Cascade box set 2, p.45
Cascade Box Set 2, page 45
Michael stood next to him. Both men watched the construction that was being completed on the buildings in front of them. It was 9 p.m. and the lights which lay strewn twenty feet up in the air, burned brightly.
Zach looked at his friend. “I bet you wish you stayed in the camp?”
Michael smiled. “And miss all this alien shit?”
They both laughed.
Michael swallowed. “Anyway, it’s what Cal would have wanted. Us together, until all this craziness is properly taken care of.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A scrawny looking man with grime-laden clothes and a sack thrown over his boney shoulders, scrambled up some rubble. He used his flashlight to help him find his way, but more than once he had fallen painfully. Only half of the building he was trying to get to the top of remained. He clambered over pieces of office furniture and then into what remained of a stairwell, finally emerging on the fourth floor, which was now the top most floor of the office building and was open to the night sky above.
A man with a leather jacket and black hair with streaks of gray stood looking out into the darkness, listening to the E.L.F’s causing even more destruction to the area around them.
The man walked to him, out of breath and dropped the sack onto the dust-covered floor. “Got some nice stuff, few cans of ham, some bags of candy and a few bottles of soda. How’s it looking out there?”
“Our friends are doing their best to gain access to the catacombs, but they are well constructed so it’s going slow,” said Erin.
“Are we sure it’s worth being in the middle of this? Clovis seems to have a bug up his ass for the old government people.”
“If we can into the bunkers then there will be riches for us all Dale. With what we find down there, we might be able to call this our home.” He turned to face the older man. “Clovis said there will be good things in our future if we trusted him, and he was right.”
Dale frowned. “I still don’t trust him. He’s off.”
Erin smiled and placed his hands around the shoulders of his fellow Cascader. “Of course we do not trust him. He may be ‘like’ us, but he is not ‘one’ of us. For now though he knows more about what’s left of the old world than we do, and that’s worth its weight in gold.” He looked down to the piles of food on the floor. “Take this to the others, I’m not hungry.”
Dale picked up the bag and went to leave. “Oh and Sandy wants to see you, said you’ll know what it’s about.”
Erin nodded and turned back to the sounds of dragging and scraping.
A mile away, Bryan sat on an old chair, surrounded by the others in Clovis’s group. A fire blazed in an old barrel not far away.
He briefly looked at Lilly’s bruised face. He didn’t want to think about what Clovis was doing to her and his part in keeping it going. Since when they had met Erin’s group, she had become Clovis’s personal plaything and it was his job to patch her up and make sure she didn’t die.
I have to escape.
Maybe he could take Brett and Lilly with him. The young man had already pleaded with him on a number of occasions to leave with him, but Clovis wasn’t stupid. On joining up you were told of the ‘rules’. The first being if you tried to escape, everyone left behind would be slaughtered by his creatures. The second being if anything should happen to Clovis, then the result would be the same. The third was, you pull your weight or you become the next meal for his ‘boys’. The effect of all of that was, no one but Brett had even shown a hint of trying anything that the boss didn’t agree with. Brett though was young, desperate and didn’t care about the others. He just wanted out and it was becoming harder each day for him to hide it.
Luckily Clovis hadn’t been around much lately, instead choosing to be alone with his creatures.
The door to the ruined building they were in, opened and what hushed conversation there had been immediately fell quiet.
Clovis appeared with his backpack on his back, and stood near the fire looking at the others. “I’m leaving. You all stay here and help Santiago and his people get into the bunker. I’ll be back in a few days.”
Bryan’s inner joy only lasted a few seconds, for the big man’s eyes then rested on him. “You’re coming with me.”
Momentarily Bryan’s mind protested and the emotion almost made it’s way to his face, but instead he got to his feet and started gathering his things into his backpack.
*****
Raj sat in the high ceilinged lobby, while the fire burned in front of him. To his side laid Abbey sleeping. Once he had told her what he had learned, she burst into tears and hugged him. They sat there for a few hours until he realized she was asleep, and then he helped her lay down. He then spent a frustrating hour trying to get the fire back up again.
He looked at the woman near to him and wondered what kind of dreams you have when you learn that you were responsible for the deaths of eighty percent of humanity. No words came from her once he finished talking, only tears, but they were the tears of someone who already knew some of what he had told her, that he was sure of. Either way, sleep was the best thing she could be doing right now, and he himself needed time to think and work through Elcher's plan.
Elcher he learned was one of the Hulathen, a high-ranking official, but a bureaucrat nonetheless. They had never planned to ‘transition’ the earth as he called it, but several years before they had received a message on a ‘very basic frequency’ from this region of interstellar space, which was quite clear. “The earth needs a reset.” This in itself wouldn’t of meant anything, except it had come from ‘one of their own.’ This last part was the biggest revelation to come from the brief chat he had with the alien. The Hulathen had already been to earth. Thousands of years prior, and had genetically altered certain humans with a virus, which would lay dormant until the Hulathen had need for the planet. “We do not transition all the planets we have previous seeded, only those that are on the brink of their own destruction. The earth appeared to be one such place. Once the virus is triggered in the host, it spreads to all life on the planet, which decreases the population to a more manageable number for what altered life is left.”
Abbey’s angry protest at her corrupt employer had led to the downfall of the human race. Go figure.
Elcher said he had first visited Cal, as he thought Cal would be a good candidate to help stop what was happening, but he found Cal to be emotionally ‘unstable’ and when he died, he decided to concentrate more on Abbey.
Thinking back on all he had been told, Raj felt the same roller coaster of emotions he had at the time and just as before he suppressed them, for exploding in anger at beings such as the Hulathen wouldn’t have helped, and as he found out might have actually ended any chance of saving what was left of earths population.
Elcher said he and a few others felt transitioning the earth was a mistake, just as they later realized the message from Abbey had been as well. But the ‘high council do not admit mistakes. We are the Hulathen. If such knowledge became known then many societies we have transitioned would collapse.’ He went on to say that they do not hide themselves from a transitioned world, and in fact the new worlds are usually offered technology to help them progress even faster. “Those that you call Cascaders are connected to the universe around them in a fundamental way, even more than you or they realize.” Raj wasn’t sure what that meant at the time.
But either way, Elcher felt the destruction on the earth had been too extreme. He did not know why the Cascade accelerated why it did, but for some reason “Everything changed here too fast and to a greater extent than had been planned. Leading nature to devour itself.” Raj learned they initially try to slow down the process, but found they could not and it was decided it was better to forget about the earth, and their ‘mistake’.
Elcher disagreed, and wanted to do something to help. But ‘If the others find out, than I will not be able to help anymore.’
Then there was the ‘other’ thing.
“The other Hulathen have decided they cannot allow the Cascaders to continue,” said the alien.
Raj looked again at Abbey and felt guilty. On seeing her hours earlier, he knew what he had to tell her might break her, but at the same time it was too big for one person to keep to themselves, and the feeling of relief he felt on relaying his story to her was palpable. He still had no idea how she was going to react once she was awake, and he was not looking forward to finding out.
He glanced up at Mo who was equally asleep, laying on some pipes on a balcony on the second floor.
His eyes felt heavy as he looked back at the fire, but he shook his head to try and flick them open and thought again about Elcher’s plan. “The Cascaders, can not only control animals, but all forms of altered life on the planet. They can stop the cascade from going any further if they combine their powers. A strong individual needs to bring them together, but we do not have long for this to happen.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A small convoy of two Humvees, one turreted, a truck full of soldiers and another housing a drone and fuel, sat with their engines idling near the gate of the outpost. The sun still hadn’t made an appearance but the black of the sky was beginning to be tinged with blue and orange.
“You know this could go badly wrong, right?” said Fiona slapping her hands together to keep warm in the driving seat of the first Humvee.
“How’s that any different to any other mission we have been on?” Said Zach.
Fiona raised her eyebrows and nodded.
Brad walked up to Zach’s open window. “Weather looks good, clearer than usual for this time of the year I’d say.”
Zach nodded.
“Make sure you give me regular updates and bring our girl back.”
“Will do.”
Brad backed off and gestured for the gates to be opened.
Zach clicked on his radio. “We all good back there? Over.”
“Sure are. Over,” said Bower driving the other Humvee.
Zach took one final look at Brad, smiled and nodded. Then Fiona pulled off and through the gates to the country road. Wyatt, Michael and Miles sat behind them.
“Any E.L.F’s we should be concerned about?” said Zach over his shoulder.
“There’s a few creatures around us, but they are ignoring us so far,” said Miles. Wyatt nodded in agreement.
Zach glanced at the outpost in the side mirror, and the new walls and buildings that were springing up and wondered if next time he saw it, Abbey would be with him.
They quickly made progress through the town and then onto the highway, passing the airfield which Zach wanted to forget.
Fiona looked at the burgeoning green hills and slopes of what used to be farmland flowing by. The whole scene reminded her of the thousands of miles she had driven with the man she still loved. Since he died she had to push the idea of him away. Push it down deep with all the other things she hated thinking about. But from time to time memories bubbled up and she had to take a moment to compose herself and put her mind back into autopilot. She wondered how Zach was coping with a different kind of loss, maybe it was worse for him. The person he loved chose to leave, for some harebrained journey to a place only a Cascader could go. She couldn’t understand why Abbey left, but then she wasn’t like her anymore, she was still human. When she found Zach in the cell in space or wherever they were, he was not the man she had spent the last few months with, his mind had obviously lost whatever battle it was fighting. If he didn’t find Abbey she didn’t know what kind of man would emerge afterwards.
After an hour the landscape flattened out and sun broke above the horizon. There had been a few pauses to allow E.L.F’s to cross their path, but nothing had tried to attack them and it wasn’t long before they were moving through the city where Miles had been imprisoned.
“Must be strange being back here,” said Wyatt vocalizing what the other three were thinking.
Miles looked at him and smiled. “It’s just another place where bad things happened.” He returned to looking out the window. “Just like every other city.”
The young man nodded and looked out the window on his side. For a long time after his grandmother died he wanted to be away from people, but it was Abbey that convinced him to get involved initially because of his abilities and he generally thought it was the right decision. If his grandma could see him now, as a soldier going on missions she would smile. “You’re going to go a lot further than your dad!” she would say, even though he could just about hold down a job at the local store. It had been just about seven months since she died of a heart attack while they were getting used to their new home at the camp, and he was approaching the stage where the pain of her passing was not blocking the happier memories.
Michael sat with his eyes closed between the two Cascaders. He had heard the young man just make a vain attempt at conversation with his colleague, and usually that would be a good time to make a joke to ease the tension, but he was tired. He felt like he was coming to the end of a journey which began the moment they stepped out of the elevator in New Mexico, and all he could do now was accept whatever fate awaited all of them. He hoped he would make it back to Hannah and Megan, but he knew even if he didn’t, she was a strong woman, they would survive. He felt in this new world, if you weren’t one of the ‘chosen’ just surviving was about the best you could hope for.
Didn’t help Cal though did it.
He sighed, then tried harder to catch up on the sleep which he couldn’t get a few hours earlier.
*****
Raj opened his eyes. Blinking a few times his brain was trying to tell him that the weight on the sofa he was on felt different. He looked to his side. Abbey was no longer there. He immediately stood awkwardly, his back feeling the strain of not moving for most of the night and looked around in the gloom of the hotel lobby. He went to shout then realized if he really was alone alerting all the altered life around him might not be the wisest thing to do.
An ear shattering screeching came from above him, making him duck and look up at the same time. Mo was diving towards him at a thunderous pace.
“What? No! It’s me, Abbey’s friend!” He shouted, but the Simivem kept descending, his head seemingly the target. Raj turned and ran, but before he got to his second step the monkey bird, grabbed him from under his shoulders, making him raise his hands. The creature then held his forearms securely and took flight back into the air taking Raj with him.
“Put me down!” Panicking, Raj looked around as the floor of the lobby moved further and further away. “Abbey! Abbey!”
Mo rose higher, his human cargo no problem for his powerful wings to lift. Soon they were at the ceiling of the lobby, and then as they slipped through a twelve foot square tear in the floor higher still, moving through the hole which seemed to pierce all the floors of this thirty-three floor building.
This is it. I’m going to die. I survived space and met an alien, only to be dropped like an eagle wanting to kill its prey.
Mo and Raj burst out onto the topmost level, where the E.L.F dumped Raj onto the floor. Raj immediately scrambled to his feet and went to run for the nearest piece of furniture that could provide him some protection, when a distant voice shouted out to him.
“Abbey? That you? Where are you?” He looked around the restaurant that once had breathtaking views of the city, but couldn’t see her anywhere.
“Come outside!” said Abbey.
He looked around and noticed one of the glass doors to the balcony was open. Carefully walking around the shattered tables and chairs he walked out into the fresh air, and the banquet of noise that was the wildness of the city.
“Up here!”
He turned and looked up. Evidently there was another floor still, a rooftop viewing platform. He quickly spotted the set of metal stairs and walked up, trying not to look out beyond the next step in front of him. As he got to the top the wind buffeted him. A few yards away Abbey sat, with her feet dangling off the wall and nothing between her and the ground, six hundred feet below.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said.
Raj resisted the urge to continue looking at the ground and looked out across the city. It wasn’t the tallest building in the vicinity, but it was one of them and he walked forward mouth agape looking out at the green forest a few hundred feet below. His scientific mind knew that what he was looking at wasn’t possible. The sheer volume of trees, similar to the Amazon could not have grown in the time since the Cascade started, but there it was in front of him. A flock of lizard like flying creatures flew from east to west, while just visible poking above some trees were the arms or tentacles of something else. What he couldn’t see, his ears could sense, as a cacophony of bestial sounds played out around them.
“Err, yeah it is.” And he wasn’t lying despite his fear. He looked at Abbey. “Why are we up here?”
“I needed a place to think. This seemed appropriate.”
“I’m sorry.” He looked down.
She turned and looked at him. “Why?”
“If it were just up to me I wouldn’t have laid it all on you so quickly, but Elcher said it was important that I told you everything now.”
She turned back to looking at the transformed city. “I’m sure he had his reasons.”
“So… how do you feel?”
She breathed in a deep breath. “You would have thought finding out you are responsible for the death of most of humanity would… well, it would be hard to deal with.” She looked at him again and smiled. “But the way I felt before you told me what you did was worse. I sort of knew, but didn’t. And now I know it wasn’t completely my thought. It was a hundred different things that had to come together the way they did, to get all of this—” She held her arms out wide. “—Like Elcher said, this virus was already ingrained inside some of us, something we were born with, like our ancestors before us.” She briefly looked at him again and then looked down. “Elcher tried to tell me in my dreams. He showed me my parents and grandparents. I guess that was his way of saying, they were like me too, it was just my bad luck that I would be the one to trigger everything.”
