Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  “How much faith are you willing to put on that?” I asked.

  “Faith is my business, young man.”

  “I’m in,” Melanie said. Davion’s eyed widened and she looked at him with a ‘what did you expect’ glare. Make the best of what you get, especially if it results in something you’ve always wanted. I suppose, to him, the sudden reversal was a surprise. He extended his hand to her and she took it. She could hide in the pursuit of her father for as long as Davion allowed it.

  “There, we will have shelter and food,” he continued.

  “What if it’s been destroyed too?” Annalise asked.

  “Then the mercy of God’s will should have us dead before we arrive,” he said.

  I surveyed Davion in that moment. He stood, breathing hard. The man who’d been brought in crumpled against a strange woman’s side was no more. Davion was proud, faithful, and strong again. Had he gotten it from the drink?

  I could imagine Daniel standing next to me. ‘That’s what you should be like. That’s the kind of person who’d fight to keep his program, who wouldn’t be afraid to admit when things are going wrong,’ he would have said.

  “Well, if we’re going to walk to our deaths, first I propose a drink,” Annalise picked up both bowls, walked over to the cask, and then proceeded to fill both up. “One each. For nerves. Or faith.”

  I joined her. Melanie slowly made her way to the tapped cask and Davion followed.

  One by one, Annalise filled up one of the bowls and in turns we swallowed as much as we could before needing to take a breath. I felt it calm me, burning down my throat as my stomach insisted I give it food to handle as well. The aftertaste allowed me to ignore my shaking hands and the sweat beading on my forehead. I took a second bowl, and so did everyone else.

  Sondranos had turned into a wasteland faster than I could have thought possible. The destruction was masterful. Only those who relied on their instincts of protection had been able to stand up and fight back; however, their plan had included that into the equation. When we left the Abbey, we entered desolation. The terminal had caught fire and slowly collapsed to the ground, so we didn’t head back in that direction. The awning over the receiving area had tumbled down like a deflated circus tent.

  Tracks in the grass followed away from civilized life, away from the landing strip where the shuttle fire had extinguished itself. I assumed that was towards the road. We skirted a small rectory attached to the Abbey. The Abbey and all its buildings still stood untouched after the initial shattering of the windows.

  I’d hoped Davion had looked inside to find the boy, even though I knew the answer was plain. The boy wasn’t here. Not a single other person was in sight. As we left the Abbey behind, nobody asked where everyone else should have been.

  Chapter Four:

  Belovore

  We walked until noon had come and gone. We kept our eyes and ears alert while listening for the darts. I still hadn’t seen one, so I followed Annalise assuming she’d recognize the sound first. I felt as safe as the revolutionaries waiting for Paul Revere to announce the coming slaughter. Melanie stuck behind Davion, who led the group.

  “Without a vehicle, we can get there in over a day. Provided the Lord gives us the strength to maintain a steady pace,” he said.

  Annalise bit back her words, about to respond to his comment. Instead she said, “roadways are burnt out within a few kilometres anyway. Should be okay the further we get out – driveable, if not powered by the city.”

  A loud clattering caused me to spin around. I caught sight of the Abbey miniaturized in the distance and the terminal now behind it. As we walked further, and disappeared over the road’s steady decline from Sondranos proper, I couldn’t help but think of the terminal as a giant pile of burned leaves. I saw a small declining road leading in another direction, one with a charred truck and spider-web cracks in the road that confirmed Annalise’s story. I turned back around, choosing instead to watch the ground and hug the curb with the heels of my shoes. Further up the road and we’d be unable to see the Terminal, Abbey and Annalise’s standing ground. Astride the pavement, thick patches of transplanted Montana grass had faded from the soil, replaced by a dirt and sand mixture that reminded me of walking over a dried pond. Small patches of grass sprung up all over the landscape.

  What do you say when you’ve become part of an apocalyptic group of wanderers?

  ‘Oh, nice weather.’

  ‘Yes, the ashes compliment the wind quite nicely.’

  ‘You know, it’s too bad civilized life had to come to a screeching halt; I could sure go for a shower.’

  Annalise said something else about wandering towards a side road instead of the highway and Davion altered his course. Melanie sung softly to herself. At one point I was certain the song was the same we’d heard in the cellars before the audio cut off. Hell of an earwig, I supposed.

  It wasn’t until I’d tripped on a root sticking out of the ground that I’d woken up and seen how far we’d gone. Annalise helped me up as I patted the brightly coloured dirt off my hands. Sondranos as a colony had to be close-knit. It was here I’d learned about what I’d mentioned earlier: how the landscape wasn’t as flat as you’d expect in a crater. Take a train across Scotland, from Edinburgh to Culzean Castle and you’ll know what I mean.

  We’d found ourselves walking along a small, two lane road that traced along a ridge. A handful of trees planted on the left side of the road pointed towards the sky as the soil beneath climbed steadily, slowly upwards. They were the first trees I’d seen since landing. Thousands of them stretched to the west - wind-broken creatures with leaves that hung ragged off scraggly branches. Some of that might have been caused by the implosion we’d seen in the city, but I couldn’t be sure. Most of them looked impossible. Others had been so closely planted together that they looked like the pine farms outside Paisley. To the right was no better. A dozen, hand-planted bushes lined the side of the road every now and then. Most were either dead or dying. Their branches groped each other as if to steal the life from their neighbours. Dead leaves on the ground mimicked the colour of the dirt. An unseemly dip a couple meters off the side of the road told us we walked on a path specifically raised higher than the landscape. Below the drop and in the distance was the natural formation called the crater’s cradle, and beyond that would be the suburbs or recreational areas. Daniel had once insisted we find a place in Stirling, out near the Wallace Monument and in the enclaves of suburbia. We never would have lasted out there.

  Annalise must have noticed my sudden snap back into reality. “You okay?”

  “Just thinking about a friend,” I said.

  She paused, about to ask a question I didn’t want to answer – anything about who the friend was, or if he was in Sondranos. Instead, she noticed me taking in the surroundings, catching my surprise as the sudden change of environment.

  “If you’re trying not to think about being stuck here, do yourself a favor and don’t look ahead,” Annalise said. I held her gaze. Her eyes were soft, and trusting of me.

  I didn’t have to look out and follow the road forward to know why she’d told me not to. I averted my eyes to a few feet ahead, but never straight up. As a result, I wasn’t reminded of the crater standing like a prison wall, hulking itself across the horizon in every direction.

  “The Abbey is nothing compared to the commune,” Davion began speaking just after all traces of the terminal and Abbey had fallen behind the new tree-line. “On entering, you will see a Great Hall as high as our architects could reach without employing technological advancements in ungodly ways. All around is family. You won’t need to know their names to be welcomed,” Davion exaggerated the word family by circling wide with his hands and arms, sermonizing. Melanie perked up at this mention. “I thank the Lord that I have been granted this task. I thought I’d been punished for something, but now I see. I bring you to your salvation, and my own.”

  Annalise rolled her eyes. “Stationed or punis
hed?”

  “You don’t get stationed in my profession – you get called,” Davion said. Still ahead, Davion turned to walk backwards, not faltering a step. He was another man, then. Here was the shepherd, willing and decidedly leading us to a larger flock. I felt a certain kind of jealous hatred within my chest in that moment. Cold, yet somehow warming my blood. Who was he to act so strongly in the face of something devastating? “Being assigned like a soldier is a trait unbecoming a man of my stature.”

  Annalise opened her mouth, but the words subsided into a grin. Stifling what she was about to say, she winked at me. I couldn’t help but wonder what she held back.

  “Don’t provoke him,” I whispered. I just didn’t want to hear him any more.

  She nodded and nudged me, noting that I’d been still watching the ground. It had turned from the Montana grass to a patchwork of green, clay, and all manner of soil used in terraforming. Small speckles of silver gleamed in the vast tracts of fall colours.

  “Almost makes you want to take your shoes off,” Annalise said.

  “Just might,” I smiled.

  “Thank the Sondranos carpet foundation!” Davion said, swivelling back around.

  “It’s what natives call the ship that transported the Montana grass – it didn’t fuse to the soil properly when they planted it, and ever since people call it the largest natural carpet in history. Not exactly a selling point for our home,” Annalise said.

  “Salvation is our selling point, Annalise!” Davion raised his hands and acted as if he was conducting – waving wildly about to the beat of something none of us heard. How dare this man, I thought. How dare he omit the truth and act like it simply didn’t exist in the face of his purpose.

  Melanie staggered her steps until we’d caught up with her.

  “He’s acting like this is a good thing,” she said.

  “We’re all doing it. Focusing on the next task, trying to think positive without thinking of what we’re leaving behind,” Annalise responded. “Better than looking at the reality.”

  I raised my hand in mock toast and smiled. Annalise returned the gesture. I watched Davion and wondered if the only reason I’d begun to hate him was because he’d been man enough to step out into the courtyard when life crumbled. I’d taken a star-liner away while he’d faced the conflagration face-first. Practically ran in to it – Annalise was proof of that. Did I have anything to show for running?

  Daniel’s voice echoed in my mind, ‘if you could be more like him…’

  I twitched away the thought, and Annalise noticed. “Wanna hear a story?”

  I nearly stumbled. It was random, but welcome. I felt like she was only speaking to me. Melanie had resumed singing to herself, and I was certain she’d started making up lyrics to distract her internal thoughts. Davion, meanwhile, soldiered on.

  “Sure,” I said. “Why?”

  “You look like you need one.”

  “How does one look like they need a story?”

  “You’re still breathing,” she smiled. She waited until I smiled in return before starting.

  “In the early twenty-second century, a girl named Ilyana spent her life looking for heads-up pennies on the ground. She believed they meant good luck. If she passed a man offering her the trip of a lifetime, she’d keep her eyes on the ground waiting for the sign to accept until she walked too far away to respond. One day, she was walking down a street by the name of Rue de la Montaigne in France, where her biggest celebrity crush had been dining for lunch. His name was Bradley. Bradley rushed out of the restaurant, having paid in cash, and slipped his change into his pocket while trying to avoid the paparazzi.

  “He’d recently been in a film about King Arthur that revolutionized the genre. As such, everyone wanted a digital image of him making mistakes, or acting normal. Could you imagine King Arthur eating a burrito? Or, Gods forbid, going to the toilet?

  “Anyway, Ilyana looked up to see what the commotion was even though she was already late for class and didn’t want to be detained any longer. So, she abandoned her near-subconscious search for a penny and proceeded to skirt the crowd. Bradley burst through the crowd and ran into her, knocking them both into the street. He helped her up and their eyes locked. Bradley suggested he buy her dinner two days later to make up for his mistake. Ilyana responded quietly, to which Bradley had to read her lips to understand over the noise and Ilyana’s shy volume: ‘I’m not doing anything now. There’s a coffee shop across the street?’

  “‘I’d like that very much,’ Bradley smiled. He extended his arm, forgetting about the snapping photos and cat calls for him to smile for the camera. Ilyana blushed and wrapped her arm around his.

  “‘Hey,’ shouted one of the photographers, ‘you dropped your change!’

  “Neither Bradley nor Ilyana heard. They were too busy watching each other and the road ahead. In fact, Ilyana vowed to never keep her eyes stuck to the ground so long as she had something to look up to. What she’d always wanted could only be seen by looking to the future and moving towards it. After a long a happy marriage, on her deathbed, she told her great-granddaughter that there would always be pennies; it’s the act of looking for them that denies you the chance to attain them.”

  I paused. Melanie had inched closer and stopped singing. I don’t know when she’d begun listening, but her attention slipped away just as quickly as the ending of Annalise’s story. “Are you trying to tell me that I’m watching the road too much?”

  “Relax, it’s just a story,” Annalise grinned, and smirked.

  Annalise stopped. She looked like she had more to say, but all pretence of that fled in the instant she stuck her arm out to halt Melanie and me. Davion heard the scrape of heels against pavement and turned.

  “What’s that?” Annalise asked, pointing to a spot along the ridge.

  I followed the line of her finger to where she pointed and struggled to see anything other than brush and the edge of the decline. A flicker of light caught my eyes, stinging for no more than a second, and the silvery glimmer object of something embedded in the dirt a couple metres away. It could have been a missile, or a silver hydrant.

  Annalise broke from the road and headed towards it. I followed, choosing to step closer to the edge of the hillside instead of remaining directly behind.

  I stepped closer to the edge and watched as Annalise approached the object. You could tumble down the decline, but could never hope to keep your feet planted unless you went down very slowly. After the fall, the copse of trees was a visual appeal to nature, as they didn’t do anything other than act as a makeshift wall against the ridge. As the hill touched bottom, the decline stopped and became a sheer cliff for about five or six feet before it hit ground. It looked as if someone had tried to dig the hillside away with a spade for years, one sweep at a time. The treeline was marked by healthy, young pines.

  The trees extended into the distance the length of a couple hundred metres before finally meeting a small neighbourhood of town homes lining a grid system. I could have put my hands before my eyes and blotted out the entire neighbourhood. When I had the chance for closer inspection – breaking the fourth wall to tell you that, yes, we would be drawn there like moths to a bonfire – brightly coloured homes spread out with equally sized yards and fenced in backs, some with pools and some with swing sets. Most sat like boxes on their foundations. I didn’t see any people scrambling in the streets. Beyond that were dirt, grass, more trees, and a scattering of red-clay fields. Past the trees, any movement would have looked like ants; however, I still didn’t see anything stirring. I also saw no signs of destruction.

  Annalise stopped at the object as I caught up to her, having finally picked my way down the ridge. The surface was clear silver. At the back, the propulsion system had Int: AE stamped below a large bowl surrounding a handful of blue wires. The smell of burning fuel hovered around it like a barbecue. They were Aurichrome stabilizers – ancient technology.

  “Davion,” Annalise called out.
“Does this look familiar?”

  “What is it?” Melanie huffed, coming up behind. Her gaze shifted from the object to the stiff fall an arm’s length from all of us.

  Behind us, Davion re-joined our group and clapped his hands together. His smile extended beyond normal reach. “Oh my, this is fascinating!”

  The object had buried itself into the ground through sheer force. My entire body could have fit inside the shell with room to turn around, maybe do a few flips provided I could bend at a 180 degree angle. An impact around the main canister staggered the dirt, causing it to circle around the cylinder. However, the most telling piece of the object came near the top. A small compartment of casing had been detached. We didn’t dare look inside, or lean close enough to accidentally do so. A series of scratches marked where something had climbed out of the hole, which led to a dent in the ground. The dent was torso sized, and a handful of prints proved that whatever had exited the object had also fallen down the ridge.

  “These are the things that attacked us,” Annalise answered my next question before I could ask it. Her tone turned into one of half adoration and half fear. “It’s true, this thing’s from International Aeronautics. Very old. Haven’t been in the public eye since museums put out a call for them. I read about it while I was in Beaumaris.”

  Davion scoffed at the mention of Beaumaris, squinted at Annalise, and was about to say something. Instead, Davion shared his look with Melanie. I’d never heard of a place called Beaumaris, but it seemed to hold judgmental weight over Annalise. Doubting it was anything important, I returned attention to the pod. The cover was cool to the touch. I expected to have had to pull my hand back, thinking the heat would have burned the flesh off my fingers.

  “Shouldn’t it still be warm?” Melanie asked the question that had occurred to me.