In Washington the president, his family, and senior staff were airlifted to an undisclosed location. From the chopper he could see the Beltway with its murderous fight to get out of D.C. Most would not make it. He could see the dome of Capitol Hill, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian with its treasures, the gleaming terraces of the Kennedy Center and mellow rosy brick of Georgetown. All would be gone in a few more hours.
“I need more information,” he said to his chief of staff.
“Sir, retaliation scenarios are in place for—”
“I need more information.”
A woman stood in the doorway of the store, carrying a sort of padded bucket with a handle, curved to hold a baby. The baby was asleep. The woman and Pete stared at each other. She spoke first.
“You’re the one who has been stealing children, aren’t you?”
“Not stealing,” Pete said. “Rescuing.”
“From the tsunami.”
It was the second time Pete had heard that word today. He scowled to cover his confusion. “No. From the Tesslies.”
“What are Tesslies?” She moved closer, just one step. It was as if she were pulled closer, jerked on some string Pete couldn’t see, like the puppets Bridget had made for the Six when they were kids. The woman looked about McAllister’s age, although not so pretty. Her hair matted to her scalp and her clothing was wet over her breasts, which made Pete look away. He started throwing bundles of towels into a shopping cart.
“You’re taking things from this store, the way you did from the others. A sporting-goods store in Maine. A pet store in New Hampshire. A garden shop in Connecticut. A supermarket in Vermont. Ambler’s Family Department Store in Connecticut…”
She recited the whole list of store Grabs, his and Caity’s and Ravi’s and Terrell’s and Paolo’s and even way back to Jenna’s famous Wal-Mart Grab. Pete stopped hurling towels into the cart and stared at her, astonished. “How do you know all that? Who told you?”
“Nobody told me, or at least not all of it. A law enforcement joint task force that… No, it would take too long to explain. You aren’t here for long, are you? How much longer?”
Automatically Pete glanced at the wrister. “Sixteen more minutes.”
“I’ve been waiting outside for you.”
More astonishment. “You have? Why? Don’t try to stop me!”
“I won’t stop you. At first I came to video you, to get photographic proof that… It doesn’t matter. That’s not why I’m here now. Listen to me, please—what’s your name?”
“Pete.” He yanked at another shopping cart and started emptying a table of clothing into it. So much clothing! And most of it big enough for Ravi and the Survivors. Eduardo’s pants had a hole in them.
“My name is Julie. Listen to me, Pete. The tsunami will be here within the hour. It will smash everything on the eastern coast of the United States. Almost no one will survive—”
“McAllister will. She told me.” Pants, tops, jackets, more pants but softer. “All the Survivors will live.”
“Yes? Where will they go?”
“The Tesslies will take them to the Shell.”
“That’s where you live, the Shell? Where is it?”
“After.” A third shopping cart. If he could tie them together, they would all come back with him—a lot more than Ravi had Grabbed! Better stuff, too. He yanked free a towel to lash the carts together.
“But the Shell is a safe place, isn’t it? Is it some sort of space ship or underground colony? Are you from the future? It—oh my God!”
At her voice, Pete jumped. She stared at the wall behind him. He whirled around to look, knife at the ready. If it was a Tesslie—
JULY 2014
The front wave of the megatsunami loomed 300 feet high when it crashed into northwest Africa. When it reached the low-lying south coast of England, the trough of the wave hit first. The sea retreated in a long, eerie drawback before rushing back to land. It breached England’s sea defenses, roaring a mile inland, destroying everything it touched.
The main body of the wave train sped over the Atlantic at hundreds of miles per hour. When eventually it reached Brazil, the Caribbean, Florida, and the eastern coast of the United States, it would crest to a maximum of 120 feet.
Long before that, the missiles had been launched. Retaliation for the act of terrorism aimed at smashing the way of life of the Western world. The counter-response was not far behind.
The far wall of huge DIGITAL FOTO FRAME had stopped showing the moving pictures of the beautiful girl running on the beach. Instead, they all showed fire spurting into the sky. At the same moment the ground shook beneath Pete’s feet and he nearly fell. The woman staggered sideways against a table of rugs, righted herself, stared again at the row of DIGITAL FOTO FRAME, which were screaming loud enough now to wake the baby. Something about a yellow stone.
Julie said, in a voice Pete recognized: “There goes the West. To match the East.” The words made no sense, but the voice was the one Bridget had used when her last baby miscarried. Quiet, toneless, dead.
Pete stared at this baby, now awake in its padded bucket and peering curiously around. Was it a girl? How hard would Julie fight for it?
She said, “Take us with you.”
He gaped at her. She didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“You can, I know you can. You’ve taken twelve children, starting—”
“Thirteen,” he corrected, without thinking.
“—with Tommy Candless over a year ago, and you can take us. Don’t you understand, Pete? Everything here is dying, the Earth itself is dying! Tsunamis, earthquakes, a mutated bacteria that is killing every plant above tide level. Governments will collapse, and as they collapse they’ll fight back, there will be nuclear retaliation with radiation that will—”
“Radiation, yes.” She had used a word he knew. “It damages babies. It damaged me. But it’s mostly gone now.”
“Is it? Then take—”
“Everything you said, the destroying of the whole Earth—the Tesslies did that. But McAllister is leading us to restart humanity. And Ravi and I will kill the fucking alien Tesslies!”
“The—”
Suddenly all the DIGIAL FOTO FRAMES went black at once. The silence somehow felt loud. Into it Julie said, “No aliens wrecked the Earth. We did. Humans.”
“That’s a lie!”
“No, Pete, it’s not. We poisoned the Earth and raped her and denuded her. We ruined the oceans and air and forests, and now she is fighting back.”
“The Tesslies destroyed the world!”
“I don’t think so. Tell me this: Are there any plants where you live? Growing wild outside the Shell, I mean?”
“There are now. Grasses and bushes and red flowers.”
Julie closed her eyes, and her lips moved soundlessly. When she opened her eyes again, they were wet. “Thank God. Or Gaia. The microbial mutation reversed.”
“What?”
“Take us with you, Pete. I can help your McAllister start over. I’m strong and a good worker and I know a lot of different things. I can be really useful to… to the Shell.”
She took a step forward and looked at him with such beseeching eyes that all at once Pete saw her. She was a real person, as real as McAllister or Petra or Ravi, a person who was going to die in McAllister’s tsunami. The first person in Before who had ever been real to him.
“Take us with you!”
He choked out, “I can’t!”
“Yes, you can! You’ve done it twelve times already!”