6
Kati
Kati Takacs breathed deeply, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Each breath was timed with every fourth footfall, her running limbs and her lungs in perfect sync. She glanced at the heart monitor on her wrist, the digital display showing a perfect 85%, which was her target rate for the half marathon she planned to run in a month. She had honed her body into an efficient machine, and took great pride in her physical achievements. The same could be said for her business acumen. In a world still run by men—anyone who said otherwise
was
a man—she built her law firm case-by-case, earning a reputation for no nonsense, and at times, aggressive legal representation. She ran the firm with the same rigid protocols that kept her exercise routine well oiled. Everything in its place. Every document. Every employee. Every sinew and bone in her body.
All of it was perfect. A flawless sculpture.
So why am I so unhappy?
she wondered, and she watched the heart rate leap forward, scrolling its way toward 90%.
Through sheer force of will, she purged her mind of doubts.
I’m on the right path. I’m successful, wealthy...
...and alone.
The realization tripped her up, and she staggered to a stop in the center of the single lane road—the only one—stretching from one end of SEAcroft to the other. The small village was the most northwest town in all of the UK, located on the isle of Lewis, in the Uig parish—which was to say, in the middle of nowhere. Kati had summered in the quaint locale as a child, staying in a rented cottage. While her parents had read books on the beach, she had grumbled about being bored. When she decided to take a holiday—the first of her career—at the insistence of her psychiatrist, she returned to SEAcroft, hoping to find her now deceased parents wiser than she remembered. She discovered that little had changed since childhood, about the tiny village, or about her desire for more. For better. She’d spent just one night in the one-and-only local inn, and was already feeling restless.
So she ran.
And now, stopped between an adorable gray stone home and a rolling green field where some sheep had paused munching grass to look at her, she wasn’t sure if she was running toward her life, or away from it.
“You all right, luv?” a woman said, her sea-weathered face peeking out from an open window. Her round cheeks were framed by two lace curtains. “Can I get you a drink? Some tea maybe?”
Kati smiled as a long forgotten memory returned. She closed her eyes and saw the woman, twenty years younger and just as many pounds lighter. Kati had been walking this same barren stretch of road leading to the Atlantic Ocean, kicking stones. The woman, this same woman in this same house, had offered her a soft drink. “Fizzy drink, luv?” she’d asked.
Kati’s mouth watered at the memory of the grape soda, and the cherry licorice that had followed it. For an hour on a single, boring day on holiday with her parents, this woman had been her friend. While the woman had apparently not changed much since then, Kati had.
“No thanks,” Kati said, moving forward.
“I have licorice, too, if that suits your fancy.”
Kati paused and looked back.
Does she remember me, too?
she wondered, but she just shook her head and returned to her confident stride.
Leave the past behind.
Focus on the future.
On growth. On strength.
These are the things that create greatness.
“
And anxiety disorders,
”
she heard her psychiatrist say. “Go on holiday. Someplace quiet. Reflect on your life. On what really matters. Then reevaluate.”
Reevaluating sucks,
she decided, and she poured on the steam. She pushed her heart rate to 95%, perfect both for a 10k race and for ignoring tough choices. She passed small homes to her left and more sheep to the right, the treeless landscape otherwise barren. Cresting a hill, she saw the ocean ahead. Its vastness filled her with hope, and she ran for it, pushing forward as the road became something closer to a trail. As a child, she had never explored past this point. Believed it was private land. It very well might have been, but she knew the law. Without a posted sign claiming it as private property, or a fence to keep her out, she could go where she pleased until told otherwise.
Her heart monitor showed 98%. A 5k pace. Something about the ocean drew her in. The way it smelled. The rising crescendo of the crashing waves. The call of seabirds. Maybe
this
was why her parents had come here?
The path led out onto a peninsula, turning right toward what looked like a small compound. A business, or just more solitary residents. She didn’t care which, and continued running straight, off the path and toward the sea.
Approaching a cliff that dropped down into the ocean, Kati slowed to a jog and then stopped. Hands on knees, she caught her breath. Then she lifted her head and took it all in. The morning sun warmed her back. A strong breeze rolled in from the ocean, cooling her sweat-dampened cheeks before pushing waves into the rocks below. The scene enveloped and calmed her, blocking out the hubbub of life she left behind on the mainland.
A deep breath brought tears to her eyes.
I shouldn’t be here alone
, she thought.
Why am I?
She thought back to lovers come and gone, none of them serious, all of them short-lived trysts. She didn’t have poor taste in men, but they clearly had poor taste in women. Each of them. She’d made her body available on occasion, when she’d fancied, but the rest of her had hidden—and still hid—behind steel emotional walls. Walls that could apparently be rusted and cracked by a dramatic ocean view.
As tears rolled down her cheeks, she looked for a place to sit, but paused when the air grew hot around her. The sun hadn’t suddenly moved higher in the sky, so the heat had come from the ocean, which was frigid, even in the summer. Her eyes turned back to the water, looking out to the horizon, where a dark cloud marred the view. But the distant storm, blotting out the sky, looked cold, not hot.
And yet, the temperature pushed by the ocean breeze continued to grow warmer. Her nose scrunched at a recognizable, but totally out-of-place smell. She turned around, searching the distant compound for any sign of a pool. She saw nothing, but even if there was a pool, why was she smelling chlorine—from the ocean?
She turned back to the storm, squinting and wondering. The word
ominous
came to mind, but brought a smile to her face. She had completely forgotten about the world and its troubles, but not its technologies. She dug into her pocket, plucked out her smartphone and opened her weather app. She was pleased to see that she had cell coverage, even out here, and she waited for the app to find her current location and update.
A flashing red warning caught her attention.
Disaster Alert — Volcanic Eruption.
Her thumb moved to tap on the message, but she stopped when the scent of chlorine became unbearable. Her nostrils burned. Her eyes watered.
“Oh,” she complained, rubbing her eyes and turning away from the ocean. “Oh!”
A shrieking of birds turned her watering eyes to the sky above the ocean. A swirling flock of agitated gulls swarmed skyward, as though frightened. Half of the group headed toward open ocean. The rest toward the coast. Toward Kati.
She gasped, the sudden deep breath scorching her lungs, as the gulls flying out to sea contorted, spasmed and fell, lifeless into the waves. Backing away from the ocean, Kati watched the inbound birds fall from the sky, one by one, starting with the furthest and moving forward as though something invisible were reaching out and crushing them.
There
is
something invisible,
she thought, looking at the distant black cloud, which she now realized wasn’t a storm at all, but a volcanic eruption originating in Iceland. But she’d only stopped reading the news for the past day, which meant the eruption had taken place in the past twenty-four hours. For the plume of smoke and ash to already be visible from SEAcroft, the eruption’s force must have been catastrophic. Her hand rose to her lips, as she remembered the loud boom that had interrupted her meal the previous evening. She’d assumed it was an errant thunderclap. But now she knew what it was, and understood what was happening to the birds.
It was gas.
Chlorine for sure, probably CO2, and God knew what else was being shoved ahead of the ash, propelled by the distant explosion.
And if there was enough of it to choke the birds in mid-air, there’s more than enough to do me in.
Kati wheeled around, facing the village, and sprinted.
Focusing on the path ahead, her legs became a blur. While she normally concentrated on endurance running, because it most resembled the slow, steady climb of the business world, she occasionally sprinted, reflecting times when legal battles were closer to wars. She was a fighter, not prone to giving up. Yet with every breath, the sting of chlorine seeped deeper into her lungs, where it was absorbed and sent coursing through her body.
Routine drew her eyes to her heart monitor. It was pegged at 100%, a fact she already knew because of the pounding in her chest, the ache of a strained heart as unfamiliar to her as breathing chlorine.
She covered the distance between the ocean and the single lane street in under two minutes, but her legs began to shake. She slowed as she approached the line of homes, now on her right. Her chest heaved with coughs, and then for air.
Not air,
she thought,
oxygen.
Her eyes widened as the sheep on the left side of the road let out a pain-filled bleat. It kicked and thrashed against some unseen attacker, desperate and afraid. Its front legs folded beneath its body, and it ran like that, pushed along by its hind legs for a few more steps before collapsing. It then let out a long sigh and fell still.
The door to the house on her right opened and the familiar face of her old friend greeted her once more, this time with a look of abject horror. The woman tried to speak, but couldn’t past her swollen tongue. She fell to her knees, clutching her throat, and then laid as still as the sheep.
No
, Kati thought. Move!
Her legs beat against the pavement, but became useless after just a few steps, her body and mind deprived of oxygen.
She stumbled off the road, reaching out for balance and grasping hold of the thin metal wire surrounding the wide-open sheep field. The pain in her mouth, throat and lungs was momentarily dwarfed by a jolt of electricity, coursing from the fence, up through her arms.
Her shout of pain lodged inside her swollen throat. If the air around her was still breathable, it would have done her no good.
She rolled onto her back, gulping.
Dying.
Regretting.
As her vision blurred, she let go of the world she had built. The business. The million pound flat. The expensive dinners. None of it mattered in the end. Her head lolled to the side, and for a moment, she saw the beach where her parents used to sit and read.
I’m sorry,
she thought, as she saw only darkness.
I should have enjoyed it all more.
And then, Kati Takacs laid still, for the first time in her life, at peace.
The invisible cloud of chlorine and CO2, ignorant to her passing, continued on its journey inland, propelled by the staggering eruption’s influence on the region’s weather patterns. High winds swept the gases southeast over Lewis and Harris, the largest of the Western Isles, killing all 18,500 residents and 875 visitors, before descending on northern Scotland, where it thinned and eventually settled in the Highlands, but not before claiming another 235,000 lives.