The Bargaining Path

by T. Rudacille

  ***

  The fire had only been the beginning, and it had only claimed certain parts of the world. The bombs had been meant for only a few very unlucky regions, which laid in ruins beyond that of death, in utter destruction; every piece of the inhabitants there, every muscle, every bone, every beat of their hearts and every thought that had ever run through their heads in their varying years of existence, were gone, erased, forgotten by most, grieved by the rest. Even now, the fire burned, as all who could end it had long since fled or died within it.

  The dropping of the bombs had been done simultaneously by the many opposing sides. For once, synchrony in the universe was not just a befuddling coincidence but rather, a frightfully clear signal from God or the Gods that the destruction of the world was not only imminent, but that it truly was written long before we grazed the fields, travailed the dangerous seas, built the cities, or slowly began to dissemble it all; our destruction was promised and guaranteed for us by some mad creator before we were even created.

  In the farthest reaches of the world, bombs had fallen. Radioactive material was no longer in vogue, not in our days there. My father always used to proudly profess that poison was not needed to kill the remnants of one's enemies; they would kill each other in far more brutal ways. Even as a young child, hearing those words brought forth the thought that no death, not one inflicted by nature or by the hands of another human, could be so painful as to die slowly from poison. A part of my young mind was terrified to contemplate the idea of people feeling that venom as it spread through their systems, weakening them until they could do nothing but lie on the ground in the most breathtaking agony possible, awaiting the moment when God or the Gods would be so gracious as to take them away. Sometimes, my father had told my mother nonchalantly, it took several days.

  The radiation would have been the cowardly guns, but the fire was the brutal, nonstop fist—a hand-to-hand combatant who never tired and who fed on nothing but the swirling ash, toxic black smoke, and—its favorite food of all—the clean air that was struggling to survive. In those parts of the world, there had been no survivors. For months, small groups from the ruins traveled, believing they were all that was left. I could relate to that, but I could not know their utter terror entirely, despite all the strange and frightening things I had encountered.

  God's will was not finished with the bombs, as too many, by the grace of someone or something else, survived. From the oceans that continued to roll and thunder against the burnt remnants of land, massive waves of water, so high that they rose to the level of the pseudo-nuclear sun, crashed against what remained, and erased whoever had been unlucky enough to survive the first phase of the world's annihilation. The sight of that mighty mass rising in front of my eyes caused the breath to hitch in my throat; the power of it, the force of it, the unstoppable crushing death that awaited me, I saw it all, and I could not breathe, I could not think, I could not even scream... And what would I say, really, if I could scream?

  I remembered suddenly one day at the beach, when Eli and I had been very young. We were running into the waves that were rolling towards us almost joyfully, as though they were having as much fun with us as we were with them. As each wave came in, we would scream “up” or “through,” and most of the time, our commands always matched; when I yelled to go up and over, he had wanted to go up and over the wave, and when he yelled that we should swim through it, I had already been halfway into a dive. But then, one wave, frightening in both its size and the deafening sound of the crash that it made as it barreled towards us in what looked, sounded, and felt like very human rage, swept us both up, and sent us hurtling upside down and sideways over and over again, all the while holding us under the water. I remember holding my breath for as long as I could, but I was under for so long that my air ran out, and then, my mouth was open, and I was trying to scream, but I only took in a huge mouthful of salt water instead. As I choked under the water, my body twisted around and flung backwards, already beginning to scream in pain from the force of being overturned so violently.

  Luckily, Eli and I washed towards the shore, and Maura was able to grab us both, pull us out of the water by one arm each and administer our violently shaken little bodies onto the sand, where we huffed and puffed and in Eli's case, cried. I believe that we all have a moment in our lives when we understand (and fear greatly) the true power of nature, or at the very least, where we witness the true power of nature firsthand. That was my moment, and I was reliving it in that dream, as I watched that tidal wave, infinitely bigger and angrier than the wave that had so roughly manhandled me when I was a child, rise to its full, intimidating height right before my eyes.

  Instead of words screamed out, whatever they might have been, I merely groaned in utter horror with my arms wrapped around myself, my body curled over, and my eyes squeezed shut; I could hear it and see it in my mind even though my eyes were closed in the dream. I knew that soon I would be blasted backwards by that forceful flood that had been created seemingly only for me...

  Everything changed. I was wandering now, looking down at hands that were not my own. They were the hands of a boy, approximately my age, if I had to guess, or a little younger. A backpack was slung over the shoulder of the person through whose eyes I was seeing, and they had been walking for days, for even longer than I had walked with Adam. Beside this person, a young woman whose face was out of focus walked with slow, laboring steps, her arms wrapped around herself, and her breaths being released in short, breathy sobs. Her steely gray eyes were all I could see in perfect clarity, but they stayed fixed straight ahead, even as I looked at her, even as she silently wanted him to answer a question that she could not bring herself to pose out loud, one of which I did not know the significance.

  “Why did you make me hide?”

  Her tears were that of sadness, fear, and anger. He had forced her to hide from something or someone against her will. Someone had been taken from her, and they were on their way to get that person back. He was thinking that they would die, and he was willing to risk that, because someone very close to him, someone who had his love absolutely, had been taken from him, too. He was willing to risk his own life, but he was not willing to risk hers. When they arrived at their destination, if they ever did, he would force her to remain behind and continue with the journey on his own. The people they were going to meet could not be trusted, but he had no choice but to leave her with them, for the ones that they would encounter at their last destination were far worse than the ones they were meeting currently could ever be...

  “They might not be from here, but that might make them the best people to trust.”

  His thoughts were not a puzzle to him, so he could think in codes and fragments without becoming confused. I, on the other hand, felt like I was listening to very heavy emotional secrets, long-kept and held close, but spoken in a language completely unknown to me. Being a parasitic infestation in that boy's mind was uncomfortable, to say the least, but just as I left him, I watched as he turned his head to the left to observe the trees. In fallen rows, they lined a rural street, extending all the way up a large hill into a tiny neighborhood with only five houses. One of those trees had fallen directly on the house at which they both were staring.

  Dread overtook him, and the mental scene changed.

  A selection of living creatures—humans, animals, plants—had managed to survive the fallout. In some places, buildings had managed to hold their ground against the multiple forces of destruction. After taking hold of that boy's senses, I could hear the screeching of crows and the triumphant cackling of vultures; for a brief moment, I had seen those carrion creatures ripping into the flesh of a dead man, squawking in delight after the warm fragments of skin had slid down into their stomachs that had been hollow for so long.

  In another place, another town, another story, hands that looked familiar to me were grasping a steering wheel. His leg was shaking up and down and beside him, a woman whose face was a blur was rocking ba
ck and forth, begging him to drive faster. But they were at a dead stop, stuck in the middle of a massive traffic jam; on the radio, a voice was warning everyone to abandon the cities and get underground.

  “If he heard about this, he'll go get her first, sweetheart.” The man told her, “They'll get out. I promise you.”

  Her voice jumbled and broke, like it was a frequency being jammed by some meddling device close by. Before her thoughts could even be spoken out loud, the car began to rumble and shake up and down, and all around them, people were jumping out of their cars and looking straight ahead, some screaming, some completely silent and still as they awaited whatever terror nature held in store for them next...

  Water came whipping around the bend several hundred yards ahead of them.

  “Come on!” He jumped out of the car, ran around to her side, pulled open the door, and grasped her hand. Both were trying not to look back, but they had to know how close that unstoppable wave was, they had to see how much time they had...

  It crashed over the cars behind them, knocking them aside the way a child thrashes his small blocks from side to side without a care for where they land or how badly they will be damaged. They ran as quickly as they could, but they were no match for it; they had only a blink, a nanosecond, to get inside another car, one in which the driver and passenger were staring straight ahead with petrified eyes... He covered her just as the water rolled over the car, causing the windows to concave and water to fill the space. He had only just warned her to take a deep breath as his body threw itself forward to cover her...

  I felt every flip of the car. The urge to take a deep breath was undeniable after so long of holding it in, and I felt myself choking as water took the place of what I had so desperately prayed would be new, beautiful air. It was déjá vu, a scene repeated from my childhood, and yet it was completely new, because of the thoughts in my head: I prayed that my son had found my daughter... I prayed that drowning was not as slow as I had always been told it was... I prayed that my husband, who was not the man with me, would wait to run... I prayed that we would survive so we could meet him... Wait for us, wait for us, wait for us...

  My heart stopped. I died gasping.

  I woke up with a sharp gasp that sent a pain through my chest as sharp as a slow, deep jab from a long, clawed blade. Then, the scream left me and did not stop even after I had run out of air. My hands covered my face before my arms swung forward abruptly and around violently; I did not know what I was fighting because there was nothing, not the slightest possibility that I could swim to the surface of that terrible, rushing wave. I was fighting nothing except the prominence of my death that had been so slow, so terrifying. I had felt every second of it.

  “Baby! Baby!”

  Tears and sobs were intermixed with my screams. My fist made contact with something solid, and it hurt, but I kept swinging, believing that Death had taken a form, and I was fighting him, fighting for my very life, for continued days of Earth, as ravaged as it was...

  Only I was not Earth. I was on Pangaea.

  My eyes snapped open, and I found that not only was James in the room with me, but Violet and Alice were, too.

  “It's alright...” James was walking towards me cautiously, reaching out to me with one hand, and holding up the other to tell me that he was not going to hurt me. “Brynn, you're okay.”

  My body was bent over slightly, and my breaths were quick and shallow, and my tears and cries would not stop.

  “Brynn, we're all right here.” Violet was telling me just as gently. “I don't know what happened, but there's no one here that's going to hurt you. God, I'm so happy you're finally here!”

  Her smile calmed me, even though it was slight. She wanted to reach out to me and embrace me tightly, but she knew that I was too rattled by whatever had happened to me. I needed time to adjust. As strange as it was, I needed a few minutes to re-acclimate myself to reality.

  “Come on, baby.” James had closed the gap between us. Gently, he put his hands on my face. When he saw that my arms were wound tightly around my middle, he reached down to loosen them. After pulling them away, though, he looked at his hand, and then turned me around gently.

  “Okay...” He muttered, “Ladies, I need some bandages. Can you see if we have any in the house? Get me some acid-root, too, please.”

  They left with no hesitation, and I did not even struggle to look back to see what I had done, as I already knew; my nails had scratched and dug deeply wherever they could reach as I embraced myself during and after the dream.

  They left, whispering amongst themselves about how happy they were that I was alright, and how scared they were by what was happening. The two contrasting thoughts were strange to be said in almost the same breath but then, they were teenagers, and teenagers are the strangest lot of all. Listening in on the thoughts of my sister and Alice always yielded interesting results; the thought patterns were as erratic as the many different moods that they cycled through. Those sudden changes occurred always without their noticing, so when they were called on them, they always reacted defensively. That part of their teenage condition always entertained me very much.

  “Sit down, sweetheart.” When James touched me again, I had not been expecting it, so I flinched and jumped away from him before I could realize that it was only him. “Alright… alright...” He said quickly, holding up his hand again as though he were coaxing a frightened animal forward. “It's alright, baby. It was just a bad dream. Come here, sweetheart.”

  “I think I am awake, but it was so real that I don’t know.” I told him, and my voice sounded utterly pathetic because it was tinged with the high-pitched quality that voices take when new sobs are imminent.

  “Then, come here.” He prodded me gently, and he reached his hand out to me again.

  My legs carried me to him, and as soon as his arms were around me, I sunk against him, struggling against the tears that wanted to fall continuously, until there was not a drop of liquid left inside of me. I knew then that I was awake, but still, my entire body trembled with a force strong enough to rattle even his firm body. After a moment, he sat us both down on the bed and pulled me into his lap so I could lie with my head beneath his, with one arm over his shoulder and the other grasped tightly around his middle. Only after sitting like that with him for several minutes did I begin to calm down. Only listening to his steady heartbeat was able to slow the nonstop replay of those terrible images I had seen in that nightmare.

  “What did you see, baby?”

  He asked me so gently that I could not refuse him an answer. Besides that, I desperately needed to tell someone, specifically him, so he could reassure me that my wild imagination had produced a larger-than-life, overly dramatic, almost ludicrously grim show of what had occurred on Earth. He could tell me that all of those things I had seen were simply my mind's speculation, not a premonition, or rather, a legitimate flashback. Knowing that Earth still existed and that there were people on it was dangerous; it would torment me into madness far more easily than the idea of everyone being dead could. That sounds like a statement backwards in logic, but if one were to think on it from an objective point of view, one would see it this way: Everyone being dead meant that they were no longer suffering (at least if one believes many popular religions, not even necessarily the Abrahamic ones), whereas if people had survived, they were struggling every day to eat and stay sheltered. The same terrible fights that we faced each day were being fought by them, and the only reason we were surviving was because we had adapted by evolving. If we had been merely human, the elements alone would have killed us. The natives never would have had to intervene.

  “I saw...” I was barely able to form a coherent sentence or raise my voice above a timid murmur. “I saw the bombs going off. They were bombs, James. It was not the sun, or an explosion from some other source. It was bombs, and there were so many. Some places are still standing. There are still people, James.”

  He did not respond just then be
cause he knew I was not finished.

  “Other things happened, too. It was almost as though the fire did not do its job, so God had to throw other things at those who had survived. I saw a flood. Well, first I saw a massive wave, and then I saw a flood. The first memory I saw was of these two kids, and they were searching for something; I think it was a house, because when they found it, it was destroyed. I was seeing through the boy's eyes in that one. But the second memory, I was just observing it; it was like I was sitting in the backseat of their car. And when the water hit them, I could feel...”

  “What, baby?” He prodded me gently.

  “I could feel myself drowning. I felt myself die. James...” I looked up at him, “Just tell me that it wasn't real.”

  “It wasn't.” He answered instantly, and I could see that he was not just pacifying me, he genuinely believed that. “It was just a nightmare, baby. After what you've been through for the past three days, it's no surprise that you would have one that was so bad.”

  “It was bad.” I nodded, and my body began to shake again. “It was as real as when you showed me the vision in the diner. You know what these dreams are like, and yours was true. How do we know that mine was not? I have seen so many things, haven't I? Isn't that my power?”

  “Sweetheart...” He grasped my hand and brought it to his lips so he could kiss it. “Do you remember the dream you had on the ship when you had taken that pill? You said that the Earth was completely gone.”

  “Yes, and I thought that was true until now. But where would it have gone? Even if something as catastrophic as several bombs going off did occur, the Earth would not disappear. It would still be physically in its place. There would not be just a large blank space the way I saw it in that dream. That should have been obvious to me, but that dream was very vivid, as well. It was just as believable as this one. So now, I don't know which is the truth.”

  “It could be neither, baby. You can see things and sense things, Brynn, but that doesn't mean that every dream you have is real. What happened to Earth, to everyone we ever knew that didn't come with us here… It haunts us every day. How could it not? Out of all the most horrendous scenarios in the world, that is the worst; everyone we knew there is dead, and everything we were ever familiar with is gone forever. It weighs on us constantly; I can see that in you whenever Penny asks about Earth, or your mom, or one of her friends.”

  “It is terrible. It is so unfair. So many things about it are unfair, first and foremost of which is that we survived, and they did not. I still ask myself quite frequently why we were the lucky ones. That's what you told me, back in that time that seems like it was one hundred years ago.” I almost laughed, though my laugh would have been a very bitter one. “You told me that we were the lucky ones.”

  “And you said, 'Lucky by whose definition?' And I had nothing to say. I still don't know if we're lucky or if we're not. Who knows what's on the other side? We could be missing out on a really good time, right? We don't know. No one knows.”

  “There are many theories, some of which are very well known, and others that are not.”

  “You're starting to sound a little more like yourself.” He told me with a smile. “You don't know how many times I thought about how dull my life would be if I didn't have your overly detailed sentences to decipher.”

  I turned my head on the side and managed to make a jocular frown form on my face. When my eyebrow raised, he laughed.

  “And I missed the scolding look of displeasure. Both the real one, and the one you use when you're kidding.”

  “You make yourself sound very stupid when you say that you have to decipher my sentences. You were an engineer, for the sake of all deities and Gods. You are certainly not a stupid man, at least not in terms of learned intelligence.”

  “I know that I'm not stupid. Nine people out of ten have to decipher your sentences, so I'm in the majority.” His smile grew, and he slid his hand up into my hair. I turned my head slightly so my cheek was rested in the palm of that hand, and I found myself smiling, too. I never could have imagined that our issues would be resolved so easily, but they had been. Many will suggest that I was far too easy on him, but to me, the only aspect that mattered was that he had not turned me over to Adam, and that when Adam's impatience had reached its maximum level, James had told him that he would rather die than trade me.

  “I love you.” I told him softly, “After all of the things we have overcome together, I know that I couldn't live without you.”

  “I feel the very same way, my dear.” He leaned forward and held his lips to mine for a long, gentle moment that immediately stopped the rapid beating of my heart. I felt the beats slow to a perfectly synchronized, steady rhythm that almost matched his. “I love you, too.”

  When Violet and Alice returned, I laid on my stomach as James cleaned the deep claw-marks in my side with the acid root. Despite its name, the plant produces a soothing chill that almost erases all traces of pain completely. As James dressed the wounds, careful to keep me covered enough that Alice and Violet could not see my other more severe injuries, I answered the questions posed to me by them as concisely as possible. Something told me that the details of my almost-tryst with Adam would not be met with kindness and understanding, and disrespect was not something I tolerated, even when I was in the wrong. It is not that I thought they would shun me, it is that I knew I would be judged by them, however valiantly they tried to fight that urge. If only a few days earlier someone, even a person who was close to me and who was respected by me, had said that they had almost engaged in a physical relationship with Adam, I would have looked down upon them and immediately questioned their mental capacities. Within my mind and perhaps out loud, I would be commenting that their sanity had fled them long ago.

  “Well, I'm glad you two love-birds are back together.” Alice told us both with a gigantic grin that actually made me smile, too. “This is our pack. It's supposed to be all eight of us. The four of us, and Quinn, Nick, Penny, and Eli. We're a tribe. We're a cohesive unit. Like a bundle of atoms. Or a flock of birds. James is the father-bird, and Brynn, you're totally the mom.”

  “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.” I said as Violet and James laughed softly. “I would never play mother-bird to you crazed chicks. By chicks, I mean baby birds, not the 1960's era slang term for anyone who is female.”

  As Alice laughed again, she said, “But you do, and you know it. You're the mother-bird. James is the father-bird. You two make sure that we don't fly too far from the nest before we're ready, and you make sure that we eat our worms and bugs!”

  “We also make sure that the baby-birds don't stash little bird-sized bottles of vodka under their beds where they think no one will look, ever.” James added, and the looks of surprised, only half-serious guilty expressions on their faces were enough to make us both start laughing again.

  “We plead the fifth.” Violet said instantly. “Mama-bird, you never told me that you found those!”

  “Wow. That was the most effective usage of the Fifth Amendment it has ever been my privilege to witness. Thank you for that.”

  All three of them burst out into the most ridiculous fit of laughter I had seen all night, and it was there, in that moment with them, when we were all behaving like elementary school children in an unsupervised lunch room, that I knew I was finally home, and that despite all that Adam and I had overcome out in the woods, nothing could hurt me anymore because I was back with them. The other quiet revelation I made was that even though for the past five hours, James and I had fought for the majority of the time, we were alright finally, and our relationship was going to continue progressing as it had been for the past year.

  Alice and Violet stayed with us, chattering about all that had happened when I did not show up. When one subject almost came up, James must have shot them a look or shaken his head, because they both stopped abruptly and then rerouted the course of the conversation in two completely different directions.
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br />   “And Quinn tripped over a leaf!” Violet exclaimed.

  “And Penny kicked Don in the shin!” Alice exclaimed.

  “Because that is not suspicious at all.” I said with a roll of my eyes, “But no matter; I will find out all I need to know on whatever it is that the three of you are hiding tomorrow.”

  “Of course you will.” James kissed my cheek. “You always do.”

  “Yes,” I replied with an emphatic nod, “I do. And you know how I do not appreciate secrets. If I focus long enough right now, I will be able to pick it out of your heads, or rather, the topic of the secret will appear to me.”

  “Or you could just go to sleep, and deal with it in the morning.” He replied, and we stared at one another in a moment of intensity that was completely farcical until finally, I smiled and pulled him towards me.

  “We'll leave you two reconciled love-birds alone.” Violet told us, “I'm tired, too, and I don’t want to fall asleep scarred for life after watching you two make out. Which you two adult-birds do when you think no one is looking! All the time! So, there! We baby-birds stash bottles of booze, and you adult-birds go at it like rabbits!”

  “So, we’re birds and rabbits? I am mildly befuddled.” I asked.

  “We do not go at it like anything.” James told them, “Because we’re not married. We don’t even kiss. You think that we’re kissing, but we’re just talking into each other’s mouths. Because we don’t kiss. Because we’re not married.”

  They were doubled over in laughter, and even I was laughing, too, despite the fact that it hurt my ribs to do so.

  “Oh, God, James, you are hilarious…” Alice said, wiping the tears from her eyes, “I’ll see you two love-birds slash Mom-and-Dad birds in the morning. Quinn is probably home.”

  “Don’t kiss him! You’re not married!” James called after her, “Don’t break my heart, Allie! Don’t disappoint me!”

  She was still laughing loudly when she walked out the door.

  “You’re dumb!” Violet told him, and he held up his fist, which she immediately pounded with her own.

  “You know it.” He said.

  “Goodnight, you two crazy kids in love.” She said, but before she left, she laid beside me in the bed, wrapped her arms around me, and nestled her head under mine. It was only a hug, albeit a random one, but it affected me in a way that I had not been expecting. My arm came up to hold onto her, and I lowered my cheek so I could rest it against the crown of her head.

  “You got ‘dem feels right now.” She told me after a long minute of silence, and James burst out laughing in that borderline maniacal way that he did only in response to jokes made by Penny, Violet, or me.

  “I’ve got what?! No, I don’t!” I exclaimed, and I let go of her.

  “You do! I feel it in your heart. It’s nice.” She told me as she pulled away from me, “It’s cool, Brynn, I had them, too. I mean, I have them all the time.” She pounded her fist into her chest and whispered, “Dem feels.”

  “Are you high?!” I barked at her, and James laughed harder, grasping his stomach, “I do not have anything of the sort! I do not even know what ‘dem feels’ are. Go to sleep, you lunatic!”

  “You got ‘em. You know ‘em. I know ‘em. James knows ‘em, don’t you, James?”

  “I know ‘em.”

  “You two are out of your minds.”

  “Goodnight, you feeler of feels.” She said from the doorway, and I threw a pillow at her, which she dodged effortlessly. She left the room laughing.

  “Can you at least throw that pillow back?”

  “Nope!”

  After she was gone, and after his laughter had subsided (which took at least five minutes), I pulled James close to me and kissed him, for no other reason than that I was suddenly very thankful that he was there with me, that our issues had resolved, that Violet approved of that resolution, and that we could continue to be the strangest makeshift family there ever was. After several long, passionate minutes of kissing him had passed, and I had pulled away, he moved my hair away from my face, and smiled slightly.

  “What was that for?” He asked, with that gentle glint of light in his eyes that I loved so much.

  “Do I need a reason?” I asked him teasingly, with a grin of my own.

  “Of course not.”

  “Good.” My smile grew as he leaned down to kiss me again. After that, we laid down and closed our eyes. Outside in the trees, crickets were chirping, beetles were buzzing, and some four-legged creature was prancing in the distance. The smell of the crumbling leaves and fallen pine needles reminded me that winter was fast approaching, and I was suddenly very thankful for our new shelter, as well. Grieving for those we had lost could wait, although it never had before. But that night, there with James in our new house, I allowed gratitude to replace that festering grief for a short while.

  My hands ran up his arm that was over me and stopped to hold tightly onto his biceps.

  “Just so you are in the loop, I kissed you because I am happy that you are here.”

  A soft laugh escaped him, and because his face was burrowed there, he kissed my neck first before moving down to my shoulder.

  “I wouldn't be anywhere else, baby.”

  I smiled as I began to drift off, and just before I fell asleep, I whispered:

  “I know.”