Hi all and happy week two of October! The following story is the conclusion of "Sent to Save" Part 1, which was published last week. If you haven't read that section, please procede one week back in time to catch up with our heroine. For those of you who are all caught up, read away!
"Sent to Save" Part 2
Once the door was completely shut and sealed, I blinked hard and instantly opened my eyes, but once more my reality had shifted. When my eyes opened it was not the day of the blast, but ten years later. Again, I cannot explain how or why, but this is what happened. Ten years had passed. Ten years gone, but not lost. Though my mind was blank of solid memories, my heart and body met the passing of the time. I caught an image of myself in the reflection of a mirror. The tale was told right there on the looking glass. Women my age always dread turning thirty, but they cannot begin to imagine what it's like to look at yourself one day and be 29 and then the next time you see yourself to be nearly 40, with radiation scars on your face, no less.
The ten years that were lost to my mind were not spent in waste by my heart and body. In this morning, the tenth anniversary, people were coming to me for guidance, answers directions. At some point in this parallel world, I had managed to position myself as a leader. A literal underground resistance had grown, and I was its face. But instinct was begining to tell me as I rushed around helping people to grab and pack survival supplies from their once exceedingly well-stocked shelter, that my time was running short. These people had apparently followed me for ten years, but the government learned of our survival underground. It was time for us to move. The conditions of the earth above our white walled shelter were unknown, but we knew through intercepted radio transmissions that the government was preparing to advance on our hiding place. How they determined we were there was lost on us, but we did not have the time to debate their rhymes or reasons. Had the advance taken place five, even one year ago, the people would have been able to sit through and wait out the advance. But the food and the general supplies were all but spent. There would be little hope in waiting.
I stood and watched the people prepare and saw that their priorities were merely to take food. I directed all of them to fill their canteens with water - a resource that came naturally from an aquifer that ran through the lower caves. Without question or command, I grabbed as many small tools as possible and shoved them in the various bags of the people who were cconveniently around. Those small tools, knives, forks, cups - those and access to water were the items that the people had grown comfortable to always having around - they had no idea how handy those tools could be off the table as well as on.
About midmorning, the first door was opened. We sent out scouts to patrol the area. While the shelter had been extremely well lit, this was going to be the first time our people had seen the light of the sun in ten years. We all gathered around the open entrance, daring not to speak or move. The familiar unknown was paralyzing. I thought of deer caught in the headlights of a car. The light was harsh, but welcoming. The air seemed surprisingly clean. In my last reality I knew of post-radiation disaster zones and I knew that this soil would hardly bode well for us to dwell upon, but the sight I saw before me was nothing I could have expected.
What little memories people had of the ground above was long forgotten, so the landscape before us, was foreign, but more in part because of what we could easily see; after the blast, the government had clearly gone through these lands and planted trees, some stunted, some enormous from the poison that had been hurled over their soil. The instant giveaway that the trees were planted, were the neat little rows in which the pines stood. The government's attempt to cover up their intended major disaster was futile and pathetic, particularly with us alive. Because we remained we were far too great a liability. We had no idea how many other commmunities were destroyed in this way, but we were not about to let our people be obliterated without a fight.
The scouts returned with good news; the government had not yet found this area of escape and their forces remained many miles away. With a subtle nod of my head, the people began to move out in small, tight units. Many of the children that I had helped to pull inside this underground world were nearly adults or already sprouting families of their own. It was an odd sensation to watch the people that in my reality I had seen just yesterday with baby fat and abject fear clinging to their faces and yet on this day they passed by me with stoic expressions, like well trained soldiers off to save their lives and those of their families.
I remained on the cusp of the entrance, standing beside the once little boy that I came here to save, the now adult who I knew in my heart I had adopted as my stepson. We stood proud, quietly beside one another as we watched our people seep out from the undergrounds. We refused to leave until everyone was out safe. His father, my apparent husband, had helped to facilitate the first to leave. He was guiding them to a zone we determined to be safe for the time being. Our son would then procede with the last of the citizens of our emerging underground community, to lead them on to lands far away from here, taking my position as their new leader. Because of this foreign familiarity that we shared, I could sense that my son was nervous and scared, but no one looking at him would ever know. His expression was stone and his position confident. I thought of how the great leaders in my reality stood and whether it was the maternal love that I had developed for this young man or the truth of the situation, but never before could I recall a person looking so right for the impossibly large role he was about to undertake.
The last of the groups were preparing to leave, and a group of about twenty men and women stood behind me. They were the cadre that I was to lead towards the governments men. Our task was to draw the soldiers as far away from our people as possible, regardless the consequences. My face was one that the government would know - how, I have no idea. Perhaps somehow I was a trouble maker in this world before I stepped out from that tunnel. As a journalist in the life I knew, I had been a bit of a rabble rouser, it would make sense that a parallel soul of myself here would be the same.
Our time was running short. I turned to my son and in a motherly way fiddled with his brown tweed vest. "Do not be afraid," I queitly said to him. "You are ready for this." He knew that this was our last time together and looking him in the eye expressed every human emotion expected in so sorrowful a case, but it was alll masterfully contained. Inhaling deeply, I touched his face and said, "You'll always know what to say; you know my words because they come from your heart." I touched my fingertips to his heart and then took hold of his hands. I briefly saw that on my own hand, I wore a plain gold ring on my middle finger that his father likely gave me to mark our marriage here in these caves. It was strange to think that an entire lifetime had passed in these ten years, which had occured to me in the span of time no longer than a blink.
The young man nodded proudly. I could feel that he and I had already expressed our goodbies, but that did not make the moment any less difficult.
But it was time. I held the boy close and then looked once more into his blue eyes. I will never forget his face.
And then, my cadre and I bolted.
Out from the shelter, out from the protection of our dwelling place and up the hill. We headed north, towards the same direction from which I had originally brought the boy and his father. It was strange. The area then had been sparsely populated by trees, but today, it was a dense thicket. We lept and jumped over fallen logs and squeezed between the overgrown rows of trees. The only word I could think to describe the whole scene was "wild" - the forest itself, completely untamed and the way we threw ourselves through the brush, we were equally as wild. Like animals. It was a freeing and terrifyiing experience all at once. We had thought that the government troops were far though closing in, but we had no idea how close they in fact were until they were right upon us.
Gun fire instantly started to pelt through the rows of trees. As planned, my companions and I parted in every which direction, except backwards towards our exit from the shelter, to conjur as much confusion as possible. The plan worked. The soldiers had to quickly decide which darting imp to follow. It wasn't long before I had three soldiers on my tale, shooting like mad. As a journalist, I had only ever been to post-conflict zones, never live action. I have a far new appreciation for how raw animal instincts take over when literally running for one's life.
That odd sensation of being led by my heart again overtook my actions, though that sensation of immortality was waning. I sprang down a hill at high speed. The forest was so dense and bullets were ricochetting wooden splinters all around me. Characters falling when monsters were chasing you in movies seemed so much more realistic to me now.
The hill was steep and it seemed to go on forever, until there was an unnexpected break from the trees and there before me was a beach. A thin, but deep looking inlet led from the ocean on my right and a thick forest of planted trees led right up to the sand on either side off the stream. This place looked nothing like it had when first I stepped onto the sand ten years ago, or a mere few hours in my head, but I knew it was the same beach where first I emerged into this world. I hesitated on the sand for just a second to catch my bearings. The cool mist coming from the sea did nothing to cool or to calm me. My face and back were dripping in sweat, my heart pounding, and the sound of soldiers shouting continuous. They would be right behind me in a matter of seconds and I was completely exposed. Darting back into the forest was out of the question at this point - they would find me easily. I was likely to get shot if I tried to cross the watery inlet. There was but one chance for me to get out of this alive.
Looking to my left, I saw the bluff from which I had emerged, but there was no sandstone visible - the face had been completely covered in wild vines. But I didn't care. I wasn't about to sit here and wait to be shot. Even if I was shot in the back, at least I'd die trying to reach my freedom.
My booted feet bolted towards the bluff. Running in the deep sand made the task so much more trying, but my adrenaline powered me forward. The cliff was so close! But so were the soldiers. They were nearing the beach.
I reached the cliff and slammed into it, unable to stop. My hand desperately ripped through the ivy, pulling down the branches, ignoring the sharp spines equally ripping through my hands. The task seemed hopeless as I destroyed the viney network, praying that I would find the tunnel.
Behind me, the soldiers had reached the beach! They began shooting immediately. At least their distance and their running toward me temporarily threw the aim of their bullets. Until...
A sharp, scream of pain wretched clean through my shoulder, sending blood rippling across my face and the cliff. I cannot describe the pain of being shot. My left arm was useless and bleeding terribly, but I did not give up. My right arm made one last rip down and there it was. I couldn't believe it! There was the same round hole that I had squeezed out of and I was seconds away from dieing in front of it.
Without completely clearing the spot, I dove in head first. My body slammed into the base of the round tunnel, knocking the wind from me. Amidst my coughing and bleeding, I turned onto my back and kicked my way back through the water that occupied the tunnel, never losing sight of the beach. I could see the soldiers. They were running up to the entrance of the tunnel. Just as I saw the barrels of two guns reaching into the hole to make their death shots, my upper body slipped out of the tunnel, dropping my body into a wider pool.
I was completley submerged. Fearing drowning ontop of being shot, I threw my arms up to the surface and kicked hard against the bottom, throwing my face up out from the water.
I expected to be shot instantly. I expected to be dragged out of the tunnel by the soldiers and then be shot on the beach execution style, but what instead occured was silence.
Silence.
I was in a pool shallow enough so that I could stand, but my feet were barely able to support my weight with the high of adrenaline throbbing through me. The walls were white, glowing. The natural ceiling was high above my head. The waters familiar. I stood as straight and as solid as I could, so to look at the waters. I expected to be surrounded by a pool of my own blood, but there was none. The pain was gone. I grabbed onto my shoulder, the bullet wound, gone. The clothes, the boots that I had been wearing when I ran through the forest and on the beach, gone.
I was again in the navy blue swimming suit that I had worn to swim in this place at least a dozen times before. My eyes darted up to the rabbit hole spot where I had been lost. The hole was gone. Gone. The wall was solid. My left hand slowly reached up and touched the wall where the tunnel should have been. But there was nothing but solid rock, glowing white as it always had before.
There is no way for me to tell you how long I stood motionless with my hand pressed against that wall. It could have been ten seconds it could have been ten hours. Time, reality, all those were lost to me. I knew where I was, I knew these walls and these waters better than most, but what I had just experienced ripped away every thing I thought I knew.
The memories of me leaving that cave, returning to my locker and bike to get changed and to go home are fuzzy at best. The only reason I know I did these things, is because of what happened to me as I neared the top of the hill leading to the natural wonder. Thank God for auto-pilot, which did steer me to grabbing my keys and clothes, otherwise I would have trekked this road twice in a dripping bathing suit in order to go home. Of course once I did reach home, I curled up in a ball on my sofa and remained motionless for hours trying to rationalize what had happened. However, before I made it back to my condo, as I neared the top of the path, I heard a woman's voice calling to me, "Excuse me?" Apparently she had been trying to get my attention for a little while.
I turned to face her, but my expression surely gave nothing of welcome. I was still lost in the caves. The off-put look that she returned to me realized as much, though I'm sure she assumed for other reasons. Sounding quite snooty, she asked, "Can you tell me if there's really anything interesting in those caves?"
The question seemed so terribly dull to me, considering all that I had seen. I could barely summon a thought. I squeezed the handles on the rails on my bike and I noticed something incredible - the ring. The ring given to me by the man who was my husband in that alternate reality was there plain as day on my middle finger. I stared at it dumbfounded for a moment and just before the woman completely gave up on me, I turned my face to her and said with utmost conviction, "Oh yes. Yes. But that is completley dependent on what you choose to see."
The answer made all the sense in the world to me, but the woman clearly decided that my head was full of fluff and smoke, so she continued on her path toward those mystical caves.
I turned around to peer down once more at the entrance to the atrium where those incredible petroglyphs were etched on the far back wall. I know that I will never be able to explan what happened to me, how it happened, or if that reality will ever again present itself to me in my lifetime. All that I know is that those petroglyphs were carved by the hands of the children that I was sent to save.
End
Thoughts, questions, comments? Please feel free to write them below in the comments section - I'm always happy to hear your responses!
Until our next spooky tale dear readers!
Your humble author,
S. Faxon
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