Max nodded and pushed the lever forward sending more power to the drill. The machine rattled and hissed angrily, shaking from side to side. Jacob hurried back inside and clumsily fell into his seat. He buckled himself in and cast a snide glance at Max.
“Everyone is ready. Not like you were waiting,” he spat.
“Shut up and start the drill,” Max retorted.
Jacob snarled and twisted the dial, unlocking the jagged bit. As the drill ground through the bedrock, the tracks of the massive vehicle slowly creaked forward. Max rolled harder on the throttle and the gears emitted a high-pitched whirring.
“You’re gonna burn out the clutch,” Jacob warned.
“At this pace we’re gonna suffocate before we break through. Keep the drill running, we’ve gotta go faster.”
Vibrations rambled through the walls as more loose panels fell off. Max continued to push power to the drill even as the temperature gauge spun beyond the limiter. It was a race, and he knew that if they didn’t win, they were all going to die.
“I don’t think we can keep up this pace,” Jacob warned again.
Max ignored him. With his eyes scrunched together, he pushed all of the power to the drill and the egg groaned its displeasure. More smoke started to spill into the control room and the sound of pieces breaking apart made an ominous ding.
“Come on, just a little bit more,” Max begged.
There was a sudden bang and the lever to operate the drill broke off in Jacob’s hand. He held the splintered piece of metal in the air as his eyebrows stretched to the top of his head.
“What the hell?” he gasped.
Before anyone could reply there was another explosion and echoing boom that nearly pushed Max from his seat. The lights flashed then for the second time all the power went out.
CHAPTER 8
THE FIRST STEP
Max groaned as he stood and wiped his face. Reaching out, he blindly felt his way to the cabinet at his side and grabbed a flashlight. He clicked the button to turn it on and swept the beam back and forth. The room was in disarray, smoke spilled from the walls and pieces of broken equipment were scattered across the floor.
“Everyone okay?” Max asked.
He turned the light and found MJ fumbling with the bolts to Craig’s seat. Craig was leaning to the side against Cynthia with his eyes closed. His skin was sallow and peppered with sweat and even though Cynthia had tied a tourniquet around his leg, blood was everywhere.
“What are you doing?” MJ snapped. “Help!”
Before Max could move, Alistair rushed into the room and grabbed Craig underneath the arms. With his help, MJ carried him off and followed Cynthia to the infirmary.
“Did we make it to the surface?” Jacob asked.
Max nodded then headed back to the monitor. He pulled up the diagnostic screen and bit his lip as he awaited the results.
“How bad is it?”
“Better than I thought. We’re already venting the toxic gases outside. Problem is our air supply. We’ve got days left.”
“What! What about the rebreathers? What about the oxygen farm?”
“Rebreathers are done and the oxygen farm was in the wing we had to seal off. We’ve gotta get out of here.”
~~***~~
The medical wing was starting to become the most popular place in the entire facility. As the beds filled, Cynthia found herself overwhelmed and wishing at least one other person had an idea of how a stethoscope worked.
The halogen lights burned from the ceiling as the silence of anticipation grew. She could see MJ pacing back and forth from the window and took a deep breath then pushed the doors open.
“He’ll live, but he’s not going anywhere,” Cynthia said and held her hands up as she walked into the hallway to face the mob of questions.
“What about Trevor?” Daniel asked.
Cynthia frowned. “No change. He’s stable, though. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”
“I don’t mean to sound insensitive,” Jacob interrupted.
“Then don’t!” MJ snapped.
Jacob glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes and swallowed. “It’s just…aren’t we running out of time?”
“He’s right,” Alistair said. “We need to go.”
“We?” Melinda asked as she walked up behind them.
“I’m going, Mom.”
“Alistair, we talked about this.”
“Days! That’s it. In less than a week you, David, Charlie, everybody is dead. I’m not gonna sit on my hands and do nothing.”
Melinda stared at Alistair and couldn’t get past her conflicted feelings. He was right, but that didn’t make it any easier.
“I’m going, too,” Daniel suddenly announced, breaking the silence.
“Craig told you both how he felt,” MJ replied. “That hasn’t changed.”
“Everything has changed,” Alistair said. “Craig was going and now he can’t. We had weeks and now we have days. There’s no more time to discuss this. We have to leave now.” Alistair finished then turned and walked off.
~~***~~
“As best I can tell, this is where we are,” Max said and pointed at a blinking spot on the grid.
MJ nodded and grabbed the tablet. “And what, we just walk around testing the air?”
“Petty much. You’ve gotta move out at least two miles to get good readings.”
“Okay,” MJ replied. “Don’t fuck this place up while we’re gone.”
“He better not,” Alistair suddenly said.
He was standing with Daniel behind her. Each of them was holding a supply bag and their helmets under their arm. To see them clad in the bio suits made everything real and the look of terrified wonder was mirrored on everyone’s face.
“This is it then, huh?” MJ smiled then looked toward the air lock.
Melinda walked into the room and stopped at the door. Behind her was nearly every other soul that lived with them. The grim shadow behind their eyes betrayed the forced smiles and well wishes. Everyone knew what was at stake.
“Be careful,” Melinda said simply.
Alistair nodded and fought back tears. He wrapped his arms around her and his brothers and for a moment his resolve faltered. But he knew what he had to do.
“Thanks for letting Chloe stay with you,” Daniel said from behind them.
Melinda slowly turned around to face him. “Don’t mention it. You keep yourself safe out there. Chloe and Trevor will be fine.”
“Yeah, stay safe,” Amber echoed, wiping away the evidence that she’d been crying.
Ashley was right behind her and suddenly, the room resembled an airport, full of crying, hugging parties that didn’t want to let go. Even MJ welled up as Grayson gave her a hug that seemed to last longer than the usual. But eventually, the running clock won and MJ and the team left the room of saddened faces behind as they stepped into the airtight chamber.
“Good luck out there,” Max said then pressed the button to seal the door.
“Wait!” a voice called after them. “Hold the door.”
Jacob and Cindy were running down the hall clad in bio suits with half-packed bags clenched in their hands. Max gave them a confused look then hit the stop button.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going with them. We are going with them.”
Max took a deep breath and held it.
“They’re gonna need the help Max,” Jacob added.
“Cindy, what are you doing?” he asked again, ignoring Jacob.
She glared at him and bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m going. I’m helping.”
Max started to reply, but she cut him off.
“Don’t tell me to stay here. You don’t want anything to do with me…just, just let me go.”
“What?”
“I can help, Max, you know I can. I need to help. I can’t stay in here anymore with you looking at me the way you do.”
“How do I look at you?”
; “Like that! Like you hate me.”
Max swallowed and looked away. “I don’t hate you.”
He paused and a long silence lingered between them. His emotions were mixed, but he’d been avoiding her for the exact opposite reason. He didn’t hate her, he wanted to, he needed to, but he didn’t. And as he found himself smiling, or looking at her with a nostalgic longing, he forced himself to pull away.
“I know you can help, but I do want you here.”
“Max,” MJ called. “Max, we have to go.”
Max nodded and wiped his hand across his face. “We can talk about this when you get back.”
Cindy made an awkward movement forward as if she wanted to hug him, but decided against it. Instead she smiled and thanked him then followed Jacob into the chamber.
“Safe travels,” Max said as the door sealed shut.
CHAPTER 9
A BRAVE NEW WORLD
Alistair tried to slow his breathing as he watched the outer doors slide open. A mix of fear, anxiety, and excitement rushed through his veins and he squeezed his hands to stop them from jittering.
Five years was a long time to be anywhere, but even longer to have been locked inside. Even in prison they get to see the sun through a window, sometimes feel the wind blow against them through the fences. But for the last five years all they had known was the dark and the glow of artificial light. Now, they were coming face to face with reality.
“Dude, you sound like Darth Vader,” Daniel said.
Alistair turned toward him and tried to smile, but all he could focus on was breathing. He leaned to the side as a feeling of nausea overwhelmed him and MJ grabbed his arm.
“It’s gonna be fine,” she whispered reassuringly.
“Everything okay up there?” Max’s voice echoed inside of their helmets. “Alistair’s heart rate is going through the roof.”
“He’s okay. Just a little nervous, we all are.”
With a deafening clunk, the final door opened, like the curtains to a Broadway show. A rush of dense vapor whooshed past them, obscuring their view momentarily as the negative pressure system sealed. When the air cleared it revealed a barren wasteland covered in a low-lying smog.
Ignoring the quiver in her leg, MJ took a deep breath then stepped out of the egg onto a bed of rust-colored soil. She stared into the mist then moved a little further away. There was a calm to everything that made her skin erupt in goosebumps. Even through the bio suit she felt naked, she felt like the air would infect her and suck the very life from her lungs. The world had certainly died.
By her clock it was noon, but it looked closer to dusk. Everything was lifeless and even the sun barely gleamed through the muck-ridden sky. It wasn’t the world they’d left, it was a shadow of it, a land devoid of life and happiness.
“Where the hell are we supposed to go from here?” Jacob asked as he stepped beside her.
MJ swallowed down her fear and grabbed the tablet she’d taken from Max. With a few commands, she locked the position of the egg and synced everyone’s GPS so they could be tracked. It was ironic that the Earth had fallen apart, while the swarm of satellites still orbited above like nothing had ever happened.
“Come on,” she said as calmly as she could. “We’re moving this way.”
The group fell behind MJ as she marched into the unknown. They were hesitant and skittish, checking over their shoulders for seemingly no reason. An eerie feeling hung over them like a cloud, the world was foreign now, just as alien as if they’d landed on Mars as intended.
The crunch of red dust beneath their boots made a lonely drumline against the emptiness. It echoed on forever as if the melancholy cadence had no place to go. Half an hour passed without a word, without a sound aside from their footfalls.
A strange breeze blew as the landscape gradually rose and fell. The fog began to dissipate, revealing little mounds of compact soil scattered across the ground. Beyond that there was nothing, no trees, no buildings, nothing but a never-ending stretch of parched land.
“Where are we going?” Cindy asked.
“Here,” MJ replied. “This is far enough. Start setting up boys.”
Alistair and Daniel knelt and began to unpack their bags. They’d brought an array of monitoring devices that could read everything from air quality to the amount of sunlight. Max hadn’t taken any chances and he preferred to over do it than not have enough information.
“What was that?” Daniel asked, pausing to look over his shoulder.
Alistair lifted his head. “What?”
“I…I thought I heard something,” Daniel replied then went back to assembling the Geiger counter.
“So, it’s this simple. Go on a walk, run a few tests and live happily ever after?” Jacob asked.
MJ didn’t reply, her eyes said everything. Jacob bit his lip and looked away, breaking under the pressure of her scornful gaze.
“Good news,” Max’s voice crackled through their helmets.
“Yeah, what’s that?” MJ asked.
“Ran the new calculations. With you guys gone and a few changes to the system, we have about a week and a half of air. That doesn’t mean take your time but things are getting better.”
“Glad to hear it. Now keep the channel clear, Max. This is serious shit out here.”
Max huffed. “Roger that, boss.”
MJ shook her head then turned back to the ground crew. “How are we looking?” she asked.
“It’ll be a minute,” Daniel replied.
“Take your time, let’s just make sure we get it right.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
It took them half an hour to get everything set up and start syncing the devices. Cindy and Jacob watched the majority of it and when they tried to help, they ended up just getting in the way. MJ was growing impatient and had no problem voicing her displeasure with the both of them. Eventually, they moved off to the side and stared out at the landscape.
“It’s weird,” Jacob mumbled. “It’s like we don’t belong here anymore.”
Cindy shrugged then followed his eyes toward the sparse panorama ahead. The emptiness seemed fitting. She hadn’t felt like she belonged for years. At least on the surface there was space, space to just be. “It’s nice up here,” she said. “Peaceful.”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t look like home. I guess it never will, huh?”
“It’s our home now, we don’t have anything else.”
Jacob sighed then turned back toward MJ and the others and grabbed one of the tablets. He walked off and took a seat in the sand alone.
With a frustrated guise, Daniel huddled over a laptop inside a hard-shelled case. He grunted and banged on the keypad then stood and held his hands up in defeat. “Something’s wrong with the AQS,” he said as he tapped on the side of the display.
“What’s up?” MJ asked.
“Readings are all over the place. It can’t be right…but looks like the air is full of some pretty foul stuff.” Alistair took a few steps forward and focused on a hill fifty yards away. “I’m gonna walk down over to that hill and check with the handheld, maybe get a better sample.”
MJ looked at the hill and then looked back to Alistair. “Okay, just hurry back and be careful,” she said.
Alistair made a dramatic salute then pulled a small gray device from the bag and started toward the incline. MJ watched him until he cleared the peak and vanished into the valley. She turned and looked back at the alien mural in awe. She knew it was Earth, but parts of it were unrecognizable.
“What do you think those are?” Cindy asked as she followed MJ’s eyes. “Those mounds…they look like graves.”
MJ shrugged. She hadn’t given it much thought. Everything she’d seen was strange, her only concern was getting back to Grayson. “Let’s focus on air samples and not mounds of dirt,” she replied dismissively.
“Bitch,” Cindy mumbled under her breath and walked off.
Jacob was a few yards away, hunched over, balancing a tablet
across his knees. Cindy made her way toward him like she was in grade school, looking for a friend on the playground. Kneeling, she cleared her throat and he looked up.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“Trying to figure out where the hell we are.”
“Can’t be too far from where we started. Wyoming, right?”
“If you trust the satellites and what Max says. But Max says a lot of shit, doesn’t he?”
Cindy took an exaggerated breath and stood up to leave. Jacob grabbed her hand.
“Wait! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I forgot you two were um, having issues. Maybe you should just talk to him.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m just saying. We’re likely the only people left on this planet. You can’t afford to be enemies with half of the world’s population.”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” Cindy said with a bit more force.
Jacob held his hands up in surrender then stood up and walked off. “MJ,” he called. “Weather looks like it might be coming in.”
A low rumble sounded in the distance as deep, gray clouds collected above them. MJ leaned her head back and stared up to the sky. Nothing looked right. Through the smog and clouds, she could see the dimming sun, casting a harsh red halo. The apocalyptic scene sent a cold chill down her back and nearly squashed her hopes that the surface was ready for their return. Something was off, she couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew something was wrong.
“We’ll wrap it up soon enough,” MJ finally replied.
“No radiation,” Daniel announced. “At least not enough to be harmful.”
“That’s some good news, right?” Cindy asked as she rejoined the group.
“Maybe…or maybe our equipment isn’t working. Everyone, start level one diagnostics on your suits. I don’t like any of this,” MJ said as she scanned the horizon with anxious eyes.
Daniel looked up at her and squinted. “What’s going on and when did the gear become a problem?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”
Daniel shook his head but didn’t argue. Cindy was already looking anxious and there was no reason to worry anybody else.
Deconstruction- The Complete series Box Set Page 89