by J. Thorn
The alpha male trotted to a rocky outcrop several yards from the cave entrance. He wound his way up the shards of stone until he stood fifteen feet taller than the rest of the pack. The wolf looked out over the field, where the horde replaced the wheat, still teetering back and forth as if pushed by an invisible hand.
So many.
The hunters paced underneath the outcrop while waiting for the alpha male to come back.
We must pursue. We must descend into the womb.
The hunters wailed, gnashing their teeth and snapping at each other’s tails, all the while knowing that none among them could challenge for leadership.
***
“What did you do to him?” Mara asked.
Samuel stood still, staring at the dark-gray wall.
“I gave him what he wanted.”
She shook her head. “How did you do it?”
“I’m not sure,” Samuel replied.
“Can you do it again?”
“I’m not sure,” he repeated.
Mara turned and took a few steps toward the front of the cave. She approached until the yellow eyes of the wolves danced in the darkness beyond.
“Between the wolves and the horde, we’re not getting out of here.”
Samuel nodded. In a recess, he noticed an array of angles foreign to rock. Samuel stood and walked toward them. As the inner glow of the cave cast light on it, Samuel discovered a small pile of broken tree branches and twigs. He gathered them in his arms and walked back toward Mara. He dropped the bundle and began to arrange them into a leaning pile.
“They’re very damp. But it’s worth a try.”
Mara smiled when she realized what he was doing.
She helped arrange the wood as Samuel dug in his pockets for the lighter. He could not remember if it had always been there or not. Samuel felt that sludgy feeling returning to his head, slowing his thoughts and forcing him to think hard about simple tasks. He recognized the feeling as the same one he felt when the noose first dropped him into this locality, and he wondered if this was how the end would come, if the Reversion would rewind everything, even the thoughts and experiences in his head.
“Go ahead and try,” Mara said.
The comment shook Samuel, and he wondered how long he had been hovering over the firewood with his thumb on the lighter.
“I don’t even know if the lighter works.”
Mara shrugged her shoulders and sat cross-legged on the ground. Samuel lowered his hand and flicked the lighter. Sparks caught and ignited the fluid in the reservoir. The flame appeared with a green tint, warm instead of hot. He touched the flame to the smallest pieces. The wood cracked and sizzled but failed to catch.
“It was a nice thought,” said Mara, her face betraying her words.
“Not sure how long it would have lasted, anyway. It’s not like there’s a stack of firewood in here.”
She nodded in consolation.
“It was there, too,” Samuel said.
Mara waited, sensing Samuel was speaking to himself as much as he was to her.
“I saw the cloud in the portal, which is why I knew I was slipping him into that one. If it had been paradise, like a picture of the steel-blue waters of the Caribbean you see on office calendars, I’m not sure what I would have done.”
“You saved me.”
Samuel huffed, discomfort wracking his face.
“I really don’t know if I can summon a locality or if it’s all chance. I don’t even know if I can open a locality other than that one. Major could be waiting for us when the next portal opens.”
“Then we won’t be any worse off than we are now, right?”
A howl followed by a series of growls made them both turn to face the entrance.
“I have a feeling that they’re coming after us at some point. When the Reversion gets right up close, these wolves are going to get over their fear of this cave.”
“I agree,” said Samuel. “And if the horde joins in, we’ll have our hands full.”
Samuel watched Mara tuck a lock of black hair behind her ear, and he thought how sophisticated she would look in middle age. He imagined that move revealing a shimmer of gray by her ear and the slender hand pushing her hair away from blue eyes that resonated with laughter, and experience, and life.
“Do you think Kole is dead?”
“Yes,” replied Samuel. “Whatever that means here.”
The comment and its inherent mystery passed them by.
“He was broken. On the inside.”
“Aren’t we all?” asked Samuel.
“His pain was so deep he couldn’t live without it.”
Another howl, this one more intense and louder. The sharp retort echoed through the cave like a gunshot. Mara watched Samuel’s face contort as if she could see the memories floating back to the surface of his mind.
“I was sick. Middle of winter, aches, the flu, the whole thing. We had been married for quite a while at this point, kind of shed the little kisses and light touches of the first few years.”
Mara flinched, and Samuel could see her holding the pain inside the best she could.
“I was in bed and having a hard time falling asleep. We had a big mattress that left a lot of space between us. She reaches over and starts gently rubbing my back with one hand. This was not foreplay. There wasn’t any of that happening that night. She did it because she wanted to, and those couple of minutes of contact felt like a million dollars. It’s that feeling that I miss. I ache inside for that intimacy that comes through years of friendship, disagreements, shared experience. It’s more than sex and more than physical contact. It’s a spiritual connection between two people, unspoken, real, and powerful.”
Samuel looked at Mara as she wiped tears away with the cuffs of her sleeves. “That’s what’s dead here. That’s what this locality is missing. And if it is, maybe the cloud needs to eat it. The Reversion needs to do its job and sweep this place from existence.”
“It’s love. I wonder why you can’t say that word? Everything you described is love. Do you think it still exists elsewhere?” Mara asked.
“Why? Why do you think it has to? Maybe love died like the summer breeze and the sound of gulls soaring over open water. Maybe love is lying in its grave with sunlight, and goodness, and righteousness,” replied Samuel
“It has to exist somewhere else,” said Mara. “If I didn’t believe it did, I’d walk out there right now and offer myself to the wolves.”
“But does it exist for us, Mara?”
“We’re here for a reason,” she said.
He thought about Mara’s comment for a moment and rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why I’m here,” he replied.
“You do, Samuel. We all do. Some of us haven’t remembered it yet.”
Before Samuel could reply, a howl from the alpha male brought them to their feet as the wolf’s silhouette appeared at the threshold of the cave.
***
The cloud continued its death march across the empty sky, eating the locality. The rolling swirls of slate and obsidian pummeled the air. From west to east, all but a sliver of the eastern horizon remained untainted by the Reversion. It also dropped toward the surface like a heavy curtain. The cloud pushed down, placing a pillow over the face of the last remaining motion in this world. The silence overpowered everything, and distant vistas disappeared within the coming storm of nothingness.
The trees of the locality leaned inward, tired and exhausted from the continuous pull of the Reversion. Some leafless branches touched the ground in homage to the unstoppable force engulfing the land and everything in it. Some could not fight any longer, their trunks snapping and toppling the head of the tree to the forest floor, leaving a ragged trunk sticking up from the ground like a broken tooth.
The horde remained, most of them fastened to the last remaining piece of solid, real matter. As the Reversion continued to churn from the west, the horde began to revert as well. Clumps of undead flesh fell from their bodies i
n silent mounds of rotted bone. Teeth and hair trickled from the creatures’ heads, followed by limbs no longer strong enough to withstand gravity, the lone natural force left virtually untouched by the coming disease. Scraps of clothing that had long ago turned into dirty, gray remnants floated to the ground in silence. Some of the creatures standing on the edge of the clearing collapsed on themselves, leaving a pumping, empty jaw on the ground spewing nothing but meaningless silence.
The pack suffered along with the horde. The alpha male’s hunters hunkered down in a clearing not far from the cave, but several remained motionless and still for far longer than would be natural. Two of the hunters lay with their noses nuzzled underneath their tails, the rise and fall of their chests no longer visible. The alpha male strode amongst the wolves and noted the change, one he felt within.
It must be now. Nothing will remain.
Of the six hunters with their muzzles in the dirt, three stood in response to the alpha male.
The horde shall join. There is not much will left in the dead flesh, but I command that on His command.
The hunters growled and circled their leader. They paced back and forth, staring at the black hole in the mountain. The alpha male trotted forward and circled around. Three dozen members of the horde shuffled, their legs dragging them toward the entrance to the cave. Several more attempted to march until their atrophied bones dropped them to the ground in a pile of dirty fabric and gray flesh. Seeing the movement, the alpha male looked into the sky as it closed in on the tops of the few trees brave enough to reach up into it.
The alpha male brought his ragged army to the edge of the clearing until he could feel the subtle exhalation of the mountain coming through the mouth of the cave. He paced back and forth, growling and snapping at the air.
Come out. We are not done.
***
“We can’t stay here.”
“I know.”
Mara lowered her head and wrapped her arms around her torso. Samuel moved closer to the entrance, where silent movement caught his eye.
“The alpha male is calling me out. He must sense the end of the Reversion drawing closer, as well.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ll fight, too.”
Samuel smiled at Mara and nodded, knowing that she would do so regardless of what he said.
The water running down the walls of the cave intensified, but did so in silence. Samuel turned and paced the edge of the walls, his eyes searching for anything that could be of use in their predicament. Mara watched and then did the same, starting at one end of the main cavern until she worked her way back to Samuel. Neither gathered anything useful for what they knew was an inevitable conflict.
“Think, Samuel. Can you reopen the portal on a different locality than the last one?”
Samuel closed his eyes and let the nothingness encompass his inner vision. He waited without hope, knowing that the knowledge to open a portal to escape the locality was escaping him, like the old horror movies when the car would not start no matter how many times the ignition was turned.
“It’s there, but I can’t access it. I can’t say if I could open something, and if I could, I’m not sure where we’d land.”
Mara looked toward the entrance, where several of the hunters joined the alpha male in his pacing, accentuated with hisses and growls.
“Maybe this is not our last stand. They don’t seem to want to enter here, the wolves or the horde. Maybe we push through the cavern and go deeper into the mountain.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust and shook her head back and forth. “I’d almost rather have my throat ripped apart by the wolves.”
Samuel nodded, understanding why she would suggest such an alternative. “It could come to that anyway. Let’s try to avoid it with the understanding that we may have a last stand.”
Before Mara could answer, the alpha male crossed the threshold with a yelp. His cry broke the silence of the Reversion like the crack of a whip. The other hunters followed, all enduring the hurt caused from crossing over into the cave. The horde came next, slagging forward and oblivious to the pain the crossing had delivered to the pack. They shuffled in a single-file line, arms dangling and heads cocked to the side as if held to their shoulder by an impenetrable force.
“C’mon,” Samuel said to Mara.
He ran into the labyrinth of tunnels that led deeper into the mountain, hoping to avoid the dead ends. He heard Mara’s breathing and her feet slapping against the dry powder on the cavern floor. The growling of the wolves came too, reverberating through the cave and not far behind.
Samuel dashed left and then right until the tunnel narrowed. He felt it drop downward as gravity helped propel him forward. Samuel reached out and was able to steady his gait by using both hands to guide himself deeper into the cave. Several times, he felt the scree from Mara’s feet hit the back of his legs, which propelled him faster.
The cavern twisted and turned, the tunnel clamping down on the two refugees like a slowly closing iris. The utter and complete darkness kept Samuel from lunging forward faster than he would have liked, and he wondered how much of a handicap, if any, this would provide the team of beasts and their undead escorts.
“Wait.”
He stopped, surprised that words still carried through the dying air of the locality. Samuel felt the icy touch of Mara’s fingers on his back as she came up behind him.
“Listen.”
They stood in the black silence, hearing nothing but their own exaggerated breathing.
“Maybe we lost-”
Before Samuel could finish, a howl penetrated the air and rang in his head with the force of a thunderous church bell. He knew it was the alpha male, and he knew the pack was closing the distance.
Mara pushed him, and Samuel picked up the pace. He felt an aching in his lower back from running in a crouched position and wondered how long it would take for the muscle cramps to drop him to the ground in spasms of agony. The chasm continued ever downward and became more of a pipe than a tunnel. Samuel bounced his head off the cavern’s ceiling of the rock above, and he was forced to draw his arms in closer to his body as the walls crept inward. He felt Mara behind him, and he also felt her impatience. Samuel imagined her thin frame navigating through the space faster than his, and the frustration she must be feeling as their pursuers would come upon her first. He pushed on as the jagged edges of the rock drew blood from his battered knuckles. Samuel led them down another passage that widened enough to allow him to run in a crouched position. He heard Mara breathing hard a few feet behind.
The tunnel dumped them into another open cavern, although it was not as expansive as the one inside the entrance to the cave. Samuel ran to the center and spun in time to see the tunnel toss Mara out. She scrambled and stopped next to him, the expansive space illuminated by an eerie glow coming from the walls. Samuel thought he could feel the stone lowering in an attempt to snuff him and Mara from the locality.
The alpha male’s cry came again, this time closer. Samuel swept Mara behind himself with one arm as he readied for the onrush of attackers.
Now we finish and He releases us from our duty.
The alpha male picked through the passage until his head appeared in the darkness, like a perversion of a newborn entering the world. The rest of the animal came next, along with three more wolves. Samuel could not see the horde, but figured they were on their way as well.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Samuel said.
Mara craned her neck forward, unsure if the comment was for her or not. When she saw the alpha male and Samuel’s gaze directed at the wolf, she stepped back and listened.
But you do. We are hunters, and you are our prey.
“And the horde? What role do the undead play in your hunt?”
Samuel felt a mental chuckle come from the leader of the pack.
Beacons. Markers of our prey. They follow the misery and consume what is left behind by the hunters. The horde will fight for the scraps.<
br />
The alpha male stood seven feet from Samuel, with his hunters forming a semicircle, blocking the passage leading back toward the surface. Samuel looked over his shoulder and saw two tunnels on the opposite wall.
You may enter those, but we will find you.
“The Reversion is coming, and it will destroy you, too.”
There is nothing that the sky will bring that will cause us more pain.
“Back in the cabin. You attacked and I fell through. . . .”
Samuel let his comment hang, unsure whether or not it was a question he felt the alpha male could answer.
A minor slip, within this locality. It only delayed this meeting.
“So you expect us to lie down while you tear out our throats?” He felt Mara’s hands on his hips as she moved closer to him.
No, but it shall come to that.
Samuel shifted, his muscles tensing and adrenaline flooding his nervous system.
What have you done with the scarface?
Samuel smiled, sensing what could be a slight crack in the wolf’s stone will. “Banished. Opened a portal and sent him through it.”
He will return. He will come back, as he has unfinished business with you as well.
“Not without me, he won’t.”
You will go to him, whether you so desire it or not.
Samuel caught motion beyond the wolves. He looked at the black velvet curtain of darkness and saw a humanoid shape breaking through. The first of the horde appeared, one arm missing and another dangling by a single strand of ligament. The creature’s head sat askew, with the top portion missing as if one of the pack had torn it away.
There might be nothing left for them, should we continue to delay the inevitable.
“I’m not concerned about that.”
Mara came closer. Samuel could feel her nervous fingers gripping the back of his shirt.
