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Chapter 15
Some Awakening
I would never have expected it. The universe would not be the same. But it happened and I will never forget every little detail about it.
Yet again, a violent thunderstorm bulldozed the area of Ravenna at dawn. I kept expecting to hear tornado sirens go off. The clock on my car’s dash read 7:02 am. The drip over the passenger seat was a steady little stream hitting the floor—I should have found a way to plug it by now. Lightning danced all over. Thunder bellowed with bone-rattling force almost on a constant basis, which was the catalyst for my rise from sleep.
Every few seconds or so the stream of water coming from the roof of the car would get thicker. The roof, already corroded and weakened after years of neglect, was rapidly succumbing to the deluge. But this was the least of my problems. After picking up my cell with the intention on calling Gene, I felt the left side of my car get jolted heavily by something. Then again. The bricks on the wall on the building my car was parked beside had begun to slip from their mortared positions, a sign of the entire building ready to collapse. And before I could start the engine on my car, the wall had already begun its descent down upon me.
“Help, Gene!” I managed to shout into the cell.
Bricks then began to pound the top of my car every second, then every half-second. The side continued to get pummeled—it was a three-story building, after all. It was coming down. I began to panic. The driver’s side door dented inward from the outside due to large collections of bricks banging against it at once.
I went to the passenger door and tried to break the window with my feet repeatedly. It was very similar to a person in a drowning car attempting to break the window so they would not drown, only I would be drowning in bricks and instead of drowning I would be bludgeoned to death by them. Kick after kick, the window, reinforced apparently, would not give. However, physics broke it for me. The roof was getting piled on by probably hundreds of bricks, causing the frame to warp and the window to bust.
I leapt for the open window, lacerations both shallow and very deep wrapping all parts of my body. The rest of the wall began its fall on my car. As my top half was out the window, I looked up to see my life ready to go thanks to decades of human disregard for buildings. I tried my best to get through the window, but my pants got caught on a displaced piece of metal jutting from the passenger door. The metal was then forced deep into my front right thigh. I could not go.
I could see everything from my past go before my eyes, a retrospection of my not-so-wonderful life. And like that, I was out of the car, almost as though a hand had grabbed my arm a mere second before the entire wall collapsed on my helpless self. It was a blur as I lay on the ground many, many feet from the epicenter of the collapse. The rain, too, blurred my vision. I’d gone from the death trap of a car to relative safety in the matter of five seconds. I was offered a miracle, yet I was still unable to appreciate it thanks to my dazed state. I lost consciousness for a few minutes.
As I woke, I could see I rested under some green and white striped awning out of the rain that would not relent. I looked to my left to see parts of my car under a mountain of red bricks. I looked to my right to see Gene standing there with a scowl on his face as he looked down. I looked back to my car.
Wait. Huh? Gene? What? I had to still be asleep. I wiped the sleep and trauma from my eyes, almost so deep I could have gone blind. I couldn’t look. But I had to so I did. Gene was there, sitting on a concrete stoop as he continued to look away from me. Was I dreaming? I slapped my own face. Wake up, stupid!
“This isn’t a dream,” Gene very casually stated as he looked at nothing in particular to the right.
I stood very fast, afraid, but immediately fell right back down thanks to the enormous gash in my thigh all the way down to the bone, the wound bleeding profusely. “My God, Gene! Get away from me before I feel it!”
“If you were going to feel it, Wallace, it would have happened now. Same for me. I don’t feel it. Do you feel it?”
“Well, I might soon! Delayed reaction from the Flegtide in your system! Leave!”
“Too late. I’m already here.”
“But—”
“I dragged you out of that fucking car, Wallace. I took you by the arm seconds before the wall came down. I broke the cardinal rule of touching. I broke the rules and I won. Wallace, things are different now.”
Then why did he look so sad? Why did he sound heavily burdened? He wanted nothing more than to talk to me in person, side-by-side. He had his wish. I would have pondered that much further if I hadn’t been so dumbstruck over the basic fact that neither he nor I were Ired at the moment. I lost consciousness again.
Proof that this wasn’t a dream came about an hour later. I woke up to the image of Gene’s round, beard-riddled face just inches from my own. His breath smelled of some mixture of spoiled cabbage and dead squirrel, the first breath I’d smelled in two decades. And he smiled.
“You’re ok now,” he told me, grinning brightly.
Again, I was afraid. I backed up as far as I could go, which turned out to be about a foot to the wall behind me. “So it did happen?”
“It did, my friend. We are sans Ire, you and I. Been this way for, oh, an hour and a half. No drugs. No drugs.” He cried, but these were tears of joy. The man was elated. “You’re right here, Wallace. I touched your arm. I bandaged your leg. I’m having a hard time believing it’s true.”
Hard times all around. I was completely taken aback by the reality. And my leg, although still in tremendous pain, was wrapped with a piece of ripped plaid fabric, just as Gene had said he’d done.
“What does this mean?” I asked Gene.
“It means we have something special, Wallace. I don’t know what it is, but we aren’t killing each other and that means everything.”
The man could not have ever spoken a more honest sentence. Our world of the past twenty years seemed to be a thing of the past, at least in this moment. We could not have known whether or not this meant the Ire was over, Flegtide interference had something to do with it, Gene’s mental state triggered the imbalance, or any combination of the three. Frankly, under the awning in Ravenna, we didn’t care.
Gene and I sat there a while. We basked in the newness that was person-to-person communication without long-distance yelling. The rain poured all around us, but we remained dry in both our physical and spiritual states. Gene left my side for a moment and returned with a six-pack of beer. They were warm, without labels, and likely a decade or so past their due dates. Still, we drank them and they were delicious, not in taste but in the creation of what would be a nostalgic moment; it’s rare that I know when the current moment is going to end up in my nostalgia bank.
We chatted more than ever, more furiously than when I finally accepted his requests to become friends. It was fresh, brand new, and we both were very aware of it. True, we already knew each other, but it always seemed limited and with good reason. No personal contact. The Ire took that from us. We had a lot of catching up to do and we did just that until nightfall, when more storms ripped through town. Talking of everything died down as we had cried and laughed enough to deplete our tears.
“So now, here we are,” I said. “What happens from here?”
“Well, I’m thinking of going on the search for another six-pack somewhere around,” Gene said. “Any place you can think of?”
“I meant you and I, Gene. This is a banner day. Bigger than any other in my life. It will be over soon and we have to know what we’ll do then. Are we still going to Oklahoma for Pauline?”
“We just reconnected, Wallace. We just broke the rules that Mother Nature set in motion two decades ago. We are new people. Goddamn right, I’m going to tell my sister. We’ll leave in the morning. One more thing.”
He reached his bag and pulled out my cell. I took it and looked back at him.
“Wasn’t this thing pulverized in the rubble?”
“I found it under the bricks, along with the extra batteries. I think it’s amusing and ironic because, well, we don’t need the cells to talk anymore.”
“You’re right.” I could have said more, but my brain was pretty much toast at this point. “It is nice.” Such the talker, me.
“Your little cruiser there is destroyed, Wallace. We’ll ride together to Oklahoma. I already checked the map and it looks like we’re about 400 miles from the border of Oklahoma. From there we’ll find Pauline’s development and our journey will be over.”
“I think it’s just beginning, Gene.”
He grinned. “I do too.”
The kindness he shared in his eyes was almost overwhelming. Things looked incredibly good. If only we’d better anticipated the problems we would face now that we were no longer slaves to the Ire. They were set to be Biblical in value, the problems.
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Chapter 16
Me and Gene
My leg wobbly from its aching, pus-filled wound, I stepped into Gene’s car. It was cozy for the most part. The leather bucket passenger seat reminded me of my recliner back at my cabin, with memory settings and enough give to make me feel just the way I wanted. It already knew me. Still, I maintained that lingering doubt that at any moment, without warning, the Ire would rejoin our brains and we would go for each other. For this, comfort could not be fully realized.
Gene got in the driver’s seat and shut the door. “Are we ready?”
“I believe we are.”
“Good.” I do think Gene shared the same doubts as me, but he showed no signs of it.
We readied ourselves, buckling up and adjusting our seats. That was when we heard and sort of felt an explosion. We looked behind us to see my car, still off in the distance on the streets of Ravenna, up in flames.
“The gas can in the trunk,” I said. “Guess the flames finally caught it.”
“Guess so,” Gene said. “Good thing I already got the bag full of canned food out.”
“You’re too kind.”
He cradled the cell and we were off. Within the first few minutes I could tell this would be a unique sensation. I was being driven in a car with a living person beside me without even the slightest inclination to kill him. This is the stuff of dreams.
The bright sunshine of the very warm late-August day was a refreshing change from endless buckets of water being poured on us. We could easily see the ultra-flat landscape of the plains. And even on this road, which was wildly untreated and in many places overgrown with bushes and trees, we could see what we were unable to see for years—nature. Perhaps it was our newfound miracle that brought in such perspective. Neither of us complained.
Silence percolated between us for about thirty minutes on the trip. Apparently, neither of us wanted to be the first to break the ice. Under the awning was one thing, but now, forced into close quarters with one another, the pressure was there to say something. Granted, we still have countless things to discuss.
“Time,” I said.
“Time?”
“Yes, time.”
“Wallace, it’s about 9:30 in the morning.”
“No, not that. I’m saying time is with us, Gene. Timing, I should say. The timing fits.”
“Well, why didn’t you say timing in the first place?”
“Nervous, I guess.”
“But timing,” Gene said, “definitely is on our side. There’s a bond. I don’t feel the slightest Ire around you.” He’d already said those exact words a dozen times since yesterday, I believe. “I can’t put it into words.”
“Neither can I.”
“That bond.”
Suddenly, I was feeling just a tad uncomfortable. I knew his past, the fact that he had a husband. I never thought twice about it. But now that we were breaking Mother Nature’s rules, it could grow deeper.
“You do know I’m straight, right?” I regretted saying the words before they exited my mouth.
“Wallace?”
“I’m straight, Gene.” Damn it, I couldn’t stop.
“And I’m not. And that’s all fine, Wallace. What the hell is that all about?”
“Um, it just felt like—“
“I was hitting on you? Christ, Wallace. I would not do that. Not jeopardizing this thing I just got back yesterday. Get over yourself, boy.”
He laughed hysterically, prompting me to do the same. Ice broken, no more discomfort. It was a necessary moment in time for us. The air was clear.
We’d driven probably a hundred miles or so south when a call began to come through on my cell, not Gene’s. I removed it from my pocket to investigate.
“Evans?” I said, reading the overly simple name on the screen.
“Who is Evans?”
“No idea.”
Why not go deeper down the rabbit hole? I answered the call. “Hello?”
On the screen was possibly the most terrifying person I’ve ever seen. He was likely 350 pounds, tall, an evil black goatee, a horrendous buzz cut on his balding head, and eyes that shot directly through my soul. He wore a very thin black tank top, revealing just how gargantuan he was in the muscle department. He did not speak for the longest time.
“I said hello?”
“You are Wallace Auker?” he said, his voice as deep and bloated with menace as his image.
“That’s me.” I didn’t want to answer.
“An occasional development refugee comes this way. Much more recently than usual thanks to Flegtide. It is my job to greet them. I am Evans.”
“Greet us, eh? As in friendly?”
“Greet you as in kill you,” Evans corrected. “I have seen your car, the gray Taos, on the road moving slowly. I will find you and kill you. This is a promise.”
“Why is everybody who finds me so damn polite and nice?” I enjoyed sarcasm, even as a defense mechanism.
“Listen, I have your trail. I know the geography of this area. I will find you, allow the Ire to become me, and you will die. That is how it’s been for so many years and that will not change. Expect me soon.”
“Come find us,” Gene suddenly blurted out.
This, as it seemed, had a maniacally confusing effect on Evans. Whereas before he was confidently grim, his face now was sternly puzzled. “Did I hear another person?”
I had to think. Did I want this to happen? To spoil our news of Irelessness? What the hell. I angled the cell to show both of us, both smiling ear-to-ear.
“That is Gene,” I said. “We don’t have the Ire.”
“Ah, I see now. You are both part of the minority without it.”
“No,” Gene said. “We still have the Ire, killed many people. It just doesn’t affect us anymore.” He was truly proud to make such a statement.
“Evans,” I said, “if you want our stuff why not use a rifle like the last guy and try to blow out our tires?”
“Hold on,” Evans angrily demanded. “You’re not Ired. How the fuck are you not Ired?”
“A miracle!” Gene mocked.
“Gotta be Flegtide. Gotta be that. Flegtide.” He was obviously befuddled. “Nevermind. I’ll kill you. And to your remark, Wallace, I will not use guns because there is no fun in it. And now I have a challenge. I will see you gentlemen shortly.” He ended the call.
“What do we do?” I asked Gene.
“We get to know our new friend, Wallace. This should be all kinds of fun.” He wasn’t worried, unlike me. Gene had regained all of his confidence and knew something I didn’t.
“You want us to fight him or something? Because Gene, I’m lame. My leg.”
“Enjoy the ride, Wallace. We’re in great shape. Trust me.”
Whatever he meant by trust was just a mystery. He knew something more. Nevertheless, his words actually did ease me. I couldn’t be upset with anything, not after what happened the previous day. I was sitting one foot from another human being. Nice.
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Chapter 17
Minus the Populace
One ful
l day of driving without hearing from that nuisance over the cell again. Evans was nowhere to be found. I think we’d scared him off or something. Well good riddance. He would have ruined our good time.
And it was a good time. There was a card in the stereo of the car with thousands of songs, much of them from the ‘20s, the last decade music was made and published. Most songs were of the Head-House variety, the most popular genre of music since the mid-teens. Many songs whose lyrics we knew we sang together—neither of us could sing.
“Where are we now?” Gene asked.
“I’m not too sure. I saw a sign a few miles back that said Osborne. Let me look.”
Sure enough, we were somewhere near the town of Osborne, Kansas. The town of Luray was nearby. We were perfectly on track to reach Oklahoma. As Gene said, just go south.
“Good evening,” came the voice and simultaneous picture of Evans.
“Why, hello,” Gene gleefully responded. “I thought you’d forgotten about us.”
“You are my mark. I never leave a mark alive.”
That’s when we saw the headlights behind us flash five times. His signal was obvious, as Evans trailed us just as he said he would.
“Honestly, what do you want?” I kindly asked Evans.
“Your lives. Nothing more. You may have food in your car, other goodies, but I am fine on my own. I need you dead. The Ire has built this in me over the years.”
I looked over at Gene. He didn’t appear right. His head tilted down toward the steering wheel and his eyes were affixed straight forward. He was feeling something. And just as I was understanding his situation, I’d begun to feel a sensation not felt in over a week. It was the Ire. All puzzle pieces came together when Evans flashed his lights again, this time literally right behind us.
This was new territory. I was feeling the Ire and it built with quick intensity. All the while, I was sitting right beside another person. I looked over at Gene and he was not red through my vision. He might as well have been dead, for he was not the target of my Ire. I looked back through the window and, of course, Evans’ image was completely red. Unprecedented for sure, but interesting too.
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