Awakenings

            The clouds above us roiled, twisted.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, though I didn’t see any lightning to spark it.  Rain splashed down against the weathered concrete and we huddled together, sharing blankets against the damp and the cold.  Carolyn grimaced as she stretched shaking hands toward a small fire that crackled and popped, barely staying alive.  She seemed to concentrate a moment, and the fire stopped struggling, strengthening a moment.  Kellin nodded slowly, smiling weakly.  I just shivered a little, drawing closer to whoever was next to me and listened to the rain keep coming down…

            I pressed a hand against my temple, groaning quietly as I leaned a little more heavily on Kellin for a moment, letting the vision run its course and dissipate.  Bloody hell.  I say something about not having any visions, and one hits me between the eyes.  There wasn’t much to it and I didn’t try to hang onto the vision, delve any deeper.  I wanted to focus on the present, on finding survivors—especially Thom.  Kellin threw a questioning glance in my direction and I just shook my head.  Don’t need to worry about what I’m seeing right now.  Need to worry about the here and now first.  “We’ll need Drew, at least.  Some of the guys from the camps could be useful, too, in case we need to carry anyone.”
            She grunted, then nodded in agreement.  “At the very least, we’ll need Drew to carry you.”
            “What’s that supposed to mean?  I can walk.”  Maybe.  Slowly.  It’ll hurt like a bitch and I’ll be useless for a couple days, but…  She deadpanned at me and I sighed.  “Fine.  Park me someplace where I can watch, at least.”
            “Can probably do that.  We’ll start with what’s left of Mackinac, I think, and work from there.”  She pulled me across the hill—I could see a few makeshift shelters of furniture taking shape, though mostly it was just a forest of beds, desks, and shelves in various states of assembly scattered across the area.  The buildings looked stable enough, but I was wholly understanding of their logic—I wouldn’t trust them, either, not with everything that was happening, not with the ground heaving erratically.  They were giant brick tombs, especially if things shook just right—or just wrong.  I knew what those floors could shake like on a normal day, let alone a day with earthquakes.
            “Drew!”  Kellin lifted her arm to wave.
            Drew was working on hauling a wardrobe out of Robinson Hall with Jack Schmidt, one of the camp staffers.  He glanced at us for a moment, blinked, then continues to help Jack haul the wardrobe out.  They struggled to get it partway up the hill before they unceremoniously dropped it into the thick grass there.  Drew cocked his head to one side, looking at me.  His tone was half teasing, half chiding.  “Up already, Marin?”
            I made a rude gesture, feeling about as tired as I’m sure I looked.  “Up not soon enough, apparently.  We’re going survivor hunting.  Can’t believe you hadn’t thought of that yet.”
            Drew grimaced.  “Most have found us.  We haven’t had to look.”
            “And the ones who can’t come find us?  They don’t get to live?”  I gave him a dirty look to match his sheepish one.  In hindsight, I shouldn’t have laid into him so hard.  He didn’t deserve that, on top of everything else that he was facing—what all of us were facing.  I was worried, though, more than I was willing to admit at the time.  I wanted Thom to be all right, wanted to find him.  I wanted to find our other friends; I prayed silently that they were still alive, waiting for someone to come rescue them.  It was all I could do, and that hope was all we had except each other.
            Kellin sighed.  “Arguing isn’t going to do anyone any good.  Let’s go.  Grab some of the camp staff, Drew.  We’ll check Mackinac first.”
            “Right.”  Drew looked at Jack, then the two of them headed back into Robinson Hall as Kellin and I slowly made our way over to the wreck of the Mackinac Hall complex.
            The center columns that had towered above the open courtyard had come down, crushing tables and smashing windows.  One corner of the building had already collapsed, and other parts were in a state of partial collapse.  Most of the building’s glass littered the ground and I grimaced, hoping against hope that there hadn’t been too many people inside when it started to come down.  Apparently, the ground wasn’t nearly as stable as the contractors who’d worked on it had thought.
            I sank down on what was left of a bench at the edge of the courtyard while Kellin unwound her pendulum from around her neck, wrapping a good portion of the chain around her hand.  She took a deep breath, watching the finger of stone dangle from her fingertips, then glanced at me.  “Wish me luck.”
            I smiled weakly.  “You’re better at it than I ever was.”  Good luck, Kel.
            She grinned wryly at me, then took another deep breath, as she relaxed her hand and arm, closing her eyes a moment.  She opened them again as the pendulum began to swing lazily toward the wreckage of the buildings.  Moving carefully, she walked the path set out before her, following the pendulum’s direction into the devastated courtyard.  I watched, rubbing gently at my feet and calves, as she picked her way through the debris.  Drew joined me with three of the camp staffers before to long.
            “Has she found anyone yet?”
            I shrugged a little.  “Not sure.  She hasn’t said anything if she has.”  Gods, please.  Please let her find him alive.  Please.  Please just let this work.
            Then her voice called from deeper into the ruin.  “Over here!  I think I’ve found someone!”

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            “You okay, Marin?”
            I rested my chin on my knee, looking up toward Kellin and managing a shrug.  “Thinking, mostly.  Not good things.”
            “Not a lot of good to think about right now, ‘cept that we’re what’s left of…well.  What’s left.”  She came over and sat down next to me on the mattress.  “What’s up?”
            I grimaced.  “Carolyn.”  She blinked at me, momentarily confused.  I sighed and shook my head.  “She knows what we know, I think.  Sort of.  She feels…she feels that something’s gone wrong, beyond just saying it.  I can tell.  It’s in her eyes.  She knows, Kel.”
            Kellin’s voice was quiet.  “She Awakened?”
            “Yes,” I whispered, exhaling slowly.  “I’m pretty sure of it.”  For better or for worse, she’s aware, Awake.  Hopefully the former.  I guess we’ll know soon enough.
            Kellin didn’t say anything for a long moment.  “Well,” she said finally, “I guess that’s a bridge we have to cross sooner than we’d have liked.”  She scrubbed her hands over her face and leaned back against her palms, looking at me.  “We knew that it might eventually happen.”
            “Eventually.  We also decided it might never happen in this lifetime, so why worry about it?”  I blew out a breath through my teeth.  “If she’s becoming aware, Kellin, what about the others?  They can’t be far behind.”  We always thought she would be the last one to Awaken.  Maybe we were wrong.  I hope we are.  I just want to be able to take this one person at a time.  Carolyn first, everyone else later.
            “A bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.  We’ve got other issues.”
            “I’m sure we do,” I mumbled.  I dug around in my pocket for my keys, coming up empty.
            “We took them already.  That’s how we got into the other dorms.”
            “Oh.”  I chewed the inside of my lip.  Of course they’d loot my keys.  If furniture is going to equal shelter…  “Who’s in charge, Kellin?”
            “Right now?  We’re kind of leading by consensus.  Professor Doyle seems like he’s in pretty good shape, now that his arm’s set.”  Greg Doyle was maybe eight years older than me—in his early thirties, I thought—and taught biology.  I’d only met him a few times, at meetings for the campus pagan group, which I’d helped to create and then promptly abandoned as things got…well…too fuzzy for me.  Kellin had stuck it out, probably just to see if she could channel some of the members in positive directions.  I wasn’t sure how successful she’d been—we didn’t talk about the organization much.  “Haven’t really found anyone else other than you that’s even moderately in the realm of authority figure.”  The only thing that made me an authority figure was that in addition to my off-campus job, I was one of the people in charge of the summer camps staff—which had resulted in me having a lot of keys, mostly to the dormitories and a few associated buildings.  Between me and Davon, we probably had keys to most of the campus and knew how to find the rest.
            I nodded slowly, taking another long swallow of water.  “It’s a Sunday.  Guess we can’t expect much of anyone to actually be on campus, right?”
            “For better or worse,” Kellin murmured, looking at her hands, which were stained with dirt.
            Oh.  Oh.  Oh, Kellin.  I reached over, squeezed her arm gently.  “How many have you buried already?”
            “Thirty or forty, maybe,” she said quietly.  “Long graves—trenches, really.  Out by the PAC.”  She paused, then looked at me.  “We haven’t found Thom yet.”
            Why would they be looking for Thom?  Thom left for Chicago…he’s not here.  He didn’t want to stay to say good-bye to me.  Interview was too important.  All that rot.  He’s gone.  My throat tightened.  I didn’t want him to be gone, to be dead, but that was probably the reality.  I fought to keep my voice steady.  “Thom’s in Chicago.  We’re not going to find him here.  He’s probably dead, like most of the rest.”  The words tasted like ash in my mouth.  I felt sick just saying the words.  I’m never going to fight with him again because I never can.  Because he’s gone.  I’ll never see him again.  Damn it.  What I wouldn’t give to fight with him one more time.  I swallowed hard.  Now wasn’t the time to mourn him—there’d be a chance eventually, but not just yet.  Right now, we had to make it through the next few days, the next few weeks.  I could come apart later.
            “His car’s still here, Marin.  Drew said he decided not to go.”
            I stared at her.  When did he decide not to go?  Why did he decide not to go?  That job was so, so important to him.  Idiot!  Why didn’t he…  My chest tightened.  Oh god.  That means he’s still…that he’s…  “So he’s here somewhere?”
            She nodded.  “We have no idea where, though.”
            I stared at her for a long moment.  She looked the same as always, right down to her necklace that wasn’t a necklace.  A way to find lost things.  One use for scrying, for dowsing.  Not just for finding water, but finding anything.  “…then what the hell are you wearing that around your neck for?”
            “Huh?”  Kellin looked down toward the finger of rose quartz she wore around her neck on a slender silver chain.  It was her pendulum, one she wore like a necklace so she’d always have it on hand.  She blinked a moment at it, then looked back at me.  “What?”
            She must have hit her head.  “You can scry for lost things, can’t you?  I’ve seen you find your keys with that thing before.”
            Kellin shook her head, hard, as if she was struggling to clear it.  “You want me to dowse for Thom?”
            “You said you can’t find him.”  I started pushing to my feet again, grimacing.  Fuck it.  Push past.  Time enough to rest when you’re dead, or when he’s dead.  Or something.  Need to find him first.  I smiled grimly to myself.  So I can slug him, then kiss him, and scream at him for not telling me that he wasn’t going to Chicago this weekend.  I wavered a moment on my feet; Kellin was quick to steady me.  I tugged on her pendulum.  “Use it to find him, Kellin.  Hell, use it to find any other survivors.  We’re…we’re going to need everyone we can get.”  I leaned against her, knees shaking.
            “How do you know?”
            I deadpanned.  You have to ask, Kel?  I just know.  “I haven’t had a real, bona fide vision yet, if that’s what you’re asking.  Then again, I think I’m still half high on fumes from cleaning supplies.”  Brains are still half scrambled.  Give me a good night’s sleep, I’m sure I’ll start seeing things again.
            She recoiled as much as she could with me leaning against her.  “Right, right.  Sorry.”
            I shook my head.  “We don’t have time for sorry right now.  We need to start hunting.  Where are the others?”
            “Rory and your brother are helping bury the dead I think, though he may have hooked up with Davon to check out buildings.  Jacqueline’s with Leah, working with the folks that’re hurt.  Drew’s working with some of the camps crew on shelters.  Tala’s scouting for food.”
            That’s it?  What about everyone else?  She must’ve seen the question in my eyes and shook her head.  “That’s all we’ve found so far, Marin.  It’s not looking good.”
            “Apparently not.”  I exhaled a sigh, feeling goosebumps race up and down my arms.  I shook my head.  “Let’s get on with this.  My feet are killing me.”
            “After you walked all that way?  Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.”  She let me lean on her as we made our way out from under the shelter, out into the waning light.  The sullen sky roiled, clouds gathering in the west.  I grimaced, watching them drift ever-so-slowly eastward, toward us, tendrils reaching across the sky.  Here and there, every so often, a faint streak of light would mark them—whether rock or lightning, I couldn’t be sure.  Either way, they were coming.  A storm was coming.

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            “Ungh.”  My limbs felt like jelly and my feet were on fire.  I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out; all I knew was that whatever I was on was mostly soft, there was a pillow, and I was still utterly exhausted.  I sagged, groaning weakly again and scrubbing a hand over my face.  Never before had I felt like utter crap, and in that moment I prayed I’d never experience such a feeling ever again.
            “Marin?”
            I groaned, rolling onto my side and making an attempt to force myself up into a sitting position.  It took a minute and a lot of effort, but I managed to get myself upright.  “What happened?”
            “You passed out, that’s what happened.”
            I feel like I should’ve stayed unconscious.  “Thanks for stating the obvious, Carolyn.  What’s going on?”
            “Pretty sure the world ended about six hours ago.”  She moved over, sat down with me on the mattress they’d clearly salvaged from the dorms.  “Did you walk that whole way up here from the mall?”
            Did I?  God.  I must have.  I rubbed at my eyes.  “I must have.  My legs hurt.”
            “You’ve got a knot on your head the size of a baseball,” she told me, grimacing.  “And I totally can’t blame you if your legs hurt.  Mine would definitely hurt.”
            I smiled weakly at her, drawing one leg painfully up against my chest, stretching my thigh muscles gently.  “Everyone okay?”
            She frowned.  “Depends on what you mean by everyone.  I was in the library with Jacqueline and Davon and Rory.  I’ve seen some of the others.  Don’t know exactly how many are still alive out here.  Hopefully more than I’m afraid of.”
            “Hopefully,” I echoed.  “Do you guys have any ideas?”
            “Forty, maybe?  I’m not sure.  I’ve been sitting with you since Jacqueline and Leah decided you’d live, waiting for you to wake up.  They told me I was probably better off here than…well…elsewhere, doing something else.”
            Probably right.  Carolyn doesn’t need to see half of what she might be seeing in the near future here.  I suppressed a shudder, remembering the stench of the church.  Definitely doesn’t…sooner or later, though, we won’t be able to keep it from her anymore.  I leaned into her shoulder, closing my eyes again and sighing tiredly.  “Have they checked everywhere?”
            “Not sure, really.”  Carolyn reached down, picked up the blanket that had been spread over me and wrapped it around my shoulders.  I gave her a questioning glance, but she just shook her head.  “You’re shaking, Marin.”
            “I’m tired.  That’s all.”  I tugged the blanket closer.  It felt cooler than it should have been—much cooler.  I squinted toward the sky.  Sullen red, streaked in dark gray.  I don’t like the look of that.  I took a deep breath, exhaling slowly.
            Take a breath and wait to die.
            I squeezed my eyes shut.
            “Marin?”
            “I’m okay.”  I started to try to push to my feet, gasping at the pain in my calves and ankles.  “Ungh.  Ow.”  I sat back down abruptly, blinking stinging tears from my eyes.  God, that hurts.
            She looked at me quizzically.  “Who do you need?”
            “Not sure.  Who took charge?”
            Carolyn blushed a bit.  “I’m not really sure, honestly.”
            Wonderful.  I sank back down, waited a long moment for the pain to abate slightly before asking, “Where are we, exactly?”  That she’ll know.
            “Hills outside of Copeland and Robinson.”  Carolyn hugged her knee against her chest, flipping dark hair over her shoulder.  “They looked like the most stable areas to set up shop.”
            I nodded tiredly.  Makes sense.  More solid ground than anywhere else on campus.  Dorms would fall back down into the ravine before they fall forward onto the hills, if they survived the initial…whatever that was.  A glance outside confirmed that they had survived, but I could already see the nasty crack forming in the end wall of Copeland.  They wouldn’t last.  “Mattress come from inside?”
            “Yeah.  Some of the camps staff is hauling crap down and out.  We’re not sure how stable the buildings are.  Davon’s been checking, I guess.  Outer shells on some of them are probably okay, it’s everything else we’re worried about, maybe.  I’m not sure.  Like I said, they told me to stay with you.”  Carolyn grimaced.  “Glad it’s them in there and not me.  Getting out of the library was bad enough.”
            Of course it’s still standing.  “Was it bad in there?”
            She shrugged, pushing to her feet and moving over to a bag that lay beneath the shade of our makeshift shelter—shelter built, I realized, from stacked and pinned furniture from the dorms shoved up against one of the trees on this particular hill.  From the bag, she produced a bottle of water and a package of crackers.  I threw her a questioning glance and she smiled guiltily.  “We sort of raided the C-store,” she told me, pressing the crackers into my hand.  “Rory said Jacqueline and I shouldn’t freak out too much.”
            I couldn’t help myself.  “And you listened?”  I unwrapped the crackers.
            She shrugged.  “It’s not looting if everyone else is dead, right?”
            I stopped, almost choking on the cracker I’d just shoved into my mouth.  Carolyn scrambled to uncap the water bottle and thrust it toward me.  I gulped some down, coughed a little, then downed some more before I regained the ability to speak—or sputter, as it were.  “Did you just…?”
            She shrugged again, not making eye contact with me.  “We all realize that something’s gone terribly, horribly wrong, Marin.  It’s the end, isn’t it?”  She finally looked me in the eye.  “Like what you used to talk about sometimes with Kellin and Drew and Rory, the stuff you told me I could ignore.  The stuff you used to see.  That stuff.”
            My breath caught in my throat and I thought I would just fall over onto the mattress again right then and there.  Was she actually saying this?  Our Carolyn?  Our Carolyn?  She was the only one we’d tried to shelter more than anyone else.  She was the one that we’d agreed maybe couldn’t handle the strain of knowing, of learning—and yet, she’d been the safe one, even more than Jacqueline or Davon, because she wouldn’t ask—Davon just thought we were all crazy, I was fairly certain, and Jacqueline would have started asking questions that we weren’t ready to answer.  But Davon didn’t understand—not yet—and we were going to have to sort out a way to tell Jacqueline without accidentally breaking her.  It wouldn’t be easy, but they would eventually accept it.  They wouldn’t deny it.  Not like…  I stopped the thought before it got rolling.
            Carolyn grimaced and started to stand up.  “I’m going to go find Kellin.  She said I should when you woke up.”
            I held up a hand to forestall her departure.  “Carolyn, wait.”  I scrubbed my hand over my eyes, crackers half forgotten in my lap, bottle of water locked in the other hand.  My head was slowly clearing—too slow for my comfort.  I took another gulp of water.  “How…how do you know?”
            She shrugged a little again, sinking down to kneel in front of me.  “Just a feeling, I guess.  Everything feels like the end of the world, anyway.”  She frowned, fidgeting a little.  “If it wasn’t, someone would’ve made it to us by now, anyway.  We’d have seen something.”  She bit her lip.  “I just…I know, Marin.  And you know, too.  It’s all over your face, and Rory’s and Kel’s and Drew’s.  You all know it.”  She rocked up to her feet.  “Better walking into whatever comes next with open eyes rather than denying it until I stop breathing.”  She managed a smile.  “Trying to look at it like a big adventure.  I can think of worse teams to get stuck on.  Drink your water.  I’m going to get Kellin.”
            I nodded mutely, unable to contain my shock.  Our Carolyn indeed.  Never saw that coming.  I drank my water, trying to slow down—gulping it wasn’t going to do me any good.  Is this how it’s going to be?  They’ll just start…waking up before we’ve had the time to properly prepare them?  I grimaced.  Maybe that was why Kellin had been so insistent on talking to me quickly after I woke up.  I suspected it was otherwise, though.  She’d have other things to pick my brain about.  I’d be the one to bring up the others waking up to the abilities we knew that they must have.  Another Thom isn’t going to help anyone in this situation.  I winced, hugging my knee against my chest.
            “One was enough,” I mumbled to myself.  “Davon will probably deny it, too, though.  Maybe.”  I rested my forehead against my knee and sighed.  He probably would, at that.  At least at first.  But maybe he wouldn’t.  We’d have to see.
            There were a lot of things we’d have to see.

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            Another stumbling step drew me closer to my destination.  The sky grew dark slowly, though whether with gathering night—which I doubted—or something else, I wasn’t certain.  My head was still ringing, pounding, and my body ached.  My feet had never really hurt quite so much as they did at that very moment.  I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been walking anymore, either, just stumbled slowly on my way down what was left of a highway, from where I worked toward where I lived, on autopilot, knowing—just knowing—that I had to get back somehow.
            I daydreamed as I struggled along, letting currents of memory and imaginings carry me at least temporarily away from my body, from the aches and the trembling, the tremors of the ground and the sick feeling in my stomach that came with them, feelings that grew with every painful step I took along the way.

            An exhaled breath sounded like my name.  I rolled slowly, rotating in the cocoon of his arms, nuzzling his jaw lightly as I opened my eyes lazily to stare at him.  His eyes were half-lidded and he smiled sleepily at me, reaching up and brushing hair away from my face.
            “Almost afraid to get used to this.”
            The corner of my mouth curled in a smile.  “Why’s that?”
            “Well, for one thing, it’s the first time you’ve actually not been distracted when we’ve done this.”  He laced his fingers through my hair and drew my face down to his, kissing my forehead gently, tongue sampling the sweat wrought by previous exertions.  “First time you haven’t said we’re being watched, or something equally weird.”
            I stiffened, restraining myself.  Something was watching us, but I’d elected not to say so.  Elected not to once again end this before it started, to not ‘kill the mood’ as I’d managed to before.  It wasn’t fair to either us—but what was more unfair was the fact that he denied feeling the same things that I was.  I knew he could feel things, could see them.  But for the past six months, he’d done nothing but deny that.  It had put a strain on us—on us as a couple, as a thing.  The fact that he kept calling it weird, though, and denying what we both knew…that was starting to put a strain on me.  I cared about him too much to let him blind himself to what he was really sensing—what we were sensing, and feeling.
            He felt me tense and sighed, letting go and sagging against the mattress, looking away.  “Damn it anyway, Marin.”
            I sighed, pushing myself upright.  “I’ll go.”
            “It’s your place.”
            I shrugged, padding across the floor to find my clothes, lost somewhere between the door and the bed.  “I’ll take a walk.  You can do whatever.  I really…yeah.  I’m tired of fighting you on all of this, Thom.”
            “I can’t live with the delusions.”
            “They’re not and you know it, unless we’re both crazy.”  I yanked my pants on, followed by my shirt.  He didn’t say anything in response.  I turned toward him, nodding firmly.  “I’ll be back in an hour, Thom.”
            He didn’t say anything as I walked out the door.

            “Ungh.”  My knees were scraped as I picked myself up off the ground again, peering blearily down the highway.  Landmarks looked familiar.  I knew where I was—I’d stumbled at least another few miles since the last time I was aware of where I was.  I rubbed at my eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in my head and the grittiness around my eyes.  God, it hurt.  It hurt so much.  I stumbled another few steps before stopping, blinking as my head cleared a little.
            That’s the Grand River.  But the bridge…god.  The bridge…
            I rubbed my eyes again, making sure I was seeing what I was seeing.
            The M-45 bridge over the Grand River had collapsed.  Bits of the bridge had already begun to drift downriver, moving quickly—more quickly than the Grand should.  One car was overturned on the bank, half-sunk into the mud.  I shuddered and stumbled sideways, retching onto the shoulder of the road.  The air stank of death already.  How long had it been since it all started?
            The church to my left, the one near the riverfront, had been obliterated by something.  The parking lot was packed.  I shuddered again.  That’s where it was coming from—the smell.  I prayed that was the only place it was coming from.
            I spat twice after puking, then pushed myself upright again, trying to study the bridge critically, figure out a safe way across the broken concrete to the other side.  My head swam as I struggled to make sense of a path across, failing miserably.  I pressed the heel of my hand against my temple, willing myself to focus, if only for a few minutes, just so I could make it across, get closer to home.
            I stumbled onward, picking my way across the broken concrete carefully.  I lost a shoe somewhere along the way, climbing across the broken pieces, stumbling up and down the pitched slabs.  I dimly could hear someone calling my name as I made my way slowly, agonizingly across, but I couldn’t spare the brainpower or the energy in trying to figure out who was calling me—or if it was even real.
            I lost my footing on a particularly steep bit, slid down the slab, scraping my legs up something fierce.  I groaned, lacking even the energy to get back up again.
            It seems stable enough.  Maybe I can just rest here for a few minutes.
            “Marin!”
            I looked up, squinting.  “Rory?”
            He turned away.  “She’s down here!”  He eased down over the edge of the slab, sliding down toward me, getting a shoulder under me.  “You’re alive.”
            “What’re you doing here?”  I gasped as a stab of pain shot up my leg as I tried to straighten up with his help.  I glared down toward my foot, feeling betrayed.  Had I stepped on something?
            “We came to see what M-45 looked like.  Good thing we did, huh?”  He heaved me upright despite my protesting muscles.  Drew appeared at the top of the slab and reached an arm down.  Rory heaved me up toward him and somehow I caught Drew’s arm.  Between the two of them, they got me up onto more stable ground beyond the midpoint—they practically carried me to the other side of the river.
            “The Baptist church over there…”
            Kellin was at the end of the bridge, waiting for us.  “We know.  It’s not much better on campus, honestly, but we’ll see.  Not sure how many are dead yet.  I think lots.”
            I had to nod, shivering.  “I think so, too, Kel.”  The ground quaked again.  I shuddered and found myself unable to stop.  I was so cold…
            “She’s in shock,” Rory mumbled.  Drew picked me up, cradling me like a child.
            “We’ll take care of it.”
            I wanted to ask how, but I didn’t have time before I just sagged into darkness.

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             The wind was worse out in the open, away from the sheltering trees of the ravines, whistling between buildings, down along the brickwork pathways of the campus.  The clocktower was listing sideways.  Kellin grimaced.
            “…that’s probably not good, huh?”
            Rory followed her gaze and shook his head, pursing his lips half thoughtfully.  “Nope.  Nope, probably not good at all.  Think we need to avoid this section until it comes down.”
            Kellin nodded.  Drew nudged her.  “Let’s keep moving.”
            Together, the trio forged onward, moving quickly along the pathways of campus, skirting wide of buildings along the campus’s main drag rather than moving along the ravine’s edge.  They were checking the parking lots, after all, to do a count of how many people should be around.
            The field house was mostly a pile of wreckage and rubble, twisted metal and shattered glass, but the parking lots around it were mercifully empty, it appeared, which made Kellin exhale a sigh of relief.  Gods, but I hope there’s not many.  I hope there’s not many.  Please let there not be many.  She wasn’t looking forward to burying anyone, though she already knew they were going to—and probably many—in the hours and days and weeks to come.
            In the years to come.
            They continued along the concrete sidewalk, stopping as the ground began to heave.  The trio grasped for each other, hanging on for balance.  Kellin went down, and Drew took a knee to steady Rory before he joined Kellin on the ground.
            The feeling of ley lines twisting made her stomach flip-flop, and for a moment she thought she was going to offer everything she’d eaten that day up to the grass nearby.  Kellin swallowed hard, covering her eyes with her hand, trying to breathe through her nose so she wouldn’t vomit.
            Drew squeezed her shoulder.  His face was pinched, pale—clearly he was having the same problems.  A glance at Rory revealed that while he struggled to keep a straight face, he was suffering from the same wrenching feelings as they were.
            “This is bad,” Kellin whispered.
            Rory nodded grimly.  If he was feeling it with the same intensity as they, it was very bad.  For all sides, and all stripes.  As the tremors eased, he reached down, pulling Kellin to her feet and steadying her gently.  “Come on.  Sooner we get all this done, sooner we can get back to the others and give them a hand.”  He glanced toward Mackinaw Hall, one of the largest buildings on campus, and grimaced, pointing.  “Look.  Part of the south corner’s come down.”
            “Columns in the courtyard are probably down, too,” Drew murmured.
            Kellin nodded.  “We knew that this section was probably the most solid but not,” she mumbled, scrubbing a hand over her eyes.  Something destabilizing below.  Pilings can’t fix that.  They weren’t building these things to be seismically sound, anyhow.  Why worry about that crap this far away from a major fault line?  Something devastating would have to happen for us to get quakes here.
            Something like this.  She exhaled shakily.  “Let’s go, guys.  You’re right.  We need to get this done so we can move on to the next thing.  Whatever that’s going to be.”
            Drew grunted.  They moved on, heading toward the resident parking lots on the so-called “freshman” end of campus.  Several of the dorms were already collapsed—Neimeyer looked like something had crashed into it, Frey was rubble, Stafford collapsed as well, and the buildings nearest to the treeline were simply gone, buried as rubble and under fallen trees.  A few scattered cars were in the parking lots nearest to the dorms—some of them belonged to the friends and were checked off a mental list each of the three were keeping of approximately how many people might still be yet to be found on the campus—alive or otherwise.
            There was one car, an old silver BMW, settled in a corner parking spot not far from where they were standing.  Kellin stared at it for a few long moments.  It was naggingly familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it.  Her frown grew as she wrestled with her own mind, pushing the impressions she was catching from the ravines, from the world around her, of twisting leylines and shifting energies, to the back of her mind as she tried to remember.  Finally, it clicked.  “…that’s Thom’s car.”  Why is Thom’s car still here?  He was driving to Chicago this weekend to see his folks.  And he’s got that interview Monday for that job down there…why the hell would his car still be here?  “Did he take the train down from Holland to the city, Drew?”
            Drew looked at her, blinking.  “Who?”
            “Thom!  His car’s still here.  Did you drive him to the station?”
            “Thom didn’t go to Chicago this weekend.”
            Why wouldn’t he go?  That interview…he made it sound like his big shot at being someone and something.  “What about his interview?  Seeing his parents?”
            Drew shrugged a little.  “He called them Thursday night and said that he had something come up, had to reschedule.  I don’t know how the rest of that conversation went.  He seemed…out of sorts, I guess.”  He scratched the back of his head.  “When I asked him, though, he said that Chicago wasn’t going anywhere, and neither were his parents.  He didn’t want to miss Marin leaving.”
            Rory glanced back at them.  “Wasn’t that why he was going to go to the city this weekend and stay ‘til Tuesday in the first place?”
            Drew shrugged again.  “Guess he couldn’t bring himself to miss saying goodbye.  Even to Marin.”
            Especially to Marin.  Kellin grimaced.  “We have to find him if he’s still here.”
            “With any luck, he’ll find us.  He usually does.”  Rory hopped down off the curb.  “Come on.  More lots to check.  Should check Kleiner while we’re here.  See if there’s anyone there.”
            “What if there is and they’re dead?”  Kellin tried to catch the words as they slipped out of her mouth, to no avail.  Her tongue had gotten away from her—again.
            Rory stopped, turning toward her slowly.  He exhaled, then shrugged slightly.  “Then I guess we bury them.”
            “Was afraid you’d say that.”
            The façade cracked and he grimaced.  “Better than leaving them to rot, Kel.  Come on.  Let’s get this over with.”

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            I don’t like this at all.  Kellin frowned darkly to herself, standing near the rim of the ravine—a few feet back, in case the ground decided to move again.  She had come back to the edge with Drew after the earthquake stopped, to look down at the ravine, at the creek.  Something had stirred in the last hour, and was still stirring now.
            Three dozen of them—no, forty of them now.  Survivors from the campus.  Eight had already left despite urgings to stay put.  Kellin already knew they’d never see those eight again.  She could feel it.  It wasn’t a good feeling, either, especially because she knew they wouldn’t be the last to slip away, never to be seen again.
            She exhaled through her teeth, watching the not-quite-imaginary ripples down near the creek that ran along the bottom of the ravine.  They quavered and swirled, twisting back on each other, moreso than she was used to seeing them do.  They wove themselves into knots that she could feel tightening, the lines suddenly changing, the fabric warping.
            She glanced toward Drew.  “You can feel it, too, can’t you?”
            The tall man grimaced, following her gaze.  “For the first time, I can see it,” he murmured.  He’d never been able to see these things before, only in snatches and snippets, fleeting glimpses, but he’d always been able to feel it.  He looked at her for a moment.  “What do we do, Kellin?  You understand this more than the rest of us.”
            She snorted softly.  “Rory understands, too.  His understanding is just unique.”  She crouched, hugging her knees and staring down.  The ground trembled a moment, then stilled.  “It’s bad, Drew,” she mumbled.  “The whole…everything’s destabilizing.  The lines…”
            “Shifting erratically.”
            She nodded.  “And faster than they should.  Something hitting the river itself shouldn’t do this, either, not like this.  Destabilize it, yes, but it doesn’t just feel like it’s the lines through here.  It feels like the entire fabric is being twisted.”
            “And torn.”
            “And torn,” she echoed, swallowing.  And the others can’t grasp this yet.  They will soon, but not yet.  But they’ll ask.  They’ll ask me, as if I have the answers to all of their questions.  What do I tell them?  She exhaled quietly.  “It’s not good.”
            “But it’s…the beginning, you said?”
            Kellin blinked.  I didn’t think he heard me say it.  She licked her lips almost nervously.  The words had slipped out when she had felt Jacqueline’s question, thought so strongly that it was audible to anyone even remotely sensitive.  It was a beginning, though Kellin herself wasn’t sure of what—but something different.  A new world, maybe?  A new age?  Probably.  She shook her head slightly.  “Of something.  Not an end.  Well.  An end and a beginning at the same time.  Something different.  It’s…it’s changing.  I’m not really sure that it’s…well.  That it’s an awful thing.”
            “Hope you’re right,” Drew mumbled, staring at the tortured lines below that he could feel but couldn’t see.
            “So do I.”  She smiled ruefully, watching the rippling and swirling below.  “Has anyone found Marin yet?”  Marin’ll be able to help.  She can help me figure out what to say.  How to explain it all, when they ask us.
            Silence met her question.  She looked up at Drew quizzically, brow furrowing at his frown. 
            “What is it?”
            “Marin went to work.  Got called in last-minute.”  Drew scratched his head.  “Not sure if she was off yet when this started.”
            Damn.  Kellin swallowed rising bile.  “Hope she made it back.”
            “I’m sure Matt does, too.”
            Kellin winced.  “Yeah.”  Matt was Marin’s younger brother, less than two years younger than his sister.  They’d been raised by their aunt after their parents had died while they were in high school; cancer took her two years before.  Marin was all Matt had left these days.  He’d transferred to the university a year ago, while his sister was finishing up her degree, after breaking up with his fiancé.  That had been for the best, Marin had said repeatedly in the wake of the incident.  Kellin crouched and drew in the dust with a fingertip near her feet.  “If this is what it might be…we need her, Drew.”
            “Preaching to the choir, Kellin.  I realize we’ll need her.”  He glanced back over his shoulder.  Rory was on his way toward them from the knot of people, which seemed to have decreased by a couple more bodies.  “This is going to be long-term.”
            “Choir.”  Kellin sighed.  “You and I—and Rory, too, I’m thinking—know it’s going to be long-term.  This isn’t isolated.  Have you seen the meteorites stop coming down?  I haven’t.  Sky looks like it’s getting worse.”  She didn’t mention the strange wind, or the dark clouds they’d been watching rising in the west.  She didn’t need to mention the continuing ground tremors, or the feeling of the very fabric of the world, of its power-lines, twisting back on itself, unraveling.
            “We drew the short straw,” Rory announced as he joined them.  He grinned at Kellin’s quizzical look.  “They want us to hike out to M-45, see what we can see.  Count cars in the parking lots on that end of campus.”  The grin faded.  “Figure out how many people we should be looking for.  How many bodies we might be finding before this is over.”
            Kellin winced.  Of course there’ll be dead.  I just…wish there wouldn’t be.  She slowly straightened, crouching again as a ground tremor stole her balance momentarily.  The sound of breaking glass echoed off the trees and the ruined buildings.  Not good.  These buildings aren’t designed for seismic stability.
            She made it all the way upright on the second try.  Chewing on the inside of her lip, she chafed her hands over bare arms.  “Someone else checking the dorms?”
            “Tala volunteered.  She and some of the other anthro students, plus Leah and Jacqueline.”  Leah Vandenburg was in the nursing program—Jacqueline had met her in one of their freshman chemistry classes and they’d been friends since.  Rory frowned at her.  “Are you cold, Kel?”
            She grimaced.  “A little.  Wind’s chilly.”
            “It is,” Drew admitted, eying Rory.
            Rory just shrugged.  “Could be this is making the weather turn?”
            “Pray it doesn’t,” Kellin mumbled.  “If it does, things are going to get very messy very quickly, I think.”
            “We’ll find a way to make it work.”  The optimism in Rory’s voice was unusual, to say the least.  Normally, the criminal justice student was the most pessimistic of the bunch—something in the midst of this insanity must have put him in a good mood.
            The bleaker the straits, the more perky he gets, I guess.  Maybe it’s the challenge.  Or adrenaline.  Kellin sighed again.  I hope I don’t hate what we’re going to see when he finally comes down from this high.  “Right.  I’m thinking we’d probably be better off going the long way around rather than trying Little Mac.  Let’s go.”

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            Half an hour later, they had taken stock of the situation—and found it wasn’t good.  Standing in the middle of the plaza, they surveyed the wreck of what had once been their university campus.  Several of the old, stoutly-built cinderblock, concrete, and glass buildings on the central plaza were already half ruined.  All the glass in Au Sable Hall’s atrium was shattered, glittering greenish on the ground.  They’d collectively decided that it probably wouldn’t be best to necessarily trust the structural integrity of the rest of the buildings around them—especially in the light of what they continued to watch.
            Meteorites continued to lazily rain from the sky, one or two every five or ten minutes.  It was hard to tell where they were landing, how far away they were landing.  A few times, they could see fire licking into the sky in the distance or feel the earth tremble beneath their feet.  They’d seen no sign of other survivors, but they hadn’t expected there to be many people on campus, anyhow—it was a Sunday morning, after all, in the middle of August.  Semesters had ended.  Most people were back home, enjoying their last few days of freedom before the new term began.  Just a few days before, they’d been discussing how empty the university grounds were in these waning days of summer, before move-ins started for the fall semester but after the end of the summer term.
            Matthew Astoris had struggled up one steep side of the ravine about twenty minutes after the six had emerged from the library, one of the few relatively intact buildings on this section of the campus.  He was tired, and gratefully accepted a bottle of water the friends had looted from one of the broken vending machines in the library’s lobby.
            “Something must’ve come down downstream of here,” he reported after he’d gotten about half the bottle into him, slumped against the concrete steps up to the library’s doors.  “River’s moving faster than it should be.”
            Davon grimaced at hearing that.  Drew just shook his head.  “Nothing we can do about that,” he said quietly, looking around.  “Your phone working, Matt?”
            Matt shook his head.  “Can’t get a signal.  Can you?”
            “Nothing.  None of us can get anything.”  He blew out a breath through his teeth, looking around.  A few people were stumbling up form underneath Lake Michigan Hall, they could see at the end of the plaza.  Tala was waving.
            “Guess they were down in the cave,” Davon muttered, shaking his head.  The slang for the anthropology lab in the basement of Lake Michigan Hall was one they’d all become accustomed to hearing.
            “Guess so,” Jacqueline echoed.  She glanced at Rory, Drew, and Kellin—the trio had withdrawn a little from the rest, each looking at each other with strange expressions on their faces—guilt, was it?  No, not guilt.  Something else.  Reluctance, almost.  “What’s wrong?”
            Drew winced.  “Don’t worry about it.  Look, we’re going to go take a look at Little Mac and stuff…why don’t you guys take Matt’s bag and go grab whatever food and water and stuff you can out of those broken vending machines?  Might need them before this is over.”
            Jacqueline frowned, starting to protest, then nodded.  “All right.  Come back for the rest of us before you go take a look beyond Commons, huh?”
            “We will,” he assured her.  She nodded, watching the trio head down the plaza toward the pedestrian bridge over the ravine.  Chewing the inside of her lip, she slowly turned back toward the library, mounting the steps.
            “I’m getting the impression that this might be a little bigger than a local thing,” Carolyn said quietly.
            “I wish I could say I felt like they were wrong,” Jacqueline muttered back.
            “…damn.  I was hoping you didn’t feel that way, too.”
            Jacqueline shook her head slowly.  “World feels different, Care.  Don’t ask me how, but it does.”
            “You bet it does.”  Carolyn shouldered the door open, holding it ajar for Jacqueline.  Matt and Davon remained on the steps, waiting for Tala and her fellow shovel-bums to make it across the plaza to them.  “Nice to know I’m not the only one who suddenly feels that way.”
            “I don’t like it.”
            “Neither do I,” she sighed.  “But something else tells me we don’t get a vote about it.”
            Jacqueline frowned, grabbing a few plastic bags from behind the circulation desk, the kind usually used for books.  She handed one to Carolyn and began to gather up the bottles of water and juice that had spilled from the broken machine as Carolyn started gathering the food from the other machine up.  “Would you really want one?”
            “Good question.”  Carolyn paused a moment, frowning.  “I don’t think I would.”
            “I didn’t think so, either.”
            “So what are we going to do?”
            “Not sure.”  Jacqueline paused, too, staring at her friend.  “Muddle through somehow?”
            “Business as usual.”
            “As usual as it can get under the circumstances, I guess.”  She resumed stuffing bottled water into her bag, trying to will her stomach to settle down.  She felt sick.  “…what do you think is going to happen to us?”
            “I’m trying not to think about that just yet,” Carolyn admitted, starting to help her with the bottles.  “Right now, I’m just trusting Drew and Kellin.  And Matthew.  They’ll figure something out.  Some kind of solution for at least the short term.”
            “And the long term?”
            “That’s what I’m trying not to think about.”  Carolyn blew a breath out through her teeth.  “We don’t even really know what happened out there, Jac.  Shouldn’t get too ahead of ourselves, right?”
            The ground shuddered beneath them, more violently than all the previous tremors.  Jacqueline muttered an oath under her breath and pushed to her feet; Carolyn was already headed for the door.
            “What the hell is that?”
            “I don’t know.”
            The ground was still moving beneath them as they scrambled outside.
            “What’s going on?”  Kellin, Drew, and Rory were making a mad dash back toward the knot of survivors gathering outside of the library.
            Matthew looked grim.  “Earthquake,” he said calmly.  “Meteorites probably hit something and caused it.”  The ground gradually stopped shaking.  The geology student slowly stood up, squinting at the sky.  “I think they were wrong,” he said quietly, watching as another meteorite streaked through the sky distantly, disappearing behind the tree line.  “These aren’t negligible at all.”
            “You’re saying this is from the asteroid they blew up?  The one that everyone threw missiles at so it wouldn’t…wouldn’t do something like this?”
            It didn’t matter who the voice came from; Matthew answered all the same, voice grim.  “I don’t think they exactly knew what they were dealing with, or the consequences that could result from the actions they took.  This…I don’t think they expected this at all.”  He picked up his bag.  “We need to rig up some shelters and get as much food together as we can.  Hopefully, this is isolated and the National Guard will show up soon enough to help us sort out this mess.”
            The National Guard isn’t going to be able to fix what’s just gone wrong with this world.  Jacqueline tried to kill the thought before it manifested, but failed.  When had she become such a pessimist?  A glance toward the bloody sky answered that question quickly enough—in the moment of a flash of light when the world went dark.

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            “Ungh.  What hit me?”
            “I think that it was a bookshelf, but I could be wrong.”  Muscles straining, Carolyn and Jacqueline heaved the metal shelving unit, now bereft of books, off of Davon, who lay sprawled on the library floor, books all around him.  Nearby, Rory was picking his way through the wreckage toward the doorway to the stairwell, which stood ajar, a yawning maw looking into a stairwell choked with drifting dust.  The building wasn’t creaking, nor was there the sound of the masonry starting to crack.  Maybe that was a good sign.  Maybe.
            It should be a good sign, right?  Jacqueline started to pick her way down the row of what had once been the stacks, toward Rory and their way down and out of the building.  Goosebumps rose along her bare arms.  She wanted out of the building, suddenly silent and eerie as a tomb.
            “How do the stairs look, Rory?”
            “Uhm.  Okay, I think.  Give me a second.”  He jerked the door a bit further open, casting a baleful glance toward Jacqueline.  “This is the last time you’re ever getting me into a library.  Ever.”
            She tried to laugh, but it sounded like a bitter croak.  Rory hated libraries, feared them.  He’d always said they gave him a bad feeling, made his skin crawl, made him feel like someone was watching him.  Marin usually just laughed at him and said he’d probably spent too much time in one in a past life, which usually earned her a dirty look.  Jacqueline wasn’t sure what to think about that—then or now.
            Carolyn had Davon on his feet, now, and was tucked under his arm, steadying the tow-headed young man.  He looked like his head might still be ringing from the shelves and books falling on him, though his eyes were clear.  Carolyn shook her head, looking bewildered, only half visible in the dim and the drifting dust.
            “What was that, really?”
            “I don’t know.”  Jacqueline looked back toward the door to the stairwell, illuminated from the skylight above.  Rory had pushed the door most of the way open and was standing near the top step of the stairway leading down, on the solid stone and steel landing.
            “Looks okay from here,” he called back to the rest.  He started down, slowly at first, then a little more quickly as it became clear that the stairwell was, in fact, stable.  Eager to escape as ever.  Jacqueline couldn’t blame him.  She had to admit the idea of being entombed in a giant concrete box wasn’t a very appealing prospect.
            Davon shook his head.  “Guess there’s a reason it won design awards in the ‘70s.”
            Carolyn shook her head, looking as grim as Jacqueline felt.  The three started to slowly make their way down the stairs after Rory, down the single flight to the library’s main level.
            It would have been pitch black but for the windows—most of them broken, now—along the outer walls.  Dust drifted lazily in the air.  The banks of computers were dark.  No one was within sight.
            “Guys?”  A voice called from the far side of the circulation desk.  Kellin peeked over the edge of it, her gray eyes wide.  She must have heard their footsteps in the strange silence that blanketed the world.  Her voice was almost shaky.  “I think something really bad just happened.”
            “You think?”  Rory’s voice dripped with his usual sarcasm, but even that seemed strained.  Jacqueline winced.
            Something bad really did just happen.  She cleared her throat, picking her way toward Kellin.  “Were you the only one working circ desk today, Kel?”
            Kellin nodded, raking lank tangles of brown curls out of her face as she straightened and climbed over the desk with Jacqueline’s help.  “Drew was down in archives, I think, though, in the basement.”
            “…not anymore.”  The tall man looked about as tired as any of them had ever seen him.  A bruise was forming on his cheekbone and one arm hung a little more limply than it should have.  “Wrenched my shoulder pushing a fiche reader out from in front of the door,” he explained, slowly working the arm up and around in a circle.  It popped sickeningly and he winced, then worked it around in an arc again—no sound the second time around.  “Any of you see what happened?”
            “Just a flash.  Boom.  Windows blown out.”  Kellin frowned.
            “Two flashes.”  Davon rubbed his head.  “I saw two.  Was looking at the corner window on the second floor.”
            “Sky’s red,” Rory muttered from near the shattered windows.  “Come see.”
            The friends crowded close, peering through the shattered window, craning their necks toward the sky.  Clouds drifted lazily through the air, but not against blue.  The sky was indeed red, deep and angry, streaked dark somewhere high above the normal summer clouds.
            “It looks like blood,” Rory mumbled, staring at it.  Jacqueline made the sign of the cross on herself, pressing a hand against the silver and gold crucifix she wore around her neck, a gift from her long-ago first communion.
            Her heart fluttered.  Is this the end of the world?
            Kellin looked sidelong at her, brow furrowing slightly, and said softly, “No.  It’s the beginning.”

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