Offworld

by Robin Parrish

  Chris glanced at where Owen still slept on the couch, oblivious to the world. "No, not really. Trish, can I talk to you for a second?"

  She knew that tone of voice. Her morning grumpiness was quickly pushed aside and she put down her breakfast.

  He stepped into the kitchen. "I've been having more of the dreams," he said, voice low. About my missing time. And not all of the dreams have been happening while I'm asleep."

  She was momentarily silent before she caught his meaning. "You mean you've been blacking out during the day?"

  Chris tilted his head sideways. "Not `blacking out' exactly. More like being hit with a sudden jolt of memories, and losing track of where I am. It just happened again while I was out running, and it made me trip and almost crack my head on the pavement."

  Trisha stepped toward him looking for injuries. `Are you all right?"

  He held up his hands, not to stop her but to show off some vicious scrapes on his palms. "I didn't hit my head. Caught myself. I'm okay."

  Trisha shook her head and began searching their bags for antibiotic ointment or alcohol.

  "I fell into a lava tube," he continued.

  Trisha stopped what she was doing and stared at him, wideeyed. Then she blinked. "Well, we always knew there were dormant volcanoes, and there were the veins on the satellite images.... I guess it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise that they're real. But I can't believe you were actually inside one!"

  "Shh ..." he whispered, looking out into the living room to make sure Owen was still asleep.

  "How'd you get out of it?" she asked.

  "I don't know yet. But I do know I only had an hour of oxygen left when I fell in."

  "Sounds terrifying." She dabbed at his palms with the alcohol.

  He nodded. "I knew without a doubt I was going to die. And I was going to be all alone when I did"

  Trisha looked away. "I know that feeling," she said softly, and was almost surprised at herself for admitting it.

  She didn't say any more. Chris' expression changed and she knew he knew that they were no longer talking about him or about Mars. They were talking about Paul. About her living and dying alone, without him. Without anyone.

  "Are you okay?" he asked, taking a half step closer and looking at her with his eyebrows tilted up in the middle. She recognized it as the way he showed concern about her physical condition. "If you want to talk .. ." he began.

  She bottled up the alcohol and put it away, returning to her waffles. "I'm fine," she said, once again closing the subject.

  Chris let it drop. "It might be a good idea for you to keep an eye on me. If I should zone out from one of these memory flashes while I'm driving or doing something else dangerous, then I'll need you to cover for me in front of the others. The four-I mean, five of us have to maintain discipline, or we have no chance of getting through this. Agreed?"

  Trisha straightened up, soldier-like. "You know I do. We're still NASAs finest, even if we are the last people on Earth."

  "Thanks. Don't worry about breakfast; we'll get Mae to find something for everyone. She's got a knack for finding things. I want to get back on the road as soon as possible. Houston's waiting."

  Trisha took a deep breath as she watched him leave to wake the others.

  She tossed the still-frozen waffles in the trash.

  "Hey, Chris," called Owen from the living room while the group was packing the vehicles. "Look at this."

  Owen angled his laptop for Chris to view a web page already open on the screen. It was a world news website, but it bore an odd, tabloid-like headline that made no sense.

  "Managed to stumble across a few servers that still have power," Owen muttered. "Here, I want to show you something."

  He tapped the screen with his hand, and it shifted to another page with another outrageous headline. Finally, he reached a third news story and stopped there. The headline read, Moon Sprints Through Evening Sky.

  Chris just wanted to get on the road. They didn't have time for this. "Why are we looking at this, Beech?"

  `Just watch," Owen replied.

  He tapped on the screen again, this time on a video box. The video zoomed in to fill the entire screen, and began to play.

  It was jittery home video footage of a family sitting around a picnic table. A man was grilling in the background. It was a summer night, and the sun was just starting to head for the horizon.

  The people on the video were laughing at a joke the cook told from his grill when a child's voice from off-camera squealed, "Daddy, look! "

  The video panned up into the sky, where the moon hung at three-quarters full. Chris couldn't detect anything strange about the image until the camera operator zoomed out to the point where trees and houses could be seen along the bottom of the screen. Now the moon was much smaller in the frame, but it was still easily spotted in the twilight sky.

  But it was moving. From the perspective of the camera and the people in the video, the moon was crawling across the sky at a rate that was just noticeable to the naked eye. But Chris knew that for its movement to be evident this way to people on Earth, it had to he traversing through space at a rate of speed at least three or four times its normal cycle of one Earth orbit a month.

  The ambient sounds on the video increased as the people watching the moon began talking louder and louder. Soon many of them were yelling.

  About a minute later, the moon stopped its rapid crawl across the sky and seemed to pause, hanging there as it always did. It had resumed its normal orbital velocity.

  The image dropped to the ground suddenly as the camera operator began to run. The video ended in mid-stride, pointed at the ground.

  Chris looked at Owen, openly skeptical.

  "I know," said Owen. "I thought it was fake at first. But this isn't a tabloid site. Its a major news organization. And it says here that people all over the world watched this happen. This is just one of hundreds of videos that were shot. There are links on this page to other reputable news outlets that apparently reported on this same event-though I haven't found any I can access yet. Those are down."

  "What are you thinking, Beech?"

  "Hang on, there's more. This story says a pack of dolphins off the coast of Australia jumped out of the ocean and flew over it like a flock of seagulls for almost four minutes before they dove back into the water. Hundreds of people along the coast saw it, and took pictures and video. On one of the videos, you can actually hear the dolphins chirping like birds."

  "That can't be right... " said Chris. He wanted to dismiss it, but Owen was a serious scientist, not given to flights of fancy.

  "Look at this one," said Owen, moving to another page. A rain forest in Brazil produced twelve sonic booms in a row, and they were loud enough to be heard for hundreds of miles around. A thorough search of the area immediately after it happened turned up no evidence of anything that could produce such a noise. Or this one-twenty-seven eyewitnesses swear they saw a living, breathing Tyrannosaurus Rex emerge from a cave one morning in Austria. They said it stepped out into the sun, roared, and then went back in. It hasn't been seen again.

  "Chris, I've found dozens of stories of bizarre things like this happening all over the world. And all of it happened while we were away."

  Chris knotted his eyebrows. "You think this stuff is connected to everybody disappearing?"

  "Seems likely, doesn't it?" said Owen. "What if the disappearances were the grand finale of something that had already been happening on the planet for months?"

  Back on the road again in their respective vehicles, they took 1-75 north out of Orlando, past Gainesville, and turned on to 1-10 East on the other side of Tallahassee.

  It was an excruciatingly slow trip, with endless traffic pileups caused by cars that had been driving on the road when their drivers had simultaneously vanished. Even with Owen's satellite-linked laptop, it was impossible to foresee each one of these impromptu barricades that blocked their path. And when they left the highway for surfac
e streets, things were even worse, so they made do and pushed west as quickly as they could.

  It was stress-filled traveling, and the four astronauts traded driving duties frequently. No one asked Mae to drive, and she didn't volunteer, seemingly content to ride out the entire trip alone in the back of the pickup truck.

  They stopped for the day in Pensacola, discouraged not to be out of Florida. Chris had hoped to perhaps make it to the Mississippi border, but traveling was just too slow. They'd taken twelve hours just to get this far, a drive that should have taken no more than six.

  The group lodged in a motel right off the highway, and each of them slept in a room of their own.

  It was a quiet night to match a quiet day when very little was said inside either vehicle or by radio. The astronauts had retreated into their own personal head spaces once again, as if after two and a half years together they simply had nothing left to talk about.

  Mae, who was used to spending much of her time alone in silence, carefully watched them. And she repeatedly wondered if it was part of astronaut training to internalize whatever anguish one suffered in extreme situations ... or if that was just part of being human.

  JULY 7, 2033 DAY THREE

  They had an early start the next morning, roused out of bed once again by Chris, who'd gotten up before it was light for another morning run.

  The highways, thankfully, seemed cleared, and a half hour in they crossed the Alabama border only to be greeted by torrential rainfall and stopped so Mae could scramble into the SUV. The weather turned cruel alarmingly fast, the wind fierce, and the clouds lit by frequent flashes of lightning. Trisha absentmindedly turned on the SUV's radio at one point, hoping to get a local weather report, until the sound coming out of it reminded her that of course every station was broadcasting nothing but static or dead air. She asked Owen over her transmitter for any information he might know.

  "It doesn't look to be a hurricane, at least not yet," he said through his earpiece. "But it is a very large, very powerful storm, and it's moving remarkably slow along the Gulf Coast. Could be a tropical depression. Based on its wind speed and direction, I'd say were going to he passing through it at least until we reach New Orleans."

  The real trouble began around midmorning as they approached Mobile. What should have been damp marshlands was saturated with standing water, and the seven-mile bridge that extended across the Mobile Tensaw River Delta straight into downtown Mobile had water lapping up dangerously high, nearly touching its concrete side rails.

  "I don't believe the water is ever this elevated, even among the most extreme weather conditions," Owen announced for everyone's benefit as they cautiously zigzagged through the unmoving cars on the elevated freeway. They were fortunate that traffic had been fairly light here on D-Day-Terry had been the first to utter the term, which stood for Disappearance Day, and it quickly stuck-so only once did they have to stop, move a handful of cars blocking their narrow path on the long bridge, and resume the drive. But the water continued to rise and the rain continued to pour, and soon it was sloshing over the edges of the bridge, threatening to overtake it.

  "We'd better pick up the pace," Chris said, pressing his foot clown harder.

  They made it to the George Wallace Tunnel, which burrowed under the Mobile River for less than a quarter of a mile and served as the gateway into Mobile proper. The five rows of fluorescent lights at the peak of the round tunnel continually flashed and sputtered, threatening to go out as they drove hurriedly through. The texture of the tunnel's glossy white brick walls turned Chris' thoughts to unsettling memories of another tunnel with smooth walls that he had no desire to think about just now.

  Once the tunnel shifted into an upward angle and led them out into the city, 1-10 turned southwest for a while, outside the storm's wrath a bit but not so far that they couldn't see what was happening.

  Already Mobile was beginning to flood.

  They'd left the rain behind but not the waters, particularly near rivers or marshes. The rising tide had come so far above the ground that it was cresting the undercarriages of both vehicles. It seemed that the farther inland they went, the higher it got. Making matters worse, there were odd surges of water arriving every five to ten minutes, and each one elevated the water level another inch or two.

  As they neared the Mississippi state line, the vehicles had slowed drastically just by virtue of the standing water, and though both were four-wheel-drive rigs, they would only be able to stave off the mounting water for so long before they lost traction completely.

  "Talk to me, Beech," Chris called over the radio. He knew that his brilliant friend would already be formulating a theory about this strange weather. "Is this just the storm?"

  But Owen's response was slow in coming. When he didn't say anything, Chris repeated himself.

  "Sorry, Commander," Owen replied. "I'm still collating data. Based on what I'm seeing on my laptop ... It's really quite astonishing. I've never heard of such a wide-scale systematic failure."

  "Failure? Of what?" said Chris, reminding Owen that the rest of them needed context.

  "I believe we're looking at a cataclysmic collapse of the entire dam and levee system along a major artery of the Mississippi River. I know how that sounds, but I can see from the satellite that at least three major dams have breached, and that means several smaller ones have likely been overrun as well. I think it must be building as it goes, taking out more and more of them, one at a time. And with each new dam or levee the water overcomes, its overall flow gets stronger and stronger."

  Chris took a moment to swallow this, glancing at Trisha, whose startled expression mirrored his own.

  "Does that mean what I think it does?" he asked.

  "Well," Owen surmised, "we have to assume that the dams are failing because of the lack of human presence to maintain and upkeep their structural supports. Major dams leak small amounts of water daily, and as such require constant maintenance. They're more fragile than most people realize. I'm still searching the parts of the Mississippi I can see behind the storm clouds, following its paths and branches inland....

  "But as the river continues to build, it's causing a domino effect, with ever-greater spurts of water pouring into the Gulf region as more of these dams and levees fail. That would explain why the water is rising in sudden swells. But it looks like so far it's only affecting this one major artery. Once we make it out of Mississippi and into Louisiana, we should be relatively safe. I believe our best chance is to hug the coastline and try to outrun the surge."

  Chris looked at his first officer, seeking input. Everything had changed in a matter of minutes, and her face showed it as much as his probably did. He noticed that she was sitting up rigid in her seat now, her eyes scanning the horizon, and one of her knees was pumping up and down rapidly. The swift, loud back and forth of the wiper blades had become a metronome, counting down the amount of time they had left, until ...

  "Why don't we make for higher ground instead, Beech?" asked Trisha. "Shouldn't that be safer?"

  "It probably would be, but there's no time," Owen answered. "The water's rising too fast; most of the river basin is already flooded beyond traversability. Until the water subsides, delving farther inland toward the mountains would be suicidal"

  Chris saw an opportunity on the road ahead and made an instant decision.

  "We're getting off 1-10," he barked into his earpiece. "Let's go."

  Chris made a sharp right at a cloverleaf exit and left the interstate behind, speeding past stationary vehicles left and right at dangerous speeds. The water was closing in on them and they had only one chance to outrun it. Gunning the engine, he clipped the hack end of a station wagon, sending it into a brief spin and forcing Terry to go around, but there was no time to stop and inspect the SUV for damage. He raced onward, onto Highway 90, which clipped much deeper south toward the coastline, and would take them through Pascagoula and hopefully buy them some time.

  "Uh, Chris?" came Terry's voice
in his ear.

  "Yeah, Terry, go ahead," Trisha replied as Chris focused all his attention on the breakneck pace he was keeping as he dodged through the unmoving traffic. He was gripping the steering wheel tight with both hands.

  "This is probably a bad time to mention it," Terry said, "but our batteries are low."

  Trisha looked over at Chris sharply, and he stole a quick look at the SUV's odometer, which was holographically projected onto a lower corner of the windshield. The virtual needle indicated they had roughly one quarter charge remaining of the vehicle's power cells. Chris didn't return Trisha's gaze, but merely kept his eyes on the road and his foot mashing down the pedal.

  "Copy that, Terry," Trisha replied, watching Chris anxiously.

  Chris had no words of reassurance to offer them. He knew only one thing: they had to make it to the other side of the state before the entire region was buried beneath these endless surges of water. Neither vehicle had enough power to make it that far, and neither of them would be able to drive through the kind of strong flooding Owen described.

  He glanced in the back seat and saw Mae staring blankly at the rain outside her window, unperturbed and unmoved. As if she looked danger in the face every day and found it about as interesting as watching linoleum peel.

  Less than an hour later, Highway 90 had led both cars to dryer ground, though they still raced along the shoreline as fast as they dared, knowing that a wall of water was charging closer to the coast with every passing second, threatening to cut off their passage.

  They crossed the massive Highway 90 bridge and shot down Beach Boulevard on the southern coastal edge of Biloxi. The beach was only a few dozen yards to their left. They passed a hotel with an enormous guitar out front. Not far out at sea they spotted a couple of floating casino barges that were adrift. A third had run ashore just past the big guitar.

  Chris ignored most of this, his eyes searching the road ahead for one thing and one thing only. Biloxi didn't seem to have power, but that shouldn't matter. Vehicle charging stations didn't run off of city grids. They had their own massive generators buried underground.