J. Souders - Revelations

The dark object sliding across the glass is a body. Well, what’s left of the body anyway. The bottom half of it is missing and a lot of the skin appears to have melted away.

Asher spins me around so I’m facing away from the glass and forced to stare at him instead.

“Don’t look, Evie. Just … don’t look.”

I stare into his eyes, trying to focus on them, but I can’t. I can’t think. Everything in me is telling me to run. I try to fight it; I know the thing on the other side can’t hurt me. But despite that, I can’t help but think—know—the body is going to break the glass, trying to get to us, and we’ll either drown, or end up being eaten by it.

Asher rubs his hands up and down my arms, his voice soothing, even though I can’t understand what he’s saying, yet my mind still screams at me to run.

So that’s what I do. I run. Back into the dark, and as far away from the window as I can get. Asher’s behind me; I can hear his feet pounding behind me and I want to stop. But my body won’t let me. It’s like I’m on a runaway train with no way to get to the controls and stop myself from hurtling through the Tube at Mach 10.

“Evie!” Asher calls, and while I can hear the desperation, I can’t even slow.

I just keep running, placing one foot in front of the other, as I try to locate the exit. Even when my lungs burn and spots flare into my eyes, I keep turning corners and pounding up stairs and banging through doors, hoping each one will bring me closer to the one that will set me outside.

Then, without warning, I burst out into the sunlight. My feet stumble when they hit the different texture of the sand after the concrete of the hallways, but surprisingly I don’t fall. I just continue to run.

The light blinds me, but even then I don’t stop. I can’t. If I stop, even for a second, the monsters will get me.

“Evie! Stop! Don’t go any further!” Asher yells from behind me. From the echo of his voice, I can tell that he’s outside like me. There’s even more desperation to his voice now and the pounding of his feet speed up.

Suddenly the ground underneath me slopes and I lose my footing just as something hits me in the back—hard. I land chest-first on the ground, all the air rushing from my body.

Whoever landed on me stays on my back and we’re rolling down a hill, our limbs flailing wildly and getting caught on each other.

“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Asher grunts in my ear and suddenly there’s a jarring motion and we stop rolling, but we continue to slide for a few more meters before we’re able to stop completely.

I immediately roll over onto my stomach and try to push up on my hands and knees, but I can’t breathe, and can only manage a few strangled gasps.

Asher is yelling at me again, but I can’t respond and the sunlight is still blinding me so I can’t see him.

Finally, just as I feel I’m going to pass out, I manage to pull in a shaky breath, and collapse onto the ground, squeezing my eyes tightly shut as sweet, sweet oxygen fills my lungs.

Asher speaks directly into my ear. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt? Do you have any burns?”

I shake my head, and just continue to lie there, sucking in all the air I can get. It doesn’t stop the burning in my lungs, or my pounding heart, but the spots in front of my eyes are slowly fading.

“Okay. That’s good. That’s very good.” There’s a thump next to me and he says, “I’m just going to lay here for a minute and catch my breath. Okay?”

I nod again.

For several minutes we lie next to each other, our breaths panting out before they slow and even out. I just want to lie here forever, but unfortunately, the foulest stench is assaulting my nose. I can’t even describe it, but considering what I just saw, I’m sure it’s dead bodies.

When I can breathe normally again, I slowly open my eyes, blinking against the bright sun, and even though it’s bright and the sunlight stings my eyes, I can see. Frantically I look around for the bodies to make sure they’re nowhere near me.

But I don’t see a single one. I frown. The smell is getting stronger and now it reeks exactly like the rotten eggs Gavin’s mother found in the hen coop.

“Oh, Mother, what is that smell ?” I sit up and cover my nose with my hand.

“Sulfur,” Asher gasps, pushing himself up to a sitting position. “The lake. It’s not a lake.”

I look at him, wondering if he hit his head on a rock or something on the roll down. “I don’t understand.”

“There’s no water in it. There must be a lava vent under it or something because it’s all sulfuric acid now.” He gestures to the lake, mere centimeters from our feet. “And if I hadn’t tackled you, you would have run right into it.”

No admittance into Rushlake City will be authorized without this visa. Please safeguard this document as a replacement will not be issued if lost or stolen. Use of this visa constitutes acceptance of Rushlake City Community Standards. Only those individuals listed on visa will be accepted into the city.

—INSTRUCTIONS ON VISA

Evie

To say the thought that I would have run blindly into a poisonous lake doesn’t terrify me would be a lie, so I decide it’s better not to think about it at all.

“Thank you.” My voice is so soft I almost can’t hear myself.

Asher continues to look out over the acid water, before pushing to his feet. “We’ve got a long road ahead of us without Starshine and our supplies.”

“Where’s Starshine?”

“Probably waiting for us back at the town.” He holds his hand out at me.

I take it and let him pull me up. “Aren’t we in the town?”

He helps me up the slope, then gives me this lopsided smile. “See for yourself.”

When I look at where I presume we came from, I only see a tiny little metal shack not much bigger than the door itself. It’s the only thing for kilometers in every direction. All I see is brown dirt and blue sky. It looks just like when we stopped yesterday and waited for Gavin. The only difference is the gross-smelling not-water lake and the metal shack a few meters from it.

“Where did it go?” As soon as I say it, I realize how stupid a question it is. Between last night and this morning we could have walked kilometers underground. It’s not the town that moved, but us. I did it again. With a groan, I sit back on the ground. “I’m so sorry.”

Asher pulls me back to my feet. “It’s as much my fault as yours. I’m the one who pulled you into that space. I should’ve thought that through a little better. If I’d known…” He trails off and I want to tell him there was no way he could have known I would do that. I didn’t even know I would do that. But he continues. “We’d better get going. We’ve already missed most of the morning.”

He starts in a fast walk and I have to rush to keep up.

“How do you know which way to go?” I ask.

He gestures to the sun. “Sun always rises in the east. Rushlake should be southwest of us. This is approximately southwest according to the placement of the sun.”

“But … we’re going back for Starshine first. And to wait for Gavin, right?”

He gives me a look. “No. We’re continuing on, because I have no idea where that city was or how long it’ll take to get back there. We’re working on limited time as it is.”

I stop walking. “We have to go back. We can go back in through the tunnels. We found our way out here, we can find our way back there.”

He turns around and frowns at me. “No. We’re not. We’re lucky we made it out of there alive the first time. And who knows what the hell we breathed in all that time we were stuck in there. It was an accident that you managed to run in the right direction and we didn’t run into … anything that might be in there. If I’d known what that place was, we never would have stepped foot in there.”