by J. Thorn
“This is wonderful,” she said. “I don’t remember the last time I ate. I don’t even remember the last time I was hungry.”
“Those things are different here,” Samuel said, savoring the salty burn of the bacon on his tongue. He took slow, measured bites, as if the bacon was the last he would ever taste. “You still have to eat, but it’s not quite the same.”
Jack abandoned caution and shoved all of the bacon strips from the plate into his mouth. He chewed and grunted, rolling his eyes several times.
“Disgusting. You’re like a caveman,” Lindsay said.
Samuel laughed and watched Jack push back from the table, putting his hands on his stomach.
“Bacon,” was all he could mutter.
The three sat in silence as the last of the pork disappeared from the table. Nobody pushed to discover its origin, and Samuel didn’t care that it appeared in the cabin, wrapped and chilled as if delivered by a butcher. When they emptied the mugs, Samuel turned back to the stove. He brought the coffee pot to the table and refilled all of the mugs until the last precious drop of brown liquid could be coaxed out of hiding.
“They’re still out there,” Lindsay said.
“And the cloud is advancing, quicker than it was before,” Samuel said.
The three held their mugs, the euphoria of an unexpected breakfast replaced by a heavy foreboding.
“Did anyone dream?” Samuel asked. The silence and lack of eye contact told him everything he needed to know. “I’m not going to ask you to share. Either of you. I know how intense and personal dreams in the reversion can be. But we’re going to need to make a decision soon. I’d like it to be a group decision, and anything you gleaned from your dreams could be helpful.”
Jack glanced up at Lindsay, her high cheekbones lifted in a satiated smile. A bolt of pain raced through his stomach when he thought about what Kole said.
She’s not in your league.
“I don’t remember any of my dreams, if I even had any,” Jack said.
Samuel looked at Lindsay and then at Jack. “None?”
Jack shook his head and ran a finger around the top of the mug.
“How about you?” Samuel asked, turning to Lindsay.
“Yeah, I remember mine.”
Samuel waited as Lindsay closed her eyes to collect her thoughts.
“I met Mara.”
The sound of her name hit Samuel square in the chest. He leaned back on his chair as his lungs struggled to suck in more air. He bit his lip, hoping to hold in the hundreds of questions filling his head.
“She said we have to get to the mountain, the peak. If we don’t get there, we lose all hope of salvation, or freedom or release from a cycle. I’m not exactly sure what she meant, but I do know that we can’t sit here for much longer. Bacon or no bacon.”
“Was she okay?” Samuel asked, ignoring Lindsay’s interpretation of the dream.
“It was a dream,” she said.
Jack kept his head down, staring into the swirling, dark lines of coffee grounds collected at the bottom of the mug.
“Anything else she told you about the reversion or our situation?” Samuel asked.
“That was pretty much her point. If that cloud gets to us, we’re done. Or dead. Or back in. I still don’t know what the fuck is going on here half the time.”
Samuel nodded, sensing her growing frustration at existing in a world without certainty. He remembered those feelings of confusion and the conversations with Major helped.
“If the cloud gets you, or the spider-crabs, or any other creature here, I think you end up back in the forest and you have to come through another reversion.”
“Sounds like a purgatory,” Lindsay said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Jack said, lifting his head to join the conversation.
“What?” Samuel asked.
“What’s the point of going out there and facing the spider-crabs or fire rain, or whatever the hell else the reversion decides to cook up for us? Why don’t we stay here, wait for the cloud, and take our chances in round two?”
“You’re saying we just sit here and let it get us?” Lindsay asked.
“Yes,” Jack said. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t see the point of leaving the cabin and tossing our fate to the mountain when we can sit tight, let the cloud come and see what happens tomorrow. Sometimes it’s best to hit reset and try again.”
Samuel stared at Jack, looking for a connection with the young man, something to help explain his position. Samuel felt like Jack’s perspective defied the natural human instinct of survival. Unless Jack knew something he didn’t.
“How do I know those fucking crabs want me?” Jack said. “How do I know the cloud isn’t after you, Samuel?”
Lindsay’s eyes shifted, and she turned her head sideways as she thought about what Jack said.
“Maybe Lindsay and I sit here and the reversion takes you for whatever business it has. Maybe the two of us would be collapsible damage.”
“Collateral. Collateral damage,” Lindsay said.
Samuel looked from Jack to Lindsay. She averted her gaze and bit her bottom lip.
“You believe that, too? You think the cloud is coming for me and not for you or Jack?”
Lindsay felt a tear welling in her eye, and she used her anger to push it away. She refused to become their damsel in distress. “I don’t think I agree with Jack, but we would be irresponsible if we didn’t consider all possibilities before making a decision.”
Samuel slammed his mug down on the table and stood. “You believe this is all about me and it’ll let you walk. Just up and out of here, like that.” Samuel snapped his fingers. “If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re wrong. You are welcome to sit here and test that theory if you like, but I’m telling you that you’re wrong.”
“Maybe Lindsay and I will do that,” Jack said.
Lindsay looked at him, shook her head, and then stood to face Samuel. “I trust you. I feel it. I can tell you’ve got good intentions for all of us.”
“How do you know that?” Jack asked, an edge creeping into his voice.
“I just do,” she said, her eyes not leaving Samuel’s.
“I’m so tired of all of this spiritual bullshit and feelings and dreams and everything else. I think Samuel wants you for himself, Lindsay. And he’s going to say anything to make that happen.”
Samuel stepped forward until he towered over Jack. He clenched his fist, wanting to lash out and retaliate for the words that felt like a betrayal, but he didn’t. Instead, he nodded. “Fine. I’m not forcing anyone here to do anything. You each decide what you want to do, but I refuse to sit here any longer.”
“What’s your plan?” Jack asked.
“Until you decide, you’re not part of it,” Samuel said.
Jack rocked back in his chair and shrugged with a smile, as if he didn’t care. He turned to Lindsay. “What are you doing?”
Lindsay shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at Jack and then Samuel. “I’m with Samuel,” she said.
“That’s what Kole said you would do,” Jack mumbled.
Samuel heard it, as did Lindsay. She dismissed the barb immediately, but the name rang through Samuel’s head until he had to sit down to keep from swinging at Jack.
***
Deva stood and walked to the stone stairs. Shallna waited for his instructions.
“Stay here,” Deva said.
Shallna turned from the orb. He struggled to escape his morbid fascination with the spider-crabs and their infestation of the locality. He watched as they spread out, covering the sand and turning it into a black, pulsing mass barely distinguishable from the sky above. The cabin and its prisoners remained fixed in the center-like the core of a dying sun. He drew a breath and looked at Deva, standing next to the archway leading to the stairs.
“You are going up?” he asked.
“Yes,” Deva said, without an explanation.
Shallna nod
ded and turned back to the orb, the ambient light casting a dull glow across his face. The creatures provided a sickly amusement that made him less interested in Deva’s ascension.
Satisfied that Shallna would not leave the orb unattended, Deva turned to the stairs. A layer of dust and forgotten time covered the steps, hewn from the rock of the mountain. He tapped his staff on the first step as if somehow testing its structural integrity. Deva thought back to the first time he made the ascension and had to suppress the panic that accompanied the memory. He was toward the end now, not young and irrational as he had been back then. He might not come down the steps, but he would not rise in fear or with a feeling of false security. Deva would make the climb knowing it would be the last time. He would let the cloud take him and be cast to oblivion or be released from his cycle. Either way, Deva would not return.
The first several dozen steps came easily, until the staff no longer provided assistance to his legs. Deva kept one hand on the wall and one on the staff as he continued up and to his right. Cold torches from distant times clung to the wall, some dangling from rotten iron hooks while others lay on the steps, coated in dust. The wall felt rough and cool at the beginning. Deva felt the craftsmanship of the masons who had lain the stone eons ago. He thought back to their crude tools and primitive techniques. He would never understand how they could have produced such a formidable structure. It should have fallen ages ago.
Deva pushed on, the atrophied muscles in his legs screaming in pain. He sat on the steps twice, and knew he might not be able to rise if he did so again. The light from the top filtered down in a way only natural to the reversion. Deva caught a glimpse of a distant memory, a glowing star above an ocean, showering the sands with warmth and life. That thought dissipated as Deva pushed onward, the glow slightly expanding with every step. He could feel his insides burning and cursed the universe, which gave him the powers of the reversion yet held him captive in the body of a mortal. If a reason existed, it would not be explained.
“I shall not descend.”
Deva made the statement, bruising the still air with his words. He could not understand why he needed to say it, but felt a sliver of relief with the finality of the climb. Deva laughed to himself, thinking of the mountain climbers of his past life, those who had chosen to scale the tallest places Earth had to offer for the sake of doing it. He wondered how they would have felt about the climb if they knew they would not return.
He kept pushing, his staff becoming a metronome, keeping pace with the beating of his withered heart. Deva slid into the wall several times, his arms groping while his legs kept pushing upward over the steps. On occasion, Deva looked down and noticed the stairs bowed toward the middle. He let his mind wander, curious as to how the rock could have warped, until he remembered the masses that once filled the reversions. Thousands of feet over thousands of years had come this way, wearing away the stone one molecule at a time. Deva remembered those initial days with a strange mix of elation and sickness.
They left their world behind in a tangled mass of hatred, warfare and death. The reversion did what nature must do. It restored balance to the weary universe. It cut the infection to keep it from spreading. The early refugees from a diseased Earth overran their new world the way they had in the old. Warlords rose and subjugated lands as they had before. Deva saw some of their faces in his mind, until they were whisked away like leaves floating in an October breeze. It was the feet of those millions that had worn down the steps, moving up and down from the peak to the base. And now it was only his crooked, diseased heels that disturbed the dust from its final resting place.
***
“We should fill these rucksacks with as much as we can, but only stuff we can use.”
Jack looked at Samuel and laughed. He glanced at Lindsay to see if she had noticed the absurdity in the exercise. “Like the coffeepot? Are we going to scald the spider-crabs to death?”
Samuel sighed and let Jack have his wisecrack before continuing. “I don’t know where we’re going to end up, and I can’t say for sure how far the spider-crabs are spread. We may drop right in the midst of a group.”
Samuel smiled, trying to think if he knew the terminology for a group of creatures that were part spider and part crab. He would have to settle for “group” unless a better one came along.
“Utensils and anything that could potentially be used as a weapon,” Lindsay said.
Jack saw her bending over to put items into the sack. He watched her shirt separate from her pants, where the smooth, white skin of her lower back glowed in the cabin.
That is a beautiful sight, he thought before averting his gaze.
“I guess we traded our bows for the firestorm slip, eh, Jack?”
“You had bows?” Lindsay asked, stunned and now discouraged at the makeshift weapons in her pack.
“Had,” Jack said. “Didn’t make the slip.”
“Shit,” Lindsay whispered, letting the idea go with the rest of her tired hope. She turned in time to see Jack ogling her. “What?” she asked while holding both palms up.
Jack turned quickly to search the other corner of the cabin.
This is where he dumps your ass.
Kole’s voice invaded the boy’s head as if coming from inside it. He spun and saw Lindsay and Samuel scouring the cabin. Neither spoke and neither appeared to hear the words he heard inside his head.
Time to make your stand, Jack. Lindsay should be with you. You know this.
He placed his hands over his ears as if to block out the voice coming from within his head. The words felt slick, intrusive. Jack turned his head sideways and shook, as if trying to dislodge water stuck in his ear canal.
Now or never, dude. Now or never.
“Are you okay?” Lindsay asked.
Samuel stood next to her, and they both stared at Jack. “You look like you’re in pain,” Samuel said.
“I’m fine,” Jack said. He turned away from them and pretended to be interested in something inside an empty cabinet.
Samuel looked at Lindsay and shrugged. “We’re almost ready,” he said. He placed his hand over his forehead and pressed close to the window pane.
“Still there?” Lindsay asked, knowing the answer.
“Still there,” Samuel said.
“Spiders have always creeped me out.”
Samuel smiled at Lindsay’s discomfort. He could not remember ever meeting a woman who didn’t have an innate aversion to spiders.
“Sometimes we’re afraid of the wrong things,” Samuel said. He managed to turn in time to see the charred bottom of the skillet before it crashed into his face and brought a darkness to rival the dead skies of the reversion.
***
“What the fuck are you thinking, Jack? Seriously. You might have killed him.”
Lindsay felt torn scraps of fabric tighten on her wrists and ankles. She had no idea where Jack found a knife and could only assume it was in the cabin. His attack on Samuel left her stunned and at the mercy of his shaky blade as he forced her into the chair. As she had many times in her own bedroom, Lindsay began dissociating her mind from her body.
“He was about to kill us,” Jack said.
A thin line of drool dangled from the corner of Jack’s mouth. His eyes bulged in the sockets as if they were being pulled out by an invisible hand. His hands twitched as he tied Lindsay to the chair, his foot tapping the floorboards.
“You suckered him with a goddamn frying pan, and you’re threatening me with a knife.”
Jack looked over at Samuel’s still body lying face down on the floor. The skillet lay a foot to the right.
“He’s breathing. Just broke his face,” Jack said. “He’ll live. You will too if you don’t do anything stupid.”
Lindsay winced as Jack made the last knot tighter on her right hand. He pushed a lock of hair from her face. His fingers felt like ice.
“So now what, Jack? What’s the plan now, genius?”
She can’t talk to you that w
ay. She’s a woman. Teach her.
Jack reared back with his right hand and brought an open palm to Lindsay’s chin. Her teeth clattered together in a harsh, clacking sound. Blood began to drip from a gash in her bottom lip. Lindsay looked at Jack as tears formed in her eyes.
“I can’t think with you talking all the time. Shut up.”
“No way. You need me to tell you what a big fucking mistake you’re making. That man on the floor, the one whose face you’ve flattened, was about to slip us out of the cabin. He was going to get us away from the spider-crabs and hopefully land us near the mountain.”
“Our best bet is to stay here, lie low, and let the reversion hit reset. Don’t you see, Lindsay? We get to try again. So we got fucked? Maybe next time the spider-crabs won’t come.”
“If there is a next time.”
Jack slapped her with the back of his right hand. Spittle flew from Lindsay’s mouth, and her lip opened further. The blood trickled in a jagged line down her chin before clinging to her neck and running across her collarbone.
“I swear to God, if you hit me again, I’m going to rip your balls off.”
Jack stood and smiled. His grin blossomed into an uproar of laughter. He pranced around Lindsay, hopping from one foot to the other. Lindsay saw the emptiness in his eyes and began to notice the long, gaunt look on Jack’s face. His fingers flicked at the corners of his mouth, and he mumbled more than he spoke.
“I mean, that should do it, right? He ain’t gonna wake up before the cloud comes. I hit him good, didn’t I? Smash. Knocked that fucker out.”
Jack danced toward Samuel’s inert body and shuffled around it. Lindsay averted her gaze, trying not to provoke Jack any further. She remembered watching old videos of Muhammad Ali, mesmerized by the swagger he brought to the ring. Jack reminded her of that, although his attitude seemed to be coming from somewhere else.
You’d better tie him up if you want to enjoy your spoils.
“Right, right,” Jack whispered.
