by Billy Dering
Heidi handed Kid a bowl of baked beans. “Eat, please.”
Kid was restless and after one spoon, he put the bowl down. He didn’t want to lose that glimmer of hope. He didn’t want it to fade away. “Alright, I’m going to get Sara and head out.”
“We talked while you were in there and we’re all going with you.” Jess clapped him on the shoulder. “We wouldn’t let you go it alone.”
Nodding, he said, “Thanks. Let’s get her and go.”
“Hey Kid.” Maria then whispered, “You may want to tell Sara that when she’s recovered, we have her rescue planned out already.”
“We do?”
“Not exactly, but give her hope. Sometimes that is the only thing that gets you through.”
He nodded and put his hand on Maria’s shoulder, understanding what she was getting at.
Walking into the middle room, which was eerily quiet and still, Sara appeared to be sleeping. Kid sat on the bed next to her, put the candle on the floor and held her hand. It felt completely limp and… lifeless.
His heart sank. In a frenzied desperation, he began to check her vital signs. He didn’t feel a pulse and her chest didn’t rise to take a breath. He started shaking her and yelling, “Wake up! Come on Sara, wake up!” Tears flowed out of his eyes as he pleaded. He fell to his knees and screamed, “No!” at the top of his lungs.
The others rushed in.
“Sara!” Maria shrieked and ran over to the bed.
He turned to her for help. With an autistic younger brother who also had medical issues, he knew that Maria was trained in CPR. “Kid, do chest compressions!” She started blowing into Sara’s mouth and lungs.
Jess and Heidi stood over Sara’s bed. “What can we do? Maria, what can we do?” Heidi asked in a panic, with her trembling hands at the ready in front of her.
After 30 minutes of regimented CPR, Sara was still unresponsive. Maria’s voice was barely audible. “Kid…”
“No!” he snapped and continued to do chest compressions, with his arms trembling.
Reaching out and grabbing his arm, she squeaked out, “It’s over.”
He gave one final push of his palm on Sara’s still chest. “It can’t be.” His voice had a tormented vibrato.
“Kid… it’s over.” She cupped her hands over her mouth and slid down the side of the bed. He caught her before her knees hit the rock-hard concrete floor. She put her arms around him and they both began to cry.
With no strength to fight off the internal tidal wave, Kid finally broke down completely. He cried oceans of grief and sorrow, as if every sad event in his life was catching up to him at that very moment. He had always put forth a tough emotional front, and up until that moment, that front had never really been compromised. Now, it was completely obliterated. Not slowly stripped away or chipped at, but annihilated in an instant. The pain he was experiencing was so bad that he thought he literally wouldn’t live through it. It was as if his insides had turned to mush like the rest of the world. He felt weak and dizzy, and thought he was going to pass out. As he held Maria, even the muscles of his stomach were trembling and he felt like he was going to vomit.
With a Herculean effort, he turned his eyes again toward Sara. He stared at her face, waiting for her lips to part and resume breathing, knowing that was not going to happen. As he continued to stare, his body began to tremble even more. Maria held him tighter. He felt like he was convulsing. He looked up to see Jess pressing his lips together so tightly that they began to quiver.
Heidi, like a mother consoling a young child, took Kid’s head and cradled it against her stomach. With his forehead resting against her midsection, he cried without holding back.
Jess put one arm around Maria and one around Heidi. They were all bound together, with Kid in the center. He knew he was not holding them together, rather together they were keeping him from coming apart.
After several minutes of sobbing, Jess said, “Let’s go to the other room. We better get some water before we all dehydrate.”
He slung Kid’s arm around his neck and carried most of their combined weight as he began the slow journey to the main room. He put Kid down on a bed and ran outside. Jess returned and put a full pot of snow on the wood stove. The snow instantly melted and everyone drank except Kid.
“More than anyone, you need this.” Jess handed Kid a cup. “It’s too late to do anything more tonight. We’ll do whatever you feel we need to do tomorrow,” he added as he put a hand on his shoulder.
Kid barely nodded, and kept looking down at his untouched cup of water. Abruptly, he stood up and walked out the front door.
“Where are you going?” Heidi asked.
Falling to his knees in the snow, Kid slumped down and put his face in his hands. “No!” he screamed as he turned his eyes toward the sky, and his fingers squeezed into tight fists.
“Kid! What the…” Jess yelled.
“No!!” even louder.
Heidi ran out and as she turned to face Kid, her feet slid out from under her. She scraped and clawed her way on all fours. Without hesitation, she straddled him, pulled his face into her chest and held him tight. “Shh, please don’t scream.”
He screamed one more time, but right into Heidi’s chest. She held him tighter while saying, “Shh.”
They shared a long embrace, until his inferno burned down to smoldering embers. Kid and Heidi stood and dragged themselves back into the cabin. Before closing and locking the door, Jess peered outside in every direction.
“See anything?” Maria asked.
“No. Don’t see anyone,” Jess answered. “This would not be a good time for those bastards to show up.”
Kid was sitting on the foot of Heidi’s bed. She laid down, grabbed his shoulders, and whispered, “At least lay back and rest.”
His weakened body did not resist. His back hit the mattress about halfway up, with his knees and lower legs still dangling over the foot of the bed. Maria came over and took his shoes off. She grabbed his ankles and lifted while Heidi pulled, until his body was completely on the bed.
Turning on his side, Kid stared at the stars he could see in the nighttime sky through the window. He really wanted to fall asleep, if not for any other reason than to get a break from the pain. His heart was shattered. How was he ever going to live without her? His sadness turned to guilt as he re-lived the past several days. The rescue went so well, and then one shot at the last moment barely hit her. If only he had told her to get down sooner. If only he had pulled her to the bottom of the boat a little harder. If only he had reached out and caught that bolt with his hand! So many things he could’ve done.
His guilt gave way to a deep anger. They will pay for this! he thought as he clenched his fist. The more he thought of the soldiers, the more he was consumed by rage. He saw the maniacal face of the old man outside the truck window in Logan’s garage. He could never forget the cold eyes, and the evil smirk on his disgusting face. They had destroyed almost everything in his life that meant something to him, and Sara was the final straw. He put the bent knuckle of his pointer finger in his mouth and closed his eyes. With so much rage, he bit down, not realizing how hard he did until he noticed the trickle of blood running down his fist.
The night seemed never ending to Kid, who was unable to sleep a wink. Finally at 3:30 a.m., he got out of bed. Lighting a candle, he walked into the middle room of the cabin. Although the others had pulled the blanket over Sara’s head, he couldn’t bring himself to look that way as he walked past. Continuing to the back storeroom, he grabbed a pickaxe and a shovel.
On his way back through the middle room, he again averted his eyes to avoid the pain of seeing the casket their bed had become. He stopped in his tracks as he spotted something on the wall. Putting down the tools, he reached out and touched a picture, which was now visible in the flickering candlelight. It was the photograph of him and Sara sitting together on the cabin’s roof deck, both laughing hysterically. “The day at the cabin,” he whispered. T
hat day, he had come with his heart, but she had left with it. As he stared at her laughing in the picture, his mind began to play back the rest of their day together. He saw her laughing and running her fingers through her hair, like she always did, as she sat on the roof. He could never forget the level of intimacy they found that day. It was so much more than physical. It would always be the best day of his life.
After staring at Sara in the picture, he looked over his shoulder and saw the outline of her motionless, covered body. With his eyes again swelling, he nuzzled his face in the crease of his arm at the elbow. How can I go on without my soul mate?
Chapter 29
January 1, 2045
Sunday, Early Morning
The Pine Barrens of New Jersey
Six days after the event
The next morning, Heidi woke upon hearing a strange noise. You’re imagining things, go back to sleep, she told herself.
Chink.
She sat up in bed upon hearing it again.
Chink.
She jumped to her feet. “Oh no, someone is here!”
Peering out the window, her sigh seemed to roll from relief to pity. Behind the cabin, Kid was swinging a pickaxe and hitting the frozen ground with tremendous force and might. She stepped back to the bed, wrapped herself with a blanket, and returned to the window.
Jess ran over and stood next to her. “What is he doing?” He yawned and rubbed his scruffy face.
“Trying to cope,” she answered, and paused. “We’re all heartbroken about Sara, but I can’t even begin to imagine what he’s feeling right now.”
Moving his face closer to the dusty and scratched glass, Jess developed a pained expression. “It’s killing him. I’ll go help.”
“Wait.” Heidi grabbed his arm. “Let him go for a little while. Let him deal.”
Jess rekindled the fire and reheated the small amount of coffee left in the percolator.
As Heidi watched Kid dig, a cold breeze made it through one of the many gaps around the window and her breath turned to steam.
Midmorning, Kid exhaled and tried to shake the fatigue out of his arms. Have to keep going, he thought. He looked up as Jess walked outside. His friend never said a word, but just picked up the shovel and as Kid pick-axed the frozen ground, he would scoop away the chunks of dirt. A couple of hours later, they stood over a shallow grave. Kid finally muttered his first words since Jess had come out. “That’s good, thanks.”
Back inside, Kid secured the blanket around Sara’s body. When he carried her out, the others trailed behind him. He carefully laid her in the freshly dug grave and stayed on his knees. Reaching down, he pulled the blanket down just enough to see her face one last time. She looked very much at peace. Starting to get choked up, he pulled the blanket back over her head and stood up, staring at her body for several minutes. He couldn’t say goodbye to her. He would never say goodbye.
Overcast skies had settled overhead and a slight breeze rustled the treetops. The air was raw and everyone breathed steam as they stood still with their heads down. The group stood around the grave and not a word was spoken. Kid preferred it this way. He seized the shovel and started filling in the hole. Jess pushed earth with the head of the pickaxe. Heidi and Maria, in a gesture that Kid appreciated despite it being more symbolic than useful, used their shoes to move small piles of dirt. After the grave was filled, they left the slightly rounded mound and trudged back into the cabin.
Kid took a hammer and dismantled the wooden bed frame in the middle room, while leaving the mattress and box spring on the floor. He took a long piece of wood and a shorter piece of wood and nailed them together as a cross. Next, he carved words into the pieces of wood with a pocketknife. The inscription in the longer piece of wood read, ‘Her spirit will never die.’
On the smaller piece of wood, he inscribed horizontally, ‘Sara Hyland’ and then he stopped. He was going to add the date of her birth and death, but being exhausted and disoriented, he had lost track of what day it was. And if they were in January, it would be the next year. “It doesn’t matter.” He threw down the pocketknife and took the grave marker outside. Just having her name on it was fine. Honestly, he didn’t want an end date, or closure. He then put the marker into the loosened soil at the head of the grave and tapped it in with the back of an axe head. With his task finished, he sat staring at the dirt mound for several minutes.
When Kid walked into the cabin, a bowl of grits was waiting for him on the table.
“Eat,” Heidi said.
“Maybe later.”
“Maybe nothing, eat. And this time it is an order, not a request. You need to keep up your strength.” She picked up the bowl and put it in front of him. He pushed it away, but she pushed it right back. He peeked up at her and then started to eat, not wanting to be bothered about it anymore.
Jess walked in from the middle room. “Hey buddy, me and the girls dumped and refilled the basin. You should take a bath while the water is still hot. It felt great, and I know I needed it.”
“I’ll vouch,” Maria offered, “I’m the one who’s been stuck sleeping next to him.”
“I even shaved. Didn’t even know we had disposable razors. Brian must’ve bought them. Soap doesn’t lather up as well as shaving cream, but it works.”
As soon as Kid finished eating, Heidi said, “The bath is open, and you need it. You’re dirty from all of that digging.”
“I’ll wait, someone else can go.”
“Everybody else already went.” She pointed to the middle room of the cabin. “Now, Kid, let’s go,” she added in a commanding tone, as if scolding a child.
He walked by, sarcastically saluting Heidi as he passed. In the middle room, the water in the tub was still steaming. The disposable razor was on a chair within close reach. He undressed and slipped in, crossing his ankles under the water to relieve the pressure on his tightly bent knees. The water level was pushed halfway up his chest since his body took up so much of the metal tub’s space.
“Knock, knock. Just grabbing your dirty laundry,” Heidi warned and came in. She grabbed his clothes and took them to the stream. After washing them, she hung them next to the stove.
Now finished bathing, he realized that he had nothing to dry himself with. He called out, “Heidi? I need a towel.”
“Be right there.” A moment later she came in. “How’s the water?”
“Still warm,” he said with complete indifference.
“This is all we have.” She held up the ripped blanket they were using as a bath towel. “It’s still a little damp from Jess but it’ll do. I’ve had it drying next to the stove.”
“Thanks.”
“You know, it’s hard to believe all this has happened so fast,” she began to say and then stopped. “Sorry, I should leave and let you finish in here first.”
“I don’t really care at this point.”
“You don’t care that I’m in here, or you don’t care about what’s happened?”
“Both.” At that moment in his life, he really didn’t care about anything anymore.
“It’s just that, well, why did this destruction have to happen now? Why couldn’t this happen when we were old and gray?” she asked, still holding the makeshift towel.
After a moment passed, he finally said, “It doesn’t matter now. It happened,” as he flicked at the bubbles on the top layer of bath water.
Heidi, seeming more determined than ever, sat on the floor. “So, what do we do now?” After a momentary pause, she answered her own question, “We just survive I guess, and fight when we have to.”
“What’s left to fight for?” He sounded solemn.
“We’ve got to find things to fight for. This society on the ships, they plan on inhabiting the mainland,” she noted.
“So what.” After a moment of silence, he erupted. “Heidi, they had the power to completely destroy the world and alter the course of history. I’m starting to wonder if it was just meant to be, and here we are, the final
crumbs left on the floor. All they need to do is sweep us away, and they’ll have a clean slate for their new world. Maybe it was meant to be, and we don’t belong here now. Maybe we were meant to be swept away. Can’t you accept that possibility?”
“I give up,” she blurted out and scrambled to stand up. Getting to her knees, she stopped. After hanging her head for a brief moment, she whispered, “No.” She paused, and then snapped, “No!”
Looking into his eyes she said, “Maybe so, Kid. And yes, they have altered history, but their history isn’t written yet.” Her voice was rising. “I’ve seen their world, and it’s scary, really fucking scary. People aren’t meant to live that way. Damn it if the world didn’t need to change, but they’ve gone and stripped people of all of their humanity. Why live at all?” With conviction, she added, “Listen, we need you. Whether you realize it or not, you are our leader, and from what I understand you have always been. For us to make it and survive, we really need you.”
“It’s their world now. We are only four people. At this point, we sit and wait to die.”
Heidi responded, “I know we can’t go head to head with them, but there must be something we can do. Even if we could kill them all, would we really want to? Nobody would be left at all. They are the world’s population.”
They both sat in silence for several minutes.
“I wonder…” Kid began to say and paused.
“What do you wonder?” She seemed desperate for his response. Her eyes pleaded.
“What would happen if there was a way to free the humanity that their society has suppressed? Even if one individual at a time.” The subject was beginning to catch his interest, and was chipping away at his depression and indifference. “The back-door approach.”
She sat up straighter. “You mean if we could somehow infuse humanity into their society?”