Worst Case Scenario

WORST CASE SCENARIO

Book 1

G. Allen Mercer

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Text copyright
©
2014 G. Allen Mercer

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording, or otherwise, except to quote on blogs or reviews without the expressed written permission of the author.  Any unauthorized reproduction of this work is punishable by law.  Permission can be requested at: www.GAllenMercer.com

Cover design and text by G. Allen Mercer

For those that dare to prepare

For those that lead the way

For those that have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms

And to the glory of God

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Acknowledgments

About the Author

CHAPTER 1

The shockwave impacted the commuter plane with such force that it actually rolled the jet in the air.  Oxygen masks exploded out of the compartments above the passengers. Magazines, cell phones, backpacks and briefcases flew through the air, striking passengers as the pitch of their screams was drowned out by the fear that flooded the cabin.

Ian felt the blood rush to his head and then to his feet and back again as the plane continued to roll and lose altitude. The lady next to him grabbed his hand and dug her nails into the flesh of his palm. Her seatbelt was loose, and she flopped up into the air and then crashed back down into the seat.  All the while she held Ian’s hand as an anchor.

With his free hand, Ian fought to pull his own seatbelt tighter. G-forces were pinning him to his seat one second and then trying to pull him from his seat the next second.

“Pull your belt tight,” he yelled at the lady tethered to his hand.

He knew they didn’t have much time. The plane had been circling lazily at a low altitude waiting to enter the Atlanta traffic pattern and land at the world’s busiest airport.  But that wasn’t going to happen today.  They possibly had 30 seconds until the plane crashed, unless the pilot could recover from the roll.

“No!” the lady screamed.  She dug her nails into Ian’s palms; she wasn’t letting go to do anything. Ian reached across his body, fighting the g-forces and pulled her belt tight; zipping her to her seat like she was a piece of metal and the seat a magnet.

“Oh God, please help!  Oh God, please help,” she started saying over and over.

Ian fought to pull his legs up to the seat and his knees to his chest.  He then put his head between his knees and wrapped his left arm around his knees; all the while holding the lady’s hand with his right hand.

“Do it!” he yelled again to the woman. 

“Oh God, please help!  Oh God, please help.”

“God wants you to do it!  Do it now!” he barked.

She stopped her chant long enough to pull her legs up on the seat and put her head between her knees. 

“Oh God, please help!  Oh God, please help,” she started again.

Ian could feel the pilot fight the physics of uncontrolled flight. The plane shuttered and groaned but seemed to be leveling off.

“Come on man,” Ian whispered in support of the pilot.  He chanced a glance out of his window.  The sun flew past his window as they rolled again.  The ground was close. 

The plane shuttered one more time and pitched the opposite way of their barrel roll, fighting for level flight when the lights in the cabin went out and one of the engines stopped. 
Damn.
  He looked out the window again.  They were too low, he could see the trees clearly and the shores of a lake zip past.

The second engine stopped and everything fell silently for an instant.  Everyone onboard seemed to hold a collective breath.

The plane nosed up sharply and then they simply stopped flying.

“I love you,” Ian said to his family and his God.

The plane struck the water with such force that it bounced, and tumbled head over tail before striking the water again.  The second impact with the water had so much intensity that the commuter jet snapped in half just in front of Ian’s seat. 

Sometime during the tumble, the lady released Ian’s hand, the forces of the crash pulling her in another direction.  He fought to keep his knees up, his head down, and his arms locked around his knees.
Please don’t let me die.

The motion stopped with a jerk, and everything went quiet.

Ian sensed wind and the rushing of flowing water through the cabin.  He was conscious.  Someone screamed and then gurgled to a stop.  The water swirled around his knees and quickly reached his chest.  He drew a giant breath, and closed his eyes before the water washed over his head. 

Ian released his legs but couldn’t move them because he was pinned between his seat and the seat in front of him.  He twisted and flexed every muscle in his body.  His ears were popping.  He was sinking.  Finally, he gripped his belt and released.  He opened his left eye and instantly felt stinging, but could see the light of the setting sun reflect on the water several feet above him.  He pushed off the seat for the light, but a hand grabbed his leg.  It was the lady that had been sitting next to him.  She was still trapped in her seat and the seat was twisted in oxygen masks and wires.

Keeping his right eye shut he turned around and felt for the hand.  Once he reached it, he squeezed it.  She squeezed back.  Ian followed her arm down the lady’s body until he reached the buckle.  Her buckle was not budging.  So, he laced his arms around her arms and pulled, putting his feet on the armrests for leverage.  The buckle snapped open, releasing her, but she was still tangled.  Ian’s lungs were on fire; he needed air.  Instead of going to the surface, he pulled again, this time releasing her legs out from the snare of wire.  Her body went limp and she stopped moving.  Holding her torso, he kicked off to the light.

Ian broke the surface and wiped his mouth before inhaling deeply.  There was jet fuel in the water and the fumes burned his lungs.  He coughed and tried taking small rapid breaths.  His left eye stung like knives were digging at it to pop it from its socket. 

Still holding the lady around her torso, he floated her to her back and tried to look around.  He could hear shouts from somewhere, and there….land!  He took off swimming as hard as he could while dragging the lady behind him.  He heard a splash in the direction he was swimming and voices coming towards him.

“I’ve got her!  I’ve got her,” a man yelled to him, appearing out of nowhere.  “Can you keep swimming?”  The man asked.  Ian nodded that he could and released her.

Ian felt the softness of the lakebed before he reached the bank and nearly stopped there.  Another person, a young girl, was also in the water.  “Let me help you,” she said, pulling at him to make it to the bank.  She tried to pull him all the way onto the bank, but as the water became shallow, her small size gave way to the weight of the muscular grown man.  He waved her off and trudged through the rest of the water, reaching the bank and falling to his knees. He increased his short breaths, making them longer with each second, and then he saw the lady that he had saved.

The man that had jumped into the water and helped him was performing CPR on her.

“Penny, help me,” the man instructed the girl. The girl left Ian’s side, dropped to her knees and instinctively took over the rhythmic pumping of the lady’s chest. “Just keep pumping,” he ordered while he blew into the woman’s mouth.  Her chest would rise and fall with each breath.

Ian moved to kneel beside the girl and without a word took over the compressions for her.  They were immediately rewarded with a reaction.

“Turn her over,” the man said, flipping the lady on her side as lake water spewed from her lungs. 

She began to cough violently, her heart reengaged, and she sputtered back to life.   The man stood up and waded back into the water looking for anyone else, but he stopped in his tracks, knee deep in the water.

Ian, for the first time, wiped his right eye clean and opened it.  It took a second, but he could see clearly from it. The left eye was on fire; he needed fresh water and he turned back to the lake, but was also stopped by what he could see.

The wreckage of the plane was visible; a wing protruded from the water like a giant shark, and there were a few more people swimming to the shore. But, it was the site of the mushroom cloud rising above Atlanta that froze them to their spots.

“Dear God,” Ian said.

CHAPTER 2

Leah Burrows hit send on an email to her daughter’s volleyball coach, letting her know that she would provide the drinks and snacks at the next game, when the power to the house surged, blinked and then went out with a zipping noise.  On the street, the transformer at the top of the power pole exploded causing Leah to let out a startled scream.

“Damn!” she said, peeking out of the window of her suburban house.   There were dozens of other explosions happening up and down the street.  “Wow!  That can’t be good Daisy, can it?” she asked, looking at the black Labrador at her feet; the loud booms causing the dog to pant nervously.

Leah walked to the kitchen in search of her cell phone and a flashlight; she had no idea how long the power was going to be out.  Picking up her phone, she pressed the button to display the time, but the screen displayed for a second and then faded to black.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!”  She pressed every combination she could think of on the phone.  Daisy was glued to her side, she was anxious with the constant explosions they could hear outside.

“It’s okay girl,” she comforted herself as well.  “I know it sounds a little like the 4
th
of July out there, but it’ll end soon,” she said, her voice trailing off, as a thought seemed to pop into her head.  She opened a door and descended into the basement, suddenly driven to respond to the thought in her head.

With Daisy near her heels, Leah went to a small closet under the stairs.  She opened the door and out of habit flipped the light switch.  Nothing.  She then squeezed the dynamo flashlight a few times.  The battery-less flashlight rewarded her with light, which she pointed towards a shelf in the cramped space.  On the shelf was a green army ammo box, or ammo can as her husband called it.  With reservation, she unsnapped the box and pointed the light inside. 

The box was lined with tinfoil; effectively turning the ammo can into a homemade Faraday cage.  The Faraday cage was a box that could distribute electrical energy around the surface to prevent electronics, which might be stored in the box, from being damaged.  Her overly prepared husband had made the box a few years earlier. 

Inside the box was a small hand crank dynamo, like her flashlight, but it could be used to charge batteries.  Also inside was a back up cell phone that her husband charged religiously every week.  She picked up the cell phone and flipped it on.  It worked.

She waited for the cell signal to acquire and display a range of bars across the top. 

It never found a signal.

CHAPTER 3

Grace was sprawled on the carpeted bedroom floor of her best friend.  They were both lying on their backs looking up at the phone that Grace held at arms length. 

“Of course he’s cute, I’m just saying that, well, he’s like in 10
th
grade.”

“So?” the face of the girl on the other side of the phone asked.

“So?  So?  Well, Grace is about to graduate and go to college.  He’s like in 10
th
grade.  Don’t you get that?”  Anna answering for her best friend

“Right,” Grace finished, defending her own position.  “Besides, I don’t think I’m ready to get back in a relationship after the last year with…”

The phone shut off.

“Seriously?” Grace shook the phone and tried the buttons, but the phone was dead.  “Great!  Can I borrow your charger?  I’ve got to put some juice in it before going home.”

Anna rolled up from the floor and dove across her bed to reach the white charging cable on her nightstand.  “Here you go,” she said, sliding off of the bead.  “I’m going to get something to drink.  Want something?” she asked, walking out of the room and heading for the stairs down to the kitchen.

Grace rolled to her knees and stood up, pulling her hair back to a ponytail and tying it off with a band that had been around her left wrist.  “I’ll just come down with you.  I can charge my phone down there.”  Grace bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen a few seconds after her friend.

“Hey, that’s weird,” Anna said, opening and closing the refrigerator. 

“What?”

“The light’s out.  See.”  She opened and closed the refrigerator door a few times to prove that the light was absolutely out.

“Weird,” Grace said, plugging in the charger to an outlet on the kitchen island.  “Weird, again!  I think the power’s out or something.”

Anna turned to look at Grace, who was holding the phone up to prove that it was not charging.  Anna tried flipping a few of the light switches, but nothing happened.

They heard a large boom in the distance and the house seemed to rumble and shake.

“What do you think that was?” Anna asked.

“I’m not sure.  Kind of sounded like an explosion somewhere.  It’s probably why the power’s out,” Grace mused while looking out the window.  “What time are your parents getting home?” Grace asked her friend.

Anna walked to a wall calendar that was over a kitchen desk.  “Um…it looks like the conference doesn’t end until four Atlanta time, and then they were going to drive back.  They should be leaving soon.”

“Oh.  You know, I think my dad was connecting through Atlanta today.  Maybe they could just give him a ride back.”  Both girls laughed.

“I don’t know if my doctor parents would like to have the gun dealer in the car with them,” Anna said, still smiling. 

“He’s not a gun dealer!” Grace elbowed her friend slightly. “He’s the Vice President of Marketing for a fire arms manufacturer,” she said, as if the words were being delivered at a high tea where the women wore hats and everyone ate scones.

“Whatever. He’s a gun dealer.  Anyway, if the power’s out, then they might really be late.”  There was another boom in the distance.

“Wow, those booms are crazy.  So, I guess it depends on how big the outage is?  I think those are transformers or something,” Grace looked out the window again.  This time she could see smoke rising from several miles away. 
Is that where downtown is?

“There’s smoke?  I guess something pretty big is on fire.”  Anna looked over her friend’s shoulder, also eyeing the black smoke in the distance. 

“So why don’t you just stay with us tonight, give your parents a call and see.”

Anna liked the idea and bounded back up the stairs to get her phone and returned to the kitchen almost as fast.  “Grace, my phone’s dead too.” She held it up for her friend to see.  “This’s really crazy!  First your phone, then the booms, our power is out and now my phone!”

Grace shook her head that this was indeed crazy, but something seemed to tell her that there was more to what was happening.  There was something different about this situation. The boom, and the large column of black smoke billowing in the distance. Her parents had talked about this sort of thing happening if…

“So, your phone’s dead, mine’s dead, the power’s out and,” Grace said, giving words to her stream of logic. “I think that boom that shook the house is what ever is on fire out there.  So…” She stopped talking to think it through again.

“Yeah, so?  Go on!” Anna persisted.  “What are you thinking?”

“Ahh, I don’t know, maybe it’s weird, but my parents said that this kind of thing could happen during things like big solar flairs or a terrorist attack and stuff.”

“Terrorists!  What? Why would terrorists cut the power?  We live in Birmingham, Alabama. Hello!  Little town of Birmingham!  Who wants to do anything to us here?” Anna asked, in total disbelief of her friend.

“I’m not saying that we were hit by terrorists, I’m saying…I’m saying that I don’t know what caused it, but it’s weird that like, everything is off.  That just doesn’t happen you know!”

There was a long pause between the friends.

“What should we do?” Anna broke the silence.

“I don’t…well, maybe I have an idea,” Grace offered, walking towards the garage entrance of her friend’s house. 

“Where are you going?” Anna called after her and then started to follow.  She was suddenly aware of how quiet it was in the house without noise generated by electricity.  She opened and closed the refrigerator one more time.  It was still dark, so she grabbed two Cokes and headed to the driveway where Grace was digging under the passenger seat in her Jeep.

“This is going to sound weird, but this whole thing is weird already,” Grace said, leaning across the driver seat to reach the other side.

“What are you looking for?”

“This,” Grace said, pulling a small green metal box out from under the seat. 

“What’s that?”

Grace put it on the ground and popped the locking handle to open the lid.  “It’s a special box that my Dad put together.  He put in here when I first got the car.  All of our cars have one.” 

Anna looked over her shoulder and then inside of the box.  “It’s lined with tin foil.  Why?”

“It’s supposed to protect electrical stuff from radiation,” she said, and then paused.  “No, not radiation,” she corrected herself.  “It protects electronics from magnetic fields.  It stops stuff from getting fried, like our cell phones.”

“Oh,” Anna rolled her eyes.  “Lots of good it did our cell phones!”

“Well, it wasn’t supposed to protect our cell phones, it was supposed to protect this,” Grace pulled out a small digital two-way radio.

“Great Grace, we have a walkie-talkie.  You can call Star Trek and see if they can beam us up!”

Grace smiled at her and turned the radio on.  She was a little surprised when the green LED backlit the screen.  It was on channel 25.  There was no chatter or noise, but at least it worked.

“So, now what?” Anna asked.

Grace keyed the mike and tentatively spoke into the device.  “Momma B,” she said, and then let off the mike, not liking the way she sounded.  She cleared her throat and tried again with a little more authority.  “Momma B this is Tardis Blue,” she said, feeling the redness of embarrassment creep up her neck as Anna looked at her use code names.

“I don’t think I know you anymore,” Anna said, half laughing, half wondering if she was speaking the truth.

“It’s code.  My Mom and Dad had us all choose a code name a few years ago when they started prepping.”  She looked at her friend; waiting for the next set of questions, but decided to just tell her before she could ask.  “My code is obviously from the BBC show Dr. Who.”

“Yeah, I remember, you were into that a few years ago.”

“Yeah, and the Momma B is for Momma Burrows or Momma Bear.  It just depends on the situation,” she said with a smile.  “Momma B this is Tardis Blue do you hear me?  Over,” she transmitted, again.

“Hey look, there’s Mr. Miller.  I wonder if his phones are out too?” Anna asked, noticing that her neighbor from across the street had also stepped out to look up and down the street to see if the rest of the neighborhood was out.

“Hey girls, did you see that plane go down?” he asked, pointing at the column of black smoke.

“No!  Is that what that is?” Anna put her hand to her mouth.  “Grace thinks its terrorism.”

“Really,” the man said with a hint of allure.  He then started walking towards them.

Grace shut the radio off and quickly tucked it in her back pocket.