It was a good half hour walk to the beach, the sky threatening snow but not delivering. The sea that day wasn’t as monstrous as it often was in winter. The waves were shallower, but still reaching, still grabbing. The beach as rocky as ever.
He stood there for a moment, then he started to take off his shoes.
Seth runs toward the train station, leaving footprints in the drying mud, his legs creaking and groaning from lack of this kind of use. He turns up the stairs between the blocks of flats, heading to the station.
His first sweat is on, the drops stinging his eyes as they drip from his forehead. The sun is blazing down. His breathing is heavy.
He runs.
And as he runs, he remembers.
He runs faster, as if he might escape it.
There was sand there, between the rocks, and he stood on a little patch of it to remove first one shoe and then the other. He set them carefully together, then he sat on a rock to take off his socks, folding them and tucking them deep inside his shoes.
He felt . . . not quite calm, calm wasn’t the right word, but there were moments, moments when he wasn’t focused on the precise folding of his socks when he felt almost faint with relief.
Relief because at last, at last, at last.
At last, there didn’t have to be anymore, didn’t have to be anymore burden, anymore weight to carry.
He took a moment to try and shake off the tightening in his chest.
He breathed.
Seth leaps over the ticket barrier at the train station and pounds up the steps to the platform. He doesn’t look at the train as he heads for the bridge over the tracks. He hears nothing from the boar, no doubt sleeping away a hot day in the confines of its den.
Up the steps, across the bridge, and down the other side.
He took off his jacket, because that seemed right, too. He was only wearing a T-shirt underneath, and the wind stung his bare arms. He shivered more as he folded up his coat and placed it on his shoes.
He felt present there, but also separate at the same time, as if he was watching himself from a height, looking down on a shoeless, coatless boy, staring at the sea.
Like he was waiting.
But for what?
Whatever it was, it never come.
And then, “I’m ready,” he whispered to himself.
He found, to his surprise, with a sudden upsurge of grief that nearly knocked him flat, that he was telling the truth.
He was ready.
He began walking toward the sea.
He leaps over the gate at the other side of the train station and out the far exit. He pounds down the incline toward the first main road, wincing at the strain on his feet, but his muscles seem to be awakening, returning to the memory of themselves, returning to the memory of running –
He takes the first running steps into the destroyed neighborhood.
Everything around him is dead.
The cold of the water was shocking, brutally so, even in those first steps, and he couldn’t keep himself from gasping. A wave of gooseflesh marched up his arms, the thin black hairs standing almost vertical. It felt for a moment as if he had already started to drown ankle-deep in five inches of water.
He knew then that if the water didn’t get him, the cold would.
He forced himself to take another step.
And another.
It’s so quiet, all he can hear are his footfalls and his breathing. In this first street, everything’s been flattened, so there’s only blackened ground reaching out on either side. He kicks up clumps of ash into the air, some of it drying now in the sun and making a trailing cloud.
He turns his gaze forward again.
Toward Masons Hill.
His feet – almost blue with cold – went numb as they stepped from rock to rock. Each new shock as he waded in deeper was like a knife slicing into him, but he pressed on. The water reached his knees, his thighs, darkening his jeans to black. There was a long shallows, but he knew it deepened suddenly a little farther out to depths that had to be swum. He also knew there was a current, one that would take an unsuspecting swimmer and smash them into the rocks that loomed down the beach.
He was so cold now that it felt as if his skin had been dipped in acid. A larger wave splashed across his T-shirt, and he couldn’t help but call out. He was shaking uncontrollably and had to force himself to keep moving forward.
Another wave came, larger than the last and he almost lost his balance. Another followed that. He wouldn’t be able to stand for much longer, his feet and toes gripping hard on the submerged rocks, the tide pulling forward and back. He readied himself to let go, to plunge in, to begin the swim out into the farther cold, out into the terrible, terrible freedom that awaited.
He was here. He had made it this far. There was so very little distance left to go, and he was the one who had brought himself here.
It was almost over. He was almost there.
He had never, not once in his life, felt this powerful.
Down another street, the concrete frames of some houses are still standing, though burnt through, inside and out. Not just houses, but storefronts and larger structures, too.
All blackened, all empty, all dead.
His throat is burning, and he thinks he should have brought water. But the thought is fleeting and he lets it go.
Masons Hill remains firmly on the horizon, and that’s all he needs.
He feels empty. Emptied of everything.
He could run forever.
He feels powerful.
Then a wave, larger than any before, engulfed him, plunging him under the freezing water. The cold was so fierce it was like an electric shock, sending his body into a painful spasm. He was afloat, twisting underwater, narrowly avoiding cracking his skull on an outcropping.
Coughing, spluttering, he broke the surface as another wave crashed down. He surged up again, his feet scrambling for purchase, but the undertow was already pulling him out fast. He spat out seawater and was thrust under by another wave.
(He fought; despite everything, he was fighting –)
The cold was so enormous it was like a living thing. In an impossibly short time, he was unable to make his muscles work properly, and though he could still see the empty shore in the seconds he had above water, it receded farther and farther into the distance, the current pushing him toward the rocks.
It was too late.
There was no going back.
(He felt himself fighting anyway –)
Seth picks up his speed, his breath starting to come in raking gasps, pushing the memories away, not letting them take root.
I’ll make it, he thinks. I’ll make it to the hill. Not far now.