by Harley Vex
Table of Contents
The Burst [Cover Image]
The Burst [The Barren Trilogy, Book One]
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
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THE BURST
The Barren Trilogy, Book One
By Harley Vex
Copyright 2021 By Harley Vex
CHAPTER ONE
The last day of your life shouldn’t start with an end-of-year field trip.
And after the last day of your life, you should be, you know, dead. That means the cessation of breathing. The stopping of your heart. Your brain shutting down, and all that lovely jazz the hospice nurses always talked about.
Certainly not the “life” that followed the end of the world.
“All right, class,” Mrs. Taney said, pacing up and down the aisle of our school bus. “We should arrive at our destination in about twenty minutes. Make sure you take your notes into the facility, because they will not let you back out to retrieve them.”
I nodded, trying to squint against the sunlight bouncing off the Arizona desert. That was a better distraction than the fact that we in the Math Club had packed into the same bus with the Science Club and the air conditioning was struggling.
I could deal with being hot on the bus because it had windows, but not with the other problem. Our field trip would take place deep in a mine, and that meant more tight spaces with no escape. Claustrophobia. Lovely.
"So," David McElroy called from across the aisle. "What's this Big Arizona Smasher again?"
"Collider," Mrs. Taney corrected, crossing her arms. She was no nonsense and should’ve been the mean English teacher instead of going into Physics. Once, she took David's phone and used it to demonstrate Newton's first law off the second floor stairwell. “The scientists from the university are letting us witness the Huge Arizona Collider as they search for elusive particles that have evaded scientists for decades. As head of the Science Club, you should know better.”
Yep. We were a group of nerds, and she still had the audacity to lecture us.
“I don’t want to do this,” I told Alana, who had the window seat.
Mrs. Taney turned her perpetual war on students on me. “You signed up for this field trip, just like everyone else here, Leslie.”
That was before I knew the Collider was in an enclosed mine. “It’s Laney. And I’m sorry, Ma’am.”
“She needs to lighten up,” Alana whispered as soon as she looked away to drill someone else. “At least Mr. Ellis is cool.”
Mr. Ellis sat right behind the bus driver. He taught Astronomy and went on this trip every year. He looked bored, and I knew he’d rather be out coaching the Colton basketball team.
I crossed my legs. I hoped they had a bathroom down in the mine. Or maybe the thought of being so far under the surface was freaking me out. I'd been claustrophobic for the past year.
Since—
I hoped whatever room the Collider was in was bigger than a hospice suite.
“That wasn’t nice of her,” David whispered to me as he leaned across the aisle. “She couldn’t even get your name right.”
I sighed. It seemed like most people only remembered it when they were talking about my horrible loss last year, and then it was only in whispers that I overheard in the halls. I wasn’t sure which was worse: being the girl who would fall over in the hall and no one would notice, or being the girl who lost her mom to skin cancer.
“It happens,” I said, shocked that the president of the Science Club would talk to me. He hadn’t before.
“You know what? Watch.” David flashed a charming smile. Then he leaned over Josh to stick his head out the window. The wind blew his sandy hair back as he eyed the road ahead.
Josh wasn’t having it. “What are you doing?”
David ignored him. Not, of course, that Josh could do anything as David outsized him by a factor of two.
Mrs. Taney approached as if David were a five-year-old in trouble for shoving a pencil up his nose. “What are you up to now, Mr. McElroy?”
Thunk. The bus hit a pothole, and Mrs. Taney grabbed Eric’s seat to keep her balance.
David, proud of his distraction, pulled his head back in and returned to his place. “I was just looking out the window.”
I sat there in shock. Had David seriously put his neck out for me? No, he had to feel sorry for me, just like the rest of them.
David turned to me and offered another grin as Mrs. Taney muttered something under her breath and turned away.
But next to me, Alana smiled.
Heat rushed to my face.
“That’ll keep her off us for a while,” he said, throwing his class jacket on the seat beside him.
What did I say? Thanks? I almost didn’t want to continue the conversation, just in case David was acting out of pity. So I nodded and stuck with, “I hope so.”
Mrs. Taney went to sit beside Mr. Ellis, leaving us alone. And Alana gave me a gentle poke in the ribs. She didn’t think this was an offer of pity.
“You’re Laney, right?” He spoke as if he had remembered on his own, though we both knew I’d just said my name in front of everyone.
Seriously.
This wasn’t happening.
I could feel Alana’s gaze on my back, urging me to talk to who would probably be the valedictorian next year. Not only was David the head of the Science Club, he was also a quarterback on the football team. A rare combination, and for reasons neither me nor scientists could understand, he was single. Apparently, no one was ever good enough to date him for long. “Yep. I’m Laney, here with the Math Club.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You went to the Mathletics competition, right?”
He was talking about something other than…that. “Last month.”
“That’s awesome.”
"All right. We're almost there," Mrs. Taney shouted from the front of the bus, daring to stand with Mr. Ellis’s help. Of course she had to interrupt the moment. Ugh. Her skirt swayed as she searched the bus for any signs of cell phones. I had mine in my backpack. Dad had told me to keep it with me, though he only sent the occasional text while burying himself in business trips across the country. Now was no exception. He was way over in New York.
"Almost there," Alana said next to me. "Good. I have to pee."
"So I’m not alone.” Disappointment flooded me as I saw David poking another girl in the back. The teacher had distracted me for five seconds, and already he had moved on.
Typical.
The bus rolled past a station called Happy's Gas that
looked as if it was also an entrance to a bunch of desert trails. After five more minutes of nothingness, we pulled up to what looked like a small military base, complete with a chain-link fence. There were a pair of low, gray buildings inside with metal roofs, one of those big yellow industrial tractors parked in the back, and a short radio tower. Two hangar-looking buildings, also metal, stood in the back. Well, it wasn't quite a military base, but just as bleak. It was no wonder Mr. Ellis was falling asleep.
We stopped at a gate with a guard shack and Mrs. Taney got out. She talked to the guy in a booth, probably ordering him to let us through or else, and got back on. The gate lifted, and we went through. The guy in the shack was reading a magazine. He looked more bored than Mr. Ellis.
"It feels like we're heading into a prison camp," Alana said.
"I agree," I told her. "I thought we were supposed to enjoy this field trip?" Alana had convinced me to sign up and have fun. That was before we both knew what the trip entailed.
If I had known about the mine—
The only thing that convinced me that our school hadn't sent us all to some detention center was a colorful sign on the building that read Huge Arizona Collider and Visitor Center. There were a few cars parked in a dusty lot. "I thought they spent, like, billions on this?” I would need to distract myself.
"Maybe the Collider was so expensive there was nothing left for the parking lot," Alana said.
"I'm sure the rest will be cool?"
"Says the math nerd," Alana said.
I slugged her on the arm. "Hey, you're a math nerd, too.”
Mrs. Taney got back up and clapped. It was her version of a gavel. "Time is ticking. Cell phones away.”
I got up as Mrs. Taney cleared her throat. The thought of the mine hit me again and my chest constricted. I went to grab my backpack.
"The Visitor Center has a policy of not allowing backpacks," she continued.
Translation: leave everything on the bus.
Unzipping my backpack, I stuffed my phone into my metal lunch pail, which was a gift from Mom in our travel days. She found it at one of those bed-and-breakfast places out in California when I was ten, and I’d been using it ever since. I could lock it, and no one could ever steal my lunch. People always tried, of course. That came with being the quiet girl in the corner.
And now I would never let it go for other reasons.
I set it on the floor as I stood, tucking my key inside my pocket. Others would risk Mrs. Taney’s wrath, but I wouldn’t.
The driver slumped over the steering wheel as we filed off and into the full desert heat, ready for a nap. The guy must have gotten up extra early this morning to drive us here, only to sit for however many hours we would be down in this place. I didn't see the entrance to the mine anywhere. Didn't mines have a large hole in the ground with a shaky elevator?
I felt like I would throw up.
"Something wrong?" Alana asked, as she stepped off the bus behind me.
I shook my head. "Everything's cool. Peachy."
"You get quiet when something's wrong," Alana said. "You don’t tell anyone what's going on anymore."
No one deserved my world. It was better if people just stayed out. I didn't want them to see what I'd seen. Of course, that always made Alana prod and drag me back out into life.
My stomachache intensified. Everyone else stepped off the bus. I scraped my shoes on the uneven ground and faced the building. It was low, with narrow windows, and sported a red and white awning. I couldn't find the entrance anywhere and for a few seconds, I had the hope we had arrived at the wrong place and the entire field trip would have to get canceled. But then I saw the door, sunk into an alcove behind a potted plant.
“Okay, group,” Mr. Ellis announced. “We’ll have to arrange this in groups—”
"Look!" David shouted.
Jolted out of my own thoughts, I looked up and squinted.
A white glow exploded over the horizon, like an enormous star was sailing towards us and ready to crash into our planet.
CHAPTER TWO
Asteroid.
The word blasted into my mind as I stood there, frozen, as extra shadows formed along the ground and danced. The white light on the horizon grew brighter and brighter, expanding across the entire sky without a sound. I backed into Alana, who gasped and caught me.
I waited for the roar. But the quiet fell over us all as my legs froze, keeping me rooted. Silently, the sky intensified to white hot, making spots dance in my vision every time I blinked.
We were going to die.
Pepper broke the silence. "Shit!” She ducked into the shade of the building, as if it had any chance of saving her.
Then everyone moved. I pulled Alana to me, acting on instinct and not the cold, hard logic that we were all about to—
A few people hit the ground, swearing. I glimpsed Pepper's yellow and green yarn hat. David’s class jacket. Jerome’s holey jeans. Everything was too bright under the intense light that had filled the sky.
"Everyone inside!" Mr. Ellis shouted.
Shouts filled the air as people stampeded. Alana freed herself from my grasp, grabbed my other arm, and pulled.
An explosion of panic struck my heart and forced a scream into my diaphragm.
Move.
But just as I lifted my leg to make a pointless run for it, the light faded.
I blinked and exhaled. Blue spread over us again, along with a few wispy clouds that danced between pink afterimages. My scream died in my throat as a squeak. The light retracted into a giant new star on the horizon, which faded and blended back into the sky.
“It’s gone,” David shouted.
He was right. Alana released my tingling wrist and stepped back. We all stood there like a set of petrified trees.
The whole thing had happened in under half a minute.
"Was that a plane?" I blurted, glad that I’d held onto my scream. It was a stupid question, but logic and fear didn’t exist together.
Alana looked at me with enormous eyes. "Planes aren't silent.”
Some people murmured. Pepper stood from the dust and blinked. "We're alive?"
"Of course we’re alive!" David said, thumping his own chest and turning up the charm. "Nothing can destroy the almighty David."
A few people let out nervous laughs, even Mrs. Taney. All twenty-three of us stood in the dust, watching the clear blue sky that held a freak star moments ago.
"Was that a supernova?" Mylie from the Science Club asked. "Mr. Ellis?"
The teacher pulled at his collar. "I don’t know. Whatever it was, we need to start the tour. They're waiting and we're late. We can all discuss this later." He looked to Mrs. Taney for help.
I didn’t like the nerves Mr. Ellis was showing.
But before I could think about it further, Mrs. Taney took control.
"Maybe the people inside the building will know what happened. Everyone." She turned to all of us. "We are all okay. The tour starts now."
"I want to record that if it comes back," Josh said, pulling out his phone. That was brave. I focused on that to calm my nerves.
"Now," Mrs. Taney ordered.
People muttered and phones went back into pockets. Josh shook his, hit it, and stuffed it back into his jeans with a disgusted look. I thought about mine back on the bus, hating that I had left it. Recording the UFO or the supernova would have been cool. I could show Dad when he got back from his business trip.
Then I remembered with a gut punch.
We still had to go deep underground.
Mr. Ellis and Mrs. Taney ushered us all inside, wasting no time. People still muttered about what that light could have been, but as we entered the cool, dim building, silence ruled.
We stepped into the Visitor Center and into a tight, air-conditioned space small enough to make my heart race. My chest hurt as my heart thumped against my ribcage. It was shaped like the cabin of an airplane, with dome lights above us and a bathroom halfway down that already attracted
a small line of people. Long, narrow windows let in the desert sun.
A woman sat behind the front counter, but in front of posters on the walls of particles and galaxies. Mrs. Taney tapped her fingers on the counter and Mr. Ellis waited beside her, hands behind his back.
"Twenty-three kids," she told the receptionist, her voice like a razor blade. "Can we send them all down at once?"
It was a weird question for her to ask. Mrs. Taney had come on this field trip many times. The woman typed into a computer, hitting a button over and over. "Oh, come on. I’m sorry. My Internet’s out, so I’ll need to do this manually.” She switched screens, gave up, and pulled out a clipboard instead. “Ah. Here’s your group. Yep. Twenty-three kids. We can only send ten people at a time, I’m afraid. The elevator will be ready in just a few minutes. I suggest you send people down in groups of eight to ten.”
"I'll be in the last group," I muttered, eyeing the line in front of the bathroom. Half the class had lined up there. The mysterious light had an adverse effect on everyone’s nerves, then. I’d have to wait.
"Huh?" David asked me. “You want to wait?”
He was standing right there. "I don’t know," I told him, as Alana winked at me from the side. I hadn’t realized he was standing on our side of the pack. We were in a group. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. At least David was nice to look at.
But it was clear he would be in the first batch of people to descend.
“Okay, everyone. Through here,” Mr. Ellis said, motioning us through the archway where the bathroom was. “We have to hurry. Those of you by the bathroom. It can wait until later.” He snapped his fingers.
What was his deal? Mr. Ellis never got snappy. I looked at Alana and David, but they shrugged.
People didn’t move from the bathroom, and Alana and David came up behind me and blocked the way, anyhow. We stepped through the archway and past two vending machines. There were more posters of supernovas and galaxies on the walls here to make this place seem like less of a prison. It did little good. I still felt trapped in a big metal tube in a barren wasteland. They could have at least put the Collider near civilization.
