by J. T. Warren
“It’s what the universe wants,” he said.
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Like fate, I guess. I was supposed to follow you up here. Supposed to spend time with you.”
“You think everything happens for a reason?”
He smiled. “Maybe.”
Her face darkened. “So, my mother dies of cancer--that’s for some reason?”
He felt like he had taken a wrong turn down a dead end road. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She was shaking her head and apologizing. “I’m sorry. There’s a lot on my mind right now. I didn’t mean to be so antagonistic. I want to believe everything happens for a reason. I guess I just don’t see what the reason could possibly be.”
“You need some guidance,” he said. “You need to find your purpose. What the universe wants you to do.”
“Are you going to help me do that?”
“Maybe. But it’s a solitary path. You will find it on your own.”
“I’m glad you’re so confident.”
He reached toward her, placed a hand on her bony shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. The bone would snap so easily. She glanced at his hand and then stared up into his face with that helpless puppy face again.
“I’m sorry. I get carried away with the whole ‘universe purpose’ thing. I was only trying to help. You have such a pretty smile, you ought to show it more.”
And she did.
“There it is.” He shook his head as if it were the most stunning smile he had ever seen. Her two front teeth overlapped slightly and a thin stain accentuated where they joined. His other hand was clenching the grass at his side, fighting the urge to punch her in the mouth and knock out those teeth.
They stared at each other for several seconds, his hand on her shoulder, and he knew she wanted him to kiss her, just a soft, first kiss that teased the lips more than enveloped them, but he took his hand off her shoulder and sat back, delighted at how her smile wavered. Part of seduction was always keeping the target wanting.
It’s all about power, Mother had said. She’d start to spread her legs and he would lean forward and then she’d close them again and laugh. Once you have self-control, she said, you can get whatever you want.
If he wanted, Victor could ravage Mercy right now, here on the grass with the late-afternoon sun shining on them. But there was still a chance her brain would clear and she’d tell him to back off, to take things slow.
He couldn’t go after her yet. The seduction was not complete.
She licked her top lip slowly and he wondered what sound she would make when he tore her tongue out with his fingers.
THIRTY
She was fourteen again. She saw herself sitting on a little footbridge over a small creek behind her house with Dylan Olan. He was almost sixteen, about to get his driver’s license, and had an incredible head of black hair and a smile that she often thought about before falling asleep.
She was wearing shorts that she felt were too short, would have rather been in jeans to cover her pale legs, but she stretched them out before her just the same. Two shadow legs rippled over the creek below. She caught him staring at them and smiled. She had painted her toes yesterday. They were little aqua dots she wiggled back and forth.
Dylan spoke about high school and getting a car and going to parties but she didn’t really hear him. She was only thinking about his lips and how they would feel against her own. He mentioned Megan Booth and how he thought she might be interested in him but even that didn’t diminish her hopes for a kiss. His hands were on the bridge at his sides. She touched the one closest to her, ran her finger across the top in the shape of a heart. He stared at her finger and then looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“Hi,” she said.
He thought about something. “You’re cute,” he said.
“So are you.” Her heart was racing instantly and her stomach was knotted into a not unpleasant ball.
He nodded to himself and leaned toward her and she closed her eyes and pursed her lips just slightly like she’d practiced in the mirror and waited for what felt like forever for him to get closer and closer until she could smell the light sweat on him and then his lips touched her cheek and withdrew.
“I’ll see you around,” he said and left. Like he’d said goodbye to his sister.
Mercy had cried all night.
Now here she was again, fawning over some boy and desperately hoping for a kiss only to end up with an exchange befitting siblings. She felt like crying, almost did but mentally slapped herself. Be an adult, for Christ’s sake.
“I don’t even really know you,” she said as if she had been the one to deny him.
“What would you like to know?”
“How old are you?”
“Older than you. I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”
“Depends. Are you, like, fifty?”
He laughed. “Closer to thirty.”
She thought of that for a moment with trepidation and awe. Girls back in high school loved advertising if they had college-age boyfriends. In college, girls thought they were so special if their men were graduates, men with jobs and money. Mercy had always been envious and disgusted. Older guys could be creeps who lived in their mother’s basement and couldn’t find woman their own age. But older guys were more mature. They understood women. What they wanted. How to please them.
“That’s not old,” she said.
“Are you even old enough to drink?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she said like she was a drinking, partying queen.
And on their conversation went into the minutia of what defines who people are: age, interests, aspirations, history. At one point when he was discussing his mother, showing enough concern for her to know he loved her but not so much that he was a momma’s boy, Mercy stared at his lips and willed them to come toward her.
The afternoon light morphed into the vibrant reds and oranges of a setting sun and the breeze that whisked past grew colder. By then, they were sitting only a foot apart.
“We should make a fire,” he said.
“Sure,” she said and in her head saw her jump on top of him and thrust her tongue into his mouth. Why the hell was he not making a move? They were alone. In the woods. It was almost too ideal to be believed.
Alone. Dad had been gone for hours. She stared off at the distant peak as if she might see him up there waving down at her. It was now a flaming match tip of yellow and red.
“How long does it take to reach the top?” she asked.
“A while,” Victor said. “There’s no reason to worry. I’m sure he’s fine. It’s not dangerous.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve done it several times.”
“Okay.” But in her head, Dad had fallen somewhere along the way or fainted or suffered a seizure and was slowly dying while she was desperately hoping some random guy might make out with her.
THIRTY-ONE
Victor gathered dead twigs and dried brush. He set the fire in one of the designated areas where gray ash long ago stained the ground. He had matches in his bag and after several false starts, he finally got the fire going. Mercy watched him with an expression on her face no one ever really showed him before. Even while his urges to attack her strengthened, he began to feel something indefinable in the pit of his stomach. It was like longing only laced with fear.
They sat next to the fire and talked but the flickering fingers kept Victor’s attention. Fire was so pure, so clean. It ate everything. It solved every problem. One day soon it would solve all the problems. The world would be eaten and he would be left to salvage life on an orb of ash. But he did not want to be alone.
That thought troubled him because he had always imagined himself as a lone man in these woods, preserving the sanctity of humanity’s purest purpose. But the universe was offering him this girl. She would be his companion. She would make the coming Dark Time almost pleasant.
H
er father would be back soon.
Victor sat closer to Mercy and casually placed a hand on her thigh. The muscle tensed. It was strong, fit for a girl who spent her days reading books. He rubbed slowly back and forth, as if hypnotized by the feel of her jeans.
“Hey,” she said so softly it sounded like a voice from the crackling twigs.
When their eyes met this time, he did not deny her the kiss for which she had been longing, but he denied himself the pleasure of forcing himself upon her. Instead, he teased her lips gently with his own and lingered there only briefly. When he withdrew he smiled at her shut eyes and engorged lips. Self-control made her his.
“That was nice,” she said.
“You ever think about ‘the end’?”
“The what? What do you mean?”
The fire drew him in again. “The end of everything.”
“Like 2012?”
He chuckled. “Maybe.”
“Do you really think that will happen?” she asked. “Like in that movie? The ground will just break open. The Earth will be flooded?”
“People always think the end will be some kind of epic showdown with fire and explosions and tsunamis. It’s because we think so highly of ourselves that we can’t possibly fathom that our end might be quieter, more drawn-out. That humanity will pass on so gradually most people won’t even realize it. Then they’ll be gone and that’s that.”
“Like The Stand?” she asked. “Some kind of super flu?”
“Even a super flu has a grandness to it. No, it won’t be anything so marvelous. Though it will be spectacular in its own way.”
“Then what? What will end everything?” She asked him like a disgruntled school girl.
“The world seems to be falling apart. Uprises in countries everywhere. Death in the streets. The end has already started.”
“So, global unrest? That ends it all?”
“When I say ‘the end,’ I don’t mean eternal darkness, though it will seem like that. The end of the world will be the end for most people and things. It will be the beginning of a new time. An age of enlightenment unlike any Man has experienced since he first walked the Earth.”
“You mean cavemen?” she asked.
“The people who survive the Great Shift will be one with their atavistic selves. They will be able to harness from nature everything needed for life and happiness.”
“So, cavemen?”
“Enlightened beings,” he said.
She said nothing for several minutes and he let his words begin to seep into her. He added more wood to the fire and watched the flames attack it. Fire was greedy. Never satisfied. Almost perfect in design except it lacked self-control, making it vulnerable. It didn’t know strategy. It only knew hunger. The fire in his soul would soon be unleashed and the conflagration would be unstoppable.
“How do you know who will survive?” she asked.
The sun was almost gone now and Victor felt the shadows dancing on his face like ghosts. Like promises from the universe.
“This is going to sound crazy,” he said as if he didn’t really believe it himself. “There are people out there who have a mission to sort it out. Meaning, people.”
“What?”
“They’re called cleansers. They free the chained minds and souls of the destined survivors and they help purify the world for the New Time.”
“What do you mean, ‘purify the world’?”
He stared at her. This was the moment. If the last several hours meant anything, it would be determined now. She would either be his or he would ravage her and throw her away.
He hesitated. His palms were hot, his heart beating rapidly.
“It means--”
From off in the dark, a man called, “Hey!”
Mercy turned and jumped up, headed toward the shout.
Out of the darkness came an older man with the slumped shoulders and heavy gait of a weary traveler. The bobbing dot of a flashlight rocked with his steps.
“Dad!” Mercy shouted.
When she hugged him, the other man appeared as if he had materialized out of the night.
THIRTY-TWO
She didn’t care about anything Victor was saying. She just wanted that kiss again. His lips had been so soft and the sensation rippled throughout her whole body. She fought the need to go after him. She couldn’t let him think she was so easy. He would kiss her again.
But he didn’t. He started talking about the end of the world.
Alarms went off in her head but she didn’t panic. So, the guy was eccentric. Just look at his mud-stained feet, which, by the way, she was overlooking for the sake of a little romance. Maybe he had weird theories but that didn’t mean he was dangerous. Besides, she wanted some kissing not a marriage proposal. Was that so horribly wrong?
When Dad arrived, however, she was relieved. Not only because it meant he wasn’t lying hurt somewhere but because it meant she wasn’t alone with Victor anymore and that made it safe to see how far she wanted to go.
She hugged him tightly around the neck like she used to do when she was little. Unlike back then, he did not pick her up and swing her around, singing some idiotic children’s rhyme. He sagged against her for a moment, chest heaving, and patted her on the back. When she broke the hug, she saw the man standing next to him.
“Hi,” he said. He was tall and broad shouldered and wearing well-worn hiking equipment over a sweatshirt. His flashlight was shining up into his chin, accentuating his high forehead and wide eyebrows. It took Mercy a moment to realize he was the guy she had seen this morning heading up the trail. She had imagined him as some lonely guy who would gladly hike along with them because all he really wanted was a quiet girl with whom to laugh and spend his life.
“What took you so long?” Mercy asked her father.
He sighed like he had expected this question but hoped she wouldn’t spring it on him immediately. He shared a glance with the new guy and Mercy wanted to grab Dad’s face and tell him that he had to be more considerate of her and of his own health and she had a right to know why it took so long up there--had something happened? Was he feeling okay?
She stopped herself, hugged him again instead.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m fine. I met Caleb here and we got to discussing things. Didn’t realize the time had slipped by so fast. Caleb’s quite the experienced hiker. He knew right where to go. You should have seen the view, honey. From the top, our town looks like a pimple.”
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “He told me about you but I didn’t realize you were down here waiting. Looks like you had company though.”
All eyes turned to Victor and he glanced away. She felt bad for him. He was a quiet guy, maybe a bit strange, but he had opened up to her over the past several hours and now he was on display like something at an auction. She nearly forgot he had been talking about the End of Everything.
“This is Victor,” she said. “He came out of the woods.”
“Did you leave your boots in the woods?” Caleb asked and smiled the way so many jocks back in high school smiled. Joel had smiled that way sometimes, too.
They all moved back toward the fire and Dad and Caleb turned off the flashlights they had been carrying by their sides. It hadn’t quite been dark enough for them to do any good.
Dad shed his equipment and sat near the fire. She offered him water and he drank it. “I ran out,” he said.
“I offered him mine,” Caleb said, “but he refused.”
“Dad.”
“It’s fine. I’m here. Aren’t I?”
She offered him a displeased glare, thought of Mom, and shook it away. She hugged him again as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks.
“It’s lucky Caleb found me,” Dad said. “I could have been lost up there for hours. The path seems pretty straight but it’s really not.”
“There’s actually several paths,” Caleb said. He looked like the host of some nature show on Discovery. Taming the Wild, perhaps. “For a newbie
, it can get daunting real fast. You think you’re near the peak and then you’re staring straight up at a vertical rock formation. You are near the peak, sure, if you’ve got your climbing gear.”
“It’s a mess,” Dad said. “But it all turned out okay. Have you just been sitting here the whole time?”
It was like he had asked if she had been eating chocolate bars while watching Olympic gymnastics. “We were talking,” she said.
“I guess we could have been more proactive,” Victor said.
“Victor was telling me about the End of Everything.”
Dad and Caleb made amused, oh, how morbid noises.
She started to explain some of what Victor had said, something about humanity slowly dying off and the survivors reverting back into primal beings, like cavemen.
“As in shoeless?” Caleb asked.
The laughing faded quickly.
“It’s something I believe,” Victor said. “It’s hard to disagree that the time is near when you look at everything going on right now. We are no longer on the cusp of great change: we are in the midst of it.”
“There have been so many times just like the present throughout history,” Dad said. “People thought the world was ending back in the sixties. Then the eighties. Every global crisis carries with it a sense of apocalyptic doom. People cling to that for whatever reason. Maybe it makes the daily grind easier knowing it will all be over soon. Course it never is over.”
“Humanity will devour itself and only the eaters will survive,” Victor said.
“You mean the violent?”
“The people who embrace our true natures.”
“Meaning the uncivilized brutes who believe violence is the answer to all problems? If that’s who is going to inherit the Earth, I don’t think humanity has very long to go at all.”
“You’re right about one thing,” Victor said. “Humanity, civilization, as we know and understand it, doesn’t have very long left, but the world you imagine is far too pessimistic. The approaching New Time will be one of enlightenment.”
“Living as cavemen?” Caleb asked. He smiled, so amused with himself.
