Offworld (17 page)

They were soaked through every layer of clothing they wore, but
neither of them minded. It was the middle of summer and still warm
enough that hypothermia wasn't a risk. Besides, showers hadn't been available on the Ares, so neither of them had felt the water pelting
them for years. But this was too much. The rain was coming in sheets,
blowing harder and harder against their flesh, and both of them knew
without saying that they couldn't sit here forever.

Still, the moment lingered peacefully.

Trisha decided that if the story of Noah's Ark was real, then this
is what Noah must have felt like when the flood began, watching
it happen from a place of tenuous safety, but barely missing being
touched by it.

"Do you really think we could swim it?" Trisha asked.

"Well, you and I could," Chris said.

It was ridiculous. With a quick glance at each other, they chuckled quietly.

The levity lasted only a moment.

So much refuse and wreckage and bits and pieces of the world
were floating by below, rushing out to sea. There were cars and furniture and toys and mailboxes and lamps and everything else under
the sun, and she wondered what story each item carried with it.

Whose baby once slept in that broken crib? How long had it been
alive before it disappeared along with everyone else on D-Day? She
couldn't stop herself from looking past Chris to several feet over,
where Owen sat alone and quiet; he was watching the crib as well,
with sad, vacant eyes.

A grandfather clock drifted by, its wooden surface heavily scratched
and scraped. Did it come from a wealthy person's house, or was it a
sentimental heirloom of a low-income family, unwilling to sell the ugly
nonfunctional thing, no matter how much they needed the money?

More than anything, she was struck by the emptiness of it all.
The rain wouldn't allow her to see more than a few hundred yards
in any direction, but nothing here held any meaning, any purpose.
There was no death among what she saw, but there was no life either.
With neither death nor life to define existence on the planet, what was the point of anything? What were any of these objects, if no one
was there to use them?

She felt her face flush and her eyes burn, and for the first time in
a long time she didn't fight it. Didn't compartmentalize it or suppress
it. Like the waters churning beneath and above, she just let her emotions pour out. Maybe the weather would camouflage it. She didn't
really care if it did or not.

She'd never been a heavy crier-as the oldest of seven she'd grown
up with too many responsibilities to have time for such things-so
there were no great, gasping sobs or quaking shoulders. She simply
allowed hot tears to spill out quietly, not even bothering to turn so
Chris wouldn't see. What difference did it make? She could feel him
looking at her, and wondered if he was uncomfortable. To his credit,
he didn't find a reason to move away, nor did he prod her to spill her
secrets. He merely sat there, at her side.

If she had a best friend in this world, she decided, it was Christopher Burke.

Strange to suddenly realize that now, she thought.

"Paul didn't live there anymore," she blurted out, her voice deep and
throaty with emotion. "No one lived there. His house was gutted."

He was silent for a moment, considering this, before responding exactly as she knew he would. Analytical and measured to the
end.

`Are you sure he didn't just move someplace else, and maybe
he'd been waiting for you there?"

She shook her head. She knew the truth. "He knew how much I
loved that house. His house. It was a shelter for me, from all the work
and pressures of life as an astronaut. It was the first place I'd ever
been where I had no obligations or responsibilities. He promised me
he'd never leave it as long as I was in his life. But he did. He moved
away. He moved on. Because he decided that I'm no longer part of
his life. He didn't wait. He couldn't wait for me."

Chris blinked and looked away without saying anything. He gazed
back down at the water below them. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," she replied, her eyes searching the gushing water flow
for nothing in particular. There was no point in wiping her tears
away; they mixed with the raindrops, making the two indistinguishable. And it had been so long since she'd felt the sensation of tears
pouring from her eyes ... it was liberating. "It was too much to ask
of him. Two and a half years is a really long time."

"Oh, I don't know," Chris remarked. "The Paul I remember was
one very smitten guy."

"Not smitten enough."

He was quiet.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," said Trisha lifelessly. Then
she rolled her eyes and gestured at the raging water. "I mean, if we
survive this, and we somehow get through ... all of this, this whole
last-people-on-Earth thing ... I do still have my family, out there
somewhere. My big, crazy family. I won't be alone. But I love Paul. I
know him, heart and soul. He was the one, you know?

"And I don't know what to do now. I'm not sure there's anything
I want to do. Not without him."

"Have you always, you know-" Terry grappled for the words"lived on the streets?"

"Born there," Mae answered.

Terry was confused at this and wanted to know more, but
already felt like he might be pushing harder than she was comfortable with.

"So did you ... drop out of school?" he asked, shifting the subject slightly.

"Nah"

"Where did you graduate from?"

"Didn't graduate," said Mae. "Never went."

Terry tried to keep his surprise in check. "You never went to
school? At all?"

Mae shook her head.

"But ... there are laws against that sort of thing," Terry said.

She gave her characteristic shrug as if to say that it either didn't
matter or she didn't care. Or possibly both.

"How could you live this long without anybody making you go
to school?"

"Dunno. Guess I just don't matter like other people."

Terry closed his eyes. Mae was so broken and hollow, so fragile
and full of baggage. Yet for all of that, she had a resilience and a selfsufficiency he admired. And there was something almost transcendent
about the way she never seemed defeated by her circumstances. He
imagined that if living on the streets was all one ever knew, that
person's definition of normal would be very different than other
people's.

"So where do you spend most of your time?" Terry asked, looking
deep into those captivating silver eyes of hers.

Her shoulders rose and fell again. "Here, there. Between the
cracks."

"You said that once before. What do you mean?"

Mae gazed down at the churning waters inside the lighthouse.
"Cracks of life. Cracks of the world. Cracks in the road, sidewalks,
walls. The dirty places, the shadows, the in-betweens. That's me.
That's where I'm at. The places don't nobody else look at and don't
want to."

Terry hesitated before responding. "Sounds lonely."

Mae shrugged again. "Don't mind. Some people just don't matter as much. They ain't done nothing to deserve it, they just don't
get noticed by nobody else. So they fall through the cracks. Like
me. Kinda figure that's why I'm still around even though the whole
world's gone."

Terry shook his head at her calmness as she said these words. She'd just told him she was left behind on D-Day by whatever had
taken everyone else because she barely qualified as a person, and
she'd done it without any trace of self-pity or remorse. What could
have brought her to such a demoralized existence?

And yet she seemed ever curious and innocent about the world
around her, and eager to learn and see more. He pitied her and
envied her simultaneously. He was about to tell her that he thought
she mattered when she spoke first.

"What you got against bein' alone?"

`Are you kidding?" Terry replied. An Earth with no people on
it is my idea of hell. I may not have family, but I'm hardly alone. I
mean, I'm a crewmember of the Ares. I actually have fans. Had fans. I
mean ... I walked on Mars. My feet touched another planet. I couldn't
wait to get back home and see my friends. Even though they barely
qualify, even though none of them have ever shown any interest in
really knowing-at least they were always around. And now-now
nothing is the way it's supposed to be, and I can't believe I survived
walking on another planet, and here I am back home and ... His
voice trailed off as he appeared to be fighting back emotion. "I just ...
I waited so long for my feet to be touching the Earth again. And now
they're not. This ... isn't how I want it to end."

Terry was so lost in thought, he almost didn't notice when Mae
pulled something out of one of her many pockets and there was a
sharp click.

She tossed something in his direction, and he had just enough
light to see it was a switchblade, its blade out. He managed to catch
the knife by the handle before it fell into the water below.

"Wanna end it? Here, now?" she said in a matter-of-fact tone, a
serious look on her face. She nodded at the knife. "Do it."

The water seemed another half meter closer, and Chris found
himself thinking like when he was back on Mars that he was going to die. And for some reason this time it hurt more. He tried to reason
it out and realized the difference was the four other people with him.
He'd let them down.

He looked into the angry sky and wondered what the five of them
had done to tick off the universe. They'd had nothing but trouble
since they got home.

If anybody's up there ... could you possibly send a little help our
way? It's not looking too good for its down here.

Anything? Please?

He glanced over at Owen and noticed him pull something small
out of his pants pocket.

Chris was stunned, and couldn't keep it to himself. "Beech, what
are you doing?"

"Don't start," Owen replied, pulling a cigarette out of a procured
pack and retrieving a lighter from his bag. "Found it at the motel last
night. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've had one of
these? A lot longer than we were offworld, man."

Chris still frowned. "I hope the rain keeps you from lighting it."

Owen laughed without humor. He gestured both of his wet arms
wide at their predicament, at the state of the world. Then with practiced ease he lit the cigarette and took a slow puff.

"I need you on your game if we're going to make it out of this
one alive," Chris argued.

"Relax, Chris," Owen replied. He balled up the pack in his fist
and tossed it into the circulating waters below. "See? Only one. Just
need to ... calm my nerves. Just a bit."

Chris wondered if Owen was thinking about his family, but he
didn't wonder long. Of course he was thinking about his family. He
had to be wondering if he'd ever see them again. He was probably
wondering how they'd changed in his absence. Maybe he even felt
like he was being punished for leaving them for so long.

Chris leaned a little closer in Owen's direction, gazing out at sea
where he saw an abundance of boats-both of the small, private variety, and the cruise and casino variety-floating aimlessly, and
being pushed ever so gently by the current emptying into the sea.
If only they could get to one of those, but everything he saw was
much too far away. He might've been in great shape-probably the
best of any of them, except Owen-but he was no marathon swimmer. Especially in this end-of-the-world weather. And visibility was
nearing zero.

Please. Help its.

Across from him, Owen had opened his messenger bag and
pulled out the laptop. The rain pelted it just like everything else; the
waterproof casing could withstand everything but being dropped to
the bottom of the ocean.

"Think you can get a signal in all this?" Chris called out over
the maelstrom.

Owen's response was to tilt the screen in Chris' direction, showing
him an orbital view of the massive storm hovering over the Gulf Coast.
Even though Owen had said earlier that it couldn't be a hurricane
because of how slow its winds were moving, Chris reckoned it had
to at least be a tropical storm by now. It had ground to a halt, content
to dump its entire bounty right onto their dire circumstances.