by Ric Nero
I look down at him through the water and see a bluish glimmer glare across his forehead. Shocked, I bring him up and look at his forehead as he gasps for air. Maybe it was just the way the light hit the water. He looked me in the eye with a smirk on his face. Seeming suspicious I ask him, “Is there something you want to tell me, Auron?”
“Just know the power invested in you is a lot stronger than you think,” he answers as he begins to grab his shoes and things and head up the hill. I think I finally I understood Auron. I chose to let that statement go along with all the others that were just too confusing to understand and loaded up the vehicles and jumped back on the road.
Looking over at Julie as she sleeps so comfortably and peaceful, I get a little envious. We’ve been driving almost eleven hours, and my road buddy was supposed to make sure I stayed awake. I wasn’t too worried about it, at least one of us was getting some rest. I was just happy my clothes finally dried up after the baptismal. Not too long ago I was itching and twitching in this leather chair-like seat, that’s still a bit wet. We passed a few states now and should be approaching the state of Texas soon. I look to the right side of the road and see a green and white sign that says 180 miles to Houston and raindrops bang and splatter against the windshield as we drive though the night. The storm finally caught up with us, or should I say, we caught up with the storm – seeing as how we pretty much drove into it. The storm is ferocious; I wouldn’t have been able to manage to see the Tahoe ahead of us, had it not been for the high beams. For some odd reason, they begin to slow down ahead of me. There’s a large object blocking the road ahead of them. I reach over and shake Julie to wake her up.
“Hmm hmm?” She moans as I attempt to wake her, but to no avail.
“I had to get stuck with the heavy sleeper, huh?” I say to myself. Coming to a complete halt, I reach over and try it again and then she finally awakes.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
“I don’t know, but stay alert. I’m going to go find out.” I tell her as I open the driver’s door and hop down out of the S.W.A.T. truck.
Thunder roars loudly in the night as the raindrops fall from above, beating against my body like balls of hail. Reluctant to proceed any further in this weather, I second guess if I should get back in the truck. But I see the driver’s side door of the Tahoe open up. Even with the high beams from the S.W.A.T. truck shining on the SUV, it’s still hard to make out who was getting out. I run to see who was getting out. I was just about right up on the person before I saw who it was.
“Shane, what’s up?” I ask Shane, shouting over the rain and thunder.
“We realized the road was blocked by that vehicle that turned over.” Shane explains.
“So why didn’t we drive around it!?” I ask Shane.
“Auron said something told him to check the vehicle, so he sent me out.”
“Ha ha ha!” I had to laugh. Auron had a feeling, but sent Shane to go check it out. Shane shoots me a peculiar mug causing me to cease my laughter. I guess it was only comical to me.
We rush over to the white vehicle. It’s an older van kind of resembles a delivery van. Shane runs around to the front and peeks through the windshield as I try climbing the van.
“Thomas!”
“What!” I answer trying my best to climb atop of the vehicle without slipping.
“It’s a … inside!” Thunder screams through the sky making it hard to hear what he says.
“A what!?” I ask him to repeat.
“A woman!?” he answers.
A woman? I rush trying my best to scurry up the roof of the van to the driver’s door.
“Hurry!” Shane shouts. I look through the driver’s window and see her hanging towards the ground. The only thing keeping her from falling is the simple fact that she’s strapped in her seat belt. My adrenaline gets my heart pumping as I rush to open the door hoping the woman is still alive. Swinging the door open, I lean in and reach for her upper stomach close to her heart to check for a pulse. Her upper stomach was the only thing I could reach. At this point, I can feel my own heartbeat making it hard to distinguish between her pulse and my own.
“She’s alive!” I shout out hoping Shane can hear me. Relieved, I finally felt her heartbeat, I try to unfasten her seat belt and lift her up. Once I got a good grip on her, I pull her out and carry her down.
Once my feet touch the ground I switch the woman from my being thrown over my shoulder to cradling her horizontally in both arms. Shane runs past me and disappears around the rear of the van.
“Thomas, hurry!” he shouts out from the other side of the van.
The beads of water still fall from the sky and pound against our bodies as I run to Shane, hoping he knew what we’d do next. As I get on the rear side of the van, I see Shane crouched down opening the double white doors on the delivery van. Doors that would usually open from side to side now swing up and down due to the circumstance of the van being flipped on its side.
“Come on!” he shouts going back inside the cargo area of the van. Kneeling down, he then turns around and reaches out with empty arms for the woman.
I hand her to him and bend down and crawl in. It was a smart move using this spot, seeing as how it was the only dry space we could find. And the two vehicles didn’t have any room left.
Shane re-checks for a pulse at her carotid artery. He turns to me and says, “You’re right, she is alive.”
Relieved that I was right, I sit down and lean against the wall of the vehicle.
Shane placed a rolled up blanket under her head that he found in the van in attempts to try to make her comfortable. That’s all we could do make her comfortable and wait for her to recover. “Alright, keep an eye on her,” Shane says making his way out of the van.
“Wait, where do you think you’re going?” I asked curious as to what he was in such a hurry to run off and do.
He turns to me and says, “Well, I didn’t bring a radio, so I gotta tell everyone what’s going on. They deserve that much respect, don’t you think?” He turns around once more, but I stop him in his tracks.
“Especially Auron.” I reminded him. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but I was wrong doubting Auron. I won’t make that mistake again.” He heads out of the van into the pouring rain once again. Now that he’s gone and I’m in the silent presence of the woman, I begin to realize how cold and damp it is in here. Keeping an eye on the unconscious woman as her chest rises and falls consistently, the rain drops clap against the outside of the vehicle almost in a melodic rhythm.
She coughs then gasps for air.
I rush over to her side, slightly lifting her head and fluffing the pillow-like blanket under her head then lay her head back down.
“Thomas?” she says almost in a wheeze.
I look at her. I mean really look at her, as if for the first time. Who is this woman to me? And how does she know my name. It’s hard to make out who she is with grease smudges on her face, but I study her light brown complexion and golden brown like hair slicked back into a ponytail. Her body is kind of petite in figure, but well in shape for a woman, and face slim with slightly high cheekbones.
“Sparks?” I ask, waiting for a response or confirmation.
“Cough! Cough!” She coughs again and her eyes close. She’s still weak, going in and out of consciousness. Footsteps echo from behind me as I tend to the woman I believe to be an old friend.
Shane grabs another blanket that’s off in the distance towards the front of the van and wraps it around her.
“Is she okay?” Auron’s voice surprises me from behind.
I turn around and ask Auron, “Yeah, she’s fine. But why didn’t you just have Shane drive around the van? What made you choose to have him stop?” Auron looks at me and remains silent.
“Thomas, give me a hand.” I turn my attention back to Shane who’s kneeled down by her shoulders. “We gotta get her taken care of. Everything else can be handled and discussed later,” Shane says. We c
arry her out of the van and cradle her in the rear of the Tahoe. The storm seemed to have gotten worse, so we chose to bed down for the night with two men on guard rotating shifts. I was driving so I didn’t have to pull watch. But I couldn’t sleep much of the night as I thought about that woman. Was that Sparks? What happened to her that her van flipped? What’s her reason for being here? I couldn’t stop thinking about her. The thunder continued to roar and the lightning illuminated the clouds as if someone were playing with the light switch all through the night. Then the time finally came when I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and I couldn’t focus to ask myself questions anymore and I fell asleep.
I wake up early and hear the static screech of the radio go in and out. Just waking up it’s hard to concentrate on what the radio is saying. Startled at the voice on the radio, I sit up from a slouching position in the driver’s seat. My head begins to throb and my stomach becomes a bit nauseated for a brief second, I think it’s because I was sitting up too fast. Regaining myself from what felt like a deep slumber, my stomach settles and the throbbing in my head ceases and I can finally focus on the voice staticing in though the radio.
“Julie… Thomas… do you read me?” a young voice says. It was Jessie, everyone else had to be asleep and he’s probably bored and just chose to start playing on the comms to kill time.
I grab the radio sitting on the dash behind the steering wheel. “This is Thomas, we read you loud and clear, Jessie. But you shouldn’t play on the radio.”
“Thomas, I need you to look at this!” Jessie shouts through the radio. There’s a sound of urgency in his voice making it clear he wasn’t playing.
I swing the door open and hop out of the truck rushing to the Tahoe where Jessie was calling from, but stop in my tracks as I look at another devastating sight ahead of me in the distance. It was another dark pillar stretching high into the sky and wide as the horizon almost. The highway we’re on was about fifty feet off the ground, but about a hundred yards or so the ramp just ends. It was destroyed by the blast of the nuclear bomb maybe. The others are all at the edge of the highway, but I hesitate to walk towards them. The darkness is almost consuming and almost drains every ounce of hope you have.
“Oh my God! Thomas, Not again! No!” A shocked Julie screams from the passenger’s seat. I look at her and wave beckoning her to come to me. I turn my attention back to the darkness and wait for Julie to catch up to me. In the further distances around us the sun shines brightly and the air is humid. I couldn’t believe it, we came across this again. How many bombs were dropped across the U.S. and why here of all places? I understood the others that hit New York and the Capitol, but why here?
Julie finally catches up to me. And we walk side by side towards the others with each step becoming more reluctant than the last to get any closer to the darkness. We walk past the rear of the Tahoe and I look through the glass to see the woman still passed out. Jessie hops out and runs up to me with James behind him. “We just woke up and saw this,” Jessie says.
“Where’re the others?” Julie asked.
James points ahead in the distance. It wasn’t hard to spot them but the dark pillar easily captures our attention and keeps our focus. We all dreadfully draw nearer the rubble edge of the highway by the others. The closer we got, I notice Shane was on his knees looking ahead as if something is supposed to be in front of him. The closer we get I begin to hear crying and see Shane then slumped over with the others surround him.
“What’s happening with Shane?” Julie asks the twins. Then it hit me this is Texas, where Shane spent all his life. He was born, raised and stationed in Texas.
“I understand people from the south, especially from Texas. They’ve always taken pride in their home state,” I explain to her. “Every person I’ve ever met in my military career may have tried to hold on to the proper preservation in description of his or her city, I am one for hometown pride myself. To love something so much for so long and then to see it just lie in ruin would easily break anyone of us.” I continued on. Auron and Jefferey stood side by side behind Shane, the others stood on the outer sides of the two. I walk in between Jefferey and Auron up to Shane, who was at this point, on all fours. I kneel beside him and place my hand on his back and look at burning red cheeks and tightly clenched eyes as a downpour of tears flow from his eyes like rivers of water. Julie, surprisingly, does the same and mirrors me on the opposite side.
“I’m sorry, Shane. I know how much you love Texas. But, I’m here for you, hell we’re all here for you,” I tell him in a low tone, but to no avail it didn’t change anything. I didn’t expect that it would, I just wanted him to know I was here for him as always. At this point, I didn’t know what else to say. This isn’t the fist time I’d seen Shane like this. We have had a history of one always saying the right words to the other who was down to get a quick pick me up, but how could I find the words to fix this? Julie rubs her small hand up and down his back. I can see the sincerity in her eyes as if she wants to cry as well for his loss. Instead, she leans in close and whispers something in his ear. He opens his eyes abruptly as if a new hope was awoken in him. He then stands to his feet takes on last look at what was once the beautiful grassy and ace countrified state of Texas and silently walks past all of us to the trucks. Julie attempts to follow him, but I stop her. I was amazed at Shane’s recovery. I had to ask her, “Wait, what did you say to him?”
She looks me in my eye and then over my shoulder and says, “Doesn’t the Bible says a kind word lifts a lowly heart, Auron?” I look behind me and Auron nods his head in confirmation. “He was there for me, so and the same thing he told me I told him in return,” she said still with glossy eyes. I left it at that and she goes to catch up with Shane.
“I can only imagine how he feels,” Bazz says to us all as we stare into the darkness. “Sometimes it’s not about feeling for others, sharing pain is the best way to heal others,” Auron says.
Confused I ask, “What do you mean by that?”
“In some cases, the ones best suited to help though certain situations are the ones who in some ways went through similar situations.” He explains looking at Dana.
“I think I know what you’re getting at, Auron. Julie and I can understand better what it’s like to see your hometown destroyed and ruined. I’ll go see about him, too,” Dana says catching on to Auron’s persuasive statement he aimed at her indirectly. She walks away and the remaining few of us huddle closer together and stare into the dreadful negative void. The ground craters for a mighty long and wide distance. There is crumbled wood, brick and stone in the open just to be openly observed. We all stand here in a state of awe until we hear a mysterious voice from behind us say, “It’s like an endless night, isn’t it?”
We all turn around and see her, the woman we found laid out cold in the flipped van last night. She stands there wrapped in the same gray blanket that Shane had grabbed in the van to wrap around her.
“Hello, Thomas.”
It was her, it’s been years and hard to remember her, but now I knew for certain it was her. “Sparks!” I shout as I walk towards her.
“Good, you recognize me,” she says. She hugs me tightly and I returned the hug just as tight. “I’m sorry it’s just been so long since I ran into anyone that wasn’t …” She pauses and looks past me. “We need to go, it’s not safe here,” she tells me.
Looking behind me, all I see are the others. “They’re with me, they’re good. I wouldn’t have them around me if they meant any harm.” I reassure her about the company I keep.
“No, it’s not them,” she says, shaking her head side to side as she slowly backs away. “It’s that!” She points into that abyss behind me.
“What is it, why is it so dark?” I asked her.
“They’re called Black Zones,” she answered. “Get your friends and let’s get out of here, we’re threatening radiation poisoning,” Sparks says.
“Excuse me. Did she just say radiation poisoning?” Jeff
erey asked me, overhearing what Sparks said.
“Yes, that’s what I was running from. We have to get out of here.” She explains to us as she rushes back to the vehicles.
“Who is this girl?” Bazz asks.
I look at Sparks then back to him. “Isn’t that a question you can save for later?” I ask him as I jog back to the vehicles, following her lead. “Come with me!” I yell to her as we rush to the S.W.A.T. truck. Swinging the driver’s side door open I see the twins beside me. I help them climb up as I hear Sparks get in on the passenger side. “Jessie, James, you two sit in the middle.” I tell them as I get in and close the door behind me.
The Tahoe pulls off, kicking up dust and debris as it does a U-turn. I try to hot wire it as quickly as possible while sparks fly everywhere.
Vrrrmmmm! “There we go!” I shout as the truck starts up.
“Thomas...Thomas!” Jefferey shouts impatiently through the radio. I grab the radio off the dashboard.
“YEAH!” I shout as I do a U-turn.
“Who’s your friend?” Jefferey asks.
“Sparks, I went to basic training with her back in ‘05.” I told them.
“Well, ask her what she knows, there’s obviously something’s that your friend knows that we need to be brought up to speed on,” Jefferey says with the same impatient tone. I hand her the radio and put both hands back on the steering wheel.
