Genesis (17 page)

“What is that?” Rhiannon said, stopping suddenly and pointing off to the right side of the road.

The travelers were approaching a low concrete bridge over a wide but shallow arroyo that ran perpendicular to the freeway. The rain had not stopped its constant dreary drizzle, and a steady stream of brown water, just a few inches deep, Emily estimated, ran through the wash beneath the bridge, broken apart by four-meter-high concrete piers that acted as both support and breakwater. The space between the piers was clogged with debris and mud, leaving only a half meter or so gap at the top. The runoff had created a pool that was a meter or so deep already.

Emily stopped, shrugging her backpack into a more comfortable position while she tried to see what Rhiannon was pointing at through the strained light. She followed the stream from the bridge uphill toward the south. A few kilometers away, she saw the outline of a mountain; the range’s upper half was gradually being devoured by black-and-gray clouds, and the occasional flash of lightning showed it was in the grip of yet another powerful storm.

“It’s pretty far away,” Emily said after a few seconds.

The storm was centered directly over the range. The slope of the mountains looked like it was taking a hammering, barely visible behind diaphanous sheets of rain. There wasn’t much of a breeze, and the clouds looked to barely be moving—plus, the storm was far enough away that Emily was confident it wouldn’t be heading in their direction anytime soon. A distant peal of thunder, barely audible, finally reached Emily’s ears.

“I don’t think it’s anything we need to worry about,” she concluded.

“No,” said Rhiannon, “not the storm . . . that!” She jerked her hand again in the direction of the base of the mountain, and this time Emily saw what she was pointing at: a brown wave twenty, maybe thirty, meters across was sweeping down the scar of the arroyo from the base of the mountains. The water had already overflowed the narrow walls of the gully and was flooding outward. A few scattered smaller trees lay in its path, and, as Emily watched, the wave reached the first of them and it disappeared.

“What the . . . ah crap. We need to move . . . now!”

“What
is
it?” Rhiannon insisted.

“Flash flood,” Emily said. It was heading down the arroyo toward them. And it was moving fast. “It’s only going to take a couple of minutes for it to get here.”

It was easily two hundred meters to the other side of the bridge, she judged.

“Come on,” Emily said, nudging Rhiannon’s elbow into motion. “We need to get across the bridge as fast as we can.” She jogged out onto the bridge, stealing glances at the oncoming wall of water every couple of seconds.

They had made it as far as the midpoint when the leading wave rounded a bend in the arroyo about a quarter of a kilometer upstream. The wave barreled into the corner, splashing ten meters up into the air, raining down mud, water, and pieces of debris, before the main body of the flood caught up and began surging toward them.

“Keep your eyes on the ground,” Emily yelled to Rhiannon, who kept slowing to look at the approaching water. Emily also slowed for a second to try and gauge the speed of the wall of water rushing at them. The corner had sucked away some of its power, but the river of ugly brown water continued to thunder their way. At that second, she saw another wave of muddy water thunder up over the bend and obliterate what was left of the corner, smashing away huge chunks of mud, sending them spinning into the air like meteors, and cutting a new channel directly through to the last section of the gully leading to the bridge.

Emily finally understood just how much danger they were in: that water was going to hit the bridge and have nowhere to go but up and over.

“Run! Run, faster!” Emily yelled as she took off after Rhiannon and Thor. The water was speeding toward them now, its thunderous roar filling the air, the surge powerful enough that it would sweep right over the bridge and take them with it, she was sure.

Rhiannon picked up her pace, sprinting at full speed for the opposite side of the bridge, easily outrunning Emily’s older, tired legs and heavier backpack. Emily saw the girl’s head flick to the right, and even over the growing din of the oncoming water she heard the girl yell out in fear, before she turned back, found an extra well of speed, and started to pull away from Emily even faster.

Thor had taken up a position in the space separating the two women, and Emily could tell he was holding back to stay close to her.

“Go, Thor, go to Rhiannon,” she yelled, but her voice was drowned out by the thundering approach of the flood. From the corner of her eye, Emily saw the swell of water barreling toward the bridge, clumps of mud and foam bubbling in the frothing wave. She focused on Rhiannon’s back, willing her onward as she forced her own feet to just keep moving, hoping that she did not trip.

Rhiannon had pulled ahead by a good ten meters when the wall of water finally reached them, smacking into the debris-clogged runoff below their feet. A five-meter-tall wave of mountain-cold water exploded over the side of the bridge with a hiss like sizzling bacon and
rained down onto the road. Emily gasped as the dirty freezing water hit her, blinding her momentarily before she wiped it from her eyes. Within seconds, coffee-colored water tipped with white foam gushed between the gaps of the safety barrier running along the side of the bridge, spreading out over the road as tho
ugh someone had turned on a thousand fire hoses at once.

Ahead of her she saw Rhiannon through a haze of water, her feet already splashing through several centimeters of water. But she was okay; there were only a few meters between the girl and the safety of the opposite side of the bridge.

The main body of water was still below the top of the bridge, Emily could hear it thundering against the concrete siding, hissing and spitting. The debris caught between the stanchions was acting as a dam, and the water, with no way to escape, was being forced up and over the edge of the bridge. All along the safety barrier was what looked like a stationary wave of raging, bubbling mud. The overflowing water was spreading tens of thousands of gallons out over the bridge every second. The road was completely awash, water already reaching to Emily’s ankles.

Thor stopped, standing several meters away from Rhiannon, the water up to his knees, looking back toward Emily. His tail wagged slowly; he wasn’t sure if this was a game or not. Emily began to yell at the dog to move, but her words were drowned out by an even louder roar. She thought she caught the sound of Rhiannon screaming
“Look out!”
and glanced to the right in time to see a boulder of clay as big as a VW Beetle pushed along by a second surge of raging water crash into the side of the bridge ahead of her. The boulder exploded on impact, smashing part of the bridge away with it and sending smaller pieces of concrete and metal and mud through the air to splash all around her like shrapnel. Now the right lane of the bridge looked as though a giant had taken a bite out of it. This new entrance and the force of the extra water was all that was needed for the flood to fully breach the top of the bridge, sending a wave of powerful sludge across the road. It bubbled up through the new hole like a geyser and reached Emily, hitting her just below the knees. She almost buckled but managed to steady herself as it washed against her. Before it had been like walking through a stream, but now Emily was wading across a fast-flowing river.

Thor! Where is Thor?
Emily’s head pivoted left, then right. The malamute had been following behind Rhiannon until the wave hit, but he had vanished, carried away by the force of the flood. She scanned the frothing lake that had been a bridge just a minute earlier, looking for her dog.

There! There he is
. Emily could see his body pinned against the beam of the metal guardrail separating the central median of the east- and westbound lanes. The guardrail was acting in much the same way as the debris below the bridge had, slowing the spread of the water and creating a wall of angry bubbling water. Thor was caught by it, and Emily could see his body buffeted and pummeled as he tried to keep his head above the rushing water, his paws frantically trying to find purchase where there was none.

Emily started to move in his direction just as another surge of water pushed over the edge of the bridge, hitting her calves. She stumbled and fell to one knee, a hand dropping into the frighteningly cold mountain water. The wave covered the distance between her and Thor in a second, and she watched in horror as the malamute disappeared beneath the muddy water.

No, no, no!

Emily pushed herself up onto unsteady feet, fighting the pull and push of the sucking water, and started toward where she had last seen Thor. She wasn’t going to make it to him in time. She could see him bobbing up and then back under the water. A dirty-looking gray scum of froth collecting on the surface made it even harder to spot him.

Rhiannon had made it to the opposite side and was standing on dry land, bent at the waist, panting from the exertion as the water rushed by her toes.

“Rhiannon!” Emily yelled as loud as she could, not sure she would be heard over the cacophonous roar of the river as she continued to try to cover the distance between her and Thor.

The girl looked up, her face contorted with fear and exhaustion.

Emily stabbed her left hand to where Thor had disappeared under another wave, just as his head broke the surface again.

Rhiannon turned in the direction Emily pointed. The second her eyes found Thor and she realized what was happening, Rhiannon sprinted toward him along the edge of the river. When she was parallel to his position she splashed back into the water, using the guardrail as a support, hurdling with exaggerated steps through the twelve meters of water that separated her and the struggling malamute.

The water was just below Emily’s butt now as she zagged toward Rhiannon and the malamute, but the weight of her pack and her fight against the constant pressure of the water had sucked the strength right out of her.

Rhiannon reached Thor and grabbed his collar just as he was dragged under again. She pulled the dog to the surface and started edging her way back toward dry land, one hand grabbing at the submerged guardrail, the other towing Thor behind her like a dinghy. Seconds later they were both back on dry land and Thor was shaking himself dry while smothering Rhiannon with licks, before he sat then lay down on all fours, obviously exhausted. Rhiannon, her face pale with exhaustion, was starting to head back into the water as she saw Emily struggling toward her.

Emily waved her off. Rhiannon’s energy was obviously close to empty; all it would take would be another surge of flood water to hit them and they would both end up being swept away.

The water was now more like a thick soup, a brown sludge of mud and debris that sucked at her feet, slowing her to a crawl. There was less than ten meters between her and safety, but it might just as well have been a kilometer.

This is finally it,
she thought with a pang of sadness as the water beat at her stomach and her exhausted muscles.
I’m not going to make it.

In her mind Emily saw Mac standing at the edge of the torrent next to Rhiannon and Thor. Rhiannon was holding on to Thor’s collar to stop the dog from racing back into the water, the girl’s face a mask of fear and confusion. Mac was yelling at her, telling her to
Move your bloody arse
. She managed another step, the water so thick with New Mexico clay it was more a river of slowly setting concrete now, but she was exhausted. Her legs were lead, lead surrounded by a pool of liquid lead that wanted to keep her for itself, the weight of her backpack pushing her down.
Dump the Goddamn backpack,
she heard Mac yell silently at her, then more quietly,
Just drop it, love. It’ll be okay
.

She reached down and struggled to find the belt clip fastener at her waist, found it, squeezed with fingers that did not want to obey her, and felt the clip disengage. In the same instant she shrugged the pack from her shoulders and caught a fleeting glimpse of it as it was sucked away from her, disappearing into the roiling, frothing waves of scummy water. Free of its extra weight, Emily forced herself toward dry land.

“Come on,” Rhiannon yelled urgently.

One more step, that’s my girl,
said imaginary Mac, standing behind Rhiannon, smiling.
You can make it
.

With just a few meters left, Rhiannon ignored Emily’s weak protestation to stay back and rushed out into the water. She grabbed an exhausted Emily around the waist, and the two staggered the final distance to the flood’s edge, where they both collapsed onto the road with barely enough energy left to even breathe.

Emily lay facedown on the side of the road. Like a fish pulled from the turbulent flood water raging just meters away, she gasped silently
for breath, occasionally coughing and spitting up muddy water.

She could see Rhiannon’s boots a few centimeters away from her head, a cake of mud around the soles, the sodden bottoms of her jeans a darker blue than the rest. Then Rhiannon’s butt as the girl flopped down on the wet tarmac, pulled her knees up to her chest, and leaned her head against them, panting deeply, more from the stress of what had just happened than the actual exertion, Emily thought. Even the normally ebullient Thor was stretched out on all fours, his tongue half out of his mouth, panting so heavily his chest about lifted him off the ground. His normally pristine coat was matted with streaks of dirt and clumps of mud, the rest of his fur sodden.

“Oh my God!” Rhiannon said when she was finally able to speak. “When the fuck will this planet stop trying to kill us?”

Under any other circumstances, Emily would have chided the girl for the profanity, but at this moment, she was right there with her. It was so much fucking trouble just to keep going, just to keep trying.

The rush of water from the mountains was now a horrendous roar, louder than anything Emily had heard before, terrifying in its
raw nature. A sudden crack, like the sharp report of a rifle, drew her
curiosity enough that she managed to roll over onto her back and sit
up. The sound was followed by the snap of a small explosion, then another as the air was rent by an ungodly shrieking that ended just as suddenly with a
pop
like a giant balloon bursting, as the bridge they had just made it across began to break apart. The water ate through the deck of the bridge like it was made of papier-mâché,
chunks of it dropping away, disappearing from her view as they were
consumed by the river. On the plus side, the new opening relieved
the pressure and allowed the corralled water to burst through and rumble on down the arroyo and out into the desert beyond.

Somewhere out there, floating away on the tidal wave, was her backpack, along with all her supplies and clothes—everything she had. Gone.

As if it had flown in from above or maybe been swept down from the mountains with the flood, a sudden and intense despair grasped Emily in its talons and refused to let go, overwhelming even the molecular call of her son with a hopelessness that slipped over her like a second skin. It tore at her inner resolve, shredding it almost instantly.

Oh, let me list the ways that my life is oh, so fucked up,
she mused, her eyes staring up at the ugly gray sky.

Let’s see: I’ve lost my son; my husband is thousands of kilometers away and probably won’t be coming back alive; the place that I called home is slowly and systematically being dissolved by a woman almost as evil as the fucking aliens who had annihilated the planet, a woman who plotted to have me
murdered
. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the fucker who tried to rape me before carrying out Valentine’s request. Can’t miss the guard I killed either. And who could overlook the freezing weather and a planet that turned from being home to a world that could easily have passed for one of Dante’s levels of hell?

Shit! That’s what it had all turned to . . . shit!

“I can’t do this anymore,” Emily said matter-of-factly, the words slipping from her mouth so easily and feeling
so
good on her lips, like she was finally dislodging something that had been caught in her throat. It was
such
a relief.

“What?” said Rhiannon.

Another chunk of the bridge fell away with a rumble and a splash. A bit like her own life, really; chunks of it had methodically been eaten away by fate and the zombie corpse of what had once called itself humanity, until there was so little of it left it was hardly worth fighting for anymore.

“I said, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. It’s over. I give up.”
I’m just going to sit here,
she decided,
sit here and wait for everything to just stop and go away.
It wouldn’t take long—she was already freezing from the waist down.

Rhiannon reacted as if Emily had slapped her across the face.

“But . . . but you can’t, you have to get up. You can’t just stop.”

Oh yeah?
Emily thought.
You just watch me.

Rhiannon stood and waited for Emily to get up. When she didn’t, Rhiannon bent over and grabbed her right arm with both hands and began pulling. “Get up,” she demanded. “Get up now,” she yelled when Emily resisted. Now she was tugging at Emily’s arm, tears of anger and frustration percolating in her eyes.

“Would you just leave me alone, for fuck’s sake? Just leave me alone.” Emily wrenched her arm free of Rhiannon’s grip.

Thor whined and crawled toward her.

“No,” said Rhiannon. “You have to get up. Now!”

“I don’t want to.”

A tone of desperation had begun to creep into Rhiannon’s voice. “What about me and Thor? What are we supposed to do now? Where are we supposed to go?”

Emily stared at her feet; her head was thumping, her legs felt like two icicles. God, she was miserable. Rhiannon did not seem to care how she felt, she just kept talking.

“You’re all we have. You and Mac, you . . . you’re my Mom and Dad. And Adam . . . what about Adam? Who’s going to help Adam?”

Emily thought about that for a few slow heartbeats. If it hadn’t have been for the constant tingling over her skin, she might have dismissed even Adam as being dead, and the journey they were on as pointless, but she couldn’t. That connection she felt, that pull, acted as a lifeline, something that she had to hold on to, a life preserver that would not allow the terrible despair she felt to carry her any farther away toward the abyss that threatened to swallow her. But she was
so
,
so
tired. All she wanted was some peace.

“You can’t just think about yourself,” Rhiannon was saying, unaware of the struggle consuming Emily, “you have to get up and you have to fight for us. Like we would for you.”

The kid was right, Emily knew it, and she was trying to care, but it was so hard. Maybe if she could just hang on to that feeling of connectedness, focus on it and allow it to fill her. She felt the sensation grow, like a tiny light in a dark room beginning to brighten and fill the dark space—slowly, gradually, but unstoppably. Emily held on to the thread of her love for her boy, for her husband, her surrogate daughter, and the dog who had saved her, and by default saved all of them. And like the room, she gradually filled her own darkness with light again.

“And who’s going to stop Valentine?” Rhiannon was asking, “If you don’t get up right now, then she’s going to win. Valentine and that guard who wanted to . . . who was going to . . .” She could not get the words out. “The one that I
killed
for
you
. They’ll both win, and then we lose. The good guys will lose, Emily.”

Emily opened her eyes. The sky was still the same dull, dead, leaden gray, but she thought she could see a few patches of blue just above them, a hint that this momentary darkness was not an omen for the future of their world, but that there
was
hope.

“Okay,” said Emily.

Rhiannon stopped midsentence. “Okay, what?”

“You’re right. Here, help me up.” She extended a hand, and Rhiannon helped her to her feet, then threw her arms around Emily and hugged her so hard Emily thought she was going to break something within her aching, fragile body.

“I thought you were going to leave me,” Rhiannon mumbled into the material of Emily’s jacket.

Emily held the girl for three heartbeats, then gently pushed her out to arms’ length.

“Like I said already, I’m never going to leave you.”

Rhiannon lunged forward again and held Emily tight.

The bleak mood, so intent on swallowing Emily, was gradually evaporating, replaced by an optimism that lasted until they took an inventory of what was left of their supplies. All Emily had was the soaked clothes she was wearing, her .45, a single magazine of ten rounds—the spare magazine and all her ammo were in the backpack—and the knife on her ankle. She found a couple of energy bars in a zipper pocket of her jacket sleeve, and a half-full canteen of water on her belt. Emily had taken back the blanket she had given Rhiannon and tied it around her waist like a sarong to ease the chill until her jeans dried out.

Rhiannon had her own clothes, none of which would fit Emily, enough MREs to last them all another day—two, if they stretched it out—a handful of energy bars, a flashlight, a full canteen of water, and her pistol. And that was it.

“Well, that’s better than losing all our supplies,” said Rhiannon, trying to sound optimistic.

Emily tried to smile. She still had no idea how far away Adam was, which meant she also had no idea whether the supplies they had would be enough to get them to him. And even if they found him before their supplies ran out, they would still need to restock and figure out how they were going to get back to Point Loma, or if they even could.

“We have to find food,” Emily said, “and that’s going to be much easier if we can find a vehicle.”

“Fat chance,” said Rhiannon as she looked up and down the freeway. They couldn’t go back the way they had come from; the bridge was no longer there, and there was nothing back there anyway. Ahead of them the road reached toward a set of hills, about fifteen kilometers in the distance, stark against the gray-white clouds that obscured the sky.

“Well, look at it this way,” said Emily. “We know there’s nothing back the way we came, so if we weigh the odds, seems to me the probability is that we’ll find some kind of town or city ahead of us, right?”

“I suppose so,” said Rhiannon, pausing, “maybe.” She did not sound convinced.

“Well, if we can find a town or even a store, then maybe we’ll find food there.”

“But what if we don’t?”

“We will,” said Emily. “I know we will.”

“Can you hear that?” Rhiannon asked, surprising Emily. They were a couple of hours farther on from the bridge. The conversation had petered off and for the last hour or so they had walked in companionable silence toward the slowly approaching hills.

Emily stopped and cocked her head to listen. “I can’t hear a thing,” she said after several beats had passed. “Are you sure it’s not the wind?”

“It’s like some high-pitched squeak,” Rhiannon said. “I’ve heard
it for the last ten minutes or so. It gets louder and then fades away.”

Emily listened again, then shook her head. Rhiannon was a good seventeen years younger, so it didn’t come as a surprise that the girl would pick up on a sound faster than she could. Emily raised her hand to shade her eyes against the diffused light pushing through the overcast cloud. Ahead of them, the road cut between the range of hills that effectively blocked the eastern horizon, but to their left, right, and behind was the ubiquitous flat plain of red that had become synonymous with their travels over this terrain.