by Zachary Howe
“For your friend.”
“Noah,” Gordie said, stone-faced. “His name is Noah.”
“Right. Noah. I’m sorry.” Gordie’s anger softened. He wasn’t mad at her; he just couldn’t deal with the thought of Noah. Plus, he was impressed with her composure after the disaster, which had helped him remain calm.
“Thanks,” he muttered. Just then he heard footsteps running down the hall behind them.
“Gordie! Bridget! Thank God! Are you two all right?” It was their English teacher, Ms. Hannigan. She appeared unscathed.
“We’re okay,” Bridget answered. “There are some students in room 106 that are injured, but most of them are . . .” her words trailed off. Ms. Hannigan looked at Gordie for confirmation and he nodded. He could see anguish in her eyes, but she masked the grief in her voice.
“Okay. You two go to the auditorium. The school is gathering there. The police are on the way. Tell Mr. Anderson that I need help down here.”
“No,” Gordie said. “I’ll help you.” She must have seen the determination in his eyes because she chose not to argue.
“I’ll go,” said Bridget. Without another word she ran back the way Ms. Hannigan had come. When Bridget was out of sight the English teacher turned back to Gordie.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said, which seemed to appease her as she nodded and reached for the door that he and Bridget were about to enter. When she turned the knob and pushed the door open they were overwhelmed. Gordie could feel the presence of death, almost like a current; it was heavy. Of the twenty students that were in this room when the bell rang that morning only three were still alive. The scene here was almost identical to that of the room Gordie had left just minutes earlier, except that the faces of the dead seemed so much smaller and younger—the difference between ninth and tenth graders.
In the middle of the room a young boy was lying on the floor with a girl and another boy at his side. The girl was pressing a blood-soaked sweatshirt on the abdomen of the injured student while the other boy looked on, immobilized by fear. Ms. Hannigan rushed to the girl’s aid and Gordie asked the spectating boy if he was all right. He nodded, and Gordie told him he could go to the auditorium. He joined Ms. Hannigan after he sent the boy off.
“It’s okay, Sarah. You’ve done a great job,” Ms. Hannigan told the girl. “Bobby is going to be fine. Let me stay with him and you go to the auditorium, okay?”
“No! I need to stay with him,” Sarah said.
“Okay, okay,” Ms. Hannigan said. “Just keep applying pressure like you’ve been doing. That’s great,” she told Sarah, and then turned to Gordie. “How was there so much damage over here?”
“Over here?” Gordie asked, baffled. “Was there none on the other side of the school?”
“There was a little. The earthquake caused some furniture to tip over, but nothing . . . like this.” Her face went slack. She swallowed audibly and assessed the room again.
“That was no earthquake.” Gordie pulled her from her contemplation. “It was a giant explosion, or eruption, or something. It came from straight east of here. That’s why we got the brunt of the blast, even though it looked like it came from at least a mile or two aw—” Gordie froze. He felt like he had just dived into a frozen lake as he realized, since he first saw the explosion, where it had originated. “No.”
“Gordie! Are you okay?!” He heard Ms. Hannigan yelling, but was already sprinting down the hall, sneakers squeaking on the tile. As he tore through the cafeteria startled shrieks reached his ears.
“Gordie!”
“What happened?”
“Was there another explosion?!”
He didn’t know who asked these questions and didn’t care. His only goal was to get home as fast as possible. Gordie burst out the western doors of the school, dashed between cars and up the second aisle to his Charger. He fumbled for the keys. His hands shook uncontrollably, scratching the paint around the lock repeatedly before finally managing to steady them enough to open the door and turn the ignition.
He squealed out of the parking lot and began the race home. There were no other cars on the small streets, and he made no effort to obey the laws of the road. He raced through street lights and stop signs alike, pushing his Hemi up to 90 mph in town, barely aware of the devastation surrounding him. Houses were becoming less and less recognizable as dwellings the further east he travelled. Structures more closely resembled wood piles the closer he got to home. An eerie silence had descended over the town.
Gordie flew past the Jensen farm a quarter mile away from his house. He felt a twinge of sorrow as he scanned the utter destruction of the Jensen family home, but his concern for his own family outweighed this empathy. There was a small hill ahead concealing his house from view. His anxiety mounted as he approached the slope. His heart was racing faster than it ever had in his life and he was nearing a state of sheer panic. When he mounted the berm he was greeted by a terrible sight.
Nothing was visible but a charred black ground cover. His confusion at the starkness of the landscape was gradually replaced by terror as he came to the realization that his house no longer existed. In his moment of shock, Gordie released the gas and coasted by this scene, watching it through his window as if he were watching a film strip roll by. The thought of his father began to creep into his mind, but he pushed it away. He knew he had been home, finishing the chores that Gordie hadn’t after sleeping in, yet he told himself his father had gone into the city. He could not concede his life. Not without proof.
Gordie was still rolling. His hands were glued to the wheel. He was lost, lost in a struggle inside his own mind. Images of his father disintegrating wrestled with reassuring thoughts that he had been far away at the time of the blast; they were competing for his sanity, his will to live. He had no sense of reality. He was still rolling.
His wits returned enough to register the entrance to his driveway looming thirty yards ahead. The prospect of turning the wheel and entering the bounds of his family’s property seemed impossible, a Herculean task. He took a deep breath to steel his nerves and steered his car onto the lot. At this point his tires were crawling across the pavement, but he didn’t have the strength to step on the brakes. He waited until the car rolled to a stop.
Gordie was numb.
He had seen so much—so much horror. The reality of all this was starting to well up inside him as he stared across the barren land that was once his farm, his home. Again, he pushed those thoughts away after the image of his best friend floated to the surface. Not yet. He couldn’t address that pain yet.
As Gordie surveyed the land, something in the distance finally provided visual relief to the endless nothingness. There was some kind of jagged form lodged into the ground, protruding from the middle of where their pasture had once sat. It looked almost like a sculpted lightning bolt. A tingling sense of foreboding crept into his mind. He stared at it.
“What is—” His mouth went dry and he couldn’t finish the question that exploded in his mind—along with a thousand others—as he continued to stare at the spire.
In a labored effort, Gordie pushed open the car door and stepped out into the dust and ash. The smell of burnt grass filled his lungs and the residual smoke made his eyes tear up. His gaze was fixed on the stone as his legs pulled him toward it. It appeared to be a few hundred yards away. He stepped towards it, one heavy footfall after another.
When he was within a hundred yards he could make-out some form beneath the bolt. He maintained his pace while the ominous feeling loomed over him. A crow flew overhead, cawing into the void.
He was fifty yards away and he could see a ring of grass around the site of the bolt. The figure beneath the object took on a more recognizable shape, but Gordie would not accept what his eyes were telling him. He began to slow his gait; he did not want to see what he feared awaited him. He focused on the grass so he could continue on.
He was twenty yards a
way and could not ignore the reality of what lay beneath the bolt, which stood eight feet tall. Gordie knew there was a human being under that alien object that was so unwelcome on this landscape, even in its desecrated state. His brain told him who that person was, but his heart denied that he could be the son of the victim ahead. It could be anyone.
The tears in his eyes were no longer a reaction to the polluted air. Gordie stared at the rim of the grass circle that was now ten yards away. He told himself that he just needed to make it to the grass, though his knees felt too weak to bear him. He trudged forward, fixed on the edge of the inexplicably pristine grass ahead. He would not look at the body again until he reached the next checkpoint. Still, his breaths were becoming short and ragged. The structure of his world was crumbling around him and he struggled to steady the walls.
Gordie looked straight down at the grass upon which he stood. His breathing was no longer subconscious as he forced long, calculated inhalations to ready himself for what he was about to see. He raised his head, and then collapsed to all fours, gasping for breath.
He closed his eyes to regain some sense of the world, but the image of his father was burned on his retinas. Robert Leonhart’s face was twisted in some mixture of agony and terror that Gordie could not recognize. He was too broken to release the scream that had manifested in his brain as it desperately tried to escape from the prison of his skull.
Waves of grief crashed over him. The day’s events threatened to consume him. Gordie was paralyzed, but he felt compelled to reach his father’s side—an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Shaking, he began to crawl toward his father. He gripped the grass and dragged his body forward almost against his will. His fingers dug into the earth, pulling him onward. A voice in his mind made him question whether he would survive unless he reached his father soon.
Forward. Forward. Gordie was just feet away and another voice in his head asked, What will you do when you reach him? What’s the point? He shook those thoughts away and carried on. That voice told him there was nothing he could do for his father; a realization that was speeding toward him like a bullet, or a bolt of lightning. In reality, he knew there was no helping his father the moment he saw this apocalyptic scene, but he refused to let his body lay unaccompanied.
Gordie reached out his arm to pull himself further, but his hand did not meet grass. His fingers recognized the thick, hairy forearm of his father by touch. When Gordie was a child, he and his father would play a game where Robert would hold out his arm and little Gordie would hang from it for as long as he could. Their record was forty-eight seconds—Robert’s shoulder generally gave out around thirty. This memory sent another jolt of pain coursing through him.
Gordie’s right hand remained clasped around his father’s wrist while he trembled with tears, lying face down in the grass. He stayed like this for a few minutes until he could muster the strength to look up and take in Robert’s entire body.
The bolt was protruding from his stomach angling away from his face. It looked almost like ice as it reflected and refracted light in odd ways. Gordie turned away from it in disgust, pulled himself close to his father, and rested his head on his chest, looking up at his face. Robert’s facial expression was still foreign to his son, so Gordie closed his father’s eyes and jaw, which threw into relief the strong face he once knew.
“I love you, Dad. I’m so sorry.” Those were the last words that escaped him for some time as he buried his face into his father’s chest and sobbed. Images of lifeless teenagers piled atop one another flowed through his brain. Noah and the cavity that was once his face materialized in his mind’s eye; the demolished houses he had sped past in his rush home. All these images swam in his head, and they were all linked to this frozen lightning bolt.
2
The Messenger
The lightning bolt. For the first time, Gordie began to analyze the enigmatic nature of the attack, and this contemplation had a sobering effect. His breathing slowed and became more controlled. The heavy stream of tears flowing from his eyes began to stem and he was regaining awareness. With this newfound consciousness a sense of confusion swelled. How is this possible? This wasn’t some kind of military attack, but then, he never thought that from the moment of the eruption. He searched his mind and grasped at wild notions of electromagnetic devices, but could not fathom why rural Wisconsin would be a target, or why there would be a resultant frozen lightning bolt.
Is it just a lightning bolt? Gordie had seen lightning strike the giant oak at the north end of his property with little or no effect. This couldn’t be normal lightning. Is this global warming lightning? Is that even a thing? These thoughts raced through his head as he grasped for a logical explanation for what he had witnessed—
“Rough day!”
Gordie sprang to his feet in alarm at the sound of a man’s voice behind him. If a normal man were to display such callous insensitivity in the midst of this devastation, Gordie may have tried to kill him. But this was no normal man.
In front of Gordie stood a very young man, barely older than himself, wearing a white toga sectioned by a golden belt that matched the fluttering golden wings adorning both his cap and sandals. In his left hand he was carrying a staff ornamented with two carved snakes intertwined around the rod topped, again, with a pair of wings.
Gordie’s shock at this character’s ludicrous appearance began to wear off and was replaced by reason and skepticism. At first glance he thought he was staring into the youthful eyes of Hermes, a member of the Greek pantheon. But he knew better. He was not a child and this was no Olympic god before him, taunting his wounded soul. But then, who was he?
“Who the hell are you?” Gordie asked.
“Who am I?” the newcomer asked in a falsely wounded voice. “Surely, I am Noah, returned to comfort my bestest friend!” Gordie’s eyes widened at this jab, but the jester continued before he could retort. “Or maybe I am little Judy Pritchett—you held me so tenderly while I passed.” He looked down upon an imaginary baby he was pretending to cradle in his arms, then peeked up at Gordie with a malevolent grin splattered on his face.
Fury was bubbling to Gordie’s surface, as was disbelief at this man’s audacity in mocking the dead.
“No, no.” He shook his head with feigned disappointment, but his smile widened ominously. “I am indeed your poor father . . . and I am so very angry with you, my son, for failing to save me.”
Too far. Gordie had already begun his sprint towards him at the mention of his father with an unyielding thirst for blood. He no longer cared about the identity of this lunatic. His only wish was to inflict as much pain as possible. More than that, he intended to beat this wretched man-child to death. He crossed the gap between them in an instant and buried his fist into his enemy’s cheek just as he finished his taunt.
Blinded by his wrath, Gordie almost toppled to the ground when his ensuing left hook met nothing but air. He turned, searching for his prey, until he saw his limp body hurdling across the landscape like a missile. He pursued.
He closed the gap between them with remarkable speed and was near enough to attack again within seconds. He grabbed his enemy’s ankle and dug his heels into the ground, halting their momentum in an instant. Before the limp body could fall to the ground however, Gordie swung the motionless form above his head with one arm and slammed him face first into the dirt. A plume of dust exploded skyward.
As the dust cloud dispersed, Gordie stared down into a six-foot-deep hole where his opponent now lay quiet. Not yet pacified, he jumped into the grave, his knee aimed for the center of the spine. He reveled in the impending doom of this vile creature he was raining down upon, demonic glee carved into every inch of his face. But he did not get to experience a hunter’s satisfaction upon the kill.
Gordie crashed down onto dirt, and was yanked out of his craze as he tried to relocate his target, who had disappeared before his very eyes. He scratched and clawed in the dirt, wondering if he had somehow burrowed
into the earth.
“You won’t find me in there!”
Gordie looked up to see his enemy floating in midair fifteen feet above his head. His smile had returned, instilling in Gordie a fresh helping of rage. He crouched and sprang upwards. He was buoyed by the sight of the ridiculer’s faltering smile as he ascended towards him. Gordie wrapped him in a vice-like embrace and registered his fear with grotesque satisfaction as he slammed his forehead into the youthful face.
The force of the attack sent them hurtling towards the ground at a forty-five-degree angle, Gordie’s arms still wrapped around his victim. They crashed into the dirt at breakneck speed and their bodies bore into the ground, carving a long ditch.
Time stood still as they lay in the ground, their bodies entangled. After a few seconds of regrouping, Gordie lifted himself up amid a cloud of dust. He looked back on a twenty-foot-long track in the ground that grew progressively deeper until it came to an end beneath his curly haired antagonist, who once again rested in an earthen cradle. Looking down upon him, Gordie began to regain his senses, and a twinge of regret started to creep its way into his heart. He had never been one to harm others—in fact, he’d never even been in a fight before—but his emotions overcame him after so many overwhelming experiences this day.
His remorse was interrupted when the young man’s eyes fluttered and then opened. “That was quite a show,” he coughed, as he looked up at Gordie with a slight smile reforming on his face. His infernal smirk reawakened the fury within Gordie, whose eyes widened again. The defeated fighter must have recognized the rebirth of his abuser’s anger though, because he raised his hands in defense. “Wait! Wait!” he said. “I concede. I just had to ensure that you are the one whom I seek.”
Gordie paused. “The one you seek?”
“Of course . . . What vexes you? Do you not know who I am?”
“You’re Hermes,” Gordie responded without hesitation, and was surprised to hear this from his own mouth. He knew mythology was just that: myth. Why then was he so ready to accept that a god of Olympus stood before him? He had no other explanation for recent events. Or was this even real? Had he been dreaming the whole time? Would he soon wake up in his bed to hear his dad’s beckoning? The thought of his father tore at him again. The pain must have registered on his face because Hermes took a softer tone.
