All of the Above

by Timothy Scott Bennett

  She’d been hoping for a straight-on fight. Even when she was still teaching, she’d spent her summers on the front lines, monkeywrenching oilrigs and felling HAARP towers with the ICA. She wasn’t cut out for these mind games, these magic tricks, this hall of mirrors. How could she fight an enemy she could not even see?

  She collapsed back onto the bed, letting her fur parka fall open. Elvis looked down on her from his place of honor on the wall, mocking her with his unfathomable smile. As if a pretty-boy in a white jumpsuit knew anything about reality. Sina hated the culture from which such things as Elvis could grow: the fat, comfort-addled Americans that were eating up the planet; people so lost, so corrupted, that they couldn’t even see the stupidity of their ways. And here she was trying to help their leader. And the President’s new boyfriend. And all because the aliens told her that this President would be different. Sina scoffed. Right. She’d heard that one before.

  Sina sat back up, leaning over to rip the velvet painting from its nail and tossing it to the floor. The walrus stood guard in the hallway, glancing at her expectantly. When this is over, Sina thought, she was going to have her say about this whole, fucked-up venture.

  For now, she had to find Immaqa. And Payok whom, despite her best intentions, she had begun to love.

  16.17

  Years later, whenever Payok recounted the battle – to his children, to his tribe – he was dismayed at how quickly the tale was told. It didn’t feel like it at the time, but in retrospect, all hell had broken loose, only to be quenched like a candle in the rain. It hardly seemed fair. So much loss demanded a longer story. Even the coming of the great spirit Wentshukumishiteu could not outweigh that loss.

  He’d been running from room to room, knocking things over and breaking mirrors and plates and CDs, smashing the televisions and moving furniture and spreading trash across the floor, trying to figure out where the old woman had gone, and everyone else. Trying to figure out this madhouse. Trying to find his way back. For a moment, when the Earth had first moved, he’d thought he’d heard voices. Immaqa had screamed. He was sure of it. But he could not follow her voice, and every time he entered a room, the messes he’d made had vanished. Except once, when he returned to the kitchen to find the trash can toppled just the way he had left it. It was possible to get back. He knew that. He just didn’t know the way.

  He’d only this minute entered the living room when the ground shook again, harder and for a longer time than before. Payok fell against the bookshelf, toppling books and CDs onto the floor. The front window he’d helped smash earlier, the window that had repaired itself, shattered again, falling into shards of sharp glass. But this time, the window did not restore itself.

  Then out of the coat closet burst a creature more hideous than he’d ever seen, a skeleton draped in dry flesh and skin, its eye sockets white with fire, shrieking like a dentist’s drill. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck you you you!” it screamed. Payok backed up as the skeleton stumbled toward him. The eagle flew at the babbling monster, digging his talons into its eye sockets, blinding it with wingbeats. The skeleton slipped on the CDs and crashed to the floor, smashing its skull on the coffee table.

  Payok knew then what the angakkuq, Aua, had meant so many years ago. Aua had told the explorer, Knud Rasmussen, “We don’t believe. We fear.”

  Payok ran.

  16.18

  Linda yelped and hunkered down over Cole. The second tremor sent a burning log rolling right toward them. Only the quick response of Aamai saved them from being burned. He stepped in and kicked away the flaming wood just moments before the log would have hit Cole’s face. Linda sheltered Cole’s body with her own, waiting for the quaking to stop, listening to the hurried, worried sound of cracking ice and rock as it pinged and moaned and echoed through the rocky ledge beneath her. She imagined the Earth opening up and swallowing them all, and shivered at the thought of being trapped, once again, in the fierce and torturous blackness underground. She pressed closer to Cole, her body heavy with alarm and exhaustion. It felt as if somebody were lying on top of her. Had Rice somehow followed her here, and was it he who was now trying to shake her apart?

  The trembling stopped. Cautiously, Linda raised her head to look around. Despite the wind and the shaking ground, the Inuit woman across the circle continued to pound her frame drum. Linda pulled up a wobbling knee, as if she would try to stand.

  Aamai squatted next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?” he shouted into her ear.

  Linda nodded, turning to face the Inuit. Snow spilled from her hood and onto Cole’s tranquil face. “You?” The wind had grown so fierce that it seemed to snatch the word from her mouth and fling it into the darkness. She could barely hear herself.

  “We’re fine!” shouted the Inuit, grinning in the firelight. He looked up as someone called out from across the circle, then put his mouth to Linda’s ear. “Stay low!” he shouted. He stood and walked away.

  Linda gave him the thumbs up. She brushed the snow from Cole’s eyes, then lowered her face to his, creating a tent with her hood, holding it with cold, tight fingers to keep back the storm.

  Aamai and two others went about the difficult task of rebuilding the fire.

  16.19

  Alice sat in the bedroom closet, eyes closed, watching things unfold. She was glad her mother had chosen her for this mission. Someone needed to guard the sleeping humans in the bed beyond the closet door. Here, alone, she had time to think. Only one fold away, she could hear the man snoring. She wondered what was wrong with his breathing system, that it made this odd noise.

  Something had shifted. When her father’s people withdrew five days ago, Alice had begun to notice something in her body. It was in her chest, right above her lungs, near her throat. A tightening. A constriction. She surveyed her systems and found all to be in order. This was something new. It was as if her body was responding to the news of the alive ones’ departure. When the human girl made tears, the sensation in her body had intensified.

  Mr. Rice said it was a test. That resonated with her fundamental vibrations. But she thought he was mistaken about the alive ones’ intentions. It was not a test for Mr. Rice and her mother, or for the organization they called the People. It was a testing for all humans. A trial. An ultimate task. A testing of this snoring man and the woman at his side. A testing of this President Linda they kept chasing. A testing of these fur-clad ones now stumbling about in the house.

  Alice was no longer convinced that her father’s people wished for Mr. Rice to succeed. Which meant that her own mother might be mistaken as well.

  A shout came from below. Her mother’s voice. Alice rose, stepping out into the empty room. Perhaps she should go discuss this before things got out of hand.

  16.20

  Utterpok shuffled back and forth across the living room floor, beating his drum and chanting a song. Grace could not make out the words. The polar bear paced the hallway between the back door and the front.

  The old shaman stopped and opened his eyes, an inner light glowing through his pupils. He winked at Grace. “Fast cars, fast deals with Kenny Fast,” he said, his eyes sparkling. He closed them and began to chant again.

  Grace smiled. She knew what he was doing. He was refusing to believe.

  16.21

  Obie knew he had an advantage over his enemies; he could empathize. Because he could share the feelings of others, he knew that Mr. Random, though resigned to his situation, really wanted nothing more than to be set free. He wanted to die a final death. His cries and shrieks were not the cartoonish rantings of a monster. They were the desperate, piteous pleas of a man in pain. He simply had no idea how to let go and move on. He didn’t even know that he could. And so Obie could trust that this house would fall. Born of Random’s mind, it wanted to die as well. For Obie, it was simply a matter of aligning with what already wanted to happen. He could help it do what it wanted to do, and in that, serve the highest good for all, including Mr. Random.

  Ob
ie sat in the recliner and focused his mind. His ears heard the distant sobbing of Immaqa, the harried footsteps of Payok running in the hallway upstairs, the chanting of Utterpok. But he could not let these things distract him. Dust filtered down from the ceiling above as the old woman pounded and pounded on the bathroom walls. Obie ignored it.

  Obie did not believe in this Confusion. He did believe in earthquakes. All that mattered was that this house fall down. He knew that it would. And because he knew that it would, it did.

  16.22

  “Go back upstairs, Alice!” snarled Bob. She pushed her daughter aside and kicked the Inuit girl, the one they called “Immaqa,” again and again. She’d have preferred just jumping inside the little bitch’s brain and exploding her mind from the inside out but something about these walrus-fuckers’ trance kept her locked out. So be it. She’d do it the old-fashioned way.

  The girl was pathetic, really. She’d fallen down the stairs and broken her ankle, poor little dear, and all she could do was pull herself away on her elbows, trying to hide under the dining room table, begging like… well… a little girl. Stupid! Like she even had an ankle here to break. Is this all you have for fighters, Carl? Gods, man, did you really think you could beat us?

  Bob grabbed the girl’s legs, pulled her out from under the table and kicked her once right in the head. The little bitch finally shut the hell up. Random knelt beside her and tasted the blood that seeped from her temple.

  Remembering her father’s admonition to “always use the right tool for the job at hand,” Bob materialized a small black cube in her palm: a rubix. She knew that she couldn’t actually kill somebody on the astral with kicks to the head. That was just for fun. To get rid of someone in this realm, the quick and easy answer was to toss them down a black hole. Then the techs could mop up the bodies matter-side at their leisure. Bob twisted the rubix and tossed it at the Inuit chick. Random scooted back. The girl was sucked inside the cube as it disappeared through the floorboards.

  One down, seven to go, thought Bob. She wiped her boot on the rug and walked into the kitchen for a glass of water, smiling at how powerful the Confusion was. Like she really had boots to have blood on! She thought for a moment of her parents back in Cleveland, long since dead in prison. She smiled. They’d have been so proud.

  Bob failed to notice the look on Alice’s face, the slight, almost imperceptible grimaces that had flashed across her tiny face as Bob had delivered her kicks. Alice was not proud.

  16.23

  Evlyn hooted as she pounded the bathroom walls. The shower tiles had cracked and broken away and the pipes had burst, spraying the floor with a mist of hot water. And already there were fractures around the room’s edges, as if her pounding, and the earthquakes, would splinter this place to brick and timber. It felt good, the pounding, the destruction of this house. She’d lived so many lives. She’d been stabbed, beaten, raped and murdered too many times to count. She was tired of it. The human race had gone to shit. If they couldn’t muster the moral resolve to pull themselves out of the slime into which they’d fallen, then they deserved to be sent back to “Go.”

  A large piece of the ceiling fell onto the sink behind her, not just wallboard but joists and insulation. She could see straight through to the roof, where a beam of darkness shone through a crack in the sheathing. She smiled and went back to her pounding.

  The old woman was furious. She’d been helping and they killed her! And that poor little girl! She’d sacrificed her own life for her father. Evlyn beat the wall with her fists and the whole house shuddered underfoot. She could do no less than that little girl.

  16.24

  When the house shook again Ruth screamed.

  Cole pounded back up the stairs and burst into their room. “You okay?”

  “What’s going on?” asked Ruth, sitting up on the bed. The sounds of distant pounding and a girl sobbing had awakened them both. Now the whole house was shaking, as if they were having an earthquake. Ruth grabbed her robe and stepped into her slippers. A loud scraping sound came from above and she looked up, expecting to see the little girl Cole had spoken of, lifting off their Barbie’s Dream House roof. The scraping stopped. She looked at her husband with panic in her eyes. “Did you see anything downstairs?”

  Cole shook his head. “There’s CDs all over the floor. Otherwise, nothing.”

  “What’s happening?” asked Ruth, stepping into Cole’s arms.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed into her hair.

  The velvet Elvis fell to the floor.

  16.25

  The roof of the house rose up and tumbled away as if a tornado had taken it. At once they were all together again, left confused and shaken in rooms all over the same little house, as though scattered like cornhusks by the twister. Their opponents were there as well, and were already attacking. Random made for Obie as the latter rose out of the recliner. Obie tried to dodge the skeleton as he approached but Random was impossibly fast, putting Obie into a chokehold from behind before Obie could complete his move. The fox nipped at Random’s legs. The living room wall behind the recliner fell outward into the blackness.

  Utterpok and the polar bear, now standing side by side, started toward Bob in the dining room. Bob launched herself at them feet first, kicking them both in the chest with such force that they tumbled away like bowling pins. The bear landed on Grace, pinning her against the sofa. Dennis managed to squirm away. The polar bear righted himself and tried again.

  Alice slipped out the front door.

  Sina sped down the hallway from the back and slammed into Bob just as she regained her footing. They fell to the floor; the Inuit woman’s hands clutched at the distorted woman’s neck. The walrus huffed up and pinned Bob’s legs. The polar bear caught her foot in his jaws. The floor underneath them buckled.

  Payok rushed into the room from upstairs, his eagle landing on Bob’s face and digging in with its talons. Evlyn followed and began pounding on Bob’s stomach. Payok turned to help Utterpok to his feet. Obie and Random held fast in their embrace; Obie pulled desperately at the skeleton’s sharp fingers as they sought to close his windpipe.

  Bob exploded. That’s how it looked to Payok. A detonation of radiance and power filled the dining room, tossing back Sina and the polar bear and old woman like test dummies, like paper dolls, like leaves in the wind. Dennis barked a furious warning. When the explosion dimmed they saw Bob, standing calmly with a slight smile on her face. In her hand was a small, black cube. “You guys are a joke,” she said. She twisted the rubix and threw it at Obie.

  “No!” shouted Utterpok and Grace at the same time. Utterpok tried to deflect the cube with his hands. The cube drew him in as it passed and he was gone. The polar bear flickered out. The cube was not deflected.

  Obie saw her throw. He wrapped a leg around the skeleton, twisted and let himself fall, bringing Mr. Random into the path of the approaching rubix. Random was sucked away as the cube passed over Obie, sparing him a similar fate. The air was filled for just a moment with Mr. Random’s final words: “Thank thank thank thank thank!” he shouted. The rubix disappeared through the wall. It was over in seconds.

  “Goddamn you, Carl!” shouted Bob.

  The Confusion buckled and quaked again. The floor beneath Bob fell away, taking her with it. Through the gaping hole in the floorboards, all they could see was starless black.

  Grace walked to where Utterpok had disappeared, her face lined with tears. She picked up his drumstick where he’d dropped it. His drum was nowhere to be found.

  16.26

  Linda pushed herself to her feet when Cole’s tarp was ripped away by the gale. The cold wind tore through her body like shrapnel, leaving her joints so stiff that it hurt to move. She looked around for Aamai, hoping to wave him down and get his help. Her Inuit musher was over by the woman with the drum, dancing with two other Inuit men and another woman. The four of them were pounding a slow, steady rhythm on the ice with their feet, as if calling on the Earth itself for
help and protection.

  Linda looked down at Cole. Snow was drifting quickly around his body. Though she was loath to interrupt the dancers, Linda needed some help to find another tarp. She took a quick step forward and then stopped. A dreaded voice had started laughing in her ear. Rice! It felt as if that bastard hovered right beside her, breathing down her neck. Linda quivered with revulsion at the thought of his hands on her. She heard Rice shout “Now!” Then the shooting started.

  Rising over the lip of the rock ledge was a ship, a larger version of the “wok” she’d ridden in, glowing blue-hot against the dark sky, hovering in place as if the wind could not touch it. Out of the top popped two men in black uniforms with rifles. They aimed and fired down on the circle.

  Linda screamed as bright beams of yellow power pulsed and spattered across the circle. The Inuit screamed and scattered. Linda fell down onto Cole, shielding him with her body. She looked up to see a beam of light cut across the old shaman’s chest.

  16.27