The Hell Season (30 page)

Tomorrow we are going to leave this place. Head south. I’m not sure what to expect when we reach our destination. Maybe Stella will be waiting for us. Or Tanya, by some miracle. There could be any number of other survivors there we may not have seen when we left town. What about Gerald? Or Ron? I hope not if it’s the Ron I knew after his resurrection.

There is one thing I’m quite confident we
will
find when we get there. The hole. The pit. The abyss. According to the angel, we are to enter that abyss. And what will we discover when we do? Some sort of portal that will bring us back to the world we once knew, the world from which we were taken? A gateway to another world entirely where our friends and loved ones have been waiting for us to arrive? Or will it act as a psychological trigger that will awaken me from the dream I’ve been experiencing this whole time? Will I blink my eyes and turn my head to find Julia lying in bed next to me? Will Robert and Jenny come running into the room, ready for breakfast and the first of many long summer days? Wishful thinking, I know, but it doesn’t stop me from thinking it anyway.

Once we are there at the Wal-Mart again, once the fated time is upon us, just how, exactly, will we “embrace the darkness”? By slowly and carefully climbing down into the pit? Or by jumping from its edge, diving outward and into the waiting blackness, an actual, physical leap of faith?

So many questions... Soon enough, it seems, I’ll have my answers. For now, though, the time has come to put the computer away, to go to bed and try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is a big day as are the ones to follow. And, with any luck, if what the angel said was true, June the twenty-first will prove to be the biggest day of them all.

THE END