Burn

by G E Hathaway

  “You planned this,” Liam spit out. “You took out the Grid, left us without power.”

  He expected him to scoff, but for the first time, surprise registered on the sun god’s face.

  “The Grid has no role in my destiny, which is to purify this world of its cancer. You are that cancer.” He reached out and touched the man’s head, and the man burst into flames.

  The heat was immensely powerful and Liam threw himself backward, shielding the woman and her children from the flames. An instant later, the blackened shell of the man crumbled to ash on the mission floor.

  “Peter!” The woman holding the baby screamed.

  Liam tried to scramble away, but the sun god was already turning toward him, his outstretched hand just inches away.

  “And now,” the sun god said, “I purify you of your sins, and welcome you to my home.”

  “Stop!”

  A great wind suddenly burst between them and Talisa materialized out of the air above them. Lightning filled the sky and struck the mission tower. The resulting boom was deafening. Liam and the rest of the humans fell back from the force.

  The sun god was reeling from the attack, but he had no time to react. In one swift movement, Talisa yanked the Darkness amulet from around her neck and pressed it against his chest.

  The sun god reached out to stop her, but it was too late. Darkness had taken hold of him, a black shadow that spilled out of the amulet and wrapped around his body. He looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Darkness helped you,” he said.

  Talisa looked triumphant, but her smile faded when she saw the intense fright on his face.

  “You don’t know what you’ve just done,” he choked out. Then Darkness took him completely, covering him in shadow.

  The sun vanished from the sky. Everything went dark.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chaos erupted inside the mission. Screams and wails reverberated from the walls and ceilings.

  Liam’s mind spun in the disorienting darkness. He tripped down the altar steps and scrambled down the aisle to the main doors. His foot hit something hard and he fell. Bodies crumbled to ash beneath his weight. He rolled off and found the edge of the nearest pew. He pulled himself up and kept going.

  The doors were heavy, but the wind no longer pressed against them. He burst onto the patio.

  Mid-day had plunged into moonless night. As his eyes adjusted, he could see the stars more vividly than he’d ever seen them before, even through the cloud of dust that was still settling in the air. His skin prickled with the sudden drop in temperature.

  Talisa approached him from behind.

  “You took away the sun,” he choked out.

  “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed. “I thought it would only stop him, I did not think...I would never do something that would hurt others-”

  “What can you do?”

  She shook her head, eyes wild. “I don’t know, I’ve never defeated him before, this has never happened-”

  “We have to go,” Liam said.

  He headed in the direction of his car, guided by the dazzling light of the stars. His mind raced, trying to work through all the implications of their actions. How long did they have?

  Talisa followed him. “I’m so sorry Liam-”

  “Regardless of whatever issues the two of you are working through, you realize that we need the sun?” Liam shouted. He opened the car door and dropped behind the wheel. She sat next to him. He turned on the car and flipped on the headlights. Light filled the parking lot. He spun the wheel and drove toward the interstate.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Noah and Ellie have no idea what’s going on. I have to tell Noah, maybe there’s something he can do to protect us.” Even as he said it, he knew he was probably investing too much in Noah’s technology. He probably couldn’t do much against the absence of their primary life source.

  “I still have the amulet,” Talisa said, “it may not be permanent.”

  He looked out the window at the neverending expanse of darkness, heart hammering in his chest. He didn’t trust himself to answer.

  “I have to get rid of it,” she said. “I have to take it back.”

  He balked. “Go back to the cave? That will take hours. I don’t think you can even breeze your way there.”

  “Darkness may have taken over that cave, but Darkness is everywhere the light doesn’t touch.”

  Noah swerved to miss a road median, his headlights illuminating it at the last second. “Oh you mean like everywhere?”

  “This was Its plan the entire time. I was such a fool to think It would help me.”

  “You think putting the amulet back under ground will undo it?”

  Talisa considered her options. “I hope so.”

  Liam thought quickly. They weren’t any caves that he knew of immediately surrounding the city, but the region had been home to several large mining projects. Most of them were filled in after they were finished, but one particular project had ended abruptly, and if he remembered correctly it was located relatively close to the interstate-

  “Twin Peaks Mine.”

  Once the location of two rocky hills, Twin Peaks Mine once fed the Twin Peaks cement plant through a thirty-mile long underground conveyor belt. The hills were depleted years ago, leaving the mine dormant and the cement plant converted to a Utopian Industries manufacturing plant.

  “Where?”

  “About ten miles from here.”

  She nodded, the movement barely perceptible in the darkness. “I will go there.”

  Before he could question her, he felt a gust of wind, and she was gone.

  Liam watched the road by the light of the headlamps and counted the seconds in his head. He could already feel the air dropping inside the car. How long would it take before catastrophic reactions occurred?

  * * *

  Twin Peaks Mine had been a small operation compared to the larger mining projects in Arizona. Spanning the size of just the hills, the project left two massive-sized holes in the ground. Originally they had planned to fill the earth back up once finished, but then Utopian Industries bought the site and found a new purpose for the land. The mining site remained until the Grid fell, then became condemned.

  Liam was familiar with the site. It had been a popular place for kids and teens to mess around in pre-Fall, and he had tried to patrol the area as often as he could to keep them off the property.

  The minutes ticked by as he drove down the freeway, visibility limited to the glow of his headlamps. He exited at Twin Peaks road and headed west driving down the winding stretch of road until he saw the aged sign tacked on a metal fence. The gate was permanently twisted open, the road deteriorating from asphalt to dirt at the entrance. He carefully maneuvered around rotting administrative buildings and rusted mining vehicles. Their shapes loomed over him, massive toys in an enormous sandbox.

  It didn’t take long to find the opening to the pit. He recognized the familiar drop-off of dirt and slammed on the brakes. He checked the car’s power level. It was getting low, he had just enough to get them back home.

  He climbed out of the car.

  Talisa stood at the edge of the pit, looking down into its vast depths. He could see the outline of her body against the starlit sky, hair blowing in the wind. She looked back at him and her hands fell at her sides. They were empty.

  He blinked, realizing that he could actually see her in the slowly illuminating light.

  He looked up and saw a faint ball of light glowing overhead in the middle of the sky, a tiny fraction of its previous brilliance. It was dim enough to cast a strange orange light over the earth.

  His legs were heavy as he slowly walked up to her and peered carefully over the edge. The pit spanned at least a quarter mile wide and faded to darkness in the twilight. His head spun at the sheer depth.

  “You threw it in,” he said. “It took it back?”

&nbs
p; She nodded.

  He peered up at the sky. “How long will it take for the sun to come back?”

  She studied the sky. “He will be whole before it sets behind the mountains.”

  Liam nodded and bent over, fighting the urge to throw up. His legs finally gave out and he sat heavily on the ground. His whole body ached.

  “That family...he burned them.”

  “He won’t stop.” She sat down next to him and hugged her legs against her chest in a distinctly human manner. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and he realized he wasn’t just looking at a god. He was looking at a young woman who had lost all hope.

  But she’s not a young woman, he thought. She’s not a human at all.

  “There’s got to be another way,” he told her. “We can’t kill him like this.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded.

  If Talisa had been Ellie or any other human, he might have comforted her. He considered it for a long moment, then decided he didn’t want to lose sight of his own humanity. He’d worked too hard to keep it after the Fall. He wouldn’t lose it now.

  He gingerly reached around her and pulled her in for a side hug.

  She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed and leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder. She was warmer than he thought. The smell of rain wafted from her hair.

  They sat there for a long time in silence, watching the color of the world slowly return.

  “There might be another way,” Talisa said suddenly.

  “What is it?”

  She straightened up, and his arm fell away. “It’s too early, but we may be able to wake her up.”

  Liam looked at her apprehensively. “Who?”

  * * *

  Talisa had newfound energy as they drove down the interstate back to Marana. It made Liam nervous.

  “She’s been a part of this since the very beginning,” she said, “if there’s anyone who can help us, it’s her.”

  “Where has she been all this time?”

  “Asleep. She sleeps when I’m awake, and when I’m asleep she’s awake. It’s a cycle, we take turns, but together we can keep him from burning the ground.”

  “And her name is…?”

  “Beira, Auxesia, Khione, Itztlacoliuhqu, Father Frost-”

  Liam looked at her in alarm. “You realize we’re in a desert, right? You can’t bring a snow blizzard here!”

  “She isn’t just the snow. She has taken turns fighting off Sun for all the ages. It’s why your land hasn’t dried out. I bring life, and she brings the cold. If it wasn’t for us, he would have burned up this region a long time ago.”

  Liam couldn’t tell if he had heard her right. “You’re talking about winter?”

  “Yes. She’ll know what to do-”

  “Wait.” Liam had to keep himself from stopping the car. He kept his hands steady on the wheel. “That’s why you’ve been fighting the sun this whole time? This is just a seasons thing?”

  She frowned at him. “No, Liam-”

  “You know what the seasons are, right? The seasons happen because of the tilt of the earth’s axis. There are scientific explanations for all of this. As we tilt farther away or closer to the sun, the seasons change. That is all. Monsoon, winter, summer...it’s all governed by that very simple fact. That is never going to change-”

  “You don’t understand-”

  “I think I do understand. You just keep doing the same thing over and over again. Forever.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “This is a never-ending loop.”

  “But Liam, we’re not in that loop anymore. He’s broken free and there’s no telling what he will do.”

  “But you’ve broken out before. History paints a very bleak picture from when you last had your human forms. The sun god wants to purge this world of nonbelievers. He requires a devout following, and when people don’t fall in line he punishes them. What next? Will he demand sacrifices? What about you?”

  She blinked in surprise. “What about me?”

  “You say that you bring life to the region, that you are the mother of all creatures. But what were you then? What names did they call you?”

  She seemed to shrink in her seat. “Chibchakum. Chaac. Tlaloc.”

  “You told me Tlaloc sent a rain of fire on the earth.”

  Her chin trembled. “The stories have became muddled.”

  “Have you ever given out punishments? Accepted any sacrifices?”

  She didn’t answer, but her expression was enough.

  They were approaching the Marana exit now, with the faded sun dropping low in the sky. He looked forward to seeing his human friends. He needed to get out of the car.

  “Mankind has enough to deal with just to survive on a daily basis,” he said. “We don’t need the gods here.”

  Talisa was silent for a long time. Liam glanced at her quickly, wondering if he had hurt her feelings. Did gods have feelings?

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “Maybe the best strategy is not to find ways to stop the sun god,” he said, “but send all of you back to where you came from.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Noah admired Ellie’s form against the window.

  She had wrapped a towel around her body after her shower and was now watching the sun dip into the mountains, her damp hair hanging in tendrils that brushed her shoulders.

  He approached her from behind and followed her gaze. Clouds slowly formed above the horizon, vivid colors of pink and purple stretching across the sky. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck, breathing in the scent of her skin. She smelled of lavender soap. For the first time in years, he felt strangely at peace.

  “I’m sorry for how I’ve been,” he said quietly. “I’ve been afraid of you.”

  The irony was not lost on both of them, and she smiled.

  “I thought maybe you hated me.”

  “No. Never. I was afraid of what I wanted from you. I couldn’t...think straight. I kept thinking I was back in the cave. I was confused.”

  She hesitated, and he wondered if he had said too much.

  “And what do you think now?” she asked.

  He smiled against her shoulder. “Well...definitely not any of that.”

  She laughed and relief washed over him.

  They had lost track of time since Liam and Talisa left. He wanted to feel guilty, but it was hard to in the moment.

  “The sun looks strange,” Ellie said.

  He looked up. The bottom of the fiery disk had disappeared from view. It would set soon.

  “It’s fainter than usual. There isn’t enough light.”

  He frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’ve been watching it ever since I got out of the shower.”

  “You shouldn’t look directly at the sun.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Liam and Talisa should be back soon.”

  She turned around to look at him, slipping her hands around his waist. “And what if they aren’t?”

  He didn’t like to think about that possibility. “Then I guess it’s just you and me.”

  “Would you go to California with me?”

  He hesitated and she noticed. “I stayed behind to bring back the Grid,” he said. “You know that.”

  “Yes, and you have done that.”

  “Only in remote areas and off local power sources. It’s nowhere near turning on the actual Grid.”

  “If we go to California, there might be actual active Grid communities. You can learn from them and bring back resources. That’s what I want to do.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “You do?”

  “There’s nothing left here, and even if there was it would all expire soon. If there are active Grid communities outside of the desert, I can get help.”

  “That’s been your plan all this time? I thought you wanted to leave and never come back.”


  She leaned her forehead against his chest. “Come with me.”

  The idea was suddenly very tempting. What if she was right? He could figure out why the southwest hadn’t been reactivated yet. He might even be able to communicate with Headquarters again. The thought of finding active Grid communities in existence when he had been living the whole time in the old west was disheartening, but if he could bring the power back…

  “If we don’t hear from Liam by tomorrow night,” he stipulated feeling dread in the pit of his stomach, “I am open to it.”

  She smiled at him.

  “Are you okay with this?” he asked, suddenly self conscious.

  “Let’s see where the road takes us,” she said, and she kissed him.

  A car horn blared outside.

  “They’re back,” Noah breathed.

  She turned and immediately started looking for her clothes. Noah did the same, grabbing his jeans and shirt off the bedroom floor and scrambling to get dressed first. He ran down the hallway, flicking on light switches as he went and flooding the house with bright light.

  Liam had parked in the street and was climbing out of the car when Noah reached the front door. They both looked at each other in amazement.

  “You made it back,” Noah said.

  “You restored the power,” Liam said.

  Noah immediately notice the dark bruises blooming on Liam’s face. He stopped short halfway down the driveway. “What happened?”

  Liam was breathless. “Did you see the sun?”

  “No.”

  He looked at him strangely. “What do you mean? What have you been doing all this time?”

  Noah stammered. “Working in the garage. Lost track of time.”

  Ellie arrived in the doorway. She had changed back into her clothes, damp hair hanging in tight curls around her face. Liam glanced quickly at her.

  “We’re in trouble. There’s a lot to cover. The car power is low, so I hooked up the battery. It’ll take time to charge.”

  Talisa was climbing slowly out of the car, her face red, eyes swollen. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  No answer. She and Liam began walking up to the front door, the driveway illuminated by the bright lights in the front window and doorway. Talisa looked curiously up at the house.