“You’ll see,” he said cryptically.
As they passed Jacob’s lab he spotted them. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“That’s what Emily said,” Rhiannon laughed as they passed his door.
Jacob shook his head in bemusement, then swiveled his wheelchair away from his desk and followed after them.
MacAlister led Rhiannon and Emily through the anteroom and straight to the door, finally letting go of their hands as he reached for the handle to open the exit.
“Hey!” Emily objected, bracing for the sudden rush of freezing air. “Let us get our jackets on before you open that.”
“Won’t need ’em,” the Scot replied and pushed the door open.
The anteroom was flooded with bright daylight.
Emily gazed out through the open doorway. She could feel the cold air but she could also see all the way over to the other buildings and beyond even. She edged forward until she was standing in the doorway.
The blizzard that had pinned them to this island was gone.
“Finally,” Rhiannon sighed as she squeezed in next to Emily. Thor pushed his way between them and bounded off into the snow, barking as he plummeted through the newly fallen powder.
MacAlister stood behind the two women, then all three stepped aside to allow Jacob to edge up to the open door.
“Notice anything different?” MacAlister asked.
“Besides the absence of the ninety-mile-an-hour winds and the blinding blizzard?” Jacob asked, his voice buoyed by a sense of sarcasm. “Not really.”
“Look beyond what you can see,” MacAlister said in his most mystical voice, his eyes wide and his hands fluttering at the side of his head.
Emily ignored the cold and stepped down the steps into the snow. Slowly she turned, trying to take in everything: The sky above her head was clear of all but a few wispy white clouds, the sun beat down on her skin as it burned brightly in a blue sky that stretched off to the vanishing point in the distance.
To the clear horizon, Emily realized.
“Oh my God!” she whispered, her hands flew to her mouth, not daring to believe what she was seeing. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh…my…God.” Her eyes raised skyward, and she twirled around, looking for all the world like a child intent on making herself dizzy.
“What is it, Emily? What do you see?” Jacob called out.
Emily skipped back to the door and the waiting survivors. Truth was, she wanted to dance her way back, but the snow was still too deep for that. But already she could see the telltale wet glistening of a thaw.
“Careful!” said MacAlister.
“Careful, my ass!” she yelled out, grabbed MacAlister’s face with both her hands and, before either knew what she was doing, planted a smacker on his lips. She felt her face blush as the look of surprise on MacAlister’s face turned into a broad grin. To cover up her own embarrassment she grabbed Rhiannon and pulled her down into the snow with her.
“It’s gone,” she yelled, kicking waves of snow with her hands at the two men in the doorway as if she was in a pool.
“What is?” Jacob yelled back, frustration in his voice.
“The red storm,” Rhiannon yelled back. “The red storm is gone.”
No one knew when the alien storm had finally released its stranglehold on the planet. The only thing they did know was that when they looked out beyond the curve of the island, in every direction to the thin line where the sky met the sea, the blood-red clouds that had stained them for so many days were gone, vanished as though they had never been there. It had not simply faded away or subsided, there was no slow diminishing of its fury, nothing. It was simply gone, as if God himself had, with the sweep of a hand, brushed it from the skies.
Emily, Rhiannon, and Thor joined the crew of the Vengeance in the courtyard between the buildings, a white fog of hot breath collecting above their heads. Two crewmen carried Jacob and his wheelchair from his room, swaying from side to side as the two sailors carefully picked their way over the melting snow, like he was some ancient pharaoh. As they set him gently on the snowy ground, Emily looked down at the man who had brought her here. He looked about ready to cry, and Emily felt something shift inside her. It was as if, with the passing of the storm, her anger for him had also diminished…at least, a little.
It was still freezing out here, no way would they be ditching their coats just yet, but now that the blizzard had stopped, standing still for any period of time no longer meant you ran the risk of being frozen into a human Popsicle.
And the view. My God, the view was breathtaking now that she finally had a chance to take it all in. A crisp white blanket of snow with a top layer of rapidly melting ice particles that scintillated in the light lay across the undulating ground of the island, stretching off in all directions seemingly until it met the blue of the sky. But Emily knew the island sloped away just a few thousand feet from where she stood, dropping gradually down until it met the Beaufort Sea. As Emily listened carefully, in the spaces between the excited chatter of the assembled group, she could hear the waves breaking against the shoreline in the distance.
Everything looked so normal.
Emily had tuned out the chatter of the survivors milling around the entrance to the hospital block, but now she allowed the voices to fade back in again.
“…what’s it mean?…”
“…you think it’s safe now?…”
“…can we leave?…”
At a nod from Emily, the two sailors flanking Jacob raised him up again and followed Emily into the hospital building, depositing him in the corridor of the sailors’ quarters. Emily took the wheelchair’s two handles and began pushing Jacob toward the main room where the rest of the survivors now waited.
Jacob swiveled his head around and looked back at Emily with curiosity.
“Don’t start getting used to it, just yet,” she told him.
He looked at her with his sad eyes, the words almost forming on his lips, but instead he smiled. He faced forward again. “Onward James,” he laughed, with a pretty good imitation of an English accent, before adding “and don’t spare the horses.”
What had been the hospital area was now filled with the sub crew. They sat on the beds or stood together in small groups talking excitedly. Everyone looks ten years younger, Emily thought as she entered the room with Rhiannon, MacAlister, Jacob, and Thor.
MacAlister squeezed Emily’s elbow and nodded toward the front of the room where Captain Constantine and another man were talking.
“Duty calls,” Mac said and zagged across the room to join the men. Emily aimed Jacob toward the front, maneuvering the wheelchair through the tangles of bodies.
Captain Constantine’s deep voice cut through the chatter. “Alright. Alright. Quiet down everyone. I know today has brought some very exciting developments, but we still need to maintain discipline.” He waited for all eyes to be on him and all mouths to stop moving before he continued. “Alright, that’s more like it. While it does seem that the storm has abated, we still don’t know what’s changed out there. Now, I know that you’re all eager to get off this rock—no offense to our gracious hosts—but the simple fact of the matter is that we have no idea what this latest development means for us. And of course we’re not going anywhere until we repair the fire damage to the boat.
“I’m sure you all have a lot of questions, but neither I nor the good people of this station have any answers for you just yet. However, as soon as we have any clue as to the sudden disappearance of the storm, I can guarantee you will be the first to know about it. In the meantime…Mr. MacAlister?”
“Skipper?” grunted MacAlister.
“I want you to get some eyes on the inside of the boat to assess the damage. When you have a good idea of how bad it is, I’ll need you to organize two cleanup crews: twelve hours on, twelve hours off, so we have a constant presen
ce on the sub. Am I understood?”
“Yes, skipper!” MacAlister replied.
“In the meantime, I want all of you to remain as calm and as professional as you have been up until this juncture. Am I understood?”
The crew responded in unison: “Sir!”
“Alright then. You are dismissed. Mr. MacAlister, carry on.”
Immediately MacAlister began barking orders at the crew. Within minutes he and three men had collected tools and supplies from the stash they had brought ashore and headed off in the direction they had originally arrived from.
“I think I’m going to head back to the radio room. Now that the storm’s over, maybe I’ll have better luck contacting the ISS again,” Jacob told Emily.
“Great idea,” said Emily, “but I still need to speak with the captain first.” She caught the eye of one of the two men who had carried Jacob across the snow and he agreed to round up another helper and get Jacob back to the other building.
“Captain?” Emily caught Constantine as he headed back to his office.
“Hello, Emily. Wonderful news, isn’t it?” he said, smiling warmly at Rhiannon.
“Have you given any more thought to what I told you about what could be waiting for us out there?” said Emily.
The sub captain’s eyes narrowed slightly and she saw him blow a puff of air out before replying. Exasperation. Well, at least she knew how he really felt.
“I’ve given it as much thought as a man stranded on an island with no way to contact the outside world can,” he said, his face softening again. “But now that the storm has blown over, I’ve got Jacob and MacAlister trying to establish contact with anyone that they can reach on the base radio. We’ll at least know if there are more survivors out there that can help us.”
The captain turned to walk away, but Emily grabbed his arm.
“One more thing, is there anything else I can do to help you and your crew?”
The captain considered her request for a moment. “Quite honestly, Emily, you and Rhiannon are of more use to us watching over the remainder of my crew who are still hospitalized. If you don’t mind continuing to help out here, it means I can pull a couple of the crew from hospital duty and get them on the cleaning crew instead.”
Emily shrugged off her coat then helped Rhiannon out of hers, the little girl chattering excitedly as they made their way back to their rooms.
“Do you think we’ll be able to go back home? Or maybe there’ll be others out there like us too.” She fired the questions off one after another, barely pausing for breath between each of them. Emily nodded noncommittally at each of them and added a “maybe” to each. But at the door to her room Rhiannon finally paused. “Do you think the monsters will be gone now?” she said, her voice barely audible over the sound of the warm-air vents.
Emily placed both hands on the girl’s shoulders and knelt down until her face was level with Rhiannon’s. It was so very easy to forget the kid was only thirteen, but when Emily stared into her eyes, she could see the traumatized child still hiding just behind those blue orbs, a reflection of Emily’s own inner fears.
“Listen, kiddo. I don’t know what’s going on out there, but I promised you when we were on our way here that I would never let anything bad happen to you, do you remember?”
Rhiannon nodded.
“But the truth is, I just don’t know what’s out there anymore. But guess what? Now we have all these other people who are going to help keep you and me safe. So, don’t you worry, okay?”
Rhiannon nodded and Emily watched as her frown turned into a smile again. “MacAlister likes you,” the kid said from nowhere.
“No way?” Emily replied with mock shock, nudging Rhiannon gently with her shoulder.
“Does too,” said Rhiannon.
Emily stood, her knees cracking in protest.
“Yeah, well, I quite like him as well,” she said, and ushered Rhiannon down the corridor toward the radio room.
Emily heard familiar voices floating down the corridor as she and Rhiannon headed to the communications room. One of them was definitely Jacob’s, the other MacAlister’s, but the third was too faint for her to make out.
MacAlister smiled when he saw Emily and Rhiannon in the doorway.
Only when Emily stepped into the room with the two men was she able to hear the voice clearly.
“Fiona?” she blurted out just as Rhiannon let out a happy cry of “Commander Mulligan!”
The microphone must have been open because the commander of the International Space Station immediately replied. “Emily! Rhiannon! It’s so very good to hear your voices and know that you made it to Jacob safely. I was so worried about you both. The storm blocked all radio transmission from us to you. I…” She paused as if wondering whether she should bring up the next painful subject. “I am so very, very sorry to hear about Simon and Ben. I wish…well, I just…I’m just so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said Rhiannon, her voice barely loud enough to be picked up by the radio’s microphone. “They’re both with Mommy now.”
Emily pulled the girl closer to her, rubbing her hand up and down her arm.
“Commander, it’s good to hear your voice too. I’m assuming Jacob has told you about our new arrivals? The crew of the HMS Vengeance?”
“Yes, yes, wonderful news in so many ways, Emily. And it’s good to know that a little bit of Great Britain made it through all this.”
“Their timing could not be better; it looks like the storm we outran has disappeared. How does it look from the ISS?” Emily continued, steering the conversation away from Rhiannon’s deceased father and brother as succinctly as she could.
“The commander and I were just discussing that very thing when you walked through the door,” said MacAlister, his smile broadening even more. “Emily, the storm seems to have vanished…worldwide.”
“Everywhere?” Emily said, astonished.
“That’s correct,” said Mulligan. “We noticed it beginning to dissipate about six hours ago. Its disappearance was almost as strange as its arrival.”
“What do you mean, strange?” asked Emily.
“Storms usually take days or even weeks to really lose their full power, but this one was gone in a little over two hours,” said the commander. “It was almost as though it disintegrated, bit by bit. From what we could see up here, the edge of the storm just began to dissolve toward the center until there was nothing left, as though the original process was being reversed, only at a much faster rate. I’d tell you it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen, but I’ve seen some very odd things these past few weeks.”
“So that’s it? Everything is back to normal again?”
There was no reply from the space station.
“Commander? Are you still with us?” Emily asked, even though she could hear the astronaut breathing slowly over the radio.
“There’s something else,” said Fiona. “While the storm has vanished, it appears to have changed everything on a global scale. I can’t see any sign of Earth’s indigenous flora, nothing is green down there anymore. It’s all red. Everywhere.”
Emily knew that she should feel something at the commander’s shocking revelation, some kind of surprise or remorse at the passing of the final vestiges of the world that had existed since life first sprang forth on this tiny rock. But the truth was that she felt none of those things. She had suspected that when, or rather if the storm ever subsided, the world would be a very different place, transformed and as different as its former human rulers had been when they crawled from their cocoons after the red rain. Even Rhiannon seemed to have accepted that the world was no longer theirs. Only Jacob, who had witnessed the demise and eventual transformation overtaking the world from this distant, isolated island, seemed taken by surprise at the commander’s words.
“Nothing? It’s all gone?” he
said, aghast. His skin was slowly fading from pink to a waxy gray, in spite of the warmth of the room.
“Yes” was the answer from miles above their heads. “While I obviously can’t be certain this far from home, I see little other possibility for the changes we are seeing.”
Jacob’s voice became momentarily childlike, almost a squeak. “What are we going to do?” he asked, his eyes wide. He was asking her, Emily realized. Why was everyone asking her what to do? Being a mother figure was not in her survival plan, and she sure-as-shit didn’t fit the job description.
Emily laid a reassuring hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “We’re going to do what we’ve always done: continue to survive.” It was the best reply she could come up with under the current circumstance.
Jacob stared up from his chair at her with watery eyes. “How? Can you tell me that, Emily? We have a limited amount of food and nowhere to go. So, how? How do we make it, exactly?” His voice held no malice, she knew, but Jesus, she expected a little more backbone from the man who had dragged her ass out here in the first place.
“We have allies now,” she said, looking at MacAlister. “We have the Vengeance and her crew. And once they get the sub fixed we have a way off this island.” She tried to sound as positive as she could.
Jacob laughed, an ironic grating snicker. “Well that’s just wonderful, but where do we go? You heard the commander, nothing out there is the same anymore.”
“Anywhere,” she said. “We go anywhere. Because if we stay here, then we’ve given up and the one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I never give up. Never.” She paused and sucked warm air deep into her lungs, calming her nerves. “Look, we are all there is right now, but the chances have to be good that there are other survivors out there, other submarines, maybe ships, bunkers. People are like roaches, we have a way of surviving even the worst of situations. We will find a way to survive this.”
“And that about sums us up, doesn’t it: bugs. We’ve been on the receiving end of a fucking galactic pest control effort and we’re the survivors.” Jacob paused in his diatribe for a moment, closing his eyes tightly, a vein pulsing periodically in his temple. He sucked in a deep breath of air before he began talking again, this time there was less of a panicked edge to his voice. “Jesus! I’m sorry, Emily.” He forced a bleak smile as he tried to pull himself together. “I’m just so sorry for all this. Truly.”
Revelations (Extinction Point, Book 3) Page 4
