“What’s going on?” I ask. “Kane flipped over it and eventually destroyed Rhonar. This isn’t how it happened.”
I continue to watch as Nicole screams Kane’s name…but the big guy doesn’t get up cursing like before. He doesn’t get up at all. Nicole wails again, yelling that Kane is dead and I feel my heart ache. Joining my past self’s voice, we shout in anger at the scene. Instead of Kane defeating the beast, it’s me. I leap on its back and empty my Glock into the base of its stone skull.
The sorrow I feel is real and Nicole and I weep together, I can feel both my current self and past one cry in unison too. It’s like it really happened. It feels like Kane just died now.
“He isn’t dead,” I say aloud, looking down at my hands. I’m still holding the empty gun, standing over the inert form of the Nightmare. I specifically remember feeling the agony Rhonar felt as Nannot forced his will upon the creature. I even recall kneeling and praying for Rhonar’s forgiveness.
“Kane’s not dead.”
“But is he?” a voice quickly answers.
I watch as something else comes to be that I know didn’t. The golden statue of Thoth comes to life and steps down off his own platform. It’s still holding the oversized ankh like before except its eyes are bleeding. It’s a telltale sign of Nannot’s corruption.
Enki’s corruption, I decide as I watch.
I’m still in past-Hank’s body as the monstrous Thoth raises his mighty ankh over his head, swinging it like a sledgehammer. But the downward arc isn’t coming for me… It’s coming for Nicole.
It connects as I scream—just as my eyes blackout again.
I’m consumed by utter darkness again, tears streaking down my face. Snot drips from my nose as I openly wail in agony over the loss of my friends. My chest constricts and I feel the cold envelop me again, sapping whatever energy I have left.
A sinister laughing breaks me of my pain-induced vegetative state. It also reminds me that what I just saw didn’t happen.
“Why are you showing me this?” I ask, my voice shaking.
“To break you…”
The room again comes into view and we are now down in the smaller cave. Omar is standing in front of Nannot’s prison, just about to put his hand on it. Everyone is shouting for him to stop, but like before, he doesn’t listen. He places his hand on the frozen black fire and releases Nannot. Up until that moment I believed him to be man’s greatest foe, but not now. His master was, and is, so much worse.
The possessed form of Omar Jafari quickly points his gun at my father, like before, and squeezes the trigger. I reflexively direct my will at the bullet, trying desperately to turn it to dust as I did in real life.
It doesn’t work.
The round hits home and exits through Dad’s back. I again feel the horrifying loss like I did when Nicole and Kane were killed, but this is ten times harder to fight through. My heart rate increases and I feel my body quake. My very soul screams.
The reverberating sound of my voice bounces around the cave and brings its roof down on top of Kane and Nicole, killing them again.
“This didn’t happen!” I shout.
Mercifully, my vision goes black again.
“No more!” I yell again, sobbing. “P-please.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” the voice booms again. “I can feel you weakening. I can feel your insides begging for mercy.” Enki laughs again. “Will you give yourself to me now?”
Give myself to him? He’s in my head, tormenting me, but can he not take me over yet? I start to recall other things about this process. You have to willingly let them in. It’s only the weakest-willed that can be forced to obey without bowing to them first.
Omar gave himself over to Nannot. I gave myself to Thoth. Even the Judges gave themselves willingly. Rhonar had been defeated and broken. He was one of the ones taken.
But can I continue to fight back? Can I keep resisting this hell?
“No,” I hear myself say. “You can’t have me.”
I visualize myself standing in defiance as the scenery changes yet again. This time, we are in the last place I want to be… The basement of the Smithsonian Castle—the place my father actually died.
Knowing what to expect makes this easier to handle than the other scenes. As much as I want to change things, I know, without a doubt, that William Boyd dies. I’ve tried countless times to reverse course, sacrificing myself over and over and over again. Dad was dying of cancer anyway, but this isn’t the way it should have happened. Even though Dad gladly gave his life to save me—us all, really—it’s not how things should have ended for him.
But then I remember mom… She passed years before, also of cancer. We watched as it ate away at her, destroying what was a normally jovial woman. Dad went out in a literal hail of gunfire, like a hero. So did mom, though. It was just in a different way.
“There’s nothing you can do here that I haven’t already suffered through,” I say, willing Enki to appear. He does and takes Frost’s place behind my dad. I don’t have to watch the rest. Instead, I focus my attention on Enki’s lifeless black eyes and scarred face, my glare never wavering.
I don’t give in and become my past self again. The other Hank rushes forward like I’ve done a hundred times already. But dad is beyond saving. I even look back and see Sofia, my dad’s aide, dead, lying in a pool of her own blood.
“This is all because of you, isn’t it?”
Enki’s cheekbones lift, smiling. His form of it anyway.
“Not directly, no, but without my influence over the world upon my arrival, yes, none of this would have come to be.”
I take a step forward as the scene blurs slightly, but doesn’t completely fade. Nicole rushes to the other Hank and cries alongside Ben and him. And just like before, Kane pounds up the stairs, Desert Eagle in hand, ready to obliterate anyone that gets in his way.
“But…” Enki says, hanging his words in the air, “None of you would have come to pass either.”
I stop dead. “What do you mean?”
He laughs again. “Do you really think the primitive savages would have developed the technology they did without my help? Do you think discoveries would have been made that would have inspired your precious movies? Would Dr. Boyd have taken to archaeology?” My hands shake. “Would he have met your mother?”
“Would I have been born?” I add, understanding what he’s saying. It’s not that none of this—in front of me—would have come to pass without Enki. It’s that nothing at all would have. Love him of hate him, he’s also indirectly responsible for the good that the world has to offer too.
The good…
“You’re to blame for everything wretched in the world. Centuries of war and death, disease and famine.” He almost bows, happy that I’m confirming his existence. “But…” I say, letting it hang in the air, “you’re also to thank for the good in the world.”
His eyes narrow.
“Because without evil…there is no good to fight it.”
Enki lunges at me.
The world around me goes bonkers as Enki and I fight through some of the world’s bloodiest battles and most inspiring victories. It’s like the who’s who of gladiatorial conflicts—the History Channel live and in person. We each take up the persona of someone in the battle, slicing, punching, or shooting each other countless times.
The Battle of Marathon between the Greeks and the Persians.
The war between Spanish Conquistadors and the Inca.
The Hundred Years War with Joan of Arc at its reins.
The American Revolution and Civil War.
World War Two, specifically Normandy Beach.
The death toll is nauseating and impossible to fully grasp, but I fight on and hope. I hope I can survive the bad, in order to use the good as my own personal weapon against him. I believe it is his only weakness and I intend on exploiting it. If he screws up somehow and gives me an opening…
39
The Citadel
Te
rra swung her massive arms back and forth like clubs, bashing two or three mitutu with every pass. She may not be able to use the earth around her like she could elsewhere, but she could most definitely still help. It had been over two-thousand years since she morphed into her true form.
This feels…good.
She wasn’t sure if finally being herself was the reason or if it was the fact she was fighting for good and not evil. Yes, she’d slowly changed her outlook on humanity, but she’d never openly fought alongside them before.
The two here, Kane and Nicole, they were the most intriguing ones yet. They weren’t Boyd’s family, but they still chose to fight for him, risking even death. Terra would do what she could to make sure that didn’t happen.
She continued forward, stomping and smashing anything that wasn’t human. Once the mitutu may have been, but not now. They only knew one thing now—hunger. They were truly an inspiration behind the modern world’s zombie craze. Everything was about zombies nowadays. The fad was running its course, like vampires before it, and werewolves before that. Soon, like everything in mainstream media, the dead-man mania would end and Hollywood would be forced to find another hot button to milk.
Four of the rotted out things leapt at her, three successfully clinging to her legs. One tried to go high, but she caught it in her oversized hand and squeezed, crushing its skull like a tiny grape.
She kicked out and sent the two on her right leg flying into an incoming horde. The one on her left thigh met its demise with a simple flick of her wrist. She backhanded it away, snapping its neck with very little effort. The mitutu, like the zombie phenomena, worked best in large numbers. One on one with just an average human would prove fatal for the creature. After centuries of starvation, only being kept alive by the slightest of scraps, mixed with the tiniest bits of vine, their bodies were little more than toothpicks in strength.
Her goal was simple, clog the entry with her own body and keep fighting. She would do what she could to delay the monstrosities from overwhelming the others. She had faith that Boyd would prove his might against Enki. She didn’t know why, but she could sense a change in the air within the Citadel. She could sense that Enki was losing his grip on Boyd’s mind.
Terra picked up the pace and started jogging, her colossal ten-foot frame, bulldozing through anything that got close. Thankfully, the mitutu lost most of their ability to think long ago. Now they only acted on instinct. Strategic thought was literally lost to time.
Between her heavy footfalls, Terra heard gunshots and countless shrieks, but with every death, came another abomination from the Kur.
Twenty more feet…
She opened her arms and scooped up six of the mitutu, quickly crushing all of them with one bone-crunching bear hug. But they kept coming. They lived in the lowest levels, spread out for miles. Even Enki didn’t venture that deep regularly—if ever. Not to her knowledge anyway, which was very limited. What she did know from talking with Susanoo was that every few months, Enki would undertake the journey and that was only to deliver their rations. He would visit the four lowest doors, making his rounds as quickly as he could. He wanted no part of them unless it was to fight.
He feared them. He feared that the mitutu would remember who was responsible for their demise.
Could that be used against him? Would they even understand?
If she had time, she’d try, but for now, she’d fight.
She entered the square entry, the top of her bald stone head grinding just a bit on the ceiling. She widened her stance and opened her arms, gripping the edges of the corridor. She would block the tunnel as the others dispatched what got through. She’d never gone up against these creatures before, but she guessed that their weakened teeth and frail bodies were no match for her stone frame.
She clenched her eyes tight and mentally roared. Her will even shook the sides of the tunnel a little, cascading a cloud of dust. Even the mitutu seemed to be frightened of her sheer mass and ferocity. The resistance against her was so much that not even she thought she could hold on.
The gunfire behind her got closer and more infrequent. Did she fail? Did the soldiers perish? No, she thought, I don’t believe that. She knew that these particular humans wouldn’t be beaten so swiftly.
“Terra…down!”
She listened, unsure why she trusted them so. But when she turned and knelt, she saw six of the eight still remaining, all of them pointing their weapons her way.
Not all…
One of them held two small cylindrical canisters, one in each hand.
“Flash out!”
The one named Kane threw both of them over her head and into the tunnel behind her. Most of the mitutu were still stuck, entangling themselves with each other. As she finished turning, she saw the humans dive to the ground and cover their ears. Terra duplicated their movements, except held a kneeling position. She would continue to hold back the creatures while whatever was going to happen did.
Twin flashes bloomed to life behind her and the voices of hundreds of mitutu shrieked in agony. Whatever Kane did, it worked. The load lessened on Terra’s smoking back and she stood and immediately entered deeper into the tunnel.
“Go!” her voice boomed, startling the others. It was a deep baritone sound and it again rattled the tight confines of the ten-by-ten space. Even though she didn’t audibly speak the command, it still affected this place. “Help your friend!”
Before any of the human survivors could reply, she once again resumed her assault on Enki’s army, roaring in fury. She wouldn’t stop until they were no more, or until she was. Thankfully, her regenerative powers remained. She knew that if she could buy the humans more time…the day may not be lost after all.
* * *
“Holy mother!” Kane yelled, watching the mammoth form of Terra stomp through the lessening horde of…whatever the hell they were. She probably could have kicked the shit out of Rhonar too.
The light grew in brilliance, making them turn. Hank and Enki were still locked in motionless physical combat, but the mental part…well, that was very much in motion. If what Terra said was true about damaging Hank’s mind worse, they needed to, unfortunately, let him fight his own fight.
“Nicole…Kane…”
Everyone watched as Ben stood and carefully limped towards them, rounding the glowing altar. He gave it a wide enough berth, not wanting to potentially interrupt anything.
“Ben,” Nicole said, rushing to the man, “you’re okay…”
His smile turned into a clenched jaw… He wasn’t okay.
“What happened?” she asked, Kane joining them.
“Yeah, man,” Kane said. “We watched you get lifted into the air and then…poof…you were gone. Off the grid.”
“Anu happened, my friends,” Ben answered, leaning into Nicole for support. “He attacked me in the Tassili arches and broke my back.”
Kane’s right eyebrow asked the question.
“Oh,” Ben said, smiling again, “it’s not broken anymore.”
“I don’t understand,” Nicole said.
He lifted one of his closed fists and revealed what looked like a smashed leaf. “It was the vines—the gardens. They cured me. I couldn’t walk and was in dire pain before I smelled their nectar hidden within.”
“Are you high?” Kane seriously asked. Ben looked like he was on a morphine trip or something.
He laughed but winced again. “No, my friend. I’m still in shock over this discovery. The Hanging Gardens are real and they have a healing property that could serve the world in hundreds—maybe thousands—of unique ways.”
A grunting sound emanated from behind as two stray creatures darted out from the tunnel. One was missing an arm and the other was missing half its face. Two quick shots from one of the soldiers ended their feeble attempts, however.
“Davey,” Kane said, “you and the others form a perimeter around this central spot. Shoot anything that isn’t our new big friend.”
Davey nodded
and relayed the order. His body language was all business after losing half his men. Each of the four remaining Special Forces soldiers moved off. Two headed closer to the tunnel entrance, while the other two split off and formed a walking perimeter around the altar.
Feeling a little better about their position, Kane turned back to Ben and Nicole, hearing the last of what they were talking about.
“We need to take some of it with us and study it,” Ben said, his eyes still wide. “Maybe Olivia can make heads or tails of it?”
“Take what?” Kane asked.
“The leaves,” Nicole replied. “He said it may even help Hank…” She looked up to his floating body. “If he comes back.”
“He will,” Kane said, “stay here and help Ben.”
Kane marched off to the nearest vine he could reach. It was about three hundred feet away—the same distance as a football field—and even then he could barely reach up and grab it on his tippy toes. He could scale the round sloping walls and find more, but decided against it. The bowl shape would be rough on his still aching knee. So instead, he jumped and hung from this one for a second, feeling it give a little. Ignoring the ache in his damaged hand, he pulled himself up as far as he could and dropped, forcing his deadweight to jerk on the vine once again.
This time, it broke free, causing him to land hard on his ass. He grunted and stood, rubbing his lower back. But in the end, he got his reward. The eight-foot section of vine would definitely be a prize worth the twinge in his back.
“Should’ve just used the damn sword.”
He inspected the vine and its few leaves, expecting to see something remarkable. Instead, all he saw was green. They did smell sweet, though, like a freshly cut dewy lawn. They had an unusual sheen to them though too. Maybe it was a result of being barraged by the golden light for so many years?
Babel Found Page 24