by T. Rudacille
***
Maura and I didn’t speak a word to one another for the remaining days on the ship. One morning, as we all lounged around on the couches in the Atrium, others began to run to the window, exclaiming about being able to see “it.”
Just as we all stood to see the spectacularly colored orb that was Pangaea outside of the window, the intercom beeped twice, signifying an announcement from the pilot.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your housing compartments. We will be arriving on Pangaea in fifteen minutes.”
There was a mad rush for the door. Maura went to grab Penny, but I lifted her myself.
“Do you think there are horses on Pangaea? And dogs?” Penny asked me excitedly. “Maybe Kingsley and Sheba and Jack and Lucy will have other dogs to play with now besides each other!” Penny gasped as another thought took hold of her. “Do you think there are turtles and dolphins?! Those turtles at the aquarium were so old, and do you remember how the bottle-nose dolphins? Do you think on Pangaea we can have them as pets?”
“I’ll bet they are here, but I don’t know if we can have them as pets.” I replied cheerfully, though I sincerely doubted that we would ever be seeing an animal we were used to. We would be the only living creatures on Pangaea, I was sure.
“Can you believe it? We’re seriously going to be on another planet!” Violet exclaimed behind me as she clapped her hands like an obnoxiously overexcited tween viewing her high-pitched singing, hair-flipping, sexuality-questioning idol for the first and last time ever.
“Really? I thought we were jokingly going to be on another planet.” Elijah grinned in satisfaction at his horrible joke.
I looked back at him, rolled my eyes and drawled, “Lame…”
“Come on, I can’t be expected to make good jokes right now!”
“Just because you are excited, little boy, does not mean that your standards of humor can fall. I will not allow such nonsense.”
I had to admit, I was excited, as well. My heart was fluttering madly in my chest, and I found myself biting my lip to suppress the smile that was trying to emerge. Because Elijah and Violet had moved in front of us, James knew it was temporarily safe to put his arm around my waist as we walked. When I looked at him, I could not fight the smile anymore. When I looked at Penny’s face to find such childlike wonder and anticipation there, my smile grew even bigger and a chuckle of pure merriment escaped me.
Once we were back down in our housing compartment and the ship workers were strapping people in, I felt a dismal drop in my mood.
“It’s alright.” James told me softly in my ear, “I'm going to be right next to you, baby.”
“James, I can't do this.” I muttered to him as I turned away from Maura's ever-watchful eyes. “You know that I can't stand it. Especially now, after what happened last time.”
“Hey…” James said, and the worker closest to us looked up. “Can you strap us both in on her bed?”
The man nodded and adjusted the straps so that they were longer. James, with his arms around me, laid us both down. At that point, I did not care which members of my family saw or what they thought of it. I would explain it away later, saying that James was able to calm my anxieties better than anyone else, therefore I allowed his closeness to keep from succumbing to a panic attack. They would surely believe that.
I kept my face buried in James’s neck as we were strapped down to the cot.
“This isn't so bad, is it? Besides the fact that you haven't broken this cot in at all, this is alright.”
“Pardon me for being light.” I muttered with only half the amount of sass I normally would have used. “James, I don't want to do this...”
“The pilot has done this before, ma’am,” The worker assured me gently, “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“I don’t like this.” I whispered to James again, “I think I would probably take that pill again to avoid experiencing this.”
“There’s no way in hell I’d let you take that pill again. We’re going to get through this, baby. I promise. Fifteen more minutes, and we’re there.”
I nodded and looked up at him. He craned his neck so he could hold his lips to mine for one long, calming moment. In the corner of my eye, I saw Maura watching us still.
“Your upper extremities are probably going to lose all feeling because I am going to be squeezing you until this beastly contraption is on the ground,” I warned him, “All circulation is going to get cut off.”
“That’s okay. I’m tough. I can handle it.”
I nodded, squeezed my eyes shut, and burrowed further against his chest.
A faint shutter passed through the ship that caused people to mutter softly all around us. Before we could fully recover from the shock of feeling the ship move so strangely, it flew up into the air and crashed back down to the path it had been flying on before. When the ship jerked into the air again and plummeted into an even larger drop, the lights flickered, went out, and everyone in our housing compartment screamed in pure, heart-stopping terror.
I heard Penny crying out for me from the bed beside mine. My first instinct was to jump up and go to her, but the straps and James’s arms held me firmly in place. I was so selfish. I had been so concerned about my own anxieties that I had neglected Oenny. When I had found that they could strap two of us on a bed, I should have stayed with her.
“Penny! Penny!” I was screaming over everyone else.
“Oh my God, we’re going to die!” I heard Violet shrieking. “Oh my God! Maura! Maura!”
The ship was falling. We had broken through Pangaea's atmosphere and were falling to the hard ground too quickly to fathom. The whole ship would break apart on impact and our bodies would split with it. We had made it into space, flown so far from where we were from, and now, we were going to die in what was essentially a glorified plane crash.
“Penny, you’re okay! Penny, listen to me!” I was struggling to break free of the restraints so I could get to her. When I managed to maneuver one arm out, James held me to him even more tightly. I would have been able to squeeze out of the other restraints if he had slackened his grip on me. It was a good thing he was holding me, though, because the ship rose and fell abruptly again. The force sent us hurtling upwards again but the restraints, thankfully, kept us from flying right off of our beds.
“She’ll be okay.” James was assuring me calmly, “She’s fine. We’re all okay.”
He hadn’t realized it yet. He hadn’t realized that we were going to die. Everyone in the room was screeching in the dark, knowing that the end was near for all of us. The survivors of the human race were going to become extinct with the rest. A simple, terrifying fact stored in some deep corridor of my mind through which I never traveled shouted its message of despair and hopelessness to me at an eardrum-shattering volume: We had simply outrun the inevitable. We were meant to die with the others as the Earth burned. Death had caught up to us, knowing that a brutal higher power had demanded the eradication of the entire race. Death could not fail He or She or They who had created him...
My mind was racing, aiding my mind in forming erratic and eloquent thoughts. But no; I could not believe all of that. I could not believe that we had traveled so far only to die just as we reached Pangaea.
The ship gave another almighty lurch upwards, and my hands locked onto James. I held onto him with the last bit of strength left in my body. My eyes squeezed shut as I braced for the crash that would surely be my demise. I thought of what I would say to my parents upon seeing them. I could not think of any words but the three I had written on the paper.
It had been a lie.
We were falling again, our stomachs dropping as though we were on a thrill ride at an amusement park.
I heard a deafening screech that rattled everything, including our insides.
I could not breathe. I could not breathe.
I blinked in the total darkness.
Everything went black.
Quinn
The thought of falling forever in space, of being stuck in that stomach-churning drop for all eternity, made me want to close my eyes and beg for death. I wouldn’t be able to stand it for long. To fall forever, in my opinion, would be the absolute worst way to die.
Alice was crying, begging God to spare us. She rambled on and on, praying through her tears. I stared up into the thick darkness, widening my eyes in hopes of being able to see something. I hoped to see some indication that we had not reached the end yet. But even if the lights were on, all that would have been seen above me was the iron ceiling. There would be no angels assuring me that all would be calm in a few minutes. I didn’t have to decipher whether the tranquility they were promising would be reached in death or in just a few minutes when the ship miraculously evened itself out.
These are the thoughts that I had when facing my death. The animalistic instinct to get up and run was strong, yet I knew it was useless. There was no safe place to run if the ship truly was falling. The crash would be the end of everything. My heart pounded against my chest as I struggled to take a breath that would allow me to calm Alice. I didn’t know what I would say, but it would surely be empty promises that I couldn’t keep. Telling her that everything was going to be alright would be a lie. There is no way I could have known that for sure.
Is this how Alice’s parents felt while their souls were stuck inside of those creatures? Were they falling forever?
No, they were burning.
That thought certainly wasn’t soothing.
My parents had been killed trying to protect me. It was my fault. I should have been there.
I chose Alice.
Was that right?
I should have been there.
How had that thing killed them? There had been so much blood.
What had those things wanted? Why were they there?
Demons? I didn’t believe in them.
But if I had to picture a demon, those things came pretty close to the description.
We’re falling.
Falling…
Falling…
Where is the crash?
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for it, begging the higher power I didn’t believe in to gift me with a swift destruction where I felt no pain. But don’t all people pray for that? I wasn’t special. I had been lucky once and now, I would feel every last second of agony that the people we had left behind had suffered.
Silence. People had stopped screaming, including Alice.
“Allie?” I choked out.
My mouth was dry, and my heart was still beating strongly in my chest.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was still quivering with the tears I couldn’t see falling from her eyes. “Are we… dead?”
“No. We’re not dead.”
People were beginning to mutter amongst themselves, trying to decide exactly what had just happened.
“Did you feel a crash? Are we still in the air?”
“I don’t know.” I replied as I struggled to sit up. The restraints on the bed held me down as they were supposed to.
“Where are the lights?”
“I don’t know, Allie.”
She cried harder.
“That was so scary.” She managed to whisper to me.
“It’s okay. I think that whatever it was, it’s over now.” I assured her with a firm calmness in my voice that I could barely muster.
“I wish I could see you.”
“I’m right here, baby.”
“Why haven't they made an announcement?”
“They will. Any minute now.”
We were silent, being forced to listen to other people creating all sorts of fanciful scenarios to explain what had just occurred. One man insisted that there were people on Pangaea who had been firing on our ship.
Okay, I mused, Whatever he brought on-board with him to smoke, I want some.
Despite the terror that was still inside of my chest, I couldn’t help but chuckle softly.
“What?” Alice asked me, and her voice was steadier now.
“Nothing. These people are funny.”
“Crazy is more like it.” She replied, “How did we get stuck in the freaking psych ward?”
“Maybe they saw your pissed-off face and assumed that you were a sociopath.”
“Okay, smart-ass, then why would they put you in here?” She asked, and I could hear in her voice that she was smiling. I grinned, too.
“They assumed I must be delusional given my association with a sociopath.”
“Shut up!” She exclaimed, “I will hand it to you, though, babe. You do always manage to make me laugh even in the worst possible situations. Even after we almost died...”
“That’s my job.”
The intercom beeped, and the familiar gravelly voice of the pilot came through.
“Sorry about the rough touch down, ladies and gentlemen. We have arrived on Pangaea. Someone will be by shortly to remove your restraints.” The man paused for a moment, perhaps unsure of what to say next. When he finished, it was with a statement said in unthinkable relief and vast disbelief:
“We did it, folks. We survived the end.”
Violet
“Just hurry up!” I shouted at the man unstrapping me. Brynna had passed out in the midst of the ship's collapse from the air. After learning that she had almost suffered heart failure on take-off, I was more than a little alarmed. My anger at her still burned inside of me but that didn’t mean that I cared for her any less.
I would hate myself for the things I had said if anything happened to her now.
Once my arms had been freed, I shot up and forced my shaking hands to hurriedly undo the restraints on my ankles. Elijah was furiously unstrapping James and Brynna, looking as terrified as I felt.
“Does she have a pulse?” Maura demanded as she held Penny’s head against her shoulder so she couldn’t see Brynna. I couldn’t imagine how badly that would scar Penny, seeing someone she loved so much lost after such chaos.
James was cradling Brynna in his arms, his fingers pressed to her wrist. He nodded and let out a sigh of relief as he put his hand on her face.
“She just passed out.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t pass out. What the hell was that?” Elijah asked as he looked around the room with his hands rested on top of his head.
“I guess it was just a rough landing. They said we’re here.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose for a minute as I tried to calm myself down. “I just want to be clear about one thing…”
“Come on. That’s it.” James was sitting Brynna up as she came back around.
“…I will never get back on this ship. Ever.”
Elijah put his arm around my shoulder.
“You know I’ve always said that if the opportunity came up to travel through space that I would. But I agree with you. I don’t ever want to see the inside of this thing again.”
“After two and a half weeks of being stuck here, no one can blame you for that.” James replied absentmindedly as he kept Brynna’s chin cupped in his hand. He was observing her eyes, making sure that she was truly awake and not miles away in some quiet, crazed stupor. After the panic attack she had had, temporarily going out of her mind would not have been the unlikeliest of scenarios. It had happened to her before.
Brynna nodded before forcing her trembling legs to support her slight weight. Instantly, she stumbled back, only to be caught by Elijah and James.
“I just need a minute. I’m fine.” She blurted out a little too loudly.
When she slumped back onto the bed, Elijah sat down beside her, took her hand, and looked at her only until she held her other hand up close to his face, ordering him without words to look away.
“She’s fine.” Elijah assured us with a grin.
He
r gesture was a certain indication that she was returning to normal. My eyes met Maura’s for a moment after I looked away from James, who had rested his hand on Brynna’s back. My heart jumped at the sight of the anger I found looking back at me. It was beyond the fury she felt at the things Brynna had said to her. It was also not channeled towards one recipient. It was channeled towards two.
Maura knew everything.
“Where are Penny and Violet?” Brynna's voice was quieter than normal not only because of how weakened she was from passing out but because she was talking to the floor; her head was down between her knees.
“I’m here.” I told her gently.
It was the first time I had been able to speak to her kindly since I had found out about our parents. I sat down on the other side of her and grasped her other hand in both of mine. She squeezed mine tightly for a moment, which took me by surprise. That was, in Brynna’s case, a show of love. That simple gesture required the same amount of affection a normal person would need to feel before she threw her arms around her loved one and cried in happiness at finding them in one piece after believing they were dead.
But after that momentary squeeze, she slipped her hand out from under mine.
“Alright. I am fine.” She stood up and swayed on her feet. Elijah and James grasped both of her arms to steady her. “We have come this far. Let us go see this planet already.”
I grinned now, excited trepidation brewing inside of me. This was it. This was the moment every person on the ship had prayed for, theorized about, and imagined in luminous, intricate details.
It was the end of the journey and the beginning of the beginning.
Part II: The Arrival
