by Scott Todd
A few short moments later, it became clear that if we were to go down to the shoreline, far away from any oxygen-producing trees, we would certainly suffocate to death. There was no way we could last twenty minutes, let alone two days, down at that new shoreline.
The only rotten hope I had left was that the massive blowout, because it didn't last weeks or months or millennia, put a highly concentrated, but limited gas/sulfur cloud in the air. It was still massive, perhaps even continent sized, but I could hope that the winds would eventually carry it away and disperse it- even if it took weeks or months. Maybe it would take two or three times of going completely around the globe. I didn't know. We might have to face it again, if it went away.
The obvious choice became not to go down to the shoreline, but to head back up to the trees! And how was I going to explain all this to Jan?
The second this all became clear, I took as many deep breaths as I could, ripped off my mask, and desperately said to Jan: "Trust me. We've got to go back up the hill into trees. NOW. Get all food and water you can, and leave the boat here. Let's go! No time to explain!" I slammed back on my mask, gasping for air. I tore a page from the notebook, drew as big and thick an arrow as I could, pointed it towards the tree line, and secured it with a small rock by the boat. Maybe Gary would see it with the UAV.
I don't know if you can get castrated twice in 24 hours, but from the look on Jan's face, it was clear she was dying to prove it. Nonetheless, she followed me reluctantly as I led her by the hand back up the slope slowly. Going up in that situation made progress slow. But within an hour or so, we were nearing the tree line again. And already it was getting a bit easier to breathe. She noticed it too.
We made it back to the tree line and went a bit further, sat down, and caught our breath. It didn't take that long, and when we finally got back to regular breathing, it was just about normal. Maybe just a little harder, but nowhere near what we had experienced down on the rocks, far away from the trees.
Surrounded now by forest, with the wind carrying all the oxygen from the forest our way, I reasoned that we would have to stay there and wait it out. We still had the sulfur to deal with, but at least we could breathe through the masks. My bet was that the forest had gone into overdrive producing oxygen, with such a large amount of incoming carbon dioxide. So it was nature once again doing its constant balancing act. We just had to stay on the right side of the scales.
A hand reached out to touch me as we sat there, and I looked up to see Jan patiently staring and waiting for me to look at her. The look in her eyes conveyed deep thanks, renewed trust in me, and- dare I say it- love. I squeezed her hand back hard in acknowledgement. Too bad you can't kiss with masks on. So we settled for snuggling up to each for warmth for quite a while. And oddly, it started getting warmer.
Retrieving my notebook from my backpack, I finally wrote her a long note explaining all this, so she could understand how and why we were back up in the forest. She read it, and nodded appreciatively writing back only: "I'm so glad you're you! Thank you!"
But I couldn't explain why it was getting warmer, despite the fact that we were in near darkness, under a deadly dark cloud, and further, under the trees in the "shade." I initially just wrote it off to getting near midday. But my spidey senses were alerting me that something was off. At that elevation, and at that time of year in the spring, it was usually more like 45 to 55 degrees. With the sulfur cloud and trees, it should have been more like 30 or 40 degrees.
By 2:00 pm however, it got up around 70 degrees or higher, and our jackets finally came off. Jan's perky nipples poked at me through her shirt, and I couldn't stop staring at them. Hell, I had nothing else to do but think, and well- look at her beautiful, braless breasts. She seemed to delight in the fact that she had me totally captivated.
Despite my hopeless captivity, I kept on thinking how the temperature could get so high. Maybe it was just a warm spring day. Maybe. Damn it, I wanted to talk to Ben. I was already getting wild ideas about how the event might have affected the earth's orbit around the sun. Could it have been strong enough to act like a rocket booster and knock the earth on a different orbit path? If it did push the earth closer to the sun, even Jan's breasts weren't as hot as the oven we were about to roast in. SHIT!
I couldn't think about it any more. There was no point, and nothing we could do about it anyway. We would just have to hurry up and wait... Wait for the cloud to hopefully subside enough to make it to the waterline.
In the meantime, knowing we needed to kill some time, Jan's shirt suddenly came off... And good, masked trouble was upon me for a change...
Chapter 50: Only in the MC:TLSC- EXTREME Version
Chapter 51: Shower of Pain
Late that afternoon, what little light was left finally vanished into pitch blackness. It was so black with that noxious cloud up there, that not even a sliver of moonlight helped us. We were at the total mercy of flashlights. And we had to be careful to conserve the batteries wisely. Still, we managed to make a meal of canned stew and a few crackers.
Without any worries of animal attacks, we were looking forward to a good night's sleep. It cooled down slightly, but not near enough. It was still a muggy 75 degrees that night I estimated, and that was just not right. We should have been freezing.
I wondered if Ben was aware of any of this. I wondered if they had surfaced, and I wondered how the repairs on the sub went. But we heard nothing, and I had kind of expected another visit from the UAV.
Maybe Gary sent it and couldn't find us, even with the arrow note I left. I just didn't know. Then again, we were about 100 yards up into the forest, so if he sent the UAV... Nah, I reasoned, we would have probably still heard it buzzing the tree line. Maybe something happened. The not knowing was the worst.
So all Jan and I could do was write each other notes back and forth, but we couldn't even do that much because we had to conserve the batteries. We finally just gave up, and settled into the sleeping bags at about 8:00 pm.
We carefully changed the mask filters, not knowing how long they lasted- and fearful we might wake up gagging. It was strange sleeping on the incline, but exhausted from hauling that boat all day- sleep deep we did. But we tossed and turned all night very uncomfortably- especially trying to sleep breathing through the masks.
I was awakened smelling the coffee. Jan had managed to make some, and I looked at my watch: 7:15 am. It was still near black, while the rising sun desperately tried to break through the death cloud with little success.
About an hour later though, more light seemed to make it through, and I reasoned that it was probably due to the low angle of the sun. Perhaps some light was getting through below the cloud. It became slightly darker than a bad rainy day- but just enough to see by.
We went back down to the tree line, and even ventured a bit further, but found that the minute we were about twenty to thirty feet away, breathing became noticeably more difficult. I took careful note of that distance and marked it with a rock, knowing that IF the cloud started to dissipate or was going to pass us in the next days, then we should slowly be able to go beyond that barrier and still breathe easy.
So we went back to the tree line and waited. What was most uncomfortable though was the heat. It had not gone away, and on the contrary, it kept getting hotter.
"So what now, and what in the world is with all this heat?" Jan wrote.
"Let's hope he sends the UAV. And I have a theory on the heat but not sure you want to hear it," I wrote back.
"Try me," she scribbled.
"I think the earth might have been knocked into a new orbit around the sun. I think that blast might have been so powerful, it could have caused it. Huge earthquakes have changed our orbit slightly before. But that's just a theory, and we should really wait to talk to Ben. Let's see what he thinks. And yes, right now, as you know, it should be near freezing up here," I responded on paper.
She looked up at me mortified. "So then how hot is it going to get?" she wrote.
Beads of sweat were already forming on her arms, and they had a yellowish tint from the sulfur.
"I have no idea. We're just going to have to wait and see. I am hoping this problem, if that is the problem, will eventually rectify itself as the earth and sun struggle back to orbital stability. But that could take years. I just don't know," I wrote back.
It was ironic to think that the very death cloud we had managed to survive might be the only thing keeping us from frying by blocking out the vicious sun. So on one hand we needed the cloud gone- but on the other hand, if it dissipated or was blown away, the intense sun could kill us.
I seriously hoped my theory was wrong, but as the day wore on, the temperature climbed into the high 80's around noon. And at that time of year, there was no way it should have been that hot at that high elevation- even in the dead middle of summer, that would have been a stretch. The masks now felt like they were suffocating us in that heat.
I was desperate to talk to Ben, to make sure he knew what was happening. And right about 1:00 pm, we heard the buzzing. The UAV was coming.
We scrambled back down to the tree line and caught just a glimpse of the craft as it headed back to the sub. Jan spotted the small package they had left, but I insisted on retrieving it. I had high hopes that Ben knew something when I saw it a mere few feet from the tree line. I grabbed the package and we scrambled back up into the trees.
We opened it and found two wrapped steak sandwiches with all the trimmings, and two bottles of water, still cold. A longer note was included, but Jan wrote to me that we should eat first before reading it. She confiscated the note and handed me my share.
We carefully unwrapped just a small piece at a time, held our breath, took a bite, and then chewed and breathed back under the masks.
As I ate, I kept wondering how that much solar heat could even get to us, with the sulfur cloud above. It was blocking out what looked like to be over 90% of the sunlight.
But then the thought occurred to me that maybe it was because the winds could be different near the earth's surface. And THAT could mean that there might be breaks in the cloud much further away. The surface winds could be transporting heat to us under the cloud cover.
I wrote my thoughts to Jan, and she looked up at me with hope. "So maybe it WILL pass, then!" she wrote. "But is that a good thing or a bad thing?" she further asked.
"We'll just have to wait and see," I wrote back.
Finally finishing our meal, I held out my hand- and Jan knew exactly what I wanted. She handed me the note reluctantly, afraid of what it might say. I scooted over by her side so we could read it together:
"You two are lucky to be alive. I realize that is an understatement with all that has happened. The air is full of CO2, and I know it must be difficult to breathe. That was very good thinking to head back into the trees. We saw the arrow on the ground, but without the sun the UAV is severely limited in flight time. Ship repairs have gone slow, but we are getting there. We are almost ready. The problem is that we don't know if we can get to you in time before the masks run out- and we have no more. Gary is not sure how long they last- it depends on the degree of contamination.
"We have monitored the temperature, and we know of the high heat. I am not sure why that is occurring, especially when there is a sulfur cloud above. That should be causing a temperature drop. But it could be that the event changed the global temperatures, and that would not be surprising, considering the magnitude. If the CO2 content in this case is especially high, that could explain the heat. Might be a greenhouse effect, trapping the heat. In any case, I expect severe storms and acid rain anytime, so be careful.
"We are shooting for tomorrow morning early to make it to the shoreline and try to get you. Chances are, you are going to have only one short window of time to make it down to the shoreline when the cloud passes, or thins out enough in the atmosphere. Using modified radar, I believe we have seen an opening, or thinning of the cloud. It should be over us right about then. It will be your best chance- and especially if... If the event caused other things to happen that I can't go into right now. So we MUST take it.
"We are hoping you can make it in about two hours- with the boat. We've GOT to have that boat. We should be nearest shore by 10:00 am, if all goes well. We will make a final UAV drop at 7:00 am. Terry says to enjoy the steaks. Gary sends his best. Hang in there. We're coming.
Ben."
Jan and I just looked at each other blankly, not knowing whether to hug each other, or just shoot each other and get it over with. We knew that unless some fresher air poured into the area, there was no way. I laid back against a tree and went into deep contemplation, thinking about it all.
So how in the hell were we supposed to pull THAT off, and get the boat all the way down there, when we could barely breathe 30 feet from the tree line? From what I had read of volcanic type gases, usually they stayed in a concentrated area, some tens to (rarely) hundreds of kilometers from the eruption. I kept trying to wrap my brain around the problem, not understanding how a sulfur cloud from an event some 9,500 km away could even reach this far- and especially, according to Ben- if it had already gone most of the way around the world first.
But then I remembered how in rare cases, if the eruption was big enough, this could saturate the global air to the point that it overcame nature's ability to disperse it quickly enough. And it could linger- for years. I remembered the infamous "year without a summer" in 1816- which happened after a series of large volcanic eruptions during a period of low solar activity- culminated with a colossal, VEI 7 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. These all injected such a large amount of particles into the atmosphere, that it plunged the world effectively into a volcanic winter.
My mind reeled for more answers, and again I yearned to talk to Ben. After all, he had been getting secret updates on this all along. But this event was undoubtedly orders of magnitude larger than anything humanity had ever witnessed. I had serious doubts that the "cloud" would disperse at all.
Suddenly we were jolted by another tremor, knocking us both around a bit, and shaking us back into hell. I briefly had the thought that this must be what life was like for people who lived in quake-prone parts of the world like Chile and Indonesia. You eventually just get used to it, and the fear of them becomes less and less. But it never totally goes away- at any time it could be a big one that might kill you.
At about 3:00 pm, we felt the wind pick up, and we heard rumbling in the distance. But that was no quake- it was thunder. Great. Maybe we were about to taste some of that acid rain Ben mentioned.
From what little I knew about acid rain, it wasn't usually all that directly harmful to humans- but was more directly harmful to trees, water, and wildlife. It was mildly corrosive to rocks and metal, too. But that's only because it usually contained only very small amounts of sulfur. In more concentrated form, however, it became a corrosive acid.
In this case I had a very uneasy feeling that the sulfur concentrations in the air might be high enough to turn any rain into a harmful sulfuric acid that could eat through our clothes and maybe even burn us. Not pretty. And what about the boat. Oh no! Could it survive such an onslaught? I had hopes that the material it was made of could resist it.
As the first raindrops fell, we both looked up into the fir trees to see yellowish water drops finding their way down to the ground. But when the first one hit my head, I paid close attention to see if I felt anything other than wetness. I looked at Jan, who was also mortified, and anticipating the worst she tried to shield herself from the vile rain with a blanket.
At first I thought we would be ok when I didn't feel anything other than the wetness of the raindrops. I had grabbed part of the blanket and put it over my head soon after the first drops hit my head, just in case. But it only took minutes for me to regret that decision to test the rain.
Stinging pain began irritating my head. I realized I was slowly being burned. I grabbed a towel from the backpack and quickly dried my head best I co
uld, while staying under the blanket Jan was trying to hold up over our heads.
That worked for a little while. The pain subsided, but my head still felt irritated. And then Jan began to move around and moan uncomfortably too. As the blanket became saturated, holes started appearing in it. The damn sulfur-laced rain was literally burning right through it. Any place the rain touched us, it started to hurt. We were going to have to do something, and fast. Our very clothes were starting to melt.
Totally desperate, there was only one thing I could think of. I noticed the backpacks seemed to be holding up. They were getting wet, but obviously the particular material they were made of seemed to be resisting the corrosion. Our clothes, on the other hand were not.
I grabbed the pen and paper, and wrote Jan an urgent note: "We've got to get under the boat. NOW. We'll use the backpacks to shield us. GO. NOW!!!"
She looked at me with wide eyes, as she had done so many times before in these last days- and just seeing that now familiar look on her face ignited adrenaline in my body. Blindingly trusting me, she wasted no time and jumped up, putting the backpack over her head- and bolted down the hill towards the boat. I wasn't far behind in hot- no, make that burning- pursuit. We were starting to burn all over.