Genesis (Extinction Book 1) (17 page)

She couldn’t help glancing at the small monitor that framed the earth. For a long time, it didn’t seem to change–their position looked stagnant. Little by little, Africa opened up and she could to see the Arabian Peninsula. As the clock hit 134.2, she fired the Zveda thrusters, watching as the view of the earth began to roll; the curved horizon of the small planet came into view, backed by the deep dark of space. Metal in the 357-foot main truss torqued as the station rolled, groans floated through the pressurized station like protesting spirits.

Melanie shivered as the haunting sound grew. Her imagination quickly grabbed the eerie vibrations, and images of cemetery-bound wraiths grabbed at her mind’s eye. She shook her head and forced her attention to the clock to kill the primary thrusters on Zvezda.

Using the port thrusters on the module to break the rolling action, she watched darkness fill the monitor and switched to the starboard camera. Earth once again filled the screen, the view still changing as the ISS sought a higher orbit, still moving as the ISS continued to race across the sky at almost 18,000 miles per hour.

“Progress shut down in three, two, one. Kill Progress.”

“Shut down complete. Settling into new orbit.”

“Alpha, this is FLIGHT. Well done.”

Mel ran a check on orbit and attitude, and began shutting down as many systems as she could. As the lights dimmed in the Zarya command module, she said, “Thanks, Tom. Shutting down all non-essentials. Leaving power to life support and environmental only.”

“We are expecting extensive damage to satellites, be sure to have the S band up and running. You will be in line of sight for Ham when the storm passes.”

“Mel, you need to see this,” Kaito had gone from sounding terrified to awestruck. Even before Mel turned, she knew what he was seeing, as eerie green light danced across the console. Mel fought with her restraints and pushed toward the small viewing port as Kaito continued. “It is incredible, as if the atmosphere has become the ocean.”

The aurora caused by the solar storm waved and danced around the earth, heading their way. The green was shot through with red, as particles made it through the magnetic field and ignited in the atmosphere.

“Beautiful!” Yuri had been so quiet; she had almost forgotten that he was hiding out in Zvezda. No one spoke as they watched the front edge of the magnetosphere grab particles from the geomagnetic storm and shove them into the thermosphere. The aurora borealis seen from the night-side of Earth would be spectacular, but it was nothing compared to a front row seat.

Mel drifted in zero gravity, captivated by the stunning light show as it traveled around them, above and below, making a run toward the South Pole. She reached out to touch the window, almost reverently, and it saved her life. The space station lurched hard, slamming into Mel’s hand, snapping her wrist and pushing her back, rather than smacking her in the face.

Screaming, she was spun backwards as the station leapt again, frantically trying to grab at the nylon hand and footholds as they flew past her face. Shouts rang out in her headset as Yuri and Kaito were tossed through the ship.

Sparks erupted from the console and the power management unit as the station lurched again, slamming into Mel’s back. It sent her tumbling towards the console. She fought to twist her body around so she could grab the rail, and failed.

The back of her head clipped the console and she had enough time to see the blood, blue in the light of the aurora, drift passed her head before darkness swallowed her.

Max Dumaric hated Florida. He hated the heat, he hated the humidity, and most of all, he hated the sun. He pulled his eye from the NightForce scope and twisted the cap off a sorely depleted bottle of Jim Beam.

After taking a swig, he replaced the cap and wiped the sweat from his eyes before propping his cheek on the cool, black widow stock of Betty, his Lapua .338 Magnum Rifle. 1400 yards away and down ten degrees stood the glass doors of the Ritz Carlton.

If Miami was hell, the art deco section of South Beach was somewhere between the seventh and eight circle of Dante’s
Inferno
. Everything was too loud: the colors, the sounds, the people. It hurt his eyes and ears. It clawed at his brain and his headache throbbed in time with his heartbeat.

William Maitland couldn’t seem to get enough of the lifestyle. To Max, it seemed less like a life and more like a frantic pretense. Everyone pushed themselves to the breaking point, from working all day to partying all night, from the fashion pages to the dye jobs on their pocket puppies. It was as if in South Beach, everyone with the same lunatic delusion of grandeur had settled on the same little patch of sand.

While Max mentally cursed Maitland for making him come to this godforsaken place, his senses were tuned in and monitoring his shooting solution. Humidity and pressure were high, clear line of sight, light cross breeze of only three, maybe four, knots requiring only minor targeting corrections.

Conditions were perfect, yet an alarm was going off in the back of his brain. He couldn’t put his finger on what had his hair raised, so he kept both eyes open, giving him a wide field of view that included the soft red glow of the reticle in his scope, both sides of the entrance and the bright ocean behind the hotel. For the beach goers and luxury hounds of South Beach, it was an idyllic day. Perfect for encouraging skin cancer and maxing out credit cards.

Without thinking about it, his left hand slipped down, his fingers caressing the cap of the bottle of Beam and he cursed Maitland under his breath. “Just pop your greasy little head out for two seconds. I’ll take care of all your troubles.”

A plastic disposable watch lay propped next to the twenty-three inch barrel of the Lapua. He checked the time and his agitation grew. Maitland was known for keeping a rigorous schedule. His meeting with the South Beach Corporation was at 10:00am sharp, and he hadn’t even left the hotel yet.

Max wanted to believe the hairs on the back of his neck were complaining about Maitland’s tardy appearance, but he couldn’t. His skin was as attuned to weather conditions as any computer sensor and his instincts told him the warnings came from that small compartment in his brain.

A flutter at the top of his vision caught his attention. Despite his training, he looked up. Against the ocean’s glare and the bright sky, a pale green light flittered across the horizon. Several lines passed and the alarm in the back of his head began screeching. A tingling in his jaw superseded a jaw-popping yawn, which initiated a painful pressure release in his ears.

His eyes shot back down to the reticle, afraid he had missed Maitland while he was gawking at the sky. He’d been hunting Maitland for two years. Two long years. Now that he had him pinned down, the idea of losing him turned his stomach.

Nothing moved on the street. A shadow drifted over the bay and gooseflesh marched down his arms. He glanced back up to find the once bright sky darkening as clouds pulled together.

Caught between the instinct for self-preservation and his desire to end Maitland’s life, Max’s eyes jumped from the storm brewing on the horizon to the empty glass doors of the Ritz-Carlton. He might have held on a little bit longer, but that eerie green light rode the storm clouds like a wave.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” he sighed. Folding the stand on the Lapua, he packed the twenty-pound rifle back into his duffel, before shedding the gilly-net that made him almost invisible against the light tan gravel on the roof.

On the other side of the building, he slipped his foot into a harness and stepped off the roof. Four seconds later, he stopped his descent, dropped to the ground and secured his duffle to the side of his Valkyrie.

Running the stoplight on Dad Boulevard, he swung left before grabbing the brakes. Traffic on the Venetian Causeway was backed up as far as he could see. He cut between cars and jumped the curb to hit the 907. Riding the centerline, he pushed the Valkyrie to ninety-five miles per hour as he followed the lush green line of the Miami Beach Golf Club.

He had no idea what was happening with the weather. Storms had never frightened him, but he gave himself over to instinct, which was screaming at him to get to the plane and get the hell out of Miami.

A wreck at the entrance of the Julia Tuttle Causeway blocked his route. Slowing down just enough to keep the bike from going over, he spun a one-eighty, jumped the ridge and rode against traffic until he found an opening across the grassy median to bypass the traffic jam and get back on the causeway. Cutting across oncoming traffic, he nearly laid the bike over as he found his lane, cut left, and gunned the engine.

The clouds behind him were growing darker, blocking out the sun as he barreled down 112 toward the Miami International Airport. The bike swayed, knocked off balance as the wind kicked into high gear, running out to sea as if it, too, was desperate to escape Miami.

A whispered word activated his headset and dialed the hanger at the airport. It was answered by a bull of a man who Max had dealt with more than his own family over the years. “AJ’s Aircraft.”

“Coming in fast, AJ. File a flight plan, anywhere north, just make it fast. I want to be off the ground in ten minutes.”

“Got it, bro. She’ll be fueled and ready.” They disconnected without saying goodbye. No questions, no excuses. Just the way Max liked it. Contacts like AJ were hard to come by, and expensive.

As the storm continued to build behind him, Max danced through traffic and shot through red lights. He took the back entrance to MIA and didn’t slow down until he slid to a stop behind his plane.

With a practiced hand, Max snapped loose the wing tie downs and climbed in. The keys were in the ignition, the fuel tanks were topped off and a greasy brown bag that held AJ’s traditional fare sat in the second seat. A bottle of Crown Royal XR was propped up next to it. The smell of fries and a double bacon cheeseburger as a big as a plate saturated the air in the little Cessna 152 and made Max’s stomach rumble as he ran through his preflight checklist.

After getting clearance from the tower, Max held the ailerons and elevators to the stops as he fought the crosswinds. His feet constantly adjusted the plane’s direction as he headed for the runway. On the runway, his nose into the wind, he watched, amazed, as the indicated airspeed began to climb with the force of the wind in his prop. He leveled off the ailerons and elevators, cranked the flaps to ten degrees, and enriched the fuel mixture.

With the brake in place, Max opened the throttle and gently ran the engine until it was pushing 2400 RPMs. Pulling the nose up just shy of dragging the tail, he eased off the brake and rolled forward, working the right rudder to stay centered on the runway. Long before he reached the midpoint of the 1000-foot runway, the tires left the ground and he climbed with ease.

At 2000 feet, Max leaned the fuel mixture, adjusted the trim and began a slow banking climb, keeping a wary eye on his angle of attack and indicated airspeed. The wind hit him broadside, slamming the little Cessna around like a kid’s party balloon. By the time he reached 4000 feet, the storm was behind him and had grown to nightmare proportions.

The wind was at his tail, pushing him inland and he had a moment to think he might actually outrun the beast. The choice was to keep climbing, or gain airspeed. He aimed for the lowest safe cruising altitude and grabbed the bottle of hooch from the passenger seat.

Eve stood in the waters of Biscayne Bay, her eyes closed, and her face tilted toward the warmth of the sun like a flower emerging after a long, hard winter. Gentle waves lapped at her wetsuit-covered legs while she stood, oblivious of the darkness that would soon crash down over them.

In the years to come, it would be this moment–this golden moment in the sun with her father’s laughter drifting to her across the water like a lullaby–which she would turn to on her darkest nights. There would be times when she would wrap that memory around her like a warm blanket to ward off the deep chill of despair. At other times, she would feel as if, in that final moment of happiness, she was almost bearing witness to the last true warmth humanity would ever know.

Not today. Today she is still innocent, a girl still coming to terms with becoming a woman.

She let her mind slip into neutral, let her body relax, and just enjoyed the soothing touch of a warm winter day. There were things to look forward to–her annual dinner with her father at The Pier in Miami, the exploration of Dry Tortuga in the morning, and the gentle but clumsy flirtations of Ben Richie when they got back to campus. For a few more warm moments, there was only now, and her moment in the sun held no prophetic glimpse of what she would never have again.

“Richard!” Eve’s father barked and everyone jumped. The guilty young man snapped his head around, his lips still frozen in place as if he were preparing for his first third-grade kiss. Professor Ryan’s face was red–not from anger, but from the desperate need to hold back his laugher while he scolded one of his young research assistants. “Mooch the crocodiles one more time, and I’m going to glue your butt to the boat and push you out to sea!”

“No, Sir,” Richard smiled and batted his thick dark lashes, as if he hadn’t just moments ago tried to call an American crocodile out from the mangroves behind the rag-tag group of students. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Professor.”

“You and Talia get sediment duty.” Professor Ryan nodded to the small buckets and bailer still sitting in the boat. “Let’s grab samples every three feet on the line.”

“What did I do?” Talia feigned offense. The not-so-casual flick of her blond ponytail when she looked at Richard told everyone that working with Richard was exactly what she wanted to do.

The professor rolled his eyes, eliciting a laugh from the Morrison twins, Sharon and Steven. “Because I saw you practicing how to mooch.” He shook his head and laughed, “You’d think after three seasons of sampling out here, you wouldn’t be in such a hurry to get cozy with that many teeth.”

Eve felt a small tug of jealousy in the pit of her tummy and turned her attention to the horizon. Miami sat like a scar across the bay, its edges softened by a haze of pollution that kissed the air around it.

Behind her, Steve hooted in triumph. “That leaves the water to us, Sis.”

For the hundredth time since they left Syracuse, Eve fought off the urge to compare her body to Talia’s, and failed. She let her eyes drop to the rippling surface of Biscayne Bay and told herself yet again that her
filling out
days were over and she might as well get used to it.

In the rippling reflection offered, nothing spectacular stared back at her. With mousy brown hair and plain features, Eve didn’t just blend in with the crowd. She could disappear from someone’s radar while standing right next to them.

“Remember to rinse—” Professor Ryan began.

“Rinse the bottles three times, with the sample water,” Steve finished. Eve’s lips twitched into a smile despite her self-recriminating thoughts. Steve and Sharon had her outclassed as nerds, but not by much.

“And don’t disturb the sediment at the sampling site any more than necessary,” Sharon quipped as she hiked the field kit over her shoulder. It was a song and dance replayed every season since the project had been funded three semesters before.

Steve grabbed the small float that held their plastic sampling bottles, waste bucket and cooler. “We’ve got this, Professor. Eve, wanna come with us? I’ll let you run the meter.”

Eve turned to her father for permission. Conflict of interest concerns kept her from being an official member of the team. “Go for it, Peanut. They could probably use a little adult supervision.”

Picking her way over the rocks and chunks of broken coral, Eve’s eyes were drawn back to her reflection. Her father had always told her she was beautiful, that she had a quiet elegance that couldn’t be matched. Until recently, she had believed him.

Now she was sure it was Daddy Speak for
you have a great personality
. Standing next to Talia’s Nordic blond, swimsuit-model body, she felt like a hobbit. The only thing she was missing was the hairy toes. Given enough time, she was sure her genetic makeup would take care of that little oversight, too.

She found herself glaring at the unremarkable brown of her hair and eyes. Her nose was too round, her chin was too small, and her breasts…forget about it. That ship had sailed and left her stranded. If boobs were a woman’s flotation device, she’d drown.

Sharon handed Eve the meter and began walking out into the bay with the depth rod. “You’re not seriously into him, are you?”

Her question caught Eve off-guard and she barked out a quick laugh before looking around to see if they had been heard. “What me? No.” She shook her head a little too hard and they both laughed.

“You’re too good for him, Evie,” Steve mumbled and pushed his wandering glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. He looked away to rinse the first bottle, but not before casting a cold, pinched look toward Richard. “He’s just here ’cause it’s daddy’s money and daddy said he needed it for his resume.”

“Harsh, Bro,” Sharon whispered, then shrugged her meaty shoulders at Eve and went back to work.

“It’s true,” Steve insisted, refusing to look up at either of the girls. “The guy’s a douche canoe. I tutored him last spring. Eve deserves better than someone who thinks the Pythagorean Theorem is a vaccine.”

There was a moment of silence before the girls erupted, their laughter drawing looks from Richard and Talia as Professor Ryan tried to get them squared away with the bailer. Eve’s father grinned as he looked up and she was sure they hadn’t been overheard.

The sad truth was, Steve was right. Richard’s father, the good Senator Kinsey, had called the house over Christmas break. She had only overheard her father’s side, but it hadn’t been a pleasant conversation. The memory of it sobered her. She focused on the meter in her hands and pulling a good electrical conductivity reading from the warm waters of the bay. He hadn’t talked to her about that call, which was strange, but he had doubled his efforts at helping Richard prepare for tests.

The guy struggled with every math-intensive course he took, but his heart seemed to be in the right place. Even if his father’s wasn’t. Richard’s class-clown antics were one of the reasons she’d finally become engaged with her fellow students instead of remaining absorbed in her studies, pushing herself to the point of burnout. He had a natural charisma that had pulled her, and her fellow geeks, out of their shell. Because of him, the last couple of semesters had been a blast.

That was really the point, wasn’t it? He was as different from her as night was from day. He wasn’t a nerd, nor did he have the social IQ of fungus. Eve, on the other hand, had been homeschooled most of her life. Her only experience with large groups had been environmental conferences and fundraisers for
Earth Now
and
Climate Change Awareness
, the two non-profit organizations her father favored.

Put her on a stage for a public speaking assignment and she would rock it. Put her in a group of people and expect her to make small talk, she’d be more likely to puke on their shoes before running off to hide in the bathroom.

Though Richard filled out a wetsuit better than any guy she’d ever met, it wasn’t his body she found attractive. It was the self-confidence he wore; as comfortably as she wore sweats for Saturday morning cartoons with her dad.

Nor was it only Talia’s pouty lips or perfect curves that had nurtured the envy, which had begun to distract Eve from her studies. It was how easily she turned on that charm, and got noticed by guys like Richard. Even as part of Eve thought it made Talia look like an idiot, there was another part of her, growing more persistent as time passed, that would have traded places with her in a heartbeat.

Irritated with herself, Eve forced her attention back to the meter and jotted down the EC and temperature of the water before changing the probe out to get a dissolved oxygen measurement.

Steve nestled a sample bottle in the dry ice in the cooler, where it would keep until they could get it back to the hotel and freeze it. Sharon finished filtering a second bottle for analysis, but her eyes kept drifting back and forth between her sullen brother and Eve.

As if sensing a conversation changer was needed, Sharon asked, “Been so busy with prep for the trip, I forgot to ask. Did you get to go flying while you were on break?”

“Even better.” Eve grinned from ear to ear. Sharon knew full well she had been flying. She also knew there was no better way to goad her brother out of his mood. “Got to airfield and Manuel was throwing gliding gear into the plane. We caught an arcus cloud and rode the front edge for nearly six hours. Just about made it to Mexico.”

Steve froze and stared at her with gaped mouthed amazement. “You don’t mean a roll cloud?”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Eve beamed with pride. Steve was the resident weather fanatic and the jealousy would eat him up. It felt good to be on the other end of it for a change. “Stretched horizon to horizon. It was
glorious
.”

“Do you have any idea how rare they are?”

“Count on it,” Eve grinned as Sharon gave her a conspiratorial wink. “We filmed it. I’ll let you see it tonight, if you’re a good boy.”

His amazement turned into a nasty glare before he grinned and went back to work. “I’m always a good boy.”

A warm breeze skipped across the water and grabbed small grains of bromocresol green as Sharon tried to get the chemical into the small bottle to test. Eve reached out to block the wind until Sharon got the stopper in and began to shake it to dissolve the powder. Unable to resist a final jab, Eve smiled sweetly at Steve. “Don’t worry, Steve. They’re incredibly rare, but I’m sure someday you’ll get the chance to ride the edge.”

“If he could get over his fear of heights.” Sharon giggled and wiped sweat from her forehead before getting the sulfuric acid dropper ready.

“Or his over-inflated sense of self-preservation,” Eve added and Steve was the only one who didn’t laugh. “I don’t know what it is about staying in one piece that he seems to hold onto.”

Steve’s face flushed and he went for a change of subject, refusing to look at either of them. “We’re dodging the snow back home and tourists season here—” Before he could finish, the hinge came loose in his jaw as it stretched out in a yawn.

Eve fought the tingling response, but it was a contagion she couldn’t fight. Her ears popped to relieve the pressure inside before she could cover her gapping mouth with the bend of her arm. Sharon didn’t bother trying. As she counted the drops of sulfuric acid that it took to make the solution turn bright pink, her jaw stretched to the limit.

Behind them, in the mangroves lining the bay, birds by the thousands burst out of the treetops and took flight. It was feathery pandemonium. The flight of the birds drowned out the sounds of the boats in the bay and darkened the sky. Several minutes passed before they seemed to find their compass again and disappeared over the mainland.

Professor Ryan had been moving to join his daughter’s little group. He stood frozen about five feet from them, staring out to sea where dark clouds were beginning to gather. The winds were pushing the clouds toward shore, but it looked as if a giant, invisible hand blocked their path, forcing them to circle back the way they had come.

Within minutes, the clouds towered as high as they were wide. A curtain of rain painted the sky with giant gray brush strokes, from the clouds to the ocean.

The gentle eddy of water shifted, pulling at their legs and almost taking Eve’s feet out from under her. The small float that served as their work platform jerked against its tether, trying to float out to the open ocean.

“Get to shore, now!” Professor Ryan yelled.

Eve, hearing the panic in her dad’s voice–but not understanding it–felt rooted to the spot. Watching Steve and Sharon gather up the equipment, she coiled the cord of the meter up and slipped it into its case.

They had been through squalls in the bay before. Sure, lightning was always an issue, but the storms always huffed like a dragon and blew themselves out, almost as fast as they got going. They had plenty of time to get to one of the pavilions to wait out the deluge.

Eve reached out to help Sharon gather up the small glass vials, only to have them knocked out of her hands. Glass and packets of chemical flew into the water as her father shoved Steve and Sharon towards shore. He grabbed her upper arm hard enough to bruise and propelled her towards the mangroves.

A gust of wind slammed into her back, pushing her forward as the receding waters pulled at her legs with riptide force. Fighting to get back up and get her feet on solid ground, fear of being pulled under added fuel to her racing heart.