Delusional Read online

  The air had a crisp coldness to it, and when I breathed it in through my lungs my body instantly became invigorated with life. The darkness of night has a calming aura to it, and we continued to trek up and down hill after hill, until I found myself entering a new state of awareness with the world around me. More than ever I could hear the clicking of the insects, the gentle swaying of the grass in the breeze, and the hoarse breathing of the goats who laid motionlessly sleeping.

  “This is beautiful,” Ethan stared up in awe at the thousands of stars that were scattered across the night sky. They added another layer of light, illuminating the fog that was beginning to build up at the base of the hills.

  I glanced over at the peaks of the mountains towering above to the left, and I couldn’t help but be amazed at how beautiful the world was—at how impossible all this truly is. I looked back at the White Knight’s compound that stood behind the tall, skinny pine trees shrouded in darkness. Colton said it would take about two days two hike the trail along the coast to the Golden Gate Bridge where we would make our way through San Francisco, and eventually to the Retributioners’ outpost in Oakland.

  And once we get to the Retributioners, the hope is that they can somehow help Ethan and I get our memories back. And hopefully, with their help we can get our lives back, and the five of us could somehow escape to the arctic tundra or tropical rain forest where no one existed to control us.

  “We are about five miles away from the coast,” the wind carried Colton’s voice to my ears. A salty smell brushed by my nose with the draft of wind. Colton looked ever mysterious in the low moonlight, and I couldn’t help but dream of being in his arms. His hair looked dark brown in the night, and the edges of his body looked ever tantalizing. But there was something different about him. His eyes had lost the familiar spark that had resided in them the past few weeks, and a pit of blackness had taken its place.

  As we all continued to walk down the gently sloping hills toward the lake that stood surrounded by cliffs on all four sides the air began to take on a new feel. The darkness of the night seemed to be growing even heavier, threatening to suffocate my eyes. My heart rate began to pick up as the thoughts swirled around in my brain. I was beginning to feel more anxious than ever. What if the White Knights find us? What will happen if they catch us?

  I looked up at the clouds that covered the moon causing a new dimension of darkness to settle in. I glanced around in hysteria, half expecting a monster to jump out from the grass.

  But I focused my brain back into the rhythmic crashing of the waves that the wind carried to my ears, and I let the sounds soothe my fears. The lullaby of the wind and waves sent me back into a trance, as we continued our trek toward the coast.

  “I miss you,” Dulce said her thoughts aloud suddenly breaking through the silence that pervaded the air. The electrodes on all our clothes were turned off, and it only made the look of sadness on Dulce’s face more exemplified.

  I opened my mouth to respond, but the words come out as a breathless moan. “I wish I could be there for you.” I held Dulce’s hand and squeezed it as tight as I could, her voice instantly slicing my heart in half. “But I promise, I’ll get my memories back soon. We’ll take this country and give it back to the people. We’ll make this world a better place—it will just take time.”

  Dulce only nodded in response, as she stared up at the night sky searching for hope.

  The grass crunched beneath us, and the wind picked up pace to howl in our ears. We were walking on the thin piece of earth, only about a hundred feet wide, that separated the calm lake on one side from the tempestuous ocean on the other. The ocean pounded into the jagged rocks hundreds of feet below as the water dispersed wildly in a clamorous roar. My brain told me not to do it, but my body caved in to the temerarious sensation to peer over the cliff.

  “Holy-” my words were cut off by a gust of wind that cut through the air like a bullet, and my feet slipped on a jagged rock off the cliff side. Instinctively, I twisted mid-air and clawed desperately to a layer of rocks just below the edge of the cliff to try and prevent my body from plummeting hundreds of feet into the ocean below.

  “I got you.” Ethan’s hand wrapped around my wrist just in the nick of time, and he swiftly yanked my barely breathing body back up onto the soft grass of the cliff.

  “Damn, Natalie!” Colton ran over panicked, “Are you okay?”

  I finally opened my eyes, as my brain came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t falling helplessly to my death. I looked up at the perfectly still night sky, and then at everyone gathered in a semicircle around me, staring at me with wide eyes.

  “I’m fine,” I gasped for air and smiled, “Shit, I’m fine.”

  Antonio and Ethan both helped me back up, and I exhaled as I felt my feet stand firmly on the ground below.

  “Oh my,” Colton walked over and wrapped his arms around me. “I’m so happy you’re okay. If you left me I don’t know what I would do.” He smiled, but there was a serious tone to his voice.

  “Dang, Natalie, what happened?” Dulce asked in a worried tone.

  “I wanted to peer over the edge of the cliff and then tripped on a rock. Probably wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Dulce looked out over the ocean, that gleamed in the luminescence. “You almost got yourself killed.”

  “I would have gotten myself killed if it wasn’t for Ethan.” I glanced at Ethan, who stared down at the ground shyly. I nudged him playfully in the shoulder, “Thanks a lot. You saved my life, literally.”

  He looked up at me, and a rare smile crossed his face, “Y ’know I was going to just let you fall. But then I decided, eh, I’ll catch her.”

  “Yeah right,” Antonio chuckled, “You shoulda seen this boy’s face. He looked like a dog whose bone got taken away. Okay maybe not the best analogy, but you get the point.”

  In that moment, all five of us laughed a bit dolefully together. I laughed not because I was humored, but just to feel the sensation of a drop of joy traveling through my body again. I laughed, in a way, to forget our reality. But the darkness sunk in soon after we started walking again.

  Out of fear of falling off, I kept my eyes away from the rocky ocean and serrated cliff side and glanced over at the lake. The bluffs dipped more gently down into the tranquil waters that vibrated ever so slowly. Besides us, there were no signs of human civilization in sight. It was just us and the world, and I liked it that way. The first purple rays of the sunrise began to peak out above the mountains and reflect onto the lake in beautiful flashes of orange and red. The suffocating heaviness of the air had subsided, only to be replaced by an inauspicious placidity.

  I looked ahead at the ridge of land that curved sharply to a point out in the near distance. Something didn’t seem right; there shouldn’t have been a dead end. I spun my head around in a tizzy. When Colton described the path, we were taking he made it sound much different than the one we were on. He said we would follow the mountains as we turned inland toward the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, yet it seemed like we were going in the complete opposite direction.

  “Hey, Colton,” I called out at the top of my lungs to make sure my voice didn’t get carried away in the wind. Night still encased the sky with little pores of light seeping in ever so subtly.

  Colton walked even faster ahead in response, not even acknowledging my yell. What the hell? Then out of nowhere, he abruptly turned and began to take stride toward the edge of the cliff.

  “Colton!” I shrilled, my voice slicing through the air as I charged forward. What is he doing?

  I could hear the roar of Antonio, and Ethan’s voices, and the pound of their footsteps behind me, but it was all a blur. I cried out desperately, as I threw my body out in a futile attempt to stop him.

  But it was too late.

  He looked back at me, the black pits in his eyes darker than ever, and I watched in pure horror and anguish as Colton leaped off into the night sky. In my crazy, delusional st
ate of mind, I almost felt myself having the hallucination that he would spread his wings and begin to fly majestically over the ocean. But that kind of stuff only happened in dreams.

  I felt every muscle in my body go numb, as my brain tried to process the horror that played itself out in front of me.

  “No!” a blood curdling scream exploded out of my throat, and in slow motion Colton’s body began to free fall hundreds of feet off the cliff side and into the rocky ocean below. I ran up to the very edge of the cliff, and I could feel my feet slipping, as I looked down at Colton’s motionless body plummeting to its ultimate demise.

  Then, in a resounding thud, his body hit the stormy waters below, and I lost all control. All those times with Colton picking wild flowers, stargazing, and kissing wildly beneath the crisp rays of the sun pounded against my vision and whirled around in my mind as my conscious was stuck in an agonizing instant replay of all the feelings that it would never be able to let go of, and never be able to experience again. Every muscle in my body trembled, as the tears poured out of my eyes madly; I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened.

  Antonio, and Ethan had to drag me away from the cliff side.

  “Ah!” I bellowed the amount of shock, pain, and sadness poured out of me in an uncontrollable amount of emotion. My brain, body, and mouth went completely berserk as I became desensitized from the world around me. A blinding flash of light crossed over us, and for a second, I thought it was the clouds opening to highlight Colton’s departure from life forever. But the spotlight quickly vanished, and a sleek, black helicopter loomed above us.

  My heart stopped, as time seemed to slow to a lethargic, painful crawl. A man stood with the wind blowing back his gray hair, and even in the dark I could make out his distinctive facial features and tall stature. He looked directly at me, in all his glory, and shot me a sinister glare.

  It was President Ash.

  Chapter 11

  When President Ash pulled out a shiny, black machine gun from his side I knew my life had taken a turn for the worst. I grabbed onto Antonio, who heaved me up off the ground, and before I knew it we were sprinting along the skinny bluff that jutted out of the Earth, almost unnaturally. I looked forward and began to will my legs to kick into the next gear. They were catching up to us, and if we didn’t make something happen quick then I would officially conjoin with the blackness around me.

  In a quick succession of deafening bangs, President Ash fired his machine gun in our direction kicking up bits of dirt and grass in all directions.

  “Ah!” I screeched at an ear-splitting tone. Pure fear coursed through my veins, tears poured wildly down my face, and my legs continued to run for my life to no avail.

  “C’mon.” I gritted my teeth as the pain building up in my lungs threatened to explode. I trailed just behind Antonio, and the rest of the group ran just a few yards ahead of us. The military helicopter had caught up to us, and I was just waiting for one of the bullets to penetrate my skull.

  “Dead end!” Ethan screamed in a panic, his wide eyes were petrified in terror. The sun’s golden rays reflected off the edge of the other cliff that towered above the rapids of the lake emptying out into the ocean.

  We were surrounded by water and perilously steep cliffs on three sides. There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to hide. We were trapped.

  We all looked at each other with expressions of shock, sadness, and horror strewn across our faces. The gunfire suddenly ceased, as the helicopter stopped just overhead of us. Within seconds, a countless number of troops, dressed in all black uniforms, swarmed us in a moment of chaos.

  Suddenly, I lost all control. My brain felt numb, and my body desensitized to the mindless screams, and the mayhem.

  A large, cold hand clamped over my mouth, and my heart stopped as my body froze with terror. The other arm of the man firmly bundled around my body, and both our bodies were lifted off the ground and into the helicopter.

  The darkness and light clashed in the sky in splashes of red and orange and that was the last I saw of the sun, before the door of the helicopter slammed shut in an echo behind us, and for a moment no sounds could be heard, but the murmured tears and heavy breaths. All around a sinister blackness enveloped the air, blinding my hopes, and suffocating the life out of me.

  “We have them now,” I heard the low, but somehow cheery voice of President Ash. His evil smile emanated through the darkness. “They are in for a wild ride.”

  I felt a hand move up my arm to my shoulder, and it eventually landed softly on my neck. Every muscle in my body froze, as I stood petrified with fear.

  “You’re mine now,” President Ash whispered in a warm, menacing tone right into my ear. Despite his warm breath, I felt an arctic chill make its way slowly up my spine and reverberate throughout my body.

  My hatred for that man boiled slowly in my veins, until it warmed into a piping hot rage. This man took my life away. This man took the freedom of America away. And instantly a paralyzing fear settled in as I realized, what is he going to take away next?

  The military trooper behind me grunted and pushed me across the inside of the helicopter. I stumbled, and he grabbed me back and pulled me down into a cold, metal chair that felt rigid beneath my butt.

  I screamed hysterically, as I felt the man force restraints around my wrists, forcefully tying them to the chair. The blackness all around made it impossible to see anything, but somehow the guards knew exactly where to push all of us.

  “Get off me!” I heard Dulce’s sassy voice boom.

  The thud of a gun being thrusted hard into something echoed in my ears, which had to have been Dulce’s body. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the madness as President Ash sweetly warned, “Next person who says a word, I will make sure it’s their last.”

  Finally, after hours of an ominous stillness swathing the air, President Ash finally spoke in a calm tone, laced with an extra pang of pure vexation. “You animals are mine now, and this time you aren’t getting away. This time it’s over.”

  He turned on a single dim light, revealing the creases on his forehead, and his ever-frail gray hair. The light was more of a spotlight focusing on President Ash, that left the rest of the room shrouded in darkness. He smiled from ear-to-ear and rubbed his hands together maniacally. I gulped, trying to swallow the terror building up in my mouth.

  Then his expression changed from a sinister smile to just plain insane. He cackled madly and then scanned the room with dark, narrow eyes. “Ah, it always amazes me how gullible humans are. How stupid they are! How they run like wild turkey in fear!”

  Where are we going? I looked around in a panic, but it was impossible to tell. It was impossible to be sure of anything.

  His expression suddenly calmed down, and he opened his mouth to speak. “So, in case you didn’t know, I am Wilburn Ash, the President of the United States of America. The only leader of all of you.”

  More like the overlord, I thought trying to imagine how much pleasure it brought for him to utter those words. I watched as he took two smooth steps, directly towards me. His eyes narrowed, and his hands formed fists that vibrated with fury. “And in case you didn’t know,” there was a chilling edge to his tone, “You,” he shot me a gnarly glare, “Took away the safety of America. You took away America’s prosperity, and forced us to dissolve into a civil war. You destroyed our democracy.

  “I’m sure you know why you’re here. I’m sure you know how you got here. Friends will always betray you one day.” He paused smiling in a truly wicked way. “But none of that matters anymore. Because all that any of you will ever know, for the rest of eternity, is visons of hell.”

  My heart, my thoughts, and my adrenaline all raced throughout my body. Suddenly, I felt a bubbling anger begin to work its way from my stomach, and travel through my veins to the rest of my body. My hands formed fists as they shook wildly in the handcuffs, and with my jaw clenched my face still twitched in indignation.

  He stomped on the
hard floor of the helicopter and scanned over every one of us. He shot me a nasty glare, that made me feel smaller, and more insignificant than I had ever felt before.

  My mind instantly flashed back to those final moments in Area 51. The chaotic screaming of the people, the cold metal chair beneath me, and the look of that tall, lanky man all driving a paralyzing fear into my skull. It wasn’t much different then.

  But instead of the cowering fear that I had felt that day, there was a much different fear causing goose bumps to line my body, and my heart to beat at a rapid pace. This time I knew that no one was coming to help us; this time I knew it was on us to make it out alive.

  And more and more I felt the irresistible urge to not run and hide from my problems, but to face them head on.

  “Screw you.” The words blurted out of my mouth in a groggy blood-filled rumble.

  I could feel the moisture being sucked out of the air from an invisible vacuum-like force that left a dry, desperate taste on my tongue.

  President Ash’s neck contorted, and he shot me a look filled with fire. “What did you just say?”

  “Screw you.” I repeated. I should at least let this man know how I feel about him—how I feel about what he did—before I die.

  He stepped forward, and raised his cold, wrinkly fist. I could feel the pairs of eyes staring at me. President Ash opened his mouth, as if to say something, but the words didn’t come out.

  Instead my words came out in a somehow low, but livid tone. “You ruined my life. You ruined America. And you, and many more evil men like you have ruined this world. You took everything away from me!” I took a quick breath staring at him, and his eyes that were wide in shock. “You took away my memories! You took away my life! You destroyed my country! And now somehow you can find it in your cold heart to take even more from someone, who has nothing left.” The thoughts inside my head raced out of my mouth uncontrollably. In the moment, I was completely out of control, my brain had surrendered to my emotions.