Blood of the Masked God (Book 1): Red Wrath Read online

  The online comments became more pointed, with people wondering what was happening and could it happen with other heroes or even Chronos? Did it have something to do with the meteor strikes? Was it all connected? Were the heroes going mad?

  Some of the anti-Chronos and anti-supers people were awake now. I closed the window before the circle jerk could truly begin. I’d gotten my fill of it years before when sifting through support group forums of people who had experienced loss like mine. Legal and political action occupied one end of the spectrum, while the other end was filled with hate speech rebranded as anti-hero. It didn’t take long for me to realize there was nothing in any of those groups for me. I didn’t want my hand held or a shoulder to cry on. My problem would still be there after a group meet-up to hug it out, meditate, and listen to each other’s tales of woe.

  My online home was with the gun nuts. All I had to put up with there was conspiracy theories about the government and blather about the Second Amendment. I’d always thought the UN was a cool idea and I wasn’t about to become a well-regulated part of anything. Friendly folks, otherwise.

  Carter shuffled past me. He was all dressed and looked like he had showered. Had I been so preoccupied I hadn’t noticed him get up? He tidied up the kitchen and wiped down the counter before making coffee. While the machine burbled, he turned on the TV.

  There were slow news days and bad news days. This was a craptacular news day where you could pick your disaster. The news from the Pacific wasn’t good. The tsunamis were devastating coastlines as repeating cycles of waves kept pummeling the shores, with continued warnings for the entire region. In Indonesia a volcano named Kelud was erupting, spewing hot gas and debris. At least three other volcanoes were rumbling within three thousand miles of the impact site.

  The local news was smaller in scope but equally dreary. Several murder-suicides had occurred in the city, with many more throughout the nation. Then there was the attack on the Astoria Ferry.

  Carter had the hard look of someone who was disgusted by what he saw but didn’t want to turn away.

  “It’s too much,” I said. “Too awful. Want me to switch it off?”

  “No.”

  He kept watching even after the coffee was finished brewing. I lost myself in the Chronos data. Numbers meant coordinates, with the colors red, yellow, and green indicating how accurate the point on the map was. Each point, when hovered over, had a source. Following each line, I saw how Chronos came and went, with New York City as the crux of it all. If he lived here, it would mean we would need to tap into CCTV cameras or something, as he could vanish down a million alleys or in buildings or subway station entrances. The entire project felt like it was a waste of time, because if Carter hadn’t figured out any true patterns yet, then one didn’t exist.

  I sat back and stared, and then something looked wrong.

  “Is there a reason why you don’t ever spot Chronos here?”

  He didn’t hear me at first. I repeated myself and he muted the TV and came over.

  I pointed to the screen. “This spot of New Hampshire. Why doesn’t anyone track him here? On most of his inland routes he flies south of this point, but sometimes north of it. And a few times it looks like he might fly directly over. All of those lines have several corroborative sightings and are yellow, which is good, right?”

  “Yellow is okay. Green is where I have two sources at each location and yellow or better at the point on either side.”

  “Yeah. So it’s a giant connect-the-dots. I get it. But you have yellow dots all around here, but no red dots. So some reliable observations were made along these flight routes.”

  He looked closer. The white light of the monitor made his pale face look blue. “It’s a low-population area upstate. I wouldn’t expect many greens. But I’m missing the point.”

  “There are quite a few sightings in other places where nobody lives, aren’t there? Eventually you’d get a motorist or hiker or camper or cop car. And a few of the lines stop right near here. Which means this is an island where he’s never been seen. I think that’s really weird. Especially with so many yellow dots in line with this area. And then they all just stop. What highway is that?”

  “Highway 89. But it’s not the only spot with no sightings. There are quite a large number of gaps the more you zoom in. This is a work in progress.”

  “I know. But eventually you’ll have to draw some sort of conclusion from your data, even if it’s a best guess. Maybe we need to focus on the gaps. And this one looks like the one with the most reliable sightings where he should have flown straight over but he didn’t.”

  He sipped his coffee but didn’t appear particularly motivated. Perhaps he believed his own conclusions more than my amateur observations. I backed up from the computer and turned to watch the muted television.

  Chronos had descended next to a specialized armored car the police had brought down to the waterfront. A small squad of armored cops that looked like low-rent stormtroopers had loaded Slingshot up. They were climbing into several police SUVs and getting ready to depart as a convoy with their captive. The white-and-blue lights were all spinning. Several news crews had appeared. Flashbulbs were snapping at Chronos, but he looked as if he was unaware of their presence. Reporters began shouting questions.

  “Why did Slingshot attack the ferry?”

  “How do feel having had to fight your friend?”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do with the growing crisis in the Pacific? Will you be going there to help?”

  The questions began to overlap. Chronos didn’t pay attention to any of it, but just watched the departing armored car with little expression. One younger reporter kept bouncing up and down and shouting. When there was a break in the clamor, other reporters turned their mics on him so he could repeat himself.

  “Could this happen again?” the young reporter asked. “Could it happen to you?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Carter took a call from his sister and they talked for over an hour. She sounded needy. I couldn’t take any more news and was getting itchy just waiting around. My afternoon appointments had canceled, so I had an open Sunday. Chronos was no longer around, having flown off after the interview without answering any questions.

  Finally Carter’s phone call ended.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “She had a bad night.”

  “Lots of that going around. Looks like the FAA might ground all aircraft because there’s been over a hundred crashes since last night. Mostly in countries in Southeast Asia, but not all. One plane went down between Hawaii and California.”

  “Some sort of electromagnetic disruption from the second meteor?”

  “They don’t want to say. But online news is reporting widespread pilot error. Some are speculating psychotic episodes.”

  Carter switched the TV off.

  “If you have to check on your sister I understand,” I said. “Can you give me a lift first? I want to get my scooter.”

  “What are your plans for today?”

  It was a question no one had asked me in a long time. I couldn’t help but grin. “We’re starting to sound like a domesticated couple, aren’t we?”

  He blushed. It was priceless. “Look, I don’t know how to do what we’re doing. I don’t want to be clingy or get in your way.”

  “Carter, it’s fine. I’m teasing. It’s not like we have a playbook on starting a relationship based on mutual revenge.”

  I gave him a peck on the cheek. He blushed deeper but didn’t back away. As far as looks went, he was okay. Cute in a doughy, professorial kind of way. But I felt comfortable around him. Maybe affection would follow.

  “I’m going up to that blank spot on your map,” I said.

  “You’re driving all the way to New Hampshire? That’s a really long way on your scooter.”

  “It’ll give me something to do. It might be nothing, but I put the GPS coordinates in my phone and I want to check it out.”


  “There won’t be anything there to see. The data is incomplete, that’s all. This will be a giant waste of time.”

  “Then it will get me out of town. Chronos already made his appearance for the day. I don’t have any clients. So this is my best idea for figuring out where he goes. Plus, it’ll give me time to think.”

  Carter was distracted by a text. He began a long reply, his thumbs moving quickly across the phone screen. Sister again, I guessed. I could jog to my place in half an hour and the exercise would do me good. When I headed towards the door, he raised a finger for me to wait. Finally he hit send and pocketed the phone.

  “I’ll take you,” he said.

  “Thanks. Once I get my own wheels again I won’t have to rely on you for everything. I’ll probably be back late.”

  “No, I mean I’ll take you to New Hampshire. It’ll be quicker with my car, and I have my program data loaded on my tablet.”

  It was light traffic even for a weekend. People were afraid to go outside, or struggling to process whatever shared psychic phenomenon had struck the city or maybe the entire world. The experts yammering on the car radio concluded it was a fear response. The thought of random doom from above having struck the earth twice in forty-eight hours was too much for many people. It gnawed at people’s fears, both the childhood one of an apocalypse from God and the one rooted in cold science, an asteroid eventually hitting a bullseye in the cosmic shooting gallery.

  So many people staying in made driving easier.

  The current NPR segment was a special episode of Science Friday. The host was interviewing a panel of three astronomers and trying to find an answer as to why such large rocks hadn’t been seen before plummeting into Earth’s atmosphere. Not enough eyes on the sky was the consensus between two of them, while the third suggested the rocks may have come from someplace besides a natural elliptical. Rogue objects from other galaxies, impossible to predict, well off the plane of the Milky Way, coming in on a Z-axis trajectory.

  But then the host asked the pertinent question. “Why didn’t radar detect either of the meteorites that struck Earth?”

  By the time the objects were detected, it was too late. That was the first answer. Then more guesses followed, like both bolides had separated from some larger object. A delicate conversation ensued, all participants dancing around the obvious fact that if there could be two such rogues, there could be three or a hundred. Both meteorites were estimated to be not much larger than a hundred feet in length and were likely composed of iron. Anything much bigger would have caused even greater damage to the planet. Large enough, and the event would end all life on Earth.

  When the scientist making the last comment was asked why she used the term “event,” she answered that with two impacts and a possibility of more, the short interval suggested an ongoing singular episode, like a meteor shower.

  “Well you can just rock me to sleep tonight,” I said. “Can we change it?”

  Carter hit a button on the steering wheel and found an adult alternative station we both could ignore.

  I found myself on edge and watching the road behind us as if Princess Pike was going to appear again.

  “I don’t see anyone following,” Carter said.

  “You know what’s weird?” I asked. “I don’t see any cops on the road. You’d think with everything that’s happening they’d be on high alert.”

  “Everyone’s affected. Fortunately there’s been no widespread panic. Everyone is hunkered down waiting.”

  “Yeah. Waiting for the third shoe to drop. And here we are, chasing Chronos.”

  I had left the rifle behind. Carter and I had gone back and forth on whether to take it. His opinion was that if we got pulled over it would be better if the weapon was not in the car. When he pointed out that this was just research, I relented. But I had my .357 in my day bag. I’d brought my speed loaders too. For some reason, though, between the avalanche of bad news and the eerily vacant highway, the weapon did little to make me feel secure.

  We were just past Hartford when we saw our first cop. Three police vehicles were on a southbound off-ramp with their lights on. Four people were cuffed and sitting on the shoulder. A five-car wreck was blocking the ramp. Neither Carter nor I switched the radio station to try to find out what had happened.

  Stressed-out people were finally out on the roads, and trouble was no doubt brewing.

  But nothing appeared amiss when we stopped for gas and a snack in Springfield. The girl behind the counter at the gas station deli was cheery, and my hot roast beef and cheddar was decent. Carter was less than pleased with his turkey, judging by his face as he dissected his sandwich and removed the red onions.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Those won’t kill you.”

  “It’s the close company in a sealed car for the next couple of hours I’m worried about.”

  “Such a gentleman.”

  By early afternoon we were passing through Concord, New Hampshire, and heading up Highway 89 towards Lebanon.

  Things felt normal out in the sticks.

  New Hampshire was a different planet from what I was used to, with its trees and long stretches of road with so few cars. The small towns we drove past weren’t burning, there were no mobs or raiders ambushing motorists, and we passed two State Police cruisers who looked like they had nothing more urgent on their plate than traffic enforcement.

  Another hour and we were away from anything resembling a town. My map app told me it was time to take a service road heading east. Carter took the next exit, which boasted No Services and only had a number and letter to designate it. A few scattered homes dotted the streets. My zoomed-in map was showing very little as we drove for a while, with no notable features in a twenty-mile radius. The center of Carter’s no-data anomaly lay down a road marked simply with an arrow and an old brown metal sign with white letters that read Dogwood. Beyond it a second sign said No Through Traffic. There was no shoulder and no striping down the center of the busted asphalt.

  Carter brought the car to a stop.

  “If there’s an old man on the side of the road who tells us to turn around or we’re doomed, please run him over,” I said.

  “We could spend days driving these back country roads.”

  “We just got here. I knew it would be a long drive.”

  “I’m not complaining. I’m just saying we should set a time limit because we have a ways to go to get back home.”

  I pointed him down the road towards Dogwood and he drove.

  The lane went from semi-paved to pocked to gravel with potholes deep enough to lose a small child. Carter babied the car along. We saw a few houses along the road but no businesses. White fences were everywhere, along with signs reminding us everything was private property. Every branching driveway or street had No Trespassing posted, along with a few reminders that read No Turnaround Beyond This Point.

  “We’re doomed,” Carter said as he pulled to a stop.

  A cluster of small colonial homes lay dead ahead. Only a couple of them looked to be in good condition while most had a worn, tired appearance as if no real maintenance had been done on them in years. What could have been moss, lichen, or mold grew on a number of outer walls. One yard featured an old rusted vehicle with a giant hood and massive bumper, a car no doubt built before any of my grandparents were even born. Parked next to it and overgrown with weeds was an old open carriage.

  “Quaint,” I said.

  As Carter rolled slowly down the main road, I kept an eye out for signs of life. Electrical wires ran into the homes from utility poles, and I saw mailboxes and a few septic and propane tanks. A three-level house larger than the rest stood in the middle of town. It was boarded up. At one time it had been painted red and the shutters, eaves, and window trimming might have been white.

  Just ahead, a woman was in the front yard of a smaller single-level home, tending vegetables. A somewhat sickly-looking apple tree dominated the side of her home. The woman wore a broad st
raw hat and a blue denim long-sleeve shirt. She straightened and wiped her brow as we approached. When she waved, Carter rolled down his window and pulled over next to her garden.

  “Help you folks find something?” she asked.

  “We were just seeing if there might be a coffee shop or a place to get a bite to eat around here,” Carter said.

  Her wrinkled, sun-beaten face offered a conciliatory smile. “Afraid not. Dogwood’s something of a cul-de-sac with not much here but a few homes. No businesses to speak of. Do you folks need a bathroom?”

  Carter shook his head.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Figured you might be out antiquing or some such,” the woman said. “Folks come down this way looking every weekend, it seems. We really should post a sign that says we don’t have any stores whatsoever.”

  “We’re not shopping but scouting out some property,” Carter said. He sounded too forthcoming to me, but I’m no actor.

  “None for sale here that I know of,” the woman said.

  “Actually, there’s one our realtor wanted us to look at. It’s an open parcel in Spring Rush. Looks like one of the county roads connects through here.”

  “Grafton County maps are a bit misleading and old, like everything else around here. You’re more than welcome to try, but you’ll find the roads will quit on you. Best bet is to get back on 89 and go down another exit.”

  “I guess we’ll be needing to call the realtor,” I said.

  “Yeah, you can do that. You should get a signal here. Most folks do. This isn’t the Dark Ages, neh? It’s just New Hampshire.”

  She gave a small wave as we drove on. But the road became more and more rutted. Soon it became clear that to continue we would need a four-wheel drive. We had quickly driven past all the homes of Dogwood and it felt like we were completely in the wilderness, except for one sagging brown fence with a few curled strands of broken barbed wire.

  Carter checked his phone and then his tablet. “This is our destination. The only reason there’s no Chronos sightings near here is there’s no one to see him go by.”