Sapience (31 page)

The canisters started spewing white smoke that engulfed the entire far end of the hallway. We were now trapped between a wall of tear gas and the large wooden door. Spencer kneeled down and went back to peering through the hole.

Chapter 20

            
 
“Brianna, can you seal this door up with ice?” Spencer asked.

Brianna looked away from me for the first time since we had sat down. “Sure.” She said, standing up and walking over to the door. She ran her hand down the crack between the two doors, filling it solid with ice along the way. She was quick to come back over and sat down at my side.

I closed my eyes for a moment because it was getting so hard to keep them open, a strange relief washed over me when they were closed. It wasn’t long before I felt Brianna slapping me lightly on the cheek.

“Sleep is not an option William, I don’t know if you will wake back up. We have to get through this first.”

It felt like there were heavy weights pulling down on my eyelids as I opened them. I wasn’t going to hold out for much longer. My head was in Brianna’s lap and she was running her fingers lightly down my scalp. It was a heavenly feeling amid all the pain. I shivered under her touch. 

“Looks like they are beginning to grow suspicious.” Spencer said. A few moments later you could hear people trying to force their way through the door.

“And now it’s time to ensue a little panic.” He ran his hands down the bottom of the door leaving a trail of flames that quickly began to grow. “Nothing like believing you are in a burning building to make you let your guard down.”

Our side of the door was soon entirely engulfed in flames. The heat coming off the fire was extremely uncomfortable. It didn’t seem to bother Spencer, fire couldn’t hurt him.

The ice in the door began to melt, luckily there was still enough to hold the soldiers at bay on the other side.

Brianna ran ice across our exposed skin to counter the intense heat. It actually worked pretty well. I wanted to inform her that she had missed a spot on my calf but decided it wasn’t worth the energy it would take to say it.

Soon we began to hear shouts of panic increase from the opposite side of the door. The men were no longer trying to bust through, the fire must have scared them off which was good because the ice Brianna had sealed it with was completely gone.

Spencer checked that his rifle was cocked and loaded then stepped up to the burning door. He closed his eyes and relaxed his muscles. He stood there for a while, quietly waiting.

I began to wonder what he was doing. Then I heard a gunshot come from the other side.

Spencer’s eyes snapped open, he took one last gaping breath and kicked the door apart.

The other room was packed with soldiers. I could barely see more than ten feet in through all the panic stricken men.

Spencer began shooting into the crowd. The spray of bullets from his gun cut a deadly path through the room. I could see farther and farther every second. There were other guns going off too, but it seemed like no soldier could live long enough to figure out what was going on and shoot Spencer. Smoke wafted to the ceiling but didn’t fill the room entirely. Most of the doors had been set ablaze to make the appearance of a far greater fire.

Brianna hovered over me, as if to take on any stray bullets that might come our way. The thought made me sick to my stomach.

Spencer loaded a new clip fast as lightning and continued shooting, all within the beat of a heart. I could hear other guns going off and cringed as the wall was struck and a splinter of cement hit me above the eye. It didn’t hurt as much as I would have thought, maybe my body had reached its maximum pain threshold and was refusing to recognize any more.

Spencer took a step into the room, he was now pausing between shots and taking the time to spot what little targets were left.

Only a minute after it had started, the shooting stopped. In an instant there were no more percussions from guns, no more screams from panicked soldiers, only the crackle from the burning doors.

“Status report!” I heard a man yell, I think it was Adrian. Some of the other gun shots I heard must have been the rest of our group shooting in from different directions.

“I have both targets.” Spencer yelled back as Brianna pulled me up to my feet. “William is down and has lost a lot of blood.”

Then I heard Rachel yell “Josh took a bullet to his lower stomach just now, he is still standing but I don’t know for how much longer.”

Spencer and Brianna took my arms over their shoulders and we entered the room. The floor was a blanket of dead soldiers. Blood was splattered everywhere and everyone was covered in a layer of dust. The room itself was big and round, with large wooden doors evenly spaced along the wall. A cathedral ceiling loomed, huge and white over the carnage below. The others were standing in groups of two at all the open doors. Josh and Rachel stood at one burning door, Adrian and Lillie at another. They were all dressed the same as Spencer, they had their gas masks pulled up on top of their heads to reveal their faces.

“Let’s move out.” Adrian said, turning back the way he had come from. Lillie, at his side, eyed me for a moment before turning to follow. I knew the look well, she was taking a quick survey to see what condition I was in and figuring out what treatment I would need. It also said that I had been missed.

Josh leaned on Rachel as they met us in the center of the room. Rachel had one hand pressed firmly against his abdomen, blood seeped through the cracks of her fingers. We all shuffled through the hulking bodies in a rush to catch up with Adrian and Lillie.

“It’s good to see you.” Josh grunted.

“Tell me about it.” Brianna said.

We exited the room and went down a large hallway. I tried with all I had to keep my head up. It was so hard, I wished I could just lay down and sleep. My feet were now dragging without so much as the pretense of trying to walk. At the far end of the hallway was a long set of glass doors where blindingly bright light shined in from outside. As we got closer I could see that most of the glass had been shot out and there were more dead soldiers on the ground.

We slipped through the window panes without bothering to open the doors. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the light I could see a black suburban waiting on the curb with its passenger doors open. The rest of the parking lot looked like it had been racked with mortar shells.
  I wouldn’t want to be the guy standing in this parking lot when the fighting began. The snow had melted but the weather was still chilly, the cold wind was a welcomed caress on my wounds.

Josh and I were laid down in the back seats while everyone else scrambled to cram themselves in everywhere else. Lillie immediately began inspecting my wounds. She worked systematically, starting with the bigger ones and working her way down. Her expression never changed from one of a deep set of concentration.

Brianna sat down by my head and lightly ran her fingers down the side of my face and neck. She tapped on my cheeks every time I started to fall asleep. She looked so troubled, soon even her tapping and pleading wasn’t enough to keep me awake.

I watched her, the most beautiful girl in the world, the girl I always wanted at my side, until my eyes slipped closed and I passed out.

At first it was dark, I was alone in a pit of black. I don’t know for how long, it could have been days, or weeks, it was impossible to tell. I just sat there, waiting for the moment when the nothingness would end. Hours passed and then days, finally I emerged from the darkness into a dream.

I was in one of the government’s big cities. Large buildings, all of which were hundreds of years old, towered over me. Thousands of cars lined the streets and yet there were no people.

“Hello!” I called, my voice echoed back and forth through the eerie streets, hello, hello, hello...

I peered through the window of a clothing store. At first I thought I saw people, but they turned out to only be mannequins. There was a layer of dirt on everything as if I were the first person to have been here in a long, long, time.

I started walking; desperately trying to find an end to the city that never came. As I walked on, the city began to grow more and more similar. Eventually everything looked the same, every building, every car, even the dented stop sign that waited for me at every corner.

“Let me out here!” here, here, here…

I started to run, I wanted out of this place. No matter how fast or how far I went, I could not out run the similarities. I was trapped somewhere deep inside my subconscious with no way out.

I stopped running to try and catch my breath. I was about to continue on when I heard someone yelling behind me. When I turned I saw Brianna. At first I was ecstatic, I wasn’t alone, she was with me. I started towards her but stopped as I saw her panic stricken face.

She was screaming “No!”

As she got closer I realized she wasn’t looking at me but over my shoulder. When I turned to see what she was looking at I found myself face to face with Adrian. He was pointing a gun straight at me, a crooked grin on his face. He pulled the trigger before I could react. BANG!

My eyes snapped open. The first thing I was aware of was a bright light hanging over my face. The second was the excruciating pain. It felt like somebody had torn my body into tiny pieces and poorly sewn it back together. I could do nothing but stare into the light, I was too afraid of the pain to move. There was a heart monitor somewhere nearby. I listened to its rhythmic beep, beep. The hours of a life could be measured in that sound, I waited for the monitor to stop and my time to be up. Surely the pain alone would kill me soon.

I wondered where I was and how long this would last, I just wanted it to end. I must have fallen asleep soon after that because the next thing I remember was waking up and seeing that it was bright outside.

I was propped up in the hospital bed. Daylight came flooding in through the window and the heart monitor was gone. I recognized the room, it was on the second floor of our house, I was home. Lillie must have moved all this hospital equipment into the empty room upstairs.

Brianna was asleep on a red couch, under the window. I sat there watching her, taking in every inch of her face. The wounds from her fight with the physical user were almost completely healed, which meant that I must have been unconscious for a long time.

My own pain had lessened too, not completely but it was now bearable.

The shadows in the room eventually shifted and Brianna began to move. She tossed and turned, she stretched and yawned. This went on for a half an hour before she finally sat up.

“Good morning sleepy head.” I said.

Her head snapped in my direction and a smile spread across her face, flashing her dimples.

“You’re awake!”

“It is the morning isn’t it?”

She stood up and began walking barefoot across the wood floor “Yes, but you haven’t been awake in over three weeks.”

Three weeks! “I was in a coma?”

She nodded “It was Lillie’s idea, She wanted to spare you the initial pain of recovery.” When she was only five feet away she stopped, looking nervous.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She took two steps towards the door and paused. “I’ll be right back.” She said. “I want to brush my teeth first, really quick.”

I wanted to object but she ran out before I could say anything.

“He’s awake!” I heard her yell somewhere deeper into the house.

I sat there for a while, listening to the birds chirping outside the window. I should have been dead, everything in life seems more vibrant after you almost die. The white curtains waved slowly in the breeze coming from the floor heater. I was safe now, my family and friends were here and I was safe. Things had gotten so out of control, in all fairness we all should be dead. That makes every day from here on out a gift.

It wasn’t long before Lillie came racing in; she walked right up and grabbed my wrist to check my pulse. “Did you enjoy your nap?”

“Nap? I was out for weeks!”

“I didn’t want to see you suffer.” When she was done checking my pulse she handed me a tooth brush, bottle of water, and a bucket. “Your breath is horrible.”

Brushing my teeth was surprisingly easy, it didn’t hurt to lift my arms hardly at all.

“We were quite worried about you William. Only I know how close you really came, though I suspect the others can guess.” She sat on the end of the bed and watched me with a warm smile. “I don’t think I have ever been more troubled in my life.”

“I’m glad I had you there to save me.” I said.

“Rachel is downstairs preparing you a large breakfast, I want you to eat as much as you can. It is imperative that you get food in your body.” She stood up and waited to take the toothbrush back.

“Ugh, I am starving!”

When I was done Lillie walked over to the door. “It’s nice to finally have you back with us.” She said before disappearing around the corner.

Moments later Brianna walked back in. Her face was flush from just having been washed and I could smell her refreshing perfume.