by Geoff North
Reginald did a full spin. “They’re closing in from all directions.”
“Why the hell are they comin’ in such numbers now?” Lowe asked.
“We have to go back to the farmhouse,” Bertha said. “We have to get Brinn back to safety.”
Selma scowled at her. “I’d like to be saved too if that’s okay with you.”
Lowe was already digging around in the rocks and sand beneath their high point for more bullets. “The farmhouse ain’t such a good idea. They followed me and Reginald all night, and I can guarantee you for every one we killed below, there’ll be dozens more surrounding the place now.”
“So that’s it?” Brinn complained. “We’ve been here for less than half an hour and we’re all about to be slaughtered up in these rocks?”
“I’ll head north,” Oscar offered. “Try and draw some of them that way.”
Reginald made a buzzing sound; his lights blinked yellow and orange as if in deep thought. “I’ll go south…perhaps it will buy the marshal and Bertha sufficient time to keep moving west with the girls.”
“Nobody’s goin’ nowhere,” Lowe said. “We could split up and go in six directions, but they’d eventually overwhelm us. We stay put. We got the high ground and plenty of ammo. Besides, Reg, without you we wouldn’t be able to use the next gateway.”
“What gateway?” Selma asked. “Is there another way home?”
Lowe looked up at the dull brown sky and laughed. “Not home. Not by a long shot.”
An eerie silence fell over them for the next few minutes as they watched the wannasee stumble and lurch and gallop across the plains. It reminded Brinn of a noose tightening—a ring of faceless monstrosities closing in. There were too many of them—hundreds if not thousands too many. Their sheer numbers blanketed the brown earth in a muddy, moving sea of gray, dying flesh and yellow, diseased bone. Lowe’s rifle exploded into action, making her jump. The first of the wannasee—the fast, four-legged variety—had arrived at the foot of the rocks. They weren’t well equipped to climb, but Lowe blew them into pieces all the same.
Bertha prepared to leap from their boulder into their endless numbers with her sword swinging. Oscar grabbed her wrist and shook his head. “We have to stay together.”
Reginald rolled in front of them and jets of liquid shot out from the ends of his wiggling fingers. The streaming fluid ignited into a moving wall of flame below. He swiveled slowly and the wall of fire became a circle of death for any wannasee that tried to pass through. And they tried. Some made it, flailing their limbs in soundless agony. They became great pyres of thrashing orange and yellow. Not many made it far after that. They collapsed into the rocks, burning and smoking. Those that followed fell over, entangled in the smoldering corpses of those in front.
“Who needs machine guns and rocket launchers when you can use a flamethrower?” The robot’s fiery assault ended and his arms retracted back into his body.
Lowe continued to fire his rifle, putting an end to those burning, and to the others still pushing through. Bertha stood at the edge of the rock, her sword gripped in both hands, the muscles in her arms and legs tensed, ready to spring into action. Oscar inspected his arm. He clenched and unclenched his fist and watched the movement of artificial tendons within.
Bullets and fire, Brinn thought; next would come hand-to-hand. She and Selma would be of no use to these people when it came to that. And it would definitely come to that. Reginald’s defensive circle of fire was already dying out, and the wannasee were dragging their smoking bodies up into the rocks all around them. She closed her eyes and whimpered quietly.
We’re going to die here. I lied to Dad, and I let Gramma down.
The wannasee had made it to the top. Bertha hacked off arms as Oscar pushed the creatures away. Reginald’s arms coiled about others and squeezed. Lowe continued to fire, and fire, and fire. He paused momentarily to yell at the android, “Quit pussy-footin’ around. Kill the damn things!”
Oscar hesitated. He threw the next Wannasee further back into the pressing crowd. “No. I won’t kill them. They were like us at one time.”
Lowe answered by blasting the head off one, spattering the android across the face with its rotting remains. “For a machine, you bleed too much. They ain’t like us no more.”
Brinn’s whimper turned into a scream of fear and rage. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t her world. Selma didn’t deserve this. Her cry could be heard over the brain-buzzing wail of the wannasee; it was louder than the shooting, the hacking, and squeezing. When she was finished, all fell silent.
She opened her eyes. They were all staring at her. Even the wannasee had paused in their mindless advance, featureless heads all turned towards her. But it wasn’t Brinn they were seeing and sensing—it was something directly behind her.
“What is this place? Why am I here?”
She turned and saw the love of her early teen years looking about in a daze.
Paris Pureheart.
His wavy blond hair fluttered about his shoulders in the heat and smoke. His blue eyes sparkled, even though the sun was just a faded smudge in the sky. He was as she remembered him. Forever fifteen years old, handsome and cute beyond belief, and everything else a young girl wanted her dream wizard boy to look like. He was cloaked in a billowing robe of deep red. His boots were shiny black and in one hand he held a felt marker that was wielded more like a wand.
Selma broke the silence. “Nice one, Brinn.”
Brinn jumped up and hugged him. She looked into his wondering face and grinned. Not quite as I remember him—he’s shorter. “Paris, get us out of here!”
“Brinn? Where are we?”
The wannasee started to press in again. The shooting, hacking, and squeezing resumed.
“You can get us out of here, Paris, I know you can!”
A creature with its legs blown off clutched at Brinn’s ankle. It pulled and Brinn fell to her knees. “Now, Paris! Do something!” She stared at the thing’s face—where eyes and nose had once been. The skin was a sickly pale yellow covered in glistening sweat, and there was a black hole no bigger than the end of a pencil above its chin. It’s how they breathe, she realized, how they make that horrible high-pitched noise. It was the remains of a mouth.
Paris made an incomprehensible stuttering noise. His jaw dropped open in shock as he watched the thing scramble up her leg. And then he raised the marker-wand up into the sky and waved it about.
“Falafaloopa! Callakawham!”
His robe and boots disappeared in a flash and Paris was left standing there, clothed only in his underwear—white boxer shorts with pink hearts. “Wrong spell.”
He waved the wand again and the robe and boots reappeared. A wannasee jumped onto his back and he staggered down to his knees beside Brinn. Its one arm wrapped around his neck and started to pull his head back. Paris slammed the fist holding the wand into the rock and he yelled through gritted teeth.
“Walawalakazam!”
The entire boulder shifted, slanting up at an even more precarious angle. The wannasee holding onto him fell away and Paris kicked it all the way off. The rock had begun to move up into the air. Oscar pulled the creature still clinging to Brinn and hurled it away. It landed in the crush of wannasee now twenty feet beneath them. Bertha kicked another in the chest before it could grab onto Selma and it plummeted as well. The rock leveled out and continued its ascent, picking up speed.
“Where to, mademoiselle?” Paris asked. He hiked an eyebrow up and there was a smug grin on his flushed face. He had saved them all, and he was reveling in it.
“West, young man,” Reginald answered for her. “We are headed west.”
Chapter 7
The magic rock ride was smooth and silent as they watched the wannasee recede behind them like a hill of angry ants kicked up by a giant foot from above. Within minutes, the rocks and boulders where they had almost died were swallowed up by the bleak horizon.
“How far west?” Paris as
ked.
Reginald rolled over to the far side and made some clicking computations. “Twenty-seven point eight kilometers. You’ll have to bring us over six and a half degrees to the right.”
The boy shrugged his shoulders, wrote the numbers in the air with his marker, and the rock tilted slightly. The course correction had been made. “Would anyone mind now explaining what this is all about? I was kind of…busy before being summoned here.”
Brinn knew full well what he meant by busy. Paris was hardly as pure of heart as his last name suggested. She had originally imagined him as every teen girl’s dream wizard boy. Unfortunately the dream had turned into a nightmare shortly after he first popped into her life four years earlier. Along with his good looks and youthful confidence came conceit and arrogance. He started to take as much interest in Brinn’s girlfriends as he did in her. He had wanted to meet them, and even went so far as to start appearing in the hallways of her school, sitting in the back desks of her classrooms, and showing up during lunch breaks and recesses. Paris had at least shown enough intelligence during those school visits to ditch the red robes for tee-shirts and designer jeans. He became the mystery kid that teachers couldn’t put a name to, the cutie every girl in junior and senior high wanted to know. Brinn put a stop to it. She stopped thinking of him—stopped thinking of all her imaginary friends—and they stopped visiting her altogether. That part of her life had ended. Until now.
“Hot date, Paris?” she asked.
He winked at her. “You’re in my thoughts every day, Brinn, but a guy has to move on.”
Typical Paris answer. Affection followed with insult. “Thanks for saving us. Reginald can fill you in on the details.”
She went to the other side of the rock. Marshal Lowe was showing Bertha how his rifle worked a few feet away. They were passing the bottle of whiskey back and forth between them. Brinn could no more control her than she could Paris, and she no longer cared to try. She saw the looks Bertha was giving the wizard boy during sips. Even though the two had never met, the barbarian woman detested Paris—and with good cause. He was the reason Brinn had stopped imagining the barbarian woman into her life. Did she hate Brinn for it as well? Did she give Brinn the same cold looks when her back was turned?
Let her get drunk. What harm can come when you mix jealousy with a little booze and firearms?
The world whisked by below. It was an endless expanse of flat gray earth and brown rock. She squatted down between Selma and Oscar.
“Don’t get too close to the edge,” the android warned.
“I’m not that worried. If I fall, Paris will rescue me.”
Selma was staring at the boy over her shoulder. “Can you hook me up with any more of your imaginary boyfriends, Brinn? I can’t even dream of guys that hot.”
“Believe me, he isn’t worth the effort.”
“He’s not your typical knight in shining armor, is he?” Oscar asked.
“Not by a long shot.” She looked at Oscar’s kind face and smiled. Of all the imaginary friends she or her dead uncle could have thought up, this one seemed the most grounded, the most normal—a mechanical man with a human brain. Go figure.
They passed over a darkened region of land. Brinn looked closer and saw it was a forest, or what was left of a forest. All that remained were stumps and fallen black tree trunks with withered, leafless branches. It went on for miles. “Is everything dead here?”
“That’s where Neal used to play with pretend bows and arrows. There was a medieval village down there somewhere and a guy called Sherman Sureshot that your uncle used to pal with. I never met him, but I hear they had some adventurous times.”
Selma leaned further ahead for a closer look. Brinn pulled her back. “What happened to Sherman?”
Oscar sighed heavily. “I guess things went pretty crazy down there after Neal died. The town sheriff rounded up most of Sherman’s outlaw gang and had them put to death. He then started to burn down the woods looking for the rest. The fire got out of hand—took everything out—forest, farms, and village. Sureshot was eventually found and hanged on the last tree standing.”
“How could things go so horribly wrong? This whole land…a child’s imaginary world…how could it—how could all of its people become so…real?”
“I don’t have the answers, Brinn. But I know someone that might.”
“Commander Gunnarson.”
Oscar nodded and the three continued to watch the land pass below in silence. The forest ended, turned into desert land with shifting sands and dried-up river beds winding between immense dunes. Brinn didn’t ask what kind of friends Neal may have played with down there. She was amazed at the size of it all. How much room was required for a little boy to play in? They were at least half a mile above the ground but it seemed endless in all directions.
As if sensing her wonderment, Oscar spoke again. “It wasn’t this way in the beginning. Things were much more compact back then, a lot closer together. Sherman’s Forest was within walking distance of the Plains of Stauch.” He paused, considering things. “It’s strange how a dying world continues to grow…to keep spreading.”
More like a slow bleed, Brinn thought. A puddle of life separating away from itself—a heartbeat slowing, drained of color and imagination. All that remained was featureless sand, dirt, rock, and dead forest, its green a distant memory. Death’s tentacles had taken hold and continued to crawl out over the last three decades into the inevitable blackness beyond.
After a few more minutes their rock started to slow. It dropped from the sky, and Brinn felt that momentary butterfly sensation in her stomach.
They landed on the bank of a wide river. This one was still running, the water an oily black sludge that flowed slowly to the south. It smelled as foul as it looked.
“Where are we now?” Selma asked as they stepped off onto the ground. They had settled at the bottom of a valley. The rocky cliffs a half mile distant on either side of the river were as black as the water.
Reginald pointed north. “Artica Land is that way. This river, the Jang-Geez, originates from there.”
Brinn had a hunch the waters flowing from Artica Land had at one time been fresh and crystal clear. She had no desire to visit its source. It was undoubtedly another dead or dying place, inhabited with wannasee, or worse.
“The jungles of Shandukhar lay to the south,” Reginald continued.
“You don’t expect me to turn this rock into a boat, do you?” Paris wrinkled his nose. “The river stinks.”
“Indeed I do not, my newfound wizard-wonder friend. Our destination is fifty feet up on this bank.”
They all followed as Reginald skirted around small rocks in the oil-soaked sand, up onto drier ground. He rolled on top of a square concrete pad barely large enough to accommodate the seven of them. Its surface was encrusted with black mold and sickly-looking purple lichen. “Welcome one and all to Gateway Junction 14-A,” the robot announced enthusiastically.
Brinn could see an inch-deep line running along each side of the square pad, a half foot in from the outer edge. There too, the lichen had taken hold. Reginald bumped into her as he made his way to the center of the gateway. “Pardon me, young lady.” She heard a click from the cement beneath his treads, and the mold covering a second, smaller square pad cracked away beneath him. Reginald dropped down a foot, and the outer line began to glow green.
“Wait a minute,” Selma said. “It doesn’t look like this thing has been used for a long time. How can you even be sure it still works?”
“I hate these damn things,” Lowe muttered.
Reginald’s arms shot out and sunk into two corresponding rings set into the pad hidden beneath the lichen. The green glow intensified and the entire pad began to vibrate. “This damn thing is the only way to Canis Major, Marshal.” The robot made a series of strange beeps and clicks that could’ve passed for laughter. “Major Marshal…that sounds funny.”
Selma tapped on one of his glowing green squares. “You s
till haven’t answered my question—how safe is this thing?”
“Well…the lights came on. That’s always a good sign.”
“Wait a minute! That doesn’t sound very—”
The glow surrounding them shot up. A four-walled square of bright green light stabbed into the brown sky overhead. The light disappeared a few seconds later. Gateway Junction 14-A, on the bank of the River Jang-Geez, now sat empty.
***
“—safe to me,” Selma finished.
The brown sky was gone. In its place was a panorama of black with tendrils of navy blue twisting throughout. A fat yellow moon, twenty times larger than Brinn had ever seen from Earth, was rising directly in front of them. A ring of sparkling dust, or chunks of space rock from this distance that appeared like dust, encircled it. Behind that was another great sphere, a red giant of a planet with swirling atmosphere bands of orange and white. There were stars, not many, but what really took Brinn’s breath away were the galaxies. She had loved astronomy since she was a child—marveled at the pictures in books and on documentaries. And here they all were, spattered like fat paint drops against the vast expanse of black and deep, limitless blue. There were barred spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, and even a few with odd classifications she’d never really understood, but always thought sounded dangerous: lenticular, irregular, violent, and peculiar.
Reginald patted her on the shoulder. “If you think that view is impressive, turn around.”
Brinn turned and gaped. She took a few staggering steps back into Selma, and Oscar had to stop both girls from falling off the platform. It was another galaxy, much closer than the others. So close that its spiraling arms filled the entire horizon—so immense that they could only see half of its entirety, the rest cut off beneath the surface of alien rock they stood on.
“It is the face of a great god,” Bertha whispered.
“It is the Milky Way Galaxy as seen from our current position in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy,” Reginald corrected. “We are almost directly above its central hub—actually closer to the center of our home galaxy than we would be on Earth.”