Doria Falls

by Michael Pierce

  “Please, God, bring them home to me,” she whispered and took a sip. She couldn’t bear the thought of only one or two of them returning.

  Helen turned off the kitchen light and sank down to the tile floor, sitting in beams of moonlight flowing in from the window. Frolics still lay near the front door, still with his head on his front paws. He looked at her, and she at him. Neither one moved from their claimed spot on the floor. She took another sip, and then another. The alcohol was beginning to work. It allowed her to breathe fully, if only for a short while.

  The glass was empty several minutes later. Helen would need to refill it soon—her drinking was far from done—but she felt tears crawling closer to the surface. She would let them flow without any attempt at holding them back. There was no shame in crying when one was alone. She could be tough tomorrow.

  “Please…” she pleaded again and lay down, curling into a ball like a child.

  Once she was down, Frolics rose and came to her, his claws clicking against the tile. He stood over her spent body and licked her face, lapping up the tears. Helen hugged him hard, imagining he was one of her boys returning home to her so she’d no longer be alone—never again be alone. Oliver.

  2

  Shot

  “Richard?” I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe Richard was with Mr. Gordon. “Where’s Mom?”

  “She’s at home...for her own safety.” Richard paused for a moment and then pulled me and Jeremy into a group hug, which we didn’t try to fight. “Thank God you’re okay. Daniel said you were, but—but I didn’t know what to believe. He said he’d take me to you—both of you—so I could take you home. We’re family, right? We need to look out for each other. Always.”

  “Then I suppose Mr. Gordon left out the part where I can’t go home,” I said, pulling away.

  “I may have—” Mr. Gordon began.

  “What’s he talking about?” Richard asked.

  “This isn’t the time or place to fully discuss this. The men that went into my house have one mission, and that is to find your boys, especially Oliver,” Mr. Gordon said to Richard. “We want to be gone by the time they come out, which won’t be long.”

  “There are four of them and five of us,” I said. “Now that you’re back we—”

  Mr. Gordon cut me off. “Now that I’m back I can better help you escape. It’s too dangerous to fight them.”

  “Who are they?” Richard asked.

  “Hi, I’m Desiree by the way.” Desiree extended a hand to Richard, making me feel like a complete idiot.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re the famous girl down the street.” Richard grinned so big, for a moment he reminded me of Jeremy.

  “Daniel’s right, we should get moving,” Jeremy said. “Where are you parked?”

  Mr. Gordon pointed over his shoulder. “Just down the street. We can continue the reunion and introductions in the car.”

  Just then, three of the men came out of Mr. Gordon’s cabin, two of them helping Cias shuffle and nearly stumble down the stairs. His head hung low with his arms hanging limply around the two men’s shoulders. The fourth man sauntered behind them and watched the rest of his team position their injured comrade into the backseat of the car.

  Cias was alive! How could that be?

  “I thought you checked him?” Jeremy asked, nudging me.

  I shook my head, saying nothing. His skull had been split open like a cracked egg, spilling blood everywhere. And I couldn’t find a pulse, nor any signs of breathing. I continued shaking my head in an attempt to cast out the image.

  “It’s time to go.” Mr. Gordon sounded urgent.

  The fourth man walked to the edge of the driveway, gazing out into the woods. We were too far back and protected by shadows for him to see us—or so I hoped. He scanned the trees, never looking in one place for more than a few seconds. He definitely didn’t see us, but if we made a run for it, then the noise and movement would probably give away our position.

  A white light appeared in the man’s hand just as the other three joined him at the edge of the driveway.

  “Daniel,” the first man called into the darkness. “You’ll never make it. Give up the boy and we’ll let the others walk away, no questions asked. No one else has to get hurt.”

  The light in the man’s hand was a glowing orb about the size of a ping-pong ball and it floated out in front of him. As the orb lifted, it multiplied into two, four, eight, sixteen glowing orbs, now blanketing the whole area around the men in white light.

  “We need to go now,” Mr. Gordon hissed, but nobody moved.

  The orbs stopped rising when they reached chest level of the men in the driveway and began fanning out in an arc, moving away from the driveway and into the trees like a multitude of tiny headlights.

  Leaves rustled behind me as the rest of the group took off deeper into the woods. Desiree was the only one left and she tugged frantically at my arm. Mr. Gordon stopped when he noticed I wasn’t directly behind him.

  The orbs extended into the forest, passing straight through trees in their path, at about the pace of a brisk walk. Not hurried, but steady. The line of light on the uneven ground of dead leaves drew closer like an incoming flood.

  I climbed to my feet with Desiree’s help and let her pull me away. We ran past Mr. Gordon, following the sound of crunching footsteps ahead of us. And Mr. Gordon picked up stride in our wake.

  Then I heard a gunshot.

  The first bullet struck a tree fifty paces back with an explosion of bark. Birds overhead scattered from the trees and flew into the clear moonlit night. Now we were sprinting through the darkness, dodging trees, bushes, and low-lying branches—trying our best not to be clotheslined.

  Another shot hit the dirt at my heel, even with Mr. Gordon directly behind us. He didn’t slow, so he still must not have been hit. The forest echoed with the sharp cracks of more gunfire and I wanted to run faster, but now I was the one dragging Desiree. She had reached her full speed.

  Jeremy and Richard were neck and neck, and I saw a small light ahead of them like Richard had a flashlight or Mr. Gordon had created a shining orb of his own to lead us back to the car. It was amazing to see Richard keep up with Jeremy, sliding past trees and leaping over bushes and protruding roots on the forest floor. The last time I’d seen him, he hobbled around the house in a cast, and only a month or so before that, he was lying unconscious in a hospital bed.

  A bullet whizzed between my head and Desiree’s, and ricocheted off a tree in front of us. My ear rang from the projectile screaming by inches from my head. Desiree pivoted away from me and fell to one knee. Before I was even out of reach, I grabbed her arm and helped her back to her feet without losing more than a few seconds. But every second counted. The flood of light behind us crept closer as the orbs reached for the tails of our shirts. They were like eyes in the wilderness fixated on us, not about to let us out of their sight. The bullets were drawing closer and I was beginning to believe not all of us would make it to the car. I still couldn’t see an end to the trees. The forest seemed to stretch on forever. And the eyes would never let us go.

  Another shot. It flew by us as close as any of the others, but still missed flesh. My legs were aching from the sprint for our lives. I rarely ran the mile at school; I usually walked it. Coach Andrews had said I wasn’t living up to my potential and now I wished I’d tried harder. My speed slowly dropped and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. The fear of death could cause people to do extraordinary things, but at some point, the body still shuts down. My legs weren’t shutting down—yet—but I felt like that fuse didn’t have much length left. The best thing I could do was visualize reaching the car and not think about the agonizing gap in between.

  Richard broke left and it took a couple of seconds for Jeremy to correct his direction. The rest of us were far enough behind not to be thrown off course.

  A bullet hit the ground a few paces in front of Desiree and me, and w
e jumped over the invisible hurdle. I glanced back at Mr. Gordon. The light from the traveling orbs was nearly upon him.

  When I turned back to focus ahead, I saw the final row of pines. Richard had made it out of the woods and Jeremy broke through the last line of trees a moment later. They now continued at full stride down a narrow gravel road, and then I saw the dark shape of what had to be Mr. Gordon’s car directly ahead of them.

  Car lights flashed twice like it had been unlocked and as I approached I could hear the soft purr of the engine.

  Another bullet nearly grazed my arm and I thought how much would have changed if I was running a few inches to the right. The bullet would have clipped me in the upper arm and spun me around, and I would have found myself sprawled out on the gravel road in what I could only imagine would be searing pain.

  “Get in!” Mr. Gordon yelled as he came up from behind Desiree and me.

  Jeremy sprang into the backseat, leaving the door open so Desiree and I could follow without losing a single precious second. Mr. Gordon hopped into the driver’s seat and the gunmetal hover car took off down the winding road.

  The three of us in the back seat ducked at the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the back window. The glass didn’t shatter, crack, or even seem to chip. I just saw a small plume of smoke where the bullet had hit.

  The tablet tucked into the back of my pants dug into my skin, so I repositioned my body to remove it and placed it in my lap.

  “I hope you can heal gunshots as well as you can heal stab wounds,” I said.

  Mr. Gordon glanced over his shoulder. “Is someone hit?” he asked, concerned.

  “No—I don’t think so—I’m just saying.” I looked at Desiree and Jeremy, who were both staring back at me. Everyone’s chests were heaving and Desiree seemed to be having trouble drawing in full breaths, but no one seemed to be more injured than before.

  “Who were they?” Richard demanded. “And what was Oliver talking about not being able to go home?”

  “Cias is not on our side,” Jeremy said. “He was the babysitter you’d promised, right?”

  “I’m sorry I put you in that position. What happened to him? He looked nearly dead.”

  “He was,” I said. “The earthquake or crash or whatever that was interrupted everything and he was hit by falling rocks from the fireplace. We didn’t have to do anything.”

  “I’m thankful for that,” Mr. Gordon said.

  “I could have handled him,” I said defiantly.

  “I’m still thankful you didn’t have to.”

  “What was that?” Desiree asked. “The earthquake I mean. Did you feel it?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Gordon replied. “Richard and I felt it back home.” He turned his attention to Richard. “Those men work for Kafka Lorne—the man who is after you stepson. There will be more of them—members of the Lorne Royal Guard, they’re called—members of the Lorne family and Kafka himself. Kafka wants him because of Nicholae, but I already told you about that.”

  Mr. Gordon paused, keeping his eyes on the road. I saw that there were no orange gridlines stretching down the road, so Mr. Gordon didn’t have the car tapped into the Automotive Network. He wanted full control.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Oliver, but it was going to be too hard to explain beforehand. I didn’t want to alarm Helen even more than I already had, and I wanted you to be able to see them for yourself—to see they were all right.” Mr. Gordon let out a long sigh.

  “You call this all right?” Richard asked incredulously. I could hear the pain and hurt in his voice.

  “I call this thankful.”

  “We are all right, Richard,” Jeremy said.

  Mr. Gordon found the main road and we began our winding decent down the mountain. Desiree laid her head on my shoulder. Her breathing, along with the others, had slowed. I found her hand and held it tightly in her lap. We would probably never get to have a normal relationship, but what we had now felt right.

  “I didn’t thank you earlier.” Jeremy spoke softly. “You know—for what you did.”

  “You would have done what you could for me,” I said.

  “Yeah, what I could…” He trailed off and went back to gazing out the window.

  Mr. Gordon still hadn’t turned on the Automotive Network. Everything outside looked like it would have back home, and for a moment I tried to imagine I was—we all were, with no one trying to kill us. But that’s what my life had become; there was no sense in running from it, running like we were doing now.

  Headlights appeared behind us as a car emerged from a bend in the road. Mr. Gordon glanced in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t say anything and didn’t speed up. We were already going fast enough to throw me into Desiree or Jeremy depending on which way the car turned into the curves.

  I peered over my shoulder as the tailing car gained on us, but I couldn’t make out the color or who was even in the car due to the bright halogen headlights. I sank into the seat so my head wouldn’t be visible in the rear window. Desiree and Jeremy followed my lead.

  “They found us,” Desiree said, squeezing my hand tighter.

  “Can you lose them, Mr. G?” Jeremy asked.

  Mr. Gordon gently put on the brakes, letting the car behind us catch up, which it did quickly. When it got a car-length distance away, it eased across the center dividing line and pulled alongside us. I peeked through Desiree’s side window at the car as it passed, but the windows were too darkly tinted to see inside. Thankfully, the car kept moving, speeding up and swerving back into the lane descending the mountain. Soon its tail lights dimmed in the distance and we were alone on the road once again.

  Desiree exhaled loudly like she’d been holding her breath underwater. I felt that way, too. Any pair of headlights appearing behind us could be them, and it only seemed like a matter of time before they caught up to us on this one-lane road.

  “See where worrying gets you?” Jeremy said in true Jeremy fashion. “Absolutely nowhere.”

  We finally reached an elevation where the tall pines fell away, replaced by sparse trees and shrubbery. Great chasms and rolling hills extended around us on all sides—and there was a bright light in the distance like the sun had not fully set and was lingering just over a hill. Once we wound around to another side of the mountain, I could see far beyond the mountains, nearly to the ocean. From the base of the mountain to the horizon, there were illuminated gridlines from civilization far below and a mass of glowing mountains in the distance that could only be Provex City. But there were dark spots in the city and scattered through the grid of smaller cities and neighborhoods. The dark spots in the mountain range of skyscrapers made the city look broken, like it had great chasms of its own.

  “The earthquake caused a lot of damage in this plane,” Mr. Gordon said solemnly. “It will be apparent once we’re back in civilization.”

  “This place is so advanced, it has to be prepared for decent-sized earthquakes and stuff,” Jeremy said. But I could tell he was seeing it, too.

  Provex City didn’t look whole anymore. The broken city before us was a flickering shadow of what it once was—the grandeur it once exuded had been reduced to a pale imitation. Glowing chunks of rubble rained down from the towers like meteorites. Some of the buildings were listing, others were crumbling, and more were simply gone.

  “No one was prepared for this.” Mr. Gordon said, but didn’t elaborate.

  A pair of headlights appeared in front of us as we turned into a bend in the road. The car sped by and disappeared in the curve behind us just as another pair of headlights appeared to be catching up.

  I tensed again, but knew it did me no good. Everyone else seemed more relaxed.

  The car steadily crept up behind us, continuing to slowly close the gap through the continual curves. When the headlights were so close that they were partially hidden by the trunk of Mr. Gordon’s car, I waited for it to pull to the side and pass us. It swerved onto the center dividing line several times like t
he driver was peeking into oncoming traffic, waiting for the perfect stretch of road to pass. But it didn’t. The car stayed behind us, right on our tail.

  “Mr. Gordon?” I asked.

  “I know.”

  Jeremy, Desiree, and Richard finally looked back just as an arm and head emerged from the passenger window, aiming a handgun directly at us.

  “Nobody panic,” Mr. Gordon said calmly and pushed down on the gas.

  Several shots fired in short succession bounced off the rear glass. The glass seemed to be impenetrable, but the body of the car didn’t seem to be so lucky. The rear body turned into swiss cheese, riddled with holes, and I hoped there was something in the framing to keep the bullets from traveling all the way through the car.

  “What are they doing?” I asked. “Don’t they want me alive for Kafka?”

  “You maybe, but the rest of us are expendable,” Mr. Gordon said. “Hold on!”

  Mr. Gordon slammed on the brakes and the tailing car collided into us, crunching more of our rear than their front end. Bits of metal and glass exploded from the impact and rained down on their car, whose nose dropped with the sudden braking and caused it to momentarily skid across the pavement. Sparks flew and the man hanging out the window flopped in multiple directions like a crash test dummy as the driver tried to recover. His pistol flew out of his hand and tumbled into the rocks lining the road.

  We sped up again and rocketed down the mountain. The car took the curves without sliding as if we were connected to the road like a monorail.

  “We’re losing them!” Desiree shouted, and then the chasing car pulled through the previous bend in the road, right back on our tail.

  A white hatchback passed us and headed up the mountain, and then the dark sedan behind us swerved into the oncoming lane and moved to pass us. They paralleled us for a stretch, inching closer and nearly pushing Mr. Gordon’s car into the rock wall on our right. There was no shoulder for much of the road, only turnouts at the big curves.