Time Slip by ML Banner Read Free Book Online Page A

of paper taped to the door. The note was meticulously handwritten, its letters prominent and very legible:
     
    June 29 - The day the lights went out
     
    To my daughter Victoria,
     
    I am hopeful that you will see this if I don’t find you. I am headed to a place of safety. I left you a note with directions on how to get there. This note allows entry for you and whomever you decide to bring along. It may be the only safe place left on earth. So please put aside your anger at me and go. You’ll find the key in its usual place.
     
    I always cared, no matter what you may have believed.
     
    Love,
    Dad
     
    “June 29 th of what year?” he thought out loud. It had been August 9 th when he left his office to travel here. He stepped into the home and first tried to find the note to Victoria.
    The kitchen had seen the worst of the looting. Broken dishes, cups, glasses, and various pots and pans were strewn about. There was no note on the counter and he didn’t see it on the refrigerator or any sort of bulletin board. But something struck him as odd. It was the usual assortment of things you would expect in a kitchen, but something didn’t add up—it just didn’t feel right.
    He combed the floor in case the note had dropped, but he didn’t see anything. Stepping through the detritus, he saw another pile at the back of the kitchen. Boxes and cans of food: broth, tofu, gourmet noodles, pasta shells. “No real food,” he said to no one. Perhaps it was no mystery at all. If there was no power, there would be no deliveries to the grocery stores; he had earlier confirmed this thought when he passed a looted grocery store. People would be hungry and would look to other houses for food. Still no note.
    Again, that feeling hung on him like a weight. There was something wrong about this place. And then he knew: it was the dust, or rather lack of it. If he was years into the future, the house would be covered in a thick layer of dust, but there was only just a little. He knew by the billboard outside his laboratory, changed methodically every six to twelve months, that the start of this calamity had occurred shortly after he had stepped through the time slip—after that day in what was his past. Now, he knew that this apocalypse hadn’t happened years ago, but only weeks or a few months ago. That dread crept up further within him.
    He continued his search around the house, head down, searching for the note that would tell him where this “place of safety” was that Mendelson wrote about. Within a minute, he found Mendelson’s home office. It was similarly tossed about, with papers and drawers from a desk thrown on the floor. Stepping around the mess, he sat in the man’s office chair and pondered where he should look next.
    If you haven’t found it yet, it’s because you weren’t looking in the right place. Keep on looking until you find it.
    The computer was a dead soldier, as he guessed most computers in the world were now. A thought popped into his mind and he turned his gaze downward, pushing his chair away to see a printer cable running under the semi-transparent chair pad and leading to the credenza behind him, on which sat a small laser printer. There were no pages on top, but part of a page stuck out. The remainder jammed inside the machine. Dr. Ron stood up, opened the back housing, and firmly but carefully pulled out the jammed page. He turned it over and plopped back into the chair, like a deflated balloon.
    Although the ink was somewhat smudged, as it hadn’t yet been fused to the page, it was a mostly complete satellite picture with a map overlay, like one would find on a typical map program. In the middle was a complex of buildings surrounded by a wall. The marker pointing at the complex was labeled Cicada, and he could see “Boulder” prominently displayed above. On the bottom of the page was a GPS location: 38 32 48.55N 104 52 30.00W.

Chapter 20
    Aug 10 (04:35)
     
    Monty woke up stunned and groggy. It