by Perrin Briar
Zoe and Cassie climbed down from the Humungo’s back. The bird turned to snap at them immediately, but Zoe kept hold of the vine and tugged hard on it. The bird choked, jumping back. The Humungo stepped back, hissing at Zoe.
“Are you going to behave yourself?” Zoe said.
The bird gave no hint it understood.
Wark wark!
A thick ball of yellow fluff fell end over end toward them, bleeping as it descended.
“Wayward!” Aaron said. “We have to save him!”
“Wayward?” Bryan said.
The parent bird looked up at the falling chick, desperation painted on its features. It jumped, going wild, biting at its restraints. It wanted to rescue its baby. Zoe could understand that.
“Hey!” Zoe said. “Hey!”
The bird snapped to attention, looking at Zoe. It nodded to the vines that held it. Zoe stepped forward and began unwinding them, releasing it. Once it was free, the bird stepped back and leapt into the air, flapping its powerful wings toward the falling chick. The second parent bird joined the first, and together they brought the chick down to the ground safely.
Aaron stepped toward Wayward, but his parents held him back.
“They’re dangerous,” Bryan said. “Let them go.”
“But Wayward did so much for us,” Aaron said.
“He knows that,” Bryan said. “He’ll always remember it. Hopefully he, at least, won’t be so bloodthirsty as his parents.”
The birds took off, Wayward perched on the back of one of his parents. The family hugged one another, holding one another tight. It was everything they’d been working toward. This moment.
“Can I smell puke?” Cassie said.
“I, uh, had a little accident,” Bryan said.
BOOM!
An explosion shook the earth by the throat. There was a flash and the world turned bright red, then bleached orange and yellow. The world was coming to an end and it wasn’t about to wait for anyone or anything. It was going to happen. Now.
“And onto the next thrilling chapter,” Zoe said.
46.
“NOW WHAT do we do?” Cassie said.
“There’s nothing we can do to stop it,” Bryan said. “We just have to find a way of escaping somehow.”
“That’s great,” Zoe said. “Except we don’t know where the Passage is.”
“We do, but unless we want a severe suntan I don’t think we want to use it,” Bryan said.
“So after all that falling through the sky stuff, we’re doomed anyway?” Cassie said. “We’d have been better off hitting the rocks at sixty miles an hour. At least it would have been quick.”
“What are you talking about?” Aaron said. “We know where the Passage is.”
“Where?” Zoe said.
Aaron pointed up, at the sky.
“The ceiling?” Bryan said. “You mean, where we just came from?”
“Yes,” Aaron said.
“How do you know this?” Zoe said.
“We found a map of the world,” Cassie said.
“And each major point links up,” Aaron said. “On your side, now the sky, there was a strange picture of something that looked like a spiral.”
“A spiral?” Zoe said. “Not another whirlpool.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a whirlpool,” Aaron said.
“Then what was it?” Zoe said.
“I’m not sure,” Aaron said. “Something that sucks or pulls, I guess. Why else would it be a spiral?”
“Which direction was it in?” Bryan said.
Aaron pointed to their east. Bryan shut his eyes and pictured the route they’d taken to get to the mountain. He shook his head.
“No,” he said “We didn’t see anything matching a spiral… Wait.”
“What?” Zoe said. “What is it?”
“The spiral,” Bryan said. “We did see something it could have been.”
“What?” Zoe said.
“The quicksand pit,” Bryan said.
“Right!” Zoe said.
“That’s it,” Aaron said. “It must be it.”
“We don’t know that,” Zoe said.
HISSSSSS!
The sound came from beneath their feet. The earth erupted, sending a large magnetic rock into the air, much like the Gravitas boulder Bryan and Zoe saw in the mine. The family took cover, and watched as it rose up, up, up…
The family remained behind cover, expecting the rock to crash back to earth…
Only it never did, and instead stayed up there, hovering in midair, spinning like a top.
“The quicksand pit it is, then,” Zoe said.
“I second that motion,” Aaron said.
“We’re going to have to hurry,” Bryan said. “This world doesn’t look like it’s got much more life left in it.”
“Uh, guys?” Cassie said.
She was floating, her feet rising off the ground by a foot. The whole family began to rise, floating.
“We’ll need to be able to walk if we want to go anywhere,” Bryan said.
Zoe bent down, picked up some rocks, and stuffed them in her pockets. The others followed suit, and soon they were all walking across the ground, dragging their feet, fully loaded with dirt.
“I know it’s good to keep yourself grounded, but this is ridiculous,” Cassie said.
47.
A DOZEN large Gravitas boulders floated in the middle of the world, spinning gently in place. There was a loud crack! and the walls of the world disintegrated, breaking apart like crumble. It fell forward, an avalanche of earth, but never hit the floor. Instead, gravity seized and pulled it so it swirled around the world, a miasma of carnage.
Chunks of rock larger than their heads zipped past their ears in an attempt to replace their skulls. The family ducked down and crawled on their bellies. A crack in the earth broke, and red raw magma shone like the gates of hell.
“It should be here!” Bryan said with squinting eyes. “It should be here, somewhere!”
“Maybe it was never here,” Zoe said.
“It was!” Aaron said. “It should be! Right here!”
“Maybe it got blown away, like the rest of the world,” Cassie said.
Bryan took a step forward and stumbled. His leg was buried up to his ankle.
“It’s here!” Bryan said. “It’s here somewhere! Everyone spread out!”
Bryan felt with his free foot left and right, searching for where the quicksand was. His left foot was trapped, but only weakly, like it was on the edge of the pit.
“Here!” Zoe said. “It’s over here!”
She had sunk into the quicksand up to her knees. The others gathered around and sank beside her. They swirled around in a circle, heading into the center.
“Remember what happened last time?” Zoe said.
“Now we’ve got rocks in our pockets,” Bryan said.
“Not rockets?” Zoe said with a wink.
“Now is not the time,” Bryan said.
“Now is never the time,” Zoe said.
With the added weight, the quicksand overwhelmed them, submerging them beneath its surface.
“Here we go again,” Cassie said.
This time, they didn’t rise back up. They each felt the familiar tug of a sinkhole as they were sucked beneath the earth.
Rosetta #4
ROSETTA LET out a desperate breath as she was expelled from the Passage. She flew through the air and held up her arms to protect herself against the fall. But it never came. She felt frozen, like she was being held up by someone. She didn’t want to open her eyes. But she did.
She was floating, six inches off the ground. She cast around, confused, mesmerized. She kicked her feet, reached out with her hands, but felt nothing. She made swimming motions and moved forward, slowly, but what really made her move was the transfer of body weight.
Rosetta pulled herself onto a large floating rock. She braced herself, bending her knees. She located her next pebble, another rock ten yards
distant. She pushed off her rock, forcing it backward. She drifted forward to her next stepping stone.
She paused on the rock, peering around at the molten lead and floating rivers of lava.
Why do I always have to clean up Bryan’s messes? Rosetta thought.
One thing was certain: she was due a hefty pay rise when she eventually got her hands on him. She coiled her legs and leapt to the next boulder.
Once Upon A Time
1.
IT WAS a fine job, and no mistake. Montgomery reached into the water and felt at the cold skin of the deceased—and probably diseased—body. A shiver went through him. He would never get used to that—the cold, claminess of dead flesh, swollen and puffy with water.
He suspected it was because one day it would be his skin that felt this way. It wouldn’t be long before it did, he thought to himself. He was an old man. Death was the only thing left to look forward to. But Montgomery had been saying that for the past twenty years.
He expected every moment to be his last. The only tragedy—in his eyes—was that it never came, and so he spent his life in perpetual fear, waiting for the moment when something—or someone—would snatch his life from him.
Montgomery wore a mask over his mouth to prevent breathing in any fumes or disease that might emanate from the body. It wasn’t right for someone living to have to go touching the bodies of those that were dead. Who knew what they had wrong with them. They weren’t from this world. They were from the underworld, and that thought terrified Montgomery more than any other.
One half of the bodies was always puffy white with death. The other half—from the top of the head to the waist, was always scorched black and red raw, bubbled and harsh, their clothes burnt rags. The body had been ejected from the bowels of hell. There were two of them.
Montgomery pulled them out of the water into his boat. He piled the bodies one on top of the other. It was the only way he could fit them in his tiny boat. It lacked the respect the dead deserved to be treated with, but there was no avoiding that.
Montgomery picked up his oars and set them in the stirrups on either side of his boat. He placed the paddles into the water and bent forward, the paddles reaching back to begin pulling away.
A single bubble formed on the lake’s surface. Montgomery peered over the side at it. The bubble popped. Montgomery leaned back on his bench and again pulled the oars through the water.
Pop! Pop!
More bubbles.
Montgomery felt a churning sensation in his stomach. He knew what was about to happen. He wished he’d worked faster so he could have been away from here by now. Then they would have been someone else’s problem.
Bubbles erupted on the surface, rushing and frothing at the mouth. The lake was going rabid, and it always resulted in the same thing. More arrivals.
But this was unusual, happening with greater fervor. Hell really wanted to be rid of these corpses, Montgomery thought.
He fell back into the belly of his boat, eyes wide. The bubbling water grew more violent as the lake burped, retched, and reached across the surface toward him.
There was a bright red gleaming light from the floor of the lake. Montgomery seized the oars and bent his knees, preparing to row. He was going to leave. He’d just say the bodies must have come after he left with the two he’d found. In his fear he lost his grip, sending an oar floating to one side.
Montgomery reached over, stretching his fingertips for the lost oar. He could just about feel it with the tips of his fingers, and began reeling it in.
Montgomery was face to face with the surface of the lake now. His eyes boggled. The harsh red light illuminated a body, a calm face, that rose higher and higher toward the surface.
Montgomery pulled back, but his weight was off, and he fell into the lake. His boat rocked, but stayed upright. The water was ice cold.
Montgomery began kicking back toward the surface. He was arrested in his actions by the sight of not one, but three—no, four!—bodies rising toward the lake’s surface. They looked like souls ascending to heaven. Perhaps that was what this world was compared to the hell they had formerly occupied.
Just as Montgomery breached, so too did the other bodies. Montgomery gasped for air, and floundered with his hands for the boat. One of the bodies nudged him with the top of their head. Montgomery ignored it and pulled himself up into the rowboat. He was panting, out of breath. He was too old for this.
He covered his face with his hands, unable to bring himself to look over the side, quivering. The lake was calm once again, the crickets and toads continuing their tuneless vigil.
Montgomery peered over the side. The final few bubbles popped into oblivion, leaving nothing but the faintest trace of half a dozen sets of vague ripples emanating out from the lake’s center.
Eventually, Montgomery stopped shaking. He peered through his fingers, still clasped tight to his face, at the lake’s surface. Where there had been no more bodies, there were now four. They floated on their backs, vacant expressions admiring the sky. Their eyes were closed and still wore clothes.
Montgomery blinked. He had never seen bodies like this before. They looked almost normal.
These bodies were not scorched. Somehow they had managed to avoid the worst of the flames of hell, and emerged up here, on God’s green Earth, untouched. Montgomery crossed himself.
These things must truly be work of the devil, for them to come out of hell’s own fiery void without a blemish. They must have been sent here by the great evil doer, Satan, sent here to test them, to destroy them, to slip amongst their number and do evil. Montgomery shivered.
He leaned over the side and picked up the missing oar, arms struggling under the weight. He prodded one of the floating figures—the man. There was no response, save for the body inching away from himself.
Montgomery cursed himself and put the oars back in the water. He turned around. Dead was dead. Even from hell. Montgomery usually liked the hollow thudding sounds of the boat as he rowed, but not tonight. Tonight they sounded ominous.
Montgomery didn’t really want to touch these bodies, didn’t need the extra work. But it would have been too obvious to whoever took the next shift that he had intentionally left the bodies here. And what a storm that would cause.
He sighed, grimaced, and reached over the side. He hooked his hands under the man’s arms and pulled him into the boat. If he was alive, surely that would have woken him up. But the man didn’t stir a muscle.
Montgomery did the same with the other bodies, and laid them atop the first two crisp bodies he’d found. This had to be a record haul. He ensured to tie each of their wrists and ankles together with rope, and laid them down. It was believed bodies from hell might awaken and take their vengeance upon the living. It had never happened, but evidence never killed superstitious beliefs.
Montgomery wiped the sweat from his brow. It was not caused by exertion—the air was damp. He cast around and listened. Was it just him, or did the world seem even more silent than usual? He got the depressing thought nature was watching him, paying attention to his every move.
Montgomery decided to get the job done, and as fast as he could. He pulled on the oars with a strength and speed and desperation he hadn’t felt in a long time. He hadn’t even had to do the worst part yet. That was still to come.
2.
THE BOAT coarsed over the lake in strong pulsing movements, stroke by stroke. Montgomery fancied no one else in town could have pulled the rowboat any faster than he currently was. His form was perfect. Funny how the body’s performance kicked in when its survival was at stake.
Montgomery steered the boat through a large gaping rent in the side of the mountain. It was triangular in shape and looked like something had cleaved a hole right in the earth.
Montgomery hated it. He hated the look of it, hated the way it made him feel. Afraid. Mortally afraid. Despite having done this job a hundred times before, his feelings toward that cave never wavered.
&nbs
p; Montgomery had never seen unscorched bodies emerge from the lake before. This was a first. Firsts were never a good omen. Firsts were a sign of something new taking place. A reversal in the world order. New meant danger. New meant intrigue. New meant death. But in Montgomery’s mind, everything led to death. He was just that way inclined.
He held his lantern over the side and cast the light around. It did little to break through the darkness, the small orb of light illuminating nothing beyond the water’s edge.
Montgomery hopped from the boat and into the shallow water. He thought he heard something and brought the lantern around. He didn’t see anything. He wouldn’t with this piddling light. He made munching motions with his mouth, noises like he was chewing cud. A sure sign he was nervous.
He gripped the prow of the boat with his swollen knuckles and pulled it onto shore. Then he reached into the bottom and pulled out the bodies. The unscorched bodies seemed heavier now, and if he didn’t miss his guess, he would have said they were getting warmer too. He decided to ignore it and get on with his job.
Montgomery laid the bodies along the shore, just shy of the water’s edge. He glanced at the bodies and considered just leaving them there, but he knew he couldn’t. Someone would come across them and he’d get blamed for it. He sighed and bent down. He’d begin with the scorched bodies first. They were what he was used to.
He hooked one hand under each scorched body’s armpit and dragged them across the ground, deeper into the cave. They didn’t put up much resistance, though one of them got snagged on an outcrop of rock and seemed unwilling to be pulled off it.
The tunnels were like a maze in these caves. It was easy to get turned around and confused. You could spend weeks wandering around without knowing where you were going. That’s if you could survive there that long. There was little in the way of food or sustenance.