Age of Monsters by John Schneider (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

knocked out a couple of satellites too, and his networking across the board was growing steadily more blinky.

Mostly, he had been looking for any remaining signal coming in from the planet below.

But there was nothing.

Tom sat there, floating weightless – almost like a ghost himself.

He felt like he should want to cry – yet, somehow he couldn't – perhaps it was a defense mechanism – as if that part of his mind had simply shut down.

It was possible that in that moment, his hair went a little bit gray.

Tom looked around at the one-hundred square yards where he would spend the rest of his life.

Two days before, he had found Kristi's cabin in Alaska.

It had actually been as simple as finding her last name in the database and mapping her associated address.

The property was boarded-up and looked abandoned.

She had evidently gone looking for help, braving the wilds, looking for some other sign of human habitation.

Which, near as Tom could tell, did not exist for several thousand miles in any direction.

Even if surviving military had regrouped, Tom didn't know where.

He wondered how long Kristi had waited before abandoning her home.  Had she been desperate?  Or perhaps she had gone out well-fortified, well-planned and ready?

Tom could not imagine a scenario where it could possibly matter.

He tried not to feel sorry for himself, for the fact that he would never know.

And then, just because he couldn't stand the silence any longer, he flicked his screens back on – bringing back repeating images of the recent past.  Computer-simulations blinked to life, and began to shuffle and analyze, looking for new patterns in old re-runs.

As he floated up here forever.

Burning out his fuse up there alone.

What did he miss?

He had said 'nothing'.

Funny how words came back to bite you.

Tom buried his face in his hands.

Chapter 49

None of the pilots ever returned.  The fleet and the base were gone.  If the military had regrouped, it was nowhere near

Rosa sat out on the beach, looking out at the ocean.  Beside her sat Allison and Bud.  Behind them, was the wreck of the coastline, where the cliffside had crumbled away.

The jeep had tumbled with the rocks.  It had been a crazy, rolling sensation – it was LOUD – with a sense of weight so immense – so CRUSHING – that it took your breath away before it even touched you.

If they had been buried, it would have been over, but they had tumbled with the rest of the rolling avalanche.  The jeep itself was actually uniquely well-reinforced for this specific kind of trauma – the solid roll-bars keeping the crushing boulders at bay.

Rosa wasn't really aware of it at the time – it happened so fast – but what had really saved her was her seat-belt – a reflexive habit, she didn't even remember strapping across her waist.  Bud had done likewise – his overprotective self – for both him and Allison.

The others had died.

Julie had been thrown out the window almost at once.  Rosa heard one brief scream, and then she was gone.  They never saw even a trace of her again.

Private Jones had clung to the overhead bar and his seat – bracing himself, his tendons stretching like wire – but he was, nevertheless, also pitched into the stampeding boulders.

Not that Rosa expected it to matter.

How many times, now, she thought?  How many times had she gotten herself ready to die?

At this point, she almost wanted to just get it over with.  She was simply too tired to fight it anymore.

The avalanche had continued down the beach into the ocean, even as the falling rubble filled the foam-splitting fissures.

Rosa remembered feeling the spray of the ocean, and then impact.

She lay in darkness.  She didn't know how long.

But the next thing she remembered was being carried, and then sat down with care on a bed of hard rocks.

That had been three days ago.  Since then, the tide had come and gone three times as well.

It was amazing, Rosa thought, how quickly it all washed away.

The collapsed coastal wall was a jagged quarry of smashed rock, but the passage of the surf had already begun to fill in the cracks with sand.

Their jeep still lay where it had landed, just at the surf-line, near the top of a dead-fall of boulders.

And now they waited to see if anyone was coming back.

Correction: Rosa was waiting to see if Lucas was coming back.

As a kindness, Bud and Allison had allowed her to wait.

But now, on the eve of the third day, as the tide washed the sand back into the cracks, Bud sat down next to her, in front of the little campfire they'd built among the rocks.

He said nothing right away, but Rosa knew what was on his mind.

Allison had wandered a ways up the beach, looking for driftwood.  They had already salvaged what they could from the jeep – mostly a few matches, some kerosene, a first-aid kit.

Allison also found a little ammo for her 9 mm.

Rosa found herself again wondering about the woman's past.  Based on what she knew, those circles under the eyes had been hard-won.

No doubt they were mirrored in her own eyes, just now.

No one gets tough on purpose.

Rosa glanced sideways at Bud.

“You're thinking it's time to move on,” she said.

Bud nodded slowly, letting out a long sigh.

“We've been running for a long time,” he said.  “I think it's time we stopped.”

Rosa looked off to where Allison walked alone on the beach, safely out of earshot.

'Fallen Woman', Rosa thought, her Catholic upbringing rearing its ugly head once again.

But Allison was also a survivor.

If God existed, if His Will had played