Caleb turned from the splintered beam he had been wrestling with and scanned the scorched surroundings. A great weight seemed to press in on his chest and shoulders, and his breath was short and labored. A piece of metal clinked to Caleb’s left, and he turned to see Krezahu standing silently beside him.
“This was woven into the roots before you came here,” the small dinosaur said. “But my words cannot offer you comfort while we stand here. The violence lies too close and shadows our minds. I will walk with Chuck to the stream on the other side of that ridge. We will wet our dried throats and let you speak with your sorrow.”
Caleb kept his eyes leveled on the horizon, giving only the tiniest of nods to acknowledge the old Awaru. Krezahu walked slowly over to Chuck, tapping her on the flank and leading her over a small, brush-covered ridge.
Caleb remained still for several minutes after his companions left. He stood still and rigid like a sequoia tree, but his teeth were clenched fiercely and his eyes burned with inarticulate rage.
Suddenly, Caleb exploded into motion, kicking furiously at a piece of shattered wheel. He picked up a broken section of railing and began attacking the charred wood violently, sending dust, ash and splinters soaring into the air. When his strained arm muscles finally began to weaken, he heaved the railing chunk into the sky, letting loose with a scream of fury and despair.
The last of Caleb’s strength released itself along with his anger, and his legs began to wobble under his weight. He took one sagging step, then slumped against a smooth boulder, next to a fire-scarred wooden door. Caleb’s thoughts dimmed, though he didn’t truly sleep. He wasn’t certain how long he lay there, but soon he was aware of a number of stars emerging from the darkening sky. He listened to the sound of the evening wind whistling through the empty ashes, his wild rage replaced with a dull, hollow feeling.
A small clatter of pebbles somewhere behind him brought Caleb’s senses to sudden focus. He remained still, but strained his ears against the gentle whispering of the wind. Somewhere behind him, only a few yards up the slope, something crept stealthily toward him. He heard its gentle steps brushing against the sand and ashes, and thought he could discern the soft sound of breathing.
Caleb glanced around him, searching for a weapon of some kind. His left hand crept down to the worn hunting knife on his belt, while the other hand closed on the singed handle of the battered wooden door beside him. He sat silently, listening to the stealthy footfalls.
Abruptly, the mysterious stalker fell silent. Caleb sat as still as stone for several minutes, hearing nothing but wind and distant insect chirps. Finally, Caleb’s patience reached its limit. He began, with agonizing slowness, to crane his neck up and over his shoulder, trying to peer over the boulder.
There was still no sound when he finally shifted his head and shoulder just enough to see over the top edge of the smooth rock. He blinked for a split second; barely registering the outline of a small, sleek form crouched atop the end of a massive wooden beam. Before he could finish drawing a single rapid breath, the still night air erupted with a nerve-wracking, whistling shriek.
In a blur of motion, the figure’s powerful legs uncoiled, launching it toward Caleb with a rush of wind and a flicker of gleaming golden eyes. Caleb jerked forward violently, trying to throw himself out of the attacker’s path. In his panicked lurch, his left hand slipped from the handle of his hunting knife, while his right remained stubbornly wrapped around the handle of the burnt door. Abandoning the idea of the knife, Caleb rolled onto his back and yanked on the door, pulling the heavy wood over him.
Before he could brace the door with his legs, the attacker crashed into it with incredible force, slamming it against his knees and chest. Caleb felt the creature leap lightly off of the door as he gasped and groaned, trying to suck air back into his winded lungs. He heard the padded feet land several feet away, sharp claws clicking on the sand and rocks.
Not knowing when a second attack might come, Caleb remained curled up under the door, trying to turn enough to get a clear view of the creature.
He saw a pair of small, clawed feet padding softly toward him. The second toe of each foot was raised up from the ground and bore a curved, razor-sharp claw. The creature stopped only a couple of feet away, sniffing and growling. Caleb prayed silently that Chuck, or even Krezahu would return.
A pair of eyes came suddenly into view, brilliant gold in the dim light. They stared into Caleb’s eyes for a moment, then pulled away. Caleb watched the clawed feet retreat from the door, then the figure settled into a crouched sitting position next to a section of wagon wall. The sound of quiet feminine laughter echoed strangely in Caleb’s ears.
Caleb pushed the door off of him and struggled to his knees, leaning heavily on his bruised hands and wheezing. He stared across the wreckage at a small female form, little more than a silhouette in the dark, but completely unmistakable. The raptor-woman looked at Caleb warily, a bitter smile on her soot-stained face.
“It’s you,” Caleb grunted. “the dancer...”
The smile faded, and her thin laughter quickly degraded into heaving sobs. Caleb stared, wide-eyed, unsure of what to say. He carefully climbed to his feet, favoring his battered knees. The raptor-woman’s shoulders shook silently. Caleb found himself stepping forward.
“I...” he croaked, “uh, are you...”
The woman glared up at him with her luminous eyes, and Caleb fell silent.
Krezahu’s words echoed in his head, surprisingly appropriate: ‘My words cannot offer you comfort while we stand here. The violence lies too close and shadows our minds.’
Caleb looked out at the horizon and spoke softly. “My two friends went to get some water. I’m going to go make sure they’re okay. I’ll bring some back for you.”
The raptor-woman glanced up at Caleb for a second, then muttered a quiet “Thanks.”
Caleb walked carefully up the uneven slope and over the small ridge. He wondered how the hollow feeling in his chest had changed so quickly into hope.
“REPENT! REPENT! IT’S THE JUDGMENT DAY!”
The high, wavering voice continued to shriek somewhere out in the darkness. Caleb felt like his lungs had been squashed flat. He gaped his mouth, trying to suck in enough air to breathe.
Beneath him, Uncle Bill wriggled and shifted. One of the people that they had fallen on was groaning and trying to crawl out of the pile of stunned bodies. Uncle Bill sat up and rubbed his ribs, accidentally knocking Caleb off his back and onto the cold surface of the bridge. The small tumble was enough to shock a breath of air into Caleb’s chest, and he huffed and gasped in relief.
“Uncle Bill,” he squeaked. Bill turned and climbed off the fallen people as carefully as possible, but groans and whimpers still came from the jumble of limbs.
“Caleb,” Bill coughed, “are you okay?”
Caleb nodded weakly and looked up and down the dark bridge. The crushing mob that had flowed around them only moments before was now trickling down to a few disoriented and injured stragglers. A few yards away, he could see the gap where the plane had crashed through the bridge. The hole was flanked by the main support cables—still intact but sheathed in brilliant, roaring flames where the plane’s wings had been torn off. Carol and Nina were somewhere on the other side, unless the plane had... Caleb refused to think it.
“Aunt Carol,” Caleb said weakly.
Bill spun and stared at the rift in the giant bridge. He stood there silently for a moment, his breath tight in his chest, before calling out.
“Carol!” He turned and gripped Caleb’s shoulders. “Did you see her? Did she...” he gasped, his eyes bulging.
“I didn’t see,” Caleb whimpered. “How are we gonna find them?”
Bill grabbed Caleb’s hand and pulled him through the clutter of dazed wanderers and fallen bodies. He stopped a few yards away from the edge of the gap.
“We’ll find her,” he whispered. “Carol! Nina! Where are you?” The words echoed emptily across the r
ift, mingling with the cries of countless others.
“Carol! Nina! We’re right here!”
Caleb scanned the other side of the gap, blinking and trying to make out signs of movement in the darkness. From somewhere across the open space, a thin voice echoed.
“Bill! Bill! Somebody help!”
Caleb and Bill turned their heads to the source of the sound. Amid the rubble and bodies, they could just see the thin white shapes of Carol’s face and arms waving in the darkness.
“Carol!” Bill called. “Where’s Nina?”
Even as Bill asked, Caleb spotted the patch of bright red that Carol was leaning over.
“She’s here!” Carol called, pointing to Nina’s bright red jacket. “She’s hurt! She won’t wake up!”
“Oh, God,” Bill murmured. “Carol! Don’t move her! I’m going to see if I can come across!”
Caleb could see Carol rocking herself and caressing Nina’s forehead. Beside him, Bill was searching along the edge of the gap, looking for a way across. If it weren’t for the flames, they could simply walk across the main cables to the other side, but the fires showed no signs of dying down. He looked back at the large and small cables strewn across the bridge behind him, then began searching for the end of one of the thinner lines.
Caleb followed behind as Bill tried to lift and drag a thick ply of cable that had unwound from a larger line. It shifted slightly as Bill strained and pulled, but the heavy steel coil refused to move any further.
“Damn!” Bill cursed. He searched around, then spotted a fallen line of thick electric cord dotted with black and broken bulbs. He pulled it out from under a heavy chunk of twisted metal, then started dragging it toward the shattered edge of the bridge. It reached the edge with a couple dozen yards to spare, more than enough to reach the far side of the rift. Bill began gathering the cable into a coil, then lifted it, grunting under the weight. He swung it once, as if preparing to toss it across the gap, then dropped it at his feet.
“It’s too damn heavy!” he gasped. “We’ll never get it across!” He kicked the cable angrily, nudging it up to the edge. The coil wobbled, then slipped over the side, unrolling and snapping to its full length with a metallic twanging noise and a tinkling of glass.
Bill paced back and forth furiously, rubbing his face and cursing. Caleb looked over at Aunt Carol, then down at the swinging cable.
“What if we swing over?” he asked.
“What?” Bill asked, a look of despair on his face. “Swing? No, we couldn’t. We might be able to climb down the cable, but we’d never swing high enough to reach the other edge.”
“Yeah, but we could reach those other cables,” Caleb said, pointing to a number of long lines dangling from the far side of the gap. Bill stared at the lines, then at Caleb.
“Caleb, you know you’re a genius, right? Come on, help me climb onto the cable, then you come down after me.”
Bill began climbing over the edge of the rift, holding the cable tightly while Caleb pointed out footholds in the broken steel. Once Bill was below the edge of the bridge, he paused and looked up at Caleb.
“Let me climb down a little more,” he said, “then you start down, okay? Can you make it all right? If you don’t think you can, maybe you can hang on my shoulders again...”
Caleb looked at Bill’s tired face and straining hands, then down at the dark water far, far below.
“I’ll be okay,” he said, trying to sound confident. Bill nodded and began slowly climbing down the length of cable, taking great care not to grab onto one of the broken bulbs.
Caleb watched for a moment, then began to feel dizzy. He looked up at the darkened cityscape, noticing the growing number of fires scattered throughout the shadows. He could hear the sounds of distant explosions and collapsing buildings. He checked to see that Carol was still waiting on the other side, then looked back at the city.
Why were there still so many fires starting? Was that all from crashing cars and falling planes? He could see now that there were already a couple of new fires, and it sounded as if there were more and more explosions. Why weren’t they dying down by now? He scanned the black buildings and shadowed streets, looking for some explanation.
A flash of movement caught his eye off to one side. He thought he had seen something big and bright zip between some of the taller buildings downtown. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? No airplane would still be flying like that without power.
Another flash of movement appeared above the docks and wharfs at the water’s edge. Caleb’s eyes bugged as he saw the object slow to a stop, hovering over one of the docks. It was some kind of aircraft, but it didn’t look like any plane or helicopter Caleb had ever seen. It was glossy and dark, with small little lights flickering near the front. The body was short and compact, maybe forty feet long, with two large, bulging windows or portholes on either side of the front end. The rest of the body seemed to be covered in segmented plates, like an insect. Projecting from the front end, two great, curving wings or vanes swept backwards in graceful arcs, tapering to sharp points. The belly of the craft was flat, but Caleb could see a sort of bright red light or glow coming from the entire bottom surface, flickering and flowing like fire or electrical arcs. Caleb decided that the ship bore an amazing resemblance to some sort of gigantic, mechanical trilobite.
As he watched, the ship spun and circled, and a set of search lights beamed out from the front, between the bulging “eyes.” The lights revealed a large crowd of hundreds of people, running and stampeding across the dock. Dozens of people were leaping from the dock and trying to swim away into the bay. Suddenly, with a thunder-like boom, the front edge of the ship erupted in a brilliant red glare, and a bolt of flaring red electricity swept through the crowd of terrified people. The bolt left a path of fallen, smoldering bodies in its wake and set a large section of the dock on fire. Caleb held his breath as another arc of electricity raked the crowd, then another, and another. In minutes, the dock was turned into a giant funeral pyre.
The ship swept out over the water, circled, then released a bolt into the dark waves. Caleb saw several swimmers shudder, convulse, and smoke as webs of electricity spread through the water. The ship made one wide, final circle, then sped back into the city, where several other shapes now swept through the streets, firing bolts of red lightning.
Caleb turned back to the edge of the bridge to shout down to his uncle. As he turned, he saw a double gleam of red light out on the bay as one of the ships glided over the darkened boats, its bright underbelly reflected in the turbulent waters. This ship was almost identical to the other trilobite ship, but it had a large, sharp spike projecting from the nose of the craft.
The ship fired a number of bolts from the large spike, much brighter and more powerful than the other ship’s blasts. The bolts randomly destroyed several of the larger boats as the ship passed over them, but it soon turned its searchlights on the bridge, and began a slow but steady approach.
“Uncle Bill!” Caleb screamed. Below him, Bill slipped and almost fell. He stared up at Caleb worriedly.
“There’re UFO’s in the city!” Caleb continued. “They’re shooting everything!”
Bill stared up at Caleb in confusion. Just then, the ship over the bay blasted a particularly large yacht. The ship exploded violently, and Bill almost slipped again as he stared at the bizarre trilobite ship.
“Son of a bitch!” he screamed. “What the hell is that?” He began climbing rapidly up the cable. Over the bay, the ship ceased its attacks on the boats and began rising higher as it came closer to the bridge.
Bill scrambled madly over the edge of the gap, jumping to his feet and screaming to Carol.
“Run, Carol! Get out of here!”
Carol looked from Bill to the rapidly closing ship.
“You said not to move her!” she cried, cradling Nina’s head.
“Forget that! Move her, dammit!” Bill screamed. “Get the hell out of here! Get off the bridge!”
; Carol began lifting Nina, struggling to get a stable grip on her limp body. “What about you?” she cried.
“I’ll find you!” Bill called. “Just get the hell out of here! Now!” The ship was level with the bridge now, and still rising. It would be above it at any moment. Bill spun Caleb around and gave him a steady nudge in the back.
“Run Caleb, as fast as you can!”
Caleb and Bill broke into a frantic dash, jumping over fallen cable and still bodies. Behind them, the ship was moving over the gap in the bridge. Caleb could hear the low, cruel hum of the engines, or whatever it was that powered the machine. He gasped and huffed as his small legs strained to keep up with his uncle’s terrified strides. A loud, static crackle began to fill the air, building rapidly.
Up ahead, the bridge was blocked by a cluster of cars and trucks wedged into a thick jumble. Caleb began to slow his run, but Bill gripped his arm and pulled him along faster than ever.
When they reached the vehicles, Bill jumped onto the hood of a police cruiser, pulling Caleb up behind him. They scrambled across the metal and glass, jumping from the cruiser to a sports car, then into the bed of a pickup truck.
The electric crackle reached a crescendo behind them. Bill leapt out of the pickup and lowered Caleb onto the pavement, pulling him underneath the truck.
A tremendous boom rocked the bridge, and a flash of red light filled the air. Caleb felt the bridge surface ripple with the shock of the blast. There was a dull, rumbling roar as chunks of the bridge near the rift fell into the bay below.
Before Caleb could catch his breath or calm his pounding heart, Bill was pulling him back out from under the truck. They climbed over, around and under several other vehicles, while the ship began crackling with another build-up of energy. Caleb glanced over his shoulder and saw that the craft had moved forward slightly, preparing to blast another section of bridge into the water.
After a few moments of climbing and running, Bill led Caleb behind a large refrigerated truck, ducking down beside its large wheels. The air lit up with another flash of crimson light and the bridge trembled again, more violently this time. Caleb noticed that the bridge continued to shudder and quake even after the blast. Bill seemed to notice too, giving Caleb a wide-eyed glance and then tugging him along through the dead vehicles.
Carnival of Time Page 9
