'Finally she had met Mr.
Perfect. What could go wrong?'
Survivors,
Part 5
Approx 1,109 words
©2004
by W. E. Lopez
Maggie
snuggled closer, enjoying the sensual comfort of the marriage bed and the
familiar masculine aroma of Ken’s body. At
23, she could not think of a single thing lacking in her world or her
life. Finally she had met Mr.
Perfect. What could go wrong?
Suddenly the
last image of Ken flashed through her mind.
His head, lolling awkwardly over the steering wheel, the steering column
pressing his body into the bench seat of the little Nissan pickup, blood
trickling from his smashed jaw where
he’d been slammed against the wheel by the force of the little truck impacting
the side of the mountain.
She winced
with her own pain as she reached out to him, wanting to take him in her arms
and soothe his hurt, comforting him with her love, but it was obvious he was no
longer feeling the pain. Tiny flickers
of orange began showing their forked tongues above the fenders and wheel wells
of the pickup and Maggie realized the truck was on fire. She had to get out or perish beside Ken! She pulled the handle on the door but it
failed to open. She threw her shoulder
into it—oww! Shooting pain flashed through her left arm but the passenger door
opened and she rolled onto the ground.
Her right leg
sent pleading messages to her brain, “Stop hurting me! Just lay still and let the flames engulf
us!” But Maggie wasn’t ready to die yet. She forced the complaining leg to bend at the
knee and thigh and then pushed her way along the ground in the direction of the
highway. Again and again she fought back
the pain until she was a dozen yards from the burning truck and her good arm
lay outstretched on the rough asphalt.
Fatigued, she
lay there a moment and tried to catch her breath before looking back at the
wreckage. The Nissan was fully engulfed
with brilliant flames now, their light illuminating thick black smoke rising
into the night and blotting out the starry night sky, usually so brilliant in
the desert air. The stench of burning
flesh assaulted her nostrils and she could see Ken painfully crawling from the
vehicle and standing with his flaming arms outstretched to her. She heard his voice, “Maggie! Why are you leaving me? Maggie, come back to me! Help me!”
His clothes
were alight and burning fragments of his shirt were falling to the ground. Pieces of charred flesh began to fall and his
handsome face appeared to melt and cave inward upon itself until his entire
body collapsed into a smoldering heap.
Teriffied,
Maggie sat upright, barely managing to stifle a scream evoked by the terror of Ken’s
death and the pain in her broken left arm.
A nightmare, that’s what it was.
She relaxed a
moment and began to marshal her thoughts.
The crash had been real, the fire had been real, her injuries had been
real, but she had only imagined Ken calling her name as he stood beside the
truck. Ken was dead, but she would go on
living. Don Sheridan lay beside her but
she hadn’t disturbed him.
The motor home
had suffered a blowout on the poorly maintained gravel road. While Don was changing the tire, two convicts
from the nearby prison had attacked them and she had been forced to kill one of
them. The world had gone crazy and her
only security now lay with Don and the children. They had driven down the road a few more
miles and pulled over for the night putting the children to bed, making a game
of camping out, as if nothing had gone wrong.
When Don saw
she had spread the double-berth for the two of them he commented, “Maggie, I’m
not the sort of dirty old man who fantasizes about having a nubile teen-age
woman to share his bed.”
“I’m not a
teen-ager, Don, I’m 23, and I’m not trying to seduce you. My world turned topsy-turvy today, my husband
died, and I killed a man. I’m
frightened, Don, and I need you to hold me and reassure me I’m not crazy. I just want a little security, nothing more.”
“You’re no
crazier than I am, Maggie, for what it’s worth.
I’ll provide all the consolation one crazy person can provide another,
if it will do any good.”
“Trust me,
Don,” she said as she spread the blankets back and urged him to take the side
closest to the wall, “I just want you to be my security blanket. I need some cuddling before I really do go
crazy.”
Don tossed his
shoes at the driver’s seat and stretched out on the bunk. Maggie lay beside him, her back to him, and
he covered them with the blanket.
“Put your arm
around me, Don.”
“You’re sure I
won’t hurt your broken arm?”
“I’ll let you
know if you do. Just hold me, please.”
And they
slept. Maggie was calmed and reassured by
the strength and warmth he gave her, until awakened by her nightmare. There was no light inside the motor home, but
faint streamers of moon light filtered through the windows. She looked at Don and admired his cracked and
wrinkled face. He was old enough to be
her grand-father, but just like her grand-father, she felt safe and comfortable
having him watching over her.
Something
strange had killed them. Maggie recalled
a segment she had watched on the Discovery channel, an event not unlike this
one. A huge asteroid struck the Earth 65
million years ago and eighty, maybe ninety percent of all life on Earth had
died in the calamity. But life
continued. The survivors went on and
eventually became the species we call man
and began to dominate and change the Earth.
She and Don would survive, and the children would survive. They would regroup with other survivors and
fight back against this tragedy. They
would survive.
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Don’t miss the next compelling segment of “The Survivors!”