Apocalypse

by Dean Crawford

  Katherine turned away the moment she saw Lopez. ‘You’re not welcome here.’

  Lopez strode forward. ‘We need your help.’

  Katherine moved back into the shack without another word.

  ‘She could be sitting on her husband’s luxury yacht,’ Bryson said as he followed Lopez, ‘sipping a cocktail while servants manicure her nails . . .’

  ‘It’s called charity,’ Lopez replied. ‘Good will and all that?’

  Bryson shrugged as he followed Lopez into the darkness of the shack.

  The air within smelt of herbs, dried fruits and ancient soil, a haze of incense smoke struggling to conceal all other odors. Laying on a bed in the center of the shack was a girl whose age Lopez guessed at fourteen, maybe fifteen. Her belly was distended as though filled with gas, the deeply tanned skin laced with veins.

  Katherine Abell knelt alongside the girl and gently drenched her forehead with cool water from a chipped porcelain bowl. Lopez eased closer and saw that the girl’s breathing was erratic, her eyes rolled up in their sockets.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Lopez asked. ‘Malnutrition?’

  Katherine Abell did not look around as she replied.

  ‘She’s pregnant, but the baby is breach and I can’t turn it.’ Katherine scooped up some more water and spilled it across the girl’s glistening skin. ‘She’s dying.’

  Lopez winced and looked again at the girl’s face.

  ‘She looks too young.’

  ‘She was raped,’ Katherine replied without emotion, as though such a tragedy were all too common, a daily occurrence.

  A thick loathing stuck in Lopez’s throat as though a ghost had just joined her in the room, and her voice fell to a whisper. ‘Why didn’t she have a termination?’

  Katherine Abell peered around at Lopez as though she were crazy.

  ‘Because the government here outlaws abortions in all cases,’ she shot back, ‘including those resulting from incest and rape, even those that endanger the mother’s life. They’re bullied into it by Catholic dogma, made to live as though they’re in the Dark Ages, so poor young girls like Isabella here are forced to carry the child or die trying. And all because of people who call themselves pro-life.’

  Lopez stared at the wall of the hut, her eyes glazed.

  ‘You okay?’ Bryson moved to her side, one big hand resting on her shoulder as his normally arrogant features folded into something that might have been concern. ‘You look like somebody’s walked over your grave.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lopez uttered.

  Bryson’s eye peered at her. ‘You and I both know that’s women’s code for “something’s wrong”.’

  Lopez ignored him as she looked down at the pregnant girl.

  At the age of fourteen, Nicola Lopez had become pregnant to a 16-year-old farm boy from Coroneo, the tiny municipality in which they lived, in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, deep within the Vedeer Mountains. Lopez had always been a child willing to take chances, to run where other children would not, to disobey and to confront. Armed with a ferocious temper, high intelligence and a mischievous sense of humor, she had inevitably sought the company of older friends. What she could not have understood was the difference between their motives and her own.

  In a tiny, musty-smelling stall on a ramshackle farm, Javier Ruben, a tall and strikingly handsome boy who had taken an interest in her, overpowered her while they were fooling around and hurt her in a way that she could neither comprehend or resolve. While she had not exactly fought her amorous companion off, nor had she realized the consequences of his actions. She had been unable to sleep for days, had wandered Coroneo in a state of shock, and had frequently found herself crying unexpectedly.

  And then her menstruación had abruptly ended, along with her childhood. In an instant, the sleepy cobbled streets, soaring mountains and quaint churches of her homeland had become the features of an implacable, ferocious enemy.

  At the time, Guanajuato, a conservative state whose leaders were held in grim and bigoted thrall to Catholic dogma, had denied every petition by a pregnant rape victim for abortion services, and over a hundred of its residents had been arrested for seeking or providing illegal abortion. Worse, more than a dozen women had been sentenced to up to thirty years in prison for the same ‘crime’. Faced with prison if her pregnancy was terminated, Lopez had no choice but to throw herself upon the mercy of her family. None had abandoned her. Her terrible secret remained exactly that, until four months later she suffered a natural miscarriage and lost the child.

  Lopez knew what pro-life meant, and it was sure as hell nothing to do with compassion.

  ‘Really,’ Lopez said, leveling Bryson with a steady gaze. ‘I’m fine.’ She turned to Katherine. ‘We have to leave right now.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere. I have work to do.’

  Scott Bryson’s voice cut in from behind Lopez.

  ‘You don’t move right now, you won’t have anywhere to do your work.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘This area is about to be hit by an earthquake,’ Lopez said.

  Katherine’s eyes narrowed. ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘Because your husband has built a device that can cause earthquakes,’ Lopez said. ‘If we don’t leave in the next few minutes we might not be leaving at all. Do you understand?’

  Katherine shook her head slowly.

  ‘No, he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t – he knows that I’m here.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have come all of this way if we weren’t pretty damned sure,’ Lopez cut across her. ‘We have to move, now!’

  Katherine stared down at the girl.

  ‘But Isabella . . .’

  ‘We’ll take her with us,’ Lopez said.

  ‘She can’t travel, and I can’t leave her here alone.’

  Lopez was about to answer, when Bryson suddenly shouldered his way past and knelt down alongside Isabella’s prostrate form. Lopez watched as Bryson ignored Katherine’s protests, his thick and calloused hands gently probing Isabella’s belly as he looked up at the ceiling, seeing with his hands.

  ‘She’s got plenty of amniotic fluid,’ Bryson said, still looking up at the ceiling as he felt around. ‘Baby feels fine. Do you have any anesthetics?’

  Katherine blinked away her confusion.

  ‘She’s on painkillers right now, but they’re making her pretty drowsy. I don’t want to think what they might be doing to her baby.’

  ‘It might help,’ Bryson said. ‘I’m going to try external cephalic version.’

  Lopez stared at Bryson. ‘The hell you think you are now, Dr. Kildare?’

  Bryson grinned and winked at her. ‘Watch and learn, honey.’

  Bryson turned back to Isabella and leaned in, gently massaging her belly. Lopez realized that Bryson was skillfully pushing the baby back up from the girl’s pelvis, then easing its head around from the top of the womb to the bottom.

  Bryson ministered to the girl for several minutes, gently working his way around her body as Katherine watched, just as enthralled as Lopez. Finally, he leaned back and looked down at Isabella. The girl was no longer writhing, and some of the sweat on her skin had disappeared. Lopez realized that the girl’s fluttering breath was now more even and regular.

  Katherine Abell stared at Bryson. ‘Thank you.’

  Lopez watched wide-eyed as Bryson stood. He glanced down at her. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lopez uttered. ‘I’m just amazed, is all.’

  ‘You think they only taught us to kill in the SEALs?’ he guessed. ‘Hearts and minds, honey. We were also trained to help locals in foreign countries, to win their support and friendship.’

  Lopez looked at her watch. ‘Shit, we gotta go, right now.’

  Katherine Abell stood up.

  ‘I don’t see why I should go anywhere. This is where I’m needed.’

  ‘No,’ Lopez shot back, ‘where you’re needed is back in court, because
only one person on earth knows Joaquin Abell’s mind, and that person is you.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You’re going to end up in court whether you like it or not,’ Lopez snapped. ‘You can either be in the witness stand or you can be in the dock. Your call.’

  ‘I won’t turn against my own husband!’

  ‘Then why are you out here?’ Lopez challenged. ‘As far away from him as you can get?’

  Katherine’s lawyerly cool seemed to have deserted her as she flustered.

  ‘IRIS is still a force for the good. Prosecuting it through the courts will do more harm than good to its charitable causes.’

  ‘There are no charitable causes!’ Lopez insisted. ‘IRIS is a fraud, Katherine, and Joaquin is a megalomaniac bent on creating disasters in order to generate debt in entire countries. He knows that you’re here. Don’t you see? He’s trying to silence you too!’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Katherine gasped. ‘I won’t believe it.’

  ‘Is that a gamble you want to take?’ Bryson asked her. ‘Where are your kids?’

  ‘They’re at school in Miami, far from here,’ Katherine said. ‘This is ridiculous. Even if Joaquin were to target me, he would never harm our children!’

  Lopez was about to argue further when a deep, shuddering noise rumbled across the mountains as though some careless god were dragging their heels across the earth. In an instant the walls of the shack began swaying. Lopez reached out to steady herself.

  ‘It’s starting!’ she shouted. ‘Get out, now!’

  52

  Lopez staggered out of the hut toward the two scooters. The children were scattering toward their homes as frantic parents beckoned them inside.

  The earth beneath Lopez’s boots vibrated as though giant celestial strings were quivering through the bedrock deep underground. Bryson got to the scooters first, kick-starting one for Lopez in a cloud of blue smoke, before leaping onto his own and firing the engine. Lopez climbed onto the scooter as Katherine clambered onto the pillion seat behind her.

  ‘He knows I’m here!’ Katherine yelled above the noise of the engine. ‘He wouldn’t do this.’

  Lopez kicked the scooter into gear. ‘He already has! Hang on!’

  Lopez twisted the throttle wide open and the scooter surged away from the village. Flocks of birds vaulted from the trees in thick clouds of wings that streaked across the lumbering clouds above, and Lopez could see millions of trembling leaves spilling droplets of moisture like a rain shower upon the track as she guided the scooter down the hillside as fast as she dared.

  Bryson’s own scooter growled somewhere behind her, following her closely down the trail and shouting as they went.

  ‘Watch out for the trees!’

  Lopez glanced to her left through the quivering blanket of ferns and leaves and saw the moisture-laden soil of the steep hills to her left tumbling and shifting, shaken loose as the quake gained intensity. Rivulets of earth spilled out across the track in front of her and she swerved the motorbike around the larger chunks, as from the corner of her eye she saw thick, gnarled tree roots burst from the earth like grasping skeletal hands.

  ‘The hillside’s coming apart!’ she yelled back to Bryson. ‘Stay on the outside!’

  Lopez swerved the scooter further out toward the edge of the track, the plunging hillside vanishing to their right into a dense canopy of trees that she knew concealed a hundred-foot drop.

  Katherine shouted out to her above the wailing noise of the engine.

  ‘We can’t stay on this bike when the quake really gets going!’

  Lopez nodded, knowing only that they had to get off the hillside. The drenched soil and exposed flanks of the hills, eroded by years of deforestation and rain, could give way at any moment and send millions of tons of watery mud cascading down on top of them.

  Lopez kicked the motorbike up a gear, sweeping it through a long right-hand bend that followed the epic curve of the mountainside as they plunged beneath a shivering canopy of trees. Cold droplets of water showered down upon them again, and Katherine’s grip on Lopez’s waist tightened as the scooter banked out almost to the edge of the drop. Lopez leaned into the turn as the rear wheel skipped and span on the damp track. She twisted the handlebars to the left, counter-steering against the rear wheel’s grip, and letting it spin freely as she broadsided around the rest of the turn and then opened the throttle wide, the bike coming upright as the track straightened out toward the lowlands a mile away.

  Bryson accelerated past them on their left as he powered out of the same corner, his motorbike quicker with only one person aboard. Lopez followed him as he leaned the bike toward the dizzying drop on the right-hand side of the track, the forest canopy whipping past as they screamed down the hillside. Lopez’s shirt was drenched with water, her hair thick and heavy with moisture, but already she could feel the heat of the sun again and see ahead the vast floodplain of Puerto Plata bathed in sunlight, distant windows flickering like beacons in the haze.

  Katherine yelled at her and pointed at the distant town.

  ‘It’s coming! Stop the bikes!’

  Lopez squinted through the moisture dripping from her eyelids, and saw that something had changed in the town’s harbour ahead. It took her brain a moment to register what it was, as a wave of fear sluiced through her.

  The tide had receded more than a mile out from where it should have been, as though dragged by some unseen force way out in the deep ocean.

  A deafening crack burst the air around Lopez as though a gunshot had been fired beside her head, and in an instant she saw a spray of woodchips burst from the foliage as a tree plunged out of the forest ahead, thick branches rushing down toward the track.

  ‘Stop the bike!’ Katherine shouted.

  Lopez kicked the scooter down a gear and snapped the throttle fully open. The scooter raced toward the ever-closing gap as the thick branches caught amidst the canopy above them, the heavy trunk quivering as it twisted and shook its way down toward the track.

  Bryson ducked down on his bike as he shot past beneath the swaying palm fronds, and Lopez shouted out as she leaned forward and lay flat against the tank.

  ‘Get down!’

  Katherine lurched forward and Lopez felt the lawyer’s head thump against her back as they plunged beneath the falling tree, damp leaves and fronds slapping across them as the scooter raced beneath the plunging trunk and out the other side. The vehicle weaved and kicked as Lopez struggled to keep it upright as they shot out into clear air.

  Lopez closed the throttle to give the scooter a chance to steady itself, and that was when she heard the noise, a deep and loud rumbling like the roar of a thousand boulders tumbling down upon them. Ahead, she saw Bryson’s motorbike suddenly kick to one side and then the former soldier leapt from his saddle and hit the track hard, rolling as he did so and covering his head. The earth ruptured beneath his scooter, buckling upward in jagged mounds pierced by thick tree roots, as the earthquake split the track in two. Bryson vanished from sight as the road disappeared in a chaotic explosion of dirt and debris.

  Lopez shouted over her shoulder. ‘Jump!’

  In an instant the track beneath her shifted violently and threw the motorbike to one side. The tires lost their grip as all balance was ripped from Lopez’s hands and they toppled toward the dusty surface of the track racing past beneath them.

  Lopez hurled herself clear of the saddle, her arms out before her as she crashed down. The breath was smashed from her lungs as she rolled across the dusty earth with her arms wrapped around her head, the roaring still in her ears as the motorbike span past her on its side, the metal engine scraping across the rugged terrain.

  She came to a stop and peered through eyes filled with damp grit. The ground beneath her was trembling with rolling seismic waves that caused the forests to sway and ripples to tear through the earth beneath her, splitting chunks off the track that spilled away into the ravine below.


  ‘Nicola!’

  Lopez whirled in time to see Katherine Abell on her knees in the dirt and the grime, balanced precariously upon a tilting slab of earth that rolled away from the track toward the plunging abyss below.

  Lopez hauled herself to her feet and staggered across, reached out for Katherine’s hand and grabbed it as the ground beneath her feet slid away. Katherine screamed and held on to Lopez’s hand in terror as the track disappeared. Lopez’s stomach lurched as she felt herself fall, saw the ground break up into a million spinning chunks of earth that plummeted away from her, and she reached out blindly with her free hand.

  Her palm touched on a thick tree root exposed by the collapsing hillside. She gripped it without thought, and dense fibers sliced into her skin. The sharp pain receded as though dulled by the roar of the rending earth around her. Her hand slid down the root for almost a foot before she stopped to hang from its tip whilst Katherine Abell dangled below her. Lopez looked down and saw the top of the forest canopy some twenty feet beneath them, chunks of earth falling away from the hillside to batter the palm fronds.

  The pain in Lopez’s hand returned and began to spread and she felt the muscles in her arm seize up under the strain. A cascade of soil and stones spilled from the ruined track above, pouring over Lopez’s head and shoulders and stinging her eyes with sand and grit. She looked down, trying to shout between teeth gritted with the effort of supporting both of their bodies.

  ‘Climb up me, quickly! The rest of the track could go any moment!’

  Katherine Abell looked up and then reached out with her own free hand and grabbed Lopez’s belt, hauling herself up and wrapping her arms around Lopez’s legs. Her green eyes were now muddied with terror, as the world shook itself apart around them. The canopy below them swayed and shifted, the deafening roar of the quake punctuated by sharp cracks as trees were uprooted, their mighty trunks snapping under the strain, to crash down through the forest.