Mountains of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

  That didn’t seem right since I hadn’t had a chance to do anything to him.

  I looked up and saw a flurry of furious firefly pixies feverishly darting at him and the others. The uniformed men backed up from me, and Mario held a hand over his face. One of the pixies had gotten her silver toothpick in a spot that truly hurt him.

  “Fly away, sisters!” I sang. “Go to Zach!”

  Spring wasn’t up to listening. I wasn’t surprised. I realized I had misjudged a little. A lot. Mario didn’t subscribe to the Geneva Convention. He probably thought Geneva was a girl that he should have dated in the eighth grade. McCurdy wanted me to be tried for the death of the President, not pummeled to death by a walking behemoth. If McCurdy wasn’t around, then Mario didn’t really have a reason to have me around.

  “Shut up!” Jack snarled at me.

  I climbed to my feet just as the firefly pixies zoomed away from Mario.

  The other men had their crossbows pointed at me, and Mario was bent over, trying to figure out what had been done to his face.

  Finally Mario straightened up, his expression sizzling with rage directed at me. He didn’t care what McCurdy wanted or didn’t want. No one was going to get away with what I had done. He took three steps to his right and yanked the crossbow out of one of the other’s hands. He brought it around to bear on me while I stared at him.

  The firefly pixies shrieked their anger, and flurries of green luminescence darted around everyone’s head. Mario swatted them away without really making contact, like he was waving at pesky mosquitos.

  It was to my advantage that Mario wasn’t familiar with the weapon. He was an individual who had always counted on brute strength to carry the day. His fingers fumbled with the trigger as blood flowed down one of his cheeks. One of the pixies had gotten his eye, just like Flowers had gotten Maston’s. Clearly Spring believed the way to a human’s death was through the eyes, and she had taught the others.

  Mario finally managed the trigger. There was a loud snap as he let the bolt go and it flew away. I didn’t even have to duck. Mario was a lousy shot. It whooshed past my head. I don’t even think it was close. I’ll admit, I shouldn’t have snorted at that moment.

  He cursed violently and threw the crossbow down. Wood and plastic cracked on impact. With an economy of movement, the former bodyguard snatched another one out of another man’s hands and pointed it at me. This time, Mario took a moment to breathe deeply. He was determined not to miss me this time.

  “Nothing to say?” he growled at me. One hand swiped blood away from his cheek, leaving the crossbow only briefly.

  “Hope you like eye patches,” I said and instantly regretted it.

  The large finger yanked at the trigger and the bolt was away. If there was one thing I had forgotten, it was that sometimes I didn’t have to rely on the formerly mundane rules of the old Earth.

  It wasn’t a bowling ball, so I don’t think it looked as cool, but a moment later, I watched the end of my Japanese broadsword juddering in reaction to the slicing movement it had just made. Again, I didn’t remember the pull or the hit, but two pieces of the bolt lay at my feet. My eyes came up and studied the stunned faces staring at me.

  Maybe it was as cool as the other thing. However, they hadn’t seen me slice a bowling ball in half, so they really couldn’t say. Where was a camcorder when you really needed one? Man, I missed YouTube.

  Mario threw the crossbow aside and stepped toward me.

  “You think I won’t do that to you, too?” I asked with a little circle of my sword, and he stopped abruptly. “Two pieces of Mario won’t look as nice as the bolts.”

  “You can’t kill us all,” Jack said.

  “That’s very cliché,” I observed. I brought my feet to the shoulder-width-apart position. I balanced on the balls of my feet, the sword in front of me, preparing for battle.

  “Shoot her!” Mario yelled. “Shoot her now!”

  There was hesitation and apparently not everyone’s heart was into this chase. Mario and Jack took it personally. They had failed in their jobs, but then, they were crappy bodyguards. That’s what the President got when he hired cut-rate bozos.

  One shot the remaining crossbow, and a second after that, the bolt joined the other one at my feet, split in two very neat pieces. Robin Hood, eat your heart out. The two that had fastened the dirigible to the ground with screws joined the not-so-merry men.

  A tall man found some courage and rushed me, holding a sword high. The sword was some shoddy reproduction and not worth the metal it was fabricated from. He’d probably gotten it from one of the cheap stores in a mall because he thought it looked whiz-bang. He was likely the kind of man who would wear a leather jacket because it would make him look like a hip cat.

  The Japanese broadsword moved once, twice, and the man tripped as he tried to figure out what happened to his sword. He was still holding the handle in his right hand, and the rest had been reduced to odd-shaped pieces. Half on the ground, he looked up at me with an expression that would have been funny, if I hadn’t been certain that I was about to get my teeth kicked down my throat by Mario.

  I didn’t even falter in the least. My left foot shot out and connected with the man’s jaw. His eyes rolled up in his head as he was pushed over.

  The next one came at me with a knife, and I had to slice that one’s arm before he let go of it and stumbled backwards.

  A rumble that sounded like a train engine was being emitted from Mario’s chest. He was working up a terrible frenzy that spelled bad things to come for Sophie. He was going to come for me, and there was little I could do to stop him except to kill him.

  Suddenly, I saw a figure approaching from the rear. Others followed the first. My heart leaped in my chest. Someone had come to save my naïve tushie. But they were coming from the wrong direction. My heart stopped leaping.

  As the lead person came closer, I saw that he was bleeding from the head, and his body covered with blackened patches. He limped a little and didn’t look very happy. His uniform was wretchedly rumpled in a way that probably irritated him to no end. Instantly, his unerring gaze sized up the situation and bellowed, “Stop!”

  Mario stared at me with one good eye, and the growling roar cut off. I shrugged. The train was away and probably doing a damn good clip, every second carrying it away from this awful place with the people who couldn’t let go of the past.

  McCurdy had arrived. He’d survived the first dirigible’s crash and was ready to do business.

  Chapter 29

  Surprise!

  Eventually, they disarmed me and tied my arms behind my back. I wasn’t Wonder Woman, after all, and there were a couple dozen of them. They were mostly ticked off at me because I had caused so many problems, deaths, discomfort, and some other stuff I might not been aware of doing. I was frankly surprised that one of them didn’t shriek “Witch!” at me and demand I be burned at the stake. That was probably something they were saving for later.

  They let me sit in the same lawn chair, and I watched the firefly pixies zipping around above me. Several of them headed for the dirigible, determined to do some damage. Poke enough holes in it, and it would deflate. It might take the pixies a few hours, but they were persistent girls. I almost let myself smile.

  After McCurdy conferred with Mario and Jack, they kept glancing at me and in the direction where the train had gone. I didn’t have to be a telepath to understand that they were deciding not to go after the others. McCurdy thought he would get the train later, or maybe he had some aces up his sleeves that I didn’t know about.

  They set themselves up in the building that Ralph and the others had used as a base for when they were working with the trains. One of them dragged me inside, using my elbow as a rudder. It wasn’t bad on the inside. The office space was comfortable, although, I wasn’t allowed to sit on the leather couches. This time I was handcuffed in the front and the ropes were discarded. They found a chain and attached the chain to a radiator with padloc
ks.

  Let me tell you, that radiator was fixed to the cement something fierce. Whoever had done that had done a pretty darn good job. I tested it out. The chain and the padlocks weren’t so bad, either.

  After a while, McCurdy brought me a bowl of stew that one of his men had made. It was a little awkward eating it with handcuffs on, plus I shouldn’t mention that the teeth on one side of my jaw didn’t want to chew anything. I held it up to my lips and disregarded the spoon. Sipping noisily, I enjoyed the moment of discomfort that passed over the naval officer’s face.

  There were some lanterns lit, and McCurdy adjusted one so that he could see my face. “Mario shouldn’t have hit you.”

  I assumed one of the others told him because I certainly hadn’t complained about it. Maybe it was obvious because it felt obvious. I didn’t have a mirror, but it felt like a giant had decided my face was a piñata with lots of candy inside. “He’s not a very nice person, is he?”

  “He said you resisted,” McCurdy said. Oh, that was just lame.

  “I was sitting in the lawn chair, and I asked him a question,” I said slowly. “It’s not the first time Mario has hit me, now is it?” I let that digest because McCurdy had seen the first time. “The first time was without cause, too.”

  “You were heckling the President,” he said. There was outrage in his voice. People shouldn’t be allowed to heckle the President. Bye-bye, First Amendment. But hey, Corbin Maston had been X-ing off amendments well before that. Don’t like an amendment, just put a big X across it. There.

  “I wasn’t threatening the President…then,” I said. I couldn’t argue about that. “I hadn’t had the intention of doing anything to Maston at that time except calling him out and finding out what he’d had done with the ones that had been taken.” I paused because this wasn’t what I wanted to impact on this man. “Do you remember what we talked about, McCurdy?”

  McCurdy offered me a bottle of water. He even opened it for me. I passed the bowl to him and took the water. After a few deep drinks, I sighed. The water tasted good, and I was in the mood to appreciate little things.

  “We talked about the motto on the seal. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one. You said something about your history teacher in high school.” McCurdy laughed suddenly. “I forget how young you are. What are you? Seventeen? Eighteen?”

  “Eighteen now. Age doesn’t really matter now, does it?” It wasn’t really a question I wanted McCurdy to answer, and he wasn’t inclined to offer an opinion. “Well, about the seal, E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.” I let the words sink in because I thought McCurdy was deluding himself in a deep-seated way. “You should take that to heart. It means a great deal in the changed world. Maston was not right to lead this country. I think you know that. The new animals, the people with psychic abilities, the ones with the connections, they are the country now. It no longer belongs to regimented, old school men who think might equals right.”

  “Corbin was the President. He was what we had left.” McCurdy couldn’t help the defense of a man who was forever gone. If Maston had been wrong, then McCurdy was also wrong. Anything else would make the naval officer look bad. As it was, it was sticking in his autocratic craw like a sideways stick.

  “Maybe he was the President, rightfully so even.” It made me think of something I’d thought about before. “Did you ever ask what happened to the Vice President, who had been at the Naval Observatory with Maston?”

  “He went off the grounds,” McCurdy said it flatly. “He got disintegrated like the others that were stuck there that night.”

  “Maybe that’s true, too,” I said. Maybe Maston had pushed him because he saw an opportunity or because he didn’t want to share the food left in the reserves at the Naval Observatory. “We’ll never know. This world has selected those it wants to continue. Perhaps, it’s something else that has selected us. Maston wasn’t one of those.” Neither was Clora, if I was correct, but Clora wasn’t a raving ‘path bent on causing the next greatest world war and taking everyone to hell with him. I didn’t have the right to judge Corbin Maston but I had. That was my responsibility and part of why I was sitting there chained to a radiator.

  “It doesn’t mean we have to go rogue,” McCurdy insisted.

  “Please. Maston already went there. Mario and the boys over there don’t have a problem roughing up humans or new animals. You think you’re keeping it rea-ill? The Constitution has burned up, and everything it meant went with it. You’re going to write the new one? You’re going to enforce the rules when your own people break them?” McCurdy was an ass. I’d said it before. Or at least, I’d thought it. But, and here was the big fat conjunction that ruled all of our lives like a honking huge battle axe, but he was stuck in his role as the fundamentalist. “You can’t have it both ways.”

  “When the union was first formed,” McCurdy said, “it took decades for the rough spots to be worked through.” It was a last desperate rationalization.

  “That’s a horrible excuse.” I rattled my chains, and all the soldiers looked at me, including Mario who had bandages around his right eye. I glanced up and saw that the firefly pixies hadn’t followed us inside. That was okay. I didn’t want them getting into a tight space while trying to save my stupid human butt. Go ahead, sisters, bring down the big balloon.

  “We can do this,” McCurdy insisted. Even I heard the hysterical tidbit that tainted his tone. “We’ll rebuild D.C. We’ll elect a new President and make up a new Congress. It was a good system. It was a great system.” The last part was said like it was a solemn promise.

  “It was a great system. It would be a good system again, if the people involved were good people,” I said softly. “And some of them aren’t. If you put me on trial, then you should try Mario. You should try Maston posthumously. In fact, you should try yourself. I seem to recall that just being one who is ordered to do something, doesn’t make it less of a crime.”

  McCurdy’s face settled into a cold mask. No one liked their flaws being pointed out. “You’ve already been tried.”

  I should have been surprised but I wasn’t. “And I didn’t even get to testify,” I said dryly. “Supreme Court Justices are rolling in their…well, they’re rolling wherever they are.”

  “Do I need to tell you the judgment?”

  “I guess you don’t, since I’m not frolicking in a nearby field,” I responded with more amusement than anything else. I had faced death before. It didn’t feel much different this time. Deep inside, my insides had turned into a roiling morass of fear, and I fought to not let it show. “And will you be going after the others?”

  “The ones that aided and abetted you?” McCurdy asked.

  “If you want to get particular, they helped me before you tried me.” I smiled and leaned against the radiator. “Innocent until proven guilty and all that. They didn’t sign a contract or anything, now did they?”

  “We’ll want the train back,” McCurdy said. “We’ll need Craig and the other engineers for that.”

  “Wow. Forced labor wasn’t just Maston’s issue, was it?”

  McCurdy’s face looked like he had smelled curdled eggs. “It’s a matter of national security,” he said.

  “Be careful,” I said quietly, “or everything will turn south in the interests of national security.”

  “You’re stupid if you believe the world revolves around just what the right thing is to do,” McCurdy snapped suddenly. “Sometimes the bigger picture is more important.”

  “Sometimes the bigger picture is important,” I agreed changing the words to make my point, “but not always, and there are other choices. Every time.”

  McCurdy reached behind him and pulled out a sleeping bag. He tossed it at me, and I caught it awkwardly with my cuffed hands. “Get some sleep. Dawn’s coming fast.”

  “Execution at dawn?” I asked and then I couldn’t help it, I tittered. “Really? Seriously? Is that out of the military handbook for parochial officers? Hey, you’re not going to shoot me
, so what’s the method? Don’t tell me you’re burning me at the stake?” I shouldn’t have asked the last part because I didn’t want to give McCurdy any ideas.

  “You’re being hanged,” he said, and his voice was ever so slightly regretful. I’m not sure what he was regretting, that he had to hang me or that he had to hang me.

  “Because I tossed Maston out of the tech bubble?”

  “Tech bubble?”

  “The Naval Observatory,” I said.

  “Hmm. Good term. It’ll outlive you.” McCurdy studied me. “No, not because you tossed him out of a tech bubble. It’s because you knew what would happen when you tossed him out.”

  “Maston had a shot.”

  “Get some sleep,” McCurdy said, “and tell your bugs that if they try something I’ll swat every one of them.”

  I grinned with a lot more animation than I felt on the inside. “Tell that to Mario.”

  * * *

  Zach was there. Tall and handsome in such an exotic way. We were in a dark place. Seriously, it was black all around with a circle of light that we stood in. It was a muted illumination like someone had a lamp far above us with soft-white light bulbs.

  I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. My feet were bare. I curled my toes into the softest grass I ever felt. I felt comfortable and relaxed. Nothing was hurting me at the moment. No one was threatening me. The world was peaceful, and most importantly, Zach was there.

  Likewise, he had a t-shirt and jeans on. His feet had Nikes on them. His face was serious and belied the feeling of tranquility within me.