by David Moody
“Are they here!?”
Maddie was physically pushed back, she didn’t know if it came from the force of the question shouted, the crazed look, or the striking color of the young woman’s eyes.
“Who are you?” Thistle asked as she focused on Maddie. She stood rapidly, keeping her back against the wall. She had her fists raised as in preparation to strike. “Where’s my brother? Oh…oh, my poor father.” She desperately attempted to hold on to her composure, her bottom lip quivering as she wiped a tear from her eyelid before it could roll down her cheek and betray her.
Maddie had her hands out in a placating manner, she didn’t know what the girl was capable of but today had been entirely too strange to test it out.
“I’m Maddie, and, as far as I know, you’re the only one here. Haven’t seen your brother or father, and I’m not going to hurt you.”
“As if.” Thistle sniffed. Maddie could sense that the other was scared, but also that she might be very capable of backing up her snide response.
“I’m from the moon, well, from Earth, originally, but the moon most recently.”
Instead of calming the woman down, that seemed to agitate her further. “I don’t know either of those places. Are you a god?”
“If I say no, are you going to respond with, ‘then die?’”
“Not unless you give me a reason to.”
“Let me start from the beginning.” Maddie gave Thistle the condensed version of the wars on her home planet, the escape to the moon, how they’d been thriving until very recently. The explosions, the impossible atmosphere and life forms, the flight through the tunnel and of her exploits on a differing timeline with Jenny Allsopp. She did leave out the part about the other woman, that she may or may not have been a half-god; she was still having a difficult time reconciling that. In the end, it took her nearly an hour to recount. “Now you know my name and some of my story. How about you?”
Thistle hadn’t completely let her guard down, but she was willing to talk. She spoke of her family, her village, how the bleed had come and destroyed nearly everything she knew, their escape to the citadel. Maddie was astute enough to realize that Thistle was leaving some parts out; she wondered if it was on purpose to hide a secret, or perhaps the shock from the events made them too painful to recount. Either way, she did not press it; if the woman wanted to fill in the details later, Maddie would listen. Wherever Thistle was from, it was not her Earth or that of Jenny’s; it was possible it was another timeline. More unnerving, Maddie got the impression that it might be a different world altogether. She had mistakenly believed her mind could only be blown so many times before it would shut down to new stimuli. How wrong she had been.
“Your eyes…is that a normal color where you’re from?”
Thistle stood tall and proud, a defiant look upon her face, believing that she was about to be attacked for being a filthy “halfsie.” “It is not.” Her chin held high, she dared the other to say something.
“I was just wondering; you don’t have to look at me like I was about to steal your Eggo.”
“My what?”
“Ancient ad for frozen waffles, apparently. I never ate one, saw it in a magazine once.”
“Why would anyone want to eat a frozen thing?”
“Well, it’s not, I mean, you gotta put it in a…you know what? Doesn’t matter. We’re veering off-topic here. Your eyes give you a very cat-like look, like maybe you’re part of the Thundercats gang, know them?”
“Maddie, most of what you say sounds like a foreign language. What are Thundercats?”
“You know, Thunder, Thunder Thundercats hooooo!” Maddie sang.
“Quite honestly, I haven’t the faintest notion what you mean.”
“Probably should have realized that; doesn’t sound like your world was much past the Medieval stage. You were pretty lucky, not having televisions.”
Thistle decided not to further engage with what sounded decidedly alien. “My eyes are this color because I am a half-god,” she pronounced.
“Hmmm,” was all Maddie replied.
“Hmmm? You have nothing more to say on the subject? No animosity?”
“Animosity? Like some strange sort of god-ism? I said hmm because you are the second person just today that has told me they are a half-god. I have gone my entire goddamned life without ever hearing of such a thing, and now I’m being inundated. I think I’d rather be hit in the face with multiple pies, it’s less…bracing.” Maddie had to search for a fitting word.
“Jenny is a half-god?”
“So she says.”
“You do not believe her?”
“Where and when I come from, God, or gods, in general, have mostly been discredited as merely stories. Nothing more than fairy tales, really.”
“Do you perhaps think that maybe that is the reason for the state of your world?”
“I, umm, never thought about it much, or at all, really. It was all I could do to survive.”
“If she could operate the god-machine, then it makes sense she was a halfsie. I can’t believe I just uttered that foul word.”
“Halfsie?”
“It is derogatory, where I come from.”
“It’s my understanding you can call yourself whatever you want to; it’s only when an outsider does it that it becomes an issue. Marines could call each other ‘crayon eaters’ all day long, but woe be to those silly bastards on the outside that called them the very same thing. Right, sorry,” Maddie said as she looked at Thistle. “You have no idea what I just said.”
Thistle nodded.
“I don’t get it, Thistle. I’m not a half-god, more like Irish and maybe a little English, but no otherworldly elements that I know of, and I can kind of make the god-machine, or god-tech as we called it, work. “
“This Jenny, did she always know she was a halfsie?”
“No, it sounded like she’d just found out and was pretty confused about it and maybe even doubting if it were true, though, I guess you could say she’d been pretty much proofing the pudding. I have got to work on my use of language with you.”
“We have pudding on my world. Is it possible that, perhaps, you could just be finding this out yourself? I mean about you, personally? Who you are?”
“My parents were Bethany and Patrick McMahon. The only thing the gods blessed me with was a certain talent with a wrench and this magnificent head of hair.” Maddie pointed to her red tresses.
“Okay Maddie, who may or may not be a halfsie, I need you to bring me to this clockwork room, I need to find my brother; we stepped through the portal together, we were holding hands, he has to be here.”
Maddie had no idea how the portal worked. It made sense, though, if they went together, they should have stayed together, but who could tell? There were no manuals with the god-tech, and Maddie sourly figured that even if they did have one, it would be written in the gods’ version of Chinese. The mechanism was softly glowing, as if it were in the process of cooling down after having worked particularly hard. All it needed was the pops and pings of a machine and it would nearly be normal, in Maddie’s eyes, anyway. From where they stood upon the small raised platform, they could see the entire room. They were alone.
“How did you come to be in the hallway?” Maddie asked, wondering if Thistle had been tossed out errantly, and that perhaps her brother was in some other nearby place.
“I don’t remember much. It was bright; I had an arm up against my eyes to shield the worst of it, I stumbled a few steps, and that’s when you found me.”
“You held his hand the entire time?”
“It felt that way; I never sensed we’d lost our grip.”
“Let’s see if we can find him, and if that’s the case, there are a few people I’d like to get a hold of myself.” She was, of course, thinking of Sam, Derrick, Tyler, and to a much lesser degree, Sandra, the people she had been with on the moon. “Any idea of what to do?”
Thistle shook her head.
�
��Do you remember what you did last time?”
“We were looking for an escape from the monsters that chased us. You went through a portal twice now. What did you do?”
“That’s a good question. The second time Jenny was at the controls, the first time, no one was.”
“You sure about that?” Thistle had a small smile splayed across her face.
20
THE MOON
“I am not a god, not a half one, not a demi one, not any kind of one!” Maddie was angry.
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing,” Thistle replied.
“I don’t know what kind of thing it is, other than I want no part of it. Now can we just try and find the people we’re looking for and drop the rest of this?”
“Lead on, your grace.”
“I will knock you into whatever you call the third day of your week.” A soft glow began to shimmer as Maddie neared the machine, a hum joined it as Thistle approached.
“I don’t know what to do,” Thistle said as she gazed upon the wondrous creation.
“Just think of your brother, the bond between you. Use some of that magic juice you apparently have running through your veins.”
“It’s mostly been drained away from my flight and fight.”
“Too bad we don’t have some magic potion to restore our mana.”
“That’s a thing?”
“It is in video games.”
“Video…games?”
“Hopefully, soon, I’m going to remember that there’s about a five-hundred-year gap in our knowledge and technology base.”
The silver rings moved slowly at first as the women concentrated, like train wheels on a slick track, heading uphill. Slowly but surely, they began to spin faster to the point they almost appeared still.
“I see something.” Maddie strained.
Thistle had her head thrown back, her eyes open wide as she stared blankly at the ceiling. Whether willingly or subconsciously, she was linked to the machine, and she was subtly directing it as it tapped into her for power. Faster the machine turned and whined; Thistle was now half a foot off the floor, her back arched, her head flung back impossibly far.
Maddie couldn’t even begin to grasp what was happening, but she was fearful that the rings were bleeding the girl dry, taking everything she had to offer like a vampire would his victim’s blood until there was nothing left but a dried-up husk. Maddie moved to pull Thistle free from the invisible grip. As soon as she touched the girl, a chilling shock went through her; it was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She’d had her fair share of electrical mishaps, but this could not compare. She could move if she chose to, but she did not wish to do so. People, places, events streamed past, most before the Bleed plague, but others after. She gasped as the all-encompassing evilness sought them out. Somehow, it knew it was being spied upon; it had stopped the flashing images, not allowing the view to change.
“Thistle, we need to release!” Maddie was shaking the girl. There was nothing except a fluttering of her eyelids.
“Thistle!” The Bleed was pulling itself together, cohering from the apocalyptic soup it had made of the world. Small tentacles formed and spread out in every direction, feeling for what it knew was there. Maddie didn’t know how it would be able to do it, only that it could. If one of those tendrils found its way back to them, it would be over. The tendrils began to lash out, striking randomly, cracking the air like a whip. Wherever it struck, blackness appeared, as if it were ripping through the very fabric of existence. Maddie knew that this was precisely what it was doing, attempting to tear its way into their reality.
“Do you see it!?” Thistle exclaimed, the girl was now looking at Maddie, her eyes wide in a panic but with an underlying bewilderment. At first, Maddie thought that perhaps the Bleed had ensnared Thistle and the cause was lost before it had even been started.
“Thistle, we have to leave!”
“Look first, Maddie.”
Then, whether because the bleed had hypnotized her, or Thistle was directing her to do so, she was looking, peering into the belly of the beast. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, other than it was important, vastly important. And then, as if the Bleed was aware of what was happening, instead of actively searching for them, it began to pull away, something neither of the women thought possible. Before Maddie had a chance to regain herself, she was on the ground, a bewildered Thistle atop her.
“What the hell was that?” Maddie asked as she stood, helping the other up.
“A way, I think,” Thistle replied.
“Yeah, like shooting down a jetliner with a peashooter, kind of way.” Maddie rubbed her forehead, a deep and grating headache beginning to form.
Thistle closed her eyes, exasperated. “Five hundred years, remember?”
“Maddie?” It was Samantha.
“Sam!” Maddie raced to grab the girl, hugging her tight, slightly embarrassed by her outburst—but not enough to stop. What had been happening, what was happening, was so bizarre that it was a profound relief to finally have someone you knew and trusted by your side. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’ve missed you.” Maddie let go of the embrace and held the girl at arm’s length.
“Missed me? Maddie, we’ve been together this whole time. You weren’t more than a step or two ahead of me. Where are we? Where’s Tyler and Derrick…and the other one?”
Maddie thought it was safe to say that Sam was still mad at her mother.
“Sam, it’s been a couple of days. I was back on Earth.”
“Back on Earth? What are you talking about, Maddie? And why is…whoever she is, looking at me like that?”
Thistle had her head cocked to the side as she looked at Sam. “Are you a half-god too?”
“Half what? What is going on?” Sam asked. “And stop looking at me that way.” She felt self-conscious.
“Let’s wait for the rest to come through, that way I only have to explain it once,” Maddie said. It began to get awkward as more time elapsed and no one spoke, nor showed up. “Well, that’s weird.”
“Maybe they’ll come through at the same pace as you did, Maddie,” Thistle offered.
“This could take days, and I’m not sure we have that kind of time. Sam, who was behind you in the cave?”
“My mother. I think she forced her way up.”
“Dammit. if it was Derrick, then Tyler, the moment they came through I could have dismantled this infernal machine.”
Maddie and Thistle spent the next hour recounting their separate tales and what they had encountered together. Sam looked like a third-grader tossed into a calculus class; she knew she was witnessing some version of math, but since she had barely a rudimentary grasp on addition, this far surpassed her understanding.
“So, wait.” Sam was thinking. “Is there a chance that what was happening on the moon was this Bleed thing?”
Maddie paused. “I…you know, I don’t know. It was so vastly different from what I saw when I in Jenny’s world and from what Thistle said; it sure does seem entirely too coincidental though. The rot, the animal life, the portal, all of it.” A dim wattage light bulb flickered in a dark recess of her mind, and she nearly let her thoughts pass on by without a second glance. “There might be something there,” she thought out loud. Then she turned to the two others. “If it was the Bleed, it was much more manageable than what we’ve been dealing with on Earth.”
“Manageable? Juan was killed by it.” Sam was aghast.
“I know the loss, Sam, I was there. And I don’t mean to make less of his death and everyone else’s, it’s…” Maddie was looking for the right words, given what they were talking about was burdensome. “I was in Australia, too. What happened there was a worldwide cataclysm, and there was nothing that could be done. It killed billions, and they had tech and weaponry to fight back. We were up here using pointy objects and most of us got away.” She didn’t add, “for now,” because they all knew that the clock was tickin
g. “Your dad was a good man, Juan was a good kid. They didn’t deserve to die that way, but what we need to do now is focus on not letting it happen to anyone else.”
Sam let the anger that had been building, dissipate. Juan’s death had nothing to do with Maddie, and she was smart enough to realize that she was mistakenly placing blame where it didn’t belong. “Could it be the lack of atmosphere?” Sam posed.
“Possibly.” Maddie couldn’t be sure.
“Lack of life, perhaps. Your moon sounds nearly devoid of it. The bleed thrives on the destruction of life, without it, it cannot bloom,” Thistle said.
“Oh, that’s great. So we can beat our enemy by starving it of all life. Seems counterproductive.” Maddie was masking her fear with sarcasm. It was likely, she felt, that this did have something to do with the Bleed’s lack of manifestation on the moon, but there was more, she was certain of it. There had to be. Without some other means, they were merely marking time for the end of all things.
The three women said nothing for many moments. Sam had gone to the monitors and was looking out over the people below. They seemed to her to be a disorganized mass.
“Maddie, where are we?” she asked, placing her hand on the screen. She wasn’t entirely sure, but underneath the vegetation, it all looked somehow familiar.
“It would appear we are on the moon,” Maddie told her.
Sam turned, she was astonished. “Our moon? The future? How?”
“I don’t think I can answer any of those questions definitively. It’s our moon, in a sense, but not our future. It would appear to be a different timeline, maybe parallel to ours?” Maddie looked to Thistle to see if she had any input; she shrugged her shoulders.
“Alternate reality? It sounds like something Derrick would read about. What do we do now?” Sam asked.
Maddie wanted to shrug her shoulders, too. She didn’t have the foggiest notion. She’d applied for the moon project to get away from people. She’d never liked crowds of any size, and at no time had she ever desired to be in a leadership role. And now it would appear she was being confronted with both of those things. To what purpose, she couldn’t resolve. There were over a hundred thousand people down there. Most weren’t going to give her a listen; people generally did what they wanted to, and what was she supposed to do about it? All of these people were under massive amounts of stress, had perhaps lost all or most of everything dear to them…what could Maddie possibly offer that would help to calm them or begin the process of rebuilding their lives? She had no idea if the ecosystem they found themselves in could support this massive influx of life, or if they were basically just hiding out in an understocked bunker and would soon find themselves out of the basic necessities for survival.