Tar

by Taylor Hohulin

  And Ansel stood to one side.

  Still alive.

  Who had Brendan infected?

  Slowly, Brendan’s eyes traced the tar across the streets of Black Falls to his victim. He stood still, arms outstretched with swollen black veins and darkened eyes. Long, gray hair hung limp around his shoulders.

  Samson.

  Somehow, Samson had pulled himself from the rubble, run to where Ansel stood, and jumped in front of Brendan’s tentacles just in time to save his old friend.

  Stunned, Brendan ripped the tar out of Samson’s system.

  Samson’s skin sagged as the last of the tentacles left him. He swayed momentarily, a tired old man with too much skin. The blackness faded from his eyes, but no spark of life shone in its place. Samson was gone.

  As if to prove the point, he collapsed on the street like a rag doll.

  A gut-wrenching sob rose from behind Ansel, and Krystal raced to Samson’s side. She cradled his head in her arms, and she looked up at Brendan. Tears swam in her eyes. Her mouth stretched and contorted in a grimace of sorrow.

  “You monster!” she screamed, loud enough to shred her vocal cords. “You killed him! You killed Samson, you monster!”

  14

  Brendan staggered backward, shaken by what he’d done. For a moment, his mind cleared. Gone was the insatiable hunger for power. Gone was the burning need to eliminate anyone in his way. Gone was the parade of thoughts forced on him by the tar.

  And in that hollow pit came clarity and regret.

  Brendan gaped at the hollowed-out form of Samson. His eyes, no longer blackened by the tar, stared blankly at the sky, and his mouth hung slack. For the first time since Brendan had known him, he looked old and tired. He’d made it to the end of his journey and come so close to success, only to die at the hands of the one person he’d hoped would help him succeed.

  Emptiness blossomed in Brendan’s chest, though he didn’t understand it at first. Not once in their entire relationship did Brendan consider Samson a friend, but he was an ally, and that was as close as anyone in Brendan’s life got. Even Krystal was more ally than friend. Maybe she thought more highly of Brendan, but if he ever had to choose between saving Krystal or himself, he had no doubt he’d choose his own safety.

  That wasn’t friendship.

  All his life, Brendan had believed the lie that he needed to live this way in order to survive. He’d told himself that if he wanted safety, he couldn’t allow himself to get close to anyone. But he’d never stopped to ask whether it was worth it to trade connection for safety. As he stood on an abandoned street corner, dripping with tar and surrounded by allies who weren’t friends, he saw the emptiness of his trade.

  “It’s ready!”

  The sound of Ansel’s voice jarred Brendan out of his thoughts. The old man had spent so long conjuring his tryfnium spear that, though Brendan’s attention had been focused on stopping him, he’d begun to think of Ansel as little more than a statue or some other decoration.

  But now Ansel stood with clear eyes locked on Brendan’s monstrous form. Blood ran from both nostrils, mottling in his beard and painting a thick, red line down his chin. He held his arms out, muscles flexing and veins trembling.

  The spear hovered over his head, a column of white twenty feet long and three feet across. It came to a gleaming point at the end facing Brendan, though something told him that much was unnecessary. If Ansel bludgeoned the heart of Tir Anhrefnus with something that size, it would have done the trick.

  “Free yourself from the blight,” Ansel said, his voice strained. “I cannot hold this weapon long. I will drive it into the heart of Tir Anhrefnus one way or another, but I am giving you a chance now to remove the parasite from your body. Please. I do not wish to kill you.”

  Brendan could remove the heart of Tir Anhrefnus from his body. He knew that instinctively. He also knew it would be hard, and that it would cost him dearly. Not only would he lose his power over the tar, but he’d lose countless memories. He couldn’t predict what would remain and what would burn away. He’d used a great deal of power since letting the heart of Tir Anhrefnus inside him. He knew, deep in his bones, that the only reason his mind remained untouched was because all those memories were stored in the tar, just as Merovech’s had been.

  “Decide, before I decide for you!” called Ansel.

  Brendan looked at the old wizard, his expression blank. Though Ansel tried to give the appearance of a warrior ready to strike, Brendan could tell he wasn’t ready for a fight. Samson had been the warrior, and he was dead.

  “Brendan, please!” This shrieking plea came from Krystal. Her cheeks shone with tears, and she rocked back and forth with Samson’s head in her lap.

  With a jolt, Brendan understood. Krystal was afraid, but not for her safety. The tears on her cheeks were for Samson. They were for a planet covered in tar. But more than anything, Krystal’s tears were for Brendan. To Brendan, she might only be an ally, but Krystal cared about him. To see him covered in tar and turning into a monster ripped her heart in two, even more than the knowledge that her world was one decision away from becoming just as ruined and empty as Tir Anhrefnus.

  As the realization rushed through him and seeped into the marrow of his bones, Brendan’s heart broke, too. With sudden clarity, he realized he didn’t want power. He wanted a future where he could care for Krystal as much as she cared for him.

  And so he reached inside himself with those unseen hands, and he took hold of the heart of Tir Anhrefnus. As he pulled, his mind filled with thoughts he knew were not his own. The tar clearly put them there as an act of self-defense, but that made them no less compelling.

  Gaps will fill my mind. I will forget even myself. Is that what I want?

  The thoughts raced faster by the second, and then a scream joined them. Ansel had fallen to his knees, still holding the tryfnium spear aloft. Though he wasn’t touching it, his entire body buckled under its weight.

  I will be unable to protect myself.

  The blackness poured out of Brendan’s mouth, forming a massive black cloud above him. Flecks of tar rose from his shoulders, his back, his legs, to join the inky mass.

  What is left of this world? What is worth protecting?

  Brendan’s feet—his human feet—touched the ground for the first time since he’d wrapped himself in the giant body of tar.

  How do I expect to live where so little civilization remains?

  The cloud of tar was massive now, plunging all of Black Falls into the dead of night. As the tar coalesced in the air, Ansel trembled. The man had said he would kill Brendan if he needed to, but clearly he hadn’t meant it. He would wait until every ounce of tar left Brendan’s body, even if it killed him.

  I will never know this power again.

  With one last herculean effort, Brendan ripped the last of the tar out of his body. Now it all hovered overhead, straining against Brendan’s substantial power. Tendrils whipped at its sides, but Brendan pushed them back.

  I am nothing without this.

  Now was the time. Both Brendan’s and Ansel’s power stretched to their limits. If they didn’t destroy the heart now, they never would.

  So he screamed, “DO IT!”

  And Ansel did.

  15

  The spear sailed over the streets of Black Falls, still spinning as it traveled toward the cloud of tar. It found its mark, ripping through the center of the floating black, and the whole mass exploded like a swollen dead animal.

  Brendan felt the impact, though he couldn’t put the sensation into words. It should have been pain, but it wasn’t. It should have been relief, but it wasn’t. It was a deep, resonating jolt that shook the very core of his being.

  Numb, he lay on the concrete.

  16

  The tryfnium spear tore a hole through the tar and crashed through a building, forgotten as Ansel, Brendan, and Krystal focused
all of their attention on the floating apparition.

  Slowly, the hole in the tar grew wider. The tryfnium’s poison worked its way through, creating smaller lines of destruction that branched out like black veins in victims of the tar.

  More tar burned away, and Brendan watched with a sense of wonder and loss. It was happening. It was really happening. After all this time, they’d dragged the heart of Tir Anhrefnus into their world, and they’d destroyed it.

  As the tar overhead continued to burn, Brendan rolled his head to one side in time to see a patch of tar that had fallen off his body. It shuddered, compressed, and dissolved into nothing, all without a sound.

  Merovech had been telling the truth. The beating heart of Tir Anhrefnus gave life to every speck of tar in the world. Brendan couldn’t verify this, but something told him black patches all over the planet were writhing the same dance of death he’d just witnessed.

  Only a few seconds later, a great heaviness came over him, and he realized the cloud of tar had disintegrated.

  They’d done it.

  In an instant, they’d changed the world.

  And Brendan was exhausted.

  He let himself sink into a new kind of blackness.

  17

  Brendan awoke next to a window. Outside, the world raced by.

  To his right sat an old man. He’d had a nosebleed or something, because a trail of pink dyed the middle of his beard.

  In a seat in front of him, a woman held onto a steering wheel. Long, black dreadlocks with ice blue streaks hung around her face, and in the mirror above her head, Brendan saw a smattering of freckles on smooth, dark skin.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  A rush of images paraded through his mind, too strange to be possible. He glanced at the old man, who appeared as befuddled as Brendan.

  “We’re going home,” said the woman. “If the Tin Can Man’s batteries last that long.”

  Brendan didn’t understand what the woman meant by the Tin Can Man, but he understood home.

  And that sounded nice.

  18

  They drove for three days, stopping only a couple times for Krystal to stretch her legs or sleep.

  That was her name, the woman driving the car. She’d spent their first stop looking for a book, as if it had a piece of information she was incapable of giving herself. Eventually, she found it tucked under a seat. She closed her eyes with relief and said, “Thank goodness. I was afraid Samson left it behind when the castle fell apart.”

  Brendan asked who Samson was, and Krystal’s eyes shone with tears.

  19

  As they drove, Krystal told the story of what had happened the last few days. Brendan couldn’t prove the story true or false, though a few of the experiences she described matched the images that flashed through his mind from time to time.

  Brendan chose to believe her. He didn’t have many other options.

  It was a nice enough story. They’d won, after all.

  From the Book of Memory

  I hope it’s okay that I’m writing in here. I guess there aren’t a whole lot of people left who would care what happens to this thing, but still.

  Even if there was enough of Ansel’s mind left for him to get mad at me, I’d find a way to write in here. Because I want you to read this, Brendan. I want you to know what happened that day in Black Falls, even if it’s for just a moment before that memory slips away with all the rest.

  The fact is you were hero. You weren’t a perfect one for sure, but what heroes are?

  I want you to know that, Brendan Cobb. You were a hero. You are a hero.

  I wanted to hate you, you know. And maybe I did, for a little while. For the longest time, I couldn’t look at you without also seeing Samson’s dead body on the pavement. Some days I can imagine the pressure of his head on my lap so clearly it feels like he’s still here.

  But I couldn’t go on hating you. It wasn’t you who killed Samson. It was the tar. And then, when the chips were down, you let us kill the tar. You gave up all that power so the rest of the world could be safe.

  And now the tar is gone. Like, really gone. We’ve been in Newhaven for a week now, and I haven’t seen any yet. It was hard to believe at first, but now it really feels like it’s true. I’ve run into a few survivors, and everyone is starting to hope again. Some of them are even talking about rebuilding society. We’ve got a long way to go, but it feels so good to hope again.

  Let me say it again. You’re a hero, Brendan Cobb. All this goodness is because of you.

  So thank you. Thank you for agreeing to go with Samson when he found you here in Newhaven. Thank you for not letting the tar do to you what it did to Merovech. And thank you for giving up so much to save us.

  I wish there was enough left of your mind that you could really appreciate what I’m writing in here. I really do. I’m going to make you read this every day, if that’s what it takes. Who knows? Maybe someday you’ll get your mind back and everything you read in here will stick.

  Okay. Once more, with feeling, in case you’ve already forgotten.

  You’re a hero, Brendan Cobb.

  Your friend,

  Krystal

  Author’s Note

  I know this is the most cliché thing ever to say at the end of a book, but thank you so much for taking the time to read Tar. This weird story with wizards and monsters and mods means a lot to me, and that you would stick with me to the very last sentence is really special.

  If you reached that last sentence, and you wanted more—especially more about Alicia and Myra and the mysterious god they serve—I’d like to shamelessly point you to my book The Marian. It’s the first book of a trilogy that prominently features the Priesthood those two belong to. You’ll find links to all of my books here.

  There are a handful of people who read this book before it reached the state it’s in now, and I need to say a special thank you to them. It’s one thing to read a weird book from an indie author, but quite another to read an unfinished book from that same author, before all the typos and inconsistencies have been ironed out.

  So I want to say a HUGE thank you to Amanda and Sharon for reading an early draft of Tar cover-to-cover, and also to my whole critique group for looking at a good pile of unfinished chapters. There were some weird things that slipped through the cracks, and you all were willing to suffer through them so I could end up with an even better final product.

  So to all of you—thank you.

  About Taylor Hohulin

  Taylor is a radio personality by early morning, an indie author by afternoon, and asleep by sundown. He lives in West Des Moines, Iowa, with his wife, where they are owned by a dog and a cat. He loves Oreos. A lot.

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  Did you love Tar? Then you should read The Marian by Taylor Hohulin!

  Ethan Denby doesn't know how he got on the Marian. He just woke up one day inside the body of its captain.The Marian is unlike any ship Ethan has ever seen. It crawls on long, metal legs over dunes of salt in search of water, despite laws granting exclusive harvesting rights to a corrupt organization known as HydroSystems Worldwide.HydroSystems is closing in, tensions are mounting aboard the Marian, and on top of all that, Ethan is beginning to think the dreams he's been having aren't completely harmless. If he doesn't get home soon, Ethan could die inside someone else's body in this wasteland of a world. The only way back seems to be through the Cloud, but how can he convince the crew to take him there when it means confronting a danger
ous cult and venturing into a place where the very fabric of reality has worn thin?The Marian is a wild, post-apocalyptic pirate adventure, equal parts Pirates of the Caribbean and Mad Max. It is the first book in The Marian Trilogy.

  Read more at Taylor Hohulin’s site.

  Also by Taylor Hohulin

  The Marian

  The Marian

  The Hunted

  The Cloud

  Standalone

  Alpha

  Polaroid

  The Box Is Protection Not Prison

  Tar

  Your Best Apocalypse Now (Coming Soon)

  Watch for more at Taylor Hohulin’s site.

  About the Author

  Taylor is a radio personality by morning, a science fiction author by afternoon, and asleep by 9:30. His weaknesses include Oreos, his dog, and Sharknado movies.

  Read more at Taylor Hohulin’s site.