Epoch Earth; the Great Glitch Read online

  When the PodMate’s brilliant green light clicked on, I nearly cried. It hadn’t occurred to me how much I needed to hear Fox’s voice until those long minutes when it felt like I never would again. After losing everything else, I couldn’t lose Fox too.

  The display told me I had seven new episodes to catch up on, the most recent of which had aired just that morning. Snatching the Pod off its charging pad, I yelled something to Brooks about him going to bed early to get on a ‘normal’ sleep routine again, and locked myself in the Stepp’s garage.

  For hours, well into the night, I listened to Fox describe the horrors of the world I refused to go back into. The dust storm had knocked out the last communication towers. Our Sister Nations fell silent. Floodwaters destroyed four of the five remaining BDU locations across the continent. I skipped over the graphic details of bloated bodies floating in the streets.

  Fox spent the next two shows discussing the Wall of the Lost that Rebels had constructed on the outskirts of all the launch station towns. People who could, flooded the Walls with dedications to their loved ones. Those who couldn’t, transmitted their farewells to Fox instead.

  Although I tried over the years to find Pettine’s voice on these dedication shows, I had given up hope long before then. After the first thirty minutes of desperate wailing cries for lost parents, spouses, and children, I skipped the rest of those shows, too.

  And while I refused to listen to the gut-wrenching sounds of those people mourning their loved ones, there was one sound I couldn’t miss. Maybe it had been there all along, and I had been too wrapped up in my own self-pity to hear it. Like a grandparent marveling at how much you’ve grown since last summer, when you feel the same as you always have.

  Fox’s health was deteriorating. His voice, formerly a strong sure buoy in the rough waters of the Glitch, now bobbed and sank deeper with each wave. By the last episode, it was unmistakable.

  “Our time has come my friends.” Fox forced air through a hoarse dry throat. “I hope I’ve been a comfort to as many of you as I could. And if I brightened just one day, it was worth it.”

  For the next several minutes dead air crackled around me. I hugged the Pod closer, wishing it was Dad’s radio. It only seemed fitting that I should be hearing my last Fox broadcast the same way I heard my first.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen next, not to me, not to you... this world. I wish I could give you listeners one more modicum of peace as my parting gift. But, the truth is... I’m tired. I’m so tired.” Another crack broke his voice and I wished I could tell myself it was the reception.

  “I lost my son last year. His mother died shortly after the Glitch. I... I never spoke of them before now. My pain was not your burden. But now, I must use my final hours to honor them. Whoever is still around, still listening, please know that I loved them both dearly.

  “Her name was Ellyse. She was a math teacher at our local elementary learning hub. I miss her so much. I miss her long curly hair, the way it never did what she wanted it to, but always looked perfect to me. I miss the tiny flecks of yellow in her dark brown eyes; the way they would flare up when she got excited about something. But most of all I miss what a wonderful wife and mother she was to me and...

  “Aston, my dear sweet boy, Aston. He was only seven when the Wasting took him last year. Seven. He wanted to follow in his old man’s footsteps, take over the show. And he would have been great at it.

  “My wife and I... I defied orders and implanted him. She didn’t want to. She was scared. But I assured her that it was safe. People had been recycling chips for decades, I told her.

  “I thought he made it. He was healthy for a while. That childhood resilience that can make you complacent. It started with fevers. Long-lasting fevers that just took everything out of him. By the time I realized... it was too late. Even with my power, my reach, I couldn’t find anyone... anything to help him. He wasted away in my arms.”

  That time the crack in his voice couldn’t be explained away. Fox broke down in full-on sobs. So did I. For a long stretch of minutes, we cried together for our losses. Gone but not forgotten.

  Fox sniffed and pounded his fist. “And now it’s my turn. I want to give you listeners some things to watch out for. How you can know it’s coming. It might not be the bit of comfort I was hoping to give, but this is probably more important in these hard times. Preparedness.”

  “First, my chip started slipping, the skin around it loosened and oozed this greenish-brown fluid. By that time, I’d been forgetting things, words that should have been on the tip of my tongue. I chalked that up to fatigue, grief. But now... who knows?

  “Second, my legs. Some days they just wouldn’t work. They didn’t hurt, no more than the rest of my body after years of malnourishment and long hours. For the past three months, I’ve been bedridden. My dear neighbor, Salmo, cared for me as best he could. He’s gone now, too. Two weeks.

  “Then,” Fox stopped, and didn’t start again for a long time. I squeezed the Pod, desperately checking the feed to see if I was at the end of the episode. Twenty minutes left. I sighed and waited, waited for Fox to unburden himself to me the way so many had done to him. Another three minutes later, he continued, “Then my mind. I saw... things. My wife. My son. The devastating things they’ve broadcast through my chip since the Glitch. Things I’d never put on air, things that were too horrible to force onto you listeners. Things I’ll take to my death. Those, those visions haunt me to this day. My respite is near.

  “Finally, thankfully last, my voice. As you can tell, I’m struggling here. The last two shows were dedications because I had vainly hoped that resting my voice would do... something. I know better, now.

  “I want everyone left to know that I’ve loved all of you dearly. And I hope that you heed my warnings. Get out. Go. We’re not wanted here anymore. We’ve hurt each other, this planet, everything. We’ve destroyed it all, and we must go now.” Fox wept the words into my ears.

  “I... I must go now. Please stay with me. Don’t leave me alone.”

  Tears poured down my own face. “I won’t. I won’t.” I whispered into my Pod as if he could hear me.

  Twelve more minutes passed in silence. I watched the episode clock tick backwards, just the static crackling back at me.

  Then, with one minute left, I heard a faint rush of air. I maxed the volume and pressed the PodMate to my ear. “I want you to know my name. I’m Arbitan. Arbi.”

  For the next hour the only sound in the the garage was my own sobs.

  Chapter Forty

  I built a pretty sweet boardwalk between our window and what turned out to be the Stepp’s master bath window. Going downstairs in our house wasn’t an option. I wasted two weeks fighting the mud and muck after the rain stopped – a day and a half after we jumped, if you’re wondering. Brooks never stopped coughing after that. Never.

  We did manage to salvage some of the supplies, essentials like Dad’s old radio and the dismantled solar panel from the shed. Neither of them ever worked again, but I couldn’t bear to part with them.

  Eventually, the mud turned to concrete that looked deceivingly strong but couldn’t support our weight. Another lesson learned the hard way. Everything on the bottom floor of our house became enshrined in that auburn crust.

  One good thing did come out of that storm, though. We had plenty of drinking water. Every plastic tub, bowl, cup, and leftover can we could scrounge up between both houses sat in the Stepp’s garage, filled to the brim.

  Food, well, food was a different story. I had vowed after the... you know, to never leave Brooks’s side again. And I meant it. Him being in that house with no adults was dangerous enough. I couldn’t leave him there without me, too.

  What I hadn’t thought of in my highly emotional state, was just how noisy a nine-year-old boy could be. I’d tried to take him hunting with me on multiple occasions, only to come back home empty handed with a screaming headache. There were so few animals left to hunt, and the
ones that were around knew better than to come to the woods in Sector B. I’m sure they heard him from miles away.

  “You promised!” Brooks whined at the top of his lungs, slamming a plastic bowl in the sink. “And I promised I’d be quiet.” He screamed louder.

  “I think we have different ideas of what that word means.” I yelled back.

  He glared at me. Then his face softened. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”

  My resolved crumbled. We had to get food. Meat; we desperately needed meat. But that face. “I don’t want to leave you here alone. But I don’t have a choice. Look at yourself.” I pointed an accusing finger at his ribs.

  “I’ll be quiet.”

  “No.” I turned to leave, picking up the small bb gun I’d found in the man cave. It was a small game rifle for sure, but I was a small game kind of girl.

  A thud echoed around the kitchen behind me and I spun back around. “You’re not my boss!” Brooks clenched his fist then threw an expired can of stewed tomatoes at the wall. They made a curved dent in the daisy wallpaper and fell to the floor beside another can; the presumed origin of the first crashing noise.

  Fury bubbled up in both of us. His manifested in a wet terrifying cough, mine in a white-hot rage behind my eyes. I lunged at him, snatching a third can from his clenched fingers before it, too, could go sailing across the room. He stared a hole right through me.

  “I am your boss, Bit.” I spat the baby name through clenched teeth. “And you’ll do what I say, or else.”

  I regretted it immediately. Tried to catch the words before they fell out of my mouth. But it was too late.

  I watched his face crack, slowly. First a slight widening of his eyes, the incredulity. Then the tremor in his chin he tried to hide by sucking his lips into his mouth. One solitary tear spilled over his long lashes and ran down his cheek before getting soaked up by the thick dirt that always coated his tiny face.

  He fell into me, or I pulled him, I wasn’t sure. But we stood there, crying all over each other, in the middle of our new kitchen.

  A knock at the door scared the shit out of both of us.

  Brooks jumped backward, tearing his arms from me like he just remembered I had cooties. I pursed a finger to my lips and turned.

  Through the peephole I saw a ghost.

  //YOU GONNA LET ME IN?// Howie chipped, and I threw open the door. The can of stewed tomatoes dropped on my pinkie toe, but that’s not why I screamed.

  I flung my arms around him and cried. He was taller, and so skinny. Bony shoulders poked out of a drab brown shirt. It itched liked a potato sack against my skin.

  “Can I come inside?” Howie put his hands on my waist, where they’d never been before.

  I let go. “Of course. Are you... how... when...?”

  Howie pushed inside the door and closed it behind him, never taking his hands off me. His emerald eyes devoured mine, then flicked toward Brooks. The large hands fell from my hips and I began to cry.

  “I’m out.” He smiled at me, then the smile widened, brightened at Brooks. “Heard that one all the way over at your house.”

  I shot Brooks a triumphant smirk through my tears. He stuck his tongue out at me.

  “What the hell happened?” Howie asked, those hands that still refrained from touching me waving in the air. “There’s garbage everywhere out there.”

  “There was a storm. A dust storm... then...” I couldn’t speak.

  Brooks told Howie the story, in great animated detail, “The dust storm lasted forever. Then the rain was even more forever. And everything broke. And we had to hide in Mommy’s room. And the rain crashed the window and the water kept getting higher and higher and higher. And... And... we blew up the mattress and jumped out the window! Synta swam for two days –”

  “Alright.” I snapped, seeing horror drain the color from Howie’s thin face. “We had an adventure.” I pulled Howie to the Stepp’s black leather couch and sat close beside him. “The mud destroyed our house so we came here.”

  “But we still go over there for nite nite – bedtime.” Brooks corrected himself, lowering his voice as far as it would go on the last word.

  “I saw your... handiwork,” Howie said, pointing up toward the side of the house with the boardwalk. “Impressive.” His voice had gotten deeper, too. He sounded like a grown man.

  He didn’t look like one, though. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. All the times Mom had tried to force me to eat another helping, calling me ‘skin and bones’, this was what she meant.

  Howie squirmed in his seat, uncomfortable in my spotlight. He took my hand in his, warm and solid. “It’s OK, I’m OK. I’m here, now. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

  In response, Brooks’s stomach grumbled. Howie’s head snapped up.

  “How... They let you out?” I asked.

  “Are you hungry?” Howie ignored me, let go for the second time, and walked over to Brooks.

  Brooks nodded.

  “Let’s go find you some food, kiddo.” Howie mussed the top of Brooks’s head.

  Brooks frowned, wearing his best pitiful expression. “Synta won’t let me.”

  “So I heard,” Howie laughed. “But now we can all go... together.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  I yanked Brooks backward by his jacket and yelled, “This is too dangerous!” His legs gave out and he tumbled off the scooter. Howie, who was straddling the seat, reacted quickly enough to keep the bike from crushing his tiny body. Two sets of eyes, one brown and one green, glared up at me. “We can’t do this,” I tried to reason with Howie.

  “If we don’t, we’ll starve.” Howie pulled Brooks to his feet, then onto the handlebars. “He already weighs nothing.”

  The words pierced my heart like four flaming daggers. Howie was right. I knew that. Still, I couldn’t release my grip from my brother’s sleeve. I remembered finding that jacket three years earlier on a hunt. Three years and it still hung off him like an old hand-me-down.

  I let go. “You two go, then. I’ll stay here and finish fixing the boardwalk.” Brooks and I had begun crawling across the platform on all fours, too scared of the wobble to stand up. Now, if Howie was to start using it too, the thing was sure to fall.

  “We need you to hold onto whatever we catch, Syn. Come on.” Howie patted the seat behind him. When I didn’t move, he smiled that crooked grin. “Are you scared?” His lips spread farther across his face as he teased me. “That how you got your new beauty mark?” He pointed at my cheek.

  Brooks glanced back at me, eyes full of my pain. He knew otherwise.

  Howie continued giving me a hard time, not noticing what passed between us. “I promise I’ll be careful. Besides, I’m a much better driver than you, anyway.” The grin almost wrapped around his entire head.

  What choice did I have? “Shut up!” I played off the taunts and climbed onto the seat behind Howie. Gone was the heat from our physical contact just minutes earlier, except what radiated from my scar. “Just go.”

  By the time we reached the woods behind Sector B, I was certain that Howie wasn’t the better driver after all. As the kickstand hit the ground, so did I; kissing the dirt beneath my feet.

  “Get up,” Howie tugged at my arm, unamused. His strength startled me as I lifted into the air easily. “So maybe I’m a little rusty. But really it’s Squirmy’ s fault over here.” He pitched a thumb at Brooks who was still climbing off the handlebars.

  Brooks gave us his most angelic face. “The brake thingy kept going up my butt.” To drive home his point, he rubbed the offended area with both hands.

  Howie put his arm around the boy’s shoulder and said, conspiratorially, “You can trade with Syn for the ride home.”

  “I think not,” I huffed, taking off toward the trees.

  The moment dirt crunched under my toes, I regretted my hubris. Dust storms weren’t the only reason Brooks and I had ribs poking out. The night I had dragged myself out of the woods, broken and ashamed, was the night
we became vegetarians.

  I froze. My toes curled up, digging into the dry soil below and refusing to budge. A large hand slapped across my back, forcing a pitiful yelp from my lips. “Let’s do this,” Howie said, marching past me with Brooks on his heels. The gun in Howie’s hand uncurled my toes and sent the blood coursing back through my veins. I had no idea where he got it, but didn’t care, either. My Howie, my hero, he was back.

  Half a mile into the forest, Howie stopped, waving a hand behind his back at us. Brooks crashed into him, letting out a loud ‘oof.’ We shushed him in unison. With two fingers, Howie pointed to his left, then at us, and a large tree we had just passed. Careful not to make a sound, I ushered Brooks to the tree and motioned for him to sit.

  Brooks’s mouth opened in an incredulous O and his eyebrows furrowed deep into the bridge of his tiny nose. But to his credit, he didn’t make another sound.

  Moments later a deafening shot echoed through the forest. Brooks leapt up, pulling a steak knife from his back pocket. I snatched it away and threw it to ground. My eyes radiated shock and fury at him. Another angry look crossed his own face and he reared up to his full height, about to my shoulders; a clear message to stop babying him.

  I mouthed, ‘I’m sorry’ as Howie trampled through the brush beside us.

  “Missed,” Howie said, and waved us forward. As we journeyed deeper toward the part of the woods where sunlight didn’t even go, Howie regaled Brooks with his tale of the wolf that got away. By the time we heard the next crackle of a nearby animal, that lucky wolf had grown to dire proportions.

  Like before, I took my place at the foot of the largest tree and called Brooks to me. Playing ‘grown-up’, he ignored me and followed close behind Howie, into the darkness.

  Alone with my thoughts, the shadows around me loomed overhead. In every chirp or chitter, I heard the snide remarks passed between three soldiers as they hunted one of their own. But found me.