by Dan Glover
He should have known her name. He sensed a sort of underlying bitterness that she tried without success to suppress. He had hurt her, somehow, and badly. It was a familiar feeling.
When the winds of reminiscence roared about his mind he burrowed more deeply into the garments of dread and uncaring that he carried so easily. He wore his guilt like a cloak. It sheltered him from useless uncertainties like love.
The world was full of names yet he had no part of that. Walking chartless paths in dark forests and high mountains he had no need to carry more than food and water and only a few days worth of that.
"Oh... you're awake!"
The excitement in her voice startled him. He hadn’t realized she was standing now and peering at him in the dark."
"You saved my life, Father."
He had no idea what she meant but he grunted. The noise seemed to assure the girl of something though he couldn’t be sure what. A discomfort wormed its way into his consciousness though like everything else the feeling passed through his psyche leaving scarcely a trace.
"Are you hungry? You've been asleep for days."
Feed me.
The girl's eyes widened with hope and amazement as a smile swept over her face. Though he didn’t speak he knew she heard him.
"I'll be right back, Father."
Bending down to kiss his forehead she twirled on her heals and left the room. Intense daylight burst through the open doorway and then darkness caressed his eyes once more... beloved night, like the first dawn deep beneath the waters of his youth.
Attempting to sit up brought a cascade of pain in his chest as well as a wave of dizziness and nausea. Blood pounded in his temples as a patch of perspiration broke out on his forehead.
Laying back down in an effort to quell the symptoms did little to ease the pain but at least the dizziness and accompanying nausea subsided. He had never felt so weak and so helpless. As he lay gasping for breath, Daughter entered the room with a platter laden with food.
"Your primary heart is still healing, darling Father. Lady Lily told me that it will begin beating again once the cellular damage is repaired. She comes here every day to help heal your wounds."
Who?
Though he'd rather talk, his throat was so sore and dry he doubted words would exit from it. Daughter must have anticipated that as she proffered only soft foods like pudding and cottage cheese.
"Lady Lily... don't you remember her? She stayed with you at Edinburgh Castle."
He shook his head as he fingered heaping portions of pudding from the bowl to his mouth. From the sound of her name, he thought she must be considered a princess or perhaps a queen. He wondered why he should know such a woman and why she'd bother with a man like him."
"I remember nothing."
The pudding had soothed his throat enough for him to speak though his voice sounded like an echo in a darkened tunnel.
"You remember me, don't you, darling Father?"
"Daughter... you are Daughter."
"But do you remember me and all the time we used to spend together, my loving Father?"
"No."
He would rather lie to her but something in her eyes forbade it. She deserved the truth and besides, she knew it already. He sensed her mind delving into his, searching for answers that meant nothing to him and yet everything to her.
Though he longed to belong somewhere, he doubted he ever had. Memories of morning faded before the afternoon sun made her long shadows. So far as he knew, his life had always been one lived without recollection. He had no old friends or lovers.
"Do you remember your son, Joshua?"
"I have a son?"
Yes, sweet Father."
"Who is the mother of this child you say is mine, my precious Daughter?"
"Her name is Ginger, my darling Father. She is living in old France now."
When he attempted to shrug his shoulders a piercing pain reminded him of his injuries. A hallucination surfaced of holding a tiny bundle in his great hoary arms and feeling the warmth emanating from it like a golden orb of love.
Why had such a sacrifice been demanded of him? He had no notion of any god yet the music, yes, the music... he had no choice but to follow the melody as it played on, always twisting and turning in ways unforeseen cascading down the dark corridors of time leading him ever on.
What was it that caused the music to play? It was a question that he had asked himself many times. Often, he thought he had stumbled upon the answer when he gazed into the eyes of another yet the moment passed leaving him poorer for the experience rather than richer.
It puzzled him to think everything in the world was as it should be, without choice, and yet completely free. It wasn’t the thoughts that befuddled him as much as the meanings. In following the music he had fashioned a life of forgetfulness, safe from the turmoil that raged through those who knew too much... those who held onto things near and dear as well as the darkness that blossomed inside every lighted moment.
It was in the asking of the wrong questions that led him into muddled mazes of the mind. What if there were no causes for the music? What if the music and reality as it unfolded were one and the same?
That would signify that time itself had no meaning, and of course it didn’t.
Chapter 6 6—Old Bones
Amanda loathed staying in the wilds of the north of old France but Chester was barely able to move much less walk.
Luciana graciously assented to stay by her side knowing if she remained there alone Amanda would grow ill with the Lake Syndrome. Lady Lauren and Natalia left a week ago with Ginger driving. Lauren's wounds were such she needed more medical attention than Amanda could provide in the field. Karen would be waiting back at Toulon Castle to help heal her.
There was no sign of the chimpanzees that attacked them so viciously. Apparently whatever force driving them had been disrupted and the survivors slunk off into the weeds to nurse their wounds and their losses. Though she couldn’t be sure, she suspected the same agents infecting the chimps had also caused Chester to grow so large and endowed him with increased intelligence.
"Why is he so big, darling Nate?"
When the big tiger first appeared on the deserted island where they were marooned, she thought he had come to devour them all. Emerging out of the dense undergrowth, the beast didn’t charge them like she expected. Instead, he simply sat down in the sand watching them all as if they might be his next meal.
"Chester was an experiment of a mad scientist who we came across in old New York City. When the man injected Chester with miniature machines that he called his nanobots it changed his physique."
"Why would anyone do that to an animal? What was this man's name?"
"Micah... apparently he knew Karen from the days before the Great Dying. He kidnapped her and threatened her with the same treatment."
Amanda was aghast at the notion that anyone would torture such a marvelous creature. Though she'd never met Micah, she hated the man as intensely as she had Marilyn. Just the thought of that woman brought back memories better left behind.
She still remembered that long ago day when everyone was succumbing to Lake Syndrome. Amanda was sick too. She figured before she died, she'd make sure Marilyn didn’t have the opportunity to hurt anyone else... and then Lady Lauren appeared just in the nick of time at Orchardton Hall.
The first symptom she noticed was the fire inside her eyeballs. They burned like they sometimes did when she accidentally got shampoo in her eyes while washing her hair only the feeling did not abate... instead it grew steadily worse until she thought her eyeballs might melt.
When the nausea started Amanda tried to remember what she had eaten that day. Within another few minutes the room began spinning violently around... for the first time she realized what was really going on.
She had never been sick, nor had anyone that she knew. She had heard the stories all her life. Only the People foolish enough to leave the safety of Orchardton Hall had ever gotten ill...
most times they died before they could turn back.
The ossuary deep beneath the castle was filled with old bones, some of them the same People who once inhabited Orchardton Hall... those same People who laughed and cried and teased her incessantly.
Lucy was down there in the dark and the damp, or at least her bones were. She had been Amanda's age. She remembered being jealous of the relationship Lucy enjoyed with Nate... how they were always fawning over one another. As she grew into a teenager Lucy always seemed to take a perverse pleasure in parading herself past Nate.
If Amanda had the courage she would have went to Nate and told him how Lucy talked about him behind his back... but she was afraid Nate wouldn’t believe her. That, and she had always been slightly in awe of the tall boy with the long black hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to see things no one else could.
It did not sadden Amanda to hear of Lucy's demise. Nor did it bother her to see Marilyn die before her eyes... she only wished she had shot the woman before she could perpetrate her hateful plot against the Ladies and Dr. Karen, and especially Nate.
"What has happened here, sweet Amanda?"
"I shot Marilyn, Lady Lauren."
"But why did you do such a thing, darling Amanda?"
"I had to. She is the one who told Kirk to lock you and Lady Natalia in the dungeon..."
Amanda had been too sick to talk any longer as her mouth opened and closed spasmodically like a fish trying to breathe the air. Lady Lauren's words brought a cascade of memories rushing through her mind... Kirk with his stuttering nonsense attempting to justify the horrible things he had done all in the name of love.
"Why did you push Ginger down those stairs, Kirk?"
"Marilyn said if I helped her to lure Lady Lauren and Natalia down into the dungeon, Amanda. She said she'd help make me a king. She said she loved me and wanted me to better myself. I didn’t want to push Ginger but Marilyn told me to get the Ladies down into that old basement any way I could think of. She wouldn’t go on her own so I shoved her."
Though she was so dizzy she could barely stand up, Amanda went to the closet where Natalia kept her gun. It felt heavy in her hands, malignant in its sullenly swollen silence. She paused over him wanting to kill Kirk but he'd passed out by the time she returned. She couldn’t bring herself to shoot an unconscious man.
Instead, she staggered back outside. Going directly to the limousine where Marilyn sat and watching as the horror of recognition wash over the woman's face when she pulled out the pistol and pointed it at her midsection Amanda had quailed at the thought of actually killing someone.
She didn’t remember pulling the trigger or the sound of gunshots but all of a sudden two red holes appeared in Marilyn's stomach. Amanda wondered absently if she should shoot the woman in the head as well, just to make sure, but then she must have blacked out again.
There should have been more blood. Amanda recalled watching Nate hunt the gnus that descended upon the area of old Scotland where they lived and how the wounds his bullets made gushed geysers of blood. But for the holes in Marilyn's shirt and the tiny spots of red dotting the surface Amanda would have never known that the gun had fired at all.
When Nate and Lily's group returned from their journey to CDC headquarters, Amanda opened her sweltering eyes to Karen standing over her with anger flashing in her crying eyes while holding the gun she had shot Marilyn with in both hands as if she was fearful that Amanda might jump up and wrestle it away from her.
"Amanda? Did you kill Marilyn?"
Her voice quivered with rage. For just a second she thought Karen might turn the gun on her but she was so sick that it didn’t much matter... in fact, she yearned for the release death might offer.
"Leave her alone, Dr. Karen."
Lady Lauren's authoritative voice came from somewhere far away. Amanda knew once the Lady was back at Orchardton Hall her Lake sickness would quickly subside... it had been drummed into her head since she was a young girl not to leave the presence of the Ladies for any reason.
"But she shot Marilyn... she's dead, Lady Lauren."
"That woman orchestrated a coup aimed at killing you, Lily, Nate, and little Maon, and nearly succeeded in locking me and Natalia in the dungeon. Amanda only did what needed to be done. You know that as well as I do, Dr. Karen. Now, leave Amanda alone."
A look of awe tinged with resignation came over Karen's face as she let the gun slip from her fingers to the ground, turned, and walked away without a word.
Amanda had never gotten over the memories of that day... the look of loss flowing over Marilyn's face when she must have realized she was dying... the thought of how she had taken everything from the woman... her past, present, and her immortal future.
Sometimes, Amanda would dream of that horrible pistol only instead of holding it in her hands, it had become part of her. When Lady Lauren and Natalia called from the north of old France in trouble and asking for help, Amanda went straight to the storage shed where all the automatic weapons were kept.
"Why on earth are you bringing those rifles with us, sweet Amanda? Are we going to fight a war?"
Luciana was the most gentle of souls. Leaving her daughter in the care of Nate's first born son Blane and his wife who lived in a villa some fifty kilometers east of Toulon Castle was hard on her yet she did it willingly in order to help save the Ladies.
"I understand Lauren and Natalia are under some sort of siege, lovely Luciana. I feel it is better to go prepared to fight rather than unarmed. Have you ever fired any of these weapons?"
"No, sweet Amanda... I have never even seen rifles like these."
"When I was a girl growing up at Orchardton Hall we had to be aware of wild animals roaming the estate. Guns were kept to frighten rather than to kill but there were times when they weren’t scared. So we had to shoot them... especially dogs that had become rabid.
"When I arrived at Toulon Castle, they had no weapons other than a couple of shotguns. I procured these automatic rifles and other artillery at an old army base not far from here.
"Where we are going is a dangerous place, my darling Luciana. You must be proficient in wielding these weapons. Come... let us go into the fields where we can practice shooting them."
Though she was in a hurry to leave, Amanda deemed it more important that her friend was able to load, aim, and fire any of the weapons they carried. Even though she hated everything about firearms, Amanda knew their lives depended upon them.
She still remembered the acrid smell of gunpowder and flesh burning.
Amanda learned to shoot guns as a child, rifles, mostly, and shotguns. Not long before the day she killed Marilyn Natalia showed her the old pistol and told her a story of how she took it away from a man bent on taking Lady Lily back to prison. He and Karen had come after Lady Lily, following her to old Moscow in a country called Russia where Natalia had beaten the man into submission.
"But what did Lady Lily do that she deserved to be in prison, Lady Natalia?"
"She was who she was, that's all. That man planned to study our Lily, to dissect her, all in order to learn of her secret of infecting human beings with a deadly disease. Karen was with that man. Lady Lily nearly killed her and I put the man down with one blow to the head. I wanted to finish the job but she stopped me."
"Our doctor Karen wanted to put Lady Lily into prison? That doesn’t sound right, Lady Natalia. I thought they were great friends."
"They were adversaries before their friendship flourished, my darling Amanda. Even now, I doubt Lady Lily totally trusts Karen. She makes allowances for the doctor's past behavior in ways I am not sure I could do. Nor does Karen accept Lily at her word. They are cordial but as to being friends... perhaps on the surface, but below it? Not so much."
"How did it come about that Karen and Lady Lily formed a union? I would have been exceedingly leery of being with the person who kept me prisoner."
"That's a remarkable question, dearest Amanda. It happened like this: later, when we reac
hed Lake Baikal and met Lady Lauren, we all made a pact: rather than allow Lily to be taken prisoner again, we would kill anyone who tried. When we left the Lake we traveled to old Scotland in hopes no one would follow us. We were wrong.
"It was my fault that Karen found us. Lady Lauren showed me and Lady Lily a postcard of Orchardton Hall and I liked it so much that I pinned it to the cabinet in the cabin where we stayed on the shores of Lake Baikal.
"Karen was able to glean enough information from that postcard that she followed us to Scotland. Orchardton Hall was well enough known that once in the country she had no problem finding it.
"About that same time we walked into the village, the three of us. While we were sidewalk shopping I couldn’t help but notice a man watching Lady Lily with an evil intent. Though he was holding a newspaper and pretending to read it, he was surreptitiously staring over the top.
"When I informed Lady Lauren of it, she seemed to take no notice. But when I turned around a minute later she was gone. I saw her approaching the man I told her about. A few minutes later, she kissed him. Though we didn’t realize it at the time, that was the beginning of the plague that swept around the world wiping out nearly all of humanity.
"The next day we noticed smoke on the horizon. At first we thought a forest fire had broken out but soon it became apparent it was the nearby villages that were burning. Rather than investigating, we felt safer staying home.
"That is the same day that Karen and Marilyn showed up at Orchardton Hall. They were obviously ill and close to dying. I wanted to send them away as did Lady Lauren. I often think we should have stood firm in our convictions that they were interlopers who would lead us all to no good.
"Lady Lily interceded. She welcomed them. My heart is hard... Lily's is soft. She forgives whereas I hold old grievances close to my heart. When we first met I longed to be more like her but now I think I am right in my convictions. Lily is too easily swayed by a desire to help others."
"So the story that Lady Lauren was responsible for the Great Dying really is true, isn't it?"
