by Jeff Long
At last, thought Ike, falling to his knees.
Him.
Shoat hummed tunelessly in his sniper’s nest, his rifle nested in a stone groove overlooking the abyss. He kept his eye to the scope, watching the tiny figures play out his script. “Tick-tock,” he whispered.
Time to nail the coffin shut and start the long road back out. With the exit tunnel sterilized by synthetic virus, there would be no critters left to dodge or run from. His worst dangers would be solitude and boredom. Basically, he faced a lonely half-year of walking with a diet of Power Bars, which he’d secreted at caches all along the way.
Finding the hadals mobbed together in this foul pit had been a stroke of good luck. Helios researchers had projected it would take upward of a decade for the prion contagion to filter throughout the sub-Pacific network and exterminate the entire abyssal food chain, including the hadals. But now, with his last five capsules taped inside the laptop computer shell, Shoat could eradicate the nuisance population years ahead of schedule. It was the ultimate Trojan horse.
Shoat felt the high of a survivor. Sure, there’d been some rough spots, and there were bound to be more ahead. But overall, serendipity had favored him. The expedition had self-destructed, though not before carrying him deep. The mercenaries had unraveled, but only after he’d largely run out of uses for them. And now Ike had conveyed the apocalypse straight into the heart of the enemy. “And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest,” he muttered, setting his eye to the sniperscope once again.
Just a minute ago, it had seemed Ike was ready to run off. Now, oddly, he was on his knees, groveling in front of some character emerging from the inner building. Now there was a sight, Crockett servile, head glued to the floor.
Shoat wished for a more powerful scope. Who could this be? It would have been interesting to see the hadal’s face in detail. The crosshairs would have to do.
Pleased to meet you, Shoat hummed. Hope you guessed my name.
“So you’ve returned to me,” the voice said from the shadows. “Stand up.”
Ike didn’t even raise his head.
She stared down at Ike’s bare back, frightened by his subjugation. It upended her universe. He had always seemed the ultimate free spirit, the original rebel. Yet now he knelt in abject surrender, offering no resistance, no protest.
The hadal khan—their rex, or mahdi, or king of kings, however it translated—stood motionless with Ike at his feet. He wore armor made of jade and crystal plates, and under that a Crusader’s chain-mail shirt, sleeves short, each link oiled against rust.
She felt sick with realization. This was Satan? This was the one Ike had been seeking, face by face, in all those hadal dead? Not to destroy, as she’d thought, but to worship. Ike kowtowed blankly, his fear—and shame—transparent. He ground his forehead against the flowstone.
“What are you doing?” she said, but not to Ike.
Thomas solemnly opened his arms, and from throughout the city the hadal nations roared up to him. Ali sagged to her knees, speechless. She couldn’t begin to fathom the depths of his deceptions. The moment she comprehended one, another cropped up that was more outrageous, from pretending to be her fellow prisoner to manipulating January’s group, to posing as human when all along he was hadal.
And yet, even seeing him here, draped in ancient battle gear, receiving the hadal celebration, Ali could not help but see him as the Jesuit, austere and rigorous and humane. It was impossible to simply purge the trust and companionship they’d built over these past weeks.
“Stand up,” Thomas ordered, then looked at Ali, and his tone softened. “Tell him, if you please, to get off his knees. I have questions.”
Ali knelt beside Ike, her head by his so that they could hear each other over the roar of the hadals’ adulation. She ran her hand across his knotted shoulders, over the scars at his neck where the iron ring had cinched his vertebrae.
“Get up,” Thomas repeated.
Ali looked up at Thomas. “He’s not your enemy,” she said. An instinct urged her to advocate for Ike. It had to do with more than Ike’s submission and fear. Suddenly she had her own grounds for fear. If Thomas was truly their ruler, then it was he who’d permitted Walker’s soldiers to be tortured through all these days. And Ike was a soldier.
“Not in the beginning,” Thomas conceded. “In the beginning, when we first brought him in, he was more like an orphan. And I brought him into our people. And our reward? He brings war and famine and disease. We gave him life and taught him the way. And he brought soldiers, and guided colonists. Now he’s come home to us. But as our prodigal son, or our mortal enemy? Answer me. Stand up.”
Ike stood.
Thomas took Ike’s left hand and lifted it to his mouth. Ali thought he meant to kiss the sinner’s hand, to reconcile, and she felt hope. Instead he parted Ike’s fingers and put the index finger into his mouth. Then he sucked it. Ali blinked at the lewdness of it. The old man took the finger in all the way to the bottom knuckle and wrapped his lips around the root.
Ike looked over at Ali, jaws bunching. Close your eyes, he signaled.
She didn’t.
Thomas bit.
His teeth snapped through the bone. He yanked Ike’s hand to one side.
Ike’s blood slashed across Thomas’s jade armor and into Ali’s hair. She yelped. His body shivered. Otherwise he gave no reaction except to lower his head in supplication. His arm remained outstretched. More fingers? Ali thought.
“What are you doing?” she cried out.
Thomas looked at her with bloody lips. He removed the finger from his mouth as if it were a fishbone, and wrapped it in Ike’s mutilated hand, which he then released. “What would you have me do with this faithless lamb?”
Now Ali saw. Here was the real Satan.
He’d misled her from the start. She’d misled herself. With their systematic study of her maps, and their promising interpretation of the hadal alphabets, glyphs, and history, Ali had tricked herself into thinking she understood the terms of this place. It was the scholar’s illusion, that words might be the world. But here was the legend with a thousand faces. Kindly, then angry; giving, then taking. Human, then hadal.
Ike knelt, his head still bent. “Spare this woman,” he asked. The pain told in his voice.
Thomas was cold. “So gallant.”
“You have uses for her.”
Ali was astonished, less by Ike trying to save the day than by the fact her day needed saving. Until a few minutes ago, her safety had seemed a reasonable bet. Now Ike’s blood was in her hair. No matter how deeply she penetrated with her scholarship, it seemed, the cruelty of this place was adamant.
“I do,” said Thomas. “Many uses.” He stroked Ali’s hair, and the armor tinkled like chandelier glass. She started at the proprietary gesture.
“She will restore my memory. She’ll tell me a thousand stories. Through her, I’ll remember all the things time has stolen from me. How to read the old writings, how to dream an empire, how to carry a people to greatness. So much has slid from my mind. What it was like in the beginning. The face of God. His voice. His words.”
“God?” she murmured.
“Whatever you want to call him. The shekinah who existed before me. The divine incarnate. Before history ever began. At the farthest edge of my memory.”
“You saw him?”
“I am him. The memory of him. An ugly brute, as I recall. More ape than Moses. But, you see, I’ve forgotten. It’s like trying to remember the moment of my own birth. My first birth as who I am.” His voice grew as faint as dust.
First birth? The voice of God? Ali couldn’t fathom his tales, and suddenly she didn’t want to. She wanted to go home, to leave this awful place. She wanted Ike. But fate had sewn her into the planet’s belly. A lifetime of prayers, and here she was, surrounded by monsters.
“Father Thomas,” she said, less afraid than unable to use his other name. “Since we first met, I’ve been faithful to your desires. I le
ft behind my own past and traveled here to restore your past. And I’ll stay here, just as we discussed. I’ll help master your dead language. That won’t change.”
“I knew I could count on you.” But her devotion was simply one more of his possessions, she saw that now.
Ali folded her hands obediently, trying not to see Ike’s blood staining his beard. “You can depend on me until the end of my life. But in return, you must not harm this man.”
“Is that a demand?”
“He has his uses, too. Ike can clarify my maps. Fill in my blanks. He can guide you wherever you want me to take you.”
Ike’s head lifted slightly.
“No,” Thomas said, “you don’t understand. Ike doesn’t know who he is anymore. Do you realize how dangerous that is? He’s become an animal for others to use. The armies use him to kill us. The corporations use him to lay bare our territory and to guide murderers who plant it with disease. With plague. And he hides from his own evil by leaping back and forth from one race to the other.”
Beside him, the monster Isaac smiled.
“Plague?” said Ali, in part to digress from Thomas’s finality. But also because he kept mentioning it, and she had no idea what he meant.
“You’ve brought desolation onto my people. It follows you.”
“What plague?”
Thomas’s eyes flashed at her. “No more deceptions,” he thundered.
Ali shrank from him.
“My sentiments exactly,” a reedy voice piped out from the laptop computer.
Thomas turned his head as if hearing a fly buzzing. He scowled at the computer. “What’s this?” he hissed.
“A man called Shoat,” Ike said. “He wants to talk with you.”
“Montgomery Shoat?” Thomas spoke the name as if expelling a fetid stench. “I know you.”
“I don’t know how,” Shoat said. “But we do have mutual concerns.”
Thomas grabbed Ike’s arm and spun him face-out to the distant cliffs. “Where is this man? Is he near? Is he watching us?”
“Ah-ah, careful, Ike. Not a word more,” Shoat warned. His finger wagged at them from the screen.
Thomas stood rooted behind Ike, motionless except for his head switching from side to side, piercing the twilight. “Join us, please, Mr. Shoat,” he said.
“Thanks anyhow,” Shoat’s image said on the screen. “This is close enough for me.”
The surreality was breathtaking, a computer screen in this underworld. The ancient speaking to the modern. Then Ali noticed Ike’s eyes darting about. He was gathering in the broken chamber, estimating it.
“You’ll be down soon enough, Mr. Shoat,” Thomas said to the computer. “Until then, there’s something you wanted to talk about?”
“A piece of Helios property has fallen into your hands.”
“What does this fool want?” Thomas asked Ike.
“It’s a locator. A homing device,” Ike said. “He claims it was taken from him.”
“I’m lost without it,” Shoat said. “Return it to me and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“That’s all you want?” asked Thomas.
Shoat considered. “A head start?”
Thomas’s face filled with rage, but he regulated his voice. “I know what you’ve done, Shoat. I know what Prion-9 is. You’re going to show me where you’ve placed it. Every single location.”
Ali glanced at Ike, and he looked equally puzzled.
“Common ground,” Shoat enthused, “the basis for every negotiation. I’ve got information you want, and you’ve got a guarantee of my safe passage. Quid pro quo.”
“You mustn’t fear for your life, Mr. Shoat,” Thomas stated. “You’re going to live a very long time in our company. Longer than you ever dreamed possible.”
It was plain to Ali that he was stalling, searching. Beside him, Isaac, too, was scanning the gloom for any evidence of the hidden man. The girl stood at one shoulder, whispering, guiding his examination.
“My homing device,” Shoat said.
“I visited your mother recently,” Thomas said, as if just remembering a courtesy.
Murmuring to the side, Isaac had begun dispatching hadal warriors. Their fluid shapes were indiscernible from the shadows. They streamed down from the ruins.
“My mother?” Shoat was disconcerted.
“Eva. Three months ago. An elegant hostess. It was at her estate in the Hamptons. We had a long chat about you, Montgomery. She was dismayed to hear about what you’ve been up to.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Come down, Monty. We have things to talk about.”
“What have you done to my mother?”
“Why make this difficult? We’re going to find you. In an hour or a week, it doesn’t matter. You’re not leaving, though.”
“I asked you about my mother.”
Ike’s eyes quit roaming. Ali saw them fix on hers, intent, waiting. She took a breath and tried to still her confusion and fear. She anchored herself to his eyes.
“Quid pro quo?” said Thomas.
“What have you done to her?”
“Where to begin,” Thomas said lightly. “In the beginning? Your beginning? You were born by C-section …”
“My mother would never share such a—”
Thomas’s voice grew hard. “She didn’t, Monty.”
“Then how …” Shoat’s voice faded.
“I found the scar myself,” Thomas said. “And then I opened it. That wound through which you crept into the world.”
Shoat had fallen silent.
“Come down,” Thomas repeated. “I’ll tell you which landfill I left her in.”
Shoat’s eyes filled the screen, then backed away. The screen went blank.
What now? wondered Ali.
“He’s started to run,” Thomas said to Isaac. “Bring him to me. Alive.”
A look of peace flickered across Ike’s face. With Thomas lurking over one shoulder, he raised his eyes to the faraway cliffs. Ali had no idea what he was searching for. She looked around at the dark cliffs, and there it was, a twinkle of light. A momentary north star.
Ike dove.
In the same instant, Thomas ignited.
The hadal armor and Crusader’s chain mail and the shirt of gold did nothing to shield him. Normally the round would have punched through his back and then quickened into a fireball and phosphorous shrapnel. But in Thomas, clad in back as well as in front, it found no exit. The heat and fléchettes went wild inside him. His flesh burst into flame. His spine snapped. And yet his fall seemed infinite.
Ali was mesmerized. Flames leaped up from the neck of Thomas’s armor, and he drew in a great gasp. The fire poured down his throat. He exhaled, and the flames shot from his mouth. His vocal cords seared, Thomas was silent. There was a soft clatter of jade scales falling to earth as the gold sutures holding them together melted.
The warlord towered above her. It seemed he had to topple. But his will was strong. His eyes fixed on the heights as if to fly. At last his knees sagged. Ali felt herself plucked from the ground.
Ike carried her, racing for a toppled pillar in the gloom. He threw her behind the pillar and leaped to join her as Shoat’s havoc commenced in earnest. He was an army unto himself, it seemed. His ammunition struck like lightning bolts, detonating in bursts of white light and raking the library with lethal splinters. Back and forth, he strafed the ruins and hadals fell.
The carved pillar gave cover from incoming rounds, but not from the ricochet of fléchettes. Ike pulled bodies on top of them like sandbags.
Ali cried out as precious codices and inscriptions and scrolls were shredded and burst into fire. Delicate glass globes, etched with writings on the inside through some lost process, shattered. Clay tablets, describing satans and gods and cities ten times older than the Mesopotamian creation myth of Emannu Elish, turned to dust. The conflagration spread into the bowels of the library, feeding on vellum and rice paper and papyrus and desiccated wooden a
rtifacts.
The city itself seemed to howl. The masses fled downhill from the ruins, even as martyrs piled around Thomas in an attempt to protect their lord from further desecration. With a shriek, Isaac launched into the darkness in search of the assassins, and warriors sped after him.
Ali peered around the pillar. Shoat’s muzzle flash was still sparkling at the eye of his distant sniper nest. A single shot would have accomplished everything Shoat needed to escape. Instead, his rage had gotten the better of him.
While the chaos still held, Ike went to work transforming Ali. He was rough. The flames, the blood, the destruction of ancient lore and science and histories: it was too much for her. Ike began yanking her clothes away and smearing her with ochre grease from the bodies around them.
He used his knife to cut tanned skins and hair ropes from the dead. He dressed her like them, and stiffened her hair into horn shapes with the gore. Just an hour ago she had been a scholar excavating texts, a guest of the empire. Now she was filthy with death. “What are you doing?” she wept.
“It’s over. We’re leaving. Just wait.”
The shooting stopped.
They’d found Shoat.
Ike stood.
Crouched against the bonfire of writings, while the wounded still thrashed about and minced blindly across the needlelike shrapnel, he pulled Ali to her feet. “Quickly,” he said, and draped rags across her head.
They passed near Thomas, who lay heaped with his faithful, burned and bleeding, paralyzed within his armor. His face was singed, but intact. Incredibly, he was still alive. His eyes were open and he was staring all around.
The bullet must have cut his spinal column, Ali decided. He could only move his head. Half-buried with Shoat’s other victims, he recognized Ike and Ali as they looked down at him. His mouth worked to denounce them, but his vocal cords had been seared and no sound came.
More hadals arrived to tend their god-king. Ike ducked his head and started down the ramp, towing Ali. They were going to make a clean getaway, it seemed. Then Ali felt her arm grabbed from behind.
It was the feral girl. Her face was streaked with blood, and she was injured and aghast. Immediately she saw their scheme, the hadal disguise, their run for the exit. All she had to do was cry out.