The GOD Box (24 page)

May said, “Look, as far as I understand, you need Gabe to come back for you to come back.
Starting over still seems like a definite possibility in your mind. But you will not kill everyone I love and everything I know. It seems like you have an addiction to immortality, and this worries us. You might need his body, we think, and that scares us, too. I’m interested in making this a win-win. You help us with knowledge and you can continue being grumpy and hating the world.”

“Hey – be glad you’re not dead yet. Yeah, and if you’d had my life, you’d hate the world, too. Got it? I don’t like you, I think you are immature and got yourselves into something you don’t understand. There’s that I want than my meds – I want my work back.”

“We need answers, and since it is apparently your doing that the world is the way it is, you need to start talking. Why is everything dying?”

Jonathan scoffed. “I’m not ready to give you information, yet.”

But May pressed him, hoping that if she bugged him enough he would explode and give things away.

Once Janine had fallen asleep on the table next to them, Jonathan made the very bold statement that he was still
planning to start over again. So still and scientific was the threat that it made the air fill with sick smells. May wasn’t sure she cared so much about what Jonathan knew as she did about what Gabe knew, but she had to learn something. When May felt like she had gotten as much out of him as she could, she picked up Janine and carried her to bed. Then outside she went to relieve herself. Upon entering the house, she finished her glass of water, then continued taking notes and making theories from what she learned.

When she started to fall asleep, she was so grateful, she didn’t even feel surprised that she was tired.

…

Sometime in the night Dane tried to rouse her, but she could hardly make out what he was saying. Jonathan was gone. She swore under her breath, but it was inaudible. Dane went tearing out the door, hollering for Thomas to join him, heading to who knows where, and May fell back asleep.

…

Sweat was pouring from everywhere on May’s body when she woke up. The sun was out. Ah, crap. She remembered the events of the previous night and assuming it wasn’t a dream, immediately began looking around for evidence of the events. How could she have not woken up?

At first, nothing looked suspicious.
The house was empty of most of the occupants. Thomas and Dane were sprawled on the floor, looking like they had crashed in exhaustion. Then she looked over at Jonathan, who was back in his chains. That wasn’t enough information. She was tempted to wake Dane. Looking closer at Jonathan, she noticed dirt all over his hands, and on his knees.

What on earth would he have to be digging around for? Burying something? What wo
uld he have to uncover? Or… who? That thought weirded May out, even though it was a likely possibility. He used his hands? Why not a shovel? Was he that desperate? Did he plan on May falling asleep, even though typically her insomnia wins that battle? But the sleep was so strange and out of her control. Something was wrong. May realized the possibility and heat started rising in her chest. Had Jonathan somehow tricked her into taking one of his sleeping pills? Was it possible?

May tried to stop herself from the paranoia. Body tense and nervously touching her face, she knew how strongly she believed it.
Freak
. She felt flushed and shaky. How did she want to react? He needed to know how unacceptable that was. A violation of space, of choice, that’s what that was. No trust or honesty. Not even an all-out fight.

Jonathan was waking up. Sweat was dripping to his eyebrows
. Perhaps May was seeing things, but she thought she saw a smirk on his face, then again, he most likely didn’t see what was about to occur. May walloped him in the jaw with her fist and kicked his knees, hard. He started swearing, waking both Dane and Thomas.

“Something is wrong with you! Maybe you could take apart my brain and put it back together, but you obviously have chosen to leave yours
out to rot!”

Jonathan smiled. May smashed her knuckles again into the side of his face.

Since Dane was somewhat alright with Jonathan getting beat up, he didn’t stop her immediately. But he did look intensely confused. Jonathan running away was expected after all. For her final blow, May roundhouse kicked him in the ribs. Jonathan stopped smiling and May took a few steps back with her hands on her hips, exhaling heavily.

She pointed at him and said, “Damn, you.”

Wheezing Jonathan retorted, “You don’t even know what that means.”

That ticked May off, but she just stayed quiet.

“So I missed something.” Thomas said in good humor.

Dane silently showed agreement.

“I think he put a sleeping pill in my food or water.”

“Oh…” Dane supplied, lightheartedly,
then immediately changing to anger said, “Now I get it…”.

Jonathan dangled from his chains and coughed a few times.

“I guess he anticipated he would never have another chance. Who knows when you actually sleep.” Dane said.

“Bingo.” Jonathan
sang.

Thomas clarified their confused looks
to Jonathan when he said, “Maybe you should use words we understand, ‘cause otherwise you sound like a complete idiot.”

Jonathan grunted and that was the end of that conversation.

May dropped her power stance slowly, breathing deeply and looked at Dane, “Where’d he go?”

“Cemetery. Digging up Gabe’s body. Might’ve even been close if we hadn’t shown up. We spent a few hours trying to get information out of him and searching through his possessions. We confiscated everything that wasn’t food.”

May was terse. Nothing could help this man. She fumed silently for a few minutes. How would they ever get him to be friendly with them? What was wrong with him? What happened to make him like this? Should this explain everything about their attempts to restart the world? Was everyone like him? Physical aggression would never work to their benefit, but May felt better for now. Only if they could break him down far enough to be like a child, she thought. As she said that she thought of a phrase in the green book…

“Why’d he go last night instead of the night before?” Thomas asked
, encouraging a stiff hesitation in her self-imposed abyss. That was a fair question. Possibly, he was just trying to pull wool over their eyes, but in case there was another motivation, the question needed to be asked. May said she didn’t know, but that she’d think about it. Her hand patted around her waist, checking that the medication was still there. It wasn’t.

“Oh… here.” Thomas said, untying the pouch from his own waist and handing it to her.

May sighed and looked down at the bag, “I don’t know what to do with this.” She dropped it on the table for the time being, staring at it. Those pills made her wonder if everyone who used to be on earth was like Jonathan, if everyone had distractions and addictions – it was still common in her culture now, just not as detrimental. The things she thought were normal in their life were just the dregs of horror from Jonathan’s generation.

Dane saw the way May was perplexed with the inanimate object, and the way her eyes widened and her brow folded the longer he let her stay like that. He said,

“Hey, May, I’m gunna show you the things we found with him.” Dane beckoned her and they found their way outside to some shade.

They sat together and Thomas went out to the field to see what work needed to be done
still. Dane pulled out silver syringes and mechanisms from the bag and laid them before her. Now these were artifacts. Hopefully these would tell them something. The silver instruments were foreign to the dull brown of the earth and the bright green of the grasses. There were three syringes, one with clear liquid and two empty. There was an egg shaped silver case where the syringes fit. From the smaller, empty syringes stuck out some tubing leading outside of the case. Nothing magnificently special stood out about the case itself; nothing extra-terrestrial, if you will.

“They start the world over with beef jerky and a few syringes… that makes sense.” May said it, and Dane laughed, but she didn’t. She seemed stressed, like she should know what it all meant, but couldn’t remember. She was still irritated at how untrustworthy Jonathan was. So why was it that Jonathan had this stuff, but not Gabe? Was he supposed to be more trustworthy? Why was he in
charge of life and death?

At
any rate, they knew the purposes with which Jonathan and Gabe came back and so these things had to be treated with care, and fear. Perhaps there was something more to be learned from the cave when Samson and Miek came back.

Dane broke her out of the stupor, “So… he had this all open and out while he was digging, as if he were preparing to use it once he got to Gabe’s body.”

“Do you think that this clear liquid is –“

“Yes, it’s the disease, that was one thing we actually got out of him.”

“Let’s not give this back to him, yah?”

“Yah.” Dane agreed, then leaned in to kiss her. “I don’t like seeing you this stressed.” He said, looking in her eyes.

“Me neither.” She agreed.

“Everything will be okay.” He assured her.

May shared with him all the things she and Jonathan talked about over the past few days, hoping he could help her to glean information and piece things together. Dane sighed next to her, listing things on his fingers as the sun set. They had reconvened after dinner and playtime. May lay on the grass and was scouring through more of the green book by the small candle they’d lit. Thomas sat by, hoping to learn what was happening and be of any help if he could. When the darkness came on, Thomas said he was going to go to sleep and left the two out by themselves.

Dane lay himself down with his head on May’s
lower back and closed his eyes. She never knew if he was asleep, but he didn’t ever care to be woken up, so she would usually try to talk to him and see if he responded. The book was randomly allegorical, sort of. It was driving May crazy. Her body was tense and she was squinting so hard you could hardly see her eyes. What was up with all this stuff about trees? Seemed to her like there was a deeper meaning, but she couldn’t figure it out.

“Dane.
” She said calmly, knowing he would most likely respond. “I need your help, you’re much better at this stuff than me.”

“Read it to me” came his low, tired voice.
She did so.

With a groan, Dane sat up and flipped over dramatically so that he was belly down and parallel with May from the shoulder to his ankle, where her toes were. A momentary smile and a short laugh came to May’s lips.
As May held the book up, he read it in a whisper to himself. Intrigued, he pulled the book closer to his face and asked, “who’s ‘
he’
?”

“
… supposed to be some kind of philosopher… and a doctor… but a lot of people oppose his way of thinking. I’m not understanding enough, I don’t think, to say whether I agree. However, I’m gathering that his selectiveness is what is causing problems with people. Sometimes it rubs
me
the wrong way.”

“This language is really strange. If this came from their time, why don’t Gabe and Jonathan talk similarly? Maybe it was a fad of some kind to write in this style?”

“Maybe. Or I considered that perhaps it’s a history book that pre-dates them?”

Dane asked May to re-explain her
first discovery of the book and she explained how Gabe tried to hide it. Then he asked if she thought it was valuable or if it was just something they wouldn’t understand so Gabe preferred they didn’t get mixed up in it. Right now, May was not sure it was either. Together, they read on into the night, hoping they could at least figure out why Gabe had it, but hid it, and never read it himself.

Dane put forth
good effort to stay awake, but in the end couldn’t manage it. May, herself, was wide awake.

Huh
? She asked herself, flipping between the few last pages. The style of writing was making it terribly difficult to understand.

May made her literature study intentional with circles for words she didn’t know, underlines for important passages, squares for repeated words or phrases.
Most of the time she could understand from context, but this book was different. An ink circle now surrounded the word
crucified
. Was the whole book about this man’s failure?  How strange. May settled herself with her head on the small of Dane’s back. Another thought occurred to her, which she hadn’t completely registered earlier. Those researchers might be coming soon. They were going to want an explanation. In exasperation May slapped her hand to her face. They’d hardly had enough time to learn for themselves.

Perhaps it would be good to share the information and have many people deciphering at once. It would be difficult to explain, though, and
who knew how they would treat the information. Most people would read a little and make assumptions off of the little instead of knowing all of it. Speculation of dozens seemed worse than waiting for a few to get the full story. But May knew she would be upset if she was on their side of things. Who knew what they would try to do for the information?