“Mommy...mommy...” What voice she had left was gravely and errand sobs escaped between delirious syllables. Her khaki pants were wet. This girl had no choice but to stand in that one spot since yesterday. And it seemed no one had even tried to help her.
A man lying in the grass a few feet from the imprisoned girl painfully lifted his head to look up at us. His calves were lost within the abdomen of a middle-aged woman and a fully reclined lawn chair. Her body was bent at an extreme angle, evidence that he’d dragged her as far has he could. The woman never had a chance.
I noticed Matilda glance over at Mr. Gordon and sigh before walking up to the crying girl. She knelt down and spoke with her mouth against the girl’s ear. The young girl tried her best to suppress her crying, but she was no longer in control of her emotions. Matilda continued quietly talking to her and the girl slowly and slightly calmed, but her face was still streaked with tears and haunted by the horrors of what she’d experienced and witnessed. Matilda took the girl’s face in both hands, wiping below both eyes and down her cheeks with gentle palms. The girl hugged her with her one free hand, almost as much for support as for emotional connection. Matilda grasped the girl’s forearm close to where it died into the tree and pulled. Within seconds, a tiny hand emerged from the bark of the trunk with perfect fair skin. The girl clamped onto Matilda with her newly freed arm as well and her feet were finally allowed to give out. Matilda caught the poor girl and laid her gently in the grass.
“Mommy,” she said again and glanced over at the man with his feet embedded into the dead woman’s abdomen.
Matilda shook her head and detached the man’s legs from the woman’s body, along with the fabric and metal framing of the lawn chair. The girl pushed to her hands and knees and crawled over to the body of her mother, rested her small head against her mother’s, and cried.
The man clumsily got to his feet, testing his legs, looking like it was the first time he’d ever stood on his own. Matilda helped him balance for a moment and then let him go. He hugged her tight, which seemed to make her visibly uncomfortable. Her arms hung by her waist while he sobbed into her shoulder. She simply waited for him to be done with her and let go. When Saebra approached the both of them, the hysterical man did just that and ran for safety at the sight of the menacing canine.
Matilda rubbed the coarse fur of her wolf, seemingly thanking her for the interception, and rejoined the group, which still huddled together in a nervous mass.
“It’ll get easier in time,” Matilda said to Desiree, who now sat on a patch of vomit-free grass with her knees up to her chest. The redheaded woman opened her right fist, which held a white handkerchief. She passed it to Desiree, who graciously took it to wipe her mouth and nose. “I won’t need it back.”
“This wasn’t an earthquake,” Richard said. “No earthquake I’ve ever seen does anything like th—”
“I never said it was,” Matilda replied. “This is what happens when two planes collide—partially collide to be more precise.”
“Collapse may be a better way to describe it in reference to what they currently understand,” Mr. Gordon said.
“And what’s causing them to collapse—or collide?” Jeremy asked.
“Not what, but whom,” Matilda said and started leading us away from our entry point, away from the present carnage, and toward so much more.
“Is the whole world suffering like this?” I asked, not really directed at anyone.
“The whole plane,” Mr. Gordon answered.
We walked along the edge of a wooded area, behind what looked like a main street and rows of fused-together buildings to avoid as many people as we could. Saebra stuck to the trees, her brown fur helping her to blend in with her surroundings.
Within a few minutes, Matilda turned us toward the road, headed straight for a bulbous, curvy, 1950s-looking, deep red, full-sized sedan. All four whitewall tires were blown, but besides that, the car looked fine. By the time we reached it, the tires had inflated themselves to pristine condition. Matilda walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door.
I looked at our group—the six of us—and wasn’t really sure how we were all going to fit without sharing laps until I gazed into the window. No center console separated the driver from the passenger, so one person could sit in between, something I wasn’t used to seeing outside of some old movies.
Mr. Gordon nudged me to slide in, but I quickly backed off and hopped into the back seat, scooching all the way to the far window and setting the backpack by my feet. Desiree followed, with Richard claiming the final seat. This forced Jeremy to sit between Matilda and Mr. Gordon—the seat I had gratefully avoided.
I reached over my shoulder for the seatbelt and felt nothing but the leather seat. I swiveled around looking for the elusive belt, shoulder or lap, and still found nothing. Desiree moved her body forward, but doing so didn’t reveal any hidden straps.
Matilda jingled a key into the ignition and the engine sputtered a few times, then roared as she stepped on the gas. She turned the steering wheel with the tiny center, her hands firmly gripping the surrounding thin rings of Jupiter. The car pulled away from the curb and immediately performed a U-turn, now heading toward the distant mountains. They were the same mountains where Mr. Gordon kept his not-so-safe house, and the same mountains I could see from the freeways back home.
Home? Where is home now?
Matilda turned a few knobs on the dashboard to move the radio’s needle-driven display and settled on a station with a mixture of static and campy diner music. Everything here had to be fused with something.
We were in the only moving car, dodging broken-down and spliced cars scattered all over the road. The horrors done to this plane were apparent in every direction. I didn’t know how it would ever be rebuilt in a way where society would be given the opportunity to recover. The process of cutting people, living and deceased, out of buildings, automobiles, and trees was too horrific to fully comprehend. The slanted buildings would never be usable. And the spliced building would not easily be converted into single units. Everything would have to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch.
As we drove, I even saw a man hanging from two fused trees. Not from a rope. His head was lost within a thick branch, his body dangling lifelessly beneath, with a toppled wooden ladder on the ground. The headless body continued to sway with the rustling leaves.
In breaks between buildings, I could see flashes of brown fur. Saebra could keep up with us while we had to maneuver through the highly populated area. It seemed like she may even be leading the way. But once we left the city behind and turned onto Condor Avenue, I lost sight of her. There was more open landscape and less people, making the effects of the collapse less noticeable and allowing us to pick up speed. Now it had turned into a scenic drive in the countryside, though it became a game of pointing out the trees that were supposed to be here, and those that weren’t. There weren’t many people out here, and fewer dead, though it was upsetting to spot the occasional limbs sticking out of trunks like stripped, limp branches.
Desiree had her head on my shoulder again. I looked down to see if she was still awake, and she was, staring at the back of the front seat.
“I don’t think I could have ever imagined anything so bad,” she whispered. “Why would anyone want to intentionally do this?”
“I wish I had an answer—I wish I had an answer to anything,” I said. “I’m just plagued with questions, many for which I probably don’t want to know the answers.”
“Yeah…Sometimes it’s better to be blind,” she said.
I immediately pictured how she looked when I found her with Reid—strapped into the white straightjacket and leather hood.
“The curious cat was eaten by the wolf,” I said.
“What was that?” Matilda asked from the front seat, eyeing me from the rearview mirror.
“Nothing.”
As I gazed out the window, I thought about meeting my father in literally hours, an
d whether he was someone I really wanted to meet. Would it have been better if he’d just stayed dead? After picturing how I’d found Desiree in the asymmetric plane, I thought of how I’d left Anna, in what was left of the hazy, drug-induced fog I could remember. She was lying back on her bed with red slits up her arms and the razor still in her hand. Her blonde mirror image frantically soaked up as much blood as possible, but was seemingly overwhelmed with the persistent flow. I couldn’t help but think what Alexandria Lorne had done with my friend. Had she let her bleed out and disposed of the body? Had she allowed Anna to join the ranks like Eli? Or was Alexandria still holding her as a pawn for some move in the game we hadn’t reached yet? It was my fault she was there in the first place—my fault if she truly was dead. I prayed she wasn’t, but the final image I had of her haunted me.
What Desiree had been through, from traveling to Provex City and from before I even knew her, was traumatic as well. They were events that change a person forever. I was thankful she was here with me now, but if those events were her price to be with me, I wished she hadn’t paid it.
I remembered seeing Provex City for the first time and how amazing it was. This new place—Doria—may have been amazing at one time, too, but it was now a nightmare. This should not be what’s waiting on the far side of Provex City. We ascended into Heaven just to be dragged down into Hell. And I still felt responsible somehow.
I was supposed to be documenting now; I was Commodore Chaos, or so Logan would have me believe. The tablet in my backpack was my only connection to him and I knew now that he was connected to my past. There were many things I had forgotten that now seemed to be coming back in bits and flashes. He was another piece of a puzzle that was rapidly becoming a small part of an even larger puzzle. I wanted to reach out to him, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to write. I didn’t know what to post online that would flush out the true commodore, if he even was still okay. Hopefully, he was back at school, continuing on with his hidden, yet normal life as I ventured into the heart of something and somewhere terribly dark.
The slanted spires of a great stone cathedral reached out above the trees, the tips of them fading into space. Smokey lines descended the towers like part of the stone was cut away. It clearly was not supposed to be nestled in the middle of the forest. I could only imagine how many trees punctured it like spikes, and how many people were impaled inside.
Condor Avenue led us to the base of the mountains, where a sign holding up a barely breathing doe welcomed us to the small town of Doria Falls, with an estimated population of 500.
How little did that number mean anymore.
We turned off the main road and onto a side street with no name. From there we were met with unmarked gravel paths guiding us farther into the forest. After a few more turns and a few more miles, the trees opened up to a clearing where numerous cars were parked, all looking as good as the day they came off the assembly line. Several one-story, metal box-shaped buildings with blacked-out windows were arranged in close proximity to one another. The buildings had no signs or labels, nor were there any signs visibly posted nearby. It looked as if we’d come across an industrial complex in the middle of the forest, and one that wasn’t destroyed by the forest.
“They’re still setting up,” Matilda said, pulling us into a free space. “But we’re here. Welcome to the lovely rebellion camp, here in remote Doria Falls.”
“What, no welcoming committee?” Jeremy asked sardonically.
“Don’t tempt me to leave you in the trunk.”
Oliver Remembers (ii)
Jeremy entered my bedroom, opening the door just enough so he could slip in. Once inside, he quietly closed the door. He removed a small hemp sack from under his shirt and tossed it to me. I peered inside and was thrilled to find a partial loaf of bread and slice of ham. The ham was already cold, but I devoured it within seconds anyway.
“You’ve always done this for me,” Jeremy said, taking a seat on the window ledge. “I thought I’d do something nice for you for a change.”
I was still so hungry and began gnawing off chunks of bread.
After leaving Logan in the halls, I returned to our family quarters. Mom wasn’t too happy with my afternoon hide-and-seek stunt and sent me straight to bed without supper. Unlike Jeremy, this was my first offense.
“What’d you do to make her so mad?” Jeremy asked.
“Made her chase me through the castle.”
“Why?”
“I dunno.” I shrugged and stuffed the last big piece of bread into my mouth, which was now so full I could hardly chew. “I was following my friend Nero. He told me where to go.”
“He’s not really your friend. You know that, right?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He’s your daediem, not your friend.”
“But he says he’s my friend. We play together.”
“You can’t believe everything you’re told,” Jeremy said.
“Duh,” I said with a huff. “I know. I’m not stupid.”
Jeremy glanced over at the door. “I should go so I can enjoy being the good son for once.” He slipped out as quietly as he’d come in, and I was back to my solitary punishment, which I could at least now endure with a full stomach.
The door opened again once the sun had set and my window was dark. A circle of glowing orbs shone over my bed where I sat against the headboard. Nicholae strolled confidently into the room. His hair was darker and straighter than Jeremy’s, much more like mine. A shadow of a beard always covered his face, but never seemed to grow any fuller. His skin was fair and flawless, with a few edges of his many tattoos sticking up through his raised collar. The most pronounced picture was that of the wolf head on his inner right hand, dark and intricate, with the open jaws framing his thumb and forefinger.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and stared down at me with noticeable disappointment. The door closed behind him after he was already seated.
“Your mother says you were in the forbidden region of the castle today, unsupervised. What were you doing?”
“I—I dunno. Just playing.”
“That’s not good enough,” he scolded. “I need you to give me a real answer. This isn’t a game. The rules I set are not arbitrary. They are for your protection. What were you doing in the forbidden tower?”
I couldn’t look him in the eyes. “Nero told me to…”
“What have I told you about listening to Nero?”
I shivered, his presence draining the room of its warmth. I’ve heard so much about my daediem from my parents and others in the castle—but they all seemed wrong. Nero was different; he was my friend, like Logan.
“You will stay out of the forbidden region—especially the forbidden tower—from now on. Is that understood? This is your warning, man to man. This discussion will not be revisited. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir,” I said meekly.
“Good,” he said and stood up. Before he reached the door he turned back. “I just want you to be safe, Oliver. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
I nodded, but looked toward the dark window. The door slowly closed behind him. I silently asked for the orbs to dim, curled up on my bed, and cried myself to sleep.
6
Compound
We all spilled out of the red sedan. Matilda led us in between two gray buildings, which seemed to be a walkway through the center of the camp. Several more rows of buildings extended behind the ones adjacent to us. The place was eerily quiet—the sound of the breeze and birds overhead, along with our shoes kicking up gravel, being the predominant sounds.
Ahead, three men approached us from two long buildings away. When they got closer, I saw that it was two men and a teenager who was probably a year or two older than Jeremy. All three of them were dressed in black militant wear, including bulletproof vests, boots with their pants tucked into them, and holstered handguns hanging low on their hips. The teenager walked out in front of the other two men, who f
lanked him like bodyguards.
“Here’s your welcoming committee,” Matilda said to Jeremy. “Appreciate it.”
As the teenager in the middle of the pack got closer, he looked more and more like—Nero. I couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be him walking toward me. I killed him!
When he reached Matilda, he gave her a hug and then reached his hand out to Mr. Gordon. The two other men stood back a few steps and placed their hands behind their backs in an “at attention” stance.
“It’s been a long time,” the boy said to Mr. Gordon and then stepped past him and Matilda. “And this has been even longer.” Out of the remaining four of us, he honed in on me. “Hello, Oliver. This probably isn’t the reunion you were expecting.” He held out a hand to me.
I glanced over at Mr. Gordon and he noticed the concern in my eyes immediately.
“Oliver, this is your father,” Mr. Gordon said.
Nicholae’s tattooed hand lingered in the air, waiting for me to take it.
“You’re Nicholae?” I asked.
“In the flesh,” he said. “I’ve waited for this day for two lifetimes.”
I apprehensively shook his hand, which seemed to release some of the tension between us.
Then Nicholae turned to Jeremy. “I trust you’ve been looking after him.”
“Of course I have, that’s what big brothers—”
Jeremy was cut off when Nicholae wound his arm back in a flash and decked Jeremy square in the nose. Jeremy stumbled backward and fell on his ass, holding both hands up to his face. Blood quickly began seeping through his closed fingers, dripping into his coat sleeves.
“Hey!” Desiree yelled and dropped down to Jeremy’s side.
In the same instant, Richard lunged forward with all of his muscles tensed, ready to tackle Nicholae.
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