Evelyn Earth Part 49

I wanted the feeling of contentment that I received from that moment to live on inside me forever. I wanted it to be something that I held close to my heart until the day that it stopped pulsing with blood.

                I woke up in the middle of the night and gently got out of bed. Bas, I had started calling him that incessantly as a substitute for ‘baby’ which irritated me to no end, was sprawled across the sheets and breathing softly. He never snored, nor did he like to grab me and press his hot body against mine while we slept. It was so comforting knowing that I could move around and do what I wanted in bed, without the constraints of cuddling. Most of the time I slipped off to sleep easily, but tonight something had kept in a state of barely awake consciousness.

                As I lay in bed I could hear the sound of insects and the sway of trees. It was a chorus of things that didn’t allow me to move onto the next stage of deeper sleep. I padded my way over to the window and swung it open. They were old style French glass windows with six panes on each side and two ornate handles.

               

I had gone to bed in a large white t-shirt that had belonged to the resident of this house and it didn’t do much to keep the chill out. The nights were gradually getting longer and as I looked out over the star encrusted sky I knew that soon summer would be over and the long nine month Melbourne winter would kick in.

                I hated winter, I wished that it was a season that would never come to pass, a season that would always be forgotten and kept hidden somewhere far away like Antarctica. Melbourne winter was especially maddening with its lack of snow, incessant rain and blustering winds. It had none of the perks of winter and all of the shitty downsides. Come to think of it that was always an assumption I had made before, at least the temperature didn’t drop below zero and we wouldn’t all freeze to death without houses and things.

                Imagine how the Earth Warriors were doing in a place like Antarctica. There wouldn’t be much for them to destroy, but once they did wipe out a village or a base of some kind it would pretty much be game over for any humans who lived there. Probably game over for them too.

                It would have been a different story if it was Eskimos, igloos were made from ice after all and all their clothes were made of animal furs. Those people probably wouldn’t even have seen an Earth Warrior. Maybe one of them was standing out on the snow fields and looking up at the stars completely oblivious that a new world order had taken place.  

                Bas stirred behind me and I glanced back at his half naked form. Despite the temperature he always insisted on wearing pants, but the shirt was usually optional and I was fine with that. I looked back at the moon, which had just revealed itself from behind a cluster of clouds. It was crystal clear and at its most vibrant even though it was only three quarters full.

                It would be a different day tomorrow, different in more ways than one. I leaned over the window sill and grabbed onto the handles. It was time I went back to sleep—proper sleep.

                I woke up late. I could feel the depressing thud of my head which was filled to the brim with stagnant blood. I groaned and rubbed at my eyes. I could feel the lack of Bas’s presence and wondered why he hadn’t woken me up.

                “You’re awake” his voice startled me. I opened my puffy eyes and immediately shielded them from the glare of the grey sky. He was standing in the same spot that I had occupied last night.

                “Whatteryoudoin” I mumbled.

                “It’s going to get colder soon” he said under his breath, “do you think the Sun Soldier’s powers wane when there is no actual sunlight?”

                “It’s a possibility.” I slid off the bed and felt around on the floor for a pair of trackies that I had discarded a few nights ago. They were three sizes too big for me, but that was just the way I liked them; baggy and soft.  

                “I think we should start today” he said firmly. I froze one leg half inserted into the pants leg and the other wobbling mid-air.

                “Today?”

                “You don’t think so?”

                “No, it’s just last night I was thinking that something was going to change today and I guess this is it. We’re finally doing it.”

                We looked at each other, both with our own apprehensions.

                “Have you been thinking about how to get around your…dilemma” he asked me. His voice was still tinged with slight distain, but at least it wasn’t venomous.

                “I was thinking instead of doing a mass blanket sweep of the city, that would leave us completely drained and vulnerable, we do it section by section. Before we clear an area we should announce it and see if any people do wander out of their hide-outs and bunkers. What do you think?”

                “Have you tried amplifying your voice?”

                “I don’t think that’s one of our assorted capabilities.”

                “We could spread out with Izzy, Trav and Sloan and all yell out at the same time, but fuck Evs would you come out of your safe bunker if some British lad and a bird were screaming out “come out or die!””

                “Good point” I muttered.

                “It’s worth a try though, you never know once the rubble starts disintegrating before their eyes they might wake up and come out of hiding. I’m going to go next door and get the lads. You pack anything we need for this trip and meet me by the well.”

                I nodded in agreement and watched as he strode out of the door looking the part of a determined general. He had his usual attire of black t-shirt, black jeans and black Converse chucks on, but I also noticed that he had tied up his hair. It made him look more severe, but also more in control.

 I breathed a sigh of relief for the fact that he hadn’t mentioned Owen. We both knew that these safety measures weren’t for the stray groups of people hiding out in the city’s depths, but it was nice not to talk about it.

                I rushed around the house packing walking gear, the small amount of food we had left over and plastic bottles to fill up at the well. Once I was ready I took one last look at the bedroom where Bas and I had spent so many steamy nights and waved it all away. Literally.

                “Starting early?” He called out as I crossed the road and walked to the well where our small crew had assembled.

                “It’s like a band aid” I shrugged. The spot where the old Victorian house had stood was now a strange looking block of land, dotted with various lines of plants, weeds and overgrown grass that had covered the stones of a path that had once led to a shed. The whole world would look like that after we were done, before Mother Nature took a firm hold of it and re-shaped it to her liking.

                It irked me a little bit that she was allowed to do all these things while humanity couldn’t create metals and such without being condemned. After all we lived in a closed system. Everything mankind had made had come from the Earth. It was just the way things were shaped and meddled with that was the problem.

                I wondered who the first person to change an atom had been. Had they modified an atom? I realised sheepishly that I didn’t even know. I knew there was such a thing as an atom bomb so surely some man or woman had tampered with the raw material of the Earth to create something akin to an abomination.

                I also realised that I was wandering into shady territory where questions like “is cloning okay” and “is stem cell research ethical” wanted to present themselves like over eagre students in a class room, begging to be picked to speak in front of their peers.

 One thing was for sure, I was no scientist and I had never possessed a scientific mind. My brain was filled with myths and legends, with ages long past and philosophical thoughts of the universe that had no logical grounding.

                One thing I did want to affirm to myself was that at some point in our evolution mankind had gone astray. They had been influenced by an outside source and given a seed of knowledge that was not meant for them. With that one tiny seed a huge cancer had spread that blanketed the world and it was this cancer that I was going to destroy. Not because the Mother told me to, or because she wanted vengeance against humanity, but because I could feel it in myself—the need to change to world, no, to revert the world back to its purest state.

                Then, and only then would we be able to see where we went wrong and take a different path that would not lead to our mutual destruction.