Genesis Read Free Page B

. . . Valentine was different.
    As Thor reached her, his head up, back end swinging like it was about to fly off from all the tail wagging, the woman barely even acknowledged his presence. The malamute continued to circle her for a few seconds, looking up expectantly, his tail gradually dropping as he lost some of his enthusiasm. Finally he sat at her feet and raised a single paw.
    The kick was subtle; if Emily had not been looking directly at Valentine she would have missed it completely. It was aimed at the muscles of Thor’s haunches, and exercised as casually as anyone else might swat away an annoying fly. Emily heard Thor yelp in pain and saw her friend flinch, his tail dropping between his legs as he scooted sideways while the woman stepped past him and onto the concrete quay.
    Valentine’s head tracked back and forth across the camp and the forest of red that lay off in the distance.
    Emily felt her own smile falter. Her right hand instinctively dropped to the butt of the HK45T holstered on her hip as her anger boiled up . . . and for a second she forgot where she was. In that moment she was back on the road to the Stockton Islands, her instincts and sheer will to survive the only thing keeping her alive. And her instincts told her that this woman wasn’t just a social threat, this woman was dangerous. Emily almost drew the pistol . . . almost.
    Instead she forced her fingers to relax and dropped her hand to her hip. Be civilized, now. “Thor, come here, boy,” she yelled out, her eyes remaining fixed squarely on Valentine. With those big sunglasses she looked like a giant bug: a praying mantis.
    She needs to watch her step, Emily thought, because I would be more than happy to step on the bitch if she gets out of line.
    The big malamute scampered to Emily’s side, his tail back in the air and his tongue lolling again, but he was still occasionally looking back at the stranger as if he suspected she might deliver another swift kick when he wasn’t looking.
    “Sit, boy,” Emily told him. Thor obeyed, and his mistress rested the flat of her hand on the dog’s head.
    For many of the new arrivals, this would be the first glimpse of the strange alien world they all now lived in. Most of them would have seen the original news reports when the red rain had first fallen, witnessed the sudden and final severance of all communication with the rest of the world. All of them would have experienced the great red storm that had changed the world so absolutely, and all of them had heard the stories of survival relayed to them via Point Loma’s radio. But this first step into the world, this was reality, and seeing the changes for themselves was often the psychological equivalent of being cracked on the head by a hammer.
    And given those mitigating circumstances, Emily would give Valentine a chance to change her first impression, she decided. This time.
    Every developed nation from both the east and west had had a base on Antarctica before the red rain had fallen. Around fifty of the seventy bases were permanent, while others operated only during the summer months. On the day the rain came there were 1,722 souls on the continent. An American submarine, the USS Michigan , was in port for a routine visit, along with two large container ships, docked at McMurdo base to supply the islanders with both food and fuel. Counting the crew of these three vessels, the total number of humans present was just shy of two thousand.
    As the alien rain swept across the world it left the deep-frozen Antarctica untouched. The rest of the world quickly disappeared, and the Antarctica survivors believed themselves to be all that was left. They were well stocked with both food and fuel thanks to the two resupply ships sitting in the port and waiting to be offloaded. They believed they had time to wait out the effects of the red rain.
    They continued to believe that until the day of the great storm.
    The world-spanning storm swept inland from