Genesis

by Paul Antony Jones

  Emily waved her off. Rhiannon’s energy was obviously close to empty; all it would take would be another surge of flood water to hit them and they would both end up being swept away.

  The water was now more like a thick soup, a brown sludge of mud and debris that sucked at her feet, slowing her to a crawl. There was less than ten meters between her and safety, but it might just as well have been a kilometer.

  This is finally it, she thought with a pang of sadness as the water beat at her stomach and her exhausted muscles. I’m not going to make it.

  In her mind Emily saw Mac standing at the edge of the torrent next to Rhiannon and Thor. Rhiannon was holding on to Thor’s collar to stop the dog from racing back into the water, the girl’s face a mask of fear and confusion. Mac was yelling at her, telling her to Move your bloody arse. She managed another step, the water so thick with New Mexico clay it was more a river of slowly setting concrete now, but she was exhausted. Her legs were lead, lead surrounded by a pool of liquid lead that wanted to keep her for itself, the weight of her backpack pushing her down. Dump the Goddamn backpack, she heard Mac yell silently at her, then more quietly, Just drop it, love. It’ll be okay.

  She reached down and struggled to find the belt clip fastener at her waist, found it, squeezed with fingers that did not want to obey her, and felt the clip disengage. In the same instant she shrugged the pack from her shoulders and caught a fleeting glimpse of it as it was sucked away from her, disappearing into the roiling, frothing waves of scummy water. Free of its extra weight, Emily forced herself toward dry land.

  “Come on,” Rhiannon yelled urgently.

  One more step, that’s my girl, said imaginary Mac, standing behind Rhiannon, smiling. You can make it.

  With just a few meters left, Rhiannon ignored Emily’s weak protestation to stay back and rushed out into the water. She grabbed an exhausted Emily around the waist, and the two staggered the final distance to the flood’s edge, where they both collapsed onto the road with barely enough energy left to even breathe.

  Emily lay facedown on the side of the road. Like a fish pulled from the turbulent flood water raging just meters away, she gasped silently for breath, occasionally coughing and spitting up muddy water.

  She could see Rhiannon’s boots a few centimeters away from her head, a cake of mud around the soles, the sodden bottoms of her jeans a darker blue than the rest. Then Rhiannon’s butt as the girl flopped down on the wet tarmac, pulled her knees up to her chest, and leaned her head against them, panting deeply, more from the stress of what had just happened than the actual exertion, Emily thought. Even the normally ebullient Thor was stretched out on all fours, his tongue half out of his mouth, panting so heavily his chest about lifted him off the ground. His normally pristine coat was matted with streaks of dirt and clumps of mud, the rest of his fur sodden.

  “Oh my God!” Rhiannon said when she was finally able to speak. “When the fuck will this planet stop trying to kill us?”

  Under any other circumstances, Emily would have chided the girl for the profanity, but at this moment, she was right there with her. It was so much fucking trouble just to keep going, just to keep trying.

  The rush of water from the mountains was now a horrendous roar, louder than anything Emily had heard before, terrifying in its raw nature. A sudden crack, like the sharp report of a rifle, drew her curiosity enough that she managed to roll over onto her back and sit up. The sound was followed by the snap of a small explosion, then another as the air was rent by an ungodly shrieking that ended just as suddenly with a pop like a giant balloon bursting, as the bridge they had just made it across began to break apart. The water ate through the deck of the bridge like it was made of papier-mâché, chunks of it dropping away, disappearing from her view as they were consumed by the river. On the plus side, the new opening relieved the pressure and allowed the corralled water to burst through and rumble on down the arroyo and out into the desert beyond.

  Somewhere out there, floating away on the tidal wave, was her backpack, along with all her supplies and clothes—everything she had. Gone.

  As if it had flown in from above or maybe been swept down from the mountains with the flood, a sudden and intense despair grasped Emily in its talons and refused to let go, overwhelming even the molecular call of her son with a hopelessness that slipped over her like a second skin. It tore at her inner resolve, shredding it almost instantly.

  Oh, let me list the ways that my life is oh, so fucked up, she mused, her eyes staring up at the ugly gray sky.

  Let’s see: I’ve lost my son; my husband is thousands of kilometers away and probably won’t be coming back alive; the place that I called home is slowly and systematically being dissolved by a woman almost as evil as the fucking aliens who had annihilated the planet, a woman who plotted to have me murdered. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the fucker who tried to rape me before carrying out Valentine’s request. Can’t miss the guard I killed either. And who could overlook the freezing weather and a planet that turned from being home to a world that could easily have passed for one of Dante’s levels of hell?

  Shit! That’s what it had all turned to . . . shit!

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Emily said matter-of-factly, the words slipping from her mouth so easily and feeling so good on her lips, like she was finally dislodging something that had been caught in her throat. It was such a relief.

  “What?” said Rhiannon.

  Another chunk of the bridge fell away with a rumble and a splash. A bit like her own life, really; chunks of it had methodically been eaten away by fate and the zombie corpse of what had once called itself humanity, until there was so little of it left it was hardly worth fighting for anymore.

  “I said, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. It’s over. I give up.” I’m just going to sit here, she decided, sit here and wait for everything to just stop and go away. It wouldn’t take long—she was already freezing from the waist down.

  Rhiannon reacted as if Emily had slapped her across the face.

  “But . . . but you can’t, you have to get up. You can’t just stop.”

  Oh yeah? Emily thought. You just watch me.

  Rhiannon stood and waited for Emily to get up. When she didn’t, Rhiannon bent over and grabbed her right arm with both hands and began pulling. “Get up,” she demanded. “Get up now,” she yelled when Emily resisted. Now she was tugging at Emily’s arm, tears of anger and frustration percolating in her eyes.

  “Would you just leave me alone, for fuck’s sake? Just leave me alone.” Emily wrenched her arm free of Rhiannon’s grip.

  Thor whined and crawled toward her.

  “No,” said Rhiannon. “You have to get up. Now!”

  “I don’t want to.”

  A tone of desperation had begun to creep into Rhiannon’s voice. “What about me and Thor? What are we supposed to do now? Where are we supposed to go?”

  Emily stared at her feet; her head was thumping, her legs felt like two icicles. God, she was miserable. Rhiannon did not seem to care how she felt, she just kept talking.

  “You’re all we have. You and Mac, you . . . you’re my Mom and Dad. And Adam . . . what about Adam? Who’s going to help Adam?”

  Emily thought about that for a few slow heartbeats. If it hadn’t have been for the constant tingling over her skin, she might have dismissed even Adam as being dead, and the journey they were on as pointless, but she couldn’t. That connection she felt, that pull, acted as a lifeline, something that she had to hold on to, a life preserver that would not allow the terrible despair she felt to carry her any farther away toward the abyss that threatened to swallow her. But she was so, so tired. All she wanted was some peace.

  “You can’t just think about yourself,” Rhiannon was saying, unaware of the struggle consuming Emily, “you have to get up and you have to fight for us. Like we would for you.”

  The kid was right, Emily knew it, and she was trying to care, but it was so hard. Maybe if she could just
hang on to that feeling of connectedness, focus on it and allow it to fill her. She felt the sensation grow, like a tiny light in a dark room beginning to brighten and fill the dark space—slowly, gradually, but unstoppably. Emily held on to the thread of her love for her boy, for her husband, her surrogate daughter, and the dog who had saved her, and by default saved all of them. And like the room, she gradually filled her own darkness with light again.

  “And who’s going to stop Valentine?” Rhiannon was asking, “If you don’t get up right now, then she’s going to win. Valentine and that guard who wanted to . . . who was going to . . .” She could not get the words out. “The one that I killed for you. They’ll both win, and then we lose. The good guys will lose, Emily.”

  Emily opened her eyes. The sky was still the same dull, dead, leaden gray, but she thought she could see a few patches of blue just above them, a hint that this momentary darkness was not an omen for the future of their world, but that there was hope.

  “Okay,” said Emily.

  Rhiannon stopped midsentence. “Okay, what?”

  “You’re right. Here, help me up.” She extended a hand, and Rhiannon helped her to her feet, then threw her arms around Emily and hugged her so hard Emily thought she was going to break something within her aching, fragile body.

  “I thought you were going to leave me,” Rhiannon mumbled into the material of Emily’s jacket.

  Emily held the girl for three heartbeats, then gently pushed her out to arms’ length.

  “Like I said already, I’m never going to leave you.”

  Rhiannon lunged forward again and held Emily tight.

  The bleak mood, so intent on swallowing Emily, was gradually evaporating, replaced by an optimism that lasted until they took an inventory of what was left of their supplies. All Emily had was the soaked clothes she was wearing, her .45, a single magazine of ten rounds—the spare magazine and all her ammo were in the backpack—and the knife on her ankle. She found a couple of energy bars in a zipper pocket of her jacket sleeve, and a half-full canteen of water on her belt. Emily had taken back the blanket she had given Rhiannon and tied it around her waist like a sarong to ease the chill until her jeans dried out.

  Rhiannon had her own clothes, none of which would fit Emily, enough MREs to last them all another day—two, if they stretched it out—a handful of energy bars, a flashlight, a full canteen of water, and her pistol. And that was it.

  “Well, that’s better than losing all our supplies,” said Rhiannon, trying to sound optimistic.

  Emily tried to smile. She still had no idea how far away Adam was, which meant she also had no idea whether the supplies they had would be enough to get them to him. And even if they found him before their supplies ran out, they would still need to restock and figure out how they were going to get back to Point Loma, or if they even could.

  “We have to find food,” Emily said, “and that’s going to be much easier if we can find a vehicle.”

  “Fat chance,” said Rhiannon as she looked up and down the freeway. They couldn’t go back the way they had come from; the bridge was no longer there, and there was nothing back there anyway. Ahead of them the road reached toward a set of hills, about fifteen kilometers in the distance, stark against the gray-white clouds that obscured the sky.

  “Well, look at it this way,” said Emily. “We know there’s nothing back the way we came, so if we weigh the odds, seems to me the probability is that we’ll find some kind of town or city ahead of us, right?”

  “I suppose so,” said Rhiannon, pausing, “maybe.” She did not sound convinced.

  “Well, if we can find a town or even a store, then maybe we’ll find food there.”

  “But what if we don’t?”

  “We will,” said Emily. “I know we will.”

  “Can you hear that?” Rhiannon asked, surprising Emily. They were a couple of hours farther on from the bridge. The conversation had petered off and for the last hour or so they had walked in companionable silence toward the slowly approaching hills.

  Emily stopped and cocked her head to listen. “I can’t hear a thing,” she said after several beats had passed. “Are you sure it’s not the wind?”

  “It’s like some high-pitched squeak,” Rhiannon said. “I’ve heard it for the last ten minutes or so. It gets louder and then fades away.”

  Emily listened again, then shook her head. Rhiannon was a good seventeen years younger, so it didn’t come as a surprise that the girl would pick up on a sound faster than she could. Emily raised her hand to shade her eyes against the diffused light pushing through the overcast cloud. Ahead of them, the road cut between the range of hills that effectively blocked the eastern horizon, but to their left, right, and behind was the ubiquitous flat plain of red that had become synonymous with their travels over this terrain.

  “Well, we can’t stop just because of some random sound, and I really don’t hear it, so let’s keep going, but keep your eyes open.” Emily’s hand instinctively dropped to caress the butt of her pistol. She was still kicking herself for not grabbing her trusty shotgun. She’d left it in the cupboard back at the apartment in Point Loma and in the confusion of their escape had simply forgotten about it.

  They set off again, both Rhiannon and Emily walking just that little bit closer to one another as their eyes played over the red flora, watching for any threat it might hold. Thor seemed completely oblivious to whatever sound Rhiannon was hearing; he trotted along quite happily next to them. Emily placed a lot of trust in his far more acutely tuned senses, but, still, it would be foolish to only rely on the malamute for any kind of early warning of an approaching threat.

  Almost ten minutes later, the twin humps of the hills now only a kilometer or so away, Emily stopped suddenly.

  “Okay, I hear it now too,” she said.

  A See, I told you look was Rhiannon’s answer.

  It was a rasping, dry screech that rose in pitch and volume, then slowed and died away again. Emily listened for a good thirty seconds without speaking, but she could not isolate a pattern; it seemed completely random. It was almost like listening to something in pain, but she was sure there was a definite metallic sound to it; it didn’t sound the least bit organic. Again the screech resonated through the hills, fading in and out as if carried on the gusts of the wind that kicked up the debris of the I-40 at their feet.

  They continued to trace the road upward, the sound bouncing off the hills on either side of them, filling the air, sometimes a slow drawn-out screech, sometimes a short raspy moan. It was the silence in between that was the most nerve stretching. Drawing the .45 from its holster, Emily found the weight of it in her hand less reassuring than she had hoped, but there was no way she was going to be caught off guard.

  The wind picked up again and brought with it a prolonged ululation that lasted for well over a minute. If whales were made of metal, Emily thought, this would be the song they made. It was so eerie, she half expected to see a line of ghosts rising from the ground and marching down the hill toward them.

  “Come on, let’s keep going,” she said to Rhiannon, who seemed more annoyed than scared. The sound grew louder the closer they got to the summit where the road cleaved the two hills.

  “Jeez!” said Rhiannon as they reached the top of the incline and looked out over the stretch of land ahead of them, the source of the eerie, otherworldly sound now obvious.

  Emily simply stared, an echo of the melancholy she had felt earlier returning.

  Strung out in lines along the northern skyline like sentinels watching over the landscape stood row after row of wind turbines reaching back into the distance, each one probably a hundred meters tall. Emily thought she remembered the ones she had seen in photographs being white, but that, of course, would have been before the red rain. These were varying shades of red and black. Some were motionless, their rotors locked in place, others were nothing but reeds missing their blades, while still others’ rotors were bent and misshapen. But the majority s
till worked, in a fashion, at least, pushed by the constant breeze of the plain, singing a song of misery, a lamentation for a purpose now lost. Their rotors and bearings shot after two years of no maintenance, the turbines squealed and groaned like lost souls haunting the landscape, a sad aural testament to humanity lost. And for a moment Emily again wondered whether it was all worth it: the constant fight for survival, the need to try, to fight for some kind of a future for the remnants of the human race. Perhaps the paltry few humans left on the planet were like these turbines, outliving their usefulness, purposely striving to continue to be relevant in a world where their time was up and they should just lie down and die.

  “That’s actually pretty cool,” said Rhiannon, staring at the distant turbines, genuinely smiling for the first time in a very long time.

  Emily turned to look at her companion, momentarily taken aback by how differently Rhiannon saw the same scene. She turned back and looked again at the rows of distant mechanical monsters. Maybe they weren’t the tombstones of a dead civilization. Maybe they were monuments to what could still be achieved, with a little perseverance.

  “Yeah, you know what? It really is pretty damn cool,” said Emily with a nod.

  And they continued on their way.

  Rhiannon was the one who spotted the car.

  About fifteen meters off the road, its roof was just visible above the tall red grass and, surprisingly, from where they stood, it looked like it might be relatively well preserved.

  “Let’s take a look,” said Emily. They cut off the road and began to make their way toward the car, pushing the grass aside like they were Lewis and Clark. The vegetation seemed to have sprouted up over the last few days, almost doubling in height. Maybe because of the rain, Emily hypothesized as she tried to keep the vehicle in sight while not stumbling over the tangle of roots and new shoots sprouting up from the muddy ground. The growth was so thick it was hard to actually see more than an arm’s length ahead.