Page 29 of Don't Let Me Go
“I was coming to find you!” I answer. “Why aren’t you withyourfamily?”
“Because I was coming to findyou!”
Despite the panic in my bones and the devastation whirling around us, I find myself weeping with joy as he once again pulls me into his arms.
In a city of chaos, with death raining from the sky, Marcus came for me.
At the end of the world, he chose me.
“We have to get out of the city!” he hollers, breaking our embrace. “Everyone is evacuating!”
He takes my hand. Then together we leave the narrow alley and clamber onto the wide avenue that cuts through the eastern half of the city. Much to our dismay, we find it almost completely buried in debris. Rocks are raining down even faster than before, as if Vesuvius won’t be content until it’s vomited every stone out of the belly of the earth and smothered every inch of our city. We try wading our way through the sea of stones, but it’s up to our shins. If the rocks were heavier, we could walk on top of them, but with every step, we sink into their crippling embrace.
Running is no longer possible. We are half blind from the ash and tripping over our own bruised feet. I try not to panic, but a voice in the back of my head is growing louder with every faltering footstep.
We’re running out of time.
“I need to rest,” Marcus says through choking coughs as he steadies himself against the wall of a house. “I have to catch my breath.”
I would give him the air from my lungs if I could, but at this moment I can barely breathe myself. With every greedy gasp for air I take, my throat burns with pain.
We’re running out of time.
We need to find shelter. The city’s battered buildings might be a death trap, but out here, exposed to the elements, we won’t survive much longer.
I cast a hopeful glance up the street and catch sight of the Temple of the Sibylline Oracle. It’s one of the few great sacrileges for a man to enter the inner sanctum uninvited. And the high priestess is a woman as feared as she is respected. But I have greater fears at this moment, and the temple door is open.
“Come on!” I shout as I put my arm around Marcus’s waist, then pull him upright.
Wading through the rubble and fighting against the wind, we force our tired feet onward until we’re climbing the temple steps and pushing ourselves inside. Then, with the last of our strength, we shut the heavy wooden door against the warring elements and collapse onto the cold marble floor.
The temple is still and quiet. And the air is cleaner. But even in this sacred place, the falling stones are forcing their terrible pollution through cracks in the ceiling.
“We shouldn’t have stopped,” Marcus laments. In the darkness, with only a torch to light his ash-stained face, he looks like some ancient terror spawned from a nightmare. “We need to keep going.”
“We wouldn’t have made it another ten steps,” I say, gasping to catch my breath. “Besides, we don’t know if we’d be any safer outside the city.”
“We’d be farther away from the mountain.”
“There are other mountains. Maybe they’re all exploding. Maybe this is the end.”
Marcus is silent. He turns his face from me, but when next he speaks, I can hear the panic in his voice.
“Is this the end?”
I have no answer. It seems impossible, and yet if the gods wanted to bring an end to the age of man, the horrors I’ve seen today would be more than sufficient.
We’re running out of time.
“What was that?” Marcus asks, jolting up straight as his eyes dart toward the entryway that leads off into the temple’s inner sanctum. “Did you hear that?”
Lost in thought, I hadn’t heard a thing, but I cock my head and listen. Aside from the storm outside, I hear nothing. I’m about to tell Marcus this when a faint groaning from deep within the temple echoes throughout the darkness.
“Do you think someone else is here?” Marcus asks.
Having found the temple’s outer door open and all its lamps overturned or extinguished, I’d assumed the place was abandoned. But perhaps others have sought refuge here. Others who might be able to help us or whom we might be able to help.
Rising to our feet, we take each other’s hands and carefully step forward into the inner sanctum. Our dying torch struggles to light our way, and once or twice our feet stumble on the uneven floor that has been unleveled by the earthquakes. Slowly, though, our eyes begin to adjust to the shadowy blackness. I spy cracks splintering like spiderwebs across not only the temple walls but the central columnsas well. One has already collapsed. Like a giant oak tree of stone, it lies uprooted on the floor, shattered to pieces.
