Bleak

by Jacqueline Druga

  “Morning,” Finch said when he saw her.

  “Morning.”

  “There’s coffee on the fire.”

  “Thank you. Is there something wrong with the Omni?”

  “No. Not at all. I’m just setting up the temporary base.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Like the medical tent. It was designed for us to dig in for a week or so while here. It allows us to utilize the water recycle system to shower, use the bathroom without popping a squat.”

  “That would be nice. Could you have Ben check the climate control in my tent? It was rather warm and stuffy in there.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I can do it when I’m done.”

  “Thank you. What time are we heading out? It’s a long walk.”

  “We’ll head out in an hour. We’re taking the buggy though.”

  “I thought it only seats four. Are two of us staying behind?” Rey asked.

  “There’s a grab bar, stand and belt system for the back. We’ll make Nate and Curt hang on.” He winked, almost as if he were joking.

  “I’m gonna go grab some coffee.” Rey pointed back with her thumb. “Thanks again.”

  She walked over to the small fire. Finch had a tiny fold-out table with the cups already set out and she grabbed one, pouring herself a cup. As she sipped it, she peered over the rim, watching Finch work diligently on setting up the temporary base.

  Was it really temporary?

  He was digging in.

  Long-term.

  That made her sad, and Rey tried not to think too much about it. About her brother and family, the friends she left behind, the children in her classes.

  Truth was the reality was starting to set in for Rey. As she watched Finch she recalled the night before they left, when he promised her he would bring her home. It wasn’t the way she planned or imagined, but Finch did indeed keep true to his word.

  <><><><>

  The Interstate ninety-five sign was pretty much all Nate needed to give him the final piece of the puzzle in guessing their location in Baltimore. Sandra and Rey didn’t see it the first time they came down the slope, mainly because the lettering faced the opposite way, and the team made their way down slightly more north.

  The first recognizable structure was the lights that set on top of the bleachers in the city’s football stadium. Part of the building had crumbled, and the slope stopped just around the third level, going through the stadium until it leveled out.

  “Looks like the mud wave came from the south, making its way northwest,” Nate said staring at the image on his tablet. “Everything south and southeast of the stadium is gone.”

  “Buried,” Rey corrected. “It’s still there.”

  “How did you determine this was Baltimore?” Finch asked.

  “It wasn’t the stadium,” Rey replied. “It was the street cleaning sign that we saw. It was rusted and dirty, but we saw the name Baltimore.”

  “Do we know what happened here?” Curt asked. “I mean, half the buildings are destroyed.”

  “Could it have been a bomb?” Ben questioned.

  Nate shook his head. “Seismic activity brought things down initially, then time just took its toll … head toward the larger buildings, that’s our best bet. I don’t think we’ll find many answers in this area.”

  “What …” Curt peered over Nate’s shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

  “Oh, I’m pinpointing our location on the recent imagery from the Omni, creating a map. Plus, I have a map of Baltimore. You know what we should do? We are not that far from Washington DC. The fault runs past there. It looks clear, we could make it there and back on one charge of the buggy.”

  “Not sure I want to see Washington, DC,” said Sandra. “That would be too much of a nail in the reality coffin.”

  “I would like to,” Finch said. “And that’s a great idea. But if anyone doesn’t want to come, they can stay back. The module has useful information and technology that can come in handy.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Ben asked. “We have an idea of what happened.”

  “We need the when and specifics,” Finch replied. “We need to know if they evacuated the entire city. If so, they had forewarning, and there is a chance there are people remaining.”

  “The when is important,” Nate said. “I want us to know how far we have come, if the event is nearly done, or how much more we have to face. A date is important. Find anything with a date.”

  <><><><>

  “I watched my children die before my eyes,” Ben said with so much frustration as he searched a back area with Rey at a medical center they uncovered on the way into downtown.

  They collectively believed if anywhere, the hospital would give them answers. The building for the most part was still intact. The interior was thick with dust and dirt along with mold and moss that grew everywhere.

  “I watched them die and there was nothing I could do,” Ben continued. “They weren’t in my reach, I couldn’t suddenly become The Clutch and save them. Then my wife opts out. She just opts out. I wanted to, I really wanted to.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Of course you do, I’m sorry.”

  “No … no. It’s fine. What made you not … opt out?”

  “I don’t know. But I ended up hating this planet. I hate this fucking planet. I wanted nothing more than for this to be …” Almost angry, he tossed a package. “I wanted this to be someplace else. Somewhere other than a place that caused me so much pain. And what happens? I’m not here an hour and the planet tries to kill me.”

  “Nate wanted to stay behind and not return.”

  “Really?” Ben asked. “What did Finch say?”

  “He said he wanted him to return, but he wasn’t stopping him if he wanted to stay behind.”

  “I get that. I do. But … hey, what difference does it make now? We’re already home.”

  Finch cleared his throat, which caused them both to turn around.

  “How’s it going?” Finch asked.

  “Nothing,” Rey answered. “There’s nothing here with dates. Just useless stuff. And I mean useless.”

  “Yeah, we’re finding that is the case, everywhere in here. We’re …” Finch pointed back with his thumb. “We’re meeting up in the front lobby. Try to figure out what’s next. This is a bust.”

  “Tell me about it.” Ben tossed a package of tubing and after waiting on Rey, they followed Finch out.

  “Structurally speaking,” Curt explained, “this building sustained minimal damage. Finch and I hit two of the upper floors.”

  “And nothing,” Finch said. “Not a single patient. Not any charts.”

  “Everything we found is useless,” Rey added.

  “Just tubing and things that no one would want,” Ben said.

  “In fact, this place is picked clean,” Nate said. “Not just evacuated clean. Clean out, picked clean. Not an aspirin or even a Band-Aid.”

  “Damn it.” Finch shook his head. “I really thought this would be a place to get answers.”

  “What about a hotel?” Rey suggested. “I can’t see all records taken from there.”

  “We can try one,” Finch said. “There are a lot of places out there we can check.”

  “You know …” Sandra spoke up. “You guys are wrong. We did get some answers here.”

  Finch looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “The emergency room,” Sandra replied. “Yes, there were no documents, but all you had to do was look around. There were cots lined in the halls. Single patient triage with four or five beds. Something big happened here before the event. I think it was a heatwave. An excruciating heatwave that put a lot of the population here in the hospital. The sheer number of cooling blankets left is astonishing. It was hot here, really hot. I will even venture to guess the evacuation happened over the heat, and long before the earthquake, if there was even one.”

  “Still doesn’t tell us when,” Finch sai
d, leading the group outside. “I want to know what time frame we are at. There has to be something remaining that will tell us.” He looked down at his watch. “Alright, let’s head outside, take a meal break, then head into the main portion of the city. There has to be something there.”

  Finch paused with the team by him and looked around.

  “Why does it matter?” Ben asked. “I mean let’s face it, Earth has turned into hell. It’s even worse than before, I can wait to see what it throws at us next.”

  The whistle sound was short, giving no warning. An arrow sailed fast at the group, and before they registered what had happened, it landed with a thud directly into the area above Ben’s right knee.

  Ben grunted loudly in pain as he dropped to the ground.

  Rey was beside him and without hesitation lowered to the ground to aid him. Immediately and instinctively, Finch grabbed his pistol, as did Curt and Sandra.

  The three of them raised their weapons, all taking a tactical stance as they shifted their arms slightly left to right, scanning the area.

  “The natives have found us,” Curt said. “I’m not seeing them.”

  “Me either,” Finch replied. “Where did it come from?”

  “Status on Ben,” Sandra called out.

  “Status on Ben?” Ben asked with heavy breathing. “Status on Ben is Ben is fucking pissed.”

  “Bleeding. Not real bad,” Rey replied.

  “Don’t remove the arrow,” Sandra dictated.

  “Listen up,” Finch spoke low. “Ben? Can you make it to your feet?”

  “Yeah,” Ben replied.

  “I’ll help him,” Nate said.

  “Good. Do that,” Finch said. “Sandra let me know when he’s up.”

  After a few seconds and a mix of painful groans, Sandra whispered, “He’s up.”

  “Good. On my call, Curt and Nate, grab Ben. Sandra and I will cover. Back into the hospital. Retreat. Ready?”

  “Lower your weapons!” a voice shouted out.

  “Why would we do that? You hit one of my men,” Finch replied, trying to spot the man, but he couldn’t. He saw no one.

  “Yeah, well, we could have killed him. We didn’t.”

  “We aren’t here for a fight. We mean you no harm. Let us get our man help. We have guns, you have arrows …”

  A single shot fired and landed a few inches from Finch’s boot.

  Finch looked at Curt.

  “Okay, what now?” Curt asked.

  “Get ready?”

  “We’ll let you walk,” the man shouted. “We want all your stuff. Everything.”

  Curt whispered, “They want our stuff.”

  “No shit. They aren’t getting it.” Finch raised his voice to communicate with the man. “That is not going to happen, sir. If there is something you need that we have, we will help you out. We are not giving up our stuff.”

  “I believe you will want to.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  Another short whistle, another arrow. It sailed down toward the group and landed in Ben’s other leg.

  “Ug, God, son of a bitch!” Ben screamed.

  “I see him,” Curt whispered. “I’m taking him out.”

  “Put your weapons down!” the man ordered again. “Put them down or we’ll take you all out.”

  Upon his words, from the brushes and rubble stepped men and women, there had to be thirty, all armed with bows and a few had guns.

  Finch exhaled and readied to lower his weapons.

  “Hold up, Pyle. Hold up!” another man shouted from the distance.

  A man who looked to be in his sixties broke through the pack.

  “Dad? What are you doing?”

  “They’re harmless. They’re lost.” The man walked nearer to the team. “This is the crew of the Omni-4.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The man named Pyle was probably about twenty-three years old, but he had a face that was hardened and rough like a forty-year-old man. He was a big guy, whose size didn’t quite match the voice. He was the son of a man name Quinn, who seemed teetering on shock when he approached Finch.

  Excitedly, he introduced himself, then his son Pyle.

  Finch wasn’t as excited. Calmly, in Finch style, he asked, “Pyle, are you responsible for making the call to take my man down?”

  When Pyle nodded his acknowledgement, Finch turned to Quinn. “I mean no disrespect. But since I can’t just shoot your kid…” Then he nailed Pyle square in the jaw.

  Rey winced truly believing that moment would not finish off well. She expected all hell to break loose. It didn’t.

  While she wouldn’t exactly call it an even exchange of pain, it was close enough.

  Quinn said he’d explain everything when they got to their village. He offered another apology and a promise they just got off on the wrong foot.

  Finch wasn’t buying it. Ben needed medical attention, quickly, and he didn’t feel comfortable, especially since Pyle demanded their stuff. Why would he leave it and trust them?

  “When our scout spotted the fire in the distance coming from the verboten zone, we figured it was a group that fractioned off from us ten years ago. They’ve caused us a lot of problems in the past.”

  “I understand that,” Finch said. “But it’s still no reason for us to trust you. Thank you, but we’re heading back to our camp. We’ll meet tomorrow, our man needs medical attention.”

  “We have doctors,” Quinn said. “And something for you.”

  Curt started laughing. “You have something for us? Like you were expecting us?”

  “Not expect … find,” Quinn said. “We expected to find you.”

  “Who … who are you?” Finch asked.

  “We’re the Genesis colonists sent here to prepare the planet,” he said. “We left Earth twenty-five years after you did.”

  <><><><>

  Quinn’s simple statement was enough to drum up the curiosity of Nate’s team. It was enough for Nate, especially. It was his way of finding out what happened to the earth, but the questions were abound; most of all how did those who left Earth twenty-five years after the Omni, get there first?

  Technology wasn’t as stilted as Nate would have believed.

  They had solar-powered vehicles much like the buggy they brought with them. Their village was about fifteen miles west of Baltimore, and they took a dirt road to the settlement.

  As they approached they were greeted with bountiful farmlands and orchards.

  When they pulled into the village, it wasn’t the grass huts or tents Nate imagined, but close. The buildings were constructed some of clay, some stone, others logs. They were neatly organized into a community setting with a few bigger buildings that were businesses.

  “How long have you been here?” Nate asked.

  “Twenty-six years, four months, and two days,” Quinn answered. “Quite a while. I was about your age when we got here.”

  First order of business was to get Ben medical attention. Sandra insisted on staying with him, even though Quinn assured her he was in good hands. She’d meet up with the rest later.

  The townsfolk were curious about the arrival of the strangers, but Quinn asked for privacy, and he brought the team to his home where they sat in his yard around a large oak table.

  His wife Dana placed some fresh fruit and rolls on the table and offered them some wine while she prepared a meal.

  “Please don’t tell me you took the world back to the woman’s place is in the kitchen?” Rey asked.

  “Hardly,” Quinn said. “My wife just loves to cook. And I’m sure you all have other questions.”

  Curt asked first, “You said you were expecting to find us?”

  “Yep.” Quinn nodded. “I was fifteen years old when I watched your ship take off. I kept thinking, I’m gonna be an astronaut, because I wanted to be on the first ship out to colonize the new world. I ended up doing not only that but was also the commander of both Genesis One and Two. We brought two ships.”
>
  “So you were old enough to remember what happened?” Finch asked. “What did they say about us?”

  “Well, of course, you never returned. They lost contact with you when you went through the Androski. When you never returned, and the Androski closed, the theory was always that you made it to the planet and were unable to return. Something you were all prepared for anyhow.”

  “I’m confused,” Nate said. “You left twenty-five years after us. We didn’t come back, what made them think it would work for you?”

  “What choice did we have?”

  “Still twenty-five years after us and you have been here that long?” Nate questioned further.

  “Wormholes are a tricky thing. Mostly they were always in the mind of writers and Einstein, no one knew anything. We have a gentleman here, a scholar who educated us on Einstein’s theories so we could understand this space-time continuum. See, there’s no controls with a wormhole. Where you go is where you go. The NOAA came back decades after she left. Since being here, we determined those images it took aren’t exactly right. They’re probably from about a hundred years from right now.”

  “Christ,” Nate huffed. “It’s confusing.”

  “Don’t try to figure it out. I just knew the second we went through we weren’t in another galaxy, we were home.”

  “How?” Finch asked. “How did you know?”

  “For starters, the Xbruxus or Planet X as earlier generations called it, was nowhere near this close to Earth when we left. That’s that big beautiful and dangerous planet up there. When we came through it was right smack there.”

  Finch nodded. “We had the same experience. I came to and saw it.”

  “So you weren’t wearing your life support suits?” Quinn asked. “Wait. You wouldn’t be. There was no theory that power could be lost when breaching the wormhole. We wore our suits, lost power for about fifteen seconds, floated through and damn near was caught in its pull. Genesis One ended up crash landing. Thankfully only the one ship was ruined. We knew then we were on Earth and had missed the show.”

  “The show,” Nate said. “I’m going to assume you mean the event that changed our world?”