Issue #71 : In Vain

The storms had already begun. Twin beams of energy, extending up from the ground and intertwining with each other like a cyclone of twin rainbows. The sky darkened all around them and cracked with the electricity put off by this complete destruction. Anything in its path would be reduced to base matter, they had to get clear of here before it was too late.

Janus grabbed the laptop and radio equipment and threw everything into the jeep. Jennifer and Rodriguez were already scrambling into their seats, twisting around and throwing glances at him to find out what was taking so long.

The ground was already starting to tremble and fracture as he threw the jeep into gear and accelerated away from their camp site. There was still research material back there but it was no longer worth it to linger. It was impossible to know if the storm had been sparked by the near collision of XR47 which had passed by the day before or if this was an attack from one of the crafts now in a low Earth orbit.

He had grown up chasing storms with his brother, but this felt different, inherently more dangerous. Regardless of the size of the tornadoes they tracked as teenagers, there was always the underlying belief that everything would ultimately be all right, could be avoided. Looking back at the twin spirals of churning nuclear energy, he knew that he would not have the luxury of making even the smallest mistake.

“Take a left, we have to get out of the kill zone.” Rodriguez yelled up to the front seat, over the sound of the hail that had started to pelt the body of the jeep.

“The kill zone is everywhere,” Jennifer yelled back at him, “We have to create distance, get as far away as we can and try to regroup.”

Janus kept to the road, ignoring the debate between his two companions and accelerated into the haze of dust and debris that was being pulled up into the air by the wind. He flinched at the screaming sound of something that flew past the jeep, an animal of some kind. Jennifer screamed louder than he had ever heard and pointed up as a passenger jet flew overhead, no more than a few hundred feet above them. It floundered and dropped out of the sky, crashing into the rocks in a blossom of flame and metal. He gripped the wheel as the jeep was knocked to the side by the shock wave and clutched at his cheek as he felt burning pain from a piece of passing debris slicing open the skin, and embedding itself into the dashboard.

Jennifer flipped on the radio. Following a loud burst of static, they heard the announcement, playing on a loop, that all commercial and private air flights were being grounded and that people were instructed to start moving south, no stops at home to get personal belongings, if your family was in the car, you were to leave now.

“No shit.” They barely heard Rodriguez’s retort over the sound of the storm.

The jeep jostled to the side as the road underneath it started to shift and for a moment, it felt like they were slowing, as if some invisible force was pulling on them from behind. Janus pressed the accelerator to the floor and the engine revved, slowly bringing them back up to full speed. The wheels started to shimmy from side to side and he renewed his grip.

In the rear view mirror, he caught the look of terror that had appeared on Rodriguez’s face and looked ahead to see that in about a hundred yards, the road itself was starting to pull apart, straight down the center as if it was being unzipped.

“Time to get off this road!” Jennifer yelled at him

Janus swerved off and turned into the field which was running alongside them. They were all tossed in the air from the impact and in the process, the radio flipped back on, playing nothing but shrill static. After a minute or two, the static was replaced by a news alert in a language he didn’t recognize. Then static exploded again, followed by the sound of someone sermonizing.

“The end is already upon us, Brothers and Children. The saviors you may wrongly see as the enemy comes down from up on high, transmitting the solutions to our problems through the rainbow lifelines that connect us to them. Rest easy. If you are one of the chosen, you were picked before you were born and the rest can sort things out for them—”

Jennifer had been fiddling with the various buttons, trying to turn it off when she gave up, drew back one leg and kicked the radio, smashing the face and causing static to sputter out of the speakers, which slowly spiraled down into silence Ears of corn whipped past the windshield. He could still see the funnel clouds, actually felt the heat being released by them as they lazily drifted across the countryside, leaving destruction in their wake. He looked in the mirror.

Rodriguez was gone.

He swerved the jeep as he turned to look and hit an exposed root in the process, causing the two of them to crash into each other.

“What is the problem?” Jennifer asked, but she soon saw the source of his panic as she glanced back and saw that they were now down to two people. The back lift gate was hanging open, bouncing up and down off the frame, either from the latch being knocked loose or from Rodriguez jumping out, or worse. He had no time to contemplate it as he felt the wheels beginning to spin as they drove further into the field.

“I don’t even know where we’re going!” he yelled.

“I think there’s another two lane just on the other side, if we can get that far.”

Almost as if she had seen it in advance, the jeep burst through the last row of corn and bounced down onto blacktop. Janus slammed on the brakes enough to allow him to make the turn onto the road and gunned the engine, driving in the direction he could only guess was towards safety. He glanced back and saw that the corn they had just emerged from was already engulfed in flames.

“There!” Jennifer pointed to their left and he saw the face of the mountain looming up over them. He swerved, taking the jeep off the road again as he aimed for the base.

Despite being the middle of the day, the sky had gone pitch black, as discharge from the energy field leeched into the atmosphere, partially blocking the light from the sun. Janus flipped on the headlights and braced his arms as they started to draw closer to the mountain. He vaguely heard Jennifer screaming and saw that behind them, the ground itself was crumbling and collapsing down into itself, giant sinkholes forming and reaching out to each other with spidery veins of fractured earth. The smell of smoke singed his nostrils and he looked up to see the canvas topper on the jeep was starting to smolder.

They drove into a large, open mouthed cave and immediately began driving at a dramatically downward slope. The stone corridor shook around them and the jeep started to pitch from side to side. In the mirror, he could see the entrance collapsing behind them. The deafening sound of something impacting the jeep was followed by the vague sense of his head being driven into the steering wheel, followed by darkness.

He woke up to the clicking of the turn signal, muffled sounds of explosions and red light, flashing on rock.

Jennifer’s severed arm was resting on his lap. He looked at the ring on the lifeless finger, and in his mind’s eye, saw her twisting around in her seat, ignoring her seat belt.

The tunnel had collapsed around them, cocooning the jeep in broken rock. Even if anyone knew he was down here, it would take days to tunnel this far down. By then, the jeep would be a coffin. It wasn’t as if there was anyone left topside to help him anyway. He wondered how much longer his air would last.

Before he could contemplate the question, the jeep was rocked by an explosion, so loud that he felt blood spurt out of one of his ears. The air itself felt like it had become fire as the jeep began to shake. He screamed through the pain, the sound of metal crushing like a tin can, and had just enough time to register a flash of blinding light before the last—

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