The Impossible Future: Complete set by Frank Kennedy (mini ebook reader .txt) 📕

Sammie started to speak, but Michael grabbed her.

“You sure we ought to tell him? He don’t seem all there yet.”

“No,” Jamie insisted. “It’s OK. I think I remember most everything. Yeah. I had to come here because …” His eyes widened. “I couldn’t let the Jewel be reborn. But she lied to me. She wouldn’t let me go.” Jamie swallowed again. “I let Ms. Bidwell shoot me. The rest of it is foggy, like a nightmare you wake up from but you can’t remember.”

Sammie grabbed his hand, trying to comfort him. “Jamie, I …”

“What happened? Tell me.”

Michael sighed. “I reckon you better see for yourself. It’s … I got no words, dude.”

They scaled the slope together. Just before reaching the top, Michael spoke in a low, measured voice.

“No matter what, I’m always gonna have your back. You’re the best friend I ever had.”

Jamie knew he should have drawn warmth from those words, but the tone gave him pause. Sammie wrapped her hand in his as they reached the top of the outcropping and looked out upon the valley on the opposite side. Jamie saw the creek running off into the distance, the trees thick and green except for the path of destruction wrought by the Shock Units. The world was the way it should have been. Then he looked east and south.

He felt sick all over. His body trembled, nearly collapsing upon the rock. Sammie and Michael grabbed hold. Jamie had no words.

“We thought we were dead,” Sammie said. “Those monsters … the Shock Units … they fired on us. I could feel the heat. And then, all of a sudden, they were gone. They were shredded, just completely destroyed. The fire disappeared, too. Everything was calm, Jamie. I thought you saved us. Somehow. And then … I can’t explain it. Just … fire. A wall of fire.”

Jamie heard enough to get the general idea. He understood why she couldn’t describe anything more. Who could? The destruction began at a point beyond the outcropping, bordering alongside the creek and radiating outward east and south through valleys and hills farther than he could see.

It was all gone. The earth was scorched, devoid of any form of life for miles. The bare earth was orange and dusty, containing no remains of any kind – no tree trunks, no rocks, no fallen debris, no wildlife. Much of it was scooped away, fifty feet deep in places. He squinted, and still he did not see an end to the destruction. Stretching into the clouds and far beyond, Jamie beheld a brown, filthy storm of dirt and debris, with flashes of yellow lightning and echoes of thunder. The cloud seemed to be receding rapidly toward the east and south. The surface had been tossed skyward.

Michael said a prayer. “It’s like God took a shovel and dug out a piece of Earth for himself.” He held Jamie tight. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you nuked Alabama.”

The last vestiges of missing memory returned. He heard the echoes of a maelstrom, felt the anger and desperation of the Jewel, and sensed the fury that caused him to hurl the Jewel out upon the Earth to save his friends and, ultimately, all those who might one day become victims of this weapon. It was exactly what the Jewel always wanted, and Jamie unwittingly obliged. He saved the only people who truly mattered to him, but his distraction gave the Jewel a way out – a way to unleash its rebirth.

The sheer scope of the devastation chilled his blood; however, this did not terrify him as much as another, more horrifying realization. Jamie knew he hadn’t liberated himself from the Jewel, after all. He was a fool for thinking he ever could, for believing that Ben – however well-intentioned – had all the answers.

Lydia’s final warning echoed through every synapse. You do not understand what you will become. The dark will drown them.

Jamie didn’t say another word as he surveyed the scorched Earth. Rather, he listened to the weapon that flowed freely through his blood and realized he crossed the line beyond all that was sacred.

70

J AMIE LISTENED AS they described the cataclysm, how the land folded up and was swept away in a torrent that couldn’t have lasted 15 seconds. They talked of how the line of fire rushed off into the distance like a tidal wave, the Earth trembling all the while.

He wanted to understand how he could have done this; his only desire was to destroy the Shock Units. He looked at his hands, which were soiled and bloody. They seemed alien. Through his confusion, Jamie took solace in one positive development: Lydia did not reemerge, and he did not feel her presence in any form. Yet he could be sure of nothing.

While the teens sat on the giant rock facing away from the devastation, trying to comfort each other and come to terms with the past eight hours, Jamie happened to glance at his watch, the one Ben had synched in the cellar of Walt’s lake house. The digital window was smeared in blood, and the time frozen.

“9:56,” he said, a bewildered smile trying to form. “It’s stopped. 9:56 plus ten seconds.”

Michael scanned the surroundings with emboldened eyes, hesitated a few seconds then tapped the rock twice with a fist.

“Wasn’t that when …?”

“Yeah,” Jamie said, acknowledging the anti-climax of these past eight hours. “The Jewel was supposed to be reborn.”

“Huh,” Michael grunted. “Well, on the bright side, that’s done, and you’re still here, dude. You beat this thing. So, you ain’t planning on dying again, are you?”

Jamie and Sammie offered Michael jaw-dropping stares of astonishment. Michael threw up his hands.

“What?” He said with a sheepish grin. “Ain’t that a reasonable question? I mean, what else am I supposed to say right