Scorched

by Michael Soll

  She understood what he was saying, but she didn’t care. She raised her fist and with her spikes gleaming, slashed down at him.

  He could have blocked her attack with his sword if he chose, but he didn’t. He raised his arm as a shield. Her claws penetrated his flesh, cutting through until hitting bone. He screamed as the blood dribbled down his limb.

  She raised her other fist and brought down more spikes. He held up his other arm as a shield and it too was pierced by metal. The Mayor screamed in agony, unable to save himself or the city which loved him.

  Kaolin took my hand and placed it on the lever. We shared a moment to appreciate each other and then, together, we pulled and the elevator jolted upward.

  Down below, I could hear Bryan’s screeches as he appeared, running to save the Mayor whose arms were being shredded to a pulp, no more muscle or skin, only bone.

  The boy jumped in front of his leader, sword held high as the noxious gas pushed around the metal, undeterred by the weapon and its destructive power.

  The Mayor screamed, “No!” But it was too late. It was too late.

  The boy slashed down at Valasca as she struck forward and both sword and spike connected. A tiny spec of a spark leapt from their metal and then ignited.

  The fire incinerated the air, consuming all three of their lives and bursting down onto the city below, swallowing the buildings and Newburyians and Nanashi and plants and animals and their history and memories. The fire extinguished it all, in a burst so powerful it knocked Kaolin and me to our knees and then, the blaze rocketed upward toward us.

  I held Kaolin in my arms as the flames surrounded the contraption and melted the wires pulling us away. The metal box creaked and moaned and then, there was a nearby explosion.

  The box careened into one of the walls, denting the dirt and forming a hole as the smoke billowed up. I quickly grabbed Kaolin and lunged toward the hole in the wall, away from the rising fire and its deadly smoke. We crawled out of the broken elevator and into the nearby soil.

  I punched the tiny hole with the spikes, widening it. I pulled us to temporary safety as the fire engulfed the elevator, but there wasn’t much time until there would be no air left to breathe and we too would be swallowed by the Earth.

  “Hold on!” I shouted as I punched through the dirt, making our way upward toward the surface. Kaolin grabbed onto my ankle as we steadily crawled upward at an incline as I used the spikes to lead us to safety.

  I didn’t know how much time we had left or how far the surface was or how long it would take to get there. There was no light. My knuckles were completely raw and I couldn’t feel them as I clawed at what I presumed was upward. All I could feel was Kaolin’s grasp on my ankle and her slowing breaths against the back of my legs.

  My lungs screamed and I coughed harder than I ever had. I didn’t know how long we had been tunneling or if it mattered at all. I didn’t know if we were dead or alive. My brain felt scrambled and I was so tired I just wanted to lie down and stop. But I couldn’t.

  As the smoke filled the tunnel and our lungs burned, I could feel Kaolin’s grip on my foot weaken, her life fading from her body. I punched and clawed and grabbed at dirt. I needed to get us to safety. And then, I felt a warmth from above as we evaded the heat from below.

  I couldn’t breathe anymore. I used every last ounce of energy to push us ahead. I had only moments left. Only seconds to see my dream before the eternal slumber.

  My punches slowed and then, my hand got tangled onto something. A stringy substance I could not see in the infinite blackness. I pushed past the strings as they surrounded our bodies, trying to hold us below, trying to keep us from breaching the above.

  Kaolin’s fingers were loosening from my ankle. I took a deep breath but all I got was smoke. I was suffocating.

  I had energy for one last punch. One last effort.

  I heaved my hand upward and I pierced the Earth’s flesh.

  A blinding heat sprayed down onto my face as I felt the thick smoke escape the tunnel beside me, rocketing up toward the sky, to wherever it would like to go, to the infinite beyond.

  I grabbed upward, toward the top of the Earth and felt the damp soil between my fingers and then,

  I gasped for air.

  EPILOGUE

  A cacophony of clamor and chaos and death was expelled from the Earth along with his fist. The boy sucked in the air as he felt the blistering heat. The inexplicable light shined onto his face and shattered the darkness, but he was still left blind. He reached down below and grasped her hand and lifted her above so that she may witness his lifelong dream beside him, but for the moment, neither of them could see. They simply lay on the ground, staring up at a sky they could not view.

  They coughed and wheezed, but they were alive. They could feel a prickly sensation on their backs as their scorched flesh was revived by the dampness beneath. And after awhile of lying and waiting, wondering if their vision would ever return, the whiteness sprinkled away. Now, they could see a bright blue ocean above, like the color of Cotta’s eyes.

  With their hands forever interlocked, they watched above and stared at the fluffy, white pockets of bundled water molecules. They drifted through the sky, effortlessly and without purpose but their heart desire. Past a ferociously yellow ball of fire that made Kaolin’s hair seem dull and ordinary.

  The lovers took in the coolness and the warmth and inhaled the freshness. Spec caressed the prickly green blades of grass beneath them and glanced over at a large tree, towering above, remnants of its roots still stuck to his ashy hair.

  His eyes continued to readjust to the light, sending tears dribbling down the sides of his face, washing away the scorched grime smothering his skin. For so long, he had the weight of the world hoisted atop his shoulders, but now, that was all behind him, below and out of sight.

  And after some time, enough for new clouds to appear and the sun to shift directions, the boy and girl stood, gazing at the infinite wonder of the world loved so long ago. The girl arched her head and stared at a magnificent structure constructed in a time before the end. A wooden marvel and symbol for a nation of people. A house once white, now charred black, deformed and disfigured like the world it used to inhabit, a marred spectacle, standing empty and burnt but a marvel nonetheless.

  The two walked hand in hand toward the house, one of the most important structures of the old, now a dilapidated memory, but to them it was new.

  The people who lived here must be responsible for Newbury, the boy thought. They must have brought the people below so long ago.

  The two moved past four charred beams and through a door overrun with foliage and entered the home that had once housed some of the most powerful people in the world.

  On the walls were many portraits of men long ago extinguished, yet their faces remained, pale and unflinching.

  A breeze floated past the cracked doors and into the empty house, sending a chill up Kaolin’s spine. She pulled Spec in close and asked if they could leave.

  “It reminds me too much of Newbury,” she said.

  “All right,” he said back.

  They left the house and its history and were once again met by the beautiful green outside. They walked together, past a gate and to new terrain. They had never seen cement or asphalt or anything unnecessary in the world they had become acclimated to.

  The girl looked up at a sign once green, now plastered black, but she could still make out the curves of the letters imprinted so long ago.

  “What do you think it says?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Joey only taught me a few letters. I know that one’s a ‘P’ and that there’s an ‘S.’”

  They pushed forward, past the street sign so recognizable in the time long ago. Had they known the letters and the numbers and the word imprinted on metal, they would have known that the sign read: “PENNSYLVANIA 1600.”

  They walked down the road, not a soul in sight, except for the one in which they shared, encircling the
two in a world of their own, one to cherish and nurture, to keep safe from harm at all cost.

  And as they pushed ahead, Spec couldn’t help but look up, past the clouds and past the sky, past the sun and further than he could see.

  What’s beyond, he wondered. What’s above the Earth? If there’s so much beauty above the world I knew, what wonders are there above this one and the next? How many truths and how many realities exist beyond our own? Did the Specs of the past look up and ask, what if I could go higher? What if I could claw my way past the sky and the sun, further than the stars? Was the past banished to the surface like we were to the depths of the Earth?

  And the boy realized that despite his location, he would always wonder. He would always gaze above. He would always be lost in his thoughts.

  “It’s okay,” she said, as if she could read his mind, as if his inner dialogue was uttered aloud. “The world is as it is and you are as you are. There are reasons for this and that but things are the way they are because they are. You’re looking up while I’m looking ahead, but our hands are still clasped. That’s all that matters.”

  I wonder what direction Joey would look were he here, the boy thought. Would Valasca look below? Would the Mayor keep his eyes tightly shut? What about Cotta and my father? Would they see the sky’s blueness like I do? Would they appreciate the warmth of Kaolin’s hand?

  And then, his mind skipped a beat as a thought trickled in. Could I see the world as they do? Could I love the way they love? Was I capable of understanding as they could?

  Spec’s thoughts were interrupted by a small creature with a bushy tail that scurried past the two, a tiny nut in its hand. For a brief moment, the animal glanced at the humans, curious by the two strange creatures.

  The boy took a deep breath and wondered about the past. Something happened here, he thought. Who’s to say it was a solar flare? Who’s to say it wasn’t something else?

  The two pushed past the ancient city. The breeze sent a small piece of paper toward Kaolin, pinning it against her chest, beside her heart. She pried it from her shirt and stared at the man imprinted in the middle, once the most famous general to those who resided in the city now uninhabited. Four large “1”s were imprinted on the bills corners. She tried to read the words: “THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” But she couldn’t. The girl dropped the piece of paper and the two continued out of the city.

  The boy climbed up the incline, up the grassy hill, up the large mound of dirt, beside the girl he once loathed, now his one love. And then he took it all in. Not just the view around, but the one within. How he came to where he was now.

  Were I alive so long ago, I couldn’t avert this crisis, he figured. I couldn’t have prevented the war between Nanash and Newbury or their ultimate demise. I couldn’t control any of that. But here I stand, with a girl I saved, with a girl who saved me. I changed my world. Just a spec on this planet. I transformed my everything.

  And after some time walking up the hill, the two of them reached the peak, standing atop the tallest mound of dirt, staring down alongside the fiery ball in the sky at the not-so barren Earth.

  And in the ruins, in the not too far away, several streams of black smoke billowed up from a distant city.

  The boy squeezed the girl’s hand and leaned his head against hers. He whispered something in her ear and she smiled.

  She turned to him, caressing the side of his face, amidst the world flushed with green and red and yellow and blue and purple and black and white and all sorts of gray.

  And as they breathed in the colors, as they breathed in the world, she nodded and simply said, “Of course.”