Hollow Kingdom

by Kira Jane Buxton

  Ghubari and I heard him coming before we could register who it was. We spun our heads in the opposite direction of the horrible battle and made out a fawn-colored mass of wrinkles and flappy skin pounding the tarmac. Drool strings, trash, and gravel flew, scattered by the spongy paws of a dog on a mission. My heart seized. Dennis, against everything I taught that shining turd monster, was running full steam toward carnivorous cannibal quasi-birds. I opened my beak to stop him but nothing came out, my throat a desert. I jumped forward to somehow intervene, but Ghubari blocked me with his gray-and-white form.

  “No,” he said, gently.

  And then the light caught something, a glassy glimmer bouncing off it. In his drooly, scrotum-sanitizing mouth, was an iPad. I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t stop him and I couldn’t move as I watched him come to a sharp halt, taking in the battle across the four-way stop before him. He dropped the iPad with a clatter and let out a series of deep Dennis booms, the sounds of a hound who means business. The screeching stopped. Horrible beaks snapped toward him, their black eye holes facing my friend. Dennis barked again. He pawed at the iPad, slapping his cumbersome paws against its screen.

  No, Dennis. No. SIT. STAY.

  He picked up the iPad and the light caught its screen again with a sharp glint. The screams that came from the creatures were in the language of a raptor. They were sounding out prey calls. And Dennis was the prey. The crows commenced their mobbing from above, risking being digested for the sake of our bloodhound. But the Hideous Ones were fixated on the screen Dennis had presented them. Locked in. And they started to run.

  Dennis dipped his floppy head down to pick up the iPad but struggled. The edges were difficult for him to get his rubbery jowls around, too flat against the road. He pawed and gummed at the iPad, painting it with drool. I was certain I was already dead as a dodo from the stress of watching this, from being stuck and completely unable to help my Dennis. He began to look desperate, the whites of his eyes and teeth flashing as he bit at the iPad. And then he caught the edge of the tablet on his lower jaw and lifted it in his mouth. He turned and sprinted, faster than I’d ever seen or felt him run. Dennis was the wind. A whippet. A shooting star. He barreled back down the way he’d come, iPad in his jowls, a herd of unspeakable horror pounding the earth to get at him.

  “We have to do something!” I squawked. Ghubari nodded his head vigorously. And then, a sound as wonderful as the rustling of a Cheetos® bag or the Taco Bell gong, I heard high-pitched notes that freckled the air and raised my beak to a sight that almost made me sing. Migisi lowered to the ground, offering her back to me, her butter-yellow eyes revealing that look of stern consternation where she inadvertently seems extra judgy. I hopped onto her back and we lifted, us three, into the sky, soaring above with hundreds of birds. Blackwings, songbirds, geese, raptors, we all filled the sky, following from above, every eye on the bloodhound with the bait and the birdlike monsters that chased after him.

  “Throw whatever you can at them!” I screamed. The Sky Sentinels obeyed, dipping and diving to retrieve whatever they could. They pelted things at the racing beasts below. Rocks, trash, books, scrap metal, license plates, acorns, buckets, anything they could snatch up quickly. But it did nothing to stop the runaway train that had locked onto Dennis. I couldn’t breathe watching our bloodhound from above, his body no bigger than a hamster’s as he tore right through the town center and headed up a steep road, dodging crashed cars and toppled trees and store signs. His ears streamed behind him like the most beautiful wings I’d ever seen and then a sharp pain in my chest stabbed repeatedly because I knew he couldn’t keep up this pace for long. Dennis didn’t have the endurance for it. He wasn’t a greyhound or an Alaskan husky. He was a professional slob. And as soon as he couldn’t keep this up, those nightmarish beings would gain on him, and I’d just seen them swallow a crow whole and I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t. I scanned the area and racked my brain, what would a crow do? What would a crow do?

  Dennis tore up the enormous hill, the herd of horror on his heels. And then, just like that, he disappeared under the crowns of maples where I couldn’t see him anymore. I cried out for him—a wounded yell—as the Hideous Ones thundered after him, tearing at our skulls with their screams. Migisi and my stomach dropped, and we plummeted, rapidly losing altitude, plunging below the tree crowns to follow the fray. We had burst into a small park, whipping past a young MoFo climbing frame, barbecue pits, and picnic tables. And just up ahead, the herd charged forward, shredding grass and mud that flew at our eyes and engulfed us. Migisi dropped like a rock onto a picnic table, her talons scratching wood. The impact threw me from her. I toppled onto the table’s gum-lacquered bench, horrified to have stopped our race after Dennis.

  “No, Migisi! Keep...” I leapt into the air, all wings and prayers, thrashing my feathers, willing them to take me up, up, up. I had to fly! Sharp pain and gravity dropped me back to the bench. Then I froze, watching. Up ahead, a shoreline. A sliver of sandy beach. And a bobbing fawn body that swam furiously, disappearing into the body of a lake. The herd tore after the paddling bloodhound, a spray of water fanning into the air as those terrifying gray legs launched into the lake. Dennis swam on, head jerking side to side, rudder of a tail propelling him. The Hideous Ones screamed as they pursued him, jerky thrusts pushing them farther into the lake after my best friend. I called out to Dennis in Big Jim’s voice.

  “Come on, Dennis! Let’s go!” I wanted to tell him to give up and let go of that stupid tablet and be done with it, but the damn shiny plastic thing was still in his mouth and that slobbering rapscallion was going to sea-otter this shit until his last breath. And then one of the blanched creatures, with its thawed Thanksgiving-turkey skin and its black holes for eyes, disappeared under the water. And then another. Another let out a territorial scream that was drowned by bubbles.

  They. Couldn’t. Swim.

  And still they couldn’t break the fixation, wouldn’t let the tablet go; and so they thrust themselves out toward the middle of the lake, the deepest part, thrashing their ostrich legs under the water. Birds landed around us, calling out their cries of jubilance and threats toward the strange beings that couldn’t swim and couldn’t give up their prey. They were driving themselves extinct.

  One by one they disappeared into ripples and the birds around me shrieked and squawked and bounced up and down in place. We called for Dennis in a thousand bird voices, summoning our hero. And Dennis, my very best friend, kept on swimming. Finally, I sucked in a breath and called for him in Big Jim’s voice.

  “ZzzzZZZt! Come here, Dennis!” And just like that, he turned around and showed us that magnificent spongy black nose and he started his long swim back to shore. Back to everyone who loved him and back to safety. When he emerged from the water, doggy wet, covered in lake, his avian audience lost their minds, dancing and diving and singing. He aimed those drooping eyeballs at me and gave me a look that was both sheepish and triumphant. Dennis was not a gloater or an “I told you so” type of dog. He was just a hero, plain and simple. The flocks mobbed him lovingly and swooped down around him. Needle-beaked plovers danced around his feet in the sand. Salt-winged gulls and finches alike opened their throats and let their joy take flight. And Dennis shook off the lake water and our blues and dropped the tablet in front of him with a snort that sounded a hell of a lot like laughter.

  Chapter 31

  S.T.

  Martha Lake, Lynnwood, Washington, USA

  Celebration sparked around Dennis like the fireflies of summer’s gloaming. Aura, Web, and Echo lit up with an electricity the world had been deprived of, and I knew word of Dennis’s cunning maneuver would spread far and wide. As we plodded away from the lake—me on the slobbering hero’s thick, soggy back—birds dropped petals and tiny flowers from the sky, showering him with their gratitude. We made our way back through the small lakeside park, seeing it through calmer eyes than before, and stopped once we reached a road called 164th, where across the st
reet a Walgreens sat, quietly harkening back to dark times that seemed as if from another life. In the distance, in the direction of the towering Olympic mountain range that leaned against the horizon in the West, the road’s sick swaying suggested MoFos clustered there. The kind that were looking for screens and were wearing themselves down like pencil erasers. The kind that we were used to. The college crows, joined by another murder that called themselves the Marymoor crows, fluttered down from the sky like black playing cards. I filled with dread as I saw a familiar set of wings. Buffed black and blue feathers dropped down in front of me.

  “S.T.,” said Kraai. There I was again with my mixed feelings, relief to see his magnificent self, the eyes that made me think of a midnight lake, but utter shame and revulsion at my ineptness. I had proven to be a coward, no better than a prurient squirrel.

  “I’ve let you down—” I started.

  “We are grateful to you.”

  “What? I panicked, froze, and then hid in a bucket of ice cream.”

  “Dennis knew what to do because of what you taught him. You and Dennis are a partnership. You are murder. And we consider you family.”

  I didn’t know how to digest this; it felt so right and so wrong. I had tried so hard to be a part of this murder, to prove myself a crow, and was certain I had failed. And here I was being validated, being told that I had been enough all along.

  The birds flying above continued to shower us with petals and small twigs and what I believe was a radish, which landed directly on my head. And then a bird the color of a faded newspaper fluttered down next to Kraai and me. Ghubari. I hopped down from Dennis’s back, and “Mother Nature’s Gift, a mythical stallion of the canine world” wandered away from me. A clowder of cats congregated nearby, ever watchful. The Ones Who Open Doors had caught up to us. The youngest one, a juvenile male, used his lengthy arms to shimmy up to a branch midway up the maple and pout at us sullenly. His mother and sister settled on the grass, trailing their beautiful fingers across its blades and watching as their patriarch slowly approached Dennis. I hopped forward, worried about the interaction. The male orangutan with his carpet of coarse ginger hair lifted an arm and placed it on Dennis’s back. Dennis didn’t flinch. He sat, drooling for the Olympics, seeming to enjoy the contact, and I wondered if he was thinking the same as me: that it was like a pet from Big Jim. I was jealous that he could feel the touch of a hand again. Jealous, but so very happy for him. The One Who Opens Doors ambled away from Dennis to join his family and the feline congregation. Raccoons, opossums, and dragonflies joined in the collective worship of Dennis, and he lumbered along as they cheered around him as if he were a wrinkled and odiferous Snow White.

  Kraai spoke to Ghubari and me: “What were they? Those…things?” He sought the answer in cement outlines of the endangered buildings around us. We knew that they were not The One Who Conquers, a known smell, a known enemy. Ghubari and I exchanged a look, and I realized he hadn’t told me everything. There was more to the MoFo story. He scratched a foot along the tarmac before he spoke.

  “They don’t have a name because they are new,” Ghubari said, his voice somber and steely.

  I resisted the urge to stay quiet, the comfort of clinging to old thoughts, as if saying something would make it real and keeping it to myself would mean it wasn’t really happening. But I had made a promise to myself on Migisi’s back as I watched my bloodhound friend blaze a courageous trail with my heart in my beak. No more hiding from the truth.

  “They are MoFos,” I said, voice low. “They are Hollows. They are evolving. It is a last-ditch effort at survival.”

  Ghubari nodded his head methodically. “We were wrong. I thought that we were watching their total obliteration. But they are not leaving this world without a fight. This has never been seen before. I had not thought it possible, Shit Turd, so I haven’t told you everything. I heard something else.”

  In that moment, Ghubari performed the greatest magic trick I have ever seen. He opened his beak, and the voices and sound effects that poured from his throat were not of feathered or furred. They were the voices I had been pining for, and hearing them snapped me in half.

  “What is happening? Please, please don’t dismiss me, sir. Please. I’m here because of my wife. Please, sir, I’m asking for one thing from you—the truth,” said Ghubari, only it wasn’t Ghubari. It was Ghubari’s flawless rendition of Rohan. I could suddenly see him, his oil-slicked hair in chaotic tufts, his intelligent MoFo eyes sleepless and shiny. I could feel his thorny desperation.

  “I don’t have time or answers, excuse me,” came the curt voice of someone new. Ghubari was using his stupendous skills—his voltaic memory and his gift of mimicry—to summon the past. To bring the MoFos back to life. Ghubari mimicked the creak of a door. They were moving. Clinical clicks and beeps. This was in the hospital.

  “Sir, I beg of you. I have no one else to turn to and I know you have some idea. Please. The truth,” Rohan pleaded, his heart sliced open, voice cracking like an ancient branch.

  “I—look, come in here—” The MoFo With The Answers paused. A door opened and shut, and I imagined him ushering Rohan’s panic into a janitor’s closet at a hospital as frenzied as a zoo, his brow speckled with sweat, the bags under his eyes crow-black and heavy with the weight of the world. “I can’t make this easier for you, Rohan. Your wife, my daughter, we’re all stuck in this nightmare together.” An alarm sounded out in the hospital, muffled to the two MoFos in the janitor’s closet.

  Rohan pleaded, his voice choking on grief. “Henry, please. Surely, the CDC—”

  “The picture is the same everywhere, Rohan. At every hospital and research center. I’ve called everywhere—” He paused again, swallowing a large stone. “We are on our own. We can’t expect help.”

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  “We have no cure for the virus. We know nothing about it. Technological bioweapon, disease, what? It doesn’t even seem to have a name. You’ve seen what it does, it ravishes the human form. The news reports weren’t sensational. We are undergoing a mass extinction; the virus, an increasingly toxic environment, all of it is a perfect storm and, Rohan, we have no shelter. The changes you’ve seen in Neera and these newborns is some sort of unprecedented phenotypic plasticity, an immediate genetic response and survival mechanism.”

  “I don’t underst—”

  “Our genes are changing faster than we imagined possible. Much in the way cancerous tumors can adapt or acclimate to chemotherapy, humans are rapidly evolving to survive the virus. That’s what you are seeing in these accelerated physical deformities. My daughter—” He inhaled sharply, as if filling up with air could keep him from crumbling. Shrieks sounded outside the closet. A nurse yelled for help. “My daughter’s skin has changed, her whole tiny body is—” His voice cracked. He sniffed. “What I’m realizing, Rohan, is that there are parallels to cancer. Cancer is a newly evolved parasitic species, the uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells in the body that metastasize, spreading to invade nearby tissues. In order to survive this insidious virus, to survive total obliteration, I think the human species is becoming that cancer.”

  Rohan exhaled. “There must be a hope, there must be a cure, we cannot...” He couldn’t finish his sentence.

  “There is always hope. Always,” The MoFo With The Answers offered up snake oil, tiger bone, and rhino horn. And he almost sold it.

  Ghubari squawked, bringing us back to the present, to a world without those clever, clever voices, those beautiful minds. I fluttered my gular, flapped my pinions. Oh, the pleasure of hearing those bewitching MoFo tones, to be reminded of their sharp intellect, the sparks of electricity running through their words. I braced against the skewering pain of remembering that it was just a memory, a haunting, a recording. I understood why Ghubari had held this inside him. Who would believe it? It was all too much.

  “The One Who Hollows as well must return,” came a low whisper from Kraai. He had taken the news stoically
, but I felt something change about him. He must have felt the sharp shock I did, how suddenly the world felt even more unstable; the ground seemed to rumble under our feet. In an instant our future looked different. The MoFo remnants that slimed our cities weren’t going to die out quietly with a bloody gurgle. Instead they were growing feathers and wings, a mockery to our very beings and a cancer on our world. It meant that our whole lives would be a war. Kraai gathered himself quickly. “And so we start with our immediate enemies. We will strengthen our numbers and track down The One Who Conquers. We will take on this new enemy without compromise. I will align us with our Marymoor crows, our U District crows, the Queen Anne crows, all Bellevue, Redmond, and Kirkland crows, and we will call on the Tacoma murder, the Renton IKEA crows, all the San Juan Island crows, the Portland murder, and all the others. We will put out the call through Aura for every crow on this big beautiful blue to unite. We will fight for a future.”

  Dennis was now across the street, in front of a building wearing a banner that advertised Thai food, songbirds frolicking around him, playfully pulling on his ears and twittering their gratitude. He looked small under the enormous shredded banner that hung from the side of the building by mere threads. Stubbornly hanging on, I thought; everything is stubbornly hanging on. And then I looked at Dennis in all his silly splendor with a bunch of sycophantic critters hovering around him and I felt very full. Full of love and gratitude and suddenly ready to take on whatever had to be taken on so that we could have a better future.

  Dennis’s head froze and his ears perked up, a slight movement. His head pushed forward, The Golden Nose training on something. A shiver danced under his coat. The birds around him lifted and gave him space, sensing he was focused. Ghubari, with his oboe solo cadence, was speaking quietly to me about projections, battle plans—the thoughtful ramblings of a brainy bird—but I wasn’t listening to them. They were background noise. I was watching Dennis, whose lips pursed and freed a small, chesty growl. He broke into a trot with his ears swinging metronomically and his big paws striding ahead.