***
It was while we were walking through the rows of different campsites that I began to see the discord that would eventually shake the foundation of our lives. When Dad had warned the people that they were to claim their rations by sunrise or else, he had neglected to mention that those who failed to appear would go hungry that day. I couldn’t fathom why he was allowing people to starve, but I knew that in time, the people would grow tired of it, and as we all had seen over the previous years on Earth, when people grew tired of things, absolute chaos ensued.
“Did he mention why he is refusing to give people food?” Nick asked me angrily as we watched a little girl take a huge gulp of water from a bottle the man in the campsite next to hers had handed over.
“No.” I answered vaguely. I knew that I would be asking him later that night.
The answer was clear to me. My father was ruthless, and he knew that by denying these people food, eventually they would begin to die off, and our numbers would thin out. I had overheard him telling one of his minions, as Brynna called them, that we were overpopulated. Enough food hadn’t been packed for every survivor.
“Nature has to take its course, I suppose.” Dad had told him. There was a grimness to his voice that I was unfamiliar with. Though allowing people to starve was a necessity in his opinion, he took no pleasure in seeing them die.
I didn’t relate that to Nick, though, because I knew that by being my father’s daughter, he would begin to see me as being just as cruel. I vowed to change my dad’s mind on the subject. I would make him feed everyone, regardless of whether they showed up on time or not.
Some would argue that what he was doing was the only option. But I didn’t see why we couldn’t all have food for the amount of time it took us to find our own on Pangaea. By the time the rations ran out, we would know what was safe to eat and what wasn’t. However, eating unknown plants would surely yield a few casualties, so that option wasn’t the kindest, either.
Surviving was going to get tougher as the weeks wore on. We were fools, because we had not planned out solutions to any of the more likely, most important challenges.
“Excuse me...” I approached a woman who was kneeling beside her daughter. I pulled my water bottle out of my bag and handed it to her.
“You’re his daughter, aren’t you?” The woman asked with a fury in her voice that scared me. “This is the second day he’s kept our food. We were there on time, too!”
“I’m sorry.” I said uselessly.
“Well, you shouldn’t be. But he should.”
“I know.”
“Thank you for the water.”
She was abrupt with her gratitude, but I could understand. Her daughter was trembling on the cot, crying softly but making no tears. Dehydration was beginning to take its toll on her small body.
I wanted to loathe him. I wanted to see him through the glare of hatred the same way Brynna did. But I couldn’t discount him. Perhaps if I pleaded with him, he would loosen up on those people. I would make him walk down to the end of the campsite and see the horrors they were beginning to experience. It would take some convincing, but I believed that I could get him to reconsider.
“Naïve.” Brynna’s voice said in my mind. I shook my head slightly to force her cold cynicism from my thoughts.
“Do you know who James Maxwell is?” I asked the woman. She turned to me in irritation, having thought our conversation was over.
“I don’t know if his last name is Maxwell. But a guy named James came through here just this morning. He was tall, muscular, brown hair, goatee and beard, nasty attitude...”
“That would be him.” I said grimly.
“Well, he left.”
“Left?” Nick asked in utter bewilderment, “Left to go where?”
“I don’t know. He took a tent and everything. He took some water and a rations box that he had stolen from someone.”
“He said that he had stolen it?”
I don’t know why that surprised me so much. Our father wouldn’t give him a rations box while he was on his own. The preservation of our supplies was part of the reason why, but the other part was far darker: He wanted James to die slowly for having a relationship, even one that was not physical, with Brynna.
“That’s what he said.” The woman huffed, and I could see that her aggravation was growing. “Anyway, we don’t need thieves in this camp. We don’t need rapists, either, but your father made it clear that he doesn’t care about that. All he cares about is a few people surviving.”
Dad had no set group of people that he wanted to survive. He was just trying to make the numbers dwindle down to a manageable figure. The woman had no idea exactly whose lifespan my father was trying to elongate, she just knew that there was a set group. She was wrong.
“This guy, James, took off into the woods. He’ll die out there, but maybe that’s for the best. How can anyone steal from other people now? I lived in Burma on Earth. I saw people starving everyday. But I rarely saw a man steal. Is this James man close to you?”
“To my sister.” I told her.
“Well, your sister had better think twice about him. What he did was wrong. Something like that shows a man for who he truly is.”
She turned away from me now, and I knew that our conversation was actually finished that time. I looked at Nick, and we turned without a word to head back the way we had come.
My search for James was over. Not only was he a liar who didn’t deserve my sister, but now he was also a thief. He had taken off like a coward to live by himself in the woods.
The woman was right, though I was ashamed to have such a terrible thought. Maybe James dying would be the best outcome for everyone including, if not especially, Brynna.
Brynna
It was night the first time we saw someone that was not of our world. I was pacing in front of the tent as Maura, Elijah, Penny, my father, and Violet slept. Maura was sleeping in my father’s tent at night, and the thought was so sickening that I found myself unable to sleep. The already turbulent, anxious energy was rolling in filthy disgust and pin-sharp betrayal. Even resting quietly was not an option for me anymore.
Violet was keeping something from me. Somehow, she blocked me out of her mind when I tried to decipher exactly what her precious secret was. She did not realize she was doing it, but every time she saw me coming, a wall so large even my strange, new power could not scale it went up inside of her mind.
I still did not know why I could hear peoples’ thoughts. When they passed by me, I could listen in to not only their meandering, ordinary musings but also their fears. They were afraid of starving. They were wary of my father. Both were valid anxieties.
I sat down in front of the fire pit and watched the embers as they died away, as they were replaced by gray, crumbling ashes. I stared at the dying light, thinking of James. Just as the fire burned itself into nonexistence, so did my feelings for him. I had never been clear on exactly what those feelings had meant. They were as hazy to me as other peoples’ innermost thoughts should have been. I had to trust what was sure: He had lied to me. I could not forgive him for that.
Plus, there was a faint whispering in the camp amongst the fearful survivors. People were beginning to embrace the lawlessness of this new land. Innermost desires to cause pain were being worn proudly, emblazoned on the chests of the evil for all of us to see. Selfishness and cruelty were flavors of every day.
I knew, from seeing into someone’s mind, that James was responsible for some of it. Exactly how much remained unclear.
It would only get worse. It would grow in intensity until my father was forced to act. When he did, the consequences were too horrid to picture. The brutality of it would stun everyone into submission. I knew my father was capable of such atrocity even if he did not know it yet.
James.
My mind tormented me by dropping some subtle clue to his continued existence. Sometimes it was just his name appearing like a ghost in the darkness of my
thoughts. Sometimes, it was that overwhelming warmth consuming me; it hypnotized me into a daze where I saw only his face.
Looking back now, I know that I was foolish to believe that I could let him go.
“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”
Maura’s first words to me after several days were both insulting and annoying. A cliché? Really? Also, how could she allow herself to assume that I was so devastated over James that I needed her comfort? How could she suggest that I still felt anything for him at all? Did she not know me even after so many years?
I looked up after throwing my cigarette into the embers. The paper burned to a charred black, causing smoke to flow steadily in my direction. I looked up, squinting as my eyes watered. When I gazed out into the darkness, I saw the man standing far off by the trees.
Ours was the camp closest to the forest on that side, so I had the best view. My heart began to bang painfully against my chest as a fear I could not fathom filled me up like scalding hot water. Nausea gripped me; a thousand hands beat against the walls of my chest; the wings of a thousand birds fluttered madly against my stomach, generating the power my anxiety needed to operate with such ruthless efficiency.
He was wearing black pants and a loose-fitting black long sleeve shirt. Besides his eyes, which I could see even from a distance, he looked just like the rest of us. I could see a faint glow in the blackness of his eyes; it was a light within darkness.
His intentions were unknown. His identity was a mystery. All that could be known in certainty regarding him was that he was not one of us.
I squinted hard, trying to read into his mind. Instantly, a searing pain shot through my forehead and spread backwards to the base of my scalp. I collapsed to my knees and grasped my head in my hands.
I must have given a cry of pain, because Elijah came running out of the tent.
“What is it? What is it?” He demanded quietly as he held my arms. I looked up to see the man still standing in the same place. He had not moved an inch, but his eyes were rested on me now.
With a shaking hand, I pointed.
“What the…” Elijah whispered. He did not take his eyes off of the strange man as he pulled me to my feet. “Dad!”
As if our father would be brave enough to approach the stranger… I could have laughed.
However, our father proved me wrong when he immediately began to stalk across the grass.
“Danny!” Maura exclaimed behind me, and I scowled at the heavens.
Truly, I could have turned around and slapped her. Now, she was addressing him by an affectionate nickname. Vomit…
“Keep Violet and Penny back.”
I had felt them awaken from their sleep and heard their curious thoughts rise quietly to life. They were wondering what exactly was going on.
“Brynna!” Maura called after me, “Elijah!”
Congratulations, you know our names, I thought irritably.
She could have called something else out. She could have at least given us a “Come back!” or something similar.
We were following after my father who was already halfway across the untouched field where the man was standing. I couldn’t help but conjure up images of demons and ghosts appearing to humans. If I had to picture their earthly forms, the man was very close to that image. The way he stared at us unblinkingly as we approached was strange enough as it was. But the pallid color of his skin and the light within his black eyes... They were downright otherworldly.
My heartbeat skipped into high gear when we were right in front of him. His eyes locked with mine the moment I stopped walking. Still, he didn’t blink. I will give myself credit, though, when I say that I did not look away. Perhaps the stare-down was his way of frightening us off of the land. I would not be so easily swayed to move a group of thousands for his sake.
“Are you Pangaean?” My father asked him.
Clearly, he did not inherit any of my mother’s foreign diplomacy skills over the years of their marriage. A simple “Hello, can we help you?” might have started the conversation off a little better.
The man continued to look at me, even as my father glared at him, awaiting an answer. His stare was beginning to unnerve me. I felt as though he had invaded my mind and was listening in on every panicked thought. If I could hear the thoughts of others, could he? I prayed that my mind was closed to him, that he did not have my same ability. I could keep my composure physically but emotionally, I was crumpling. We were living through the subject of several science-fiction movies Elijah and I had watched, ones where hostile aliens killed humans for everything from territorial disputes to farming us for resources to just loathing our race. I could not peg exactly what the man’s motives were for sure, but I knew an attempt to frighten better than anyone.
“What do you want?” My father tried again, and his voice was still infused with boldness despite the growing fear I could hear inside of his mind.
Still, the man did not look away from me. To break the tense staring contest, I spoke next.
“Do you speak English?”
“Brynna, be quiet.” My father snapped at me.
The man’s gaze finally broke free from mine, and I felt as though a tremendous weight had been heaved off of my back. My cognitive functions were chugging along speedily as they always did once again.
“You’re from the green orb. You call it ‘Earth.’” The man spoke perfect English.
“We are.”
I ignored my father’s burning glare. He wanted to handle the situation himself, but somehow I knew I was more apt to diffuse whatever tension (and there was plenty) that stood firmly between us and this man.
“What do you call this place?”
“This is Purissimus.” He responded vaguely, but he looked back at me now.
“How can you speak English?” I asked him, though the answer certainly was not important.
“We have studied your race since the Beginning. We knew one day you would come.”
“Our world is gone.” My father chimed in.
It was as though the man simply could not begin to understand the situation unless he was the one explaining it. I, for one, believed that I was doing a more than satisfactory job of handling that first meeting. But my father had to be the chief, as men so often do.
“We came here to escape what happened there.” He continued, “We’ll stay out of your way.”
As if I was going to allow that man to just walk away, never to be seen again! The things he could tell us would be far beyond anything we could ever have known otherwise. I didn’t know if he would be up for sharing but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to ask. When I looked at Elijah, behind the fear in his eyes, I saw the same desire to learn all of that vast knowledge the man could provide.
“You destroyed your home. It is gone, because you squandered it.”
He was right about that, so I didn’t argue.
“It’s gone because…” My father trailed off, and I smiled slightly to myself, awaiting his explanation for what had happened. “Either way, we’re here now, and we can’t leave. The ship had enough fuel to make one trip. Even if we had enough to make it back, we would have no home to go to.”
“You expect to keep so many people here on this field?”
My father's aggravation and self-righteousness were rising quickly. He was starting to become offended by the man’s attempts to tell him what to do.
“Do you have a problem with that?”
“Would you prefer us to move somewhere else?” I asked him.
His voice did not rise in anger, nor did he take his eyes off of my father.
“I would prefer for you to leave. Your kind is not welcome here.”
“Did you not hear what I just said? We have nowhere to go.”
“You destroyed your Earth. You will not destroy what is ours.”
Now, I was panicking again.
“For every day that you stay here, we will take ten from your number. They will not be
taken from this realm peacefully. Please be aware of that.”
His skin seemed to glow in the moonlight just as he was beginning to slink back into the darkness of the trees. As the shadow took him, that strange light in his eyes snuffed out, and he truly did resemble a demonic creature from ancient religious literature. His eye sockets were all I could see.
If I wasn’t unnerved before, I was downright terrified now. Still, when I spoke, I did not show any fear. If that is a surprise by this point, then you clearly have not been paying attention.
Elijah looked at my dad for a solution to this very pressing, very dangerous situation. But our father was staring, utterly dumbfounded, at the place where the man had stood only seconds before.
“What are we going to do, Dad?” Elijah demanded as our father turned and stormed back towards our campsite. A long, seemingly endless line of people stood there, gawking and muttering quietly amongst themselves in speculation. It seemed as though every survivor had risen from their slumber. One slight whisper of some strangeness afoot, and they were all awake to witness it.
“Who was he?”
“Is he from here?”
“What does he want?”
Surely, our group suddenly speaking at a volume that rivaled a stadium during the Super Bowl was very disturbing to the natives we now knew existed. One of my father’s cronies came up with his trusty megaphone. They even placed a box down on the ground for him to stand on. After seeing that, I covered my mouth as a small smirk crept onto my lips.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we now know that there are others on Pangaea. They have asked that we refrain from littering and straying too far into the forest.”
I was laughing hysterically now and covering my mouth to hide it. When my father shot me a look of warning, I did not suddenly pretend to be seized by a coughing fit; I merely laughed harder.
He cleared his throat and looked back at the crowd.
“They say that if we do either of those things, there will be consequences. Therefore, anyone that strays too close to the tree-line will be shot.”
I must have looked slightly crazed for a moment as I turned my head to stare at him with eyes widened and all traces of that boisterous humor from a moment earlier gone in a flash. First of all, I had been unaware that guns were on the ship. They were just what we needed on an “uninhabited” planet. Clearly, he had known that Pangaea was populated long before we got there. Secondly, I was shocked at the brutality of his new order. He was already starving people in hopes of lowering our numbers. Now, he was threatening to shoot people if they got too close to the trees? Was being put in front of a firing squad for leaving one's dishes on the ground the next step in his plan?
“You haven’t thought this through.” I told him as he walked behind the ship, flanked by his goons, “He said nothing about littering, for the sake of all deities and Gods!”
“I hate when you say that!” He snapped after turning around to point his finger at me.
“Would you just listen?!” I grabbed his arm, and he shook me off forcefully, almost knocking me to the ground in the process. “This is his planet, and he wants us off. They are threatening us with murder!”
“Do you think I am so stupid that I zoned off during our conversation? I heard him! There is no use repeating it, Brynna Claire. What would you have me do? Do you want to be the one to tell people that we have to get back on the ship, leave here, and fly around until we run out of gas? We have no choice but to stay here. My guards will watch over the campsite. If they come for us, we’ll shoot them.”
“Why did you bring guns to a planet that wasn’t populated?” I challenged him after grabbing his arm again. “You knew they were here! You knew we were invading their planet!”
“We didn’t want anything from them but a place to live. How many times do you think these people have been on Earth? We’ve never told them to leave!”
“We didn’t know they existed!”
My voice had risen. My tone was betraying my growing trepidation that the situation would soon spiral completely out of control. In fact, I knew it would.
“Of course we didn't know they...
“If they were on Earth, so what?!” I continued furiously, “They did not drop five thousand of their people on us and demand that we let them stay! They know that what happened to Earth was our fault. If it was nuclear, we started the war. If the sun exploded or the ozone layer depleted suddenly, it was because we burned too much fuel or threw our plastic bottles in rivers... I do not know what the environmental implications or the catastrophic consequences of all of that would be! You will have to ask your son! Either way, why would they let us stay here? In enough time, we will do the same thing to this place!”
“So, you believe everything was all our fault? It wasn’t! I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why the earth had to end! But...”
“Yes, you do!” I interrupted him loudly, “You are lying! I will have no parts of this! I am telling everyone everything!”
He grabbed my wrist in a hold so painful that I was forced to wonder very briefly how I would make a splint after he shattered the bone.
“If you say a word, I’ll give you over to him. That’s how they do it in those stories you read, right? To create an alliance, they arrange an exchange of a female? If it’s through marriage or through slavery…”
“I never pegged you as a reader.” I snarled at him through a sardonic grin. “If you want to hit me, and I can see that you do, then do it. But I am taking people who want to go. I am well aware that we cannot leave the planet, but we sure as hell are not staying here.”
When I broke free of him, he reached out to grab me again, but I dodged him. I will admit that I did not expect him to try again. That is the only reason why he was able to succeed in getting a firm hold on me. After pulling me backwards and slamming me against the outer wall of the ship (again), he backhanded me hard across the face. If his hands had not been pinning me to the side of the wall, I would have fallen to the ground, only this time, James would not be there to scoop me up. As my ears rung and my eyes struggled to move back into focus, I heard my father shouting about “remembering who I was talking to” and “watching my (expletive) mouth.”
My head was turned away from him, and his hand was holding my chin. I only smiled slightly as blood dribbled out of my mouth onto the ground; I was thinking over and over again that what he was doing was more of a sign of weakness than of strength. Even as the tears of pain stung my eyes, I thought how humorous it was that he believed himself to be such a man, and yet he could not tolerate my scathing sarcastic nature, my threats to leave the land he ruled so cruelly, or even my demands for common sense.
“We are staying together.” I heard him clearly now, “If you’re not here, then I guess it will be Violet, right?”
I stopped smiling abruptly and looked up at him, livid beyond my wildest dreams. I know now that he saw my eyes turn red. They were redder than they had ever been. I could almost feel them burning.
“If you try anything like that with her, I will rip your heart out!”
I do not know where that violent sentiment came from, but I pictured disemboweling him clearly. I was drunk on the image of ripping his heart from his chest and biting into it. Something was seriously beginning to go wrong in me. Screws were loosening, and some ferocious creature I had no knowledge of before was taking hold.
“What is wrong with your eyes?” He demanded, but through his rage, I could hear the slight tremor in his voice. I had shaken off his hand, but he grabbed my face again to get a better look. The moment he touched my skin, though, he exclaimed in agony and pulled his suddenly reddened hands away.
“Do not try to stop me.”
“Don’t you understand that there is strength in numbers!?” He yelled after me as I began to walk away. “I will never let you take Penny! You goddamn freak, I will kill you before I let you take her! You won’t take Elijah or Violet, either. Or Maura!”
“Keep her. I don’t want her.” I replied quickly and with an air of blatant arrogance that I am sure only infuriated him more.
As I walked back around to the front of the ship, I heard him yelling still but did not care enough about what he was saying to listen. Once I was physically out of his presence, I could feel the cold night air on my face again. I could smell the sweet aroma of the white flowers that grew at the sides of the field where there were no tents.
I had returned to normal.
“Pack your stuff.” I told Violet.
“What? Why?!” She jumped up and looked at me with eyes widened in terror, “What happened?!”
“Penny, honey, get your bag.” I called into the tent.
“What are you on about now, Brynna?” Maura demanded, “What is going on?” She saw my face and grimaced. “Sit down. Let me get you some ice. I will talk to him later.”
I chose to answer the first two questions she asked but ignored the second part of what she had said completely.
“We are leaving. Now that you are newly reunited with the love of your life, you will feel no need to join us, I assume. But we will not stay here long enough to experience what is to come.”
“What is to come, dare I ask?” Maura asked as she crossed her arms over her chest, rolled her eyes, and yawned.
“I apologize. It is clear that what that man said is boring you. Please, go back to sleep if you are exhausted. Explaining the severity of the situation to you is slowing me down.” I told her hurriedly.
She chose to ignore my momentary rant.
“Look, I am as stunned by the fact that there are people on this planet as you are. But I am not going to be afraid until I have reason to be.”
“There is reason to be afraid.” Elijah told her bluntly as he stood and watched me throw my own things into my small suitcase. “Brynna, we can’t leave her and Dad here.”
“Really? He knew those people were here. He was just going to make them accept our presence. I do not want any parts of that. I do not want any parts of the massacre, either.”
“Maybe he was bluffing.” Elijah reasoned, “Maybe he was just trying to see if we really needed to be here.”
“I doubt it. What would you do if someone just dropped in on you the way we did to them? You would be angered greatly, would you not? We are getting out of here.”
“But Dad said that if we go into the woods…” Violet started.
“That native man said nothing about the woods. He told us to pack up our things, get back on the ship, and leave. We have no home to go to, as you know very well.”
“I think he was just trying to see if we really needed to be here. Brynna, please…”
“Here.” Maura stuck her hand in between us and dropped an icepack into Elijah's lap. “Make your stubborn sister put some ice on her face.”
She strode away before I could offer a snide retort to that comment. Elijah pressed the icepack to my face, and I cringed before moving away.
“I do not want that. I am perfectly fine.” I snapped at him as I busied my hands with untangling Violet's headphone cords. She had asked Maura to do it earlier but instead, our nanny had decided to take a long, extended walk to the ship with our father.
“Shut up and put this on your face, asshole.”
“I should punch you in the throat for calling me such a vile, unoriginal name.” But I finally did put the icepack on my face. His eyes flashed red, and I reached over to grasp his hand. “Let it go, Eli. He is nothing of concern for us.”
“He is of concern...”
“We are not going to talk about this. We are going to pack our things and go.”
“Let’s just see what happens tomorrow.” He told me, “How dumb will you feel if you take off and nothing happens?”
“I will not be around to find out if I was right or wrong, will I? If you and my father…” I turned my gaze to Maura, because she had suddenly resurfaced behind us, “Want to stay here and get yourselves killed, that is your prerogative, most certainly. But I will not sit by, doing nothing, and let the three of you die.” I looked back at Violet and Elijah. “I will not do it. And no, Violet, it has nothing to do with the fact that I saved your asses once!”
“Stop doing that!” Violet exclaimed, covering her ears and stomping her foot.
“Just to keep you informed, covering your ears does nothing.” I handed her the newly untangled headphones.
“Yay!” All traces of her aggravation at me evaporated suddenly; she smiled widely and walked back to her tent.
“Adolescent mood swings...” I muttered irritably with an eye-roll.
“Brynna, come on,” Elijah led me away from the group, “I sincerely don’t believe that this is anything to be worried about. It makes no sense! If he wanted us off Pangaea that badly, why would he only be taking ten people every day? Why wouldn’t he just come and kill us all right off? I’m sure that they have the means to do it. Plus, we don’t even know if he has any other people with him!”
“Right, this whole planet was created for one man. Aren’t you the more spiritual of the two of us? What Divine point is there in creating a huge mass of livable space for one person?
“I know that you’re being sarcastic right now. But if he wanted to show his real force to really convince us to leave, he would have brought others with him. He would have threatened to kill us all immediately. I don’t think this is serious. Please don’t go running off before you know if this is a real thing or not.”
“I do know, because I just know.” I replied, though I also knew that what I had just said made little sense to him. “If you want to stay here for a day to see the extent of this man’s devotion to his cause, then fine. I will allow it for one day. I cannot guarantee that we will not be one of his first ten. But after tomorrow, I am gone,” I stopped, feeling an unfamiliar lump in my throat as I prepared to finish my thought, “With or without you.”
“Okay. I know that you’re freaked out. But everything is fine. You’ll see. Tomorrow, nothing will happen. This guy is just trying to see how badly we need this place. Otherwise, he’d kill us all right now.”
“If you say so, Elijah…” I replied shortly, “Perhaps he is not killing us outright because he enjoys playing games.”