by Jayde Brooks
Rose’s heels clicked lightly against the glossy linoleum of the bottom floor of the building, heading toward the morgue. It was late. Rose flashed her medical credentials to the security guard, who barely glanced in her direction as he buzzed the door open to let her in. Why the dead needed security guards was rather laughable.
The infant looked even smaller than the six pounds, eight ounces she had weighed at birth. Rose laid her on top of the blanket on one of the autopsy tables and stared at her. She didn’t look real, and Rose certainly couldn’t fathom the idea that somehow the things she was about to do would bring her back to life. But, then again, it wasn’t that teenage girl’s child who would come to life. That child had passed through this world for a moment before moving on to her next life. This would be Khale’s child.
With a finger, Rose pushed down on the tiny chin to open her mouth and, drop by drop, let the water from the jeweled vial fill her mouth until the vial was empty. Rose lit the candle as her Ancestors had done.
“The essence of the individual will follow the light,” she had learned. “It is a beacon to those who are lost, whose life journeys have not yet ended, fully. But beware the essence of evil or angry beings, for they should never be allowed to return.”
Rose gently unrolled the scroll. Her eyes glistened with tears at the images drawn by her own hand so long ago. A stream of very old symbols filled the page as Rose began to recite the oration to open the gateway between the Ancients and the infant lying on that table.
“Give me the sweet breath that is in your nostrils. I am the guardian of this great being who separates the earth from sky. If I live, she will live; I grow young, I live, I breath the air.”
Rose finished her incantation, took a step back away from the table, and held her breath. Had it worked? Had she brought the Ancient essence of Mkombozi into this world? Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement.
A deep, threatening rumble rose up from the ground. Equipment on the shelves began to shake and fall to the floors. The walls began to crack, and Rose truly feared that the building was about to cave in on her. Then the child started to cry.
“Thank you, Rose.” Khale said, stepping out of the darkness, as tall as the ceiling, thin and powerful, with flower petals where lips should be, a stream flowing down her back and onto the floor, filled with all manner of sea creatures, her skin as blue as the sky. “You did it.” She smiled. “Mkombozi is here.”
“Doc!” the security guard banged hard on the door and tried turning his key into the lock. “Doc, you all right in there? The door’s locked! Doctor?”
Rose looked desperately at Khale.
“She is cold, Rose.”
Rose snapped out of her hesitation, rushed over to the child, and quickly wrapped the blanket around her.
“I’ll get help!” the man said outside of the door.
Rose gathered the child in her arms and held her close to her heart. She looked across the room for Khale, but the Ancient was gone. Several minutes later, the quaking stopped and Rose pulled the door open with little effort. She looked around for the security guard, but he was nowhere to be found. Rose found the stairwell and quickly left with her child.
“Rose? No,” Khale said sorrowfully, kneeling down at Rose’s feet and taking Rose’s hands in hers.
Rose noticed how old her hands looked, and all of a sudden she was so very tired. Rose had unintentionally stepped out of the spell of her glamour, which had kept her looking young all these years, and she felt relieved.
“You can’t do this, Rose,” Khale pleaded with her. “Not now. She needs us. She needs you to bring her home, Rose. You know she won’t come with me.”
The Great Shifter was crying.
“I have loved her, Khale, as if she had come from my body. I have done all I can for her. But I will not bring her back. Not this time,” she said, surprised by how feeble her voice was.
“Rose, she’s not ready to be out there on her own yet. She needs us to guide her and to watch over her on this quest for the Omens.”
“I will not lead her to that,” Rose said firmly.
“Look! Look at what is happening to this world! Look at what the Demon has started! Rose, she needs to do this, and we have to help her!”
Eden’s small and pretty face flashed in Rose’s mind. The little girl, so small and afraid, who smiled when she curled up in Rose’s lap and laughed until she cried when Rose tickled her. The child who fell asleep in her arms when she sang to her—that was her child. The scared young woman who was out there somewhere, running as far away and as fast as she could from Theian prophecy, was her Eden. And Rose hoped that she would escape it and get as far away from it as she could.
She looked at Khale, gradually fading from her sight, and Rose breathed a sigh of relief as she welcomed her long-awaited rest. “All I’ve ever wanted was for her to be happy, Khale.”
Khale’s expression twisted in confusion as if the word “happy” was a foreign concept to her.
They both knew the fate of the Redeemer after the bond with the Omens was completed. The Omens would make her powerful enough to defeat the Demon, and then they would destroy her. There was no other way that it could end. At least if Eden was running, maybe she had a chance. At least running away gave her a choice.
“Rose?” Khale shook her. “Rose!”
The sound of Khale’s voice sounded so far away. Weightlessness enveloped Rose and finally she was set free.
BERLINER MORGENPOST
BERLIN OFFICIALS DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY
Military forces have been called in to restore order to Berlin. Scientists have not been able to identify the mysterious plague that has killed thousands. Days later, these same patients, who have been declared legally dead, reanimate or are resurrected, seemingly fully recovered initially, only to attack and appear to feed on other humans. One medical professional interviewed stated the following: “The initial onset of the disease appears as meningitis or influenza, but does not respond to treatment of either. We have no idea what it is.”
LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
Three days ago Eden was at the airport trying to buy a one-way plane ticket to Fort Lauderdale. Now she was on a bus heading for Cleveland. All air travel had been suspended until further notice. Eden had been sleeping in a bus terminal for three days before she finally managed to get a ticket out of Brooklyn, and the only bus leaving was headed to Cleveland. The ticket cost her six hundred dollars. She paid it because all that mattered was getting the hell away from this place.
She’d tried calling Rose several times, only to have her calls go straight to voice mail. In the past, Rose, along with Khale, had always found Eden and had always convinced her to go home. This time, Eden had no intention of going back, but it would’ve been nice to hear Rose’s voice and to know that she was okay. Of course she was okay. Rose was an Ancient. For now, at least, Rose had to be safe.
Eden sat huddled beside the window in a seat next to a pregnant woman holding a toddler in her lap. The people on this bus were scared. She was scared. Eden had no idea what was waiting for her in Cleveland or where she’d go after that, but the fact remained that New York had caved in on itself and turned into a nightmare. She’d been checking the news on her smartphone.
People were getting sick and dying and then coming back to life and killing each other. There had even been reports of some people eating other people. It was crazy. Eden had been feeling sick to her stomach for days. She hadn’t been able to eat and she’d barely slept. This was it. She knew it. This was what Rose and Khale had been telling her about all these years. It was real. The Demon was real, and this so-called plague was no plague at all. Her gut told her that all of this was a part of the prophecy that had been drilled into her for as long as she could remember.
Eden stared out of the window, blinking back tears. All of the people on this bus were running, just like her, hoping to find a place to hide until all of this shit blew over.
�
��When the Demon returns, Eden, his army will rise up and your world will be in jeopardy of falling under his rule, like our world had been,” Khale had warned. “You are the only one who can stop him. You with the power of the Omens can save the human race from annihilation.”
Is that what was happening? Annihilation? Rose and Khale expected her to stop this and to save the world, which had been turned upside down and inside out. People were dying and being resurrected into monsters. No one could fix this, especially not her.
“What’s that?” someone in the back of the bus asked. “Did you see that?”
Eden pulled back her hoodie and sat up in her seat, glancing anxiously out of the windows. She felt them before she could see them. But what were they?
“What?” someone else asked.
Her heart raced, and she fought back the urge to scream, to cry. Was it another dream, a nightmare? Wake up, Eden, she willed herself.
“What are they doing, man?”
“Mommy?” the toddler sat up in his mother’s lap and looked at her.
“Shhhhh, baby,” she said, holding on tighter to him.
“Shit!” someone shouted. “Oh shit!”
Eden looked out of the window at the back of the bus and saw a large cargo truck bearing down on them. Moments later, sound closed in on itself and time seemed to almost stand still as Eden felt her body jerk against itself and saw the chaos of other passengers floating in midair. Mouths gaped open, releasing screams into the air. Eyes bulged wide in disbelief. Glass shattered and then fell like rain inside the bus. It wasn’t until her body folded and twisted over one of the seats that she realized she’d been airborne. Excruciating pain raked across her back, and loose luggage fell on top of her, pinning her in place.
The scent of smoke and gasoline filled the cabin, and as suddenly as it had begun, it ended, with broken bodies piled on top of each other. The deafening sound of metal scraping against metal and asphalt and screams blended together creating a chorus of terror. Eden smelled blood and tasted it in her mouth.
Everything stopped. She looked for the pregnant woman and her toddler. Eden slowly turned her head to where she believed the driver should be, and through blurred vision saw that the whole front windshield was missing. And then she saw them, people—at least they looked like people, but something about them was different. Their movements were sporadic and unnatural. They were raging, crawling through broken glass and peeling back the door at the front of the bus.
Sakarabru’s army. The words came to her all of a sudden: The Brood.
“Noooooo!” The terror in a woman’s voice made Eden’s skin crawl, and two of them crept through a busted-out window and grabbed her.
Eden watched in horror as they bit into the woman and dragged her back out of window they’d come through. The woman stretched out her arm to the other passengers. “Help meeeeee!”
It didn’t take long for others to come in and start to take more passengers. Eden stared frozen in her own fear and disbelief in what was happening—what was actually happening—as passenger after passenger was attacked, torn, and ripped apart by people who looked like them, but didn’t—weren’t—like them.
Fight! The word kicked her hard in the stomach, nearly taking her breath away. They were killing the passengers on that bus, and if she didn’t do something, they would kill her too. Eden willed her body to move but then realized that she was pinned underneath something … someone. She fought to turn over and looked into the face of the pregnant woman, lying lifeless on top of her. The baby, the little boy, was pinned underneath Eden.
Eden had to get out. She looked to the back of the bus for a way to escape, but it was blocked by the truck rammed into the rear end. Eden had no choice. There was only one way out of here, and if she wanted to live, she had no choice but to take it. She didn’t remember freeing herself, but soon Eden pushed her way past bodies and debris to get to the front of that bus. They were like ants, crawling over each other to get to these people. Eden met them one by one with her fists, breaking faces; she grabbed heads and gauged out eyes.
Fight! Fight or die, Eden! Yes!
Eden was killing, but she had killed before. She climbed out of that window, stepping on these … these cannibals like they were insects, breaking them, stopping them. Eden kicked, breaking knees and forcing these things to the ground in agony. Things. They weren’t human. They were animals, worse than animals. They were monsters. And they deserved to die.
Eden lost herself to the moment. She was drunk on adrenaline, and for the first time in her life, she let go and gave in to the nature of what she was, had always been. Eden was a warrior. But she wasn’t fighting alone. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him. A phantom? No. She turned and saw that it was the Guardian. He picked up grown men by their necks and tossed them aside like toys. As he marched toward her, he caved in chests with his fists and twisted heads, leaving bodies with broken necks in the path to get to her. He was coming toward her. He was coming for her. Huge wings, black and wide enough to block out the sun, spread from his back as he ran straight toward Eden; she stumbled back in awe and fear.
“Tukufu,” she whispered, closing her eyes and wrapping her arms around him. But there was nothing she could do. The Guardian had her.
FORSAKEN
Kifo walked the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina, with the same disdain and disgust for what he had seen in Turkey, London, Somalia, Mexico. The curse had spread like fire, just like he knew it would, and the undoing of humankind had been at his hands.
The media had called it a flu. A pandemic.
In the Americas: “Tens of thousands have died.…”
In Berlin: “Tausende sind gestorben.…”
In Italy: “Migliaia sono morti…”
The first so-called resurrections were deemed miracles, and the masses celebrated, doctors were baffled, and common people became overnight celebrities, with microphones shoved under their noses, and cameras in their faces asking them about their experiences.
“What’s it like to be clinically dead?”
“Is there an afterlife?”
“How have you changed since you’ve been born again?”
In the blind excitement to proclaim these miracles, reporters had failed to see the fear and trepidation in the eyes of these miraculously resurrected people. And they certainly didn’t see the hunger, a hunger that would make them monsters, an unfortunate side effect of Sakarabru’s will. Kifo had warned the Demon that human bodies weren’t like the Ancients he’d used to build the Brood Army on Theia. His mystics had performed the same spells on the humans, but the results had not been without consequences.
Bullets whirred past him. Chaos swirled around him. Screams. Sirens echoed through the streets. Confusion. What had happened? Miracles quickly turned into nightmares. A city oblivious to his presence pressed on to try to stop the pandemonium, but Kifo knew that they would fail. They would stop this first wave, but not the second or third or fourth.
“The Seer Larcerta said it would be you.”
Kifo recognized the sound of Khale’s voice, even though she had never said two words to him. He turned slowly to face her, standing on the other side of the street. She looked ordinary, but still, he should have been afraid. She was Khale née Khale, after all, the Great Shifter and the dragon.
Kifo boldly walked toward her, stopped, leaned down until their noses almost touched, and inhaled.
“I can still smell the sulfur on your breath, Khale,” he said bravely.
“Where there is sulfur, there is still fire, Djinn child.”
He recognized a warning when he was threatened with one, and Kifo slowly backed away from her.
“You brought the Demon back,” she said, stating fact.
Kifo stood back proudly. “Yes. I brought him back.”
She looked beyond him at the houses in the neighborhood of suburbia and shook her head. “And you caused all of this.” Again, it was a statement, a declaration. “You did thi
s to these people.” She turned her attention back to him. “To this world.”
Yes. He had.
“All to get back at me, little Djinn.”
Of course her intent was to humiliate him. Khale was understandably upset by all the recent events. Even for him, however, old wounds that should’ve healed long ago were reopened.
“I saw the dragon the day my people were murdered,” he said, evenly. “I watched as you flew over our colony, spitting flame out of your mouth until there was nothing left.” More than four thousand years later, the images from that day were still crystal clear to Kifo.
“And then I watched as you landed and changed back into your pretty self and walked through the ash examining the charred bodies of the mystics. They were spiritual, peaceful, and had never hurt anyone, and they had taken me in when no one else wanted me.”
Tears had the audacity to fill the Shifter’s eyes. “It was war, Kifo. And for every one I killed from Sakarabru’s territory, he killed ten of mine. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right, but it was war.”
“And it is again, Khale,” he said coolly.
“You could have left well enough alone, Djinn. We have all found a new home in this world. We have built our lives here. Bringing him back will destroy everything and everyone. You know this. I cannot believe that in your heart you believe that bringing him or his army back is the right thing to do.”
“I am obedient,” he blurted out, surprising even himself with those words.
Khale frowned. “But you weren’t always.”
What the hell was she talking about? Of course he had always been obedient to Sakarabru. The Demon had saved Kifo from a life of desolation and starvation after Khale had destroyed everything and everyone who he had ever loved. Kifo owed him his loyalty.