The sky above the valley was free of the previous day"s storm clouds. Emily could still see rolling clouds of red to the east, beyond the border of their sanctuary, as the sun struggled to push through the veneer of red dust that had turned the day into a permanent twilight.
The path wound upward toward the summit of the hill. Closer to the ridge the trees began to thin out, replaced by gra.s.s all the way to the top. Emily watched as the kids began getting more excited and finally pulled their stumbling father to the ridge. As he reached the top, Simon straightened and pushed his kids behind him.
By the time Emily walked the final few feet to join the silent trio on the hilltop and looked out at the sight that lay beyond them, she knew that she had been right to insist on following the children.
"See?" said Rhiannon, her young voice emphatic with an adult sense of vindication that she had done the right thing.
They looked out across the sprawling landscape that had, until only a day ago, been lush with gra.s.s and trees. Now it was nothing but a swirling ma.s.s of red. Gone was the gra.s.s; gone were the trees. Replaced by a jungle of alien red plants and vegetation that stretched from about a mile or so from the base of the hill below them toward the southern horizon.
A very obvious line of delineation separated the old world from the new-the planet"s original life from the invaders that had taken hold like some vicious weed, consuming everything they touched. On one side there was green; on the other nothing but red. It undulated off into the distance like some incoming tide of blood. To the east, the old world still remained, but once you stepped past that line of demarcation, you might just as well have stepped onto another planet.
"Jesus Christ," she heard Simon whisper.
All this had happened in the s.p.a.ce of just a day? While she had slept and eaten and talked with the family, this trans.m.u.tation had been taking place at an incredible pace, far faster than she would ever have imagined possible.
As she looked out over the distant swell of red, she could see a shimmering distortion in the air right above the point where the red vegetation met with the gra.s.s and trees of her world. It looked like the kind of heat shimmer she had seen hovering over the road during a hot summer day, and it followed the line of contact almost perfectly, creating a wall of distorted air that rose a few feet above the ground. Was it something to do with the rapid transformation of earth vegetation into the new alien variety? Some kind of indication of the energy that was being used up as it relentlessly marched across the landscape?
Emily surveyed the area below her, trying to pick out some kind of familiar landmark in the red zone that she could define as still belonging to her planet. Her eyes flicked back and forth over the landscape until she finally found the distant glint of a lake. If she hadn"t been looking so intently, she would probably have missed it; the surface reflection was almost as red as the sky above. But it wasn"t the lake or the coppice of half-built alien trees bunched together in one corner, their thick roots clearly visible as they snaked down below the water"s surface, that made her reach out and grasp Simon"s arm just above his elbow.
No, it was the area just beyond that-a clearing, almost perfectly circular and completely devoid of both invading vegetation and earth life. Unmistakable even from the mile or so distance she guessed she was from it. It wasn"t even the huge tree she saw sprouting up from the center of the clearing, its limbs heavy with the unmistakable bulbous white-skinned fruit that had caused such unfocused terror in her when she"d found them in the forest as she fled Manhattan.
No, what caused her heart to race and her breath to freeze in her lungs was that she could see one of the fruit lying broken and discarded on the ground beneath the tree.
And whatever had been inside it was nowhere to be seen.
"We need to get out of here now," hissed Emily into Simon"s ear. Whatever had come out of the sack could be out there right now, watching them. Or...stalking them.
Simon didn"t react; he just kept staring out across what had once been lush green fields and forests. "My G.o.d," he finally said, his voice filled with awe or fear, Emily wasn"t sure which. "I honestly wasn"t sure whether I believed you, Emily. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but this..." He swept a hand across the horizon, then returned it to his son"s shoulder, pulling him closer. "This is just surreal."
"Isn"t it beautiful, Daddy?" said Rhiannon, blissfully unaware that she was witnessing the inexorable destruction of her world. If this kid survived long enough, Emily realized, she would be one of the last generation who would ever remember what the earth had looked like before this great transformation.
"Fantastic," replied Simon as he released both kids from his grasp. "Now we have to go home, okay?"
As the kids raced ahead, Emily placed a restraining hand on Simon"s arm, holding him back until they were just out of earshot, but not so far that she lost sight of them-she would be keeping them all close from this point on.
"We have a problem," she said.
"You aren"t kidding. Did you see that? It"s just so...so...alien."
"Okay, let me rephrase that. We have a bigger problem. Did you see the weird-looking trees down by the lake?"
"Of course," said Simon. "How could you miss them? Those things must be eighty feet if they"re an inch."
She quickly reminded him of her disconcerting encounter with the lone tree and its white pods when she was traveling through the forest outside Valhalla. "Oh, s.h.i.t," said Simon. "That"s what those things were down there? I thought it was just some kind of trick of the light."
Emily shook her head. "Don"t ask me to explain, or how I know, because I won"t ever be able to give you an adequate explanation, but whatever was growing inside those sacks it"s...it"s evil."
She realized how ridiculous that must sound, but it was the truth. She didn"t mean "evil" in the religious sense, though. Her encounter in the clearing was simply the most incredible sense of concentrated malevolence Emily had ever experienced. It had been like the frozen blade of a knife had been laid against her soul, and it had left an indelible scar. Even now, as she thought back to her first brush with the globes, she shuddered. More than anything in the world, she did not want to know what was inside those milky-white sacks.
"Lock the doors and keep the children inside," Emily warned as Simon ushered Rhia and Ben back inside the house.
"Where are you going?" he asked as she and Thor turned and began to head back toward the path that led down into the woods.
"I won"t be long," she called back over her shoulder. She heard the door slam shut.
She had left her backpack, bike, and, most importantly, her satellite phone at the house on the opposite side of the ridge when she had left yesterday morning.
Emily followed the path back down the hill toward the Jefferson house, Thor trotting beside her. She had learned the home owners" name from Simon. Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson had, apparently, left the day of the red rain, heading off to be with their parents in DC. They were probably dead now.
The trail dropped down, then leveled out as she headed back past the pond. The ducks she had seen earlier were back, but Thor seemed uninterested in hara.s.sing them this time, preferring instead to stay close to her.
At least one of those sacks they had seen growing on the tree had disgorged its contents. She thought back to the similar tree she had seen in the forest outside Valhalla and the slowly rotating shadow she had seen hidden within the orb"s pink-liquid-filled interior. Whatever had been inside, it was now out and roaming the area. The knowledge that she might not be alone had turned the surrounding woods and deep shadows from a pleasant distraction to a potential ambush, and she found herself jogging along the path, the shotgun off her shoulder and held tightly in both hands.
If she had brought the phone with her, she would not have risked coming back to the house and would have abandoned her supplies, but it was her only means of contact with Jacob and his team, and she would be d.a.m.ned if she was going to leave it behind.
The m.u.f.fled electronic call of the sat-phone greeted Emily like a long-lost friend as she pushed open the door to the Jeffersons" home and stepped inside.
She raced upstairs and jogged into the living room. Pulling the case holding the phone from the backpack, she quickly opened it, pulled out the phone, and flipped up the antenna, simultaneously hitting the Talk b.u.t.ton.
"h.e.l.lo," she said, breathless. "Jacob?"
"Emily. Thank G.o.d. I"ve been trying for hours to get in touch with you. Are you okay?" Jacob"s concern was obvious, but Emily had no idea why he would be worried in the first place.
"Yes. Of course. Why?" she finally answered.
"Listen, I have some news that I need-"
Emily cut him off. "I have better news, so I get to go first. I found more survivors."
Emily heard Jacob"s sharp intake of breath. "What? Where? How many?"
"They"re a family, a father, son, so d.a.m.n cute, and a daughter. I found them yesterday."
"That"s astonishing. Amazing," Jacob stuttered. "Wait? Are they immune to the effects of the red rain, too?"
Emily realized that she hadn"t actually given any thought to the possibility that Simon and his little family might not be immune to the red rain. She had simply made the a.s.sumption that they were, for whatever reason, resistant like her. They"d had zero exposure to the event thanks to the quirky weather system of their little valley. But what if they were not immune? What if once they stepped outside of the hill"s border the virus-or whatever the rain actually was-was still active, and what if it killed them?
No! She was convinced that once the original red rain had turned to dust, its ability to infect human life had become negated, but there was no way to find out if her theory was correct without risking the lives of Simon and the kids.
"I don"t know," she answered Jacob eventually. "Maybe they are immune, but I think they were probably just lucky." She took a couple of minutes to explain what Simon had told her about the valley"s microclimate and how it had shielded them from the red rain. "There are even ducks here, too," she blurted out excitedly, resisting the urge to add a comic quack to emphasize the point.
"Fascinating. Just fascinating. This makes my news even more important." She heard Jacob"s voice grow fainter as if he was holding the phone at arm"s length. "I"m going to send you some images that you need to look at," he continued, raising his voice to ensure he was heard while he apparently fiddled with some controls on his sat-phone. "You"ll need to share them with your new friends as quickly as possible. You"ll need to convince them to get out of there."
The sat-phone gave a beep, and Emily glanced at the little LCD screen; it read, "Downloading Files...1 of 4."
Emily waited for all of the files to download. The resolution on the screen was not optimal for viewing the kind of detail she was looking at, but as she scanned through each of the images while Jacob explained what she was looking at, she felt a growing discomfort in the pit of her stomach.
"You can see what you"re facing, Emily. It"s imperative that you get yourself and the family out of there as soon as possible. If you don"t there"s no way-"
Emily stopped him midsentence. "I need to get back to the other house. You"ll need to explain this to Simon, or I don"t think there"s any way he"s going to believe me. He"s already skeptical of what I"ve told him. Without proof from you, he"ll think I"m out of my mind. Can you give me half an hour to get to them and then I"ll call you back?"
"Make it fast, Em.," Jacob said. "I"ll be waiting by the phone." Emily heard the click of Jacob hanging up and immediately began to collect the remainder of her belongings. She shoved them into the backpack and swung it over her shoulder and called for Thor to come with her.
Making her way through the house to the garage, she found her bike on the side of the house and walked it around to the back path. Once she was down the steps and back on the dirt trail, she began pedaling toward the house on the opposite side of the valley.
She barely felt any of the b.u.mps of the rough trail as she and Thor raced back to Simon and the kids. The implications of what Jacob had shown her flooded her mind with questions, and it was all she could do to keep her pounding heart from exploding out of her chest.
"What exactly is going on?" Simon asked as he followed Emily into her room.
"Do you have a computer? One that"s charged," she asked.
"What? Why do you need a computer?"
Emily dropped the backpack onto the bed and turned to face Simon. "Please, Simon," she said. "Do you have a computer?"
Simon stared at her for a moment, then disappeared. When he came back, he was carrying a laptop computer under one arm. Emily pulled the sat-phone from the backpack, pulled the computer from under Simon"s arm, and walked into the living room.
"Jesus, Emily. Are you going to tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on?"
"I don"t know what"s going on," she replied as she set the equipment down on the coffee table and attached a USB cable from the laptop to the phone. She pressed the On b.u.t.ton of both machines and, once a connection had been established, hit Redial on the phone. "But I think I know someone who might be able to explain it to both of us."
She pressed the Speakerphone b.u.t.ton and listened to the ringing phone. It chirruped a couple of times before Jacob answered. "Emily. Are your new friends there?"
"It"s just me and Simon," she answered, keeping her voice as low as possible in case the kids overheard her. "I didn"t think this was something we should discuss with the children around." Emily glanced up from the phone at Simon, and she realized by the surprised look on his face that he hadn"t believed a word she had told him when she had tried to explain about Jacob and his crew of scientists. "Simon, meet Jacob. Jacob...Simon." The two men exchanged greetings before Jacob took control of the conversation again.
"I don"t know how much Emily has explained to you about what we think is actually going on here, Simon, but I have someone else that I want to introduce to the both of you who I think will be able to clear up any doubts you might have about the threat you are all facing. Hold on a second while I bring them in..." There was a sharp beep followed by a short burst of electronic tones. A few seconds later, a woman"s voice filled the room.
"h.e.l.lo all, can you hear me okay?" There was a slight static buzz behind the transmission, as though the stranger was speaking from a great distance. The woman"s voice was accented, certainly not American. British maybe?
"We hear you," said Emily and Jacob almost simultaneously.
Jacob"s voice broke in to the conversation. "Everyone, this is Fiona Mulligan. She"s the commander of the International s.p.a.ce Station."
"My G.o.d," said Simon, his voice a stunned whisper.
Huddled around the computer screen, Emily could see exactly what Simon saw: a panoramic view of what looked like Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. Of course, she could only a.s.sume it was the uppermost part of South America because the majority of the image she was looking at was obscured by a red haze. The only way she could be sure of what she was seeing was because she could still make out the rough outline of the Gulf of Mexico on the right side of the image. The east coast town of Veracruz was just vaguely visible, but everything else was covered by the same cloud.
"Are you looking at the first image?" Commander Mulligan"s voice crackled over the speaker.
"Yes," replied Emily.
"Jump to the second image, if you would." Again Commander Mulligan caught a gasp of astonishment from the two civilians; this time it was followed by an expletive from Simon and a quick apology.
"That image was taken twenty-four hours later. It"s the same location as the first image. I"m sure you can see now why I thought it was so important for Jacob to let you see these pictures as quickly as possible."
The image on the screen could have been anywhere for all Emily and Simon knew. It was impossible to tell because there was nothing but a swirling ma.s.s of red that looked like some kind of crazy kid"s finger painting or Rorschach image. No land or sea was visible at all.
"This cannot be happening..." Simon whispered.
"I a.s.sure you it is, Mr. Keller," came Fiona"s voice from the phone. "And I am sorry to tell you that the news does not get any better. Please skip ahead to image three, if you would." The third image was of a clearly distinguishable US East Coast. Small spots of red were splattered over the image like drops of blood. Emily could see the largest spot was hanging over New York. "That was taken two days ago," continued Fiona. "You can see the phenomenon is less p.r.o.nounced than you just saw over South America, possibly because, as Jacob has already postulated, whatever we are seeing here is r.e.t.a.r.ded by colder climates. But if you would be so kind as to move to the fourth image."
Fiona waited a second before continuing.
"You will see that although the progression is slower on the US mainland, there appears to be a much larger storm, if that is the right word, rapidly approaching from the east. The picture you are looking at now was taken six hours ago."
Emily sucked in her breath as she looked at the aerial photograph on the screen. It was mind-blowing. While the outline of the coast was still clearly visible, what had been spots of red in the previous image had now grown to three or four times their size. She could just make out tendrils of red extending out from each spot; each one seemed to be reaching in the direction of the nearest red splotch of its neighbor. Here and there she could see some of the tendrils had already made connections, and the originating red stains seemed to be uniformly larger than the ones that had not yet connected.
But that paled into insignificance next to the huge red storm that occupied most of the right side of the screen, a swirling ma.s.s of red hues with thick branches extending out in front of it, as though searching blindly for the land ma.s.s that lay just a few hundred miles ahead of it.
"What we believe you are seeing is a huge body of this substance you called "red dust" that we first saw ama.s.sing in Europe. It broke off from the main body of the red storm over that continent and began heading in your direction several days ago. You may already have experienced some preliminary effects from its approach. If this was a normal meteorological event, I would be recommending you simply hunker down and try to ride it out, but given the information I have received courtesy of Jacob and Emily, my only advice to you is to reiterate what Jacob has already advised you: run as fast and as far north as you possibly can."
"Daddy, what"s that?"
The sound of Rhiannon"s voice shattered the shocked stillness that had settled over both Simon and Emily. Simon"s hand flashed out and slammed the screen of the laptop shut. "It"s nothing, sweetheart," he said as he turned to face his two children, who had somehow managed to sneak into the house unheard. "Just some photos that Emily took that she wanted me to see."
"It"s pretty," said Benjamin, standing next to his big sister, a coloring book in one hand and a green pencil in the other.
While the implication of what the kids had just seen had pa.s.sed by Benjamin, Rhiannon didn"t look convinced by Simon"s explanation.
"Who were you talking to?" she asked, nodding at the sat-phone next to the computer, as Benjamin, apparently already bored by the conversation, took a chair next to Simon and began coloring the remainder of his picture.
Before Emily or Simon could reply, Fiona"s voice filled the kitchen. "h.e.l.lo, children. My name is Fiona, and I am a friend of Emily"s and your father." The ISS commander"s strong British accent instantly grabbed the children"s attention. "I was just telling your daddy how nice it would be if you and your brother might like to come see me and my friends. Would you like that?"
Rhiannon"s response was to simply raise her eyes to the ceiling, spin on her heels, and head out of the kitchen toward her bedroom. "Whatever!" she called back over her shoulder. Ben continued to concentrate on filling in his coloring book, biting his bottom lip as he carefully worked the color between the lines.
Simon watched his daughter disappear, then took his son"s hands in his own. "Why don"t you go and take Thor to the kitchen and give him some cookies?" he asked. The little boy"s face instantly brightened as he turned toward Emily, his eyes fixed on the carpet.
"Can I?" he asked.
Emily tried not to let the surprise she felt creep into her voice. Benjamin had barely acknowledged her existence since she had stumbled across his family. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
The little boy turned to the dog: "For. Want a cookie?" Emily smiled at the sheer sweetness of it. The malamute didn"t seem to have any problem understanding the boy, though. He rolled to his feet and trotted after Benjamin, and they both disappeared into the kitchen.
"We have some other problems to contend with," said Emily when the boy was out of earshot. She explained what they had seen happening over the hill, quickly filling in the commander on her experience in the Valhalla forest and what the empty sack might mean for their safety.
"This is a very interesting development," said the commander after a pause. "And you have no idea what this egg sack contained?"
"No, all I know is that when I encountered the first one, I was almost overwhelmed with fear. Just take my word for it, whatever is on the loose out here isn"t thinking happy thoughts."
There was a burst of static, then Jacob"s voice cut through it. "...all that you have told us, I"d advise you leave as quickly as possible. While I can"t speak with any certainty about the storm, given your previous experiences and observations, and the unprecedented size of the storms, I can only a.s.sume that this is the next phase in the geoengineering of the planet. In short: you don"t want to still be there when that thing makes landfall."
Emily stared at Simon. She could almost hear the cogs in his brain whirring as he tried to process this avalanche of information.
"Okay," he replied, finally. "We leave now." The tenseness Emily had seen in him seemed to drain from his muscles in resignation, all resistance finally leaving him.
"If there"s nothing more? I think Simon and I need to get cracking. There"s not much of the day left and the sooner we"re out of here the better."
"Good," replied Fiona. "Don"t waste time. You have no more than twelve hours in our estimation before that storm makes landfall and starts heading inland in your direction. You"ll want to be out of there well before then to stay ahead of it."