The Distance

by Jeremy Robinson

  I cry out.

  Alone...

  The house rattles again, the sounds of some unseen battle in the skies above mirroring the turmoil within my body. The whole world is consumed by crackling, bursting, tension.

  They’re coming to get her.

  What if one crashes into the house?

  How long do I have? Can I run?

  One on top of another, crests of energy jolt through me, rattling my teeth, erasing my thoughts. I bid my muscles relax, to embrace the intensity. You were made for this, Poe. Breathe, girl.

  This is not pain.

  This is lightning.

  I beg my mighty artist heart to return to me, robust once again.

  And it does, along with the realization that I will be a mother soon. I will feel alive again. I grind my teeth, and then, at the tail end of a contraction, I breathe deeply, through my nose.

  Rose.

  My eyes open to the Blur, sweet-smelling, filling the space, resplendent.

  The dogs have retreated to the open closet, sitting still, wrapped in the hanging tendrils of my father’s trousers, trusting the new arrival with my care.

  A long thin strand of white is already stretching out through the space between us. It touches my forehead just as an explosion shakes the house and is followed by the sound of falling trees.

  “Do not be afraid.”

  The words are powerful, deep and resonating. In that instant, the fissure is sealed, the crumbling walls rebuilt.

  Compelled to take charge of this birth, I change positions, remembering August’s insistence that while the missionary position might be the best for getting pregnant, it’s not for giving birth.

  I balance on my knees, my body cleaving and stretching past anything I ever thought possible. The scent of the Blur washes over me, earthy natural comfort. I lean forward on my hands, rocking. Sweat drips off the end of my nose, tapping the comforter.

  Like the tumblers inside a lock, everything clicking into place, Squirt’s body descends. A pinball, moving through the maze, all the layers. I can imagine her, my powers returned to me. She’s ready to be with me, out here. The pressure and burning makes me scream.

  An explosion, this one distant, is followed by a whooshing sound. I barely register it, but the Blur—Rose—is suddenly there, fully visible and leaning over my body, straddling my back with its arms. It lowers its head and a hum bursts out around us. I’m about to scream, but this isn’t a betrayal. Debris punches through the bedroom wall. Much of it continues on into the next wall, but several chunks of who knows what deflect off of something unseen, and slam into the ceiling—instead of me.

  Thank you, I think, and I reach under to feel Squirt’s scalp. She’s right there.

  Rose steps back, under the cloak, invisible observer once more.

  With both hands cupped beneath my body, I push, a fathomless groan.

  The lightning my entire being.

  And I push again.

  Her body tumbles out, all her parts, a whole baby, and I catch her in my two strong hands, the sudden weight shift the most alarming aspect. Once inside me, now in my arms. A loss, then swift gain. She is pink, with a full head of dark hair. I knew she’d be a girl.

  I scoop her up onto my chest and lie back into the pillows. She coughs twice and then cries, her small, frail voice like music.

  And again, Rose is there, sudden and visible, reaching out, a sharp finger this time. I try to shout, to resist, but I can barely hold onto my baby.

  And then, a prick. The needle tipped finger dips into my baby’s skin, the back of her arm, and pulls free, a bead of blood on the end. Collected. The second arm comes up, like Rose is checking the time. But there is no watch. Instead, there is a flat oval patch on the forearm where the Blur taps the bead of blood out. The sphere of redness, shrinks down, absorbed.

  In silence, I turn toward the empty eyes. “You had no right.”

  It turns the forearm in my direction. It’s no longer empty flat space. Instead, I see an image. Of a baby. My baby.

  Slowly, the image changes, the child aging from toddlerhood to adulthood in seconds. She’s tall, and strong, and whole. The long pointed finger retracts and a slit opens. The worm emerges, and I fear it this time, but not enough to fend it off. I want to hear what it has to say.

  I lean my forehead to it, the connection made.

  The voice, deep and rushing like the wind, says, “She is pure. Like her mother.”

  And that’s it. The wormy tendril snaps back inside the suit. The Blur turns its head to the outside wall, like it can see through it, like it has just become aware of something.

  The pitch of the battle changes.

  Mixing with the explosions, and otherworldly sounds, are the blaring coughs of something much more familiar. Gun shots. A lot of them. And among them, voices.

  One of them is familiar and shouting a single word that trembles my lips.

  “Poe!”

  52

  AUGUST

  The man who once stared up at the night sky and wondered what lurked inside all that darkness, is dead. A forgotten relic. At least for the moment. All that remains is the long dormant silverback, the man my ex-wife would have appreciated. That overprotective beast rises up inside me, with all its chest-thumping fury, and propels me from the woods surrounding Poe’s home.

  After months of travel, of mending the deepest wounds imaginable, of believing against all odds, that the hope for mankind’s future is represented by the child being born in this farm house, I arrive as a tidal wave. Energy built over time. Strength increased with each mile crossed.

  Angry.

  Vengeful.

  Unstoppable.

  And I have not come alone. There is a storm at my back.

  After speeding past the remaining miles of highway, piled into five limousines, we make our final approach through the woods. While the sky above us blazes with battling lights, we sift out of the trees, announcing our presence the way armies of old might have as they raced into battle, or into oblivion. I take a deep breath and smell a mix of chemical odors: bleach, tar, ammonia. While the men and women around me, some old friends, others total strangers, simply scream, my battle cry is enunciated.

  “Poe!”

  It’s the loudest I’ve ever screamed in my life, and the sound waves rising from within my chest tear at my throat. But if she’s in there, and still living, she knows I’m here. Knows there is hope. That I am coming for her, as promised.

  The house, which looks exactly as Poe described it—old, but sturdy barn in the back, a long rambling, farmhouse refinished with tan vinyl siding—is out of focus. The air hovering over the overgrown lawn is alive. The home’s backdoor slams open as though on its own. Shimmering energy slides inside.

  The home has been breached.

  I stop in a sea of tall grass and raise my rifle. “Keep your aim low! Do not hit the house!”

  Those who have come out of the woods alongside me—Jeb, Tanya, Mark, Luis and forty others, some familiar, some not—stop beside me and raise their weapons. Had this battle taken place two hundred years ago, our volley would have been forty rounds strong. But now, armed with rifles, shotguns and automatic weapons, we’re going to unleash a torrent of modern humanity’s wrath.

  “Fire!”

  The thunder that follows is shocking. I want to cover my ears and cringe. But I keep pulling the trigger and chambering a new round, taking a step closer to the house with each shot.

  It’s hard to tell if we’re having any effect, but then one of the Blur turns on me, its face emerging from the light-bending cloak. The long, wooden mask is easy to target. I pull the trigger and the head snaps back. Compressed air and wriggling white bits burst from the exit wound, which pulls the cloak away and reveals the skinny, tubular form hidden beneath. Exposed, the monster becomes the group’s focus. Bullets and buckshot tear into the Blur, into the long white worm filling the suit. It falls to the ground, immobilized, if not dead.

 
; I turn to Jeb. “I need to get inside!”

  He nods and turns to Charley, a man from our group. “Shotgun. Now!”

  Charley and I trade weapons. I’ve never used a shotgun before, but I understand the concept. Point and shoot. Unlike the rifle, if I’m within ten feet of the target, it will be nearly impossible to miss.

  “Here,” Luis says, suddenly beside me. He’s holding a belt with a sheathed sword. The weapon is exquisite, its white handle framed by swirls of gold and a Japanese style dragon.

  I take the belt and strap it on, asking, “Where did you get this?”

  “Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,” he says. “Samurai exhibit. It belonged to a Shogun. A warrior. Like you.”

  A warrior. Like me. The words strike me as both ridiculous and accurate.

  What was, is no longer.

  What remains is less, but stronger. Simplified. Forged and beaten. Like the blade that hangs on my hip. How many lives did it take before being relegated to a glass case inside a stuffy museum? How many more will I add to its history?

  I nod my thanks to Luis and shout over the continuing gunfire, “Clear the outside. Burn the bodies.” He nods and moves down the line, comfortable issuing orders. I turn to my right and find Mark, Jeb and Tanya, waiting.

  “We’re with you,” Tanya says.

  Mark grins and says, “Lead the way, dude.”

  Jeb slaps a fresh magazine into his MP5. No words required. These people are my core, but my heart waits for me inside.

  “Let’s go,” I say, and I take two steps toward the house.

  The Blur counter-attack stops me in my tracks.

  Arcs of blue electricity crackle through the air. Some strike the grass, setting small fires or dissipating harmlessly. Others streak high, hitting the trees at our backs, super heating the sap inside and shattering bark with loud snaps. The rest find their targets, flowing through human flesh before finding the ground. People spasm and fall.

  More lightning splits the air as wits are regained and the barrage of bullets resumed.

  Both sides attack.

  Both sides die.

  It’s Luis who realizes that a change in tactics is necessary. Bullets, up close and personal, are still dangerous. Electricity on the other hand, would harm both sides. Armed with a pistol, Luis leads the charge into a wall of warbling air. “Let’s go!”

  The wall of humanity still pouring from the woods charges forward at his back, some still wielding firearms, others now raising swords, knives or clubs. For a moment, they appear as feral and mad as the rash-controlled collaborators. But we’re not fighting people. We’re fighting monsters.

  With my friends at my back, I charge, shotgun raised and ready to blast any half-seen Blur that get in my way.

  The arcing electricity drops a few more people, but ceases when the charge reaches the wall of bent light. Too close. If I’m right about the Blur, that they are like I once was—scientists rather than warriors—we might actually stand a chance. But the Blur, while lacking the physical savagery still available to the human race, are far from defenseless.

  Luis is the first to be repelled by the invisible force that defends a Blur’s body. He catapults overhead, landing in the grass behind me. I glance back, see that he’s alive and continue forward.

  Three people tackle the Blur that flung Luis away. Whatever technology protects them, it’s limited. Needs to recharge. The Blur, I remind myself, are not all powerful. They are beings of limited capabilities and perhaps only slightly more advanced intellects. Just a few hundred years—maybe less—ahead of humanity.

  The light-bending cloak is torn away from the Blur, revealing the slender, frail looking tubular body beneath. Exposed and undefended, the monster’s head is crushed, its limbs cut open or cleaved away. The biological suit holding it together becomes useless. Immobilized. Writhing worm bodies slide out of the destroyed suits. All around me, similar scenes play out. People sail through the air. Blur are revealed. Slain. Then, desperate arcs of electricity spray in all directions, like a child’s lawn sprinkler, striking both sides of the confrontation.

  Clearing a path.

  I try not to think about the people losing their lives because I brought them to this place, and I stomp forward, aiming for the back door, which is now in focus.

  And then not.

  A Blur, unseen except for its distortion, blocks my path.

  Without thought, I pull my weapon’s trigger. Accustomed to the fairly limited buck of my rifle, I’m unprepared for the sheer force unleashed by the shotgun.

  So is the Blur.

  The pellets hit the shimmering form like an oversized fist, lifting it off the ground and peeling the shroud of invisibility away. It lands on its back, exposed. Its swirling oily eyes show no emotion beyond frozen indifference. For a fraction of time, I wonder if it can truly see, the thing compressed within this suit. In even less time, I decide I don’t care.

  I pump the shotgun, place the stock against my shoulder and this time, lean into it. When I pull the trigger, I’m ready for the kick. The Blur, once again, is not.

  There is no defense, human or alien, against the spray of buckshot. The organic mask shreds, peeling away. The writhing white tendrils beneath are hewn down, turned to mush. The body slumps back.

  I continue past, headed for the home’s back door.

  Through the ringing in my ears, I hear screaming, human and inhuman, gunshots, the crackling of electricity and a cacophony of other sounds I don’t recognize. But through it all, I hear a cry, muffled by walls, but striking my eardrums with nuclear force.

  “August!”

  53

  AUGUST

  “Poe!” I shout back, stepping into the kitchen through the back door. The interior of the house is both familiar as a standard farmhouse kitchen with all the Americana comfort I’d imagined, but also warped.

  Occupied, I realize.

  Without a word, I open fire. The stock punches into my shoulder, again and again. Tomorrow, there will be a bruise on top of the bullseye rash. The shotgun’s explosive report is joined by the staccato pop of smaller weapons. My tribe has arrived, putting their weapons to the task of clearing the house.

  “Poe!” I shout again.

  I have a view of the living room and dining room, and while both spaces are full of light bending shapes, Poe is in neither.

  The screamed reply doesn’t come from Poe. It’s high-pitched and frail. Raw and terrified. New to life.

  Squirt.

  She’s above me. On the second floor.

  “I’m coming!” I shout, hoping that Poe is alive and hearing me.

  Fighting back tears of the deepest worry I have ever experienced, I fire into the hallway, where there’s a warped set of old hardwood stairs leading up. The Blur falls back, its cloak flickering where the buckshot embedded.

  I pump the shotgun.

  Pull the trigger.

  The empty click doesn’t fully register.

  I pump and pull again. Nothing. Out of ammo, I realize. With no shells to reload with, I drop the weapon and draw the sword. I’ve never held a sword. The closest thing to it would be a baseball bat, and I haven’t held one of those since I was a kid. Still, I remember how my father told me to hold it. The lesson was lost on my younger self, but it comes back in a rush. My new primal self, understands, implements and adapts.

  I raise the blade over my head and rush into the hallway while Mark, Tanya and Jeb hold off the other Blur still on the first floor. The sword comes down, cleaving the hallway light in two, its fogged glass raining down. Undeterred, the ancient blade of some forgotten Shogun strikes the light-bending cloak, slices it cleanly—and is repelled.

  A wave of energy bowls into me, lifting me off the creaky, old plank floor and slamming me into the wall. Luckily, the old horse hair plaster wall covered in thick wallpaper caves in, diffusing some of the impact’s energy.

  But not all of it.

  I fall out of the hole made by my body, cough
ing. Then I fall forward against the opposite wall. The Blur kicks free from its split cloak. Whatever it is that repelled me needs time to recharge, so I don’t need to worry about that again, but the Blur is far from defenseless. All those tendrils, packed into the tight suit, are like muscles, tight, bunched and powerful. The dead, oily eyes betray nothing, but the bending knees and coiling fingers warn of attack.

  Still breathless, I stagger to my feet.

  Without a sound, the Blur lunges.

  I step back and angle the katana forward, as its pommel strikes the wall behind me. The Blur can’t avoid the blade, and takes it, center chest, sliding down the smooth metal until its ribbed chest strikes the guard.

  But being impaled is nothing to a creature that lives inside this humanoid suit. Its hands reach up and find my neck.

  “August!” Mark shouts. I turn to see him aiming at the Blur, but he doesn’t take a shot, no doubt not trusting his aim. And then he’s attacked, defending himself against a Blur of his own.

  The alien fingers tighten around my neck.

  With my face growing hot and red, my vision narrowing and my lungs burning, my resolve blossoms like some horrible flower. The silverback smiles at the Blur. And then shoves.

  The Blur hits the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. The blade, still clutched in my hands impales deeply, striking wood.

  With the last of my strength, nearly blind from oxygen deprivation, I twist and release the sword, reach beneath it and wrap my arms around the Blur. When my legs give out and I fall sideways, I pull the Blur with me.

  The pressure on my neck bursts free.

  I breathe long and hard, sucking in air. A fog horn in reverse. When my vision returns, I see the Blur, sliced nearly in half, its stringy insides wriggling, but beyond function.