Above us, constant lightning streaks through a sky thick with leaden clouds. No sun is to be seen. The light coming through has a dull yellow hue, like it’s sick and dying. I stop breathing and listen for a sign of life: the tweet of a bird; the barking of a dog; the wailing of a baby. Nothing. Only distant thunders interrupt the eerie silence.
We exchange a baffled look and start climbing out of the hole. I take one step and the soft ground gives way under my feet. My shoe sinks into unsteady pebbles. My partner grabs my arm and helps steady me.
“Thanks,” I rasp.
When we finally reach the lip of the crater, I take off my shoes and remove ash and pebbles before putting them back on. My gaze searches the dead city. The crater lies in the middle of a crumbling asphalt street. Rusty cars lie under tons of debris, their occupants long gone. They appear to be really old, like from a century ago. At least.
My partner coughs to clear his throat. “What the hell happened here?”
I rub stinging dust off my eyes. “Are we in the right place?”
He pulls a cell out of his pocket and flicks the screen on. He checks it for a moment, then lifts it in the air and does a slow spin. “No signal of any kind.” He puts the device back into his pocket. “But it looks like we’re in the right place. Look.” He points at the crumbling façade of an ancient building. “Isn’t that the church behind our building?”
“Is it?” I study a cracked dome in the distance. The surrounding structure once consisted of high walls and smaller chapels. Now, all that remains is that cleft dome and a collapsing bell tower, perching perilously next to it. “Or, at least, what remains of it,” I mumble.
“If there’s one place bound to have records, that has to be a church.”
We make our way to the complex. Neither of us speaks. The cold numbs my hands and feet. I reach and grab his hand with mine. He squeezes it at first, then his hand slips from beneath my fingers and hangs limp by his side. I mimic him and we walk that way until we reach a tall stone rampart. Without a word, he points at an opening where the wall has given way. We enter a courtyard filled with broken columns. Normally bustling with activity and pilgrims, there is not a soul to be found. A chill runs across my spine and I squeeze my coat against me, realizing I’m still wearing the same clothes I wore when I shot Hitler. For some reason, the thought annoys me and I speed up.
“Over here,” he says and points at a metal door. Rusted hinges keep it closed.
I grasp the door handle and pull. It creaks and the door opens an inch with an agonized moan. “Come help me, will you?”
He rushes to my side. I search his face, but he avoids my gaze and grabs the handle. “On three,” he says.
“One, two…” I put all my weight and pull.
Crack! The top hinges give way. The door jerks open, like a half-opened tin lid. The clamor echoes through the courtyard. I half-wish, half-dread seeing another human being, but no one appears.
The interior is pitch black and smells of decay. It is a rancid smell that makes me twitch my nose. My partner flicks a switch a couple of times. Nothing happens. He turns on the light on his cell and uses it to illuminate a dark corridor. Broken glass and pebbles crunch under our feet. We pass empty offices with desks covered in thick layers of dust. In parts, the ceiling has given way. Broken beams touch the floor and let thin slivers of light inside.
I spot a stack of books on a shelf. As I touch it, it collapses into a heap of dust. I jump back and cough.
“Over here,” my partner says. He holds up a book with a thick leather cover. “This must be a journal.”
Some pages in the middle are stuck together, but we manage to pry it open with careful fingers. Several of the first pages crumble to dust as we do, but the last half of the book remains intact.
“What is this?” The handwritten scribbles inside are in an unfamiliar language.
“Hang on.” He scans the page with his cell and stares at the screen. “It’s Greek.” I stare at him while he reads silently. His face turns as ashen as the dust around us, then he flips the page and scans again.
“Come on, you—”
“Shh!” He repeats the process a few times while I study our surroundings. My eyes have adjusted to the dark by now. I spot faded icons of forgotten saints on the crumbly walls. They glare at us from the shadows, as if we’re violating the sanctity of the place. Their faces creep me out, so I lift my gaze to examine the sickly sky through a hole in the ceiling.
He reads the last page and raises defeated eyes at me. “I think I know what happened,” he says. He sounds as if he’s choking on gravel.
My heart skips a beat. “Yes?”
He draws a deep breath. “After we killed Hitler, Germany basically imploded. Two months later, Stalin invaded. After occupying Germany, he attacked Poland. Then, the Allies declared war on Russia.” He takes my hand. “There never was a Cold War. Just a decades-long hot one. The States got the bomb first, but the Russians did so just a month later. The second part of the war was fought with nukes.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Numbness spreads from my head to my toes. My lips move before I can think. “If this place was nuked, how did any of this survive?”
“It wasn’t hit directly. This”—he motions around us—“is the result of the fallout. The nuclear winter has lasted well over a century. The monk who wrote this describes how all of his brothers died of radiation poisoning.” His face drops as his gaze scans the condemning faces on the walls. “His last entry was over a hundred years ago. We may well be the last people alive.” He gives me a resigned half shrug. “Not for long, of course. Radiation is probably killing us as we speak.”
Despite myself, I burst into a cracked cackle.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, a flash of anger in his voice.
“We broke history.” My head spins. Is radiation already killing me? My legs buckle and my knees hit the ground, raising a cloud of ash. Burning tears streak down my cheeks. “We broke history.”
He kneels next to me and takes me in his arms. I gasp as our surroundings fade around us. This time, they disappear into a blinding flash of light.
“Hold still,” a woman’s voice says.
Hands pull at my face. I slap them away, then my eyes focus on a woman’s face a few inches away. A woman in a blue beret is pulling away virtual reality goggles.
“The dizziness will soon pass,” she says in a professional voice. “You should lie still until then.”
I nod and nausea hits me. I shut my eyes. “Where am I?”
She pulls a needle leading to a transparent tube from my arm, making me cringe. “Back at the training camp. Your memories will return shortly.”
I absentmindedly rub a red spot on my arm, where the needle used to be. It stings. She removes spider-like electrodes from my temples and memories rush into my head as if a floodgate has ripped open. The experience from the time travel fades away, leaving an acrid taste in my mouth, like waking up from a nightmare. I haven’t time-traveled yet. Today was part of the training. A warning to the dangers of messing with the timeline.
“I told you it was too easy,” a groggy voice says. On a bed next to mine, my partner is grinning at me, ignoring a male nurse who is flicking a penlight at his eyes.
“Hey, you,” I say. My voice is hoarse, as if my throat has been sandblasted.
The woman and the nurse move in front of a large monitor displaying various readings and exchange notes in low voices. Every now and then they glance at us and tap on a tablet.
I turn my attention back to my partner. I’ve had my eye on him for a while now. I remember my excitement at getting him as my exercise partner. “Hell of a first date,” I say, a dry smile on my lips.
“At least we got to kiss.”
My cheeks feel hot.
“But you’re right. Let me make it up to you,” he continues with a wide grin and a mischievous sparkle in his warm hazel eyes. “Dinner at Freddo’s?”
I chec
k out his handsome face and broad shoulders. Even lying on that bed, his wide frame is imposing. My heart flutters as I mimic his grin. “Sure, why not. Meet you at eight?”
The grin on his face widens as his head slumps back on his pillow. “Deal.”
Shh—the Baby’s Sleeping
The Patient
“He’s awake.”
I stir in my sleep, lost in unsettling dreams. There’s a fire. Ashes. Acrid smoke burning my throat. I moan, only half-awake. “Hmm?”
He nudges me again. “Come on, honey,” he says with a pleading voice. “It’s your turn. I went last time.”
My eyes flutter open. Thank goodness, it was just a dream. I rub cobwebs from my eyelids, then shut them again with a throaty groan. “Just five more minutes, then I’ll go. Promise.” I’m almost asleep again when our son’s wailing echoes in the room. I push the soft, warm duvet away and swivel my legs off the bed. “Shush, darling. Mommy’s coming.”
As my feet touch the cold floor, I steal a look at my husband, his mouth half-open, his eyes completely shut. I can hear light snoring in the brief spaces between the baby’s hungry yelps. I fight the urge to throw a pillow at him as I stumble out of bed and toward the crib in the corner. I don’t turn on the lamp, using instead the little sliver of light slipping from under the door and between the window curtains to guide myself through the all-too-familiar room.
“Shh, shh. I’m here, darling,” I say and stroke the baby’s face. The crying stops as his hungry lips root for my finger. He opens big blue eyes, his dad’s eyes, to stare at me. The eyelids are red with sleep, and I gently wipe a tear away from one of them. He grabs my hand and squeezes with all his might. Even in my sleep, my heart melts. Angel hair surrounds his lovely face. Cherry, half-open lips open hungrily. A knitted beige bear smiles at me from his chest.
I kiss his stubby little fingers and wait for him to release me, then head over to the fridge and fetch a milk bottle. My hand reaches for the microwave door. For a second, it pauses before the door as a fleeting memory of a fire tries to emerge into my head. It evaporates as soon as it reaches the surface of my consciousness. Stupid dream. With a shudder, I open the microwave door and hit the button that will warm up the milk for exactly one minute.
While drowsy seconds count down to zero, my gaze caresses my baby. He looks so peaceful, so beautiful. God, I love them both so much. If anything should happen to them, I’d probably lose my mind.
The beep from the microwave snaps me out of my reverie, and I open the microwave door.
The Doctor
My hand reaches for the switch and turns off the monitor. “Now you’ve seen her,” I tell the beautiful young woman.
She leans back into her chair. “She does this every day?”
“She has a name. Jane.” The words coming out of my mouth sound like cracked ice. I didn’t mean them to, but I can see in her eyes nothing but pity for Jane. And I hate that. Jane’s to be helped; taken care of—not pitied.
She raises her hands before her in an apologetic manner. “I’m sorry. So, Jane does this every day?”
“Yes. She replays the last twenty-four hours with them. When she reaches the point of the fire, it’s like her brain reboots and it starts all over again.”
She shakes her head in amazement. “Her scars are the result of the fire?”
“You mean her face?”
She tilts her head in question. “There are more?”
“The scars actually go all the way down her body, but I guess the robe hides that.” I reach for a folder on my desk and pull out a bunch of photos. When I pass them to the woman, she flinches. To her credit, she studies them, one after the other, before handing them back to me. Only the pallor on her face betrays they had any effect on her. She’s tough, I’ll give her that. “When she came to us, it was touch and go,” I say as I slip the photos back into the folder. “But we have a great trauma specialist—one of the best in the country. I’m not worried about her body. It’s the scars in her soul that worry me the most.”
“I can see that.” She taps her finger against shapely lips. “I noticed there’s no mirror in the room.”
My shoulders lift in a half shrug. “With or without one, she spends half an hour each day staring at the wall where the bedroom mirror used to sit, combing non-existent hair with a plastic fork she believes is a comb.”
Her eyes light up and she nods. “She only sees what she wants to,” she says, finally understanding.
“Exactly. She is no more likely to notice her scars than she is to realize that she’s feeding a plastic doll, or that her husband is a pillow.” I steeple my fingers before me. “Which is why I can’t let you proceed with the treatment.”
Her eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
“You want to cure her. What good would come out of it? This way, she’s happy. She’s whole. She’s well taken care of. She lacks for nothing.” I lean forward, planting my elbows on my desk. “Imagine you wake up from the best dream you’ve ever had, and face a nightmare of a reality. In your dream, you are loved. Safe. In reality, you’re alone. Scared. You’ve lost everyone and everything you’ve ever loved. Would you want that?”
She straightens her back. “I can see your point but, with all due respect, that’s not your decision.”
“I’m afraid I have to insist. As her attending doctor—”
She interrupts me with a slightly raised voice. “Both the trustees and her sister—”
“Can go to hell,” I burst out and bang my fist on the desk. She gapes at me, eyes as big as teacups. I run my hand through my hair. “I apologize. It’s just…” I force myself to draw a deep breath before I continue. “It’s just that I feel very strongly about this.”
“I understand.” Her tone is ice-cold.
“No, you don’t.” I rub my temples to ease the sudden thumping in my head. “I knew them. Knew her. We were friends before she even met her husband. Before they got married, started a family. I gave her my word all those years ago. To look after her, no matter what. And this treatment is not in her best interest.”
“Not your decision,” she repeats. She speaks the words simply, matter-of-factly. “She’s broken now, but we can restore her. Make her whole again.”
“She’s not a broken toy to be fixed, for God’s sake. She’s a human being.” I can see my words have no effect on her. My cheeks heat up.
“We can bring back her memories,” she continues, as if she hasn’t heard me. “Within a month, this pointless existence can end. Her sister has gone to great lengths to ensure that Jane has access to the treatment.”
I clench my jaw at the mention of the old hag. She never cared for Jane before. And now, she doesn’t care how much pain her sudden interest in her sister’s so-called well-being will bring. “Why?” The word leaves my lips before I can think.
She shrugs. “She’s my boss, not my friend. I’m only here to let you know we’ll be transferring her out next week.” She jumps to her feet to indicate this was just a courtesy call. One that is now over.
Her short skirt does nothing to hide long, shapely legs as she leans forward, hand extended. She looks like a skinny insect. One I want to swat.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done for her,” she says. “We’ll be in touch to arrange the transfer.”
I cross my arms before my chest and meet her gaze in defiance. As she eventually lowers her hand, she knocks the lamp over. She rushes to put it upright again.
You clumsy idiot. “Please,” I beg through gritted teeth. “To you, she’s a deformed monster. A problem to be fixed. To me, she’s a very dear friend. One I’ve cared about for a long time. As I said, I’ve made a promise. And I won’t break it.”
“I’m sorry. The decision’s been made.” She spins around and marches toward the door.
“Miss!” I call out just as she reaches for the handle. “I'll need your boss’s current details. I’m afraid I’ve lost touch with her, and I’d like to talk to her myself. Explain
the situation.”
She pauses for a moment, her fingers already wrapped around the silver handle. Without turning, she speaks a number.
I hurriedly grab a pen and a piece of paper and jot it down. “Her address, too.”
She turns sideways and chews her lip, then gives me that as well.
“Thank you.” I wave dismissively, and she shuts the door on her way out. Louder than she has to, but I don’t care.
I pour myself a large one. To my dismay, my hand shakes, rattling the ice cubes. I down it in one large gulp, then pour a second one. My mind is racing, exploring options. I could sue. Go to court. But I’m not a relative. Her sister would win. Plus, if the trustees are behind this ridiculous decision, I could even lose my job.
I groan and slam the glass on the table, almost knocking over the lamp. I hate feeling cornered. Helpless. I stare at the diplomas on the wall with unseeing eyes as my fingers rap against the desk’s hard wood. That annoying young insect is right. They will take her from me, and there’s nothing I can do. Unless…
I slump backwards and the back of my head hits the leather chair. I reach for the glass and take a slow sip. There is but one option. The only option. Terrible as it might be, I can’t think of a better way.
I reach into my pocket and pull out a key. One I haven’t used in years. I run my fingers over the dull metal, feeling the grooves and indentations, as memories flood my head. Then, my hand hovers over the bottom drawer. The one that’s been locked for years. As if they have a mind of their own, my fingers slide the key into the lock and turn twice. The drawer clicks softly.
I hesitate. My mind is frantically looking for another option, but there is none. I know that meddling sister well. As stubborn a person as they come. Haven’t seen her in years, but I’m sure that old age will have only made her worse. She’d never see reason. Make her whole. I scoff. She is whole. She has her family to take care of. Me, to take care of her. What more can she ever need?
The Ultimate Collection of Science & Speculative Fiction Short Stories (Short SSF Stories Book 5) Page 20
