In Beelzebub's Web

In Beelzebub's Web

"Ralph screamed, a scream of fright and anger and desperation. [...] He swerved as a spear flew past and then was silent, running. [...] He swung to the right, running desperately fast, with the heat beating on his left side and the fire racing forward like a tide. The ululation rose behind him and spread along, a series of short sharp cries, the sighting call. A brown figure showed up at his right and fell away. They were all running, all crying out madly. He could hear them crashing in the undergrowth and on the left was the hot, bright thunder of the fire. He forgot his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet, rushing through the forest toward the open beach. Spots jumped before his eyes and turned into red circles that expanded quickly till they passed out of sight. Below him someone's legs were getting tired and the desperate ululation advanced like a jagged fringe of menace and was almost overhead.
He stumbled over a root and the cry that pursued him rose even higher. He saw a shelter burst into flames and the fire flapped at his right shoulder and there was the glitter of water. Then he was down, rolling over and over in the warm sand, crouching with arm to ward off, trying to cry for mercy" (Golding, 199-200).
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Ralph woke up with a shout, mind rushing, drops of cold sweat coming off of his body and soaking into the overheated sheets as he breathed in the thin air in short gasps.
He lashed out at the air around him, attempting to hit any threats coming his way.
They were here, they were here, they would kill him, he was going to die, he didn't want to die, he--
Ralph froze, looking around the unfamiliar surroundings, his state of panic slowly replaced by confusion.
Then he groaned, flopping back onto his pillow with a sigh.
Five years had passed. Five years had gone by, and he still hadn't forgotten the island. Five years had already elapsed, and he still hadn't forgotten the terror so obviously embedded in his very being.
Five years later, and Ralph was still terrified of half of the boys around him in this warship.
It wasn't like a single one of them knew that the fear still remained. It wasn't like he broadcasted that to the world. If he had, he would have been killed well before now. No, it was his fake fearlessness that had kept him alive this long.
Then he hesitated. Kept him alive for what?
Ralph groaned again, turning over in the army cot and slamming his hard, hospital-like plastic pillow over his head.
Ralph was seventeen now. So was Jack... so was Roger... so were half of the boys in the cots surrounding him. With the exception of Samner... Sam, the only sixteen year old, the whole room was filled with late teens.
They were all new recruits for the war.
As children on the island, they had still thought that all there was to fear was an imaginary beast. They had thought that adults would have handled it so much better.
If only they had known about the wasteland they would return home to.
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As the ship docked in London, the boys had been kept in their room, Sam and Ralph both staying in the bunk as far away from the others as possible.
All the boys were too tired to fight amongst each other any longer, and there was an unspoken truce between them that no matter how much they hated each other, they would hold back their glares and fists and shouts.
They had seen the world of the adults, entered it in one rush, and no one wanted to stay. So they sat, listening to the sound of silence echo off the walls.
They all had different versions of London in their heads. Some thought it looked the same as when they left. Others thought it had changed, but not much. Even others thought it was a paradise, a refuge in the war.
Three thought differently. Three were correct.
When the head officer finally came down and told them it was okay to go up, all of the boys could tell something was wrong. When he told them to brace themselves and that it was okay to cry, they knew something was very wrong. When a row of officers handed them gas masks before they would open the door, they expected the worst.
When they saw the wasteland that had once been London, only three boys thought it appeared how they expected. These boys were Sam, Ralph, and Jack.
There were shouts of shock and terror and devastation from around them as the boys hurried off the ship, walking where streets had once been, where buildings had once stood, where some of their homes had sat and families had stayed.
Yes, only three had expected this. The three that knew the darkness of man better than anyone else.
Sam headed east, looking for wherever his house had once stood. It had never been a home to him, and now that Eric was gone, it was even less so. The rubble smoked, quite possibly nuclear, but the London boy didn't care. He walked through it carefully, avoiding anything that glowed, smoked in a strange color, or looked sharp. He found a familiar corpse among the rubble- his father's- as well as the two nursemaids' who had looked after him. He was slightly thankful that his mother had died much earlier, giving birth to his sister, Anne, who he hoped was still away at school when London had been destroyed, as she wasn't among the rubble herself. His mind inserted a body matching his, knowing that was the fate of his dear twin. He left a bit hurriedly, but couldn't find it in him to cry or scream, walking in a numb path along what had once been a familiar route home.
Jack started west, along the River Thames. He had not been born in London, nor was his family living there, but the sight was still just as disturbing. Flames still rose from buildings off in the distance, corpses littered the ground, the earth had fallen in on collapsed subway stations, and the Thames flowed slowly, oddly orange and viscous. He knew the chemicals in whatever bombs had been dropped here were to be held responsible for the current state, and he knew that the radiation bound to be pouring from the rubble around him would catch up to him eventually, but he didn't care. You have to die sometime, right?, he reasoned with himself. Then he laughed. He laughed harder and harder. He laughed because the world was a mess, the people were destroying themselves, and no one would be around to care about the aftermath. He laughed because it was just so funny that no one saw what they were doing to the families and people, people just like them, only different. He laughed at the pettiness of it all. He laughed that people warred over skin color or who controlled this or that. He laughed that entire wars broke out because people believed that there were different gods in the sky than someone else. He wondered where their great god had been when bombs dropped and they died slowly, bones and cells radiating slowly until they couldn't hold correctly and the person died. He laughed, an insane laugh, because he knew that he did the same as all these men and would always want to. He laughed because he could see the proof, right here, that man was evil and that all deserved nothing but the death they inflicted on others. He laughed because he was the very embodiment of the destruction around him, and he had no idea of anything else he could do but destroy. Jack laughed because here he was, in the midst of something he could just as easily replicate, and it hurt him, drove him mad. So he laughed... because he had no idea what else to do.
Ralph walked south, eyes not on the buildings, smoke, fire, or even the nuclear rubble, but on the people, the corpses littering the streets and walkways and rubble. Some smoked, victims of fire or nuclear warfare. Some were crushed by falling roofs or stones or trees. Some had knives or bullets through their skulls, victims of the soldiers who had passed through or of the frightened fighting that surely had broken out between neighbors, not knowing who was friend or foe. He saw children among the adults, bodies just as broken or more, several trampled by the fleeing feet of people trying to escape the warzone. He saw a few people still dying, crouching or rolling on the ground as the radiation caught up with them, some still bleeding out from battles unknown. He stopped by all of them, sitting with them until they were gone. A few were even children younger than he himself, closer to the age of Nettie- that's right, he did have a little sister, didn't he; it had been so long since he had thought about her. He wasn't aware of the wet drops of salt running down his cheeks for a long time. When he finally got to where his home had once been, now just a pillar of ash and a few bodies, he had nothing left he knew to do other than scream long and loud, louder than the conch had ever blown, and sob.
Then the three boys turned back and met again, looking at each other with an unspoken understanding. No matter what else happened, they weren't staying. It was time to leave London behind.
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