by Becky Black
“I want a thousand nights like this,” Adam said softly.
“Only a thousand? That’s less than three Earth years.”
“I was being poetic, not mathematical.”
“Oh. Of course.” Zach traced circles on Adam’s chest with his fingertips. “Adam…I’m not asking you to promise me anything. This isn’t a normal situation. I know we have to wait and see how things turn out.” Zach knew they had to let things become more normal before they could be sure they had anything more than a short thing here. If they had even that thousand nights. He hoped so. He hoped they had a long, normal, dull old time to spend on each other and not on climbing a mountain.
“Maybe we should get some sleep,” Adam said. “Get a few hours rest before we take the watch.”
No. Zach remained determined to seize every chance to be with Adam. He might be nearly asleep before he came—like on the first night of the hike—but he wouldn’t miss a chance again. He started nuzzling Adam’s neck and ear.
“Or we could have sex, I guess,” Adam said, voice full of amusement. “Works for me.” He slid his hand into Zach’s shorts and stroked his rapidly hardening cock.
Zach moaned, his head going back, body arching and pressing harder into Adam’s hand. Between the stroking hand and the hypnotic rhythm of the rain on the canvas, he began to drift to a different world, a different plane of reality, even. Nothing outside this tent existed. It was the whole universe, containing only him and Adam, in a bubble of desire and pleasure.
Until the dogs started barking.
All of them.
“What the hell?” Adam muttered. “What’s set them off?”
“An animal maybe?” The Terraforming Institute had introduced some wildlife into the area, most of it quite small. “Forget the dogs. Don’t stop, please, don’t stop.”
Adam chuckled. “I love it when you beg for—”
The earth moved. Not in the way Zach had been waiting for. First came a low rumble like nothing he’d ever heard before. It became a roar as the ground first trembled and then shook under them. The dogs went berserk, howling and barking frantically. People screamed. Zach and Adam clung together, staring at each other, eyes wide, faces pale. Around them, their possessions danced and toppled.
Zach couldn’t think—a terrifying state for him. It was worse, much worse, than the minor quake of a few months ago. The horrible, fundamentally wrong phenomenon, the solid ground trembling, activated such a basic, primitive terror in him it swamped all higher thought. He felt like no more than a caveman, wondering why the ground shook and fearing he’d angered the gods.
The roar faded. The shaking lessened and stopped. Other sounds came back. The dogs still howled. Children cried in long, terrified wails. Zach’s mind came back and with it the horror of the certainty he was right, almost as overwhelming as the terror of a moment ago. The two of them unfroze and started scrambling into their clothes.
“Shit!” Adam gasped. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Zach said nothing, just dragged on his pants, grabbed a sweater, and put it on as he exited the tent. He found the camp in chaos. Many of the tents had collapsed. People were standing around looking stunned, some holding crying or frighteningly silent children. The rain still poured down.
“Is anyone hurt?” he yelled. Adam climbed out behind him and stood up. “Find Dr. Howie,” Zach said. “Check all the tents in case anyone is hurt and can’t respond.”
“Right.” Adam sat down, heedless of the wet grass, and pulled on his boots. “God, Zach. You’re really right, aren’t you?” Boots on, he ran off without waiting for an answer.
Zach turned back to the campsite. What did they do now? Check for injuries, treat any. Get the tents back up. Try to calm everyone down. Make the damn dogs shut up! Calm yourself, he ordered. Injuries first. Then tents. Re-erect the collapsed ones to get people warm and dry. The pouring rain could only make things worse. The night had barely started, so nobody had had any rest yet.
It seemed dogs were not the only animals upset by the quake. Korrie approached, Tuzo in her arms clinging to her like she was a lifebelt and he was drowning. Zach had never known what to make of the phenomenon he’d read about, of animals knowing of an approaching earthquake. But they’d known here all right. When she reached him, Korrie and Zach stared at each other for a long moment, rain pouring down their faces. They’d both believed it would happen, but having the ground shaking under them had moved things into a whole new category of real. After a moment, she nodded and spoke. Only two words needed.
“It’s started.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nobody got much sleep the rest of the night. Some people wanted to continue walking right away, but the rest of the group persuaded them otherwise.
“Too dangerous,” Adam argued. “There’s too much risk of someone taking a bad fall. And carrying an injured person would slow us down too much.”
“You’re right,” Zach said, almost reluctantly, as if he’d liked the idea of continuing the climb even in the dark. He gave way to Adam’s common sense, and Adam was surprised he’d even considered it, would have thought him too smart. The quake must have shaken him in more than a literal sense.
Everyone helped to re-erect the collapsed tents. The ground had gone as still as if it had never done anything as ridiculous and un-ground-like as shaking. But the quake had changed everything. When they finally settled for the night Adam fell asleep quickly, but woke again with a feeling of emptiness at his side. He found Zach sitting up, looking through the open flap of their tent, down into the basin. Far off, the lights of Arius glowed dimly. What were the people there doing? Had they decided Zach was right? Were they heading for the hills too?
We’ll know in the morning, Adam thought, reaching out to place his hand on Zach’s back, slipping it under his shirt to feel warm skin. Zach reacted with a sigh.
“Try to sleep,” Adam said.
“I won’t sleep. Useless to try.”
Adam sighed too and sat up beside him, putting an arm around Zach for shared warmth and comfort. Zach slid his arm around Adam’s waist and held him close. They stayed that way until dawn.
* * * *
There was no trouble getting everyone out of bed when morning came. As soon as the dawn light began to creep over the mountains, people were up and moving, eating breakfast, striking camp, packing their gear. Everyone knew they had to make the most of the daylight. The packing was almost done when someone shouted.
“Hey, they’re coming back up.”
Zach looked up to see the man pointing back down the slope, looking through binoculars.
“Jonesy’s group,” Adam said.
“Barbara’s group,” Zach corrected him. “I doubt Mr. Jones is still in charge of the group.”
“Good point.” Adam passed him the binoculars. “Take a look.”
Zach found the group after a moment, well down the mountain. They’d made good time—going the wrong way. Impossible to make out individuals at this range, but they were clearly moving upward, not down.
“Should we wait for them?” a woman in the gathering crowd asked. Some others called out agreement that yes, they should. Others protested. Should they wait? Zach tried to assess how far back the group was. It would take them longer to climb back up the same distance they’d climbed down.
“They might have injuries,” Dr. Howie said. “We’ve got a few minor injuries ourselves. If they have worse—”
“No way!” Korrie said. “Don’t you people understand what that quake meant? The subsidence is starting. The island is going down, and we can’t sit around waiting for it to happen. They’ll have to catch up.”
“They’ll never be able to catch us up if we’re still moving too,” Howie said.
“They made their choice.”
“God, Ann, have some humanity.”
“That’s not helping,” Adam said. He received a couple of stern glares for telling off his elders.
He hadn’t give
n his opinion yet, though, Zach noticed. He must be waiting for Zach. Zach relied on Adam for practical advice about the climbing and the environment, but this wasn’t a practical matter. This was a judgment call. And once again, everyone waited for him to make it. As if he had some special knowledge of how fast the sinking would proceed, so whether they were safe here for a couple of days or should rush on and only hope Torres’s group could stay ahead of the water if it came.
Fear and resentment warred in Zach’s mind briefly. Why did he have to make this decision? And take the consequences if he chose the wrong course? But he pushed such useless emotions away. They contributed nothing. Things were the way they were. Useless to rail against reality. Deal with it instead. Be a man.
“We go on,” he said. “Waiting achieves nothing.”
It was a temptation, since they were all so tired. But to let temptation persuade them into the wrong choice, talking themselves into it by convincing themselves it was the moral choice, would be a mistake. Murmurs of both agreement and disagreement greeted his words.
“We should leave our friends?” someone shouted.
“They left us,” Adam snapped back. “Zach’s right. Waiting achieves nothing.”
“We must keep moving,” Zach said. “It’s the best chance we have.”
How many more days would it take them to climb to the ridge at the top of the mountain? Would they have to climb that far, or would rescue arrive first? And if it didn’t? If it never did? They’d climb, in pain and exhausted, to the bare rock of the ridge and wait there to die.
But at least we’d have tried.
“It’s time to go,” Zach said. “We have to use every minute of daylight.” He turned away. He had his pack on already and walked through the people behind him, Adam, the Franes, Korrie, Howie. The leadership, as he’d begun to think of them. And him the leader, whether he’d asked for it or not.
He walked. Uphill. In a moment, Adam caught up and walked at his side.
“Thank you for backing me up,” Zach said quietly.
“I happened to agree with you this time.”
“This time? Does that mean you’ve disagreed with me other times?”
“Maybe.”
“When?”
Adam shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I’m backing you. You’ve been right so far.” He took Zach’s hand and they walked on together. Uphill.
* * * *
This seems like madness, Adam thought as he refilled his and Zach’s water bottles from the spring and dropped a couple of purifying tablets into them. To keep walking up a mountain as it shook and sank beneath their feet. But what else could they do? Sit and hope for rescue? At least climbing felt like doing something to help themselves. What choice did they have but to go on? He walked back to Zach, stopping off and chatting to people here and there on the way as they sat eating lunch.
“People have started talking about the rescue ships a lot,” he reported, handing Zach a water bottle and sitting beside him. “It’s been days. Shouldn’t we have at least heard from the ones from the outposts by now? Where the hell are they?”
“Are you asking or quoting?”
“Bit of both,” Adam admitted. “They’re right. They should be here by now, at least from the nearest one.”
“I know. I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do. But I suspect the council or the Institute did manage to turn them around, legal or not.”
“Then those bastards might have killed us all.”
“Not so loud.”
Adam frowned. “Don’t scold me; you’re not my mother.”
Zach gave him a scowl right back. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t scare people.”
“I think the earthquake did that just fine without any help from me.”
“You sound as if it’s my fault. I’m damn well sick of this whole thing being my fault!”
His voice rose, and Adam’s irritation receded. God, Zach sounded so pained and tired. Looked it too. Pale, unshaven—too eager to get away that morning to take the time—the dark bristles harsh against his pale skin. Dark circles ringed his eyes.
“You should take a nap before we go on,” he suggested. “It’ll be good for you, but it will help everyone else too. Make it look like you’re not worried.”
“Only a fool wouldn’t be worried right now.”
“A fool or a hero.”
Zach snorted at the word hero but summoned up a smile. “Thank you. I—”
“Zach! Adam!” Simon Frane ran over and skidded to a halt beside them. “The distress signal is back on.” He held up the radio set, and they heard Colleen Johnson’s voice sending on the same frequency that Simon and Visha’s illegal signal had been transmitting on before. Adam and Zach stared up at the grinning Simon, but then one word Johnson spoke galvanized them into action.
Evacuation.
Adam scrambled up with his binoculars and trained them down into the basin, setting them at their maximum range. Someone came to his side, Zach, he knew from the scent of him. The thought made him smile. They’d know each other in the dark, no showers for days, only the unsatisfactory, though often enjoyable sponge baths.
“What do you see?” Zach asked.
“I think I see movement. It’s hard to tell.”
“Vehicles? Coming this way?”
“Still too far away to tell. We’ll probably have to wait a couple of hours until they get closer.” He lowered the binoculars. “If they are evacuating, do you think it’s too late?”
Zach’s face went white. He stared out at the basin and spoke in a tight, low voice.
“Adam, please don’t make me answer that.”
Adam was damn sure that was a “yes.”
* * * *
Late in the afternoon, Adam trained his binoculars back down at the basin again. He was sure the moving shapes he could see were vehicles heading in a convoy for the hills. The relief was almost painful. Late to the party, but they were coming. They’d start climbing, they’d be safe. The rescue ships would show up.
Even a minor quake they’d felt an hour ago hadn’t scared him—much. As long as the island didn’t rip itself to shreds, then the quakes might be no more than an inconvenience to be borne while they waited for rescue.
“We have another couple of hours of daylight,” Zach said, coming over to stand with him. “We should keep moving.”
“Maybe we should make camp here,” Adam said. He passed the binoculars to Zach. “It’s a good spot. Might not be such a good one farther up.”
Zach looked around at the group, taking a ten-minute rest break. “No. We should make the most of the light.” He raised the binoculars and looked into the basin. “Do you think it’s them? The rest of the residents?”
“It’s got to be. That’s a lot of vehicles on the move. Maybe enough for everyone.”
“Could they really move everyone? There must be people too ill to move. Or women about to give birth.”
“They’ll have figured something out.”
“I hope so.” He watched for a while longer, then gave the glasses back to Adam. “But I still think we need to continue climbing for another hour. We’ll stop then, while we have some light to put the tents up.”
“You’re a martinet, you know?”
“Someone has to be. If you were deciding, we’d still be taking hourly naps in the meadows in the foothills.”
Adam grinned. “Are you suggesting I’m lazy, Dr. Benesh?”
“I’ve never known a man who valued five more minutes in bed as highly as you do.”
Adam laughed. “You’re not far wrong, actually. Being lazy is how I ended up here. Okay, everyone,” he called to the group. “Captain Bligh here says to get on your feet and keep climbing.” There was some groaning and protests that it hadn’t been ten minutes. But people clambered up, and in a few minutes, they were climbing again.
Zach and Adam walked in the rear this time. Adam found he rather liked it. Though people glanced back at them often eno
ugh, he didn’t feel as if he had one hundred and fifty pairs of eyes watching his every move the way he did when they walked in front. A few spots of rain hit them but didn’t last long, as the wind picked up and clouds scudded across the sky.
“So, how did you end up here because you’re lazy?” Zach asked after a few minutes.
“Oh, that.” Adam sighed. “We’re about the same age, right? But I’m still a doctoral candidate while you’re a PhD. Okay, you’re really smart, but I’m not exactly a knuckle-dragger. I should have my doctorate by now—according to my parents anyway. They were getting a little tired of funding my eternal studenthood, which I guess is reasonable. I have been milking it a bit.”
“But why here?”
“Working for the Institute meant they’d sponsor my studies, so I could take some of the financial pressure off the folks. But also because it’s so dull here.”
“Dull?” Zach goggled.
“I meant before you came along. There isn’t much social life. There aren’t twenty different bars to hang out in. So I can give my studies one hundred percent effort. I don’t think I ever gave anything one hundred percent effort, except for partying.” He frowned, serious suddenly, surprised at himself. “Wow. Never thought of it that way before. Yeah. I’m more a man who gives ninety percent. The extra push to one hundred is too much work.”
“You like to take the time to enjoy life, not just work, study, and sleep. I should have done the same.”
He did seem like someone who could have benefited from a little more socializing during his many years of study. Adam wished he’d known Zach then. He’d have given him some advanced lessons in relaxing.
“Well, it’s all screwed now. I’ll have to start over with my experiments.” Adam grimaced. “A year of work, gone.”