by Karl Morgan
Within a minute, the forty-two winged beasts soared overhead while Dom and Lou watched them from the ground. Both men waved and the group broke into two and flew away, one headed north and the other further east. The two men hugged each other and faded away, leaving the empty desert to it native inhabitants.
Bill could hear the others’ voices in his head along with Faith discussing tactics and laughing and kidding around. He thought about Mary, suddenly transformed into a monster before his eyes, now headed toward their mutual destiny, whatever it might bring. The voice of Jonas said, “In five miles, we will come upon a small town where a group of terrorists are hiding in plain sight in the midst of the normal population.”
“How will we know who’s who?” Bill asked.
“Does it matter compared to our mission?”
“Yes, it does, to me. I don’t want to just kill everyone. That would make us as evil as those things trying to enslave us.”
“Bill is right,” Faith’s voice said. “Our mission is to take control of one of those passageways, that’s it. No senseless violence is needed.”
“Cousin, you take away all of our fun,” another voice said.
Jonas laughed and replied, “Well, if one of them is shooting at you, that’s a good sign they are a terrorist. If one sneaks up on you to kill you, they will find out pretty quickly that doesn’t work with us.”
Ten miles away, the other group glided just a few feet above the ground toward a small hill. Marcus told them the terrorist group on the other side was prepared to slaughter several dozen townspeople in the name of their god. A lone guard half a mile away was leaning on his rifle, only half guarding his post, his mind consumed with the young women in the town he wanted for his own. When the beasts were three hundred yards away, he suddenly came out of his stupor and started to scream, raising his rifle to fire. Mary felt a bullet strike her in the face, but it bounced off harmlessly and she beat her wings harder. Marcus flew up to two hundred feet in the air and dived toward the sentry just as he turned to run toward his friends. He was shouting and the others looked at him like he was crazy.
Just then, Marcus reached the fleeing man and sliced him in half with a talon. Mary and the others reached the top of the hill and began their charge, beating their wings as fast as they could. Most of the terrorists ran away screaming in different directions, followed almost instantly by a giant beast. One of them stood there laughing, his pistol pressed against the back of a man’s head. He fired and the man fell over dead. He walked over to an old woman and aimed at her. In less than the time it took to pull the trigger, Mary knocked him to the ground and began ripping at his flesh, pulling off his limbs while he screamed in agony.
Jonas and his group were five hundred feet in the air as they approached the small city. People on the streets began to scramble for cover and screaming at the horrible beasts headed toward them. One of the terrorists leveled a shoulder-held missile launcher and fired. The projectile screamed through the air toward them. Jonas plucked the missile from the air and threw it back at the terrorist. It struck him in the chest and exploded, leveling everything within twenty feet.
Bill was following another beast down the street and up into the air over an open structure where fifty terrorists were chanting and cheering with their leader. The two beasts landed on the wall and breathed fire down on them, reducing them to ashes in seconds. Bill noticed something odd near one of the skeletons and jumped down, landing on one of the monsters, which squealed with pain. He crushed it with his foot, driving his talons through its head and chest. The other beast said, “Bill, don’t forget that we need one of them to open a door,” and then flew away.
Marcus had transformed into the biker and was releasing the remaining prisoners, while Mary continued to look at the dead terrorist beneath her. Then she saw it, but it was more like an apparition than anything else. It was pressed tightly to the ground, moving very slowly so as not to be seen. She thought, “Do you see it, J.C.?”
“Yes, but I don’t believe your eyes. We can’t lose it.”
It slowed almost to a stop, looked around, and then continued again. After a minute, it arrived at the body of one of the other terrorists. There it was, a small right angle of light near the head. The thing inched forward and then extended a gnarled hand to grab the edge of the door. It opened slightly, then a bit more, and was almost large enough for it to slip through. Mary grabbed the edge of the door and pulled with all of her might. The beast screamed and dived through the opening as noxious gases and horrible screams poured out. The former prisoners ran away screaming and holding their ears. Mary was weakening and J.C. added his strength to hers. Suddenly, Marcus and two more beasts grabbed the door and pulled it wide open. Marcus sat on the open door to hold it in place. “That was awesome,” he grinned.
“Mary,” J.C. said, “Bill has an open door too and it’s secured. I guess this is it. Stick your head inside and tell us what you see.”
Mary, back in human form, knelt next to the two foot by three foot opening and gradually moved her face toward it. The fumes and noise had abated and it seemed very quiet on the other side. She stuck her head through the opening and looked about in every direction. Then she pulled out and sat down with a sigh. “I don’t believe it. It looks just like any city in the world at night.”
Another biker looked through and said, “She’s right. It’s a short alleyway with several dumpsters nearby. There are tall brick buildings on both sides, a broad street and more buildings across that. It could be Brooklyn, Chicago, anywhere really.”
Bill, as the beast, landed nearby and morphed back into human form. “What have we got here?”
“Take a look,” Mary said.
Bill looked through and sat back down. “Wow! Our opening is totally different, and it’s only a few miles away.”
Marcus noted, “Bill, that’s another universe. The two portals could be billions of light-years apart.”
“I don’t think so, Marcus,” Bill replied. “We can see a forest on the other side through the second door, but I get the feeling the two aren’t that far apart. I don’t know if it’s the air, or the time of night, or what, but they are on the same planet, reasonably close together.”
“Bill, it’s time for J.C. and I to come out. We have to go through those doors now,” Faith’s voice said.
After Bill had returned to the other door, Mary and J.C. were still next to the opening, ready to begin their adventure. Marcus and the other bikers hugged them both, and gently lowered them through the opening which was ten feet up on the wall of a non-descript building. They stood on the street looking up at Marcus sticking his head through the doorway. “We’ll put a metal plate over the opening to slow down any more demons if they try to come through.” They waved at him and then the plate slid in place, leaving only the faint outline of the other side.
“Now that we’re here, I’m not sure what we should do,” Mary noted.
“We have to look for any sign of Prudence or Bill’s family,” J.C. replied. “Once they’re safely on the other side, we have to find out who or what is leading those things that are pledging to enslave our universe.”
“Yea, I got that part, but seriously, this is an entire planet! You don’t think any of them are just going to jump in front of us now, do you?”
“Mary, this is a holy war. We have to count on fate to lead us where we need to be.” She smirked at him and then a police siren wailed.
They turned to see a police cruiser stopped at the entrance to the alley. The officer in the passenger seat shined his flashlight at them and said, “What are you two doing here? You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No, sir,” J.C. replied. They began to walk slowly toward the car as the two officers exited the vehicle and stood twenty feet in front of them. “I think we’re lost, officers. Where exactly are we?” As they got closer, they could tell the policemen were not human at all. They had green, scaly skin, yellow eyes, and holes for ears.
“Well, well, well,” one of the officers said. “Tank, it looks like we’ve got ourselves two runaway slaves.” They drew their weapons.
The other officer said, “You both need to get down on the ground so we can cuff you. Don’t worry; you’ll be back in your master’s home soon.”
As they knelt down, J.C. whispered, “Don’t worry, it would seem fate has intervened already.” A crowd of similar creatures formed around them as they were cuffed and placed into the backseat of the police cruiser and driven away. A gentle rain began to fall.
Bill and Faith climbed down from the massive tree that was pierced by the doorway to another reality. A cold drizzle fell from the black sky. A narrow gravel path cut through the trees leading from one unknown destination to another. “Which way should we go?” Bill asked.
She smiled at him and said, “Since we don’t know where we’re going, we’ll get there either way.” She walked down the path and he hurried to catch up to her. “You really think that other door opens around here?”
“Yea, but I don’t think I ever said it was nearby. I just think we’re not on opposite sides of the universe. Also, those hideous creatures all looked alike. It makes sense they come from the same place, and probably close to their leader.”
“I hope you’re right, Bill. Try to remember the tree, okay?” They walked for an hour, finally reaching a tall hill and began to ascend. It took another hour to reach the summit and stood in awe at the sight. The forest extended for several miles in front of them. It was broken by several small hamlets, apparently farms or other rural settlements. In the distance, a huge city extended beyond the horizon. Most of the city was dark, lit only by a few streetlights at this late hour. It looked impoverished with almost endless rows of shabby apartment blocks. In the center of the city was a massive glass-like dome, under which an incredible center city was all glass and marble, with huge parks, statues, and governmental palaces. “Wow!”
“J.C. and Mary are down there,” he sighed. “I can feel them now.”
“How about Prudence and your family?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I think my family might be in that beautiful center city and I get the feeling that Prudence is not far from here, maybe in one of those rural hamlets between here and the city.”
“How do you know any of that?”
He laughed and said, “You have to remember I was born to be here, dear cousin.”
She took his hand and started down the hill. “I bet you wish you were back on Maui with a Mai Tai now, don’t you?”
“With you in that bikini, absolutely!” he laughed.
“Where are your markings, slave?” the police sergeant asked Mary and J.C.
“What are you talking about, lizard boy,” Mary scoffed.
“Listen, you stupid bitch, if you don’t start cooperating, I’m going to have to call the enforcers.”
J.C. said, “Officer, we are not slaves.”
“Look at you,” the sergeant replied. “What else can you be?”
“I guess you should call the enforcers then,” Mary added. The other officers nearby became nervous and hurried out of the room.
“Maybe a night in the slammer will help you regain your senses,” the sergeant said.
Minutes later, Mary found herself separated from J.C., changed into prison fatigues and pushed into a cell with another seemingly human female. The last thing he had told her before they split was to try to be nice. She was in no mood to be nice. This was a world where humans were slaves to the lizard people and the other monsters were bent on taking over her home and enslaving them as well. She stood leaning with her hands on the bars and the other woman sitting several feet behind on the single chair. Mary wondered if her superhuman abilities would work in this reality. She summoned her anger at her captors and the evil ones who ruled this savage planet. She pulled on the bars and felt them bending in her hands. She pushed them back into normal position and smiled.
“What clan are you from, missy?” her cellmate asked.
Mary turned around and leaned her back up against the bars. She examined her cellmate. She was young, perhaps eighteen in Earth years, with dark skin and bright green eyes. Her hair was cut short and her hairline was edged with geometric tattoos. “I don’t know what you mean by that, but my name is Mary Stewart.”
“Ah, so you were born a slave in the Stewart household. I never heard of that name in these parts. What does your master do?”
“I’m not a slave, whoever you are.”
“They call me Cassie, missy. Why do you have two names if one isn’t from your master?”
“Where I come from, we have a given name like Mary, and then our father’s family name for a surname. Is that what a clan is? Is that your family?”
“No, my family is my parents and such, right?” Mary nodded. “We don’t use that around here. My clan is the whole of the folks in my area, related or not. I am Cassie of Raven Wood. In fact, I haven’t heard of any others using their father’s names. Where are you from?”
“Earth.”
Cassie frowned and continued, “I never heard of that clan either. Is it on the other side of the ocean or something?”
“Yea, it’s something like that.” Mary walked over and sat on the lower bunk. “Cassie, why are you in jail?”
“The same as you, I suppose.” She stretched out her forearms and said, “No ownership brand, that means I’ve never been a slave before either. A few days ago, they entered my village looking for new slaves. I ran, but there’s no way a person can outrun those things. They captured twenty of us. Now they’ll be selling us off to the nobles in the center city. If we’re lucky, we get to move inside the dome. The air is cleaner there and I hear the food is good too. Otherwise, they put us in one of these buildings around here to work the factories and farms, providing food for the masters. Either way, the work is hard and the hours are long, but inside the dome is better.”
“Are the masters like the policeman who brought me in here?”
“You mean the gronk?” She laughed. “No, the masters are nothing like them. They say that the gronk are soldiers from another world, but I don’t know if that’s true. They are just the protectors, and most of them are pretty decent. They treat us okay for the most part. They’re not slaves, but they might as well be.”
“Who are the enforcers? Are they the masters?”
Cassie gasped and pulled her knees up under her chin. “We don’t talk about them, missy. I’ve heard they can hear us wherever we are, and can slip out of hidden holes through secret doors to take us away forever. But they aren’t the masters either. No, missy, they say the masters look a lot like us, only they are very tall and thin, with big eyes and light gray skin. They always wear long robes, and their long hands and fingers bring death itself. Your clan must be far away not to know all of this.”
“You cannot imagine how far away it is, Cassie. Do you know how long the masters have been on this planet?”
“My dad said his grandfather told him that his grandfather was born a free man, in the days before the masters. They say that we used to live in grand cities with vehicles driving us from place to place, nice houses, and lots of food and drink. I saw a book once that they said was from that time. I think my dad still has it as a memento of his grandfather.”
“Do you know what it was called, that book?”
“No. It had funny shapes on the outside, and lots of pages of more funny symbols inside, but I don’t know if anyone knows what it means anymore.”
It was the dead of night as Bill and Faith approached a small clearing in the dense forest. It had stopped raining and a single moon was suspended in the sky. About fifty yards from the clearing, they heard voices talking, but they were too faint to make out. They separated to take two different paths forward, both hunched down and moving slowly to avoid detection. The air was chilly, and Bill’s breath formed a cloud in front of his face. He stopped for a minute to calm his nerves and then
continued forward gingerly. He moved off the path and out into the undergrowth to hide his movements. He was ten yards from the clearing when he saw them and dropped to the ground. From his vantage point, he could see three smashed cottages that had burned to the ground. There was a small campfire halfway between the start of the clearing and the smoldering ruins. Two of the monsters he had fought back home were sitting there, casually ripping pages out of a book, crumpling them in their hands and tossing them into the flames. There were several bodies lying around, not moving. He thought he noticed one body move slightly and let out a groan. “Ignore it,” one of the monsters said. “It will die by morning. I want to get back to our nest soon. This cold is seeping into my bones. Why are we playing with this stupid book, Neck?”
The other creature ripped out another page and discarded it. “You know the rules, Track. All books must be destroyed. The things that live here must forget the past if they are to be docile slaves to our master.”
Track picked up the book and said, “Why not toss the whole thing in now and get out of here?”
“That is not what the rules say!”
Track tossed the book into the fire and said, “I’m cold. Screw the rules.” He rose and ran over to a tree, pulling open another angle of light and slipped through.
“Track, you bastard!” he shouted as he tried to retrieve the book from the flames. He burned his fingers and yelped. Giving up, he ran over to the same door and climbed through.
Bill jumped to his feet and rushed into the opening, kicking the book out of the fire and then patting down his leg in case he had caught on fire. He threw dirt onto the book until the flame was extinguished. An odd glow caught his eye and he turned to see Faith kneeling over the dying man with her hands extended over him. Her hands were glowing and the light was pulsing down into the man’s body. After a moment, she removed her hands and turned to Bill. “You worry about a book first? Really, Bill.”