Page 21 of Taken
Time has existed before there was and will exist after there is. I’m fighting now to save a blip in time, to give those Sucere humans and maybe a few of their next generations a chance to exist because that’s all any of us ever have. A chance at something. I feel tears coming to my eyes now at the awesome understanding of the chance I’ve been given.
To paint in museums that once stood. To paint with blood against bunker walls. To paint the desert sands of a time that exists so far after the Fall. To try to save humanity. To maybe be their downfall. To join a pack of monsters, to make love to one of them. To fight with sex and teeth and claws.
I think about my parents, blurry faces I can no longer keep a full grip on in my memories. I think about tia and avó Marias, avó Paolina, tia Leonor, tia Benedita, and tio João. I think of Hugo, who I once bathed with in the fountain and had desperate sex with in a bombed-out building around the corner right after. He’d cried the whole time and I’d cuddled him in my arms.
I think about the monster who screeches like he’s being gutted any time he empties into me, his cock knotting us together right after. I wonder if he’ll be upset or relieved to find me missing when the sun crests the horizon, knowing that regardless, he’ll get over it. Because time stops for no one.
I exhale finally and blink, my eyelids blotting out the cascade of stars twinkling like the ghosts of forgotten worlds, lost somewhere in the eclipse of time. They, too, don’t matter to time, but they matter to me. They are significant, I think as I roll onto my knees. They matter.Imatter.
I grin and rise onto my feet, dust off my filthy fucking uniform and start to jog a little bit faster. I exhale again, even more emphatically. “Don’t worry, Pam. I’m on it. I’ll close the door.”
“It is good to hear that you are…confident…Rhen. Confidence and optimism are good traits in successful Sucere Project team members.”
I laugh, the sound swallowed on the next breeze—a breeze which carries with it another sound. A softer one. “Huh.”
I keep my ear to the wind and my arms pumping at an easy pace knowing that I’ve got another three miles to go, grateful that the caravan hasn’t moved farther than it has. I haven’t been part of the moving process yet and I’m curious about the sail structures I’ve seen from afar.
Aside from the sails, which I’ve never seen up close, there are large wooden platforms, some as big as fifteen meters by fifteen meters, but I don’t know how they’re being moved. Anytime I’m dragged back into camp, his tent is already up or hasn’t been collapsed yet, and after he catches me, he always keeps me inside of it for…awhile.
The soft hissing sound comes at me in a second wave a little while later, carried on another breeze. The sky is a different, lighter color—the dark indigo fading into a murky gray along the horizon. I haven’t been able to see where I’m going at all and the fact that I’ve only fallen three times, stumbling over large rocks, is a miracle. I only know where to go because Pam’s voice corrects my course every so often. Other than that, I just run straight.
“What is that, Pam?”
“Would you like me to take a reading…Rhen?”
“That would be great.” I come to a stop and hold my arm up towards the eastern horizon where there’s nothing. To my left is a rocky outcrop, not too far off. Behind me, to the south, there’s a lone mountain way, way off in the distance. “Thanks, bestie.”
“You are very welcome…Rhen. You are also my best friend. Ha. Haha. Ha.”
I shiver. I don’t know if it’s Pam’s terrible laugh or if it’s an even eerier premonition, but the goosebumps crawling up the back of my neck have me glancing over my shoulder. It’s dark that way. Looking back toward camp, I notice the fire’s either out or I’ve traveled far enough I can no longer see it.
From what I’ve noticed, the tribe tends to wake late into the morning and sleep late at night. If I’ve calculated everything correctly, then I should still have a couple hours before the first being rises. If I keep my pace of some obnoxious number ofmilesper hour, then I should make it. After all, whatever sound I’m hearing is too soft to behispounding feet. His footsteps are spacedwaytoo far apart. I didn’t recognize them as footsteps the first time, that massive loping stride, but I know that sound well by now and that’s not what…
“Rhen…I regret to inform you that I am unable to ascertain the name or nature of the incoming species.”
“Incoming…what?” I lose my voice.
Pam, glib as ever, prattles on, “The most credible information I am able to share is that the incoming species are insectoid in form, though larger than the insects you may remember from the old world.”
All the blood leaves my body in a whoosh. All the little scabbing incisions the beast decorated my neck with tingle. My toes curl in my raggedy boots. “How big?” I squawk.
“The incoming species is moving at approximately eleven miles per hour…”
“I don’t give a shit how fast it’s moving, Pam. What is it?” I screech, picking up my pace and bolting.
“With a small head, glossy, flat body and six legs attached to a thorax, they most closely resemble the old-world cockroach, though are approximately the size of a German Shepherd.”
She’s talking, but I’m hung up on that one single word. So hung up that when she finishes speaking, I repeat it back to her in a screech.“They?”
“Yes. There appear to be somewhere around eighty of them.” I pump my arms harder, but Pam’s cheery voice cuts into my panic. “I would recommend heading for the rocks to your east, rather than to the Sucere Chamber. You may stand a better chance of survival seeking shelter on the rocks than being caught on land and, by my calculations, you will fall short of reaching the Sucere Chamber by half a mile or more if you maintain your current speed and should the incoming creatures not change trajectory.”
“Holy horseballs, Pamela! I am going to fucking kill you!” I shriek, veering dramatically east, toward the jagged cliffs drawn there in charcoal against the lightening sky.
“I understand your…frustration…Rhen. However, I do not have a physical body which you can take out your aggression…”
“PAM, SHUT UP!” I scream bloody murder at the thought of being overtaken by a horde of roaches the size of dogs. I don’t know if they’re carnivorous or violent or if they’re nice as puppies and rainbows, but I do. Not. Give. A. Flying. Horseshit.
Scuttling through the walls and under the floors of every house and apartment I ever lived in, there was no escaping roaches in the old world. There’s no escaping them now. Becauseof coursecockroaches made it, and given their new and improved size and their numbers, they seem to be thriving.
