CHAPTER 30

The remote laboratory was in chaos. An invisible force lifted and pushed outward from the containment device. The energy formed concentric circles, increasing in intensity and pushing continuously with each second that passed. The graduate assistants were pinned against the wall. The pair screamed in agony as the increasing pressure drove their bodies into the concrete wall. The shrill ringing grew with the intensity of the reaction. The two students twisted and kicked as they tried to cover their ears from the torment, an ice pick force that penetrated their eardrums.

The vibration emanating from the device grew in proportion to the increasing sound. The shaking had penetrated the concrete building’s core, almost lifting the walls off their foundation. Any object not bolted to the floor was lifted and thrown, pinned to the walls around the students, following the concentric circular pattern that was centered and began at the two-ton containment device in the center of the room.

Just when the pain became unbearable, too much for the two students to endure, the humming stopped. The force field died. The grad students dropped to the floor, followed by the clamor of equipment falling off the walls. Both students cupped their ears, trying to ward off the excruciating pain that continued in their eardrums.

The remote lab was silent. A black notebook, the last item to fall from the wall, hit the floor with a mild slap.

The first student was in a fetal position on the floor, next to his kneeling comrade.

“Aghh.” The kneeling man had both hands around what he knew was a broken bone.

“My knee. I can’t move it. The pain. God!”

He cringed as the sharp throbbing continued, scanning the mess around him.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” said the prone man. He looked around the laboratory. Pushing himself off the floor, he stood and pointed at the telephone.

“We need to get the paramedics for you.”

The second student pointed at the emergency switch. “No. The grounding switch; we need to shut it down first.”

“The reaction has stopped,” said his co-worker. “We’re okay. Everything is back to normal.”

“No. You have to pull it. This may not be the last –”

A tremendous vibration shook the room.

“Go!”

The uninjured man raced for the switch. Right before he could reach the device, the room lit up with an intense flash, illuminating the lab like a miniature sun. The brilliant light erased the corneas of the two graduate students, instantly blinding them. Screaming in pain, they struggled and squirmed as the intense heat burned the clothes off their bodies.

At that very moment the remote laboratory building erupted, a volcanic explosion that blew the poured concrete structure into dust and demolished the entire side of the hill.

The remote lab disappeared.

A deep crater, one hundred feet deep, was all that remained.

An ominous sign, a small mushroom formed and rose above the laboratory, making its way to the heavens, marking the spot where the remote building once stood.

***

Claudia and Professor Blackstone were winding their way up the path when the secondary vibrations shook the ground under them. Both fell. Blackstone landed on his hip, the one with the metal pin in it, writhing in pain. Claudia saw what happened and rushed to him.

“Are you okay?”

“My damned hip,” he said, shoving her away. “Go! Get to the lab and help them. I’ll be okay.”

Claudia pulled him up off the ground. “I can’t leave you, Uncle Rodney. Come on, I’ll help you.”

He grabbed the branch of a nearby tree and pulled himself up. “Please. I’ll be okay. Get up there. They need your help. I’m just slowing you down. Go! Get out of here.”

Claudia thought for a moment and nodded.

“Okay. Wait here. When I’m done I’ll grab one of the carts and come back for you. You can rest. Then I’ll give you a ride back to the lab.”

The scientist winced as he dipped his head in agreement, the pain throbbing across his hip. He gripped the branch as he watched Claudia bolt up the dense trail and disappear through the winding trees.

A second after, it happened.

First, there was the white hot flash; a furnace of heat that burnt and scarred the woods around Blackstone. Next was the explosion, a massive eruption that disintegrated the entire hill above him, showering the trail with tons of debris. The blast of air pushed and shoved, tumbling him and everything around him down the hill, tossed like a matchstick, until he stopped, unconscious, entangled in a thick stand of brush.

***

The forest animals living around the estate had fled the scene when the first vibrations began. Nothing stirred. The woodlands around the remote lab were blasted flat, the trees leveled like flimsy toothpicks, scattered about in random piles, the forest sounds gone.

Quiet and still, it was a silence of death.

The mushroom cloud loomed in the distance.

Blackstone awoke to the smell of burnt wood. Clouds of smoke and dust engulfed what was left of the woodlands around him. He squinted to see through a fog of debris. The force of the explosion had blown away the snow, exposing the damp earth beneath it. Wrapped in a pile of branches that saved him from the laboratory blast, a stream of light caused him to squint.

The soft bed of mulch underneath Blackstone was warm and comfortable. He remained there still, quiet. Until he realized what had happened. With kicks and shoves, he moved the branches off his body, freeing himself. Pine needles stuck to his face, held in place by melted pinesap that stuck to his skin. He picked the needles off his face. The pain in his hip was there, but remote. He lifted himself off the ground. The Professor scanned the demolished woodland around him. He noted the pile of rubble, once a thick forest, had served as an insulator and absorbed the brunt of the intense heat and explosion. The berm, the protective mound of dirt around the remote lab, had caused the explosion to shoot upward and saved him.

Claudia?

He spun his head.

Claudia! Where was she? He frantically looked for some sign of movement in the fallen woodland.

“Claudia!”

His screams broke the deadly silence. He scrambled as fast as his seventy-year old body would allow him, through the pile of downed trees, following what was left of the winding path.

“Claudia! Talk to me! Where are you?”

Tears welled up in his eyes as the frantic physicist tore away branches and tried to find her. Nothing was alive or visible in the terrible aftermath of the explosion. He tripped and fell, and regained his footing, desperate to find the young woman who had become his surrogate daughter.

“Miss C. Please! Speak to me!”

He ran further up, winded and aching as he climbed over a crowded stand of fallen trees. Cutting through the switchback where he had last seen her, he was out of breath when he reached the top. He began to think the unmentionable. Had she been killed by the explosion? A dull pain passed across his chest and the wind left him. The elderly scientist stumbled, almost falling down the path, tears streaming, devastated by the thought of losing his precious gem; she who had given his life such meaning and purpose.

“Claudia…”

Directly in front of him, he spotted movement under a pile of downed trees; at first he thought it was an animal.

“Here.” The voice was faint. “Over here…”

He dropped to his knees and tore under the large trees that had fallen in a protective ‘x’ and shielded her from the intense heat and blast. Blackstone scrambled through the rubble with every ounce of strength he had left until he felt her touch.

She grasped his hand. “I’m okay, Uncle Rodney… Don’t worry, I’m okay.”

“Claudia!”

She struggled out from her cocoon. He embraced her and held her tight against him. The tears poured from his face. Thrilled that he had found her, he held her in a death grip, not wanting to release her.

She gently pushed him away and looked into his eyes.

“I’m okay, Uncle Rodney.”

He wiped the dirt from her face.

“Don’t ever, ever, do that to me again. Do you hear me?” he said, his voice pleading. “I couldn’t take losing you.”

She clung to him, dizzy from the explosion, comfortable in his arms, feeling the compassion in his voice and his touch. Rodney Blackstone was her only real father, her mentor, and the one man she knew would never stop loving her, no matter what, for as long as he lived. Her eyes welled with the joy she felt, warmed by his embrace.

“I won’t, Uncle Rodney. I promise.”

Claudia closed her eyes. Blackstone rubbed the back of her head as she held her face against his chest and inhaled the familiar pipe tobacco scent that brought back memories of her childhood.

“…I won’t.”