by Steven Welch
This is the vessel that brought Elise St. Jacques back to our world with the ocean itself and it was an abomination born of two worlds, Jack thought.
This is the vessel to deliver me to the girl and to a new beginning.
This is a damned special day.
He did not hear Zuzu as she approached but he certainly felt her when she wrapped her arms around his neck and twisted.
The pain was sharp and sudden. Jack was strong though, and he resisted enough so his neck wasn’t broken.
Zuzu jumped on his back and wrapped her thick legs around Jack’s waist. The breath went out of him and he saw dancing lights.
Jack grabbed her legs so she couldn’t release and launched himself backwards as hard as he could manage.
Zuzu was slammed to the cold, wet cobblestone and she let out a gasp. Jack threw his head back into her face and the impact made a wet sound as it broke Zuzu’s nose. The legs clenched even more tightly and Jack thought his ribs might break.
Damned strong legs, he thought.
He tried to use the back of his head as a weapon again but the legs released and the person who held him scrambled away and to her feet.
Jack stood and saw Zuzu, face bloody, standing in the dim glow of the tunnel.
“I know you,” she said. There was surprise beneath the anger in her voice.
Jack looked at her for a long moment. It had been years, so he wasn’t sure at first but then he recognized the face despite the scars and the blood and the age.
“Hello, my friend,” said Jack, “looks like you were the one that got away. Well played.”
If Zuzu had her knife in its sleeve at her calve Jack would have been dead, but as Jules Valiance always said, “ifs and buts, candies and nuts, what a Merry Christmas it might have been.”
She spat blood.
“I know you. I remember you. You are Scaphandrier.”
“Don’t insult me, Zuzu. You still call yourself that, yes?”
Zuzu tasted the copper of her own blood and spat again.
“I’m taking the ship,” Jack said.
“No you’re not.”
He ignored her.
“It’s changed. It’s alive. Did that happen over there, in that world you visited?”
Zuzu gave him the finger.
“I ask because, well, if this thing is sentient then will it respond poorly if I kill you right now? This ride will carry me faster than I’d ever imagined. But will I piss it off? Is that possible?”
Zuzu shrugged.
“Let’s find out,” she said.
So Jack pulled his gun and fired three times. Zuzu was moving so the first two bullets missed her but the third did not.
The slug pierced the meat of her thigh. It missed the bone and the entry and exit were clean but the weapon was a .45 so great damage was done. Blood came, thick and dark.
Zuzu could not tell if a main artery had been hit but it sure as hell seemed like it.
“Well, lucky for both of us, I guess,” Jack said, “my guys will have heard the noise so they’ll be down here soon. And you’re not dead yet so maybe, if this ship can actually feel, I won’t have pissed it off too much. Only one way to be sure.”
Zuzu spat her words through clenched teeth.
“You’d better kill me now. I will find you.”
Jack smiled and shook his head “no.” He indicated the passage that led back toward the headquarters. There were footsteps slapping against wet stone.
“My guys might want to keep you around for a day or two. You might know things. Frankly, I’m sure you know things. I’ll leave that to them, though. Anyway, you’re bleeding out.”
Zuzu looked at her leg and smiled.
“Yes, I think I am.”
Jack shrugged.
“I have a stop to make along the way to hell. See you on the flip side.”
He didn’t hesitate. There was a narrow stainless steel gangplank, and he used it to access the forward entrance hatch at the top of the submersible. The body of the ship was as he remembered, everything in its place, just reformed with new materials. He pulled a recessed lever. The top hatch opened with a hiss and Jack descended into the cabin.
Well, it let me in, he thought. Now let’s see what happens.
A wonderland of instruments rebuilt perfectly but with the strange emerald glass and the polished copper and brass, held together by ribbons and strands and tendons of glowing organic material. The air inside of the ship smelled clean and dry. There was the sound of the river flowing outside but there was another, a whispering sound that might have been something breathing.
Jack looked about and he remembered. He remembered the voyages, the parties, the men and women of Les Scaphandriers and their arrogance.
Yes, he remembered a ship much like this one and he knew every inch of her. He passed along the alien yet still familiar passage to the cockpit of the submersible and he remembered every control mechanism, every indicator panel, every button. Jack remembered exactly how to pilot a ship like this so he slammed his hand down onto a button that remote closed the top hatch then slid into the captain’s chair. He pulled hard on a lever and he heard the clicks and felt the shudders as the ship was released from the cables that held her in dock.
So, he thought, alien hands destroyed then rebuilt this vessel into something new, something different.
He smiled. This ship was alive. Cables and wires were veins now, and they coursed with alien blood. He sensed a presence but it was simple, not profound, and it did not appear to consider him a threat.
This ship would do the job and then he would kill it. The thing was a horror.
Jack looked over the instrument panel until he found a round fixture of glass that contained both digital and analogue indicators. This was a homing program linked to a satellite he hoped was still in orbit because, with this device, he could pinpoint and track the location of homing devices anywhere in the world. The Aquanauts always wore one of the satellite trackers in their gear. Sometimes it was in a phone, sometimes it was imbedded in a vest.
There was a homing beacon built into the wrist computers they called Aengus.
He activated the tracking system. A minute passed, then another.
Little dots of light appeared on the screen and they glowed against a map of Paris, the lines that displayed the arrondissements spiraling out like the shell of a nautilus. Even the dead Aquanauts here in their ruined Academy blinked as if still alive.
I wonder, thought Jack, how long the tracking device would signal? A hundred years from now would they blink from the grave? As the bodies decayed would the tracker be lost in the dust but still signal its location to some future traveler?
No. All of this technology will be burned away, along with the memories of these horrible fools.
He expanded the view because what he sought was beyond Paris, beyond Europe.
Yes. There were three dots of light that shined against a map of Egypt.
The outskirts of Cairo.
Three? The boy had an Aengus as did Elise. Who was the third?
No matter, Jack thought. Time to go.
The coordinates were there and quickly programmed into the navigation system of the ship. Jack pulled a lever that completely sealed the top hatch. He verified the instruments and checked the gauges. The seatbelt buckle made a sharp click as he engaged it around his chaise and waist. He confirmed that his weapons were in their straps and holsters, one on either hip, either calf just above the boot line, one in his jacket above his heart, another tucked into a holster at the small of his back. Blades and handguns, with several ammunition belts tied tight to his chest, waist, and thighs. All good.
But maybe something more, he thought. Jack scanned the interior of the cockpit.
Yes. There it was. To the starboard side of the little cabin there was a series of charging stations, all empty except for one, and in that one was a glowing green screen imbedded in a copper mount and attached to a thick strap.
&n
bsp; Jack pulled the Aengus from the charging station and strapped it onto his left arm. He did not like the way it felt and hated what it represented but he knew it would be useful in this short game.
With this on his wrist he could track and do what needed to be done.
It had been fifteen years since he had flown an Aquaboggin and longer since he had worn an Aengus. He started slowly, with hesitation, but soon his eyes moved more quickly around the instrument panel as he conducted the pre-flight checks. This ship had been remade by alien hands, that was certain, but everything was still in its proper place, everything was recognizable to him.
The engines came to life with a soft hum, like the sound of a cat purring. The lights in the cockpit dimmed so that his focus and concentration would be on the instruments. There was a wide glass panel in front of him, much like you would find on a jet, and the dim bioluminescence of the ancient tunnel glowed off into the distance.
Everything looked good. Jack pulled a silver handle and the docking cradle released with a clang and a groan. The ship shuddered and jostled as it was freed to float in the river. Water splashed the viewing glass but Jack couldn’t hear it.
He remembered the steering wheel as a thick thing of black leather and steel. Now his left hand had a tight grip on the replacement, a circle of emerald glass and dark wood with a shaft of tarnished brass.
His right hand put the throttle down and the engines throbbed.
The submersible moved forward slowly and accelerated as he put weight on the throttle.
The walls of the subterranean river tunnel rushed by, faster and faster, until there was the night sky.
The fast ship took flight.
Paris receded below.
ONTO HELLNADO PLAIN
Just beyond Eilat the road turned west and pierced the desert into the emptiness as far as Elise could see.
Egypt was out there beyond the dark line of the horizon. The stars were so bright it was as if she could touch them and the sand was a painting of bone white and blue. The truck rumbled and popped as it sucked and burned the rough fuel. There were cracks and potholes in the old tarmac of the highway but she drove slowly enough to avoid the worst. At first, in Eilat, there were overturned vehicles and other large obstructions that required Elise to detour and drive around but once they’d left the city’s borders the remains of the old world were less frequent.
It became possible to imagine that the end of the world had never happened.
“I wouldn’t be here, in Israel, or Egypt, that’s for sure,” she said so quietly that it might have been to herself although Taariq sat with her in the truck’s darkness.
“What do you mean?”
They hadn’t said a word in the half hour since they’d cleared the webs from the truck and resumed the journey. Elise didn’t invite Taariq into the Dodge but he slipped into the passenger side anyway and she didn’t object or shoot him.
“Sometimes I imagine that the world didn’t end,” Elise said, “I’m still in school, getting ready for college, and I’ve gotten used to being in Paris and I have friends. Or maybe I’m still with my Dad and we’re living in Florida and I go surfing on the weekends. Sometimes I like to pretend that things are the way they used to be.”
“This is the world I know,” Taariq said, “so I don’t waste my time with that. I mean, there was a reason that the old world was burned away. This is the way it should be and maybe what you remember wasn’t so good.”
“No, wrong. There might have been a reason, yes, but it wasn’t our fault.”
“What do you mean?”
“The world didn’t end because of pollution or nuclear war or guns or race riots or some twisted religious revolution. Those were the things back in the day that everybody worried about. Plagues, zombies, killer mosquitoes, religion gone nuts, none of that happened.”
“I don’t really understand what you’re talking about. It’s still our fault.”
“Our fault?” Elise stopped herself. She thought for a moment and there was no sound but the white noise of the road.
“Well?” Taariq asked.
“Doesn’t really matter now,” she said.
“It matters if we want to prevent it from happening again.”
“It won’t.”
“Sure. Just the same I’d rather be ready. If there was a mistake that caused all of this I’d rather not repeat it.”
Taariq let the silence settle in once more. He felt he’d pushed Elise harder than he should. She could still kick him out of the vehicle and he had no illusions about her ability to do so. He tried not to be obvious as he looked at her, shifting his eyes from the road ahead to her profile in the moonlight.
He hadn’t much experience with beauty, would have difficulty ascribing the word to an object or an emotion, but in that moment he would have defined beauty by the woman driving that truck.
“Your Dad died before The Turn?” Taariq asked.
“Yes. He’s all I had. Mom was long gone. He sent me to a girl’s school slash orphanage slash torture chamber in Paris.”
Taariq had heard legends about this girl and her time in Paris, about how she woke up one morning and ten years had passed. Those stories didn’t make much sense but were just another piece in a strange puzzle. He nodded his head as if this was all new, as if he didn’t know anything about Elise. And really, he only knew what he’d been told and how much of that was true he couldn’t say.
“The school sucked but I loved Paris,” she said, “and what the hell were you doing in the back of the truck, anyway?”
Taariq took a deep breath. His pulse was calm because what he said wasn’t a lie.
“I wanted to follow you. Go with you. Get out of that town and go somewhere new.”
“And you didn’t just ask?”
“I was sure you would say no and that would be the end of it. At least this way, I mean, I have a chance. You could kick me out and let me walk into the desert and die. Or you could shoot me. Or you could take me along, at least for a while.”
“I will kill him. You know that.”
Taariq stared at her for a long moment.
“Yes,” he said, “I know that. I’m not with him. I don’t care. You do what you need to do. It’s not my life.”
Elise grunted and pulled her foot off of the accelerator. The truck slowed, then stopped. She pulled the emergency brake and killed the engine.
The road was soft with sand as she stepped out of the truck and onto the highway. The breeze at night was nice on her skin. Elise leaned against the hood and looked off into the distance, into the curtain of stars on the horizon, the blackness that became the darkest of blue and then shimmered into the infinite.
Taariq was next to her. She looked at him and didn’t hesitate. She leaned into him and kissed his lips. She felt him start, as if frightened, but he didn’t pull away. There was the salt taste of his lips, the warmth of his face, the strangeness of being so close to someone she wasn’t sure she could truly trust.
He returned her kiss, and they held each other, eyes closed, blood suddenly flowing and alive, and Elise felt her stomach grow tight. She stepped back and could breathe again.
Taariq’s eyes were wide, and they questioned.
Elise smiled. So that’s what it’s like, she thought. Awkward, scary, but nice.
They got back into the truck and Elise fired up the engine.
The kilometers passed and the rumble of the truck’s engine and of the tires on the old highway were a strange comfort in the emptiness. The highway passed through the craggy mountains of western Israel and because there were few plants to disrupt the macadam the way was smooth. Only the years of sunlight and darkness, the shift of temperature between hot and cold, had caused damage to the road. An hour passed without either of them saying a word. Elise kept her eyes on the gauges of the truck and the temperature of the engine was constant, the fuel indicator did not dip too much, and her foot was steady on the pedal so they kept a steady pace of for
ty kilometers per hour. She didn’t dare go much faster than that. Ahmet had warned her about pushing the truck too hard and Elise also wasn’t interested in hitting a hole in the road at high speed. Slow and aware would do.
The surrounding country would have surprises, Elise thought. Here and there were small buildings, empty shells with not even ghosts, and shooting stars that would dance in and out of her view.
When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I suppose I should ask where we’re going.”
“I’m still not sure about you but I’m going to Egypt. To a city called Cairo. It was a big deal back in the day.”
“Cairo. How far is Cairo?”
“A hike by foot or horse but we’ll be there in a day if the road is clear and the truck holds together. It’s only a few hundred kilometers.”
“What’s that light?”
Taariq pointed off to the western horizon. There was a black line below the glistening star field where the night sky met the desert. Something flashed along the line, only for an instant. Elise thought at first it was a reflection on the truck’s glass.
The flash happened again and Elise could see it more clearly.
“Looks almost like lightning,” she said.
“Sure. I saw lightning once when I was a kid. Not many storms in Amman but one came through and there was lightning and thunder. I don’t see any clouds though. Don’t you need clouds for lightning?”
Elise kept her concentration on the road ahead but stole glances up at the distant horizon as best she could. The truck’s headlights didn’t work so she was driving by star and moonlight, which was enough, but she didn’t want to lose focus and drive over something that could destroy the tires, or steer into a pit.
“I’ve seen lightning from sandstorms,” she said, “a long time ago. Didn’t look like that, though.”