They are finally outside now, the mass of people shielding them from the cold winds.
"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Lucas has to half-yell to get his voice over the din.
"No, not really. I'm a little confused about everything, actually."
As soon as everyone is outside, the crowd begins to part, and Iia walks back towards the building, her hair lifting gently in the breeze. Time seems to move slower around her, in a little bubble of paused time, and Carey watches with fascination as she reaches out her bare hand and lays it on the outer walls of the gigantic building.
"What's she doing?" Asks Lucas quietly. They entire crowd has fallen still except for those in the back who cannot see and are forced to whisper the proceedings to one another in confused and anxious voices.
"We'll see." Says Carey, not taking his eyes from Iia. She looks up into the sky and closes her eyes, her hand running up and down the brick as if soothing the building's nerves. Carey hears a few screams, and someone shouts,
"Up there!"
Carey and Lucas crane their heads and their jaws drop. The very top story of the building is drifting away as if caught in a strong wind, the entire foundation of the building blowing off as if made of sand. It doesn't take long for the top few levels of the hospital to vanish entirely, and Carey notices with a jump that not only is the building disappearing, but also everything inside of it. Soon half of the building is gone, and then only a fourth remains, and then the entire thing has floated away on the wind, taking with it all of it's basement levels and the concrete beneath, leaving Iia and the crowd standing on the edge of a giant gaping cavern, like a screaming mouth in the earth. The wind blows across it and it moans, the breeze darkly whistling across this hole in the city.
Carey gulps an grips the handles of Lucas' wheel chair, walking backwards and bringing them both further away from the cavernous opening. Lucas has gone as white as a sheet, and his hand flies up and tries to grip at something, anything that is alive. Carey takes his hand and gives it a squeeze before returning his white knuckled grip to the wheelchair.
"What the fuck was that?" stutters Lucas, the white flowers trembling in his lap.
"I think that was change."
Iia turns back towards the people, the hundreds that have gathered now from the neighboring buildings and the drivers that have had to stop their cars to avoid the giant crowd in the street.
"You will go with Dikyn now. I will stay in this place for the time being. There are many things here I must do."
The man in black walks from the crowd, his whitish hair gleaming as he walks.
"So it's all real," says Lucas to himself, shaking his head and staring at his lap.
Dikyn simply says, "This way," and starts to walk down the street, weaving his way between the stopped cars. Slowly the crowd begins to trickle behind him, a mass of people spilling over the cars like water spills over pebbles in a stream. Carey waits for a moment and turns to Iia, who is watching the crowd walk away with a carefully shielded expression. He doesn't want to leave her, to leave that amazing apparition of his brother, to leave the powerful being that can deflect bullets and oncoming cars. She looks at him and smiles warmly; a mother's smile.
"I will meet you again soon. But now is not my time to leave this place. I must stay and help all of the lost spirits here. There are so many suffering, so many in pain. I must remove the stain this city has left upon the earth. I must replenish this place."
"Are you going to destroy everything?" Carey's entire body is covered in goose bumps, and not from the cold. All of these places, all of these people, things he has seen and interacted with everyday for the last years of his life. He can't imagine them all suddenly being gone, everything suddenly vanishing in a whisper of dust, like that hospital.
"Nothing is destroyed. Everything is renewed." She begins to turn away from them. "Go now. Do not be afraid of the changes that lie ahead."
Carey doesn't know what to say to her, so he simply takes hold of the wheelchair and moves down the street, falling in with the crowd as Lucas leans back, sighing as if he has been holding his breath.
"Is this the apocalypse?" He asks seriously, his hand covering his mouth and making his words sound muffled and soft.
Carey waits a moment, trying to think of way to explain it differently, to make it seem less terrifying. But he can't think of anything.
"Maybe." He shakes his head. "Maybe."
The woman in this movie is absolutely ridiculous. She's trying to get this guy to date her, I think he's like her manager's uncles boyfriend's son or something stupid. This is absolutely retarded. Why can't I bring myself to turn it off?
Okay, look away, look at something else, Lucas. Okay, here's a thing, my sister's home office desk thing. It's really, really organized. And really really plain. That computer is really flat and gray, like a slab of concrete. Ew. Boring. And I have to sit down here while she types away day and night. What does she even do anyway?
This couch-bed thing is really uncomfortable. It has all these springs under about a half-inch of padding, and they like to grind in to all the wrong places, if you know what I mean. The things actually leaving bruises all over me, if you can believe that.
AH!
Oh my God I am so bored. I'm going to go wander outside, do something, ANYTHING.
Jesus.
-Lucas
Naomi remembers thunderstorms; the rolling, rumbling angry thunderstorms of summer that left the grass electric green and the sky an ominous yellow. She remembers waking up in the middle of the night when a lightning bolt would rip through the trees as bright and loud and explosive as a blast of light from the sun. She remembers the achingly slow throb of thunder as it rumbled through the house, jiggling the appliances, making the glasses tinkle and clink in the cupboards, shaking the bedposts and rattling the windows.
She remembers the wet, cool wind, so different than the desert winds that blow across the valley. These winds were full of life and electricity, and the rich warm smell of dirt. In the desert the winds blow rough and hot, lifting up the dust and the sand and scraping along the skin like the very air is boiling away and turning to dust. Everything is dry and scratching and painful. The winds back home would blow down the house, knock over the trees, rip down the power lines and destroy everything in their path, but they would leave behind them a track of rain and lighting and explosions, the complex rhythm and cycle of life reverberating behind them in their wake.
She used to stand in the storms with her eyes wide open and her arms spread wide, the rain smacking into her face and the winds trying to uproot her, she would stand there and dare the lighting to strike her, to blast her into the ground and make her part of the wet shining world that she loved so much. Her mother would scream for her to get her coat on, to get inside, scream that she'd catch her death of the cold and the rain.
But Naomi new better. She new that the storms meant life; that ever living thing that was touched by them would turn bright and clean and new. And even the trees that were split along the middle by the forks of lighting would fall, their charred remains giving life to the earth, fuel for the world. The sky would shake and fire up with light, and every hair on her body would stand on end with excitement, with fear, with a sort of awe that can only be saved for the gods, for the titans, for the mighty powers of the Universe.
In the desert it storms maybe twice a year, and the sand beats against the house, the cheap plastic siding sighing with distress, the dry cracked earth trying to eat them all alive, trying to swipe itself clean and renew its palette. The lightning is silent and dry, an when the rain comes it merely colors the earth a dusty brown and makes everything run like a murky river of filth. The world does not replenish; it merely dries out again and waits endlessly for life to return.
She misses the front porch, the screen doors, the rickety, squeaky wooden boards that lined the outside of the house. She misses the sound of the weather vain squeaking and spinning as another storm rolls in, the dark black sky spreading over the prairie like smoke after a fire. She misses everything about it, the smell of wet rock and wet earth and wet sky, the felling of dark rich mud molding around her feet as she runs through the sliding, slippery grass.
She misses cowering in the basement with her father and mother and all their dogs, listening to the distant sirens crying long and high and spinning over the rain and thunder, the old, battery powered radio crackling their fate into the darkness of the house. She misses reading by candle light when the power would go, misses the long lines of bright backlit clouds that would brighten the windows with the excitement of knowing what was to come; the danger and the destruction and the ultimate morning after, when everything was coated in shining drops of moisture and felt so clean.
And now, when she walks behind this new amazing creature, when Rhanna's feet touch the earth and make it split, pouring fourth all of it's hidden desert bounty, she is running again in the rain as it washes the dry sand of the desert away.
It becomes apparent after the first few hours of walking that everyone in going to need food and jackets and rest. The cold has finally started to settle in to the skin, no longer shocking and painfull but numbing and penetrating. Every bone is frozen, every finger red and swollen. No one was prepared, no one is dressed correctly, no one has had enough to eat to fuel this long of a journey.
Lucas is growing restless, he has been sitting in the same position for far too long, his legs are throbbing and pulsing, he knows that the lack of clotting factor is taking it's toll on his body. He has leaned his head back as far as he can and tried to doze, but the chill creeps under his eyelids and makes his eyes water, and Carey's body will knock into him every once in a while as he pushes them both along.
The pace has slowed, everyone has lost the excitement and anxiety that first pushed them forward, now all they want is a warm place to sleep and a hot meal to bed them down with. Carey wonders what they will do. Will they let them freeze; wait for the weakest to fall? He wonders if this is some test of their endurance; a judgment of their ability to cope with the 'change'. Is this evolution in action?
"We need to stop soon," he yells, to anyone that will listen. People have been muttering about it for miles, but no one has said anything until now. "We need to eat."
There is a commotion coming slowly to the back of the procession, a message being passed slowly by word of mouth, passing through the lips of hundreds before it finally reaches the ears of Carey and Lucas.
They can hear people muttering ahead of them, a group talking excitedly through their tiredness.
"They say there's an outlet center ahead. He says we'll stop."
"Do we have to pay? I didn't bring money/"
Carey supposes darkly that no, they won't have to pay. He feels a little uneasy at the thought that they will probably be stealing food and jackets, and even then he wonders if it will be enough. The crowd is huge. Inevitably more people are going to join them, and presumably Iia is following them in a cloud of destruction, leveling all of the buildings, shelter and industry that keeps them alive. Carey wonders what's going to happen after the first week, the first month, the first year.
It is just beginning to dawn on him that this is not just going to affect him, or even just these people around him. If this continues the entire world is going to have to cope, and he isn't sure it can. What if a war breaks out? What if disease and poverty overtake the entire country. Carey frowns and shivers, passing the word on to someone else.
A distant, chopping sound starts to drift through the air, and Carey stops for a minute, the other around him pausing as well, their faces turned partly upwards, trying to distinguish thee noise. As it gets closer Carey recognizes it; the sound of a helicopter, and surely enough a beam of bright artificial light pierces through the early winter dusk, and Carey has to squint and look away. What is it? A rescue helicopter? A news chopper? He tries to make out the writing on the side but the light is shining too brightly and the dusk is too thick.
He turns to his left and can just see the highway, he wonders what the people in their warm cars are thinking; if they are wondering about this crowd of people walking next to them. Maybe they're on the news; maybe these people know all about them, have heard about the hospital and the police and even that poor woman who died in Iia's arms in the parking lot. Maybe they think they're terrorists, or government spies from another country, or soldiers. Carey wonders how those people feel; separated from the truth in their little glass cars.
Across the highway he can see the lights of the outlet stores, the street lamps in the parking lots glaring hot and welcoming. The lot is almost full, it is the hight of post-Thanksgiving shopping season, and Carey wonders if any body is going to be killed; if the news is going to cover this, if the cops are going to come again. What if the army shows up this time? What if they shoot him, or Lucas, or the other sick hospital patients, half of which look as if they are nearly dead from cold already.
"How are we going to get there?" mumbles Lucas, huddling into his chair and trying to keep warm, wrapping his arms about himself. "Are we just going to walk across the highway?"
"Probably," says Carey, and because of his vantage point behind the chair, he can't see Lucas' eyes bulging in shock.
Just as he says it, a car horn sounds across the ditch, and Carey tries to see what's going on, but there are simply too many people to merit a good view of anything. There are astonished gasps and whispers moving down the line, through the crowd, and Carey assumes that Dikyn must have moved out into the road, and a car must have crashed into him and disappeared, just like with Iia.
"What happened?" he tries to ask, but the confusion is just too great, no one this far back can say for sure what's happening. But before long, the entire group finds themselves on the edge of the highway, cars stopped in either direction for miles, drivers getting out to see the commotion, the helicopter hovering noisily overhead.
Carey has to ask for the help of several people nearby to hoist Lucas' chair onto the asphalt, but once they're on smooth pavement, it's easier to push him than it was before, and Carey is suddenly aware of the stiffness in his arms and legs; he has not walked this long or this far for years; he wonders how the sick have faired; and how long it will be before they get to whomever it was that was promised to heal them.
As they cross the stopped-up freeway, Lucas looks around him nervously, realizing something.
"This is really big, isn't it?" he says to Carey, his lips numb and his face buzzing with pain and needles. "I mean, this is a really big deal."
Carey nods, forgetting that Lucas can't see him.
"My sister lives back there." Lucas breathes shakily, something prickling at the back of his eyes. "What if she didn't get out?"
"I'm sure that everyone was given a chance to go." But even as he says it, Carey isn't sure that it's true.
Once across the highway they encounter a steep hill, almost a grass-covered cliff, that leads up to the outlet center. There is no way any of them would be able to scale it, even at full health, and so Carey and Lucas follow the ring of people circling around the base and heading towards the frontage road that leads to the parking lot. The road is steep but manageable, and Carey is feeling a bit warmer by the time they reach the top, his body covered in a thin layer of sweat, his palms wet on the plastic handles of the wheelchair.
"You doing okay?" he asks Lucas, afraid that the other boy might be too cold, or too sick, or to hopeless to make it through the night.
"I could be better." There is a slight pause, and then he adds, "but I'll be fine."
The crowd of people has thinned and dispersed into the various shops, but Dikyn still remains outside, his calm, regal stance making him stick out from the rest. Carey goes past him and as he does a sort of knowledge seems to soak into him, a comfort that wasn't there before. It is as if Dikyn is telling him without words to take what he needs and to rest; they will staying here for the night, safe and warm inside the heated buildings.
Lucas suddenly speaks up, pointing his shivering arm towards a coffee shop.
"In there. Oh, please God in there."
Carey laughs and brings them inside, pressing the both of them through the sea of bodies, Lucas swatting at people in his way with a lighthearted energy he hadn't shown before. When they get inside, they hit a wall of warm, coffee-scented air, and both of them sigh with delight as the warmth begins to soak into their bones; painfully but pleasurably, and they go over to an empty corner and simply wait for a few minutes, letting their bodies readjust.
"I can handle myself in here," says Lucas as he stretches out his fingers and flexes his hands. "I'm a little sore, but I can get myself a coffee." Carey nods and finally disconnects himself from the wheelchair, his hands struggling to stay flat now that they are free.
"I'll go see if I can' find us some coats and gloves and stuff." He starts heading towards the door and Lucas calls out,
"Meet you back here?"
Carey nods over his shoulder and heads back out into the cold, sprinting across the lot towards a sporting goods outlet. The attitude inside is calmer than he thought, hundreds of people milling about patiently, waiting their turns to look at the jackets and hats and gloves. Most of them seem to be happy just to be in from the cold, and he sees more than a few people simply slumped against the walls, sleeping or talking to one another, trying to rest.
The cashiers and stock boys seem to understand the magnitude of the situation, and no one is protesting as people walk out the store without paying a dime; patients and workers who didn't have a dime in their pockets when they dropped everything and left with Dikyn. The feeling is that of a large charity event, or a soup kitchen, it is as if the store employees know that this need is very great, and he catches some of them chatting with people from the crowd, maybe being persuaded to come along.
Carey finds it astounding that all of these people are simply willing to go, but he knows that they probably all feel the same way about the things they've seen. They don't know where they are going but they know what they are walking away from; and the air is filled with a warm bittersweetness that hangs over a feeling that is hard to name.
There are still a few jackets left; and Carey grabs two; a greenish grey one for himself and something blue and lined with fleece for Lucas. He also grabs a blanket for Lucas' legs and hats and gloves for both of them. He can't bring himself to just take them, so he walks to one of the registers and dumps out every cent he is carrying on his body. It isn't much and it isn't enough, but he looks the cashier in the face and says, "It's all I have," and no one seems to mind.
Carey is not sure why the employees are this lenient, and he finds himself wondering again if there has been some news broadcast. Do these people think they're under attack, or that they're being held hostage for goods and services? Maybe they're just struck dumb by the same spell that seems to have fallen over everyone who has seen the Olanaiia. Carey doesn't know, but he imagines that it won't be long before he finds out, won't be long before their are some sort of repercussions and they are stopped, or killed, or something even more drastic happens.
He puts on his jacket and goes back outside, slowly walking back to the coffee shop, trying to take in as much of the scene as he can.
The helicopter is still chopping loudly overhead, and the sun is nearly down, it is almost night by now. Most of the crowd is invisible now; hidden and comfortable inside the shops and restaurants, settling down for the night, recuperating. Dikyn is still standing as poised and still as a statue; a proud night-watchman guarding them all. Carey nervously approaches him, wondering if he will be as difficult to talk to as Iia was.
Carey isn't sure what he is supposed to say to initiate a conversation with the being, but as soon as he steps toward him, Dikyn turns his red eyes towards him and studies him with a sort of expression that invites questions, and his eyebrows raise expectantly.
"What is it that you need, Carey Danielson?"
Carey is taken aback by the use of his name, but he stays fixed to the spot, clutching Lucas' jacket.
"I'm just wondering if there's anything you can tell me."
Dikyn smiles as if he has been waiting years to hear this question, and he removes a glove from one of his hands and holds it out to Carey, as if waiting for him to take it.
"Do not worry. My touch will not harm you. It has a different affect than that of Iia. She is the void; the passage between this world and the next. I am knowledge and consciousness. To touch me is to touch enlightenment for a moment. I can help you see, if you know what questions to ask."
Carey nods and sets down the jacket, blanket and gloves, his unclothed hand reaching out for Dikyn's. Before they touch, Dikyn asks him,
"What do you want to know?"
"I want to know what you are, what the Olanaiia are."
"This," says Dikyn calmly, "might take some time."
And their hands meet, the world vanishing in a haze of white.
Petra stands with Cyrus in the foyer of her dorm, feeling suddenly like a stranger. A few people look up from the television, where almost two dozen people are gathered, but very few of them seem to take notice. The news is blaring loudly over the group, and even from her place near the door she can hear the familiar voice of the anchorman saying:
"Up next at six, our breaking news report on the events taking place on the east coast. Stay tuned for more."
Petra makes for the stairway, but Cyrus puts a hand on her arm, his skin sending a unexpected jolt of confusion through her body.
"You'll want to stay for the breaking news report, believe me."
Petra clears her throat and looks at the group of television watchers, spotting her roommate Samantha among them. When Sam sees her she jumps up and runs over to meet her, her eyes roving over Cyrus questionably.
"Petra, where have you been? You've been gone all day!"
Petra blinks slowly a few times and looks at Cyrus.
"I have?" Her question is directed more at Cyrus than it is at Sam.
"Yeah. I was going to meet you after my first class, but you weren't at the coffee shop and you never showed up after that. I've been looking all over campus for you. It' a littler unnerving; there's been so much weird stuff going on today all over the place."
Petra's heart skips a beat. Have they found out about the dead bartender? Is she in some sort of hideous trouble? Cyrus puts a heavy palm on her shoulder.
"Settle down. You'll wet yourself." He turns to Sam but does not offer his hand, something that might have been better appreciated if Sam understood the power that lay beneath that inky black skin. "I'm Cyrus, don't worry about introductions, I already know who you are."
"You told him about me?" asks Sam, blushing and looking shy. "Petra, what did you say?"
Petra is looking at the television, the news has come back on.
"Petra? Petra? Hey, you're really out of it today."
Petra blinks and looks up, shaking her head.
"Yeah, sorry. My head is really foggy. Look, the news is on." She points weakly and hopes this is enough of an excuse for her to go over and join the group; to escape from Cyrus for a moment.
Sam looks over her shoulder and notices the television as well, taking Petra's elbow as they walk over to an empty set of chairs.
"Who's the guy?" Sam whispers, trying to keep her voice down so that Cyrus won't hear; but he is clearly interested in something else, he is looking about the room curiously, his arms placed casually, one folded and one up, waving about in the air as if he is standing in an art gallery and observing the paintings.
"He's... new." Petra shakes her head and looks at the T.V, hoping Sam will stops her questioning for now.
The picture is wobbly and homemade; somebody obviously caught the news on home video and sent it in, but the event is nonetheless unbelievable. Through the shaking lens is a crowd of people, at least a hundred, maybe more, standing in front of a hospital. The camera is held over the heads of several dozen people, and the picture is poorly framed, jumping around a lot. There is nothing particularly unusual about the scene, but then tinny, metallic screams begin to filter though the camcorder's cheap microphone, and the camera all of the sudden tilts up, focusing poorly on the top of the building.
It is hard to see because the automatic f-stop is a little confused; making the sky a blinding white and the building a hulking mass of black, but it is still clear what is going on; something is blowing off the building in mass quantities. It almost looks as though a truck full of sand has been knocked over the roof and all of it's contents are spilling into the street below.
But as the footage rolls on, it becomes apparent that the dust is not coming off the building, it IS the building, and little by little it disappears, until the entire thing is gone and the crowd stands before an empty hole in he ground, gasping and screaming. The camera looses direction and starts pointing everywhere before the station tunes back to the anchorman, who temporarily dons an expression of fear before launching back into his live broadcast.
"We've been playing that clip for you all night, but if you're just joining us, what you just saw was unedited, un-doctored footage of (UNAMED HOSPITAL IN AN UNAMED CITY!) disappearing into thin air. We still have no details on the event that took place earlier today in downtown (CITY), but eyewitness have been calling in from all over the city and giving us new and unprecedented information.
"Some government officials suspect local terrorist organizations, others say that it is a work of something greater, many are not sure what to think at all.
"We have audio from an eyewitness caller now,"
The camera cuts to a graphic; a blue screen with a picture of a man's face, with a subtitle that says: "Voice of Edward Lee". Paragraphs of text pop up as a scratchy voice starts speaking over a cell phone.
"Everything just disappeared, I swear to God. I woke up this morning because everyone was screaming to get out of the building. I got outside and half the street was just gone. It was unbelievable. There were holes in the ground and half of the street missing and everyone running around in a panic. There was a crowd of people leaving the city, I could see them because everything was gone, and lots of people where following them...
"I saw a girl, she looked like she was maybe twenty, I don't know. But whenever she'd touch a building it would just vanish into thin air. She was almost naked, only wearing a jacket and no shoes or pants or anything. I've never seen anything like this in my whole life..."
The news cuts back to the anchorman, who nervously reorganizes the papers on his desk. his co-anchor is the one to speak this time, her strong alto voice uncertain and confused.
"Though there have been multiple reports of this reportedly half-clothed woman, there has been no recorded evidence of her at all. Eyewitnesses at the hospital insist that she was standing in front of the doors but in all of our footage there is no image of her at all. We are still trying to understand exactly what has happened in (CITY) today, and we will keep you updated when we receive more information."
"Thanks Susan, now we go to local news where a young boy received a special honor today..."
The voice trails off as everyone starts to speak at once.
Petra looks at Cyrus, who meets her eyes instantly and seems to affirm the truth of the news report, his eery green eyes glimmering in the artificial light of the Television.
"I told you. The world is changing."
Petra is breathing heavily; without knowing it she has grabbed on to Sam's knee and is cluchign it with all her strenth. Sam doesn't seem to mind and is actually disctracted by something else; the mysterious man who came in with her friend.