Saga Five: Gordon’s Leap
365 DAYS AFTER OUTBREAK
The Canadian and Mexican quarantines have long been broken.
The Infected were now a global phenomenon, spread by plane and by boat resulting in an inevitable apocalypse.
No one has heard from the government in months. All communication infrastructures and most of the power grids have gone down due to lack of personnel. Civilization now in shattered ruins, society resorts to survival of the fittest. The ever-increasing mortality rate yields brutal results, turning the cities into savage wastelands. The dead control the world now. Only there is nothing left to rule.
“Go! Go! Go!” Samuel yelled.
It was now or never. Everyone rushed back into the shuttle. The explosion helped close the bay door behind them. The ship rocked off-kilter.
“Forget the countdown.” Samuel commanded, “Atticus get us out of here.”
“Sam, there’s no life support.”
“Get us in the air, now!”
Atticus released the brake, started thrusters, and grabbed the throttle. He told Rebecca what switches to hit and what gauges to keep an eye on as co-pilot.
“When we hit sixty-thousand feet, tell me,” Samuel concluded Rebecca’s in-flight tutorial.
“Let’s get past the flames first,” Harold flinched.
Karina kept her eyes closed and gripped her seatbelt harness ever so tightly. She begged and pleaded with the universe to get them through this. Atticus leaned into their toppling about as the exploding fuel capacitor thrashed them around. He gained momentum from the blast and caught some air underneath the ship. All he had to do was sacrifice a little bit of the ship’s outer shell integrity. He pulled up and let the wings do what they do best. It being a one-way trip gave Atticus a rare opportunity at flying. He could match fuel expulsion with ascending altitude for an optimal trajectory.
There was major turbulence but they seemed to be leveling out as they gained distance from the fires and Cape Canaveral. They passed into the clouds and Rebecca yelled out, “twenty thousand feet!”
Atticus knew the hardest part of the voyage would be the last 20,000 feet. Right now they were cruising. All of the controls balanced and remained regular. Life support was still completely down. Once the oxygen in the cabin was spent they would suffocate.
“Forty thousand feet!”
The passengers were beginning to feel the effects of such a rapid incline. Harold vomited on the floor next to his seat. It immediately slid back away from everyone else. Karina passed out from the pressure that the g-force was putting on them. Samuel reached into his suit jacket, from the inner breast pocket he pulled out a golden pocket watch. Samuel clicked it open and admired it; a gift from his wife. The center manifold buckled underneath their feet. The floor caved in around them as they helplessly sat strapped into their seats. Samuel was not expecting that. Of all the things to happen, the floor was about to drop out. Samuel panicked.
“ATTICUS!” he called to attention, but Rebecca had already alerted Atticus to the change in cabin pressure. They knew what would happen next. The floor finally gave way and tore apart from the hull of the ship. Samuel unbuckled from his seat, compromising his own safety to catch his time travel devices and take the place of their harness that was just ripped from the rest of the ship along with the center manifold and all the remaining oxygen.
Samuel couldn’t wait any longer. Even if they were not at 60,000 feet they could start losing altitude at any moment. This ship was going down.
Atticus looked over at Rebecca. It was maybe the only time Rebecca ever saw him frightened.
“What is it?”
“I’ve lost the stick.”
Samuel wrapped his hand around the console he fitted. He closed his eyes and summoned the fates to give him the right signal. And that’s when he heard her…
“Sixty-thousand feet!”
Samuel hit the red button the same exact moment the tail of the shuttle cracked completely apart from the cabin. It caused the rest of the ship to dive into a forward spin, whipping Samuel up into the cockpit. He was forced to release the three devices. Three metal boxes, the last few things he held dear in this world untangled from his arms and fingers. All of his hopes and dreams, everything he had left bounced out of reach. Samuel need not fear. They had already been activated.
The Tachyon Resonator spun up first and expelled blue luminescent particles that suspended the other two boxes in the air while the plummeting pile of astro-trash twirled around them. The Time Collider led out a sharp sting against their ears along with the cleanest white light to ever be seen. The flash of light whipped their faces away for a brief moment. A deep tread vibrated throughout the ship. It did not dissipate but focused into the center of the ship.
Coming through the hole in the bottom of the ship the vibration crawled into the blue particles, turning them white. The Quantum Wormhole Catalyst pulled the vibration through the tachyon filter. It stitched and burned electricity inside of it. The final device cannibalized itself into a concentrated black storm. The tachyons touched the storming catalyst and swirled into a portal. The wormhole grew and began to devour the ship from the inside out.
The pressure of the portal was too much for the ship to bear as the rest of the cabin began cracking under pressure. The air getting sucked through the holes of the ship was causing the portal to grow in abnormal directions instead of evenly. Weirdest of all, the event had altered gravity and was now causing the ship to stop falling. The tachyons still surrounding the expanding portal were released from the resonator ring. The tiny luminescent orbs returned to their original blue as they flew towards the cockpit.
The tachyons hit Samuel in the hands and chest as he tried to block himself. They multiplied and covered him sporadically.
“Samuel!” Rebecca reached for him as he was tossed about between her and Atticus. Samuel screamed in agony. His body was bonding with the tachyons on a molecular level. Something had happened to him way back in New York, before the end of days, before the rise of the dead. When he was just a college professor getting away with (what he looked back at now as) hijinks he accidentally exposed himself to tachyon radiation during one of his experiments.
That exposure unlocked something inside of him. The fabric of his being had been altered, making him unique. On that day he changed the course of what would happen today. It made him a key to surviving this event. Samuel tried to deal with his current predicament as best he could, but there was nothing he could do. He felt his flesh morphing with the tachyons. The light of the orbs shined through his skin as it turned translucent.
He watched his own hands disappear into a bluish glow along with the rest of his body. Rebecca would always remember that the last she saw of Samuel Gordon Chase was his screaming face fading away into a blue oblivion.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The portal in the cabin had consumed Harold and Karina and now working its way towards Rebecca and Atticus. Rebecca wanted to reach for Atticus’ hand but she could barely stop clinging to her chair. It swallowed what remained of the tumbling ship up whole and spat it out on the other side. Rebecca didn’t know what to expect. Neither did Atticus. The only one who would was gone.
The focused dark swirling cloud with shooting veins of lightning pulled Rebecca in. She closed her eyes thinking this what it. This was the end of her story, her final day. She had made it this far. Compared to everyone she knew it was a good run. Rebecca felt the phase in reality wipe over her face. It was cold, almost wet. The touch compared to rubbing one’s face with a static-laced plush blanket, but instead of just stopping with the rub, you are forced into a lake of blanket.
Just a couple of seconds and she could breathe again. When Rebecca opened her eyes all she could tell for sure was that they were still crashing, more importantly, they were still alive. Atticus released himself from his seat and started moving towards the parachutes.
“It didn’t work!” he yelled over the whistling wind, “We have to abandon ship!”
Atticus was surprised to still see the portal open in the cabin. Harold and Karina were free from it and still in their seats. Atticus woke up Karina, unbuckled her seatbelt, strapped her with a parachute and pulled it for her, whipping her free of the crash. He handed Harold another parachute. Harold looked around at the number of remaining parachutes. Without asking questions he thanked his lucky stars, slipped it on, and jumped free. Atticus grabbed the only remaining parachute and put it on, apologizing to Rebecca.
“Hold on to me.”
Rebecca wrapped her arms as firmly as she could around Atticus’ waste. He took the last step forward and they began to free fall. After he had gained enough distance from the crashing ship he pulled the chord. The parachute released and caught the wind, snapping Atticus back up, dislodging Rebecca’s grip on him. Her hands were yanked so abruptly from her grip on him, Atticus slipped right through Rebecca’s fingers.
Rebecca now resorted to free falling to the group without a parachute. There was nothing Atticus could do about it. His parachute had already deployed. Atticus’ attention was drawn upward when he noticed Rebecca was not panicking but watching something. The portal was still stuck in the ship that was now completely fallen apart. Out from the portal swung Rebecca’s moonsword. She called out to it and it swooped all the way down below them and up into Rebecca’s hand.
The moonsword followed upward creating some resistance to slow Rebecca down and minimize the rate of impact. Rebecca watched her three companions land safely as she followed suit. She reminded herself of Mary Poppins with her umbrella. When they got close to the ground the first thing that was clear was they were no longer in Cape Canaveral. There was land as far as the eye could see; no ocean in sight.
Rebecca hit the ground running and caught up with Atticus, Karina, and Harold. They looked around at the dust and tumbleweeds. Crashing parts of the ship rained down all around them. The portal was gone.
“Where are we?” Karina inquired.
“Not where, when…”
“You think it worked?”
“Look around, we are in a completely different environment” Atticus revealed.
“He did it.”
“Did we go back too far?”
Atticus could come up with questions that couldn’t be answered all day like the rest of them. But he had a different mind, a military mind; he was already laying out a plan of action.
“We sit tight and gather our strength while the rest of the ship finishes crashing and cools down, then we salvage for supplies. Keep on your guard we could still be facing infected. Get your rest, at first light we pick a direction and start walking until we find civilization.”
It was probably noon by the time they reached a town. Rebecca left her sword on the outskirts of town careful not to attract any unwanted attention. It looked pretty old and not much of a town at all. Even more worrisome was the lack of paved roads and cars. Either they were in a town owned by the Amish or they had traveled back past the industrial revolution.
Everything felt so much slower, and dirtier. Those were their first impressions of the strange new world; a refreshing change of pace from the strange old one, but not quite the same as their old old world. It would take some getting used to that’s for sure. By popular opinion it was for the best. For the first time in a long time they could relax, and not feel like they need to be looking over their shoulders at any given moment. All but Atticus were ready to let their guard down.
Thankfully, for them no one saw the crash and subsequent emergency landings. That being said they still stuck out like a sore-thumb. Rebecca and Karina went into a store while Atticus and Harold entered a saloon. Apparently, it was a bordello not a saloon from what they could tell from the scantily clad woman flaunting their natural gifts at any onlooker. After that, Atticus knew exactly where they were in-time.
Rebecca and Karina tried taking their minds off of things and talked to the shop clerk. The older woman had a wrinkle in her nose that seemed perturbed by Rebecca and Karina’s appearance. Once they started talking and proved how nice and normal they were, the clerk felt more at ease and showed them her selection. Rebecca and Karina pulled out all the coins they could salvage from the crash. When the clerk saw them she seemed very impressed.
“My god, that’s the face of President George Washington, unbelievable. It looks so real. Where did ya’ll get this?”
“Would you believe it if I told you the future?” Rebecca smirked.
“Cut it out, Rebecca” Karina slapped the top of her hand gently and walked away to look at more dresses.
Rebecca embarrassing showed the clerk her black hand and told her about her struggle to clean it. The kind old lady picked out a nice pair of gloves for Rebecca to wear, the first step in blending in with their new community. Rebecca could not be more grateful for the warm reception they were receiving.
Karina waited until no one could see her face and let out a guilty smile. Something had shaken her loose during the jump. Everyone had the marbles in their heads tossed around; the only difference was Karina already had a few loose. She had to be honest with herself right now, the first time she was really alone, to herself, and that was just because Rebecca was distracted. Karina was gone.
Karina had gotten left back in Cape Canaveral. He would take his time playing the part of Karina, after all he had spent most of his time watching her, studying her, memorizing every last detail of her mannerisms and idiosyncrasies. You might say he was in love with her, but that would only be the case if Hamilton wasn’t already a part of her.
Hamilton would always have the last laugh. He bided his time. Sure when Karina fought of the dead at the prison, he felt a devastating loss, but he never gave up hope. Hamilton knew the life she led would never be without stress, and one day she would need him once again. Hamilton waited and prayed for an unknown threat greater than the horde. His prayers were answered in form of time travel torsion.
Before Karina was knocked out in the ship from the g-force she thought she was going to die. She would do anything to survive but could do nothing to stop it. Her helplessness was back and so she took the form of Hamilton to endure. What Karina did not expect was how he would keep control.
He was never going back in the dark of her consciousness, even if it meant playing it cool and pretending to be her. The truth was that before the crash she was catching herself slipping. Karina knew deep down what was happening and just didn’t want to admit it. Now her failure to face her demons had her trapped in her own mind. Hamilton fingered through the dresses and enjoyed contemplating which he would look best in. In the end he picked the darkest one in-case he had to get his hands dirty.
Atticus watched the two girls across the street inside the store looking at dresses. He focused in on Rebecca and remembered what had happened right before the launch. How she had picked Samuel over him. All of them were dealing with the jump in time in their own way. Atticus found that concentrating on a memory right before the jump was helping ground himself back to reality. Almost as if he was forcing himself to feel hatred in order to be more human.
That’s when Atticus finished his glass of whiskey and took one of the whores upstairs. He took his clothes off and had his way with the woman for hire. Atticus took the nameless whore in that bed and spent the night giving her everything he had. After all that had happened he could not help but fall asleep.
Now changed into some much more suitable attire the girls joined Harold at the bar. Karina had chosen a nice violet dress that had so much material in the skirt; she looked more like a tea kettle than a woman. Rebecca, on the other hand, had decided to go with slacks, a brown-hide vest and a cowboy hat.
“I can’t believe we traveled back to the Wild West.”
“Could be worse,” Harold sipped his beer.
“Where is Atticus?” Rebecca wanted to know.
“He went upstairs with a girl.”
Rebecca sat down at the table. Harold slid his beer over to her. She had a sip and he got up to get himself another drink and one for Karina.
“It might be a while.” He shamelessly added.