The Too Loud Silence
- July 13, 1999 -
She stood, looking out over the wasteland, the silence welling up from her core like blood from a fresh wound. Miles in the distance the wind easily pulled the sand from its resting place and whipped it into a whirlwind. She stared at the elements' violent outburst, completely disconnected from the part of her mind that would estimate the distance and speed and calculate when the storm would reach her position. The wind snatched at her hair, trying to yank her soul from her body, but it was only the typical weather conditions; the storm was as yet only a slight crescendo in the usual howl of the wind. As was the voice of the young man at her elbow, trying to reach her from outside a respectable radius. Nothing touched her, not the wind, or the sand it blew into tender skin, not the slow swell in the howling wind as the storm approached, not the hand, growing increasingly insistent, that was tugging on her sleeve, or the voice, nearly pleading now, that accompanied it.
There was no silence in his world . . . the wind screamed louder until his voice was lost even to his own ears and he knew he still called to her only by the ache in his throat. His desperation grew as she ignored-—no, seemed not even aware of him. Respect and deference waged with the increasing danger of their situation. The fact was, there was no time for her to grieve, not if they wanted to avoid adding two more names to the death tolls.
"Please! We have to get out of here!" He pulled her arm so hard that she was forced to half-turn to face him. And she saw him. Only what she saw, certainly, wasn't really him, wasn't the man she knew and cared about. Perhaps all she saw was something to grab hold to, something she could use to pull herself from the killing silence. Perhaps it was the uniform—-dirty and torn and stained with blood, his and hers and that of the dead.
He saw in her eyes, hollow and haunted though they were and would remain, some bit of assurance. Not recognition exactly, but perhaps some hidden 'programming' that had snapped into place when her mind wasn't up to the task. She said nothing to him, only turned away again and bent to the broken woman at her feet. This woman who had consumed her thoughts even as her eyes were locked on the horizon. She hefted the shattered body with a strength that he would not have imagined was in her, yet it did not surprise him.
"Help me, Harry," she yelled, her voice frightening as she bellowed even over the storm. It was a sound filled with rage and a pain too great to be expressed in articulate words. Yet, still she managed to command over the roaring wind. And the unspoken vow was louder still: We will not leave her!
And this also did not surprise him. Of course they wouldn't leave behind their comrade, their friend. He finally entered the tiny circle of her personal space that he'd tried to avoid out of respect for her, not simply for her rank, but his respect for the woman, out of deference for this new grief she'd been forced to accept. He took half of the weight, or at least as much as she was forced to give up to run.
They were already running towards the shuttlecraft, running against the wind, the sand blowing into their eyes and cutting their faces. And he felt her grief wash over him, pouring into and over and through his own grief like scalding liquid. Like the lifeblood that drenched his hands in warmth from the dead and from the living. Like hot tears from a freezing soul not yet quite cold enough not to feel. The tears ran from his own eyes, not merely because of the sand, and dripped with their sweat onto the parched land beneath their boots.
The storm was moving fast and overtook them just as they reached the shuttle, as she took all of their burden so he could open the hatch. The little vessel shook as the wind buffeted it, but blessedly they could no longer hear the terrible shriek that would haunt both of their dreams.
They laid the body gently on the floor. He tripped over it as he dashed for the controls, swore, apologized, and succumbed to a short, hysteric laugh.
Kneeling by the dead woman, she heard none of this. She tenderly brushed the blond hair back, untangling it from the matted blood at the temple, and closed the eyes. The silence roared through her veins with more volume than the storm had ever achieved. Yet when he called from the controls to her, she went to him. Together they fought through the storm, as they would later fight off the silence by sharing it, and escaped into the more friendly silence of space, heading for home.
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