Apocalypse Machine (14 page)

14

Turns out that while I have no trouble writing convincing words, and can recite facts on a myriad of subjects, I’m horrible at verbalizing why I am the wrong man to send into an apocalyptic hot zone. After all, I had spent my time at the White House showing the President that I was, in fact, the right man to send. And since this is really an exploratory mission, my job being to assess the situation and recommend which fields of science should be directly involved, I’m more qualified than any actual scientist. In the President’s words, I am ‘quick thinking, knowledgeable, and experienced.’

Escaping the initial eruption and saving the team has somehow convinced the Commander in Chief that I am not only a science-minded fellow, but a man of action as well. I disagreed, vehemently, but soon found myself speaking to an empty chair and General Stone, a man whose course in life seems defined by his last name. He was hard and unmoving, both physically and emotionally, plotting out the mission that would lead me away from my family once more and toward the embrace of doom.

Dramatic, I know, but not an exaggeration.

When I realized the argument was unwinnable, and that in three hours, I would be heading back across the Atlantic, I made a request. Perhaps my final request. And that has led me to where I am now, standing outside a White House bedroom door with Sonja Clark.

“They’re inside,” she says.

“How long do I have?” I ask.

She looks at her watch. “Forty-five minutes.”

God...

“How are your legs?” she asks. The last day has been a whirlwind. I all but missed the sun’s passage through the sky. My body, still acclimated to Iceland time, is telling me it’s time to get up, but here, it’s the middle of the night. The boys will be fast asleep. Their mothers...who knows? Bell sleeps more soundly than Mina, but given everything that’s going on, I suspect both women will have trouble sleeping. Even more when I tell them I’m leaving.

I shift my weight back and forth, stretching both limbs. “A little stiff, but mostly better. If I don’t have to outrun a volcano, I should be fine.”

Her forced smile looks more like a frown. She and I both know there is a good chance I’ll be running for my life again. Hell, I might not even get the chance to run.

“I’ll knock when it’s time.” She twists the door knob and pulls the door open.

Feeling equally desperate to see my family, and terrified to reveal my fate, I step inside the dark room. Clark closes the door behind me, and I stand still for a moment, willing my heart to slow down and waiting for my eyes to adjust.

The White House grounds are well-lit and artificial light seeps through the spaces around the drawn shades, making my transition from light to dark a little easier. There are three cots, all made up like they’re fancy beds, no doubt intended to be used by the boys and either Bell or Mina. All three are empty.

On the far side of the elegantly furnished room is a king size bed with a hardwood-framed high canopy. The crystal chandelier overhead, old paintings in golden frames and display cases full of china make the space feel like a museum, like I snuck past a velvet rope to get in here. But none of this strangeness holds my attention long. Ike and Ishah are fast asleep on the bed, framed by their mothers, who are both laying on their sides. There’s a gap in the middle, which I have no doubt was left for me.

We don’t sleep together as a single unit often. Once, when the boys were younger and frightened during a power outage, and once when we all went camping in a single tent, but it never feels strange. To the rest of the world, we’re a circus act, and I understand why, but to us, it’s just the way our family is. And to the boys, it’s the way we’ve always been. Bell, Mina and I have always been up front about our situation. None of us intended this to happen. All of us made mistakes. Had Mina and I had a little more faith in her ability to bear a child, that rift would have never formed, and I would have never found myself sleeping on the couch of our surrogate mother. But at the same time, now that we’re years beyond the pain of that tumultuous time, none of us regrets what happened. Instead of one son, we had two. Our family became complex, but full of love.

I crawl into the bed, happy to find the mattress firm and unbending to my weight. The boys don’t stir when I lie between them. Surrounded by my loved ones, a weight lifts from my body, and I nearly fall asleep. But in that twilight space between consciousness and sleep, my mind’s eye replays those brief moments where I saw it—the aberration—slipping in and out of the ash cloud. So big. And alive.

My stomach twists.

My eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling.

You’re not here to sleep
, I tell myself, and I turn my nose against Ishah’s head, breathing deeply. I kiss his forehead, my nose tickled by his coiling hair, and then I repeat the process with Ike. Nine years ago, before the boys were conceived, I believed I would never be a father. It seemed impossible. But then, two of them. Sons.

I glance at each of them, tears welling in my eyes. The emotions swirling through me are complex. Fear, regret, longing, pride. But there is something larger, something blanketing every torrid emotion this horrid situation has conjured. I look at Mina, her soft eyes closed, peaceful in sleep.

I am blessed,
I think.

And this thought causes me nearly as much consternation as facing down a colossal monster risen from the Earth’s depths. Because to be blessed, to be bestowed with something good, requires a second party. I believe in the power of the mystical universe even less than I do an omniscient God. Reality itself, as defined by science, is incapable of blessing. It provides, or it doesn’t. Blessing requires intention.

And if I don’t believe in a higher power, how can I feel blessed by something larger than myself?

I turn toward Bell. Her big brown eyes are staring back at me. Her thick lips are curved up in a smile. “You have the look of a man contemplating big things.”

Our hands meet over Ishah’s back, fingers interlocking.

“You don’t have to believe in Him, to be heard by Him,” she says, getting a smile out of me.

“There’re no atheists in foxholes,” I say, recalling my thoughts on Diego’s prayer.

Her smile fades. “What’s that mean?”

She knows what it means. Understands the saying. What she doesn’t know is that I’m about to head toward a battlefront where foxholes are useless.

“It means...” Mina’s slender hand wraps around my shoulder and pulls me back, flat onto my back. “...he’s leaving us.”

I say nothing.

What
can
I say?

I have trouble looking Mina in the eyes, but there’s no hiding from her. “You said you wouldn’t leave.”

“They didn’t give me a choice.” It’s a pitiful excuse, but the best and only one I have.

“When?” Mina asks.

“Soon.”

Her fingers find my free hand. I pull both women’s hands to my chest, squeeze and then kiss them. I feel ready to break. Vulnerable. General Stone would probably roll his eyes and call me a Nancy, or worse. But this is who I am. I’m an emotional guy. In the early days of our strange relationship, I was plagued by doubts. Would Mina and Bell accept each other? Could we really function as a family? Could I really love two women, and two sons from different women, with the same level of affection and devotion? While Mina and Bell found their natural rhythm, balancing their relationship, and finding joy in the closeness of their sons, who seemed more like fraternal twins than half brothers, I felt lost. ‘You have enough love for us all,’ Bell had told me, and Mina had agreed. ‘None of us doubts that.’

While Mina had felt betrayed at first, and Bell was guilt-stricken because of her conservative beliefs, something drew them together. And they were better for it. Once I saw that, I was too. We had sons—plural—when it seemed none would be possible.

Mina called it fate.

Bell said it was a miracle.

I chalked it up to luck, though I didn’t believe in that, either. But it sounds better than being driven by a biological imperative to reproduce. Science, for all its unflappable truth, is cold. Not only does it remove a creator from the universe—Bell argues it doesn’t—but it reduces love to a series of chemical reactions. And that’s where science and I part ways. Love is the chink in science’s armor.

And as I lay in that bed, surrounded by an Old World, gaudy, White House bedroom, I feel more loved than I think any man should. In my heart, I know there is more going on than a simple rush of dopamine, adrenaline and serotonin. In my brain, I have no idea what that might be, and what it might mean.

“Why?” Mina asks.

It’s a simple question, but I hear far more.
Why you? Why now? Why are we here? Why did you lie about staying? Why not someone else?

I turn toward my wife and see an uncharacteristic amount of emotion in her deep brown eyes. They glisten with tears, like she already knows my fate. She and Bell usually balance each other. Logic and emotion. Realism and dreams. Pragmatism and hope. But now, we’re all on the same page, feeling...what?

Loss.

I haven’t told them what I’m doing, or where I’m going, but they can sense the finality of this visit oozing off of me.

Her question lingers in my mind, and I decide to break my promise to guard our nation’s secrets. I tell them. Everything. Words of unnatural death and destruction whisper into the darkness. Their fingers grip mine tighter, as I detail what I saw in Iceland, how it moved across the island nation, plunged into the sea and ended millions of lives. And now, taking the advice I gave him, the President of the United States is sending me to the far side of the planet to figure out what is happening and why it’s happening, and hopefully to devise a way to stop it.

I try to reassure them by making a promise I’m pretty sure is a lie. “We’ll keep a safe distance.”

“How do you keep a safe distance from something that big?” Mina asks.

“We’re not exactly sure how big—”

“Miles,” Bell says. “You said ‘miles.’”

“We’ll stay out of its way.”

“The radiation,” Bell says.

“It could change direction,” Mina adds.

They’re thinking up all the horrible possibilities that I’ve already considered.

“You can’t go,” Bell says. “The boys...”

She stops when a tear rolls down my cheek. Leaving Mina and Bell is hard enough, but leaving the boys again… I know they struggle when I’m gone. Despite the traveling I have to do for my job, we’re a close family. And I’ve been away a lot lately. Too much. After the trip to Iceland I was going to focus on more local stories, maybe even take a lower paying job at a local paper. Or try blogging.

“Sometimes the best thing you can do with your life, is risk it for others.” My words sound hollow, like some action hero’s last words. I can’t help but feel that I have finally and completely failed them all.
At least they have each other,
I think, and then I turn to Bell. “Maybe you could pray.”

She slaps my chest, looking angry. “This is
not
the time for sarcasm.” It’s true. I have teased her about her beliefs before, especially in the wake of one religious scandal or another. Mostly about TV news anchors and politicians, who she says (and I agree) have hijacked the religion for their own gain.

But this is not one of those times.

“I’m not joking.”

I’m as surprised as she is. But she nearly falls out of bed when Mina props herself up on one elbow, looks over me and says, “Go ahead.”