#oneaday Day 669: Wasteland Diaries, Part 17

I flipped past the first entry in the diary that I’d already read. The next one was a couple of days later.

“November 3, 2014,” began the entry. “Loneliness is getting the better of me. This world is not where I want to be. This world is a shadow of its former self. Evie’s mission might rebuild it, or it might doom it. I don’t know what the outcome will be.”

She’d mentioned the “mission” once before, but I had no idea what that could be. It sounded as if what Evie was up to had something to do with the state the world was in — or perhaps she was looking for a way to restore things to how they were. How could that be, though? Surely that was impossible. Everything lay in ruins; everyone was dead, turned to dust.

“November 10, 2014,” began the next entry, its handwriting noticeably more untidy. “I wish I had my sister’s stubbornness. Once she sets her mind on something, she sticks to it, commits to it wholeheartedly. I’ve only ever known one time that she didn’t. That’s what made her have to go away. That’s what made her set off on this insane mission. It’s over, I wanted to tell her. She should just give up. Like I have. There’s no hope.”

Annie, it seemed, hadn’t been handling the changes too well. Evidently she’d relied on Evie — for it had to be her; there was no other sister mentioned anywhere — a great deal over the years, and being suddenly without her had plunged her into a feeling of loneliness and despair. “There’s no hope,” she wrote. What a terrible way to feel. I’d felt my thoughts sliding in that direction on more than one occasion, but I’d managed to keep going somehow. I wasn’t sure how long I’d last.

I flipped through the rest of the diary; similar sentiments were expressed throughout. Annie seemed to be suffering a gradual breakdown of her sanity in her involuntary isolation, until the last entry with anything written on it simply said “ALPHA OMEGA ALPHA OMEGA” over and over again.

I frowned. There had been an anonymous text message on Annie’s phone which had said something along similar lines, but it wasn’t clear what that might mean.

“Alpha and Omega.” Beginning and end, I thought. What could that mean? Could it be a reference to the end of the world? I screwed up my eyes as I tried to call to mind the reference — I knew it was from something but I couldn’t place it. The beginning of what? The end of what?

Every step I took seemed to be raising more questions than answering them. Nothing had yet explained the strange flashes of rage that seemed to leave a trail of devastation in my wake; nothing explained the flashes of memory that seemed real enough to touch; nothing explained–

Speak of the devil; nothing explained the dark place where I could hear the voices in the distance — the place where I once again found myself now. I was no longer holding the diary — no longer holding anything. I couldn’t feel my body. I couldn’t see anything but I got the strange feeling I was in the middle of a vast, empty room. I could once again hear the mumbled voices in the distance, but not what they were saying — their tones were hushed, urgent.

Their tone seemed to change abruptly, and I heard what sounded like someone approaching, but there was no-one.

Adam, came a male voice, reverberating around this strange, pitch-dark place, strange echoes distorting the purity of the sound. Adam, you have endured a great deal. And you are strong.

I knew this. In the time since I had awoken, my memories locked away somewhere in the darkest recesses of my mind — somewhere behind the wrathful beast that seemed to inhabit my body — I had travelled far, and to what end? To track down this mysterious person to whom I felt an inexplicable, indefinable connection?

You must gather your strength, continued the voice. For her sake. For without you, she weakens. Without you, her life is meaningless.

What was the voice talking about? Was it, too, talking about Evie? Or about someone else? Why did everything have to be in confused riddles?

A flash of light and a whoosh of air; then nothing again. I could hear swirling sounds; clouds of voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, so I tried to concentrate on one and pick out the words. The voice sounded familiar.

Adam, said the voice, female this time — was it the same one I’d heard speaking to me before? It hesitated; I heard a deep intake of breath. I felt tense. We need to talk.

The other voices swirling around crescendoed to a noise so terrible that I wanted to scream, but no sound came out.

Then, suddenly, silence; and a single voice in the void. Her.

It’s about… us.

The light flashed again, and I was back where I had been, the remnants of the diary held in my hand — though what had once been a legible book was now a barely-identifiable charred object.

I looked around. Still no-one.

The words I had heard chilled me. Were they a memory, or something else altogether? Whatever they were, and whatever might follow them, filled me with an enormous sense of dread. Those words had led to something terrible — or were about to lead to something terrible. I couldn’t tell if that terrible thing had already come to pass as yet, or if where I was sitting was the aftermath of the event.

I was beginning to have my own suspicions, but I was hesitant to explore them in too much detail for fear of unleashing another wave of anger and destruction. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my mind.

The darkness behind my eyelids was soothing for a moment, but before long I heard the words again, and they made me shiver.