If he was going to choose life over death, now was the time.
Four young people stumbling, walking on the street below, maybe drunk, but they were his ticket to survival. His ability to step into people like doorways was going to save him.
The roof of an old sedan was rushing up, too fast, even when Athan was seeing things happen more slowly.
Metres now.
Athan pulled his aching legs closer to his body ready to push off. He glanced one last time at the mutilated face of Dereck Lucas, as he lay unconscious. Athan thought it was almost too nice a way to die; not knowing his world was ending.
Now or never.
Athan gathered all the strength his broken body had left to make the jump. The four club goers were almost exactly in position, it was time to jump.
Athan pushed off.
His arms waving helplessly in the freezing air.
The rest of his life depended on this fall.
My future.
Humanity’s future.
The future of more than just one reality.
Kiranda.
Finally there was impact. The platform crashed into the top of the old sedan and the steel roof roared as it buckled and was crushed. The windows of the car exploded into a glittering shower around the smashed vehicle.
Athan’s trajectory took him further out from the car, closer to the middle of the road.
The club goers standing on the road cowered and recoiled as the car was smashed beside them.
Their frozen position was Athan’s way out.
If he missed and hit the ground right now, every bone in his body would shatter. Athan only saw the young man for an instant before impact.
He closed his eyes tightly and took a deep breath.
He landed on, and through the young man.
Athan came tumbling out of soft gateway onto the smooth pink ground of the subconscious landscape.
I’m alive.
Athan opened his eyes to look through the pale mist at the white glow.
The light hurt his eyes, but the leathery ground felt like a spongy mattress. He tried to roll over onto his side so he could get up, but multiple stabs of pain pulled him back to the ground.
He cried out in agony, but the crisp pale world only replied in silence.
He was totally alone.
He lay on his back breathing heavily, hoping that the different nature of the place could help repair his body.
He twitched his hands and feet and found that they were stiff and bruised. He lifted an arm carefully to look at his right hand. The shock glove was still on there, caked with dried blood and sooty black stains. He raised his left to undo the Velcro strapping that held it on.
He peeled off the glove and looked at the pale hand underneath. It looked pasty and white from his sweat, and the bruising in his hand made the rest of it look purple. He let his aching hands fall to his sides.
He wondered how many bones were broken.
Chapter 31
ATHAN HAD CHOSEN Dempsey as an exit to return.
He could barely move, but he thought Dempsey must still be alive; otherwise there wouldn’t be an exit through his mind.
He slid into the rippling doorway, which had appeared in the leathery landscape. It had been concealed by some bony protrusions like ribs that arched around it like an avenue. It was as if the landscape was guiding his broken body to the safe route of return.
He closed his eyes as he passed the threshold, ignoring the black void around him as he slipped from one plane of reality to the next.
Dereck was dead.
He had been there when the window cleaner’s platform had fallen onto the roof of the car. Nothing could have survived a fall that violent or that far.
The machine was destroyed and the Gate closed to The Blind.
He could rest now; he was on his way home.
As he drifted he thought of his friends, he thought of The League, of Aadi and the watchers and The Blind.
His quiet world in the minds of men, the metaphysical plane where he had hidden for so long in the last few years had become an enigma, it was more of a mystery to him now, and he thought he had known it so well. He was only a very small part of a much bigger, more complex ecosystem that spanned many realities. He promised himself he would go back to the city of flesh and bone and speak to the secretary again, maybe even meet the ones that he had referred to as Gods.
Dereck was gone, and The Blind no longer had their Gate to the human plane. The universe was safe once again.
Athan slipped through his exit onto the floor of Aadi’s infirmary.
As he fell back into the human world he thought he could hear Dempsey call his name.
Athan’s eyes fluttered open.
Time had passed again.
He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious.
The room was warm and there were fluorescent lights trying to blind him. He tried to move his arm to prop himself up but he was too weak, and the pain reverberated through his body.
He let his eyes venture a flutter and they held open longer, the blur sharpening, like a hand was focusing a manual camera lens.
It was a dark flower, no, a ring of shapes.
“What…Where am I?” he stammered.
His lips split and stung.
“Safe, darl. You were lucky you made it after the shenanigans you pulled off. We saw some footage the guys upstairs got: you on that window washer’s platform sailing down to the ground. Can’t wait to hear how you got your arse out of that, pussy cat,” a woman’s voice chirped.
Cynthia…
“Where am I?” Athan tried again. As nice as it was hearing Deadfall’s voice, she didn’t give him specifics.
“Aadi’s place, the warehouse. He’s set up a little hospital here. You are lucky you chose Dempsey as a portal, he was sitting in here on this very bed.”
“Dempsey? He’s alive?” Athan asked trying to focus on the moving face, which he gathered was the source of the voice.
“Your friend is one tough bastard. He’s only just going to sleep. He took two bullets and got here on his own, and still stayed with you while the Doc did your stitches and bandages.”
Athan tried to moisten his dry lips. “I was worried… Are you okay? How’s Kira?”
“I’m alright. Better than you are,” a familiar voice chimed from his opposite side.
“Kiranda?” He said, while producing a hideous attempt at a smile. “You’re okay? You look good.”
“I’m fine. You look awful,” she said sharply, making him smile more, which brought more pain.
He felt Kiranda’s soft hand lightly touching his bruised fingers.
She felt warm.
“So glad the gang is back together,” he croaked.
“Well not everyone. Cal is gone.” Cynthia said, looking at the blur that was Kiranda. “He was wounded, but he disappeared. Aadi sent a group out for a reconnaissance drive, now it’s day light, but odds are if he’s dead or alive, he’ll end up at a hospital.”
“I…thought he’d be okay, Cynthy. Like he’d remember us or something.”
“Sorry. We are able to stay here with Aadi and his team, which is nice. We might be helpful again. Brad told us about the monsters in the subway.”
“Oh, I forgot about them…” Athan groaned.
The goblins and vampires…
He closed his eyes and was bombarded with memories of his fight with Dereck Lucas and the fall.
As long as I’m awake I’ll be fine.
“We are part of something bigger now Athan,” Kiranda said, lightly squeezing his hand, “something that gives us a purpose, and if it wasn’t for you, we would still be blindly trying to survive out there being heroes and hiding in plain sight. This is a new beginning,” Kiranda sounded a little teary.
Athan remembered that night so many years ago when they sat on the roof talking about who they were and where their place was in the world. He thought of Brad a few days ago, telling h
im that he felt like he was asleep.
Now he was awake.
The League was awake.
This was the way it is supposed to be.
He gently turned his head toward the voice of Kiranda and whispered, “there’s always a place for us Kira, there’s a place for everyone.” After which he felt a light kiss on his forehead, which made his bruised body tingle all over.
“I missed you too,” she said.
His consciousness rode the stream of tingles like a raft down a torrid river until he drifted away into another dreamless sleep.
Epilogue
ONE HAND IN front of the other.
Dereck Lucas could barely move, his whole body was wracked with so much pain that it could not be described as pain any longer, it was like a weight was on top of his body holding it down and squeezing it from all sides.
He stretched another arm out and dug his fingernails into the asphalt and tried to pull his weight a little further.
He could hear the wail of sirens in some nearby street, but he couldn’t tell which, he was completely disoriented.
“He…elp…” He gasped.
He felt like he was in one of those nightmares where no matter how loud you tried to be, you can only manage a whisper.
Am I even alive?
He wasn’t sure, but he was certain of the weight of the pain.
The streets were lit with street lamps and neon signs for various bars and eateries, yet the streets were empty of people.
Dereck stopped a moment to catch his breath and try and swallow. He saw a person in the shadows, two people.
They looked at each other and looked back at him. They must have been tourists of some kind, too drunk to make sense of an injured man of the ground needing help.
“He… He… elp.” He gasped again in their direction.
He realized then that he wanted water, or anything to drink, preferably water. It dawned on him that he’d never had a craving for water before.
The figures in the shadows didn’t come closer; one of them crouched as if they were gauging the distance to where he lay.
Damn it, thought Dereck, taking a wheezing breath.
He thrust the next hand forward and buried his fingertips into the asphalt before pulling with what little strength he had left, eyes screwed tight in agony.
Then there was the cold grip around his wrist. He opened his eyes to look at his extended arm. It was bruised and caked in dry blood except for a set of bony white fingers wrapped tightly around it.
“Help?” He tried to say as he was dragged quickly up over the curb and down an ally.
His broken body bumped and grazed along the coarse ground.
The pain made him feel as if he was going to pass out.
Dereck tried to speak or make sense of where he was being dragged, but his eyes kept closing, trying to sweep him up into a dizzy sleep.
He could tell he was on his belly, and the second figure had taken his right wrist, and was pulling him as well.
He tried to note landmarks that appeared around him, but he couldn’t say exactly where he was.
Bins.
Garbage.
Dank doorways…
One moment he would feel water under him, the next he could see that his body was collecting rubbish as the people dragged him, plastic bags and burger wrappers. Then there was the stairs, or a shelf, he couldn’t tell. When they stood still he watched droplets of his own blood mix with the water on the surface of the concrete below his face.
He couldn’t recognize the half reflection he could see in the street lit puddles.
Eventually everything disappeared.
***
Dereck blinked in the darkness and tried to move.
His body was still and numb.
Looking about in the dim light he could make out white specks that must have been bits of rubbish.
It was too dark for night, so he assumed he must have been underground. “Hello?” he whispered. “Hello?”
Something moved in the dark and there were the padding sounds of bare feet on wet concrete.
A figure came forward shyly.
It was naked, too short for a grown man, maybe a child. As it crept into the dim light Dereck beheld its inhuman features. It mostly looked like a twelve-year-old boy, but it had no hair, was thin and its jaw was set strangely and it had no lips. “What?” Dereck exclaimed in disgust.
That’s when he noticed the eyes, they were sky blue with no whites, and they bulged out of odd shaped sockets. The pupils were big and black.
Dereck almost involuntarily tried to crawl back away from the monster, which was odd, he thought, seeing he was trying to bring The Blind into this realm.
He felt and heard a familiar crunching behind him and dared to look at what he was sitting in.
Garbage, piles of garbage.
He turned back to where the creature had been and it was gone.
This was when he passed out again.
***
He could see a few silvery puddles of water around him when he woke.
He tipped his body to the side and pulled himself along so he could reach one of them.
His body screamed in pain, but he was able to focus, he felt awake, and he knew he was thirsty.
The puddle was shallow and he couldn’t see it from above in the dim light, he had to feel for it. He put his head down and began to suck the cold sour water from the ground with his split lips.
He felt grit in his mouth but he didn’t care, he needed to be hydrated.
“Need food?” A gravely voice said from behind him. “Food, for you.”
Dereck rolled onto his side to see the source of the voice. It was a man squatting in the dark, looked in his fifties or sixties wearing just a pair of dirty jeans. He couldn’t make out the man’s face, but he could just make out a tangle of long hair and a wrinkled leathery face.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Dereck stammered as he sat himself up against his pile of garbage.
“No name. Eat.” The man held out some cooked meat that smelled incredible.
Dereck took it with a shaking swollen hand and began to gnaw on the steak that he had been given.
“Happy they find you.” The man said.
“Who found me?” Dereck croaked between mouthfuls.
“Pale ones, fast ones, blue-eyes. They no name that I know. Old ones…” The man smiled and sat on the concrete and pulled a grey plastic shopping bag into the dim light and began rummaging.
“Blue eyes? I…dreamed a creature with blue eyes was here.” Dereck muttered as he recalled the face I the dark.
“Yes, that blue eyes. Many here.” The man said as he pulled what looked like a loaf of bread out of his bag and began to eat.
“Where are you from? I don’t know your accent.”
“Where?” the man paused to think. “Everywhere. Many place.”
“Aren’t you cold?” Dereck could see that the man was shirtless, his chest bare except for abundant hair.
“Cold? No. I bring you to feast fire. Others there. Not far. Others like me.”
“Homeless people?” Dereck inquired.
“Homeless? No and yes. Many home.” The man shrugged.
Dereck finished the cooked meat and closed his eyes. He had no idea he had been hungry.
“More?” The nameless man offered.
He held out what Dereck had thought was a loaf of bread; it was in fact a massive dripping roast. And Dereck’s mouth watered at the thought of more. Then he realized that he had discounted the idea of hygiene since he had woken. In his normal wealthy life he was quite fussy about taking food from any individual, and taking some meat from a dirty man in what looked like a sewer was a surprise to him.
“How am I eating this? And why do I want more? This isn’t like me! I should be trying to get to a hospital, not hiding down here, wherever this is.” Dereck tried to examine his surroundings again.
“No going back to them, Zirro. Blue-eyes bite
you, save you. Help heal.” The man shook his head vigorously.
“What do you mean no going back? I’ve got the money to pay you, if you want money. I need you to get me to a hospital!” Dereck yelled.
Another man crept out of the dark. He had scraggly hair and wore an old flannelette shirt, jeans full of holes and two odd shoes.
“He’s awake then, eh?” The new man said to the one sitting with the plastic bag. The one sitting nodded and put his food away into the bag.
“Welcome, Zirro.” The newcomer said, nodding to Dereck.
“Are you going to help me or what? I have money!” Dereck demanded of the second man.
“Ey, ey, calm down. You ain’t goin’ nowhere. You been hurt, and the pale one fixed you up. There’s no goin’ back when you’re bit. They chose you. It’s honour to be chosen. And you are Zirro, we know your smell.” The new man said nodding.
“Pale one? The blue-eyed monster? It bit me?”
“No monster; enochi, sire of vampyr. Old blood. They help. And you need help. You were broken. Now you are like them, at least a little bit,” the man smiled.
“Vampire?” Dereck shook his head. “What are you saying?”
“That’s why you like the meat. You want more yes? That’s man you eat.”
Dereck stared at the plastic bag that the first man kept close.
He knew he wanted more.
“Come and join us Zirro. We have longed for your company at the feast. It is great honour. Even blue-eyes will follow you.”
“Why do you call me zero?”
“It is a name, like king or strong one. You are one of the two. Long time has passed while we wait for you. No man’s medicine will fix you. Come with me, join us.”
Dereck was silent.
He was in too much pain to move and he could not escape the strange men if he tried.
He nodded slowly.
Both of the men came forward and lifted him between them, and together they carried him through the dark to a flickering golden place. There was a campfire and the smell of cooking meat.
The two men brought him to padded chair that had been taken from a ruined car, which felt like heaven to his broken body.
The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League Page 29
