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Chapter 10
Zach Croft: 2053
Where is it? Zach thought, white-knuckling the wheel of his sky-colored truck.
He looked from window to window, his eyes scanning the dense forest that lined the narrow road. Finally, he spotted a small mailbox nailed to a tree, carved with one word: OWEN.
Zach swung his truck into a cutout on the side of the road and parked. He got out and took in a breath of clean forest air. Ryker climbed out of the passenger side. He anchored a hand on his hip. “You really think this guy knows anything about what happened?”
“He said he didn’t at first. But then, why would he have called?”
“It just seems a little sketchy to me. Why didn’t he want people to know we were coming? What if it’s a trap?”
“He’s an old man, Ryker. What’s he going to do?”
Zach stepped off the road and ducked under an arching branch. His feet shuffled through leafy detritus as he listened to the rustle of animals rooting in the underbrush and the scrabbling of lizards on tree bark.
“And you’re sure you know where we’re going?” Ryker asked while dragging his fingers across a patch of syrup-like sap.
“Think so,” Zach replied. He saw a stone-lined pathway that led deep into the woods. The gravel crunched as they stepped onto the path.
Zach looked up at the trees looming overhead. They waved back and forth like slow-dancing giants, and he couldn’t help but notice how beautiful his surroundings were. There weren’t many trees in Pasadena anymore. Just a few sad, drooping palms. But the mountains were lush with towering pines and ancient redwoods.
“This certainly beats the Slabs,” Ryker commented, taking in the forest. He cautiously stepped over a fallen branch, then swiped at a hanging cobweb.
Zach thought back to playing Alien Hunter in Prescott, realizing it was the last moment they spent truly happy in the colony. Beyond that point, all Zach could remember was the blood. The boils. The bruises. The egg-yoke eyes. He and Ryker taking turns watching their parents die. All of the suffering.
“Is that all we have in common anymore?” Zach flashed an awkward smile. “Mars?”
“Well, look at you, and look at me. How much does it look like we have in common?”
“We were friends once. We’ve gotta have something.”
“We don’t, okay?”
“Come on. It’s been a long time, but you’re still the same old Ryker.”
Ryker puffed in exasperation, stopping in the middle of the path. “We’re both alive, Zach. Who gives a shit if we both like the color blue?” Ryker continued down the trail and caressed his scarred wrist and forearm. A scoff escaped him. “Same old Ryker, my ass. What about the flares? According to you, we’re both gonna be fried in a year. We have that in common!”
“I know it’s not what you were expecting—”
“You’re damn right it’s not.”
“If you’re so disappointed, why’d you come back? After this long?”
“Took me a long time to override the system.” Ryker eyed Zach.
“And how did you manage that?” Zach passed under a stone overhang. Dew drops dribbled down the walls, creating small, reflective puddles in the paste-like sludge. A drop splashed on his forehead. He wiped it away.
“Can you stop asking questions, Zach?”
“Yeah… sure.” As he approached a bend in the path, Zach wrinkled his nose. An acrid smell filled the air, dense and smoky, like ash. He started walking faster.
Ryker spoke from behind him. “Hey, do you smell—”
“Yeah,” Zach said as he rounded the bend. He stopped. His eyes went wide.
“What is it?” Ryker asked. He came around the bend and saw what Zach was seeing.
Wilford’s house was ablaze.
Zach ran toward the cabin with Ryker just behind him.
As they got closer, they saw that, despite the thick smoke, the fire had mostly burnt itself out, except for a few small spots of lingering flame and glowing embers. The house’s walls were stone, so only the wooden parts had burned. It was a miracle the blaze hadn’t sparked a forest fire, but thankfully, the house was in a wide clearing lined with fireproof hardscape that seemed to have kept the damage contained.
Zach leaped over the collapsed porch and rushed to the front door. It was locked. He hammered his fist against the paneling. “Wilford! Wilford, can you hear me?”
There was no response. Zach threw his shoulder against the charred wooden door until it split. He pressed his face to the opening. Smoke burned his eyes, but he refused to pull away.
“I can’t see anything!” he said to Ryker, then shouted through the opening, “Wilford!”
“Zach, move!” Ryker pulled him out of the way, stuck his arm through the gap, unlatched the door, and threw it open. Zach pushed past him and into the house.
“Wilford! Are you here? Wilford!” he called. Black ash fell in noxious clouds from above and settled on the uneven floor. Scraps of papers that had escaped the feathers of flame drifted through the air. The entire structure creaked and groaned.
Zach moved across the remains of the sprawling living room. Ryker went in the opposite direction, then announced, “Zach! In here!”
Zach followed the sound of Ryker’s voice and found him peering through a hole punched in the drywall. Inside the room, a pair of boots stuck out from behind a large desk. “Is that him?”
A fallen bookshelf blocked off the door to the room.
“Come on, help me!” Zach said.
Together, they took the two sides of the heavy shelf and heaved it aside. Zach grasped the doorknob, then drew his hand away with a hiss. It was still hot to the touch. He banged on the door, shouting, “Wilford! Are you okay?”
A series of pops echoed behind them, and a massive portion of the ceiling collapsed in a swirl of smoke and ash.
“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Ryker said.
“Not yet.” Zach drove his shoulder into the door, refusing to leave Wilford to the flames. The wood splintered on impact, but the door held strong.
Ryker begrudgingly did the same, charging at the door with his face pressed inside his jacket. After a few hits, the frame finally cracked, and the door collapsed inward. Ryker tumbled into the room with Zach at his rear.
As they entered the office, Zach nearly slipped on a carpet of torn book pages and letters, all singed and jagged at the corners, some still shrinking from flames. A fallen cabinet stood between him and the desk, its contents spilled out over the crumbling ground. Vaulting it, Zach circled the table and prepared to help Wilford. But upon seeing the old man, he recoiled in disgust. The back of his hand found his lips. “Goddamn it!”
Zach let Ryker pass, then looked at the crumpled body behind the desk. Its skin was blackened, burnt to the bone. Its skeletal fingers still clutched the melted remains of a phone.
“What happened?” Ryker asked.
Zach shook his head. “I don’t fucking know!”
Ryker walked over to the large stone fireplace. The remains of several logs were still glowing orange. “Maybe the fireplace?” He scooped up a metal poker and jabbed at logs. A swarm of embers swirled up the chimney like fireflies. “Maybe a spark flew out and started a fire?”
“How would it get so out of control? He’s right there! He could have just stomped it out! Or thrown a glass of water on it.”
“Unless he was already dead,” Ryker interjected. “Before the fire started.”
“We don’t have time for this.” Zach pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed in his passcode.
“What’re you doing?” Ryker asked.
“Calling the cops, what do you think?”
Ryker snatched the phone out of his hand. “You can’t call the cops.”
“Why not?”
“You really think the police will believe we just happened to find a burning cabin in the forest? They’ll think we did it.”
“So, what do we do?”
Ryker handed Zach’s phone back to him. “Get as far away as possible.”
“We can’t just leave him!”
“Why not? He’s not gonna know the difference.” Ryker started walking out of the room. “Come on.”
“Hang on a second,” Zach said, but Ryker didn’t stop. “Okay, fine. Wait up!”
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Ryker said as he headed for the front door. “I told you—” Suddenly, there was a loud crack. Ryker stopped, wobbled, then froze. Before he could react, the floor under him caved in. Ryker yelled in surprise as he disappeared into a pitch-black chasm.
“Ryker!” Zach sprinted to the edge of the hole and peered in. A choking cloud of dust, smoke, and ash billowed out. From somewhere far below, Zach could hear coughing and groaning. He got down on his stomach and leaned into the hole, waving the smoke out of his face. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m okay,” grunted Ryker from the darkness.
Zach swiped at his phone screen and turned on the flashlight. He shined the beam down into the hole until he spotted Ryker lying on his back in a pile of rubble, his face smeared with soot. A thin trickle of blood leaked from his hairline, which Ryker caressed with his finger as he sat up. He looked up at Zach. “Where am I?”
“I’m not sure.” A wave of embers rolled across the ground behind Zach, and he jumped away in surprise. Pretty soon, he wouldn’t be able to stand anywhere without igniting his pants. They needed to get out of there fast.
Ryker looked around at his surroundings and squinted into the darkness. “Toss me your phone.”
Zach dropped it through the hole. “What is it?”
Ryker caught the phone and shined it around him. “Looks like the fire never made it to the cellar.” He struggled to his feet and limped out of Zach’s view.
Zach leaned further over the hole, trying to see where Ryker went. He heard Ryker curse under his breath. “What do you see?” Zach asked.
Ryker appeared back under the hole and looked up at Zach. “You better get down here.”
Ryker Gagarin: 2030
Once the ground stopped shaking, the rumble of crumbling buildings was replaced with screams, sharp and blood-curdling, slicing through the air like serrated knives. Ryker could barely contain his wails as the schoolhouse wall, which had snapped at the center, pinned him to the ground. A bent shard of it dug into his thigh.
The pain radiated from his knee up to his hip, but he was unsure how much blood he had lost or how deep the jagged metal burrowed. It tore at his nerves and made suppressing a whimper that much harder.
What happened? A pulsing sensation on his brow suggested a blow to the head, but he couldn’t remember.
He did his best to search the landscape, but all he could see were corpses, wreckage, and smoke spilling from the ruins. As far as the eye could see, nearly every hab unit had crumpled to the ground. All that remained were the steel frames that used to hold them up, along with tangles of torn fabric and cabling scattered across open sand.
No, wait, there was Zach. And Sophia. A few others, too. They were lying face down in a messy half-circle where the schoolhouse used to be. All around them, desks were turned over and bent, and a fire had started near the entrance. Zach started to regain consciousness, holding one of the desks for leverage and standing up.
“Help,” Ryker croaked. Before he could repeat his plea, Zach stumbled over and fell down next to him.
“Ryker!” He wrapped his arms around the free parts of Ryker’s shoulders. “I’m going to get you out of here.” Then, he looked over his shoulder and called, “Sophia, we need help! Wake up!”
Sophia raised her sand-covered face. At first, she seemed confused. Then she realized what Zach was referring to and swooped in to help.
Fingers poked at Ryker’s damaged skin. Someone pulled a cloth under the stabbing metal to soften its edge. The pain weakened a bit. Ryker was vaguely aware of Zach and Sophia pulling up on the debris, then rolling him out of the way as it crashed back down.
With the metal no longer covering Ryker’s wound, Zach could tear away some of his pants and wrap the strip around the deep gash. “Does it hurt?” He found a bottle of water and poured it over Ryker’s leg. “We’ll get you to the medbay, okay, Ryker?”
The water felt like acid against the cut. “Where?” One look around could tell you there was nowhere safe, sturdy, or even in one piece. “You know what…” He couldn’t even finish, his mind too foggy to form anything intelligible. But he just had to know one thing. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter right now. We’ll deal with it later.” By this point, Zach had managed to get Ryker standing, testing his damaged leg’s strength. “Sophia, go get my dad.”
“What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll get Ryker to the medbay, but have my dad meet us. Go.”
With her orders, Sophia ran in the direction of the medbay. Zach supported Ryker as they limped through the sand. Ryker wondered where his parents were. He hadn’t seen his mom since breakfast when she dropped her dehydrated egg plate. And his father… When was the last time he saw him? Last night?
As Ryker limped through the lines of crumbled buildings, he began to notice the number of people who were dead or injured. Bodies were strewn around the street, broken and crumpled, trapped under collapsed hab units. Ryker noticed a pile of sheet metal and pipes beside the crumbled maintenance bay. Legs jutted out from beneath it. He recognized the boots. “No…” Ignoring the pain in his leg, Ryker limped toward the boots and crashed down next to the pile.
He pulled back handfuls of rock and metal, his fingers turning bloody from the rubble’s jagged edges. He kept shoveling, throwing the debris aside to uncover the body underneath. By the time the pile was reduced to only larger beams, Ryker’s fists had turned the color of the sand beneath him. He picked at shreds of fabric, eventually uncovering a face.
The flesh was pale as paper, with cuts drawn across the cheeks and forehead. “Dad!” Ryker yelped. “Dad, can you hear me? Wake up!” He tapped Cage’s face several times, but his father didn’t stir.
“Step back.” Ryker turned to see Quinton jogging up behind him. He rolled up his sleeves, and checked Cage’s pulse. A flicker of hope crossed his face. “His heart’s beating.”
Ryker smoothed out his father’s hair as he spoke to Quinton. “Please, do something.”
Ryker tuned out the world as memories of his father filled his thoughts. He wasn’t as close with Cage as with his mother, but Cage was a good dad. Ryker could remember one time in particular when they went on a trip to the Bahamas for the summer. There was good food. Great weather. It was awesome. But on the third day, Ryker ventured too far out in the clear-as-day ocean, and with his swimming skills not dialed in yet, he found himself in a precarious situation. He clawed to stay above the surface as water filled his lungs. Miraculously, Cage had seen him from the dock and dove in to get him. Just as Ryker lost consciousness, his father’s powerful arms closed around his body and pulled him to shore. He had saved Ryker’s life.
So now, as Ryker watched Quinton fail to do the same for his father, something tore within him. Tears welled in his eyes, but he told himself to get rid of them and wiped them away with the back of his sleeve. His father would wake up. There was nothing to worry about! Cage would open his eyes and be carried off to the medbay. Ryker looked around in search of the medical building but realized that it, too, had been destroyed. Whatever. That was only a minor setback. Some of the supplies must have survived. The colony hadn’t had an explosion; it was just an earthquake, right? Or a meteor? Something like that. Okay, yeah. Once Cage was awake, Quinton could get the necessary supplies, remove the shrapnel in his torso, and patch him up! They’d be eating dinner together before they even knew it.
The first part of Ryker’s plan seemed to fall in place as Cage’s eyes opened. He gave a painful cough, blood—wait, what?—splattering on his chin. His mouth hung open, flooded with red. It didn’t look good.
Quinton said things to him like, “Can you hear me?” and “You’re going to be okay.” Cage’s eyes, wide with terror, moved from Quinton’s face to his son’s. He extended his damaged hand to caress Ryker’s face. Ryker pressed it against his cheek.
“H-Hey, there,” Cage sputtered with something resembling a smile. His teeth were stained with blood. “I’m okay. Don’t you g-go worrying about me.”
Ryker nodded. “Quinton’s going to make you all better. You hear?” Quinton looked at him with a solemn expression, clearly hesitant to make the obvious known. Cage’s eyes traveled to his son’s thigh. “Your l-leg.”
“I know, Dad. I know. It’s fine,” Ryker lied.
“You were always the s-strong one,” Cage started but was interrupted by Quinton.
“I’ll go to medbay to see if anything survived. Just sit tight; try not to move. We’ll get you through this.” Quinton took off.
Cage nodded and managed a look at the lower half of his body. One chunk of steel was embedded deep in his abdomen. Another smaller one bulged from his side. “I guess I’m p-pretty m-messed up, aren’t I?” The life slowly drained from his face.
“It could be worse,” Ryker said with optimism, swallowing hard. “Really. I mean it.”
Cage tried to laugh, but a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth set him back. “Mhm. I’m right as rain.” As his eyes began to close, Ryker pushed them back open. “I’m just r-resting, son. Don’t worry.”
How could Ryker not? He’d seen this before in movies. The moment they closed their eyes, it was a done deal. There wasn’t any bringing them back. How long was Quinton going to take, anyway? “I know you are, Dad. But you just have to stay awake a little longer. We’re having mashed potatoes tonight.”
“Oh, r-right. I’ll be there. Save me a spot at the end of the table.” He looked up at the sky. “It sure is nice out. What do you s-say we go to the beach?” Was he forgetting where he was?
“That sounds nice,” Ryker commented, giving his hand a firm squeeze.
“H-Hold on.” Cage slid a silver ring engraved with a G off his finger. “Take this. Don’t lose it, okay?” His words suddenly became clear.
“You’re going to be okay.” Ryker creased his brow.
“Sure, I am. But I still want you to have it.” He nudged the piece of jewelry through the sand. “Please take it. For me.” Proper speech began to take its toll on him, and his face contorted in pain. He coughed again, sending a volley of red a few inches into the air.
He couldn’t just give up. That wasn’t like him. Ryker had once been told a story where Cage had gotten kicked out of a college class but stayed four hours after the day’s end to convince his professor otherwise. Safe to say, he wasn’t a quitter. But then, why was he giving up now?
“Take it, Ryker,” he spat. “P-Please.”
Hesitantly, Ryker moved to claim the ring, sliding it over his finger. “Okay. I promise. I’ll never take it off.” Before he could pull away, Cage took hold of his wrist and held it for a moment, dragging his fingers delicately across Ryker’s skin.
Then, his breathing hitched, and he went still.
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