by Zack Parsons
“They’re tombstones,” said Polly. “These are the people who have died and been returned to the Pool.”
“Why? You just come back,” said Dr. Cochrane.
“Please, Liam,” scolded Robin.
“Keep moving,” said one of the Gardeners flatly.
CHAPTER TEN
Casper read the propaganda chapbook for awhile, about the wars in Vietnam and Mexico, Central America, the Philippines, and the Middle East. The fight against the Communists and the Muhammadins. There seemed to be endless wars with political and humanitarian motivations poorly concealing the true fight: a global war for the domination of resources.
He turned off the lights, all except for an electric lantern kept beside Carlos, glowing brightly enough to give color to the cartoon ducks. There was just enough space for Casper to lie with his feet on either side of the toilet and his head beside the metal maintenance door.
He rested but did not sleep. He listened for the sound of Carlos breathing. There were long pauses between each rattling intake of air, a high-pitched squeak at the edge of each exhalation. The cadence was frequently disrupted by rattling coughs.
The man surprised Casper by recovering from a particularly brutal fit and then asking, “Hey. Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” said Casper.
“My name is Carlos. I’m,” he trailed as if considering what to say next. “I’m with David.”
“The name is Casper Cord.”
“It’s weird sending him off for medicine,” said Carlos. “Used to have all I needed. You know, I was an EMT. They called in every ambulance when it hit. It was one of the first, maybe the first real big one. There were already crews there when we showed up. It was an elementary school in East LA. We had masks and gloves in case it was hemostaph, but it—”
Carlos’s cough burst through his words, a fluid lung spasm that continued for several seconds. Once he regained his composure, he took deep breaths before continuing. “It wasn’t hemostaph. The kids were all on the ground, right there on the playground, three classes of them, and these teachers freaking out. The other kids were watching through the windows of the school, their faces in a row along the windows of the classrooms, watching us try to save their friends. I wish the teachers would have kept them away, but they were ... they were all outside with us.”
Carlos went silent. Casper listened to him struggling to fight back a cough. Carlos steadied himself, took a few more deep breaths, and continued.
“I thought it was pollen, you know, when it caught a beam of sunlight. Like the air was all chalky. There was more and more of it every minute we were there, and these kids, man, they were fucked up. Seizing, eyes rolled back in their heads, tearing at their skin. There was no time to stop and assess. Then it started growing on them. Wherever they scratched themselves open, so fast it was like their bodies were full of the bristles man, the white weed.”
“The blood,” said Casper. “I remember.”
“Yeah. It likes open wounds a lot, open mouth or eyes, mucus membranes—that’s how it got all those teachers. We kept telling them to get back, but they wouldn’t stay away. I just brushed my pant leg against a little girl, flat-lined, working the bag on her. Partner doing compressions. He got it all over his hands and arms. By the time we had that girl and two others loaded in our unit, it was starting. I ... I don’t know ... they corralled us, the military, tried to cut it off of us, which works for a while, but the others kept dying, so I got away. Holding me was pointless anyway—it was in the air—but I sometimes wonder if I might have been better off. Maybe I—”
More coughing. Prolonged this time.
“If I’d stayed, maybe one of their doctors might have found something. I’ve lasted longer than most. Got some ... got a partial immunity maybe. Maybe at least going through this would have meant something to someone.”
Casper turned onto his side and slid the curtain open a little. Carlos’s eyes rolled slowly to regard him. There was foam at the corners of his mouth. His nose was bleeding.
“You didn’t send Bottles to get you medicine, did you?”
“I did,” said Carlos, “but it’s an antibiotic in high demand. He’ll never find it.”
“You might be surprised; he seems pretty resourceful.”
Carlos chuckled, which caused a silent hitching in his chest as he stifled more choking.
“I didn’t want him to watch this happen. I can feel it, growing all the way up my thighs, onto my stomach. It’s only an hour or two now. Maybe even less. You can ... it moves, it grows so fast, you can feel it moving on your body, then it gets cold. Burning cold.
“You did this to me, you know.” Carlos smiled. “Not you, I mean. Your kind. I’ve read the CDC reports at the hospital; all of these invasive diseases have infection patterns radiating out from that fucking rejuvenation center. The spore came from there. That place you all are hatched from. It’s ...”
Carlos’s head lolled to the side, and drool spilled from his lips. He began a rhythmic motion of arms and legs, violent at times, that dashed the radio to pieces and startled Lenin from his sleep. He stopped, finally, but continued to make a terrible gurgling sound as he struggled to breathe. It was several minutes before he came fully awake, disoriented and frightened, staring up at Casper, who had tried to position him to breathe better.
“I saw this disease before,” said Casper. “Far away from here in a strange place.”
Casper confessed the whole thing to Carlos, relating every detail, first of the other side, and more broadly, of his experiences, even the truth about the strange training apparatus, the Harrow, and the trepanned prisoners in the Center. He rambled, stretching back further, to the Pool, to its discovery, to Spark, and to Annie. He looked down every so often to be sure Carlos was still alive. As he finished the tale, he saw the white creeping up Carlos’s neck, growing onto his jawline and over the cartilaginous portions of one ear.
“I heard it,” said Carlos. “It makes it better in a way ... I ... please ... take me to ... take me to where the tunnel ends. I want to see the outside.”
It was pointless to argue a deathbed request with the man, so Casper carried him, the dog following along by his side. Carlos was like a skeletal bird, hollow and fragile, his arms dangling uselessly, his limbs sheathed in the bristling pelt of the spore grass, his eyes rolling as he passed in and out of consciousness. The white material appeared soft but was brittle and burned wherever it touched Casper’s body. It did not take root in his flesh.
He traced the path from the maintenance room west until he could hear the surf rolling in, louder than the rush of the drain water.
“I can hear the ocean,” Carlos said with a dreamy smile. They reached the end of the tunnel, and the view of the night sky, spangled with countless stars, and the marina, dark, full of ships bobbing gently in the tide, was moving to both men.
There was an outflow ramp, which would have made possible the descent from the tunnel mouth down to the rocky shore below, but Casper dared not attempt carrying Carlos down the slippery concrete. Casper braced him against the tunnel’s central pillar, the cool night air ruffling his hair. Casper watched the time-lapse unfurling of white threads up Carlos’s chin, around his mouth, wriggling into his scalp, his nostrils, but his dark eyes remained untouched.
“My mother ...” Carlos said something in Spanish before continuing in English. “My mother, she was very religious, always believed she would die when the world was ending. I thought it was silly. She died from a bad heart years ago. But I understand it now. I understand why she wanted that.”
“Why is that?”
“To follow the tide out to sea,” he said. “To be carried away with everyone and not be alone. To not die alone.”
Casper was not sure when Carlos passed from merely being quiet to being dead. Casper gently stretched his body out on the concrete, but he did not want to leave this view of the ocean. Carlos was right about that. The Pacific was speaking, reminding
him of the immense power the world still contained. He leaned the side of his head against the wall of the tunnel, mesmerized by the reflections in the water and the cool air.
“He chooses death.” The voice was soft, flat, and unaffected by the stone walls of the tunnel, but completely clear to Casper. “He is correct. Heat builds, the depths stir and churn, and the deep waters will devour land and sea. Fluid and flesh, the ichors of every living thing, consumed. The outcome of its arrival is inevitable. Your spires will break, the earth will heave and crack open, it will consume the marrow of this place, and unique humans, rich with purpose and meaning, are its greatest craving.”
Casper was afraid. Without looking, he knew the voice belonged to the dog, and he knew it was revealing its true self to him, that the thing within the flesh of his old dog was exposed, glowing coals in an open furnace, casting rippling aurora light along the moisture-darkened tunnel. If he turned and looked upon its face, he might go mad.
“What are you?” Casper asked quietly, trying to still his fear.
“I am friend, Casper Cord, who is Warren Groves, who is the champion of this place, trapped in deep waters with me. I am long-ago thing of faraway place, another kind, protector of a dead queen, guardian of a forever thrall of the waters. I am reificant. Intent trapped in deep water, I wear the flesh of your dead animal. A corpse-thing shunned by the water. We have met before. I have tried to be the voice of warning.”
“The grasshopper,” said Casper.
“I am from the other place. You have been there. You have witnessed as I have witnessed the great ruin of my kind. You walked on two slow legs through the city by the sea. It was once greatest of our cities, our capital. The spires of this place were largest, the scholars the most learned, the warriors, the mightiest and most fearless. It took six hundred days to incorporate us, to adhere us to the gestalt, ravenous, extending infinitely, unseen but yawning. A well of deep water.”
“The Pool,” Casper said, his words eaten by the crashing surf against the rocks. Foaming water climbed the drainage ramp. His head was beginning to ache. “It’s doing something, spreading these diseases like Carlos said.”
“Diseases first,” said the grasshopper. “Sessile things follow to make the air ripe. Already coming. Danger blooms. Slavering jaws collected from countless places. Wise things, full of meaning, cruel and savage, stalking your fallen spires. Their hunger is its hunger.”
“Why?”
“The water flows and fills the cracks, to beckon, to dissolve and incorporate. It is the bodies within that give this water purpose, and it is this purpose the water seeks. Life, Casper Cord, like yours and mine. Sentient life is the most precious resource.”
“Why?” said Casper.
“A stone cannot be heroic. A chasm of ice deep enough to swallow this place cannot stir the spirit of the sky. Only intelligence imbues meaning. The water bends and flows and fills the cracks between, crosses void, offers eternity as its honeyed trap. Your kind has sworn this pact.”
“How can ...” Casper’s head ached fearsomely. “Tell me ... how can we stop it?”
“Through the eyes of strange flesh I have witnessed things impossible in the context of my kind. I have lived as other flesh. Other places I have been, the water has been before. This place is the first I happened upon quickly, before the fall, the next sentient to be tempted to the water’s edge. The long-ago people of the desert met me first, and I learned their words and sang them with quills. Warning, Casper Cord, was heeded, and these brave humans chose death over eternity. They chose extinction over servitude. You, the others, have not chosen the same. The tipping point has been reached, and you must prepare.”
“To fight?” Casper leaned his head into his hands.
There came a clicking sound, almost scornful. When the grasshopper spoke again, its voice was very close behind Casper.
“You are champion of your kind. A human. It is a body without flesh, it is mindless and infinite, it cannot be overcome with violence. It is too late for sacrifice, but you must prepare.”
“For what?” Casper tore at his hair.
“A champion must deny meaning to the water. This place is lost. Your kind is lost.” A dry husk rasped against stone. “You must prepare to flow with the water to the next place, to warn the next kind, to deny meaning to the water. You must take on new flesh.”
“How?”
There came no answer. Casper asked it again, and still it did not answer. The scudding sound of rubber on concrete echoed up the tunnel. A voice called from far away.
“Carlos!”
The dog was sitting on its haunches, staring at Casper with red eyes flecked with black. It did not look away as Bottles approached from behind.
“Casper, what ... what happened?”
“I’m sorry.”
Casper stepped up to him and tried to hold him back, but it was a futile, weak-limbed gesture. Bottles tore through his grasp and ran to the edge of the tunnel. Carlos was by then completely engulfed in the white of the spore grass. It spilled from his body and planted itself along the floor around him. Bottles stopped short, realizing that to touch his dead lover meant death. He fell upon his knees and hung his head and did not rise again for a very long time.
Casper and the dog could only watch.
The corridor opened into a stone chamber, painted red and filled with rows of rock benches. The rock walls, coated in heavy white material that made the chamber very bright, were adorned in carved figures and patterns. As they stepped into this chamber, Polly became unsteady on her feet. A tightening sensation enclosed her skull, but from inside her helmet, as if something was squeezing the soft fruit of her brain. Someone was whispering to her, a chorus of soft susurrations.
“Do you hear that?” she asked. No one admitted to hearing it.
The Fane was small. Three wide steps up to an indentation in the rock wall. There was a black hatch low to the floor clamped shut by several heavy locks. There appeared no way to open this hatch. Above that, at roughly face height, a smaller red hatch with a hand-grip to lever it open. An elaborate symbol was carved into the stone above the red hatch. It was the skull and branching antlers of the stag.
“This is not what I expected,” said Dr. Roux.
“It is a chapel,” said Konstantin.
“You worship this thing?” asked Captain Dryson.
“We venerate her and commune with her,” said Milo. “Do you not feel the Mother, pressing into your skull like fingers in soft clay?”
The snowflakes did not feel it. Polly did not admit to feeling it, though she still heard the soft whisper of unintelligible voices.
“The effect becomes more pronounced when you open the viewing aperture,” said Milo. He ascended the rough stairs and operated the smaller hatch’s locking mechanisms. Unearthly, moving light appeared behind the glass. Even through the gilded portal she felt it. Polly laughed and felt a rush of hormonal pleasure. The scientists and soldiers yelped with dismay.
“Ow, fucking hell!” complained Dr. Cochrane. Others sagged against the walls or one another. The ragged breathing and the hastened click of their respirators sounded over the radios. It took several seconds for the group to level out.
“What is happening?” demanded Robin.
The Gardeners ignored her question. They began a methodical process of unfolding a red velvet cloth and spreading it upon the rocky floor beneath the larger hatch. They lifted the insulated coffin from its cart, and four men carried it to the red cloth. The Gardeners assumed a formation, standing like soldiers in parade rows between the cloth and the scientists. Milo was visible above them, standing atop the stairs.
“You may begin,” he said.
“Yes, brother,” replied the Gardeners surrounding the coffin.
Rukundo moved close to Polly and took hold of her sleeve, tugging it gently. He gestured back down the tunnel. Escape was his intent. She gestured to the cameras in protective bubbles. Rukundo tugged more insistently, not darin
g to speak over the open radio channel. The Gardeners were involved in some bizarre ceremonial opening of their insulated coffin. She wondered if someone intended to climb inside it.
Milo began to speak loudly, his tone and posture that of a seasoned preacher.
“Without form or limits,” began Milo, “we revere your waters, which pass through stone and cross all gulfs. We are the instructions of men, derived from your flesh and your blood. We are your water. We are eyes to see and hands to touch for you on this earth. We are your mouths to speak on this earth.”
“Mother, be praised!” answered the chorus of Gardeners.
Polly watched in disbelief as Milo reached up to the clasps on his helmet and unsealed the cuff with a hiss of releasing pressure. He tossed aside the helmet. His face was immediately red and shimmering in the heat.
“Come forward, brothers,” he said, and the front ranks of the assembled Gardeners joined Milo at the head of the stairs. They carried hammers and chisels and immediately set about pounding the chisels into the gaps on the larger of the two hatches.
“Mother, we free you. We release you from your cage and crack the shell that holds you. We present a great sacrifice and beseech you, call forth the spirit of Holly Webber from her surviving flesh.”
The four Gardeners standing at attention beside the insulated coffin opened the lid. Steam rushed out in a gasp and evaporated almost instantly, exposing a naked and badly mutilated body. It was gray with decomposition, its features softened as though it had been brined. Polly’s stomach lurched as she realized the lipless face was Holly Webber. This was her original corpse.
“I”—Milo swayed unsteadily—“I give myself to you. I give my brothers to you. I give this place to you, so that you may become unlimited. So that your waters ... your waters will overtake the sea.”
He descended the stairs and laid a hand upon the grotesque carcass of Holly Webber. He lifted that quivering hand and let it fall. The men behind him beat their hammers against the chisels in unison. A crack, loud as a cannon shot, sounded through the Fane.
