When I could see again, the ambiance that I had only just seen had vanished, replaced by a horror so lethal that I felt my heart begin to split. I wanted to reach up, grasp my chest, and through some miraculous cure, aid my heart's return to its normal two-step. But the sight before me was too harrowing. I was being eaten alive by it from the inside out.
Fire had engulfed the world in several blasts. I could hear the screams of every last man, woman and child as they ran for cover, only to be consumed by that wave of flame I had seen so clearly myself. I could see every person I ever knew, whether I had felt any semblance of affection for them or not, as they perished in the overwhelming blaze.
My mother did not even try to run. The flames had erupted and she had stood firm, awaiting the moment they blasted her from this life to the next. I wanted to scream out to her but the pain in my chest had reached such an agonizing point that I found myself unable to draw the breath it would take to warn her.
For the first time, I was sorry that I left her. Tears of physical pain mixed with those of emotional torment fell as my arm jerked forward, reaching out to the image of her that was so clear, I thought I would be able to embrace her if I just strained myself to reach with enough effort and pain.
When the fire surrounded her and burnt her right before my eyes, I finally did scream. I screamed until I felt the blood pushing against the skin of my face. I screamed at my mother with fury, guilt and sadness so strong, I knew that it would end me.
Over and over again in my mind, these words repeated:
“She carried you.”
I screamed louder. The idea of it, though the thought seemed so obvious, jolted me out of my drugged sleep.
“It's okay. It's okay, Brynna. You're okay.” James was telling me. His hands were on my face as the screams continued to pour from me. Those panicked wails were the words I should have said to her. They were the protest that I never gave James when he told me I had to leave both of my parents behind. I could not form a coherent sentence. Only guttural, animal shrieks could tell the world of my regret.
I allowed myself that moment. I allowed myself the vulnerability because I knew that I was safe there with James. I allowed myself to feel something other than the normal disdain I had for my parents. I owed them a moment of grief as their moment of death came and went.
An earthquake had ripped through my chest, pulling my heart in two separate directions with a canyon of space in between. My cries of torment choked off suddenly and I found myself unable to gather breath sufficient enough to clear my clouded mind.
It was the drug they had given me. I was the one who was having the side-effects when I had been so worried about everyone else. I watched as James shouted to someone. Two men in white coats were beside me and one was ripping my shirt down the front. Even with the unthinkably horrendous pain in my chest, I still found the strength to reach over and hit that doctor hard in the face. My body was going into the defense mode I knew all too well. Despite the fact that a small part of me knew that those two men were going to save my life, I was still horrified to be in such a vulnerable state with them in the room.
“Everything's going to be okay.” James was telling me softly as he held the hand that I had used to slap the poor doctor to his chest. When I went to strike out with the other, James grabbed that one, too.
“Look at me.” My eyes snapped over to his face and I was calmed by his soft brown eyes even though I could see the smallest traces of fear reflected back at me in them. When he spoke, his voice was steady. In his firm show of calm, he was able to soothe me with an ease I didn't quite understand. “I'm not going to let anyone hurt you, Brynna. I promise.”
My hands tightened around his as I felt two patches being secured to my chest.
I couldn't breathe. Everything was beginning to disappear in swirling clouds of black. Within those ominous clouds, I could see silver stars twinkling. They did not calm me; they terrified me because as they appeared, I realized that I was falling back into space where I would relive that blood-chilling moment when the entire world I knew disappeared in a blaze that turned everyone and everything to ash. I couldn't see it again. I couldn't breathe.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
“Let go!” One of the doctors shouted at James. I grasped his hands even more firmly and the doctor had to bark at him again before he finally wrenched them free.
When the jolt of electricity coursed through my body, I heard a deafening bang that I was sure had shattered my eardrums. The ringing that followed the deafening sound was the same as the one I had heard just before the blast. I was still on Earth. I was going to drown in the wave of fire...
BANG.
It was the blast. Why wasn't I burning?
It hadn't hit me yet. It was coming.
BANG.
There was more than one explosion. The flames would surely come barreling towards me with a force that would rip what was left of the air from my lungs as I struggled to take one last, sweet breath before I died...
Silence.
It was coming. It was coming.
“Brynna?”
So God really was a man. I wondered what my eternal punishment would be for living with such hate in my heart. The condescension was towards those I did not care to know. But the hate was towards the two people who had made me. Surely that was quite an offense, one worthy of a place in at least the first of the many fabled levels of hell.
“Brynna?!”
Why did God sound so frantic?
“Come back to me, baby.”
...Okay...
As my senses came back to me, I realized that I was not dead, nor was I being called “baby” by an anxiety-ridden higher power. It was just an anxiety-ridden James Maxwell. My eyes opened and I found myself looking up into his worried face. I couldn't think of something witty to say that would assure him of my return to normalcy. I could barely process what had happened. My sarcastic nature and my intelligence that were the partners in crime behind such snidely clever remarks were put on the far back-burner under the circumstances.
“You look horrible.” I managed to croak out as my hand came up to grasp my chest. There was very little pain there anymore. A few aftershocks rattled my bones but they were mere flies compared to the beastly creature that had been the actual heart attack.
James smiled slightly and tilted my head back. He poured some water down my throat and I managed to swallow it before I started to cough.
“Easy.” James said gently.
“What are you telling me 'easy' for? You're the one pouring it.”
“And she's back to normal in...” James looked up at what I guessed was a clock on the wall, “forty five seconds. That has to be a record.”
When I went to sit up and found myself unable, James eased me up himself.
“You wouldn't even know what to do with yourself if I wasn't getting on you about something.” I managed to whisper before smiling at him just slightly.
He smiled, too and replied, “You're absolutely right.”
The memory of the awful dream (was it a dream?) that I had been having grasped my jugular and choked off my newly restored ability to breathe.
“Is it coming back?” He asked me. I could tell that he was forcing his voice to remain level.
I shook my head.
“I think I saw it happen. I saw the blast.” My voice was trembling slightly as I recanted the details. “I saw my parents and I felt...” I shook my head, stopping myself. I could not bear to relive it all again. “I don't feel it anymore. But I felt it then. And it was so strong and so...”
Without thinking about it, I reached out to him and grasped his arms before pulling them so that they were encasing me. Then I wrapped my own around his neck. That gesture showed more weakness than I could stand and immediately, I went to pull away. But his arms stayed locked around me as we laid back on the small cot. I was beneath him with his body pressed to mine. The urge to push him away wa
s rivaled by an equally strong urge to hold him close. The two desires fought valiantly but the latter won when I looked up into his eyes.
But I had to pull away. I had never needed a man before and I certainly did not need one now. I especially didn't need him. Since the moment we had met, he had purposely aggravated, insulted and angered me, all in an effort to put me in my place. The concern he was displaying just then was meant to manipulate me into feeling a strong level of affection for him. He was holding me and gazing at me so warmly because he wanted to engage in a physically intimate act of carnal eroticism. Then, after he had gotten what he wanted, I would never see him again.
That was what Maura would tell me, if she was awake.
I had to pull away.
But I couldn't do it. In the event of that near-death experience I had suffered through, I had no choice but to show vulnerability, as my desire to survive far superseded my need to remain unfazed by any passing terror, be it big or small. But I did have a choice in that moment and I needed to move away from him and force myself to face that horrible vision I had seen on my own. I faced everything on my own and I couldn't afford any cowardice now.
Though I knew that I needed to pull away, I found myself holding his arms around me, my body shaking as those horrifying images played out clearly in front of my widened eyes.
I was still very afraid.
After planting a gentle kiss on my forehead, he turned us both sideways so that he could lie behind me. I felt the scratchiness of his unshaven cheek as it rested against the side of my face. I squeezed him tighter and whispered softly so no one could hear but him:
“Stay with me.”
I felt his lips press softly to the side of my face now.
“I will.”
***
Forcing myself to remain conscious for the previous day and a half had taken its toll on me. I collapsed into another deep sleep despite my body's fight to remain awake. I couldn't stand to see what I had seen again. As I drifted off, I prayed that my chilling nightmare would be kept at bay by James's strong, comforting presence.
The dream never reemerged. I can thank him for that because every time I began to see that darkness, I heard his voice telling me that everything was alright and it faded. Within an hour or so, I heard another male voice, this one amplified to a point that it jerked me out of my mercifully serene sleep.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are level.”
I rubbed my eyes and turned over to look at James, who was still lying beside me on the cot.
“How was the take-off?”
He laughed softly.
“Terrifying, as I expected.”
“I figured as much.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why don't you try to sleep?”
“I can't. Not now.”
“Your body is going to crash sooner or later. You might as well just sleep now while everyone else does the same.”
He smiled slightly and sat up. I was alarmed by his appearance now that I was studying him closely. His eyes were surrounded by dark circles and their lids were starting to swell slightly. A day and a half ago, he had been toned and healthy but now, he was beginning to take on a sunken-in appearance that would have distressed any medical professional. I believed myself to be the mo afflicted most detrimentally by our mad dash to the ship but the stress of the journey had taken the highest toll on him.
As though he had read my mind, he said softly, “You look as bad as I do.”
“Well, thank you so much for pointing that out.”
I wasn't angry at the suggestion that I was looking less than my already lackluster best. I just had no other retort. I was clearly feeling the effects of the sleepless days.
“Do you know where my glasses went?” I asked as I looked around for a bedside table where he might have placed them. Instead of a table, though, I found that they were safely stowed in the breast-pocket of his button-up shirt.
“You might have to clean them. During the take-off, I was sweating so much that they're probably saturated.” He looked at me and said in a deadpan, emotionless voice, “Sorry.”
I found myself covering my mouth as I chuckled softly. His mouth cracked into a small, crooked grin.
“You think I'm kidding but I couldn't be more serious.”
“That is so very gross.”
His smile grew when he said. “I really am sorry, all joking aside. Let me see them.”
I handed them over and watched as he cleaned the lenses on the end of his shirt.
“You only slept for an hour.”
“I know.” I looked over at Penny, Maura, Violet and Elijah who were still sleeping peacefully.
“Don't worry about them.” James said before breathing on the lenses and wiping them again. “The doctors said that if anything was going to happen, it would have happened by now.”
I nodded and stood up, my legs feeling heavier than usual. Every step was like attempting to stride quickly through waist-deep water. I almost felt like I was succumbing to some high fever as the malaise made itself known so strongly. I put my hand to my head and sat back down.
I was momentarily stunned to find myself on the verge of tears.
“Lay back down, sweetheart.” James told me but I shook my head. When I had moved my hands away, my eyes had traveled to the far end of the room, where I could hear someone sobbing. One of the doctors was covering a middle-aged man with a sheet. A woman, presumably his wife, was standing beside him, crying into her hands.
“What am I going to tell the kids?” She asked no one in particular.
James and I stared at her, neither of us sure exactly how to proceed. I had never been skilled at consoling people as outpourings of emotion made me literally squirm in discomfort. I looked at James finally to find his eyes were traveling through the huge, heavily-populated room.
“Ten other people.”
He was right; ten other people were covered with sheets. Ten families were going to be grieving the loss of their loved ones before we had reached Pangea. Ten families were going to rue the day they had decided to come aboard the ship to escape the end of our world. It would have been easier to just die together, they would say. That's what I would say, if I had lost anyone.
“They chose to come. They knew the risks.” I said softly to James.
He only nodded in response and grasped my shoulder.
“I want to go somewhere else, James. I cannot bear to see this.”
He nodded again and followed me as I strode across the room. I reached out to grasp a nonexistent handle on the door only to jump back in surprise when it slid open on its own. As we walked past the sobbing woman, we averted our eyes.
There was a loud humming in the hallway. Our way was illuminated only slightly by the dim overhead lights. We walked side by side, neither of us having the energy to keep up a quick pace or engage in conversation.
We climbed a flight of stairs and walked past a door marked “Housing Compartment 3.” There must have been another room full of sleeping survivors on the floor we had just come up from. Finally, after several more flights of stairs and several more housing compartments, we reached a door that read “Atrium.” When James opened it for me, I was unprepared for the sight that was suddenly before my eyes.
It was exactly like a cruise ship. The floor was marble and the walls were painted a cheerful blue. There were two staircases leading to an upper level that looped around the entire circular room. At the far end of the vast, open space, there were several sofas arranged around one spectacular floor to ceiling window.
One thing that had always befuddled me was the fact that while gazing out of the window of a moving plane, I could never tell that we were going several hundred miles per hour. Now, we were hurtling through space at a rate two times the velocity of a simple airplane and yet we were gliding along almost effortlessly. As James and I stood looking out of that window, we could barely tell we were moving at all.
The nerd in me was awakened as we stared at the ligh
ts outside of the window. I suppose that space has weather as distinguishable as Earth's did but in space, the clouds are not dingy and gray the way ours looked when rain is coming. Light purples and blues were the norm up there. The stars twinkled in the distance around us; we were still not close enough to touch them.
People were starting to emerge from their housing chambers to explore. A collective gasp of several onlookers sounded behind us but James and I were scarcely aware of it. The view outside the window was something no man had yet seen and there we were, the first of the civilians on board to see it.
As people started pushing to get a look out of the window (a child actually pushed through my legs to get in front of me, the little heathen) James grasped my hand and pulled me away. But as we walked, we craned our necks to continue looking, hypnotized by the rare, mystifying beauty of that scene outside.
Large crowds always made me nervous and the atrium was slowly filling to the brim with people. Though the room was exceptionally large, the walls seemed to shrink, closing in on us and giving little time to escape. Luckily, we pushed through another door and found ourselves walking through a wide corridor. Tables adorned with potted plants and decorative vases were spaced evenly apart along both walls.
“Seems a bit strange, doesn't it?” I asked James after a moment as we continued to stroll along with our hands clasped together.
“What?”
“This was a means to an end, correct?”
“Means to an end of what?” He stammered for a moment. “What are you even talking about right now, woman?”
I smiled and he did, too.
“You must be exhausted because after two days of conversing, I know that if you were feeling your best, you would have picked up exactly what I was talking about the moment I said it. But since you don't seem to be grasping it, let me explain myself further.”
Normally, I spoke so quickly that a less intelligent person would find themselves lost after just a few words. But with my body so heavily weighed down by the same exhaustion that I was accusing James of succumbing to, I spoke so slowly an eavesdropper might have assumed I was intoxicated.
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 16