TORMENT (8 page)

“One.”

The ship shook violently.

Screams from outside filtered through the steel walls and rumbling engines. Then with a violent kick, the voices fell silent. The people and trains outside the portal disappeared in the billowing smoke.

A tremendous pressure clasped her body tight. Mia looked down and realized the restraints had compressed around her body. She couldn’t move.

Then the ship lifted off, sucking what little air remained in her compressed lungs, denying her the opportunity to vent her fear, anger and vast terror with a scream.

Sam Black climbed out of his car. He’d managed to turn the wheel just as his car lost power. He had avoided hitting the car in front of him, but careened over the curb and up onto the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue. He’d expected Secret Service men to swarm the scene, followed quickly by police and firemen. But no one showed. Looking out the windshield, he could see why. By the lack of sound, he judged that every car within earshot had died. “What the...”

Sam caught sight of the front tire that had struck the curb first.
“Aww, hell.”
The tire was flat and the rim bent. “Dammit.”

Recently divorced, working as a line cook and paying alimony, a new tire, let alone a front axle
was
far above his budget. A shrill scream took his attention away from the latest miserable chapter of his life. A woman across the street, standing with the White House as a backdrop, pointed toward the horizon. “They’re going to crash!”

Sam followed her pointed finger and saw the faint image of a 747 falling nose down, far in the distance.

A heavily mustached man stepped up on the curb next to him. “Think it’s the terrorists?
First the power and now this.”

Sam turned to the man, “The power?”

“Power’s out everywhere...in everything.”

Sam turned back to the plane in time to see it disappear behind the city’s buildings. A woman across the street screamed. She’d seen it, too. A distant boom pealed through the air like thunder and smoke rose to the sky. Then the ground began to shake. “What the hell? No way could we feel that plane hit.”

The mustached man nodded.
“Must have been ten miles away.”

A line of people filled the sidewalk in either direction, moving forward slowly, pointing and talking. Sam lowered his eyes from the smoke-filled horizon to the green grass of Lafayette Park’s famous Ellipse.

“Ho-lee shit,” the mustached man said. “What’s going on?”

Four massive holes opened up at the middle of the Ellipse. Large disks of grass had sunk down and were now sliding beneath the park. Already, the four openings looked like half moons.

“What the...” Sam stepped forward, intent on getting a good look. This would be a good story to tell his kid. Might give him some leverage over the ex. Dad witnessed history being made, kid, be proud.

Seconds after the spaces opened fully, a massive rumble shook the ground and smoke blasted from three of the four holes. A moment later, smoke burst from the fourth hole.

The sidewalk full of onlookers began stepping back. Sam stayed still, rooted by curiosity. Three white domes emerged from three of the holes, huge gleaming bodies rising from the ground. Plumes of smoke billowed out around them.

Sam stepped back as he realized that whatever these things were, they had rockets attached to them and he had no idea how far the heat would reach. He saw people getting back into their cars. He did the same and then realized his electric powered windows were down. He jumped out and headed for the next car on the road, never taking his eyes off the rising behemoths. When the fourth object began to rise he knocked on the window of the mustached man’s car. The door flung open, “Get in man,
get
in!”

Sam climbed in and slammed the door as a wall of steam and smoke overtook the street full of dead cars,
then
rolled over the White House itself. The smoke settled and cleared as the four craft rose up into the sky, one lagging behind the others by several hundred feet.

“Ma-aan,” the mustached man said, “What the fu—” The man caught his breath as three small objects fell from the undersides of the higher three crafts, which were now a thousand feet off the ground and rising.

“What are those?” Sam asked.

An instant later, Sam’s eyes registered a bright white flash, a pain like someone striking his full body with a massive fist, and a twist in his gut. He vomited as his bowels loosened and he felt blood seeping from his nose, eyes, ears and mouth. On top of all that, he was blind and deaf.

Sam never saw the three higher crafts launch skyward at amazing speeds, riding shockwave after shockwave of small nuclear explosions. He had no idea the fourth one had been knocked off course by the explosions from the first three. And when the fourth ship launched its small nuclear device horizontally rather than vertically, Sam had no way to know it had landed just outside the mustached man’s car.

Then they both ceased to exist.

10

Over Washington D.C.

Points of light danced in Mia’s vision as she fought against the restraint system and crushing G-forces, struggling to catch a breath. The restraints were designed to keep the force of lift-off from tearing apart a human body, but did nothing to prevent the sudden increase in pressure, which significantly lowered blood pressure and the flow of oxygen to the brain. As the rapidly accelerating escape pod approached 8 G’s, known as the maximum G-force, unconsciousness loomed for Mia. Realizing this, she struggled to look out the portal. She felt sure it would be the last time she saw Earth’s blue sky.

But the view from the portal was solid white. Mia thought her failing mind was playing tricks, but color variations kept her focused. Then the white disappeared, replaced by a vibrant blue. She could see the tops of clouds in the distance. They’d passed through the clouds and were rising quickly. The scene looked beautiful and serene, and for a moment, allowed Mia a reprieve from the horrible pressure and shaking. As the clouds faded from view, the blue hue became deep, like the depths of the ocean.

The colorful dots that filled her vision turned white and stationary. As she winked in and out of consciousness, she realized the stationary points of lights were stars. Then something else, something she wished was an illusion, passed by in the distance. A long, black-tipped cylinder rocketed past in the opposite direction. Then she saw more—missiles descending from space to Earth. Her consciousness faded, and with the last of her lucidity she took one last peek through the portal. This time she saw new missiles, more than she imagined possible, rising up from the same country that would, within seconds, no longer exist.

Then the oxygen-sucking maximum G-force robbed her of consciousness.

Tom Austin woke as the forces pushing against his body disappeared. He lifted his hands to his head and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t remember passing out, but knew he had. Having no memory of the restraint system releasing him was proof of that. He sat, pushing with his hands and shot out of the chair. He spun toward the ceiling and collided with it.

Zero gravity.

From maximum G to zero G
, Austin thought.
That’s just great.

He shoved off the ceiling and took hold of his chair. He knew there was no up or down anymore, but the designers of the Earth Escape Pod obviously hadn’t taken that into account. His eyes still perceived an up and down, but his body had no clue, and he felt the confusion in his stomach. Fighting the urge to puke, Austin focused on the few men and women in the room who were now under his direct care as the ranking Secret Service agent on board. President Collins’s chest rose and fell—unconscious, but alive. Around the president lay the three members of his Secret Service team: Daniel White, the skinny, blond-haired, emerald-eyed electronics wiz, Joseph Garbarino, the burly Italian Stallion, and Erin Vanderwarf, one of the few female field agents in the service, whose full pouty lips and long lashes made her one of the prettiest, too, despite a rugged build. All seemed fine.

Austin turned his attention to their guests. He flung himself from chair to chair, covering the empty spaces between him and Paul Byers, the war hero. Byers looked dead, but a quick check of his pulse revealed otherwise. Paul’s brother, the priest, was already beginning to stir. Before his eyes got to the next passenger, her name echoed through the room.

“Elizabeth!” Mia shouted as she flung herself from the chair and catapulted through the air, up and above her young niece. Tom pushed off Paul’s chair and intercepted Mia as she approached the ceiling. Gripping a handhold, he snagged Mia’s wrist with his free hand. The force of Mia’s movement pushed them both flat against the ceiling. He looked at her as confusion flooded her eyes.

“We’re in space,” he said. “No gravity.”

She looked at him, eyes wide and nodded frantically. She understood, but the information clearly unnerved her. Tears filled her eyes.
“My sister.
My mother.”

Mia hadn’t asked a question, but Austin heard one. He closed his eyes and gave a gentle nod. “Everyone is gone.”

When she began to cry, he didn’t know how to respond. He barely knew this woman. His instincts leaned toward survival, not mourning. But he wasn’t without sympathy. He gave a tug on her hand and she floated into his embrace. He held her, floating in zero gravity for nearly a minute while she cried into his shoulder. Then she pushed away slowly, wiping away her tears. “Thanks.”

He offered a thin smile. The woman was resilient, he gave her that much. She didn’t break down or cry out. She mourned briefly, and now, like him, was setting her mind on their current predicament. “Push off the ceiling, gently. You won’t slow down until you hit something.”

She nodded quickly again and looked down at the floor, ten feet below. “An object in motion...”

Austin smiled and finished, “Tends to stay in motion. Yes.”

Austin let go of her arm and she pushed off the ceiling gently, but not quite evenly. She spun on her way to the floor, bounced off one of the laid back chairs and caught herself on the floor. She righted herself. Without a comment or look back at Austin, she pulled herself to Elizabeth’s side. He watched as she checked the girl’s pulse.

“She okay?” he asked.

Mia nodded. “Should I wake her up?”

“Best if they wake on their own. Let the mind recuperate first.”

Mia turned her gaze from Elizabeth to the portal. “Have you looked?”

“What?”

“At Earth,” Mia said. “Have you looked?”

Austin felt a wave of anxiety wash through him. He’d been so focused on his duties that he’d forgotten all about the dangers they’d just escaped.
The dangers that more than six billion other people had no way of avoiding.
He doubted the few people who made it to the underground facilities could survive. In an all-out, no-holds-barred nuclear war, even a mountain could be flattened by repeated strikes.

As Mia made her way across the long room, guiding herself along rows of chairs, Austin pulled himself along a row of handholds built into the ceiling. At least the designers had gotten that right. They reached the slightly curved far wall at the same time and met at the dinner-plate sized portal, side by side, legs floating out behind them. It reminded Austin of looking through the underwater portal of his childhood home’s pool, but the aqua tinged view of his brother on the other side wasn’t there. Instead, he witnessed the
most vile
sight he had ever seen in his life. A swirl of black filled earth’s atmosphere and absorbed the light cast by the sun. Pulses of orange marked the detonation of still descending nuclear devices, further reducing the world to ash. Stabs of blue revealed the ocean below, but the vivid colored planet that only a few minutes ago stood out as a pearl in the universe had been reduced to a black and gray swirled marble.