Emma pushed the button on the handset just in time to feel the first tremor. She dropped the mic and grabbed the edge of the table, thinking the chair was rolling out from under her. Then it became clear that the whole station was shuddering. After a couple of seconds, the radio and every other light in the room winked out, then the trembling slowed to a stop. The aftermath was total silence, quieter and emptier than the station had ever been. The low hum of the generator was gone.
Her hands slipped on the edge of the table when she tried to push off. In the dark she could see the table was streaked with blood. The cut on her arm had not stopped bleeding, and every movement brought hot needles and a fresh trickle of blood down her wrist. She held her arm stiff and wheeled the chair to the door, opening it with her other hand. She got the chair mostly over the threshold before it tipped over. Without trying to break her fall, Emma landed on her face in the dirt. The weight of her body pushed her face forward, grinding against the tiny splinters of volcanic rock.
She propped herself on an elbow and looked around. The cold wind made the mud on her face sting like ice. A seismic event made no sense. South Alderney had been volcanically extinct for thousands of years. In any case there was no sign of serious damage to the building, or any building of the village that she could see below the hill. She listened for the sound of birds, hoping the cliché of birds troubled by impending natural disasters was real. It was difficult to tell if the squawking was any louder than usual over the roaring of the wind. The sky was light blue around the mountain, only moments now until the sun came over the top. It was normal for the wind to pick up again.
Emma looked at the dawn and squinted into the cold wind. It was coming from straight ahead and tasted of compost and sulfur instead of salt. The night wind was blowing.
In the same moment, the ground began to shake more violently than before. A ridge of basalt sand that marked one edge of the hill liquified and oozed downhill.
Emma shouted into the wind.
“Do it. Throw a tantrum.”
She crawled up the slope toward the center of the island.
“I’m right here. What are you going to do? I’m not your toy, and I never will be.”
The presence was still there, felt more clearly than the pain in her arms and legs. The second tremor abated, but she still felt like she was holding onto a lifeboat in a storm.
“What? Nothing to say to me?”
After several feet she was crawling through the tall grass that grew in clumps on the lower slopes of the mountain. She kept her eye on the peak but otherwise lost sight of everything around her. She could not tell how long she had been pulling her body forward when it refused to move any farther.
A puff of warm air hit her ear, then another. She looked up into the face of a small dog, sniffing her filthy hair without making a sound. When she lifted her head, the creature moved to a safe distance and walked a full circle around her. There was no sound, and the mud it trampled bore no footprints. When the dog came back to her face, she saw that the pads of its feet were covered in thick fur. She was inches away from it but couldn’t smell anything but grass and dirt. It sat down and cocked its head to the side.
“Hello. What are you doing here?”
Emma was almost surprised to receive no answer.
“I’d get out of here if I were you little guy. Maybe go to Australia. I hear it’s nice there.”
The dog yawned, then scratched behind its ear.
“Maybe I should have gone to Australia. Maybe we both should have never come here. You can still get out. Some boat is bound to want a weird dog mascot or something. Go keep the people company while they evacuate. Tell them I said goodbye. Tell them I would have liked to live. Even if it meant living with myself.”
It cantered down the hill and out of sight.
“OK. Bye.”
A third tremor hit, this time almost rolling her onto her side with its force. She looked up the slope and saw large sections of the mountain slide toward her. Dark clouds of dust curled in slow motion around the rubble. That was the last thing Emma remembered until she was lifted off the ground.
“It went this way! I swear I saw it.”
“Red! Red, you drunk cunt forget the dog. It’s Emma!”
The world spun around several times until Jessie’s face came into view.
“Get over here. I can’t lift her by myself.”
“Jesus, what happened to her? Constable! Can you hear me? It’s not safe here.”
“Grab an arm before the whole hill goes.”
“What was she doing out here?”
“What are we doing out here? I’ve got better things to do in an emergency than talk you off a mountain because you think you’ve seen a dog.”
“She’s awake. Constable?”
Emma tried to walk, but the dragging motion swept her feet out from under her. She settled for raising her head enough to see where she was going. When she cracked open her voice, her lips were sticky with blood and mucus.
“I have to leave this place.”
“You’re not alone in that.”
The village had reached a state of chaos. The sight of the tumbling mountain was unprecedented in living memory. The
