The Ultimate Mike Kraus Book Bundle (Paperbacks)

Chapter 1
10:17 AM, March 26, 2038
Nancy Sims

Nancy blinked and rubbed her eyes for what felt like the thousandth time that day. Driving across the plains of Kansas, bound for Florida, Nancy had barely started her trip but was already exhausted. Not used to long car rides, Nancy usually preferred to take a plane, but accepting that new job offer required that she move her car along with the rest of her belongings. Money was tight, so she decided to make the trip the weekend before she was slated to start at the new job. Three hours out of Denver and she was already regretting the decision, wishing that she had just sold the car and bought a new one after a few months of working.

Nancy was well aware of the economics of such a decision, though; after all, she was starting at one of the top law firms in Florida as the head accountant, brought in to clean up sloppy accounting practices and help increase the firm's profit margin. For the last two years she had lived in Denver, taking advantage of the advanced mass transit system and rarely driving except on the weekends and holidays. The only apartment she could find on such short notice in Miami was far enough away from her new office that she didn't want to risk taking its comparatively primitive transit system. So there she was, driving along the highway, already two hours behind her original schedule thanks to a blown tire just outside the Denver city limits.

Rolling down the windows to let in a fresh breeze, Nancy coughed a few times at the dust kicked up by the tractors plowing the nearby fields in preparation for the next growing season. This was the last place on earth she ever wanted to be, and merely driving through it made her feel like falling asleep at the wheel. Row upon row of corn passed by as she drove on, their waving motion hypnotic in the heat of the sun. Though it was still only spring, the Midwest had been hit hard over the last few weeks with an intense heat wave. While she wasn’t happy with the drive, she was looking forward to escaping to the South, where it was still only in the upper 70’s instead of the 90’s. Of course, that would all change in the coming months, but it would be nice to have a few more weeks of reasonable weather before the heat and humidity kicked into overdrive.

Nancy rolled past the Kansas/Missouri state border sign just after six that night. Driving faster to make up lost time had cost her dearly with a freshly minted ticket to the state police ball. Still fuming over the incident, Nancy didn't pay any attention to the bright flashes that appeared in front of and behind her on the highway. After a moment, they grabbed her attention, though at first she thought that they were simply the lights from Kansas City. As they grew in number and brightness, she had to pull down the sun visor to shield her eyes from the blaze. As she did so, she happened to glance in the rearview mirror. Nancy's jaw dropped as she saw similar flashes on the horizon behind her, then off to the south, towards Oklahoma as well. She glanced up ahead again, trying to keep her eyes on the road without being blinded by the intensity of the light. Finally, as the first lights began to fade, Nancy put her hands to her mouth in horror, watching the mushroom clouds rising in the distance, forgetting that she was still driving along at nearly sixty miles an hour. As the wheels of the SUV hit the ditch and the vehicle began to roll, the last sight Nancy saw before she blacked out was a fresh flash in the sky, back-dropping the multiple mushroom clouds in the distance.

Chapter 1
The Waters’ Homestead
Ellisville, VA

Autumn was truly in the air, and the leaves on the trees showed it in full force. A cold front had blown through from North Carolina up through New York the previous night, and by the time Dianne Waters woke up the next morning she was shivering. After making an early breakfast of warm oatmeal, toast, eggs and cereal, Dianne cleared the breakfast table and sat down for what she lovingly called “another day on the farm.”
Set on the far outskirts of Ellisville—itself on the far outskirts of Blacksburg—the Waters home was a modest-sized two story building set in the dead center of a forty acre plot of land. Thick woods ringed the property and a long, winding driveway passed through them from the house out to a gravel road that, after half a mile, connected up with a country highway.
The property was isolated, charming, beautiful and peaceful—no one ever visited except to deliver the occasional package and piece of mail and, even on a clear day, it was hard to hear any cars or neighbors nearby thanks to the density of the trees. A small spring bubbled into a creek that passed a few hundred feet from the house, meandering down into a three-acre lake at the bottom of a long sloping hill. The area in between the house and the lake had been cleared and turned into a mixture of fields for growing small amounts of crops as well as for keeping a small variety of animals.
Dianne listened to her children as they bumped along upstairs, doing more playing than cleaning, and smiled as she looked out the window. The leaves were finally changing from green to a dazzling display of orange, red and yellow. She sighed and ran her fingers through her dark hair, pulling it into a ponytail as she heard another loud bump followed by the scream of Josie, her youngest at six years old. It was once again time to play the exciting game of “which one of you made your sister cry,” starring Josie’s older brothers Mark (thirteen) and Jacob (ten).
“Boys!” She shouted up at the ceiling, smiling with some small satisfaction as she heard the whispered panic in her son’s voices. “Get your butts down here right now!”
All three of her children showed up a few minutes later, standing in a row at the end of the table. Mark and Jacob both looked solemnly at the floor while Josie, sporting a red bump on her head, fidgeted with her hands and feet as she stood, unable to stay still.
“What is it you boys are supposed to do with your sister?”
“Be nice to her?” Jacob was the first to speak as he tried to gain an advantage over his older brother.
“Correct. Now, I don’t know which one of you pushed, poked, tripped or hit your sister, nor do I really want to know. I want you both outside feeding the animals right now, then when you’re done, I’ll have a few more chores for you before you start on school for the day.”
Dianne waved off the pair of “aw, man’s” that came next and pointed out the door and at the field beyond. As the boys traipsed off, she watched them for a moment before glancing at Josie. “You’re not off the hook, missy. Come on, let’s get to your work.”
Dianne had been a vocal proponent of homeschooling ever since she was a child, and Rick had gone along with her desire while offering a few suggestions and conditions of his own. In addition to the education they received at home, each of the children spent a few hours every other day with after-school programs, learning to do everything from cooking and basic engine repair to computer maintenance and programming. While Rick wasn’t able to participate in their education as much as he wanted due to his job, ensuring that they had a well-rounded childhood and solid foundation were of paramount importance to both him and Dianne.
As the morning turned into the afternoon and all three children took a break for lunch, Dianne began packing their things into the family car to take them into town. One of the perks of being married to someone reasonably far up the food chain at a car manufacturer was getting a new car to test drive every few months. Dianne was particularly happy with the van that was parked in their driveway, especially since it had some of the latest self-driving and collision avoidance features baked in.
“Kids! Let’s go or we’re going to be late!” Dianne walked out to the car, listening to her children slowly follow after her as they talked to each other about a book they had been reading for the past few nights. When Dianne arrived at the van she opened the door, tossed their backpacks into the front passenger’s seat and leaned in to turn on the ignition before heading to the back seat to strap Josie in.
As Dianne buckled Josie’s booster seat straps, the soft tones of some local soft rock station abruptly cut off, followed by the sound of the van’s engine sputtering a few times before it too, died. A second later the van’s horn began to sound and the radio kicked back on at full volume as it cycled through the local radio stations at an increasing rate of speed.
“What the—Mark? Jacob? Did one of you boys mess with the van? Your dad is not going to be happy!” Dianne shouted over the sound of the car as she unbuckled Josie, trying to shield her daughter’s ears with her arms.
“It wasn’t me, mom!”
“Me either!”
Dianne pulled Josie out of the car and yelled. “You three back in the house!”
Dianne waited until the kids were back behind the car before climbing into the driver’s seat. She twisted the dial for the radio volume but nothing happened. She inserted the van’s key and turned it, but nothing happened there either. She got back out of the car and headed back toward the house, covering her ears with her hands. “What’s going on with that stupid thing?”
Once she was back inside, Dianne grabbed her cellphone off the counter and tapped in her unlock code. She scrolled through her contact list until she reached the name for the engineer who Rick had told her to call if anything ever broke down on one of the test cars. Wincing at the sound of the still-shrieking vehicle, Dianne shooed her children into the next room before closing the door and sitting down in a nearby chair.
After holding the phone to her ear for several seconds, Dianne pulled it away and glanced at the screen. The call status, instead of reading out as a count of how long the call had been ongoing, merely said “Dialing.”
“What?” Dianne hung up and dialed again. She watched the screen of the phone, but nothing changed, even after several more seconds. She sighed and hung up the phone, set it down on the kitchen table and then turned to her children.
“Stay in here. I’m going to go disconnect the battery, then we’ll take the old truck into town, okay?”
Jacob, Mark and Josie all nodded and Dianne headed back toward the front door of the house. As she swung the door open, a light breeze picked up, sending the smell of freshly cut grass dancing along. Accompanying it, however, was a foul stench that took Dianne a few seconds to recognize.
“Gasoline?” Dianne mumbled to herself as she turned to look at the car out in the driveway. As she looked at the vehicle, wondering why she was suddenly smelling gasoline, the radio shut off, the horn stopped blowing and the electrical system shorted out. Sparks flew from the bottom of the van, igniting the gasoline vapors with a faint whoosh that was quickly followed by an ear-shattering explosion. The van shuddered under the force of the explosion and burst into flames that quickly began to consume it both on the inside and out.
Dianne fell back against the front door of the house, partially from the force of the blast and partially from the shock of watching a vehicle that her children had been climbing in a few minutes earlier explode before her eyes.
“Mom?” Mark’s voice came from inside the house. The thirteen-year-old pulled open the front door and all three children gasped as they saw the wreckage of the van in the front driveway. Flames licked out from the vehicle and black smoke filled the air, rising high above the trees. A tire popped from the heat, sending pieces of rubber exploding outward, and Dianne turned and pushed Mark back through the door and into the house. She followed behind him and slammed the door shut before turning to look at the carnage out front.
“Mom, what’s going on?”
Dianne could only shake her head and whisper in response.
“I don’t know, Mark. I don’t know.”

Frank sipped on his coffee and sighed. Twelve straight hours on the road had taken their toll on his eyes and he had to rub them several times to keep from seeing double on the menu. The small greasy spoon at which he’d stopped at was quintessentially American. He sat at the long, wrap-around bar with a view into the kitchen and there were a few other people scattered around the bar as well. A handful of couples and a trio of road workers were spread across the booths where waitresses with beehive hairdos took orders with a drawl and the frequent use of the word “hon.” If not for the chilled weather outside and the falling leaves, he would have sworn he was somewhere in Alabama or Texas instead of Maine.
Twelve hours. Frank took another sip and shook his head. I’m not cut out for this. Having been behind the wheel of a tractor-trailer for less than a month, Frank wasn’t adjusting well.
He started his life in a much different place as an accountant for a large technology company where he had managed to stay on for his entire adult life. As the economy started to tank, though, he lost his job and there were few companies looking to hire someone in their late thirties when they could pick up a college graduate at a quarter the cost.
After moving back in with his parents for a few months, Frank managed to find the only job that was available—driving a rig cross-country. It wasn’t glamorous and the pay was terrible, but he had a clean record and had been able to get a commercial driver’s license fairly easily.
“Any dessert, hon?” Frank looked up at a face caked with far too much makeup that was smiling down at him.
“No thanks, just the check. And a coffee to go. A tall one, please.”
The waitress nodded sympathetically. “New to this, are you?”
Frank nodded. “That obvious is it?”
“Most of ‘em do speed to stay awake. Try to stay off that stuff as long as you can, okay hon?” She flipped through her order pad and tore out a page.
Frank looked at the check, glanced at his watch and sighed. He had spent less than twenty minutes at the diner, but he knew based on experience that the computer inside his truck was going haywire with alerts from his dispatcher.
Mandatory maximums for time spent behind the wheel as defined by federal and state law meant nothing to his company. They pushed their drivers for up to eighteen hours a day, six days a week since that was the optimal balance—according to their calculations—between speed and keeping the number of accidents to an “acceptable minimum.” As new as he was, Frank couldn’t risk any more long stops for a couple more days, and he was counting on the next fueling station to have some decent food to see him through.
So far the transition from an office job to unemployment to driving a truck all hours of the day and night was rough to say the least. Frank felt like he hadn’t gotten a handle on any aspects of the new job, and his body felt like it was being run through a meat grinder day in and day out.
Frank threw down a few crumpled bills and drained the last of his coffee. He met the waitress halfway to the door and took the Styrofoam cup from her and nodded in appreciation. “Thanks.”
“Stay safe out there, hon.”
As Frank pulled open the door, he glanced around the parking lot to locate his truck. As he walked towards it, a far-off sound caught his attention. It sounded—at first—like a gunshot or series of fireworks going off, though he soon discovered what it actually was.
Frank’s truck exploded in a fireball a hundred feet in front of him, the force of the explosion throwing him back against the wall of the diner. Frank’s truck wasn’t the only one to explode, though. Three other 18-wheelers in the lot exploded within seconds of his, sending pieces of metal, glass and the contents of their trailers flying through the air.
Frank sat still on the ground for several seconds, dazed and confused about what had just happened. Stunned by the blast, he fought to catch his breath and comprehend what had just happened. Just then he heard more explosions from the highway in front of the diner. A passing truck was incinerated instantly and the trailer behind it flipped up into the air before crashing back down.
Several cars and SUVs driving behind the truck and trailer smashed into it, while others further back careened off the road as they tried to avoid the crash. As much as Frank hoped that the explosions would stop, they didn’t even slow down. There were distant echoes from down the highway and on roads in the small town off to the west, though the sounds eventually faded some minutes later until they again sounded like gunshots and fireworks.
Frank struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the diner wall as he stood. His legs felt unsteady, his vision was blurry and his mind felt clouded and overwhelmed with sensory input. Inside the diner, people rushed in and out, screaming and crying and shouting. Several drivers and passengers had been in their cars when the large trucks exploded, and were instantly killed by the blasts. Others had been walking to or from the nearby gas station, the diner and their vehicles and had been injured.
Frank lurched forward instinctively, still dazed as he started towards his truck. After a few steps he felt a hand on his shoulder that turned him around. Frank blinked a few times and a concerned face came into focus. “Are you okay?” The man speaking to him had been sitting a few seats down from Frank at the bar munching on a chicken sandwich.
Frank looked down and held a hand against his head as he felt a sharp pain in response to the movement. “I… I think so.”
The man looked down at Frank’s head and shook his own. That’s a nasty wound you’ve got there. Come on, let’s get you inside and sat down.” The man put his arm around Frank’s shoulder and started guiding him back towards the diner.
Frank went along willingly, still trying to get a handle on what was going on. Just as they reached the diner steps the stranger ran off to try and help two other men pull open the door to a burning car. Smoke filled the air as Frank trudged up the steps and all he could hear was an endless array of screaming and shouting.
Inside, Frank slumped into one of the back booths, pulled out a wad of napkins from the dispenser on the table and pressed them against his head. As the destruction continued to rage outside, he looked up at the television above the bar as he tried to get his eyes to focus.
The overly chipper daytime talk show host that had been on the television earlier was now replaced by the pale face of a well-dressed reporter. The reporter sat behind a desk in a studio, shuffling through pieces of paper that the crew were running and handing to him as he tried to compose himself.
“We’ve—uh…I’m sorry. I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. One moment please.” The reporter leaned off-camera and held a hurried, whispered conversation. “My apologies. We’re doing our best to get all the facts here. This is an active story right now and what we tell you may radically change based on new information that comes in. However, as we understand it right now there’s been a nationwide terrorist attack the likes of which we’ve never seen. We’re reporting that there have been dozens and perhaps even hundreds of explosions at key rail and air facilities around the country. We’re also receiving reports of thousands of smaller incidents that seem to involve 18-wheelers and—“ The reporter stopped mid-sentence while someone wearing a headset came on-camera and whispered in the reporter’s ear.
“What the hell is going on?” Frank mumbled to himself. He pulled the wad of blood-soaked napkins off of his head and tossed them on the table before getting a fresh handful.
The reporter nodded a few times to the person talking to him before turning back to the camera. “Folks, we’re going to be cutting to a live announcement from the White House in just a few minutes. Before that, though, we wanted to update you on an AP update that just came out with some disturbing claims from the radical terrorist organization—”
The television flickered and powered off, along with the lights in the diner. Frank looked around, then glanced outside. Several people who had been in the lot and survived the explosions were sitting on the grass nearby, talking on their phones when they all took them from their ears and glanced at the screens. Remembering his own phone, Frank reached into his pocket, only to frown as he felt nothing. He dug in another pocket and frowned again, then started patting his jacket, shirt and pants to no avail.
“What the…” Not only could Frank not find his phone, but his wallet was gone as well. He turned around to see if they had fallen out into the booth or the floor below, but couldn’t find any sign of them. As Frank stood up, he turned to look out the window and saw the man who had helped him. The man had his arm around another person and was helping them walk back to the diner. From his vantage point, though, Frank could see what else the man was doing—reaching into the other person’s pocket.
Frank lurched forward and put one knee on the booth seat while the other banged into the table, causing him to fall forward. He barely caught himself on the window with his free hand, then regained his balance and started banging on it. “Hey! Asshole! Give me my stuff back!”
The man looked up at him, his eyes wide as he saw Frank shouting at him from inside the diner. Not waiting around to find out what Frank was saying, the man took off like a shot, disappearing a moment later beyond the gas station down the road.
Inside the diner, Frank stopped banging on the window and dropped back into his seat. He shook his head and instantly regretted the movement as a wave of pain shot through his head and neck. The waitress that had served him before came running up to him, concern written on her face. “You okay, hon?”
“I… I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that guy took my phone and wallet and I think he was stealing from that lady sitting out there.” Frank pulled the napkins off of his head and touched the wound gently.
The waitress gasped at the sight and ran back behind the counter to fetch a first aid kit. She sat down next to Frank and began bandaging his head, all while looking out the window and talking to him.
“I was in the walk-in taking stock until the power went off a minute ago. What happened out there? Did a gas truck explode?
Frank winced as she scrubbed his wound with antiseptic wipes. “I don’t know. I was walking out to my truck when it exploded. Several others did, too. Then I came back in here and the news was on, talking about some terrorist attack when the power cut out.”
The waitress’s face turned white. “Terrorists? Oh God, not nine-eleven again.”
Frank shrugged. “All I heard was that this is all over the country, apparently. I was—” Frank was cut off mid-sentence by a shout from the other side of the diner.
“Lucille! You got the first aid? Get over here, quick!”
The waitress glanced at Frank’s head and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “I was a nurse for a few years before the hospital closed down. You’ll be fine. Just try and stay off your feet as much as you can.” With that, the waitress was up and moving.
Frank turned away from the billowing smoke outside the diner as he realized how much noise was coming from inside. Several of the injured had been brought inside, and all of them were crying and moaning as a few others tried to tend to their wounds. Frank stood up, still unsteady, and walked down the length of the diner, unsure of where he was going. He headed outside and walked towards his truck, shielding his face from smoke and flames as he reached the parking lot.
The trailer on Frank’s truck was engulfed in flames, but the cab was still mostly intact, though it was masked by plumes of smoke. Frank broke into a run, hoping he could get up into the cab and grab some of his personal belongings before they were destroyed. When he reached the passenger door to the truck he hopped up, opened the door and ducked inside. Smoke had been leaking into the cab but it was otherwise untouched. He reached into the sleeper compartment and grabbed his backpack and threw it out onto the ground, then dug around on the floor for his spare pair of shoes and his computer.
He found his boots just as the flames found their way into the cab, fueled by the fresh supply of oxygen from when he had opened the door. Frank nearly fell backwards out onto the asphalt as he tried to get away, catching himself at the last second by the door and swinging outward. As the flames continued their slow, steady journey across the truck, Frank grabbed his backpack and shoes and broke into a run back towards the diner.
Just as Frank reached the steps to the diner, a fireball consumed the cab as the flames finally found their way into the fuel lines and tanks. Already damaged by the initial explosion in the trailer, the lines were easily compromised by the heat from the fire. Frank dropped his belongings on the ground and shielded his face with his hands, watching the fire through the cracks between his fingers. A single thought ran through Frank’s mind as the flames consumed his job, his home and his life.
“What now?”