The Universe Next Door: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller (Jake Corby Series Book 3) Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  BOOK OFFER PAGE

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  BOOK III

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  REQUEST FOR REVIEWS

  BOOK OFFER PAGE II

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The Universe Next Door

  A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller

  By Al Macy

  AlMacyAuthor.com

  Copyright © 2016 Al Macy

  All Rights Reserved.

  Version: RC05 2016/07/26 8:58

  Also by Al Macy:

  Becoming a Great Sight-Reader—or Not! Learn from my Quest for Piano Sight-Reading Nirvana

  Drive, Ride, Repeat: The Mostly-True Account of a Cross-Country Car and Bicycle Adventure

  Contact Us: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller (Jake Corby Series, Book 1)

  The Antiterrorist: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller (Jake Corby Series, Book 2)

  Yesterday’s Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller

  Coming Soon: Going Mental: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller

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  PROLOGUE

  She told me to describe what had happened. “Leave nothing out,” she said.

  My life depended on obeying her, so I sat in the strange chair and looked directly into the camera.

  I cleared my throat. “That morning, with my sleeping wife snuggled against me, I had no idea that in a few short hours, I’d be the only man on Earth.”

  BOOK I

  CHAPTER ONE

  The strange behavior of our German shepherd, Boonie, should have alerted me that something weird was coming. Around seven a.m., he began whining and howling outside our bedroom door.

  My bride of six months, Charli, lay snuggled beside me. She groaned but didn’t open her eyes. “Jake, what’s going on? Why is Boonie barking?”

  I frowned. “I don’t know. He never does that. I’ll go—”

  The doorknob turned, and Sophia, our seven-year-old daughter, poked her head into the room. Barely four feet tall, her hair tumbled down around her sleepy face.

  Pushing past her, Boonie battered the door all the way open and streaked into the room. He jumped onto the bed and lay with his head against me. No licking, no tail-wagging, no barking.

  “Boonie, down.” I pointed to the floor, but he wouldn’t budge. A huge dog, he knew he wasn’t allowed on the furniture. He’d never broken that rule. More strange behavior.

  Sophia came over and climbed onto the bed, rubbing her eyes. She wore a pink blanket sleeper and held The Wonderful World of Dinosaurs, her favorite book.

  She squeezed under the comforter and nestled between Charli and me. “Boonie’s weird today.”

  I gave her a mock-stern look. “Have you been reading scary stories to him?”

  She giggled.

  Charli rolled over. “Hey, guys, it’s the middle of the night.”

  “It’s not the middle of the night, Mommy. Open your eyes. It’s daytime, and Boonie’s acting cuckoo.”

  Charli opened one eye and propped herself up on her elbows. Her blonde hair fell across her eyes. “Boonie, what are you doing? Down.”

  Boonie shifted his eyes to her briefly but kept his head against me.

  Frowning, Charli gave Sophia a kiss on the forehead, gave me a kiss on my cheek, and hopped out of bed. Charli is height-challenged. I think of her as my miniature supermodel. I’d be in trouble if I ever said that out loud. She has enough trouble getting people to see beyond her looks.

  She seems especially short when standing next to my six-foot-two frame, and that isn’t the only difference that stands out when we’re together. At forty-five, my hair is wavy but starting to thin. She’s nine years younger, and her thick blond hair falls to her shoulders—when it’s not in a ponytail. And unlike her, I’m a bit worn, resembling a trusty tool that’s had its share of abuse.

  She pinched my toe through the covers on her way to the closet. “We’ve got a lot to do this morning—”

  “Don’t remind me.” As I said that, a strange pulsation hit me, as if I’d swallowed a cell phone and it was vibrating between my lungs. I tapped my fist against my sternum and frowned. The feeling went away.

  “C’mon, you’ll enjoy it. You like everyone who’s coming.” Charli had organized a big lunch, not something I looked forward to. Sure, I liked everyone, but even with friends, making conversation and being sociable was something I preferred in smaller doses.

  Charli got dressed as sunlight filtered through the redwood trees outside our windows. Crows squabbled in the branches, and a woodsmoke scent lingered from our fire the night before. Our house was off the beaten trail in far-northern California. I’d paneled the walls with tongue-and-groove cedar planks. Ceiling, too. The bedroom floor was oak, and a braided rug extended out from each side of the bed.

  Sophia put her book on my lap. I held her close and put on my reading glasses. We took up where we’d left off the night before. After the chapter on the something-o-saurus, she went to help Charli with breakfast. Sounds of cooking and laughter filtered in from the kitchen. Could I be more lucky?

  Boonie stuck with me, sometimes actually leaning against my leg. I almost tripped over him while getting dressed. After breakfast, I squatted down and looked him in the eye. “Do we need to take you to the vet?” The V word was something he understood, and it usually made him disappear. Not today.

  Over the course of the morning, my shadow and I cleaned the house and got some extra chairs out of the attic.

  As the guests arrived, each commented on Boonie’s behavior. After a lot of standing around, making small talk, we finally sat down around our rustic dining room table.

  Between bites, one of my friends pointed her fork at me. “Maybe Boonie is sensing something wrong with you, Jake. Are you sick?”

  “You think Boondoggle is acting like the cat that sits with the nursing home residents who are about to die?” I rubbed my sternum. That otherworldly vibration had returned a few times over the course of the morning, getting stronger with each repetition. But it wasn’t that close to my heart. I pictured a gravestone with my famous last words: “It was nowhere near my heart!”

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, still pointing her fork. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  Charli’s tough-as-nails grandmother put her champagne glass down. “Have you taken any suitcases out of a closet? My dog, if he s
ees a suitcase, sticks to me like glue.”

  “Good point, Marie, but all the suitcases are in the attic.”

  Gordon Guccio took his unlit cigar from his mouth. “My housecleaner loves it when I go out of town.”

  Charli and I both laughed.

  “Big surprise there,” she said. “Cleaning up after you probably qualifies as aerobic exercise.”

  Guccio was the country’s secretary of defense. He was in California meeting with military contractors and had made time to come visit Charli and me. Gordon favored donuts, hard drinking, and cigars over health and fitness. His gut struggled against his shirt like a porpoise in a canvas sling, but he was okay with that.

  I excused myself and headed to the bathroom. Did I have to go? No. I just needed a break from all the people. Yeah, I did enjoy seeing my friends, but I needed a quick recharge. So what if people thought that I had a bad prostate?

  Heading back to the party, I was passing Grandma Marie in the hall when the vibration in my torso exploded. It spread to my arms and legs.

  Boonie cocked his head and growled. My stomach lurched into my throat as if I were flying down the first drop of the world’s largest roller coaster. My entire body was now vibrating like a huge tuning fork. Marie frowned and put her hand on my wrist. Normal sounds disappeared, replaced with an intolerable ringing.

  Boonie barked like crazy, judging from the movements of his mouth. It was like watching TV with the mute on. I grabbed the fur on his back and yelled something incoherent, but I heard nothing. Only the high-pitched squeal reached my ears.

  I had the impression I was shrinking or even folding in on myself. The colors in the hall shifted, becoming more and more reddish until no other colors were visible. The walls receded from me.

  I tightened my grip on Boonie’s fur. I’m not sure which of us was trembling more. Marie squeezed my wrist with an iron grip. The light faded to black and the whine rose in frequency until I could no longer hear it. After ten seconds with zero sensory input, the process reversed. The ringing returned and dropped in frequency. Light came back, red at first, then shifting toward normal colors. An outdoor, woodsy smell washed over me.

  When it was over, my house was nowhere to be seen. I sat in the redwood forest with nothing but my clothes, my faithful German shepherd, and my eighty-three-year-old grandmother-in-law.

  * * *

  I looked straight ahead, still shaking. Jumping to my feet, I took deep breaths, barely holding back the panic that had replaced my inner vibrations. I walked in a tight circle. Hallucination? It couldn’t be a dream. I was wide awake, I was in the hall, the whine, the colors, then bang, I was in the forest. Since I wasn’t in bed, I figured it wasn’t a dream.

  I slapped my face—once, twice, three times. Hallucination. It had to be. But everything felt normal, apart from my shakiness. Something like LSD wouldn’t come on so fast, would it?

  This was happening. It was real. There was no question about it.

  “This isn’t happening,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”

  With a deep breath of humid air, I turned to Marie. She stared back. It sounds touchy-feely, but we somehow bonded in that moment. I guess that comes from sharing an impossible experience.

  As short as her granddaughter but built like a fire hydrant, Marie wore a green fisherman’s sweater she’d knitted herself. Maybe her toughness came from a life of brutal Maine winters, or maybe she was born that way. Most women, after going through whatever had happened to us, would ask for a hug. Not Marie.

  Charli had warned me that her grandmother was never surprised or shocked. Nothing fazed her, as if that part of her brain were missing. She took everything in stride.

  Marie got up on her knees. “Well, that was a hell of a thing.” She spoke with the heaviest of Maine accents. “What happened?”

  I wouldn’t have said no to a hug, but I just shook my head. “No clue. None. Maybe this is related to Boonie’s weird behavior. Somehow.” I looked around. “Where’d he go?”

  Marie pointed. Boonie was racing around the trees, nose to the ground, apparently thrilled that he hadn’t been left at home. No more whiny Daddy’s boy.

  I called to him. “Boonie, come.”

  He obeyed instantly, sprinting over and sitting in front of me. He was the world’s best-behaved dog. He’d once belonged to the president of the United States, after all, and had been trained by a team of professionals.

  I kneeled down and held the loose skin around the sides of his head. “What did you know?”

  He barked. Right in my ear. Ow.

  “Okay, go.”

  He jumped away and went back to sniffing and running. The seriousness of our situation hit me. The house had vanished; were Charli and Sophia still alive? If so, how would they deal with our disappearance? Sophia had been kidnapped two short years ago. How would my absence affect her?

  “Seriously, Jake, where are we?” Marie stood up and brushed some bark and twigs off her jeans.

  The redwoods were as big as any I’d seen. This was old-growth forest—it had never been logged. If my house had simply and magically disappeared, it wouldn’t look like this.

  Time to put panic aside and take care of business. I stood up. “If we walk someplace with a view, it might help me get my bearings, but for now maybe we should stay right here in case whatever happened, unhappens. I can’t think of any rational explanation.”

  “Well, at least we’re not naked.”

  I reached down and picked up one of four chunks of oak flooring. It was about the size of my foot. “Maybe anything we were touching or anything within a few inches of us came along for the ride.” Good that our bodies remained intact. I checked my pockets. My reading glasses in a plastic case, a Leatherman tool, my wallet. My key ring was on a length of nylon rope attached with a snap hook to a belt loop.

  I pulled out my smartphone. No bars and no GPS. After snapping a picture of our location, I set battery saver mode as the new default and shut it down. “Anything in your pockets?”

  She pulled out a key ring that included a small LED flashlight. She pushed the button and it glowed. Better than nothing.

  I checked my watch. “I guess we should work out our prior—”

  Something slammed into my back. About the weight of a raccoon, it scrabbled around to my front, its claws digging through my denim shirt and undershirt. My heart clenched, and I was back in fight-or-flight mode.

  The body was the size of a large house cat, with a snakelike neck on one end and a lizardish tail on the other. The head resembled a snake’s as well, and it seemed poised to strike. What was it waiting for? I brought my arms up slowly. The neck was as wide as a goose’s neck—if I could get my hand around it, I’d only have to deal with the sharp claws.

  Marie called for reinforcements. “Boonie!”

  My arms were halfway up when it struck. The head flew toward my eyes, the mouth gaping open as it increased in size. I jerked my head back and turned away. Pain blossomed from the top of my ear, and eighty pounds of German shepherd slammed into my shoulder. Boonie pulled the creature off me and shook it mercilessly. The creature squealed briefly before Boonie crunched its head bones.

  “Jake, look.” Marie pointed at the branches above. Two more of the creatures seemed ready to drop on us. Boonie stood staring at the monster, as if daring it to move.

  “Good dog, Boonie.” I picked up the animal by its neck and carried it to an area with fewer trees. It was clearly a reptile, but red fur covered its body. I squatted down and pried open its mouth with a stick.

  “Careful.”

  It didn’t have fangs, but it did have rows of protruding teeth, top and bottom, like those of a crocodile. I tilted it and shook out a piece of my ear the size of a quarter. A drop of blood dripped from my head. I stood.

  “Let me take a look. You feeling okay?”

  I kneeled down. “I hope it doesn’t kill with infection, like the Komodo dragon.”

  Marie walked over to me
. “You have too much hair here.” She pushed the hair out of the way and pinched my ear.

  “Ow.”

  Marie took my hand and placed it on my ear. “Squeeze here and it will stop the bleeding.” Marie had once worked as an X-ray tech in a hospital. Hopefully, she’d picked up some nursie skills. “That’s wrong, by the way.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The Komodo dragon thing. It’s true that animals they injure usually get an infection, but it turns out the dragons do have some venom.”

  “Animal Planet?”

  Marie nodded.

  “Fatal infection?” I looked at her.

  She stared straight ahead.

  “We don’t have the luxury of sugarcoating here, Marie.”

  She shrugged. “You can’t believe everything you hear on TV.”

  “Right. Got it. I guess it’s too late to suck out the poison.” I raised my eyebrows.

  “Another myth. And what would Charli think if we rematerialized in the hallway, and I was sucking on your ear?”

  We both got a chuckle out of that. But our laughter faded, and my thoughts went back to the ideal life I’d led just a few hours ago.

  Marie must have sensed my thoughts. “We’ve got to play the hands we’re dealt, Jake, no matter how weird. You and I are apparently living in interesting times.”

  I took a breath. “Right. Priorities?” I stood up.

  “Water, shelter, food, protection, fire.”

  “Agreed. If we’re on Earth and in the same location as the house, I know of a small cave a few miles away. You up for that?”

  “Ayuh.” Maine talk for yes.

  “Good. On the way, there should be a hilltop with a view. That may tell us where we are.”

  * * *

  Navigation was tough since the forest was dense, but with an eye on the direction of the sunbeams through the mist, I kept us from walking in circles. Marie did a good job hiding her fatigue. We took a few breaks.

  We came to a hilltop—probably the one I had in mind. The shape wasn’t quite right, but a clearing at the top gave us a good view of the river valley. The Yurok River Valley. Again, different but similar. A few miles away, the river meandered along fields of grass and emptied into the ocean. The Highway 101 bridge over that river had been built a hundred years ago. It wasn’t there.