“Quinn, bring it down!” She shouted to me and instantly, I felt a surge go through my entire body so that when I turned around and charged at it, I was running at a speed far greater than anything a human being could be capable of reaching. When I tackled it backwards, for a moment my body stuck to it, frozen with ice that it carried inside. I yelled out and pushed the creature hard, sending it hurtling several feet away from me. When I looked down at my hands and arms where my bare skin had touched it, I found that I was bleeding. My skin had frozen to the thing and stayed attached even when I pushed it away.
“Oh my God…” I muttered, “Alice, it’s frozen…”
“That’s because it’s dead!” She yelled back at me impatiently. “It’s from another place! Just tackle it!”
The creature charged at me again and this time, I ran back to the car to grab a bungee cord that I suddenly remembered throwing in the trunk two years ago after my father and I finished helping his friend move to Forest Hill, a city four point two miles (or nine minutes) from my home right in the middle of Bel Air...
What the hell? How did I know that?
The beast ran at me like I knew it would. I swung the bungee cord out just as it reached me. The cord wrapped several times around the creature’s neck so that when I pulled down, he fell flat on his back. It hissed, sputtered and even gasped out a few words. “Smell” and “eat” were the only two I could make sense of. The rest were in a dead language. I knew it no longer existed the same way I knew that I could bring it down; I just knew.
I held the cord firmly in my hands as I knelt down behind its head. Its hair was black instead of white, but still long. Its features were more masculine; its nose was bigger, its mouth was smaller, and its jaw was more pronounced, though its teeth were exactly the same as the woman's.
“Alice…” It dragged the word out threateningly. She was standing in front of it now, the shotgun at her side. Though she was not aiming, ready to shoot and kill the monster, I could still see the fierceness in her eyes that I had seen earlier as we prepared for the fight we had just won.
“Let him go!” She yelled at the thing after aiming the shotgun at its chest.
“Gone…” It hissed at her, its black eyes turning over white as it smelled the air. I knew that it could smell the blood seeping down my arms.
“He is still in there! Let him go!” She fired a shot right next to its head. The bullet left a deep dent in the bumper beside my head; I supposed it wasn’t the best time to fuss at her for shooting my car…
I knew that trying to get the creature to let her father go was useless. But I also knew she would never shoot the beast holding him captive without knowing for sure that there was no chance he could be saved.
Her fear was growing as was my own. If she didn’t shoot the thing, it would kill us both. The hope that her father could be saved was draining from her face. If I could have let go of the cord that was keeping the creature on the ground, I would have gotten up and shot it for her. I couldn’t stand the idea of her having to kill both of her parents.
“Burning…”
Tears began to fall from her eyes now and she lowered the shotgun.
“Look at me, Alice.” I whispered and after she moved her hands away from her face, she did. “It’s the only thing you can do for him. It’s the only humane thing.”
I understood those things suddenly. They were the result of a person being consumed by an evil that was older than their own race. The evil mutated their physical appearance and acted through them, terrorizing the living for reasons neither Alice nor myself knew yet. But although they were completely possessed, the original person was still alive somewhere. They were falling through the crushing darkness that consumed them, being ripped and contorted and burned and eaten by it. The only way to save them was to kill the beast that held them firmly in its grip. I knew that as Alice had known it after awakening from her sleep.
She raised the shotgun and with tears running down her face, she whispered, “I love you, Dad.” Then, in an explosion of sound that ripped painfully through the dense silence, she fired the gun.
Thick, black blood splattered onto my face and I jumped away from the body before it turned back into her father. I wiped the blood from my face before it dripped into my eyes, listening to her crying softly as she grasped the creature’s clawed hand. After turning back around, I watched the hand turn quickly back into one belonging to a human.
“My mom told me. She told me I had to help him pass over. He was stuck inside of that thing!” She managed to gasp out through her deep, powerful sobs. I knelt down beside her, holding her head to my chest as she began to cry even harder.
“I had hoped…” She whispered. “A part of me thought that maybe he had escaped it. Either it had killed him… or he had gotten away. But I hoped that if someone had to do it, that it would be me.”
“I know. I know.” I told her as she grasped both of my arms tightly.
“It was my responsibility… but he’s…” She laughed slightly and I looked at her in shock. “I’m relieved because he’s okay now. Wherever they are, our parents are okay, Quinn.”
I had known that, too. It was the only thought that could comfort us. People had been using the notion of “a better place” for centuries to console the living after their loved ones had passed to the land of the dead. Alice and I both didn’t know where that place was but we knew it existed. Slowly, we were beginning to know things like that. The idea brought the comfort then that had evaded us for days.
“Do we have time to bury him?” She asked me softly. “I know you said we’re running out of time. But…”
I grasped her hand and kissed her.
“We’ll make time. Come on.”
XXX
We reached the launch site with exactly seven hours to go until the event. In order not to be caught in the middle of it, the ship would be departing Earth with two hours left until the great blast.
The launch site was something to witness, believe me. It reminded me of a tailgate party, though one with slightly more frightened-looking party-goers. Cars, trucks, vans, buses and even one tractor trailer were parked on the hard desert ground, stretching back as far as my eyes could see. Alice and I watched as people meandered through the rows upon rows of cars, talking in different languages and carrying their bags.
“This would make for a cool essay, wouldn’t it? ‘Different cultures at the end of the world’?” I suggested to Alice, who just wrapped her arm around my back as we started walking.
“Even if you bring a charger, there isn’t going to be electricity, you moron!” One man snapped at another man.
A man was gesturing to the ship in the distance while trying to communicate with a group of Americans that were obviously very confused at his ramblings in a language they didn't know. One man opened the door of his car and pulled out two small dog carriers.
“All pets are being kept in the east side of the ship through lift-off.” A man in an unidentifiable uniform told him. “Did you bring their sedatives?”
The man nodded and started to explain, but our feet were carrying us forward still.
“This is going to be so much fun, sweetheart. It’s going to be like a ride at Six Flags!” A woman was telling her crying daughter as she hugged her tightly.
“This is crazy, Quinn.” Alice commented as she looked around.
“I know. It’s like every country has at least a few people here.” I replied. “I think that’s a good thing. It would be no fun if we got to Pangea and there was no diversity, right?”
“I don’t think it really matters.” Alice replied. “I know you’re trying to keep things positive. But diversity on Pangea should be the least of our worries.”
“What should we be worrying about?”
“Getting there in one piece. Think about it: We are going to be zooming through space at a ridiculous speed. We’re going to cover an unthinkable amount of ground in a two weeks. I just don’t think tha
t if spaceflight travel was that advanced, that we never would have heard about it. It seems dangerous to me.”
“Do you remember what they said at the meeting? They kept this a secret because it was all going to be unveiled in a big ceremony. But now they have no choice but to tell us. We’re all making this ship’s first journey with them. There’s something I forgot to tell you, by the way.”
“What?”
“They’re sedating everyone.”
She stopped walking and looked at me, her eyes blazing.
“How could you have not told me that?!” She exclaimed in fury. “No! Quinn, I am not being sedated! For all we know, they’re sedating us because we have to travel for like, one hundred years!”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, wrinkling my eyebrows in confusion and stifling a bemused grin.
“Don’t give me that look like I’m being so ridiculous! Quinn, hello?! You’re the space nerd! Hyper-sleep!”
“This is not hyper-sleep! They're sedating us so we don’t all freak out while we’re taking off into space at thousands of miles per hour. I don’t want to be awake for that. Plus, they said it’s more like a cruise ship on-board than anything. Why would they make it look so nice on the inside if we were going to be asleep for so long? We’re only going to be out for the take-off. Allie, I promise, no one is trying to trick you into sleeping for one hundred years.” I grasped her hands, trying not to laugh. After a minute, she rolled her eyes and groaned in aggravation.
“Quinn, if I wake up and my boobs are down to my knees…”
I couldn’t help it; I cracked up.
“You think it’s funny. But you’re the one who said you wanted to be with me forever. So, you have to deal with them.”
“I meant that, when I said it. So you’re right. See? Now I wouldn’t lie to you about this because that would be unpleasant for both of us.”
“Yeah, it would.” She punched me lightly in the stomach. “Keeping secrets from me… Hyper-sleep with one eye open!”
She was trying to maintain the façade of being genuinely angry but I could see the faintest trace of a smile as she turned away from me. I was laughing even harder now as I walked behind her and ignoring the irritated glances of the people I walked past. I’m sure they thought I was just a stupid kid that was too immature to understand the gravity of the situation. But I wasn’t just laughing because what she had said was funny. I was laughing because she was starting to show stronger signs of returning to the way she had been before the end had begun. In my heart, I knew that both of us were starting to grasp at a faint, distant hope that we were going to survive. We were going to have the life we had always dreamed of having. Whether it was on Earth, Pangea or Pluto (the non-planet, so obviously, I’m kidding), we were going to be alright.
Violet
Brynna was frustrated. She was shaking her head slightly, taking long drags on her cigarette, and rolling her eyes. Maura, Penny and I were standing on the cracked desert ground, watching her and James try to change the tire that had exploded as we drove. If James hadn’t had sufficient reflexive abilities, the car would have swerved off the road.
“Well, maybe you should have checked them before we left! Aren’t men supposed to be the ones who possess all the expertise on automobiles? That’s a fallacy, obviously!”
“Will you just be quiet?!” He snapped at her loudly, clearly beyond frustrated. “At this point, listening to you talk is like having a spiteful, condescending banshee screeching in my ear. If you’re going to stand there and complain at me, please, for the sake of all of us, be a little quieter about it.”
“I feel no need to mutter when I’m irritated, James.”
“Clearly.”
“Alright!” I snapped finally and jogged over to them. “Brynna, stop being…” I shook my head slightly, coming up short on a word to properly describe her behavior, so I settled on:
“...you. James, you have to hurry up. We’re running out of time.”
“I know. I’m getting there, Violet.” He hiked the car up further on the jack and I knelt down beside him to screw in the bolts. “Thanks. Oh, look; someone else has brains in the family.”
“You are the most insufferable annoyance I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, James Maxwell.” Brynna snapped as she flicked the ember off of her cigarette.
The jack started to give beneath the weight of the car but James, in an impossible show of strength and reflex, got below it before it fell. He knelt with almost half the weight of the car on his shoulders.
“Yeah?” He hissed as the exertion of forcing the car up rendered him hardly able to talk. “Right back at you, sweetheart.”
“Would you two just stop it?!” I stood up after fixing the jack. “One minute, you’re arguing like ridiculous tweens who want to wear the same shirt. Then, you’re babbling at each other about the most stupid, ridiculous things. Bottom line: You two never shut up!”
“Excuse me, if you overheard the conversation that we had in the car earlier, you only heard it because we were operating under the assumption that you were asleep. I can also assure you that the aforementioned conversation was neither stupid nor ridiculous. Furthermore, please let me remind you, that if something is stupid, it is more than likely also ridiculous, so your statement has been rendered moot by redundancy. Finally, even if our conversation was meaningless or mindless, it was also none of your business.”
“We were in the same car. What was I supposed to do?”
“Listen to your iPod. Plug your ears. I don’t know!” She snapped and clearly, her exhaustion was beginning to get the best of her. Maura and Penny came over to see what was holding us up. Brynna scooped Penny up and walked around to the back of the car where the trunk was open. I heard her pull open the cooler we had brought, talking softly to Penny all the while. Normally, her gentle nature was not exposed to strangers or even to Maura and me. Now that she was slowing, her body weighed down heavily with exhaustion and hunger, she couldn't hide it.
“Are you sleepy?” She was saying softly as she came back around where we could see her. Penny was eating a cheese stick while her head was rested against Brynna’s chest. “We are going over here to lay down while you figure out a solution to our little conundrum. You got us into it, James, though I have little faith that you can get us out of it as well.”
“Maura, make her stop.” James grunted as he pulled the bolts with all the strength he could muster in his own exhaustive state.
“That’s enough, Brynna.” Maura replied flippantly.
Brynna was opening a cheese stick of her own carefully.
“I will walk away now. If I do not, I will surely throw this cheese-stick at his head.”
“She’s just being funny at this point.” Maura explained to James quietly as Brynna started to walk away.
“Really? I didn’t know she was capable of being funny. I thought she was only capable of foaming at the mouth.”
Maura and I both gasped when Brynna's half-eaten cheese stick hit James in the side of the face. I expected him to jump up and start shouting at her in fury. Instead, he turned his head and watched her walk away, grinning to himself before starting to laugh. The cheese-stick had landed in his lap; he picked it up and shoved the whole thing into his mouth.
“She’s something else, I’m telling you.”
“She is.” Maura replied with a sigh. “That’s kind, actually. She’s a right pain in the ass. But she is, as they say, my pain in the ass.”
When the car was finally running again, Brynna came over with Penny bundled up her jacket. When I looked into my younger sister's face, I found that she had fallen asleep again.
“You need to wake her up, Brynn. If she sleeps now, she won’t sleep on the ship.” Maura told me.
“I will get her to sleep.”
“How? Are you going to knock her unconscious?” Maura asked impatiently.
“Do not make jokes with me. I am not in the mood. I will get her to sleep by s
imply...”
“They’re giving out sedatives for the lift-off.” James interrupted her. “It will wear off sometime after we’re in space.”
“Sedatives?!” Brynna snapped at him as she laid Penny in the backseat against me. “That’s not happening, James! I don’t even let her have non-organic juice! You think I’m going to let them drug her?!”
“What is the alternative?” James closed the door to block out the rest of the conversation. She was pointing at him, her eyes widened, clearly infuriated that he had kept that little secret from her. Finally, she threw her hands up and huffed to the car door which she opened and closed with gusto.
“Well, at least I know one thing for sure.” Maura spoke up after Brynna had sat back in her seat. “You two will never date.”
“What even made you think that was a possibility in the first place, Maura?” Brynna snapped irritably. A cigarette was burning away between the fingers of the hand she had rested on her face.
“I don’t know.” Maura replied calmly. “You’ve never fancied boys your own age. I thought you had decided to try someone a little older.”
“No. If I was going to date an older man, it would not be that one. If one forces their gaze past his good looks, all one would see is an infuriating, arrogant plague.”
“I think that's a little harsh, darling.” Maura reasoned, still in that calm and cool tone. Her zen attitude was obviously grating on Brynna's frayed nerves.
“No. It really is not. Please, by all means, forgive me if this is too harsh, but I think he is just about the most aggravating presence I have ever encountered.”
“I think you’re just tired and cranky.” I chimed in casually but with a condescending scorn to my voice that one would use when disciplining a very rambunctious, contemptuous child.
“I do apologize if I missed this but did I ask you what you thought?”
“No, but I’m going to tell you anyway!” I shot at her after crossing my arms over my chest defensively. “This is a free country!”
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 13