* * *
I told them everything from the moment Bruno and Gordana found me to the part where the hill exploded.
It had been their understanding that I was running toward a known trap, and all they had to do was make sure I didn’t accidentally trip over a bomb on the way down. This was why Mirella had to intercept me, as it was clear I didn’t know which way to go on my own.
They were disappointed when I explained that Dmitri’s armed caravan wasn’t part of any plan I had put together, although the caravan itself didn’t come as a surprise: they were alerted to keep the roads clear, and assumed that was why.
“That is a remarkable story,” Esteban said. He was disappointed, but tried not to make that too obvious. Basically, everyone thought I had some big master plan that was going to save everyone, when it turned out I was just some idiot with fish goo on his hands running for his life with a cloud of pixies.
The pixies, by the way, were nowhere to be found. I assumed they just flew back home, and hoped nobody was hurt in the blast. I called out for Ha a couple of times, but that just got me weird looks, and no pixie.
“The most interesting part, I think, is the Internet troll who as it turns out is an actual troll using the internet,” Mirella said.
“He’s really nice, though,” I said.
“I’m sure.”
“If we survive this we’ll have to have dinner together. I understand he’s a good cook.”
“Survival is also my primary concern,” Esteban said. “But I’m having issues putting together all you’ve told us with the timeline. You’re saying you reached the summit and discovered this cult was already gone.”
“I assumed they were waiting for me, but couldn’t wait any longer.”
“This would have given them only a day’s head start at the most, and as you said they were traveling with someone who was supposedly sick. How do you imagine they made it down faster than you and evaded both the white monsters and us?”
“That does seem unlikely. Have you seen any helicopters?”
“No.”
“You spent all last evening commanding the full attention of the mermen,” Mirella said, “and we spent the entire day and all last evening preparing the trap. This could have given them their opening.”
“That still isn’t enough time to get down,” Esteban said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Can you describe the person who told you to expect me?”
“She wasn’t a person,” Mirella said. “She was an auburn-haired harlot.” The tone in her voice told me more than the description.
“A succubus, then. That would be Gordana.”
My assassin girlfriend raised a threatening eyebrow at me, and I was smart enough to be a little scared.
“What does this tell you?” she asked.
“It tells me I’ve been getting played for a lot longer than I realized. She must have gone downhill when she left me alone with Bruno, rather than up to the campsite. That’s the only way she would have had enough time.”
“I don’t see how that resolves this,” Esteban said.
“The cult had already left the top of the mountain by then. They might have a three-day head start, not one. What happened to her after she told you what to do?”
“She claimed she had to help execute the second portion of your plan,” Mirella said.
“That’s great. Did she happen to say what that was?”
“No. Only that it was important she get to the hotel.”
This was interesting, because I was pretty sure the rest of the cult was headed for the hospital.
“I wonder what’s at the hotel?”
“She declined to say,” Esteban said. “But we didn’t press the point because we thought she spoke for you. She went by boat, yesterday when the water line was higher and a boat was a possibility. Colin took her.”
Colin was, I assumed, a deputy. Since at one time or another I’d been introduced to all of them, it was now too awkward to act like I didn’t know their names, even though I didn’t know their names.
“Are you in touch with him?”
“We have radios, but the interference is tremendous, so communication is spotty.”
“Right. I’ve encountered that too. See if you can reach him anyway.”
“All right. For what reason?”
“I want to know why she went there.”
* * *
Thanks to Gordana’s liberal use of my name when manipulating Esteban and Mirella, things were now a little awkward. It had been assumed that once I got there, everything would be okay. I was there, but I had nothing to offer, aside from a weird side-quest involving the hospital and a cult that may or may not exist.
It was dispiriting.
I just didn’t have anything else to offer. Everyone agreed that continuing to fight the invaders from the trees—or blowing them up—wasn’t going to resolve the problem. Likewise, Dmitri’s assault could well be sufficient to allow the survivors a chance to escape, but that also wouldn’t be enough.
Enough meant making sure the army of mermen didn’t keep attacking, which meant figuring out why they were attacking in the first place. Since my encounter with them the prior night was the closest thing to an exchange of information, any answers had to begin there. The problem was, I didn’t get anything out of that summit. And I was probably the most experienced person on the island when it came to first contact with a new species.
There was still a strong need to go forward and effect change, somehow, and that’s basically how we ended up walking downhill, toward town. It was ostensibly because of my stated interest in getting to the hospital and the understanding that if this was to happen, it had to happen before the sun went down. But that doesn’t mean our decision to start walking was based on a concrete plan.
First, I was given a change of clothes. Esteban had a bottle of rubbing alcohol on hand, and I used most of that to try and clean the stench of merman catnip from my hands. Once that was done I couldn’t smell it any more, but my goblin girlfriend with the better nose insisted it was still there. Hopefully, the walking fish didn’t agree.
By the time we heard from Colin, we’d been moving for long enough for the sun to nearly make it to the top of the sky. I put it at around 11:00 AM or so. One of Esteban’s men was working a radio the whole time we walked, and it was just about the only thing we heard for a lot of that time, so the morning was spent with the repeated mantra Colin, come in, and it was exactly as annoying as it sounds.
Colin did come in, though, and the two deputies spoke quietly for a little while, at which time the news was delivered: Colin had no clue where the succubus went.
Esteban was as unhappy with this as I was, and took the radio.
“Colin, it’s me,” he said. “How did you lose track of her, over?”
“The situation here is unstable,” Colin said. “We… constant…”
Static was already starting to reclaim the channel.
“I didn’t catch that, over,” Esteban said, but the channel wasn’t open because Colin was still talking.
“…fighting… and… gone but… k… everyw…”
“I think you’re losing him,” I said.
“Yes, thank you,” Esteban said.
“…was gone…ver.”
“Colin, has Dmitri reached the hotel yet? Over.”
The answer was a burst of static. Stubby shook his head and threw the radio back to his man.
“Try and get him back,” he said. He turned to me. “You and I will have to come to a decision soon, regarding our eventual destination.”
“Why don’t we see what the afternoon brings, first?” I said.
But the afternoon brought no particular clarity.
We continued on a path that led directly down the hill, rather than along the road we crossed twice, because the path was the most immediate route to the lower island. A couple of times, we took to the trees to get our bearings and to see if anything alarming was coming
up, but nothing was. These were the moments when I wished I had tried harder to endear Ha’s affection, because she would have been pretty useful as a scout.
The banshee howls continued. After the explosion on the hillside, the cries went silent for the first time since the tsunami, but picked up again at around midday. They seemed to be coming from where we were headed, rather than where we’d been. I didn’t know what that meant, but assumed it wasn’t anything good.
Still, we encountered none of them, and precious little else. It seemed whatever wildlife still lived on the island was determined to remain hidden.
We reached the high water mark late in the day. This was where the top edge of the wave hit the island, and it meant we were about parallel with our house. There was only a little damage to the land, but the lingering odor made the ocean’s recent landward incursion self-evident.
“This place is going to smell of rotting fish for a long time,” Mirella said.
“Gonna bring down the property values,” I said. “Maybe we should move.”
She smiled.
“Sell in a down market? This seems unwise. And where would you like to go next, now that we’ve lived in paradise?”
“Maybe we can find an old bomb shelter in a landlocked city somewhere.”
“I would need a view.”
“Either that or outer space.”
“Space would be interesting.”
“Yeah, I’ve never been. I hear good things.”
She laughed, and took my hand.
“I’m glad you’re still alive,” she said. “You would be very difficult to replace.”
“But not impossible?”
“No, of course not. I’m sure there are dozens of immortal men out there.”
“If you two would refrain from the banal chatter,” Esteban said, “and remember we are in a life-threatening situation, please.”
“I bet that’s the first time he’s ever had to say that on a mission,” I said, slightly more quietly.
“Possibly.”
“And I was just about to discuss what sex in space is supposed to be like.”
“Oh, were you?”
“Dear lord, please stop talking,” he said.
* * *
I got my first real up-close appreciation of the damage done to the lower island a few minutes after a diverting conversation involving intercourse in zero gravity harnesses that Esteban likely regretted enormously. (The other four goblins in our band seemed to enjoy the subject.)
We reached a road, and it was clearly the road I took to drive down to the town. It was also, for a change, the most direct route, so we stayed to it. Shortly, we reached the point where the natural brush and trees fell away and the entire vista became apparent from our slightly elevated position.
If it seemed as if the devastation was total when the wave first hit, it looked hardly any better now. Possibly, it looked worse, because at least when the water covered all the buildings it just looked as if an ocean had replaced everything. Now that the water had receded to below knee-levels and the buildings (or what was left of them) reappeared, the scene was more manifestly horrific.
There was the structural damage, of course. That was impossible to ignore: buildings either wholly relocated or dragged off their foundations in pieces; standing A-frames with nothing beneath them; overturned cars; and wood, metal and glass fragments everywhere. A bungalow that belonged on the beach where the wave hit was sitting on top of an apartment house roof on the opposite side of the island. A sun umbrella from one of the hotel pools drifted in the shallow water down the middle of one of the streets like it was looking for a particular shop. Really, the only building that looked to have survived okay was The First Pub, which sat alone on a little hill just above the town. It still looked abandoned and appeared to be missing its front lookout window.
Ordinarily, my first thought would have related to the alcohol contained within the pub, and the likelihood that it still existed in sealed containers. It wasn’t my first thought, though; it was my second. My first had to do with the part of the town’s devastation that really drove home what had happened here: the bodies.
There were a lot of bodies: on top of buildings, caught on signposts, floating casually like an upside-down sun umbrella. They’d been lying more or less in the same spot since the wave hit, and had all that time to bake in the sun. Most of them looked unmistakably dead, although one or two appeared to just be resting. One fellow—an imp from the look of him—remained in the wicker chair he’d been resting in when the wave struck. At the right angle it would have seemed as if he was sleeping.
It was like looking at the Pompeii victims.
I recalled my first instinct, right after the wave hit, of wanting to avoid stepping on an aquatic creature recently displaced by the water. Going forward from here would mean accepting that I end up stepping on a different kind of dead.
“We’re going to need a car,” Mirella said.
“And a drink, maybe,” I added.
I expected her to protest, as this was surely not the time, since we were still racing the sunset. Instead, she nodded.
“That sounds like a good idea.”
* * *
The problem with a lot of top shelf liquor is that bars actually keep them on the top shelf. I mean, I understand: they’re the least-used bottles so they should be in the hard-to-reach spot. Plus, it’s where they’re most visible and showy. That’s fine. But when your bar has been hit by a tsunami, it’s really helpful to all the people who plan to loot your establishment in the future if the expensive alcohol is on the bottom shelf, where it’s less likely to fall from a height and shatter.
I also appreciate that looters can’t be choosy, and bar owners would no doubt prefer circumstances in which they are neither looted nor struck by a tremendous wave, but life isn’t perfect, and so here we are.
The owners of The First Pub were a couple of gay Scandinavian elves named Trevor and Ivar. Nice guys, regardless of their top shelf policy. They lived in a house a tiny bit higher up the mountain than we did, and so were probably spared a direct hit. Despite that, they weren’t on the premises. This made the looting easier, but I felt bad about it.
Their tavern iffrit was there, though.
Iffrits are, on average, ten inches tall, can hold their liquor as well as a 400 pound linebacker, and are generally great to have around if you like to drink a lot. They are also deeply obnoxious when anyone involved is sober, or is a woman, because iffrits are also naked and perpetually horny.
On the mainland, there’s probably at most one iffrit per metropolitan area, and nobody there knows they exist. On the island, every bar has one, and everyone knows about them. They appear to be considered good luck here, a belief tragically and thoroughly disproven by recent events.
This one’s name was Steven. He was incredibly depressed about the whole matter with the tsunami, but thankfully hadn’t acted out in the way his kind tended to, which was to A: drink all the alcohol, and B: set fires. Regarding the second point, it’s possible he just couldn’t find anything dry enough to ignite. Regarding the first, he’d left us about half of the bottles.
I found a cheap rum and sat at one of the three undamaged tables, on one of the seven undamaged chairs, opened the bottle, and had a swig. Esteban, in another one of the chairs, had the decency to appear disgusted, and the grace to accept the bottle once it was passed to him. This was after Mirella had her own pull.
Stubby’s men took one of the adjacent tables and dug up bottles of beer for themselves. Steven remained on the ruined bar, semi-conscious with a mostly-empty bottle of cognac, muttering quietly and for the most part ignoring us.
“Can we assume Dmitri has reached the hotel by now?” I asked, opening up what felt a lot like a war room strategy session.
“I do not know that we can,” Esteban said. “The more substantive question is how much of a difference that makes.”
“Have you tried them on the radio?”
>
“Even knowing what frequency they’re using, I have no reason to think they’re in active communication. With the atmospheric interference considered… if I were them I would rely upon line-of-sight as much as possible.”
“It’s too bad you didn’t say hello when they drove by last night.”
“We thought we were all working from the same master plan,” Mirella said.
“Well, we sort of are,” I said. “It’s just that none of us know what that plan is.”
“This prophet,” she said. “You mean it’s her plan.”
“I wouldn’t say plan. Think of it as a game of billiards. I might conceive of a strategy that would allow me to sink three successive balls. A prophet could coordinate which balls go in which pockets on the break. They adjust what can be adjusted to enable an outcome, but the path there involves chaos and randomness.”
“You aren’t making any sense,” Esteban said. “And it doesn’t matter either way, because if this woman is predicting the future, we have no special decisions to arrive at. We do what we think is best.”
“So,” he added, taking the bottle from my hands, “what do we think is best?”
“You have an opinion, cousin?” Mirella asked, possibly sensing something I wasn’t, or referring to a conversation that took place before I got there.
“Our first priority should be to get the survivors off the island as quickly as possible. Residents and tourists alike. This place is no longer safe, and we’ve no idea how to guarantee that safety in the future.”
With the existence of a malevolent force of mermen established, it seemed reasonable to say nobody standing in view of an ocean was safe—worldwide—but I didn’t think it was worth pointing that out.
“Dmitri has the right idea,” he said. “We should meet up with his group and secure a perimeter. You said rescue ships will be arriving shortly.”
“That’s what I was told. But those ships are coming across an ocean full of a motivated army.”
“We don’t know that.”
“They are coming out of the ocean, right?”
Immortal and the Island of Impossible Things (The Immortal Series Book 4) Page 26