Out of Exodia

by Debra Chapoton

  “Oh, Bram …”

  Bram drew in a stuttering breath and paused a beat before speaking. “Lydia, my marriage to Kassandra was a mistake. The stars may be right some of the time, but I don’t believe it was God’s plan for me to be with her. I should’ve saved myself for you.”

  “We’re together now. That’s what matters.”

  * * *

  I have no idea if this is what she expects or even if she’s heard of this old custom, but I pull her to her feet, keeping hold of her hands. The erratic knocking of my heart escalates. I drop back down to one knee and though my mouth goes dry I ask her if she’ll marry me.

  She will. I draw a steadying breath and embrace the sudden draught of scented breeze, the frenzied rush of birdsong, the weight and pressure of night descending—all my senses working again.

  I rise to my feet, kiss her again. We make a new promise to have a wedding celebration as soon as we reach the special land we’re headed to. We seal the promise with several more kisses. I help her with her shoes, carry her bag, and guide her back as the gray twilight darkens the trail.

  And I forgive, forget, what my sister has said.

  Chapter 9 The Siege

  From the tenth page of the second Ledger:

  Where the land had been farmed it was infertile. And under the emptiness there was a city.

  THE BEAM FROM Malcolm’s electronic device fashions a gash in the sky, a ribbon that tickles the earth ahead of the early risers. Children, eager to leave the barren hangars, grab fresh loaves of bread as they run across the airport’s western runways, letting dawn tag them on their shoulders.

  The cloud leads us west. We share the horses, using them to carry our packs or pull our sleds, though a few people take turns riding. Three families who’d faced me down when they sided with the Mourners now walk beside Lydia and me, more like escorts or bodyguards than hostile conspirators.

  We slow as a few hundred of our people veer over to pass the graves. Most double back and catch up without going by the altar I made. I tighten my hold on Lydia’s hand, smile and nod toward the secret retreat. She squeezes back then drops my hand to dig in her belt sack for something. She retrieves a comb and works on her hair until it’s smooth. I spot a yet uncrushed purple flower hiding behind some weeds, snap off the bloom, and tuck it in her ear.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  She reaches for my hand again and ignores my compliment. “Why are we going west instead of north?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I’ve no idea unless it’s Ronel’s, or God’s, plan to have us camp in that vast expanse we went through the night we rescued you. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll stay in the cave-dwellers’ caves.”

  “I assure you, they weren’t caves. The little bit I saw was pretty well constructed.”

  I mull that over and remember the room I’d broken into, where they’d kept her.

  “I had this feeling,” she hesitates and a stream of ugliness runs from her fingers to mine, “that they were civilized yet barbarians.”

  “Why do you say that?” I glance around at all the people with us who look pretty uncivilized right now.

  “They had advanced stuff, like lighting and electrified door locks, but most of them were dressed pretty rattily. And not everything they said was in English. Some of their words sounded like grunts.”

  She tries to mimic some of what she’d heard. We laugh at her attempts. I’d traveled a bit when I was growing up—believing I was the grandson of Battista—and I’d been to places where people’s speech differed in distinctive patterns. Longer vowels, dropped consonants, slow lilts, missing syllables. But I still understood every word.

  “Twenty forty-nine.”

  I frown at her.

  “It’s a date. It was on a plaque I saw.” She lets go of my hand again to finger the blossom at her ear.

  I’m pretty good at history so I say, “Twenty forty-nine was the peak of the climate change period.”

  “I know. People moved underground. That’s when the cave-dwellers’ city was built. I know because when they shoved me down against the entrance there was a plaque and I stared at it as if it were a clue: Two oh four nine.”

  Two oh four nine. Funny that she’d say it like that. The letters start to form new words and I see honor before she speaks again.

  “Bram. Are you sure we should be heading this way? I mean, I believe we did a lot of damage to their numbers, but what if they’ve been regrouping, rearming themselves, and what if they attack us out in the open?”

  * * *

  The twelve men who Bram had named as judges kept a close eye on the families they held authority over. They laced themselves through the lines of people and horses, encouraging stragglers, carrying tired children, warning of dangerous terrain, but mostly they acted like platoon commanders and checked that weapons were loaded, swords and spears were visible, and people were mindful of their surroundings.

  The same march Lydia’s rescuers had made at night over a week before took a few hours longer in the daylight as they struggled to haul all their belongings or stopped often to accommodate the older and younger Reds. They slowed even more as they passed mutant trees, stunted in height, but with telescoping branches of gray leaves. The strange trees had been unobserved in the dark, but now they were hard to ignore, bearing witness as they did of the nuclear consequences the old nation had suffered. The shallow-rooted poplars clustered in stooped groves like shriveled grandparents to the healthier pines and oaks that twisted new limbs around them.

  Scattered signs that others had passed this way concerned the leaders. Josh pointed out the deep prints of galloping hooves, the broken branches in places the trails narrowed, the streaks of blackened dirt where bodies had been dragged perhaps to shallow graves or to some concealed refuge where they might heal. They all felt the barbed hook of premonition ice its way up their spines.

  Teague and Korzon exchanged tense glances as their senses alerted them to some faint smell, food perhaps, something they were eager to investigate.

  The moment the gray grasses ceased to crunch beneath sore feet was the moment Bram heard the hum of Malcolm’s box hitch up a notch. Though he heard no unearthly words and no heavenly guidance was given he raised the rod and signaled for a halt. It took several minutes for the mass to stop and even longer for the murmured grousing to finish. The way before them had opened to rocky fields of intermittent bushes, humanly planted, Bram knew, to hide the underground city’s lighting shafts.

  “Over there,” Lydia yelped, dropping Bram’s hand and pointing to a far off stand of vine-tangled trees. Teague moved closer and cocked his head to listen to her. He’d sent Lydia and Barrett on resistance missions when he was the acknowledged leader of the Red slum. He listened closely as she explained, “See those two giant boulders? They’re really concrete barriers. They flank the entrance to the underground city.”

  Bram nodded his head and Teague stepped forward, pointing a bony finger at Bram. He had a simple statement, “If we march across this land they’ll undoubtedly hear us below.”

  Bram looked at the old man and asked, “Do you have a suggestion?”

  Teague was pleased. “I do.”

  * * *

  I listen to Teague explain how we should send our strongest men, warriors he calls them, to burst through all the shafts at once and invade the buried city. It’s a terrible plan; it spreads our attack too thin and we have no idea how many remain in this subterranean fort, but I respectfully ask pointed questions and just as he begins to shake his head Onita screams.

  We drop our burdens, all except the rod, and rush to her side. She’s holding a shaky hand over her mouth, and backing away from the edge of a thorny patch of sumac.

  Marilyn and Mira grab her arms and lead her away from the grisly sight. It takes a moment for it to register as I focus first on a sprig of pine needles wedged between two bits of flesh. It’s a face. It’s the face of the man I attacked to save Lydia. Just his head and face. Where
a body should have been there’s a thick oak branch, the bottom end of which is snapped off. Its other end protrudes among the thorns, waist high.

  “Punishment,” Lydia breathes. “It’s Amal. They impaled him for letting me escape.” I fold her into my arms so she no longer stares at the hideous butchery. Her body chills with an intensity that seems to blister. “If they’d do this to one of their own—”

  She doesn’t need to finish that thought. Such pagan impulses scare me too.

  “Everybody back,” Harmon shouts. He covers Amal’s face with several pine branches and turns to me with a mixed expression in his eyes.

  I don’t know what to do. The gentle breeze that moments ago freshened our foreheads stiffens into a slapping wind. I look up at Malcolm’s cloud. It’s still moving on, out across the desert-like plain that roofs the hidden city.

  “Move on!” I say. “Step hard! Weapons ready!” The pounding of our parading band will either keep our enemies hidden as we pass or draw them out to be numbered and killed. Raul had told me these enemies are vanquished, not that they were vanquished. “Children to the center!”

  * * *

  As soon as the horses stepped from the parched grass to the rocky plain they began to nicker. The burdened horses that were led with ropes pulled against their lead lines trying to head for the hidden stables. The Reds who rode in crude saddles or bareback strained to keep their mounts advancing west and not let them head toward what looked like a vine-covered forest. The mass of humans and animals proceeded in a nervous prance across the land, horses with eyes wide and white, men with eyes narrowed and darting.

  Beneath the ground those thousands of footfalls set off alarms throughout the city. The Director summoned his aides and his new general. In richly descriptive words he commanded that every single citizen, including mothers with children, go topside with the remaining troops, surround the invaders, and take captive only those who might prove useful in their neo-pagan rituals. The general repeated the directive through an intercommunication system and within moments the entire city was armed and stationed at perimeter exits. They believed they would easily girdle the invaders, take the advantage, and squeeze the Reds into deadly submission.

  The Director covered his silvery head with an old motorcycle helmet and followed the tall general to the western exit, the one that was best hidden and most easily defended.

  * * *

  “We’re gonna make it,” Lydia breathes at my side. “We’ll cross and go on and they can just stay hidden.”

  Her optimism sharply contradicts the suspicions I have as I now step more lightly, afraid the ground might cave in. We hit the midway point and the cloud ahead drops lower, loiters at the western edge, then falls like a wall of fog to stop our progress.

  A great number of the horses have lost their riders or freed themselves of lead lines and are now trotting off, heading to their well-remembered home. A bit of panic is setting in among the women. A quick regret flashes across my mind: I should have used the rod, let it snake into the ground, tunnel to the center and blow their caves to pieces.

  Despite the noise around me I hear the click and clatter of dozens of metal doors thrown back. The sound reverberates, popping left and right, front and back, then randomly around. Within seconds warriors appear, stripes on some faces, helmets on others, lances and swords and spears outnumbering the deadly gray barrels of their ancient guns.

  We are surrounded by an orange and black army.

  They fire first; a quick round of bullets goes wild above our heads. Hair-raising screams and vicious threats precede the sounds of our answering attack: single shots and nano-gun fire.

  Through the cloud appears the tallest man I’ve ever encountered, flanked by men with weapons I’ve never seen before.

  Time slows for us, but stops for them. We take our clearest aim, our sharpest shots. Our marksmen are precise. I raise the rod, but it makes no difference. I stab it into the ground and pillage my pack for a weapon. Lydia races to the center, pulling children into trembling piles. She along with her mother and her friends cover the small bodies with their own.

  Both sides quickly exhaust supplies of precious gunpowder and the battle takes an awkward pause. Josh and Blake and Herb and Harmon and every able man who bears a faux sword pushes out from our circle and strikes with surety and ease while our enemy’s army crumbles.

  The cloud spreads above us, drops like a murky blanket, and shrouds the dead and the living. The enemy stumbles through, turns on its own people, kills blindly. And wrongly. I can see through the mist and vapor; I battle with men who cannot see me raise my arm. They swerve and parry in frantic defense, but they lose. I disarm them one by one and use their strange weapons on the next wave.

  It seems that only minutes have passed, but the sun no longer lingers above the veiling cloud which now rises high. Hues of hot orange and red and deepest purple frame the sunset. My eyes and ears settle on new sights and sounds. Blood upon my hands. Streaks of tears and dirt on Lydia’s face, but thankfully no blood. Sobbing children. Harmon’s shirt is dark with stains, but the blood isn’t his. Blake, Teague, Marilyn, Mira, even Eugene, all are laughing in a way that mimics madness, but they’re not hurt, not bleeding. Safe. Everyone is safe.

  I check quickly. There’s no more fighting anywhere. The bodies that surround us, men, women, even children, all lie still and broken. Dead. Every cave dweller is dead.

  I don’t find even one Red who was killed though many do have injuries, some quite bad.

  Suddenly the cloud shimmers and I hear the hum from Malcolm’s machine. I spot him sitting on a heap of bags, fiddling with levers on the chest and petting the sides of the thrumming box. The cloud moves around to the north side. It settles there as if to guide us to the hidden stables and the main entrance.

  A victory cheer goes up. Everyone believes we have vanquished this foe so they shout to one another, daring to go down under.

  A nod from me is all it takes and our circle explodes. Men step on corpses, women run around them, children hop over the dead, and surge toward the various doors that are embedded in the ground. A few women produce banners from their packs, waving them wildly. The bit of breeze they make sends the scent of death to my nose – blood and flesh and sweat, gunpowder and guts. But there are no keening cries from widows or orphans. No mourners for these cave-dwellers. Unless they’ve left those too weak or sick or young or old beneath this battle ground.

  “This way,” Lydia says. I release the rod from the ground as she takes my other hand and pulls me toward the two large barriers she’d pointed out before. This entrance to the city catches the last rays of light. We reach the doors that other Reds have already pulled wide. They’ve gone from heart-pounding fear in battle, to conquering champions, to parading victors in a short quantity of time. They stream down the steps, confident they’ll meet no resistance, but their weapons are ready just the same. In no time at all Lydia and I are the only ones topside.

  I put my hand on the plaque and feel the metal’s warmth. I read the inscription.

  “This was built nearly fifty years ago.”

  “That’s what I told you.” Lydia smiles. “Twenty forty-nine.”

  I run my fingers over the numbers, leaving a smudge of blood. I stand still, my breathing tamed, my violent hands subdued, and rub the numbers that hide a message. Two oh four nine. I see it now. Honor unto wife. Maybe I need to change our promise to wait until we reach that faraway land; perhaps I need to make Lydia my wife before we leave here.

  I scan the short inscription below the date, a vaguely poetic verse, and find the very line that sanctions this amendment:

  Built to save from icy breath of winter heat

  And killing swell of frozen night,

  This city of Proserpina saves her citizens from

  Heaven’s changing rains and

  Its fanged dew.

  Whatever victory celebration that transpires below will shift its morbid theme when I propose a weddin
g feast.

  Part II 2097

  Chapter 10 The Second Start

  From the tenth page of the second Ledger:

  Some married, some gave birth, some died, and all were fed with food from the highest.

  WE’VE BEEN FOURTEEN months in this underground city. Lydia and I were not wed that first night. I went to Jenny to ask her blessing, to ask if she’d approve a marriage between her daughter and me, and to suggest a wedding feast because I’d seen the letters on the plaque change before my eyes, from its fanged dew to wedding feast. She told me that Blake just proposed to Onita. There was already a ceremony planned, she said, and she was sure that my premonition concerned her friend Onita and not her daughter. She couldn’t bless our union, she told me, until I had fulfilled my destiny. I stayed away from Lydia for a while.

  The wedding feast lasted seven days and nights as the cloud remained stationed above the entrance. No packages of meat dropped that first evening and no loaves of bread fell the next morning. But the wedding celebration included gorging ourselves on the fresh fruits and vegetables we found below. The citizens of Proserpina didn’t deserve our nickname of cave-dwellers since their city was better than anything we had in Exodia. They had refrigeration as well as cellars filled with cheeses and meats and wines. We decimated their supplies completely during that first week. On the eighth morning the bread dropped from the skies again, but the cloud didn’t lead us away.

  The second week we spent settling in more permanently, learning the workings of the heating and venting and how the water was supplied. We memorized the layout of the massive underground tunnels and rooms. Families adjusted to the communal dwellings though there were several disputes at first regarding the largest apartments. Piles of the more personal possessions of those we’d crushed began to block the hallways—statuettes, costumes, crystals—and then those idols and clothes disappeared as if they walked off on their own, claimed by Reds inclined to embrace a darker culture.