Beyond Armageddon: Book 03 - Parallels (59 page)

"That’s where you’re wrong. You
are
the same. The same genes, the same body, the same mind. I’ll bet you had the same childhood: good parents who tried to help you get over the feeling of being an outcast. But with each year you felt yourself different from the other kids. Even then, you were thinking like a warrior. Getting ready for the coming fight."

            "How do you know all that?"

            "Because that’s what my Nina was like. But then, at some point, things changed and the two of you ended up different."

She swallowed hard and wanted to know, "What happened?"

            He found it ironic that he was telling her the truths of her life. Perhaps sometimes it takes an outsider to see the larger picture. The way Lori Brewer or Dante or even Knox or Jon kept his life in perspective back home. A perspective he lacked on this parallel Earth.

            "You gave in. You decided it was more important not to be alone than it was to be true to yourself. Let me tell you, if I had ever raised a hand to my Nina she would have tied me in a knot. She was faster and stronger than me, the same way I know you're faster and stronger. Yet you let him beat you down because you were afraid to be alone."

            She did not say a word. He went on.

"The things you did with your Trevor, you did them to keep him. You did them because you thought that’s what it took. You let him use you like an object; you let him…let him
degrade
you. To cheapen you. Because you were afraid to walk away."

He felt her flinch. A sigh from her lips became a sob.

            "You let him define who you are. Then you did everything he wanted, no matter how it made you feel. You let him use you, and why? Because you were afraid to be alone."

She shivered, as if a chill had worked its way beneath her armor. Then it came out. She muffled each burst as best she could but she could not hide from him. Not any more. The tears flowed and her chest heaved. The woman he knew to be so strong and brave fell to pieces as she confronted the only nightmare that had ever managed to scare her. The nightmare of loneliness.

            "I…I have hated every second…ever…every day…of my life," she spoke between breaths. "Every…day. I never knew how to…how to…"

            Trevor answered for her, "How to fit in?"

            She wiped a hand beneath her eyes.

            "So you let him use you like a toy, just so he wouldn’t chase you away."

            "I thought…he wanted to do things. I did them. I thought he’d love me for it."

            Stone ran his hands along her shoulders and arms in a comforting caress.

            "Me and my Nina," his eyes glazed over with wonderful memories. "We had all sorts of fun together. But through it all, we had respect. I always respected her. To be with her, together, I mean—wow—we had fun. But we sometimes just sat and talked, for hours over a bottle of wine. We played racquetball together and went horseback riding. I’d give anything for just one moment with her again. If only…if only to talk to her."

            This time Trevor fought to stave tears. He concentrated on her, on holding her tight, on forgetting for the moment how she had deceived him. After weeks of nothing but anger, violence, and lust, he found his soul cleansed by offering compassion; something he rarely had the opportunity to do. The kindness he showed her, despite all she had done, provided a counter balance to the evil he had wrought since coming here. In a way, he found it healing.

            "You really loved her, didn’t you?"

"Yes. I loved her, very much. But you know what else? I
liked
her. I liked just being with her. And I respected who she was. I didn’t want to change her; I wanted her to share with me the person she was. And she did. It took a lot for her to do it, but she did."

"I’m nothing like her," she did not ask, she stated a fact.

            He corrected, "That’s not true. You’re very nearly the same person, you just made a different choice. Our memories and our experiences make us who we are. You made a decision my Nina avoided. So yes, you’re different but I know you have the same strength that she has."

            "The same…strength?"

            "Yes," he insisted. "The strength to be who you are. Don’t let someone else define you. Don’t let someone else cheapen you."

"Strength…" she turned the word around in her mouth.

"You have it. You showed it once, didn't you?"

She turned around in her sleeping blanket to face him. The glow of the lantern flickered in her blue eyes and sparkled off streams of drying tears.

"Come on now," he said to her. "Go ahead, tell me. You need to. Don't worry, I figured it out a while ago."

She nibbled at her lower lip, cast her eyes down, then back to him. And then Major Nina Forest admitted, "I killed him."

He touched her cheek and encouraged her to, "Go on."

"One day, after a battle, we were alone. He said I was…he called me a worthless…"

            "Shhh," he kept her from finishing whatever cold insult the Trevor Stone of this world had berated her with.

            She said, "I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the heat of the battle. I had just finished killing…killing things. I felt invincible for a moment, like I sometimes do when I’m fighting. I felt…
comfortable."

            "You’re a natural soldier, just like my girl. That’s who you are."

"He laughed at me. Real mean, like. And I don’t know… I hit him. I knocked him right down to the ground. He looked at me…he was, like…shocked or something. For a few seconds…like…he was afraid. Afraid of
me.
Then he got up and he was pissed. He told me he was going to cut me for that. So he came at me with his blade and then, and then I realized I had a knife in my hand and he swung at me with his knife and the next thing I know I stuck my knife in him and his mouth just fell open and he had this look in his eyes and the blood came and then he was on the ground and he was dead and I didn’t know what—"

"Good for you," he interrupted the long string of words that came from her mouth in an ever increasing panic. "You protected yourself."

            "No," she shook her head but not too vigorously. "I killed him. And you know what? I was glad. For a while, I was glad to be free of him."

            Trevor figured the rest, "But with time things started to fall apart and every one said it was because of Trevor. And you were alone. Without him no one cared about you; you were a nobody. So after a while, and when you found out about the dimensions and all, you decided maybe you should try and bring Trevor back. Maybe it’d be good for your people. Maybe you wouldn’t be alone any more."

            She did not need to nod or answer in any way because they both knew how right he was.

            "Nina," he spoke softly. "On behalf of all the other Trevors of existence, I forgive you."

She chuckled, sort of.

"What he did to you all those years, what he put your people through and what he did to this planet…well, I don’t blame you one bit. I don’t think any one could."

            They paused and listened to the sound of their own breathing for several seconds. The Major managed her emotions but her curiosity got the better of her.

            "So, you and Nina, you were, like, friends and lovers, huh?"
            "That’s right, yeah."

            "I’m jealous. It sounds like you two were happy. I mean, really happy."

            "Yeah."

            "Tell me some more. Tell me about the Nina you were in love with. I want to know her."

            He smiled and much like showing compassion, sharing the stories of the months he had spent in love with Nina Forest helped return some calm to his heart. She had always had that affect on him.

            So they laid there together in the glow of the Chem Lamp while the howls and screeches of monsters played in the distant background of the Hellish city. He kept his arms wrapped around her and they closed their eyes and he told stories of the woman with whom the Major had much in common, yet so much more that was not.

Eventually, slowly, exhaustion overpowered the tales and the two fell asleep.

            Their clothes never came off, not even a kiss, only his arm draped over her in half a hug. Yet she had never felt so close to another person in all her life.

            They fell asleep together, two human beings on an alien planet yet they were not alone.

---

            With their bags packed, the two travelers prepared to leave, hoping to reach the rendezvous point before dark. However, Trevor first needed to tend to one task.

            He left her and walked into a small room with one window and toilet facilities that offered a smell even more unpleasant than the other smells of the decaying city. Once positioned above a basin that must have been a urinal, he opened a strategically-placed zipper on his battle suit and relieved himself while Nina waited several rooms away.

He looked out the window, one of the few intact panes of glass in the entire city. It offered a view of the downtown area. He saw crisscrossed roads lined with the remains of eaten, burned, and other wise destroyed trees.

            Stone felt a tremble. He had been feeling those trembles all morning, yet not seen anything. He worried it might possibly be a Goat-Walker on the prowl.

            In any case, at least brilliant rays of sun bathed downtown making for a glorious clear morning. Perhaps they could make good time today. Perhaps—

            The glow of the morning sun went black, his view out the window obstructed.

By an eye.

A big black and white eye surrounded by gray, tough skin, staring in directly at him through a quarter-inch of fragile glass.

            Then the eye withdrew, replaced by some sort of huge arm or fist or ball of claws or something. Whatever it was, it cocked then rushed toward the window.

            "Oh…shit."

            Trevor zipped and ran.

            "We’ve GOT A PROBLEM!"

            The window smashed in as a colossal appendage the size of the entire room crashed into the wall, obliterated the office, and pushed all the way through to an inner hall.

            Trevor barely escaped the strike. Crossbeams and dusty powder—the Chaktaw’s version of drywall—billowed around him but he did not stop even as the vibration tried to knock him from his feet.

            Nina met him and together they raced further inside the office complex as another heavy strike rattled the building to its very foundation.

"What was it? What was it?"

            "I have no idea! Just run 'cause whatever it is it’s as big as this building!"

            They ran along a tight, dark hallway. A porcupine-like thing saw them and disappeared into a side room. They paid it no mind as they navigated by the light of their flashlights and the occasional ray of sun beaming in from splintered windows.

            Those beams, however, flickered between light and dark as the massive creature circled the building, searching for them by punching through walls.

            "Stairs! We nee to find the stairs and get out of here," Nina shouted the obvious.

An entire section of the corridor collapsed. A gust of fresh air blew inside with dust riding along; dust from a new hole stretching several yards from the outer wall, through what looked like an old conference room, and into the inner hall.

Trevor and Nina ran along the fourth floor. The thing that had punched the hole had to stoop to peer in at them.

            With a quick glimpse, Trevor’s mind categorized it as a rhinoceros, except it stood on its rear two legs. Its arms were thick and ended in massive claws. One big horn grew from the center of its forehead and two more adorned the side of its skull. The black and white eyes of the creature looked dazed, almost hypnotized.

            As the dust cleared, the monster spied its quarry. A humungous arm cocked back.

            Trevor and Nina raced for a door at the end of the hall.

            A locomotive-sized arm speared the building once again, obliterating walls—including a support pillar—and passing through the corridor three yards behind the fleeing humans.

            Chunks of the sixth and fifth floors collapsed down onto the fourth, partially and temporarily capturing the giant’s arm. The creature let out an annoyed grunt in response. The bright morning sun shown in from above with only a handful of crossbeams and roof panels to obstruct its brilliant glare.

A chain reaction rippled across the fourth floor as it started to collapse, the floor buckling like an ocean wave, spitting wood and metal beams in a series of pressure-driven explosions.

Nina reached the door first and held it open for him. The collapse nipped at his heels while the weight of his back pack and gear slowed him enough that he might…not…make…

Trevor jumped through the open door into the stairwell. Nina timed her own pivot perfectly and avoided the disintegrating floor in less time than it takes to blink an eye.