by Spencer Baum
Kevin’s eyes followed the bugs upward.
The walls and ceiling of the cave had disappeared. Above him was a massive, glowing bubble of clear liquid, larger than a blimp. Sap gurgled from inside the tree stump, coming out of the hole. It broke into bubbles which floated upward, coasting through the air and connecting to the larger bubble, becoming a part of it.
Jackie stood up. She ran to Kevin.
“Where are we?”
“We’re on the other side,” Kevin said, tilting his head to take in the expanse around him. “We’ve found the treasure.”
Floating through the air were termites, hundreds of thousands of them. Some were no larger than those he had seen at the park; some were as big as the carcasses in Turquoise Mountain. They moved as if gravity didn’t exist for them, swimming freely in all directions as they tended to the giant bubble.
A swarm regrouped in front of Kevin and Jackie, forming into the shape of a man. The shape spoke in Peter Gerrard’s voice.
“She wanted it all, so none was shared,” said the shape. “You are welcome to the treasure, provided the quantity you take can be replaced.”
“I only want a little,” said Kevin.
He pulled off his backpack and reached inside. He removed The Global Mug espresso cup Joseph had taken from Lou’s mansion.
“Can you fill this cup, please?” he asked Jackie.
“Kevin, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know, but my dad is dying, and I think a drink of the sap might save him.”
Jackie nodded her understanding. With her eyes, she guided the cup out of Kevin’s hands and up to the bubble overhead. When she brought it down, it was filled to the brim with clear sap.
Kevin took the cup to his dad and placed it on his lips.
“Drink this, Dad. Please drink this and be alright.”
His dad opened his eyes and looked at Kevin. Still too weak to speak, he used his eyes to communicate. More, they said.
Kevin poured the cup into his dad’s mouth. His dad swallowed it like a shot, and exhaled in relief.
“Kevin, are you safe?” he said.
“I think so,” said Kevin.
“Leave the way you came,” said the swarm. “We will lock the door behind you.”
Kevin looked past his dad. Despite the monumental change in scenery all around him, the tunnel through which he and Jackie had entered the atrium remained.
“Thank you,” Kevin said, and helped his dad to his feet. They stumbled toward the arch that led into the tunnel. Kevin turned for a last look. Millions of termites swarmed up and around the giant bubble, but the human figure was gone. They stepped under the arch, and back into a tunnel in Turquoise Mountain.
“Hello?” came a familiar voice from up the shaft.
“Hello, Joseph, down here!” called Jackie.
Joseph flew into view, his flashlight leading the way. He landed quickly and threw his arms around Jackie.
“I thought you were dead,” he said. “Where did you guys go? An army of demons came out of the…Mr. Browne, what are you doing here?” he said.
“No time to explain,” said Kevin. “Can you carry another load of three?”
“Of course I can,” said Joseph, “but then what? Thousands of demons are headed straight for town.”
“I don’t know,” said Kevin. “We’ll figure something out when we get there.”
Chapter 21
Kevin clung to Joseph’s left arm; Jackie to his right. Kevin’s dad, doing as he was told, put his arms around Joseph’s neck and rode piggyback. When they took off, Kevin got a look from his dad, part disbelief, part exasperation. Kevin imagined his poor dad, kidnapped from his normal life by Cassandra’s monsters and taken into a nightmare. He wished he had time to tell him the whole story. He wished he had time to think.
An army of monsters was rushing into Turquoise. No one knew they were coming. No one would be able to stop them. His teachers, his neighbors, people he saw in the streets and on the plaza downtown, women and children, tourists and locals, his classmates, Gabe, Ricky, Maxine, Bill, Vicky Baca and even Ruben Graves, all would be wiped off the earth, the entire town of Turquoise would soon disappear into legend, like Shuberville, Mississippi.
Kevin’s burgeoning panic was countered by a momentary elation when they emerged from the mountain. More than once since the start of Lou’s broadcast, Kevin was certain he was going to die. The last ladder down, at the bottom of the giant pitcher, was perhaps the worst moment of all. Now they emerged at dusk and the fresh air of Turquoise provided Kevin a jolt of life.
The demons were nearing the foothills of Turquoise Mountain, having cut a wide scar into the forest down one side. In minutes, thousands of them would reach the city, and destroy it. He had hoped the death of their queen might have stopped their determination, but it had not. The horde galloped at full speed, trampling the earth with such force they shook loose the largest boulders near the top of the mountain. One by one, giant boulders came loose from their perches, and began tumbling down the mountainside, picking up speed as they went.
Too much speed.
Jackie’s eyes were glued to the tumbling rocks. She was pulling them along.
“Good thinking, Jackie,” Kevin said.
Jackie held her gaze on the mountain below, loosening every boulder they passed. The boulders in turn knocked loose more rock and sediment, which freed more debris, more boulders. A massive landslide came together at once and overtook the horde.
Boulders, rocks, logs, and dirt flattened the monsters they touched. But the landslide only caught the back end of the group. The avalanche came to a stop in the foothills, and thousands of demons emerged from the dust, their charge barely slowed.
“Get ahead of them!” Jackie shouted. “I’ll try something else.”
“I’m trying!” Joseph yelled. “They’re fast!”
Joseph was gaining on the horde, but at this pace, they would reach town only moments before the demons did.
One by one, Jackie began grabbing the monsters with her eyes, using her power to lift them into the sky and drop them into the stampede, where they were trampled by their counterparts. Her technique was effective, but there were too many demons and not enough time. Mission Church, the unofficial entrance to town, was in sight, and thousands of demons remained.
“Now what?” Joseph said.
“Get in front and as far ahead as you can!” Kevin yelled.
Joseph tightened his grip on Kevin’s hand and flew even faster, passing the horde and gaining ground. In seconds, they all would be in Turquoise. Kevin could see his house. He looked at his dad, his arms wrapped around Joseph’s neck, looking on, helpless. Kevin loosed his fingers from around Joseph’s wrist. Before he began to fall, he caught his dad’s eye, and winked.
“Kevin!” his dad yelled. “We’ve lost Kevin!”
“Keep going!” Kevin called back, waiving them onward as he fell. Joseph tried to slow down, but the inertia of three bodies was too much for him. There was no way he would be able to change course and catch Kevin in time.
Kevin fell fifty feet and landed hard on the ground. He heard bones in his ankles and legs break on impact. A fierce pain shot up to his hips as he collapsed to the ground. He forced it all out of his mind. He didn’t need to get up. He didn’t ever need to walk again. He only needed to listen.
He cleared his mind of superfluous sound. The trampling feet, the calling of his name from above, the war cry of the demons, it all melded into a common note in his ears. He pushed all the sounds of the world together, blending them into the hum. He found the hum of the mountain, and shut it out. He heard the echo of Gerrard’s swirling noise from far away, and turned that off too. He found himself, the lone note of a trumpet, and stashed that sound safely in the corner of his brain.
All that remained was rage. It was a sound with a purpose, but that purpose was out of place. These demons and their rampant rage didn’t belong here. Separated from the other soun
ds, the rage developed an overtone of sadness.
Kevin called forth his own sound, the solitary trumpet, and touched it to the rage. Strands of sound began to mix. He could feel the central part of himself going away, becoming a part of the horde.
He could feel himself disappearing inside the rage.
The sound teased him, dangling its tremendous power before his eyes. He sensed the world in his fingers, the magic of that afternoon of discovery, of strength and speed and agility, telekinesis, flight, the hum, multiplied many times over, happening every day for the rest of his life.
For the rest of a thousand lives.
He felt the connection to future and past, of a genetic line passed from colony to colony, thousands of beings living and dying for the sake of the one colony, their individual lives meaningless in a larger infinity.
He saw the sap, a floating balloon on the other side, protected and tended to by the termites, a drop of it saving his dad’s life.
How much power was in all of it?
He felt the hard leather of a shoe on Ruben’s foot, kicking him in the stomach when he was already down. He sensed the footsteps of his classmates, leaving him in the mud, not one of them stopping to help, or even ask if he was okay. A few drinks of the sap made the pain go away, and gave him so much more. He could be so much more than any of them. He could do things that would make Ruben whimper. He could squeeze the last ounce of dignity from Ruben’s soul in front of the entire school, and he could be the one laughing this time.
He saw himself laughing at Vicky Baca. In the vision, he was putting a world of hurt on Ruben, but looking at Vicky Baca while he did it, and laughing.
He was ready. He could share in the power of the horde if he would only give himself over to it. The destruction of Turquoise would be so small in the larger scheme. The colony will live forever, but one day, all the people of Turquoise will be dead.
Some of them were dead already.
He saw his mom, falling off a mountain cliff, the hands of rage having pushed her. She fell forever, the ground always moving away as her body approached, the arc of her fall a continuous curve that never landed, but only spiraled inward. His ears went ahead of him, and followed the spiral arc to its blackened core. He saw a young girl, standing over an ant mound, giving over herself to the rage. Her sound was faint now, the ring of a bell in history, slowly fading, slowly blending inside a larger evil. Kevin listened for the very center of that bell, and changed it.
Mandible jaws had opened to swallow him, but they never arrived. As each demon crossed Kevin’s path, it changed from within, transforming to match its new sound in the hum.
He started with that bell, wrapping his mind around it, swallowing it, releasing it as something else. A fading hum of rage, changed in his mind into a solitary flute.
The flute exploded into the hum, flying in all directions, growing stronger as it went, and as the demons crossed a line in physical space, they lost themselves to the hum.
Kevin changed the horde of giant, mutated fire ants into a flock of butterflies. Tens of thousands taking flight, an instant metamorphosis from rage to beauty. When the last demon had changed, Kevin opened his eyes and saw an orange sky, blending into an orange sunset.
Chapter 22
“Have you heard about the video that played on people’s coffee machines?” said the nurse. Her breath was look-away intense from her last cigarette break.
“I’ve heard,” said Kevin.
“So what do you think? My friend says it was all a publicity stunt by some guy who used to do talk radio, but I’ve heard some crazy things today. People are saying something awful happened downtown. People are talking about wild animals running loose or something. My sister’s favorite coffee shop was destroyed.”
“It’s weird,” Kevin said. To the nurse he raised his eyebrows. To his dad, sitting in a chair on the opposite wall, he gave a smirk. Of all the people in Turquoise, his dad, having been deep inside Turquoise Mountain when the madness started, was still the most confused person in town.
Joseph and Jackie had carried Kevin to Mission Church, where Jackie called an ambulance. When it arrived, they told the paramedics Kevin had been screwing around on the church’s second balcony, fallen to the ground, and broken his legs. Kevin’s dad accompanied him on the ride to Turquoise General Hospital, where their story morphed into a tale of a reckless, thrill-seeking teenager who thought he could drop and roll like an expert paratrooper.
The doctor walked in, holding an X-ray sheet in his hand.
“How’s your pain level?” the doctor said, nodding at the IV connected to Kevin’s arm. When he arrived, the doctor prescribed a dose of morphine to go in the IV. Kevin thought it best to just take it, and not tell them that he could handle the pain just fine.
Now he was wishing he had refused. His mind was foggy. Worse, the hum was off. There was a white noise on top of it all, making it harder to heard the individual component sounds. After two days of wishful denial that he might be a Hearer, Kevin was sad that a drug was interfering with the hum.
“I’m fine,” Kevin said.
“We’ll need to set the ankle before your surgery tomorrow. Would you like a sedative?”
“No, thank you. Let’s just get this over with.”
“Alright. This is going to hurt. Hopefully the pain will be something you’ll remember the next time you have a stunt like this in mind.”
The doctor gave a quick twist and it was over.
“Tough guy, aren’t you?” the doctor said. “You barely flinched.”
Kevin shrugged.
“Must be the morphine,” Kevin said.
The doctor looked skeptical. “I guess so,” he said.
They spoke about the surgery Kevin was to have the next morning. Anasthesia, plates and screws in each leg, three weeks in physical therapy, months until he could walk normally again. The doctor left, encouraging Kevin to get a good night’s sleep.
“I’ve always thought it would be nice to make our house accessible to wheelchairs,” said Kevin’s dad. “We can get started right away.”
“I don’t need surgery, Dad. I just needed my ankle set. I think I’ll be ready to walk in a few hours, max. Get comfortable, and I’ll you the whole story.”
Kevin started with a butterfly landing on an elm tree in Blackstone Park. Three hours later, Kevin signed two consent forms in front of a very confused discharge nurse, and walked out of the hospital, his broken legs completely healed. He called Jackie, and invited her entire family to his house for a late dinner.
They re-lived the events of the past two days over carryout from Turquoise Good Luck Restaurant, Joseph and Jackie giving displays of their unique abilities to still disbelieving parents. When they came to Lou and his unusual broadcast, Kevin asked his dad if he had seen any of it.
“Just a few minutes,” said Kevin’s dad. “Cassandra showed up at my studio when Lou Sweeney was showing that security footage from his last radio broadcast, the part when the ants came in and demolished his studio. I invited her to come look at the screen. Of course I had no idea what was going to happen. It was a surprise to have Cassandra show up at my studio, but the video on my espresso machine was much more surprising…
“She acted strange right from the start. She said, ‘I don’t need to see that video, what I need is for you to come with me, right now.’ I asked what was going on and she said there wasn’t time to explain, but that it was crucial I come with her this minute. I shushed her, and told her she needed to come look at my espresso machine. She closed her eyes and made the ugliest sound with her throat. Then the hum started screaming in my head. It was terrible. The worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Kevin’s dad was looking down at the table as he spoke. The color had drained from his face. He took a long drink of water and continued.
“I must have passed out. I remember opening my eyes and I was in a cave, surrounded by giant ants. I was convinced I was in a nightmare. Th
e whole time, I was certain this all was the most vivid, terrible nightmare, and I just had to get through it and wake up. I remember telling myself, you’re a Hearer, you’re brain isn’t normal, this is just another state of development, and when you wake up, you’re going straight to a shrink.”
The table was silent. Mrs. Silver’s hands were over her mouth. Mr. Silver looked utterly baffled and lost.
“She took me to the tree stump. I knew right away that it was the wall I had been hitting when I listened to the hum. She insisted that I break through, and bring her to the other side. I told her I had no idea what she meant. She said she knew I could do it, that she had ways of persuading me. She made the hum scream again. I tried. I tried to do what she wanted, but I couldn’t. I explained to her that I could hear there was another side but I didn’t know how to get there. I didn’t understand what I was supposed to do. She was having none of it. Five times she brought about that horrible scream in my head. I was certain I was going mad.
“Then she said, ‘It’s time to go. For your sake, I hope Kevin does better.’ That was the worst moment of all. I thought she was going to do the same thing to you. I wanted to kill her. But the scream returned and I passed out again. When I woke up, I was in the jaws of a giant ant. That’s when I saw you and Jackie in the cave.”
Jackie was crying. “That hideous, terrible woman,” she murmured.