Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  “I could tell you stories that would,” Gene juts out her jaw, “scare you.”

  “Shut up, Fernanda. He’s gone and you act like Keanu Reeves.”

  Samuel, Gene, and Atlas reach the outskirts’ first tree. Atlas closes his eyes and, when he opens them, his feet, drenched in fading light, press soil harder, fresher. Modest tree trunks replace the ashen opening behind, new moonlight ahead through rustling twigs that tickle their scalps. Gene breathes clean air and pulls on Atlas’s wrists and the twine around them. She unties the knot.

  Atlas’s heart beats to the tempo of moth’s wings. He shivers.

  Gene tosses the twine and says, “You’re going to . . .”

  “What?” he whispers.

  “You’re . . .”

  Atlas’s ears ring and vision grays. “I can’t hear—”

  He falls. His back hits the dirt and his eyes show him jagged limbs spinning into the sky and overhanging webs. Trees’ sage swirls till it’s fuchsia. He drops through a passageway that launches him back to Sidera, churning, turning, burning; but that can’t be. He would have felt the pull. Instead, numbness swings and pulses and skirts along hands’ frigidity, fingers’ tingling, abdomen’s searing. Sweat drips from his forehead and soaks his soaked shirt. He gasps between seconds of lung’s petrification.

  “—going into shock. What do we do?”

  “I’m not doing anything. Honey, my part of the deal was getting you in and out of Mordor. Nursing our pint-sized Titan was not in the fine print.”

  Something touches his shoulder. “Oh, dear heaven. He’s white. So much blood—” Gene’s voice quavers. “Oh, dear heaven.”

  Atlas forces his eyes down. They focus on two lumps of dark red holding his gut together—his brows tense—and they’re his hands.

  “No deals.” Her voice turns from Atlas. “No shallow, stupid deals or snarky comments that just blah—pour out of that mouth way too unnaturally naturally and no dirty looks or name-calling, lying, cheating, or standing there with snotty mannequin pose. Save the life you crippled or, so help me, I’ll make sure you meet him on the other side.”

  Blackness seeps into Atlas’s view. His peripheral vision withdraws.

  “Get off your high horse and move.”

  A figure crouches at the fringe of periphery’s blackness and Atlas budges his head toward it—Samuel, who pushes up his own sleeves. Samuel scans Atlas’s gash, then grips the shirt framing it, yanks, and widens the tear away from blood’s source. He opens a palm to his gut. Atlas pants and his wind-whipped flag of a heart jars metallic tinges up his tongue and bass drums through his head. Though his consciousness shoots far from his body and simultaneously delves worlds deeper within, his thoughts clutch the present. Samuel lights his hand, flames tapering off it, heat hovering over Atlas’s severed skin. Atlas digs his fingers into dirt clung to his stained palms and knows: the next jump in his pulse isn’t from blood loss.

  Samuel presses his hand to Atlas’s wound. Feeling swoops back in full. Atlas cries out. Fire gouges his gouge and weaves through his bones—sears his every vein and nerve and steals his every thought. Samuel moves his hand upward, up toward Atlas’s chest. Then it stops. Dabbing the gash with a cleaner section of Atlas’s shirt, Samuel leans back and extinguishes his hand. He stands up straight. The wetness ebbs.

  For the last time, Atlas kicks his heels into the trenches they hollowed and then lets them fall slumped, straight. He spits the groan from his throat shudder by shudder until breath deepens and Gene crouches by him next.

  She slips her cardigan off her shoulders and wraps it around Atlas’s injury, slides it under his back. He cringes, but she knots the fabric at his side, withdraws; and the urge to scream regresses.

  “Should I help him up?” she asks. “What do I do?”

  Samuel raises his hands and, grinning a scowl, shakes them, burns his scowl deeper, claps combatively near Gene’s nose. Then coughs out the words puffing his cheeks.

  “What’s this?” Samuel slingshots his hand upward. “What do I do? What do we do? No. I don’t like you or the other one.”

  He folds his arms, and Gene bites her lip.

  She looks at Atlas, grimaces from his soldered middle, and touches his hand. She curves her fingers around his knuckles. He flinches. He eyes his hand and hers and crumples his forehead.

  She whispers, “It’s going to be okay. You’re—it will be okay.”

  Atlas opens his mouth. His body doesn’t obey his mind so Gene reads both.

  “I don’t know why or how I came,” she says. “One second, I literally crash into you on the street. The next, you save me from barbequed me. Then there’s talk about crazy alien stuff and the sound of a gunshot and I look out my window to see you get hit in the head by that same guy who almost made us barbeque us. So I flipped out for hours, I think, tripped on a decorative pinecone, threw my phone into the bathroom, picked it up, dropped it in the toilet, and thought better of calling 9-1-1 because toilet phone is obviously and most certainly an omen.

  “Then I grabbed the gun under my bed and repented of the sins I was about to commit and ran through the woods for too long when I saw this man,” Gene draws a breath and motions behind her, “lounging in the dirt and drinking out of a flask like the world’s ending. I did the next logical thing and threatened him and he brought me here. At that point, I knew I wasn’t me anymore. I was insane. I chose to embrace it.”

  Atlas chokes. “I’m sorry.”

  Gene’s eyebrows tense. “Why in the world are you apologizing?”

  He grinds his teeth. Squeezing his eyelids closed, Atlas holds his arms to his stomach and swallows a moan.

  “He’s apologizing because Grandma left the TV on the Lifetime channel and lost the remote,” Samuel says. “I’m gonna go soak myself in gasoline. Thanks for the fun times.”

  Gene stands and aims her weapon at Samuel. “I don’t know the way out and Atlas needs a hospital. Show me the way.”

  “Be careful flailing Morgan around or you might find yourself with a big ego there, blondie.”

  “My name is Gene Walker.”

  Wide-eyed, Samuel stares at her. He erupts in laughter.

  “Why does everyone keep doing that?” Gene yells.

  “Gene Walker. Gene Walker. Is walking jeans your life’s calling or just a passionate hobby? Or, like, was your mom a tailor and dad a speed walker and they had pll-aans for you, baby better-be-textile-enthused?”

  Gene lowers her voice. “My full name’s Genesis. It’s not that funny.”

  “I’m going to help you, Gene Walker—”

  “Stop saying my name like that.”

  “—but only because messing up Eden’s day makes me giddy and I plan on assimilating your soul when your back is turned.”

  “Wait, what—”

  “Assimilating. You know, like adapting to a foreign culture and its customs.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Samuel smirks and Gene gasps.

  “No,” she waves her handgun at him, “that’s not what you meant at all.”

  “Two smart ones.” Samuel glances between Gene and Atlas. “Natural selection didn’t select you.”

  Stepping toward him, Samuel bends down and grips Atlas’s arm. He yanks him onto his feet. The scream that follows bursts louder than all three gunshots his eardrums have endured in the past day.

  Samuel flicks his finger at Atlas’s forehead. “Indoor voice, Attie.”

  Wincing, Atlas closes his mouth. Gene’s jaw drops. She digs her 9mm’s tip into Samuel’s back and, after a yelp, he walks onward. She grips Atlas’s far sleeve, her arm under his closer shoulder; they tail Samuel.

  Atlas hangs his head. He presses his heel to roll after his toes to repeat within cycles that scuff dust to cloud labor cycles from memory and memory from mind. His body reacts on instinctual mechanics that drift him into some unliving, undying, undead limbo with two sets of feet stroking distortions around his own, two voices speaking words that make no
sense. For the fourth time this day, he contemplates afterliving.

  Samuel turns and shouts, “Walk your denim here. Life’s this way.”

  VII

  Sun and Moon

  Bump. Jerk. Wince.

  Atlas bobs up and down, slides left and right, grasps his gut. He lies on his back, his feet propped against the vehicle’s door, legs bent, head on the mound of the right seat. The fabric feels smooth on his neck’s nape but the cushioning, far from the comfort of Gene’s couch, digs into his shoulder blades. It’s an ache accentuated threefold by his gash and fivefold by the bumps in the road. Gene steps on the gas and speeds down some moonlit street, overhanging branches and their shadows brushing her rear windshield.

  He listens for her breathing. Though it’s not at a resting rate, it’s slower than his. He attempts to match his breaths to hers and watch night sky’s stationary curtain beyond their mobile machine. He remembers why he’s in Gene’s vehicle.

  “Samuel.” Atlas’s heart jolts and lips quiver. “Where—where—”

  “He’s gone, remember?” Gene glances at the back seat. “He ran off into the forest after we got to the apartments.”

  He remembers. Why did Gene allow Samuel to escape without an injury similar to Eden’s? Why is an adolescent dead and Atlas isn’t? “Why—”

  “Shush.” Gene grips the steering wheel and, with her right hand, flicks her fingers at Atlas. “Rest. We can talk after you’re at the hospital.”

  “Bu—”

  “No,” she exhales, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean ‘shush’ so much as—” Gene presses her lips together. “I meant be quiet because I’m having sort of a little, tiny, you know, small, insignificant,” she shrugs, “nervous breakdown.”

  Atlas opens his mouth.

  “Not a big deal. Seriously. Forget about it. I can still drive okay—not shaking that badly.”

  He cringes.

  “Wow, sorry. That just sounded like sympathy bait,” she blubbers a chuckle and points at him, “but it’s not. Because I don’t want you to talk. Don’t move. Don’t speak.”

  He stares at the ceiling.

  Gene makes a face. “Sorry. That was controlling.”

  “Gene,” Atlas grips the seat’s headrest and pulls himself up by it, grinding his teeth, “cease this incoherency.” He inhales. “I am feeling adequate.”

  Her breathing accelerating with her vehicle, she glances at him. “You need to lie down. You’ll smudge your Neosporin so bad.”

  “I heal quickly.”

  “Yeah.” She chokes on her laugh. “Yep. Mmhmm. I know.”

  Atlas leans into his seat and peeks under his makeshift bandage. “And I believe the injury was shallow, however lengthy. Production of plasma, cells, tranimae, and other sustaining organic matter have begun to—” he curbs his lungs, softens his movement, “begun to reproduce substantially. I can feel it.”

  “Tranimae?” Gene’s eyes widen. Her foot twitches and car jolts; Atlas groans. “You can feel it? Feel what? You can feel, like, your,” she whispers, “insides?”

  “I am experiencing much less vertigo.”

  “You can feel your insides.”

  “Though I’d prefer if you operate your vehicle with more care.”

  Gene squeezes the steering wheel until her fingers whiten. “Nothing weird about this day. Hey, Dad, guess what I did today?” She tilts her head. “Do you know what tranimae is? Well, I’ll tell you. First, score yourself a shallow, however lengthy, stomach gouge.”

  “Are you well?”

  “Am I?” She grins. “Are you? Nope, never mind. Don’t talk. No more talking.”

  Atlas looks out the window and holds as still as he’s able. The trees blend with the black sky and road and angular shadows blinking every couple seconds between streetlamps. His shiver plunges pain through his gut. What he sees is all he knows and the darkness reminds him it’s not much.

  Two or three buildings whoosh by his window, scenery’s remainder framed behind uniform cords hung from symmetrical, spaced wooden posts upon posts that claw the sky. Atlas grimaces at each streetlamp’s passing. His eyes can’t adjust to the contrast, though the tandem bulbs, dim if against daylight, don’t narrow Gene’s eyes.

  “Great financial recession,” she yells.

  Atlas jumps.

  Gene leans into the wheel and lowers her voice. “I shot a woman.”

  “ ‘Woman’ may not be the accurate term.”

  Jaw dropping, she twists to face Atlas in the back. “I shot a man?”

  “No,” he squints at the flash of a lamp reflected on his window, squints through the trees, “no, I don’t believe—”

  A flare balloons above deciduous crowns, one silver and sleek, bluer, more defined than streetlamps. The moon. Atlas freezes into stone for the first successful time this evening. It’s large. Larger than he supposed. Radiant.

  He’s never seen the moon before. Not out of a textbook, not like this.

  “Atlas?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What is going on? Who did I shoot? What did I really save you from?”

  The painted circle, strikingly round and vivid, emits a subtle, hazed ring half a hemisphere wide, stretching beyond the tips of blurred sycamores. Atlas stares without discomfort. So unlike the sun. Intricate shapes carve imagination into the moon’s canvas.

  “What’s out there?” Gene asks. “What’s outside my life?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “Atlas.” She breathes in, steadies her hands, and slows her vehicle. “What are you?”

  A black shadow shoots across the moon. Atlas’s heart pauses. He angles toward the car door and forces his pupils’ adjustment. Another shadow trails after the first, eclipsing the circle’s glow for a millisecond, one millisecond’s indication. A third follows. It flaps its wings.

  Then he hears it: the collective croak.

  “Gene, I think it wise to steer your vehicle off this road,” Atlas says.

  “I’m going to pretend I heard that, like you did with me. Mmhmm. Yeah, okay.”

  He turns to Gene and sharpens tone. “Steer off this road.”

  She frowns. “No way. I’m getting you to a doctor, whether you answer my questions or not.”

  Fifty black birds, then eighty—three hundred join the first few, and the cloudless sky squirms and writhes its feathered tarp until overcast. They swing in and out of branches, bark and caw, thrash and glide. Watch Atlas’s eyes watching them back. A thousand ravens flock together, flying with the direction of Gene’s car. They swoop downward.

  “Move the vehicle,” Atlas grips his seat and sears his stare into Gene’s rearview mirror, “now.”

  “You’re hurt and your judgment is clouded. Let’s just calm—”

  “TURN.”

  Gene throws her hands right and the sedan jerks with it. Atlas slides from the window, toppling onto his elbow. Concentrated into a dense point, the ravens oscillate taillights’ orange and graze the trunk with their talons as they rush past the vehicle’s rear fender; they miss their target by centimeters. Gene drives down another empty road and half the birds follow her, the other half falling slaves to their momentum over the previous path.

  Atlas sits up and looks out the rear windshield. The ravens’ mass engulfs the street from tree to tree, obscured power line to power line. They’re not far behind.

  “Drive faster,” Atlas says.

  Gene looks at her side mirror, her expression vacant, eyelids drooped, stare too long glued to the reflected ravens.

  “More quickly, Gene.” Atlas grasps his knees. “Command your vehicle to proceed more quickly.”

  She lifts her chin a centimeter. “I should make a list of these things.”

  “Forward with haste.”

  “Bet it’d break some kind of record.”

  The leading ravens brush the vehicle’s frame with their wings. The rest close in on the first. Twitching black clouds caw a cacophony that overwhelms engine’s hum, wheels’ skid, an
d raises Atlas’s and Gene’s voices to strain and crack.

  “Gene, these are not average birds—”

  “Really?”

  “—they’re the servants of the Accenda and, most plausibly,” Atlas’s brows tense, “sent by the only being who knows of our unpermitted escape and cares enough to pursue us. Eden survived.”

  “Eden—she’s the non-woman I,” Gene shrinks into herself, “shot?”

  “Yes. Turn here.” He points at a narrower road on their left.

  She veers her car onto the pathway hardly wide enough for two lanes. She hyperventilates.

  “So those—” Gene pushes her foot down on the gas. “Those birds are unnaturally fast spies sent by the very-much-alive, white-haired non-woman that lives in another dimension?”

  “Yes.” Atlas points again. “Turn.”

  She turns onto a road more cramped than the last, branches scraping their roof. Leaves sift the ravens; their obsidian crooks of beaks delve deep into canopies beneath the reach of moonlight, beyond any logical navigation. Flora’s rustling and fauna’s beating merge into one towering, overpopulated insect nest fidgeting across Atlas’s window. His blinks synchronize with the infrequent glint of moonbeams. He whips his head toward every shift in shadow.

  “Adding it to the list.” Gene nods. “Remind me.”

  Atlas flings his finger to a dirt path, paved by tire tracks, ending in a cusp where the forest melds. “There. Drive in as far as you’re able and put your vehicle to rest.”

  She does. Twigs scrape four doors and roof and bumper until Gene cranks off her headlights and plants her brake-foot. Thicket canopies halt into distinction but the storm above rages on, a mass of palpitating ebony scrambling sky where basked leafy windows. Hundreds of carnivorous raptors batter chunks of foliage into their wind and wake as they soar over Gene’s stopped vehicle. Through heart booms, the caws disperse and rustles settle. The engine creaks its last sigh, and Atlas’s and Gene’s breathing succeed it, fill the interior to the point of suffocation and brim toward the exterior bound by branches. Trees morph into the night and release their shape to impenetrable walls of black, near enough to touch, to taste. Seconds passing become minutes. They don’t speak or move as they listen to the woods murmur for, what Atlas swears to be, an hour.