Offworld (11 page)

Chris looked into her eyes, and she looked into his. Even from
twenty feet away, he could see it in those haunting silver hues.

She'd seen everything he'd just done.

The alarm continued its wail.

Chris tasted bile and felt as if his world was teetering out of control
as the shovel fell out of his hands and clanked on the cement debris
that lay all over the ground. The alarm continued sounding from
inside the house.

He felt his knees trying to fold beneath him.

The young girl, Mae, was watching him, expressionless.

He had to get a grip, had to shove aside thoughts of his father
for later. He'd been so angry a minute ago that he'd taken that shovel
and...

And she'd seen the whole thing. Did she know what the rock really
was that he'd destroyed? Could she make out the details from inside
the house? Or did she just think he'd had some kind of meltdown? A
temper tantrum from an otherwise normal, stable adult?

Chris didn't know what to feel. Other than the humid July air. It
was hot, and he was sweating hard.

At last, Mae showed signs of life. She cautiously stepped forward,
opened the screen door, and walked out onto the tiny back porch.

The siren stopped of its own accord. Maybe it hadn't come from
inside the house? He couldn't remember his father ever installing an
alarm system....

Mae made no motion to speak, and he couldn't blame her. What
was there to say?

Chris let out a shuddering breath and stepped one foot forward.
"So, uh, listen ..." he tried to say in a strong voice, but it came out
weak.

"Chris!"

Now what?

It was Trisha, screaming. "Chris, where are you?!"

Chris bolted, following the sound of her voice to the street out
in front of the house, which Trisha had just run past.

"What's wrong?" he cried. Mae walked out slowly behind him.
Quietly, cautiously.

Trisha turned around and ran back toward him. But she didn't
stop-she ran past the old house and continued on down the
street.

"Come on! Hurry!" she yelled.

Chris followed. Behind him, he could hear the footsteps of the
girl trailing, but he didn't turn back to look at her.

Not once.

"Beech!"

No response.

"Beech?!" Terry screamed. "Can you hear me?"

No sound, nothing at all.

"Can anybody hear me?!"

Terry tried to shift his weight under the rubble piled on top of
him, pinning him to the ground. But it was no use-he was trapped.
Something was pinching his left arm; something else was pressing
with tremendous force deep into his sternum, making it hard to draw breath. And the circulation to his legs had been cut off. Already it
was hard to feel them.

Worse, the rubble had fallen around him in such a way that he
was cocooned inside his own tight little box. Light was only a memory.
He was without a sliver of it, a pinprick.

But he could hear. He heard all sorts of things. Creaking, groaning, popping. If anything was left of the building, it was threatening
to come down. He heard his heart as it thudded in his chest. And
he heard his own breathing, which had never sounded so loud in
his life.

In and out. In and out.

Faster and faster went his heart....

Terry closed his eyes and tried some relaxation techniques he'd
been taught during his training. They were meant to force his body to
calm itself, to take his mind off any predicament he might find himself
in. He was a top-level astronaut, after all. He'd been confined to rooms
not much bigger than this as part of his training, for hours on end.

Of course, he hadn't been pinned down in those tiny little rooms,
with no feeling in his legs, and difficulty breathing. But it wasn't all
that different otherwise. This was no big deal.

The others were coming. Chris, Trish, the homeless girl. They
had to be. They would find him, and they would find Owen. And
everything would be all right.

But what if they didn't? What if something happened to them too?
What if they tried to move the rubble and got trapped themselves?
It's not like they could dial 9-1-1.

It's getting harder to breathe....

Light couldn't get through. What if air couldn't either? What if
he was already breathing the last of the oxygen that was in this
minuscule space?

Terry was in danger of hyperventilating, but this time he wasn't
able to calm himself.

"Help!" he shrieked with every last bit of energy he had.

Terry's mind wandered as he waited, and hoped. Who's going
to take care of Gordon? You idiot-Gordon's gone, along with all the
other animals.

I miss him.

I wonder if he d even remember me.

Why am I thinking about that dumb old dog at a time like this?

Maybe because there's no one else who missed me while I was
gone.

His heart pulsed ever faster, ever harder, until he could feel it
beating against the large piece of metal that mashed against his
sternum.

Every one of Terry's instincts had been rewritten as part of his
training. He knew never to panic. He knew how to use fear as an ally,
a motivator instead of an obstacle. He knew how to set his feelings
aside and focus on the task at hand. His training had drilled these
principles and many more into him to the extent that they'd become
second nature-no more difficult than walking or breathing.

And yet here he was panicking like a little kid. All alone on an
empty planet ... Imprisoned beneath a broken building ... Running
out of air ... And the old grocery store was groaning again ... If
any more weight fell on top of him ...

His high-and-mighty training was being stripped away with each
minute that passed, and he felt small and alone in ways he hadn't
felt since childhood.

Terry's mind imagined seeing himself from a helicopter high
above the broken building, a small figure amid a large pile of ruins.
The helicopter image turned to a high-altitude plane, high enough
to see all of Orlando; in this image his trapped form was little more
than a speck. His imagination pulled back even farther, a satellite
image looking down at the outline of the whole of Florida. He was
invisible now, all alone in a vast wasteland. He thought back to how
Earth had looked in the forward windows of the Ares, and tried to
wrap his mind around the idea that in all he could see then, the vast oceans and mountain ranges and plains and deserts and forests, only
five people could be found, and he was one of them.

There would be no first responders coming to save him. No
ambulances, no fire trucks, no police.

"Guys! Help me! Please!"

I can't go out this way. Not like this.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. Couldn't move. Couldn't
see.

"Help!"

"You're sure they were inside?" Chris asked as the three of them
jogged to a stop in front of the grocery store. The outer walls were
still standing, but they couldn't get beyond the front door. The entire
roof had collapsed. It was a mess, a hellish pile of wood, jagged
metal, and glass.

"I told them to go together," Trisha said, grief filling her voice.
"The crash was so loud.... I'm surprised you didn't hear it, but then
the disaster alarm started going off...

Chris glanced at her once, but then centered his thoughts. All
right, we use the trailer hitch from the truck; you drive. We'll need
some horsepower to move these metal beams, they look heavy."

"We can't," she replied. "Terry had the keys to the truck in his
pocket. And I don't think the truck had a hitch anyway."

"What about the SUV? Does it have one?"

"I don't remember!" she said hopelessly. She looked tired, yet her
entire body was tensed like a coil, ready to spring.

He grabbed her gently by the shoulders. "We're going to get them
out," he said, speaking slowly. "Because we are all they have."

Trisha nodded solemnly. "I'll make it work," she said as he handed
her the keys to the SUV. She ran.

"Why is this happening?" Chris mumbled to himself. It was
so strange, to run into trouble so quickly after setting out on their cross-country drive. He turned back to the demolished building.
"Give me a hand."

Mae complied. She didn't seem to have much strength to offer,
but she didn't complain at the difficulty of the work either. The two
of them labored silently-without eye contact for a few minutes,
quickly picking up whatever debris they could handle and throwing it
clear. Chris awkwardly stepped over and through much of the debris,
until he was ten yards or so inside the crumbled building. The stench
of rotting food seeped through the wreckage.

"Owen!" Chris shouted. "Terry!"

He turned sharply at a sound only he could hear.

A long piece of plywood was wedged under what looked like an
entire aisle of metal shelving, a dozen feet to his left. He saw something at the edge of the wood that caught his eye, something that
looked like Owen's dark skin. Climbing again until he could reach
the wood, he tugged at it.

It wouldn't budge.

"Help me!" he shouted. "I think Owen's under here!"

Mae stepped over the debris until she was next to him, looking
at the spot he was concentrating on. Working together, they strained
to pull up on the long metal shelves. But they remained firmly in
place.

"I need something," he said, his eyes darting about. "Something
to use as a lever ... A crowbar maybe, or a--

"Shovel?" Mae asked.

He let out an angry breath and forced himself not to glare at
her.

Just then, there was the roar of a powerful engine as a rusted tow
truck barreled across the strip mall's parking lot. The driver threw it
into a spin so that it screeched to a halt just in front of the toppled
store, its rear facing Chris and Mae.

Trisha piled out of the truck and ran around behind to find Chris
staring at her, astonished.

"Where did you find that?" he cried.

"We passed it a few blocks from where we parked the cars. It
was outside a garage."

Chris inspected the inside. The ancient gasoline engine was running, but there was nothing in the ignition. "You hot-wired it?" he
asked, impressed.

Trisha nodded as if she wasn't really listening.

The three of them sprang into action, using rope and chains to
attach the back of the truck to the large metal shelving.

"Where did you learn how to hot-wire a gasoline car?" Chris
couldn't resist asking as they worked.

"Oldest of seven kids, remember?" she replied. "You learn things.
Mostly how to take care of the people you care about. Whatever it
takes."

With the tow truck's help, they had the metal and the wood out of
the way quickly, and they found Owen, bleeding from an ugly scrape
to the back of his head and unconscious. As Chris and Trisha carefully
hefted him from the ground, he began to mumble, delirious.

"Clara ... please be with me on this, Clara ..." he said low, just
above a whisper. "I need you ... I always need you, babe, you know
I need you ... But I have to do this...