Paradise Falls

by Jim Spencer

  ‘Why did you ask that?’ Sana asked him.

  ‘Curious I guess. Weren’t you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well come on folks. We’re only a half a mile away from neutral country thanks to your friends,’ Cordell told Arion.

  ‘We are, aren’t we? I didn’t think we’d make it for a second.’

  ‘That makes two of us,’ Cordell told him.

  ‘Are you telling me you’re getting soft, captain?’ Marcel asked him.

  ‘Well I am over 70 years old.’ Cordell replied and everyone left it at that, as they made their final approach to the coast of neutral city.

  Chapter 22

  ‘What have you received?’ Tali asked Ruto.

  ‘They say ‘We have a surprise for you’.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘That’s what it says. Either way, it’ll be a great help for us.’

  ‘Maybe he’s tamed animals,’ Tali suggested.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Ruto commented.

  ‘Maybe it’s like a bomb or something,’ another one commented.

  ‘How do you mean?’ Tali asked.

  ‘Kind of like when we were able to extract water from ringwoodite. We used fusion to create extreme pressure, which helped us to bleed water from rocks within the mantle. Maybe he’s weaponised the God Particle.’

  ‘No, the God particle is already a weapon of sorts. It wouldn’t make sense for him to create more weapons.’

  ‘What could it be then?’ another asked.

  ‘Whatever it is, we’ll find out soon enough,’ Ruto commented. ‘Either way, we have a big problem now.’ he pointed straight ahead from the edge of the coast of Tribe country. Civil country was upon them. They had great machinery upon them. Great tanks, missile launchers, trucks, ptactyl pods, which could fly. Looking upon the great horizon, all he could see were these great works of machinery.

  Upon the other side of the aisle, people were letting go of the vehicles and beginning to walk upon the edge of the coast. They were standing for a full two-mile radius, with no room between them. It looked like they were marching on a pilgrimage, if Ruto didn’t know better. The only difference was they were holding weapons as opposed to their arms in the air in prayer.

  Ruto remembered the last week where he had, with the help of his civil country friends, managed to rally troops to his cause. With some persuasion, the remaining people from Tribe country had decided to venture into the uninhabitable lands, which they preferred over going to neutral country, whom some still considered betrayers.

  Even with all the people of Tribe country uniting under this imminent danger, there were still great numbers who couldn’t partake in fighting. Not all the tribes allowed women to fight, so he couldn’t rally them together and in the end had to agree to let the woman go. The children were never going to partake in warfare, no matter how willing they were. Ruto simply wouldn’t allow that, though some did try to overrule him.

  With regards to the elderly, the choice was given to them. Fight or go with the rest to unknown lands. Some chose to fight, others were too weak to do so, so had to go with the rest. Either way, even with all that, they had only managed to gather a hundred thousand men. Not exactly the type he was hoping for, against two and a half million. They were outnumbered greatly, but Ruto knew these men would do the best they could with what they had.

  The only way to stop the troops were to hold them down on level ground. Some had been tasked at creating great trenches that went down for about one hundred feet, enough to kill a man. Of course, some locations went further down than this. He knew the first troops would definitely fall within some time. But after a while, enough would fall to allow the rest to balance themselves over the dead and come through.

  When that happened, he had some arrows, practically every single one they had, to throw at them. He just had to hope they hit the mark. After that, it was down to fist fighting, for none of the people in tribe country believed in great weapons, all were united on that. Then he had the thirty or so GP-002 guns that Arion had left them. Ruto had instructed the rest to not use that until the last moment.

  Some of them had simply not been told what the weapons did. It was easier that way. Aim and shoot was all they knew. Too much knowledge was dangerous. All these within the split second he saw the troops and realised they would have to fight for their lives. The plan was in his mind, the rest would follow. Only a miracle could truly save them. Then again, he was a believer in miracles.

  *

  ‘What plan do you have in mind?’ Alexander asked his comrades. The people didn’t exactly have anything in mind as they were just following orders.

  ‘Do you have a layout of the place?’ Alexander asked, taking his one good eye towards Cordell. They had just been stopped by Alexander before they went up the hill to get to neutral country. He had old holograms of the layout which he knew was up to date so he bought it out.

  ‘What’s the wait?’ Genghis suddenly burst out.

  ‘We need strategy, Genghis. Or did you never learn that in your time?’

  ‘I preferred brute force,’ he commented, looking Alexander directly in the eyes, as if challenging him.

  The others got in the way as Genghis thought for a moment whether he should attack or not.

  ‘Let’s concentrate on the issue at hand, shall we?’ Cordell intervened. Genghis looked at Cordell for a moment before restraining himself and walking away.

  ‘He’s a bloody barbarian.’

  ‘We need a barbarian.’ Alexander answered back. They studied the map for a couple of minutes before Alexander looked at what could be done.

  ‘So the army of civil country is around two million… and you have one hundred thousand with inferior weapons.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not exactly easy.’ he commented again.

  ‘Well we wouldn’t exactly need Alexander the Great otherwise would we?’

  ‘Is that what people call me?’

  ‘People who know history, yes.’

  He lingered on that thought for a moment before he went back to the map.

  ‘Our best hope is the element of surprise.’

  ‘Which we have.’

  ‘And a double ended attack.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Meaning, you give me that thing and I use it.’

  ‘What do you mean? What thing?’

  ‘The thing you used to bring me back to life.’

  ‘The God Particle?’

  ‘Yes, that.’

  ‘And what do you plan to do with it?’

  ‘Use it to bring back as many people as we can along the way. Do you have a horse?’

  ‘What’s a horse?’ Cordell asked.

  ‘Are you telling me you do not have animals you can ride on?’

  ‘We have some leftovers here which can be fashioned into vehicles.’

  ‘Does it move forwards?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good enough. Can you fashion another… God particle?’

  ‘Arion?’ Cordell looked over to him.

  ‘I remember the formula and we do have enough scraps here. I think I can make him a weapon/’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Under one condition.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Destroy it once done.’

  ‘I will. You have my word.’

  ‘Really? You’re not curious what it will be like to conquer this world?’ Cordell asked him.

  ‘I don’t have any interest in that. The fact that I am known as Alexander the Great after so long is enough for me. Just don’t tell Genghis that.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Take this tracker with you. It’ll show you where there is metal. You can get one of my guys to help you get the vehicles working.’

  ‘Thank you.’ They split away, Alexander taking his half a dozen men atop a small vehicle and a metal tracker and Genghis Khan reluctantly agreeing to join them.

  *


  They were welcomed by the great committee of bystanders who stood near them, all smiling sending greetings of salutation and peace. The three main members, who were clearly representatives of the cabinet, had very distinctive looks to them. Although they were all men, they were very well groomed. One of them had blue hair with a perm hairstyle that made him look like some elegant woman.

  It was a similar feeling he had when he had seen them before. Only once before in his life was that. Even then it was unusual. The second man had purple hair, with extremely bushy eyelashes and no eyebrows, who was masculine in his movements, but would give the odd look towards Cordell, as if he was his type. The third and final person had red streaks across his hair and an outlandish garber like suit, made from what looked like cashmere and silk. He was muscular well-groomed at the same time.

  ‘Welcome to neutral country,’ he said to them, in a deep but soothing voice. It was almost hypnotic the way he spoke.

  ‘Although our appearance may seem unusual to you who are from the outside, I can assure you we are not the only ones like this. We have decided to embrace our masculinity and express our feelings here also. We do not hide anything and never speak of war and famine.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to like what we have to say,’ Arion told them. As they moved up the atmosphere to the great grey landscape, a great surge of wind hit them in the face. It was shockingly cold.

  ‘I assure you it will get warm enough once we get inside,’ he screamed in the wind as they opened a hidden doorway underneath them, opening a passageway, which was the entire country.

  ‘We have to build these huts, otherwise these regions are too harsh to live in,’ the advisor told them, ‘please, come inside and we can talk there.’

  They moved from one part of the country into the unknown abyss of neutral country, which seemed to be an underground vessel to Sana.

  ‘Have you ever been here before?’ she asked Arion.

  ‘Only once when I was very young,’ he answered as the great blast doors closed and the wind from the outside vanished.

  *

  They were running as fast as they could. The machinery was helping them to go many miles in mere moments. This would be impossible with horses. No wonder that man was curious as to what a horse was. They’d probably all been eaten. He was ahead of all his men by a few miles, that way he could use the machine wherever life was detected. He had done as instructed and aimed straight for the ground. Though he found it unusual that the scientist wasn’t aware that one single shot was enough. Keeping the ‘gun’ as they called it on the ground for a long time made no difference.

  It almost felt like he didn’t know what he was doing. Or perhaps he hadn’t really thought of that before. Either way, he was able to save a lot more time by simply taking a shot and moving on. In the time it had taken him to get to halfway across the distance that was required, they had an army of one hundred thousand. They were all the bodies that were somewhat intact anyway.

  He didn’t want to say it, but this ‘formula’ had given him a new lease of life. Quite literally, he had the energy of his youth and beyond. He felt he could throw a giant rock if so tested. Just as he thought of this, he looked up in astonishment to see some giants amongst them. He had only ever heard of giants but this was the first time he ever saw them. They stood between fourteen and thirty feet in height and were exceptionally strong as they were able to lift entire machinery in one hand.

  He ordered the battalion to stop and Genghis, who was leading this crew ordered them to stop. As much as they didn’t get on, they seemed to work together well. Just the fact that he hated him made him more alert. Perhaps that was a good thing.

  ‘I have a plan, Genghis,’

  ‘Attack would be my plan,’

  ‘Yes indeed. You take this army with you now and attack full force,’ Genghis looked at him, and smiled as if he had read his mind.

  ‘What about you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll use this gun to get more people.’

  ‘And where will you attack from?’

  ‘All over.’ he said simply.

  *

  The people of tribe stood there as the battalion finally made their way across the edge of the coast, or what used to be the coast. Atan held out a banner of peace, which tribe country knew would never truly mean that. As he waved the banner of pure white, Ruto ordered one of his bowmen to throw an arrow directly at the flag but just miss Atan. He did as instructed and was so precise that Tali wondered why he hadn’t ordered him to be killed. Then he noticed he had slimline armour, which nothing could pierce.

  As the flag went down to the floor, Atan in great anger, and possibly fear, sounded the charge and sent his first line to run across and end this conflict before it began. The little peace that both countries had maintained for the last seven years was gone in an instant. Only enemies stood in the great wall now. An equal number of soldiers with guns were sent forth.

  A hundred thousand shots came directly at them. They held the shots with the shields they had. So few they were that they could only put it on the front line. No one else had any armour and it could only take one hit due to the amount of rust on some of them. Some of the pieces stood and others fell to the ground, almost exposing the great pit. And some simply splattered into pieces, shooting shrapnel across the ground. Some of the civil countrymen were hit with it and some tribesmen were hit with it, practically dying on the spot.

  Ruto watched a little further back. He would have preferred to have been at the front, but he had to think of his people. As they came close, the order was given from Ruto to loosen the pits. The great covers that they had put up to hide the pits became loose suddenly and would have looked like a river from the distance with how it moved. But the first people were so distracted by their enemies that they didn’t see it.

  And after a few second, they came to the middle of the pit and the entire fabric was let loose, allowing all the men to fall to their deaths. As they screamed amongst the great pit, Atan screamed in fury at what he saw. Clearly, he had underestimated his enemy. If the people didn’t die from the fall, they died from the sheer weight of one another.

  As the battalion was forced to stop suddenly, Atan ordered the air flight officers to do their rounds. As the great machinery lifted in the air, Ruto decided to do a ground attack. They had spent a few days capturing Wolves and had kept them locked up as best they could. They were violent and they were hungry. As long as they didn’t look back, they would be able to hunt in the open.

  They only found about eight, but it was enough. He unleashed them. They opened an old entrance into the safehouse. As the Wolves came out, some people actually fled from close to them. Thankfully for Ruto, they went straight forward and didn’t look back. In the panic, some of the flyers had to come back to shoot them down.

  The remaining shot as many of the rest that they could. Some died and some of tribe country held ground thanks to some of the less rusty shields. They made their one round and came back for seconds. Ruto ordered the remaining members who were alive to shoot all their arrows in the air. The civil army had advanced forward again and was walking over the pit now.

  The sheer number of arrows, which was practically everything Ruto had left in his arsenal, blackened the sky. As the people stopped, unable to truly run back due to how many people were behind them, the effect was as full as it could have been. In this one bloodied minute, Ruto had ended up killing more than two hundred thousand people, and the army still didn’t look any smaller.

  The aircraft came back for their second round and some of the small ptactyl fliers that they had crashed into the bigger ones, lessening the numbers, but not enough. Some of the civil country flyers became distracted in taking out these flyers, the remainder, attacked the remaining ones standing on guard. All the shields finally broke away, they literally had no defence left. A third attack by civil would finish the job.

  ‘Well, I guess this is it,’ Tali told Ruto.


  ‘It is indeed,’ Ruto commented.

  ‘You ready to die, old man?’ Tali joked with him.

  ‘I never liked living much anyway.’ Ruto shrugged.

  The flyers came across for their final round, when something completely unexpected happened. A massive rock flew across the sky, taking out half a dozen flyers. As it crushed to the ground, it took out a whole herd of civil troops. Ruto looked to the right and saw six giants running towards him. As he tried to comprehend what he saw, the giants went onto ferociously attack the flyers, and used the machinery to smash the other bits into oblivion. As the crafts were eventually taken down, Atan simply stood there, mouth agape and Genghis walked to Ruto.

  ‘I am looking for Ruto’ he spoke, in a somewhat familiar tongue.

  ‘I am Ruto,’ Genghis looked towards him, almost disappointed. It was as if he was hoping to see another giant.

  ‘I am Genghis. I am here to help you. Just tell me where to go and it shall be done.’

  *

  They were in a great colourful country. The whole place was underground and full of colour. It was like bright sunlight in here. It took Arion a while to realise that it was all made of gold. An entire country made of gold. No wonder everyone was over-cheerful. That was apparently the currency used as well. Although cubes were accepted. There were people walking in the middle of the streets that were made up and great mansions built within the rocks and some within ice were visible as far as the eyes could see.

  ‘Apparently not all the ice caps melted,’ their host told them, who was clearly a tour guide more than anything else.

  ‘So let me get this right. Everyone tolerates everyone here?’ Sana asked, still overwhelmed by what she was seeing.

  ‘Of course,’ the guide replied, as if that wasn’t even a question worth asking.

  ‘Right…’ she responded, clearly not convinced.

  ‘I mean, we have the odd breakout of emotion I suppose.’ the guide elaborated, ‘but we have our ways of countering that.’

  ‘And how is that?’ Cordell asked.