“Why didn't they tell anyone?”
“Because of this. They said they didn't know why, but they had been told to keep this a secret. So, they did, out of fear of losing their jobs. That's good for us, though. A spacecraft has been built. It's large enough to hold five thousand.”
“How did they build something like that without anyone snooping around?”
“That's the next part of the story. You are well aware, I'm sure, that things go on behind closed doors in our government that we never know about. I mentioned that to you earlier.”
“Yes.”
“They have known about this, Brynna. They have known that the end is coming and the spacecraft was built to take them away from here before it hits.”
“But they're responsible for this!” I exclaimed as fury overtook what fragile hold I had on my self-control. “If it's nuclear, if it's an act of war, then they started it!”
“They did. But since when does anyone's personal responsibility override their need to survive? They were planning to leave us all here to die.”
“For their mistakes!”
“Yes. But that is not our main concern. It will please you to know that we have other ideas. Our job right now is to gather as many people as we can and leave here before this thing happens.”
“How many people had the dream? How many people are out there trying to gather up others?”
“In the US, about ten, I've been told.”
“Ten?!” I actually put my face down on my knees, needing a moment to process the grave impossibility ahead.
“Ten.” James said calmly. “In other countries, put together, about one hundred.”
“One hundred and ten people are responsible for gathering up five thousand...” I took a deep breath that was meant to soothe me but only gave my heart the jolt it needed to beat faster. “We'll never get enough, James.”
“We will. More and more people are having the dream, Brynna. More and more people are starting to realize what they have to do.”
“Why has no one said anything? Why has no one gone to the press?”
“Since when has the press ever believed anyone that predicted the end of the world?'
I did not reply, for I knew he was right.
“Plus, can you imagine the panic if people were to believe it? They're going to let this unfold without ever saying a word. No one will be warned.”
“So many people are going to die.” I whispered, more to myself than to him. The rush of blind consternation that went through me as that realization took hold is beyond anything I can describe. “There are billions of people in the world. There are good people who are all going to die now. There are children...”
It seemed ridiculous to say but I just could not imagine a higher power so cruel that He would smite the world while children inhabited it. The notion of the innocent paying the price for the guilty crept into my head and forcibly turned my stomach.
“I know.” James told me and I looked up to see my sadness reflected in him. “I can't believe it, either. But the fact is, we were given these visions for a reason. We were meant to save everyone that we can from this and start over somewhere else. We'll never be able to save them all. But we can save as many as possible, Brynna.”
I nodded, knowing, hating that he was right. I'd have some choice words for a higher power as soon as my mind slowed down enough to think of them.
“Why us?” I asked as I shook my head slightly. “Why were we the ones that were chosen?”
He studied me for a moment, clearly trying to decipher the answer to that question himself. All he could come up with was:
“We're lucky, I suppose.”
“Lucky by whose definition?” I asked before running my fingers through my hair. “What about supplies? This other planet is completely uninhabited, correct?”
“As far as we know.”
“So, how are we supposed to build a civilization out of nothing?”
“The ship can also hold five tons of cargo. The people who think that they're leaving have been gathering things for years.”
“I would call them such awful things. But I just cannot think of anything that is quite awful enough.” I looked at him. “James, how much time do we have?”
Once again, he fell into a lapse of silence and studied me. As the seconds ticked by so distressingly, I began to dread his answer more and more, until the feeling became so unbearable that when he opened his mouth to reply, I almost covered my ears to avoid hearing it...
“A day.”
XXX
As we suspected, the two jocks were still outside of my apartment building, sitting across the street on two different benches and staring at the door with expressions of pained concentration on their slowly decaying faces.
“Is there a back way in?” James asked me as the car idled.
I nodded, studying the physical deterioration of the two young men who only the night before had been so boyishly good-looking. No longer were they clean-cut and stocky. Though I knew that their height remained the same in actuality, the way they slouched cast the illusion that they had shrunk down at least three feet. Their emaciation was severe; they were merely wisps of skin clinging tightly to creaking bones. Even from across the street, I could see that their eyes were surrounded by menacing dark circles and their hair was beginning to fall from their pale white, snake-veined scalps. To a passerby, they simply appeared to be afflicted with some terrible, fatal disease. To me, they were the perfect real-life imitations of the monsters I had run from in my childhood nightmares.
“Why do they look like that?” I whispered to James and I did not realize how tightly my hand was squeezing his arm.
“Do you want me to sugar-coat it or do you want me to be blunt?”
I frowned at him over my shoulder.
“What do you think?” I answered sarcastically.
“They haven't eaten you yet.”
I looked at him, my eyes bugging in fear but then quickly resuming their normal shape.
“I will let you know when I require a full explanation on that. Now is certainly not the time.”
“I wasn't going to give you one anyway.” He drove away slowly, rolling his window up before we passed them. Thank God his windows were tinted or they surely would have seen us.
He parked the car just behind a meter. I watched him hop out with charismatic grace and had to roll my eyes; this was a gentleman who knew how good-looking and powerful he was. Arrogance never complimented a male, I had been told once by Maura, who believed herself to be the all-knowing authority on the matters of men. Shaking my head, I started to open my door only to find that he was already there, opening it for me.
“Thanks.” I murmured. “Chivalry isn't dead, I suppose.”
“No. Not to old guys like me, at least.” He replied as he walked to the meter to dispense three quarters inside of it.
“Shall we?” He beckoned towards the alley. I nodded, striding ahead of him with no fear of what might meet me. I just wanted to pack my things and go, knowing that every second ticking past was too precious to waste. We only had twenty-three hours left until the ship that would carry us far from the chaos and carnage departed our world forever.
Once safely sheltered by the shadows of the corridor, we hastened our pace until we reached the back door of my building. I took my keys from my purse and tried to steady my trembling hands long enough to unlock the door for us. I tried to tell myself that it was adrenaline causing me to tremor that way and not fear strong enough to drain what was left of my vitality. Thankfully, James reached out after a moment of watching my pathetic attempt at completing the simple task; he held my hand still with both of his and together, we unlocked the door.
We moved quickly up the back stairway, jumping the steps with ease. After reaching the fourth floor, we both had to stop and breathe heavily. Damn smokers, we never learn.
“Alright, let me check,” He said, “I don't know how many of them there are. I've
seen as many as ten of them casing someone's place.”
“Do you always use action movie jargon or is this new for you?” I whispered to him in a lame attempt to make a joke. Sometimes a little humor can go a long way to ease one's anxieties.
“It's new for me.” He whispered back, deadpan, as he looked up and down the hallway. He looked back at me and said in an intentionally hoarse voice reminiscent of a chain-smoking drill sergeant, “Coast is clear. Move out.”
I couldn't help but laugh softly at that. If my joke was of slightly below average hilarity, his was scraping the very bottom of the meter.
I have never been as stunned by normalcy as I was when I walked into my apartment. Everything remained exactly where I had left it: My clothes were still strewn out on the floor, my dishes were still piled in the sink, and my window was left open from when I had burned muffins the day before.
“Nice place.” James complimented me as he looked around. “How much do you pay for this?”
“Wow, nosy.” I replied before walking in further and going straight back to my bedroom.
“Not nosy. Just curious!” He called to me from the living room.
“You can come back here.” I told him as I started to pull the clothes from my drawers. I shoved them unceremoniously into my overnight bag before moving over to my closet. “So many shoes, not enough space...”
“What is it with women and shoes?” He asked me. “Why do you need a pair to go with every outfit?”
“I know. Why can't we just wear the same severely scuffed pair that we bought almost a decade ago everyday?”
“Are you talking about my shoes right now?”
“I'm sorry, you're allowed to call me out on my excessive footwear collection but I'm not allowed to call you out on your scant one?”
I poked my head out of the closet, raising my eyebrow in sardonic scolding, awaiting an answer.
“Touche.” He held up his hands in surrender. “But just to verify, I don't wear these everyday. I wear them for work. And for your information, it was six years ago.”
I smirked and went back into my closet, quietly commanding myself not to take my stilettos, boots, or flats, but only my practical walking and running shoes. I sighed heavily again as I looked at the ones that would be left behind. I had spent so much of my parents' money on that assortment of shoes. How very sad I was to leave them all behind. I grabbed a few more items out of my closet that I couldn't bear to leave behind before moving past James into the bathroom.
“I do not like the silence so I will answer your nosy question.” I told him as I pulled my shampoo and conditioner out of the shower. “I don't pay for this place at all. My parents are responsible for paying my rent. They're responsible for all of my expenses, actually. Credit cards, cable and phone bills, things like that.”
“Typical rich kid, I see.”
“I didn't say I was proud of it. I just answered your question truthfully.”
“Is your relationship with your parents a good one?”
An iciness must have come over my features because he immediately backed off of the subject.
“You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.”
I nodded before answering.
“It's better that way. Let me just say this: A part of me wants to leave them behind.”
He reached out suddenly and grasped my hand, startling me with the gesture.
“You have no choice but to leave them behind, sweetheart.”
Some would have considered that a bombshell. But somehow, I already knew. My parents, I'm sure, knew of the impending crisis because of their jobs. My mother was a senator who was, if we are being honest, partially responsible for the predicament that the human race found themselves in. My father ran a news organization that was no doubt hushing it all up. Guessing was not needed; I could denote easily that they had no place on the ship that would carry civilians away from the doomed earth.
“You don't seem surprised.” James gently prodded me to speak, to tell him in detail about the blustering war of sadness and fury inside of me. Instead, I simply posed a question to him:
“Is it because they're responsible?”
“Yes. We all voted. Every last one of us who had the vision first voted on whether or not to allow your parents to come. But since they are involved in covering this up and since they were of the many that were going to leave us all behind, we decided against it. Originally, they had all agreed that even you couldn't come. But I persuaded them.”
“Why?”
My blue eyes raised to meet his light brown ones. We gazed at each other for one long, curious moment and then he answered:
“I don't know.”
How anticlimactic. How insulting, too, that he had no idea why he had persuaded the others to save me. I would answer for him, just so the question would be closed for good and just because I was urged to say something to fill the space of silence. Words were brimming at my lips, urging me to say them before it was too late to regret. If I didn't speak, I would surely meet my end much earlier than expectation dictated...
“I guess you're a good enough person that you didn't like the idea of me being eaten by those things that are just outside the door.”
The words fell from my mouth before I could fully appreciate the magnitude of what I had said or the fact that I had known those creatures had arrived at all. James looked away from me and then looked back, his own shock evident on his face.
“Alright. We have to go.” He picked up my bag and grasped my hand. “I'm going to get us out of this.”
“One more thing...” I told him before creeping out into the living room. I grabbed one of the two picture frames I had placed on the mantle over my fireplace; it was of me, my sisters and my brother from the Christmas before, standing on either side of Maura, my “nanny.” Anyone who didn't know us or our family tree would think that she was just a proud mother surrounded by her loving children. But as it turns out, that just was not the case.
The other picture was from a campaign event of my mother's. Someone with no knowledge of my shaky relationship with her had given the photo to me as a gift. I had kept it simply because I liked the frame and nothing else. In the photo, my mother had her arm around my back and was smiling as she waved to the crowd around her. I was still young enough not to question the perpetual charade we were forced to live under. In the photo, I was smiling, too, and looking up at her.
That photo made me sick. As I shoved it into my other bag, I felt a wave of nausea that was so forceful, I had to reach out and grasp the mantle for a moment and focus on my breathing. It was the only way to avoid the disgusting, inevitable consequence of the tumultuous, acidic feeling in my stomach.
“What is it?” I heard him whispering to me from some far off place. I shook my head slightly, unable to explain my strange behavior away. I was unable, for the first time in a long time, to pretend that I was fine. He slung my bag onto his back and put his arm around my shoulder. As he steered me towards the open window, the feeling began to dissipate.
“The fire escape doesn't work.” I murmured to him once my stomach stopped bubbling comletely.
He looked at me, instantly trying to work out a solution to our conundrum. My two ideas were useless, at least if we wished to live another day: We could jump to our deaths or get eaten by Reapers. I was well aware that they were the only two options and for me, there was no contest between the two. James interrupted me as I silently prepared to take that first step onto the window ledge.
“I know this is going to sound insane but I need you to just go with it.”
“After everything that has happened today, do you really think I’m not going to go with it?”
“Do you have something sarcastic to say every time someone speaks?” He asked me, clearly amused and bewildered by the tendency. Most people just found it annoying.
“Indeed, I do.” I replied and before I could add, “Thank you so much,” I heard my name being hissed on th
e other side of the door. My eyes must have widened and betrayed the revulsion I felt. I had never heard such a sound and to hear it saying my name provoked a fear that froze my ability to comprehend firmly in its place. Chills ran laps up and down my spine and the hair on my arms stood up straight. One of the creatures outside made a sound almost like a guttural bark followed by what sounded like my name garbled out through spit and clenched teeth.
“James…” I whispered, not realizing how tight my grip on his arm was once again, “What are we going to do?”
“Get behind the couch and close your eyes.”
“What? No, don’t open the door!” I ordered in a furious whisper. “James, please don’t. Please don’t let them in!”
To call that “begging” would be inaccurate. To call that pleading with him as though he possessed and could allot the rest of the days of my life would be closer to the truth. But instead of hearing my desperate plea and jumping with me out of my fourth story window, he spun me around and sat me down behind the couch.
“I won’t think less of you if you cover your eyes,” He told me hurriedly, “But whatever you hear, do not come after me. Understand?”
I nodded vigorously, suddenly cognizant of the fact that I might very well witness the end of him. Given all the other complex emotions of the moment, I didn’t quite know how to process the idea of not having him by my side from then until the end. I would only understand how the thought paralyzed me much later.
My entire body jolted upwards as the door he had just thrown open banged against the stopper in the wall. I stared straight ahead, my eyes wide, my breathing shallow, but my body motionless. The first sound I heard was that short, raspy breathing of the two creatures. Next, I heard their pounding, labored footsteps.
“Come on.” James was saying, urging them to get past him, to try to come at me. “Come on!”
One long, deep, ragged inhalation followed by a shrill shriek of animal fury startled me; my hands flew to cover my ears and my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Several hard, evenly spaced thuds vibrated the floor beneath me. I heard the bark that could have been produced by the voice of any particularly large breed of dog. After two more barks, the monsters drew in two long breaths before those blood-freezing screeches blasted from their fanged mouths again.
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 4