by L. B. Carter
"Wouldn't we have passed Sirena on our way here?" Henley spoke from the middle seat next to Val's brother. She was their diffuser, sending calming aloe and lavender around the Jeep's cabin.
"Not if she'd already passed us," Ace replied.
"She's unique," Nor said again, attempting to bolster his own confidence in Sirena, maybe? "And strong. She can make it."
"Well, I'm not," Val finally relented to her human weakness. "I need food. Can we stop somewhere?"
"Oh, sure." Reed's sarcasm was thick. "You see somewhere to pullover? Maybe we can find the bodies of those guys you killed and eat them? You were up for cannibalism at one point, remember?"
"You killed someone?" Nor was horrified.
"Several," Reed clarified.
"Mrs. Juarez was fine." Val didn't appreciate the judgment when it was his brother's ass she'd been saving and the guy probably wasn't dead. He just wouldn't be sleeping with anyone anytime soon. Though perhaps, handicapping him before a fire headed this way shortened his lifespan indirectly. "Only you would think losing your junk was equivalent to death," she told Reed. "And I thought you Stanleys were fond of recycling. Waste not want not. If not us, then the buzzards."
"But... cannibalism?" Henley made an exaggerated retching noise as if seriously considering the satirical suggestion. Brainy, but not so great at street smarts.
Val grinned, staring into the rear view mirror at Reed's reflected eyes though they were intent on the road. "I'd put my mouth on him over Reed."
"Val," Ace reprimanded with exasperation and a tinge of discomfort. Yeah, well, he made her nauseated first with his cutesy shit with Henley.
"As soon as we get back where there are food options, we'll stop," Nor placated. "We should refuel with cleaner water at that point, too." Someone was being sensible.
"If we get stuck in the middle of a cornfield again, I'm not sacrificing myself this time." Val folded her arms. "Especially not alone with him."
"Feeling's mutual, sweetheart."
Val's shoulders raised at the endearment.
"No one is getting left behind," Nor corrected, playing the role of mediating parent. "Sirena was right—we should stick together."
"And that's why Ace tossed her off a bridge, right?"
"We've already discussed this." Ace didn't let himself be drawn into the argument that was satisfying no one and conglomerating everyone's concerns and worry into a twisting, pulsing parasitic mass—a tornado of goddamn teen angst inside the Jeep.
"Do you hear that?" Henley's urgency got everyone's rapt attention. She bolted upright in her seat, lurching around as if searching for something out the windows.
"Drones?" Ace quickly inherited some of her panic.
"No." Her thick brows dropped. She shifted, pressing her ear right up against the window.
"Oh, fuck."
"What?" several voices demanded of Reed.
Between him and Henley, Val was feeling incredibly out of sync. She did not like being on the outside of the loop; as Director, she was always kept apprised of minute occurrences.
"We've got a tail," Reed said.
"What?" Val wedged her torso over the water jugs to see out the back window. "What the hell? We haven't even made it halfway back to the Juarez's. How'd they find us?" She started nodding. "I know. Your jeep."
"Hey," Reed snapped. "No blaming my baby. She's untraceable."
"There is one possibility." Ace waited a beat. "Do you think... it could be your hand?" He didn't face Henley as though afraid of her response.
Her gasp did not comfort anyone.
"Mother freaker. See what you did by bringing her?" Val demanded, slapping the back of her brother's head. "Jesus."
A honk sounded, and Reed jerked onto the side of the road, halting abruptly. "Strike that. Not BSTU."
Everyone slid to the driver's side, pressing their faces against the glass as several military Humvees sped past, interspersed with school buses packed with the evacuees they saw trooping out of the port earlier. They were moving faster than any school bus had probably ever been driven before, kicking up a dust cloud. It looked like they were fleeing a war zone before a bomb could drop in the middle of an air-raid. Lucky for them, there were no speed limit signs left standing along this stretch.
"Where's the fire?" Reed laughed at his own joke.
"Do you think it's spreading again? They couldn't contain it?" Henley was anxious, her head zipping left to right to track each vehicle in the caravan as they zoomed by, rocking the Jeep like it had in the tornado.
"No." Val's face was screwed up. "This isn't usual procedure."
"Dad said Mom increased the evacuation request level to mandatory." There was uncertainty in Ace's voice. He knew this wasn't normal either.
"Yeah, but this is bat-shit-out-of-hell." He'd seen dad? She tamped down the urge to ask about him.
"What do you mean?" Henley wanted to know more. Always.
Val cleared her throat as a final Humvee pulled slowly up to their side. "Usually, they split up, departing at different intervals to make sure no one was left behind and to avoid putting all the supplies and refugees in one location in case there was an accident or ambush. Piling up all the civilians and supplies in one location is stupid. It's a matter of meeting safety protocols."
"So splitting up can be beneficial. I vote Val stays here," Reed proclaimed.
"What would make them break protocol?" Henley breathed.
Val was reluctant to answer aloud but knew Henley wouldn't let a dead horse not be beaten. "Something very bad and orders from someone very high up." Like a director.
The window of the last military truck lowered, and another nobody in glasses and camo motioned at Reed to do the same. Henley put hers down at the same time so they could all hear.
"What's breathing up your asses?" Reed asked. Nor hissed, but the guy was used to much worse from his superiors no doubt.
"You can't be here. This area is not safe."
"The wildfire?" Henley's small voice quivered. Val knew she was older than she looked, but in that moment, she sounded like a child. BSTU did not train their students to be active participants in society. Pros and cons to BSTU.
The man was reluctant to reveal details, Val knew. She leaned over the seat back and rifled in Ace’s pants pockets.
Ace slapped her hands away. “What—?”
“Flash him your badge. I wanna know what Mom is up to.”
Ace gave her a censuring look. “If you wanted to be in on the decision-making, you shouldn’t have vacated your role.”
So he was pissed at her, too. Freaking fantastic. "Fight later. Badge now," Val gritted through her teeth.
Ace pressed his body across Henley. Val was impressed. When they lived together at home, if anyone so much as tried to touch his hand, or God-forbid hug him, he'd launch across the room. "Excuse me? USGCS DDM Associate Ace Acton, son of Director Marissa Acton. Can you enlighten me as to the particulars of this evacuation order?"
The guy placed a forearm on the windowsill to lean closer, a gloved hand lifting his sunglasses to squint at the identification card. Then he spoke to whomever was driving his Humvee. Val imagined there was a bunch of radio chatter. Then the guy leaned out again. "Your mommy says to tell you to follow us immediately and await further orders from a safe distance." He smirked.
"What is the pressing danger?" Ace was mimicking Henley's nature, which was good so Val didn't have to nudge him to get more of the scoop.
The soldier hesitated then said gravely, "We don't have the resources to keep up with the wildfire. Waiting for rain is... Well. Director Acton is using other means to put out the fire before it transfers to the east coast. Personally, I think this part of the country is a loss anyway, but..." He shrugged. The rest of the sentence was but you follow orders when decreed by your senior. Val missed having obedient minions.
"What means is she using?" Val couldn't help but pipe in over her brother's head. The guy was trained to be evasive, but no
t with her. She was the true director, dammit. "Fire break?" That'd be a rush job and no guarantee it would work.
Ace sat up. He knew that wouldn't work. That was his area of expertise.
The soldier's scruffy chin wobbled around. Either it was his habit when deliberating if he should reveal confidential information—she'd have him fired if he were hers—or he had gum in his mouth and hadn't been taught by his mama how to properly chew his cud. The livestock was decimated; he could take its place. "Flood," he finally said.
Everyone reacted at once.
"Flood!" Nor.
"How?" Henley.
"Controlled?" Ace.
"Explain." Val.
The only one laconic for once in his freaking life was Reed.
The guy answered all of them or none of them, jerking his head back behind them. "Instigating a tsunami in the seaway."
"What?" Henley and Val exclaimed at the same time. The first was intellectually and engineeringly fascinated undoubtedly, and the latter pretty freaking mind-blown.
What in the hell, mom? Val wasn't sure if she was impressed or flabbergasted that it was an idea she wouldn't have thought of. Val was the queen of pulling crazy, genius ideas out of the air.
The guy frowned. "I don't know the details, but 'sfar as I understand it, they're destabilizing the glaciers on the mountains. I think the hope is that they'll make a big-ass tidal wave when they slide down and hit the water."
Shocked silence followed his statement.
"Any more questions, or can we get the fuck out of the tsunami zone?" His eyebrow popped up above his sunglass lens on one side. He motioned at his driver to carry on, and his window slid up as they rolled away on massive wheels that probably made Reed and his baby jealous.
Val sat back in her seat, mouth still agape, watching the dust cloud caboose disappear. Only then did it occur to her she should have asked to ride with them.
"He say what I think he did? Or is my nightmare getting that weird dream-logic where things don't really make sense?"
Nor didn't answer Reed, twisting around in his seat to stare accusingly at Ace and Valerie. "Can she really do that?"
Ace shrugged. "It's feasible."
"Scientifically, yes. But... How?" Henley breathed.
"Dynamite-induced avalanche?" Reed opined. "Maybe they'll use those fireworks from earlier."
Ace shook his head. "I'm uncertain."
"Jesus Christ." Val finally got her vocal chords functioning. She was stuck on the implications of everything hanging in that one sentence. "She's insane." Valerie had been called that many times herself; you had to be a tad crazy to hold that role. A director had to make serious calls about life-and-death on a large scale. That's why Valerie had gone so far as to undergo freaking DNA-modification treatment without telling anyone. Well, except Jennifer, who took the knowledge to her grave.
Several pairs of eyes stabbed into Val.
The Jeep accelerated onto the road. Reed had decided it was time to leave with the validation of Marissa Acton's off-her-rocker idea from her stupefied children.
"She's fucking melting some of the last alpine glaciers in the country to generate an intentional seiche." Val's head dropped back. The stupid pop-up seats had no head-rest like all the other seats in the car.
"A what?" Henley blinked.
Val cast around for a metaphor. "Like when you get into a bathtub, and it sloshes the water back and forth, sometimes going over the edge. A seiche is like a tsunami, except in a smaller body than an ocean, it'll just swish back and forth until the energy from the disturbance dissipates rather than a single pulse in one direction."
Henley's eyes popped. One of the Stanleys in the front swore.
"So you do know some geology, despite not having been an actual BSTU student or Professor Tate's daughter." Reed wasn't impressed by any means, but there was some respect in his acknowledgment. His job involved a lot of faking and planning; on some level he was envious of just how smart Val was with her deviousness.
"I'm head of the disaster management department in the USGCS. Of course, I fucking know some geology." Val tsked.
"Used to be the head." Ace the pedant.
"It may dissipate, but how big will the first wave be? Has anyone ever done an experiment on this scale before?" Henley was processing.
Val snorted. "No. Not even the dinosaurs. Has anyone modeled it? Ace?"
Ace squinted thoughtfully. "I am certain Mom had a few people test the concept digitally before implementing it in such a large-scale."
Val was already shaking her head before he finished the thought. "Not during a forest fire and bridge collapse. She's already strung out all her recourses. There's no time. You should know. How many models did you complete over several years at BSTU?"
Ace's face darkened as he gave Val his profile. "Point taken."
Nor tried to say something and had to clear his throat and give it a second shot. "She's destroying the last glaciers, raising sea level, and destroying the environment and ecology in the path of the seiche overflow?"
Yep, out of any of them, it'd be Nor to worry about the repercussions on the natural world.
Val was more concerned with the fact that it was going to be a huge-ass clean-up job. Maybe she'd rethink taking back her title after they got Sirena. Mom could handle the brunt of the retaliation for her own choices.
Val smacked her lips. "Sure seems like it. I mean, some of that was already burning to the ground, so..."
"So, drive fast, and find the one person who can help us live in a water-world, yeah?"
Val didn't want to agree with Reed, but he'd zeroed in on the most important aspects of the news for their survival and everyone else's. "Like the wind."
Chapter Ten
His baby pushed hard, yet they never caught up with the evacuees and their military escorts. Goddamn government got all the money while their family's hard-working non-profit struggled to fund themselves and do all the work the big boys weren't doing; Reed's Jeep had taken multiple years and scientists to build, limited by the volatility of the fuel as he'd explained to Henley once. Hydrogen was a dangerous element—highly explosive, which made it tricky in an engine that tended to get warm when running. The Green Solutions team had mostly figured it out. That Humvee would have been a good base for their modifications though. He'd watched it accelerate in way less than sixty, the bullet-proof window rolling up a foot or two above his eye level, with unbridled envy.
Reed mentally apologized to his baby. She was doing great. But with the poor water quality from whatever had been stored in that water tower, Reed was wary of his girl overheating. Or worse. He usually gave her only the purest. Sure, they had Henley to help them fix stuff, but if his girl went up in flames, the only thing that would help would be the fact that a wave was coming shortly to put the fire out before it caught the rest of the cornfields. Breaking down sooner than later would, in that respect, be better. Nearer to the tsunami zone meant less chance of their group causing more destructive wildfires. Or nearer to the seiche zone. His mental eyes rolled.
So, the further they went, the more Reed's vigilance increased. The more he coaxed out of his baby, the more warm she was getting, the more risk there was of hydrogen combustion. He spent as much time reading all the gages as watching the road. His passengers were all fairly quiet, so he was able to attune to her happy purr and isolate the moment she choked.
Nor was sulking in the passenger seat over the cumulative destruction of the Earth. It wasn't the first time. However, humans were the cause of the climate change at this point in Earth's extensive history—according to Val who he had thought was Jen the paleoclimatologist's daughter at the time. Guess she did know some geology, so Reed let her suggestion gain some traction in his mind that, unlike past warm periods on Earth, this one was human-induced and changing far too fast for nature to ever keep up and swing it back the other way.
This was just more of the same. Although this was more directly the result from peo
ple they knew rather than a generic "humans" scapegoat. Henley started the fire, they'd admitted, and Valerie and Ace's mom was annihilating the glaciers.
See? This was what his family got for meddling with civilians. Things always went to shit. They needed to get back to home base, to Father, and maybe things would stop flushing down the toilet. It was worth a shot. He was going to have to do something to get Nor to let Sirena go. A small part of him was hoping she hadn't escaped, that she hadn't made it. Then Reed wouldn't have to be the bad guy; Nor would have no choice but to let Sirena go. Like Reed had his Valerie.
That dark, deep, horrible part of him wanted Nor to share in Reed's pain. As much as he'd prefer to not have to off Rena, Reed wasn't as close to his brother as he wanted to be, as he knew Nor tried to be. There was a chasm between them, a six-foot hole filled with bodies. Reed wanted to build a bridge. He couldn't revive anyone in the hole, so the best he could do was craft a bridge that enabled Nor to come over to his side. The side of lachrymose self-loathing.
Reed knew Rena had a fear of bridges. She'd almost died and lost most of her memory when a car she was in broke through a guard rail in that podunk town when Reed's colleague, Lynn, had first attempted to fulfill the contract to get Rena out of BSTU. Rena had thought that Lynn was her mom, killed during the accident. It didn't matter that she wasn't and that the amnesia had been a result of Stew, an over-ambitious nerd kid from that town who had access to drugs thanks to his mother being a surgeon while Rena was in recovery. Rena had suffered for several months under the delusion that she'd watched her parents die. Then, Ace had tossed her off another bridge.
And this was the girl who Reed had helped to learn the importance of leaning on people to open up. She'd been a furious little thing, and he'd tamed her and convinced her to open up under the promise he'd attempt verisimilitude in return.
Well, now he couldn't. For one, since he didn't know what the fuck had happened with his Val in the first place, he was just as disillusioned as Rena's amnesia had rendered her. Secondly, she'd be another wedge between Nor and Reed. Just like his Valerie.
