The Lost Country, Episode One

Chapter 6

“WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE it was?” asked Amelia, poking the ashy dirt with one of her sticks, stirring it around.

“I wouldn’t do that,” I warned. “Could be unexploded ordinance—you never know.”

She gasped and moved back—although not very far—as I studied the point of impact, noting how angular it was, how geometrical (as if a giant arrowhead had been stabbed into the earth); all of which left me to wonder—had the object somehow been removed? Or was it still down there?

I scanned the area, looking for debris. “There’s no wreckage—which is odd. So I doubt it was a satellite. No; I’m afraid there’s only two possibilities, really. Bomb or meteorite. And I doubt very much it was a bomb.”

“Or is?”

“Or is.”

She didn’t say anything, only continued staring into the dirt.

At last I said, “What is it?”

“Nothing ... it ... it’s nothing.” She seemed dazed, confused. “It’s just that ... it all seems so strange now. I mean—that we ever had use for such things. For bombs. That we could spend so much time and effort and money ... just to kill each other.”

She looked out at the ocean and the billowing clouds, the whirling seabirds, the distant pterodactyls. “That we could make such ugliness and pain—such sheer terror—and in such a beautiful world. I mean, look at it, Francis. Can you honestly say that it’s not better off without us? Or that, even if there are other people, we’re not better off without them?”

I must have looked confused. “What the hell are you talking about?”

She turned to face me; her dark eyes close to mine. “Give me one reason, Francis. Give me one reason why we shouldn’t just stay here, forever—you and I, alone. Give me one reason why we shouldn’t restore the lighthouse and defend it and kill anyone who comes close; why we shouldn’t go so far as to kill them first—just kill them where they sleep—and stop the threat before it even begins. Tell me now why they’re worth saving, and why we shouldn’t finish what they started,” She nodded briskly at the sky, “What they instigated with the Flashback but failed to complete. What can be completed still—”

And I kissed her, suddenly, completely—I’m still not sure why, maybe because I thought she was breaking down and that doing so would be the only way to snap her out of it, to shock her back to her senses. All I know is that she responded almost immediately and we stayed like that for some time, kissing not as children lost in a storm—which is how it had felt that first night when she’d pecked me on the lips before retreating to her own settee—but as something akin to red hot lovers: thirstily, intensely, primally (but not base), the Bogie and Bacall of the apocalypse.

After which I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

And she said: “Not yet.” And then kissed me again.

Until the moment (and the day) had passed and we’d agreed to stay one more night, and she’d retired by 8 pm to the antechamber while I drank vodka on the couch, shortly after which a plesiosaur breached the froth like a glistening killer whale—and snatched a pterodactyl from the orange-painted rocks.

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