Overshadowed (Free Short Story) (The Remnant) Read online

  MORE VANNETTA CHAPMAN

  THE REMNANT SERIES

  Overshadowed (e-only novella)

  Deep Shadows

  Buy Now

  Raging Storm

  Buy Now

  HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

  EUGENE, OREGON

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Cover by John Hamilton Design

  Cover photos © beltz6 / flickr / Visual Hunt; AlphaTangoBravo / Adam Baker / flickr / Visual Hunt

  Published in association with the Steve Laube Agency, LLC, 5025 N. Central Ave., #635, Phoenix, Arizona, 85012.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  OVERSHADOWED

  Copyright © 2016 by Vannetta Chapman

  Published by Harvest House Publishers

  Eugene, Oregon 97402

  www.harvesthousepublishers.com

  ISBN 978-0-7369-6953-6 (eBook)

  All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.

  CONTENTS

  More Vannetta Chapman

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Author’s Note

  The Remnant Series

  Excerpt from Deep Shadows

  Preview for Raging Storm

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  DEDICATION

  For Bobby

  You rescued me—again.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is dedicated to my husband. He rescued me when we first met—literally—and he has continued to do so for the past nineteen years. Many times, when I’m floundering through a manuscript, he’s provided valuable input and direction. His engineering brain balances well with my artistic one. So thank you, dear.

  I’d like to thank the staff of Harvest House as well as my agent, Steve Laube. My pre-readers, Kristy Kreymer and Janet Murphy, provided important insight and proofreading skills.

  Friends and family endured endless conversations that explored relevant what-if scenarios. Thank you for your patience.

  I also would like to express my appreciation to my readers for following me faithfully down whatever path has caught my attention.

  And finally, I am “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20).

  Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.

  Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.

  AMOS 5:15

  It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

  ALBERT EINSTEIN

  ONE

  San Antonio, Texas

  June 10

  Operation Nightshade will commence in one hour.

  Gabe Thompson stared in horror at the text on his phone.

  He’d prepped for this mission for more than two years, but he had hoped it would never happen. There were signs though—the reports from NASA, blogs of amateur astronomers, talk among the group. He stood frozen for less than a minute, probably closer to thirty seconds, but long enough for his barber to notice.

  “Problem?”

  “Yes, actually. I’m going to have to leave.”

  “Now?”

  Instead of answering, Gabe turned and walked out of the room. His training kicked in, as his superiors had known it would. That was the reason they trained over and over again. The campaign’s specifics, necessary preparation, and enormous stakes had been drilled into them until they could have followed orders in their sleep.

  Though his pulse was racing, Gabe knew that no one would be able to tell from looking at him that the world had just changed. This wasn’t another hypothetical event. This was the real thing. He paused long enough to pull out his phone and push the clock icon and then the timer. Three minutes—he’d already wasted 5 percent of his time. He set the timer to fifty-seven minutes and tapped start.

  Striding out of the barber shop, he avoided making eye contact with anyone. He didn’t have time, and even if he did see someone he knew, he couldn’t have explained anyway. Within minutes he was in his car, on the way to his apartment.

  One hour. He glanced at his watch—fifty-two minutes.

  Fortunately, he lived close to where he worked. His superiors had insisted that he do so, and now Gabe was glad they had. He walked to his bathroom, quickly rinsed out the tub, and filled it with water. He did the same to both sinks. Finally, he grabbed his go bag from the front closet and set it by the door, scooped up his cat, and walked across the hall.

  Lenora Diaz answered his knock, her hair a mess and her face clean of makeup, wearing snoopy pajamas.

  “Gabe. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “It’s not a problem. Come inside.”

  Lenora worked the night shift. Since it was just shy of eight in the morning, he knew he had woken her. She was thirty-five years old, with a pleasant though practical attitude and the lean body of a runner. Gabe had been tempted to ask her out on a date, but something had stopped him, and now he knew what it was. How could he grow close to someone when there was a possibility he would have to leave? When he knew that the odds of them surviving were in the 15 percent range?

  “Do you need me to keep Oliver?”

  The tabby cat squirmed, and Gabe released it. Oliver immediately crossed the room, hopped up onto the window seat, and began to methodically clean his face.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Of course.”

  “You have a key to my place.”

  “I do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a problem.” Lenora reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Gabe, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  Had he allowed the emotions spinning in his heart and mind to show?

  No, he didn’t think so. Lenora was perceptive. She always had been, which was how they’d become friends in the first place. Friends—but no more.

  “Yes and no. I’m being called out.”

  “All right…” She crossed her arms, waiting for more information, which of course he couldn’t provide.

  “All the supplies—”

  “Are in your apartment. Yeah, I know where you store stuff.”

  He had opened the door when some spark of humanity forced him to turn back to her. “Anything you need from my apartment, anything at all, you take it. I want you to have it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Gabe glanced at his watch. Thirty-eight minutes, and he still had a twenty-minute drive if everything went well.

 
“I have to go.”

  And then before he could second-guess himself, before he could warn her that everything was changing, he left the apartment, hurried down the stairs, and jumped into his car. Leaving her, refusing to tell her—it had been the right thing to do. It was what he had sworn to do. All the data models said that limiting knowledge of the event was critical. One person tells another person who posts it to social media, and before an hour had passed panic would kill more people than the flare.

  He’d done the right thing by remaining silent.

  There had been an increase in solar activity in the past few weeks. Enough that he’d followed his instincts and activated his own emergency plan. In that moment, he thanked God that he had. Otherwise Lenora wouldn’t have had a chance. He hoped the supplies in his apartment would help her survive the first week.

  TWO

  Lackland Air Force Base was located just inside Loop 410 on the west side of San Antonio. In 2005, congress had ordered the consolidation of three facilities—Fort Sam Houston, Randolph Air Force Base, and Lackland. They were formally merged on October 1, 2010, the same year Gabe had arrived from his training in Bethesda. He’d done two deployments to the Middle East since that time. Joint Base San Antonio was large, though not as big as Fort Hood to the northeast. JBSA supported a population of 80,000, managed an annual budget of $800 million, and made great efforts to interface with the city of San Antonio—the fastest-growing of the ten largest cities in the United States.

  He stopped at the gate, showed his government-issued identification, and waited while security personnel ran mirrors under the vehicle and checked the trunk. Finally, he was waved past the gates and navigated his way through the complex. Gabe watched the flurry of activity and understood this was not a drill. The cataclysmic event they were facing was real, and most of those in the sprawling metropolitan area of San Antonio would not survive the first week. People in urban areas would struggle more than those in rural areas—or so they’d been briefed. He didn’t have trouble believing the data, but believing it and trying to envision it were two very different things.

  The state of alert had been raised to DEFCON 3, which indicated an increase in force readiness. Gabe knew from previous briefings that their actual level was DEFCON 1. That would not be declared immediately because the press would catch wind of it, and panic would follow. Even within the military ranks, personnel would be tempted to notify family, friends, and neighbors. An image of Lenora popped into his mind as he exited his vehicle, but he pushed it away. He crossed the parking area, marveling at the intensity of the heat before nine in the morning. Such was southern Texas.

  The room he entered was large enough to hold all two hundred fifty-four of those deploying, in addition to officers and analysts. He’d guess their total at close to three hundred.

  He dropped into the closest seat and checked his watch. Two minutes. He tapped the icon to cancel the alarm.

  Chief Master Sergeant Broker stood at the front of the room. He didn’t need to ask for quiet. Broker was fifty-two years old, had been in the military since the innocent age of eighteen, and was as physically fit as anyone in the room. Only his bald head belied his age.

  “We were notified by NASA earlier this morning that a coronal mass ejection of unprecedented strength will strike the planet between the hours of twenty and twenty-one hundred. The geomagnetic storm is expected to be felt worldwide, and its effects are predicted to be cataclysmic.”

  Broker nodded to Command Chief Master Sergeant Kennedy, who stepped to the podium. JoAnn Kennedy was forty years old and a rising star by all accounts. She had olive skin and a soft voice, both indicative of her Middle Eastern ethnicity. Her dark hair was cut in a straight, short bob, which did nothing to diminish her beauty. Even from where he sat, Gabe could sense the seriousness of her expression behind her black-frame glasses.

  “As per prior briefings, the expectation is that an event of this magnitude will result in cascading failures, followed by a complete loss of the electrical grid. Without the ability to manufacture more transformers, we expect the blackout to last approximately forty years, though there is a possibility that some areas with manufacturing capability will be less affected than others.” She pulled off her glasses, studied her paper, and then glanced out across the room. “It’s a roll of the dice as to what areas will receive the brunt of the storm, but we do know that all orbiting satellites will be hit. We’re shutting down as many of those as possible, but it’s not like turning off a single switch. Even if they survive the storm, we won’t have the ability to turn them back on. Expect all municipal services to cease within the first twenty-four hours. It is important that you be in place before that happens.”

  The people around Gabe shifted in their seats. Some cleared their throats, and others pressed fingers to their lips. No one spoke. No one looked away from Kennedy.

  “As you know, this task force was commissioned by Governor Reed and approved by military leaders at a higher pay grade than you or me.”

  Her remarks eased the tension in the room. They all knew that in the next twelve hours, pay grades would cease to exist.

  “You will be the eyes and ears of the government. Without information, we cannot know how to respond to the needs and emergencies that will arise. Without information, the government will pull apart at the seams. Not all states see it this way. Not all states have a task force such as this. But Reed felt strongly that should such a catastrophic event occur, this would be the only way for society as we know it to survive. You are to proceed directly to your predetermined destination, do the job you’ve been assigned, and report to Austin within the next four weeks.”

  A young woman in the front row raised her hand. When Kennedy nodded, she said, “We were previously told to return here.”

  “That’s been changed. Even as we speak, the governor is preparing to fence the perimeter of the capitol buildings. A contingency of forces will protect those blocks for as long as necessary. You will report to Austin.”

  “How do we get through the fence?” This from a black man standing against the back wall.

  “Your code word will be Sierra, Whiskey, Oscar, Romeo, Mike. Authentication zero, six, one, zero.”

  Gabe had no idea what SWORM meant, but the authentication was the date—both easy enough to remember. No one reached for a pen. They wouldn’t be writing it down. There was too great a risk that the code would fall into the wrong hands. One of the analysts had made a strong argument that should such an event as this happen, foreign sleeper cells would take advantage and attack while the government was at its weakest.

  SWORM. 0610.

  He might as well have tattooed it on his brain. Those words could mean the difference between life and death, and not just for him.

  “Are there any other questions?”

  A woman next to Gabe raised her hand. “Are there any similar federal preparations?”

  “That I don’t know. I can tell you that the president and cabinet members have already been moved to an underground location.”

  Kennedy waited for more questions. When there were none, she stepped back, and Broker once again approached the podium.

  “Your new identification packets are at the back of the room.” He paused and allowed his gaze to travel slowly across each man and woman. “What we are facing today is unprecedented; however, conflict is not. Conflict is what this nation was built upon, and it was men and women like yourselves who fought and bled and even died to see that we survived. Some of you will fight, some will bleed, some will die. However, what you’re fighting for—our very way of life as well as the citizens we are sworn to protect—are worth such a sacrifice. Godspeed.”

  There was little discussion as they queued up in lines according to their last name. Gabe reached the front of the line rather quickly. He was surprised when the woman in charge there held out a zippered plastic bag with his name on the outside. “Please deposit any type of identification, including driver’s li
cense, medical card, credit cards, and so on. We also need your cell phone.”

  He opened his wallet, pulled out what she’d requested, and dropped the items into the bag.

  “Here is your new identification as well as a burner phone.”

  Gabe stared at his face on the Texas driver’s license. The height, weight, date of birth, and color of his eyes were all correct. As for his name? It was something he’d need time to get used to. Only he didn’t have time.

  He stepped to the side and gradually became aware of the conversations that were taking place around him.

  “Chief Master Sergeant, Mark Zuckerberg is on the line again. He’s quoting the freedom of information act—”

  “Doesn’t apply in this situation, as I’m sure he knows.”

  “He’s threatening to put out an emergency warning message across all his social media sites.”

  The fact that such things were being said openly might have surprised Gabe. But they were all cleared for the information, and anyway, who would they tell? In twelve hours, the only communication they would have would be face-to-face. And Gabe didn’t expect there would be anyone in the small rural town where he was going that he would have the urge or ability to share such things with.

  Broker’s face flushed red, and he muttered, “I’ll take it in my office.”

  Suzanne Green walked up to him as Broker stormed out of the room. “Word is that Zuckerberg has informants on every military base in America. When we all went to DEFCON 3 at the same time, he knew something was up.”

  “Broker can handle Zuckerberg, but is he the only one?”

  “No. Google’s people saw that we were moving an unusual amount of personnel and equipment. They’ve been breathing down Broker’s neck too.”

  “It’s only been an hour.”

  “Technology reigns, at least until tomorrow.”

  “And the newspapers?”

  “Nothing yet, but social media has shown a big jump in activity. They haven’t guessed what’s happening, but I suspect they will. All it takes is one amateur astronomer with a telescope.”