Recursion(80)

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“We should’ve seen this coming,” she says. “Remember their UN statement on the last timeline?”

“?‘Any further use of the chair will be seen as an act of war.’?”

Helena drives too fast through a sharp curve, the tires sliding on the snowpack, the ABS braking kicking in.

“If you wrap the Jeep around a tree, we’ll never—”

“I grew up here, I know how to fucking drive in snow.”

She guns it on a straightaway, densely packed fir trees rushing past on either side as they scream down the mountain.

“They have to attack us,” Helena says.

“Why do you say that?”

“For all the reasons we talked about when I was at DARPA. Everyone’s worst-case scenario is that one country sends someone back half a century and unwrites the existence of billions. They have to hit us with everything they’ve got and hope to destroy the chair before we use it.”

Helena turns on the radio and pulls out of the entrance to the state park. They’ve already descended a couple thousand feet, and the only snow on the ground consists of melting patches in the shade.

“—interrupt this program. This is a national emergency. Important instructions will follow.” The terrifying sound header of the Emergency Alert System blares inside the Jeep. “The following message is transmitted at the request of the US government. This is not a test. The North American Aerospace Defense Command has detected the launch of Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles. These missiles are expected to strike numerous targets on the North American continent within the next ten to fifteen minutes. This is an attack warning. I repeat. This is an attack warning. An attack warning means that an actual attack against this country has been detected and that protective action should be taken. All citizens should take cover immediately. Move to a basement or interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building. Stay away from windows. If outdoors or in a vehicle, head for shelter. If none is available, lie flat in a ditch or other depression.”

Helena accelerates to a hundred miles per hour on the country road, the foothills falling away behind them in the side and rearview mirrors.

Barry leans down and starts to unbuckle the straps that attach the snowshoes to his snow-encrusted hiking boots.

When they merge onto the interstate, Helena pushes the engine to its breaking point.

After a mile, they enter the outskirts of the city.

More and more cars are pulled over onto the shoulder, doors left open as drivers abandoned their vehicles in search of shelter.

Helena hits the brakes as the road becomes log-jammed across all lanes of traffic. Hordes of people are fleeing their cars, hopping the guardrail, and tumbling down an embankment that bottoms out at a stream running heavy and brown with snowmelt.

“Can you get through to the next exit?” Barry asks.

“I don’t know.”

Helena pushes on, dodging people and driving through a handful of open car doors, the front bumper of the Jeep ripping them off in order to pass. The exit ramp to their turnoff is impassable, so she maneuvers the Jeep up a steep, grassy hill and onto the shoulder, finally squeezing between a UPS truck and a convertible to reach the top of the overpass.

In contrast to the interstate, the avenue is practically empty, and she burns down the middle of it as another alert blares through the speakers.

Their lab is in Lakewood, a western suburb of Denver, in a redbrick building that used to be a firehouse.

They’re just over a mile away now, and Barry stares out the window, thinking how odd it is to see so little movement anywhere.

No other cars driving on the road.

Hardly any people out.

By his estimation, it’s been at least ten minutes since they heard the first emergency alert broadcast.

He looks over at Helena to say what he’s already said before, that he wants to do this again with her no matter what, when through her window, he glimpses the brightest light he has ever seen—an incandescent flower blooming on the eastern horizon near the cluster of downtown skyscrapers, so intense it burns his corneas as it overtakes the world.

Helena’s face becomes radiant, and everything in his field of vision, even the sky, is robbed of color, blanching into a brilliant, searing white.

He’s blind for five seconds, and when he can see again, everything happens at once.

All the glass in the Jeep exploding—

The pine trees in a park straight ahead bending so far sideways their tips touch the ground—

Structural debris from a disintegrated strip mall streaming across the road, blown by a furious wind—

A man pushing a shopping cart on the sidewalk flung fifty feet through the air—

And then their Jeep is flipping, the scrape of metal against pavement deafening as the shockwave blows them across the road, sparks flying into Barry’s face.

As the Jeep comes to rest against the curb, the noise of the blast arrives, and it is the loudest thing he has ever heard—world-ending loud, chest-crushing loud—and a single thought rips through his mind: the detonation sound wave reached them too quickly.

A matter of seconds.

They’re far too close to ground zero to survive very long.

Everything becomes still.

His ears are ringing.

His clothing singed all over with fire-ringed holes that are still eating through fabric.