Connor brushed her hair from her face as he said, “And here you are.”
Val waited to see if he finished. When he did not speak again, she said, “Thank you for telling me all that. It makes me glad I didn’t let you go completely. I almost did. I wasn’t joking when I said I was fine with you getting eaten by zombies.”
“I know.”
“Connor, last night was amazing and I’m looking forward to us getting back together.”
“But-”
“But you really screwed me over, Connor, in a lot of ways. You’ve made an excellent start to earning back my trust. But don’t make the mistake of thinking just because I’ve let you sleep with me again everything is golden. Keep pursuing me. Keep engaging me. And realize some things are just going to take time.”
“I understand. I think all this is very gracious of you. Thank you for giving me another opportunity. It means the world to me.”
“Thank you for maturing into a position that I could offer it to you. For a long time I didn’t feel safe with you. There’s no way I could have given you another chance if I didn’t feel safe with you.” She rose to kiss him and added, “Come’on, lover boy, we should get back to the shit-drain that is reality.”
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙
Val and Connor soon headed back towards the beach. They walked hand in hand. Val had not noticed it before, but the city maintained a dark romance about it. Even in death's grip, vines still clung to their perches on second level balconies. A dark energy radiated from the place very in tune with everything going on.
Before they reached the beach, they passed a little house on the right with a fence.
"Ha," Val said feeling very light-hearted. "Look at this," she said releasing Connor's hand and stooping down to pick something up. She managed to spot a stuffed animal toy through the waste and debris. Dusting it off with her hand, Val revealed a fuzzy penguin. "I'll give this to Sara for the baby."
"She'll love it." Connor retook Val's hand and they continued down the lane.
"Now see, Reginald would be a great name for a penguin," Val began. "But that name just has all kinds bad connotations with it now."
"You should let Sara name it."
"I don't know that Sara names things anymore. She'll just go back in time and find his actual name and then tell me the story about how it's owner got eaten alive or had cancer or something. It's all very tragic."
They came to the edge of the beach and Val blurted out, "Beauford! That's a good name for a penguin."
"Sounds marvelous," Connor said somewhat sarcastically.
With the others barely in view, Connor and Val could tell things had changed. Dramatically. Most of them inhabited the beach. They all sat around in the same lazy manner in which the couple left them. But now a dark, lone figure sulked out on one of the sandbars.
Val couldn’t help noticing a row of heavy winter coats lined up on the beach.
“What’s up with all the coats?” Val asked Andrea.
“Sara,” Andrea replied. “She said we’d be needing them. I got one for you and Connor. I didn’t know what style you liked.”
“Is Sara ok? Has anyone talked to her?”
Andrea hesitated. “She’s different now. She was saying awful things that made everyone afraid of her.”
“How long as she been out there?”
“Several hours.”
“Damn it!” Val handed the penguin to Connor and Val ran into the water. Connor put the thing on the sand and busied himself with picking a winter coat.
Val waded out to the dark figure. Sara sat with legs crossed wearing a black sweatshirt with the hood over her head. As Val approached, she became aware of several unusual things. First, Sara wore a ripped shred of her dark shirt around her head. The grey material, still stained with Sara’s own blood from when she cut into herself, was bound around her eyes like a blindfold. The second horrified Val. With a small razorblade, Sara cut deep, bloody passages down her left arm. Val looked in shock at Sara’s right arm already displaying similar terrible gouges. Immediately, Val grabbed the razorblade and threw it into the sea.
“What are you doing?” Val screamed. “What have you done?” Val knelt before her friend and found Sara’s hood covered her bald head. “You shaved your head?”
Sara made no reply. Her right hand continued its terrible cutting motion just without the razorblade.
Val reached into Sara’s hood and pulled up the blindfold. Bloodshot, vacant eyes drifted behind it. “No!” Val screamed. “No. I’m not losing you to la-la-land.” Val slapped Sara across the face hard enough to make her head jerk.
Sara snapped back into consciousness and immediately her eyes locked onto Val with zombie-like intensity.
Sara screamed at Val, “Do you have any idea the chain of events that would be put into place if I ate you or even attacked you now?” Sara clenched her teeth so tightly Val thought she might break one. “I am convinced,” at this Sara repeated her last word three times in mechanical fashion. “We would all die! I believe we jump like adventurers onto raised pillars through time. Below is a fiery death. Turning to the left or the right will bring us to certain destruction. I know it now! I can see it. Val, I perceive those raised pillars swirling with orange letters! I can guide us. With my foreknowledge we can outwit him at his own game. He’s used the future against us. But so will we.
“Mark my words, Val, one wrong step and we’re his. He comes like a dragon behind us to devour everything. We cannot misstep.”
“Sara, you’re talking like a crazy person! What do you mean? Are you talking about Brady?”
“I see him rising like a dragon through time. He comes to consume me and my offspring. My baby to slave labor and myself to be culled. But, if we do not misstep, we have one chance. A thing in time I cannot see. Try as I might its powerful emotions drive me back from it.”
“Sara, you’re not really making any sense. What do you mean?”
“Of course you don’t understand. How could you? It’s always been me. Brady and I are set in opposition to each other like great stones. One must fall. One must remain.”
“Sara, I’m really worried about you. Look at what you’ve done to yourself.”
Sara replaced the blindfold over her yellow eyes.
“Ok,” Val said, “what is up with the blindfold? Have you been taking cues from Moses?”
“I’m tired of seeing double,” she replied. “What will happen and what is happening. Or at least what is happening for you. I don’t know where I am anymore.”
Val didn’t know how to take this or respond to it. “Well why are you cutting your arm?”
Sara’s head dropped down as if she saw through her blindfold. “Inconsequential,” Sara whispered obviously preoccupied with something else. “If I build up the courage, I might gouge my eyes out. Honestly, they’re more of a hindrance than a help at this point. Maybe my ears too. Or I might go insane.”
Val placed her hands on Sara’s face. “Sara,” Val repeated Sara’s name until Sara finally stopped talking. “What is going on? You are seriously losing it. You’ve gone nuts!”
“How can I tell you? The words I have are a foreign language you cannot understand. They come from beyond. A place you’ve never been. I’m more there than here now. Remember that place I told you about where I go to think sometimes?”
“The place with the water?”
“Yes. I feel more at home there than here. The more I understand, the more I feel alone. I’ve spent days on those beaches weeping and I don’t even know why.” She began tearing up even as she spoke. In a whisper more to herself than Val she said, “It’s something Corpus said.” She continued her conversation with Val, “I’ll sit in that warm ocean water like an old woman soaking her aching bones. It’s the only place I actually feel warm anymore. I feel like I’ve lived far too long. I feel ancient like an old woman in a nursing home who’s outlived the rest of her generation. All her friends and everyone who underst
ood her have long since passed away and she’s left alone with the memories of a bygone way of life. I feel confused and nothing makes sense anymore.
“I’m ripped. Caught. I’m neither in that world nor in this one. Forever between the two. There are so many times, I honestly can’t tell the difference between what has happened and what will happen. I’ll be back in Colorado Springs for days sometimes. Everything is happy. I’m with Brady before I knew he hated me. But then I remember everyone I’m talking to is dead. And then I’m catapulted into the future and everyone’s skin will melt off their faces from the intensity of the nuke. And I’ll be standing naked and alone with skeletons all around. It’s like I’m simultaneously seeing what was and what will be.”
Sara screamed aloud.
“I have these awful dreams when I try to sleep. I’ll see myself torn between the two worlds caught up in limbo. I’ll be falling in between the worlds and out of both of them into oblivion. It’s like I’m falling out of time altogether like I never existed.
“That’s what it’s been like since we left the hotel. And then we found Chuck. He reminded me of my son Evan. And then I was handed the wonderful privilege of watching him die. It’s like life was making up for the fact that I never witnessed my real son’s death. So it gave me a surrogate one to watch suffer. He died at my breast, Val! I have seen hundreds and hundreds die in time. But at least it bore some sense of mercy. But this! It would have been more merciful for us to kill him. No one should ever have to die like that, especially not a child.
“What’s the point of it all? Boulder after boulder is hurled at me crushing my very bones. How much can I endure? Why have I been thrust into torture?
“Do you want to know something horrible?” Val did not answer. “Brady never said, but I guessed it even before I confirmed it in time. The day the infection hit, it was late afternoon and Evan, Samantha, and I were driving around town doing errands. We were in a minor car accident because I was driving and died at the wheel. They were killed instantly from the infection and never came back to life. I ate them, Val. They were the first. Do you have any idea what it’s like to have to live with that?”
Val cried. “But Sara,” Val said between her tears, “you can’t hold yourself responsible for that. You were in your madness. It was not your fault.”
“Brady told me he buried them but it was just the bones. It comes back to me sometimes in my dreams.” Val bowed her head and took Sara’s hand. “Are you beginning to understand? Does even an ounce of this come into your understanding? I speak these things to you and you can’t handle them. I’ve lived them. Over and over. These are the horrors I see every time I shut my eyes! Where can I take these boulders? I give you a small one to carry and you are crushed. Ground into the dust! You cannot even begin to understand how alone I am.
“Now I understand. For I too am a bastard. Like a child I come to life seeking its comfort but it does not know me. As if the sight of me only produces the painful memory of his unfaithful wife, he casts me out into the street.”
Val released Sara’s hand and cried.
“Shall I go on? Even just the physical things exhaust me! I’m pregnant which brings with it a tide of unstable emotions. Do you know how many foods I’ve craved that don’t exist anymore? I want fresh milk. I want ice cream! I’m the only woman in the world who’s ever had pregnancy cravings for food that doesn’t exist anymore.
“But I should stop. I open my mouth anymore these days and just destroy people. My words are like fiery arrows.”
Sara rose and stood over Val. “You’re going to want to find a heavy jacket. In a few days, I won’t be the only one who’s freezing.”
Unsure of what else to do, Val followed her back to shore.
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙ ∙
When Sara stepped onto the shore, she gathered everyone around her and addressed them. Everyone stood in a circle around her but remained at a distance. The gouges on her arm and the shirt on her eyes kept anyone from getting close.
“As you all know, I see through time. I can see both past and future. This makes me an obvious choice for leader, but I don’t want it. We will keep Val as the leader unless she’s willing to throw Connor’s hat back in the ring.” Sara paused and her head looked at Val despite the blindfold covering her eyes. But when Val said nothing, Sara continued. “I will help in any way I can. I have trained myself to be able to focus on moments directly ahead in time. I can see what is going to happen just before it does giving enough time to warn people. So with Val’s leadership and my foreknowledge, we’re going to outsmart Zalac.”
“If you can actually see things,” Ian said, “it’s time for some answers. First off, what’s up with the zombies here?”
“Seeing through time doesn’t just work like that. I can’t easily shoot to a specific event unless it’s directly connected to me. It’s very complicated. And emotions play a big factor. Events surrounded by strong emotions get very clouded. And on top of that, I see the events through a specific person. It’s not this overarching awareness of everything. I usually can only see and feel what the person sees and feels.”
“So what happens if your emotions get the better of you and one of us dies because of it? How can we trust you? I mean, you can’t even tell us the simple answer of what happened here. Something that, I think, is both relevant and important.”
“I don’t know the exact details but I know where we could find out.”
“Why are we heading east?” Owen interrupted.
“There are lots of reasons,” Sara said turning to him.
“Can you share one?”
“I’ve allowed us to continue heading east mainly because there is no other choice. As we already knew, Zalac is coming for me. But what you don’t know is that a very sizeable force has gathered to the west and north of us. We are quickly becoming trapped and east is our only consistently free option.”
“How are we going to fight them?” Owen asked.
“Do not ask me that.” Sara’s response caused a ripple through the group. “I’ll tell you what I can but I also have learned not to share everything. It’s better for you to find out on your own sometimes.
“But back to the matter at hand. Do we want to see what happened here or should we just move on? Val should decide.”
“There’s no point,” Val replied, “especially if there’s really an approaching army. We shouldn’t waste any more time. Let’s start moving east again.”
The others started gathering their belongings while Val took Sara off to the side.
“I thought I told you,” Val began, “I didn’t want you putting any more stress on yourself. You shouldn’t be consistently viewing the future for our sakes. I want you to rest. You’re going to kill yourself.”
“No,” Sara answered very poignantly. “I’m not. Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
“Sara, you know what I mean.”
“We’ve had this conversation. Don’t isolate me. I want to help.”
“Know that I am not happy about this,” Val replied. Val turned to leave but then sheepishly returned to Sara to ask, “Well if you’re going to do this, mind telling me where we’re going?”
“There’s an old locomotive that still runs. I feel its burning frame in my mind. They used it sometimes in ceremonies so it’s in fairly good working condition.”
“How come it runs when nothing else does?”
“It’s mechanical,” Sara replied in a scolding tone.
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean,” Val said under her breath.
The company gathered their belongings. Since no one wanted to wear them yet, the team appointed Moses to be the coat carrier. When everyone was ready they finally headed out towards the railway station.
Connor, Owen and Carlos made it a point to kill every zombie they came across. Carlos especially ran with a spring in his step as he bolted from harmless zombie to harmless zombie bashing in their heads with his bat.
; “Carlos, I love watching you mess crack heads up!” Val said. “It always makes me glad.”
“If this were a video game,” Carlos replied, “this would be like the bonus level. They don’t even fight back! It’s all gravy,” he said with an odd little gesture. He ran up to one of the zombies and struck it across the face, “Ten points!” He did this to several others and yelled, “Rampage!”
“You’re very odd,” Val replied.
Carlos replied in the tone of a child, “I know.”
Carlos went up to one but was startled when it turned suddenly to look up into the sky. Carlos didn’t wait to see what would happen and quickly caved in its skull. Those around it, however, seemed to come to life. Almost instantly Carlos found himself against a horde.
Val and the others quickly readied their guns to assist. Carlos barely survived the onslaught as the team hastily retreated into a nearby building for cover.
“What’s going on,” Carlos asked. “Why are they waking up?”
“She’s here,” Sara replied cryptically.
“No,” Val screamed, “we had to put up with all that cryptic speech with Brady. Tell us plainly!”
“A queen.”
The answer sent shivers down everyone’s spines and all suddenly felt very vulnerable.
“They’re the ones that steal minds, right?” Owen asked.
“Only at a certain level,” Sara replied. “It’s not as soon as when they mature to becoming a king or queen.”
“I’d ask you how you know that,” Connor began, “but we all probably know the answer to that.”
“Could she control us?” Val asked.
“I don’t know. She’s a newer queen so I hope she hasn’t evolved that far yet. We’ll have to risk it. She’s quickly cutting off our escape. And she’ll bring her minions down on top of us. If we’re going to escape, we have to hurry!”
“Connor and Owen,” Val ordered, “use the bigger guns to clear a way out. Let’s get out of here!”
The two heavy guns managed to cut a line through the enemy. Val deemed it safe enough to press forward. Soon the whole team sprinted out of the building in the direction of the railway tracks.
Sorrow: A Novel Written by Brian Wortley Page 36