The ‘T’ Anomaly

Except for the occasional abandoned vehicle, the streets were mostly clear and for the moment, Andrew experienced little difficulty making his way in the direction where the supposed building, Monroe claimed one of The Corporation’s bases of operations, stood. The suburban setting maintained its illusion of a quiet ghost town and without a being in sight and the roads relatively drivable, Andrew could not help but ask, “What did you see back there?” curious to know what brought her so close to death. Laura looked to Andrew with a sad face but he was too focused on driving to notice. “I wanted to save her,” she said solemnly, “—but then I realized I couldn’t, no matter how much I wanted to.” “Who?” Andrew asked, furrowing his brow, still clueless to her paradox. “There was a little girl back there,” she said dryly, recalling the wretched creature still fresh in her mind. Andrew said nothing and held firmly to his silence after finally understanding her dilemma. “Who could do such a thing? Who could create such an insidious weapon knowing it would do that to a human being …to a child?” As Laura proposed her question, tears began to fill her eyes again. “…Men who’ve sold themselves for money and power, men without conscience, men who prize the qualities of death and fear, believe it or not, men that are worse than me. Perhaps they fancy themselves gods—or maybe it was God Himself and He wants to show us how monstrous we’ve become.” Another pause ensued as they both thought about what he just said. Dividing his concentration, Andrew’s eyes combed the blackness ahead of them and focused on the road while his intellect contributed to the conversation. He heard himself talking again but did not know the purpose as to why he opened his mouth. “It’s a hard thing to stomach …a dead child, sad victims and casualties of a cruel world; too young to understand the complexities of ‘why’. …I once watched a boy, who must have been about ten, trip an IED. All I can say is; one moment he existed, the next he didn’t. It was the quickest, most painless way I’ve ever seen anyone go and if his death was meant to be, I’m glad it happened the way it happened.” Laura listened to Andrew’s emotionless statement of firsthand experience. “If there is a God, I can’t imagine he’d allow such things to be,” she began. “Whatever this is, it’s something only we have the capacity to do to ourselves.” Bitter over the words she just spoke, Laura wiped away her tears before they could stream down her face and turn her cheeks red and puffy again. Andrew was quick to formulate a response that rebounded off her statement. “Disparaging, man’s savage nature, how we willingly choose to pursue new avenues to destroy ourselves… Our appetite for destruction is insatiable. It is truly a sad world we live in, but our world none the less. …If there is a God, why do you suppose he’d allow us to do such things to ourselves?” Even though he had not intended to press the conversation, he found himself engaged with the bleak morality of the subject and it was the first time in a long time he had given the content any serious thought. Since he had already pre-formed an answer to his question long ago, he waited to see what she had to say, if anything at all. The inquiry withdrew from her a dark, philosophical response and it was more like his own than he wanted to admit. “Maybe it’s punishment for man’s defiance against Him, and perhaps, to some small degree, we deserve it. He is the only one who can fully understand our nature and judge us for what we are and what we are capable of. I guess it’s only natural …but does the corruption of a few warrant the destruction of all? And if so, how can He rationalize and justify the punishment of the innocent? …Because we are not all equally guilty.” Laura became increasingly more devastated after thinking about all she had already seen—the damage, the horror, the wrong, the injustice. Now you’re catching on… Deep in the recesses of his mind, Andrew started to analyze what she had said and the more he thought about it, the more frightening the statement sounded coming from her. It left him almost speechless as he could only reply with an absolute. “…And then you realize ‘innocence’ is just a word and it holds no value to the greater powers that might be. If God is real, and you understand how He works, you’d know that He doesn’t like to leave anyone ‘untouched’, for better or worse, when it comes to His wrath, no one ever gets spared.” The more Laura chose to think about what she had seen, the more hopeless she became. Her mind darkened as she began to focus on her own problem. “I understand what it is you need me to be, but I’m not sure I can fit that mold, not even for one night. You’ve had time to adapt to become the fighter—the survivor—that you are, but it’s not me,” she said, leveling doubt at herself. Her mind tabbed over to an adjacent thought. “What happens when I become one of them?” Laura said, thinking aloud as she gripped the wound on her arm, squeezing it until it began to sting again. Andrew wanted to say nothing for fear of inflaming the issue but he knew his silence could make it that much worse. He glimpsed over to see her clutching the bite, afraid of the uncertainty surrounding the rest of the night. “I wonder if I’ll even notice the change,” Laura muttered, staring out the windshield as she began to monolog, her morbid thoughts flooding the cabin. “Will I shake and convulse and strain in agony as I suddenly burn out, or will I unknowingly become a dumber me until I have no control over myself and can only watch what I’m doing from behind dead eyes? Will I feel my body turn cold while I slowly drain of life or experience any emotion whatsoever after my transition? Will I feel the desire to attack you as if driven by some basic instinctual need only to watch as you shoot me dead?” Her trailing thoughts were nothing he wanted to comment against and he would have kept his mouth shut if not for the lurking demon. It eagerly greeted the opportunity and cackled with pleasure at her passing notions of a grim foreseen fate. How right do you think she is, Andrew? After all Monroe said? Will you watch her suffer and choose to suffer yourself like before? Or are you going to play the humane hero who grants mercy in the moment of a dying wish? You know you should have left her, Andrew. You should have left her to her fate, not burden yourself with it. You’re fighting a losing battle and you know it. …Yet you try so hard; are you really doing this for her or is it because of ‘her’? Fuck you! Andrew thought to his dark side. Temper, tempter, Andrew, it grunted scornfully as it scurried back to its dark crevice within his conscious. With no place else for his anger to go and tired of listening to her depressive outlook, Andrew turned to her. “I need you to turn that shit off, right now because I don’t want to hear it!” he said to her with a solid touch of abrasive sass. “I know I haven’t anything better to do but wade into neck-deep bullshit and put my waste of a life on the line, but I’m not going to sit here and listen to you theorize about your end. I don’t like this part of you, is shows a real lack of commitment to your life and to who I know you to be. You sound like you’re ready to die, like before, like you’ve already accepted it—have you accepted it?” Andrew took his eyes off the road again and turned to look at her. Ignoring him while deep in thought, Laura’s face was blank and emotionless as she continued to stare ahead. “Let me tell you something; in the fifteen years I spent trying to self-destruct, my despair only carried me so far. You know what I discovered? My anger against the world, my rage, outweighs my grief and guilt. And God …he can go fuck himself.