Flare (25 page)

/***/

Ash dreamt that he was in the Salvation, and he was lucid. The dream was preternaturally vivid, and though he couldn’t control his environment, he knew that it was a dream. The Salvation was simply a large penthouse, high up in a building in the center of a city, and there was no one else in the room. He was clean, cool and comfortable, and he was alone.

The penthouse was sparsely furnished, with modern wood flooring and glass walls. Though the sky was filled with the blaring sun, the thin glass walls had somehow muted its strength, and Ash was able to look at it without squinting.

Ash viewed the city below and was aghast to see a devastated urban wasteland filled with endless people crammed together, a mass of humanity so deep that they were crawling on top of one another just to keep from being crushed to death.

It was miserable outside and perfectly cool on the inside, and Ash felt horrible about that. Though the people outside were distant and barely visible, he felt their torment deeply, as if he were a man watching his own children being killed in front of him. The feeling of helplessness was more than he could bear, and it was increasing in strength to an impossible pitch in the way that emotions can only expand in dreams, unconstrained by reality.

He couldn’t do anything though. He couldn’t figure a way out of the room because it had no doors. He couldn’t break the glass because there was nothing around with which to break it.

The sun flashed, and the group on the ground began to burn. The pile of humanity stopped crawling on top of each other and reversed their direction, now scrambling to the bottom as the sun continued its steady assault. No one was safe and even those at the bottom began to cook, because the sun was roasting the pile thoroughly. Soon the crush of people caught fire, and Ash saw the flame start in the middle and spread outwards, burning through the group as if it were paper.

Ash knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t quite dissociate himself from the crowd below. He knew they weren’t real, but his emotions were, and he felt like his anguish was going to grow until his heart stopped. He heard their cries as they burned, still living in the flames. He tried to will the sun into stopping its attack, but he couldn’t make it stop. He tried to walk up to the glass and crack it open with his hands, but he couldn’t even move.

As he watched idly, Ash felt each person’s anguish as they cooked, lighting up like an ember before turning into a charred husk of spent coal. Though thousands died by the second, there were millions more waiting to be burnt, so the screams kept coming, wave after wave, while Ash stood alone in his Salvation penthouse, cool, comfortable and impervious to the agony below.

/***/

He woke from the nightmare calmly and breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that he was back in the tent. He was in a cramped space, vulnerable and not yet at the Salvation, but he was still glad to be awake.

Ash had been the last one to rise, and the front of the tent was open to reveal a night filled with an ocean of stars, strewn across the sky like shiny dust on a soft blanket. He exited the tent to see Courtney and Heather alone, staring at the horizon. The large man was nowhere to be seen.

“Did you dream?” Heather asked.

“Yes,” said Ash.

“It was that tea he gave us,” said Heather.

Courtney laughed, because she had dreamt too. Ash told them of his dream and they nodded their heads, unsurprised. Heather told Ash she dreamt that he had ascended to heaven, and it had made her sad.

“It wasn’t the heaven we’ve been told of, with white clouds and angels playing harps,” said Heather.

“What was it, then?” asked Ash.

“I don’t know,” said Heather. “You just went
up
, and I knew you’d never return.”

Heather looked upset and Ash wanted to console her, but it was hard for him.

“I dreamt that I was with the man that led us here,” said Courtney. “I don’t know what I was doing, but we were together. Not together in the sense that you and I are together, Ash, but like we were two spirits linked. Like we wanted to accomplish the same thing.”

“What were you supposed to accomplish?” asked Ash.

“I don’t know,” said Courtney. “But we weren’t at the Salvation.”

/***/

The silent man came back to the group five minutes later and pointed off to the horizon. He started to pack up his silver tent, and the group packed up their things too. He left in the direction that he had pointed and the group followed. Ash’s leg didn’t feel quite right and each step was painful, but he kept quiet. The Salvation was only a few hours away.

/***/

They lumbered on through the night, and the group became thirsty. The big man sensed it and returned to them, procuring a large jar of water from his trench coat. Ash wondered how the man had been carrying a jug of water all this time, and when the group was done the man took the empty container back and it disappeared into his coat again.

They continued forward, and the desert became desolate. It had been dry and sparse before, but it was now absolutely lifeless. There were no hardy shrubs on the ground, no scurrying animals in the distance, not even insects flying through the air. The ground was dead, and stayed dead in every direction up to the horizon.

It was still rough walking though, and the big man came back twice to check on Ash’s leg. The second time he found that Ash’s scabbed cuts had opened. The big man ripped a piece of cloth from his coat and then took some duct tape from his pocket. He wrapped the cloth around Ash’s leg and bound it with the tape. He beckoned Ash to try the makeshift bandage out, and Ash grimaced as he walked. His leg hurt, and the man looked chagrined because of it.

“It’s okay,” said Ash. “What do we have, an hour left?”

The big man nodded.

“I can make it,” said Ash.

The man frowned, unconvinced. But he eventually nodded and the group resumed walking.

/***/

One hour and ten minutes later they still hadn’t reached their goal, and Ash had to sit down to rest. The big man came back to help him, but Ash held up his hands.

“It’s okay,” said Ash. “We should be close.”

Ash beckoned Courtney close and gave her his map with his coordinates.

“Can you tell where we are?” asked Ash.

Courtney looked at the map and then at the stars. She looked at the map again and squinted her eyes.

“We should be close, really close,” she said. “In fact, the Salvation should be … there.”

Courtney pointed towards the horizon, and they could see something faint in the distance. They couldn’t quite tell what it was, but it looked to be the size of a large house. The silent man smiled and offered Ash his hand. Ash took it, and the large man swung him upwards and placed him on his back. He was still carrying a large backpack but put Ash over it, then stood up straight without effort. Ash clung onto the man’s shoulders like a child at a parade, and he could see the object in the distance, large and just barely lit.

“Let’s go,” said Ash.

/***/

The object turned out to be a tree. There was nothing else alive in the vicinity, but there was a tree, and every single one of its branches held thick green leaves. Its body was oversized and sturdy, perhaps thirty feet across, and its canopy was so dense that Ash wondered if it would be possible to survive the flare by sitting under it, or by scurrying up into its branches.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Courtney, feeling its trunk. “From far away it looks like a large oak tree, but its leaves are much denser, and its body is that of a baobab’s. It’s a baobab-oak tree.”

Though the round, smooth trunk was built like a small building, Courtney found a way to climb it and was soon within its foliage. She brought down a leaf, and it was dark green with a reddish tinge when Ash shined his flashlight on it.

“The leaves themselves are interesting too,” said Courtney. “They’re thick, and they have a lot of wax on them. They’re really dark and are covered with silver hairs.”

Courtney gave him the leaf and then looked up at him.

“What do you think of this?” she asked. “From what you’ve studied?”

“I still don’t know how this could survive the flare, biologically speaking,” said Ash. “But its features do all the right things.”

Ash shifted his focus from the leaf to the tree itself and realized he hadn’t seen anything this
large
in some time. So far the environment tended to favor the small, hardy living things. Big trees that spread their limbs up to the sky were the first to be burnt, while the humble shrub that hugged the earth survived.

“Someone must have known this tree could withstand the flare,” said Ash. “Someone must have placed this here deliberately.”

But how could they plant a tree this big?
Even with modern technology, it’s hard to uproot a tree this size and bring it all the way out here—

Ash thought about this. He touched the tree’s trunk, healthy and robust.

“I don’t quite understand where we are, but this is it,” he said. “We’re here.”

The group walked around the enormous tree slowly, and even the large man looked up in awe. Courtney had climbed back up into the foliage and was inspecting the branches. She was perched on one of the tree’s smaller limbs, still so thick that it supported her with ease.

“Do you see anything?” asked Heather.

“Yes,” said Courtney. “There’s some strange piping in here.”

“Piping?”

“Yeah,” she said. “The pipes are built into the tree somehow, and made out of some strange material, like plastic. In any case it looks like the tree grew around them, and there are little holes at the end.”

Ash could now see the piping from where he stood, but just barely. After a moment of thinking, he noticed that the large man was missing. Ash wanted to call for him, but then he realized he didn’t know the man’s name. Ash limped around the tree, slowly circumnavigating its enormous girth. He made a complete circle but still couldn’t find the man.

Ten minutes later Courtney found him, deep in the darkness.

“There,” she said, pointing from the tree.

Ash couldn’t see anything, but he walked in the direction that Courtney was pointing and eventually saw the outline of the large man. Ash approached slowly, and saw that the man’s backpack was missing, and he was standing in front of another pipe in the ground. The pipe stood four feet in the air, and was pure white and quite thick. Ash came close to it and saw that it ended not in a hole, but in a glowing white button.

Heather and Courtney soon joined them around the pipe, and they surrounded it to make four corners, with Ash on the ground and the other three standing. The white button glowed with a soft pulse, beckoning them to press it.

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t push it,” said Ash. “Do any of you guys have any objections?”

They all shook their heads
no,
including the black man.

“I think we should all press it, each one of us,” said Courtney. “Just once each, and see what happens.”

They all nodded, and Ash winced as a pain shot through his leg. He stumbled while he stood, and the large man helped him up. Ash leaned on the man and marveled at how solid he was, and thought that it was like leaning against the baobab-oak tree.

“You guys mind if I go first?” asked Ash.

They all nodded
no.

Ash pressed the button, and it flashed green in response. Nothing else happened. Ash nodded at the large man that he would be okay, and Ash sat on the ground. Courtney was the second to go, and the light turned green as well. Heather also received a green light. Finally, the silent man pressed the button, and it flashed green a final time.

Nothing happened, and after a half minute of silence, Courtney spoke up.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“We wait,” said Ash. “We’re here, and I think we should wait.”

They all nodded in agreement. The sun was going to come up soon, but for now they could wait. Ash noticed that the large man was particularly calm. He looked like a man who could wait for a long time.

/***/

Ash sat under the baobab-oak tree, and his eyes felt heavy. He was tired, but it wasn’t the soft, relaxed exhaustion that was brought on by their companion’s mushroom drink. This was the heavy, unnatural sedation that was found in gases from a dentist’s office. It didn’t knock him out immediately, but it would soon. Ash tried to move his limbs but couldn’t, and he figured that he had perhaps a minute of consciousness left. He had no desire to leave the baobab-oak tree anyway. He wanted to lie down beneath its limbs and let the world club him into oblivion.

In his few last moments of consciousness, he looked around and saw that Heather and Courtney had already passed out. The large dark man was sitting cross-legged as if he was meditating, and Ash couldn’t tell if he was still conscious or not.

Ash wondered where the gas was coming from, and reasoned that it was coming from the pipes in the branches, the pipes with the holes in the end that were
built into the tree somehow, like the tree grew around them.