by David Salvi
“Quiet,” she said. “We have to talk. It’s not safe here.”
Chris agreed. Then he saw a man opposite the woman to his right. The man mouthed something, but the ringing in his ears blocked any sound.
Instead of worrying about sound, he moved his legs to regain sensation. Within moments his nerves picked up what his brain was trying to signal them.
Each foot planted on the gravel, crunching the pebbles under his boots. He found his balance and looked at the two figures. Both hooded persons in frayed, dark clothing. Their faces were half-covered by the shadow of the hood.
“We can go to my block. Safer there,” Chris instructed.
The two hooded rescuers nodded and gestured to Chris to lead the way.
Off the three went in haste to Shanty Row. They ran so fast that morsels of gravel kicked up in each step.
“This way!” Chris directed them around the bends of the roads and alleys. For twenty-six years, Chris navigated these streets to escape angry parents…or overzealous Canaanite MF Officers. Jack’s friendship never helped calm Chris’s mischief but in fact strengthened it. Myra never minded as boys will be that way, and she always said, “Human beings have a natural rebel buried in them. It’s in a challenge when we see how great we are. Or not.”
Cracks of lightning and thunder roared above. Drops of rain fell from the blue and purple-gray sky. Water accumulated on the streets quickly, and large puddles formed.
When Chris neared his apartment, he skidded to a halt when he saw the door smashed open. He rushed inside immediately after and found furniture upended and their personal belongings scattered across the common area. The dehumidifer was smashed into pieces. Clothes, pots, pans, chairs, jewelry, accessories covered the floor and draped over a destroyed couch and table.
In the corner was his mother. He nearly cried from fear and dread.
“Mom!” He plowed through the mess and knelt beside her.
“Chris…” she said. Her voice was weak. Her face pummeled and bloody from blunt blows of a club and stunner. Bruises marred her normally beautiful and fair features. Hair was ripped out and spread across her face and body.
“What happened?!” the son said to his mother.
She said, “They…came…for…”
Chris leaned in.
Each breath was harder than the last. She said, “They came for you.”
Chris’s eyes widened, and a jolt of nerves scared him. A noise at the door caused him to jump. He turned to see who was at the door while shielding his mother with his arms.
The hooded figures appeared in the doorway. Myra smiled at them in relief.
Chris turned back and asked, “Ma?”
“My son.”
“What do I do, Mama?” He only used that term when he was afraid. Like when he was bullied as a child.
“Put this in your knapsack and go. Run and escape. Get out of here.”
Myra revealed a thick krakona-wood container, lined with rubber insulation. Chris opened it to see a massive stack of papers and portable data drives.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Take them to the Motus Society. They need them. Over the mountains and across the sea…to the west.” The interval between breaths was longer and longer.
“I will.”
“And remember…” She lifted her arms from the floor and rotated her body so Chris could see her neck. She lifted her hair and revealed a hollow pentagram in a deep green ink.
“Who you are…is special. Never stop dreaming, Christopher.” She took her last breath. And her eyes shut for the final time.
It took a second for her passing to sink into Chris’s heart. When it did, his eyes welled up.
“Mama! Mama! Mama, come back!” He watched her eyes close for the last time and put his forehead on her shoulder. He wept unlike any time he had before. The one person in the world who didn’t see him as an outcast was gone.
This couldn’t be real, he told himself. No, this isn’t real.
“We must go,” said the hooded man. “Now.”
“Give him a minute,” said the hooded female.
Chris’s body convulsed as he embraced his mother. He sniffed and let tears streak down his face without shame.
“I don’t know if I can…” Chris said until he was cut off.
“Can what?” the man said.
“Do this. I don’t know anything about any of this.”
“We will guide you. You’re one of us now.”
Chris got to his feet and navigated through the mess slowly, though he could not take his eyes off his mother. Clouds covered Apollo, and the dark corner of their apartment would have to be her grave.
He walked out with the hooded persons, who both consoled him with rubs and pats on the back. They mouthed pleasant condolences but had little else to offer this stranger of an ally. Again, the woman on the left could be heard. But on the right, a dull noise could be heard. Must be from the blast.
Rain continued to fall, dampening their clothes and filling street puddles.
Then he heard something loud and clear.
“Motus!” A Military Force officer showed up behind them. He drew his stunner and shouted down the street for backup. Three more officers arrived within moments. All well-built brutes with shitty attitudes. Arson and rioting did not help the opinion of Motus among Canaanites, let alone the Military Force tasked with cleaning up the mess.
“Chris, go!” the hooded female shouted.
“You bastards are going to fry,” said a brute.
Four officers. Four stunners. Two carrying clubs. These were superior officers with more decoration on their ominous “I’m an asshole” uniforms.
Chris looked once at his attackers, then once at his allies. In the next breath he turned down the one road to escape. It was a race to Lake Albertrum. Chris engaged a primitive instinct and ran in a full sprint. Adrenaline fueled his every movement.
One of the officers dashed forward and dove into a puddle with his stunner before the hooded criminals could safely escape. He activated his stunner while they had their feet in the water. Despite submerging his entire torso, the officer shocked himself and the two Motus with sick pleasure. The Motus halted and dropped to the gravel. They winced from tingling back from paralysis.
Already in the distance, Chris ran with a different sense of purpose—one he had never felt in his life. People were after him. Bad people. People with cruel intentions and harsh sentencing for breakers of their laws.
The storm tempered and headed past the lake and mountain range. Weak thunder rumblings sounded in the distant north as its last dying breaths.
Chris had reached the city’s edge without an incident, prompting him to change his sprint to a hurried walk, but he’d turn his head every so often to check if followers were hot on his tail. Touching his heart, Chris wanted to catch his breath and slow his body down. Legs burned. Heart raced. And his body temperature was well above normal. Straight ahead was a valley blanketed by the sprawling Krakona Forest. To his left, the south, were rice fields. In the southeast were the misty Marian Mountains and the mountain pass into Marian Gulf. Into the northwest, a cliff and a hundred-foot drop into Lake Albertrum.
A dull thumping in the air interrupted his rest.
Shooting into the sky were three Canaanite bi-copters, twin-propeller electric aircraft with menacing features. They called them Sentinels on Canaan. Black oxide plating rounded out its treacherous curves at the aircraft’s bow, port, and starboard sides. Propellers stretched from the top of the craft like wings. The thudding beat of their blades filled the dead air, demonstrating powerful thrust. Inside glass cockpits were pilots with silver helmets and black visors over their eyes. These Sentinels were typically equipped with a singular rapid-fire air compression gun, which shot black oxide pellets. A single shot would only injure a man. A barrage would pulverize and rip through skin. Death by a thousand pellets.
Nearly falling over from exhaustion and defeat, Chris dro
pped to the ground and crawled to the nearest krakona tree for cover. Looking at his body, he quickly rubbed dirt on his legs, hands, arms, and face to blend in with the tree’s bark. Peeking from around the trunk, he eyed the three Sentinels closely until they broke off formation, obviously in search of someone.
Spotlights at the nose of the aircraft glared down as a beam of light in search of prey. One scoured the rice fields. Another browsed a strip of land bordering the lake. Another headed right to the valley with its spotlight aimed toward Chris and his tree like a tractor beam.
***
“Anything?” one pilot said into his comm system. He combed the lakefront cliff and land between it and the city. He led the mission.
“Nothing in the rice paddy. He wouldn’t get far in here,” said the pilot in the south.
“Checking the valley. Trees are obstructing my view.” said the valley pilot. His propellers disrupted the trees and leaves below. They bent downward in deference to the power above.
“Should we send a team through?” said the mission leader.
“Negati…wait…krakona fruit isn’t red, is it?” said the valley pilot.
“No, pilot.”
“Negative.”
“Possible target. Regroup at my position immediately.”
The Sentinels tracked back to the alley. They all prepped their weapons by pushing a few buttons. Hydraulics and pumps charged and filled their compression containers.
The hovering pilot dropped his altitude and fixed his gaze on the foreign red object. He aimed his weapon accordingly. His spotlight moved about the tree for any other clues. Nothing else out of the ordinary. The Sentinel hovered there with patience.
Thinking he and his bag were safely behind the tree, Chris held his ground until he heard the other two Sentinels approaching. The spotlights stalked him at his front and back. He turned his head ever so slightly to find the other Sentinel, but that’s when the onslaught began.
Hellfire rained from above in the form of black pellets. They shredded through the krakona leaves and branches while chipping away at the bark. The other two Sentinels joined the shooting parade.
Chris did the only thing he could do. He ran, again for his life. But the valley proved too dangerous. Open pockets and an impending mountain climb would expose him to fire—or kill him with exhaustion. His legs churned and burned toward the cliff.
“There he goes!” one pilot said.
“He’s headed for the cliff!” said another.
The Sentinels corrected their course and blasted away at Chris’s heels. Several pellets penetrated the boots and tripped up their prey.
“Get him!” a pilot yelled into the comm system.
Chris writhed in pain while falling forward toward the cliff. His body smacked the planet and rolled to the edge. He looked up to see the spotlights adjoin at his location, then he stared over the cliff into Lake Albertrum.
Sentinel guns temporarily stopped firing, but hissed with air as if reloading.
“Fire!” the mission leader commanded.
Chris spun his body over, and launched himself off the side of the rock face. He narrowly cleared the jagged rocks along the face, but it was enough. For a few moments in time, he heard nothing and felt nothing but the rush of air. At least one hundred feet until his water landing.
Below, a massive and deep lake filled with tigrus fish awaited the human prey. Although these fish were good-eating fare, they were nasty and defensive when foreign objects disturbed their waters. Most boats were scuttled or deserted ashore after schools of tigrus fish would gnaw through with sturdy and sharp chompers.
Kerplop!
His heel pain felt nothing compared to the flop into Albertrum’s water. A wide wake followed by a high splash disturbed the water plane. He would just as soon dash into a krakona wood wall than do that fall again.
Still with plenty of adrenaline pumping through his veins, Chris looked around underwater to find submerged lake weeds sprouting from the rock face, meaning a surface was near. He remained underwater, knapsack still in tow, and swam toward the weeds. Seeing they were strong and sturdy, Chris used a lake weed to pull himself since his heels hurt like heck and slowed him down. He’d rather them dangle than shoot electric pain up his legs and into his spine.
As he approached the rock face, sparkles of light caught his attention. He swam toward it. A barely-underwater grotto opened to reveal a cavern well above water with plenty of space to rest. He poked his head through and gasped for air. He was able to find a ledge to pull himself from the water. First, he threw his knapsack down, then collapsed.
Soaring above were three Sentinels maneuvering across the splash site. Heads moved around the cockpits with curiosity.
“You see him come up?” a pilot said.
“Negative,” another pilot said.
“Did the fall kill him?” one pilot said.
“Possible.”
“Or tigrus fish got him.”
“Maybe, but where’s the blood?”
“Or we killed him and he fell over,” the mission leader said.
“I like that version best.”
“Then that’s what will go into our report,” the mission leader said. “And if he isn’t, the fish will get’m. Good job, men. I’m low on battery. I’m sure you are too. Let’s get out of here and head back to base.”
With no man in sight, the Sentinels pushed the lever on their propeller thrust, pulsating the water below, and climbed above the cliff and trees. They made their way back to the city, satisfied with the outcome of their mission.
***
Inside the cave, Chris rested. His chest compressed in and out as his lungs took in as much air as they could to make up for the invigorating escape, with the body on the brink of collapse. Anything for survival, including pain. In the center of his chest, his heart beat. It was the only thing he could hear, which was inside his head, pulsating at his temples. Thump. Thump. Thump. And so on.
It would take several minutes before his heart stopped wanting to jump out of his chest and his lungs finally caught up. Each passing second cooled the body back to normal.
Coherence slowly coagulated in his mind as Chris blinked to remind himself that he wasn’t blind. Then he scoured the ground with his hand to feel for his knapsack that held the air-sealed container of life-or-death materials from his mother. What he felt was grainy, slick, and isolated. Finding his knapsack, he quickly flung open the flap and dug his hands inside to free the container. He also found his handy Apollo-powered flashlight, which was waterproof, like most devices and gizmos on Canaan. It was the length of his hand, but thin and cylindrical with panels wrapping around all sides to draw power from Apollo. A plexiglass casing allowed the light through. He’d use it at times in the garden when inspecting deep brushes—or when Apollo was blocked by menacing clouds.
Before investigating the container, Chris hopped to his feet and scanned his temporary residence with the flashlight. He wished to leave as soon as he could. An unwelcoming array of jagged rock walls with algae climbing up its face surrounded him. Above him minerals formed dripstones. It was like a giant mouth slowly chomping down on him and salivating from its rocky teeth.
He refocused his attention to what his mother gave him.
Upon opening the container, his eyes widened from surprise. Hundreds of handwritten pages on ancient tanned parchment. Ink came in black, blue, and even spots of red. Notes all over the pages. Odd numbers and letters without much meaning on first glance. In the center, though, was clear messaging in paragraphs.
Chris held to read the first page, noticing the thick, seemingly indestructible nature of the paper. Curious, he started, not knowing what it initially meant. Then he kept reading and reading. The more words he consumed, the more in awe he was. As he flipped the page over to see it signed, he gasped in the cave.
It read:
End of Entry.
Oscar Marian
But a more critical realization hit him in
real time. The flashlight only had a life of an hour fully charged. Time to look around for an exit. Reading papers was for another time.
The knapsack was thrown onto his back, and he tightened the straps to hug his body. The entire bag, though durable, was soaked from his leap of faith off the cliff into Lake Albertrum. He stared at his water entrance for a while, wondering if he could swim ashore at all. Tigrus schools were abundant in the area, no doubt. And he could not risk being seen by a Canaanite, military officer or fisherman. It was in this moment of thought that he felt a slight breeze at his back. He turned with the flashlight and lit up the back wall of the grotto.
Light reflected off the grotto’s water and danced around the rock in a gentle serenity. He approached cautiously.
A passageway, not even the size of his torso, was at the bottom. The cool breeze whistled and grew stronger as Chris neared a hopeful escape. He’d have to take off his bag and pull it through after securing himself.
On his first try, Chris felt the pressure of the rock on the top of his skull and shoulders. He didn’t think he could fit through. But he pressed by slithering his body.
The jagged teeth of the rock incised his head and back. Chris was able to only poke his head through, discovering utter blackness. The blood already rushed to his face, and he heard his heart pumping blood at his temple. He constricted the rest of his body and pushed in agony. He screamed on the other side to manage the pain, only to find his voice bounce back immediately. There may have been a draft coming from a crevice in the planet elsewhere, but whatever was on the other side of this opening wasn’t anything but an inevitable tomb if Chris successfully wiggled in.
“Why didn’t I look inside first? Dammit” he said to himself. The cave echoed back the question in a mocking fashion.
He made it to the middle of his back, but knew he had to retreat. His hands gripped the grainy surface and maneuvered a millimeter at a time.