Forts: Endings and Beginnings

by Steven Novak

  Another voice emerged from somewhere among the crowd. While this one was a bit more feminine, it was no less frustrated or angry. “How do you know they’ve found it?”

  A response came quickly. “I saw with my own three eyes, that’s how! They’ve discovered the hundredth world, they’ve dug their damn hole, and they’ve sent the diggers through! I tell you, the invasion has begun! While we stand here arguing amongst ourselves another world is about to be pillaged! We can’t let that happen! Not again!”

  As her children shivered against the plates of her chest, Lenore Guzarea again cursed Zanell, the Ochans, the citizens of New Tipoloo, and the universe at large. She was tired of death and of fighting. She was tired of battling for her life among her friends as well as her enemies. She was tired of prophecies, and magic, and lies, and she was thoroughly disgusted with the idea of starting over. She wanted it all end.

  Endings however, rarely adhere to the whim of man—or woman.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 19

  THE DAY THE SKY TURNED RED

  *

  With her hand in his, Ed Williamson escorted his wife to the upstairs bedroom, helped her into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin and lovingly tucked her in. She loved being wrapped like a cocoon when she slept; she’d always loved it. It made her feel safe, and Ed knew this. It was the same reason she preferred to sleep during the day. Her logic was that, “no one could hurt her when it was light out.” It was silly of course, but Ed found the silliness so damn cute. It was one of the many reasons he loved her. If there was ever a time over the course of their marriage when Edna needed to feel safe, this was indeed it. From the moment Tommy and his little brother Nicky disappeared, Edna Williamson had become an emotional wreck. They knew that agreeing to take the boys into their home in the first place was a risky proposition. Becoming foster parents meant dredging up old wounds, which in turn meant dealing head on with issues they’d chosen to forget for years, issues they thought they had put behind them. Though the boys only lived with them for six months, Edna had grown closer to the children than she could ever have anticipated. She was overjoyed to hear the voices of young ones again. It had been so long after all, so long since they lost Jacob.

  Once again, though, that which she had come to care for so very much had been taken from her, ripped from her grasp before she was even remotely ready to let it go, and without so much as a goodbye. Once again Edna found herself confused among the ashes of what might have been, feeling cheated and hollowed out and frustrated and angry.

  Placing his hand gently on her wrinkled forehead, Ed pushed a few loose strands of whisper-thin gray hair from her eyes. He wanted her to sleep and to hopefully forget, if just for a while. He wanted her to rest. She deserved a little rest. The aching bones in his back popped audibly as he leaned forward to place a gentle, breathy kiss on the pale skin of her cheek. She tasted like red licorice. He loved that taste. Though he still wasn’t sure if it was something she wore, or simply the natural taste of her skin, he’d always loved that taste. Ed Williamson had kissed his wife’s face a million times over the course of their marriage, and remarkably the act was no less special than it had ever been. Even after decades together, every kiss remained important, and every moment special. Time hadn’t touched them. There had been difficult periods, of course, many of them in fact. Such was to be expected. Without the bad though, there could have been no good. The two needed each other to exist, the same as he needed Edna. Though Ed hated the bad, over the years he’d come to accept its necessity and possibly even respect it.

  He was worried about Tommy and Nicky as much as his wife. He was hurting, and feeling broken up, and trying to force back all the wild, ugly scenarios his mind insisted on conjuring up. Three other local children were missing as well, and no one seemed able to locate Christopher Jarvis either. It was a mess, all of it: a big, disgusting mess in which he and his wife found themselves caught in the middle. Staring down at Edna, watching as she turned onto her side and pulled the covers even tighter against her chin, Ed knew they would survive this the same as they had survived every trial and tribulation tossed in their direction over the years. They would do it together. Leaning forward once again, he kissed her cheek softly and exhaled a bit of hot air that made her smile in her slumber.

  Licorice again. It was always licorice.

  After painfully pulling himself into an upright position, Ed crept as lightly as he could across the hardwood floor, exited the room and gently closed the door behind. Edna would be asleep for some time. She’d run herself ragged with worry over the last few days. Her body needed to recharge, even if her mind had no interest in such perceivably trivial things. She was far too old to fight her body anymore. She’d be asleep for hours whether she liked it or not.

  Ed’s knees were sorer than ever, and navigating the stairs to the lower floor proved a frustratingly achy experience. Once downstairs, he made his way through the kitchen where he grabbed a cup of hot tea and a jacket before lumbering like an injured soldier through the patio door and onto the backyard porch. Night was rapidly approaching. There was a storm on the horizon. The air smelled crisper around this time of day, and it was that very crispness that he loved. Everything felt sharper, sharper and more real. He could feel the breeze in his bones. In anticipation of the coming night most of the neighborhood had slowed to a crawl. Ed appreciated the lulls and the silence – especially now. The lack of neighborly chatter or the buzz of lawnmowers or the grind of cars helped him think. It helped him clear his head and focus. It helped him relax. Leaning back in the same tattered patio chair he’d been reclining in for years, he breathed deep, stretched his legs, and closed his eyes. Inhaling, he let his beloved crispness coat his lungs and held it there. Everything else faded away. His heart rate began to slow and the aching muscles in his neck and back that were stretched to their absolute limits over the last few days relented.

  For the briefest of moments, nothing else existed. For the most miniscule of nanoseconds there was only Edward Williamson. For a glimpse of a flash, his hair hadn’t thinned to the point that it was barely clinging to his head, his joints didn’t insist on popping and clapping from even the most basic of movements, and his wife wasn’t lying heartbroken in the upstairs bedroom. For a moment Ed was alone with the chirp of the crickets, the gentle sway of the trees above, and the wonderfully warming taste of licorice still lingering on his lips. For a moment there were no worries, because there was nothing.

  But only for a moment.

  Lost in his nothingness, Ed Williamson barely noticed the first tremor. The second one, however, shook the ground so forcefully that the chair underneath him slipped on the deck and tumbled to the side. Tossed violently against the chilly wood, Ed landed on his elbow, which in turn sent a jolt of pain across the left side of his body and blasted him back to reality with a yelp and a grunt. While struggling to get to his feet, yet another tremor shook the neighborhood, rattled the leaves loose from their trees and knocked Ed onto his rear. In spite of the throbbing pangs of pain moving across his body, his first thoughts were of his wife. Edna – he had to get to Edna. It was an earthquake. It had to be an earthquake. Though he’d never been in an earthquake, Ed certainly understood the basic principals of one. It had to be an earthquake. It couldn’t be anything else. It was an earthquake and he had to get to Edna. He had to make sure she was safe.

  It was at this moment that he heard the roar.

  The sound was as unmistakable as it was unbelievable. The roar was so loud it shook the ground like an aftershock, so loud it cracked the pane of glass on the window behind him. It seemed to come from everywhere. It sounded as if it was spewing down from the clouds. The incredible sound reverberated off the surrounding houses, bouncing back and fourth so many times that its true origin was nearly impossible to distinguish. Using the patio table as a brace, Ed managed to get himself into a standing position just in time for another brutal tremor to shake the ground beneath
his feet. This was followed immediately by yet another ungodly roar. Stumbling backward, Ed’s body collided with the patio door and further extended the newly formed crack. His head smacked against the glass so hard it almost buckled his already wobbly legs. With his right hand he reached up and massaged the already swelling lump under what remained of his gray hair. As the ground rumbled yet again, his gaze was drawn momentarily to the sky, where the dark blues of the impending night were being swallowed by something else entirely. Though it seemed to have no form, a wall of the deepest, most frightening red he’d ever seen was devouring the clouds and the sun and all things not of this earth. Within seconds, the world as Ed Williamson had come to know it was transformed into something crimson, and otherworldly, and terrifying. In a matter of seconds, everything had changed.

  Finding it difficult to breathe, Ed flung open the sliding glass door and stumbled into the house. His head was pounding, his entire body was lurching like a rusted tin man, and he had absolutely no idea what was going on. Sure, it felt like an earthquake, but what about the sky? Why was the sky turning red? He was moments from calling out to his wife when he noticed Edna already charging in his direction from the opposite end of the room.

  She was moving faster than she’d moved in years, her arms flailing wildly as she slammed her body into her husband’s and shoved him backward against the nearby table. “Eddie! Ohmygod Eddie! Eddie, what’s going on?”

  Unfortunately he didn’t have an answer. Even as she dug her face into his chest and squeezed him so tight he thought his head might pop off his shoulders, he still could offer no response. From somewhere outside came the roar once again. It was followed this time by another, and yet another after that in close succession. They were getting louder. With Edna still clinging to his chest, Ed reached for the phone. When he put it to his ear, he heard nothing. There was no dial tone. There was nothing. Across from him the lights in the living room lamps flickered out at all at once, and the display on the microwave digital clock puttered and flashed before turning black. Through the bay window across from him, Ed watched the lights in the houses across the cul-de-sac and the lamppost at the end of the street dim to nothingness.

  What was going on? What the hell was happening?

  Again the ground shook; again came the horrible roars. Louder still, they were followed by the sound of something crashing, or exploding, or simply being obliterated. For a moment Ed thought he might have heard someone, somewhere, scream.

  Wrapping his arms around his wife, he pulled her as tight to his chest as his muscles would allow. She was trembling, more terrified than he’d ever seen her.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  *

  *

  CHAPTER 20

  DEATH GRIN

  *

  Making good use of the key he retrieved from the dead Ochan soldier, Brutus immediately unlocked Staci Alexander’s cell and threw the bars aside with an echoing clank. The moment it was opened, Tahnja rushed past the burly mound of fur, dropped to one knee, and wrapped her arms around the shivering girl. Instinctively Staci pawed at the pink-skinned woman, pulled her close and held her tight. It felt good to be near someone that wasn’t trying to kill her. It felt good to be close to anyone at all.

  Gently stroking Staci’s crinkly, partially frozen hair, Tahnja pressed their chilly cheeks close together and whispered into the shivering girl’s ear. “It’s okay baby. Everything’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here.”

  Her need to protect Staci was less a conscious decision than it was an instinct. For every living thing there is a mother, and it wasn’t too long ago that Tahnja was one herself. Some things can never be forgotten.

  With a quickness belying his monstrous proportions, Brutus moved from Staci’s cell and quickly opened the one encasing Donald Rondage. Stepping with focus into the shadows, he wrapped his massive arms around the shell-shocked boy and pulled him to his feet. While Brutus was half expecting resistance, he found none. Donald’s limbs were limp and dangly, his body seemed almost without mass. Placing his paw under the boy’s chin, he maneuvered Donald’s head so he could look directly into the boy’s eyes. What he saw was nothing. What he saw was emptiness. Donald was somewhere else, somewhere distant and faraway where he couldn’t be hurt anymore. He was lost and seemed to have no immediate interest in coming back. The boy had witnessed Walcott’s torture. He’d seen the king of Tycaria literally ripped in half, watched the life pour from his wounds and his eyes roll back. He witnessed his friend die in the most brutal fashion possible, and it had changed him forever. Despite this, Brutus believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Donald’s current vegetative state had as much to do with the awful things he’d seen as it did with whatever Kragamel had done to him. From his belly seeped a low, long, and angry growl. Seeing Donald in such a state was infuriating. His hands pulled tight and his knuckles cracked like a pair of gargantuan stones smacked together by the hands of the gods themselves.

  A child of his age had no place in the heat of battle. The universe had no right.

  Leaning against another cell a few feet away, clouds of chilly smoke passing between his lips with every labored breath, was none other than the gray-haired, snout-nosed creature known as Teek. While one of his paws held tightly to the bars behind for balance, the other pressed against the gaping wound in his side. Though it had stopped bleeding some time ago, this was simply because Teek had no more blood to bleed. He was dying. Too much of his warm insides had already spilled out, and there was no getting them back. He’d long since progressed past the point of no return. Patching himself now would have accomplished nothing. The question was not whether he would survive, but how long until he was dead.

  Sitting unevenly on Teek’s shoulder, using clumps of half-frozen gray fur to keep his balance while nursing his own debilitating wounds, was little Roustaf. The muscles in his back twitched as if to flap his wings, but there were no wings to flap. He ripped them from his body to escape, and while it had worked, there was no getting them back. They were gone and they would remain that way forever. Glancing briefly over his shoulder, the little man stared back at the bloody cage that held him only minutes prior and was still dangling from the ceiling. Wedged perilously between two of the steel bars was a barely noticeable scrap of his shredded and nearly transparent wing. Already the point at which the rip occurred had begun to darken, coil, and curl like the edges of burnt paper. As unbearable as the physical pain coursing across the muscular filaments of Roustaf’s back continued to be, it was the idea of what he’d done to himself, no matter how necessary, that bothered him most. This is what caused him the most pain.

  With Staci tucked tightly against her side, Tahnja stepped from the cell into the dimly lit hallway. Immediately her eyes drifted to Roustaf. She watched as he stared longingly at the bloody cage and the bit of crinkled, torn wing. Though the movement was subtle, she noticed him sigh deep. She observed as his head dipped low for a moment and she felt her heart twist and shatter as he grimaced, holding back the tears he could never allow himself to shed. Never had she felt more sorry for him.

  Never had she loved him more.

  “We have to move. The Ochans are bound to notice the guards’ disappearance sooner than later,” Brutus remarked, stepping from the shadows of the nearby cell with the unresponsive body of Donald Rondage draped limply in his massive arms.

  “The fur-ball’s right,” Roustaf responded, quickly snapping back to reality. “We need to hightail it out of here while the gettin’s good. Only question is, where the hell are we supposed to go? Place is crawling with green-skins. There’s no way we can make it out of this castle…not alive anyway.”

  Collectively the group breathed a desperate sigh. They had managed to escape their cells, but this was ultimately a hollow victory. They remained trapped, trapped in this castle and trapped in Ocha. From either of these places there was no escape.

  “I can help you.”

  Rising from the sh
adows of a cell a bit further down the narrow corridor, the timid, weary response to Roustaf’s remark instantly garnered the attention of the group as a whole. Making his way past Tahnja, Brutus moved in the direction of the voice and discovered that it belonged to a pale-skinned, partially frozen creature shivering against the stone behind a series of thick steel bars. He looked old, extremely old. Sparse patches of twisted gray hair grew in clumps from his pale brown chin. His eyes were stained yellow, milky and distant. His skin was drawn tight against the skeletal frame underneath, leaving him looking patchy and gaunt. Where one of his arms should have been, Brutus saw only a stump. The wound left behind looked clean—too clean, almost surgical. The limb couldn’t have been lost in battle, not with a clean cut like that. This of course led Brutus to assume that the Ochan interrogators had removed it.

  Still holding Donald, he quickly unlocked the creature’s cell and motioned for the weary old thing to step outside. “You know of a way out?”

  What was left of the creature grimaced, struggling with every bit of energy in its body to get to its feet before wobbling in the direction of the open cell with a jittery, cautious half-grin on its weathered face.

  Once through the bars, it leaned its weight on Brutus’s shoulder, nearly out of breath. “No, there is no way out. There is a place to hide though, underneath one of the slave huts in the courtyard. It’s been there for years. A select few have managed to make it there and survive.”

  Tahnja moved behind Brutus, Staci clinging to her side and quivering like a falling leaf. “Over the years? How long have you been here?”

  “Does it matter?” The old creature answered between labored breaths. “Spend enough time within these walls and believe me, you begin to realize the pointlessness of time, young lady.”