Tribulation

by Kaz Morran

  The edges of the trench crumbled underfoot; the floor uneven, slimy, and boulder-strewn. The rock heap, about two or three spear lengths to the left, shielded them from the croc but also trapped the bad air. There were gaps up ahead, though; spots where an intruder could get in without having to climb.

  Nel showed Taiyo her phone. Oxygen had dropped to 10.2 percent, and CO2 had jumped from 7.7 on top of the rock heap to 1.3 down in the trench. Methane stood at 1.9 percent and rising.

  If not for the masks, hydrogen sulfide, which had reached ten parts per million, would’ve surpassed the rotten egg stench and deadened their sense of smell; and corroded their eyes, noses, and throats, and triggered respiratory paralysis.

  They kept moving. Even ankle-high rocks felt like barriers, so draining was the air. But despite the 37-degree heat and 88 percent humidity, Taiyo rolled down his sleeves and zipped his suit to the neck.

  At three meters from the wall, oxygen had dropped to 6 percent—lethal levels—and every other bar on the screen grew farther in the wrong direction.

  They shared a look beneath the halo of Taiyo’s headlamp: Keep going?

  There was no other choice.

  Hands tucked into his sleeves, Taiyo poked with the spear at the rubble and snotsicles until a plume of stinging yellow fog crossed the light beam and made him duck out of the way. A few steps from the wall, the air was pushing forty Celsius, but at a spear’s length from the jumble of rocks that lined the bank of the steam, the phone read twenty degrees hotter.

  Further along, gypsum glitter mixed with the slimy wall and rocks, and he could feel the toxins prickling his sweaty arms through his sleeves.

  A few more steps ahead, they kicked away brick-size rocks, then crouched down and hand-fanned the steam to glimpse the water. Taiyo took off the headlamp and aimed it at the gap between the wall and the bank. The rock there looked freshly exposed—no slime. The earthquake had lifted the entire wall off the Asylum floor, tearing open a meter-high gape and turning the little brook into a small river.

  Kneeling, Nel and Taiyo peered under the wall, but the masks fogged up every time they got too close. The heat kept Nel from holding her arm in long, but she managed a few photos.

  Examining the pics at a distance from the wall, they spotted something weird in one image. Something blood red. Zoomed in on, it appeared as some kind of flaming golf ball-size hairball holding its position against the current. A follow-up video confirmed, despite hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide levels reaching six times the lethal dose for humans, something was inhabiting the stream. Lots of somethings. They counted at least nine tangles of stringy red worms writhing in the noxious water.

  Taiyo typed out and showed Nel a suggested name for their discovery: FSMs, after the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Nel, apparently familiar with Pastafarian lore, showed agreement with a thumb up and “Ramen.”

  The creatures were probably red from hemoglobin, which explained how they could live in hydrogen sulfide.

  A review of the video turned up something else in the stream: a dead, but otherwise ordinary, frog. The three AsCans watched in slow motion as the frog floated belly-up downstream until an FSM reached out with its noodly appendage and devoured it. The FSMs were carnivorous.

  As fascinating to science as the FSMs might be, Nel and Taiyo’s immediate needs—namely not dying of air poisoning—took precedent over describing a new species; the presence of an ordinary frog implied the stream linked to the ordinary world outside of the Asylum.

  Closer to the northwest corner, the steam and extreme temperature eased, but only slightly. An updraft swept across Taiyo’s neck, sending chills. It came from the gap between the wall and stream, which was taller and broader there. A section of a subterranean river was exposed, but even with the headlamp, Taiyo struggled to gauge its extent beneath the overhang.

  Nel cupped her ear to tell him to listen. He heard water pouring down from the surface and feeding the stream. A path to the surface! His heart raced.

  Nel must have sensed his excitement, because she quashed it: she held the tip of her aluminum spear in the water a few seconds then pulled it out and touched it to the back of his hand. The initial contact not quite burned, but certainly made her point that water was too hot to wade into. The chemical after-sting made sure there was no doubt. He had another look at the water. No FSMs. They must have preferred the even hotter and more sulfurically hellish life farther downstream.

  So there’d be no escaping along the route of the river, but a drier passage might have cracked open in the surrounding rock. Taiyo clambered over the rubble in the corner for a better look. Running the light as far up the wall as it would reach, he saw there were cracks and splits throughout the wall. He scanned back and forth, up and down, mentally dividing the area into a grid. The gaps were fragmented and falling in. So far, he only saw cracks too narrow or crumbled to be a path out. There had to be a section wide enough and deep enough. He scanned again. And again. And again … until he fell to his knees, wanting but unable to cry. Just as the Zeel map had found, not a single spot opened wider than fifteen centimeters.

  Climbing back down, he shook his head to tell Nel the bad news. But he wasn’t surprised or discouraged. He’d already known he’d have to make his own way out.

  On one knee, he took a minute to real in his spinning head, then he got to his feet with the help of the spear. One boot forward, then another—

  Nel put a hand on his back to get his attention and then held her phone down for him to see the battery life: 3 percent. He shut off his own to save the last 1 percent. He hoped that would be enough.

  He gestured for her to follow him downstream. She grabbed him by the elbow and held up an open hand. She typed him a message:

  CH4 not ready yet. better to wait here--cooler

  She knew his plan. Back downstream, methane may or may not have already topped 5 percent. If not, they’d have to hang out in that hellishness atmosphere, cooked gnawed at and by clouds of acidic steam.

  He checked his levels: 23 minutes left in the tank. 23 minutes of life. And yet, the enormity and imminence of the situation felt abstract, like news of distant atrocities, that, while horrific, didn’t actually affect him.

  He nodded at Nel. They could afford to wait another five or so minutes.

  Crouched there, panning the water with the headlamp, awestruck by nature and numbed by the circus borne by his mind and body, he wished they’d had the battery life to better document the flying spaghetti monsters. The FSMs were a big discovery—as would be the remains of would-be astronauts, either asphyxiated or, if his plan went sideways, splattered across the walls and ceiling of a cave like fireworks in a hamster cage.

  Better to just focus on getting out alive.

  A flash startled him. A red light was blinking on his wrist. But how? Already? What happened to 23 minutes?

  He reached out for Nel’s. Same. He spun her around and checked the gauge on the backpack, and she checked his: less than two minutes of air left in each of their tanks.

  Not good.

  The solenoid in the rebreather was probably shot. In both of their rebreathers? The scrubbers had been pummeled in the earthquake, the hoses were riddled with leaks, and both the O2 controller and battery had been running off the backup. He shouldn’t have been shocked.

  But both of their tanks at once? It didn’t matter. Curiosity was a virtue and all, but using up the last of his air standing around thinking I wonder why? would be a pretty dumb way to die.

  He lifted the mask. “Now or never,” he said.

  He pulled the mask back down right away, but in those few seconds of exposure, the air singed his lips and nostrils and filled his throat with what felt like shattered glass. His head spun. To keep from passing out, he reached out for the wall. The skin and hair on his forearm sizzled. He could feel his blood, rushing through him like it wanted to escape, pumping against the walls of his arteries.

  Nothing to hold. He leaned on the spear. Grab
bed his forehead. Fuck, it hurt.

  He had to focus. They needed air. Breathable air. They’d be dead in a minute without it.

  They checked Nel’s phone. 8.9 percent O2; 2.2 percent CO2; 4.3 percent CH4. He couldn’t make sense of the numbers. His brain wouldn’t work. Except one. One number struck him as more important than the others.

  Methane.

  “Four-point-three,” he mumbled inside his mask. “Christ that’s high.” The words sounded distant. It hurt to speak. But he knew they wanted methane to go up, not down. Did they? That didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t he supposed to climb the rock heap up out of the trench? The air was better over there, so …

  It’s part of the plan, he remembered. What plan?

  Air first. Need clean air.

  No. … Have to get downstream. Into the worst of it. Hurry.

  They shuffled along, dodging jagged boulders and thick swaths of slimy ground, moving faster than was safe, eyes on their feet, light beam bouncing.

  He grabbed Nel’s arm, signaled to stop. He’d heard something. Tumbling rocks. Somewhere upstream. Behind them. Back toward the corner.

  They stepped out into the center of the trench and stared down the corridor into the darkness they’d just come from.

  The headlamp revealed nothing. He tried to listen. His pulse was too loud.

  No time.

  A few more steps and he heard it again. He turned around, lifted the mask. “Ronin? That you?” The exertion stole his balance. It took all his focus not to spiral into collapse.

  Mask down, he inhaled and choked on wet, metallic air. The tank had depleted. Sucking the residual air, he followed Nel’s lead in hastening together a series of rock piles; hardly inuksuit, but they worked to balance their spears across—an alarm roughly spanning the breadth of the trench.

  Taiyo aimed the headlamp at their next steps, downstream, away from the sound. He felt his heart beat faster. He began to draw a stickman on his hand as he moved but stopped. Think. Act. That’s what’ll save you. He rubbed his palm on his leg as if scraping off what he’d drawn, then reached back for Nel’s hand. Swiftly but cautiously, they moved deeper into the hellish core of the deadly heat and air.

  He couldn’t steady his breathing behind the mask; he’d taken in too much of his own CO2. Nel was gasping beside him. He paused at a stair-like drop, shone the light ahead, then behind them.

  “Hello?” he called through the mask. His voice vibrated off the plastic visor, adding to the thrumming in his skull.

  Roiling steam flittered across the light cone. Gravel felt embedded in his chest, stabbing his insides each time he inhaled.

  Each step further downstream was an operation, a confrontation with himself and the cave. Without a concentrated effort, his feet would not rise and fall, and for stretches, he had to push his knees with his hands to bridge the next twenty centimeters.

  Bubbling water and hidden drips echoed inside the carved out chamber behind the wall, and the acidic mist needled every bit of skin not sealed in the mask.

  They should’ve been going the other way—upstream—away from the source of toxins. But again, from upstream, he heard the sound of loose rocks. It was following them. Stalking its prey.

  He kept moving. Each step like plowing through a tsunami; waves powered by no less than the mass of the sea and heft of the planet’s splitting crust.

  Something touched his arm. He spun and landed on his rear.

  “You all right?” came Nel’s stifled voice. In his mental fog, he’d forgotten he had company. Had the tumbling rocks been Nel all along? He didn’t think so. Adjusting the headlamp, he saw her standing over him. He nodded, and she helped him to his feet and lifted his mask.

  “Breathe in,” she said. “It’ll hurt, but you have to.”

  He did, and she was right. It hurt. But as scant as the oxygen in the air was, the rebreather had less.

  “What’s your plan?” he said between breaths that felt deep but were shallow.

  She gave him a panicked look. He was supposed to know what to do. Had he even told her about his plan? He shouldn’t have been hesitating. Fuck. His brain wouldn’t work. Broken. But something wanted out, he could feel it, as if the last two neurons of an idea were locked in a mating dance, circling each other, neither wanting to be the first to initiate the synapse.

  How unsettling, being forced to witness the disintegration of his own cognitive ability, like developing dementia over the span of a coffee break.

  “Taiyo?” Nel had him by the shoulders.

  She was going to say goodbye.

  He pulled away and showed him her phone. Oxygen had sunk below 7 percent. He couldn’t focus enough to see the methane reading or the life of the battery.

  He dropped to his knees, the atmosphere crushing his head from all angles, swallowing his thoughts. He threw off his mask and ground his fists into his eye sockets. A voice inside told not to—it wasn’t helpful; a waste of his precious last morsels of energy, air, time … He should think. Focus. Stand up. Act! Do something! Anything. But his body would obey no other command.

  The light focused and then dimmed as he lowered his forehead to the ground. His world pulsed gray, coaxing him toward sleep. Only the would the pain in his head and chest go away.

  Just a power nap, he told himself. It might help.

  He keeled onto an elbow, noting the pain of the sharp rocks but not feeling it.

  Nel’s hand stroked his back—not to stop his descent, but as the compassionate reaper. Her words caressed his ear: undecipherable, but full of meaning. She was helping him die.

  That shouldn’t be. How could she be so weak? How could he?

  Her embrace was a needle plunged through his chest; an elixir for either euthanasia or resuscitation. His heart could decide. It bore into his lungs a compulsion to feed his brain, into his spine an impulse to hold his head up high, and into his eyes—though they could not see what lay ahead—a command to stare boldly into the darkness.

  She smacked him hard in the back of the head and knocked that last stray synapse into line. He lifted his chin, saw her face, and remembered what he had to do.

  “You heard it, too?” she whispered.

  She thought a noise had jolted him back to life.

  “What?” he said.

  “The alarm.”

  The spears had fallen off their perch.

  43

  Life is a candle before the wind.

  —Japanese proverb

  Ethan clenched his gut in time with the dips and rises in altitude. Risking nausea, he stole a look out the window. The other helicopter appeared as a spec, only standing out against the roiling sea of angry clouds when a gust tried to toss it from the sky. Again and again, the wind shear blasted the second helicopter, and a second later, the same wave had its way with the copter carrying Ethan, Machesney, Henry, and Wumba.

  Ethan had crammed a quick bite into his belly before takeoff. Flying into the tail of the cyclone had ensured he donated a portion to the floor, window, and pilot Machesney’s seatback.

  While the storm raged on inside Ethan and out the window, he came to understand why the rescue workers in Cooktown had fought so hard against letting anyone fly. It’d taken Ethan heaps of begging and apologizing to his ex-missus before she finally gave her cohorts the order. Nice, though, Ethan supposed, that he’d found an excuse to talk to her.

  The blur of green beneath the jostling copter slowed, and Ethan began to make out the forest canopy and individual trees. He watched the terrain fold and roll over itself. Down a snaky crease in the hills, a creek poked in and out of the forest cover. Machesney wrestled the wind to keep the aircraft in line with the water, more or less following its course upstream.

  They came up over the lip of the valley, and Ethan’s mouth fell open at the scale of devastation. The mudpack had consumed the whole mountain. The crest of boulders and forest that had been up behind the hab was simply gone. It had crumbled and slid down the slope, burying any e
vidence of an opening into the lava tubes and reducing the hab and helicopters to a pinch of white sprinkles among an expanse of red mud, boulders, and uprooted trees.

  The gyrating lessened as they approached the ground.

  “Okay, folks,” Machesney called over the headset, “Holding at forty feet.”

  Ethan, Wumba, and Henry unbuckled and rubber-legged it to the rear. They each took a side of the crate and held the straps for balance.

  “Ready,” Wumba radioed to Machesney.

  “Ready,” radioed Henry.

  “Ready,” radioed Ethan.

  The rear door lowered. The wind was nowhere as strong as what had battered the ute on the Mulligan Highway.

  Machesney gave the all-clear.

  They unlatched the straps in synch and in order, just as they’d rehearsed back at the hangar in Cooktown. Sure enough, when they let go, the crate slid right off the rails and out the back.

  Ethan gripped the wall handle and peered out at the ground. The payload had already hit—a white fridge-size crate sticking up out of the muck. The other copter dropped its cargo a minute later, and then Machesney moved the aircraft forward, and they let the second crate go.

  They completed four runs in all—returning to Cooktown to fuel up and reload between drops. They delivered drilling and digging equipment, pumps and filters, generators and fuel, medical equipment and lights, tents and cots, and heaps and heaps of shovels.

  On the fifth run, they were carrying pallets of food and water for the crews on their way. The sky started to clear as they approached. Patches of sunlight were even coming through the clouds now. Perfect timing, since this time they’d be putting their boots on the ground. Ethan couldn’t imagine how much harder the operation would be in the rain.

  “Don’t drink ‘em all already, old man,” Wumba told his partner.

  Henry reached back and plucked another juice box from the pack.

  “Go on and have one, mate,” Ethan said through the headset. “We got a week’s worth.”

  “Not at the rate Henry drinks ‘em,” Wumba said. “And you can bet we’ll be camped down there longer than a week.”