Earth God

by Jon Messenger

  Xander smiled at the thought. Maybe Lord Balor wasn’t as evil as he had imagined all these many months. His smile faded, however, when he noted a series of other blue glows a few miles behind Lord Balor. Floating forward, Xander paused when he saw a squad of Fire Warriors marching across the sand. It could have been purely coincidental, he realized. They could have all been heading to the Fire Elemental at its behest.

  Xander shook his spectral head. These Fire Warriors were moving with a single-minded purpose. They were hunting someone. Since there wasn’t much of a human population left in Los Angeles, that meant they were hunting someone else, someone like Lord Balor.

  That meant they didn’t have much time, if Xander expected his haphazard plan to work. In a flash, Xander retreated from the California desert and settled back into his body.

  Opening his eyes, he looked out once again over Easter Island. He could see Sean and Jessica laughing on the beach. He smiled at the sight of his friends. No matter the stresses they endured, far more than a normal person would ever go through, they were never too discouraged to smile. They had always been his anchors, but they had also become his tether while he sailed through an insane world.

  He stretched his legs as he floated down from the top of the dome. As he touched down on the ash-covered grass, he walked quickly over to where his friends sat in the sand. They heard his approach and turned toward him, both still wiping happy tears from their eyes.

  “What are you two talking about?” Xander asked as he approached.

  “Spinosaurus Water Warriors,” Jessica said.

  Sean wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but he couldn’t suppress a chortle.

  “Okay,” Xander replied slowly as he looked back and forth between the two friends. “I feel like I missed something important here.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sean said. “What’s the word?”

  Jessica looked at Xander with surprise. “We have a plan?”

  Xander sighed. “We do have a plan, and it’s a good one.”

  “That’s a terrible plan,” Sean said as Xander finished explaining.

  “It’s not a terrible plan. There’s some danger involved, I’m not going to deny that, but this could work.”

  “It could get us all killed,” Sean replied.

  Xander looked pleadingly to Jessica. “Please tell him this isn’t a bad plan.”

  “As far as plans go,” she said, “this one’s absolute crap. Sorry, Xander.”

  Xander sighed. “This will work; I just need your help.”

  Sean shook his head. “And this is the part where you want Jessica and me to go rescue her father. The man who started this entire war when he sent Sammy to assassinate you.”

  “See, that’s where I have the problem, too,” Jessica said. “This guy is a stone-cold killer.”

  “I can handle him once you get him to Los Angeles.”

  She shrugged. “I have no doubt you can. I was thinking more about the time in between when Sean and I pick him up and when he gets to you.”

  “Yeah,” Sean added. “That’s the time I like to refer to as, ‘Sean and Jessica get brutally murdered by a psychopathic Fire Warrior.’ It’s a working title.”

  Xander stood and paced the beach. He knew his plan would work, but he needed his friends on board. “I’ve been scanning the area, checking the people walking on the ground, the water content in their bodies, the air passing in and out of their lungs. The dragon isn’t trying to hide, so I found it right away in Los Angeles. Lord Balor was a bit tougher. He’s in California, heading to L.A.—”

  “To link up with the dragon to try to kill us all,” Sean said.

  Xander shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. He’s by himself, for starters. He’s severely dehydrated, too. His steps are unsteady, like he’s weak. I can’t find any real groups of humans in the area, so I don’t think it was a resistance group like Wilkes’ that did this to him. I think it was the Fire Warriors. I think he’s fallen from the Fire Elemental’s good graces. He looked like he was a prisoner, like he’d been tortured.”

  “I don’t really care,” Sean said emphatically. “It doesn’t really change the fact that you want us to go get a Fire Warrior as part of your brilliant master plan.”

  “Which is what, by the way?” Jessica said. “You still haven’t fully explained that part.”

  “Sammy’s still alive, trapped somewhere inside her own body. When the Fire Elemental and I fought in France—“

  “The fight in which you got the holy living crap kicked out of you?” Sean asked incredulously. “That fight? I want to make sure we’re on the same page.”

  Xander glared at his friend. “When we fought in France and, yes, Sean, when the Fire Elemental beat me up, Sammy intervened and saved my life.”

  “I thought we saved his life when we hit her with a speeding truck,” Jessica corrected.

  “When she took over the body, she was able to force the dragon out of her. Not completely, but enough that I could see it like a shadow stretching out behind her.”

  “Who cares?” Sean said. “Just absorb the Fire Elemental and be done with this, then you’ll have Sammy back and everyone lives happily ever after.”

  “It’s not that simple. You remember when we first met the Wind Elemental? She was a dotting old lady in Iceland, full of power. That woman was the Elemental’s host. When I absorbed the Elemental power, the old woman disappeared. I didn’t absorb the woman; her body was destroyed in the process. If I just absorb the Fire Elemental, I’ll destroy Sammy, too.”

  Sean and Jessica fell silent. Their protests didn’t really mean much, since they knew Xander had his mind set on saving Sammy at all costs.

  “I need to separate the two,” Xander continued. “I can take the Fire Elemental in a fight, especially now that I know what needs to be done. I just need someone else to influence Sammy, to help her force the dragon out of her body. She was able to do it in France because of her love for me. There’s only one other person in the world she loves.”

  “Good old Daddy,” Sean muttered.

  “I’m still a bit hung up on Sean and I having to pick him up, so excuse me if I’m retreading old ground here. Since you’re not one hundred percent sure Daddy dearest isn’t just going to incinerate us the second we show up, why don’t you just grab him on the way into Los Angeles? Bubble him up like you’ve done before so he can’t harm anyone until he’s needed?”

  “Because the dragon can sense its Warriors even better than I can. If it knows I’ve grabbed Lord Balor, it’ll prepare itself, steel its mind. There won’t be the element of surprise that I need to break their bond. It has to be you two. You have to bring him when the bond between the dragon and Sammy is at its weakest. It’s the only way.”

  Jessica and Sean exchanged nervous glances. In unison, they sighed heavily.

  “I stand by my previous statement,” Jessica said. “As far as plans go, this one is absolute crap.”

  Sean shrugged. “Who wants to live forever though, right?”

  Xander stood, a soft smile reaching the corners of his mouth. The smile disappeared quickly, though, as he glanced down at his friends. “I should probably mention that I think Lord Balor is being chased by a pretty big group of Fire Warriors.”

  “I hate you,” Sean said.

  “This wasn’t the homecoming I’d hoped for,” Sean said as they passed over the California desert.

  “I know,” Xander replied flatly.

  He knew Sean would have appreciated a funny quip, but neither man was really feeling in the mood. It hadn’t really been so long since they left White Halls, but it felt like an eternity. Despite being so far from their hometown in Tennessee, they had made it back to the United States. Still, everyone would have preferred to come home under different circumstances.

  The I-10 was a snake cutting straight across the desert. The highway wove through small towns, all of which lay in ruin. They hadn’t been strategically advantageous to the
Fire Elemental when it awoke and began its march to Los Angeles. Instead, they’d merely been in the way. The dragon had followed I-10 straight into the city, much like they were doing now.

  “Where is he now?” Jessica asked, trying her best to keep her gaze away from the destruction below.

  “Still up ahead, but not far,” Xander replied. “He’s moving pretty well, considering the shape he’s in.”

  “And the others?” Sean asked.

  Xander nodded. “Still following Balor. We should see them soon.”

  The horizon wavered unsteadily as the heat radiated off the asphalt. The shifting air played tricks on their vision. At times, the horizon seemed sparse and empty. Moments later, figures would seem to emerge, marching along the hot highway, only to disappear shortly thereafter.

  Sean broke his gaze away from the horizon and stared at the road below. The eastbound lane of the freeway was a parking lot. Cars, trucks, and RVs were packed bumper to bumper in a gridlock that was painful to watch. Sean couldn’t imagine being trapped in an unmoving line of cars, knowing that death was chasing them out of the city. The vehicles were all empty now. The families within had fled on foot after realizing the traffic would never move for them.

  The westbound lane looked slightly better. Quite a few cars had jumped the median, figuring they would outsmart their peers and drive down the wrong way. In the end, it had proven just as futile. A few burned husks of cars marked where Fire Warriors had ambushed those trying to flee. The westbound lane heading into Los Angeles would still be passable by car, so long as the driver was willing to weave around the few wrecks spotting the road.

  “There they are,” the Wind Warrior said. He pointed a couple miles up the road.

  Sean and Jessica squinted to see what he was pointing at but it just seemed like a haze to them. As they stared, however, figures began to emerge. Dark-clothed men and women marched steadily along the road, moving unerringly toward the city. Their blond hair stood out against the dark road.

  “I see them,” Sean muttered. “How much further is it to Daddy dearest?”

  Xander shrugged. “A mile or two. They’ve been steadily catching up all day.”

  Sean frowned. It was going to be hard enough convincing Lord Balor to come with them without having to worry about being swarmed by Fire Warriors.

  “Think you could buy us a little extra time?” Sean asked.

  Xander smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  The trio quickly began to descend toward the road below. As they grew nearer, the Fire Warriors sensed Xander’s power. They stopped and glanced upward, just as Xander passed overhead, flames already burning in their hands.

  It was such a quick pass that Xander didn’t bother to summon anything dramatic like a tornado. A powerful gust of wind was dragged in their wake as they flew overhead. The sudden burst of wind slammed into the Fire Warriors, extinguishing their flames even as it lifted them from their feet. As the air currents wrapped around them, Xander sent them spinning off in random directions.

  Fire Warriors were tossed haphazardly around the California desert. Some collapsed into the sand hundreds of feet away, groaning softly but not quick to rise. Two of the Fire Warriors were launched nearly straight up, the wind expiring once they were thirty feet over the highway below. The really unfortunate in their group were thrown into the eastbound lane of traffic. They slammed into the abandoned cars, shattering windshields and denting doors with their bodies.

  By the time Xander arched backward and started climbing back toward the safety of the clouds, none of the Fire Warriors were on their feet below.

  “That won’t stop them, but it’ll buy you enough time to get Balor.”

  Sean laughed and said something comical, but Xander missed it. He felt a strange twisting in his gut, like a Fire Warrior was using his power nearby. He turned slowly and scanned the area around them, but saw nothing. As quickly as the sensation had appeared, it faded to nothing.

  “Are you okay?” Jessica asked.

  Xander glanced around once more as they rocketed through the air, high above I-10. He nodded slowly to Jessica. “Yeah, I think so. Come on, I’ll find us a place to land.”

  Speeding as they were, they nearly missed the shambling form of Lord Balor passing beneath them. The once-proud Fire Warrior leader raised his head inquisitively as the trio flew by, but he seemed relatively dispassionate about their arrival.

  “Where are you going to drop us?” Jessica asked.

  “Depends,” Xander replied. “Have you figured out what you need?”

  “Any place where you think we can find a sturdy car,” Sean said. “I’m guessing it’s about to take a beating.”

  Xander laughed as he pointed beneath them. “Seriously? Are you telling me you can’t find a decent car around here?”

  Sean frowned. “You may have been too busy reenacting the latest Thor movie when we were in London to notice, but we had some pretty impressive luck with a fire truck. That’s the kind of sturdy car I’m talking about.”

  The Wind Warrior scanned the road below but didn’t see any emergency vehicles. Lots of cars, a few trucks and vans, and plenty of RVs, but nothing that would really take some abuse. Xander pointed ahead, where a few broken buildings still rose over the blackened landscape.

  “There might be something there,” he said.

  They touched down in front of a hospital just off the I-10. The word “Arrowhead” was still visible, but everything else had been burned away. A few cars were parked sporadically near the hospital’s front door but they, like the vehicles on the highway, were abandoned. Trapped in the center of the parked cars was an ambulance that still seemed to be in good shape.

  Sean stood before it and ran his hand over the driver’s side door. “It’s not a fire truck, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

  Xander and Sean both jumped when the truck behind them roared to life. They turned to see Jessica behind the wheel. She leaned her head out of the window apologetically.

  “The keys are still in all these cars,” she explained. “We won’t be hurting for a ride any time soon. It also makes it easy to get them out of the way.”

  Sean smiled as he slid behind the wheel of the gold car parked directly in front of the ambulance. Jessica was right. The keys were still in the ignition, as though the car had been abandoned as soon as it was thrown in park. He turned the key, but the engine didn’t offer so much as a sputter.

  “I’ve got nothing here,” he explained. “Battery’s completely dead.”

  Sean dropped the transmission into neutral before climbing out of the car with a sigh. He walked around to the front of the car even as Jessica finished parking the truck. He placed his hands on the hood and pushed. The heavy Buick rocked under the effort but didn’t roll backward like he’d hoped. Sean grunted as he tried again but got the same results.

  “Think you can give me a little help here?” he asked Xander.

  Xander smiled as he walked to the front of the car. “It really eats you up inside that you need to keep asking for my help, doesn’t it?”

  “Just shut up and push,” Sean replied smarmily.

  Xander placed a single palm against the hood and pushed. The Buick rolled quickly away, stopping only when it crashed into another parked car.

  Refusing to acknowledge Xander’s success, Sean climbed into the ambulance. Like the cars around it, the keys were still in the ignition though, to Sean’s relief, the engine had been turned off before it was vacated. He muttered a prayer before turning the key. The engine rumbled to life right away and the gas gauge climbed steadily to the halfway mark. He leaned out the open door and whooped loudly. He quickly turned off the engine and climbed out, glad that at least one part of their mission wouldn’t be unnecessarily complicated.

  Jessica joined the other two and sat on the curb in the shade of the awning, admiring their ambulance. Sean considered joining her but instead turned his attention toward I-10, passing nearby.

 
“Are you sure he’s going to come this way?” he asked.

  Xander followed his gaze to the road and nodded. “He’s been following the 10 so far, and it’s the quickest way into the heart of the city. He’ll be here.”

  Sean stepped closer to his friend and lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “I know you need this guy for your master plan, but what exactly am I supposed to say when we meet him? I don’t think he’s going to be all that keen on the idea of climbing into a truck with strangers.”

  “Give him your best Arnold,” Xander said, screwing up his face into a deep frown. “‘Come with me if you want to live.’”

  “Terminator might be able to pull that off, but chubs here isn’t going to manage that without getting my face burned off.”

  Xander patted his friend on the shoulder. “You’ll think of something. Just remember, you both actually have the same goal in mind. He’ll listen to reason.”

  “And if he won’t?”

  Xander shrugged. “You’re at a hospital. Gas him or sedate him or something. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  Sean sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to get a much better answer. “Let’s just hope his Fire Warrior buddies don’t catch up to him.”

  Xander closed his eyes for a moment but opened them again almost immediately. “About that, you might want to go meet him on the road.”

  Jessica stood and walked over to her friends. “He’s already got company? I thought we scattered all the Fire Warriors.”

  “Apparently, they’re persistent. He still has a head start, but they’re closing on him quickly.”

  Sean wanted to sigh, but it didn’t seem to quite express his level of desperation. “We’ll handle this. If he’s getting close, that means it’s about time for you to go, too, huh?”