Tar

by Taylor Hohulin

  tomorrow we will fight him

  the cost

  ME

  cost is not too high not too high the cost is not I wish too high

  RO

  I I I I do not wish to pay wish to pay the cost

  ––––––––

  VECH !

  ––––––––

  what if he escapes

  BLACK FALLS

  1

  Brendan closed the Book of Memory and set it in his lap, staring out the windows as Ansel’s words from two thousand years ago echoed in his mind. Next to him, Krystal worked quietly on his damaged mod. The tools extending from her fingers danced around the metal appendage at Brendan’s side, reattaching connections and mending separations.

  After reading Ansel’s crazed ramblings, Brendan was shocked at how much he remembered, both from the Tin Can Man’s fortress and from the Hotel Shalom. Though he’d expended massive amounts of power, he retained nearly all of his memories, unlike when he saved Alicia at the rest stop.

  But here, he’d reached into Tir Anhrefnus and pulled a strip of tar into this world with almost no consequences to his mind. Maybe that meant he was becoming stronger. Whatever power awakened in him in that basement in Newhaven continued to blossom within him, a sick flower releasing poisonous spores.

  Or maybe it meant he was losing parts of his mind besides memory.

  Escaping the Tin Can Man’s network of tunnels had been surprisingly easy. Few guards manned the place, and the ones they did encounter didn’t seem interested in the escapees. They were probably all hired guns. Only the Tin Can Man cared what happened in his fortress. Everyone else was just getting by.

  It didn’t take much wandering to find the garage where the Tin Can Man kept his fleet of infected-powered vehicles. Samson’s car was down there, too, and the Tin Can Man hadn’t confiscated any of Samson’s supplies. The shotgun, the tryfnium-coated bullets, and the Book of Memory still waited in the passenger seat. Once he’d flipped through the yellowing pages and filled the gaps in his memory, Samson convinced Brendan and Krystal it was time to change cars. His old ride was finished—the chase had reduced his tires to ribbons, and the years of hard driving had ruined the engine.

  “Besides,” he said, waving his hand around the garage, “this is as good a place as any to take a new vehicle.”

  Brendan pushed back, of course. The memory of the infected trapped in the cube remained clear in his mind. It felt wrong to drive a car powered by something so monstrous, but Samson talked him down. He convinced him the things in the Tin Can Man’s power cells ceased being human long ago. The body in their new car’s power cell wasn’t alive.

  “If anything in that box is suffering,” Samson said, “it is the blight.”

  That was what sealed it for Brendan. The Tin Can Man’s method of creating this battery was terrible, but the damage couldn’t be undone. And if they could cause the tar to suffer simply by driving this car? So much the better.

  Besides, it was either this or walk the rest of the way.

  Once they were on the road and pointed toward Black Falls, Samson tossed the Book of Memory into the backseat. Brendan read it, more out of obligation than any desire to learn what happened next. A few pages of frantic scribbles remained, but he had a good idea of how the story ended by now.

  “Did Ansel ever get back to normal?” Brendan asked.

  Samson paused before answering. “His condition improved,” he said. “He was never as bad as the day we placed the curse. However, I cannot say he returned to a normal state.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Krystal, looking up from her work on Brendan’s mod. “You’ve seen so many friends die. That must be hard.”

  Samson didn’t respond, but Brendan thought he noticed something soften in him, a tick in the sliver of flesh visible in the rearview mirror. Suddenly, Brendan saw Samson for who he was. Brendan saw a lonely old man, driven partly by a sense of duty, but also by the task’s connection to his past.

  To Samson, destroying the tar would keep the past alive. More than that, it would bring meaning to his overlong life, filled with heartache and nightmares.

  “You understand why your powers are so dangerous, don’t you?” Samson asked.

  Brendan caught the old wizard’s eye in the mirror and nodded. It was enough to see the monster Merovech became and the shell of Ansel that remained.

  Samson unlatched the glove compartment and reached inside. After a few moments rummaging through the contents, he withdrew a stack of yellowing paper, folded together and smelling of must. He passed them back, and Brendan took them with reverence.

  Millions of strange symbols covered the pages. Brendan had never seen anything like them in his life, but he understood immediately what they were. He understood immediately what they meant.

  He read, and the labyrinth of passageways in his mind began to shift.

  2

  Brendan knew what he was reading even before Samson spoke up from the front seat. His mind split open with new knowledge and new power. He was so engrossed that he started when the gruff voice a few feet away pulled Brendan back to the humming presence of the car.

  “We found them in the arcanum after we placed the curse,” Samson said. “We couldn’t read them, but we assumed they must be...”

  “Notes.” Brendan’s voice came out hushed, reverential.

  How else could he explain the tattered pages on his lap? The scribblings looked like words in another language, but they were more than mere symbols. They imparted power. They granted previously impossible understanding, but only to those who could decipher them.

  Only to those who commanded the tar.

  Those like Merovech.

  Those like Brendan.

  The rush of power was dizzying, intoxicating, and exquisitely painful. As overwhelming as it was, Brendan couldn’t stop his eyes from passing over every pen stroke. Every symbol on those pages held a galaxy of information, exploding in his mind and burning fresh passageways in the labyrinth there. Now he understood Merovech’s fascination with Tir Anhrefnus and the power it gave. He also understood why that power scared Merlin so badly.

  Samson was talking again. “Now that you’ve read the Book of Memory, do you know why I waited to show these to you?”

  Brendan nodded, his head spinning.

  “I wanted you to understand the danger of this power. I wanted you to see what it did to my...” Samson swallowed audibly. “...to my friend.”

  And Brendan did. After reading about Merovech through the lens of three men terrified by their colleague’s transformation, he understood their terror. Since leaving Newhaven he’d gotten a fresh look at what terrible things the tar did to people—both to those it consumed and to those who tried to use it.

  “I gave you those pages because I trust you,” Samson said, his voice growing soft. “You should know I have trusted no one in a long time. Merlin died, Merovech turned, and Ansel lost his mind.”

  The weight of Samson’s confession settled over the backseat.

  “I don’t...” Samson stopped himself, started again. “I don’t want to trust anyone, but to rid the world of blight, I must trust you. Ever since we met, I have known I must learn to trust you, whether I want to or not. Once we reach Ansel, you must go where I cannot. Only you can defeat the blight.”

  Brendan’s heart caught in his throat. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you still not understand?” Samson’s eyes flashed. “To defeat the blight, you must kill Merovech. To kill Merovech, you must travel through the portal he built. And only one with your unique powers may pass through that portal.”

  3

  Samson’s words and their implications settled over the car, but the silence didn’t last long.

  “You’re telling me I have to go into Tir Anhrefnus and kill Merovech by myself?” Brendan asked.

  The muscles a
long Samson’s forearms rippled as he gripped the steering wheel. Clearly, he hadn’t looked forward to this conversation.

  “Only you can travel through the portal,” Samson said. “And even if I could follow you there, I would be of no use fighting Merovech. I would be vulnerable to the blight. This task is yours alone.”

  “So you waited this long to tell me.” Brendan snorted. “Can’t imagine why.”

  “Now you understand how dire the situation is,” Samson said. “It is not enough that we have imprisoned Merovech in Tir Anhrefnus. His powers have reawakened, and now the only way to save our world from the blight is to kill Merovech. If I told you the day we met, you would not have come with me. But now, after everything you’ve seen and read...”

  His voice trailed off, but Brendan knew what the silence implied. He was supposed to understand the tar’s evil and be willing to sacrifice himself on the altar of its destruction. After reading about the black infection’s origins and seeing the horrors birthed by the fear, reverence, and worship it inspired, he should have hated the tar more than he loved his own life.

  Only Brendan wasn’t confident that was the case. Of course he wanted the tar gone, but all this time, his visions of destroying the stuff included him, Samson, and Krystal working side by side. If anyone would finish the fight alone, it was Samson. The tar affected Brendan, but this was not his fight. He was safe in this world thanks to the powers he’d discovered. The tar regarded him as a king. A god, even.

  But Merovech wouldn’t hold him in nearly as high regard.

  Merovech would kill him the instant he realized Brendan’s intentions in Tir Anhrefnus. Though Brendan held the same power over the tar, Merovech had spent much more time with his abilities. Just because they both carried the same weapon didn’t mean they could wield it with equal skill.

  Samson lied because he knew he was asking Brendan to risk his life for a future in which he was no better off. A future without the tar would be less chaotic, sure, but it would be no easier for Brendan to survive. If anything, a future without the tar was a future where Brendan was less powerful, where he’d been stripped of a weapon.

  “You lied to me,” Brendan said.

  “I did what I had to do. If the cost of defeating Merovech is a lie to a selfish boy, it is one I am glad to pay.”

  Krystal put a hand on Brendan’s mod. “Don’t you want to live in a world without tar?” she asked. “Don’t back out of this just because you feel manipulated.”

  Brendan looked at Krystal. The woman who’d been his first friend held his gaze, pleading with her eyes. Here was the woman who’d done more than taken care of him. Even when Brendan reduced her to a means to an end, she cared about him. She never stopped caring about him.

  “Please, Brendan,” she said.

  “There’s no feel to it,” Brendan said. “I was manipulated. Our two-thousand-year-old tour guide knew he needed to sell me on something crazy, so he waited until the last minute to spring the news on me. If I’d read the Book of Memory cover to cover before we left Newhaven, he still would’ve waited until this exact moment to tell me everything. He needed me far from home. He wanted me backed into a corner. Isn’t that right, Samson?”

  But Samson didn’t respond. Brendan didn’t push him. Krystal let go of his mod, and the car rolled on in silence.

  4

  They pulled off the crumbling highway later that evening. Brendan thought they were preparing to stop for the night until Samson put the car in park and powered it down. The old wizard let out a heavy sigh and said, “We’ve made it.”

  “Are you sure?” Krystal asked, and Brendan didn’t blame her. To call the place where they’d stopped a city would be overstating it. The highway led past a row of buildings, where a lone stoplight hung, flashing red lights in every direction. And yet, there it was. Samson pointed to a dusty billboard at the edge of town, its fading paint saying Welcome to Black Falls.

  Judging from the number of buildings—even those that crumbled and fell into disuse—Black Falls had been small long before the tar reduced the planet to a husk. Now it was a ghost town.

  But Samson wasn’t bothered by the lack of activity. He got out of the car and walked purposefully toward an old gas station with a sign in peeling paint declaring it LOU’S FUEL & FIX.

  Brendan’s boots crunched on cracked earth as he chased after Samson. He heard Krystal’s footsteps, lighter and jogging, as she came up behind him. She reached his side and slowed, allowing Samson to continue far ahead. Krystal clearly thought it best to give the wizard his space, and Brendan couldn’t say he disagreed. Even if Ansel regained some mental stability since trapping Merovech in Tir Anhrefnus and blocking his power over the tar, the chances of a full recovery were slim. It wouldn’t be easy for Samson to see his friend in such a state.

  Did Samson blame himself for Ansel’s condition? Did he stay up at night, wondering what might have been had he been powerful enough to share the psychic load with his companion? Brendan couldn’t imagine Samson experiencing any emotion at all, but there was a chance his current demeanor had a lot to do with Ansel’s last entry in the Book of Memory.

  Samson came to the front doors of the gas station, pulled the page of notes Myra had scribbled for him from his back pocket, and went inside.

  Krystal turned to Brendan. “Some wizard hideout, huh?”

  Brendan chuckled humorlessly.

  The old building’s interior was as run down and empty as its exterior. Old shelves lay on the floor, toppled ages ago and caked with grime. The setting sun streamed through the windows in beams of highlighted dust that almost looked solid enough to grab. A miasma of dirt and mold hung in the air.

  Samson stopped to read Myra’s notes after they entered Lou’s Fuel and Fix. Eventually, he nodded and said, “Okay.”

  He turned to the counter where there a clerk once waited behind a cash register. His back to Brendan and Krystal, Samson raised a hand, and the floor rumbled. Tiles dropped and shifted like massive blocks. White and gray squares transformed into stairs, leading deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the earth.

  What truly held Brendan’s attention, though, was the dust.

  The thick, gray layer didn’t move at all as the floor rearranged itself. It hovered in midair, a solid plane over the new passageway into the ground, as if it hadn’t been resting on the ground at all. Brendan turned back to the gas station’s entrance. No footprints marked their short trip inside. Even as Brendan shuffled his feet, the dust seemed only to rearrange into its previous, untouched state. If someone came into Lou’s Fuel and Fix immediately after they all descended the newly formed stairs, they would find no trace of the three travelers—and no trail to follow.

  “Your buddy really didn’t want visitors, did he?” Brendan said.

  “If you had endured all he had, would you?”

  And then Samson turned back and started down the staircase, passing through the floating layer of dust. It parted as he passed through and reformed behind him as if it had never been disturbed.

  5

  As he passed through the floating layer of dust, Brendan clenched his mouth and closed his eyes like he was plunging under a lake’s surface, but he didn’t feel a thing. It was as if the stuff parted, ever so subtly, and regained its original form once he’d crossed it.

  At the foot of the staircase, they found packed dirt beneath their feet. Another deep rumbling filled the air, and the stairs rose behind them, cutting off the light filtering from the gas station above. The hazy window to the world above grew smaller and smaller, turning to a sliver of yellow before disappearing completely.

  Cold darkness swallowed them, but only for a moment.

  Warm, dancing light shone around the party. Four torches, one at each corner of this new space, caught fire. Whether it happened on some command from Samson or by whatever force kept the dust from showing their footprints, Brendan wasn’t sure.<
br />
  They were in a cellar now. The tiny, cramped space had little decoration. Empty shelves lined the walls, once likely stocked with extra food and supplies.

  Samson walked to one end of the cellar, standing between two of the torches. He lifted a hand to the wall, pressing his palm into its torchlight-gilded surface.

  And then, as the floor had done moments ago, the wall descended.

  Blinding, golden light filtered around fresh cracks, filling the cellar with more brightness as the wall disappeared. Samson turned back to Brendan and Krystal. The shine consumed his body.

  “Do you trust me?” asked Samson’s silhouette before stepping into the light.

  In an instant, the light swallowed Samson. His dark outline dropped out of sight as if the wall had opened to a cliff and Samson had stepped into oblivion, now plunging into a shining abyss. Brendan rushed forward, holding an arm over his face to shield his eyes. Samson might have only stood inches away, but it was too bright to see him.

  Brendan had thought little about whether he trusted Samson, but at this point, he had no choice. His options were finding another way out of the cellar, or following Samson through the glowing hole in the wall. He turned back to Krystal, flashed her a half-smile she couldn’t see, and stepped into the light.

  But his foot found no purchase.

  His leg disappeared into the glow, and where his boot should have met solid earth, there was nothing. He plunged forward, like a man who’d come to a staircase earlier than expected. He swung his arms in a useless effort to regain his balance, even trying to grab the edges of the wall, as he tumbled into the light.

  And then, as suddenly as he’d lost it, Brendan found solid ground.