Fifty-eight
Even after the roar ended, dank earth rained from the
sky. John ducked back into the car and crawled beneath the dash as debris
shattered the windshield and side windows. Pieces of broken tombstones
crumpled the sheet metal of the body, rocking the car on its suspension.
David could not have survived such violence.
The end, when it came, did so abruptly. The light
vanished. Echoes rolled in from the hills and faded away. He sat
blinking in the dark. The glare had turned off the sodium vapor
streetlights. Now, the night had fallen into darkness and the lights
were flickering on, one by one, dimly at first, and then slowly
brightening.
The scene that unfolded before his eyes burned itself
into his memory forever. The entire crown of the cemetery had been torn
away to a depth sufficient to reach the dead. It was as if the oval light
had to search through the corruption of a thousand graves for the one it
sought. The foul stench rolled slowly over Eagle Junction, carried on the
prevailing winds to the east.
John climbed from the car and wove his way through
the debris to the iron gate. He stood on the edge of a six feet precipice
and looked out over the raw wound of utter ruin. Only dimly was he aware
of exactly what it was the green light had been searching for. He dared
not question whether it had succeeded or failed.
A part of what I once was.
Another streetlight flickered to earth behind him.
He caught sight of approaching movement against the black earth.
John leaped the fence and dropped down the wall of
barren earth. He staggered across the uneven earth, ignoring the
scattered pieces of skeletal remains breaking beneath his feet.
"David!"
He could not be certain. He could only hope.
Shock emptied his mind when he began to discern forms
approaching in the darkness. The part of him that could still function
tried to blind him to what he was seeing.
David was walking toward him, and David was holding a
pale hand. It took an effort of will for John to follow David's arm down
to where the boy's hand grasped the other. Only then could he look up at
the slender figure standing at his son's side.
Marlene's stained and rotted funeral shroud fell with
every step she took, revealing the play of hard muscle beneath pale flesh.
John started to turn away knowing if he fell to
pieces now, he would never recover. Choking on madness, he forced himself
to look back, to see her, to acknowledge her presence in the world again.
Her barred breasts heaved and he heard her gasps of air in the cool
night. Her long hair billowed in the breeze from the ocean, and her eyes
sparkled in the dim light from town.
And slowly his terror eased. He could never have
accepted as David had, but neither could he deny the reality of the
moment. He would have to fight his own inner battle to reconcile the two
as David had done. But David had been young and his mind flexible as
Marlene had pointed out to him. His own battle would last until the end
of his days.
He went to her, hesitantly at first. He could see in
her eyes the horror and wonder she had witnessed, horror and wonder no
ordinary human mind could have endured. Marlene, though, had known her
entire life this moment would come. She had been prepared, as had David.
She clutched his right hand and lifted it to her
face. Her eyes burned with an almost maniacal intensity of joy, and her
grip was like iron. She then forced his hand against the warm skin of her bare
stomach. Her trembling lips fought to form words. They were but a
whisper.
"Do you remember?"
He looked skyward to withstand the agony of
comprehension. Marlene had taken an unborn child to her grave. Even that
had been returned to him.
John embraced his wife. He cried out to the night,
and all the misery and pain he had endured went with his cry. No man
deserved to suffer as terribly as he had suffered, no child, and no
mother. And now all suffering was gone.
He reached for David's hand. And Marlene's. He
walked between them back to the car, helping both up the collapsed
embankment to the street. David held the front passenger door of Gene’s
patrol car open for his mother and willingly climbed in back.
John slipped behind the wheel. If the car wouldn't
run, it would be a place of refuge until help arrived. David's eyes
darted back and forth between his parents, alert for any hint of trouble.
John felt as if he was pushing through the molasses of a dream world with
unseen danger closing from all sides. He could not hope to escape, except
that nothing at all in the deserted night threatened him.
Despite the battering Gene's car had taken, the
engine started and idled smoothly. "I want to go home," Marlene said in a
shaky voice. She crossed her arms against her breasts and sat trembling
with her eyes closed.
"In the morning..." she said.
She took a deep breath and sighed.
"…I want to work in my garden."
