Last Call For Caviar

by Melissa Roen

  I felt Buddy tense under my hand; he quivered, and a low rumble started in his chest. I slowly reached in my pack and brought out the powerful flashlight. I checked again that the safety was off on both my guns. He was only thirty meters away now; his visor was up, but his features still hidden under the helmet.

  He covered another ten meters. I took one last deep breath to steady myself and hit the switch. The powerful beam of the flashlight caught him in the crosshairs of my ambush, temporarily blinding him, while I put a warning shot in the ground at his feet.

  He slowly put his gun on the ground at his feet, then stood, his arms raised overhead in surrender. I saw him fumble at the strap of his helmet, and he took it off. I could see clearly in the torchlight the broad shoulders, the dark hair curling as it brushed the collar of his leather jacket. I saw the flash of white teeth gleaming under the starlight as he gave a rueful smile.

  “Don’t shoot! C’est moi… I knew you were angry about the stripper, Cherie,” he paused for a beat, “but Maya Jade, surely you can’t still be that pissed off?”

  He was only twenty meters away, but it felt like I was crossing the distance of the whole year that had separated us. Then, I was in his arms. There was a gash on his forehead; his clothes and leather jacket reeked of smoke, besides being bloody and torn. He staggered against me; he could barely stand. Then, his arms tightened around me, holding me close in a fierce embrace.

  Just before his lips claimed mine, I whispered, “If you ever go out with a stripper again… next time, I won’t miss.”

  It wasn’t a dream this time: I watched his hands undressing me in the candlelight, felt his mouth, the kisses burning along my collarbone and over my breasts. The touch of his finger tips as he teased my body with long, slow caresses. I could smell the smoke in his hair, taste the sweat and blood caked on his shoulder as he eased inside me. Every inch of our flesh fused together, as we moved under the twinkling lights of the dome. The urgency mixed with ecstasy as he brought me to the edge—and over—again and again. I thrilled at the smell and taste of him. The pain and sadness of the past year melting away beneath his touch.

  No words needed to be said tonight. No explanations given or plans made for the future. Tomorrow would be soon enough for all that. Tonight, there were only his lips and his arms, the warmth of his body enfolding me as his love flowed into mine. I could see the green fires burning in the depths of his eyes, and I knew that my dreams had been a prophecy.

  I woke up in a beam of moonlight falling across the bed. I reached out for him next to me but touched only emptiness. No one was there. Tears welled up in my eyes. No, not another dream; it couldn’t be. Julian had come for me. It was real. It had to be. I couldn’t face the torture of dreams turning to ashes yet again.

  Then, I noticed the door to the deck was open; a path of moonlight led outside. Julian sat at the edge of the void, the world spread out before him. His back was to me. Head bowed over his knees, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs. He made hardly a sound as the memories and pain of all he had seen and experienced these last months poured out of him. I waited by the doorway, leaving him to mourn in private.

  Buddy padded across the deck and nudged him with his head. Julian scrubbed his eyes with his hands, wiping away the last trace of his sorrow. He stared out at the horizon, Buddy curled near his side. I went in the kitchen and got two glasses and the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. I handed Julian a glass and sat down between them. My head rested against Julian’s shoulder.

  The guns remained silent in the direction of Nice. The war drums no longer sounded, and no explosions ripped open the sky. We sat nursing our whiskeys, arms wrapped around each other, holding tight, waiting in silence for the new day to dawn. I felt Buddy’s warmth on my other side.

  We could make our stand here. The Land Rover was loaded, if we decided to strike out and find a new sanctuary in the vastness of the mountains which soared at our backs. I hadn’t abandoned Julian or Buddy, left them behind to face death separately and alone. Whatever would happen, we would face it together, Julian and Buddy by my side. I felt peace descending on me like a benediction.

  The world still sang to me, and for the first time in a long while, I heard and understood its song.

  CHAPTER 35

  DREAMTIME: CONVERSATIONS WITH ARI AND GALADRIEL

  I tumbled through a nightscape devoid of all starlight. I was a feather drifting slowly downward into a well, all my senses alive. I felt the darkness like a mantle of soft velvet caressing my skin. The taste of rich chocolate and tart cherries melting on my tongue. I heard the haunting melody of violins swelling on all sides. The smell of sugar and cinnamon tickled my nose, and in the abyss a kaleidoscope of color swirled before my eyes.

  I saw two shimmering forms down below me, a woman floating between them on a cloud of light. Something about the woman was familiar. I’d seen her face a thousand times.

  I felt like a naughty little girl eavesdropping on the grownups after she’d been sent to bed, but my curiosity aroused, I drifted closer and heard them say…

  “Galadriel, I thought you’d be done by now. You’re taking a long time with this one.”

  “I’m almost done, Ari. All her memories are downloaded.” The shimmering form answered and gestured towards the slumbering body of a woman, a tangle of curls tumbling about her shoulders.

  “Well, hurry! We’ve got a truckload of meat sacks to process. You can’t take all day for each one. There’s more on the way… they keep pouring in. We’re going to have to bring in more Sensitives to help, if we’re going to make any headway this next batch.”

  “I’m sorry I’m taking so long with her. There’s something about this one. When I connect to her memories, her pain… I don’t know why… I can usually keep my distance. But her story touches me. I almost feel like I’m living it. She struggled so hard to hold onto hope, to hold on to love. She almost made it.”

  “I’m sorry that you had to feel that—that yearning and sorrow.” A shiver of distaste rippled through Ari’s shimmering form. “I don’t know how you do it! It must be awful to connect to all that pain. That’s always the risk with Empaths: you feel too much; you care too much; you get too involved.”

  “Sometimes, Ari, you are so insensitive! They’re not meat sacks; they’re complex, intelligent beings. I guess you’ll never understand what it’s like to delve so deeply into their minds and hearts, the secret garden of their souls.”

  “Jeez, Galadriel, I’m sorry! I don’t mean to be callous; it’s just that the inflow is overwhelming: there are billions in the queue. Don’t get me wrong; you do a great job, and we all appreciate your hard work. But you know the drill. You can’t get attached!”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know, I know, Ari. It’s just when I think about how hard she fought to hold onto love and her ideals, while all around her, ‘psychotic whack job motherfuckers’ were killing each other and destroying their world. To be reunited with him in the end, and then…”

  “Well, look who picked up some new vocabulary. ‘Psychotic whack job motherfuckers’—I like it.” A chuckle, warm and rich like fine, aged whiskey echoed through the velvet mantle of darkness, “But we’ve talked about this. You’re one of the best at what you do, but you’ve got to keep some perspective. Take a step back.”

  “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “She’s going back down.”

  “What? Now? But Ari, it’s so bad down there! And this is just the beginning. It’s only going to get sicker and more perverted over the next seven years. The Jurassic era was red death, tooth and claw, but that was just about survival, not for entertainment. Have you seen the sadistic pleasure some of these humans take in torturing and killing each other?”

  “Thank God they’re not all like that! But you know that ‘free will’ is hard-wired into their DNA. As they say down there, everyone gets to go to hell their own way,” Ari patiently explained. “They had choices. Pity so many of them made bad ones. They kn
ew better! How many prophets and signs from above does it take to get the message through their thick skulls? All they had to do was keep to the sacred teachings. Care for their planet and each other. They were given paradise, compared to some of the dumps and hostile worlds I’ve worked on over the years. No one held a gun to their heads, and made them try to turn their world into a cesspool… an abattoir!”

  “But why her? Why does she have to go back to the insanity all alone? It’s going to be a bloodbath! How is she going to survive?”

  “She has to go back. It’s not my decision. There’s no arguing with it. It’s not her time. Her story’s not done. The Purification is only going to last for seven years. If she stays connected to the earth, she might make it through. Actually, when the dust settles, the ones who adapt will survive. We’re just thinning out the herd. Getting rid of the rotten apples. Whatever you want to call it. It’s called evolution, baby. The universe always shuffles things around. Random chaos is our motto.”

  “And the one called Julian? What about him?”

  “He’s waiting for her. Their story together isn’t done, either.”

  “They’ll be together?”

  “Listen, Galadriel, you know as well as I do it’s a crapshoot down there, but the odds are good. Maybe she’ll be able to run between the raindrops. You can’t keep her here and think you’re protecting her. It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Oh, Ari,” Galadriel sighed, “you’re probably right. I can’t help worrying.”

  “Come on, Galad, it’s the job. Say goodbye and let her go. Cheer up. We’ve got just enough time to get a drink before the next shift.”

  Her eyes were open, and her dreams chased each other like schools of quicksilver through clear pools of turquoise and jade. Galadriel exhaled a soft sigh and reached out and caressed the cloud of sun-streaked hair. The kiss, an invisible benediction, was like the flutter of butterfly wings against her brow.

  “Oh, come on, don’t cry! I know it’s exhausting for you after retrieving all these memories, and I am sorry to have been such an insensitive jerk, but you know the rules, Galadriel. We’re not allowed to keep them. They’re not pets!”

  I felt myself swimming towards the surface. I could still feel the kiss of butterfly wings against my brow. I reached out to Julian sleeping next to me, and he pulled me close into the warmth of his body.

  He murmured against my hair, “You’re safe, ma cherie. I’m here. I’ll never let you go again.”

  “I had the weirdest dream. There were these two shining creatures—Ari and Galadriel. I don’t know what they were—some kind of higher beings? I couldn’t look at them directly. It hurt my eyes; they were so bright, as thought they were made of starlight. I wish I could remember better. Ari had this deep, melodious voice like Barry White, but he was kind of an asshole. The other one—Galadriel—it was so amazing. It almost felt like I was connected to her by an umbilical cord. She radiated this incredible energy of pure love and empathy. I felt so close to her. So safe.”

  Julian settled my head on his shoulder. “Do you remember anything else?”

  “I think I was lying on a soft couch, but I couldn’t move.” I tried to retrieve the memory, but it was just out of reach. “It was so clear. But now, it’s fading away… I remember only snatches. Something about ‘running between the raindrops,’ ‘we’re just thinning out the herd,’ and ‘random chaos is our motto.’ What a trip! I wonder what it means.”

  “Cherie, it was just a dream. They’re not supposed to make sense. Go back to sleep, darling.”

  “I had this conversation with Sister Marie-Timotee, a couple of days ago. Something she said probably stuck in my subconscious, and I recycled it into this dream. She said, ‘Miracles do happen all the time, and angels show up when you least expect them.’”

  “Hmmm…,” Julian mumbled, already slipping back into Morpheus’s embrace.

  “But she was right about the miracle part. You came back for me. You’re really here,” I whispered too softly for him to hear.

  I heard Buddy snoring on the floor by the bed. I could see Leah in my mind’s eye, safe in the forest with Mama and Sloan. I smiled as I thought about Charlotte and wondered where she would find mischief to get into, so deep in the redwood groves.

  I remembered Leah’s last words.

  P.S… I know we’ll see each other again.

  P.S.S… I’m never wrong.

  I imagined the cosmic symphony vibrating through the ether, connecting everything in the universe, from the constellations down to the smallest tree or stone. I sent a message of love into the starlit sky, where it hummed along the strands of energy encircling the planet, before it dropped down into the sanctuary of Leah’s woodland glade.

  I’m going to hold you to that promise, Big Sis.

  We will find each other again.

  Until then, be safe.

  I felt the bed dip as Buddy jumped up on it and curled by my feet. I snuggled closer to Julian. Sleep reached out, and I felt myself falling into dreamland.

  CHAPTER 36

  THE RED DAWN

  The darkness was loath to release its hold, and dawn was hours late in coming. Charcoal gray clouds roiled the sky. An unkindness of ravens raced towards the sanctuary of the mountains behind the dome.

  I saw a small herd of wild boars, red eyes gleaming, tusks dull against rank, wiry hides, trotting in formation as they headed for the high ground.

  I thought to myself, “Merde! You know you’re in trouble when the animals evacuate.”

  I took one last look around the dome: the poster of Mulder and Scully over the cracked leather couch, the shelves filled with maps of our galaxy jumbled in with UFO pamphlets, and my beloved Celestron. The pinpricks of light on the black ceiling winked out as I hit the light switch. I wrestled the metal doors closed, locked up and hid the key behind a brick in the wall.

  Julian was loading the last bag into the Land Rover, Buddy by his side. I tossed him the car keys and said, “The dome’s closed up tight. I guess this is it. You ready?”

  Julian leaned against the hood of the Rover in the twilight before dawn. A sudden gust of wind ruffled his dark curls. He stared at the horizon; a slight frown of worry creased his brow. “I don’t like the look of this weather. There’s a bad storm coming. Yeah, let’s get on the road before it hits.”

  “At least it will slow down the fighting. Can’t believe Nice is still holding. I thought the rebels would have taken it by now.”

  “Look’s like they’ve fought themselves to a stalemate. Are we forgetting anything?”

  “I don’t think so. Gold, guns, ammunition, clothes, medicine, gas, food, water—all loaded. Buddy. You and me, babe. We’re ready to roll.” I opened the door, and Buddy jumped in the back seat. I claimed shotgun.

  Julian put the Land Rover in gear, and we bumped slowly down the rutted lane.

  “You know where we’re going?” I had the map spread out on my lap. Both the Judge and the Glock close at hand.

  “We’ve got to get away from the coast. Avoid the big cities. Find somewhere there are less people, that’s easier to defend. I have a friend, a doctor, who I worked with in Africa. He has land and a chalet near the Swiss border. He sent me a message last week. He said it’s still safe there, and we’re welcome to come. We’ll head towards there.”

  “I don’t care where we go, as long as I’ve got you and my Buddy.” I turned around and scratched Buddy behind the ears. He gave a sigh of pleasure and grinned.

  We wound along the Grand Corniche, the panorama of the Cote d’Azur spread before our eyes. Maybe we would come back one day, when the tide of blood and death receded from these shores. Perhaps I would see Giovanni once again and find out Bilal, Lucy and Abdul’s fate. I said a prayer for their safety.

  A couple hundred meters up ahead, I saw the turn-off for the mountains. The road stretched before us, ascending towards the Alps. I turned around to catch a last glimpse of endless sea and sky.

  Th
e sky was lightening in the east. The sun rose above the horizon, glaring like an angry eye, surrounded by broken blood vessels of rust. Its rays blistered the expanse of heaven and rolled the gray curtain aside. Crimson stained the sky like an infected wound, as the sun rose and dawn spread over the land.

  A tremendous gust of wind buffeted the Land Rover with such force that Julian pulled over to the side of the road. I rolled down the window and heard the wind keening like a thousand dying souls.

  Julian and I looked at each other and he said, “Putain! What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never heard the wind sound like that. It’s like the gates of hell are open. Do you think it’s another tornado?”

  He didn’t have time to answer before I gasped, “But look! The sky! That’s scary!”

  Lightning flickered along the breadth of the horizon out to sea. Hundreds of jagged forks striking simultaneously. The deafening crash of thunder a few seconds behind.

  “This looks bad, Maya. I don’t know if we can make it back to the dome.”

  “Don’t go back! Just drive! Let’s get the hell out of here! Maybe we can outrun the storm.”

  I saw the distant peaks of the Alps up ahead in the distance, the snow pristine on their crowns. The air there would be clean. There would be sanctuary, so far from the blood-drenched coastland.

  “Don’t worry, Maya. We just need to get off of this ridge and find some shelter further inland. We’re too exposed to the storm here.”

  I watched the coast receding through the rearview window. Now, an eerie, red mist rode the swells, and as I watched, the first tendrils crept towards the shore.

  “Uh-oh,” I thought, as I felt the first brushstroke of apprehension tickling my neck. “This is not looking good.”

  “Julian, do you remember me telling you about the Hopi Prophecies? Their legend about a Blue Star that heralds the coming of a Red Star, which they call the Purifier, who will bring about the end of the world?”