CHAPTER 11: THE WAVE

Envy saw the sheet of silty gray moving through the Mat-Su Valley and thought it had to be some sort of massive cloud formation. Then her gut told her otherwise.

“Higher!” she cried, echoing Rusty’s words. “Get higher! Rusty, grab Douglass and run. I’ll get the stuff!”

Rusty ducked, threw the doctor over his shoulder with Douglass’s startled oof, and started charging up the hill, no questions asked. Envy stuffed all their gear—as well as Douglass’s shoes and socks—into the duffel and threw it over her shoulder. Then she jumped up and started running after Rusty.

“My shoes!” Douglass cried from the big man’s shoulder.

“Got them!” Envy panted. She took a moment to glance over her shoulder and wished she hadn’t. The wave had already reached the base of the alien structure and was coming fast, faster than they were going to be able to run.

Please let us be high enough, Envy thought, putting as much effort into pumping her legs as she could. She fell, crawled up to her feet by her hands gripping the snowy, stony earth, then kept going. Gods above, let us be high enough…

She heard it hit the mountain behind her with a swishing roar, the sound of tumbling boulders and trees, but she didn’t stop to look. She heard it oncoming with the force of a freight train, too fast, churning and ripping. Lord God, too fast…

They’d made it another hundred feet up the mountain before the splash at the back of her legs told her it was all over.

Thirteen hundred feet, her panicked mind gibbered. It was over thirteen hundred feet…

Water hit her in buckets from the sky, sloshing over her like Loki had decided to dump a cold Jacuzzi on her head. “Run!” Envy screamed as the water pelted her. Ahead of her, Rusty and Douglass were still dry.

After running another hundred feet straight up the mountain, Envy’s lungs finally couldn’t take it any more. She hit the ground hard, the gear—and her companions’ only hope of survival—falling with her. Instinctively, she shoved her arm through the strap and grabbed the biggest rock she could find, determined to hold on. The rest of the wave, however, didn’t come.

When Envy managed to locate her wits long enough to open her eyes, she saw just how close she had come to becoming another statistic. The ground was wet and brown only fifty feet below her, the sides of the mountain still draining saltwater back into the boulder-strewn valley and back out to sea.

Then she saw that hole that the alien ship had carved into the earth was spewing boiling water like a Titanic-sized Old Faithful, turning the sky into a pillar of moisture that dwarfed a volcano eruption.

“Yeee-haaw!” Rusty cried twenty-five feet up the mountain, pumping his fist and laughing. “Yeah!”

“Don’t see what you’re so happy about,” Douglass said. “Considering I’m nose-to-armpit with a guy who probably hasn’t bathed in a year.”

In response, Rusty tugged Douglass from his shoulder and hugged him. “We’re alive, Doc!” he giggled, like a little girl. “You see that?!” He pointed down the mountain.

“No,” Douglass said, not looking.

“Seventy feet and we would’ve drowned. Take that, Mother Nature! Yeeeaah!”

“Jesus, this guy likes to tempt Fate,” Douglass noted, looking right at Envy.

That made Rusty start. “Envy?” He started glancing around. “Captain?!”

He can see me, Envy noted, frowning at Douglass. Hunkered behind a boulder as dusk is falling. What the Hell? It wasn’t until she started moving from behind the rock she’d been clinging to that Rusty caught sight of her, but Douglass had been staring right at her from the beginning.

What, exactly, is he seeing? she wondered.

“Captain Travis!” Rusty cried, with obvious relief. “I thought that wave’d gotten you.”

“It did,” Envy said, shaking water from her coat. “Fuck…I’m soaked through.” Not a good start to another mountainside overnighter. The last one had almost killed her, and this time, they had a smaller fire, a damp sleeping bag, and no tent.

“It hit you, Captain?” Rusty demanded. “Holy shit…and you’re alive?”

“I think it was just the spray,” Envy said. “Whatever it was, it wasn’t very serious.” As if Loki dumping a few Jacuzzis of icewater over her head on a mountaintop in March wasn’t serious…

“You got the matches?” Rusty asked.

“In the bag,” she said, tossing it to him. The matches were in a Ziplock, but already, with the combined ocean water and mountain breeze, Envy was having trouble feeling her extremities. “Damn, guys,” she muttered. “I’m really cold.”

“Sharing body-heat for the win,” Douglass said mirthlessly.

“You’re just trying to get me into bed with you,” Envy said, more playfully than she felt.

“I’m a redhead all over, you know,” was his reply.

Envy snorted at that and went to help Rusty find firewood—what little, scrawny pieces she could find before her hands went numb—then tried to clear another area in the snow to block the wind. Then, when she became too numb to move, she simply sat down and shivered beside Douglass, ditching her wet coat for the relative dryness of the sleeping bag.

“I think we’re probably gonna die up here,” Douglass said casually. “Well, at least you and me. Maybe not him.” He gestured at Rusty, who was bouncing around from snow drift to snow drift, seeking tinder. “He looks like he’s in his element.”

And he did, too. The hillbilly doornail was whistling.

But, with Douglass and her both down for the count, he was their only hope of living through the night. Already, Envy’s shivers were slowing, her body perceptibly growing warmer.

Which, of course, she knew wasn’t true, just a symptom of hypothermia.

Body’s shutting down, she thought. Well, this is it… Guess she wouldn’t get to see the end of the world, after all.

She felt Douglass undressing her before she saw it, and didn’t even try to stop him when she realized what was going on.

“Gimme her pants,” Rusty said, reaching for them. “I’ll get them drying by the fire.” The man had somehow set up a rickety rack of ancient twigs around the fire and took the clothes Douglass handed him to drape across the crude lattice. Then, with a gruffness belying his discomfort, the big guy said, “You two ready to get cozy?”

“Always,” Douglass muttered.

“I’m warm enough,” Envy said, yawning.

“No ya ain’t.” Rusty got down between the two of them, then, with one shoulder around them each, pulled them both in close, right up against his warm, meaty body. Then he rolled over, facing Douglass.

His armpits really did stink, Envy noted.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“You two got penguin blood in you?” Rusty said. “You’re both like ice. Envy, scooch closer. You’re letting the cold in.”

On the other side of the hillbilly, Douglass muttered, “Why are you spooning me? Envy’s the one with hypothermia.”

“Miss Travis is a lady, and she can hug my back. You get dickside, bro.”

“Great.”

“Envy, get closer. Right up against me, okay? Use as much of my heat as you want—I’m a big boy. I’ll make more.” Envy did, but only because the massive arm reached behind him and squeezed her closer until she could barely breathe.

“You know, I could get used to this,” Douglass said from the other side of their portable body-warmer.

“Yeah, well, if you feel something hard in the middle of the night, that’s my dick.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “That wasn’t funny,” Douglass said.

“It’s pretty big, too, so if it feels like a rifle or something, it’s just my dick.”

“On second thought…” Douglass began, throwing off the blanket and starting to sit up, “I’d rather die in a snowbank.”

“Oh come here, ya pansy,” Rusty muttered, grabbing him and yanking him back down. “Gonna be hard enough to survive the night without you letting out the heat.”

There was a long pause, then Envy heard Douglass relax a little once more.

“But seriously, it’s my dick.”

#

When Envy woke the next morning, she was surprised she was doing so. Then she noticed her face was covered in a heavy layer of fine gray dust and, in blinking, she got it into her eyes. The immediate snort and scrabble that followed only made things worse, sucking it into her mouth and lungs.

Her choking woke up the others, and all three of them spent the next few minutes coughing and hacking as a rain of volcanic ash fell all around them.

Well, Envy thought, shoving a full inch of ash off the blanket to stand, Guess that’s why we survived the night. It had acted as an insulator, keeping the three of them warm despite their altitude and shitty situation.

Immediately upon leaving the blanket, Envy realized she was naked but for her underwear and hurried to the remnants of the fire to shake ash from her mostly-dry clothes. Pulling her shirt, pants, and coat back onto her body was an itchy, uncomfortable affair of prying open damp and frozen folds to fit her legs and arms into, all the while covering herself with volcanic ash.

“Was wondering why we were so warm last night,” Rusty said, pinching some of the ash between a big thumb and finger, then glancing up at the sky.

“What the hell is going on?” Douglass demanded, sitting up tensely.

“Volcanic ash,” Envy said. “There’s about an inch on everything right now. Looks like it’s gonna keep falling for awhile.”

Douglass blinked sightlessly at the slope in front of him. “So a volcano went off?”

“Man, from that earthquake yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was several of them,” Rusty said. Grinning, he nudged Douglass with an elbow, almost knocking him over. “You missed it, man. That quake woulda torn my grandmother’s pussy wide—”

“Language!” Envy snapped.

Rusty snapped his mouth shut in an instant. “Sorry, Captain.”

Envy bit down the urge to tell him she wasn’t his captain, that she had no fucking idea what they were going to do next. They were alive, and that’s all that mattered. Alive, breathing, and, as far as she could tell, still maintaining all their limbs and digits. “How’re your feet?” she asked Douglass.

“I can feel them again, if that’s what you’re asking,” Douglass said. “Polearm, here, is a pretty hot sleeper.”

“All those dreams of redheads,” Rusty said, grinning. “Keeps a boy warm at night.”

Envy saw Douglass turn green. “That so.”

“Hokay,” Envy interrupted, before she could review in her mind whether or not Rusty had been thrusting his hips in his sleep, “everybody huddle. We need a plan.”

“My plan is you get spooned tonight,” Douglass said. “I get dibs on moonside.”

“No,” Rusty said, “it’s dickside or no side. Miss Travis is a lady. I won’t be spoonin’ no lady without her permission.”

And Envy wasn’t about to give permission for Rusty to spoon her. When both of them looked at her expectantly—maybe even hopefully?—she quickly cleared her throat and started gathering up the sleeping bag.

“Fuck,” Douglass muttered under his breath.

“All right,” Envy said, stuffing the sleeping bag back into the duffel. “What’s next? I’m not feeling another tsunami coming. Hell, feels pretty good down there right now.” She’d taken a quick look while forcing her frozen pants over her legs and the flattened, churned-up valley—now blanketed in a layer of ash—hadn’t seemed any more doom-and-gloom to her spidey senses than two hundred feet up the mountain. If anything, the higher elevations now felt slightly more dangerous. She glanced at Douglass. “What about you? You feel any earthquakes coming?”

“You mean am I hearing anything screaming?” Douglass asked.

Envy nodded, then realized he couldn’t see her nod and awkwardly said, “Yes.”

“No,” Douglass said. Then he frowned a little and looked up. “But there’s something wrong with the sky.”

Oh joy.

Then he seemed to shake himself with an embarrassed chuckle. “But, I mean, like I said, I think it’s brain damage, not me being tapped in to Mother Earth or anything. I mean, every time either one of you opens your mouth, I see a shower of color that hits everything in all directions, bounces off it like ripples from a stone. He rubbed his shoulders, looking uneasy. “So yeah, if I mysteriously fall into a coma in the next couple of days, that’s your culprit.”

“What’s wrong with the sky, doc?” Rusty said, looking.

“It looks…” Douglass blinked several times, his eyes flickering back and forth. “…pregnant. And not in the Oooh, Let’s Go Paint The Nursery kind of way. More like Lillith got raped by Satan and is spreading her legs to spew wriggling baby hellspawn all over the countryside kind of way.”

That…was graphic.

“It’s just volcanic ash,” Emily said.

Douglass shrugged. “We’re gonna die in the next couple days, anyway.”

“Be positive,” she said.

“Yes, Captain,” Douglass said. She narrowed her eyes at him, then shook her head and went back to the task at hand. “All right. I’m guessing we’ve got about nine hours of daylight left. My gut’s telling me we’re safer in the lowlands than we are up here, there’s more firewood down there, and Douglass is saying we’re not due for another earthquake.

“Just wriggling hellspawn,” he said idly, watching the mountain slopes.

Maybe he was brain damaged. “Thank you,” Envy said. “Rusty, what do you think? Can we get to one of those old mining cabins before nightfall, or should we take our chances down in the valley, in case there’s another earthquake?”

“I could probably carry Douglass to one of those cabins,” Rusty said. Then, almost sheepishly, “If you break trail for me, Captain.”

“No problem,” Envy said. Despite her gut feeling, that was what her brain was telling her was the better choice, and after seeing a wave the size of a mountain lapping at her ankles, Envy was gonna let logic win out.

“Then let’s go,” Envy said. “Maybe we can find some supplies in one of those cabins.” Old curtains, water buckets, anything that they could use…

Out of nowhere, a willow ptarmigan came walking out of the ash, leaving a little trail of stark white under its feathered feet where it had disturbed the ash beneath it. Everyone went quiet, watching. The bird walked until it was a good ten feet from where they huddled, then seemed to see them for the first time and veered to wander back into the heavy cloak of dust.

“Sure would love to have a gun right about now,” Rusty muttered, as the bird disappeared. “Closest ones are in that cache on the other side of the Pass.”

“Maybe one of those mining cabins has something to eat,” Envy said. It was a long-shot, but by this point, after surviving an alien attack, an earthquake, and a tsunami that could have taken out New York City, Envy was willing to roll with those chances.

“That bird was bleeding,” Douglass said. “You can see the blood.” He gestured at the white tracks in the snow.

“There’s no blood,” Envy said.

“Think it ate one. Was looking for a good place to die.”

“Now why the fuck are you trying to creep us out?!” Envy demanded. “We get that you’re depressed, but that’s just cruel.”

“Go check for blood,” Douglass said.

Rusty immediately got up and looked. When he frowned and touched two big fingers to the ground and lifted it to his nose, Envy knew with a sudden, wrenching dread that he had found some.

“Hey!” Rusty cried, his excitement rising in a sudden tide, “Does this mean you can see again, doc?”

“Nope.” He’d gone back to digging through the ash with his fingers. “Just don’t think we should be up here in the snow. We need to get someplace they can’t sneak up on us.”

Envy squinted at Douglass, then glanced at Rusty, who gave her a shrug. She glanced back down the hill, but the thought of passing that high-water-line—the line that clearly stated where they would have died had they been standing there eleven hours earlier—made her instinctively uncomfortable.

“Come on, Rusty,” she said. “Let’s see if we can make that cabin before dark.”

Rusty obediently grabbed the smaller man around his narrow hips and hefted him over a shoulder, then Envy took point, and they began their slow march toward one of the mining cabins a couple miles deeper in the pass.

They’d been going several hours before something heavier than ash hit Envy on the shoulder. She twisted to look, but before she could see what it was, it tumbled down her back and hit the ground with a puff, disappearing under an inch of ash. She kicked around at the snow under the ash, but couldn’t find anything distinguishably solid.

“It’s burrowing,” Douglass said, from Rusty’s shoulder.

Envy jerked to look at the doctor. His eyes were following something under the snow, moving under them. Seeing how focused he was, her spine grew cold. She glanced back up at the sky.

“What did you say you’re seeing up there?” she demanded, inching closer to the other two as her heart started to pound.

“Look like maggots to me,” Douglass said. He shrugged. “But like I said, probably just brain damage.”

Something hit Rusty’s scalp with a palpable thump, and this time, Envy saw it, too. Black and writhing, wriggling like a displaced maggot. “Ow!” Rusty cried, jerking, and the thing tumbled to his empty shoulder. Envy saw it rear up, a many-toothed black mouth pulsing, seeking, and saw it briefly hone in on Rusty’s ear canal, as if it was considering crawling into it.

She let out a scream and batted the thing off Rusty’s shoulder and into the ash. As soon as it fell to the ground, it ducked under the ash and was gone. Douglass, however, was watching it just like he’d watched the other one.

“See?” Douglass said, still placidly riding Rusty’s other shoulder. “Like Lillith decided to shit maggots.”