The Portal in the Forest

by Matt Dymerski

  ***

  I looked up from the book, my thoughts frozen by the sheer magnitude of that unimaginable cruelty, and the scope of what had happened to humanity here. For once, the threat had not been outright lethal, but the existential crisis had still been inhuman. This time, people had done it to themselves…

  "What happened here?" Danny asked, seeing my face.

  I kept down a surprisingly powerful sob. "Um, nothing relevant," I told him, looking up. There was no blue shift that I could discern, so the bacteria must have been cleansed. The Moon was just coming up over the horizon, and I thought I saw numerous city-like patterns dotting its silvery landscape. But how long had they been there? How long had the cleansing system been running? Had something gone wrong with the return plan, or had they chosen never to come back out of shame and horror at what they'd done?

  I looked ahead of us, to the east.

  The Sun was gigantic, and red, dominating the sky. Had the slow-time bacteria cost the Earth billions of years? Was the Sun going red giant, and expanding to consume the planet?

  I peered to the side, studying the Moon. The patterns there looked grey and lifeless. Had humanity departed for the stars? Or had they petered out on their dusty new rock?

  About out of willpower, I shook off my questions. I'd never get answers, and those people - if they were still up there - would hardly help us.

  Not after what they'd done.

  My bare foot had become sliced and bloody, but I could hardly stop to deal with it. Looking back at our group, I noticed some stragglers. "Come on," I shouted tiredly. "Nobody gives up!"

  Most of the straggling children sped up a little, but one struggled along, visibly limping.

  "Danny," I said grimly. "Keep the pace."

  He nodded.

  I stood in place, huffing, and took a moment to bandage my foot with a strip torn from my shirt. The kids all seemed worried that I had stopped, but Danny barked at them to keep moving.

  Eventually, the limping boy - Ryan, if I remembered right, maybe nine years old - caught up to me.

  His entire face was bright red from exertion, and dripping sweat. The wall of fire was louder here, and more audible without the group's crunching footfalls. I watched him until he reached me.

  "I hurt my ankle," he gasped.

  "Hold onto my arm," I offered, taking the pressure off his hurt leg as much as I could. We began staggering forward. "We're going to make it, don't you worry."

  He had no breath for a reply. I could feel the heat on our backs growing, and searing breezes began ruffling our clothes.

  "I don't wanna die," he said, unprompted.

  I looked, and saw tears flowing down his face. "You're not going to die."

  He gasped with resigned terror. "We're not going fast enough."

  I set my jaw, my thoughts on the people that had died on this world. "I'm not going to leave you behind." Out of options, I bent down, and had him climb up on my back. "We are all getting out of this godforsaken place."

  I huffed forward, tapping into reserves I never knew I had. He was no baby, and heavy on my back, but I ignored the pain in my feet and the heavy weight in my muscles and pushed on - until I looked further ahead, and saw a scattering of children lying where they'd fallen from exhaustion.

  I couldn't carry them all.

  "Get up!" I screamed, still a hundred feet away from the first fallen child.

  She pushed herself up weakly.

  "That's it! That's it, get up! Get up! Keep going!"

  Stumbling forward, she began to walk again, her head low and her eyes hollow.

  Which reminded me - I'd have given anything for a few iWorkers. Those things would have walked the children right to the limits of their endurance without an issue.

  And thoughts like that, I'm sure, were what led that world to its fate…

  "You!" I shouted again, approaching a prone ten-year-old boy whose name I desperately wanted to remember. "Get up! You're not going to die in this oven. All you have to do is walk another mile or two and you can fall down and rest as long as you want."

  He still didn't move.

  Finally reaching him, I pushed him with my shoed foot.

  He groaned.

  "Get up, goddamnit!"

  Trembling, he took my hand, and started walking again after another push.

  Ahead, two more children lay stretched out on obsidian, and, ahead of them, I saw four more collapsed in various positions.

  Even if I did get them up, we were moving too slowly. I could feel the blazing heat at our backs, and I dared not look. "Get up!" I screamed, desperate. "Please, just get up!"

  The first one we reached, a girl, tried to get up - and fell back onto her wide plate of black glass.

  It was about then that the horrible tree of approaching decisions manifested itself to me. I'd burned all our spare time, and the cleansing wall was nearly upon us.

  I couldn't save them all.

  Was this what the people on the Moon had felt, unable to feed billions of people?

  They had to be left behind…

  I could carry one… but the others had to be left behind…

  I already had one boy on my back. Did he deserve to live simply because he had faltered first?

  Could I possibly live with putting him down, and picking up another child?

  I became aware of an added wetness in my sweat - tears? I hadn't cried in so long, and now, here, forced to make the worst decision… it was simply happening, somewhere fuzzy, somewhere outside my cold and calculating survival instincts. Part of me knew the tragedy - but I couldn't directly feel that part of me, not anymore.

  I could save one. Which one? One clung to my back, screaming as the corona at the base of the wall of fire began dancing toward us. Six children lay sprawled out before me and ahead of me. Should I choose by age? Youngest, or oldest? Gender? Boy, or girl? Or should I choose the smartest, the most capable I'd seen?

  No.

  I refused to accept it.

  It was a crappy, terrible solution, and it would hurt them all badly, but it might just -

  Handing the book to the boy on my back, I turned around, gripped the girl and the nearby boy by their arms, and began dragging them.

  They screamed as they slid against sharp angular obsidian, and traces of blood began soaking their clothes… but we were moving.

  In turn, we approached each of the other four fallen children, and I had them grip each other with all their remaining strength. They were all young, and small - thus, they had been the first to fall - and that fact also made them draggable.

  Screaming at the top of my lungs from the strain, I pulled six crying children across shards of broken volcanic glass, while one clung to my back and shouted continually for them to hold on.

  All I could see was the roiling blazing bulwark slowly catching up to us; even licking at the shoes of the farthest boy now and then. If he were to lose his grip on the leg of the boy above him, even for a moment…

  Just pull...

  Just drag...

  Breathe...

  Foot down, push...

  The other foot down, push...

  The agony went on without end, but I would never -

  A perfectly straight line of pure red, like a laser, cut across my awareness, and a swath of despair followed the twinge of pain.

  I fell to one knee as the flare in my spine broached extreme levels of agony. I'd pulled something, or strained something, or simply reached the edge of my endurance… sometimes, there was simply no way out. I knew that, I did, but I could never accept the reality of it.

  But the bloodied and battered children did not slip into the flames and die. Given the break they'd needed, they staggered up and began running again. Ryan handed me the book and took off after them. Turning in amazement despite the searing torsion in my back, I saw them desperately charge toward Danny, who stood… right next to a small oval in space.

  On the other side, children silently waved and
shouted and motioned for them to come. Wasting no time, they tumbled through - with a little push from Danny each.

  We'd made it. We hadn't lost a single person… without the boy on my back, I could move a little easier, and I gripped the book tightly with one hand and my side with the other.

  "It's still not big enough for us," Danny shouted as I approached, reaffirming his earlier unspoken concern. His eyes jumped to the wall of flame not twenty feet behind me.

  I came to a stop, swayed in front of him, and lifted the book with a pained gasp. "Time for a wild guess, then…" Without hesitation, I thrust it through the small oval portal. I waited a tick, and then pulled it back. I did this thrice more, and then…

  Space began ripping around the small rift, rapidly expanding the portal to three times its original size.

  "Go," I told him.

  He nodded gravely and dove through.

  I waited as the heat and roar grew behind me to screaming intensity. I could just stay here, and the book… the device, whatever it was… would be destroyed with me.

  Or would it?

  I couldn't make a gesture like that unless I was certain.

  A little relieved, I tumbled through the portal. "Get back!" I roared, as blessedly cool forest air flowed around me like an eddy in a river.

  Remembering what I'd told them about shouted warnings, they all immediately darted away.

  I rolled forward, spine sparking body-filling agony, as the portal ruptured further behind me. By the time I scrambled to a small hillock and looked back, it had torn out across the entire clearing. Beyond, I saw only descending flame.

  I lolled my head back on good old dirt, and stared up at the trees. I'd done it. I'd avoided the choice… I'd found that elusive third option that people were so rarely afforded… all that training I'd given them, and all the pain I'd ever gone through… it had saved these kids today…

  I laughed. It was a deep, satisfying thing, and I let it go on with all the relief, humor, and wonder I felt. The internal armor I'd lost was gone, but I no longer needed it. I hadn't been wrong, and it hadn't been my fault. Or maybe it had been, but I just didn't care anymore. At some point, life had to go on.

  And, with time so short, life had to go on now. I had to go through with my plan and view the objective image of the book. I had to know what it truly was.

  I vaguely remember the children helping me up, and a long staggering journey back to the suburb before I sent them all off to get patched up and rest.

  I also remember a brief image of the several tequila bottles I had to buy to make my plan work. It was pretty simple, really: down a nearly lethal amount of alcohol, wait until you're almost blacked out, and then - and only then - take out the dangerous image, draw it as quickly and as accurately as you can while so inebriated, and pass out. If you're lucky, you'll remember nothing, and your brain won't rupture trying to process the multi-dimensional image.

  Viewing it had almost killed Danny; would have killed Danny, without healing help.

  I awoke at some indeterminate time the next day, my entire body a hurricane of hangover pain, and my face in a pool of vomit that had come from my stomach and blood that had come from my eyes… but I was alive.

  I was alive, and I'd managed to draw what the book really looked like - or, at least, what limited sense I could make of what it looked like.