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- Herausgeber: Icarus Publishing
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Amsterdam, Virginia — a small farming community in the midst of a suburban transformation — is decimated by the H16N1 flu pandemic. With resources scarce and law enforcement nonexistent, the normally decent citizens of the once well-to-do area turn on each other. Then the militias arrive — men once looked on as "kooks" and outsiders, but who now have the military resources to claim the area farming infrastructure as their own. And with their ranks swollen by the desperate, they don't stop there. United against the tyranny by Reverend Jacob Craft — a local minister and veteran of the war in Afghanistan — the people of Amsterdam fight back. But with the federal, state, and local governments eerily silent, a new form of leadership is needed and The Amsterdam Directorate is born. Today - Reverend Jacob Craft awakens to a brilliant flash in the Eastern sky, the sight of a fiery mushroom cloud on the horizon, and a world ensnared in darkness by the failure of a susceptible power grid. With everything he has worked to build threatened, Jacob rushes to find answers. But an old enemy waits in the darkness for a second chance. Can Jacob keep the peace and defend his friends from a madman's attack or will the fragile community be torn apart from within and consumed by forces from without? ★★★★★ "Slick, well-executed!" - Steven Konkoly (author of The Jakarta Pandemic and The Perseid Collapse series)
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AMSTERDAM APOCALYPSE
a post-apocalyptic thriller
AMSTERDAM APOCALYPSE
© 2023 Matt Grimm © 2023 by ICARUS Publishing, an Imprint of Luzifer Verlag Cyprus Ltd.www.icarus-publishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover: Michael Schubert
ISBN: 978-3-95835-983-3
All rights reserved.
Table of Content
Chapter One
Amsterdam, Virginia 12:16 a.m. – Mid August
Event -04:44 Hours
Reverend Jacob Craft carried the last of the choir chairs from the stage and placed it in a stack near the back of the sanctuary. Turning around and resting against the chairs, he watched a bluish streak cross the nighttime sky through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the stage. Two smaller streaks followed in quick succession and Jacob marveled as he made his way to the base of the windows and stood beneath the wooden cross that hung suspended from the ceiling behind his pulpit.
Saint Nicolas United Methodist Church had been uniquely positioned by a former congregation decades earlier to overlook the vast ranges of the Blue Ridge Mountains that surrounded the valley in which its congregation lived. Tonight, during the tail end of the Perseid Meteor Shower caused by the passing of the Swift-Tuttle Comet, that position was akin to ringside seating at a sporting event years in the making.
Jacob watched a moment longer, transfixed by the millions of stars in the inky sky. He took a deep breath and lowered his eyes, the array of foldout camping chairs amassed on the front lawn of the church catching his eye. In them darkened shapes sizes large and small moved about, their necks craned upward in hopes of catching another striking Perseid.
Jacob turned away, willfully ignoring the pointing fingers of fathers and mothers as they attempted to direct the swiftly fleeting eyes of their children to the wonders of the sky. Tonight, the church was hosting the last of its summertime lock-ins for the youth and the Perseids had drawn a larger crowd of chaperones than usual. And like every family-oriented event the church had hosted over the last few years, it served as a reminder to Jacob of the family he’d lost six years earlier when the population of the area had been decimated by the rapid spread of the H16N1 influenza strain and the accompanying fear and desperation that came with it.
He walked to the pulpit and stood looking out over the red carpeted sanctuary and its wooden pews, envisioning the dearly departed who’d once sat and listened on Sunday mornings. One by one, their images faded and were replaced by rolled sleeping bags and backpacks stuffed with overnight preparations. He dismissed the vision before his eyes arrived at the front pew where his wife and son had once sat. Theirs was an image that would never fade.
A loud thunk and creaking hinges signaled the opening of the sanctuary’s mahogany doors and the end of his solitude. He looked up as a slender silhouette appeared in the doorway against the well-lit narthex area beyond.
“There you are,” a female voice said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Jacob knew the voice well. In the years since the pandemic and the end of her marriage, Leah Huff had become almost as much of a staple on the church property as he was. If the doors were open, and they pretty much always were for one reason or another, she and her teenaged sons, Sean and Aidan, were there.
“Just making a few last-minute changes,” he said, stepping out from behind the pulpit and descending the few steps that ran across the front of the stage.
“They’re going to love it.” Leah stepped into the sanctuary and allowed the door to close behind her. “I love it.”
Even in the darkened room he could see her delicate features, blonde hair, and the white of her teeth as she smiled broadly. She walked down the center aisle and stood awkwardly in front of him, her slender torso hidden in the folds of a maroon Virginia Tech sweatshirt. Jacob resisted the urge to let his eyes wander further.
“I have no idea whose is whose,” he said with a nervous laugh, looking at the sleeping bags. “I guess they’ll have to fight it out over who sleeps on the stage and who gets the aisles.”
Leah laughed.
Lock-ins were normally held in the older areas of the church where the youth ministries were centered, but tonight, with the presence of the meteor shower, the floor-to-ceiling windows of the sanctuary would provide a miraculous backdrop. And if he was being entirely honest with himself, the work done to prepare the area was as much for him as for his guests—a stubborn attempt to avoid the disturbing memories of the family who could no longer join him for such events.
“I’ll stake my claim not too far from yours in case one of those things decides to get a closer look at earth,” Leah said.
Jacob smiled. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. It happens all the time without any major consequences. And I’m a creature of habit.”
“You’re sleeping in the parsonage,” she said with a frown.
He confirmed her statement with a small nod. “I’ll be here to unlock the doors bright and early—if the church is still standing.”
“Stop it!” She hit him playfully on the shoulder and he feigned injury as they walked down the aisle and into the narthex.
Like a mortician, humor had become his way of publicly dealing with both his own inner turmoil and the deluge of personal pain that was brought to him on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. The deaths of twenty-eight million Americans was a hard thing to get past. Nearly every household had been touched by loss of some kind and as the leader of a facility that had become a central part of life in the area, he was expected to care for them all with words of comfort and encouragement. It was a duty he did without complaint to anyone but a God whose existence he’d questioned on more than one occasion since residents of several east Asian countries had fled their homes and brought with them a plague.
“Hi. Good evening,” he said a few minutes later with a smile and a nod as two parishioners passed him at the front door, their male child walking between them toward the sanctuary. He repeated the process again and again as the people from outside stowed their camping chairs next to the door and entered for the night, smiling and laughing with one another as they prepared for what would likely be a mostly sleepless night filled with pizza, popcorn, and oohs and ahhs.
On the opposite side of the entrance and likely aware of the subliminal signals she was sending, Leah greeted people as well, just as Jacob’s wife had once done. Jacob smiled. What else could he do? She didn’t mean any harm. Her attraction to him was well known, and on more than one occasion by more than one well-meaning parishioner he’d been encouraged to make good on it. But he wasn’t ready yet. And he didn’t know if he ever would be.
The pandemic and its aftermath had changed much of American society and Jacob’s role had become far more than he’d ever imagined. Not only was he responsible for the normal duties of a pastor to his congregation, he was responsible for the very form of government that now held the entire area in a fragile but realized state of peace.
When the pandemic had finally subsided in the winter months of 2014, many people had tried to simply move on, but life was far from the normal they sought. Local leaders had long since perished after barricading themselves into their well-stocked, palatial homes in an effort to avoid contracting the illness, once friendly neighbors looked on each other with suspicion and distrust, and all forms of government—local, state, and federal—had become eerily silent.
With resources scarce and law enforcement nonexistent, the normally decent citizens of the well-to-do suburban county once known as Botetourt turned on each other, becoming roving scavengers who would fight for the simplest of creature comforts and hoard life-saving items while others died of need in the streets.
Then the militias arrived—men who had once been looked on as “kooks” and outsiders, but who now had the military resources to dominate large swaths of the area farming infrastructure and claim it as their own. And with their ranks swollen by the desperate, they didn’t stop there. Sitting high on a knoll at the southernmost tip of Botetourt County, Saint Nicolas United Methodist Church was chosen as an important and easily defensible position in the militias’ plan to control the area. But with everything he’d come to love about life dying around him, Jacob had refused to surrender the property—God’s property.
In response, the militias attacked, burning homes and killing people, but Jacob stood fast using the skills he’d learned fighting a similar force in the United States’ war on terrorism in Afghanistan. And slowly, what remained of the citizenry joined him—a man they once knew as a high school football hero and had come to re-know as a trusted friend and spiritual adviser. Together, they drove back the invaders, formed a new system of local government under the leadership of five elected directors, and gave birth to The Amsterdam Directorate—a forty-seven square mile self-sustaining suburbia complete with its own food producing farms and small but effective security force.
But like any experiment there were still rough spots to iron out. Many of the militiamen had only accepted their terms begrudgingly after losing an intense battle and Jacob feared what would happen if and when another emergency came to pass and the fragile peace was tested. Would the militias break the agreement and attempt to take control of the area again?
He jarred his mind back to the present and reached for the handle on one of the double doors leading out of the church as the last of the lock-in guests passed through. For a moment his hand touched Leah’s as she did the same. He drew back as though the metal handle had been hot to the touch. “Sorry.”
She smiled. “Why?”
“I—uhh—well—I don’t know.”
She laughed quietly as he pulled a set of keys from his pocket and prepared to lock the doors. In total, twenty-six teenagers and children accompanied by fourteen adults had entered.
“Wait,” Leah said, stopping him. “Did you see Sean or Aidan?”
Jacob thought back over those who had entered. “No.”
“I left them with the Mundy boys. They were playing by the sign.”
Her smile faded in an instant and Jacob knew she was thinking about the steep slope and the four-lane highway at its bottom not far from the illuminated sign identifying the property and its purpose. Though her sons were nearly teenagers, the oldest, Aidan, had a moderate case of autism that meant his mind functioned on the level of someone half his age.
“I’m sure he’s fine. The Mundy’s didn’t come through either. Sean’s with him and Del and Zac are good boys. They wouldn’t let anything happen to him.”
He could tell by her facial expression that his words were of little comfort to the worried mind of a mother. And if he was being honest, Sean’s reputation for getting his older brother into trouble was indeed a reason for concern. He pulled open the door he’d just closed and gave her a reassuring smile before stepping out, intent on heading for the front yard.
“Hey now!” someone said as Jacob turned, his face meeting a pair of camouflage overalls and the broad chest wearing them.
“You weren’t about to close up shop without us, were you?” a deep, country voice said.
Jacob looked up, stunned.
Mace Mundy, a seemingly gentle giant of a farmer, grinned down at him.
Jacob frowned. “I thought we’d avoided the antics of the three stooges tonight.”
“Takes one to know one,” Mundy said dryly, moving past him and into the church. Behind him, four boys made their way causally into the church, the last one, Leah’s oldest son, Aidan, smiled broadly as he sailed a toy plane through the air.
Jacob chuckled. Mace Mundy was like a brother in many ways. They couldn’t be more different in terms of looks and interests, but they bantered back and forth like they’d grown up on the farm together. And in some ways they had. Mundy was his chief deputy in the Directorate and though they rarely spoke of it, they’d both survived the H16N1 outbreak and the ensuing militia wars in no small part because of each other. But many of their friends and family members hadn’t been so fortunate.
“Hey, Captain,” Jacob said, clapping Aidan on the back as he entered. “What’s that one?”
Aidan beamed, his eyes moving between Jacob and the model plane. “Cessna Citation 560XL!”
“Awesome.”
“Are you sure you won’t spend the night in here with the rest of us?” Leah said, placing an arm around Aidan and guiding the boy away.
Mace Mundy chuckled and raised an eyebrow, giving Jacob a sideways glance.
Jacob shrugged and cocked his head a bit.
“I know,” Leah said. “You’re a creature of habit.”
Jacob smiled and watched as they made their way into the sanctuary before he pushed the doors closed. Turning toward the path to the two-bedroom brick ranch the church provided for him, he passed an eye over the church’s quiet backyard and parking lot. Tall pines formed a natural boundary around the dozen or so vehicles parked there and the nearly full moon created a ghostly bluish glow.
He placed his hands in his pockets and looked into the sky as he walked the well-worn fifty-yard path. A faint red light from a high-altitude aircraft caught his eye among the myriad of stars, but was quickly eclipsed as three Perseids shot across the sky like tracer rounds. The world was in for a show tonight.
Chapter Two
4:59 a.m.
Event -00:01 Hours
Jacob caressed his wife’s cheek. It felt good to see her, even if it was only for a few minutes. Somehow, he knew he was asleep and that this was a dream, but it didn’t matter. He watched his son, Samuel, bounce playfully through the wheat field sweeping the tops of the stalks with his outstretched hands. Sarah smiled, but said nothing. She never did. Neither of them did when he saw them like this. But they didn’t have to.
Sarah stood from the spot they’d chosen on the hill overlooking the field.
“Wait,” he said, grabbing for her hand, but missing it. “Don’t go.”
But she was gone. Standing next to Samuel a hundred yards away in an instant and holding her hand out for the boy to follow her down the gravel road that ran between the fields.
Jacob sat up, pining for more. Just a minute longer. A few seconds to say goodbye. But it wasn’t to be. The two walked toward the rising sun, their shapes becoming hazy in the bright light.
His eyes flew open, expecting a darkened bedroom, but the light lingered. He closed them and rubbed his face, trying to clear his head. Opening his eyes again and sitting up in the bed, he could still see the light though it was fading rapidly. A moment later it was gone. He ran a hand through his hair and swung his legs off the bed, reaching for the cell phone on his bedside table to check the time. He pressed a button to light the LED, but nothing happened. That was odd. He felt sure he’d charged it, but maybe he’d forgotten. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He cleared his throat and stood, yawning. How long had he slept? This night hadn’t been any different than the many others of recent years. He’d struggled to fall asleep, his body desperate for rest, but his mind refusing. The last time he remembered looking the clock on the phone had read 2:07 a.m. Had he fallen asleep right after that or had it been sometime later? It didn’t matter. He knew he’d slept because he remembered dreaming. How long was irrelevant.
He walked across the aged shag carpeting and left the bedroom, his feet feeling the cold linoleum of the kitchen. He plucked a cup from the drying tray in the sink and pushed the faucet lever up. A steady stream of clear water fell into the cup. At the halfway mark, the flow slowed to a trickle and then stopped completely. Jacob pushed the faucet lever up and down trying to restart the flow, getting only a few drops and a loud burst of air.
What was going on? Was the power out? Obviously it was because the well pump had stopped. He left the faucet in the on position so he’d know when it came back on. Tilting his head back as he drank from the cup, he noticed a reddish glow from behind the curtains. Was the sun rising? He looked at the battery-operated clock on the wall above his kitchen table. It was only a minute or two after five. The rising sun shouldn’t be visible for another hour at least.
Realizing the ground beneath his feet was actually shaking, Jacob dove to the floor and crawled under the kitchen table as dishes fell from the hutch shelves, pots and pans hanging above the stove vibrated loose and clanged across the floor, pictures slid from the walls, and the chandelier came crashing onto the table, sending fragments of crystal colored glass in all directions. From outside he could hear a car horn beeping as he held tight to the table to keep it from vibrating away from him.
Then it was over. As suddenly as it had begun shaking, the earth stilled and became quiet. Jacob sat under the table looking around the few parts of his house that were visible in the dark. An earthquake in southwest Virginia? While it wasn’t entirely unheard of, it was rare to say the least. He looked at the eerie red glow through the kitchen window again. What was it? Were the two events connected?
Doing his best to calm himself, he reached out from under the table and took his tennis shoes from beside the back door. Making sure there was no glass in them, he slid them on and left his cover. He opened the back door and looked out into the side yard of the church to see the swings on the children’s play set moving back and forth as if they’d just been used. Everything else was still. The normal sounds of night had returned with the exception of the systematic beeping of a single car horn.
Cautiously leaving the relative safety of his home and rounding an overgrown bush that provided the house with privacy from the church driveway, he saw the source of the eerie glow and stopped. Red and orange smoke rose from behind the mountains in the distance and ended in a ball of fire, the unmistakable sight of a black mushroom cloud high above the surface of the earth spreading steadily outward. He stared for a long moment before stumbling forward into his yard. What was he looking at? A number of possibilities flashed through his mind before the words Leah Huff had spoken a few hours earlier came echoing back to him. “...a closer look at earth.”
Feeling all of a sudden like his legs couldn’t support him, he sank to his knees and took a deep breath, his eyes never leaving the sky. “Mercy, Lord,” he thought. “Mercy.”
Chapter Three
5:03 a.m.
Event +00:03 Hours
The sound of the church doors opening jarred Jacob immediately into motion. Standing from the ground, survival instincts imparted to him by two tours of duty in Afghanistan with the U.S Army kicked in and he rushed toward the doors. “Is everyone okay?”
Mace Mundy pushed his way out of the church, his eyes wide and his mouth twisted into a threatening frown. “What the hell was that? What’s happened, Jacob?”
Leah Huff and Mundy’s two sons, twelve-year-old Del and ten-year-old Zac, arrived behind him.
“An earthquake,” Jacob said, making brief eye contact and then looking over his shoulder at the glowing horizon. “And that’s not all.”
Mundy studied the horizon, his eyes not moving from the sight for several seconds.
Jacob looked past him and into the darkened church. The power was definitely out, but why? The quake had arrived after he’d noticed the outage so that couldn’t have been the cause. “Is everyone okay?” he repeated.
Mundy shook his head. “I don’t know. I told everyone to get under the pews as soon as I realized what was happening, but I don’t know how many made it.”
“Ugh—what is that?” Leah said, making a face as she stepped out.
Jacob turned and squinted as something stung his eyes. The outside air had suddenly become dry and restrictive as if a large truck had just driven by on a dirt road. “Ugh—” He pulled his t-shirt over his mouth and nose. “Get back inside.” He waved them toward the darkened narthex.
Closing the doors and returning the room to almost complete darkness, he made his way to a fire extinguisher cabinet recessed into the wall next to the door. Bending down, he opened a compartment beneath it and withdrew two six-volt floating flashlights and a bag of first aid supplies.
“Here.” He handed one of the flashlights to Mundy, who turned it on and shined it around the room.
Standing and crossing the tiled floor, Jacob made his way through the mahogany doors into the sanctuary with the other light. The many windows gave the walls the same eerie red glow as the sky outside.
“Pastor—” someone said as Jacob shined his light around.
He walked further in. Around him children sat hunkered underneath the wooden pews as the adults tried to count them and check for injuries. “Is anyone hurt?”
“Two of the chandeliers fell, but I don’t think anyone is injured.”
Jacob turned his beam to the floor and saw the shattered remains of two of the six festoon-ornamented lighting fixtures that normally lit up the large room. Broken glass spread in a wide circle around the remains, but thankfully no one appeared to have been directly underneath. He moved the light up and around. The pulpit on the stage had vibrated away from its original position and the cross hanging above it was swinging gently.
He left the room and re-entered the narthex where Mace and Leah stood.
“Leah, I want you in charge of keeping everyone in the sanctuary and seeing to any injuries. There doesn’t appear to be anyone seriously hurt. Make sure everyone is here and then keep them under cover. There may be aftershocks. There should be forty people total between adults and children and don’t forget to count Mace and me.” He handed her the first aid bag and his flashlight. “Mace, we need to get the generator going and get the lights on so we can assess the damage and save the food in the refrigerators. The power was out before the quake hit, but the grid could still have been damaged. It could be awhile until service is restored.”
Mundy nodded his head northeast. “What about that out there?”
Jacob shook his head and gave him a knowing look. Whatever had caused the plume of fire and smoke wasn’t something they could do anything about and wasn’t something that needed to be discussed within earshot of already scared people. Whatever it was, they’d deploy their emergency preparations and would deal with the things they could directly control.
Mundy gave an understanding nod and handed over his flashlight.
Shining the light ahead of him, Jacob entered a hallway off the narthex, pulled open a metal door, and shined the beam down a flight of stairs. Unlike the sanctuary and narthex that were lit minimally by the light coming through the windows from outside, the basement was completely dark. Jacob descended the switch-backing steps with Mundy closely behind him and moved steadily through the zigzagging hallways where the church classrooms were located, stepping over items that had fallen from shelves and walls during the quake. In a far end of the church, he handed the light to Mundy and unlocked a door.
After the massive disturbances during the flu pandemic six years earlier, Jacob had made sure the church was equipped with two generators and a healthy supply of fuel with which to run them. He pulled open the door and Mundy shined the light into an equipment room. Here, all of the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing needs of the church were based. The rough adaptations and updates made to the room over the years testified to its original construction during the 1950s with the oldest of the facilities on the grounds.
“Looks like the walls held.” Mundy moved the light along the concrete block construction. “I don’t see any cracks.”
“Let’s hope the rest of the church fared as well.” Jacob stepped into the room, moving ladders and other maintenance items out of the way. “We need to check everything out as soon as we get the lights on.”
In the far corner of the square room a gray electrical box was mounted to the wall. Jacob pulled open the front panel and held his hand out for the light, shining it on the fuel gauge when Mundy handed it to him.
“We’re all set,” he said, looking at the arm on the gauge as it hovered over the full mark. He pushed the switch marked MAIN at the top of the box to the on position. “It’ll take a minute or two for the engines to get going, but once they do we’ll have seventy-two hours of continuous power before refueling.”
“Is seventy-two hours going to be long enough?”
Jacob turned and could see the concern on Mundy’s face. “There’s another seventy-two hours’ worth of fuel in 55-gallon drums next to the generator outside. We can pump it in periodically and keep this place going for a week, maybe ten days if we’re conservative. Then we have fuel at the farms for the trucks that we can scavenge if we have to. That should keep us going long enough for the government to figure out what’s happened and for the recovery plan to be enacted.”
“The government wasn’t much good to us last time and if that mushroom cloud over those mountains means what I think it means, this could get a lot worse and quick.”
“I don’t think it was an A-Bomb.”
“Why not? Sure as hell looks like a nuclear detonation to me.”
Jacob shook his head. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think a bomb would cause an earthquake like that unless it was underground. I think it was an asteroid. One of the Perseids from last night maybe. I think it struck the earth.”
Mundy examined the floor for a moment. “Hard to believe I’m saying this, but let’s hope you’re right. At least a repeat performance isn’t a likely factor in that case.”
“I know. Believe me.” Jacob slapped Mundy’s shoulder reassuringly as a humming sound came from the generator. “We can’t control the actions, only the reactions. And we’re prepared to go it alone if we have to for as long as we have to. You know that.”
Chapter Four
5:10 a.m.
Event +00:10 Hours
Jacob shined his flashlight over the darkened metal surfaces in the commercial kitchen that had been built as part of the church community center just over a decade earlier. The generator had been running for a full five minutes, but the appliances had yet to respond. Not even the small digital clock on the face of the stove showed any sign of life.
“Breakers are all on,” Mundy called as the beam of his flashlight signaled his arrival from elsewhere in the building.
“Damn,” Jacob mouthed, his mind searching for an answer. While he knew the earthquake hadn’t caused the power outage, it was easy to believe that if an impact had occurred or a bomb had gone off that the grid could have been damaged a good distance away and still affect them. But if that was the case, why wouldn’t their backup generators restore power?
He ran the individual systems involved through his mind one at a time all the way back to the beginning. The generator itself was running but nothing else, so the problem had to be in the connection between it and the building.
“We need to go and get Jimmy Cundiff. He designed this whole system when we installed it a few years ago. He only lives a few miles away.”
Mundy nodded. “We can take my truck. I need to go by the farm and make sure everything’s okay there.”
“We’d better make it separate trips,” Jacob said, knowing the clock was ticking. “I need to get Jimmy back here and figure out what’s going on fast before people start showing up.”
In the Amsterdam Directorate, Saint Nicolas United Methodist Church was designated the go-to place in case of an emergency, and with the power down Jacob was expecting a large crowd to begin arriving by midday for food and shelter. While most homes in the area had been prepared for at least a few days without electricity, the circumstances in which the outage had occurred would produce fear and anxiety, and with the flu pandemic still fresh in many minds he expected people to leave home and seek out comfort and information sooner rather than later.
“Alright,” Mundy nodded.
“We need to get some guys on the road and start spreading the word also,” Jacob said, heading for the glass doors of the community center. “People need to stay in their homes until further notice.”
He leaned out of the building cautiously. “Seems to have subsided,” he said, shining his light over the roofs of the cars in the parking lot. A fine dust sprinkled with larger, pebble-sized pieces of rock had settled on every flat surface within sight. He stepped out and waited for Mundy to join him.
“Some of these cars have been moved,” the big man said, shining his own light around. “That’s a hell of a quake to move a standing vehicle.”
Jacob nodded. “Get Paul and Ben Poff from the sanctuary and see if they’re willing to help us make these runs. I’ll get my keys from the parsonage.”
Mundy started off toward the front doors of the church and Jacob turned for the path to his house.
“You hear that?” Mundy called as Jacob reached his back door.
Jacob stopped and listened. He wasn’t sure exactly what Mundy was talking about, but he did hear something. He walked back around the house and stood looking across the parking lot in the direction of the reddish ball in the sky. From somewhere over the horizon a sound like that of approaching rain could be heard. Mundy rejoined him just as the tops of the pine trees surrounding the parking lot began to bend in a westward direction.
“Cover your eyes,” Jacob said, turning around as the gust went from a light breeze to a heavy wind within a second. The settled dust blew up and around them as they stood downwind, shielding their eyes and faces. A loud crack came from somewhere above them. Instinctively, Jacob covered his head with his arms until he heard the sound of crushing metal and glass. He looked to see a tree branch buried in the windshield of a nearby car.
“This way!” he called over the gale.
Mundy followed and they made their way to Jacob’s back door where they were shielded from the wind by the overgrown shrubbery surrounding the house. Jacob pushed open the door and they entered the darkened house as another deafening snap sounded. Jacob knew by the heavy impact a moment later that one of the pine trees lining the property had fallen. He led Mundy to the central hallway of the home and stopped. “We should be safe here. The trusses run this way and the house is made of brick. That should protect us from any impact.”
“What do you think it is?”
“It’s all got to be some kind of aftereffect. It can’t last forever.”
He thought about the people gathered in the church. It too was made of brick and had thick trusses. If a tree fell on it, it was doubtful any serious damage would result and certainly not enough to reach the people inside. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the sanctuary were the only possible weakness, but there were no trees on that side of the property, only a wide open view of the mountains.
“How far do you think that cloud is from here?”
Jacob shook his head. “Hundred―maybe a hundred and fifty miles.”
“Still too damn close if you ask me.”
“Whatever was underneath that thing when it hit is toast. Like Nagasaki or Hiroshima toast.”
Mundy shook his head. “I sure hope you’re right about it being an asteroid. If it’s some kind of attack―God―we’ll be in the middle of World War III.”
Jacob frowned and listened to the noise outside. The wind was quieting.
“I think we’re safe,” he said after a few minutes. The sound of the wind had completely subsided. Taking the car keys from the decorative hanger shelf next to his back door, he pulled it open. The wind was gone entirely, leaving only the stillness of the late summer night. He looked into the yard for any signs of damage from the falling pine tree. From beyond the overgrown shrubbery he could see the top of the tree extending into the side yard of the church where it had narrowly missed the children’s play set as it landed directly between his house and the church.
“Dammit,” Mundy said, looking out over Jacob’s shoulder. “That’s right across the parking lot.”
Together they rounded the shrubs and looked. One of the six-story-tall pines that had lined the property for decades had been pulled up by its roots and had fallen diagonally across the parking lot, crushing at least six of the dozen cars located there.
“Ohhh—” Mundy said with a whistle as he looked at the damage.
Jacob shook his head, almost unable to believe the events that had transpired in the last ten minutes. “My Trailblazer’s over here.”
The front door of the church opened. “Jacob? Mace?” a male voice called as a flashlight shined over the lot.
“We’re fine!” Jacob called, seeing Leah Huff and Paul Poff standing in the doorway. “Keep everyone inside!”
He walked to the front of his house where a small concrete pad had been made into a parking spot. His dark blue Chevy Trailblazer had been parked far enough away to avoid any damage from the falling tree, though it was now covered in green pine needles. He clicked the remote fob expecting the doors to unlock. Nothing. He clicked it again with the same result.
Looking back at Mundy with a worried expression, he placed the key into the driver’s door and tried to turn it. The key turned, but felt as though it would break off from the amount of force he was having to use. Finally the lock popped up and Jacob opened the door. Sitting down into the vehicle, he pushed the key into the ignition and pressed down on the brake.
“You’ve got no brake lights or anything,” Mundy said.
Jacob turned the key, hoping the vehicle would sputter to a start. When it didn’t, he stared at the gauges and turned the key off and on again. Nothing. He took a deep breath, allowing himself to sink back into the leather seat as he did. What kind of asteroid killed a perfectly good automobile?
“Let’s try my truck.” Mundy walked through the yard to where he could step over the fallen tree. As it usually was, his beat-up farm truck was parked next to the small tool shed where the lawn mower and other outside maintenance equipment was kept.
Jacob followed, doubt creeping up inside him as he looked over the crushed vehicles in the lot. He’d worked hard to bring the citizenry of Amsterdam past the pandemic and into some sense of normalcy. But that had all but evaporated in the last few minutes.
Mundy opened the door to his truck and leaned in, placing the key in the ignition as the shocks whined beneath his considerable weight. He gave the key a sharp turn and the faded red Ford sputtered. “C’mon, baby.” He turned the key again. This time the old wreck shuttered to life, its belts squealing and its motor grumbling. “Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! Your Chevy can eat my boot.”
Jacob laughed as Mundy pumped his fist victoriously.
“Alright. Alright. We need to get the keys to some of these other cars and see if they’re working and then get the chainsaw from the shed so we can get this tree cut up. No one’s going anywhere until it’s out of the way.”
Chapter Five
5:46 a.m.
Event +00:46 Hours
Mace Mundy turned off the chainsaw he was holding and set it on the pavement. Returning to a standing position, he lifted the last sizable piece of the fallen pine tree and allowed it to fall over onto one of the crushed cars in the lot. It had taken just over half an hour to saw up and move aside enough of the tree to get a vehicle through.
“Alright. Good stuff,” Jacob said, removing a pair of work gloves and dusting off the front of his pants. He’d piled what he could of the smaller pieces close to his house. He could split them into logs later and use them in the fireplace during the colder months.
“What now?” Paul Poff asked, returning from the same pile of wood Jacob had been working on. Paul was a younger member of the congregation and attended with his father, Ben. In another week, he’d have been off to college at the University of Virginia. But like everything else at the moment, that future was hanging by a thread.
Jacob clasped him on the shoulder. “Let’s start collecting keys from people in the sanctuary and trying these other cars. Maybe we can find a few more that work.”
Paul nodded and trotted off toward the church.
Mundy frowned. “I’ve been thinking about this and I think we have bigger problems than we talked about earlier. Something’s happened to the power grid. I don’t know what exactly, but I think it’s big.”
Jacob had thought about it as well while they were clearing the tree and conversation had ceased. The five-person Directorate of which both he and Mundy were elected members had played with a variety of emergency scenarios over the last few years in an effort to make sure their community was as prepared as possible. In a meeting prior to their first winter as a fully formed community, they had sat down and ranked the possible emergencies in terms of likelihood from least to greatest, and while he wasn’t sure exactly what they were dealing with, the circumstances seemed to fall toward the least likely side of the scale, meaning they’d put more of their resources into combating events they had considered more likely and had thought they would have more control over locally.
He looked at Mundy. “I agree with you, but there’s only so much we can do. We all agreed that putting resources into events we wouldn’t have much control over wasn’t a good idea. We need to focus on what we can do and I believe that’s getting the backup generators functioning. We’ll get Jimmy back here and working on the system here. Once it’s up and going we can focus on the farms. From there, we can see what else needs to be done to have everyone prepared for the winter.”
Mundy shrugged. “Guess you’re right. I’ll get the truck out and we’ll get moving.”
Before either man could make a move, the distant sputter of an engine drew their attention.
Up the road from the church, a set of headlights illuminated the tree-covered lots nearby and they watched as a vehicle appeared from around the corner, its engine sounding like that of a lawn mower. The vehicle slowed and entered the church lot, stopping directly in front of them moments later.
“I thought you boys might be out and about,” a voice said as the headlights were turned off to reveal an olive green open-top Jeep that looked as if it had come from an army base.
Jacob shined his flashlight at the driver though he knew who it was by the vehicle alone. “A.J,” he said with a nod as the driver stood and looked over the windshield at them.
A.J. Deyerle was a local maintenance man, occasional attendee of Saint Nicolas, and an eccentric veteran of the Vietnam War. Though he’d been retired from the military for many years, a person would never guess by his choice of clothes that he was no longer enlisted.
“Looks like you have a nice collection of two-ton paperweights, bubba.” Deyerle looked over the gathered vehicles. “They’re all dead, ain’t they?”
Jacob nodded. “Mine is. Mace’s is running, but we haven’t tried the others yet. We’ve been trying to get this tree cleared away.”
“Well—I might have an explanation if you’re interested.”
In addition to his experience as a soldier, Deyerle was a dedicated prepper, choosing to live like a hermit in a one-bedroom hut at the end of a nearby road with only a Siberian husky for regular company. On more than one occasion, Jacob had sat listening to the man’s vast conspiracy theories and pontification about the kind of preparations it would take to survive everything he said was coming.
Prior to the pandemic, Jacob had written him off as mildly entertaining and possibly a bit crazy, but had learned different when the man joined his loose knit coalition in the months after the pandemic and had helped to fight off the militias.
