Isi put her hand on Afon’s leg and wrapped her fingers around his knee. Even in his perfectly rendered form, the knee joint was still sensitive, a vestige of its former vulnerability.
He jerked away from her.
He remained seated, but no longer allowed Isi to touch him. “Don’t tell me how your night was,” Afon said, “tell me how he was … tell me! I can still smell the slimy pig all over you!”
“Afon,” Isi said calmly, “my night went exactly as we planned. Nanook, Jian, and you all agreed that I should get as close to Henry Ford as possible, in as quick of a way as would be believable. We all agreed that we can’t stop someone from inventing a gasoline powered engine, but if we can convince the man who brings the gas engine into mass production to mass produce a different engine, a steam engine, then we can get rid of almost half of the pollution that destroyed the Earth. You should be glad that you smell him on me Afon, that smell is the scent of a chance at life for our planet.”
Afon shook his head; one strand of his golden hair fell out of place and dusted his furrowed brows. His lips were tight, and his cheeks were drawn in. All of the skin in his face was pulled tight in an effort to stop his canine teeth from releasing in anger.
“I’m not like those two,” Afon said, and gestured to the empty chess table where Nanook and Jian had been earlier. “I’m not here on some selfless mission. I’m here for you Isi … just you … and to watch you come in the door from your supposed mission smiling, as you did just now, it’s too much Isi.”
“Afon, you’re being crazy. I was smiling because I never imagined that things would go so smoothly. I was able to meet him almost instantly, after I got to the ball, and …”
“Oh bullshit, Isi,” Afon cut her off. “I know you. You were smiling because you’re a scientist, and you just got to have a one-on-one with the great Henry Ford. In our time, he’s been dead for almost two hundred years. In this time, the same fate could quickly be arranged for him.”
Afon stood up from the couch when Isi reached out for him again. He moved to the fireplace, and busied his hands with building up the fire. At this moment, he was angry with Isi, she enraged him, he was disgusted by her willful flirtation with Henry Ford, and he was repulsed by Isi’s attempts to manipulate him since she returned home. Afon was radiating anger, but at no moment did he stop loving Isi. Her welfare, her experience, was always the first thing on his mind. And so, despite his jealousy, Afon nurtured the fire for her. His own body could withstand many greater extremes of temperature than that of an unimproved human, but he could smell her body responding to the cold draft in the room, and he built the fire higher, for her.
Isi was still on the couch, taking in Afon’s casual death threat to Henry Ford – a threat that Isi knew Afon could all too easily carry out.
After minutes of silence passed between them, Isi said, “Look, I love you Afon, I love you more than anything in this world, but you need to get yourself to the point where you’re okay with this. It’s going to happen.”
Afon nudged a log into place with the poker in his hand. “Does that mean that I can’t kill him? What if I wait until after you’re done with him? Once he starts mass producing steam cars he’s not necessary anymore, is he?”
Afon applied the slightest pressure to the log, and it snapped in two.
Isi shook her head, “No, you must get that thought out of your mind. If you ever meet Henry, he will pick up on your hatred, he is a very perceptive man. He is also a very newly married man, and easily spooked. It’s not possible to completely hide your opinion of him, so you must change your opinion. No more thinking, or speaking, like this, Afon. Think of Henry Ford as the savior of the whole planet, for that is what he will be, if we succeed.”
Afon was about to respond, when he heard a loud crash from downstairs.
He still clutched the poker from the fireplace, his sense of danger heightened, and he screamed, “Run! Go to Nanook and Jian!”
He rushed down the stairs, and was met with the most grotesque scene he could have ever imagined.
Five decaying people wandered aimlessly, hands outstretched, and eyes seemingly blind, while they made a horrific sound that was something between a growl, and a painful moan. The smell of their putrefaction overpowered him.
Afon was struck by a thought: these dead men walking were some perverse version of himself, and the other Immortals. The nanobots in Afon’s system allowed him to triumph continuously over death, and these men were all stuck in a form of continual death. Somehow still walking, their brains were as dead as their bodies that Afon saw decaying, and dripping off parts, before his eyes.
Afon tried to quiet the involuntary retching that he could feel coming up from his gut. He held his stomach and moved backward up the stairs.
It was impossible to tell which sound happened first: the creak of the wood on the stairs below Afon’s feet, or the dry heave that finally escaped his lips, but whichever noise it was, it drew the monsters to him like a herd.
The first tear of a dead man’s teeth into Afon’s skin fired up his adrenal glands, and sent him flying up the stairs at a blinding and impossible speed.
He quickly closed the pocket doors into the living room, cutting the five dead men off. Isi, surrounded protectively by Nanook and Jian, greeted Afon.
“What’s going on down there? Afon …” Isi stopped short when she saw the fresh blood on his leg.
“I’m fine Isi, or I will be in a minute or two. Listen, there’s five …” Afon shook his head, unable to form words for what he had just seen. “There are five monsters of some sort, out there. Looks like they used to be human, so I’m thinking that this must be Mortterra’s work.”
Isi jumped back at the violent banging that started on the other side of the pocket doors.
“How strong are they Afon?” Nanook said, and moved toward the door.
“I was able to get loose from the one that grabbed me, without too much effort. And they’re … I don’t know … brain dead. They only noticed me when I made a sound, but none of that matters if they’re like us, if they can’t be killed,” Afon said.
Nanook, who was standing next to Isi, had been calmly taking in every aspect of their current situation. He nodded firmly and said, “That is most definitely true, Afon. We don’t know if Mortterra’s monsters are immortal … but we do know that we are. It seems to me, that we can safely test their immortality by trying to kill them, since we know that they cannot kill us.”
Afon’s eyes lit up. “Agreed, but one of us must stay to guard Isi.”
Jian nodded, “I will stay with her. You and Nanook are larger, and will have a better chance out there.”
Nanook was waiting patiently at the door, having come to this conclusion before Jian spoke. He turned to Afon and said, “Ready, brother?”
Afon locked eyes with Nanook, blinked once, and smiled. “Let’s eat.”
They opened the door and were immediately engulfed by the arms and teeth of five snarling dead men. Nanook and Afon moved forward down the hallway, and endured the bites from Mortterra’s dead men, so that the monsters could be drawn away from Isi.
Jian stood next to Isi, held her arm tightly, and kept her safe next to him; preventing her from instinctively rushing to Afon’s side. She had never felt more mortal, or helpless, in her life.
Mortterra’s monsters kept coming for Afon and Nanook, despite the Immortal’s attempts to destroy them. Afon had ripped both arms clean off of one of them and, still, it lumbered toward him, blindly gnashing at the air with its decaying teeth.
Nanook was methodically testing each monster, seeking the kill spot. As a boy, growing up in Greenland, Nanook’s father had taken him north, hunting for reindeer and, on one memorable afternoon, they had even taken down a polar bear together. Every animal could be brought down. Some had hides that were thick as armor, but there was always a weak spot, always an Achilles heel.
But how do I kill these things? They don’t bleed out, they�
��re already dead … how do you kill something that has already died? They’re like chickens with their heads cut off …
Nanook reached out, and grabbed the monster closest to him by the hair. With his other hand, he pressed down on the things decomposing shoulder. The stench was overpowering, as the creatures head came free from his body. As he held the dripping head in his hand, Nanook studied it, and then looked to the rest of the corpse at his feet, searching for movement. Finally.
Turning to Afon, Nanook yelled, “Go for the head!”
In a matter of just a few minutes, the four remaining monsters were permanently killed. Five corpses, and their heads, littered the hallway, filling the house with the incomparable odor of decaying flesh.
Afon and Nanook, covered in gaping wounds left by the creature’s teeth, made their way through the carnage, and rejoined Isi and Jian.
Isi appraised both of them, quickly going into a triage frame of mind.
The nanobots will heal their wounds, but there is a lot of damage for my little doctor machines to deal with. Blood … they need blood.
She settled Afon and Nanook onto the two couches in the room, and put them each into a supine position.
“You must go and get blood for them,” Isi said, and looked at Jian. “Bring back two, one for each of them.”
“Of course,” Jian said. “Two of what, Dr. Nizienko?”
“Two people, Jian,” Isi said, and fixed him with her most commanding look.
“Bring two human beings back here, alive, correct?”
Isi nodded, and Jian left.
She turned back to her two charges, and Isi was amazed by the rapid progress the nanobots had made in healing Afon and Nanook, in just the few minutes she had spent conversing with Jian. They were both fast asleep, but what had been gaping wounds, flaps of gnawed on flesh that gushed torrents of blood, were now simple red blotches on both of the Immortals skin: the beginning of scar tissue, covered with caked on, dried blood.
Beautiful … what feats of science we could have accomplished, what heights we could have reached, if we had learned to work with nature, instead of against her. My god, what a wondrous world we have killed …
Isi’s eyes filled with tears, and she took Afon’s hand, stroked the flakes of blood from a part of it, and kissed him there.
“Fight for Her, my love, as you fight for me,” Isi whispered. “She just needs one true warrior, one firm place to stand, and She can fix Herself. The Earth can undo all that we have done to Her, but we need to give Her a chance …”
Isi reached out and put one finger on Afon’s lips. She carefully climbed onto the couch, and wrapped herself around him gently. Half his size, Isi’s arms and legs fit naturally into him. She rested her head on his chest, and drifted off to sleep.
In Afon’s dreams, he heard Isi speaking to him, felt her body meld into his, but then her voice began to change; a deeper, more resonant, tone emerged and fused with hers.
I am always by your side. When you feel the wind at your back, I am there, holding you up, with her. She and I are one, and you will never be alone, my knight.
THIRTEEN
Listen to me …
She is there, walking among you now; my power, and my hope, go with her.
In the beginning, I had four roots, drawing their life from me, and giving life to you, in turn. My daughters … my girls …
In time, you came to view them as your enemy. You grew suspicious of their abilities and you called them unnatural, even though their power was drawn from nature, derived from me. You persecuted their descendents, my descendents, drowning them and burning them alive. Those who survived did so by hiding … not just from you, but also from themselves. The ancient wisdom became lost, buried in backchannels of myth, and barely remembered family lore.
She is the last of her blood, the last of my blood, the last living descendent of my founding roots. She knows not her own history, nor her own power.
Every invention, she has credited to the work of scientists that came before her; every miracle carefully brought into being by her own two hands, she sees as the ultimate expression of nature’s genius … my work, not hers.
She is brilliant, and she is humble. She is here to save you, so, of course, you will try to kill her.
If you kill her, you kill me.
If you kill me, you kill yourself.
Listen …
FOURTEEN
The corpses of the two men that Jian had caught for Afon and Nanook were lying in a corner of the living room, drained dry of blood. Not a drop spilled, the only thing to do now was to dispose of them in a way that would raise no questions … left in the woods, a victim of a bear or wolf. The bigger problem was the headless bodies of the monsters, and what they represented.
“He’s tracked us through time,” Isi said. “I knew that would be possible, I just didn’t think that Mortterra would figure out the technology so quickly …”
Her voice trailed off, and Isi bit her lower lip, “Oh God, that means … poor George.”
At the mention of Isi’s assistant, George Murphy, the Immortals all focused in on what Isi was saying.
“You think that he helped Mortterra track us?” Nanook said. “George would never help that bastard!”
Jian shook his head, “No, much worse than that, I’m afraid. Torture, you think, Dr. Nizienko?”
Isi was crying on Afon’s shoulder. “It’s the only way … fuck! I knew I never should have left him behind. Even death is a much better fate than interrogation at the hands of Mortterra’s thugs.”
Afon held his hand still against the small of Isi’s back; not caressing, not moving, he just held her sorrow in the palm of his hand and acknowledged it.
“He did succeed a little bit against Mortterra, though,” Afon said.
Isi searched his eyes for his meaning. “Oh! Those awful idiot monsters … of course! George helped the AmEur Alliance track us, but he deliberately screwed up the design of Mortterra’s thugs. They’re brainless and easy to kill, once you figure out how. Good old George, one of us to the very end,” Isi said, and curled up against Afon’s shoulder.
“How do you think we were tracked, Dr. Nizienko?” Jian asked.
Isi thought for a moment before she replied, “I’m not certain, but I know it is possible to track human beings in the present, without using any sort of invasive device. The AmEur Alliance has the ability to scan for DNA from satellites. The Americans were developing the technology before their country was mostly destroyed in the great waters of 2100. They knew the tipping point in the weather was about to be reached, a global warming catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions, and the government wanted a way to be able to keep track of itself. If the President of the United States, and all of the government, were to be lost in the storms, they could be found again … if anyone wanted to find them. Of course, once the whole city of Washington D.C. was submerged in the Atlantic tsunami, there was no one left to search for.”
“And then Mortterra took power,” Nanook said, “and took my country.”
“He did do that, K’eyush, but I think it was the one good thing that he did,” Isi said. “Without the remaining wealth and technological knowledge of America and Europe, the human race would have gone extinct in 2100. The AmEur Alliance did invade your country Nanook, but it was global warming that took your home.”
“And who caused global warming?” Nanook said. “The same people that stole my country so that they could run from the mess that they themselves had made. It’s a complete circle, positively biblical when you consider Project Immortality.”
“Ah, exactly brother,” Jian said. “We complete the circle.”
Afon nodded agreement, and Isi looked at him questioningly.
“By funding the science that created us, by funding your laboratory Isi, President Mortterra sowed the seeds of his own destruction and, if we succeed, the seeds of the Earth’s rebirth, as well,” Afon said. “Full circle.”
Isi shook
her head, “All of the heroic myths of the world can come true then, if Mortterra is destroyed … but, right now, he’s still out there in the future, sending god-knows-what after us.”
Isi stopped for a minute, looked down, and massaged her hands, then continued, “I can’t even wrap my head around what he must have done to poor George … and I know he’ll go after my brother next.”
“Fyodor!” Afon gasped.
Isi nodded, “It is not just our lives that are in danger.”
“If I may, Dr. Nizienko,” Jian said, “it occurs to me that we should concern ourselves with more than our own defense. We may, or may not, be able to defeat the next group of Mortterra’s mercenaries, we may, or may not, be able to defend those that we love in the future from Mortterra’s wrath, and we may, or may not, be able to do what it takes, in this past that we are living in, to stop pollution from destroying our planet, but there is one thing that we can most definitely accomplish. Nanook was hinting at it earlier, but he would not say it outright, for fear that it was solely the primal emotion of a man bent on revenge, but, in this case, justice and logic demand the same solution: we must kill Ignis Mortterra.”
“My ever-logical brother,” Nanook said, “you always wind up where I start.”
Isi smiled, hope dawning in her eyes; she would force herself to put the fate of the whole world over and above the fate of one man, even if that one man was her brother, but not if she didn’t have to.
“We will need to send at least two of you back to 2112 … technically forward,” Isi said, and took a moment to appreciate the odd humor of their situation. “Mortterra will be heavily guarded, and the more of you the better … actually, what we need is more of you.”
“Dr. Nizienko, we all agreed, before we began this trip, that we would not do that,” Jian said. “The three of us are enough, any additions would be uncontrollable. If we change someone from the past, they would never be able to truly understand the stakes of the mission that we are on. If we change someone from our own time, Mortterra’s dictatorship is so strong, that our recruit’s loyalty would always be a question to us. No, with all due respect Dr. Nizienko, we said that we would not do that.”
Immortal Earth (Vampires For Earth Book 1) Page 7