***
“Where have you two been?!” Maura exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air the way she always did when she was more than substantially irritated. “We woke up. You’re both gone. They’re wheeling people out of here covered in sheets.”
“How many?” James asked.
I walked over to kneel down beside Penny, who was sitting up and drawing in a great yawn.
“There were seven that we saw. Who knows how many?” Elijah replied, “So, what happened? Do you think the drug really did kill people?”
“I am sure it did.” I replied dismally. “It almost killed me.”
“What?!” Maura exclaimed, even more loudly than she had before. Within a second, she had stormed up to me, grabbed my face tightly in both of her hands, and began staring into my eyes as though she’d be able to assess my health by glaring at me. “What happened?!”
“It was mild, according to the doctor. Please don’t worry yourself over it.” I replied emotionlessly. After shaking her off, I sat down next to Penny on her bed.
“Are we in space?” She beamed brilliantly up at me, her blue eyes that were identical to mine gleaming with girlish wonder and glee.
“We are.” I said with a smile of my own. “Do you want to go see something cool?”
“You still haven’t told me exactly what happened, and you’re not going anywhere until you do.” Maura snapped at me furiously. The placid, gentle joy I had felt as I spoke to Penny disappeared without warning, leaving an uncomfortable, black void that left me cringing almost visibly.
“Maura, it is not even a big deal!” I shot back at her angrily. My outburst was unwarranted and practically inarticulate, considering how normally, when I dealt with strong emotions, I did so with poised sentences, as I am sure you have gathered.
Who was she to demand an explanation? Why was she, quite suddenly, so concerned about me?
“It was a heart attack.” James answered with a touch of irritation poisoning his reassurance. I did not know towards whom his hostility was directed.
“It was very mild, and the doctors said she should have no lasting side effects from it.”
“Your heart has always been fine.” Maura replied instantly. “She’s twenty two. How could she have had a heart attack?”
James shrugged slightly.
“Because it was caused by the sedative. They had to get something together quickly that would be powerful enough to knock people out for the amount of time it took to level the ship. Given how rough the takeoff was and how quickly we were moving, they had to have something to keep everyone calm. You know that the old, safer stuff that could do that isn’t exactly easy to get these days. Not even the doctors on board had access to it; their clearance wasn’t high enough. They didn’t worry too much about the side effects of the one they gave everyone.”
“We can see that!” Maura continued, much to my growing offense. “Now, at least seven people are dead!”
“The world was going to end. They did not exactly have time to let the FDA screen the drug.” I huffed irritably.
“Would you just relax?” Violet snapped at me, “God! Did you sleep at all?”
“Yes, I did, thank you so much. Just because I slept doesn’t mean that I am not still suffering through some mild irritability at being asked asinine questions. Come along, Penny.” I grasped her hand, and we strode ahead of Elijah, Maura, Violet, and James.
“Just ignore her. She’s just in bitch mode.” I heard Violet mutter to Maura softly.
“Profanity is the weapon of weak-minded men, or in your case, girls.” I called to her over my shoulder.
Violet exclaimed in contentious exasperation, but I heard Elijah chuckling to himself.
“Don’t encourage her!” Violet snapped at him.
James stormed up to Penny and me. When his hand grasped my upper-arm roughly, I immediately snatched it away and frowned at him dangerously. His earlier belligerence in the conversation had been directed towards me, I discovered, though I could not have cared any less.
“You know, you really should go easy on her.” James muttered to me quickly. Perhaps if he had merely suggested that I take a more agreeable approach in regards to my association with Maura, I might have taken his thoughts into consideration. I might have even followed his guidance on the matter. Instead, his tone was harsh, demanding... I would not be told what to do by any man but certainly not by one I had only just met. My frown darkened to a lethal scowl that I thought would scare him away.
“Yeah, I know that look.” He nodded and furrowed his brows in a show of condescension that was sure to earn him a harsh kick between the legs from me. “It's not scaring me. Listen, I know this is tough for you. But it’s tough on everyone. You are acting like a spiteful child right now, and it needs to stop.”
Already, my resolve to refrain from ever making true, civilized human contact was overtaking my need for attachment. The former was stronger than what I had assumed was a basic, chemical need for James Maxwell. Ordering me around was certainly not helping his case, either. In fact, his sudden embrace of an abusively coercive disposition proved what I had so long believed about all men: Once they believed that they had a woman under their spell, their entire being changed. They had to feel as though they were totally in control by whatever means necessary.
Sometimes I thought of myself as a soldier on the front-line of defense. Consider it idealism or perhaps even a delusion far beyond grandeur, but I believed that it was my duty in life to guard not only myself and my sisters from the advances of men like James, but to inform all women, young and old, on the ways to recognize and successfully (albeit figuratively) dispatch a man who hid his beastly nature behind his handsome face.
That's what I thought when I was young, anyway. Yes, I was that type of feminist, I am sorry to report...
I glared at him in scornful silence before clearing my throat in irritation.
“James, just because I embraced you does not mean you can now tell me what to do. Do not assume that because you witnessed a moment of weakness in me that I am now suddenly at your command. Resist your nature as a male, please.”
“I figured that was coming.” James told me, without missing a beat. “So, you’re back to normal. You’re back to being a nasty, arrogant, bitch right? I know that's your thing. We’re back to that?”
I smiled at the thought of sticking a pin in his now laughably large ego. He had managed to weaken me momentarily when we were in the hallway. He had exposed the human being beneath the machinery for a second in time. Now, he gave himself undeserved credit for accomplishing what others believed to be an impossibility. The one moment when I had foolishly allowed myself to drop my guard, even if it was only slightly, was a victory for him, because he had done what so many others had tried and failed to do in regards to conversational and emotional intimacy with me.
I was partially responsible for the lapse in my judgment. But he was mostly to blame. Suddenly, I hated him for it. I was keen on self-loathing in those days, so I hated myself as well. However, I was also keen to passing the buck, as they say, and so, James received the brunt of my reproach; he had not given up his quest to expose my inner fragility until he had succeeded.
Because of those things, I would put both him and myself in our respective places.
“Tell me we’re back to that, Brynna.”
“We were never anywhere else, James.”
Quinn
“Quinn? Quinn, wake up!”
When my eyes shot open, they watered in the harsh light that was casting Alice's face in shadow.
“Is it back? Is the thing back?” I asked through slurred speech as I sat up quickly. “Whoa…” My hand flew up to grasp my head that was suddenly spinning in complete circles. “What’s going on?”
“It’s okay.” I felt Alice’s arms around my neck and her lips press to mine. “We made it. But it happened. We’re here. But it’s gone. Everything is gone, Quinn.”
Her face
was buried in my neck, and I felt her tears as they streamed from her eyes.
“Did you see it, too?” I asked her, feeling my hands trembling as I held her tightly. The familiar smell of her hair and the feeling of her body pressed to mine remedied the horror I still felt at witnessing the end of the world in my dreams.
She nodded and stammered out, “But… but… The ship leveled out. We’re alright, baby. They said we're going to make it...”
I pulled away to look her over, making sure that she really was alright. Nothing about her appearance gave me reason to be alarmed, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Her hands flew up to grasp my face as she kissed me. We fell back on my cot, kissing passionately, prompting everyone to turn and look at us, some in disgust and some in admiration. After we had broken apart, I watched a guy in his twenties pump his fist in the air triumphantly when I looked at him.
“It's love, man! It will keep us together!” He exclaimed, and because we knew he was just goofing off, we found ourselves cracking up despite the horror we still felt in our chests over what we had seen.
“Let’s just be happy right now that we’re alive, okay?” Alice asked as she kissed me every couple of seconds. “Let’s be sad later.”
I looked into her green eyes and nodded.
“We’re here. We’re together.” I told her, and I couldn't help but smile slightly. “You’re right. We need to be happy about that, especially after everything that's happened.”
Her smile emerging suddenly at what I had said was all the affirmation I needed.
“Let’s go see the ship. People have been talking about how awesome it is.”
She pulled me up, and once I was on my feet, we were hugging again, laughing to ourselves for no reason at all. The world had ended, and everything we knew was gone. But there was, admittedly, a certain excitement at having survived. It wasn’t a matter of boasting in the faces of the dead. Every human has the basic instinct to survive, and we had. There was no way we couldn’t celebrate our lives being spared, even if we didn’t understand why we had been so lucky.
Our hands were clasped together as we hurried out of our housing compartment on the third floor.
“The lady next to me said that we have to go upstairs. She said it’s amazing!”
We were running up the stairs, laughing like children in the midst of escaping from school for a day off. When we threw open the door with the word “Atrium” printed boldly across, we were stunned into silence. Even our gleeful laughter was rendered inert.
We walked forward in a daze, our mouths open in awe. Outside of the window was a display so fantastical, it was worthy of a place in some medieval fairy tale. Lights were swirling and glittering, the stars around them twinkling in the distance. The window from floor to ceiling allowed us to see perfectly this spectacular array of colors and shapes that flew past us at a speed we could not even begin to fathom.
Alice looked at me as we stood with our faces to the glass and mouthed, “Oh my God!” We were both laughing, unable to shake the joy we felt so strongly without apology or excuse. When her fingers linked with mine, my grin only grew wider.
“I could stand here all day. Can you believe this?” I asked her.
She shook her head, her eyes still wide in disbelief at what we were witnessing. In that moment, I felt truly lucky to have survived. Our reward for all we had suffered was that sight seen by so few. It was that childlike amazement we felt.
We stood for several minutes, staring until our eyes watered. We couldn’t imagine tearing ourselves away. But then, our curiosity at what other wonders the rest of the ship held overtook us, and we turned to leave.
“Do you think they have a Ben and Jerry’s stand? If they do, this would pretty much be the coolest ship ever.” Alice told me, and we both burst into hysterics again.
After walking through a hallway lined with vases and flower pots, in which we passed a very tired-looking man and who I assumed was his equally tired-looking daughter (though the way they were embracing was a little weird, if my assumption was right), we walked into a large room with a ceiling made of glass. There were hundreds of tables on the hardwood floors. It looked like a dining room at a vacation resort; the tables were wooden and adorned with flowers in small crystal glasses. Running along the left wall was a buffet stand that was emptied and dark.
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing they were building this thing for uppity morons.” I told Alice, who beamed.
“Only the best for them, I suppose.” She agreed with a roll of her eyes. “Well, now it’s for us. I mean, look at this!” Her voice echoed around the room as she spun in a circle while walking. “Look up!”
I did, only to see the stars whizzing past us through the window overhead in an impossibly fast blur.
“Do you have any idea how fast this thing is going?” I asked her, “I mean, how much money did they spend for this?”
“Not our problem, baby. Don’t think about it.”
“I know it’s not our problem. At least, not anymore. I mean, I have to admit that I find it kind of funny that they couldn’t escape even the apocalypse unless they were riding in style.”
“I know, right? If someone told me I had to fly in a rocket made from a Spot-A-Pot, I would have done it.”
“Oh, gross! That's so nasty, babe...” I said, but I was doubled over from laughing so hard.
“I knew you’d like that one.” She told me after walking back to grasp my hand again. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek.
When we left the dining hall, we walked through what looked like a large sitting room straight out of the Titanic. After that, we discovered a library. Then, we discovered a recreation room. Set up throughout the spacious area were televisions, several pool tables, and through a door in the back, a large, empty swimming pool.
“That’s a lot of TVs.” I told her as we stared. “But definitely not enough for five-thousand people. ‘I want to watch Transformers!’ ‘I want to watch...' I stopped, screwing up my face as I tried to think. “God, what's a girl movie?”
“The Notebook, Runaway Bride, oh!” She snapped her fingers when she remembered another one. “Pretty Woman, Dirty Dancing, Flashdance... That’s some of the 80’s ones, and I haven’t even mentioned anything with Molly Ringwald yet…”
“Okay, okay...” I waved my hands to stop her. “Please stop. If you cut me right now, I'd bleed pink after listening to that.”
When she laughed that time, she fell back onto the couch and covered her face. When she recovered, she held up the tape that was in her hand.
“Fine, baby, I can fix that problem for you. Superbowl XLVI.”
“Shut the…” I walked forward and took the DVD from her hand when she outstretched it to me. “They have football, too? Allie, I now know for sure that everything is going to be okay.”
“Except for the fact that people are going to get knifed over movies, which is what you were insinuating earlier."
“I guess we’ll just all have to learn to share. Isn’t that what you used to tell your kids at work?”
“Yes. What, do you think I’m going to be a Preschool Teacher’s Aide here, too?”
“People will probably start acting like little kids over movies, so yeah. I hate to break it to you.”
“Never! I told you, I will never do that again. If anyone gets into a fight over whether to watch football or baseball, I am staying out of it. There’s nobody to tell me that I have to break it up. That’s something that I am not going to miss, I’m telling you.”
“What? Working?”
“Yup! Are you going to miss fixing cars on the weekends?”
“Hell no. Isn’t that why people are fascinated with the end of the world? They know that they don’t have any responsibilities except the most basic ones anymore.”
“I know I’m excited about it. I mean, yeah, we’re going to have problems. But I just have this feeling that everything is going to be alright. It’s not because w
e have football DVDs. It’s just…” She looked up at me. “I know it. The same way we’ve known everything else so far.”
I smiled and kissed her quickly.
“I know it, too. We deserve it at this point, don’t we?”
“Definitely. After what we just went through, we deserve to have it easy from now on.”
Consider us young, naïve, and entitled, but we really did believe that everything was going to be easy from then on out. We were aboard the most amazing ship ever built in the old world, hurtling through space at a speed that had never been achieved by any craft in the history of man. Sure, we were going to land on a planet and start civilization over, but how hard could that be? We were living through an experience that most would have deemed impossible. The thrill of it all was enough to blind us to the harsh fact that things would never be easy for us again. There on the ship that day, we could not bring ourselves to acknowledge the challenges that we knew would have to be faced, nor did we take the time to ponder the challenges we knew nothing of yet.
There was no guarantee that we would survive the first year on Pangaea. I knew that those thoughts were the reality of the situation, and I believe that Alice, in her heart, knew that as well. We just couldn't face that fact then because we had been through hell over the previous days. We needed hope. We needed to believe that things were going to get better. It was foolish and irresponsible to allow such a drawn out vacation from the harsh reality. We needed to remain grounded in it, stuck hard to firm ground in order to deal with the consequences of our escape.
Alice and I looked at each other after several minutes, our smiles faded, and our laughter having abruptly died away. We knew then that our hope was premature and our view on the “paradise” we were sailing towards was unrealistic.
“I know that we can’t afford to let our guards down.” I told her quietly, “But we have to try to make the best of this, babe. We’re all we have now. We’re all that we’re ever going to have.”
She nodded as she reached up to wipe a stray tear from her eye.
“You sound like your dad.” She told me, “So reasonable and so… ‘This is how it is. This is how we make it work.’”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
After grasping my hands, she smiled slightly.
“He might not have liked me, but I liked him. I always saw a lot of him in you. I see it even more now. If he were here, he’d be proud of you.”
Why she said all of that just then, I didn’t know. I didn’t believe that it was true. The carefree joy we had felt just mere moments earlier was replaced by a sadness so strong, it rattled my nerves. The mention of my father made tears come into my eyes. Alice, crying with me, reached up and wiped them away. She kissed me again gently.
“I love you, and you’re right. We’re going to make the best of this, and we’re going to be alright. We survived the worst of it. We can survive what’s left. You’re right about that, Quinn. I love you.”
I looked up at her and put my hand on her face.
“I love you, too.”