Project Terminus: Destiny
Page 26
Wade found Tommy sitting alone and crying just outside the CC. He sat next to the child and put his arm around him. What words of comfort could he offer an eight-year-old boy whose parents had just died and who had no one? He shrugged internally, pulled the boy onto his lap, Wade held him until he stopped crying. Ten minutes later, Tommy had a new family and a new place to live.
As February crept slowly toward March, the remaining survivors disengaged from each other. Cooperation, interaction, and all sense of community came to a screeching halt.
On March 8, Bill grabbed Wade’s arm and motioned him outside. “I ain’t goin’ to the death house.”
Wade’s eyebrows rose in a questioning look.
Bill shrugged. “Yeah.”
Wade shook his head from side to side. “Bill…I…I can’t.”
“I told you, Wade. I ain’t goin’ to the fuckin’ death house.”
“Dammit, Bill.”
“I’m asking you as my friend to see me off. If you don’t have the balls to do it, I’ll take care of it myself.”
The two old friends stared at each other for a long minute, and Wade asked, “How?”
“I don’t give a shit. Just do it.”
Noah didn’t live to see his baby born. He passed two weeks after Bill.
Anna couldn’t bear to burn Noah’s body, so convinced Wade to bury him in the backyard of their old home.
The ceremony was brief. Efficient. Anna placed a flower on his grave and said, “I don’t know if I can live without you, Noah, but I’ll try.” She knelt at his grave and touched the fresh mound of earth. “Goodbye.”
She stood and bowed her head. Without warning, she fell to her knees, and with tears streaming down her face, beseeched the heavens, “You’re a cruel God. Why? We deserve an answer. We believed in you, worshiped you, lived by your commandments. This is your response?” She screamed, “Answer me!” Ultimately, she collapsed in a heap at the foot of Noah’s grave.
Maggie sat down and pulled her head onto her lap. With Maggie stroking her hair, they remained unmoving until Anna was cried out.
When she sat up, her voice was weak. “I don’t know if I have the strength to continue, Maggie. What’s the point?”
“I don’t have an answer, Anna. I’m a cog in a cosmic machine. Just like you. None of this makes sense to me either, but I still believe in God. And deep inside, I know you do too. Noah’s gone. That’s not going to change. But you have a baby to take care of, and one on the way. You have to think of them. Come to medical with me. Unless we miscalculated, your baby is overdue. I might have to induce labor.”
Reluctantly, Anna agreed, and thirty minutes later, Maggie smiled. “She’s really active, Anna.”
“It’s a boy.”
“Well, it looks like he wants out.”
“Huh?”
“You’re dilated. He could be at your breast at any time.”
Anna’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes got big. “Oh, my God.”
On March ninth, the population of the world had been 109. Today, March tenth, it was 110.
“Your baby is close to normal term, Anna. I think we simply miscalculated. Congratulations. Stormy has a healthy baby sister.”
Anna beamed. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”
Holding the baby at arm’s length, she pulled her down and kissed her. “Hi, baby girl. Are you hungry?”
Maggie smiled at Wade. “Another of God’s little miracles.”
“Un huh.”
Wade bent and kissed Anna’s forehead. “What are you naming her?”
“Dawn.”
While the kids were busy fawning over baby Dawn, Wade gently grasped Maggie’s arm and motioned her outside. “Have you ever wondered why, out of the entirety of the human race, that you and I are two of the last left alive?”
“No. I haven’t.”
“I have.”
“And?
“And I think I’m being punished for my misdeeds. I’ll be the last to go. Forced to watch everyone I ever loved die before my eyes.”
Maggie was astonished, then she was angry. “You don’t really believe that?”
“It crossed my mind.”
“Well, uncross it. That’s absurd, and you know it, Wade Coltrane. Knock it off.”
When she addressed him using their surname, he knew he was in trouble, and the last thing he wanted to experience before his last hurrah was Maggie’s wrath. A sheepish look crept over his face. “I’m sorry, Mags. I am. Really, I’m sorry.”
Although Maggie acted shocked, the same thought had occurred to her. But it wasn’t Wade who would be forced to watch everyone die. It would be her. She wanted to comfort him but didn’t know how to do that any more than he did. Instead, she nodded, hugged him, and said, “I better get back to Anna and the baby.”
The survivors weren’t callous toward the deaths of the people they loved, or of other humans. The shock factor had simply disappeared. They had become uniquely intimate with the Grim Reaper. Inevitability wore the cloak of reality as death became as regular as the sunrise.
Days passed.
People died.
Nothing changed.
Until April eighteenth.
Maggie took Wade’s hand and asked him to walk with her. Her face was sad. As they walked, she looked at him, smiling wanly. “You are the love of my life, Wade Coltrane. I wouldn’t trade one day that I’ve spent by your side for an eternity with anyone else.”
Wade stopped, horrified. “Please. No.”
She coughed and nodded.
He put his arms around her, drew her to him, and cried.
His head on her breast, Maggie stroked his hair. “I know this will sound trite, Wade, but it will be all right. We’ll be together again in a better place.”
Wade was having a difficult time believing in a better place, but the last thing he intended to do was have a pity party in front of her. With great difficulty, he said, “I was hoping I’d go before you.”
“No, Wade. You’re going to be the last for a reason. You have to keep Adam alive. I don’t know how you’re going to do that, but you’ve always found a way. All these years, no matter how bad things got, you found a way. Find one now. Save our son.”
Maggie wanted him to take her to the death house, but he refused.
“None of our preventative measures prevented, Maggie. We didn’t take Noah there, and I am not taking you there either.”
Two days later, Adam held one of his mother’s hands and Wade the other as she drew her last, ragged breath.
Adam cried silently. Anna and the kids sobbed tears of farewell. Wade stared stoically. That evening, they buried her next to Noah. Afterward, Wade placed the cross that Anna and the kids had made.
Maggie Coltrane. Wife-Mother-Friend. We love you.
Anna took the kids aside so Wade and Adam could spend a few minutes alone with Maggie. They stood in stoic silence, father and son, holding hands and staring at her grave. Tears rolled down both of their cheeks. They didn’t move. They just stood, stared, and cried.
Without warning, Adam threw his arms around Wade’s waist “Daddy, I don’t want you to die too. Please don’t leave me. Please, Daddy?”
Wade kneeled and took his son’s face in his hands. “Son, I know this is hard for you, but I promise you that I will never leave you voluntarily. Not ever!” He picked the boy up.
Sobbing, Adam threw his arms around his father’s neck and wrapped his legs around his waist.
Wade stroked his head and held him until the tears subsided. He sat on the ground and pulled the child onto his lap and forced him to look at him. “Before your mom went to heaven, she asked me to do something for her. I want you to listen very closely to what I’m going to say.”
With the time left to her, Maggie had convinced Wade to concoct a plan. The
odds of success were slim and none, but hope had comforted her in her final hours.
Initially, Wade went along with it to appease her, but now that she was gone, he owed it to her memory to implement it.
“We’re going to do something different, Adam, but before we do, I need to talk to Anna. Okay?”
Adam’s tearstained face had shed the look of an innocent young child. The boy looking back at Wade was older. Resolute. He nodded. “Yes, Dad.”
“I want you to sit with the kids while I talk to her.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Anna was sitting on the steps of the CC with the children, and Adam sat down next to them.
Wade said, “I need to talk to you, Anna. Can we go inside?”
“But…the kids?”
“Adam can stay with them. We’ll be just inside the door. It won’t take long.”
They entered the Powwow Room, Wade carrying Stormy, and Anna carrying baby Dawn. Wade began by asking her how she was doing.
She smiled a sad smile, shrugged her shoulders. “I’m still doing. That’s something, right? And you?”
“Hell, Anna, I knew this day was coming. I was hoping I’d go first. Selfish, l know.”
“I felt the same way about, Noah. What do we do now?”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. Maggie coaxed me into devising a plan before she left, and you’re a part of it.”
“Okay.”
“Other than you and me and the kids, how many people are left?”
“I’m not sure. Last week there were around twenty, I think.”
“Right. Well, it doesn’t matter. Here’s what we’re gonna do.”
They spent the next two weeks gathering supplies. Two hummers, two trailers, extra fuel, food, medical supplies, tools, animals—anything and everything Wade could think of that could ensure human survival.
Anna started referring to the kids as her brood, and in fact, they did look like ducklings following in a line behind her everywhere she went. She had effectively become their surrogate mother.
At the end of two weeks, Wade sat with Adam outside the CC. “You know how to drive, son. You know how to shoot, how to stay alive. I’ve taught you everything I know. When the time comes, you’re going to take the gear we’ve assembled and you and Anna are going to take the other kids and Shiloh and leave this place.”
“But you’re coming too.”
“No. I’m not.”
Adam started shaking his head. “Daddy…please…no.” Tears welled in his eyes.
Wade gently took his arm.
“Stop. I know you’re scared. You may think this is unfair, and a few months ago, it would have been. Now it’s reality. This is what your mother and I decided to do before she passed. It’s what she wanted. It’s what I want. It’s what you have to do.”
“Are you…are you sick?”
“No. But when I am, you’re leaving.”
On the fifteenth of May, the population of Earth was seven. Wade, Anna, her two babies Stormy and Dawn, Adam, Cole’s daughter Amy, and Tommy.
Wade woke up sick.
He woke Anna up.
“It’s time, Anna. Everything’s packed and ready to go. I won’t allow any of you to watch me die. Maybe we should have done this a long time ago. If we had, perhaps things would have turned out differently. You have to go. Now. After you leave, I’ll turn the animals loose.” He hugged her for the last time. “We both know the odds aren’t good, but it’s better than sitting here waiting for the Reaper. At least you’ll go out having made an effort. Get the kids to the Everglades, Anna.”
Her face softened and silent tears slid down her cheeks. “You did everything humanly possible to keep us alive, Wade, and while I don’t believe for one minute that fleeing to the Florida Everglades is going to give the kids or me a snowball’s chance in hell, I’ll do it for them. I’ll do it for you.”
He took her hand. “You’re a good woman, Anna. I believe in you. You can do this. You’re tough.”
She stared at him, then shook her head slowly from side to side. Her face was grim as she shed the last tear. “No, Wade, you’re wrong. Anna is not tough enough to do this.”
Nina smiled, and kissed his cheek, “But I am.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Reboot
Seven years after man’s dominion over the Earth ended, the glaciers slowed their southern advance. Volcanic eruptions were less frequent. The ground stopped trembling.
In the waters of the Caribbean Sea, near what was once Cuba, a dolphin lifted its head from the water and looked across the expanse of the ocean, then at the coastline.
Sunlight reflected gently off the slight chop and continued on its journey to nowhere. The animal made a clicking sound; breathed deeply of the crisp, clean air; bobbed its head; and dove under the pristine waters.
A gentle drizzle fell on the naked woods of the Ardennes Forest in what humanity had once called France. A male crow cocked his head and listened intently. All he heard was the patter of raindrops on the branches of the tree he called home. His eyes scanned for danger. He looked left, then right.
All was well in his world, and he shook the raindrops from his back and continued with his sentry duties.
South of the equator, a colony of ants went about the business of building their world. Tunnels were dug, food was harvested, workers fed their queens, and they bred.
Millions of years in the future, one of these animals would be a candidate to replace Homo sapiens at the top of the food chain.
For now, the dolphin was a dolphin and lived in the sea.
The crow was a crow but didn’t know it was a crow.
The ants were insects, nothing more.
But Mother Nature is fickle. She couldn’t make up her mind.
Deep in the Florida Everglades, a newborn baby cried.