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  "No," she whispered, looking at the dead man staring into space ahead.

  "Go and check the back, there may be something," Zack reached inside the car and fumbled for release. The hood popped, but he had to wrench it. "It's broken. The acid leaked out," he slammed it.

  "I've found water in their bags," she called from cargo space and put two bottles inside her bag. "What now?"

  "We move forward. After you," Zack let her go first.

  She fought in mind to rebalance the scales whether she wants to go or not, but the negative side won. She's not far away from Garrett to run back if Zack chases her. He doesn't seem to be as quick as wolves, and she almost outran them yesterday.

  "Zack, we'll separate here. I don't want to join your community."

  After a few steps, she stopped as no answer came back.

  "Zack?" she looked on both sides, but he wasn't there. "Zack?" she turned around.

  Zack stood by the car with an outstretched arm, aiming a pistol at her chest.

  "What- What are you doing?"

  "Enjoying our time together," he slowly walked closer. "I can't describe how much I'm delighted with my ability to convincingly lie and make up stories even though they are so apparent. Also, I'm quite surprised by the simplicity of you. It had to be poking your brain all the time that everything is made up. You looked like a clever girl, but you obviously aren't. Pity," he smirked at her.

  The way he spoke was the same as the speech of a doctor telling her that her cancer is good for the drugs business.

  "I can't waste more time talking to you. I don't need you, I don't want you around me, and yes, I don't want to see your face anymore. You were always weird. I hope you know that I don't care. It's all about my survival, not yours. You've found yourself some loser who obviously had some sense, but you just untied a stranger and walked away with him. People did many stupid things in my presence, but I can't come up with words to describe this one. Where did you live for the last year? Did you look around? You really thought there is some community? That I will take you to a family where we care about each other? That we scavenge houses for stuff we need? It all would be counter-productive when there are such easy ways," he smiled, satisfied with himself. "It's about stealing, looting, and killing. I kind of started to like the last one," a shade of desire appeared in his voice.

  "And the people living underground? You said they fight for supplies."

  The moment they left, she expected that he won't be entirely honest with her, but only now she understood that he is much worse than she remembered.

  "The people living underground, fighting for supplies, and training their people sounded real to you? If at least five percent of people on this planet are still alive, I would be surprised. Finding more than a few loners wandering around is hard. Others are gone. Scattered. Hidden. They don't have the strength to fight. They are all just waiting to die. And those who want to fight are weak. Who do you think set our camp on fire? A storm? Come on. And the proposal to Emma? She was the first one whose throat I slit when they all slept while I had a night watch," he burst in a mad laugh; she furrowed her brows. "I just told you. You can come to anyone and take whatever you want," he swirled the dust with feet. "Truly, it must be a coincidence that you are still alive. Just by looking at you, I see you were supposed to be rotting somewhere in a ditch by now. As if it would be different since your father began with that."

  "Leave me," she hissed at his grinning face.

  "You've got to understand this," he walked to her with a finger pointing up. "I did teach you something - don't trust people. You've found out pretty late, but it's a valuable lesson," he repeatedly tapped with a thumb on her forehead. "Beneficial and protective one. Look where it led you. If you knew that before, you wouldn't be standing here right now. You would be still in that shack, lying on the bed and wondering with greybeard how to kill me. Same as you are now," he grinned even more. "Wouldn't you? But as I've got a sense of fairness and I consider this kind advice as my intellectual property, I value it. That means I require payment. Then I'll let you go," he played with her.

  "What payment?" she said but didn't want to hear the answer. "I helped you to escape."

  "So? You made a choice. You've got nothing more than a bag and clothes, and everything these days is valuable. Even frozen people. But you could serve me better way than as a corpse. It's been a while since I've seen a stripped girl shivering with cold and fear for her life. Take off your clothes, I want to watch."

  "Are you mad?"

  "Mad? No, not at all. Madness is a mental illness, and I'm perfectly fine. You will do what I say. You are no different from the other ones. They all say the same, rejecting my proposals and then I have to do it myself. Some of them aren't even this lucky to have such an amazing opportunity of choosing fate. But in the end, it's an equal choice. Do you get this? I'm a good person. I let people have the feeling of choice even though they are dead anyway."

  "I'm freezing out here with all my clothes. Go to hell!"

  He raised the gun and put it at her temporal.

  "Then you should get cracking and run back to him when I'm done with you. He'll be delighted by the view on the gift I'll send back to him. I don't have much time. Take it off. Now," he pulled the hammer back, letting her hear the click.

  Jillian glared, blood boiled inside her. She threw the bag and cap on the ground, despising him. Zack made a few steps back, watching her closely. She unzipped her jacket and threw it on the ground.

  "Screw you, I'd rather die than do this!" she shouted, rubbing her arms.

  "If the deal is set, it binds both parties to fulfill their liabilities. And you still haven't paid your part. Now I have to consider your sense of fairness crooked, which makes you a deal-breaker worth of nothing. Farewell partner," Zack raised the gun again.

  Jillian stood there alone, and her blood went suddenly cold. She cried inside with shut eyes, waiting for the single sound separating her from death. She saw the rope, holding her above the void she was scared of all her life, snap, and she plunged into nothingness forever. Seconds that passed felt like hours and hours felt like years. Years of nothing gone in a mere blink of an eye. Zack said something, but she didn't understand. All the sounds mixed into one. She waited only for that sharp pain. Her screaming brain and pounding heart couldn't force her body to run. To hide. To escape.

  Then it came.

  Gunshot echoing inside her ears hit every cell, every bone and every drop inside her body. She sighed relieved. Smiling and spreading her arms, she was falling on her back into soft green grass growing around the shallow calm river under the clear summer sky. The stream burbled; crickets chirped noisily in the high grass. The warm sun rays fell on her face, water droplets dried on her skin, and fragrance of fresh, moist petrichor filled her chest. Joyful, once again. One last time, looking forward to sunrise and a new adventure, leaving a great one behind. A unique chance. A vibrant, bright, never-ending whirl of everyday pleasures. She almost felt the grass.

  Chapter 05 - Catharsis Gone

  Jillian, trembling with fear and cold all over her body, opened her eyes, standing straight. Tears blurred her vision and ran down the face. She wiped them with a dirty edge of rough sleeve scratching her red cheeks. Zack, with dread stuck in his eyes, lay on the ground, still holding the gun.

  "What happened?" she whispered confused.

  Looking around for any clue to help her understand, her sight fell on the van and Garrett standing next to it, holding a revolver.

  "There goes my catharsis," he threw away the empty shell of his last bullet.

  An overwhelming burst of relief rushed into Jillian's mind. She lost balance and fell to her knees. Garrett walked to her, picking up the jacket lying on the ground.

  "It's all right now, girl," comforted her Garrett, kneeling down and wrapping it around her shoulders.

  "I thought it's over. I thought this nightmare's over, and I will wake up to a normal life again. But this is no st
upid dream; it's real. Living every day in fear of tomorrow, waiting to die at any second. I don't want to just survive. I can't go through this anymore, I can't."

  "Come on, girl. You're talking nonsense. There's no time for this. Somebody might hear the shot. We need no company," he helped her on feet.

  She stood there as carved into stone and paid no attention to Garrett.

  "Your cap and bag," he handed them to her, but she took neither.

  Her body was freezing, but she only stared at the dead man. Blood ran from beneath him towards the car and thickened on the way.

  "He tricked me, and stupid me trusted him. So foolish thing to do. I thought I'm more clever than that, but I'll never learn," she muttered self-pitying. "I didn't know you have a gun. You could kill me too."

  "I didn't know he had a gun!" Garrett raised voice towards the lying body and kicked it with such power that they heard ribs crack. "I searched him, and he had none. But he asked for the hole in his head, so he got it," he cut-open dead man's bag. "Help me with this. Search his pockets again," Garrett urged her and turned out man's bag.

  "Why? What's the purpose? We'll die anyway. Sooner or later, you'll be gone; I'll be gone."

  "Stop," he raised the voice again. "Do you see that hill over there?" Garrett pointed with his knife, taking man's goggles and gun. "Where the road meets the horizon? There is the crossroad he spoke about, and getting there is your purpose now. It's the same way I planned to take to get to the base," he looked down the road, and she turned to check it.

  Grey road, covered with trees that couldn't resist yesterday's storm, ran straight down to the bridged valley and up the hill.

  "Okay, yeah, I'm going."

  Garrett walked closer and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  "It will be all right," he patted her but knew there might be nothing but an empty promise. "At least in the end. Come," he pulled her lightly, and they began to walk down the road.

  The first few hundred yards of the road they climbed over trunks slowing them down. Jillian quietly followed, thinking about the man lying there. She chose to go with a man she knew a long ago, and now she is walking next to the stranger.

  "You should know where we are going," he intended to distract her thoughts from Zack.

  "You've said that it's a purpose and there lie answers. If they do and you traveled this far, uncertain if anything is there, then it must be worth it. I don't know where you're leading me, Garrett. Maybe you want to kill me, use me, or maybe you are honest. Anyway, I have no other option than follow you. I'm not very good at surviving on my own. And even if it's only a lie, don't tell me. Just not now."

  "It's not a lie, and I won't speak about it unless you ask me," promised Garrett, and they silently continued down the sloping road to the bridge at the bottom. A river used to run through the narrow valley, but now there's only a dried out rocky river bed.

  "I see the church he mentioned. Look, on the hill. A bell tower."

  Jillian searched for it for a while and then bent her forefinger and thumb to make the tiniest circle. With one eye covered, she looked through the hole.

  "There has never been a church before. At least not on the map," he looked at Jillian holding her hands on the face. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm sharpening the image," she rotated the hand. "It's physics 101, Garrett. I thought people know this," she teased him.

  "Yeah, I know. Aperture. I worked at the university for a while."

  "You don't say," she looked at him surprised. "You certainly don't look like a scholar."

  "What do I look like?"

  "I don't know. A car seller or somethin'."

  "A car seller?" he raised eyebrows; she shrugged. "I taught Advanced Dynamics of Electromagnetic Fields at Birkwood University for two years. It was pretty neat all the time, but I'm a terrible teacher. Most of my students, brilliant as they were, I managed to substantially confuse with the simplest tasks. They didn't understand anything I said because I made the lectures too complicated. Some of them considered changing the study field because of me. So I rather got back to my research to let them pass exams. After all, it was always more exciting in the lab than in the lecture hall."

  "Tell me about that. I went to school to die every day. How could you work there?"

  "I had a research grant for a project. We created a complex molecule capable of generating magnetic fields hundreds of times stronger than any other could, simply by focusing numerous streams of forces that grew through spheres built-in within each other. We named the molecule Ocrosir. The first one of the hyper-compounds and one of a kind where all the forces were uniquely balanced. When we finished the draft, and everything looked promising, we began to synthesize it. It took us long to find out how to fix atoms in the positions we wanted. Instability, properties changing, and decaying in a matter of seconds fitted nowhere close to success.

  Until we designed a new crystal structure. The first time we made less than one gram, and it got immediately stuck on any piece of metal. We learned how to control this strength and aim it directly where we wanted. Can you imagine how many possibilities and applications it could be used in? We tried everything we could in the lab. We also had an idea to make the university invisible by bending the stream of photons around it if we had enough material. We could achieve a lot, but in the end, they forced us to give up on it and sell it to the army. They told us that some commission for civilian protection marked it as a weapon with an unknown degree of potential danger to the civilian area. They allowed me to do some more research with Ocrosir a year later, but only for a while. They simply took my magnum opus," he frowned as they entered the bridge.

  Jillian walked to the edge, and they leaned against rails near a bent lamppost lying on the road.

  "That is awesome, Garrett," she praised him, looking down at trees dominating the valley and touching the arch of the bridge with their tops. "I didn't understand a single word about that molecule, but it surely is awesome," she nodded and looked at him. "So you know something. You could teach me."

  "Teach what?" he expected a simple question.

  "Why is your head twinkling?"

  "What?"

  "Look," she took off his cap. "Your hair ends. They glitter. Maybe you're becoming sai-" Garrett snatched off her cap. Her hair glittered the same as Garrett's and stuck to cap.

  "It's awesome, Garrett. What is it?" she wrapped her brown braid around fingers.

  "It's not awesome. We've got to move. Come on," he urged and looked up at circular clouds passing above them. "It's an electric discharge."

  "I've said you're gonna be a saint," she chuckled at the glow around his head. "What's that buzzing?"

  "Run. Into the woods. Run!" he shouted, pulling her to sprint towards the forest at the hill's bottom.

  The moment they darted, lightning struck the rails where they stood and spreading through it melted the iron.

  "Come on!" he dragged Jillian slowing down.

  Growing buzzing warned him before every strike. Pine needles of forest trees flickered as the field's strength changed. Bolts of lightning struck the road, leaving holes filled with liquid tarmac, and covered them both with showers of sparks from rails and rusty lamps. Hands shielded their faces from burning pieces of metal as they ran into the forest. Garrett immediately pushed Jillian apart from him and threw the bag away.

  "Bag off and get down!"

  Jillian instantly followed his orders and got on all fours.

  Withered plants and dried grass slightly rose up, being pulled towards flashing clouds, and feebly glowed several inches from their faces. Lightning struck around them, set trees on fire, split trunks into halves or blew them up into pieces as if explosives hidden inside detonated. Every lightning hit the ground with an ear-splitting strike. Jillian felt her hair ascend, and metal parts of her clothes being pulled up as well. Garrett watched her as she silently looked at the ground and counted seconds from being hit to her neck.

  "Hold on, it will be o
ver soon."

  Out of nothing, the lightning stopped. Only cracking of burning trees resounded through dense forest. Twisting lenticular clouds moved over them towards the church and continued further. Garrett rolled over on his back, watching the tree burning short way from him.

  "Damn, my ears," Jillian fell on her side, rubbing them.

  "Okay, very well, heh," Garrett breathed quickly. "If someone would ever tell me that storm can counteract a gravitational field, I would smack him. But now..." he stood up, took his bag, and walked to Jillian. "Come, it's getting worse and worse with every hour passed. A hundred miles to the west is barely a trace of anything like this. It must be happening locally."

  Jillian got up, looking like she will never be happy again and desperately sighed, "What the hell was that?"

  "I'm not sure. Earth is messed up," he shrugged, and she rolled her eyes.

  "What now? Back to the road? I don't want to stand under burning trees."

  "Yep, up the hill, and we will be at the crossroad."

  The steep road was covered with black burnt marks made by lightning. Hot tarmac flowed down to the valley like sticky, shiny streams of fudge with an unmistakable irritating smell.

  "Don't step into one."

  "Don't worry. It won't bite me," Jillian replied fed up.

  They silently walked up the hill for minutes, smelling the vapors of hardening matter and smoke of burning wood.

  "Did you see something like that before?" she blew the irritating scent out of her nose.

  "Yes, I've already seen some. These are nasty but not that rare. However, they've never pulled my stuff up to the sky before."

  "So, what was that?"

  "Electric discharge in the charged space. Or some kind of it. But your hair can't twinkle. It's not possible. I've got no idea what happened."

  "Wait," Jillian stopped. "You worked with your science stuff, and you can't explain it?"

  "I didn't. These storms, cold and dry weather without rain or snow, and hurricanes are just a result of the entire climate being severely disturbed. I overheard that the Arctic doesn't exist anymore, and deserts are now overgrown with vegetation and fertile because of heavy, long-lasting rains. But I don't know what causes all the disappearances, abnormal light reflection, and other exquisite effects," he finished sarcastically.