Crow - The Awakening (57 page)

"Someone want to pull up a seismological survey and figure out what's happening?" Laurence looked around. A couple of the agents got to work on it. The tremor only lasted for a few moments and all was still again. He called his team and requested that they check in, to make sure they were okay and still in position. As they did, he marked them off on the map. The last thing they needed was for some natural calamity to interrupt their chase. Especially with a volcano overlooking the city.

"They're still trying to triangulate the epicenter of the first tremor but the second earthquake was just off the coast in Puget Sound," one of the agents reported, leaning back in his chair to get a straight view of Laurence. "Wait, I'm getting reports of earthquakes all over." He looked at his screen, his brows furrowing.

"Seattle?" Laurence asked. Just how many faults did Seattle have?

"No, sir." The agent looked at him. "The world."

Laurence stared at him, not sure what to make of it. A localized cluster of earthquakes wasn't uncommon as stresses migrated through the crust, but worldwide at the same time was very uncommon. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if even the Earth was conspiring against him and got up and looked over the agent's shoulder. There were red dots all over the globe. Some were pretty significant and there were dozens of tsunami warnings. "What in the world could have caused that?" Laurence stood up.

The agent shrugged his shoulders. This kind of cluster of earthquakes had never happened in all of recorded history.

"Does that affect our status?" Laurence couldn't imagine it would unless the roads were rendered impassable. There were still several red dots in the Seattle area.

"No, sir. The quakes weren't strong enough to cause serious damage here." The agent typed and clicked on something. "Roads and highways are still clear."

"Good. Keep them that way," Laurence commanded as he poured another cup of coffee took another sip. The agent looked at him, wondering if his boss just made a joke.

"Ow!" Migalo jerked his hand back and Penipe had to reach out and grab it again. He had gotten slivers of metal stuck up in his claws and she was trying to tweeze them out.

"Stop being a baby, Migalo," Penipe chided him as she plucked another sliver out of his hand. He jerked back and Penipe gave him a sour look.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Migalo grumbled, giving her his hand again.

"Yes," Penipe answered curtly as she plucked another sliver out, making Migalo fidget.

"That hurts!" Migalo tried hard not to yank his hand back.

"I didn't claw the hood of a car, Migalo," Penipe said, irritated that he was moving his hand around so much.

"Well, he braked hard!" Migalo squirmed as another sliver was pulled out. "Can you pull that so it doesn't hurt so much?"

"Penny, are you hurting our little cub?" Sirel sauntered over and leaned against Migalo, playing with the little bit of hair he had left. Migalo growled at her and she winked at him mischievously.

"He won't sit still," Penipe complained as she pulled another sliver out.

"Hey, you got shot." Sirel noticed looking at Penipe.

"Not really. It's just a bruise." The bullet had grazed her neck but not hard enough to break the skin.

"Now look at that, Migalo. Penny got shot and she's not complaining." Sirel tweaked Migalo's ear and giggled. Migalo snapped at her hand, missing on purpose and she slapped the back of his head and got up, walking over to give Penipe's wound a closer look.

"That's going to leave a mark." Sirel touched it tenderly. "It looks burned." She reached over to the medical kit Penipe was using and found a salve to apply to the wound.

"I thought you were helping Lohet grind the rest of the paint off." Penipe winced in pain as Sirel cleaned the singed fur away.

"I got to a stopping point," Sirel explained, and applied the salve and Penipe relaxed noticeably.

"Oh, that feels better," Penipe said, then Migalo yelped as a large sliver was pulled out and Sirel giggled at both of them.

"I got as far as I could. He's... finishing up." Sirel looked over at Lohet.

"I've never known you to be modest, Lohet." Penipe grinned.

Lohet looked up briefly, then back down at the task on hand. "Modesty has little to do with it, Penipe. This part needed more strength than Sirel was capable of." He was oblivious of what they would find amusing about that. His stony chest was where the paint had become stubbornly attached because of the shells from the drone. She barely got his back done.

Penipe looked at Sirel and Sirel made a face. The Elf shook her head and returned her attention to Migalo. She was almost done with him and started dabbing a cream on the wounds to help them heal faster. Migalo almost purred at the soothing effect of the cream and finally relaxed.

Sirel returned to her workstation where she was attempting to monitor the communications of the soldiers that were hunting Steven. Currently it looked as if they had redeployed themselves in a grid over the city, which meant they still have no idea where Steven was. Lohet looked at her and she shook her head. No change. It has been hours and now was in the late afternoon. Steven had for all intents and purposes disappeared.

"Penipe. Try to reach your daughter again." Lohet looked over at her as she closed up the medical kit.

"I haven't been able to even detect her, Lohet. It's like she's not even there and has blocked Steven completely," Penipe explained, frustrated at the futility of her attempts.

"We could be too far away if he has left the city," Lohet mused. He looked back up at Penipe. "You just keep trying. It is imperative that we find out his status." Lohet was going to say something else but stopped, cocking his head. A moment later a low groan that emanated from the ground followed by a slight shaking of the building they were using as a safe house. He looked over at Sirel who was concentrating on their equipment, already trying to identify the epicenter of the tremor. Another stronger tremor shook the building more vigorously and everyone looked up to see if the roof was going to stay put. That passed after a brief moment and Sirel got back to her screen.

"The second quake came from the bay. I'm reading other quakes all over the globe." Sirel furrowed her eyebrows and keyed in the search criteria again, getting the same results. Lohet sat patiently, looking at her. She gasped, gaping at the display screen. "The first one had no epicenter. It was worldwide." She looked up at Lohet, suddenly uncharacteristically terrified. That was all too familiar to her.

Lohet frowned. It did not bode well for them. He got up and looked at the display, examining the energy signature of the event. It was like the whole planet shuddered all the way down to the core. Lensing took that shudder and bounced it back up to the crust, focused enough to cause other faults to slip. The secondary earthquakes were much stronger locally than the original.

"Lohet, it's happening," Sirel said, for the first time actually looking like a scared young girl. "Just like home." Penipe sat down next to her and put her arms around her, feeling her trembling.

"It was a weak quake," Migalo interjected, looking at his claws as he clenched and unclenched his fingers. "How can it be so bad?"

"Locally it was weak, Migalo. Collectively it was catastrophically strong. The stresses it created will increase the heat in the core significantly and cause faults to come unzipped in the crust," Lohet explained. "It wouldn't take much more than that to..." Lohet trailed off, looking over at Sirel. Her home was an uninhabitable cauldron of molten magma and vast lava fields now and would remain so for thousands of years before anyone would be able to even step foot on the planet again. He thought for a second. "Sirel, keep an eye on volcanological reports. We need to know if this causes an increase in activity."

Sirel nodded, and pulled herself together to get back on the job. Her people had somewhere to go. The people here have nowhere to go and are stuck. If this planet dies, so do all of them.

"Penipe. Paint." Lohet held up a can of fresh paint. He tied up his hair and put a pair of shorts on. Only his exposed areas needed coverage but it was prudent to paint a little extra just in case so his upper torso, arms and legs would also be painted. Penipe walked over and grabbed a brush.

"You still have stains." She pointed to grey streaks on his chest. Spent uranium rounds had left their mark on him and the marks had proven to be difficult to remove. She rubbed on them but it felt like rubbing smooth marble.

"Those will have to wait until later. We need to get back into the hunt." Lohet held his arms up and Penipe started applying the paint to his porcelain white skin. She felt like she was painting a stone statue.

Steven stretched and opened his eyes. He was sore and stiff, and cracked his neck to relieve tension. The dream stuck with him stronger than the others and he lay there thinking about the strange man in it. "Maybe I'll become a writer when I grow up with all these weird dreams," he said to himself. As he shifted he felt something solid and looked down. It was a bottle of water, unopened. Next to it was a wrapped burger, still warm. He looked around and saw a raccoon curled up a few feet away. Grinning, he decided not to think about where the animal got the food. There were many restaurants near the apartments and surely someone somewhere was complaining that they were missing a burger.

He was famished. Steven realized that he hadn't had anything to eat or drink since the Chinese food restaurant the afternoon before. As he took a bite of his burger, he made a face. "People actually eat these?" He looked at it. It didn't look or smell spoiled, but it certainly wasn't the whole foods he had grown up with. But he was starving so he forced himself to finish eating the burger, then washed it down with the water. He smacked, trying to get the taste out of his mouth. If he ever got back home he decided to eat a bunch of hot peppers to burn that taste out. "Bleh. Nasty." He made a face. At least he wasn't starving anymore.

He lay back, letting the sleep wear off and relaxing a little before attempting to join the day. From the angle of the light, it looked like early morning out there, if he wasn't turned around. He didn't know how long he slept, but Steven felt much better rested. His muscles were sore and his scrapes and cuts were throbbing though. He wondered if he ever got out of this if he could take a vacation from work. Not that he's ever taken a vacation before. And his search would likely eat it up. With a start, Steven remembered that he had totally neglected searching for his parents for several days. He had come to Seattle to get more productivity and was having a harder time getting anything done than when he was working out of his tree house.

Then he remembered the park and the vampire. Steven wondered what was in that smoke they shot at him. Surely he was hallucinating. The man on the hood of the car, too, but he was not nearly as hairy as the wolfman. Could he have really left someone injured on the parking lot? Could that have been their car? He rubbed his eyes. The thought of hurting someone didn't settle well on his nerves and worse that he could have left him there. The man may have just been trying to keep his car from being stolen. But he was being chased and there were people around. Surely the man would have gotten help. Steven remembered the car and wondered if it had been found by now. It was a mess when he left it. Someone was going to be very sore at him. But what choice did he have? There were crazy people were shooting at him.

"Okay, plan of action. Brandon's," Steven said to himself. Hearing his voice echoing in the pipe helped bring his thoughts back to the now. He hoped against hope that Brandon was okay. Steven already felt guilty enough as it was to have gotten his childhood friend caught up in this. He had to somehow get to his friend to warn him. But every time he tried to get to him he was blocked and chased and driven out of his hiding spots. He was surprised but very thankful that he had not gotten chased from this spot. He had to keep trying, to keep pushing forward. Once he got to Brandon, they could figure out where to go from there. Brandon's parent's mansion wasn't far from the forest.

Stretching again and yawning, Steven crawled to the end of the culvert and looked out. What he saw left him speechless. The pond, albeit low from the lack of rain, was completely empty. There were cracks in the bottom of it and the water seemed to have all leaked out. Except the bottom of the pond was dry - not even mud remained. Steven blinked and rubbed his eyes.

"Wow, what did I miss?" He looked around and noticed that the sun wasn't just rising, but was actually setting. Dumbfounded, Steven realized that he must have slept for twelve hours or more. "I must have been really tired," he mumbled as he crawled out of the culvert and stepped onto the sidewalk. There were some people on the bank of the pond looking at it and taking pictures with their phones. The bank looked like there had been a grass fire too. "I always sleep through this stuff." Steven looked around. The trees in the park were all scorched, as well. He walked toward the apartment, looking around. Soot covered many of the cars and the asphalt parking lot was still warm and sticky. Shaking his head he looked where he had parked the car. It was gone. Steven wasn't too surprised. The people chasing him probably removed it, or it was towed.

Steven started to wonder how he was going to get to Brandon's. Stealing cars wasn't exactly his forte, and the buses didn't run out that way. As he walked into the parking lot, he saw a guy getting into his car. "Hey!" Steven yelled and walked up to him. "Think I could get a lift? Please?"

The man looked at him for a second, a little surprised, then smiled, "Sure. where are you headed?"

Steven told him and the man raised his eyebrows. "The rich neighborhood?"

"Yeah. My best friend lives there," Steven said. He hesitated and the man waved him in so he got into the passenger seat. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help."

"Have you tried calling?" The man backed the car up and they pulled out of the parking lot onto the frontage road.