Tourists of the Apocalypse (13 page)

I am confused for a moment, a clear symptom of drunkenness or lack of sleep. Then I realize she’s talking about the letter Graham slipped me. I kept the letter, but never read it. It’s stuck in the corner of a mirror in my closet. Clearly I should have read it. Shutting the door, I turn and see her scanning over the room.
Thank God for the maids
.

“I didn’t read it.”

“What? Why not,” she gasps. “Why would you not read my letter?”

“Graham gave it to me and honestly I was pretty upset.”

She peels off her jacket, tossing it on the closest bed. Under it she’s wearing a Florida Gators tee shirt that looks brand new. Looking at it, I recall we are in Florida and not Texas. I open the door and scan the parking lot. I don’t recognize any of the cars, but pass my eyes over them a second time to be sure.

“I’m alone.”

“How did you get here?” I demand shutting the door.

“Drove.”

“All the way from West Texas?” I challenge her. “By yourself.”

“Uh-huh,” she gulps. The corners of her mouth curling down. “You should have read it.”

“You’re here now. What did it say?”

“Ha,” she exhales loudly. “Too late for that.”

“Too late for what?”

“For you to get back,” she scolds me shaking her head. “For either of us now.”

“What’s so special about being in backwoods Texas today?”

“Tomorrow,” she corrects me. “It’s tomorrow that’s going to be a problem.”

Growing ever more confused, I move to the bed by the patio door, snatching her up as I go. She pushes back initially, but then goes down in a pile on the bed with me. Once she struggles to her knees, I roll over and she climbs on top of me. I pull a pillow behind my head and wait for her to offer any more information. We sit like this for several minutes, and then she huffs and reaches down with both hands and pulls her shirt over her head, tossing it on the floor. I’m staring at the black lace bra, when it dawns on me who this is and how fast this is moving. Before I can open my mouth she drops down and kisses me. All thoughts of stopping her melt away along with my headache and sunburn pain.

When my hands start working up her sides she reaches behind her back gracefully and unhooks her bra, which falls on my chest.

“Are you sure about this,” I stammer, pulling my lips away from hers.

“Is that a no?” she asks in a pouty voice. “Am I moving too fast for ya?”

I’m not sure what to say. I’m so confused. In the end I am just so happy to see Izzy. All I can think about is her.
Finally we are alone.

“I’m a big boy,” I assure her. “You’ll know it when I want you to stop.”

We are jolted from sleep by Derrick and Randall stumbling into the room around nine in the morning. When Izzy pokes her head out from the covers, salacious smiles explode on both their faces. Izzy, sensing what this looks like, surprises me by flying them the bird and diving back under the covers.

“We need to shower,” Randall explains, pointing at the bathroom door.

“No one’s stopping you,” Izzy shouts from under the covers.

I shrug, but the boys find it amusing. They shower and change, asking if we want to go with them to an event a few miles away. Some sort of Bloody Mary Breakfast thing put on by a suntan lotion company. Izzy shakes them off and we are again alone.

She sends me to the shower, and fends me off when I try to take her with me. When I come out she has retrieved a pile of clean clothes from somewhere. She shoes me out of the bathroom and disappears for almost an hour. She emerges looking fresh and ready to go in blue jeans and her well-worn Texas A&M hoodie. Her hair puffs out of a visor from the same school.

“You got any long pants or closed toed shoes?” she grumbles, seeing my board shorts and flip flops.

“Sorry, just beach stuff.”

“Less than ideal,” she complains, looking at her phone. “I need coffee.”

“Coffee shop here is decent,” I propose, taking her hand and leading her out the door.

Holding hands like high schoolers, we wander down the sidewalk past tourists who smell like suntan lotion and carry towels or inflatables. In the diner we order coffee and stare across the booth at each other.
This has been amazing, but why is she here?
I’d like to think she ran away and tracked me down for love, but that’s not what this is. There’s a panicked feeling emanating from her. It’s almost sureal to see her outside of the cul-de-sac. It’s occurs to me that besides a funeral I have never seen her or Graham outside of that little street.
It’s like she’s a runaway.

“How’d you find me?”

“The number you called from. Graham had it traced to your place in Tallahassee,” she explains, sipping coffee.

“But I’m not in Tallahassee,” I point out. “I’m here.”

“Your buddy’s cell phone bill was in the mailbox. Phone’s got a GPS chip. Tracked it here and then checked at the desk,” she reveals. “Your room is in the same name as the phone bill.”

“How’d you track his phone?”

“Graham handled that,” she replies dismissively.

“Why didn’t he just come with you?”

“
Fail Safe
can’t leave,” she snaps, pointing a finger at me.

“What’s a
Fail Safe
?”

“You should have read the letter,” she grouses.

I remember the term
Fail Safe
from years ago. Lance had called Graham by that title. I start to ask about it again, but decide on something more pressing.

“Lance let you come after me?”

“Like hell,” she snorts. “He was out at the Hive.”

“It’s the Hive now?”

“Yeah, it’s coming along now.

“He’s going kill us,” I warn. “When he finds us.”

“We got bigger problems than that,” she promises, looking at her phone again.

“Like what?”

“Like this might be your last chance for a meal not cooked over a camp fire,” she remarks coldly. “We have time so let’s eat.”

I protest, but her mind is made up. She orders waffles and an omelet. I have steak and eggs, then help finish hers. Her constant obsession with the time is not lost on me. After the waitress takes the check she peeks at her phone again and then nods at me.

“Let’s take a walk on the beach.”

“Now,” I grumble, feeling more like a nap.

“Yeah, she insists, looking up at the huge skylight. “We need to be outside in the clear.”

Finding it counterproductive to argue, I follow along. We go back to the room, then out the sliders onto the beach. Cans, cups and other party fare litter the sand. A man in a yellow reflective vest moves down the beach with a stick, poking trash and putting it in a bag. Izzy walks about halfway between the motel and the water, then stops, checking the time on her phone.

“Well,” I shrug, hands out. “How long till whatever you’re waiting for arrives?”

“Two minutes, give or take,” she replies, stepping closer and putting her arms around me.

“Two minutes and then?”

“It would take longer to explain than just waiting for you to see it,” she lectures me. “People generally have to see to believe.”

“I trust you.”

“Fine, it’s the apocalypse,” she tells me calmly.

“You’re a riot.”

“You’ll recall I previously mentioned you would not believe me.”

“You don’t expect me to take the Apocalypse seriously do you?”

She backs away and looks at the sky. I join her, but see only puffy clouds. I ponder if possibly Izzy has gone mad, which might explain her presence here. I know she must have escaped as Lance would never have allowed this road trip.

“So?” I badger her. “Now what?”

There is no reply. She turns slowly, eyes on the sky. There is a sudden pop back in the direction of the hotel. On the backside of the coffee shop near the garbage bins is a transformer with a wire running to a power line. Smoke wafts out of the transformer. Before I have a chance to comment there’s a loud squealing noise from the road and then a crash. Several other smaller crashes follow as if it was a chain reaction accident. Izzy pokes me in the upper arm before I can say anything.

“There,” she gasps, pointing at the sky. “Look there.”

Pulling my sunglasses off the top of my head, I scan the sky. A large commercial jet is visible far to the right, but it’s an odd image. It’s not so much flying as fluttering. The scene from Top Gun when Tom Cruises plane was in a flat spin flashes across my mind. The huge commercial jet is slowly fluttering like a leaf in a similar spin.
What am I seeing?
I keep watching and as it gets closer to the ground, one of the wings shears off, bits and pieces flying everywhere. Moments later the entire thing hits the water, maybe a mile out to sea, sending up a splash into the morning sky.

“We, we need to call someone,” I stammer, looking down at her.

“No phones,” she mutters and points back to sky inland. “There, look it’s another one.”

A second commercial jet, this one moving fast in a straight line, cuts across the sky in the distance. There’s a terrible whine sound as it hurdles earthward. Making no motion to alter its course, it disappears from sight behind the motel, but a horrifying bang echoes from that direction. A fireball is visible over the tops of trees and the motel. The plane must have gone down a few miles away, but black smoke is filling the sky already. I glance back to the sea, but only a drizzle of smoke marks the place the first plane went down.
Did she say apocalypse?

“Tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing good,” she shakes her head, still peering up.

“Tell me—.”

“Watch the sky,” she warns, emphasizing each word. “Wait five minutes until we can be sure nothing else is going to fall on us.”

We do so, but no other planes crash. She takes my hand and leads me back to the motel. We enter the room from the beach, and then she opens the front door and leans on the frame. Holding onto the top trim piece, I lean out and take in the mayhem.

A box truck has run off the road and hit a line of parked cars. Two men are yelling at each other next to a red sports car that took the brunt of the trucks impact. There are half a dozen cars sitting dead in the road, but they don’t seem to have been in an accident, just dead. A crowd of people mill about the wreck, but I notice something they all have in common. Nearly everyone is looking at their phones or holding them up and shaking them. Two guys walk down the sidewalk in front of the rooms and frown at me.

“What’s up?” I inquire.

“Powers out,” one of them explains. “Phones are out, powers out. Must be some kind of solar flare.”

They pass by and I eye Izzy, but she shakes her head.
Not a solar flare then
. Leaning back inside, I flick the light switch next to the door. The lights don’t come on. I notice Izzy looking at her phone, which is still on and displaying the time.

“Yours is working?”

“Mine’s hardened,” she nods. “It’s on, but there aren’t any more cell towers. It’s a glorified calculator now. Besides, when the charge runs out it will be difficult to find a place with electricity to charge it.”

“Hardened?” I mutter. “Like military hardened against attack?”

“Yeah.”

Having recently been a member of the military I understand the term
hardened
. It refers to electronic items with built in shielding. As I am watching the crowd around the truck accident it strikes me that no emergency vehicles are showing up. I step out onto the sidewalk and scan down the street. No cars are moving past. I walk another ten yards out into the road, but see only stopped cars with people milling about.

“What exactly is it you think has happened?” I shout back to Izzy who is leaning on the door frame looking bored.

“EMP,” she shouts back.

This term is familiar to me. I spend a few moments watching the smoke rise over the trees where the second plane went down then rejoin Izzy in the room. We lean in the open door watching the proceedings.

“Electromagnetic pulse,” I mutter. “How do you figure?”

“A dozen low yield nukes were just detonated in low orbit,” she explains. “The resulting electromagnetic discharge has been reflected off the upper atmosphere back onto the planet.”

“The Compton effect,” I toss out having done several preparedness drills for EMP’s. The power lines act as an antenna to focus the damage.”

“Anything hooked up to the power grid is now dead,” she explains.

“You said a dozen?”

“EMP’s are line of sight weapons,” she points out. “So, at least a dozen given the curvature of the Earth.”

“Meaning what?”

“Welcome to the eighteenth century,” she shrugs.

“For how long?”

“What do you mean?” she chuckles, seeming amused now.

“Till everything comes back on?”

“It’s not coming back on,” she assures me. “No power, no transportation and no communication. You are ostensibly living in the time of the Revolutionary War with a few grave differences.”

“And those are?” I inquire for the sake of argument.

“In that time people worked with their hands,” she explains. “People knew how to farm their own food, make their own clothes, cut down trees, build houses and provide for themselves. Those people,” she tells me shaking her head and pointing at a group of young people staring at their blank phones, “are ostensibly helpless.”

I watch them standing in a group talking. They are clearly waiting for things to return to normal. They appear inconvenienced, but what if it’s more than that? If this situation is permanent she has a point.
This has to be a joke doesn’t it?

“You said a few grave differences.”

“The entire world population in the eighteen-hundreds was about 62 million. Guess what it is now?” she quizzes me, arms crossed over her chest.

“Nine billion?”

“Just under that,” she corrects me. “Do you know why that statistic is important with regard to this predicament?”

I shake my head.

“You’re about to witness the largest die off in recorded history,” she promises, wagging a finger at the helpless millennials. “Two thirds of the U. S. population will be dead in the next twelve months, seventy percent worldwide in twenty-four.”