Easton

The strange night deepened and the mountains loomed hungrily from a distance, towering over a city half in ruins. Easton and the others took a spot closer to a gazebo were a few people had gathered, finding a space between the shade of a tree and a lamppost.

Easton had no idea what time it was. His watch still showed it was three o’clock in the afternoon, but it didn’t match the night sky. More than half of the city bathed in darkness, though sprinkles of light illuminated from the dozens of buildings with backup generators and solar panels, the streets remained in the grace of the shadow.

While half of the city was without power, Marina Green and Crissy Beach were fortunate. Most of the buildings along Marina Boulevard was still intact. Several were five-star hotels and luxurious apartments cashing in on the view of San Francisco Bay, and probably had those larger backup generators to spare; the lights streaming out of their windows were like a beacon when seen from the ground.

Like stars, Easton thought. Hope. Safety. Normalcy.

Solar panels powered the park's lamp posts since the city’s turn for renewable green energy, and though it had been cloudy due to the storm, their backup power cells still had enough juice in them to sense the shift in the day and automatically switched on. For how long, Easton had no idea. He didn’t like the thought of being lost in the dark, especially when the foreboding woods was only several thousand feet away.

Easton didn’t trust those woods, and the silence that gripped the city was unnerving. He was used to the occasional roar of traffic, the plane engine’s howls from the skies and a million voice lively talking at once through the winding streets. It was as if someone snuffed the life out of the city, and everything came to a standstill.

But the woods had the same story.

There was a silence that lingered behind the shadows, more unsettling and distinct from the one blanketing the city. There were no howls from wolves or the hooting of birds, nor were there the rustle of leaves that marked any signs of life. Only the wind graced through the foliage. Easton felt like a thousand eyes watched behind the veiled darkness, waiting.

For what?

He, like many others, didn’t want to find out. As much as he loathed to admit, it was primarily driven by fear. No one wanted to take that first leap into the unknown, that by stepping onto the alien meadow made everything real, fighting their hope that all of this was a dream.

No. A nightmare.

A vast meadow sat between the park and the woods, and he gauged the distance to be at least a quarter-mile long from the city’s edge. A significant gap between the city and what lay beyond, and for Easton, it still wasn’t enough of a barrier against what lay ahead.

No walls.

No army.

Only air.

To Easton, not safe.

He could distinctly make out where the city ended, and the meadow began with the latter covered in thick snow. Hundreds of people stood at the edge of the city limits, staring off into the distance, some wandered closer to the meadow but never dared to step beyond the line.

For now.

It had only been three hours since they arrived in the park, and the survivors coming from the city’s interior still trickled into the open field, crowding the space by the minute.

Survivors.

The word had a strange roll on his tongue. A lot of people did die today. He tried not to think about the mangled corpses under the rubble. He had already helped a few people around the park since they’ve arrived, tending on their wounds and using his medical knowledge at work. Though what little he could do wasn’t enough. There was a limit to what a 4th-year medical student could do in this situation, and the first-aid kit he had was almost spent by the first hour since they’re arrival. Aside from the scissors and sterile gloves, what was left were loose gauze bandages, half a pack of band-aids, a thin roll of tape, a full bottle of hand sanitizer, and two packets of alcohol wipes.

I should’ve saved up for emergencies, Easton thought suddenly. Though, once it ran through his mind, he felt awful about it. He shook his head. He remembered the words of his first-year professor, on the first day of medical school—naive and still green—where he learned that a healer must never turn away those in need.

And besides, we are Survivors now. I guess we are that now, Easton thought. In this strange place, in stranger circumstance.

Easton couldn’t even begin to think where they were. He knew they were still in San Francisco, or part of the city at least, but the Pacific Ocean was missing. The battering storm was missing. What should be the glittering lights of the city of Oakland across the Bay was also gone, as if it vanished in thin air. So, they must be somewhere.

They had to be.

Though Easton was at the cusp of graduating medical school next summer, he didn’t need a college degree to know that earth didn’t have two moons.

However, here in wherever they were, had two.

The largest of the two was twice as big than the earth’s moon, but it had a purple-bluish color. The second one was the opposite, twice as small than the former, but shared the same bright powdery yellow of the earth’s moon.

And the rift in the sky…What was that all about? Could it have anything to do about this? He thought sourly. Well, at least we all made it. At least no one got hurt too far.

Easton glanced behind him and saw his father sitting under the tree with Jacob. Eli was playing a mobile game on Connor’s phone while Connor was talking to Kenny. Easton took a spot on a nearby bench and watched the blinking lights of the buildings, the mountains from a distance, and the people streaming into the park.

At least we’re all right, he repeated like a mantra.

And yet something still felt wrong, as if this was far from over.

—

“It’s been hours. They should be here by now,” said his brother-in-law, fidgeting with his phone next to him, though Easton already knew the outcome: No signal, not even wifi or an LTE.

Surprisingly, their phone batteries were at least up to ninety percent, which was unusual given that Easton charged his phone last night, and he could distinctly remember that it was barely hovering over twenty percent when he left the house for the evacuation shelters with his parents.

Weird, Easton thought. Definitely very weird.

“Who are you trying to contact anyway?” Easton asked.

“My CO,” Marcus said, before pausing, “My former CO. San Bruno isn’t far away from here, but it might take time for the National Guard and the rest of the garrison in Dublin to mobilize, especially when the city looks like, well, that.” Marcus cocked his head toward downtown.

From a distance, Easton could make out several billows of smoke rising from the burning buildings and streets. He tried to remember Marcus’s rank, knew that it was something higher up from what Easton had gathered from his sister, a command job in the San Bruno camp, though it slipped out of his mind since he rarely interacted with Marcus before and after he retired a month ago. If Claire were here, his sister would know the ins and outs of Marcus Ward’s military life. Heck, she lived through it for more than fifteen years. Easton didn’t even know what a CO meant, though he let it slide, nodding as if he understood him, though he still felt like an idiot.

“I hope it rains soon,” Easton muttered. It was frightening to see several raging fires across the city and yet not hear the familiar wailing sirens of the firetrucks rushing to combat it.

“I doubt it would be even rain. It is fucking cold. It’ll snow.”

Snow, Easton shivered. “Yeah. Some summer this is,” he said sarcastically.

Marcus scanned his phone once again. “Damn. Still, no messages.”

“You said Dublin,” Easton started, though he didn’t like where it was going. “Dublin is at least thirty miles away from here. What makes you think it’s still there?”

“Believe me; I hope it is. With the Bay looking like it got sucked down the drain, all we can do now is hope for a miracle.”

“They’re gonna call you back in?” Easton asked. “Because that’s a hell of a quick retirement, barely even lasted you a month of civvy life. I mean, that’s what you guys call it, right?”

Marcus chuckled. “Well, technically speaking, I’m still part of the army. I am inactive, which is a fancy way of saying we’ll pull your ass back in when shit hits the storm, and this is one big pile of it. I am just waiting for the order. Colonel Reeves don’t usually take this long. With the hurricane, he should be in the camp, ordering his men to evacuate the city before the hurricane comes.”

“Don’t you guys have like a contingency or something, in case of a communication blackout?” Marcus smiled, a little impressed, and Easton couldn’t help but feel a bit proud of himself for catching it. “Sorry. Saw that in a movie once,” Easton added.

“No, no. Don’t be. You’re right. If I were active, all military personnel in the city would head on to San Bruno or toward Camp Parks, though San Bruno is a little closer. Any reservists in here would head there.”

“So we’re going over there then.”

“Inactive, remember? Although I can’t leave my kids around here, which means we have to walk through downtown to get there, and that’s going to be dangerous. I can’t risk that.”

“If your—what do you call it—CO tells you to go there, are you—”

Marcus bit his lower lip, as if unsure what to say. Easton caught a flicker of concern in his eyes, though he quickly blinked them away, regaining back his composure. “Yeah. I have to. I am starting to get worried about the crowd. We need to control this soon, and I can’t do that alone. I need the garrison before someone does something stupid like walking out toward the woods.”

“Well, does San Bruno have helicopters?”

Marcus stopped for a moment; his eyes slowly widening. “Yeah. They do.” He peeled his attention toward the skies. “If they can’t manage to pass the troops through the streets, they should be able to airlift a few platoons.”

A police car suddenly rolled onto the small roundabout loop, and slowly parked several feet away from the gazebo. A bright flash of rolling blue and red lights illuminated out of the top switch on the police officer turning everyone’s heads to it.

Finally. Authorities, Easton thought.

“Wait here. I’m going to talk to the officer. Stay with the kids,” Marcus said before he started jogging toward them.

Two police officers that climbed out of the vehicle, one was a tall and dark man with a thick mustache while the other seemed too green and young for the job, barely in his early twenties.

Easton got up from the bench and walked over toward the others sitting under the tree. His father asked what was going on, though Easton shrugged, having no idea. Not satisfied, his father went after Marcus into the growing crowd around the police vehicle.

“Gather around everyone! That’s it! Gather round,” said one of the police officers, the tall one.

“Should we go over there?” Connor asked beside him.

Easton shook his head. “Your dad wants us to stay here. Besides, it’s already getting crowded.”

A large group, probably up to a few hundred, had gathered around the police car, and Easton could make out Marcus and his father making up the very front. Others started to converge, filling up the gaps between the crowd. Scanning the rest of the park, Easton realized that these weren’t the only police officers that arrived into the area. At least a dozen police vehicles were scattered along Marina Green and Crissy Beach, turning on their police lights to draw more people around them. Easton heard a megaphone startled to life a mile down.

The tall police officer hopped onto the hood of the car, carrying a megaphone, which he turned on. Putting it close to his lips, he introduced himself as Officer Gunther and his younger colleague as Officer Matthews.

There was a general unease that swept through the crowd, and Easton shuddered from it. He could tell from everyone’s faces that they had a lot of questions, and now that the authorities were here, they clamored against each other to ask first. But Officer Gunther quieted them down with as much calm and composure as he could manage, urging them to listen as he had an announcement to make from City hall itself.

The Mayor had issued an order that no one should venture out of the city limits, and that the National Guard from Camp San Bruno had been notified and mobilized to restore order across the city. The latter seemed to squash some tension from half of the crowd while the remaining still wanted to know what caused the massive explosion a few hours ago. Officer Gunther tried to pivot back to rest of his announcement, ignoring the heated shouts and yells as he listed the various shelters that had been set up by SFPD and the Army Reserve as clearly as possible above the thundering voices of angry citizens. He then encouraged everyone staying in Marina Green and Crissy Beach to head up to the nearby Presidio of Fort Scott, which was a former military installation now turned into a national park.

It was then that Easton noticed something strange.

All of the people that gathered around the vehicle were all men.

Easton did a double-check, and yet he ended up in the same observation as earlier. It could be circumstantial, but even the children were also made up of boys.

“Are you seeing it, too?” Kenny asked, which startled him.

“Seeing what?”

Kenny nodded over to the crowd. “I don’t see a single woman in there.”

Easton gulped down warily. “Yeah. I just realized it.”

“I first noticed that when we were walking down the street earlier. I didn’t think of it much at first, assuming it was from my overall shock of the entire situation. But now that I had time to calm down...well, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

Easton looked around the crowd near the gazebo, to the people gathered around the police cars, through the people still trickling into the park from the city, and to the cluster of groups hugging the edge of the border, he found a chill that ran up his spine.

Kenny was right.

There wasn’t a single woman among them.