Only a few days had passed, but the event that had wiped all but a handful of humanity from the face of the earth already seemed distant and vague to her now. The red rain had fallen across the world, seemingly from nowhere. Within hours everyone and everything was dead…well, apart from her, Thor, and a bunch of scientists trapped in a research station in the Stockton Islands on the far north coast of Alaska. That was where she was heading. Alaska.
Guess there’s something to be said for the end of the world, she thought. It had certainly done a world of good for her cardio health. The post-apocalypse diet: guaranteed to trim inches from your waistline, or you’ll die trying. She could have made millions in book sales, if there had been anyone left to sell the book to.
Thor, an Alaskan malamute, had been Emily’s only companion since he had rescued her from an attack by a trio of alien creatures in an equally alien forest just outside Valhalla. In their brief time together, she had often thought he must have received some sort of training, because he responded to many of her commands and was very protective.
“So, what do you say, mutt? You hungry?”
Thor looked up at his mistress and bounced his tail back and forth enthusiastically.
“Okay, then. Let’s find somewhere we can eat.” Emily slowed the bike to a crawl and began looking over the street in front of her. She quickly found the building she was looking for, pulling to a stop outside a small corner convenience store and dismounting. She could feel the burning ache in her calves as she wheeled the bike toward the sidewalk. The military-style backpack strapped to her back had grown lighter as she and Thor consumed the initial stockpile of food she had brought with her. Emily had to admit, losing the bulk of the weight had been a relief, but it was time to replenish her stock.
Pausing for a second, she scanned the street ahead of her; grayscale buildings lined both sides of the empty road. It was the same everywhere she had traveled since leaving Manhattan. No sign of any other living creature except for her and Thor. No birds, no dogs, no cats—not even an insect, as far as she could tell. And no people. She had no idea what that meant for the world, but she knew it couldn’t possibly be good. What would be the effect of the total destruction of most, if not all, of the earth’s indigenous species?
It was no mystery what had happened to life on this little blue planet. It had been annihilated by the red rain, consumed and then reconstituted into the weird alien life-forms she had encountered in the days after everything had died.
As she continued traveling north, Emily had seen more signs of the insidious encroachment of the red forests into the earth’s environment. The second day into her ride, she had noticed small pockets of the towering trees similar to what she had encountered in Central Park scattered here and there along her route, usually near a water source like a lake or a river. She had seen a couple of small clusters of trees growing on sidewalks with their roots spiraling down inlets into sewers, but these had been much smaller, almost scaled-down versions of their bigger brothers. But by day two and three, she had begun to notice larger groups and far more frequently. To her mind, there was an almost exponential growth occurring, although she had seen nothing on the scale of the forest she had traveled through in Valhalla. Not yet, at least.
She had seen little of the spider-aliens other than the occasional distant sighting, but on day three she had found one, or at least the desiccated remains of one, hanging from an iron security fence outside a block of offices. Evidently it had impaled itself on the spikes when it had leaped from the building; she could see the telltale circular escape hole in a window three stories up. She was tempted to take a closer look, but Emily had begun to recognize that her reporter’s nose was more likely to get her into trouble these days. She gave the thing a wide berth and continued on her way.
The only other survivor she had spoken to was Jacob Endersby. He was part of a team of scientists on the remote Stockton Islands, just off the northern shore of Alaska. She still wasn’t convinced that Jacob’s hypothesis—that the farther north she traveled, the colder it would get and the less of a foothold the invading alien life-forms would have—was right, because it sure as hell didn’t seem to be having much of an effect so far. Truth be told, there was little in the way of temperature difference in the hundred or so miles she had already traveled; so maybe it was going to take a much more severe drop before there was any observable decrease.
Emily slipped the backpack from her shoulders. The wounds she had sustained during the attack by the alien creatures in the forest were healing nicely; her shoulder still ached and she felt the occasional spasm of pain if she moved her arm too quickly or spent too long riding her bike.
She knew she would have to find an alternative form of transportation soon. With winter closing in, and the temperature already starting to drop, finding a vehicle that would protect her from the elements was also going to have to be a major consideration in her plan of reaching the Stockton Islands. There were thousands of cars and trucks left at the side of the road or waiting in garages for owners who would never return.
Of course, that meant she would have to learn to drive.
She’d need something easy to handle but large enough that she could stash her bike, supplies, and, of course, Thor. It was also going to have to be robust enough to cope with the bad weather she was sure to hit when she crossed over into Canada. Roads were going to be closed once the winter weather set in, with no one to clear the inevitable snowfalls that would make them all but impassable. She would give it some serious consideration over the next couple of days, she decided.
The pain in her shoulder paled into inconsequence when compared to the soreness she had experienced in the first few days of eight-hour cycling sessions. She now knew the true meaning of the old cowboy phrase saddle sore because her butt chafed like nobody’s business after long hours parked on the saddle of the bike. She learned quickly that she needed to make frequent rest stops or suffer the consequences, that and the liberal application of cream from a tube of Desitin she had picked up from an abandoned pharmacy to her more tender areas.
She had decided to follow the Hudson as far north as she could. Keeping the river to her left gave her a sense of security; it was one direction she didn’t think she’d have to worry about an attack. Staying on the east side of the river also had the added advantage of keeping the half-mile stretch of water between her and what had been, up until only a week or so ago, some of the more populated areas of New York.
That first day, as she and Thor had stood on the hill and looked back at the village where she had spent the previous night slowly succumb to fire, Emily had worried her canine companion wouldn’t be able to keep up with her. But as she rode along the deserted highways and side roads, she had quickly learned how wrong she was about that. Thor was more than capable of matching her pace. In fact, he could go far longer than she could between breaks; a result, she believed, of malamutes having originally been bred as sled dogs. She found herself having to limit herself to a maximum of thirty or so miles a day for herself rather than the dog. Emily guessed that Thor would be able to easily cover twice that distance, if she gave him his head.
Thor wasn’t the problem, though. It had quickly become apparent to Emily that cycling the forty-five hundred miles to reach the Stockton Islands and the group waiting for her there was going to be a next to impossible undertaking. She was utterly exhausted by the end of each day. She had been lucky so far and not had any accidents, although she had come close on a couple of occasions. But she knew her luck wouldn’t hold out forever, and the odds were stacked well and truly against her traveling that kind of distance and not hitting a pothole or letting her attention slip momentarily and ending up lying in some ditch with a broken arm, leg, or worse.