Nightfall

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the surface, nothing much had changed when he got back to Tampa. He quietly went to work every morning and came home every evening to his empty house in Clearwater Beach. No one asked where he’d been for the past few months, and from that fact alone he knew that the Defense Forces had been twisting arms at the University to make sure he kept his job. Anyone else would have been asked to resign over such an unexplained absence, but it wasn’t healthy to question the NADF.

  And Mike played along, pretending the incident never happened. In fact, as time went by the whole summer really did begin to seem unreal; like a dream he’d once had or a story he’d read in a book. They’d even gone out to pick up the abandoned boat and returned it to the same old slip at the marina. If Mike tried really hard he could almost imagine that Annabelle and Tyke were just gone to visit friends for a few days.

  But they weren’t, of course. They were prisoners, and he was reminded of that fact every single weekend when he was allowed to visit them.

  They were being kept on Edgmont Key, a small sandy island at the mouth of Tampa Bay. No one mistreated them, to be sure, but there was no chance of escaping the place either. It was much too far to swim, especially with a three year old, and even if they’d dared the waves or been able to arrange some kind of rescue attempt, he and Annabelle both had implanted, heat-sensitive tracking chips under the skin on the napes of their necks. The Defense Forces had no intention of letting them slip away for a second time.

  The island itself was home to a naval station and lighthouse down at the southern tip, complete with a guard tower and a platoon of marines on call at all times. But the rest of the place was deserted, and Lieutenant Bartow had arranged for Annabelle to be given a cottage by herself up toward the north, out of sight of the base. It had its own self-contained power supply and water system, just like some of the fancier cabins that rich folks maintained in remote locations. And indeed, at times it was easy to imagine they were on some far-flung South Seas island a thousand miles from civilization. The whole set-up gave a powerful illusion of solitude and privacy, but Mike never doubted the place was bugged and telemetered so thoroughly that the NADF knew every move they made and every word that was spoken.

  But no one meddled with them other than that, and if they liked they were free to walk the beach or have picnics on the dunes, or go fishing, or whatever else they pleased, as long as they didn’t try to leave the island. There was an old abandoned fort with brick streets and larger than usual palm trees which Annabelle particularly liked to visit sometimes, and the jailers even let Tyke have a puppy for his birthday in October; a chocolate Labrador retriever. It was a semblance of freedom, at least, even though they both knew it had strict limits. They were reminded of it every time they wandered a little too far south and caught a glimpse of the guard tower.

  Mike was reminded of it every time he went home, too, for he soon found himself under surveillance of a different kind. Lieutenant Bartow calmly moved in right next door with his family, the better to keep an eye on him, no doubt. Mike knew perfectly well that they could have watched him in more subtle ways, had they wanted to. But no, they wanted him to know they were watching, and Luke’s presence never let him forget it for a second. The fact that Lieutenant Bartow had a pretty young wife (eight months pregnant, no less), and a daughter the same age as Tycho were just another way of rubbing his nose in things; a not-so-subtle reminder of what the stakes were in all this.

  He wasn’t surprised by any of it; not really. As he’d often thought before, when it came to manipulation they never missed a trick.

  To add insult to injury, the man even had the gall to invite him over for supper at least once a week, and then Mike had to pretend to be having a good time all evening in front of Marie Bartow, who apparently knew nothing about what her husband’s real interest in the situation was. After one of those weekly ordeals, Mike wanted to choke the man.

  But it didn’t stop even there. Lieutenant Bartow even deputized Marie to get friendly with Joan, who was also pregnant at the time. No doubt as a way to let Mike know he was on top of that relationship, too. No doubt Joan knew perfectly well what the game was, but she didn’t dare snub the woman any more than Mike would have.

  The only mildly satisfying thing about the whole affair was that it gave him an excuse to start calling Lieutenant Bartow by his first name, Luke, which he knew irritated the man. It was cheap vengeance, but better than nothing.

  And all the while, he lived with the sure and certain knowledge that December 31st was creeping closer by the day, with inescapable death just beyond it.

  He didn’t let it show on the surface, but nonetheless in his heart of hearts Mike soon found himself sinking into a black pit of hopeless depression. There was no way out, and whichever way he turned he met only a brick wall. He worked slowly and carelessly on the tachometer, not really caring if he made any progress or not beyond the bare minimum necessary to keep the NADF at bay. He rarely shaved anymore except on Fridays before he went to see Annabelle, and whenever possible he took refuge in sleep from the misery of living.

  Then one day a new thought crossed his mind, one so blindingly simple and stunningly elegant that he could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. What if they used the tachometer to escape? After all, he and Annabelle had both traveled to the future once already. This time wasn’t where either one of them belonged, so why should they hesitate to leave it? They could permanently ditch the NADF, escape Colonel Burns’s death warrant, and never have to worry about political intrigue again.

  It was perfect.

  True, they’d have to give up some things. They’d have to leave Philip and Joan behind, and that would be hard. And then if he were to be brutally honest with himself, Mike had grown to like that fine house on the beach, and the new car every year, and all the other nice things that money could buy. That would all have to be cast aside, too.

  But he was quite willing to trade all those things in exchange for life and freedom. All he’d have to do to make it work would be to finish the tachometer, find a place in the future that suited them, and then somehow smuggle the machine down to Edgmont Key. Then Lieutenant Bartow and his cronies could kiss them goodbye.

  Mike seized on the new plan with enthusiasm, all his depression and hopelessness blown away like a vapor in the wind. He went to work on the tachometer with redoubled effort, spending almost every waking moment in the lab and barely taking time even to eat or sleep, so determined was he to finish the thing.

  He must have made progress, because there came a day in late November when it actually worked. He sat there staring at it when he was done, feeling a kind of exhausted joy.

  But Mike was nothing if not methodical. The very first thing he did was to run several final tests and system checks to make sure everything operated properly; the last thing they needed was a repeat performance of the accident that started this whole adventure.

  As soon as he was sure everything was in order, he immediately got to work looking for a good time in the future for them to escape to. He knew he wouldn’t be able to keep the tachometer a secret for long, so he needed to put the rest of his plan into motion at once.

  He set the controls for twenty years ahead, for no particular reason other than the fact that it was a round number. Then he activated the tachometer, to see what the future might hold.

  Tampa Bay was deserted. Completely.

  Mike scrolled through the empty streets in puzzlement, but wherever he looked he saw not a single human being, nor even a cat or a bird for that matter. Tampa might as well have been a city of ghosts.

  He looked elsewhere, curious in spite of himself, and found the same conditions everywhere. London, Tokyo, New York, Karachi; all of them were utterly forsaken by every living thing except the weeds growing up through cracks in the pavement.

  He soon found that it wasn’t just the cities, either; the small tow
ns and villages were exactly the same. Wherever he looked on the whole Earth, there wasn’t a single living soul to be seen.

  Disturbed, he backed up the controls by one year and checked again. Nothing had changed.

  By dint of careful looking, he soon narrowed down the time when whatever-it-was would happen. The last week in January of 2154; a little more than twelve years away.

  In twelve more years was the end of the world.

  Well, maybe it was a bit hasty to go that far; he couldn’t check everywhere for survivors, and some of them might easily have slipped through the cracks, so to speak. He could only hope so. But even if it wasn’t necessarily the end, then it was still a catastrophe of unbelievable proportions.

  Nevertheless, in spite of all his efforts he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that happened, except that it was very sudden. The lack of sound on the tachometer hindered him, and so did the graininess of the image. All he could tell was that swift and total destruction had overtaken the human race, and no one had been able to stop it. When he looked more closely at the victims, all he saw were people and animals lying down and going to sleep, never to wake up. The only thing that gave him even the vaguest hint of what might be happening were the quarantine barriers he glimpsed in a few spots. That suggested some kind of disease, though the symptoms he’d seen didn’t look like any disease he’d ever heard of.

  He wondered uneasily if he should tell Lieutenant Bartow. Much as he hated the man and resented his presence, the NADF did have some power. If there were really a major calamity about to hit the world, then it was possible they might be able to do something about it. Not to prevent it from happening, no, but they might possibly find a way to save at least a few.

  Telling them anything at all would be a major risk, of course. It might even imperil Mike’s own escape plan, but if the catastrophe were really that bad then he might have to chance it for the sake of humanity. Maybe if he thought about it for a while, he could figure out a way.

  He knew it probably wasn’t wise, but he couldn’t resist the temptation to look at his own family. He noticed immediately that his house in Clearwater Beach was occupied by someone else in 2154, and incidentally that Lieutenant Bartow had moved, also. Not all that surprising, maybe, but it left him out of luck as far as seeing anything related to his own family. The tachometer was useless unless you already knew exactly when and where to look.

  He idly scrolled down the street to Philip and Joan’s house, and soon found that they at least still lived in the same place. But then, that wasn’t so very surprising either. The house on Papaya Street was bigger and nicer than anything they’d ever be able to manage on their own, at least not without getting into crippling debt to afford it. They had every reason to stay put.

  They looked a little older, of course, and the boys were teenagers by then. The baby girl Joan should be having any day now was twelve years old, and seemingly there was another boy who must have been born a few years after her. But most interestingly of all, he saw Tyke.

  There was no doubt in Mike’s mind that’s who it was; he still had the same solemn look on his face he’d had ever since the day he was born. Mike soon discovered that he and Jesse were both attending the advanced math and science academy downtown, and for a second he allowed himself a small flush of pride at that.

  Then things changed. It was still hard to tell exactly what was going on, but from the urgent discussions Tyke went around having with various people, Mike surmised that his son must have discovered something. Close as it was to when the plague struck, he could only imagine it had something to do with that.

  And so it must have. He was able to skip ahead bit by bit, until he saw Tyke board a space plane at the MacDill Aerospace Research Center just south of downtown, along with several other people. Philip and Joan were there along with their children, of course, and there were a few others Mike recognized as well. Katrina Doucet. Amos McClendon, his eager-beaver lab tech. Luther and Jenine Anderson and their three children. Then his eyes narrowed as he recognized Marie Bartow. Luke wasn’t with her, although their two children were. That was puzzling, but Mike had no way of figuring out what might have happened to the good Lieutenant or why he wasn’t part of the group. He forced himself to stuff his knee-jerk resentment at seeing the Bartows there; he had nothing against Marie, and certainly not against the kids.

  The really disquieting thing about the whole situation was that Mike himself and Annabelle were nowhere to be seen. In fact, he hadn’t seen either one of them ever since he started looking at the future.

  He hesitated to guess what that might mean; several unpleasant possibilities came to mind without even trying. But he didn’t know, and he much preferred not to speculate.

  He couldn’t tell where Tyke and the others were going. The plane moved too fast for the tachometer to scroll after it, and since he didn’t know where to look he wasn’t able to skip ahead and pick it up later. All he could do was pray they succeeded in whatever desperate plan they’d come up with to save themselves. God bless them and good luck to them.

  Mike sighed and switched off the tachometer, unable to decide whether he should be troubled or comforted by what he’d seen. It had ramifications he hadn’t fully thought through just yet.

  For one thing, it bothered him that Tyke was still the same age as Jesse and still living in this time period, since obviously that could only mean that Mike’s plan for using the tachometer to escape to the future hadn’t worked for some reason.

  For another thing, it downright alarmed him that he and Annabelle were apparently nowhere to be found. Were they dead? Captives? He couldn’t imagine any other reasons why they wouldn’t be there or why Tyke wasn’t with them.

  For a third thing. . .

  There came a knock on the door, breaking his train of thought, and Amos came in without waiting for an invitation. Mike wondered if he ever did.

  “Here’s your lunch, boss,” Amos said, setting down a tray from the cafeteria. It was his last year at the University, and Mike was supposed to be writing him a letter of recommendation for graduate school. He supposed he needed to get around to doing that before he left, if he could ever collect his wandering thoughts long enough.

  “Thanks, Amos; I appreciate that,” Mike said, though he really wasn’t all that hungry. But before Amos could say anything else, the door burst open and hit the wall so hard it shattered the glass.

  “Hey, what-“ Mike said, and then the words died on his lips as he beheld none other than Katrina Doucet. Amos was staring at her in shock, and Mike wasn’t far off.

  “Come on, let’s go. Now!” she cried urgently, and turned to leave.

  “But-“ Mike began, and she cut him off.

  “Mike, we’ve got to go. There’s a bomb about to explode any minute!” she cried.

  That was enough to get him moving, and Amos too for that matter. Mike had the presence of mind to grab the tachometer as he left the room, but there wasn’t time to gather up his papers and research notes. He expected Katrina to run for the exit doors, but instead she immediately took them up the fire stairs as fast as she could go.

  “Where are we going?” Mike yelled from behind her.

  “Up to the roof!” she called back, and even though that didn’t make any sense at all, he followed her anyway. The building was only three stories tall, and it was a good thing, too. Mike was out of breath by the time he ran all the way up that many flights of stairs.

  As soon as they reached the flat roof, Mike saw the reason why she’d brought them there. Someone had landed a big black helicopter up there, crushing several unidentifiable vents and antennas in the process. The engine and rotors were still running.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to land anything up here,” Amos said uncertainly, coming to a stop in the doorway.

  “If you don’t come on you won’t be alive to worry about it,” Katrina hissed, grabbing him by the forea
rm and yanking him toward the copter. There was barely room for him and Mike to squeeze into the back seat, and Katrina didn’t wait for them to get buckled. She took off with a roar of the engines as soon as she could get her door shut, nearly clipping the top of a tree in the process.

  “You’re crazy!” Amos yelled, and Katrina ignored him. She pushed the helicopter to the utmost speed she could squeeze out of it, and Mike buckled himself in while he still had the chance.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, when their flight evened out just a bit.

  “A group of anarchists planted a bomb somewhere on the university campus. I didn’t even find out about it till about fifteen minutes ago. I already called the university police, but I didn’t know if they’d have time to do anything or not. So I decided to come get you myself,” she said.

  “Where’d you get the helicopter?” Mike asked, puzzled.

  “It’s my dad’s. We were at the airport when we heard about the bomb, so I grabbed the copter to come get you before it was too late,” she said.

  Just then there was a flash of light from behind them, and a second later an unbelievably loud explosion and a blast of hot air that sent the helicopter spinning wildly out of control.

  “Get ready to crash!” Katrina yelled while she fought the controls.

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than they hit the ground with bone-crushing force, and then Mike knew no more.