Raining Fire

by Rajan Khanna

  Carmen lay on the floor, cuts all over her body. I was grateful for all the blood, for hiding some of it from me. On arm lay splayed out beside her, the hand curled into a claw, as if she were clutching at the ground for some kind of respite. But none came.

  I felt empty. Drained of everything, of all my fire.

  Maya grabbed the back of my head and forced me down. “Get a good look,” she said. “Remember this.” Carmen must have been beautiful. Once. But now she was just carved meat. The image is still frozen in my mind.

  After Maya threw me back in my cell, I cried for a while. Cried for Carmen and cried for her daughter, a girl who would never see her mother again, a girl who might very well be absorbed into the Helix.

  I didn’t talk to Dimitri. What would I say?

  Eventually I lay limp and awake on my sleeping pad, hollow. I am alone. I am a prisoner. They have me right where they want me.

  And there is no escape.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I wake up and test my resolve. Is this really what I’m going to do? But I know that it is. Now that the thought has settled into place, I feel a kind of calmness. Like I’ve somehow come to rest and however strong the storm around me is, I can weather it.

  I went through a stretch a while back in which I discovered books, novels, about time travel. I fell instantly in love. I read as many as I could get my hands on. It wasn’t easy to find them—it’s not like they were labeled—but I found books about books and then made a list and hunted them down. The Time Machine. To Say Nothing of the Dog. Slaughterhouse-Five. The Anubis Gates. Books like that. I could live in that mental space for hours and hours every day.

  The obvious fantasy was going back to that moment when the Bug was released and stopping it. There are so many myths about how it happened. That it was an accident, an experiment gone horribly wrong. That it was a crazy mutation of some African virus. That it was a deliberate attack by terrorists from the East. Or by, well, insert whatever group you hate. No one I ever met knew for sure. What most people said was that they weren’t equipped for it, that years of weak government and ignorance meant that when the Bug appeared, they couldn’t stop it. It spread all over the world in a matter of weeks.

  But whatever its origin was, I fantasized about traveling back to that moment, when the vial was dropped or the gas was released or that first patient sneezed, and I imagined stopping it. I imagined taking one act and forever changing the future.

  It was only later that I realized that doing that would wipe me from existence. Without the Bug, without the Sick, my father and mother would never have met. That kept me up some nights, wondering if I would still do it. I’ve spent all of my life trying to stay alive. Would I throw my life away, even for such a huge thing?

  In the end, I decided yes. Because of my father. Because of my mother. Because they would live lives free of the hardships that the Sick brought. They wouldn’t have to spend their lives in fear of touching someone. Or breathing without a scarf wrapped around their faces. So that they could live in a world where they didn’t have to worry about where their next meal would come from.

  It was moot, of course. Time travel doesn’t exist. I would say our current state of being confirms that. But that one moment was the biggest wrong in the history of our world. What Miranda was trying to do was to fix it. To mend that wrong. Years later, yes. And it wouldn’t reverse everything. But it would fix that wrong, and that was (it took me too long to realize) a worthy and just goal.

  The same applies to me, and my life. There are many, many (so many) wrongs written on that page, but one has stuck out above all others for years now. One is the King of Wrongs, that one bit of ballast I’ve never been able to drop.

  Maybe, even years later, addressing that wrong is worth something.

  Maybe it’s worth everything.

  So when I wake up, I don’t reach for a bottle. I instead go to our water barrels, and the sponge and soap that have been strangers to me for at least several days (and probably longer), and I wash myself. I trim my beard. I dress in the cleanest clothes I can find. I pull on my boots. I strap on my holster. I shrug on my coat. I visit Claudia’s stores of parts and gear and pull out a few choice electronic pieces. Only when this is all done do I make my way to front of the Valkyrie where Claudia is sitting. She likes to fly in a loose style. I slump a bit, but I’m usually straight in the chair. It’s how my father taught me. Claudia will often lean to one side. Sometimes she’ll throw one leg over the side of the chair. She seems to fly entirely by feel.

  She looks up at me, then back at the windows in the gondola. Then back to me. “What’s the occasion?”

  “I need you to take me somewhere.”

  She sighs. A sound of utter frustration. I wish I didn’t understand why. But I do. “What now, Ben?”

  I inhale. Hold it a second. Then let it out. “It’s important.”

  She turns to me and gives me a bitter smile. “Isn’t it always? Isn’t it a matter of life and death? Or a matter of personal honor? Or some wrong that needs righting?” Her face goes hard. “Or are you already out of booze?”

  I close my eyes. “It’s important now.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Please, Claudia,” I hear myself saying. “Just . . . please drop me where I need to go. Then . . .” I try to search for the right words, but instead grab the easiest ones. “I’ll be out of your hair.”

  She narrows her eyes. “Where?”

  “Utah.” Pause. “The temple.”

  Her face turns angry. “Where your father Faded?”

  I hold her eyes. “Just take me there. I . . .” I look away, then shut my eyes and shake my head. “I need to go. There.”

  “What for?” She throws up her hands, then points at me. “Jesus. That bitch got so far into your head that your brain is still choking on her shit. Tess was playing you, Ben.”

  “No,” I say. “This is . . . this is what I have to do.”

  “Do what, Ben? Revisit the site of your biggest tragedy?”

  “My biggest failure.” Tears come as I say it through clenched jaws. Almost immediately I wonder if that’s true. I think of the collapsed and smoldering house and Miranda. Then that guilt gets pulled into the whirlpool of shame and desperation that’s churning inside of me.

  “What do you want with that place?”

  I don’t know, is the answer. “Does it matter?” I say. “I need to go.”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” she repeats. “I’m not taking you there.”

  “Claudia . . .”

  “No, Ben. This is my ship. I don’t follow your orders.” She sets her jaw. “I never followed your orders. I’ll drop you at the next stop, and you can make your way. But I am not taking you back to that temple.”

  “Claudia . . .” My voice is almost a whisper.

  “No.”

  My eyes are closed, and I’m shaking my head, and tears are leaking from the shut lids. I vaguely realize that my right hand is resting on the butt of the revolver. I’m only slightly more aware when I pull it and point it at Claudia.

  “Claudia.” I say it short and clipped and as if through a heavy curtain of pressure. “I need. To go. Back. To the temple.”

  Claudia’s look cuts me. “Are you going to shoot me, Ben?”

  “Not if you take me where I want to go.”

  She smirks.

  The bullet hits the console about four inches to the left of where she’s leaning. She jumps at the sound and the impact so close to her. Her first instinct is to rise out of the chair and come at me. But I see her catch herself. She holds herself firm. “You just shot at me.” Her lips barely move. Her tone is flat. Dead.

  “To show you I’m serious,” I say.

  Her face grows darker, more dangerous. But she turns back to the controls. “Fine,” she says. “Back to the temple.”

  A voice inside of me says “thank you,” but it dies on its wa
y to the light. I know I should feel bad. Part of me does, the part that thinks of everything that Claudia has done for me. All the many times she’s come running. All the many times she let me back into her life. All the times she’s saved my life. I wall it out. I drown it in this churning black soup inside of me. I drop a heavy weight on top of it and send it back down to where it came from.

  I keep the gun out as Claudia flies.

  * * *

  Claudia is, almost surprisingly, good to her word. Not that she doesn’t usually do right by me, but she has the tendency to overrule me when she thinks I’m doing something stupid. This time, she takes us right to where I want to be, and then she brings us down to the ground. Still, I keep the gun on her. “Walk me out,” I say.

  “Or else you’ll shoot me,” she says. Her eyes are narrowed.

  “I don’t want to,” I say, but it sounds feeble, even to me.

  “Yet you still have that gun out.”

  But she gets up, and together we walk to the exit ramp. It’s true, I don’t want to have to do this, but if I put the gun away, I’m afraid that Claudia will take the ship back up into the air or try to tackle me. I can’t have that. So I make her, at gunpoint, walk me to the edge of the ramp, then I step off of it, onto the ground.

  “Ben,” she says.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say. “I need to do this.”

  “No,” she says, and there’s so much of a growl in her voice that I turn to her.

  Her leg lashes out in a kick that catches my wrist and sends the revolver flying. I raise my other arm to try to block, but she’s already moving too fast. A punch hits me in the ribs, then in the face. I try to block her, but she’s a lightning storm and I have no shelter.

  A foot slides past me, and then I’m tipping backward. I hit hard against the ground.

  “Don’t take me back!” I yell.

  Claudia stops, then looks at me like I lost my mind. “Take you back? Are you fucking kidding me? What would make you think that I would want. You. Back.” She punctuates the last two words with kicks into my side.

  I lie there and take it.

  She stands over me, fists clenched, her face twisted in anger. “No more! No more coming to your aid when you need it. No more answering your call. No more pulling you up off the floor. No more cleaning up your messes.”

  She stalks over to the revolver and scoops it off of the ground. Her finger looks dangerously close to the trigger. Her eyes meet mine. Bore into them and through them. “I’m done,” she says. “I’m completely done with you.”

  She lifts up the gun, then turns it to the side, regarding it for a long moment. Then, shaking her head, she tosses it to the ground next to me.

  I sit up and watch as she turns away, walks back up the ramp of the Valkyrie, and retracts it behind her. Then, without fanfare, my oldest friend takes her airship up into the air and leaves me behind.

  Where I wanted to be. The place that I’ve feared my whole life.

  On the ground.

  * * *

  The place looks much like it did the last time I was here. A little more overgrown, sure. Wilder, maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not. I guess it seemed a little different in my memory.

  It wasn’t “that place” until later.

  The revolver is out, and down by my side. I’m on the ground, in the open. Some habits are too hard to break. Nothing seems to be moving, so I do, treading out across the grassy ground.

  I see some Feral spoor. Luckily, my father was a shit connoisseur. “This is dog shit,” he’d say. “Look out for more. Don’t want to disturb a pack.” Or, poking at some with a stick, “Deer droppings. Better get the rifle.” But the Feral shit was the stuff to look out for. “If they stopped to unload, it means it’s safe territory for them. Not for us.”

  So they’re still here, then. I shouldn’t be surprised.

  I used to think that it was the Ferals that were persistent, that it was they that were better suited to staying alive than we were. It always seemed a struggle for us, me and my dad especially. But Miranda taught me that it wasn’t the Ferals, it was the Bug. Or the Maenad virus, as she’d call it. The Ferals were just . . . vehicles for it. Like the Cherub. Or any airship. A Feral body just transported the virus so that it could grow and escape its vehicle and infect another one. Ferals, in essence, were just side effects of the virus. They were good at eating and fucking and getting around. So the Bug thrived.

  It was a real mindfuck.

  Because of course Dad had taught me that it was always the Ferals that we had to fear. That we had to keep watch for. That we had to avoid.

  Only he didn’t end up avoiding them enough.

  We thought we were safe. The Feral hadn’t done real damage to my father. He didn’t get clawed. Or bitten. Or even bruised, really. The Feral itself didn’t do any damage.

  But the Bug did. The Bug got inside him, and it killed him as dead as any bullet or knife or claw.

  That’s why I ended up coming around to what Miranda was doing. Sure, I’d killed Ferals. Bunches of them. Plenty. Not that I sought it out, though. I’d be more likely to run away from them than to shoot at them. But Miranda, she was trying to kill the Bug. The true enemy.

  I reach the door of the temple and pull on it. The lock is still active, even years later. I’d suspected it might be, which is why I brought another portable EMP device. Claudia kept the parts just like I had, so I cobbled one together from her stores. That and the flashlight I took are her last gifts to me. Well, maybe not the last—my ribs hurt as I draw the EMP from the pocket of my coat.

  I activate the EMP, and the lock disengages. I enter through the door, letting it shut behind me with a loud bang that sends dust swirling through the air. The place smells even worse than last time. I don’t see any signs of Feral spoor, but I pick up the usual smells of aging and decay—mold, rust, a mineral scent. That I can’t smell—or see—Feral shit is a good sign. I can’t help but wonder why. We’d left the door open to the lower level. I’d think any Ferals would have wandered up. But then, I wondered how they got down there in the first place.

  I pause at the picture of Ganesha, his form only a faint outline buried beneath the thick layer of dust. I pause to wipe some of it off, revealing some of the color underneath. I pay careful attention to his hands this time. One holds what appears to be an axe. Another holds a flower, a type I’ve never seen. The third is the outstretched one that I thought was telling me to stop. And the last is holding a bowl filled with what look like eggs. I notice the belly on the guy. He ate well, that’s for sure. And there it is, in that one image. The outstretched hand of warning, the weapon signifying violence, the eggs or whatever they were, indicating the need to eat. The primal forces of the Sick.

  Then what did the flower signify? For a moment I think of Miranda.

  Fuck you, Ben. You’re no preacher, no rabbi. Who the fuck cares what it means.

  My mood darkens as I move down to the next level.

  I have the revolver out, and I realize that I don’t think I could put it down if I wanted. Those reflexes are wired right into the base of me. But it begs the question—what am I doing here? What am I searching for? Up until now, I’ve been acting on instinct. Autopilot.

  My feet hit the floor on the basement level. Kick up the thick carpet of dust. The smell of mold fills the air—the Sick eating away at everything, minute by minute. I pause, waiting, listening, smelling, looking. The scarf and the goggles and the hat cut down on all the senses—the trade-off for protecting yourself. Again—you cover your front, you expose your rear.

  There’s no winning.

  Nothing moves. I wait another moment. Still nothing.

  I move forward. The lights inside have died, so I use the flashlight to look around. The beam isn’t much light to see by. I keep expecting to see a Feral leaping out at me in every direction. Then the beam falls on a pile of bags, and boxes, piled haphazardly together. Our bags of haul. All the computers and other goods that we loot
ed from this place last time. All that I left behind when I got my father out.

  See, Dad? You had it wrong. I should have pulled out the gear and left you behind.

  Then I stop.

  I did leave him behind.

  I could haul all of these bags and boxes and improvised carriers out of here now. Only I don’t have a ship to take them anywhere. And whatever hold they might have had over me is gone.

  The Feral’s body, the one I shot all that time ago, is missing. Probably dragged away by others and eaten. I look for the blood spray, but with all the dust and dirt in here, I don’t see anything.

  This is the place. The point at which it all pivoted. In this holy place, it is a kind of holy place itself. A dark place.

  I should leave.

  Instead, I find myself moving to the door, to the lower level.

  The air seems to get thicker as I approach. My body seems thicker. Heavier. It prickles, too. I tightly grip the revolver in my rigid hand.

  I think I smell it then. The Feral stench. Then, there it is. The door. Still open.

  We could have barricaded it.

  He was right. There’s a bookcase nearby. A refrigerator not too far along.

  But would it have mattered? Dad was likely infected already by then. We would have gotten our haul, and we would have made for one of the bartertowns, and we would have hustled to turn all of that gear into food and fuel and the finer things in life. We might have been in a bartertown when Dad Faded. He could have infected others.

  His words come back to me. There could have been anything.

  I pass through the doorway. No signs of movement. No sounds that I can hear. I stand at the top of a stairway that leads down. It’s dark, of course. That voice in my head, my father’s voice, says that the flashlight is going to give me away to any Ferals that might be lurking below. Ferals still have human eyes, so they can’t see in the dark, but they are better at using their senses, as far as I can tell. Still, I leave the flashlight on.

  I start descending the steps. One. Two. The air seems to get thicker. Seven. Eight. I wait for the Ferals to jump me and pull me tumbling to the ground. Rip into me with their teeth and nails.