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The Fortress of Clouds

Page 27

by J. A. J. Peters


  The guard pointed the gun at the three of them. “Nobody move, okay? Ralph, when you’re done cuffing that hippie, come on over here and do the kids.”

  Sean was staring at Ben. The guard clicked the handcuffs tight. Sean didn’t move. Ben could feel Alison and Hannah cowering beside him. He closed his eyes and it was almost like he could hear their heartbeats. There was nowhere to run. This was their life now.

  Ben opened his eyes and ran at the guard. Where would the bullet hit? For half a second, he imagined what it would feel like, the burning metal searing through his flesh.

  And then his shoulder collided into the man’s stomach. The two of them fell over into the water. Hands grappled with Ben’s face. He bit down on a passing finger and there was a yelp of pain.

  Shouts from his right. A brief image of Sean wrestling with the other guard. Then there was a sharp kick to Ben’s head. Something told him to gasp for air. In an instant, a stiff boot pinned his face to the pavement, the two feet of water above him rushing over his ears like a massive glacial river. And then the boot just let go. Ben came to the surface, coughing and struggling to open his eyes. In front of him, Alison and Hannah were stomping on the man’s back like they were putting put a fire. Their eyes were wild and hateful. Ben’s once-sweet sisters were now consumed with a lust for violence. After a minute, the man was reduced to a sodden, inanimate log.

  Behind them, Sean was somehow managing to keep the other guard at bay without the use of his hands. He kept throwing these wild kicks at the guard’s head, but always just missing. Alison and Hannah ran at the guard before Ben had even caught his breath. The two girls each grabbed one of the man’s arms and tried to pin him down. Sean, sensing an opportunity, smiled and promptly kicked the guard in the teeth. Blood flew from his mouth like an overturned drink.

  The guard flung the two girls away and turned back to Sean. Ben charged, an unintelligible, snarling yell coming from deep down inside him. And then they were all wrapped up together, Sean, Ben, Alison, and Hannah, all punching and kicking at anything that looked silver. Ben felt like he was in a pack of wolves descending upon a moose. But it wasn’t him fighting. It was a different Ben, waking up into a new life.

  They fought because of who they were. They fought against the horrible knowledge that had been thrust upon them. The code inextricably fused into Ben’s DNA, Hannah and Alison created to be some sort of decoy. They fought because they couldn’t do anything about the destiny that had been put in front of them. They fought because no one could fix them. And whether they won or lost didn’t matter. They would end up purified somehow. They were erasing the identity of who they used to be.

  Ben threw a punch at the man’s face. A confusing mixture of pride, disgust, and exhilaration flooded Ben’s heart. It all felt so wrong according to the code their mother had instilled in them. And yet it all felt so good. Beating up Milagro’s guard almost made Ben feel like they were one step closer to reuniting their family, one hurdle towards somehow getting back to their old life. Which he knew deep down would never happen. Who this man was didn’t matter. He had become their scapegoat, their punching bag. All their frustration at their mother was being directed at him. And all their love for their mother was being demonstrated to him.

  She had taught them to be respectful of each other. Why? The family had been their practice grounds for a day, one day, when they’d have to deal with others. She never wanted that day to come, but she must have known it would arrive somehow. That day was today. And all those points of manners meant nothing. It was like she couldn’t bring herself to teach them what they would really need, like she couldn’t admit to herself that her kids would never have a normal life. Everything they had learned was dissolving into rain and blood. She should have trained them in fighting, in running, in stealing. These things were their future. They had been raised with love. But they had been born into conflict.

  “Ben, stop.” said Sean. “That’s enough.”

  Ben blinked. It was like awaking from a dream. He was holding the Milagcorp guard by the hair. Ben’s fist was glistening and raw, tensed for another punch. Someone else’s hand had been grafted onto his. He had no memory of what had just happened.

  They looked over the silver man, his uniform darkened with red blotches. He was slouched over like a mass of garbage washed up on a beach. His arm dangled at his side like a big piece of silver seaweed trembling in the tide.

  “Wow, Ben,” said Sean. “Glad you ran away after you tossed that brick at me.” He bent down and put a finger to the guard’s neck. “I think he’s still alive.”

  Ben looked up at the world around him like it was another country. He had been so immersed in the fight that he had almost forgotten where he was. The man with the chips and the umbrella was still standing on the sidewalk. His mouth was caved open in shock and his eyes had grown into full moons.

  “Nothing to see here, mate,” called Sean. He rummaged through the guards pockets and found the keys to the handcuffs. “Here, Ben. Get me out of these things. Now, come on--we have to get to the tru--”

  And then the cars appeared. Ten or twelve of them, roaring towards them like speedboats.

  “Damn it,” said Sean. “These fools aren’t making it easy to get out of here. Just get in the truck as fast as you can.”

  A single shot snapped through the air. And then a cry, a girlish yelp more like Hannah than Sean. Everything was happening too quickly. The passenger door was slammed and locked. Ben, Alison, and Hannah were safe inside. But outside, Sean lay crumpled on the sidewalk, eyes wincing in pain. He was clutching his arm. Blood ran down and pooled with the rain into a crimson bruise beneath his body. It was the same arm that Ben had hit with the brick.

  The cars came to a halt in an angry thunder. A second later, the guards ran at the truck, an avalanche of silver wetness that rocked them from side to side. They wrestled frantically with the door handles and shoved and pounded against the metal. One of the men started striking at the windshield with a crowbar, the glass shattering into blossoms of spider webs with each blow.

  The keys were in the ignition. Ben knew what to do. His instincts were now in full control of his brain. He turned the key and put the truck into drive.

  “Ben, what are you doing?” yelled Hannah.

  “Getting out of here,” said Ben. He kicked at the gas pedal and the truck bucked to life. But the rain was so heavy he couldn’t see out the windshield. There was yelling outside, and the truck slammed into one of the silver cars. Ben put it in reverse, and there were more yells and another crunch. Then Alison turned on the windshield wipers and the world outside became visible.

  “Damn it,” said Ben. There were cars on all sides--they were boxed in. But to their left was maybe just enough room to squeeze through.

  “That way--go!” yelled Alison, pointing at the gap.

  But Hannah was pointing off to their right. “Look!” she cried. Sean had been thrown across the hood of one of the cars, and was being beaten up by two Milagcorp guards. There were slugging Sean over and over in the gut and in the ribs. His mouth hung open and his eyes stared at the sky.

  “What are you waiting for, Ben?” said Alison. “Just go!” Her plea could barely be heard above the screaming of the Milagcorp guards pounding away at the sides of the truck.

  Ben watched Sean being turned into a piece of meat. He slumped to the ground, but a Milagcorp guard picked him up and threw him back against the car. Another guard rolled up his sleeves and started in on Sean anew. Ben’s brain told him to look away, to drive the truck as fast as he could away from Sean, away from what Sean said Ben couldn’t escape. But Ben’s heart wouldn’t let him go. Without actually being aware of making a decision, he put the truck back into drive and slammed down on the gas.

  Half of Ben wanted to crush Sean with the truck, to add him to his list of scapegoats and victims. But Sean was right. They couldn’t run. And something inside Ben’s head told him they’d need Sean, that even though he was t
aking them away from their mother and Thomas, he was on their side.

  “No,” said Ben.

  The tires spun and the truck jumped to the right. The Milagcorp guards looked up and scrambled out of the way just as the truck smashed against their car, the force of the collision throwing Ben’s head against the steering wheel.

  “Grab him!” ordered Ben. Hannah opened the passenger door and dragged Sean into the truck. The door was slammed and locked just as the guards came rushing at them. Sean lay sprawled out over the seats, his hair smeared over his eyes, his shirt almost completely red.

  “I thought you said they weren’t trying to kill us?” said Ben.

  “Oh, I’m fair game,” breathed Sean in a pained wheeze. “Now get us out of here.”

  Ben hit the gas. But nothing happened. He tried the ignition but the engine wouldn’t turn over. The truck was stalled. The Milagcorp guards were striking at the windshield again, and one was prying at the edge of the driver’s door.

  “Oh no. Damn it,” cursed Ben.

  “Now what?” cried Alison.

  “Get in the back,” ordered Sean. “We’ll have to do it here. Come on.” He opened a small door behind the seats and pushed them into the rear of the truck. He dragged himself in behind them, groaning and holding his bloody arm. A large, spherical object sat like an elephant in the darkness. Ben couldn’t see exactly what it was, but it had a sort of golden tinge. Despite the lack of light, it sparkled like a massive diamond. Sean pressed a tiny button, and a circular hatch clicked open under the belly of the thing.

  “What is this thing?” asked Alison.

  Sean’s voice was urgent and annoyed. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll explain later. Well, there’s going to be no hiding this from Milagro now.”

  Behind them, the guards swarming the truck had nearly smashed through the windshield and the windows. The four of them squirmed into the small hatch in the sphere. Sean flicked a switch and a greenish, white light shook to life just above their heads. They were in some sort of capsule, barely big enough for the four of them. All around them were clusters and arteries of wires, dials, digital readouts and flashing lights. Thomas would have been in heaven.

  Sean hurriedly spun a series of knobs and pushed button after button on the control panels. The truck began to shake but it wasn’t clear whether it was the machine itself moving back and forth, or whether the guards had ripped the doors off the truck and were now inside. Blood was dripping from Sean’s arm and his shirt was drenched red.

  “This is some sort of spaceship,” said Ben.

  “Depends how you define space,” said Sean without stopping his rapid work at the controls. He was grimacing in pain. “Okay, kids, time to buckle up.” A deep humming rose around them. It became faster and louder until Ben felt like it was going to burst his eardrums. Sean reached up and slid open a small screen to reveal a tiny piece of glass. Through it they could see that the rear doors of the truck had been torn open. Three Milagcorp guards were assembling a monstrous gun out on the street.

  “They’ve got a gun pointed right at us!” yelled Alison.

  “Don’t worry,” said Sean. He twirled a bunch of knobs at his feet. A new whirring sound started and increased in frequency until it became the scream of a child in the throes of a tantrum.

  “And why not?” Ben’s voice cracked. One of the men was fitting a long barrel onto the end of the gun.

  “You . . . it . . . They won’t shoot,” said Sean without looking up. “Unless they have one of those electropulse disabling laser cannons.”

  “And what’s that?” screamed Alison.

  Sean looked up from the control panel to where Alison was pointing. “Okay then,” he said in a panic. “Looks like they’ve got one there.”

  The guards’ mouths moved in silent commands, but the walls of the pod were so thick that no sound could be heard inside. The gun was swung around and pointed right at them. Alison and Hannah’s screams united into a singular wail.

  “I think we might just make it,” said Sean quietly, as if he didn’t mean for the three children to hear his astonishment. “Hold on!” he yelled as he pushed a button on the main control panel. Ben felt his stomach rise into his throat. It was as if a trap door had collapsed beneath them. The overpowering howl of the machine was at once replaced by the high-pitched whine of a giant vacuum cleaner. It was the cry--half snarl, half moan--of some sort of electric beast. Ben felt himself begin to vomit, but managed to look up at the screen for a split second.

  “Down we go--hold on!” Sean’s voice faded away and his face disappeared in a flash of light. In a microsecond it became unclear whether they had been obliterated by the massive gun out on the street, or whether the machine they were in had just done something incomprehensible. The only thing Ben saw before he blacked out completely was the image of the silver men through the viewing screen replaced by what looked to be dirt.

  Chapter Twenty-eight: The Light through the Trees

  The massive trees reared up everywhere like scaly gray skyscrapers. The twisted and gnarled trunks--thirty feet around at least--creaked and moaned ominously, and it took a few minutes to be reassured that they weren’t going to break and fall over. The foliage was so dense that very little light filtered through to the ground, a matted thatch of old leaves and twigs that crunched underfoot. Even though it wasn’t raining, the humidity made their clothes cling to their bodies. No one spoke. Ben felt like he was drowning in the sourceless, background noise that seemed to climb and fall in coordinated chaos like the waves of an ocean.

  On each level of branches was a different community of residents: up high, tiny birds--some completely camouflaged and others bright and radiant--argued and gossiped. On the lower branches, monkeys shrieked and nattered as they picked the glowing red fruit hanging finger-like from the ends of sagging limbs. One of the monkeys, a piece of fruit jammed halfway into its mouth, was shrieking in panic. The voices of the other monkeys rose in pitch and volume to signal that they had heard the cry, but once they took notice of the scene down below, they went back to their business, seeming almost annoyed at having been disturbed by the monkey who was maybe known for raising false alarms. Except for the one wailing monkey, none of the animals was overly concerned by the sudden emergence of four humans from the round metallic thing, which now sat smoking on what looked like a very large anthill. Or perhaps the monkeys recognized one of these humans.

  Another wave of nausea brought Ben’s head swinging back down, and he heaved out what little was left in his stomach. He wiped his mouth and felt the crusts of dried blood ringing his nostrils. His head pulsed like a lighthouse. The only thing they had eaten since the previous night’s gastronomical free-for-all in the now-demolished Strand were those cans of peaches in the abandoned house. Whatever food that had been in their stomachs was now strewn across the jungle floor. To Ben’s left, Hannah and Alison were each staggering around in their own private hells. On his right, Sean held his hands to his head and slowly regained his composure. He had tied his shirt around his arm as a sling, and the bleeding looked to have stopped.

  “I did say ‘hold on’, did I not?” said Sean with a wry smile. “I think you kids smacked your noggins pretty good when the Moses achieved full propulsion. Sorry, that’s my fault, I guess. You’re not really supposed to go straight to complete velocity like that. Bit sick I see. Not to worry--happens to everyone their first time.”

  “Great,” muttered Alison as she wiped her mouth.

  “What just happened?” asked Hannah from between cheek-bulging gulps. “And where are we?”

  “Well,” said Sean in a proud voice, “we got away. Not a very clean escape I guess, but we got away nonetheless. Milagro now knows that we have a Moses, though, and that certainly complicates our situation. Hmm. We’ll have to hide it.”

  “No, she means what is that machine,” said Ben. “And how did we get here?” The sphere now sat shimmering and dumb on the top of a heap of earth, vague waves of st
eam circling around it, its high-pitched cry still echoing in Ben’s ears. In what felt like only a minute or two, they had been transported from a battle in the flooded streets of Los Angeles to a squawking, humid rainforest.

  “Oh, right. The Moses. Mass Opening Sequential Energy System. It’s actually Milagro’s. Stole it a few years back. Been keeping it in the back of the truck in case I needed a quick escape. Fantastic contraption, but not without its complications and potential problems.”

  “So we left Los Angeles . . . and now we’re in the jungle?” asked Hannah.

  “Yep. Here, help me move the thing. There’s a big hole under that tree over there.” Sean was favoring his arm, and he winced in pain as they all leaned against the sphere. It grudgingly moved an inch or two.

  “But how long did that take?” asked Hannah.

  “About an hour. You were all unconscious. Come on, push harder.”

  Ben was not the geographical whiz his little brother was, but he knew this was impossible. “What? An hour? To go from Los Angeles to South America?”

  Sean stopped and smiled at Ben. “The Moses takes a direct line through the earth. Shortest distance between two points is a straight line, right? Airplanes are for losers, Ben.”

  Ben recalled the image of dirt through the viewing screen in the Moses, just before he blacked out. “Through the earth? How?”

  Sean stopped to scratch his chin in contemplation, letting the others continue rolling the machine. “I dunno, really. Nuclear stuff, I guess. It disassembles mass in front and reassembles it behind. Produces a tremendous amount of energy--slices right through the earth. And through water. Just like the old chap and the Red Sea, eh?”

  “How is that even possible?” asked Alison.

  Sean chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, well, technology and magic are pretty similar these days, aren’t they? Come on--we have to get going. Damn machine leaves an atomic slime trail. Milagro’s goons will probably be showing up before too long.”

 

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