Dammit

  At least the drive would be quick. Eli suspected Deacon was eager to prove Hark’s neck was yet again great and to share in that glory. Eli could understand that. He sat in the driver seat next to Eli who was in the passenger seat. Scarlet hung to his chin like a beard and a piece of axe handle protruded from his gut. He drove all the same.

  The van jerked to a start—a miracle in itself. The Concorde had a lead foot now that those pesky road laws no longer existed. Dodging destruction made things more fun, though the first obstacle was no longer there.

  New Virigina’s fifteen foot gates had been destroyed when Deberqetebial–The Horseman of Conquest–blasted them clean off their hinges. When had come for Eli for reasons that he still did not understand.

  The world outside the vehicle was a sea of ashen gray winds barely keeping its shape. As they drove, the streets were carpeted with bodies. All of them at various stages of undead infection but all staring upwards at the sky. They all had burned, circular hollow eyes. All of them. Everywhere.

  Eli turned on the radio. There was only one thing playing.

  “The End of Days is here. There will be no Rapture, no salvation. You have devastated the balance of this world. You have insulted Creation itself, and now you will face almighty judgment. I am now the snake you have made me. I am the Accuser. The Adversary. Face oblivion.”

  After about twenty minutes of this, Eli saw something shambling on the side of the road. He watched it as they approached. It wasn’t a zombie. This was roughly person-sized, covered in layers upon layers of cast-off clothing, rags, and torn jackets. It was cold, the leaves having submitted to the autumn tide weeks ago, but it was not that cold.

  The figure turned to look at the van before turning back around. The van neared the bundle.

  The bundle of cast-offs seemingly tripped, or maybe collapsed, onto the knoll at the side of the road. The van rumbled past the pile of discarded clothing and tangled limbs, its tires bumping along the uneven edge of the road. Eli checked the side mirror.

  "Pull over," Eli said.

  “Why? Who do you think you are?” Deacon asked

  "Does it matter?" Eli responded.

  Deacon kept his gaze forward, ignoring him. The crumpled shape shrank in the mirror as the van rolled on.

  Eli clenched his fist. They could help her. They could bring her back. There was no need for this cruelty. The only thing stopping them was—

  “What kind of a man, as powerful as you no less, doesn’t go with her? You just seem to put a lot more effort into saving Isla, than you ever did Rachel. ” Deacon said, “I mean, did you really love her? Maybe part of you wanted to kill her.”

  Eli moved suddenly, twisting arm already swinging at Deacon. Eli’s fist stopped mid-air, trapped by Deacon’s hand. The van screeched to a halt, the smell of burnt rubber filling the cramped interior.

  “Am I the devil?” Eli asked.

  Eli’s arm dropped. Deacon exhaled. Eli unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped outside, Deacon followed him.

  “Probably,” Deacon said, “But I didn’t think you were a stupid one.”

  They went to the back of the van and procured a medkit. They strolled casually to the heap of rags around the woman.

  “Why are you always an asshole?” Eli asked.

  “How come one ever asks the hammer why it only sees nails?”

  Eli turned but Deacon was gone. He reached down the clump of rags.

  She groaned, blood seeped through the fabric. Eli knelt beside her. Blood had soaked through layer after layer of clothing. He gently peeled back the fabric, but there was only a torn nub of an arm.

  Turquoise met deep, hollow eyes that were meant to be chocolate. She cried crimson tears, rivers of blood flowed from her mouth as she spoke.

  “Do you think,” Rachel asked, “that my Nonni was right?”

  He sat out there in the dark, on the park bench, staring up at the shining ones above. His eyes glistened with tears. Though they were the regular kind, but his eyes burned all the same.

  The dark plum was beginning to give way to hues of copper and rose as the night began to fade.

  He was not sure how long he had been out there, but Isla joined him. She sat next to him and put her head on his shoulder. A familiar ritual.

  “You did the best you could,” Isla said softly.

  “Do you think I’m weak?” Eli asked

  “No, of course not,” Isla said

  “Why didn’t I go with her?”

  “I don’t know, why do you think you didn’t go?”

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  “When Nathaniel reawakened my ESP, all of the noise came back with it.”

  “Noise?”

  “I see dead people,” he quipped, “Shades mostly, like Nathaniel, all stuck in the Veil with no tether. I hear them, or at least I can see that they are speaking. Sometimes I can understand them but a lot of the time it’s like they don’t understand what they are saying themselves.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone about your powers growing up?” Isla asked?

  “Oh, I did,” Eli said, “constantly.”

  “What happened?”

  “First my ‘doctors’ and my ‘teachers’ would tell me that I was just weak,” he said. “That in time, and with enough prayer, the sound would go away.”

  He shifted. “But it never did, I was just deaf.”

  “When Nathanial reawoken my power it came to a world screaming. I was in the Philadelphia area. The noise was indescribable. Almost like a firework but instead of the lights it’s electricity at the edges of your skin desperately trying to break free.” He said.

  “I had no idea what I was doing, I had no who I was talking to, and I had to figure out all out while to trying to survive on nothing, I am terrified of the things I can do. Of the things I can see. I can see the future, I can see all the futures,” He said. “But somehow it’s still never enough. I can’t be completely sure of which path I am on until it is too late to change it.” He said.

  “I am more powerful than I want but weaker than I can believe. I wanted to help so badly. I needed to do absolutely everything I could for everyone because … they had saved us, Rachel and I, even when God hadn’t. But they did.” He said “But I killed Rachel. I didn’t mean to do it. I loved her but how can I possibly explain that to them? They don’t feel like I do. How could they understand the weight of it? I thought I was making it easier for her.”

  His hand came up to meet hers. “I did not even think to try to look ahead.”

  “I am only having this version of the conversation.” She said without heat and scooted to him. “Last fall was not your fault either. You were exhausted, your faith and your wrist broken for a large part of the night, and under the best circumstances you can only see a couple of secon–”

  “We sat, in the fucking circle, for hours. I just sat there and watched you work,” he said and his head dropped into his hands. “I couldn’t help you.”

  “But look at how far you have come. If you hadn’t just slipped I wouldn’t even have known you were looking ahead just now.” she said and “It’s not your job to help me,”

  “I know,” he said “but I couldn’t have done it without you, and you almost died helping me.”

  Emerald met turquoise.

  “Eli,” she said slowly, “Before we met, and especially before the Fall, I never put much stock in anything beyond the material, you know? Cause by definition if it couldn’t touch anything…how could it touch anything?” she grabbed his hand.

  “I live in a world of gray winds and plastic eyes. I feel the things I say are just carried away and simply cease to exist. But, surely, that can’t be right? They have to be out there somewhere because the sound waves travel through air, right? They can’t just vanish.”

  He nodded.

  “But the fucking colors we see are only a representation our brains evolved to interpret an infinitely narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. The only reason we have the colors that we do is because we happened to evolve around a star peaking there. The way we see The Universe is a random accident.” she said.

  She squeezed tight. “Do you feel that?” she asked

  “Yes,” he said.

  “When I was in highschool chemistry,” she said “I learned about the Pauli Exclusion Principle for the first time,” she laughed, “its kind of a clusterfuck to explain but the relevant idea is that the electrons in my hand have the same charge as the ones in yours but…” her hand began to twitch in his. “Like charges repel, so our skin cells are not actually touching, so what are you feeling?”

  Eli said nothing.

  “As I continued on, focused on physics, I started learning how arbitrary things are,” she said. “You can just…choose any reference frame if you pay enough attention to what you are doing. Physics always works out.” she said. “And then if everyone was careful, everyone gets the same answer.”

  She breathed deeply. He faced her.

  “And then I continue on and I learn that not only are time and space relative, but matter and energy too,” she smiled softly, “two people can physically see the same events and disagree on which happened first. Literally. It’s provable.”

  Tears came from both of them.

  “How is it fair that General Relativity and quantum mechanics get to be provably real when their very existence suggests fundamental subjectivity for us? And then to have the fucking nerve to be fundamentally incompatible with each other?” she lamented.

  “But despite all of that,” she said slowly, “our fucking souls touched.”

  Emerald met turquoise.

  “When you look into my eyes my entire world goes turquoise and I don’t have to think anymore and I don’t know if you’re saying the same things that I am but I think you are. I think I need you to be. I think you need me to be too.” she said.

  More tears came..

  “They don’t have a word for…” She hiccuped. “For…us?” She took a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t fair to you or me but I can’t help it. I hate myself for it but I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I don’t want to be a problem. I don’t want to take more than I can give back but I want to give you everything and that’s not good for either of us,” she said. They put their heads together gently.

  “You thought you were risking dying to give me some comfort when you didn’t have to,” she said, pulling away. “I figured I could do the same. I am glad I was there,” she said “otherwise you would have just found some other way to kill yourself that night.”

  She appeared then, before them in the first gasp of the morning’s light. The resplendent copper gave way to her silhouette, and that of a large feline.

  Beside her was a beast of heavenly gold fur, large paws, and hidden black claws. It had teeth of ivory and a mane of bronze that could only declare itself the King of the Kingdom.

  In its mouth was a picnic basket.

  “Good morning, lovelies!” Venus sang, “I brought breakfast!”