Deacon - Chapter 8

Chapter 2 (4 Walls and A Roof)

"Guys?" I call out to the people in the helicopter, "She's squeezing my hand." I say. "Here, let me take a look." Says a man, "I was a doctor."

"He takes out a stethoscope and puts the end against her head. "That's the head. Place it near the heart." I say. "Revanchists' heads are where blood is pumped from." He says, "Luckily, she's not turning."

"Okay... That's good." I say. "The bullet just grazed her eye. Another inch off, she'd have a hole in her brain. She's lucky here." The doctor says, "We'll go back for that old man after we drop you off." "Don't." I say, "He tried to kill us."

He nods, while running his eyes from my face to Kelly's, repeatedly.

"Whatever you say." He says.

I try to relieve myself from what happened to Kelly. There's a seat next to Kelly. I hold on to the walls of the helicopter and drop into that seat. As I look down the window, I see the threat that surrounded us. At least a couple thousand of those things were down there. If it weren't for them, we'd be dead. It's like a storm of them. We've been in an endless desert.

Soon, I fall asleep on the window.

A while later, I wake up in a room. It has white walls all around. The floor is covered with a white carpet and I am in a bed. A small window to my right, with light rays passing through it to light up only a square patch on the floor.

For what seems like the first, I hear noises leaking into the room. For the first time, I hear a baby's cries and a child's laugh. I sit up and make my way out of the room. I transition from a dark room to a bright, empty, grey looking room with a vent about five feet long and a finger's length wide. There's something or someone on the other side. "Who's there?" I ask out.

A soft voice replies and asks for help. It sounds a bit like Kelly's voice. "Is that you Kelly?" I ask. "Deacon? You there?" she says, "They're deciding whether to kill us or to let us go."

A thought hits hard on my brain. I see something. It feels like a dream I can't escape.... Jane... It's something to do with Jane. Why does it feel like I've been there? I've never seen it before. It's us sitting on the edge of a hill in a wooden bench. I'm playing a light acoustic tone on a guitar, and just staring at the orange sunset. I don't see Kelly there. But, there's a young by. He's younger than Kelly. He looks about six years old, with short blonde hair just covering the top of his ears and eyes as blue as the ocean, just like Jane's ahead and not a single wrinkle. One thing about him stands out the most. He is wearing a shirt which belonged to me when I was in the coma. Soon, he looks at me and says, "Dad—"

Before anything else could happen, I got pulled out to the real world by a tap on my shoulder from the men who picked me up. They take me to the outside, rather gently.

The afternoon light blinds my eyes, leaving the dark room. As the whiteness dissolves, I see about a hundred people standing in front of a row of benches and a man in homemade armor standing on the stage. With a look of stress on his face, he opens his mouth slowly and in a deep voice says, "Bring out the girl, too."

The men walk in and drag Kelly out from the cell. The man on the platform looks at us and says that they've come to a decision. They say that they'll let us live for now, but we cannot leave these walls without company. If we do leave without anyone knowing, they'll shoot us down.

Everyone then drags their bodies out with a look of disappointment on their faces. It's like they wanted us killed.

They untie our hands and just walk away to their own lives. "Is this it?" I ask, "No cells for us?"

The men answer with a nod and a faint smile.

One of them turns, "Hey, come with me." He then turns back towards the other men. "You guys can go I'll be with you soon." He tells them.

"Come," says the man with a calm smile on his bald and shaved red face. He leads us to a cliff.

The bench... It looks shockingly similar to the one I saw in my blackout today in the cell. Kelly and the man take a seat. Around four feet ahead, there is a hundred-foot drop. The orange sky, shines into my eyes and lights up every canyon in my skin while the sun drowns itself into the seemingly endless ocean, while reflecting itself to instigate my eyes.

"First off, we already about the flames." He says. "What?" I ask him.

He shakes his head while he also moves it down slowly. "We are the ones who sent you the diary in Jane's clone. We wanted you to know about us." He says leisurely, "Good thing is, she may have made it out of the –"

"She didn't!" I say with regret, interrupting him.

He gets up and stands on the edge of the cliff. He holds his hands out to the side, gets down to one knee and starts to round up his arms under his chest. Smoke whistles through his fists, "Follow me now," he says. I get down on one knee and do what he is doing. I too, feel smoke leaving my fists. He holds his hands out to the side and they catch on fire. Soon, he gets up and falls off the cliff. I rush to see where he is. When I look down, he is not there.

Soon, I hear him behind me, "Think of the moment that brings your eyes tears... Now, keep thinking of it..." he whispers.

I feel my hands catch on fire. I keep thinking of the memory as he instructed. Soon, he pushes me off the cliff. "Close your eyes!" he screams. I close them, fearing that I might hit the ground. I keep them closed and soon, I stop feeling the wind hitting my face. Everything goes quiet. The sound of what sounded like an announcement creeps into my ears. "Dear residents of USA, we request all of you to stay calm throughout the announcement. A drug had recently leaked out of one of our science facilities—" I am back in time... the time when my mom and dad died. "-tested to be lethal when inhaled or consumed. Please do remain indoors till we announce that everything is safe." The announcement kept playing on.

I could move, I could hear, I could be heard. As I look ahead, the woman, with melting skin appears. Then, a man screams for us to run. What if I could stop my parents from dying? What if I could change history?

When the man screamed, I stop my parents and run deeper into the hospital building and hide with them in a storage closet and lock the doors. Then, my eyes close on themselves. Wind slowly accelerates across my face. Then, I fall into deep water. As I open my eyes, I notice that I am in a crowded area of people... People in swimsuits. For what seems like the first time, I see everyone smiling on a beach.

The people I hated when younger were my friends. What the hell did I do? What else did I change? I gasp... "Mom!" I whisper to myself. How's she? Where's she?

"Time to go, Deacon." I hear a masculine voice. As I look back, I see a man dressed in a plain, dark blue costume, like a nurse. I get out of the ocean and try to make my way through all the beach balls and the people. I'm not used to the white, blinding sunlight. "What happened to the apocalypse?" I ask the nurse. "What apocalypse?" He asks me with a look of confusion. 'I need to see mom." I say to him. He states that that's where he's taking me with a look of confusion on his face yet again.

He drives me home in an old Volkswagen golf which looks like a black slice of cheese. We arrive and knock on the door. The man in the uniform then leaves.

Soon, a woman just a little older than me opens the door. "Who are you?" I ask. "Ha-ha. Nice joke." She says, "My name is Candice, dear supposed stranger."

"Candice, My wife?" I ask. "Aww... no. I'm your sister. You are a good actor and it's nice seeing you again," She replies.

"Where's mom?" I ask. "Speaking of, she started to think you'll never show up again. She'd love to see you." She replies.

Candice then turns around and yells, "Mom, you've got a visitor!"

I wait as my fingers shiver and a smile widens my face. Soon, a door squeakily and slowly creeks open inside the house. What I see next, makes the smile narrow away and makes my mouth fall open. I then hold two hands on my mouth as I begin dropping tears.

It's mom. She's wearing a blue gown. She's seated on an electric wheelchair with a ventilator attached to her throat... And yet, she smiles at me.

She says a word I've always wanted to hear from her voice, "Son..."