Tribulation
Page 52
Taiyo uncurled his body from around the snout. His foot was still caught. Stretching out his whole body, fighting his convulsions by tensing, he extended his arm with so much strain he heard the tissue tearing even as he pushed further. Battery pinched in his fingers, teeth clenched, the back of his blistered hand scraped along the ground as he stretched in agony until his knuckles singed on the rocks and he bent his wrist and lifted the battery, edged it up into place on top of a fist-sized stone and released it.
Right away, he smelled the battery melting.
He curled in on the croc and sheltered in the nook of its bleeding neck and shoulder. Powered only by the instinct for self-preservation, without a breath left, he pressed his fists to his ears and buried his face in the dying monster.
A plume of flames whooshed overhead. His back seared. The smell of the crocodile’s burning skin wafted over him. He dared look up: A fireball. … Rising, growing, consuming the air and its toxins. He put his hands over the back of his neck and every muscle felt contracted. Space and time swirled and warped. The atmosphere heaved, swelling into a catastrophic shockwave that burst through the ceiling and showered the floor of the Asylum with rocks, mud, and fragments of trees; and flooding Taiyo’s lungs with fresh Earthly air and his eyes with the brilliant Sunlit sky.
45
Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Taiyo woke to the sound of sneakers on a glossed floor. He tried to open his eyes. Anything stronger than a sliver of light hurt.
“He’s awake! He’s awake,” his frazzled mother jabbered in Japanese. “Tai’s awake …”
“Can you see?” he heard his dad say. “Taiyo? Can you hear me?”
He nodded, slowly.
Their voices sounded underwater and made his ears throb. Moving hurt. Everything hurt. Even the sensation of the back of his head shifting against the pillow. The crisp neckline of the hospital gown felt like a ring of scales and teeth, and he began to wonder how many people had died in the same linens now stroking his skin. He brought one hand across his stomach to touch his other arm. His own skin felt clammy like wet rubber, like Anton’s skin had felt.
Taiyo had once heard someone say the reason for Time was because otherwise everything would happen all at once, and life would be unbearable. That’s how he felt now, like Time didn’t exist and he was remembering everything that had happened in the cave all at once. He pressed his face into his father’s shoulder, wanting to cry and be held as if he was a child, but no tears came, only his own hot breath blowing back into his face.
“Take your time,” Dad told him, and he helped him with some sunglasses. “The doctor said your eyes will need time.”
It was hard to think, but a woman with an Australian accent—a nurse, Taiyo guessed—came over and said the fogginess was probably more from the medication than from head trauma, though they couldn’t rule out CTE.
He saw an IV dripping into his arm. He looked like a mummy, there were so many bandages. He had two fractured bones in his foot, they said. The ankle was only bruised. He had a lot of bruises. Burns, cuts, scrapes.
Taiyo felt his dad’s hand stroking the fuzz of hair on his head. Dad’s touch, though gentle, hurt in spots, but Taiyo didn’t mind. His parents must have come from Japan to be with him. He turned his head over on the pillow, straining the muscles in his neck, to face Dad.
Taiyo took off the sunglasses, blinked several times, and looked at his father until he could focus on his eyes. Then, through tattered lungs and vocal cords, he told Dad, “I can’t believe it worked.”
“Shhh …” His mother told him not to speak.
“What worked?” said Dad.
Taiyo almost smiled. “The controlled explosion.”
“Controlled?” said his mom, her tone rising incredulously.
“Never mind,” Taiyo said. She didn’t get his humor.
There were other people in the room now. A doctor and a nurse. They stood against the curtain without saying anything, probably waiting for the family to have their moment.
“You need a bath.”
She was right. He stunk of charred flesh and body odor, but not of sulfur or methane—those had burned off.
He asked about his crewmates. “I know about Walter and Anton,” he said. “And Kristen,” he added as he remembered.
“But the others. Nel and Ronin. Are they … ?”
Dad nodded. “A large Japanese man—”
“That’s Ronin. Yes.”
“He’s so rude,” Taiyo’s mother chirped from the bedside.
“But another man …” said his dad.
“Anton. I know. The medic. He’s gone.” He closed his eyes and drew in a breath, letting it out slowly before asking again about Nel. “The Canadian woman. Nel Oonarq. Is she here?”
“Oh, she’s so sweet,” said his mother. “I’m so glad she didn’t die.”
So was Taiyo.
His dad explained that like Taiyo, Nel had been badly burned. Between the three survivors, they had quite the suite of injuries, but aside from some battle scars, they’d recover. Dad liked to call scars souvenirs, but not this time. The situation was too grave.
Taiyo had been the last to regain consciousness. “You guys are lucky,” his mother said, as she squeezed Taiyo’s hand through the bandages on his knuckles. “It could have been worse.”
Taiyo didn’t comment. He certainly didn’t feel lucky, not with half of the AsCans dead. He thought about that. … Dead. Lights out. Silence. Entropy wins. He knew he’d be haunted for the rest of his life.
The embers of his torture had, however, conceded one phoenix. He felt guilty for almost smiling, but he needed to talk—to think—about something other than death and tragedy. “Dad?”
“Right here, buddy.” He squeezed Taiyo’s other hand.
“I found a way.”
“You found a way out. Yes. You’re going to be okay.”
He started to shake his head, but the pain stopped him. “Not that,” he said. “I found a way to get to the Oort Cloud. To five-fifty AU.” He knew his parents wouldn’t understand, but he had to say it anyway, as if hearing it come from his own voice confirmed it hadn’t been a hallucination. “I know how to shorten the travel time without any leaps in technology or engineering. The Oort Cloud. Imagine. Not centuries or decades, but years to reach—”
“Please, Tai,” Dad interrupted. “Not now.”
“Not now, what? Why not?”
“What’s important is you’re safe now.” And he repeated, “You were lucky.”
Taiyo frowned. Luck had hardly played a role. Luck and natural ability were what skill looked like to someone who hadn’t witnessed the prep and training. It was Dad who’d taught him that. “It wasn’t luck,” Taiyo said. They’d fought damn hard. They’d earned their survival.
His mother said, “Well, you were luckier than the poor people in that helicopter.”
“Not now,” his dad told her, his voice firm. “Give him some time.”
“What?” said Taiyo. “What helicopter? What happened?”
“Later, okay, buddy?”
“Please. I want to know.”
His parents looked at each other. Dad looked at the floor. He dialed his ring around his finger while he said, “It’s just one of those random flukes of timing. You can’t think too deeply about it.”
Taiyo sat up on his elbows, ignoring the tug of the IV and his mother’s insistence that he lie down. “Just say it, Dad. What fluke of timing? What?”
Dad closed his eyes for a moment before refocusing on Taiyo. “They sent in two rescue helicopters.”
“Okay.” He didn’t remember being airlifted, but that made sense. “And … ?”
“They were just coming down to land …”
“And?”
“And the cave exploded.” Dad looked away.
Taiyo swallowed hard. “And?”
The word hurt to say, but not as much as the answer.
“And one of them didn’t make it.”
“It crashed?” He knew, but he had to hear it.
Dad wiped his eyes on his collar and lowered his head, unable to retain eye contact. “They think something hit the rotor.”
“Rocks from the cave explosion.”
“They didn’t say.”
“People died?”
Dad was barely able to nod a reply.
“Five,” said Taiyo’s mother.
“Jesus.” Taiyo fell back onto the pillow.
“Two NASA contractors,” Dad said. “The pilot. Two rescue workers. Two aborigine bush guides.”
Several minutes passed, each heavier on Taiyo’s chest than any moment in the cave. He tried not to fit the deaths of three astronaut candidates and the helicopter crew into context. It didn't help, nor make sense to compare numbers—though he couldn't keep his mind from thinking about the toll such a quake and cyclone must've taken on nearby communities.
A hard lump ached in the back of Taiyo’s throat. It took several tries to swallow it before asking, “How bad was the quake?”
The doctor and nurse stirred in the background. Taiyo had forgotten they were there.
“Pretty bad, buddy.”
“How bad?”
Dad looked over at his mother. She shook her head, unwilling to give Taiyo more bad news.
“Cape Tribulation was in the middle of one the strongest cyclones on record when the object hit,” said Dad. “The timing—”
“Object?” Taiyo’s eyes bugged and then retracted into a squint as he scrutinized his father. “What are you talking about?”
“An impactor. They don’t know much right now.”
“An asteroid? Holy shit. Like the one in Namibia. And Mongolia and Iran.”
“Not like those.”
“Right. Those didn’t trigger earthquakes. Jesus.”
“You’re lucky,” his mother repeated. “That volcano you were in started erupting yesterday.”
“Tai,” said Dad. His eyes looked intense. He had a hand on Taiyo’s forearm and was shaking. “The impactor came from the Oort Cloud.”
“A comet, then.”
“Maybe.”
“How big?”
“Small.”
“But then why … ?”
“They’re saying it’s the speed of the thing that did the damage, not the size.”
“It didn’t air burst? So there’s a crater. Where? Not Cairns?”
“No crater.”
“But … ?”
“A tsunami,” said Dad. “Cairns got it worst, but it’s the whole coast, really.” A long pause followed before Dad explained: “Tai, they think it came from that rogue planet thing.”
“Tabaldak?”
Dad nodded.
“But it’s too far away for its gravity to—”
“They’re saying nothing natural could’ve got here that fast.”
“Nothing natural.”
Another nurse came through the curtain and interrupted. “Mr. Yamazaki, you have a visitor.” Head down, she read the business card in her hand. “A Mister Sekihara. He says he’s a detective from Japan.”
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About the Author
Kaz Morran is the author of the indie sci-fi/thriller Tribulation and the 550AU series. A native of British Columbia, Canada, he has lived in Sendai, Japan since 2006 where, despite being wholly unqualified, he teaches English at a university and at some of Japan’s biggest companies. He’s travelled to 20+ countries (14 in Asia), including a year in Australia.
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To the Oort Cloud …