The Wine Dark Earth

by | Wayne Kyle Spitzer-7

It takes a moment to realize, but, we’ve survived, somehow, in spite of having been ejected and scattered like sides of beef, like floppy-limbed test dummies, so that Beth and I lay in the fountain while Will lay in the avenue—as broken and bloodied as we are. As for Benny; well. I can’t. I just can’t.

Nor, for that matter, have the great predators left us but have in fact regrouped and reconnoitered—scanning the area like cameras, like Martian Death Machines, identifying everyone’s exact whereabouts.

At which I help Beth up and look at Will; see that he has crawled to a long gun amidst the wreckage and is even now gesturing with it, barking something I can’t read, indicating we should go. At which he stands and begins to stumble off, distracting the allos away from us, away from the ruined truck and impossible fountain, still flowing, drawing them across the street into the construction area.

That’s when Beth collapses—just crumples like paper into the icy water—and I look on in horror as her blood spreads like ink, like a wine-dark cloud. So, too, is it the moment the sky erupts in color—as though the alien lights themselves have been agitated by her pain—colors which blend and bleed in and out of each other like spotlights intersecting, like time and space coalescing, until they show a sudden, perfect white—like an A-bomb going off or the sun itself exploding—and everything is cancelled, just glared out completely—if only for an instant, if only for a breath, an eye blink.

Alas; it’s also when I look back at Will to see him pinned against the cyclone fencing and firing again and again—taking out as many allos as he can, going down fighting. It’s when I turn to Beth and see her smiling; see her staring into that strange cloud even as her body seizes and starts to tremble and her legs twitch; as I kneel beside her in the water and sign—because I know she hasn’t very long: What is it? What are you seeing? —as the white light flashes yet again.

At which she just smiles—only weaker, fainter, and signs, The second prism. Then adds, Where is Will?

And I turn in time to see him crumpling beneath the onslaught of the allosaurs—disappearing from view—before refocusing on Beth with the intention of telling her he’s fine—but find her shrinking noticeably, almost as though she’s been vacuum-sealed, and her eyes rolling around white. And then she’s gone.

I stand, the silence begetting silence, at least until a meteor hits not ten feet away and I am pelted with debris, which burns like white phosphorous, scalds like hot pokers. Then I am being pushed and yanked along by Captain O’Neil and Enge Puckett— being rescued, I suppose—as we return to the sub and it begins to drift, to move away from the pier and the aquarium—back out to sea. As everyone gestures from the hatch for us to come but the captain and I stand transfixed, gazing at the overturned box truck and the cases of food everywhere; looking at the body in the fountain and the animals feeding at the fence line—not with sadness, which we are so far beyond, nor anger, but meditatively, blankly.

Looking, finally, at the red-black clouds and the dead city, the eerie lights, the wine-dark earth. Looking and wondering what’s next for us; if anything. And wondering, too, if it’s true—what Benny said about Vashon Island; which was that there’s a doomsday compound there with enough food to last a decade (if, that is, one can outfox the security systems—which he said were lethal), and, of course, if it wasn’t just an urban legend, which he said was likely.

Just wondering and meditating—until a meteor hits the nearby water and the captain says it’s time to go; it’s time to submerge. After which, reluctantly, we follow Enge Puckett—down through the hatch and into the cold, dark tube. Into the bowels of the ship.