“Logical!” Brady laughed, pointing accusingly at Reinheiser and glancing about at all the others. “Will you just listen to the time traveler here telling me to be logical!”
“Enough!” Mitchell roared, his voice edging on violence. The muscles in his arm twitched dangerously. Even Reinheiser refrained from any comments under the imposing glare, and Mitchell cooled at the immediate respect shown him. “I’ve got an officer missing, probably dead, and all I’ve got to go on is some bullshit story from that idiot!”
He spoke loudly.
Thompson heard.
Mitchell raved on, and the others, watching him, didn’t see Thompson rise and charge across the beach. He bowled into the captain, clawing at his throat and screaming hysterically. “You’re the idiot!” he cried. “You’ll get us all killed!”
Mitchell regained his balance in a second and easily pulled free of Thompson’s grasp. He was about to retaliate violently, Billy, Del, and Brady poised to intercede, when Thompson suddenly stopped fighting.
“But maybe that’s it!” Thompson proclaimed excitedly as he spun away from the captain, seemingly unconcerned about his defenseless posture. As with his tantrum on the becalmed raft earlier that morning, his abrupt mood swing halted the others in confusion. Mitchell backed off and waited curiously for Thompson’s next move.
“Don’t you see?” Thompson asked, looking around from man to man. “We don’t belong here. I wanted to escape on the raft, but that’s no good. Nowhere to go. Don’t you see? We don’t belong anywhere anymore. This isn’t our world-” He looked Mitchell straight in the eye. “Corbin found the only way out!”
Doc Brady moved to calm him, but Mitchell did it his own way, connecting on Thompson’s jaw with a wide arcing left hook that lifted the seaman clear over the edge of the raft and dropped his limp body inside. Del began to protest, wanting to mention the castle in hopes that it might lend credibility to Thompson’s story, but the resounding boom-boom of a drum stopped him short.
The startled men turned and, in the fading daylight, saw their impending doom.
Fifty yards away, rank upon rank of creatures lined the beach, most standing, but some riding saddled lizards. Those mounted brandished long spears, and the others had crude but wicked swords and black shields. In front of the files stood a standard bearer, his unfurled yellow banner emblazoned with the red foot of a bird of prey, blood dripping from its talons.
“What was that word you used, Reinheiser? Goblin?” Billy said with obvious contempt for the physicist. “Good word.”
“That Thompson must have a huge mind to keep this army bottled up in it,” Del remarked.
“Cool it,” Mitchell said in a low, steady voice. Unlike the uncontrollable elements of the storm, Mitchell understood the crisis before them and knew that it was within his realm of influence. “We’re not dead yet, not with these.” He patted his M-16.
Boom! Boom! the drums tolled as a huge goblin strutted in front of the standard bearer. It presented Corbin’s smashed rifle to the men, then bared its teeth, threw the weapon down and spat on it.
Holding his hand up behind him to keep his crew calm, Mitchell walked out a few steps.
“Do you understand pain?” he threatened, pointing his rifle at the creature. He was amazed to learn that the beast was capable of answering.
“We know pain,” it croaked. “Men taught us pain long ago.” Abruptly its voice rose in proclamation. “We give pain back to men!” Wild-eyed, it turned to its army and bellowed a command. “Give death to men!”
The drums thundered to life and the ranks began chanting the liturgy of their race. “Men die! Men die!”
Sensing that the attack was imminent, the men moved several yards apart and formed a line, Billy and Mitchell on opposite ends with the two remaining rifles. With all that was happening in front of them, they didn’t notice that Thompson had climbed out of the raft and had found a large rock. He crept up behind Billy Shank and, as a drum resounded, brought the rock down on Billy’s head. Without a moan, Billy dropped to the ground.
Thompson had a rifle.
Suddenly the drums went silent, their last note hanging in the air like a death summons. The leader turned slowly back to Mitchell and flashed him an evil smile. It raised its arm and commanded, “Marguluk!”
Two creatures emerged from the throng, pallbearers to Ray Corbin, his “casket” a pole supported horizontally on their shoulders, his shredded, mutilated corpse tied twisted to it, left wrist and right ankle.
Del spun away in horror and fought back the bile in his throat. Likewise, Brady and Reinheiser averted their eyes. But Mitchell reacted differently, more than ready for a fight. “Bastards!” he roared. “Murdering bastards!” and he fired a burst at the bearers. They dropped, as did several creatures behind them, riddled with the leaden extensions of Mitchell’s fury.
The beast leader howled in rage.
Mitchell imitated the cocky grin it had flashed earlier and blew it away.
Awed and terrified, the creatures verged on panic. Many of them fled, especially those in the farthest ranks; others ducked quivering behind their shields; some even bowed to Mitchell.
“Look at them!” Mitchell shouted, his anger turning to ecstasy under the aphrodisiac of instant power. “Look at them run and hide!” He fired a volley into the air and scores of creatures cowered.
“Do you realize what this means?” Mitchell laughed and turned to the men, a sated look in his eyes. “We’re gods!” he proclaimed. “We’ll own them!”
“I don’t think so,” came Thompson’s voice, steady now, off to the side. Mitchell, eyes wide with surprise, turned to the seaman and looked down the barrel of an M-16.
“We have no right to kill them,” Thompson declared. “This is their world, not ours.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Shut up!” Thompson snapped, and Mitchell froze at the sheer violence of the outburst, expecting Thompson to fire. Suddenly, though, Thompson seemed calm again. “Don’t you see?” he pleaded, begging for some confirmation. “We’re the ones who don’t belong here. We’ve got to escape. Like Corbin.” His head drooped in despair, and Mitchell, seeing an opening, inched the barrel of his gun toward him. Thompson was alert, though, and he snapped his glance back on the captain.
Mitchell swung about desperately, clearly recognizing his death in Thompson’s feverish eyes.
But Thompson’s rifle roared first and Mitchell felt fiery explosions as bullets invaded his body.
Doc Brady lunged at the mad seaman but stopped abruptly when Thompson wheeled around, the rifle still ready.
Del noticed Billy, his head opened and blood flowing freely. He wanted to go to his injured friend, but fright and confusion held him in place. He turned to Reinheiser and noted the man’s eyes darting about, Reinheiser obviously searching desperately for an out. And when Reinheiser met his gaze, Del realized that the selfish wretch was hoping that he or Brady would distract Thompson so he could make his break.
“Thompson, please,” Brady said, struggling futilely to appear calm. In the background the creatures regrouped, also trying to make sense of Thompson’s crazy actions. “For God’s sake, man!”
The three were still in a line, Del frozen on one end, Reinheiser in the middle and leaning away, and Brady on the closest end, bending toward Thompson, reaching out with pleading hands for the rifle.
“Why was I picked for this?” Thompson mumbled, tears streaking the sand on his face. He looked at Brady, still several feet away. “Why am I the only one who understands?” With a sigh of helplessness, as if he had no other choice, he clenched the rifle determinedly, and the others, like Mitchell, knew.
Reinheiser broke for the raft, Brady dove for the barrel of the rifle, Del never moved.
But it didn’t matter.
Thompson, sobbing openly but certain of his duty, made one thundering sweep with the death dealer.
And they, all three, felt the fiery explosions.
In the Halls of the Colonnae
VOID. THE PUREST emptiness. Consciousness remained, but it was a stagnant thing, devoid of external stimuli and of cogent thought. Existence, and nothing more.
Time passed… irrelevant.
Del opened his eyes. Or perhaps they had been open all along and his mind just now caught up with them. Instinctively he clutched at his midsection. Too late, he knew, the bullets had already ripped through his belly.
He lay on his side, shrouded by a thick gray fog. Strangely, he felt no pain. He raised his hands up before his face.
No blood. Had it been a dream? Trembling, he looked down, his breath coming in short gasps as he moved the tattered strands of his shirt aside. A jagged line of scars crossed his belly, the round scars of bullets.
It took him many minutes to steady his breathing.
As he regained control he realized that he wasn’t on the beach, that the floor beneath him was smooth and cool as marble. Struggling against his disorientation and bordering on panic, he forced himself to his feet, but as his head emerged from the waist-deep fog, his confusion only increased, for he stood in a vast dark hall, illuminated in reflections of wispy gray from the transient fog. A seemingly infinite row of huge pillars, glowing blue-white, ran off into the distance at his left. Del saw no walls or ceiling, just the massive columns, each rooted beneath the low-riding fog and stretching upward as far as the eye could see, into the blackness and beyond. Unearthly, beautiful, yet hauntingly surreal.
“I must be dead,” he muttered, staring blankly at the supernatural sight.
“Hardly,” came a voice behind him. He spun to face Martin Reinheiser.
“Del? What happened?” another voice called. Del recognized it immediately, and then saw Billy rising from the mist at his right. “The last thing I remember was those goblins on the beach and getting whomped on the head.”
“Thompson,” Del explained.
“Figures,” Billy replied, shaking his head. “That guy’s got a real problem.”
“He took your weapon and opened up on the rest of us,” Del went on.
“But you two got away.”
“No, I got shot. So did Reinheiser, I think.”
“A dozen times at least,” the physicist confirmed.
Billy folded his arms across his chest and shot them an angry glare. “What?” he demanded, his voice louder.
Del understood his friend’s impatience. Holding Billy’s stare with his own firm but compassionate visage, he slowly pulled the tattered shirt away from his abdomen. Even from several feet away the vicious scars were unmistakable.
Billy’s arms fell unfolded and his eyes bulged in disbelief. “Are we dead?” he gasped.
“You two seem preoccupied with that subject,” Reinheiser said. “These are not the bodies of spiritual entities; we remain flesh and blood. We are not dead!”
“But you just said you got shot,” Billy protested. “Don’t tell me that those goblin things know anything about medicine.”
“Apparently-” Reinheiser began, but Del cut him off.
“Ssh!” he hissed, and he went tense. Billy and Reinheiser also went alert, straining their eyes and ears in search of the danger Del had sensed.
A low growling noise came from somewhere under the fog nearby.
“Bear?” Billy whispered breathlessly. He moved next to Del, half expecting some hideous beast to spring at them from out of the fog.
A second later, though, the growling sounded more like snoring, and Billy and Del looked at each other and smiled. “Mitchell!”
“The captain, too,” Reinheiser said. He stroked his goatee at this new revelation. He knew he had been shot, but since it was the last thing he remembered, he wasn’t sure of the extent of his injuries. Immediate aid might have saved him. The captain was a different story, though. Reinheiser had seen Mitchell blasted apart by a hail of bullets, certainly dead even as he fell to the ground. Nobody could possibly have survived that volley.
Following the thunderous snores, the men had little trouble finding the sleeping giant. Waking him was a bit more difficult, though, for Mitchell was deep into his dreams and didn’t appreciate being disturbed. He flailed and kicked, punched and even tried to bite. Eventually they managed to rouse him, somewhat, for the captain remained groggy and had little recollection of the events at the beach. The others recounted the tale in full, and though Mitchell grumbled about its implausibility, at this juncture, at least, he had no choice but to accept it.
“Let us continue searching,” Reinheiser suggested, “perhaps the doctor is here as well.”
Almost immediately, Billy stumbled over Doc Brady, peacefully asleep under the gray blanket. Before they even woke him, Del pressed on. “That makes five,” he said. “Let’s keep going.” And he started away.
“Do we really want to locate that idiot Thompson?” Reinheiser argued.
“We’ve got to keep looking,” Del pleaded. He wasn’t looking for Thompson at all, secretly hoping that Ray Corbin was there, somehow recovered.
“Del’s right,” Billy agreed. “If Thompson’s out there and he’s got that gun, we’ve got to get him before he wakes up.”
“Then let’s get going,” Mitchell growled, nodding his huge head as he began to remember the pain and shock of the bullets. “I want Thompson found, and then his ass is mine.” The captain grinned wickedly at the notion. It wasn’t often that a dead man had a chance to pay back his killer, and he found the thought of twisting Thompson’s neck quite satisfying.
They searched the immediate area, but the fog remained impenetrable and Thompson didn’t seem to be close by. Frustrated and more than a little fearful of the possibilities-perhaps Thompson watched from a distance even as they searched, a crazed smile on his face and a ready M-16 at his side-Mitchell needed a showdown and began calling out, “Thompson!” The others, except Reinheiser, joined in.
“Wonderful,” Reinheiser muttered, and he crouched low into the safety of the opaque veil. “That lunatic is probably training his rifle on their voices this very minute.”
A tickling breeze, a gentle puff of wind, blew across them, swirling the fog into swaying minarets. And the breeze carried words in its wake, words in the purest tone and timbre that any of them had ever heard, clear as an unblemished bell and, like the great hall about them, supernatural in beauty. “Your Mr. Thompson is not here.”
As one, eyes wide, mouths open, they turned to the voice.
Halfway between the five men and the columns, limned in ghostly evanescence, stood a tall man in a flowing white robe of fine silk. A golden crown adorned his head, and in his delicate hand he held a many-jeweled, golden scepter. Hair of the starkest white, yet thick and rich with vitality, hung loosely about his shoulders, and though his skin was incredibly pale, almost translucent, his presence was undeniably solid and powerful.
Even from a distance the being’s calm demeanor soothed Del’s apprehension, for the creature’s eyes held a flickering blue flame that radiated unbounded knowledge and serenity.
Mitchell stood firm before the wondrous specter, his anger sufficient proof against any feelings of awe. “Then where is he?” he demanded. “And who are you?”
The being made no motion, yet a breeze emanated from him. He did not move his lips, yet the breeze carried words. More than words, actually. Within that gentle wind came emotions and sensations beyond the spectrum of hearing, emanations that the five men felt throughout their bodies and souls. “It is best to say only that Michael Thompson’s destiny followed a different path from yours. As to your second question, I am Calae, Prince of the Colonnae.” The specter then turned from Mitchell to Del, and an even more gentle puff blew by. “Truly I am sorry, Jeffrey DelGiudice, but your friend, Ray Corbin, has indeed passed from this world.”
Del’s eyes widened. The being had just read his mind and answered his unspoken question.
“You still think we’re not dead?” Billy whispered to R
einheiser. The scientist, completely at a loss for an explanation, wasn’t so quick to dismiss the possibility this time, but before he could seriously consider that theory, the breeze came again.
“Take comfort, Billy Shank. I assure you that you are not dead. By the power of the Colonnae, you have passed through the dark realm and are healed. We could not permit your deaths, for this is a time long-awaited, and a great adventure lies before you. Your actions may well determine the destiny of a new world.”
They knew a moment later that their understandable doubts had been foreseen. Calae raised his scepter and permitted the men a glimpse of their recent past, an image that had been mercifully erased from their memories. Each alone in a form not quite corporeal, yet somewhat substantial and inescapable, they walked among black mounds, barrows of broken shale, under unknown stars, and looked upon the shadows of Death’s domain. A lonely journey, an endless trek, for not another being stirred in the never-ending plain, and every horizon promised nothing but continued blackness. Even Martin Reinheiser was stricken dumb, this episode being too far beyond any mortal experience to be believable. Sympathetic to their confused distress, Calae released them from recollections they could not comprehend. “Come,” he said, opening his arms as a father to his children. “Sit by me and I will tell you a marvelous tale that shall answer many of your questions and instill in you many more.”
Compelled by this superior will, the mortals could only comply. Barely conscious that they were moving, they approached and sat before Calae on the cool floor, and the fog in that area wafted away.
Calae closed his eyes and contemplated his tale. He didn’t want to overwhelm the fragile mortals any more than was necessary. The breeze came again. “Let me begin,” it whispered to them, “at what you may perceive to be the end, though it was in fact the beginning. You have been quite perceptive and have already guessed much.” Calae’s eyes softened in sympathy and sadness. “The war long feared by your race came, swift and terrible, a mere fifty years after you departed the sunlit world. Tiny enemies long thought eradicated were awakened once more as weapons and, in the escalation that soon followed, mankind’s terrible machines of destruction wreaked devastation across this beautiful world. Nothing could stand against the fury, the very stones screamed in agony! Nation after nation loosed their weapons in full knowledge that the poisonous wake would leave naught but a barren, unlivable earth.
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