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Overview
While driving home to Tulsa, Oklahoma, along a major Interstate highway, Trenton Brambly Smithson witnesses an asteroid crashing to earth where it creates a 30-mile diameter crater obliterating his home city. At a distance of about 60 miles, Trent and two new friends survive the disaster. The trek to find civilization and safety turns ominous when he discovers much of northeast Oklahoma devoid of citizens due to forced evacuation by police and militia forces supported by the military. Militia forces now rules the area, which is to become a military reservation built for exterminating undesirable citizens. Aside from the possible global ecological consequences of the event, the powers-that-be activate National Guard units unilaterally, deploy regular military units and recall troops from abroad prior to the asteroid disaster, and declare martial law. States now oppose each other and the potential for civil war looms large. The chief executive, the President of the United States, Dwayne Jefferson Troutman, has decided to rule for the rest of his life. Smithson, supported by seasoned military associates, restores order to northeast Oklahoma creating the erosion of tyrannical support, and the team turns their focus to bringing the chief executive to justice. The chase is on...the vermin is loose.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781546251194 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 08/08/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 402 |
| File size: | 768 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Trenton Brambly Smithson woke to a glorious early June day at a Kimberly Hotel & Suites somewhere west and south of St. Louis just off Interstate 44. Glorious because it was 6a.m. the sky was clear, and he'd see another sunrise. Definitely, this was Trent's favorite time of day ... great for traveling, especially when traveling southwest with the rising sun behind him and most especially when going home.
He arrived Saturday evening around 8p.m. while enroute to Tulsa, Oklahoma: home. The journey began in Michigan in a northwestern burb near Detroit. He would have left earlier, but got a late start. He drove ten hours and since his night driving skills were for naught, he holed up for the night at the hotel.
In Michigan, Trent visited with his pals, the gang he hung with when he lived in the area nearly twenty years ago. They were still tight, but saw each other infrequently due to the distance. Jason Antonelli and Rodger Francis, and all the wives, Kate, Lorinda and Josie, were together most weekends for years ... at a lake somewhere, in a backyard somewhere, or in some other place ... wherever their fancy took them. Jason's wife, Kate, had died of complications due to chronic emphysema. She'd been sickly for several years.
Trent was traveling on business when Kate died. As the executive process engineer for a diversified manufacturing company with nearly twenty plants scattered across the United States and Canada, and another ten or so in other countries in, or near Asia, and a smattering in Europe. Trent was always on the move.
He couldn't make the funeral, so he drove from Tulsa to Jason's place in Northville, Michigan a week later to hang with Jason, to be with him, and to show him the love he felt. Rodger and Lorinda were there too. Josie, Trent's' wife, had other obligations and couldn't make the trip.
The Kimberly Hotel & Suites was a convenient place to stop ... easy-off, easy-on access to Interstate 44 and free breakfast. Some of the food was not too palatable, but Trent needed calories to support his largish frame; six-feet-two-and-a-half-inches and two-hundred-thirty pounds of semi lean flesh supported by strong bone and sinew. His hands could palm a basketball. His shoulder width and upper body strength supported with piston like legs provide power and stamina and he has to keep his engine fed. His classic and pleasant oval and clean shaven face was topped with a thick mop of black hair, with a few silver highlights. Trent kept his hair trimmed. He intimidated no one. He was a boyish looking large man.
His food items of choice were the biscuits slathered with real butter and white gravy. His bonus food of choice included a whole banana, bright yellow and not too bruised, the large chunks of shelled walnuts, and 2% percent milk in the small carton. These items were his travel food. Later, before leaving, he'd fill a clean styro coffee cup with the nuts. Along with the banana and the milk, Trent would consume those goodies on the way home, but now he enjoyed his coffee, biscuits and gravy before checking out and hitting the road; six hours to home.
The night before, Trent topped off the gas tank in his Hyundai Hybrid. He rather enjoyed getting forty plus miles per gallon in the vehicle. The car would get even better mileage if not for the fifteen mph headwind he'd be facing.
There would be no stopping unless a potty break became an essential need. It was about four hours to Joplin, Missouri. I-44 runs straight through to Tulsa and beyond to Oklahoma City, and continues on to Wichita Falls, Texas. Joplin was the last sizable town he'd pass through before hitting the Oklahoma state line. From there it was two hours to home.
In Oklahoma, I-44 is a toll road but Trent would not be stopping at a tollbooth. He had a Pike Pass thing'ie on the inside of the windshield behind the rear view mirror and it automatically registered the passage and debited his account.
Trent had been traveling a while, even before the Michigan trip. He was looking forward to spending the whole week at home with his wife, Josie and doggies ... Lucy, Bravo, Megan and Shannon. Lucy and Bravo were brother and sister German Shorthair Pointers from the same litter. Megan and Shannon were King Charles Cavilers ... sisters from the same litter. They are a loving pack of animals. A loving family. Trent was looking forward to not doing anything after arriving home. ETA, 1 p.m.
A little more than an hour after crossing the Oklahoma state line, Trent neared the eastern edge of Claremore, a town east of Tulsa and a port city because of the McClellan-Kerr navigation system built to connect Claremore to the Mississippi River system with access to major ports. The radio was set on 89.5 FM, National Public Radio, in this part of the world. Trent wasn't focused on radio dialog. The radio was background noise and soothing regardless of the current topic. Suddenly, the program was interrupted by the infernal and teeth clenching emergency broadcast system noise with its strange beeps, buzzes, and trills designed to get your attention. It's the same sequence sometimes heard and seen on TV. Sometimes, when the sequence finished the program would simply return to normal, and sometimes an announcement would blurt, "This has been a test of the ..." etc, etc. But that didn't happen. There was no announcement. There was no return to program. There was nothing. Trent punched another station ... 103.3 FM, a classic rock station in Tulsa. The silence continued.
Trent was startled when a dark disc appeared at 12 o'clock high in what was otherwise a bright blue-sky day. It was bizarre and ominous and it appeared to be huge and almost perfectly round. The disk glowed orange-yellow along its edges which were flaring away from the object. This was no airplane. Trent couldn't see a contrail of any sort, so maybe the trajectory was straight down and not a glancing fall, or seemingly so from Trent's vantage point. The center of the disc was dark, burnt, and brown and it was getting bigger in the sky. The realization of what is was, or could be shocked Trent to his core and it seemed to be headed straight for his final destination ... Tulsa.
Trent slammed on the brakes and pulled to the shoulder. He jumped from the car to get a better look and narrowly avoided becoming blubbery pasta sauce as another driver nearly picked him off. Other cars stopped too ands some were driving crazy-like. Others turned around, or tried to. Trent looked left across the Interstate. Forest. He looked right. Pasture. He raced down the steep embankment to the right, leapt a cattle fence strung along the flat pasture and ran along another fence-line to about the center of the field. He found a dense thicket of brush and flung himself into it with his head pointed toward Tulsa. He latched his hands onto two sturdy-looking stalks of some kind of bush. Trent's largish hands clamped around the girth of the wooded material and he was determined to NEVER let go for the rest of his life.
Suddenly, a rabbit appeared from directly in front of him. It was making a bee-line for the right side of Trent's neck and chest area. Trent was wearing a mock safari shirt with extra large, button down breast pockets. He offered the right pocket to the rabbit and it seemed all too happy to crawl in. If that wasn't strange enough, the next critter that made a frantic sprint for a safe haven was a snake. A copperhead. A smallish one. Poisonous. Thick body. Variable coloration of dead leaves. Triangle shaped head ... the head of a viper. It snuggled on the left side of Trent's neck and chest area and made itself as small as possible. Trent made his left pocket available to the snake and it had no qualms using this temporary shelter.
Then it happened. It hit. The vibration of the ground reached the hapless trio before any sound did ... and the vibration grew stronger before all heck broke loose.
Trent experienced an earthquake before. It was a 5.5 centered in an area he happened to be near to ... about twelve miles from the epicenter. He remembered it lasting thirty seconds or so. He was standing next to his vehicle and kept his hands firmly attached to it while keeping his feet connected to vibrating ground beneath him. The noise associated with the tremor sounded like a freight train running flat out from about six feet away.
Trent reasoned this was no tremor or a quake. It was upheaval. He looked through the fence line in front of him, and saw another open pasture for about two-hundred yards before reaching a line of trees, or forested area. Trent saw concentric undulations of earth rolling toward him, fast. They were waves, a foot or so high, like water waves, but these waves were made of earth. The space between them was twenty to thirty feet apart. His grip tightened. His heart pounded. The snakes tongue flicked franticly from under the left pocket flap. The rabbit shook silently in the right pocket.
Trent's body was flopped up and down as each wave hit. As he was being battered and he was certain he lost his hearing because he heard nothing but a droning so loud it hurt his head and the rest of his body at the same time.
Then a blast furnace wind, presumably from the impact area, hit. His survival was uncertain. Most of the brush around him was set ablaze. Looking up for a second, he saw a full size tree of some variety, and apparently uprooted, was flying straight at him. The ragged uprooted trunk hit the ground first and the tree's upper structure slammed into the brushy area where Trent hung on for life. A good portion of the top of the tree covered his position and gave him some relief from the searing heat above.
He looked up again he saw other objects flying past at impossible speeds. Some were trees, and they zoomed by like rockets. Trent hazarded another peek at the sky only to see other objects being propelled and the sky was awash with awkward, misshapen missiles ... there were vehicles of every ilk and other debris that was mostly unidentifiable. More trees too, or parts of trees.
All sense of time stopped. The earths rumbling abated, somewhat. Much of the sky was blackened and burnt and was rolling in every direction, including upward. Other areas near the center and lower to the earth glowed orange-yellow. Suddenly, Trent realized he wasn't breathing, so, he started breathing. But his situation hadn't improved. Trent was getting light-headed because he was being starved of oxygen. That was it. The oxygen. The blast blew the oxygen out of the air. Suddenly, he remembered: Red Adair, the oilman. He developed a technique to extinguish oil wellhead fires by placing an explosive device near the flame and igniting it. The blast removed the oxygen the fire needed for fuel, and with no fuel, the fire extinguished itself leaving the oil to gush forth and eventually a crew would cap the flow.
There was no place to run to find breathable oxygen, but Trent realized a massive explosion would leave a vacuum ... a vacuum which would backfill to the epicenter with almost the same ferocity as the event that created the no oxygen zone. It was then he noticed the wind had changed direction and now coming from behind him, and coming fast. A fifty or sixty mile-per-hour gust pushing toward the blast center was more tolerable than the F5 or greater gale that nearly sent him flying toward Missouri moments earlier. And, the best part, he could breath again. He was alive.
After a time, the ground shaking quelled. The breeze coming from the southwest became more or less normal. The sky remained dark and was still full of debris with larger chunks of whatever making their way to earth. Trent decided to keep an on eye on the sky in case anything larger than a toothbrush would come his way.
Trent realized his hands still gripped the bases of bushes he'd clung too. The ground around him and under him was busted and broken, but the roots of the tenacious shrubs held. He tried to loosen and unwind his grip and surprisingly found it a difficult task. It was as if his fingers permanently welded themselves into the flora. Eventually, his fingers came free. His arms ached, his hands ached, his back ached; everything hurt.
Trent pushed himself to his knees and sat his butt on his legs. He took in the tree that covered him and realized it probably saved him from the searing heat wave. He noticed every leaf had burned or blown off, and some limbs were smoldering, others were charred. He also noticed the temperature had diminished greatly and wondered if it would get cooler under a darkened sky. And if so, how much cooler?
Trent stood shakily on rubbery legs. Much of the tree that covered him still covered him, but without the foliage, he could see across the pasture in front of him ... or what was a pasture. Now it was a free-for-all wasteland of broken trees, broken earth, and other things he couldn't readily identify. He scanned the horizon looking southwest, and saw no standing trees. No buildings.
Smoke, or haze, and fluttering debris dominated the view, and limited Trent's vision. But, from what he could see, the land was denuded. He looked toward I-44 to his left. He didn't expect to see any vehicles, and he didn't, including his own.
Trent breathed deeply and exhaled loudly. In his right shirt pocket, he felt a stirring. The rabbit. He opened the shirt lap and rescued the bunny. It seemed no worse for wear. He looked around for place to release the bugger, but thought better of it, and resolved he could find a more suitable area. Assuming there would be a suitable area ... eventually.
He returned the rabbit to his, or her, new nest in the shirt and turned his attention to his left pocket. Now what do I do. Gee, wouldn't it be a hoot to have saved this critter from certain death only to be bitten and laid low from its venom.
Trent tapped the outside of the pocket, below the flap where he could feel the snake's body. The snake stirred and poked its head from under one corner of the buttoned flap. They regarded each other. Slowly, Trent moved his right index finger to the flap and left it there a moment. The snake came close to the finger and flicked its tongue over it ... getting a good taste of his new benefactor. Seemingly satisfied, it returned to the sanctity of the pocket. Trent wondered if this meant they were buddies now, or perhaps partners. Would a survival partner betray me?
It was time to move on. Trent aimed south toward the highway and ducked and dodged around all manner of obstacles. When he reached the highways embankment, it was mostly clear and easy to climb. When he got to the top he saw exactly what he expected; a concrete super highway busted to pieces. A few chunks were missing entirely. Walking this path would be difficult.
CHAPTER 2Tent stood motionless on the broken highway. The situation was factoidal. Surreal. The last time he felt this way was September 11, 2001. His life changed then. Everybody's life changed then. Suddenly, its' changed again. The whole world probably changed, or is about to when the affect of what may have happened settles in and chokes life from living things.
From his vantage point, there was no way to know the extent of the damage, or the resulting aftermath. Was it possible? An entire US city with a metro population of seven-hundred-fifty thousand suddenly erased? How much debris was blown into the atmosphere? What impact would it have? Would cloud cover persist, and if so, would sunlight be blocked and for how long? Would crops fail? How many people died today? How many will die tomorrow? Will markets collapse? Were resources available to deal with this?
Trent didn't look at anything in particular because everything around him screamed death, destruction, and mayhem. Slowly, he faced west, toward Tulsa. In his heart he knew Tulsa, or what was Tulsa was gone. His family was gone. His wife, gone. His dogs. His possessions. His house. Everything. His married son and his wife who lived in the Tulsa area were gone, unless either or both were out of town. Unlikely, they both worked and rarely traveled, but in his heart he knew they were gone, too.
Trent had no way of contacting anyone. His cell phone was in his car, and now it was gone along with every other possession he had while driving. His gym bag with cloths, his laptop, bits of food, bottled water ... all gone. Trent reasoned cell service was probably dead anyway. He took personal inventory of what he had left.
In his left rear pants pocket: his wallet with about $120 cash, CHECK.
Right rear pants pocket: nothing CHECK.
Front right pants pocket: A. G. Russell Premium Scout knife, CHECK.
Left front pants pocket: nil, CHECK.
Swiss Army Watch on left wrist, still ticking: CHECK Socks, white: CHECK.
Shoes; white Reebok's, size 13: CHECK.
Denim pants, dark blue: CHECK.
Short sleeved safari shirt, Beige, with critters stuffed in breast pockets: CHECK.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Survivors"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Michael E. Newell.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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