A Crack in the Sky

by Mark Peter Hughes

  At night she dreamed of the wild dogs—fearsome, starving creatures with tongues that lolled out of their mouths as they ran at her. She knew they were still out there, packs of skeletons hunting the wasteland.

  Every now and then she heard barking in the distance.

  Late in the morning she came to a stretch of road so flooded, she was forced to leave the highway. She climbed through a grove of overturned trees and eventually stumbled onto a passable road, this one narrow and winding. She followed it awhile, moving slower and slower as her energy waned.

  At a curve in the road she stopped to rest again, wondering how long she could last without finding something to eat. A small, desolate village lay ahead and, just in front of her, a sign that tilted to one side. Most of the paint had been chipped away, but she could see it had once been blue with carved gold letters:

  Welcome to Hartsburg

  Population 1,061

  “Home Is Where the Hart Is!”

  Minutes later she was slinking through the town’s sodden, muddy streets. Collapsed wooden houses, windowless and dripping. More deserted vehicles. A simple white church with a steeple that, incredibly, still stood upright even as the wind whipped garbage across the road. Marilyn moved with caution, alert for anything that might jump out at her. Wild dogs weren’t the only danger. She wondered when she would run into more barbarians like the old man in the sky or the hag that had nearly killed Eli. But she saw nobody. This place was empty, a ghost town.

  Up ahead a small clapboard building caught her eye. It had a sign that said HARTSBURG GROCERY. Its exterior was weatherworn and many of the clapboards were missing, but the building itself was still upright, and it still had a door. Her heart beat faster. With energy she didn’t realize she still had, she ran toward it. Maybe her luck had turned. The perishable food would be long gone, of course, but maybe she would find something inside. Canned goods, perhaps? Opening a can would present a problem, but, given the chance, she was sure she could figure a way to get to the food. After all, she was desperate.

  At the side of the little building she stopped to consider how she was going to get inside. All the windows were broken, but they were too high to reach. After a moment she went back to the street and found a long, dead tree branch. She dragged it to the side of the store, propped it against the wall, and then climbed to the window. Her pulse was racing. Food, at last! She could almost taste it. She hopped inside and dropped to the floor.

  There was nothing. Just bits of twisted metal that might once have been shelving, all broken into pieces and strewn about the room. Somebody had been here first and had already ransacked the place. From the thick layer of dust, it must have been a while ago. The room stank of mildew, and even the wood flooring felt spongy under her paws.

  When she turned her head she noticed a faded message spray painted across the entire back wall. The spelling was poor and the letters were misshapen and crude, as if a child had written them:

  SALgAN O MUERAn! gET OUT OR diE!! THiS STUF FOWnd BY Big diEgO AnD HiS dETH RAdERS WE EET inTRUdRS

  The skin on her neck prickled, but not because she thought whoever had written it might burst into the room. It was obvious nobody had been here for a long, long time. But still the message itself left her breathless, especially the last part. She wondered if it was true or just a threat. And what had happened to these people, whoever they were? After the food was all used up, where had they gone? And if they and everybody else were dead or dying somewhere, what was the purpose of anything? Why would the great architect of all natural things allow this?

  But she couldn’t let herself get distracted with pointless questions. All that mattered now was that she was still weak with hunger and there was nothing here to eat. She was on her own in the middle of the Outside wilderness during a storm, and if she didn’t find food soon, she was going to starve. And Eli still needed her help.

  Marilyn dragged herself down the road again, away from the town. The thunder seemed louder and more frequent, and the wind and rain blew hard in her face. After a while she stopped under a low bridge to take a drink and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the water. She didn’t recognize herself. She was skinny and haggard, and her fur was matted with mud. She looked like a drowning rat on the brink of death. Suddenly all she wanted to do was collapse. She didn’t want to give up, but she felt so famished and weak. After all, she’d been running for almost five days.

  Just beyond the bridge she noticed a long four-story building with open concrete walls, and floors that slanted in alternate directions. She’d seen pictures of buildings like this, old-style parking garages for the road vehicles of years long past. Surely she could find a dry place in there, a safe corner at the top of an incline where she could rest awhile, just until the storm ended. She staggered to it and climbed the first staircase to avoid the rising flood. In the center of the second level she found an elevator car that had long since stopped working. The sliding door was open, though, and despite the darkness, it was dry and comfortable and smelled relatively clean.

  This would do nicely, she decided. She could lie here and get some sleep while she dried off. A few hours, that’s all she needed. After that, maybe she would feel better.

  She tumbled into a corner of the floor, glad to take the weight off her aching legs. Almost immediately her eyes grew heavy and she felt sleep start to take hold of her.

  But that’s when there was a sudden rattling sound.

  She opened her eyes.

  On the opposite corner of the elevator floor was a rattlesnake. Its body was coiled and its head was upright. It was staring at her, threatening to strike. Like her, it must have stumbled into this dry, comfortable place after it came into the garage seeking shelter from the storm.

  She kept still, sure she was about to die.

  But then, as she stared into the snake’s murderous eyes, she felt something stir deep in her soul. As terrified as she was, she was overcome by a powerful wave of hate, inexplicable and primal. She realized she despised this slithering thing.

  She wanted it dead.

  After all she’d been through, why should she let it take her life?

  All at once she knew what to do. Instead of making an immediate dash for the doorway, she took a half step toward the snake, just within striking range, tempting it to come for her. It did. Its head moved like a whip, but she was ready for it. The instant it made to spring at her, Marilyn leapt back through the doorway and out of its range. Despite her hunger she was still agile, and just fast enough to get away with it.

  The snake was angry. It slid across the elevator floor, its fangs glistening with venom. But this was what Marilyn wanted. She let it come. She led it into the open space of the garage and saw it clearly for the first time. It was perhaps four feet long, with a thick, muscular body and a repeating diamond pattern on its brownish scales.

  The snake hissed as she danced around it in a wide circle. In spite of her desperation—maybe because of it—she’d found strength she wasn’t aware of. She taunted the confused reptile, stepping just within its reach and backing away the moment it attacked. It shook its rattle in fury, but Marilyn kept doing it over and over again. She was wearing it down, letting it use up its limited energy as she kept moving around it, always circling, circling. Hungry as Marilyn was, she was determined to outlast it.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, the rattlesnake was moving noticeably slower. Its head wobbled as it tried to follow Marilyn’s erratic movements, and it took longer to respond when she teased it. Marilyn decided now was the time to make her own attack. She lunged at it with her claws outstretched. Just as she did so, the snake made one last dive at her, and she felt its fangs whip across her shoulder. But her fur was thick, and the venom didn’t penetrate to her skin. Before the viper got a second chance, Marilyn had her jaws clamped around the narrow section of its neck, just under the head. She shook it with all her strength. The snake’s body went suddenly limp.

  It was de
ad! She’d actually killed it!

  She dragged the carcass back to the elevator and started ripping hungrily into its flesh. With every delicious mouthful she felt her heart beating faster and her strength returning. She was experiencing the ecstasy of her first blood kill. It was different than she’d imagined it would be. It wasn’t awful or disgusting. It wasn’t even sad. It was noble and logical, the true nature of the world. She could feel a change coming over her, the dawning realization that she would never be the same again.

  For the first time in her life, she felt as if the eyes of all her ancestors were watching with approval.

  The next morning the rain stopped. The sky cleared and the sun blazed again. Marilyn was amazed at how quickly the bugs reemerged. By afternoon many of the puddles had all but evaporated.

  She was growing stronger now, and making better time than ever.

  For miles there had been an evil smell in the air, sharp and foul and unidentifiable. Faint at first, it grew stronger as she made her way south, until it burned in her throat and lungs. Something about it made her afraid.

  Just before sunset she crossed the New York state line. Whatever the stench was, the air was thick with it here. It made her wary. Since she didn’t know what she was afraid of, she wasn’t sure how to avoid it. She climbed one of the dead trees to the highest branch that would support her and looked ahead.

  There it was. She could tell right away she’d found the source of the odor. Just a quarter mile or so ahead, she could see a vast lake unlike any other she’d yet come across. Even from here she could see there was something very wrong with it. The water was an odd purplish color, and clouds of smoke billowed off its surface. Parts of the lake were on fire.

  Near the edge of the ooze she could make out what looked like the remains of dead things, hundreds of them, perhaps. Most were skeletons, stripped clean of flesh. Without moving closer she couldn’t tell exactly what they were. And she wasn’t going to go any closer.

  One thing was sure: she couldn’t stay anywhere near here tonight, even to sleep. She would have to find a path around this terrible place, even if it meant traveling in darkness many miles out of her way.

  She climbed down the tree and soon she was moving west, keeping what she hoped was a safe distance between herself and the edge of the foul-smelling sludge. Minutes later, as she emerged from a patch of dead brush, she came across something crouched at the edge of a steaming pool, lapping at the ooze. She was almost on top of it before she noticed. The sky was beginning to darken, but there was still enough light to see. Whatever it was, it was skinny and hairless and long, perhaps twice the length of an adult human. It was obviously some kind of mutant. Marilyn could see right away there was something horrible about its body, something peculiar and startling. She blinked and looked again, unsure if she could trust her eyes.

  Its hide was so thin, it was barely there.

  She could not only make out the ridges of its backbone, but she could see the backbone itself, right through the skin. Its muscles were visible too. And what looked like internal organs.

  All of a sudden it raised its gourd-shaped head as if it sensed it was being watched. Standing erect on its hind legs, it pulled itself to its full height and turned in Marilyn’s direction. She wanted to run, but for a moment she couldn’t. She was too terrified at what she was seeing. Its face was almost featureless. Its nose was sunken into its skull, and where its eyes should have been were only two thin circles of skin. She could see into the empty sockets behind them.

  It lowered its head as if trying to take in her scent. Then it lumbered toward her.

  Marilyn took a step back into the thicket. And then another. Soon she was running. Behind her she heard the thing make a low, plaintive wail that seemed to hang over the wilderness. It sent shivers through her bones and filled her heart with dread. But she didn’t stop. She would run all night if she had to. And after that she would keep moving, continuing south as fast and hard as she could, for as long as it took. She had a great distance yet to go, she knew, but even now she could sense she was getting closer to Eli. She could still feel him.

  As long as she could follow his signal, she wasn’t going to give up.

  Not ever.

  20

  faith and doubt

  Eli tried to keep up a brave face. No matter what Spider thought of him, he was still a Papadopoulos.

  How long had he been in this place? A few days? A month? He wasn’t sure anymore. The powerful spheres seemed to warp time, and every day felt more or less the same. The manual labor never ended, and most of his waking hours were spent fighting the CloudNet. As Tabitha had suggested, he’d been finding real things to focus his mind on, but keeping alert here was a lot harder than living in the dream haze.

  In a way, he almost wished she had left him there.

  Every now and then the spheres gave updates about Grandfather. He was getting weaker by the day and wasn’t expected to live much longer. Huge crowds were gathered in domes all across the country. The biggest crowd of all held a vigil in front of Papadopoulos Mansion, in New Washington. Watching all this, Clarence and the other Waywards would get teary-eyed. But for Eli it was different. It wasn’t simply some sad, historic moment to him. This was Grandfather.

  He kept trying to imagine why Mother, Father, and Sebastian hadn’t come for him. There were two possibilities: First, maybe Spider had dragged them off to secret work prisons too. It was hard to imagine that he could get away with it. Father and Mother, especially, were high-ranking family members within the company. Still, it was a possibility he couldn’t ignore. The second possibility was that Mother and Father were okay with Spider taking him away. After the Fogger incidents maybe they were furious with him, thinking he’d betrayed the company. Eli worried about both of these possibilities and what it would mean if either was true. For now, all he could do was cling to the dimming hope that someone would eventually come for him. And when that happened, he would make sure Spider paid for what he’d done, and maybe someday Eli would be forgiven.

  In the meantime he did his best to keep Tabitha at a distance. He wasn’t going to give her away as a Resister—he owed her that much—but it didn’t mean he wanted to risk exposing himself to more trouble. She had once been a Fogger, after all, and anything he did to cause suspicion would only give Spider more ammunition to use against him later.

  Unfortunately Tabitha seemed to have no understanding of what he was going through.

  She had her own ideas.

  Even though he’d told her to keep away from him, the next day she approached him again in the cafeteria. He tried moving to another table, but she wouldn’t take the hint. She followed him. She’d gotten so good at drifting, blank-faced, among the Waywards that she could do it without drawing attention to herself. There was nothing Eli could do to stop her without causing a scene. So he gave up.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she began, as if she hadn’t even noticed he’d been avoiding her. She didn’t seem to care. “Here’s why the old man you saw couldn’t have been the real Gustavo.”

  “Leave me alone,” he whispered. “Don’t you get it? I’m not interested.”

  “Well, listen anyway. Maybe you will be. Keep in mind, I’m not telling you what I believe, only what I heard. How much do you already know about Dr. Friedmann?”

  Eli didn’t know much of anything, but he didn’t answer. He pretended she wasn’t even there.

  Again this didn’t seem to faze her. “Gustavo Friedmann was a radical figure from the early years of InfiniCorp. He was a petrogeologist and a design engineer who came up with designs for experimental city-shelters with sophisticated people-management systems—what eventually became the CloudNet and the domes. After that, his continuing research into the changing climate got him kicked out of the company’s inner circle.” She stopped to sample her lunch. Today it was soggy rice and some sort of meat pudding. As appetizing as ever. He waited for her to go on, but she didn’
t. She took another spoonful and chewed it slowly.

  “So?” he said. “What happened to him?”

  “I thought you weren’t interested.”

  He glared at her.

  She gave him the slightest of smiles. “It depends on who you ask. For a while the official company word was that he was one of the earliest victims of brain fever and that his condition led him to commit suicide. But the Friends say he went into hiding and lived Outside for years, until the desert finally took him. Either way, he’s dead now. Which proves that whoever your sky-dwelling friend was, he couldn’t have been Dr. Friedmann. He probably wasn’t even as old as you thought. The desert takes a heavy toll on the people who try to survive out there. Everyone knows that.”

  “All right, so what was the Greenhouse Recovery Project?”

  “So you do know something about Gustavo. You’ve been hiding it. If not, how would you know about the Greenhouse Recovery Project?”

  “I told you yesterday, I saw a picture that seemed to be this Dr. Friedmann guy. The project name was on a folder he was carrying.”

  Even through her jungle of hair he could sense her eyes studying him. “Boy, either you’re a good liar or they couldn’t have picked a more clueless Papadopoulos to accuse of being with the Fog. But dumb as it sounds, I believe you. You really don’t know anything about this, do you?”

  Eli’s face warmed. “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  So Tabitha went through the story as she’d heard it from the Friends. She described how after Dr. Friedmann had spent years working with the company, his research led him to recognize how dire the climate situation had become. He put together a plan for what they had to do: the Greenhouse Recovery Project, he called it. It was a detailed list of immediate, sweeping changes to the way the company did business and the way people lived their lives. He said InfiniCorp and its employees needed to break their addiction to fossil fuels like coal and oil by switching to cleaner, renewable energies. They needed smarter power-delivery grids to get energy more efficiently from where it was generated to where the people actually lived. In the meantime everyone had to make more efficient use of the energy they already produced. All this was going to be expensive and difficult, he warned, but the consequences of not making such dramatic changes were unthinkable. If the company didn’t act right away, the end was certain to come. But the good news, he said, was that the solutions to the climate crisis already existed. The technologies were currently available. And, while moving forward with them was absolutely necessary to ensure human survival, they also presented a huge revenue opportunity for the company. Best of all, InfiniCorp was big and powerful enough to make it all happen. This was the moment for the company to exercise its wisdom and leadership to save the world.