“Let’s just stay in the States. You’ll be at Whiteman. I’ll come up from Leonard Wood on Saturday. Not like the Americans give a shit what we do anyway as long as we are back in class in a week. We can go see the arch…..all the boring buildings you can desire in St. Louis.”
It really didn’t take that much to convince him, it wasn’t like he had any friends besides Amy anyway. Mom was in Lebanon visiting her family, Dad was supposed to meet her, and MIT didn’t have a break until American Thanksgiving, so visiting Sarah would be a waste of time.
St. Martin’s on a Saturday night had been both a bust and relaxing – booze and fried foods at a dive called Cajun Shack. Someone to talk to other than the elitist cadets at the US Air Force Academy. All of them absolutely positive they knew far more than their neighbors to the north. Of course, their toughest classes only kept him slightly interested, since they started so far behind as first year cadets, that they were still behind three years later. He’d been cruising. Maybe he drank too much while chillin’ with Amy.
Maybe that’s why neither one of them really recognized the first explosion the next day, because it certainly wasn’t rehashing the loser tinder date she’d been on that was distracting them.
His eyes flashed open, the memories shaken loose by having rolled over onto his back, and the wounds screaming at him.
Darkness. Multiple people breathing. He moved a bit, trying to find a better position, moving the extra clothes and the duffel slightly. Who knew how difficult it would be to find a comfortably position with your ass shredded from a bad landing? He only hoped that Kiki had been able to actually pull out all the particles and clean it. An infection during the end of the world would be…..a bad way to die. He’d seen enough of bad infections on trips with his Dad.
He reached for the chain out of habit, the one his mother had given him years ago, before frowning, remembering that it was no longer there. Instead, he pictured the colors of the cross, murmuring in his native French the ritual prayers of khams ḥudūd. He could recite it in all three languages, but something told him speaking Arabic at the moment, even while the others were asleep, was not the most intelligent of moves.
The prayers of his mother’s faith allowed him to focus, as always. The pain of the wounds diminished slightly, as he thought through the last several hours. He never shied away from the truth, invariably spoke the truth, as the first precept dictated. Which inherently led to his lack of friends. Truth was often harsh, and…..well, a debate he did not need to have with himself for the thousandth time right now.
What he didn’t need to debate was the actions he should have taken. Figured out a way to take. The man they had met, Tags, seemed fearful of his need for weapons. He’d seen the way he’d reacted on the rooftop. More importantly…..more importantly he was either lying, or they’d left somebody behind in that hospital. Five weeks…..five weeks in a hospital, supposedly unconscious, but now relatively healthy. He had not been connected to any medical device when he awoke. He couldn’t speak for the others, but even if he had been, who had fed them? Cared for them? Protected them from these alien infected zombies? How many others might there have been?
He didn’t really trust this Tags at all. God would understand if he didn’t say that out loud, not yet anyway.
Last Dreams 