SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1

by Joseph Heck

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea to split up with all this shifting locations going on,” Mashkkha said. “We’ll just come along with you, save you from coming back for us.”

  Zak mumbled several curses. Why could no one follow his orders? In his frustration, he increased his pace, trying to regain sight of Megan. But she was too far ahead for him to catch any glimpse of her through the dense trees. He let loose another string of curses as he picked up his pace.

  As he chased after Megan, a sudden apprehension came over him. The path seemed to grow darker, the forest quieter. The air itself became heavier, a growing pressure making his ears ring. Then he sensed it...a malevolence that seemed to contaminate the very air around him. It was the same malignant sensation he’d picked up on the previous night in Tanner’s Warehouse. He cursed Megan’s independent stubbornness again, as he became even more concerned for her safety and he attempted to find more speed within himself.

  When he did finally catch her, it was only because she had stopped. Megan stood just off the small path, crouched into the brush behind a tall Elvish Pine. As he approached her, she gave him an exaggerated signal to remain silent. A cold shiver ran down his spine as he caught her expression. Fear reflected in her eyes, turning the deep green to a duller shade and nearly extinguishing the bright flecks of gold. There was a sense of panic reflected in her actions as Megan silently motioned toward the clearing just beyond where they stood.

  Zak followed her direction and as he looked out past the trees, he realized that the area beyond was not really a clearing at all. Not in the natural sense of the word anyway. While devoid of the tall living trees that made up the surrounding forest, this was a circle of destruction, the aftermath of some powerfully devastating force. Proud old Elvish Pine and Red Oak had stood here together not so long ago, but now all had been stripped away. In their place, large jagged stumps rose up from the ground, their trunks lying dead and broken around them like casualties of some great battle. Some of the dead trees appeared to have been scorched by fire, while others were splintered and cracked as though snapped from their roots by a giant hand.

  The air within the circle was a swirling blood red, but remained translucent somehow. In the center of the destruction a darker black-red vortex rose up from the ground and into a blackened sky. The swirling column pulsed with a steady rhythm, very much like the energy stream that rose up and out of the roof of Tanner’s Warehouse. But the column here was much larger than that coming from the small shipping office, at least several meters in circumference.

  “Do you see it?” Megan’s voice was unsteady as she whispered to him. A shiver rippled through her as she looked out over the vast circle of destruction.

  Zak intuitively knew she wasn’t referring to the obvious destruction. He strained his vision in an attempt to see what Megan wanted him to see. It was difficult to look, as his eyes immediately began to ache when he tried to see into the turbulent red air. No sunlight touched this area of ruination. Heavy dark clouds pressed down from above as jagged spears of lightning, stained red in the contaminated air, slashed through the blackness. Thunderous rumbles vibrated from the churning red vortex in the center of it all, echoing over the destruction like a cry of victory.

  As Zak stared ahead in disbelief, he wondered how he had not seen the jagged spears of lightning, had not heard the angry rolls of thunder until now.

  “Do you see it!” Megan’s voice turned harsh, but still no louder than a whisper.

  Before Zak could answer, Captain Mashkkha and Harry Mathers came trotting down the path. When the two reached them, Mashkkha bent over, grasping his legs for support, breathing in deep gasps from the exertion of chasing after them.

  “It would be nice if the two of you would keep in mind that we are not Elves,” he managed between breaths. “Did you pick up on that spooky feeling...”

  “Sshh, not so loud.” Megan quickly put a finger to her lips to indicate silence. Her movements were exaggerated, almost frantic. She was clearly having difficulty controlling her fear.

  “What the...” Mashkkha mumbled, looking up and past her, staring out into the reddish air.

  “Oh my,” Harry whispered. Panting less heavily than Mashkkha, he stepped closer to where the trail opened into the clearing.

  “No!” was all Megan had time to call out.

  Time suddenly became paradoxical as events unfolded in painfully slow motion, yet happening so fast that they were impossible to prevent.

  As Harry approached the perimeter of the clearing, a black shadow moved within the dark stream of energy in the center of the clearing. Zak suddenly felt the full weight of the malignant power there, watched as the shadow seemed to grow larger.

  Instinct screamed danger to him. “Get back!”

  But it was too late. A sudden explosion erupted from the dark vortex and a catastrophic wall of blood red energy came rushing towards. It moved with tremendous velocity, further consuming the dead logs and tree stumps that lay in its path, splintering them into tiny shards of wooden shrapnel.

  Zak acted purely on instinct, diving toward Megan and knocking her to the ground with a solid jolt just as the deadly shockwave swept over them. He protected her with his own body, his adrenalin rush wiping all thoughts from his mind. Pain streaked down his left arm as something heavy impacted with his shoulder. His vision blurred as another unseen object hit him in the back of his head.

  . . .

  He was uncertain how much time had passed before he realized that everything was suddenly quiet. The ground felt harder than it should have...concrete hard. He was disoriented. His head throbbed, felt swollen to the touch where it had been hit, and he instinctively knew that the warm liquid he felt on his fingertips was blood.

  “Knocking me around is getting to be a habit with you. Get off of me!” Megan angrily pushed against him. Then the anger drained from her voice. “I smell blood!”

  “It’s just my head, don’t worry about it,” Zak mumbled. He attempted to sit up, but slumped back down in dizziness.

  “Are you all right?” The transition to concern he detected in Megan’s voice comforted him, her unexpected touch grounding his fuzzy thoughts as she groped to find his wound. “You may have a concussion.”

  He tried sitting up again. Before he could manage it, he froze, the fact that they were no longer in the forest suddenly registering. The place was dark. He switched to his Elf vision without realizing it, until he felt the pain in his head begin to grow. A soft reddish glow drew his attention and he focused on the familiar sight of the small prefab office of Tanner’s Warehouse.

  His first clear thought was how could it be dark already? He immediately felt foolish, remembering that they were in virtuality. Day could turn to night in the blinking of an eye. He made a quick visual sweep of their surroundings. Again they seemed to be in a perfect reproduction of Tanner’s Warehouse, this time at ground level. There were no cops. Everything was dark and deathly still.

  “I’m all right.” He finally said to Megan, shrugging her probing hands away. After realizing he was sitting on the concrete floor, he attempted to stand in spite of the dizziness, but didn’t get far before he ended up back on the hard cement.

  “There is more blood here than yours” Megan’s voice trembled.

  Her remark called his attention to it. The tangy smell of fresh blood registered with his senses. The air was thick with it. They searched for the blood source and found Harry lying dead still on the concrete floor not far away. As Megan rushed to Harry’s side, Mashkkha’s voice suddenly called out from the darkness.

  “Where are we?” He sounded groggy and confused.

  Zak guessed that he’d just regained consciousness. “Tanner’s Warehouse, it would seem.”

  “What in demon’s hell is going on!” Mashkkha demanded. “If we’re back in the warehouse, how did it get dark already? And where are my people?”

  Zak made no comment. Now was not the time to argue over the reality of thei
r situation. Or the lack of it. He made another attempt to stand. His head protested the move. He abandoned his Elf vision hoping it would relieve some of the pain and forced himself to his feet. The pain remained, both in his head and in his left shoulder. His left arm also felt numb. He tried gently rotating his shoulder as he stood. The pain surged, but he concluded that the injury wasn’t serious.

  “How’s Harry?” he asked Megan.

  “He is in really bad shape,” Megan answered from the darkness. “I have used a healing incantation to help stabilize him, but we need to get him out of here. He needs a doctor or a proper healer!”

  Before Zak could respond, he was suddenly overcome by another sensation. Death hung thickly in the blackness that surrounded them. It was so strong he wondered how he could not have detected it until now. He heard a startled sound catch in Megan’s throat and knew her Elvish senses had just kicked in as well.

  He wished he had a flashlight with him, but no such luck. He made an involuntary grimace as he switched back to his Elf vision.

  It didn’t take him long to get his bearings. He slowly moved toward the line of workbenches not far away. The bodies were right where he and Megan had found them the night before. He looked down in disbelief. The wounds were fresh, still in the process of bleeding out. The pooling blood beneath each Elf appeared nearly black in the darkness. Bending down he checked the first body and confirmed that it was still warm. These Elves had been shot only minutes before. Suddenly he was not so sure that this was virtuality. But it had to be, his logic insisted. If they were somehow in the real world, that would mean they had travelled back five days in time.

  The unmistakable sound of a large shipping door sliding closed echoed through the dark silence of the warehouse. They had just missed the thieving murderers by minutes.

  Zak was tempted to go after them, but Megan called out to him. There was no time for pursuit. No time to debate whether they were still in virtuality, or theorize over the possibility of time travel. Harry’s injuries had to take priority for the moment.

  Megan looked up at Zak as he returned, her expression haunted.

  She knew what he had found. She knew, but resisted going to see for herself. The pain was in her eyes, in the drawn expression on her face. Zak wished there was something he could do to comfort her.

  “Let’s try to get him to the security office. Maybe I can figure out how to get us back to the world from there.” His head continued to pound, the stress of using his Elf vision adding to the effects from the blows he’d taken.

  Time and space... Real or virtual... He was not feeling very self-assured at all right now.

  23

  They had gotten only part way to the stairs leading up to the security office when their surroundings again blinked out. When they blinked back in they found themselves back among tall trees, the sun filtering down through branches dense with lush green leaves. With all that had happened none of them even raised the question of where they were. At this point, all that mattered was that they find a way to get Harry medical assistance as soon as possible.

  “So, now what?” Mashkkha asked.

  He and Zak were sharing the burden of carrying Harry. They had him braced between them, using their clasped hands as a makeshift seat, his arms thrown over and dangling from their shoulders. Harry was in bad shape, as Megan had said. He was unconscious. His forehead was a deep purple from an ugly bruise, his right arm broken. Zak felt a wetness running down his own arm, the hole in Harry’s side leaking blood again. Before they moved him, Megan had removed a large piece of tree branch from the wound. She had been able to stop the bleeding and had stabilized him the best she could, but the wound had reopened. He had other minor cuts and bruises as well. It was all too obvious that Harry had taken the brunt of the blast back at the clearing.

  Zak motioned to Mashkkha to set Harry down and they gently lowered him onto the narrow path they now found themselves on.

  “We should keep moving,” Megan said, after tending to Harry. “At least we can put some distance between us and the portal.”

  “Or hope we do,” Zak said. His injured shoulder was throbbing from carrying the injured wizard and he rubbed at it, hoping it would provide some relief from the constant pain. It didn’t. He tried to put it out of his mind and added, “The way we are popping in and out all over the place, it’s hard to say where we’re going to turn up next.”

  “I’m going to bust Aakil down to beat cop when I get out of here,” Mashkkha’s ruddy complexion was a few shades darker than normal, indicating that he also was not in the best of shape to carry Harry through the woods. “Aakil should have pulled us out when he saw we were in trouble!”

  “Perhaps he has tried and could not,” Megan said.

  “Well, let’s hope he doesn’t pull us out now until we can find an exit,” Zak said. “If the exit protocols aren’t in place, the shock even to a healthy person would be pretty hard on their system. It could very well kill Harry in his condition.”

  “Well, that’s just great!” Mashkkha growled.

  “We don’t have time to stand here and discuss it.” Zak bent down and waited for Mashkkha to help lift Harry once again. “We seem to be on some sort of foot path. I don’t have a clue what kind of virtual setting this is supposed to be, but a path usually means people...virtual or otherwise. If we can find help, virtual healing can often be just as effective as real medical care when it comes to injuries that occur in virtuality.”

  Megan took the lead and slowly they made their way along the twisted path. Both Zak and Mashkkha struggled as they carried Harry’s limp form. They were both injured and tired. The narrow path made it even more difficult, as dead branches and exposed roots hidden beneath dead leaves made their footing treacherous. They went as fast as they could manage without jostling the injured wizard any more than necessary. And that meant they moved pretty slowly. Zak did the best he could to look for an access point along the way, but there didn’t seem to be any in this stretch of virtuality.

  They made frequent stops for Megan to check on Harry’s condition. She never commented, but Zak could see the concern on her face grow with each stop. Harry remained unconscious all the while.

  The poorly tended trail eventually turned into a wider path. They had been travelling for some time without any abrupt changes to their surroundings. Dense woods continued to border either side of them until they finally came to another clearing.

  This one was much more pleasant than the previous clearing they’d come upon. An open gate hung loosely from a wood rail fence, beyond a small cabin stood in a well groomed yard. An abundance of flowers and shrubs had been neatly planted throughout the yard, softening the frontier style of the cabin, its roughly hewn logs stacked one upon another and packed with dried earth to seal the cracks between them. A wood shingled roof sloped relatively low to the ground, indicating that the cabin was a single-story dwelling. The front door at the centre of the structure had been shaped with equally rough blows from an axe and the windows on either side of the door were no more than rectangular cut outs without the benefit of glass. Heavy shutters, of the same workmanship as the door, hung from each window for security. These were now open, however, with only ragged looking burlap curtains hanging from each window as a means of separating outdoors from in.

  To the left of the house a pile of uncut logs waited to become firewood. An overturned wheelbarrow lay not too far from the woodpile, as though someone had dropped it and left in a hurry. The place seemed deserted in the deep silence of the forest surrounding it, although it had not been abandoned long judging by the condition of the yard.

  Zak called out several times as they stopped at the open gate. There was no answer.

  “Nobody here,” he concluded.

  “You guys take Harry inside and get him comfortable,” Megan said. She turned off to the right just before the entrance into the yard. “I am going to look around for some medicinal plants or herbs.”

  “Wai
t and I’ll come with you,” Zak said.

  “I am a big girl,” she answered. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not sure what would happen if we shift again and we’re not together. I’ll come with you!” Zak insisted.

  “You take care of Harry,” she said. As she disappeared among the tall trees she called back, “Keep him warm!”

  Zak cursed under his breath. There was little he could do to stop her until he was able to get Harry situated. He said to Mashkkha, “Hurry up and let’s get him inside.”

  They found the door to the cabin not only unlocked, but unlatched as well. Inside, the cabin was small but cozy. A fireplace was inlaid in one wall, a large black cooking pot hanging in it. Although there was no fire burning at the moment, a pile of cut logs in the near corner was ready for use. Furniture was sparse and, like pretty much everything else in the cabin, cut from logs. Four stools were gathered around the fireplace, each roughly cut and supported by three short legs. A wood table stood against another wall. Four bowls and a collection of utensils were set out on the table, along with a couple of ceramic jars. A sleeping loft had been constructed in the roof peak and several blankets could be seen heaped in a pile near the edge, a ladder propped against the far wall was the only access.

  No way were they going to get Harry up to the sleeping area in his condition. They eased him down onto the dirt floor.

  “We need to keep him warm. I’ll go up and get some blankets.”

  Zak was three quarters of the way up the ladder when something down below caught his attention. A large burlap sack sat in the corner near the fireplace. In bold black lettering printed across the side of the bag were the words Tahmore General Store. The memory trigger was immediate. Tahmore. It was the name on the sign Megan had seen in her vision while making contact with the portal inside Tanner’s Warehouse. And the sense of familiarity came back stronger than ever. “By the Maker, I know I’ve heard of Tahmore somewhere else before!”