Before the Witches

by Karina Cooper

  No. Not in a million years. It wasn’t witchcraft or voodoo or whatever occult nonsense people spewed that caused this sort of chaos. It was science. Pure and simple.

  The earth hiccupped.

  Volcanoes blew.

  This was life.

  But he couldn’t lock out the sound of her voice as she’d asked fearfully about God.

  No God would ever allow this.

  Not to thousands, even millions of Seattle civilians. Innocents. Not to babies like Junie.

  Like Maylene.

  His knuckles popped around the steering wheel. For the hundredth time, he replayed his daughter’s words in his head. Love you, too.

  She’d said it. Without prompting. Without wheedling. Maylene had told him that she loved him and then Laura had taken her away. Held her hostage because of some stupid point she wanted to make against him.

  But maybe it was for the best. His daughter was safe in Bellingham.

  Please, let her be safe in Bellingham.

  He drove carefully, every muscle throbbing in protest as he navigated the cruiser through the remains of whatever street he was on now. He’d once known Seattle like the back of his hand. Now it sprawled in the false night like a strange junkyard; twisted and broken. He knew he had to aim for the coast. He had that covered.

  But there was no telling what they’d find.

  Out the window, flickering in and out of view, the fiery glow from Mt. Rainier pulsed. Like a vivid heart in the forced darkness.

  Nigel shook his head. “Witches,” he muttered. Not likely.

  Beside him, Katya stirred.

  Even just thinking about her in the seat, filthy and bruised as she was, set his heart racing. He’d almost lost her. Hell, he’d been so eager to put her into that helicopter. He didn’t stop to think about the ash cloud, or the intake clogging with it.

  It was his fault that Jake would never meet his new baby. If that baby was even alive.

  He clenched his teeth, his eyes burning. They’d come this far. He’d be damned if he’d lose Katya, too.

  She opened her eyes. They glittered in the dark, a diamond glint of blue. “Nigel.”

  “We’re not there yet,” he said quietly. “Relax.”

  She didn’t. Resting one hand on the dash, she leaned forward, her mouth bent in a puzzled frown. “Do you hear that?”

  He glanced at her. Noted the haggard lines by her mouth. The exhaustion she shoved aside as if it were nothing. He shook his head. “You were dreaming—”

  “Shh.” She depressed the window button. It crept down a mere inch and then stuck, its mechanism likely filled with the sooty residue of Rainier’s temper. “Damn.”

  “Katya—” But then Nigel stilled. Instinctively, he depressed the brake, slowing their already frustrating crawl down to a snail’s pace.

  The sound he’d taken for the ambient noise of ash slushing against city wreckage seemed different somehow. He hunched over the wheel, squinting to see through the dark. The headlights only picked out a wall of floating soot, definitely not the source of the rushing sound around them. “I can’t see.”

  She flattened a palm against her window, pensive. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s okay,” he said, responding to the fear in her voice. “We’re almost to the port.”

  She opened her mouth. The rushing sound rose to a heady roar.

  His eyes widened. “Katya,” he said, and the two syllables sharpened on a harsh warning. She half-turned, but he grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her down, half-across the seat. Too fast to be gentle.

  Not fast enough.

  Water slammed against the passenger side of the car, crashing into the metal and safety glass like an explosion; a fist of cement. The cruiser flipped. Glass crunched as the police lights on top exploded into fragments, metal ground.

  Nigel grunted as his seat belt snapped across his chest, thrusting him back into his seat with the rebound. He heard Katya’s scream, but she wasn’t in his grip anymore. The car flipped again, and again. Rolling and turning with every pounding thrust of the flood as it swept over them.

  End over end; the world turned and righted and turned until he didn’t know which side was up. His stomach pitched and yawned, his chest aching from the pressure of his seat belt.

  Pain seared through his head as the car slammed against something.

  Swearing, still seeing stars, he fumbled his seat belt loose. It gave way, and he reached out in the near-perfect darkness.

  He found gritty, cold skin. “Katya!”

  Hands caught his, wet but strong. “I’m here,” she managed, her voice tight.

  There wasn’t any time for relief.

  “We need to get out before the water in here traps us in,” he explained quickly. He fumbled for his door latch. “As soon as I open this—”

  “I get it.” Her hands found the back of his shirt. Held tight. “Ready.”

  He grunted. His options were slim. Either die in a watery tomb, or risk dying out there of exposure, hypothermia, or worse.

  He swallowed hard. “One . . .”She sucked in a hard, painful breath.

  “Two.”

  He closed his eyes. Please . . .

  “Three!” He rammed the door with his shoulder as he pulled the latch. The pressure in the car tightened, as if a vacuum sucked on the door, resisted his effort. He strained, muscles popping, strained with everything he had.

  All at once, it whooshed open. Nigel caught the door frame in one hand as water sluiced through the sudden opening. He grabbed Katya with the other, helped her out, and held her to the rim as she grabbed the hood.

  She gasped. “We’re moving!”

  He’d been afraid of that.

  Gritting his teeth, he wrenched himself out of the interior. The current flowed over his battered body, soaking him to the bone in seconds. “Up,” he rasped.

  She grabbed the hood, stretched as high as she could and tried to climb to the somewhat drier territory on top of the busted cruiser. Nigel forced himself up beside her, collapsing to his hands and knees as the car rocked dangerously.

  Katya clung to him, panting.

  He didn’t know where they were anymore. He didn’t know how fast they were moving; hell, he didn’t even know what fucking side of town they were on.

  Gasping for breath, he clung to the roof edge with one hand and tucked an arm around Katya.

  She gasped, her body stiffening.

  “Oh, shit,” he said tightly, and caught her by the shoulders instead. “Are you hurt?”

  Her lips gleamed faintly as they curved up in the dark. Wry. Apologetic. “My side hurts.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “Hurts how?”

  “Burning.” She huddled against his side, tucking herself under his arm as if he’d somehow be able to protect her. Fuck, he couldn’t.

  Burying his face in her soaking hair, he muttered, “Bruised ribs, maybe. Cracked. Christ, Katya.”

  She eased out a shaking, sodden sound of exhaustion. A sigh; a laugh. He didn’t know.

  As his eyes adjusted, he picked out details as they passed. Sparking cords to the right, some remnant of an electrical supply. Ruined, half-buried tenements on the left.

  She sagged against him, her fingers tight at his waist. He looked down, saw the vague outline of her profile as she stared towards the southeast. Mt. Rainier flickered and danced; a vibrant orange knot smoldering in the dark.

  “It’s . . .” She took a deep breath; he felt her body recoil as it hurt. “It’s weirdly beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Nigel closed his eyes. He pressed his lips to her hair, inhaling the fragrance of ash, woman, and the unique scent of salt.

  The fragrance of ocean.

  It didn’t matter where they were now. They’d never get to Petty Officer First Class Winston Shepherd. They’d never find the Port Authority.

  The flood had come from Puget Sound.

  The port was gone.

  She dozed awkwardly in his emb
race. Nigel shivered, tightening his arms around her, trying to channel every ounce of warmth he had left into her body.

  He’d taken his flannel off, draping it over them. It filtered the worst of the ash out, but he had to shake it more and more often. The cloud was thickening.

  She stirred now and again. But because he couldn’t help himself, he checked her pulse as often as he could.

  Every few seconds, it felt like.

  Katya shivered. “Nigel?”

  He rested his cheek against her hair. The car bumped gently, but he resisted the urge to look. He was desperately afraid it’d be another corpse.

  He’d seen a few. Pale and ghostly beneath the water.

  He closed his eyes. “What, sweetheart?”

  There was a pause. Then, so softly he almost missed it, she asked, “Did you wonder why I . . . Did you want to know why I was there? In that place?”

  He smiled. “Because you’re a Good fucking Samaritan.”

  She raised her head. Muttered a hard word of pain and sank back into his embrace. He cradled her as closely as he dared, one hand spread across her rib as if he could protect it by his touch alone.

  Oh, how he wished.

  “Yes,” he answered, to give her something else to think about. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  She was silent for a moment. He tipped the flannel slightly. Ash slid to the damp car roof with a whisper-soft sound.

  “We were going to escape, you know,” she murmured. “We had it all planned out. I went to the police to ask for help.”

  He was too exhausted to be angry. Still, the thought bit hard.

  “They said no,” she said, her voice thready with pain. She leaned back against his chest, and he looked down to see her eyes closed. Her mouth curved down, pinched with effort.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “I guess I . . . hoped you’d help me. When I saw you, when you picked me, I thought maybe you’d come to help.”

  “I’m a bastard,” Nigel said tightly.

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, you’re not.” The car thudded. She gasped.

  Nigel smoothed back her hair, gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering. “It’s all right.”

  But it wasn’t. With dismay, he realized that tears slipped from beneath her lashes. She bit her lip, clutching his arm as if afraid he’d let her go.

  He wouldn’t. “It’s all right,” he said again, soft as he could. “Why did you go back to the house? You were out, you could have run.”

  “I couldn’t leave them,” she admitted, turning her face into his chest. He cradled her cheek, bending his head over hers. “All those girls . . . All those men. I couldn’t leave them there. And now . . . now they’re probably all dead anyway, aren’t they?”

  Ah. Now he got it. Nigel held her as she cried, staring into the darkness in silence. What could he say? He knew survivor’s guilt.

  As she sank again into a broken sleep, all he could do was thank God that she was here with him.

  Not helpful.

  The car shuddered again. Silence stretched across minutes, maybe hours.

  He dozed fitfully.

  Without warning, the car jarred hard. The impact knocked him backward. Katya shrieked awake, jolted out of his arms, and he barely managed to catch himself on the edge of the hood.

  Katya grabbed her side, her eyes wild. “Nigel?”

  He looked down. Saw mud, rubble.

  And a corpse. Another. Bloated, pallid. Scraped raw.

  Fury lanced through him. “No,” he gritted out. The waters had receded, sucked back into the ocean after the tidal wave had run its course, but he’d be damned if this was it for them.

  “No?”

  He rolled off the car, landed awkwardly in ankle-deep mud. “Come here.” When she scooted near enough, he pulled her into his exhausted arms. His chest kicked as she looped her arms around his check. “Stay with me,” he ordered hoarsely. “I don’t care how cold you get, how bad it hurts, you stay with me, you understand?”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder, but he felt her nod.

  Slowly, mustering every ounce of energy he had left, he forced one foot through the mud. Then the next. One more. The other.

  Step by step. Block by ruined city block. Past the skeletons of ruined buildings, past the corpses piled by the destructive, unfeeling currents.

  He didn’t know how long they walked. Tremors rippled through the earth beneath his feet, but as long as he could stay upright, he walked.

  Katya clung to him, too spent to even shake.

  He wouldn’t die here. He wouldn’t let her die here, either. She hadn’t gone through years of hell to lose it here.

  He hadn’t gone through everything he had to lose her to it.

  Another vicious tremor rolled underfoot, and he paused, half-collapsing against a fractured telephone pole. Panting for breath, his legs and back screaming, he briefly rested his head against the sodden wood.

  Katya cracked open a crusted, ash-smudged eye. “Do you . . . Do you hear that?

  He stiffened, adrenaline forcing a painful stream through his veins. “Not again,” he rasped.

  “No. No, it’s—”

  His head snapped up. “An engine!” He scoured the horizon, for all he couldn’t see much more than a few feet. Lights. Just give him lights. Search lights, tail lights. Was it an airplane?

  No, not in the ash field.

  A car?

  Suddenly, a horn blasted across his senses, tearing jagged furrows through his control. He pushed away from the pole, letting Katya slide down his body. Her feet touched the ground, and she half-pushed, half-pulled him into the road. Or what he hoped was the road. “Oh, God,” she said hoarsely. “Please. Please!”

  He squinted, shading his eyes with a filthy hand. Was it his imagination?

  No. “Lights,” he said. And then, louder, “Katya, lights!” With an arm around her shoulders, he waved wildly in the spark’s direction. “Help,” he shouted. “Hey! Over here!”

  “They’re turning.” Tears thick in her voice, Katya sagged against him.

  He looked down at her. Five feet and two inches of grim fucking determination covered head to toe in grime and soot, with her hair colored the same dingy gray as he was sure his was.

  As a massive truck rumbled into view, he caught her face between his palms and said fiercely, “I love you, woman.”

  Her eyes widened.

  He bent and seized her mouth in a celebratory kiss. As her hand slid around the back of his head, he bent and swept her once more into his arms. Air brakes screeched. “Hey!” he heard, and lifted his head to find a grimy, bespectacled man leaning out of the window.

  He waved. “Coming, then?”

  Nigel looked down at the woman in his arms, her eyes filled with pain. But her mouth curved up. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  He forged through the ankle-deep sludge. The truck was large, some type of long-distance trailer attached to the cab. The man beckoned him back, and he heard the creak of a ramp being lowered.

  “Thank you,” he said to the driver. “You have no idea.”

  “I do,” the man said. “There’s help back there, go on.”

  As he rounded the trailer, a woman met him at the top of the ramp. She was young, maybe early to mid-twenties, with high cheekbones and ash-streaked red hair woven into a messy braid. Her brown eyes were serious as she beckoned them up. “Here, bring her,” she said. Her voice was husky, her tone authoritative.

  Katya held his shirt in one hand as he climbed the ramp.

  She gasped.

  The trailer was filled with people.

  They sat huddled in groups, some wearing scrubs. Others, like him, wore whatever they’d been caught in and enough grime to mask any detail of color.

  The woman’s fingers slipped under his elbow and he started. “In,” she ordered. “Is your lady hurt?”

  “Ribs,” he said automatically. “I think they’re bruised.�
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  She smiled from underneath a fringe of ash-tipped red hair. “It’s okay. We’re going to get everyone out. Take her that way.” She pointed to a small knot of exhausted looking women. “Erin?”

  One, a blonde sporting a thick scab across her cheek and dirty nursing scrubs, looked up. Upon seeing Katya in Nigel’s arms, she straightened. “Bring her.”

  He stepped over hands and legs and made his excuses. Faces blurred. So many. At least thirty crammed into the trailer. Many wearing hospital clothes. He saw two IVs, their bags affixed to the trailer rafters.

  As he set Katya down on the floor, the back of his neck prickled. He turned, met the woman’s warm brown eyes. She tucked a shoulder-length braid behind her as she bent to place a wad of clothing under Katya’s head. “She’ll be okay,” she said, though he hadn’t asked.

  The window between trailer and cap cracked open. “Mattie?”

  She didn’t turn. “We’re set, Laurence. Go.”

  The window snicked shut.

  Erin worked quickly, raising Katya’s shirt and feeling around the livid bruise climbing from hip to breast.

  “How bad is it out there?” he asked, his eyes on Katya.

  The woman called Mattie crouched as the truck lurched into motion. Everyone swayed, holding the walls, the window frames build into the sides, and each other.

  The shadows outside passed in a blur.

  “It’s bad,” she said. “But we’re going to get everyone to a safe place.”

  Nigel looked down at his hands, clasped tightly.

  Mattie reached over, touched his shoulder. “Your lady will be fine. She’s strong.”

  His throat worked. No sound came. Then, slowly, raggedly, he asked, “Bellingham. Is it—?” His voice betrayed him. It broke as he read the truth in her steady regard.

  In her sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” she told him, shaking her head. “Mount Baker erupted.”

  Erin looked up from the bandages she wrapped around Katya’s ribs. “Not so much erupted as blew out,” she told him. “Near as we can tell, there was a sudden flurry of volcanic activity in the Ring of Fire. It touched off even the dormant ones. The shockwave obliterated Bell—”

  He rose to his feet so fast, he had to slam a hand against the window for balance. Refugees startled awake around him.