EMMA

  Something hard was pressing against her back. She wasn't in the chair anymore, she was laying down, with a headache.

  Maybe it had been a nightmare. Maybe she had fallen asleep in the backyard, tipped over into the barren garden bed. Or maybe nothing had happened at all, and her mind had made the whole thing up.

  Emma's too-cold hand found something rounded and hard. Nothing that would be in her bed naturally, even if Calen had left the window open and frozen the entire room.

  Her eyes opened and stung, piercing prickles scouring across her retinas and prompting a gasp.

  Water flooded in, and she was awake.

  With a kicking, rebellious lurch, Emma's lungs seized, bruising the back of her throat as they rejected the invasion that had finished waking her.

  The reflexive inhale that followed only drew more water in.

  Numbing cold tugged at her limbs. Her eyes were useless, open or closed, stinging against the flow when she tried to look.

  Another cough solved nothing, but felt as if she were bruising her own ribs. She was half curled-in on herself in moments from the dull ache.

  None of that was air, and she knew it, even through the screaming protests of the abused skin on her face and the electric buzz of an impossible cold in her knees and elbows.

  The current dragged at her, pulling her in one direction. Another was down, judging by the way she couldn't move her arm beneath her torso.

  So the opposite side of that must be the surface.

  Between ragged coughs that threatened to fill her closed eyes with stars anyways, Emma sat up, more of a roll. Weight crashed over her as she broke the rushing surface, threatening to drag her face back into the surface.

  The chill only intensified in the night air, which did nothing for the water already in her lungs, or dragging at her sopping clothing.

  Another half-cough buckled her sideways in pain. She dropped her palms to the smooth, almost slimy-feeling surface of something below the water, relying on her hands and knees to keep her face above the water.

  Every choked inhale prompted another rejection, but slightly warmer water trickled out past her tongue and teeth every time, and the burning for air slowly receded.

  Emma wanted nothing more than to collapse as she took her first, shaky, impossible breath in the cold, all the way in, and all the way out afterwards.

  Her eyes opened above the flowing river, because it was a river she was in, from what she could see. The bottom had smooth rocks in it, like a carpet of skull-sized ovals forming an awkward bend to stress one of her wrists.

  She coughed again, but it was not the buckling, curling sensation of lungs desperate for survival. The rawness of her throat still burned from that, but she was breathing.

  Breathing very cold air, somewhere she shouldn't have been, without any sign of—

  Splashing to her left announced the presence of something, wherever they were, not the kitchen, or the backyard, or anywhere else Emma knew.

  It was approaching rapidly.

  "Em! Em are you okay? Holy shit Em what did you wish for?" Chattering teeth nearly obscured his question. The cursing barely even registered in Emma's brain.

  Calen's fingers squished against Emma's sopping shoulder as he shook her. The current brushed her chin as Emma processed that she was alive, relief nearly leaning her over into the knee-high rushing water all over again.

  She reached out towards the noise, and found Calen's neck under her elbow.

  He failed to drag her skywards, but she used the opportunity to straighten and rest back on her heels, pulling away.

  "Wh—"

  The idea of trying to use her voice quickly aggravated her throat and turned into another coughing fit.

  Calen let her go, and was busy dunking his face in the river. Taking a drink, judging by the slurping sounds.

  Emma wished she could see.

  The smell of pine sap tickled at her nose. The river dragged by, and the lack of explicit sting in the way the air prickled at her numbed skin almost tricked her into believing they should stay put, and hide from the night air in the water.

  The bottomless cold sinking its teeth into her bones where her body rested below the surface convinced her otherwise.

  "Out. Cold."

  The plea was more of a croak, but Calen heard her, and pointed.

  His single outstretched finger was suspiciously well-defined, given that his face hadn't been more than a colorful blob of approximately the right shape, when they were around the kitchen table.

  Maybe he had been right, about the damage to her vision being temporary.

  It wouldn't save her from the radiation burns she could feel stretching across the rest of her face, but at least she could navigate without being dragged. Calen would get to a hospital faster, if she wasn't slowing them down.

  Not that there was a hospital in the middle of whatever wilderness they had ended up in. Or even a road.

  Twigs snapped and rattled, and more cursing emanated from up ahead as they both waded towards the dry shoreline. A pair of boots was kicking its way out of the vegetation crowding the steep, rocky bank.

  Mr. Isaacson, at least, sounded fine.

  "Kiddos? Where did you drag me? What in the hell are you doing in that water?"

  Emma finished dragging herself onto some dry stones and collapsed again. Her soaked clothing made standing feel nearly impossible. The surge of energy brought on by the shock of cold was fading, replaced by a tingling numbness creeping through her body.

  Hopefully it was the cold, and not nerve damage. It was all over, which was good. If she had been baked on one side by the bombs, the sensation would have been unequal.

  Unless she was cooked all the way through.

  "Getting a drink." Calen chirped. "And we didn't drag you anywhere, we got—"

  "Tell me later. Get those clothes off before they freeze you to death. Swimming in the wilderness in the middle of the—"

  Emma didn't catch the rest of the grumbling as their neighbor picked his way down the bank, too busy winding her numb fingers around the hem of her too-small sweatshirt. Squeezing out of the soaked garment let the wind at her skin for real. Another wave of numbness washed over her as the frigid air met her undershirt.

  She left the rest on, and hugged herself as she pushed the ball of wet cloth away to curl up on the ground again. Squeezing out of the rest of her clothing right now wouldn't dry it any faster, even if it was just the two of them. And she would never get back into her jeans while they were wet.

  "Wet denim. It won't squeeze out much anyway, and no." She forestalled Calen's concerned look.

  Emma wasn't cold enough to strip down in front of the neighbor. Not yet.

  He nodded, sitting between her and Mr. Isaacson as he began to pile some of the dry rocks inside his clothing, and hers.

  Too grateful for the minimal privacy he was giving her to care, Emma let him do whatever weird thing he wanted right now. She was busy rubbing her arms below the stubby sleeves of her undershirt for whatever heat the friction would give her, and being grateful for the strange impulse that had left her wearing a bra on a Saturday.

  At least Mr. Isaacson was busy being annoyed at Calen. Not that he had ever been weird around her. But still.

  "That doesn't answer my question. How did we get here, and why did you leave me in a bush to go swimming?"

  "It's been five seconds man, what do you want from me? We were kidnapped by aliens."

  Emma rolled her eyes despite herself. There was that denial again. The cake had been a nice gesture, but the world was ending, and they were freezing to death in the wilderness.

  She almost opened her mouth to interfere, but Mr. Isaacson replied immediately. He was clearly in no mood for more of Calen's antics either.

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  "Oh that's fine then, I'll just tell Uncle Sam I missed my call-in because of little green men. Where's the road?"

  Calen stopped wringing out his undershirt to throw his palms up, the very picture of punchable reasonability. Clearly his second wind was still carrying him forwards.

  Emma had heard that tornados could throw people miles. Maybe a nuclear shockwave had done the same thing for them. That sounded more sane than the justification that came out of Calen's mouth next.

  "I don't know any more than you, but I can see what's going on." Her brother said with an unreasonable amount of condescension in his voice. "What river do you think we're in? Why are the Rockies that tall? Have you looked at the sky?"

  Emma finally had the energy to step in. He was pushing it too far.

  "Calen the sky is weird because the magnetosphere is probably really upset with us right now." She explained. "And stuff looks bigger when it's clo—"

  Calen's fake laugh interrupted Emma's attempt to rationally explain perspective to him.

  "Har har, very funny. I read about starfish prime in school too. Still don't know where the road is." He said stubbornly. "You two smarty pants wanna see a really funny perspective trick? Look at the moon."

  She didn't bother fighting the scowl that crept over her face, as she glanced up to appease him. Her eyes hadn't been working minutes before. Even if she could see a few more feet, the sky was going to be a blur.

  "I can't see the—"

  Emma could see the moon.

  Well, something moonlike, beyond the glimmering meteor shower streaking through the atmosphere.

  But it was a rusty red-brown. And tiny.

  Well, far away.

  Mr. Isaacson cursed. Very colorfully. Emma bit her tongue.

  "Okay, so someone hit the moon with a superweapon and baked it." He said when he was done. "I'll give you that one kid. But not aliens."

  Emma blinked, not trusting her eyes, scanning for debris, the ghost of the hab domes, the railways between them.

  There was nothing. No twinkling lights, no neat geometric lines between them, no obvious craters.

  So either the colonies had been entirely erased, or—

  "Come on, we'll figure it out later. Water's rising, and you two gotta get moving." Mr. Isaacson said something useful, dragging Emma's attention out of the sky. "Up up up kiddos. Keep yourselves moving, stay warm."

  Emma dismissed the crazy idea, right before Calen dragged the rest of her attention away from the sky by cursing and dropping one of her slippers as he wrung the rabbit out.

  Blood was trickling down his closed fist already.

  "Broken glass in the sole." He hissed.

  Chewed-down fingernails still managed to tear the stitches on Emma's sleeve when Mr. Isaacson requested a bandage of some kind.

  River water probably wasn't the cleanest way to rinse Calen's open wound, but a keychain flashlight jangled and clicked on to ensure no glass was still pressed into the flesh before they bound it.

  They ended up using one of Calen's long sleeves instead, with Emma's being packed as padding.

  "You managed to miss all the tendons and major arteries, somehow. By millimeters." Their neighbor grumped, tying off the cloth around Calen's palm. "Be more careful, kid. And be nice to that hand for a few weeks while it heals."

  Pangs in Emma's stomach and the prickling on her face reminded her that she wasn't going to be around for that.

  "Which way do we go?" She asked, shakier than she wanted to sound. "Where's home? He— we all need a hospital."

  Calen's annoyed look had her correcting herself midsentence. Better to pretend she was keeping it together, than waste time fighting his denial.

  The water was still rising, starting to run over Calen's one squelching sandal on Emma's foot.

  "You two need shelter first, after we get out of this ravine." Came the gruff reply. "This'll flood soon at this rate. Up the hill, we'll see if we can find a trail, track it back to a ranger station with a first aid kit."

  "And four walls, and a roof." Calen added, sticking his feet back in Emma's slippers. "Y'know, assuming we're still on—"

  Emma tuned out his jabbering, and focused on climbing after Mr. Isaacson. Stepping where he shone the light on footholds helped, and making sure Calen didn't fall behind scrambling up the slope with only one hand took the rest of her time. A dull buzz of chattering insects, snapping twigs, and the occasional distant yipping emanated from the woods.

  Trying to poke holes at Calen's theory by looking at the stars behind the flickering lights in the sky was useless. None of them were in the right places, so Emma couldn't even begin to orient herself.

  It was just light pollution from the meteor shower, and the magnetosphere objecting to all the nuclear payloads dumping too many electrons through it.

  Knowing that didn't help Emma dismiss the obviously incorrect theory Calen was using to distract her at all.

  The moon...

  Emma hugged her lightly-sodden sweatshirt to her chest. The 'moon' wasn't even the right phase. The real one was somewhere else in the sky. Maybe behind that really big mountain, and it would be fine, when she looked.

  That rusty lump was just a rock in the sky. A really big rock. Maybe someone's backup doomsday plan, in case the missiles didn't do the job.

  Thinking about whose plan it could be wasn't comforting either.

  None of the answers would make her feel better, even if she had a way to know.

  Examining the dirt below her feet as they trudged through the dark was no help either. Unlike the strange rock in the sky, the soil was not the rusty orange of oxidized iron that Emma was accustomed to, or even the gray that sometimes showed up, patchy and irregular, near home.

  Which made sense, sort of. None of the stretching pine trees with puffy tops were familiar either, and wouldn't have taken root very well near home, even so close to the shelter of the mountains.

  They had been thrown very, very far away. Into some sort of microclimate, maybe one of the national parks, a valley in the Rockies.

  Busy being satisfied that she had figured out some of their predicament, Emma walked chest first into the back of Calen's head when he stopped.

  After winding their way through scrub at the top of yet another earthen berm, the ground had leveled off. Emma's singular borrowed sandal squelched on something hard and flat as she stumbled away, apologizing.

  Calen waved her off, and threw his mostly-dry sweatshirt on while Mr. Isaacson crouched to examine the road with his flashlight. Emma joined Calen in wearing all her clothes again. Being a little more damp was better than leaving herself totally exposed.

  And she could stop carrying her sweatshirt. Which was hers, now, if something had happened to the moon.

  "This is private property, not one of the parks." Mr. Isaacson said, clicking his flashlight off. "Someone had this paved with bricks. Not maintained very well over the winter, and decorative make, so not one of the compounds. I was almost hoping we got to deal with security and solve it with an ID check."

  "How do you know it's not just some trail that got... filled in with bricks for walking?" Emma asked, scuffing her remaining footwear on the partially washed-out road.

  The greenish tint of the bricks that had been visible under Mr. Isaacson's flashlight definitely seemed like decorative stone, but Emma was having trouble reconciling that with the otherwise untamed wilderness they seemed to be wandering through.

  "Because the weirdos built a watchtower too, like they're guarding a private fiefdom a thousand years ago, and never heard of concrete." Calen replied, pointing uphill. "Looks pretty cool, actually. Like absolutely nothing we've ever seen built near home."

  Ignoring his jab at the idea things weren't quite as they seemed, Emma's eyes followed the snakelike gap in the overgrown foliage, the bricks softly reflecting the lights in the sky to lead her gaze.

  The geometric blob at the top of the hill wasn't made out of the same stone as the road below them, but there was a more important detail.

  Firelight, reflecting off the near side of the quarried stone. Something was burning.

  People made fire. Especially controlled blazes right next to stone buildings with well-maintained clay-tiled rooftops.

  "Someone's out here camping." Emma said excitedly. "Calen that's help, we can get—"

  Mr. Isaacson's dour tone cut her off.

  "Slow down kiddo. That's probably our best bet at shelter, but we need to have a talk before we wander up that hill and say hello."

  "Because they might not be friendly, or even know the apocalypse is happening." Calen said. "And we look a little homeless, wandering out of the woods dressed like this."

  "We can just explain what's going on." Emma suggested through lightly chattering teeth. "Tell them we need help."

  "They might not care." The blunt reply tightened Emma's throat. "Our best bet is that there's some nice friendly rich campers riding out the end of the world willing to share a fire and a map. The worst case is, they're armed, know the bombs dropped, and get unhappy about us being here."

  Emma maintained a count to five, making sure she got air to the bottom of her lungs and trying not to panic. Some of the staticky tingling in her flesh wasn't numbness. It had to be radiation damage. She was going to start literally falling apart, and once she couldn't walk, Calen would—

  She didn't know what Calen would do, if she collapsed. Hopefully the smart thing, finding help. But it would be better if they found shelter before that started to happen.

  Calen was nodding sagely while Mr. Isaacson spoke, thankfully unaware of the panic Emma was fending off.

  "So if they're mad, we volunteer to leave in the mor—"

  "See that's exactly the kind of suggestion that would get us in trouble with a certain kind of reclusive, armed asshole, and you two will freeze without shelter soon." Mr. Isaacson interrupted Calen again. "So I need you two to let me take the lead on the conversation, and if anyone gets angry and pulls a weapon, you get low, get behind something solid, and stay still."

  The idea that anyone would shoot at them for being lost was absurd, so Emma just nodded along with Calen, and made to start up the road.

  It wasn't like her life was going to be cut too much shorter than it already was, if she was wrong. Even having to sleep outside sounded like a decent plan, if she could do it around a fire, while Calen got help.

  Dying warm, with the smell of clean forest air and pine sap to accompany her was about the best she could hope for anyways, at this point.

  Legs burning as the last of her second wind expired, Emma held herself together as they crested the hill at the end of the road.

  Sure enough, a wall built out of mortar-less slabs of stone greeted them. Firelight spilled across the brick pathway ahead, but Calen tugged at Emma's sleeve.

  Apparently they were skirting around the road, and creeping up on the wall before they approached the gate. Stumbling through long grass in the shadows when there was a perfectly fine road, right there.

  Mr. Isaacson was halfway across the open space outside the walls already. He had his knees bent oddly as he crept through the starlight, one hand tucked in his jacket pocket.

  Calen pointed and shrugged, Emma shrugged back, and they followed him. Walking like normal people instead of creeping around in the dark. Something smelled odd under the charcoal scent of smoke on the wind, but Emma couldn't place it exactly.

  The fallout on the wind would be a longer-term problem. If Emma somehow survived the creeping death she could feel buzzing through her torso as she tried not to fall apart at the seams.

  Eventually she would just melt, if her cells were too damaged to keep functioning. Hopefully her vital organs would fail first, so it wasn't drawn-out. She just needed them to last a little longer, until she found someone who would be able to keep Calen from giving up. And willing.

  The yawning gateway had been occupied by a pitted slab of wood and banded iron, before it had been cracked and tossed to the ground. The break was recent, pale, dry wood at the broken portion stark against its weathered counterpart in the firelight. The dying bonfire at the center of the walled enclosure also illuminated smooth boot prints in the mud.

  A large animal skeleton was spitted over the dying coals, what looked like cow bones blackened and cracked above the embers.

  Really big cow bones.

  The tower was decorated with a deep blue banner with black trim, haphazardly spiked above the doorway. A stylized armored gauntlet, raised in a fist dominated the space, grasping a cracked fang outlined in white.

  Tracked blood stained the steps below the flapping cloth.

  Toes squelching through the mud, Emma found herself subconsciously mimicking Mr. Isaacson's creeping slowness, and tracking her breathing with a count to five. The recent signs of violence added up in her mind.

  Not all of the prints in the pandemonium of mud were from boots or even hooves. There was also a wide track carved unevenly from the gate to the doors, as if something heavy had been thrown on a tarp and dragged through the mud.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance as Calen finally found a joke to tell.

  "Well. We know there were people here, I guess." He 'whispered'. "Odds on a midnight renaissance fair reenactment gone too far, or are we ready to reconsider the 'abducted by aliens' idea?"

  Emma was too busy looking at the bloody claw marks smeared across the steps below the banner to tell him to shut up.

  Operation Plumbbob was a series of nuclear tests conducted in 1957, most commonly known for 'launching a manhole cover into space', was also the largest ever troop maneuver associated with U.S. nuclear testing.

  Pascal B, the detonation associated with the mythical 'manhole cover' (A 900 kilogram steel lid, welded over the borehole Pascal A was detonated inside), launched the plate at an estimate of six times the Earth's escape velocity. Its movement was captured for precisely one frame of video footage. The plate was never found, and is believed to have vaporized due to compression heating while traveling through the atmosphere.

  Next chapter in a few hours!