Everything Has Changed Page 16

  Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.

  Dave was suddenly alone.

  He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.

  Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?

  This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.

  It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.

  From the author of best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.

  Chapter 1:

  Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.

  Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles, rather than rain clouds and foreboding.

  Finally, he’d had enough.

  “Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.

  “I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”

  Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.

  “Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”

  “Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”

  “Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”

  The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”

  Dave coughed. At first he had no words.

  Then he found some, and stated the obvious.

  “Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”

  “Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”

  Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”

  “I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

  “Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”

  Two heads nodded up and down behind her.

  “But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”

  Beth made a gagging sound.

  “Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”

  “Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”

  Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.

  In other words, he played right into Sarah’s hands. She knew he would, as soon as she let the kiss fly.

  “Okay, here goes.”

  Dave started humming the tune that had played in his mind a thousand times since the previous evening.

  It took the three of them no more than ten notes. They’d have been “Name That Tune” champions in another era.

  All three of them blurted out, almost simultaneously, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

  Then Dave felt incredibly stupid.

  “Of course. How could I have not known that? The old Mr. Rogers theme song. Sheesh! Now I really feel dumb.”

  Sarah said, “Did you know that Fred Rogers was a Green Beret in Vietnam, and wore his red sweater to hide all of his tattoos?”

  Dave scoffed.

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet. Why?”

  “That story’s been going around for years. It was debunked a long time ago. Mr. Rogers was a fine man, but he was never a Green Beret.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where did you hear that?”

  “On the internet.”

  It was too much for Lindsey.

  “Gee whiz, would you two stop believing what you read on the internet? Nearly all of it is garbage.”

  She turned to her little sister.

  “Do we have to teach these old people everything?”

  Beth said nothing but nodded her head decisively. She was in firm agreement.

  Dave was a man of his word, and after the family checked in at the ticket kiosk and Sarah and the girls got their boarding passes, they made a beeline to Cinnabon.

  “Daddy, are you going to walk us to the gate?”

  “No, honey, I can’t go through security without a boarding pass, so I’ll walk you as far as I can and then you can give me a great big hug and a kiss.”

  “I wish you could come with us.”

  “I know, sugar. I wish I could too. But with two of the guys being sick at work, they just can’t let me take vacation right now. Uncle Tommy will understand, and we can go fishing another time. And you’ll be so busy helping Aunt Karen get everything ready for the wedding, you won’t even have time to miss me.”

  “Bet I will!”

  Sarah looked at him longingly. They were going to be apart for their twelfth anniversary. It would be the first one they’d missed.

  It was as if he could read her mind.

  “We’ll do something special when you get back, I promise. We’ll get a sitter and go spend the weekend at the lake. Just the two of us.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He walked the three special ladies in his life to the TSA checkpoint and got his hugs and kisses.

  He held Sarah close and told her he loved her.

  Little Beth rolled her eyes and said, “No mush, you two.”

  Dave paid her no mind. He looked Sarah in the eyes and said, “It’ll seem like forever before I see you again.”

  Neither of them had a clue how true those words would be.

  ALONE: Book 1

  Facing Armageddon

  is available now on Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, selected Hastings book stores, and at other fine booksellers.

  *************************

  Please enjoy one of my short stories,

  And thanks for reading my books.

  -Darrell-

  *************************

  The Journey of the Hands

  By Darrell Maloney

  copyright 2004

  I was born in a big marble building in the middle of Philadelphia in 1925.

  Back then I was sturdy and strong, with a sharp chiseled face. I even sparkled in the sunlight, although I didn't see sunlight for the first time until I was six months old.

  I took my first boat trip on the Erie Canal, in a canvas bag with 999 others just like me. It was cramped but not uncomfortable. I had no idea where I was going, but was happy for the company of the others.

  From time to time the bag we were in would be tossed from hand to hand as workers moved us from the boat to an armored car, then into a bank in Detroit.

  The first time I was touched by humans I was picked up by a grizzled old merchant named Hanz, at his family's apotheke in Taylor, Michigan. He handed me to a lovely woman named Clara, in a beautiful gingham dress and a bright yellow Easter bonnet.

  Clara immediately passed me to a young girl named
Betsy, who held me up in wonder in the dusty sunlight breaking through the store's east window, and marveled at how I shone.

  I remember the brilliance of the light, and the warmth of her little girl hands, sticky from the gumball she had been passing back and forth between her mouth and her fingers.

  Thus began my journey of the hands.

  I took my first train trip in a rickety old Pullman car, nestled into the pocket of a man named Gustafson Baker. He preferred Gus, although his wife used his full name when she was peeved at him, which she frequently was.

  The train moved west over the Rockies, into Salt Lake City. I was rooted from my nest in Gustafson’s pocket and dropped into the hand of a young porter named Joe, who helped carry the Bakers' bags from the train into the station. Joe traded me for a piece of penny licorice a couple of days later.

  I look back at my days in Salt Lake City with fond memories. I got to meet a lot of people and felt the warmth of hundreds of hands as I was passed around, sometimes several times a day.

  Sometimes the hands were soft, and smelled of sweet lilac or perfume. Sometimes the hands were grimy and gnarled, covered with dirt or coal dust, or heaven knows what else.

  Sometimes I would ride around in a genteel lady's pocketbook for days or weeks at a time. The women tended to hang onto me longer than the men did. I suppose that's because in the bottom of a pocketbook I could be easily forgotten.

  Once I got to go to a magnificent schoolhouse in the small pocket of a girl of nine named Millicent. She traded me and an old buffalo nickel for a bowl of soup and a biscuit. Then she sat down and ate her lunch amidst a chorus of chatter and giggles, while I sat in a cold cash drawer, waiting to be passed to someone else.

  By the time I was five years old I had given up on my goal of counting the number of hands I had touched. The quest was borne out of boredom, and I had no idea it would be so many.

  After the first hundred hands or so I gave up on trying to remember all the names or the details. After a thousand or so I gave up altogether. Suffice it to say it was a lot of hands in those early years.

  When I was ten, I was on the move again.

  This time was not so glorious a journey. I slipped through a hole in the pocket of a farmhand who was loading steers into a cattle car heading south.

  For days I lay on the hard wooden floor of the car as it lurched along its tracks, occasionally being stepped on by a four-legged beast which had no more idea where we were heading than I did.

  We wound up in southern California, where the cattle were turned into steaks and I was passed many times from one hand to another. I learned my worth was two tomatoes or one apple. I was in the land of itinerant farmers, most of whom were displaced by the dust bowl and the depression, and moved west in search of a better life.

  I would go back and forth, from a set of scratched and cracked hands belonging to a picker, to the soft and lotioned hands of a grocer, in exchange for a juicy plum or an apple, or a pat of wrapped bread. Then given in change back to another set of cracked dry hands.

  Back and forth, day in and day out. It was monotonous. Sometimes I was passed back and forth in poker games, where I was apparently enough to ante my owner's hand of cards into the game.

  In 1943 I belonged to a man named John.

  John had picked me up on a sidewalk in Waco, Texas, where I had been carelessly dropped by a small child whose hands were too tiny to carry a handful of change.

  John looked at my date and proclaimed me his lucky penny, since we had been born the same year. I knew it was 1943 because the other pennies being jostled about in John's trouser pockets were marked with that date, and were shiny and new.

  They never stayed around long, though. John carefully picked through his change whenever he paid for something. The shiny pennies would leave, never to be seen again.

  I would stay with him to bring him luck, he'd say.

  John worked in an armament factory outside of Waco, making gun barrels, until the day he changed careers and put on an ugly brown uniform. He stopped being John and began being Private Moseley, and he kept that name for the rest of the time I knew him.

  Private Moseley always rubbed my face before going into battle. For luck, he said. In those chaotic days, scared men in faraway lands did whatever they could to calm their nerves and convince themselves that they would live to see another sunset.

  The last time I saw Private Moseley we were on a landing craft in rough seas, heading toward something called Omaha Beach. He rubbed my face, said a short prayer, and placed me in his left breast pocket. Then he patted me through the pocket. I heard him tell a buddy that his lucky penny would keep him alive.

  For two long weeks I sat in a box alongside a handful of other change, some love letters from Mary, three worn and tattered photographs of Private Moseley's mom, Mary and his young nephews with their ear-to-ear grins.

  I was jostled about in this box, not knowing where I was, or where I was going, but knowing from the constant rocking that I was in the cargo hold of a ship.

  Later I could feel the vibration of a truck that seemed to labor forever across the dusty and bumpy roads of west Texas. Finally I heard voices, then saw light, as the box was finally opened.

  I saw Mary's face, red and puffy, polluted by too many tears rolling from her pretty blue eyes. I saw her clutch the love letters she had written to Private Moseley, to John, so many months before. I felt the warmth of her fingers as she picked me up, his lucky penny, and gazed hard at me.

  Then in a rage she threw me from the porch swing where she was sitting, and into the soft green grass of her front yard.

  For many years I sat in the dirt of that front yard, watching seasons come and go. In the spring and summer months, the grass would grow tall, and would block out the sun. Then someone would cut it and I'd see light for a few days or weeks, until it went away again.

  My life became a series of cycles. I became very good at guessing the seasons. The grass growing and cutting cycles meant spring. When the growing slowed marked summer. When it stopped altogether it was fall. The cold marked winter, and I lost track of how many winters I laid there.

  One year in the cycle I knew as spring, I could hear voices. A lawnmower had passed over me not too many days before, and sunlight was penetrating through the shortened grass and warming my face.

  Suddenly I was up, away from the earth, feeling fresh air for the first time in way too many years. A smallish hand scraped the dirt from my sides, and I went into a dark pocket, where I joined two other pennies. One of them was rough cut, with freshly minted features. I could not see it well in the darkness, but I could tell from the feel of it and the smell of new copper that it was recently minted. It said 1963 on its face.

  Suddenly I was alive again. I was being used again in the manner in which I enjoyed, being passed from hand to hand to hand. Children buying candy. Ladies buying produce. Men buying flowers for angry wives they had slighted in various ways.

  I sat in a coin tray at a 7-Eleven convenience store, unwanted by one customer, then picked up and used by another.

  One day I was dropped at a bakery and rolled under a display case. For several months I lay, smelling the glorious smells of fresh donuts each morning, and hearing the joyous laughter of children begging their mothers for cookies.

  One day the smells drifted away, never to return, and the laughter went away as well. For a long time I was once again alone, day and night. At least I wasn't getting rained on as I had been in Mary's front yard.

  Eventually the old bakery was reopened, only it wasn't a bakery any more. It was now an insurance office, and of course the old ovens and display cases had to be removed to make room for desks and chairs and typewriters and such. As the display case was lifted off of me, a worker picked me up, dusted me off, and thrust me into a khaki pants pocket. The pompous, overbearing quarter beside me said 1981.

  These days I don't go anywhere. I am confined to an airless, clear plastic pouch, which I assume i
s for display purposes.

  On the white cardboard label attached to the pouch are the words "Lincoln Cent, 1925 P". I don't know what that means, but I do know that I am lonely. I miss being passed from hand to hand and traveling across the country and around the world. I miss being admired by children and hearing the joy in their voices as they traded me for the latest sweet thing.

  It’s funny, but I also miss the grumbling of some adults who cast me into parking lots or onto sidewalks, as though carrying me was not worth their effort. I knew that eventually someone would pick me back up, recognize my worth, and pass me along.

  I even miss feeling the ants run across my face in Mary's yard, and shuddering each time the lawnmower passed over, ten to twelve times a year, in the season I knew as spring. I would love to break out of my plastic prison and feel the warmth of the hands once again. I really miss them...

  *************************

  If you enjoyed

  The Yellowstone Event

  you might also enjoy

  Countdown to Armageddon

  Available now at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

  *************************

  Scott Harter wasn’t special by anybody’s standards. He wasn’t a handsome guy at all. He wasn’t dumb, but he’d never win a Nobel Prize either. He had no hidden talents, although he fancied himself a fairly good karaoke singer.

  His friends didn’t necessarily share that opinion, but what did they know?

  No, if those friends were tasked to choose one word to describe Scott Harter that word might well be “average.”

  If Scott excelled at one thing, it was that he was a very good businessman. And he was also a lot luckier than most.

  And it was that combination – his penchant for making a buck and being lucky, that led him here on this day to the Guerra Public Library on the west side of San Antonio.

  To research what he believed was the pending collapse of mankind.