Volcano Watch

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

“Cassie?”

I fought through layers of fog, swam through ash, surfaced. My eyes were glued shut. Glue of ash and saline lachrymal fluid. Glue of grief. I rubbed my lashes apart and looked around. In the shed, home.

“Do you hear that, dear?”

We listened, trying to fathom this growling sound. What new category of beast was this? There was no point trying to escape because there was nowhere to go. There was no time. The sound was growing louder — a phreatic, perhaps. Sounded like it came from lower on the mountain, just where I predicted it would come. We lay still, watching the sky. No terror. Way beyond that, in another realm entirely. Limbo. We no longer drifted in and out of limbo; we’d taken up permanent residence.

Krom slept, at peace. He had a face again, of sorts.

“The color’s different,” Walter said.

“Of what?”

“The sky.”

“Must be dawn.”

The growling magnified, clarified. Oh, so familiar. I know this beast. I sat up.

Krom’s eyes opened.

Walter got to his knees and began to hunt around, scattering our supplies. I pushed past him — I knew just where everything was if he didn’t jumble it up first — and I found the radio and switched it on.

Static. Batteries had juice.

I lifted my face again to the sky and saw what Walter meant — the color’s different. Day’s breaking and the sky is white like a dawn that promises an overcast day, a day innocent of ash.

Voices crackled out of the radio. Voices and static. Logistics.

The growl from the beast was closer. Plain enough, quite identifiable. Whup-whup-whup-whup, beating the air, whacking us out of limbo.

Static receded, words clarified. “How many survivors?”

I gazed across the shed and met Krom’s eyes — which suck dry every look I give him — but this time was different, this time he had no further need of me. This time he broke our contact first and gazed up at the new dawn. I did not care, really.

I pressed the transmit button. “Three.”