by Tom Abrahams
Less than a minute later, Vihaan tumbled from the truck onto the ground next to Clayton. He was conscious but lethargic, and seemingly confused. He moaned and then called up to Sally. “Where are you going, Sally?” he asked. “What happened? Why are you—”
“Idiots!” Sally spat, and unleashed a profanity-laced diatribe, ending with, “Selfish idiots.” She hung out the side of the truck, spitting as she yelled. “You think I really befriended you, Vihaan? Really? Me? You? Please. My job was to keep you inside and occupied. Spaceman here destroyed that. Now I can’t go back. Hell if I’m staying with you. You wanted out. You got it.”
Vihaan lay on the ground, seemingly stunned by the nasty revelation. He pulled his hands to his face.
Sally slammed shut the passenger’s side door and scrambled to the driver’s seat, reaching for the ignition. Her face reddened and her features tightened with anger. “Where are they keys?” she snapped. “Give me the keys!”
Bert reached into his pocket and dangled the keys from his finger. “You didn’t think this through, did you? And what’s worse, you brought a knife to a gunfight.” He pulled his left hand from behind his back, revealing the nine millimeter, and leveled it at her.
The red hue drained from Sally’s face. She instantly paled, her eyes bulging with the recognition she’d misplayed her hand.
“Get out of the truck,” Bert said. “I don’t want to kill a woman, but I have before under far less irritating circumstances.”
Sally cursed and spat at Bert, but climbed from the truck. She stood at the open door, her feet planted shoulder-wide in a weak show of defiance.
Chandra struggled to his feet and walked around the front of the truck, leaning on the front grille for support. His balance was clearly off-center. “You were lying the whole time?” he asked. “What about the bruises?”
“Part of the plan,” she hissed. “All of it was an act. That moron Treadgold never should have brought you to the bunker. I told him that when he assigned me to you.”
Chandra lowered his head and leaned his full weight against the truck. Clayton could see the scientist was processing the data, trying to calculate how he hadn’t forecasted this outcome.
Bert waved the gun at Sally. “Move away from the truck. We have places to be.”
Sally laughed. “What, you’re going to leave me here in the middle of nowhere?”
Bert looked at their surroundings, curling his lip into a sneer. “Yes.”
Sally looked back at Chandra and then at Clayton. She ran a hand through her strawberry blond hair and stepped toward the center of the road. She was halfway between Bert and the truck, her eyes darting around, her chin trembling.
“Vihaan, Clayton,” said Bert, “you two go ahead and hop back in. I’ll be there in a second.”
Clayton moved to Chandra and put his hand on the scientist’s shoulder. He ushered him around to the passenger’s side of the JLTV and helped him into the cab. He reached under the seat and found the Glock, pulled it free of its strap, checked it, and held it in his hand.
Bert pointed in the direction they’d traveled from. “Take fifty steps that way,” he said to Sally. “Count out loud. You stop before you get to fifty and I’ll kill you.”
Sally cursed at all three men and started counting. She moved deliberately north, away from Bert and the truck. When she’d hit twenty-five, Bert crossed the street and climbed back into the truck. He started the engine, released the brake, shifted into gear, and accelerated south.
***
MISSION ELAPSED TIME
76 DAYS, 11 HOURS, 07 MINUTES, 01 SECONDS
BOWIE, TEXAS
Bert eased the truck into a parking space in front of Bowie City Hall. It was early morning and they needed to refuel. It had taken eight hours to travel four hundred miles from Kerrick, Texas, at the Oklahoma border to the small town northwest of Dallas. They’d managed to avoid any additional checkpoints.
“I’ll fill it up,” said Clayton. He shouldered open his door and jumped to the street. His legs were heavy, his joints stiff from the long, silent overnight ride. Clayton had tried to sleep, but Chandra’s whimpers from the backseat had kept him awake.
He eased to the back of the JLTV and opened up the tailgate, pulled a couple of the jerry cans to the ground, then heaved one of them to the fuel access. Bert appeared from the other side of the truck.
“Bowie, Texas,” he said, employing his best Southern twang. “Have you ever been here before?”
Clayton plopped the can’s spout into the tank. The can vibrated as diesel glugged into the tanks. “No, never have. Though I saw a sign that suggested this is where the world’s largest Bowie knife is displayed.”
“How large?”
“Twenty feet.”
Dust swirled around the men as a soft breeze chilled the air around them. Bert crossed his arms over his chest and tucked his hands under his armpits. He looked at the cream-colored brick building in front of the truck. Its quartet of windows were adorned with metal green awnings, as was the front door. Above it was a green placard embossed with gold lettering. BOWIE CITY HALL.
“You think Vihaan’s going to be okay?” he asked.
Clayton shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know if any of us are going to be okay.”
Bert frowned. “That’s a downer.”
“This is a different world, Bert. People have turned into aliens. Their basest instinct seems to rule. We have limited food, little water, and almost no fuel. Once we go through the cans, we’re stuck wherever the needle pegs empty.”
“You might be right on the people, the food, and the water,” Bert smirked, “but we might be just fine on the fuel.”
“How so?”
Bert motioned past Clayton. “That truck over there has likely got more diesel in it than we can carry.”
Clayton looked over his shoulder and saw a white bobtail fuel truck. Along the side of the truck was black and gold labeling that read “Kelly Propane and Fuel, LLC.” On the bottom right of the fuel tank on the back of the truck was a red diamond that warned of flammable diesel fuel on board.
Forty-five minutes later all six of their cans were full. Clayton lugged the last of the jerry cans to the back of the JLTV. He walked to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel.
“My turn,” he said. “You catch some sleep, Bert.”
Chandra was already asleep. He was lying awkwardly splayed on the backseats, snoring.
Clayton was driving southeast on State Highway 287. If the road signs were right, it would take him through Fort Worth and Waxahachie. He knew from experience he could find Interstate 45 from Waxahachie. He’d driven through there before on a camping trip to Dinosaur Valley State Park with Chris.
He accelerated, unconsciously pushing the truck faster and faster, willing himself toward home. What had been a week seemed so much farther in the distance. Hours earlier, before Sally had put a knife to his throat, he’d been about to tell Bert what had happened in orbit.
What had happened?
He remembered that moment the radio went dead on the ISS and how he’d gripped the sides of the laptop display directly in front of him. The screen had been black. He’d thumped the spacebar with his thumb. He’d hit the power button as if he were trying to score on a video game. Nothing had worked, not even the joystick that controlled the Canadarm2. He’d jockeyed it back and forth and slapped at it out of frustration. Nothing.
In his mind, a movie played as if he were watching it happen to someone else. Boris Voin was stuck, tangled in the tether that connected him to the ISS. Ben Greenwood was floating with his hands up in surrender.
At the time, he’d not seen them move. They had not indicated they were alive. As he drove the JLTV toward Fort Worth, his mind replaying that seminal moment in his life, he could see Boris’s gloved hand curl. Ben Greenwood’s arms twitched. They’d been alive.
Clayton couldn’t be sure that his memory wasn’t playing tricks on him. It was possible
he was rewriting his own history to justify his ill-advised spacewalk. However, something told him that wasn’t the case, that in the confusion of the moment, he hadn’t processed their movements. His eyes had missed them, but his subconscious hadn’t. That was why he’d felt so compelled to try to rescue them. That was why he’d clung to the belief they might be saved. That was why he’d risked his own life for theirs. It wasn’t selfishness, as he’d told himself. It was heroism. It was what any righteous human would do for another.
It might also have been something else that drove him to the gargantuan, futile effort that defied every bit of his training. Clayton didn’t want to admit to himself that was it. But it was more plausible than the notion he’d not seen either of his crewmates exhibit signs of life in the seconds after the coronal mass ejection blasted through the ISS.
The “something else” was his twin sister. As a rational adult, he knew that her death hadn’t been his fault. As an eighth grader at the time, only fourteen years old, he’d not been rational.
As the ambulance took him from the mangled wreckage of their car, leaving his sister behind, Clayton had wailed. He’d reached for her, called her name, and cried for the medics not to take him.
He and his twin had an unbreakable bond as children. They’d promised each other they would always be together. They would never leave the other behind. They’d promised each other with a blood oath that no matter what happened in their lives, one would always be there to help the other. The oath, the promise, was his idea. She’d eagerly agreed.
When Carrie died in the crash, he’d left her behind. He’d failed to be there to help her. As a fourteen-year-old, he’d carried that weight, knowing he’d not kept his promise. At her funeral, he’d laid a white glove on her small casket and whispered to her so that only her spirit could hear him.
Driving Highway 287, weaving around stalled trucks and cars, zipping past backpack-clad loners hiking and thumbing for rides, Clayton remembered for the first time in years what he’d said to her.
“I’ll never leave anyone behind,” he’d said, his hand resting on the polished mahogany. “I’ll never break my promise again, and I’ll do everything I can to get as close to you in Heaven as I can.”
Clayton’s sore throat tightened and his eyes welled. Had he really done all of that? Go to space, attempt to rescue two dead men, and drag their bodies from outer space back to Earth, across a glacier, all because of an adolescent promise he’d made to his dead twin?
In so doing, Clayton had left behind the only people who really mattered. He’d left Jackie, Marie, and Chris to fend for themselves in the worst possible environment. He took a deep, ragged breath, and cleared his mind.
How in the world did I ever pass the psych evaluation?
Bert was asleep in the front passenger’s seat, his head bouncing against the headrest as the truck rumbled along the highway. Chandra hadn’t moved from his awkward recline.
Clayton checked the fuel gauge and smiled. It wasn’t a worry now. In some magical deux ex machina moment, the gods had provided a truck three-quarters full of diesel. Now there was no question they’d reach Clear Lake.
No question at all…
CHAPTER 23
THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 2020, 6:02 PM CST
CLEAR LAKE, TEXAS
Chris heard the rumble first. He bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen. Jackie was boiling water from the swimming pool in a pot. She had a large handful of uncooked spaghetti noodles in her hand. She looked up from the pot when Chris called her name.
“What is it?” she said. “You seem excited.”
“There’s somebody coming. Like the Army or something.”
Jackie snapped the noodles in half and dumped them into the pot. “How do you know?”
“I heard something loud, like a tank, and went to the back window upstairs,” Chris said. “There’s some big truck with a gun on it rolling up the main loop.”
“I think I heard that too. Where’s Nikki?”
“She’s upstairs,” said Chris. “I think she’s reading one of your books.”
Jackie wiped her hands on her shirt and edged around the island toward her son. “Grapes of Wrath,” she said. “I told her it would make our plight seem more palatable. Let’s go check on this tank.”
She crossed the kitchen to the family room. Before she reached the front door, she drew the Glock from her waistband, pulled the slide, and aimed the weapon at the ground. At the door she stopped.
“Hey, Nikki!” she called upstairs, one hand cupped at her mouth. “C’mon out front. Bring your gun.”
Jackie admired Nikki’s handiwork at the front windows. They were boarded up with plastic and large pieces of undamaged wood from the fire across the street.
Jackie unlocked the front door, unlatching the new hotel bar she’d installed. She’d taken it from the Bucks’ place across the street. They didn’t need it.
The sun was low in the sky, offering an orange glow across the neighborhood. The tall pines in her front yard cast long shadows across the driveway. Jackie stood on the front porch, waiting for Nikki.
“What’s going on?” said the fighter, stepping outside, her Glock in her hand. “I was just reading about the government-run camp and the plot to stage a riot so they can shut it down.”
Jackie nodded toward the main loop. “Hear that rumble?”
“Yeah,” said Nikki. “It’s getting louder.”
The women stepped from the porch onto the driveway. At the end of the cul-de-sac, the front end of a high-rise sand-colored truck eased right and turned onto their street. It was rolling slowly, but the engine whined and whirred in the lower gear.
Jackie tightened her grip on her weapon and stepped closer to the street. Behind her, the front door opened and closed. Chris and Marie were standing on the porch. Although she considered telling them to go inside, something stopped her. She walked out into the street and straight toward the oncoming armored truck. Her deliberate steps quickened and she instinctively started jogging, then running, at the truck as it slowed to a stop halfway down the street. It squealed when the driver set its brakes.
“Jackie,” Nikki called, “what are you doing? Jackie!”
Jackie didn’t listen. She ran straight for the truck, covering the final feet in a full sprint. She knew. She knew her husband was home. It came as no surprise to her when astronaut Clayton Shepard emerged from the right side of the truck and leapt toward her.
Jackie wrapped her arms around a man she almost didn’t recognize and buried her face in his chest. He was rank with odor, his hands calloused and rough on her face and neck. She hadn’t even looked him in the eyes, but it was him. Clayton was home.
Both of them sobbed, holding up each other’s weight as they embraced. Moments later, two more bodies joined theirs. Chris and Marie bowled into their parents, almost knocking them to the ground. The family stood there in the street for what at once felt like an instant and forever.
“I knew you would come home,” Jackie said, pulling her face from Clayton’s uniform. “I knew, against every rational bone in my body, that you’d find your way back.”
Clayton stared into her eyes and she saw a sadness, a deep pain looking back at her that hadn’t been there seventy-seven days earlier. She couldn’t imagine, she didn’t want to imagine, what he’d done to make it home to her. She touched his ragged, spotty beard. His face was pale, his cheekbones more pronounced than she remembered. Jackie stepped back, her arms still around him, and looked at the digital camouflage uniform. She patted his chest and motioned toward the JLTV.
“So you enlisted?” she joked. “Is that what took you so long?”
Clayton hadn’t said anything yet. He’d been crying and laughing and holding his family. His chin quivered and he inhaled a shallow breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
Jackie sniffed back her own tears. “You can be sorry later. We need to get you cleaned up. You stink.”
When she turned to lead her husband to the house, two other men emerged from the truck. They cautiously stepped forward but kept a comfortable distance. Clayton must have sensed she’d seen them. He turned around.
“This is Bert Martin and Vihaan Chandra,” said Clayton. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for them.”
Jackie tucked the gun in her waistband and walked toward the men. She offered her hand. “Thank you,” she said, first to Bert and then to Chandra. “Thank you so much. Of course you’re welcome in our home. I’m cooking noodles right now.”
The men thanked her and followed her back to the house. Jackie stopped when she reached Nikki.
“This is Nikki,” said Jackie. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”
Clayton shook her hand, as did Vihaan. Bert held the grip a beat past comfortable.
“Do I know you?” he asked. “You look familiar.”
Nikki glanced at Jackie and then responded, “I get that a lot.”
The group walked back into the house, where Jackie guided them upstairs to find clothing and wash clothes they could soak in the bathtubs. She steered Clayton clear of the master bedroom.
He stood on the foot of the stairs, looking at her. She held his hand and rubbed the back of it with her thumb.
“I’d tell you I owe you a trip to St. Lucia,” he said. “But we don’t have a boat.”
“It would probably take more than a boat,” she said. “You go clean up and come right back. We have a lot to discuss over dinner.”
Clayton gave Jackie another hug before climbing the stairs. He used the handrail to move up one step at a time.
“You’re limping,” she said.
Clayton looked back at Jackie. “We have a lot to discuss over dinner.”
***
Clayton leaned on the granite kitchen island, as he’d done so many times before. It felt different this time. Not only because they were eating by candlelight, or that there were three people who were virtual strangers standing around the island, eating with him, but because his world was irreparably changed.
