by Grayson Crew
They move toward me like a wave. One solid line growing in numbers and strength. They swell over a settler in front of me, but they don’t stop.
They’re coming for me, to devour me, destroy me, do whatever it is they do.
I wait for claws to rip my body to shreds, for fangs to dig into my bones. But there aren’t claws, there aren’t any fangs. They pass over me.
Still holding my bloody side, I look back. A wall of shadows stands between me and the settlers.
I hear shouts and the bludgeoning of weapons on the other side but can’t see anything past the dark mass of figures between me and the fighting. On this side, it’s calm.
They let me live. Why’d they let me live?
Raven hair spreads across the floor in front of me. I collapse against her.
Gashes stain her torn dress. I can’t tell if she’s breathing. I look down to my side to see I’m bleeding out fast.
I clench down tightly against the wound and the bleeding slows, but not enough. I’m bleeding to death.
Cliff’s projection flashes ahead of me, he’s dragging himself across the floor toward the fountain of golden water.
Moira’s projection appears with Kettle’s right in front of me, “It’s bedtime baby, time to say goodnight,”
“I hate bedtime,”
Violin hands Kettle the Mister.
They flash out. Cliff crawls and tumbles into the water.
Moira falls from the roof into the pool, her scream shredding the air.
Violin is curled up in the water, dark stains blossoming over her dress.
Kettle reaches out for me, the yellow bow still wrapped around her wrist. Holograms of missiles fly across the ceiling and crash into the pool. The projections cut out.
The Fountain
My cheeks are wet again and I’m trembling. Wrapping my arms under Jael, I drag us to the pool. Every stretch forward feels like a saw cutting between my ribs, but I keep pulling forward until we’re at the water’s edge.
Dipping my fingers into the warm water, I feel bubbles fizzing along my skin. My vision clears and the stabbing pain from my wound lessens.
I pull my hand from the water and the pain returns. I have to get Jael in the water.
Pulling us forward I tumble us both over the edge, screaming from the pain as the water pours into my side staining the water around us red.
The pain disappears. Feeling for my wound, I can’t find it.
Jael is floating in my arms as I swim us closer to the center of the pool. Her eyes open and she gasps for air.
Blood rushes through me as I grasp her tightly. She’s alive. She’s breathing. I look for her to reach back for me. She doesn’t.
Pushing out of my arms she sinks under the water and resurfaces. Like oil, the darkness that was in her eyes washes away, but not completely.
Before Dovehaven, her eyes were gray, but they were bright. Then at the Estate they were becoming darker by the day. Now they're cloudy, almost white.
Golden water trickles down her skin. I swim toward her. She looks my way, but not at me, like she can't even see me.
The sound of fighting gets closer. A machete flies through the air, slicing through the water and sinking into the depth between us.
She jolts backward.
I swim to her and take her hand, "Stay close to me."
She pushes me away, “I can’t see,” She’s breathing fast and shallow.
Hiro’s Whisper rises, Swim down.
“Just stay by me,” I say. Jael pushes farther away, hyperventilating. “Why can’t I see?”
A projection of Ana walks through the wall of Shadows and toward the fountain. Her head is hanging low and her steps are unsteady.
At the edge of the fountain, she falls to her hands and knees. I lunge toward her as if she’s really there, but the projection cuts out.
What does that mean? The projections only seem to show things that have already happened. Does that mean she’s dead? Did she follow me? I can’t stop my lips from shaking. I have to go back for her, but I can’t leave Jael either.
Jael’s eyes are streaming and she's gasping for breath. Covering her ears with her hands she screams out.
I come next to her but she swings at me, so I grab her arms.
"I'm not going to hurt you.”
Her hands are trembling. "I've done everything you've said!" I know she's not talking to me. She's talking to someone else, somewhere else--a Whisper.
Swim down, I hear Hiro say, I’ll be there with you. Calmness warms through me as he speaks.
Jael must have heard it too because she’s breathing slower now.
The projection of Ana reappears at the edge of the fountain. She rises from her knees and steps out onto the water as if it’s dry ground.
Slowly, she walks out to the center of the fountain. With arms flat to her side, she looks up and mutters something I can't hear. She takes a deep breath, then, as if pulled down by suction she plunges downward so fast and deep, I lose sight of her.
I look back to Jael. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and dives down too.
Just Breathe
Her torn dress waves through the bubbling water as she descends farther from my vision. I dive down after her, cutting into the warm water.
She’s swimming faster than I can keep up with. My lungs are already starting to burn and my heart is pounding.
Breathe in, says Hiro.
I won't breathe in and I can’t keep going down, I have to go back up. Jael’s completely out of my vision.
A pressure pulls me down as I try to swim upward. The surface is closer, but not close enough.
Instinctively, my mouth opens and water rushes in, filling my lungs just as I break the surface.
I’m close enough to the wall that my hand slams into cold, harsh granite. Throwing myself over the top I lay flat on my stomach.
Heaving and coughing, my eyes stream and my body convulses, but no water comes out. It feels like it's sinking deeper into my lungs.
Gasping, I clench my fists, until I finally feel that I’m breathing air. Whatever was in that pool, it wasn’t water, because I just breathed it in.
Laying on my side, I curl into myself and look back at the fountain, looking for Jael.
She doesn’t come.
Metamorphosis
The water turns from gold to a blue so dark, it's almost black. I look back to where the settlers were--it’s silent now.
The wall of shadows that had been protecting us dissipates. A crowd of dead settlers remains, with a few dark forms standing over them, facing away from me.
I drop my fingers into the water, it's cold now.
Ice forms around my finger and creeps out like a web across the surface. Pulling my hand back, the ice stops spreading.
What's happening? I think of Jael and her lifeless body floating below. I'm shaking uncontrollably.
Fountain’s End
I hear a grunt. One of the settlers is stumbling to his feet. His skin is pallid and drawn. The shadows don’t seem to notice him.
Clambering forward, he falls onto his stomach, but he doesn’t stop. He gets back up and dumps himself into the now icy pool, splashing chilled water onto me.
“No . . .” I manage to get out. He looks at me with an empty face. The water isn’t healing him like it healed me.
He swims down anyway, but not for long, his body spasms and he floats to the surface, face down.
My head is a fuzz.
Jump in. Pull him out.
Tumbling over the side I splash into the icy pool. Chills rush through, thickening my blood.
He’s heavy because his clothes are thick and soaked, but I push him out and lay him on his side. Feeling for his pulse, there's nothing.
Dead. Everyone's dead.
Ana.
I look back toward the bridges. They’re empty. I yell out her name. My echoes answer by the dozens, but not her.
A hollowness leaks from my heart like a b
arrel with a puncture. Fill it as much as you want, it'll never be full.
The Unforgiving Cold
Kneeling over the edge, I peer down into the dark water. I touch the surface and watch as a mirror of ice forms around my finger again.
Looking back at me is a face I’ve almost forgotten. Long, drawn creases in my cheeks cut through my tattoo.
I crash my head through the thin screen of ice. My lips are blue when I look back into the fragments of ice, so are my fingertips.
A thick frost is settling onto my wet clothes. Crawling to a dry settler, the shadows turn and face me, but they don’t move.
I take the settlers dry clothes and cover him with mine. Feeling again for my wound, I can’t find it. There’s not even a scar.
Slowly I start to warm, but only in my skin. Everything underneath is frozen in a way I don’t think will ever thaw.
Those Who Remain
I look at the carnage around me. Soft, delicate petals swirl through the air over the remains of a battle that I don’t think anyone won.
Questions. I should have so many questions, but I don’t, because I don’t care. I want my friends back. They’re my family, my only happiness, my only hope.
Jael’s gone. No doubt, no question. But Ana . . . Ana might still be out there.
With my palms flat on the granite and my forehead pressed to the cold surface, my lips mutter what might look like nonsense, but it’s not. It’s a plea. A begging petition to save her, the only one left.
With forced steps I move back onto the bridge, having to weave around the broken bodies of settlers. It looks like their own weapons were used against them. I have no choice but to come close to the shadows. They don’t move.
Picking up speed I cross the bridge and enter the maze of corridors behind the coliseum. I shout Ana’s name as loud as I can, running up and around staircase after staircase, corridor after corridor, finally making it to the gates and into the blinding light of day.
Rescue
Shielding my eyes I try to move forward but walk into a pillar, knocking myself to the ground. I wait for my eyes to adjust to the sunlight again.
After my eyes adjust, I see a scene completely unlike what it was just hours ago in this same spot. I hear people shouting. People in bright red uniforms are carrying stretchers with injured settlers outside the gates. Rescue medics.
There’s too much chaos to notice me, even though I’m in a settler’s uniform. All the better. I scan the edges first, looking for Ana. Maybe they already got her.
I close in and start weaving in between the stretchers and medics. Most of the wounded look like they’re already dead. Most are the men in khaki uniforms, but some look like normal villagers. These must be survivors from the beach. Maybe the Whispers forced them to come here just like Ana and I.
As they clear out, I hear the sound of helicopters nearby. They’re loading the few that survived. If Ana made it, she’ll be there.
Exiting the outer wall of the ruins, I pass team after team of medics, pushing my way through to the helicopters. One of them is preparing to take off.
“Wait!” I scream out, even though I know it’s lost among the roar of the propellers.
“You’ll get the next one,” shouts a medic.
“No, please, wait! I need that one.” I need to see if she’s on it.
It takes off. My stomach sinks. But if she’s on it, than she’s alive. That’s all that matters.
No it isn’t.
I need to see her. I need to know.
“Was a girl on that helicopter!” I scream out to a medic. He doesn’t hear me, nor does the next or the next.
“Next flight has a spot.” Shouts one of them. She grabs my arm and pulls me to the next helicopter. Stepping onto the first rail of the swaying craft I look inside. No Ana. I jump back down and they slide a half-dead settler in my place.
There’s more aircraft coming. The next one is filled with the injured and a few medics. There’s a girl, but not mine.
Next is the same. Helicopter after helicopter lands and takes off until there’s only three left. The medics are the only ones boarding now. No more survivors.
My eyes race through the clearing and toward the ruins, then the jungle.
Where is she?
One aircraft is left.
“This is it, buddy. Last one. You’re getting on,” Shouts the same medic that tried to get me on earlier. But I push her off.
“There’s someone left!” I shout back. I’m hyperventilating.
Two medics in red come from the ruins. They’re struggling with a panicked survivor.
“He’s still in there!” she’s screaming. “You’re. Not. Listening!” Between the mud and smoke, I see the one thing I’m looking for. Red lips. Green Eyes.
She pulls her hair out of her face and looks at me. She steps closer. Her chest is heaving, green eyes cold, but brightening.
Frozen or not, I’m moving.
Pushing back the medic holding me, I lunge forward and rush to her, wrapping her in my arms, holding her.
“Those things are coming back!” yells a medic. “Load up.”
They pull Ana away from me and belt her into a passenger chair, seat me across from her, then station themselves. We lift off the ground.
Survivors
If I were to look outside, I would see the jungle spreading out below us. I would see the tower and its courtyards.
If I looked hard enough I might even see the lake in the distance where the Estate sits. But I don’t look outside, because that would mean taking my eyes away from Ana’s.
In the bright green of her eyes, I see not only her, but Jael too, and Moira, Cliff, Kettle, and Violin. My friends, my family.
I feel streams falling over my cheeks but I really don’t care, because Ana is here. She lived. Someone lived.
The roar of the engine and blades are too loud for anyone to talk, but that’s well enough, because really, there’s nothing to say.
Answers and Questions
We’re descending. In the corners of my eyes I see ocean spreading out in every direction and beneath us a massive ship.
The floor shudders and I’m launched forward, but my belt anchors me back into place. Rough landing.
The medics pull Ana out first, then me. To either side are rows of helicopters with medics rushing back and forth with stretchers.
The injured are carried off the landing area and into the heart of the base. Antennas and radar dishes clutter towers in every direction.
We’re led to a lineup with others who look pretty beaten, but are able to walk. The medics go into a separate line-up with those in stretchers.
One of them is going through and putting a marking on each of the survivor’s foreheads. The one nearest me gets an “F” written. He’s not breathing and his skin is gray. He’s wheeled to a row of long metal boxes and placed in one.
In my line, everyone’s watching wordlessly.
“No serious casualties with these ones,” says a hoarse medic to a uniformed kid about my age. “Just get some .09, get’em hydrated, keep’em calm. Can you handle that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Get on it.”
He steps to the front of our line and leads us past rows of lifeboats—basically mini-submarines. A door is opened and we head into what looks like a cafeteria-turned into medical bay.
“Use these chairs for now, until more room clears up,” he says.
Not far from us is a settler clutching the hand of someone covered by a blanket in a stretcher. One of the medics kneels beside her and wraps his arm around her while another team carries the stretcher away.
Ana is covering her mouth with her hands. The uniformed kid hangs a bag of fluids on a hook behind a large woman next to Ana. Opening a kit, he slides on gloves and starts up an I.V.
When he gets to Ana, she closes her eyes and looks away while he slides a needle into her vein. He gets it on the first shot. Not so with me. He says my veins roll.
The large woman farther down starts talking to Ana.
“I was against it from the start honey. I told Sammy, this Haven business, it isn’t worth it.”