SALVATION
My earliest memory stands out in my consciousness. Even after all these years, the colors haven’t faded and the smells are still as strong. I dreamt it after my altercation with the Christ’s Coalition. Before that it’d been years since the last time it forced it’s way from the back of my mind.
I was seven or eight and it was about three weeks before my birthday. I was playing in a field that used to be outside my house, between the stream and the road. It was in the starting throws of spring, the flowers were almost all bloomed and pollen hang in the air like a fog, stinging my eyes. I was running around with this girl that lived down the street, Lindsay. I used to get mad because my mom and dad used to joke that she was my girlfriend, but in retrospect I guess I did have a little crush on her.
We were playing tag or hide and go seek, I can’t remember which, all I know is that one of us was running and the other was chasing. I had ran into what we called oldhouse, which was no more than a foundation of a long decayed church. I was rounding the corner and about to hop out of the foundation area when I felt pain shoot up my leg, bringing me to my knees. I looked down and there, in my foot, was a long rusty carpenter’s nail. It had pierced it’s way completely through my foot, the end sticking out about 4 cm. I was wailing and screaming and spouting blood, and Lindsay, being the little angel she was, came over and put her hands on my face and kissed my forehead. That’s when it ends, just as her lips make contact with my head, yet in that split second I didn’t feel the pain anymore.
My head hurt. That was the first thing that came into my mind when I woke up. I did a quick self-diagnosis, nothing broken, nothing bleeding, nothing missing. So far, so good. “Stop wiggling.” I heard from behind me “You wouldn’t want to be poked, would you?” Gene sat behind me, perched on a bucket, with a needle and thread closing the gaping would that earlier was displaying my skull for all who cared to see. “What is this place, Gene?” I said looking around and taking in all that this place had to offer. “This is home, David.” Gene answered back, sighing heavily, then going back to work “This is where I stay since my family has left.”
“How did you find me, Gene? What were you doing in there?” I asked, squinting in pain. “Oh, well, you see, I was scouting the area for some foods and I heard the gunshots so I ran over to see what the problem was and there you were. Done.” Gene said as he finished the final stitch. “Now don’t go exerting your skull for the next week or so, we wouldn’t want your brains to fall out, eh buddy?” Gene patted me on my shoulder and helped me to my feet.
I looked around his well equipped home. It was more of a bomb shelter than the hovel it should have been, behind the rickshaw shelves stood meter thick concrete. The shelves were stocked to the brim with dehydrated food, bottled water, and pristine condition firearms. I whistled in amazement “Wow Gene, where’d you get all this stuff?” “It was all already here along with him,” Gene said while pointing out the corpse on the floor “it took me three days to work myself through the door.” The corpse was decked out in an officers uniform, I recognized it as one of the allied uniforms from WWIII, my dad had the same one. The shotgun he used to kill himself still hung from his lips.
“We’ve got to go back Gene, we’ve got to go back to the Coalition camp, they’ve got Hope.” I pleaded. “No they don’t, David, I know where Hope is and there she is not.” “But I saw them take Frank.” “Frank?” Gene’s ears perked up “Where did you see Frank?” “He found me and took me in there, they opened up this wall panel and pulled him in, he could still be alive.” I answered.
Gene frantically began rounding up supplies, slinging guns over his shoulder like Robin Hood. “Let’s go,” he said in the most commanding voice I’d ever heard come out of him “we need to go, now David, grab what you can and follow me, ok?” I complied and hurriedly grabbed the automatic shotgun and mp5 on my way out the door. We walked hurriedly up the stairs and into the streets.
The streets were chaos, screams and yells for help echoed off the buildings as people chased and shot each other on the sidewalks. “What the hell is going on Gene?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “This is what happens,” he answered “This is what happens when everyone in the world knows they will be dead within the next six hours. Tonight is the night, David,” then Gene turned to me, stared directly into my eyes and said “but we shall find your Hope my friend, before the night is through we shall find your Hope.” He turned back and begun his march again, but not before adding “and Frank.”
IMPACT
We shot like a bullet out onto East 22nd street. “Gene, where are we going? Christ Coalition is back on Long Island.” I said, pointing out to the east. “I know my friend,” Gene answered, not breaking step “but that is not where Frank and Hope are. They are with the Demon’s Gate.” “So where’s that” “Where else, David? Hell’s Kitchen.”
We made it about three more blocks before we encountered the wall. What they basically did was put up walls in-between the buildings, walls as high as the buildings, and then wall of the exits on the other side making every block into an impenetrable barricade. Before even being given the chance to wonder how to get by aloud, Gene snatched the automatic shotgun from my hands and fired wildly at the obstacle, sending the bricks flying inwards and, eventually, punching a man sized hole in it. He tossed the shotgun back to me and took point, ducking into the hole with his m16 cocked and ready.
Hell’s Kitchen lived to it’s namesake, fires raged throughout my perspective and the overwhelming heat stung my face. I only had mere seconds to take it all in before hearing Gene yell “Here they come!” and looking up to see a mass of cultists running full force towards us. Gene started mowing them down seconds before the thought to grab my mp5 made it from my brain to my hands. I squeezed the trigger, shooting in small bursts. I ran alongside of Gene, swerving in and out of alleys, shooting behind us all the while. We ducked into the subway tunnel, giving them the slip.
We sat, breathing heavy in the dark. “There’s no way we are both going to make it, David. There is more of them than the last time I’ve been here” “Wait, the last time you’ve been here? What are you talking about Gene?” “I’m sorry I deceived you my friend, but follow this subway down and take the tunnel for two stops, climb the elevator shaft seven floors and you will find your Hope.” “Where are you going?” I asked. “I shall distract them, see you in another life my friend.” With that Gene shot up from his crouching position and fired wildly and yelled as he exited, I heard the mass stampede by the entrance following Gene to my safety.
While I traversed through the centuries old subway tunnel that phrase Gene said, “I’m sorry I deceived you…” why did he say that? I know he said he’d been here before but that couldn’t have been the deception he was talking about. I stumbled my way onto the platform at 5th street, a rusted sign hanging from one corner signified it as the NorthRidge building.
The elevator was off to the left of the platform, the panel was smashed in and the door was stuck. I grabbed a nearby piece of steel and jammed it in the doors, wrenching it back and forth until it achieved the desired effect.
An elevator car sat, crashed, at the bottom of the shaft. I climbed across the shattered wreckage and grabbed onto the ladder that hung down the south side of the shaft. Around the fifth floor my arms began to get tired, I wrapped my elbow around the next rung and took the weight off my hands, rubbing the rust flakes off them.
That’s when I heard a creak, it echoed in the square chamber and I stopped moving immediately. Then it happened again and I started looking around for my escape route should the ladder decide to hang on no longer. I barely had time to look around the shaft before I felt the top half off the ladder suddenly become weightless and then extremely heavy. Crashing steel boomed throughout the shaft and I found myself falling fast. It felt like miles before I reached out and grabbed the dangling elevator cable. The pain from that was like no other I’d ever felt, imagine tying a cheese grate
r to your hand and rubbing them together furiously. That’s about half of what it felt like. Now all those “climb the rope” days in gym class came to pay off as I shimmied my way up and flung myself into the open door on the 7th floor.
The room was completely black, save for a sliver of light coming from across from the elevator shaft. I crawled forward, hoping to peek out and get a feeling for what I was about to walk into guns a blazing. My hand over hand was stopped when I felt the first body, it was a hand, or maybe a foot, I couldn’t really tell, it was dark. It was also dead, I could tell that much because when I placed my weight on it, my hand sank about a third of the way into, with juices squishing out and flesh tearing under palm.
As I pressed forward my eyes began to adjust to the darkness and it was only then that I noticed I was crawling over piles of bodies. I guess my sense of smell had gotten used to it over time. About ten feet from the light a put my hand on something that felt out of place, it was firm and warm. I left my hand there for a moment, trying to think of what to do with it when it’s toes wiggled. It was alive. I dug into the corpse stack, tossing body parts left and right, excavating the warmth that I felt. I felt a clump of hair attached to a warm skull and pulled it out of the pile.
There was a huge gasp of air followed by arms wrapping around my neck, familiar arms. I looked into the face, the beautiful angelic face, that I had saved from the pile and found myself face to face with my Hope. I had found her. Against insurmountable odds and in a pile of dead bodies I had found her. With her draped over my shoulders and the mp5 in my other hand I pressed forward, surgically splitting the curtain and laying eyes upon an elaborately set table, complete with candles and chamber music. At the head of the table was a chair, back towards me like so many Bond films. “So you’ve finally made it.” A gruff voice boomed. It was in that instant that I realized what was really going on, but by then Hope had taken control of my shotgun and was already boring the barrel into my spine. I had been taken for a fool.
The chair spun around and there sat the man I had already deduced was behind it all. Frank was dressed in his finest suit, his hair was cut and clean and he was freshly shaven. “Sit down, please.” Frank said, motioning to the chair closest to him. I complied as only someone with a shotgun to their head can. Frank motioned for his servant to pour some wine in our goblets. “Have something to eat David, this is a momentous occasion.” I glared over at Hope and told Frank that I had lost my appetite. He shrugged and started into his plate, cutting it carefully and savoring every bite.
“You see, David, when I found out about the asteroid I was on a walkabout out in Australia. My guide, after hearing the news, left me to go be with his family and I continued, unguided, on my own.” Frank said, eating slowly after every sentence. “And do you know what I saw on my walkabout?” I shrugged no. “You, David, I saw you. You lying there in your coma, in your bed. And my sprit animal, a goat named Balel told me that the only way to avoid impact would be to offer your soul up to the heavens.” “And how, pray tell, are you planning on doing that, Frank? You gonna shoot me, or burn me alive” I said, justly annoyed at the amount of people trying to kill me today. “The only way to get a soul into the atmosphere, David. I’m going to boil you alive.”
With that he wiped his mouth with his napkin and pushed himself back from the table. His servants dressed him in a red robe with black trim and he motioned for Hope to bring me to the edge. She pushed the gun into my back, I glanced back at her to see tears streaming down her face. She mouthed the words “I’m sorry” to me, to which I scoffed and turned my head back, facing front. At the edge of the building I saw a sea of cultists all cheering and screaming, they stood surrounding a giant vat of molten lava which stunk to high heaven. Frank’s servants kneeled me down and Frank grabbed the back of my neck like a puppy dog. “This,” Frank screamed to the howling mass “Will be our Salvation!!” I turned back to shoot Hope on last dirty look, but she wasn’t there. That’s about when the rumbling started.
It started out low, not louder than a subwoofer in one of those cars I used to hate back home, but as time passed it grew louder. Then, on the horizon, it broke through the clouds sending them flying into wispy strands of moisture. The front edge of it was completely engulfed in a plasmic yellow aura as it punched it’s way through the atmosphere, a thundering crack following by a few seconds. The ground started shaking violently as it pushed forward, shaking the bricks and mortar to its molecular base, everywhere in the distance buildings were falling like Jenga blocks. Then, more noise, this time from behind us, shouting and gunfire. We turned to see the chained doors off to the side of the elevator burst in and there appeared Gene, bloodied and beaten. “You can not do this, Frank. He is the only thing that can save us.” Gene yelled at the top of his lungs. “No Gene,” Frank yelled back “I am.” And with that Frank produced a Desert Eagle from under his robe, aimed and fired. Ever since the Iranian civil wars I had noticed something about gunshots. While there are many of them flying about all willy nilly, the ones that matter produce silence after the shot. Doesn’t matter if there are mortars going off or asteroids coming in for a landing, that one well placed meaningful shot will be the only thing you hear.
Gene clutched his stomach but didn’t fall. He stared at his now freshly bloodied hands in disbelief before crumbling to the ground. That’s when the second and third meaningful well placed shots came, this time from the automatic shotgun I had previously possessed. “You said it was the only way, Frank.” Hope said in what could have been a whisper at this point. “You said the only way to save the world was to kill him.” “And that’s the truth, darlin’.” Frank rebutted. “Then what was he saying?” She answered back, motioning at Gene.
Through coughs and blood spittle Gene provided the answer. “I too have seen a prophecy, Hope. I come from the Church of God’s Undying Grace. Our prophecy states that he is the one whose survival mirrors the worlds. If he dies we all die!” “That’s not true!” Wailed Frank as he lunged for his gun. He rose up and shot Hope square in the chest, knocking her back to close to where Gene laid.
Frank turned his pistol towards me, I could feel the heat from the recently fired barrel on my temple singeing the flesh. A final shot rang out, Frank’s eyes widened and locked into position before he fell of the edge, splashing into the molten rock below. I looked to the shots origin and saw a smiling Gene, blood streaming from the sides of his lips. I scrambled over to my two friends, picking up the half limp body of Hope and cradling her in my arms, Gene put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it in comfort as we all three looked up to see CM-114 looming over our heads.
It was an awesome sight, in the full definition of the word. Plasmic fires covered the surface, moving in waves over the asteroids body, flickering yet glowing all at once. The surface was rough, yet shiny, to the point where you could see the reflection of the entire city. The air around us grew warm and wooshed around like a hurricane and the sound became unbearably loud as it passed overhead.
I held Hope close, tears streamed from her eyes as I watched her gaze move from the astrological phenomena to mine. She said something, but I couldn’t hear it because of the noise, I leaned in close and she kissed me on the cheek, mouthing the words again. Her eyes moved back to the asteroid and her pupils fixed and dilated.
As quickly as it had come it had gone. The Earth still stood, as it always had. The city around us had all but fallen. I closed Hope’s eyes and stared at her angelic face. “My friend,” I heard “Can you give me a hand here?” Gene smiled at me through bloody teeth. I carefully laid Hope’s head down and pushed myself to my feet. I outstretched my hand and gripped Gene’s pulling him to his feet and slinging his arm around my shoulder. He hugged me tightly and said “We survived, the prophecy was true my friend.” I didn’t say anything back, I just smiled at him. We stumbled over the hovel that used to be the NorthRidge building and made our way to the doors Gene had burst into earlier. I looked back, at Hope, the sun was begi
nning to rise bathing her in a peach glow. She looked at peace.
EPILOUGE
One billionth of a degree. That’s how much scientists had been off when the tested the effect the Earth’s atmosphere would have on the asteroid’s impact. They concluded that while causing worldwide destruction CRM-114 had passed over the planet’s surface by a mere two miles before skipping back out to deep space. Gene assured me that it was all due to his fulfillment of the prophecy and my survival. I don’t really think that was the reason, just a coincidence. That’s all life really is, a series of coincidences.
After all was settled Gene and I parted ways, he was off back to the Ukraine to find his family. I decided to stay here, in America. There was nothing for me back home. I wandered south, like many people did. The winter was coming and without food or shelter we’d all be dead. I made my way to the Ozarks in Arkansas. It reminded me of the Swiss Alps. My family and I had taken a vacation there once, it was nice. I settled down in a little town called Hope, I met a woman and started a family, opened a diner on the highway. Things slowly got back to normal, except for the presence of a sense of world unity, which had never been there before. I was living in Hope for about three years when she passed through, much older now but definitely her, I wouldn’t forget a face like that.
Eve had grown up to look much like her mother. She was hanging on the arm of some guy who seemed pretty well off, they shared a milkshake and the number three special, tuna on rye. It took every fiber of my being not to run up and take her into my arms. I had been out of her life for nearly a decade and she, without mother or father, had somehow survived and made it to America. I can only imagine the horrors she must have endured, but she had made a life of her own now and who was I to interrupt it.
The End Page 5