Terra couldn’t help but shiver at his declaration. Nobody at Firma ventured out after dark. Not even the security team.
Nat eyed Terra’s face with a sympathetic grimace. “You look like a red balloon.”
“Why the hell didn’t you head back the minute you saw the clouds?” Bill asked. “Nat and I didn’t even wait for our tattoos to sting.”
Rowan raised his mug in the air. “I take full responsibility.”
“You’re an idiot.” Nat rolled her eyes.
Terra snorted, because she knew Nat didn’t mean it. She'd seen the secret looks and the way they lingered in each other’s personal space. It didn’t take a scientist to figure out something was going on — especially since she’d done the same song and dance with Roark.
Rowan hadn’t admitted it yet. The two of them shared a lot, but matters of the heart had never been a big part of their relationship. Until Roark spilled the beans because she'd broken it off.
Rowan waved his mug around, brushing off Nat’s insult. “Let’s forget about the acid rain debacle for a minute. That’s not even the important part. Terra’s dad told us there’s been another outbreak.”
Carter gasped, covering his mouth. He leaned closer to Jack, as if his boyfriend’s very presence could ease his fear.
“Typhus?” Jack asked, sliding a comforting arm around Carter.
Terra set her tray on the center table, her appetite fleeing. “He’s not sure what it is.”
“Three dead, twelve sick in a week,” Rowan said. “That’s worse than the Zika outbreak five years ago.”
“We lost more than that in the first week of Danu Influenza,” Bill said. “Why should we worry too much right now? We just need to be careful. Right?”
Terra wished she could give him something, anything, to take that shocked look off his weary face.
But she had seen the fear in her father’s eyes.
Jack laid out a rolling paper on the table and opened his pouch of faux tobacco — a compound-grown herb with calming effects. “We’re fuckin’ sitting ducks here. Four hundred-eighty people in an underground bunker with shitty ventilation and a planet trying to kill us? It’s a miracle we haven’t all died already.”
“We may not be dead, but we are dying out,” Carter said, his voice so low Terra had to lean forward to hear. “We’re dying at a rate 55% higher than we’re breeding.”
“But that’s just here at Firma, right?” Terra asked. “Not the whole human race.”
“Don’t be stupid, Terra,” Jack shot back. “When was the last time we saw someone who wasn’t already a resident here?”
“The soldiers, idiot. They come every few weeks.”
“In gas masks and full hazmat suits,” Rowan pointed out, making a face to indicate he wasn’t siding with Jack's sharp remarks. “If the government is only venturing out covered head to toe in leak-proof rubber suits and oxygen tanks, something is fishy.”
Bill chugged the last of his brew and clunked the mug on the table. “We don’t know how many compounds like ours are even still functional out there. For all we know, Dr. Reed is the only reason we’re still alive.”
Terra felt a burst of pride for her father, but she shook her head and played devil's advocate. “We have a good research team. It’s not just Dad that’s kept us alive.”
“There are some things he can’t save us from,” Jack said gruffly. “Zika killed eight kids. The Ebola outbreak ten years ago wiped out the elderly population. Danu flu took out an entire floor of the compound in our first year. Not to mention, typhus decimated three-fourths of the world’s population in the week following Danu’s activation. It only makes sense if these viruses are coming from Danu, they’re affecting everyone. Not just Firma.”
The group fell silent as they considered his words.
Jack lit his cigarette and sucked in a lungful of sickly sweet smoke. “We’re all going to die. It’s the only end in sight.”
Chapter 4
Terra awoke the next morning to the low rumble of a hundred generators running—a sound that only came with sunshine.
Optimism flooded her as she rolled out of bed. Danu’s most passive attack on the human race over the years remained the constant cloud-cover. According to the chart hanging beside her vanity, they hadn’t seen actual sunshine in several weeks. Life without the sun affected the people of Firma in a bad way — not just in mood, but in health, too.
Which was probably part of Danu’s master plan.
Terra grabbed a marker and drew a smiling sun on the day’s date.
She stumbled into jeans and a T-shirt, brushed her teeth at the wash basin, and then clomped up the stairs, her eyes still heavy with sleep. Being Teddy Reed’s daughter brought certain perks — the most lavish being her second-level bunk. Rowan lived a few bunks away on the same floor, but Carter and Jack lived on the tenth. A helluva trek to make every day.
Ground Bay buzzed with activity as the engineering team monitored the generators that would store solar power for use on dark days. The generators lined a wall of the bay, connected to a complicated system of mobile solar panels that now decorated the tire path outside.
Rowan stood with Roark. The elder brother was back in his navy blue jumpsuit, though thankfully it was zipped over his abs this morning.
Roark spotted her first, his handsome face guarded. He spoke to Rowan and jerked his chin in her direction.
Rowan broke into a grin and waved. They spoke briefly, the he clapped his brother on the back and jogged to her side.
Terra loved Rowan. For twenty years, he'd been her everything and she’d spent all of her waking minutes with him. But a piece of her wished it was Roark smiling at her, running toward her now.
Stop it. That way leads to madness.
“Alexis and Freya?” Terra greeted Rowan, shouting to be heard over the din of machinery.
He shook his head. “No word.”
Her heart sank. Outside the open bay doors, the sun shone cheerily—so bright the forest seemed overexposed, lacking depth and shadows.
“They should be back by now,” Terra said, more to herself than Rowan. She took a deep breath and motioned to the world outside. “Time for recon?”
Rowan nodded gravely.
* * *
An hour later, Terra led the team south toward the sector Alexis and Freya covered on their hunts.
Birds sang in the trees, and shafts of sunlight spilled through the leaves, casting geometric patterns on the tire path. On days like this, Danu’s beauty was as undeniable as her wrath.
But Terra couldn’t appreciate the scenery. Nausea had turned her stomach to a mass of cramps. Alexis and Freya should have returned to the compound as soon as the sun rose. It was protocol, to ensure the compound knew you were safe and didn’t send a search party.
Like this one.
Terra didn’t know what they would find in the woods, but she worried it would be nothing good.
“Nat, you spoke with Freya’s husband?”
“First thing this morning,” she replied from behind Terra. “He seemed to think she’d be in a Frig waiting out the rain. She knows protocol.”
“Which makes their absence that much scarier.” Terra turned off the eastern path and onto the portion that led into the southern sector. “What about Alexis’s mom?”
“I talked to her,” Carter said. “She’s concerned.”
“As are we all,” Rowan said darkly, his voice close to Terra’s shoulder.
In the ensuing decades since Danu became poison and the compound was built, the forest surrounding Firma had been equipped for their survival. Whether those who left the safety of Firma were part of the hunting team, the security team, or the team of researchers who studied Danu’s changing poisons, they had shelters ready for protection from Danu’s anger.
Frigs were Firma-built shelters scattered in each of the four sectors surrounding Ground Bay. Each cocoon was made entirely of thick, man-made plastic, seamlessly enclosed with a lo
cking door, and made to fit at least four people — though in a pinch, it could fit double that.
Every Frig was stocked with dried goods and water cleaned for drinking in the event a team had to stay overnight, as well as weapons — just in case.
Terra herself had used a Frig in the past to set out a freak thunderstorm with Rowan. But protocol stated as soon as the storm passed, and daylight arrived, they were obligated to return to Ground Bay. And they had.
Alexis and Freya hunted in Sector Four, the outermost southern ring on what was considered Firma land. Being the furthest out, the Frig in their area was the best equipped. Even so, the pit in Terra’s stomach yawned wide as they drew near to the familiar green structure.
The Frig looked untouched. A thin layer of yellow pollen spread over the tires at its entrance — a substance not quite as dangerous as dirt. Good for an itchy rash, but not deadly.
Terra knocked on the door, her heart hammering.
Please answer, please answer.
They had fallen asleep. The rain on the roof had lulled them to sleep and after a long day in the woods, they’d simply passed out and slept through dawn.
Surely that was what had happened. Freya would answer the door, her thick auburn curls mussed from sleep, while Alexis blinked sleepily from the floor.
But the door didn’t open. Nothing moved but her restless team and the birds singing in the trees.
Pulling strength from Rowan’s presence at her back, Terra held her breath and turned the latch.
Not locked.
Sunlight arced across the empty interior, and Terra’s heart sank to her knees.
“Shit,” Rowan murmured. “Where are they?”
Jack slipped a cigarette from his pocket and balanced it between his lips. “Guess this just turned into a body hunt.”
Chapter 5
They split into two groups to cover the area: Bill and Nat headed back toward Ground Bay to begin working their way in, while Terra, Rowan, Jack, and Carter began working their way east.
The sun ventured across the sky, high and hot and always in sight. Terra kept hoping they would stumble across their friends doing a little extra hunting before they headed back to the compound. Maybe they had spent the night in the Frig, and got sidetracked by a deer or wild boar on the way home.
But nothing in Danu’s world was ever that simple or easy. When people went missing, it rarely — if ever—ended happily.
Their group stayed unnaturally silent. None of them were strangers to loss — Carter’s scientist father died on a research expedition when they were teenagers. Jack watched both his brothers die in a thunderstorm, and Rowan’s parents died in a mudslide only two years earlier.
And even though Terra never knew her mother, Amanda Reed was one of the first casualties in Danu’s war.
April 20th, 2158: The day the earth said enough was enough and opened fire. Danu’s first battle would kill more people in one fell swoop than any of the pandemics to have ever decimated the human race.
Amanda had known she was in the early stages of labor that afternoon. But Terra was her third child, so she’d been around this block before. She’d already decided to call for her husband as soon as she finished weeding her herb garden. Terra’s father always laughed about it—“She said the weeds were choking her basil plants, and she had declared war.”
She was on her knees in the garden when the clouds gathered. She thought nothing of it; Amanda loved the rain.
But when the sky opened up, it wasn’t lukewarm rainwater that soaked her face.
She stabbed her Medi-pad to call for help. She didn’t know then that half the city was doing the same thing and there weren’t enough medics to help everyone—especially when venturing into the rain killed them, too.
Terra’s father braved the deluge to drag his wife to safety, but it was too late. Terra was born minutes after her mother’s heart gave out. She came into the world screaming, almost as if she knew nothing would ever be the same.
Neither of her siblings survived the first year. Her sixteen-year-old brother ran away, leaving only a note that said he wanted to fight Danu with the government. When he never returned and years passed with no word, they assumed him dead.
And her middle brother died in the first typhus outbreak.
Her father declared his own war on Danu. He dedicated the next twenty years to studying the acid rain and developing methods to survive.
From his pain came determination and an intense drive to keep the human race safe.
To keep Terra safe.
Terra stopped in her tracks. Her heart somersaulted into her stomach.
Alexis’s pack sat in the dirt just off the path.
Her pulse thundered in her ears as she studied the backpack for clues. The black canvas was soaked through and covered in mud, as if it had sat through the storm. Terra lifted her gaze from the bag, too scared to look but unable to turn her back on what she knew waited for them.
Off the path, in an area thick with brush, familiar auburn curls glinted in the sunlight.
“Rowan.” Her voice cracked on his name. She pointed at the copper curls with a shaky finger.
As one, they both lifted their binoculars.
Freya’s mangled, unrecognizable face pointed to the sky, her eyes and nose burned away by the storm. Her visible skin had turned to a landscape of pus-filled blisters.
Terra lost control of her knees. She sank to the tires, barely noticing the impact of bone on hard rubber as her stomach revolted. She fought the urge to empty her stomach on the earth, focusing on her the pain in her legs as she breathed through the nausea.
“What the fuck were they doing off the path?” Jack snapped, grief manifesting as anger.
Carter pried Terra’s binoculars from her hand and peered at the two corpses. “They’re burned completely. Eroded, even. I’d venture to say they never made it to shelter.”
“We’re pretty far from the Frig,” Rowan agreed. “Maybe they thought the trees and bushes would protect them?”
“That’s insane,” Terra said, somehow finding her voice. “They weren’t dumb enough to think it would be safer to leave the path. If either of them had stumbled, they’d have died instantly. Why not risk the rain and run to the Frig?”
Carter spread his hands helplessly, binoculars dangling from his fingertips. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
The group fell silent, all eyes on their fallen comrades. The way the grass had regrown around them after the rain stopped made them seem to be a part of the earth. Embraced by Danu.
“What do we do now?” Rowan asked. “If we walk out there, we put ourselves at risk. Not just from the ground, but the brush.”
“We’re not going out there,” Terra said firmly. She stood and wiped away a stray tear before she faced her team. “Neither of them would want us to die for their bodies.”
“We just… leave them?” Carter asked.
“For now. We can come back with more hands and better supplies.”
Jack shook his head. “Tare, we can’t just leave them. They’ll get mauled by wild animals.”
“They’re dead, Jack.”
“We respect the dead.”
“Which means we keep living,” Terra snapped. “And if we try to get to them now, the ‘keep living’ part gets compromised.”
Rowan put a hand on her shoulder and squared up to Jack. “Terra is right. We go back to the compound and get help. The engineers can bring the big guns and nobody has to die.”
Jack’s bluster deflated against Rowan’s steely gaze. “Right. Whatever.”
Her subdued team turned away from the friends who were beyond their help and began the long trek back to Ground Bay.
Terra retreated inside her own head, lost in thoughts of her dead mother and her dead brothers and now her dead friends. Alexis and Freya were smart. They didn’t make mistakes. They were careful, just like the rest of the team. If you weren’t careful, you got dead.
What made
them leave the path? Not just the rain. Terra didn’t buy it. The rain hurt, but they could have run for the Frig or even run back towards Ground Bay and had a better chance at surviving than leaving the path.
Something else frightened her friends. Something that made them walk into death rather than remaining on the path.
But… what?
Terra moved automatically, barely paying attention to her feet. In the instant before she stepped on the tire, she registered something wrong. Whether it was the angle of the rubber sinking over time or just a hint of collapse on the inside edge, something pinged her radar.
But not fast enough.
Her foot caved in the aged rubber. She pitched to the left, arms flailing as she tried desperately to find her balance.
Rowan yelled, his hands locking on her wrists. She grasped at his arms, and for a brief, weightless moment, she thought he had her. She could balance herself, straighten, laugh off her inattention and thank her best friend for saving her life.
Instead, Terra’s weight pulled them both over. They tumbled off the path.
Terra hit the dirt, all breath expelled from her lungs at the impact. Rowan fell beside her, the ground seeming to shake beneath him.
Terra registered cool grit beneath her fingers—an alien sensation, something she had never felt before. She was touching Danu.
She was touching death.
Chapter 6
Terra watched in horror as Rowan’s body seized.
He shook violently, grunting as Danu’s poison attacked his nervous system. Bubbles gathered at his lips. He struggled to breathe, his limbs stiff and vibrating as if he were being electrocuted.
Then he went utterly, deathly still. Blood seeped from his open eyes like tears.
Terra waited for the pain. She waited for her own body to stiffen, for her nervous system to react. She realized she wasn’t afraid. Not really. Clarity rolled through her. Time slowed. She could only see Rowan; everything else faded. Became unimportant. She felt the power of Danu beneath her skin, and she welcomed it.
If she had to die, it only made sense they would die together.
She registered screams that weren’t hers in the same moment she realized she felt no pain. A cool breeze shifted her hair over her forehead. She reveled in the grit of dirt beneath her fingers. The smell of grass was heady, beautifully overwhelming. She had never been so close, smelled so clearly the green musk of Danu.
East of the Sun Page 3