Amalfi Echo (11 page)

“Yeah,” Marion
said, “except that my gut feeling tells me the same. It’s the old
story. The nations of Earth are so bound up in their vested
interests that they won’t even unite to save the planet.” A painful
acceptance settled on her face. “It’s not doable in the time-frame
available to us.”

“It never was,”
Digby said.

“Why didn’t you
just tell me that, instead of letting me go through all of
this?”

“Despite my
God-like attributes, I don’t know everything and nor do the
learning programs. There was always a possibility that you would
come up with a new wrinkle.”

“Yeah, I’ve got
plenty of those now,” Marion said, “but not much else to show.”

“Jesus Christ,”
Tessa said, as the awful truth began to dawn. “You’re not giving
up?”

“I was kidding
myself about what I could achieve. So much for being the great
leader.”

“Hey, Adult,
you’re setting a bad example,” Tessa said, surrounding the three of
them with inspirational, cheer-up messages.

“I could do
without this,” Marion said.

Instantly Tessa
swapped the messages for a priest’s confessional box and sat,
draped in dark robes, in the priest’s chair.

“Go away,”
Marion said.

Encouraged,
Tessa tried again, surrounding Marion with drop-dead gorgeous
little puppies with large, soft, love-me eyes. Marion picked one up
and played with it in her lap. Eventually she said, “Fall-back plan
is we do the Ark thing.”

Tessa created
the Ark, with Digby as Noah and a long column of animals plodding
up the ramp. They all watched the animals for a while until Digby
said, “Not really my style.”

Which was so
obviously true it didn’t warrant further comment.

“Earth. What a
shit-hole,” Tessa said, quoting a line from another famous movie.
She tried not to think about her followers dying at the hands of
the bugs.

“Looks like
we’re going down fighting,” Marion said.

Digby gave them
an out. “There is nothing further to be gained here,” he said. “I
won’t be staying.”

-oOo-

Later Marion
said to Digby, “So have you got what you came for?”

“Yes,” said
Digby.

“That’s right
up front,” Marion said, taken aback.

“You did ask,”
said Digby. “And now it’s time to pick up our skirts and fly.”

-oOo-

So flee, they
did.

Fiction by John Zanetti:

The Gardener Who Could
See

Writing Home

Amalfi Echo

War of the Shadows

Non-fiction
:

The Christchurch
Destructor

Who Owns the Fish?

Back to
beginning

About the author

I am a New
Zealander, now wandering around northern Australia in a caravan. I
am also an Australian citizen. I brought my two boys up on my own
but they are now grown and gone, leaving me free to write
full-time. Mostly, I count myself fortunate to be living in the
tropics, with the freedom to simply hitch up my caravan and move on
whenever I get restless, which is often.

Twitter:
@johnzwriting

Blog:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7306535.John_Zanetti/blog