Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  ‘She’s cool.’

  ‘Up ahead, right?’ Zach asked as he slowed the Growler to about twenty-five miles per hour.

  ‘Yeah. There’s a track off the end of the surfaced road, leads down to the water. You can follow it all the way. There’s a house with a good turning circle for the driveway. That’s them. They’re the only one this far down on the outer point.’

  Igor swept the forest with the muzzle of the machine gun.

  ‘Residences off to the right, on the inner harbour?’ he said.

  ‘Yep,’ Dave confirmed. ‘Five of them, as I recall.’

  No lights flickered through the trees from that direction. No sound drifted up. Some of the houses were occupied year round, but Dave did not know which ones. He’d never really fitted in here, even when he’d visited in the years before the separation. He twirled Lucille in his hands, trying to feel if she could sense anything.

  She hummed in his hands, but that was all. And she’d been doing that for days.

  Zach found the track that ran through the scrub down to Pat O’Halloran’s cottage. As always it was meticulously well maintained, the branches and undergrowth cut way back, the hard scrabble surface clear, if a little wet from an earlier shower.

  ‘Still good,’ Karen informed them as the twin cones of the headlights illuminated the private road.

  ‘Yeah, think so,’ Dave confirmed. Lucille was quiet.

  He was beginning to worry that everything was maybe too quiet, but he had no idea how the orcs would lay an ambush somewhere like this without Lucille being able to sense them. For that matter, Zach and Igor presumably knew all about not driving into ambushes and, as watchful as they were, they didn’t seem to think one was coming. The headland was surrounded on three sides by water. A couple of tiny islets lay just offshore due south, reachable by a hazardous walk across mostly submerged rocks. Nothing would be storming them from there.

  It was so quiet Dave was more worried by the lack of any signs of life. The headlamps picked out the cottage at the end of the gravel road. He recognised the large front door, white-panelled and framed by the slender columns of the entry porch. Palladian windows – that’s what Annie always called them when she was pestering him to replace their aluminium frames in Houston. He knew she’d also insisted on the ones at the cottage being ‘authentic’, which to Dave was another way of saying inexpertly made by poorly trained craftsmen. They threw back wavering reflections of the jeep’s headlamps. He saw Pat’s old truck parked by the side of the house, and a couple of bikes chained to the rails of the front porch. He didn’t recognise them but assumed they belonged to the boys.

  ‘Cutting the lights,’ Zach said as he pulled up.

  ‘I’m good,’ Igor told him, pulling down night vision goggles.

  ‘What about you two?’ the younger SEAL asked. ‘How fast does your night vision adjust?’

  ‘It won’t be a problem,’ Karen said. ‘Just do it. I’ll cover you.’

  Another thing Dave hadn’t bothered to find out. How quickly did his night vision kick in?

  Instantly, as it turned out. Zach cut the lights and the world resolved itself into crystal clear blues and greys. Karen had known that because she had obviously taken the time to find out at some point. He hadn’t. That was gonna change, first chance he got. First thing tomorrow, in fact, when he had the boys safely away.

  Zach fitted his own NVGs and they dismounted, Igor last of all, covering them with the mounted machine gun. Dave carried Lucille in an easy, two-handed grip, ready to start swinging, but she didn’t seem to think it would be necessary. He could hear small waves lapping at the shore, but nothing like the rustle and clink of leather and chain mail, or that rattle of armour plate and edged weapons. But nor could he hear any TV or radio, or see any lights on. He knew Pat kept a generator and a supply of diesel to run it.

  ‘Think the power’s out?’ he asked nobody in particular. The other three crept forward, sweeping the approach with their weapons.

  ‘And the phone lines,’ Karen said.

  Igor stopped, dropped and covered the way they’d come in with his more compact weapon. The barrel of his sniper rifle poked out a foot over his shoulder.

  ‘Well,’ said Dave, struggling with his impatience, ‘the orcs aren’t likely to be waiting in the house, are they?’

  He strode between the carefully advancing special operators, stomping up the front steps, ready to hammer on the knocker.

  The shotgun blast blew a hole in the door directly in front of his face.

  30

  Lucille saved him. She didn’t start singing as much as shrieking when Dave stepped onto the porch. He was already raising his hand, reaching for the brass knocker, when the magical war hammer filled his head with the buzz of angry wasps and screaming eagles. He warped by instinct, without thought, simply to escape the horrible din which seemed to fill the whole world. He didn’t transition to the weird edge-state he’d found himself in earlier, where it seemed as though the fabric of reality itself might tear under the strain. He simply slowed everything right the fuck down as the door in front of him seemed to bulge and glow. Paint blistered, cracked and dissolved. For an uncomfortably long, suspended second the hardwood distended like the surface of a balloon. Then rents appeared, forced open by glowing fireflies.

  No, they were wasps.

  No, they were shotgun pellets.

  And Dave was diving, rolling, twisting away, feeling muscles tear and repair themselves. Losing sight of everything when he flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, as though that might protect him from the shotgun blast that was tearing through altered space toward him. The world turned and spun and fire raked at his flesh. Long splinters of pain speared through him as white-hot lead shot tore through his body.

  The world sped up again and he heard screaming, not just his own. And shouting, a woman’s voice. Two of them, both known to him. Karen, yelling at everyone and no one to chill the fuck out, calm the fuck down, and stop shooting.

  And Annie.

  Annie O’Halloran. Love of his younger life, bane of his later existence.

  Annie screaming and screaming and screaming as Dave fell into darkness, pushed under by the tsunami of pain he’d just absorbed.

  *

  He came to in pain, but not the twisted agony of burning and ripping he’d felt when Pat O’Halloran had unloaded both barrels of his old Ruger 20 gauge on his one-time son-in-law. Or at the door he was standing in front of, anyway.

  ‘I knew you never liked me,’ Dave croaked, not really joking, as he cracked open his eyes. He expected to be blind. Dead.

  Instead he was stretched on a couch in the lounge room of his former father-in-law. An old tarp, stiff with age and dried paint, lay under him and he suspected that Annie would have made either Zach or Igor go out to the garage to fetch it before she’d allow them to lay him on her father’s good lounge.

  He blinked and his eyes felt dry and scratchy, but hell, at least he could blink and he could see. He winced at the memory of the blast which had nearly taken off his head.

  ‘He’s awake,’ somebody said, as Dave struggled to sit up. He felt at his cheeks, gently, gingerly with fingertips only, not sure what he’d find. A whole new face? Grotesque and misshapen, grown back over shattered bones and cartilage?

  No scars. No wounds. A three-day growth.

  ‘Dad! Dad’s awake!’

  It was Jack. Or Toby.

  For a second he wasn’t sure which. It had been a while since he’d spoken to the boys face-to-face.

  ‘Dad, are you okay?’

  That voice, higher, a little more lilting, was Toby’s. He was eighteen months younger than his brother and unexpectedly musical. Annie had insisted he have singing lessons and Dave thought he could hear it in his voice now, a measured timbre that his brother lacked.

  ‘Dad?’

  And that was Jack. His voice was cracking. Dave blinked again and rubbed at his eyes. He expected to find them crusted with dried bl
ood but somebody had cleaned him up.

  After Annie made sure the couch was safe.

  ‘Hey,’ Dave said, looking for his sons in the gloom, unable and unwilling to keep the grin out of his voice. ‘Hey boys. Did you see your old man on the TV?’

  ‘Did we!’ shouted Toby.

  ‘You were on everywhere, Dad,’ said Jack. Dave’s vision cleared at last and he found them easily in the dark. His boys.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, or tried to around the lump in his throat.

  ‘Boys, you mind your father, he’s hurt.’

  The speaker brought them up short and swift.

  Patrick James O’Halloran. Boston Irish master mariner. A hard man and an even harder father-in-law.

  Ex father-in-law, thank Christ.

  Dave spied him standing by the cold hearth, cradling the gun with which he’d nearly blown Dave’s head off. He looked older, even harder if that were possible, and utterly unrepentant. The rest of the room came into focus. Zach and Igor standing by the windows – the Palladian windows – both of them peering out into the night, keeping watch. Karen stationed by the window at the far end of the room, which looked out toward the tip of Shermans Point. She was watching Dave, her machine gun held with casual ease, the handle of her katana protruding well above her shoulder.

  ‘How long?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Half an hour,’ she said. ‘We were waiting for you to recover. Or die.’

  He looked for Annie but couldn’t see her before the boys slammed into him. Their small arms around his neck, their warm faces pressed against his cheeks.

  ‘We saw you on YouTube,’ said Toby.

  ‘Yes, and they saw you on TMZ and Perez Hilton . . . with Paris Hilton.’

  Annie.

  That flat nasal voice which could pack so much more hurt into a few words than Dave could ever load up into a fist. Not that he had with her. Not once, not ever, no matter how sorely she had tempted and baited him to do it. He felt his youngest son stiffen against him.

  ‘So where have you been, Dave?’ said Annie, her voice sounding tired rather than angry. ‘Besides partying with your new friends in Hollywood?’

  ‘Well, mostly here on the couch I guess, after Pat shot me in the face.’

  He tried to ease the boys away from him, but they held on tighter.

  ‘Granddad didn’t mean to,’ Jack said. ‘We thought you were a Bigfoot.’

  ‘Can’t blame a man,’ Pat O’Halloran said, again without a trace of apology.

  ‘I could but I won’t,’ Dave said. ‘Am I still pretty?’

  Toby loosened his grip and sat up.

  ‘We saw you! You were like . . .’ He made a sucking-snorkelling sound and danced his fingers around his face, which scrunched into a fright mask, and then returned to its normal, unblemished form.

  ‘It was like they said on TV,’ Jack said in something approaching a stage whisper. ‘You’re indestructible now.’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said Karen.

  ‘That’s enough.’ Annie sighed. ‘You boys let your father be. He’s had a nasty accident. You’ve said hello. Now go get yourselves off to bed. You’ve hardly slept and he’ll still be here in the morning. You will be here, won’t you, Dave?’

  ‘Hey. It was you who took the boys and fucked off . . .’

  ‘Language,’ growled Pat. ‘Keep it civil, Hooper.’

  Karen spoke over the top of them.

  ‘You can have your episode of Divorce Court when we’re out of here. You boys, go get dressed. Camping clothes. Good boots. Go now. You, Ms O’Halloran . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, but who are you anyway?’ Annie asked. ‘These two I know now,’ she said, indicating Igor and Zach who remained studiously fascinated by the approaches to the cottage. ‘They had the good manners to introduce themselves properly. But you haven’t told us anything. Did you bring your girlfriend, Dave? Is that who this is?’

  Karen snorted.

  ‘He wishes.’

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘Hey? Super Dave. Pretty sure I mentioned the psychic powers.’

  ‘You have psychic powers?’ Jack gasped, staring at Karen with awe.

  ‘And a magic ninja sword,’ Toby said. ‘Holy crap. You’re even better than Black Widow.’

  ‘Language, boys,’ Pat growled again. ‘Keep it clean on my deck or you’ll be swabbing the deck.’

  Dave cringed. It had been a while since he’d been directly exposed to Cap’n O’Halloran’s patented nautical sayings.

  Zach decided he had to say something.

  ‘Ms Warat is correct,’ he said. ‘We need to exfil. Our pilot confirms he’s been refuelled. And this location is not secure. I don’t want to remain here any longer than we have to. Dave, are you good to go? How are you feeling?’

  Dave thought about it.

  ‘Really hungry.’

  ‘Of course,’ muttered Karen. ‘Fsyoe zaeebahnuh.’

  ‘Language!’ growled Pat.

  ‘Your kids speak Russian, Dave?’

  ‘They will if you keep up the cussing like that, pizda staraya,’ O’Halloran said. ‘I’ve had your sort on my boats before. So I’d thank you to watch your mouth around my boys.’

  ‘They’re my boys,’ Dave said.

  ‘Could have fooled me,’ said Annie.

  ‘Why? You weren’t banging Vietch back then, were you?’

  Dave heard Zach say, ‘God help us,’ under his breath, but the white squall that blew up between the clans O’Halloran and Hooper buried it. Nobody was arguing with each other. It was more a matter of throwing words at each other. Pat avowing that he should never have let his daughter fall in with such a low life. Annie yelling at Dave about some Hollywood lawyer who’d been ringing at all hours of day and night, all hours, harassing both her and poor Pearson, making all manner of threats. Annie demanding to know where her share of his last bonus went. Annie lashing him about all the bills she could not pay, the responsibilities he would not meet. And Dave, forgetting about the boys who were still clinging to him, jumping to his feet with such speed that Toby actually flew a short distance through the air and over the back of the lounge chair with a comical cry of ‘Whoa,’ while Dave shouted, ‘Perhaps your old man could reach into his pocket for something other than fucking shotgun shells.’

  It only ended when Karen stormed across the room, spitting out the words ‘Shut up shut up shut up,’ as she smacked her palms on Pat and Annie’s foreheads, and then gave Dave a cracking backfist. The old man’s eyes narrowed at her touch, Hooper’s ex-wife’s bulged in shock. Her mouth flew open in a wide, soundless ‘O’. Pat’s lips pressed together in a thin, bitter line. Dave knew why. He was familiar with the deeply unpleasant feeling of Karin Varatchevsky reaching into his skull and squeezing hard.

  ‘You two!’ she barked at the boys. ‘Go do as I said. Now!’

  The boys both scuttled away. Toby seemed no worse for his maiden flight across the lounge room.

  ‘As for you,’ she rounded on Dave and jabbed a stiffened finger into his chest. It hurt, and he could imagine her driving it right through his ribs. ‘Wake up and smell the hell stew, Hooper. I’ve put up with you bitching and moaning about this poor woman from the moment I met you.’

  Annie did an actual cartoon double-take and shook her head vigorously. Dave opened his mouth to speak but Karen jabbed him again, pushing a little this time.

  ‘You’re a terrible father, every bit as bad as your own. But you were a much worse husband.’

  She threw up a hand like a traffic cop, to forestall his inevitable protest.

  ‘You have no secrets from me, remember. I came up here with my head full of your whining about this woman.’ She pointed at Annie. ‘I was expecting to find a castrating succubus because that’s what you’d convinced yourself you’d married. But I’ve had half an hour with Annie while you’ve been having your power nap, and what I actually found is just another woman who married poorly. She’s been terrified these last days, like every
one in the whole world, except you. You were partying, and she was here wondering when the orcs would turn up.’

  The force of her censure was a physical weight that Dave could feel pressing down on his shoulders, immobilising him. It got worse.

  ‘That drop cloth you’ve been lying on. She didn’t put it there to protect the couch. We used it to haul your carcass in off the porch. But you just had to make it her fault didn’t you? Like everything was always her fault and never yours. You’re a selfish bastard, Dave. You’re smart enough to know that, but you’re selfish, so you won’t do anything about it. You never have. In some ways, killing Urgon was the worst thing that could ever have happened to you.’

  She pushed him again, hard. Forcing him to see himself as others did. Not as Super Dave. More like Super Douche.

  The psychic blow was heavy enough to cause Pat O’Halloran to stagger against a wall and his daughter gasped, collapsing to the floor.

  It saved her life.

  31

  ‘The attack on the village has gone as planned, your Lordship. And all the cattle have been cleared from these fields.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Guyuk, not bothering to correct the Sliveen MasterScout. Although the lord commander had vowed to give up thinking of the human foe as nothing more than a food source, he had learned that others of the Horde found it nearly impossible to do so. For now, he would have to content himself with the knowledge that he was better than them. He understood dar ienamic. Or he was beginning to, at least.

  ‘They’re going back to the blood pots right?’ Compt’n ur Threshrend said. ‘The cattle, I mean. Because I got me some powerful munchies and I plan to see to them when we’re done here.’

  ‘Yes,’ Guyuk grunted, ‘the blood pots. But first we must be done here, Superiorae.’

  ‘Pfft.’

  Guyuk recognised the odd noise the Threshrend made as being a remnant human gesture indicating scepticism. Compt’n ur Threshrend seemed especially fond of it.

  ‘You can stick a big fucking fork in us, jefe, we are done,’ he said. ‘All except for the screaming and the shouting and the tasty, tasty feasting back at the ol’ blood pot. And beer. I think we should totally take some beer when we go back down.’