The Beachhead

by Christopher Mari

  John struggled to get off his knees but felt as if he was about to vomit. “Where?”

  Kendra gagged and squinted about her. “There, John. Look there.”

  Before them was a glow coming through the trees downslope from them. It was the kind of warm glow that emanated from gaslight and civilization.

  As they struggled to their feet, they found Sam already standing, at ease and surveying his surroundings. The rain had washed the blood from his split lip, but it highlighted the bluish bruise forming on his jaw. His hair was wet and wild, his beard dribbling water. He looked like a man of another era, raw and hard and unfinished and not part of the contemporary world.

  John staggered toward him. Sam’s fist flashed out, a quick left jab to John’s nose. He felt the bone break and then hit the ground in a heap.

  “How about now?” Sam leaned over him, hands clasped behind his back, the storm raging around him. “We even now, son?”

  “Leave him alone, you son of a bitch!” Kendra tried with slippery hands to help John to his feet.

  John pulled his arms from her grip and stood up. “We’re going to tell them about you,” he said over the wind and the rain. “All of them. Not just the Council—but Mom, everyone you ever knew.”

  Sam nodded. “I suppose you will.”

  “Jesus Christ, why won’t you help me? Come back with us.”

  The older man turned toward the glow in the valley below. The hardness of his face faded for an instant, almost as if the curious young explorer who had disappeared from this world had suddenly returned again unchanged. But then the moment passed, the hardness returned, and Samuel Giordano shook his head.

  “I killed her son.” He began to walk back to the portal, still alive in its milky whiteness. At the threshold he turned. “Get out of the rain, Johnny.”

  An instant later he was gone.

  John fell to his knees and vomited up his breakfast and much of the blood that he had been sucking into his fractured nose. Kendra was beside him in only slightly better condition. After a while they dragged each other to their feet and helped each other put on their packs. Kendra paused after taking a few steps toward the city.

  “Do you know where we are, John?”

  He looked around, realization dawning. “This is the field where we met when you were a girl.”

  “A portal. Here. Of all places. What—what does that mean?”

  The rain hid her tears. Her voice couldn’t.

  “I don’t know, Ken. I wish to God I did.”

  Kendra looked toward the now-exposed portal. Its orange-striped metallic edge shone in the rain, but its interior was again dark and inert. All around it were broken branches, bits of bark, chunks of evergreens—telltale signs of their dramatic entrance. “That felt like—well, it seemed like where the Remnants said they were before the Arrival. The White Place, remember?”

  John took her hand and squeezed it. “Hey, hey you,” he said. “Don’t you dare. Not now.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, stiff lipped. “We have to get you and that nose of yours home.”

  Arms around each other, soaked and shivering, they made their way down the slippery slope to the world they had known for all of their lives. When they needed to steady themselves by holding on to a tree trunk or an outcropping of rock, they did so for as long as necessary to get a grip and help the other down.

  They soon found themselves standing on the edge of a level plain that marked the outskirts of their civilization. Here before them were orchards, barren of fruit and foliage at this time of year, that had been planted during the baby-boom years before Kendra’s birth. Someday the wall would need to be brought out here to protect their food supplies. An enormous project for another generation. For now, John and Kendra were only too glad to be able to march down the orchards’ endless rows until they saw the top of the city’s wall towering over the trees. They could see light—and with it, the promise of warmth and food—through cracks in the shuttered windows at the top of the nearest gate’s guard tower.

  The air was so choked with rain it felt difficult to breathe. They marched on despite this until they reached the huge city gate. John pounded his fist against it and saw above its massive wooden frame the number eight etched in the stonework. They were at Gate Eight and close to the center of town, not far from where General Weiss lived. What would he think when he saw them?

  John pounded and pounded again. Kendra kicked at the door.

  “Oi!”

  They looked up, squinting through the falling rain, and saw a sentry with six of his fellows aiming carbines right at their heads.

  “Oi! Who goes there?”

  “For the love of God, man, open the door!” Kendra called.

  “Who? Talk fast, friends.”

  “It’s Giordano and McQueen of the Defense Forces, you half-wit!” John yelled up. “Now open the damned door!”

  The man disappeared over the slick stone parapet. Kendra and John slumped to the ground and leaned against the smaller door that had been built into the enormous gate. As they heard the big bolts being pulled back behind them, Kendra gripped John’s hand and smiled.

  “Not very patient, are we?”

  “Should we be?” John wiped the stinging rain from his face.

  She shrugged, grinning. “Patience is as close to perfection that our human condition allows.”

  As the smaller door opened, John and Kendra flopped backward and fell inside the gate, where they found themselves faceup, staring at the same rifles that had been pointed at them earlier.

  “In the name of City Protector Gordon Lee, I arrest you!”

  CHAPTER 19

  The darkness scurried with the movement of mice. Kendra felt their ghostly touch long after their thin paws and thick bodies had slid over her feet and hands, long after the flick of a fleshy tail touched her face as she slept. She had no need to see them or to know how many were out there in the room scratching, shitting, sniffing, slipping over one another. The invisible exists. She’d always known that. That was enough.

  Kendra was in a wine cellar near the center of town. Before the first candle had sizzled out, she recognized it as belonging to the house where the Khan family lived. She had gone through school with Emily Khan. But there was no sign of the family. Where they were, she could only guess. Her guards had given her no answers. Her guards. Most of them were smooth-faced Novices barely able to hold a carbine. A few she had even helped train just last year. If they knew anything at all about what was going on, it was information so low-level as to be barely a step above rumor.

  By meals served and chamber pots emptied, she guessed that she had been here for nearly three days. Three days ankle-shackled to a fieldstone wall with a long chain. Three days of trying to keep the mice patrolling for crumbs in this now-barren cellar from biting her face. Three days of wondering if John—or anyone else she had known and loved—was still alive.

  Whoever was now in charge (Did they say Gordon Lee? Lee? What?) had not been expecting their return. That much seemed true. The muttered conversations she had witnessed, their desire to split her and John up to maintain some control—it all seemed part of a very uncoordinated effort to figure out what the hell to do with the two of them. If somebody in charge had known they were coming, they would’ve been dragged before him ASAP.

  So what were they doing? Questioning John right now? Why hadn’t they asked her anything? Interrogating them at the same time was the best way to corroborate their stories. So why weren’t they doing just that? She chuckled, then shook her head.

  You could anticipate malice but not incompetence.

  The squeaking and scratching in the dark—God in heaven. She found herself trying to wipe away tears and imagined her face was crisscrossed with blackened tear tracks. Oh why wouldn’t they give her any light? Just a nub of a candle when they brought food that always burned out before she finished eating or peeing. And then and always the dark and fighting the dark—fighting to find that last
scrap of bread or her cup of water, fighting to keep the stink of her chamber pot from overpowering her, fighting to find a place on the dirt floor to grab some moments of sleep free from rodents. Fighting to keep a beachhead of light within her as the dark sought to creep inside.

  She rubbed her hand against the ichthys tattoo on the inside of her left wrist. She couldn’t see it, but she knew it was there. Christ had returned from the dead on the third day. Why shouldn’t she? Did she still believe that?

  It isn’t the first time you’ve been locked away, Kendra. And it isn’t the first time that you couldn’t be found for three days. But it wasn’t dark then. And you weren’t really alone then, were you? No, even if you had wanted to be, you couldn’t have been alone.

  You were fourteen, just a few months away from joining the Defense Forces. You were gangly, awkward. Your arms and legs were too thin and long to be of much use other than to trip over, but your body was changing too and you knew it and you started to like the curves that were coming in and you used them all you could in your overt stupid teenage way and on nobody more so than Alexander Raymond Jr.—Alex with his dark hair curling over his forehead and his artist’s soul and his coward boy’s heart. Alex. He feared you as much as he loved you. You controlled him and you ruined him. But that night you wanted more than anything for him to be wrapped around you.

  How many times before that night had the two of you gone up to the hills through the secret trapdoor in the city’s walls? Ten, a dozen times at best? It was midsummer then, and you had been curling around each other since your first flirtations in the spring. Sex no longer hurt as it first did. And the less it hurt the more you wanted it, and you both soon realized that there were just too many places in the city where you could get caught. Alex was terrified of getting caught. Was it Alex who had found the secret way out of the city? Had he found that tumbledown Remnant cabin in the hills? At this distance, six years, you don’t remember exactly who found your retreat. It doesn’t matter. All that you remember is the warm thrill you felt as you crawled through the secret tunnel in the city wall and waited for him outside that ruined cabin.

  But Alex wasn’t there when he was supposed to be. You waited and paced. The yellow cloud around the moon seemed as bright as midday. When you finally saw him silhouetted against the sky, you knew without doubt that it was not Alex Raymond. So you ran toward the woods, fearing you were about to be caught by one of the elders. Then you looked back and saw nearly translucent wings unfold, glint blue in the moonlight, and take flight. You suppressed a scream and ran harder.

  Branches lashed your face and your desperate outstretched hands. The moonlight, so bright in the clearing, was now muted and dull, hardly penetrating the treetops. All around you was dark, dark, dark. The warm breeze slipping past the tree trunks swayed branches and bushes, but apart from it and your own breathing, the night was silent. And the silence terrified you. You knew even then that the woods throbbed at night with snapping branches and scurrying feet and mating calls. But it was all completely still.

  You didn’t know how the Remnants had evaded death at the hands of the Orangemen on Earth. They never explained it to anyone except tangentially—in Defense Forces drills. But you hadn’t had any drills; you hadn’t had any training at all. So you ran and prayed to God, but you had already reverted to the animal instincts of your ancestors and tried to escape through cunning and silence. You were nearly through the woods and could see moonlight in the next clearing just before you. With every step you heard the flap of monstrously large wings. With every beat of your heart you heard a sword being freed from its sheath.

  You neared the clearing and your heart beat even faster.

  He’s gone. He must be gone.

  You took deep breaths through your nose to calm yourself.

  But what if he’s out there, just past these trees? Maybe he flew out over these woods and is just waiting right there?

  You took a step forward, your breath gripped in your chest.

  A hand snatched you from behind, covered your mouth, pulled you close. When you turned, an oversized orange face contemplated you. He moved his hand from your mouth and studied you from the edge of your hairline to the tip of your chin. You could feel him exhale against your cheek. His breath was sweet and warm but not in a familiar or even recognizable way. That warmth, that sweetness was not of anything remotely human.

  He started to open his perfect line of a mouth, then stopped. Then he gathered your body into his arms and flew up and into the evening sky. And you were flying—flying, Kendra!—in a way no human being had ever done before. It was frightening but familiar—a primeval feeling. Did men once fly with angels? Was this one taking you back to God? You clutched his neck tighter, a child’s grip, as his wings took you farther into the sky.

  Kendra, you were flying.

  Wherever you landed, you knew you were far from home. No stretch of these woods looked familiar. Not that you would have recognized something familiar at that moment. Your mind was too full of afterimages of what you had just seen—almost-unbearable moonlit vistas of distant mountain peaks rushing toward you, the lights of your city falling away, the deceptive calmness of the ocean as you whirled first toward it and then away from it, the rush of greenery exploding under and around you as your pilot cruised down to his landing. On the ground you shivered more from the thrill than the actual temperature on this mountaintop. Your heart thrilled. You understood what that meant now.

  A hand gripped your wrist and led you toward a cave you hadn’t seen upon arrival rising out of the rock face. Inside the cave was warm, glowing white. You had expected a campfire, but this glow neither flickered nor burned. It was simply light and warmth resting in what once may have been a true fire pit made by men. The walls and high ceiling of the great cave were alight in relief.

  The hand did relax its grip but did not let you go once inside the cave. The beautifully formed face seemed even more perfect in this light despite its foreignness—the just-oversized eyes and head, the inhuman blankness of the slate-gray eyes. But then your curiosity buried your fear, and you began to regard the face as an individual and not as a representative of a race you were supposed to fear. This Orangeman wasn’t quite as tall as you had been told they were. And he wasn’t as strange. That look was curious, maybe even bemused, but not devoid of emotion. Your voice came to you without your realizing it.

  “My name’s Kendra.” A pause. You touched your free hand to the top of your breastbone. “Kendra. Do you understand me, milord?”

  He tilted his head but said nothing.

  “I was told your people know human languages. Do you understand me?”

  The head straightened. It almost seemed as if a smile was curling the edges of the mouth.

  “This isn’t the year of one of your visits,” you rambled on. “Has something happened? Are my people still safe?”

  He leaned forward, and the hand that gripped your right wrist brought you closer. It wasn’t really painful, just compelling. Your eye caught sight of the sword attached to his belt.

  “Please speak to me.” Your voice quivered as you were reminded of a long-forgotten childhood memory. You were three, maybe four. You had done something wrong—broken something maybe—and were trying to apologize for it in your father’s disappointed silence. “Please speak to me, great one.”

  A nod, very slight. “You are intelligent for one so young.” The voice was deep and strange in its perfect pitch. “And brave. These are valuable traits.”

  “Who are you?”

  An enigmatic look spread across his face. “Call me Samael. Why not?”

  “To whom do you belong? To those who saved us? Or to those who destroyed us?”

  He shrugged in an almost human way. “Depending on your perspective, to both or neither. I come from a third place.”

  “And why’re you here?” You stuck your chin out when you asked. “What do you want with me?”

  “To know you, girl.” He smil
ed at you. You had never heard of an Orangeman smiling before. “As I have known others of your kind.”

  Samael took a step forward and pulled you closer at the same time, then sniffed your hair. Then he released your wrist and walked toward the mouth of the cave. As he did a wall of white light not unlike the ball of light that had been keeping you warm covered the entrance. A moment later and he was gone and you were a fly still alive in a bubble of white amber. But that was only the beginning.

  All these years later you’ve convinced yourself that when he came back and took you that first time you didn’t resist him because he had been gone for so long and you were afraid that he had forgotten about you. You were alone in a sealed cave with no idea when or if that light would go out, and you were terribly hungry and thirsty. The few people you told your story to backed up your thinking. Grace Davison had tried to explain it both as the psychologist she once was and as the preacher she had become. Traumatic bonding with a captor, she had said, perhaps influenced by powers beyond man’s comprehension. You were barely more than a child. You couldn’t have fought off such a powerful creature, not to mention an armed one.

  But that isn’t quite true, is it, Kendra?

  Like the first night, he left you, again without food. You were sore and tried to sleep, but you weren’t sure if he would return. You spent much of the time alone, touching the light he had left, all that light that warmed and illuminated but did not burn. You ran your fingertips, wet with snot and tears, loosely across the ball in the fire pit or the wall sealing the mouth of the cave, as if contact with it might make you understand him better. Lying alone in that light for hours, you found yourself thinking less of your parents and the people you knew who now must be desperately looking for you and more of Samael, the perfect slope of his shoulders, the taper of his wrists, the powerful way his thighs flexed as he walked, and you realized you were no longer crying about what had happened. You wanted him back.