Getting Home

EPILOGUE

The side of her face lay on something soft. Clouds? Heaven? No...

Softer than that.

Like velvet.

Oh no.

Ava opened her eyes.

The sky above was dark gray. The soft velvet underneath her (grass, her mind whispered) was a dried, washed-out brown. She was laid flat on her stomach, her cheek resting on the ground as her fingers slowly tightened and slid through the dead, stiff turf. The sparkle of her skin reflected a muted, dull gray in the empty light.

Am I really here again? Ava thought. Back in this place?

Alone?

She slowly pushed herself up to her feet.

There were clouds here, after all—they roiled and churned impossibly high above, like an angry ocean. Everywhere around her was barren, just like before—but this time is was endless fields of dull, lifeless brown. Ava took a deep, clean breath of the cool air, her body immediately relaxing... even if her mind didn't. She scanned the flat, featureless land, seeing if maybe—

And then she saw them.

Tire tracks.

Her eyes rolled wildly, looking everywhere. And sure enough, she found trails and clusters of footprints—her bare ones, and Henry's sneakers.

But how could that be? This place had been so vibrant and green before—she had literally just been here. Now everywhere looked sick and dead—

And like it had been that way for centuries.

There's no way. She could see the Civic tire tracks run off, going straight off to the horizon... towards where she and Henry had begun their own journey, here in this place. She tried to remember: the Civic had been sitting right there, but we ended up going the other direction, which was opposite of—

She froze.

The Caretaker's home.

Ava hurriedly followed their footprints from where Henry had pursued the little teddy bear-like creature. She quickly found the spot where Henry had plunged his hands into the soft, giving ground—tearing it apart to go after the Caretaker.

Now it had been sealed shut. Not just sealed, though.

Scarred.

How the heck am I going to get in there? Ava thought. She literally had nothing on her, besides the clothes on her back. At least she had the Civic before, something that could be scavenged off of—but now?

No knife, nothing sharp, much less solid—not even a key.

Not even a stick.

Henry tore it apart with his bare hands.

She huffed. Yeah, well, I'm not Henry. Besides not having his strength, it had been a pretty gross and unpleasant thing to witness the first time—not something Ava was eager to re-experience.

But what else could she do?

She knelt down to the twisted, fleshy scarred ground, putting her ear close.

Nothing.

"Hello?" Ava said timidly. She attempted to knock on the soft ground, like she would a door—which of course, resulted in no response.

Only silence.

Quiet, quiet, it's too quiet here, she thought, getting frustrated. The total silence was so eerie, so unnerving—it was beginning to drive her crazy, especially without Henry there to at least make some kind of noise.

I can't stand it, I just want to scream—

She stopped mid-thought.

Could that possibly work? WOULD it?

It was worth a shot.

Ava took a quick look around—there was nothing, nobody, for as far as she could see the horizon. She sighed, taking a deep breath before putting her hand down on the squishy, scarred ground-flesh.

Then she started singing.

Softly, at first—a low, gentle lullaby. Her skin began to dimly glow, the millions of sparkles dully reflecting like subdued glitter. Strands of her hair began to move, lightly raising and floating about her face as her voice faintly began to swirl around her.

The soft ground under hand began to tremble, vibrating and thrumming.

Ava pushed her voice a little more, adding volume until she begin to feel the first tugs of tension on her vocal chords—

The ground suddenly burst apart.

Ava fell over backwards. The ground split even further than it had from before, revealing a wide open chasm that she could see down into, which further revealed—

Nothing.

Just an open cavern in the ground, exposing the red, slimy walls that she definitely remembered— which was now more of a dull rusty color out here, under the dark, gray sky.

No Caretaker.

Great, Ava thought. Now what?

She scanned desperately, looking for something, anything—a sign. The giant hole in the ground looked like a giant wound in the world, vaguely blood-like and looking like—

She spotted a small dot of white poking out in the sea of rusty red.

What the heck is that?

It looked small from here—a weird dullish-white spot in the fleshy, red ground of the Caretaker's home. It could have been anything; or nothing. A bone? Ava thought morbidly.

There was only one way to find out—

A way she was not a fan of.

She reluctantly approached the mushy edge of the hole in the ground, her face squinched up in disgust as she timidly sat down at the edge, the fleshy surface squishing and gelling under the backs of her legs as she dangled them over.

Ugh. I really hate this.

Ava pushed off, sliding down the wall of muck, much as she had the first time when she had followed Henry. She slid down on her back, nimbly popping up to her feet at the bottom. She gingerly made her way to the white thing she had seen, trying to ignore the squishing and sinking underneath her as she stepped.

When Ava got close enough to finally see what it was, she froze, her brain locked—

It was a Starbucks cup.

At least, it had been—she saw it had been ripped open, the cup unrolled out flat. It was covered in muck, but Ava could see a hint of the dull green logo. She bent down, gently pulling it up from the slimy ooze.

It looked old.

Not just old—ancient.

The cardboard was still firm, with no real deterioration, but... something about the faded color and brittle texture...

It just didn't feel right.

She flipped it over, then yelped in surprise, jumping and almost dropping the unfurled cup.

There was writing scrawled on the other side:

"GO TO CARETAKER CITY. PEOPLE THERE. LIKE YOU."

But it wasn't the message that had frozen her brain, that had made her unable to formulate a thought as her mind fumbled for something solid, still unable to figure out or reason with what it was looking at.

It was her handwriting.