Mountains of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  That odd sickening feeling ran through me as I went through again. I knew what it meant now. I was no longer meant for that world, although I wasn’t excluded.

  “I’ll get another one!” Maston screamed. “You don’t know how many weapons I have access to! I’ll kill every one of you freaks, if it’s the last thing I do!”

  I sighed heavily. I brought the gun to bear. I pointed the business end at my target and checked the little switch on the side. It had three settings. Safe, semi, and auto. It was on semi. I didn’t know what that meant, so I switched it to auto.

  Maston said, “You can’t do this. McCurdy! You have to stop her!”

  I glanced over my shoulder at McCurdy, who seemed frozen in place. He wasn’t exactly frozen. He was looking at me with that same expression. Hope and despair all wrapped up into one.

  “I can,” I said and began to fire.

  Although it had a really big magazine in it, the M16 rifle didn’t fire very long. Auto meant all at once. It rattled it off in a way that made me feel very bizarre. It made a lot of holes in my target, and the response was a shriek of mechanical rage.

  It was only a few seconds before all the bullets were gone. But the directed-energy weapon had a lot of holes in it. The control panel was smoking vigorously, and something on the inside was creaking a wounded protest. However, it didn’t really seem dead enough to me.

  So aching chest and all, I went to the Hummer and climbed into the back. It took me more than a few minutes, and I could feel blood pouring down my chest, but I took the M16 and made it into a fancified club. “‘Nothing beside remains,’” I quoted as I swung the butt end of the rifle over and over again, idly noting that pieces of metal and glass flew into the air. “‘Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.’” I don’t think anyone understood what I was saying, but it needed to be said.

  When I was done, I climbed back down and surveyed my work. Sure, I hadn’t pounded the directed-energy weapon into teensy-weensy little bits, but it wasn’t going to destroy any more embassies ever again. I didn’t think that Maston would ever find any kind of scientist to put that booger back together.

  Dropping the M16, I turned back to the people and new animals standing on the other side of the bubble watching me. It was a good day’s work. I wasn’t done, but I thought I could live with it. I was going to find the next transport out of D.C. and head west.

  I was already forgetting about President Corbin Maston.

  Lulu gasped and started to say something.

  I spun to find Maston lunging at me with the same M16 held over his head like an ax, and it was headed for my head. He wouldn’t have missed had something else not happened.

  A tiny green luminescent flash zipped past me and plowed into the President’s face. Flowers had returned, and she had flown through the side of the bubble to come to my aid. Maston dropped the M16 even while he shrieked in agony. The firefly pixie had pierced his eye with her mighty silver toothpick. Her wings beating furiously, she braced her feet against his cheek and the orbital bone and dug in with the small weapon.

  Maston grasped the firefly pixie and roared with anger.

  “No!” I screamed. “No! No! NO!”

  But it was too late. The firefly pixies were fierce warriors, but they weren’t invincible. Maston deliberately threw her against the side of the Hummer. It made a sickening crunching noise as she hit and then she slid to the ground. Her wings didn’t move again. Somehow I thought that she would just bounce off the side of the bubble, that she would be unable to pass through because she was a magical creature. But it meant something else. I wouldn’t put it to thought until later, but the new animals belonged on this earth just as much as we did. Perhaps, it was as I’d suggested to McCurdy, they had been here all along.

  Dimly, I realized tears were streaming from my eyes, and I turned to look at Maston. The stuff streaming from his eyes was clear liquid combined with streaks of pinkness. He clasped a hand over his eye, howling with pain.

  I took his arm and yanked at him. I couldn’t find any words to express the pain and anger I was feeling. I didn’t have my eyeball stabbed, but my heart was shredded and bleeding inside. “Mr. President,” I said because I couldn’t think of any other words.

  Maston stared at me crazily with one eye, not understanding my unforeseen calmness. He tried to pull away, but I was already swinging him around. The momentum tore at my beleaguered flesh, and I cried out with anguish as I came about. I don’t think he realized what I was doing until I threw him out of the tech bubble.

  Like the directed-energy weapon, there wasn’t a wondrous burst of fireworks or even an amazing display that would make Hollywood weep with envy. The man who would have been king simply vanished. And an empty set of clothing with a fancy watch that no longer ticked landed on the grass. One unoccupied shoe rolled over and over and finally came to a stop. A black sock flopped over and went still.

  One would-be tyrant was gone forever.

  I went to Flowers’ body and gingerly picked her up.

  It was time to leave.

  Chapter 22

  Exodus is Another Word for Leaving…

  But first I had a simple question. I stumbled toward Captain McCurdy and looked into his stunned face. Guess he hadn’t been expecting Maston to simply vanish like all of the others. I had been. I was also half-insane at the moment. “McCurdy,” I said. “Where are they?” The question was like purest ice. No one with half an ounce of reason would have refused to answer.

  McCurdy didn’t hesitate. Still staring at the empty shoe, he said, “The zoo. They’re all at the zoo.”

  The other firefly pixies came then, and they crooned with all kinds of emotions, fluttering around my head and body, snagging my hair and clutching my clothing. They sang out their sorrow and despair and I grieved with them, falling to my knees because I couldn’t keep standing up.

  Lulu tugged at my shoulder. “We need to get to the others.”

  “Let me carry her,” Horse said, and his long muzzle nudged me gently.

  I was suddenly so tired, so filled with the consequences of what I had done. It wasn’t just that I had killed Maston or that I had caused his disappearance or whatever I had done to the President, but that I had caused such utter chaos to erupt at a time when people needed normalcy so badly.

  Meka picked me up and kind of slung me across Horse’s back. I got into the saddle, but it was because my skirt had become shredded with all of my activities. It was all I could do to stay on top of the new animal and cradle Flowers’ remains in my arms.

  Ignatius was there looking at my collarbone. “That wound needs to be cleaned. I need to get the fragments out and stitch it up. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “The zoo,” I insisted. Then I sang to the firefly pixies, “Let us free the sisters and all the others.”

  I nearly fell off Horse, but Meka adjusted me.

  I saw McCurdy’s whey-colored face in the torchlight staring at me. He couldn’t do anything, and he was partially responsible for these outrages, but he stood there, ire revealed on his being. It occurred to me that I could see him clearly because the embassy was still burning, and the flames were spreading to the trees around it.

  Then we were past him, streaming around the northeast side of the observatory, following Massachusetts Avenue as it curved about the bubble. I didn’t know how to get to the zoo, but others obviously did. I raised my head and looked. There were hundreds of us. Humans and new animals alike, gathered together in a group. Many held torches from the President’s party. Others held the tiki lamps. The darkness unfolded away from us as we proceeded. And it was so eerily quiet, as if the night had closed its mouth to allow us passage.

  We went down the street away from the observatory through a residential area with overgrown shrubbery and the tail end of a huge commercial airliner sticking out of a red brick house. Then another right through a business area, past a huge hot
el and a billboard with a huge stylized face of Marilyn Monroe. Ignatius had to explain who Marilyn Monroe was to Prosper but the doctor didn’t seem to mind.

  We crossed a bridge over Rock Creek Park, and the blackness below us was complete. I imagined the animals down in the pit, watching the odd lights passing over them.

  One of the people in front suggested a short cut, and we passed around some buildings on the other side of the bridge and then cut through the park to the zoo. I could see lights in the buildings at the zoo.

  The few soldiers there didn’t even attempt to resist. They handed over keys without saying a word. I watched from Horse’s back as cages were opened and buildings unlocked. Clearly, some of the locks had been electric and McCurdy’s people had made adjustments in the form of iron hasps and thick padlocks.

  Both humans and new animals stumbled out into the torchlight, elated to be freed. Landers came out last, carrying a cage, but the firefly pixies had already zoomed away from their imprisonment. They were like excited little children; their bodies were streaks of green iridescence.

  They circled around me, shrieking and whooping, and it was only after a few moments of glee, that they realized that I was holding Flowers. Spring clasped my hair and held onto my ear. Others landed on my arms, held onto my fingers, or the lace of my skirt.

  “Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers,” I sang, and my voice grew hoarse with emotion. I started again, “Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers died in battle. She was very brave. She saved many lives tonight. She—” my voice broke “— saved me.”

  I managed to get off Horse, but Horse helped by dropping to his front knees.

  In the middle of what had once been a menagerie, but what had become a prison or a punishment, the sisters and I cried for Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers.

  Their custom was cremation, and it didn’t take long for us to build a fire around her tiny body. It took even less time for her to be consumed by the flames. It was over all too soon.

  A young woman stepped up next to me. I looked up at her and saw the one I had seen before in the Anderson-Malone Hotel. She had the black puma mark on her face and by her side stood a similar animal not quite the size of a bobcat, with dazzling green eyes bright with innate intelligence resting on my face.

  “I’m Noelle,” she said, “Maston used me for my clairvoyance, although I withheld much from him. I didn’t say anything about tonight. Regardless, events changed.” She cast a lingering look upon Lulu. Noelle looked back at me. “The naval officer will be coming for you. I see him in my head. Angry. Frustrated. Determined. He burns to return normality to this world. He thinks he can get it from you.”

  And punishing me would top McCurdy’s to-do list. I glanced around. The firefly pixies were clinging to my hair and clothing, lost in their grief for the moment. The rest of the humans and new animals stared at me with expectation, with longing, and with hope.

  Some of them would be going back to where they were from, to tell the news about a man in Washington, D.C. who was not to be trusted. Others didn’t have anyone or anything.

  There were so many. The names of some I knew. Stephen. Ignatius. Leya. Prosper. Craig. Even Clora was there with her massive belly, and it was on her that my gaze rested longest.

  Landers cocked an arrogant eyebrow at me. “I guess you decided for yourself, after all.”

  “A little hint would have been nice. We might have avoided some of this.” I saw Maston’s face in my head, the instant before he was thrown across the veil of the bubble’s edge. The fear and horror there were enough to turn my stomach.

  “No, it had to happen this way,” Landers said. “Some things cannot be changed. Fate still weaves our path.”

  McCurdy wouldn’t waste time once he came back to himself. He would organize his troops, gather weapons, and come marching along. He might, I had to admit to myself, even have a good reason to want to catch me.

  “Stephen,” I said, “is the train still at Union Station?”

  “Yes,” Stephen said. “Actually there’s two on that line now. We found another one that ran out of a museum in Philly. Big bastard, too, and hauls a lot more…okay. Yes.”

  “How many cars are there?”

  Stephen looked around and glanced meaningfully at Craig. Craig answered, “There’s enough for just about everyone who wants to come.”

  “If it makes a difference, I’m the only one McCurdy’s going to want for right now,” I said loudly.

  “Until he changes his mind and decides to use the people with special abilities in the same way that Maston wanted,” someone called.

  “McCurdy might have gone along with what Maston wanted,” I said slowly, “but he didn’t like it. I don’t think he’ll do what Maston did. All the same, I think we should leave. Not tomorrow. Tonight. I don’t want a war that anyone will be killed in, not them and not us. Not while there’s a place that is more accepting of people and new animals.”

  “You mean the group you came from,” Landers said. “I thought they gave you some problems.”

  “Some had a harder time than others believing that what has happened has happened. I guarantee there’s a place for all of us there.”

  “What about the ones who have groups of animals back in their homes?” Prosper asked. There was a herd of hippogriffs in Maine that he was asking about.

  “That’s up to you,” I answered, “and your friends. If you want to travel to California and be a part of that world there, then you will be welcome.”

  I wasn’t speaking for everyone at the Redwoods Group. As a matter of fact, there would be some who wouldn’t like it. But we would have to work it out, we would have to make it work, because Maston’s world was too appalling to contemplate, and I didn’t want to take the chance that McCurdy or the next man in line would want to replicate the former President’s policies.

  Can of worms, I thought. I’m opening up the biggest can of worms. No, strike that. I already opened it. I looked at the smoking fire that was once one of the firefly pixies. The wind was picking up out of the south. A warm breeze whipped the smoke away from the remains of the pyre. Her name had been Flowers. She did something the other firefly pixies would write songs about. Hers would be the legend of many generations to come.

  And I’d be damned if I was going to let that go to waste.

  “Start spreading the word,” I said. “We’re leaving at dawn. Be at Union Station on the train. We’re going to a place where all will be accepted.”

  Humans were slow to move, but new animals nudged their way around.

  “And make sure those two humans are freed from the hotel,” I added. That was lame. “I wouldn’t want them to die from thirst or something.”

  There were black spots at the corners of my eyes, and I looked curiously to see what was causing them, but no matter how much I turned my head I couldn’t catch up to them. Then the world was tilting. Noelle said something urgently. I didn’t catch it, but someone caught me. They grasped the bad side, and I felt bile rising in my throat even as I fell over.

  * * *

  We sat at the top of the hill overlooking the ocean as if we had always been there. In the distance was the hard-beaten path that the Big Mamas took to and from their home. A salty wind gently brushed across my skin and made me think of ocean breezes that would turn chilly later in the year.

  The sun was descending behind the faraway curve of the earth. The bottom part seemed to spread apart, trying to touch as much ocean as it could. A few purplish clouds danced across the vista, playing games with strands of pink ones. Crickets sang to the impending evening, intent on adding their magic to the world at large.

  The log bench was the same as it had been the last time I had sat on it. Funnily I wondered if the bench was even still there. Once the Burned Man had gone all psycho arsonist on the redwoods, we hadn’t returned to the Bluff Trail to see. Besides, the group had moved south to the Eureka area, and there wasn’t a point in building another bench if the first one ha
d been burned to ash.

  Not that it mattered in the deep recesses of my brain because of the man sitting next to me.

  I was so glad to see Zach again. It had been so long since I had seen him and even a dream was a welcome respite. It was like fresh spring water given to a woman who had just crawled across a dusty desert.

  His eyes were still chocolaty brown and filled with nameless emotion. His perfect face was still as beloved. His hair glowed with the sun’s diminishing light. One strong arm rested along my shoulders, and I basked in the warmth of his flesh.

  “Sophie,” he said, and his voice was a wondrous whisper of longing.

  I threw myself into his arms, and in the dream he caught me easily, holding me against his chest, crushing his arms around me. His fingers pressed into my flesh. He kissed the top of my head and ducked to find my lips.

  It was a moment of endless magic and a feeling I could have never described to someone else.

  After an eternity, Zach drew back. His delightful eyes glittered down at me. “You’ve been stupid again,” he said, but there was no real censure in the tone.

  “I’ve been trying to make the right decisions,” I protested, but it was half-hearted. I didn’t want to be berated by Zach.

  “Throwing a sword at a machine? What if you’d missed?”

  “I wasn’t going to miss,” I said. I knew that I wasn’t. It was like how I had known how to use the Japanese broadsword, which reminded me that I had forgotten to retrieve the weapon when we had left the Naval Observatory.

  “My brave, beautiful Sophie,” Zach muttered. “Savior of the new world. Can you come back and save us?”

  “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “One of us is always in a bad mood,” Zach said. “He wanders around like he’s lost half of his soul. He doesn’t eat as well lately no matter what Gibby makes. He misses someone, and he needs her.”