Black Tide, page 5
“It comes and goes out here,” Mike says.
I shove the phone back into my pocket. It’s already getting hot, looking for a signal. My Wikipedia deep dive will have to wait.
There are cars ahead. A half dozen, parked on the beach just beyond a sandy access road. People out beachcombing, maybe. Or clamming. Or meteor hunting. I don’t actually see anybody, though, except one guy pacing around aiming his cell phone at the sky, and a young girl hovering nearby, watching us approach through a pair of binoculars so big I’m surprised she doesn’t just tip over.
Jake whines from the hatch area. Poor pup has been so stressed out all day. The meteor shower really messed with his head. I don’t blame him, really; last night was weird all around. Right now he can’t decide if he wants to sit, stand, or pace in agitated little circles. Too bad he can’t have any mimosa. I’m already feeling the morning’s edge soften.
“It’s all right, buddy,” I coo. It doesn’t help. I toss him my last peanut butter treat. He just looks at it forlornly. Wow. Maybe I should get him to the vet.
“Looks like we’re not the only ones who had this idea,” Mike observes.
The first vehicle we pass is a red Jeep Wrangler—big tires and a removable plastic top—and then a bit farther on, the main cluster of vehicles. An SUV, a couple of sedans, and a nice pickup. I spy another of those strange bowling ball–looking meteors—no, sorry, meteorites, according to Professor Mike, since they survived the fall. It’s lying in the sand past the man with the phone. He doesn’t show any interest in it. And he seems to have found some bars, since he now has the phone pressed hard to one ear.
He has a crew cut and wears a tank top that shows off toned, tattooed biceps. He looks annoyed by whoever is on the other end of that call, a vein protruding alarmingly on his forehead. If I had to guess, I’d say the girl is maybe eight, with dark, inquisitive eyes, and a cascade of loose, black curls down to her shoulders. She lowers the binoculars and wanders toward the meteorite. Crew Cut moves to shoo her away from it, his face soft but stern. Apparently he, too, knows not to touch them. From experience?
The girl redirects her attention our way, breaking into a broad smile and waving as we pass, as if we’re old friends she’s been waiting on to arrive. The binoculars bounce heavily off her chest, nearly knocking her over. They look powerful. Expensive as my camera (which Mom made sure to tell me the price of, as if it were my fault, before hiding the credit cards in a place Dad wouldn’t find them). I take a gulp of mimosa and lift the jug in a toast. Then I realize it isn’t me she’s waving at. It’s Jake. His tail gives the floor a single whomp, then his attention turns to the dunes, and another whine builds in this throat.
“You know them?” I ask, meaning Crew Cut and the girl.
“No,” Mike answers. “We were never really here long enough to get to know anybody.” I follow his stare to the other vehicles. Most of the drivers and passengers are, oddly, sitting inside, gazing at us with bleak expressions. A middle-aged woman in a T-shirt and pajama pants, like she crawled out of bed to come down here, leans against the rear bumper of her car, cradling her head in her hands and rocking back and forth as though she’s going to be sick. Somebody else partied too hard last night, looks like.
Jake barks. Then, apparently having scared himself, collapses into a quivering ball on the floor and whimpers. I really don’t like how upset he is. Like he senses something about this situation that we’re both missing. I wish he could talk. Mike doesn’t comment, but I see him eyeballing the sick-looking woman. He feels the strangeness in the air too. It’s palpable, even if I can’t quite identify what it’s all about. I wake up my cell phone again. Still no bars for me, and just checking has chunked my battery life down by almost a quarter.
Once we’re well beyond the crowd, Mike makes a sweeping turn until we’re facing the waves; then he kills the engine. Hopefully one of them has jumper cables, in case the battery craps out again. I don’t think we drove long enough to charge it, and the Subaru’s an automatic transmission, so we won’t be able to push-start it. You become very aware of these things when you drive a car that’s held together mostly by duct tape and prayer.
“Why we stopping?” I ask. “You think this is where the big one hit?”
“No, I’m just … curious about something.” He gets out without offering more, and I get out with him. Jake whines in protest.
“We’ll be right back, buddy,” I assure him, and close the door.
He yelps in despair, like he firmly believes we’ll never come back at all. This is why Jake’s people didn’t want to board him. He hates being left alone in small places. Even crating him is torture. He was born to run. I’d let him out here, but I don’t want him to see us near the meteorite and get even more anxious.
The air is already heating up. This unusually warm fall is going to reach its apex today, I think. A perfect day to spend on the sand. I fill my chest with that clean, rejuvenating ocean breeze, then set off after Mike, sealing our fate.
5
MIKE
What are they all doing here?
There aren’t any kites in the sky. No dogs running around or beach chairs set out or sandcastles being built. Did these people all come to look for meteorite pieces? If that’s the case, why are they sitting in their cars? And why all the vacant, glazed faces? It feels as if we’ve driven through a funeral procession.
I set my sights on the meteorite half sunk in the sand. Beth trails close behind. She left the dog in the car, which I’m glad for. He seems so concerned about everything. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any other dogs out. Jake threw a fit when we found the first rock this morning. I thought he might bite me, just to get me away from it. He’d decided by then that I couldn’t be left to my own devices. He wouldn’t even let me leave the office after I brought him over last night, not without crying and throwing himself against the door. As if he’d known exactly what I’d been up to down there on the beach, and worried that as soon as I was out of his sight I’d do it again. And I won’t say I didn’t think about it. Lately it’s been all I think about. I certainly never expected a stranger, a dog, and a few falling stars to alter the course of things.
The man on the cell phone looks at us warily as we approach the rock, like an attendant at some tourist attraction who’s been yelling at touchy gawkers to keep their hands behind the rope all day. But he doesn’t say anything, until the little girl wanders toward us.
“Natalia!” he snaps. “What did I tell you? Stay away from that.” He throws me an annoyed look, like it’s our fault she doesn’t listen. The girl, Natalia, sulks away, then directs her binoculars toward my car. I should get binoculars, now that I might be hanging around on this rock for a bit longer. Or better yet, a telescope. That would fit nicely in the office window. One of those fancy ones you can control with your computer. Punch in Andromeda or Orion or Mars, and there it is on the big screen. Listen to me. One astronomical event, and suddenly I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“She’s fine!” the man barks at the person on the other end of the call. “She doesn’t need to get back in the car. Would you stop? She’s safe out here, I told you. I can see for miles in both directions. I’m more worried about you. Where are you?”
“What is it you’re curious about?” Beth asks, interrupting my eavesdropping. We’re both standing a few feet from the meteorite now, neither daring to take that final step forward, as though it might blow up. Which is ridiculous, of course. But something about it has my warning bells clanging like last night’s tsunami siren. “It smells as bad as the last one.”
“It looks exactly like it too,” I say. This is what I’d noticed as we were driving by, and now I’m certain: this rock is identical in every way that I can see with my untrained eye. The same size, shape, and coloring as the meteorite I lugged off the beach in a bucket, Jake whining at my heel the whole way.
“Does that mean something?” Beth asks.
“I honestly don’t know. You’d think, being pieces of space debris that burned through the atmosphere before smashing onto the beach, they wouldn’t look so…” I wave vaguely at the thing. The word I need slips through my fingers and darts away into the murk, wanting to be said about as much as I want to say it. “I’ve seen pictures of meteorites, they’re … well, they look like what you’d expect. Like hunks of rock. This—”
“Looks like an alien’s bowling ball,” Beth says, grabbing the word fearlessly and throwing it onto the deck to flop about between us. Alien, that is. Not bowling ball. But she isn’t wrong there.
“Right. Which I thought was just an anomaly with the first one I found. A perfectly round piece that broke off and survived the landing intact. But here’s another, exactly the same.”
She snorts. “‘An anomaly.’ Maybe you should consult your colleagues back at the university.”
“I just thought it was interesting, that’s all. I’m not trying to say I get it.”
“All right, it does seem weird, I’ll give you that.” She puts her hands on her hips and looks around. “It also seems like we’re the only people dumb enough to stand this close to them. So maybe we stop doing that until we know more about them. I mean, that smell, it can’t be healthy. It’s extraterrestrial. By definition, right? Whatever that funk is, it isn’t from Earth.”
We both take a large step back at that. The rock has no reaction to this slight on its character. The look on Beth’s face, however, tells me she wishes she hadn’t said anything. It’s a bit creepy, when you think of it that way. Of all the things these rocks have passed by, and through, on their way here from wherever.
The palms of my hands begin to itch where I touched the thing. I wipe them on my pants and tune back in to the man’s conversation. What was that he was saying about being safe on the beach? Safe from what, exactly? Certainly not the smell; the breeze is distributing that all over the place.
“No, I don’t have an ETA,” he’s saying in mounting exasperation. “He’s still gotta get down here from the marina. We’re probably not the only ones who had this idea, so it could be busy crossing the bar. Then he’s going to have to tender us all out, since he can’t exactly dock on the beach. We’re just lucky the weather is nice, the water calm. At least that’s one thing that hasn’t gone completely sideways today.”
“You hearing this?” Beth asks, her voice low, eyes still glued to the rock.
“Yeah. Sounds like they’re all going out on a boat. Fishing excursion or something, would be my guess. Last night must have put some kinks in the weekend plans.”
“But ‘busy crossing the border’? What the hell?”
“Crossing the bar. As in, the Columbia River Bar. The boat is probably moored in Astoria. They’re waiting for it to reach open water and come down the coast.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just drive to the boat?”
“You’d think so. Maybe they just don’t want to pay for parking.” I see Beth winding up to deliver a scathing rebuttal to that hypothesis, but a small voice behind us cuts her off.
“I like your dog.”
We both turn. The girl stands a safe-enough distance from the meteorite that her dad probably won’t yell at her again, watching Jake through her binoculars. He’s sitting upright now, staring this way and panting, his tongue rolled out and flinging droplets of drool all over the glass. I shouldn’t have rolled up the windows. It’s so warm out, the temperature in the car probably double what it is out here on the sand. I just didn’t want that smell getting in.
“What’s his name?” Natalia asks.
“Jake,” Beth says.
“Is he coming with us?”
“No.”
Natalia lowers her binoculars and looks at Beth. “Are you?”
“We’re just passing through,” I say. “Is that your family?” I nod toward the lined-up cars. The woman in pajamas is tightly clutching herself, spitting into the sand. Fresh tears streak her cheeks. Somebody gets out of another car, puts a hand on her back to comfort her. Either they’re really upset about running behind, or it’s not a fishing adventure they’re about to set off on.
The girl shakes her head. “They’re some of my dad’s friends. And neighbors,” she says. “He called others. If they’re not here in time, Dad said we’ll have to leave them behind. Maybe you could come with us instead. And Jake.”
“No,” the man rasps, and for a second I think he’s responding to her suggestion, but he’s still on the phone. He glances this way, sees Natalia talking to us, takes a split moment to judge our intentions, then angles away, lowering his voice further. “I haven’t told her about all of it,” he says. I can barely hear his voice on the breeze, but it’s laced with anxiety. “I will, once we’re all on the boat and away from this fucking nightmare.”
My stomach balls up like an animal defending itself against an approaching predator. Something is seriously wrong here. More than scheduling hiccups and hungover friends.
“Where are you going?” I ask the girl.
“To get my mom.”
“Where is she?”
“In Portland. She went there for a conference.”
“Why not drive?” Beth asks.
“Because Dad said the roads are bad.” She looks in her dad’s direction. “He said it would be dangerous, that we might get stuck and not reach Mom.”
“Mike.” Beth leans close and lowers her voice. “The meteorites. They must have hit cars, damaged roads, bridges even? Houses? No wonder it’s taking so long to get the power on.” There’s champagne on her breath. She made the mimosa just about strong enough to get up and walk off on its own, and I have half a mind to grab the jug and take another deep swig myself.
I feel like such an asshole. Of course there was damage. Probably widespread. And panic on top of that. People waking in the middle of the night to the sky falling and blaring sirens and no electricity, now waiting to be ferried upriver to connect with loved ones, maybe seeking medical attention. I glance toward the cars—the woman in sweatpants is being helped back into hers by an older man, her face still red and swollen, her eyes huge with shock and stress. If things are that bad out here, I can’t imagine what it must be like in Portland, where this kid’s poor mom is waiting. Meanwhile, here I am, out hunting for treasure.
Typical Mike. Staring at the sky while the ground crumbles beneath your feet.
“Why doesn’t your dad want you touching the meteorites?” Beth asks. “Did he say?”
“Meteorites?” Natalia asks, genuinely confused.
“Those things.” Beth points with the toe of her shoe.
“Oh. I didn’t know that’s what they were.” She furrows her brow in a way that makes me think she still isn’t sure. Am I? What else would they be? I watched them fall last night, maybe even this very one. She probably slept through it, and her dad hasn’t filled her in on all the details, not wanting to make a stressful day even worse by causing her to worry about rocks plummeting from the sky.
Without any warning, Jake starts to bark. Not at us—he’s looking toward the dunes, his ears perked and alert. The dunes are taller here than at the house, inclining steeply from the beach and rising a good twenty feet to the rounded, grassy ridge. There are places where the slope has been carved out by the tide, leaving an escarpment of compacted sand and grass roots. I can’t see whatever Jake senses on the other side. The ridgeline is empty, the sky pale blue and clear.
“Hey!” the girl’s dad shouts. “There he is!” He’s looking not at the dunes but out to sea. A boat cuts through the chop, a sailing catamaran, probably a thirty-eight-footer, just visible against a thick bank of fog. “I have to go,” he says into the phone. “Stay where you are, stay in your car, conserve your battery. We’ll be there as soon as we can, okay? Natalia!”
She runs over to him, and he shoves his cell phone into her hand. “Mom wants to talk to you. Go wait with the others.” Then he turns, gives me a stoic, knowing nod, and beelines for the dunes, drawing something he had tucked into his belt: a bright orange flare gun. He runs as fast as he can in the dry, slippery sand, grabbing handfuls of beach grass as he climbs to the top of the dunes. There he aims into the sky, pulls the trigger, and fires a flare with a dull pop.
Beth lights a cigarette, watching as the flare blooms dazzling red in the air. The man jumps up and down, waving his arms for good measure in case the catamaran’s skipper hasn’t seen the signal.
“Well,” Beth says, blowing a plume of smoke into the breeze. “Starting to feel a bit like Armageddon arrived out there on the other side of the dunes. Maybe we should try to secure a seat aboard his little ark, what do you think?”
“I’m sure they’re just overreacting.” Except I’m not. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that my detachment from the world around me has put me into a state of underreacting.
“We should at least get back to the house,” Beth says. “My service sucks out here, and I don’t want to miss any new information when it comes.” She pauses to take another drag on the cigarette, giving me time to contemplate just how lucky we are that my house wasn’t hit last night. Well, how lucky Beth is, at least. I’d have been at a safe distance, down in the water. What a wicked joke that would have been.
“I’m also getting a headache,” she adds. “I think it’s these things.”
“Could be the mimosa,” I suggest, not mentioning the pain blooming behind my own eyes. I don’t want to think about that. About how I had to wash with soap and water for five straight minutes to make my fingers stop burning after stupidly grabbing the meteorite, or how I can still feel my palms itching, no matter how much I scratch at them. What would cause that? Could they be radioactive? I feel fine otherwise, besides the soreness in my lungs that still hasn’t subsided since dragging myself coughing and puking from the ocean.
All in all, I’m coming up with a lot more questions about the last twelve hours than answers, and I don’t like it.
