Underworld Earth

by Nicholas Gagnier

  The Nephalim chuckles.

  “You assume it is I wishing for that particular outcome. These are not my decisions to make, Phoenix. Rest assured, were it up to me, your friend Death would be hunted mercilessly. Humanity would be eliminated as a superfluous presence the Atlas has insofar tolerated.”

  “Guess we should count ourselves lucky you’re not in charge then, shouldn’t we?”

  The taunt wipes all condescension from Gabriel’s mouth as he raises his head, glaring at me over the tip of his nose. His recently established beard bristles, as if a cold front pushes out from his flesh, ready to blow me aside like the nuisance I am. My immortality is just as much of an affront to him as seven resurrected people.

  Setting the dead robin at my feet, I can only take glee in the fact the Atlas needs me, and Gabriel must tolerate it.

  “I know you spared the Knox woman. Of two names, it has taken you three days to eliminate one, and you failed to kill the second. So, forgive me if my faith in you is shaken, Phoenix.”

  Returning through the dark doorway he emerged from, Gabriel is all too willing to bestow guilt I will carry as long as this is my cross to bear.

  “Maybe you should have had someone else do your dirty work, then!”

  The scream from my throat does not sound like my voice; the locket is heavy at my collar, and I wish I could rip it off and throw it in the Nephalim’s face.

  Just as he does, only using my sense of helplessness instead.

  “Do you honestly believe I would have chosen you, Phoenix? As I see it, you are a loose cannon. A mistake that should have never been allowed to progress.”

  “Stop it. You’re breaking my heart here.”

  “If anything, you should be charged as an accomplice to your friend’s actions.”

  “An accomplice? How do you figure?”

  “Perhaps, had you stayed in your realm where you belong, Death would not have been able to accomplish what he did? Maybe, if you had a modicum of personal responsibility about you, more time would have been spent making sure he wasn’t acting so foolishly!”

  “Oh? Is that right?” I retort. “So, if I’m hearing you correctly, I gave Tim Hawkins the means to go bending the time-space continuum, with minimal oversight? I gave him absolute power, knowing it corrupts? Somehow, I’m to blame for this bullshit set of circumstances I had no part in!”

  Gabriel calms himself but says nothing to dispute his personal belief I was partly responsible for the Breach. He re-enters the Wallace homestead, but turns back in the doorway once again, reminding me that he is the superior force.

  “Your next target is a man named Peter York,” he says. “York was responsible for saving Haven from white supremacists but died for his efforts. The Breach has revived him, and the Atlas needs this taken care of.”

  “I’ll get right on that. Anything else, Your Highness?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel says, ignoring my attitude. “You will deal with the Knox woman. Somehow, you are already aware Nathan Wallace is a target. To be honest, I don’t want to know how or where you acquired these instructions. But if it came from where I think it did? Tread carefully, Phoenix. You do not want to make an enemy of the Atlas. Or me.”

  Gabriel backs into the shadows, leaving me alone on the back deck. Looking over a world that returns whispers on the snaking currents, I sigh at the robin I cradled moments earlier, wishing we could trade places.

  Instead, I am the irredeemable, and return to contemplating how to mercifully kill an eleven-year-old child and coerce his mother into murdering several more people, simply because she did so in a different life; wondering what I would do in her position when this all ends.

  If it were me, I would simply watch for the birds.

  Samantha

  When Derek came home from New York, the last thing he said to me was caked in sarcasm. The meeting didn’t go well, he said. On my way out the door to visit my mother and sister on the other side of the country, there wasn’t much time to get into it. Like so many other things, it would have to be shelved until I returned. Whatever happened in Haven, our life would still be waiting on the other side. My husband kissed me on the cheek and wished me a good flight.

  The next time I talked to him, CDC was sounding the alarm and otherwise healthy people were dropping dead. From an airport terminal where my flight was grounded, the strain in his voice may have been a death sentence.

  Mark is still waiting where I left him, hands in his pockets, cursing at an enclave of road between opposing rows of dense boreal forest. Previously annoyed his female companion had the audacity to make her own choices, he greets me with a hanging head and sigh.

  “Chips? Is that all you found?”

  “If you want to go peruse the aisles with a dead guy in them,” I snipe back, throwing him one of the crinkled foil bags, “be my damn guest.”

  “There’s… a body in there?”

  “Yup. Should’ve seen it coming at me. Like a zombie. Had to smash its brains in with a lead pipe.”

  Mark’s widening eyes prompt me to roll my own and tell him I’m kidding. Sinking back into a combination of relief and disgust, he relaxes, asking if we should check the wreckage down the road.

  “Come on,” I say, gesturing to a picnic table outside the store. “I need to rest for a minute. Then we’ll go.”

  “Is there a bathroom in there?”

  “With the dead body?”

  “Stop it,” Mark frowns as I take a seat. He says he needs to take a leak out back, disappearing around the building. Left to my own devices, my hands pull at the bag’s seams. It withers with escaping air; wasting no time, I shove a handful of its contents in my mouth.

  It’s no meal but it’s better than nothing.

  On the third handful, Mark reappears. He says nothing as he takes a seat on the bench opposite me.

  “Whew,” he wheezes, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

  I chuckle, wiping salt shards from my lips, reaching for another handful as Mark paws at his own. The bag splits mid-pull; its innards fly in every direction toward and away from him. Mark is first taken aback, but his shoulders slouch, jaw tensing as his fists bunch on the table.

  “Of course,” he says, wiping white crumbs from his shirt and lap as I try to conceal mild amusement. “Just my luck.”

  I feel bad, but in our circumstances, will take all the comedy I can get.

  “Here,” I smirk, “I grabbed three bags.”

  Mark eyes the spare bag slid across the wooden table but tells me to save it; he will wait for Post Falls.

  Our unique habit of awkward conversations between strangers relapses into silence, and my mind drifts to Derek. This entire time, I have tried not to link our last conversation in a Spokane airport to a survival rate which favors nobody. With casualties mounting, I may have to make peace with that connection soon enough.

  I have no way to know Nathan’s status, and can’t bear to imagine my baby boy suffering like the people of this town did.

  Like my sister did.

  Then again, between the world left behind, and Stephanie’s gasps on constant replay in my head, the quick death might have been a mercy after all.

  Almost an hour later—under a dull, grey sky I swear was concocted just to dramatize the moment further—we arrive at the scene of an accident. The smell of death is acute and overpowering from two hundred yards away. Drawing closer, only our steps against the gravel road provide any soundtrack to the macabre panorama of haphazardly stopped motor vehicles.

  The wind here is dead as the cadavers; thanking whatever God remains we are not in the full swing of summer, I take the lead, trying not to peer too closely into any windows.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mark says, clearly not adhering to the same philosophy. “Is that smell what I think it is?”

  The carnage’s centerpiece tells a brutal story. A semi-trailer ran over the smaller Toyota in front of it when the trucker died. It crushed the Camry’s driver, forcing several othe
r cars off the road, before finally toppling on its side. Some people were thrown from vehicles that ended up in the adjacent fields; most remain buckled into their seats, heads rolling on necks in the position they slumped over. Closed windows quarantine them in death’s biomes, while the stench escapes others whose doors are ajar.

  From there, everyone caught on the stretch of Interstate died as the plague made them all hosts.

  “What are you looking for anyway?”

  Peering along the obstructed road, I have no answers. One foot in front of another, hands by my sides, my heart is in my throat at all this loss of life. And then I see it—the familiar assembly of white and blue glass casing along its roof. Inside, two faces idle in the seat, trapped inside like dogs on a summer day.

  “There,” I say.

  “What?” Mark asks. His eyes follow mine, groaning where they land. “Sam, you can’t possibly be serious.”

  There’s no time for complaints. I don’t know how these people are decomposing so quickly, other than perhaps to say it began before they were dead. The aroma bursting between the chassis and opening door overpowers every sense; I have to duck out of its path, coughing into my palms to avoid retching.

  “Ah!” Mark yells, pinching his nose until a nasal voice emerges, “What the fuck is that?”

  Recovering, I ignore his question; pulling my shirt’s bottom seams up over my head, I give no consideration to male eyes. The loose fabric around my face won’t mask the smell completely, but as I reach for a holster on one of the bodies, it offers some protection. It can’t shelter my brain from maggots eating the driver—trapped in a sauna, they fester in his lap. The gun slides out of the state trooper’s holster easily, and I have never wanted to vomit more.

  Circling the cruiser to obtain the passenger’s weapon, I stand downwind of the opening passenger door, avert my eyes in securing the partner’s service weapon and toss it over the roof to Mark. He fumbles it against his chest, likely having never held a gun in his life. I remove the shirt from my face, and redress.

  “Jesus! A little communication? You could have killed me!”

  “Quit your complaining,” I retort, adjusting my shirt. “Safety’s on, anyway.”

  Rustling prompts my newly acquired protection to raise, and I spin around. After Frank’s crew, one can never be too careful, but the sight I am met with offers only pause.

  Behind me, at point-blank range, a blond woman is unaffected by how close she came to being shot. Her face is stained with dirt and tears, held up by a blue dress patterned in yellow flowers. Each petal is ragged and brown like the marks down her face, and she wears no shoes.

  Cursing under my breath, I lower my arm, pointing it at the ground. The woman’s face is drained of emotion from the length of time she has wandered between the carnage. Like us, she is immune to the sickness that wiped out nearly all of humanity.

  Her mouth opens to speak, but I am speechless.

  “Help me,” she croaks, and I know those words will never register in my brain as they once did.

  Peter

  When my sister and I were young, our father disappeared in the night.

  Their estrangement built to it for months. Later, Mom told me she suspected an affair, but could never prove one; thus, she never mentioned it to him and the disappearance was anticlimactic.

  The next time I heard Richard York’s name out of my embittered mother’s mouth was on my birthday, six months after she learned he had died. Blowing out the candles on my fifteenth, he was gone, any opportunity for reconciliation with him.

  In comparison, the day Fiona was born is one of the most lucid memories I have. Tiny, fragile arms involuntarily waved around wailing cries. Meghan and I hadn’t known each other for a full year. It made no difference in my resolve to do right by her.

  The moment I met this amazing little human being, I promised never to abandon her.

  And yet, she deserves so much better.

  “What are we doing, Daddy?”

  Exiting Margaery Tickson’s apartment at the Row, we stand at the top of three concrete steps that divide the building’s front door from solid ground. I scan the sights. People I bumped into, day in and day out, are gone forever; so much of the world, changed.

  It only took one brutal, audacious moment.

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “Thought we’d spend a bit of time together, after everything that’s happened. What do you think?”

  Fiona smiles.

  “That sounds good. Can we go to the park?”

  I nod; we descend the step and begin walking.

  “That’s a good idea. Be good to do something normal, right?”

  The closest playground is on Manchester Road, a snaking avenue two streets behind the Strip. Approaching the gated-in playground, it seems we weren’t the only ones who had the idea. A little boy bolts from structure to structure, shouting with glee. His high-pitched squeal either grows louder the closer we get, or his volume climbs the more excited he is.

  “Can I go, Daddy?”

  With my permission, she crosses the gate’s threshold, joining him at the play structure. Both can shrug off trauma, death and universal destruction in favor of assemblies of metal, wood and plastic combined into slides and monkey bars over sand pits—things that plagues and tyrants covered in deer’s blood can never change about kids.

  The woman sitting on a bench in my peripheral view finds equal joy in her son’s bliss as he and Fiona forge an instant bond and begin playing together. Her hair is blond, with streaks of brown stemming from the root. An oversized sweater drapes her shoulders and sleeves conceal hands clutching the bench’s underside.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” she asks.

  “What’s that?”

  “How easily they can let go. See a slide? Doesn’t matter the world is falling apart around us.”

  I chuckle.

  “Joys of children.”

  “What’s your name? I’m Mara.”

  “Peter,” I reply. The sleeve falls down her wrist as it rises, and we shake hands.

  “Nice to meet you,” she says. “Let me guess. Everyone else you know is dead.”

  “About the gist of it. My wife, she... didn’t make it. Just fell sick. Gone the next morning.”

  Mara grimaces.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What about you?”

  Golden locks fall over her face, green eyes searching clumps rising from the Earth for answers.

  “Joey is all I had to begin with. His father was an asshole; wanted nothing to do with him, anyway.”

  “Ouch. Sorry. I can relate.”

  “Can you?”

  “Mine took off when I was nine. Left us a Smith & Wesson, forty bucks in cash and half a bottle of rum in my mom’s liquor cabinet.” Don’t dwell, Peter. “The father dead?”

  Mara shakes her head again.

  “No. He’s definitely alive. Helping this Victor Quinn character run the gong show out of the liquor store. I’m barely sure he knows we’re alive, let alone cares.”

  “And what’s this fine gentleman’s name? You know, because he sounds like someone to avoid.”

  She giggles, but the smile drops off her face just as quickly as it appeared.

  “Frank Lancaster. At first, I hoped he would get sick like everyone else. But then, I remembered that I’m not that kind of person... to wish harm on someone. Maybe if I was, it could have been one of those ‘careful what you wish for’ situations.”

  I chuckle.

  “I’m sure no one would blame you—”

  We are interrupted by Fiona and Joey’s feet pounding up to us, talking over each other to collectively inform us they are now officially friends. But before I can resume the conversation with Mara, a small group of Kevlar-clad men appear from the park’s south entrance. I recognize a couple from last night. Reggie is not among them, but Walter—yelled at by his companion for wincing over a dead body’s removal—is, as well as Sydney’s companion Ronald.
r />   Their leader is outfitted in a faded denim jacket, no bulletproof vest or automatic weapon on his body. He only brandishes a revolver in one hand, cigarette in the other. Mara’s eyes go wide at the sight of him, and Joey immediately recognizes him.

  “Daddy!” the boy yells. Fiona trails behind him, unaware what her new friend is leading her toward.

  “Frank?”

  The man ignores them. Joey wants his father to watch him tackle the monkey bars. Frank tells the kid to scram, and excitement falls off Joey’s face—shades of my old man and me.

  “Victor wants to see you,” Frank says. His voice is gruff, breath sweet like alcohol and bitter like the Newport he lifts to his mouth, drawing deep on its filter.

  “Great,” I say, hoping he doesn’t hear my pounding chest. “I’ll see him when I’m done here.”

  “Now,” Frank commands. “Mr. Quinn is a busy man.”

  “Mr. Quinn?” Mara teases her ex-flame, who has aged much worse than she has. Maybe he was always rough. “The man is a glorified criminal, Francis.”

  “Stay out of this, woman! Learn your place.”

  “Excuse me?” she says, standing from the bench. Her posture tenses; anticipating a fight between her and a man who could quickly harm all of us. I agree to accompany them.

  “Would you stay with my daughter until I come back?” I ask Joey’s mother. She nods quietly, saying she lives across the street, in that brown brick triplex.

  “Fiona!” I call, waving my daughter over. Dark hair bobs as her momentum steers toward me and she comes running back. “I’d like you to go with Joey and his mom when you guys are done, okay?”

  “Okay,” Fiona nods, eyeing Frank and his men. Her gaze lands on the pistol in his hand. “Where are you going?”

  I lean down, planting a kiss on her perspiring forehead.

  “I just have to help them with something, sweetheart.”

  Accepting my explanation, Fiona returns to Joey, and they resume their game of tag. Frank wants to get as far away from his family as possible and asks if I’m quite done. I thank Mara again, before being shepherded back toward the Strip. My new companion is a man of few words and does not look back to check I’m still behind him.