3|Beyond the Darkness

Zoey groaned. How many more times was she going to wake up like this? Even with her eyes closed, she could sense the bright light around them.

…Wait. Light.

“Lisa?” she turned her head, opening an eye. Her voice was still hoarse from the screaming.

No Lisa.

Zoey shot up with a heave, propping herself up with an arm against the grass beneath her.

Grass?

She looked down. Sure enough, soft, green grass coated the ground under her. She dug her small fingers into it, feeling every individual strand that passed between her digits.

But then, what about that dark place with the smooth ground?

She stood up, brushing herself off. She was under a tree, and it was sunny. Light, puffy clouds drifted overhead, some of them clinging to the mountains in the distance.

As if nothing ever happened.

She felt her breaths begin to quicken. “Lisa!” She shouted again, breaking down into a fit of coughs almost immediately after. She ran out from underneath the tree, frantically scanning the landscape around her. There was some kind of city in the distance, but it looked nothing like the ones she knew back home.

No houses, either.

“Lisa!”

She ran to the other side of the tree.

…It was Lisa’s house. Or at least, part of it. A crash from somewhere deep inside the barely-standing wreckage made her jump.

“Zoey!” Lisa’s head popped out from the rubble. She pulled herself over the chunk of concrete concealing her, pausing at the top to reach back for something. “You were out for a while. Everything feeling okay?”

“I…” Zoey glanced at her still-bandaged hand. A splotch of red was barely visible beneath the pad. “I think so? What happened?”

“’Dunno,” Lisa tossed a crumpled sheet of metal down before hopping to the ground herself. “I woke up first after we got dragged back. I’m not sure when we passed out, or how half of my house got here with us, but when I came to, we were at the top of the stairs again. How’s your memory, by the way? Still scrambled? I think I have everything in order again myself after I woke up.”

She squat down, picking up the silvery chunk she’d pulled from the debris.

“Good, I think?” Zoey mentally recounted what happened. The big thing was the bubble. Then, they ‘woke up’ in the garage, and then… her mind fired a blank. “Nevermind.”

Lisa chuckled, walking closer now to Zoey. “Yeah, it takes a little while for everything to come back. I still don’t know what exactly happened, but I guess everything from the basement up to about half of the first floor got brought here with us.”

“Caleb!” Zoey gasped. “Does that mean—”

She watched Lisa’s forced smile fade.

Caleb was still missing.

“Do… you know where we are, then?”

Lisa shook her head. “Middle of nowhere, I guess. I know for sure that we’re not on the edge of the city anymore. But, there’s a road.”

“A road?”

“Yeah, you wanna see?” Lisa pointed with her free hand. “It’s not connecting to the driveway or anything, but there’s this old looking road that goes right up to part of the front yard. It looks almost like it got cut.”

Lisa began walking, still carrying the piece of metal with her as Zoey trailed behind. It helped a lot that Lisa wasn’t panicking or anything. It made her feel at least a little safer. Kinda.

They stopped next to what was left of the garage. Lisa ran inside for something, coming out again with a wagon in tow before continuing to lead.

Sure enough, there was a road. It was old and crumpled, but right where it ended, it looked almost like someone had cut it with a knife. Absolutely nothing went past the line where it ended; not a rock, not a pebble… Zoey squinted. Even the grass was cleanly cut between where the road ended and where the yard started.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Lisa continued, “It’s like the entire lower half of the yard and the house sitting on it got scooped up and plopped right back down here. You’d think that it’d be on top of some kind of dirt heap, but no.”

“Weird,” was all Zoey could muster herself.

“Very. Still” —Lisa wheeled up the wagon beside herself, the piece of metal now sitting neatly in its wooden basket— “I don’t think that we should stay inside the house. Half of it is gone and with all the cracks in it I really don’t think it’ll be safe to be in.”

She turned around, wheeling the wagon back to the remains of the garage. “For now, I think it’s best if we grab whatever we can and build ourselves a shelter of some sort for the night. It’s better if we sleep in a weird tent thing than sleeping in a house that we might get buried in by next morning, y’know?”

“Wait!” Zoey ran after her mentor. Her voice tremored with every word. “How can you be so calm right now? What about your mom and dad? What about Caleb? Aren’t you scared?”

Lisa stopped in her tracks, the handle of the wagon barely dangling in her fingers.

“Yeah, I’m scared,” the faintest hints of doubt began to creep into her voice. “I’m scared, and tired, and hungry, and so many other things right now. I carried you out and put you under that tree while I picked through whatever we have left. I’m anything but calm right now.”

She turned around, her shoulders tense as she pursed her lips, just barely beginning to tremble herself. “But you know what? It’s so that you don’t have to be scared. You’re just a kid, and you…” she rubbed the bridge of her nose, running her hand down to her cheek before letting it drop back down. “…you shouldn’t have to go through all of this. So long as it means you don’t have to worry as much, I’ll do all the worrying for both of us.”

“Li—”

Lisa turned back around, running now toward the garage.