by Ellis, Tara
Except… Kacey might only be a fifth grader, but she could still feel it in her gut. The heavy, sick feeling that convinced her things were so much worse than her parents were letting on.
She heard them whispering the night before, when they thought she was asleep. While she only caught bits and pieces of the conversation, they were saying things like “extinction”, and how they might have to live in the cabin for years.
Years.
A faint light up ahead caught Kacey’s attention, and she focused on it, thankful the sun was finally rising. At least no matter what else happened, she could still rely on that, even if it was starting to look sorta weird from all the ash moving around way up above them. That was how her mom explained it the day before, when Paul first pointed out how orange it was starting to look.
Fifteen minutes later, as they crested the last rise before dropping down to a slow-moving river, the hazy globe broke loose over the shortest of the mountain peaks to the east. “Why do fish bite best early in the morning?” Kacey asked as they made their way down to the bank. It had a nice, mossy log for sitting on and the natural inlet located there created a perfect fishing hole for the trout that liked to hide there. “I mean, fish can’t even see the sun, right? So, you’d think it wouldn’t matter what time of the day it was.”
Paul chuckled and set the tacklebox down next to the log. “It’s the bugs that really dictate the best time,” he explained. “Some of them come out when the sun first rises and end up sitting on the water. That’s why the fish are around then, to feed on the bugs. We’re just taking advantage of the situation.”
Kacey had no idea if her brother was making it up, but the whole bug story sounded like it made sense. He often liked to tease her by getting her to believe things that turned out to be really stupid, but she decided to accept the theory for the time being.
Taking a bottle of stinky fish bait, Kacey wrinkled her nose at it. She didn’t even like the taste of fish, but doing something…anything, helped to ease a little bit of the anxiety that had been building up inside of her the whole week.
Paul held up a container of pink, glittery paste. “This is what they were going for the last time we were up here,” he said with confidence. “If we catch enough, I can fire up the old smoker in the garage and we can live off fish jerky for the whole winter.”
Kacey was in the middle of acting out violent vomiting, when an odd vibration in the ground made her freeze. “Did you feel that?”
Paul was staring back at her with a look of concern, his hands stuck out to either side for balance, like he was on the ride at the carnival with a moving floor. “Uh, yeah,” he muttered, looking up at the trees towering over them.
Kacey didn’t understand at first why he was interested in the trees, but then she noticed how quiet it had gotten. Except for the soft gurgling of the water flowing over the rocks, the rest of the woods had grown entirely still, and eerily silent.
“What’s happening?” Kacey whispered. Pushing off the log, she stood in a crouch, looking at the thick woods around them as she spoke. They were still pitch-black, and the light of the odd sun wouldn’t penetrate the canopy for several more minutes.
“I don’t know.” It was something her brother didn’t usually admit to, and it made Kacey’s stomach hurt suddenly.
“I want to go back,” she begged. A tangible fear made her breath come in gasps and her chest hurt as the tremble in the ground grew in intensity. Pine needles from the surrounding aspen began falling like rain, acting as physical proof that what they were feeling was real.
Paul snapped the tacklebox closed and grabbed one of Kacey’s hands. He began pulling her up the hill without a word, which only added to her increasing terror. Before they reached the top, there was a sharp banging sound, followed by a downward motion in the ground under them.
It was an incomprehensible sound to Kacey’s mind. All she could think of was that something heavy must have fallen, and then realized both she and Paul were laying down on the ground. Branches fell around them and another, new sound grew in intensity. A deep, resonating moan that might have been the howling of a giant creature burrowing its way up through the ground to reach them.
“Run!” Paul yelled while tugging at her hand and hauling her to her feet.
Kacey didn’t need any encouragement. Her mind spinning, she held tightly to her brother and allowed him to lead the way. She’d lost her cherished fishing pole but didn’t care. All Kacey could think about was getting away. Getting as far away as possible from the sound, except it was around them and she couldn’t tell which way they needed to run.
It was getting hot, and for some reason Paul had stopped. Kacey slammed into his back at the same time he tried to turn around. Grabbing onto her arms, he held her so tightly that it hurt. “Go back!” he screamed, sounding hysterical.
Kacey looked beyond him as he started pulling her backwards, and her mouth opened in a silent gasp. A huge crack had split the ground open, right across the trail they had just come down. An indescribable fiery glow coming from the crack made it all visible, including a big glob of burning goo oozing down the hill toward them. As Kacey watched, the first tree it touched burst into flames.
Burst.
“Paul!” she screamed, as he continued to drag her after him.
“Lava,” he growled, his voice hoarse and heavy with disbelief.
Kacey finally found her footing and moved along beside her brother, taking his hand again. She allowed his single word to sink in. How was that even possible? Looking back over her shoulder, she was relieved to see that it was at least moving very slowly. “I don’t understand.” Kacey nearly choked on the words, and she hadn’t realized she was sobbing.
They were back at the water, the contents of the tackle box scattered where the mossy log used to be. Kacey saw that part of the bank had crumbled into the water from the shaking of the earthquake, taking the log with it. She had a sudden, unreasonable sadness for the fish. They wouldn’t know what to do.
“It’s got to be a basalt eruption,” Paul was saying as he surveyed the edge of the river for a good place to enter. He’d always been fascinated with volcanos and earthquakes and had a huge rock collection any geek would be proud of.
“I don’t know what that is,” Kacey cried, shaking her head. She didn’t care what a basalt…or whatever he’d called it, was. She only wanted to get away from it.
“This isn’t possible,” Paul moaned, his head swiveling between the lava picking up speed as it moved down the hill behind them, and the other side of the river.
Kacey followed where he was looking, and could see a familiar glow partway up the mountain that rose from the other side. It helped form the ravine the river flowed through and was just as steep as the one they were on.
Was it more lava? The ground had stopped shaking, but her legs were weak from fear as Kacey tried to follow her brother into the water. It was all happening so fast that she hadn’t had time to think about what they were doing.
As the ice-cold water swirled around and up to her waist, Kacey’s mind cleared momentarily. They were trapped. No matter how crazy and impossible it seemed, it was happening. They were trapped by the melting ground oozing from the crack, and it was now setting the woods on fire around them.
Smoke burned Kacey’s nose and filled her lungs, making it both hard to breathe and see where she was going. Not that she needed to see. Paul had a firm grip on her hand and although her feet were hardly touching the slick rocks under the water, he was tirelessly pulling her along behind him.
Kacey’s vision blurred and she was losing the strength to cough and clear the water from her mouth. The world was on fire, reflected off the surface of the river flowing around them. It became hard to tell where the water ended and the fire began.
Kacey thought of her parents and felt a sharp pang of remorse that she wouldn’t get to tell them goodbye. Her mom would be so sad…
I really thought we were going to be
okay.
As Paul’s fingers slipped from between hers, Kacey closed her eyes and let the water take her.
Erased from history, and carried into the mass extinction of mankind.
Chapter 12
PETA
Lassen National Forest, Northern California
Madeline Schaefer’s House
Peta sat at Mads’ desk with a steaming mug of hot coffee, staring at the open laptop. She hadn’t had a decent cup of coffee for over a week, and after running the cup and pot through the sanitizing cycle on the dishwasher twice, couldn’t resist it.
The first hint of morning warmed the dark skies outside the glass patio doors, reminding her that time was rapidly slipping by. A gas mask sat next to the computer, a present from Devon. He’d given it to her the night before, after discovering it in what he was calling Mads “bug-out trailer”. Peta had worn it as she collected the items from the bedroom and while going on a nearly frantic cleaning spree.
According to the printout from the CDC, a strong solution of bleach would successfully kill any prions left behind on the things Mads had touched. Peta’s eyes still stung from the strong chemical smell, even though it had been six hours since she’d finished scrubbing every surface with a paranoid vigor.
She felt like a prowler, and couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doing something morally wrong by not trying to help the poor woman. But from everything she’d read, Peta knew there wasn’t anything she could do. Madeline was barely breathing, was in a comatose state, and unable to swallow water. Peta ultimately decided that covering her with a clean blanket and closing the door was the best option, especially since she didn’t know if the respirator actually protected her from the prions that had to be flourishing on the bed.
“Any luck?”
Peta jumped at the sound of Devon’s voice, almost spilling the coffee. He’d managed to open the patio door and step inside without her being aware of it, a clear indication that the couple of hours of restless sleep on the couch wasn’t enough. He was wearing an identical mask to the one on the desk. Even through the fogged plastic, she could tell he was stressed and probably had a worse night’s sleep on the patio furniture than she did on the hard couch.
Wiping sleepily at her gummy eyes, Peta tried not to look annoyed as she shook her head in response. “I’ve got everything working, but my calls aren’t going through to either my mom’s house or the NOAA lab in Australia.”
She knew it was a calculated risk to make the calls. Although everything was so unsettled, Peta had no idea how much reach ICONS still had. They could be watching and tracing any calls to her parents or former employer. At least, she thought they could. No one in their group had the proper technology background to make an educated guess about it.
“Are you sure you don’t want to call your sister?” she asked. “There’s a much better chance of getting through, since she’s in the same state as us.”
Devon was the only other member of their group who had close family he wanted to call, but his sister had two small children, so he’d decided not to risk it. “The last thing I want to do is make things harder for them by dragging her into this mess,” he said after a moment of consideration. “I can’t do that to her.”
Peta, on the other hand, knew her mother would be furious if she used that as a reason not to call. Her mom was the type of woman who would happily accept the danger, and not being able to get through was enough to threaten Peta’s resolve earlier to keep pushing on. But that all changed a few hours into her search of the house, after she’d started digging into Mads’ documents. The ones she’d put together before falling into what appeared to be a coma.
Staring at those papers stacked on the other side of the laptop, Peta had to concentrate on controlling her breathing. Every time she thought about what it all meant, a crippling panic began to build and literally robbed her of the ability to think constructively. And it was critical that she be rational. She had to be smart and rational, and behave like the scientist Henry taught her to be.
“Peta?”
She looked up at Devon, and realized she’d spaced off again.
“Are you okay? Do you have a headache?” he asked.
“Sorry. No, I’m fine. I’m just tired. The email I sent to John at the USGS bounced back. I don’t have his personal email, but Devon—” Rubbing at her forehead, Peta took a shuddering breath. “I honestly don’t know who’s left to notify.”
Devon walked further into the room and crossed his arms, looking very dystopian in his gas mask and dirty, khaki shorts. “What does that mean?”
Peta turned the laptop around and revealed the article that was pulled up from the New York Times. The headline read: Martial law Declared as Disease and Panic Spread Amid Imminent Infrastructure Collapse.
“I’ll save you the effort and paraphrase it for you,” Peta said with little emotion. “In the eight days since the MOHO eruption, and only five days since the prions were first acknowledged by the CDC, we’re officially in a worldwide crisis. The ash has shut down all international travel and most intercontinental travel, effectively cutting us all off from everyone outside of our own states or local vicinity. When you throw in all of the communication outages, it only escalates that effect. I think it’s becoming more difficult to ascertain how much of that is due to satellite failure and upper-atmosphere involvement, power outages and structural damage, or the growing impact of having so many people sick and dying. It’s gotten to the point where there aren’t enough people left to run the critical utilities or repair them.”
“Wait,” Devon interrupted, holding up a hand. “How is that possible? How can that many people be sick already?”
“You saw what it was like in Reno.” Peta was trying not to be too harsh, but there was no sugarcoating it. “It’s on a whole other scale in the bigger cities, and getting exponentially worse, literally, by the hour. Listen,” she huffed, slapping the lid down on the computer. “While you guys were asleep I’ve done a lot of digging into the information Mads had access to, that isn’t public, and I’m telling you that this thing is spreading faster than any disease ever known. I think—”
Devon remained silent as he stood staring at Peta while she fought to regain her composure. He’d worked with her long enough to understand what it took to shake her. As he watched her struggle with her breathing while nervously wringing her hands together, he correctly interpreted what it meant. “We’re all dead already,” he whispered.
Hernandez stepped into the room behind Devon, just in time to hear the comment, and turned an inquisitive expression on Peta. He wasn’t wearing a mask, which didn’t surprise her. She suspected he didn’t much care about his own survival and hadn’t since the time they’d been adrift in the ocean.
The sky was growing more visible by the minute, creating an inappropriate background of beauty behind the two men. Peta was drawn to it, and found it hard to look away. It would be so much easier to just sit there and wait. To simply allow things to unfold and wipe her hands of it all. But that would mean giving up on the hope that her mom was still alive. To accept that her friends at the NOAA lab in Australia were gone, along with all of her other colleagues spread around the world from over the years. More than anything else, Peta was a scientist. Her job did define who she was, and to turn her back on the knowledge she had somehow become the keeper of, would be a travesty greater than she was willing to burden her soul with.
“Martial law has been declared,” she said to Hernandez, knowing that simple statement would clarify a lot for him without much explanation. “Bill was right. This was all the perfect storm and the prion disease is now the greatest threat out there. I’m going to have to resort to using some of Mads’ existing contacts in her laptop with Universities and organizations, in order to send our ICONS information out. Except honestly, I’m not sure that’s what matters anymore.”
Hernandez shrugged. “So, you do what you can and then we can stay here. Ride this out. That woman m
ight have been crazy, but she’s seriously stocked for the long-haul. We could make this work.”
Peta picked at a piece of tape stuck to the edge of the desk and her brows drew together in consternation as she tried to choose her words carefully. “I agree that would be the best thing for you guys to do. I’ll stay too, if I can get hold of the right people. Otherwise, I’ll take the jeep and head south. It’ll be a long shot, but I have to try. I don’t have a choice.”
“You just said it doesn’t matter.” Devon sounded angry, and Peta looked up to find him glaring at her. “If ICONS doesn’t exist anymore to the capacity that we need to worry about them, I don’t understand why you’ve suddenly developed a savior complex. It doesn’t sound like there’s anyone left to impress, and whatever sins you’ve been trying to atone for since before I met you won’t be erased by you needlessly risking your life.”
Peta flinched at the harsh evaluation of her character, but she realized the anger stemmed from Devon’s reaction to her saying she was willing to leave them behind. His accurate assessment of her crippling guilt over events from her past drove home how close they’d become, and the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him.
Sitting up straight and meeting his gaze, she pushed the papers up next to the laptop. “This isn’t about ICONS anymore.” When neither Devon or Hernandez made a move toward the desk, Peta stood and lifted the documents up. Most of them were sheets of handwritten papers torn from different notebooks. “Over the past couple of days, Madeline understood that, too. It’s why she was bugging out, guys. Except, she got sick. She unintentionally exposed herself which led to an even bigger discovery. She made sure to leave the proof here, for someone to find. Whether it was meant for me doesn’t matter, but I think that in some way it was.”
