by Jeff Long
“We can’t wait forever,” she said to Hunter and Clemens. They were sitting by a ring wall of piled rocks. Nearby the river was sliding past and getting sucked into oblivion. They had reached the edge of the world.
“We’re better off without them,” Clemens said. “We’re fat free now. Nothing left but lean, mean fighting machines.”
“You’re in a good fucking mood,” said Hunter.
“Why not? Homeward bound, Rebecca told us,” Clemens said. “I’m going home.”
Their losses energized him. Rebecca thought of his buoyancy as a type of spirit. Like a statue getting freed from stone, he was taking his true form. He was rising to the occasion.
“We’re getting close,” Clemens said.
“How would you know?” said Hunter. “I thought you’d never been here.”
Clemens went to the wall and slapped a character—possibly a geometric animal—chiseled into the rock. Men turned from their groups to see. Lights danced on him.
“Destiny,” said Clemens. He lifted his T-shirt. There among the scars and geometric patterns lacing his chest was the same mark. With one fingertip, he traced the mark on his flesh and then on the stone. “See the horns?”
“The horns of the devil,” said a man.
“The horns of the Ox,” Clemens said. “Taurus. His city. That’s where the children are.”
A shout went up. A man racked a round with maximum flourish. Rebecca’s warriors—the professionals, the deer hunters, the Sunday soldiers—clustered around with their forest of rifle barrels. The moment was here. It was time to open the floodgates.
She stood on a rock and took stock of their coal-miner eyes and matted hair and beards running riot, the sports caps and do-rags, the berets and helmets, the amulets, rosaries, and smeared camouflage paint. They wanted some words from her, something grand, something Hollywood. Right about now, in Jake’s war movies, the gladiator or Highlander or coach made the big rousing speech.
“We came to beat the devil,” she finally said. “Let’s go beat him.” Thin, she thought. Very thin.
They waited. She stood there. “Amen,” she added.
“Amen,” they said.
Still they waited. She wracked her brain. She put out her hand. Men jostled close to put their hands on top. “Fight,” she said, spacing it out so it didn’t sound too much like a school cheer. “Fight. Fight.”
That did the trick. “Break,” they said, and streamed off into the tunnel with their gear clattering and weapons drawn.
They staked their boats in a row, like cars in the company parking lot, as if this were just another day on the job. Rebecca left a note for the stragglers. “Hurry on,” it said. Per usual, Clemens bounded off on his own. Per usual, Hunter sent some of his DZ wolves out front to prowl the tube. The rest of the men set to muling their big packs up the trail. Rebecca shouldered her load and joined the main body.
One advantage to their dwindling numbers was that Rebecca had come to know these men intimately. It was an odd intimacy. She touched them, but they did not dare touch her back. She knew them, but less and less by name. Their faces blurred, merging into a single stark-lit face. They were becoming a single thing. They were becoming her.
One had the fullback thighs. Another had the endurance. That guy over there had the Chicago wit that carried men on long days. This man had the pain threshold of a rock. Her unwritten inventory went on. It wasn’t even an inventory anymore. When they moved as one, when she moved them as one, it was like her own body moving. They had become her fingers reaching into this hole. Their sweat was hers. She loved them as she loved herself, which was to say, not at all, not presently, not yet. That depended on Sam.
They followed the worn path for three days. With over ten tons on their collective back, it was brute peasant labor. No one complained. They kept their weapons ready.
On the third day, they caught up with Clemens in the dark. “It’s here,” he said. “A few hours ahead.”
“The city?” said Hunter. “It really exists?”
“Big time,” Clemens said.
Rebecca pushed to the front. “What about the children?”
He held out a long, smooth pebble. Rebecca frowned. “It was under a rock,” said Clemens. “A plug.”
Rebecca still didn’t understand. He skinned a dried flake off with his thumbnail.
“Is that blood?” she said.
“No need for alarm,” said Clemens. “It’s menstrual blood.”
Hunter stepped closer. “It could have come from an animal.”
“Except it didn’t,” Clemens said. He touched his tongue to it. Those big gee-gosh eyes suddenly did not look so pure and simple. “This is human. Female. A few days old. She used this pebble to try to stop her flow.”
“It was under a rock?” said Hunter. “You were looking under rocks?”
“I live under rocks,” Clemens said.
The city lay four hours on, built in an immense cove. They sneaked up on it, as if—with all their noise and lights—their presence might still be a surprise. Luckily no one was at home, it seemed.
Their headlamps darted across its fortress walls like lizards. The massive gate doors had fallen off long ago. Rebecca wanted to rush inside, but held herself back.
Carved oxen heads with green onyx horns jutted from the upper walls, barely eroded by the eons. Some still contained eyes made of gold. Three eyes, not two…one positioned in the middle of each bull’s forehead. Cow Buddhas, thought Rebecca.
Reading from some internal script, the men fanned out like skulking Indians and took positions behind rocks. Rebecca stayed close to Hunter, the professional soldier, who was staying close to Clemens, his enemy.
“Let’s turn on the lights,” said Hunter. “Get some flares up. See what we see.”
The city sprang into being. It was like a dream flickering on the far side of the walls. Columns of limestone stood in hivelike towers, five and six stories high. Staircases wound up the densely built hillside.
This was Rebecca’s first hadal city. She was stunned. “They did this?”
Hell was supposed to be the house of infinite pain. In its heyday, though, it had apparently been much more, a heaven without the milk and honey. A dark paradise—a masterpiece, Rebecca thought—wrought in stone and human blood.
“They came this way,” Clemens said.
“How do you know?”
Clemens took a whiff of the air. He went to a rock and turned it over, exposing a link of animal dung. “Hadal,” he said. He offered the turd to Hunter, who stared at him. Clemens broke the turd open. “Human,” he said.
“Which is it, Clemens? Hadal or human?”
“Both,” said Clemens.
Rebecca got it. Hadal shit. Human meat.
Hunter turned to Rebecca. “I’m sending in a team,” he said. “Keep the flares burning bright. And tell the action heroes to keep their safeties on. The last thing we need is Joe Six-Pack shooting up the shadows.”
Hunter’s team rushed the gate. They streamed inside the fortress. Five long minutes passed. Finally a man’s head appeared at the top of the wall. He waved them in.
Rebecca entered with the others. The gateway arched overhead, tall enough for giants. Hunter greeted her. “Good news and bad news. They’re not here. Not in this part of the city. The place stretches for miles. It would take us weeks to go house to house. We’re going to have to make some leaps here.”
They discussed a plan for sweeping the city. He got the citizen-soldiers organized into platoons, with one of his operators in charge of each platoon. They had radios to communicate.
“Shouldn’t we have radio handles or something?” said a man. With his camo greasepaint, he looked like a clown version of a soldier.
Hunter grunted. “Help yourselves.”
“We’re SIGMA force one,” the clown soldier said.
Another man piped up, “FOXTROT nine.”
“Lord,” muttered Hunter.
“Are we
ready?” said Rebecca.
“You’re staying here,” said Hunter.
For once Clemens agreed with his nemesis. “Listen to him,” he said to Rebecca.
She said nothing. Pulling Jake’s Glock from its holster, she started up the steps. They could tie her up or they could follow. They didn’t tie her up.
The city of the ox reminded her of the Dr. Seuss books she used to read to Sam. Stairs led to other stairs. Spires teetered above circular mazes. Water sluiced merrily along the aqueducts blistered with colorful lichen. All it needed was citizens with whiskers.
Hunter’s men searched a handful of buildings, ducking around doorways, guns drawn, twitchy as hummingbirds. After a half hour, they lost their sense of urgency. The place had probably been vacated since before the time of Christ.
They reached the edge of a marsh. Once it had been a vast reflecting pool, but over time its neatly squared margins had shifted and cracked. The water was fetid. Reeds grew from its bottom.
Farther along the shore, a crumbling citadel commanded both the city below and this side of the marsh. Rebecca let the DZ men zigzag and leapfrog their way up to the stronghold, but it, too, proved to be empty. Her desperation mounted.
A bridge of massive stepping-stones reached across the marsh in a long, straight line. Hunter fired a flare. The far shore lit up with sharp, white mountains. “Snow?” said a soldier.
Not snow, not mountains. “Pyramids,” said Rebecca, lowering her binoculars.
“The bridge must be a quarter mile across,” Hunter said. “There’s no other approach to the island. That means that in the old days no one came or went without passing this fortification. Which raises the question, was the fort built to protect the pyramids from the city or the city from the pyramids? What is on that island?”
Sam, thought Rebecca. Once again she unholstered Jake’s Glock, and made for the bridge with her follow-me chin plowing the way. She got as far as the first stepping-stone before Hunter grabbed her arm. Again. Like at the toll bridge.
“No one crosses until we sort this out. I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking the same thing. The children must be there. But this bridge could be a death trap. The only way across is single file, exposed to the front and sides, with no support, no backup. And if we had to retreat…” He gestured at the water. “Who knows how deep it is.”
“We’re not stopping here.”
“What we’re not doing,” he said, “is walking into an ambush with our pants down and our eyes closed.”
Rebecca tried to jerk her arm free. “Every minute counts for these children,” she said.
“We’re stretched so thin out here it would take just a puff of air to knock us over,” Hunter said. “We need to establish a forward base, bring up supplies, and be ready for the worst.”
Voices peeped up from below. Hunter glanced down the stairs. He groaned and let go of her arm. “The action heroes.”
Dozens of tiny figures were winding through the ruins and climbing the stairs. The camo paint clown arrived first, gasping for air.
“What the hell are you doing?” Hunter demanded. “I told you to make a base camp and secure the rear.”
“And miss the party?” said the man. “The action’s up front, and we’re not missing out. We’ve paid our dues.” One of his buddies was bent over with his rifle on his knees, sucking air. More and more men arrived in various states of collapse. Couch potatoes gone wild, thought Rebecca.
“Who’s guarding our supplies?” Hunter said. “If they take our camp, we’re dead.”
“Code red, yeah, we know, you keep saying. Twenty-four/seven, it’s always code red. But the place is empty.” He saw the pyramids. “What are those?”
“Return to camp,” Hunter said. “Every last fucking one of you.”
“Send your own guys.”
With just a few steps, Hunter’s DZ boys had shifted to contain the growing crowd. Rebecca saw their gun barrels subtly levitating. Hunter’s finger had moved to his trigger.
Abruptly the firebrand noticed how far he’d stepped over the line. He got very still. A dark stain blossomed at his crotch.
Clemens appeared. “Easy, gentlemen.”
“Out of the way, Clemens,” Hunter said. “The man has a mouth. He doesn’t need yours.”
“Rebecca,” Clemens said, “I think these men deserve a little respect. How about this, I escort any volunteers across the bridge. The rest can hold this shore.”
Rebecca looked out at the island and its burden of pyramids. She could still feel Hunter’s grip on her arm. Unleash the dogs, she thought. “Each to his own,” she said.
Hunter shook his head, disgusted. His finger released the trigger. The DZ men lowered their guns. “You’re making a mistake,” he said to her.
“Mr. Hunter, I’ve had people telling me that every step of the way,” she said. “If I had listened to them, we would not be here and the children would be lost forever. That aside, we just passed through the ruins and they’re empty.”
“That camp and its supplies are our exit door,” said Hunter. “If something came at us from the rear, we’d be trapped in this city.”
“The only thing behind us are our own stragglers,” Rebecca said. “I left a note for them. They’ll take care of the camp as they arrive.”
“Until then the supplies need guarding.”
“Then go and guard them,” she said. Hunter shook his head.
Rebecca started for the bridge once again. This time it was Clemens who grabbed her arm. “All except for you.”
“Let go,” she said.
“We need you right where you are, out of harm’s way. We’ll clear the island. This won’t take long.” He forcibly steered her to Hunter. “Listen on the radio. Wait for the signal, Rebecca. It’s almost over.”
The crowd broke apart. “Hoo-ah.” A few of the civilians tried the Ranger cheer, but it just didn’t fit well, like pants too big.
Rising and sinking with his limp, Clemens set off across the massive stepping-stones. A long line of volunteers trailed behind him. His voice came over the radio. “Testing, testing, one, two, three. Do you read me?”
“What do you see, Clemens?”
He was feeling frisky out front. “No pharaohs yet.”
The stepping-stones were the tips of huge, squared pillars driven down into the mud. Where the pillars had shifted, the bridge gapped open. The long line of men bunched up, hopping and straddling, slowing, speeding up, moving farther across. Through her night binoculars, Rebecca counted eighty-nine of them. That was everyone but the DZ boys.
Meanwhile, Hunter deployed shooters to the right and left. Propping their rifles on worn statues and broken pieces of balcony, they sighted through their scopes. Rebecca fanned through her optics, IR to UV to the slower radars, scanning the motionless pyramids for any sign of life over there, hostile or otherwise.
“Touchdown,” Clemens radioed. He looked like a tiny green scarecrow in her binoculars. The conga line of men began to arrive, and she lost him.
“Spread those men out, Clemens,” said Hunter. “Play defense. Find cover. Watch your flanks. Do not enter that complex until you’ve established a defense.”
Clemens came back on a minute later. “No one’s listening.”
Flares sank into the water. More flares shot into the air. It was very festive looking. Rebecca cut in. “Do you see the children?”
She tried to pick out Clemens’s bent paper clip of a body, but the rabble was streaming everywhere. A group toppled a statue. It broke into pieces. Arms pumped in triumph.
“What are they doing?” she said.
“I’m afraid we’ve got a touch of gold fever over here.”
“Gold?”
“It’s everywhere. On the statues, on the walls, even lining the paths. This thing’s turning into a treasure hunt.”
“My ass,” she said, and dropped the binoculars around her neck. “I’m coming over there.”
Hunter’s voice
came over the radio. “Rebecca…”
A twinkle of firecrackers appeared.
Rebecca paused.
The sound of popcorn popping drifted across the lake. Had they lost their minds, squandering ammunition? “Clemens,” Hunter said. “Tell them to cease fire. Immediately.”
Clemens’s voice blinked on and off. “Rebecca…keep safe…”The gunfire amplified over the radio. She heard men yelling. The merrymaking was over. The transmission stopped.
“Ah, hell, it’s happening,” said Hunter.
Revelers appeared from between the pyramids and began swarming toward the bridge. It looked like a vice raid. At this distance, with the men so tiny, Rebecca had trouble taking their desperation seriously.
A lucky few at the front got a clean start across the bridge. Behind them men jammed together and fought for access. Antlike figures toppled into the water. The marsh was shallow, barely up to their waists. Seeing the chaos at the bridge, more and more men simply jumped into the water and began plowing back to Rebecca’s shore, with or without their guns.
A man began climbing the slope of a pyramid.
The popcorn bursts stretched longer. Some men took aim. Most just sprayed wild gunfire back toward the pyramids.
“Fall back,” Hunter shouted to his men. “It’s a trap. Back to the gates. Secure the supplies.”
Sam. “But we can’t leave them,” she said.
The man suddenly dove off the side of the pyramid. He simply turned around and cast himself off. His body tumbled down like a rag doll. That stunned her more than the mob’s panic. He had only climbed high enough to kill himself.
She spied a second man climbing a different pyramid. Another suicide? He kept on going, though, higher and higher, leaving below the pandemonium.
The sound of tiny shouts drew her back to the mob. Some sort of invisible lawn mower was cutting them down from behind.
She knew she should be horrified. Something terrible was unfolding. But with no faces to see or screams to hear, with not a single hadal in sight, it seemed like a very small cartoon. Men galloped about. They tumbled off the waterfront. They shoved between the marsh reeds. She lowered the binoculars. Her naked eye found nothing more than a few pinpricks of gunfire in the darkness.