past might have looked foolish searching for renewal here. Marcus had stopped worrying much about that. It helped. It felt right.

He dreamed grateful dreams.

On Saturday morning, he set off up the mountain. He meant to spend one more night out and head home Sunday. It might be a year before he could return.

The trail began as a dried-up creek bed with some rather large rocks. His ankles were not too happy for the first few miles, but the terrain quickly turned to grand cedar and Douglas fir halls over age-old roads and railroad tracks. It had been many years since they kept up the almost invisible trails at the road’s ends. Knowing the way by heart from the many trips to his favorite place. Grateful for all of our maker’s wonders, he trudged on. For Marcus, the spirituality he felt in the woods always seemed to give him some sort of sixth or seventh sense, so to speak. The land looked new again even after many trips to the area, he could see the balance in it all anew.

A sense that at first, had him thinking of some sort of cataracts. Deciding to take a try at the ridge across the lake of where very few travel, he was off, trails not necessary.

Chapter Five

The plane offered all the amenities of the super-rich: champagne, meals, and a first-class crew. Anne was hurried into a window seat. Beside her, a heavyset, bearded man of about forty clutched a battered briefcase that appeared to date from 1973. Sweat ran down his forehead. He acknowledged her introduction with a frantic nod and no eye contact.

This was going to be a trip.

She looked around at the assortment of enormous brains filling the other seats: professors and scientists she had hoped to work with someday, if she could first manage to meet them. Tired, and still missing her ice cream, she tried to sleep before whatever this was came unraveled.

A tone over the intercom and her neighbor’s increasingly powerful body odor woke her. The next voice sounded familiar. She looked up to find Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott, no more than six feet away.

“My apologies for the circumstances,” he began.

“The object carrying the designation 2012 DA14 passed Earth safely earlier this year. Recent observations indicate a collision with a much larger body or fragment complex. What we are tracking now is not the small asteroid that made the headlines in February. It is a changed system, with a changed trajectory. Our best estimate puts that trajectory directly through Earth’s position.”

“Our present estimate puts the combined body and debris field at roughly 6.3 miles across,” Abbott continued.

“Its mass and composition are still being checked. With the minds on this plane, I don’t need to explain what an impact could mean.”

Anne was hardly shocked by the announcement. It was her finding, after all.

“We are joining an international team at Cheyenne Mountain in the United States. The information is already public, and the panic is spreading. It’s going to be a long flight. Button up and get those giant heads working!”

The pale, sweaty man beside her relaxed enough to attempt an introduction.

“Sorry. Landon,” he said, extending a hand.

Anne gave him a tired smile but left the hand alone. Turning toward the window, she was soon asleep. Passed out was closer to it.

That magical “sense” never left him as he scrambled through blueberry bushes, devil’s club with painful spikes at least five inches long, and leaves as big as a coffee table. The forest floor was as comfortable as some of the best carpet; the recent rain and constant moisture at this altitude helped. Scrub alder was doing its best to erase man’s foolish wounds. Older firs and cedars had fallen years ago, and in their sacrifice he found the trail as easy to see as a sidewalk in Times Square. He had a flashback just then as he rounded a very large cedar stump, easily twenty-five feet around. It had three other trees growing from it covered in hanging lichen, from almost head to toe.

He had a picture at home somewhere of this tree, and then a memory hit him. He had left markers all those years ago, no, not the last time or the one before that but when he first visited this place. He used to hate it; it was a type of prison to him at one time. He spent his time wandering the area and beyond, looking for a way out. Of course he was always found; Jonathan ran the place, and some of the boys swore he had been doing it for eight hundred years. Marcus had never worked out how much of that rumor Jonathan had started himself. Marcus never asked him anything about that when they spoke.

Like most people, Marcus was selfish and self-centered, and was always worried about himself when they met up for lunch at the noodle shack. Why does he always pick the noodle shack to meet up with me? Marcus pondered. But that was many years ago and Marcus was forever grateful for his “second” father. His own father had been gone for years; Jonathan filled a different, older place in his life. Grey Feather was aware of the boy’s feelings and was grateful himself. For never having married, very few people come into one’s life that genuinely move you and bring pride to your living history.

At a refueling stop somewhere in the Pacific, Anne was taken to a cheap hotel at oh-dark-thirty and told to sleep. Guards stood by the doors. Internet and wireless access were blocked.

One thing about these asses, she thought: they tell you straight up that you’re screwed.

One thing about the people she noticed is that they had no concern with data that she and others had. She had seen Pigpen carry his now stained briefcase and some copy paper boxes into his room. Checking the door and looking for obvious cameras, she stealthily did her best quick strip and into the shower. No shampoo! Argh! Very warm water quickly took the angst away. What the hell has happened to her life in the last eleven and a half hours? There was a jumpsuit on her bunk when she was finished and that just about made her lose it completely. What did they expect her to do? Go get the damn rock?

Sleep came in snippets and it must have been a solid two hours and twenty-three minutes before she was awakened and told to board the plane. The emotional nightmares of the knowledge she carried had changed her. She felt split in two, the succubus of mankind itself, and a victim of giving a shit.

The stop had apparently been Guam—or somewhere equally remote, judging by what she could see. That explained the lodging, she thought. The prime minister’s aircraft had all the luxuries; the people being transported apparently did not qualify for them on the ground.

Once everyone was back aboard, the suited men gathered the passengers around the conference table. There was no press, leaving room for as many scientific minds as they could collect in a matter of hours.

“Your task,” Bennett said, “is to find a way to destroy or divert the asteroid headed for Earth.”

The monotone voice faltered on the words. He was used to giving orders that demanded sacrifice. This one was different. For a moment, the old lifer considered retirement—assuming there would be somewhere left to retire. He glanced skyward and let out a genuine sigh.

Then the lines of rank and discipline returned. He still had a job. Get to work.

Chapter Six

Intrigued by the thought of even finding just one of his rock and twig markers, Marcus took about a half an hour to get his bearings.

They would be by old Horseshoe Bend, just to the northeast. But he used to follow a decent trail to get there, and it had all but been obliterated by the sawgrass, ferns, overgrowth and scrub alder that had taken over with great abandon in the last twenty years. Never daunted by the lack of trails, Marcus triangulated a rough spot that looked familiar as a possible starting point. And with walking staff in hand began clearing the sawgrass and nettles. In doing so, he created a line of sight to make sure he was on course. If he remembered right, “and that would be a stretch after all those years of killing brain cells.” It would be about two miles to the ridge looking over his favorite fishing spot when he was younger.

Years ago, Jonathan had told him that there was great event there. But it had been so long that even he, Grey Feather, could no longer remember the story. He also said to look for crystals in the clay line of the river. Smiling, he said they sell like hotcakes to the tourists coming from an old man like me. Ha! Marcus laughed and the endearment grew.

He emerged from the grass and shrubs to an open field of a landslide of mud and grass. Not in the recent past, grass has grown over it many seasons, and alongside the river a decent trail familiar to some old memory. Marcus remembered that the rock that he spent so many summer days by; Fishing in the perfect pool was very much a trek farther on. He paused and hydrated up and ate a granola bar.

He had forgotten that it had been in his pack for over a year. But it was somewhat edible and with enough water he scraped it down.

The trailhead he recalled was right, that part of it next to the river was untouched. A gentle trail that was a road one hundred and twenty-four years ago. It brought back some great times and even awe to the fact that change sometimes is so slow that we can reflect on the past. Many logs have come down over the winters and climbing them was a small test for him and his determination. Soon the trail/road ended in a mash of huge trunks, gravel and mud.

“North still,” he said, grabbing his lightweight jacket and tightening his boots. Walking stick in hand, he climbed the mini mountain of Mother Earth’s destruction, and found a small runoff stream and followed it north.

The men in the suits were serious as different passengers cried at different times; emotions must be kept on some sort of dermal keypad. These guys were the closest thing she had ever seen to a Terminator. Bennett moved to the head of the table, laptop and a stack of manila folders in front of him. Studying them in silence for a good ten minutes.

“Dr. Anne Kelly, PhD in astrophysics?” he asked, looking around at the women seated at the table.

Anne then noticed the even more menacing man at the rear of the plane. Sweating buckets more than Anne’s seatmate Landon, it was a gooey mess that was Professor Peter Quince. Useless weight on this or any other plane in the thoughts that Anne had. After a rather vertical liftoff the plane leveled off and the plane’s crew of military officers began making the passengers comfortable as best they could. Why would they bring a half-melted gummy bear like Quince in on this?

Startled to hear her name first, Anne collected herself.

“Present.”

“Dr. Kelly, you discovered the change while researching 2012 DA14?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just Bennett. Please go on.”

“I was comparing the earlier flyby observations with our current tracking,” Anne said.

“Last week, the instruments began picking up a growing debris field. Most of that material stayed on the old trajectory. The main body didn’t. I needed more observations to be certain, but this morning the calculations converged. It’s coming back toward Earth.”

Quince stood.

“You’re wrong! Your data is wrong; your science is wrong! How does a massive asteroid change course?”

Bennett’s expression suggested that standing up had been strike one and the screaming was strike two. He reached for a thick manila envelope.

Anne suddenly had to fight a laugh. Her old boss, blathering and belligerent at the far end of the table, looked exactly like Baron Vladimir Harkonnen from Dune.

“Sit down, Professor,” Bennett said.

“And listen.”

Bennett was not a large man, but his orders were seldom ignored. From the envelope he took a stack of photographs: twelve recent exposures assembled into a composite view of 2012 DA14. Large fragments floated near the main body; smaller debris continued along the old trajectory.

“The latest tracking supports Dr. Kelly’s conclusion,” he said.

“The projected impact is next Tuesday. Our present estimate is seven days and a little over six hours from now. We’ll reach Cheyenne Mountain within a few hours. There, we’ll check in with the Air Force support team and Lieutenant General Johansen of NORAD. Get some rest.”

Anne was too weak with exhaustion to argue. She slept almost immediately in her assigned cabin. A comfortable, carpeted jail cell, she thought. Probably a gold toilet seat, too.

Chapter Seven

The color on the hill in front of him was different, not something natural he thought as he climbed up the four hundred feet practically straight up. Surrounded by bear dens and blackberry bushes he got to what he thought the strange color was. It turned out to be a group of skunkweed growing up from what he could tell was a sulfur or copper runoff. The runoff might explain the strange color, but he wasn’t about to taste anything to test the theory. He also saw a group of chanterelles around them. He loved chanterelles but the water source made the decision for him quickly. Talk about trippin on mushrooms’ he mused to himself. He found himself following deer and bear trails. They are everywhere and if you follow one too long you will get lost.

It is one of the stories that Jonathan had told him around a campfire years ago. In Jonathan’s telling, deer, bears, and especially wolves laid trails with no end, turning men in circles. They make them through terrain that makes a great noise alerting every animal to the danger. That is why they are called the spirits of the forest. When Marcus “escaped” all of those years ago from the camp he followed a lot of those trails. And as nature would have it, they did lead back very close to the camp. Thinking back to a childhood memory, Jonathan was sitting on the logjam waiting for him as he clumsily broke twigs, trying to make it across the river at the end of the lake.

With long pipe in hand and sitting cross-legged, he asked Marcus in an almost ethereal voice, “When will you ask for help?” Tired and emotional, Marcus was out of breath, he was too tired to fight his real feelings and let it out. He has no recollection of what he said or how long he spoke. But he does remember the end. That he screamed and cried and begged for help at least a half dozen times, before he collapsed on the logs a dozen feet from Jonathan.

Jonathan did not move; he continued to smoke his long pipe and watch the lake in the distance. Marcus… after many minutes raised his head and asked “What do I do?” With that Jonathan slowly rose up from his cross-legged position as if he levitated. Then gingerly walked across the logjam, and held out his hand to help Marcus up.

“We have work to do!” he said as he pulled up the youngster.

“You need a shower and some rest. The lessons aren’t in a hurry, as long as we keep learning.”

The entrance to the complex, a nuclear fortress made to resist a thirty-megaton explosion. Was filled with enough cars that it brought back visions of the L.A. Freeway at rush hour to Anne. She was taken to a waiting area and thoroughly inspected, medical and all. Violation at its finest and she could feel the personal trauma. When she was fifteen she had to go through a similar experience at the local hospital. Made to feel like a pariah by everyone including her peers, the bastards got off scot-free. She, on the other hand, has paid the price again and again for years… even now. NORAD-North American Aerospace Defense Command, had everything at their disposal.

After being led through giant doors, countless hallways, and a row of regular elevators, she stepped off one into what had to have been the largest room she had ever seen, underground that is. Airman Lovelight-Goforth escorted her down a few flights of metal stairs. It looked like a warp core reactor from the new Star Trek film with that guy Pine. After a few minutes the “warp core” opened up to reveal a very large elevator.

“Oh, good, you made it,” Airman Lovelight-Goforth said as other escorts brought the others from Anne’s group down the stairs. She made a mental note that Baron Quince was not among them. As they stepped into the “elevator,” they were instructed that this is a pressurized unit and their ears may pop many times along the way.

“We are going a great distance down, but you will be ok.” Just then the doors closed and almost immediately Anne’s ears popped and continued to, almost to a painful degree. She stepped out into a hall and immediately prodded left; there was a circular structure that she was apparently walking around. After going about three hundred feet, she and the other members were shown the door to a lecture hall.

She was stunned, practically every scientist was there, Hawking stood out first in the left corner. My God she thought everyone who was anyone was there. Timothy John (Tim) Berners-Lee – creator of the World Wide Web, Richard Dawkins, Persi Diaconis, even Gordon Moore the founder of Intel, Roger Penrose and too many more to count. The one person in the room that she immediately gravitated to was probably the most important person in this room on this subject. Allan Sandage, the world’s greatest living observational astronomer and a good friend if he remembered her. They were all slowly finding their places in the lecture hall. Allan had to sit very near the front if he was to hear this. He hadn’t told anyone he was going very deaf and relying on reading lips more and more.

Anne sat two seats away from Dr. Sandage, whose admirers were practically fighting over the other places. Bennett stood at the back as Secretary of Defense Chuck Nagel approached the lectern.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I must apologize for the hasty—and, in some cases, uncomfortable—means by which you arrived. The disturbance now visible around 2012 DA14 appears to have begun with a collision several days ago. We are still reconstructing it. What matters now is that the resulting trajectory intersects Earth’s orbit at the wrong time.”

“People, we brought you here to find a solution,” he continued.

“As of this briefing, we have just over six days. Every military and experimental research resource we can make available is at your disposal. The agents behind me will be your points of contact. I believe we can find an answer. If we cannot, may God have mercy on our souls.”

After hearing it said out loud by someone else, Anne felt a little relieved that she didn’t have to be some dragon lady antichrist that got to tell the world we were doomed. She let it out of the bag but Uncle Sam just did that for her. Agent Bennett made a beeline for her when the formalities were finished “Anne? Anne Kelly?”

“Yes!” she replied, startled that he remembered her name.

“You were the first to see this in your findings right?”

“Yes,” she said proudly. “And the first to leak it out to the world too, huh?” Bennett continued. Anne wasn’t sure if she was in some very serious trouble or being asked to help.

“I would like to see your phone if I could?” “You see there are seven gigs of information missing from your lab. We already know you have it, we searched your phone when you were talking with Mouse? I believe it was?” Furious but really apathetic at the time she handed him her phone.

“SD card still in it?” Bennett asked. She nodded silently like a child being lectured for doing something bad.

Bennett had her follow him with a half dozen other guests up some stairs. Landon, or Pigpen, as she had begun to call him was one of them. Still in military-style overalls and her Nikes they were soon seated in a rather impressive “tech” room with all the screens and gadgets one could ask for.

Chapter Eight

“Kelly.” Bennett slid her phone across the backlit table.

“We need everything on that SD card. I don’t have time to untangle your encryption.”

Anne started taking apart the heavy protective case, breaking it in the process. That will cost me another seventy-five bucks, she thought. Removing the SD card she was pointed towards a workstation on the far side of the room. It took her a second to find the right slot for the card, there must have been twenty. While she worked away at putting her data in order she had to walk a fine line between layman understanding and brilliant insights from the professionals. While she was doing that, Bennett had the others in the group break into small groups or work solo on their particular expertise. It turns out Landon cleaned up ok for a large man, and after being taken straight from the gym in the middle of a workout things made a lot more sense.

Besides, he got the workstation right next to her and she soon found out that he is, or was, depending on if the University President knew where he was, the head of the Astronomy Department at Stanford. Oh! He has issues…Anne silently thought to herself as she got back to work.

His pace up the mountain was slow and steady, always looking and listening to that part of the forest that the average hiker would easily miss. He was in the backwoods anyways and very few if any have gone this way, at least not in a few decades by the looks of things. He was thinking his old hiking friend Vickie Wallace and her dog Alyse would love this. To the east he could see a large cliff of rocks that had columnar jointing, huge pieces of granite and other materials sticking practically straight up. He would make a small camp there when he got there, but that was still a ways. The fall flowers and beautiful changes in nature could add time to that very easily, but that’s why he was there.

He had an easy time crossing some streams that were not nearly as gorged as when he was here before, the melt having been over for a few months now. Something right then stopped him. It was a severe case of déjà vu, he knelt down and tried to recall the millisecond of memory or intuition it had just placed in his head.

He lost it. The sense swept away like smoke on the wind. A bit shaken he continued on his journey. He was beginning to think that this was one last vision quest type adventure. He was getting older, and his life was nothing but hand to mouth. He was terribly lucky to find a woman like Lori so many years ago. Twenty years, twenty years and he hasn’t found a way to break it yet? Now that was an accomplishment he could be proud of. But the same could be said for her going through a war of sorts for that long. Earning every medal and commendation more than once. They made it through, but only with the generous help from an aging mother and her Social Security check.

Checking the Sun, he hurried toward the standing cliffs. There was still most of Saturday ahead of him. It was perfect in every way, a small patch of level grass fed by a small stream that pooled as it ran down the mountainside. Firewood was just yards away and the view of the shallow valley was priceless. An eight-point buck decided to wander close by as he was setting up his tarp. Magical, simply magical… The place brought back the dream from Friday night. He had been talking with Jonathan, but not quite Jonathan: older still, if that was possible, and white as a spirit. Jonathan spoke of the ancient times and how he was now in very sacred and ancient land. He was safe from all the woodland beings and close to a very old part of the Earth.

Bennett kept pressing Anne to finish. None of the other groups had anything close to a solution. Science fiction was being tossed around as if it were reality. Sadly, reality was that they were nowhere near ready. The proverbial china shop, waiting for the bull.

As the groups compared her observations, a second, denser object emerged from the data. One possible origin was debris associated with Comet ISON. It was a working hypothesis, not a confirmed identification, but the fragment’s calculated path explained part of the collision. Its motion around the Sun had carried it into the asteroid’s route. The team still needed to determine how much of it remained embedded in the larger mass.

Over the next few hours, scientists and military personnel bickered in groups ranging from two to twenty.

“What do we have for spacecraft?” Landon asked.

“Nothing we can get there in time,” Bennett replied.

“Nor can the Russians, Chinese, Japanese, or Jamaicans.”

Anne wondered whether she was losing it. The world was approaching an apocalypse she had seen a thousand times in Hollywood movies, drugstore paperbacks, and Discovery Channel specials. Her little brother had comic books about exactly this. Barney loved the pictures; she used to read the stories to him at bedtime. His smile when the good guy won could light up her whole evening.

“Dr. Kelly!” Landon called from their situation room.

“New observations on ISON and 2012 DA14. There may be something here.”

“Where did the new asteroid data come from?”

“I’m checking,” he said, trying to keep his papers together as he hurried after her.

One of those comics had begun something like this, she thought. She had been recruited into a Justice League. She laughed aloud. Landon looked more confused than ever.

Chapter Nine

The morning rain was more of a mist…It was the kind that gets water into every single crack of your clothes – and body. During the night, with the strange dreams, he felt that he had been somewhere very far away, but right where he was. He was in an exceptionally good mood, and since this being his “vision quest” (He always had to laugh a little when he said that because of the horribly made movie by the same name). He felt good enough to climb the fearsome rock face behind him. He had been there before, but not this close the stories he heard of guys dying while trying was enough to deter him from ever trying it before.

He had enough gear with him to try it at least, if there was any trouble he would simply back down. No problem. As he was walking around the base of the vertical jutting cliff he was looking for a climb line. He saw he could get a good twenty feet up without even trying too hard, the stones created a series of steps. It would be a hard start after that because of a massive overhang… perfectly rectangular he saw. The climb line after that looked pretty good, great in fact. Marcus started his MSR flyweight stove and made his breakfast of oatmeal. He tossed in some late blackberries that the bears had not found yet or were saving for later after the lowlands were picked clean.

He thought about the best plan of action if he were to do this. Oh my God! Lori would be so freaking pissed at him if something happened. If he didn’t die from it she would kill him but the climb still had him tough. Turning his head and glancing at the spot again. He did the thing that guys learn in football and the military, that thing isn’t so big, I can take it! Yeehaw! He had to repeat that a few more times as he was getting his gear ready. Yeah, he may do it but just like anyone else he was scared shitless. The fear really did mean Fuck Everything and Run.

Marcus sat cross-legged in the moist morning grass, directly in front of the climb; the rope had already been rigged up as far as he could go at the moment. He meditated and cleared his head, he prayed to his maker for safe travels this day and always. He prayed for his wife Lori that she always has the light of love shine on her. He did this daily at home but for some reason it worked so much better in these surroundings. He felt great, heading towards the rope, doing a last-minute gear check. As he saw earlier the first twenty feet or so looked fairly easy, but he still was a cautious climber. There were years of loose dirt and small rocks in the corners, dusty handholds and short, weak vines could mean his downfall.

He was going to be late but Lori would understand, Marcus completely forgetting any news.

Anne pored over the latest data as people were reassigned to her situation room. When Allan Sandage took Landon’s place at the workstation and began speaking, she lost the thread for several seconds. Of all the people she could have hoped to work beside, there he was.

“I’m sorry. Could you begin again?”

“Are you all right?” he asked, tilting his head.

“Yes. You caught me off guard. I was a million miles away.” She gave a tired smile.

“Which is not a useful distance to be thinking about right now.”

“Home?” he asked.

“Hard to keep focused, isn’t it? Allan Sandage.” He extended a wrinkled hand.

“Anne Kelly. We met in Arizona about ten years ago. Your work is legendary.”

“Bah! Keep at something like a crazed fool long enough and the odds say you’ll find something nobody knew about. You said we met?”

“Yes, one summer.”

“My memory isn’t what it was. Well, time’s wasting. Let’s see what we’ve got, so I can get home to a decent meal. Horrible commissary.”

Landon remained on the team, now beside Anne again. He had a schoolboy’s determination to show his working to the teacher before anyone else did. Her teacher’s pet, she thought, amused despite herself.

Bennett hurried in.

“Anything?”

“We’ve only just received the new data,” Sandage said.

“Hurry it up. The Russians are pressing the nuclear option.”

“That could make this worse,” Anne said.

“The spectrum suggests unusually dense radioactive material alongside large magnesium-rich deposits. We don’t yet understand the structure. Break it apart and we may exchange one target for several.”

Bennett knew the simulations had not produced a dependable nuclear solution for this object. A weapon might transfer enough momentum to help; it might also fragment the body in ways they could not control. Space did not oblige a plan just because it had worked in a movie.

Landon raised his hand. Bennett gave him a look.

“What have you got, geek squad?”

Anne looked down to hide a smile.

“I’ve been comparing the observations,” Landon said.

“Some from before the shutdown hadn’t been processed. The dense fragment may have separated from a cometary body long ago. Its path crossed 2012 DA14. Dr. Kelly’s spectral data suggest a high concentration of heavy elements—possibly gold among them. We need to know how much of that fragment is still attached.”

Mass, Anne thought. A lot of it, concentrated where they had not expected it.

“We’re working out the ratio now,” Landon added.

Smart guy.

Chapter Ten

The first twenty feet would be easy, he said to himself as he turned on his GoPro camera, ha! It just reminded him how out of shape he was but he had gotten to the top of the easy part. He was now at the overhang that made him really rethink this folly; it was not as inviting as it looked on the ground. It was about nine feet out and pure granite. It was as square as if it were cut by the Master Masons of the Pharaohs. Looking for a way to defeat the obstacle, he saw that on his left that the rock face extended about halfway to the front of the overhang. A few juts in the rock and some foliage made him think he could get a hook on something.

Moving over ever so slowly, a little up and a little down he was able to make it near enough to the corner to tap a spike and carabiner; he hooked up and took a rest, hydrating up.

He was making good time; he wanted to enjoy it though. His thought was at first to swing away from the corner and somehow get a handhold on the face of the overhang. But after being there a while he realized he could simply go up the left side to the top, some one hundred feet up. Sure, it wasn’t the face, but it was just as vertical and he had plenty of equipment. Already the views were amazing, little ecosystems had begun on each of the little square pilings. Colorful little lizards, western skinks, stuck their tongues out at him as they scurried away under some moss. The north side was also mossier; he would have to watch for that, moss destroys rock and makes it brittle. If it gets worse he will work his way to the face.

Making sure to vocally say a prayer and wishing his wife well while he was looking over an absolutely beautiful fall valley. He started to climb, he loved this. It was in his soul, he felt he became one with the rock and the wind and defied gravity itself.

The moss was mostly a nuisance but he made his way up. He moved to the face about halfway up because of the rock condition and a route that seemed to open up. It looked almost like a miniature inset grooved ledge that had been carved into the rock. Like some disturbingly curved smile going up to its left ear. Taking the line that was afforded to him by the rock itself he was brought to the other side. This is where he got his second wave of a déjà vu type of feeling, but this one was quick to pass and he just stopped. At this point he was having second thoughts about proceeding.

He was about a quarter of the way up to, not the top, but a small field set into its face, almost impossible to get to from the top. He took a long break and ate some lunch on one of nature’s perfectly made tables. It was about seven by nine and almost perfectly flat, he was amazed by the geologic forces that must have had to occur for the rock to be jutting almost perfectly straight up. The sandwich and juice helped clear his head a bit and he was soon on a vertical path again.

Bennett was visually agitated as he spoke on the phone. You could see him through the glass walls that were everywhere. Now we know why it costs the government so much money to get things done. He came back into the room with a look of desperation on his face.

“The Russians are preparing to go with a nuclear plan,” he said, as if he were telling someone they had cancer.

Anne made a guttural noise. The others lowered their heads. Since the first person had imagined an asteroid heading for Earth, somebody else had proposed nuking it. Nuke ’em: the favorite answer to aliens, asteroids, and just about anything inconvenient since the fifties.

Sandage studied the images again.

“Agent Bennett, we have a fox in the henhouse.”

Bennett looked up. He was too tired for word games, and frightened enough to be losing patience.

“The first spectral interpretation suggested familiar radioactive ores,” Sandage said.

“The latest observations don’t fit neatly. There may be an isotope or mixture we cannot identify remotely, embedded beside those magnesium deposits. We cannot treat the whole thing as ordinary rock.”

“I know the composition is unusual, Doctor. What is your point?”

The crispness did not appeal to Sandage. He was an old man. He did not need this job. Fuck these guys, he thought.

“Not that it will conveniently become one enormous atom bomb,” he said.

“That is not how an ore deposit works. We could fracture it, heat it, scatter radioactive debris, and still leave most of the mass coming at us. Move it badly and we might make the impact harder to predict. We do not know enough to be confident.”

He spread his hands.

“Let’s blow it up! Duh, wonder what’ll happen? I don’t know, Beavis. What do you think?”

Anne and Landon chuckled. The Beavis reference escaped Bennett, but the rest did not. He left in a hurry.

Anne realized she was hungry. Underground, her body clock had begun to lose the argument. Asking around, she discovered another commissary farther down, ordinarily reserved for officers. This emergency had changed a few things. Possibly for good.

Chapter Eleven

The President was not happy; screaming in the Oval Office about the idiot Russians and the damn Chinese. The Russians want to blow everything up and the Chinese think this is some sort of game and want more information before making up their minds. The NATO nations were working closely together on this, but there was too little time really to arrive at a workable solution. The space shuttle retirement could not have come at a worse time and all of the other rockets used for the ISS needed weeks to get ready.

“What about the X-37B?” asked President Bowman, well into his second term. So he was familiar with Washington, D.C. and its workings. X-37B was a very secretive, until recently, space program run by the Air Force that used a robotic version of the space shuttle. Smaller in size, it was able to stay up for months collecting data and whatnot.

“The experimental vehicle assigned to this program is in pieces at Groom Lake, sir. Nothing in the fleet is equipped to intercept that mass.”

“Area 51!?” the president quizzically looked at his Chief of Staff.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, what answers have those brainfarts over at NORAD come up with?” The President’s skin was getting thinner by the moment and he apologized to Ben Brandt, his trusted Chief of Staff. Honestly, he was the only reason Bowman could even do his job.

“They are furious at the Russian solution and say that it may cause more harm than good.”

“Nothing nuclear is ever good,” the President said under his breath a bit. “The Townes team think they can get a laser on it, but it would take too long to do enough to change the trajectory.”

“What else?” He was pressing Ben for something, anything to reach for a little hope with; Ben didn’t have any to give. The mere size alone got his educated brain going over the effects of something like that impacting the Earth, over and over again.

“It appears to be an end game scenario at this time, Charles.” The president knew that when Ben used his first name it was the truth. Two men in charge of protecting a nation and its people and finding nothing more to do than wait and hope.

“Call the Russians,” he said as if he had decided to sell his soul to the devil.

As he inched and crept his way up the mountain he came to another one of those perfect tables. Not as square as the last but still beautifully covered in a soft moss. The weather was turning foggy at this elevation and he figured he was a good one hundred feet or so from where he started. Making sure to change the batteries in his camera this morning he took it off of his headgear. He took pictures of the views that were especially appealing to him. While he was putting the camera back together the back piece fell, and not wanting to lose it over the side gave his foot a quick flip. It worked! The clear plastic piece flew behind him into a corner of the ledge.

Reaching for it, his hand caught a very warm draft of air. It was coming through a small crack in the rock that was about four inches wide and twenty feet high. He looked at it from all angles and it was just a crack. Taking the walking stick off of his pack Marcus prodded its depth… not much a foot or so here and there. But in doing so could not deny the hot airflow coming from it. If nothing else it was a great seam to get to the top of the next ledge where he could free hand it and save his dwindling gear. As he chalked up his hands and found a foothold he was simply in awe of the warmth.

Everything else around him caused his breath to show and dew to reside on all of its favorite places. The clouds were low and he was at their level; this felt like warm air escaping from inside the rock, not a passing pocket of warmer weather.

As he climbed he almost did a double check on his handholds, making sure he was not grabbing some kind of volcanic lava rock, he kidded with himself. About halfway up the fifty or so foot climb it hit him, it felt like a dryer vent. But not any dryer vent it was one that smelled like his previous neighbor’s when she was drying clothes in the summer. Bella, yeah that was it! It was Bella’s dryer smell, thinking he forgot to ever ask her how she got things to smell so nice. A little farther up he saw that there was a gap opening up in his crease. If he could wedge himself in there a bit he would take a quick break, at least he would be out of the mist. Muscles tight and straining and at times making him wonder if at his age they would give out altogether, he climbed upward.

“We have no alien ships or technology! For the last time, stop asking me!” it was a general statement made to a large group of tired and anxiety-riddled scientists and others. Anne could sympathize, she was going through bouts of it too. But since she first pounded out her original work she made herself at peace with it all. Besides inside she felt was still that demon of some kind that brought this wrath onto her beautiful planet. Landon came rushing in obviously from just using the facilities. Because he was still adjusting his jumpsuit and holding a few wet paper towels in his hand.

“I think I got it!” he said with a childlike excitement.

“The ISS!” he blurted looking around to the faces in the room, everyone must know what he was thinking?

Flustered, Landon wheeled a whiteboard over from the wall.

“We looked at the station,” Sandage said.

“It hasn’t the propulsion or the mass to solve this.”

Landon began sketching something that would have lost him every game of Pictionary he had ever played. Eventually, the picture resembled Earth with several squiggly lines above it.

“Is that a rainbow?” Anne asked.

“Landon, my boy, I see what you’re proposing,” Sandage said.

“But the ISS is being evacuated. The crews are using the docked return vehicles. Nobody is staying up there to improvise an interception.”

The astronauts wanted the same chance as everyone else: to see their families again. Whether the world had a future or not, mission control would try to bring them home.

“We’ve got squat,” Anne said.

“We might as well join the Russians throwing nukes at it.”

She was tired of finding reasons nothing would work. Somewhere in Washington, a call was already setting those wheels in motion.

Across the country and world, for that matter, it wasn’t what one would think the end of the world would look like. Large riots in some of the bigger cities, looting and such for food. But on the whole it seemed mankind was still waiting for the inevitable. Many thought the big space rock would just not hit us, others believed in their religious deity saving the day. Then there were some that were so disgusted in what man had become that they welcomed our annihilation. Most everything was going along in a somewhat orderly manner, you know, for it being the end of the world and all. Wall Street had taken a devastating hit though, it may never come back! Oh goody!

Chapter Twelve

The gap in the crack of a massive monolithic type rock was just above, it really looked a little bigger as he got closer. He was going to have to take a better look at how to get up into it. He decided he was going to have to do a little swing move from one arm. If that didn’t work he was going to have some explaining to do to Lori… from the hospital. Taking his time to line himself up and mentally go through the motions needed to do this, he looked up one last time and did a double take. He stopped and tried to crane his head back as far as he could to look into the opening. What he saw was a feather he thought, but not any feather it looked like a raven’s feather.

Underneath the feather he saw a small stack of stones. It reminded him of markers Jonathan had shown him, though he couldn’t tell who had placed it or what it meant from here. He decided to be very careful when he “flipped” up to the rock’s gash as not to disturb it if he could help it. After a few more moments of concentration on his upcoming action he went for it. Surprisingly enough did a spectacular job of doing so landing just where he wanted, with no damage to the marker. It was gloomy and a bit dark; taking out his flashlight to see it better the only word he could think of for what he saw next was thunderstruck.

With the blessings of NATO, and most of the United Nations it was determined that our only best hope was to use the nuclear option. Washington begrudgingly joined in with Russia in determining which warheads would be used, and which were the most viable. It was a bit comical to the teams doing this because each side found that there were no real secrets left. We knew of all of theirs and them ours. After a bit of uneasy laughter from both sides they got to work, China was abstaining, citing faulty Western science.

“When do I go on?” President Bowman asked Ben. “You have about two hours to read up on the copy and make any changes.” “Are you ready for this, sir?” Ben asked the leader of the free world.

“I don’t know? Right now it is just a speech addressing the nation. If it ever hits me what is really going on I may very seriously lose it!” At first Ben didn’t like the thought of him “losing it.” Then he remembered just then that this was a man like any other. The fact that he could lose it made him happy for the human aspect of this President he served. As the countries finished up their defensive plan for Earth, Japan, Israel, Pakistan, India, and even Iran sent word that they would like to be a part of it too. Iran stating that it would be too unacceptable that the capitalist infidels should be the only ones working to save Allah’s world. Brinkmanship in the face of certain death. Typical of the regime, but every bit helps, right?

A few hours later a somewhat shaken-looking President stepped up to a podium set up on the steps of the Capitol. Some in the crowd have been waiting for a few days, others just arriving to hear this historic speech. Carried on every TV station and radio and through the national alert system. He cleared his throat, held back his emotions and began what very well could be his last address to this wonderful nation and world. As the camera light turned on and he stared into the waiting eyes of the world he threw up a little in his throat, grabbed the glass of water and began.

“My fellow Americans, citizens of the world: I come to you with grave news. Earlier this week, astronomers confirmed that an object previously believed to pose no danger had changed course. It now threatens Earth. Scientists from around the world have worked without rest to find a solution.

“Today, a coordinated strike using nuclear warheads has been authorized. Launches will begin in roughly three hours. Our teams are still aligning the data, and we will not know the outcome until tomorrow.”

He looked down at the podium. On television, the pause lasted an eternity.

“Nothing like this has ever been attempted. We have no guarantee it will work. It is our last, best available hope. Please know that I will be praying for your safety. Hold your families a little closer. Pray to whatever God you believe in. This is not a drill or a precautionary warning. This is a stand we are making together. May we make it with peace toward one another, for our fates are now one and the same.”

His heart was pounding, Marcus had never seen or felt anything like this. It was a marker for sure, but the dust and dried plant debris only told him it had been undisturbed for a while. He was in a cave that was no more than a crack in the huge stone he had just climbed. It was about three feet wide and he could almost stand up in it so it was almost six feet high. It was also about seven to eight feet deep tapering inwards towards the rear. The crack continued to travel up the back of the cave and there was still heat coming in from it.

Amazed was the nearest word Marcus could find. It was not just the warm air or the old marker. It was the colors. Paintings covered the little cave from floor to ceiling: indigo, red ochre, yellow, green. He turned his flashlight into lantern position and studied the overlapping marks. Some had been painted out, some repeated until their original shapes were almost lost.

Then he saw two white handprints, separate and apparently made by different people. They brought back one of Jonathan’s stories: the first walkers leaving a hand on the wall. A land deed? Or, more appropriately, Thanks. I was here.

Marcus had no way to date what he was seeing. The enormous ages in Jonathan’s telling were stories, not a field archaeologist’s notes. Here, though, he could almost believe every word.

By the time he looked outside again, the western light was fading. He would stay until morning, then head down before Lori had too much reason to worry. He began photographing the site.

Maybe next month’s rent was on these walls, he thought, then felt uneasy about the thought. Marcus could make or fix almost anything, but that had never guaranteed steady work. Lori had kept their small world going through more than her share. He wanted to do something good for her.

Perhaps the photographs would help. Perhaps they were too private, too sacred, or simply not his to sell. He did not know. He was tired, and tomorrow would be a better time to think.

With warm air drifting through the crack, he propped his pack against the right wall, leaned back, and threw his jacket over himself. Within minutes, the day had carried him into sleep.

Chapter Thirteen

The primary launch codes were given. A few of the countries that would have liked to have been involved could not be. Their antiquated technology and/or their respective locations on the Earth at the time of launch were cited. Amazingly, the masses of humans around the world gathered in town squares, and city centers and parks. They held vigils and prayer services as the launches took place. Over three hundred various types of rockets bounded skyward, few of them actually seen by the people on the ground. But the sound of them took over the twilight sky and a thunder never heard had permeated every molecule available for sound to travel. And in it the deep hum of our last, best hope had been delivered to the skies. In God we trust is written on the one-dollar bill, how appropriate it sounded right now.

“Well, it’s out of our hands now,” the President said as he sat down on the white settee in the Oval Office with a fresh Johnny Walker Red on the rocks. Not a real drinking man, he had had a few lately.

“Why don’t you go home to Molly? Ben?”

“Molly and that dog of yours, what was its name?”

“Go-Go,” Ben replied as his thoughts went to his wife, they had been in constant contact throughout and she knew everything that he did. But they needed to be together, this job had stolen so much precious time from her. He was in the Middle East with Bowman when her grandmother passed away, he felt devastated that he couldn’t be with her then. It was two months before he got home even then.

“Sounds like a plan, sir,” he answered, moving to the door and removing the professional business façade as he quickly exited the building. He got to be a mere man again with his wife and dog and cat Enid, what a better way to experience the end of the world, he mused to himself out of nervous energy.

Anne had been in the command center watching the huge screens that wrapped the room. Air Force officers were rushing about reading displays off of clear plastic screens. Marking them here and there and yelling out numbers to others back and forth. Coordinates and times, speeds, and course corrections. A modern-day Hannibal charge she thought, terrified that she knew the outcome of this circus even before it happened. God she hoped she was wrong. For the first time in her life wished she was stupid and others were right. But, with some of the world’s most brilliant minds behind her. She was left with a growing icy coldness spreading over her chest.

The first rockets had been chosen for their reach and payload. Modified vehicles followed from ground and sea launch sites. Every stage had been planned in a hurry, and the tracking began to show the cost.

Some failed to achieve the required trajectory. Others had too little maneuvering capacity left to correct for the newest observations. When their motors shut down, they did not stop; they kept coasting, but along paths that would miss. Nuclear payloads were no use if they never reached the right place.

“What does that screen show?” Anne asked the officer beside it. His tag read Manginelli.

“The complete engagement. White is strike group Alpha; blue is Beta.” He hesitated, then added, “They should’ve used Omega somewhere.”

She smiled. He was more right than wrong. In their situation room, after the better part of forty-six hours working together, Anne, Landon, and Sandage exchanged a look. There were no words left for it. Their goodbyes happened silently.

Marcus slept deeply, the climb had really worn him out. In that sleep he dreamed the craziest sequence of dreams he had ever had. You name it, old songs from long-ago campfires went through his head, he drowned, and he was at the White House. It was all crazy and he was even laughing in his sleep. His wife Lori told him that he did that every now and then and he didn’t know whether to believe her. Sometime during the night he rolled off his pack to the right.

He woke up to the sound of rock breaking and himself falling at the exact same time, he was falling! Some kind of light around him—the floor was caving in! Ouch! Crash! He splashed into a shallow pool. Upon awakening it takes people a second to really wake up, after more than a few confused moments of what the hell just happened? He got the picture. He had fallen backwards through a thin part of the back of the “cave” A few feet maybe four into a cavern. Which had a shallow pool of water about a foot deep at its bottom. But he saw light? And he still could, it was coming from the other side of the cavern. A bright green, it moved in the water to the ripples he had caused by his fall.

He righted himself into a deep squat and waited for something else to happen. After what seemed to him like an hour (four minutes) he moved and found he was not going to be attacked. Freaked out beyond belief, he had no word for it, which was odd for Marcus.

He could see that the walls were covered with a glossy melting-like substance. That looked like someone had taken tapioca pudding and whipped it to a hard peak. Then mashed it down into some relative of the Michelin Man. There were trillions of small crystals that made up the floor of the cavern. It was too dark to see them well, but they were so small they did not hurt to sit or touch them. Then he noticed that the walls had a few, not too many, cave paintings as well. This just spooked Marcus to no end, he definitely found something. For it to be in the middle of the night after a day like today didn’t help his nerves very much at all. He found his footing and found that he could reach his pack. He found his headlamp because he couldn’t quite reach his flashlight/lantern that was still in the middle of the cave floor.

It was pink! When he switched on the LED headlamp the cavern glistened, the small crystals that were the floor were a beautiful rose-colored pink, the Tapioca Michelin Man walls were more Pepto-Bismol with cherries in it. And the water was blue, like someone had added just the perfect amount of food coloring to it to take a picture.

“Pictures!” Marcus blurted and reached onto the new… ledge? Marcus searched for his camera, he had to jump a bit but he got it from the far side of his pack. Blinded by total excitement he began taking pictures, some with flash and others without. For one of his pictures he wanted to re-create the view he had seen when he first fell in. Turning off his headlamp after making sure his camera was set properly, he sat in the water legs ahead of him in a V.

As he did, the thought of the light he saw when he fell entered his mind and he sat there in the blue water wondering about it. He was still tired, but functioning now on nervous energy and adrenaline. As if in a trance he sat there the water was as warm as a bathtub, that must have been where all the heat was coming from. He knew it was water, and pretty fresh when he fell in and tasted it. A bit of a dusty aftertaste but he was the one that fell in, it wasn’t the water’s fault. As he sat in the now calm water the cavern began to brighten he thought? Or was it just his eyes playing tricks on him? From the far side of the cavern the thing he thought was a glowing green rock or something began to grow, it was coming towards him.

Chapter Fourteen

News channels around the world were following the missiles. The only story, other than the reports of violence and looting here and there. Smaller countries were changing hands as if in a poker game but at this point few if any really cared. There was yesterday’s story of the rough Soyuz landing, whose crew had all survived.

News displays followed the projectiles toward their supposed appointment with salvation. CBN had assembled its religious commentary; CNN had acquired a military feed and the advantage of showing everyone the same bad news first.

Bennett had disappeared sometime during the negotiations with Washington. Anne and the rest of the team watched with the world.

“Most of the missiles appear likely to miss,” a presenter announced.

“Two are still on course to destroy the asteroid.”

Destroy it? Anne thought. Which school of cosmetology had taught her that? A controlled change in course would have been plenty.

“Well,” Sandage said, “whatever happens, there’ll be fewer of those damned nukes left to complicate things.”

Anne and Landon looked at each other and laughed despite themselves.

Two payloads reached the dense end of the peanut-shaped body. The flashes overwhelmed the instruments, then faded. Fragments spread away, but the main mass remained on its route toward Earth. For a few minutes, preliminary calculations promised an extra eighteen to twenty-four hours. Revised tracking took most of that hope away. Impact was still expected Tuesday. The news that followed was worse.

Temperatures around the impact sites were climbing. Hot material and newly exposed deposits were producing a plume the instruments could not yet explain.

“I think we just lit the Roman candle aimed right up our ass,” Anne said in her best Wanda Sykes voice.

She would go home to her family if they released her. Then again, buried inside this mountain might be the best place for the first blow. Who knew she would ever have to choose?

The President soon came on all channels again to announce the by now, well-known news.

“We have failed to avert this disaster; our best efforts have fallen short. Our fate is in God’s hands now, may he have mercy on our souls,” he said before slowly turning away from the podium to his Secret Service agents. As if he was being taken away to the gallows. There was unrest in many of the larger cities still, but, as if out of some defense to humanity itself. Most were going to go out as the good people they were, not letting go of the good no matter how bad things got. To Lori, who was watching this all unfold on TV alone all she could do was think about Marcus, and his not knowing any of this. What a welcome home he is going to get “huh, Hobbes?” she said to their kitty.

She had made all of the calls to family and friends, all of them hoping that the data was off and it would just do a flyby. But knowing in her gut because she trusted it that this was really it… How sad she thought, for such a juvenile species.

As he started to do some kind of crab crawl backwards, away from the green…whatever. He realized he didn’t want to make too sudden of a move. It might just reel back and eat him whole like some sort of cave whale. He decided to sit very still and watch, for whatever it was. If it wanted to do him harm it had plenty of chances to do it before now. As he waited for his fate to befall him… actually he was too scared to move at that point. He looked down into the water and saw a bright green floating bit and then a few more. There were billions of them… that was the light he saw when he fell through? Some kind of organism that uses bioluminescence but what were they?

They were as small as krill and as bright as small LED. They flowed around him in the shallow water. His fall must have scared them to the other side, which he saw to be very much deeper. Maybe that’s where the heat was coming from? He guessed. As he sat there in the water and took flashless pictures of his new little buddies. He noticed that daylight was beginning to enter through his not so delicate remodeling. The light “bugs” started to recoil from the light, and he had the sensation that he was being bitten by some of them. Yeah he was! Ouch the little bastard! Jumping out of the water and making it to the ledge in one shot. He wiped furiously at his legs and forearms, the most exposed of his skin. But they were everywhere!

And he soon started stripping off his clothes to check his whole body for anything like leeches and such. He took extra measures to check his sensitive areas. Reaching into his pack he found his first aid kit and the ointments in there. Marcus then began squeezing out most of the ketchup-type tubes of ointment on himself. He had a change of socks and underwear but the rest of his clothes were going to have to go on wet… great. Good news: his coat was still dry having snagged on his pack well before he fell through the wall. Taking inventory of everything he brought in and a good inventory of what the hell had just happened to him. He was ready to get the fuck out of there.

The bites that he felt lessened quickly leaving only thousands of small welts in their place, white welts, I hope that doesn’t mean poison, he queried himself. As he got ready for the descent he took some time to make a plan from what he remembered from yesterday. But after all that had happened since, that was a long time ago to him in a certain sense.

Chapter Fifteen

Lori was sitting petting the cat looking out the window, Marcus would be home soon she thought. She was thinking about their life together and all of the bucket list things that she and Marcus had written down. They had managed to scratch off just a few. Money never being their forte, most things were still on it. Of course there was Hawaii and Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon again. There was Washington, D.C. so they could finally see the nation’s capital, and all of the Dakotas, so that Lori could see long-forgotten relatives. Marcus had Europe down there, when she asked him where in Europe he always said Europe, Europe. This to him meant all of it. And she remembered him saying he wanted to meet the Dalai Lama.

Marcus saw him on a PBS special and thought he was a real cool dude. She and Marcus could not have kids and without money there was no way to adopt. They had learned to make jokes around that ache, though some days neither felt much like laughing. Lori held hope still though, something deep down and primal said that this was not the end. But her educated mind said otherwise. Where was Marcus?

“It’s really harder on the way down!” kept going through his head as he slowly backtracked his route a bit. It was the voice of Big Will, Will Harrison. He was the guy that while growing up was always the guy to point out why something wouldn’t work or how something should. He was a really nice guy, went to church and all. But when he told you the truth, his timing really sucked. It was his voice from their Explorer Scout Jamboree; he was just ahead on a rope and rock climb going down to a stream. Marcus could still see just that big smile and round face as if disembodied and laying just on the ground.

“It’s really harder on the way down!” Thanks, Big Will, I will remember that! he thought. A few feet farther down and while moving left to the center pillar he heard the words again… as Marcus’s grip slipped away and there was nothing else to reach for.

It looked just like his body just got hit by a defibrillator… he was falling backwards. He vividly remembers thinking “I’m gonna die! Lori’s gonna kill me!” But before he could get more than that thought out of his brain cells something shook him out of it. He was floating down… not like on a cloud or anything, but just not falling as fast as he should to incur some kind of injury that would send him to St. Peter…or a surgeon to St. Bart’s. He landed with a thud, bouncing off of the rock face a few times and it still hurt like hell. What the fuck just happened?

He picked himself up and adjusted his pack. The climbing pick had grazed his leg, and the cut stung like hell. His phone read 9:30 a.m.

“Shit. I was supposed to start down at six. This morning.”

Still no service. What did he expect? He was miles from a signal. Beginning the roughly five-mile walk to the car, he tried to focus on what had just happened. Had he slowed while falling, or had terror stretched the moment? Was the haze in his head some kind of poison? He needed to get home.

The old saying goes if you want to hike in Western Washington there are plenty of places to do so, they are just all uphill.

Marcus was at his car a lot sooner than he thought he should be. The time didn’t add up, he hadn’t had enough thoughts to have moved that far. You see Marcus was one of those whom meditated when he walked and contemplated the world… etcetera. The only thoughts that had gone on in his head were how the hell he didn’t crash and burn back there? really nothing more! And that fact alone scared him even more than his anxiety-riddled mind could hold at the moment. He fell to his knees, eyes wide open, looking for anything to make this last day just be gone. He began to cry something bad was happening, he could feel it now.

It was Sunday, with a little over two days left until the predicted impact. Violence remained scattered, but much of the world was spending its remaining time looking after one another.

Nations simply asked their citizens to pray and mourn, families were gathered from all corners, and the word enemy seemed to slip away from our common language for a while. It was visible to those with even a modest telescope a quick glance at a dot in the sky. Slowly… it appeared the world shut down like in a countdown. Man had found its kind.

People reached for old prophecies and new rumors, trying to give the approaching rock a meaning. Even its designation, 2012 DA14, became an omen to anyone still thinking about the predictions attached to that year. A catalog number was not a prophecy, but fear wasn’t checking references.

Nations opened their borders, and those with plenty grieved alongside those without. The Smithsonian broadcast as much of its digital collection into space as it could, aimed toward the Moon, as if someday a stranger might find a trace of our story. Our story. We had struggled so hard to be different when we were all just kids on a playground. A savage species, destroying things we didn’t understand while believing in unseen things we didn’t understand either. Mankind was a chemistry set gone awry, with a built-in kill switch: a brain.

Inside his trusty Subaru Outback that had 334,000 miles on it, and it showed. Marcus fumbled through his gear until he found his keys. He was spent, he just slammed himself into the seatback and tried to focus… Shit! He couldn’t drive like this. His head started to clear a bit and he found the right key for the ignition. Yeah it took him a second like he was a drunk about twenty minutes away from a DUI, a feeling Marcus knew intimately. It wouldn’t start, what the? He tried again and it was about the time that he was getting angry that he remembered the coil wire. A trick he learned a long time ago from a hiking buddy named Frank Sepp. Slamming his head back again he had to get out and get into his pack all the way in the back. He was just feeling better and didn’t want to move that far.

Opening the door he found that he felt better than expected, he retrieved the coil wire and put it back on. Falling fatigued beyond the norm into the driver’s seat, he pulled his legs in and tried again, good old Betsy. He let her warm up herself and him. He wasn’t cold on the outside but it felt like his nerves were causing him the shivers, he was wondering again about poisons. After about twenty minutes he took off… noting the time 10:40 a.m. Sunday. He had lost track of the morning, but he had to use all of his abilities to focus on driving at the moment. He considered stopping at the hospital for stitches—it was on the way home—but the winding forest road demanded every scrap of his attention.

Making it to pavement he turned west to catch I-5. Feeling a bit better it wasn’t soon before he saw signs that things weren’t right in the world. Twenty miles down the road he saw a fuel tanker that had crashed into? The woods? Still in flames Marcus rushed over to check the driver. A .44 Auto Mag still pointed at what used to be the right side of his head, Marcus jumped down and puked. He hadn’t eaten much, that made it hurt… he returned to his car and checked his phone. No service… he should start to get something soon he thought. A few more miles down the road he found a few shops and corner stores. He was going to report the tanker but they were all closed, one of them had its front window broken out.

“What the hell?” Marcus said out loud in his best redneck voice. The coming miles made him speed up. Worried about Lori what he was seeing around him in small towns and roads along the way looked like war zone or some kind of invasion. Fires burned in a dozen places and wherever you looked cars were abandoned where they stood. Marcus noted more than one that took the trucker’s way out. He sped home “forty-five minutes, honey” he said out loud. He began to feel the destruction and death and he cried. Driving at nearly 90 in an old Subaru he kept uttering “Have to get to Lori.”

Chapter Sixteen

Lori was fine at home in the burbs with the cat. She had a full pantry and more than a few survivalist neighbors. They were practically beside themselves when they got a chance to set up a pseudo-military compound. She knew most of their wives and being this close to Joint Base Lewis–McChord what do you expect. The guys were mostly paper pushers who had put in a tour or two a long time ago. They were really big pussycats but even pussycats know how to use their claws Lori thought. They had a four-block perimeter set up and were even using old man Bruce’s ham radio shack as an HQ. Bruce was always yelling at them about federal laws and bandwidths.

Oh yeah, she felt very safe, a fire burning in the fireplace and a growing angst at Marcus for not being home yet. Hobbes was in Marcus’s spot on the couch she instructed her furry child “yeah… don’t let him have it when he gets home! Good boy!” She continued to look out the window for him as she drank her coffee with hazelnut creamer.

“C’mon, honey, I am so worried about you,” she whispered aloud.

His usual exit was blocked. Marcus backed onto the freeway and finally got off two exits farther down, edging past abandoned cars. Away from the arterials, the back roads were clearer. Fires marked the skyline. He would have tried the radio, but it hadn’t worked since that road trip in ’04. His phone still had no service. In the middle of a city? He was going to need a new word for this feeling.

Near his house, trucks blocked the road behind garbage cans and a stretched-out ROAD CLOSED sign. Men with rifles approached. Marcus braked hard.

“Oh! Hi, Marcus!”

Mike Turner. The neighbor across the street. A flight engineer at the base, though Marcus had never seen him in uniform.

“What’s going on? Have you seen Lori?”

“She’s fine. At home waiting for you, probably.” Mike lowered his rifle.

“Give me a second to move my truck. It’s been a real war zone since the news.”

“What news?”

Mike looked at him, then lifted his head.

“Get home to Lori. This is time for your loved ones. Take care.”

Inside the barricade, children played and dads grilled burgers and hot dogs. The Sun was out, a welcome visitor this time of year. The calm was so complete that Marcus wondered whether he had lost his mind on the mountain.

Lori was feeding Hobbes when he came through the door. She rushed at him and held him so hard it hurt. Then she began to cry.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Would somebody tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Her hands loosened and came to rest at his waist. He really didn’t know. Four days away, and somehow he had missed it.

“I saw the fires and the cars. I drove home as fast as I could.” He looked around.

“How’s Hobbes? Is he okay?”

A little laugh escaped her. Yes, this was her husband.

“He’s fine. Being a lump in the bed right now.” She took his hand.

“Honey. Sit down.”

He knew that voice. It wasn’t a mad order. It was something he had to do.

She had no idea how to tell him. Marcus was usually the one who knew every amazing, unnecessary fact about every recent event. Knowing when the rest of the room had reached TMI was another matter.

“Do you remember before you left? The joke about the asteroid?”

“Yeah,” he said slowly.

“It wasn’t a joke, Marcus. It’s headed right for us.”

“What?”

He searched her face. She didn’t need to repeat it.

“When?”

“Tuesday evening. A little over two days.” She pointed toward the television.

“They’re running updates on a few channels. Mostly loops. Everyone else has gone home.”

There was something almost proud in the way she said that last part. People had chosen their loved ones.

He watched the pictures of 2012 DA14, Mecca, and St. Peter’s Square. He learned about the missiles and the forecast impact. The internet was failing under the traffic and the loss of power and staff at key facilities. The local station had been looping the old National Anthem sign-off from the sixties. CNN was still there.

He and Lori caught up on what they could while the updates repeated. Finally he leaned back on the couch, shut his eyes, and slept.

Chapter Seventeen

Anne and the others at NORAD had decided to go home after all. The base was being mostly evacuated and there was nobody to do half of the things necessary to run the place… placed on a skeleton crew so to say. They were taken to their respective homes around the country. Landon returned to his Mom and Dad in California. Dressed in his military jumpsuit gear still, he felt like the soldier returning home a hero of sorts but losing the war. They were proud of their son, surprised at his gumption, but proud. They could go to church together as a family now and that made his Mother feel whole and at peace.

Dr. Sandage was dropped off at his Connecticut home after a flight on a Gulfstream G-5 a nicer one that was taking a few of the higher-ranking officers home as well. A former drinker, he was not about to begin again now, but seeing the Majors and Generals down their whiskey gave him a craving he hadn’t had this bad in thirty years. He opened the door to his modest cottage on an acre of land, oh, he lamented for his gardens. There was nobody home to welcome him except his cat Bastette, Marci his neighbor had kept her promise to feed and watch after her, oh she and Gary. He was going to miss them, her southern charm and his endless fishing tales. He sat in his ancient high-back chair, cracked and scratched at by Bastette and petted her going over his life and its fullness.

After a certain point in life one loses fear of death, death becomes the trivial. Life itself becomes a point of stubbornness and not wanting to give up on whatever you are doing at the time. He lit a fire in the fireplace and sat around and looked at the clutter of his life. He closed his eyes and thought of the wonderful times he and his late wife Sally had had.

“See you soon, Pookie, see you soon…”

As Anne pulled into the driveway of the family home, emotions rushed at her. She had not been back in almost ten years, not since her parents’ funeral. Her older brother still lived there. She had dismissed his depression and suspected the drugs did more harm than he admitted, but it had been years since she had honestly asked how he was. Her sister Jessica lived about a mile away and Anne and she were close. Jessica took care of their little brother Barney. His real name was Thomas but somehow over the years he became Barney. Barney was autistic, and Jessica and her husband, Matt, provided the support he needed.

The Airman driving the black SUV pulled up behind Jessica’s minivan. Anne could see everyone about fifty feet ahead hugging and shaking hands. Jessica must have just arrived as well… Anne looked down at herself and laughed out loud. “Everything ok, ma’am?” the airman asked.

“Oh yeah, I always like to see family looking like G.I. Jane.” She was referring to the jumpsuit with a few coffee stains that she was so graciously given by Uncle Sam or Uncle Nick Dundee. He was in his dress uniform because he too was going home, about two hours away, but he understood her meaning. She stepped out of the car on the other side from the family Jessica’s minivan blocked them from seeing her at first. As she rounded the corner of the minivan a huge, startling cry of delight leapt from Barney’s vocal cords.

“Annie!!” Yes he was the only one on Earth allowed to call her that, she despised the name since grade school. He ran over to her in his familiar way and put out hug arms. Normally having an extreme aversion to being touched or held, Jessica, Anne and now sometimes Matt were the only exceptions. Anne knelt down and hugged him because he hated having his feet lifted off the ground. He hugged her with almost straight arms but a hug is a hug and his were the best kind. Jessica and Matt came over to greet her, her older brother Brett stood off to the side.

“Hey, Brett,” she mustered. “Hey,” he mustered back. They weren’t real words, just sounds, but it was the most each has made to each other in years. Yep bad blood, but that’s another story altogether. They spent the evening catching up and talking about Mom and Dad, Barney glued to Annie’s side. Brett and Anne were cordial to each other but maybe shared three sentences and one of those was “please pass the gravy.” Anne was glad she came home now and saw her family, yes even Brett. There was so much more she wanted to share and let them know, but the day had been long and the food too good. In these last days sleep took her too soon.

Chapter Eighteen

Lori had let Marcus sleep. Even in the weird position he was in she was afraid to wake him. By his snoring he was really tired and she knew he didn’t think well when he was tired. She laughed and wondered if tired had anything to do with it. She had made some pasta and began walking over to him when he woke up; he looked like a train wreck.

“Why don’t you take a shower before dinner and we can see if that gash needs stitches?” He had all but forgotten the cut on his leg from his climbing axe. He was glad that he didn’t get any blood on the couch… it all struck him then… everything…It wasn’t some Hollywood megahit story it was real! He wondered to himself as he stripped and got into the shower if anyone had called Hollywood for a solution to this? There had to be at least a dozen movies and books on this subject over the last few years alone! As he climbed in the shower he noticed the welts… the bug bites! They were everywhere and still had little white tops on them.

Eww, these might kill him, was his first thought as he directed his attention to the cut on his thigh. As if the cut and bites didn’t sting enough. There were the usual scratches, aches and bruises that come with what he loved to do. Lori had seen him many times come home with his legs and arms looking like he got into a fight with a gang of blackberry bushes and lost.

“Ouch, Ouch, Ouch!” was his mantra as he finished up the supposedly soothing shower. The cut on his leg didn’t look too bad after it was cleaned up, he would have Lori look at it. They had some butterfly bandages here somewhere. Lori had made some goop… don’t take that wrong it was just a dish they throw together when they really don’t want to cook. As she came into the bedroom Marcus was grabbing a shirt to put on when she noticed the welts.

“What the hell is that?” she asked immediately going up to inspect his bare back.

“What is that? Poison ivy?”

“It’s some kind of bite I think?”

“You think!?” she asked.

“In all of the news I forgot to tell you about my hike and my news as well. But it doesn’t seem like a big thing now.” Over dinner he told her the whole story…well almost the whole story, the falling slowly bit he changed into – got down. He didn’t know if she was aware that her lower jaw had dropped and stayed there for quite some time. So he made the motion to her, she closed it, but a moment or two later it went back to its hanging position.

“I have a bunch of pictures on my camera!” he said excitedly and went to get it, already done with his food. Turning on the camera he was disappointed that he would have to charge it first to download the pictures from it. He had to start up his computer as well.

Knowing this was going to take a while he told Lori that he was going to go for a run to clear his head. He had not fully felt like himself so far today and a run usually did him some good. Running may take some of these toxins or whatever it was out of his system. Besides… Lori’s goop was pure carbs.

Bowman was sitting in a small situation room deep in the bowels of the White House. He was there with the Secretary of Defense a few aides and his dog Opie. They were watching a few displays of trajectories, failed nuke orbits and whatnot. “Where’s it going to hit?…Stanton?” he had to turn to see the aide’s nameplate.

“The latest numbers put it off the west coast of Africa, sir.”

“And how long do we have til we’re dead, son?”

“About a half hour after impact, sir… an hour if we’re lucky,” Petty Officer Stanton replied.

“Oh goody! Opie and I can watch an extra episode of the Simpsons! Wouldn’t you like that, boy?” the President rattled off obviously losing a bit of his faculties in some way. The SecDef looked at him and wondered what took him so long, good man, good President.

They were just finishing up another bottle of Johnny Walker Red waiting for the world to end. It seemed sad to see them this way P.O. Stanton thought. Mankind could have done much better than they have so far.

Lori applied two medium butterfly bandages to the cut on his leg, then covered the whole thing with a big adhesive patch.

“Are you sure you want to go for a run with this?” she asked knowing the answer already.

“Yeah! I have to clear my head and get this funk out of my system.” Lacing up his battered running shoes he started off on his normal route. But nothing about it felt normal, the neighborhood had been transformed into some kind of compound and “Oh Shit! Is that a howitzer?” Sure enough someone had sandbagged a howitzer smack-dab into the middle of a traffic circle. It was twilight and it looked as if there was an old-fashioned brownout. Add a few rolls of razor wire and a Duesenberg or two, and you would have a perfect set for a scene from any number of WWII era movies. It was eerie to see it all this way and know that by Tuesday evening it would all be gone… completely wiped out of the universe.

There was also something else going on that was eerie, his chest, no his face, everything on his body felt, felt… furry? He looked down and no, there was no hair there. But the contact with the wind he was having didn’t feel like it was hitting his skin, but rather some kind of….fur. He started running faster to try to shake it off. But that’s when IT happened. He started to take longer and longer strides and soon found himself airborne…. Not flying not running. It completely freaked him out and made him stop any motion at all. Now, coming down slowly to the ground. He reminded himself again that he had to come up with a word for this feeling of being beyond freaked out and overwhelmed.

“What just happened?” he said out loud as if someone was right there and going to tell him, with perfect logic the answer. So he did next what any guy in America would do he jumped forward like Superman, hands ahead and a face-first landing waiting to happen…and it did!

“That freakin’ hurt!” he told his new invisible buddy.

Then it came to him. Brilliant! Superman took three steps first. Yeah, that was the ticket.

Three steps later he was picking himself off the ground for the second time in five minutes, inspecting the road rash on the heels of his palms. Apparently the ticket was nonrefundable. He started jogging home. The fuzzy feeling returned, but he was beginning to recognize it rather than fight it.

Chapter Nineteen

Three blocks from home, passing his fourth neighborhood guard—this one for the second time—Marcus felt the cut in his leg begin to throb. He pictured his front door and wished he could simply go there, without all this pounding on the pavement.

His next stride didn’t come down.

This time he didn’t flail or reach for a Superman pose. He held the picture of the house in his mind and let the strange pressure along his body settle into something he could follow. He rose above the roofs, tilted slightly forward, and moved. It wasn’t like commanding a machine. It was more like finding his balance on a bicycle he had never seen before.

The front walk rushed up. He thought stop, and stopped—just late enough for his knees to file a complaint. It felt as if the Jolly Green Giant had set him down without reading the fragile label.

He turned toward the door, ready to tell Lori everything, then hesitated. What if talking about it broke the spell? He wanted to do it again. The twelve-year-old had never left Marcus. It was one of the reasons Lori adored him, and occasionally one of the reasons she needed aspirin.

He tried again. Nothing.

“Noooo. It can’t be over already.”

He jogged, going over what had changed. Not the arms. Not the three steps. The clear picture, the desire to get there, and that odd moment when he stopped trying to force his legs to do it.

He chose his childhood home. His father was long gone; his mother lived in the house his brother had built for her. But the old place was still there, and he knew every inch of the approach.

He pictured the front walk, felt the fuzziness gather, and let his next stride carry him upward. Seconds later he was moving above the street. This wasn’t proof that the picture did the work, but it was something he could repeat.

Unfortunately, he repeated the landing too.

“Ouch.”

An elderly couple on the porch stared down at him.

“Time to go in, dear,” the woman said.

Her husband followed without taking his eyes off Marcus.

He flew home the same way, choosing a familiar route rather than trusting this thing to find a place he couldn’t see. On the third landing he tried thinking gently before the pavement arrived. Better. Not good, but better. His knees still wanted ice, and whatever the furry feeling did, it did not keep him warm.

At NORAD, Bennett was watching it all as well, seeing just what the President was seeing. He was disgusted at the whole nuke mess with the operation he was in charge of organizing.

“They didn’t even allow us time to come up with a viable plan, we may have come up with something!” He was speaking to one of the Officers still on duty. He was listening but pretty much ignoring him focusing on his work even in times like these. Bennett didn’t mind losing, he just hated not being given a fair chance to play.

“What was up with those Chinese?” he asked the Lieutenant who just sat quietly still shrugging his shoulders. Bennett knew he was just talking to himself but he didn’t care.

“What was their game? If nobody is here then who cares who has the biggest pile of sticks left over.” He just didn’t get it, any of it. So he retired himself to this hobbit hole to watch the last greatest show on Earth.

As he rose from grabbing both knees with his hands Marcus got it. His head started spinning and a million little pieces of thoughts came to him in one gigantic…What if? Lori did not see him come home she was using the bathroom. He bounded in the door out of breath and grabbing his thighs.

“Fly!”… gasp “Fly!”… gasp Marcus said to her. She looked at him with her usual “Are you being funny or really losing it this time?” look. Stopping just long enough to get enough air to say the three words he was trying to. He stammered once again “I can fly!” Lori had her answer… he had actually lost it for real.

“Clothes! I need my ski suit! And gloves! Go! Go!” He ordered her… He ordered her? What the hell was this about? She thought. But when he talks like that he means it. Not in a menacing way but an important way. She went to the closet, being a Virgo she knew where everything in the entire house was and probably had a list of it too. Marcus ran into the bedroom and put on some heavy socks. It was a chilly night Marcus was not thinking about the surface temperature but the ones up a few feet.

“Oh, if this works!” he said to nobody; except Hobbes who looked at him with his ever curious gaze.

“Here it is,” she said as she placed it on the bed next to him.

“Marcus, I’m worried about you! I know none of this is easy to accept. But I am afraid your head got broke somehow, honey?” She said in almost like she was talking to a child. As he pulled on the suit and looked around for his heavy boots he said “c’mon!” and pulled her with him down the stairs and out the front door.

“I don’t know?… so don’t ask just watch!” He started a slow jog and pictured his neighbor’s house at the end of the block. Like clockwork he was flying at what seemed to him an easy pace, but to Lori it was at a different speed altogether. Jaw agape, and trying to actually take mental snapshots. Marcus landed down the street and ran up to her hugging her and screaming about how great it was. Lori didn’t know what to think really, she just sat on the wet lawn head in hands, trying to accept what her eyes just told her. Marcus was right beside her making sure she was ok “Honey?” he said.

“It will all be ok!” in that reassuring voice she needed to hear.

Chapter Twenty

For the next hour Marcus practiced from the backyard, with Lori watching the first few attempts. Short trips first: a roofline he could see, then a familiar street, then farther across town. He learned to ease off before a landing and to change direction by fixing on a new point. When he lost concentration, the movement faltered; when he panicked and fought it, he came down harder. He wasn’t certain whether intention, posture, or both controlled it. He was certain that pretending to be Superman didn’t.

He also learned the limits of his clothes. He must have left before they handed out the magic long johns. His ordinary ones weren’t doing a damn thing against that wind.

He tried sitting in the Subaru and taking the whole car with him. Nada. Whatever was happening traveled with his body and what he wore, not everything he happened to touch.

He sat looking at the laughing Buddha bobblehead on the dashboard. Then an idea came to him. Not a particularly dignified idea, but dignity was losing ground tonight.

Returning to the house he found Lori awake. She was lying down on the sofa with a towel over her forehead like she did when she had a migraine. He found the roll of commercial-size plastic wrap that he got from the local restaurant supply store. He had no idea why anyone would buy that home-use stuff. Taking it all into the bathroom he stripped down to his skivvies. Then began wrapping himself up like he was either a very modern Egyptian, or too cheap to afford a spa treatment. He wrapped it carefully, wanting to get double layers and cover sensitive areas the most. When he “flew” he not only felt the fuzzy but he also felt just a tiny bit of pressure from the welts. He knew early on they had to be a part of this.

“OK!” he said as he looked at himself in the mirror “plastic man!” He pulled on his remaining undergarments and ski suit and as he walked outside to try it again, he saw her. Lori just laying there sleeping… what he wouldn’t do for her… A look of determination crossed his face and he headed back out to the garage. He grabbed his helmet and bike gloves and laced on his heavier biker boots. It was hard for him to move around very easy and some of the wrappings were cutting into his skin. But something changed in him when he looked down at his wife. Finding a sharpie he scribbled down a note on a few pieces of paper towels. Honey…I love you more than you know, I will be back as soon as I can, I have to try. Bunches and lots – Goofy.

He put it on the counter in the kitchen and scooped up his boy Hobbes and said “You are the man of the house for now, bud!” Marcus scratched his head, gave him a few treats, and closed the door softly behind him. Outside he scraped up every ounce of guts and courage he could muster. Checked his zippers and began to run as best as he could. Closing his eyes he pictured the one place… the first place he had to go… The White House, Washington D. C…. Lori was gonna be pissed.

Chapter Twenty-One

The fuzziness was still there beneath the plastic, with a little pressure at the welts. At first he followed roads and lights eastward, keeping low enough to recognize what he was passing. He had tucked his hiking compass beneath one layer of wrap; it could tell him a heading, not where Washington was. The picture of the White House was an aim, not a map. He kept checking both the compass and the ground.

He could increase or ease his speed by degrees now, though he still couldn’t have explained how. The farther he went, the more deliberate he had to be about slowing down to check landmarks. He was freezing, but he meant to reach Washington, frostbite or no frostbite. Holding his hands ahead changed the pressure around him and made the wind a little less vicious. It also tired his arms. Some superhero.

He left western Washington at ten Sunday night. By the time the capital’s landmarks came into view, roughly two hours had passed. The clocks there read three Monday morning.

He circled to get his bearings before descending. The last few practice landings had taught him one useful thing: think about slowing down before the ground filled the whole view. His knees were strong supporters of that policy.

There were people camped out all over the place and a barricade keeping people from getting too close to the grounds. Armed guards were everywhere, great! I get to get shot! Marcus thought. Closer to the White House itself though he noticed that the guards were in dress uniforms, and standing right next to the doors. They didn’t have their combat gear on and were noticeably more relaxed. I guess having the entire Army in front of you probably did that for them, it would work for me! He thought to himself. Being in a dark green ski suit with helmet and biker boots he was hard to see from the ground, even for these trained professionals. He decided to ditch the helmet on an antenna on the roof.

Then he would lower down slowly in front of the blonde dude, by the glass doors in the back of the White House. He always dreamed to see D.C. and it was on their wish list… scratch one of us off of that he noted.

Knowing full well what this was going to look like. Marcus prepared himself to be shot, beaten, tasered and any other gruesome thing one has done to them… when they violate federal laws in front of the guys there to enforce them. He also thought that it was going to look like some scene from an Austin Powers movie.

“A guy in a green ski suit shows up and says take me to your leader!” rimshot… He got above the guy and lowered himself down. Making just enough noise as not to alarm the guy too much.

“I’m not an enemy,” he began saying again and again as Marcus’s blonde buddy and his friend took him down and hogtied him. Both were looking at each other with huge ass eyes because they saw the same thing… this dude just flew down here!

“I need to see the President. I think I can help!” Marcus said it twice because he didn’t remember saying it the first time, he was blacking out. These guys were good.

“He what!?” President Bowman screamed across the room at a pitch that sounded a little too high for a world leader.

“He flew down from the sky and said he had to see you!” said his right-hand protector Agent Witte, assigned to him from the Secret Service when he first began to campaign.

“What do you mean he flew down?” Bowman asked as if this was some kind of trick question to see if he was capable of performing his duties. He knew he had snapped somewhere, so he was really just questioning himself at that point.

“He flew down slowly, like drifted down and our men subdued him immediately.”

“He said he needed to see you and that he was not an enemy,” Agent Witte continued.

“Then he started muttering something about being a cook or something before he blacked out.”

“He blacked out?” Bowman quizzed.

“Yeah… our guys are on edge as it is and this guy just dropped like a sack when he was taken down.”

“Where is he now?” the President asked.

“He’s in a detention room in the basement, sir.”

“Oh! Sir? He was wrapped in plastic wrap! Freaking nutcase if you ask me.”

“But he flew down?” the President repeated in somewhat of a question to Agent Witte as his guard left the room.

“President ha!” Bowman said to himself still tipsy from a long bout of Johnny Walker Red. He felt so defeated at that point, he had for the last few days. He was crumbling inside and out and couldn’t stop it.

“Flew in?” he said as he laid his head against the back of his chair… “Plastic wrap?” ha!

Marcus came to a few minutes after being brought into a small room with a bench in it. It had a shower stall on the other side of a tile wall, and he was forcibly and carefully stripped down.

“Compass!” one agent said to the other as they removed the piece of plastic with a pair of scissors. He could see that he was not getting his clothes back. Scissors were these kids’ favorite toy and everything is being cut away from him. They jumped back when they saw the welts “Possible biologic!” one barked as they left the room and closed him in. Standing naked it was cold in there too…

He took the opportunity to try to yell through the reinforced glass window at them. But they were busy doing something else; they were running around taking off their clothes. Ah! They think I am toxic or something. It crossed his mind then that maybe he was… he didn’t know? He had welts all over his body that he believed to be bites of some kind, but he didn’t know if he was going to die from them.

“It’s just some bug bites!” he managed to say in a voice loud enough that he thought they could hear. They didn’t, and he sat on the bench then he decided to take a hot shower. It was more like a warm one but it would have to do.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lori woke up with a raging headache, something that was happening all too frequently lately for her liking. She called out for Marcus then headed to the kitchen to start some coffee and look for some aspirin. She had started the coffee, first things first she thought. As she turned to look for the aspirin she noticed the paper towel note.

“What the?” she read it, and again as her head pounded like she had been on a bender last night. She sat down with the note at the kitchen table. She just stared at it forgetting the aspirin she needed for the moment.

As she waited for the coffee to finish she snapped out of it long enough to grab the aspirin and take a few. Wishing that they would work instantly but knowing they won’t. She poured herself some coffee and sat down again with her head in her hands… she couldn’t cry she was cried out. Her head was pounding her husband was gone, and losing his mind she thought, deserting her at the end of the world. Jumping up on her lap Hobbes gave her an almost eerie all too knowing a look and a tear did start to fall from her eye.

She sat there for the longest time petting Hobbes going over the events of the last day in her mind, it hurt. She remembered that before he went for his run Marcus was going to show her some cool pictures from his hike. Checking his gear it was all ready to go. It took her a minute to find the right place to view the pictures. She looked at the thumbnails of different video and picture files, there were a hundred of them at least. She clicked on the first file, a movie, and just like the Virgo she was. Decided to go through every single one from the beginning, to figure out what had happened to her husband.

The water didn’t last long and Marcus was now there wet and cold. Standing naked in front of a fogged-up security window. He heard a click and the sound of a fan coming on, a few seconds later the door opened. Just enough to toss a towel and a robe onto the bench and the door closed. He took the hint; he dried himself off and put on the robe a very nice one he noted. He then proceeded to adeptly draw a happy face on the steam on the window.

The door opened again and he stepped out to find the two agents or whoever. They were in white jumpsuits with hoods, facial masks and gloves. They swabbed at his arm with a couple of Q-tip things and put them in test tubes. Also a couple of pieces what looked like scotch tape, torn quickly away and placed into a plastic container. They showed him the door back into the holding cell. He waited only about fifteen minutes when the door opened again, and he heard “Mr. Downs, this way please.” He was led out of the booking room? Then led down a long ugly green hall to an open metal door.

“Inside!” was all that was said and he stepped through… it was a typical interrogation room. Table in the middle, two chairs and a large mirrored window on one side … same ugly green.

“Sit down!” came an order from behind the open door.

Captain Dean Kenny, a twenty-five-year veteran of the Capitol Police now assigned to the emergency security detail, held the unfortunate distinction of carrying the on-call phone. Marcus sat. Before he could say a word, Kenny started.

“Don’t say a word. Here’s the deal.” Kenny spoke through a handlebar mustache.

“You’re going to walk out of here in that nice white robe. Then you’re going home, or wherever you came from. Okay?”

It wasn’t a suggestion.

“I don’t know what kind of whack job you are, but there are too few hours left for me to spend them on a lunatic punk at the end of the world. Get the hell out of here. Now.”

Marcus waited. He was a cook. In the restaurant business, this counted as casual banter.

“Are you done?”

Kenny dragged the other chair to the table and sat backward on it, glaring at him over the backrest.

“What?”

“I’m not nuts. I found out yesterday that I can fly. I don’t want my wife to die. I think I can help. I need a spacesuit.”

The captain stared for a few seconds.

“Tell me that again. Slowly.”

For five minutes Marcus stumbled through the cave, the fall, the flying, and his idea. Hearing it aloud did not make it sound more sensible.

“It’s cold up there. I don’t know what else I can do, or whether I can breathe without air. I know the suit won’t let me push a mountain around like a shopping cart. But if whatever moved me could move it, even a little—”

“You can fly.” A disbelieving smile worked its way across Kenny’s face.

“What the fuck have you got to lose?” Marcus pounded the table, then remembered where he was and stopped.

Kenny started to answer. A crackle and pop from an ancient intercom cut him off.

“He’s right. What the fuck do we have to lose? Let him prove it. If he can, give him what he needs.”

Marcus didn’t recognize the distorted voice. Kenny did. President Bowman.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Lori at first was looking at the same pictures Marcus always took. She had finished up her first cup of coffee and fed the cat, showered and changed. She went back to the laptop with her second cup. Headache subsiding a bit, Lori found the place she left off. Yeah more streams, bushes crashing into camera (that same exact sequence of the leaves hitting the camera was in every one of his hiking folders she swore). Climbing video? Oh she was upset with him because she told him to take it easy. Then some weird dark pictures; Ok it was a…a cave?

“Wow! Look at that!” she said to herself as the close-ups of the trail markers and pictographs started to be revealed one after another. She had to look a couple of times at the first pictures of the dark cavern he fell into. She knew he fell into one… but this! This was beautiful! She saw the colors in the flash pictures and the blue water. She saw the wisps of gas and glowing orbs? So much had happened over the last few days she doesn’t remember him talking about the orbs but he could have? She thought. When she saw the pictures of the paintings and pictographs she got excited. They both shared a curiosity with the ancient and one of Marcus’s favorite shows was Ancient Aliens. A show about mankind’s possibly forgotten or misplaced history.

Some of it was a hoot Marcus thought but it brought up some good points. She remembered he had a few coffee-table-type books with some cave paintings in them. But…It was funny? For the life of her she couldn’t remember where they were? She finished looking at the pictures and began looking for where she thought the books should be. She wished she could get a hold of Jonathan, he would know something for sure. But who knew anything anymore in this dying world, she sighed.

Almost as soon as the intercom crackled off the door opened. In walked two huge guys. Agents Witte and Sanchez “We got this from here, Dean,” Sanchez said, as if it needed to be said at all. As Captain Kenny left Sanchez made sure to let him know that Dean’s wife and kids were in his prayers. Dean nodded “As well, my friend.” and he was gone.

Agent Witte grabbed Marcus by the arm and half pulled him up and said “Let’s go!” They only went about thirty feet to a couple of double doors and they were outside.

“Here ya go! Fly away!” The burly agent said to Marcus dripping with sarcasm and looking like he was gonna get hurt if Marcus couldn’t produce. Marcus was still cold but pictured the outbuilding… about one hundred yards away and began to start jogging. “Hold on there!” Sanchez piped out.

“Fly…?”

“This is just the way it works!” Marcus replied in some sorry-to-disappoint-you tone of voice. It’s five a.m. and dressed in just a robe he started it again and off he went… fuzzy feeling at all, to the outbuilding. To Marcus he felt and thought he just floated over there. But just as Lori witnessed; Agents Witte and Sanchez with their jaws around their waistline saw him move much faster.

As Marcus reversed the process Agent Witte was already on his earpiece. He was talking to the President affirming the little fuck could fly! President Bowman then told Witte “That little “Fuck” as you call him may be the biggest “Fuck” in history!” Witte laughed, it was all meant in good humor and he knew that somehow some part of his friend the President, had come back. Witte turned to Marcus with a shit-eating grin on his face, Sanchez was smiling as well “What do you need, son? Sky’s the limit!” They all laughed at the unintended but perfectly appropriate pun.

The President was already calling in some Military advisors and the heads of many of the Nation’s top agencies. Also quite a number of them which very few knew about as well.

“My plan just needs a spacesuit,” Marcus said calmly. Sanchez relayed the message to someone on the other end of his…hand?

“Can I get some clothes?” Marcus then asked the still mystified and stunned agents.

Why do you have to be so fussy, Miss Luci? Crischill (Crissy) Norton asked her almost three-month-old daughter Lucillia. Luci was in her car seat and her Mom was looking for her car keys and cigarettes. Crissy had just received a call at oh god thirty from her boyfriend’s brother Jake. His commander had called them all in and she was the only tech that answered their call. This particular team had communications abilities that were let’s just say… off the grid.

“Baker said now!” Jake yelled into the phone as he hung it up, saying it loud enough for Colonel Josh Baker to hear that he got hold of her.

“Jake?” Baker barked, “She’ll be in, sir!” he barked back, thinking that she better. His brother just got in from NORAD and they are staying at his place for the “End.” The Vice President himself had called Colonel Baker and gave him the orders. The President had to have deniability about this group, commonly known as a “Black Op.” The Vice President did not, nor did he even care at this point.

“Give this guy all that ya got! and let’s see if the bastard can do it?”

“You there, stop! Strip down!” Agent Witte ordered some poor office type worker or aide or whatever he was. He walked right up and over the guy and stared at him. The guy was about the same size as Marcus, with a startled shriek he began surrendering his clothes.

“I think I’ll go commando on this one, guys!” Marcus said feeling horrible for the terrified man giving up his…Ralph Lauren suit.

“Good taste!” Marcus said to him he pulled on the guy’s pants and threw him the robe he was wearing. Sanchez said “Benning!” to Agent Witte as he motioned at Marcus with his head.

“We have to get you to Fort Benning, kid!” Witte said as he stood up from kneeling with the guy’s shoes in his hands. Marcus just looked at the shoes and shook his head “14 ½!” Daniel Witte tossed the shoes back down to the guy.

“Sorry about all this,” he said. Sanchez; “We have a fast mover ready at Dulles now.” Marcus chimed in and said “I think I can make it there faster on my own, guys.”

“I just need to know what the place looks like that I am going to and the general direction… this flying thing seems to do most of the work.” Looking down at the poorly fitting designer suit he added “I’m gonna be cold.”

Sanchez snapped his fingers and started off towards the nearest office. Finding a computer he entered a passcode or something and Googled Fort Benning – Columbus, Georgia. Marcus was a little surprised at how well his large mitts deftly worked the keyboard. He brought up a few images before he stopped on one and said “Right there, kid!” and pointed to a building that he had zoomed in on. Witte took off his coat and handing it to Marcus said “It isn’t much, kid, but it may help a bit?” Marcus grabbed the coat gratefully and started for the exit they just came in from. Almost running he hit the bar on the door, and before he hit the few steps a mere three feet away he was in the air…freezing!

Chapter Twenty-Four

Colonel Baker was in charge of a small, elite and very new kind of military unit. Still very much in the experimental stages but thought about for decades. Technology and engineering had finally caught up with imagination, and so it would also seem… Hollywood. The United States spent extraordinary sums preparing for the next war. This was one of the answers to a scenario no taxpayer had been invited to imagine. S.O.A.P. – Solo Orbital Armament Platform. There were only a dozen of them made and half of them were constantly in the shop. Costing billions to produce each, they were on the cut side of spending. But since there was a current government shutdown going on (a huge partisan spat in the capital), they had not yet been formally re-assigned.

They were not a typical unit coming from different branches and agencies. But that was all in the guise and it made them disappear on paper. Baker would be home with his wife and kids if he hadn’t heard exactly what the Vice President said. He wasn’t here out of duty or honor anymore. What he heard in that call was that there was a chance! Dammit! He did not hold, in his beliefs, that whoever was in charge would not give us one last chance! He was fearful for his children and wife… he wanted to keep fighting. If there was a chance any kind at all, he would go to any length he could. He had to get it together… half the team is here and he was waiting on this guy to “Fly” in.

He had briefed the ones that were there and watched their reaction. Their jaws dropped at the same time when he told them the story… and the plan. Major Jake Manginelli, just “Jake” to everyone, was one of the squad’s lead officers. Bored, he glanced out of the glass room attached to the top of the hangar at the big doors.

“What the frack?” What he just saw was a guy in a business suit with no shoes on, and what appeared like a cape. He landed in front of the hangar then crumpled to the ground immediately.

“Sir? I think he’s here?” he said in a poltergeist movie tone. A few of the team already on the hangar deck ran over to the motionless figure. No, he was moving; he was just shivering in the fetal position not able to move much.

“Medic!” one of them yelled into the medic’s ear who was coming up right behind him. The medic—a doctor, as it turned out—looked at the man who had shouted into her ear and said “Present” in a monotone. Marcus had never been this cold… they rushed him onto a stretcher and into one of the back rooms of the hangar used for quarters.

Jessica just went right into her sister’s childhood room, left untouched since she went off to college. She knew Mom and Dad didn’t touch it out of respect toward her. But she didn’t know if it was creepy or nice that Brett hadn’t done anything with it. It took Anne a moment to gather herself, where she was, who was yelling at her, about what.

“That air guy needs you downstairs NOW!”

“Wha?” Anne got out.

“That guy that dropped you off is at the front door, he says he needs to see you NOW!” Jessica didn’t talk to her sister like that. Anne grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around her while she hurried past her sister. At the bottom of the stairs the door was open. Barney was flying around in his Superman cape in front of the Airman, standing at parade rest in the doorway.

“Ma’am, I have orders from Bennett that you must return to NORAD immediately,” the Airman reported as soon as he caught sight of her coming down the stairs.

“What the hell for?” she quizzed in her best “I haven’t had my coffee yet!” snarl of womanhood.

“I just know what I just told you, ma’am.” the Airman was too polite.

“Well you can tell Agent Bennett that I will be in on Wednesday!” It was Monday morning. Impact was due Tuesday evening.

“He did say something else I guess?”

“What?” The Airman looked confused a bit at the ground by his shoes looking for the words that Bennett used “Oh! That’s it! He said there was a chance, and a plan.” In that moment Anne had to make the split-second choice of whether she was going to give up or try harder.

“Ma’am?” the Airman was looking for an answer. Anne turned to see her little sister and little brother there, and their courage, that’s all it took.

“Give me five,” Anne replied in an authoritative voice. She ran upstairs to change into some real clothes this time. When she came down the stairs she stood for a second looking at them.

“I have to go… I have to try!” she said as she hugged them. Jessica was proud of her sister for not giving up; her sister felt the same about her.

“Bye, Barney! Bye, Mouse!” and she was off in the black SUV speeding away. After she got about a quarter of the way down the road Barney said “Bye, Annie!” As he watched the truck until it was out of sight.

The squad had tossed him into a hot shower and proceeded to strip him down. He felt very violated in a sense that twice in the last eight hours a group of men…and a woman! Oh dear! have stripped him down. The men saw the welts and reflexively backed away from Marcus. The doctor knelt down to look at them.

“The first tests haven’t shown a known infectious agent. We’re still checking.” The men noticeably relaxed. Holding out her hand, she said, “Captain Michelle Hubbard, M.D.” Marcus reached for her hand embarrassed for his nudity.

“Nice to meet you, Doctor Hubbard,” and shook it while still shivering up a storm. A dark red complexion on his face as well.

“Don’t worry… I’ve seen it all!” she said as she took his pulse. She stood up after a moment saying “He’s all yours! He’ll be fine, just keep him warm” and she was gone. Jake had sized him up when they threw him into the shower. Jake had already retrieved some BDUs for him and some clean underwear. As Marcus was shivering and getting himself dressed Colonel Baker walked in.

“What’s in your head? How is this gonna work?” Baker had to know these things first. He was a full off plan it out and plan it four times more type of leader, he did not make mistakes.

“I have a plan too,” Baker added. “If what you say you can do? you can do, this might just work.” Baker wasn’t one to smile at work but something inside told him to be optimistic.

Chapter Twenty-Five

As Baker was leading him out of the door Jake showed up and told Marcus to come with him. There was little time and a lot Jake had to teach him. He was led into an open service elevator on the far side of the hangar. And down they went, Marcus just rolling with it and waiting to see the cool stuff. It was just a boiler room! Marcus was more than kind of disappointed but in the far side of the room. Past the steaming pipes and sounds of fans was a playground Marcus could really get into. Ha! He thought at the irony of how he just phrased that. In the open expanse that must have held a huge old furnace or something was a lab, and something else… doors?

“Ok, just get me into a suit and get me up to the ground!” Marcus said eager to get this over with. His brilliant plan was scaring him more and more and his fear body putting up a heck of a fight.

“Not so fast!” Jake said. Like Marcus had just insulted his entire family and his dog as well.

“You are going to be in MY suit, it’s the only one tall enough for you.”

“But you are not my size and we have to do some adjusting.” He said those things very calmly and instructive then burst around and blurted.

“You think this is easy? That all I have to do is shoot bad guys? You have to know a shitload of things to use this suit!” Marcus felt that Jake was offended that someone would just step in and try to do his job! Deep down Jake felt sorry for Marcus and wanted to go himself to save the skinny old man.

“What are you yelling about now?” came a girl’s voice from the end of the boiler entrance.

Crissy Norton was standing there with an unlit cigarette hanging out of her mouth and a kid in a car carrier kiltered to one side of her body as she looked in on the two. Dressed in lace-up stiletto heels and pink leggings, a lavender tutu, and a ripped black t-shirt, the girl with the jet-black hair was still in her white bathrobe.

“Hey, Crissy… glad you could make it!” was said with enough sarcasm to induce a scowl from her. Holy crap, cosplay anyone? shot through Marcus’s head.

She set baby Luci in her carrier beside the couch, checked her binky and turned.

“You fucker! You couldn’t get coffee going yet?”

“We just got here! I haven’t had time yet!” Jake said knowing that he should get it started so that she could get her work done. Marcus decided the argument had the comfortable rhythm of family. The baby far enough away, Crissy bit at the filter of her cigarette, pulled it out and placed half of it back into the tube before lighting it. Tossing the other half of the filter onto the floor, with the other dozen or so dust bunnies of cotton.

“Have they met yet?” she asked Jake.

“Not yet, we just got here and haven’t had the time.” Clicking on the coffee maker he motioned for Marcus to come with him.

He walked up to a futuristic-looking doorway of some kind and reached inside his shirt for his tags. Taking one out and holding against a red pad and using a retina display at the same time. Marcus heard a tone and a series of clicks and hisses. The door opened and inside was S.O.A.P. IV; Marcus was going back to that Hollywood connection thing again because this was out of this world.

“His window is really shrinking fast!” Bennett said to President Bowman from NORAD. Dr. Kelly was on her way but had not arrived yet. Bennett was doing some heavy thinking about gravity and pull. His astrophysics scores in college were less than average at best, because he never took it.

“He’s at Benning with Baker, check in with him,” Bowman said as he hung up. Bennett was reaching for his cell phone when Anne showed up.

“What’s the plan?” she said as she put down her purse and coat.

“The plan is a flying man,” he said flatly. Anne was crushed… what kind of crap was this!

“Watch this!” Bennett said as he watched her face turn red. It was a few second video from the front of the S.O.A.P. hangar at Benning. It showed Marcus coming down to the ground and crumpling. Anne looking unfazed replied “So someone fell out of the sky?” And this! Bennett added sharply as he clicked the mouse again. It was another short clip of the same guy. Was he homeless? She was thinking.

“This was taken at the White House a half hour earlier.” It showed the homeless-looking guy start to jog and…Fly off? Anne’s jaw was hanging open it seems to be a human condition, this hanging of jaws.

“He is getting into a spacesuit and going to fly up there and save us!” Bennett said as if he were reciting a fairy tale to a small child with that syrupy goo of fake sincerity.

“Where did he come from? Why only now?” The second of Anne’s questions more of a cry.

“He is a cook from Seattle; named Marcus Downs; wife Lori.” He then rattled off Marcus’s rap sheet going back to when he was five. He was suspected of burning down the garage of a home across the street from his, up to his DUI just a few years earlier.

“He’s nobody! What the fuck?” Bennett said frustrated. Anne was going back over the video a few more times thinking it was a trick… nope she thought. Same homeless dude.

“He is going to be “in flight” by 1600 hours. We need to get some numbers together or this guy might just speed up our demise.”

“Let’s get to work!” It was an order, and one that, for some reason, Anne was more than happy to comply with. A frozen close-up image of Marcus still on the big screen. She looked up and inside said humbly ‘May the meek inherit the Earth… save us homeless dude…’

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Robert Downey Jr., much?” Marcus laughed at the enormous suit.

Jake had heard it before.

“The Solo Orbital Armament Platform, Mark Four, is based on a design mankind has been improving since the Middle Ages.”

Must be in the brochure, Marcus thought.

“The concept has been in development for over sixty years. It combines armored protection with orbital maneuvering and life support. It’s the most advanced military vehicle ever—”

“That they haven’t managed to get into orbit,” Crissy said, delighted by the irony.

“And they retired the shuttles.”

“This unit has more technology than the space shuttle.”

“So does my Dell, dude.”

Jake knew when to stop. Otherwise she would be improving the brochure aloud for the rest of the day.

Crissy opened a service cover on the suit’s right thigh.

“He’ll need his own liner.”

“That may be a problem,” Jake said.

“I’ll make one. Try to sound surprised.”

Marcus looked between them.

“A liner?”

“The pressure garment under the armor,” Jake explained.

“Cooling, sensors, waste collection. It has to fit you, not me.”

“Which means a scan,” Crissy said.

“You save the world; I save you from my equipment trying to fold you in half.”

“The suit recycles water and manages your waste,” Jake continued.

“Its life-support system can keep a trained operator alive for up to fourteen days, if the reserves are full and nothing important breaks.”

“Forty minutes of powered maneuvering,” Crissy added.

“Don’t confuse the two.”

“So it keeps me alive for two weeks, but it only flies for forty minutes?”

“In its normal configuration. That’s why you’re here,” Jake said.

“We’re hoping your ability can provide the long trip. The suit gives you protection, air, and a way to maneuver if you can’t.”

Hoping. Marcus noticed that word.

Jake laid the equipment out on the table, removing most of the weapons as he talked. This really was a war suit. He kept the grappling tether and the small maneuvering charges they called poppers, then began showing Marcus how not to use either on himself.

As she went back to the other side of the lab to get the 3-D scanner warmed up, Marcus turned to Jake and asked him what the deal is with her? Turns out she was one of those geniuses that was not even twenty-one yet. Who… as Jake tells it… has repaired or improved and in some instances, completely redesigned the fancy plans that they sent with the units that didn’t work.

“These work because of her and her alone,” Jake said with a sigh, like it was a curse that came with the job. Marcus smiled at him and said “I just love family” as a jab at Jake who cracked a smile then and continued to open up the suit cavity. Baker arrived just about then “We have a deadline. 1600 airborne. We need time to test him before the release point. Every delay leaves him less distance in which to change that rock’s course. How are we doing here?”

“On schedule, sir!” Manginelli answered sharply. Colonel Joshua Baker spent the longest time right then just checking Marcus out without saying a word. Then cocked his head… smiled and said “Carry on, men, carry on” as he turned and left through a cloud of steam.

Lori found the books finally underneath a large clipboard that Marcus uses to sketch on in his den. She looked through them with her third cup of coffee of the day; she found a few that matched up with his pictures. The petroglyphs, pictographs and cave paintings in the book were from all over the world and of varying ages. The Lascaux Cave Paintings from France were the centerpiece of course. But as she was trying to match up more than just the water glyph and hand glyph that were common, she couldn’t find much more that matched. Checking Marcus’s office for anything else on it she found a few more books on Native American and Indigenous American peoples.

The first she picked up was from a Dr. Victoria Lien, an anthropologist at the University of Washington: Native American Folk Stories and Legends. It had a bunch of glossy pages in the middle that could be seen from the side. Pictures! So Lori opened it up to them first.

One illustration looked disturbingly familiar. The caption placed it along the Snake River in Idaho. In Lien’s account, a storyteller described visitors from the stars and a war that reached the Earth. The book treated the story as a retelling, with uncertain origins, not a dated record of an actual battle. Still, the shapes beside it were almost the same as those in Marcus’s cavern.

The marks in the outer rock-break shelter looked different: nearer to the regional examples on the surrounding pages. Lori could see a resemblance. She couldn’t tell how old either set was, much less whether the pictures meant the same thing.

She wished she could call Jonathan. She wished she could call anyone who knew more than she did. Whatever her goofy old husband had found, it scared the living daylights out of her.

She scooped Hobbes off the floor.

“Your daddy wouldn’t go if he didn’t think he could do something.”

She paused. That was true. Believing in him had worked for years; why stop now? If this was the end, at least he was trying.

“I love you, honey,” she said, looking up and closing her eyes.

Four hangars over in darkened quarters a red light came on and began flashing. Commander Ron Gronning rolled over in his bunk and stared at the light unblinking.

“What?” was all he said with a curious and defeated breath. Rolling back over and then back again to see if it was still on?

“Shit!” He knew what that meant, that he had to get his ass in gear to prepare a flight. But what kind of flight? And why today? Can’t we all just die in peace? He began to dress and put on his boots. Mumbling under his breath that he didn’t deserve to be kept prisoner by the government at the end of the world. He had put in his time and he trained enough guys; wasn’t that enough? Then he remembered something he always told his trainees… that he would be doing this for the rest of his life…every day, practicing, learning and growing. Just so that he can do it all again the next day.

“Gron?” he heard the familiar voice of his old friend Baker.

“Yeah!” he answered.

Poking his head into the room Baker just smiled and said “We got a plan! Get Vinnie warmed up! 1600!” The Commander just nodded and waited for his head to catch up with his body. The blackout curtains throwing a bright beam onto the floor in front of him. He looked up at the door where Baker had been and whispered under his breath a bit “A plan?”

“Vinnie” was the nickname for VEMAC a Lockheed C-130H – Hercules. With enough wiring and power plants to be in the same neighborhood as a small city. The guys got tired of acronyms and decided to just name it… it was the test platform for the suit. It’s a good thing the Commander could do this in his sleep. He wasn’t quite sure if he was going to wake up. In no hurry he strolled toward the tarmac with an easy gait. Baker was soon on the phone with JBLM

“General Moyer, please… Now!”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The numbers came in from whatever sources still worked. The rushed launches had made a bad situation worse: fragments, failed upper stages, and intact missiles followed intersecting trajectories through already crowded orbital paths. Some satellites had been struck; others had gone silent for reasons nobody had time to investigate. Running out of fuel hadn’t stopped the wreckage. It had merely stopped anyone from steering it.

Anne was doing her best with the incomplete data, trying to find the most probable success scenario. As in where to push this rock?

“We are really going to get one tiny pin of chance to pop this balloon,” she said to Bennett. Bennett was waiting for a Colonel Baker to link up with him via the Military’s heavily encrypted version of Skype.

“I know! Why do you think I brought you back?”

“Because I’m cute and you were lonely.” Anne tried kidding with Agent Bennett. Does he ever smile? She thought to herself as she got back to work, shrugging off the rejection. They were almost alone in one of the many command centers the mountain had. It was a medium-sized one used for Ops missions that were sometimes known and sometimes unknown. This particular one was being used solely for Afghanistan for years. So it was being emptied out when the news came about 2012 DA14. There was one other person in there. A Lieutenant was watching the screens that were on. Silently just going about his job as if nothing were amiss.

“Do you know anything about this system?” Anne asked him pointing to the one she was working on. After a moment Lieutenant Finn Saxegaard realized he was being talked to.

“Yes, ma’am, I know everything about that system. What would you like it to do? Maybe the Macarena?” Anne was relieved that not everyone had lost their humor.

“I need it to link up with that satellite sv74 there,” she said pointing to a visual display of the satellites in orbit.

“That’s not ours, ma’am,” he told her in a matter-of-fact snip.

“Whose is it?” Anne queried.

“It’s Russian and it’s one of their newer ones.”

“Does that mean that we can’t get into it?”

“Not at all; we can get into it in a heartbeat!” he replied happily.

“Do you read Russian?” Anne saw his point immediately. Bennett still waiting with a landline stuck to his ear spoke up “I do…fluently.”

At the uppermost tip of a trail near Mt. Baker, Washington. An old and weathered gentleman with long gray hair sat by a small fire. The rain was steady and he sat cross-legged on a few boughs of cedar. Around him sat objects from his past and the past’s past.

An arrowhead, a few stones with various symbologies, feathers; and an opened calfskin pouch containing various stones and crystals. Metal objects, beads and wampum were there as well. The old man had set them around him before he began his meditation and prayers. Deep into meditation and speaking the words he had learned from his elders. He was unfazed by the rain and the wind and the cold of the afternoon. He came to pray until the event occurred. His way of being with his Mother and Father and all those who ever were… while the world was dying. In his meditation he saw the ending in great detail and it troubled him heavily. He also saw a current friend and an Ancient One standing side by side in the Sun.

His meditation was broken at that time and he opened his eyes slowly. The rain was stopping and the Sun was coming out in all of its warmth. These were good signs Jonathan thought to himself as he looked into the sky and to the Sun.

“My quiet one… You have given me honor,” he said to the sky using the private nickname he had given Marcus so many years ago. A smile cracked across his wrinkled mouth, but you would have to look very hard to see it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Scan first,” Crissy announced, cutting across Jake’s briefing.

“Then you can stand there admiring the expensive pajamas.”

Marcus looked at the waist-high scanning enclosure.

“She needs the fit right,” Jake said.

“The liner has to maintain pressure without cutting off circulation.”

“Exactly. I prefer my pilots conscious. They complain less.”

Crissy opened the enclosure and pointed to the foot marks on its glass base. Her voice had the brisk confidence of someone who could rebuild the machine before the rest of them found the manual.

The scan covered his lower torso and legs so the liner’s seals and collection fittings could be made to measure. Captain Hubbard would handle the medical side behind a screen. Crissy needed dimensions, not an audience.

“Any needles involved?” Marcus asked.

“Two forearm ports for monitoring and medication,” Jake said.

“The doctor will explain everything before she puts anything anywhere.”

“That is a remarkably unhelpful sentence.”

Jake slapped his shoulder.

“Welcome to black ops. We still have to give you a call.”

Not a phone call. A call sign. Marcus knew enough to keep quiet before he became Fruit Loops or T-Bone.

Crissy checked the scanner.

“Jewelry off, please.”

He looked at his wedding ring.

“No. I can’t do that.”

It was an ordinary white-gold band, and it was not ordinary at all. Lori was everything to him. This was the piece of her he could hold when the rest of his world went sideways.

“No,” he repeated, more quietly.

Crissy looked from the ring to his face, then pointed above the scanner.

“Hold that hand up, clear of the scan. Don’t move it.”

“I can do that.”

She drew the privacy screen into place and let him get ready. Red and green lines swept across the enclosure.

“A minute or two. Stand still. I don’t want to print you an extra knee.”

She went to check Luci while the scanner finished. A few beeps later she called that he could dress, then came back to inspect the measurements. Whatever the end of the world was doing to everyone else, Crissy still had a baby to settle and a job to get right.

Marcus asked her for something to write with, and two envelopes if she could find them.

Baker was at the communications desk in the glass room atop the hangar. He was being linked in with a guy named Agent Bennett from an agency that Baker had already forgotten the acronym of. It was coming from NORAD and both sides have been briefed up to a certain point. Jon was at the computer trying to find a solid link. Technically Jon worked for the FCC, another invisible paper man that was on the squad from the get-go. A pro communications specialist and radio guy. His last name still unknown to everyone including Baker.

“I think I have it, sir?” he said as he moved away from the computer to let the Colonel sit down. It was Bennett and the link would be solid for another eight hours Jon informed him. And like always he disappeared without notice. Baker and Bennett traded greetings and information for the next twenty minutes. Bennett introduced Anne to the Colonel and informing him on her role as a de facto Mission Control. Baker liked to plan everything and these two just put a few wrenches into his plans. But they were right he thought and his gut and heart told him that this was part of the big deal too. He would go along.

“Jon!” he cried and Jon was already right beside him “Yeah?”

“Keep this open and get me if something comes up.” Nothing more was said; the men were professionals.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“It’s a carbyne-graphene composite,” Crissy began before Jake could finish saying jumpsuit.

“We call the experimental material Carbyne-G. Flexible inner layers, armored outer shell, circuits and sensors built into both. The diamond structures help carry signals across the interface.”

Marcus studied the rolled-down garment.

“So why does it have to know me personally?”

“It reads muscle activity and pressure. The liner learns how you move; the frame follows instead of making you drag it around. It can’t read your thoughts. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Crissy,” Captain Hubbard said from the doorway.

“What? That was the short version.”

“And classified. Finish the fitting.”

The doctor was tall enough, and her voice level enough, that she didn’t have to say it twice.

“Liner’s ready, Captain,” Crissy said, with sudden professional efficiency.

“Good. Baker wants you all moving. You know how he is about plans.”

Jake and Crissy went through the system checks while Hubbard worked behind the screen with Marcus. She explained the collection fittings and the two forearm ports before attaching them. As she adjusted the liner, she caught the edge of one welt. A little clear fluid escaped.

“Sorry.” She swabbed it and set the sample aside for testing.

“Do we know what’s in those things?” Marcus asked.

“Not yet. The preliminary tests found a strong riboflavin signal—vitamin B2—and other material we haven’t identified. That doesn’t tell us what caused them.”

He would have preferred an answer with fewer unknowns.

She gave him a lab coat before he stepped out from behind the screen. He handed her the two envelopes and explained what he wanted done with them. She understood.

Jake stood beside what looked like a short trash can: the rolled-down pressure garment.

“Step in here.”

One foot, then the other. Over the next ten minutes they eased the flexible layers up and checked every seal. Marcus could hardly believe the same basic garment fitted Jake, even with all the adjustments. The doctor secured the forearm lines: one for small blood samples and monitoring, the other for fluids and medication. The suit also carried noninvasive sensors against his skin. Nobody was going to circulate his entire blood supply through a pair of tubes, which was one small comfort.

Then they walked him toward the nine-foot armored alter ego waiting at its docking stand like a futuristic iron maiden.

As he stood there and looked at it, it hit him he was wrong. It was no Downey Jr., it looked to him then like the predator sans dreadlocks —with full body armor! Jake had gone over all of the gear that he had on him and it was impressive. Most would be turned off as not to kill someone, most likely himself. Marcus took a deep breath and stepped into the suit… stepped into the suit…. was helped into the suit. It rolled a bit and Marcus just shot Jake a look of fear.

“It’s got wheels! Cool, huh?” like it was something he just ‘forgot’ to tell him. Marcus looked at him again and gulped.

Lori had just made a snack for herself, lunch wasn’t quite going to cut it when she heard the sirens. It was two M.P. Humvees from the base. She had seen them a million times before but they were pulling up to her house. One on her lawn! Oh! One M.P. got out from each passenger seat and jogged toward the door. She was already on the way there to yell at them about her yard!

“Mrs. Lori Downs? Wife of a Marcus Downs?” They blurted before she could get one angry word out. That took her off her heels for a moment, and with a blank look on her face “Yes!?” she answered.

“We have orders to take you to the base; it’s about your husband.”

“He’s fine, ma’am,” the other one said before she could ask.

“Come with us immediately, ma’am, there’s no time now for talkin!” he said again obviously a southern kid. She turned and grabbed her coat from the hook by the door. Looking for Hobbes she found him out by the Humvees with a quick glance.

“Door’s open, bud… Mom will be home as soon as she can.” She said to the cat as he was by then busy licking himself and running away as the M.P. ran towards the vehicle’s door. Lori just sat in the backseat staring at the rear of the front one trying to figure out what this was all about. Marcus had nothing to do with the military… he was just a cook! Off they sped through wreckage and other debris once they left the neighborhood. The MPs admiring the Howitzer on the way out.

CNN had never stopped doing something. Whatever they could squish onto the air about the asteroid, the violence, the fires, they would put it up. The problem was connectivity and that was sparse at best.

Outside the gates of Fort Benning was a small crew covering some church protesting in front of a chain-link fence. They blamed the military for everything and even picketed funerals of soldiers. They were not live but they were close enough to Atlanta, CNN’s headquarters that they were being uploaded straight from the truck to the tower. In the far background three figures crossed the runway very slowly. Noticing the size of one the ever diligent cameraman quickly zoomed in on them then back out and onto the protest once more. The cameraman took note of it but quickly filed it away. They had an American flag and were about ready to light it, a staple at protests, right? The cameraman continued filming the desecration.

Gronning was aboard Vinnie—V.E.M.A.C., Vehicular Electronic Monitoring and Advanced Control—or, in his preferred terminology, a lab that flew. The modified Hercules carried a reinforced deployment cradle and a release opening under the fuselage. During atmospheric tests the suited operators dropped from it, used brief thruster burns to separate from the aircraft, then deployed their glide surfaces and high-altitude parachutes. That was the part they had actually tested.

Orbital deployment and reentry were still unproven. The heat protection existed on paper and on test rigs; nobody had brought a living operator home from space inside one of these cans. Today they were going to ask a cook to go much farther than the program had ever intended. Not his gig but it was a good way to make some cash at the end of a great career. He had been looking forward to his retirement. All he had to do was to fly this rig a few times a month, if that. He had trained countless men to follow the instrument panel and check their gauges often, fly right was his motto. Going over the plane’s big book checklist and warming up the beast for his final flight. He was bummed…he loved to fly.

Coming up onto the plane’s rear cargo doors were three figures. He recognized Jake at once with his freakish red hair holding a ‘lid’ with Baker and someone in a ‘can’ his lingo for the suit.

“Get him hooked up!” Baker snapped at Jake as soon as they hit the plane’s deck. Jake knew Baker was more bark than bite but he never wanted to see it challenged. He was a good leader and an honest one, a combination Jake found little of so far in his career. Jake led Marcus up to some kind of docking station and rolled him into it then locked him down; connecting up a lead. Looking at Marcus in his suit made him feel small. Not on the outside but on the inside, just for a moment. Baker and Gronning were in the cockpit going over the plans as the cargo doors closed on Vinnie. Marcus was not cold but he was not warm either, it was his nerves.

In the last twenty or so hours he had become and done things he never thought possible for him. Not the flying part; that was really one of the easiest things to accept.

“You don’t look so good,” Jake said, looking up from the tablet connected to the suit.

“We haven’t even tested this idea yet.” Marcus felt something shift against his ribs.

“What’s that?”

“The liner taking up the slack. Tell me if anything pinches or folds.”

Over the next three minutes a gentle pressure spread around him. It felt like being lowered into gel, though he knew nothing was pouring into the garment.

“What’s filling it?”

“Nothing from a tank. The inner layers change shape when we energize them. They make contact, read your movement, and spread the load.”

“It feels like it’s inside me.”

“It isn’t. You’re feeling the interface settle against your skin. Different thing.” Jake turned and lifted his long, regulation-defying red hair. A small implanted connection showed at the back of his neck.

“Trained operators have that. You’re on the external sensors. Less precise, which means you take it slowly and listen.”

Marcus stared at the connection, then at his own armored hands. This was not a set of clothes. It was a vehicle fitted around a man, and he was still learning where the man ended.

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Jake said.

“You’ll be okay, Chef.” He went back to preparing the lid.

Chapter Thirty

“They didn’t build these for comfort, did they?” Lori finally broke her silence. They were coming into the base and had just run over, into and around a few car lots worth of debris. Rough ride would be an understatement. Now inside the gates the MPs drove faster on the cleared roads. But it was right up to a large black three-story glass building only a few hundred yards into the base.

“This way, ma’am,” they ordered. Damn she hated to be called that. She wasn’t that old, was she? And what was with the parking on the lawn business? Did they train that? She was escorted inside and immediately up some stairs to the third floor. Inside a computer room that looked like those fancy ones on TV shows like NCIS and such was a short white-haired woman

“Mrs. Downs?” she inquired as she turned.

“I’m General Moyer…Just call me Darla.” Lori was motioned to sit at the chair the General was standing by. Not in uniform at the time it was hard for Lori to take in at first. Here is this little old lady in her early sixties Lori thought, and she’s a General? Wasn’t there a height requirement?

“It appears your husband is up to something,” she said in a manner that a principal would talk to a parent about their child. Lori was hearing and seeing a little General clearer now. She motioned for someone to flip a switch and the monitors came on in front of her. One was that damn feed from a satellite following the infernal rock. One was a map of the world but just outlines like those in airports that track flights. The big one in front of her was of an airport runway looking out of a cockpit. Lori looked at the little woman and asked “What has this got to do with my husband?”

“That airplane picture is from Fort Benning, Georgia. Your husband is going to be on that plane!” Darla could tell by the scared woman’s reaction she had no clue. She grabbed Lori’s hand and sat down next to her and said “Here’s what I know, dear.” Over the next half hour both were crying over lousy husbands and good men; and a half box of tissue for them each. Darla just looked at her and finished with.

“At least someone isn’t willing to give up! You should be proud. I am not one to have faith in men. But something tells me I may just be wrong this time.” They waited forever for the Captain to remember they were there and turn around the camera. Giggling a bit at themselves staring at a blank runway on TV. Darla brought Lori some coffee and she had hot chocolate with little marshmallows.

“Best thing on TV in years!” the General filled in. They laughed.

The old white-haired man had gathered his things and come down from the hills. Jumping into a brand new beautiful Forest Green Jaguar; and tossing his belongings on the passenger seat. He had a long drive ahead of him but he had to do it, the visions were strong. Finding the key at last, he started the engine and proceeded to do his best Jeff Gordon impression. Down gravel roads and through war-zone-like conditions the old man raced. The rain had not begun again, another good sign thought Jonathan as he tapped the display. After a few pecks it blasted some Journey into the speakers. It seemed all too appropriate to him…Don’t Stop Believing! This was good as well. On the display a red light came on… he laughed “120 is not too fast!” he instructed the car over the music.

Jake touched the disc beneath the skin at the back of his neck.

“My plug. Eyes, ears, movement—the suit’s systems are built around it.” His voice had gone flat.

“Looks better in the brochure than it feels in my head.”

“Can they take it out?”

“Not without a risk of damage.” He lowered his hair.

“You don’t have one. We’ve adapted the controls, but the visual system is the snag. Normally it records through the operator’s interface. We can send you images on the visor; we can’t get your view back through it.”

“No camera?”

“Not one we can fit, harden, and wire into that sealed helmet in the time we have. We’ll get your instruments. We’ll hear you. But if you see something we can’t, you have to tell us.”

Marcus looked at the suit again. Billions of dollars, and somebody still needed to describe the scenery.

Colonel Baker and Commander Gronning came back at that time to check on Marcus’s status. Jake reported him to be ready and excused himself.

“How do you feel, sir?” Baker asked Marcus. Marcus a good ten years older than Baker didn’t like to be called sir, especially from someone in a uniform.

“I’m getting used to the feeling of the thing still but I’m ok! ….. But hey! We haven’t even tested this thing out?”

“This is the test!” Baker said checking his watch “What the fuck do we have to lose? …Oh I’ll be back in a minute! I have someone that needs to talk to you.” He jogged off towards the cockpit.

“What do ya think?” it was Commander Gronning looking up at him.

“I’m fine,” Marcus lied to him; “Sure you are! Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. Yeah! You’re FINE alright.” Gronning continued “You won’t have the neural interface that they do, so I will be in charge of your HUD display.” Marcus nodded understanding everything so far surprised him a bit.

“I will be putting up all of the basics on the bottom. Keep checking them to make sure you are on course. The waypoint will be marked with a triangle. Make sure to keep the triangle together, ok? Ya know what I’m sayin?” Gronning finished. Marcus nodded and sucked up some more of that courage thing that he kept on hearing about.

“I have trained a lot of guys. I know if they can fly or not. I believe that you can do this if you don’t give up!”

The plan was to take Marcus to the Hercules’s operating ceiling, check whether he could lift and steer while wearing the suit, and release him toward the first waypoint. Anne would guide the interception. Once he made contact with the asteroid, the thrusters could brace him against it while he tried to make the strange ability carry something much larger than himself.

That was the hope, anyway. Nobody could demonstrate it on a blackboard. Marcus had failed to lift a Subaru; a mountain was an ambitious next lesson. Baker had insisted on a stop point before the final approach, so they could check the navigation and what little data they had.

Easy, he thought. What the hell was I thinking?

At 1600 hours he checked the camera link with NORAD and JBLM, got a ready signal from each, and carried it back toward the cargo bay.

“You can always call me,” Gronning told Marcus on his way to the cockpit.

Chapter Thirty-One

In Atlanta one of the few remaining workers at CNN was Director of the News Department Gene McCarl. His family was out of the state visiting relatives; he was simply caught as one of the last guys on duty. He being a vet he was not about giving up his post. Gene was scanning the uploads from the last few hours. Trying to put something on the Network that was different. Most of the content was simply silent video clips or all too repeated stories. There were few if any real reporters out there; and they were covering stories that were in areas hardest to connect to. It was in a loop of some nuts at a base somewhere when a huge close up. A Giant zipped past his eyes and back so fast he had to roll it back.

That was different… after watching film and video for years; he seldom if ever questioned what he saw while reviewing footage. He looked at it about four times before trying to clean it up a bit and to clip it out completely.

“What do we have here?” he said aloud to himself. He cleaned it up and zoomed in on the head of the giant robot. Not caring a bit, and losing his marbles to the reality of the day. He threw a headline under it and put it in the Counter. When it came up a few minutes later on the Cable News Network; all that was there was a really good picture of Marcus’s head coming out of a robot. The headline read – Is there Hope? As the only positive thing on air it spread throughout the scattered connections and different areas over the bits of internet still available. Within the next few hours it was appearing on every screen and radio story around the globe. – Is there Hope?

At Joint Base Lewis–McChord Lori and Darla saw a freeze-frame of Marcus on one of the monitors. Millisecond later the camera started shaking on the larger one in the middle. Lori recognized him immediately and General Moyer recognized the base. Her having been stationed there for over twenty years, long ago, “Oh God! They have eyes there!” the General piped out as she stood up and had to walk over and press a button.

“Baker? They got a peek at your costume!” she said over a mic that was nowhere to be seen.

Baker’s face was immediately on the big screen and he looked at the lens kind of giggling and said “Who cares?” He was right she thought. All those years of training really didn’t mean that much now. The jiggling image reminded Lori of Marcus’s little videos.

In a moment it began to stabilize on the curious face of her husband. He was in what looked like a scuba suit and inside something else. She could only see the top of the S.O.A.P. unit on the screen. She heard him ask.

“What’s this?” to someone. Lori then said “Hi, honey!” to the invisible microphone in the room. Marcus’s face lit up in surprise and then tears of joy; and a smile that looked like it hurt in that getup.

“Hi, honey,” he said almost like a child in trouble. He looked at Jake who was now holding a tablet with a live feed of Lori. Then to Baker saying Thank You without words.

“I have to try this, honey. You know how I love to surprise you!” he said lovingly.

“Why did you just leave?” she asked, tears starting to well up.

“I didn’t want to wake you!”

“I’m scared, honey,” she said.

“I am too, but I have to try.” Marcus and Lori felt that they would not see each other again in those moments. There was nothing but an ominous gut feeling that told them that. Call it love, call it intuition, something inside of them both just didn’t feel right.

“I love you Bunches! Give Hobbes rubs for me…and tell him I’ll be home soon.” That last line was for her and she knew he was being strong for her… and for everyone else.

“Ditto,” she said and blew a kiss at the camera before the other end started shaking again and the screen went wider. Leaving her to hear and see the whole picture of what her husband had gotten himself into.

“Holy crap!” were the words that escaped her lips just then. The General just said “You got that right, sister!” as she sipped on her cocoa.

About that time a scraped and dented brand new green Jaguar pulled up to one of the streets blocked off by the neighborhood watch. Taking the old guy driving up fast as some sort of threat, Jim Wilson. Major-General Retired, held up his old M-1 carbine.

“Halt! Who goes there?” the old soldier requested. He saw an old guy in the car then and wasn’t as scared. But the guy was pounding on his door which didn’t make him feel any easier. The dented door of the Jaguar burst open just then to allow someone four inches wide to escape. Looking up at the grizzled vet Jonathan just said “I need to get to the Downs’!” Jim didn’t quite hear him “huh?” he muttered.

“The Downs’!” Jonathan tried to yell again.

Old Jim’s ears were playing tricks with him and he thought about what the guy said for a good solid minute. He swore the guy said he wanted to get down? There were no dances tonight! Jonathan waiting for a response was thinking he may have broken the old guy.

“Marcus and Lori Downs! I know where they live! You are just blocking the road!” Jonathan’s patience had worn half thin his voice louder. Well poor old Jim didn’t know who he was talking about; but the guy didn’t look like too much trouble.

“I don’t know em. Let me move Jeff’s truck!”

It took the old vet a good five minutes to back the truck up about ten feet. Jonathan was waving at him as he sped through the opening.

“Whoa! Howitzer!” escaped his lips as he took the first turn past the roadblock. He pulled up to the familiar little house; he could tell nobody was home as soon as he crawled through to the passenger side and got out.

Hobbes was right there at his feet like always. Jonathan reaching down and patting his head asked the cat with the seven-toed paws where his Mom and Dad were?

“Excuse me?” came a woman’s voice over Jonathan’s shoulder. It was Lori’s next-door neighbor Laura.

“Are you looking for Marcus?” she asked recognizing him a little before walking over closer.

“Jonathan, right?” He was a dinner guest at least once a month at their house.

“Yes, and you are?” he said with a silkiness that only age and experience could give.

“Laura, Laura Ridderbusch,” she said as she stuck out her hand. Jonathan took it ever so daintily in his hand, “The pleasure is mine, Miss Laura.”

“They took Lori away about two hours ago,” she continued.

“She was upset about Marcus leaving Sunday night.”

They were neighbors and friends and Laura was one of those people Lori could talk about anything under the Sun with. When Marcus disappeared Laura saw her friend the next day taking out the recycling, asking her what was wrong.

“Who are they? Laura?” he quizzed her wondering why she would think he knew.

“Oh! The MPs from the base; they must have taken her to the base?!” she said embarrassed that she forgot to mention that part.

“Thank you!” smiled the old man, then grabbing his driver’s side door and spending a minute pulling it all the way open. Taking a minute to get it closed as well before he sped off. He was glad to see that Wilson guy hadn’t moved the truck back by the time he got back to the checkpoint. Off he sped, a bigger smile crept onto his lips. But you would still have to look pretty hard to see it.

Chapter Thirty-Two

The giant Hercules aircraft began to roll down the runway. Lori was looking on as some big redheaded guy was holding up a helmet and talking to her husband. There was sound but all you could hear were the plane’s engines. General Moyer and Lori were having a very civilian ladies’ afternoon, Lori felt like she had known this woman for years. While waiting for Baker to get his shit together they chitchatted about life, the end, and Lori’s husband. Moyer liked him from what she heard but not exactly tough enough for this old bird she thought.

Jake was explaining to Marcus what he would see and what it meant. Since he couldn’t tie into the suit through the neural interface, they were going to have to use remote command to operate a lot of the displays. He then slid on a headset and began talking to Marcus.

“Check, check?” the speakers and mic apparently built into the pressure garment.

“I still need to know where I am going?” Marcus informed him again.

“They have a lady at NORAD that is going to provide waypoints to operations command.” Jake was trying to go through a daylong checklist in just a few hours. Crissy has made all of the adjustments for size and compatibility at the main lab. But that still didn’t take away a huge job from the “Pilot.”

“Sorry, Chef… just got a lot to do still,” Jake said as he stopped and looked up at the skinny old guy in his suit again.

“I don’t get much feelings anymore, but I’ve felt all day. In a part of me something I haven’t ever felt before I don’t think?” Jake opened up to Chef, surprising himself.

“Fear maybe?” Marcus questioned.

“No, I know fear real well, Chef, this is just the opposite…but I don’t know which opposite?” Marcus was just about to say something when Baker broke in on the com from the cockpit.

“Check, check?” Baker knew they could hear him and he just continued “fifteen, boys.” Marcus and Jake just nodded at each other knowing they had to get busy with the lid. As Jake climbed up the stepladder to hook it up Marcus kept the previous conversation going.

“Maybe it’s faith?” he said face to face with the red-haired warrior, “Maybe it’s faith?” he said again as the helmet came over his head and hissed closed. Jake was mulling this over in his head when Baker broke in again.

“Jake? Gron and I are going to head straight to Bermuda after this either way it goes, are you in?”

“Hell yeah!” Jake said excitedly.

“Chef! I hope to have a few days leave there! We believe this is gonna work. But if it doesn’t let me say thank you for giving us a fighting chance!”

“I didn’t do anything when you think about it really?” Marcus chimed in plainly. Thinking about something he wrote down recently he continued.

“I am not here to save the world; I am here to save something else.”

“I don’t know if I am just the messenger or what. But I couldn’t fly yesterday morning of that I am sure. So I think you owe your thanks to something or someone else. Whoever or whatever that may be.”

Baker was in the cockpit agreeing with the guy, Gronning nodding his head as well. Everyone on the linkups from JBLM to NORAD and Vinnie was surprised and jolted a bit. The next voice to come on the com was a familiar one.

“Your leave is approved, gentlemen; let’s hope it’s long like the Colonel asked.” It was President Bowman.

In a subsurface level of the White House President Bowman was watching everything as well. Agents Witte and Sanchez were there too. In the corner sat a technician wearing beautiful Gucci shoes with no socks and a nice bathrobe.

Sanchez had brought in an early dinner for them all from the only place to get Thai food in town, The Copper Wok. The owner always teasing Sanchez about needing three signatures just to order dinner! Because he knew the big man was with the Government. They had seen and heard everything since Lori and Marcus did their couple thing. Agent Witte hiding a few wet ducts from the others when they did.

In the other Washington the guard at the gate looked really horrified to see such a nice car in this condition pull up. The old man asked about the MPs and assuming Jonathan was some kind of Lawyer; pointed him at the building a few hundred yards into the base. Jonathan was wondering why so many people were acting normal as if they had a more than a day to live. So many things were still working right.

The guard called ahead and a uniformed girl was at the door when he pulled up. Jonathan inquired to… Specialist Valentine about Lori. Who, after turning around to a duty desk and asking another uniform took Jonathan upstairs. Three flights? The old man thought to himself. He could hike uphill and down no problem but his knees hated stairs with a passion.

“Wait here,” she said as they went through the third-floor doors. She disappeared into a room, then back out and into another and another. The third door must have been the prize winner. She motioned for him to come from a hundred feet down the hall.

As he popped into the room Lori cried “Jonathan!” and jumped up to hug her old friend. General Moyer must have approved because she straightened herself up and patted her hair. Introductions were made, and flirtations begun. Lori was filling him in that he was right on time.

“On time for what?” Jonathan asked more than curious. She didn’t have time to explain at the moment, she just pointed at the large screen and said “Well, for starters, that’s Marcus.”

“My quiet one and the Water Bearers,” Jonathan said as he looked over to his left at the two women. Both women did the double take he had expected.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“I can’t see anything, Jake!” he said after a few minutes in the lid. Jake tapped his pockets and found what he was looking for.

“Sorry, Chef, forgot the contacts.”

“Contacts?” Marcus replied like what was next? Body paint and a beer helmet?

Jake worked the tablet, raising the triple visor layer by layer. Then he climbed the step stool with a contact-lens case.

“Crissy made these for the backup display. Without the neural interface, you need the optical adapters.”

“Contacts. Of course. What’s next, body paint and a beer helmet?”

“The visor’s there. The lenses make its projected channels visible to you. Different filters pick out different layers.”

Marcus understood about half of that. It must have looked wonderful on the monitor: a large redheaded man trying to poke a giant robot in the eye. Marcus had never worn contacts, so he complained for longer than the standard allowance. Jake finally blotted the tears away with tissues.

“Thanks. Hey, if you’re calling me Chef, what do I call you?”

“Thor.” Jake said it flatly.

“He had an anger problem too.”

Down came the visors. This time the status display appeared, bright and sharp.

“Check, check?”

“Got it,” Marcus said.

Jake had done too many tours too few years and he was one of; if not the best war machine Uncle Sam had ever built. But his humanity was the stronger of his wolves, and his past…and present haunted him.

“Marcus? Marcus? Can you hear me?” it was a strange woman’s voice, “My name is Anne… Anne Kelly.”

“Give us a minute, Miss Kelly, yeah we can hear you.” Baker interrupted. They were running behind schedule by three minutes and he couldn’t have that. He looked over to the Commander, who kept an old pair of ten-speed handlebars mounted beside his seat, clear of the controls. Baker gave him the sign to speed this thing up and then the sign for what the hell is that? As he pointed to the handlebars?

“Old Friend!” Gronning just said….

“Old friend.” Baker took it at face value and contacted NORAD and Miss Kelly again to start this final launch up.

The redheaded guy was moving the camera again to show the back of the plane. Lori’s heart was pounding out of her chest. Too many emotions all at once and she started to cry again. Jonathan just wrapped an old but comforting arm around her. The General looking on, holding back her own tears.

“There, there, Mama Bear,” he said to her in his pet name for her. She has heard him call other women that so she knew some of his tricks.

“I think he is with old friends,” he continued still trying to recall one of the old stories.

“How does it go?” asked Darla curious about the story.

“It is hard to remember legends after one has become one himself,” he said. General Darla Moyer looked at him and countered “You just forgot and you are too embarrassed to admit it, huh?” Grey Feather just looked over his shoulder at her “Yup!” Lori laughed at that and they went back to looking at the display.

At the White House the three men had moved to a different room, to accommodate the larger audience that was growing every few minutes at that time. The President drank Johnny Walker Red and Agents Witte and Sanchez coffee, there were beers and even popcorn at one time. The President was noting the ones that were going too far. Then it dawned on him that if this works he too may be out of a job. He did order a massive nuclear launch after all, didn’t he?

“You ready to walk?” Jake asked him as he grabbed a lever. He couldn’t see Marcus’s face through the shielding but heard him through the headset.

“Ready!” Marcus said wondering if he should have taken a little more time. Jake put on a large coat and then a backpack with a mask attached to it. He then grabbed a belt with a carabiner attached. He threw the lever and the platform it was on lowered the three inches it was above the deck. Feeling and hearing clicks in the suit stop after a moment.

“Wheels are up! You are Go for walk!” ‘Thor’ said. Marcus took a cautious step. The liner sensed the movement and the powered frame followed, a fraction later than his own leg. He shifted his weight, waited, and tried again. Easier. He had to lead the suit rather than wrestle it. It was the balancing in the gel feeling that he had to watch. He walked in a little circle with four careful steps; that’s about all that the deck would allow anyways.

“This is so cool!” Marcus said in his suit.

“Gentlemen! We have a mission?” It was the Colonel, ever watching the time.

Marcus tried to point himself at Jake so it would look like he was talking to him.

“Jake! Have you got that feeling inside figured out?”

“Nope,” came a downer response.

“Well since your call is the name of a Norse God maybe that’s what you are feeling?” A somewhat confused Jake replied “Thor?”

“I dunno? I’m just saying that may be where you should look for the answer to your question?” Marcus said.

“I’ll have to think on that!” Jake responded.

“You just do that,” Marcus finished. By that time they were at the rear cargo doors of the aircraft. Jake tapped the lid and motioned to Marcus that he was going to go to the front of the aircraft. He latched up his belt to a long cable going down the cargo bay and walked away. Jake just said “Thank you, Chef” under his breath but audible to Marcus.

In Atlanta Gene McCarl was almost busy. The questions coming in about the mystery robot man were getting through. He just didn’t have any answers to give to anyone except location. He was using the news service’s brand-new facial recognition software. But it was taking forever to find a head in a robot stack, so to speak. The strange thing to him was that there were three figures and faces. None of them turned up on anything! And that was odd. McCarl was still trying to get a response from anyone he could get in contact with in the Government. While he was on a landline to Benning for the hundredth time he noticed something that made him hang up and look. The military feed that someone had hacked into days ago before up and leaving… was moving!

It had been following the asteroid from the same angle and position for the days now. Why was it changing now? Gene was getting excited to watch the camera on the satellite move ever so slowly to a new position, he was such a videophile.

Anne and Lieutenant Saxegaard worked over the satellite controls. The spacecraft was already in a useful orbit; they were changing where its instruments pointed, not flying it to the asteroid. Even that took care. Small attitude corrections brought the target through the camera’s field while the telescope settled.

Saxegaard looked composed enough for Anne to think he knew exactly what he was doing. Inside, he was rehearsing the command sequence and hoping he hadn’t forgotten a step.

“Right there, Lieutenant.”

He locked the tracking mode and took his hands away, relieved that they had stopped shaking before she noticed.

The imagery was coming from an experimental high-magnification tracking instrument, one more capability nobody had advertised before the emergency. They had no reason to expect it to be available again.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The huge rear cargo door began to move. Marcus was about two feet from the sloping metal slab and he began to feel fuzzy again. He could feel pressure against his skin where the liner fitted it, and a deeper pressure at the welts. Whatever Jake had meant about the interface, Marcus’s skin was still very much his own. The President’s voice began coming over the speakers in his helmet.

“Marcus Downs, you are embarking on…” Marcus broke in interrupting the President of the United States.

“Mr. President. I am sure that you have some nice things to say, and they are all important and stuff.”

“But we are just Men and if you want to continue just go ahead. But I would rather talk to my wife right now because I have to get going.” Marcus finished in a matter-of-fact manner.

Bowman was struck at first because he was interrupted but soon realized this was his second term and Marcus was right. Who was he kidding? Witte and Sanchez just started cracking up laughing at the situation as was half the staff that had found the room.

“I’m here, honey.” Lori’s voice came through a little weakly. She could still see him standing by the now fully opened doors of the aircraft on the monitor.

“Honey?” he said. “What is it, dear?” Lori responded.

“I’m going to miss you more,” he said. “You don’t get that one, Goofy.” “Ok, but I wanted you to know that I didn’t mean to run away at a time like this.”

“You didn’t,” said Lori. “I don’t know why all of this is happening, honey?” Marcus replied in a scared voice.

“Maybe it’s so everything else can still happen?” Lori said.

Gronning quietly interrupted “Sorry, you two, but it’s time,” he said solemnly.

“I love you bunches and lots!” Marcus said trying to emotionally snap back.

“Ditto, honey… I love you lots and bunches.” Lori’s face fell into her hands and she lost it. Jonathan and Darla knew they could do nothing but let her.

“Mr. Downs? This is Anne Kelly again at NORAD.”

“Hello, Miss Kelly.” “Anne”- “Marcus.” Now that they had been introduced it was time to go.

“Ok, Marcus, I am going to be sending coordinates to the plane. Commander Gronning is going to be relaying them to you, ok?”

“Your display shows a direction, distance, and the waypoint image,” Anne continued.

“We’re giving you a route around the Earth, with checks between stages. Don’t try to go straight through to the final target.”

“I’ll relay the marks,” Gronning said.

“You’ll see a red guidance line. We call it the laser, but it’s a line in your display. Nobody’s shining a pointer from this airplane to the asteroid.”

Marcus was relieved to understand that much. The government had apparently found a way to make following a red line require three people and a flying laboratory.

“First waypoint loaded,” Gronning said.

“Got it.”

“Jake?” Marcus yelled like he was calling for someone in a room.

“Yeah?” Jake’s voice crackled more than the rest.

“Will it work?” Jake shot back immediately “Sure it will, Chef!” Baker broke in with a countdown from. Seven – Six.

“How do you know it will work, Jake?”- One.

“I think it’s faith!” Jake said to him right before he stepped.

Marcus took a few steps toward the open ramp, then held the first waypoint in his mind. The pressure gathered beneath the liner. For a terrible moment the suit’s weight seemed determined to stay on the deck. He eased his shoulders, stopped trying to jump, and felt the load lift with him.

He rose clear of the ramp. One careful turn; then another. Gronning watched the instruments as Marcus brought the waypoint back to the center of his display.

“Control check good,” the commander said.

Nobody called it safe. Baker gave the go-ahead, and Marcus climbed. Gronning and Baker decided to stay airborne and watch for as long as their fuel allowed. Bermuda could wait.

Chapter Thirty-Five

He felt as different as he had ever felt before. He was warm for one, but the fuzziness and pressure were at levels that made him worry. His suit was working as far as he knew and the altitude display climbed faster than he could take in. The ground was curving away below him. He couldn’t judge the height by looking; he had to trust the suit. It almost felt like the “fur” was continuing to grow around him. How could he have gotten so far so fast? He was thinking when the suit started talking again “Marcus! You are arriving already! Slow down!” It was Anne’s frantic voice. He eased his intention toward the near side of the waypoint, the same way he had learned to slow for a landing. He overshot, corrected, and finally held the marker steady.

Looking at the image and the object he said “Step one complete!” At NORAD Anne was looking around in disbelief. Lieutenant Saxegaard handed her a piece of paper with some numbers on it. She looked down at it and gasped…A lot of numbers on it.

“Do you have the number two location on board, Commander?”

“Just getting it to the suit now, ma’am,” he replied. Snickering about the number two reference a bit.

He was awestruck at the Universe in front of him. He was able to see the Milky Way and the giant gas clouds that he could never see while at home. It made him feel like their entire expanse was in his grasp.

He came to understand so much about his place in it all while floating there for those moments. The picture changed in his display just then and brought him back to his task.

“Got it there, pilot?” it was Gronning again.

“Yes, sir, but I don’t know a direction yet?”

Gronning checked and everything was good on his side.

“You’re sure you don’t see it?” Marcus was going through everything he was taught in the few hours before suiting up. All of it in his mind, and he was coming up blank.

“I don’t have it yet, sir.” Marcus started checking all of the displays and panicking a bit, his breathing getting noticeably faster over the mic. Nobody could figure it out and that was a problem.

“Stand by, pilot.”

Like he was going anywhere, Marcus thought.

Five minutes passed. The Earth turned beneath him and the distant stars seemed fixed, but he couldn’t judge his own movement against either. The suit’s readouts said his position was holding near the waypoint. He was not floating away as he had expected. Whether that was him, the suit, or some combination, he couldn’t tell.

He was nearly ready to ask for Lori again, to apologize for getting stuck at the first turn, when another voice came through.

“Hey, Chef!” It was Crissy, with her irritating voice toned down into something he could bear.

“What number do you see on the very bottom on the left side?”

“There are no numbers down there!” Marcus said like she should know.

“Ok I think I know what it is, just a second.”

“Do you?” asked Bennett right after that.

At NORAD, Bennett read the message Crissy had sent. The second waypoint overlay used an optical channel outside the range she had programmed into Marcus’s adapter lenses. The navigation data was there; the guidance line wasn’t visible to him.

She converted the overlay to a channel he could see and sent the revised file to Vinnie. Baker wondered why she was on the command circuit, then remembered that things worked when she was.

“Got it now, pilot?” Gronning asked after forwarding the file.

The pause was too long.

“I’ve got it,” Marcus said at last. He didn’t mention how sick he felt.

It took him a second to do his thing because he felt like his stomach was kicking him. He defied physics once more and reached the second waypoint.

“Step two complete!” It was a rendezvous point well clear of an old Soviet rocket stage, its exact purpose long forgotten. The display was working as it should and he went through a third marker beyond the debris field.

“Step three complete!” It was time for his big waypoint where he got to meet the destroyer of Man.

Lori had been watching all of this along with Jonathan and Darla. She could speak to him if she liked but was too emotional to do any good to him. He was her everything too, and she was watching him slip away from her little by little. Jonathan saw and felt this too, but he did not share her dark feelings and hopelessness.

“Lori, he is with friends, remember?”

“I don’t know that! I don’t know!” she almost angrily screamed at her dear friend.

“I know you don’t, dear. But if there is anything in your heart that still feels like there is light shining in it, you will know.” She tried to remember the way that Marcus would tell her not to make her Universe a Uniworse. To never give up, even though you don’t think you couldn’t go further. She tried and tried in those few moments but nothing broke through. She looked back at the screens in front of her and felt un-whole for the first time since they met.

McCarl in Atlanta had stopped watching the asteroid feed since it stopped moving. He was too preoccupied with the other news that just came over via his fancy software. It seemed that robot had a name and that it was married too. McCarl started reading the fact sheet from the service they used to scrub everyone, it wasn’t pretty. So McCarl just typed the guy’s name on the most commonly used picture going around… his cleaned up one. He then… for the first time in his career made a small recording and tossed it on an empty track. Five words was all he said. Marcus Downs cook from Seattle. Tossing the piece on the counter he was curious if anyone was going to see this crap.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The reason for the staged route was clear now. The asteroid lay beyond the other side of the Earth, and nobody knew whether his ability would choose a safe path if he pictured something with a planet between them. The nearby waypoints had tested his control, given the team a position fix, and taken him around the Earth rather than toward it. From the last marker he would have a clear departure line toward the approaching rock.

Could he do more? Maybe. This was a hell of a time to find out by trial and error.

He was thinking that Lori laying there asleep sparked this mission, so it was all because of her that he was here. Anne had told him to hold on again while she got some numbers. He was good with that because this time he had a view of the Earth and even the Moon in the same field of vision. How cool is that he thought like a kid.

He was so small out there without the bonds of Earth but he did not feel small inside. It was not because he was doing some great feat or work of wonder. It was not because his ego had now exploded with self-centeredness. He searched his mind for a word he could not find at the time. But no, he was not small inside. As he looked around as much as he could he thought “All of this could fit into a corner of my insides with room to grow.”

Anne was worried about the temperature of the rock after the warheads had heated and fractured parts of its surface.

“What is that suit made of?” she asked Bennett, who looked at her like how the hell was he supposed to know.

“Well, the telescope I was using for spectrographic purposes went down about five p.m. Sunday. So I have no idea if I am just sending someone into a furnace!” She snipped. She was frustrated, tired and emotional. Feeling all the work being done, all of it… was coming from her.

It was just not reality and she soon came back to common sense.

“I need to know what that suit can withstand! And I need a way to take the temp of that flying bitch!” She rattled off to anyone that would listen, mean mugging everyone in the room.

Marcus didn’t know what was taking so long so he said “Lori?” Lori heard him clearly and she had to swallow hard just to answer, “I’m here, honey.”

“It’s so beautiful up here!”

“I bet it is,” she said softly.

“I wish I could have hugged you one more time.”

“I know, me too.”

“You tell Hobbes to be good, ok.”

“Ok I will.”

As they were speaking there was not a sound coming from anyone. Not at the White House or JBLM or NORAD silence was the rule. As a group of people around the country wiped their eyes a bit and understood the sacrifice being made by these two.

“I’m sorry I should have tried harder to make you happy,” Marcus said.

“Oh, honey!” She broke down over the connection a bit “I have not been unhappy since you came into my life!” Lori was able to get out through the tears.

“I didn’t mean to get the last job out there,” he said.

Lori realized the conversation was almost over, he was trying to make her laugh she thought.

“Ok lady I love you bubye!” he then said to her, with a pet term he pulled from a cartoon a year ago.

“Bubye!” Lori replied in a false happy voice.

“Hey, guys! We have work to do! I have a wife to get home to!” Marcus said louder than normal to get their attention.

Lieutenant Saxegaard and Dr. Kelly were deep in the bowels of NORAD trying to garner any bit of information they could. Anne’s nerves were unraveling quickly under the pressures and she was just about to go snap nuts. Baker had informed them of what the S.O.A.P. IV was made of. But the abbreviated briefing files listed no useful limits for the complete suit under prolonged heating. Crissy was frantically searching through her assortment of secret Government databases. A material’s melting point wouldn’t answer this. She needed the cooling system’s limits, the exposure time, and what happened to the seals.

President Bowman was pretty sloshed by this time; he kept droning on with the old “we’ll never make it!” attitude. Agents Witte and Sanchez were then wondering if they should just slip the Prez a Mickey. To put him down for the time being…Seriously pondering this for a few moments both busted out laughing again.

NORAD had been able to contact the ESA- European Space Agency; and get the codes to one of their orbiting telescopes. They needed the thermal spectrographs that most these days carried. Having no problem communicating with the telescope the team in the mountain quickly punched in the coordinates.

The telescope’s pointing sequence was going to take longer than they had. It had to respect its Sun-avoidance limits and settle before it could give them a useful reading. The last estimate put some surface regions near twelve hundred degrees Fahrenheit, with much hotter spots possible. That did not mean space around the rock was full of hot air. It meant radiant heat on the approach, and direct conduction wherever Marcus touched it.

Carbyne-G was their experimental composite, not a magic temperature rating. Its strength told Anne nothing about the weakest seal, the electronics, or the cooling loop wrapped around the man inside it.

She stood in a mountain full of extraordinary equipment and waited for an answer nobody seemed able to find.

“Marcus?” Dr. Kelly said into the com.

“Yes?” he answered having just waited four minutes. To him it seemed like five hours.

“We don’t have anything that can help us here.”

She said with a solemn voice.

“Well, ma’am I didn’t come up here to not finish this gig! Have you got the coordinates?” he came back.

“We have had them the whole time…but we didn’t want to send you into a nuclear inferno.” Dr. Kelly told him.

“I really don’t think that matters now, Anne. Listen… I’m a chef and I am used to working with hot things. Just get me close enough for me to get to it and we will see what happens from there, ok?”

Baker hearing this squirmed in his seat on the plane a bit. Commander Gronning knowing his friend’s weaknesses started laughing at his old friend.

“Sending now,” said Anne as she pushed a computer key; feeling like she was the one who was ending the world with her keystroke.

Gronning looked at Baker with a hopeful look and one of terror all in the same. When he pressed his button he felt very much the same way Dr. Kelly did. A moment later over the link up around the country they heard.

“Got it!”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Marcus looked at the image they sent up, but it wasn’t an image. It was the live feed of the asteroid, the demon.

In his display a red line extended in front of him. He was still feeling sick to his stomach. He tasted the iron in his blood, because he had been clenching his teeth too hard and bit his cheek. He was warm though he thought and after a moment his nerves were done doing their dance. It was too quiet in his head at that time. For a second he thought he was dying and racing through a tunnel. The furry feeling was almost receding into him this time when the motion of movement began. The pressure under his skin was more than he ever felt before. The welts were hurting again almost as painfully as when he was bitten. Then a kind of blackness came over his vision and the light began to fade into a gray. All of this lasted only moments. But in that time, that big space inside seemed to get much smaller.

“Got it” had been the last clear words before Marcus left the outer waypoint. The short test legs had taken minutes. This passage was different. Hours of fitful telemetry followed as he crossed the remaining distance, the suit reporting strain the team could measure but not explain. Anne adjusted the intercept whenever a position fix came through. Gronning and Baker brought Vinnie down to refuel, kept the link alive from the ground, then went back up. Nobody was leaving for Bermuda yet.

Near the end, the updates thinned to silence. Ten minutes without his voice felt longer than the hours before them. Nobody wanted to be the first to ask whether he was still there.

In Atlanta a bedraggled McCarl was waking up from one of his two hundred naps that week. Still sitting with feet up on an editing console, he was sore and tired. As he took his feet off of the table his eye caught something. Not remembering which monitor his eye was going by at the time. Sleepily he checked them again.

He had been seeing things for days now on the monitors. Some were real, some were not, so he wasn’t really excited when he saw the robot dude on hacked military feed.

“Oh look at the little… man!” he said out loud and then “Little man!” and then with a shout “Little Man!!!” as he jumped up and down repeating himself again and again. Pointing at the picture to absolutely nobody like his team had just won the Super Bowl. He frantically switched the military feed onto the network live.

The teams saw it too at the same time… a little man. Lieutenant Saxegaard at NORAD was struggling to remember how to zoom in the satellite, once he got into that system again. For the longest time all you could hear in the room were the people breathing, Anne noticed. Every team was able to see him now; as well as a good number of people on the ground that still had connectivity.

From Brazil to Finland and South Africa to Detroit, a very large number of people on the planet saw this… little man. There was a calm inside they came to find. A reason to believe again, of a future now not wasted, but gained.

Marcus, believing that he was dying at that time had no idea he had stopped.

“Marcus?! Marcus?!” he heard the voice faintly; becoming stronger as it repeating itself. It was Anne’s and she had a pretty voice Marcus thought just then. His consciousness was crawling out of a long hole, twisting and turning and trying to come fully to. The hole began to be a little brighter up ahead, and then a little more.

“Marcus!? Marcus!?” Dr. Kelly was just about to give up for a minute, when a cough came across the speakers in each team’s location.

Lori breathing for the first time in minutes launched back in her chair and almost tipped backwards. As his vision came back to him he was still hearing the doctor’s voice and wanted to reply but temporarily could not.

Ahead of him the only thing he saw was a burning landscape a few miles ahead moving towards him. It wasn’t moving fast but the human body has a reaction to falling that will make most people panic. Marcus was most people because it took him about two whole seconds. He was flailing and screaming in his head before he realized where he was and began… just began, to calm down. On the feed sent out now through CNN around the world Marcus would be seen, zoomed in on finally; at just the very end of this. It appeared to all like he was just getting his balance…something perfectly normal on Earth.

On speakers in each team’s respective locations, they all heard it. They had heard it a hundred times in movies and cartoons and for some others in real life. It was the scream of someone falling to their death for a few seconds laced with profanity and screaming and panting. Cringing at it all it lasted but a few seconds and was over.

Heavily breathing Marcus came over the speakers “Hey! I am falling here!” A chorus of cheers was heard through the speakers in his suit.

“I’m falling here!” he repeated again.

From both Washingtons to a Mountainside in Colorado to a Plane in the air over Jacksonville, FL and a hangar in Georgia people cheered. They got there at least…there was still one, last, best hope. We would not go silently into that good night…

Marcus was not so hopeful because what he saw was a mountain range ahead of him. It was his now not so proverbial job to move them. He just saw the end of his life coming without accomplishing a thing. He repeated “Guys! I’m falling!” Anne snapped out of it first and pressed a key.

“Marcus, we hear you! Congratulations!” she said.

“I am coming up on this thing kinda fast, Doc!” Ahead of him was eerie, he was slowly falling but he wasn’t. He was stable and IT was moving, but his mind was still having a hard time with it. The brain has 100 billion neurons and it was taking time for his to calm down.

“It’s burning…” Marcus said seeing a white lava looking type of glow ahead of him, in spots on the asteroid’s surface.

Through the magnified feed Anne could make out bright patches on the surface. The pattern didn’t look like the runaway nuclear reaction Sandage had feared. But a picture alone could not tell her what was glowing.

“Some of those areas may still be hot from the blasts,” she told Marcus.

“Stay clear of the white patches.”

“So it’s hot. Are we still a go?”

He felt the suit’s cooling system working harder. Anne looked around the room.

“Anything on the suit’s heat limits?”

Blank faces.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Gronning was in the cockpit with his feet on the rest below the old bicycle handlebars, the plane was on autopilot. Baker was going through the flying lab’s data. To try to find out more on this stuff he was in charge of. Gronning was waiting for the final guidance coordinates. The direction in which Marcus would have to try to push it. But it would come when it came and he was still tired.

Jake came into the cockpit “What’s taking so long?” He had been in the cargo hold during the last link reset and had missed the argument over temperature. Baker barked “What’s it made of!?” Not to Jake but to the universe really. Jake just asked “What is what made of? Sir?”

“The S.O.A.P. unit!”

“Carbyne-G, sir…you know that?…” Baker realized what was happening and looked at Jake at that point and said very calmly and slowly “What is its high temp range?” Jake thought about that for a second and answered him in the same calm and slow voice “A brief radiant exposure equivalent to fifteen hundred Fahrenheit. They tested it with me inside. Not contact with a hot surface, and not for long. The cooling reserve is the limit.”

“Thank you,” Baker responded in the same calm demeanor. Gronning hearing all of this asked

“If you Dr. Phil’s are done, then can we get on with this?” adjusting himself in his seat a bit. Baker relayed the message to Cheyenne Mountain.

Anne remembered Sandage talking about magnesium in the spectrum and caught herself reaching for a familiar explanation. White light, magnesium, burning. It was tempting, and it was not enough. A metal fire needed an oxidizer; an exposed rock in vacuum didn’t supply an endless atmosphere. The blasts might have uncovered reactive pockets, or the glow might simply be heated material. She could not identify the process from that image.

What she could do was choose the least luminous reachable area on the required side, warn Marcus, and keep watching the cooling telemetry.

Bennett watched her stare at the screen.

“Doctor? What do you need?”

“A reliable surface temperature. Which we don’t have.”

He put the test summary beside her.

“And this is only short exposure.”

“I know.” Anne marked a darker patch near the required contact point. Darker was not safe. It was the best comparison available.

Marcus didn’t know if they were cut off or if they were just waiting, but something had to happen fast. His body was doing some weird things in the suit and the temperature was higher still.

“Chef? Chef? Copy Chef?”

It was the voice the Norse deity and made Marcus miss him already.

“I hear ya, Thor!” Marcus said excitedly. Those who had not heard Jake on the com were wondering who this guy was.

“We gotta get you moving, bud!” he said with a controlled rush to the words.

“I am good with that copy!” Jake was muttering under his breath that this was no time for Chef to try to use the lingo.

“This is going to be like calling a dance, Chef! Ok?” They both knew what that meant because that was one area they trained in a few minutes back at Benning. Others on different teams were looking around their rooms looking for someone who looked like they knew what that meant. Marcus would call a number one through four correlating to the four thrusters on the back of the suit. One for upper left, through four for lower right, plus the word fire for stop using a front thruster. Jake – Thor’ would then use the Xbox controller that Crissy had rigged up long ago to scoot him through space. The Government’s designed control interface was antiquated before it was drawn up she said, citing that gamers know.

“You have the lead, sir!” Jake said in his best southern drawl, which was syrupy and just… bad.

Anne was horrified… She had no answers, and no place to put him safe that she knew of. She knew the direction in which to push the asteroid, she had that since the beginning. But she didn’t know if it was a burning lake of magnesium or a colder piece of the radioactive stuff. She remembered the first time she saw him she thought he was homeless guy. Now that thought seemed incredibly ridiculous to her…To her now, he was not the homeless one she thought in that second…we were. The voices starting the “dance” brought her back to her work.

“One-one-one-two-two-three-three-four” Marcus was saying to the redheaded pilot. He was moving for the first time and the sensation was wonderful. The gel that he felt like he was floating in moved around him and that felt better than not moving.

“Now this is space!” he said to the curious ears of those that were listening.

Dr. Kelly had made up her mind that the only thing to do was to send up the waypoint, and let Marcus judge the approach from there. Every available reading had been checked. There was simply no more time to think about the humanity of sending someone to their death; while said person was trying to save humanity. She sent the coordinates and the previous feeling she had was this time different. Anne wasn’t pressing the key on mankind this time… just a little man.

Commander Gronning looked at the new coordinates that just came in. He was punching them up into the S.O.A.P. unit. Jake was in the back seeing the numbers coming and going from a readout in the lab. It was just a bunch of numbers to him, but he could see the red line forming in the display in his mind’s eye. He was waiting for his new friend to start the dance again. Marcus got the coordinates in his display and taking his time to get his bearings now that he was moving replied “Got it!”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The hacked feed still entrancing people around the world was still showing the little man; but he was moving out of the frame! Anne shot back at Saxegaard “Follow him, follow him!” The Lieutenant did his best but Marcus was soon out of the frame.

“Two-two-fire!” Marcus said to Jake and then “I’m going to change that word to stop!” Jake replied “I don’t blame you! I think I am killing you every time I hit the button.” Marcus chuckled at that a bit and continued the dance “one-two-four-three.”

“Can’t we get him back?” Anne asked the Lieutenant that was finding it harder this time around.

“Trying, Doc!” Saxegaard said as he was trying to catch sight of Marcus.

McCarl in Atlanta screamed at the screen in front of him “You’re fired!” Then they all caught sight of him, the Lieutenant had done it.

But he was going to the other side of the asteroid and there was no way he was going to be in the picture long. Anne seeing this just sat immediately, she wouldn’t ever know where she sent him. So the world once again was looking just at the bringer of death. But now they had a close-up of the burning celestial demon.

Over the next ten minutes or so Marcus and Jake performed this routine. Jake was watching the fuel readout as not to burn up too much of the fuel before getting there. Marcus was looking out to the place where the waypoint marker was hitting the asteroid “Stop-Stop.” Down below was a spotty landscape with dots of the different metals. The reddish spots were the cold ones and the whitish ones the hot, it looked like a huge Lite-Brite set to him.

“You ok, Chef?” came Jake after a few moments.

“Yeah, I’m great,” Marcus lied to him. “It looks like I am going in on a cold spot!” he said in false enthusiasm. It really wasn’t a lie, it was a cold spot but it was very near a hot one by no more than ten feet. Hearing this Anne felt relieved and Lori felt a little better if you can call it that.

“How much room we got?” Jake asked, “Well…a couple hundred feet… let’s dance!” Marcus said knowing if he stopped just doing it he would think about it too much and not get it done.

It was amazing if you were anywhere around a TV or monitor or any other type of screen around the world. Billions of people were staring at a live picture of their doom, and were seemingly completely content in doing so.

“Four-two-two-one-stop-stop…I think I got it from here, Thor!” Marcus replied as he floated closer. Feeling the heat build once more in the suit but able to bear it. The suit was working overtime to keep him cool but it was working well because he felt it getting cooler. A bit like the AC was kicking on a touch. Remembering his training from a few hours earlier he readied the grappling round, one of the sharp things Jake couldn’t take off. It was a tether that shot out of his chest, he just had to make sure it was targeted correctly… especially now.

“Chef, can you hook up?”

“Getting ready here,” Marcus came back not wanting to make it sound like he was having doubts about all of this. He checked his display “Here I go!” a few moments later they all heard “tether!”

To Marcus it felt like he was the shootee not the shooter. The small chamber on his chest opened up; out shot a large, wickedly pointed piece of metal with a ribbon attached to it. Marcus watched the thing scoot across the expanse between him and the rock.

He wasn’t aware that it had hit and made contact until the tether started getting taut. It was reeling him in slowly and he could see that he had hit the target area. The white of the tether a bright contrast to the asteroid.

“Hooked up, being brought in,” he then reported.

Anne checked the latest positions. They had reached the intended part of the surface, but the time left to create a useful change in course was shrinking. The asteroid had always been under Earth’s gravitational pull; there was no boundary they could beat by a second. The later the change came, the larger it would have to be.

Lori at JBLM could not listen any longer, in her heart she felt like he already was too far gone. Too far from this world was hers; the expanse tearing their tether to a single thread. She was inconsolable and Darla led her from the communication room to her office.

“If you need to… you can listen here. Just press this and we will connect you,” she said to Lori as she instructed her on the Cisco phone. Getting her a blanket and some aspirin the General hurriedly walked back to the com room. Lori just sat in the darkened room wailing off and on and wondering why her end of the world was so much harder to take.

Chapter Forty

As Marcus was slowly approaching the rock the suit kicked in again and the AC feeling came back. I have to thank that little girl he was thinking. In his counter on the tether readout was -25-20-15… He was holding out his arms and stuck his feet out too the best that he could. Contact!

“Houston, we now have contact!” he said after checking that he could touch the rock without melting.

“Now let’s get this moved!” Chef rattled off to Thor who was smiling from ear to ear. Every team linked up to the audio was smiling and cheering a bit, but still anxious to see if they could do this now. The President could not believe that he got there, his mood brightened noticeably.

“How much fuel do we got, Thor?” Marcus questioned, “11.6 pounds,” Jake came back.

Anne worked with the fuel figure and the suit’s thrust specifications. In space the rock had no weight resting on a scale, but it still had mass—far too much mass for a suit’s maneuvering jets to shift out of Earth’s path this late. She had told Baker that before launch. The jets were there to seat Marcus against the surface and hold the direction while he tried whatever had carried him across space.

They had a route, a contact point, and a man who could do one impossible thing. They did not have an equation proving he could do the next.

She had chosen the point and the direction to give any force he could produce the best chance of changing the miss distance. It was a desperate experiment, not a smaller version of the missile plan.

Anne came on the com “Marcus, how are you doing?”

“I’d rather not talk about it now, Doc, no time for therapy!” he replied, afraid to go that deep in his head since this started.

“We planned on twelve pounds left for the contact phase,” she informed both Jake and Marcus.

“Are we a go, ma’am?” questioned Jake’s voice.

Anne looked around the room again at the men in the room both looking at her with the same question on their faces.

“Yes, we are a go,” she said and her stomach jumped up did the back flip and came to rest somewhere in her throat.

“Did ya get that, Jake?” Marcus called out to him wanting to get this done and over with. Marcus knew that this was do-or-die time. If he didn’t do it he would die, if he did do it he would probably die as well. This was the first time that death had really come into his head.

“Yeah, Chef! Just give the word and I’ll punch it!”

Marcus was warming up again and there were parts of his suit that were not getting the AC now as much as before. He was still going over that whole death thing in his head when the motion of the asteroid gave him a view of the Earth. That was all he needed, because in that great big beach ball ahead of him all he could see was Lori’s face.

Jake was feeling the nerves, he’d just found a friend and that didn’t come easy for him.

The planned twelve-pound reserve would have sustained the chosen setting for roughly twenty minutes. With 11.6 pounds, Jake estimated a little over nineteen, depending on the adjustments needed to keep Marcus seated. Anne checked the figures again. The missing fuel narrowed their margin, but it wasn’t the real uncertainty. Even a full tank could not do this by itself.

“Marcus,” she said, “the jets will hold you against it. They won’t move this mass enough on their own. If your flight can’t carry the load, we have to know.”

“I know, Doc,” he answered.

“I’m going to try.”

Anne kept the instruments running. She had spent her life learning what could be measured; now the decisive part refused to fit inside any measurement she had. She could admit that without pretending the physics had gone away. It was frightening, and oddly freeing. There was still work she knew how to do.

Not knowing was what was going through Marcus’s mind in those few seconds; but he too felt ok with it. Bracing himself against the mountain he was able to get into a good position.

“Ok, Jake…Punch it!” With that Jake pressed the controller button that Crissy had assigned to all rear thrusters. Thud! Marcus was slapped flat against the asteroid his arms and legs spreading as he fought for purchase. The thrusters were going full blast and Marcus’s face was a few inches away from it. Great! He thought just then, he is now a Garfield window plush in space… He pictured the red guidance line, then tried to extend the same intention that had lifted him from the ramp. The deep pressure at the welts surged. He couldn’t tell whether the rock answered.

“Chef? How ya doin?” Jake asked after about ten seconds. Marcus really didn’t know and had a hard time hearing him. Outside, the jets were silent in vacuum. Inside, vibration traveled through the frame and the helmet, a punishing mechanical roar that made the voices hard to hear.

“I am still here!” he said loudly into the mic, the booming sound of Marcus and the thrusters making every group jump.

“Ok, Chef, we have about eighteen minutes of this setting left, ok?”

“OK!” Marcus came back to him, his head pounding at the noise.

Dr. Kelly was monitoring the asteroid’s position with the only piece of equipment she had at her disposal. A newer Russian satellite sv74, that they had taken control of just hours earlier. She couldn’t tell yet if it was making a difference it had only been a few minutes so far.

Lori had come back to the communications room at that time. She looked like hell from the crying and head holding but she had to come back. Jonathan told her “He’s doing it, Mama Bear.” he said it matter-of-factly while never taking his eyes off of the screen. She just sat next to him and put her head on his shoulder, not looking at the monitor or even that direction.

“I can’t watch,” she said burying her head a little deeper.

“The track is changing!” Anne said after ten long minutes of holding breaths. On the satellite readouts though, she could not yet separate a real change in course from the fractured rock’s shifting center of light. It was much too large to credit to the jets alone, if it held up at all. The numbers were readable but the Cyrillic script was making it difficult to decipher.

“Bennett? I am going to need you here.” Bennett, who had been sitting like the boss of a car lot most of the time, began helping like he was bored of the show.

“What does it say here?” Anne pointed, “And here?” Bennett quickly relayed the information, smiling.

Marcus didn’t know if he was going to make it at that point, permanent hearing loss was going to happen he knew. But would he be completely deaf? He scoffed a bit after looking at the rock again that his face was only a few inches away from. His hands were on the asteroid but the torso of the suit was really pushing it. Marcus just had to keep from rolling, it was not difficult but his hands were getting hot. He had a lot of experience with hot items; lifting one away when it was not needed to cool.

“How ya holding up! Chef?” Jake checked in with Marcus but did not get a response. Remembering the noise level he said it again in practically a scream.

“How ya doin, Chef?” Marcus heard him that time; he was just changing hands to cool the other when he came back on “I’m!”

Chapter Forty-One

Bang!… is all everyone on each team heard. Marcus had started to say something and was instantly cut off. The teams could not dissect what had happened.

“Chef! Chef! Chef!” Jake was screaming into the mic milliseconds after the noise. Chef! Chef! Chef! rang over the com for the next thirty seconds. Looking down at his uplink display Commander Gronning saw that the suit had gone offline, and showing it immediately to Colonel Baker.

“Offline! Offline, Thor!” Baker squawked into the com.

Gronning worked frantically to get it back. Jake stopped screaming knowing Chef couldn’t hear him offline. Not knowing what had happened but fearing the worst Baker pinged “Contact lost, I repeat contact lost.”

Nobody knew what happened and they were waiting for Marcus to reply. The teams around the country started to panic checking everything they could, software, hardware it was all coming up fine. Then Jonathan of all people saw it first “Hey! Hey!” he said pointing to the screen with a wagging finger, even Lori looking up at that time.

What Lori and everyone on Earth watching saw was spectacular. The colors on the Asteroid began to change. A gossamer strand of a bright green began encircling the mountain in space. Before it was lost behind a gray haze, the entire rock was wrapped in bright green.

“Chef! Chef!” Jake said into the com if only for his own reasons. The entire asteroid disappearing in just moments. A gray dust cloud expanding in space exponentially.

“Get me a bigger picture! Lieutenant!” Anne was screaming at him, not knowing she was doing so. Saxegaard zoomed out to a gigantic dust cloud that was getting bigger quick. The asteroid could not be seen. After a few more minutes of zooming out repeatedly, the feed satellite was lost to the cloud as well. Dr. Kelly was just as perplexed as anyone else, did it go nuclear? Was it still coming? Is Marcus alive?

Lori was on the floor in the fetal position repeating the word “no” over and over.

“Why, God, why?” escaping her lips every few seconds too. Every team was devastated; the shock on their faces evident.

Anne tried to get more information from any satellite out there. But knowing the answer already… That the cloud would not let her.

President Bowman came on the com then, almost sober.

“This is Bowman! Everyone that can hear my voice is now under government orders of silence… don’t make us hurt you!” the still slurring Bowman spat out. Agents Witte and Sanchez were fast at cutting him off at the plug. Gronning was punching in the coordinates to Bermuda. He turned to Baker and kicked his feet up again “I guess we will just have to wait, huh?”

Baker was white-faced and silent he looked at his watch… one a.m. Tuesday, Eastern time. Seventeen hours until the predicted impact… Jake had to be pulled away from the equipment before grief and rage did more damage than the program could afford. Mankind would have to wait for the answer to the question of its fate.

Chapter Forty-Two

Those last hours crawled by. Fear had found a home in many people, and hope had become almost painful to hold. They waited for a definite answer. Then they waited because there was nothing else to do.

Tuesday afternoon, the surviving telescopes could find no intact body on the predicted track. That was encouraging. It was not yet a guarantee.

The forecast impact time passed that evening. Then another hour. No world-ending strike came. The impatient wait turned to hope, the hope to an almost disbelieving elation. Fragments were still coming, and the warnings were not over, but the mountain they had watched for days was gone.

By Wednesday morning the Sun shone on a blue marble newly aware of its blessings. Mankind stepped into the undiscovered country that was the future, rather more carefully than before.

The President had pronounced a time of celebration and gratitude Tuesday night as well as a time of reflection and rebuilding. The wounds to civilization repairable, it was with great but troubling ease that it resumed normal activities. The world had managed to survive because of mankind… now that was a first. The breaking of a thousand walls had occurred and few dared begin repeating their design.

Citing National Security all of the teams that were on the com were sworn to secrecy, reminded by the President’s rant to hurt them. They were scheduled for their debriefings and given subpoenas.

Three G.I.s that already knew that they would be the last to get their subpoenas. They were happily enjoying some leave in the Bermudian sun. One was having a bit less.

Dr. Anne Kelly went back to her brother’s for some amends and some more family time. She found out people change, her Brother among them long ago. Maybe she has as well, she was in no hurry to try to figure it out.

Jonathan never left Lori’s side, scooping her up and taking her home. Then setting her on the couch; she did not speak or move much. He fed Hobbes who was curiously looking for something.

A dear friend and a good man he waited there with her for the end. When it did not come he returned to his car and retrieved the items from the campfire.

Lori found the strength to get up at one time and could not find him in the house. She found him in the backyard that evening. He had lit a small fire in the fire pit and the items set on the ground around him. He had been there for hours meditating with chants and silence. She did not disturb him for she knew his ways. She went back to the couch and found more tears for her husband. Hobbes had curled up on the couch with her before she moved and returned as soon as she did.

Captain Hubbard arrived in D.C. early on Wednesday morning. She was dressed in civilian clothing and had done her makeup. But she was showing a slightly worried look. Using as much of her security clearance that she could, she got close.

She was stopped by two large men in suits and earpieces as she tried to skirt a security checkpoint.

“Badge!?” the larger man asked, more a command than a question. She just held up her hands like saying I don’t know? Trying to use her charm a bit, but it didn’t work. Agent Witte questioned “What’s your business here?” also not really a question.

“I have a message I have to deliver to the President personally, National Security!” Agent Sanchez almost laughed at that thinking she could try to be a little more original.

Agent Witte swiped her I.D. card into the system on a tablet thinking this Captain is about to be a private. A window on the computer came up to indicate she needed to perform a palm scan. That was when Agent Witte looked down in the corner of the window below it that he could still see.

“C’mon!” he said to Michelle and Sanchez at the same time leading them down a hallway.

“Hey! genius, the brig’s the other way!” said Sanchez. Agent Witte just stopped and spun on his heel and handed Sanchez the tablet.

“Corner… Genius” he replied face blank. Captain Hubbard stopped more the curious and a bit worried saying “If the President does not get this, guys, he’s going to be really pissed! He already said he would hurt me!”

Those words snapped both their necks and she could have sworn she heard a pop. Looking up from the tablet Sanchez smiled at Michelle and led off down the hallway with the words “And Heerree we go!” Witte followed behind, almost as happy.

“What is it?” Bowman asked the agents as they both came in with smiles on their faces and a tall woman in tow.

“Captain Hubbard here to see you, sir,” Agent Witte reported. The President’s face was white in an instant remembering the names on the subpoenas he had just signed yesterday. Before he could get out a word of argument as to why she shouldn’t be there Hubbard piped in.

“I have a message from Chef,” she said as she held out the envelope. Agents Witte and Sanchez were immediately feeling like they were kicked in their guts, recognizing the name and now positive of her involvement. She moved forward and handed it to the even whiter-faced man.

Bowman cautiously took it and looked at the writing on the gray envelope, ‘If I don’t make it back-Prez.’

It read in a hasty printed script.

“He gave them to me when he was suiting up,” she informed him.

Opening up the envelope he saw some very colorful Hello Kitty paper that apparently was bubble-gum-scented as well. On it Read.

Mr. President

If you are reading this then something must have worked right but I didn’t make it back. I just wanted to thank you for letting me go, it was a crazy idea. I have a wife and cat at home near Seattle and if I could ask something, could I ask that they be taken care of? I couldn’t always make the rent and she is going to need some help making it for a while. That would be appreciated.

Oh and by the way I didn’t do this to save THE world. I did it to save MY world. Love really does keep the universe going now, doesn’t it?

Marcus Downs

The man was weeping by the time he was done, stabbing at some tissues and blowing his nose. Dr. Hubbard was saddened by the look alone. He placed it out for them all to read “Nothing classified,” he said as he slumped back in his chair.

“You said them?” Bowman questioned her and continued “You said he gave them to you?” Michelle was a few sentences into it she stopped and said “Yes, one for his wife too.”

“Where is it?”

“Sir, you can’t she…” Bowman cut her off “I don’t want to read it silly girl I want to deliver it!” sitting up in his chair.

“I gave it to my brother Jack yesterday morning,” she said adding “It’s on a Harley going like a bat outta hell across country to her!”

“Get out a national APB,” Bowman barked at Agent Sanchez.

“To all law enforcement personnel from the President of the United States” Bowman continued “Get the Fuck out of this guy’s way!” he finished.

Hubbard was glad he didn’t want to deliver it now, this wasn’t politics. Agents Witte and Sanchez eagerly got busy taking down the Captain’s information on her brother “Happy Jack” and his Harley.

Lori was still in the throes of grief that week, but beginning to function. Jonathan was still a guest and consoler; he cooked for her and tried to get her to eat. He was as much a Father figure as anyone in her life, but he wasn’t Marcus. They dined when she could eat and he meditated for hours each morning and evening. The General came over a few times to check on her and that was genuine. But so was her interest in Jonathan which was obvious. Hobbes never left her side which was nice because he was such a Daddy’s boy most of the time.

It was during one of the visits by the General, while the older couple was enjoying a conversation in the back yard. That Lori remembered Marcus’s pictures of his hike and the cave.

“Jonathan? Marcus had a bunch of pictures and video he took on his last hike.” Grey Feather knew that Marcus had gone up the mountain after their Friday gathering.

“My quiet one and the Water Bearers,” he said motioning for her to lead him to them.

“How does it go? Have you remembered yet, ya old coot?” General Moyer said to him, with a little rub because she could.

“I have been trying to meditate and remember the story but it has not come,” he answered and continued into the house.

“Maybe the pictures will help you remember, Jonathan?” Lori said sounding the best she had since Monday.

When Marcus’s computer warmed up and she once again remembered how to get to them she brought them up in a slideshow. Grey Feather was not impressed until the shots of the cave and cavern lit up the display. He was stunned that Marcus had found anything like this. There before him were pictographs and paintings that were, like Lori had found out. Both seemed newer in the outer shelter and older in the cavern, though neither of them could date the marks from photographs. Nudging Lori to get out of the seat he sat down and began to pause each one. Just saying “My quiet one” every so often.

Chapter Forty-Three

There was a knock on the door and Lori went to answer it. She saw the same M.P. that picked her up on Monday.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Marcus Downs?” That shook her and made her mad because he knew who she was, and it hurt to hear his whole name right now.

“You know who I am!” she spat a bit at him “Sorry, ma’am,” the southern boy said as he looked down. Looking up he said “I have a message for the General?”

“Come in please?” she said as he just stood there. Clearing his throat, Lori took that as he can’t come in. So she said “I’ll get the General” “Thank you, ma’am.” Lori scooted back to Marcus’s den and a moment later Darla stepped out, a little miffed to be bugged on her off time. Returning the salute to the M.P. she said “What!?”

“General, ma’am, I have a message from the President for your ears only.”

“Ok, you got me, spit it out, soldier,” looking up at him like this better be good.

“Message is: there is a message from Chef en route! Ma’am” Darla’s face could not have grown brighter, downright giddy even, as she dismissed the M.P.

On a beach somewhere in Bermuda Jake kicked at the hot sand as he was walking down a beautiful beach. The Colonel was flying home on an airline flight as soon as they heard the news about it succeeding; needing to get back to his wife and children. Jake was thinking about the week he just had and he and Marcus’s conversation. His part of the big picture. He saw a reflection ahead of him and almost laughed. It was the Commander’s bald head shining, as he played volleyball with some local women.

Anne had made good with her brother and they were making gains on repairing their family. Jessica and Barney spent a lot of time there. Anne wished she could talk she was not good at secrets. Have they not found that out about her yet? They shared the time together with dinners and rest, lots of rest. It seemed the repairs going on around the world included people too and not just stuff.

A Harley screamed past the troopers, they clocked it at a little over a hundred. Looking at each other the Colorado State Troopers just continued drinking their coffee. Harleys were off-limits nationwide.

Looking over the pictures Jonathan was entranced, he ‘felt’ the pictures it seemed to Lori. Great emotional swings in his eyes and his body. Which she had never seen him do before. General Moyer walked in with a beaming look on her face and said “Lori, dear, I have something to tell you.”

“Yes,” Lori replied happy to have remembered the pictures still.

“I will just tell you what I just heard ok?”

“Ok?” Lori now replied worried.

“There is a message from Marcus en route.” Lori stood there shocked… Jonathan hearing that stopped what he was doing even.

“Where is it?”

“That is all I know,” Darla said sadly. Lori was numb: “When will it get here?”

“That’s all I know now, honey, I’m sorry,” she said again deflating.

That Thursday night the General cooked for them all. Jonathan told some of the ancient stories he could remember. Lori ate and went to sleep, still numb.

Agent Bennett had long since left Cheyenne Mountain and NORAD behind him. Leaving everyone there alone to do their jobs. Lieutenant Saxegaard just returned to duty after being questioned for activity on a Russian system. Laughing he simply held up his subpoena and cited National Security.

He was sitting at his normal station monitoring high-altitude flights, both Military and Civilian for most of the Pacific Ocean and West Coast of the U.S. Parts of the debris stream were passing near Earth. Some fragments entered the atmosphere; others crossed the tracking network’s field and complicated its returns. He did notice that there were two HF (high flyers) near American Samoa something that was out of place. He dutifully noted in his log as an anomaly.

Near the village of Fagaitua on American Samoa villagers were going down to the shores in droves. Between their village and the Village of Faleasao on Ta’u Island something was seen in the night sky. Most were just looking at the shooting stars, their bright green streaks filling the sky at times.

Professional Photographer Brandi Lynn was there on a photo shoot for a high-end fashion magazine. Not wanting to miss this she set up her cameras and began taking video and stills. Catching a large meteor in her frames decided to follow it… to… right where she was! Taking her camera away from her eyes, she saw that it was not coming at her. But near to her and followed it to an almost atomic splashdown in the waters between the two islands. Within minutes it was on Instagram and Facebook or would be when the fluctuating internet signals returned.

By Friday morning, Agent Bennett had reached Samoa. Brandi answered a knock to find him standing at her door.

“Agent Bennett, ma’am. May we talk about your pictures?”

Chapter Forty-Four

Friday morning Lori slept in again, not wanting to get out of bed. She knew there was something else that Marcus had to say to her but she would have to wait. It was being delivered through bike messenger? Grey Feather was still staying in the guest room not wanting to leave Lori. But since he had heard about the message from Marcus, he was curious too.

He cooked breakfast for the two of them and sat her down in front of it, aromatherapy if anything. She picked at the toast and drank her hazelnut creamed coffee. Jonathan retreating to the backyard for another round of meditation, it was his saving grace as well.

Outside of Spokane, Washington, a Shovelhead Harley was gassing up at a local Shell station. Two local police officers were checking out the long-haired biker, this simply wasn’t his kind of town. Keying in his license plate number into their computers they soon turned ghost white and continued to drink their coffee.

On Ta’u, people were clearing up after the waves from the offshore impact. The strike had registered on seismographs, and it was not the only one. Much of the debris had burned high in the atmosphere; some had reached the ground. There were frightening close calls near Rio and damaged houses across the Midwest. Survival had not made the fragments harmless.

What made the Samoan footage different was the detail. Brandi had caught the descending object in a long, high-resolution sequence. Once the connection held, the government’s analysts were able to examine it frame by frame.

Governments were already competing to recover fragments for analysis. Preliminary spectral readings had started rumors about valuable or dangerous materials, but no one had verified what lay inside the recovered pieces. The Samoan footage drew attention for a different, very secret reason.

Bowman received reports that some fragments had struck military and industrial sites in China. A few people around him were unpleasantly pleased by the coincidence. He had enough wreckage at home to know better.

In the Pacific, naval and coast-guard vessels from several countries converged on the reported splashdown and the surrounding debris. Their speed and numbers overwhelmed the islanders.

General Moyer was in her office when the call came in that afternoon… it was Bennett. She scooted out the door with her purse in her hand. The other Officers in her office were not surprised at her speed, but the smiles she had been wearing these last few days. She jumped in her private car and sped off the base, a few MPs in tow for a moment before realizing the car’s owner.

Jonathan had brought Lori outside to the surprisingly warm fall day. Thinking the Sun would do her good, and it would get her out of the house at least. Sitting at a small bench with a colorful large umbrella they talked. Lori was opening up just a bit and Jonathan did not want to pry too soon. To Jonathan pain was fine, as long as you don’t make yourself suffer. Talking a bit about Marcus until the tears came then changing subjects and bringing up the Seahawks. Their year was good this one.

Up the street they heard a roar of a motor that shook the ground a little bit. Whoever it was wasn’t in a hurry and the bike’s motor steadily got closer. Jonathan and Lori stopped talking because they couldn’t really hear themselves at that time. A blue Harley Shovelhead chopper pulled up at the little white gate that was always open. A road dirty leathered guy swings off slowly and strides up to the door. Seeing Lori and Jonathan sitting there a moment later he changes direction and takes off his helmet.

“Lori Downs?” he asked her in a dusty voice. Lori standing up and walking towards him answered in a hopeful voice “Yes… That’s me.” The man reached into his jacket at that time and pulled out a Ziploc bag and opened it, inside was a letter. Holding out the letter to Lori she took it with shaking hands and tearing up eyes. Then the man with the dusty voice looked at her with all too knowing eyes said “Thank You.” Then gave her a hug and rode away. Jonathan came up to her and took her back into the house; her crying continuing.

Sitting there in her living room and looking at Hobbes in Marcus’s spot licking himself. She opened up the Letter marked with her name and address in Marcus’s hand. She began to laugh at first because of the paper and how it fit his humor so well. It simply read.

Honey

I’ll be back!!

If there is any way I can come back I will. I know that I can see your love wherever you are, I will find you.

Love Forever

Goofy

Lori began to cry and to laugh and she knew that he would try like Houdini to scare the crap out of her and come back.

“Oh” she let out after a laugh and it was just like Marcus to make a joke out of something. But that’s what she loved about him and she would never lose that, she was sure. Jonathan taking the letter from her hands after being offered.

“Ah…He’s a nutbag,” he said straight-faced and dry. Lori then turned to Jonathan and hugged him, and began crying again.

General Moyer was speeding down the street by the traffic circle where a Howitzer stood earlier in the week. She had to slow down a bit as to not hit a motorcycle. She pulled up to the little house with the always open gate and rushed inside not bothering to knock. She turned into the living room and saw the two laughing a little and hugging.

“I got news!” she said and just continued “You young lady better get your act together! Because we gotta get you on a plane to Hawaii. They found him and they are flying you there now! There’s a chopper on the way here now!” Jonathan caught Lori as she fainted… Handing the letter to the General.

Chapter Forty-Five

An Australian military C-130 carried Marcus Downs toward Hawaii. His badly burned body was still trapped in the ruined S.O.A.P. IV.

Bennett looked at the recovered images again. Meteors didn’t have two deployable wings. Once the analysts had seen that, the search had changed. A search aircraft had spotted it, and a ship had found the floating wreckage and the faintest signs of life beneath it. The suit’s emergency flotation had worked even when almost everything else had failed.

The suit had deployed the wings but the parachute had failed before it could slow the descent properly. Half the ‘lid’ and his whole left arm armor were missing a chunk and the suit was shredded beneath that. Agent Bennett stood by and watched as the medics were trying to open it up and get to the patient, he had very faint vital signs. How the hell could he have survived? going through his head. Commander Gronning, Colonel Baker, Crissy and Jake were already on their way en route to Hawaii to assist with the suit that wasn’t supposed to be.

Jake was smiling from ear to ear and in a great mood which irritated the hell out of Crissy. But she was happy to know the reason, Chef came home…

Lori was resting comfortably on board the plane having come to and told to rest. It was a very nice jet that the helicopter had placed them by. Jonathan noticed that they all wore an Australian military type of outfit. General Moyer and He chatting away the time realizing they were at the same protest in the sixties. He as a protester and she as a soldier, but they were at the age where that didn’t matter. Time had healed old wounds; friends shared a lifetime about a lifetime ago.

The C-130 landed at Hickam, part of Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam. Major Lynne Bray M.D. had just come on duty. She joined the receiving medical team at the airfield, where two men in dark suits and sunglasses were waiting. Agents Witte and Sanchez were given time to assist on this at the President’s request. They were not going to let just anyone get close to Marcus without screening them. Her identity and clearance were checked while the transport team prepared. Nobody was letting the paperwork delay treatment. She checked out and was waiting for the giant aircraft to finish taxiing to a stop.

Knowing there was already a team on board she took point as soon as she could. Witte and Sanchez looked on at Marcus in the huge suit still and turned away. His burned and damaged condition a little more than they could take. A reinforced transfer platform carried him into the medical transport. At the receiving hospital, the armored frame would not fit the usual bed or working space, so they cleared and equipped a ground-floor service bay. The team began treatment while the suit specialists were still on their way. Dr. Bray went to work trying to save this blown up… robot man?

Lori’s plane was brought into the base itself which was not unusual for jets of this designation, just rare. She and the two lovebirds arrived at the hospital and were told that the doctors were working on him. Lori screaming to suit her up, she just about took out two male nurses that were in her way.

The radiation team found no significant external contamination as Dr. Bray attended to parts of the patient that they could get to. Once the radiation check was completed and they got an intravenous drip going. His signs were checked constantly, very faint, in and out. But being as stable as she could make him, she walked into the waiting area.

“Mrs. Downs?” she said looking at the civilian woman in the room.

“I’m Dr. Bray…Marcus’s doctor.” Lori’s stomach fell and kept falling until she heard the words “He’s as stable as I can make him.” Lori’s beaming face rose up to the doctor’s and she started crying and hugging the startled Major.

“He’s alive!!?” Dr. Bray not knowing the whole story just stood there and smiled for her.

“But…” Lori’s heart sank with that three-letter destroyer of aspirations.

“We have to talk.” With that she and Lori spoke for the next thirty minutes about what she was going to see. Lori didn’t care about the burns or looks; she just wanted her husband back in her arms. She wanted her world…

Before Lori could get in to see Marcus the team from Fort Benning arrived. Dr. Bray told her that this had to be done immediately. She understood completely and shooed the doctor away to work just happy with the news still. Jonathan and the General were almost as happy as she was about Marcus’s condition…Alive.

Jake and Crissy having just arrived were ungraciously scrubbed and gloved by four of Dr. Bray’s nurses. Looking at the equipment they brought in Lynne could do nothing but sigh, it was needed.

Jake was nervous and Crissy was eager, a little too much for Jake. They were hurried down a corridor into a service area that looked at the moment a lot like the lab. Their equipment had been wrapped the best that the team could do with plastic. At that Agents Witte and Sanchez welled up as they saw it being rolled past them. Stopping Jake for a moment before he went in Witte said “Take care of Chef for us will ya!?” in his whiskey voice. Jake just nodded, noting the guy was his size too.

It was almost too much for Jake to stomach when he walked in. The smells and the sounds, and the sight of Marcus were overwhelming. Even though he had witnessed the ravages of war many times, this was different, this was Chef.

Walking up to the suit that Crissy was already at, he looked down and was afraid for the first time in a long time. Like being shocked his face changed and he got to work. Crissy looking up and saying “This isn’t gonna be easy!” Jake just nodded and went to the toolbox wrapped in plastic.

Chapter Forty-Six

Lori was elated and they talked about the mission and wondered at Marcus’s letter and his chutzpah. She wondered aloud “Maybe Marcus was too busy looking for something outside of himself that he forgot what he already had inside?” Jonathan replied “Many the man gets lost in that land.”

Dr. Bray’s nurse came in and filled them in. That it appeared to her that the cutting of the suit is going to take some time. Nurse Knouse hurried back to assist the doctor wondering if the cutting out would do more harm to the patient.

For two hours Jake and Crissy worked on the damaged armor. They had opened only eight inches of the sixteen-inch line needed to release the chest shell. The impact and heat had fused the release points; the normal removal sequence was useless.

Crissy’s cutting head worked in short, controlled passes, with shielding beneath it wherever they could place it. Bray monitored the temperature at Marcus’s skin and stopped them whenever it rose too far. The surviving liner offered some protection, but nobody trusted it blindly.

Jake kept his eyes on the cut. Looking at Chef’s face made his hands less steady. Crissy, usually impossible to silence, spoke only to call the readings or ask for a tool.

A few hours later Jake looked up.

“Doc, we’re nearly through. Get your team ready.”

“Ok Chef, gonna get you out of here in three, two, one,” he said as he could hear the suit crack. With a few more minutes of cutting he heard the entire unit lose structure and break under the stress “Crack!” He reached for the cooler side of the piece and lifted, it was stuck but it moved a bit. Jake wedged his fingers under the armor and curled them around an edge. Pulling it up it did not come, so he climbed on the table and stood over the chest piece legs wide. He reached in and curled his fingers once again and began to pull up face contorting into that of a powerlifter. Now Crissy has seen Jake lift a lot of things over the years and this was by far his hardest challenge. With another crack and a few pulled ligaments Jake was holding the chest piece in front of himself.

Rushing in and rushing them out right then was Dr. Bray and her team, they got busy extracting the patient. Asking if the material could be cut she was informed to use tin snips. Jake was rushed from the room and as they did so he turned and looked again at his friend, burns and all. Nurse Knouse saw that his glove had been torn and he was bleeding pretty good and bandaged him up. The extraction took forty-five minutes and then he was rushed into surgery. Lori was told the news and she remained hopeful in the waiting room, patiently waiting for updates.

Twelve hours later an exhausted and frayed woman came in, they almost didn’t recognize Dr. Bray.

“Mrs. Downs…He is out of surgery and stable…but he is in a coma.”

“When can I see him?” Lori asked eagerly.

“In a few hours, but remember what I told you about his condition. I have to get a nap in.” The doctor left another member of the team to answer their questions and went to find a few hours of sleep.

A few hours later Lori was led to a scrubbing station and instructed what to do, she had to be sterile as possible.

She finished and was escorted by Nurse Knouse to the room reminding.

“Remember not to touch anything but his right hand. I am sorry about the facial bandages.” Lori walked into the room and headed to Marcus like she was floating, looking down at his right hand she took his lightly in hers.

“I love you, Goofy,” she said softly in his ear and remained by his side holding onto what she could. The coma lasted nearly six months. Lori stayed close throughout, leaving his bedside only when she had to. Jonathan returned home with the General to look after Hobbes and the house.

Chapter Forty-Seven

The burns began healing at a rate that unsettled the medical team. They documented the changes, repeated the measurements, and looked for an explanation. None of it explained why he remained unconscious.

Lori noticed the extra examinations and the looks exchanged over the charts. Eventually she asked Nurse Knouse—Heather, by then—to tell her plainly what was happening. Heather did. The recovery was real. The reason was unknown.

Later, with the physician’s agreement, Heather asked whether Lori would be comfortable with a quiet Reiki session. She described it as her own spiritual practice, not a treatment for the coma or a substitute for the care he was receiving. Lori agreed. After months of machines and waiting, a little quiet sounded welcome.

That evening in April, Heather dimmed the lights without disturbing the monitors and began near Marcus’s feet. Lori watched from the chair. She didn’t know what she expected, only that Heather’s stillness made the room feel different.

Then the nurse winced. She steadied herself and continued. For an instant Lori thought she saw gossamer strands of neon green between them. She blinked and blamed fatigue.

After half an hour Heather lowered her hands and opened her eyes. For a long moment she said nothing.

“What?” Lori asked.

“I can’t tell you what he feels,” Heather said softly.

“But I’ve never experienced anything like that. It felt… peaceful. Enormous.”

“Is that good?”

“I hope so.” Heather took her hands.

“Thank you for letting me sit with him.”

They hugged. When Heather left, Lori took Marcus’s hand again.

“When will you come back all the way?”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Four days later Dr. Bray came into Marcus’s room, Lori was asleep on the couch they brought in for her. Checking his vitals and the usual routine she noticed a change in the EEG pattern, then saw his eyelids move. She tested his response and called the nurses. The nurses started coming in and checking everything out as well, Marcus was beginning to respond. Waking Lori up in the process Heather just said, “I think someone in here is gonna want to see you?” Lori looked around confused? She was helped up and brought to Marcus’s side “He should be waking up soon,” she added softly. Lori held his hand and began to tear up looking at him lying there, still scarred from the burns but healing. Marcus’s hand squeezed hers then again, she looked down at him. His eyes opened…

“Hi, honey?” he said extremely hoarsely and then “I love you bunches…where is Hobbes? I had a heck of a dream last night.” She looked down at him with big saucers for eyes and replied “I love you too, honey, Hobbes is fine…You said dreams?”

“Not really dreams, I’ve been awake for a few minutes… I was just trying to find something funny to say!” Lori burst out crying not laughing because her world was home.

After a few more weeks she got to take him home to Hobbes and Jonathan. He would still be healing for quite some time Dr. Bray told them.

In the coming months he got to know General Moyer as she and Jonathan continued their relationship. She promised to help him find work when he was well enough. Agents Witte and Sanchez stopped by with his helmet and the President during a later trip through the region. Marcus was really glad to see them all foregoing the bear hugs to a later date. And thanking the President again for letting him go. The President inviting him over to his Personal home any time he chose and said “Nonsense, Marcus…I couldn’t have stopped you anyways.”

He would often catch people staring just a little too long at him. His looks changed enough by the ordeal, that they soon lost interest. McCarl and CNN got a visit from an IT guy one day. With help from the U.S. Government and a few others, it was all greatly disavowed.

One day Lori noticed an SUV pull up to their little house and out stepped a Mother and Child. As they walked up to the gate that was never shut Lori started to the front door. Not afraid but curious that they had the wrong house she leaned out the door “Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m looking for Marcus Downs?”

“And what business do you have with him?” Lori was now piqued “I’d rather not say,” replied the woman. That snapped her a bit and she retorted “Well if his WIFE can’t hear it” “Lori!?”

“Are you Lori!?” she was cut off which would have made it worse.

But Lori remembers faces and she had never met this woman whoever she was.

“Yes that’s my name?”

“I’m Anne, Dr. Anne Kelly!” Lori remembered the name well “Oh I’m so sorry come in, come in, you are more than welcome in our home!” Once inside “Marcus is out back in his chair writing. This way, please.” “Oh?” Anne sounded curious.

“Oh, he’s just making notes. How old is your boy?” Anne “He isn’t mine this is my brother Barney.” “Hi, Barney!” Lori said to him and looked knowingly into Anne’s eyes.

They found Marcus beside the firepit, looking a million miles away.

“There’s someone here I think you should meet,” Lori said.

He turned.

“Anne. Good to finally meet you.”

She looked puzzled for a second.

“The feds,” he explained, sparing her the question. They had all been debriefed and interrogated. His own account went only as far as a piece of the asteroid breaking loose and striking him. After that he remembered nothing clearly.

“I’m sorry to come by,” Anne said.

“I know we’re supposed to avoid contact. But I brought my little brother to meet the real Superman.”

Marcus would normally have protested. Looking into Barney’s eyes, he decided he could manage the part for a little while.

He couldn’t fly anymore. He had tried, carefully, as soon as he was strong enough. No fuzziness, no lift, no answer from whatever had carried him before. But being a hero to someone who believed in him didn’t require all that, did it?

They played in the yard as best Marcus’s healing body allowed. Later they ate together and traded stories—Anne’s Australia, Marcus’s reception at the White House, the sort of details that hadn’t belonged in any official report.

When it was time to leave, Barney held out his hug arms. Marcus couldn’t lift him, so he bent down and did his best.

Barney handed him the cape.

“I have to leave it here,” he told Annie.

“He lost his.”

They laughed the laugh that comes just before a cry, and parted.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Marcus has not seen Jake or the others from Fort Benning since. The only word he has been able to get is that they are stationed overseas, on a mission. That is all anyone will tell him.

One night, shortly before Jonathan went home, the three of them sat out back talking about the cave.

“My quiet one and the Water Bearers,” Jonathan said.

“You haven’t said that in a while,” Lori answered.

“Did the story finally come back in your meditation?”

“Not in meditation.” He looked sheepish.

“In one of your books. I was waiting to see if our friend was ready to hear it.”

“I’m all better now,” Marcus lied. He was stronger, anyway.

“I’d better get the book. My memory has already demonstrated its qualifications.”

He returned with Lien’s collection and opened it on his knees.

“This is her telling of it,” he said.

“The old stories change with the person who carries them.”

For a few moments he sat quietly. Then, in the voice Marcus remembered from childhood, he began.

The Skin of the Earth

Before the time of living things, the Earth was ruled by the Horned Fire Demons. They were darkness and fire, and they allowed no living thing on the Earth.

The Water Bearers came to bring light to the Earth, and the two sides battled for billions of years.

The Horned Fire Demons were losing. They gathered all the darkness they could to destroy the Water Bearers, but the Water Bearers could not be destroyed. So the demons made an offer: the Water Bearers could have half the Earth.

Pleased with the bargain, the Water Bearers came down among the fire, brimstone, and lava. It was an ambush. The Horned Fire Demons trapped them beneath the flames. There the Water Bearers ceased fighting and began to grow, making water below their captors. For billions of years they grew beneath the surface.

At last, a drop of water reached the surface among the Horned Fire Demons. It reflected the Sun Creator and brought light to the Earth. More water followed. For millions of years the Water Bearers let it flow from their prison, making lakes, rivers, and oceans, and preparing the land for its peoples.

The water carried the Sun Creator’s light and warmth. Life stirred in it, and the wind was born. The Water Bearers still grow today, keeping the Horned Fire Demons far from the light. The demons remain in their unintended half of the bargain, beneath the skin of the Earth.

It is here that I would say THE END…But is it ever… really?

This book is dedicated to my late father, Thomas B. Douge, and my mother, Virginia E. Douge.

M. E. Douge

Message from the Author:

This was my first book, written from memory and imagination between October 15 and 31, 2013. The crisis, technology, and legend belong to this fictional story. Real names and the real asteroid designation 2012 DA14 appear alongside invented events; historical details have been adapted. The Water Bearers and Horned Fire Demons are part of an invented origin story, not a translation or an account of a particular tribe’s traditional teaching.

If you missed the story it was trying to tell that’s fine. It tells more than one story to me and that’s all that really matters. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Tempests Follow