by David Moody
“Maddie, if we can get in, can’t they?” Sam asked.
“I don’t think so.” As if to prove her point, Maddie stood directly in front of the opening. Her hands down by her side, a silent prayer passing by her lips. The ground beneath her feet shook as the tick ran full speed toward her.
“Maddie, move!” Sam begged, the other held her ground. She lowered her shoulder in preparation for an impact she would not survive. The bogalite was some fifteen feet away when it jumped.
“Through the valley of…” She had her eyes closed; she didn’t open them until she heard the deafening sound of legs and a body being broken. A portion of the beast had forced its way in, its mouth less than a foot from Maddie, opening and snapping shut rapidly. Its body was squelching as it tried to pull itself toward the meal, blood was running down the walls as it inched closer.
“Maddie.” Sam pulled her friend backward. The bogalite struggled more frenetically as its prey was escaping. The other three, after seeing what had happened, were probing the wall for a way in. One had turned sideways and was climbing atop of the injured one, once it had discerned that it would have enough room to gain access. Its front legs were feeling around for the edge as it came in, the antennae eyes fixed on Maddie as if it were seeking revenge on what she’d done to the other.
“We need to run.” Sam was dragging on Maddie’s sleeve.
“Nowhere to go.” Maddie could see Kalandar watching. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she was positive if they sought refuge in the hotel, this deadly game was over and not for their betterment. “Stop her!” Maddie saw Sandra trying to do just that. For the second time in under ten minutes, Sandra collided with an invisible field, this one much more forgiving than Kalandar’s, but with the damage already done, she was down for the count. Heavy, consolidated tears instantly formed as her nose shifted to the side like tectonic plates during an earthquake.
Maddie raised her hands and spread them wide. She curled her fists around some imaginary material and rapidly pulled her outstretched arms together. The mouth of the first animal and half the body of the second were neatly shorn; no blood flowed from the wounds.
“It looks like the dioramas from biology class,” Sam said as she moved to the side to get a better look. At some point, Kalandar had come up, he pressed his hand to the ground, a shock wave obliterated the two remaining bogalites. What was left looked as if it had been sprayed from an aerosol can. “What have you done?” Kalandar asked of Maddie as he dissolved his wall.
“I don’t know. I wanted to use the wall as a shield and knew we needed to be on the other side of it, so…other than that…” she trailed off.
“What was done should be impossible. Especially by one so much lower than myself.”
“Gee, thanks,” Maddie told him.
“You are offended? It is a truth. I am over three times your height, and I am, by all measures, nearly immortal. I have magical powers that place me in the upper echelons of conjurers, and I have these.” He flexed his arms, producing enormous biceps. “But still, that was an impressive feat and one I will have to ponder further. Come, we must celebrate our new alliance!” He was making strides toward the hotel. Maddie was looking toward the carnage, the mangled ruined bodies of dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. The last thing she felt like doing was celebrating. There was, however, the flicker of hope that had ignited inside her chest; she was going to have to be content with that for now.
21
THE MOON
“That’s it? That’s your plan?” Now that they were sitting, Maddie found she was extremely exhausted. Perhaps partly it had been the heat or the stress of the fight, but this was a deeper sort of weary; she felt it down to the bone.
“I cannot be the public face of the opposition, for obvious reasons, but I will help where I can,” Kalandar said.
“Sounds like typical politician double-speak.” Sandra’s words were muffled, her head was tilted back and a tissue shoved in each nostril. Maddie had taken great satisfaction in Sandra’s pain as she had readjusted the woman’s broken nose. “You could have been more careful.” Sandra was wiping away the involuntary tears the adjustment had caused.
“I could have,” Maddie told her.
“Guys, we’re going to have to figure something out. When we got here, I wasn’t specifically checking but the temperature looked normal enough, mid-seventies, maybe, but the monitor says we’re at ninety now, and it’s still rising.” Sam was pointing at the screen.
“Something to do with the wall?” Maddie asked, grunting as she stood to get closer.
“I don’t know, maybe. What else could it be?” As one, they turned to Kalandar.
“It is not of my doing,” he told them. “You will have to drop the wall.”
“Drop it? I’m not even sure how we made it,” Thistle said. “And what of the monsters? They’re still out there. The second we bring down the wall, they’ll kill everyone.”
“I believe they would rather fight than be baked alive,” Kalandar said. “I know I would.”
“Can you even be cooked?” Maddie asked.
“It is true I am used to unnatural degrees of heat… That is beside the point. I would rather fight than hide in an oven. Although, upon reflection, I always prefer to fight.”
“The temperature seems stable in here.” Sandra was removing the tissues, thankful that her nose was not bleeding nearly as freely.
“Normally, that would be an innocuous statement, a valid observation even, but I know where you’re going with that,” Maddie said.
“Why don’t you enlighten me then.”
“Let me know if I veer off course at any point. You’re thinking that if the hotel and this room, in particular, are holding steady, then fuck everyone else. That about sum it up?”
Sandra was quiet.
“Mom?” Sam asked. “Really?” she responded when her mother shrugged.
“Nothing she does should come as a surprise. It wasn’t so long ago she’d planned on leaving you behind. The only thing important to Sandra is Sandra.”
“Don’t be a bitch, Maddie. It’s unbecoming,” Sandra told her.
“So is the willful destruction of the final vestiges of humanity.”
“Always so dramatic.”
“Dramatic? Do you see what I see? It’s the truth!” Maddie punctuated her words with a flourish of her hands.
“Our big red friend already told us we are the key to stopping this invasion; we should not risk such vital assets.”
“Jesus, what goes wrong in a person’s life that they become so callous to the suffering of others?”
“I’m only being practical. We can’t babysit and fight the forces of evil.”
“To be fair, evil and good are relative terms that only carry meaning according to the perspective from which you view them. The Bleed does not believe itself to be an evil entity but rather one wiping the scourge of life from existence,” Kalandar said. “But, in a strangely ironic twist, it also enjoys being worshipped, which makes killing everything an interesting dichotomy.”
“Isn’t that the definition of evil?” Thistle asked.
“Have you seen what life will do if left unchecked? How many planes on Earth were destroyed by humankind’s actions? War upon war, and I won’t even go into the ravages of stripping everything considered of value from multiple worlds, at all costs. Or what about the Flueries of Grandalon? What they considered transcendental acts made the heavens weep. The Bleed considers life a virus that must be destroyed down to the last, so that it does not multiply again and begin the process anew. But it is not a completely altruistic event; the Bleed relishes in the consumption of power. Killing to feed its unquenchable lust.”
“Aren’t you living? Aren’t you part of that life?” Sam asked.
“He already answered when he said he was immortal,” Maddie replied.
“Nearly so, but yes, I am on the other side of the dividing line. Close enough to a god to be considered such by
the likes of you, and gods, for all your prostrating to them, care very little about any of you. Gods look upon you much like when, occasionally, a person might take a brief interest in an ant as it stumbles carrying a morsel of food too big for it or goes off warring with a rival anthill. Otherwise, they are generally oblivious, more times carelessly stomping through existences than helping in any manner.”
“I don’t believe you!” Thistle yelled. “My mother was a god, and she did nothing but help people!”
“Is that so? Where is she now?” Kalandar was bemused.
“She died fighting this great war! She died trying to protect her family.”
“Or did she run before the war began, leaving you all behind to the fates?”
“How dare you!” Thistle’s face was turning red with rage.
“Is there a purpose to you baiting her?” Maddie asked.
“She needs to realize, you all need to realize, that there is no help coming from outside sources. You and those like you are all that stand between life and unlife.”
“And what about you?” Sandra asked.
“My help notwithstanding.”
“Convenient,” Sandra sneered.
“Just in the few minutes we’ve been arguing here, it’s gone up another two degrees outside.” Sam was once again looking at the monitor.
“Woman,” Kalandar was talking to Maddie. “Come with me. I have a working theory about what you did with my magic and I want to see if it is true.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Anything to do with the amount of power I use is dangerous, and I suppose where we are going could be construed as dangerous…to you. So, yes. Come, it will be enjoyable.”
“What about us?” Sandra asked.
“Don’t worry, he doesn’t want to endanger you.” Maddie followed Kalandar out of the room and the hotel. “Fuck, it’s hot. Never realized how much I appreciated the controlled environment we had on the moon.”
“About to get hotter. You will need to get on my back; we must travel fast.”
“I’m about to get a piggyback ride from a demon?”
“It’ll be fun.”
“Clearly we have very different definitions of fun,” she said, even as she was being hoisted up.
“Would you prefer my shoulders or back?”
“I don’t normally have a problem with heights, but I’m going to stay on your back.”
Kalandar was running fast. Maddie had to close her eyes; they were jostling so severely, she couldn’t see straight anyway. Add to that, she wasn’t a fan of where they were going. Straight for the wall.
“Are you still there?” he asked. Maddie had a difficult time hearing the question from the rush of air past her ears. He was moving faster than a Mower, and she wished she were back in the moon vehicle. “Humans are light…not very filling either.”
“What?” Maddie asked, hoping she hadn’t heard what she had.
“What did you hear?” Kalandar asked when he realized he said something he maybe shouldn’t have. “Makes no difference; we are almost there.”
“Might make no difference to you.”
Kalandar finally slowed to a pace that Maddie felt comfortable hopping off the great red back. She looked about at the broken bodies that littered the ground like trash after a Mardi Gras party.
“So many.” At this point, she wasn’t even sure what they were fighting for; there couldn’t be many survivors left.
“This wall.” Kalandar started bringing Maddie back to the task at hand. “It has created a lethal environment. It will not be long before it is too hot for human habitation.”
She didn’t know why this was, but the proof was present whether she knew the reason or not. There was not a part of her body where her clothes weren’t clinging like a spandex cat suit at an eighties disco rave.
“Can’t you take it down?”
Kalandar looked up at the earth looming far above his head. “It is possible, but I would have nothing left for what comes through the breach.”
“What’s coming through the breach?” She wasn’t even sure why she’d asked the question. The wall had been made for one purpose only. She supposed she was stalling, thinking maybe if she kept the teacher distracted long enough, he would forget to assign homework over the weekend. Rarely worked, but every once in a while, the students got lucky.
“I am going to set a small charge, then you are going to do what you do.”
“What do I do?”
“That would be like me trying to explain ‘how do I love?’ It is unexplainable.”
“You know about love?”
“Yes, I know about love. That is not a uniquely human feeling. Of course, I feel it more when I’m referring to a great meal, but on occasion, I have loved those—of the living variety.”
“Had to add that last part, didn’t you.”
“I enjoy humor. I knew a human once; he opened that door for me, and for that I will be forever grateful.”
“Did you eat him?”
“Oh, I dared not. Besides being powerful in his own right, he had some allies that would have made the prospect daunting.”
“But you thought about eating him, right?”
“I think about eating almost everyone or thing I come across. It takes a lot of fuel to keep this running.” He smacked his chest hard. “And when I use power, even more so.”
Maddie gulped.
“Do not worry; I have found that red hair gives me indigestion.” He threw his head back and laughed hard at the joke. Maddie was not nearly as amused.
“Why are you really helping?” Maddie asked, unsure if she wanted to know.
“For the love of the game,” he responded without missing a beat.
“The game?”
“Yes, the game cannot be played without players.”
“This isn’t a game, Kalandar, this is life and death.”
“A game with the greatest stakes, but a game, nonetheless. Now, stay by my side.” Kalandar got down on one knee and placed his hand on the ground. He murmured a few words in a language Maddie didn’t understand, she felt a heavy thump under her feet, then a ripple that radiated outward, but instead of forming a circle, there was a pie-shaped wedge heading straight for the wall.
“What’s that going to do?”
“Not much. This is where you come in.”
“We’ve been over this; I don’t know what I did or what to do.”
“Hmm.” Kalandar placed a hand to his chin, they both watched as the earth tremor struck the wall. A few boulders were knocked loose and tumbled down the face but other than that, it held firm. “Perhaps we should make this personal.” He clasped a hand on each side and picked her up, ran a few yards away before depositing her and running back to where he’d been. “I’m going to do this again and I want you to remember my earlier words: expending power makes me hungry, and, also, now that you are in the direct path, this could be harmful to your health.”
“How harmful?”
“Did I say harmful? I meant hazardous.”
“Kalandar!” Maddie yelled just as he released another pulse. She had no time to act, only react. The ripple split as it approached her, then reformed and intensified as it passed her by. The ripple had become a series of waves, and as they got closer to the wall, they enlarged, looking much like those waves were breaking, though they were composed entirely of dirt and rocks. “Did I do that?” Maddie could only watch in awe.
“You should move!” Kalandar shouted over the din. “Fast!”
The wave did not crash against the wall but instead passed through.
“Nothing’s happening.”
“Run, small one,” Kalandar urged.
Maddie was about to ask why when the very top of the wall began to shake violently, the noise louder than anything she could ever remember hearing. Boulders larger than vehicles were being tossed over a hundred yards, some crashing entirely too close to her location. Now she understood the reason to move and did
so with haste. It was difficult gaining traction, as more times than not, the ground was bouncing and she would lose footing or momentum to the beat. Kalandar, realizing she wasn’t going to make it, raced toward her. He picked her up and pulled her in close, a hard protective shell formed around them just as a boulder crashed into the top and shattered, tumbling down along the sides like a rockfall. Kalandar was breathing heavily as he moved away. When he felt they were at a safe distance, he went farther before nearly dropping Maddie, and he fell to the ground on his hands and knees. Maddie gathered herself and stood. The wall was crumbling—disintegrating might even be a better word. Billowing clouds of dust rose into the air and mushroomed into an expanding plume. A shock wave followed by a blast of cool air rippled through Maddie, but that wasn’t what chilled her to the bone. It was the hordes of bogalites scrambling towards them over the scree.
“Kalandar!” Maddie reached behind her to tap him on the shoulder.
He lifted his head. “I see them. It could not be helped.”
“Wait, what couldn’t be helped?”
“I thought you knew. The seal needed to be broken.”
“And the people?”
“Mostly expendable.”
“Mostly?”
“I’m a growing demon.”
“Kalandar!”
“Maddie, make no mistake, the room with the rings and the three of you operating it are the most important pieces to the puzzle on this moon. It was protected and would have been all right for a while, but the defenses would have eventually failed and your lives would have been in jeopardy.”
“We went through hell to save these people; we can’t just leave them to the fates now.”
“Can’t you? Who are you to bend fate?”
“Isn’t that exactly what you’re asking us to do?”
“Hmm. I do not like having my words logically used against me. Alright, yes, but some conflicts are worth fighting and some are not. This is the latter.”