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Planet-quake?
I’d experienced a couple of mild ones on Terratribe I, and I knew Old-Earth had been notorious for really dangerous ones. But somehow, a planet-quake didn’t seem quite right. Because I was hearing things, now. Things like thousands upon thousands of layers of distant thunder.
Only there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
I rose, frowning, dusting my hands on my pants and tipping the brim of my hat back a little to get a better look around. Everything seemed normal back here behind the house as far as I could tell.
But the sound and the vibrating roar was only getting louder.
Panic dampened my fists. I didn’t know where Silar was right now. The ranch, with all its various pastures, was absolutely massive. If something was wrong, would he even know it? With his ears, he’d likely be able to hear whatever it was by now.
But what the hell was it?
I hurried up onto the porch of the house and then into the kitchen. Even in here, I could feel the tremors underfoot. Could hear the increasing doom-rattle of whatever was coming our way.
Seriously, I thought. Is this, like, an invisible tornado or some shit? What the hell is happening?!
Finding no answers in the kitchen, and getting more and more worried about Silar wherever he was, I went through the house’s front door and out onto the road, trying to suss out more information on the situation. I looked up at the astoundingly clear, blue sky, then angled my head the way we’d come from the warden’s property on our wedding day. Nothing on the road. At least not in that direction.
I turned my head the other way and…
Ohhhh. Fuck.
It was as if the ground itself had risen up and was rolling in a great, dusty wave towards me. A roiling mass of movement was pummelling itself over the land, dust rising like nuclear fumes. An explosion of sound split through my skull. The moving mass wasn’t limited to the dirt road the way a train might barrel towards me on its tracks. No, whatever this disaster was, it stretched across the landscape in an inescapable crush.
And it was moving fucking fast.
The house!
I had to get back in the house. I had no idea if the structure would even withstand the thunderous force roaring towards me, but staying here in the road, the only living thing around to get smushed, was not an option. I’d never prayed before, but I did in that moment as I stumbled backwards towards the house, pleading to every Old-Earth god I’d ever studied in school and maybe even a few I’d made up. Please, please let Silar be OK. Please. If he’s in the path of this mess, let him at least be on a shuldu and outrun it. Please!
But maybe I should have been praying for my stupid-ass self. Because when I reached the edge of the road and was about to turn and flee into the house, I stepped on a big, fat, very poorly placed rock and I felt flat on my ding-dang derriere.
The impact slammed up my spine, knocking my teeth together. That, combined with the vicious shaking of the ground and cacophony of noise, left me wildly disoriented. So much so that I actually panicked thinking I might not be able to stand up and that I’d have to crawl back to the house.
I would never fucking make it.
Dust filled my mouth, my throat. My lungs burned as I scrabbled into a wobbly standing position. Everything was sound and shaking and fury and for too-long a moment I didn’t even know which way to turn to get back to the house.
In the chaos, there came a quiet moment of perfect clarity. Clarity about where I’d come from and what I’d done. Every bad decision I’d ever made, laid out in a line, winking at me like marbles in a child’s game. Starting with the day I went to the mob for money.
And ending here. Now. In the midst of what I now could tell were the hooves of about a million raging bracku bearing down upon me.
And in that strangely hushed moment, I didn’t miss Mama or Maggie. I didn’t pine for Terratribe I or wish I could have just one more chance to make it all right. I didn’t pray again.
I just wished I could have seen Silar one more time. Seen him one more time and maybe even told him that –
“CHERRY!”
A man’s bellow – somehow even louder than the bracku horde – smashed through the air like a weapon. Dizzily, I wondered if the warden had somehow come upon the scene, because I couldn’t think of anyone else around here who could get that fucking loud.
But when a hand and tail seized upon my waist in perfect unison, they weren’t purple.
They were gold.
My body sailed upward so quickly it felt as if I flew.
Maybe I really had died. Maybe this was just my soul leaving my body…
