Curtain Fall: Second Edition, Disaster, Preparedness, Survival, Awakening (The Gatekeeper Book 1) (43 page)

People of all ages walked along the shoulders. Most of them seemed aware of the approaching storm and were walking south or east, but they had no sense of urgency about them. Many faces turned to look over their shoulders at the approaching wall as they walked, but they seemed to be more in awe of the sight than terror. It was obvious to John that the people weren’t completely aware of the destruction that was bearing down upon them.

The sky continued to grow dark as if a huge boiling cauldron was spilling its dark fluid upon the land. Like a huge tidal wave, the storm front threatened to crash upon the heads of the hapless people below. John could no longer control himself, and he screamed, “Run! Take cover!”

But nobody heard him. They didn’t react to his warning. In fact, they couldn’t react to his warning. They could neither see nor hear John, and he knew it, so he turned to Eli once again and asked, “Can we leave this place?”

Eli took John’s hand and they flew away from the approaching storm. When they finally stopped, John saw that he was standing above another city, this time Oklahoma City. Though there were signs of earthquake damage, the city looked to have sustained the earthquakes very well. From John’s perspective, there was little obvious structural damage to the buildings in and around the city. However, he did notice that there were several fires; they burned in various sizes and intensities all around the city.

John descended to investigate further and saw that the fires were burning freely, that no effort was being made to extinguish them. John heard the sound of running feet and turned to see a group of thirty young men, armed with a variety of clubs, knives and guns, moving together as a group. People ducked into buildings and dark alleys as the gang passed. They were an obvious threat to the community.

John was curious to learn what he was meant to see by the display, so he followed the gang as they made their way down the street. When
the gang neared an adjacent shopping center, they slowed and began to move more cautiously. It didn’t take John long to identify the gang’s target, which was a large grocery store in the center of the shopping center.

The grocery store was under the protection of four police officers, each of whom were unmistakable in their Oklahoma City Police Department uniforms. Two squad cars were parked, nose to nose, in standard barrier fashion, between the store’s two entrances. The arrival of the gang drew their attention and they immediately took cover behind their police cars.

One young man, wearing a military digital-camouflage top, yelled something to the police taking cover behind their cars. John couldn’t hear the exchange, but he guessed the man was the gang leader.

One of the police officers stood up behind his car and boldly walked out into the open, apparently to address the gang leader. When the cop waved his hand as if to shoo the gang away, they responded with laughter and taunts. John could see that the gang was entertained by the police and eager for a fight.

A rock struck the police officer’s leg and his hand went to his pistol. John yelled, “No! Why’d you leave your cover?”

Another rock flew toward the police officer, and he drew his pistol. In that instant, the officer was hit several times by gunfire from the gang, and he fell to the ground mortally wounded. The remaining three officers returned fire with a shotgun and pistols, but the gang took cover and waited for them to reload.

When the lull arrived, an officer ran out to help his fallen partner. He was immediately gunned down by the gang.

John watched in shock as the gang leader called three men to him. He knelt and etched out his plan in the dirt at the base of a tree, and sent the team away to flank the police cars. John knew, just by watching the partially camo clad leader, that the man had tactical training and combat experience. He moved with confidence and determination, as if he was attacking a known enemy position. There was no way he was a civilian.

It sickened John that the military could produce such a man, and he wondered why the police didn’t receive tactical training to at least defend themselves. But a bigger part of John’s awareness knew the fight was over before it even started. John didn’t know what motivated the police to defend the grocery store, but he thought it was a colossal waste of human life.

While the remaining two officers were busy defending themselves from the gang, the flanking squad moved in and shot and killed another officer. The surviving officer quickly threw down his weapon and surrendered.

John thought the leader would accept the man’s surrender, but he simply walked up to him and shot him in the head. The fight was over, and John was furious. He wanted to go down and crush the gang. To eliminate every last one of them. He turned angrily to Eli and asked, “Why did you show this to me?”

Eli’s face was serene as he turned to watch the gang. John saw the leader point to the officers, and gang members began stripping them of their equipment. Another group searched the police cars for anything useful. Finally, when the gang was fully assembled in front of the grocery store, the leader paused to address them. A unheard cheer rose up from the gang, and after many congratulatory back slaps and high-fives, the leader posted guards at the front of the grocery store, and then he led the rest of the gang in.

“I’ve seen enough . . . please take me home,” said John.

Eli turned to face John, and he extended a finger as if to hush him, but instead touched John’s forehead. John started at the touch and sat up in bed, awake and breathing heavily. A fine layer of sweat covered his body, and he reached out to turn on his bedside lamp.

While wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, Jenna stirred behind him and asked, “Are you alright?”

John shook his head slowly and grunted. Finally, after taking a drink of water, he said, “You’re not gonna believe what just happened to me.”

A
fter lacing up his running shoes at the foot of the entryway stairs, John stretched in preparation for a morning workout. It wasn’t overly early by his standard, but he was still tired from the night’s activities. He almost decided to sleep in, but felt strongly compelled to get up and run anyway. Besides, he considered running good medicine. It gave him a chance to clear his mind, and he’d use it to come to terms with everything that happened since first learning about the disaster.

John usually ran alone, but sometimes Adam would join him. He liked running with Adam because Adam didn’t feel the need to talk all the time. But this morning he didn’t want to chance a chatty Adam, so he decided to slip out alone.

He looked out the window and saw the approach of dawn, then checked his watch. There was still enough time to do a few sets of sit-ups and push-ups before the sun showed itself over the eastern horizon, so John moved to the living room and slid his feet under the sofa. After a quick set of fifty sit-ups, John rolled onto his stomach and did the same for push-ups. They were the army standard for fitness, and John rarely deviated from that practice, but his back and shoulders weren’t the same for it.

Breathing a little harder from the exercise, John took a moment to stretch his legs at the front door. He thought about Jenna while he stretched, and how she wasn’t at all impressed with his night vision. John knew it was early in the morning when he woke her, too early to expect any real excitement anyway, but he was surprised by her response of “It’s late, can we talk about this in the morning?”

John agreed and went back to bed, but he was hurt by her apparent apathy. He had a very strong feeling things would change for him, and he wanted to share his excitement with her. If anything, things would get even more interesting for him, and if she didn’t want to be a part of it now, then where would she be in a week, or even a month. Things were changing fast, and he desperately wanted her to be a part of it.

With his last stretch complete, John slapped his stomach hard. The shirt absorbed the sound, for the most part, but it was a silly game he played to motivate himself to workout. Keeping the weight off was getting harder and harder to do, what with his desk job and Jenna’s excellent cooking. Especially around his stomach. Hitting himself like that was his way of waking up the fat so it would burn off, or at least that’s what he liked to believe.

John knew the power of positive thinking, of activating his mind in a certain direction. He doubted it burned calories, only the run would do that, but he liked to think it got his fat burning system up and running in that specific area. Next, John fiddled with his smart phone. He activated the running app he preferred and slipped the phone into an armband. He tried running with music once, but it was too distracting. The phone was his way of tracking the running route, distance, elevation and speed.

He wondered what it would be like to live without his smart phone, it was such a regular part of his life that it would be difficult to function without it. But when he thought about it, not all the functions required a connection to the data stream. The camera, calendar, notes, and many other apps would continue to function as long as the phone was charged. And charging the phone wouldn’t be a challenge, not with the solar power he could draw from the house or the portable unit.

After taking a customary deep breath, John stepped off the front steps and pushed off at a gentle get-loose pace. When he cleared the walkway, he turned right to begin his customary warmup lap around the neighborhood. He did the same at the end of the run, to cool down,
and other than those two laps, that’s the only running he did in the neighborhood.

John hated running in circles, be it on a track or in a neighborhood, but he did like to see what was going on around him. In fact, that’s how he met most of his neighbors, while doing a cool-down lap after a Saturday morning run. But for the most part, John ran the country roads around the development. They were narrow, and he had to watch for careless drivers, but the routes he ran were varied and comfortable.

The warm-up lap also helped him loosen up his knees, but even that was taking longer to happen the older he got. With growing knee troubles, John considered adding cycling to his fitness schedule, but he had yet to make the leap. Something about wearing those silly looking tights just didn’t sit right with him. He didn’t care if they were designed for optimal cycling performance, or that they had special pockets to carry his gear. All that mattered to him was not looking like a male ballet dancer on wheels.

John stepped off the sidewalk and continued his run along the gutter. And as he stepped down he noticed something strange about the sky. He looked over his left shoulder while he continued to run, but then he slowed to a jog, and finally to a walk. After taking a few steps he stopped and turned to look north. He realized instantly what it was, the ash was coming.

He looked up and saw the overlapping grayness of the ash cloud high overhead. The sky was growing darker by the minute, and John was surprised he missed it. At first he attributed the sky to normal fall like weather, but it clearly wasn’t. The grayness of the approaching ash cloud was that of a gray scale, with the deep, dark gray at the northern horizon, and lighter shades of gray reaching high into the sky and over John.

To the south, the early morning blue sky was giving way to the rising sun, but long fingers of ash were already reaching into the distance, riding the winds of the upper atmosphere to spread their warning.

It was clear to John that ash was going to fall across Texas, and fall soon, so he turned around and started walking back to his house. He
wasn’t sure how long it would take the ash to reach the ground, but he didn’t want to be on the street when it did.

The ash would most likely be fine, but he believed that would make it dangerous to breathe. John picked up his pace and reached his walkway in minutes. He turned to look north again and slowly backed up the walkway to the front steps. Once on the patio, he sat on the bench and watched the approaching storm.
“Only it isn’t a storm,”
thought John,
“It’s change.”

And now that the change was almost upon him, he began to more fully appreciate the implications. Like it or not, the change was going to kill people. It was going to cause starvation, thirst and death. Hundreds of thousands of people would die as a result of the eruption, and John reminded himself not to celebrate the change because it arrived, but respect it for what it meant. To acknowledge the change for what it was. “Don’t personalize this, John,” he said aloud. “Don’t personalize it.”

Regardless of outcome, it wasn’t his fault, and that was the hardest thing for him to come to terms with at the moment. Knowing about the disaster didn’t mean it was his fault. He didn’t cause the eruption, or make the ash fall. But as he watched the approaching curtain of ash move ever closer, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for it.
“I should have told more people, at least the people in my neighborhood. Some of them might have listened.”

As the sky darkened, the street lights began to come back on, their sensors believing nightfall was again approaching. John remembered his phone and pulled it out. He stopped the running app and checked the temperature. It was a comfortable fifty-nine degrees, cool and crisp. He wondered what the ash would do to the temperature, would it be warmer or colder when it fell. He didn’t know, but he knew he’d find out soon enough.