Free TORMENT by Jeremy Bishop Page A

“She makes you a mother figure. Mother figures are trustworthy. She also gives you the most motivation to come out of this in one piece. The rest of us are just fighting for our lives. You’re fighting for two.”
    Mia sank into her chair. He was right. But she still wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t do a better job. He was dealing with the annihilation of the human race better than all of them. “What about you? Why aren’t you cracking up?”
    Austin leaned his balding head back into the chair and closed his eyes. “When I was eight, my father and I were driving cross country. We’d just entered Arizona when this wall of sand came from the south and swept toward the north. To us, seeing it from a distance, it looked beautiful. My father wisely stopped on the side of the road while we watched the sandstorm pass. When we started back on the road again, we found a small town a few miles ahead. It’d been directly in the path of the storm. The first person we saw was an eight year old boy. He was missing an arm. His mother lay in the sand with a shingle buried in her forehead. We counted twelve dead that day. People missing limbs, heads, or otherwise impaled by debris. Cars were overturned. Windows broken. Shards of metal, glass and wood everywhere. The sand was soaked with blood. It’s amazing anyone survived. That was my first experience with death. I’ve been to thirty-four funerals since, seven in 10 th grade alone. There wasn’t much left of my family when...” Austin motioned to the view of Earth. “...this happened. Death just seems to follow me around and I’ve been ready for it for a long time. It’s why I can take a job where getting shot for someone else is part of the deal. It’s also why I’m the wrong person to take the lead right now. I’m good at dealing with death and with preventing death, but I’m not so good at what needs to happen next.”
    Mia met Austin’s eyes. “And what’s that?”
    Austin forced a smile as he turned the security monitors off. “Life.”

13
     
     
    Paul Byers spun through the air, enjoying the lightness zero gravity provided his aging body. He’d been limber and fit once, with an athletic build and square jaw, but time and post traumatic stress syndrome had taken their toll. His body was still in fairly good shape for a man in his late fifties, but the heroics of his stint in Vietnam would never be repeated. His slower body was still capable of enduring some physical strain, but his mind had never been the same. It had taken him years to overcome the fear, anxiety and insomnia caused by surviving the war and saving his friends. He often envied the unconscious men he pulled from the jungle. They couldn’t remember what happened that day. Occasionally, he envied the few that didn’t make it.
    Counseling had overcome his thoughts of suicide, but he never felt far from the brink. And now...now the feelings were bubbling to the surface once again. The stress of escaping the planet, surviving the destruction of civilization and his brother’s endless harping taxed his mental capacity to process, compartmentalize and block his emotions. Everyone called him a hero, but he was really just a tired old man who once again began to envy the dead. Their lives ended in a wink. His would drag on for who knew how long.
    If not for the blessed lack of gravity distracting him from the full burden of his emotions, he’d already have cracked.
    Paul drifted over the rows of chairs, pushing himself smoothly through the air. He’d told Mark that he needed time to think things through, but he really just didn’t want to hear any more preaching. He loved Mark. They were closer now than they ever had been. Disagreements over the war in Vietnam had caused a divide between the two long ago, but time and Mark’s joining the priesthood and learning the fine art of forgiveness had healed the wounds. Mark occasionally insisted they “talk God” and Paul usually didn’t mind. He knew