Chapter 35
Colt
Colt couldn’t believe how fast Daniel’s fingers were racing across Seb’s MacBook. All this time he’d been looking at a girl with wings but he’d never seen her fly.
“No one’s following us,” she said, not looking up from the screen that was casting an unnatural glow over her dramatic features. “No one’s alerted the car to the federal or domestic police.”
“What about Middlebend?” John asked. “They onto us?”
“Nope, there’s nothing. No alerts, no details. Everyone must still be tied up.”
John was now driving. He and Daniel switched after she cheerfully announced that she didn’t have a license, American or otherwise.
“Just because some fascist organization hasn’t given me a card with my face on it doesn’t mean I can’t operate a vehicle!” she said as John forcibly tugged her from the driver’s seat. “Besides if you drive it’ll look like you work for one of those topless chauffeur services.”
“I don’t care,” John said, depositing her in the passenger seat and slamming the door shut.
As it turned out, it was a good thing they switched. Daniel could monitor their situation with a frightening level of competence. She’d already taken their Middlebend money out of their accounts and placed it in an anonymous offshore one, neutralized the car’s navigation system so they couldn’t be tracked, and arranged a place for them to stay.
They were heading to a Grassroots base near the Anza-Borrego State Park. According to Daniel it was smaller than the ones in Chicago and Wisconsin, more of a collective than anything else. She’d already emailed the owners asking for refuge for herself and three guests and their response had been quick and affirmative. Colt noted however, that the asking had made Daniel incredibly tense. Why he wasn’t sure, they were the ones who should be nervous. There was every chance Grassroots would accept Daniel and throw them back out on their asses once they found out ‘three guests’ meant ‘former US soldiers on the run from their powerful corporate employers’.
“Urgh, listen to this,” Daniel announced as she skimmed through Elkin’s emails. “After they killed us they were gonna take our bodies down to a crematorium in Sacramento. The plan was to say there was a gas explosion and pretend we all burned alive.”
“Fucking pricks,” John said, jabbing his foot on the accelerator so the SUV gave an unexpected lurch.
Daniel looked up, her face full of malevolent glee. “Don’t worry, Heathcliff, we’ll have our revenge. As soon as I get near a power point I’m going to shred that org a new arsehole. They won’t know what fucking hit them.”
As Colt watched Daniel resume typing like the wind, a feeling he couldn’t quite identify rose in his chest. It was like he’d lost something important or forgotten a special date, a nagging sort of unease.
“Maybe before you go committing any more felonies we should talk about the fact that we’re fugitives,” John said in his typical fun-killing manner.
“Can we postpone the heavy shit for later?” Colt said as Daniel gave a good-natured groan. “In case you forgot, I almost fucking died.”
“How could we forget? You’ve only mentioned it five hundred fucking times,” John muttered. “Fine, we’ll talk about it once we’re at the base. Is there somewhere secure we’ll be able to go, Schwartz?”
“Huh?” Daniel looked up from the MacBook. “Yeah, we’ll be fine.”
John looked unassured by this lackluster answer but didn’t push for more details. They lapsed back into silence, broken only by Seb’s gentle snores and Daniel’s typing. What was she doing Colt wondered? Was she still checking out Middlebend or was looking after her own interests? Reading six weeks’ worth of news, going on her social media accounts, contacting old friends, possibly even lovers. Fear and jealousy slipped between Colt’s ribs like a knife and he came within an inch of asking her what she was doing. He was glad he stopped himself though. Daniel hadn’t had any privacy for weeks, let her do her own thing. He should be enjoying the fact that he wasn’t barbecuing in a crematorium in Sacramento. He closed his eyes and tried to zone out. After half an hour they passed a strip mall Wendy’s and Colt’s stomach growled. “Can we stop for food?”
“No,” John said, speeding up as though it would discourage his hunger. “We need to keep moving.”
“Fine. Do we have any granola bars?”
“We’re not on a fucking road trip,” John snapped. “Of course we don’t have any fucking granola bars.”
Colt raised his blood-spattered hands. “Alright relax, but I’ve bled out six quarts of blood in case you forgot and if I don’t eat soon I’m gonna pass out.”
In the end John agreed to stop at a gas station. Daniel, the only member of their party who wasn’t shirtless or covered in bodily fluids got out and bought as many KitKats and sodas as she could carry. She also snagged a fistful of napkins and a bottle of water, and he and Seb, who was awake and looking more gruesome than ever, tried to wipe some of the gore off their faces. They succeeded only in ruining the leather upholstery.
Colt was starting to worry about the impression they were going to make when they arrived at a pacifist commune covered in human blood. Daniel seemed nervous too, hopping up and down in her seat, checking countless things on the MacBook. Was she worried about their arrival or was she just looking forward to being with her people again; friends, colleagues, ex-lovers, current lovers, men who wrote poetry and didn’t- fucking Christ he was doing it again.
Daniel caught his eye. “What are you staring at, Red October?”
“Just, uh, wondering how you invented that thing,” Colt bluffed. “That bomb.”
John turned to look at Daniel. “Yeah, I wouldn’t mind knowing that either. Wouldn’t think designing weapons fell under your skill set, Little Miss Pacifist.”
Daniel went a little pink. “First of all I didn’t invent it, I helped work on it, and secondly it’s not a weapon that’s meant to cause any lasting injury.”
She turned and examined Colt’s busted face. “Well that was the idea anyway.”
“But how does it work?” John asked. “I mean, what does it actually do?”
“An NEMP is designed to release an electrical charge that operates on the same frequency as human brain activity,” Daniel said in a voice that made him think of people in white lab coats and goggles. “The charge tells your occipital lobe that you’re deep in a REM cycle and sends you into a safe but temporary paralysis.”
Colt whistled. “That is some Star Trek shit, princess.”
“I know. I don’t really understand how it works,” Daniel admitted.
“Then how did you work on it?” John asked.
Daniel made a face. “It’s hard to explain but I don’t know how I know lots of things. It’s like in maths; I sort of always arrived at the answer before I’d done any of the working out. My brain just goes in leaps.”
“We understand,” Colt said, not liking the flustered look on her face, as though they were demanding she explain herself. As though they didn’t believe her. “So what did you work on?”
“Getting the blast radius to extend,” she said, chewing on a KitKat finger. “In the beginning it couldn’t zap anyone beyond six feet but now…how big is Castle by the Sea?”
“Fifty thousand and eighty-seven square feet,” John said dryly.
Daniel grinned. “We’ve come a long way, baby.”
Colt pointed to the blood coating his face. “Oh yeah? Because if you ask me that thing needs fine-tuning.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. So you didn’t pass out?” she asked with what Colt thought was unnecessary eagerness. “Not even for a second?”
“Nah. The noise was like barbed wire going through my head but I stayed awake the whole time.”
“What did you think happened?”
“I don’t really remember, it’s all hazy.” It wasn’t true, he could recall that bloody dazed state where he thought she and John and Seb were dead all too well, but he didn’t want to talk about it.
“Interesting. We knew some people are more susceptible to the blasts but not that anyone could be immune.”
Colt rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, maybe I’ll find it more interesting when I don’t smell like a fresh scab.”
“Sorry. I did save our lives though.”
“You’re also the reason we almost got killed in the first place,” John pointed out.
Daniel’s face fell. “Oh yeah, well it’s not my fault Middlebend thought we’d be sexy for each other.”
“So Middlebend wanted you because of the NEMPs?” Colt said, asking the question that had been driving him crazy for weeks.
He expected Daniel to happily, even boastfully confess what she’d so successfully hidden, but instead her gaze dropped to her lap and stayed there. “No. That was for something else.”
“Jesus, woman, how many secrets do you have?” Colt said. “Come on then, what’s more kidnap-worthy than tech worth billions?”
“Colt,” John said sharply. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“But—”
“Colt.” John raised his sunglasses to glare at him from the driver’s side mirror. “Don’t.”
“Fucking hell, fine!” He slumped back in his seat and tried to look like he wasn’t sulking.
“I can shed a little light on how I got the NEMP though,” Daniel said, turning to face him.
“It was Hall,” John said flatly.
Daniel punched his shoulder “Spoiler alert! Although yes, it was Jem.”
Colt grimaced at the memory of the tattooed jerkoff. “How did he get it in for you? He wasn’t carrying anything on him, we checked.”
“That’s the bit you’re not gonna like becaaaaaaause…” Daniel waved her hands beside her face.
“Hurry up,” John snarled. He’d always hated surprises.
“It was his dick piercing.”
The car exploded with groans and even Seb brought his head off the backseat for long enough to voice his disgust.
“Why?” John kept bellowing. “Why would anyone do that?”
“It makes so much sense,” Daniel said, grinning from ear to ear. “No one looks too closely at a dick piercing, especially a bunch of straight dudes. He took it off while we were in bed and I put it under my pillow. Like a loose tooth.”
“Some loose tooth,” John said glaring at the highway.
Colt shuddered, then had a sudden, wonderful realization. “So that’s why you wanted him to visit you so bad. For the pin?”
Daniel examined her nails with mock dismissiveness. “Um, yeah, Tarzan…that’s why…”
“Punch her leg, John.”
Daniel laughed and moved away from John’s raised hand. “Yes, that’s why, you jealous man-hog; we’re friends. We really have known each other since uni.”
That wasn’t a huge relief to Colt considering that tied in with Daniel’s story of losing her virginity. “What kind of friends?” he asked.
Daniel rolled her eyes. “Here’s a little something for your troubles, Colton. An early Christmas present from Lady Schwartz; Jeremiah Hall is a gay man who would literally have rather been scrubbing a toilet than looking at my pussy.”
Colt, who’d taken a big angry swallow of Coke Zero promptly sprayed it all over the back of John’s chair. Thankfully, he was too busy pounding the steering wheel with both fists and shouting. “I fucking knew it!” to notice.
By the time they’d settled down Daniel was laughing so hard tears were rolling down her cheeks. “How Seb didn’t notice, I have no idea,” she said, cupping her stomach. “Jem literally cringed every time he touched me.”
“I thought he wasn’t attracted to you!” Seb said.
“Of course he wasn’t attracted to me, I don’t have a dick.” Daniel wiped tears of laughter from under her eyes. “He and Mikey are a couple. I introduced them when we were twenty-three.”
“Well that makes sense.” John tapped the steering wheel, beaming to himself. “I fucking knew he was gay.”
Daniel smirked. “Yeah you do. Because I just told you.”
Her happy expression became wary. “Here’s the thing I never understood; why did Middlebend approve him visiting? It was so risky to let me see someone I knew. I mean, they ran background checks obviously but any techie worth their salt can fake that shit.”
“No idea,” said Colt. “Maybe they wanted to keep you happy?”
“They knew it would make us jealous,” John said, staring determinedly at the road. “Probably trying to inspire us to push past our boundaries and make a move.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Daniel said, the amusement gone from her voice.
Colt wanted to tell her that Middlebend were a bunch of assholes, that they liked her for who she was not because Elkin banged them together like a bunch of misused Barbie dolls. But looking at her tense, secretive expression he lost his nerve and the car lapsed back into loaded silence.
If he wasn’t so stressed and filthy Colt probably would have enjoyed their journey. They were traveling through California deserts and mountain ranges, the setting sun staining everything red and purple. But as it was all he could think about was getting out of the car.
He hoped the Grassroots base wasn’t some kind of yurt village because he needed a hot shower, food that wasn’t wrapped in foil, and a long and extremely thorough blowjob. Seeing as Daniel had almost ripped his head open with electricity, he hoped she might help him out with the last one. Actually he didn’t give a fuck about the blowjob, he just wanted to hold her, smell her hair, feel her body warmth and acknowledge they were still alive and together. But there was no chance of that, their journey seemed never ending as Daniel directed John through backroad towns and long, potholey roads. Finally, when the blood crusted into his hair and his beard was itching incessantly and his soda-filled bladder was full Colt asked. “How far away are we?”
John didn’t even look up. “Not far.”
“How far is not far?”
“Shut the fuck up. That’s how far.”
Colt groaned. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, I need a pit stop.”
“I need one too,” Daniel announced.
“Same,” Seb groaned.
Cursing, John was forced to make another detour. They stopped at a rundown diner full of fluorescent lights and bleary-eyed truckers. Daniel ducked into the ladies and he and Seb slipped into the men’s to relieve themselves and attempt to wash their faces. The water ran red for ages as they scrubbed themselves with cheap pink dispenser soap, both of them wincing as it stung their cuts and bruises. When he was finally done Colt examined his face in the cracked mirror and was amazed to see he looked the same as he had this morning. He felt like he’d aged a million years.
“We went surfing today,” he reminded Seb. “Now look where we fucking are.”
“It’s crazy,” the kid agreed. He lifted his t-shirt and stared at the raised red stripes on his back. “Geez, that looks bad.”
“They’re not too deep. Should heal up quick.” Colt recalled the way Seb’s mouth had twisted like red licorice as he fought to keep himself from screaming. “You barely made a sound, took it like John Wayne.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it,” he said, putting a hand on Seb’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
Seb glanced down at his feet. “Same.”
They grinned at one another, feeling stupid until another guy came in and they left. Daniel was already waiting for them in the car, four large takeaway coffees wedged into a large cardboard cup holder. “Figured we could use the caffeine.”
Colt took a grateful swallow of coffee and found it sweet and strong. “You’re an angel, princess.”
“Man, how many female archetypes are you going to inflict on me?” Daniel’s face was ghostly pale in the fluorescent light of the diner and she was grinning in a way Colt didn’t like at all. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I just…”
John opened the driver’s side door and Daniel fell silent.
“Ready?” John said, starting the engine.
“Hang on, Daniel’s got something to say,” Colt protested. “Go on, princess, tell us?”
Daniel’s pained smile grew wider still. “I think we should talk about why Middlebend captured me before we get to Grassroots.”
The car was so quiet Colt could hear ‘Call Me Maybe’ playing inside the diner. He wondered dimly if bubbly pop music followed Daniel around, making itself manifest for her enjoyment.
“Why do you think that?” John asked in a voice thick with misgivings.
“I’ve been messaging my friend Iris.” Daniel tapped Seb’s MacBook. “She’s on base at the moment and she says Winton and Merri, the people who run it, are gonna grill me when I get there. Then they’ll probably alert the higher ups and the whole thing will happen again only more intense.”
Colt’s body tensed. “They’re gonna interrogate you?”
“No, they’re not like that, but you have to understand that they’re mad at me. One minute I was working on this huge expensive project for them, the next I dropped off the face of the earth. I’m like the dad who said they were going out for cigarettes and never came home.”
“You can just tell them you were abducted, right?” Seb asked.
Daniel shook her head. “I went to Paris with my friend Cynthia months ago, when we discovered…what Middlebend wanted me for.”
Colt’s curiosity from earlier was instantly rekindled. “And that was?”
“You can’t tell them,” John said quickly.
“Hang on, how the fuck does he know?” Colt asked. “You told him and not us?”
“No,” Daniel said cut across him John. “He figured it out himself and that’s why I think I should tell you. We need to get our story straight before we hit the base. The people there can’t know why I left and if we show up with a bunch of jumbled excuses it’ll look suspicious as hell.”
“She’s got a point,” Colt shouted because John looked like he was about to dispute this. “Just lay it on us already. Seb and I are starting to feel left out.”
Daniel smiled her ugly, painful smile. “I’m not gonna lie, Tarzan. What I’m gonna tell you is pretty bad.”
He recalled the red haze that washed over his eyes when the NEMP went off. “It can’t be worse than thinking you’re all dead.”
He expected Daniel to reassure him, to tell him it wasn’t that bad. Again he was completely fucking wrong. She stared at him, her dark eyes as serious as he’d ever seen them. “It is worse, Colt. Way worse.”
His heart stopped. “Do you have cancer?”
“What?” Daniel’s eyebrows drew together. “No.”
“Do I have cancer?”
“No!”
“Someone’s trying to kill you?” Seb said, his hands balling into fists.
“No.”
“You killed someone.”
Daniel rolled her eyes. “No! Stop guessing for fuck’s sakes.”
“Did you invent something that fucks people up?” Colt said, recalling with horrific clarity the movie I Am Legend. “Like a virus or something?”
She turned to John. “Do you see this? Do you see this dumb guessing? Just fucking let me say what it is. I think it might be better to hear it in bite-size pieces rather than a long protracted D&M.”
John clenched the steering wheel, his knuckles white against the leather. “This isn’t the right time, they’re not ready.”
Colt was about to demand once again, how John who’d been cagey and distant with Daniel for days knew what she got time for and they didn’t. Then he took in John’s tortured expression and realized he hadn’t been told, he just knew. His hostile attitude towards his friend withered. John couldn’t help being what he was.
Daniel laid a deliberate hand on John’s arm “I know you want to protect them but they almost died for me today and they have a right to know.”
Colt held his breath as John stared blankly in front of them. “Fine,” he said at last. “Just lemme park somewhere I can’t hear Britney Spears songs.”
They stayed silent as John moved the SUV to the other side of parking lot. Colt drank his coffee without tasting it, his stomach churning. He tried his hardest but his mind couldn’t come up with something bad enough that John, a hardcore pragmatist with no feelings, would rather they stayed uninformed.
“Whenever you’re ready,” John said, turning off the engine so everything around them was silent except for the wind. Something about that set Colt’s nerves on edge and he almost asked John to turn the car back on.
“Okay,” Daniel said, rubbing her hands across her denim covered thighs. “Okay, okay, okay. You can do this. You can do this.”
“Darlin’…” Seb said. “If you don’t want to—”
“It’s fine! I mean I will be fine.”
“Get it out fast,” John murmured. “All at once.”
“Okay,” Daniel repeated and she balled both hands into fists and pressed them into her chest. “So my friend Cynthia noticed the rate of eruptions around the pacific plate was speeding up. She was a volcanologist.”
Colt noted the word ‘was’ with another acidic stab of panic.
“She let Grassroots know that she thought it was linked to the hydraulic fracking being done in Tonga and the pacific islands. You guys know what that is yeah?”
Colt pictured the fields of huge drills he’d once passed on his way through Oklahoma. “Yeah.”
“Grassroots have been researching the connections between fracking and earthquakes for ages so they sent me back home to Auckland to help Cynthia look into it.”
For no logical reason the hairs on the backs of Colt’s neck had begun to stand up. She’d said absolutely nothing scary and yet her light, trembling tone was putting him on edge. Or maybe it was John’s palpable fear soaking into his skin.
“When I got there Cynth and I built a 3D seismograph together,” Daniel said. “It was crazy fucking sensitive, basically a giant clit. We could monitor the whole pacific plate, predict how eruptions were going to occur months ahead of time, see clear patterns between the fracking sites and volcanic activity. Cynthia was freaking out, saying we were going to win the Nobel Prize. Grassroots were happy too, they gave us another fifty grand and told us to keep looking. They wanted us to expand our radius to Africa and North America; see if we could magma map the next ten years. A nice solid number looks good on research papers.”
Daniel was smiling again, a smile that was all teeth and gums and fear. “That was when shit got bad because—”
A car door slammed nearby and all of them jumped. Colt’s hands felt oddly light and sweat was prickling the back of his neck like pins.
“Daniel,” John said in a low voice. “You have to keep going. Just say it fast.”
She nodded. “Cynth and I knew the number of earthquakes was increasing globally but we didn’t think much of it, but then we noticed the severity was getting worse with every month and then every year and—
“There’s gonna be a big fucking eruption, right? Colt interrupted unable to withstand the tension “That’s what you found?”
“Jesus,” John snarled. “What are you, a fucking kid?”
Seb punched him hard in the arm. “Shut up!”
“I’m sorry,” Colt said. “It’s just…my nerves are fraying over here.”
Daniel looked ill. “I understand. I’ll get to the point…”
She sucked in another shaky breath. “Did you know all of Yellowstone Park is a volcano? The whole thing? It’s actually a super-volcano. It hasn’t erupted for six hundred and forty thousand years.”
“And it’s about to?” Seb asked, his face pale beneath the swelling and bruises.
“Um…” Daniel shook out her hands as though they were covered in water. Colt could see in the dim light of the dash, that her face was pale as milk. “Yeah. In five years and a half years a quake will trigger it. The impact will be so massive tectonic plates across the earth are gonna shift and volcanos that have been dormant for millions of years are going to erupt, in Hawaii and Japan and Iceland and South America…”
No one touched her. No one said anything. No one moved. Colt thought about the haze brought on by the NEMP and imagined in on a global scale, a world covered in fire and red.
“Um, so aside from the initial destruction, the lava and stuff,” Daniel said in a tiny voice. “Volcanic eruptions release massive amounts of-of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere and I’m sure you guys know earth’s atmosphere isn’t doing so hot lately, so what Cynthia and I found…I mean what the real problem is, is that…”
Daniel buried her face in her hands.
“Schwartz, just say it,” John demanded. “You’re almost done. Talk.”
Anyone would have taken John’s harsh tone but Colt knew, even as he fought the urge to puke up burned diner coffee, he was telling her what she needed to hear.
“Um…so all the acid being released won’t be able to escape into the stratosphere. And within a week or so we…um, that is to say humans and animals and trees won’t be able to breathe. The air. Anymore.”
Silence. Outside the wind howled mournfully, rattling the windowpanes of the car. The air that they would no longer be able to breathe. Colt felt his brain go slack, like someone had cut a bungee cord and sent him plummeting downward. Impossible, he thought. No fucking way.
“We didn’t believe it at first,” Daniel’s whispered. “Cynth and I thought we’d fucked up. We reran all our tests but they came out the same. So we did it again. And again. And again. For days all we did was check records, reprogram the seismograph, go over our notes. I can barely remember that time at all, I don’t think either of us slept. Then we called Mikey. He flew down and helped us with the simulations and once he said there was nothing we could do…” she drew in a deep rattling breath. “We knew there was nothing we could do.”
There was more silence. Colt found himself thinking about whales, he’d always liked them, how big they were, how gentle. They breathed the air just like all other mammals. He thought about what Daniel had said and he imagined them floating upside down, rotting in dank, disturbed seas.
His heart suddenly wrung so tight he couldn’t breathe. “Is there anything…” he began, and wasn’t optimistic enough to even finish the sentence.
Daniel looked up and the pain in her eyes raked down his chest like a blade. “No. Cynth and I spent weeks trying to figure something we could do but the ball is already in motion, even if we managed to stop all the fracking in the world for the next five years, the simulation was the same. Same date. Same hour even. And here’s the really fucked up thing…”
Colt covered his face in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” John said. “Keep going.”
“The-the really fucked up thing is that even when we programmed our simulation to show how the patterns would work if no-one ever fracked, Yellowstone still erupts. Just ten years from now instead of five and a half. All human activity seems to be doing is speeding up the process.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Seb asked a little more urgently. “The media, the-the government?”
Daniel laughed bitterly, the sound so jarring Colt stared at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about something Mikey said, about how Fox News and the Prime Minister of England didn’t know how to stop a fuck-ton of magma from exploding out of the earth’s core any more than we did. I’m sorry Seb, guys, there’s just…not anything anyone can do.”
The flat resignation in Daniel’s voice was more chilling than tears. Colt wanted to hold her but he also wanted to leap out of the car, run into the darkness, and keep running until he was back at Castle by the Sea three days ago. In bed with a Daniel, whose secrets were all sewn up inside her. John was right; he didn’t want to know this. He shouldn’t have been told this.
“So you and Cynthia went to Paris?” John asked, as though he needed to keep talking.
“Yeah, we ran away like pregnant teenagers,” Daniel said with a short, false laugh. “We didn’t know what else to do.”
“Why couldn’t you go to your people? To Grassroots. Even if you couldn’t tell them what happened, why couldn’t you have just lied?”
“We…I…couldn’t face them,” she said weakly. “It’s hard to explain but we felt like it was our fault the world was ending. Cynthia was almost catatonic with guilt and I thought we needed time to absorb the news before we told anyone else.”
“What happened to her?” John asked. “Was she with you when you got picked up by Middlebend?”
Daniel shook her head. “She, um, killed herself.”
Colt dimly registered sympathy as he struggled to absorb the message. No air. Dead whales. End of the world.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” John said. “So you stayed in Paris by yourself?”
“For a little while, then I went to Spain, then Prague, then London, then I had a date with Walshaw and a needle full of horse tranquilizer and then I met you guys.”
That was a pretty generous way of describing their situation, Colt thought. Dead whales, no air, end of the world.
“How did Middlebend find you?” John asked
Daniel bit her lower lip. “My best guess is that they’ve been keeping tabs on me for a few years. I took down one of their guys for fraud.”
“You think they suspected? About Yellowstone and everything?”
Daniel shook her head. “From what I read in Elkin’s email they thought I’d linked their fracking sites to volcanic activity and they’d have to shut down their deliciously valuable source of income. I don’t think they realized we’d found…you know. The apocalypse.”
There. There it was stark as a newspaper headline. The Apocalypse. Colt put his head against the car seat and stared up at the ceiling of the SUV. There was a smear of blood up there, dark brown and sticky looking. He memorized the way it looked as he ignored the small, wet noises Seb was making beside him, determined to give the kid his privacy.
“Well I think that’s basically everything,” Daniel said her voice flat and lifeless as their soon to be world. “Do-do you guys have any more questions?”
Colt felt like he had a million, a billion brewing in his brain but they all really boiled down to ‘Why? Why now? Why us?’ And he knew Daniel didn’t have the answer.
“When’s the date?” Seb asked, in a small watery voice. “When Yellowstone…”
Daniel pressed her face into her hands again. “February 14, 2022.”
Valentine’s Day, Colt thought.
“Valentine’s Day?” Seb asked in a thick voice.
“Yeah.” Daniel stared around at them, her dark eyes hooded. “So that’s my secret. Being a doomsayer. Think we can all agree it’s a good one.”
No one said anything but Colt knew they all agreed.