Coronado Dreaming (The Silver Strand Series) (12 page)

After two and a half hours of surfing, I found that I had worked up quite an appetite. Melody and her two friends were on the beach; a few guys had tried to approach them, but thankfully had met with little success.

When we saw the three uber-maidens donning their over-clothes and collecting their gear, Giddeon and I made our way to shore. We ditched our boards and walked across the sands… I looked down and noticed that oddly, even though I could feel my feet digging into the silicon, no footprints followed my steps. Sometimes, I could see a flickering as my feet left or connected with the beach, but I had grown accustomed to that type of weirdness and ignored it. As we got nearer to the girls, we could hear them deciding to get fish tacos at South Beach Bar and Grill.

Gid
gave a thumbs up, and I knew where we were headed, also.

He and I parted from the young ladies and walked towards the restaurant while they went to store their boogie-boards in their car. We made our way past people on the boardwalk… teenagers, college students, bicyclists and the homeless… all out enjoying the San Diego weather.

Just before we got to the pier, we took a left and went past a small parking lot. We then exited the sidewalk right into the bar. It was moderately busy; a few patrons were enjoying early afternoon cocktails and looking out of the open windows at the beach. We went into the adjoining room and took seats at a table against the far wall.

Giddeon blinked and two tall iced-teas appeared in front of us, whereupon I took a long, replenishing draught. We looked over the menus as we waited for the three women to arrive.

“I’m thinking a Wahoo and a lobster,” said
Gid
.

“I’ll go with a shark and an oyster, but, no rush. Wait ‘till they all get here.”

We relaxed in our seats; the wet suits were magically gone and we were back in dry shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops… standard
Southern California
uniforms. Someone dropped some money in the juke-box and Jimmy Buffet’s ‘
Come Monday
’ filled the air.

It was easy to forget that I was in a long-term care facility half-way across town.

“Not a bad day, so far,” I observed.

“Not bad at all,” replied Giddeon. “I want you to remember how you feel right now, and how absolutely fantastic it would be if you were ‘real’ and waiting on Melody after all of the sun, sand and surf we just experienced.” Again, he had made finger quotes in the air. “That would be pretty much a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, wouldn’t it?

“Maybe a 12… hey, here they come!” They must have been parked nearby.

Melody, Amanda and Brooke entered the bar/restaurant, looked around, then came and deposited themselves at a table in the middle of the room close to us, naturally. I’m sure Gid had somehow sampled where they would most likely sit. They had on shorts and jerseys over their swimsuits, and dampness showed through their clothes. The co-eds all picked up menus and were pointing and talking amongst themselves, trying to decide what to get. A waitress came over and took their drink orders; they all went for iced tea as well.

Jimmy Buffet went off and was replaced by The Beach Boys… ‘
I Wish They All Could Be
California
Girls
’.

The California Girls at the table all bobbed their heads and sang along. Other patrons in the eatery were definitely enjoying the impromptu karaoke from the good-looking college ladies with the menus in their hands; the waitress, cute in her own right, danced over towards the end of the tune and took their orders. Everyone was smiling, and I felt the mood of the restaurant lighten perceptibly in sync with all of the happiness and music.

‘
Wipeout
’, by the Surfaris, came on the jukebox, next.

Amanda and Brooke couldn’t contain themselves. They jumped up from their chairs, began to dance, and succeeded in dragging Melody from her chair, too. Giddeon and I, along with every other male in the place, watched in amazement as three gorgeous women entertained the customers for 2 minutes and 36 seconds. Short and sweet. Just like my guardian angel said a song should be. Maybe he was on to something.

The day went to at least a 13, even being in a coma.

After the girls finished their meals and left, Giddeon and I walked outside into the afternoon sun. I was feeling pretty good about having ‘spent’ some time with Melody while learning to surf… also, from being with her while partaking of delicious seafood. The sky was crystal blue, and the water beneath it shades of a deeper blue, touching on green. A few clouds skirted the horizon, but for the most part the atmosphere was clear.

“Not bad, huh?” said Gid, taking in the view as the ocean breeze pushed the hair back from his forehead.

“No place like paradise,” I replied.

We stood there, in silence. My companion had a faraway look in his eyes. I remember thinking to myself that it was the first time I had ever seen anything close to sadness on his face. Finally, he said something rather cryptic…

“You know, heaven and hell have the same zip code.” Giddeon continued looking out at the ocean. Slowly, the sky began to darken.

There was a flicker, and then, everything around us changed. Well, not everything… the sea and the air were still pretty much the same, but the buildings to our right, our left, and behind us were all suddenly dilapidated and in various states of disrepair. The sidewalk had become cracked and shifted… grass and weeds were growing up through the gaps. A mangy dog foraged nearby; he stopped and sniffed at a dead seagull that was mostly feathers and bone, decided against it, and continued on with what appeared to be a quest for a meal.

“What happened?” I asked, quite alarmed.

“Just showing you a future.”

“The future…?”

“A future. There are so many. This one is about 17 years from our present, after a series of wars… both international and civil.” He turned towards me and his blue eyes were like fractured glass; streaks of cerulean radiated out from the dark, black centers.

Giddeon continued in a voice that was devoid of his usual inflections, “After the wars, famine and disease ensued. Weaponised bird flu, cholera, and something similar to smallpox were the worst ones. That plague resembling smallpox just came about on its own, by the way.” He turned his head back to the water. “Those three pandemics, along with other minor epidemics, have wiped out at least 70 percent of the earth’s population… oh, yes… before that, dirty bombs and chemical bombs had crippled most of the western economies.”

Gid
shoved his hands in his pockets and I felt just a bit more breeze come in off of the water. It didn’t have the same smell that I had grown accustomed to. “All of these problems started a downward spiral into ubiquitous violence,” he said. “Many of the large urban centers, whether bombed or not, are now abandoned except for roving gangs. However, a few brave people come to places like this to fish… like that group over there.”

He pointed to the pier, or rather, what was left of the pier. A small cluster of people had lines in the water from off the northern side. We walked over in their direction and carefully made our way onto the damaged structure.

__________

The people on the cement construction were a scraggly looking bunch…6 adults, 4 teens and 2 small children. Some of them had pock-marks… apparently from the scarring, smallpox-like disease. They all wore rumpled designer clothes, and I noticed that two of the men had on expensive watches. Apparently, razors were in short supply; the males that could grow them had beards, and the women wearing shorts and sleeveless shirts sported underarm hair and unshaven legs. Several rifles were propped against the pigeon speckled railing.

Suddenly, one of the men exclaimed, ‘Got one!” The Rolex on his wrist flashed brightly in the sun as he reeled in a small sea-bass; the people around him cheered with delight.

“Plenty of luxury items around… just no running water, electricity or food,” said Giddeon. “Small bands of people group together for protection. Most stay near the coast or by rivers and streams, and nearly everybody carries a weapon… kind of like in the Wild West.”

We circled the group, and then stood next to the broken end of the pier. The water below could be seen from our location, sloshing back and forth as it had done for eons. My subconscious resumed his narrative, “A few towns, mostly in
Colorado
,
Idaho
and the
Midwest
are making a comeback. Some even have sewerage systems and running water. The feudal system is basically how those areas manage themselves, and no one new is allowed in unless they have a skill to share… otherwise, they’re out of luck. They can’t get past the town perimeters.”

I looked over the poor little group for a while, and asked, “What about medical care… what if you get sick, or a woman’s pregnant?”

Giddeon shook his head. “
Darwin
rules. Most of the doctors and nurses died in the epidemics. They were on the front lines, so to speak.”

“Not good.”

“Not so bad compared to some places.”

Before I had time to ask what he meant… the flicker and light tunnel came and went, again.

__________

We were then in the remnants of a city. Without having to be told, I sensed that the destruction around me could only have been caused by a nuclear weapon.

Gid
and I were near the outskirts of a devastated area, and I ascertained that we were somewhere in the
Middle East
by the remaining architecture still standing. Here and there, graffiti sprayed in a foreign print could be seen… possibly Hebrew, Farsi or Persian. The area was deserted. Not even a bird could be seen winging above the ruins.

“This is where one of the few actual nuclear exchanges occurred,” said Giddeon. I’ll show you what it looked like back then… 10 years ago… or maybe, I should say, 7 years from our normal, present time.”

__________

Abruptly, we were transported to high on a hill near the area we had just been standing. I could sense that we had been carried through time, again… a tremendous blast had obviously just occurred, and the sky was filled with yellow dust and a reddish haze. The remains of what must have been a mushroom cloud towered above us, and an eerie silence was punctuated here and there by the sounds of sirens.

Oddly, I thought I heard a call to prayer mixed in with the horns.

Then, from the periphery of the destruction came a terrible sight… a sight that I’ll never forget for as long as I live.

__________

They looked like zombies in a movie.

People were moving away, as best as they could, from the periphery of the blast zone… at least for the most part. Not everybody was able to do so. Some were walking in a daze. Others were trying to run. Many periodically stumbled, arose, and then continued on. Several crawled pitifully, and some just sat holding their arms out away from their bodies as if it was too painful to do anything else.

I’m not sure if they all got closer to us, or if we got closer to them, but the scene came into greater focus as the horrible seconds ticked by.

I saw that their clothing was burned and melted. Skin, reddened and sometimes in strips, hung from appendages and torsos. Obviously, many were blind even though quite a few were wide-eyed due to their eyelids having been seared away.

Thankfully, those poor souls could see nothing.

A little girl of about three or four was screaming for her mother in a universal tongue. She sat in the dirt, and her dress was totally fused with her body… what was left of her jet black hair still smoldered there upon her head.

I turned to Giddeon, who was taking in the scene, quietly.

One of the zombies walked through us on his way to wherever he was so intent upon going. I could almost feel the liquids on his flesh… blood, lymph and interstitial fluid… as he passed through my insubstantial form.

I suppressed a shudder.

“There are worse things than a coma,” said Giddeon. “Far worse.”

I looked back at the carnage. It was more terrible than any hell you can ever imagine. My grim tour guide gently reached out and took my arm. “Hold on for a moment… I’ll show you what they feel. It won’t last long.”

__________

How can I describe the most unbearable pain in the world?

Have you ever burned your fingers on a hot stove? It was like that, except that it was over every square inch of my body. But, that wasn’t the worst of it. It was inside of my body. My mouth, my eyes, my gut and my bladder. It was inside my rectum and between my ribs. Not just horrific burning, but that awful feeling like the wind has been knocked out of you and you can’t catch your breath. Not that you want to breathe; every breath brings in liquid fire down your trachea and into your lungs.

There was a roaring inside my ears, not from sound, but, from pain.

Every nerve ending in my body was screaming and nothing could be done to assuage the onslaught. I thought I would pass out, and then, realized with horror that I wasn’t going to. The crescendo of misery seemed to have no plateau, but continued on and on in an unrelenting exploration of the parameters of suffering.

It just got worse, and worse, and worse.

When I couldn’t take it anymore, I began praying to die. Whom I was praying to, I don’t know. Any god that could end my existence would do. I wasn’t particular at that point. Not particular, at all. I closed my eyes and was engulfed by pain so pure that time itself seemed to stand still.

Giddeon released my arm, and I fell heavily to the sand.

We were back in
Ocean
Beach
. As suddenly as it had come, the pain was gone. People were walking past on the sidewalk, and music was playing from South Beach Bar and Grill behind us. I vomited onto the off-white quartz crystals below my face.

The shark and oyster tacos weren’t nearly so good coming from the other direction.

“Sorry about that.” said Giddeon, quietly. “I’m sorry you had to feel what should never be felt… by anyone.”

I reached out and he helped me to my feet. “It’s alright,” I finally rasped after a few seconds. “I… I’ll never complain about being in a coma, again.”

He smiled a sad smile. I stood unsteadily beside him, holding onto his shoulder for support.
 
Normal seconds ticked by as I regained my composure.

“Hey, Giddeon?” I said in a weak voice.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t think today’s a 13 anymore.”

He burst out laughing and patted me on the back.