Chapter Twenty-Four
Decisions
I was dwelling in a dream reliving a memory, just like I had been doing for many a night, but I momentarily recognized that this particular remembrance was different from the others. I found myself standing in Neves’ living room, surrounded by the large open windows stamped to the ivory colored walls, making the influx of sunlight whitewash anything outside the room. Neves’ antique longcase clock was in front of me, a family heirloom Neves was heartbroken to leave behind. The only family relic he could bring was an aged wristwatch belonging to his late father. I heard the ticking of the robust mechanical timekeeper, but I saw that its hands and numbers were missing. What I saw next gave me my first real inkling that something was off in what my mind was conjuring, that perhaps this was no memory after all. In the corner of the room was Mr. Tillar’s chair. It was a bulky lounge chair made from the expensive hide of the thick-skinned bi-bi species that no one else would ever sit on. I remembered him sitting on the red-stained seat the first time I went to visit Siena’s family. The chair itself was improperly placed beside the stairs of the Tillar home, where I observed, with no small amount of foreboding, the dead kite’s sprawled out body, looking as if I had just blown off its brains.
Adding to the assorted imagery, a sound I could not exactly label sprang up behind me. The enigmatic sound was fleeting, broken, deep, and more than enough for me to impulsively turn around. The room was suddenly cast into a dim twilight, but it was still bright enough for me not to mistaken the womanly outline standing (or was she hovering?) no more than a yard away from me, a figure who made my heart beat back to life. Lizeth. While her facial features were what I had always known them to be, her eyes were changed somehow. They were fuller and uncompromising. I next noticed another mistake. She was dressed in a familiar green nightgown, but it was the nightgown Siena wore on the night we were engaged. I was about to say something, but Liz pressed a bony finger to her lips. She lowered it when she saw I had complied with her bidding.
Then, in a muzzled tone not belonging to any voice known to me, she asked smoothly and firmly, “Do you want your son to live another day?”
I languidly nodded. I began to make out my name being called from high up in the sky, but my focused remained steadfastly on the form of my wife, who continued with, “Then don’t board the ships-” The echo-like voice was cut off from saying anymore by the voice in the sky shouting my name in a swiftly rising pitch.
Another split second had the spell vanish completely and replaced by my mother shaking me awake and proclaiming, “Roym! Roym! Get up! They’re attacking!”
I rose my head to see Neves and Bervin desperately packing a few items to leave. I distinguished a crackling voice coming from the radio Yitro was holding. It was loud enough for me to hear every term being said. There was Injector activity to the east of us, which was the opposite side of the port; a fact I found odd. After I bent down to grab my backpack, I felt my leg become seized just as I rose. I looked down to find Dayce.
He stated with a combination of purpose and anxiety, “Daddy, I don’t want to go.”
His small voice was no louder than a whisper, but it staggered me more than any jolt from a lightning bolt. It prompted a flash of my recent reverie. I knelled down and, with much reluctance, he let go of my leg.
“Why don’t you want to go?” I asked of him.
He did not want to look me in the eye. Not a letter more he spoke. He merely hugged me with an emotion I had not felt in such a long time. He started sobbing. Was it possible? Was he brought a dream similar to my own? And from whom? It seemed incredible to fathom, yet, so did everything else taking place.
“We have to go,” said my mother urgently.
My thoughts raced faster than I could process them. Before I knew it, the sentence, “I’m not going,” was blurted out.
“What?!” my mother cried hysterically, detaining the attention of everyone in the room. “You’re not going?! Why not?!”
While my mother was fuming in disbelief and catching her breath, Siena asked, with a tone in stark contrast to the former speaker, “Roym?”
I stood up, lifting Dayce with me. Tears were still running down his cheeks, but he stopped being audibly distressed. “Something’s wrong,” I answered. “I-I can’t really explain it, but the ships… they aren’t safe.”
“And we’re safe here?” Yitro alluded.
“I believe we’re safer, yes,” I replied, perhaps not as convincingly as I would have liked, but, then again, I had not fully swayed myself to the decision. “I guess I think the enemy will concentrate at the port.”
“Are you sure about this?” Bervin asked me, gazing at me with the same expression of concern everyone else used.
“I wish I was… The rest of you can go. I can’t stop you, but… I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
No one flapped their tongues as my company stared dumbfounded at me, attempting to judge how cracked I was. I couldn’t fault them, of course. After all, I was advising for them to do the one thing that was against all nature for them to do; not run.
A sizzled voice broke the stillness of the hardening air. It came from the radio and it stated, “Those in the barracks have one minute before we go!”
“I can’t leave you,” said my mother as she embraced me, sounding resolute, which by itself wasn’t novel, but the softness in her voice was. There was also something in her eyes, something I knew only came out when she thought about my father.
“I’ll stay too,” Siena was the next to say.
“Well, I wouldn’t be much of a grandfather if I left my only grandson,” said Neves firmly.
Delphnia didn’t say anything, although, by the look she gave Neves, it made me believe she wasn’t as committed to staying as we were, but considering she didn’t say anything to challenge our decree, I assumed she thought persuading her husband to leave their last connection to their lost daughter would have proved fruitless.
Bervin couldn’t contain his laugh, which was hearty and brief. He then professed, “Dammit! We’re all officially crazy! Spirits guide us!”
“You all serious?” asked Yitro. “What do you think?” he went on to ask Eloram.
“I think we’re screwed either way,” she amiably replied.
“Couldn’t have said it any better,” Yitro responded with a smile meant mostly for her, but also given to everybody else. “Shit, you better be right about this, old-timer.”
We only had each other’s company in the entire building by the end of the minute. The rumble of the engines of the evacuating vehicles dwindling farther into the distance made it official; there was no turning back. The gunfire came next, along with eruptions from the tanks as the defensive line provided the convoy with cover fire. We still had the radio, or the inside of building would have been perfectly silent. It was bursting with several voices either issuing out commands or asking for assistance.
The doubt started to creep deeper into our minds. Everyone avoided eye contact with one another, particularly with me. Each new revolution of the tires outside took me closer to total lunacy. My dream was probably not a message at all, but a delusion of a weary mind that wanted to see its other half again, so much so that I let it induce me to accept whatever form she came in and execute anything she demanded. The radio continued on in the background until I heard a dispatch that placed it back at the forefront.
The man’s tone sent a biting chill through all of our bodies when he said with an agonized tone, “The propulsion system has failed!”
Before we could comprehend what was just expressed, we heard another voice, even more vexed than the last, say, “We’re dead in the water, sir!”
Additional desperate assertions packed the line.
“…on board! Get everyone below deck!”
“We request immediate pickup!”
“That is a negative on the pickup. LZ too hot.”
A miserable feeling wrapped ove
r me like a heavy winter cloak during a heat wave. I was correct to avoid the ships, but at the cost of thousands being wrong. The declarations in the radio only became graver and more horrific. I couldn’t help feeling guilty, but it was a new form of it, for I knew I couldn’t have done anything differently. Even so, the contemplations of what might have been buried all others. I could not allow Dayce to listen to this increasingly ill-fated situation, and neither did I, for that matter, so I ferried Dayce into an adjoining room. The lights were left on in the rush and I paced the room with him still in my arms.
In an inquisitive tone that surprised me, Dayce asked, “Dad, what happened to Mommy?”
“I don’t know,” I answered gently, knowing it was time to stop pretending to him. “I don’t know where she is, Dayce.”
“I saw her, but I don’t think it was all of her,” he said with great delicateness, forcing my heart to catch its breath.
I sat Dayce down on a bed and asked, I’m assuming not at all steadily, “You saw her?”
He nodded, seemingly not surprised at my bewilderment. “I was sleeping and she told me not to get on the boat. I don’t think it was really Mommy, but I believed her.”
Before I could even begin to comprehend the meaning of my son’s confession, my mother walked in. Without so much as an inspection, she informed me, “We’re moving to the third floor.”
I nodded my acknowledgement and mechanically followed her and the others upstairs. Any meditation of my son’s words and their implication had to be reserved for another time. Bervin, Yitro, and Neves listened to the radio in a room separate from the rest of us. The rooms we chose faced out to the setting eastern sun, or they were supposed to be, for its brilliance was blighted by a vast opaque smoke cloud rising wildly in the distance. The oil reserves on the eastern shore must have been ignited and were now aflame. For twenty grueling minutes we couldn’t elude the accustomed sounds of the battle enclosing us, and the sky once again began to envelope itself in a cycle of darkness.
“Get away from the window,” my mother anxiously told Siena.
“A group of soldiers just entered the building,” Siena replied. “I’ll go see what they know.”
“I’ll go with you,” I automatically decided. “Eloram, take care of Dayce. We’ll only be a minute.”
Siena and I went downstairs, cautiously, but not necessarily slowly. We soon stepped into the first floor of the living area where we found three young soldiers (younger than we were, in any event) crouched together behind some of the pillars. One of the two women saw us at the stairs entrance and motioned us to remain quiet and stationary. All of us were as still as sculptures from an antique age for a minute or so before the female soldier gave another signal to release her group from their inertness, allowing them to come toward us. As for Siena and I, we stayed in our sculptured state, though it was not something we fastidiously planned. The soldier, the one who had signaled up until now and whom I assumed was the superior of the others, was the first to speak.
“Sorry for the silent treatment, but we just had to be sure we weren’t being chased.”
“You mean by an Injector?” I asked.
“You went to college, I see. As far as I know, there’s only one reason we shook off an Injector-”
“They went after somebody else,” keenly finished the male soldier.
“You’re learning well, corporal.” Her gaze returned to us. “What about you guys? Did you oversleep or something?”
“Something didn’t feel right about the ships, so we stayed behind, lieutenant,” said Siena.
“Good instincts, but now comes the most expensive question of our lives. Now what, right? Well, never fear, your humble saviors are here.” The last statement was not said without her share of sardonic gallantry. “Those of us who can are heading for the northern shore where some boats can float us out of here. Care to join us?”
“That’s our best option?” I inquired.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” she responded, with feigned disappointment. “The real port is fucked and any available aircraft can only be used if the mission is deemed critical. Now, while I’m very willing to deem myself critical, the rest of the military sees differently. So, let me ask again, you in or out?”
“Could you give us some time to ask the others?” requested Siena.
“Others? Sure, go ahead. Tell you what, while my corporal here claims a transport for us, you can go have your little meeting.”
In a necessarily concise discussion, Siena and I were disclosing to the rest of the interested party the opportunity that presented itself. Deciding we had to take a chance on this prospect was not a challenging verdict, however, that did not mean I was any less edgy. This was not something I could sleep on in the hope I received another visit from the apparition and expect her to offer more guidance. Two blinks later and we were all downstairs standing before the lieutenant and the private, who were waiting by the western entrance. We waited unmoving for a few minutes alongside them. Taking us out of our petrification was the sound of our means of exodus, coming from the rumble of a potent engine heading for us. The lieutenant signaled for us to go meet our emancipator.
In the blurred glow of the smoke-veiled moons and stars, I felt the touch of an unusually warm breeze hit my face. I expected to find a truck or jeep waiting for us, but the corporal brought what I would later learn was an armored personnel carrier, or what others conveniently call an APC, instead. There was easily enough space in the rugged, tracked vehicle to hold all of us. Even before we settled in and the rear doors were able to fully shut, we had already moved a few yards away from our parked position. I couldn’t see much of anything at first, exempting the night sky visible through the open roof, which was uncovered to allow the stand of a .50 caliber machine gun to rotate in any direction. The private procured this weapon. The rapidly revolving tracks churning against the gravel of the road made me feel safer than I had felt in many other places. The warm wind I had first met became much cooler as the vehicle moved with more strength, replacing it with air not fed by flames. It wasn’t necessarily the cool breeze or the streaking stars above us that comforted me. It was what they represented. They were signs we were doing what I believed was the safest enterprise imaginable; moving as fast as possible.
I held this solace for as long as I could, knowing it wouldn’t last, and it didn’t. The APC was losing some of its haste when I felt the tracks move over the uneven ground as we went off road. Some stars became concealed by the leaves and branches of the tallest parasol trees. Our transport eventually came to a complete stop. Everything became quiet enough so that I could faintly hear the breathing of the effervescent ocean close by. The lieutenant stood up onto her seat to survey the area. Bervin and I did the same. We were alongside a line of halted military vehicles, situated near a strip of trees with broad leaves larger than the branches they were attached to. I expected they came from the refugee defensive line, as there was nothing else to presently defend.
“Why did we stop?” Bervin asked.
“There are mines on the beach,” said the irked lieutenant. “They have to be cleared out before we can move.”
“How?” inquired Delphnia, shifting nervously in her seat, though she could not move much between Neves and Siena. “Won’t that take too long?”
“Just give it a minute,” the lieutenant replied with the same impatience.
The stretched moments that passed us by had trouble moving through the stagnant slush the air had been converted to. The pacifying breaking of the ocean waves on the shore changed into fuming and writhing swells.
“Fuck, where are they?” wondered the private in a whisper, as if she did not want to completely disturb the stillness.
As those words were being articulated, the calm was snapped by the sharp hissing sounds that could only originate from the expelled projectile needles of the enemy. Succeeding the despairing yelps that came from the unfortunate souls who couldn’t escape the enemy�
�s strike, the unyielding and frenzied onset of weapons fire vibrated the night. It was directly afterward when I heard the screeches of jets zooming over us. Taking a glance above me, I was able to see their silhouettes blending with the night sky, but the starry black ceiling soon distorted and became interlaced with hues of crimson, yellow, and auburn. The roars of the bombs impact temporarily dominated the effects of all other weapons. The beach was briefly buried in flames brilliant enough to rival the command of the sun in her highest splendor.
“Finally!” announced the lieutenant. “Move us out, corporal!” I knew she had said it loudly, but it was meager compared with the ensuing battle, the newly shaped fire crackling, and the tumultuous waves of the ocean governing much of my hearing.
It was as if the entire line of vehicles obeyed her command. Each transport in the ensemble lurched toward the beach. Night enshrouded us yet again as the flames in the distance fizzled out just as quickly as they were created. The roar of the ocean seethed through the line of forest as we moved closer to her call. The APC next came into contact with the sand as we traversed the beach, leaving all trace of the trees and their shadows behind, instantly revealing the true image of the island’s majestic coastline. The moons at once came out of their hiding over the placid sea, forming a panorama only conceived in gladder tidings, beckoning us to the bosom of the shore. The sea was its own lighthouse as the lustrous yellowish rays of the moons reflected their light across the coast, rendering it clearer than crystal itself. The convoy journeyed thirty or forty yards before we came to a sudden standstill, immediately bringing back the reason we were there.
“Where are the boats!?” asked the corporal from within the APC’s cabin.
“Turn the APC parallel to the water,” ordered the lieutenant. “Then everyone off and get behind it! We’re easy pickings in here!”
A Depraved Blessing Page 20