by Martin Kee
“That’s where we live,” Rhia said. “That big black lightless mass.”
Upon closer inspection Dale could see that it wasn’t completely dark. There were small patches along the coastlines and a few deeper inland, but nothing like the rest of the world.
“I don’t get it,” said Dale. “Why is the rest of the world lit up and not here?”
Rhia sighed, “Because Dale, they all still have generators.”
Dale’s eyes never left the globe. He had never seen the world on such a scale before, never imagined that it could be so huge. As the continent swept by, a pair of tiny dots appeared on the far western coast. He had seen enough local maps to know what he was looking at.
“How…” he swallowed with a dry mouth. “Rhia how did you get all this information?”
She turned to him with a half smile. “What, you’ve never heard of courier ravens?”
“Orrin…”
“And his children,” she said. “They are creating a network of information, a way for us to know just how bad it was.”
“He’s been busy.”
“Yes,” she said, “And this map is still incomplete. As far as we know there are over sixty thousand of these generators, each of them powering a city, all of them feeding on the dead—on people just like us.”
“And you declared war on them,” Marley growled. “Looks like you got what you asked for.”
“That’s not the half of it,” she said, her brow furrowing. “The only reason we exist is because they don’t have confessionals on this entire continent anymore, none that are functioning anyway.”
“Why?” Dale asked. “Why aren’t they functioning?”
“The Savage Commonwealth sabotaged most of them,” she said. “A very long time ago.”
“You mean the crusades?”
“No, before that,” she said.
“How long ago?” Dale asked.
Rhia frowned. “I don’t have an accurate record of that.”
“An accurate record?” Dale scoffed. “Surely, someone remembers back that far.”
“I wish I could tell you,” said Rhia. “So much recorded history was destroyed during the Dark Age, I don’t even know anyone who remembers.”
“Other… gods?” he asked.
She shook her head. “They have their territory and I have mine.”
“You have half a million people here in your cafeteria and you’re telling me that not one of them can tell us?”
“That’s just it,” she said. “Nobody wants to remember that they’re dead, Dale. Memories cause nothing but pain here. It’s unbearable.”
Dale couldn’t help but agree. He remembered the moment he lost his legs and the memory that flooded his entirety. He had relived every second of it, a lifetime of pain, compressed into a few seconds.
“But someone has to be out there who does remember,” he said.
Rhia shrugged.
Marley had been half listening to this conversation, uninterested in the technical details. His eyes were fixed on the mass of standing bodies outside the window, that growing army of people, feeding off that light.
“I think it’s the Reverend,” Marley said.
“It can’t be,” Rhia said. “That’s impossible.”
“Why else would it come after us, ask your name—your name here? Hel. It couldn’t find you otherwise. Nobody in this asylum knows you as Rhia besides me, Dale, and Melissa. And the Reverend would never know you as Hel. How else would he know that we knew?”
She looked up at Marley, and for the first time since he’d known her, Rhia/Hel looked scared. “He must have traced it back to someone, found someone who died and knew you, found someone who talked to you, knew I was dead.” she said.
“It could be anyone,” Dale said. “Like I said, the thing that took part of me, wasn’t the Reverend… but it was controlled by him.”
“But if the Reverend isn’t dead, he is untouchable to us,” Rhia/Hel said. “We could fight that army for an eternity and never once find the Reverend.”
“He was touchable once.”
“Only when Skyla brought him through,” said Rhia/Hel. “And I doubt he would let her do that again.”
“I could try,” said a voice from the shadows. Skyla stood at the base of a pillar, a ghost in the land of the dead. Through her the wall seemed a gray slate. “I could try to bring him through again, but I’d have to find him first.”
The ghost faded in and out, reached up and adjusted the one remaining lens.
Rhia smiled and walked over to her. “You would have to do what I did, when I rescued your mother.”
Skyla looked up at her aunt. Dale noticed for the first time how black ink began to grow from behind her shoulders. Skyla sprouted tentacles, hooks, claws, a mass of flesh growing from behind her thin body. She stood now almost as tall as Rhia, and Dale felt a sudden pang of sadness that so much time had passed.
“You mean without the goggles,” Skyla said. Her voice sounded like a distant echo.
“I mean you would have to leave your own body behind,” said Rhia. “You would be here forever with me.”
“Hey!” Marley shouted. “Don’t be putting ideas in her head like that. There might not be a ‘here’ pretty soon.”
Skyla turned on him. “I have to find him before he does anymore damage, before he invades.”
“And then what?” Marley asked. But he knew the answer. “You heard what your aunt said. He can do this forever. If he isn’t dead, there’s nothing the dead can do.”
“I have to try.”
Her skin was beginning to appear pink and raw, the fine hairs on her arms dissipating in the void. Another shadow flashed out from behind the girl, lashing against the tile floor.
“Listen to me, now,” Rhia/Hel said, still in her teen form, still in her cafeteria outfit. “We can never escape our actions. The past follows us around like a bridal train wherever we go. Remember that before you do something you cannot take back.”
Skyla looked at her aunt. “Do you know where he is? The Reverend. His physical body.”
Rhia took a long breath. “I don’t know now. But I can tell you this much: The Reverend is very important to The Church. You will have to get very close to them to find him.”
“Then I have to try.”
“Alone?”
Skyla shook her head. “I have… friends.”
“Friends?” Rhia raised an eyebrow. “That’s new.”
“Well, a friend. He knows the archbishop who killed Melissa. But he’s crazy… I… I broke him, like you broke my mother.”
“And this friend,” said Rhia. “Are you certain you can trust him?”
Skyla gave her a sideways glance. “I never know if I can trust anyone anymore.”
Rhia’s eyes were sad, haunted. “It isn’t easy is it, being us…”
Skyla looked at her hands, how rough her skin seemed. “Did it age you, too?” she asked her aunt.
“I think it ages all of us differently.”
Skyla sighed. “All I see is people at their worst, you know. I just see an endless stream of guilt from everyone.” She glanced at Dale. “I don’t trust people now like I used to. I thought I had a friend once, but then I saw what lies underneath. I see their schemes and their sins. I see their plans... Does that make me paranoid?”
“Sometimes trust is more about probability than faith,” said Rhia. “People like us have to make a calculated risk in making friends. Otherwise the world is a very lonely place.”
“But did you ever trust anyone?”
“A few,” said Rhia. “And I paid for that trust.”
“Did you trust the Reverend?” Skyla asked. “When you knew him?”
“Not even once.”
“Do you at least remember where you left him?”
“On a boat, screaming, drifting towards the Vatican.” Rhia gave her a grim smile. “I thought being half way around the world would be safe enough. I even thought he might just die.�
�
“Was it far enough?”
“No,” Rhia said. She looked out the window at the growing army. “No, it wasn’t far enough at all. The world is a big place. If he is alive and doing this, then I can’t imagine he is in good health. Maybe he doesn’t even know he’s alive, perhaps straddling the borderlands between our worlds. Stranger things have happened.”
Skyla sighed, nodding. “So I’m right back to square one again.”
“No,” said Rhia. “If the Reverend is up there, he is bound to run into you.” She smiled at Skyla. “You’ve been here too long. Can you find your way back?”
Skyla nodded. She looked out through the archways and spotted the coin. It twinkled like a distant star. Familiarity. It was all she had anymore. She looked back at Rhia.
“Will I see you again?”
Rhia looked out the window. “I’d like to think so…” But her voice was uncertain.
As Skyla stepped through an archway and vanished, Rhia turned to the two men. She appeared older, more serious. Her cafeteria clothes shifted into a high collared cloak as she stepped back up to the throne.
“The good news,” she said, “is that they have chosen to fight a war on two fronts, it seems.”
“What’s the bad news?” Marley grumbled.
Rhia, assuming her Hel persona, gave him a half smile. “I have always been terrible about asking for help, as you know, Marley.”
“But…”
“But I am going to ask now.” She looked out the portal at the enemy army of husks. “I need a general, a fighter. I need someone who knows how to teach people how to fight. You taught Skyla, you can teach these people.”
Marley laughed. “There’s no time. Training an army takes months. We may not even have hours.”
“I’ll give you whatever you need.”
“Can ya give me something more than a sanitarium of bathrobe-wearing inmates?”
The ground shook, causing more tiles to fall from the ceiling. A foot appeared from behind an arch, so big it impressed even Marley. A knee emerged then a thigh. The ceiling crumbled as it rose to accommodate the giant. She wore a maidservant’s robe, the belt jangling with skull-shaped hammers. As Lotti reached the center of the chamber, she straightened to her full height, her head nearly scraping the crumbling ceiling tiles. Ganglot no longer wore her glasses as she stared down at them, her hair hanging in warbraids as thick as a ship’s anchoring rope.
The ground shook again as a second giant stepped from the opposite archway, his body gaunt and wiry. An iron helmet, decorated in bone, as large as Marley’s boat, rested on his head. In one gloved hand he held a sword half the height of the hall itself. Ganglati, the butler stood and buried the tip of his sword in the tile, digging a furrow several feet deep. The blade was blacker than onyx. Marley could see no reflection in it.
Both giants stood, awaiting orders. When Marley returned his gaze to Hel, she appeared older, her robes long and torn.
“You remember my servants,” said Hel. “Ganglot and Ganglati. It’s not an army, but it’s a start.”
“What are you?” Marley asked. It was the sort of question he never thought to ask, but even here, in this dead world, what he saw was beyond comprehension.
Hel smiled. “I’m just a teenaged girl with too much time on her hands. Will you help us, Marley?”
Marley grumbled. “Like I have a choice.”
A noise made them turn to the door, to Dale. A wet trail led from the dais to the archway where he had dragged his broken body. He stood now on both hands, looking back at them. His face was determined and set.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
He lowered himself and rested there a moment, flexing his arms. The effort just to cross the floor had left him exhausted, but it felt good. “If nobody around here is able to answer my question, I’m going to find someone who can.”
“You don’t even have legs,” Marley said, his brow furrowed in concern. “You won’t make it a mile.”
“What’s a mile anymore?” Dale asked. “There is no time or space here. There’s no distance. Maybe the reason I am so broken with this—” He pointed at his body. “Is because I am broken here as well.” He pointed a finger at his head, his hand a pantomime of a gun. Dale smiled. “Look, I’m no fighter. That was never really my thing. But I’ll try to help the only way I know how. I’m not running… I’m just… doing reconnaissance.”
“You’ll die,” Marley yelled. His voice was commanding, but there was something terribly sad in it. “Even I don’t know how to protect you anymore.”
“I guess I’ll have to figure that out on my own then,” said Dale. Then to Hel, “You mentioned the Savage Commonwealth. I suppose you can’t tell me any more than that.”
Hel shook her head slowly.
“You can’t go alone,” Marley yelled. His face was the color of the giant beets they had grown once on the farm. “Dammit Dale!”
“I can and I will. It’s time I stood on my own two… well, you know what I mean.” Dale turned to Hel. “You should probably put dinner on. I expect you’ll be getting a lot more inmates over the next few days.”
Chapter 45
Rhinewall
SCRIBBLE THOUGHT HE might be dead when he opened his eyes to darkness. As he turned his head, a small sliver of light along the floor, beneath a doorway caught his eye, and he sat up wincing. His skull throbbed. Wiping his face, he could feel the salty remains of the tears he had cried for Gary. His left hand still ached, but the bandages around it felt fresh. Through the walls he could hear a dull clicking, an irregular clock, the sound of running water in pipes.
He grasped in the dark with a clumsy hand, found a small chain, and pulled. Warm light blinded him for a moment. He found himself lying in a soft down bed, the walls paneled in stained walnut—across the room from him a rounded sofa, a dresser, a small closet, left open and stocked with a variety of hanging boy’s clothes. He was no longer in his own shirt and pants, and his possessions were neatly laid out on the end table beside him: a pair of pencils, one worn almost to the nub, a wrinkled notepad, and the coin. It gleamed in amber lamplight.
Outside the window it was still evening. City lights twinkled in rows. Had it been a dream? A nightmare perhaps.
Oil paintings hung from the wall, framed pictures of beaches and ships and sea. They were good… not great in Scribble’s opinion, but a good effort. The colors seemed a little off—too much green in the water. Deep down he knew he could do better.
Scribble blinked away the fog of sleep, images of the dream resurfacing, Gary falling again and again, laid out on a table surrounded by soldierboys making soldierboys, children building monsters out of children, Scribble reaching for him, trying to save him over and over and over until he screamed himself awake. He swallowed and his throat still felt raw.
He sat up, sliding his feet out of bed. He held out his arms, looked at the silk pajama sleeves. Canary yellow, so light he could forget he wore them at all. His feet kicked something soft and he looked down. Slippers, the color of his pajamas, rested at the base of the bed. He stepped around them, crossing the room in bare feet towards the door. He thought he heard voices.
Two men spoke casually about matters beyond him. They sounded as if they were far away… Stairs, he remembered those. He had been carried up the stairs as he cried.
His hand on the cool brass handle, Scribble cracked the door open to sneak a glance. He expected guards, even chains or bars. Every sense in his body told him this was a trap. Men would be waiting. Soldierboys would grab him.
What he saw instead was more wood panels, a hallway as elegant as his room that stretched in either direction. Evenly spaced crimson rugs padded the hardwood floor. Just one of those rugs would feed him for a week. He stepped into the hallway, expecting at any minute that he might wake up and find himself lying on a table, armor bolted to his bones. The hallway to the left ended in a wooden spiral staircase. The warm glow of a fire cast flickering shadows a
long the far wall. The voices came from there. Scribble listened.
“—and even if the Bollingbrokers want to invade, they’d have no way of reaching us. And even if they did make it, they’d be sorry for running into the soldierboys. I doubt very much they will join the fight until they can be assured a victory.”
“It seems cruel,” said a familiar man’s voice. “What we’ve done with them…”
“Cruel? No. Cruel is watching children die from disease and starvation, not from bullets and bayonets. Cruel is growing up with no purpose and no future. Cruel is ignoring those children, letting them form their own little tin governments.” The man laughed. “You want to see cruel, Harold? Watch a gang of boys rape a passing woman. Watch a gang of children descend like wolves on an old man and strip him for everything he’s worth, set him on fire for no reason at all. Then laugh afterwards.”
He paused and Scribble heard the clink of ice swirling in a glass. “If you want cruel, look no further than what lies in the hearts of children. They are the perfect soldiers, Harold. They lack any real empathy, any real foresight. They can’t see the consequences of their own actions. How many adults do you see pulling the wings off flies, pulling the tails off mice?”
“I don’t see them drilling holes into children’s bones, slapping armor on their bodies and calling them soldiers.”
“Then what would you call them, Harold? Ask that little urchin you rescued up there what he thinks. Go ask if he hasn’t witnessed his share of cruelty at the hands of other boys. Go ask if he hasn’t grown up with fighters his whole life.”
A pause. Scribble couldn’t tell if the man was smiling, drinking, or smoking. He remembered him though.
“When I left the NT it was in ruins. Of course the main damage had been done long before by a man who went by Summers…. Oh, you know him.”
“I… yes I know of him.”
“Then you know that he is responsible for the reunification?”
“The what now?”
“Oh, come on Harold. You’ve read about the Grand Unification of Georgia… the thousand factions… Okay, look. The NT was on the brink of coming unhinged. There were at least a thousand different churches, each with their own agendas, some of them highly aggressive, fanatical when it came to getting their points across.