Moonlit Retribution

Chapter Eleven

Sighing, I toss myself on my side, ignoring the sharp jab my ribs inflict. That pain is nothing compared to the loss of confidence I’ve felt towards Ríjez. When did I stop trusting him? Or had I never truly trusted him?

No, I don’t believe either is the case. There’s no one on this planet that I trust more than him. And for very good reason.

I can hardly even remember how we met up and decided to leave Prairie Village together. I’d woken up from being incapacitated by E.T. to gore-splattered furniture and walls, with no bodies in the vicinity but my own. I’d left my house, screaming through town after encountering that thing, when I’d literally crashed into Ríjez outside his office. I’d blubbered to him some crap story about my mom’s and brother’s deaths. He’d actually taken me seriously, saying that he had gotten a call from his brother, who told him that something was going on with the meteorites. We had rushed to Ríjez’s house where we were faced with his wife and two sons. His dead wife and dead sons.

The virus is very selective, we’ve learned. It kills most people right away. Changes some people after extensive exposure. And then the people like me, the immune one(s), remain alone in the world. Veritable pariahs of a dying race.

After hours of inconsolable grief, Ríjez had taken one good look at me and had told me to go back home, pack some things, and meet him back at his house. I had been too astonished by his abrupt recovery, too terrified about this entire situation, to question him. And the next thing I knew, we were being attacked. And Ríjez, armed with a 12 gauge and a bowie knife that I never pegged him as the type of guy to own, stood between me and a horde of mindless things that I knew, without a doubt, wanted us dead. Or, at the very least, thoroughly digested.

Really, after how many times he’s protected me from the infected, it’s amazing how he’s still around…

I choke at the thought. Somehow, the thought of him dying like that…Shudders rack my frame, and I pull the scratchy wool blanket to my chin, seeking warmth where I know I won’t find it. The comfort of a blanket has nothing on the comfort of an embrace.

Not unlike the years before all this infection stuff disrupted our lives, fierce longing spread throughout me, into the very cytoplasm of the billions of cells in my body. The fear that I would never be accepted, never be loved, tore my heart in two, ten, a thousand pieces, the broken shards piercing, agonizing. Alone in my room, I feel isolated enough to let a few screams of frustration into the buckwheat pillow, relieved that the material completely swallows the sound. Soon I grow tired of meaningless noise and tears and heartache that has no place in a world like this. Letting the buckwheat mold to my face, I allow the oxygen to dissipate from my lungs and let the world go black.

--

Grains of coarse sand grind against my skin, eroding the surface level, exposing the soft, vulnerable inner core. The brazen wind gusts and sends more rough sediment across my face and into my eyes. It swirls and roars around me in a whirlwind of biting needles, coming ever closer, sealing off the light. The cyclone has sucked up the light, and I am left in total blackness. There are voices now, urgent ones, mocking ones, ones that make me feel like fleeing this artificial night. This only makes my fear more pronounced, pungent. I can smell it, and so can the voices. They tell me to keep it up, it’s so delicious. We’ll relish your screams. We’ll savor your blood.

In a blinding hurricane of light and heat, the dark is blown away, the voices ululating faintly in retreat. Light does not exist, but the dark is gone. The question of ‘how’ does not appear in my mind. This odd illumination is as natural as drinking water or craving salt. It’s a part of us, of humans; it knows us, feels us. Welcomes us into its cool, soothing embrace. It sways us gently into eternity, the arms of the universe cradling our wayward souls.

And I’m falling, falling… Air does not escape my lungs. Air does not exist in this plane, this realm, but it isn’t uncomfortable. Oxygen is needed only for mortals--needed only to keep that flesh and blood matrix capable of thought and survival.

I land comfortably; the surface reaches up to cradle me, lessening the impact. It enfolds me in a nurturing hold, sweeping a soft breeze through my hair. Though I don’t know why, I open my eyes and study my surroundings. The night sky is dotted with gleaming pewter stars on a navy velvet blanket. I lie on my back, watching the stars swirl, dance on the sky. It rotates around me, but I don’t feel motion sick. The breeze is back, softly whispering between the limbs of a lone tree, carrying a subtle, calming sandalwood scent. The night is cool, sweet and tranquil. A balm to the bedlam that is my mind.

Shooting stars streak the darkness, briefly illuminating the swells of dunes all around me, the clear pool of water at my feet, the softly swaying vegetation.

And then the roaring starts. Tranquility is no more; more like it never was. Huge stones pelt the sand of the land, sending up shards of the biting sediment. The sand stabs my eyes, enters my ears, slices my unprotected arms. Flying up, I scramble to my feet and race to the pool, knowing that, for some inexplicable reason, this oasis will keep me safe. I dive in, feeling the cool liquid surround me like silk, feeling it ease the sting in my eyes, the deafness of my ears.

Hesitantly, I surface. The noise sounds like jets, but with a terrible shrill underscore to it. All around me, five- to six-foot slabs of porous stone rain down on the land.

The landscape shifts, melts, reshapes, and terror leaps out at me in the form of thousands of men, women, and children racing, screaming for their pitiful lives as these rocks crash to their land. The people fall seconds after the stones. Not simultaneously. Some straggle along, limping, crying, tearing at their skin in panic until they, too, drop.

It is quiet. Not the peace of the desert. This is the stifling silence that only the dead can hear, that only the dead can procure. The breeze is stale, but a sharp, bitter scent surrounds me as the stones seemingly melt into the ground, dissipating.

Breath is sucked from me as the desert once more welcomes my presence. The stones, looming megaliths guarding the barren land lie still. They circle the oasis, waiting like sentries. Waiting for me to attempt escape. But I am not afraid.

Smiling serenely, I dive into the water and inhale deeply.

--

Eyes snapping open, I jerk awake. Not completely jackknifing to an alert position, just twitching violently, like when you feel like you’re falling but realize in the next instant that you’re still in bed. Sweat beads my brow, plastering my hair to my face and neck as my heart slams against my ribcage. There’s a soft, rasping noise echoing in the empty room, sending my system on red alert. I twist my arm to grasp the bowie knife I keep under my pillow. It takes me a while to realize that the noise is my own ragged panting.  Soon I relax enough to lie back down.

I’m not letting go of the knife, though.

 Pondering my dream, my brow knits in confusion. I’m generally not a “deep” dreamer. Most of my nightly mental excursions involve either being chased by some dude dressed as a Ghostbuster, or my old pet goldfish, Lem, swallowing me whole. Nothing profound that has any emotional effects.  This dream has my psyche a bit shaken, to say the least.

I have no doubt that those stones were the meteorites that catalyzed this epidemic. But I don’t know what was up with the desert or the people. I’ve never seen any of those things specifically. I mean, obviously I know the general layout of a desert, and I’ve seen plenty of panicked, dying humans before. But neither of the scenes was anything like what I’ve seen before. Especially that desert…

A floorboard groans outside the door. The breath stills in my chest as I listen to the door creak open. A footfall, nearly silent on the stable wooden floor of my room. I clench the knife tighter as I swallow an oxygen-deprived gasp.