Gaia Dreams (Gaiaverse Book 1) (19 page)

Coleman said, "All right, son, I've got it now.
You take a rest." He had to shout to be heard over the noise of the wind and
rain. He was beginning to worry about the other men he'd sent out to some of
the smaller fighter jets. The wind was not what it should be. A regular storm
would have stopped by now. This wind just seemed to be getting worse. Almost
like a hurricane. Dammit, he thought, not almost like a hurricane--definitely
like a hurricane. He'd never seen anything like this before.

A new and different noise rose over the sound of
the storm. Corporal Barnes lifted the canvas covering the side window and
looked out. After a moment, he turned an ashen face to the Captain. "They're
go-go-gone, s-s-sir," he said shakily. "Into the control tower--all twisted
up--two, or maybe three--oh, my God, sir, they're gone!"

"The fighters?" asked Coleman tensely.

"Y-y-yes, sir," replied Barnes. "Do you--do you
suppose they got out, sir? Maybe they got out?"

Coleman looked directly into the Corporal's
eyes. "No, son, I don't suppose they did."

Barnes took a deep breath and blinked back
tears. He wouldn't think about it right now, he thought. Captain Coleman needed
him to do a job.

"Right, sir," he said. "What should I do next?"

Houston, Texas

"Who's got a working cell phone?" yelled the mayor,
straining to be heard over the eerie howling noise above her head. "Dammit,
somebody get me something to talk to the outside world with--and do it now!"

Mayor Dusty Dubois was distinctly unhappy. And
absolutely terrified. She and her staff and everyone else who'd been in City
Hall were beneath the streets of downtown Houston now in the tunnels. Decades
ago, Houston city planners had built an extensive network of tunnels beneath
the buildings and streets of downtown. One enterprising individual realized he
could make a few bucks selling fast food in the tunnel and opened a business
below ground. Eventually the tunnels were lined with restaurants and shops and
a thriving tunnel economy developed. It was now possible to walk in
air-conditioned comfort from one end of downtown to the other without ever
having to set foot on sun-melted black asphalt streets. Each tunnel had a
character all its own; some were carpeted in plush red pile or sophisticated
grays, some exhibited artistic patterns made of ceramic tiles. Entrances to
skyscrapers above were reached by escalators and elevators which emerged in the
buildings themselves.

When the wind and rain began around one p.m.,
the Mayor wasn't alarmed. By two p.m., she was getting reports that the storm
was looking like a hurricane. By three p.m., her staff was advising evacuation
of the city--except that the flooding had already begun in some lowlying areas
and roads were being cut off. Highways were jammed with cars in the most
massive gridlock the traffic controllers had ever seen. It was now eight p.m.,
the winds were screaming over their heads, and the officials in the tunnels
were suffering from varying degrees of panic. Electricity and water were lost
early in the evening. The only communication was sporadic over a ham radio and
an occasional connection on a cellular telephone that was now non-functioning.

"So you're telling me I can't talk to anyone?"
the Mayor asked, demanding of her assistant in outraged tones. Her pudgy
features shook with rage at the helplessness of her situation.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, sometimes we can get that
radio to work, but all our electronics are shot down here," said her assistant,
Alan Beakman. He towered over the mayor at six feet, two inches, his coal-black
face furrowed by a grimace of frustration. Mayor Dubois' choice of an
African-American male, who looked like a body-builder, to be her chief of staff
was a shock to her constituents, but had gotten her the black vote in her re-election
last November. He had surprised her by becoming her right-hand man, and she
stared at him now in disbelief that he was not able to help her with the
communications problem.

At that moment, a sheriff's deputy, soaked to
the skin, came running up to the mayor and Beakman. "Ma'am," he paused, gulping
for breath, "Ma'am--Ms. Mayor--you gotta get out on the radio--you gotta tell
them out there--a warning or something--"

Beakman stretched out a hand and placed it on
the deputy's shoulder, saying, "Hold on now, man. Just slow down and tell the
mayor here what's happened. Take a deep breath."

The man took a breath and then said, "It's the
glass, ma'am. Huge big sheets of glass flyin' down the streets up there--that
wind musta popped those plate glass windows out of the skyscrapers or somethin'--but
the Sheriff-- he stepped outside and--and-- one got him! Ma'am, I'm sorry but
it got him. His head--ma'am, his head just got took plumb off by one of those
flyin' pieces of glass--I, I..." He stuttered to a stop.

Mayor Dubois noticed the flecks of blood
splattered across the deputy's clothes and face. "Oh, Lord," she breathed.
Looking up at Beakman, she said, "Alan, take him somewhere, get somebody to
clean him up, and get him something to drink--something strong if anybody's got
it."

He nodded and guided the dazed deputy away.

His boss walked slowly over to the radio
operator's desk, shaking her head. This cannot be happening, she thought. She
heard her thoughts echoed by an irritating nasal voice.

The voice belonged to Dr. Sheffield Hutton, who
was shouting at the cowering radio operator, "This can't be happening! I have
to get through to Washington to get transport out of this hell hole! Now, you
find a military frequency or do what you have to do to connect me to D.C. now!"

Mayor Dubois planted her stout, square body
directly between the screaming scientist and the radio operator. Raising her
voice to be heard over the din of the storm, she said firmly, "Now hold on
there, doctor. Nobody's calling Washington. We have more of a crisis going on
here than getting you back home."

Sheffield glared at her, outraged. Her very
appearance offended his sensibilities. His eyes roved over her page-boy styled,
silver-gray hair, steely gray eyes behind silver framed glasses, and thin lips
that were now saying something he couldn't hear above the noise. How did this
inadequate, dumpy, frumpy bitch of a woman get to be mayor of a city this size,
he wondered. Even as he thought the question, however, he knew the answer. Her
family had more money than
his
, money made from some of the richest oil
wells in Texas. She was a product of the Texas political machine which was
fueled by money, greed, and corruption. But she had turned the tables on that
machinery once she was fully ensconced in office for her second term and
outraged the hard-drinking, old white boys by hiring more Latinos and Blacks
than any government official before. She was a liberal in conservative
clothing--and what rumpled clothing it was, thought Sheffield, as he stared at
her wrinkled knee-length gray linen suit and ugly, square-toed black shoes.

"Now you listen here," he began, only to be cut
off by the mayor pointing a finger in his face.

"Pipe down, Doctor! You aren't going anywhere
until the rest of us do, so get used to it," the mayor stated forcefully. "Now--you're
some kind of scientist, aren't you? Why don't you put that brain of yours to
work and tell me what the hell is going on with this storm? My weather people
say there was no indication of a hurricane coming, so what happened? And why
are we getting winds at this speed? Last I heard it was 150 miles an hour,
consistently--and that's just not right. The storms we get around here, the
winds slow down as soon as it hits land--and that is not happening...what
gives, Doc?"

He stared at her, wanting nothing more than to
hit her, hard, across her ugly face. But he'd realized he was at the mercy of
this woman and her staff. Angrily, he stated, "I don't know. It seems
impossible. Your weather people must be wrong. Probably don't know how to read
radar. But we do have to get out of here."

"And why is that, Doctor? We're safe from the
wind--and other dangers--down here. We have food and water. This is our
emergency shelter for City Hall. I think we should be okay here."

Sheffield cut her off. "Mayor, do you understand
that we are underground here? If this storm is as bad as it sounds, eventually
there will be flooding. Now what do you think will happen to us when these
tunnels start filling up with water? Plus, you've lost power, With damage to
structure above ground you may end up with very poor air quality as gas and
other chemicals are released."

Mayor Dubois stared at him for a moment, and
then burst into action. Abruptly turning from Sheffield, she said to the radio
operator, "Get ready to pack up your gear. Bring whatever you can with you in
case we get a chance to use it again...Oh, wait, before you do that--put out a 'Flying
Glass Warning' for downtown Houston. Tell whoever you reach to put out the word
that nobody--and I mean nobody--is to come into the downtown area until this is
over. You got that?"

"Yes, ma'am!" said the operator, turning to his
radio.

Swinging back to Sheffield, she said, voice
filled with contempt, "And just when were you going to point out this piece of
information, Doc? After you'd found a way to get yourself out of here? You were
in my office when we decided to come down here. You know as well as I do we
have no engineers with us, no emergency management people, only the folks who
happened to be in City Hall. You are as close to an expert as I've got right
now. From here on out, if there is anything,
anything
I need to know
about this storm and its consequences, you tell me, pronto."

Before he could respond, the mayor bustled off,
barking orders to subordinates to pack up equipment and supplies.

Viruna Mountains, Rwanda, Africa

My search is over. I began traveling a week ago
through the trees on the mountains. I kept thinking I would see one of my own
kind somewhere, that I couldn't be the last one. When my mother used to speak
of the woman who watched, she told me about the woman's fears. Fears that one
day our mountain home would be destroyed and that our kind would then vanish.
The woman called it the extinction of the mountain gorilla. My mother told me
that the woman was killed for trying to prevent our extinction and that we
should always remember and honor her. My mother lived to be very old. To think
of her now is a pain in my heart. I keep thinking she would know what to do,
but I know there is really nothing to do. Nothing can be done now.

The voice in the mountain is my companion in
these last days. I hear it rumble in the black night as I stare up at my
blanket of stars. The rumble tells me I am not the only one who is soon to die.
My mother taught me to listen to the voice. She said it lived in the trees and
rocks and earth. When the others came and cut down our trees to make farms, the
voice told us where to travel for the best new home. The voice was our teacher,
our guide, in the ways of living life.

As I lie in my nest of leaves, I can see the
smoke billowing out of the mountaintop. Soon the rumble will be a roar, and the
fire will spew out and flow down into the farms of the others. I do not feel
anything about that. It just is what will happen. My feelings are gone now. I
have seen too many die.

At first, when the oldest silverback got sick, I
felt sad, but I knew he was very old and his time was over. But the blood that
flowed from his eyes and mouth scared me. Then the other two males became ill
and I was frantic, beating my chest and trying to rouse them from their nests
of blood and dirt and leaves. Still I thought there was hope.

As my baby clung to my back and I raced away
from this dying place, I hoped to find others left on the mountain. But halfway
to the place where I last saw the others of my kind, I felt you slide from my
back, tiny hands falling limp at your sides as I caught you and held you close.
And smelled the coppery scent of blood caking your eyes and seeping from your
mouth. I watched the life drain out of your dark eyes, little one. I will never
tell you the stories of my mother and her mother, of the voice we hear in all
living things. I will never watch you play, sliding down the grassy slopes,
never feel your tiny fingers combing through my hair. I will never see you with
your own babies.

And you were the last baby for me. When I
reached the place of the only other group of us remaining in these mountains, I
found death yet again. A sickness had been there, but not the blood sickness.
This was the sickness of the others who came and laid traps, who stole babies,
who cut down our homes. The others had come and left behind the bodies of the
last males--headless bodies, bodies without hands or feet. It had happened
before, but I had never seen the horrible truth of it until today. When I was
young, my mother took me to a place of honor for one who died in this way,
hands and head chopped off, and the woman who cried for him. Now I could see it
for myself. I could almost hear the machetes as they whistled through the air
and then met with a thwack the fur and skin, and muscle and bone, and carved
the bodies into death.

Soon, I, too, will be gone. I have not bothered
to eat, for there is no reason to survive now. I lie here growing weaker,
talking to you, little one, held close in my arms. Telling the stories of our
kind, hearing the voice of the earth tell hers, waiting...waiting for the end.

Somewhere on Highway 20, between Hattiesburg
and Jackson, Mississippi

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Andy muttered.
Glancing from the road to Waldo, he shook his head, as if to shake off a daze,
or perhaps a spell. "Yeah, that's it--it's a spell...and she's a witch and you're
really not a dog at all, are you?"

Waldo continued to sit calmly in the passenger
seat staring at the road ahead. Andy was having problems Waldo couldn't really
help him with at this point.