Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn

by J. J. Malchus

  “Where is Gene?”

  “She took her,” Samuel says.

  “Why?” Atlas coughs on a crack in his voice. His vision spins with his head, with his body, with each draining, paling sway against will. “There’s no rea—why would she—”

  “Took the coin too.”

  Atlas’s gut catches up. It churns.

  Limp slight, Samuel runs to the nearest body, the masked Accend’s, and crouches, slides his hand into his suit jacket. Samuel pulls out a decorated knife much like his own, the one used to open an Elisium portal. He slips it into his cropped trench.

  “Why?” Atlas says.

  “Because that’s what Eden does.” Samuel brushes off his lapel. “Now, are we going to keep standing here, glancing about like stoned meerkats, or are we going to take back what belongs to us?”

  “For the love,” Atlas faces Samuel, “of the Absolute. I don’t care about the horrid coin.”

  “No, Miss America. Are we going to get Gene?”

  Atlas looks him in the eye.

  “Then we better get out of here.” Samuel jerks his head toward a decelerating vehicle—a truck several meters down their road: two walkers.

  Stepping as far as he can from the tattooed Accend, Atlas cringes under vision’s periphery that bakes into memory a glimpse of stained fingers facedown, sprawled out, and then hops with Samuel into Gene’s sedan. Samuel turns the keys hastily left in the ignition. They spin out of dirt and, tires screeching, down the road from the other vehicle. Two walkers, four bodies, blaring images of seconds past hang behind Atlas’s eyelids; he and Samuel don’t look back.

  “How will we reach them?” Atlas stares at his wet sleeve. “Where are they?”

  “They’re headed for Elisium. Wouldn’t go anywhere else.”

  “How do we get there?”

  Samuel slips his thumb and forefinger into his jacket and uncovers the hilt of the Accend blade.

  “That will get us there how?”

  “That, Furious George,” he tucks the knife away, “is a key. Boy, is it good to have access to Elisium again.”

  “You hadn’t access already?” Atlas says.

  “Eden took my key before I came out here. When I say she banished me, I mean that literally.”

  Samuel veers the sedan onto a new road and steps on the gas. The accelerometer’s needle shoots to the right. Atlas digs sore fingers into sore knees but forgets to feel their tension, forgets beyond his window the trenches and mounds of blurred fields, of fields of fenced farmland.

  Atlas whispers, “Why—”

  “Gotta get lost—away from the highway.” Samuel glances through the windshield’s right and left. “The mountains are probably our best bet of getting away from self-righteous dirtbags in blue and finding a portal spot.”

  “Eden obtained the coin.” Atlas stares. “Why take her?”

  Samuel scoffs. “It’s funny. You’d never guess it but Eden is pretty levelheaded. Very strong-willed. When it comes to the mission—bringing down Sidera—she couldn’t give a crap about personal vendettas. The only thing personal is the mission, meaning progress or setbacks get her intoxicated or infuriated. She’s a general and war’s coming.”

  “Gene has no connection to the war.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You, Attie, have everything to do with the war. If Gene’s important to you, Eden takes her. It’s all politics.”

  The sedan hovers centimeters above a backward-launching road that spins and spins with its retrograde Earth at lightspeed. Engine’s rumbles and suspension’s quakes and the supersonic whir of beige grass enclose in a solid mass that contracts around Atlas’s ears and eyes and throat upon the exhale trapped motes from release—blood is important when he’s seen—

  “I am not,” Atlas claws his knees, “A PART OF THIS WAR.”

  Samuel twitches.

  “I don’t understand why I continue to be hauled back into it. I scarcely know what this ominous, not-yet-commenced revolution entails nor do I care to and Eden’s correct about everything, this journey, me—and so, I am uncommonly, agonizingly,” Atlas clenches a fist swirling a gust through the car, “done playing. No more involvement.”

  Hair blowing forward, Samuel glances at him through the corner of an eye. “You got involved when you escaped Sidera. Everyone wants a piece of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “The freedom to come and go.”

  “If I had known—”

  “Uh-uh.” Samuel gives Atlas a look. “You’re not allowed to say, ‘If I’d known what I was getting into, I wouldn’t have hightailed it outta that Sideran hell hole.’ No moping. Now,” he smooths down the wave of his hair, “I don’t know why exactly Eden took Denim or what or who Minkar is or why, minus the coin-getting, Eden was wasting time making us go to him and then on this stupid trip. But this is serious. Eden’s working with someone, getting inside info—she said ‘we.’ Clear as day. She’s levelheaded but impatient and if anything could slow that hot babe down, it’d be politics. Politics only a superior or equal could inflict on her. I don’t think that person’s Minkar but,” he shrugs, “I dunno.”

  Atlas’s brows tense. “You believe something changed?”

  “Mmm. Eden’s acting different.” Samuel pops his lips. “She despises working under others. This is more serious than I thought and I know you don’t want to hear this—” He inhales. “But Denim might’ve been the change.”

  “How?”

  “Pylon, our fun war portal, is opened through a special human, remember?”

  Atlas stares out the windshield. “Gene.”

  “Or Eden thinks so,” Samuel says. “A human hanging out with an Accend and Sideran is wacky and my voluptuous tramp’s been spying. Maybe she’s playing it safe. Trying not to do too much damage to you, me, and Denim because she thinks she needs us or, at least, you and Denim.”

  “Do you believe she’s verifying Gene’s identity by retrieving The Presage through the coin?”

  The vehicle jolts. Atlas looks out his window at a dirt path: pebbles and tire tracks. Bloodshot eyes on the meander ahead, Samuel powers up an incline between rising slopes, the sedan bobbing, rattling their bones. Dense pine forests take the distance and cliffs beyond that, skirts of luscious sage swaddling the golden rock that buttresses sky. Samuel accelerates, weaves in and out of thickets, wrings the steering wheel with both hands, a rarity. Dirt kicks up their ghost of a kilometer-long cloud trail. The vehicle groans.

  “That blade—” Atlas looks to Samuel’s jacket. “If it’s the key, where is the lock?”

  “Lock and key. Keys and locks and doors. That what all the youngins are jargoning ’bout these days?”

  “Where are we headed, Samuel?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Which means?”

  “Attie,” Samuel sighs, “do we ever know where we’re going? You don’t, Pocahontas. You take step after reckless step, eyes closed, and hope there’s not a cliff next time you bring your foot down.”

  Atlas frowns.

  Samuel glances to the right and narrows his eyes. “I mean, it’s better to feel where you’re going than to see it. I’m feeling for the heat.”

  “Such being an idiom for?”

  His swollen eyelids droop. “Some people—dainty people, nauseatingly fragile people follow the pretty wind to coins and things. And other people—much manlier people—follow a certain invisible heat to get where they need to go. In other words, my dimension.”

  “Samuel.” Atlas purses his lips and lifts a finger. “Are you—”

  Samuel scowls.

  “Are you one of the second group?”

  “Another question and you’re breaking the law in this car.”

  “Then you follow the heat to Elisium?”

  “That’s it. Get out. I’m not stopping so you’ll have to jump and roll.”

  “There’s no need for embarrassment if—”

  “Get your fleshy gob out of my space, you feral porc
upine-headed sin.”

  “I will quiet if you need silence to fee—”

  “You know what?” Samuel twists and glares into Atlas. “That’d actually be great. Do that.”

  He twists back to the windshield and Atlas looks him up and down.

  “There are hundreds of thousands of hot spots, weak spots in the interdimensional barrier, that can hold a portal, most in secluded places where humans can’t somehow mess things up,” Samuel says. “Just gotta find one.”

  Atlas stares.

  Samuel looks back. “Do that a lot?”

  Atlas nods.

  “Stick up your butt goes all the way to your head.”

  Atlas stares.

  Samuel taps the steering wheel, fidgets, exhales. He whispers. “Sorry.”

  His back off his seat, Atlas opens his mouth.

  “I’m not so peachy and Denim’s—” Samuel gestures to the dirt path. “What am I doing?”

  “Apologizing,” Atlas says. “Am I permitted to speak?”

  “I’m not getting into this episode of Little House on the Prairie. I want to choke on rusty nails now. Also, I hate you.”

  Atlas deepens his tone. “But you saved my life. Lydia was advancing from behind and,” he looks down, “you saved my life.”

  Samuel switches on the stereo and revolves its volume nob past comfort. The road jars them and music blares.

  “I merely—” Atlas turns to the side window. “I don’t understand why. You care more about Eden and a stain on your apparel than mine or Gene’s life.”

  Samuel switches off the stereo. Grinding his teeth, he raises his hand and squeezes an imaginary object until it’s crushed in his fist.

  “Because you,” Samuel points, “care about my life so much?”

  “No.”

  “But you, like a tard, saved my life too.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then stop saving it.”

  Atlas squints at him. “Cease saving mine.”

  “Okay.”

  “Yes.”

  Samuel rolls his eyes, and Atlas drums his fingers against his leg, heartbeat speeding—speeding, speeding vehicle. Not speedy enough.

  “You know what—” Samuel scoffs. “No. Not okay. Your verbiage is vomiting arrogance and ain’t no one likes that.”

  “Verbiage does not have stomach contents.”

  “Eden and I are done and I wear my bloodstains proudly, okay?” Samuel swings around a bend. “Stop pretending you know me.”

  Atlas flinches at the forest’s pulsating light and shadow, afternoon sun dipping below treetops. Each flash warms his cheek with hypnotic invitation; each withdrawal accentuates his pallor with a disillusioned shudder. His fatigue dives into his subconscious, where it grumbles and plots vengeful return.

  “So, I did what I did, what I’m doing now—I’m here because I’m saying,” Samuel breathes out, “thanks.”

  Atlas looks at him.

  “Nothing more than that. Don’t psychoanalyze me again because you’re scabies in a tulle skirt.”

  “Thank you,” Atlas says.

  “No problem. I’ll say it again: scabies in a tulle skirt.”

  “For saving my life and helping me seek Gene.” Atlas turns to the trees and lowers voice. “I appreciate it.”

  “Uh-huh. Please stop talking.”

  He clenches his jaw. “Good Imper—”

  “Shh.” Samuel waves Atlas off and leans into the dashboard. “Shut up.”

  The sedan jolts and then slows, the time between bumps increasing, the intensity deepening. Samuel throws his weight into the wheel; he steadies it with white knuckles. They creep to a stop under evergreens’ shade and a golden cliff face, engine’s hum receding to clicks and creaks of settling metal. Atlas’s brow furrows. Samuel hangs his head.

  “I’m not feeling anything,” Samuel says. “We’re screwed.”

  Atlas asks, “The heat?”

  “There’s no portal spot within a hundred miles. By now, I would’ve felt something—anything.”

  “But you’re becoming human. Perhaps you can no longer feel these spots.”

  Samuel’s mouth falls open. He glares at Atlas. Then says a word Atlas associates with prolonged red traffic lights. He hurls open his door and steps outside.

  Atlas follows him. Samuel yanks his sun-soaked collar up his neck and walks from the sedan, across the path. Pressing foot into granules and tire grooves, Atlas jogs after Samuel’s silhouette against trickled light and the coarse symmetry of pine clusters. They pass needles’ scrape by cheek, plod off path, and scuff an involuntary hasten down the first of forest’s leeward decline.

  “Are you,” Atlas ducks under a branch, “preparing to explain where you’re going?”

  Samuel lifts his shoulders.

  Rubbing the space under his ear, the notch in his jaw, Atlas stumbles past a trunk splitting into sun-dried mulch and over clumps of bleached grass.

  “Not welcome with her. Not welcome with this scabby world and definitely not welcome with the Siderans.”

  “Where are you traveling?” Atlas asks.

  “I shouldn’t—” Samuel shakes his head. “Shouldn’t have broken up with Eden. Maybe I could take it back. If we talked it out—”

  “You shot her. She attempted to incinerate you.”

  “I miss her so much. Eleven—twelve years has it been? I know we’d fight sometimes and someone would get their leg broken or kidneys bruised or eyeballs burned but then she’d laugh and I’d laugh and we’d rent a movie and not talk about war, that is, until you—”

  “Samuel—”

  “You came.” Samuel spits at the ground. “Mmhmm. Source of all my problems. She’s ignoring me—using me because of a flittery, bubbling, bouncing bitty baby who fell out of the sky and went potty time on my scalp. You know, I condition my—”

  “Samuel.” Atlas grabs his shoulders and spins him around.

  Samuel makes a face. “Will you stop blabbering?”

  “Why are we not in Gene’s vehicle?”

  “Because we’re here.” Hopping on his toes, Samuel smiles, fans his arms out and up, and then rains his fingers down. Halfway through the air, he brushes the tip of Atlas’s nose. “In nature.”

  Atlas recoils. “Why are we not driving?”

  “Oh, that. We ran out of gas. Gas makes the vroom-vroom go, little boy.”

  His face pinches in on itself. “You could have expressed such.”

  “If I always explained everything up front, you wouldn’t be able to ask any more questions and would cease to exist.”

  Atlas walks past Samuel and along a crooked path needles pave. Samuel jogs to catch up.

  “Where are we traveling?” Atlas asks.

  “Cease to exist.” Samuel steps ahead of him. “We’re following a possible one-degree rise in temperature. I’m feeling something. Just don’t know what yet. Lots o’ stuff. Don’t know.” He drags a hand down his neck and changes tone. “Don’t know.”

  Closing his eyes, Samuel stuffs his hands into his pockets and inhales. He lightens his steps. He opens his neck to the air and angles his head, sidesteps an evergreen’s lowest branches, squeezes his purple eyelids together. He opens them.

  “There.” Samuel pivots. “I must not be a complete potato yet. It’s a pulsin’. The heat.” His voice and breath quicken as he pushes off the ground. “This way, Teeny Titan.”

  Samuel breaks into a sprint and Atlas follows. He rocks his weight, heel to toe, thrust off, fall down, cut arms through mountain air rolling up his sleeves, out his collar that dries upon each crash against soil’s spring. They pant. Samuel darts left stumbling over a limp and Atlas chases after stumbling over a log. Atlas scrapes his palm on pine needles; the sting smells of bristling mint and hot maple drizzling from the sunniest treetops. Sky narrows his pupils. Atlas would smile.

  The ache in his shoulders and back, low throb of his chest’s scarred-over gash—they sink under the drumming of feet. The opposing wind, blue
’s lattice grading, drooping between branches, the scent of sage taste like dusk. They sound like her. Canyons echo and Atlas listens.

  The path traveled flakes and drifts from mind; the path ahead beckons. For the first time, Atlas comprehends its words. From becomes to.

  Samuel yells, “Let’s get us that Denim!”

  XX

  Where the Heart Is

  “Smell that?”

  Atlas shakes his head.

  Samuel skids his heel into soil and, gasping for air, staggers to a stop. Atlas runs past him a few steps and backs up. They glance around.

  “It’s a tinge of nutmeg. Or, like, dew evaporating into fire that engulfs a mossy mountainside somewhere in Iceland.” Samuel glares into distance. “I have no idea what that smells like.” He turns to Atlas. “Do you like neoclassical opera?”

  Atlas says, “Have we reached your—”

  “Uh-huh.” Samuel slides his knife, polished mahogany hilt, curved blade, from his jacket. “The heat’s much more subdued than it would have been a couple days ago but it’s there. This three-foot radius,” he circles the knife’s tip at the ground, “give or take, is the lock. Now we use our key.”

  Samuel kneels, grips his dagger, and thrusts it downward.

  The blade sinks into soil, cuts between needles and clumps and shards of brittle wood decades disjoined. It sparks violet. Atlas blinks and Samuel draws the blade toward himself, slicing a palm-wide slit. The grass around it smolders; smoke wisps climb the air; and, as Samuel stands, withdraws, tucks his knife back into his jacket, the ground explodes in blinding red flames Atlas watches for the first time in daylight. The portal’s glow blooms into shape: tendrils of clicking, fizzing fire intertwining with orange, with white roots that swirl a hot breeze as they sprout from earth’s manmade fissure. Molten demon tentacles, dancing into formation, weave an upright, circular pillar. Lips parted, Atlas stops blinking. Fire’s four-hue gradient swells over the blue in his eyes until they too burn and twitch under air’s every surge.

  Samuel grins. “Honey, I’m home.”

  He claws the front of Atlas’s tunic and yanks him into the glow. Fire spins up Atlas’s legs, his arms, racing for his head, pulling, drilling him into the ground’s slit, where kindling spits flames raging inside their circular cage, where Earth’s plane disintegrates. All falls from under foot. Samuel folds his arms beside his escortee, and Atlas screams.