by Geoff North
Brinn looked up from her twisted ankle and saw only Lowe, Oscar, and Reginald standing on the pad. Fear gripped her as she imagined her friends choking somewhere out in the depths of space. Selma’s words came back to her. The warning from her mother.
All of your uncle’s creations—they can’t be trusted.
Reginald performed a full three-sixty. “My recharge was only half complete.”
Brinn staggered up to her feet. “What’s happened to them?” She was on the verge of panic. “Can you bring them back?”
The robot glowed orange. “I have no idea where to bring them back from. Neal created dozens of transport terminals throughout the universe. They could’ve ended up on any of them.”
“Then they’re still alive somewhere?” Panic was replaced with hope. “They didn’t die in outer space or end up at the center of some star?”
“Of course not. The system can’t malfunction like that. They either never left Canis Major or they’re on some other pad…someplace else.”
The thought of them being displaced almost anywhere frightened Brinn. But the idea that they had remained behind with Gunnarson and the crumbling asteroid terrified her even more.
“There’s nothing we can do for them at the moment, Brinn,” Reginald assured her. “When I’ve recharged fully I’ll begin the process of searching for them—provided we remain safe—one transport terminal at a time.”
“It could be months before you find them,” Oscar said. “Hopefully they’re able to stick around in one spot until then.”
Brinn felt worn out and utterly dejected. She didn’t even have the strength to cry. “So what do we do now?”
Marshal Lowe loaded his rifle with bullets found beneath a rock on the ground. “We carry on with the mission.” He started to walk away from the pad and Oscar and Reginald followed. Brinn limped after them, taking in their surroundings for the first time.
They were back on Earth, or at least the Earth Neal Stauch had imagined so long ago. It wasn’t all that different from the land surrounding the old farmhouse; an endless vista of gray rocks strewn about in brown dirt and sand. But directly ahead lay a city, an immense dark metropolis that appeared as desolate and uninviting as the dry plains surrounding it. Brinn shuddered at the oddness of its layout. There were no outlying suburbs you would expect to see before entering a city. There were no suburbs, no industrial facilities, not a single gas station, farm, or restaurant in sight. It was just one towering skyscraper after another. They were still a few miles away and Brinn could see the slight circular line of the buildings’ perimeter. It was like someone had simply plopped down a massive piece of city-center onto the ground and said, there you go—there’s a city.
And considering who was responsible, Brinn wasn’t all that surprised. It was exactly the way a nine-year-old boy would imagine things on such a large scale.
Lowe stopped to let her catch up. “You gonna be okay on that leg of yers?”
“I’m okay—just twisted my ankle a bit. The more I walk, the better it feels.”
“That’s good.” He lit a bent cigarette and looked back over the plain towards the transport terminal. “There’ll be plenty of wannasee in the city, but the kinds that wander out here after dark are a lot worse, I reckon.” Lowe picked up the pace, and the others dropped back in behind him.
The marshal had taken charge. He was fearless but his leadership didn’t make Brinn feel any safer. With Gunnarson dead it left the lawman free to carry out his own agenda—to murder every wannasee left in Neal’s world. If they managed to save that world along the way as the commander intended, fine. But she remembered Lowe’s words spoken at the fire. He would kill all of them. What would there be left to save after that?
The long walk gave Brinn more time to absorb the news her friends had shared with her before leaving Canis Major. She already missed Selma terribly. Why couldn’t Neal’s creations be trusted, and how many other secret messages from her mother had Selma held back? And now that Selma was gone, had Brinn lost that final link to Nancy Addam?
Then there was Esme. She was carrying Paris’s baby. How was that even possible? How can the undead create life? The physical-how part she understood, and maybe that’s what was bothering her more than anything. Brinn’s imaginary friends had lost their virginity before her. More crazy thoughts and worries plagued her as they trudged on. Who would the child look like? And what role would Brinn play in its life? Would she be an auntie?
“Don’t dwell on it,” Oscar said.
Brinn looked at him in surprise. “What?”
“Bertha will look after Selma. And I wouldn’t want to tangle with Esme either. They’ll all be fine until Reginald tracks them down.”
“I shouldn’t have yelled at Esme like that.”
“I’m sure if we’d had the time, the three of you could’ve worked things out. It’s always tough when you have regrets and aren’t able to do anything about it.”
He didn’t say it, but Brinn knew he was referring to Neal drowning. “My dad asked me the night before my mom died if I wanted to go to the hospital for a visit. I stayed home instead.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
It was becoming a repeat of the conversation she’d had with Selma. She kicked a loose stone out of her way and pain shot through her sore ankle.
Oscar grabbed her by the elbow. “You okay?”
Brinn pulled her arm away. “No, I’m not okay! I never said goodbye to my mom! It’s the same with Paris and Esme. I could only think about myself. I could only think about how they hurt me—not what they meant to each other.”
Lowe stopped ten feet ahead and shook his head. “It would be best if you kept the yellin’ down. No sense drawing attention to ourselves.”
Brinn dropped her head and continued to walk. “Sorry.”
Reginald started to sing.
“Tennis and tiddly winks, balls in the air—tabletop skating rinks, sticks we all share.”
“Oh, Christ, not again.”
The songs he sang became more nonsensical and annoying the closer they got to the city, but Lowe didn’t tell Reginald to shut up. None of them did. It was like humming to one’s self when alone in a dark forest for company. It wasn’t a guarantee to keep the shadows from closing in, but it made you feel better.
There were no small buildings in Neal Stauch’s city of New Hamden. Brinn started to count the number of broken windows in the skyscraper closest to them, starting from the ground and working her way up. She became dizzy less than a quarter of the way through and stopped after the thirtieth floor. There were buildings behind it twice as tall. And all were as dark and abandoned looking as the rest.
Reginald’s rubber treads started to crunch over broken glass. “Watch out for the bigger pieces,” he warned.
Thousands of panes of glass had fallen and shattered in the streets over the decades. It had been trodden upon, crushed beneath the feet of millions until it was fine enough for the wind to move and drift up against the buildings like drifts of glittering snow. Brinn spotted a sharp edge poking out and chose her steps through the debris more carefully. They all fell in directly behind the robot after a while as his treads did a better job of breaking down the larger shards.
“How many people did you say used to live here?”
“Over fifty million,” Oscar answered from behind her.
“That’s impossible. Uncle Neal may have had a powerful imagination, but his life was too short to have created so many…and so much.”
“He didn’t have to,” Reginald said. “Once the basic groundwork was established and the first few characters were populated, nature took its own course. Those settlers procreated with each other and their descendants did the same at an exponential rate.”
“They bred like rabbits,” Lowe offered.
Reginald continued in song. “They fell in love and made babies—bought cats and dogs without rabies.”
Brinn chuckled quietly to herself.
They fell in love and made babies…just like Esme and Paris.
“And it all turned to crap when Neal died,” Lowe replied, silencing Reginald before a second awful verse. “No more little ones, just folks dyin’…and changing’.”
The weak sun had either set altogether or been swallowed up the further they made their way between the towering buildings. In the far distance a dark skyscraper, reaching impossibly into the dull brown above, loomed above all. She knew what it was. The S.S.I.A. building sat at the center of New Hamden—keeping whatever secrets it held behind its black skin of glass— waiting for them in silence.
Brinn spotted something closer from the corner of her eye. She gasped and pointed to a small fire flickering through a broken window twelve floors above them in a building a block away.
Lowe pointed to three more in other buildings and on different floors. “Some wannasee still have enough brains left to try and keep warm,” he whispered. “No more talkin’—no more singin’.” Brinn saw his eyes glint in the orange light as he gave her a warning look. “And you…don’t let your emotions run too wild inside that head of yers. Think of something quiet and peaceful, so’s not to get them all riled up and bothered.”
Easy for you to say.
She tried anyway.
The crushed glass became drifts of snow. Her father was breaking a fresh trail ahead, and Brinn’s mother was holding her mittened hand. It was Christmas Eve, a few months before Logan was born. They plodded though the forest behind Grampa and Gramma Stauch’s farm, searching for a perfect little clearing amongst the spruce to have a wiener roast. Nancy Brinn laughed from the effort of pulling her daughter and lugging the backpack filled with supplies. Brinn remembered how red her nose was—like Rudolph’s—and how the exhaled breaths of happy hard work puffed out from her nostrils and mouth.
“How did I get stuck carrying the food?” she had asked. “I’m four months pregnant!”
“It doesn’t show,” her father called back.
Nancy stopped in snow halfway up to her knees. “At least wait up for Brinn.”
Michael Addam turned and grinned at his daughter as she plopped down resignedly beside her mother. “Come on, you two… Don’t give up on me! I see the perfect spot just ahead.” He patted the left side of his chest with a heavy glove. “Besides—I’m carrying something, too.”
Brinn’s eyes lit up, noticing the slight bulge under his coat for the first time. “Whatcha got there, Dad?”
“Did you really think I was going to drag you guys all the way out here just for hotdogs and hot chocolate? Help me find some wood for the fire, and you’ll get an early Christmas present.”
That got Brinn moving again.
Her father dug a four-foot-wide circle in the snow until he reached the frozen brown grass beneath. He found most of the wood too, but made Brinn feel especially helpful for the small armload of green twigs she contributed.
“You wanna see how we built a fire in Boy Scouts?”
Brinn laughed at the little stack of branches he’d arranged into a pyramid shape. “It looks like a teepee.”
“It’s too wet,” Nancy added.
He hunched over onto his knees and elbows and struck a match in the center of it. The small flame flickered higher as it caught some of the bark he’d put in the middle. It died out a moment later. He struck a second match and the flame sputtered out with a weak sizzling sound. On his third attempt, Michael kept the match held inside longer. It caught on better but he ended up burning his fingers near the end. He yelped and pulled his hand out, knocking the structure over completely.
“Oh, give me a break,” his wife said, pushing him out of the way. She had a ball of bunched-up newspaper in one hand. She grabbed the matches from him and went to work fixing the pile of sticks.
“Where’d you get the paper?”
“I packed a few sheets in with the food and thermoses.” The fire caught on her first try. She laid a few bigger pieces of wood gently on top as the flames started to build.
Brinn’s father sat back cross-legged in the snow and poured Brinn a cup of hot chocolate. “A good Boy Scout also knows when to step aside and let the troop leader take charge.”
“Your dad never made it past Cubs. He got too homesick on the campouts.”
“Who told you that?” He feigned shocked outrage, and Brinn almost spat up her drink.
“I know more about you than you realize, buster. Now how are we supposed to roast our wieners? Did you bring that trusty knife all Scouts carry around to carve us up some sticks?”
They roasted their hotdogs and toasted their marshmallows. Michael told them about his childhood memories of Christmas growing up in the city, and Nancy shared a few of her own about how it was on the farm.
Brinn loved listening to the stories, but her eyes never strayed far from her father’s breast pocket. “So when are you going to give us those gifts?”
“The gifts! Sorry, I’d forgotten all about them.”
“I didn’t,” Brinn said. He dug into his pocket and gave each of them identical rectangular boxes. One was wrapped in green metallic paper, the other red.
His wife smiled. “Christmas colors…nice touch.”
“It gets better.”
Brinn tore into hers first. It was a gold necklace. Hanging from it was a red star-shaped jewel, the ends finished with tiny diamonds. It twinkled as she moved it slowly between her fingers. “It’s beautiful. Wow, thanks, Dad.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Nancy’s necklace jewel was star-shaped as well. It glimmered and glowed deep green as she admired it next to the fire. “Michael…you shouldn’t have.” She knew the gems were real, and she had a good idea how much they had cost. “Thank you.”
“I figured I may as well spoil you two this year. There’ll be three of you to buy for next Christmas.”
Nancy removed her scarf and put the necklace on. She helped Brinn with hers. “So what kind of extra presents will Santa bring us next year? Will there be more jewelry and clothes, or do you think it’ll be something more for a boy?”
“I want a little sister.”
She bundled her daughter back up after the necklace was in place and went over to the other side of the fire to sit next to her husband. She kissed him, and they both giggled as their cold noses touched.
“Gross.” Brinn rolled her eyes, but continued to watch her parents snuggle. It was cold sitting in the snow but she had never felt so warm and content.
Her father started to sing Christmas carols and her mother joined in after some gentle prodding. Brinn sang along and watched the winter sky change colors through the trees. The soft pastel blues and pinks gave way to early evening shades of purple and orange. Soon all the color was replaced with gray and big flakes of snow started to fall around them. Brinn pretended they were angels, floating down all around them, silent and protecting.
Michael began to sing ‘Silent Night’—her mom’s favorite—in that deep Dad voice of his. Brinn closed her eyes and felt the warmth of the fire on her cheeks. The song wouldn’t end. The final word—peace—seemed stuck in her father’s throat. It went on and on and on. It became a low buzz in her ears, growing louder.
Brinn opened her eyes. A piece of ash landed in one and she winced. Oscar had one finger up to his lips. Be quiet.
“Wannasee,” Marshal Lowe whispered back to them over his shoulder. “They’re on to us.”
They picked up their pace through the ruins, less mindful of the broken glass. Brinn could see more fires burning in the shattered remains of the buildings. Dozens of them. The buzz was beginning to hurt her ears. “How much further do we have to go?”
Oscar shook his head in a manner that said she didn’t want to know.
“Thirty-seven city blocks,” Reginald said. “Approximately twenty-one point three kilometers.”
It would take them the rest of the night and most of the following day to cover that much ground. And now that they had been discove
red, Brinn imagined it would take twice that long if they had to avoid wannasee along the way. “We’ll never make it.”
“Why the hell didn’t Neal place the transport pad in the middle of the city?” Lowe grumbled. He bent down and retrieved a full box of ammunition from under an old car tire hubcap. “Brinn’s right. I’ll have plenty of bullets to keep us going by the look of things, but there ain’t no way we’re going to make it that far on foot.”
They continued through the ruined city. Reginald’s internal sensors blipped and bleeped warnings of creature numbers and movement. The robot was their radar and he made course adjustments along the way, by-passing wannasee-infested streets and detouring through back alleys. “They know we’re here,” he said after thirty minutes of steady progress, “but they’re finding it difficult to triangulate on our position.”
“Keep up the good work.” Oscar patted him on what could be considered the shoulder part of his square body.
“They’re finding it difficult—not impossible. Their numbers are growing, and they are closing in slowly. At our present rate of advance and evade, the wannasee will have us completely surrounded after three more blocks—no matter which direction we travel.”
A flaming piece of wood dropped from above and crashed against the robot in a shower of orange sparks. Oscar pulled Brinn back and Lowe fired multiple rounds overhead. A wannasee, or a piece of it, whistled down a few seconds later.
“So much for remaining quiet,” Reginald said. A few pieces of smoldering char still sat on top of him, but other than that, the robot was in good shape.
The faceless creatures started to jump down from the second and third floors, carrying burning torches of chair arms and table legs with them. Most collapsed up into themselves with the impact—hairless legs and ankles snapped—but they dragged on towards the four with blackened fingernails digging into the glass and ash.
“This way.” Oscar beckoned the others, pulling Brinn into a narrow alley sliced between two of the hundred-plus-story buildings. Reginald rolled into the darkness after Lowe, forced to swivel sideways to allow room for his snaking arms.
