Colony High, page 14
The smell of gasoline was strong as he descended. Probably a huge wave of it had splashed out of a cracked storage tank. Mark found the aroma weirdly invigorating, even if the fumes were dangerous. They made his head swim and he wondered if the air mixture might be flammable, even explosive. Still, it was a city smell, an Earth smell, fighting the weird, acidic stink of the jungle.
Almost there, he thought, using two iffy footholds and one of the thickest roots to hang on the short face of the cliff. The pipes were about a meter and a half below the tarmac and this slab of Twenty-Nine Palms only extended another three or four beneath the pipes, with piles of rubble and smashed red plants reaching halfway up in places.
If a ten-eyed purple lion with octopus arms jumped out of those bushes, Mark wouldn’t have much warning.
This was a bad idea, he thought, gritting his teeth.
Then Alex and Barry were back, standing above him with a few buckets. Other kids arrived with their arms full of paint trays that were nearly useless as containers. Best of all, Alex brought some rope. It snaked down to Mark, who used one hand to whip it into a simple support bowline. There was no time for anything fancy.
“Wait!” Alex called. “Got to tie off.” She ran to secure the other end, maybe to the remaining gas pumps.
Meanwhile, Barry grimaced down past Mark. “Let’s hope those other guys have better luck. Half the hardware store is gone, Mark, I mean just gone, like even part of a box of screws was just laying there cut in half. Cut perfectly in half, like a laser went through it, like we were all inside a laser.”
Barry babbled … though actually, he seemed better off than anyone might expect. Still, Mark was glad when Alex returned and shouldered the black-haired sophomore aside. “Bamford, are you stupid?” she yelled. “You should have waited till we could belay!”
A senior named Charlie Escobar got back with four plastic trashcans. “What are you guys doing?” Charlie shouted. “Hurry up! It’s barely a trickle already!”
“Do you want to try it?” Alex said.
“Jump, dude!” Charlie shouted. “Get on the ground and we’ll throw you the—”
“No! Just … give me a second,” Mark said. “Okay, now pass me some of those smaller cans. And get more rope to tie on to the other ones!”
“We can fit the cans in these shopping baskets,” Barry said. “We’ll use ’em to haul the cans up and down.”
“Go find more rope,” Alex said to Charlie. “Please.”
“Yeah. All right.” Charlie cast one more frown over the edge, then sprinted away, shouting. Mark tested the crude harness under his armpits, then called, “Belay on!”
“On belay,” Alex answered.
Mark never hesitated as he put his weight – maybe his life — into her hands. He got himself down alongside the pipes in an instant, dug his shoes into the rough face of dirt and leaned back, spreading his arms to catch a plastic trashcan from Barry.
It whacked him in the jaw.
“Ooof!” No problem. He fumbled and pushed it under the streaming gas.
The fluid came in belches as it squeezed out past bubbles of air. Luckily, the impact must have bent the three pipes upward and badly kinked two of them as well, slowing the flow of premium, mid-grade and regular.
Mark didn’t even try to keep the octanes separate. Just save as much as possible. He guessed he had four gallons before the small trashcan grew hard to handle. It was less than half full but he couldn’t hold more weight, hanging there on his toes. He hollered, “Okay, Barry. Haul away!”
They lowered a yellow plastic shopping basket on two lines. Mark tried to plunk the trashcan down into it, but he lost too much of his precious load when the basket swayed and he tottered out from the wall of dirt, hearing everyone shout.
They got better. Barry’s basket-elevator was smart stuff. The next bucket swap was more efficient.
Alex screamed at someone: “Get away you idiots!” And Mark glanced up to see her push at a pair – a man and a woman – who were laying on their bellies at the edge, trying to push a camera and microphone down at Mark! He ignored the fools and kept working, as Alex kicked at them, until they went away.
Soon it became like an assembly line. “Faster!” Mark yelled, trying to hold two buckets at once. The rich amber gasoline was barely dribbling now. We can siphon from cars, he thought. What else? The carnival trucks. There’s probably still some gas caught in those pumps, too, but that’ll be the only—
“Now you,” Barry said. “Mark? Now you!” Barry waved for him to climb, and Mark could hear Alex’s voice rising somewhere above him. The last bucket of gas had already gone up, but instead of climbing after it, Mark twisted around to look out at the eerie red-and-gold jungle.
Maybe it was fatigue, or dizziness from the fumes. Somehow he felt unnaturally calm, hanging there on a thread, halfway between Earth and another world.
Our world, he thought. Even if the aliens change their minds… or this is some kind of test… or rescue comes … or if someday we find a way back … Right now we have to act like this place is home now. Forever.
The truth of it felt massive. Terrifying. Mark was sore and tired. And he stank. Every scrape on his hands stung from the gasoline. A bruised elbow throbbed. Yet he felt good. He almost untied and hopped down, overcome by the temptation to be the first human being to actually touch this strange world. The impulse felt as real as his breath.
He was so close. He could actually make out veins in the leaves of a nearby tree, where photosynthesis must work differently than back home. He knew that much from biology class. Chlorophyll was green, so these plants must use something else …
“Get him up!” Alex was very loud now and Mark’s harness tightened uncomfortably. She was pulling. Then the line jerked. Other kids must have added their hands to the rope, too. Mark had no choice. He turned back to the wall of dirt and moved his legs, though they felt miles away, climb-walking upward to keep from being dragged over pipes and ragged asphalt.
Still, his head just wouldn’t let go of the temptation, ringing with mixed feelings of loss and distance and newness. He wanted to jump down!
Well, I guess that was one small step for a man, he thought, remembering old, x-tube immersions Dad had shown him of the Apollo XI moon landing.
Thinking of his father caused bright, lonely pangs of heartache. At the same time, Mark knew in his bones — Dad would be both proud and envious of him. Because this was an opportunity like no other. Heck, almost anything that a person did here today might turn out to be history in the making. If humans survived on this world and made a go of it, that is.
We’ll see, he thought as he reached the rim and felt the strong grip of his friends, hauling him the rest of the way, back onto the slab of Earth. We’ll see if it’s any kind of a leap for mankind.
The hours that followed were hectic. Nonstop, frantic work until …
… until suddenly there came a breather. A moment to climb up to the High School’s bell tower and have a good look around. To see what had been accomplished.
Not enough, he thought. We haven’t done nearly enough.
From atop the High School’s mission-style bell tower, Mark stared across Rimpau Avenue and the smoldering ruins of the Shell station, past a sudden, curving precipice to a sweeping vale of alien forest. Some miles beyond the red-and-lime jungle, there jutted a line of sheer, almost-glassy, purple cliffs, a high ridge of iridescent stone that slanted away toward serried ranges of serrated mountains.
In the opposite direction – which the Physics Club guys were now calling North – a rolling landscape, dotted with meadows, sank gradually into a far-off haze that might hint at a much larger shoreline, perhaps even a sea.
We’re not in California anymore, he thought.
All things considered, I’d rather be in Kansas.
From this height, there was no mistaking what had happened to the school and a few nearby city blocks. Perhaps that was why only a couple of dozen kids had come up here, yet, to feast on the full view. Most of the castaways – even those who were keeping busy at urgent tasks — kept gazing downward at familiar things, like a small patch of pavement, avoiding the truth while stumbling in a half-daze — or worse. Hours after a traumatic snatch, almost a hundred students were still cowering in dim classrooms with the blinds drawn. Not good prospects to recruit for lookout duty.
Fortunately, people came in all kinds. Some took the word “adaptable” even farther than Mark. Farther than sane, perhaps.
“Howzit, Bam?” asked the boy who had been keeping watch in the tower. He wore a wide-brimmed gray hat swiped from the janitor’s closet. Mark had insisted, since no one knew how fiercely this sun’s light would affect human skin, but Dave McCarty was clearly happy up here, soaking in the view.
“Zit happens,” Mark replied, with a shrug. “Any changes?”
Dave was into Harleys and thrash metal, but seemed perfectly okay with moving on to other interests.
“There’s nothing dangerous as far as I can tell. No more trees falling over. Oh, say! I spotted five different kinds of bird-things.” He opened his scroll-tablet by pulling apart the two rods, and the big screen showed Mark several blurry images of strange things fluttering or diving with four wings. Like large, feathered insects.
“I’m still deciding which of ’em to name after me.”
Mark smiled grimly. “Well, don’t drain your battery, It may take a while to rig something to run rechargers.”
Dave was clearly loving every minute of this, and couldn’t wait to make this planet his own. More power to him. That kind of personality might prove crazy, or crazy-useful, in the days ahead. Mark had closer, harsher concerns. For now, he only had attention for their tiny slice of Earth.
From fifty feet up, he could see just how much — how little — of their home town had been carved up and deposited unknown lightyears away from home — a disk less than four hundred meters across – or half a dozen football fields — and ten meters thick. Their island was just big enough to encompass most of the high school grounds, plus a few homes and small businesses, including two-thirds of the Food King.
Thank God for that last stroke of luck, he thought, walking around the top of the tower again. And let’s hope we’re making the best of it.
Dave sniffed and pulled back from him. “Dude, you absolutely reek like gasoline. Why don’t you take a shower or something before you blow up?”
Mark would like nothing better, yet he shook his head. This valley was covered in jungle — the trees and underbrush looked as thick as rain forest — but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They couldn’t be sure when or if there would be a storm. And what if the downpour wasn’t safe to drink? “Shouldn’t waste water,” Mark said.
“Water. Right. Bummer.” Dave nodded. “That was some fast thinking by you and Alex, by the way. Everybody’s talking about it.”
Mark nodded, accepting the compliment, but wondered. What did I really do when the noise stopped and everyone stood up … staring around ourselves at the Great Gift that the Garubis gave us? I tried to cope, I guess … Sometimes you don’t have a second to think. You just act.
Smoke wafted from the Food King parking lot, where a crowd of TNPHS kids tended several barbecue grills with price tags still flapping on the handles. Clumsily, and a bit dangerously, volunteers hacked away with butcher’s knives, cutting everything in the supermarket’s meat section, converting steaks, roasts, and whole chickens into thin strips. Others dipped the strips of meat into a salty marinade, then spread their work above smoldering charcoal.
It had taken Mark half an hour to show them how to turn raw meat into jerky that could be stored without refrigeration, at least till the castaways figured out what else there might be to eat around here. By the time others knew enough to take over the job, his exhausted, quivering arms had been covered in blood up to his elbows. But there wasn’t anyone else. TNPHS had no cooking staff, not since the school switched completely to franchise food twenty years ago. Only tomorrow there won’t be any delivery trucks to refill the cafeteria or the vending machines, he thought.
All of the supermarket’s perishables began to thaw when the electricity went out. At Barry’s suggestion, the very first meal served on this new world consisted of ice cream — as much as anybody wanted — not only to salvage the stuff before it melted, but also to give everyone a badly-needed boost. Even among the dozens of stunned teenagers who were in the worst shape, cringing in darkened rooms, praying for this calamity to go away, many seemed to rouse a bit when spoons were thrust into their hands along with a pint of Cherry Blitz or Webonanza, Beijing-Berry or Double Chocolate Chunk.
In Mark’s estimate, Barry deserved some kind of medal, especially as it grew evident how varied people could be. Some who you’d least expect turned out to be pragmatic, active types. Others faltered. The imposing Chief of Campus Security, Mr. Perez, wandered around, babbling in a soft, unnerving tone, alternately stroking his bear-like pot belly or the revolver at his hip. Meanwhile, an unlikely trio of sophomore girls, previously known only for useless giggling and gossip, took charge of preparing tonight’s first and final all-you-can-eat New World Burger Bash.
As for tomorrow—
Mark still felt a twinge, recalling the Food King’s freezer section. As much as possible had been crammed tight, in hope of hanging on to some of the chill. But gourmet dinners and ready-to-heat pizzas were already beginning to thaw. Cheesecakes and tater tots, frozen strawberries and cans of concentrated orange juice … No matter how many ingenious tricks they came up with, most of it would be on the verge of going bad by morning. Whenever morning came.
Among the resilient ones? About half of the science nerds. Those who had not given in to shock or panic seemed to share the very opposite reaction, plunging into a state of focus that seemed way-intense, showing the kind of teamwork they were accustomed to pouring into quiz contests and robot competitions. Just ninety minutes or so after the arrival, Mr. Davis and his physics geeks gave a preliminary report on this new planet. A simple pendulum experiment showed it had only nine-tenths the gravity of Earth, for example. Maybe that helped put a little spring into everyone’s step. But there was more. The too-yellow sun moved too-slowly across the sky.
We might as well dump all our clocks over the cliff-edge. And before the next long day, there was going to be an awfully long night.
Looking down, Mark saw again the pair of fools who had tried to shove a camera and microphone down at him, when he was dangling over the edge, salvaging gas. They were from Channel Six “Headwitness News: On The Spot News Leaders for San Bernardino County!” So read a logo emblazoned on their van, whose now-useless roof antennas jutted skyward. The woman reporter and her technician-cameraman must have rushed to the school as soon as the Garubis ship arrived overhead. A brave or dedicated move … and a stupid one. Now, trapped like everyone else.
Keeping busy is therapeutic for shock, Mark pondered hours later, watching them still scurrying about, poking their lenses at everyone who was busy. And who am I to judge what’s crazy.
Dave had been looking elsewhere with his binoculars while Mark surveyed activity below. At last, Mark turned and said, “You’re okay alone up here for a while longer?”
The gangly blond nodded. “It’s all good, dude. Real good. I’ve been naming the mountains, and that river. I got everything in here.” Dave held up the tubelike scroll-tablet, covered with stickers of guitars and band logos. “Think about it. Any names we lay down will stick for hundreds of years. Maybe forever!”
For Dave and a small minority like him, the gift of the Garubis was exactly that, something great and thrilling, a sudden immersion into a different world that just had to be better than his old life! Dave’s intoxication, the way he stared joyfully at the new shapes and colors, struck Mark as a little frantic, nor even entirely sane. But who was he to judge another guy’s way of coping? Mark’s own method was to keep busy – the reason he clambered all the way up here again. Looking for anything urgent they might have missed.
“Looks like they got the last of the booze,” Dave said, pointing the other way.
Mark saw a caravan of shopping carts now leaving the Food King. Pushed by several of the biggest faculty, the carts were heavily laden with bottles, cases, and kegs. In front strode the tall form of Principal Jeffers, stern and capable, his priorities clear. This was their third trip to ferry all of the prescription drugs and alcohol across Rimpau and up the school steps, into Jeffers’ locked office.
And so it went, a few clusters of activity organized by anyone with a plan and a loud enough voice, while others scooped dismally at tepid ice cream or just sat and stared. Or meandered aimlessly, lacking any will or focus.
“Why us?” they asked. Mark couldn’t walk more than thirty feet down there without hearing that complaint. “Why did the Garubis punish us? We’re just kids!”
Why ask me? As if I know?
But some of the kids seemed to think that he did. That he had to know something. Just because he had spoken once or twice with Na-Bistaka, the alien envoy, and … well … and maybe saved the unpleasant fellow’s life.
One small group struck Mark as so poignant that he felt a catch in his throat when he saw them using paints from the art room to make a big sign, drawing neat letters on the other side of a banner for the never-gonna-happen Desert Carnival dance.
PLEASE. WE’RE SORRY. TAKE US HOME.
He didn’t expect the appeal to do any good. Still, when they unfurled their work between two poles at the edge of the disk, turning to aim it this way and that, Mark felt his breath catch, for a full minute. As if half in expectation, or hope, that the petition might work. Because up until this very day, fairness really had been an element of daily life.
