Days of Anarchy

  Days of Anarchy

  The Meteor: Book #2

  Written by J.D. Martens

  Copyright © 2018 by Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Published by EPIC Press™

  PO Box 398166

  Minneapolis, MN 55439

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  International copyrights reserved in all countries.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without

  written permission from the publisher. EPIC Press™ is trademark

  and logo of Abdo Consulting Group, Inc.

  Cover design by Candice Keimig

  Images for cover art obtained from iStock

  Edited by Amy Waeschle

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Martens, J.D., author.

  Title: Days of anarchy/ by J.D. Martens

  Description: Minneapolis, MN : EPIC Press, 2018 | Series: The Meteor; #2

  Summary: Jeremy and his friends drive to Vail to escape possible rioting and anarchy after the United States reveals the truth about the comet. As the discontent continues on the ground, Dr. Miller and Dr. Lahdka grapple with the ramifications of failure, while Jeremy searches for meaning in a new world. Meanwhile, something is afoot in the Rocky Mountains.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017946136 | ISBN 9781680768282 (lib. bdg.)

  | ISBN 9781680768565 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Adventure stories—Fiction. | End of the world—Fiction.

  | Meteor showers—Fiction. | Teenagers—Fiction | Young adult fiction.

  Classification: DDC [FIC]—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2017946136

  This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

  For my lovely niece, Avery—my inspiration comes from you.

  “Let’s get some gas. Also, I need to pee,” Anna yawned, looking out the window.

  Jeremy, Anna, Dustin, and Karina were an hour south of Dallas in Dustin’s Acura, speeding up Interstate 45. Their backs clung to the leather of their seats and the car’s air was thick and humid. Since Jeremy wanted to save gas, they didn’t use the air conditioner. It was fourteen hours after President Chaplin had announced to the world that a rather large frozen rock—a comet nicknamed Shiva—would probably hit the Earth in around two years. At the last gas station they had gone to—an unassuming Chevron outside of Houston—they had almost been shot, so when Anna suggested they go to the next gas station, Jeremy refused.

  “Just pee in one of those Gatorade bottles,” Jeremy said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  “Are you kidding me?” Karina exclaimed.

  “Jer, I can’t do that,” Anna sighed, before continuing, “I don’t want to go to another gas station any more than you do, but we have to. We don’t have a choice. We need gas.”

  “We have some gas in the U-Haul, in the gas canisters,” Jeremy reasoned.

  “And when we run out of that? I am not so sure my mom’s Triple-A card is going to work in Anarch-Merica,” Dustin remarked. “Sooner or later, we are going to need gas.”

  “Stop calling it that, Dustin,” Jeremy said, but the others grinned.

  Jeremy knew they were right, of course, and saw they were approaching a Shell station, so they went over their attack plan. If there were more than two cars there, they would drive to another gas station. Everyone would stay in the car except Dustin, who sat closest to the gas tank flap. He would jump out and pump the gas, and then get back into the car and wait for it to be done. Once he heard the click of the full gas tank, he’d jump out again, pull out the pump, screw the lid back on the tank, and get in the car. Anna would not pee, and instead at some point they would stop somewhere they knew was safe and where there were no people. They would talk to no one, and everything would run smoothly.

  “I heard a saying once from my Greek exchange student,” Dustin said. “‘When you make plans, God laughs.’”

  “God must be laughing pretty hard, then,” Karina said, looking up at the sky.

  When the Shell came into view, they were all thankful to see only one car there. The entire gas station was otherwise deserted. Dustin hopped out of the car, but immediately stuck his head back in through the door.

  “It says cash only. What should we do?”

  You want something done, you gotta do it yourself, Jeremy thought, and opened the door.

  “You take the wheel,” he said to Dustin as he stepped out of the car.

  “Jer, what about the buddy system?” Anna asked, worried.

  Jeremy walked toward the gas station, nervously stroking what stubble his chin had been able to grow. He stepped into the small store, looking around, and saw a thickly mustached man staring at him.

  “Oh, hello,” Jeremy said.

  “What do you want?” the man asked, sternly but not unfriendly.

  Jeremy looked nervously at the handgun the man held. He had his hand on the handle, and it was pointed at Jeremy, but his finger was not yet on the trigger. The man saw Jeremy eyeing the handgun.

  “Don’t be nervous, boy, just taking precaution. Got robbed here this morning, since the world is gonna end and all.”

  “Right,” Jeremy said tensely. “Can I get a full tank on two and some chips?”

  The man nodded, and pressed some numbers on the computer to his left, while keeping his eyes on Jeremy. Jeremy, meanwhile, was sure to keep his hands in plain view of the man. He didn’t want the guy thinking he was going to do anything wrong.

  “That’ll be two-hundred dollars, even,” the man said.

  “What? Are you joking?” Jeremy had $220 in his pocket, but he couldn’t believe the guy wanted that much.

  “Desperate times, I can charge whatever I want.” The man angled the gun to point at Jeremy’s heart.

  Jeremy looked to the old man and narrowed his eyes distrustfully, and gave the man the money, taking a bag of chips on his way out. His wallet felt much lighter. He walked back to the car and began pumping the gas, and his phone buzzed. It was a text from his dad.

  I’m sorry for how we left things, son. I hope you’ll let me know you’re safe and I look forward to hearing from you. Be careful. Things are already changing in Houston.

  Jeremy thought for a moment about how to respond, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard, but his mind came up empty. I’ll respond later, he thought.

  As Jeremy drove through Dallas, he saw people swerving all over the road. Many people held guns in their cars. There were preachers on the side of the road, raving about the coming apocalypse.

  Anna suggested that the credit cards might stop working soon, so they should use them while they could. She thought they should stay at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Dallas, and Dustin eagerly agreed, having never stayed at a hotel like that before.

  “Are you guys sure we should do this? I mean, we could be getting ourselves into trouble. It might be better to just drive and sleep away from people who might try to kill us,” Jeremy said, thinking about their two gas station encounters. Jeremy had almost gotten his friends killed at their first stop because he hesitated at the pump. If that man had raised his gun just a little higher, he could have shot Anna, but luckily the bullet just went into the car door.

  “I think Jeremy’s right,” Karina said. “What if someone tries to steal our car or our stuff or something?”

  “It might happen, guys,” Dustin mentioned. “But think of it this way. It’s getting dark soon, and there will be people on the road who want to do us harm too. If we are in a hotel room, what could happen? We can lock the door, and we have four people.”

  Anna spoke up. “We can’t think that everyone is out to get us.”

  “I don’t agre
e. Everyone is probably out to get us!” Karina retorted.

  They couldn’t agree; it was a two–two vote. Dustin said that since it was split down the middle in a vote, they should flip a coin.

  “Heads,” Jeremy said, and held his breath.

  Dustin had a big grin on his face as the coin flipped in the air and landed on his palm . . . It was tails!

  “This is such a dumb idea,” Jeremy bemoaned. “Someone literally tried to kill us for this car, and you want to go into a big city where guns are legal?”

  But Jeremy was voted down, and they got off the freeway. On the streets of Dallas they saw people walking around the city, fully armed and dangerous. How could we be so stupid? Jeremy thought.

  Jeremy bit his nails as Dustin drove into the roundabout for the Ritz Carlton Dallas. The dual flags of the United States and Texas jutted out of the tall building, and incredibly the valet stood professionally at his post, despite the president’s address the day before. At first they considered giving the car to the valet, but Jeremy convinced them that they couldn’t possibly be thinking of giving the keys to their “apocalypse car” to a kid their same age. They parked it in the self-parking lot, which took a while because they needed an extra spot for the U-Haul.

  The group walked into the Ritz and it was beautiful. There were great oak columns on the edges of the lobby, ornate mirrors on the walls, and a beautiful chandelier hung above them. Jeremy eyed the luxurious lobby suspiciously, expecting someone to pop out at any moment and attack them.

  “Hello!” Dustin said eagerly to the cute and bored-looking clerk named Sheila. “We would like to rent your most expensive room, please. Whatever the honeymoon suite is, we’ll take that!”

  Dustin winked and threw his arm around Karina, who affected a smile while trying her very best not to roll her eyes.

  “That suite is eight thousand dollars, sir,” Sheila replied calmly.

  “No problem, Sheila,” Dustin answered, handing her a credit card.

  After a minute or so of Dustin looking at Karina to keep up the appearance of their engagement, and Karina awkwardly trying to avoid Dustin’s gaze, Sheila gave Dustin the card back.

  “I’m afraid it’s been declined. I think that price is over the daily limit of your credit card, sir.”

  “Oh,” Dustin replied, unsure of what to do next.

  They tried a few more cards, but it didn’t work. Eventually they settled on the lower suite, the “Ritz-Carlton Suite.” It was only four-thousand dollars. Jeremy thought the entire exchange was suspicious. Why would she be working even after the President Chaplin speech about the comet? he wondered.

  Together the group walked with their backpacks of essentials and got into the elevator.

  Dustin had to insert a key into the elevator so he could even click the “8th floor” button.

  “Wow,” Dustin began. “You can’t even get to this floor without a special key.”

  They walked past the hotel rooms in the hallway until they reached a room at the end of the wing. The entrance of the room said “Ritz-Carlton Suite” on it and there were two doors instead of one. Maybe this is a good idea, Jeremy thought.

  Dustin stuck the room key in the slot, and as they entered the room, the girls gasped. Jeremy held his breath, and Dustin walked in with his mouth agape. Jeremy saw the dining room table with a unique-looking art piece in the middle of it. It looked like an elegant branch of an oak tree, deeply stained an earthy color. Straight ahead were enormous double windows, which looked over the Dallas skyline. In front of the huge windows was a glass coffee table with ornate couches surrounding it, facing an impossibly thin TV.

  Jeremy went and sat down next to it, turning it on. Anna locked the deadbolt to the room, and slid the chain-lock over as a second security measure. Dustin ran and jumped on the California King in the master bedroom. “Dibs!” he laughed.

  Jeremy watched as the “Ritz Carlton” logo danced across the screen before CNN came on the screen, and a pundit began speaking about the day’s events. Karina turned on the rainforest shower in the bathroom and closed the door.

  “The president is about to speak again . . . ” Jeremy said, continuing to stare at the TV. The news ticker was scrolling along, repeating the words “State of Emergency in West Coast cities . . . San Francisco, Seattle . . . ”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Dustin asked Jeremy, reading the news ticker.

  “It means that enough people weren’t obeying the regular laws, as we saw while we drove to Dallas, only worse. Maybe they’ll declare martial law soon.”

  “And give the military more power? That’s not good.”

  “Maybe fewer people will try to shoot us if they think the military might come after them if they break the law.”

  “Maybe . . . ”

  Even though they had just started their journey, Jeremy sank deeply into the Ritz-Carlton couch, unable to keep his eyes open for long.

  Robert Miller had assembled his team, packed his belongings, and sat in the back of the military Humvee, watching the flat Texan landscape whiz by. Suri Lahdka, his trusted coworker—and now probably his best friend—sat next to him. They went over the team they had assembled together, complete with new engineers and scientists. They were to go to the National Laboratory, which was in Los Alamos. Robert couldn’t believe that seventy years ago J. Robert Oppenheimer made the journey to Los Alamos to make the world’s first atomic bomb, and now he and Suri were heading there to send nuclear weapons into space.

  Robert stared ahead before turning to Suri, saying, “It’s crazy to think that the same technology that almost destroyed the world might save it now.”

  Suri nodded. “At least we aren’t building the bomb. We are just trying to blow up a really big rock.”

  Just then, Robert’s phone rang.

  “Robert Miller,” Robert spoke into his phone.

  A peculiar accent replied, saying, “Dr. Miller, this is Gerald Jan. I believe we spoke around a month ago. I called myself Mr. S.”

  Robert quietly put Gerald on speakerphone, putting his finger to his mouth to Suri, who nodded.

  “Right, Gerald, how can I help you?”

  “I was hoping you would come to Hawthorne, California, to my factory. I have something I want to show you.”

  “Actually, Gerald, I’m sure you’re aware of what I do and you may know, somehow, that I’m on my way to an undisclosed location—”

  “You’re on your way to Los Alamos. Listen, Doctor, I have the world’s best programmers and hackers working for me. Please come. I want to show you what I’ve built. I think that it will come in handy. This is a conflict that will obviously affect us all, and I want the next generation to survive. I will pay whatever it costs to get you over here.”

  Robert looked over at Suri, who gracefully reached over and tapped the “mute” button on Robert’s phone.

  Suri looked thoughtful, and said, “I think we should go. I mean, Gerald might have an unconventional way of doing things, but he’s really big in the tech sphere. He’s been building a lot of rockets at SpaceX, and he knows how important this is. He wouldn’t ask you to go out of your way if it wasn’t something extremely important.”

  “He does seem a little self-important though,” Robert mused.

  Suri raised her eyebrows. “You know that saying about the pot and the kettle?”

  Robert laughed, ignoring the quip. “The guy does seem smart. Let’s do it. Mr. Jan? Are you there?”

  Suri reached over and unmuted Robert’s phone for him and Robert tried again. “Mr. Jan, tell me where to go and I’d be happy to meet you.”

  “You’re on your way to a military plane, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, tell the pilot you need to make a stop at Vandenberg Airforce Base, in California. I’ll be waiting here with Vishnu.”

  “Vishnu?!” Suri exclaimed, rolling her eyes in exasperation. Another Hindu name?! she thought.

  “Hello, Miss Ladhka. I did
n’t realize you were there as well. Yes, I’ve nicknamed my invention Vishnu, because I figured we should stay constant with the Indian gods.”

  Robert couldn’t hide his smile as he said goodbye to Gerald Jan, telling him he would reach Vandenberg in around three and a half hours.

  Once they reached the air field, Robert spent fifteen minutes convincing the pilot to stop in California. Finally the pilot conceded that Robert—since, after all, he was in charge of saving the world—should be allowed to make a detour if he thought it was appropriate and relevant to his plan to stop Shiva.

  Jeremy woke up groggily on the pullout couch. It was difficult to pull himself away from Anna’s grasp, who held him tightly. Sometimes being under blankets with someone you love feels more secure than a bulletproof vest. There was another knock at the door.

  “Who is it?” Jeremy asked, but no one answered.

  He peered through the peephole, but saw no one.

  “Should I open it?” he posed, to no one in particular.

  Anna had drifted back to sleep, and muttered something that sounded a lot like, “Yes . . . no.” Jeremy decided to ignore the last part.

  He opened the door slowly with the door-chain still attached, peering out.

  “Hello?”

  Again, no one answered, but he looked down and saw a newspaper on the floor. It was the USA Today.

  He swiped it up, closed the door, and turned on the coffee in the room. Four-thousand dollars a night, but at least they gave you free coffee. Jeremy wondered why the Ritz-Carlton employees seemed to have maintained their professionalism. Going to work after learning about Earth’s expiration date—commitment indeed!

  Jeremy looked down at the newspaper in his hands. The headline blared: “Martial Law in California, Washington State.”

  Jeremy read a list of bullet points which told the citizens their new laws. “In these states where President Chaplin has instituted Martial Law, the military has been granted permission to search any civilian, confiscate goods in service of the State . . . ”

  Jeremy was interrupted by a buzzing sensation in his pocket. It was a text from his dad.