Genesis (Extinction Book 1)

by Nading, Miranda

  She found herself glaring at the unremarkable brown of her hair and eyes. Her nose was too round, her chin was too small, and her breasts…forget about it. That ship had sailed and left her stranded. If boobs were a woman’s flotation device, she’d drown.

  Sharon handed Eve the meter and began walking out into the bay with the depth rod. “You’re not seriously into him, are you?”

  Her question caught Eve off-guard and she barked out a quick laugh before looking around to see if they had been heard. “What me? No.” She shook her head a little too hard and they both laughed.

  “You’re too good for him, Evie,” Steve mumbled and pushed his wandering glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. He looked away to rinse the first bottle, but not before casting a cold, pinched look toward Richard. “He’s just here ’cause it’s daddy’s money and daddy said he needed it for his resume.”

  “Harsh, Bro,” Sharon whispered, then shrugged her meaty shoulders at Eve and went back to work.

  “It’s true,” Steve insisted, refusing to look up at either of the girls. “The guy’s a douche canoe. I tutored him last spring. Eve deserves better than someone who thinks the Pythagorean Theorem is a vaccine.”

  There was a moment of silence before the girls erupted, their laughter drawing looks from Richard and Talia as Professor Ryan tried to get them squared away with the bailer. Eve’s father grinned as he looked up and she was sure they hadn’t been overheard.

  The sad truth was, Steve was right. Richard’s father, the good Senator Kinsey, had called the house over Christmas break. She had only overheard her father’s side, but it hadn’t been a pleasant conversation. The memory of it sobered her. She focused on the meter in her hands and pulling a good electrical conductivity reading from the warm waters of the bay. He hadn’t talked to her about that call, which was strange, but he had doubled his efforts at helping Richard prepare for tests.

  The guy struggled with every math-intensive course he took, but his heart seemed to be in the right place. Even if his father’s wasn’t. Richard’s class-clown antics were one of the reasons she’d finally become engaged with her fellow students instead of remaining absorbed in her studies, pushing herself to the point of burnout. He had a natural charisma that had pulled her, and her fellow geeks, out of their shell. Because of him, the last couple of semesters had been a blast.

  That was really the point, wasn’t it? He was as different from her as night was from day. He wasn’t a nerd, nor did he have the social IQ of fungus. Eve, on the other hand, had been homeschooled most of her life. Her only experience with large groups had been environmental conferences and fundraisers for Earth Now and Climate Change Awareness, the two non-profit organizations her father favored.

  Put her on a stage for a public speaking assignment and she would rock it. Put her in a group of people and expect her to make small talk, she’d be more likely to puke on their shoes before running off to hide in the bathroom.

  Though Richard filled out a wetsuit better than any guy she’d ever met, it wasn’t his body she found attractive. It was the self-confidence he wore; as comfortably as she wore sweats for Saturday morning cartoons with her dad.

  Nor was it only Talia’s pouty lips or perfect curves that had nurtured the envy, which had begun to distract Eve from her studies. It was how easily she turned on that charm, and got noticed by guys like Richard. Even as part of Eve thought it made Talia look like an idiot, there was another part of her, growing more persistent as time passed, that would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.

  Irritated with herself, Eve forced her attention back to the meter and jotted down the EC and temperature of the water before changing the probe out to get a dissolved oxygen measurement.

  Steve nestled a sample bottle in the dry ice in the cooler, where it would keep until they could get it back to the hotel and freeze it. Sharon finished filtering a second bottle for analysis, but her eyes kept drifting back and forth between her sullen brother and Eve.

  As if sensing a conversation changer was needed, Sharon asked, “Been so busy with prep for the trip, I forgot to ask. Did you get to go flying while you were on break?”

  “Even better.” Eve grinned from ear to ear. Sharon knew full well she had been flying. She also knew there was no better way to goad her brother out of his mood. “Got to airfield and Manuel was throwing gliding gear into the plane. We caught an arcus cloud and rode the front edge for nearly six hours. Just about made it to Mexico.”

  Steve froze and stared at her with gaped mouthed amazement. “You don’t mean a roll cloud?”

  “Yes, sir, I do,” Eve beamed with pride. Steve was the resident weather fanatic and the jealousy would eat him up. It felt good to be on the other end of it for a change. “Stretched horizon to horizon. It was glorious.”

  “Do you have any idea how rare they are?”

  “Count on it,” Eve grinned as Sharon gave her a conspiratorial wink. “We filmed it. I’ll let you see it tonight, if you’re a good boy.”

  His amazement turned into a nasty glare before he grinned and went back to work. “I’m always a good boy.”

  A warm breeze skipped across the water and grabbed small grains of bromocresol green as Sharon tried to get the chemical into the small bottle to test. Eve reached out to block the wind until Sharon got the stopper in and began to shake it to dissolve the powder. Unable to resist a final jab, Eve smiled sweetly at Steve. “Don’t worry, Steve. They’re incredibly rare, but I’m sure someday you’ll get the chance to ride the edge.”

  “If he could get over his fear of heights.” Sharon giggled and wiped sweat from her forehead before getting the sulfuric acid dropper ready.

  “Or his over-inflated sense of self-preservation,” Eve added and Steve was the only one who didn’t laugh. “I don’t know what it is about staying in one piece that he seems to hold onto.”

  Steve’s face flushed and he went for a change of subject, refusing to look at either of them. “We’re dodging the snow back home and tourists season here—” Before he could finish, the hinge came loose in his jaw as it stretched out in a yawn.

  Eve fought the tingling response, but it was a contagion she couldn’t fight. Her ears popped to relieve the pressure inside before she could cover her gapping mouth with the bend of her arm. Sharon didn’t bother trying. As she counted the drops of sulfuric acid that it took to make the solution turn bright pink, her jaw stretched to the limit.

  Behind them, in the mangroves lining the bay, birds by the thousands burst out of the treetops and took flight. It was feathery pandemonium. The flight of the birds drowned out the sounds of the boats in the bay and darkened the sky. Several minutes passed before they seemed to find their compass again and disappeared over the mainland.

  Professor Ryan had been moving to join his daughter’s little group. He stood frozen about five feet from them, staring out to sea where dark clouds were beginning to gather. The winds were pushing the clouds toward shore, but it looked as if a giant, invisible hand blocked their path, forcing them to circle back the way they had come.

  Within minutes, the clouds towered as high as they were wide. A curtain of rain painted the sky with giant gray brush strokes, from the clouds to the ocean.

  The gentle eddy of water shifted, pulling at their legs and almost taking Eve’s feet out from under her. The small float that served as their work platform jerked against its tether, trying to float out to the open ocean.

  “Get to shore, now!” Professor Ryan yelled.

  Eve, hearing the panic in her dad’s voice–but not understanding it–felt rooted to the spot. Watching Steve and Sharon gather up the equipment, she coiled the cord of the meter up and slipped it into its case.

  They had been through squalls in the bay before. Sure, lightning was always an issue, but the storms always huffed like a dragon and blew themselves out, almost as fast as they got going. They had plenty of time to get to one of the pavilions to wait out the deluge.

  Eve
reached out to help Sharon gather up the small glass vials, only to have them knocked out of her hands. Glass and packets of chemical flew into the water as her father shoved Steve and Sharon towards shore. He grabbed her upper arm hard enough to bruise and propelled her towards the mangroves.

  A gust of wind slammed into her back, pushing her forward as the receding waters pulled at her legs with riptide force. Fighting to get back up and get her feet on solid ground, fear of being pulled under added fuel to her racing heart.

  Eve fought to keep up with her father’s frantic pace. Stumbling over exposed roots and rocks that had only moments before been two feet below the water’s surface, she narrowly avoided planting one of her floundering feet on a spadefish.

  Caught between the rocks, stranded by the fleeing tide, his sides slapping at the rocks around it, the fish made wet sucking noises that somehow made his silent gasps for liquid oxygen much worse. At the site of the struggling fish, confusion gave way to panic.

  The storm off the coast seemed to draw the light out of the day as shadows lengthened and the world took on an otherworldly glow. Wind, sudden and fierce, slammed into Eve’s back, propelling her forward as if they had worn out their welcome and it meant to drive them all the way back to Syracuse.

  Thunder, which she felt as much in her running feet and chest as she heard, exploded. As they neared the minivan, Eve chanced a look back just in time to see Talia’s ankle wedge between two rocks. Her momentum launched her forward and she went down hard, her head rebounding as it struck one of the last rocks between her and the asphalt stretch that would carry her to the safety of the van.

  Richard, caught up in the professor’s panic, grabbed Talia’s arm, pulling and dragging her forward while she struggled to her feet. Blood, too bright in the darkening day, soaked the left side of her face in seconds.

  Eve had only a moment to register the empty bay behind them before her father shoved her head first through the driver’s door. She crab-crawled over the console and into the passenger’s seat as wind–that had only moments before been as warm and soft as a lover’s touch–slammed into the side of the van, rocking it and swallowing her father’s screams to hurry.

  The side doors slammed back to the stops. Steve and Sharon were yelling at each other, over each other, as they crawled in, but the wind ripped their words away. A growling, rumbling engine filled the darkening air, traveled up through the frame of the van and into their bones.

  Eve’s attention was torn between the horror of the blood that covered Talia’s once beautiful face as Richard shoved her toward the open back hatch, and the wall of darkness that pushed toward them from the ocean. The minivan cranked to life and for one terrifying moment Eve thought, in his panic, her father would drive off before they could get in and shut the door.

  Steve and Sharon had fallen silent as they stared out at the angry waters beyond the bay. Richard half shoved, half rolled Talia into the back of the van screaming, “Go! Go! Go!” He straddled Talia’s body and grabbed the hatch to slam the door closed, only a moment before Eve’s father hit the gas.

  The sudden surge forward slammed Richard face-first into the rear glass. His nose left a bloody print on the window that faded as what little light had been left in the world drained away.

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  Also by This Author

  Caliban

  Echoes of Harmony

  Canyon Echoes

  Extinction: Genesis

  Planned Novels

  Extinction: Flash Point

  Extinction: Judas Kiss

  Extinction: Asylum

  Extinction: Dogs of War

  Extinction: Dead Light

  Extinction: Sacrifice

  Extinction: Purgatory

  Extinction: Bastion

  Extinction: Ascension

  Eldorado: A Cottonwood Cove Novel