Apocalypse Machine Read Online Free Page A

electrical current, something new—was the cause, I haul the ice ax back and strike.
    The hard metal blade connects with the very tip of the spike, the serrated edge bumping over the thin formation and then connecting solidly. The millimeters thin rock—if that’s what it really is—has taken my hardest hit and remained whole.
    Or has it?
    I lean in close, steam collecting on my face. There’s a thin scratch on the surface. Determination takes root, and I raise the ax again, eyes on the spike, aiming for the same spot. But I don’t swing.
    The scratch is gone.
    Healed.
    “What the...”
    “Abe!” Holly shouts. Not shouting, I think, screaming.
    I don’t turn toward her to see what she’s warning me about. I don’t need to. I’m already looking at it. Straight down. Between my knees. The glacier beneath me has turned translucent, like ice on a lake. And through its clear, wet surface, I see bubbles.
    I nearly stand to run, but decide that would be a mistake. I don’t know how thin the ice is. Could be a foot. Could be inches. Either way, it’s getting thinner by the second. Putting all my weight in a small area could send me shooting through the ice. So I crawl, still clutching the ice ax. I move slowly at first, trying to disperse my two hundred pounds over three contact points at all times. When a geyser of steam spews into the air behind me, I shout and crawl-sprint, watching bubbles roil beneath me. I can actually see the ice thinning now, absorbing cracks and imperfections as the water rises, threatening to cook me alive like a lobster. I haven’t eaten a lobster since I heard one scream, as it was placed in boiling water. I wonder, for a moment, if my scream will be as high-pitched.
    When the ice beneath me spider-webs, I shout out and nearly start sobbing. Sudden heat scalds my left knee, and I hear the scream, not as high-pitched as the lobster’s, but far more anguished. Lobsters are primitive creatures. They eat, poop and procreate, driven by instinct more than any kind of mind. But me...I have two sons and their mothers, Mina, my wife, and Sabella, who I call Bell. She’s my...it’s complicated. But I love them all, and that deep sense of loss, for my boiled self and for my family, who I know loves me, bubbles out as a pitiful wail.
    And then I’m lifted. Propelled really. The ice below me gives way to boiling, steamy water, but I’m no longer there. I see glacial ice beneath me again, and then I slam down onto its blessedly hard surface. Before I fully understand what has happened, I’m lifted once more and placed back on my feet. “Move,” says the mountain of a man who saved my life. Kiljan shoves me so hard that I nearly fall back down. Instead, I turn the tumble into a run, and obey.
    When Kiljan sidles up next to me, grunting and wincing with each step, I slip the ice ax into my belt and look up at the big man. “You came back for me.”
    “I have not lost anyone before,” he says. “I did not want you to be my first.”
    “Uh-huh.” I smile at him. “And if it had been Phillip?”
    He chuckles and winces, but doesn’t reply.
    “Admit it,” I say. “You like me.”
    The glacier answers for him with a loud pffft . We’re a hundred yards from the small spike, and the puddle now looks like a pond. A jet of steam erupts from the center of it, rising high into the air, before freezing into snow and being carried off by the wind.
    “Faster,” Kiljan says, lumbering ahead.
    I’m not entirely sure running is going to help us much. Near as I can tell, we’re at ground zero for an impending eruption. But I’m desperate to see my family again, to hold them in my arms and tell them all how much I love them. So I run faster, despite the burn already settling into my chest. I’m no athlete. None of us are. And the air consumed by our desperate lungs is frigid, fighting with each breath to lower our body temperatures and slow our retreat.
    When Kiljan and I catch up to the others,