by Greg Hanks
A ceasefire. The breeze rattled the leaves and grass. Balien’s breaths were deep and thoughtful. The crisp apple green leaves of every tree and bush threatened to claim V’delle’s attention. Their swaying, their disregard for war and blood and the destruction of explosives. Gray clouds shifted slowly across a bright blue sky, careless to the discord below.
The devil crack of gunfire came again. Their side of the road, in the undulating fields. V’delle swept her aim. Her reticle chased movement, a parting of the grass; someone was moving toward the road. Another cluster of shots came from the southern field like firecrackers.
Balien leaned into V’delle and whispered. “Convenience store roof.”
V’delle adjusted.
Lying on his belly, a Preen’ch shuffled across the flat of the plaster roof, trying to keep cover behind the foot-high barrier that protected him from eastern and western fire. Unfortunately for him, not southern and northern.
V’delle squinted and pulled the trigger. The rifle jerked in her hands. Khor’Zon slug drove through Khor’Zon armor, up his spine, to the back of the neck. A jolt of surprise before the crimson blood was all that moved.
She rolled away, holding the rifle to her chest, letting the momentum of the slope carry her away from presumptive retaliation. Once gravity stopped her, she crawled a few yards to a safe distance, then peeked. Balien had retreated backward down the hill and was making his way to her. She beckoned him and they returned to the motorcycle.
Dried Blood was untouched. V’delle returned the sniper equipment to Balien and magnetized her rifle to her oblique. Another explosion shook the road a half-mile down. V’delle took the opportunity and manually pushed the bike across the street.
They continued on the south side of the road, swinging wide to the edge of the forest. With three dead Preen’ch, the Calcitra would push north across the street and finish off the disadvantaged. They came to the knoll that provided defilade from the street, populated with dead trees and the ruins of a pond at its base. V’delle stopped abruptly. Five minutes without sound. Balien looked at her. Two more minutes. In the bank of the dead pond, a gray leathered girl got up from her stomach and crawled up the knoll. Two more Calcitra rose from the tall grass and crept around each side of the small hill. Together they advanced.
Balien gave V’delle an expression of relief and admiration. V’delle took one more graze of the forest before pressing forward. Across the street, voices of encouragement. The last cries of warfare cut through the northern fields. V’delle struggled pushing the motorcycle with grace through the dried pond; the slow momentum kept getting the front tire stuck on larger rocks. Balien positioned himself to help.
A massive explosion near the road shook them off their feet. V’delle slipped and hit her hip on the ground. The bike fell on its side. Balien caught himself on a tree branch, but the limb snapped, and he fell to his wrists.
“Shit,” V’delle breathed, in curiosity. She left the bike and scrambled up the backside of the knoll to get a look.
Through what few dead bushes remained for cover, she saw a plume of black smoke billowing in the air, originating at a spot near the gas station, ringed by charred bodies. A single Preen’ch without a helmet sprinted east down the middle of the street, blood-tarnished and shell-shocked. Two Calcitra stumbled with haste from the northern fields, picking themselves up from the explosion. They charged after the Preen’ch. A ghoulish, violent rampancy in their eyes as their hoods flew back. The Preen’ch zig-zagged but the Calcitra weren’t firing rounds. The faster Calcitra caught up to and tackled the defused Preen’ch. Bare fists against bare cheek. The second Calcitra reached the struggle and added his share of heavy kicks. They mutilated the Preen’ch with their own bodies and screamed in grief over the loss of their own. It was over.
“This is our chance,” V’delle said, sliding to the pond on her butt.
Balien helped upright the motorcycle and together they maneuvered it out of the gully. They edged the forest until the black smoke disappeared behind them. V’delle insisted on pushing the motorcycle a while longer until she concluded the distance was safe enough for the engine’s roar. Her arms were sore and stiff when it was time to mount up.
The road continued straight for the next two and a half hours. V’delle kept flicking her eyes to the side mirrors. Winds relentless against her body, a numbing cocoon. The energy that their new journey brought had diminished greatly. Two demoralized husks sitting tepidly on a rigid motorcycle, wishing the sunshine meant more than light.
The countryside maintained its penchant for wet, furry greens. Lush, rugged landscape claimed by barns and farmhouses and wrinkly fences like metallic sinew. They rushed astride blanketed wheat fields under placid blue skies and forested tunnels where bent trees had formed natural arches. Signposts, telephone poles, and billboards overgrown with twinkling vine leaves. The road, craggy black asphalt riddled with chalky, faded white paint. And the rushing smell of old wood steeped in rain pools. The freshness of a planet given back to itself.
On their fourth hour, a small town appeared as tiny homes left like scattered toys. The forests gave way to concrete highways that converged over and under each other and a massive lake on the town’s eastern side. The road curved along the eastern and southern border of the lake and ramped up toward the city center. Clusters of roadways, merging and dissecting, held up by massive concrete pillars. V’delle imagined thousands of cars zooming each direction. Was it a constant thing, cars going to and from places? Now it was only her and Balien, on their little motorcycle, weaving through indefinitely stopped traffic.
The dead town teemed with faded colors. Emptiness warded by crumbly brown brick churches covered in verdant vines, and saffron flowers wreathing streetlamp posts. Bent chain-link fences that imprisoned lush recreational parks with empty playgrounds. Paneled homes decaying with cracked facades and roofs. Porous apartment and townhome complexes that stretched for miles like rows of degenerate vertebrae. Gray infecting what used to be baby blues, magentas, and insufferable yellows and pinks that would have brought life to the town back then. Balien kept shifting in the seat and it made V’delle notice her stomach yawning with vacancy.
She slowed the bike near a charming white church. Steeples, gables, and two colonnades on its roof with statues in their walkways. Cracked and browning stucco, little green sprouts and clumps of grass growing through each fissure. Stained glass mostly broken. She cut the engine and they rolled to the church’s entrance before leaning the bike against the simple concrete entrance stairs.
“Are you hungry?” V’delle asked.
“Yes,” said Balien. “But I am fine to keep moving if you want.”
“No, I am too. We’ll be quick.”
They pushed through the water-warped double doors. Rows of pews, either broken or uprooted by invasive plant life. The wooden floors beneath them croaked and squeaked as they walked to the dais where a row of chairs stood behind a pulpit. A simple chapel, its elements of elegance written in the handmade crown molding, bannisters, and cheap, faux-marble sculptures. At the back, a single stained-glass window lay intact; the sun brought a burning vermilion into the chamber, making a perfect replica of its rose petal pattern on the floor next to the pulpit. Dust particles floated through its gaze.
“Beautiful,” Balien said, running his fingers along the tops of the pews, looking upward at the vaulted arch-work. “Do you agree?”
“It’s old,” V’delle said. “And smells like dead cats.”
Balien frowned at her as she walked past him. “You have killed many cats in your lifetime then?”
“No, but I’ve raided tons of homes with dead animals inside.”
“Are you telling me you do not enjoy this? Are you not the one who painted those murals? The stained-glass window, the antiquity, the history? Does it not stir you?”
She took off her shell pack and set it on the floor. She looked around one more time. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
Balien
scoffed and continued to observe, like she was “missing out.”
She moved some supplies around and found the energy packets and Khor’Zon sugar cubes. She took a cube and a gelatin packet, then resealed her shell. Balien’s pack had the purified water, little packages laced with some electrolyte supplements. He lobbed one to her once he opened his pack.
They ate quietly. V’delle let her cube roll around her tongue. Bland honey flavor washed down with more unsatisfying water. She sat on the dais steps, looking at the map. Balien was examining the various statues built along the back wall.
“People put so much effort into what they worship,” he said. “It is fascinating. Did you see these little things?” He brought a sculpture of a robed man with a beard.
“Hm? Oh, sure. Fascinating.”
Balien turned around. “I just mean . . . it used to be so decorative and . . . gaudy I guess?”
“‘Goddy?’ Is that how Khor’Zon describe Orothaea stuff?”
Balien skewed his eyes, trying to understand what she meant. He laughed a little when he figured it out. “No, g-a-u-d-y. It means extravagant and fancy.”
She was too busy with her maps to care.
Balien quietly stood over her. “How much farther do we have again?”
“It’s a twelve-hour trip altogether if we give ourselves room to deal with road obstructions. So far we’ve come four.”
“Eight to go.”
“I’m thinking we spend the night in Berlin.”
Balien licked his lips. “I thought you wanted to keep going? We can easily get to Urholm by nightfall.”
“Yeah, but we don’t want to get there at night. Transfers of personnel only happen during the day.”
“Berlin . . . do you think it is a good idea to sleep there?”
“We’ll be fine. Rain told me no one’s been there since it was abandoned.”
“How does he know this?”
V’delle paused. “I trust him. That’s all I need.”
“Okay. What about radiation? Will that be a problem?”
“Your people didn’t use nukes—they never did. It’s just a graveyard. Khor’Zon didn’t want to put a City or an Outpost there.”
“Ah, I see.”
She folded the map and put it inside her shell. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Balien said.
V’delle turned. She saw him standing on the dais next to the pulpit, backlit by the stained-glass ray. “What?”
“Do you mind if I take a moment to pray?”
“Fine, I’ve got to piss,” she said, and turned around.
“V’delle.”
She sighed. “Yes?”
“Do you want to join me?”
She laughed out of surprise. “Yeah, I’m not into that. Especially whatever you believe in.”
“I am not asking because I think you would be ‘converted.’ I would say I am a spiritual person, but fanaticism loses itself on me. I like to meditate in quiet places. This is a quiet place. I just wanted to feel what it is like to pray in a human church. Thought you might want to join.”
“I’ve really gotta pee.”
He smiled at her as she walked away.
After she’d relieved herself, V’delle was walking back to the motorcycle when she passed a small cemetery next to the church. Graves sandwiched between the white foundation and another brick building. Six wooden crosses stuck out of the grass in no order or symmetry. Some with semi-circles added to the top half of the crosses, others simple two-stick versions. One was broken at the shaft, its top half missing. Her fingers curled silently around the metal gate. Why would this tiny church have its own little graveyard? An awkward six graves? Underneath each plot, a disintegrated essence of full human life. Lives with the same kind of intricacy as hers. Six small, insignificant graves residing in an alley of an unnamed town on a spherical planet floating perfectly in space. Was she any less or greater than these people in the dirt? Was her cause of uniting scattered soldiers worth more than the lives of the particles below her feet? At the end of the war, no matter who would win, would V’delle be remembered? Would she even get her own plot of land for her body to rest? How many had been forgotten? What was life supposed to mean?
Balien opened the church doors, startling her.
“You ready?” he asked, grabbing his helmet. In his other hand he held a wooden crucifix.
“What’s that?”
“A souvenir,” he said, holding it with both hands like presenting a baby.
She recalled her little surplus of items shelved back in her concrete room, in her cottage. “What do you do with your souvenirs?”
“Good question. A keepsake, perhaps? A token of this journey. This place made me realize I have not gathered many things from this world. Twenty years goes by and you forget where you have walked sometimes.”
“I’d rather not remember, I guess,” she said, suddenly regretting her collection.
“Well I would be worried if all you had were severed heads.”
“Why the cross though?”
“I like it. It was one of the last sturdy things in there. Here, feel.”
“No thanks.”
“Afraid it will burn you?”
“What?”
“Sorry,” he said, a little deflated. “I forget you are about as savvy about this world as I am. I found a book last month about these creatures called vampires. They fear sunlight and crosses. They feed off the blood of others.”
“Once again I am torn between my heritage and their fixation on stupid things.”
“Your skin certainly fits the description of vampire,” he said, a line between caution and bait.
V’delle shook her head and spoke low. “The only vampire here is the one holding the cross. A creature from another world. Whose race thrives off the blood of others. Whose ship drains the life of our planet. Whose leaders gave me this skin.” She sat on the bike and ignited the engine. She looked sideways at him. “And I’m not that pale and gross anymore.”
He smirked and put away the cross. “Fair. That is fair.”
Aboard the trusty Dried Blood, they curved onto a southbound highway, passing a sign showing “Berlin.” The highway took them another hour toward the massive capitol. What started as farmlands turned suburban, then dense urban living. V’delle found a main street separated by a traffic berm. Large state buildings took up two-to-three blocks each, surrounded by what used to be cultivated grounds now turned violently green. Intermittent high-rise apartment complexes lined the roads like Norwegian fjords, mostly white with orange-red accents. Their shorter counterparts swept the rest of the empty space, marred by infectious flora and a fondness for glassless windows. A spire monument with a bulbous throat that could be seen from half the city jutted above the skyline, looking like a spike impaling a metal apple. Rows upon rows of ornate stone buildings, thousands of hand-cut moldings, terraces, arches, sills, and turrets. Spiky church steeples and A-frames rose above rooftops. Concrete pads that stretched between blocks. Alleys and underground tunnels and glass structures. All of it morphed by war. Some blocks decimated, flattened by Khor’Zon or human technology. Other complexes shaved halfway, as if someone had taken a giant, dull razor blade and carved off sections at a time. The buildings got bigger, and the density stronger. What little room left over was given to shrubbery squares and parks.
The whine of their engine echoed across miles of eerily empty cityscape. V’delle slowed the bike to twenty-miles-an-hour. Her eyes flexed to every open window of every apartment complex. Ahead, near a river bridge, a grouping of cars were piled up—a barricade.
At the next intersection, something moved in the corner of her eye. She jerked the handlebars to the right. Barbed wire sprung from the ground. The front tire popped, and the bike upended. V’delle flew over the handlebars and rolled across the empty road, hitting the gutter on the perpendicular street. She sprang to all fours. Her rifle had demagnetized from her side, now lying in the middle of the inter
section. Balien was grappled by two men in shredded, dark brown leathers with grim, faceless hoods. Another person was standing near the crashed bike, aiming a heavy machine gun at V’delle.
She lunged behind a parked sedan. The car took the full brunt of the gunfire. A momentary cease as he repositioned and yelled to a comrade. She ripped off her motorcycle helmet and tapped her collar; her mask morphed to her skull. Crouched behind the smoking car, she felt for her bangle shield on her hip and magnetized it to her wrist. Another hooded figure flanked her at the crosswalk, aiming a large, menacing pistol. A pincer attack. V’delle turned her back to him, and felt the slugs pelt her armored shell. The bullets staggered her as she scrambled around the sedan where the other claw of the pincer was waiting. Just as his machine gun broke flame, a magnificent pink barrier burst forth from V’delle’s wrist. The bullets ricocheted away. She aimed her Khor’Zon pistol through her own barrier. Two loud, crunchy metal blasts. The thick slugs tore through his thin leather, ripping his collar open and making a hole in his stomach. She spun immediately, catching the man with the pistol before he could catch her. They shot at the same time, but her shield deflected his round, and her round sprayed his skull and brain against a store window, shattering its glass.
Quiet descended upon the intersection. Her back throbbed. Every movement was small and cramped, to keep herself shielded as she approached the corner where they’d been ambushed. Smoke billowed from the bike. The barbed wire lay dormant. She rounded the corner, finger ready to claim lives.
Balien was gone.
11
DOWN THE FERRET HOLE
A door closed with a creak on the corner building. Thin wooden chimes hanging from the door tinkled and twisted off each other, a hollow clicking. The door’s white paint was mercilessly scratched, as if someone had scored it with their fingernails; trails of dried blood followed each line.
V’delle looked up. Ten stories. Her bangle shield buzzed dully.
She grabbed her rifle in the intersection and magged it to her side again, then ran to the door and kicked it open. Harsh, thick blackness overpowered the outside light. A concrete stairwell rose into complete void. More carved wind chimes, flameless candles, string, and duct tape adorned the walls and handrail. White paint splattered the walls and floor in weird symbols, some V’delle recognized like skulls, hands, and animals—perhaps dogs. V’delle inhaled, and nearly gagged. Feces, definitely feces, with a heavy urine aftertaste. Wafts of dusty wood powered through the taint, and then something odd, something V’delle couldn’t pin down. A sour, vinegary smell that made her think of chemicals. The floor, a cess pit of decaying trash and grime fused into one. Newspaper clippings stuck out amongst the piles, phone books with their contents rent, a broken chair, underwear, and a pair of flats. The menacing darkness enveloped everything above her. The bangle shield was only powerful enough to give off light five feet around her.
