Precipice: The Beginning (8 page)

15

W
ilbur Peters was completely clueless when the phone rang, waking him from one of the most erotic dreams his boring mind could conjure at the most critical moment. His dick may have retired but his mind still plugged away. Some creation of multiple research assistances and a few celebrities, mixed here and there with some pop singers and a tennis player, then he had her. The most beautiful woman. More importantly than anything else, she wanted him. How did he know? Because it was his creation. The dream had started out like most of his life, behind the desk in his office. But in she walked, wearing black slacks and a tight white dress shirt. As soon as she’d started to unbutton the God Damn phone rang, ripping the woman from his mind and scaring the hell out of him.

“Who is it Wilbur?” His wife of thirty years moaned, falling back asleep instantly.

“Hello?” Wilbur was startled, seeing by the alarm clock that it was just after three in the morning.

“Dr. Peters?”

“Yes, who’s this?”

“You are to go downstairs and get in the car.” The man on the other end of the phone was direct.

“What car?” Wilbur jumped at the knock on the front door. “Who is this?” His tone moved from shaky to angry.

“What’s going on?” Elvira rolled onto her side to face him, her eyes widening.

Wilbur held up a hand to shush her. “Why is someone at the door? Where am I going?”

“Presidential order 2138, sir.” With that given, the man hung up.

“What’s wrong?” Elvira was getting terrified, fearing someone close to them had died.

“I have to leave,” Wilbur spoke slowly, going over the orders in his mind.

“Leave? Now?” Elvira sat up, gripping his forearm tightly until she got some answers. “Are you having an affair?”

“Don’t be a moron. You know I’ve got E.D.” Wilbur tapped his crotch with agitation. “It’s classified.”

That was all he had to say. Years of being gone for long hours, sometimes days at a time, had trained her for these moments. But he’d been retired for ten years. She couldn’t fathom what could be so damn important to wake up a seventy year old geologist and ask him to rush out the door.

Wilbur rolled out of bed, pressing a hand to the small of his back as he stepped into his slippers. The floor was so very cold at these early morning hours. He looked to Elvira and shook his head, letting her know this was not his idea. There was another series of knocks at the door, loud and urgent. Wilbur cursed under his breath as he shuffled into the walk-in closet and stood before his limited wardrobe, all hung up and organized by what matched what. As brilliant as he was, he could not grasp the concept of style. Elvira had taken it upon herself to organize his closet and spare him the embarrassment of his own design. Fine by him. One less thing for this old man to worry about. Should he go with the “business briefing” look or the “field researcher?” Since they’d bothered him so late in the morning he decided to be casual, grabbing the “field researcher” ensemble of jeans and a grey sweatshirt.

Wilbur blew his wife a kiss and told her not to worry. Probably just some concerns over the seven point three Utah was hit with yesterday. Living just outside Las Vegas, they’d felt a tiny bit of the rumble themselves. He gripped the handrail tightly as he made his slow decent down the stairs. The knocking was getting rather annoying.

“Yes?” Wilbur said with annoyance as he opened the door.

“Dr. Peters, if you could please come with us.”

Wilbur nodded, grabbing a trench coat off the rack as it had started pouring. He locked the door behind him, moving slowly behind the young man with the impatient knock. He held the back door to the black Lincoln town car open for Wilbur, shutting it with a single hard push that shook the car. Wilbur didn’t much care for this young man, watching him run around the back of the car to hop in. His hair was slicked back without a single misplaced hair, his black suit free of lint. Worst of all were the dark sunglasses. Presence was once thing, but who the hell needed dark sunglasses before the sun came up? Wilbur just shook his head with disapproval, buckling himself in as the boy took off.

“Where exactly are we going?”

“Our destination is just outside Provo, Utah.”

“So it is about that earthquake.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss anything further than the location, sir,” the young man snapped, sounding well rehearsed.

Wilburn spent the next several hours with his forehead pressed to the cold glass, looking out at the city as it gave way to nothingness. Just long stretches of desert. He felt the desert was a beautiful place, geographic features that had been shaped and twisted over time, dunes moving with the wind. The early morning sun had been incapable of penetrating the dark cloud coverage. It loomed above them and made the asphalt look so deathly black, as if it’d just been laid. Water came down in buckets, pounding on the car like a million little fingers. Wilbur yawned, shaking his head. Three in the morning was far too early for him to get out of bed and get moving. He closed his eyes and fell asleep, letting time and the road pass by without paying them attention. The sound of the rain soothed his agitated mind. So many drops falling from the sky to create a beautiful melody, lulling him to sleep. He fell hard, slipping down into the depths of his subconscious. Just as he had when he was a young boy, always out like a light on long road trips. Some things never changed.

“Sir?”

“What!?” Wilbur nearly fell from his seat. When he saw the driver looking back from the front seat he calmed himself, pressing a hand to his heart. “Don’t startle an old man. Don’t you know better?”

“We’re here, sir.”

Wilbur looked out the window, squinting to see through the dark. He saw some white tents fluttering madly in a strong breeze, maybe forty yards away. There were bright lights stretching off into the distance for as far as the eye could see just beyond the tents. The military presence was thick. Hummers and jeeps parked in packs. Soldiers dressed in ponchos stood stiff and alert before the tents, many others set up more tents or hurried to cover equipment as a tarp gave way. It was hard to make out any specific details under the cover of night. “It took you all day to get to Provo?”

“It’s only eleven thirty, sir. That’s AM.” The driver motioned with his head toward Wilbur’s window. “They’re waiting for you in that first tent.”

Wilbur furrowed his bushy brows and opened the door, his clothes soaked almost instantly. He cursed loudly over the rain as he hurried as fast as he could across the muddy terrain. More than once he’d had to slow himself in fear of slipping. Whatever this was, he wouldn’t be much help to them laid up with a broken hip.

“Thank you so much for coming.” Dr. Andrea Saccucci held out her hands to welcome him.

“It’s been such a long time.” Wilbur took hold of her hands and gave them a good squeeze. “But I must say this is not my idea of the perfect location for a reunion.”

“I feel this is the perfect location,” Dr. Katrina Ludwig said with a single nod. “We must go where the work is.”

“Is there work to be had?” Wilbur raised an eyebrow.

Andrea and Katrina shot each other a glance as they pulled open the flaps that led from the first tent into a much longer tent. In the tent’s center was a long table lined with monitors and core samples, chunks of rocks with detailed labels taped to the many containers. Wilbur stepped forward and eyed the monitors, not really sure what he was looking at. Just a long black void it seemed.

“You’re looking at the five mile crack running through the earth, located just a few feet outside this tent.” Andrea crossed her arms about her chest, enjoying the bewildered look across her mentor’s face.

“Are you suggesting this formed from the earthquake yesterday?”

“There’s no question about it,” Katrina added, pointing at the first monitor. “This crack is an exact duplicate to the ones in Hong Kong, Vienna, Galveston…the list goes on and on.” Katrina tapped the screen. “This is more than just a mere crack in the Earth’s crust. We’re here to see if there’s been any change to the earth’s core or mantle. A continental shift unseen by this planet since the supercontinent of Pangaea.”

“That’s not possible,” Wilbur muttered, but the look in her eyes told him this was a possibility.

“I hope you’re right. Because if this is a continental shift…” Katrina took a deep breath, not wanting to focus on the negative. She was by nature a negative person, but only because she always knew how to combat it with a workable solution. But if the plates of the Earth were shifting as they did so long ago, no amount of positive spin would save them. “NASA is monitoring all solar output and the gravitational pull from the moon, but so far there’s nothing unusual. There are over forty-three such cracks across the globe, including several being monitored beneath the ocean.”

“Which ocean?”

“All of them,” Andrea added with a sense of severity. She shook her head under the weight of it all. “That’s not even the most baffling part.”

“Something’s worse?” Wilbur found it hard to believe.

“Something’s burning down there.” Katrina nodded, letting the information sink in to the old man’s mind.

“My dear, you of all people should know that there is always something burning beneath the Earth’s surface.”

“No, we mean something other than magma is giving off black smoke. Large amounts of CO2 are being released into the atmosphere. That’s why it’s so dark.”

“What the hell could be doing this?” Wilbur turned from the monitors and opened the tent’s flap, looking out into the blackness. Through the rain he could briefly make out the shape of the crack.

“We don’t know, but the President is asking for an answer. That’s why you’ve been called out of retirement. We need the best minds, so dust yours off and let’s get started.” Andrea elbowed Dr. Peters with a warm smile. She admired this man since her early days in the field, following his lead as he’d shown her the ropes. “Let’s put our game faces on.”

16

A
nnie couldn’t take her eyes off the television.
The footage was just that shocking. There were moments in history when people just had to bear witness. The moon landing in ’69, the Berlin Wall coming down in ’89, and the first woman on Mars in ’18. Now, on this historic and tragic day of May 4
th
, 2038, Annie watched a large crack in the Earth running through the heart of Paris. The camera kept going back to the Eiffel Tower, now slanted but at least still standing. Five miles worth of city pulled into the depths of the Earth. The president of France was about to release a statement, but Annie didn’t care to hear it. She knew he would add nothing of importance. Just a bunch of fancy words and no explanation. What he was really doing was trying to curb the minds of the people from panic to understanding. False understanding, but better than chaos and mayhem as the people run through the streets in fear.

“This is the end,” an old woman muttered, rocking back and forth.

Annie pretended not to hear her. The last thing she needed was some lengthy doomsday speech in the middle of this electronics store. She’d only gone in for a pack of solar snaps for a remote control car she’d bought Logie after she’d dropped him off for preschool, but the crowd swarming around the televisions had pulled her in. Now, twenty-seven minutes later, Annie set the solar snaps down and hurried out to her car. She saw the line and had debated over the lengthiness of getting through. If she didn’t leave now she’d be late getting Logan and she hated having to wait outside with those bitchy moms.

The radio was the same on every channel, talking about the crack in Vienna, then the most recent one in Paris. Annie turned the dial to her favorite classic rock station, only the stupid DJ was talking about a new crack discovered in Chili. There were cracks in almost every country. Annie turned off the radio when the idiot on the classical station posed the question if these “cracks” should be called something else, like a “trench.” It was all such pointless dribble and Annie hated speculation. No one was in possession of the facts. If they had them they certainly weren’t going to share it with the general public. So it would be up to the media to fill everyone in on what they thought might be happening. Just a long game to see who can create the most plausible explanation. Crack or abyss? Who the hell gave a shit! A hole in the ground was a hole in the ground, no matter how they tried to spice it up with their own perspectives. Tragedy to humanity was about one thing: how can we put our own spin on the same info to get the most attention. Annie was already on ends with all forms of media. They’d painted her husband and his unit as monsters. As if they’d intentionally intended to kill civilians.

She pushed it from her mind. Why dwell on something that you couldn’t change? Only it followed her everywhere she went. The gossip circles of the stay at home moms had a wider range than an atomic bomb. Spreading faster than herpes at a summer camp. She pulled up to Immanuel Lutheran’s Preschool and found a spot right up front. It was a bit startling to see she’d made it with seven minutes to spare. She must have put the late foot down and gone a bit too fast. Lucky she didn’t get pulled over. Last thing she needed was to get pulled over right in front of her son’s school.

The moms were out in full force. They stood before the front doors with their carefully planned outfits and their high-maintenance hair. Salon ready at home. Annie didn’t dare budge from her car, not since she’d had the “incident” three months back with that bitch. Her son was some snooty little cuss too. She’d been waiting outside like the rest of the pack when she’d overheard her husband’s name. She turned and inquired to the reference. The skanky ho delivered a snooty remark about how they let just anyone into this school, especially the son of some murdering savage. Annie smiled, gave a polite nod and rushed her. Stopping with her arm in mid air just to scare her, but the clumsy moron stumbled over the small fence around the flowerbed and fell. The only injury came from embarrassment and anger over dirtying her new white capris. She’d raised a stink to the school and tried to seek legal action, but the truth of the matter was that Annie had never touched her. But to avoid any further unpleasantness, especially in front of her son, Annie stayed in the car. She saw her standing there with one of the other moms, Brenda. Annie gave an exaggerated smile and blew her a kiss. Brenda sneered and turned to her cronies. It had not been her intention to cause any issues, but she’d crossed the line. Much can slide by. But if you utter a bad word about her husband or son, well…you’d better be ready to rumble.

The doors opened and out came the children. They held hand painted art projects and newsletters to give their parents. All of them so happy and joyous. Logan was no exception, running toward the car with a wide grin. She held out her finger and Logan stopped, taking a second to look both ways before crossing the church parking lot to the car.

“How was school?” Annie turned and leaned over the seat, fastening his seatbelt through the car seat.

“Not bad.” Logan gave her a big lower lip, lowering his face to hide his sadness.

“What’s wrong?” Annie reached back and placed a comforting hand to his cheek.

“Isaac tore my art project!” Logan crossed his arms about his chest, moving with great drama.

Annie knew she should be supportive of her son and comfort him, but she laughed. It hurt his feeling to see her laugh or smile when he shared his feelings, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. It was like a hiccup. An automatic response when she thought something was extraordinarily adorable, or even if it was extremely depressing.

“Don’t laugh at me!” Logan snapped, lowering his head even more.

“I’m sorry.” Annie controlled her facial expression, reminding herself to be stern and serious. “Sorry, I was just thinking of something funny I saw on the way to pick you up.” She looked into the rearview and saw he wasn’t buying it.

Annie backed out of the space and began driving. As soon as she pulled out into the road, a big fat raindrop hit her windshield. Then it hit all at once, hammering down like a tropical storm. It was becoming hard to see, even with the windshield wipers moving to full capacity. So very odd they were having so much rain. It had been pouring for almost two days straight. Picking Logan up had pretty much been the only break, so she was thankful for that. Very surprising to see so much water accumulating on the road. She looked to a hill on their left and saw it cascading down like a water park. Annie looked up and saw her son looking through his backpack in the rearview, his previous anger toward Isaac put aside.

“You want some ice cre –”

The wheel spun beneath her hands and the car lost control, spinning in complete circles to the right. Both of them screamed in shock and terror as Annie pulled desperately at the wheel. They drove over the shoulder and into a ditch, the driver side colliding with a cement barrier. Annie tried to open her door, pushing frantically without a budge. Her mind so overcome with panic she couldn’t figure out why the door wouldn’t open. Logan’s tears were thick with terror. Annie’s own mind struggled to comprehend what had happened. The heavy rain continued to pound down on them without mercy or concern, rolling down the windows until there was no visibility. Their flustered breathing had fogged up the windows. With the door sealed shut her mind began to race, feeling trapped. It was as if the water itself had wrapped itself about their car like a serpent and pulled them into the embankment.

“It’s okay.” Annie’s voice gave little comfort, as it was thick with uncertainty.

She unbuckled her seatbelt and crawled over the front seat, kissing her son’s checks as she ran her fingers through his hair, checking for any cracks or dents. Nothing but a frightened child. His eyes red and swollen as he hitched in shallow breaths. It pained her to see her son so afraid. Annie could see people running toward them from the highway, peeking in through the glass to assess the situation.

“Everyone okay?” an older gentleman asked, his face pressed to the window.

“We’re fine,” Annie yelled over the rain and her son’s harsh tears. “It’s okay. Everything’s fine. I promise.”