Bad Ash
A story preview
I started writing this thing this morning. You know there’s been no editing or nothin’ done to it.
Bad Ash
Uninhabited Island, somewhere near Wrangel Island, Siberia
A pert-eared elf stood next to the seismograph. With one hand he was tapping out morse code on the key to the telegraph, with the other he was fumbling his cell phone out of his back pocket. His eyes never left the jumping needle.
It wasn’t necessary to look at the number before he dialed. There was only rare occasion to use it, but it was always top of the contact list.
“Yes?” The mellow baritone on the other end of the transmission sounded warm and welcoming, as always.
The elf’s first word came out as a strangled croak, before he swallowed hard to relax the muscles in his throat and tried again. “Sir. The fault is... it’s slipping. We have a 6.9 and that’s on top of a 5.2 less than twelve hours ago...”
“You think there’s a big one on it’s way.” Strangely enough, the calm voice helped the elf to take a very deep breath.
He answered in something closer to his normal tenor than the near-soprano of his first attempt.
“I do. I think this is it.”
“Thank you. Keep us updated.” There was an audible, long, breath taken on the other side of the call. “Vale.”
The elf hung up. He’d stopped transmitting Morse during the call, unable to talk and key other words simultaneously, but now his key started to chatter once again. He would transmit continuously as long as he could.
Outside the bunker where he and the seismograph stood, on the low, rocky island devoid of any scrap of vegetation, the sea began to recede. It ran off the rounded black boulders like a river streaming into the rapids, and the flag above the bunker snapped out crisply towards the expanding shoreline.
