by Jordan Rivet
She walked slowly across the green earth, the very same earth that had once been covered with asphalt, wondering at the springy moss beneath her feet, the buzz of life in the air. The whole world felt new, cleansed. She could almost believe the firestorm had never reached here at all.
Dr. Huntington had told them two hundred years would give the earth enough time to recover and long-dormant seeds would sprout once more, but she had still imagined a gutted landscape where they’d have to scrape together food and cultivate desolate farms in the rocky ground. But this place looked healthier than it had when it was a mine. Time had been gentler on the surface of the earth than the acts of man.
Trees crowned the once-barren hills surrounding the complex. The forest didn’t have the venerable look of the Pacific Northwest woods she remembered. No ancient hemlocks towered into the sky here. But the trees had had enough time to grow a comforting nest around the old mine complex and fill the air with rustling branches.
Joanna paused between the shaft house and the processing plant and turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. The sun hung low over the horizon, already assuming the dreamy quality of early evening. She felt as though she were on a different planet. The way the plants curled across the ground and cloaked the ruins was unlike anything she’d ever seen. She couldn’t reconcile this wild garden with the concrete chaos she had left behind. If it weren’t for the familiar shape of the headframe rising over the shaft house, she’d believe her cryo tank had been moved while she slept.
Only one thing soured the beauty of the green-drenched world: it was untouched, which meant no other survivors had been here, from her own bunker or any other. She still held onto the tiniest ray of hope that some people had survived the cave-in and escaped out the other mineshaft. She wanted to walk over and see for herself, but it was a few miles away, and twilight was approaching fast.
Joanna needed to make some decisions before nightfall. Her knees picked that moment to wobble, reminding her she’d just completed a marathon climb out of hell. She needed rest—and soon.
She hobbled back to the shaft house to retrieve her knapsack. The windowless structure would provide the best shelter that night, but she didn’t particularly want to sleep in this musty concrete box, as if she were still underground. The thought made her skin feel too tight for her body. By contrast, the breeze drifting through the doorway was warm and inviting. She’d had enough of being contained. Turning her back on the mineshaft’s dark maw, she hoisted her pack over her shoulder and hurried outside.
Darkness was falling quickly. Joanna had to make camp before the stars came out in force, not wanting to use too much flashlight battery. The effort of climbing the ladder was beginning to catch up with her. Her stomach clenched and gurgled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten in hours.
She was tempted to flop down to sleep on the grass covering what had been a parking lot. Shelter was always a survival priority, but the air was warm and dry—and her aversion to sleeping inside a building was growing stronger. She briefly considered the processing plant, but the walls looked as though they might fall down if she glanced at them sideways. At last, Joanna decided to scale a pile of rubble and sleep there. Being high up ought to keep her safe. She didn’t know if any predators stalked this new world.
She ascended the rubble carefully, scrambling around until she found a stable plateau, a wide slab of concrete resting about fifteen feet above the ground. The headframe rose on one side and the processing plant on the other, silent sentinels keeping watch. She fought her exhaustion just long enough to swallow some water and protein bars, and then she stretched out on the springy moss coating the slab and rested her head on her pack.
The sky rolled like an endless ocean above her. It was so big and close that she felt as if she were being absorbed into it. The sky could swallow her, finishing the work Brandon started, consuming her in its malevolent darkness.
She shook off the image. It was just a sky. They were just stars. They’d already thrown their worst at the earth. It had recovered from the blow, and so would she.
A light breeze blew over the tree-covered hills, whispering like a companion. For a moment Joanna imagined she heard voices on the wind, people calling out to each other. She bolted upright, reaching for her pickaxe. She wasn’t sure if she’d use it to defend herself or bang it against something to attract attention. But no movement disturbed the dark.
Joanna held her breath, thinking of secret bunker builders and cave-in survivors and alien invaders and bears. Okay, maybe not bears. No one would have to worry about those for a few million years. But the others . . .
She waited, listened, didn’t dare move. Nothing. Had she truly heard voices?
But the earth was empty of anything but wind and shadows and stars. She was alone. Joanna lay back, allowing the night sky to blanket her once more, and drifted to sleep.
Chapter Sixteen
When Joanna woke up the next morning, she sincerely wished she were dead. If she thought climbing the mineshaft was excruciating, it was nothing compared to the way she felt after sleeping on a stone slab after climbing the mineshaft. Agony throbbed in every muscle, and her body cramped up when she so much as took a deep breath.
She should have taken a week or two to build up her strength. Climbing a fifteen-hundred-foot ladder after waking from cryosleep was a stupid thing to do. The bunker might have been crumbling around her, the lights dying one by one, but she had completely underestimated what the climb would do to her body.
“Idiot,” she muttered. “Why couldn’t you have been patient?”
She tried to move, and pain burned through her muscles so intensely she felt nauseous. She managed to sit up long enough to force down some water, whimpering pitifully. It was physically impossible to stand. Sleeping on this slab high above the ground had seemed like a good idea last night, but she didn’t think she could get down now. She slumped onto her back.
“Oh, just climb fifteen feet up and sleep in the open. Great idea, Jo.”
She had felt triumphant when she hauled herself out of the mineshaft. She had dragged herself from the depths of the earth through pure grit. She had overcome cosmic odds, resurrected herself from an artificial death. And it had been a terrible mistake.
Despair tugged at her like hands reaching up from the bunker to pull her back underground. What if she ran out of food and water before she could walk? She’d only brought a small supply, assuming she’d be able to zip down to the exit chamber to retrieve more after she set up a pulley system. She only wanted to look around on the surface. She hadn’t considered that she might not be able to move.
Someone on her team would have thought of this. Probably Ruby, who knew the toll different levels of strenuous physical activity took on the body. Joanna had gone running with Ruby a few times back at orientation, suspecting that exercise was the way through Ruby’s cranky exterior. She seemed to appreciate Joanna’s company and had even confessed her ambition to run a marathon on every continent.
This was why they had focused so much on team building. They needed each other. No matter how hard Ruby tried to avoid connecting with people, she projected physical and mental strength with every stride. Blake had his army background. Chloe was a tech genius. Garrett had his whole Captain Boy Scout persona. But Joanna was just a normal girl. She wasn’t sure where her true strength lay. At the moment, she didn’t have any at all.
She tried to move again, and the pain held her like a vise.
What had she really offered the team? Sure, she was an optimist. She prided herself on always moving forward. But even that failed her now, when her lack of foresight had consequences. She should have stayed underground.
Joanna had no choice but to begin the agonizing process of stretching out her muscles. Gritting her teeth and digging her fingernails into the mossy stone, she forced herself into a sitting position again. Each movement made her want to vomit. She doubted she’d be able to climb down from her plateau at all today.
So much for your plan to check out the other mineshaft.
At least she had a decent view of the mine complex. The morning sun glistened on the wild greenery, and white and yellow blossoms adorned the scrub. Most of these plants had probably been growing here for fifty years, but they made the place seem fresh, like a garden at first bloom. Lumps of concrete beneath the vegetation sketched only the faintest outlines of the old buildings. Without the skeletal shape of the headframe, Joanna wouldn’t have recognized this place if she had stumbled upon it accidentally.
As she stretched, she searched for familiar features. That stand of trees with concrete peeking out around the stumps had been the storage building where the cryo scientists stayed. There was the hill where the border gate had been, doubtless the first thing to fall after the impact. The processing plant turned BRP headquarters on the western side of the complex was mostly intact. Vines grew on its weathered walls, easing out of cracks and slowly overtaking the empty windows. The building gave her chills even as a ruin.
The BRP officials had become increasingly frantic at the end, forgetting their own advice not to panic. Many of the soldiers, technicians, and builders didn’t stick around when they realized the bunker didn’t have enough space for them. They dispersed to spend time with their families, and the newly arrived BRP denizens were called on to finish their work as the comet tumbled nearer. The entire complex had roiled with trucks and noise and the low drumbeat of panic.
Stocking the bunker was billed as a team-building exercise. To the last, BRP drilled home the message that the teams would be the key factor in ensuring the success of the mission. Humanity only had one shot. If someone didn’t get along with the team or didn’t pull their weight, they were doomed. Most rose to the challenge, which meant they barely had time to remember their own names during those final weeks at the mine.
As Joanna surveyed the overgrown ruins, she wondered if the disorderliness of the final days had contributed to the eventual cave-in down below. Had some frazzled BRP scientist miscalculated the structural integrity of the mine? Had some careless error cost her friends their lives? She prayed the other bunkers had fared better than theirs. Maybe she’d get to ask them one day.
A bare patch of earth on the far side of the complex must be where the nuclear power source for the bunker was buried. Joanna’s survival suggested it still generated some power. That could prove useful—if she lived long enough to make it down from her pile of rubble.
“One step at a time. You’ve made enough rash decisions for one week.”
Joanna massaged her legs—a task that would have been easier if her arms didn’t hurt so badly—and resolved to take her time before moving from her perch. She could find no sign that anyone had been here for a very long time, the ruins undisturbed by man or beast. She’d thought she heard voices the night before, but she was sure now that it must have been the wind.
Stranded atop her concrete island, she found it difficult to push away the memories of the three weeks she’d spent aboveground here. Every detail was still so sharp. That overgrown gravel patch was where Beth had gotten in a shouting match with a woman named Priya from Red Team. Tensions had run hot at the end, and the argument had been over something stupid, a careless word or an accidental jostle. Joanna hadn’t ever heard the full story, but she remembered Garrett defusing the situation with calm words and a cheery smile. That hilltop on the other side of the headframe was where Chloe had cried on Joanna’s shoulder after she asked Vincent to kiss her and he said no. And that spot, where the corner of the processing plant rose out of a bramble patch, was where Garrett had—finally—pulled Joanna aside to talk.
Chapter Seventeen
BEFORE
In an effort to alleviate stress, Joanna accompanied Ruby on her usual morning run—a decision she deeply regretted by the second lap around the mine complex. She felt pretty fit after enduring Blake’s Apocalypse Boot Camp, but Ruby was on another level. Joanna was trying to think of an excuse not to complete a third lap when Garrett emerged from the BRP headquarters building and beckoned to her.
What was he doing in there? The former processing plant continued to be a source of mystery. Joanna hadn’t been inside it since the first night, and she couldn’t get a straight answer out of Theresa about what Colonel Waters was hiding there.
“Mind if I quit here?”
Ruby shrugged, jogging in place as a convoy of supply trucks crossed their path and rumbled toward the shaft house. Her blond ponytail, still edged with red dye, bobbed like a lure.
“Far be it from me to stand in your way when Prince Charming calls.”
Joanna rolled her eyes. “He could have found out something about whatever Waters is up to.”
“Do what you gotta do.”
The last truck grumbled past them, and Ruby sprinted away through a plume of dust.
Joanna joined Garrett, a little breathless from the exercise. It had been difficult to steal private moments since they arrived at the bunker. Between trips down the mineshaft to stock the storage tunnels and quick rotations through their cryosleep trials, the team barely had time to eat together anymore. Joanna had all but given up on getting Garrett alone.
But when he drew her into the shadow of the former processing plant to talk, his face flush with emotion, she realized he must be ready to make their relationship official. She almost wished he’d chosen a better moment. Sweat plastered down her hair, she wore a frayed T-shirt she’d already decided not to save in her locker, and her lungs were rebelling against her for going running. Garrett seemed tired too—not helped by the faint green shadow under his eye from the shiner Blake had given him.
“You look like you could sleep for two hundred years,” she wheezed. “What’s up?”
“It’s my brothers,” Garrett said.
“Oh.” Joanna quickly reassessed the situation. He wasn’t about to declare his feelings or reveal a BRP conspiracy. She leaned against the concrete wall, trying for a casual posture. “You heard from them?”
“Theresa let me make a call.”
“How did you—?”
“It’s not important.” Garrett glanced around. Shouts rose from where Purple Team One was unloading solar panels from a truck, not near enough to overhear their conversation. “Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to get Theresa in trouble.”
Joanna promised not to repeat the information. “What did your brothers say?”
“They built a bunker in Montana,” Garret said. “They got access to a cave system. It’s not very deep, but they’ve been filling it up with supplies. It has ventilation and everything. It’ll be ready before Brandon gets here.” Garrett searched her face for a moment before continuing. “The officials say bunkers where everyone stays awake won’t keep them alive long enough for the atmosphere to clear.”
“But you want to join them anyway.” Joanna should have known his thoughts would turn this way.
“I should never have abandoned them,” Garrett said. “I could have helped with the work these past months.”
“Do you really believe their bunker will survive after everything we’ve learned?”
“I don’t know.” Garrett rubbed the back of his neck. “What if BRP is lying to us, making us think non-cryo bunkers won’t save us so we’ll go along with their program?”
“You sound like Ruby.”
Garrett grimaced. “She might not be so wrong.”
So even Garrett’s uncomplicated belief in the program had turned to skepticism. Perhaps it was inevitable.
“Chloe knows more about the science of it than any of us,” Joanna said. “She says the calculations are correct. A homemade bunker will only delay the inevitable. How long will your family’s supplies last?”
Garrett hesitated. “Four years.”
“That’s it?”
“Maybe we’ll play board games for those four years and then die anyway. At least we’ll be together.”
Joanna took a deep, steadyin
g breath. “So you’re leaving.”
Garrett met her eyes.
“Only if you come with me.”
“What?”
Joanna felt as if she’d suddenly been made responsible for a precious and breakable object, like a Fabergé egg, or maybe a human baby. The rumble of activity around them faded away.
“I know it’s not fair to ask,” Garrett said, “but I meant it when I said I wouldn’t leave you, Joanna. I want you to come with me. If we can get hold of a vehicle, we should reach my family before they seal their cave.”
Joanna stared at him, trying to process what he was asking her. This was much more serious than becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, which was all she had wanted out of this conversation. But she really did believe Chloe’s assessment. If they drove off to Montana and hid underground, they would be dead in four years—assuming they even managed to cross the pre-apocalyptic wasteland to get there. The planet would not be habitable in so short a time. They would have no chance to reclaim the earth, no new legacy.
Joanna’s parents’ faces flickered in the dust curling across the complex. The rumble of the trucks returned, along with the murmur of voices from the rest of the BRP cohort. This wasn’t just about her and Garrett. They were all a legacy for their families. Joanna owed it to her parents—and to everyone else who hadn’t been chosen—not to waste this chance.
“We can’t,” she said. “You know this won’t work.”
Garrett took a small step away from her, confusion flitting across his face. “I’m so sorry, Joanna. I must have misread . . . If you don’t want me, I’ll—”
“I didn’t say we won’t work,” Joanna snapped. “Of course I want you, dumbass.”
Garrett gaped at her.
“You mean the Montana bunker won’t work.”
“You know it as well as I do.” Joanna leaned forward. She had to make him stay, for his sake and for hers. “BRP is our only chance. We can’t throw it away.”
