“When I brought him down here for the first time, he immediately said we needed a wall. I loved the idea and commissioned two other people to help him out. I still remember laughing as I watched the three of them bring in scrap metal pieces. I don’t even remember who it was now, but those two helpers would bring in one or two smaller pieces and Moses would come stomping in carrying half a dozen or more on his back. He practically built this wall himself!
“I think that’s my favorite memory of him. He was never a man of a lot of words. I always wished he would talk more. He seemed like such a fascinating individual.”
Adus sighed. “I’d like us to start eating now. I know some of you have really been looking forward to eating so much chicken! But as we eat, I’d ask that you share your favorite memory of Moses if you have one.”
Adus sat and the meal began. The bulk of the meal consisted of canned food and typical gas station treats. But in a few minutes, two servers brought in plates for everyone. On them, the company discovered stir fry with real chicken and vegetables. The flavor of it made Sara weak in the knees. In all her life, she’d never tasted anything so good.
Several people around the large table stood up and shared their favorite memories of Moses. Listening to them caused Sara to feel regret at how she had purposefully distanced herself from him. She had no idea he lived out his life with such intentional purpose. In his quiet way, Moses had desperately showed his love for the people here.
About the time Val rose to share about how Moses had saved her in the hotel battle, Sara felt her baby moving vigorously inside her. The sensation shot up to her head. It hit her so strongly that she leaned forward and placed both hands on the table. Connor took note of her odd behavior and offered her a shackled hand. She did not take it but seemed completely engulfed by a world unseen.
The focus of Sara’s mind shot out like immediate, intimate connections to everyone around her. Without even having to try, she held their entire stories on her hands. What normally took a great deal of effort in the halls of time, happened instantly.
The present rent and time seized her in a way she didn’t know possible.
Instantly she knew the stories of every person sitting at the table. With force they collided into her. Though her own story remained in a fog of emotions, she now understood her future through the eyes of their story. She saw the fiery end of all of them. She felt their current minds with all their burning questions.
Unable to help herself, Sara interrupted Val. “She loved you, Marcus.” She said it softly at first. Only Connor heard her. Connor gestured for Val to stop speaking. Val begrudgingly complied at first.
Sara repeated it louder. “She loved you, Marcus.”
Everyone stopped eating at the outburst.
“She doesn’t blame you for what happened,” Sara continued. Her head turned so that she could look at a man directly across from her.
The man looked back at her with a blank gaze. “Are you talking to me?” he asked. “My name’s not Marcus.”
“It was when you lived in a little brown house on the corner by the stop sign,” Sara replied softly. “You know the place I mean. All your memories of your past life are gone – except that one. That brown house comes to haunt your dreams. The poorly painted green walls and the tragedy that happened there.”
The man’s eyes fell and his focus drifted into the table. His face twisted as if some great remembrance overtook him.
Sara continued, “She knew it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. She blamed you for only the briefest of moments but then she remembered how much she loves you. Do not carry that burden of guilt anymore. No one is putting that on you but yourself.”
Marcus said nothing in reply.
Val sat down and stared at her friend.
Adus wondered if he should stop her. He’d already lifted himself a fraction of an inch off his chair. But something told him to let things play out.
“Bill,” Sara continued looking at another of Adus’ men.
Bill looked at Sara confused and slightly afraid.
“Your daughter, Courtney, died with the infection,” Sara said. “She did not wake or know any of this horror.” Sara closed her eyes. “I see her peaceful. Her body undisturbed even now on her babysitter’s living room floor. Her eyes on the door fully expecting you to come back at any moment. She felt no pain.”
With tears running down his face, Bill held Sara’s gaze.
“Thank you,” Bill said softly.
Sara’s face now locked onto a woman. “Your middle name is Valentine. Your parents were sitting in a park watching children play when your mother overheard someone talking about that upcoming holiday. She knew it was your middle name immediately.”
The woman smiled at Sara as if to thank her.
To a fourth person Sara said, “Your wife became an infected. She died trying to secure her first kill.” Desperate to give him some hope, she ended with, “But she is at peace now.”
Sara turned around to someone closer to her. “And you,” Sara said with a strange smile, “were a chef. That’s why you love cooking so much. And you were happy. You and your wife, Kara, couldn’t conceive so you adopted two lovely children. You were a great father.”
“What happened to them?” the man asked.
“They died,” Sara answered.
“How?”
But Sara only smiled.
Turning now to Maya, Sara said, “Maya, sweet Maya. He loved you in his own way.”
With her big brown eyes, Maya looked up at Sara.
“But he was a man of purpose,” Sara continued. “In this fallen world, he could not give you more. It pained him to leave you here. He thought of bringing you many times. But things were different then. Adus thought an army would come today. So he believed you would be safest here instead of wandering around in the wilderness with him. He thought of you often. Especially at the end. You should have seen it. We sent him off in a burning boxcar. It was the only proper funeral any of us ever got. I perceive his last thoughts lingering above the flames. He was thinking of you. He thought he would return to you.”
With eyes locked, the two women stared at each other in silence. Maya’s tears ran down her cheeks. This ended when Maya put her arm on the table and then rested her head on it.
Everyone’s eyes were glued to Sara as she stood. “I have never loved,” Sara confessed. “Not once since a little girl. All my ‘loving’ actions were selfishness in disguise. I gave money to the poor out of guilt or to feel like a good person. I selfishly collected friendships out of loneliness or to gain from them. I apologized only when caught. My ‘care’ for so many people was just to make things smoother for me in the relationship. I have loved you all with a cheap love.”
Sara opened her hands towards everyone at the table. In a voice soaked in care, Sara continued, “But then I saw you. In a flash I knew your life. You stood before me and I unclothed every clever scheme you’ve used to hide yourself. Every flashy pretense. Every façade. Every lie. I stripped off of you. There in time, I perceived you perfectly. Burning soul to burning soul.
“Exposed - I see your dreams. I know your naked pains. I have touched them and they became a part of me. Your grief became my grief. Can you not see?” Sara placed a hand on her chest. “They are here in my heart!
“You have poured in on me like the ocean and I have drowned in you.
“Your hurts bring to light my hypocrisy. I stand before your stories and they rightly judge me guilty. I didn’t know we are all a melancholy race. I thought I was the only hurting one. Pain kept me a captive to myself. But now I see no life is devoid of sadness. All our tales pass through grief.
“Through your tragedies, my selfishness has been stripped away. I knew nothing of suffering!”
Sara reached out and grasped Maya’s hand.
“I didn’t know! The rich and poor. The addict and pompous. All the thieves and all the innocent. The waltzing arrogant in their expensive clothes. T
he cutters and all their brutal honesty. All the ones who suffered so greatly to keep their dark secrets safe. Those that took their own lives. The wrongfully executed. The homeless, the sick, the infamous soldier, the prisoner, the ones with other religious, sexual, or cultural preferences and all the undeserving shame I spat upon them. The famous and their deafening words of haunting emptiness. The millions of unknown who endured countless tragedies without a single word being recorded. Whose entire essence was wrapped away in time and only echoed down in the deepest strands from old generations to make us human. And all those who died before ever tasting life. We are all the same! Cut through all the façade of appearance and pretend and what do you have? A desperate but precious, precious human soul! I didn’t know we are all lost spirits wandering the same wilderness. We’re all looking for home. All on the same journey to find what satisfies!
“I must confess to you a campaign of mine. It’s so shameful to say it out loud but it’s what I’ve done. I have desperately sought a reason to judge you. To stand above you and rightly point my finger down at you.
“Years ago now, I developed the art of judging by physical appearance. I could size you up and find a dozen faults just with your body or behavior. Having no more evidence than physical appearance, I sentenced you like a judge. I placed such great weight on appearance when in the end it makes so little difference. The mere physical representation of a soul is no way to judge one. I damned anyone I considered weird, ugly, or disgusting with my prideful eyes.
“When I started to walk in time, I quickly began to realize there is much more to you than physical appearance. So, in order to keep up my habit, I moved deeper. I used my gift to walk in time and gaze in on your hearts to try to condemn you. I would not be proven wrong! To my great delight, I found what I was looking for. I thought I’d finally trapped you. But as I pressed deeper, I discovered anything but hate.
“I finally started to understand. You see, the most heinous person humanity can offer did not start out that way. No one was born wanting to grow up to be a murderer, pedophile, drunk, or bitter old woman. You all had such beautiful dreams. But when life did not live up to your expectations, you murdered. But not in a way to be caught by any of civilization’s laws. No, this you did in your heart. I have seen each and every one of you enter your heart with hate’s bloody knife. And there you stabbed your dreams until their blood ran into the street. You considered it a thing too painful to believe - to dream.
“And then you ran like a criminal from anything that might remind you of your terrible act. And I watched you. When I saw this, how could I hate you? Like zombie-kind, you were hijacked. Slaves now to your murderous ways. Kidnapped from your true self. I, like you, beat down the fallen and consume them whole. Without even thinking of why I might be doing it, I impulsively devour them. And I cannot stop. I don’t even know what I’m doing. And this is me – one of the living! I am not a mindless undead, but how very much like them I am.
“But I refuse to condemn you as these murderers. I know very well I am the queen of you. I recall your dreams even if you’ve long forgotten them. I consciously chose to remember that naïve, innocent and loveable child. This is how I see our race. With my waking eyes, I see all humanity blending together into a single child stretching up its desperate arms.
“In that way, I see you! Your beautiful stories. Your stunning souls. And when my judging, hateful heart encounters the shining light of your true stories, it melts away.” Sara exhaled loudly and a new wave of tears came over her. “All the hate and malicious thoughts. All the judgment and assumptions. All the selfishness. All the pride! It just dissolves! There I am human to human. All I want from you is forgiveness. And all I have for you is love!”
Sara awkwardly pulled Maya into herself. As she did, Sara met the gaze of another with the kindest look in her eyes. “I love you! With a deep, pure, unhindered kind of love! I have broken down the dam in my heart and it flows freely now. With my unfolding heart I embrace you!”
Sara released Maya and kissed her on the forehead.
“If only I had known earlier! I would have been such a different person! I would have loved compassion and not judged. I would have helped those around me. When the dirty, homeless man stretched out his hand to me, I would have grasped it and exclaimed, ‘You are my brother!’ I would have lost myself in loving the dirty and diseased. I would have known my body is just a resource to be spent in the service of my soul.
“With this kind of love, I love you! Finally it awakens. I gladly disadvantage myself for your benefit. If I could, I would give myself to Zalac for you. But I cannot save you. Even if I did that, they would still invade here.”
Sara pulled her hat off her bald head. “Know that I don’t hate you. I know it’s not your fault.” With that she folded over the material of her hat to make a blindfold and wrapped it around her head.
Everyone silently watched as Sara retreated back into the hallway that would take her to her room. Maya jumped to her feet and ran to follow Sara before Val.
Maya ran ahead and parted the curtain doorway to allow Sara to enter her room. Sara collapsed on the floor before her bed. In a loving a gentle way, Maya knelt down before her.
“How can I help you?” Maya asked in a beautiful voice.
“You are kind, Maya,” Sara said with a smile. Maya looked up into the blindfold wishing she could see Sara’s eyes.
“Would you cry with me?” Sara asked. Maya leaned up against her allowing Sara to rest her head on her shoulder.
Together the two women cried for a time.
After awhile, Sara spoke, “I understand now how Brady was. You can’t just spill all the secrets of time into our world. To do so would ruin friendships and destroy relationships. And so I kept my knowledge all to myself. But now I understand mercy. I told Val her husband, Connor, would die. She took it as an offense and recoiled at the telling. But what I did was merciful. Her husband is going to die and they had only a short time left together. And so I was faced with a choice. If I told her, it would quicken their restoration but probably harm Val and I’s relationship. And so I chose to be merciful even at a cost to myself. It’s these kinds of choices that gnaw at me like they did Brady.
“I knew this grief would soak deeply into my soul. But I did not know I would become it. I am a gallery. A collection of memories too painful to remember. I am all of them. No one will look at me because I am too painful and ugly.” Sara lifted her head. “I am all together disgusting.”
“Sara,” Maya started, “you are anything but disgusting! Look at you. You have life growing inside of you. Did you not see everyone’s eyes on you at dinner?”
“You are kind,” Sara replied smiling.
Maya caressed Sara’s scalp. A gesture made very strange by the absence of hair.
“Maya, it is coming. I’ve been having contractions for about an hour now.”
Maya looked up at her. Sara’s gaze turned to the floor. Maya followed her gaze to find a puddle of water between Sara’s legs.
“The last grains of time slip from the hourglass.”
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙
A hideous roar echoed through the air. It sounded so loudly even the survivors deep inside the earth heard it. The company knew its meaning all too well. Soon afterwards a scout came down the tunnel entrance to report a terrifying storm brewed outside.
“The sky burns,” the scout told Adus, Connor and Val, “with an unnatural, green, electrical kind of fire. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And there’s lightning everywhere. It seems like they control where and when it strikes.”
“Tell the above ground scouts to retreat to the building directly above us if it’s safe enough to move,” Adus ordered. “They can keep watch from there and come down here if the storm gets worse.”
With that the scout climbed back up the ladder to the surface.
“Do you have a plan or something we could help with?” Connor asked Adus.
Adu
s turned to one of his men. “Bring me Bill,” he ordered.
Adus then turned to the couple. “I’m not sure there are any good plans left. How willing do you think Sara would be to talk to me?”
“I would think she’d want to help,” Connor replied. “She’s given us advice many times on the future.”
“Ok. Then I will try. She gave me a strange speech when I first met her here about not abusing her abilities. But her actions at dinner seem to contradict that. She seems erratic to me. I don’t understand her.”
“She’s an odd one,” Connor replied.
“I’m not sure how much she meant for all that to happen,” Val said. “I mean, I haven’t been around too much lately but she’s had a few episodes before where her ability seemed to get the better of her. And she’s pregnant! She sees the future - which apparently is pretty bleak. The woman has a right to be a bit unstable.”
Bill came running up to them. “You called,” Bill said.
“It’s time to discuss our options. I’m afraid they’re very limited unless we figure out a way to change the weather. Our movements will be reduced to the tunnels. We’ve mapped a fair amount of the underground systems of the city. But, frankly, I don’t know that that buys us anything. I’ve thought for a while now, that if the time came where we had to leave, we’d use boats. But with this weather that would be a disaster.”
Adus looked at Connor, “Do you have any idea what is causing this weather? A plane or missile?”
“We heard someone call it the weather witch,” Val said. “But no description of what it actually is.”
“I’m sure the chipmunks would know,” Bill said. “We could try contacting them.
Connor and Val found this reference peculiar.
“I think we’ve burned that bridge,” Adus replied. “If they’re even still alive.”
“I think we’ve got to try, Adus,” Bill replied.
“Who are the chipmunks?” Val asked.
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