Corrosion: Terminal Horizon (The Portal Arcane Series - Book III)

by J. Thorn

  ***

  “How you feelin’, bro?”

  Tommy blinked and tried to speak but his mouth was full of sand. He turned to the side and spit while blinking again to clear the crust from his eyes. His body ached and he immediately felt hot in the winter coat and snow pants he was wearing. The air felt still, unnatural, and Tommy really wanted a drink of water.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  Shallna remained still with the slightest wind tugging at his robe while Kole dropped down to one knee and put his face inches from Tommy’s.

  “You’re in my house, now, little man. Take a second because shit’s about to get real.”

  Shallna stepped forward and Kole held an arm out. With his back to Shallna, Kole spoke. “Nope. I got this.”

  Tommy sat up and the pain in his head felt worse than a check into the boards. He thought a high-stick to the face wouldn’t be so painful.

  “Who are you?” Tommy asked.

  “Slow down, little man. See, I been learning shit from Shallna. Shit Deva never knew he could do. You were about to come through the suicide forest, but I was able to divert you through another portal to bring you here, to this reversion. Yeah, I know you didn’t off yourself, but not everyone that comes through the forest does. It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say you’re here for a reason. And I know what it is.”

  Tommy’s eyes adjusted to the light and he looked past Kole and Shallna at the urban desolation behind them. He saw the carcasses of skyscrapers, yet he recognized none. Tommy knew he was not in Detroit but that’s all he knew. A mist curled around the base of the buildings and jagged mountains seemed to hold them in place at the bottom of a shallow valley. They sat on a highway a few miles from the center of the city where the winds were already hard at work burying the asphalt beneath sand.

  “Can I see your knife?” Tommy asked.

  Kole turned his head and smiled at Shallna, nodding.

  “Of course, little man. I got that and more weapons than you could possibly imagine and I know some assholes you can test them out on.”

  Tommy stood and canted to the side until his equilibrium returned. Kole rose and towered over the boy. He put his hands on his hips and rocked back on his heels. Kole was shirtless except for the gang signs and naked lady tattoos wrapping around his torso. He had a knife sheathed on his left hip above the band of his black jeans.

  “I got the dude that killed you and your sister in that car wreck and I got a knife you can use to dice him up.”

  Tommy smiled for the first time since he died. It felt better than being alive.

  ***

  Shallna remained several paces behind Kole and Tommy as they approached the forgotten city. He kept his hood up and his head down as the wind threw sand across the highway. Tommy walked the fading, yellow line between lanes, pretending he was balancing on a tight rope across an active volcano.

  “Look, I’m staying on the line.”

  Kole looked down and to his left at the top of the boy’s head. He used his elbow to nudge Tommy and throw him off balance.

  “Don’t do that. I was doing good.”

  “Just walk and quit playing stupid games,” Kole said.

  Tommy looked up with a scowl on his face as he jumped back on to the faded lines.

  “The Reaper,” he said. “That dude is freaking me out.”

  Kole laughed and turned around, walking backwards on the roadway while looking at Shallna.

  “You get used to him. My name is Kole.”

  The boy kept his focus on the line, taking great care to stay on it.

  “I knew your sister,” Kole said. He spun back around, no longer concerned with Shallna behind them. “She was a bitch.”

  Tommy laughed and lunged at Kole with his fists. He took a half-hearted swing at Kole’s midsection, giving the man enough time to back away from the weak blow.

  “Don’t say that about my sister.”

  “Fine. Then I won’t say she was kinda hot too. I woulda nailed that fine ass if…”

  “If what?” Tommy asked.

  “Never mind.”

  Tommy waited for an explanation. When none came, he ran to the shoulder of the road and leapt up on to the rusted guardrail. He walked along it, finding the game of volcano on the guardrail more realistic than using the painted lines on the road.

  “Where are we?”

  Kole sighed and then spat the sand from his mouth.

  “Reversion.” He said it as if Tommy would know exactly what he meant. “This is an alternate universe. People’s souls come here. They end up in these places when they die.”

  “Like heaven?” Tommy asked.

  “Nothing like heaven,” Kole said. “Reversions are places where you gotta prove you’re not the shitbag you were in life. Each one of us is here for a reason but not everyone knows why. I know you gotta stay in reversions until you make it right.”

  “Make what right?”

  “Whatever it is you fucked up in life, little man. How the hell should I know why you’re here?”

  Tommy giggled and jumped from the guardrail, bored with his game of volcano. If Kole wasn’t going to play, then neither was Tommy.

  “Why are you here?”

  “None of your goddamn business,” Kole said. He snapped his mouth shut and looked over his shoulder at Shallna. “You don’t need to be worrying about me.”

  Tommy shrugged.

  “Looks like a storm,” he said, pointing to the silent, rolling cloud eating the western horizon and moving toward the abandoned city.

  “Reversion sends that. It’s like a big game clock. You get to the east, to the last portal before the storm…or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else your ass is grass. Dammit kid, you ask a lot of questions,” Kole said.

  The buildings looked so far away when Kole and Shallna pulled Tommy through the portal. They walked for an hour and now the skyscrapers loomed like stone giants, monuments to a place lost in time. The outer suburbs of the city crept up from the desert sand, one- and two-story structures that once were home to small businesses and shops. The stylized signs and neon lights were long gone and most of the windows were too. The reversion’s wind pushed sand into the openings and began to eat the buildings from the inside out like a cancer.

  “See that,” Kole said pointing to the side of the road. A single gas pump stuck out of the sand like a lone tooth. “Used to be a gas station.”

  Tommy sighed. If it didn’t have anything to do with hockey, he wasn’t interested.

  “Did the city come here like us or did the people who used to live here leave?”

  Kole heard Shallna cough and glanced at him before raising his eyebrows and ruffling Tommy’s hair with his left hand.

  “That’s the best question you’ve asked so far. What of it, Shallster?”

  Shallna remained silent and five paces behind them.

  “Eh, it doesn’t matter. Dude doesn’t like to say much, but when it’s important I’ll make him talk. Not sure about the answer to that question. I haven’t had much time to explore since we got here and we thought recruiting you was really important. When we get to the city I’ll check out the cars. Should be license plates or something.”

  “What do you think I have to do to get outta here and go back home?” Tommy asked.

  “You ain’t ever going back home, little dude.”

  Tommy waited, expecting some kind of explanation.

  “You’re in the reversion now. You can get released but you ain’t goin’ home.”

  “He should know,” Shallna said.

  “Oh, look who’s talking,” Kole said to Shallna. “I’m going to tell him right now. Hold the fuck on, would you?”

  Kole waved a hand at Shallna as they all passed the remnants of the gas station and arrived at the first major intersection of the city. Traffic lights lay scattered across the road. Sand covered them from west to east and the frayed cable dangled overhead from the light p
ost on the side of the road.

  “What should I know?” Tommy asked.

  “Lots of people ended up here from committing suicide. Others didn’t. Seems like more suicides than not, but I really don’t give a fuck. If you’re here, you’re here.”

  Kole waited, keeping his stride even and steady.

  “You have to do something to get out and it’s got to make something right. A dude hit you and your sister on the way home from hockey practice. He killed you both.”

  Tommy kept walking, listening to Kole as if the story was about some other kid.

  “You’re here to settle the score. You need to kill that man in this reversion to set yourself free. And holy fuck, why wouldn’t you want to, right?”

  They slowed and Shallna was now only a foot behind them on the road.

  “Who’s the man?” Tommy asked.

  “Samuel,” Kole said. “You’ve got to kill that motherfucker. You dig?”

  Chapter 4

  Samuel and Lindsay turned and took one last look at the island. They could barely make out the beach through the trees but they heard the faint sound of the surf in the distance. The cloud grew out of the west, no mistake about it now. The island’s reversion was moving at a slower rate than the others, but it was in reversion and would eventually swallow this world as it had all of the rest.

  The portal buzzed behind them as the energy expanded on all sides, opening a window into another universe. Lindsay turned back to face it and wrinkled her nose up as if she could smell the desolation on the other side. She looked down into a forsaken world of emptiness. She saw tall, leaning skyscrapers and rubble strewn at the base of them all. Flocks of black birds circled the top. The reversion in that world tainted everything a sickly green hue.

  “That one?” she asked.

  Samuel turned to face the portal. He gazed upon it for a few seconds before responding.

  “Yes. It feels like the right one to me. It’s the locality I must go to next.”

  Lindsay decided not to press him about it. Samuel felt the pull the way some people picked winning lottery numbers. No logical explanation existed.

  “Take my hand.”

  Lindsay placed her left hand in Samuel’s right. They closed their eyes and stepped into the open portal as if walking off the edge of a pool and into the deep end. They felt the energy of the reversion pull them in, the air pressure intensifying. The force popped Samuel and Lindsay's ears and brought a dull pain to their foreheads.

  Samuel wanted to question Deva, dispute the former lord’s message. He wished he could spend time with Lindsay, naked on the beach with nothing but the wind and the sea.

  ***

  They stumbled across the broken asphalt. Lindsay tripped over the loose scree on the side of the road and Samuel remained hunched over, his hands on his knees. After shaking the disorientation from their heads, Samuel and Lindsay took cover behind a massive boulder on the edge of the highway. Samuel saw the footprints first and ushered Lindsay off the road in silence. They slumped to the ground with their backs on the cold rock, breathing heavy and rubbing their temples to try to alleviate the aching pain.

  “I feel like a part of me dies every time we slip.”

  Samuel nodded. He wanted to agree with Lindsay but his head hurt too much to form words. Each trip through a portal became more difficult, the after effects more severe.

  “Yeah,” he said through dry lips. “It definitely takes a toll. Maybe its radiation. Whatever it is, it’s got a cumulative effect and not a positive one.”

  “Who came through already?” Lindsay asked.

  Samuel stuck his head out around the boulder. He turned his eyes to the highway and squinted. As he did, he saw the outlines of figures. They walked as if in a silent movie. Three slightly transparent figures, all of them heading into the city.

  “Definitely Kole. Also a child and someone in a robe.”

  Lindsay laughed, imagining a bathrobe and not the heavy, soiled garb of an agent of the reversion.

  “How do you know?” she asked.

  “I can see them. Well, not exactly. I can’t see them now but I can see them in the recent past. Almost like a—”

  “Reflection?”

  “Exactly,” Samuel said. “With the increased pain of each trip through a portal I also seem to be getting more sensitive to the energy here.”

  “What next?”

  Samuel leaned back and rested his head against the rock. His head pounded when his eyes were open and when they were closed. He would have to endure the pain.

  “We’ve got to follow Kole into the city. You heard Deva.”

  “And I have to protect you,” Lindsay said.

  Samuel sighed and exhaled. He bit his tongue to keep from saying how he really felt about being protected by a woman.

  “Deva said so,” Lindsay said.

  He nodded, knowing she was right.

  Samuel stood up and walked down the middle of the highway unconsciously placing his feet where Tommy’s were hours earlier. His body detected the energy and kept him moving towards the city where Kole and the others were headed. Lindsay stayed closer to the shoulder of the roadway. She scanned the horizon looking for signs of movement and detected none. The air here felt weaker than in any other reversion. The landscape looked as though the cloud had already passed over, sucking the last remaining life from the barren place. With the exception of the black birds flying silently around the tops of the skyscrapers, nothing but the wind moved in this universe.

  “There.”

  Lindsay turned to face Samuel. He stopped in the middle of the road and pointed towards the center of the city. She was so preoccupied with the horizon that she did not see the more direct threat approaching.

  “What is it?” She placed a hand over her forehead and stood on her toes to get a better look.

  “The horde. I thought we were done with them.”

  “Zombies? Either it’s a group of drunks or zombies. I can see them stumbling down the road.”

  Samuel watched as the horde oozed from the side streets. The mindless hunks of flesh shifted back and forth, knocking into each other and filling the highway from guardrail to guardrail. Even though they were almost a thousand yards off, Samuel could see their numbers swell and the pit in his stomach grew too.

  “They’re trying to keep us from reaching the cauldron. I’ve seen them before. It looks like they’re setting up a blockade of undead flesh. They don’t want us getting to the city.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We gotta get to the city, Lindsay. We have no other options.”

  She nodded and stepped closer to Samuel as they moved shoulder-to-shoulder down the middle of the highway. The buildings stood guard behind the horde while they silently gathered on the roadway. Once on the cracked asphalt, the undead stood upright, their bodies swaying back and forth like decimated fields of human wheat.

  Samuel never broke his stride. He reached to his hip to grab a knife. Lindsay saw his movement and she pulled her knife as well. Although not everyone could, Samuel was able to bring items through the portal. He had both knives strapped to his thigh during the slip.

  “They’re not as big as spider crabs, but there are a lot of them. Strike at the head. If you can stab them through the eye and into the brain, they’ll drop.”

  “Are they going to try to eat us?” Lindsay asked.

  “Doubtful,” Samuel said. “They want us immobile so the cloud can catch up. This isn’t like the movies.”

  The bodies kept coming, slowly pulsing out and filling the roadway. Members of the horde came up on the outer side of each guardrail and filled the gap between it and the buildings on each side. They moved in mindless synchronicity to keep Samuel and Lindsay from getting through. Samuel kept pace, each step bringing them closer to the first line of the horde.

  He looked into the face of the first, one eye socket empty and one with a gooey string of nerve attached to a diseased eyeball. It rolled back
and forth on the gray, dead flesh of the man’s cheek. Samuel saw worms dropping from his nostrils and the mouth open and closed without making a sound. The smell of decay, like warm, rotting garbage, reached Samuel and Lindsay as they gripped their weapons.

  He heard Lindsay’s breathing quicken as the horde was now less than one hundred yards away. The mass filled their vision from left to right and were at least ten deep down the middle of the roadway. Samuel smiled and shook his head. He did not want to demoralize Lindsay, but he had no idea how they could get through the horde even if they had a machine gun to cut them all down. Samuel kept walking, his knife up and his face defiant.

  “What’s the plan?” Lindsay asked, trying to hide the fear in her question.

  “Follow my lead.”

  They were fifty yards from the horde, closing the distance with each step.

  “Stop when I stop.”

  Lindsay nodded without looking at Samuel, her eyes fixed on the horde.

  Now twenty yards away, Samuel could hear their dry, brittle tendons rattling against bone. The odor intensified – unusual for a reversion – and turned his stomach into an unsettling soup. Some of the creatures at the front spread their feet as if preparing to hold their ground. Those that still had arms clenched their hands together in fists. Samuel held his knife up and kept walking. The horde would not experience an emotion like fear, and even if they could, a man and a woman holding a knife would not cause the creatures to run.

  Samuel stopped as the first one was ten feet away. He looked at the tattered clothes hanging from the undead, some dragging their funerary outfits from the grave. Lindsay looked at Samuel and he winked at her.