Tsunami Wake: Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Calm Act Book 4)

by Ginger Booth

  I was glad of that. There was better air up here, and a better view. I’d been kind of wondering what was going on, though I was hazy on why I should care. The tank parked in front of my dead SUV had siblings strewn across the campus lawn. Wisps of smoke or teargas drifted here and there. There were bodies on the ground, mostly civilian. Soldiers herded people at gunpoint, but not nearby.

  “Canber was right. People suck. I hate people,” I said.

  After a moment, Emmett grabbed my chin again to turn my head his way. Judging from his pained expression and my nonexistent skill at lip-reading, he said, “What?”

  “I can’t hear anything, Emmett,” I said, patting my ear. He nodded, kissed my forehead, and let me be, just sitting beside me with a companionable arm around my waist.

  I was distracted by my blackened paw, coated in tarry gunk that I’d just applied to my hair when I patted my ear. My leggings were sticky with the stuff, and frayed at the knees. I poked a grimy finger through a tear to confirm that my knees were scraped. Any solvent that could get the black off my sneakers would surely also remove the cheery pink and green plaid.

  “People suck,” I repeated. Emmett just squeezed my waist. “I hate Boston. New York is better.” Judging from the way his body shook beside me, Emmett laughed.

  Cam and I held this silly debate in front of Emmett once – which was better, New York or Boston. Not that there was a New York anymore, just the Apple. Cam was a Boston-leaning sort of Connecticut Yankee, despite attending college at West Point. Emmett concluded that we both disliked cities, Boston and New York included. Cam and I had to concede the point.

  A soldier came and crouched beneath us on the stairs, to speak to Emmett. I did a double-take when I recognized him as General Ivan Link. He said something to me, but I just shook my head. Like Emmett, he grasped my chin and examined my eyes in concern. Then he shook his head and returned to his discussion with Emmett. I concluded that if I was concussed, at least my pupils were the same size.

  Eventually an armored troop carrier came and took us away.

  I landed up alone with Emmett and Ivan Link in some sort of medical room. They were talking and I still couldn’t hear them. Actually the ringing white noise and aural effects were starting to die back. I could hear them in snatches. To be honest, I still wasn’t in a mood to listen. I remember wondering once whether my grandmother was losing her hearing, or if she just quit listening. She was a bit of a people-pleaser before that.

  Not something people accused me of, people-pleasing. Heh. If they only knew.

  I glowered at the raw concrete bunker walls around me. This underground facility seemed to be Link’s Boston headquarters. There was something about fresh concrete and Biosphere 2, but I couldn’t remember what. But thinking that made me notice that my chest felt like lead. Sea water in the lungs, followed by a bad cold, turned to a chest cold, followed by a hefty dose of tear gas – my lungs were not happy. I felt like hell.

  I spotted what I wanted and hopped off the examination table. Then clung to the table for a moment for a woozy wave of nausea to pass. OK, no more hopping. There was a familiar oxygen saturation meter – O2 sat – sitting on a counter, next to an oxygen canister, among a supporting nest of air hoses, breath masks and cannula. A friend had asthma when we were kids, so I was familiar with the gear.

  I powered on the O2 sat device and clamped its detector onto my finger. The detector part is your basic spring-loaded plastic alligator clip. What the meter is supposed to say is 100, for 100% of proper oxygenation in your blood.

  What it actually said was 63. I’d never seen a reading below 75 before, even when my friend was in the emergency room for a breathing treatment. I snatched Emmett’s hand and clamped the detector onto his finger. His read 85. Emmett? Who ran every morning, and was not sick? That didn’t make sense.

  I turned on the oxygen canister and with great exaggeration, mimed blowing out all the air in his lungs. I nearly knocked myself out doing that, and grabbed hold of the counter, dizzy. Link meanwhile folded his arms and looked irritable at the interruption. But these days he looked irritable all the time, and I didn’t care.

  Emmett played along. He blew out all the air in his lungs, with exaggerated pantomime like mine, and a grin, and then breathed deeply through the oxygen mask I stuck on his face. After a minute, a retest showed his O2 sat measurement up to 89, still surprisingly low.

  Apparently at Emmett’s suggestion, Link extended a reluctant finger for Emmett to clamp the meter on. Link’s reading was worse than mine, at 59. More or less against his will, Link repeated the blowing-out-lungs followed by breath mask sequence. That brought his O2 sat up to 62. His fingers looked blackened. Not like mine, but like he was turning blue. At first I’d thought it was just the creepy light in this ugly bunker. But no, I decided. He was turning blue.

  I grabbed up the oxygen canister and headed for the door. Emmett grabbed my arm to stop me. “Bad air!” I said, apparently too loud, because he winced. “Out! Can’t breathe in here.”

  Emmett waved for me to wait, while he hunted for something to write on. I held out a hand for Ivan Link to give me back the breath mask, if he didn’t want to come with me. Then I trooped out of the med bay and hit the up button on the elevator. I wasn’t paying attention when we descended, how many floors down we were. But my lungs weren’t up to climbing stairs. The oxygen mask helped, but I still felt desperately ill. Emmett’s lips were dark, too, in the greenish fluorescent lights. That might have been from my tar-covered hands, but I wasn’t risking it.

  When the elevator came I held the door and stomped my foot, demanding they hurry up and join me. “UP! OUT!”

  Emmett came ahead into the elevator car, still trying to write a message. Link looked like he was saying something on the order of, “For crying out loud, MacLaren!” I grabbed his shirt and pulled, insistent, until he joined us in the box. I stabbed the close doors and ground floor buttons.

  Emmett finished scribbling his note. We were waiting for the doctor, his note said.

  I tapped his paper and repeated, “OUT!” He winced at my volume. When the door reopened, I exited the elevator and the building at speed. There was a smoker’s outpost type facility out there, a tall ashtray with a chunk of wall to sit on, and I collapsed onto it. I alternated breathing fresh air, and more oxygen from the canister, for a minute or two, calming myself down, holding up a hand to signal Emmett, Wait.

  My lungs still hurt. But Emmett’s lips, and Ivan’s, gradually grew less purplish, more a healthy pale pink. I finally let my hand down, and turned off the oxygen canister.

  “Sorry, couldn’t breathe in there,” I said to Emmett, gradually toning down my volume based on his continued wincing. “The air is bad in there, Emmett. Too much CO2, I think. Carbon dioxide poisoning. Maybe something else.”

  Emmett wrote on his paper again. What symptoms CO2 poison?

  “Irritable. Poor judgment. I don’t know. Look it up. But Emmett, my lungs already burn from the teargas, and half-drowning, and my cold. I was about to pass out.”

  He shook his head and replied, and I couldn’t hear him. Rather than write again, he folded me under his chin and kissed my head. I snuggled into his arms, lacking any further ambition for the moment. I was safe. He was safe. The jerks of Boston weren’t here. Good.

  31

  Interesting fact: Rising atmospheric CO2 levels weren’t considered dangerous to human health, though by this point they reached almost double pre-industrial levels. However indoor air, especially as buildings became better sealed for energy conservation, could concentrate CO2 to much higher levels. A study in 2012 found average elementary school CO2 concentrations above 1,000 p.p.m., and some up to 3,000 p.p.m., in California and Texas. Another study showed significant cognitive impairment from elevated indoor CO2 as low as 900 p.p.m., especially in human decision making, information usage, and crisis response. Because CO2 is heavier than air, lower floors are particularly susceptible.

  “Want me
to draw you a bath?” Emmett offered. He was perched on the toilet seat, keeping me company in the bathroom. I stripped down to underwear to wash my scraped knees in the sink.

  Link’s Boston bunker-garrison complex was built into the otherwise abandoned Logan International Airport. We were housed at one of the airport chain hotels, in a typically bland ‘junior suite’ – kitchenette, bathroom, sitting room, bedroom. A sign down the hall advised that power was only available from 5 to 8 a.m. But the room supplied candles and a book of matches. At least the linens were fresh.

  I could hear Emmett again, though my ears still rang. The doctor said my eardrums appeared intact, and the ringing should wear off in a few days. “No hot water,” I reported, shivering.

  He hastily rose and fetched a sweatshirt to drape on my back, tying its arms around my neck for the moment. I hoisted down the first washed knee, patted it dry, and lifted the other haunch to present the other knee to the faucet. My hands were fairly clean now.

  Earlier I refused to re-enter Link’s bunker. Instead we rejoined Sump and Ruggiero’s troops at a triage below in the hotel. The staff provided me some powerful painkillers, which left me feeling much better than my condition merited. Someone also fetched me turpentine to remove the tar. I applied that outdoors, of course, being freshly hypersensitive to indoor air quality. My hair still reeked.

  Emmett needed to wander away on Resco business. I came up to the room alone and collapsed, still fully clothed, onto the carpeted floor. I didn’t want to ruin the bedding, and didn’t have the energy left to undress. He woke me when he came up, and was gradually trying to herd me toward a meal.

  “Sorry I brought you here, darlin’,” Emmett said softly. He repeated it more loudly when I gestured that I didn’t hear him.

  “Not your fault people suck, Emmett,” I said. “I knew morale was bad. That’s what I’ve been working on, ever since the tsunami.”

  I completed cleaning the second scraped knee. I pulled off the sweatshirt and handed it to him. Wincing, I switched to removing reek-of-turpentine from my hair. Ice-cold winter water dribbled down my neck. I hastily rubbed neck and hair with a towel, and sniff-tested. Nope, still turpentine.

  He offered the sweatshirt. I huddled in it while I filled the sink with water, then handed it back.

  “Want to go home?” he offered. “Wouldn’t blame you.”

  “No. Then they’d win. And they suck. I’m with you.” I sighed, handed him back the sweatshirt, and proceeded to wash my whole head of hair with shampoo in the icy water.

  “Who’s they?” he asked.

  “The sucky cranky public. May they all rot in hell.”

  “Really proud of your contributions in PR, darlin’,” Emmett said wryly, grinning crookedly in the mirror.

  “Torch them all. Let God sort them out.”

  He laughed softly.

  “Oh, hey, Emmett, I forgot to tell you. The mayor of Cambridge? She was an instigator.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure. Question her at least.”

  He sent a text, probably to HomeSec, while I toweled my hair. That water was far too cold to bother with conditioner. I sniffed. My hair still smelled like turpentine. I gave it up, and pulled on the sweatshirt, one of his, nice and long. He pulled me onto his lap. I wrapped my hair with another towel to keep the sweatshirt dry.

  And I took a good look at him. He’d cleaned himself up, somewhere along the way. The grey dust of shattered building facade was gone, and he didn’t have a scratch on him. I traced a finger along his brow, his nose, his jaw, his ear, his lips. “Hi. Good to see you again.”

  He smirked. “Been a while. How you been?”

  “Work kinda sucks,” I admitted. “I did my best. Oops.”

  “You deliver miracles, Dee,” Emmett assured me. “But scared people do bad things.” He sighed. “Then they’re my work, instead of yours. I try to send them back your way. Can’t always manage it.”

  His work had sucked worse than mine, I reminded myself. Failing to turn around North Jersey would hurt for a long time. I kissed his nose.

  But I was still caught up in my own problems. “You know what kills me? You know they’re all completely convinced that what they’re upset about, is what they were yelling about. And it isn’t true. It’s what you said. They’re scared. They’re scared by the tsunami. They’re scared that their lives suck compared to how it used to be. That things won’t ever get better. And they’re convinced that’s got to be someone else’s fault. Because somehow there’s nothing worse than admitting that your life is your own fault. Doesn’t have a damned thing to do with ‘death angels’ or ‘queen of censors’ or ‘freedom for New England.’ But there’s no way to tell them that.”

  “You can tell them,” Emmett said, tracing my lips. “They don’t want to listen.” He kissed my ear and whispered into it. “You don’t always want to listen either,” he teased. “Though you’re better than most.”

  I considered asking after the fate of the mob, but I lacked any genuine curiosity about the protesters. A lot of them would be executed or imprisoned, I imagined. Good. “How’s Ivan?”

  “Spending the night in medical downstairs. I made the doctor take him back down into the bunker. Do impaired cognitive and psych baseline tests down there, collect blood samples. Now Link’s detoxing. Has to repeat the test battery clean in a few days. That man does not like me. But, I hope that’ll prove to Cullen and Link both – problem identified, problem solved.

  “Oh, hey, Dee? The doctor was miffed. You used an O2 test and called it CO2 poisoning. You were right, though. Plus other gases, jet fuel fumes. That air was bad. But how did you know?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. I explained my cracked reasoning was based on what little I remembered of Biosphere 2’s misadventure with unsealed fresh concrete. CO2 rose and O2 fell concurrently. “I was pretty loopy, Emmett.”

  He nodded, bemused. He toyed with a lock of my hair dripping out of the towel, and worked up to a deep kiss. “So, how are you feeling? Inspiring view at the sink there.”

  “You liked that, did you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re wired,” I accused.

  His slow smile bloomed. “Combat officers. Adrenaline junkies.”

  Despite my splitting headache, that segued into some of the sweetest lovemaking we’d shared in months. Not very rambunctious, of course. But sometimes working around little impediments keeps it playful. I should catch him fresh from battle more often, I thought. Not that being close to gunshot again was otherwise tempting any time soon.

  He came out of that rocket explosion without a scratch anywhere. Emmett had never yet received a Purple Heart, despite all his combat experience. Good armor. Great reflexes.

  “Were you just born with great reflexes?” I asked lazily, when we were spooned together afterwards, him holding me from behind. It was luxurious to be too hot under the blankets, generating our own little pocket of sauna.

  “That too,” he said. “But then training. Train, train, train. Then your body does the right thing on automatic when things get furry. For you, this afternoon was bad. For me, not such a big deal. Link was ready to sweep in. You just wanted to give the crowd a chance first.”

  He squeezed me to indicate no hard feelings on that score, though he’d argued against it at the time. Emmett let me speak to the mob, try to persuade them to cool off and disperse peaceably. Now he’d forgiven and forgotten.

  I was the one holding a grudge. Against the entire Hudson public, not Emmett. “I hate them sometimes.”

  “Uh-huh. Hate is contagious,” he said. “Love you.”

  “You do. I love you, too. But why do you love me so much? Why are you so sure I’m the one?” He didn’t react as negatively as usual to the question, so I pressed on. “It’s not you I doubt, Emmett. It’s me.”

  “I don’t buy into your ‘alien’ bit, darlin’,” he murmured. “We’re on the same wavelength. Our bodies like each other.” He
wriggled into a slightly more form-fitting position to demonstrate. Yeah, my body purred at that. “We’re interested in the same things. Love spending time together, talking, playing. We’re brave together. The world’s scary. You know what I love most about you, though? You always come up with a next right step. Times when I just can’t see any.”

  I considered that. “Not sure I have that now, Emmett. That thing you said, about a one in four chance of stopping the Venus Effect, of saving Earth. How do you bear it?”

  “That was tough at first,” Emmett allowed. “Then I decided it’s none of my business. We’ll probably be dead and done before we know how that ends. PIAGO is all we can do. Leave the world as good as we can.”

  “But it will keep getting worse.”

  “Maybe the weather will get worse. My world’s gotten better, since I met you. Whole Northeast,” he countered. “You’re my hero.”

  “And you’re my hero,” I returned.

  “Besides, I don’t buy it. You have a next right step,” he accused. “You always do. Wedding?” he prompted. “How, with all this going on, did our wedding come up again?”

  I explained about hiring a seamstress, and my new scheme to distract the public into good morale, instead of discussing negative issues. I could feel his belly laughter through most of it.

  “One snag, though,” I said. “We’re too busy to organize this. I need to hire an event planner. Ash is too busy.” Ash Margolis was supervising all of the Apple and Upstate at the moment.

  “Oh, no,” Emmett said. “Ash has this circus all laid in. He figured out our wedding the same time he did the Calm Park dedication at Halloween. If we’re willing to go big – like really big – we can just give him a date.”

  “How big?” I asked with misgiving. I’d been thinking of a huge wedding, to the tune of a few thousand people. The Calm Park dedication was a couple orders of magnitude larger than that.

  “Same size,” Emmett confirmed. “Maybe a little smaller.”