by Zara Zenia
"You're a wimp," I whispered. "If you were going to hurt us you would have done it already. You're only doing this to validate your own self-importance, to make you feel as though you rule the world for a change. All of this is because you're jealous. You're jealous of Urie because he is young and strong, because he has a happy family, because he is a mighty leader who everyone adores. And who are you? I scarcely know who you are and you and I have both been in court. You are a member of the war council, you would have walked the same steps as me in the palace but you have made no impression on me whatsoever. You are small and you are worthless and on Earth, we eat people like you for breakfast."
Silence. I thought he was going to explode. A single vein was throbbing across his forehead as he clenched his hands into fists by his side.
"Are you finished?" he asked.
I smiled.
"I suppose so."
Then he did something that stunned me. He turned on his heel and walked away. Stopping at the door, he loitered for a moment and said:
"The only reason I haven't killed you is because you are bait."
Then the click of the lock sounded and I was alone once more.
Chapter 19
Urie
As soon as I placed my foot on solid ground I heard it, silence. It was ominous and empty and filled with an electrical charge as though it was alive and waiting for us.
"I don't like this," the captain was close behind me.
"Me neither."
"They're planning something."
"Of course they are."
There was no one to be seen, no life amongst the tall, angular buildings and warships that were scattered across the red desert.
"Where is everyone?" I asked myself.
"I thought they would attack as soon as we landed," the captain said.
"I thought that too..."
I took a few more tentative steps, heard the ringing in my ears and felt my own pulse thud inside my head. There was something I truly didn't like about this situation. It was unpredictable and suspicious.
"Where is everyone?" I asked again.
I crouched down on the ground and placed my head onto the dirt. It was an old trick I learned as a child from my grandfather.
"You can tell whether someone is close by listening to the ground," he said. "If they are close you will hear their murmuring and footsteps reverberating through the dirt."
My grandfather's voice was in my head as I lay with my hands on the ground as though I was in silent prayer. There was no distant movement and no murmuring. The X'Sorians were either far away or they were completely still.
"What do you hear?" the captain knelt down beside me.
"Nothing... Something is terribly wrong."
We thought for a minute, stared at one another in quiet alliance.
"What now?" he asked.
"We proceed."
"We don't know where they are!" he protested.
"But I'm assuming they know where we are. They're not stupid, they'll have eyes everywhere. They'll come to us."
"I don't like the sound of this," he mumbled under his breath as we began to walk.
"We don't have to like it," I told him. "Anyway... what is there to like when we're about to die."
We pressed on, walking through the desert with the high winds blowing sand across our helmets. After a few minutes, mine was covered in a fine film of brick colored dust. I wiped it with a gloved hand and inspected the sand on my fingertips. It looked poisonous somehow. It was a miracle that anything grew or thrived on this planet. I didn't understand how anything could live here at all.
As we marched, we soon came to the edge of the desert, or rather a dip in the ground that formed a bowl shape where civilization had decided to take up residence. It looked miserable and dilapidated with every building falling at a jaunty angle with piled up garbage lining the streets. It smelled like death and decay, like disease and rotting carcasses.
"Fuck!"
I clutched a hand to my helmet as though I was stifling the smell, although I couldn't touch anywhere near my nose. Behind me, there was the sound of someone vomiting. Turning around I saw a soldier on his hands and knees holding his throat as his helmet lay on the ground. He was throwing up a great, big stream of yellow vomit that was peppered with red blotches of sand. His eyes were watering as he retched. I grabbed him by the elbow and attempted to drag him up to a standing position.
“Put your helmet on! You’ll choke out here.”
“I’m already choking,” he spat into the dirt. “How does anyone live out here?”
He pushed the helmet back onto his head. I watched as the front steamed up with his hot breath.
“I don’t think anyone lives out here,” I mused. “It looks deserted.”
The captain walked over and the three of us stood on the edge of the dust bowl staring down into the abyss of stacked up, shoddy apartments and spoilage.
“I didn’t think it was real,” said the captain.
“What?”
“The fabled city of Hedonton…”
For a moment I thought he was going crazy, thought there were poisonous pathogens in the dust that had driven him wild with dementia. Then I thought of what he said. Hedonton… It was a familiar name; one I had heard in my childhood.
“Wasn’t that a lawless place? A city where society imploded on itself?” I asked.
He nodded.
“It was worse than that. It has been fictionalized somewhat, certain aspects of the story have been sensationalized but it all comes down to one boiling point… the moment when the X’Sorians created a city especially for their enslaved races. They were thrown in here, kept in these cages that were meant to be apartments. They were left to rot and fester, allowed to become a society of poor souls and degenerates who agreed that violence was normal, that abuse of any kind was expected.”
“Slave races…” I muttered.
My eyes were fixed on one building in the distance, a gargantuan tower that appeared to be crumbling at the edges. I thought it had to be empty. There was no way anyone could survive in such filth and squalor. Then I saw a light flicker on and my heart skipped. I grabbed the captain by the arm.
“We’re not alone,” I said.
He looked at me.
“What?”
“I said we’re not alone. They’re watching us, down there,” I pointed into the distance.
“Are you sure you’re not seeing things?”
I knew he was asking out of fear and not insolence but still, I gripped his arm tighter and looked into his eyes.
“I’m sure. There’s a light. There’s someone down there, watching us.”
Then the light flickered off.
“I saw it!” the captain yelled. “I saw it too.”
“Could it be possible it was just a trick of the light, a refraction of—”
“Be quiet,” I slapped the soldier across the back of the head. “That was no trick. That was real.”
We stood in an eerie silence for a long while as we decided what to do.
“Do you think there are people in all of those darkened windows?” I asked.
The captain pursed his lips.
“It’s possible.”
“So then… How do we draw them out?”
My hands were shaking around my rifle. I wanted to break into all the apartments and obliterate them all! Of course… that would not serve to do anything but get me killed before I had the chance to save my family. I felt my forefinger squeeze the trigger then stopped myself from pulling it any further. I pulled the gun off and placed it on the ground.
“If they’re waiting for us to make the first move then I guess that’s just what we have to do.”
Everyone looked at me as though I was crazy.
“Listen… I have an idea.”
Our fellow soldiers were landing beside us with our ships now forming into a perfect v shape. The troops came running out ready to fight but all they saw as they arri
ve was me waiting for them with a grim expression on my face.
“Halt!” I shouted as I held up my hand. “Right now you will not go any further!”
They looked confused but didn’t say anything. Instead, they obeyed me with their usual unwavering servitude. It was then that I realized how lucky I was to have such a dedicated force beside me as we readied ourselves to fight to the death.
“You are all to stay here until the signal.”
“And what is the signal?” asked the captain.
“This.”
I held up the unlit flare in my hands.
“When you see the red smoke, you are to proceed. Understand?”
“Yes, leader!” they all shouted in unison.
“Good,” I waved at them as I walked away.
“You’re fucking crazy!” the captain called after me. “You can’t go down there!”
But I was already walking away, my feet crunching deep into the dirt of the dust bowl.
It felt as though I had been walking for hours when in reality it was only a few minutes. It took considerable effort just to walk a few feet and the air was so pungent I had to hold my breath as I ventured deeper and deeper into the canyon. Occasionally, I would permit myself to take little, short, sharp breaths to sustain myself, then I would return to holding as much air in my lungs as possible until I felt as though my chest would burst open.
I turned around and gave my troops a thumbs-up. They were standing on the rim of the bowl, their figures getting smaller the further I sank down into the pit of despair that was a city. As I reached the bottom, they all looked like toy soldiers. I waved to show I had arrived safely and someone waved back. I think it was the captain.
Something scuttled behind me. I flinched and spun around. Nothing was there.
“Just my imagination,” I breathed with a hand on my chest.
Then it came again. Footsteps. They scurried behind me but when I turned to see who it was, there was nothing but the wind kicking up the dust and garbage. My mind was whirring, making things up.
Focus yourself, Urie. You’re a strong man. Don’t let yourself be afraid of bumps in the night.
In the center of the city stood the largest building, a tower block that looked as though it housed more than a thousand people. That was where I was heading, the heart of the enemy. My boots crunched into the ground as I strode carefully, taking deliberate steps as I continued to glance all around me. It felt as though there were a million eyes on me, burning through my suit and helmet but there was no one around, not that I could see anyway. I had the distinct impression that inside the mysterious black towers there were thousands catching the scent of my blood. They could no doubt sense my fear, hear the frantic beating of my heart. I knew I could.
Looking back over my shoulder, I could see the troops still facing me but they were so far away they just looked like specks on the horizon. I blinked and lifted my helmet to rub at my eyes. The sand was beginning to make its way into every part of my body. It itched my skin below my clothes and burned my eyes. It clawed at the back of my throat with its sulfuric taste and tingled inside my nostrils. I couldn’t imagine the lives of the poor wretches who struggled to survive here. They must be monsters. Or at least if they weren’t to begin with, they were now. I imagined them in their dank apartments like misshapen mutants.
I was finally at the tower. It seemed even bigger close-up and as I gazed upward at its roof, it seemed as though it was grazing the stars. A ladder ran the length of the building; a rusted rickety thing that looks as though it would barely hold the strength of a spider. It was, however, going to have to hold my weight. It didn’t look too promising. I held a hand to the side and felt it crumble slightly in my hand.
Fuck…
I placed my foot on the first rung and it gave way beneath my boot, falling to the ground like crumbling mud.
It’s time for plan b.
Plan b, I was hoping, would never have to happen. It involved going inside the building, the one that dominated the landscape with its monolithic evil. I stood at the main entrance and looked in. It was dark with one solitary light flickering somewhere on an upper landing. The floor was covered in glass. Something was splattered across the walls, brown and murky. It spelled out:
ENTER AT YOUR PERIL
I shivered when I noticed it was written in blood. If there was a more hostile place in the universe, I didn’t want to see it. I creaked open the door and stepped inside. The smell of sulfur was now even stronger, smelled as though it was alive and sentient, waiting to attack me as it seeped into my clothes. I retched and stumbled forward clutching at my stomach.
“Uuuurgh…”
I vomited against the stairs then wiped my mouth with the back of my hands. Looking up I saw there were at least a hundred floors to climb and the smell only seemed to get worse the higher I went. I did something I wish I didn’t have to do I pulled out the baby blanket in my side pocket and tied it around my face as a makeshift gas mask.
“Urie… If I ever see you again… If I get out of this alive then I promise, with all my heart, that I’ll buy you a thousand new blankets. Sorry, son.”
I breathed in his scent, felt a breeze of Samantha’s perfume on my face and was filled with a new burst of energy. They were why I was here and my love for them propelled me forward, pushing me up the stairs two at a time.
The roof of the building creaked and swayed in the wind. I had to walk bow-legged just to keep my balance. The sand blew in my face and gripped itself to my eyebrows, stuck in my eyes and covered the blanket in its gritty redness. I peered down over the edge and vertigo immediately set it. I stepped back and took a deep breath.
The edge of the dust bowl was faint in the distance but if I squinted I could just make out a line of black, the Shocktroopers who were still loyally waiting for my signal. The flare gun was in my hand, ready to be fired when I gathered the courage. I took three deep breaths and readied myself to become a piece of X'Sorian bait.
1… You can do this. Think of Samantha, think of Urie Junior.
2… Get them back. Save the planet!
3!
I pulled the trigger. It sent a plume of red smoke and fire up into the sky.
“You bastards!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “I’m here! Come get me. There’s no need to hide anymore. I’m waiting for you!”
There was a distant rumble. For a second I thought it was thunder. Then I realized it was footsteps. The slave races were coming for me, crawling out of their sulfur riddled hovels to kill me. The rumbling got louder. The building began to shake. I ran for the stairs and hurtled myself down them. I was halfway down when all the doors were flung open. Monsters of every size and color lurched at me, grabbed at my face with their talons and hung onto my clothes. I shot one in the head without thinking and his blood spread over the three behind him. They retreated at the sight of death but there were others weren’t so cowardly. They jumped on me, kicking and screaming with their teeth and nails digging into every part of me.
I shouldered my gun and fired at them, peppering them with a barrage of bullets. Body parts flew past me, tumbled down the stairs and littered the seemingly endless corridors.
“For the X’Sorians!” a voice came from behind me.
I turned just in time to see a figure in a red robe run into me full force. We were fighting, tumbling, tangling ourselves up on the ground. He was reaching for my rifle, trying his hardest to rip it from my hands but it would never happen. I slammed the butt into his face and he stumbled backward, his eyes wide and stunned as he lay flat on his back. I finished him off with a bullet in the center of his forehead. His eyes remained open.
A bang, a blast! It sounded like a thousand roaring waves of thunder and lightning but as I ran outside and smelled the fire, I knew what it was. One of our ships was burning. In the distance at the top of the dust bowl, I saw it through a window ablaze with Shocktroopers trying to escape the wreckage, their limbs on fire as they rolled
on the ground.
Boom!
A missile blasted into another ship. The fire mingled with the other one and soon our base was overrun with flames. I watched them dance up into the sky like tendrils searching for death. This was not what I expected.
“Advance!” I shouted.
What Shocktroopers were left proceeded to run down the hill toward us. We were outnumbered at least five to one but knowing we were going to die anyway, we slayed, shot and fought tooth and nail. Once again, the captain was beside me.
“I’ve got you covered, Urie!”
I had never been so pleased to see him.
“What’s the plan?”
“We need to reach the flagship!” I shouted over the sound of the carnage. “It’s that way,” I pointed. “Beyond the city.”
He looked at me square in the eye and placed a hand on my shoulder. The sentimental act seemed strange amidst the chaos.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll be by your side all the way.”
We ran. Through the city and up the other hill, we climbed and shot our way to the top no matter how many claws we felt digging into our legs. We left a trail of blood as we moved, bodies littering our departure as we exited the city.
“The ship!”
We pushed our way inside. There were bodies everywhere. Groaning, screeching and roaring they saw us immediately and advanced on our weary bodies. Then it came, the shot that took my breath away. It hit me square in the chest and I fell onto my back screaming in agony. A small fountain of blood spurted up from my chest. The captain fell to his knees and immediately placed a hand on me as he tried to stifle the blood flow.
“Hang in there!”
“I’m trying.”
But my vision was already starting to fade at the sides. I was losing grasp of reality, starting to lose the will to carry on.
“I’m not gonna make it,” I cried.