My parents, who I would describe as slow, because they’re never in a hurry, lurch toward me. My mother flings aside her knitting, Dad still holding the dishtowel. Their eyes are wide, scared animal eyes, foreheads furrowed upward. They each grab an arm and haul me back through the kitchen to the still open cellar door.
“It’s happening fast. We need to get her down there now!” My father tugs me, hard, down the stairs. I am too shocked to say anything, to do anything. So I let them lead me down the staircase. My heart flips over and over, and I think, irrationally, will they hurt me? I’m about to burst into tears. Why didn’t I see this coming? They’re fucking nuts. I should have known. I should have noticed more. I shouldn’t have ignored the signs. All this time, alone in the woods with their weird theories and their cow. Who wouldn’t go crazy? When was the last time they left the house? When did they last talk to anyone other than me? I’m so used to their idiosyncrasies.
I’m small but I’m strong, my frame wiry from genetics, a slight marathon addiction and seasonal, vigorous gardening. But confusion weakens me. My mother breathes hard; she’s panicked. Terrified. I’ve never seen her like this.
The grinding grows louder, like twin engines are revving in the basement. Right around the corner. Outside. Everywhere. But I see nothing. Just our normal New England basement with shelves and shelves of home-canned goods and dried jerkies. Bins of apples and potatoes. That’s when I notice the upright coffin. Or, what looks like a coffin—from Star Trek. It’s sleek, black and standing sentinel in the corner of the cellar, between the extra freezer and the washer and dryer.
“Honey,” my mother says to me, opening the coffin door, smooth on new hinges. I’m crying now, so sad and scared that this is the end result of their beautiful lives. Their smart, loving selves, going crazy in a snowstorm in the woods. “You’re going to have to go inside.”
She points to the coffin. Its interior is plush, jewel green. I realize I hadn’t been down to the basement in several months. The grinding increases, the velocity faster. I stare at her, then at my father, standing next to her. Tears pour down my cheeks. His hand clings to my forearm, his blue flannel cuff rolled up, just a bit, white hairs on his tan wrist.
“I don’t…Mom. What do you think is happening? It’s just the electricity. Because of the storm.” I take a deep breath. “It’ll be over soon. We’re just as safe upstairs.” I step toward the stairs but my Dad, still stronger than me, holds me fast. Only seconds have passed, but the abrasive noise keeps increasing, faster, louder.
“It’s happening, Poesy, what we’ve always known would happen.” He needs to shout, now, to be heard. “It’s why we built it. The pod.”
The pod.
Reality slams into me. A lifetime of classic sci-fi movies watched with my father on Saturday mornings has merged with his UFO obsession. This...pod...is for me.
He glances at the upright pod. “They told us to.”
“I’m not getting into anything!” I shout, through choking sobs. Grinding, grinding, like a motor in my eardrum. They look at each other.
“We can’t drug her,” my mother yells, “she’s pregnant!”
That’s when I freak out. I yank away from my father and run up the stairs. He grabs my wrist, pinning it to the railing, and I trip, hitting my elbow on the step. I stand and look at him, one step higher. When I was a little girl, I would stand on a low stair, he on the floor, and I would say, “Daddy, am I going to be this big?” I would then step up another stair and ask again and again, until I was taller than him.
He wraps his arms around my waist and I fight him with all my might.
“I’m sorry, Poe! We have to! We love you so much! It’s going to happen any second now! Get in!” He shoves me into the pod, and tries to shut the door, but I push against it. The grinding is deafening.
We reach a stalemate as my mother freezes, a strange frown on her face. Is the noise causing her to have a stroke? Or the stress? Then, her lined, lovely face turns pale and caves in on itself, like undercooked meringue, eyebrows meeting her chin. Her knees buckle. My father stops pushing the door, and staggers a few steps backward, losing a moccasin to the cement floor. His neck bends awkwardly forward, his head drops to his chest. Like erasing a chalkboard, top down, their bodies collapse into white powder.
Into dust.
I scream and slam the door shut.
2
AUGUST
Shaved coconut. It’s the closest comparison I can think of for Maggie Chow’s skin. Pale white. Peeling curls. Even the exposed flesh beneath the cracked dermis looks like it’s been soaked in a bucket of bleach and left to dry in the hot Arizona sun. Without thinking, I lean closer and see that her form is little more than barely held together granules of powder, clinging to their original shape.
The elevator doors slide shut, sealing me inside once more, curtains at the end of a macabre opera. Without a floor button pushed—there are only two options, T for top and B for bottom—the elevator sits idle. I stare at the line where the two halves of the door meet, at my disfigured shape in the brushed metal surface. Despite being a fog of color, my reflection appears more human than the woman I just saw lying on the white linoleum tiles.
She’s dead.
Maggie, my employer and friend, is dead.
Something hard and warm taps against my ear. I flinch away with a shout, all of my trapped anxiety bursting from my lungs. The elevator wall shudders from the impact of my flung body. The lights flicker. A searing pain shoots from my elbow to my fingers before bouncing back up my right arm. I’ve hit my funny-bone on the unyielding, flat metal railing.
“Damnit,” I say, and reach around to cup the joint. Instead of the soft embrace of my left hand, I feel the impact of something hard. Looking down, I find my phone. I must have taken it out while looking at Maggie’s body. The small screen displays a failed call. Claire. My daughter. Her photo fills the screen, covered by the text: Call Failed. No Signal.
I dialed?
This is what touched my ear, I realize. I was making the call on auto-pilot. But why?
Maggie.
I clench my eyes shut, squeezing them tight like Venus flytraps. The image of her corpse flashes into the darkness like a strobe, her white skin gleaming. I can’t hide from the image. Not behind the closed doors of the elevator. Not behind my eyelids. Probably not in the laboratory a mile and a quarter beneath me, either.
The lights tick, like there’s a fly inside the elevator. That should be impossible. The lab is a static free, clean environment. We don’t allow dust in, let alone insects.
An image of Maggie’s powdered flesh flaking away and disrupting the lab’s delicate measurements comes unbidden to my mind. She wasn’t wearing a clean suit. Why wasn’t she wearing a clean suit? The light blue suits cover our bodies, head to toe. Unlike biohazard suits, they don’t keep contaminants from getting in, they keep them from getting out. Skin cells. Moisture. Even passed gas. The human body sheds an untold number of particles every minute of the day. The clean suit contains it all. But Maggie wasn’t wearing one. She would never do that.
That’s when I realize that I’ve removed my hood. I vaguely remember feeling trapped upon first finding Maggie’s barely held together form. I must have yanked the hood free. Maggie’s solid white face resolves in my mind’s eye, a mannequin of clinging particles.
I try crushing the image away, but with my eyes shut, there’s nothing else on which to focus. Nothing else that matters as much. Not the ordinary concerns of everyday life. Not the dark matter we’ve been searching for. Maggie’s powdered form threatens to consume me. My eyelids flutter open. I turn toward the ceiling, looking for the fly.
The ceiling is gone. As are the walls and floor.
The lights are as dead as Maggie.
There is no fly. Never was. It was the power going out.
I’m trapped. For a moment, I feel relief. If I can’t open the doors, I don’t need to see the body again. Whoever comes to set me
free will remove her first. They have to.
Then I remember that the hole beneath me descends for more than a mile. It’s the deepest man-made tunnel in the world, and it ends at one of the world’s most sophisticated laboratories. The place is nicknamed ‘Desert,’ in part because of its location in Arizona, but also because its true title, Deep Space Research and Technology (DSRT) is just missing a few vowels. The descent takes fifteen minutes. But in a free fall, that time would be closer to one. And at the end of that drop, I would look even less human than Maggie.
But won’t the brakes hold? I have no idea. As an astrophysicist, my expertise—if I’m honest—revolves around subjects that might not actually be real. I live in a world of theories and math, of decimals and numbers, keyboards and sensors. I’ve been holed away in a subterranean lab, watching a screen—my only company—in search of dark matter particles. I haven’t seen the sun in a week. Like most people, I exist in the macroscopic, but my mind is sharply focused on the subatomic or the far reaches of space. I have no idea how elevators work. Or if the brakes will eventually fail without power.
My fear of a violent death trumps my anxiety over seeing Maggie’s withered form again, and I reach for the doors. I shake out my still tingling arm, reach out into the dark and take a step. My hand finds the cool metal wall, but not the doors. I must have turned around in the dark.
Sliding to the side, I move left to the next wall. Still no doors. I repeat the process, feeling entirely helpless in the dark. I find the line where the two doors meet, the line that just a moment ago had bisected my blurry form. My shaking fingers slip into the layer of rubber that cushions the inner door. I pull on the large metal rectangles, but they resist. Feeling trapped, I grit my teeth and yank. They split apart, but my muscles, unaccustomed to anything more physical than pushing a button, ache in a way that reminds me of childhood. I can feel the fibers in my arm stretching and snapping. The sharp pain focuses me. If I don’t open these doors now, I never will. I’ll starve before the sinews heal.
I shout out, putting the last of my strength into pulling the doors apart. My arms shake. My chest knots. I hope someone will hear my howl, but when I see the absolute darkness on the other side of the doors, I know no one will be coming. Not any time soon. The whole facility has lost power. The revelation saps the determination from my fingertips and they slip free.
The door, open just a foot, remains still. Shaking my arms, I sigh with relief. Then I thrust myself into the gap and squeeze through. The rubber seals cling to my chest and stomach, holding me in place. I start to shake as a rising panic takes hold of me before I even know why.
The elevator.
The brakes!
If it fell now, I would be crushed. Or severed in half length-wise. Ignoring the pain in my compressed chest and pinched belly, I shove my way through, inch by crushing inch, expelling the air from my body.
Then I’m free. Out of the elevator. And flailing. I’ve tripped over my own leg. I twist around as I topple forward, landing on my backside. My hands slap against the cool floor, stinging madly. Momentum and gravity pull me back, slamming my head on the linoleum.
Spots of light dance in my vision. For a moment, I think I’m looking through a telescope, watching some kind of interstellar light show. But the lights fade and the darkness of the hallway, along with my full understanding of my situation, returns. Despite the lump forming on the back of my head and the jolts of pain wreaking havoc with my nervous system, I smile. I’m free of the elevator. I’m—
A series of hacking coughs wrack my body. I convulse and sit up. Dust. Despite being blind, I can feel the cloud of dust surrounding me. It tickles my skin. The malformed tears in my eyes turn to paste. The flavor of the stuff fills my mouth as I take a breath.
Like uncooked instant oats.
Remembering my dry suit, I reach over my head and yank the clear plastic mask over my face. Magnetic strips seal the hood in place, and I breathe filtered air once again. While I’m not breathing in any more particles, I can still smell and taste them. The gooey grit they created clings to my teeth.
Before I can worry about contamination, a loud click spins me around.
Light!
Distant and dull.
Then a second click and a fresh blossom of light, closer this time.
The battery operated emergency lights are coming on.
The bulbs just outside the clean lab’s foyer click on. I wait patiently, knowing the next set of lights will be inside the clean lab.
Click.
The lab glows dull and yellow. I can see.
Everything.
Including the white flakes beneath and around me. I fell atop Maggie Chow’s body and it crumbled apart like loosely packed chalk. Like it was ash. My stomach lurches. Maggie Chow’s body is in my eyes, nose and mouth. I breathed her!
I reach up for the clean suit hood, but I’m too late. I pitch forward and vomit into the clear mask, heaving three times until my stomach is emptied. Then I slip my fingers inside the magnetic seal, peel it away and let the bile slide atop Maggie’s remains. A desecration. But it can’t be helped.
Lost and confused, I stand and run. My first few steps are uncertain, as my boots are coated with speckles of dried flesh, slippery on the smooth floor. But then I hit the lab doors and shove into the foyer. The doors don’t seal. And the giant vacuums inside the wall, meant to suck away every last piece of dust, don’t activate. I want them to. So badly. But the air remains still and quiet.
I burst through the second set of doors and sprint down the long hallway, lit every fifty feet by emergency lights. I reach my top speed, which is probably close to a jog for most people, and I feel a cool breeze coming from the hallway ahead. I round the corner and spot the research facility’s front doors. They’re wide open. Just thirty feet away. But the three human sized lumps of white on the floor keep me locked in place. Their identities are hidden. Exposed to the open air, their facial features have eroded into mannequin flatness. But their clothing and I.D. tags reveal my co-workers. Scientists. Engineers. Friends. All dead. Like Chow.
I note that I’ve already started disassociating. Maggie is now Chow. Soon, she might not have a name. But I’m not going to judge my psychological defenses, because I’m starting to feel very lucky to be alive. Something horrible happened here.
Wind slips inside the hall, generated by the rapidly cooling desert outside. A vortex forms at the end of the hall. White and horrible. My dead friends sift into the air, pulled aloft by the wind and thrust down the hallway. But I don’t run away. I can’t. I need to get out, and that means I need to go through the ashes.
Screaming, I run forward, straight into the undulating wall of white, dead dust. It collects on the outside of my mask and I nearly collide with a wall before wiping it away. It’s like snow on a windshield, but dry, and lifeless, and lacking even a hint of beauty.
Then I’m free.
And outside.
I tumble down the five concrete steps, staying upright thanks to a metal railing. Reaching the pavement, I fall to my knees, yank the mask from my head and take a deep breath of cool night air. The Arizona desert will be an inferno when the sun rises again, but for now, I consider it a blessing.
Until I feel the dust.
I turn my head toward the full moon above. It’s an obscure white sphere casting a halo of light. Curtains of white slide through the sky, propelled by high winds. My first thoughts are: clouds and fog, but there isn’t a trace of moisture in the air.
It’s dust.
The same dust birthed by Maggie Chow’s corpse. But there is so much of it, flowing out of the West. From Phoenix, I think. As I stare up at the night sky, breathing in the dead, I wonder just how many people it would take to form a cloud of ash that big.
All of Phoenix, I decide, which is troubling, because that large a number of people would also include my daughter.
3
POE
The darkness is total inside the up
right pod. Crushing me, the thunderous roar grinds faster, the fluctuations combining into a single flat note that drowns out all thought of my parents.
I’m going to lose my hearing.
I’m going to die.
My baby.
I curve one protective arm around my middle, but need to shield my ears. I turn my abdomen to the cushioned wall; flatten my ears with my hands. I slowly slide to my knees. The ground rumbles and shakes, teetering the pod. I stretch my arms out, steadying, and immediately regret it, the noise needle-sharp in my ears. It’s an earthquake, I think, and my small prison wobbles like it’s in the back of a pickup truck. I curl my entire body onto the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. The top of my head presses against one side; I just fit. Despite my clenched shut eyelids, red and pink swirl across my vision.
My whole body vibrates.
Like a finger lifted from a keyboard, the roar stops. The box totters another few seconds, slowing, a coin returning to stasis on a table. Everything is silent. I release the breath I’ve been holding, but I stay curled on the tiny floor, twin to my fetus.
Relieved that the noise has stopped, I lie silently, my cheek cooling against the metallic floor. I open my eyes and then close them, seeing only uniform darkness. My ears ring in rhythm with my pulse, stab, stab, stab. I slide a hand across my barely convex belly, feeling around for any sign of…anything.
Nausea churns through me, threatening, as I adjust my position. I can’t throw up in here. I squeeze the bridge of my nose, rub my temples, try to steady my breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
They’re dead.
I cradle my head in one arm and my abdomen with the other. What the hell happened? They turned to powder. To dust!
Panic seizes my chest as the image of my mother’s face folding in on itself flashes into my mind’s eye, a horrible painting, fully realized, impossible to forget.
The Distance Page 2