“That man is my father.” I blurted it out before I could stop myself. I covered my mouth, thinking I had blown it.
“I know.” He replied, “I saw you with him on the first day. That doesn’t freak me out but I won’t say that I like him.”
I nodded.
“What’s your name?” I asked, just to break the silence.
“Nicklaus. Well, Nick, for short.”
“Cool. It’s been nice to meet you. Seriously, come find me. I need some people my own age to hang out with.”
“I do, too. We could hang out right now, if you like.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I could help you find this James Maxwell. Who is he, exactly?”
“He’s my sister’s…” I tried several different words, including “boyfriend”, “friend”, “acquaintance”, before just settling on “person.” It was so very smooth of me. Thank you, Brynna, for being so complicated that I have to stutter over my words in order to put a status to your relationship with a man. Now Nick probably thought I was insane.
When I looked up at him, though, he was laughing softly.
“Alright. Let’s go find her person, then.”
XXX
It was while we were walking through the rows of different campsites that I began to see the discord that would eventually shake the foundation of our lives. When Dad had warned the people that they were to claim their rations by sunrise or else, he had neglected to mention that those who failed to appear would go hungry that day. I couldn’t fathom why he was allowing people to starve but I knew that in time, the people would grow tired of it.
“Did he mention why he is refusing to give people food?” Nick asked me angrily as we watched a little girl take a huge gulp of water from a bottle the man in the campsite next to hers had handed over.
“No.” I answered vaguely. I knew that I would be asking him later that night.
The answer was clear to me. My father was ruthless and he knew that by denying these people food, eventually they would begin to die out. I had overheard him telling one of his minions, as Brynna called them, that we were overpopulated. Enough food hadn’t been packed for every survivor “Nature has to take its course, I suppose.” Dad had told that man who worked for him. There was a grimness to his voice that I was unfamiliar with. Though allowing people to starve was a necessity in his opinion, he took no pleasure in seeing them die.
I didn’t relate that to Nick, though, because I knew that by being my father’s daughter, he would begin to see me as being just as cruel. I vowed to change my dad’s mind on the subject. I would make him feed everyone, regardless of whether they showed up on time or not.
Some would argue that what he was doing was the only option. But I didn’t see why we couldn’t all have food for the duration of time it took us to find our own on Pangea. By the time the rations ran out, we would know what was safe to eat and what wasn’t. However, eating unknown plants would surely yield a few casualties, so that option wasn’t the kindest, either.
Surviving was going to get tougher as the weeks wore on. We were fools because we had not planned out solutions to any of the most vital challenges.
“Excuse me...” I approached a woman who was kneeling beside her daughter. I pulled my water bottle out of my bag and handed it to her.
“You’re his daughter, aren’t you?” The woman asked with a fury in her voice that scared me. “This is the second day he’s kept our food. We were there on time, too!”
“I’m sorry.” I said uselessly.
“Well, you shouldn’t be. But he should.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for the water.” She was abrupt with her gratitude, but I could understand. Her daughter was trembling on the cot, crying softly but making no tears. Dehydration was beginning to take its toll on her small body.
I wanted to loathe him. I wanted to see him through the glare of hatred the same way Brynna did. But I couldn’t discount him. Perhaps if I pleaded with him, he would loosen up on those people. I would make him walk down to the end of the campsite and see the horrors they were beginning to experience. It would take some convincing, but I believed that I could get him to reconsider.
“Naïve.” Brynna’s voice said in my mind. I shook my head slightly to force her cold cynicism from my thoughts.
“Do you know who James Maxwell is?” I asked the woman. She turned to me in irritation, having thought our conversation was over.
“I don’t know if his last name is Maxwell. But a guy named James came through here just this morning. He was tall, muscular, brown hair, goatee and beard, nasty attitude...”
“That would be him.” I said grimly.
“Well, he left.”
“Left?” Nick asked in utter bewilderment. “Left to go where?”
“I don’t know. He took a tent and everything. He took some water and a rations box that he had stolen from someone.”
“He said that he had stolen it?”
I don’t know why that surprised me so much. Our father wouldn’t give him a rations box while he was on his own. The preservation of our supplies was part of the reason why but the other part was far darker: He wanted James to die slowly for engaging in a relationship, even one that was not physical, with Brynna.
“That’s what he said.” The woman huffed and I could see that her aggravation was growing. “Anyway, we don’t need thieves in this camp. We don’t need rapists, either, but your father made it clear that he doesn’t care about that. All he cares about is a few people surviving.”
Dad had no set group of people that he wanted to survive. He was just trying to make the numbers dwindle down to a manageable figure. The woman had no idea exactly whose lifespan my father was trying to elongate, she just knew that there was a set group. She was wrong.
“This guy, James, took off into the woods. He’ll die out there, but maybe that’s for the best. How can anyone steal from other people now? I lived in Burma on Earth. I saw people starving everyday. But I rarely saw a man steal. Is this James man close to you?”
“To my sister.” I told her.
“Well, your sister had better think twice about him. What he did was wrong. Something like that shows a man for who he truly is.”
She turned away from me now and I knew that our conversation was actually finished that time. I looked at Nick and we turned without a word to head back the way we had come.
My search for James was over. Not only was he a liar who didn’t deserve my sister but now he was also a thief. He had taken off like a coward to live by himself in the woods.
The woman was right, though I was ashamed to have such a terrible thought. Maybe James dying would be the best outcome for everyone including, if not especially, Brynna.
Brynna
It was night the first time we saw someone that was not of our world. I was pacing in front of the tent as Maura, Elijah, Penny, my father and Violet slept. Maura was sleeping in my father’s tent at night and the thought was so sickening that I found myself unable to sleep. The already turbulent, anxious energy was rolling in filthy disgust and pin-sharp betrayal. Even resting quietly was not an option for me anymore.
Violet was keeping something from me. Somehow, she blocked me out of her mind when I tried to decipher exactly what her precious secret was. She did not realize she was doing it, but every time she saw me coming, a wall went up inside of her mind that forced me out.
I still did not know why I could hear peoples’ thoughts. When they passed by me, I could listen in to not only their meandering, ordinary musings but also their fears. They were afraid of starving. They were wary of my father. Both were valid anxieties.
I sat down in front of the fire pit and watched the embers as they died away only to be replaced by gray, crumbling ashes. I stared at the dying light, thinking of James. Just as the fire burned itself into nonexistence, so did my feelings for him. I had never been clear on exactly what those feelings had meant. They were as hazy to me as other peoples’ innermost tho
ughts should have been. I had to trust what was sure: He had lied to me. I could not forgive him for that.
Plus, there was a faint whispering in the camp amongst the fearful survivors. People were beginning to embrace the lawlessness of this new land. Innermost desires to cause pain were being worn proudly, emblazoned on the chests of the evil for all of us to see. Selfishness and cruelty were flavors of every day.
I knew, from seeing into someone’s mind, that James was responsible for some of it. Exactly how much remained unclear.
It would only get worse. It would grow in intensity until my father was forced to act. When he did, the consequences were too horrid to picture. The brutality of it would stun everyone into submission. I knew my father was capable of such atrocity even if he didn’t yet.
James.
My mind tormented me by dropping some subtle clue to his continued existence. Sometimes it was just his name appearing like a ghost in the darkness of my thoughts. Sometimes, it was that overwhelming warmth consuming me; it hypnotized me into a daze where I saw only his face.
Looking back now, I know that I was foolish to believe that I could let him go.
“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Maura’s first words to me after several days were both insulting and annoying. A cliché? Really? Also, how could she allow herself to assume that I was so devastated over James that I needed her comfort? How could she suggest that I still felt anything for him at all? Did she not know me even after so many years?
I looked up after throwing my cigarette into the embers. The paper burned to a charred black, causing smoke to flow steadily in my direction. I looked up, squinting as my eyes watered. When I gazed out into the darkness, I saw the man standing far off by the trees.
Ours was the camp closest to the forest on that side, so I had the best view. My heart began to bang painfully against my chest as a fear I could not fathom filled me up like scalding hot water.
He was wearing black pants and a loose-fitting black long sleeve shirt. Besides his eyes, which I could see even from a distance, he looked just like the rest of us. I could see a faint glow in the blackness of his eyes; it was a light within darkness.
His intentions were unknown. His identity was a mystery. All that could be known in certainty regarding him was that he was not one of us.
I squinted hard, trying to read into his mind. Instantly, a searing pain shot through my forehead and spread backwards to the base of my scalp. I collapsed to my knees and grasped my head in my hands.
I must have given a cry of pain because Elijah came running out of the tent.
“What is it? What is it?” He demanded quietly as he held my arms. I looked up to see the man still standing in the same place. He had not moved an inch but his eyes were rested on me now.
With a shaking hand, I pointed.
“What the…” Elijah whispered. He did not take his eyes off of the strange man as he pulled me to my feet. “Dad!”
As if our father would be brave enough to approach the stranger… I could have laughed.
However, our father proved me wrong when he immediately began to stalk across the grass.
“Danny!” Maura exclaimed behind me and I scowled at the heavens. I could have turned around and slapped her. Now, she was addressing him by an affectionate nickname. Vomit…
“Keep Violet and Penny back.” I had felt them awaken from their sleep and heard their curious thoughts rise quietly to life. They were wondering what exactly was going on.
“Brynna!” Maura called after me. “Elijah!”
Congratulations, you know our names. She could have called something else out. She could have at least given us a “Come back!” or something similar.
We were following after my father who was already halfway across the untouched field where the man was standing. I couldn’t help but conjure up images of demons and ghosts appearing to humans. If I had to picture their earthly forms, the man was very close to that image. The way he stared at us unblinkingly as we approached was strange enough as it was. But the pallid color of his skin and the light within his black eyes... They were downright otherworldly.
My heartbeat skipped into high gear when we were right in front of him. His eyes locked with mine the moment I stopped walking. Still, he didn’t blink. I will give myself credit, though, when I say that I did not look away. Perhaps the stare-down was his way of frightening us off of the land. I would not be so easily swayed to move a group of thousands for his sake.
“Are you Pangean?” My father asked him.
Clearly, he did not inherit any of my mother’s foreign diplomacy skills over the years of their marriage. A simple “Hello, how are you?” might have started the conversation off a little better.
The man continued to look at me, even as my father gazed at him, awaiting an answer. His stare was beginning to unnerve me. I felt as though he had invaded my mind and was listening in on every panicked thought. I could keep my composure physically but emotionally, I was crumpling. We were living through the subject of several science-fiction movies Elijah and I had watched; hostile aliens killing humans for everything from territorial disputes to farming us for resources to just loathing our race. I could not peg exactly what the man’s motives were for sure but I knew an attempt to frighten better than anyone.
“What do you want?” My father tried again and his voice was still infused with boldness despite the growing fear I could hear inside of his mind.
Still, the man did not look away from me. To break the tense staring contest, I spoke next.
“Do you speak English?”
“Brynna, be quiet.” My father snapped at me.
The man’s gaze finally broke free from mine and I felt as though a tremendous weight had been heaved off of my back. My cognitive functions were chugging along speedily as they always did once again.
“You’re from the green orb. You call it ‘Earth.’” The man spoke perfect English.
“We are.” I ignored my father’s burning glare. He wanted to handle the situation himself but somehow I knew I was more apt to diffuse whatever tension (and there was plenty) that stood firmly between us. “What do you call this place?”
“This is Purissimus.” He responded vaguely but he looked back at me now.
“How can you speak English?” I asked him, though the answer certainly was not important “We have studied your race since the Beginning. We knew one day you would come.”
“Our world is gone.” My father chimed in. It was as though the man simply could not begin to understand the situation unless he was the one explaining it. I, for one, believed that I was doing a more than satisfactory job of handling that first meeting. But my father had to be the chief, as men so often do. “We came here to escape what happened there. We’ll stay out of your way.”
As if I was going to allow that man to just walk away, never to be seen again! The things he could tell us would be far beyond anything we could ever have known otherwise. I didn’t know if he would be up for sharing but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to ask. When I looked at Elijah, behind the fear in his eyes, I saw the same desire to learn all of that vast knowledge the man could provide.
“You destroyed your home. It is gone because you squandered it.”
He was right about that, so I didn’t argue.
“It’s gone because…” My father trailed off and I smiled slightly to myself, awaiting his explanation for what had happened. “Either way, we’re here now and we can’t leave. The ship had enough fuel to make one trip. Even if we had enough to make it back, we would have no home to go to.”
“You expect to keep so many people here on this field?”
“Do you have a problem with that?” My father's aggravation and self-righteousness were rising quickly. He was starting to become offended by the man’s attempts to tell him what to do.
“Would you prefer us to move somewhere else?” I asked him.
“I would prefer for you to leave. Y
our kind is not welcome here.” His voice did not rise in anger nor did he take his eyes off of my father.
“Did you not hear what I just said? We have nowhere to go.”
“You destroyed your Earth. You will not destroy what is ours.”
Now, I was panicking again.
“For every day that you stay here, we will take ten from your number. They will not be taken from this realm peacefully. Please be aware of that.”
His skin seemed to glow in the moonlight just as he was beginning to slink back into the darkness of the trees. As the shadow took him, that strange light in his eyes snuffed out and he truly did resemble a demonic creature from ancient religious literature. His eye sockets were all I could see.
If I wasn’t unnerved before, I was downright terrified now. Still, when I spoke, I did not show any fear. If that is a surprise by this point, then you clearly have not been paying attention.
Elijah looked at my dad for a solution to this very pressing, very dangerous situation. But our father was staring, utterly dumbfounded, at the place where the man had stood only seconds before.
“What are we going to do, Dad?” Elijah demanded as our father turned and stormed back towards our campsite. A long, seemingly endless line of people stood there, gawking and muttering quietly amongst themselves in speculation. It seemed as though every survivor had risen from their slumber. One slight whisper of some strangeness afoot and they were all awake to witness it.
“Who was he?”
“Is he from here?”
“What does he want?”
Surely, our group suddenly speaking at a volume that rivaled a stadium during the Super Bowl was very disturbing to the natives we now knew existed. One of my father’s cronies came up with his trusty megaphone. They even placed a box down on the ground for him to stand on. I covered my mouth as a small smirk crept onto my lips.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we now know that there are others on Pangea. They have asked that we refrain from littering and straying too far into the forest.”
The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) Page 27