Our Future
Chapter 7: A Place in Heaven and a Memory of Question

My vision blurred with my last remark. Partly from tears, partly from a vision. I lost my balance and staggered backwards. Gabriel pulled me into an embrace before I could fall and crack my head on the pavement. I stumbled into him, knocking him over. I landed on top of him as he hit the pavement. He seemed unharmed but it still worried me. I can’t replace my voice to ask if he’s alright. It spooks me; I can’t speak or move my limbs. I look over at him, scared.

“Nathan,” he says trying to keep me alert.

I don’t know if it was similar to being drugged cause that’s never happened before. But it was kind of like being really drunk only I wasn’t swimming in an unclear head. I could still make coherent thoughts but my vision was blurred and my balance was off. The lights went out, and I was pulled down by voices both yelling and whispering. Like the wind, one minute it could be quiet and the next screaming. Almost like an electric guitar that someone plugged in mid-strum. I heard one voice in particular. Noah’s. It was inaudible at first. Like a radio with lots of static or a terrible signal. It finally cleared and I could understand.

“If you are kicked out you can always come stay up here. You’re always welcome,” he says through the crackling radio.

“Thanks, but we are not abandoning Sam and Anna,” I reply and my voice to be going through a radio as well.

An annoyed or saddened atmosphere falls over me, I’ve troubled him. Just because we are angels, doesn’t mean we’re emotionless like them, no offense but we are human in some ways. The radio static cuts out and it becomes silent, the wind’s whispers and yells die out. I can’t make out my surroundings, I was completely relying on my four other senses to tell me what was going on.

Finally my vision started to clear and I blinked at what looked like gray clouds. I was awake I realized. I sat up a little too fast and got a headache. My heart had to work harder to pump blood up to my brain now that I wasn’t lying flat.

“You okay?” asks Gabriel.

He scared me slightly when he spoke, I’d forgotten about him for a second. His hair was unkempt, all leaning to the right side of his face. I must have messed it up when I fell on top of him.

“Yeah,” I say quietly.

That was weird, I was getting used to Gabriel following me into my visions, he hadn’t followed me into this one and it scared me.

“Liar,” he claimed, half serious, half sarcastic.

I looked out over towards the roof’s edge.

“Sorry,” I apologize for falling on him.

“Why? You were going to have a vision. You couldn’t help it. I can barely stay upright when I have mine,” he replies. “Did Noah say anything?”

“He said, if we get kicked out of here, he has a place we can stay. I assume he means heaven because he said up here,” I reply.

“What did you tell him?” asks Gabriel in return.

“I told him we weren’t abandoning Sam and Anna,” I answer.

“That’s for sure,” Gabriel replies calmly.

“Got yeah!” somebody shouts.

Neither of us recognizes the voice. We approach the ledge slowly. There’s a man about forty to fifty, gray hair, about six foot one or so. Some zombies have followed him down the alley from the school up the road. It used to be an elementary school but now it was abandon, like everything else in this city aside from this school or least we were the only population we knew of.

We slowly descend down the ladder and approach the alley cautiously. The man is firing a two barrel shotgun. He’s a pretty good shot but the noise of his unsilenced shotgun has attracted other zombies. We pull out our .44s and assist. It surprises him but he seems glad for the help. One gets him when he’s looking back at us. It tackles him to the ground but I blast its head open before he can get bitten. Gabriel helps the man up, but I stay back, cautious.

There’s something about him, the way he looks at me that seems odd. Like he’s relieved or glad that it was me who saved him.

“Thanks,” he says whole heartily.

I don’t say anything in reply.

“Well, I’m Gabriel and this is Nathan,” Gabriel introduces us.

“Father Daniels,” he replies.

A priest? Funny he still goes by the name everyone at the church called him. I don’t like him, or maybe it’s just the way he was staring at me. Gabriel seemed weary now that I hadn’t replied to him. Why were we replaceing so many people this week? Emily, Cain, Abele, Jasper, Landon, Paul, him and whoever else if I’ve forgotten anybody else already.

“Mark. You can come out now,” calls the man.

A three or four-year-old comes running out of a nearby house. This kid was young, short or at least short to me, he was like maybe two feet tall but then again the youngest kid we had at the school was five or six. It worries me that this man has been traveling with such a young kid. Mark stands oddly close to Father Daniels, it was hard to tell if there were any similarities between the two, it was possible that Mark was his grandson, I highly doubted he was his own son. Mark had bright strawberry blond and ocean blue eyes.

“Who are they, Father?” asks Mark.

Father? Father as in Father Daniels or family term Father? Was that why he looked so relieved when I saved him because he had a kid?

“They helped me make the monsters go away,” he replies even though clearly the dead are all around us, nobody had cleared the shooting ranges remains, yet.

This place was a living horror show. Not the most appropriate place for a young kid to be or see rather but then again this world had never been perfect even before the apocalypse. There were messed up people, psychopaths, pedophiles, arsonists, murders, serial killers, etc. It’s not to say a person who didn’t feel was bad. But this kid shouldn’t have had to see this kind of thing, violence. Then again in another universe or time kids could be assassins or what not.

“Well...” Father Daniels says slowly, “It’d be nice to have a place to spend the night if you don’t mind.”

I glance at Gabriel weary, I don’t like this Father Daniels but I wasn’t about to leave this kid outside to get killed by whatever came along in the night. If the place had thin walls, wooden doors and giant thin glass windows it wasn’t safe. The school was boarded up and about as safe as you were going to get in this area.

I turned and walked away leaving Gabriel to either bring them inside or abandon them in the alley; he of course led them inside. I climbed back up to the roof annoyed; I probably should have gone in with him to make sure he didn’t get mobbed by whoever decided he was a monster. I watch from the edge of the highest point to make sure it’s not a trap but once their inside I began to worry. After Paul’s infiltration we’ve become more cautious, we haven’t seen Paul since they’d released him this morning, he didn’t bother with questions, and he knew why we’d kicked him out. He didn’t even look back, he just walked off. I assumed he was still around, with all the zombies we’d been seeing recently and him not having a weapon, he couldn’t have gotten far.

I pulled my MP3 Player and blocked out the whistling of the wind with Slipped Away by Avril Lavigue.

“Na, na, na, na, na, na, na

I miss you

I miss you so bad

I don’t forget you

Oh, it’s so sad

I hope you can hear me

Cause I remember it clearly

The day, you slipped away

Was the day, I found it won’t be the same

Oh, na, na, na, na, na, na

I didn’t get around to kiss you

Goodbye on the hand

I wish that I could see you again

I know that I can’t

Oh, I hope you can hear me

Cause I remember it clearly

The day, you slipped away

Was the day, I found it won’t be the same

Oh, I’ve had my wake up

Won’t you wake up?

I keep asking’ why

Keep asking’ why

And I can’t take it, it wasn’t fake it

It happened, you passed by

Now you’re gone

Now you’re gone

There you go

There you go

Somewhere I can’t bring you back

Now you’re gone

Now you’re gone

There you go

There you go

Somewhere you’re not coming back

The day, you slipped away

Was the day, I found it won’t be the same

No, the day, you slipped away

Was the day, I found it won’t be the same

Oh, na, na, na, na, na

I miss you.”

The song reminded me of everyone me and the others lost. Melody, others’ parents as well as my own, siblings, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, lovers, wives, husbands, children. This world was a mess, broken at every seem, cracked at every pillar. Who knows if it will ever be how it used to be, if we’ll ever go back to what is considered ‘normal’. When all we have to worry about is our jobs, money, home, and family.

When kids can play outside, run through sprinklers; go down waterslides and all, without a care in the world again. It seems stupid that at one point in time that was all we had to worry about. Hadn’t the world’s population been cut down enough if that was truly why the apocalypse had been started in the first place? There couldn’t be more than 200,000 people left alive, God better hope we have enough to mend this planet back together. Repopulate and all. Getting rid of all the zombies was another issue, if we didn’t replace a cure we had to kill them all or throw them into the ocean, but that could affect our water supply as if it wasn’t already poisoned enough with all the chemicals spilt each year before the apocalypse and shortly after it started when all the oil transporters were infected and their boats sank.

“I spoke to God today and she said that she’s ashamed

What have I become?

What have I done?

I spoke to the devil today

And he swears he’s not to blame

And I understood

Cause I feel the same

Arms wide open

I stand alone

I’m no hero

And I’m not made of stone

Right or wrong

I can hardly tell

I’m on the wrong side of heaven

The righteous side, righteous side of hell.”

Wrong Side of Heaven by FFDP played through my earphones. The acronym isn’t actually used by a lot of people, the band is more likely known as Five Finger Death Punch.

The world had drifted away and all I could hear was singing and instruments.

Gabriel was taking a long time, or what seemed like a long time. It made me worry. My vision blurred slightly and cleared again, it did it a few times like a vision was trying to get through but failing. I bit my lower lip as the world did a 360 for some weird reason. I was uneasy and confused, dizzy. Something was off; I backed away from the ledge to make sure I didn’t fall off the two story building. I hit something sooner than I expected and it scared me. I did another 360 and Gabriel came into view, his mouth was moving but no sound or voice was being generated from it. I flashed in and out of consciousness, Gabriel looked scared and he seemed to be yelling off in random directions for help or something. He seemed to waving at somebody. Cassie appeared then. She lifted my shirt but of course the stab wound was gone. She seemed to ask Gabriel something and he seemed to be nervous about answering it.

“Should I tell her?” he asked himself not knowing I can hear him probably.

I try and shake my head worried she’ll freak out if he tells her.

Gabriel is terrified and Cassie seems to be yelling. A loud beeping noise draws out, like the sound convince stores play late at night to keep kids away because they’re the only ones who can hear it. I cover my ears but it doesn’t help and it’s like the sound is inside my head.

Gabriel seems to get fed up with Cassie’s yelling and responses by either telling her to go do something or leave flat out. Once she’s gone, he looks worried. He seems to be whispering like ‘please don’t leave’ or ‘please don’t die’. I wasn’t dying but I couldn’t tell what was going on. I passed out finally, no vision happened. Just darkness, like I had deprived myself of sleep. I felt separated from myself, like everything I had experienced was a dream. Like it wasn’t real. I felt like I was violently being shaken. My eyes snapped open, scared. I heard gunfire and voices.

“Oh, no,” echoed a voice. “We have to move him.”

I heard sniffling.

“Hurry up, be quick,” echoes the same voice.

I feel myself sway. I hear a screech and groaning.

I spotted Gabriel, Michael and Jess.

What had happened?

I looked around. I was in the front hall. I tried to move and I fell to the left, my vision blurred.

“Hey, Gabriel. He’s awake. How long did you say he’d been out?” calls Jess.

“Forty-five minutes, maybe an hour?” he responded a little unsure.

“That’s longer than usual, right?” Michael asks.

“Yeah, but the same thing happened to me yesterday. I and he went into a vision and I didn’t wake up till morning. But I don’t think he’s had a vision. He would have said something about it,” replies Gabriel.

“No vision,” I agreed in a groan.

“Where’s Cassie? We should get him on a stretcher. What about the stab wound? Is it open or bleeding?” asks Michael.

“Jasper healed him. It’s not the knife wound! I don’t know what the heck it is!” replies Gabriel annoyed.

“Here,” say Jess.

I feel someone lift up my head and place something soft under it, a pillow or blanket.

“Maybe healing needs to be done multiple times to work fully. He was moving around right after and that might have reversed it. We should replace Jasper,” replies Jess.

“You two can do that, I’m staying here with him!” comments Gabriel harshly.

Everything turned black again.

“Everyone always wants me to smile. Just because I don’t smile doesn’t mean I’m not happy. Very few people have a natural smile. People always thought I was frowning, in truth it was my neutral face. It was like when you cried when you were really happy. Crying is seen as a symbol of sadness but it doesn’t always mean someone’s sad,” I hear Gabriel’s younger self say.

I remembered this conversation. It was right after he came out and Emily broke off her friendship with us. I’d found him at the top of a tall hill, watching the sunset. Grace had asked me to go replace him because it was like ten at night and getting dark. I didn’t know how to reply to his statement. I don’t remember why he said that. I don’t recall if I asked him something, either. I remember feeling emptiness after he said that.

“I just want to be left alone. Why can’t I just do what I want? Go to school, smile when I want. Love who I want. Be who I want to be. Why can’t I smile when I want to? What is the point of smiling all the time? Why can’t I have a neutral face?” I hear him say next.

I didn’t have an answer for him. It was like when someone said ‘smile for the camera’. The smile wasn’t real then. Nobody could smile all the time. I didn’t understand people’s need to have someone smile, either. If they have a neutral face they’re fine. You can’t smile forever. Some people ask you to smile when there’s nothing to smile about. Like when they take your picture, there’s nothing to smile about then but you don’t want to sit and take pictures all day so you smile for them to get it done and over with.

People will also tell you, ‘life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows’ so how can they expect you to smile on command? We will smile when something’s funny or we’re having fun or enjoying ourselves. We will not just randomly smile on command when someone asks unless it’s for pictures because we don’t exactly replace sitting in from of a camera fun.

People like that have to realize that people often do not follow commands unless they do not want to get in trouble. But you can’t get in trouble for not smiling. If you tell someone to do something they are less likely to do it. Like if you tell a child to be quiet they probably won’t be because they think it’s funny to disobey adults.

I never did reply to Gabriel’s questions but I did get him to come home at least. He kept looking at me with wonder because normally I would understand and explain things to him but I didn’t have the answers to those questions. They were like one of those trick questions or a question that was just asked for the irony and you weren’t supposed to answer it. I had no answer. So I couldn’t help him. It made me wonder for a long time after what the answer was but I never did come up with an answer and that made me wonder if there was an answer or if the question was rhetorical. I tried to think from different angles but it had still been a mystery as to why people were like that.

Did they need to know how people felt so they asked you to smile so they thought they knew you were happy? Or did they need to know how to feel so they asked others to smile so they didn’t think they looked silly when they smiled? I didn’t know. Neither of those questions really made sense. I was lost for the answer still three years later. When had I forgotten he’d ask me about that? Did he still wonder what the answer was?

Everything was silent and finally the blackness turned from memory to sleep and I drifted off.