by E S Richards
“Well we should go and get them then!” Jesse piped up, the young man hearing what Mia was saying and realizing—much like Jorge—that they all had a chance to be heroes.
“It’s not that easy,” Mia silenced Jesse, giving him a stern look and stopping him from reaching for the door handle. “The air around here is extremely toxic. Wearing scarves around our faces is one thing, but I’m worried it won’t be enough. After what we’ve just seen, I’m not sure whether stepping out of this car again is worth the risk.”
“Mia, come on,” Jorge replied in an exasperated manner, the Spaniard more than ready to step outside. “We have to do this. We’re scientists. We were studying this exact thing before Yellowstone erupted. If anyone was meant to make this discovery, it’s us. We can’t just walk away and leave all of this behind.”
“Are you willing to risk your life for it?”
“I am,” Jorge nodded. “I always have been. We’ve spoken about this before, come on. You can’t deny that there must be a small part of you that wants to see the records kept inside this site.”
Mia considered Jorge’s words, knowing already that he was right. She was desperate to find out if her theory was correct—it was something she’d been investigating for months before Yellowstone erupted. It was the whole reason for their research team even being in the area when it happened. She knew that if she drove away from the fracking site without finding out the truth, she would regret it for years to come. But she would have those years to regret it. If she stepped outside now and inhaled too much of the poisonous air, how much would she cut her life expectancy down by? She longed for the proper gas masks that she and Jorge had taken from the plane after the crash landing, the high-tech equipment yet another thing stolen by the lahars. Their protection now was minimal—Mia questioned whether it would be enough.
“How would we even get in?” She finally spoke, slowing convincing herself that she did want to enter the site. “The gate is locked and we don’t have a key.”
“A key?” Jorge repeated, a smile creeping onto his face. “Mia, we have a car. That gate won’t take much to bring down, trust me.”
“Does that mean we’re doing this?” Jesse asked from the back seat, the young college student already strapping himself back into his seatbelt.
“We’re breaking down the gate?” Jadon asked, mirroring his friend’s actions.
Everyone looked at Mia, waiting for her to respond. “We’re breaking down the gate,” she finally nodded with a smile, receiving cheers from the back seat as everyone prepared for what was about to happen. Mia’s hands gripped the steering wheel as she restarted the car, the engine revving to life and the vehicle shuddering beneath them. Mia cracked her neck. She couldn’t believe she was about to do this. Ash swirled through the air like snow in front of them and the dark buildings of the fracking site loomed in the distance. Jorge was right. Mia needed to know the answers and one little gate wasn’t going to stop her from finding them.
A cheer rang out from the car again as the repurposed Mazda tore through the gates with ease, the wired framework giving way almost immediately and granting them safe passage into the site. Mia kept hold of the steering wheel firmly, feeling the car slide sideways slightly from the force combined with the ash that coated the ground. The whole site was blanketed in a layer of gray, like an old house that had been left to gather dust for hundreds of years.
But it hadn’t been years since this place was filled with people and moving parts. It was only a matter of days. Mia knew there had to be records within the building that pointed to that fact as well; there was no way this entire operation was being kept secret.
The questions bubbled in her mind as she slowed the car to a halt once more, this time in front of the entrance to the building. She wanted to know how much damage the place had done to Yellowstone. She also wanted to know why. There was no shortage of fracking sites around the world, so why had one continued to operate here when everyone knew it was so dangerous? And how had they gotten away with it for so long without someone noticing and reporting the fact to the authorities? These were questions Mia was anxious to find the answers for and now that they had arrived, she refused to leave the site until she had at least some of them.
“Over there.” Marcus leaned into the front of the car, pointing to one side of the building ahead of them. “There’s a window open.”
“¡Perfecto!” Jorge punched the air in excitement. “That’s our way in!”
“All right then,” Mia had the final say. “Everyone protect yourselves. Let’s get in, find what we’re looking for, and get back out again.”
No one needed to be told twice. Mia had made it more than clear to everyone how much danger they were already in, plus everyone had the memory of their experiences so far if they needed reminding any further. The airport may have felt like a lifetime ago, but it was more recent than they all cared to admit. Then there was Michael and Angelica’s village below it, the fields of dead animals they’d walked through at the farm, the dead bodies they’d moved from cars on the highway and of course, Tanner. The effects of the supervolcano’s eruption were everywhere; not one of them would be able to forget it in their lifetime.
With a deep breath, Mia led the charge and stepped out of the car first, her feet hitting the pavement causing ash to kick up and get caught in the wind. Moving at a jog, she powered over to the window that Marcus had pointed out as fast as she could and peered inside. The place was deserted; it wouldn’t stay that way for long.
“Here,” Jadon spoke up beside her, joining Mia by the window. “Let me.” Flexing his muscles, Jadon cupped his hands underneath the window and pulled. It took a second for the plastic frame to budge initially, then it slid up with ease. Grinning, he turned back to face everyone and bowed his head slightly. “Ladies first.”
Mia smiled, once again grateful that Jadon and his friends had stuck with her and Jorge as they left Tanner. She missed Patrick, Mia couldn’t deny that, though out of everyone else they had met, she saw Jadon, Marcus, and Jesse as the greatest assets. Pushing herself up and in through the open window, Mia patted the accumulated ash from her clothes and stood upright. The room she had entered looked to be a bathroom, a few stalls lining one wall while sinks adorned the other. Keeping the scarf around her nose and mouth, Mia waited for everyone else to crawl inside before they exited the bathroom and started to explore more of the building.
“What are we looking for exactly?” Marcus asked as they walked down a hallway, their footsteps echoing through the otherwise empty building.
“We need to find proof of activity here,” Mia explained. “So an office or a record room of some sort. None of the electronics will work anymore, so we need to be looking for the physical, paper copies.”
“Anything will do,” Jorge continued, adding to Mia’s summary. “Receipts. Proofs of purchase. Results from the activity. Findings. Discoveries. Basically, as long as we can say for certain that this site has been operating over the last three years, then we’re in the money.”
Mia wrinkled her nose; she didn’t like how Jorge seemed to be motivated by fame and money. She wanted to find proof that the fracking operations had caused Yellowstone to go off, but not because she wanted to be remembered as that person, or because she wanted someone to blame. She loved the science and she just wanted to know the truth. Once she had that, she would be entirely focused on her family and reaching them in Texas again. While she was literally on the fracking site that potentially caused the biggest natural disaster in the last several thousand years, she couldn’t just walk away.
“Okay,” Marcus nodded, “do you think it’s better if we split up then? Try and cover more ground?”
“Bueno—great idea,” Jorge immediately approved. “It could take us hours to go through this whole building.”
“Yeah, all right,” Mia agreed, though less enthusiastically. “I can go and scout the lower level. I saw some stairs just back there I think.” She indic
ated over her shoulder, remembering a stairwell access door she’d noticed.
“I can come with you, if you’d like,” Jadon offered, the young man once again showing Mia how chivalrous he was.
“Sure,” she smiled back at him. “Thanks.”
“Okay then,” Jorge interjected, slightly surprised by Mia and Jadon teaming up. He had been expecting to be partners with Mia while the three boys all worked together, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. If that was the case, he decided he’d much rather carry out his research alone. “Why don’t you two go up then?” he suggested to Jesse and Marcus. “I can stay on this floor.”
“Sure,” Marcus acquiesced. “Fine with me.”
Jesse shrugged and nodded, losing interest with each extra minute that they all just stood around talking. If they were going to find something, he wanted to get going and find it. He’d never been one for waiting around and despite everything else that had changed, his attitude hadn’t.
“Meet back here in an hour?” Mia suggested, though she was aware none of them had any method of telling the time. “Or as close to that as we can make it.”
“Okay,” Marcus replied, “good luck!”
Upon the well-wishing, Jorge exhaled sharply and turned his back on the rest of the group. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt slighted by Mia and Jadon pairing up and leaving him on his own. She hadn’t even argued the point, which made Jorge feel even worse. All he wanted to do now was find evidence pertaining to the fracking site being active and get away from there. He’d always thought once they reached Texas that staying with Mia might be an option; now that seemed like a stupid idea. Kicking at the ground as he walked away, Jorge stuffed his hands in his pockets and sulked.
At the other end of the corridor, Mia and Jadon made their way downstairs while Jesse and Marcus went up. Neither of them spoke, the light dwindling as they went down and making it difficult to navigate. Mia had a flashlight which she’d taken from the car, but the batteries in it were fading and they struggled to see much more than a few feet ahead of them. It made the whole situation seem spooky, the hairs standing up on the back of Mia’s neck as she scanned the downstairs.
“What about in there?” Jadon asked, his voice sounding so incredibly loud all of a sudden that it made them both jump. “That looks like an office,” he added in a whisper, walking through an open door into the room he suggested.
Mia followed him in, noticing the half-drunk cup of coffee that sat on the desk and the incomplete sentence written in the notebook. It was like the place had been abandoned at a second’s notice, no one able to gather their possessions or finish their work before they had to leave. Knowing that only added to the spookiness of the situation, Mia wondering what had happened to the person who used to work in the office where she and Jadon now stood. Were they even alive anymore, or had they been one of the many victims of Yellowstone?
“This looks good,” Mia smiled at Jadon. “Good spot.”
Receiving a smile back from her younger companion, Mia cracked her knuckles and readied herself for the investigation. While the focal point of the desk in front of her had clearly been the computer—missing from its stand—there was an old filing cabinet next to the door and plenty of papers which poked out of the desk drawers. Whatever this office had been used for, Mia was certain there’d be some evidence of activity within it.
If fracking had played a part in the eruption of Yellowstone, she was going to find out. What had happened in the national park had affected the whole world and Mia desperately wanted an explanation for why it had happened. Her whole career had told her it wasn’t possible and yet she was living through the aftermath. Her family was living through the aftermath, and Mia could only guess how well they were coping without her support. She missed them so much, and it killed her to not see their faces every day. More than anything, she wanted to see them again, but first, she had a natural disaster to try and explain.
Chapter 21
A shrill bell woke Chase with a start, his body instantly jerking upright as he tried to adjust to his situation. Where was he? What had happened? As the door to his room—or as he liked to call it, his cell—automatically swung open, all the memories came flooding back to him. He was effectively being held prisoner in Houston, even if the Authority regarded it as a safe haven for all children. He and Riley had been tricked by some adults on the outside and now they were trapped with no way of making it back to their grandparents.
“Come on, man,” Joel hissed as he exited his cell, encouraging Chase to get out of bed. Joel was the boy from the next cell: room twenty-three, that Chase had befriended through the night, already having shared a great deal of information with the new arrival. “It’s breakfast.”
Chase nodded and rose to his feet, walking out of his cell and falling into line behind Joel. Everyone from his block was filing out of the amphitheater in a neat line, the boys obeying the strict routine that the Authority enforced. Chase had finally been processed very late in the evening, meaning that this was the first time he’d left his cell since arriving. As a result he did his best to take note of everything around him, trying to commit everything to memory.
His “processing” had been a very interesting affair. Two men from the Authority had entered his cell and proceeded to ask him a series of long-winded questions about who he was, where he had come from, and how he had ended up in the city. On the journey over in the van, Chase and Riley had only been able to discuss so much, so Chase had to think carefully about his answers, responding in a way he believed his sister would’ve too.
He hoped his answers had been satisfactory—whether they had or not, he hadn’t been informed. Still, the two men had finally stopped asking him things and started giving him a few answers instead. What Chase had learned about why they were gathering children up in the theater district of the city was something he’d rather not have uncovered. It was more than just to protect them, it was to guarantee the continuation of the human race.
In essence, it was a breeding center, a place set up by the government where they could force the children of Houston to repopulate the world if things went really wrong. Apparently, it had been set up as a contingency plan many years ago, the pieces all in place and just needing to be activated when the time was right. Houston was only one of the facilities set up for the purpose; two others were also operating across the country. Chase could understand it from a grander sense, but that didn’t mean he agreed with it. Especially not because of the last thing the Authority had told him. He was sixteen. That meant he was old enough to be a part of the program.
Shuddering at the memory of it, Chase tried to focus on other things as he followed the line of boys into a makeshift cafeteria. As they entered, another procession filed out, the boys keeping their heads down and not talking to anyone. Chase could only assume they were from another block, learning from his whispered conversation with Joel the night before that people only mixed with others from their specific block.
Joel was someone that Chase already thought he was lucky to have met. They’d spent several hours whispering to each other once the lights went out the night before, Joel sharing valuable information with Chase that would’ve taken him days to find out himself. He also learned that Joel had grown up in Houston and had a younger sister just like Riley. That was something that united the two boys: a desire to find their siblings and escape the Authority.
At seventeen, Joel was a part of the same program that Chase would be joining. One good piece of news that he’d shared with Chase was that despite being in what everyone called “the pit” for five days, he hadn’t yet been called up. In fact, no one had. Joel was under the impression that while they had all these plans for a breeding program, they had yet to put it into practice.
“This looks,” Chase paused, staring at the tray of food in front of him and trying to choose the right word. “Appetizing.”
Joel snorted next to him. Appetizing was the last word anyone would u
se to describe the food they were given for breakfast. A bowl of sludgy-looking brown matter was slopped into each of their bowls, accompanied by a glass of water and a slice of stale bread. Chase looked around the cafeteria where they all sat, the place once a restaurant within the theater where they were all being kept. He thought of all the well-dressed people who would have eaten there over the years and almost laughed at how quickly the place had changed.
“Is it the same every day?” Chase asked Joel, dragging his spoon through the brown sludge, not yet daring to try a mouthful.
“Yup,” Joel answered, his mouth already full as he dug into the meal. “I’d eat it if I were you. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Chase grimaced. Bringing his spoon to his mouth he stopped himself from smelling it, knowing it would only make things worse. It tasted disgusting. Joel chuckled to the side of him, enjoying watching Chase as he struggled to keep the first mouthful down.
“All right, I lied,” Joel sniggered, “but the first mouthful is always the worst. That really is true.”
“Sure,” Chase rolled his eyes after he finally swallowed, looking down at his bowl to see that he’d barely made a dent in the meal. This was going to be painful, but Chase knew better than anyone that if he was going to escape the pit and get away from the Authority, he needed to stay strong and keep his wits about him. So he forced down every last mouthful, cleaning his bowl completely and even wiping the last remnants of it clean with his slice of stale bread.
“Impressive,” Joel remarked at the end of it. “Newbies hardly ever finish their first time.”
“Thanks, I think,” Chase replied, forcing a smile on his face as he struggled to keep the food down. He really hoped it would get better, though he didn’t plan on staying in the pit long enough to get used to it. “So what happens now?” Chase asked, keeping his voice low so none of the patrolling members of the Authority could overhear their conversation. “What’s an average day here?”
