Final Impact: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller, page 1
FINAL IMPACT
A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller
Jack Hunt
Copyright © 2017 by Jack Hunt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
FINAL IMPACT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Contents
Also by Jack Hunt
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
A Plea
About the Author
Also by Jack Hunt
Click here to receive special offers, bonus content, and news about new Jack Hunt’s books. Sign up for the newsletter.
If you haven’t joined Jack Hunt’s Private Facebook Group you can request to join by clicking here now. This gives readers a way to chat with Jack, see cover reveals, and stay updated on upcoming releases.
The Cyber Apocalypse series
As Our World Ends
As Our World Falls
As Our World Burns
The Agora Virus series
Phobia
Anxiety
Strain
The War Buds series
War Buds 1
War Buds 2
War Buds 3
Camp Zero series
State of Panic
State of Shock
State of Decay
Renegades series
The Renegades
The Renegades Book 2: Aftermath
The Renegades Book 3: Fortress
The Renegades Book 4: Colony
The Renegades Book 5: United
Mavericks series
Mavericks: Hunters Moon
Time Agents series
Killing Time
Single Novels
Blackout
Defiant
Darkest Hour
Final Impact
For my Family
We cannot stop natural disasters but we can arm ourselves with knowledge: so many lives wouldn’t have to be lost if there was enough disaster preparedness.
Petra Nemcove
Chapter 1
Their world ended long before the catastrophic event.
Felicity Meyers was the first to awake to confinement, darkness and the stench of death. Her mouth was dry, and there was a high-pitched ringing in her ears. Her mind tried to grapple with the chaos. A heavy mass pressed down, pinning and smothering her. A dark shape lurked beyond her eyes. It took a few seconds to realize, and then she recognized it as a woman.
The mangled face stared back — eyes open, void of life.
She attempted to scream — but could only croak.
As she tried again, a sharp pain jarred the rest of her senses awake.
Jagged metal stabbed her arm like the tip of a blade.
She groaned and twisted beneath the unknown weight. Felicity touched the cut on her arm, and that’s when she noticed the blood was dry. How long have I been in here? Memories flooded in like scenes from a drawn-out nightmare. The past replayed in snippets, only the essentials, only the things the mind could access while under duress.
Arriving at a pyramid-shaped hotel in Vegas.
An argument with a man.
Dazzling casino lights.
Entering an incline elevator.
A tremor then… screams.
Felicity looked at the contorted face of an older woman, her body curled in a fetal position, and jagged metal protruding through her midsection. It stopped inches away from her face.
Reality set in hard and fast.
She’d been in an accident, was in an inclinator, and she was alive but how?
Disoriented, Felicity knew she had to crawl out but which way was up?
Below her, a tangled mess of arms and legs answered that. The less fortunate must have acted as a cushion against an impact? Had it dropped? She figured the bodies had saved her life — and perhaps the angle of the inclinator.
How long had she been unconscious?
Her body twisted until she saw a flicker of light breaking through a prison of arms and legs. Her chest felt like it would collapse from being trapped. Her legs — she couldn’t feel them. No, no… was she paralyzed?
Panic rose in her chest as she used every ounce of strength to claw her way towards the light. As she turned from a position that was almost upside down, she felt the blood rush from her head, bringing life back to her numb limbs. That’s when she could move her toes. A wave of relief flooded her. Her entire body ached as she continued to push limbs out of the way and fight to reach the surface. Slowly she clawed out of the human coffin and shifted herself against the side. Finally, she could take in her cramped surroundings. The inclinator elevator was a six-by-eight-foot space, and seven other bodies hid the floor. The surrounding mirrors were shattered and chunks of shiny gold metal were twisted and crushed beneath concrete.
Fluorescent pot lights flickered above her, threatening to stop working at any second.
Cautiously Felicity clambered over to where the buttons were and pressed one labeled emergency but got no response. Frantically, she ran her hand over all of them but nothing worked. The thirtieth floor was the highest floor, and the screen that usually showed what floor they were at wasn’t lit up. She smacked it with a clenched hand but nothing happened except the elevator car shifted a little. A shot of fear coursed through her — the thought she might not be on the lowest floor. Inching back, she pressed herself against the side of the steel coffin.
Immediately her mind went into overdrive thinking of how to escape.
Phone.
She fumbled through her pocket until she felt it.
Instant relief. She was saved. She’d phone down to the front desk, and they’d have a crew up and she’d be out of there in no time. Her phone turned on but the power was on red, it was about to shut off. Damn, how long had she been in there?
She tapped in the digits for the hotel but it didn’t ring.
C’mon! She tried again, this time a different number, the one for her apartment.
Again, nothing.
You’ve got to be kidding me. She clenched her jaw then let out a scream before banging the side with her fist. A jolt, the groan of cables and she shivered, another cold shot of fear. Was the inclinator suspended; hanging on by a thread?
Looking back at the phone she saw the last voicemail, she tapped it and it played back.
“Hey hon, I need to speak to you. It’s important. Call me.”
There was another one dated a day later.
“Felicity. Did you get my message? I need to speak to you, this is urgent.”
One more.
“Please, come home. Please.”
Her heart sank. She couldn’t believe she was in this mess. Her life couldn’t get any worse. If there was a rock bottom, she had hit it a long time ago.
Knowing she might have to use the light of the phone to see her way out of the hellhole, she powered it down. Gazing at those trapped inside she wondered how many of them were dead. No one was moving. It was clear how some of them had died, a large chunk of the elevator car had twisted back, and several beams of steel had punctured through, slicing and impaling.
“Hello? Is anyone alive?”
No response. She focused in on the chests of those who weren’t discolored to see if any were breathing. That’s when she noticed one of them was. The cabbie, the same guy that had been a thorn in her side from the moment she’d arrived at the hotel.
Then, her eyes drifted to a man who’d been on top of her — well dressed in a dark blue suit, overweight but a good-looking guy in his early thirties with a full head of hair.
Do either of them have a phone on them?
She leaned forward and gave the businessman a shake to see if he would wake but he didn’t budge. Felicity rooted through his suit jacket pocket but it was empty. Next, she tried the cabbie. She had her hand stuffed inside his rear jean pocket when he groaned.
Felicity snapped her hand back and shuffled away.
He was alive.
Chapter 2
“Don’t you dare tell me I didn’t give you enough warning!” Dr. Charlie Meyer bellowed. “I sent the details over a year ago. There should have been an announcement. Why have you waited until now to tell me?”
“It was being handled.”
“Then I must have been asleep when the president addressed the n
“Do you really think they would send the world into a state of panic unless they were absolutely certain it would hit?”
“I don’t know how much clearer I could have made it.”
Dr. Charlie Meyer was in his early fifties; short, a full head of hair, a good amount of salt and pepper near the temples. His work as a teacher and astronomer with the FAU Astronomical Observatory at Florida Atlantic University had garnered him numerous awards over the years, along with recognition from his peers after creating the Space Agency’s Global Spaceguard program which connected professional and amateur telescopes looking for smaller NEOs (Near Earth Objects). The nationwide network had been the first to spot DA14, an asteroid that skimmed closer to the planet than any other known asteroid back in February 2013. It was estimated that had it hit the earth it would have released the energy equivalent of 24 million tons of TNT and wiped out 750 square miles.
“I’m sorry, Charlie, I don’t know what to tell you.”
He slammed his fist against the table. “Tell me the truth!”
“The data was off, Charlie. Radar astrometry has improved, but it doesn’t tell us everything. Steps were taken by NASA, now if everything had gone to plan, we assumed it would skim pass the earth based on the trajectory and gravitational pull.”
Charlie stared back at him in disbelief. He couldn’t even comprehend what he was hearing. “Gone to plan?”
“Look, we did everything we could. You said it yourself. There were only two options: destruction or deflection — it was too damn big to destroy completely, you and I know that. Even if they nuked it and broke it apart completely, it would have merely scattered the debris turning the damn cannonball into buckshot.”
“I told them that.”
“And so did I. But they decided to try and destroy it.”
“When?” Charlie yelled. “Before they made preparations to save their own asses?”
William sighed and ran a hand over his forehead. “The continuity of government has to happen.”
“And what of the continuity of billions of lives?”
“Arrangements have been made.”
“I bet they have. And who decides who lives or dies?”
William Baxley was a longtime friend of Charlie’s. He was also the head of NASA’s NEO program office, a division of NASA that prided itself on being able to predict the path of an asteroid. “Predict” being the keyword, as this time around they’d screwed up.
“You know the answer to that.”
“Can you live with that, William?”
He shook his head and walked around the office desk in the underground base of Cape Canaveral. “This is out of my hands, Charlie. There is nothing that can be done.”
“Of course there is.”
“You still don’t get it. After the detonation, it began to reform. So they tried to deflect it by blowing the nuke up next to the asteroid, hoping that it would shove the rock away from earth without creating smaller meteorites. It didn’t work. The breakage, the smaller meteorites, that’s what has caused the quakes. It’s just the beginning. It’s still coming. We got it wrong.”
Charlie was dumbfounded. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Got it wrong?”
“Damn it, Charlie, we have never dealt with anything of this magnitude. All our assessments of previous asteroids have been spot on. And those that didn’t pass by the earth, burned up in the atmosphere. Hell, they were too small to be of any concern. But this? What the hell did you expect?”
“Transparency. I expected them to alert the country. People have a right to know.”
“And create panic? We are talking about an asteroid that could wipe out over seventy percent of civilization. Like I said, the mission failed, there is nothing we can do now. Mistakes happen.”
“Mistakes?”
Charlie ran a hand over his head and paced back and forth in his office.
“They are calling it DA29.”
“I don’t care what they are calling it. There is still time. Get the president on the line.”
“Even if he could make an announcement, no one will hear it. It’s too late. The power grid is down in many parts of the country, Charlie. Why do you think I had you travel here ahead of time?”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have you known?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell it does.”
“Charlie, listen, there is still time for us. There is enough room on those airships for over one hundred thousand people. I’ve already got your name on that list. The military is working with state and city law enforcement to evacuate the pre-selected group. That’s the only way we will survive this. We’ve got to get off this planet.”
“Off? What about my daughter?”
“I’m sorry.”
Chapter 3
“Son of a bitch!” Zeke Blackstone said rolling to one side, and spitting dust. He was on the thirtieth floor, at least he could remember that. His back was in agony. A large mirror, along with drywall had collapsed on top of him. What an end to a hellish evening. He faded in and out of consciousness, the past replayed in his mind as if searching for some sense amid the chaos.
That day had started like any other.
Two shows a day, one in the morning, one in the evening.
He’d been performing his live magic show, Real or Magic, at the Luxor for years — ten to be exact. It was part of a long-term contract he’d secured after having huge success on TV. Until that point, everything had been going well. Life was good by any measure. He had the penthouse suite on the top floor of the Luxor, he rarely slept alone, he owned four sports cars and had recently purchased a mountaintop mansion in his own spot of paradise overlooking the Vegas strip.
But that all changed when his contract came up for renewal.
Damn you, Jerry!
He felt himself getting angry again at the betrayal.
His manager, Jerry Sanchez, had pulled him into his office, twenty minutes before he was about to go on stage, to drop the bombshell. He sat behind his desk, wearing a black suit and a pair of oversized gold specs balancing on his bulbous nose. He was one heartbeat away from a heart attack.
“What do you mean they’re not going to renew the contract?”
“That’s what they said,” Jerry replied with a mouth full of BLT.
“They are committing entertainment suicide. Get him on the phone, I want to speak to him myself.”
“I can’t do that, Zeke.”
Zeke got up and stormed towards the door.
“He’s not here, Zeke.”
With a hand on the knob, he cast a glance back. “Come on, Jerry, this is bullshit. Seriously. They are replacing me with a nineteen-year-old kid?”
Jerry shrugged and wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “He’s hot. The next big thing.”
“The next big thing? I’m the big thing. I’m the one who sells tickets, who fills seats and ensures that the hotel rooms in this shithole are filled. You think a kid will outsell me?”
Jerry sighed. “He already has. Tickets are sold for the next year. You haven’t been able to do that in what? Seven years. Most days we are lucky to get a hundred people a day between the two shows. The fact is no one wants to see you anymore, Zeke. You haven’t produced a new magic trick in six years.”
“That’s because that masked asshole on TV gave away most of my secrets.”
“Still. The kid is doing stuff no one has seen. Hell, not even Blaine, Teller or Copperfield is doing the stuff that this kid does. He’s on a different level. He’s young, full of life, good looking and…” He took another bite of his sandwich and thumbed through his smartphone.
Zeke eyeballed him then turned and caught a glance of himself in the mirror. He was in his early forties and dressed like a goth from the ’90s — long black hair tangled over one half of his face, tight leather pinched at his crotch, a flamboyant white shirt was wide open and his chest was sporting more gold jewelry than a pimp. Okay, he hadn’t updated his look in a while but they could have at least given him a heads-up, some kind of warning. Hell, even low-paying jobs had the courtesy to tell their employees when they weren’t performing. But not these assholes, no! They had just bitch slapped him to the curb.
