“Wait,” was all Ling said, gently pushing her back to the floor of the basement, his eyes watching the door and the floor of the mission above them.
Screams, faint at first, but growing in both volume and number, reached her in the darkness and she could sit still no longer. “They’re gone, Ling. People need help.”
Thinking the soldiers had turned their fire on the civilians when they had been unable to get to her group, Mittie Kate was prepared to find carnage in the dirt streets around the mission. She was no stranger to war zones, no virgin to the sights and sounds of slaughter. Yet nothing, not even her wildest imaginings, could have prepared her for the horror she found on the streets of Las Madre.
Max stood in the center of the street, tears streaking through the dirt, grit and blood on his face. A bottle of Jim Beam was held in one hand, open and partially drained. In the other was a handgun. At his feet, the cassock once worn by the padre fluttered in the morning breeze. Black ash, the remains which hadn’t been blown clear of the chopper, stained the ground where his body had once been.
Ash littered the street in the immediate area where men, women, and children had huddled to watch the spectacle or to escape gunfire. The soldiers who had been on the ground were likewise returned to the earth, the synthetic material of their gear and uniforms left behind as a poor memorial.
Two blocks away, others had not been so lucky. Some lay still, burned by the radiation of the Genesis device, others had stumbled out of their meager shelters, flailing and falling, ridden and eaten by pain and panic in equal measure.
She moved toward Max in the drunken-dazed stupor of shock as he moved to stand over the small, still form of a child. Three feet away, a tortured form stumbled out of a doorway and thrashed on the wooden sidewalk.
“We have to do something,” she heard herself say. Though she had no idea what anyone could do to help these poor wretches.
Max wiped tears from his cheek, smearing the dirt. “It works like gamma rays. The particles move so fast, with no charge of their own, they kick out electrons wherever they punch through. These people are already dead, they just don’t know it yet.”
Stunned, she could only stare, gaped-mouthed at him. “We can’t just let them suffer like this. We need to get help.”
“Have you tried the Jeep, to see if it’ll start? Have you tried your electronics? The Jeep was far enough away from the device that it might still work, maybe even your phone. But even if they do who are you going to call?”
Shock was giving way to helpless fury, and she screamed. “We have to do something!”
Max took another long drink from the bottle, and stepped onto the porch where the screaming – man? Or was it a woman? – continued to thrash. A single bullet ended its suffering.
Horrified, filled with more grief than she had ever known, impotent against the screams drifting from the streets and houses around them, Mittie Kate sank to her knees in the middle of the road and cried. Only as Ling began to walk the other side of the street, the sound of his gun pounding home the finality of their failure, did she begin to fully understand the new, horrible, race for power that had begun.
Part Two
Threshold
1
Digging around in the back of his desk drawer, Ryan’s fingers touched the hard shell of the only thing he had left of Mel. The cellphone. He froze. He hadn’t seen that phone in years, thought it had been lost for good on one of their hair-brained adventures.
Why he had held on to it all these years, he didn’t know. Why he used it to snap pictures of Eve while she was growing up eluded him even further. There was no one waiting on the other end to receive them. Never had been, never would be.
He plugged it in. Waiting to see if the battery would even acknowledge the long-awaited power supply as the door to his office opened.
“You look like you just swallowed the canary, Dad. What did you do?” Eve plopped down on the couch opposite his desk and smiled.
His heart skipped a beat. She was the spitting image of her mother, albeit her social phobias had been more extreme. Ryan would have given his last dollar to find out if Mel had been as socially awkward as Eve when she was a child, or if he had caused it by homeschooling her.
He smiled and hoped it didn’t reveal how guilty he felt about his obsession with the dead phone. “Just getting ready for class. How about you? Ready for your first day?”
“I’ve been running around this campus since I could walk,” she laughed, but there was a familiar nervous edge to it.
Forgetting about the phone, he moved to sit next to Eve on the couch and put his arm around her. “Yes, but this is different, Peanut. You are officially one of them.”
“You mean a rude, entitled, know-it-all college student?”
He laughed despite himself. She had been paying attention. “They’re not all bad. Once in a while I get a handful of students who remind me why I do this.”
“And here I thought you did it for the glory of teaching.”
Ryan laughed and gave her a squeeze. “Between me, you, and a fence post, I do it for access to all the cool science equipment. Now tell me how you’re really doing.”
“I feel—” Soft chimes filled the room and they both turned to look at the phone on his desk. His heart seemed to skid to a stop and he forgot how to breathe.
Eve nudged him. “You gonna get that?”
He faked a smile he didn’t feel and forced his attention back to his daughter. She needed him. Thanks to Mel, he had been all she had in this world her whole life. He wasn’t going to drop the ball now. Besides, it was probably just a glitch, or a jingle to let him know the battery was charging. He shook his head. “It can wait. Talk to me.”
“I feel like my insides are going to shake loose.” She finished stuffing her backpack and tossed it to the floor in frustration. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head into his shoulder and said, “I don’t understand. This campus is my second home, but it feels like a different world today.”
He kissed the top of her head and smoothed down her hair. “It’ll be okay. Give it time. Just sit in the front of the class and don’t look at the students sitting behind you. I’ve already talked to your other professors – they get it. No pressure for the first couple of weeks. Just do your work and keep your head down. They’ll ease you into the group environment.”
“Why can’t I do the other classes online? Just do your classes here?”
“Because you need to start dealing with this. You might puke on your shoes a time or two, but eventually you’ll be able to handle big groups enough to have a life, once you flee the nest.”
She lifted her head and looked him in the eye. “Flee the nest? I’m sixteen and you’re already packing my bags? Do I cramp your style?”
“What? No!”
Her smile broke through and he shoved her off the couch, laughing. “That’s right. I have a standing invitation to be the Playboy Mansion’s new curator and you, you little brat, are holding me back.”
She sat on the floor, giggling. Just like her mother. His eyes drifted to the phone sitting on the desk. “Peanut, we need to talk about your mom.”
All of her humor drained away and he could see it being replaced by a steely determination that let show the woman she would become. “She is not part of the equation, Dad. Never was, never will be.”
“Peanut—”
“No.” She stood up and threw her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m going to get ready for class. I’ll see you in a couple of hours for Water Resources.” She hesitated at the door and looked back. “It’s you and me against the world, Dad. As long as I have you, I don’t need, or want, anything else.”
When she closed the door softly behind her, he sighed. “Well. That could have gone better.”
He watched the phone for several minutes as if he expected it to crawl across the desk and start doing backflips. Maybe he did. If it did, the message it held would be far less intimidating.
; A glance at the clock told him he had thirty minutes before he needed to be in the lab for his first class. Reluctantly, he moved to sit behind his desk and toyed with the phone, building up the courage to bring up the screen.
He started to put the phone down and picked it back up. Put it down again, and forced himself to get his stack of first class papers together. Syllabi on top, orientation assignment regarding the growing fresh drinking water shortage on bottom. When the phone chimed again, he touched the screen to bring it to life. The little envelope that indicated there was a text message waiting caused his heart to soar.
Without giving himself time to chicken out again, he opened the file and his heart sank. It made even less sense than the message Mel left the night she abandoned them.
“Trust your research, Ryan. Trust your instincts. A storm is coming.”
He read it three times and it still didn’t make sense. He said as much in his reply.
The phone remained silent, unyielding of clues to the riddle. He sent another text, then another. Still the phone refused to cooperate. Despite his best efforts, Mel was gone again, if she had even been there to begin with.
Stepping into the hallway, his papers forgotten, he watched as the young men and women moved along the hall, their secret highway of knowledge. “What storm?” he murmured to himself, drawing looks from some of the passersby and ignored by the rest.
The longer he looked at those young faces, their bright futures ready and waiting around the next corner, the more uneasy he became. “Damn you, Mel.”
What storm? And how did she even know about his research? She knew because he had published. Back in his office, his door closed and locked, he fired up his computer and opened the folder that contained all of his published works. The only way she could have known about any of his research is if she’d been following his career through environmental periodicals and journals.
He shivered. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing… the idea that she had been keeping tabs on him was downright creepy. He scrolled through the list of files, looking for a common thread. There was only one. Climate change.
The possibilities of a collapse related to climate change were endless, and frightening. When Mel was with him, before they went into hiding, she had been working for some major power hitters in science and technology. If her warning was real and not some sort of sick hoax, there was no way to know from which direction a complete breakdown in infrastructure would come, and why.
Refusing to get worked up over a single text message that might or might not be from the love of his life, who just happened to have bailed on them right after the birth of their daughter, Ryan grabbed his personal phone. He hit the speed-dial number for Marcus and jumped in as soon as the old man answered. “Do we have the new data packets from the ISS yet?”
“Well hi, Ryan. Why yes, I’m doing well. How about you?”
Ryan snorted back a laugh and forced himself to relax. “Sorry old friend. How are you doing?”
Marcus’ belly-laugh carried across the phone lines. “Grouchy and old.”
“Tell me something new. Have you managed to catch that little Lolita from accounting?”
“Nope, she’s still playing hard to get. Give me time and I’ll win her over.”
“I bet you will. Now, is that enough small talk?”
“It’ll do. But I’m afraid I don’t have the best news for you.” Marcus sighed. “The data pack was corrupt. We haven’t been able to filter out the data yet.”
Sixteen years ago he had called Marcus, hoping to restore sanity after Mel’s last message, only to find out about the attacks in Washington. Then, as now, he had hoped it was just a coincidence. The station was old, long past its scheduled termination date. Only the C.O.R.E upgrades kept it alive. There’s no way a data pack would have come across corrupted after all these years. Not right after getting that message from Mel. One coincidence, okay. Two? He had to call bull-pucky.
“Any chance I could talk you into sending the raw packet to me? We’ve got a hell of a tech department.”
Marcus was silent for a moment. “You think they can pull the data?”
“Don’t know. I doubt it. But it would be good practice for them.”
“It’s worth a try. What are you expecting to find? Even your own research has verified a cooling trend in the oceans.”
“Theoretically, the glacier melt-off should increase the oceans capacity as a carbon dioxide sink, enabling more to be pulled out of the atmosphere. The data we’ve seen has shown a marked drop in atmospheric CO2 levels over the past twenty years, so that should enable the earth to find a new balance. I just want to verify that we are making the dent in it that I think we are.”
“Don’t go finding bad news, Ryan. I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re fresh out of glaciers. Thanks to lowering CO2 emissions and new technologies developed by folks like C.O.R.E, we’ve been able to push back the climate change doomsday. If we start calling warnings again, we’ll be right up there with the scientist who first tried to bring it to people’s attention.”
“Crackpots?”
“Crackpots.” Marcus sighed again. “Don’t make me regret liking you. If you find anything, I want to be the first to know.”
“You got it, Marcus. Thank you. I promise to make small talk first next time.”
“Sure, that’s what they all say.”
“Tell Lolita I said to give you a little false hope once in a while. Chasing her keeps you out of trouble.”
Marcus hmmphed and hung up the phone. Ryan’s own smile faded as he looked at the cellphone on his desk. Another game? God, he hoped so. Just in case, he had to find another route to current data. He had to know for sure that the earth had found a new balance. Had to know for sure that the changing climate had stabilized.
2
Max Dumerick woke, trying to hold back a scream with a mouth that felt packed with stale bourbon-flavored cotton. It had been sixteen years, and still the cries of the damned in that small village in Mexico haunted him. Only in his dreams, the miserable cries were shrieks of agony. Nor did they fall silent after he put a bullet in their radiation-damaged brains.
Throwing the sheet back, he got up and moved to the window, hoping for the slightest of breezes to cool his nightmare-fevered flesh. Twilight had fallen. The lights in the Deira district, the largest commercial center of Dubai, were brilliant against the purple-blue evening that had fallen over it.
The Khor Dubai – though it looked more like a river to Max than a creek – in front of the Park Hyatt hotel, was filled with boats returning for the night. Ancient dhows loaded and unloaded their precious cargo while fishermen cleaned their decks and mended their nets at the end of another work day.
After a quick shower he opened the closet to dress for the night’s hunt. He’d been in Dubai for six months and had jack-squat to show for it. Six long, sweltering months of decadence, false smiles and propaganda. Finally, two nights ago, he’d gotten his first solid lead from a drunk expatriate from Britain in the Double Decker bar.
He groaned as he pulled out the plain white, ankle-length Kandoora the Emiratis favored, and grabbed a newer pair of leather flip-flops. On close inspection no one would believe he was Emirati. From a distance, on the other hand, the woven cotton would buy him a great deal of personal space as immigrants stepped to the other side of the street to pass him, determined not to take any chances.
He chose a frayed Kandoora in faded blue to carry with him. The white of the Emirati would serve him well as long as he ventured no further than the Souks, but after that he had learned the hard way that it would buy him nothing but silence.
The scars that the Kandoora didn’t hide were camouflaged by a thick beard. He stretched the taut, scarred flesh of his back and splashed his face with cold water. Hours had passed in that little village in Mexico, before the tingling sensation in his back morphed into full-blown pain.
Replaying the scene over and over again in his head brough
t him no closer to understanding. Whether it was the building that stood between him and the device, or the angle of the radiation blast – he’d never know. Mittie Kate and Ling had been spared, but somehow, enough radiation reached Max to penetrate the skin on his back.
After that, after the killing fields in Las Madres, it had become Max’s personal mission to find the bastard responsible for developing it.
His first few months in Dubai were an exercise in subcultures. He had known before coming that Dubai was not the fairytale wonderland promoted on television. The magical architecture of steel and glass had been built on the backs of slave-labor. They were a work force numbering in the millions, who had lived in horrid conditions while they worked off their debt.
Though they fared better with living conditions, the maids, nannies, and butlers who ran the homes of the betters, were equally shackled. Their passports held hostage, so they would be forced to work sixteen-hour days and without complaint, while the world turned a blind eye.
The only thing worse than being immigrant labor in Dubai, was being jobless and without a passport in Dubai. The only thing worse than that was being hauled off to debtor’s prison. For any worker unlucky enough to be recaptured, the latter was a guaranteed fate. The camps and holding of passports had supposedly been abolished back in 2023. Even if that was the case, fear still held immigrants hostage.
Nor were his problems getting leads limited to social class segregation. Ethnicity played an even greater role. The British expatriot was thrilled to live in Dubai. Wonderland, she called it. According to her, the Emirati and royal family were at the top of the food chain. Next were expats like her, from Britain and the U.S.
Below that was a twisted staircase of nationalities and their apparent worth as lower human beings. As hardened as Max was, talking to her had made him physically ill. He’d gotten soft, spent too much time around Mittie Kate and her crusades to save the downtrodden and vulnerable.
Genesis (Extinction Book 1) Page 6
