Burning Sky

by Weston Ochse

  Everyone, including the ever-stoic McQueen, backed up a step to let the what the fuck moment fill the space. Because when Narco disappeared, he was just... gone.

  Starling was the first one to speak. “Narco? Narco?” He turned to Lore. “Where’d he go?”

  She seemed about to speak, then she disappeared as well. Just gone. One second she was there. The next nothing.

  Criminal screamed something intelligible that was cut off as he, too, disappeared.

  Starling turned to McQueen, whose eyes were so narrowed the cleft between his eyes was a dark black. Starling began to walk to his old friend, but before he was halfway there, McQueen said, “Oh,” as if in surprise—

  Then he was gone.

  Now Starling stood in the middle of the house. Just him and the girl.

  Starling didn’t know what to say, so he asked, “Who are you really?”

  Instead of answering, the girl stepped up to him and grabbed him by his shoulders. She pulled Starling down with impossible strength. She whispered into Starling’s ear, and the more Starling heard, the wider his eyes became. Then suddenly he straightened.

  “Is this true?” he said with a rush of hope.

  The girl nodded and backed away.

  Starling opened his mouth, but everything went black. He managed to say, “Oh hell,” but he didn’t know if it was in his head or in real life. A second later he felt something he hadn’t felt in years—intense exhaustion and incredible pain—and it wasn’t until he opened his eyes that he truly understood what had happened to him… again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kholm, Afghanistan

  THEY SAY THAT despair has a smell that once experienced is forever recognized. The acridness of fresh vomit, the pungent sweat forced to the skin by pulses of fear, and the cloying aroma of steaming feces all combined into a miasmatic fragrance worn by those who had abandoned hope long ago. Boy Scout had smelled it once in Darfur when they’d liberated a South Sudanese prisoner camp. The surviving warriors were a third of themselves—gristle, bone, and diseased flesh. Their eyes were sunken into sockets that looked carved out. Cheekbones jutted like knives, ready to tear flesh if an improbable smile might visit their misery. Every bone and tendon was displayed as if torn from an anatomy text, visible beneath the taut, scarred and tortured skin. But what he remembered most of all was their stench… a stench he now wore himself, in a nowhere place he seemed unable to escape.

  His chin rested on tepid water, the rest of him submerged beneath the viscous surface. He brought his hands to his face, noticing the water-logged whiteness of them. His dizzied gaze followed the length of his skin, down his arm and over to his shoulder. Reaching down, he felt his crotch, which was naked and shriveled. He coughed, the exhalation disturbing the water, creating tiny ripples that surged outward with at first tremendous force, then dissipated inches from the disturbance before finally vanishing.

  At first, he thought he was standing, but he wasn’t. He felt a rough, round stone beneath him, upon which he was seated. He flexed his toes and felt silt swoosh around them, then settle.

  As he became aware of himself, he also became increasingly aware of his surroundings. He wanted to stand up and examine this place, but it was like he’d been in some sort of mystical fugue and was only now waking up… he thought of using the term coming to his senses, but in no way did any of this make sense.

  He became aware of other sounds. An echoing, dripping sound, produced at regular intervals:

  Drip.

  Drop.

  Drip.

  Drop.

  The staccato sounds were metronomic in their regularity and served to lull him for a moment… an hour… a day… an epoch… but then he heard a cough. Not his, but similar to his own.

  Weak.

  Alone.

  The cough came again. Beside and behind him. He tried to turn, but he felt like his body was the size of a giant with only muscle enough to move a little boy. Still, he tried. What seemed like a decade later he saw the face of a tortured man, features sagging, full beard matted and grimy. The man’s eyes were open, but just barely. He stared at the water a few inches from his face. Eventually, Starling became aware of movement. It was the only movement on the man’s face. It was his eyebrow. It twitched in a way an eyebrow shouldn’t twitch, as if it had come alive. The man coughed again and the cockroach that had been chewing on the man’s eyelashes lost its purchase and fell into the water.

  Starling watched as it swam back to the man, climbed up his arm, then found his face once more. It teased around in the man’s nose for a time, antennae momentarily exploring the inside of the man’s nostrils, then found his eyelashes and stayed there, as if they were a sweeter part of the human to eat.

  Starling wanted to swat away the nasty insect, but he lacked the strength. No man should have to accept being eaten alive by such a vile creature. He remembered his own life when a cockroach had eaten away at his eyelashes. It seemed so near, yet so far. When was it?

  Then the man’s features snapped into place.

  McQueen.

  But it was a McQueen who had aged but hadn’t shaved in months. It was a sickly McQueen. Not one who could protect them as he always had. Not the one Starling had just slapped in a drunken stupor. This was a McQueen from Darfur… so much nearer to death than life.

  Starling tried to speak. Despite the water, his mouth was too dry to function. He lowered his chin until his lips were under the revolting liquid and let it fill his mouth. The taste was enough to make him gag. Instead of speaking, he found himself unable to breath. His mouth filled with such vileness that his body rejected it. He gasped and gagged. Blackness sparked at the edge of his vision as his body craved the oxygen it wouldn’t, couldn’t, let in. He tried to stop hacking but was unable to even control the smallest of his muscles.

  Then, at the last moment when he was sinking, the water cresting above his eyes and over his head, ready to drown and embrace eternity, he felt strong muscles lift him free. He was dragged backward, heels sliding along the silty bottom then onto wet stone, then free of the water altogether and onto dryness. He was tossed down and turned over onto his back. A weight pressed down on him. His face was turned to the side and something heavy compressed his chest over and over until the contents of his lungs emptied onto the stone beneath him.

  The weight was removed. He tried to open his eyes, but he was far too exhausted.

  Then a bell sounded, clear and tremulous.

  The sound snapped something that had been holding him.

  Strings, cables, webbing, and all sorts of metaphorical bindings were instantly severed.

  He opened his eyes wide, now feeling like he was at full power. He beheld a curved ceiling high above. The room’s walls had been drawn upon by myriad hands, the subjects all different in their varied levels of preciseness.

  Then a figure appeared above him… a figure he hadn’t seen in an age. He knew this figure… he’d missed this figure. He reached out to it, his back arching from the ground, still on one elbow. He was desperate to touch it. He needed to know it was real.

  Then he felt it reach down a hand and touch him.

  The warmth was overwhelming.

  He felt it enter him and fill him until he was no longer cold.

  Then the bell sounded again.

  A whine came from his mouth as the figure receded.

  Then he fell back.

  Into darkness.

  Chapter Nineteen

  HE WOKE TO the face of an angel… if an angel had had her eyebrows stitched and a tattoo of a dragon crawling up the right side of her neck until its tongue was flicking in her ear. This angel’s nose was pierced and she had a finger-long scar beneath her left eye.

  “That’s it, boss.” She wiped his face with a cold rag. Whenever it touched his skin, he relished the sensation. “Just a little longer. Just a bit more. You remembering yet?”

  The angel had both Hispanic and Asian features yet spoke with a Southern
accent. The lower part of her face, especially the strong jaw, was definitely Hispanic. But the folds around her kindly eyes revealed additional ancestry. Seeing her in the macro he noted that she was wearing an OD green T-shirt with a set of dog tags hanging around her neck. He noticed her breasts only because they were surrounded by muscle. Her shoulders and pectoral muscles were outlandish in their frame. The triceps on her arms would make most men jealous. But all of this didn’t really matter, as long as the angel kept bathing him with the cool water.

  “That’s right,” she said, watching his eyes and applying some fresh water to his face. “Take a good look at me, boss. You know me. Hell, you hired me. Do you remember?”

  Sarasota. The word came unbidden to his mind. What was it about that Florida town that linked this angel to him?

  “I was assigned to that god-awful truck battalion doing convoys back and forth from Basra to Nasiriyah. Back in Desert Storm they called it the Highway of Death after we bombed the hell out of all the fleeing Iraqis who were stealing everything in Kuwait that wasn’t nailed down. Remember Master Sergeant Sykes? Remember how he always put me in the lead vehicle because as a female I was the easiest to lose?”

  “Sarasota?” Starling rasped.

  “That’s right. I’m Sarasota. Sara for short. And remember when we were transporting your rangers forward and you saw me fighting the others?”

  One girl—strike that—one woman, against two male soldiers. Fighting while a fat slob of a wannabe master sergeant looked on. The cargo trucks had been pulled into a U-shape and everyone on the convoy took bets on who would win. Right away, Starling could tell that it was rigged. The odds were in favor of the master sergeant, who was secretly directing the female soldier to take her time drubbing the two fit male soldiers. By the time it was all over, the female soldier had a black eye and a bloody nose, but her two opponents were unconscious. The shame of it was that she could have done it without getting hurt, but the audience needed a show.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “Then later,” she said, smiling, “you confronted my master sergeant in front of the entire platoon. You twisted his arm until he cried… not just out loud, but real tears. Then you had me transferred to your unit even though there was no such thing back then as a female ranger.”

  Then he remembered. He licked his lips. “You would have made a good ranger.”

  She motioned with her hand. “And miss all this? I don’t think so.”

  His eyes snapped into focus. He grabbed her wrist and locked eyes with her. He breathed through his nose as memories flooded back.

  “How long this time?” he asked.

  Her face grew serious. “Two months.”

  “That long? What happened?”

  “Same as every time. You only get so far and the entire thing breaks down.”

  “And the others?”

  “McQueen is having the hardest time of it. Lore, Narco, and Criminal are doing fine. You’re the first one to wake.”

  He felt the fugue leaving him in waves. He knew that he’d be nearly eighty percent soon. He shifted to a sitting position. He was naked but made no move to cover himself. He turned to look at the other four, pulled out of the water just as he’d been. Narco and Criminal were moving their hands. Lore’s leg twitched like a dreaming dog’s.

  “It always seems so real.” He glanced over to where he knew the Sufi was sitting, watching, waiting. A bell stood nearby… probably the bell that had awoken him. Who was the old man? Then he remembered. They called him Sufi Sam. He had another name, but Starling had forgotten it. He was the damned master mystic the dervishes put in charge of their travels. Boy Scout slowly drew his attention back to his angel, images extending and dragging with him until his gaze focused on the woman’s face. “It definitely seemed real, but then again it probably was. The whole enterprise was so complicated.”

  “So you remember me now?” his angel asked.

  He wet his lips so he could speak. “Former specialist Sarasota Chavez,” he began, his voice returning to him. “Now just Sara Chavez. Hot shit driver, an even better fighter, and professional mother to a bunch of lousy bed wetters.”

  She laughed. “Thanks, boss. I needed that. I’ve had no one to talk to since you… you know, except for Sufi Sam over there and his conversations are about as scintillating as kicks to the groin.”

  Starling winced.

  “Too much?” she asked, playing an old game.

  “Better stick to simpler metaphors.”

  “A stick up the ass.”

  “Lighter.”

  “A straw up the ass?”

  “Maybe lose the ass.”

  “Just a straw?”

  “How about as much fun as sucking dirt through a straw?”

  She made a face. “Now that’s gross.”

  He laughed and she smiled. He could tell how happy she was that he’d made it back. He couldn’t say he was as happy, but he was still alive, so there was that. She reached down and easily pulled him to his feet.

  “Clothes in the usual place?”

  She nodded.

  “Go take care of the others. Let me get dressed and I’ll be back to help.”

  She nodded again, then moved onto where Criminal lay. He was coming to and beginning to moan.

  Starling watched her work for a moment, then headed to the back. They were in an underground cistern complex dating back to the early 800s; before that it had been a system of wells that had been built long before Alexander the Great had been through the region. Starling passed the Sufi and as he did so, placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. He glanced down and they locked eyes a moment. He felt the weight of the old man’s knowledge and was awed by it.

  Maybe next time, if they were able to try again.

  Anything to keep his team alive... anything to save the world.

  Then he went back to a room that had been set up like a barracks. Only one of the beds looked like it had been used. Poor Sara Chaves, aka Bully. Originally, it had been McQueen to draw the short straw, but then she’d jumped in and volunteered. She felt that she had the most to add doing what she was doing now than transitioning back and forth across realities. Three beds lined each wall. He went to his at the end and grabbed soap and a towel. There were eight cisterns in the complex and they liked to use the second one as a bath. Using a large bowl and a bar of soap, he cleaned as best he could, noting that he’d lost weight. In the latest reality, he’d been well over two hundred pounds. But he was really about one sixty—twenty pounds less than what he was used to. The problem was that what he’d lost was mostly muscle. The Sufi’s fugue state somehow slowed all of their bodily functions. Time wasn’t a one-for-one exchange in those cases. He was weak, but not as weak as he should have been. A lot of that also had to do with the gruel they were fed. They’d once asked what was in it, but Sufi Sam had merely smiled, unwilling to give away the secret to the magical elixir. The Sufi made it and Sara fed them once a day, giving everyone enough to survive the depravities of the cistern without experiencing any of the harsh side effects of their immobility and fugue.

  Starling was feeling better by the second. He stood waist deep in cold water and scooped heaps of it over his body. His head had been all but shaved bare by Sara, per his directions. Once clean, he toweled dry, then changed into his uniform—5.11 pants, TST shirt, boots, and a baseball cap. He left his weapons and kit under his bunk, then headed back to help the others.

  Criminal was up and about. When he saw Starling, he nodded recognition, then shook his head to indicate his disappointment.

  Starling did the same.

  Then, before he went to help the others, he did the thing he’d been putting off. He raised his gaze to the back of the cistern and acknowledged the thing that had put them in this place. The thing that had locked them in this godforsaken cistern until they could find a way to release it or kill it without dying.

  Starling had been told it was a daeva.

  Lore, who had
degrees in world religions, had explained it to him. The Zoastrians, which she called the mother religion of both Islam and Christianity, referred to the Old Gods as daeva, beings that had been around so long they preceded religion. One of the more recent interpretations was that the daeva was the source of the devi, or devil. Lore had explained that original narratives dating back to fifth century BCE called the daeva the people of the lie and there was much scholarly consternation as to what that meant. Scholars aside, the TST had somehow managed to kill two daeva and wound one.

  The last fugue had made it seem like they’d been merely UAVs. That couldn’t have been more wrong. The appearance of the daeva in their aircraft had been the inciting incident for their current state. The memory of the event plowed through everything.

  They’d blown up two shield-shaped vehicles and the daeva within. They blew up the third vehicle, or vimana as Lore called them, and its driver had been thrown free. Unconscious and unmoving, they’d managed to tie the immense supernatural being to the front of one of the SUVs, like they’d just hunted it down on safari. Its glow had diminished but wasn’t completely gone. Driving into Kholm had created a stampede—locals fleeing into their low-slung, white-washed buildings and hurrying down alleys, abandoning their carts and stalls. It wasn’t until the TST was almost on the other side of the town that two men appeared in the street before them dressed in billowing pants tucked into knee-high leather boots, tunics over blouses, and oval hats similar to rounded fezzes. Their attire looked like it came from a fifth century re-enactor’s catalogue, or perhaps even Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it was very real, right down to the scimitars at their waists.

  Instead of plowing into them, the convoy halted.

  The TST was soon surrounded by more than twenty of these men, who Boy Scout would later learn were dervishes.

  Back to the present, Starling beheld the surviving creature. With a chain around each wrist and ankle, it was suspended above the cistern. Though human in shape, it wasn’t human at all. It glowed with a dark blue aura. Its over-large almond-shaped eyes were closed. The Sufi and the dervishes had put it in a fugue, and it traveled in its own unreality. Once it had been a ball of fire in the sky, and now it was a ten-foot tall super being whose screams had sent nightmares crashing through them the one time it had awoken.