by Sean Platt
Oct. 15, 2011
Morning
Las Orillas, California
Luca’s skin was burning. He opened his eyes and put an end to the dream where Mommy was making eggs on his arms.
The sun was brighter than it should have been. Light poured through the window like buckets splashing against the glass.
Luca turned to look at his Cars alarm clock, but it was off.
He didn’t like the feeling in his arms, tingly bad and kind of burny. Luca wanted to scratch his skin, but stopped himself because Mommy said that scratching always made things worse.
The itchy burny would probably go away if he ignored it.
Luca pulled off the covers and got out of bed, then went number one in the bathroom. His toothbrush was on the counter when he peed, but was gone by the time he flushed the toilet.
Just like his Cars alarm clock when he went back inside his room.
The house was too quiet.
Luca went to the closet, peeled off his Lego pajamas, pulled on his jeans and his favorite Star Wars T-shirt — the one that read “I had friends on that Death Star” that his dad bought because he thought it was funny.
Luca dropped his Lego pajamas on the floor only a second before, but they were already gone, just like his Cars alarm clock and everything else in the room — the bed, the desk, his toys, all of it gone. His room was completely empty, the walls were now white instead of blue, and there was a different carpet on the floor, which smelled new.
He went to the window because he wanted to see the rainbow he thought would be there. But there wasn’t a rainbow.
There’s supposed to be a rainbow.
This wasn’t right.
Nothing was.
Luca couldn’t hear his mom or his dad, or his sister, Anna. He felt like he’d been in this feeling before, too. But the house was even emptier than it had been the last time. It felt like his family had moved away in the middle of the night and sold the house.
Luca blinked, and wanted to cry. He hated that everything was different.
He went to his window again and saw a sign in the front yard which read, FOR SALE.
Oh my God, they did sell the house?! They moved away without me!
Luca ran to the kitchen, looking for the phone so he could call his mom’s cell phone. He had to get a hold of her and tell her to come back. She forgot him. The phone was gone, though. The kitchen was just as empty as every other room. He tensed as something flashed at the corner of his eyes. Luca expected to see his cat, Lucky, but Lucky wasn’t there. He saw a dog instead.
And suddenly, memories began to come forth.
“Dog Vader!” Luca cried, happy to see his old friend.
The dog sat on its haunches for several seconds before he opened his slobbery jaw and said, “I never liked that name, you know.” Dog Vader made a low rumbling growl to let Luca know he was only joking.
“Do you still want me to call you Kick?”
Dog Vader said, “It doesn’t matter what you call me, so long as you listen to what I say.” Dog Vader was using his Serious Voice. But Luca didn’t want to hear the Serious Voice, at least not inside his too-empty house. “Can we go outside?” Luca asked, then said, “Aren’t we supposed to get the bathtub car and follow the rainbow?”
“There are no more rainbows, Luca,” Dog Vader shook his snout back and forth. “And there aren’t any rainbows like before.”
Dog Vader went from his haunches to all fours, then trotted toward the front door where he waited for Luca to open it. They stepped into the bright light outside together. And just as Dog Vader said, there were no rainbows.
“Where did they go?” Luca whispered, realizing that he didn’t feel the itchy burny anymore either. “Where’s my family?”
“They were never here. On this world, they died two years ago. Everything you saw was a lie,” Dog Vader said. “But a necessary lie. A good one.” Dog Vader’s snout suddenly shortened, and his shoulders started to grow as he lost all his fur. “A lie without cause is a lie without effect.” He went from all fours back to his haunches, until he was suddenly standing on two human feet.
Dog Vader was no longer a dog. He was the tall Indian, towering over Luca, with a giant flowing headdress and a long plastic pipe.
“You lied to yourself,” the Indian said.
Luca slowly shook his head, trying to understand.
“You have stolen from you, Luca. The YOU from the other Earth lost his mother and father, so he decided to steal yours. Then some part of you, maybe some parts of him, made you believe the lie when you arrived here. You saw things as you wanted to see them — as you needed to see them — in order to cope. I was here to help you find Will. I made the rainbows, and then led you to him.” The Indian looked down, then gently set his palm on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Luca” he said. “Don’t cry. There are ways to make everything right.”
Luca wiped his right cheek, then swiped at the other one. “How?” he asked, looking up at the Indian.
“You must go to Black Island. There is a vial in the moon in the bedroom of the boy who stole your life. In that vial is something which can either be very good or very bad. YOU have to open it, Luca. You do, before anyone else finds it.”
“I can’t do that,” Luca shook his head. “I’m not strong, or brave. I know I look like an old man, but I’m only a boy inside.”
“You aren’t only a boy,” the Indian said. “You never were. You are pure, Luca. Even when walking through the mind of another, you’ve never done so with dirty feet. And yes, you are brave, my boy, for it is only the courage to continue that counts, and you’ve never failed to set one foot firmly in front of the other no matter how scared you were. You are the only one who can balance the world against the Black Pieces.”
“The Black Pieces?”
“Yes,” the Indian nodded. “The Black Pieces, The Darkness, The Void, The Oblivion, The Wicked Iniquity of Nothing, and The Limbo — it has more names across more universes than there are grains of sand on your beaches or stars in your sky. The Black Pieces,” the Indian continued, “are the opposite of me.”
“So, what are you?”
“We, the Darkness and Us, started out the same. We are Light. We are Life, Creation, and We are the Infinite Possibility of All. But we can also be tainted and turned into the Darkness. It destroyed one realm we lived in. So our children sent us out in vials, in hopes that we might be found and bring Light back into being.”
Luca shuddered. His itchy burny was back, even if it was only in his mind. He was confused. He’d heard people say the monstrous things that had been attacking them were aliens. But the Indian was describing it so differently. Like they were these forces, rather than actual physical alien beings.
“Why can’t you fight the Black Pieces?”
The Indian shocked Luca with a long fit of laughter before he said, “I can fight the Black Pieces, and I do.” He looked down at Luca, his hand still resting on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m fighting The Black Pieces right now by standing here speaking with you. However, I am but a part, a small part against the many. We need to find the vial to become stronger — to multiply as the Darkness has.”
The Indian dropped to his knee, then set his pipe on the porch and held Luca’s eyes. “You will do something about it, Luca. Because you are strong, and because you are brave, even if you do not yet see it. But I am spread too thin to win this war. I am not really here,” the Indian waved his hands up and down his body. “At least not like you see me. No more than the rainbows in the sky, which led you to a father from another world. I am but a residual of the Light passed from the Luca of one world to the Luca in another. I am inside you, but I’m not strong enough alone.” He pat Luca on the back. “I need, we need to get the vial.”
“Or what?”
“Or the world will be plunged forever into Darkness. And I, and all the people you know here, will be consumed by, and become part of the Darkness.”
Luca had a million more questions that he wanted to ask, but then the Indian said, “Not now. Now is time to wake up.”
Fifty-Four
Boricio Bishop
Dunn, Georgia
Boricio’s Compound
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
Boricio Bishop ran his hands over his bald head as he watched Charlie appear in the doorway.
Every part of Bishop bristled as his doppelgänger, Asshole Boricio, welcomed Charlie like his long-lost brother.
Something’s wrong. How the hell did he get out of his cell?
Did he escape?
If so, how many bodies did he leave behind?
Boricio felt a sudden danger he couldn't define, as though it singed his skin with its flames, though he wasn’t sure where the fire was. He had to be careful how he handled the Charlie situation. This other Boricio was a loose canon, and while Boricio had been able to handle nearly any situation life threw his way, he wasn’t sure he could handle the him from another world — the him who seemed all id, no restraint. Asshole Boricio had never been adopted by Will, and had falsely learned that destroying everything around him was the best way to understand himself better.
He wouldn’t think twice about getting down and bloody to protect his own.
“Well,” the Asshole Boricio said, “get the fuck in here and make yourself at home!”
Charlie smiled, sort of, then stepped inside the house, casting his eyes across the room as though he were taking it all in for the first time, almost with the same look as if he were observing a huddle of strangers he’d never seen before.
He barely glanced at Callie, which struck Boricio as bizarre, especially after what he’d seen passing between the two of them on the cell monitors the night before.
Asshole Boricio led Charlie to the dining room table, then pulled out a chair and gestured for him to sit. “I imagine you couldn’t find any open drive-throughs on your way over here, Chucky FuckStick, so you want one of Miss Mary’s pancakes to powder your gut?” He nodded toward Mary, standing by the bottom stair, shoulders tensed and arms wrapped around her daughter. “They’re not as good as Boricio’s World-Famous Flapjacks, which I’m sure you’re a lucky enough fucker to remember, but they’ll do for short notice, I suppose.”
Something about the asshole’s pride in his pancakes forced Boricio into the twitch of a grin. He swallowed his smile and said, “What in the hell are you doing here, Charlie? You’re infected. And how did you get out of your cell? How did you leave Black Mountain? How did you find us?”
Asshole Boricio didn’t even give Charlie a second to answer. He asked, “Infected with what?”
Boricio thought he’d already explained this shit to his asshole counterpart, but for the sake of keeping things calm, he said, “It doesn’t have an official name, but some of us at Black Mountain refer to it as ‘The Apocalypse Worm.’ The monsters aren’t monsters; they’re aliens. And the aliens aren’t friendly. They’re parasites that worm their way into your body through physical contact, usually a bite, then slowly — though it seems to be happening faster and faster — take over the body, turning regular people into mutated monstrosities. Charlie is our only subject not to have mutated in outward appearance, though. We have one other subject who is halfway mutated, but everyone else, once they’re infected, that’s been that. They’re lost.”
Asshole Boricio then asked, “Is Charlie CheeseDick dangerous? Is he gonna get all slippery when wet on us?”
Callie spoke instead. “We’re safe,” she said. “I knew Charlie was infected, but wasn’t worried. Mr. Bishop said Charlie was fine, and that they’d probably be able to fix him, maybe use his blood to help fix everyone else. Believe me; you’ve nothing to worry about. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless it was to protect one of us.”
Boricio wanted to believe her, but looking at Charlie, and the odd look in his eyes that he couldn’t quite pin, he wasn’t so sure. Even if Charlie wouldn’t do anything dangerous on purpose, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a threat.
Bishop considered pushing his position; drawing the line between himself and Charlie and clarifying the threat’s severity. If Charlie returned to his world infected, it was only a matter of time until their world went to ash just as this one was.
Charlie still hadn’t answered the question, how he’d gotten out. And what the hell kind of mess did he leave behind? Boricio hoped that he didn’t break out and kill anyone. If so, he’d personally put a bullet in the kid’s head. The first time Charlie went all X-Men, Boricio could forgive. He was scared, his only experience with Black Mountain had been at the hands of assholes who shot the kid he was with. But Boricio had spared the kid, had trusted him. He hoped to God he hadn’t made an error.
He considered pressing Charlie for an answer, but decided to go another, more subtle, route.
Brent and Ed, the Black Island Guardsmen who’d proven quite useful, were standing about a foot and a half apart, their bodies tensed and ready; eyes wide and alert, shoulders and jaws set. Ed had one foot forward, ready to spring. He looked pissed, probably because Boricio made him leave his gun in the van. The woman, Mary, looked more upset than frightened, while her daughter looked more frightened than upset.
He had no words to describe the look on Callie.
Boricio didn’t have the time or the focus to read all of their thoughts, so he quickly went into their heads, pulling the most dominant thought from every mind in the room.
Charlie: Nothing.
Callie: He’s wrong about Charlie. Real Boricio will make sure everything’s okay.
Ed: The crazy Boricio’s gotta go first. I’ll wipe that smug look off his face.
Brent: At least she’s at the end of the world with her daughter.
Mary: If anything happens, we run outside and grab a van ... Sorry, Luca.
The girl: Charlie reminds me of John.
Old Luca was sending nothing but static from upstairs, and that was slightly more than Boricio was pulling from Charlie.
He hated the room’s tension, but at least that was something — the emptiness inside Charlie was chilling.
But there was nothing Boricio could do, no way to cleanly win this particular battle.
He’d go with the flow for now, play it cool. But he’d have to keep an eye on Charlie. Then he had to let Ed and Brent know that they needed to do the same. Shoot at the first sign of trouble. Boricio hoped it wouldn’t come to that, however. He actually liked Charlie a bit. He was a good kid given a bad deal, and from what Boricio had seen in his head, that had been the story of his life.
Boricio could relate to the abusive step-dad. And he could see how Asshole Boricio had developed a soft spot for the kid as well. Perhaps he wasn’t a complete asshole, after all.
The top stair creaked, and the entire room spun toward the sound. Ed thrust his arm in front of Brent and took a slight step forward as Mary wrapped her arms tighter around her daughter, then fell a step back toward the door.
Another stair squeaked, and Asshole Boricio was suddenly at the bottom of the stairs, looking up toward the top. A smile split his face as he turned to the rest of the room. “Looks like Old Man Luca wanted to come down and meet his brother from another mother.”
A second later, Boricio saw Luca’s foot, though it took about a half minute for his body to follow. He didn’t speak until he reached the bottom stair, and when he did, it sounded as though he was using every last drop of energy to push a few splintered words through his ancient throat.
“We have to go to Black Island. Now.” Then, after a few long seconds spent struggling for breath while the rest of the room stood and waited, he whispered, “If we don’t go, we’re all dead.”
Fifty-Five
“Charlie”
Dunn, Georgia
Boricio’s Compound
March 31, 2012
FIVE MONTHS AFTER THE EVENT …
It was hungry.
Starving.
Empty, hollow, deprived.
It smelled the ripened scent of the unfiltered feast It longed to consume.
The good one — ancient on the outside, but still gooey in the middle where the child harbored his innocent thoughts — would be bliss to consume.
Soon.
Soon, everything would be finished.
The beginning of the end was already over.
The girl Its shell yearned to seed was trying to convince everyone that Charlie was safe. He wouldn’t hurt any of them.
If only she knew.
The one who held hate where his eye had gone missing was trying to read the room. But he couldn't — at least not all of it.
Though the man who held hate had a bit of The Enemy within him, which allowed him to read these animals’ minds, there was nothing he could do to penetrate Its mind.
It waited for the spotlight to fall off of Charlie. If It was found out, It might be killed before It could consume Its enemy.
It was starving. Deprived. Near hollow.
Ready.
This was taking too long.
The scent from the top of the stairs grew stronger. It felt ripe, beckoning to It.
The gooey parts in the middle of the child’s thoughts now running like broken yolk.
The end of the beginning was over, but the beginning of the end felt like it was taking forever.
A stair creaked from the top of the stairs — the end, finally on its way.
The aggressive one put his arm before the one who was too thoughtful. The woman It met before wrapped her arms around the girl who was too weak for It to stay in.
Then the violent one, the one It wish It had found at The Sanctuary before going into the fat old man, said, “Looks like Old Man Luca wanted to come downstairs and meet his brother from another mother!”
It licked Its lips.
Once It attacked the child, It would be forced to silence every breath in the room.
But it would be worth it.
It would be stronger than ever.