They rode for the rolling doors. They stopped just shy of them for a few moments while Ford talked to someone Lumar couldn't see. When they were done, the doors started opening out onto honest sunshine. Even from the back, the light seemed extremely bright and aggressive as it invaded the entire windshield of the truck. The caves of Guardridge had seemed plenty bright, but nothing could compare to the radiance of real sunlight.
Lumar hadn't spent a lot of time in cars or buses, but he had always found it hard to stay awake in a moving automobile. It was warm in the truck too. The rays of sunlight coming through the windshield didn't make it all the way back to his seat, but he could feel the warmth radiating through the metal walls and the engine carrying them along.
Lumar struggled to stay awake for several minutes. He tried looking out the front window, but his view didn't let him see much other than light and the tops of trees. Nate had some kind of pamphlet in his hands he was reading over. Lumar didn't remember him picking anything like that up, but remembered that there were some instruction manuals and the like in some of the weapons' packages they'd gone through. All Lumar could tell was that it was low quality white paper with printed words on it. Lumar wondered if Nate was really interested in the contents or if he was trying to read something so boring it put him to sleep.
“I can play some music if it’ll make the trip go faster,” Ford suggested after a while.
“What do they have?” Radcliff asked.
“It would probably be faster to figure out what they don't have,” Ford said. “It looks like they put a pretty good sized collection on the dashboard hard drive.”
“Pick something soothing, Classical.”
“Coming right up,” Ford replied.
The music clicked on. For a moment there was nothing but the light buzz of the speakers as electricity reached them. Then the beautiful sounds of a piano came flooding through the truck. Lumar didn't recognize the piece, but it sounded like a gentle rain. Lumar had been struggling to stay awake before, but when the piano music came drifting to Lumar’s ears he knew he couldn't win. The notes cleared his mind. He felt strangely peaceful, more peaceful than he had felt in a long time. He didn't even make it through the first song before he couldn't keep his eyes open.
Chapter Twelve
Lumar stood alone in a white room. It reminded him of the medical examination room he'd been in when he came to Guardridge. He was naked, but his skinsuit and his armor were on the floor around his feet. The walls of the room were naked too. There were no windows, no decorations. There wasn't even anything distinguishing the walls from the floor, or the walls from the ceiling. There was no trim or seams between the different materials where the walls became the floor or the walls became the ceiling. It was all the same. Only a slight darkness in the creases marked a change in the geometry of the room. But there was a door on one of the walls. It was the only color in the space. It was the light yellow-brown of natural wood. Even the door frame it sat in was white. The hinges were white too.
Lumar suddenly realized he must be dreaming. He was in the back of a truck in his armor driving back to Sangent. He knew that, but even when he realized that nothing about his surroundings changed or faded away like they usually did when he figured out he was in a dream. Usually that was about the point when he woke up, but he stayed dreaming. He didn't mind though. He had no desire to be awake right now. He wanted to know what was on the other side of the door.
He put his clothes on first. He always hated naked dreams where he was walking around looking for something to put on or just going about his day wondering why everyone was staring at him until he realized what was going on and felt ashamed. He was not going to allow this to be one of those dreams.
It was the same armor he knew he was wearing in reality. It felt the same when it was on his body. It looked the same, black with some white paint and a red and blue mountain symbol. He was always amazed by how realistic a dream could look. The brain was able to copy even the most exact details of life; things he wouldn't have even thought about for a quarter of a second while he was awake.
The instant he pulled his helmet down over his ears a sound came from outside of the white room. It sounded like metal scraping against concrete. He'd heard that sound before. It was that maddening sound the Sarsaul made on the walls of the bunker. At first it was just one sound coming from the right, but then there was another coming from the left, then another coming from the ceiling. Then it sounded like dozens of them were tearing at the floor under his feet.
Fear washed over him in an instant as he realized he wasn't just dreaming. He was having a nightmare. The scraping got louder and louder as more and more joined the cacophony of claws digging at the barrier between him and the outside.
He looked at the door. He wondered if he opened it if they would come in or if he could escape into some other place where the scraping would be gone. He saw the longsword he'd taken from the armory at his feet suddenly. He didn't think it had been there before, but maybe it had and he hadn't bothered to pick it up. He squatted down and grabbed it. He didn't bother to clip the scabbard onto his belt. He just drew the steel and pointed it at the door. It was the only way in or out. It was the only way they were going to be able to reach him. He kept his blade and his eyes trained on it.
He stared for exactly five minutes. He knew that somehow without ever seeing a clock. It was just a dream-fact that was in his head. There was no disputing it. The moment the fifth minute was complete the sounds all stopped completely. There was just silence and white with a wooden door. It was just like when he'd arrived.
He let his right arm fall and the blade of his sword touch the ground in front of him. He jumped back when the knocking came from the door. He didn't dare open the door, but the knocking came again. He found his feet backing away until he bumped into the far wall. The sword came up between him and the door. He had both hands clumsily gripping the handle, pointing the blade straight out along the line of his arms.
There was one last knock. Then the silence returned. Lumar continued to stare at the door. It felt like the walls were getting further away even though he wasn't moving. The room was expanding, growing larger around him. Then he saw the darkness around the wall with the door. The room wasn't expanding. The walls were falling away from him.
The knocking came again, but so did the scratching. Lumar ran for the door. He didn't know why, but he felt like if he didn't do it that instant he'd never be able to reach it again. He ran as hard as he could. The distance to the door was growing, but he was running faster than the wall was moving away. He reached the end of the floor and jumped as far as he could for the door handle. He caught it with his left hand, dangling over a sea of eyes staring up at him from the darkness.
The door opened out and Lumar was pulled up with the handle. He scrambled to get his legs up onto the ledge inside the door. He stood up and the door slammed shut behind him, pushed by a force he couldn't see. For a second the crash of the door drowned out all the other sounds, but after a few seconds it began all over again. All the sound seemed to be coming from the other side of the door. The door had a deadbolt handle on this side. Lumar turned it and heard the door lock. He doubted something as simple as that would keep the darkness away, but it was the only option presenting itself.
He was in a long winding glass tunnel now surrounded by foggy twilight. He could only see a few feet out from the glass walls around him. There was a path at his feet through the tunnel that snaked up and down and from side to side for miles. He couldn't see where it ended. The fog and the dim light kept his visibility to a minimum, but there were some tiny points of light at irregular intervals along the path showing him where the trail went.
Lumar wished he'd kept the scabbard now. The sword felt heavy in his hand. With no other choice presented to him, he started walking along the path before him. The path was flat under his feet. He could touch both sides of the tunnel with his hands when he stood in the dead center of the
walkway. The tunnel was almost a perfect circle other than the slight flattening at the bottom. It made the walking much easier than he imagined trying to walk in a perfectly round tube would have been.
He passed turn after turn. Within a few minutes he couldn't see the door he'd come through any more. All he could see where a few points of light behind him. It was almost like the places he'd passed were disappearing. Eventually some of the lights behind him started to fade away into the mist, lost to him. His fear had seeped away once he took the first steps away from the door and after a while he felt calm, peaceful even as he walked down the foggy road.
He found himself trying to stare out into the mist to see if there was anything beyond the glass and the twilight. A few times he thought he saw the black fingers of tree branches, but he couldn't be sure. The glass wasn’t perfectly clear. It was like there were dark veins etched into it that moved out of the corner of his eye. He never stopped moving long enough to scrutinize the glass or the view outside. After a while, his feet were moving on their own.
“I wonder where this goes,” he said aloud. His voice sounded strange in his ears. There was no other sound now. The scraping and scratching hadn't followed him through the door. “I can't even tell how far I've come. I can't see anything.”
A shadow passed over his head. It was almost like a bird flying between him and the sun casting a fleeting shadow. The shape was wrong for a bird though. It was too big and the tail was too long. It came to a sharp point instead of fanning out like feathers. It passed by again from his right side. He couldn't make out the shape through the fog, but he knew what it was. He'd seen hornets glide through the air before. The second glimpse told him his enemies had caught up with him again even through the dense fog.
He started to run. More and more shadows crossed over him. Something bumped the outside of the glass somewhere behind him. He heard pounding behind him like feet running along the ceiling over his head. He turned his eyes down to watch his footing. The path was sloping uphill while he ran. He knew that if he fell they'd be right on top of him in an instant.
For a second he thought he could see the ground beneath him. The fog was swirling beneath him, breaking the barrier that kept him from seeing what lie beyond the tunnel. A dark mass moved from below as something monstrous stirred from the ground. He looked away before he could see what was coming up from the ground and left it behind as his feet started running faster and faster.
He felt his heart pounding in his chest. He thought for sure he'd wake up any moment. He felt the beating in his chest so strongly, so fully that he knew his pulse in his waking body must have spiked up to match the pulse in his dream. It was surely enough to wake him up. He could even feel the sweat forming along his back inside the tight black skinsuit. Surely in a moment he'd spring up in a cold sweat against the harness on the chair.
Instead he fell. The glass tunnel ended so abruptly that Lumar threw himself into empty air before he realized that the path had stopped. He felt water splash over him. He knew that if his visor hadn't been down he'd be swallowing the murky gray water he found himself floundering in. He found the bottom and pushed off of it. He shot up out of the water almost up to his knees, but then sank back down into the waist high water, its cold grip wrapping around him.
He'd managed to keep his grip on his sword through the fall and the short swim somehow. He spun it around in a wide arc dispelling the fog around him a brief moment. All he could see was the water around him now. He couldn't see the path he'd fallen from or a shore in any direction. He had no idea what direction he was facing or where to go, but in the distance he heard growls and footfalls. The nightmare-fear flooded over him again. He couldn't stay where he was. If he did he knew they'd find him. He remembered the blackness that had churned the fog earlier. He couldn't let that thing catch him.
He pushed his legs forward through the water. The mud at his feet clung to his boots and sucked at his feet with each step. It was slow going and the sounds kept getting closer and closer. He saw shadows overhead. They were moving much faster in the air than he was in the water. He knew it would only be a matter of time before they were on top of him. He saw shadows on the shore ahead of him. The water started getting shallower as he walked towards them. He had nowhere else to go now. He held his sword high ahead of him and charged out of the water at the shadows waiting for him.
He cut wildly at the first one with a baseball bat swing from his right shoulder. The shadowy figure offered his blade no resistance. He thought he'd missed, that his enemy had dodged the blow, but he saw shadow halves of a body fall the ground in front of him. When the body hit the ground it dissipated into smoke and became one with the mist.
“What is this?” Lumar asked the other shadow. “Are you real?”
The second shadow held the form of a hornet. Its whole body was black except for the green prismatic eyes on the sides of its face. It stared at him with its fist-sized eyes for a moment. Lumar put his sword up between them.
“What are you?”
The shadow lunged at him. Lumar raised his blade up above his head to catch the sickles coming down on him. Lumar pushed back with all of his weight. The shadow staggered back. Lumar swung the blade horizontally across the shadow's belly. It felt like he cut through empty air, but the shadow broke in two. The top half was carried in the direction of the cut. When it landed on the ground, both pieces evaporated and vanished.
“I guess you guys aren't so tough,” Lumar said nervously.
The fog was even starting to clear up. He could see the ground beneath his feet now. It was dead brown mud. He could see out a little over the dark water. There were ripples coming from the edge of his vision. He could hear splashing as his enemies drew closer. He saw something glinting at his feet. When he looked down he saw emerald eyes shining up at him. He backed away from the water. He was starting to see the faintest outlines of bodies moving towards him from the gray pool.
A pair of eyes started rising up out of the ground. A head followed them. It looked heavier than the shadows he'd just cut down. He swung his sword at it like a golf club. This time instead of passing right through he felt the steel stick in the new enemy's skull. Darkness oozed out of the wound into a puddle on the ground and the head stopped rising, but there were hundreds of others beginning to take its place.
A sudden gust of wind carried the fog away from him for twenty feet in all directions. The ground was rising up into bodies. The water was full of shadows wading towards the shore. The fog settled back in and Lumar couldn't see them anymore.
Lumar ran as hard as he could. There was no way he could fight all of these things. He swung his sword at the ground in front of him without looking for a target. Sometimes he felt the blade crash into something. The shadow Sarsaul were solid now. Alien faces were rising up all around him. The ground stopped feeling flat and dead. It started to feel like walking on top of a stormy sea. He walking over bodies rising out of the ground. He felt his feet falter on the valleys between the emerging Sarsaul shades and the round domes of their heads. He felt an arm under his foot. Some of them weren't emerging head first.
A claw plunged out of the ground appearing all at once in front of him. The talons grasped for him, but his sword took the arm off at the elbow. Then his foot went right into a hornet's open mouth. He tripped over the alien's head. He felt its teeth grinding against the metal of his boot as he fell. Its neck snapped back lifelessly when his full weight came crashing down against its spine. His foot was released, but he still fell.
He landed face to face with the head of an ant. Its thin beak shaped face lunged at him for all of the reach its short neck could give. Lumar grabbed it by the throat with his left hand and stuck the point of his sword up under its chin until he felt the muscles in the neck stop fighting back.
As he stood up, he saw a light shining through the fog ahead of him. Hands grabbed at his ankles before he could get to his full height. He slashed at them hastily and pulled away wi
th all of his strength.
He didn't both to swing his sword any more. He kept his eyes bouncing between the ground and the light in front of him. He had to watch his footing, but he was running with a purpose now. He tried to leap with each step to keep himself as far from the ground as he could. He felt like each step could take him to the ground again. He felt bones and flesh under his feet, but he kept going, not letting anything slow him down. He was going to make it to that light no matter what.
When the first Sarsaul shadow fully materialized ahead of him he ran around it. He turned his head back and saw it reach out its fingers towards him, but it didn't take a step towards him. He whipped his head around to see another shadow shaped like an ant three feet from his face. The whole body had formed, all six legs and both clawed arms. Lumar plunged ahead with the sword spearheading his charge. The blade went straight through the ant's chest impaling it. Lumar lost his grip on the handle of the blade while his momentum continued to carry him forward over the body. He couldn't go back for it. He looked back and saw dozens of shadows shambling towards him.
The light was getting closer with each step, but it still felt far away. He didn't have anything to defend himself with anymore. Lumar tackled another ant and let it fall where it stood. He ran past it knowing all he’d done was put it on its back. He didn’t give it a chance to try and grab him.
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