by RJ Corgan
“Luis.” She spoke his name as if recognizing him for the first time. Squinting in the darkness she saw the others sitting close behind him, pretending not to listen. “What was I saying? I don’t remember … where’s …”
“Everything’s fine,” Luis said quickly. “Kea, stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.” He placed his hands firmly on her shoulders and pressed her against the rock floor. “We’ve let everyone know that you’re okay, but do you have any messages for anyone?”
It was like having three Manhattan’s, Kea thought, the feeling of calm that blanketed her. She could see things happening, could smell Masaya’s sulfurous perfume over the rank stench of her own foul clothes, but it was like she was watching it on television. She had the desperate urge to switch the channel. She was vaguely aware Luis had asked her something, something important.
Before she slipped into sleep once more, she remembered to say, “Tell Mack I’m sorry.”
BACK IN her dreams, screams echoed through the hallways of Masaya’s university.
No, not here. I don’t want to be back here.
Kea cursed the inebriated undergraduates as she tried to focus on the spreadsheet in front of her. The Outpost team had not finished constructing her office, so she was still squatting in little more than a janitor’s cupboard at the university, which was far too noisy at the best of times.
Kea glanced at her watch. It was a bit early for day drinking.
As the cries grew closer, Kea’s curiosity turned to concern. She locked her purse in a drawer and headed for the door, pausing only to snatch a rock hammer from a cabinet. Treading carefully down the hallway, she saw students moving down the central corridor, heading toward the science wing. Kea shadowed them into the auditorium, taking in their bloodied faces, torn shirts, and the tell-tale scent of tear gas that clung to their clothes.
She estimated at least eighty protestors, all students, their faces panicked as they frantically sent texts or screamed into video calls. A few students were tending to the wounded, fashioning belts and t-shirts into makeshift bandages.
Kea heard a thump, then a sharp crack. Then another and another. The students dove for cover behind the chairs and podium, while Kea, stunned, remained standing in the doorway,
“They’re shooting at us,” Kea said in disbelief.
It seemed unreal, as if she had walked on stage during the middle of a play and everyone else knew their lines except her.
She felt a sharp tug around her waist and was dragged into the room. She stumbled to her knees as a volley of bullets splintered the walls around her.
Her ears ringing, she scurried for the shelter of a chair. Only then did she realize that Dominic had saved her. He, Maria, and Alisha were cowering behind a set of chairs across from her. So much dust and powder were pouring down from the ceiling, Kea barely noticed when the tear gas started creeping around the edges of the door.
Until the fumes began to sting her eyes and burn her lungs.
The shooting stopped. The students, driven by the advancing gas, started to flee through the emergency exit at the rear of the auditorium, no doubt straight into the waiting guns of the Policía Nacional.
A sudden surge of adrenaline kick-started Kea’s brain as a realization hit her: she had been given a master key for the building by the facilities team when she had started.
“Wait!” she yelled to anyone who would listen. “This way!”
She sprinted up the steps to the projector room, dimly aware that only about half of them were following her. Once unlocked, she ushered them through the AV room and into the hallway on the second floor. She directed them along the passage to a bridge that crossed over to an adjacent building.
Kea found herself swept up in the rush, but paused to help a girl who had been shot in the leg. Emilio joined her, helping to carry the poor girl down the hallway, but Kea stumbled and soon lost sight of them in the melee. The crowd barreled forward as more cracks announced that the police had followed. Another thunderous boom sent an insidious yellow cloud of gas down the corridor.
Kea spun forward in panic and slammed her head against a drinking fountain. Her head ringing from the blow, she found herself crawling on all fours, coughing and retching. A gap in the smoke helped her orientate herself - the faculty lounge lay only a few feet away. The students ran ahead of her, already vanishing into the mists, but Kea could hear the boots of the pursuing Policía Nacional in the hallway.
She hobbled to the door and, gasping for breath, managed to unlock it. She slipped inside the lounge and locked it with a flick of her wrist. Either they hadn’t seen her, or they’d decided that a middle-aged gringa was not as attractive a prize as the forty native protestors. She heard voices through the door although she was too numb with shock to translate as fast as she needed to. If not for the shock, she would have done something. Sliding to the floor, her heart hammered as she listened to the police continue their chase.
SO THAT’S what people dream about in hell, Kea thought as she floated back into consciousness once more. Actual Hell.
Kea learned later that the students made it to the biology building and barricaded themselves inside. Remarkably, they managed to keep the police out for several days. The medical students acted as proxy medics, while supportive villagers managed to smuggle in food and supplies. Not everyone was so kind. Some of the bottles of drinking water contained ground glass. As the protests across the nation were violently stamped out by the troopers, support for the coup dwindled, and the students decided to make a last-ditch escape attempt.
By then, it was far too late.
Kea had viewed the final assault on live TV, watching helplessly as the police streamed into the facility. It was days before she knew the names of those killed, months before she learned the fates of those captured and imprisoned.
Shaken by the experience, Kea had remained at the nascent Outpost after that, shunning her office at the university and overseeing the final construction of the Outpost alone. She was content to watch the robots extrude the cement from their narrow mouths, finding that she vastly preferred the company of machines to discovering that seemingly nice people could be capable of the most horrible things, vividly aware of the irony of that observation, given her own actions that fatal day on the ice.
“All the acoustical mapping equipment is completely gone as well.” Blanca’s calm assessment drifted over to Kea’s shimmering nest.
Kea blinked away the memories and discovered that she had regained control of her limbs. She shifted slightly so she could see the others, thankful for the silver blankets forming a cocoon around her.
“Where was the equipment last set up?” Carlos asked.
Blanca nodded at the rockfall. “Near the head of the cavern on the south side. Hydraulic splitter’s gone as well.”
Carlos’s exclamation of syllables eluded Kea’s knowledge of Spanish, but she was fairly certain the expression involved an exploding hippopotamus and a large amount of excrement.
Kea groaned in sympathy. The acoustical mapper was not cheap. It functioned by blasting noise out of a speaker, then using a configuration of microphones to record the sound waves bouncing off the walls. The result was a handy digital rendering of any fractures, lava tubes, or caverns it was pointed at. They had hoped to use it to establish what, if anything, lay in the shadows behind Delta level. Kea knew that Carlos must have brokered some dark deal with the Academy of Sciences to obtain it. Now, it was either pulverized under several tons of rubble or lost in the smoldering cauldron.
“Looks like someone’s awake at last.” Carlos said, noticing Kea stirring.
Kea opened her eyes. The air still thrummed with the vibration caused by the roiling lava, but the haze of gas had cleared. In the gloom she saw Daniela, still prostrate on the ground, her injured leg clamped in an inflatable splint but at least her mask was off. She smiled as Kea attempted to sit upright.
Daniela’s pupils sparkled brightly beneath her thick black eyebro
ws. Rivulets of sweat had cut through the dust and grime plastered to her face. She looked terrible, but to Kea, Daniela never looked better.
Kea tried to say hello, but the syllables caught in her sore throat like chunks of gravel. She took a swig from one of the energy drinks stacked by her side and swallowed cautiously. The sugary fluid gave no indication of vaulting back up her throat, so she took another sip. Then another. Finally, she tried to speak again. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded foreign, as if she were a cigarette addict speaking through a stoma. “What. Happened. To. Emilio?”
“She flies so fast, doesn’t she?” Daniela’s eyes traced the wisps of gas rising through the fractures, as the hot air and toxic sulfur caused the air to shimmer and twist in the heat. “There’s no way to catch her. Faster than thought and slicker than dreams.”
“The painkillers kicked in a while ago.” Dominic moved into Kea’s field of view and refitted Daniela’s mask. He traced the fragile edges of her inflatable splint. “I don’t think she saw much of what happened, none of us did. One second everything was fine, the next …”
Kea discovered that the only way to keep her words flowing was to speak in short, segmented sentences. “What happened to the Canadians. To Adriana and Keller?”
“I was helping them set up the last of the acoustical stations when the rockfall began.” Dominic pivoted on his heels so that he could direct his words to Kea, but kept his distance.
I’m patient zero.
“I never saw what happened to them.” he held up his bandaged hand. “I’m afraid I blacked out from the pain.”
At the sight of the bloodied appendage, Kea quickly looked away. The movement caused the muscles in her neck to scream in anguish.
“The rescue team is still assembling a rigging to get the stretchers up the rockfall, but they said they can’t risk moving you yet. Can’t have you convulsing on the cables.” Dominic’s voice was tinged with exhaustion. “Although I hope they get a move on before one of us starts spewing our brains out.”
Kea wanted to shout in frustration that this wasn’t her fault, this wasn’t what she had planned. None of this would have happened if only they had followed her orders.
Who are you kidding? asked the part of her mind where her self-doubt thrived. Of course, you’d screw this up. You failed them before, and you’ll fail them again. This is exactly what a Kea Wright rescue would turn into.
She wanted to tell her subconscious to shut up but at that moment, her body took over, drop-kicking her mind back into its protective bunker hole as she regurgitated the energy drink into the crevasse.
Chapter 11
SHONA AND Jacob brought Carter and Maria back to their one-story gated villa. The floors were practical red tile and the curtains carpet-thick to keep out the sunlight. While the gardens were trim and neatly tended, no greenery adorned the inside of the house. Rocks, however, were everywhere. Gemstones were showcased in cabinets, bouquets of tourmaline nestled at the base of the lamps, and adamantine nuggets lined the kitchen counter. While most of the stones were not valuable, their bright colors and iridescent surfaces were a stark contrast to the whitewashed adobe walls.
Jacob had texted Shona to join them in his truck. The ride back from the field had taken them through the center of town. Thousands of candles and lanterns filled the streets leading to Lake Masaya, a vigil for those killed in the rockfall. Jacob, wary of his cargo, sped on, stopping only to pick up a rotisserie chicken.
When they sat down at the dining room table, Shona eschewed any of the meat, preferring instead to subsist on handfuls of semi-sweet chocolate chips while sipping a mug of cold coffee. As soon as dinner had been put away, she sent the stone-faced Maria off to a guest bedroom, promising not to call her mother. The second the young woman left the dining room, however, Shona whipped out her cell phone.
“Now, I done told you already, I’d call you as soon as we got back!” Shona hollered over the din blaring out of the speaker. “Yes. Yes. She’s perfectly safe here. Press don’t know she’s here and the house is gated. Yes, she thinks we lost them. Look, if you want to station your men outside the gate, knock yourself out, but I’m telling you she don’t need to see them, they freak her out. We’ll take her back to the Outpost in the morning, like we agreed. Of course. And have them drive my damn truck back, the keys are in the ignition.” Shona slapped the phone down on the counter in exasperation. “That woman. Crazy as a loon.”
“She just lost her son,” Jacob said around a mouthful of fries.
“I’m not unaware,” Shona said. “I’m just doing my best to keep that Maria away from folk till she can calm down some.”
“Bit late for that,” Carter said. “Why would she blast a conspiracy theory out to millions of people, anyway?”
Shona fixed him with a deathly stare. “I’ve not started in on you yet, pirate man. Filling her head with ….” So great was her fury, Shona seemed unable to find the words to berate him. Instead, she stuffed another fistful of chocolate into her mouth and settled for chomping angrily.
Jacob interceded, offering to take Carter round the back for whiskey and cigars. Carter did not need to be asked twice. The enclosed patio looked out on the remains of a lawn. While the plants were watered and thriving, the grass had been left to fend for itself. Brown wisps huddled together in sad clumps, the mud in between cracked and dry.
While Jacob poured the liquor while Carter wandered the room. Among the photos on the desk, he found a framed photograph of the Masaya team, obviously from an earlier expedition. Shona, Jacob, and Emilio were there, along with others he recognized from the news footage. Another photograph beside it caught his eye. It took him a moment to identify any of their faces without the field clothes and grime that he’d seen on the live feeds.
One figure in particular stood out, smiling brightly beneath ginger bangs.
“Is that Kea?” Carter asked, incredulous. She was surrounded by men and woman half her age, possibly graduate students.
Jacob nodded.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that happy before. I barely recognize her.” Carter scrutinized the other men and women in the photograph. “Was she in love?”
“You could say that.” Shona followed them into the room. Calmer now, she took a seat on a wicker chair.
“Who was the lucky man?” Carter studied the other people in the photo. “Or …?”
“Ain’t neither.” Shona shook her head. “She was in love, but nothing could ever be simple with Kea. Reminded me of someone I once knew. I was brought up in a real small town, although, I guess everything’s relative. The villages around us were even smaller. They used to come to our town to teach their kids driver’s ed ‘cause we had one of them arrow lights.”
Carter was quickly losing track of the conversation. He looked across at Jacob who caught his eye and nodded as if to say, ‘Welcome to my life.’
Undeterred, Shona pressed on. “You know one of those turn signals at intersections that give you a green arrow so you can make a turn while all the other lights are red? It was a big deal! Anyway, our town was so small, that our school only had about fifty kids in the entire high school, but I’ve found that’s all you need.”
She paused to take a long sip of her drink. “In my whole life, every single new person I’ve met was exactly like one of those kids. Different country, different shapes, different colors, but always the same personalities. Kinda sad in a way, given how big the world is and how many languages, how many cultures ...”
Shona tapped her glass with her fingernail, a distant expression on her face.
“I keep wanting to be wrong,” she continued, “but whenever I meet someone new, even here in Nicaragua, I can place ‘em before they even draw breath. That man who showed up looking for Maria while you were in the lava tube, Rudi? He’s exactly like Jimmy Richardson from back home. Big, pouty, dumb as a brick with a soft spot for pie and Chihuahuas.” She blew out a long breath. “Was like when God was making
up personalities, he got right tired after making the first fifty, threw up his hands and said, ‘I’m tired, just keep using these same molds.’ I need a drink.”
A long silence filled the room.
“Damnit Jacob, that wasn’t God talkin’!” Shona snapped. “I was speaking to you. Get me another drink.”
“Yes, dear.”
Carter had long lost track of where the conversation had been headed, but as if sensing his confusion, Shona brought him back. “That Kea, she’s just like Jeanine Davis. Ain’t no man or woman alive who could make her happy. You know why? She’s always looking for reasons why someone won’t be with her, always looking for faults in herself. Well, I always say, if you keep looking, you’re gonna find something.”
Carter motioned to Jacob for a refill, since he was up already.
Shona leant over and plucked the picture out of Carter’s hands. “But some people, they find love in other ways. Mostly with friends or pets, but Kea’s the spitting image of Jeanine Davis. She only gets close to people when she works with them. That’s how she gets to know people, opens up to them, trusts them. And a life of science field work, you get real close to people, don’t cha, Jacob?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Living life on the edge of the world, twenty-four seven, crammed in a tent, or on a mountain, or in the Arctic for weeks if not months at a time, you get to know people real well.” Shona said, narrowing her eyes. “And if you don’t wind up killing them, you trust ‘em with your life. That’s who Kea cares about, those are her family, the people she loves the most. Even if she don’t know it. From what I can tell, her own family disowned her when she was twenty. That’s a huge gap to fill. So, yes, she did find love, but not the kind you might be thinking of. Hallmark won’t be making movies about it, that’s for sure.”
“Pandemic helped, of course,” Jacob said, refilling Carter’s glass.