Pradeep shrugged. “Been roaming the wastelands for quite a while now. Almost died and got rescued by your men,” he said. He looked at the other woman sitting in the corner. He could have a better look, now that he was closer. She seemed to have dark hair and a calm expression on her. It was difficult to tell from where Pradeep was sitting but she seemed almost pretty. “What’s her story? She’s an accountant too?” Pradeep asked Nivedita.
Nivedita saw who he was looking at. “New here and already going for the pretty ones, huh?” She asked.
Pradeep shook his head, smiling. “No…I am just curious. She looks like an awfully silent type,” he said.
“A little too silent,” Nivedita said. “She’s mute.”
“What do you mean, she’s mu...”
“Hasn’t spoken a word ever to anyone since she and her younger brother, Vignesh, were rescued from the borders of Karnataka. Vignesh said she hadn’t spoken since the day their parents were killed in a Thuggee attack on their city or a purge … doesn’t matter. She just keeps drawing on her notepad. Mishra thinks she is still in shock. The fact that we lost Vignesh to the common death soon after hadn’t helped either”
“What’s her name?” Pradeep asked.
“Veda,” Nivedita replied. “Stop staring so much or the General will get your eyes scooped out. He is particularly fond of her and treats her like his baby sister,” she said.
“So, she just sits there all by herself every day? There’s nothing we can do to help her?” Pradeep asked.
“I assume Suresh has already instructed you and has also given you his same old speech about how you can’t help everyone?” Nivedita asked. Pradeep nodded. “You might want to start listening to him.”
“Maybe not everyone but why not her?” He took Nivedita’s little account book and the old ink refill which she was using and walked over to Veda as Nivedita quickly followed him.
Veda looked up as they came close. Her big, light brownish eyes seemed to question them. Her unkempt dark brown hair fell to her shoulders. Despite the obvious lack of effort in making herself look presentable in any way, she clearly was a pretty woman. Her pale, heart shaped face was smooth and clear as if it was sculpted out of marble while the tiny mole on her right cheek beneath her sharp, thin nose made it infinitely more interesting and memorable.
She was dressed in loose clothes that clearly were too big for her thin frame. She wore a full–sleeved checked men’s shirt whose sleeves extended well beyond her wrists and old jeans that though big, weren’t too long for her because of her long legs. She held a small notepad in her pale delicate hands that was filled with scribbles and doodles of all kinds.
Pradeep smiled at her which she didn’t seem to reciprocate. He sat down beside her and looked at her notepad. “So, you like drawing, huh?” He said, trying to coax a reaction out of her and failed miserably as he was greeted only by stark silence. “Tell you what, I like drawing too,” he said, brought up Nivedita’s notepad and using the ink refill drew a little stickman with his hand raised, added a few motion lines by the hand to indicate that he was waving his hand, wrote ‘New here’ beside it and passed it on to Veda.
She looked at it for a second and then slowly, she smiled. It was a very faint smile but it was enough. She drew a similar stick figure with a waving hand and squiggled ‘Welcome’ beside it. Now, they were communicating. Pradeep drew a handshake and wrote ‘Nice to meet you’. She drew a handshake too, although a far better looking handshake and wrote ‘Nice to meet you too’. He then drew a big round circle and wrote ‘See you around’. She took the note and made the circle a smiley and passed it back to him, smiling. He took the note, smiled and looked at Nivedita who looked both surprised and amused. She took Veda’s hand into hers and said, “The General would be so happy to see you smiling. Let us know in case you need anything. Just draw, write or whatever you can, ok?”
Veda nodded.
‘Bye.’ Pradeep squiggled on the same piece of paper. ‘Bye.’ She wrote below it.
Pradeep and Nivedita got up and walked back to where they originally sat.
“See! That was easy, wasn’t it?” Pradeep said.
Nivedita laughed. “We all certainly can use someone like you. Someone who wants to help everyone,” she said. “For a newcomer, you are quite all right.”
“Just all right?” Pradeep said, smiling wide.
“Okay, don’t push it now,” Nivedita said. “That’s all you are going to get.” she mocked. “How was your first meeting with Suresh?”
“Yeah, it was okay,” Pradeep replied. “Asked him what he thinks of the apocalypse. He seemed surprised. What do you think?”
“Me? I think nature is just tired of our bullshit. We are answering for our crimes surely, not to God but to nature instead. I think everyone of us has our own theories. If you had asked Veda’s brother, Vignesh, he would have told you it’s his sister.”
“What?” Pradeep chuckled.
“Yeah, apparently, the first ever purge happened on the day Veda stopped talking. He believed either every one of us will be saved or everyone will be dead the day she talks again.”
“Wow. That’s crazier than the whole evil nature theory. No offence,” Pradeep said.
“None taken,” Nivedita said. “So, what else did Suresh say?”
“Nothing much. He said if I keep my head down and do my job, maybe they will make a decent hunter out of me in a year.”
“Yeah, maybe, even a lower squad leader if you stop staring at her all the time and do your job,” Nivedita said as she caught Pradeep looking at Veda again.
In six months, Pradeep became the youngest commander of the hunters.
The Messenger watched in silence from an abandoned flyover as the flames rose high down below; red and warm like the setting sun as the gloomy night–sky grew darker with the swirling smoke. That’s what the Messenger did. Watch silently and always from a distance. He had a role to play in the end of the world but it hadn’t arrived yet. His time to interfere with the rudimentary machinery of this world had not yet come. So, he watched. With patience.
The bright flames were now huge and all–encompassing, burning the city with a fierce hunger. This was not the first time he had watched a purge. He had been there, watching silently when the first ever purge had dawned upon this dying world. He had seen it first in his dreams. And then, for real. Countless times again and again. These dreams were different. They weren’t like the dreams of the horse. Or the glowing kid. Or the corruption. No, these were different. They felt different. They foretold things. Every single time, the dreams spoke of the burning before he actually saw it. And then he would actually see it. Blazing and burning. Filled with fire and flame. But even today, he still stood in awe. The crackling of fire was a familiar sound by now to his ears, but the visuals always looked spectacular. The bright colours and dancing flames.
He stood there, tall and pale as always, his lengthy brown robe covering him entirely. His face was hidden in the silent shadow of his hood. But beneath the hood and among the shadows, his eyes had a strange glow of unearthly light in them. They let him see farther and sharper than any human.
His spectacular eyes then saw something which he couldn’t believe. Something was moving inside the hellish inferno of the purge. It looked like someone walking. It couldn’t be, the Messenger thought. There’s no way anyone could survive so long inside the purge radius. None could resist the 'Red Death'. No way could any human walk about inside all that raw destruction. Slowly, the shadow emerged out of the flames. The Messenger was looking at an incredibly well–built, tall man, maybe in his thirties, almost naked except for the charred remains of his burnt clothes clinging onto his skin. He slowly walked out of the purge, unburnt and unharmed as the flames around him raged ever so brightly. His face had an irresistible charm to it, a mixture of dynamism and mischief danced in his pale grey eyes. His long, black hair fell over his face and reached his shoulders.
It didn’t take long
for the Messenger to realize who he was looking at. He recognized him from the other dreams. He had seen him many times. Not like this. Not like the man he was looking at, but in many other forms. They had all seen it. All the other dreamers. He wondered if other dreamers could sense him too.
So, he shows himself finally, he thought. The corruption had risen. The dark dream had begun. The nightmare had been seen.
And then, as the Messenger watched from afar, the Purge Walker suddenly looked in his direction, as if looking directly into the Messenger’s eyes. Then, a wicked smile swept across that incredibly chiseled face of his.
The Messenger gasped. He knows. It knows. The nightmare knows the dreamer.
He quickly turned around and started running in the opposite direction. He knew what this meant. The time would soon be upon him when he would have to act.
The forces were converging.
A COMMANDER’S NIGHTMARE
The caves offered Pradeep not just a place to stay, but also things to do to keep his mind occupied. They kept him away from the things he wished he had never seen.
As the commander of the hunters, he regularly left on hunting trips and brought back loot which Nivedita would ration out over the next fortnight. They would constantly raid pre–purge shopping malls and abandoned houses.
Sometimes things got dangerous on the hunt.
Wild animals and Thuggees were always a threat. They closely missed a Thuggee troop once. And another time Pradeep had to fight a wolf. The dangers were a small price to pay for the companionship and the shelter that the caves provided.
Pradeep was a loved and respected commander of the hunters. He almost had a family now. Roy, a young hunter grew as close as a brother to him. And then there were Nivedita and Veda. While his interest in Veda had been steadily growing, Nivedita had been his lodestar through all this. She had been there by his side, no matter what.
“You are one lucky asshole!” Nivedita once exclaimed, as Pradeep sat beside her as she minded her accounts in the central hall.
The fire crackled and raged in the middle. Nivedita hadn’t changed a lot since she and Pradeep first met. She still wore tank tops and jeans. Her hair though groomed differently now, was still short and spartan.
Looking at the confusion on Pradeep’s face she continued. “You are the only one I allow to sit with me as I do these accounts regularly. You should have never approached me on your first day. I went soft on you,” she smiled.
She had the strange gift of looking uncharacteristically cute and endearing when she smiled, despite her tough exterior.
“I am the only one who can bear your intolerable temper and grumpy mood,” Pradeep replied.
The crackling fire and the crowd at central hall always brought out the cheerier side of Pradeep; the side which the hunts and the whole business of commanding the hunters pushed back farther with each day.
“One of these days, I am going to cut off your rations.” Nivedita quipped, the smile not leaving her face.
“You wouldn’t want to starve the commander of the hunters, do you?” Pradeep asked with a raised eyebrow. “The General won’t let you do it.”
“You think I am afraid of the General?” Nivedita asked, her round eyes growing wider than usual. “I’ll cut his ration too.” She threatened with her pen as if it was a potent weapon.
“It’s okay. We won’t judge you if you get delusional in the End Age, Niv! Happens to the best of us.” Pradeep said and immediately got up and ran, before Nivedita could stab him with her pen.
“Where the fuck do you think you are you going? Come back here. I’ll show you who’s delusional!” Nivedita said, half laughing and half frowning.
“Time to pay a visit to your friend,” he said, and ran into the caves.
Pradeep, Nivedita and Veda have grown quite close since Pradeep’s arrival. Veda still mainly communicated using sketches and papers, but now she also made gestures with hands and her head to indicate agreement and disagreement. It took quite a long time, but Veda now also spoke to him – very rarely, but still she managed a few words, and sometimes short sentences. The world had clearly not ended when she had started speaking again. She also seemed to smile a lot more.
Pradeep was the first one to notice the changes in Veda, and her smile. But what Pradeep failed to notice was the smile disappearing from Nivedita’s face as he ran into the caves to meet Veda.
Pradeep sat beside Veda, silent and yet content. He didn’t speak but was not distracted either. He was aware of her every movement, the subtle changes in her breath. He would know every time she would look at him without even turning his head. She sat beside him with a notepad in her hand, as usual. She was flicking through the notepad, looking at the endless scribbles and notes that filled those pages since Pradeep had come along.
Pradeep would often tell her stories of his hunting forays. He would tell her of the abandoned malls and the dead memories. He would speak of the occasionally found mutated animals. He once told her of a deer with five legs. She would listen with rapt attention as he told her about their narrow escapes from Thuggee gangs and fiery purges. Getting caught in a purge was the biggest threat for a hunter on any given day, and Pradeep one day had come back with a burnt finger and one hell of a story to be told.
And she would listen, like a little child and then ask him about the things she wanted to know using the notepad.
Those pages stood as a testimony to their ever-growing friendship and bonding. They contained sketches, words and phrases that only the two of them fully understood. Veda remembered how Nivedita tried countless times (without much success) to make sense of those little scribbles.
A smile adorned her thin lips with the thought.
Pradeep looked at her and he once again repeated the same gesture which he made every time he caught her smiling. He held up his hand and made the sign to indicate ‘fantastic’. His pointing finger and the thumb made a circle while the other three fingers spread out.
Veda smiled a little more, pointed at Pradeep’s smile and made the same sign. Pradeep laughed heartily. He got up to leave and shook her hand. And for the first time in the six months since they met, he did something else. He bent down and his lips planted a quick kiss on her smooth hand. Veda quickly withdrew her hand and Pradeep could hear her gasp.
Pradeep looked at her in nervous anticipation. He could see the shock on her face slowly dissolve into a pond of calmness and a lotus of smile slowly growing out of that pond. This time, he was too nervous and excited to make the fantastic sign. He simply smiled, waved goodbye and quickly walked out of her chamber.
The moment he stepped out, he saw Nivedita standing there, with tears in her eyes.
“Niv!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter?” he asked, holding her.
It surprised him to see her like that. She was not someone who cried easily. Now that he thought about it, he could not remember if he had ever seen her crying.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
Nivedita shook her head, moved closer into his arms and before he knew, her lips were pressing hard on his. He could feel the taste of Veda’s hand slip away from his lips as it was replaced by the peculiar taste of Nivedita’s small yet full lips. She kissed him hard for a moment and then let go. She immediately sobbed a little, rubbed the stream of tears off her face and managed to weakly mutter.
“I am sorry.” and then stormed away.
Pradeep stood in the middle of the desert. But surprisingly, he could feel a cool breeze all around, though the harsh sun burned fiercely in the clear sky. Why are the skies so clear? Weren’t the skies scorched? –He caught himself thinking.
His scarf blew high in the wind like a beacon, a flag in the midst of a vast sea of sand. Around him, the sands stretched out into vast open nothingness as far as the eye could see. The sands rippled out from a central vortex located a few feet away from him in concentric circles, moving constantly further away from the source as if someone had dropped
a pebble into an ocean of sand. He could see the ripples of sand crashing against his feet as they spread out like tiny waves at a beach. The sand was neither warm nor cold. Just comforting.
His gaze was irresistibly drawn to the hypnotic source of the ripples, the central vortex. He looked at it with a childlike wonder and started walking slowly towards it. The sand smoothly flowed outwards, beneath his feet as he walked slowly towards the centre. He was almost there when he noticed something emerge from the vortex. Something spectacularly white. Glowing white.
He stopped and looked. It was a horse. A white horse. Its head first came into view, the sand falling gracefully down its silky hair. Slowly, the stallion rose from the sands in all its glory. Sparkling white. A divine glow radiated from its graceful body.
It stood there looking into Pradeep’s eyes as if it was speaking to him.
Pradeep slowly inched towards it, his hand outstretched to touch its muzzle. The white stallion simply looked at him occasionally shaking its head, swishing its tail and sometimes pawing at the sand with its hooves.
Pradeep’s hand could almost touch it but then suddenly the horse raised its head and its eyes started blazing with fire. Then its mouth too started glowing like the insides of a dragon. Its nostrils erupted with tiny flames.
It suddenly sprouted two huge, sprawling bony wings on its back which were made of fire. The sand blew around as its wings pushed the air outwards when they opened fiercely. It’s beautiful, graceful body suddenly turned gaunt and bony. Its face turned sinister and then as Pradeep looked up, it reared and lifted its massive front hooves high in the air and its wings spread out like that of a bat and then it spoke in a voice which was ominous and dark, both masculine and feminine, both human and robotic. Pradeep looked upon its terrifying form as it said –
“The End Game approaches.”
And then it landed its front hooves back onto the rippling sand and then stretched its wings far out and before Pradeep could react, the stallion opened its mouth and bright fire spewed forward onto Pradeep.
Sinners- The Dawn Of Kalki Page 4