2136: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Matthew Thrush

  ‘It was safer for you to come with me than to have remained back at the precinct. The Pavers would have come back and killed or tortured everyone still breathing to find the person responsible for that attack. I needed to get you out of there. I was doing what I thought was best for you.’

  ‘Well, that’s reassuring,’ I said. ‘What makes you think they would have come back anyway? Why would they care about our precinct? There’s nothing there worth going back to.’

  His blue eyes were mirrors to his soul, but I couldn’t make out what his soul was saying right now. It was as if he had shut down his gates, and his walls were up.

  ‘Talk to me, Parker!’ I said. ‘Why all the secrets and hesitation? If you want me to trust you, then you need to start telling me what’s going on. How you knew where to find the Pavers. How you know they would have gone back and killed everyone. How you know any of this.’

  ‘I know where to find them…because I’ve been here before. I don’t know exactly where they are because I was blindfolded, but I have a pretty good idea. So, forgive me if I don’t have all the answers. Forgive me for trying to save your life or prevent something worse from happening. You have no idea what these people are capable of. You don’t know what they’ve done or what they will do to get what they want.’

  ‘And what is it that they want, Parker? Hmm. Why are the Pavers so bad?’

  I saw a flash of anger in his eyes and I took a step back instinctively. I saw his jaw quivering and his fists ball up. He turned and walked straight at me. Like the moment in the tunnels, I thought he was about to hit me.

  His face was inches from mine. His nostrils flared as he tried to contain his rage. I straightened my shoulders and stood there stubbornly.

  ‘They want you,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t you get it? Don’t you see it?’ He tossed his hands in the air and spun away.

  ‘Maybe if you explained…’

  ‘Explained!’ he snapped, turning back around. ‘Willow, all of this,’ he indicated the world around us, ‘do you really think this was all an accident? Do you really think that the world would go up in ball of flame with a massive war, and then miraculously within a few short years be all at peace? Wake up! It’s time to grow up and see the world for what it is.’

  His words stung, but I held my ground.

  ‘Then tell me,’ I shouted. ‘Tell me, Parker. What is the world really like? You don’t think I’ve been living in it for the last twenty-three years? Remind me how it felt to watch my father die? Remind me how it felt to bury both of my parents when I was only twelve years old. Remind me what it was like when I had to remove the boots from a dead, rotting corpse just so that my own feet wouldn’t burn in the hot sand. Do you want me to go on? Because I don’t think you quite realize the real world around you.’

  My body was shaking. My own fists were balled into tight knots. My face felt on fire, and my body tingled with an elevated electrical current from the release of adrenaline. Every part of me was hoping he would say something, anything, so that I could release all this tension onto him. My fists were ready for the beating.

  But he just stared at me with those blue, sad, disapproving eyes. He looked disappointed. Who was he to judge? He wasn’t even around when I needed him. He wasn’t even in my life.

  His lips parted. Choose your words carefully, I thought. They may be your last.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. I’m sorry that your parents died, that all of this even happened. I wish I could make it all better, to say that it was all just a dream, and promise you that everything will be all right, and you have nothing to worry about. But, I can’t. I can’t say that you’ll be okay. I can’t say that the world will get back to the way it once was. I can’t say that things will get better. I just can’t.’

  His voice got soft and his eyes droopy. He lowered his hands and relaxed his fists. When he looked up at me next his rage had completely subsided and he looked a lot like my father after he had to discipline me for something. He had always looked more hurt than I felt. I felt my own hostility quickly fading upon seeing the sadness in his eyes. I felt ashamed for my anger. Parker never meant to hurt me. Ever since he came into my life, all he had ever done was try to help. He didn’t deserve me taking out my frustrations on him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘I’d probably be more upset than you are if both of my parents were murdered, and no one was explaining anything to me.’

  ‘Why did you say the Pavers wanted me?’ I asked.

  His face twitched with as he struggled to decide whether or not to tell me.

  ‘Please, Parker…’ I said. ‘Give me something. I’ve come this far with you already in faith. At least give me something more solid that I can hold on to to get me the rest of the way.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you, but you must promise me one thing.’

  ‘And what’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I don’t even know what I’m promising.’

  He held my gaze.

  I relented first, ‘Fine. I promise.’ Whatever that is.

  ‘If I tell you what you want to know, you have to promise me you will not follow me.’

  I just stared at him confused. Not follow him? Why have I traveled all this way just for him to tell me not to follow him any more?

  ‘I don’t understand. I thought you wanted me to follow you. Isn’t that why you brought me all the way out here?’ I asked.

  His lips pursed and his head shook slightly.

  ‘I asked you to follow me because I didn’t want you to die,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what else to do so I told you that you had to come with me. It was the only way I could protect you from what was coming.’

  ‘This doesn’t make any sense. Why bring me all the way out here just for me to leave you? What am I going to do? I don’t know where we are. And you saw those two men. If they are out here, there’s probably more of them. If you were trying to protect me, you have a funny way of going about it.’

  ‘Just trust me, Willow,’ he said.

  ‘You’re making it hard to do so.’

  ‘I know you don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t even understand most of it. But what I do know is that your parents would want this to happen. It was their plan for you to do this.’

  ‘What plan? Do what?’

  His smile reminded me of my father when he would look down at me after I had completed a mathematical equation, or read my first full-length book.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he asked. ‘Look around you. You say you don’t know where we are, but I think you do. Don’t you remember being here? Don’t you remember this place from when you were just a little girl?’

  My eyes analyzed the landscape. The cliff behind me climbed up fifty feet or more in a sharp incline after about a hundred and fifty feet from where the ocean started. On top of that were the burned trees for miles in either direction. My head swiveled towards the shoreline and as far as my eyes could see, the white, sandy beach extended for hundreds of miles to the north and south.

  ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I said frustrated. ‘How could I? Why would I remember a beach?’

  He turned his body towards the water.

  ‘Open your eyes and see,’ he said.

  My eyes shifted along with his. The ocean was vast and went for miles upon miles. The dark, deep blue of the sea reminded me of the blue water back in the cavern under the reservoir, except I couldn’t see beneath it. White foam gurgled on top of the waves as they swept into the beach before the undertow pulled them back out like a lapping tongue.

  The cool breeze from the Atlantic Ocean rinsed over my face and whipped my auburn hair behind me. My face bristled with the pellets of sand grazing my cheeks as the sand was picked up and blown with the ocean wind. The sound of the waves splashing on top of each other, one trying to overcome and overpower the other in a race to the sho
re, were soothing. My shoulders relaxed and the tension building in my neck seemed to lessen, if just for a moment.

  Parker was standing next to me.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life,’ I said. ‘It’s breathtaking.’

  And even as I spoke those words my lungs exhaled a deep sigh. I inhaled the salty air through my nose and let its pureness fill my chest. I was watching the white ripples dance along the top of the vast blue when I noticed something standing or floating atop the water.

  I walked towards the sea instinctively in an attempt to get closer to the object.

  The waves crashed into my shins as my boots waded into the first layer of the ocean. My feet sank in the sand as the current pulled. I continued to walk towards the black object until the water was up to my knees.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I heard Parker say from behind me. I turned back to see him already making his way towards me in the water. The ocean splashed as his feet high-stepped in my direction.

  ‘Do you see that?’ I asked him, pointing out into the horizon.

  ‘See what?’ he asked, but when I looked back at him his eyes were already looking in the direction of the black object on the water.

  ‘You know what it is,’ I said. It was more a statement than a question.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘I know what that is. But it’s not just one, it’s several.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Why is it out on the ocean? How did it get out there?’

  ‘It’s one of SIND’s facilities,’ he said. ‘There are multiple buildings jutting out of the sea on long metal legs. What you’re seeing are only the scout towers. The rest of the facility is under water.’

  ‘Is this why you brought me here?’ I asked. ‘Is that where they have Roxx?’

  I faced Parker to see his facial expression.

  ‘Yes,’ he conceded, unwilling to fight me any more. ‘I believe this is where they have your godfather. If they have him anywhere, it’ll be there.’

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Parker cut me off.

  ‘I already know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is no.’

  ‘Why not? If that’s where he is then why wouldn’t we go?’

  ‘Do you see the ocean?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you see how calm it looks? How welcoming?’

  As we spoke, my legs wobbled as the current tried to pull me out with it by my ankles. I sidestepped to regain my balance.

  ‘Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Sometimes the most beautiful things are the most dangerous. You notice how you have to keep stepping to keep from falling into the sea every time the tide comes in and goes back out? Now imagine that times ten or twenty. Do you think you could fight off that amount of power? The undercurrent here is very strong. If we tried to swim to the facility, we’d never make it.’

  ‘It’s not that far,’ I said, looking out at the black speck in the distance.

  ‘What you’re seeing is several miles out,’ he said. ‘We would drown before we even made it a third of the way. If the current didn’t get us first, then the sharks would.

  ‘Sharks?’

  He was nodding his head.

  ‘Like I said; the more beautiful and peaceful the object may appear, the higher the risk of danger lay below the surface. The ocean is not a friendly place. It is unforgiving and its thirst to overcome the land is unrelenting. It will not stop until it’s devoured everything all around it.’

  ‘So how are we going to get to it if we can’t swim?’

  Parker was walking back up the beach even as I asked the question.

  ‘We aren’t,’ he said.

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘What I said was that I thought your godfather was being held there, and that those guard towers are the only thing visible from above the surface. So if that’s the case, why would we try to go out there? What do you expect to find? How do you intend on getting into the facility below?’

  He was right. I hadn’t thought this through.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, reading my thoughts by my expression.

  ‘What do you think then?’ I asked. ‘You must have a plan. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have brought me out here in the first place.’

  ‘I do,’ he said, ‘but I’m not sure if it’ll work.’

  ‘It’s better than trying nothing.’

  Parker smiled at me.

  ‘You are your mother’s child,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘And since I’m my mother’s child, you also know that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.’

  The smile turned into a grin.

  ‘I guess I’m not getting rid of you,’ he said.

  ‘Nope. You’re stuck with me.’

  His eyes darted out across the Atlantic at the black towers miles offshore, then back at me.

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I guess we’ll do this together.’

  ≈ Chapter 36 ≈

  Parker led us along the beach to the north for about an hour before stopping.

  ‘It’s getting dark,’ he said. ‘We’ll make camp here then continue in the morning.’

  With my calves on fire from walking in the soft sand, resting sounded perfect. We walked up the shoreline towards the embankment. I couldn’t see any black trees on the top of the ridge, but I imagined if there were trees or any kind of foliage, it was ash like the rest.

  Parker plopped his pack down against the cliff wall.

  ‘I’ll find some wood, you get some stones and make a fire pit.’

  I didn’t bother asking if we’d be seen lighting a fire. I was too tired, too sore, and too hungry to argue. I walked back to the ocean and gathered up wet stones from the hardened sand. The tide was already pulling out.

  I picked up two broken conch shells and went to walk back. The cliff wasn’t as steep here, but it still went up at least twenty feet or so. When I looked down the shore to my right or left, I could see how the top of the cliff was concave and dipped where the sea levels used to be. When the ice caps first melted, the water levels rose so dramatically that entire cities and continents were swallowed up. But what was even crazier than that was the fact that the water levels had reseeded this much since the Proc ships were constructed. They were sucking the ocean dry, literally.

  I was constructing my rocks and shells into a circular pit when Parker returned with a handful of dead seaweed stalks and dried driftwood. He began smashing it into smaller, more manageable pieces and stacked them in a pile. He tugged the seaweed into shreds and fluffed them with his fingers to create coarse hairs that could catch a spark.

  He grouped the driest pieces into a ball in the center of my pit. I had already dug a large hole into the sand so the wind wouldn’t blow out our fire. The wad of dried seaweed looked like a bird’s nest.

  ‘Can I try?’ I asked when Parker pulled out his flint, tied to a string around his neck, and knife.

  He handed the flint bar and the knife to me.

  ‘You’ll want to strike off some shavings into the kindling first.’

  ‘Like this?’ I asked. I stroked the blade on the edge of the flint and sent a putter of sparks into the center of the bird’s nest Parker had made.

  ‘Flip the flint over,’ he said. ‘You don’t want the sparks just yet. We want the shavings to go into the pile first before the sparks.’

  I flipped the flint bar over and slid the knife along the black rock again. This time some shavings scraped off.

  ‘Ok, now strike the other side again.’

  I did as he instructed and an entourage of orange sparks fell from my hands.

  ‘Just like that,’ he said. ‘When you see it smoke, make sure you get close, cup your hands like this and blow gently until the sparks catch.’

  He acted out the motion I would do with his hands and blew into them.

&nb
sp; I scraped the knife against the flint again and more sparks flew, but none of them were catching. Some of them splashed over the kindling and went out in the sand, while a few made it to the mark. I made another strike and this time the sparks ignited the magnesium shavings into a small flame. I quickly fell to my stomach and cupped my hands around the kindling and blew gently.

  Parker added a few smaller pieces of dried driftwood to the pile.

  ‘Good,’ he encouraged. ‘Allow the flame to do the work.’

  My breath sent the tiny flame flickering and it bit into the added dry wood. I waited a few seconds then blew again. The concentrated air brought the flame to life and soon the entire nest of kindling was on fire.

  ‘Here,’ Parked said, and handed me more twigs. ‘Add these to the fire, but be sure not to smother it.’

  I placed the extra wood splinters on top of and around the small fire in a pyramid shape and let the fire catch. Eventually the fire grew and Parker added larger pieces to the it.

  ‘Good job,’ he said, with a smile on his face. ‘You may make a great tracker after all.

  I knew he was just being nice, but it felt good either way.

  With the fire burning steadily, the cliff at our back, and the ocean before us, we were as safe as we could be in the circumstances.

  ‘Have you figured out how we are going to get in?’ I asked.

  Parker looked at me blankly as if I had just startled him from a thought.

  ‘The facility. Any clue how we are getting in?’ I clarified.

  ‘I have an idea,’ he said.

  ‘Good, I was beginning to think we were just going to walk all the way up to Maine along this beach.’ I managed a small grin.

  ‘Not likely,’ he said, ‘considering the beach ends three miles up.’

  The sun was still hanging on the horizon, refusing to give up its grasp on the world. Its warm, orange and reddish-purple aura shimmered in the distance along the beach. It looked like the beach continued on for hundreds of miles, but the sea must have reclaimed it again if Parker was correct.

  ‘Seeing as we are limited on supplies, we can’t really build a raft. So, what’s your idea?’