Before the Nothingness

by Kevin George

  It’s all because of Samuel, Clay thought. Ever since his father died, he hasn’t wanted us finding out about anything. And now this is happening. . .

  Clay and the other engineers had been given fewer assignments with each passing month, to the point where he’d gone weeks with doing little more than advising on tunnel digging operations, the plans for which had been finalized years earlier. He’d heard similar stories from scientists in different departments, but nobody had grown too concerned with their standing in The Mountain considering the efficiency with which food and resources were cultivated. Clay suddenly realized how foolish he’d been for assuming he was safe. The only solace he took was that his wife and daughters weren’t being forced down here, too.

  Is that a good thing? Clay wondered.

  When the hangar bay door squealed open and a rush of cold and snow swirled around the men, Clay received his answer. At that moment, he vowed to remain quiet and follow security’s commands so his family wouldn’t be forced out beside him. As he looked from one frowning man to the next, he saw that many had come to the same conclusion.

  “Everybody climb aboard!”

  Ten snow vehicles of varying size were parked in front of the stairwell and the security force separated the men into each of them. Clay ended up in an army truck with ten other men, most of whom had quietly accepted the inevitable. Only one man—Clay recognized him from the energy department—babbled the entire time, trying desperately to come up with any possible explanation for why they’d been taken.

  “Maybe there’s a problem at the City Below that requires our help,” the man said, looking to his fellow passengers for any sign of agreement. When his eyes landed on Clay, Clay barely mustered a frown. Finally, the man focused on the person sitting next to him. “Doesn’t that make sense to you, Daniel?”

  “I hope you’re right, Aziz,” Daniel Binstadt said. “But why only men? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of women in our departments who could’ve helped with such a project.”

  “And why would they want to keep all the women behind?” someone else asked.

  Clay tried not to consider the answer, though it was impossible to avoid his mind going to dark places. As the line of vehicles drove out of the hangar and into the snowy outside world, Clay looked back toward The Mountain’s only entrance and wondered how far he would make it if he tried getting back to his family. The armed guard at the back of the truck—as well as the security force remaining in the hangar—stopped him from taking the risk.

  The view from the back of the truck was limited, but Clay immediately saw that the vehicles were headed in the opposite direction of ISU-Ville. When the guard was asked what was happening, he responded with a shrug and continued to aim his weapon in the passengers’ general direction. Gauging the passage of time was impossible. Clay felt the vehicle going up and down several inclines, but he saw nothing out of the vehicle’s rear window except falling snow and an occasional glimpse of the vehicle in line behind them.

  After what felt like hours (but may have been far less time), the vehicle noticeably slowed and the others behind it came into view. The passengers shifted in their seats to see out of the window, watching the line of vehicles form a circle around a building that seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Several large towers surrounded the glass building, but the tallest tower was on its roof. The security guard suddenly sat up straighter and tapped the device hooked into his ear.

  “Copy that,” he said. He stood in the back of the truck, sweeping his weapon from side to side so every passenger had a turn in its crosshairs. “Nobody move a muscle while I’m gone.”

  The guard opened the truck’s back door, freezing wind filling the passenger section. Clay shivered, as did every other man surrounding him, none of whom were dressed for this level of cold. The guard hopped from the back of the truck before returning his gaze to the passengers, a smile crossing his lips.

  “Actually, move as much as you want,” he said. “Come outside for all I care.”

  After the guard shut the door, the passengers scurried toward the window for a better view. Clay reached it first and watched as guards from other vehicles converged at the front door of the building. Once inside, Clay grabbed the handle to the back door and pushed it open. He stumbled out of the truck, falling face first into the snow, scrambling to his feet but having a difficult time gaining his footing. He expected the other passengers to follow, but they remained in the back of the truck. A few men even cried for the back door to be closed.

  “You’re just giving up?” Clay asked. “Don’t you want to get back to your families?”

  “You going to walk?” Daniel asked.

  Clay looked at the vehicle’s fresh tracks in the snow and had no doubt they’d lead him back to The Mountain. The thought of returning to his wife and daughters made Clay feel capable of anything, but his mind was an analytical one and he knew his length of time to survive these elements might not be an hour. He glanced toward the building, not knowing how much time they had to act, assuming it wasn’t long. As far as he could fathom, only one possibility for escape existed.

  “I’m going to drive,” Clay said. “But I can’t do it alone. I need help getting into the front of the truck.”

  The other passengers looked to each other before Aziz leapt out of the back. Daniel sighed deeply before following, and the rest of the men did the same. They circled to the front of the truck and yanked at the door handle, which was locked. The window was already dusted with snow, but it fell away as Clay and the others began to bang on it. The silhouette of the driver could be seen within and he soon cracked the window open before the passengers could smash the glass. Adrenaline coursed through Clay, allowing him to ignore the cold and snow as he hoped to frighten the driver enough to—

  Clay saw the gun barrel sticking out of the cracked window a split second before the muzzle flashed. He dove aside just in time, knocking into the others as he went. The passengers scattered, barely looking back to see one of their own felled by the gun, the snow around him blossoming red. The men scurried toward the back of the truck, slipping and sliding as they went, expecting the driver to emerge from the truck and continue firing. But the driver’s door remained closed and there was no movement from the other vehicles.

  “Now what?” someone called out over the sound of wind.

  “We can only go on foot,” Clay said.

  The prisoners looked to one another and shivered before climbing back into the truck. Clay was the last one to stay outside as he stared into the storm. He already shivered so severely that he couldn’t think clearly.

  “I’m sorry, Mel,” he whispered into the wind before climbing into the truck and shutting the door behind him.

  The other passengers sat in their seats, nobody speaking a word, the only sound being their chattering teeth and the distant howling of wind. Clay looked at Daniel Bindstadt, who no longer had his talkative friend sitting beside him. Clay had already forgotten the body of the dead man splayed across the snow.

  Moments later, the back door opened again. Clay and the others recoiled, expecting further retaliation for their escape attempt, but a half-dozen other men and women were being herded into the truck. Beyond them, other lines of prisoners were being taken into the other vehicles, treated as roughly as those from The Mountain had been.

  “But you don’t understand,” said one of the workers from the Communications Center. “Dealing with the other arks was always deemed a top priority by Charles Jonas. If we’re not able to communicate with the HASSes or the boats or the—”

  “As you all know, Charles Jonas isn’t with us any longer,” one of the guards said. “Samuel Jonas and the One Corp. Board has ordered the Comm Center shut down permanently.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” the Comm Center worker argued. “If The Mountain’s locator beacon remains off and nobody makes radio contact with the other arks, we’ll be totally cut off from the rest of the w—”

 
; Without warning, the guard lashed out and struck the worker’s face with the butt of his gun, dropping him before he could climb into the truck. Behind them, someone cried about a ‘body being in the snow,’ causing more gasps. Clay stared at the floor of the truck, trying not to shiver despite his clothes still being wet and frozen from falling several times in the snow. He glanced at his fellow prisoners from The Mountain and found them doing the same, none looking toward the guard. Clay’s eyes turned toward the rear of the truck just long enough to see the guard staring back in their direction.

  The bleeding Comm Center worker was shoved unceremoniously into the back before the guard climb aboard. Once the back door was slammed shut, several sniffles could be heard. A female Comm Center worker squeezed into the seat beside Clay.

  “What’s happening to us?” she whispered.

  Clay shrugged and kept his eyes down. The woman continued to plead silently but Clay wasn’t about to make himself a larger target. He’d already watched two fellow prisoners murdered in cold blood; on the off chance that doom wasn’t awaiting them all, he wasn’t going to risk becoming the third victim. When other Comm Center workers kept begging for answers, the guard threatened them with bodily harm before finally offering a two-word explanation.

  “Following orders.”

  The new prisoners remained nervously talkative until the guard pointed his weapon at each of them. It wasn’t long until the back of the truck fell into silence, with the crunching of snow being the only sound. Clay didn’t how much more time passed when the line of vehicles stopped again and the back door was thrown open. The guard called out to another, who responded by saying that they’d traveled ‘far enough.’

  “Everyone out!” the guard ordered.

  The Comm Center workers hesitated but eventually filed out into the snowy world. Clay and the others followed. Clay scanned the horizon in front and behind them; he saw only snow and nothingness. The rest of the vehicles’ passengers were gathered together, nearly one hundred people in all, a line of security guards with raised weapons standing in front of them. Most of the prisoners shivered in silence, though a few begged for proper clothing to survive the harsh weather. Though Clay had held out hope for any reason to return to his family, he looked from one prisoner to the next—and then to each of the guards—and knew he’d never see The Mountain again. His worries were confirmed moments later when one of the guards stepped forward and addressed them.

  “After a thorough investigation into each of you, Samuel Jonas and The Board of One Corp. have deemed you untrustworthy or impractical for the continuation of humankind in The Mountain or on our lands,” the lead guard said, his voice containing all the empathy of a robot.

  The prisoners’ worst fears confirmed, Clay watched a range of reactions from those around him. Some cried, some yelled, some argued. One man even screamed maniacally and rushed the nearest guard, who’d expected such a reaction and shot the man dead. Before today, Clay had never seen a dead body; this was the third person he’d watched killed and he was already getting used to the sight. Deep down, he had an awful feeling this wouldn’t be the end of the awful things he’d be witnessing.

  “But our families?” someone asked.

  “Those left behind in The Mountain will be well cared for,” a guard said. “Try to return and your loved ones will suffer the same fate as all of you.”

  “Where do you expect us to go?” another prisoner asked. “The rest of the world is crumbling.”

  The lead security guard pointed in the opposite direction from which they’d driven.

  “We’ve reached the point where Billings is a closer walk than The Mountain,” the guard said.

  “We won’t survive walking to either one,” Clay said.

  The guard shrugged. “You might be right. But if you do make it Billings, you at least have a chance to survive. If we catch you trying to come back to The Mountain, you won’t have that same chance.”

  The lead guard snapped his fingers at the other guards, all of whom backed their way toward the vehicles. They faced the prisoners the entire time, keeping their weapons raised in case anyone tried to make a move. Clay looked to his fellow prisoners, ready to join the first man that charged at their captors. But nobody made a move and the guards were soon driving away, leaving the former Mountainers to fend for themselves in the worst possible conditions.

  “Despite any difference of opinion that we—as a group—may have had with your father, not a single person around this table can deny the impact Charles Jonas had on our lives,” Betty Van Horn said, her voice heavy with feigned sincerity. “Without Charles, none of us would be here today. We, The Board, want to offer you our deepest condolences on his passing and I hope we can continue to—”

  “Thank you,” Samuel said, unable to listen to another word. “I think it’s time we got to the business at hand.”

  Betty frowned and took her seat at the giant table in the boardroom. Samuel sensed disapproval for his interruption from other Board members, but Martin LeRoque—the only one he was truly worried about—smirked from his chair.

  “The last few years of waiting have been difficult, but it was important to wait to enact our vision. Now that my father is gone. . .”—surprised by the crack in his voice, Samuel swallowed hard before continuing—“. . . I’ve already set in motion many of the changes we discussed. We obviously couldn’t bring in more people to work security, but we have removed those individuals most vocal with their criticism of our decisions.”

  “I still think they could’ve been used for research or experimentation purposes,” Martin grumbled.

  Samuel’s cheeks flushed, but he forced himself to exhale slowly and ease the tension in his jaw.

  “As discussed, keeping so many prisoners would’ve been a drain on our resources and our security force,” Samuel said, his words coming a bit slower than usual. “And if we kept those men so close to their families, they would’ve been likelier to cause trouble to get to their loved ones. Now that they’re gone, our security is focusing on the disgruntled family members left behind.”

  “The wives and daughters will prove more useful for what I’ll eventually need,” Dr. Weller added. His proclamation caused more than one Board member to shudder, Betty most of all. Before The Board could fire off unwanted questions about Weller’s projects, Samuel steered the conversation back to his own agenda.

  “The Communication Center has also been shut down,” he said. “Our link to other arks—to the outside world—has been severed. I don’t know if my father ever sent our coordinates to the people he was working with, but The Mountain’s GPS beacon has remained off for years, not that it matters anymore since the Comm Center won’t be there to transmit the signal. But that brings us to a more pressing issue that’ll far outlast any of us or our families.

  “The world is descending into a state of chaos far worse than anticipated,” Samuel continued. “Worldwide temperatures are dropping lower and faster than even the harshest doomsday experts predicted. Even in my father's final days, he admitted The Mountain needed major changes for the facility to survive longer than he planned for.”

  Martin stood from his chair, causing all eyes to shift toward him. “I speak for The Board in saying I agree with the first moves made after your father’s demise. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve already waited too long to start making difficult decisions and we can’t hesitate to take your plans one step further.”

  Samuel saw the way The Board watched Martin, the way he enraptured them when he spoke, the way they saw him as their true leader. Samuel suddenly wondered if he should’ve had security take Martin—and, for that matter, the rest of The Board—with the other prisoners. As much as that thought brought a surge of excitement to his chest, his stomach dropped just as suddenly when he wondered if the guards would’ve followed such an order. For all Samuel knew, The Mountain’s security force may have been in The Board’s back pocket.

  “The next step,” Martin conti
nued, “is reprioritizing which of One Corp.’s survival stations is likeliest to succeed. If we keep trying to juggle all of our operations, we’ll eventually drop all three balls and One Corp.’s efforts will end in catastrophe. If we take away our personal feelings and focus on which one has the best chance to last the longest, there’s no doubt the answer is The Mountain.”

  Samuel snorted. “And you’re certain there’s no bias in your opinion?”

  Martin’s eyes narrowed as he looked to the newest Jonas elder. He wasn’t alone. Samuel tried to focus on The Board’s leader, but he couldn’t help sensing accusatory stares from every other member.

  “I’m certain that The Board has the best intentions in maintaining your father’s legacy,” Martin said.

  Samuel finally looked down, his shoulders slumping just slightly. “I understand keeping our distance from the City Below. It’s been a separate entity from the day digging began near the volcano site. That bunker and its tunnels have been operating on their own for years now; I couldn’t tell you if they finished digging the bunker or the system of tunnels. The project was simply conceived and started too late, but the people living there at least have a chance of finishing.

  “But ISU-Ville is different. I believe we need to treat them as such. We can’t ignore them. They’re living in the middle of the worst conditions of all.”

  “We understand the difficulties involved in life at ISU-Ville, but I believe the worst conditions of all are being faced by those beyond our lands,” Martin said. “The villagers will still survive without our assistance.”