Now she understood why her father had gone outside. Why he had risked it.
She’d read his notes. In those old tape spools and floppy disks were the exact coordinates of Nomad from thirty years ago. It would provide the long axis for Nomad’s trajectory and provide the last few hundredths of a degree of accuracy—enough to see what asteroids could come close, what might hit the Earth.
They had detailed simulation data on her father’s laptop. The first step would be to decode the disks and tapes, and to get even better resolution, to find someone who had data on Nomad from just before the event.
But how to do that, in this wrecked world?
Giving Giovanni a kiss on his cheek, she stepped through the boulders to the remains of the front walls. She stopped, clicked on a floodlight. It illuminated a placard atop a pile of rubble, a headstone: “Here lies Benjamin Rollins and Celeste Tosetti, husband and wife, loving parents.”
It was all she could think of.
All that needed to be said.
And at least they came together, in the end, and now rested together. Forever.
Jess glanced over her shoulder, at Lucca and Raffael swinging Hector between them, running beside Giovanni. She’d always scoffed at the idea of having a family, but now she had one to protect.
And she would, to her last breath.
Looking south, Jess squinted into the darkness, ash and snow falling gently over the tortured earth. Her father’s last words to her echoed in her mind—survive, no matter what.
It was time to go.
Thanks for reading!
In the next section is the first chapter of Sanctuary, book two of the Nomad trilogy, now available for advance purchase on Amazon, just click here or search for “Mather Sanctuary” on Amazon.
In the section after that, there is a discussion on current research into Nomad-like events, along with a YouTube video of the author, Matthew Mather, running a 3D physics simulation of the Nomad encounter. You can even run the Nomad simulation yourself.
FROM THE AUTHOR…
If you’d like more quality fiction at this low price, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review on Amazon. For self-published authors (like myself), the number of reviews a book accumulates on a daily basis has a direct impact on sales performance, so just leaving a review—no matter how short—helps make it possible for me to continue to do what I do. Oh, and please try not to mention that Nomad is a black hole—no spoilers please!
IF YOU WANT MORE…
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Or visit us online at: MatthewMather.com/Nomad
OTHER BOOKS BY MATTHEW MATHER…
CyberStorm
Award-winning CyberStorm depicts, in realistic and sometimes terrifying detail, what a full scale cyberattack against present-day New York City might look like from the perspective of one family trying to survive it. Click here or search for CyberStorm on Amazon.
Darknet
A prophetic and frighteningly realistic novel set in present-day New York, Darknet is the story of one man’s odyssey to overcome a global menace pushing the world toward oblivion, and his incredible gamble to risk everything to save his family. Click here or search for Darknet on Amazon.
Atopia Chronicles (Series)
In the near future, to escape the crush and clutter of a packed and polluted Earth, the world’s elite flock to Atopia, an enormous corporate-owned artificial island in the Pacific Ocean. It is there that Dr. Patricia Killiam rushes to perfect the ultimate in virtual reality: a program to save the ravaged Earth from mankind’s insatiable appetite for natural resources. Click here or search for Atopia on Amazon.
SANCTUARY
Book two of the NOMAD trilogy
1
BANDITA, ITALY
“SCATTER!” JESSICA ROLLINS screamed at Lucca and Raffa, motioning to her left and right.
The two brothers stared at her, their teenage faces white even in the dim light. Clang! A bullet ricocheted off the open truck door, followed by another punching a frosted hole through the windshield, lodging itself in the metal screen behind the seats. Jess crouched lower, stealing a glance around the door. She looked back up at the boys. “Andare!” she yelled.
That did the trick. Keeping low, Raffa slithered over the driver seat, opened the opposite door of the Humvee and disappeared. Shaking, Lucca climbed over Jess and gracelessly tumbled into the snow at her feet. Jess pointed at her own eyes, then at a pile of garbage ten feet away. One, two, she mouthed silently, and on three she swung around the truck’s door and squeezed the trigger on her AK-47 assault rifle. Pop. Pop. Two controlled rounds. She rolled through the gray snow, scrambling behind the mound of frozen garbage with Raff. Crack, and a bullet whined overhead.