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“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Commander Palmer turns back to look out the window. “But it’s got to be related to that. Maybe war?”
“It doesn’t look like it.” Jackie shakes her head. “There are fires across the globe. Most of the major cities look like something bad is happening. It seems to be country-agnostic.”
“Terrorist attacks?”
Jackie shrugs. “I don’t see how. Maybe? But how could it be coordinated world-wide?”
Palmer is about to respond when the lights in the room flicker for a few seconds before shutting off entirely. The whine of a compressor in some distant part of the space station slowly dies off, leaving the room shrouded in darkness and silence.
“What the hell? Where are the emergency lights?” Using the bit of light coming from outside the station Palmer makes his way to a small cabinet on the wall. He pulls out a pair of flashlights, throwing one of the lights to Ted while motioning to Jackie to follow him. “Ted, get on the computer and see what’s going on. Jackie, I need you with me. Let’s see if we can get some lights on in here.”
“Computer’s dead, Commander.” Ted slaps at the keys and pushes the power button for the monitor on and off but nothing happens.
“Merde.” Palmer curses under his breath. “Okay, with system power offline we need to check the breakers and relays first. Ted, you head down and check those. Jackie, get your eyes on the reactor and see if there’s a problem with it. I’ll go up to control and see if anything is showing up there. Use the pipes to communicate.”
“On it.” Ted and Jackie pull themselves through a tube in the ‘floor’ of the room, heading to the panels that house the main power breakers for the space station. Commander Palmer, meanwhile, proceeds up into the control room. He pulls a flexible tube close to his face and speaks into it.
“Got anything down there?”
A hollow, tinny voice echoes back through the tube. “Give us just a second. We’re checking the last row of them now.” There is silence for a few more seconds and Ted’s voice comes through again. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No problems, no issues, no nothing.”
Palmer glances across the instrument panels, toggling switches as he flips through a thick notebook filled with emergency checklists. “I’m getting nothing from up here, either.”
“Commander?” Jackie’s voice is distant, but filled with stress and alarm. “I think I found the problem.”
Chapter 8
Somewhere Near the Indiana/Kentucky State Border
“Seriously? Again? What is that, the third one that’s been down?”
“There was the one that was still standing back at the start.”
“Technically standing doesn’t really count for our purposes. I wouldn’t trust that thing to hold up a housefly.”
“Do we keep going?”
“What other choice do we have? They can’t all be out. I hope.”
Rick sighed, and waved dramatically at the car. “After you.” Jane grumbled as she climbed into the back seat, then Rick and Dr. Evans got in. Rick started the car, put it into gear and backed away from the remnants of the bridge that once stretched across the Ohio River, linking the west and east sides together.
They had been following the river’s course for over an hour, starting down near Louisville and working their way north along the western bank. Avoiding major cities like Louisville was a priority for them given the unpredictable shifts in the ground in the area and they had hoped to use a smaller bridge in between Louisville and Cincinnati to cross over the water.
Unfortunately, though, the earthquakes that had caused them to avoid the larger cities had caused other, more urgent problems as well. They had started just outside Louisville, looking for a bridge to cross the river. The first one they saw was an older, two-lane bridge that had only a simple guardrail on both sides. They were about to cross the bridge when Jane yelled at Rick to stop, having noticed something wrong just as they were about to cross over the threshold of the bridge.
The trio had stopped, gotten out and walked to the bridge to find that the bridge was splintered and cracked with long fissures running on the road’s surface as well as on the support beams that held it up. With collapsed buildings visible in the distance at the edge of Louisville, they all agreed that they should continue north and try to find a crossing that looked like it wouldn’t plummet into the water if they drove across.
An hour and two collapsed bridges later and Rick was beginning to wish they had risked the first crossing. Evidence of intense tectonic activity dotted the area, affecting both man-made structures and the natural landscape. Structures never designed to be subjected to earthquakes had either completely collapsed or were a strong gust of wind away from falling into a heap. Clusters of trees and sections of open fields were completely gone in some places, replaced only by dark crevices and holes in the ground. The two bridges the group came across were likewise destroyed with small pieces of cement and steel sticking out of the water like gravestones.
Rick crossed his hands on the top of the steering wheel and rested his chin on them as they sat in front of where the third bridge once stood, looking out across the water. “It’s so close. So. Close.”
“We could sw—no, wait. Duh.” Jane rolled her eyes at herself. “Can’t exactly take the car across the water even if we did swim, could we?”
Rick blinked a few times as he crinkled his nose. “What if we could, though?”
“This car is a wonder of modern technology, Rick, but it can’t fly.” Dr. Evans replied.
“Not fly. But float.”
