The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  “Fine,” she said.

  She got to her feet and began to pace the room. There were ten bunk beds, their mattresses stacked at intervals between them along the walls. A row of lockers covered the far wall. There were no posters or pictures to remind anyone of anywhere else. There was a rustic heater in the centre of the room; a doorway opened into a bathroom and shower cubicle.

  “This is where the rotating trainees would stay,” Morgan said after a while, his tone placatory.

  “Rotating from where?” she said shortly. “Alpha? Bravo? The Moon?”

  Lightholler chuckled.

  “We never knew where we were,” the ghost dancer said, his voice low and surprisingly reverent.

  They all looked across at him.

  “We knew in our hearts, of course. But up here...” He tapped his temple and shrugged.

  “So where are we?” she probed gently.

  Morgan opened his mouth to speak but something stopped him. Lightholler stared with unconcealed interest.

  “This is the other place.” The indian’s smile was enigmatic. He wasn’t being facetious. His look suggested that his answer was complete.

  “What happens here?” She cast a swift challenging look at her companions. They held their silence.

  If the indian was surprised by her ignorance he kept it well hidden. “Change,” he said. He nodded sagely but offered nothing more.

  Lightholler’s face registered total surprise. “They know?” he blurted to

  Morgan in disbelief. “All of them?”

  “They don’t know,” Morgan replied wearily. He looked over to the indian. “They believe. It’s an entirely different thing.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “How else are you going to keep a secret this big?”

  The handle turning in the door gave her a sudden start. Joseph stood at the entrance.

  “Let’s go,” he said grimly. “There’s something I want to show you.”

  “It’s about time,” Lightholler said.

  They rose to their feet.

  VI

  They headed towards an isolated structure that stood at a distance from the shadows of the main compound. The stars above twinkled faintly through the russet penumbra of falling sand. It fell softly, insidious, announcing itself at the palm’s crease, the lip’s crust, the eyelid’s edge. This, Morgan thought, is what comes of sundering eternal bonds. The inexorable meets the unyielding and actuality is found wanting.

  He peered ahead. Kennedy and Malcolm had almost reached the building’s entrance. They walked in close conversation. Was he her Virgil or she his Beatrice? Morgan’s own guide pricked his thoughts with a sharp reprimand. Save that shit for later, pal.

  A torch sputtered nearby; a sentry watching the hazy perimeter. Other ghost dancers were scattered near and far across the grounds. He felt every eye inspecting their staggered march.

  Doc’s oasis glimmered feebly where a guard smoked a cigarette under the pale glow of his lantern. The encrusted water was a still membrane of red sand; the palms, leaning at odd angles, a gateway fallen to ruin.

  “Nice set-up you have here,” Lightholler remarked offhandedly.

  Morgan replied, “We run a kids’ camp here each summer.”

  Lightholler sniggered. It was another example of the churlish attitude he’d displayed at the Lone Star, but there was a twist; some fresh warp in his weave that wasn’t anger and wasn’t fear but something altogether less wholesome. When planning his recruitment, they’d envisioned an ally sworn to their task. Now Morgan couldn’t picture the man beside him commanding an ocean liner, much less the fate of the world.

  They were only a few feet away from the entrance now.

  Lightholler, perhaps reading something in Morgan’s expression, said, “Your trail of breadcrumbs ... back on my ship. You were tossing them from the stern.”

  Faced with the memory, Morgan reddened.

  Lightholler laughed with surprising warmth. “I’d give anything to retrace those steps.”

  “That’s why we’re here, Captain.”

  Kennedy and Malcolm stood at the entrance. He held a ghost dancer’s torch, unlit, before him. Her silhouette traced the lines that nature had generously sculpted there, while hiding the scars of recent travails. Confederate Gothic. She offered Morgan a look that bordered on apologetic. She’d never know what those days of captivity had done to him.

  His answering smile was a worn mask. “I guess it’s time to go down to the dragon’s lair.”

  VII

  Kennedy gave the darkened base a final sweep. Torches dotted the terrain. The rock formation that gave its name to the installation seemed a reprimand to the heavens.

  Lightholler cocked an ear at a strange sound and, tracing it to his feet, examined the sparkling sheets of molten sand. “Well, how do you like that?” He cast a sceptical eye over the small building but made no further comment.

  Shafts had been excavated and caverns hollowed out and the adobe had been finally replaced by this unobtrusive lean-to, but this was where Hardas, Morgan, Shine and Kennedy had listened to Doc’s lessons. Here they’d puzzled out the workings of the time machine, and journeyed forwards and witnessed the fruits of their labour: sand-picked bones floating on a radioactive tide. It may have been Patricia’s unforeseen presence, or a phenomenon born of the scarlet glow—faint now in the western skies—but Kennedy was struck by how much the view recalled his vision from the carapace. Not so much the sights, but the attendant feeling of perfect despair.

  I’m not going to make it.

  He hid the dread behind the rampart of his face.

  “We’ll skip the fanfare,” he said, and knocked sharply on the door.

  It swung open on sturdy hinges to reveal the soot-grimed features of Hayes, a ghost dancer, his sweat-stained blue shirt open to the navel. Wisps of smoke escaped from behind him and wafted into the night air. He gave Kennedy’s entourage the once-over and stepped aside. They descended the stairs. Doc may have forewarned him, but hearing was one thing and seeing another. The antechamber was filled with fumes. Torches tilted at odd angles, hung from improvised receptacles on the chamber’s walls. A single lantern hung suspended above the elevator. Two technicians studied a tangle of cables by the elevator doors as they attempted to wire the system to a battery array.

  “I’ve been using the service duct,” Hayes said.

  Avoiding their eyes, Kennedy directed his companions to a circular iron door near the room’s hub. From without, the structure might have passed for a derelict shack, tacked on to the main installation as an afterthought. Within, however, concrete slab walls curved inwards to an arced dome whose apex fused with the central elevator shaft. The walls themselves were scored with an incongruous blend of computer monitors and indian glyphs. The monitor readouts were blank or sizzled white-grey in silence. The ancient symbols, thrown into relief by the torchlight, were an arcane prelude to the possibilities that dwelt below.

  Kennedy approached the duct. The technicians stole furtive glances, their awed faces cowed by Hayes’ stern reproach. The indian helped him raise the thick casing of the service door. Tendrils of black smoke curled around the raised edges and spewed out in a noxious cloud as the door clanged open.

  “We’re working on the ventilation,” Hayes offered contritely.

  Kennedy nodded in faint acknowledgment. The duct was lit by lanterns, fixed at regular intervals along the ladder’s rungs. “Will you be okay getting down?” he asked Morgan.

  “Should be fine.” The historian’s face was bright with anticipation, in stark contrast to the others who eyed the shaft dubiously.

  Lightholler spoke up. “After you,” he said, and bowed to Kennedy with mock deference.

  “Let them know we’re coming down,” Kennedy called across to Hayes.

  Hayes picked up a hammer and tapped a lead pipe that accompanied the duct, giving the signal. Kennedy grasped the top rung and lowered himself into the opening. He’d negotiated
twenty feet before glancing up to check the others’ progress. Little light made its way down the shaft. Below, a weak red glow flickered. He had to squint against the rising vapours.

  Patricia was a few feet above him. He continued the descent. The rungs chimed with their steps, the duct echoed their ragged breaths, and indistinct murmurs floated up from below. The encouraging thrum of the auxiliary generator rose steadily. He dropped the last few feet to the metal floor below.

  A red lantern swung by the ladder on the unnatural draughts that swept the chamber. An elaborate blanket flapped over the entrance that led to the cavern beyond. A map of the night skies had been worked into the weaving. Its filigree of cerulean and emerald luminaries rippled portentously.

  He reached out a hand to support Patricia’s waist and helped her gain the ground. He watched, slightly bemused, as she fussed with the oversized uniform she’d been given earlier.

  “I need a shower,” she said. Her tone was almost an accusation.

  “You look fine.”

  Lightholler dropped to the ground between them. He landed lightly and began making a rapid survey of the room. Kennedy followed his eyes as they scanned across the walls. There were fewer markings here. The glyphs, where present, were subtle arrangements. Rather than the miscellany of workmanship found above, they clearly demonstrated the craft of a single hand: Tecumseh’s guidelines for that other world.

  Carve the dream here; forge the reality there.

  Lightholler approached the blanket and laid a hand against the coarse fabric. “Through here?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Morgan eased himself to the floor with a grimace. He eyed the cavern and said, “Looks different with the power out. Looks more like what it is.”

  “And what is that?” Malcolm asked softly.

  “A gateway,” Morgan replied.

  Kennedy parted the blanket’s folds.

  Morgan stared.

  Unpowered, the carapace was faithful to its name, more shell than device. It was as if the force that nestled within the baroque exterior had been extinguished.

  She’s dead in the water, bud.

  No, not extinguished. Something still pulsed within the dense black-silver canopy. The ozone was a faint presence within the smoky haze, and it was colder here. Nothing obvious, just the slightest prickle of his skin against his clothes.

  The major will get her going, Morgan thought. We’ll get there, Hardas.

  Sure we will.

  * * *

  Malcolm fell forwards, clutching her abdomen. She heard a voice— Joseph’s —swearing, and felt arms grab her, cradling her slow pirouette.

  The floor heaved. She closed her eyes. Bile burned the back of her mouth and it took every effort to hold back the contents of her engorged throat. Blood whipped within her veins, steel-tipped lashes of ice.

  “It’s alright,” a voice said. “Slow breaths. Deep breaths. Don’t fight it.” Strong arms embraced her. A strange scent that was the loamy earth, but also smouldering coals, enfolded her in a secure cocoon.

  “It can’t be,” she said in a small voice.

  “Of course not.”

  She looked up into the deep brown of Tecumseh’s eyes. He held her tightly. She fought the urge to flinch away from the medicine man. Joseph observed their exchange, pale-faced. The others remained standing, their eyes fixed on the machine.

  “It can’t be,” she repeated.

  Tecumseh’s voice was warm and persuasive. “Accept that realisation and look upon it again.”

  She glanced up, hesitantly, trying to glimpse it from a safe angle—if such a thing was possible. Joseph was watching her anxiously. Tecumseh crooned the words of an unknown tongue in her ear.

  The wounded beast crouched on twelve metal segments in a nest of its own matted cable.

  Tecumseh’s song wound its course, soothing her mind as his arms supported her body.

  An intelligence seemed to lurk behind the mirrored casement of its sculpted shell. She came to realise that it was only a reflection of the onlookers.

  Tecumseh’s song faded into a sigh.

  She turned to him and said, “Thank you.”

  The medicine man nodded slowly.

  “How did you know what would help me?” she murmured.

  “This is what happens when any of my brothers first view the device. You see what we have seen. Your sense of being here before will fade.”

  “You should have warned me,” she whispered to Joseph.

  “What would have sufficed?”

  He was a prick and a bastard and absolutely correct.

  Tecumseh shot her a mischievous grin and said, “You should see it when it’s powered up.”

  She gave a nervous laugh and rose to her feet, trembling. She crossed to Joseph’s side and cast Tecumseh a final discomforted look of thanks. He bowed and stepped back into the shadows.

  Lightholler gazed in absolute wonder.

  It was a spider; silvery-black, frozen in a web that was the distal extensions of its own limbs. Ornate cowling veiled a sleeping power that pledged an infinity of promises. He had to blink a number of times to put the machine into perspective.

  Doc and another man were checking an assortment of cords that wound into a Medusa’s knot at the carapace’s underbelly. Lightholler traced the cords to a freestanding generator that was in turn plugged into a fitting in the cement-rendered wall.

  He shifted his gaze to take in the entire cavern. The carapace occupied the bulk of the hollow. Computer monitors perched idle on wide unmanned consoles; a wall of shelves was crammed with documents and maps. A gantry, secured to the ceiling, could be rotated to offer access to the vehicle. There was only one etching adorning the thick walls here: a solitary buffalo, painted in fine strokes of red and white, defiantly facing the hunched machine. A bunk bed, up against the far wall, seemed out of place. There was a small night table adjacent to it, crowded with books and a crude model of the carapace that had been broken into two segments. Above the bed was a pale patch of wall where something had once hung.

  Malcolm was back on her feet. He’d seen her drop to the ground, yet had been unable to move from his place, held as frozen as the inert machine. She gave him a look that wasn’t reproachful but kept her glance away from the carapace.

  Kennedy spoke. “We don’t know how the interface works. We don’t know where the atoms slip up against each other, or how it is that the carapace slides through. We don’t know how here and now becomes there and then.”

  Lightholler said, “Thank you, Joseph.”

  It was okay now. Everything was okay. He understood Morgan and Hardas and Shine and Kennedy and the ghost dancers. He understood Wells.

  He believed.

  VIII

  Morgan remained transfixed. It was Doc who broke the spell.

  He approached them as they stood staring at the machine and led them to one of the consoles. He outlined the situation. Despite its altitude, the atomic blast’s discharge had battered the installation. Waves of gamma radiation had white-capped a sea of ionised particles in a brief, sudden pulse that had assaulted every operational electronic device in the region. There was no way of knowing the radius of the effects, since communications were down.

  The radar was down.

  The carapace was down.

  Some of the damage was superficial and some was permanent. The carapace could be restored to full function but the programming necessary to configure their destinations was lost. Entire sub-routines needed to be recalculated from scratch, and with all the computers disabled that process in itself would take long hours. It might not be possible.

  To make matters worse, the machine required an external catalyst for its first jump. The generator that was meant to effect that leap was a burnt-out casing lying by one of the carapace’s supports. A makeshift generator was charging from an external source linked to Alpha but the juice was trickling in slowly. By Doc’s estimate they were looking at another fifteen hours before the ca
rapace was powered up for complete extraction.

  Doc turned to join a technician by one of the monitors. The major filled them in on the rest.

  He began with a précis for Malcolm’s benefit, covering the journal— how they’d found it and where it had led them. She snuck cautious glances at the machine while the major summarised the manuscript’s contents. Her initial bewilderment turned to horror as Kennedy outlined the results of his first voyage in the carapace.

  She asked her questions. They suggested a keen mind and supported Morgan’s theories about her prior relationship to the major. He reflected that their parting couldn’t have been acrimonious nor had it been conclusive. They completed each other’s sentences, used gestures for phrases and glances for affirmation; but nothing could soft en the blow. Sometime in the imminent future, there would be no detectable human life on the planet.

  Malcolm excused herself and wandered over to the bunk bed, where she sat by the night stand toying with the model of the carapace. Tecumseh joined her. They shared quiet words.

  Kennedy wrapped things up. He said his ghost dancers were already encountering Japanese soldiers at various points north and west of the Rock but there was only so much that could be achieved by the two hundred men under his command. He needed to go over the latest intelligence. He needed to get out there and brief his platoon leaders. He needed to blunt the Japanese advance.

  “What you need to do is catch some sleep,” Lightholler told him.

  Kennedy shrugged it off.

  Malcolm returned. She seemed more at peace. Stepping alongside Kennedy, she said, “We need to talk.”

  He shot Morgan and Lightholler an ambiguous look and said, “I’ll catch up with you. Get some rest yourselves.”

  “Is there anything we can do to help here?” Lightholler asked.

  Kennedy shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’ll tell us when you need us,” Lightholler insisted. “Won’t you?”

  Kennedy gave him a threadbare smile. “Have you ever known me to hold back?”