by Dan Glover
The hordes were upon them... the only chance they had now was to outrun them, to drive over the bodies of the hideously enraged chimpanzees until their broken bones lodged so thickly under the truck that they could go no further.
"Hold on, everyone."
Natalia leaped into the cab, put the transmission into drive, and stomped upon the gas pedal.
Chapter 5 6—Hurt
The explosion knocked her off her feet, or had it been Father pushing her?
They'd been moving down the slope as fast as possible after seeing the plane approaching. Father was leading the way when he suddenly stood aside for her to pass.
"You are faster than I am. Run, Daughter... the sand isn’t so deep here. We haven’t much time."
She hadn’t stopped to think as she made great loping strides raising her feet high in the air like she used to do back at Orchardton Hall when they had the games. Her favorite sport was the hurdles and she was good at it. No one could best her.
Her muscle memory from those days returned in a flash as she made a mad dash down the never-ending slope with the sand slithering and sliding beneath her feet as if seeking a hold upon her.
The jet never made a move to avoid striking the nanobot nexus full on. She knew the pilot had no chance of survival. Having trained on the same aircraft she knew such a maneuver had to be performed manually.
When the noise of the explosion reached her ears she was already falling forward. Father must have let her go first to better absorb the outburst from the jet, to save her life, and then he pushed her at the last instant.
She remembered thinking: this is it... falling into the writhing mass of sand would be their demise. She had such hopes when they set out to destroy the nest but now she realized it was all based upon a fallacy.
They were fools who never stood a chance.
She thought Father was indestructible but now he'd disappeared under the sand. Even though she knew his body exuded a field of energy which rendered the nanobots inert she couldn't help but believe being immersed in them as he was would lead to his doom, especially when he didn’t emerge.
Her back hurt where she was shoved or perhaps struck with something hard... maybe a piece of shrapnel from the exploding aircraft. Getting to her knees she wondered momentarily how soon she'd be overwhelmed by the miniature monsters of murdering sand. Something warm trickled into her shoes and though she knew she was bleeding there was nothing to be done about it so she ignored it.
Her husband was on her mind. She should have said goodbye to Alpin. He deserved it. Even though they had taken separate roads of late she still loved him more than anyone in the world, more than life itself.
What if he had been the pilot in that jet? Who else could it have been? Of course it was Alpin... he was dead. She would never again hear his coarse voice laughing over something that he found hilarious while she just thought it was stupid.
Alpin had unearthed some old compact discs with movies of three men who called themselves the Three Stooges. She remembered how he watched the clips over and over again never failing to break into such laughter that tears ran down his cheeks as he grabbed his sides as if they hurt.
"How can you watch the same thing again and again, sweet Alpin? Don't you grow tired of it?"
The hurt look on his face told her more than any words he could have spoken to her. The next day she found all the old compact discs tossed into the fire pit where they burned their trash... the plastic had melted into fiery clumps that burned with a sullen black soot leaving tiny feathers of ash floating in the gentle morning breeze.
So far as she knew, Alpin never watched another video... even when she instituted movie night for the children her husband would disappear to wherever it was that he went to be alone while the rest of them giggled and cried, jumped and laughed, and wondered every so often where dad had gone.
It wasn’t all his fault that their relationship had floundered and then died... she was as much to blame for the pushing of him away as he was for the pulling. Ena had always been headstrong, even as a child just able to walk and talk. As she grew she only became more arrogant and self assured while Alpin seemed to have given up ever besting her at anything, be it physical or mental.
When he began leaving the Isle of Skye for ever greater length of time she had responded by letting him go. How many times had she formed the words to ask him to stay? Thousands... perhaps millions... and yet each moment passed without as much as an utterance.
So far as Ena was concerned the world was full of uncertainty and suffering. Each day wriggled by her like a gray slug and like the one before it both full of memories and laden with regrets that she could do nothing to ameliorate.
When the children began to leave she had let them go... all but Niall. He was the baby, her youngest, and her last and greatest hope. It was wrong of her to put so much weight upon the poor boy's shoulders. When she arrived there she knew he was at Toulon and though Ena had every intention of visiting the boy, of kissing him and holding him close once more, she had become embroiled in her own intrigues.
Now it was too late.
Niall had always been too much like his father, prone to disappearing for increasingly lengthy amounts of time without letting anyone know where he was or what he was doing. Each time she looked at the boy Ena saw his father staring back at her through Niall's eyes so perhaps it was only natural for her to pull away from his while simultaneously holding on tight.
She and Alpin had always cultivated a love affair with the same things though for him it was more a competition against the world while for her it was more of a melting process whereby she became the world.
They had both learned to fly when Karen and Pete moved to the Isle of Skye though Alpin was the better pilot. Like everything else, he had mastered the skies by the same intense concentration that he exhibited in everything he did... except for being a husband and a father.
So far as she knew Alpin hadn’t flown in years. Still, it would be like him to come rushing to her rescue. Even though he had never been a family kind of man he had a gallantry that shined like gold. He'd gladly sacrifice his life if he knew it would save the rest of them.
Bending down she reached up to her elbows into the knee-deep sand searching for Father. The sand was warm on her arms but curiously it didn’t move as it did just a few seconds ago. Even the air was becoming clear again. A ray of sunshine beamed down as if pointing out a spot where a patch of white appeared.
A thought flashed through her mind: Father wore a white shirt. He might have been hurt, perhaps even killed. Wading through the still sand was even more difficult than when it was alive with movement.
"The nanobots must be dead."
She spoke aloud to no one as she remembered Micah's words to Grandmother Lily: Kill the brain and the rest will follow. The jet plowing into the nest had created such an enormous impact that it must have destroyed everything.
"Father... are you all right?"
Pulling him from the sand she peers into dead eyes, open yet unseeing, a jagged piece of metal jutting from his chest just above his sternum. Still, he was warm.
"We have two hearts... wake up, Father... you still have life within you... I feel it."
Her hands fluttered in the air as she talked. She didn’t know what to do. Pulling the shard of aluminum from his chest would surely finish him yet it was impossible to perform any sort of cardio resuscitation upon him... unless she massaged the second heart.
Opening his mouth, clearing the sand from his throat, and blowing her breath into his lungs she reached a hand around his back to feel for a heart beat. It was there, feeble yet steady. She took another deep breath and forced it into his lungs once again. On the third try, he coughed, choked, and moaned.
"Daughter... are we alive?"
Chapter 57—What Dreams May Come
When she heard the explosion she knew her worst fears had been realized.
Someone had died for her. She never meant fo
r any of this to happen. If only she'd listened to Lauren... her lover wanted to send all the humans away that day over three centuries ago when Karen and Marilyn showed up at Orchardton Hall escorting a gaggle of children.
Lily insisted they stay. In her naïveté she believed they could repopulate the world. Instead of a mean and hateful place, it would become loving and forgiving. Instead of men ruling the earth, women would take their place.
Now it had come to this.
All she wanted was to go home to the arms of her Ladies, Lauren and Natalia. She didn’t care about Micah, whether he lived or he died. Ena was precious to her but the girl must find her own way now. Kāne was a bitter memory of someone she used. Only a vision of Nate stood out in her memory, and their precious son Maon.
He had saved them all once.
"Don't send him into that air shaft, Nate! He'll get stuck. Tell him, Karen."
"I can make it, mother. Please let me try. I can make it."
She hadn’t a choice at the time. They were all slowly suffocating in the isolation chamber where she'd spent many long years locked away like a science experiment gone wrong.
Maon was right. He did make it through and in doing so the boy freed her from one of the worst nightmares she'd ever experienced, of being caught and locked up again, never to escape. She never told her lovers or her husband about those night terrors knowing there was nothing they could to do assuage her feelings of dread.
When Maon came to them with plans of marrying Sileas, it meant her premonition of renewing the races was finally coming to fruition. They too would bear children and their offspring too. Soon, the world would be full of happy laughing babies.
Still, it would have been better if none of them were ever born.
Micah and his minions were brewing all the while, stewing in hatred and plotting to overrun the earth with metal and sand. The man had no need for human companionship. He was worse than the monsters he created.
She had foreseen all of it... the music played for her while her lovers slept dreaming of sweet things and tender moments. She saw that Nate must be set free... his children would help bring strength to the People that was otherwise lacking. With her as his wife, Nate would never attain his rightful place.
Kāne was what she remembered him being: a male of her species who lived in the moment, never pausing to consider the consequences of his actions. He was a perfect foil for her preparations.
Leaving Nate was the hardest thing she had ever done.
Losing him now would be tantamount to dying the worst kind of death. Still, she had no reason to believe he would come for her. The path they walked together had been broken over half a century ago. Nate had another family now. He didn’t care about her.
When Ena appeared with Kāne in tow, Lily could see in his eyes that he didn’t remember who she was. He'd always been like that, an itinerate wanderer who enjoyed his own company far more than any woman he ever met.
Ena called him Father.
She knew Karen helped Maon and Sileas conceive a daughter but she had no idea how she had been able to obtain the genetic material from Kāne or why she would do so. The woman was a miracle worker but that was one marvel Lily wished Karen had failed to achieve.
There was a reason why she had never procreated with a male of her own species. They were in her experience all like Kāne: indolent, ignorant, and morose. He used his art to rationalize his lack of empathy for any other form of life. He was a psychopath, a vagabond, devoid of feelings, and who fancied himself a soulful king.
Despite her many and profound doubts about him even Kirk had become more of a man than Kāne would ever be. Her vote would have sent him to his doom... it should have... she didn’t even have to speak... she had merely to shake her head.
She had saved them all and now that she was in need... where were they? She was alone, trapped in a building half a world away with no hope of ever leaving. She could have stopped it all any time she desired yet she allowed the charade to continue... the dragons were but puffery and smoke. Micah, who thought he was a genius, was no more than a boy at play.
Lily had watched as his species—no more than tiny rodents afraid of their own shadows—fell out of the trees for the first time breaking their frail bodies on the ground. She witnessed nights before the moon first rose in the sky. When they asked her age—and they always asked—she toyed with them telling them what they needed to hear.
She had no idea of the nature of time.
The passing of seasons meant no more to her than a blink of the eyes. Her marriage to Nate lasted but a minute and their son grew up while she was taking a deep breath. Others loved to wallow in the years but to her time meant nothing.
"If we fly to Lake Baikal, my lovely Lily, we'll save time."
"But why would we hope to save that which we have in abundance, my precious Nate?"
He was always in a hurry, even as a child. Perhaps even then he recognized his time on earth was limited in ways hers was not... a premonition of an early death, maybe, or a desire to know what the other side of life held.
"What happens when we die, Lady Lily?"
Nate had come to her when he was no more than a precocious child fast becoming a man tall and handsome. She had no words to explain death to the boy. While it was true most all of her species had passed into that great unknown Lily never considered even for an instant that she too might one day follow.
She was an immortal.
There were things she hadn’t touched yet or kissed. Her mind would not allow the thought of death to intrude upon each unfolding moment of her life. When the shrieking agony and the awful screaming began, she closed her auditory organs to the sounds of the Great Dying. When she dreamed of the dead piled high in heaps she thought of the ossuaries of her own people deep beneath Lake Baikal.
"I have no idea what happens when we die, my darling Nate. I suspect we will wink out like the stars will one day do and when that happens there will only be the darkness that breathed over the hushed waters before the beginning."
"Marilyn says there is a heaven but only for good People. She says I will go to hell for being what I am. Why does she say those things?"
"You must not listen to the People for their words will lead you astray, my sweet and gentle Nate. When you are troubled, come to me. Ask me anything. If I have the answer, I will give it to you."
"Who is my father?"
She remembered wondering the same thing as a child.
The men of her species were fleeting at best while the women were a constant. She assumed Natalia would tell Nate of his heritage when the time was ripe for such knowledge but now she'd painted herself into a corner with words intended to sooth and not inform.
"I would rather not tell you who your father is at this moment, my lovely Nate."
"But you know."
Now, as her mind cast about to catch a hint of Nate, she came up empty. He was dead. It was he who performed the sacrifice she had dreamed would be necessary... or was it the gray sands piled high as far as she could see blotting out her prescient moments?
Though she was immune to Micah's dreadful demons they still affected her abilities in ways she didn’t like to think about. Now, though, she sensed a shudder permeating the sands surrounding Cornell.
Someone or something was dying.
Chapter 58—Hero
Somehow she'd been placed in a bed.
The room seemed unfamiliar as a full moon broke its way through open windows and a gentle Mediterranean breeze lapped at the curtains. A silhouette was sitting by her bedside though in the darkness she couldn't make out who it was.
"Mom... are you awake?"
Sileas spoke in a low whisper as if uncertain whether her mother had regained consciousness or was merely tossing in her sleep.
"Is that you, darling Sileas? How on earth did I get here?"
"Niall found you passed out in the courtyard. He didn’t realize you'd been left here all alone. He brought you inside
and stayed close to you. The poor boy was overcome with guilt. He believed Luciana was here with you.
"He said how he wanted to surprise Nate with new genetic material for the grape vines. He went north and being the boy he is he failed to tell anyone. By the time I got here he hadn’t slept in two days. I sent him off to bed.
"I came as soon as we heard from the wayward boy. He said you might be in trouble so I flew here in Nate's old Piper that he keeps in the shed at Orchardton Hall. I would have been here sooner but I had to drive south from the Isle of Skye."
"Where is Maon?"
"He went to old America with Pete."
"But I thought Pete was..."
It dawned on her that a change had come over her daughter's face when she mentioned Maon. Something was being kept from her.
"Pete is dead, isn't he."
It was not a question. Karen knew it viscerally. He must have lied to her to save her the worry that would have necessarily accompanied the knowing. Of course he went to old America... even though she talked Nate into taking Kirk instead of Pete, the man had his pride. He probably started planning the trip the minute he returned to the Isle of Skye.
"I am unsure, darling Karen... from what I gather he may have died in a plane crash."
She heard the words but they somehow they didn’t register. Pete was home in old Scotland working on cell phone towers. This was all a vast mistake, a dream perhaps, or a nightmare.
"Oh... I thought I heard our lovely Karen's voice!"
Now Karen was sure she was dreaming. Lily was standing before her looking as if she was sixteen years old. Her green eyes were so brilliant they were difficult to look at without blinking, her long blonde hair shone with a luminescence all its own, and her skin was flawlessly smooth.
"What are you doing here, darling Lily?"
Her voice was no more than a croak. She tried to reach for the glass of water on the night table next to the bed but only succeeded in knocking it over.
