She traversed them with her stare, the lines wending away to the spot where the sand changed to white. Beyond, a ridge of mountains stood like teeth against the gray sky. There was a point—a pass of sorts she would imagine—where the mountains fell flat with the ground before rising again to stretch the length of the world it seemed. Through that small opening, the faintest hint of deep blue water glimmered momentarily as though the sun had looked upon it just for her. A tower of smoke drifted from behind the ridge to the left, obscuring the lake momentarily, and then was gone.
As were the tracks.
The desert was as smooth as the wind had left it.
Jill closed her eyes tightly and counted to three before opening them again. Still nothing but uninterrupted desert.
“We’re here,” she said, the corners of her lips curling into a smile. She stood quickly and jerked her pants back up. She dashed back around the rock to where the others were milling about the car. Evelyn was rolling out a kink in her neck with a freshly opened can of pop in one hand and a Snickers in the other. April and Darren embraced on the other side of the car as she attempted to warm his arms against her chest, his cheeks with her breath. Ray still sat in the bed of the truck staring off into space. “We’re here!”
“We’re where?” Evelyn asked, leaning up against the side of the truck so she could feel the idling engine.
“Here!” Jill called excitedly. She hurried around Evelyn and hopped into the truck, bounding across the seat until she saw what she was looking for on the floorboard. Grabbing it, she backed quickly from the cab and ran over to the stone formation to the left and shook the can noisily. She pressed the button atop the can and sprayed a runny red stream onto the flattest surface in the largest letters she could manage: MORMON. Rushing to the right tower of rock, she spray-painted the word TEARS in big, bold letters. “This is the gateway!” she hollered, looking from one face to the next as though it should have been obvious to them as well by now.
“Salt Lake City’s still sixty miles to the east,” Evelyn said.
“We’re not going to Salt Lake City,” Jill gushed.
“I thought we were all agreed that we were.”
“No. Don’t you see? It was never specifically Salt Lake City. We just assumed it was. We’re supposed to go to the lake itself. Mormon tears. The Great Salt Lake! The others will find us there!”
“How is anyone else supposed to know to go out there in the middle of nowhere?”
Jill gestured to the drying paint on the rocks.
“I just told them,” Jill beamed. “Besides, they’ll follow the tracks.”
“What tracks?”
Evelyn looked exasperated.
“Our tracks,” Jill said coyly, walking back around to the passenger side door and climbing in. She sat in the middle, staring straight ahead, waiting for them.
“Is she for real?” Evelyn asked April over the hood.
“All I know is we’re still alive,” April said.
Darren stepped out of her embrace, parting with a tender kiss on the lips. Their eyes lingered long after they drew apart, until Darren reluctantly climbed back up into the bed of the truck beside Ray, who still seemed oblivious even to his presence.
April clambered in next to Jill and slammed the door at nearly the exact same time as Evelyn, who jerked the gearshift into drive and sat silently a moment with her foot on the brake.
“Are you sure about this?” she finally asked.
She looked over at Jill beside her, who simply nodded, all the while wearing this dreamy expression.
“’Cause if you’re wrong, we’re going to run out of gas out there…”
“I’m not wrong.”
“Oh-kay,” Evelyn sighed, taking her foot off the brake and allowing the truck to coast forward. “You’d better be right.”
Jill smiled as Evelyn cranked the wheel to the left and guided them right between the two columns of stone.
“Head toward that small gap between the mountains,” Jill said, pointing toward the distant horizon.
Dust was torn from their tread, swirling all around them. Jill turned and stared through the window between Darren and Ray, back in the direction of the highway. The cloud thrown from their wheels parted momentarily, allowing her to see thin twin lines of their progress stretching back, all the way to the gateway.
She smiled.
* * *
Whether it was white sand or salt, Jill couldn’t be sure. The last thing she wanted to do was to stop even long enough to find out. She’d know soon enough regardless as it stretched as far as she could see to either side, interrupted only by fallen sections of old split-rail fencing. It looked as though at one point this entire area had been part of the lake, evaporating to leave its salty memory.
What she had erroneously believed to be mountains were formations of rock in their semblance. There were only spotted patches of what looked like pines growing out of the fissures in the otherwise smooth rock. As they drew nearer, she thought of the water-molded stone monoliths as castles rather than hills, for they stood almost as if in guard of the lake beyond, which they could see in the distance through the gap that was growing nearer with each passing mile. No, not castles…a fortress.
The cliffs to either side slanted steeply several hundred feet above them as though they were driving through a trench; gray stone that almost looked polished. With one long last look at the desert behind, they passed through the ridge and onto the long bank leading to the edge of a lake so large it looked like an ocean, the white earth like the most amazing tropical beach. Long-legged birds as red as flame waded through the shallows, stabbing long black bills down into the water to reappear with golden fish flopping around before tilting their heads all the way back and bobbing up and down as they choked their dinner into their gullets. Snow white birds glided in circles overhead, calling like gulls, though when they banked the sky blue feathers covering their backs stood out momentarily against the roiling gray sky.
While once the sky around them had been filled with lightning, it now seemed to be retreating from them across the sky, flashing at the farthest reaches of their vision in the black hearts of the thunderheads. The oppressive clouds allowed just enough of the sunlight through to glimmer from the white caps rolling in toward the shore.
“It’s perfect,” Jill whispered.
Evelyn nodded, unable to form words. She didn’t know what she expected to find any more than she knew what she had found.
“What are we supposed to do now?” she asked, driving the car across the remaining hundred yards of sand until they were nearly right to the water.
“I wish I knew,” Jill said, mesmerized by the water, so blue it was almost black.
“This is where we’re supposed to be, though?”
“I think so.”
“I thought you were sure. Back there you said you were positive, and I can only imagine we’re already running on fumes. There’s no way we could even make it back to the highway, let alone to—”
“Shh,” Jill whispered. “Back there.”
She pointed back toward the rock wall that was now behind them. Through the eons as the oceans had retreated to the coasts, miraculously leaving this one saline testament to its inland existence, and the lake had dwindled to its current size, the water had eroded the base of the cliffs. There were enormous mouths of shadow hiding the caverns behind.
“This is where we’re supposed to be,” she said.
Darren tapped fervently on the glass behind them. “Look!” he shouted loud enough to be heard over the engine.
“What’s going on?” Evelyn gasped, throwing the truck into park and leaping out her door.
“Check this out!” Darren cheered. “You won’t believe it!”
He was standing on the bed of the truck, his right hand across his brow to shield his eyes, staring back in the direction they had come.
“What is it?” Evelyn snapped, climbing up onto the left rear tire and straddlin
g the sidewall. She similarly covered her eyes to block out the glare.
There were several flashes of light, reflections as though cast by small mirrors many miles away.
The others were already following their tracks.
III
Utah
EBONY WATER RACED PAST BENEATH THEM AS PHOENIX’S HEART BEGAN TO beat faster and faster. They were so close now and he knew it. He could feel it resonating within his bones as though they’d been struck by so many tuning forks, though until now it had been difficult to discern one sensation from the other as the butterflies panicked in his stomach, causing a warm feeling to settle over his body, despite the fact that his skin was poky with gooseflesh. The latter was entirely new to him, but he’d felt it when Missy first climbed astride the steed behind him and wrapped her arms around him. It was as though together they formed a circuit that caused electricity to course through his form. He’d never felt so tortured and yet so alive.
He wanted to at once scream his delight up into the clouds with the wind rifling through his hair and turn and embrace her with the warmth of her breath mingling with his. Both were extremes he had never in his lifetime imagined. It was as though he had fallen asleep in that basement and had awoken in this glorious dream. He could barely remember anything before the prior morning as it felt like he’d lived an entire lifetime since.
The horses had needed several breaks during the night to lap from a convenient source of water and graze from the banks. Each time the stallion had begun to drop from the sky, he felt his heart tearing right in half, for he was certain that once they were on the ground that Missy would want to change the riding arrangements so that she could be with her brother, but she never so much as asked, instead climbing right up behind him each and every time that their rides were suitably sated and ready again for flight. He loved nothing more than the pressure of her arms across his abdomen and her chest against his back, the tickle of her breath against the side of his neck, against his ear when she spoke.
Rugged mounds of stone arose from the water randomly like icebergs in the arctic, though rounded and capped with a crust of salt that reminded Missy of the mountain peaks they had breezed through during the night. Though they had flattened themselves against the stallion’s back and huddled together for warmth, the darkness had brought a wicked chill that they all feared might be their undoing before reaching their destination. One of the rest stops had brought them to a cabin, where while the horses were recuperating, they pillaged the shack for more clothing. Even stuffing themselves into layer after layer of sweatshirts and pants, light jackets and awkwardly sized winter jackets had barely taken the sting from the icy wind, though now that they had finally descended in altitude and were feverishly anticipated moments from their end goal, they were starting to sweat beneath all of the layers. They would need them in the months to come, they were certain, so tossing them off into the lake wasn’t an option any more than standing up on the steed’s back to take them off. None of them wanted to stop now. It had been such a remarkably long journey that the sooner they reached the payoff the better. Granted, they had no idea what to expect when they arrived, but there had to be something grand awaiting them. There just had to be.
Just when Phoenix was certain that the lake extended infinitely ahead, Missy leaned against his shoulder and spoke directly into his ear.
“There!”
Phoenix’s eyes scanned the horizon. What appeared to be short rocky ridges lined the end of the world from this vantage, though several objects shimmered in front of them like the most beautiful jewels. His breath stalled in his chest and his heart fluttered. She was right. He could feel that it was their destination as clearly as he had felt the opposite sensation when they had been near Denver.
“Adam!” he whooped back over his shoulder, waving his arm. As soon as he was sure that he had the doctor’s attention, he pointed toward the edge of the lake.
Adam perked up behind the horse’s bobbing head and Mare leaned around either side of Adam to try to get a good look.
Phoenix had to turn around and look again; he couldn’t bear for such a glorious vision to be out of his sight another instant longer. As they drew closer at a maddeningly slow speed, details began to come into focus. The beach was every bit as white as it had been in his dreams, the water crashing against it every bit as dark. Thick black smoke poured out of the mouth of the mountain. There was an old pickup parked right at the edge of the sand, the lake lapping at its front tires. A good half-dozen bicycles were on their sides in the sand, their tracks trailing them back to the eternal skyline.
Several animals wearing collars, roughly the size of dogs, tussled out in the open, their blue eyes shining like amethyst, long downy fur reflecting what little sunlight permeated the clouds to shine like rainbows.
The horse beneath them started its descent, legs churning, and Phoenix felt his stomach dropping with it, his heart accelerating so quickly he feared his chest might no longer be able to contain it. Several shadows appeared in front of the cave’s opening against flames that licked at the roof of the cave, as inviting as anything he’d seen in his life. One of the shadows hailed them with a waving arm as the horse stamped into the sand, kicking up clouds of salt and sand.
Phoenix leapt from the equine before it even stopped moving, using the wing to lunge down into the sand. He tumbled to his knees but quickly found his feet and raced up to the figures as they approached.
Arms extended to his sides, he tried to hug them all at once.
“Welcome home,” a pretty girl with short blond hair said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
Chapter 11
I
Denver, Colorado
DEATH STOOD ATOP WHAT HAD ONCE BEEN A THIRTY-STORY BUILDING made of glass. The heat generated by the explosion had fused it into a construct that rose to the heavens like a black crystal. Lightning flashed circles around his head, the clouds boiling. His cloak of flesh snapped out in front of him on the gale, crackling with suffering as he surveyed his domain. The ground encircling the tower was black and crawling as though covered by ants. His army was swarming. Soon they would all be drawn here to create the most fearsome army to ever set foot on the planet, and when it was complete, they would march through the mountains and lay siege to what remained of the formerly dominant species. Man’s time had now come and gone. As they had turned their backs on Him, now so had He turned away from them.
The world needed to be cleansed of this breed cast in His image, yet reflecting the darkness of His soul that He had held eternally at bay. They could have been gods, but they chose instead to be murderers.
The flaps of his cloak fell to either side as he reached his clawed hands from within, holding out the final clay disk over the world trembling hundreds of feet beneath. With a flick of the wrist, he snapped it in two, the remaining fragments falling around his feet.
A loud hiss like a stadium full of cheering spectators assaulted him from beneath, every yellow eye trained upon him at the top of the spire, the ground now looking as though covered in smoldering embers.
He raised his arms out to his sides and held them there, the hissing building to a palpable fevered pitch, letting the noise escalate until it sounded like an avalanche, then dropped his arms to his sides. Sparks turned to towers of flame in a ring about the buildings, the flames rising several stories and gushing black smoke into the sky.
The seventh seal had been broken.
Death turned away from his minions. Pestilence and Famine parted to allow him passage to the rooftop doorway. War stood in his path, towering over the much smaller man and exuding an aura of power eclipsed only by that surrounding Death.
Their eyes locked.
With a single nod, Death took a step toward War, who moved out of his way, allowing his master to slither into the darkness and down to the throne chambers beneath.
He tromped over to the edge of the building without even looking at his weaker siblings and pulled back t
he cowl shielding his head. Bright red eyes flared through those ragged slashes in his faceplate.
All sound fell silent beneath him, save for the wind screaming from the face of the monolithic structure, though even such a force could not knock him from his feet as his studied the armada he would soon lead.
The last of the clay pieces were ground to dust beneath his heels.
Let heaven and hell alike quake beneath their advance.
The winter would soon be upon them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael McBride is the bestselling author of Ancient Enemy, Bloodletting, Burial Ground, Fearful Symmetry, Innocents Lost, Sunblind, The Coyote, and Vector Borne. His novella Snowblind won the 2012 DarkFuse Readers Choice Award and received honorable mention in The Best Horror of the Year. He lives in Avalanche Territory with his wife and kids.
To explore the author’s other works, please visit www.michaelmcbride.net.
The Fall Page 39