Sapience

by bret Wellman

  Soon we began to hear shouts of panic increase from the opposite side of the door. The men were no longer trying to bust through, the fire must have scared them off which was good because the ice Brianna had sealed it with was completely gone.

  Spencer checked that his rifle was cocked and loaded then stepped up to the burning door. He closed his eyes and relaxed his muscles. He stood there for a while, quietly waiting.

  I began to wonder what he was doing. Then I heard a gunshot come from the other side.

  Spencer’s eyes snapped open, he took one last gaping breath and kicked the door apart.

  The other room was packed with soldiers. I could barely see more than ten feet in through all the panic stricken men.

  Spencer began shooting into the crowd. The spray of bullets from his gun cut a deadly path through the room. I could see farther and farther every second. There were other guns going off too, but it seemed like no soldier could live long enough to figure out what was going on and shoot Spencer. Smoke wafted to the ceiling but didn’t fill the room entirely. Most of the doors had been set ablaze to make the appearance of a far greater fire.

  Brianna hovered over me, as if to take on any stray bullets that might come our way. The thought made me sick to my stomach.

  Spencer loaded a new clip fast as lightning and continued shooting, all within the beat of a heart. I could hear other guns going off and cringed as the wall was struck and a splinter of cement hit me above the eye. It didn’t hurt as much as I would have thought, maybe my body had reached its maximum pain threshold and was refusing to recognize any more.

  Spencer took a step into the room, he was now pausing between shots and taking the time to spot what little targets were left.

  Only a minute after it had started, the shooting stopped. In an instant there were no more percussions from guns, no more screams from panicked soldiers, only the crackle from the burning doors.

  “Status report!” I heard a man yell, I think it was Adrian. Some of the other gun shots I heard must have been the rest of our group shooting in from different directions.

  “I have both targets.” Spencer yelled back as Brianna pulled me up to my feet. “William is down and has lost a lot of blood.”

  Then I heard Rachel yell “Josh took a bullet to his lower stomach just now, he is still standing but I don’t know for how much longer.”

  Spencer and Brianna took my arms over their shoulders and we entered the room. The floor was a blanket of dead soldiers. Blood was splattered everywhere and everyone was covered in a layer of dust. The room itself was big and round, with large wooden doors evenly spaced along the wall. A cathedral ceiling loomed, huge and white over the carnage below. The others were standing in groups of two at all the open doors. Josh and Rachel stood at one burning door, Adrian and Lillie at another. They were all dressed the same as Spencer, they had their gas masks pulled up on top of their heads to reveal their faces.

  “Let’s move out.” Adrian said, turning back the way he had come from. Lillie, at his side, eyed me for a moment before turning to follow. I knew the look well, she was taking a quick survey to see what condition I was in and figuring out what treatment I would need. It also said that I had been missed.

  Josh leaned on Rachel as they met us in the center of the room. Rachel had one hand pressed firmly against his abdomen, blood seeped through the cracks of her fingers. We all shuffled through the hulking bodies in a rush to catch up with Adrian and Lillie.

  “It’s good to see you.” Josh grunted.

  “Tell me about it.” Brianna said.

  We exited the room and went down a large hallway. I tried with all I had to keep my head up. It was so hard, I wished I could just lay down and sleep. My feet were now dragging without so much as the pretense of trying to walk. At the far end of the hallway was a long set of glass doors where blindingly bright light shined in from outside. As we got closer I could see that most of the glass had been shot out and there were more dead soldiers on the ground.

  We slipped through the window panes without bothering to open the doors. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the light I could see a black suburban waiting on the curb with its passenger doors open. The rest of the parking lot looked like it had been racked with mortar shells. I wouldn’t want to be the guy standing in this parking lot when the fighting began. The snow had melted but the weather was still chilly, the cold wind was a welcomed caress on my wounds.

  Josh and I were laid down in the back seats while everyone else scrambled to cram themselves in everywhere else. Lillie immediately began inspecting my wounds. She worked systematically, starting with the bigger ones and working her way down. Her expression never changed from one of a deep set of concentration.

  Brianna sat down by my head and lightly ran her fingers down the side of my face and neck. She tapped on my cheeks every time I started to fall asleep. She looked so troubled, soon even her tapping and pleading wasn’t enough to keep me awake.

  I watched her, the most beautiful girl in the world, the girl I always wanted at my side, until my eyes slipped closed and I passed out.

  At first it was dark, I was alone in a pit of black. I don’t know for how long, it could have been days, or weeks, it was impossible to tell. I just sat there, waiting for the moment when the nothingness would end. Hours passed and then days, finally I emerged from the darkness into a dream.

  I was in one of the government’s big cities. Large buildings, all of which were hundreds of years old, towered over me. Thousands of cars lined the streets and yet there were no people.

  “Hello!” I called, my voice echoed back and forth through the eerie streets, hello, hello, hello...

  I peered through the window of a clothing store. At first I thought I saw people, but they turned out to only be mannequins. There was a layer of dirt on everything as if I were the first person to have been here in a long, long, time.

  I started walking; desperately trying to find an end to the city that never came. As I walked on, the city began to grow more and more similar. Eventually everything looked the same, every building, every car, even the dented stop sign that waited for me at every corner.

  “Let me out here!” here, here, here…

  I started to run, I wanted out of this place. No matter how fast or how far I went, I could not out run the similarities. I was trapped somewhere deep inside my subconscious with no way out.

  I stopped running to try and catch my breath. I was about to continue on when I heard someone yelling behind me. When I turned I saw Brianna. At first I was ecstatic, I wasn’t alone, she was with me. I started towards her but stopped as I saw her panic stricken face.

  She was screaming “No!”

  As she got closer I realized she wasn’t looking at me but over my shoulder. When I turned to see what she was looking at I found myself face to face with Adrian. He was pointing a gun straight at me, a crooked grin on his face. He pulled the trigger before I could react. BANG!

  My eyes snapped open. The first thing I was aware of was a bright light hanging over my face. The second was the excruciating pain. It felt like somebody had torn my body into tiny pieces and poorly sewn it back together. I could do nothing but stare into the light, I was too afraid of the pain to move. There was a heart monitor somewhere nearby. I listened to its rhythmic beep, beep. The hours of a life could be measured in that sound, I waited for the monitor to stop and my time to be up. Surely the pain alone would kill me soon.

  I wondered where I was and how long this would last, I just wanted it to end. I must have fallen asleep soon after that because the next thing I remember was waking up and seeing that it was bright outside.

  I was propped up in the hospital bed. Daylight came flooding in through the window and the heart monitor was gone. I recognized the room, it was on the second floor of our house, I was home. Lillie must have moved all this hospital equipment into the empty room upstairs.

  Brianna was asleep on a red couch, under the window. I sat there watch
ing her, taking in every inch of her face. The wounds from her fight with the physical user were almost completely healed, which meant that I must have been unconscious for a long time.

  My own pain had lessened too, not completely but it was now bearable.

  The shadows in the room eventually shifted and Brianna began to move. She tossed and turned, she stretched and yawned. This went on for a half an hour before she finally sat up.

  “Good morning sleepy head.” I said.

  Her head snapped in my direction and a smile spread across her face, flashing her dimples.

  “You’re awake!”

  “It is the morning isn’t it?”

  She stood up and began walking barefoot across the wood floor “Yes, but you haven’t been awake in over three weeks.”

  Three weeks! “I was in a coma?”

  She nodded “It was Lillie’s idea, She wanted to spare you the initial pain of recovery.” When she was only five feet away she stopped, looking nervous.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She took two steps towards the door and paused. “I’ll be right back.” She said. “I want to brush my teeth first, really quick.”

  I wanted to object but she ran out before I could say anything.

  “He’s awake!” I heard her yell somewhere deeper into the house.

  I sat there for a while, listening to the birds chirping outside the window. I should have been dead, everything in life seems more vibrant after you almost die. The white curtains waved slowly in the breeze coming from the floor heater. I was safe now, my family and friends were here and I was safe. Things had gotten so out of control, in all fairness we all should be dead. That makes every day from here on out a gift.

  It wasn’t long before Lillie came racing in; she walked right up and grabbed my wrist to check my pulse. “Did you enjoy your nap?”

  “Nap? I was out for weeks!”

  “I didn’t want to see you suffer.” When she was done checking my pulse she handed me a tooth brush, bottle of water, and a bucket. “Your breath is horrible.”

  Brushing my teeth was surprisingly easy, it didn’t hurt to lift my arms hardly at all.

  “We were quite worried about you William. Only I know how close you really came, though I suspect the others can guess.” She sat on the end of the bed and watched me with a warm smile. “I don’t think I have ever been more troubled in my life.”

  “I’m glad I had you there to save me.” I said.

  “Rachel is downstairs preparing you a large breakfast, I want you to eat as much as you can. It is imperative that you get food in your body.” She stood up and waited to take the toothbrush back.

  “Ugh, I am starving!”

  When I was done Lillie walked over to the door. “It’s nice to finally have you back with us.” She said before disappearing around the corner.

  Moments later Brianna walked back in. Her face was flush from just having been washed and I could smell her refreshing perfume.

  “Knock, knock.” She said.

  I was afraid my voice might fail me so I settled for a nod.

  Her hair was wet and curly, swaying down the back of her white tank top. Her jeans were white in the front where somebody had purposely faded them.

  She walked up, slowly, excitedly. I pulled myself higher up onto the bed.

  We first touched as my hand met her waist, my other hand slid to her side. I thought I would never get to be with her like this again. Her touch made me feel ecstatic, like there was a fire bursting to life in side of me.

  “I was so scared.” She began.

  I couldn’t resist, I pulled her in. Her lips were soft and luscious, yet strong as she pressed against me. Somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, I could feel pain from my wounds. Here, with her, tangled up together, lips exploring one another, even the pain felt good.

  When our lips finally parted I was surprised to discover that she had somehow ended up in my lap. She shifted and her elbow went into my rib.

  “Damn it Brianna!” I said, gritting through the pain.

  She moved her elbow and shifted so the majority of her weight was on the bed. “Is that better?”

  “Slightly.”

  She didn’t make any effort to get off and if we didn’t move too much, the pain wasn’t that bad. I decided to keep her right where she was, beautiful and warm, snuggled up against me. There could be no better way to spend the morning.

  She was making invisible markings on my bare chest. I couldn’t tell what they were but they tingled and felt good at the same time.

  “How is Josh holding up?” I asked.

  She looked up. “The bullet nicked his appendix. It got infected, Adrian and Lillie had to take it out. He has been on bed rest ever since.”

  Ouch, that had to have been painful. To be honest, I was just happy to discover that he was still alive. Though I would have rather taken what he got over what happened to me. Not that I was trying to compare.

  “What else did I miss?” I asked, sweeping a strand of hair out of her face.

  “Well” She said “not any school. We all decided to lay low for now and not go.” She paused to think “Oh yea, Lillie and Adrian have been working like crazy. The government doesn’t know that the armory has been destroyed and they are working hard to keep it that way.”

  “If anyone can pull that off it would be those two.” I said.

  “I also explained the physical user to them. They went over the details amongst themselves for a while. They were quite surprised when I told them she didn’t recognize us. In the end they decided that it was her eyes that were the biggest clue. They said the government must have been using a mind control formula on her. Apparently they knew that the government had been working on one.”

  “They were.” I said. “When we were debating whether or not to escape, news of the mind control project pushed us over the edge. Are they doing a good job keeping our little fire fight out of the Kingdom’s eye?”

  “Yea, Lillie is already almost done with a computer program that will simulate as if the building was still up and running. I’m not sure how, probably sending field reports and doing paper work I imagine. The whole town was persuaded to believe the armory was just weapons testing, after all the Kingdom puts them through, they hardly even questioned it.” She looked up at me thoughtfully. “Sometimes I think mental users can do anything.” She paused to kiss me on the cheek. “Even after they have lost their powers.”

  She added a cool twist into the kiss. It was a sensation I would never get tired of. I took a deep breath, letting her scent consume my senses.

  If I had to spend the rest of my life in bed, it wouldn’t be so bad if it was like this.

  Chapter 21

  “I don’t know about this guys. I think I might be having second thoughts.” I said from twenty feet up in a tree, a long, brown, rope arching out from my hands. It wasn’t that I was scared, I just didn’t want to break any more bones. There was no way I was going to let myself fall victim to weeks of bed rest again.

  “Just jump you chicken!” Brianna yelled up.

  “Yea, it’s not that big of a deal.” Spencer added.

  I glanced down at the lake only ten feet away from the bottom of the tree. The goal today wasn’t to jump in, nobody wanted to get wet on the first day of April, it was still too cold for that. No, today we were just trying out the rope. The plan was to swing out over the lake, not actually fall in.

  “Are you just going to sit up there all day?” Brianna asked.

  I ignored her, letting my feet slip off the branch. I was falling for only a second before the rope caught and I swung outward, the wind whipping past. At my highest I think I was more than thirty feet over the water. My heart was pounding in my chest as I swung back. Only we would make a rope swing designed to start off from so high up.

  Spencer ran up when I came to a stop. “I told you that was crazy.”

  “You weren’t lying.” I said “So now can we go? We are
going to be late.”

  “Yea Spencer,” Brianna said. “School is about to be let out for the day.”

  “Okay, but William is driving.”

  With that, we started for the house.

  I had been recovering for over four months now and was finally starting to be able to do things like I could before. Brianna and Lillie had battled for a while over who could be my dominant care taker. They made sure every single aspect of my days were taken care of. Once I could walk again, I had to remind them that I could look after myself and didn’t need to be smothered… they still did.

  “Shot gun!” Brianna yelled when we reached my newly remodeled Aston Martin.

  Adrian and Jack had retrieved the car from the dead lands, it had just gotten back from the body shop the day before, it looked brand new. Lillie insisted the car be in peak condition and would spare no expense. I didn’t mind.

  “Did you text Neal yet?” Brianna asked me when we were pulling down the driveway.

  “Not yet, I’m planning on surprising him.”

  So far Neal had texted me every day since we had run away from the school. Adrian had asked me not to talk to anybody until they had completely finished working on the armory’s outside image. I felt bad leaving Neal hanging like that, he probably thought I was dead.

  I glanced into the rearview mirror, a blue suburban pulled out behind us. It looked like Josh and Rachel were going to tag along. We had been working on a plan to keep Blake from ever bothering us again, they probably wanted to watch.

  “It’s going to feel good to be able to talk to my friends again. No offense but these past few months have been way too boring.” Spencer said.

  Brianna nudged my side “I wasn’t bored.”

  “Me either.” I said.

  It took Brianna, Spencer and I four months to finally put our foot down and demand to be able to go back to school and see our friends again. Last night we finally did and to our surprise Adrian and Lillie didn’t even begin to argue. They acted like they had been expecting it, which they probably had of course.