“This keeps getting stranger and stranger.”
“Don’t think about it too much.”
Abe yanked on the cable, and more length slid from the hole. He held it in front of the contraption’s protruding nipple, which was lined with raised threads matching those on the metal clasp on the end of the cable. He attached the two ends and spun the clasp, fastening the cable in place. A loud clicking sound came from the cylinder, its lights shifted from red to green, the numbers began scrolling. Abe backed away, itching the back of his neck.
“Good job,” said Asaph’s voice. “Now let’s get you out of there.”
The wall behind him parted again, and when he stepped through he was bathed in a sudden release of white gas. It was only when the gas dissipated that the door to the main chamber slid open and Abe stumbled out. His skin no longer prickled, and the strange buzz that had haunted him and his brothers since they first neared this odd place was gone.
Shade. Meesh. Shit.
Abe hurried to the flashing black mirror and looked on in horror as the last of the undead climbed the banks of the Butte. Judging from the multiple views, it looked like less than a third had made it, but that was still more than enough to overrun a hundred poorly armed people. He snatched up his blitzer and slung it over his shoulder, prepared to make the mad dash up and out of the bunker.
“There, done,” Asaph said with two final strokes. His expression soured when he saw Abe standing there. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Abe gave the man an incredulous stare. “They’re coming! They’ll be here in two, maybe three hours. The preparations have likely already started. I need to help.”
Asaph frowned and shook his head. “No one’s preparing.”
“The sentries would’ve warned them—”
“There aren’t any sentries, Abednego.” Asaph stood on creaky knees and tapped one of the mirror’s many squares. Abe stepped closer, saw six figures lying on the rocks. They were the men Cooper had ordered to keep watch, curled up into balls as the undead ambled past them, unmoving as blood pooled in front of their gaping mouths.
“What… what happened to them?” Abe stammered.
“What happens to most things when they’re exposed to massive amounts of radiation for an extended period of time. They cease to be.”
Abe stared at him, not understanding a single thing he said. He threw up his hands. “Gyah! Then it’s even more important I get up there. My brothers, our people, are helpless. There’s still time.”
“No, there isn’t,” Asaph said.
“Why not?”
The older man ran a hand over his bald head, jerked his thumb behind him. “Because the video feed runs on a delay. A long one. You won’t even make it out of the bunker before they crest the hill.”
“But—”
“There’s no argument here. Cooper will manage. He always does. Meanwhile, you’ll help me finish this once and for all.” He gestured to the door. “As long as this process is taking place, that door is locked. It can’t be opened.”
Abe’s hand fell to his Eldersword. “What’s stopping me from cutting my way out?”
“Likely the fact that if you do so, everyone dies. That’s just the way it goes, Abe. Sorry.”
Abe turned to the door, to Asaph, to the door, and back again. He opened his mouth, closed it.
“Once the Spear of God is fully activated, we won’t have to worry about any of this any longer,” Asaph said. “So sit back and relax. It will all be over soon.”
“What about the ritual?”
“Working on it.”
His statement finished, Asaph limped back to his work area. Abe stood there, stupefied, and watched as the bald man checked a few more black mirrors and then grabbed the rucksack he’d shoved under the shelf. He removed a silver tube about a foot long and placed it on the table, then reached back inside and pulled out a Heartcube. He turned to Abe and gave him a tired smile. Erin coughed in the background as she stared at the viewing screens.
“Gift from Cooper,” he said, wagging the Cube in front of him. “The man has his uses.”
Abe looked back at the Spear of God—the full of its nine-foot height was now lit up with brightly flashing lights—and then to Erin. The woman’s skin looked paler than it had only moments before, and she sweated profusely, but didn’t take her eyes off the black mirror. Abe tore his gaze away, approached the place where Asaph sat working. If nothing else, he could at least get answers.
Asaph now had a small saw out and was busy sliding it back and forth across the surface of the Cube, which raised wisps of glowing mist.
“What’s going on here, Asaph?” Abe said, harshly as he could. “I demand to know.”
“I told you, we’re saving the world,” the man replied.
“That’s not enough. I need details. Why do you need me here?”
Asaph sighed, leaned back in his seat. “Fine. Because you’re the only one who could enter that room.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the access point to the fuel rods, that’s why. And the steam the purifier bathed you in eradicates not only ambient radiation, but nonliving tissue as well. Not me, nor a regular person, could walk in there and survive.”
“Huh? What? You’re not making sense.”
Asaph sat forward, himself looking pale. “Let me spell it out for you,” he said. “A normal human body wasn’t meant to deal with high levels of radiation. Well, except for the Scourgers, but they’ve had over a thousand years to evolve into what they are. That’s why the wardens of this facility created the guardians you and your brothers so helpfully dispatched—to enter areas normal people couldn’t, to keep things running smoothly. And as you could see in the corridor, there used to be a lot more.” He chuckled. “Fortunately for us, time evens all odds.”
The scholar gestured to Abe. “Like you, Abednego. You’re a construct of the heavens, a composite of the dust of creation along with a boatload of recycled matter. Atomic energy, and time, is what birthed you. That level of exposure has very little effect on you, other than some itching.” The man laughed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t know why I’m explaining this. It’s like talking to a second grader.”
“Then why me?” Abe asked. “If what you say is true, then any of my brothers would have been able to do the same. Yet you specifically insisted it be me.”
“Because I know you,” Asaph replied with a shrug. The dark circles ringing his eyes grew more pronounced.
“Know me? From where?”
“Jackson. Greenwood. A few other towns.” He shrugged. “I knew your brothers too, but more of them. Never met them personally.”
Abe clutched at his jacket, narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know those places. I have no memory of you prior to Breighton.”
“Your loss.”
Behind the two of them, Erin’s coughing fit grew worse. Abe ignored her. “You need to start making sense, Asaph. Now.”
Asaph closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then continued sawing the Heartcube. “I knew it would be like this,” he said. “I knew you hadn’t reached the proper time yet.”
“Proper time?”
“Everything reaches a time when it ceases to be what it’s been defined as and becomes what it truly is.” He jabbed at the Heartcube with his saw before continuing to hack away. “Consider this thing. You call it a Heartcube, but they were originally known as secure fissile neutronium reactors. Their whole purpose was to swallow the energy spewed out by facilities such as this one, to, for the first time, make the energy safe. It was these Cubes that allowed the Elders to repopulate most of the world. There were only two facilities—this one, and a plant in Servesk—that had overstepped their bounds. The geniuses who ran this particular station tried to quadruple their power output just before the human race became enlightened. They gathered ten times the nuclear fuel as anyone else…so much that those wondrous new inventions couldn’t absorb it all before the oceans rose up and swal
lowed everything. But hey, at least they thought ahead. The rods are still active to this day, three hundred feet beneath us. The Cubes in this room absorb their radiation, which creates a bubble of protection around the entire facility, and then expel the excess energy by keeping this plant running, keeping water flowing and the rods cooled. An endless loop, just like time. It’s ingenious, really. I imagine the rods down there are virtually drained by now. Virtually, but not quite.” He chuckled. “Now they’ll become what they were meant to be all along.”
Asaph peered over at Abe as a slender chunk of Heartcube clanked on the table. His eyes were tired, his flesh waxy, like the day Shade found him. This man is insane, Abe thought. He shook his head and started for the door. “Erin, let’s go,” he said.
“I told you, don’t try it,” Asaph said.
“Or you’ll do what, exactly?” he tossed over his shoulder. “You’re a cracked old man, Asaph. I don’t even think you know what you’re doing.”
“Oh, I do, and it’s going to be beautiful.”
There was something in his tone that froze Abe in his tracks. He turned slowly, and Asaph stared back at him. If a look could make a heart explode, that one was it.
“You don’t know what’s going on here,” the man seethed, picking up the sliver of Heartcube he’d sawed off and cutting into it further. “You don’t even realize you work for the wrong side.” When he sliced a small fragment from the portion of Cube, he took the sliver, twisted off the top of the metal tube he’d removed from his pack, popped open a compartment, and slid the bit of Heartcube in. He snapped the compartment shut.
Erin screamed, drawing Abe’s attention. She dropped to one knee in front of the black mirror, bloody saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth, her blond hair plastered with sweat. With great effort, Asaph rose from his chair and limped toward the struggling woman.
“What’s wrong with her?” Abe asked.
Asaph knelt beside Erin, rubbed her back, and looked up at Abe with exhausted eyes. “She’s dying.”
“Why?”
“Because I shut off the safety systems. There’s nothing to stop the radiation from pummeling her. She’s finished. Just like the rest of them.”
“Huh?”
Asaph sighed, lifted the cylinder, and pointed one end at Abe. Before he could react, a high-pitched sound struck, making him scream. Then an invisible force flung Abe across the room, head over heels. He hit the wall with a crash, slid down and collapsed on the floor. For a moment the world blanked, but soon it came roaring back with pain so intense it was like he was being ripped apart inch by inch.
A groan left his throat. He saw trees and sparkling blue water; an old man holding a stick with a dangling string, a fish flopping about on a hook; an old guitar held together with twine; felt the embrace of a woman he could only identify as mother.
The real world came roaring back. “I need… sustenance,” he heard Asaph say. With his every muscle in agony, Abe turned his head, and what he saw he couldn’t quite understand. Asaph was leaning over a prone Erin, who shook like she was in the midst of a seizure. The man bent closer, spread his lips wide, and a long, fleshy tube ending in a needle, like a scorpion’s stinger, ejected from Asaph’s mouth. The tip embedded in Erin’s eye; the tube pulsed. Erin whimpered, gave one final shudder, and fell still. The stinger retracted, Asaph sighed and sat up. His complexion darkened, as did the gleam in his eyes. The man met Abe’s gaze, shuffled over to him.
“The amount of energy it takes to control so many is astounding,” Asaph said. “I’m glad you’re here to help.”
He leaned over the fallen knight, his mouth yawned open.
Abe’s world went dark.
19
“PRAISE THE PENTUS! I WILL NOT BEND TO VISIONS FROM BELOW! I WILL NOT BELIEVE IT IS NOT REAL! I WILL NOT BE SWAYED BY THE EVIL WORDS OF—”
—MESHACH THE 3RD
1 SECOND BEFORE DEMISE
Cooper’s lips moved soundlessly, and Shade leaned against his knees, feeling tense. He wasn’t sure it was such a good idea to let the brigand prophet read the riddle. Decisions made while inebriated were never the best ones.
The silence went on for a bit too long, and Shade sensed Meesh becoming restless. The youngest knight wrapped himself around Kamini and their lips met in a drunken kiss. Shade couldn’t help but feel jealousy, and even regret, at the display. If he hadn’t been so severe in his interpretation of the Pentus’s law, if he had compromised, then it could have been him and Vera canoodling.
Vera…
Shade fought off a wave of nausea and took another swig of bourbon, getting as much in his beard as he did in his mouth. Wiping away the sticky remnants, he looked back at Cooper. The brigand prophet’s skin had gone waxy, but his eyes still traced the words on that wrinkled square of parchment while Bertram snored in his lap.
Finally, after another few minutes, Cooper lowered the paper and stared at Shade with earnestness.
Shade gulped. “What?”
“These are odd instructions. The only actual order is at the beginning. The rest are… vague descriptions and portentous statements.”
Meesh broke away from Kamini’s lips. “Welcome to our world,” he said.
Cooper let out a chuckle, coughed. “It’s funny the coincidences, is it not?”
“In what way?” asked Shade.
“The riddle seems to point in my direction all right, and brims with duality.” He coughed again and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Even the part about this collector is interesting.”
“In what way?”
Cooper cleared his throat and slid Bertram’s head off his lap while Meesh and Kamini continued their lip acrobatics. He stood up and gazed at the concrete bunker entrance.
“You’ve never read the Good Book, correct?”
Shade shook his head.
“There’s one section I’m particularly fond of, a collection of twelve different psalms—poems, if you will, fables—that speak to God’s judgment, His law, and His mercy. The divinity of His presence, and how we should shout it from the mountaintops.” His head lolled back, his eyes closed. “You’re all I want in heaven! You’re all I want on earth! When my skin sags and my bones get brittle, God is rock-firm and faithful. Look! Those who left you are falling apart! Deserters, they’ll never be heard from again. But I’m in the very presence of God—oh, how refreshing it is! I’ve made Lord God my home. God, I’m telling the world what you do! That’s my favorite part. I recite it every night.”
Shade tilted his head to the side. “That’s beautiful, I guess. But what’s it got to do with anything?”
In the background, Meesh let out a pleasure-filled moan.
“Well, it’s…” The brigand prophet paused again to lick his dry lips. “Those psalms were put together by a man whose name means God accumulated, or even God’s collector, in the original arcane language. That man’s name was Asaph.”
Shade squinted. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You’re right. The coincidence is astounding.” Shade’s vision warbled from drink. Or is it?
Cooper coughed loudly, grinned. “It always is with God. However, I suppose you have to take every possibility into account, so now—”
A loud screech cracked the night air, and Shade almost toppled over. His head stopped swimming, and he rose up on his knees, glancing nervously around.
“What the hell,” said a groggy Bertram, rubbing his reddened eyes.
Meesh and Kamini separated. “Huh?” Meesh said.
Shade stood, turning his eyes to the tall hill that separated the supposed holy city from the rest of the shattered land above. The giant moon was bright, and in that azure light Shade swore he saw the hillside move as if swarmed with insects. All around him, the remaining Outriders began to buzz with concern.
Meesh joined his side, adjusted his crotch. “What’s goin’ on, brah?”
“I don’t think you’ll like this,” Shade replied. He pulled out
his spyglass, and through it saw the undead lumbering down the hillside, barely a mile away. “Shit.” He turned to his companions around the fire. “They’re coming.”
“But how?” Cooper shot to his feet and snatched the spyglass from Shade’s hand, his eyes wide with horror. “How did they get across? Why didn’t my men raise a warning?”
“Little too late for questions now,” Meesh said, his eyes glassy. “Looks like it’s all action, all the time, or else we lose our heads.” The youngest knight was actually laughing.
“What are we going to do?” shouted Cooper. “The Spear of God should have worked! Asaph promised it would!”
Asaph. Shade closed his eyes, gathered his wits. He grabbed the brigand prophet by the shoulders and shook him. “You’re going to lead your people, Ronan. You’ll to see them through to the end.”
Cooper hesitated at first, but his jaw soon hardened. “That I will!”
Meesh yanked free one of his revolvers, held it aloft. “Eh, there ain’t so many. We can take ’em.”
This isn’t going to end well, is it? thought Shade. He groaned and said, “Then do it, Meesh. Help them. But don’t do anything stupid.”
Meesh shoved away from him, chuckling.
“What about you?” shrieked Bertram.
“I’m going to see about a collector,” he replied, then snatched Rosetta off the ground, whirled, and sprinted as fast as he could toward the waiting bunker.
Meesh watched his brother sprint away, saw the wide-brimmed hat fly off his head and flutter to the ground. He felt numb, his heart thumped uncontrollably. It was still difficult to parse his whirling thoughts. He swayed on his feet. Kamini was still beside him, and he put his arm on her shoulder to steady himself. Both of them almost teetered into the fire.
Kamini glared as Meesh righted himself. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin a few shades lighter than before. Damn, that’s some strong booze.
Someone screamed, and Meesh was ripped back to the present. He shook his head, slapped himself, and followed everyone’s gaze to the distant hill. The swarm of depraved humanity shambling toward them came clear.
Soultaker Page 27
