Firestorm

by David Klass

  Shed stallion stands in surf gazing out to sea. So large. So noble. Once so powerful. Now completely defeated and alone. “What will happen to him?” I ask.

  “Once they’re alone and their spirit is broken they give up. Lie down in the sand and die. Stay here.”

  Eko walks toward stallion. He sees her coming. Turns to face her. New angle allows me to see the deep scars more closely. Boy, did he fight, and boy, did he suffer. Wounded, cast-off, vengeful beast. What the heck is Eko doing? In his solitary rage he will kick her head off her shoulders.

  Sure enough, stallion bares his teeth as she approaches. Rears up. Hooves slice the air like scythes.

  Eko doesn’t even slow. Walks up to him. Palms raised. Exuding calm. Puts her hands on his scarred flank. Stallion slowly lowers his head. She leans her cheek against him. I watch, fascinated.

  Horse and Ninja Babe stand motionless. She is holding his great head in her hands. Then, as if reaching some understanding, the great horse turns and ambles off.

  Eko walks back to me. Her eyes are wet, and it’s not from the cold or the mist. I don’t say anything to her.

  Convincing display of sympathy on Ninja Babe’s part. She is warm after all. Does have a heart. At least when it comes to wild horses.

  Fighting practice. Hard to spar with somebody you’re feeling close to. Each strike, each block, each step of the dance has a new second meaning. Throws and holds seem intimate. Arms wrapped around each other. Legs entwined.

  I understand now that Eko’s fighting power doesn’t come from her muscles. Every kick, every strike, every leap has a thought component. A kind of energy I have to tap into. Then I can knock someone twenty feet away. Then I can jump through the air and land in a tree branch.

  I ask her point-blank. “This fighting is more mental than physical, right? Your real power comes from your mind.”

  “All of the martial arts are based on mental discipline and achieving a greater awareness,” she tells me. “Kung fu was practiced by monks in mountaintop monasteries for centuries.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t kung fu. What is it? You told me last night about my ancestor Dann, and how he started a movement to try to save the world. Was it a religion?”

  “No, it’s not about God or an afterlife,” she tells me. “Dann taught us that no one can save us if we don’t save ourselves. So it’s a way of living. Understanding the world and our place in it. I can’t explain it any better.”

  “Who taught you how to fight so well?”

  Eko looks at me. “Your father,” she finally says. “So, in a way, he’s teaching you.”

  It’s by far the most powerful punch she’s landed in hours of combat drill. Her answer nearly knocks me off my feet. What? There’s that close a connection between Eko and my dad? When did he teach her? What’s he like? How do they know each other, and where do I fit in?

  She takes off running, so I can’t follow up with more questions. But I’ll find out the answers soon enough.

  31

  Meditation drill. I sit in lotus position. Eko draws line in sand. I attempt to bend it. No success.

  My mind drifts. To the osprey. The stallion. The morning’s fighting drill, and Eko’s big revelation.

  My first direct connection with my birth father. He instructed the woman who beat the tar out of me. Showed her the punches that knocked me across the barn. Thanks, Dad.

  We sit looking out at a desolate beach, swathed in mist. It’s hard to tell where sand ends and clouds begin. Eko tangled up in a knot of a yoga position, legs folded like origami paper, body inverted in a headstand, mind no doubt empty as a mirror.

  I sit next to her trying to bend the line in the sand and not think about my father in the far future, who I have never known but have started to dislike. This mess I find myself in is his fault. He sent me back in time. He constructed the artifice of my childhood in Hadley. And he sent Eko, his student in causing pain, to bang me out like a piece of iron.

  Concentrate on the sand. Home in on it. Grain by grain. That tiny brown sand pebble with the ungainly shape. Move it, Jack. I can’t. Focus. Come on. You don’t have to slide it across the beach or make it spin. Just stir it a jot.

  No dice. Can’t do it. I bore in, trying my best. Use all that I’ve learned in the Outer Banks. I feel my mind coming out of my body. Sinking slowly into the sand.

  Now I’m among the pebbles, as if I lost my balance on a ski slope and tumbled down and started seeing the moguls from ground level as I slid past.

  The texture of the sand motes.

  The way they stack together at odd angles.

  One grain in particular. White. Round. Soft-looking.

  A pillow. A sugar doughnut. A face.

  Blurry. Merlin the magician. Bushy eyebrows. Beard. Shock of white hair. Familiar features because I’ve seen them in the mirror. The contours of my own face, but sagging with fatigue and deep-lined with suffering. Captivity. Torture. Pain on a scale I have never known. Dad?

  “Son.”

  A single word from a great distance. Not spoken. Not telepathy. Don’t ask me what it is or how it comes to me. The lips on the face I am staring at never move. But I know he sees me. I sense he’s calling me. Urgency. Love.

  Dad, what is it? Tell me. What should I do? What are you reaching across a thousand years to tell me?

  The face blurring. Another word. I can’t make it out. “Fee”? No, “Free.” Free what? Free him? Free myself?

  Snap. I lose the connection.

  I’m lost and terribly cold. Not down among the grains of sand anymore. Not back in my body either. Don’t ask me where I am. Adrift. Cast loose. Drowning in a cold, swirling miasma.

  Words reaching out to me. “Jack? Come back, Jack.”

  A blanket covering me. No, not a blanket. Arms. Tightly around me.

  I’m shivering uncontrollably. Eko hugging me. Holding me. Whispering in my ear. “It’s okay. You’re back.”

  I look at her. “I saw my father.”

  Eko’s turn to look shocked. “Where? What happened?”

  “In the grains of sand. He said something to me. Free.”

  “Free what?” she asks. “Free who?”

  “I don’t know. He faded. He was too far away. And he looked so tired. And like he was in terrible pain.”

  “Yes.” She nods. “Your father is a great man, Jack. A brave fighter. He’s sacrificed everything to give you this chance. To give us this one and only chance.”

  “If he’s such a brave fighter, who’s he fighting with?” I ask her. “You said last night that this was all about a struggle in the far future to try to save the earth. But it’s not just a race against time, or a battle with our own worst impulses, is it? There’s an enemy, right?”

  “Yes,” she acknowledges. “There is an enemy.”

  “The people chasing me?” I press. “Trying to kill me and stop us at all costs from doing whatever it is that I’m supposed to do?”

  “They’ll do anything to stop you,” Eko agrees. “As I will do anything to help you.”

  “Who are they? Do they have a name?”

  “We call them the Dark Army,” she whispers.

  32

  Deserted beach. Storm definitely coming.

  Now I know my enemies. The Dark Army.

  “Not a very nice name,” I whisper back. “Why do they want to stop us from saving the world? Isn’t it in everybody’s interest to protect the planet?”

  “No,” she says. “As the earth deteriorated, they thrived. They believe in doing whatever it takes to adjust, to gain power, to prevail. Two competing philosophies, Jack, that have no compromise. A thousand years from now they are hunting us down and killing us.”

  “And they’re also chasing me?” I recall the tall man in the Hadley Diner whose eyes flashed, and the bat creatures, and the Gorm. “They don’t seem human.”

  “Some of them are,” she says. “But the Dark Army believes in tampering with nature in every possible way, to gain
an advantage in the battle for survival.”

  “So they’re genetic mutants?”

  “Many of them are genetically engineered,” Eko says. “Others are constructed. Do you know what cyborgs are?”

  I’m not much for science fiction movies, but I’ve seen a few over the years. “Part man, part machine. That became a reality?”

  “A hideous reality,” she whispers. “Mary Shelley could never have imagined a world of Frankensteins with a common cause. We want to save the earth. They thrive as conditions worsen. We believe in what is natural. They were created by the unnatural. It’s a battle to the death, Jack. It has been for centuries. And it’s nearing a conclusion.”

  “It doesn’t sound like the good guys are doing so well.”

  Eko doesn’t answer. She’s staring at the ground. “Look,” she whispers.

  The line she traced in the sand is no longer straight. It’s been bent and curved into a perfect oval.

  I look back up at her. “Did I do that? No way. I can’t bend sand.”

  “You can do anything you put your mind to,” she whispers. “You are our beacon of hope.” She’s still hugging me. She lets me go. Stands. “Come,” she says.

  “Sorry, but I don’t think I can run or swim right now. Whatever my father did to reach out to me, it tired me out.”

  “We’re not going to run or swim,” she promises. “It’s time to fly.”

  33

  Standing in crevice between dunes. Day is calm no longer. Breeze stiffening. Sky darkening ominously.

  Storm wading in from Atlantic like an angry sea monster. Godzilla’s still a few hundred miles offshore, but I can feel his steamy breath. Hear his echoing footsteps.

  Eko has me run through wind tunnel with my arms spread to full wingspan. Nothing could make me feel sillier. I put up with it for a few minutes. “Don’t just use your arms,” she calls. “Steer with your whole body. That’s better.”

  “No, it’s not better.” I stop running. Lower my arms. “This is preposterous. I quit. Let’s go home. There’s a big storm coming, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  She gazes up at the darkening sky. “Yes,” she agrees. “That’s why we can fly soon. No one will see us.”

  “Eko, about flying. I don’t know if you noticed, but I wasn’t born with wings.”

  She unzips small backpack. Takes two shirts out. No, not shirts. Thick, like life jackets. But form-fitted, like wet suits. And they glow, as if made from phosphorescent material. “Put this on and forget about wings,” she says.

  I’m tempted to ask if she’s kidding. But Eko isn’t a kidder. I tug on wet suit. Snug. Rubbery. Warm as fleece.

  Glance up at stormy sky. Then look down at my wet suit. Same angry shade of gray. Camouflage? Why does one need to look like the sky?

  Unless one is really going up in the sky! I’m getting excited now. Heart’s flitting around in my chest like a moth near a klieg light. I force myself to keep calm. Be real, Jack. No way. “Eko,” I ask, “what is this thing exactly?”

  She’s pulling off her clothes and tugging on her own gray wet suit. “Do you remember the apple that fell on Newton’s head?”

  I flash to Hadley High School. Brick building on hill with view of Hudson River. Mr. Zimmerman’s honors physics class. Dreaded by most students. Not me. Oddball Jack. I loved it from the first formula that popped out of his mouth.

  “Isaac Newton, Law of Universal Gravitation,” I spit back at Eko. “1666. He observed an apple falling off a tree and theorized that the same invisible force must be holding heavenly bodies like the earth and moon in orbit.”

  Eko stares back at me. Hard to impress the Ninja Babe, but maybe I just did. “This shirt would make Newton’s apple jump back onto the tree,” Eko informs me.

  My heart’s no longer a flitting moth. Now it’s a barn owl bashing its great wings together. “It’s some kind of antigravity device?” I guess.

  “Listen to me carefully,” Eko says, her wet suit now on. “We don’t want an Icarus moment here. Stay close—one cloud bank looks pretty much like another. If you lose track of up and down, spit. The way your spit falls is down. Stay away from populated areas. We’re camouflaged, but you never know who’s looking up with a telescope. If you hear a helicopter or a plane, head for the nearest bank of clouds. Got it?”

  Can’t believe I’m about to do this! I’ve been a passenger in a few jumbo jets, but never flown in a small plane or a helicopter. It’s always been a dream of mine to be some kind of aviator one day, in a small craft, at the controls, climbing through the sky. Never imagined I wouldn’t need wings or a propeller. “Okay, Eko, how do we go up?”

  She gives me a funny look. “You are up.”

  I look back at her. Then I look down. We’re ten feet off the ground! How did that happen? How does this work?

  Weren’t you thinking about flying?

  Yes, but …

  That’s how it works. Steer, Jack. Not just with your arms. With your whole body. There you go.

  Effortless! Gentler and more magical than deep-sea diving. Like daydreaming on the most comfortable bed ever designed, and suddenly you find the bed is sweeping you along like a magic carpet.

  The Atlantic below. Skimming over waves. Turning inland and soaring over sand. The great dunes of Kitty Hawk somewhere close. Did the Wright brothers feel this same thrill when they lifted off the sand?

  We go yet higher! Mother Earth releasing her tenacious grip. Marshes, beaches, and ocean dwindling to patterns of blue and brown, glimpsed through cracks in cloud.

  The sun warm and close. No wonder Icarus pushed the envelope. How could he turn back? I whirl on a wind current. Eko nearby, whirling also. No longer earthbound. Freer than I’ve ever been. A son of sky, a creature of cloud.

  A stanza of Shelley’s “To a Skylark” flashes through my mind:

  Higher still and higher

  From the earth thou springest

  Like a cloud of fire;

  The blue deep thou wingest,

  And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

  And I am hearing birds. Two of them. Flying near us. Calling out to us. Whirling as we whirl. Climbing as we climb. Birds of prey, but they are not hunting now. They are exulting. Ospreys. A couple. Eko told me they mate for life and travel together.

  Something enormous rolls around in the sky. Thunder? Never heard it that way before. As if it is being stirred up in a kettle with an iron spoon, just above my head.

  Blinding flash of lightning. I can feel the sizzle. Eko, are we in danger?

  The suits will keep the lightning from striking us. Does it scare you?

  Of course, but it’s also glorious. The ospreys don’t seem to mind it, so why should I?

  You can really feel the storm up here. A dangerous, hulking creature. Its plodding progress. Its unfathomable outrage. This hurricane has a hammering pulse, a musky smell, a palpable intent to destroy.

  Our flight is no longer playful, light, and merry. Now we are witnessing the landfall of an enraged behemoth. Dark clouds are wind-twisted into the haggard profile of a sky-shattering monstrosity. We comb our way through the locks of the storm. Rain and lightning are the snaking hair and flashing eyes of a mile-tall Medusa.

  Thunder rolls right through us, and we both laugh and shout with the sheer insanity of it. I’ve been chased too long, mournful too long. I needed this release and I sense Eko needs it also.

  She soars right along with me, reckless and joyful.

  And then we are diving back down and down, down toward the water, and out over the sand, toward the misty dunes.

  Watch out, Jack. You’re coming in too fast.

  You didn’t tell me how to land.

  Don’t hit the bushes! Pull up!

  What bushes? Too late!

  Legs bent to absorb shock. Can’t stop myself from toppling forward. Crash landing. Spinning and somersaulting through prickly thorns. Finally come to a stop. Ouch.

  Eko right there next t
o me. How did she land so smoothly? She must have done this lots of times. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding?”

  I register the sincere concern on her face. Stand up and dust myself off. “It’s nothing. Just a few scratches.”

  “You hurt yourself. Why are you laughing?”

  “Because that was great. Better than great. Amazing! Stupendous! When can we go up again?”

  Eko tries to contain her own exuberance, and then gives up and laughs with me. “Yes, it was fun, wasn’t it? Let’s get you patched up.”

  34

  My cuts and bruises are not serious, but there sure are a lot of them. I’ve stripped off wet suit. Stand in Eko’s second-floor bedroom a bit self-consciously in just my briefs.

  Eko fusses over cuts. Afraid they’ll get infected. Or maybe, since she was the flight instructor, she feels responsible. Insists on administering first aid right away. First time we’ve ever come home when she didn’t run right up to the living room to check the blue cube.

  Instead she led me here. First-aid kit in closet near her bed. A yellow flashlight that makes each skin puncture glow. Vacuum tongs that suck out sticker needles.

  But nothing high-tech about the disinfectant. Comes in an ugly green bottle, and Eko squirts it out onto a swab of cotton. “This is going to sting,” she promises.

  She’s still wearing her gray wet suit. Form-fitting. As she touches my bare chest with the cotton swab, I look down and see the swells of her breasts.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “You’re killing me and you know it.”

  “Think of something else,” she advises.

  I look around bedroom. First time I’ve ever been here.

  Her bed is a futon floor mattress. On her bookshelf I see books in English. Japanese. And Russian.

  An easel is set up to catch the best light. On the easel is a minimalist Asian-style nature painting. Swirling river. Heron in flight. Cottony clouds. It’s not detailed, but the masterful brushwork suggests nuances of mood and tone.