The Fall

by Michael McBride

  “Drinks first,” Rick said, the self-designated enforcer of the rules.

  Darren took two long swigs, downing half of the bottle.

  “Mr. Clean gets rid of dirt and grime and grease in just a minute,” he started, before giggling. “Mr. Clean is stronger longer ’cause there’s—”

  “Ultra Power in it,” April finished for him.

  They all laughed.

  “Your turn,” Darren said shyly, biting his lip in anticipation.

  “I’m going to need a beer if you want me to play.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Rick said, dragging a Styrofoam cooler from beneath the table. He reached into the melting ice. You could see in his eyes that he was debating whether or not she was truly worthy of one of the Killian’s. Darren shot him a glance. Rick just rolled his eyes, pulling two of the Reds out by their necks.

  “Okay then,” April said, shaking the dice and casting it onto the board. “Two!” She grabbed one of the red pieces. “One. Two.”

  “Two chugs and a peck,” Rick read. “And that means chugs, not sips.”

  April twisted off the cap and brought it back, easily swilling a third of the bottle while everyone watched her throat rise once, then again. She transferred the bottle to her left hand and leaned toward Darren, quickly tagging his lips with hers.

  Their eyes lingered long after the kiss.

  “Go Jill,” Rick said.

  “What did we miss?” Ray asked, leading Tina down the stairs by her hand. Though she had tried to wipe it from her chin, the residue of her lipstick still lingered. They sat on the floor on the other side of the table.

  “Not much,” Rick said.

  “Judging by how red Darren’s face is,” Tina jibed, “I think we missed something good.”

  Laughter.

  Jill shook the dice and threw it down, grabbing a yellow piece and tapping it down the line.

  Ray rolled over and flipped on a lamp, then pressed the power button on the stereo. Mudvayne throbbed from the speakers as the sun vanished for the day behind the swelling bank of clouds. An eerie blue light emanated through the curtains behind the couch like a black light from the bug zapper affixed to the overhanging roof beyond. Beneath the thrum of low-strung chords, several invisible bugs sizzled, leaving flaring blue sparks as fiery testament to their former existence. Their ashes fell silently to the collection tray beneath.

  Across the street, the sunbathers had vacated the lawn; those with afternoon classes prepared to start their day while the others arrived home from their morning classes.

  Somewhere through the descending cloud cover, the sun settled behind with a sigh. Thunder grumbled ominously as the first drops of rain pattered the rooftop.

  More man tears, a voice whispered to Jill.

  She looked back over her shoulder, but there was no one there, only the popping of bugs on the zapper like kernels of corn in a microwave. One after the other after the other. Flashes of light like fireworks.

  A lot of bugs out today, she thought, chasing away her imagination before it could rise and assault her with the images of the girls across the street.

  She took a sip of the beer.

  The coming storm swelled outside as God turned away.

  VII

  Northern Iran

  “THESE HAVE POWER TO SHUT HEAVEN, THAT IT RAIN NOT IN THE DAYS OF their prophecy,” Mûwth’s voice whispered in her ear, though from where she stood, Thanh could clearly see the man’s silhouette against the even darker water a dozen paces away, “and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues.”

  Her auditory senses must have been playing tricks on her, for even beneath the whisper, she had distinctly heard Mûwth, in the exact same intonation, summon Keller closer to his hip.

  “And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.”

  She felt the tip of a tongue against the outer conch of her ear, straining to enunciate those final words.

  “Who’s there?” she whispered.

  She spun a slow circle as she walked.

  It felt as though a curtain of darkness had descended around her, gently constricting until she had to swat it away like a cloud of gnats. Even then, she could feel it regenerating its oppressive mass like a pressure front, so she quickened her pace to catch up with the others.

  “It doesn’t look like he’s come through here,” Keller said, wiping his palm across the dry stone floor.

  “He still will,” Mûwth assured him. “We, however, must press on.”

  “What if he’s back there, floating on his back because he’s too tired to tread water, waiting helplessly for us to come back for him?” Thanh asked, her footsteps pounding to a halt beside them in the pitch black.

  “Would you sacrifice your chance to flee this country for him?” Mûwth asked. There was something about his tone that intimated a second question hidden beneath the first, though for the life of her, Thanh couldn’t imagine why.

  “No,” Keller answered quickly.

  The others looked to him in the dark, waiting.

  “We can’t risk missing the extraction,” Keller said, his voice a firm monotone. “It would be suicide.”

  “What about Adam?” Thanh asked softly, though she already knew the answer.

  “I’d want you all to go on without me,” Kotter said in the same hushed tone, as though to speak up would tug on God’s ear. “There’s no way I’d expect for you all to risk your lives for me.”

  “Nor would I,” Thanh said.

  Silence settled in their midst like a fog.

  “We will give him a means of following us,” Mûwth said. “Should he make it this far.”

  “You were certain he would a moment ago,” Thanh whispered.

  And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

  She immediately clutched both Keller and Kotter by the arm, drawing them closer, though she was certain that she had been the only one to hear the corporeal words.

  “I pray I have not misjudged him,” Mûwth answered, though this time in a voice sprung from his own mouth.

  “What do you propose, then? Leaving a trail of bread crumbs?” Kotter asked, though his voice lacked any semblance of humor.

  Mûwth laughed, immediately raising goosebumps on each of them, though none could tell in the absolute darkness.

  “Keller,” he said, the one word thrust between them like a striking viper. “Your knife please.”

  “What are you going to do with—?” Thanh started, but her words trailed off.

  She knew.

  There was a clap as Keller slapped the hilt of the blade into the man’s expectant palm.

  “No…please,” she whispered, but his head had already buckled back with the force of the first scream.

  Flesh parted for steel.

  The edges yawned wide.

  Slashing sounds she recognized even in the dark.

  These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy.

  Droplets of blood pattered the smooth stone beneath their feet like dew shed from so many blossoming roses.

  And have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues.

  Tearing sounds as Mûwth curled his fingertips beneath the self-inflicted seam and yanked like tugging worn carpet from floorboards.

  Thanh covered her ears to muffle the man’s cries, closing her eyes even against the darkness.

  * * *

  Adam floundered from the water onto the slab of rock, grateful for even one blessed moment with something firm underneath him. He retched up a phlegmy wash of that foul water, coughing until he expelled the last of the fluids from his chest, though he was certain he would never be able to scrape the taste from his tongue.

>   “Seek and ye shall find,” a voice whispered.

  “Who’s there?” Adam asked, but he was beginning to feel as though he knew that other voice every bit as well as he knew his own.

  He crawled forward, pulling his legs out of the warm water, listening to the drainage pour from his pruned body and trickle back into the source. It sounded like legions of miniature footsteps racing away from him.

  “Hello!” he screamed, listening for a response as his own voice repeated the same word over and over through the hollow caverns until the darkness swallowed it. “Can anybody hear me?”

  Sighing, he pushed himself forward, though his arms felt as though they had been wrenched out of their sockets and his legs were noodles, he knew he couldn’t afford to fall any further behind. He feared that he wouldn’t be able to catch up with them, but he dreaded the prospect of them waiting for him even more. Bad enough to miss the pickup himself, but to know he was the cause of the others missing their extraction, consigning them most assuredly to death… He didn’t think his conscience would be able to bear the weight of their lost lives. Just that one little girl’s life weighed upon his shoulders like a boulder.

  “Anybody!” he bellowed, listening to the travels of the echo to try to determine the size and shape of the cavern.

  Reaching forward to prepare to push himself to his feet, he felt something other than the wet stone against his palm. His first thought was that it was some sort of sludge one of the others must have dragged from the water, but something deep down inside of him knew otherwise. Running his palms over the surface, he encountered twin knobs on the otherwise flat surface. About ten inches apart, the center of each a small prickled pillar of what felt like flesh. He traced the ragged contours of the rectangular shape, pinching it between his fingers and peeling it from the rock. It was roughly the consistency of leather, though much thinner than a cow’s hide. Nearly congealed fluids coated the back side like sap, though he was still easily able to peel his fingers apart. Bringing them to his nose, he recoiled quickly, immediately recognizing the smell.

  “Oh, God,” he moaned, dropping it back to the rock with a slap like a rotting fish.

  His eyes rolled upward before he pinched the lids shut.

  Those little knobs…

  Jesus.

  They were nipples.

  His first impulse was to scream and throw himself headlong in whichever direction his momentum took him. Surely they would eventually hear him. They couldn’t be that far ahead. They would have to hear his cries at some point. Surely they would want him to try to follow and catch up if he could…

  His heart stopped; his blood flowing like slush.

  They did want him to catch up.

  He reached tentatively down for the flayed skin, pinching it gingerly by the upper corners, holding it up before him in the dark. Sloppy wads of nearly clotted fluids dripped to the ground.

  As I said, the scars were unsightly, so I hid them beneath this design so I could find my way back again.

  They’d left him the only means they could think of, somehow knowing he would crawl out of the spring water onto this very outcropping of rock.

  Staggering to his feet, holding the curling strap of flesh at arm’s length, he eased forward into the darkness, shuffling his feet to make sure that he didn’t trip over any imperfections in the rock or run himself straight into a wall.

  He was only a dozen paces down the stone corridor when the screaming started.

  * * *

  They must have been steadily rising toward the surface world, as the water was now only knee deep in the cavern. Their sloshing was deafening, like a herd of horses fording a stream.

  A faint amber glow illuminated the room. Swatches of phosphorescent algae glimmered from the stalactites overhead, reflecting back up from the water beneath. It was as though the air was filled with fireflies; not enough to clearly visualize the cavern around them, but it drew contrast against the formerly impermeable blackness. Their silhouettes stood out against the rocky walls, splashing water glimmering around their legs.

  Keller didn’t notice they were slowly beginning to stoop until Kotter’s head hammered the lowering ceiling, summoning a flurry of cursing.

  The walls to either side were closing in as well. Though he couldn’t see it, he could feel it. It was resonant in their panting breaths, which echoed back much more quickly than before, nearly as loud as the original sounds.

  Keller couldn’t shake the image that they were walking deeper into something’s mouth, with the sharpened teeth looming overhead, the throat constricting before them.

  I don’t want to die! a voice screamed from somewhere inside his mind, but he just shoved it back down as he was so accustomed to doing. He was a soldier. Fear was a luxury of the weak.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Thanh whispered from behind him, unable to hide the tremor in her voice. She felt like a rabbit being led down a foxhole.

  “We are nearly there,” Mûwth said. Thanh thought he sounded more resigned than elated.

  She could only imagine the kind of pain he must be enduring, but it was neither reflected in his steady stride nor his rhythmic breathing.

  “I don’t like this,” Thanh whispered, catching up with Keller. She gave his arm a tug. “Something’s not right. Can’t you feel it?”

  “No,” he said, though every hair on his body had risen electrically and his heart was pumping so hard he could feel it throbbing in his temples.

  “Here,” Mûwth said.

  He stopped before what appeared to be a solid wall, the tunnel terminating in a dead end.

  “Now what?” Kotter asked.

  Without their thrashing footsteps, the silence was a presence surrounding them.

  “We must break the seal,” Mûwth said, raising the medallion in his right hand. The metal glowed a dull copper color between his fingers. He placed it against the wall, sliding it side to side until it latched into place with a loud click.

  He pulled his hand back and they all watched as the disc spun like the wheel on a safe, first one way, then the other, whizzing with the sound of startled bees. Four copper posts rose straight out from the medallion, slowly curling forward like the tails of so many scorpions, then stabbed directly into the rock. With a crack, veins of light opened in the rock wall, spreading to either side like lightning bolts. A gust of heat bellowed from those fissures, blowing their hair back and immediately sapping the moisture from their skin.

  “What in the hell’s going on?” Keller gasped. He lurched forward and grabbed the spinning medallion. Blood flew in arcs from his fingers where the sharp edges cut through his flesh clear to the bone. He let out a scream and tried to rip his hand away, but with a sickly snap, a golden shaft capped with a pyramidal tip like an agar bit lanced through his palm and tore through the back of his hand.

  Thanh flinched and closed her eyes when she felt his warm blood spatter her face.

  Kotter watched in awe as the wall itself seemed to deteriorate into a spider web of crevices through which a light more blinding than the sun ate away at the rock. He couldn’t tear his eyes away, though his retinas constricted furiously against the glare and his vision was taking on a reddish hue like he remembered from walking out of the snow and into the house when he was a child.

  “Help me!” Keller screamed, grasping his right wrist with his left and planting his foot against the wall to try to tear his hand free.

  Thanh smeared the blood from her eyes and raced to his side, grabbing hold of his arm and adding her weight to his efforts. The veins in Keller’s arms glowed with the same light that ate through the wall.

  There was a loud snap.

  The prong ducked back through Keller’s palm and he and Thanh stumbled backward and splashed down into the water.

  Mûwth stepped back up to the wall and closed his fist around the medallion, which turned to glitter in his palm and was swept away like shimmering dust. With a grumble, the wall collapsed be
fore them, exposing a gaping maw of darkness barely wider than a doorway. Dust swirled on the warm breath that sighed through that mouth, swallowing Mûwth who stepped right through the veil of shadow and disappeared within.

  “Are you all right?” Thanh wailed.

  “Mm-hmm,” Keller groaned, clenching his right hand into a fist to try to slow the bleeding. He wrapped it in the front of his shirt and applied as much pressure with his left as he could, unnerved as he could feel the tip of the middle finger of his right hand through the hole in his palm. The third metacarpal was shattered, fragments poking from the wound like a bony ring. He growled with the strain of forcing himself to his knees, then to his feet. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  Kotter charged through the opening, the dust beginning to settle like snowflakes.

  “Don’t go through there!” Thanh shouted, but Kotter was already gone. “Keller—”

  He shoved past her and lumbered through the earthen doorway.

  “Keller!” she screamed, her voice like a shotgun report in the close confines of the tunnel.

  She looked back over her shoulder into the darkness from where they had come.

  “Don’t leave me alone,” she wailed, tears streaming from her eyes.

  Forcing her trembling hands into fists, she sprinted after the others.

  Chapter 3

  I

  Northern Iran

  KOTTER DASHED THROUGH THE DARKENED CORRIDOR, RUNNING WITH HIS arms stretched out before him to provide that split-second of warning should the tunnel terminate suddenly or bend away from his present course.

  “You can’t leave us here!” he shouted, grinding his teeth in frustration.

  As far as he could tell, there had been no branches in the tunnel, so he could only assume that Mûwth was still somewhere directly ahead of him, though he couldn’t hear a thing over the pounding of his own footsteps and the resultant echoes. Though he couldn’t see it, he could feel the walls constricting, the smooth, almost polished stone seamless, without any rock outcroppings or imperfections, as though a funnel of water had glazed this tube for billions of years.