About halfway across I heard the rattling noise and instinctively leaped backward before I even saw the rattlesnake rearing back like it was about to strike. I never bothered to see if it was because I was too busy running the opposite direction. I didn't think, I just reacted. I ran as fast as my feet would go, and that's pretty fast when it counts. I'm like the Tom Cruise of runners when I want to be, I swear.
I guess under different circumstances it would be funny to hear about someone's spiritual journey thwarted by a serpent, but at that moment I didn't exactly feel the humor. My entire plan was ruined, and I didn't know what to do. Sure, I could have just taken the long way around the field and kept going, but I was seriously spooked by then and imagined snakes everywhere, disturbed by tiny seismic vibrations that preluded the Cataclysm. Getting bit by snakes and crawling across the ground while my swollen limbs turned black wasn't exactly the way I wanted to go out.
I slowed down to a trot after putting about half a mile between the snake and me. My chest burned, and my legs were pretty shaky after the adrenaline burned out. I caught sight of a man sitting on a bench at a little park across the street. A brand-new skimmer bike was parked nearby, gleaming like polished silver even in the murky light. The man stared in the direction of the city, where smoke and flames pretty much obliterated the view. The sounds of people chanting and shouting carried over the distance.
"Mind if I sit here?"
When he didn't say no, I assumed he didn't mind. I took a seat beside him and took a long swig of bottled water. "Look at that. They couldn't wait to tear everything up. No wonder the Cataclysm is happening. Can't say we didn't have it coming."
I glanced at my quiet companion. He had a cap pulled low over his brow, and I almost thought he was asleep. But his eyes were wide open, staring into the beyond. He looked to be in a state of shock. Guess I couldn't blame him.
"I remember something my English teacher said. Well, I think I do, anyway. It was something about the hubris of humanity, how our arrogance as a species led to our downfall. How nature could only sustain so much ruination before it reached limits that forced it to strike out against us. He said that we imagined ourselves as gods, never imagining we'd one day be exposed and pitiful, naked and vulnerable."
I glanced at the man, but he continued to stare off into space. Normally I would have been offended, but right then I didn't care. I just felt like talking. It didn't matter if anyone listened or not.
"I didn’t think much about it at the time, but I do now. I mean, we're all guilty. We walk around like we're something special, but most people can barely make it to the next day. As soon as we get something, we squander it. Doesn't matter how valuable it is, or how much it can help others, we'll find ways to screw it up or use it to hurt others. It just sucks, man. We had our chance. Maybe we deserve this. I don't know. Maybe we should just open the Havens up and let nature take care of things once and for all. Save us the embarrassment of screwing up all over again a few hundred years from now, you know?"
I nearly leaped out of my seat when the guy moved. He slumped over slow as can be, and without uttering a word fell from the bench and slapped the ground with his face like his bones didn't exist.
I leaped up, heart pounding. "Hey man, are you okay?"
He didn’t bother to answer the stupid question. It took me a few frantic moments to realize he was dead. He had probably been dead for a while. An empty bottle of pills was in one hand, and a folded note was in his other hand. It took a while for me to work up enough nerve and morbid curiosity to pry his cold fingers open. Scrawled across a small piece of paper was a single phrase.
Non omnis moriar.
I had no idea what it meant, but I was pretty sure it was Latin. I was surprised by the stab of anger I felt at my lack of interpretation. Here I was under a dead sky in a dead city holding a dead man's last words, and I had no idea what they meant. How important they were to him at the end. I tried looking the phrase up on my phone, but no signals were coming through that murky soup in the sky. In a burst of rage, I hurled the phone as far as I could.
It hung in the air as if frozen in some kind of invisible gel.
I stared at it, transfixed for a second. I shouldn't have been shocked, but despite all the manifestations of aberrant energy I'd witnessed or heard about, I'd never seen anything like frozen gravity before. The moment shattered when a sound like a million gasps ripped through the air. The phone was snatched away, flying toward the burning city. I looked that direction just in time to see the sky rip open like a soggy paper bag.
Sometimes words aren't enough to describe something. What happened that instant, what I saw pour out of the wounded atmosphere… defied description. Every time I try to talk about it I freeze up. Every time I close my eyes, it's there as if burned onto my corneas. It took a long time to realize that almost everyone who witnessed it described something different. Like the mind interpreted it according to one's personality or mentality.
All I can say is that it was alive. I felt its gaze like millions of staring eyeballs all focused directly on me. It was something so ancient, so primeval that it outdated time. So gargantuan that only a glimpse was visible through the gaping, fiery hole in the sky. Streams of it poured through; liquid malevolence formed inky tentacles that whipped down and flattened the entire city. It happened silently; only immeasurable tremors indicated that thousands of people's lives were snuffed out like birthday candles.
I imagined I was there, in the middle of the chaos. The city falling like a giant, invisible boot stomped on it. Buildings crumbling. I was there, with Vicky. Tears glisten in her eyes. I wipe them away and smile, telling her everything will be all right. Pulling her close to me as the city collapses.
A chunk of building debris the size of a city block landed ten yards away, interrupting my romantic stupor. My senses activated, everything crashed in on me at once. The ground exploded, pelting me with dirt and rocks. The wind howled like something mad, pulling at me with invisible arms; the air flashed from hot to cold and back like flickers of a light switch.
The dead man's body dragged across the ground, limbs limp in surrender. I leaped over him, running to the skimmer bike he no longer needed. I hopped on and hit the START button, squeezing the throttle as soon as the fusion engine hummed to life. The bike accelerated slowly, hampered by hurricane-force winds that tried to pull me back. I took a glance behind. The dead man lifted into the air along with streams of dirt, grass, and debris that shot toward the nightmare in the sky.
I pressed the booster button on the controls, and the bike shot forward, nearly throwing me off in the process. I hung on through sheer willpower as it zoomed to its full speed of two hundred sixty mph in a matter of seconds. The auto-nav and impact detector systems kept me from becoming roadkill, guiding the bike through and around potential life-threatening collisions. Abandoned vehicles and buildings became blurs that the bike somehow avoided. Grit and sand that would have struck like bullets bounced off the nanosheet polymer windshield. Tears turned my vision into glinting kaleidoscopes; my heart jackhammered right in my head until I nearly passed out from the adrenaline. My eardrums vibrated from the maddening howl of the beast behind me, eating the world in its anger. I never felt so afraid.
I never felt so alive.
It was like waking up. With the wind in my face and the devil on my back, I was struck by a clarity that couldn't be found anywhere else. The truth was I wasn't Sydney Carton. I didn't want to sacrifice myself for anyone. In fact, the thought of dying terrified me more than I ever believed it would. In the middle of the end of all things, I discovered the truth about life.