Jaz's Warriors (Bondmates Book 2) (11 page)

“Do you think it’s terrorists?” Paige asked in a low voice from the backseat.

They all remembered 9/11, even if they were young when it happened. Terrorists had become the ultimate boogeyman of US culture, malevolent creatures seemingly bent on destroying the American way of life. Her heart sank as she tried to imagine what would happen if they went to war again. Shit, if that happened it might be a long time before she saw Roxy.

Dawn leaned forward and growled out, “Drive.”

Giving herself a mental shake, Casey returned her focus to the present. Okay, she needed to get her head on straight. She’d had her time to freak out, now she needed to get her shit in gear. She wasn’t just responsible for herself, but also for the friends she loved like family.

“Right, drive. Do me a favor and call a couple of our friends. Don’t waste time trying to win them over, just tell them to get the fuck out as quickly as they can and hope that someone listens. Same with your families though I’m sure my mom and dad have already contacted your parents. Maybe if they get a phone call from both of you they’ll take…whatever it is seriously.”

It didn’t take them long to get out of Ann Arbor and head west, and they were soon on the freeway speeding past corn and soybean fields to the nearby small town of Chelsea where they’d all grown up. Thank goodness no cops were around, because Casey was doing ninety-five down the clear stretch of road in her junky old car. They all looked around as she drove, trying to find something unusual, something to tip them off to some imminent, terrible disaster. Casey had gotten over her shock, and she listened to her friends talking to their loved ones on the phone, each passing along the warning that something bad, really bad, either had happened or was about to happen. As soon as they mentioned Roxy’s name whoever they were talking to would stop arguing and they would move onto the next person on their list. Evidently Casey wasn’t the only one who thought Roxy was a badass.

Paige didn’t have very many people to call; her only living family was her abusive, drunk father, but she’d called him anyway, for all the good it would do, then called their friends and the people she babysat for.

Casey glanced into her rearview mirror then looked over at Kimber. “Turn on the radio, see if they know anything.”

While Kimber flipped through the stations with a shaking hand, finding only music, morning talk shows, or commercials, Casey took the turn into her small town and a little bit of her tension drained away. Surrounded by miles of farmland and fields, Chelsea was a very pretty place, the kind of small town that hadn’t changed much in the last hundred years. Outside of town the homes were spread out, and there was a good-sized state park with a lake where she swam when she was growing up. The main street was filled with quaint shops and well-maintained buildings that the Chelsea Historical Society kept watch over, making sure the current owners didn’t do anything to take away from the ‘character’ of the town.

As she drove down the street, she once again searched for signs of trouble among the cute shops and bright pots of blooming crocuses, but everything looked normal. If anything, Casey and her friends driving down the street in their pajamas staring at everyone was the most abnormal part of this idyllic scene. Casey’s back itched, like someone was watching her, and she had to resist the urge to keep checking her rearview mirror, as though one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was trotting behind her rear bumper. That long-buried fight-or-flight instinct was kicking in, and she swore her vision had somehow sharpened.

She quickly pulled into the gas station and ran inside with her friends hot on her heels.

“Hey, Casey,” Merl, the old man behind the counter she’d known since birth, said with a smile. “What’s the rush?”

For a moment, she debated telling him anything, but as she paid for the gas cans she leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Merl, something bad has happened. I don’t know what but Roxy told me that she’s been called off of leave because the government is about to declare martial law.”

He gaped at her for a moment, then began to laugh, his wrinkles bunching together as he smiled. “Good one, you almost had me going for a minute there.”

Grabbing the cans, she gave him one last look as she ran out the door. “Merl, I’m serious. Get your son here with your gun. If shit really has hit the fan, you’re going to be mobbed with people soon.”

With his admonishments about a young lady not using that kind of language ringing in her ears, Casey hurried to her car and began to fill up the gas cans, leaving the other girls behind in the store while they bought up all the bottled water and non-perishable foods that the small store had. Casey was a little over halfway done when a high-pitched, deafening squall of static came from the station’s overhead speakers. The sound startled Casey so badly she almost sprayed herself with gasoline before she released the trigger on the nozzle. The fumes from the spilled fuel burned her eyes as she put the nozzle into the gas can with a shaking hand and nausea gripped her in a stomach-clenching cramp.

Dogs in the surrounding neighborhood began to bark and howl, and Casey watched in stunned horror as birds began to fall from the sky. A sparrow landed nearby, fluttering its wings weakly, tiny black eyes still focused on the sky that had just rejected it.

Three loud bursts, like gigantic flamethrowers going off all around the world at once, rent the air, and Casey screamed.

A moment later, an extremely deep, terrible noise vibrated through her forcing the breath from her body and almost knocking her to the ground. She had no idea that sound could have weight, but this did, and she would later swear the atoms in her body shook around like dry beans in a can. The sound was brief, no more than half a heartbeat, but it felt like a century. Her body rang with an echo of the tone and she dragged in first one harsh breath, then another.

The digital readout on the gas pump went wonky, the numbers racing before it blanked out completely.

Off in the distance tires screeched and the unmistakable crunch of metal hitting metal echoed in the air followed by blaring horns. She took the now useless nozzle out of the can and hung it up, then fastened the cap onto the can while trying to keep her fear from turning into blind panic. She was overcome with the need to see her parents and feel the safety of their embrace. Her heart sank as she realized she’d only managed to get twenty gallons of gas, but the urge to get home immediately filled her. As she was putting the cans into her trunk her friends ran out, their arms loaded down with plastic bags.

“What happened?” Dawn asked as she shoved the bags into the car. She was crying; her freckles stood out from her pale skin like blood on a snow bank.

“I don’t know,” Casey said in a thick voice, fighting the urge to just break down into hysterics. “If that was a terrorist attack I have no idea what the fuck just happened.”

Paige went to jump in the car, then paused and looked around. “Looks like the power is out everywhere.”

“Holy fuck,” Kimber whispered and they all looked over to her, only to find her staring slack-jawed at the sky.

Following Kimber’s line of sight, Casey looked out into the clear, sunny sky and gasped. Instead of the usual faultless blue, the sky was now filled with undulating waves of color. Ribbons of apple green, lemon yellow, crimson, and various shades of purple danced in the sky. It was the most eerily beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

“It’s like the northern lights, during the daytime,” Paige whispered. “But that’s impossible.”

Merl came out the front door of his store, the jingling bells drawing Casey’s attention away from the sky. It wasn’t like the northern lights she’d seen on TV. Those were wispy, almost ethereal-looking. These streaks of light were more like bright, sustained fireworks.

“Solar flare,” Merl said in a choked voice while wiping his face with a faded blue handkerchief. “Must be a huge solar flare that knocked the power out.”

From nearby came the sound of car alarms going off and she shook her head, trying to block out the background noises.

“Get in the car,” Casey said in a low, choked voice. When none of her friends moved she screamed, “Get in the car!”

The four-block drive back to her house, normally less than five minutes, took ten as she drove around people who had abandoned their cars in the middle of the street to stare at the sky, forcing her to drive up on lawns and sidewalks in places. Police sirens sounded from all around town and the noise was driving her crazy. An image of what must be happening in Ann Arbor filled her mind and she wondered how bad the streets were leading in and out of the city as desperate students and commuters tried to leave. Then her imagination took a dark turn, and her stomach clenched as she wondered what was happening in the major cities. She’d learned in her sociology class that humans were, at the best of times, one step away from reverting to their primitive self, that in times of crisis a herd mentality tended to kick in; if the herd freaked out, the world would go down the shitter real quick in a stampede of fear and stupidity.

When they pulled onto her street she let Kimber off first, then Dawn, not stopping to talk to the frantic parents who cried tears of relief at the sight of their daughters.

Paige climbed into the front seat next to Casey and gripped her hand while still staring at the sky. “Do you think it’s a solar flare like Merl said?”

“I don’t know, honey.” Some of her anxiety eased as she pulled into her driveway, the familiar flower beds and white painted porch with its terra-cotta pots filled with tulips soothing her heart. “Thank fuck we’re home.”

As soon as Casey got out of her car her mother burst out of the front door of their two story Craftsman home, her dark brown eyes wide as she ran down the steps. Dressed in a pair of tan capris and a cute pale yellow sweater, she looked like she was on her way to a garden club meeting rather than experiencing some kind of crazy terrorist attack.

The relief on her mother’s face made Casey’s nose burn. “Thank God you made it!”

Letting her mother sweep her up into her arms, Casey hugged her back. “Mom, what’s happening?”

Her father came out of the house a moment later carrying his rifle, wearing his grey business suit and no-nonsense brown tie. While her mother was short and round with dark hair and eyes, her father was tall and blond, kind of like a Viking, if Vikings had been rather nerdy accountants. “Satellites are down,” he said in a gruff voice. “Cable hasn’t been affected but all the news stations are chasing the holes in their asses. No one knows what’s going on.”

“I thought the power was out?” Casey glanced up and down the still empty street.

“It’s going in and out,” her mother replied. “But we’ve got the generator. The phone lines are down, or overwhelmed, and we can’t get a signal on our cell phones.”

“I’ve got gas in my trunk,” she said quickly, and Paige added, “I have food and medicine.”

Casey’s dad gave Paige a pleased smile that made the other girl light up. He looked at Casey. “Smart to stop for gas.”

“Roxy told me to,” she said in a low voice, wincing when her mother made a pained sound while her father audibly swallowed.

Gathering himself, he stood taller and lifted his chin in a defiant gesture that Casey could remember Roxy doing. “Well, we’re not doing any good standing out here, and I don’t know about you, but I’d feel better if we got off the street.”

Neighbors were coming out of their homes here and there, yelling information to each other. More than one person yelled thanks to Casey’s parents for their warning, and her father gave them a quick pep talk about keeping their family safe and coming over if they needed a place to stay.

He gave Paige a hug. “You
are
staying with us, understood? You will always have a room at our home, whenever you need it.”

Paige nodded, and for once, didn’t give any protests about not wanting to be a burden. “Okay.”

Sixteen hours later, Casey stared at the unsteady picture on the television, trying to absorb as much information as she could during one of the brief periods when they had power. A fire crackled in the marble-framed fireplace and her dad snored lightly on the couch. Her mother occasionally glared at his sleeping form when his snores drowned out the newscaster speaking with a never-ending parade of experts who didn’t have a fucking clue. Paige was beside Casey on the oriental rug next to the couch, both of them lying on their backs against huge floor pillows and covered up with blankets. Thank goodness it was springtime and not the dead of winter, or they would have been in some serious trouble with the cold.

The newscaster, a pretty middle-aged woman with unstyled light brown hair and nowhere near the usual amount of makeup, visibly gathered herself. Out of all the talking heads on TV right now Casey and Paige agreed that she was the only one who hadn’t given into hysterics. A few hours ago, they’d been watching one of the well-known night anchors until he’d taken a bottle of whisky from beneath his desk and began doing shots in between each clip. He’d apparently been hustled off camera during a commercial, and the weatherman took over as lead anchor.

After swallowing hard, the female news anchor said, “Though we don’t have any confirmed data at the moment due to the nature of the event, it is estimated that over two thousand planes in the United States alone went down, with an unconfirmed death toll of approximately just under two hundred and ten thousand passengers and as yet unknown numbers of dead and injured on the ground at the crash sites when the burst of intense magnetic radiation came through the atmosphere and disrupted their electrical systems. Some of them crashed into populated cities, causing more havoc as the local fire departments struggled to get to the scene, blocked by people trying to flee the city.”

Casey’s mother let out a soft sound of dismay. “God bless the innocent and keep them safe.”

“With our satellite system down,” the anchor continued, “we are having to rely on old fashioned reporting. This video that we just got into the studio is graphic and unsuitable for children. I cannot emphasize enough that this is not for the eyes of our more sensitive viewers. Please have them leave the room now.”

Both Casey and Paige sat up as the newscaster stared into the camera with tear-filled eyes.

A moment later the anchor was replaced by a scene that Casey had trouble understanding at first. It appeared to be the inside of a church with hundreds and hundreds of people slumped over in the pews—men, women, children, all dressed in their Sunday best. As the camera swept over the congregation Casey realized that she was looking at dead bodies, not people. Paige must have figured it out at the same time because she gasped and reached out blindly, gripping Casey’s hand as the anchor explained that this was the scene of a mass suicide among a fundamental sect of Christians who believed it was Armageddon. The anchor mentioned that scenes like this were playing out all over the world and she begged those watching to not let their fear overwhelm them, that while the situation was confusing and they were facing an unknown and unprecedented event, that there was absolutely no reason to believe that it was the end of the world.

The screen abruptly went blank and Casey blinked, wondering if they’d lost power again during the rolling black outs that had been instituted to conserve energy. The government had been able to somewhat predict when the event was going to happen due to the disruption of their deep space exploratory satellites that detected the initial formation of the disturbance. Roughly two hours after the first small waves had been detected, a massive eruption of magnetic radiation had hurtled through space. Earth would have been fried, but by the grace of god her tiny little planet had been on the other side of the sun, which absorbed a great deal of the impact. Only minor damage was done to the electrical systems and soon things would be running like normal, or at least the government said it would.

Noticing that the light beside the couch where her dad snored was still on, Casey looked over to find her mother setting down the remote control with a grim look.

“Why did you turn it off?” Casey said, her voice coming out rough with lack of use.

“Because,” her mother said standing, “we’ve been sitting here watching the idiot box for far too long without learning much of anything. It’s four in the morning, Casey. The sun will be up soon and we’ll get a better grasp of what’s going on then. You two girls need to sleep and I’ll feel better knowing you’re in the same room just in case…well, just in case. I can set up beds down here for you, or you can both bunk down in Casey’s room if you like, but you are going to bed.”

“But what if something happens while we’re sleeping?”

“Then I’ll wake you up. I would prefer it if you slept together tonight like you did when you were little. It would do my heart good to know my girls are in the same place.” She gave a weary sigh and helped Casey and Paige stand up. Pins and needles prickled Casey’s feet and she shifted while watching her mother. “Girls, we can stand around for the next twenty years asking ‘what if’. While our imagination is one of our greatest gifts, it also gets us into trouble sometimes if we don’t reel it back in. I don’t know what the future holds, but I refuse to believe that this is the end. Now, the only thing I do know for sure is that if you don’t get some sleep you’ll get sick. So, off to bed with you.”

Casey and Paige exchanged a look, then shrugged. Part of Casey wanted to protest that they were both almost twenty-one and they weren’t kids to be sent to bed, but her mother was right and she felt beat up from the inside out. Other than scrounging up food and using the bathroom neither of them had moved from the living room. While Paige yawned and stretched, Casey grabbed her mom’s hand.

“You sure you don’t need me to stay up with you?”

The lines around her mom’s eyes deepened as she smiled. “And do what?”

“I don’t know. I mean there are all those riots going on and stuff.”

“That’s happening in the big cities. You saw Mr. Hadley earlier with his posse, and Officer Jones and Officer Douglas, they’re patrolling our neighborhood. After 9/11 a lot of communities started taking their disaster preparation seriously and have plans in place for how to deal with situations like this. Well, maybe not exactly like this, but you get my point. Don’t worry, the National Guard is already restoring order in the big US cities where the real danger....” Her mother swallowed hard and looked away for a moment, no doubt thinking about Roxy in the middle of all that peril down in Detroit and its surrounding, heavily populated suburbs.

“She’s fine, Mom,” Casey said.

Paige nodded then said in her gentle voice, “Roxy is the toughest person I know, man or woman. All she has to do is glare at a looter and they would not only return what they stole, they’d clean up the mess they made as well.”

“I know you girls are right, I just worry.” She briskly clapped her hands, startling Casey’s father mid-snore. “Now, enough dilly-dallying. Off to bed with you. The world is going to keep right on spinning through this, and no matter what tomorrow brings you’ll face it better after some shut-eye.”

They said goodnight and Casey went up the stairs, pausing for a moment at the top step to look back into the living room; her father was now awake and talking quietly with her mom before placing a gentle kiss on her mother’s lips. She followed Paige into the bedroom where Paige had spent the night at least three times a week when they were kids, and took a moment to brush her teeth before flopping into bed. Paige appeared from her room across the hall a few minutes later, wearing a clean pair of pajamas. Casey wondered if she should do the same, but her bed felt so safe and comfortable. This house had been built by her great-great grandfather and she’d lived here her whole life. This was home.

Paige slid beneath the covers of Casey’s queen sized bed then whispered, “Night, Casey.”

Glad that her friend didn’t want to talk about ‘The Event’, as Casey was beginning to think of it, she turned on her side and pulled the covers up tight.

As she drifted off to sleep the last part of T.S. Eliot’s poem kept repeating in her head.

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

****

Casey stood beneath a stormy sky at the edge of a massive cliff of dark stone, looking out over a gray desert. Her black dress fluttered around her in the faint breeze; the only spot of color surrounding her was her hair and skin. The air tasted dusty against her tongue, and as she looked down into the sand, it shifted to form words that she couldn’t quite read. A strange apathy filled her and she continued to stare at the sand, the words coming so fast they looked like meaningless squiggles all writhing together until it was as if she was looking into a pit filled with snakes squirming together in a big ball.

The desolation of this place made her soul shrink and goose bumps rise up along her skin. This was an alien world, somewhere she had no place being, a land where nothing lived on the surface. But beneath, down deep in the sand, she sensed a malevolent presence. Her mind urged her body to step back from the ledge, but her feet remained stuck to the stone like she was merely an observer in her dream. The sand moved faster now, the obscene shapes that defied logic tearing at her mind, creating pain like being stabbed in the spine.

A little whimper escaped her as tears fell down her cheeks and she prayed to God to rescue her from this horror.

The sand below began to flow upwards like a bowl filling in reverse, and she knew if that sand touched her she would die. Before it reached her, a warm wind began to blow from behind her, pushing the sand away as if it had no more weight than talcum powder. The breeze brought the scent of green things, of life, joy, and happiness. Control of her body suddenly returned to her and she managed to turn around, to be greeted by the sight of two of the most amazing men she’d ever seen.

Both wore a pair of black pants that reminded her of something a martial artist would wear, and their long, beautiful hair was loose around them.

The man on the left had silver hair that had an almost metallic sheen, silky and falling to his mid back. The deep bronze tone of his skin also shone like burnished metal, and when she looked up into his bright blue eyes her heart swelled with a sense of…completion, of finally finding something she didn’t know she’d been looking for. His features were solid, almost aristocratic. There was an aura of control and power around him, an intangible sense of command combined with Alpha male dominance. In an effort to free herself from his intense gaze, she looked down, only to be distracted by the sectioned ridges of his abdominal muscles. He had the faintest trail of platinum blond hair leading down from below his naval, drawing her gaze down the sweet V-shape of his groin and ending on his very, very thick erection pressing against his pants.

Casey drew in a startled gasp.
Oh, fucking my
.

Movement came from the right and her attention turned to a man with amazing long, blood-red hair streaked with thick highlights of honey blond. It reached almost to his waist, and she bit her lower lip as she examined his stockier frame, her fingers twitching with the need to touch him, taste him, find out if his chest was really as firm as it looked, or if she would break her teeth biting the chorded side of his neck. There was a faint pelt of red hair on his chest and she had an overwhelming urge to lick him. He had fuller lips than the silver-haired man, but the rest of his features were rougher from his prominent nose to his heavy brow. Masculinity poured off of him and when she met his glowing green eyes, a full-body shiver raced over her as her nipples hardened so quickly the sensation almost stung.

For a long moment, they all stood frozen, studying each other before the men took a step closer to her almost as one. Startled, because these guys looked like football players on dinosaur-strength steroids, she took a step back only to find her heel meeting empty air. A scream escaped her as she almost fell off the cliff, reaching out blindly to be grasped by two pairs of very large, rough hands that pulled her back to safety. Pressed between them, inhaling their combined scent, her mind turned off and her body turned on. Her skin abruptly sensitized, and when the red-haired man skimmed his hands over her throat, saying something in a language she didn’t understand, all she could do was sigh in delight. With the blond at her back she studied the other man, the look of arousal on his face as he stared down at her cleavage making her feel unexpectedly bold and powerful. This wasn’t some dumb college guy still figuring out how to be a man; this male specimen before her was in his prime and it showed.