Yes, and in their guilt, too, at the fugitive joy surviving brought them.
And though superficial strangers, still they knew each other in that intimate way that brushing death creates. And they were thankful for that voice in the dark because they knew it was better than being completely alone.
How could a face lit by the sky possibly mean more than a whisper in the abyss?
Instead, they lay still; hands entwined, and allowed their labored breathing to ease as exhaustion stole through their limbs. Their bodies gradually quieted. Blood quit rushing through their arms and legs. The strong bass of their heartbeats became soothing tenors. And in that moment, they heard a noise.
It was the sound…of distant screams.
Part of them was stunned and triumphant – there were other survivors. And part of them refused to move just yet.
“Do you hear that? I’m not imagining it, am I?”
“No, I hear it too, Evan.”
His name lingered in the thick air between them.
“We should get up, find them, help if we can.”
Lucia gave a low, edgy laugh.
“Can we help them?”
Evan immediately understood.
“We can try.”
“Yes…yes. I just…I just don’t know if I’m strong enough.”
They both knew she wasn’t referring to her tired body.
“I just…now that we’re out, and here, I can’t help thinking about him. I know there’s no way he survived. When I lost him, when I fell, the air was full of dust from falling rocks. Everyone was screaming. He screamed, too. And now…I know I’ll hope every time I look, every scream I hear, I’ll wonder if somehow he…”
Evan said nothing for a while, but eventually, he brought her hand up to his chest and lay it flat over his chest.
“Can you feel that?”
“Yes.”
“I have the same hopes and fears. You and me, we’re the same, which is why I know you know we have to get up. We have to try.”
Her hand tightened over his.
“Yes.”
With strained and aching muscles, Evan and Lucia rolled over, sat up, and shakily stood. They leaned drunkenly against the other and began walking, still without any need to actually look at each other. They had, after all, learned to move in accord trapped together in the darkness. They emerged from the overhang to see the sun starting to slide down behind the horizon. The sky was almost clear, the haze burned up and gone. The world looked unrecognizable, but Evan and Lucia could see in the familiar rays of the setting sun other figures beginning to emerge from behind boulders and fragmented trees and deep crevices.
Those others were keening in anguish, fear, and pain.
But they, too, had survived.
The survivors stood and watched as the sun set and night raised its true face over a disfigured world.
Lucia and Evan turned to look at each other for the first time, drinking in eyes and noses and lips and cheeks. Weary almost-smiles crossed their faces. Despite everything, they were all alive, just like the two strangers who’d lost everything when they tumbled down the same hole.
Lucia and Evan mourned what they had left behind.
But with every ending comes another beginning.
~*~
4. Darkness of Mind
By
C. M. Bratton
Screams haunted him. He tried to pretend he couldn’t hear them, but aside from the sound of his breath and distant thuds, the voices continued.
“She was in my way, see. Or maybe I didn’t see her. We were just…running, yeah, running, and I was just trying to get away. I didn’t mean nothing by it, I didn’t know. But it wasn’t her anyway. Nah, it wasn’t.”
Of course, the man didn’t believe that, deep down. He knew the truth. His big, burly body still trembled from the impact, still felt the heated imprint of her body pressed against his as the ground buckled and betrayed everyone.
“There was just so much confusion, so much dust and that strange light, and – and – everything was moving. Everyone.”
He still refused to remember that there were only a few people near him, that it was only the slightest chance that had allowed his fear-filled flight to cross paths with that of another. He wanted to live, and he obeyed the instinct thrumming through him, telling him to run, run, run.
“I mean, yeah, I pushed her. There, I said it. I did, I pushed her. But I wasn’t thinking about pushing her, if you know what I mean. I was just… just… reacting. Something hit me and I threw out my arms.”
But he’d known. He’d felt the warmth of her body, heard her whimpering, wheezing breath. Her flesh had caved under the pressure of his out-flung hand as he’d pushed her away, desperate to save only himself, unaware of the loneliness that would set in later, when he sat in the darkness muttering to himself.
Hating the silence, hating the weight of the earth piling on top of him, drowning him beneath its tumbled skin, the man frantically searched his pockets.
“There must be… I kept it in here somewhere… didn’t fall out, oh God, no still here…”
His hands encountered a few half-smoked cigarettes that he’d carefully saved, a couple of candy bars, and his flask of rum – mostly empty. All products of his slovenly dress. But finally, his hands found the oblong plastic shape he’d been craving.
The man pulled it out, glee written across his dirty face (had anyone been there to observe, had he not been trapped in utter blackness). He flicked his thumb against it. A tiny, wavering light hung there, illuminating only a small circle, unable to fight the heavy dark that fought to smother it.
But being able to see – see! – even just the knuckles of his dirt-streaked hands calmed him down, sent his heart rate closer to normal. He stared at the flame, at its utter stillness, until his hand began to burn. Reluctantly, he let it go out, and the black terror of his little hole immediately rushed back in, bringing with it the images he so longed to forget.
In the darkness, he heard screams. He tried to tell himself they were the screams of people who’d refused to run away, the ones he’d left behind. And some of them were. But one scream singled him out and bounced around inside his head, echoing, echoing a strangled refrain. It was her scream, the one whose body he still felt pressing against him, challenging him, demanding he give way. His anger flared and he fought against his memory, against the echoes of her final shriek.
“You can’t do that to a man, nah, not like that. People always seem to forget that when you’re caught in the moment, you forget you’re a person. You live on instinct, like an animal, yeah, and, and she was entering my territory, right? So I just reacted. I didn’t think, you know, I don’t want to hurt no one. I just, you know, didn’t want anyone else in front of me. And I really didn’t want anyone trying to slow me down – like she did, yeah, oh yeah, she did. I coulda’ been a goner.”
But no matter how much he talked, he couldn’t completely drown out the sound of that one piercing note of horror that had followed him down as the ground crumbled around him. Thirsty and desperate to distract himself, he pulled his flask out and took a sip of rum. It was bitter, the smell strong in the enclosed space in which he found himself, and only made him thirstier. But some warmth settled in his stomach, and he told himself he felt better for having it. Still, his throat was dry so he forced himself to stop talking.
In the silence, the man realized that the distant booms and groans of the earth had fallen silent as well, and he wondered if, were he to begin talking again, the earth would as well. But before that thought had time to settle in, the screams started up again, louder than before, and he groaned with the pain of them, clutching and beating his head in an effort to get them out. Angrily, the man wrapped his hand in an edge of his shirt and flicked on his lighter, hoping the tiny flame would push away the sounds.
Instead, with light cupped faintly in hand, the man decided to explore the space he was in. The slanted roof formed of crushed-t
ogether boulders was only a few feet above his head, keeping him from standing upright. With that discovery came the immediate need to stretch his back. He tried to ignore the cramping of his muscles as he studied the walls of the newly-formed cave. They were tilted at crazy angles as well, jagged and accusing. Still, he could spread out his arms and not touch the sides, other than the strange protuberances that rippled and distorted the surface.
The light in his hands again grew too hot to hold, even through the thin material of his shirt. Regretfully, he let it go and the abyss rushed back in, lightless and menacing. The need to stand up grew in him, so he decided to try and lay down. Cautiously, he spread out his legs, but the wall stopped them. He shifted and again, and was met with resistance. Yet a third time he stretched them out and they met – nothing. Surprised, he scrambled up and flicked back on his too-hot light. There was a hole there, a slice of space where the rocks had not quite met, enough for his legs or arms to slide through, but nothing else. He stretched out his arm, the light still held tightly in his fist, flickering with his movement. The man strained his eyes, trying to penetrate the uncompromising darkness, but he couldn’t see where the hole went or if it even ended.
He let the light die and withdrew his arm to curl up against the nearest wall. His mind, which had been mostly occupied with grappling the memory of her scream, made an ugly realization. He was trapped, and there was no one who could rescue him, because he thought they might all be dead. The scream in his mind spiraled into mocking laughter.
Did you survive the plane crash only to get eaten by sharks?
The voice was obnoxious, and he imagined her smug satisfaction, the sense of vengeance she must feel. Words poured out of him, whispered, but still defiant.
“So maybe we both could’ve ended up here, hey? Maybe I didn’t have to die alone, slowly, but you don’t have to be so cold about it now, eh? It’s not like I wanted to. Okay, yeah, maybe I knew you were scared and not thinking much either. And yeah, sure, it wasn’t your fault that the ground tripped you up. But maybe you could’ve tried harder, eh? Maybe put your hair back so it didn’t fly into my face and make me think I’d gone blind. You don’t do that to a man, it makes a lot of panic. Why’d you do that?”
He stopped, waiting, but there was no answer, only the lingering sound of her scream. Exhausted, the man decided to sleep, only whispering a final denial.
“I didn’t mean to push you off the edge.”
His dreams were haunted, filled with crushed limbs and bloodied faces, crying children burning up, lifeless bodies piling up higher and higher, eyes wide open, staring at him, accusing him.
How dare you survive? How dare you live and tremble and ache! Join us, us, us and be free. Free. Stop fighting. Come.
Suddenly he was surrounded by arms that pulled at him, attached to arms attached to more hands. They ripped at him, clawing open his skin, demanding that he give in, that he let go.
With a scream of rage, he fought them, refusing, knocking away the endless claw-tipped fingers in a maddened, frothy frenzy. He closed his eyes, refusing to see. The ground heaved and undulated beneath him in strange ways, forcing his eyes open again. He was on a mountain path and the light was sickly red. He turned in confusion and saw the earth behind him begin to crack, opening up, growing wider, longer - skeletal hands reaching for another victim.
A shout turned his head and he saw her, met her wide brown eyes as she ran just ahead of the widening split, panic spurring her forward. Her arms reached for him, begging, pleading for help, even as her mouth shaped words he couldn’t hear over the roar of the ground. But all he could see was her outstretched hands, which echoed the sharp and misshapen fingers of the earth stretching out around him. He turned away, rejecting her, but a surge of the ground picked her up, throwing her against him. She tried to grab him, to hold on as she felt the ground beneath her start to drop away. But he yanked her questing hands away from him, angry that she was trying to slow him down. He pushed her off, hard, refusing to meet her eyes again. Nothing would get in the way of his survival. Not even her.
As he sprang forward, free from her grasp, the air somehow filtered through a different sound. Its pitch was much higher than that of the earth, yet somehow it still thrummed through him, vibrating a knowing throughout his body.
He glanced back and caught sight of her body, falling… falling…the air black and empty beneath her. Refusing to stop, he faced forward to climb over the next boulder. Still the scream went on and on as she fell. Deeper into the earth’s furious embrace she tumbled, screaming her own fear and fury. Fear of her death, which she knew approached in the lightless depths of the cracked ground in which her body hurtled…fury at the man who might have saved her, might have pulled her to an uncertain safety.
She screamed until she finally hit the bottom.
With a jerk, the man woke up, his head still echoing with her silenced voice.
With the truth.
He fumbled with his lighter, his hands shaking and weak. It flickered on; thin and wavering with the force of his breath. Breath. Air. Life.
For the first time, the man saw the flame clearly as the enemy – his enemy – fighting him for air. And yet he needed it, too, for his sanity, to keep the nightmares at bay, to fight for him, there in the darkness of his imprisonment.
“I’m being punished, yeah? This is your way of telling me I did wrong, right? I should’ve helped her, should’ve pulled her in front of me. Next you’re gonna say I should’ve fallen in her place, eh? Then I could be haunting her, hey? Yeah, she’d be here in the dark…feeling the air getting tighter…all alone by her poor little self…”
He fell silent and stared at the little flame. Even as he watched, it appeared to grow dimmer. His eyes widened, trying to soak in the timid light, and he tried to convince himself the lighter was running out of fuel. But even as he shook it and heard the reassuring sound of liquid swishing, he knew another truth.
Air was running out.
Still the man found himself speaking, even at the last.
“Maybe I was wrong, yeah, to do that. But she would’ve just died here with – with me. Yeah, I know, she could’ve talked to me, made me smile – hell, even given me a goodbye kiss, a nice squeeze or two. I mean, why not, eh? But you, tiny stupid light – you’re trying to tell me something, right? You trying to make me feel better, hey? Nah, I’m betting it’s worse ‘cause I sure as heck don’t see how it could get better.”
By this point, his body was growing weaker, his thoughts slower, so he lay down on his side. He thought about munching on the candy bars, but he couldn’t quite figure out a reason why. But the flask of rum pressed insistently into his side, hard and somehow sharp, until he let go the light to reach down and pulled out the near-empty container.
“Well, it’d be a shame to let it go to waste… too much waste now, eh? Can’t do that, can I?”
With that belief, the man unscrewed the top and tipped the rest into his mouth. Some dribbled out as he swallowed the final mouthful, falling lost onto the cold floor. But inside, he burned. He imagined the rum settling into him, tracing its way across his mouth and down his throat, into his stomach, lining it with false warmth, coating it with callous comfort.
The flask slid from his hands and he fell heavily on his side as bright stars bloomed in front of his eyes. Frantically, he found his lighter and flicked it on. Or tried to. Again and again, he hit it, clasping it tight in both hands and bringing it up to his face. Finally, a dim flame erupted. With all his strength, he squeezed the small lever which fed life to the tiny light. He held his breath, at long last aware that he was the flame’s enemy, too.
In his thoughts, the man heard the silent scream of that girl, and finally wondered what her name was. He finally let himself feel sincere regret. Remorse wandered through his memories as he welcomed in the pain of her scream, knowing it meant he was still alive. His nightmares were terrifying because they were real, rooted in the cataclysm he thought he’
d escaped, in the girl he’d deliberately murdered.
But the flame continued to dim, at first slowly. Only his eyes, wide open and searching for any minute nuance and shift, noticed the difference. Then suddenly the light dimmed faster and faster. He held his breath for as long as he could, hoping it would last longer, that it wouldn’t leave him alone.
Yet eventually, it did.
This time, when the abyss descended, the man knew it was final. There was no escape, no clawing to the surface, no one calling his name – if they’d known it – to rescue him. He stretched out his legs and they met empty space.
The hole!
He heaved himself over and pressed his head into the opening, struggling to take a deep breath, certain somewhere in its depths lay his salvation. But before he could finish filling himself up with air, his lungs seized up. He lay there, gasping weakly, and wished he wasn’t alone in the dark, dying and forgotten.
“No one knows… my name… my name… is…”
The air ran out. The man’s eyes bulged for a moment, his entire body tense. But no one saw. No one knew – none of the few survivors that still struggled, that were, even then, clawing their ways out of the unforgiving earth.
His body stilled and he laid in the utter darkness of deep underground - an unknown man, a cooling body, another nameless casualty. No one special at all.
Around him the earth trembled for a moment, then again fell quiescent. The abyss had won at last.
~*~
5. Clasping Life
By
C. M. Bratton
Only groans answered her now. She tried not to think about what that meant, to focus on freeing herself from the rubble that pressed against the left side of her body. It was tight and strained, but nothing was broken or shattered, merely heavily bruised. She knew, because she could feel all of her extremities throbbing with each beat of her heart.