“Oh!” I gasped. After I had given up and clung to the rails, disconnected. Apella had returned to try and save Clara.
Joseph was quiet for a while. He was stroking my arm. My eyes were heavy. I could feel myself drifting off. Then he stopped.
“You know, we had to pull her off Clara. She never gave up.”
Sleep was yanked away from me, like losing a tug-o-war, burning the palms of my hands. “And you didn’t either. But I did.” I could feel the blade turning in on myself. I sat there and let it happen. I was useless.
“You can’t do that. You can’t blame yourself. You were in shock. You need to realize that maybe, no one was to blame,” he said earnestly. It was so easy for him to see the best in people. I wasn’t like that.
“You loved her too. You didn’t go into shock.” I sounded like I was accusing him, but that’s not how I meant it to come out.
“I did. But, you…you loved her more. She was your sister.”
I sighed. To me, that wasn’t really good enough. And without Apella to blame, where could it go?
I felt this nasty, gulping feeling, like air going down the wrong hole. Acid rising. Thinking about Clara was too painful. I turned my head, and whispered angrily, “Will you…just, please. Shut up!”
I was annoyed at him. He was stripping away my ammunition. My reasons. Apella still had a lot to answer for. I wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily.
“All right, easy,” he said, “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
I was silent. I knew he was right. I supposed being together also meant I should probably listen to him, at least some of the time. I didn’t like the idea and I hardly slept thinking of ways around it, coming to no solution.
After days of walking though long grass and bendy saplings, the terrain changed. The line we were following sunk down like all of a sudden it was too heavy for the earth to shoulder it. We were between two raised platforms, running parallel to each other. Familiar concrete edged the platforms. I couldn’t see over the top. It occurred to me that this was what it would be like for me. Loving Joseph would leave me stranded, stuck in the sunken part, both futures running parallel to each other, never touching, and me, never being able to see how it might play out. Jumping up, trying to look over the edge, never quite making it. Because the truth was, I didn’t want either future.
I shook it out. Just keep moving, I thought, don’t be a coward now. Be stronger.
We were approaching the ruins of a city.
The greenery still dominated, cascading up and over everything. But in between there was evidence of crumbling stone buildings. Rotted holes where the doors once were. Painted, metal window frames in yellow and peeling, aqua-painted walls. It was ghostly and dead.
The comforting sounds of the forest existed in the city, in a strange collision of what should and shouldn’t be. So this was how our ancestors had lived. It was a confusing sprawl. There was no order to the layout of buildings. It was like people had built them wherever they pleased.
I was carrying Hessa on my back. He was gurgling, making little squeaking noises as we walked. Apella announced that she would like to scout around, see if there was anything useful left inside the buildings. I shrugged. There was no harm, I thought. Besides, I was curious to look around too. We decided to find a decent place to camp, make that our meeting place, and allow ourselves a couple of hours to explore.
We worked our way into the disintegrating city, the buildings getting higher as we went. After about half an hour of walking, we had pushed our way into several buildings, finding them all to be unsound, too dangerous to sleep in. I rolled my eyes as Alexei ran his hand over a doorframe, knocking in various places like he thought it would welcome him, tell him a secret and say you’re safe here. I turned away. None of these building were safe. They were held together by the fact that no one had touched them in years. One sharp shove and they would collapse.
I scanned ahead and was shocked to see the silhouette of a man. My heart stopped. I tugged on Joseph’s sleeve.
“Look over there,” I whispered.
We both stared at it for a long time. The man never moved, never made a sound. He kept the same pose, one hand across his chest, the other outstretched as if asking for something. When we approached it slowly, we noticed there were plants growing up and around his legs. It was a statue.
I approached, sweeping back the vegetation from the iron man’s feet to reveal a plaque. Vladimir Lenin. I guess he must have been an important man many years ago. Now, he was one of the only reminders that people had ever lived here, barely maintaining himself against the rule of nature.
The area around the statue was flat and sheltered by surrounding trees. Apella seemed anxious and readily agreed to making this the meeting place, before she and Alexei hurriedly disappeared between buildings.
With Hessa on my back and the two boys leading the way, we ventured forth. It was an eerie atmosphere and the stillness solicited silence. It felt like we were walking in a graveyard. Black windows stared at us like empty eyes, doorways opened like screaming mouths. I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to all the people. Did they leave in a mass exodus, or did they suffer the fate of most of the ones left outside the Rings? Bombed to bits.
Hessa’s snuffling was the only sound to punctuate the silence. Gurgle, snuffle, breathe, stop breathing, breathe again. I kept timing my steps to his breath, walking in a sporadic, staccato motion, like I was stealing through the shadows on a secret mission.
“What’s wrong with you?” Joseph looked down at me with a smirk. “Do you need to use the bathroom or something?” I must have looked funny, dancing around, fast step, slow step.
I rolled my eyes. “Nah, I’m just defective.” They both looked at me like I was crazy. I swiped my arm at them. “I’ll tell you later.”
We seemed to be entering what was once a commercial area. There were remnants of signs with numbers on them, written in a language I didn’t recognize, all loops and long lines, but some of the writing was numbers, prices. I stopped to investigate a light shining from within one of the openings. Joseph and Deshi were laughing at something up ahead, pointing through a broken window. Through what was left of a shop front, something sparkling caught my eye and I went to examine it more closely. Piles of gold and silver chains were tangled on the ground. Jewelry. There amongst them was a shiny white ball surrounded by sparkly crystals. I reached down to pick it up, mesmerized by its perfection, when weight hit me from above, followed by an unearthly shriek.
I screamed and saw Joseph and Deshi turn towards me in the corner of my panic, before something tore at my face. Then all I could see was blood. Hessa.
It was clawing at my back and I did the only thing I could think of. Stumbling backwards against a wall I tried to knock the thing off. It didn’t work. It was caught in my hair, screeching and hissing, tearing chunks of it from my head. I reached my hands back, trying to punch it, finding fur and claws and teeth. Hessa was screaming. I fell to my knees disoriented. I couldn’t see. The panic spread like a shock as I scrambled to protect my baby.
Somewhere in the chaos, I felt the weight lift and I was able to pull Hessa from my back and bring him to face me. I wiped my eyes, thankfully, it was only a cut above my eye that had blurred my vision. Hessa was mostly unscathed, with a few small scratches on his arms and face. The cradle had prevented the creature from getting to him with its teeth.
Joseph had pulled it from my back and now it was attacking him. It’s muscled body frantically scratching and hissing as it tried to find a soft piece of flesh to bite into. Joseph had his hands around its hideous face, pulling back its open jaws.