TORMENT (9 page)

As the planet spun beneath them, Austin began to wonder how what he saw was possible. The entire planet had vanished beneath a roiling thick cloud of smoke and fallout. The fiery flares continued, but he no longer saw pulses of light, more like bolts of orange lightning, slipping through the sooty atmosphere.

“Is this real?” Mia asked.

 “It’s real,” he whispered, then cleared his throat. “I’m not sure how it’s possible. I suppose no one really knew what unleashing that amount of destructive energy would do.”

Austin returned to the view of Earth, watching the flashes of orange cut through the black atmosphere.
“Looks like some kind of chain reaction was triggered.
Maybe volcanoes...or some kind of lightning. I don’t know.”

Mark, the priest, silently floated toward them. They moved aside as he arrived and looked out the portal. He stared in silence for a moment. He asked no questions.
Made no comment.
After a minute, his lips turned down.

“Better make your peace,” he said and then pushed away from the wall. He floated across the room like an apparition, looking both of them in the eyes before spinning away.

ORBIT

11

Earth Orbit

Vanderwarf, the lone female Secret Service officer stood far to the side of White, one of her three male counterparts, with her arms outstretched toward his face. She held a plastic bag open with tightly clamped fingertips and a turned away face. She’d wedged her feet beneath two handholds so that she could stand on the ceiling, while White held on with both feet and hands so that his violent vomiting wouldn’t simultaneously launch him across the room and send an arc of bile into the zero-G environment. Cleaning liquids in zero-G was a challenge. Cleaning puke was hell.

To his credit, White didn’t seem embarrassed by being the only one to react badly to the lack of gravity. He just latched on and puked when he needed to and acted like his cool, collected, quiet self when he could hold his stomach down.

Mia had watched the action from the corner of the room where she’d been holding Elizabeth since the girl woke up a half hour ago. The fourth Secret Service man, Garbarino, sat brooding, dismantling and reassembling his sidearm, allowing the parts to float in front of him. When he needed a part, he’d just pluck it from the air. Paul and Mark stood by a portal on the far side of the room that looked out at the amazing view of the stars. They’d been talking seriously the whole time, but didn’t seem to be arguing. Collins stood by a portal on the near side, hands against the steel walls, peering down at the swirling black world below that looked more like an alien planet than the world they’d called home only forty-five minutes ago. He had yet to say a word.

Five minutes after checking everyone for injuries, Austin left the room and sealed them in. He wanted to make sure the rest of the pod was intact before letting them settle in.

Settle in?
Mia thought,
like we’ll ever “settle in” anywhere again. This capsule is our tomb.

She squeezed Elizabeth and kissed her head. She couldn’t bear the thought of watching Elizabeth die or vice-versa, of having Elizabeth watch her die. But what was the point of living now anyway?
Survival instinct?
They could do nothing meaningful with their lives now. The human race had been reduced from more than six billion to ten. Maybe they would be better off just ending it all, like some Stephen King novel, everyone can just shoot each other in the head. The Secret Service team packed enough hardware to get the job done.

A form rose up from the floor, lacking any kind of grace, and hit the ceiling.
Chang.
She’d been crying quietly since waking. The dynamic duo of Paul and Mark had tried to console her, but to no avail. They gave up and took up the position by the portal. Chang pushed gently off the ceiling and floated toward Mia. Her eyes were swollen and red, but the tears had stopped, or perhaps she’d just run out.

Swinging her arms like a kid on a balance beam, Chang tried to slow her approach, but only managed to flip herself over. “Whoa!”

 Elizabeth ducked as Chang’s rear end struck Mia’s face. The impact felt more embarrassing than painful. Not wanting Chang to bounce off like a pinball and spin around the room, Mia took hold of her legs and held her tight. Both looked toward the other’s face.

“Sorry,” Chang said. Then she squinted awkwardly. “You know you’re standing on the ceiling?”

Mia looked at Chang’s face, askew with confusion, upside down...yet right side up, and snorted.

And for some reason, Lionel Richie’s
Dancing
On The
Ceiling
popped into her head and she sang, “Oh what a feeling, when we’re dancing on the ceiling.”

Then she laughed, slowly at first as she attempted to conceal her smile behind Chang’s upturned leg, but then breaking out into an uncontrollable laugh. Chang joined in, then Elizabeth, and the three unloaded a world’s worth of anxiety by finding humor in their current, ridiculous situation. Across the room, White vomited loudly and they laughed even more. “Thanks,” White said after finishing. Vanderwarf just smiled at them. Everyone else seemed too preoccupied with their own thoughts to notice the laughing women.

Mia righted herself and Elizabeth so that their feet were once again facing the floor. The move sent a wave of nausea through her body, but it passed quickly. She came face to face with Chang as they both reached out for something to stop their movement. “You okay?” Mia asked once her movement had stopped.

Chang nodded. “It’s just a hard concept to get used to—the end of the world, living in space, never finishing the final season DVD of
Battlestar
.”

Mia smiled. She hadn’t liked Chang much when they first met. The woman had seemed uptight. But Mia could now see that had been her “at work” personality. This was the real Chang.
A little goofy.
Very clumsy.
A
Battlestar Galactica
nerd.
And they shared a sense of humor, even if it was inappropriate.

“How about you?”
Chang asked.

How could she answer that question? Americans had a slew of standby answers to the question: Okay. Not bad.
Same old, same old.
They were reserved for small talk with strangers or reuniting with friends, but almost never were questions meant to garner anything other than one of the standard answers. Anything more became annoying. But now, America and its societal norms no longer existed. Besides, it seemed like Chang actually wanted to know. “My fiancé was Matthew Brenton.”

A pang of guilt struck when she said the word fiancé. If life on Earth hadn’t come to an abrupt end and Matt had returned from the war, and learned the truth...? But the world
had
ended. Clean slate, right?

Chang’s smile disappeared. “Oh.”

“Yup.”

“So...” Chang said. “Your fiancé is the scapegoat...for all of this.” Chang motioned toward a nearby portal with a view of the Earth.

“I came to ask the president if he knew where Matt was being held or if he was even still alive. I know the answer to the second question now.” Mia noticed Elizabeth floating around their legs and smiled. “I’ve still got my Liz, though.”

Elizabeth smiled and floated to one of the chairs. Chang lowered her voice. “Does she understand what’s happened? That her mother is...”

Mia was impressed that Chang remembered Margo had been a single mom. But she probably had to remember little details like that all the time. “I’m going to avoid the subject for as long as possible. Children are supposed to be more adaptable...or flexible, or something, than adults, but she’s dealing with enough already, and she’s not talking much. I’ll wait for her to bring it up, if she decides to. Did you lose...have a lot of family?”

“Actually, no.
No husband. No kids.
Only child.
Mom died three years ago. Dad was an asshole.” Chang smiled. “The people in this room are the ones I saw most of the time for the past few years. The rest are probably floating in one of the other pods.”

“Other pods made it?” Mia asked.

“At least two of them,” Chang said. “That’s what the Byers brothers have been looking at.”

“Then there are other survivors?”

“Probably not many, but some, yeah.”

Mia started moving toward the nearest far side portal to get a look for herself, when the steel door next to her clunked loudly as it unlocked and swung open. She bounced out of the way as Austin floated into the room. “Sorry,” he said. “The door didn’t hit you, did it?”
Mia shook her head, no.

“Good,” Austin said. “I need you for a minute.”

“Me?” Mia asked. “Not one of them?” Mia motioned to the rest of the room.

Austin looked around the rest of the room and frowned slightly.
“Just you.”
He looked at Chang. “Can you watch Liz?”

Mia realized Tom was making an effort to be extra friendly, even using Elizabeth’s nickname, but she still felt uncomfortable that he wanted her, exclusively, to join him.
“Why me?”

Tom fixed his eyes on hers.
“Now.”
He slipped back through the door without another word. She looked back at Chang, whose face had lost some of its regained composure and asked, “Keep an eye on her?”

Chang nodded. “No problem.”

“You listen to Ms. Chang, Liz,” Mia said to Elizabeth. “I’ll be right back.”

Elizabeth saluted in response,
then
floated over to Chang. “Can we talk to the president?”

As Chang answered, Mia followed Austin through the door, wondering what he intended to talk about...or do...and in that instant, realized she was trapped in an oversized escape pod with a bunch of total strangers under extreme circumstances. If one of them went on a rampage, there would be no place to hide.

As Austin locked the door behind her, she realized that if he intended to take advantage of the situation...of her...no one would come to her rescue. The loud hiss of the thick door being sealed told her no one would even hear her scream. As Tom pushed off the door and slid through the zero gravity
tunnel
, straight toward her, she prepared for a fight.

12

Mia braced herself against the tunnel wall as Austin drifted toward her, arms outstretched, hands open, ready to grab. Her thoughts turned toward her karate training. Before becoming a reporter and after a near death car accident in high school sidetracked what was almost a starlet singing career, she found a home in the martial arts. It began as physical therapy after the accident, but soon became a passion. She quickly became a black belt and began teaching adult and children’s classes of her own. The problem with karate instruction in rural New Hampshire is that it doesn’t pay the bills. She took a job with Foster’s Daily Democrat as a reporter, thanks to her night-school degree in English and a friend in circulation. The karate came in handy once, with an unruly interviewee, but she’d been out of practice since. As Austin’s thick hands reached out toward her, she wished she’d stuck with it. Not that it would do her much good in zero gravity.

Just as Mia was about to lash out with a kick to his groin, Austin reached past Mia’s head, took a handhold and pulled himself further down the tunnel. “This way,” he said.

Mia did her best to conceal her sigh of relief and focused on slowing her breathing as she followed after Austin. She couldn’t crack up now. She’d survived the worst the world had to offer and for Elizabeth’s sake, would do her damnedest to pull them through this and provide her with some semblance of a life.

But what kind of life could she really offer the child?
A life worth living?
There were no other children. No trees or grass. No pets. She would grow up in a space the size of a large house, with no gravity, no fresh food, nothing that resembled any semblance of a human life on Earth. And all she’d have for company, aside from her aunt, was a small group of adults, at least one of whom was likely to go insane and kill the rest. Astronauts were screened, trained and mentally prepared for living like this, but this group...she doubted any of them, with the possible exception of Austin, had the right stuff.