The Gordian Event: Book 1 (The Blue World Wars)

by Lee Deadkeys

  He pried open his sleep-gummed eyes, then slammed them shut again as hot white sunlight blistered his corneas. His arm was waking up as painfully as the rest of him and the crick in his neck felt like grating glass as he tried to sit up straight.

  My God, what a horrible nightmare. The details were already fading from memory but he remembered his mother was in it. An afterimage flashed in his mind, his mother fighting off a huge black rat-thing, except the rat-thing was as big as a horse and seemed to be formed out of solidified oil.

  He shuddered and that got his neck throbbing. Rubbing at it with his now fully awake hand he sat up in the cab of his truck.

  THUMP. There it was again.

  “What the fuck?” Ox looked out the driver-side window and watched a furry shape run headlong into the door of his truck. The truck shook as the animal impacted with it yet again. Fumbling through his glove box he retrieved a Glock 21 and began to open the door.

  Continuing its insane assault, the small coyote charged the truck again, collided with the edge of the open door, stumbled a few steps sideways, and fell over. Blood flowed from a gash on the animal’s head and its eyes rolled around wildly.

  Gotta be rabies, Ox thought emerging from the vehicle. He trained the gun on the animal’s wounded head. Its eyes cleared and focused. Ox waited for the signs of aggression associated with an infected animal. The coyote whined plaintively, licking at the dirt as it did.

  “What the Devil is wrong with you?” he said. At the sound of his voice, the coyote thumped its tail on the hard-packed dirt beside the road. Ox took a stunned step away. This was no reaction he’d ever heard of from a wild animal, especially a rabid one.

  As he stood there, wondering what to do, the animal whined again. A trickle of dark blood oozed from its nostrils and formed a small pool in the dust. Ox looked up and down the highway for other vehicles, it was eerily quiet.

  He wondered if he should put the poor thing out of its misery and looked up the road again, hoping for someone to pawn the task off onto. When he looked back down at the animal, it was still and quiet. He breathed a sigh of relief; it had died on its own.

  Back in the truck and on the road, he realized he couldn’t remember pulling over last night. Then a vague memory returned to him—a memory of coyotes. Hundreds of them, standing in the road, blocking his progress. He hadn’t pulled over as much as he’d swerved off the road to avoid hitting the pack.

  A cold prickle worked at his nerves and he shivered. Maybe it was a dream, part of the nightmare, he told himself. Yeah, it had to be a dream, he assured himself, brought on by the strange coyote ramming his truck. He did that sometimes with his dreams, outside sounds and senses working into his subconscious.

  Ox realized he was gripping the wheel too hard and drifting a bit over the center line. Shaking himself, he put the disturbing image out of his head and focused on driving.

  * * *

  An hour later, and he found himself in the perky southwestern motif of his mother’s neighborhood. Her Boulder City home of eight years hadn’t changed much since the death of his father three years ago. The grass was now cut weekly by a teenage boy that lived in the area and her car washed monthly by another boy, even if it hadn’t left the carport.

  His mother and a few of the older ladies from her church made biweekly pack runs on the local grocery. All in all, she had adapted fairly well to the life of a widow. Or, so he’d thought. The last few times he’d talked to her on the phone, she hadn’t seemed quite… herself.

  She was becoming forgetful, accusing him of missing an every-other-day call that he actually hadn’t. And occasionally, she had trouble remembering some of her closest friend’s names and when he would correct her, she accused him of not paying attention. Their last conversation about the rats and the shed had been the strangest by far, however.

  He didn’t like the idea of her living by herself anymore and decided this just might be the time to ask her to move in with him. It would be hard for both of them, but the thought of her forgetting to turn off the stove and setting the house on fire was too much to take.

  As Ox pulled into the carport, he saw the living room curtain fall back against the sill. His mother had been watching for him. He killed the engine as the front door opened and his mother appeared. She waved, opened the screen door and stepped out.

  Ox sucked in a breath as he rushed up the walk, leaving his truck door standing open in his haste to reach her.

  Only twice in his life had he ever seen his mother in her robe after 9:00 AM. Both times she had been sick with the flu and had passed him in the hall on the way to the bathroom.

  Now she stood on the front porch, robe hanging open, her too-thin, scab-speckled legs showing under her housecoat.

  Ox ran to her, throwing an arm over her thin shoulders and ushering her back into the house.

  “My God, Mom. What happe—”

  Then the smell hit him. The odor was thick on his tongue; a combination his mind would only describe as cabdriver feet soaking in wet garbage.

  He pinched his nose. “What is that stench?”

  His mother only looked at the floor and he realized she was embarrassed. He told her to stay where she was as he headed for the kitchen, opening windows as he went.

  In the kitchen he found the source. Four bags of garbage were piled, sandbag like, in front of the back door. He grabbed the top two down, opened the door and tossed all the foul bags outside.

  With that done, he opened the rest of the windows. He moved to the sink and opened the doors beneath, found a bottle of Febreze and set to dousing the kitchen with half the bottle before moving on to the other rooms.

  His mother stood where he’d left her. Head down, swaying slightly in the middle of the living room.

  “Mom? What happened? Are you sick?”

  After a few moments she raised her grey head and looked at him. Dark purple semicircles puffed under each eye. She looked like she hadn’t slept, eaten or bathed in a week.

  Ox went to her, taking her gently by the arm and leading her to the kitchen table. Allowing herself to be led, she plopped down at the table with a grunt. Ox took the kettle off the stove, filled it with water and set the burner on high to speed it up.

  Looking out the window as he waited, he wondered where to begin. The grass in the backyard looked as if it hadn’t been cut in weeks and had grown long and weed-choked. Something he couldn’t see scurried through the overgrowth, heading out of sight around the house toward the shed. Rats, he thought as he poured water over a teabag.

  One of his mother’s legs stuck out from under the table. He set the cup down and bent to examine the numerous wounds running up and down the exposed limb.

  “Mom, what did this?” he asked, probing an angry red wound near her ankle.

  “The rats,” she whispered. “They don’t want me in the shed, not even to put the garbage out.”

  Leaving her to sip the tea, he went to find a first-aid kit. “We need to get you to the hospital, Mom, these look infected. God knows what those vermin are carrying.” He rubbed antibiotic cream over the wounds and applied the last bandage from the first-aid kit.

  “We’ll get you checked out, and then I’ll deal with those damn rats.”

  His mother grasped his shoulder. “No. I’m fine, the rats didn’t mean to hurt me. They were trying to protect me.”

  “Protect you? Protect you from what?” he asked.

  She was quiet for a moment. Her hands shook as she raised the cup to her frail lips and sipped. She looked ten years older than the last time he’d seen her, three weeks prior.

  “From the thing in the shed,” she said.

  Ox felt chilly fingers ruffle the hairs on his neck. He rose from in front of her, feeling around behind him for another kitchen chair and fell mostly onto it.

  The Thing in the shed. Visions of chainsaw-wielding wraiths danced through his mind. There wasn’t much in this world that could unnerve him, but maybe he’d just seen too of
ten how easily a body made of soft tissue could break and tear. Bodies like ours, human bodies.

  A Thing was always a badass. The Thing under the bed, the Thing in the closet, and let’s not forget the Thing or Things in haunted houses. No, Things were never good.

  Jess ribbed him unmercifully about it. While watching a scary movie, which he hated, she would shout or scream, grabbing his arm as the Thing lunged from the darkness. She’d laugh and point, he’d cuss and try not to punch her. The only reason he watched them with her at all was their goofy back and forth banter. So, what’s the best round for zombies? He would ask. Jess would reply, .308, of course! Then they’d be laughing and he’d forget all about his promise that he would never watch a scary movie with her again.

  But this wasn’t a movie, this was real and right here. He looked again at the weeping sores on his mother’s thin legs. Anger, real rage, bubbled up from the pit of his stomach and roughly shoved aside the unease, the childlike fear of the unknown.

  “What’s in the shed, Mom?”

  She looked at him and blinked, “In the shed? How would I know? The rats won’t let me in.”

  Ox rubbed a hand over his face. In his mother’s mind, the trouble with the rats had probably morphed into some unearthly beast lying in wait inside the shed. She was getting older and this was probably a part of the process.

  He was just happy she still knew who he was. He knew other people that hadn’t been so lucky with their aging parents. Like one of the guys from the shop whose father had gone at him with a kitchen knife after accusing him of trying to steal his memory. Getting old sounded like it sucked.

  Leaning across the table, Ox took her frail hand in his. “It’s okay, Mom, I’ll deal with the rats. I do think we should get you checked out by a doctor, just to play it safe.” She was already shaking her head, no.

  “I really am fine, son. You promise you won’t hurt the rats, right?”

  He pasted a reassuring smile on his face, promised to do his best to not harm the vermin and stood to get her another cup of tea.

  “Anything else been happening around here? You feeling okay, I mean before the rat problem?”

  She didn’t say anything, only stared at her hands; she seemed nervous and uneasy.

  “Mom, what’s wrong? What is it?”

  “Well, there have been some strange things happening lately.”

  He waited for her to go on, giving her hand a slight squeeze of encouragement. She finally met his eyes, “I don’t want you to worry. I really don’t know how to explain it other than…I’ve been having earthquakes in my head.”

  Ox tried to hide his terror. Were these the first signs of a stroke, maybe a brain tumor, simple dementia or worse, Alzheimer’s? God, she seemed so young suddenly, too young to have any of these old people afflictions.

  His mother was frowning at him, head cocked to one side like he was the one acting strange. He searched his panicked mind for something to say, something light and upbeat. “Wouldn’t that be called headquakes?”

  As soon as it left his lips he wanted to kick himself. This wasn’t helping her and he came off sounding condescending, not carefree.

  She stared at him for a moment. He could breathe again when he saw that familiar feisty spark in her eyes. “Don’t be a smartass, son.”

  Ox lowered his head, receiving the playful scolding with a faint smile. “Sorry, Mom. Why don’t you tell me everything that’s happened?”

  Releasing his hand, she patted her robe pockets and withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes, shook one out and offered it to him. Ox shook his head, wondering if she forgot he’d quit over a year ago.

  She shrugged, lit the cigarette, drew deeply on it and then blew out a thick blue plume. “It started a few days ago, the head-quakes I mean. I think it was a few days ago, anyway, I can’t remember what day for sure but it was right about the time I noticed all the rats hanging around the shed.”

  She took another drag and seemed to relax. “I was asleep when it happened the first time. It woke me up and I lay there, terrified, thinking there was an earthquake happening. After it stopped I went back to sleep.”

  She tilted her head to one side, “Isn’t that a strange thing for someone to do after an earthquake?”

  Ox thought it wasn’t any stranger than anything else she’d told him so he shrugged and motioned for her to continue.

  “The next night it happened again, but this time a little more violently. I decided I should call the police, or someone. I picked my hearing aid up off the nightstand—I have to use it on the phone or otherwise I can’t hear hardly a word—and went into the living room. I walked past my china cabinet and stopped. Nothing was moving. I mean nothing. All the delicate figurines, plates and platters sat still as stone while the earthquake raged on,” she said and took another hit off the cigarette.

  “I thought I was having a stroke or something so I decided to call the paramedics. I put my hearing aid in as I picked up the phone, and that’s… that’s when I heard it.”

  She shuddered and took the last drag on her cigarette before crushing it out on the saucer.

  Ox waited a moment for her to go on. “What, Mom? What did you hear?”

  “I don’t want to go into a home,” she said.

  Ox blinked, surprised. “That’s what you heard?”

  She shook her head. “No, no, I’m telling you I don’t want you to think I’m crazy when I tell you the rest and lock me up in an old folk’s home.”

  Ox took her hand and gave it a pat. “Mom, that’s not going to happen, just tell me what you heard.”

  She sighed. “After I put my hearing aid in, I thought I was hearing voices.”

  Ox’s brows furrowed and his mouth opened, but before he could speak, she held up a hand, silencing him.

  “I didn’t understand what the voices were saying. It was like they were in another language or gibberish, but nothing I’d ever heard before or could understand.”

  Leaning across the table toward him, she interlaced her fingers, her eyes shifting from side to side as if looking for eavesdroppers. “It was then,” she whispered, “that I realized it wasn’t words I was hearing at all, it was images, pictures in my head flickering like an old projector.”

  Ox ran his hands over his face, kneading his temples. “So, Mom, you’re saying that while the earthquake is happening, the one that doesn’t move anything, that you put your earpiece in and you heard images.”

  She raised her hands and shrugged in a gesture that expressed how impossible it all sounded.

  “Okay, Mom,” he sighed. “What did you see?”

  She put her hands together again as if in prayer and grimaced. In a whisper she said, “The most awful things imaginable. Things that only the gods can look upon objectively. I saw great Events, ages when the world was both old and young. I witnessed the death and rebirth of the world many times over, more times than my mind could comprehend. Great civilizations fell and were reborn of mud and straw. The Event, the culling, culling… as a serpent devours the sun!”

  “Mom! Mom!” Ox yelled, shaking her violently. One of her eyes had rolled back in her head as soon as she started describing the images she’d seen. The other eye was spotted with pepper-sized blotches. Terrified when she wouldn’t stop talking in that creepy trance-like monologue, he’d banged his hand on the table, upsetting their cups. She had continued as if he wasn’t even there.

  God forgive him, he was about to slap her when she moaned and fainted. Ox grabbed her up and headed through the living room to the front door. Halfway there she regained consciousness.

  “What happened? Put me down, dammit!” She kicked out feebly, pushing on his shoulder with her pale hand.

  “Mom, you just passed out. I’m taking you to the hospital, so stop struggling.”

  “Cecil McNair Fougel, you put me down this instant!”

  Ox hesitated near the front door, fighting with the programming ingrained in most offspring when hearing all three o
f their names at once, followed directly by a command.

  “Mom, please. You need to be in the hospital,” he said, taking another tentative step toward the door.

  “Nonsense. I need some sleep and a good meal, son. Let me rest for a few hours while you check the shed and do something with the garbage. Maybe you could pick up something for dinner at Maxine’s Diner?”

  Ox looked at her and then back to the door. He didn’t like this, not at all. If his father was still alive he’d tell him to be a man, stop pussing out. His mother seemed to read his thoughts.

  “I promise if I don’t feel right as rain after a few hours rest, we’ll go to the hospital. I’ll leave it up to you, if you think I still need to go, then I’ll go.”

  He realized this could work out for him. He would let her rest a little, take care of the rats without worry of upsetting her further, wake her and say he still thought they should go to the hospital.

  “You remember you promised, Mom,” he said and set her down.

  She nodded her head slowly as she straightened her housecoat. “Yes, son, I remember. Don’t let me sleep all day though, only a few hours, okay?”

  Ox nodded and watched as she shuffled down the hall to the bedroom.

  * * *

  After clearing the cups off the table and wiping up the spilled tea, Ox stood at the sink, running water over the dishes. Staring once again at the too tall grass in the yard, he saw another brown blur disappear around the corner of the house. Moving quickly out the side door, he jogged to the corner of the house that led to the shed and stopped dead.

  “Holy shit,” he said as he took in the twenty or so large brown rats gathered in front of the wooden doors. At the sound of his voice, most of the rats turned toward him and sat up, little pink feet pawing the air, noses twitching.

  He shuddered involuntarily and looked around. A shovel leaned against the weathered exterior of the house, buried in a foot of weeds and tall grass. Ox grabbed it, felt the rough of the wood handle and decided its days of dirt work were over. That didn’t mean the tool was useless. He hefted it and stepped toward the rats.