When he tried to turn his head to look around the room, someone behind Jason clasped his face between their hands, forcing his head to remain still.
“Báng wo!” The white man next to Jason spoke rapidly between his tears.
The cameraman focused on a bearded man who stepped in front of the two captives. Blood streaked the blade of the oversized knife in his hand.
Oh Jesus, Jason thought. Images of his kids’ faces flickered in his mind.
—an insurgent was reading the other kneeling man his death sentence—
What kind of guy am I? I’ve got a wife—an ex-wife—I drove her away from me. I’ve got two kids
—the cameraman panned from Jason to the man next to him—I’ve got two beautiful little kids and I don’t even fucking think about them
—the man was still babbling in Mandarin, crying hysterically, the corpse of the dead kid next to him—
instead I think—I think about what?—about some bullshit relationship that ended twenty years ago, when I was a freakin’ kid myself for Christ’s sake
—Jason remembered the video, he knew what was coming and felt giddy
what’s wrong with me. The fuck is wrong with me?
—the man with the blade stepped behind the guy kneeling next to Jason. The cameraman yelled something encouraging.
“Hey—hey!” Jason got attention of the prisoner beside him. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.” The insurgent with the purple scarf hammered Jason in the shoulders—“Us kut!”—with his Kalashnikov.
Jason refused to go down.
“You’re not going to cut my head off,” he told the man with the knife. He settled on his knee pads, confident, waiting. “No, you’re not.” He started laughing, which further incensed the armed men. “Just watch.”
The window shutters burst inwards, shards of wood and sand flooding the room.
A tumultuous, revolving column swept inside. Jason lost no time, thrusting himself forward, away from the hands that gripped his face, away from the AK muzzles that lifted from him.
A squall of sand, AK fire, and screams.
Jason regained his feet, rushing across the room—
The purple scarved insurgent was lost in the gale, the camera man down, a crash as one set of halogen lamps shattered on the floor.
—shouldering past a mufti-capped man, the man screaming futilely as the dervish spiraled into the room, insurgents bouncing off its whirlwind, AK rounds deflected from it about the confines of the room, striking men’s flesh.
Jason tore down a hall, fleeing the room, the sand and battle behind him. The man with the purple scarf ran directly in front of him, turning once to yell at Jason and shake his AK, which he didn’t fire. A door to their left slammed shut behind another frightened-insurgent and the purple-sashed man punched it with his fist, cursing the man inside.
Jason passed them, more gunfire barking from a room at the end of the hall, near a stairwell. He risked a look through the doorway before taking the stairs. A giant camel spider filled most of the room, battling insurgents. Ochre-colored fluid ran from the arachnid, dozens of wounds where bullets had impacted its segmented abdomen. Behind the men a whitish glow churned in mid-air. As Jason watched, one of the men went down, braying. The last man standing emptied his AK into the spider, which then snatched him up in its chelicerae. He wailed, flailing at the beast with his hands.
Jason was knocked onto the stairs, the purple-scarved insurgent tearing past him, firing his rifle back down the hall. The man ran into the room with the camel spider, unloosing a new salvo.
Scrambling up the stairs on his hands and knees, Jason saw the bearded man with the knife rush from the front room, a spinning dervish trailing him. The man went to scream, the breath sucked from his lungs as he was bodily absorbed within the demented circumvolutions. Blood jetted from the tornado, spraying the walls and ceiling as if a blender had been left open. The knife clattered across the floor.
The dervish was bouncing against the walls as Jason made the top of the staircase. He watched as the thing in the hall slowed, then stopped rotating, a vaguely human form composing itself, standing there. Vermilion eyes gleamed from the grime-encrusted, blackened bandages that encased it. A Spanish conquistador boarding ax was in its hand. The spectre-like thing spied Jason on the stairs. As he scrabbled to the second floor, a detonation in the room with the camel spider rocked the house.
Jason took the stairs to the roof, the door there ajar. Moats of sand floated between the houses, blanketing the streets and alleyways, obscuring the buildings. The roof of the insurgent’s house stood alone, disconnected from its neighbors, an island in a sea of loess and sand. A massive, luminous orange ball hung in the sky. The sand rose and fell, pulsing, eerily quiet within its depths, in marked contrast to the house below where men howled as wraiths rebounded off walls, hunting them down.
The white man who’d faced decapitation stared into the sky, awe and terror in his eyes. Aware of Jason’s presence on the roof behind him, he turned, babbling in Chinese.
“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
Jason searched for a way out. He trotted around the four corners of the roof, looking down into the sands which filled the alleyways and street. He didn’t recall this house being detached from its neighbors, yet the nearest roof to his was a good six foot jump over boiling dust.
A final volley from an AK sounded beneath them.
“We gotta jump!” Jason yelled at the crying man. He arched his cupped hand, conveying the substance of his words. The other man shook his head vigorously, tears flying from his cheeks.
A sound on the stairs.
Jason backed up, taking the man by the sleeve of his shirt, one guarded eye cast over his shoulder at the door…
The sand between them and the next roof lifted like a curtain, obstructing their jump.
…something was coming through the stairwell, out onto the roof…
Jason bolted, dragging the other man along, forcing him to run—
…a dervish broke from the stairwell, a blur of movement…
—the edge of the roof beneath their feet and they leaped—
…until it froze, its blazing eyes watching them vanish.
—vaulting through the sand, across the void. Jason lost his grip on the man as they fell, knowing he wasn’t going to make it to the other roof, his eyes clenched shut against the wind and dirt. The jump dragged on, seeming to take forever, and it dawned on Jason that he stood on firm ground, that he stood without having landed. As he registered this, yet another impossibility, he expected to be overwhelmed by the sand, to be swept off his feet in its rush and crushed to the ground beneath its weight, buried, or skewered on the wicked blades of the ruby-eyed apparitions haunting the mists.
When none of this occurred, Jason lowered his arms from where he’d covered his face and risked opening his eyes. It was remarkably calm within the sandstorm.
Sand particles swirled in front of him like clouds, and though the sand obscured his sight—limiting visibility to his arms’ length—it did not blind him or even irritate his eyes. Indeed, it was as if the dust and sand somehow did not touch his eyes or face or, looking down on himself, his body. And Jason realized then he’d been breathing the entire time without inhaling the granular matter.
Or had he?
It occurred to him that he wasn’t breathing and yet he had breath. And it wasn’t that he had breath…respiration was not needed here, wherever here was, wherever he was. The impossibility of it, the unimaginable nature of this existence did not register with Jason. He accepted it as a given, a condition accompanying his present state and form, a condition requiring no reflection.
what do you fear the most
He passed through the nebulosity, arms outstretched.
let me tell ya Jay
Voices known and unrecognized reached his ears from the mists, snippets of conversation—consider me the Grand Inquisitor—the voices disembodied, floating past h
im, through him—sometimes you just gotta let go
A shadow loomed from the sand. Jason stood before an enormous barrier, Hescos loaded with rock and sand. Atop the barrier a machine gun nested, unmanned. He recognized it as an M240B, a weapon he’d trained on once. The sand above the encampment was darker, a bearer of dark omens. He circled the barrier, keeping the machine gun in his sight.
Get on that hog. Jason found himself confronted by his sergeant. But how was that possible? In another situation, another time and place, the improbability of it all would crush him, yet he was okay with it here, untroubled, accepting.
You feelin’ okay, Jay? Had Mook’s mouth moved? Had his sergeant asked it aloud, or had Jason somehow known what the man was thinking. Why weren’t these even questions in his mind any longer?
Get-up-on-that-hog-Jason
No. Had he thought it or said it? Didn’t matter. The look on Mook’s face, disbelief turning to anger and then the sergeant’s visage morphing to Hess’, the major standing with his hands on his hips, face reddened, apoplectic. And before Hess could speak he rippled from his boots to his head, an image wavering, and he was no more. A rush of static from the area where the entity—Mook? Hess?—had stood.
You juiced they shit
Tucker was next to him.
When Jason went to reply, Tucker’s face wavered and was replaced by Bronson’s, and Bronson was talking to him—one song main—until his features faded, merging into a succession of students Jason had taught, their faces familiar if their names were forgotten, and he realized names did not always matter, that some experiences in life could not be nailed down with words, could not be recounted coherently after the fact. He felt there was some wisdom in this realization, some closure, and then a student’s visage gave to Rudy’s and the kid looked at him squarely and said, I’m tired old man, I’m going to sit down here a minute, except Rudy was talking to Jason without words and Jason was hearing him without listening.
The kid settled into a bucket seat—no one’s going to hurt you here—that had materialized in the middle of nowhere, and promptly melted into the chair, becoming a part of it, like when he’d been blasted and burned inside the Humvee, though this was nowhere near as violent and painful and final. Rudy’s garbled voice rose from the chair, look at this, as though the chair itself were talking, but no one was speaking and a white compact car rolled towards them—Let’s light ‘em up—the M240B looming above—no wait—the passenger side window rolling down, revealing a little girl in her mother’s arms. Jason studied them as they passed, the little girl turning into Bronson’s Chandra, and Chandra was dressed in a bee costume, Aspen holding her, her face cold and beautiful and then Chandra was one of Jason’s own kids and Aspen his ex-wife and Jason told her he was sorry, he was so sorry, sorry that he wasn’t much of a dad, that he hadn’t been much of a husband, and she said that she couldn’t say he was or that any of it—everything that had happened between them—was alright but that didn’t matter because it was okay, it’s okay Jason and Jason, walking besides the car, speaking into the window, told his kid I love you and your sister, things just didn’t work out between your mom and me, I tried, we know you did dad, the woman with the child transforming into an insurgent, a malicious smile as he triggered the car bomb, Jason thrown to the ground, the heat at his back, a rush of particles stinging his face, though when he looked up there was no flaming wreckage and the sand had gone, replaced by snow, cold flakes burning his face, snow all around him, little Jason lying in it in his jacket and hat and gloves.
I’ll tell you what Jay, not Uncle Ritchie with his hands on his hips, but Kaku, Kaku is the key to this. I market in probabilities. He has the answers.
You’re not gonna find him here, said the seat.
What was that…the car burned. I told you no one could hurt you here, Jay. But I felt the heat. You felt a star die. 14 billion years ago: all this was set in motion. The car was gone, a star collapsed into a black hole. The probability of this occurrence was initiated, though its realization in the present moment is no less unique. You won’t find him here, Jay. Where. It won’t be long now, Jay—is this the present moment?—you’re almost like them. Like them. THEM.
No! He raced ahead, leaving the chair that was Rudy but not Rudy, the car that had collapsed into a singularity, speeding through the sand-the mists-the clouds, everything getting heavier, impeding his motion. He felt bloated and massive, and looking back he saw he was stretched out like putty. He moved his arms as if in slow motion, swimming, there was no surface beneath him, bursts of gunfire, he was falling through the sand, voices, the crack of a rifle,
3,793rd Iteration
Jason landed, a crumpled, inglorious heap. He was on the rooftop of a three story building, gunfire blaring around him. Rolling onto his back, he watched the amaranthine wormhole he’d dropped from sputter and close, disappearing.
Fleegle and Snork circulated the four walls of the roof, rising and firing ragged bursts from their AKs into the street. An incensed-looking black child with a gold tooth did likewise, racing from wall to wall, firing his Kalashnikov, swapping out banana magazines from a chest pouch. The boy had looped tourniquets around his arms at the shoulders, at his thighs above the knees. Heavy incoming fire drove them all down behind the wall.
An unbarred spiral galaxy shone in the sky. The bright nucleus comprised a large central bulge ringed with dust. A dark smudge marked a prominent dust lane in its inclined disk. It resembled a nuclear detonation in space, caught in freeze frame.
“Where the fuck did he come from?” Snork exclaimed, looking at Jason. The mercenaries sat with their backs to the wall, busying themselves with their rifles, rounds pouring in over their heads like a swarm of angry hornets. The gold-toothed kid sprinted recklessly from one corner of the roof to another, sending wild bursts back down at whoever was firing on them.
Fleegle looked up from inserting a fresh 40mm grenade into the GP-30 attached to the barrel of his rifle, considering Jason. “Who cares?” His hands were slick with blood, his own, and they slipped off the grenade launcher. “Grab a weapon,” he called to Jason, indicating the bodies of a half dozen boy soldiers, their assault rifles scattered about the roof, “and start laying down some fire!”
A round caught the black kid in the arm, knocking him back. His upper torso bloodied, a berserk look in his eyes, the boy bounded back, the AK braced sideways. He blazed away, cursing at those in the street. He tightened the bandage around his freshly wounded arm before he reloaded. Concrete fragments chipped off the wall before him but the kid never ducked or sought cover. He rushed to the next wall and unleashed a wild burst.
Jason struggled to comprehend what was happening and where he was. He knew where he was. On a roof with Fleegle and Snork…and the mercs had apparently teamed up with the boy soldiers. On the roof of a three story house, when the roof of the house he’d leapt from had only been two stories. None of it made sense. None of it! His leap, whatever the hell had unfolded in the sand, this city, the thing in the sky he’d come out of, the sky above him now: none of it.
“Grab a rifle!”
“The fuck is wrong with you?” bellowed Snork. “You heard the man!”
Jason scanned the roof, saw what he wanted and squat-walked to it. A discarded M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Loops of 5.56mm ammunition were draped around it. Straightening the ammo belts, Jason ducked his head under the sling, hefting the SAW. Before he got a chance to fire it, the gunfire in the street was replaced by the echoes of retreating feet.
“They do that,” Snork peaked over the wall. “Pussies.” He straightened up and looked at Jason. “Where’d you come from?”
“You saw him just as I did, Snork.” Fleegle remarked matter-of-factly. “He came outta that thing in the sky, thing that ain’t there no more.” The merc with the mustache turned to Jason. “You look like shit.”
“Yeah, you too.” Jason joined them at the wall.
The black kid was stalking around the roof
, cursing and huffing, waving his AK in the air belligerently, inviting anyone down on the street to take a shot at him.
Fleegle sat with his back to the parapet. “Got a smoke?” he asked Jason.
“No.”
“Now that he’s here,” Fleegle told Snork, “I’ll prep the Javelin.” He called to the boy and the two of them disappeared down the stairs into the house.
Jason gambled a look into the street. “Stupid fucks just want to die today,” Snork commented, reloading an AK. Dozens of bullet riddled bodies lay strewn in the dirt of the road, draped in doorways and windows. Smoke wafted from under the hood of a pickup truck that rested unmoving on four flat tires. Tires burned in the street, palls of thick black smoke wafting into the sky. The facades of the visible homes defaced, sections of concrete blown out. In the distance a squat, rectangular building pulsed red.
Snork changed magazines on AKs, stacking them barrel-up against the wall next to his position. Jason noticed there were other rifles similarly positioned at the other walls.
“You guys been up here awhile?”
The mercenary retrieved his M24. “Motherfucking ragheads,” he told Jason, hunkering down close to him, looking out on the street. “Watch this.” The merc sighted through the scope affixed to his sniper rifle. “They do this shit…” A robed woman, her face covered, stepped through the carnage, approaching their house “…watch, I’m not gonna waste her ass just so you can see this bullshit.” As soon as he’d finished saying it, the woman ducked away, the gunman hiding behind her loosing a volley of 7.62mm. Fleegle’s rifle cracked. The man sat down where he was, head and shoulders slumped.
“Idiots.” Fleegle worked the bolt on the rifle. “They done this…” The woman fled back the way she’d come “…I don’t know—fifteen, twenty times since yesterday.” There was a puff of air between her robed shoulders and a spray of red on the ground in front of her as she collapsed. “The fuck they thinking?” Fleegle ejected another spent round.
Warlord: Dervish Page 21