Shattered Roads

by ALICE HENDERSON

  Sudden silence took over her world. She tasted blood. She sucked in a deep breath, and a sharp pain wracked her chest. The world felt calm, unreal. She opened her eyes, looking around, not comprehending. Where was she? The plane. The storm spiraling them out of control . . .

  She snapped her head toward Gordon but couldn’t see him. The splintered trunk of a dead tree lay between them. It had speared the windshield and now took up most of the center aisle.

  She reached down with trembling hands and unbuckled her belt. “Gordon?” she whispered. She rose up from her seat, trying to see over the trunk. Gordon lay back in his seat, mouth open, blood streaming from his nose, eyes closed. His side of the plane had crumpled inward, smashing his left leg against the twisted metal. His breathing was shallow and rapid.

  “Gordon?” she breathed again. He didn’t stir. Her face stung, and as she reached up to her cheek, her hand came away red and sticky. Hands trembling, she reached for her door handle and managed to get it open. Her head spun. Her door was undamaged, so she climbed out with relative ease. At once she sank up to her thighs in something cold and white. From the survival manual she’d been reading, she recognized it as snow. She’d never seen it before, and the cold wetness of it instantly sucked the warmth from her body. She shivered as she stepped around the back of the plane, trying to reach Gordon’s door. Sinking deeply with each step, she tried to steady herself. Each breath brought a renewed agony to her chest. The cold air stung her face and lungs. Around her hung dense clouds, so thick she could barely make out the area around the crash site. Beyond ten feet, the swirling mists hid everything. It looked like they’d crashed on some kind of rock ledge, with the plane’s nose tilted upward. It had slid to a stop beneath a slight overhang of stone, and a dead tree in front of the ledge had gone right through the cockpit.

  Teeth chattering, she reached Gordon’s door. It had torn off in the crash and lay nearby, dented and twisted. She reached him, already feeling the cold and wet seeping in through her boots.

  “Gordon?” she said quietly. Tentatively, she reached a shaking hand through the open door and touched his shoulder. He didn’t stir. Blood seeped from his left leg, soaking his jeans. The tree had struck him in the head and sliced up his right shoulder, smearing the ancient dead wood with red.

  She could smell methane seeping into the air, and it made her gag. She moved from one foot to the other, rubbing her arms. Her breath frosted in the air, and her nose had gone numb. Gordon wasn’t waking up. The sun would soon set, and temperatures would dip well below freezing. If she didn’t do something, they’d die of hypothermia. She had to make a shelter, build a fire. But she couldn’t risk an open flame here with the methane hissing out. She had to move him.

  Staring down at his leg, she saw that it was pinned between the seat and the crumpled cone of the plane. She reached down, finding the lever that controlled how far forward the seat rested. Pulling it, she slid the seat back, gaining enough room for his leg to ease out.

  Now she could see more of his wound. Something white and red glistened through a slice in his jeans. She leaned closer, seeing that it was his leg bone, splintered and exposed. Maybe it was good that he was unconscious right now. Dragging him out of the plane was going to be painful.

  She felt him over for other injuries, but didn’t find any. Hooking her hands under his arms, she carefully slid him toward the door. Then she lifted his injured leg and placed his left foot delicately in the snow, followed by his right one. When he was halfway out of the plane, his head slumped, but he still didn’t wake. She grabbed him under the arms again and dragged him out of the plane, looking for a snow-free place to set him down. To the left of the crash site, the overhang continued for about fifty feet. Directly underneath, the rock was void of snow, so she pulled him toward it. The outcrop would protect them from some of the wind, and she could build a fire there.

  Gordon wasn’t very heavy, but lugging him that far made every breath pure agony. She’d definitely cracked at least one of her ribs, she thought. The blood on her face had started to freeze, crusting over her cheek and ear.

  As she dragged him along, she thought of all the corpses she’d moved over the years. Now she hauled someone living, someone she was trying to save instead of incinerate. She had to make it to the protected area, had to find some way to keep them warm.

  The light began to fade, and the low, thick clouds dampened the sound around them. It was the purest silence she’d ever experienced.

  She stopped for a moment, aching for a lungful of air, and took a series of shallow breaths, nearly hyperventilating in her desire for oxygen. Then she dragged him the rest of the way and propped him up against a rock wall under the overhang. The wind wasn’t as bad here, she discovered with relief. Returning to the plane, she rifled through his bag and came away with a thick coat, mittens, a knitted hat, and an old blanket. She put all of these on him, then draped the blanket over him.

  Still he didn’t stir. She set off to find something to burn.

  Thankfully she didn’t have to go far for wood. They’d downed enough dead trees on their way. She walked to the plane, grabbing her tool bag with all the books, and assessed the tree that had pierced the windshield. Branches had broken off around the crumpled nose of the aircraft, so she gathered these first. But as soon as she lifted them, she felt the sogginess of the wood. They’d been sitting out in the snow for a long time, and fear stole over her as she realized she might not be able to start a fire at all. She looked around for anything else that would burn. Their clothes were synthetic, the plane metal. If she couldn’t get the wood to catch fire . . . She pushed the thought aside and gathered an armful of branches and small twigs, as well as her tool bag, bringing them all back to the overhang. Gordon was still unconscious.

  Thirst pulled at her. She drank the last of what she had left in her water bottle. She’d have to filter more later.

  Opening the survival guide, she read the steps to building a fire. She took the smallest twigs and ground them to powder, then sprinkled them on the smaller pieces of wood, forming a little interwoven piece that the book referred to as a bird’s-nest shape. Then she arranged the bigger branches into a pyramid, with an opening in the side. She pulled out her pocket torch and lit the bird nest. It caught, and in her excitement, she took too deep a breath and cried out in pain. Using two sticks, she transported the bird’s-nest into the hole in the wood pyramid. She blew gently on it.

  But it didn’t catch. When the tinder burned out, the wood hadn’t caught.

  She tried it again, but the same thing happened. The small pieces would catch, but not the sodden logs.

  Referring back to the book, she followed its suggestion to look for slanted trees that might not be wet on their undersides. She left the overhang, tromping through the deep snow. Her feet felt frozen inside her wet boots, and her hands had grown red and painful in the bitter cold.

  She crested a small ridge, below which stood a gathering of trees. Some of them had partially fallen, leaning against their neighbors. The book said to tear off bark from the underside, but these trees had lost theirs long ago. They now stood as white, sun-bleached skeletons, silhouetted against the fading western light.

  Taking out her multitool, she shaved off pieces of wood. They would make good tinder, but even on the underside, these trees were wet. Lifting her arms sent a searing pain throughout her ribs. She scraped off more and more wood from a few of the drier-looking trees, then headed back to the overhang.

  There she repeated the fire-building steps, creating the bird’s nest, transporting it to the new pyramid she’d built of shaved wood. But it just wouldn’t catch. Her fingers ached in the cold, so much so that she could barely curl them. Soon they felt useless.

  She leaned back against Gordon, tucking her hands under her arms in an effort to thaw them. As soon as some feeling returned, she tried again. But the wood was just too wet to catch
. She picked it up and shoved it as far under the overhang as she could. Maybe it would dry out. But she knew that in this cold, with no direct sun, the chance was remote.

  This just wasn’t going to work. She had to get help. They would die out here if she didn’t.

  Rowan. She had to reach Rowan.

  Pulling out her PRD, she used the code system he had installed. She knew he was so far away, had no idea how he’d be able to help. Maybe he knew people nearby. Another pilot, maybe.

  She typed out the message using their encryption method. “Rowan, I need your help. Plane crashed. Desperate situation. Lives in danger. Won’t make Rover rendezvous. All might be lost. At the following location.” She uploaded her coordinates and pressed send.

  To cover all her options, she also sent a message to Willoughby. She didn’t include her location in case Willoughby had been compromised, but she asked him to contact her.

  She huddled up next to Gordon and pulled up the new videos they’d found at the forested site. She clicked on the first entry. Raven’s familiar face smiled out at her, but he was older, probably in his late teens. A title glowed at the bottom of the display: Video Log—Carbon Sink Project 1.1.

  Raven wore a big grin on his face. “My parents and I are about to start tending to the carbon sinks—the forests of trees planted by Rovers two generations ago. The trees have grown to a pretty good height, I hear. We’re off to check on a forest that was planted on the eastern side of the country, southwest of New Atlantic. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and can’t wait to get there. After the forest was established, it was populated with a few species that went extinct in recent history—bears, deer, wolves, rabbits, and some birds like woodpeckers and robins. We’ve preserved DNA from these animals, so we have the ability to grow more. We call it de-extinction, a method of replacing species that are necessary for the survival of an ecosystem. I’ve never seen any of these animals in real life before. Supposedly they’re doing quite well in the forest. It’s going to be an amazing experience.” He reached out and shut off the recording.

  Just beyond the overhang, the snow continued to fall, big white flakes drifting down silently, accumulating quickly. The last of the cloud-filtered sunlight faded away, and darkness closed in around them. She shivered, then huddled in next to Gordon’s unconscious form and draped the blanket over both of them. Her ribs and cheek ached, and she couldn’t get comfortable. Just as well, she thought. If she fell asleep tonight, there was a good chance she’d never wake up. She had to be vigilant.

  She clicked on Raven’s next entry. His happy face beamed as the camera turned on. Text scrolled along the bottom of the display: Video Log—Carbon Sink Project 1.2.

  “We’re here! I can’t believe it,” he said, staring around. Behind him she could see a vast landscape of green. “I never imagined how beautiful a forest could be.” He held up the camera and revolved it, revealing a densely treed forest. It reminded her of the one she’d seen with Gordon, but these trees were much taller. She could hear the wind sighing in the pines and the caroling of a bird. “This is the forest outside of New Atlantic. I had no idea how amazing it would feel to be here. It’s like part of me was missing my whole life, a dull ache inside of me that I couldn’t explain. And as soon as I stepped into these trees, everything healed. It’s like I belong here, like I’ve always belonged here, but didn’t even know a place like this could exist.” His white teeth were brilliant against his darker skin.

  “My parents and I have been monitoring the animal population and checking on the health of the trees. My mom invented these remote monitoring stations that we can place high up. They record temperature, humidity, and take photos of any animals that walk by. They also record sound, so we can get an idea of what the bioacoustics of the forest are like, how the animals interact with each other, and the sounds they make. It’s a living, breathing, honest-to-goodness ecosystem here, something I never dreamed I’d see.”

  Once again he panned the camera around. H124 felt a little warmer as she watched images of a sun-warmed forest floor, golden beams filtering down through the branches. She could almost smell it. Raven reached out and ended the recording.

  Thirst stirred her to action. She’d read in the survival manual that eating snow would only dehydrate her more, so instead she packed her water bottle with snow and then tucked it under her jacket to melt.

  It worried her that Gordon hadn’t woken up yet. She had to do something about his leg, knew she had to set the bone, then pack his leg in snow. Now would be a good time while he was still out.

  She looked over at him, this brave man who had taken her, a complete stranger, on an outrageous quest of mammoth proportion. Without a med pod handy, she knew it was up to her to keep him alive. Using the survival guide, she assessed his wounded leg. The protruding bone told her it was an open fracture. The book said that in most cases, you should leave the bone sticking out, so the patient can later get help to correct it. But if no help was coming, and you didn’t have clean bandages or antibiotics to keep infection away, it was better to put the bone back in. That way the body acted as the bandage, and Gordon’s immune system would work as the antibiotics. She studied a diagram in the book, then moved into position to adjust his leg.

  Taking a series of shallow breaths, she placed her hands on the wound and strained, pressing the bone back inside his leg and aligning it as best she could. Luckily he remained unconscious. Then she gathered the sticks she’d found and tore up one of his spare shirts to tie the broken leg to his good one, as the book instructed. She wiped his blood off in the snow and wrapped the rest of his spare shirt around the wound. Then she checked for a pulse above and below the leg, making sure the splint or the shirt hadn’t cut off his circulation. She felt a beat in both places. Now she packed snow around the wound, hoping to bring down some of the swelling.

  She settled in next to him and replaced the blanket around them, pressing close so they could share body heat. The fire attempt had been hopeless, and the cold sank steadily into her body. She got up, jumped around, and slapped her arms, but was reluctant to leave Gordon for too long without her body heat to help keep him warm. She sat back down, leaning against him, rubbing his arms and chest. He murmured, stirring gently, but remained asleep. The bitter cold invaded her, but she didn’t shiver this time. She read in the survival guide that once you stopped shivering, hypothermia was setting in. She jumped again, jogged around the plane as much as her cracked rib would allow, and sat back down with Gordon.

  She couldn’t believe how cold it was. Her fingers, face, legs, feet—everything was either going numb or burned like fire. She tucked her hands under her arms again, which helped a little, then clomped her feet on the rock, trying to keep the circulation going. She rubbed Gordon’s arms and chest yet again, doing so periodically throughout the night. She felt frozen to her core. But she was still breathing, as was Gordon, and for that she was grateful. She forced herself to concentrate on something else, and took herself out of her body, out of this cold rock enclosure.

  She opened her tool bag, rifling through the research she’d saved from the university under New Atlantic: the shiny discs, the small metal devices that had a plug of some sort on one end. She thought of how far she’d come, all the way from her city; there was no way it was going to end like this. She thought of the night she’d spent lying next to Byron, thought of his warmth and how strange it felt to lie so close to someone like that. She thought of the incredible experience with Rowan in the old mine, of how his kisses had sent fire through her core. She started to feel a little warmer. She thought of his eyes, the way he looked at her, the way he smelled. Her heart rate sent a little more warmth spreading through her.

  She forced her shoulders to relax and stop cramping up with the cold, but it didn’t last long. Soon she was shivering again. Tomorrow she had to be strong and go farther afield in search of firewood. And then she’d figure out her
next course of action.

  Trying to stay awake, she decided to listen to another of Raven’s entries about the forests. If she could imagine herself in that warm place, with the sun on her back, maybe her body would stop shaking so violently. She clicked on the next entry. Text scrolled across the bottom of the display: Video Log—Carbon Sink Project 1.3.

  But instead of Raven’s usual beaming face, he was filthy and exhausted, covered with dirt and what looked like soot. Tears ran tracks down his ash-covered face. He swallowed, his hands shaking so much that the recording wavered. Behind him stretched a desolate, black, charred landscape.

  “They’ve come. We’re not sure how or why, but the PPC found out about this place. We didn’t think they’d care about it. We were naïve. They came in ships with these giant harvesters in the bottom. They took . . .” He swallowed again. “They took all the trees. Killed any animals they encountered. When they’d harvested everything, they torched the place. My parents . . .” His chin trembled. “My parents tried to stop them. They remotely jammed the ships’ controls, but somehow the PPC took over again and kept burning everything. My parents pleaded with them over the comm link. And then, before the PPC left . . .” Fresh tears streamed down his dirty face. “They burned my parents. They launched a stream of fire straight down onto them. I rushed forward, tried to help them . . .”

  He put down his PRD, and for several minutes she watched as the display shuddered, his legs kneeling on the burned earth, catching sounds of inconsolable wailing drifting away in the wind. At last he pulled up the PRD again, and she could see his swollen eyes. “I couldn’t put the fire out. My parents were screaming, and I couldn’t put the fire out. Then they just . . . fell over, crumpled and black, burning out . . .”