The Third Wave: Eidolon

by John O'Brien

  It had been a while since she’d had to deal with any reapers. She knew that some of them came north when the climate was milder, somehow still able to sustain themselves, perhaps migrating to search for other sources of food. She thought about how they must have endured that agony over the years, at best having mere moments away from the pain, the terror of knowing it would return and wanting for it to end. She could possibly help end that, but had been too afraid of the experience.

  What if I can’t actually free them; what if I become one instead?

  The memory surfaced of the one she had freed, of the peace that settled in that essence. Remembering, she didn’t feel that she could sit idle any longer. The years had passed and she’d done nothing about it.

  I’m alone and getting older. What do I really have to lose anymore?

  She again remembered the hungering pain in their eyes; it made her heart ache thinking that they’d had to endure such agony for so long. Erin realized that her mission in life wasn’t to sit around and live in the solitude of her little valley, but to free those pour souls who lived in constant agony with a hunger that couldn’t be quenched. Afraid no longer, and feeling a little ashamed that she hadn’t done anything to help them earlier, she saddled a horse. With the weather warming and trailing several pack horses, she headed south. In the corner of her eyes, she saw wolves following in the distance on both sides.

  In the first places she traveled, there was only the wind blowing through the lonely towns. The cold winters had already dealt with the souls, bodies lying in the streets and on sidewalks. The nearest reapers she sensed were the odd few journeying north. Staying close to the mountain roads, she set off on an intercept course.

  Days later, sitting atop her saddle, she gazed through her binoculars and saw figures teleporting along the cracked pavement in the distance. Kneeing her horse into motion, Erin drew closer to the people, their apparitions clearly visible. Tying the horses to a fence pole alongside the highway, she began walking down the road, feeling the heat of the day rising from the paved surface. A short distance from the horses, she halted in the middle of the road and braced herself for the storm that she knew she was about to bring on herself.

  The reapers closed the distance, their screams faint at first. As they drew closer, they began teleporting and running, sensing her in a similar manner to the way that she could sense them. Erin heard the pounding of their feet on the pavement, their agonized and hungry shrieks as they felt an end to the pain close at hand.

  Her heart beat wildly, a panic rising within her, but she knew that she’d passed the point of no return. Doubt rose in her mind about her ability to do this; perhaps the one time was only a fluke. Resolutely, she stood her ground against the screaming of her own mind and the approaching horde. Out in the fields, she saw the wolves, standing among the bushes, waiting. Seeing them, she felt calmer. She’d either do this, or she wouldn’t, and it was too late to turn back.

  The screams of the reapers drowned out everything else. Erin braced herself, almost expecting to feel a physical impact. She felt the first cold embrace as it slid down her throat and inside. Deep down, thinking of nothing else, she protected the heat that rose within, shielding it against the torrent of cold that was invading her body and attempting to wrest the coal bed of her soul from her. Each thread of ice had an essence, and amid the turmoil, she separated each into its own pocket. Her body was buffeted by a tempest, rocking her as she weathered the storm. Slowly, the uproar was tamed and became manageable. Each essence was protected within its own enclosure. With closed eyes and raised hands, Erin exhaled, plumes of fog racing outward in every direction from her mouth. The feeling of peace that settled within was nearly orgasmic in its nature.

  Erin opened her eyes to bright sunlight, warmth again filling her body. With a glance at the bodies lying on the pavement, their clothes deeply stained and in differing states of disrepair, she turned back to gather the horses and climbed into the saddle. Exhausted, drained, yet exhilarated at the same time, she rode past the corpses and turned to the east, where she sensed another migrating group. She was like death, the reaper of souls, leaving a trail of bodies in her wake. But, she was also a savior to the agonized, releasing those souls trapped within.

  * * * * * *

  A couple of weeks later, on the high plains of Colorado with the empty city of Denver far to the west, Erin stood amid old farmland and ranches. Having intercepted several migrating groups of reapers, leaving corpses strewn across fields in groups of five, or ten, or twenty, she’d become better at adapting to the storm of drawing the souls inside. Instead of fighting the initial tempest, she did the opposite and opened herself up while keeping the fire of her own soul protected.

  The experiences had shown her that she could draw in a multitude of them as long as she kept that little part of herself behind a barrier. She had also come to understand that she didn’t have to travel to each group, but could draw them to her. She was tired beyond measure, but tonight was to be her swan song. Tonight, under the stars glittering against a black velvet sky, she sought to fulfill her mission. Tonight, she’d call on the torn souls of the reapers, releasing as many as she could before riding back to her valley. It had taken a lot out of her, more than she imagined, and she didn’t have the strength to continue. She’d do what she could for those that responded, but the others would have to suffer until they perished on their own. She would like to do more, and might, after she had time to recover.

  The night air carried the sweet smell of summer, the thin air still warm from the day. In her previous life as a child, this would be a night where she would have attended a BBQ with her few friends, or gone to the drive-in with her dad. As it was, she stood in her hide clothes, taking a moment to just enjoy the fresh night before bracing for what would come. She rolled memories through her mind, letting herself feel the sorrow and joy of each one.

  At the center of each one was her dad, giving up his life to raise her after the accident; a moment in time that she really didn’t remember. Even though the times had been perilous, her fondest memories were of her and her dad in the valley. She recalled his smile, the shake of his head when she did or said something wrong. Erin smiled at the memory of him climbing onto the dock and laughing until tears flowed down his cheeks that time he’d lost his balance and fell into the lake. Their quiet moments of reading in the warmth of the sitting room while a blizzard raged outside. Him jokingly calling her a cheater when she landed on Park Place or laid down a winning hand of cards. Although the deep sorrow had passed, she missed him terribly.

  Smiling from the memories, she turned south and prepared for the torrent that was coming. With a deep sigh, she began pulling on the souls she could sense. With the aid of her pull, the reapers were able to teleport greater distances. The first apparitions appeared, silver under the light of the stars. They arrived singly at first, their souls being sucked in. Erin calmed each tempest, storing them into compartments, her own locked away. Then, they came by the tens, then hundreds, finally thousands upon thousands gathering on the empty plains. The souls inside created a raging inferno of ice. Erin didn’t fight them, only opened herself more and more as she shielded herself, becoming a conduit for their impending departure.

  She drew them all in as they arrived, their bodies dropping until hundreds of thousands littered the plains. She felt full to bursting, yet expansive at the same time—as if she held the entire universe inside. Internal winds roared as if from a million suns burning, but instead of fire, it was the coldness of deep space. Erin felt that she was no longer in a body, nor had one of her own. She gathered and gathered, no longer entirely present. The only light within the dark inside was her own tiny sun, blazing behind its shield.

  Filled to capacity and unable to hold more, yet sensing others out there, feeling so much larger than her diminutive body, she released. A million souls blasted out at once, erupting outward in all directions. She emptied the entire universe from her mouth, galaxie
s and suns circling, then pouring forth onto the land.

  A fourth wave swept over the world. Rather than containing the darkness of the third wave, this one was composed of light. Outward it went, like the compressed concussed air from a large explosion. All around the globe, those that hadn’t frozen to death, died by radiation, or starved, fell to the ground as reaper souls were released from their tethers. Ghostly wraiths appeared above each body before evaporating from sight.

  Erin sunk to the ground, feeling utterly empty and exhausted, but with the memory of peace she felt from each essence she freed. Wrapped in the blanket of night, she slept.

  She opened her eyes to daylight breaking over the land. Feeling brittle, she shook the sand from her hair and clothing. Around her, bodies had replaced the grasslands, a carpet that stretched for as far as she could see. Numbly, she walked to where the horses were tied to a fence and mounted, turning west toward her valley.

  Sergeant Reynolds—Part 3

  Sergeant Reynolds sat atop the roof with Hanson at his side. In the dark of night, they wouldn’t get much warning of migrating reapers coming in their direction, just the ghostly glow of the apparitions in the starlight. He heard a faint whinny from one of the horses somewhere in an adjacent pasture. Some of the crew were asleep hundreds of feet below the residential quarters in a launch control facility. The others were in other control facilities scattered across the land, each facility only able to house so many. Years had passed since they’d made landfall and worked their way inland, contacting the surviving missile crews at their stations.

  Life had been busy in the intervening years as they’d set up for long-term sustainability. The cold took care of the reapers, as theorized, but there was still a yearly northern migration of them. Each year there were fewer and fewer, but still they came. The fuel for the generators had long since gone bad, but they’d managed to put up a few wind turbines, rebuilding them with salvaged copper wire. Hidden in the darkness behind, solar panels that had been lying uninstalled in buildings now lined nearly an entire field. There was enough power to operate the air filtration and electrical systems of the launch centers, allowing for them to draw water from the wells, keep the freezers operational, and cook in the small kitchen. They were even able to manufacture items in the local towns, a lot of the equipment brought from arms manufacturers and machine tooling plants.

  Life underground wasn’t the easiest, but it was the safest. During the winters, they moved to gather in a local town they’d set up, only to separate when the snows melted to wait out the migrations. Thoughts were put in many times for a place that would sustain them all through the migratory season, but in the end, the bunkers were the safest bet.

  During the day, work crews emerged from underground to go about daily chores under the watchful eyes of posted guards to alert them to incoming reapers. Reynolds hated it underground, and remembered their time on the island with fondness, the warm beaches and waters. He would have enjoyed staying there, but the threat of hurricanes and the inability to grow much there necessitated the need to move. However little he liked retiring to the underground bunker, he was thankful that he didn’t have to spend the years eking out a survival in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan. Sitting on the roof, his eyes peeled for glowing shapes and his ears listening for the distant screams of reapers, he remembered having to leave the island paradise.

  * * * * * *

  “Okay, folks,” Lawrence had said, “it’s time to go. The winter months in the north have subsided and we have to be off this island before the summer hurricane season sweeps in. Plus, our supplies are dwindling.”

  The remaining supplies had been loaded into the Washington docked in the tiny marina, and the group had boarded. The time sailing across the Atlantic to the Pacific had drawn the two groups closer together. As they headed north, this time needing to submerge due to the radiation levels, they hadn’t found a single reaper still active along the southern part of the coastline. It was the same as Lawrence raised the periscope off Atlantic City. Sailing into Delaware Bay, the streets of Wilmington and Philadelphia had appeared empty. However, they hadn’t been able to ascertain whether it was the weather or the radiation levels that had killed off those in the north. Those in the south had to have primarily succumbed to radiation, as the winters, although they could be harsh, weren’t consistently cold enough to have killed all of them.

  “Okay, we can rule out anything east of the north-south line of the eastern borders of Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Knowing the winter weather, we can expect that Nebraska, the Dakotas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, eastern Utah, Idaho, and Washington and Oregon east of the Cascades should be clear. I’ll throw Canada and Alaska into that mix, but we’d have to penetrate the coastal regions of Canada—the same difficulties as getting to the interior of the US. However, without being able to verify any of that, going inland is a risk. There’s no way we’ll know until we get there,” Lawrence had briefed. “I still believe that the missile silos might be our best option for survival. They’re secure and will have had the best chance to survive whatever happened. Everyone here is alive because they were either deep underground or underwater, which would suggest that the people in the launch control centers might have made it as well.”

  On their way back south, the crew had deliberated, some presenting arguments for Alaska and others for striking into the interior. Both had their merits and risks. In the end, they’d decided to put ashore in southern Oregon and travel east through the coastal range that merged with the Cascades, bypassing any populated areas. If they found reapers in areas where the constant freezing temperatures should have killed them off, then they’d turn around and sail further north.

  It had taken them a week to sail around the southern tip of South America; they’d needed to remain submerged for periods of time when radiation was detected. For another week, they’d sailed up the western seaboard of South, Central, and North America until they reached a place off the coast of Bandon, Oregon. They had hoped to go further north, but increasing radiation levels prevented a landing. Speculation was that the Hanford reservation had gone up and its radiation was polluting the Columbia River and being driven south by the north Pacific current.

  Sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific had unified the groups. They didn’t define themselves as Americans and Afghanis any longer, they had become one entity.

  Lawrence had maneuvered the Washington close off the breakwaters where the Coquille River emptied into the Pacific. Waves rolled onto beaches stretching north and south, smashing with great sprays of water against monolithic rocks rising offshore. Keeping the sub in position against the riptides prevalent in the area, he’d ordered the foghorn blown, the low notes carrying over the sound of crashing surf to the city nestled on the riverbank. The commander had wished he could take the boat inside the channel, but was reminded of the time a reaper teleported through the water and into the sanctity of the steel hulls.

  Reapers had gathered along the rocks of the breakwater that extended into the ocean, some sweeping away as the large breakers rolled over them, and along the southern shores. For twenty-four hours, the lonely sound had echoed inland. Then, Lawrence had ordered all hands below decks and submerged.

  Minutes later, the surface of the water had exploded time and time again as missiles cleared the surface, the roar of the rockets reverberating against the hills just inland. White trails of smoke had drifted on the breeze as the cruise missiles struck out on their paths, now nearly invisible after switching to the turbo-fan engines. A series of explosions had torn into the gathered reapers, hot metal tearing into flesh and bone. In the aftermath, shredded bodies had littered the sand and rocks, the waves retreating from the beaches stained pink.

  Lawrence had resurfaced. Again, the low notes of the foghorn carried onshore, but except for the stray animals and birds, there wasn’t anyone to hear the forlorn sound. For yet another twenty-four hours, they’d waited, but not a single
reaper made an appearance. Satisfied, but still alert to the possibility that some might still be around, they had pulled alongside a single large dock. Horses had been found on the outskirts of the town, the survivors of a ranch that had catered to shore rides. Everyone had unloaded the remaining supplies and they’d struck inland. The dark hull of the Washington had grown smaller, looking saddened at being left behind.

  Lawrence had mentioned wanting to launch the remaining missiles at some of the towns inland. He’d hesitated in case they had to return to go ashore elsewhere—they might need the firepower. With a clop of horse hooves on the pavement of the streets, they’d rounded a corner and the sub disappeared from sight.

  Reynolds would remember the sad look in the commander’s eyes as he’d sat at the final turn, the rest of the men and women riding past, staring at the sub for some time, Reynolds and Hanson remaining nearby while offering some space. With a heavy sigh, the commander had turned and kneed his horse forward.

  “Come on, we need to catch up with the others,” Lawrence had said.

  They’d ridden out of town, intersecting high-voltage power lines and following the service road as it cut through a dense forest. They’d seen not a single soul or residence until they’d come to the Coquille Valley, where they’d turned south and kept to the tree line. Having more experience dealing with reapers ashore, O’Malley and Hamed had taken the lead, along with their team. They’d avoided any places that might hold reapers by a wide margin and eventually come to highway 42 from the southeast.

  Leading pack horses, they’d gone as far out of their way as they’d needed. Even though they could have cleared some of the smaller communities they came across, they’d adhered to the rule of no contact. The days had passed as they travelled on, often veering off into the woods or taking time to down fence lines so they could move through. Taking back routes and forest roads, they’d climbed into the foothills of the Umpqua National Forest and intersected with highway 138 deep in the mountains. Continuing east, they’d found each community and town empty except for the corpses huddled on the streets, sidewalks, and in yards. Their theory of the winter cold taking care of the reapers was validated. For the rest of their journey, they hadn’t heard or seen a single reaper.