The Quest: Countdown to Armageddon: Book 6 (11 page)

     “I’ll tell her.”

     “Oh. And give her a big hug and tell her it’s from everyone back at the compound. They all miss her too.”

     “Okay. I’ll do that.”

     The women hugged and Scarlett added, “Good luck on your journey. Don’t forget to check in every time you get access to a ham radio. It would be a terrible thing if your mom was found, and then you guys got lost yourselves.”

     Tom said, “We won’t get lost. We’ll always know where we are. But don’t worry. We’ll check in every chance we get.”

     He nodded toward John’s room.

     “I was looking forward to getting to know John. Perhaps I will someday soon. If there’s anything we can do to help the situation here, please let us know.”

     An hour later Tom and Sara were back on horseback, making use of the quickly diminishing daylight to make it to Sara’s old house before dark.

     Their plan was to spend the night at the house, and to start canvassing her old neighborhood at first light.

-20-

     A bit later as Sara and Tom bedded down for the night, she in her old bed and Tom in her parents’, trouble was brewing.

     But it wasn’t in Sara’s old house, or even her neighborhood.

     It was much farther away.

     Ninety three million miles away, more or less.

     On the surface of the sun, great masses of hydrogen, helium and a few other assorted gasses broiled.

     Never quite stable, the monstrous star’s molten plasma was especially turbulent in the months and years just following its massive explosion some three years before.

     That explosion had sent massive electromagnetic pulses racing toward the earth to send mankind into turmoil.

     Years before, when Scott was researching Mayan prophesies and trying to determine what they meant by their “last period of progress,” he’d made an incredibly important discovery.

     The Mayans never said the world was going to end on December 21, 2012, as millions around the world believed.

     What they actually said was that date marked the beginning of the last period in which mankind would continue his never-ending march toward an easier life.

     Or, as man liked to call it, “progress.”

     The Mayans believed that at the end of their “last period of progress,” something would happen that would set man back thousands of years. Something so cataclysmic that no one would be spared its wrath.

     And it turned out they were right, as Scott and the rest of the world would find out a couple of years later.

     Scott found evidence that the Mayans were predicting massive solar storms on the sun around two hundred years or so after the last recorded such storms in 1820.

     And sure enough, almost two hundred years later, another round of such storms knocked out power around the world.

     Scott could be forgiven in assuming that the world was safe from a similar disaster for another two hundred years.

     And perhaps the Mayans could be forgiven as well.

     After all, it was amazing that they could predict solar storms at all, at a time when things such as telescopes didn’t exist.

     So the possibility that one massive solar storm might make it easier for similar storms to happen never occurred to them. And if it had, they likely wouldn’t have cared much.

     Through their hieroglyphics, they were able to warn future generations about the solar storm phenomenon. They’d done their part.

     The Mayans had been able to predict earthquakes as well, without the aid of modern technology. But they never left any warning of the destructive power of aftershocks, which frequently caused more damage to already-weakened structures than the quakes themselves.

     In the same way a massive earthquake can cause a fault line to be unstable and therefore more susceptible to aftershocks, a similar effect was happening on the earth’s sun.

     Trouble was brewing. And it threatened to wreak even more havoc on earth than the first solar storm had.

     Before the first EMPs bombarded the earth, there was a small subgroup of society who called themselves “preppers.”

     As their name implied, they were preparing themselves for life after a worldwide disaster.

     When the EMPs bombarded the earth and the world went black the preppers survived.

     But not even the preppers expected the sun to give them a one-two punch.

-21-

     Tom awoke early, as was his nature.

     And his back hurt, from sleeping in a too-soft bed.

     He’d always hated sleeping in strange beds. He usually slept fitfully in them, as though his body somehow knew he didn’t belong there.

     But after several days on the road, sleeping on a bed roll and tiny air mattress, he had to admit. Even a stranger’s bed was a step up.

     He heard noises coming from the kitchen, and went to investigate.

     He found young Sara digging through the cupboards.

     “Good morning, Sunshine.”

     “Oh! Good morning, Tom. You scared me.”

     “Sorry. What are you looking for?”

     “I don’t know, exactly. I guess I was just curious, to see if they left any food behind. But I can’t find anything. Not even a crumb.”

     “Maybe that’s why they committed suicide. Maybe they were faced with starving to death slowly or ending it quickly.”

     “Maybe. But there was still food out there to scrounge, if they didn’t mind searching for it. And they could have grown their own crops, like a lot of other people are doing.”

     “Yeah, I guess. Maybe they just grew tired of having to work so hard for every meal. It kind of makes you realize how lucky we were, to survive comfortably in the compound instead of being down here. I mean, we all complained about having to plant and harvest the crops, and how it was such hard work. But at least we never had to wonder where our next meal would come from. Maybe they just got tired, is all.

     “Did you know them well?”

     “Who?”

     “The people your mom said could stay here after she shot Glen and left. The people who committed suicide in your living room. The people we’ve been talking about.”

     “No, not really. I remember Mom dragging me to one of her work functions one time, and meeting one of her work friends named Sami. I don’t know if it was the same Sami or not. If it was, she seemed nice. She was pregnant, as I recall.”

     “Maybe that’s why they gave up. Maybe they lost their kids in the plague, or when their house burned down. That could certainly make someone give up.”

     “Yeah, maybe.”

     Tom went to the young woman and held her.

     “Promise me something, punkin.”

     “Uh… okay. What?”

     “Promise me you’ll never contemplate suicide. No matter how bad it can get on this earth, you only get one chance at life. If you give in and end it, you never get another chance. And the bad times, no matter how terrible they are, always come to an end eventually.”

     “I know that now, Tom. In my darkest days, when Glen was climbing into my bed late at night and raping me, I thought it would be better to be dead. But then I thought of all the good things I had. My friends. And Jordan. And I somehow knew if I could just hang on a little bit longer, that things would get so much better.

     “Little did I know that it would take a worldwide catastrophe like the blackout to make my world tolerable again. But now I know that the world is basically a wonderful place, filled with joyous experiences and incredible people. Yes, there are some isolated and very evil things. But they’re the exception, not the rule.

     “And now that I’ve got my own family, and have looked into my son’s incredible eyes and seen all the potential and pure love there, I’m so glad I didn’t do something very stupid when I was younger. If I had killed myself over what Glen was doing to me, I not only would have robbed myself of an incredible future. I would have robbed my son of his own chance to live. And that just wouldn’t have been right.”

     “Don’t forget, you’d have robbed Jordan of the chance to marry the most incredible young woman I’ve ever met. And you’d have robbed me of the chance to meet you and get to know you.”

     Sara smiled the sweet smile that made everyone fall in love with her.

     “I’m glad those days of self-doubt are behind me now. And trust me, Tom. They’re gone forever.”

     “I’m glad, little lady. You’ve become a very big part of my life now, and if you were to leave I’d have a hole in my heart as big as Texas.”

     She hugged him and said, “Nope. That’ll never happen.”

     “Well then, it’s settled,” Tom said. “Now how about we quit burning daylight and get going on our mom hunt?”

     “Great idea, Tom. I knew I brought you along for a reason.”

-22-

     They started their hunt at the most logical place, on the block where Sara once lived.

     Moon Valley Drive was typical of most other suburban streets in the sprawling city of San Antonio. Most of the once-proud houses were now abandoned and in varying stages of decay.

     The city was slowly working its way around to knock down the abandoned buildings, both to rid itself of the blight and to deprive marauders and thieves places to take refuge.

     They were hampered by a lack of manpower and of equipment, so they were moving at a snail’s pace, and hadn’t made it to Moon Valley Drive yet.

     Five of the homes on the block had been burned to the ground. Tom wondered if the fires were caused by vandalism, or were an effort by the survivors to get rid of the blight themselves.

     He hoped that wasn’t the case. In a city where the firemen were stretched as thin as the police force, he knew it was a risky business to set an empty house ablaze in the midst of occupied homes. One shift in the wind and the fire could quickly spread and get out of control. A whole neighborhood could burn to the ground in no time at all.

     Fire was a very effective, yet very dangerous, way of removing abandoned houses.

     They started with the house next door to Sara’s.

     All the windows had been broken by looters, and the front door was hanging pitifully by only one hinge. It was almost certainly abandoned.

     But they went through the motions anyway, in the off chance her next door neighbors were too emotionally attached to the house to move elsewhere.

     After knocking loudly several times, they gave up and moved on.

     The next house was in better shape. Its front yard had been dug up and the grass discarded. Seven rows of tall corn now grew on one side of a sidewalk that divided the yard.

     Seven rows of bushy tomato plants covered the other half of the yard.

     A crude sign was nailed to the wall adjacent to the front door:

NO MOOCHERS!

IF YOU DON’T HAVE

ANYTHING TO TRADE,

KEEP MOVING.

     Sara looked at Tom apprehensively.

     “Should we knock?”

     “Absolutely.”

     Tom stepped to the door and rapped loudly on the doorframe.

     An old woman with a wary eye answered.