Revelations (4 page)

Emily had to lean hard on the second door leading outside before it would open. The temperature had dropped even further and bands of ice and snow had formed around the rim of the doorway, freezing it shut; she heard it crack as she leaned her shoulder into the door.

Stepping out into the glacial air, she felt her breath freeze instantly, stinging her nostrils and lips.

At least the wind had finally relaxed its hold on the island, leaving the air feeling thick and heavy in Emily’s lungs. But when she looked to the south she sucked in a painfully deep gulp of the freezing air; the skirt of cloud hemming the horizon was so much darker now, like thick pools of congealing blood. The intertwining seams of purple stitched through the storm’s body twisted and tumbled to form cauldrons of spirals that coiled and melted their way into each other like the beads and colored glass of a child’s kaleidoscope.

What little light that made it through the clouds covered the island in a pall of perpetual twilight. It created a dull dissimilarity with the pristine white of the snow. Emily’s eyes tried but failed to compensate for the painful contrast, and she quickly felt a dull throbbing headache form in her forehead as she squinted from beneath the shade of her outstretched hand.

She hoped it was just her imagination, but the cloud to the west seemed closer. It was hard to tell from ground level as the buildings obscured her view.

She stepped down off the ice-covered steps and crunched through the knee-deep snow, walking awkwardly around the side of the building while using the exterior wall to steady her balance as she high-stepped through the snow to the opposite end.

Fifty feet beyond the cabin a hillock rose sharply up to a blunt plateau high enough to give a clear view over the roofs of the camp’s buildings. Emily’s breathing came in short, rapid pants as she climbed to its top, the air collecting like rubble in the bottom of her lungs. At the hill’s summit she had an unobstructed 360-degree view of the island.

It stilled her heart, petrifying it in her chest.

The ring of clouds circling the horizon on every side had crept closer, constricting the hole of hazy sky above the survivors’ sanctuary.

Emily’s gaze skittered across the curve of the island, and out to sea where a shining mist descended from the cloud base and melted into the sluggish sea: rain! Sheets of it were pummeling the waves out there. She could see a slick of red forming on the ocean’s surface, slowly spreading with the swell. It was the same in every direction she looked, a slowly tightening noose around their necks.

A gust of wind thumped against her, pushing her back a step. A second gust buffeted her sideways. She tottered for a second, almost losing her balance as her legs tangled at the knees. She had a sudden disquieting notion that the storm
knew
she was observing it, and it was letting her know it saw her, watching her right back, this insignificant bug crawling on the surface of the world it had conquered.

From the west, another strong gust rocked her then rose to a constant blast that threatened to push her off the summit. Steadying herself, she sidestepped down the hill toward the camp just as the snow began to fall again, but this time the crystal-pure white of each perfect flake was stained with red.

The survivors gathered in the large room, sitting on the floor in small groups, talking quietly amongst themselves. Occasionally, one of them would stand and walk to a window and look outside.

Emily had observed that whoever was doing the looking inevitably fell into one of two groups: The first would quickly glance through the frosty window, not taking more than a second to assess the situation and wander back to their seat, as dark of mood as when they’d first stood. The second group would linger for well over five minutes or more, staring out that window as if they were willing the bloodstained clouds poised just a few miles off every corner of the coast of their island sanctuary to dissipate.

Both groups left the window disappointed every time.

There was a third group too. The one Emily fell into: those who watched the watchers. That had always been her way, that deep drive to observe and understand had had a large part to play in her becoming a journalist. But she wondered now, as she sat, her butt on the floor, her back against the wall, whether she should attribute that calling to nature or nurture.

Emily shifted her legs, disturbing Rhiannon who, head in Emily’s lap, moaned softly in her sleep. “Shhhh,” Emily cooed, stroking the girl’s hair until she sensed the child was asleep again. Thor lay nearby, stretched out, his head resting on his front paws, eyes wide open, watching Emily and Rhiannon with an unblinking gaze that seemed accepting of everything that was happening around him.

Emily had brought the news of the red-tinged snowfall and the tightening of the storm’s stranglehold on the island to MacAlister. He in turn had relayed it to the captain. Both men had gone outside to check her story for themselves, and both had returned grim-faced.

“Emily, I think it’s probably best if you and Rhiannon stay here with us for the duration, don’t you think?” MacAlister had suggested and Emily had readily agreed. She did not want to be alone through whatever might be coming. Once had been enough. But the excited chatter of the sailors as they had learned of the encroaching storm and seen the red-tinged snowfall had quickly devolved into worried murmurs, and finally, as the hours wore on, almost absolute silence.

Emily had begun to wish she had done as Jacob had and requested a room to herself. She had not seen him but once since Constantine and his crew had arrived. But Emily thought that Jacob’s hermit-like attitude was more from the habit of loneliness (or possibly the stash of whisky she knew he’d smuggled across with him) than from a shirking of any need for social interaction.

Occasionally, MacAlister or the captain would wander between the groups, chatting with the sailors. They were the epitome of stoic, she thought as she eyed MacAlister. He took a knee next to a lone sailor who had isolated himself off hours earlier, his hands clasped around his drawn-up knees as he silently stared at the opposite wall, his head bobbing slowly back and forth as if he listened to some inner song. Within minutes of MacAlister talking with him, the kid was back with his shipmates.

He was a good man, MacAlister.

The hours wore on, darkness came, and with it a howling wind that tore at the roof and walls of their shelter, rattling the windows and denying everyone sleep. The wind-driven snow had long blocked any view through the windows, tinting the glass with its pink stain, but that did not seem to deter the “window checkers,” who would still occasionally stand and wander over to look, even though they could see nothing now.

By the time the second morning crept almost unnoticed over the camp, the mood had dropped as low as the temperature outside, and Emily began to feel a new nervousness settle over the group.

“Cabin fever” was not a phrase you heard very often in these modern times, but Emily thought she could detect a sense of paranoia attaching itself to the men. It was a knifepoint of anxiety pushing through the thin skin of civility still left; the thick blade, the part that would do all the damage, barely concealed beneath the surface.

Later that day MacAlister insisted that the two girls take over his room, which they did with a sense of relief. Earlier, a fistfight had exploded seemingly from nowhere, and Emily felt a skinny rat of worry begin to gnaw at her insides. As it was, it was all she could do to stop Thor from attacking. His barking and the men’s yells had alerted MacAlister, and he had quickly stepped in and banged some heads, stopping the fight before it got past a black eye and a few raw knuckles. But Emily doubted that even MacAlister’s imposing reputation and martial ability would be able to brace the emotional wall holding back the swelling fear that threatened to wash over the men for long.

For the second time in the last twenty minutes Emily checked the Glock on her hip, relishing the sense of security as her fingers played over the weapon’s butt in the holster. The move to MacAlister’s quarters would be a good idea, she decided.

You’re a regular Calamity Jane, Emily Baxter, she thought with a hint of disdain as she followed MacAlister down the corridor past Jacob’s temporary quarters to the tiny room Mac had claimed as his own.

“Here you go, ladies,” he said, holding the door open for them.

“Where will you sleep?” Rhiannon asked, her face still flushed from witnessing the earlier fight but, and Emily could not help but feel a surge of pride over the growing toughness of the kid, no tears had been shed.

“Oh, I think it best that I stay out there where I can keep my eye on the rabble for the foreseeable future,” he said. “You ladies relax, and make yourself at home. I’ll check in with you later.”

As he closed the door behind him, Emily reached out a hand and placed it on top of his.

“Thank you,” she said, fixing his eyes with her own.

MacAlister smiled and nodded, and then was gone.

Emily was teaching Rhiannon how to play poker with a deck of cards donated by Parsons—and was already down three straight hands to the damn kid—when Jimmy MacAlister knocked loudly on his door, pushing it ajar before she could tell him to come in.

“Are you decent?” he blurted out through the gap, but didn’t wait for an answer before he stepped inside. “Sorry, ladies, but you need to come see this. Come on.” He grabbed Emily’s hand then Rhiannon’s and pulled them to their feet. Thor jumped up and leaped along beside them, barking excitedly, eager to join in whatever new game his humans were playing.

“What’s going on?” Emily said, half-protesting, half-laughing as she and Rhiannon were led down the corridor toward the exit.

“You’ll see,” he said cryptically.

As they passed Jacob’s lab he spotted them. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“That’s what Emily said,” Rhiannon laughed as they passed his door.

Jacob shook his head in bemusement, then swiveled his wheelchair away from his desk and followed after them.

MacAlister led Rhiannon and Emily through the anteroom and straight to the door, finally letting go of their hands as he reached for the handle to open the exit.

“Hey!” Emily objected, bracing for the sudden rush of freezing air. “Let us get our jackets on before you open that.”

“Won’t need ’em,” the Scot replied and pushed the door open.

The anteroom was flooded with bright daylight.

Emily gazed out through the open doorway. She could feel the cold air but she could also
see
all the way over to the other buildings and beyond even. She edged forward until she was standing in the doorway.

The blizzard that had pinned them to this island was gone.

“Finally,” Rhiannon sighed as she squeezed in next to Emily. Thor pushed his way between them and bounded off into the snow, barking as he plummeted through the newly fallen powder.

MacAlister stood behind the two women, then all three stepped aside to allow Jacob to edge up to the open door.

“Notice anything different?” MacAlister asked.

“Besides the absence of the ninety-mile-an-hour winds and the blinding blizzard?” Jacob asked, his voice buoyed by a sense of sarcasm. “Not really.”

“Look beyond what you can see,” MacAlister said in his most mystical voice, his eyes wide and his hands fluttering at the side of his head.

Emily ignored the cold and stepped down the steps into the snow. Slowly she turned, trying to take in everything: The sky above her head was clear of all but a few wispy white clouds, the sun beat down on her skin as it burned brightly in a blue sky that stretched off to the vanishing point in the distance.

To the
clear
horizon, Emily realized.

“Oh my God!” she whispered, her hands flew to her mouth, not daring to believe what she was seeing. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh…my…God.” Her eyes raised skyward, and she twirled around, looking for all the world like a child intent on making herself dizzy.

“What is it, Emily? What do you see?” Jacob called out.

Emily skipped back to the door and the waiting survivors. Truth was, she wanted to dance her way back, but the snow was still too deep for that. But already she could see the telltale wet glistening of a thaw.

“Careful!” said MacAlister.

“Careful, my ass!” she yelled out, grabbed MacAlister’s face with both her hands and, before either knew what she was doing, planted a smacker on his lips. She felt her face blush as the look of surprise on MacAlister’s face turned into a broad grin. To cover up her own embarrassment she grabbed Rhiannon and pulled her down into the snow with her.

“It’s gone,” she yelled, kicking waves of snow with her hands at the two men in the doorway as if she was in a pool.

“What is?” Jacob yelled back, frustration in his voice.

“The red storm,” Rhiannon yelled back. “The red storm is gone.”

No one knew when the alien storm had finally released its stranglehold on the planet. The only thing they did know was that when they looked out beyond the curve of the island, in every direction to the thin line where the sky met the sea, the blood-red clouds that had stained them for so many days were gone, vanished as though they had never been there. It had not simply faded away or subsided, there was no slow diminishing of its fury, nothing. It was simply gone, as if God himself had, with the sweep of a hand, brushed it from the skies.

Emily, Rhiannon, and Thor joined the crew of the
Vengeance
in the courtyard between the buildings, a white fog of hot breath collecting above their heads. Two crewmen carried Jacob and his wheelchair from his room, swaying from side to side as the two sailors carefully picked their way over the melting snow, like he was some ancient pharaoh. As they set him gently on the snowy ground, Emily looked down at the man who had brought her here. He looked about ready to cry, and Emily felt something shift inside her. It was as if, with the passing of the storm, her anger for him had also diminished…at least, a little.

It was still freezing out here, no way would they be ditching their coats just yet, but now that the blizzard had stopped, standing still for any period of time no longer meant you ran the risk of being frozen into a human Popsicle.

And the view. My God, the view was breathtaking now that she finally had a chance to take it all in. A crisp white blanket of snow with a top layer of rapidly melting ice particles that scintillated in the light lay across the undulating ground of the island, stretching off in all directions seemingly until it met the blue of the sky. But Emily knew the island sloped away just a few thousand feet from where she stood, dropping gradually down until it met the Beaufort Sea. As Emily listened carefully, in the spaces between the excited chatter of the assembled group, she could hear the waves breaking against the shoreline in the distance.

Everything looked so normal.

Emily had tuned out the chatter of the survivors milling around the entrance to the hospital block, but now she allowed the voices to fade back in again.

“…what’s it mean?…”

“…you think it’s safe now?…”

“…can we leave?…”

At a nod from Emily, the two sailors flanking Jacob raised him up again and followed Emily into the hospital building, depositing him in the corridor of the sailors’ quarters. Emily took the wheelchair’s two handles and began pushing Jacob toward the main room where the rest of the survivors now waited.

Jacob swiveled his head around and looked back at Emily with curiosity.

“Don’t start getting used to it, just yet,” she told him.

He looked at her with his sad eyes, the words almost forming on his lips, but instead he smiled. He faced forward again. “Onward James,” he laughed, with a pretty good imitation of an English accent, before adding “and don’t spare the horses.”

What had been the hospital area was now filled with the sub crew. They sat on the beds or stood together in small groups talking excitedly.
Everyone looks ten years younger,
Emily thought as she entered the room with Rhiannon, MacAlister, Jacob, and Thor.

MacAlister squeezed Emily’s elbow and nodded toward the front of the room where Captain Constantine and another man were talking.

“Duty calls,” Mac said and zagged across the room to join the men. Emily aimed Jacob toward the front, maneuvering the wheelchair through the tangles of bodies.

Captain Constantine’s deep voice cut through the chatter. “Alright. Alright. Quiet down everyone. I know today has brought some very exciting developments, but we still need to maintain discipline.” He waited for all eyes to be on him and all mouths to stop moving before he continued. “Alright, that’s more like it. While it does seem that the storm has abated, we still don’t know what’s changed out there. Now, I know that you’re all eager to get off this rock—no offense to our gracious hosts—but the simple fact of the matter is that we have no idea what this latest development means for us. And of course we’re not going anywhere until we repair the fire damage to the boat.

“I’m sure you all have a lot of questions, but neither I nor the good people of this station have any answers for you just yet. However, as soon as we have any clue as to the sudden disappearance of the storm, I can guarantee you will be the first to know about it. In the meantime…Mr. MacAlister?”

“Skipper?” grunted MacAlister.

“I want you to get some eyes on the inside of the boat to assess the damage. When you have a good idea of how bad it is, I’ll need you to organize two cleanup crews: twelve hours on, twelve hours off, so we have a constant presence on the sub. Am I understood?”

“Yes, skipper!” MacAlister replied.

“In the meantime, I want all of you to remain as calm and as professional as you have been up until this juncture. Am I understood?”

The crew responded in unison: “Sir!”

“Alright then. You are dismissed. Mr. MacAlister, carry on.”

Immediately MacAlister began barking orders at the crew. Within minutes he and three men had collected tools and supplies from the stash they had brought ashore and headed off in the direction they had originally arrived from.

“I think I’m going to head back to the radio room. Now that the storm’s over, maybe I’ll have better luck contacting the ISS again,” Jacob told Emily.

“Great idea,” said Emily, “but I still need to speak with the captain first.” She caught the eye of one of the two men who had carried Jacob across the snow and he agreed to round up another helper and get Jacob back to the other building.

“Captain?” Emily caught Constantine as he headed back to his office.

“Hello, Emily. Wonderful news, isn’t it?” he said, smiling warmly at Rhiannon.

“Have you given any more thought to what I told you about what could be waiting for us out there?” said Emily.

The sub captain’s eyes narrowed slightly and she saw him blow a puff of air out before replying. Exasperation. Well, at least she knew how he really felt.

“I’ve given it as much thought as a man stranded on an island with no way to contact the outside world can,” he said, his face softening again. “But now that the storm has blown over, I’ve got Jacob and MacAlister trying to establish contact with anyone that they can reach on the base radio. We’ll at least know if there are more survivors out there that can help us.”

The captain turned to walk away, but Emily grabbed his arm.

“One more thing, is there anything else I can do to help you and your crew?”

The captain considered her request for a moment. “Quite honestly, Emily, you and Rhiannon are of more use to us watching over the remainder of my crew who are still hospitalized. If you don’t mind continuing to help out here, it means I can pull a couple of the crew from hospital duty and get them on the cleaning crew instead.”

Emily shrugged off her coat then helped Rhiannon out of hers, the little girl chattering excitedly as they made their way back to their rooms.

“Do you think we’ll be able to go back home? Or maybe there’ll be others out there like us too.” She fired the questions off one after another, barely pausing for breath between each of them. Emily nodded noncommittally at each of them and added a “maybe” to each. But at the door to her room Rhiannon finally paused. “Do you think the monsters will be gone now?” she said, her voice barely audible over the sound of the warm-air vents.