G. Fields - Under Vanishing Skies

I would like to express my deep appreciation to those who supported me with my endeavor to write this book. Support came from many people in many forms. I hope that those whose names I failed to mention know that I truly appreciate their help and encouragement.

First and foremost I would like to thank my wife, Cherie, who allowed me the freedom to disappear into our room and write for hours without any questions or complaints. I love you. And I’d like to thank my daughters, Rachel and Stephanie, for their encouragement along the way. I love you both as well. I hope that you will take away one lesson from this… and that is to follow through on your dreams. And to my mom, I’d like to thank you for sharing your twisted sense of humor and wild imagination with me. I hope I put it to good use in this book.

I would also like to thank my friend, Javier “Jarv” Ramos, for his willingness to read through very early and very rough drafts. Your plot and characters suggestions helped make this story come to life. And thanks to my good friends and beta readers, Steve Eby and Jeremy Thompson. Your insights as readers were invaluable. Finally, thanks to my copy editors, Judy b. and Elizabeth Stock and my line editor, Dylan Garity. All of you did a great job of polishing a rough piece of coal until it sparkled.

Some say Fate is fickle. She isn’t. She’s a twisted psychotic bitch. It was the only way to explain why nearly everyone on the planet was dead… everyone including my family… and I was out here fishing.

I should have been with them when the storm hit, but I screwed up. Now this endless loop of a meaningless existence was my punishment. Every day was the same. Wake up, drink, eat, drink, fish, drink, and go to sleep. Death should be quick, not drawn out like this.

I tried to push the familiar dark thoughts from my mind and cast my line out. It landed fifty feet from my kayak. I set the reel and leaned back to wait.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rick cast his line. It plopped a yard from where mine had just landed. I turned my kayak to face him.

“Come on! I said. “The Indian Ocean is a big place.”

Rick laughed. “Lighten up, Aron. You really need to learn how to let go of all that negative energy.”

“You sound like that yoga instructor that my wife dragged me to see,” I said.

“I didn’t know you took yoga.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I pulled my goddammed hamstring kneeling down on the mat. That was my first and last yoga class.”

Rick laughed. “That’s too bad. Yoga really helps clear the mind.”

“That hippie shit doesn’t work for me.”

“How do you know unless you give it a chance.” Holding on to his fishing pole with one hand, he held out his other hand and formed an O with his thumb and middle finger.

“Empty your thoughts and look around you,” he said. You’re fishing in the one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Think of this as your happy place.”

“This may be your happy place,” I said. “But it’s not mine. My happy place is back in California. If I was back there, I’d let go of this negative energy in a millisecond.”

His smile dimmed. “If you were there, you’d be dead.” He paddled his kayak over by mine and said, “Come on buddy, it’s been twelve years. You’ve got to let it go.”

“Let it go? I’ll let it go when I’m laid out on a funeral pyre and the flames are—“

A gust of wind whipped across the ocean and peppered my face with salt water.

“Goddammit,” I said under my breath.

I squeezed my eyes shut against the burn of salt and blinked until I could make out the unmistakable silhouette of Lohifushi. A half dozen palm trees poked haphazardly up through its jungle canopy like a bad haircut. Lohifushi wasn’t the smallest island in the Maldives, but at just over a quarter mile around, it was far from being the largest.

“You okay?” Rick asked.

“Yeah, perfect.”

I wiped the water from my unshaven face and looked out beyond the island. A line of dark purple clouds bridged the gap between the grayish-blue morning sky in the east and the black, star-filled arcs that scarred the northern and southern horizons. The arcs appeared the day after the storm hit. Each arc was edged with an electric, greenish-blue hue that twisted around like the Aurora Borealis. I leaned forward, rested my arms on the paddle, and watched a steady stream of fire streak across the black zones.

The kids who were born after the storm probably didn’t think twice about the arcs, but I did. I paid close attention to how much larger they grew each year. They didn’t grow by a lot, but they grew enough to reassure me that in a few more years the atmosphere above the islands would be gone. I just wished it would hurry up.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. Just watching the solar particle show.”

“I told you a million times, those are meteors.”

“And I told you that meteors burn up in the atmosphere. You know damned well there isn’t enough atmosphere in the black zones to burn up anything.”

He bumped his kayak into the side of mine and said, “Those meteors are burning up in the sky above your thick head.” He shook his head. “Solar particles… you’re such a moron.”

“And you’re a know-it-all asshole.”

I knew that he was probably right, but I’d never give him the satisfaction of telling him. And besides, he had no way to prove it. Nobody outside of the Mars colony knew how bad it was.

About a year ago, they’d sent a reconnaissance ship down to search for survivors. They told us that we were all that was left… or at least all that was left worth saving. They didn’t say much about the solar storm or the atmosphere. Their silence on the subject told me all that I needed to know. We were screwed.

Instead, they talked about the rescue mission. I remembered how proud they were when they announced that a cargo ship would arrive in a year to take a thousand lucky passengers back to the colony. Lucky my ass. They’d been terraforming that planet for fifty years and they still weren’t finished.

Rick rammed my kayak again, knocking my paddle into the water. I managed to grab it before it floated away.

“Asshole,” I said beneath a smile.

At thirty eight, Rick still had one foot firmly planted in his childhood. I supposed that was another reason why I liked him. He could make me forget about this hell hole for a while. But I never forgot about it for long.

“Come on,” he said. “We should head in before Helen sends out a search party.” He counted the fish in the empty front passenger compartment of his kayak. “I got over four dozen. What about you?”

“About the same,” I said.

“She’s not going to be happy.”

I shrugged and grabbed my paddle. The size of the catch had decreased steadily every year since the storm. In another few years, there’d be nothing left to catch.

I dug my paddle into the water, turning the boat towards the dock. I could hear Rick sloshing behind me. After all these years, that clumsy son of a bitch still paddled like a drunken tourist.

It didn’t take long before I slipped into the easy, relaxed rhythm of plunge, pull, lift, rotate, plunge, pull, lift, rotate. Each breath I took was in perfect sync with the stroke of the paddle. Within seconds, my conscious thoughts were replaced with the hypnotic lull of paddling. Forget all that yoga bullshit, this was my happy place.

A light in the east caught my eye. I looked over and saw the sun’s rays shoot up behind the cloud bank on the horizon. The scene looked like the cover of a Watchtower pamphlet, the kind I used to find wedged in my screen door back home.