When Emily finished speaking she looked across at Captain Constantine. “That’s it,” she said.
“Alright, well, thank you Emily. Does anyone have any questions?”
A sailor at the front raised his hand.
“Go ahead, Stevens,” said the captain.
“But what happens in the future, what happens if these other survivors join us and we survive and we grow?”
All eyes turned back to Emily again.
“While he didn’t use these exact words, the alien I spoke with effectively said we are on probation; behave ourselves and they will leave us alone. Start any trouble, and they’ll deal with us accordingly.”
“What happens if we run out of room?” another voice asked.
“Again, it’s going to depend on our behavior. But at some point in the future, the Caretakers will judge us; if we meet their standards, I think we might be given room to expand.”
“And if we fail?”
“It’s up to us to make sure we don’t fail. It’s the responsibility of every one of us left to ensure that we, and every generation that comes after us, understands what is needed to survive on this new planet. We won’t be allowed to meaninglessly squander resources or life anymore because we’re no longer at the top of the food chain; something with a lot more intelligence, a lot more power than we could ever imagine, runs the show now. But all they are asking is that we learn a little humility, a little respect for what we have.”
Emily paused and looked around at the faces looking back at her, the last of humanity gathered here in this one little room. “Because if we choose not to listen, they can take it all away. And the next time, there won’t be anyone left to make a difference.”
CHAPTER 30
Emily knew she would never grow tired of hearing the waves breaking against the shoreline around Point Loma. The constant susurration of white-capped rolls of ocean slipping up the sand and pebble-strewn beach was the closest she would ever come to the chaotic symphony of the great city she had loved so very much… only to lose forever.
But that loss no longer hung over her with the same heaviness.
In the eighteen months since she and Mac had returned from Las Vegas, Emily had resigned herself to being one of the final witnesses of that old world, an anachronistic memory, destined to become part of a myth, woven into the fabric of humanity’s story. It was a surprisingly comforting thought to know that she was one of the last of something that would never, could never, exist again. It made what she still had left from that old life, and the things that she had gained, seem all the more precious to her.
She walked the beach as she did every morning, lost in her thoughts, the sleeves of her cargo pants rolled up to just below her knees, flip-flops kicked off long ago and carried in her hand as she followed the gentle curve of the beach for a mile or so away from the settlement, her feet tingling as each new wave broke over the wet sand, squelching between her toes.
It was the same beach that she and the other survivors from the Stockton Islands had first set foot on in this strange new continent, familiar in so many ways, yet changed forever. It was also the same beach where, just ten months earlier, MacAlister and she had spoken their vows together. She smiled at the memory as she passed the spot where Mac had taken her hand in his own and promised to be hers and she had vowed to be his. Captain Constantine had officiated over the ceremony, a simple affair; two survivors, happy to be alive and both amazed that with their species dangling over the precipice of extinction, love, much like life, had managed to find a way to survive.
In the time between then and now, Emily’s view of this world had… adjusted.
In almost every novel she had read, every movie she had watched that pitched the end of the world as its theme, it always seemed to pander to humanity’s fear of what would be lost rather than what could be gained through the birth of something new. Birth was a messy business, she knew that from firsthand experience, but the end result was, well, something magnificent.
Binoculars hung from a strap around her neck; she raised them to her eyes for the fifth time in as many minutes and scanned the open sea for any sign of their new arrivals.
Captain Constantine had told her over dinner one evening that before the rain had come there could have been upwards of fifty or more submarines plying through the world’s oceans on any given day. That meant there could be thousands more survivors out there, safe beneath the waves, isolated in their hermetically sealed tin cans. That was the day she had started to reach out to potential survivors via the radio.
In the weeks and months after that first broadcast Emily had managed to make contact with four submarines. Two of those subs—one French, the other Argentinian—had chosen to join them at Point Loma, adding a further three-hundred-and-twenty souls to their growing community of survivors.
There had also been failures. A German sub and a Russian vessel had chosen to ignore her warnings about settling outside the Green Zone. They had headed back to Europe and their home ports. The German crew had lasted two days at their new location before all radio contact was lost, the Russian crew just under three days before their radio communication abruptly ceased.
Neither group had been heard from again.
It was impossible to estimate how many more vessels might be out there, or how many had even survived the tumultuous red storm that had brought such dramatic changes to the planet, but after this length of time, supplies onboard would be all but exhausted, and time would be quickly running out for their crews.
But the terrible loss of the two crews had at least provided the Point Loma settlers with some valuable information: There seemed to be a window of opportunity, albeit just a matter of days, before the Caretakers would fulfill their threat of retribution to any human who strayed and stayed outside of the zone they had assigned to the remnants of the human race. It also appeared that if a submarine stayed beneath the waves and kept moving, they were not seen as a threat. Maybe the Caretakers could not detect them? Maybe, as long as they kept on moving, the aliens did not care? Emily had given up on trying to fathom their inscrutable motivations.
Today, however, was an extra-special day. Today, somewhere out there, beneath the rolling blue waves, was a US submarine heading home. And, while Emily welcomed the cosmopolitan mix of accents and attitudes that had sprouted up around the camp, it would be nice to be around others from her own culture.
She had begun to think that she and Rhiannon were the last survivors of her country. But just a few weeks earlier they had made contact with the USS Michigan, a ballistic missile sub that had ridden out the storm anchored off of the Arctic, much as the crew of the HMS Vengeance had done at the opposite end of the world. They had a full contingent of almost one-hundred-and-thirty-two personnel onboard as well as a number of scientists they had rescued from Arctic research stations similar to the one she and Rhiannon had fought so hard to reach in the Stocktons. The knowledge and skills those scientists and engineers possessed would prove invaluable to the group and their efforts to survive and thrive here at this Southern California refuge.
They were out there right now, Emily thought, her eyes drifting over the sea, searching for any sign of the new arrivals. She knew she was getting ahead of herself, allowing her excitement to get the better of her; the last time they had made contact with the US sub they were still a good eight hours out, but still, she was looking forward to the promise of new faces, fresh personalities, and new stories to be heard.