The Onyx Seed - A Story of Survival by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 20

Once the cloud of blood dispersed, the sharks faded from view. Marty and Julie found themselves amidst a sea of emotional emptiness as Marty’s tears of grief began to be replaced by the void of mental shock. He had seen fellow soldiers fall in the chaos of war. And as painful as it was to witness, it was to be expected. During war, people die. But this was not war. At least, not that kind of war. In war, the dead were referred to as casualties, names and numbers on a list, lying on the desk of some anonymous clerk. Now, the dead, in whatever their number, would be thought of as ‘friend’. Fellow human beings victimized by a man-made catastrophe. Marty was weak with the release of pain and anger as his eyes had become reddened with tears and the friction of his palms. “Marty,” Julie began. “We should go below deck, okay?”

She did her best to help him to his feet while wiping away her own tears. She hadn’t known Lucas nearly well enough to truly grieve for him. But the horror of helplessly watching the process of human evisceration was more than she could bear. Now, during Marty’s greatest time of weakness, Julie would have to be the strong one. She had already felt her soul stimulated by feelings that, for quite some time, had been all but forgotten and without giving the matter a moment’s thought, felt that her existence would be meaningless without Marty, that she would follow him to the slaughter and back. And even though he was an Army Ranger, he had not completely shut himself out from his own emotions. This made him that much more desirable. Julie believed that a man without feelings is no man at all. She walked Marty past the hatch and down the steps into the cabin. With one arm tightly around his waist, Julie walked him down to her bedroom at the bow. Marty’s breathing had become panicked as his eyes grew wild with anxiety. As soon as she got him to the bed, she ran out to a cabinet and returning with a needle, syringe, and a small glass vial. Puncturing the top of the vial, she drew up one cc of a strong sedative and injected it into Marty’s shoulder. She grabbed a couple of vials of the drug while at the hospital’s pharmacy, not thinking about why it might be needed. Sitting next to him, she attempted to talk Marty down from his almost catatonic state. Within the next fifteen minutes, the sedative took effect and Marty quietly slipped beneath the veil of drug-induced sleep. He would remain adrift in the calm waters of chemical serenity for the next six hours. After returning the vial to its cabinet and disposing of the needle and syringe, Julie made her way back to where Marty peacefully slept. Turning him on his side, she lay down and molded her slender, warm body into his. His mind was beyond any conscious experience. Now, it was Julie who needed comforting as she wrapped an arm around Marty’s chest. Pressing the side of her face into his back, she began weeping quietly. From now on, the air would be tinged with a hint of despair and nothing would ever be the same.

Three hours later, Julie woke from a night of disturbed sleep. Sitting up on the bed, she noticed that Marty - still lying in the depths a chemical sea -- remained in the same position she’d earlier placed him. She stumbled out to the dining table, where just the night before, they sat around a radio listened for signs of life. She was suddenly overtaken by a single thought, that had somehow managed to crawl its way out of the aloneness that stirred the air into an almost palpable turbulence. With so many dead of the infection, the loss of another human being was far more obvious than when humanity stood nearly shoulder to shoulder as the planet’s leading form of higher life. Now, there was one less survivor. One less mind to carry the record of human experience. If the human race was ever to achieve a new beginning, it would do so minus one. Julie realized the world would continue to transform itself with every minute of every day. Maybe not the world at large but simply that which floated and bobbed like a cork on a sea that held out mercy for no one. She also knew that on a boat this size - or any boat, for that matter -- things can go wrong, mistakes can be made, but not like this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. At the very worst, a mechanical problem could leave them drifting for days. At least, they would be supplied while repairs were being made. However, the loss of life was not something that Julie had prepared for, even as a cautionary thought. People never seem to consider the idea that death could come calling. Regardless of their endeavors. Perhaps it’s a form of denial. That we refuse to believe that matters of life and death could be so unimaginably larger than any single individual. And when we are forced to confront our smallness, the realization is often earth-shattering. Threatening the very core of our existence.

It was late afternoon when Marty plodded out of the bedroom. His mind was still drifting in a drug-induced stupor as he carefully balanced his way over to the dining table. Julie had nodded off with her head resting against the hull. She woke with a start as Marty sat down across from her.

“Hey,” she said in a gentle voice. “How you doing?” She bent her head down, examining his expression for any signs of further problems. He leaned forward with his head in hands as though afflicted with the effects of a three-day drinking binge. Letting out a groan of sedated exhaustion, he glanced toward the window where the sun had begun its evening course into night. Julie reached out and gently put a hand on Marty’s arm.

“Marty?” she continued.

A moment passed as Marty slowly regained his senses.

“Come on, Marty. Talk to me.”

He let his hands fall to the table as he took a deep breath of ocean air.

“It really happened, didn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Julie whispered. “I’m sorry.” She was clutching his hands as he turned his wrists up and held her soft warm fingers. They looked at each other as their eyes again, filled with tears. “So, what do we do now?” Marty asked. He had never experienced this degree of pain and realized that he would carry it with him for the rest of his life. Julie gave his hands a firm squeeze. “We don’t have a choice,” she began. “We have to keep going.”

Releasing his hands, Marty leaned back into his seat, bringing his hands up to his face.

“Shit,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been run over by a tank.”

“Oh, yeah,” Julie replied. “I had to give you something.”

Marty looked back at her with a puzzled expression. “What did you give me?” he asked. Julie explained that when they were at the hospital, she’d taken a couple of vials of Lorazepam. Not only was it a powerful sedative, but it also worked amazingly well to combat anxiety. He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands.

“God, I feel like shit,” he said. “How much of that stuff did you give me?”

“Just a cc,” Julie answered. “It doesn’t take much. Especially if you’ve never had it before. You should be okay by morning. Just... don’t go up on deck, okay?”

Marty looked around the cabin and noticed an occasional flicker of metallic light. “What the hell is that?” he asked. Julie turned around to look at where he was pointing. “What?” she replied.

Then, she remembered.

“Oh, that’s probably the sedative,” she answered. “It can make you hallucinate a little. You should probably go back to sleep. You can sleep in my room from now on. I’ll take the other one.” Marty got up with the intention of going to the kitchen. But the effects of the sedative brought him back to a sitting position.

“Marty, where are you going?” Julie asked. “I was going to go to the kitchen to get something to eat,” Marty answered. “But I think my feet got in the way.”

Julie quickly got to her feet and insisted that he refrain from walking for a while.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’ll get you something.” She walked the few steps to the kitchen and searching the cabinets, retrieved a can of beef stew. During the process, she discovered an unopened box of powdered eggs. Reading the box, she turned to Marty with a look of disgust.

“Powdered eggs? Really? Gross.”

“We may need that at some point,” Marty said with a tired voice.

“You can’t be too picky. Especially now.” She turned to him, still holding the sealed box. “You don’t really expect me to eat this, do you?” She put it back in the cabinet, fully intending to dump its entire contents into the ocean.

“I’ll just warm this up.”

Within a few minutes, the smell of beef stew filled the cabin as Julie divided it between them. She continued to examine Marty’s face, not for anything specific but solely out of concern. She tried not to think about it, yet her greatest fear now was in losing Marty. It wasn’t just her feelings for him that brought this fear to life. They were in a forty-foot yacht somewhere off the coast of Galveston. If anything happened to Marty, she would be utterly alone. This she feared far more than death. Being alone, especially on the sea, can often bring a unique brand of insanity, incomparable from anything death can offer. The silence that fell between them as they finished their brief dinner was almost painful, as Julie struggled to find a topic of conversation.

“So, I thought we’d bunk down here for the night and just keep going east in the morning.” Marty nodded. His foggy mind slowly began to clear as he sipped the last of his stew. He knew they had to keep going, to keep moving. But it pained Marty to leave Lucas behind, to let his soul drift alone in the cold sea. He saw the very spot they occupied as an ocean-bound grave. Once they left, it would be just another few square feet of seawater. As the sun sank beneath the horizon, Marty began to feel the pull of sleep as sedation replaced emotional exhaustion. Quite often, the drug-induced collapse of consciousness isn’t really sleep at all but a chemical hammer cleverly masquerading as a harmless-looking pill or capsule. Its dreams, the product of a brain forced into a sudden state of chaos.

Julie helped him to his feet and walked him to what had, up until now, been her bedroom at the bow of the boat.

“So, we’re leaving in the morning?” he asked. Julie awkwardly wrestled his nearly sleeping body down to the bed. Between the lingering effects of the sedative and the impact of impending sleep, getting Marty down the aisle of the cabin, into the bedroom and onto the bed required all her strength. Again, she turned him on his side and watched as he quickly fell off into an exhausted sleep. But, before retreating to the now unoccupied bedroom, Julie put an arm around his chest.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “I promise.”

She walked back down the aisle of the cabin and into the bedroom. Closing the door behind her, Julie crawled to the head of the bed. She sat with her knees pulled up into her chest. Her eyes teared up as she let her head drop forward and began quietly sobbing. Eventually, her body found its way beneath the covers. And under the weight of her own tired mind, cast herself off into the torpid hands of sleep.