NOAH

There are only five families left on the planet, supposedly. At least, five made it to the summits before the radios were washed away along with everything else. And they aren't technically families. Most of them are ragtag groups of random survivors, but they may as well be families now. We are the survivors of the greatest disaster in human history. It was referred to as NOAH when it started because at first, it seemed like a flood. Water began washing away every city and every great civilization that had ever been built by man.

I remember watching the television in our old house, seeing the first of it. New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok. My father and my sister were angry, and my mother was afraid. I’m not sure what I was. I remember a sick feeling in my stomach and a sour taste on my tongue. I remember wanting to run.

I am looking up at the sun, through the branches of the surrounding trees. It is golden and the air is fresh this morning. I unzip my coat and feel the cold air wash over my skin. I watch the puffy purple coat fall to the ground, the sleeve that says Rebecca Turney falling on brown leaves. That name seems a thing of the past now.

Running is my favorite thing to do. My parents were both runners their whole lives, and they passed down the passion to me and my sister. But running in my family is not the same as running down suburban or city streets. We run in the woods. The Alaskan forest flashing by is one of the best sights in the world. It is home to me. It's freedom and forgetting your fear.

I have come to my favorite trail, the highest of them. I start to run and smile to myself as my muscles begin to work, and my lungs fill and release with each stride. Soon my heart will beat faster faster faster.

Maybe we all loved running so much that we learned to run from disaster. But no amount of running would help anybody escape NOAH. It was two months into the flooding when people began to realize it wasn’t a flood at all.

The land covering the planet was sinking.

Eventually, when the world got over the shock, people started to climb to the highest points of the Earth, the most survivable land surrounding the seven summits. The only five we know to have survived are us in Denali Alaska, a group on kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America, Puncak Jaya Indonesia, and Elbrus in Europe. We came into contact by radio when we all first reached our resting points beneath the summits. The land became far more survivable as it kept sinking, getting further away from their once great heights.

My family set off for Denali a week after we found out. We had come here a thousand times to hike and run. This is where we live now; in a cabin on the land surrounding the mountain. We were lucky to live nearby. We were ahead of most of the other groups that were trying to get close to the summit.

We live so remotely now, sometimes it feels like we are all that is left of the world. But once in a while, I think back to when the radios were still transmitting and I can hear the voices of the other survivors. I remember that we're not alone and maybe someday we can find a way to come together.

Since NOAH, it seems that all the world has been completely calm. There hasn't been a single storm over the water since the flood. That could potentially make for easy trips across vast distances. Whenever my father starts talking to us about the possibility, my mother shuts down. She would rather stay in the cabin forever, and pretend that nothing is wrong. But I can't do that. We have to see other people sometime. Make some sort of life again.

I remember the family group from Elbrus well, since they had a lot of kids. I wanted so badly to have a private conversation with Alan. He was from England, and had traveled up the summit with his father. He was my age. What I wouldn't give to meet him.

I continue on my run, all of this passing through my mind as the trees pass by my body. It seems like NOAH is all I can think about anymore. When I finish my run, I have gone in a circle and I am back where I left my purple coat.

For a split second, I notice movement beneath my feet. I look down at the ground. It seems still now. I put my coat back on before hiking back down to the house. My father built a cabin for us as best as he could. It has one front door and four windows. There are three rooms; a bedroom for my parents, a bedroom for my sister and I, and a kitchen where we spend most of our time when we're not outside. It's suffocating.

The weather has become regularly unpredictable. Today was very cold, so my parents and Zinnia are in the kitchen. Mother is sitting by the window, and Dad is cooking. Zinnia is tending the fire. She looks at ease here, despite the cold and silence. Even before NOAH, Zinny lived simply and she never complained. She was always faster in a race than the boys at school, and stronger than them too. She has the same brown hair and blue eyes as me, but the similarities stop there.

Zinny has always been brave and sure of herself. I, on the other hand, seem to go through life without half the clarity she has on things. I am not quite as scattered as my mother has become, but I definitely can't handle the loneliness of the new world that Zinny seems to thrive in. The quiet of my own thoughts is deafening sometimes.

I walk into the kitchen and sit at the table in the center of the room. Nobody speaks, but Dad nods at me. I don't blame them. There seems to be echoes of seven billion voices in each of our throats every time we speak as if their spirits are still attached to us. The weight of their absence is unbearable. Grief for them keeps us silent.

The kitchen is small, with a fireplace across from the door. There are herbs and food around, but the only evidence of the world before is a small silver heart-shaped locket that belonged to my grandmother sitting on the mantle. It is beautiful. My mother watches it like a hawk. She polishes it every night, and has forbidden anyone else to go near it.

She used to be so level headed. She was never strong like Zinny, but I remember her holding my hand when we crossed the street as a child, and the calm reassuring voice she used with her patients at the hospital she used to work at. Its hard to connect that woman with the one before me now. She sits in the corner, wringing her hands and staring outside. I remind myself that once in a while, when one of us gets sick or injured, the nurse in her seems to peak through the curtain of this frantic, frightened being she's become.

Dad and I have always been close. He used to lift me up onto his shoulders and point out the constellations in the stars to me. I remember his laugh, loud and happy. He hasn't laughed since it all happened. The sound of his laugh is one out of the thousands of things NOAH has taken from me.

I hear rumbling. I look at the table and I can see the legs shaking. Dirt shakes from the ceiling and falls onto the center of the table. I feel my heart racing and a pitfall to my stomach. I look up at my family, and find fear in their eyes, staring back at me. Everything is still again. We stand in silence, waiting.

A huge crash follows the silence, and suddenly, I am on the ground, my head in the dirt. Dust is settling and I hear my mother start to scream. I start to sit up, and put my hand to my forehead. It comes away covered in blood. My mother is still screaming, and I see Zinnia through the legs of the table trying to calm her. My father is in the dirt beside me. He isn't moving. I start to cry.

I remember what the sinking was like. You felt rumbling and crashing as the earth began breaking off in sections, then it would start to go under.

No. No, this can't be happening. We escaped it. We ran and ran, and we got away. But it wasn't enough. This would happen to us too. Wiped away from the world, like all the rest.

Zinnia and I look at each other. I can't hear her over the sound of the summit sinking, but she mouths words at me.

Get up. Get up.

I stand up on shaky legs, realizing we are going to have to get higher. Zinnia drags my mother up and pulls me along out the door. We start to run. We leave the house behind and move towards the left side of the house that faces the mountain.

My breath comes in quick heaves. We're slow going with the ground shifting beneath us. We pass by the same green trees I had peacefully run past just this morning. How stupid I was to have felt joyful here. The golden sunlight that had looked cheerful this morning now reminds me of fire, eating us alive. I look around and realize Dad isn't here. He's gone. He's...

I start to make a hysterical sound.

The ground shifts in a different way now, more of a jilt. It is starting to sink. I fall again into the dirt. I try to let my weight fall on my elbow, keeping my head away from the ground. It shifts twice more. I can see trees falling around me. I was worried I had lost my hearing, but then realized I had only stopped hearing my mother screaming. I look over at her and Zinnia, and I see my sister crying over a tree. Why would she be crying over a tree? I thought.

Mom. Mom must be beneath it.

Zinnia starts to scream. We won't be able to do it. I think we both realize it at the same time. The time we had gotten after NOAH was just the calm before the storm. He came again, and we weren't prepared for him. Like any great storm or disaster, there was a calm before the aftershock. That had always seemed cruel to me. But the earth is cruel, especially when provoked like the modern world had provoked her. She was cruel when NOAH came the first time and killed off ninety-eight percent of the planet. She was cruel when he took every piece of the world before from us. Except for that tiny silver locket that sat on the mantle. I suppose something always survives a disaster. There were fossils from the dinosaurs, and ruins from pompeii. There was a silver locket from NOAH. I wonder what will be left of us.

I remember my mother singing me to sleep. I remember my fathers hugs and smiles. I remember laughing with Zinnia over movies and boys at school.

The earth shifts again. I grab my sister's hand, and it all goes under.