“What? Who are you? We need to warn the rest of the world and work on a cure,” Arthur countered.
The man chuckled, “How noble of you, wanting to rid the world of the pandemic you created. Unfortunately, I am not concerned with a cure for anyone but myself.”
Arthur opened his mouth to say something when he felt a sharp pain in his back and he fell to the ground.
Selena’s face came into his line of sight. “Do as he says and you’ll live. This is a new world now, thanks to you.”
Arthur wanted to scream, but he felt consciousness slip away from him.
What had he done?
EXCERPTS
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Falling through the deep, frigid darkness and rushing onward to a terminal light, there is awareness, and the concept of shape, form, and breath.
The woman exploded into the universe of the real. Her soul collided with her consciousness, and she simply was. Her vision was flooded with light as she brought her forearm in front of her eyes to shield herself from the searing fire. She thought about pain, water and gasped for fresh, revitalizing air.
“It’s about time,” a man’s voice spoke.
“What?” her lungs failed her; she coughed spasmodically. She leaned forward in her seat and stifled the urge to vomit the flame that tickled her throat.
She was moving, but uncontrollable, unstoppable perpetual motion urged her entire body through the spaces of light. She could feel it, though she sat in a seat. She was alive. This much she knew.
“You were asleep for so long…” the man replied, though she couldn’t hear the rest of his words over her second coughing fit. Her entire body quivered; she arched her back against the seat, opened her eyes long enough to see that she sat beside a window, and the sun-soaked world outside scrolled along her perception impossibly fast. She was momentarily jostled, and her head nearly hit the window. She could hear steel and iron grinding beneath her feet.
She was on a train, but why?
She wiped her mouth with the bottom of her dirtied, frayed shirt. The collar was open against her perspiration-soaked chest, highlighted by the glaring sunlight that poured through the window. She reached up for the curtain above and pulled it downward to help ward off the light. The darkness, for now, was more comfortable. She needed to collect her idealized notion of perception.
What was happening to her? She glanced at the weather-beaten youth with tanned flesh and wild, unruly blond hair atop his head. He was shirtless beneath the gray jacket that lay open, and he lay slouched against the seat beside hers. He absently rolled a pendant that hung from his neck between his fingertips. His other hand rested on the butt of a revolver. The gun slept on his thigh, while the leather thong attached its lethal presence around his shoulder.
“Remington,” she named the gun. How did she know what it was? Did it belong to her? Would she know how to use it?
With sleepy, gray eyes, he looked her up and down. He seemed to wheeze, “Anyone ever tell you that you look like the outlaw? You know…Neasa Bannan? ’Scuse my language, ma’am, but she could make the Devil himself get down on his knees and pray. Don’t mind me, I’m just blabberin’. Figure it’s on account of this here train. Damn unstable. Never did like these rides. My pop used to always say…”
She stared at him while his mouth moved. Useless words tumbled lazily from his mouth as if he struggled against nausea. Dark shadows bordered the ridges of his slow, half-lidded eyes.
Her mouth opened. There were words she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to say them. Questions. There were answers that should have already belonged to her with certainties that would identify her, isolate her soul and define it with purpose. She lacked them all. She opened her hands and looked at the multitude of uncountable lines that formed deep ridges within her palms.
No. She was…she was…
“…Damn nigger lovin’ Yanks sent that dog Pemberton running. I got to get home and tell Pa ’bout my brother. I’ll be damned if Pemberton’s goin’ to find me. He ain’t lookin.’ Call me a yella-belly if you want, but you might think different if you seen what I seen. Them Yanks got these guns that keep on firin’, and they got their general with them, that alcoholic sumbitch…forget his name. Pardon my language, ma’am. I ain’t much for manners. I s’pose, on account of it all, you know, the war. It ain’t no war, though. I thought a war might be like you get these good ol’ boys and the Yanks, you see, and we roll up our sleeves and decide what’s what…”
The boy continued to ramble. She looked down at her hands again. She could feel every bead of sweat against her spine. The back of her neck was cold and wet. She squeezed her eyelids shut and listened to the wheels roll across the tracks. She felt incredibly alone in the midst of a vivid dream. The dream belonged to her, yet she was deeply entrenched within its symbolic miasma of terror.
She didn’t know who she was.
“…I ain’t no thief, mind you. This here gun belongs to you. A nice piece. It’s the newest model, I reckon. My brother used to have a Colt, which reminds me of this one time where we was rustlin’ up these pigs…”
There were questions she could ask, but she would reveal her weaknesses. She sought within the recesses of her mind for some semblance of identity. What did she look like? Her brown hair was shoulder-length and wavy, her body was lithe; she was tall. Her legs stretched out beneath the seat in front of her. Was the seat empty? She sat up to survey her surroundings. The car was empty save for a single man who seemed to be sleeping a few seats ahead of them. She felt compelled to interrupt the youth’s long, tedious speech.
“Give me the gun if it’s not yours,” she stretched out her hand.
She was surprised when he lifted the leather thong over his shoulder and gently placed the gun in her open hand. “I ain’t no thief,” he repeated. “There’s work to be done back home. Ain’t no Yanks goin’ to take our property. I’ll see to it…”
“Shut up,” she asserted herself. It felt right. It felt…natural. “Where’s this train headed? I forgot.”
He shrugged. “Ma’am, I don’t rightly know. This locomotive is a hospital train, only it wasn’t fully loaded when it took off. There’s a supply car in the back, and a kitchen. Some wounded Yanks in the hospital car ahead. Course, I ain’t ’bout to give my own life for General Pemberton and his crew. I got to get back home.”
“Who else is with us? How many?”
“Well, we got the doctor sleepin’ a few seats yonder, and we got wounded Yanks up front, the conductor… but I ain’t rightly knowin’ how many are on this here train, ma’am. It took off before they finished loading it.”
“You’re a Confederate deserter,” she looking him up and down.
“Not exactly. See, I was lookin’ for a way out. I mean, I ain’t no coward or nothin’. No Yank is goin’ to call me no coward, ma’am. I done my own share of fighting on the hill ’fore they got my brother…see he got it right ’tween the eyes and…”
She shook her head and gripped the gun tightly. The weapon felt as if it belonged in her hand; it was comfortable between her fingers, but she felt incomplete. “Is there anything else? Powder and ball? Pre-loaded cylinders?”
He batted his eyelids for a moment before reaching down to his waist and unbuckling a belt from around his gray, dusty Confederate trousers. The belt hung heavily from his hand; the empty holster and a row of pre-loaded cylinders adorned the length of leather along with pouches full of powder and ball. She took it from him and buckled it around her own waist. He produced a second belt, this one complete with another Remington revolver in its holster and more loaded cylinders.
Why would she have two guns? Was she the woman he mentioned—the outlaw? Was she on the run from the law?
