Robert Wilson - The Chronoliths

The duststorm glazed the windshield into opacity and was, by the sound of it, also fouling the engine. I closed the windows and cranked up the vehicle’s heater until we were all sweating. Our dirt track dead-ended at a wooden bridge over a shallow, dry creek bed. The bridge was splintered, rocking in the intensifying wind, and would clearly not support the weight of the van. Hitch said, “Drive down that embankment, Scotty. At least put a little dirt between us and Portillo.”

“Pretty steep grade.”

“You have a better idea?”

So I turned off the road, drove over brittle scrub grasses and down the berm. The van braked itself sporadically and the dash lit up with function alarms, and I believe we would have overbalanced if not for my iron grip on the steering wheel — which was a matter of instinct, not skill. Hitch and Ashlee were silent, but Kaitlin let out a little sound, about the same pitch as the wind. We had just reached the flat and stony basin when an uprooted acacia flew overhead like a stiff black bird. Even Hitch gasped when he saw that.

“Cold,” Kaitlin moaned.

Ashlee unfolded the last of the blankets, gave two of them to Kait and tossed one up to us. The air inside reeked of hot heater coils, but the temperature had risen only marginally. I had seen the thermal shock in Jerusalem, from a distance, but I hadn’t guessed just how painful it would be, a sudden numbing cold that radiated inward from the extremities to the heart.

Stolen energy, drained from the immediate environment by whatever force it was that could unwind a massive object through time. A fresh wind howled above the arroyo and the sky turned the color of fish scales. We had packed thermally-adaptive body gear, and we broke this out; Ashlee helped Kait into a jacket a size too big for her.

A dire thought occurred to me, and I reached for the handle of the door.

“Scotty?” Hitch inquired.

“I need to drain the radiator,” I said. “If that water freezes, we lose our transportation.”

We had been wise enough to carry our drinking water in flexible bags which would expand as necessary. We had also dumped antifreeze into the van’s radiator. But we hadn’t anticipated being this close to the arrival. A serious flash-freeze would probably demolish the engine’s coolant system and strand us here.

“May not be time.”

“So wish me luck. And hand me the tool box.”

I let myself out into the gale. Wind slammed the door behind me. The wind came up the arroyo from the south, feeding the steep thermoclines of the arriving Chronolith. The air was choked with dust and sand. I had to shield my eyes with my hand in order to open them even a slit. I navigated to the front of the van by touch.

The vehicle had come down at a steep angle into a sandy ridge, and the front of it was entrenched up to the bumper. There was a burst of auroral light overhead as I scooped out a space with my hands. The thermal jacket was keeping my core temperature up — at least so far — but my breath turned to frost with every exhalation and my fingers were clumsy and fiery-numb. Too late to go back for gloves. I managed to open the tool box and fumble out a wrench.

The radiator system was designed to be drained from beneath by loosening a valve nut. I clasped the nut with the wrench but it refused to turn.

Leverage , I thought, bracing my feet against the tire, leaning into the angle of the wrench like a sculler leaning into an oar. The noise of the wind was overpowering, but under it there was another sound, the thunderclap of the arrival, then the shockwave through the ground, a hard mule-kick from below.

The valve nut popped, and I sprawled into the sand.

A trickle of water ran out and instantly froze against the ground — enough to relieve the pressure inside the radiator, though stray ice could still crack any number of vital systems, if we were unlucky.

I tried to stand and found that I couldn’t.

Instead I rolled into the meager shelter created by the angle of the van against the earth. My head was suddenly too heavy to hold erect, and I put my numbed hands between my thighs and curled into the meager warmth of my thermal jacket and promptly lost consciousness.

When I opened my eyes again the air was still and I was back inside the van.

Sunlight burned on the scrim of ice that had formed on the windshield. The heater was pumping out steamy warm air.

I sat up, shivering. Ashlee was already awake, chafing Kaitlin’s hands between her own, and that sight worried me; but Ashlee said at once, “She’s all right. She’s breathing.”

Hitch Paley had dragged me inside after the worst of the thermal shock had passed. Currently he was outside replacing the valve nut I had loosened. He stood, peered in through the fogged window, and gave me a thumbs-up when he saw that I was awake.

“I think we’ll be okay,” Ashlee said. Her voice was raw, and I realized that my own throat was sore when I swallowed, no doubt from the briefly supercooled air we had all inhaled. Lungs a little achy, too, and fingers and toes still bereft, at their tips, of sensation. Some crusted blood on the palm of my right hand where the freezing wrench had taken away a layer of skin. But Ashlee was right. We had survived.

Kait moaned again. “We’ll keep her covered up,” Ash said. “But she’s already sick, Scott. We need to worry about pneumonia.”

“We need to get her back to civilization.” And up that embankment again, to begin with. Not a sure thing.

When I felt able, I opened the driver’s-side door and climbed out. The air was relatively warm again, and surprisingly fresh, save for a haze of dust that was settling everywhere like fine snow. Prevailing winds had carried the ice fog off to the east.

Frost steamed off the rocks and sand of the creek bed. I climbed to the top of the embankment and looked back at the town — what remained of it.

The Kuin of Portillo was still shrouded in ice, but it was clearly a large monument. The figure of Kuin was standing, one arm upraised in a beckoning gesture.

The town of Portillo lay at his immense feet, dim in the mist but obviously devastated.

The radius of the thermal shock was enormous. All but a few of the hajists must have died, it seemed to me, though I did see some vehicles moving at the perimeter of the town, probably Red Cross mobile stations.

Ashlee came up the slope behind me, panting. Her breath halted briefly when she saw the scope of the destruction. Her lips trembled. Her face was brown with dust, rivered with tears.

“But he might have got away,” she whispered: meaning, of course, Adam.

I said that was possible.

Privately, I doubted it.

By means of a connecting series of dirt roads and cattle tracks we managed to skirt the steaming ruins of Portillo and connect at last with the main road.

The dead — no doubt massive numbers of them — remained in town, but we passed clusters of refugees along the highway. Many were limping, crippled by frostbite. Some had been blinded by ice crystals. Some had sustained injuries from falling masonry or other shockwave events. All sense of threat had vanished from them, and Ashlee twice insisted on stopping to distribute our few blankets and a little food, and to ask about Adam.

But none of these young people had heard of him, and they had more pressing concerns. They begged us to relay messages, call parents or spouses or family in L.A., in Dallas, in Seattle… The parade of misery was overwhelming, and at length even Ashlee had to turn away from it, though she continued to scan the refugees for any sign of Adam until we were farther north than even a healthy hajist could had walked. The sight of relief trucks and military ambulances streaming toward Portillo eased her conscience but not her fears. She lapsed into her seat, stirring only to tend to Kaitlin now and then.