John Adams - Wastelands 2

We used to joke about how someday the world would be ours. It seemed so possible, didn’t it? Everything we attempted together just worked. We were going to be together permanently soon.

Instead the world is empty, and we’re farther apart than we’ve ever been.

How many miles to Wichita? Three score and ten. Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, there and back again.

How many really? Too many. I’d give anything for a magic ring or a pair of Seven-league Boots right now.

They took Brian. We had left the road, to stay safer at night, and I was off tying the horse. Two of them came from above, with a rush of wings and a sound like—a sound like voices, a thousand voices, voices that resonated in my bones.

I ran like hell into the trees. By the time I stopped I was totally disoriented. I waited for daylight. When I found the camp again, the tree-tops around our camp were burnt black as an angel’s wing. The horse was where I left her, but Brian was gone.

Apart from the ring of charred trees there was no other sign of them. Again I’m reminded of the fairy tales we grew up on, and I wonder if it wasn’t the angels that inspired the tales of fire-breathing dragons.

How long have they been here, and where have they been hiding?

SEPTEMBER 23

According to the map I’m now seventeen towns away from you.

I shouldn’t think that way. You may not be there. You may have died that first week, or on the road on your way to Wichita. I should probably assume you did; if you didn’t then you’re an anomaly like I am.

So many things that I didn’t tell you. How far we can walk in a day, how long it will take to reach each other. That I hoped you would marry me, eventually—no, that’s a lie, I hoped that you would marry me soon. That I used to hear voices.

That I had seen the angels before.

Would it increase your chances of surviving them if you knew? Or would you have thought I was crazy, and left me? Or thought I was crazy and try to get me help? Or would you believe me, and live life a little more afraid, the way that I did?

There was a quake in 1978. I was at my friend’s house, in her bedroom on the second floor. The windows rattled; the whole house swayed. We could see the water sloshed out of the pool through her window. It wasn’t much of a quake, not compared to what we just went through, but the experience terrified me.

I guess I thought I was having a nightmare that night when it appeared at my window, black except where the golden glow from its core leaked out, through its eyes, the webs between its fingers, its mouth. It just stared at me through the window and I could do nothing but stare back, afraid to move, afraid to scream, paralyzed in my seven-year-old fear.

That was one of the many things you gave to me, that you didn’t even know—I felt safe from them when I was with you. For the first time in my life I finally felt safe. The nightmares didn’t come when you were beside me.

You know that feeling you get when you suspect that you’ve done something really, profoundly wrong? That ice-water sick feeling that drains the blood from your head and knocks you to your knees, and you just hope it’s a mistake, and believe on some level that it must be, because you couldn’t possibly have done something so wrong?

I have that feeling tonight.

I have to get to you.

Please, please be alive.

Hundreds, I think. None at all for several nights, and now there are so many that they block out the stars. I can see their red-gold glow. I smell smoke.

I think they’re looking for me.

They’re watching me as I write this. I think the one closest to me used to be Brian. I see other faces that look familiar. Thank whatever gods there may be that none of them look like yours.

I can hear the voices again, feel them. Their mouths don’t move, but I’m certain it’s them I’m hearing. Sometimes I think I can almost isolate one from the rest, but then it all becomes noise again, murmured nonsense.

They aren’t moving. They don’t seem inclined to hurt me. They look like they’re waiting. For what? For me to do something? For me to speak? To ask them what they are, what they want?

They’re gone, the voices are gone, and I can think again, move again, breathe again. Nothing changed all night—they stood there looking at me, waiting for what, I’m not sure.

The one I saw when I was a child did the same thing. Just looked at me, waiting. When I think back it seems almost as if there was a look of expectation, like it thought I had been waiting for it; memory is tricky, though, and the more you revisit a memory the less accurate it becomes. We add details that weren’t there, things that might have made sense but didn’t really happen. So perhaps that’s what I’m doing. Just trying to make it make sense.

In my childish reasoning, I did the only thing I could do—the only thing you can do with the monster under the bed, or the bogeyman in the closet, or the angel at your window with eyes like burning coals and a face like cooling embers. I told it to go away.

It opened its mouth, and it seemed confused and almost disappointed. But it did what I said. It went away.

They took Brian. They took everyone. Why didn’t they take me? Why did the angel turn away, confused, all those years ago?

The worst part of this for me is not the hunger, the exhaustion, or the loneliness. It’s not the hardship or the fear. It’s not even the fact that the world as we knew it has come to an end, and all my nightmares have become real. It’s the fact that I’m pretty sure it’s my fault.

Every time I think of it I’m dizzy and sick. I’m responsible. I summoned them all those years ago. I didn’t know it then, but that hardly matters now. Everyone in the world is dead, or else transformed—which is as good as dead or maybe even worse—and it’s my fault.

I play with the knife from your birthday box and think about how much easier it would be to just kill myself and get it over with, but I can’t risk it. You may still be alive.

For now, I’d better make the best time I can. The road here is tree-lined and shady. I suppose I’ll know more when the sun goes down.

They brought me rabbits. A lot of them. The air is filled with the acrid smell of burnt hair from where they gripped them in their hands. They knew I was hungry. So I looked up how to skin an animal and did the best I could. I made a mess of it, and I can’t say it tasted very good, but my head has stopped hurting and my stomach doesn’t feel like it’s trying to eat my back bone anymore.

They’ve spread out a little this time, but they still have me surrounded. I’m considering just trying to walk through them and continue down the road. I think they would let me.

The sound of voices comes and goes; it’s almost like trying to tune an old radio with knobs and dials. If I move a certain way I’m overwhelmed by them, but if I tilt my head just a little sometimes one will come clear for a moment. But then I shake my head because what I hear them saying is too unbelievable, and I lose it again.

They never take their eyes off me. I think they’re waiting for me to tell them what to do.

I couldn’t stand it, the way they were looking at me. I just—I don’t know, I broke. I screamed at them; I threw rocks. They just stood there, stoic, waiting.

So I left. They stepped aside to let me pass, and then they followed me. So I screamed again, and told them to stop—and they did. Stopped in their tracks, the grass burning beneath their feet. I kept walking, looking back every few yards to make sure they were still there. They never moved from where I told them to stay.