The Island - The Final Chapters

by Michael Stark

  The atmosphere in the room approached critical mass. The old door behind me groaned and creaked. I looked up and stared in shock at wood bowing out, away from the light and the boy.

  “Go AWAY!” Daniel screamed.

  The light exploded in a dazzling eruption of color. Gorgol cried out.

  I remember not being able to breathe. I remember the wind, the deafening howl as if a tornado had been turned loose inside the tiny room.

  I remember thinking it was as good a way to die as any.

  Epilogue

  Daniel was right. I didn’t remember much of the pain beyond the initial battle. Elsie told me later that I writhed and moaned for days. Not remembering was a good thing in my book, because what I do remember drove me to the edge of sanity, to a place where rational thought ceased to exist, where the wind carried my name in a soft, insistent whisper, and where the wailing screams of those who had gone before echoed from a pit so deep and dark it seemed bottomless. Life and death no longer held meaning. I simply existed, tumbling through my own personal version of both hell and eternity, feeling boundaries shatter one by one like glass smacked against concrete, feeling emotions be flayed away like a knife stripping flesh from bone.

  And in the end, all I had left were tears, so many the floor beneath me glistened, so many my clothes felt heavy and wet.

  Gorgol and the little old man who lived down the street when I was a kid merged in a way and, between them, created a new kind of monster. I have no idea what the worm would have eaten had it stayed inside my head. It took days to realize what it had consumed while it was there. Gorgol wanted a child yet unborn. What he had taken from me was little William. Not in any physical sense, but the thought of him no longer brought tears and no longer weighed on my mind. Even the image of that final morning seemed as distant and cold as staring at a painting that I no longer understood. For that, I hated him. The terror it left behind hinged on feelings I wouldn’t have when he came for the next. Gorgol had stripped me of everything it meant to be a father. I lived. I breathed. I thought, but I no longer felt.

  How he escaped, no one knew, not even Daniel. Elsie had rushed in when she heard the screams and flung the door open only to be slammed against the other side of the hall by the explosion. They had searched the station, poking through even the closets and the crawlspace underneath with no sign of the man.

  As for Virgil, his contribution came after watching me pound the punching bag day after day for a year. He had pulled me aside then and in his flat voice said, “Enough of that. Muggers don't give you time to stretch or work out. They come from the dark and bam, bam, bam, either you walk away or they do. I'm going to teach you how to walk away. Call it the ten second fight. From now on, if you're still swinging after ten seconds, you lost.”

  What I could do better than before, better than I had ever been able to manage, was see beyond the words, beyond the guile that tempted emotions and swayed decisions. Gorgol saved me for one reason - a child I had yet to see. My transformation had not only been to keep me alive so that a son would be born, but to take away the feeling I would have for him.

  The feel-good folks will tell you that time will heal all wounds. That’s not true. What it does is dull them under a bandage that can easily be ripped away to expose the raw emotions underneath. It lets your mind eventually take on other tasks and finally go back to living instead of just hurting. As bad as the pain is, as deep as the recriminations run, they’re what a parent is supposed to feel. Gorgol had tried to take that away from me, tried to put me in a place where he could take what he wanted without the complications of a grieving father.

  I made neither pact nor vow, but in the months that followed, came an understanding, one as simple and as pure as a mountain stream rushing through boulders and glistening like the finest crystal. When the killing was done, when the Gates were once again sealed, when my child was safe, I would find Gorgol and any that sided with him. No matter how far I had to travel or where I had to go. I would find him and when I did, would extract my vengeance.

  I slept for nine days and during that time, the disease withered and vanished. He left the rest to fend for themselves. Elsie and Denise never came down with The Fever. The others did. Of them, Tyler and Daniel were the only two that survived. It seemed shade had nothing to do with my actions or Gorgol’s promises, but the uncertainties surrounding the chance of surviving the most aggressive disease in recorded history. I filed the knowledge away for future reference. Daniel had a gift. More years would teach him how to use it properly. Until then, those of us who knew him would have to learn to seek wisdom from his words instead of just relying on them.

  Time had revealed another aspect of Daniel’s ability. The question appeared to be as important as the answer. I’d asked the boy if Denise would have a baby. I should have been specific. Apparently, she would someday. The fact it wouldn’t be mine became equally obvious when Elsie informed me that the woman suffered from The Curse. I’d heard the phrase before, but given the events of the past few weeks, my mind ventured along paths of demons, wizards, and potions. Elsie, practical as she was, explained it in terms that even a simpleton could understand.

  “She’s got her period, dummy.”

  My allies appeared while I slept. Elsie found them on the porch one morning. There were two, a man and a woman. Neither stood much over five feet tall and both acted as if they’d just emerged from shock treatment in an insane asylum. Gorgol needed two things, my blood and the key to the gates. I carried one in my veins. The other two were tied to the key. Elsie hadn’t gotten them to talk much. She knew that somewhere in the massive continent to our west, we had to find a rock and decipher the riddle that had been chiseled into its face. Any question beyond that drew a hands-up, I-don’t-know gesture.

  The old woman seemed leery of the two, even doubting that such a rock existed. I gently reminded her that Daniel had the same vision. That pulled her up short. I used the break to tell her that come good weather, we’d be heading across the sound to look for it.

  November came and went. Autumn’s bright colors dried up and blew away with it. A few other things disappeared as well. In the second week of November, Elsie turned on the radio to static. WKLE never came back on the air. The days before had been filled with haunting mental images drawn by Christine Arapaloe in an increasingly hoarse and lonely voice. We found another station farther south. It vanished as well before the end of the month.

  The last official body count I heard the newswoman give brought the total to one and a half billion. No one knew it at the time, but we hadn’t seen the worst of it, not by a long shot. The Fever had turned from a wildfire of contagion and death into a conflagration that threatened to consume the entire race. Countries collapsed. Some areas saw their populations reduced to Stone Age levels and still the disease raged.

  Only one entity seemed to thrive in the wasteland left behind by The Fever. Dwight Little had been busy carving a name in history for himself, one of protector and guardian. That turned out to be the nice way of saying that he killed or detained dozens of refugees who mistakenly assumed back roads would be safer. .

  December brought snow and cold to the island. I walked out late in the month to the point, carrying a blanket and using it to shield my body against the elements. The woman came with me. She called herself Elaysia. I’d never heard anything like it.

  Bitter cold rushed down from the north, carrying icy flakes that ticked against my face like sleet. Restless waves rushed dark and gray through the inlet. Black clouds gathered on the horizon, promising rough weather ahead.

  I stood for a long time, wind buffeting my face. Finally the girl spoke in her odd lilting voice.

  “What’s that smell?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at the air filtering in across the sound.

  I thought about the mainland, the empty cities we would find and the desolate highways we would travel. The expectant look on the woman’s face told me she truly didn’t understand.


  “The dead,” I told her.

  Author’s note:

  First, I appreciate all the kind comments. If you run across typos or grammar problems in the reading, feel free to visit me at http://www.michael-stark.com/ click on the email link and tell me about them. Or you can email me directly at michael.stark.stories@gmail.com.

  Second, you may see The Island repackaged a bit in the coming weeks. Some vendors want me to combine it into one book, which I am not going to do. I hate buying something I end up not reading. I figure by the time someone gets through the first three parts, they’ll know whether or not they want the rest. So, my intention is that parts 1-3 will always be free.

  To satisfy all concerned, the sections may get a bit of a title change from parts to volumes and maybe different covers.

  Check out the website - http://www.michael-stark.com/ - for links to where The Rock isn’t, and the Survivor’s Page.

  Final notes: This section will remain free for the next couple of weeks. Enjoy. I hope to publish the next book in the same manner. If you liked The Island, keep an eye out for The Rock.

  See you next time.

  MS