You're Not in This Alone

When Nadia and I had found and teleported the last body in town, we teleported back to the clearing ourselves. Miranda leaned against a tree on the edge. When she saw us, she asked, “Is that all of them?”

I nodded. “Finally,” Nadia breathed, turning her back to the scene in the clearing.

I put my hand on her shoulder, hoping to comfort her. “We’ll sit over here while Miranda finishes up,” I told her, leading her to a fallen tree. Nadia sat facing the forest, but I sat facing Miranda. No matter how morbid it was, I wanted to watch her cover the bodies with the earth piled on the sides. I wanted to witness the finality it would create.

Without any visible signal from Miranda, the dirt loosened, and each piece poured over the pieces in front of it. It almost looked like brown, muddy water washing into the center of the clearing. It was amazingly unbelievable. It only took her a few minutes.

She turned to Nadia and I, looking almost smug. “Done,” she said.

“That was much faster than when you had to dig it all out,” I commented, observing her smug expression.

“I’m getting better,” she explained. “It’s harder to move dirt; there are so many little pieces. I’ve never had to move that much before at once. I just needed to get used to it.”

I nodded, showing her I understood.

“What now?” Miranda asked me. Nadia gave me a look that asked the same thing. I sighed internally, wondering why I had to be the one who decided, but I already know it was because I was the oldest.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I feel like we can’t just leave this here like it isn’t a huge grave. We’re supposed to do something. I just can’t put my finger on what it is we’re supposed to do.”

“I have an idea,” Nadia almost whispered. “Why don’t we make like… a giant gravestone?”

“Or a memorial monument,” Miranda put in. “Nadia, if you can teleport some sort of metal here, I can make something. I’ll make a cross.”

“How much metal?” Nadia asked.

“A lot,” Miranda replied.

Seconds later, huge objects appeared in the center of the newly packed dirt. They were giant metal sheets that looked like they belonged in a warehouse. The sun reflected off of them, almost blinding us.

Miranda sat next to us. “This won’t take long,” she murmured, “but it’ll take a lot of energy. Metal is heavy.”

Nadia and I didn’t know how to answer her. It didn’t matter, because our breath was taken away, so we wouldn’t have been able to answer. The first sheet of metal rose into the air and twisted, making a loud crunching noise. I looked over at Miranda’s face in surprise, and the corners of her mouth twisted up. The next sheet of metal rose and twisted in the same way. The third sheet wrapped around them, fusing them together.

Other than a single bead of sweat, nothing showed that she had to put effort into her work. She could’ve been a four year old bending pipe cleaners instead of a teenager bending massive chunks of metal with her mind. I could feel the power and energy emanating from her, and it unnerved me. What were we?

When she was finished, the tall metallic cross she’s created fell through the air and stabbed the ground at just the right angle to keep it standing upright. Miranda let out a breath as if she had been holding it in the whole time.

She glanced at us for approval, but when she saw that Nadia and I were speechless, she looked away in embarrassment.

“Nadia, can you teleport a big rock and a sharp knife to the front of the cross?” I asked, a new idea occurring to me.

She did what I asked without answering me.

I walked to the rock next to the cross, conscious of the many bodies I was walking over. Taking the knife in my hand, I carved roughly in the stone the appropriate words that made their way to the front of my mind: Only 4000 among billions.

I sat down and motioned for them to sit with me. “Now we can call the rest of them here,” I said to them. Knowing that Sarah would hear me although she was far away, I said, “Sarah, tell Gerard that you can all come here now. We’ve buried all four thousand, two hundred bodies. We’ve even built a memorial.”

I dropped my head and heard Lance say in my head, We’re coming.

They came. I felt their presence as soon as they were there. But when I felt their presence, I became aware of another. Hitting me like a knife in the chest, I felt the proximity of the hollow, echoing presence of thousands of people under me, still pulling me even though they were long dead. I squeezed my eyes shut to restrain as many tears as I could.

I knew Gerard and Sarah came to sit on either side of me. I pulled myself closer to Gerard, and he held me like I wanted. I knew Sarah felt left out, so I held her small hand in my free one.

Everyone seemed to be waiting on me. I heard someone a few feet away shift their weight uncomfortably after a few minutes. I sighed. We couldn’t sit around and mope forever. We had things we needed to get done. I stood up and said, “Let’s go eat lunch.”

We had sandwiches. We tried to get rid of the oldest bread and cheese. We needed to eat what would go bad first. Eventually we’d need to make our own bread.

I observed their glum faces while we ate. Maybe we should’ve been working, but I wanted to cheer them all up. I let a smile play on my lips when I suggested, “Let’s go swimming.”

Everyone looked up at me in surprise. Even Gerard looked skeptic. “Come on,” I urged. “We need to have fun, it’s only noon, and we’re filthy. We could use a good swim in the river.”

Miranda was the first to smile back at me. “Why not?” she agreed.

Gerard shrugged, the corners of his mouth finally lifting out of his seemingly permanent smile. “I think it’ll be fun,” he allowed.

“It’s settled, then,” Lance concluded. “All we have to do is go find bathing suits.”

Nadia and Ethan teleported us to the clothing department of Walmart, and we all searched for bathing suits. I picked a small black and sky blue striped bikini. When I went to find shampoo to wash my hair with in my brand new bathing suit and ran into Gerard, his wide grin showed that he appreciated my bikini a little more than I intended.

“I haven’t seen you in a bathing suit in a while,” he commented.

I rolled my eyes at him, but I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. It felt good to smile. It was good to see him smile. Now all we had to do was get the rest of them to have fun.

Lance and Miranda had lived around there, so they knew where most of the nice boats were kept on the river. That way once we all had bathing suits, towels, soap, and inflatable rafts, Ethan and Nadia got us to the place we needed to be.

“Anyone know how to drive a boat?” I asked.

“I do,” Lance offered, “but why don’t we just teleport to the middle of the river?”

Gerard shrugged, saying, “That sound fine too. Everyone get on the boat. Does everyone know how to swim?”

“I don’t,” Ethan piped up quietly, “but if I ever got in trouble, I could just teleport to land.” Just in case, Nadia handed him a life jacket she had plucked out of the air.

“Alright then,” I concluded, “We’re all set to go.” We climbed into the boat that was closer to a yacht than anything else. Once second we were by the shore, and the next we were out in the middle of the river. Lance knew how to put down the anchor, so he did so.

I was the first to jump in the water. I stood tall on the edge of the boat, my arms reaching up to the clear blue sky. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, sprung into the air, and dove into the water. It was cool and refreshing compared to the hot June day. When I surfaced, I was laughing.

Gerard grinned and, after throwing in some rafts so we wouldn’t have to tread water the whole time, dove in beside me. The others soon joined.

We spent that afternoon playing and laughing. We lay out in the warm dun, had a best cannonball contest, and splashed each other playfully. It was almost like we were kids again. For a time, we forgot all of our troubles and savored the kind of fun people our age were supposed to have.