VIII – SOLITUDE

Ana was able to feel how the blood was flowing through Carlos' body. The heat from the glass globe that had burned her so much began to dissipate and spread through the interior. She breathed in relief, but frightened at the same time. Thomas glared at her with his eyes of a killer and pointed his finger to signal that her death was imminent.

"I'm not afraid of you," Ana shouted between sobs.

That infuriated Thomas.

"I gave you the chance to choose between living and dying and you made the wrong choice.

Just then the body of Carlos began to go into convulsions, as if he was suffering an epileptic fit.

"The dead must not come back," said Thomas, as his eyes opened wide.

"Aaaaaaaaaa!!"

The scream from Carlos, a sure sign that air was entering his lungs and his heart was beginning to beat again, took Ana by surprise. But it only enraged Thomas even more and helped Father Matthias regain consciousness.

"Damn the both of you!" Thomas shouted as his hand moved towards his gun.

But Father Matthias gave him a swift kick in the ankle, knocking him to the floor.

"Ana, help Carlos as much as you can and the two of you get out of here!" the priest yelled as he grappled with their attacker.

He held on to the pistol with both hands and attempted to take aim at Thomas. His assailant fought back with his knees, wrestling for control of the weapon to aim and shoot Father Matthias.

"One less priest," said Thomas through clenched teeth.

"We'll see you in hell," the priest grunted in reply, and took heart at seeing Ana hustle Carlos out through the garage door.

The pistol moved back and forth like a pendulum, shaking from the exertion of whoever held the upper hand in guiding its direction for the moment. But the strength of the killer was greater than the man of letters and now the gun barrel was brushing up against his forehead.

"One day I will go to hell, but right now I'm sending you to meet your Creator," Thomas swore.

Father Matthias closed his eyes. His strength was flagging. The foul breath of the killer made him nauseous even as he made a final desperate effort to resist. Not to save his own life, because he knew he wouldn't hold out much longer, but to buy time for Ana and Carlos.

Their faces appeared in his mind, mainly Ana's, since she had spent over four years working with him. Ever since she caught him by surprise doing strange experiments in the library basement, Ana had never stopped peppering him with questions, putting in long hours studying by his side, and generally concerning herself with his health. She brought him food freshly cooked by her mother, did the laundry, and even bought him a radio so he wouldn't lose all contact with the outside world.

"I'm ready," grunted Father Matthias, weary of the struggle.

"Well, then... goodbye," said Thomas with a smile.

But the killer failed to notice Ana had returned with a folding chair in her hands.

"Same to you!" she screamed. "Goodbye!"

The first blow from the chair stunned Thomas. The second deposited him on the floor, unconscious.

*

The garage door refused to open. Carlos twisted and turned, screamed in agony and vomited blood and liquid remnants. Father Matthias was cleaning up the blood while Ana, sitting behind the wheel, kept hitting the security keypad that didn't work in frustration.

"What a disaster!" shouted the woman who owned the room as she released the mechanical door. "I've seen some strange things in my day, but never vandalism like this."

Ana took advantage of the situation and accelerated, honking the horn so the owner would move out of the way. She shot out of the garage with her tires screeching, leaving a cloud of fumes that smelled of burned rubber in her wake.

"I'll charge everything to your credit card! You're not going to get away with this that easily!"  the owner yelled, shaking her fist at them.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Ana answered, lowering the side window.

Beside her, Father Matthias was slumped in the passenger seat, his head up, trying to convince himself to ignore the pain. Carlos was groaning in discomfort in the back, apart from being completely disoriented and scared out of his mind. Ana remembered what her grandmother used to tell her when she was a little girl:

"We come into world alone, we live alone, and we die alone."

Seeing Carlos in agony and realizing she couldn't do anything more for him, she thought that now he found himself truly alone, isolated from any reality. For all the good fortune the young man had, being so intelligent and extremely strong as she believed he was, he was fighting to survive both physically and mentally.

"Better to drive on secondary roads," said Father Matthias.

"Where are we going?"

"I don't know, but it will be better to disappear until Carlos has a chance to recover from everything. That’s assuming nothing unexpected happens, and then we can decide what to do later.

"Do you really think that we'll make the contents of the manuscript public with his program?" Anna asked, a little confused.

"It's not about spreading the word per se, more like delivering a tool to the world so they can decipher it and everyone can interpret it the way they want. I'm certain that countless minds will discover things that slipped by you and me, even after so many years spent analyzing it."

"A universal knowledge."

"Knowledge is created by human beings and belongs to humanity. We cannot deny the obvious."

"The people who are chasing after us have no desire that its contents come to light."

"But that is what the unimaginative, mediocre people do. They are incapable of creating anything themselves so they use and abuse all legitimate, genuinely talented men and women like bloodsucking parasites in order not to lose power. I'm speaking of humanity, of all the good people who collectively fight and struggle to improve the world. Don't get me wrong. The parasites, even though they are human beings, do not form part of humanity. They only make use and take advantage of it."

Father Matthias rested his hand on his ribs and realized that one was broken.

"Pull over in here," he said and pointed to a sign reading NATURAL PARK. "Let's see if we have any luck and find a place where we can spend the night."