Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (41 page)

Feeling torn inside Alex looked back to the tent where Ope-shed was emerging.  The broad man took one look at the hover car and nodded with amazement.  With a gesture of his head he put his hand on Alex’s shoulder and said, “Remember.  Just keep heading east.” Then, reassuringly, he added, “Go on.”

Alex started to walk off towards the hover car when suddenly everyone in the village began to scramble back to their tents.  Unsure of what was going on, Alex walked briskly to the hover car.  Upon reaching it, though, he was stopped by the small girl he had saved the day before.  She was
wrapped in a blanket but quickly and decidedly, took it off and handed it to Alex, reaching above her head to put it in his hands.  Alex took the fur blanket and bowed slightly, but the girl ran off before he could thank her any further.  A blanket, he thought.  She would never know how meaningful a gift it was.

Approaching from their tents then, a horde of villagers accosted the vehicle with small gifts, trinkets, and bits of food wrapped in cloth.  Alex tried to thank them all and to offer things in return but they just kept pointing affectionately to the girl who was off with some other children playing.  Alex nodded and bowed and then waved his hand at Ope-shed.  Standing by the large tent, Ope-shed waved back and continued to wave as Alex and Olesianna drove downstream and disappeared.

Alex followed the river bank to the incline where Olesianna had come down the day before.  Once at the top of the canyon he went quickly across the land bridge and then set his course east.  It was silent in the car and neither knew what the other was thinking.  Olesianna finally tried to make conversation by noting a gift Alex received from the girl’s father.  It was a single deer antler with tassels and beads.  Alex held it as a weapon, a single claw protruding from the grip between the index and middle finger, then splitting into two sharp hooks at the end.  “Pretty neat, huh?” she asked.  A tense silence followed as Alex didn’t respond, instead fiddling with the antler as he drove above the canyon. 

“I wanted to get an early start today,” Olesianna explained.  “Maybe we’ll reach more mountains by tomorrow.”  She paused and then laughed quietly to herself.  “Are you hungry?  I could make breakfast?”

“I’m not hungry, Mom.”

“Alex, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“I just didn’t feel safe there.”

“I said, don’t be.”

“We didn’t know anything about them or their culture.  They could have been cannibals for all we know.”

Alex turned sharply to look at Olesianna.  “We left, okay?  There’s no need to say that about them.”

The rest of the day was silent.

I
t’s harder than I thought to keep a good journal.  I haven’t written in this for nearly two weeks now.  I used to think I had nothing but time to get it all down, but with any luck…

After traveling across mountains and deserts we finally came to a river and met with the first sign of people so far.  They were living in the canyon and let us stay in their tents for the night.  Aside from how great it was to have a conversation with someone, they gave us… well
me
, good news.

The
great canyon was the most beautiful thing we have seen so far on our journey.  Now we move across the open flat lands and plains.  I’m glad we have plenty of water though, because there is
nothing
here.  Nothing.  It’s just flat forever.  I don’t know how much further east we have to travel, but I hope it won’t be too far.  The speed of our hover car makes even really long distances seem so short.

…Since there is nothing to draw out here but giant, fat deer with shaggy coats, I’ll just keep writing.  We crossed a river yesterday and I think I found a way to get the hover car across shallow water safely.  This will come in handy tomorrow when we have to ford another much large river.  There are lots of trees around and more animals so as you can see I started drawing again.

Things have been quiet between mom and me.  She must feel guilty about leaving those people and yet she probably regrets it also.  It doesn’t really matter though – we couldn’t have stayed with them anyway.  What’s reassuring to me is that if this good news turns out to be nothing, we can always return to them in a year or two and maybe help them as they helped us.

I still feel funny though.  After telling Ope-shed about our banishment, I feel exposed.  I think it’s because mom felt exposed, but I think it’s also because we were alone in the wilderness for so long.  We didn’t have to worry about people judging us, and then all of a sudden our whole reason for being here came down to the fact that my sister was dead and that it was me and my mother’s fault.  It was a sobering experience.  The only thing that lets me fall sleep anymore is my Classical CD.  Thank the will for that stupid little CD player.

A
lex ran through the front door of his house.  They wouldn’t be far behind him, he thought as he raced up the stairs to his room.  Tossing his backpack to the floor, Alex stuffed the CD player, and the rest of his books from the time capsule inside.  Already in his bag was the book on religion, the book the warden had found back at school.  Stopping to look in his sister’s room, Alex saw that she was sleeping and the faint hum of her bedside machines and the beep of her pulse had hidden any noise he made.  In another moment he was down the stairs and out the front door, headed for the edge of town.

O
lesianna used her foot to close the door behind her, two large grocery bags bundled in her embrace.  She made her way to the kitchen, walking sideways to see the floor as she went.  As she set the load on the table and as the papery rustle of the bags went silent, there came a knock at the door.  Outside, the warden of Alex’s school, a tall man with sharp shoulders and a balding hairline, along with his secretary, a fat plump woman with short curly hair, stood impatiently awaiting entry.  The urgency of their knocking prompted Olesianna – to her eternal regret – to open the door without first checking to see who it was.  Before she could begin to close the door again, the warden stepped inside and pushed Olesianna back into the house.

“Excuse me.  What do you think you’re doing in my home?”  She demanded, they had met before, regarding Alex’s behavior, and weren’t on the best of terms as a result.

“We have reason to believe that you are harboring illegal material, offensive to the state.”

“Then you may return with the proper authorities,” Olesianna spat, stepping in front of the warden as he tried to move past her.  The warden, after a brief entanglement, forced Olesianna aside and moved into the living room.  She pursued him as he began to fumble through a bookshelf, pulling the contents onto the floor.  The warden paused over one of the books and then read a word on the cover aloud.  “Evolution?” 
The word was rotten in his mouth.  Olesianna moved towards him as he shoved a hand in his pants pocket and retrieved a lighter.  “Go outside Mrs. Harrison,” he said to his secretary.

Her rosy cheeks flushed as she looked at the book, the lighter, and the warden. 
Stealing glances over her shoulder the entire way, she stumbled outside and then rooted herself across the street in a panicky twitch.  In a few moments the warden’s back appeared at the door, followed by Olesianna’s flailing arms.  Olesianna was dragged onto the front steps as the fire began to take hold of her house like a chaotic liquid falling up the walls.  Mrs. Harrison was frozen as she saw the warden at the middle of the street still grappling with Olesianna.  It wasn’t until the mother freed herself of the warden’s grasp with a well-placed kick to his groin and began to rush back into the house that Mrs. Harrison found her feet and rushed to the crumpled warden.  Fumes leaked out of the rear windows and through the open front door.  Olesianna rushed through the smog and took to the stairs, galloping up the smoke filled incline.  Halfway up, she could already hear a faint crying.

“Cara?  Cara?  Don’t worry baby, I’m coming.  Just stay where you are.”

“Mommy?” cried the weak voice.

Olesianna rounded the first landing and up the last few stairs heading for Veronicara’s room.  The thin figure lay in a heap on the floor, blankets from the bed wrapped around her.

Olesianna quickly pulled out the I.V. and folded the small arm at the elbow to staunch the blood.  She detached the leads and other equipment from the nearby machines with amazing alacrity, then scooped up Cara in her blankets and rushed into the hall.  Veronicara clung to her mother, burying her face in Olesianna’s shoulder and neck.  From the blankets she could feel that they were moving quickly.  Olesianna reached the stairs and felt a wave of heat sear her skin.  She turned back, sheltering the bundle with her body and looking back nervously.  Smoke rushed at her eyes, stinging her face and burning her lungs.  Asphyxiation would come soon.  If she couldn’t get out they would be dead in moments.

“Veronica,” she asked in a hoarse but determined voice.  The thin face, glistening with tears and perspiration peered out of the blankets like a bunny in its hole.  “I need you to hold onto me real tightly.  Okay?  All right, now hold on.”  Olesianna took a few steps back to the wall then covered her face with a piece of cloth.  The front door was just a few feet from the bottom of the stairs.  Even if she broke her leg
s in the jump, they could still crawl to safety.  As she took the first springing step forward, ready to leap, a figure emerged from the smoke and grabbed her.  It was the warden.

“No
!  Stop!” she cried but he wrested the two of them apart and started down the stairs.  Veronicara was suddenly dropped on the landing in a heap of blankets.  She had tried to hold on, like her mother had said, but couldn’t.  Now she was alone in the heat and dark.  The warden looked back over his shoulder at the bundle and saw it stir with a cough, but Olesianna’s thrashing form was throwing him off balance.  With the woman on his shoulder, the warden rushed down the stairs and out the front door.  In her last conscious moments, Olesianna Ganithala struggled to reach her daughter.   

A
lexavier smelt the smoke before he saw the house.  It was a distinct but rare odor.  There was no reason for him to think it was a fire though, for a house fire had not occurred in that providence for fifty years… yet that smell, recalled from fire places or barbeques was unmistakable.  From down the street, Alexavier looked at his smoldering house, a black skeleton, charred and warped amongst the tranquility and muted color of the trees and other houses.  Several emergency hover cars were parked near the building and people had gathered.  He saw the emergency team exiting the house with a stretcher.

For the rest of his life, the image would haunt him.

He couldn’t manage to speak.  His mother was being restrained by two men in blue uniforms and forced into the backseat of a car, her lungs wailing with completely unrestrained hysteria.  Alex’s face was contorted in sadness and terrified confusion.  There had been no warning, no preparation.  Life just suddenly up and moved on.  He tried to slow things down, to demand that everything stop.  He needed a moment to rationalize what had happened, to reassure himself that it wasn’t happening.  It couldn’t be happening.

Alex rushed up to the emergency vehicle in which his mother was being driven away but she didn’t notice him, so he went to the gurney.  Alex knew the figure under the sheet must be his sister’s, but why was her face covered?  It had to be her – no one else would have been so small.  Yet even for his sister, the figure was tiny.  Alex wanted to see his Veronicara to tell her she would be alright.  She must have been terrified.  Before anyone could stop him, Alex gripped the sheet and prepared to throw it off.  But when he grabbed a
hold of it, he stopped.  In his hands, what would have been his sister’s arm was instead, what felt like charred kindling at the bottom of a fire, dry and coal-like.  An emergency technician grabbed his wrist and Alex released the sheet in horror.  He began to scream and scream and scream and scream.

Softly then, Alex opened his eyes and looked across the cabin of the hover car at Olesianna.  It was evening time and he thought they had agreed to stop just before sunset, yet his mother was now driving with the headlights illuminating the barren landscape ahead.  Alex sat up in the passenger seat and looked around.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.  I’d rather be awake.”  Alex wiped his eyes with his wrists.

“Me too.”

Alex looked ahead of them as he elevated his seat upright.  “What happened to the grass?”

“I don’t know.  It just kind of ended a few minutes back.”

“Another desert?”

“I hope not.”

“Wow, I never realized how creepy it is driving at night.”

“I just need to be moving,” Olesianna said, mostly to herself.

Alex squinted ahead of them and looked down harder at the ground.  “Slow down for a second.”

Olesianna rolled to a stop, kicking up some dust in the headlights.  Silence.  Alex had become used to the darkness in the wild, but for some reason it was different now. Probably, most notably because there was no moon out that night.  But even more than that, the darkness seemed complete – pure even.

“What is it?”

“The ground looks… burned.”

Suddenly a purple flash of light left a long crooked streak in the distant sky and then with a rush of wind, a tremendous thunder rolled across the flat scorched land.  Both Alex and his mother jumped in their seats, and immediately broke into nervous laughter.  Just a thunder storm.