Higher Ground (21 page)

Zach looked around at the group, taking a ten-minute rest break. “No. We should make the most of the light.” He raised the binoculars and looked into the basin. “Do you think it’s them? The rest of the residents?”

“It’s got to be. That’s a lot of vehicles on the move. Maybe enough for everyone.”

“Could they really move everyone? There must be people too ill to move. Or women about to give birth.”

“They’ll have figured something out.”

“I hope so.” He watched for a while longer, then gave the glasses back to Adam. “But I still think we need to continue climbing for another hour. We’ll stop then, while we have some light to put the tents up.”

“You’re a martinet, you know?”

“Someone has to be. If you were deciding, we’d still be taking hourly naps in the meadows in the foothills.”

Adam grinned. “Are you suggesting I’m lazy, Dr. Benesh?”

“I’ve never known a man who valued five more minutes in bed as highly as you do.”

Adam laughed. “You’re not far wrong, actually. Being lazy is how I ended up here. Okay, everyone,” he called to the group. “Captain Bligh here says to get on your feet and keep climbing.” There was some groaning and protests that it hadn’t been ten minutes. But people clambered up, and in a few minutes, they were climbing again.

Zach and Adam walked in the rear this time. Adam found he rather liked it. Though people glanced back at them often enough, he didn’t feel as if he had one hundred and fifty pairs of eyes watching his every move the way he did when they walked in front. A few spots of rain hit them but didn’t last long, as the wind picked up and clouds scudded across the sky.

“So, how did you end up here because you’re lazy?” Zach asked after a few minutes.

“Oh, that.” Adam sighed. “We’re about the same age, right? But I’m still a doctoral candidate while you’re a PhD. Okay, you’re really smart, but I’m not exactly a knuckle-dragger. I should have my doctorate by now—according to my parents anyway. They were getting a little tired of funding my eternal studenthood, which I guess is reasonable. I have been milking it a bit.”

“But why here?”

“Working for the Institute meant they’d sponsor my studies, so I could take some of the financial pressure off the folks. But also because it’s so dull here.”

“Dull?” Zach goggled.

“I meant before you came along. There isn’t much social life. There aren’t twenty different bars to hang out in. So I can give my studies one hundred percent effort. I don’t think I ever gave anything one hundred percent effort, except for partying.” He frowned, serious suddenly, surprised at himself. “Wow. Never thought of it that way before. Yeah. I’m more a man who gives ninety percent. The extra push to one hundred is too much work.”

“You like to take the time to enjoy life, not just work, study, and sleep. I should have done the same.”

He did seem like someone who could have benefited from a little more socializing during his many years of study. Adam wished he’d known Zach then. He’d have given him some advanced lessons in relaxing.

“Well, it’s all screwed now. I’ll have to start over with my experiments.” Adam grimaced. “A year of work, gone.”

“It’s not gone yet. You never know, I might be wrong about the whole island flooding.”

“You don’t believe that for a minute. Anyway, if you’re wrong, you’ll leave. I don’t want you to leave, Zach. I’m not done with you yet.” He couldn’t imagine a time when he would be done with Zach. He grinned. “You’ve grown on me, you big-nosed smart aleck.”

“You could—” Zach began, but his words were drowned when all the dogs began to bark and howl. The group came to a halt, fear spreading through it rapidly.

“Oh shit,” Adam groaned. “Here we go again.”

“Get down,” Dr. Howie yelled. “Everyone on the ground.” The minor injuries he’d dealt with so far had mostly been to people knocked off their feet by shaking ground. People dropped, grabbing kids and dogs, holding them close to keep them from running off in a panic. Zach and Adam hit the dirt and held on to each other, as they had done in the tent the night before.

The roar came, rising from the earth, as if something in the rock awoke and cried out in rage. The tremor started. The ground rippled. It seemed slight at first, but it grew in intensity. Loose rock bounced down the slope. It went on. And on. It didn’t stop after only a few seconds as it had before.

Zach groaned. A sound of total despair. He pulled Adam closer, buried his face against Adam’s neck, and spoke in a muffled voice.

“Adam, I love you.”

Adam pulled back, startled, looking down at Zach in his arms. The trembling, roaring ground became almost distant, almost meaningless. He saw the sincerity in Zach’s eyes. The words were true. Torn from him by the fear of death but no less sincere for that. More so.

“Zach…”

The roar lessened, quieted; the shaking eased.

“Zach.” Adam leaned closer, lowering his voice—not that anyone was remotely interested in anything they had to say right then, other things on their minds. “Zach, I love you too.”

“You don’t have to say it just because I did.”

“I’m not.” He’d fallen in love with him at the mass meeting, he realized. Seeing him on stage, taking this awful burden onto his shoulders, stepping into a role that didn’t come naturally to him, purely because it had to be done. Adam fell in love with him then; he couldn’t deny it.

“Zach! Adam!” Korrie’s voice, high and panicky. She ran to them, slipping on loose rock. “Look. The vents! The vents!” She thrust her binoculars into Zach’s hands as he and Adam scrambled to their feet.

Zach raised the glasses. Adam did the same with his, joined by many other people, looking out at the basin with binoculars or just their eyes. The ground trembled again, and some people dropped to lie down, but Zach and Adam didn’t lie down. Most of the people watching the basin didn’t lie down. They were transfixed with horror.

Water blasted from the mouths of vents as it would from a high-pressure hose, spraying and surging across the basin from the base of the mountains. It kept coming. How far had the island sunk in the quakes? If the coast side of a vent was completely submerged, the water would come through it like an express train, and it wouldn’t stop.

“No,” Zach whispered, the word barely audible over the rumbling coming from the ground, caused by the force of the water flooding through the channels in the base of Shusara mountain. Adam directed his binoculars down to where they’d left their vehicles, to see water pouring across the land. The vehicles must have been washed away like so many toys.

But he didn’t care about those. The water was covering the road, and more water came from every direction. The vehicles on the road, the rest of the residents of Arius, racing desperately for the hills, didn’t have a chance. He thanked God he couldn’t see it well as the water overwhelmed the road, sweeping away everything in its path.

The picture blurred as tears obscured his vision. When he heard the sound of a choked sob, he turned from the horrible sight and looked at Zach. Tears streaked his paper-white face.

“Why couldn’t I have been wrong?” He tossed down the binoculars and dropped to the ground, his head in his hands. Korrie knelt beside him, her arms around him. She spoke softly in a soothing, motherly tone, and stroked his hair gently. Adam wanted to take her place, offering Zach comfort, but as the trembling ground stilled and the rumbling stopped, he turned to see people looking at him. Looking first at Zach, but then at him. Zach couldn’t address them with some inspirational words this time, so they looked to Adam instead. What the hell did he say? People were crying for their dead friends. What could anyone say to them?

“Adam,” Simon said. “The distress call just stopped.”

Oh hell, we didn’t need to hear that
. Of course it had stopped. Arius had been wiped off the face of the planet. People didn’t need to be reminded. He glanced at Zach again, who had tears running freely down his face, staring out over the basin as it rapidly turned into a sea. Not seeing it, though, his gaze elsewhere. A thousand-yard stare which told Adam Zach was not the man in charge right now.

Which meant Adam was.

“We’ve got at least another hour of daylight,” he said. “Let’s use it.”

People stared at him as if he’d suggested they leave their children behind. Even Zach looked up at him with some shock.

“Perhaps this is a good place to stop for the night,” Simon said quietly. But Adam shook his head.

“That water isn’t going to stop. The interior flooding is only going to accelerate the sinking. We have to keep moving.” They couldn’t waste a second. All the abstract theory had been swept away like the hundreds of people down there. “Get ready to go.”

He went to Zach and helped him to his feet. “You walk with Ann. I’ll go up front for a while. Let me be the bad guy, okay?”

Zach almost smiled. He raised a hand to touch Adam’s face. “You could never be a bad guy. I’ll come and join you as soon as I pull myself together.”

Adam left him and strode through the crowd with a show of confidence he didn’t feel inside. When he reached the front, he turned back around to face the group. They were ready. They were still crying. The dogs were still whimpering. But the adults had their packs on, the small children scooped up or riding in backpacks.

They were ready, and Adam felt proud of them. He had no stirring words. None would be adequate. Instead, he led by example, turning to face the uphill slope and climbing. Their tribe followed him.

Chapter Eighteen

They walked for nearly an hour and a half, braving the twilight to make it a little bit farther. Only once it became dark enough to be dangerous did Adam agree to stop. Many people didn’t erect their tents. Some didn’t even eat dinner. They unrolled their bedrolls and sleeping bags and bivouacked right there. A few gathered around the campfire and ate and talked quietly.

When Adam joined them by the fire, sitting down beside Zach, he found Korrie talking about the early days of the colony and her fellow founders, many of whom had died today. A renegade she might have been, but those people had been her friends. She’d been the firmest believer in Zach’s prediction, but to see it come true so horribly must have shaken even her.

“The day we finished the atmosphere processing, that’s the day old Davey Johnson showed what he was made of. All the readings in the world meant nothing until we actually saw someone outside the dome, breathing the air. And David said as head of mission, he had to be the one.”

“Did anyone argue?” Visha asked, a smile on her face at the wry question.

“Not for long, no.” Korrie managed a smile too. “So he put on a pressure suit and went outside. Everyone—I mean every single one of us—stood watching him through a window by the airlock. He took some readings, triple-checked them, and then took his helmet off. I’ve never known five seconds to last so long in my life. That’s how long the old atmosphere would have taken to kill him before we processed it. And after five seconds was up…”

“I bet you all went nuts,” Adam said.

“Yep. So did David. Dancing, jumping up and down. He even did a cartwheel.”

Adam boggled at the thought, remembering the frail old man he’d last seen only a few days ago. “A cartwheel? In a pressure suit? Is that even possible?”

“He managed it. He was a lot more limber in those days than he is—”

She stopped, and her face turned stricken. She didn’t correct the
is
to the past tense. Zach abruptly stood up and walked away without a word.

“Better go with him,” Dr. Howie said to Adam. He didn’t need the suggestion, already getting to his feet. He hurried after Zach as the darkness swallowed him up.

“Zach, wait up.”

“Leave me alone,” Zach’s choked voice came back.

“Never going to happen.” Zach sped up, but Adam matched his pace and caught up to him. “At least let’s use a flashlight before we break our necks.” He took one from his pocket and turned it on.

“Adam, please, I need to be alone for a while.”

“No, you need to cry or scream or whatever you need to do. You don’t need to be alone for that. You shouldn’t be alone.”

Zach didn’t answer, kept on walking until the voices from the camp faded, and even the campfire was only a distant glow. At last he stopped and dropped to the ground, facedown. Adam lay close beside him, feeling the convulsions of Zach’s body as the sobbing took hold. He didn’t shush him; he didn’t try to stop him. He only stroked his hair and back in a soothing rhythm to let him know he wasn’t alone.

He shed tears too and didn’t wipe them away, let them fall onto the tough, hardy grass they lay on. After a few minutes, Zach stilled. A moment after that, he turned into Adam’s arms.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re right. I didn’t need to be alone. It’s better you’re here.”

“I’ll always be here for you.”

“What I said earlier… What we both said…”

“It stands. It’s the truth. But we’ll talk about it when this is over.”

“Okay.” He snuggled against Adam and rested a hand on his chest, over his heart. Did he want to feel the beat of Adam’s heart to remind him death was still a long way behind them? They could stay ahead of it. They
would
stay ahead of it.

“I didn’t realize it would hurt so much,” Zach said. “I knew the people who didn’t come with us would die, and I’d feel awful about it, but I didn’t know it would be this bad.”

“When it’s real it’s very different from what you imagine it will be.”

“The thing is, I don’t usually feel…connected to people, I suppose you’d call it. I don’t know if it’s because I was rather sheltered as a child, or because I’m smarter than most people, which sometimes gives me a feeling I’m not one of them. But these people—all of them, the ones with us, Barbara’s group, the people who died today—I almost feel like they’re family. I just don’t know if I can stand to lose anyone else and stay sane. If Barbara’s group doesn’t move fast enough—”

“They’ll move fast enough. The water is already rising. That’s gonna be a hell of an incentive.”

“And if it rises faster than they can climb?”