Underworld Earth

by Nicholas Gagnier

  How did I get here?

  Last I remember, I was dying on the side of an Arizona highway, having taken a wrong turn toward Flagstaff instead of Haven.

  So much for being a nightmare.

  The glare of an overpowered sun filters through the window-pane. Its rays reach through the plate of glass with no curtains, too hot to be relatable to anything in Connecticut at this time of year.

  The door to my left opens and a dark-skinned girl enters. Her hair is matted into dreadlocks and her clothes are filthy with kicked up sand, staining the knees of black jeans with white streaks. Only a couple years older, her right hand brandishes an assault rifle. A pistol in a black nylon holster fits loosely on her thin hips.

  “Good,” she says, closing the door behind her. “You’re awake. Probably don’t remember a whole lot, do you? Couple farmers found you dying on the side of the road. Knew about our little operation here. Thought you might be a good fit. Kept your Lexus, though. I wouldn’t go looking for it. Cost of saving a man’s life and all that. What’s your name?”

  If Derek was still alive, I would be a dead man walking.

  “Nathan. What operation? And who are you?”

  The girl smirks.

  “Name is Cori. Used to have a last name; don’t fucking matter now. This place here, we call Younglight. Other people might tell you we’re in Joseph City, Arizona. I would ask those people what they’re smoking, because this is Younglight now.”

  “Younglight?”

  “That’s right,” Cori says. “No adults allowed. Was the adults that went, got us into this mess. Storing deadly illnesses in vials. Doesn’t really matter who set the damn thing free. The fact they were keeping it—Hell, cultivating it in petri dishes—is what did this, ain’t it?

  “So, we killed them. The ones who were here, that is. Not many kids to begin with, but the original ones—me, Quincy, the Bosmer twins—rounded up our daddies’ precious guns. Killed every blasted adult here. Served ‘em right, too.”

  This is the most insane thing I’ve ever heard.

  “After that, kids of all ages—runaways, orphans, delinquents and the ones with some money and nothing better to do—flocked here. It became a haven for those of us who don’t follow our elders’ vision.”

  “So,” I say, “what happens if adults do come here?”

  Cori shrugs and, lifting the barrel of her rifle, imitates shooting sounds with a grin.

  “What happens now?”

  “Meaning?” Cori asks, squinting over lowered sights.

  “Am I free to go?”

  “Go where?” she scoffs. “Gonna run off to die in the desert again?”

  “No. But I was trying to make it to Washington. To a town called Haven, where my parents are from. My father died from the plague. My mom is out there, and I’m trying to get to her.”

  Cori circles to the couch’s other side towards the window and sets the stock of her rifle on the floor, its barrel pointed at the glass for support. Scorching natural light bounces off its threatening silhouette, casting white spots over the adjacent wall. Cori paces back to the door in front of me, processing what I’ve told her.

  “Washington, huh? Younglight is quite a way, my friend. I don’t think you’re going to make it too far on foot. No water, food or shade in fifty miles. I hear Flagstaff is overrun with thugs and raiders, so you’d have to go around them. If you survive that, the desert can be... unforgiving.

  “I’d suggest staying a while, friend. In fact, I would insist on it,” she concludes, returning to the weapon leaned against the wall. “Jeremiah will guard you. Later, we can talk more about reuniting you with your mother.”

  Without another word or second to allow protest, Cori secures her weapon, exiting the house. A burly teenager with curly red hair enters as she leaves, blocking the door. Holding a rifle similar to Cori’s, he mentions we’ll be leaving soon.

  “Where are we going?”

  The boy shrugs.

  “This is Cori’s house. Can’t have you stay here, so we’ll be moving you somewhere else while she decides what to do with you.”

  And suddenly, I realize those two altruistic farmers only saved my life so they could steal my Lexus. I was not rescued but traded to a group recruiting young people for their cause.

  I am not an American with rights, but a prisoner of my peers. Jeremiah resumes staring at the wall, holding the only thing that will make me second-guess jumping the fat boy and taking back my freedom.

  Burying my head in both hands, I try to think of some way to convince them to let me leave, or risk never making it to Haven.

  A while later, Cori returns. This time, a girl accompanies her, holding a cafeteria tray in front of a patterned dress. Her feet are bare, and she looks to be about ten years old, perpetually smiling despite being shepherded in front of an armed, moody teenager.

  “Had Janine here make you some food. It’s not much,” Cori says, “but I imagine you haven’t eaten in a while.”

  The redheaded girl sets noodles and plain spaghetti sauce on the floor in front of me. I don’t care if it's tasteless. Taking the tray on my lap, I shove the steaming contents into my mouth, barely chewing it. Strings fall from my lips while others slide into the black pit my stomach had become in search of food.

  Cori, Janine and Jeremiah watch the entire time; the latter two are clearly related. Another teenager enters the house; he also has red hair and freckles and is joined by a younger boy playing with a pistol.

  “This is Jackie,” Cori says, pointing to Jeremiah’s brother, “and Willie Selleck. Kid ran away from his home in Phoenix after his parents turned up dead, ain’t that right, Willie?”

  “So what?” I ask, cutting to the chase. “Am I prisoner here? Are you all prisoners?”

  Jeremiah giggles, while Cori and Jackie smirk. Janine hangs her head, only looking at me through the top of her eyes.

  “Ain’t no prisoners here,” the black girl explains. “Just friends we don’t want to see make mistakes they’ll regret.”

  “But I can’t leave,” I protest. “I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a prisoner to me.”

  Cori tells the others to wait outside. They don’t argue, shuffling out in single order.

  “My mom was a drunk,” she begins, once we are alone. “Used to whip me with this little ruler she kept. Probably got it out of one of our pencil cases years ago. Swear, this woman must have sharpened it or some shit, because it only hurt more over the years. Maybe my perception of pain changed. Maybe, as I got older, I felt the betrayal, too.

  “I lied when we first spoke. Most of our parents died in the plague, just like yours. Never had to kill them. Just mine, who begged for it. First, I assumed it was because they were all drunks, and had weak immune systems. But then, it started killing healthy people, too. Kids like you and me.

  “Some of the survivors,” Cori continues, “they didn’t want to stay. That was fine, at first. But their bodies always come back. People find them on the road and bring them home to be buried. Suddenly, we’re not only children left to fend for ourselves, but gravediggers. Keepers for the dead. And that’s not what Younglight should be.”

  After a minute to let her mourn the circumstances, I tell her I understand. “But I can’t stay here, Cori. I have to get to Washington and find my mom.”

  “Jesus, enough with the mama's boy act, Nathan! We have a chance to show the world we’re a force to be reckoned with! Join us. Next time someone tries to tussle with us, we’ll show ‘em, right?”

  Lady’s a bit short at closing a sale.

  “That’s a really enticing offer, Cori,” I reply, “but shootouts with adults are not really my thing. No offense. If you’re okay with it, I’d like to take my chances with the desert.”

  The disappointment in her face is momentary, but my host absorbs it well. For a second, I may have convinced her to let me go.

  “Fine,” she says, “I’ll get Jackie to outfit you with a rifle. Something
to keep you safe out there.”

  “Thanks.”

  Maybe Cori’s intentions are pure, and she’s simply trying to keep the people who come into her care safe. But as she gestures that we can move outside and join the others, something smacks me in the head, sending me to the floor.

  As the world spins around my crumpled body, I can’t help feeling that maybe I’ve been played.

  Harper

  I am the insufferable.

  The woman I found in a field, only feet away from an overturned compact, studies me. Her hair is brown with blond highlights to cover strands of grey she wants no one to see. Her face is dirty and scraped from temple to chin. Darting eyes embrace all levels of bewilderment, glancing between the body of a deceased man behind her—whose face is bloody like the large rock lying next to his head—and me.

  “Who are you?” she asks. “This isn’t what it looks like. He attacked me; I swear! Drove off the road, full speed. Tried to strangle me. It was self-defense.”

  I know this woman. Her son helped me bring down Hale, who was Death before Tim. Hale almost destroyed the world; his defeat led to my immortality, but Nathan was purged from existence.

  Problem is, I’m not sure Samantha Wallace remembers any of it.

  “I’m Harper,” I reply, surveying the crime scene. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to judge you. Are you all right?”

  The woman tepidly nods, but her wide-eyed expression remains; as if she contemplates killing me, too.

  “Who are you?” she asks again.

  “I told you-”

  “I mean, what are you doing here?”

  She is clearly unhinged from killing the man and does not appreciate the company. Regardless, I must convince her to help us, and don’t have the slightest clue how to tell her nothing she knows is real.

  Samantha is not a target. She single-handedly saved Haven before.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” I begin, because Nathan is, and I’m terrified to break the news to her.

  Maybe I won’t have to.

  Samantha scoffs.

  “If it’s crazier than anything that just happened in the last twenty-four hours, lady, I might just believe you. I have no idea if my husband or son are dead! The man helping me get home just tried to strangle me! And now, I’m overpowered by these God-forsaken hallucinations of some whole other life I’ve lived!”

  The last part catches my interest. I ask her to explain it. She stops venting, jaw hanging at a crooked angle, chuckling at my audacity.

  “I can’t,” Samantha says, “I keep getting these weird flashes of some alternate reality.”

  Squinting, I struggle to make sense of this revelation.

  “When did this start happening?”

  Samantha shrugs.

  “About the time I flew out here. Right before everything went to shit. Went, saw my mom in the hospital. Kept getting glimpses. And then,” she explains, gesturing to the corpse behind her, “just now, when I had to kill him, I was flooded with them.”

  She knows. Of everyone I have met since Tim and Ramona’s time-space adventure screw up, nobody has been able to recall themselves in the true timeline.

  For some reason, this woman does.

  “I’m sorry,” Samantha says, “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. Harper, was it?”

  Since Gabriel tracked me down in Paris and told me I would have to return home at one point or another, all the odds have been stacked against me. Even Peter York could not be compelled to remember the world I’m trying to save.

  Finally, someone else remembers the stakes.

  “I can help you.”

  Samantha scoffs.

  “Help me do what?”

  For the first time, I have an advantage.

  “Let’s just say from now on, I’m your guardian angel. I can tell you Derek didn’t survive, but Nathan did.”

  “How? How do you know that? And seriously—guardian angel?”

  I must convince her I’m not a threat.

  “If what you say is true, Samantha… that you’re experiencing these... glimpses, I want you to think really hard. In these glimpses, do you remember a graveyard?”

  Her gaze drifts, honing in on her new trove of unfiltered memories and long-forgotten associations.

  “After Nathan died. You came to visit me.”

  I nod.

  “That’s right. A month later... I died. And whatever destiny had in mind for me did not end there. It’s honestly... too much to explain. There may be another person who can tell you, much better than I ever could. But right now, this Nathan is in trouble. The Nathan that hasn’t been buried needs our help, and I want to help him.”

  Many things do not survive time-space rifts; maternal worry is not one of them. Any event in the true timeline Samantha is now aware of is forgotten—the instinct to protect her teenage son is in full swing, and none of this cosmic manipulation matters next to his well-being.

  “What? Where is he?”

  “Arizona. At an armed compound called Younglight. It used to be Joseph City, but apparently it’s become a refuge for orphaned children.”

  “Are you telling me my son has joined a militia of children? How the fuck did he end up in Arizona?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not joined. But he’s being held there. I want to save him, Samantha.”

  I will leave the finer points of explaining this clusterfuck to Tim. All I need is Sam’s cooperation; to prove to her I’m an ally, so Victor Quinn and Sydney Mayhew can be struck from existence, and Peter’s little girl saved from their clutches.

  Whatever the cost, I have to make sure Samantha returns to Haven, and helps me finish the job—which ultimately includes the death of her reincarnated son.

  All so I don’t have to be alone forever, even though I may yet be.

  Samantha agrees to accompany me to Younglight. She has no reason to refuse, unless she wants to be stranded with a man dead by her hand, several states away from her incarcerated child.

  Explaining none of our processes for teleportation through dark clouds or general time travel, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. The locket feels heavier than ever. Telling him we’re ready, there is just enough time to hope Tim is listening before black wisps form around us. Their light touch is momentary, carrying us thousands of miles in a single blink. Samantha looks all around her in a panic, but the effect soon ends.

  On emergence from the portal, the Arizona desert is an endless beast of uninhabitable wasteland, other than the small town nearby. The assembly of trailer homes, run-down shops and a Mormon Church with nobody left to worship inside would be unimpressive, if not for the armed youth patrolling the exterior of every building. No one inhabiting its streets is older than fourteen or fifteen. Their clothes are ragged, and many of them armed. Some are as young as five years old. They take orders from teenagers, who seem to be the ringleaders, wandering between posts, checking on the younger children.

  “Why do all these kids have semi-automatics?” Samantha asks, horror of her only child’s predicament fully dawning.

  “It seems to be a compound run by disillusioned minors and orphaned children. Those who were supposed to protect them either couldn’t, because they’re dead, or didn’t.”

  “And how did you know about this? Or that Nathan is here?”

  I chuckle.

  “Being immortal affords you some extra tools. Friends in high places. You know what they say, it’s all about who you know.”

  Given the split-second method of travel and the fact I knew exactly where to find her son, Samantha shakes her head, trying to figure out if she believes me.

  “This is insane!”

  “Can’t argue with that. But look, Samantha. We need a plan to rescue Nathan, which means working together.”

  “I mean,” she says, completely ignoring me, “I don’t even know what’s real anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is this real?
Am I just... sitting in an asylum somewhere, and this is some fucked up dream? Side effect of pills, maybe? Because as you explain it, Harper, none of this makes any sense!”

  “Samantha—”

  “How the hell did Nathan end up here, of all places? We protected him! Nobody abandoned him! Stamford is two thousand miles away!” The sobs build with questions carried on them, and I have no answers that would satisfy her. “Why did I ever leave him to begin with?”

  While I fret over her mental state being frayed by our unique ability to teleport across latitudes with ease and my appearance from nowhere, this woman is well preoccupied with failure to protect her family, and questions none of it.

  “So, what do we do?” she asks, to my complete lack of response.

  “I guess,” I reply, “now I do what I do best.”

  “Which is?”

  Taking my first steps down the elevated crag where Tim’s portal left us, I tell her to stay put. My sneakers traverse the descent easily, given pitch-perfect balance. I could teleport, but don’t want to unnerve Nathan’s mother further.

  “What are you going to do?” she calls.

  I reach the bottom, briskly walking toward the town’s borders. Stopping, I nod at her, nervously watching from several feet above.

  “Improvise.”

  I am the insufferable.

  The plan is intact. The pieces are set, all the Atlas’s dark machinations squared off against Tim’s creation—a wormhole that poisoned the world and everything good that existed within it.

  My first attempt to kill Victor Quinn may have failed, resulting in the death of Peter York. I nearly walked away after that, but my hand was stayed by Death.

  I have one last effort in me. Free of Samantha’s watchful gaze, I blink towards Younglight. The locket cooperates, executing jumps in perfect rhythm. Further into the town, it conceals me from sight, alternating manifestation and dissolution between buildings, leaving a blue trail of rippling static behind me.