The Stars are Red Tonight: The Paradisi Chronicles

by Ashley Angelly

  Trevor reached out and touched the radio icon on the screen, calling forth some oldie station. Under cover of the sound, he whispered to Saya, “Did you know Frank had one of these cars?”

  “Of course not. As far as I knew, he took public transit just like you and me. But then what did I know about anything?” She shrugged. “Of course why should we be surprised? Wasn’t the Chandler family one of the ten families who are part of this Paradisi Project? As far as we know, Frank works for them as well as my mother.”

  Trevor had given her his jacket again when they got in the car, and she pulled the hood further over her face, looking thoroughly pissed. Trevor thought that anger was a lot better than devastated, which was what she had been. She’d even refused to get into the Chandler until Frank confirmed that he was taking them to the jetport near the northern wall of the city and from there on to the Solux Sky space elevator, which would take them up to the Nautilus Space station and her mother.

  So now they were weaving through Friday night city traffic to get to I-5, where they would turn north, go past Everett, and then head east to where the jetport was located. Frank kept an eye on the road, the manual controls disengaged, but he pulled out a large mobile that looked like a military grade communications device and started rapidly texting. Trevor wondered whether he was reporting to Saya’s mother about what had happened at the Space Needle.

  The Chandler was built for sturdiness and speed, not for roominess, so it was really big enough for only four passengers. This meant Trevor didn’t feel awkward reaching out and squeezing Saya’s hand reassuringly. She gave him a look he couldn’t interpret but didn’t pull her hand away, so he sat quietly and watched out the window, again wondering if this was the last time he’d see Seattle.

  Six years he’d spent in this city. Really most of his adult life, and it was the only place he thought of as home. Before he had come here, he’d traveled with his family. His parents always looking for work and cheap housing, always failing after about six months and moving on. They insisted that he and his sister not work … but spend their days taking classes online. There might not be money for food or clothes, but there was always enough to buy him and his sister tablets with internet access. His mother had a college degree, so she’d homeschooled them both at night, no matter how tired she was, while his pop would whip up something out of nothing for them to eat and entertain them with stories from the “good old days.”

  Not a bad life ... until six years ago when both Mom and Pop died within twenty-four hours from some sort of hazardous spill at the recycling plant where they were working. He’d had to sit by helplessly, watching the blood pour from their every orifice, promising them that he would take care of his little sister.

  “Did you know I had a sister?” Trevor said, unable to take the weighted silence any longer.

  “No, I didn’t. Where is she now?” Saya spoke softly so that only Trevor could hear her.

  “She died three years ago in the Boston hurricane.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  Trevor felt the warmth of her small delicate hand squeezing his.

  “Were you two close?”

  “Growing up together we fought like cats and dogs, but the older we got the closer we became. When my folks died, I got a temporary work permit so we could move to Seattle, where I was lucky enough to get the job at WelCo and permanent residence status for us both. My sister worked part time and took classes at Olympia U. Then she met this guy in our apartment building. Fell in love. He had family back in Boston, and they offered them a house to live in and residence status if they came east. My sister always wanted to live in a house with grass in the yard and no sharing of four walls with neighbors. She liked the idea of living close to a big family in a town that went back generations.”

  At the time, Trevor remembered his pop’s stories and understood his sister’s dream, but he knew life didn’t live up to dreams … ever.

  He said to Saya, “I liked the guy, but I wanted her to stay. I wanted both of them to stay here. But Boston hadn’t really had any major storms, and I told myself I was just being paranoid. So I never said anything. I didn’t want to ruin her dream.”

  “Oh, Trevor.”

  “A year later the hurricane hit, and Boston and the surrounding towns were completely destroyed. Their bodies were never even found. Sometimes I wonder if I had said something, would they still have gone? Or would they have stayed and still been alive.”

  “Don’t do that to yourself. You can’t blame yourself for what the hurricane did. That was not your fault.”

  “Yeah. Not my fault. Like not taking Bobby seriously this morning and him getting killed wasn’t my fault.” Trevor swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat. He looked back out of the window and saw that they were well out of the center of the city. The traffic was still heavy, a combination of long distance autobuses and personal cars like the Chandler.

  Just then the radio went silent. At first Trevor thought Frank had turned it off from the front seat. He was debating about whether or not to say anything when he noticed Frank hunched over his own screen and swearing softly.

  “Hey, man. What’s wrong?” Trevor leaned forward, but his words were drowned out by a series of sharp squeals coming from the car’s speakers. The Chandler began to buck, hitting the road with a tremendous crash then tipping back as if being tossed in the air, and throwing Saya and him back and forth against their seat belts.

  Frank shouted, “Hang on,” and punched some button that swung the steering wheel out to the manual position.

  Trevor put his left arm across Saya’s chest, trying to use his greater weight to anchor her in her seat, while bracing himself against the seat in front of him with his right hand. He said to Saya, “It’ll be ok. Something must have gone wrong with the hover controls; Frank’s got it on manual now.”

  Saya screamed and pointed out her side window, and Trevor watched in horror as one of the autobuses in the opposite lane reared up and then landed on the car in front of it. Despite all the windows being closed, he realized he was hearing a chorus of horns, loud crashes, and screeching metal, while headlights and tail lights danced crazily up and down, strafing the night sky.

  “Earthquake!” yelled Frank. “I’m going to try and get us up higher above the road, so just brace yourselves.”

  Saya grabbed Trevor’s arm as there was a sudden whooshing sound like a mini-jet engine, and the Chandler rose up and the severe bucking stopped. Frank was desperately trying to avoid the cars on the road in front of them that had crashed to a standstill on the buckled highway. Suddenly, the car’s headlights picked out a flat empty stretch on the shoulder, and Frank steered into that opening and eased to a full stop, letting the Chandler down slowly to the ground.

  Nothing moved. The road had stopped bucking. Gone were the sounds of crashing metal, and only the faint complaint of proximity alarms and stuck horns penetrated the car’s windows.

  Frank turned and looked back at them and said, “Saya, are you hurt?”

  Saya didn’t respond, so Trevor shifted so he could see her better. She whispered, “I’m all right, Trevor. How about you?”

  While Frank fiddled with his mobile, Saya and he just sat in silence. Trevor was trying to think of what to say when the voice from the radio suddenly started blaring, and Trevor jumped. Swearing, he punched the controls to bring the sound down to an understandable level.

  “… Broadcast Alert … Emergency Broadcast Alert. Massive earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone has struck the Pacific Northwest from NoCal to Vancouver, Canada. First Estimate is this earthquake was a magnitude 9.2 on the Richter scale. Reports of massive destruction throughout the region. Citizens are advised that severe aftershocks may follow.”

  As if on cue, the Chandler was thrown up and then down again to bounce on to the road with a crash. Frank shouted, “Shit,” as he punched at the Chandler’s controls, and the car again rose up––just as the asphalt opened in front of
them in a gigantic shuddering crack.

  Saya grabbed Trevor’s hand, and he could hear a steady stream of obscenities pouring forth from Frank in the front seat.

  As he turned to pull Saya closer, Trevor glanced out the back window and gasped.

  The high rises of Seattle were still visible as blocks of lights, but these rectangles were no longer upright, but tilted at crazy angles. Some of them suddenly disappeared as lights failed, then reappeared as backup generators kicked in. Oddly, he could see the Space Needle, as if the buildings around it had retreated to let this symbol of Seattle stand in isolation. Then the lights of the spaceship at the top of the needle seemed to leap, as if it were trying to fly free, and the whole thing, in heart-stopping slow motion, began to tilt, eventually disappearing from view.

  The red stars shone brightly in the sky, indifferent to the death and destruction on the earth below. A new star and a new planet a galaxy away suddenly seemed like a welcoming proposition. Trevor pulled Saya closer to his chest and said as calmly as he could, “Frank, Saya’s all right. Just get us the hell out of here.”

  Frank barked out a harsh laugh and then started driving the Chandler north as fast as he could, given the obstacle course of crashed vehicles, fallen highway signs, and downed street lights showering deadly sparks. Trevor was able to make out a road sign that said Everett fifteen miles, and he began to breathe a little easier. In the next twenty minutes or so they should be making the turn to the jetport. Hopefully it was far enough east to have avoided sustained damage.

  The radio muttered a litany of disasters. Power lost, bridges broken, highways closed, fires raging out of control, hospitals collapsed, and the estimated loss of life already reaching the millions.

  Then the terrible squealing sound advertised the beginning of another alert. Trevor said, “Don’t worry. Frank’s got the Chandler hovering high enough that we shouldn’t be affected by another aftershock. We will be getting to the turnoff to the jetport any minute now.”

  His brain then processed that the monotone voice of the alert was repeating a new word … Tsunami. Trevor reached out and raised the volume and heard, “ …warning. Immediate evacuation ordered for all populations west of I-5 from the border of NoCal to the northern Seattle wall. Special advisory for people along the Puget Sound, the Barrier has been breached … I repeat … the Puget Sound Barrier has been breached.”

  Trevor flashed on the mandatory emergency drills WelCo had conducted once a year, and the figure that stuck in his mind was fifteen minutes. That there would be at most fifteen minutes to respond to a Tsunami Alert. He saw the emergency map in his mind, with one branch of the Sound pointed like a gigantic funnel at Everett and everything in its vicinity.

  “Frank,” he yelled, “turn east. Turn east now. The Barrier has been breached by a tsunami. We are right in its path.”

  “I’ve got to find an exit first,” Frank said angrily, hunched over the wheel staring at the road. “We can’t just jump the guard rails and go down an embankment.”

  Saya sat up and looked out her window towards the west. Trevor could feel tremors sweeping through her body. There had been much less traffic for the past few miles, so they were seeing only an occasional stalled car as they sped by––with glimpses of people with terrified faces. They even passed a few all-terrain vehicles like the Chandler that were still able to maneuver over the cracks and chunks of concrete. But none were going as fast as Frank, who shouted, “Hold on,” as he turned the wheel and sent the car hurtling down an exit ramp that had just appeared on their right.

  As they moved onto a much narrower road, their headlights illuminated building after building reduced to rubble and people staggering around looking like every zombie movie he’d ever seen.

  Saya said, “Shouldn’t we should stop and help?”

  But he knew that Frank wouldn’t stop, no matter what they said. And they couldn’t stop, not if they had any hope of surviving the wall of water he imagined barreling down on them. He tried to calculate their chances––fifteen minutes––the Chandler must be going nearly eighty miles an hour…

  “What’s that sound, Trevor?” Saya went rigid beside him. “It sounds like a freight train.”

  Chapter Nine

  Caroline was still busy working when her assistant ran into her office to announce that a massive earthquake had hit Seattle. The news slammed her squarely in the chest. A deep pain tightened itself around her heart and radiated outward as he conveyed the details he was getting through his earphone data link.

  “Nine point two on the Richter scale … right off the coast … unlike anything the Pacific Northwest has ever experienced. Even larger than San Francisco’s Big One twenty years ago. The entire downtown has collapsed, and it is feared that anything still standing is going to be demolished by the tsunami that is currently rushing at high speeds towards the shore and down the Puget Sound.”

  Caroline found it hard to breathe, but she kept her face still, trying not to reveal the panic within. This entire day had been a series of shocks. First came Frank’s report that her daughter knew about the Paradisi Project. Then her joy when Sarah actually reached out to her for the first time in three years. Followed by the terrifying news that there had been an attempt to kidnap her. Finally, less than an hour ago, Frank had texted that he was on the way to the jetport with her daughter, and she’d thought the only thing she had to worry about was convincing Sarah to accompany her to colonize the new planet of New Eden.

  She leaned over the screen on the top of her desk and searched for a map of Seattle, her hand shaking as she ran her finger between Seattle and the jetport––seeing how close the I-5 was to the Puget Sound.

  “How long?” Caroline struggled to get the words out.

  “What?” Marchell said. “I didn’t understand you.”

  She swallowed hard, forcing down the lump that was quietly choking her, and said, “How long until the tsunami hits Puget Sound?”

  “The report said approximately fifteen minutes.”

  How long did Frank say it was going to take to get to the jetport? Are they still on I-5? Carolyn picked up her mobile and dialed Frank’s number as she stood up and went to the office window, looking down at Earth, as if she could locate a single car on one highway, millions of miles away. The mobile rang and rang, finally going to voice mail.

  She turned back to Marchell and said, “Have they begun rescue efforts?”

  “The news service just said an alert has gone out to evacuate those living west of the I-5 corridor from north of Seattle all the way down to NoCal. But it’s the middle of the night down there.”

  “And most people will be fast asleep.” Caroline shuddered.

  Marchell nodded.

  “Any firm information on number of deaths yet, from the earthquake?”

  “No, it’s too soon. But between the quake and the tsunami, they are predicting almost total destruction as far inland as the Cascade Mountain range. Ma’am, they are estimating the death toll will be somewhere around five million for the Seattle area alone.”

  “I see.” Caroline swallowed again. Would the jetport be too damaged, even if they get to it? She redialed and got nothing this time. The local relay stations may be down; that might be all it is. She tried to steady her heart rate, silently counting her breaths as they went in and out. But the lump squeezing her throat closed, and the knife twisting in her chest didn’t ease up. Her sight began to blur, and she swiped angrily at her face, swatting away the tears.

  “Ma’am?”

  She could barely make out her assistant, who was standing right in front of her. Her eyes were not cooperating, and her vision began to go dark. She reached for the desk chair behind her to steady herself. Heat radiated across her skull, like a wave of fire running through her brain.

  “Ma’am, are you ok?”

  “I am fine,” Caroline replied just before everything went completely black.

  When she awoke, she was lying on the couch in her offic
e. Confused, she started to get up, but Marchell was pressing a cold towel to her forehead, and a white-coated medical technician was running a diagnostic scanner over her body. A second technician was prepping what Caroline recognized as an instrument to take her blood.

  “What is all this? I don’t need this. Get out!” she shouted.

  She batted Marchell away and pushed herself up into a sitting position, immediately regretting it. The sharp stabbing pain returned, and she groaned, putting her hand to her head. The pressure behind her eyes was intense.

  The first tech stepped back and said, “Be careful, Mrs. Kuttner, please. You need to take things slowly. You collapsed and hit your head.”

  “I didn’t collapse. I had just heard very distressing news and didn’t watch where I was going and fell,” Caroline said to the floor, sitting with her head cradled in both hands. She could feel each heartbeat as her head throbbed.

  I fainted! I can’t believe this happened. What was Marchell thinking, bringing these two in here? It will be all over the station by morning that I am not fit to be the head of the family. Hell, my enemies might even suggest I am not fit to take the trip to New Eden.

  The second tech started to grab her arm to take the blood sample, and Caroline yanked it away, saying, “I am fine; I don’t need that. I told you, get out.” She pointed to the door.

  The two techs looked at each other, and then, after telling her that she should check into the station’s medical station to make sure she wasn’t suffering from a concussion, they left.

  Once they were alone, Caroline turned to Marchell and said, “What insanity possessed you to call for medical assistance? How could you be so incredibly stupid?”

  “You collapsed, ma’am. You hit your head on the desk as you fell. I tried to wake you up, but you wouldn’t respond. I didn’t know what else to do. I was worried you were in a coma or something. What else should I have done?”