Merciless

by Robin Parrish

  His feet burning and aching and bleeding upon the hot black ash, he vowed upon the blood of all those he had been forced to kill and his own immortal soul that his hatred would become their end.

  "What we know," read the newscaster into the camera, "is that a military coalition forged between Turkey and many of her allies descended upon the central Turkish desert to muster an attack that will attempt to repel what officials are calling an `invading army.' Very little is known about this group. No one has yet managed to get close enough to the intruders to identify any members of the group." The newscaster was a handsome black man, with a full voice that resonated with authority. His was a face that the British trusted.

  Trevor had returned to watching television the moment Ethan had left, and now as the others gathered their possessions, he watched with rapt obsession. Live helicopter footage videoed high above the Turkish desert was replayed for the third time since he'd stopped on this station. Filmed hours earlier, the handheld video footage depicted a long line of individuals walking through the charred black landscape far below. At the head of the line was a man Trevor knew to resemble Grant Borrows, though the footage was too far away to make him out properly. On the upper edges of the screen could be seen the boiling black clouds rimmed with fire that bathed the entire nation in darkness.

  Oblivion suddenly turned his head skyward and looked directly upon the helicopter. The chopper's blades stopped spinning, the camera crew aboard cursed and screamed, and the vehicle fell from the sky like a rock.

  The footage turned to static, and then the TV news station switched to a different set of file footage, this taken with a long-range scope lens that showed blurry images of the walking group from ground level. This footage showed the group entering an unidentified village in Turkey and destroying everything in their path. As he'd heard the newscaster put it earlier, it was as if the town refused to get out of this walking troupe's way, so they simply annihilated it. He could just make out various members of Grant's team using their abilities to lay waste to the town, leveling buildings, draining the life from its citizens, and leaving nothing but rubble and death in their wake. They never stopped marching the entire time.

  Trevor's thoughts began to wander as he realized he would probably be forced to join their ranks at some point, and something occurred to him that he hadn't realized until this moment.

  The newscaster's booming voice rocketed him back to the present. "This military coalition includes, aside from almost the entire Turkish Armed Forces, military representatives from Israel, Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Syria, Azerbaijan, and the United States. The Americans are strongly urging all members of NATO and the U.N. to get behind this attack, as the bizarre meteorological and ecological threat emanating from Turkey has already breached its borders and is currently spreading throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Great Britain has pledged its forces to the fight, though the coalition is expected to act with great haste, and sources within Parliament have expressed doubt that Her Majesty's Armed Forces will reach the battlefield in time for the initial strike ..."

  Trevor looked up as Daniel walked in front of the television set, blocking his view. "I called your name five times," he said. He'd changed into a fresh set of clothes and was clutching his walking cane in one hand. A backpack was slung over his shoulder and a small luggage bag was in his other hand. "We need to get going, and you haven't packed anything yet."

  Trevor hesitated. "I'm not coming with you."

  Lisa quickly appeared, and Daniel reached behind to turn off the television set. "What?"

  "I can't come with you," Trevor said quietly, looking away.

  Daniel looked to Lisa, but she had no help to offer. "Look, son," he said, absentmindedly scratching at the back of his hand, "I know how you feel; this isn't easy for Lisa or me either. But we have to at least try to find the Stone-"

  "I'm not afraid!" Trevor said, suddenly defiant and looking up into their eyes. He held up his Ring for them to get a good look at. "Don't you understand? This rotten thing is going to make me just like the rest of them-a zombie, enslaved to Oblivion's will-and if I'm near you when that happens ..."

  Daniel and Lisa exchanged looks once more, understanding now. He was staying behind, separating himself from them to save their lives.

  Daniel leaned over and placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "It's very noble of you. But we don't even know if it will take you like it did the others. Maybe it only happened to them because they were there, in the underground city, in close proximity to Grant, when Oblivion was born."

  Trevor shook his head. "I just worked it out. It's the black storm-the changes to the earth are accompanying it. The world is dying, and it's because of his influence, his touch. When the storm reaches here, so will Oblivion's ability to control me."

  They seemed to hear the wisdom in his words. In its own way, it was logical.

  "The storm isn't far off," he said, remaining rooted to his seat. "You had better go."

  Daniel looked down, set his shoulders, and then looked back up. "We'll come back for you if we can." He began making his way toward the tiny apartment's front door. Lisa followed closely.

  Trevor smiled without happiness. "Don't, please. As I understand it, the Forging was an all-or-nothing deal, irreversible. Any attempt to rescue me-or any of the Ringwearers, for that matter-is suicide. And you know it."

  Daniel opened the door, and Lisa filed out, but he turned back to face his young friend. "You said yourself the planet's dying. If we're all doomed anyway, no one should have to face the end alone."

  Turkey

  Ferocious black clouds barely concealed the angry fire above it, casting a dark gray tone on the desert below. Neither night nor day, the empty countryside was shrouded in eternal twilight.

  From a mountain peak not far above the distant battlefield, Ethan surveyed what was sure to be the place of engagement for the coming fight. He'd returned by Conveyor to a changed landscape, a world of ash and swirling black dust in which every green plant was dying. And would continue dying unless this spreading rot could be checked. Hot-wiring a battered Jeep from a tiny town below the mountains, he'd followed Oblivion's all-too-obvious path of destruction leading east.

  Facing almost exactly north from his current position, the dried-up Mediterranean Sea was at his back. The blue waters now all but gone, in its place lay muddy, drying black mushy ash. Seaweed, sponge, and other underwater wildlife were exposed and withering; all manner of fish, crabs, stars, and even a few larger creatures like whales and sharks-all a pitiful sight, either dead on their sides or taking their last gasps. Beached fishing boats and millionaires' yachts mirrored the fish, exposing their curved undercarriages as they rested on the muddy ash on one side or the other.

  Ethan's journey here had followed the shoreline with endless views of the devastation to his right, and it left him numb. The impact this event would have upon the planet's ecology couldn't be overstated. After emerging from the underground Entry Node, he'd taken his stolen Jeep into Antalya to stock up on supplies. At a roadside food mart, he overheard two men speaking in heavily accented English about a massive cruise ship that had gotten stuck ten miles off the coast of Spain when the ocean began to evaporate there. It would take weeks if not months for the world's oceans to dissipate completely, but ships so close to shorelines were unable to outrun it. Hundreds of passengers had to be evacuated by helicopter.

  Ethan turned to his left, watching through his binoculars. It was from this point that he knew Oblivion and the others would approach, though there was no sign of them yet. It wouldn't be long, though. Oblivion was still steadily walking, never pausing or slowing down.

  To his far right, a deployment of military power the likes of which he'd never seen was taking up positions, forming a line that they would die to prevent Oblivion from crossing.

  Die being the key word, Ethan thought.

  The fact that the coalition had been able to put so many troops in place so q
uickly was nothing less than astounding. Unprecedented, even. He saw hundreds of tanks and light infantry vehicles, thousands of makeshift sandbag walls that had already been erected and reinforced, and hundreds of thousands of men and women, all of whom were no bigger from this vantage point than moving dark green specks of dust. Thousands of lights had been raised alongside portable generators. Hundreds of helicopters buzzed the battlefield at shallow heights. Thousands of tanks sat ready and waiting near the front of the line. Squadron after squadron of fighter planes and bombers flew by overhead every few minutes. Ethan knew that more than one of those aircraft would be carrying nuclear ordnance.

  Still, the battlefield itself was largely empty. A wall of humans and machines and equipment on the right, and an unseen single-file procession of thirty or forty superhumans (or however many had been summoned to Oblivion's ranks so far) on the left.

  On a collision course.

  Ethan scanned the military encampments for something resembling a command center. Stevens had specifically told him that she was coming here, and she would be wherever the generals and senior military advisors would be planning and coordinating their attack. It was odd, to be sure-a director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation venturing to a foreign battlefield-but then, these were odd times. He suspected that her sudden insider knowledge about the mysterious individual behind this threat had something to do with it.

  Somebody in a top position wanted her here as an advisor, because of what she knew. Ethan was willing to bet on it.

  Which was all the better. Because what Ethan needed right now more than anything in the world was someone who could get him in, past the legions of soldiers and vehicles and weapons.

  Oblivion hated life in all its forms. It was his nature.

  And yet he was grateful to the humans. Peculiar, that. It was humans who finally allowed him to begin completing the function for which he was meant.

  Eons he had waited. He registered few emotions, and impatience was not one of them, so the waiting had not bothered him. His irritation came from another source. For only a handful of times in all of human history had he been allowed to act freely, and even then his freedom came with heavy restrictions.

  Now, at last, Oblivion could compose his masterpiece of death without impediments of any kind. Given autonomy to choose how he would operate, to dictate the strictures of his efforts, he would un-create everything that lived, in ways that no other being in the universe was capable of.

  How ironic it was that here, in this human form, he would decimate the human race. The darkness he was spreading upon the earth, the absence of time, the fires, the blistered sky, the acrid smell, the raining blood, the heat ... All of this was merely the canvas upon which his work would be done. Byproducts more than anything else.

  The red mark on the back of his hand caught his attention momentarily, and he briefly wondered if its curved arc had grown longer. He dismissed the thought.

  The tools of his beautiful death, his army, marched silently behind him. Those who had granted him his freedom, the Secretum of Six, rode nearby in machines built by human hands. The vehicles were slanted upward now as Oblivion and his army climbed a moderate ridge, a mountain beyond which they could not see.

  The first of these vehicles drew near to him, and the one called Devlin began shouting words in his direction. Other passengers in the vehicle were eating field rations as they rode; most seemed bored.

  Devlin was holding in one hand a small communications device that he and several of his fellows seemed to favor. Often throughout the journey, Oblivion had seen one or more of them speaking into these diminutive folding machines.

  "Great one, a vast army has assembled ahead to oppose you," Devlin called out as Oblivion continued his relentless pace, one foot in front of the other. "Their number exceeds what we are able to count."

  Humans opposing him. How expected. How inevitable.

  How very pointless.

  But then ... So many humans had gathered all in one place, directly ahead. Terribly convenient of them. He would feast on their souls.

  "They are immaterial," Oblivion replied, his voice cutting through the fabric of reality and echoing across dimensional walls. As ever, his voice was monotone, yet simmering with malice, as if barely able to contain the tremendous power housed within this human body.

  Devlin faltered for a moment, then collected himself. "I do not doubt you in any way, great one," he shouted over the noise of his vehicle. "But I believe you should face them with the knowledge that their technologies and their weapons of war have advanced and multiplied significantly since you last faced human opposition. While I know they could never harm you, they have devised weapons strong enough to wipe out your entire army with a single blow."

  Oblivion continued walking until he reached the top of the rise. On the other side came into view distant artificial lights, dark machine forms, and hundreds of thousands of human beings.

  Unimpressive.

  "They will die at my hands, all of them," Oblivion said. "The only difference between them and the rest of your kind is that they have chosen the location where their human existence will end."

  He never slowed in his walk. He began sending silent orders to a select few members of his army. Their unique talents would be put to fine use.

  "He's out there and he's coming. I need more, Director Stevens," said General Bradford Davies. He stood at the center of the high-tech coalition command center, surrounded by peers from other coalition nation armies. Stevens stood nearby, over the shoulder of a young man working on a computer station that simulated the battlefield and the coalition's deployments. "We all do."

  "I'm working on it, General," Stevens replied nervously, standing up fully. "My contact is endeavoring to uncover additional information as we speak."

  "We can't wait!" Davies nearly shouted. "Our projections show that this `Oblivion' will be within range of our most powerful weapons in mere moments. I need to know how to take him down."

  "I'm afraid you can't," announced a new voice at the outer edge of the room.

  Four rifles from guards were trained on Ethan, and he froze where he stood, arms raised.

  "Who is this?" Davies barked.

  "He's with me," Stevens announced, and waved him through the guards. "General Davies, meet my inside source, former special agent Ethan Cooke."

  Ethan was half-led and half-pushed by two men, with their hands on either of his shoulders, to the center of the room where the military leaders stood.

  General Davies wasted no time in sizing him up. "What were you just saying about this Oblivion character, son?"

  "Your opponent in this ill-conceived battle," Ethan defiantly declared, "is the undefeatable enemy. I'm forced to wonder if Director Stevens passed on all of my intel, because if she had, you might not be here at all, planning a war against an opponent you cannot overcome."

  "And how," Stevens retorted, "do you know he can't be defeated?"

  Ethan's eyes flared as he spun on one heel to face Stevens. He knew she hated him, but how many times had he told her this already? And now she was selling him out?

  "It's a long story you don't have time for," Ethan replied, looking once more at the general. "The long and short of it is, I was told so by a group of people who know a lot more about what's happening here than any of us. And I believe them."

  "Young man," Davies began, stepping forward imposingly, "this battle is about to start, regardless of your opinion of our military capabilities. You clearly have some kind of firsthand knowledge of this Oblivion, and you've no doubt traveled a long way to help us. So if you know anything that can save innocent lives-any hint of a weakness we could exploit-then I'm grateful to hear it. But if you withhold said information or if you're simply wasting time that we don't have ... I've half a mind to personally stick you in front of a firing squad."

  "Oblivion has no weakness to exploit, General," Ethan replied with urgency. "I can't say it any plainer than that. I am try
ing to save innocent lives, and that is the reason I came. And the only way to do that is to pack up your men and go home, as quickly as humanly possible. You're trying to stop a force of nature here, and I'm telling you-it can't be done!"

  The military guards standing nearby tensed at Ethan's outburst.

  Davies examined him carefully, while Stevens's head darted back and forth between them nervously.

  "I believe that you believe what you're saying, former special agent Cooke," Davies said with calculated measure. "But you know a great deal more about this enemy than you're sharing, and that I will not tolerate in a time of war." Davies motioned to the guards. "Lock him up, but I want you to put him someplace where he has an unobstructed view of the battle."

  Ethan's hands were cuffed behind his back, and the guards began leading him away. He looked imploringly at Stevens, but her gaze slid smoothly away from him.

  "Every man or woman who dies in this battle ..." Davies called out as Ethan was being led away. "You just sit there and watch it happen! I hope their faces fuel your nightmares from this moment on. They're on your head."

  Ethan struggled against the cuffs in frustration and futility. "No, sir," he shouted. "They're on yours."

  In the absence of an on-site prison, Ethan was taken to a small A-shaped tent two miles from the command center, a tent held up by two metal poles jammed into the ground. At the front pole, one of Ethan's handcuffs was released, wrapped around the pole, then locked again.

  The view inside the tent was uninteresting; it seemed to be nothing more than a storage space for medical supplies, probably attached to the ground infantry unit that was deploying in the immediate vicinity around him. It looked like one of the smaller divisions working within the coalition; the four dozen or so men he could see were setting up stationary ground turrets, sandbag trenches, and one very large missile launcher.

  The coalition forces would not advance on Oblivion. They had drawn a line that they intended to hold against him. Oblivion would come to them. And as near as Ethan could tell, he was positioned near the heart of the battlefield.