Tommy looks angry. “Skylar is being helped by a woman here. She was attacked out there. Dan’s with her.”
Attacked? By what?
Add the question to the never-ending list.
“Lauren’s dead,” Jack tells her without any emotion or subtlety. “They’re all dead back there at the hotel.”
It’s too much to hear.
Lauren can’t be dead. The others—all of the others at the wedding—
Allison’s body starts to shake and the tears come once again. She’s a mess but she can’t help it.
Jack moves over to hold her. “We’re going to be okay,” he tells her. “All right?”
But she doesn’t believe his words. She knows he’s just trying to comfort her, but she finds no comfort in his declaration. She doesn’t know what they’re going to do.
Maybe Lauren and the others are the lucky ones.
Maybe they were spared the nightmare that’s unfolding right here and now.
The pain is everywhere. It feels like a low hum, like a burner that’s been left on and forgotten about but then you touch it and scorch your skin. Skylar hurts all over and can no longer even try to fight it. She’s weak and knows she’s close to slipping into unconsciousness. But Dan’s next to her and they’ve finally reached where they were headed.
Skylar rests on a cot in a room that looks like it used to be for preschoolers at the church. Colorful rainbows and clouds and letters and Bible pictures adorn the walls. The tables and chairs have been moved and replaced by mattresses that a couple of people lie on. Light comes from a few lanterns, one being held by an African American woman who also carries a friendly smile with her.
“I’m Rachel,” the thirtysomething woman says. “I’m a nurse. Let me take a look at you.”
“What is this place?” Dan asks.
“It used to be a classroom. We’ve made it a temporary triage center. We got some medical supplies from a few places.”
Skylar screams out in pain.
“I’m sorry,” Nurse Rachel says. “Your shoulders—they’re both dislocated. How’d this happen?”
Skylar swallows but her mouth is so dry. “I started to—there was this thing that came out of nowhere—attacked us—it grabbed me. . . .” Her voice is hoarse.
The nurse grabs a bottle of water on the shelf nearby and opens it. “Here, take a sip. That’s right. Just a little.”
The water tastes good. It spills down the sides of her mouth but Skylar doesn’t care.
“This blood—where is this from?” Rachel asks.
“My side—I got stabbed with something.”
“With what?”
“We don’t know,” Dan answers. “Some kind of thing out there.”
The nurse doesn’t react but just keeps checking Skylar over. Finally she looks up. “I need to reset her shoulders.”
Dan seems nervous.
“This is going to hurt a little,” Rachel says.
Skylar nods. “It’s okay.”
Dan comes to her side and holds her hand for a moment. “You’re going to be fine, okay, Sky? Okay?”
She feels so tired and so wrapped in pain.
“Do you remember the first time we met each other?” Dan says quickly. “I remember when you walked into Jack’s party. My jaw literally dropped. I’d never seen anyone so beautiful in my life. And now . . . now look at this.”
He shows off his wedding ring while the nurse gently feels around Skylar’s shoulders.
“On their wedding day, most brides hope that there’s no rain or the band doesn’t show up late,” Skylar says in a weak voice. Then she chuckles and coughs. “I’m just hoping the world doesn’t end.”
“Well, if it makes any difference, the wedding was perfect all the way up to the end-of-the-world part.”
She knows he’s trying and she smiles at her husband.
“I love you, Mrs. Wilson,” he says.
“I have to lift the arm to reset it,” the nurse says. “Take a deep breath.”
No, please . . .
She turns her head toward Dan and focuses on his handsome face, the smile she fell in love with, the eyes she never wants to let go.
“Mrs. Wilson,” she repeats.
“Ready?” Rachel asks.
“I love you, too, Mr. Wilson.”
The nurse lifts Skylar’s arm and a waterfall of agony rushes over her. Skylar sees everything suddenly become bright. The burst of suffering is immense, unlike anything she’s experienced, even unlike the attack itself. But then it’s over and her shoulder has somehow found its way back into its socket. She unclenches her teeth, letting out a muffled gasp, her stomach all knotted up and tight.
“Good,” the nurse says. “Now the left side.”
“Maybe we should just give her a moment.”
“No,” Skylar says. “Just do it.”
She can barely keep her eyes open. The pain claws and covers and she can barely suck in any oxygen since she’s tightening every muscle in her body.
Just get it over with do it do anything just make the pain go away.
“Hey, remember when we drove to get our marriage license and the office was above that crazy deli?” Dan asks her, making sure she can see his face. “We waited to get a copy while staring at pigs’ feet.”
The memory makes her smile. “I remember driving back through the rain eating those Black Forest ham sandwiches. Best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life.”
The nurse lifts her other arm and she grimaces. She feels woozy and everything begins fading to black. The pain pounds her but the shoulder pops back in and her arm is helped down again.
“Good job,” the nurse tells her.
She can feel the sweat on her forehead and her back. The pain seems to go from side to side, first one shoulder where the puncture wounds are, then the other, then back again. Her back is sore, her legs numb. Her eyes close for a moment before opening again.
“We need to get that dress off her,” Nurse Rachel says. “Dan, can you grab the sheet off the mattress over there and provide a little cover so I can help her change? I need to look at those wounds.”
Taking the dress off is an ordeal that lasts fifteen minutes. Skylar can’t move her arms much at all.
“This probably hurts more than resetting your shoulders,” Rachel tells her.
With the bloody dress off, Skylar painfully stands while the nurse examines her wounds, cleaning them up and putting bandages over them. Soon Skylar is putting on some loose clothing that belongs to someone else. Then she lies back down on the cot. It feels good to close her eyes and just breathe slowly, in and out, in and out.
She feels the gentle kiss from Dan on her cheek.
Then she hears something ominous from the nurse. “I’ve never seen a wound like that.”
Skylar thinks back to everything that’s happened since her wedding.
I’ve never seen anything like any of this, ever.
27
HELL ON EARTH
The sound of the piano in the darkness feels strange and surreal to Tommy. He’s looking for Skylar and Dan and has wandered down a hallway full of unoccupied and dark rooms. This church is bigger than he thought. Finally he comes to an open door and hears the music coming from the lighted room beyond.
It’s an Elton John song.
The lantern propped up on the console piano in the corner of the room shows the outline of the pastor playing the song. He’s quite good, Tommy realizes. He listens, then thinks he might be intruding, so he knocks loud enough to be heard.
“Oh, hey,” Pastor Shay says. “Come on in.”
Tommy walks into the room. It’s full of chairs. It must be the place where the choir rehearses.
“I used to want to be a musician,” the pastor says, looking down at the keys of the piano. “A rock star. Always loved music growing up and learned to play piano and guitar.”
“That was pretty good.”
“Yeah. But not good enough. I led worship for a ch
urch for a while, got into ministry that way. But I didn’t want to be another Billy Graham. I was more looking to be Bono.”
Tommy looks at the cross hanging on the wall nearby. “Do you have any clue what’s happening out there?”
“A clue? Yes. It’s the Rapture,” the pastor says. “It’s right out of the New Testament.”
“Come on. The thing where Jesus teleports the good people—”
“The believers.”
“—to heaven so all of us heathens—”
“The nonbelievers.”
“—can live through a hell on earth?”
The pastor only nods his head.
“But no one got teleported. They all just died.”
“You could say their souls got teleported, I suppose,” Pastor Shay says. “I’ll admit I didn’t expect it to go down exactly like this. But there’s no doubt about what’s happening. We are all presented with the same evidence. I guess it’s what conclusion we want to draw from it that ultimately matters.”
“I don’t draw anything from it.” Even Tommy is a bit surprised by the anger in his tone. But it’s the truth. The world is falling apart and no amount of Sunday school stories will change that.
Pastor Shay looks at Tommy for a long moment. “So what do you think attacked your friend?”
“Aliens, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t explain any of it.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
The pastor’s voice is weary and reeks of defeat. Everything about this man strikes Tommy as strange, but that just fits with everything else going on.
There might be more for Tommy to say, more that he should manage to come up with even though he still has no clue what to think, but his might-have-beens are interrupted by the sounds of the church bell ringing.
“There must be more survivors arriving,” the pastor says. “Let’s go see who they are.”
They enter the church sanctuary to find the room full of crackling fear. Everybody is standing up, a few people near the doors while most of the others are gathered near the front of the room. The faces appear relieved to see Pastor Shay.
“Who came in?”
“A small group,” one of the men tells him. “Five people. Three are over there. Two of them went in back to the triage.”
“What’s wrong?” the pastor asks.
“One of them is pregnant.”
A scream comes from the hallway.
Jack and Allison appear next to Tommy. “Let’s go see if we can help,” Allison suggests.
Tommy follows her and Jack down the hall. The screams get louder as they near the classroom that’s now a designated area for the sick and wounded. He wonders how Skylar is doing and whether Dan is still by her side.
Soon they stand in a room full of confusion and chaos. As Tommy watches, he feels almost like he’s floating, observing from somewhere outside his normal point of view as if he’s hovering over himself and everybody else like some kind of surreal ghost.
A woman is writhing on a cot like some possessed figure, holding her protruding stomach.
Dim lights surround her while strangers stand not knowing what to do.
The nurse remains by the woman’s side, getting things ready, putting a blanket over her, covering the ground with sheets, looking for other things.
Tommy doesn’t see Skylar and Dan. Maybe they were moved somewhere.
“Here—you—wet these towels for me.”
The nurse is talking to him. Tommy doesn’t ask anything but rather rushes out of the room carrying the stack of towels. It takes him a moment to find the bathroom, but he finally does and wets down all the linens. Figures are behind him, strangers rushing down the hall, more standing in the triage area where the screams are coming from.
She sounds like she’s dying.
He gives the drenched towels to the nurse. The woman on the cot is screaming and crying, her body moving everywhere. A man—her husband?—is trying to calm her down but isn’t doing any good. The nurse blocks Tommy’s view, but he can still hear all the violence and agony happening right in front of him.
“The baby’s coming,” the nurse says. “I can see the head.”
Tommy stays near the back of the room, his head still feeling a little fuzzy. He’s not supposed to be here, witnessing this event, being part of such an intimate thing. Yet he refuses to run away. He wants to be there in case they need him to do something. Anything.
The screams bounce off the walls. They’re so loud and so close.
“You’re doing good; come on,” the nurse tells the woman.
They have hardly anything to help the woman in labor. No epidural. No pain medication. No anything. Just wet towels.
More crying, hollering, groaning, pushing.
Tommy feels like he’s going to pass out. Jack has already left the room.
He can’t breathe while he stands listening, wondering if the woman’s going to make it, waiting to see if the baby is okay.
Those few brief moments feel like an eternity to Tommy.
What do they feel like to the mommy-to-be?
The nurse remains active, moving and bending over and grabbing tools on the table next to her. Tommy can’t see what she’s doing until suddenly she’s holding something in her arms.
“It’s a boy,” the nurse says.
But there are no sounds of faint cries or tiny coughing. No sort of motion in the nurse’s arms.
Where’s the wailing that always happens with newborns?
Something is happening here, something awful, something Tommy doesn’t want to see anymore. But the doorway is blocked. And Allison is standing right in front of him. He has to remain by her side and stay strong.
“Can I hold him?” the mother asks in a weak voice.
The nurse has her back to him, but Tommy knows something is wrong.
There’s no sound a baby is supposed to be crying where are the cries now there needs to be some wailing going on.
“Please . . .”
There’s an audible gasp from someone. The mother is sitting up and crying as she holds her baby.
“Why isn’t he crying? I don’t hear any crying!”
Allison turns around with tears in her eyes. Tommy wants to say something to her but instead she just buries herself in his arms and weeps.
“What is wrong with my baby boy?”
The screams of the mother are something that Tommy knows he’ll never forget.
If he lives to be a hundred years old, he knows he’ll be able to hear the anguished, tormented cries of this new mother holding her dead child in her arms.
Tommy holds Allison, knowing nothing is right anymore. Knowing there is no God because God wouldn’t allow this. Not this. Not now.
28
UGLY
“Is she okay?”
The older woman who introduced herself as Beverly is asking about Allison. Tommy looks over to see Jack holding Allison in the pew. The muted light and low murmurs make everything feel more ominous and creepy. If they could just get out of this place with all of its religious mumbo jumbo and strange heavenly feelings, their outlook might improve. But for now, the place feels like a divine prison.
“She’ll be okay,” Tommy says.
It’s been half an hour since Tommy witnessed the birth of the mother’s dead baby. Now he doesn’t know what to think or say. Allison is still weeping somewhat uncontrollably while Jack holds her and tries to make her feel better. Dan and Skylar are still somewhere in the back of the church, hopefully sleeping or at least chilling out.
“They keep coming in here,” Beverly says.
“Yeah. While I want to get out of here.”
Every now and then he checks his phone. It’s dead and it’s been dead for a while, but he checks it just in case. A few people have still been trying to make calls or connect with someone on their phones. Nobody’s said they’ve gotten through, however.
Maybe there’s nobody out there to get through to.
&
nbsp; Pastor Shay steps into the sanctuary looking tired and sweaty. “Hey, Tommy. Can I talk with you?”
He wants to tell the pastor no, he doesn’t want to talk. Surely the pastor is going to ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do. And he’ll probably do it because that’s what Tommy does. He’s the nice guy. He’s the guy who isn’t attached to anybody and he’s doing what anybody else asks and those guys always—always—get killed off first in horror movies. They never make it to the end. Who cares if they live or die anyway? It’s usually the girl with the guy at her side who makes it to the end.
“I need you to help me downstairs in the basement,” the pastor tells him.
There’s a basement? Wonderful.
Of course he nods. Of course he’s going to follow the pastor down into the basement. At this point what else is there for him to do?
Well, maybe you can pray and ask . . . Oh, wait, you don’t do that.
Pastor Shay’s eyes are grim as they scan the pews of the church. He doesn’t appear to even want to reach out and help anybody. Instead he looks pessimistic and frightened. “Come on then,” he tells Tommy.
A hallway leads to a door that opens on a set of concrete steps. This would be where the pastor turns out to be a serial killer in the horror movie that Tommy wouldn’t survive.
He’s leading Tommy to a dark passageway lit only by the shaking glow of his lantern.
Soon they open a door and enter a room that looks like storage. There’s a door at the back of the room. Tommy half expects to see something freaky like a mannequin that maybe looks like the pastor coming to life and talking to him.
“Half this basement is unfinished,” Shay tells him as he opens the door and leads Tommy into a cold, massive room.
The first thing Tommy notices is that the floor is dirt. It’s soft, the air musty. Metal pillars are placed in strategic positions around the open area. For some reason, Tommy thinks of his favorite television show when the main character was burying money in the crawl space. Yet this is much larger than a simple crawl space. There’s no crawling necessary down here.
“We always imagined finishing this space off eventually,” Pastor Shay says, walking toward the side wall of the room. “Guess there’s really no point now, huh?”
The Remaining Page 12