∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙
With their magnificent ascent nearing completion, gravity died away and released Connor and Kristi from being pinned against the wall. Connor put his feet against the wall behind him and pushed off. He could not hold in his laughter as he flew effortlessly through the air to the opposing wall. Kristi followed and the two floated their way to Holly and Mark.
“There you two are,” Holly greeted them.
But Connor did not hear her words. As soon as he came around the corner, his eyes were saturated by a breathtaking sight. The entire cabin had been completely repainted by the wonders outside. The walls of the shuttle, Holly, Mark, and the whole cockpit beamed in brilliant fuchsia.
“Welcome,” Mark said, “to something completely unlike space as I knew it.”
As if they’d accidentally fallen inside a kaleidoscope of the most vibrant colors imaginable, their surroundings danced in waves of purple, blue, green and several other collisions of colors. The heavens stretched out before them like a battlefield. Blue’s forces advanced on their right pressing into purple with finger-like advancements. Meanwhile purple expanded almost effortlessly overtop green. A new brownish-black saturated the area before turning completely purple with the advance of new colors.
Every direction they looked bore some brilliant color or unusual wonder. Connor could not help watching it for a moment.
“We should see the Weather Witch in a bit,” Mark announced. “I think it’ll be on the right. Keep an eye out for it.”
“I’m so impressed,” Connor began, “that you guys were able to get the shuttle ready for launch so quickly.”
“Well really most of the work had already been done.”
“How do you mean?”
“Originally, there had been a shuttle launch scheduled for some time right after the virus hit in 2005. I was a big part of the preparation for the launch. The shuttle had been prepped and moved onto the launch platform but no one was around to fly it. That’s why the shuttle’s been sitting on the launch pad all these years. The hardest part was retracting the arm above the shuttle. It was no easy task without a big power source.”
Mark pressed a few controls on the panel in front of him. “Xavier, are you there?”
“For the moment,” the reply came. Everyone heard gunfire in the background as he spoke.
“Where’s the satellite from where we are?”
“Up! Right!” Xavier said over the sound of much closer gunfire. “Maybe five minutes away at current-”
“Xavier?”
Silence. Mark cast a quick glance to Holly and then turned his eyes to the window to look for the satellite. He veered the shuttle a little to the right.
“Die!” Xavier’s voice came over the radio.
“Things pretty hot down there?” Mark asked.
Xavier ignored the question and said, “I thought of this right after you left. If whoever built this satellite anticipated all these asteroids, it may have defenses. I can’t be sure. It’s just a thought.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Mark replied. “Can you see how close we are?”
“Minute. Maybe two.”
“How far in the building are they?”
A few inaudible noises came over the radio. “Short Stick,” came Xavier’s voice, “behind the file cabinets! Here, have some turpentine!” More muffled sounds came through until it eventually went silent.
“Xavier, are you still here?”
Mark exhaled loudly and resumed looking out the window.
Undreamed magnificence encircled them. Patterns of colors exploded before them like ripples in a pool.
Connor reached forward towards the glass half expecting to touch pure color. If he hadn’t been on such a pointed mission, Connor wondered if he could have lost himself for good in such a place. Straining forward, Connor could see the sun burning through the colors. The signs of its imminent death were obvious. Hideous flares lashed out of it as if to take every surrounding object with it. Connor looked on it with pity and awe. The sight of seeing something so powerful dying frightened him. He found himself feeling like a character in mythology sadly watching one of the ancients pass away.
“I see something,” Kristi announced. “It’s there,” she said pointing.
Mark looked over the object as best he could. “That must be it. If it does have defenses, they’ll probably be on the backside. The side pointed out to space.”
Everyone held their breathing knowing it might destroy them at any moment.
“What would it have?” Connor asked. “Lasers? Missiles?”
“I have no idea. Both of those take oxygen to burn, right?”
While they were still talking, an arm on the space-side of the satellite moved their way.
“It’s going to attack us!” Holly yelled.
Everyone’s attention focused on the satellite and its moving arm. A continuous laser beam shot out of the satellite arm and hit the shuttle.
Kristi screamed and Mark jerked the controls. The sound of something breaking filled their ears.
The shuttle jumped forward closing the distance between the two objects.
Connor leaned over to where he could see the laser hitting the shuttle. It punctured a hole through the hull on the left wing. Once the laser penetrated the wing it moved across the hull to another seemingly random location on the shuttle melting all the tiles between.
The large satellite came closer and closer until impact became unavoidable. Everyone braced themselves by either buckling into a seat or at least hanging onto one. Mark turned his head away as the shuttle crashed nose first into the satellite. The deafening noise shook the cabin. Mark looked up to see lots of debris fleeing the scene. The satellite twirled off into space with the laser spinning like a wheel.
“We’re still alive,” Connor announced.
“You two go back and check to see if any compartments need to be sealed off,” Mark said.
“How will I know?” Connor asked.
Mark looked at him. “You’ll suffocate from lack of oxygen and be sucked out into space. That’s a pretty good sign that you should shut that door on your way out.”
Connor just stared at the man for a moment without saying anything. Without warning Connor just turned and floated out of the room with Holly following.
Mark maneuvered the shuttle around for another run at the satellite.
About the time Connor and Holly returned, the satellite was again growing larger outside the window.
“We didn’t see anything,” Connor reported.
“Good. Hopefully our luck continues. We’re like a balloon out here. One side pops and we’re all done for.”
Without Xavier’s voice on the radio, Connor and his team felt very alone. Out here, nothing tied them back to earth. If their engines were damaged, they could float off into nothingness forever. Connor looked out at how insignificantly they tiptoed into the vastness of space. What appeared beautiful before now seemed sinister and brooding.
With everyone buckled into their seats they collided again into the large satellite. A similarly deafening noise ripped through their ears. This time an entire arm broke off and the spinning laser finally ceased its pointless war on vacancy. The crew sat and watched the satellite twirl harmlessly out into space.
A feeling of victory overtook the room but quickly subsided to aimlessness.
“So what now?” Mark broke the silence.
“We’re going to ram Zalac’s bunker,” Connor announced. Everyone looked at him startled by how confidently he said the words. He spoke them as firmly as if they had been the plan all along.
“Someone is going there,” Connor continued. “Sara and others or maybe just Sara. I don’t know. But its defenses are still operational. If anyone is going to get near it, it’ll need to be hit.”
“There’s no way I could hit that,” Mark replied. “This thing maneuvers like a cow – and that’s before it’s banged up.”
“Di
d you ever just know something would work? I mean, what are the chances of a small group of people outrunning a continent-sized army of zombies? And yet here we are. What’s the probability of someone infecting himself with zombification and saving the woman he loves? And yet it’s been done. Why not this?”
Mark returned to the controls and started moving the shuttle. “It’s not like I had a better idea anyway,” Mark said. “Alright, Mr. Magic, you got a direction for me?”
Caught up in the ridiculousness of the moment, Connor puffed out his chest and said with the tone of a starship commander, “That way.” Connor followed up the words with a flick of his finger in a direction.
Mark looked at him in utter disbelief and sighed, “Oh, God.”
Mark turned the shuttle and for the first time they had a full view of their dying planet. There in the grip of the dead, it burned like a ball in flames. Immediately Connor was reminded of an old fantasy book he’d read when a youth. Like a spell warming up in some caster’s hand, it burned with flames reaching out into space as far as the weakened atmosphere supplied oxygen for it to burn. Connor now knew that even if the dying sun didn’t consume it, the planet would die of its own sickness.
As best he could, Mark drove the shuttle into a fatal descent. Connor moved into the seat next to him and the two exchanged a fateful glance.
The shuttle creaked and groaned under the stress. As they approached the far side of reentry, the starship started disintegrating. Considering a pure miracle the shuttle lasted as long as it had, Connor fully expected it to shred itself to pieces long before they reached earth again. Despite the stress, the ship refused to fail them. Plastered into their seats the crew watched with pounding hearts as the ground below grew closer and closer.
Though it seemed impossible for any other thing to grab his attention in such a dire moment, Connor encountered perfect peace. In those deafening moments, Connor and it came to a perfect understanding of each other. Their sweet conversation went not unlike a meeting of a long travelling wanderer finally coming home. Before the end, Connor’s face lightened and his gaze turned upward even into a smile.
∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ ∙ • ∙
Another painful contraction overtook Sara’s body. She wished she could stop its progression but her body refused.
Sara receded into herself. As if in slow motion she tilted back her head until it rested against the street. Her hands searched desperately for something to hold onto but found only zombie ankles. Having no other option, she latched onto two for support.
She grunted the deep pains of childbirth like millions of women before her. Between pushes, she looked up at the swirling faces above her floating like blurry images. They darted back and forth in muffled colors as if she viewed some memory through rainy glass.
As if heroic Atlas uncharacteristically forsook his high position, the weight of the earth seemed to be placed upon Sara’s narrow shoulders. Her contractions intensified but even now she could not forsake the weight of her race. When the contraction ended, love again overwhelmed her. She courageously reached up and coddled the jaw of a rotted face with her two-fingered hand.
“I don’t hate you,” she screamed in agony. Her full-fingered hand stretched out to the one on her left and she wailed again, “I don’t hate you!”
Another contraction came on again and she screamed before inhaling. “I love you. I love you!” She tried to speak more but the pain imprisoned her voice.
With the weight of the end pressing upon her soul, she entered the gates of agony. She now found it impossible to keep her hands from pulling up her legs. The feeling of impending doom overshadowed her. She would have given anything to keep this child from being born before her captors. But all her body refused to fight the child for its time had come. She screamed and cried as the unavoidable urge to push swallowed her. Her scream turned into a grunt as her muscles contracted.
Her unshakable will rose like a weapon dipped in the magnificent sum of all those who came before her. Poised. Ready for battle.
Alone inside herself, she stood on a mountain top facing the very fires of oblivion like an ambassador of her kind. She went to them like kindling to the flame but passed through them like deep waters.
With the infused screams of millions of women, Sara raised her eyes and pushed again several times. Drinking dry the cup of womanly strength for one last magnificent effort. In that glorious and terrible moment, Sara’s burden became complete. With no one there to catch it, the baby freely fell to the dirty street. For the first time in many years Sara’s heart leapt at the cry of her child. Her once agonized face turned to happiness.
With the smile still on Sara’s face, the gnarled faces of the dead held back no longer. Their teeth tore into her as if she held no more value than a used up breeding heifer. For before she could even reach down to grasp her child or cut the umbilical cord, a twisted zombie with his entire jaw rotted off scooped down and snatched the child.
In an all-consuming devastation few humans reach, Sara let out a soul-shattering cry as she was forced to watch one zombie hold her beloved child while the second gnawed the umbilical cord with his bare teeth. The zombie tore delight from her heart as it took the child and began shoving its way through the dead.
She gathered all her remaining strength into an effort to sit up, but dozens of dead faces and hands pressed against her. Try as she might, she could not overcome their strength. Her will failed and she resigned herself to death.
In the excruciating pain of hundreds of teeth digging into her, she whimpered, “Brady…”
As if in slow motion, Sara felt her head being pushed into the pavement under the force of zombie hands. Like worms their fingers dug into her body. Those that could not reach into her tore at her skin, ripping it like paper. Caring little for herself, she pressed her arms up against her breasts that she might be able to feed her child if she survived.
She tried to cry at the horrifying sensation of feeling things move inside her own body but the tears would not come. She struggled no longer and gave in to their greed. In her mind she made one last effort to escape into time. To her surprise, she detached enough to dampen the horrible noises of the dead. Departing even further, she could make the noise cease altogether.
She startled even herself with how well she could detach from reality. The sounds of war ceased altogether and she no longer felt the movement of deathly fingers within her body. Finding nothing but darkness in this new reality, she dared to open her eyes to find a stunning surprise. She had not detached from reality at all. Zombie fingers and mouths clawed no more. She still lay helplessly on the street with her salivating captors lingering over her. But motionlessly they glared into her astonished eyes.
She moved only her eyes at first not wanting to break whatever spell saved her. All around her stood dozens of zombies all motionless except their eyes. But beyond hateful stares, they made no advances towards her.
Disregarding her better judgment, she moved a leg away from her captors. To her amazement, they remained in their frozen spells. She then quickly slipped out from under their grasp and knocked several them over as she stood. She turned and found a king’s towering body only inches away. Her head came up to its chest and she had to tilt her head to see its sightless face. Like a statue it brooded above her motionlessly. She stepped quickly out of its reach.
In a display of miraculous willpower, she set aside the searing pain of her broken body and coerced her bleeding legs into a search for her baby. In the desperation only a mother can truly know, she threw down zombie after zombie following the cry of her newborn child.
When she came upon the monster, she snatched the screaming child from its hideous arms. Though she thought she lacked the strength, she found her eyes bursting into tears. With the strength regained by holding the child in her arms, she reached over and stripped off a bathrobe from a nearby zombie. She clothed herself in it and placed the baby under its cover.
Sara looked up to the sk
y with a face like stone and removed her own placenta. With that accomplished, she collapsed into a pile of bloody tears with her baby at her breast.
Part 7
The Completion of the Masterpiece
of Sara’s Soul
It took some time for Sara to become aware of it. But something in the army of statues moved. She peered through the tree-trunk legs of the soldiers and saw a pair of feet clumsily shuffling her direction.
She grasped her child and struggled to her feet. She strained to look over the heads of the zombies around her and saw the figure moving ten or fifteen zombies away. It moved with the slow jerking movements of a level one zombie.
Sara recognized the clothes on the zombie and let it approach. As she waited she peeled off a shirt from a nearby zombie and wrapped her child in it. Sara started clearing the way behind her by knocking over zombies to make a path. With a clear way of escape, Sara waited for the zombie to approach. Its arms came over two of the nearest zombies and carelessly pressed them down to make an entrance to where Sara stood.
It broke into the clearing and Sara looked on Val’s twisted face. Maya’s crusty blood now dried on Val’s lips and chin. Val looked on Sara with intense hunger.
“Look,” Sara said pulling back her right sleeve to expose her half eaten arm. “Meat.”
Val’s head shook with excitement and she wobbled forward. Sara backed up through her line of cleared zombies leading Val along.
Sara and Val made their way through thousands of frozen zombies until they came to a loading dock. Sara put her child up on the concrete and climbed up. From the upper platform Sara waited for Val. Val approached and encountered the concrete rising. She stumbled over to it and placed her hands on the top of it. But just as quickly brought them back down. Val stupidly walked forward and crashed into the concrete face first. She repeated this several times before looking for a way around.
“No, Val,” Sara yelled from above. “It’ll take hours to go that way.” Sara watched in frustration as Val stumbled over a few boxes that littered her path.
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