by Melko, Paul
The dark machine still moved on the horizon, just two kilometers away, and beyond that he saw the cooking fires of New Toledo, the exhaust of the generator, rising up into the air in plumes.
They had to see it. They had to know. There was always a sentry, always a lookout for wild animals.
Please evacuate, Casey, he said to himself. Please transfer to 7650. Please.
The behemoth flying machine rose higher into the air. John had to strain his neck to see it, and stopped looking for it, focusing on his pace.
He tripped, sprawling on the ground among a thicket of stones. He groaned, looking at his skinned elbows. It didn’t matter. He forced his knees under him. Then pushed himself to his feet.
Ahead of him was a stand of trees he knew well: the site of Grayborn’s execution. An unwelcome sight at any other time, but that meant he was only across the river from New Toledo.
He forced himself to his feet. Woozily, he took a step, then another.
He’d have to bypass the trees to avoid the gorge where they executed Grayborn. It was his natural instinct to go around it. Instead he aimed right through: it was the shortest distance. Damn Grayborn’s ghost.
He paused at the edge of the trees, looking into the bluing sky, trying to find the aircraft. Nothing. Where had it gone?
He pushed into the forest. He expected to be going slower, but he found the tree trunks provided him with natural crutches. Instead of falling in agonizing exhaustion, he could lean against the ashes and maples, stagger from trunk to trunk.
His shoulder hit hard against a tree trunk; he whispered Casey’s name. This urged him onward and he jogged forward. The gorge loomed ahead of him.
He stopped at the edge of the gorge, but the dirt was slick and his balance was gone. John slid and found himself at the bottom of the gorge, where he had shot Grayborn.
He tried not to look, but his eyes found the plaque someone—not him, never a John—had placed there. Here Lies the Remains of the Rapist Jason Grayborn.
He stared at the sign, the words blurring.
His ghost would be laughing now.
“Damn you!”
He reached his hands up to grab handholds in the far gorge wall.
A flash of light turned the sky white. A second later he felt a wave of heat, a shock wave of tropic sun, followed by a pounding deep thunder rolling across the top of the gorge. The heat of the firestorm forced John to drop to his belly and bury his face in the mud.
He screamed as the air above him sizzled. But it was so loud he could not even hear his bellowing.
He felt the hair on the back of his head curl and singe. Fire seemed to lick at his back and buttocks. Seconds ago he had been cold and beaten, now he burned in pain, gasping for breath as the oxygen was sucked from the air to feed a raging fire in the sky.
But no such conflagration could last for long, and it faded in intensity after thirty seconds such that he no longer screamed in pain.
After a minute he could roll over and put out his smoldering clothes. The sky, previously cloudless, was the green of an impending tornado. Debris—dirt, pebbles—rained down on him.
He blinked, took a slow breath of pain, and stood.
John had to see over the gorge wall.
He dug a hand in the dirt, gripped a loop of roots, and pulled himself up half a meter. He hung there, uncertain and suddenly disoriented, then he saw a flat bit of stone that he could push his palm against. Another half meter. His feet scrambled against the dirt wall, finding a bit of purchase. Then his right hand found the top of the gorge, grabbing crumbling grass and moss. He reached as far as he could, his hand catching a small tree.
Grunting, then screaming, he pulled himself over the edge of the gorge.
John lay there, gasping. The world smelled of char. He looked up in horror.
A mushroom cloud rose above him, less than a kilometer away, centered over what had once been New Toledo.
He screamed, incoherent sounds of rage and horror.
Casey had been there.
So many others.
Destroyed by his stupidity. His stupidity.
He stared and screamed as the head of the cloud slowly rose into the sky. Dark, murky clouds settled over the river, obscuring what had once been there on the shore. He found himself trying to find some glimpse of the buildings, hidden in the murk, some sign that they had miraculously survived, but he saw nothing but swirling dust and dirt.
So intent was he on peering into the dark clouds that he did not see the aircraft until it was nearly atop him.
Its weaponry turned toward him.
Rage filled him.
He would have his revenge, but not now. Not here.
John reached into his shirt, toggled his device, and pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
He looked down. The device was set to 7536. He pressed the right button again.
Nothing.
“Shit!” he said. Were they blocking the capability of the device? Had the detonation scrambled its circuits? He was trapped.
John turned and jumped into the gorge.
He ripped off his shirt and unbuckled the device. He pulled his shirt back over his shoulders. He jumped across the dry creek bed.
He dropped the device behind the memorial for the execution of Jason Grayborn and continued running up the gorge.
He was certain to be killed or captured. The least he could do was ditch the device.
In the gorge, it almost seemed as if nothing had happened. The trees within still stood. If he didn’t look up into the dark sky, if he forgot that Casey was dead, if he forgot that New Toledo was destroyed.
He ran.
Above him, the shadow of the aircraft loomed.
CHAPTER 35
“I’ll go,” John Prime said.
Grace Home looked at him with evident relief in her eyes. Casey, however, shook her head slightly.
To her, he added, “I have to. We have to know.”
They’d received a satchel post from 7535 twelve hours before that said, Under attack. Then nothing more. When Henry Home had tried to do a return transfer of a video camera, nothing had come back.
“You can’t go through on top of the New Toledo site,” Henry Home said. He’d been very perturbed when the video camera didn’t return. Even the hovering system had failed.
“I’ll go through from the south, about ten kilometers,” Prime said.
“Alone?” his Casey asked.
“Yes,” Prime said. “We’ve lost too many.” John Home, Casey Home, John Ten, all the refugees, all the Alarians were now missing in action. Grace Home had sent through emergency messages to all transfer gates to shut everything down, go into hiding, and make no unnecessary transfers until they could understand everything that had happened. Then she’d asked John Prime to join her in 7650 at the original Pinball Wizards factory. Casey had dropped Abby off at her parents’ and come with him. The meeting included John and Casey Prime, Grace and Henry Home, as well as Grace and Henry Top. A privy council of the Wizards to deal with the crisis.
“Ten kilometers?” Grace Home asked.
“I want a good distance between me and the site,” Prime said. “I’ll need an ATV and a portable gate.”
“A portable gate?” Henry Top said. “We don’t have a portable gate, just the one that John…”
He stopped before finishing his sentence. John was missing and with him the device that had started it all. They had no idea where he was, having disappeared after heading to Champ to reconnoiter. He could have been captured, killed, or lost in Pleistocene.
“I need a portable gate, one that I can transport easily with the ATV, that can get me back quickly, and that I can destroy after using if need be,” Prime explained.
Henry Home and Henry Top turned toward each other and began whispering. After a moment they turned and nodded in unison.
“We can do that. Portable generator, quick-deployment rig,” Henry Top said.
“Gi
ve us four hours,” Henry Home said.
“I’ll need to go back to 7533,” Prime said.
“Why?” Grace Home asked.
“Uh, weapons,” Prime said. “I have a cache of weapons I’ve been buying up in 7533.”
“Okay,” Henry Top said. “What site do we use for the new transfer site to the Pleistocene world?”
* * *
John Prime transferred across the ATV and its wagon of equipment just before six in the morning the next day. The weather was warmer in the Pleistocene universe, but not enough for him to forego a coat. His leg, where the shrapnel had embedded itself, was pink and puckered. It ached dully when he walked, but two Percocet took care of that. Casey had been shocked that the wound had healed so quickly.
Prime wore a military-grade ballistic vest. He had three pistols strapped to his body—waist, shoulder, and ankle holsters. He had a knife and three grenades. His weapon at hand was a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. He also had an AT4, an anti-tank gun, just in case he came up against something big. All of the equipment was from Universe 9000, his personal trove of equipment. Yes, he thought to himself, my entire universe of equipment.
The ATV could go forty kilometers per hour on open ground. With the trailer, he expected the rate would be less, but he didn’t expect to drag the trailer all the way to New Toledo. He’d set it up halfway there, near an outcropping of rock that was in a metro park in Home Universe: a safe, clear place to transfer into 7650.
His backup plan was to have the team activate the new transfer gate in 7650 every ten minutes until he returned.
Prime marked the transfer zone with small flags.
“Okay, here goes,” he said.
He dropped goggles over his eyes, started the ATV, checked his compass, and headed toward New Toledo.
Even with the goggles, tears ran from his eyes at the wind against his face. He blinked his eyes clear and focused on avoiding any ravines.
The trip was quicker than he expected. He stopped after five kilometers, near the outcropping of rock. He unloaded the generator and the new gate. The Henrys had built something quick and dirty, but it would work fine. It was big enough to transfer two persons in a hurry. Any more travelers and there was danger of someone losing a limb in the tight fit.
Prime verified that the generator would run and power the gate, and then he left it ready to transfer him out.
He took another bearing and continued on the ATV. He stopped repeatedly to scan the sky and the horizon, ahead and behind. Prime saw nothing.
Finally he was near enough to New Toledo that he felt he should see some sign of it. He thought he had the right location. The landmarks to the west seemed right, but the hills on the banks of the river where the settlement should have been … were absent.
He slowly drove closer.
As he crested a rise near the settlement, he stopped, staring at the sight.
Where New Toledo once stood was a huge glass bowl.
The entire settlement had been nuked.
“Jesus,” Prime said. They had all been killed, murdered by a weapon of mass destruction.
No wonder the video camera Henry had sent through didn’t come back. There was no hard ground to transfer onto. Just a drop fifty meters into a glass bowl.
John Prime felt his rage boil.
This was his multiverse too. What right did any goddamn shitheads have to kill his friends? Who put them in charge? And if they were in charge, why the hell weren’t they doing a better job? The Wizards hadn’t hurt anyone. The Alarian women certainly had suffered enough. Why did they have to die?
Tears were running down his cheeks. He felt impotent, useless, a burden. And stupid. Idiotic for letting this all happen. He had given Farmboy the device. Prime had set this all in motion. Farmboy liked to take responsibility for everything, but it was just as much his fault. So many deaths laid on his shoulders.
“John!”
He turned.
A woman, with a walking stick, was coming toward him. She was one of the Alarians, and he remembered her name—Radeheva, one of the pregnant Alarians. She was gravid with her baby, at least eight months pregnant.
As she neared, John Prime saw that the stick was a broken branch that she had picked up to help her walk. A scratch ran across her forehead. Her leg was clearly stiff from another wound on her thigh.
“Radeheva,” Prime said. “You’re alive.”
“For the moment, John,” she said. She looked at him closely. “John Prime.”
“What’s happened here?”
“Atomics,” she said. “I expect we’re getting a good dose standing here. Let’s be off.”
“Shit!” Prime said. Why had he not thought of that? He was standing on the edge of an atomic blast site.
“Are there any others who survived?” Prime asked.
“Two others,” Radeheva said. “Though I doubt for long. We were hunting. We saw the ship approach. We saw the explosion. It knocked us flat. The other two are worse than me.”
“You shouldn’t be so close to the site in your condition.”
“What else were we to do?” Radeheva said. “Neither Audofleda nor Brenasontha can walk. And this is where a rescuer would come.”
“But your baby—”
“—still kicks. Let’s go.”
She led him to the west.
“We were a kilometer to the east. The ship rose high, dropped its warhead, and came low. It sighted a survivor to the north, across the river, and pursued.”
“A survivor?”
“Yes, it was John Rayburn—John Home.”
“Farmboy? He was here.”
“Not that I knew of when I left that morning. He was coming to New Toledo when the blast occurred.”
“He’s captured then, and with him the device.”
“Perhaps. When someone is pursued, they often drop or destroy the things they want to keep from enemy hands.”
“There is no way to destroy the device easily.”
They drove the ATV two kilometers to the west, where they came upon a formation of rock under a small waterfall in a stream. In the depression behind the falls were Audofleda and Brenasontha. Audofleda was unconscious, her head bruised at the temple. Brenasontha was conscious, but her leg was broken.
Together, Prime and Radeheva carried the two women and placed them in the trailer of the ATV.
“I need to see what’s happened to John,” Prime said. “Can we wait an hour?”
Radeheva nodded. “We can wait. Where is the transfer gate?”
Prime explained where it was and how to use it, in case something happened to him.
“Give me an hour to look for him.”
“We will give you two.”
* * *
Prime had brought an inflatable canoe, which he used to cross the river to the far side. His mind kept coming back to the reality as he rowed: three survivors of a thousand. Just three.
They were facing monsters.
He reached the shore and pulled the light canoe up the bank where he set two large stones, fore and aft, to keep it from blowing away. He was still a kilometer or two upstream of the settlement site. No, not a settlement. The crater site.
He jogged easily toward the trees where Radeheva had last seen Farmboy John. She said she’d seen no sign of the enemy since. Had they found what they wanted in Farmboy? Had they left a few survivors to spread the word?
Radeheva had said the aircraft had pursued Farmboy from the trees northward. She’d seen him here, in front of the trees, facing the settlement. He was shocked to see footprints in the ash. Farmboy’s footprints. They came forward from the trees a few meters, then they turned back into the trees.
Prime followed. Farmboy had run back, jumped down the gully, and that’s where his tracks ended.
Prime hopped down and, by chance, found charred bits of clothing. This was where Farmboy had survived the blast, here behind the dirt of the ravine wall.
He looked left and right, spot
ted the stone someone had put up for that bastard Grayborn. That way, Prime thought. He would have gone that way.
John Prime ran past the memorial, taking the slanting gully slowly northeast and upward. When the gully was just a meter high, he found where Farmboy had scrabbled up the side. Ashes at the top of the gorge had been disturbed, and his footprints led off to the north.
Farmboy had been running; the length of his stride made that clear. Prime went five hundred meters, following the footprints straight, until the tracks veered suddenly to the left, then the right. Farmboy had been dodging something. The ground became a chaos of dirt, leaves, grass, and ash.
Something had swept the burnt-out land in all directions, something that had landed here. There was no corpse; they’d captured him. Then they had taken him away, leaving Radeheva and the two others to their fate. They had wanted John Farmboy specifically or just one captive. Prime had no idea which.
There was nothing to be done here. Prime turned around and followed the track back.
As he passed the memorial to Jason Grayborn, he paused. It was odd that this one thing was all that survived of New Toledo. Prime decided that it should not be so. He grabbed the memorial and tilted it over, shattering the stone.
His eyes settled on the device lying there.
“There you are,” he whispered.
Farmboy had ditched the device here, knowing he was about to be captured. Why hadn’t the enemy found it? His trail was easy to backtrack. They weren’t looking for the device for some reason.
But he had it now.
John Prime had it again. He smiled.
It was back in his hands again.
CHAPTER 36
John awoke in a cell. His head was pounding. His body ached. Sliding his feet over the edge of the bed he laid on, he pulled himself to a seated position.
The room was three meters square, with a bed against one wall and a toilet across from it in one corner. A door, with a metal screen window, was to his left. There was no other window. A vent in the ceiling blew cool air. He caught the scent of ammonia.
He leaned forward, head in hands, remembering. He had run, not to escape, but to draw the enemy away from the device. It hadn’t worked! Panic had flooded him, the same panic when Prime had first given him the device and it hadn’t worked, it hadn’t let him go back home. This time, it hadn’t let him transfer forward.