The Shattered Genesis (Eternity)

by Rudacille, T.

  I took a step towards him, my grin widening as I realized that I already knew the pathetic answer to the question I had just posed. He could not pull the trigger. In my heart, I felt nothing but pride and audacity. In his, I felt great fear.

  “You stand above others because you know all.” My tone dripped condescension and sarcasm, which I’m sure does not surprise you at this point. “Yet, you stand now before just little old me,” I held my arms out to the side, “and you're speechless. You're motionless. You know not what to do. You're terrified because you've never killed a woman. You've beaten them and degraded them terribly but can you willingly kill one? No, your lapdogs do that for you.”

  “You don't know what I'm thinking.”

  “Your mind is screaming.” I spun my hands beside my head to mime the churning stream of thoughts that were pouring from his mind. “I can hear everything.”

  “You're crazy!” He bellowed furiously but his voice cracked on the last word. I covered my mouth to suppress the giggle that took hold of me. “You're lying! You can’t hear me!”

  “If I don't do this, she'll kill Mary.”

  “If I don't do this, she'll kill Mary.” I repeated and my grin widened as his frown deepened.

  “How is she doing that?!”

  “How is she doing that?!” I shouted up at the sky. I was acting quite manically, I admit...

  “Oh my God, the devil is real. He has her! Oh, dear God...”

  “Oh, dear God! Oh, dear God! Oh, dear God!” I shouted, all evidence of whimsy extinguishing each time I said those words until I was snarling them at him viciously. Now, only that painful, familiar rage stood firmly in my chest to spur me to further action. “Just because I don't believe in your warped perception of God does not mean I'm in line with the devil, Mr. Bachum!” I was walking towards him now, willing him to put his finger on the trigger. I could end him. Sure, if Rich fell, the war would not end. But Tyre would be short an arm; he would be amputated and vulnerable to our attack. Adam's city was burning around me. I could hear the screams of his people as they scrambled for the city limits. When I closed my eyes briefly, I saw men, women and children running in terror and disappearing through the wall into the darkness of the forest. I saw others belonging to Tyre pulling back a thick golden string on the back of a large, glass, circular bowl poised towards the sky. The sun darkened overhead as one of its rays was sucked into the bowl. One of his men turned the device so that it would fire into one of the crowds of screaming, terrified people. I opened my eyes just as a fire more powerful than any that could erupt from a man-made bomb consumed them.

  It had taken exactly one second to see all that I had seen. My power was growing stronger.

  “This is a win-win for both of us, Rich.” I told him softly. “If we live, we live another day. If we die, well...” I smiled and shook my head slightly as I studied his face. “One of us will know the truth about Him, won't we?”

  “You know nothing of Him! If you did, you would not align with Adam! You would not allow yourself to be twisted into some filthy creature from this world! You don't deserve a minute of life if you think that all of this is right!”

  I realized suddenly that all the men that had surrounded us were dead. Tyre had run off when he realized that he was the only target left for Adam to disembowel. I was staring down the business end of a shotgun that was being pointed at me by a deranged, fanatical lunatic and yet Adam had not stepped in to intervene. Perhaps he was allowing me to handle the situation on my own. I appreciated his belief in me. I appreciated his willingness to let me dispatch the threat that stood so firmly and tremulously before me alone.

  No. I realized that something was not right.

  I reached forward and grabbed the muzzle of the gun. With a quick, powerful jerk of my arm, I was able to pull it from Rich's grasp and send him down onto his knees. He looked up at me, willing me to shoot him. Only after being martyred in this “holy” war would he earn his place at God's side. His ignorance and his blind devotion to that phantom version of God brought about the strangest feeling in me: pity.

  “We find ourselves at a standstill, Rich.” I told him as I put the gun over my shoulder. “I will not shoot you because I will not spoil you with a death you and your despicable wife would be proud of. Goodbye for now. I know next time you will not hesitate.”

  Like the contemptible coward he was, he ran. Later, I knew Tyre would make him pay for not killing me. Rich knew of the consequences and still, he did not fight me. I turned back to watch him disappear from view, knowing that he and I would meet again, knowing that I would be the one to kill him or vice-versa. Either way, only one of us would end the other.

  “Adam?” I asked as I turned around. Amongst the pile of bodies, I could not see him. My exhaustion seemed to have intensified. My legs dragged as I walked through the carnage. I struggled to raise them when I had to step over the fallen men.

  “Adam?!” I asked again, too tired to suppress the fear for him that was so evident in my voice.

  “Here.”

  His voice was barely audible, even in the silence. In it, I heard his pain. I forced my tired body to move quickly, knowing he was hurt badly. I did not want to imagine, even for a moment, that he might die. While his personality and his actions antagonized me to no end, sometimes purposely, I couldn't stand to lose someone else, even the man who from the moment I met him, had stirred a great, raging storm of conflicting emotions inside of me.

  “Hey...” I whispered gently before kneeling beside him. As soon as I had steadied myself, I pressed my hand to the wound in his stomach. His warm blood streamed over my hand, saturating my skin with the darkest red I had ever seen.

  “It's fatal, Brynna.”

  “Stop it.” I ordered firmly. “Come on. We need to leave. Before he left, Rich thought about the others and bringing them back here to finish us off. I also saw more fire from the harness. We need to go.”

  “You need to go. There is no help for me.” He told me in a tone firm enough to rival my own yet still displaying his weak and pained state. An explosion of empathy overtook me and I knew then that I could not leave him.

  “My city will burn. It is my duty and my humblest privilege to stay and burn with it.”

  “This is like the captain going down with the ship.” I told him. “Though it is very honorable, you are far too important to die now. Think about your dear friend Don. He would be lost without you. Now, get up.”

  “I cannot walk. It is fatal, Brynna. You must go.”

  “Stop saying that.” I took his arm and wrapped it around my neck. “On three, okay? One, two, three!” I pulled him forward and he moved his feet back, turning his body to rise onto his knees. The pain had to have been tremendous, unimaginable... Still, he did not make a sound.

  “I must stay.” He gasped out. “I must stay here to die, Brynna. This is my city.”

  We were both on our knees facing one another. My face was very close to his. As my empathy grew for him, I did something unexpected: I closed the space between us and planted a quick, warm kiss on his cheek.

  “I know. But this is your world, also. It is overrun by the Bachums, their people, and their message that is a perversion on all we know and believe. We can only save Purissimus with your help, Adam.”

  His rough hand came up to grasp my cheek. The scorching heat between us had nothing to do with the building that had just collapsed beside us in an almighty explosion of fire and debris. His eyes hypnotized me into a beautifully tranquil space that erased all fear and pain. Stranger even is the fact that I could see a similar lull in his eyes as he gazed into mine.

  I shook my head back and forth rapidly and frowned slightly.

  “Alright, we need to get you on your feet. One, two, three...”

  He did emit one almost inaudible groan of pain when I pulled him even harder. My hand was pressed over the one of his that was covering the wound. Once I had successfully gotten him onto his feet, he stumbled into me, nea
rly knocking both of us back to the ground. I dug my heels into the blood-soaked earth and slid backwards in the soggy moisture for one unsure minute. Then, my strength registered finitely in my arms and torso and I was able to hold him, despite his great mass.

  “I'll try to walk as best as I can.” He gasped out to me as we both continued to hold his wound.

  “Or I could carry you. You carried me earlier and now, I owe you the same courtesy.” I told him in an effort to lighten the mood with a terrible joke. Sure enough, he chuckled weakly. The effort it took for him to force the laugh out pained him severely. I knew by the way he grimaced.

  We took small, labored strides to move forward, away from the battle we had just fought and won. I ignored the growing ache in my shoulders and back and focused on him, knowing his pain was turning to agony and still, he would not show it to me. I focused on the tree line that grew closer very slowly with each step we took. I yearned for the shelter of the forest, where even the Bachums feared to tread. They had been spoiled by their open surroundings and therefore, knew nothing of the dangers within the trees. They would not risk their lives by traveling through the woods unless absolutely necessary. I knew that James was smart enough to hide Violet, Elijah, Penny, Alice and Quinn within their age-old shelter. In my mind, I saw him ordering Don to turn Savannah, Oliver and Ellie over to him. He had ushered them to safety as well. In the forest, he knew they would all be safe.

  The hill was the most arduous part of our journey. While I supported most of his weight, I also pushed him gently, giving him just enough momentum to move his feet up the steep slope. When we reached the top, I was using him to support myself almost as much as he was using me.

  “You could have left me, you know.” He whispered to me as we both stood, catching our breath.

  I looked up at him and scowled.

  “Do you think so little of me?” My scowl dissolved into a dramatically disapproving frown. From the frown, a tiny smirk formed. Adam laughed the soft chuckle that was I was beginning to acknowledge as his trademark. Then, he pressed his lips to my forehead for a long, tender, thankful kiss. I jerked away, alarm springing to life uncomfortably inside of my chest. I couldn't afford to grow closer to him. I couldn't even afford the lack of physical distance between him and me. Our immediate closeness and our growing dependency on one another reminded me of James I cringed visibly.

  “You and your adherence to feelings...” He shook his head slightly and tightened his grip on me for no other reason than that his legs were beginning to fail him. “That was only meant to thank you for saving my life. If I wished for romantic involvement with you, I would leave little room for doubt or deliberation.”

  I spun us around to face the woods and walked forward quickly, leaving his feet struggling to move at the same pace.

  “Keep talking like that and you'll be crawling behind me.”

  “At least I will be at the perfect level to watch you as you walk ahead of me.”

  “You are repulsive!” I exclaimed as I slapped him very gently in the chest. Any more force than what I had used would send him falling to the ground. His bloodied hand came up quickly to grasp the one I had used to hit him. I looked up at him, entranced into silence by those beautiful eyes once again. James, Maura, and the burning city behind us disappeared from my conscious thoughts and there was only that breathtakingly beautiful silence. There was only him, with his ruggedly handsome face, his muscular chest beneath my hand, and his strong body leaning against mine. There were no explosive bangs created by the sun's energy being thrust forcefully into the buildings Adam's people had labored endlessly to build. There was only the sound of our beating hearts; after we turned to face one another, I felt the strength of his thumping against the bones of my chest. I brought my hand up to rest on his scratchy, stubble-covered cheek. His rough hands moved my sweat and blood-drenched hair from my face. Rising up onto my tiptoes, I leaned into him...

  Slut.

  My brain broadcast the word on a spinning marquee. Without hesitation, I pulled away and closed my eyes when he rested his forehead against mine. A bang so powerful that it shook the very land beneath our feet made us turn our attention to the city. The sun had disappeared from the sky but the blinding light of its flames lit up the space before us. From within its painful luminescence, I watched the shadows of buildings crumble to ash; I watched the ash disappear into nothing. People unfortunate enough to be in the midst of their escape were blasted away and I knew there would be no remains; not a bone, not a shred of skin...

  I remembered another world, another time, another race being erased from existence in a thunderous display of God's power that rivaled the one I was seeing unfold before me. From the ashes of our Earth, we had been meant to travel the universe to a brave new world. We were meant to rebuild civilization and create a new life. Yet here we all were, scattered, afraid, and once again, on the brink of extinction. Since our arrival on the purest of planets, we had desecrated all of our God-given chances to create a new world from the debris of destruction.

  We were, I am very sad to say, the living results of a shattered genesis. We were, beyond the forgiving shadow of doubt, failures of nature. No holy war could remedy such a persistent, painful truth. No lies or reassurances we would inevitably tell ourselves could change the certainty of our deficiency as a race or our impending, final demise.

  When the last of that blinding light died away, the sun resumed its place in the sky only to be assailed by the black smoke of the fallen city. Its rays struggled to break through the blockade; as a result, an eerie haze was cast on the ashes and the few scraps of debris that had managed to survive the blast. The sight was beautiful in its own way, though disturbingly bizarre to the point of chilling every last drop of my blood. I had always wondered what a nuclear holocaust would look like and the sun harness being used as a weapon had produced such a scene for my viewing. I shook my head back and forth, reminding myself that so many of Adam's people and maybe even a few of my own had been killed. Whatever remained of their bodies now drifted away in the wind.

  I was twirling through space, falling forever. There was nothing left. Every salvation, every moment of solace had been taken from us cruelly and without just cause. Every escape was merely an unnecessary detour on the road to the final scene, where we would be slaughtered painfully and without mercy. We would be taken from the worlds and lives we had so dirtied and contorted.

  “Adam?” I asked softly. Both of my hands held his firmly.

  “Yes?”

  “I believe we have reached the end.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw him shake his head. He reached out and ran his finger along my jawline before turning my head so I could look into his eyes once again.

  “My dear Brynna,” He whispered, “The darkest evil has not yet even broken the horizon.”

  fin.