CHAPTER ONE
Julian Warren stared at the thick snowflakes falling outside his bathroom window with an expression usually reserved for something rotting on the street, his hands frozen in the act of knotting his tie. Judging from the blanket of white covering his back yard, it had likely been snowing heavily for at least the past couple of hours if he could no longer see any grass poking through the snow.
This latest snowstorm had been forecasted to hit late that night. Apparently, Mother Nature had decided sometime last night that the area’s children needed another three-day weekend, same as last week. With a sigh, Julian pulled the tie from his neck and threw it onto the bed. He then reached for the TV remote on the nightstand and switched on the TV. It was still relatively early, only 7:00 a.m. No one from his school had called him yet about having another snow day, but sometimes that decision wasn’t made until the last possible minute.
Sure enough, a few closures of local businesses were currently scrolling across the bottom of the news program while the weatherman warned of at least another two to five inches more snow accumulation over the next few hours. Apparently, a handful of accidents had already happened downtown within the last hour.
Maybe he should call the school’s admin office and see if Kathy, his school’s principal, had already gone into work instead of waiting for them to call him. At the very least, he should go ahead and call his brother, Nolan, to let him know that he wouldn’t be driving down to Dallas today for that drink after all.
The weatherman’s voice suddenly cracked mid-word as though the guy had unexpectedly been grabbed by the throat. Julian’s gaze darted from his phone’s screen back to the TV in surprise. No, the man definitely wasn’t being choked, but from the frozen, deer-in-headlights look on his face, Julian seriously wondered if someone had suddenly pointed a gun at him off-camera.
There was another few seconds of silence before the picture changed from the startled weatherman to the morning news anchors who looked as visibly shaken as their colleague. The male anchor had his hand over one ear, probably listening to someone speaking to him in his earpiece.
What in the world was going on?
“We apologize for the interruption,” the female anchor said in a distracted voice as her gaze flickered between the camera and her co-anchor anxiously. “Mike is currently speaking with our producer about—”
A “Breaking News” title card with the “AMBN” national news logo abruptly appeared along with the horrendous wailing of the emergency sirens used for alerting viewers about bad weather or other impending disasters. The sirens wailed for another thirty seconds or so before the current star anchor of AMBN News appeared looking as grave as the other anchors had looked shell-shocked.
“We apologize for interrupting your regularly scheduled program for this breaking news report from our brother station in London,” the AMBN news anchor said sharply. “At approximately 8:00 a.m. Eastern, 1:00 p.m. London time, several eyewitnesses from Newquay, a town on the northern coast of Cornwall in southwestern England, reported the abrupt appearance of a sizeable island about ten miles off their coast. An area already known for strong surf, the island’s sudden appearance was accompanied by a minor earthquake followed by a substantial increase in the size and volatility of the waves, though no tsunami warning has been issued.”
Julian stared a bit dumbfounded at the TV screen. An island appeared? Just how big was “sizeable”? And why in the world would they sound the emergency alarms here in the States? A horrible thought abruptly rose, unbidden. An island appearing in the ocean without warning was certainly something to get excited about, but was everybody freaking out about it because it was a precursor to something potentially catastrophic on a global scale? Something like the imminent eruption of a super volcano no one knew existed until today?
Come to think of it, he did remember a few reports within the past couple of months of seismologists worried about the increase of earthquakes worldwide. There had even been a four-pointer reported a couple of miles south of the Red River along the Texas-Oklahoma border just three weeks ago. Since the only “damage” reported had been a few windows rattling in the small town closest to the quake’s epicenter, most people had just shrugged and had chalked it up to the increase of fracking in the area.
The news program cut to a live video feed with a reporter down on a beach in Newquay. Hundreds of people were lined up across the small stretch of beach a good hundred yards or so away from the crashing waves, most of them with smartphones raised taking video or pictures of the large landmass poking out of the waves in the distance. A few were staring in the direction of the island with binoculars.
Wait—Julian narrowed his eyes and stared hard at the mysterious island as the cameraman zoomed in and then his mind froze in utter disbelief. Was that—no, it couldn’t be—
“…outlines of what appear to be buildings even from this distance…,” the reporter was saying as though plucking the words from his mind.
He had to agree with the man no matter how impossible such a thing seemed. All the edges he could see on the island were just too clean and straight to be naturally occurring.
Julian jumped and nearly dropped the phone as his brother’s ringtone sounded out. He didn’t even have time to say hello before Nolan demanded, “Are you watching the news?”
“Are you sure we’re even awake?” Julian countered with an uncomfortable laugh as he sat down on the edge of his bed.
“People are already shrieking about ‘Atlantis rising from the deep,’ ‘it’s the Illuminati,’ ‘Armageddon is starting,’ and every other crackpot theory imaginable. Hell, I’ve even had at least a dozen clients call me frantic about the end of the world! Seriously, who calls their lawyer when they think the world’s ending?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a super volcano, myself, before the live video of the island started coming in,” Julian admitted. “With the increase of the number of earthquakes happening lately…”
“Hmm…the earth shifting—and I suppose those buildings could be from an old sunken Roman city not in the history books or something—but could the ocean floor rise so much overnight?” Nolan asked.
Julian continued to stare at the impossible island on his TV screen as he considered his brother’s question. “Well, a few years back, there was a big stink about an underwater volcano in the Red Sea that suddenly started erupting and formed an island practically overnight. They kept showing the before and after satellite pictures on a loop.”
“But this isn’t really the same thing, is it?” Nolan said pointedly. “I don’t see any smoke at all in the video. Other than the reported increased surf, the island is simply—there.”
“Those planes that just flew over appear to be from the British Royal Air Force,” the reporter said, drawing Julian’s attention back to the news report. He could barely make the aircrafts out as they moved through the thick cloud cover.
“Wow, that didn’t take long. The British government must be spooked to bring in the big guns so quickly,” Julian said.
“Or they know a lot more about that island than what the news crews have shown us so far,” Nolan countered worriedly.
“I suppose you mean—” Julian gasped mid-word as one of the lower-flying fighter jets abruptly exploded.
What the…!
“Did someone just shoot that jet down?” Nolan practically shouted, causing Julian to nearly drop the phone when he flinched.
The reporter certainly thought so. He was currently rambling excitedly about possible missiles as he both reported on the chaos of hundreds of people on the beach suddenly screaming and running away from the shoreline and the fiery wreckage of the jet that had fallen into the ocean.
“I was looking right at it when it exploded. I didn’t see anything streaking towards it.”
“Neither did I…look! The other two planes are starting to circle back around.”
Julian’s eyes were riveted on the crazy scene unfolding on his TV screen. This wasn’t something he thought he would ever witness outside of a movie.
“Do you think they’re about to bomb the island?”
“Who knows?” Nolan replied. “Just because we didn’t see anything hit that jet through a shaky news live broadcast doesn’t mean the other two fighters didn’t either see or detect something on their radar.”
“True.”
To his layperson’s eye, the way the remaining two fighter jets were circling the island didn’t give the appearance of an attack formation, though one of them did veer away from the island sharply without warning.
Silence fell between them as Julian watched the jets continue to fly circles around and occasionally over the island while the reporter breathlessly continued his speculative commentary about the military’s next step as well as the origin of the mysterious island itself.
“And here come the reinforcements,” Nolan said just as Julian noticed about a dozen more fighter jets fly into frame.
Almost in the same moment, the reporter began shouting, “Did you see that! High above the right side of the island! Zoom in! Zoom in! I can’t believe what I’m seeing, but that’s a—”
The screen abruptly went dark, and Julian could have screamed.
“Fuck!” Nolan hissed in outrage. “Tell me your screen didn’t just go black, too...!”
“Sorry, but it did. Of all the lousy times for the station to lose the feed.”
“Wait a sec…I’ve been scrolling through a bunch of social media sites on my tablet while we’ve been watching. Let me see if it was just our area that went black.”
Why didn’t he think of that? Julian scooted along the edge of his bed until he could reach the tablet charging on his nightstand. A bright flicker in the corner of his eye had him instantly turning back to the TV.
“It’s back!” he exclaimed then huffed in annoyance. “No, it’s just our regular news anchor giving us some BS about the British station having technical difficulties.”
“The internet agrees with your ‘BS’ assessment,” Nolan quipped with a chuckle. “That broadcast was streaming to pretty much the entire planet, and so far, everyone’s reporting the blackout. For the feed to go dark at such an interesting time either has to be the most unfortunate coincidence in history or it was intentionally shut down.”
“Forget sailing, I think the coincidence ship never reached port in the first place,” Julian said dryly. “What do you suppose that reporter saw?”
“People maybe?”
“You’re not starting to believe that Atlantis theory, are you?” Julian asked incredulously.
Nolan snorted. “Not really, but a weird island just appeared seemingly from thin air off the coast of England. Can we honestly rule it out at this point?”
Julian frowned and tuned back in to the TV. The anchor was assuring their viewership that they were doing everything in their power to reconnect with the British station’s broadcast. Apparently, they were unable to reach anyone by phone and were now trying to reach someone through their social media.
Speaking of social media…
“Hundreds of people were on that beach. You can’t tell me that someone didn’t at least get some shaky cell phone video after everyone started panicking.”
“You’d think,” Nolan agreed, “but other than about a million clips of the fighter jet exploding and falling into the ocean, there doesn’t seem to be very much beyond that. At least not any that anyone is freaking out over. I’ll keep looking.”
Julian picked up his tablet. “I’ll help. The school hasn’t called yet about taking a snow day, but I don’t think very many people anywhere will be going to work today regardless of the weather.”
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