Closer To Heaven - Patrick Sean Lee (rosie project .txt) 📗

Mr. Baxter stopped talking after he said that. I saw his eyes close. Munster had squeezed in beside me and Lashawna, and I could hear the crackers crunching as he chewed on them. Finally Mr. Baxter opened his eyes again.

“Their bodies—you’ve seen them a few times, Amelia—their bodies carried a virus, or perhaps emitted something entirely different that was swift-acting and lethal to our species. The majority of Crinians shrugged their shoulders, if you can visualize that, and said to one another. ‘Too bad, but at least their scurrying around has ceased. Annoying little things they were. Let us continue our rest, and then leave this place. We have far to travel yet.’

“Still, a few were moved by our demise, and they saw a few of us who seemed unaffected by whatever it was their bodies carried that destroyed us. The lady you spoke of was one of them. Yes, like you, I also met her, and yes, like you, it was in a sort of dream state at first.

“My first encounter with them was on the afternoon of that fateful day when it all began here. I was in my office at the college reading papers written by my students. I saw the bright flash of light, just as Francis described to me later after we’d met. At nearly the same instant the sweet odor descended into the room, and the moment I smelled it, I reeled. It made me dizzy and nauseous, and I must have passed out and fallen out of my chair, because hours—perhaps days— later I awakened with a terrible headache, and it was dark outside. Everything was deathly quiet as well.

“I rose from the floor shakily, with great effort, using the unsteady chair with wheels on the feet as balance. It was very difficult for me, Amelia. My head spun and every muscle in my body felt like rubber. I wanted to fall again. Go to sleep, or even die. But I struggled across the room and lifted the open window higher to let fresh air in. There was none. The air outside was no better, even worse. That’s when I saw the first glimpses of the horror that had befallen us.

“The campus lamplights which had always illuminated themselves, without tending, triggered by evening’s darkness, were black and lifeless. Still, I could see them—the bodies lying this way and that on the lawn bordering the buildings, on the walkways, collapsed over bicycles and books and one another. Lying backs against the walls in doorway openings of the Science Building not far away. Twenty, perhaps. Maybe thirty. It was dark, and I was in shock and still very, very nauseous. You can imagine, I’m sure, the rage of thoughts pummeling my brain all at once! WHAT happened, I thought, trying to understand in that terrible moment. To make sense of a sight that is incomprehensible.

“I staggered back to my desk and clicked my computer’s mouse. News would be broadcast on the internet—everywhere. Of course you know that every vehicle of communication died when the city populace died. The screen remained black. There was no power any longer. There was nothing to grab onto. Only silence as total as the ruination around me.

“That is when I heard it. The silence was broken. At first it was merely a soft, low shuuu-sh. Something like a breeze that comes out of nowhere and picks up leaves and bits of paper, flinging them about in its travel down the street. It grew louder—not terribly so—but higher. More pronounced, as though whatever it was was drawing near to the room in which I was entombed. Outside the window.

“I made my way back, staying close to the wall, and peered out with one eye in case…in case. All things were dangerous to me suddenly. Some thing, or some one had killed everyone and everything around me. Perhaps, I thought, it was some drone outside, scouring the campus searching for anyone left standing so that a signal could be relayed…somewhere. Whoever, whatever they were would suddenly descend on me and do to me what they’d done to those students, those teachers, all those innocent people outside on the ground.

“I couldn’t see it, hiding there with my back tight against the wall, but I’ll never forget the sound of it. It stopped just outside the window, as though it was listening, or peering through the glass and open space beneath. A moment or two passed. I’d begun to pray. Anyone. God, Buddha. Someone help me… I stayed glued to the wall, trying not to move a single muscle, trying not to draw in or exhale a breath for fear whatever it was would notice.

“It went away after a few more terribly long moments, and I filled my lungs as though I’d been under water for hours. I slid my back down the wall and sat with my knees drawn to my chest. Sick, despairing, confused. Outside the strange noise—noises, I noted many distinct ones then—began to soften. They were moving on. To where I had no idea, but whatever they were, beast or machine, they were leaving.

“I stood up carefully, crawled to the open window, and peeked over the sill. Clouds…tornados that did not roar or tear buildings from their foundations. Quiet, nearly, but shaped like tornados, these…things. What were they? Where had they come from? Why did they do this…or did they? Yes, I reasoned. They must have. But why? To what cruel end? All of you know that terrible confusion of thoughts. The instant obliteration of everything living that draws a breath, when only moments earlier you were sitting, gazing at the Christmas tree, or helping your mother bake cookies. Talking to your friend on the phone. Playing a video game. Whatever it was you were doing. Then, POOF! It’s all just gone. Nuclear destruction without missiles or bombs. But, destruction just as thorough to our species.”

I thought back to that moment, and the pain returned. Daddy was watching TV, talking to Momma. He was on the couch with a can of beer in his right hand. She was in the kitchen making our dinner. And then the bright light came. I remember the room. It was suddenly so dark, and I remember hearing his can of beer hitting the carpet with a thud. And I didn’t know what had happened, or why everything suddenly smelled funny and it was so dark suddenly when it was still morning. I began to cry again. Munster saw this and put his arm around me. Lashawna started crying then, and I wanted to get up and run away again and not remember.

Mr. Baxter got up from the bed and knelt down in front of me. He touched my shoulder, and Lashawna’s, too, and asked both of us to forgive him for saying what he just said—about all of us knowing what happened when they first came. It made us remember when we had started to forget.

“I’m so sorry,” he said to both of us. “I shouldn’t have reminded you. Will you forgive me?”

We told him we would, and then Munster hugged us. Mr. Baxter got back up and then sat on the edge of the bed again.

“I don’t know how long I sat there. Hours it seemed. I am not an impulsive man. I consider every move I make—I like to think I do, anyway. But the shock of all of that kept me frozen, thinking run, one moment, stay until someone bursts through the door to rescue you the next. Sleep. It will all go away, and you will know it was only a very bad nightmare when you awaken.

“I taught psychology to my students. Do you know what that is, my young friends?”

“Yeah, it’s what they do to you in the nuthouse. I mean, it’s how they know what to do to you there,” Munster said to him.

Jerrick had been sitting quietly, leaning against the headboard thing where our pillows were all that time just listening. After Munster said that, he spoke.

“It’s the scientific study of human behavior. If we are doing things that hurt us, or even hurt others, there is a scientifically-based reason, and if someone trained to observe the phenomena assesses the personality disorders in the offending person correctly, a cure can more often than not be found.”

I didn’t understand that, but Mr. Baxter did.

“Very good, Jerrick. VERY good. The more I hear you speak, the more impressed I am! You are correct. There are many disciplines in the field of psychology, however. Clinical. Grief counseling. Teaching—which is what I did, as I’ve mentioned. The point is, in those first days I tried to analyze myself; discover if I’d somehow gone insane! But the bodies were all too real, not some very elaborate trick my mind was playing on me.

“My body. I needed food and water, the same as you. The university cafeteria was filled with rotting food because the refrigeration was gone, and so I wisely stayed away from it. After a few days I began to weaken. The once-fresh vegetables had gone bad. The packaged sandwiches likewise. If only, I thought, there were someplace, some store or plant where emergency generators had kicked in after the city power company had shut down. That is how the mind begins to work when a crisis has risen. We begin to grab at straws. Explore avenues that end in block walls. It is a coping mechanism hard-wired into our brains.

“I continued to weaken as more days slipped by, and I was still sick, getting sicker. Still nauseous, and by then, vomiting frequently. I needed help, and if everything else was muddled, that instinct remained solidly in place.

“My mind was drifting away, more often as the days passed. I began to hallucinate, and rationality left me entirely. Something told me death was close, but something deeper inside me told me to hang on; to fight. That’s when I stumbled out the doors and wandered from building to building, not caring if the clouds reappeared and finished the job they’d started.

“Death and rotting flesh in each of them. Food. I craved nourishment—that deeper area of my brain urging me on. Get away from the bodies, get away from the university. Go. Seek something living out in the city. Find a steak! Find…find edible food. Find help. Find survivors.

“I have no idea how long I wandered aimlessly, stumbling over bodies, seeing visions of tin men, and stars that spun in crazy circles in the sky, then dropping down in front of me as roasted chickens!

“How I got into the rear of the Mini-mart I have no idea. I don’t remember entering it. I don’t even remembering being in the neighborhood, miles and miles away from where I began my journey. Bits and pieces, though, remain. Someone standing near. My cry for help, and then a set of hands helping me to my feet. When I finally did awaken from that nightmare world, I was lying in a bed. A young man feeding me with a spoon. Cold soup out of a can.”

“Yeah, that’s about the time those clouds started hangin’ around,” Munster said.

“I was still delirious. Perhaps it was delirium…well, so I thought as I walked with my young friend into that dream.”

“What did you see,” I asked.

“A city. Someone following close behind me on an avenue. The feeling of terror, and my wish to escape around a corner. Then a veil that passed over my body quickly. Not cloth or fabric of any kind, but a whirling covering through which I passed, or which passed over and through me. A cloud, but not a cloud. This veil had substance. Onward I went, not feeling one foot pass the other as it should when we walk or run, but I was on a road of some type, moving. I looked behind me and discovered Francis had disappeared, though I didn’t know his name yet. That person who