by RJ Corgan
Kea shut down that train of thought. One of the paramedics shifted, allowing her to kneel beside the closest team member. It was Josine, a graduate student. A medic had removed her mask and was treating a cut on her forehead.
Josine’s hair, a militant buzz cut dyed with purple streaks, stuck out in slicked tufts. The jewelry on her face, nose stud, two lip rings and a silver scaffold shaft spiked through the top of her left ear, glittered in the orange light. The strobing fires of Masaya flashed across her pale, sweaty face. Her eyes met Kea’s, but there was no sign of recognition.
Eavesdropping, Kea winced as the medic rattled off Josine’s injuries into the radio to inform the other paramedics on Delta: fractured collar bone, contusions to the skull, and possible shock.
Kea took Josine’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
Her boyfriend, Dominic, was propped up against the wall beside her. He waved away the medic’s attempts to examine him, his attention riveted on Josine as the medic tended to her wounds.
“What happened?” Kea asked, handing him her flask.
“Damn mountain fell on us.” Dominic took a long pull of water, then handed the canister back to her. “No warning, then woomph,” he made an expansive gesture of his left hand.
Kea noticed that his other hand was wrapped in the remains of a bloodied t-shirt. She tapped the shoulder of the medic treating Josine and pointed to Dominic’s hand.
“No!” Dominic pulled back. “Josine first.”
“She’ll be fine,” the paramedic shouted as calmly as possible over the roar of the volcano. “Let me take a look at that hand.”
“That’s an order,” Kea added. Dominic didn’t know yet that she wasn’t in charge anymore. “We’re getting all of you out of here.”
I have no idea how with these injuries, but probably best not to say that out loud.
Kea gave Dominic what she hoped was a reassuring pat on his shoulder and squeezed past him to reach the other team members.
Clambering over a pile of rocks, she found Luis, a fellow professor. Approximately the same age as Kea, Luis was slim, nearly six feet tall with an athletic build and intense dark eyes. In San Diego, her students would have called him a silver fox. Judging from the adoring expression of his female graduate students in Masya’s engineering department, he attracted the same level of attention there. A dangerous combination, in Kea’s view. While her eyes were normally drawn to his widow’s peak, she couldn’t discern his hairline, as his face was plastered in ash and grime. In the gloom she could only make out his eyes that regarded her in surprise. He appeared unharmed, but he was hunched over the prone form of …
Daniela!
Panic rising in her stomach, Kea hastened through the narrow shelter that ended in a fissure open to the lake of lava below. Daniela was lying in a nook beside the fissure. The young woman’s face was sickly pale beneath her mask, her leg bundled in a hasty field dressing. Kea spied a pool of blood seeping into the rocks beneath her leg.
Kea fell to her knees. “Oh, thank goodness.”
Blanca, one of the original climbers, cradled Daniela’s head in her lap. “She’s asleep, but she’s lost some blood.” Her normally blond hair was streaked with ash, her expression drained by exhaustion. She placed her hand on Kea’s shoulder as if afraid Kea would tumble into her patient. “Her leg’s cut up pretty bad.”
“It’s okay,” Kea squeezed Daniela’s hand, feeling almost embarrassed by her display of concern. Blanca had been close to Emilio for years. What must she be going through, Kea wondered?
“We’ll get everyone out. I’m so glad you’re all still here.” Kea jiggled her flask to make sure there was water left, then handed it to Francisco, another climber, who was sitting beside Blanca. “What happened?”
“We had just finished installing the sensors when,” Francisco smashed two of his fists together, “everything went to hell.”
“No warning,” Blanca added. “The rockfall took out everything, including Emilio.”
“We know,” Kea said as softly as she could and still be heard above Masaya’s ever-present grinding howl. “The rest of the team is checking out the other side of the rockslide. After that, we’ll re-rig a line up the rockfall to Gamma. We’re getting all of you out of here.”
A moan from Daniela cut her off.
Kea shifted closer to Daniela. “Welcome back.”
Daniela looked up at her through groggy eyes. “I think we must have pissed off Masaya.”
“I thought you were dead.” Kea held Daniela’s hand in hers, trying to sound as reassuring as she could – playing nursemaid was not something Kea excelled at and the relief of finding everyone alive was overwhelming. She slid onto her knees to keep upright, fighting to hold back tears. “You can thank me for rescuing you later. I just need to sit for a second.”
Rocking backward, Kea’s gaze skimmed the bloodied wreckage of Daniela’s left leg and fixated on the unmistakable white porcelain of exposed bone.
Kea felt her stomach twist. “Sorry, I only,” she pressed her face into her palms while she steadied herself, waiting for the wave of nausea to subside.
“You don’t have any good painkillers, do you?” Daniela’s voice was steeped in pain. “Or a beer? I’ll take a beer if no one has any narcotics. I’m a cheap date, honest.”
“I’ll ask.” Deliberately avoiding the sight of Daniela’s leg, Kea looked back down the passage for the paramedics. They were still treating Josine and Dominic.
How the hell are we going to get you out of here?
Afraid her thoughts would be too obvious, Kea was unable to meet Daniela’s eyes, desperate to hand her off to the paramedics.
Blanca noticed Kea struggling and whispered to Daniela. “You’ll be so high on meds, you won’t even notice how much work it will take the rest of us to get you out.”
Kea forced a grateful smile and swallowed again as a gust of warm air blew a whiff of blood into her mouth.
I’ve seen worse in the field, she reminded herself, I’ve dealt with worse.
Then with a sickening lurch, the world twisted around her. She fell to the ground, jolting her arms as her palms slapped against the coarse rocks.
She blinked stupidly. If this was an eruption, they could do nothing, they had nowhere to run, no way out. They were all going to die.
Another wave forced itself through her, slamming her shoulders backward. It felt like a giant had plunged its hand into her chest and wrenched out her innards.
Oh Jesus no.
Kea closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable. Her mind was empty save for the one thought: this can’t be happening, there’s nothing I can do to stop it, why me, why is this happening to me, why …
Then, although the moment stretched into forever, she was suddenly out of time.
Kea braced her arms against the wall and felt her head snapped backward. She couldn’t contain the force any longer, and relinquished control of her body. The wave crashed up from her core, hammering through her body as it forced itself outward.
“Kea!” Daniela cried out. “What the hell?!”
Kea was distantly aware of Blanca and Daniela attempting to scrabble out of the way. To her horror, a ghastly fountain of vomit spewed out of her mouth. She had no control over what was happening. It was almost as if her mind had retreated somewhere deep inside her body, isolating itself from the revulsion – and embarrassment – of what was happening. Huddled into a mental ball, her mind could only watch uselessly as her body was forced to contort and twist into unnatural positions, as if she were a marionette possessed by an evil spirit.
Awareness returned quickly, however, as another seizure gripped her. She quickly realized that puking into an updraft was not the best idea in the world.
Fortunately, Kea passed out shortly afterward, so whatever happened next was someone else’s problem.
Chapter 9
FIRE RAKED across the inside of Kea’s skull. Her throat felt as if she had swallowed steel w
ool. She rolled onto her stomach and retched, flinching as something horrible dribbled out of her nose. Wiping it away with the back of her hand, she groaned as the simple motion caused her chest to cringe in pain.
“There are a few possibilities.” A voice drifted in the air above her.
It took Kea a moment to remember that the voice belonged to Simon, the doe-eyed paramedic with the pinchable cheeks. His latex fingers pressed first against her wrist, feeling for a pulse, then again on the side of her neck.
She kept her eyes closed, as if to shut out the embarrassment of the last hour, to pretend this was happening to someone else.
He pried open her eyelid and shone a flashlight into it. She squirmed away from its painful glare.
“Food poisoning, norovirus …” Simon rattled off other options she couldn’t pronounce before letting her lid snap shut. He popped a thermometer into her mouth. There was silence, then a beep.
Poisoning … the word lodged itself in her thoughts.
Of course, I’ve been poisoned. Someone’s always trying to kill me. Why do they never try writing a strongly written letter instead?
“Low grade fever.” Simon addressed her directly for the first time. “Any changes in diet? When did you first feel ill?”
The questions kept coming, but the words kept slipping away. She fought to stay in the moment, to piece together the events of this insane day. She wanted to blurt out that someone was trying to kill her. Instead, her voice a hoarse whisper, she told him about the plantains and eggs from the press tent that she had swiped for her lunch. She told him of the sensation of nausea she had experienced on the way down into Masaya, the headache, and the sudden onset of exhaustion.
She heard a crinkle as he wrapped her in a silver blanket. She almost laughed at the gesture. As if she needed to be kept warm this close to the lava. Even nestled within the rocky confines of the fissure, sweat streamed down her neck in rivulets, soaking her clothes. Simon popped a plastic straw into her mouth and she greedily sucked down its cool, cherry-flavored fluid. A moment later, she vomited up the juice, collapsed in a heap on the rocks, and fell into a fitful sleep.
In her dreams, Kea watched from a distance as her younger self dangled by a rope in a dark cavern, midway down a cliff.
I’m in a holodeck, she realized as the memories unfolded around her. No, the rational part of her mind countered. Dreamdeck? Vomitdeck?
Daniela was at the base of the escarpment standing beside Alisha and Josine. While all three women shared the same dark hair, snub nose, and beaming smiles, Alisha was the smallest. Her elven form mirrored her cousins’ athletic frames, but Alisha was a head shorter.
Behind them, a lava tube stretched out into the distance, the passage burrowing into the dark roots of Masaya. Alisha and Josine let out a whoop as they sprinted down the shadowy passageway. The lights on their helmets flickered chaotically against the tunnel’s roof before eventually fading from sight.
“Cuidada!” Kea called after them, but her plea for caution was lost in the cacophony of echoes that reverberated through the narrow cavern. Reaching the base of the cliff, she unclipped her harness and called “Off rope!” to let Emilio know it was clear for him to descend.
Francisco stepped closer – too close – to remove her harness. “Si besarte fuera pecado, caminaría feliz por el infierno.”
Kea waved him off. Her Spanish was improving, but interpreting his cheesy pickup lines was exhausting. If kissing you were a sin, he had said, I’d happily walk through hell.
“I’ve told you many times Francisco, I’ve got underpants older than you. And if you take one step closer, you’re going to have to ask Emilio to carry you out of hell.”
With his long hair, dark eyes, and penetrating gaze, Francisco was difficult to ignore, but he took her rejection with a smile. As far as she could tell, this morning he had hit on everyone on the expedition. As completely - and she could not stress this enough - entirely uninterested as she was in the young man, it was refreshing at least to get the same level of attention he gave to everyone else. Plus, as Daniela pointed out after listening to Kea frequently reject him in Spanish, if someone could sound disgusted in another language, Kea was close to mastering it.
Daniela caught Kea’s eyes and matched her bright smile. “Someone’s enjoying themselves.”
Kea shrugged. “I didn’t expect to spend my Saturday climbing through the inside of the volcano.”
“We do this once a month.” Emilio stepped out of his harness and clipped it to the back of his pack. “Most of the lava tubes have been mapped, but we’ve found one or two new ones following the cave-ins after the last eruption.”
“It beats playing checkers with Mrs. Gonzalez,” Kea agreed, reflecting on her usual Saturday pastime on hot afternoons before the lockdowns came. Inside the lava tubes it was so cool, so dark, it felt like another planet. It was easy to forget that the sun was blistering the surface of the world above.
“You work too hard,” Francisco laughed. “All week, all night. Time to have fun.” With a wicked grin, he gave Emilio’s rump a hearty slap.
That was the other thing about Francisco that bugged Kea. He was clearly bisexual but not only did none of the others seem to mind, he didn’t show the slightest sign of being embarrassed about it.
Given that her own bisexuality had been such a secretive, and often traumatic, part of Kea’s life, it was jaw-dropping to see the youth so blasé about it. As far as she could tell, not only was Francisco partnered with Blanca, but they often shared their bed with Emilio.
When she had mentioned it to Daniela, the woman had simply responded that her generation didn’t want labels.
The offhand comment had sent Kea reeling. She had spent half her life avoiding being labeled, then the other half fighting for her rights to live free with a label.
Now, reliving it once more with the fevered distance of memory, she wondered, have I lived my whole life doing everything wrong? I’ve wasted so much time.
In reality, she had simply replied, “Fun is something that happens to other people. I’ve found that other people are often happier when I’m working.”
At least, fewer people wind up dead that way.
“That’s a bit grim.” Blanca slid down the rope and landed beside her. Taller, with sunflower blond hair, she moved with the grace of a ballerina. She unclipped her harness. “We were surprised you agreed to come today.”
“Since you ignore all our other invitations,” Francisco added.
Kea laughed. As much of a pain as Francisco was, his complete lack of social filters was oddly refreshing.
“I believe Francisco is trying to ask,” Bianca elbowed him out of the way and focused her Teutonic blue eyes on Kea, “would you like to join us for drinks tonight? Emilio and Maria are hosting everyone for dinner.”
Kea’s normal knee-jerk reaction was to say no – socializing with students, even graduate students, was not something she approved of. However, not only were the other university professors outright avoiding her, but the rest of the Outpost scientists had yet to arrive - and she’d had enough nights of sleeping alone in a trailer to last a lifetime. Thanks to the pandemic, the ‘few weeks’ that Amirah had promised had turned out to be six months, and the Outpost was still no closer to completion.
“I don’t think we should let Josine get too far ahead.” Kea dodged the invitation and shone her flashlight down the tunnel.
“Alisha’s with her,” Emilio assured Kea. “She can handle anything.”
“Alisha is our version of Lara Croft,” Daniela agreed, “but she’s into igneous petrology, not archaeology.”
“I think I missed that sequel,” Kea replied.
Kea allowed Emilio to help her step onto the raised flow of the lava bed. The convoluted texture of the flow was a striking reminder that the channel had once been filled by a river of rock heated to more than two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The roof of the tunnel still dripped with frozen splashes of lava. Water
seeped down through the black knobs and crenulations of basalt, encrusting them with mold and lichens. A slight breeze on her face indicated the presence of another entrance somewhere up ahead and every shadow held the possibility of bats.
Kea shuddered involuntarily. In daylight, with their fluffy tummies and chirping voices, she found bats adorable. However, being swarmed in the dark by thousands of the critters was not something she wanted to experience.
She heard Dominic slide down the line. Unlike the rest of the team, whose thin forms had been sculpted by hours in the gym and climbing, his stockier build appeared to have been borne of hard labor, which Kea respected. He landed beside her with a thump. She waited for him to decouple while the others made their way down the tube.
“Let me guess,” he said with a smirk, “Alisha’s already been down to the end and back.”
“Near enough.” Kea tucked the end of the rope behind a boulder. “I don’t know how you keep up with her.”
“I don’t know how I’ll manage after the baby comes.”
This was news to Kea – Alisha was so thin she made a paper clip look anorexic. “How far along is she?”
“A few months,” Dominic puffed out his chest. “She’s trying to pack in as much excitement as possible while she can. Last week, I had to talk her out of skydiving.”
“I understand the addiction to thrill seeking,” Kea said, as if skydiving was something that she did every other month. “Yesterday, I washed my darks and whites in the same load. Had to have a glass of wine to take the edge off.”
Screams ricocheted down the lava tube, followed by laughter as the others sprinted into view, Alisha at the head of the pack. A fluttering nightmare of black wings buffeted the air and Kea threw herself to the ground, her hands over her head as a colony of bats erupted from the darkness and sped up the cliff.
Screaming and laughing at the same time, her senses were overwhelmed as the flurry of a thousand wings battered the air of this alien world.
Kea had never felt so alive.
ANOTHER BOUT of vomiting yanked Kea back into the present. After doing the bidding of the demonic virus, she mopped the mess from around her mouth with a ragged t-shirt someone had given her. She realized that the others were leaving her alone, which was a blessing. Between the smoke, heat, and roaring of the lava below, she could just about block out the world around her. Simon’s poking and prodding, however, had been adding insult to injury.