On the Lost Continent

by Andrew Novak

  Clive can wait, Jack thought with no little malicious joy. The quest on Gaerthon was sitting idle because of him, so let him wait his turn. Egghead wrote:

  I found your fiery creature. There’s a description, but now everything is even more confusing. You want to meet, I’ll explain. This is all quite strange.

  Jack snorted and typed a reply:

  We’ll meet as soon as I finish some business. I had to leave for a bit but I just got back, so I’ll see you soon. For now, look for info about a Five-headed Hydra. There’s a Venomous Hydra Stinger that I got from its tail and teeth. There were a lot of teeth. I mean, the thing had five heads. But the hydra is purely a quest animal. And the fire beast attacked me again. It almost finished me, too, so confusing or not, I have to do something about it.

  Now Clive’s letter. Jack started to read… and his hands clenched themselves into fists so tight that the virt-gloves crackled.

  Jack, stay calm when you read this. It’s for your own good. We have Lisa. We had to invite her to visit.

  Had to? Only through an effort of will did Jack force himself to calm down and continue reading:

  The matter is more important than you imagine. So we needed insurance, don’t misunderstand. Don’t do anything stupid. Bring the unit, and you’ll get Lisa back safe, sound and in good humor. The money is ready. Just bring the device and nobody gets hurt.

  The rest of the message described a place in Murray Hill where he needed to bring the item. Jack read the letter again, beginning to end. And again. So, nobody gets hurt… Hint taken, and then some.

  It’s alright, Clive. It’s all good. Just don’t do anything stupid yourself. Or someone will definitely get hurt. He just had to be sure they actually had Lisa… and if they’d taken her. Then someone’s getting hurt. Jack turned off the console, pulled the gloves off and sat down. Don’t rush this. Don’t overreact. Gotta think things through and do it right. He’d get Lisa back and only then get his revenge. Jack had friends, had connections… but Lisa was his priority. No careless moves while she was in danger.

  Jack again felt weak, the room swaying before his eyes, and he had to catch hold of the bed to steady himself. What the hell was going on with him? Just tired, that’s all. He’d go after Lisa tonight. He should be fine by then. He kicked off his shoes and lay down, and felt better immediately. The dizziness passed. The pillow smelled like Lisa. Again the rage grew and with it, the nausea. Jack closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on how he would go after Lisa in Murray Hill. There, at the ruins of the Presbyterian Church that Clive appointed as the meeting place.

  Jack woke up at sunset. Stood up and listened to his body. He was okay now, right? No, something was still off. He felt like a hole had opened up deep inside, like his life was leaking away. A little, teeny tiny hole. He had to free Lisa before too much leaked out. And then he could work on mending that damned hole in his heart.

  Jack dumped everything he’d taken on his trip out of his backpack, except the weapon. He weighed the backpack on his arm — about ten pounds. Looking around, he picked a couple pieces of metal about the same weight out of a pile of discarded junk by the wall. He placed them in an old, tattered backpack that had served its time and had been sitting in the junk pile for a while. He inspected the knife and revolver. Well, it was time.

  Once on the street, he glanced around. He didn’t see any prints around the trailer, but that didn’t mean anything. Had to check. For about half an hour, he walked in circles along the neighboring streets. A couple of times, he squeezed through the tangle of thorns between trailers and sat listening for a while. No, no one followed him through the bushes. Then Jack went to the old bus, which had sunk into the ground two blocks from his home.

  The bus was half-woven with spiny shoots. Even children didn’t play in it because it was too difficult to climb. Jack made his way into the salon and sat on a sagging seat. The last thing to be done was empty any unnecessary stuff out of his backpack, wrap it in a rag and hide it in a hole under the seat. That was everything. Now he could go to Clive.

  After the Gendemic, there wasn’t a single building left intact in Murray Hill. Everything folded in on itself, sagged and crumbled. Only the church remained standing. Not all of it, of course, only a few walls. It is unclear why, in the general devastation, the remnants of this four-building complex had been spared. They were not any stronger than the surrounding buildings. The opposite, actually.

  The locals told scary stories about this fact and avoided these ruins as a precaution. They say it wasn’t by chance that the church survived the Gendemic. It held something, the grace of their ancestors or, alternatively, a curse. The nearest residential trailers stood about a hundred feet from the church.

  Clive and his people, then, were either less cowardly or more cynical than most. He didn’t believe in curses and blessings. At the moment, Jack was too preoccupied for these thoughts, but they just slid into his head while he walked through the sleeping ghetto. Sleeping was too strong a word, really. For hundreds of omegas, nighttime was their most active period. Like the creatures in the Blighted Wasteland. Those also went out hunting at night, and the best thing was to kill them when you saw them. Only now it was Jack out hunting at night.

  Several times he stopped and breathed deeply, chasing away the nausea rising in his belly. That intruder that had settled in his gut was waiting in the wings. Jack stood opposite the Presbyterian Church Jack for what felt like an eternity, peering at the peeling facades lit by a dim bulb on a long cord. Watching the guards. The Church itself sank in darkness. A light burned over the building on the left, either former housing for a pastor or some other quarters.

  At first it seemed that Clive’s lair wasn’t guarded but after about five minutes, a man appeared. He strolled leisurely around the ruins of the church, shining a flashlight at his feet. The man yawned, spat and occasionally glanced to the side. Continuing his rounds, the guard disappeared around the corner. How to proceed? Enter through the yard, pretending he fully trusted Clive? Well, no. A man who changes the terms of the deal and steals your girlfriend… not exactly an upright guy.

  Jack figured, there was the door to the church but it was closed, and it appeared seldom used. The church and its annexes were four buildings altogether. Their roofs were connected by wooden catwalks. Which meant he could move easily from one building to another from above. The entrance was somewhere in the courtyard between them, not from the street side. Enter the conventional way? Through another building, then on the bridge in the church? So the guard could tag along with him? Yeah, no. An honest person should choose the high road.

  If Clive was going to honestly pay and let Lisa go, then he wouldn’t mind when Jack suddenly appeared and not through the door. But if he was planning to screw Jack over, he would take it in stride.

  Jack ran across the lamplit street to the main building and listened. What was that behind the locked door? Silence. Then Jack looked into a crack. He already knew that he had at least five minutes before guard returned, which meant he could look around.

  There was a large hall beyond the door. It was dark, but Jack didn’t dare knock. He crept along the wall, found a hole covered by a steel sheet. On top of iron, they’d piled rubble and some rotten trash, through which tough stalks of grass had already shot up. Pushing the rusty metal aside with some effort, Jack squeezed through the crawlspace. He found himself in the dark, a rectangle of light marking a slightly open doorway ahead.

  Jack crossed the dark room and peeked in the door. All he could see through the crack was one of the corners of the room inside. Judging by the stillness, there shouldn’t be many people. He pushed open the door.

  The interior of the church was divided by damaged walls, the holes in them patched with cracked plywood and similarly flimsy materials. It formed a labyrinth of rooms and passages of different sizes. And Jack had wound up somewhere in the inner part of the room. The main hall should be behind far door opposite.

  Before him
was a small room. A table stood opposite the passageway, a man was sitting at it with his head on resting on folded arms. Asleep, it seemed. Jack stepped out of the corridor into the light and found that were two people in the room. To the right of the table, leaning against the wall, stood Clive.

  The man sitting at the table raised his head. His face was not familiar, but he immediately called Jack by name.

  “Yes, it’s me,” Jack nodded and shrugged off the shoulder straps of the backpack. “And you must be Brandt Ironfist. I found your screen name in the Seekers’ forum. Here’s your stuff. Where’s Lisa?”

  Clive peeled himself away from the wall and took a step forward. The man at the table raised his left hand and stopped him. The right he dropped under the table, casual-like, as Jack approached. Wonder what’s down there? A pistol? Knife? A sawn-off shotgun? He was about forty, possibly older. Seemed to be about average height, but Jack couldn’t say for sure while the man sat hunched over the tabletop. Black hair, unshaven. Either he was dark-complexioned or very tanned.

  “Yeah, I’m Brandt,” the man spoke. Jack spotted three parallel scratches on his cheek. Barely noticeable, but clearly fresh. You only get that kind of mark after fighting with a woman. This was a bad sign. “Jack, I need to tell you something. It would be quick.

  “Where’s Lisa? Jack repeated, looking sidelong at Clive, who seemed the more dangerous of the two, even though he kept his hands in view. But he was wearing a loose jacket that bulged on the left side, as if something was tucked into his belt under it.

  “Again, this is important and it won’t take long. You need to understand why it happened.

  “It happened because you didn’t keep your word,” Jack cut him off, “but go ahead, tell me while Clive goes for Lisa.”

  “Jack, the thing you brought back from the Wasteland will change our lives,” Brandt continued. Clive didn’t move from his spot, and that worried Jack more than the scratches on Brandt’s face. “We’re going to destroy this unfair practice that lets the alphas get everything, and us only humiliating handouts. We will have justice and for that, there is no shame in giving your life. Justice for all. It’s worth more than a single life, or two, or even three. There was too much at stake, so I ordered Clive to bring Lisa here. No one could have predicted that she would try to escape.”

  Jack’s heart twisted. Escape… and… and what? He stared at Brandt, at his scratched cheek, and Clive felt that now was his chance. He jerked, yanking his jacket open and snatched a pistol from his belt. Just as Jack suspected. Jack chucked the backpack at his face with his left hand. It went just as planned. Clive deemed the contents of the bag to be too valuable and, for this reason, didn’t shoot, reflexively reaching to catch it with both hands.

  Jack yanked the revolver out of his pocket and was seized from behind. Someone had managed to sneak up on him. Quiet fucker. Jack hadn’t heard any sound when the enemy came into the room. The revolver bullet hit the floor and he, growling, twisted his body, but the man held him tightly. Then, pushing with both feet, he jumped backward, collapsing on the new opponent. They both crashed to the floor and Jack pressed the trigger. Clive managed to grab the thrown bag from the air, but the heavy iron struck him in the face and made him lose his balance. Brandt took cover from the bullets under the table.

  “Jack!” he shouted. “This will get you nowhere. Calm down, or they’ll kill you!”

  Jack slammed his head back and hit the face of the man holding him from behind. As he did so, he continued shooting with his right hand, inasmuch as his opponent’s hold on him would allow. One bullet caught Clive in the leg. He gasped and fell. Jack, finally breaking free of the stunned fellow, fired his last bullet at Clive and jumped toward the table. He already had a knife waiting in his left hand when Brandt popped up from under the tabletop. Jack jabbed the tip at his face. The blade scraped across metal and Jack was shocked to realize that Brandt had caught the knife with his left hand, which was clad in a black leather glove. The leather under the blade split open, revealing a flash of metal. Ironfist. His screen name was Brandt Ironfist. Hmm…

  “I didn’t think it would go down like this,” Brandt wheezed out, turning his fist and clenching the knife blade. “You need to understand. This is for the sake of victory. For the love of justice. Acceptable casualties. You have to understand what… Lisa… and you…”

  Jack was surprised to find that he couldn’t retake the handle, Brandt was too strong. The glove fell apart in shreds, the steel fingers creaked, but the knife twisted out of Jack’s grasp. And, as luck would have it, it was right at that moment that Jack’s illness decided to make an appearance. His knees weakened and a lump rose in his throat. Jack was damp with sweat, a drop ran down his temple. The handle of the revolver in his left hand became wet and slippery. And the iron hand tightened around the knife all the more confidently.

  “Brandt, this isn’t the infragun,” Clive groaned. “Just some iron scraps here.”

  Lying in a puddle of blood, he had a moment to dig around in the bag. Brandt glanced in his direction and Jack, releasing the knife, clocked him in the face with the discharged revolver. He put everything he could into it — what was left of his faltering strength, all his weight, and all his unanswered questions about Lisa. Brandt staggered back, his back bumped the door and he spilled out into the darkness outside of the room.

  A second later and Jack could hear quickly retreating footsteps. Brandt was running way, tripping over broken benches in the hall. Then the sounds disappeared. What the hell? Were there only three of them here? There had to be more! He ducked into the darkness beyond the door after Ironfist, stooping and hopping to the side, to be safe. Nothing happened. Jack made a couple of steps, bumping into a few things, invisible in the darkness. There were no windows here. Well, more accurately, they were boarded up. No lighting whatsoever. Something rustled in the dark and Jack crouched, tucking the empty revolver into his pocket. His knife was still in Brandt’s iron mitt and his second one, the folding knife was in his cloak pocket, but Jack didn’t want to reach for it just yet. He had too much stuff in there. The rustling would be too noisy. Right now, his priority was to figure out where he was and where they were hiding Lisa.

  A dozen feet away from Jack, where he heard the rustling, a small fire flashed. Behind a lattice of thick boards, a pair of cupped hands appeared, a match flame fluttered inside them. A wrinkled chin covered in gray stubble hung over it.

  “Hey, are you Jack?” whispered the old man. “Get me out of here.”

  “Who are you? Where’s Lisa?”

  “She’s not here. Let me out of this cell and I’ll tell you everything on the way. Gotta hurry. Brandt’s people are coming.”

  The old man lifted the match a little higher and now Jack saw that the cell, thrown together with boards, was cramped. The man inside was sitting with his legs pulled close. Something overhead rattled. Sounded like people, many people, were running across the catwalks from the neighboring buildings. The footfalls were approaching, descending.. Voices called from the direction Brandt had escaped. Jack made up his mind. He stood up and kicked into the boards, behind which glowed the match flame. The boards broke with a crunch, the old man grunted, then Jack heard a grinding sound. This prisoner snapped off pieces of broken boards. Jack struck a lighter and the old man squeezed through the crack. He was small, feeble-looking. Breaking just one board proved to be enough.

  At the far end of the hall a flashlight flashed and someone shouted:

  “Over here!” Had to hurry.

  With one hand, Jack grabbed the old man by his tattered clothing and yanked him from the cell, together with fragments of split boards. Jack roared in his most menacing voice:

  “Guys, shoot them! Fire!”

  And then hurled the piece of wood at the flashlight. It hit the wall next to the door jamb. The beam dipped as the man holding it fell. The footsteps subsided for a moment, everyone went still.

  And Jack, dragging the old man behind him
, tore back to the lighted room. There was no one there, just a pool of blood next to the wall, where Clive had been lying. Jack, prisoner in tow, crossed the dark room in a couple of leaps found the crawlspace leading outside. The old man stumbled, dragging behind, hissing and exclaiming when he ran into the rubble in the dark. But he laboriously moved his legs, trying not to lag behind.

  Shifting the rusty steel plate behind which was the exit to the street, Jack looked out. No one, everyone had run into church.

  “Come on, old man,” said Jack to his companion, “you go first since you’re small, and then pull me out.

  While the old man, panting, squeezed into the manhole, Jack loaded his Smith-and-Wesson by touch. When the door opened and a silhouette appeared in the illuminated rectangle, he fired twice. The pursuer fell, and more came running into the room, yelling…

  “Take them alive!” Brandt’s voice drowned out all other shouting. “I need them both alive! If any of you shoots them, I’ll shove the gun barrel right up your ass!”

  Jack ducked into the narrow gap between the wall and the steel sheet.

  “Pull!” he barked.

  The old man pulled with all his might, but Jack was too heavy for him. While the torso emerged, Jack fired into the light rectangle of the doorway twice more. When only his legs were left inside and Jack could sit up, he had to take a third shot, this time down the street, because a shadow appeared from behind the corner.

  Together with the old man, they crossed the open area, behind which was a vacant lot. At first Jack didn’t even think about where they were running, because he was more concerned with the ‘from’, and not ‘to’. They crashed through bushes, stumbled on piles of broken bricks. Behind them, very clearly falling back, they could hear Brandt’s people calling out to one another.

  Light fell on the old man’s face, the dark lot left behind, and Jack looked around. They had managed to break away from their pursuers and could continue on from here at a walk, because runners always attract unwanted attention. And this was the inhabited section of Murray Hills, crammed full of residential trailers. They didn’t utter a word the whole time. The old man was gasping for breath, and Jack just didn’t know what to say.