ENDURE: Epoch’s End Book 1 : (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Series) (Epoch's End) Read online

  The ship ripped through the choppy waters at a good clip, carving a circular pattern as its hull sensors blasted signals toward the ocean floor, sucking up the return signals to form topological images and graphs he’d no doubt be poring over.

  The wind gusted, causing the chopper to sway, shudder, and groan and the pilot shifted his joystick left, ascended several feet, then banked toward the Marin once more. The entire time, Tom's belly sunk and lifted, palms sweating as he gripped his knees. He half expected them to turn around and head back to the George Washington due to the choppy winds, but the pilot wasn’t giving up so easily.

  They approached the ship at a side angle, pointing the aircraft’s nose perpendicular to the deck and flying sideways to match the ship’s speed. Shoulders and arms tense and stomach churning, Tom fought to keep a resolute face as the pilot worked the chopper’s joystick sideways and forward, approaching the rising and dipping landing pad with care.

  Sam jerked her attention back and forth between her side window and the bubble-shaped front glass with a wide grin plastered on her face.

  “You’re enjoying this way too much,” he shouted into the mic.

  “Are you kidding? This is awesome!”

  They eased over the Marin’s deck and landed on the orange pad with enough finesse that he didn’t even realize they’d set down until the pilot hit several switches to taper off the high engine whine, throttling it all back.

  “Nice landing, man,” Tom said, unable to hold back his sigh of relief.

  “Thanks, Mr. McKnight,” the pilot replied. “Someone should be along to… ah! Here comes the colonel.”

  A blonde woman stepped up, beige uniform clinging to her form, hair pinned to the sides of her head with aviator sunglasses perched atop her nose. She stooped low and approached the helicopter, reaching Sam’s side of the helicopter and popping open the door with a slight wave.

  “Mr. McKnight!” she shouted over the noise on deck and the swells crashing around the vessel. “Good to see you again! Step on out, and I’ll get you inside.”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Banks! Likewise.” Tom nodded and helped his daughter unbuckle herself before handing her off.

  Climbing down after her, they followed the officer across the helipad, down a short staircase, through a deck door and into a small room filled with jackets, life vests and other equipment. Banks slammed the door behind them, cutting off the majority of the wind and ocean noise. Her sunglasses were whipped off and settled in her breast pocket as she turned to face the McKnights, extending a hand in Tom’s direction.

  “I didn’t expect to see you out here, Lieutenant Colonel.” Tom held out his hand as his legs adjusted to the ship’s rocking.

  “It seems fate keeps throwing us together.” A faint smile broke through her stoic expression as she shook Tom’s hand. “I take it this is your daughter, Samantha? Leeds mentioned you’d be bringing someone along with you.” Banks extended a hand to Sam, who took it and nodded.

  “Yes ma’am! You can call me Sam.”

  Then she moved past them, saying, “I’ll get the young lady situated in the recreation room and take you downstairs where we need you.”

  “I’d like to keep Sam with me, if that’s okay.” Tom followed the officer through another door and down a short hall to a locker room, beckoning Sam to follow.

  “It would be better if she settled into the rec room.” Banks stopped in the room’s center and turned. “They’ve got video games and a pool table, plenty to do since she’s not cleared to view some of the feeds we’ll have up.”

  Tom stepped in front of Sam and faced Banks with his hands planted on his hips, giving her a weary sigh. “Look, I’m here at your request, not the other way around. If it was up to me, we’d be back in Portland eating Vietnamese food and having a pleasant walk through town. My daughter stays with me.”

  The officer’s lips remained perfectly straight, and Tom couldn’t read a single real emotion behind the woman’s eyes. Banks was a by-the-book kind of officer, especially when it came to getting what she wanted, but he wouldn’t be bullied by her again – especially when it came to Sam.

  “I can’t let uncleared civilians in the control room. I’ve got protocols to—”

  “Get her cleared,” Tom said without a hint of ire, stating a simple fact, something the Colonel could accept or not. “Or we can get on that helicopter and go home.”

  Banks tensed for a moment, judging Tom’s resolve, her blue eyes fixed on him with a narrow edge before something inside gave and she shifted her gaze to Sam. “I’ll get her cleared to enter ASAP. Until then, she can stay with you.” She jerked her chin and moved through another door. “Follow me please.”

  They moved through a maze of corridors and stairs, descending ever downward into the bowels of the ship. The sounds changed as they traveled, transitioning away from the muffled sounds of the wind, waves and deckhands to the rumble of engines and low conversations between military and civilian crew members as the trio slid past them. While Tom had noticed the ship’s movements before, its ceaseless rocking was starting to get to him, and his stomach began swirling with nausea.

  “Are you feeling sick?” Tom asked Sam as they continued to descend.

  “I’m fine,” she replied with a grin. “I’m totally fine.”

  “Of course, you are,” he mumbled. “I guess I should be glad Ray called me before lunch.”

  “If either of you are feeling queasy,” the lieutenant colonel said, “I can bring you something. You do tend to get queasy for the first couple hours on board, if I remember correctly.”

  “Thanks, Colonel Banks. I’d appreciate that. And yeah, it'll pass… but fixing it sooner is better than later.”

  “Understandable.”

  At the bottom of a gray stairwell, Banks led them down a short hallway past a mess hall to a black steel door. The Colonel placed her hand against a hand reader, causing the door to click and pop outward.

  “We’ll get you both setup in the system so you can come and go freely.” The Lt. Colonel pulled the door the rest of the way open, stood back, and gestured for them to enter. “Until then, you’ll need my access to go in and out.”

  "You sure we'll be here long enough to need our own access?"

  "Protocol." Banks pointedly ignored the question, and Tom shrugged. Pick your battles, boy. It had been one of his father's favorite phrases and it still served him well.

  The three stepped into a dark, quiet control center with two rows of computer stations and a walkway down the center facing a large wall of monitors. The three paced along the back of the room as Navy personnel and civilians manning the computer stations focused on their personal screens, typing rapid-fire on their keyboards or speaking to people in their headsets. Occasionally, they glanced up at the larger screens on the wall, whispering to each other.

  “Impressive set up,” Tom said, looking around agreeably.

  “The Marin is the pride of the Navy's new research fleet,” Banks replied. “She’s equipped with single and multi-beam echo sounders to map the seafloor, and an advanced echo sounder to assess fish stock, courtesy of Maniford Aquatics Engineering.”

  “Yes, I remember that project.” He leaned in close to Sam and gave a conspiratorial stage whisper. "Of course, if you read the latest issue of Science, you might note that the Marin can detect a lot more than just fish with that sounder."

  Ignoring him, Banks continued. “And the Marin has a vast array of oceanic and atmospheric sensors to collect ocean data—”

  “Merged and extrapolated using the Proctor software,” Tom cut in.

  “Which is why you’re here,” Banks nodded, then turned as someone approach from one of the front stations. “Ah, here we are. Mr. McKnight, I think you know Ms. King.”

  He turned to see a woman in her early thirties approaching, her stout form sporting a blue blouse and a black skirt that fell to her knees. White sneakers adorned her feet, and her red hair hung to her shoulders in an exte
nded bob-style haircut.

  “Sue Anne.” Tom grinned broadly and held out a hand. "Good to see another familiar face!"

  “I didn’t expect to see you until our regular Monday conference call,” the woman replied, “but here we are.” She spoke in her usual clipped but polite tone, accent soft and southern. They exchanged a brief handshake before she turned her attention toward Sam. “And this must be one of your daughters. Sam, I’d say?”

  “That’s me,” the girl replied with a smile.

  “Good to meet you.” Sue Anne returned the smile before shooting a glance at Banks. “Mind if I get Tom caught up?”

  “Please do,” Banks replied. “I’ll report up the chain that you two have started working on the data.”

  “Right this way.” Sue Anne gestured behind her, turning, slipping between rows to lead the McKnights to a pair of closely placed computer terminals up front, giving them the best view of the wall screens. Each workstation had two monitors, a keyboard and mouse, and a headset to make calls.

  Tom pulled up an empty chair for Sam to sit in before settling into an open spot beside her. Sue Anne took up the seat on his right and turned her monitors in his direction. “What do you know so far?”

  Tom rested back with an empty hand gesture. “We saw a news report about ocean life fleeing south, caused by possible seismic activity, but that’s it. Must be something big; my wife even mentioned it on the phone when I told her we were heading out here. ”

  “It’s definitely big. Here’s what we’re seeing.” She nodded, pointing to her screen at a 3D map of the seafloor overlaid with digital contour lines marked with depths and distances. A black disruption in the middle showed what appeared to be a fracture in the seafloor, its shape long and jagged. She pointed to one side of the crack, toward a slight upward indentation. “What we have here is a bit of subterranean volcanic activity around the shelf which we think caused this crack.”

  “Based on the overlay markings, that’s almost a kilometer long.” Tom’s eyes widened as he scanned her screen.

  “Ten football fields long,” she nodded, glancing at Sam to help her feel more included in the conversation, ”about one football field wide.”

  “Caused by a tectonic plate shift?”

  “Likely, but here’s the kicker.” Her soft tone took on an unusual intensity and her accent grew deeper as she leaned forward for emphasis. “Instead of seawater rushing into the crack like you might expect, or there being some kind of outflow of magma, our instruments are detecting a freshwater outflow. Ice cold fresh water.”

  “So, a deep-earth aquifer pushing outward?”

  “Yes, and the pressure is so intense that it’s chipping away at the crack’s edges, widening it with every passing minute and expelling billions of gallons of water per hour.”

  Tom blinked. “Billions per hour? What does Proctor predict?”

  “Based on pressure readings, Proctor expects it to reach one quadrillion gallons of displacement within two weeks.”

  Tom sat back in his chair, rolling the number around in his brain for a moment. The background hum of equipment and people faded away as he considered estimates and approximations, a slow dark dawning gripping his brain. Lips drawing a thin line across his jaw, he leaned forward with a side glance at his daughter. Sam continued to look across the wall screens, marveling at the data being presented, seemingly oblivious to their conversation. “You do realize that’s an astronomical number, right? Borderline impossible?”

  The southern accent hardened. “Yes. I still stand by it.”

  “Then Proctor must be wrong.”

  “It’s not, Tom. I’ve checked and rechecked it.” Sue Anne shrugged. “But that’s why you’re here. To help make sure there isn’t some kind of bug in in the software.”

  Head shaking, mind working through the possibilities, he thought about something from his past to make the comparison. “I remember having a discussion with a friend of mine from college. I think we had a couple of beers and were talking about what it would take to flood North America. Freshwater-wise.

  “After some quick napkin math, we concluded that it would take three quadrillion gallons of water to flood North and South America. That’s a foot of water over both continents. Then we thought about where we could actually get that much water. A reservoir? An aquifer? Turns out, draining Lake Superior into the continents would do the trick.”

  “Just one lake?”

  “Well, to be fair, a big lake.” He gestured at her screen. “Three quadrillion gallons big. And Proctor is saying we’ll have a quadrillion gallons of water dispersed into the world’s oceans in two weeks? I mean, it won’t flood the world right away, but it would raise sea levels enough to cause major problems on the coasts almost immediately. And if the pressure remained stable for months, that would mean three or four quadrillion gallons of water forced into the world’s oceans in a brief span of time. That would cause mass flooding on a scale like we’ve never seen.”

  Sue Anne’s face turned pale and she opened her mouth to protest, but Tom waved her off, becoming animated enough in his explanation to draw Sam’s attention. “That’s why I’m saying these numbers have to be off. Something’s not right.” The tension building inside him eased back and a nervous chuckle escaped, half for his benefit and half to help calm Sam’s wide eyes. While he’d spent a lot of time helping develop the Proctor software, it was easier to admit it had a flaw rather than believe the predictions were real. “Give me an hour, and I’ll find the problem.”

  Sue Anne gestured to the keyboard. “Be my guest.”

  Tom turned to Sam. “I’m going to start running some numbers now, so I’ll need to concentrate. You okay to hang out here with me?”

  She nodded. “Can I get something to drink, though?”

  “I’ll take her,” Sue Anne said, standing up and brushing off her skirt. “I’ve been looking at these screens for twelve hours, and I could use a break.”

  “That’s fine,” he replied, lifting his eyes. “Keep her close, please. I don’t want her roaming the upper decks.”

  “No problem,” Sue Anne said. “We’ll be right in the mess area if you need us.”

  Tom watched them go before leaning over the keyboard and hammering a few keys with his fingers. Pulling up a window, he logged in to the Proctor software using a standard admin ID and password and got to work.

  *

  An hour later, Tom sat glancing back and forth between his computer screens, his heart feeling as though it was in the grip of a vice. He’d begun his data verification with a deep scan of the Proctor software to ensure the program was working properly. When it came back with just a few common front-end errors typical of an improper configuration, he fixed them and re-ran the analysis based on Sue Anne’s data. In spite of the slight hope he held that somehow the configurations could have caused such an egregious miscalculation, the prediction results remained the same. It still showed millions of gallons of water being dispersed into the ocean with a prediction of several quadrillions total in less than two weeks time.

  After Sue Anne and Sam had returned with soft drinks, snacks, and some coffee for Tom, he and Sue Anne had worked for another 45 minutes, debugging the code while trying to draw out any errors in Proctor’s algorithms. When they found three small errors in the back-end logic, Tom relaxed and settled back in his chair with a relieved sigh. Sue Anne grinned, and even some scientists in the room who’d been following their progress gave soft claps of relief and satisfaction.

  At some point during their work, Colonel Banks had slid in, standing in the back with her arms folded across her chest, watching the proceedings intently. After Sue Anne made the corrections and Tom re-ran the data analysis the workstation screens refreshed to show that the data had changed, though not for the better.

  Stomach churning with unease, insides burning with a primal fear, Tom watched a time-lapse forecast of the one-kilometer crack widening and spreading even farther until the screen couldn’t
hold it any longer. A freshwater flow rate number ticked up by exponential increments on the right side of the screen, millions and millions of gallons of freshwater flowing into the Atlantic ocean, then billions, then quadrillions. The scientists groaned when the results refreshed to the big screens.

  Tom gaped, the words coming out in a whisper. “The previous Proctor predictions underestimated the flow rate, and by a sizeable amount. This shows…” He couldn’t find the words, his mind reeling from the implications. His memory from ages ago flashed through his mind, recalling again the napkin math he and his friend had done, trying to somehow fathom the sheer quantity of water it would take to cover North and South America. The room grew small, the crevasse below them morphing in their minds from a benign curiosity into a time bomb.

  “We’ll have three quadrillion gallons of freshwater less than a month.” Sue Anne shook her head, her eyes ticking fearfully across to him. “That’s three times more than the previous prediction. It’s the same amount of water as in—”

  “Lake Superior.” Tom was already nodding, fists clenched tight on the desk next to his keyboard, shoulders squeezed so tight he thought they might pop.

  “There’s always the possibility that there just isn’t that much water below the sea bed,” Sue Anne offered.

  “Maybe. But with these pressures at play I somehow doubt it.” Turning, he looked back at Banks. “Tell me the government has a plan to stop the freshwater flow. Some kind of earth fill or drill venting.” The Colonel looked at Sue Anne for a long moment before slipping back out of the room without a word.

  Sue Anne, in turn, looked around at the bustling people in the room. “We’ve got a lot of prominent geologists, bathymetrists, naval specialists, and oceanographers in this room, and I’ve talked to them all.” She shook her head, the ends of her red hair flicking. “We don’t have a plan, Tom.”

  Tom swallowed and stared at the screens, remembering yet another piece of his past – one that had helped lead him down his career path. A story told first by his parents, then repeated in Sunday school, then repeated by he and his wife to their own children. As if reading his mind, Sam took his hand, whispering what he was already thinking.