He opened the door and stepped through the doorway without another word, closing the door softly behind him. Like he hadn't been about to impale Ren on the tip of that blade if his answer had been any different.
Ren closed his eyes and tried to relax. His heart thudded against his chest, and now his ribs ached worse than when he'd woken up. He was afraid to move his head again, to move anything really, streaks of fire flaring through his shoulder and neck.
And he was exhausted. He started to fade, his body stiff and tired from its ordeal, and Ren still had no idea how long he'd been here. He heard the click of the door opening, but he had to struggle to keep his eyes open.
"Dad?"
Ren's eyes flicked open and he couldn't hide the relieved smile on his face as he sat up. "Hey, baby doll."
Emma stood inside the doorway, and time spun backwards, back to when his daughter lived in a world that still belonged to mankind. Before clouds of ash fell like snow, and the smell of sulphur was so strong that it saturated the ground, sickly sweet and deadly. Before great fires spread over most of the Midwest, and nightmarish towers made of fire and rock heaved out of the earth.
Before that, she'd just been his Em. Her dark brown hair, washed and gleaming, ran in straight lines down to her shoulders, no trace of fine white ash. Her face clean, free of the dirt and grime that settled in the lines of her eyes and hid the smile that saved him every time she flashed it. The subtle confidence and intelligence lurking within her bright green eyes, the fierce courage and the stubborn streak that could only have come from her mother.
He saw that same girl right now, standing in the open doorway. Older maybe, but this was his Emma.
Don't go crying on her, Ren.
She paused there like she thought he might break if she took another step. Ren could read the concern in her eyes, and he could almost feel the knot in his chest at the sight of her. His baby girl was okay.
"I'm fine, Em."
Emma laughed, and put her hands to her face. She wiped away the tears that fell down her cheeks and closed the door behind her. She ran and nearly toppled Ren as she jumped onto the bed and wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her tight with his good arm and blinked away the tears.
Ren forgot all the pain and soreness, the exhaustion whisked away. He would deal with it later. Ren had his daughter back, and that was all that mattered right now.
▪▪▪
Emma had eventually crashed on the bed. Ren stroked her hair, happy to see his daughter in a place where she could sleep so soundly. A place like this, with a clean room, pillows and sheets on the beds, hadn't happened very often in their recent history.
He was content to lay there and rest with her. He needed it, and didn't much feel like moving anyway.
She was lying next to him, one arm dangling over the bed, when Ren heard a soft knock on the door. He frowned. So much for that.
He quietly slipped off the bed, afraid to wake Emma, and grimaced as he hobbled over to the door. Every step sent a shockwave up the muscles of his legs, and an unpleasant pang shot through his shoulder and neck. He placed his hand on the knob, prayed Kevin and his flaming sword weren't on the other side, and pulled the door open just wide enough to peek out.
A woman stood there, a good foot shorter than Ren, an easy smile on her face. Crow's feet radiated from the corners of her dark eyes, and he suspected she might be of Asian descent. Straight black hair that ran down to her shoulders framed her middle-aged face, wrinkles framing her thin lips.
He noticed, with an air of relief, that he couldn't see anything resembling a pendant hanging off her neck.
She held a tray in her hands, and Ren's stomach roiled. A large plate sat on the tray, holding what looked like still steaming fish fillets, along with a couple of clear, plastic bottles of water.
Ren's hand hovered over his stomach. He had a hard time remembering the last time he'd actually eaten.
"Um, hello?"
"Sorry if I woke you," the woman said softly. She motioned towards the tray. "I thought you and your daughter might be hungry."
"Starving, actually." Ren grinned. He swung the door all the way open and stood beside it. "Come on in."
He looked out and saw piles of white sand to the north, and a dirt wall further along, peaks of trees rising above the embankment in a wall of their own. He wanted to get a better idea of where they were, but the woman stepped through the doorway and the mouth-watering smell of fish brought him around. He stepped aside as she entered the room and pushed the door shut behind her.
The woman set the tray down on the crate and knelt before the lantern. She pumped the lantern once and turned the knob, a steady warm glow illuminating the room.
"Thank you, um..." Ren paused, his brow raised, hoping she caught the hint.
"Oh, of course. Anne," she said. She held out a hand. "Anne Chen. And you're quite welcome."
Ren took her hand. "Name's Ren." He let go of her hand and motioned towards Emma. "And sleeping beauty over there is my daughter, Emma."
"Yes, I've met her already." Anne looked over her shoulder at Emma. "Such a sweet little girl."
Ren couldn't mistake the hint of sadness in her eyes. He knew what it meant, so he let the question on his tongue drop. Wouldn't do him or her any good to ask it.
Instead he grabbed one of the fillets off the plate, pulling a piece of meat from the lean strip, and took a bite. He couldn't help the contented sigh that escaped his lips at the taste of it. It'd been a long time since he'd had fresh fish.
He almost considered waking Emma to eat, but she looked so peaceful that he decided he'd let her snooze a little bit longer.
"So," he said around another mouthful. "You're pretty much the first smiling face I've seen in months. So how about you tell me where we are?"
"That depends," Anne said. She leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. "Where are you from?"
"Where I'm from?" Just names now, those old places, ruined shells where people used to live. And the big city? It wasn't even worth mentioning. Ren worried that if he even thought about his old home, the hideous, unnatural things that now took up residence there might hear him.
The visions of the city imploding on itself, the cracks of the earth, the eruptions as St. Louis fell into the flames of Hell, would always haunt him. He shuddered at the image in his mind of the ruins and the twisted spires that rose up out of the city's remains to lay claim to this little corner of Hell.
They'd called it the Hellfont. Home to the demonic, and the warped humanity that served them, and its touch spread over everything like maggots on rotting meat.
He set the half-eaten fillet down on the plate. He wasn't all that hungry anymore.
"I'm from up north." Where he was from no longer existed. Up north was as close as it got.
"Well, you're in Haven now."
Haven. Ren had heard Kevin tell him earlier, but it hadn't really registered, not until now. All those rumors, the running, the searching, and it had taken a stroke of luck to find it. A stroke of bad luck, the demons catching up with him and Emma. Only he hadn't found Haven, it had found him somehow.
Anne smiled. "I take it you've heard of it?"
"Yeah, I’ve heard of it," Ren said, nodding. "Heard of it so much that me and Em spent the better part of the summer looking for it."
What he hadn't heard of were demons with fancy names, or assholes wielding fiery swords.
Emma rolled over and yawned, her eyes still closed. She stretched her arms over her head, and her nostrils flared. She'd probably caught the smell of food.
"From what I heard, you were lucky they found you when they did," Anne said. "We don't see too many survivors anymore."
"And who's we? I haven't been able to get out much the past couple of days," Ren said. "My barometer before you was Kevin. And I'll be honest, that bar was set pretty low."
Anne laughed at that.
"Look, Kevin is wound up pretty tight at the best of ti
mes. He feels responsible for all of us here—"
"Is that how he got that magical sword of his?"
"No." Anne shook her head. "No, Kevin proved himself, and the Malakhi blessed him with a holy weapon."
"You're all going to have to stop throwing these words at me." Ren threw his hands up, like Anne was a speeding freight train, and he was trying to slow her down before she ran him over. "What the fuck is a Malakhi?"
Anne frowned. "An angel."
"You can't just call an angel an angel, can you?" Ren tried to keep the growing frustration from his voice. He knew from the look on Anne's face that he'd failed. "And this Malakhi gave Kevin, a regular old human, a flaming sword? What did he do?"
He had so many questions he wanted to ask. What was an angel doing here, among humans? How many lived here? How had they survived, living so close to the malignant shadow of the Hellfont?
"Come." Anne took his hand in hers, the frown still on her face, and pulled him towards the door. She swung the door open and pushed him gently through the doorway, into the fading light of late evening.
A concrete landing stood outside the doorway, surrounded by rusted rails. A ramp descended from the landing at a slight angle along the front wall of the building. Pocked, white sand and jagged rock was everywhere, glittering under the sunlight.
To his left, a series of factory buildings stood across a stretch of open ground, square towers and towering silos joined dozens of feet up by connecting rails and long sections of pipe. In the distance, a huge white dome, segmented by triangle-shaped sections, jutted out from the ground, more pipes and maze-like rails leading away.
One of the pipes from the dome ended abruptly in a small, squat building maybe twenty yards away from where Ren stood. A man stood on top of the building, leaning against the rails that lined the roof, a rifle in one hand. His head swiveled to the left and right as he scanned the area.
A dirt road led north, past the armed guard, intersecting a wider road that ran from the west, rounding towards the southeast, past Ren's current quarters. Mounds of white sand had been piled up to the north of the road, countless trees standing silent vigil over the embankment.
A narrow shelf obscured Ren's view to the east, but he spotted the greenish-blue tinge of water just past the earthen barrier. Gentle waves carried to the south, rising, falling, dancing in the tumbling chaos of the river. The sun's fading light glinted off the swift current.
"Is that—"
"Yes, that's the Mississippi," the woman finished for him.
A man and woman strode by the building to Ren's left, talking quietly. One of them kicked up sand as they headed towards the squat building a short distance away.
Ren pointed down towards the white-flecked sand and stone. "And this white stuff? Sand?"
The woman smiled, like he were a young child who continued to ask a patient parent silly questions.
"Haven is mostly just an old cement plant. There's a lot of limestone build-up, obviously," Anne said. "But when we discovered the effect salt had on...them, well, now there's more than just limestone piled up around here."
"Salt?" He had seen people empty clips of ammunition into the demons, hid and watched as braver men and women than he charged unrecognizable howling beasts. A chopper had flown low once, rotors beating down the grass, its mounted guns blazing.
Too low, as it had turned out. All the implements of war mankind had created were little more than annoyances, and the angels and demons had smashed them all.
Anne ignored the question. She leaned out over the railing and pointed off to the west, towards the large dome that dominated what Ren could see of the compound. "There."
Ren followed her pointing finger and shielded his eyes with a hand as he focused on the silver triangles that made up the dome. A figure stood on the apex of the span, holding a glowing lantern overhead. Was it a man, watching guard? What did Anne expect him to see?
He leaned forward, his brow furrowed as he tried to make out the details of whoever stood on top of that dome. He wondered why someone would bother, because there was no easy way down from there. One misstep, and it would likely be a fatal one. He caught a spark of light and glinting metal, and then his eyes widened.
Wait. No, it wasn't a man at all. Not exactly.
Wings unfurled behind the creature, the long feathers a shimmering white. The wings pumped once, lifting the creature clear of the surface of the dome, and it swooped low, darting over the barren sand. Its wings beat against the air, sending up puffs of dust, and the creature soared into the sky overhead. It passed over Ren, and he saw what it carried. Not a lantern at all, but a tall spear, the tip a shining, brilliant beacon.
His mouth fell open, a thrilling panic holding him rooted to the spot as he watched the creature bank left and head over the earthen wall to the north, powerful wings beating against the air.
Ren swallowed. The memory replayed in his mind of the demon's paralyzed fear, and the image of a bright light rushing towards him as he fell, battered and barely conscious. The luminescence so blinding that he had had to squeeze his eyes shut.
"Is-is that an..."
"Is he an angel?" Anne interrupted. "Yes, he is. His name is Ithuriel. But we just call him the Spear."
Ren opened his mouth, then closed it again, the pulsing sound of his heartbeat echoing in his ears. What could he say that would make any sense here? Knowing there were angels soaring the skies above wasn't quite the same as seeing one up close.
The angel's wings pumped down hard and he vanished over the tops of the trees.
"And if you want to thank anyone for saving your lives," Anne said, a faint smile on her lips. "You might as well start with him."
▪▪▪
Emma finished off the last bite of fish and stretched her arms out over her head. She swallowed and let out a big sigh as she leaned back on her bed, her head propped up on the pillow.
"Feels good to have something in your gut besides raw ramen and beans, doesn't it?"
Emma burped. She smiled and looked over at her dad. "You sure know how to spoil me, Dad."
"Funny story, Em, you know you used to hate fish?"
"I did?"
Dad nodded. "Sure did. I remember once, me and your mom, we took you to Long John Silver's for the first time. Thought it'd be a nice treat. I loved their fish, and your mom, she sure as anything loved her hushpuppies—"
"Hushpuppies?" Emma asked, interrupting Ren. She had no idea what hushpuppies were, but now that she'd asked, she wasn't too sure she wanted to know.
"Little addicting balls of cornbread."
"Oh."
"Anyway, we got you a fish basket. You couldn't have been any older than three or four." Dad glanced at the wall, and his eyes got that faraway look they got sometimes, when he was revisiting that better world they used to live in. He looked back at Emma and grinned. "You took one bite, and that was it. Shook your head and spat it out. You hated fish, end of story. We tried to get you to give it another shot, and you got so mad that you started throwing Mom's hushpuppies."
His eyes shone in the lantern's dim light. "I owed her a box of the stupid things every day for a week, after that."
Emma laughed. Of course she couldn't have remembered that, and even if she could, she'd probably be a bit embarrassed to admit it.
Her taste in food was hardly a point now, anyway. Didn't much matter if she really liked something, or hated it, like fish. Anything she could find now that was remotely edible would do the trick. Turning down anything she or her dad found would be like admitting that she'd rather starve.
And she'd known what that felt like. She'd eat cardboard if she had to.
She tried to imagine her mom, sitting at the table of some restaurant, trying to get her to take another bite of fish. Tried to just imagine her mom's face, which had become harder and harder to do lately. Harder to recall, like the older Emma got the more of her mother's face she would forget, until one day there would be nothing left and sh
e would have nothing but her dad's stories.
It wasn't fair. She wanted to remember everything.
Only that wasn't true. Parts she did remember, parts of her mom that she didn't think even Dad had known about. Things that she didn't want him to know, like how Emma had known her mom was sick. How she had come into Emma's room some nights, and told her good night, and Mom's eyes had scared her to death.
How she knew the instant her mother had jumped.
"So what happened, Em?"
Emma's breath caught in her throat, her dad's question breaking the spell her thoughts had cast over her. She blinked and turned to face him. "What do you mean? You're the one that remembers that stuff—"
Dad shook his head. "No. I mean the other night." He leaned forward, tugging on the sling that still wrapped around his arm. "What happened?"
Emma frowned. She bit her lip and thought for a second. She didn't remember, the memories of two nights ago a blurry fog. She could picture the door slamming against the wall, and her dad setting her down so they could move faster. Something dark and wet on her lips. "I...I don't remember all of it, Dad. Just pieces..."
Her father's fingers flexed into a fist and relaxed, over and over. He sat back on his bed and peered out the window. "Anyone ask you questions? Questions that you didn't want to answer? That you couldn't?"
Emma felt the ripple of fear from him, an undercurrent that she could easily read now. She was so used to her father being afraid that the signs had become obvious.
She had to be strong for both of them sometimes, young girl or not.
"Dad, you worry too m—"
"It's getting worse, isn't it?"
Emma shook her head. "No, I don't think so."
This wasn't a discussion she wanted to have. She didn't want to think about it, or have anyone try to drill into her head and make everything seep out. She couldn't talk about it, because to talk about it would be an admission that something was wrong with her. Not knowing was better, not admitting it allowed her to hide the fear she held tucked inside. So, no, she wasn't getting worse.
"Listen, baby doll, you have to tell me what's go—"
"We can't both be scared all the time, Dad!"
Ash & Flame: Season One Page 3