49. Tabula Rasa – George

The world was a white void, blanketed in snow and mist and silence. Nothing remained of the city, not one spire or skyscraper or fairground ride broke the plain landscape. Only the cracked and flattened peaks of mountains spoiled its uniformity, although one in particular had weathered the storm better than others. From beneath its rocky skin and several perfectly circular caves, battered metal glinted to the highest peak.

Far below, the snow shifted. A shuffle, a ruffle of flurry, and a sinkhole drained away to reveal some twisted remains of the former East Bridge. Then, from below even that, a bloodied right hand punched out through the powder and stretched in the open air. Knuckles popped and joints snapped, but the hand stretched further out, to grip the first jagged twig of metal it could find, and it heaved.

And broke.

A squeal of pain and the hand instinctively withdrew, followed by a chain of curses and moaning until its left counterpart reached out for something sturdier. It was a slow and methodical search, careful, but the probing pinkie found a solid grate or step, and leveraged itself aboard.

George half crawled, half wormed his way out. His face was a singular bruise, his skin nicked and sliced. He sweated blood, leaving a pink stain around the hole, but at last his body broke free and his legs slithered after the rest of him. He crawled up the stairs.

“Holden?” he said, more a hacking cough than a legitimate call. “Holden, are you there?”

The mist swallowed his voice and no response disturbed the air. George Travers collapsed on his arms and simply breathed. The world was a white void.

“Mdohrj?” Holden’s voice said, muffled, yet practically in his ear. “Ngtffmhh.”

George looked up. “Where are you?”

He blanched as the snow beneath him shifted and raised, and Holden’s head popped up under his.

“Please get off me,” Holden said.

George rolled and stretched out a helping hand, unfortunately too weak to pull Holden from his shallow grave. His friend laid on his front, bloodied and squinting through one unbruised eye.

“I think we’re done for,” George said, panting on his back. “Should’ve known you’d be the death of me.”

“You had any better plans?” Holden said.

“Yeah, dying in my sleep sounded a nice way to go. Surrounded by children and maybe Rhea crying over losing me.”

Holden’s voice was a wheeze. “Wouldn’t dying in front of your loved ones traumatize them? At least this way you die heroically. Y’know, saving their lives?”

George attempted, and failed, to shrug. “At least I was there to raise my kids in my fantasy.”

An icy breeze warmed them slightly, as Holden managed to raise his head a fraction further.

“I am talking to George Travers, right? The man whose last date was at an abortion clinic?”

George opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then he opened it again. “Aww, shit. You’re right, I gotta survive this. I have to make it right with Rhea.”

“Great, you can take me with you. I appear to be paralyzed from the brain down.”

George once again attempted to, and failed, to move.

“Any minute now,” he said. “We’ll be up and walking into that mountain hall like heroes.”

“Yup. Just like in Lord of the Rings. I’ll be Frodo and you’re Samwise.”

George scoffed. “Why am I Samwise?”

“Because I can’t walk. You need to carry me.”

“Ha. I can’t even carry me.”

Holden let out a hacking cough that may have been a laugh. “Okay, then it’ll be like that John Carpenter movie. The one where the two guys die in the snow.”

“Well, that’s bleak.”

As sparse snowflakes drifted down through the mist, Holden’s already well-camouflaged body disappeared into the white. His eye was closed and his babbles ceased, and then through the dead air, George was sure he could hear a gentle, if rattling, snore.

He looked down at his own broken body. The pink trail of watered blood was already covered, and his own clothes were graying fast. They would both soon be buried in naturally forming graves. He turned his attention to the mountain, at the peak they’d so desperately fought to reach, and let himself smile.

“They’re safe, he said, “that’s all that matters.”

And with that, George Travers closed his own eyes and let himself finally rest in peace.

. . .

Naturally, the peace didn’t last long. Cutting into his dream of a soft, warm bed and equally soft, warm, redheaded company, Holden was dragged back to reality by a familiar scene from a favorite movie. As his eye opened, a layer of frost broke off from his face to reveal the snowy landscape he was desperate to ignore, but the sharp buzz and a black movement caught his eye, revealing a drone floating up from behind a snow dune. It beeped and whistled when it caught his gaze, and drifted closer.

“Fufooff, drnnn. Jzz f’ck right off,” he said, delirious and slurring, “I’m taking the Carpenter ending. I got nothing left for a Lucas sequel.”

The drone buzzed closer and Holden moaned, swatting at its general direction, at least in his head. From the drone’s perspective, he merely managed to waggle a finger, stopping only when the drone flew off to leave him in silence.

“That’s better.”

Then a siren broke the silence, an antiquated air raid wail that drilled into his skull. The sheer volume cleared the air of ice crystals, and Holden couldn’t tell if his eyes were opening to see what was causing it, or if his eyelids were simply being vibrated apart.

Through the thinning fog, three crescent lines of light grew into round windows as hatches opened in the mountainside caves.

Holden lay there, clutching his chest for several minutes or seconds or hours. Then, slowly, daring to see, he let go and raised his eyes.

The entire area was waking. The light grew as more hatches parted, revealing a gallery of wide-eyed portraits and bewildered busts.

Rhea’s bust leaned out from her hatch as she immediately called out “George?”

To Holden’s side, George’s head raised a fraction through the film of collapsing powder, and through reddened, squinted eyes, he wheezed.

“Rchggrrrr?” he said. “Mmmnnrrr?”

“He’s right here, next to the other hero calling the way. You can collect us both at the same time.” Holden managed to yell. “Buddy, the eagles are here.”

Rhea held her hatch up and stared at him for a fraction of a second, then fought through the hatch to escape it. She tumbled out and down the slope and into waist deep snow, and fought through it, half wading, half bulldozing, half crying and half screaming George’s name.

George, to his credit, managed to keep his eyes open, fighting the pull of unconsciousness. Rhea pushed through the snow, a team carrying convenient health packs and ammo behind her, as she clambered over the pained Holden to reach her husband, and threw herself on top of him. George was too frozen to think straight and simply cried with her, holding onto her warmth and love and warmth and scent and loving warm warmth.

The leader of the paramedics pulled her off, giving George a familiar questioning frown as his team got to work lifting him onto a foam padded stretcher.

“R. Adams, head of human resources,” the head of Human Resources said. “We met before, didn’t we?”

George gave him a thumb up, or at least a thumb, and let Rhea place the Mylar blanket she’d snatched off a medic, around him. Behind her, Holden received similar treatment, including several heat packs and the secondary attentions of Wendy, who checked on her brother first.

“Up we go,” Adams said, “Let’s get you inside before the world decides to do something else.”

They marched back to the hatches, feet post-holing through the snow with George and Holden on sleds, dragged behind and escorted by their lovers. Rhea held George’s hand and Wendy picked on Holden, still giving her brother looks of concern over her shoulder. The delirious George traced a finger around Rhea’s belly and thanked it for being by his bedside with its mother at his end.

“It’s like the Earth’s been wiped clean,” Wendy said. “Like a sheet of paper we can start on all over again, only this time, without repeating the mistakes of the past.”

“A virgin world,” Rhea said.

In his stretcher, Holden smiled. “A virgin world. I like that.”

They waited for him to continue, yet he didn’t ruin it with innuendo.

“You really are growing up,” Wendy said.

Adams, with two fingers to his ear, nodded at a message coming through his earpiece.

“I see It’s officially midday and a rescue party is coming for us,” he said. “In that case, I declare our new calendar starts now, and it is an honor and a privilege to say the first act of this new age is the saving of these two lives from the old one. I can’t think of any better way to usher in a new era, and the new year of our calendar. Let today forever be known as the zeroth day of zero-zero, Tabula Rasa, recorded for all to see in the annuls of history.”

Three drones buzzed around them, one filming the rescue, another pointed directly at the face of R. Adams of Human Resources.

“The man likes to talk, doesn’t he?” a familiar voice said.

George turned, mid-nod, and found an equally familiar face leaning over him.

“O’Toole?” he said. Or coughed.

“Who were you expecting, the tooth fairy?”

“O’Toole?” Holden said behind them.

O’Toole shook his head. “What, are you both surprised to see me here? I was the guy who showed you this place.”

“You did?”

“You don’t think it was coincidence I got you jobs showing you the one place that could withstand the end of the world just before the end of the world happened, do you?”

“I don’t think we really thought about it,” Holden said

“I did,” George said. “In my toolbelt.”

O’Toole lifted the Mylar and pulled out his glass spanner. It glistened under his fingers and cast a broken spectrum across George’s face.

He put it back in George’s hands. “You keep it, son. After all you’ve been through, getting here, I think you deserve a trophy.”

“Do I get a trophy?” Holden said.

“No, but then you know why,” O’Toole said. He leaned in but didn’t whisper into Holden’s ear. “I was watching the whole time, you dirty bastard. You’ll be on trial for what you done.”

Holden’s face visibly paled. Given his already drained features, it was an incredulous feat.

“Holden,” George said, “what did you do?”

Holden stuttered and pointed at the mountain, past Adams of Human Resources, who was still monologuing to the flying cameras. From the metal hatches, more survivors appeared and exited to join them, including two more heroes they were glad to see survived, their personal cheerleaders, and a rambunctious child photographing everything he laid eyes on.

“Jamie,” Zeke called after him, “get back in where it’s warm.”

“But dad,” Jamie said, “they found my big brother and that weird friend of his.”

“That’s weird big brother in-law, kid,” Wendy said, taking Holden’s hand. “If you, y’know, wanna?”

“Uh, I’ll, um, think about it,” Holden said.

…

Cazz and Laura caught up with Alfredo and Bobert.

“You guys made it,” Cazz said. “We were worried you got caught out here.”

“Almost did,” Alfredo said. “That was us, screaming at you guys on the staircase.”

“See, told you,” Laura said, poking Cazz in the belly. “I knew a little something like the sky falling down wouldn’t stop you guys.”

Cazz nodded. “Yup. You guys got us all the way here with your bridges and ropes and shit. You’re our heroes.”

Bobert grinned. “Isn’t it tradition for a hero to get a special kiss when they save the day? Y’know, like an unspoken promise of what’s to come later?”

Cazz and Laura eyed each other.

“Why, I do believe he’s right.”

“And who are we to break with tradition?”

“They definitely deserve a special kiss.”

“And everything it leads to.”

Bobert’s grin spread wider. “Good, so now that’s an established fact…”

He leaned over and swept Alfredo into his arms, pressing his lips against his. The kiss was returned and the two men fell into each others arms and further into a snowdrift.

Cazz and Laura stared at them and then each other, and Laura rolled her eyes.

“I fucking knew it.”

…

As George and Holden’s stretchers alighted near the closest hatch, Jamie crashed through another snowdrift and took their picture, then turned to take one of Zeke floundering after him.

“So, you made it after all,” Zeke said. “I was starting to think you were dumping us on this lot now your job was done.”

“It’s never done,” George said, still struggling to speak, “and it’s no job. It’s a privilege.”

Zeke smiled at his son from behind his unkempt beard and gave the slightest nod. “Yeah, son. Yeah, I guess it is.”

“It’s always a privilege,” Holden said, staring past Zeke, at O’Toole, “even when it’s a burden. Even when you have to make sacrifices to keep them safe.”

Zeke rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I get it, kid.”

“You’ll never know what it took to get them here.”

“Look, I’m grateful, alright. You got us through upside-down hell, even with all the forces of nature turned against us. You don’t have to run it in.”

Holden sighed. “It was never the apocalypse that would have killed us. It was always the people. And their flaws.”

Still oblivious to O’Toole glaring over his shoulder, Zeke put a hand on Jamie’s. “Ain’t none of us perfect, kid. But I think I’ll try to be better from now on.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, old man, but good luck to you. You’ll need it, considering there’s a bottle sticking out of your pocket. Couldn’t you have waited a little longer, or was it a case of as soon as you knew you were safe again, you fell back on your crutches?”

George weakly waved Holden down. “Bud, I love you like a brother as much as I’ve ever hated him as a dad, but shut the fuck up. He did good.”

Holden closed his eyes and let a tear roll down his cheek. “George, the only lesson that my family ever taught me, that I agreed with, was to prune the dead weight. Even if you have to be cruel about doing it.”

“Is that how you’ll justify your actions, Mister Crayson?” O’Toole said.

He held up a tablet and a familiar face peered out from the screen.

“Holden, is that you?” Chloe said.

Wendy scowled, but Holden took her hand. “Don’t worry. Me and the Chlo-clo are ancient history.”

Chloe frowned, and a large tear rolled down her face, followed by more. “O’Toole contacted us. He showed me everything.”

Holden sighed. “I kind of hoped I got away with it. If you’re going to report on me, turn the cameras off, Chloe.”

“No,” Chloe said, “this effects everyone.”

Holden looked at George, at their friends and fellow survivors. “Then stop transmitting. You can show everyone the recordings after this lot are all safe and well.”

Chloe considered the request, then slowly nodded. The drones flew away, all but one. It hovered around them while Holden dragged his legs over the edge of his stretcher and bade his helpers to let it down. With considerable effort, he stood and faced her.

“Why’d you do it, Holden?” she said.

“My family… I don’t think anyone here will miss them.”

“And if it was just your family, we might have overlooked this. Tell everyone what you did.”

“I goaded Cheppard into giving them a sermon. It wasn’t hard. You know how judgmental he was. I may have stoked both sides a little.”

“Holden,” Rhea said, “what did you do?”

Holden didn’t reply, instead staring off at the horizon. O’Toole pointed behind him, and two mountain dwellers with rifles unslung them and aimed at him from behind.

“Mister Crayson here arranged for his family to try and kill your dad, “O’Toole said, “then sabotaged his bridge so it’d collapse when they crossed over.”

Rhea’s eyes shot wide. “You did what?”

“To be fair,” Holden said, “I did save your dad. I just needed my family to try and kill him while you all watched. That way, there’d be no doubt they were the villains, and you’d cheer them falling instead of feeling discouraged by it. Morale’s important when you’re working hard, after all.”

Chloe, still crying, banged on her screen. “And you did it again with the remaining members of their gang. I saw the drone footage, Holden. You waited until Cheppard was preaching to those goons with the trunk. When they stayed on the bridge. You built those bridges to come apart easily, just so you could murder—”

“Actually, sweetheart,” Holden said, “they came apart easily so we could navigate through each block with a ton of scaffold in our hands. The fact I could use it to my advantage was just a convenient coincidence.”

“You’re not even sorry for it. You killed them! You set them on fire.”

“I set their drugs on fire as a distraction. How was I supposed to know their clothes were that flammable? Maybe they got some of the oil on them. Besides, I don’t see anyone here complaining. Like I said, I pruned off the dead weight. We progressed twice as fast after they were gone. Am I right or am I right?”

Rhea grabbed his collar and pulled him to his shaking knees. “And my dad? What did you do to him?”

Holden grabbed her wrist. His grip was gentle, none threatening, and he shook his head. “I didn’t do anything to your dad. You can believe that. He took it on himself to do the rest of the work for me. The Cheppard was as divisive as a man can get. He split us up all on his own. All I did was make sure the people we needed to stay alive felt appreciated and needed here, and he took the surplus waste to his heaven.”

Rhea threw him down and her hands dropped to her sides. She staggered back and George steeled himself, grabbing her, forcing the two paramedics carrying him to fall with the extra weight. Rhea’s mouth gaped at Holden.

“You’re a monster.”

He didn’t look up, didn’t look anyone in the eye. “I won’t disagree with that, but I did what needed to be done, and we were all the better off for it.”

“And what about Cynthia?” Zeke said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

This time, Holden did raise his head. “If it helps, she went peacefully. I gave her my share of her candy bars and a couple of Repose tabs in different wrappers, but I think she knew what they were before she ate them. Because she ate yours as well.”

Zeke somehow turned paler than Holden, and Wendy ran to him, looking between them with disgust and horror, and a pleading longing, all fighting to express themselves on her face.

“You tried to kill my dad?” she said.

Holden reached out her, but O’Toole’s and Adams’s men stepped between them.

“If your dad was simply dead weight, I could have justified keeping him alive as motivation for you two, but he was more than that. How many times did he actively stall us? How many times did we have to make changes to accommodate his habits, or nearly die because we were held back? Look at him, Wendy. Look at his hand. Even now, after everything we’ve been through, his fingers are reaching for the bottle.”

Wendy looked down, and sure enough, Zeke’s hand had gripped the bottleneck.

“George, you said it yourself. That your old man is selfish, self centered and is going to get someone killed, and the chances were it would have been someone vital to the mission.”

Zeke visibly trembled and lifted the bottle to head height. With shaking fingers, he unscrewed the top and poured the vodka into the snow. It melted straight through to the ground. Wendy squeezed his arm but he shrugged her off and pointed a tremulous finger at Holden. He said nothing until he was practically touching him, and the mountain dwellers parted to let him through and say his piece.

Zeke had only one point to make, and he made it by smashing the bottle into Holden’s face. Holden fell back, nose gushing, as the bottle fell on it over and over and over again. Then, with a crack, his cartilage broke, and the base of the bottle broke on the next hit after.

Nobody said anything or moved to help him. Zeke drove his point home further with his fists.

“You bastard,” he said, muttering it along with less recognizable words. They streamed without pause through tears and snot while Holden curled into a ball, taking the abuse and letting Zeke vent his wrath until he pointed at Jamie, grabbing Holden’s hair to make him look up at the child.

“You think she was useless?” Zeke roared. “You think she held us back? Look at him. Look at the boy. She kept him safe. She made sure he was safe. She…”

He dropped Holden’s head in the snow.

“…she made me better.”

He bent over, roaring into Holden’s stomach, squeezing himself tight as his breaths grew fast, then picked up the fractured bottle and rammed his final point straight into Holden’s chest.

“Dad, no!” Wendy screamed.

She ran to stop him, but he was too far gone, too far away and the snow too deep. Zeke stabbed Holden again, then again and kept going until the others pulled him back and held him down. His eyes and veins bulged, and the trembles of his hands became full body convulsions. His tears and snot ran together into foaming drool.

“He’s having a heart attack,” Rhea said. “Someone get him a damn drink.”

Jamie vaulted past her and skidded to Zeke’s side.

“Daddy!” he said, and rummaged in Zeke’s pockets for something, anything to feed him.

There was nothing there.

Wendy stared at Holden, unable to say anything, while from her screen, Chloe wept and did likewise. Holden lay shivering in a growing pool of red, seeping through the snow. Nobody approached to help him. He looked up at the equally speechless George and coughed up a further spray of red

“You really were right, George. He was gonna get one of us killed. That’s why I did what I had to do. None of you would have, except your dad, Rhea. Hah. He did. If anyone was gonna mar this new world, it was always gonna be someone like me, or like him. Tell me I’m wrong.”

George clutched at his own heart as his dad’s gave out, then stared at Holden like he was a stranger.

“Tell me I was wrong, George.”

George wheezed and looked around, trembling at the sea of faces around him, and as his dad rattled his last breath, his eyes went back to his friend, and he simply shook his head.

Wendy’s knees collapsed at George’s admittance, and Holden reached out for her again.

“Look after your brother,” he said. “He’s a real hero.”

“You could have been a hero,” she said to him.

“No, George can be your shiny golden boy. I’ll always be the cunt that does what needs doing, even if it’s not what anyone wants. That’s what a grownup does.”

“I never thought of you as a grownup.”

“Had you fooled, then, didn’t I? Now you need to be the grownup. Take care of our baby if we managed to make one. Don’t let it know who I was.”

A deep boom from above snapped their attentions skyward, as a giant, silver disc sunk through the clouds, parting them with a sonic boom. It hovered above the mountaintop and a fleet of helicopters flew out from openings along its ridge. Its shadow covered everything as it spun slowly on the spot, defying the newly reactivated gravity of the world with obnoxious ease.

“And that would be the Kinsley Foundation, I suspect,” Holden said. “They’re like you, George. Practical but caring. You’ll have loads in…”

Holden paused and didn’t move, and George waited for the next word. Wendy shook him and called his name when it failed to materialize, only stopping when she saw the glaze in his eyes.

She looked back at her dad and the scene mirrored with Jamie, with George and Rhea paralyzed in the middle of the onlooking crowd, shaking and looking for answers.

Adams gestured to O’Toole and the two retreated to the rear with two of their crew in tow. One radioed the mountain and a flair shot into the air, and a helicopter immediately made a beeline for their location.

“We can see you,” Chloe said from the tablet, her voice a dead tone. “One minute to pickup.”

The forgotten spanner fell from George’s grip and he fell from his stretcher, torn between reaching for his father and his sister, or his best friend. He stared into Rhea’s eyes and no words escaped his lips. Her words for him were drowned out by the descending rescuers above their heads, as Holden’s words echoed through his. He turned his gaze skyward, wondering what the best of humanity would think when they looked down to see their newborn, virgin world, already marred with blood.