She knelt beside him. Tears flowed down her cheeks. "Marco. Yes. Oh God, Marco." She leaped into the basement. "Hot dogs, Poet! Hot dogs!"
Marco leaped down after her. It was a pantry. Strings of sausages hung from rafters. Hundreds of sausages. There were also jars of mushrooms, crates full of roasted bat wings, and bottles of umber liquid. Marco opened one bottle and sniffed.
"It's some kind of alcoholic drink," he said. "It smells almost like beer."
Addy grabbed it and began drinking. Tears still flowed down her cheeks. "It is beer! It tastes like a boozy pig's piss, but it's beer!"
Marco grabbed another bottle. He drank. It was wonderful. By all the stars above, it was wonderful.
Fingers trembling, they snatched the smoked sausages and began to feast. Marco didn't know what meat they were made from. He didn't want to know. He didn't care. It was food. It was real food. He devoured it. They struggled with shaky hands to open the jars, couldn't manage it, and instead shattered the jars onto the floor. Mushrooms spilled out. They gorged themselves.
They were being foolish, he knew. They should take the food to hiding, at least take guard shifts. Yet they were so consumed with hunger and thirst that they threw caution to the wind. They ate and drank with abandon, weeping and laughing.
"Hey, Poet," Addy said between mouthfuls. "See any rakes around here?"
He bit into another sausage. "I just hope this meat isn't made out of gray balls."
"Still not as bad as what's in hot dogs back home." Addy grabbed another.
When they were full to bursting, they stuffed their pouches with more mushrooms and sausages and filled their canteens with beer.
"This ain't so bad, Poet," Addy said. "We got some dogs. We got some beer. We got some gray porn. We can go fuck up Tic-Tac-Toe while drunk. Ain't no thang. Things are lookin' up."
And suddenly she was weeping. And Marco held her in his arms. He knew they should leave. That this place was dangerous. That more grays could arrive any moment. But they were too weary. They slept right there in the crematorium.
When they woke, it was dark outside. They ate and drank again, and they climbed back to the main floor. They approached the dead plague doctors. The creatures had begun to rot. They pulled off two of the beaked gas masks—hideous devices of metal and glass, shaped like the heads of vultures. They took the robes off two grays too. Soon Marco and Addy wore the outfits: black robes, the hems burnt and frayed; gloves with attached metal talons that reminded Marco of Freddy Kruger; and beaked gas masks with thick lenses.
"How do I look?" Addy asked, her voice muffled behind her beak. She raised her steel talons.
"Like a psychotic parakeet," Marco said.
"Cheep cheep, motherfucker." She hid her rifle under her robes. "Ready to enter the city?"
He nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."
They pulled the dead grays into the ovens and left the corpses to burn. Dressed as plague doctors, they continued traveling across the field, heading toward the walls of Gehenna.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Marco and Addy were only a kilometer from Gehenna, city of the grays, when the saucers rumbled and stormed across the sky.
"They saw us!" Addy said.
The saucers were rising from the city like flies from a disturbed carcass. They were countless. Thousand upon thousand roared forth, the sound pounding the world. Marco and Addy dropped down, covering themselves in their ashy cloaks. They were disguised as plague doctors. They still wore their masks. How had the grays seen them?
Lying facedown, Marco reached under his robe and clutched his rifle. He knew he couldn't face them all. But he could shoot himself. If he had to, could he shoot Addy too? He could not allow them to be captured, to be tortured. The saucers rumbled in a fury. The ground shook. He dared glance above him, and the sky was dark with the round, black machines.
"Poet!" Addy gripped his hand. "Look! What's that?"
She pointed. He stared.
The air was crackling. Blue fire filled the sky. Winds gusted, blowing back the smog and clouds. For the first time since landing on Black Earth, Marco saw the stars. And there, in the blackness, the blue flames coiled into a ring. Light shimmered. A portal opened.
The saucers began flying through the portal, vanishing into the light. Formation by formation. Thousand by thousand. The saucers were draining out from Black Earth and flying through the portal.
"Poet, are they flying to Earth?" Addy whispered. "I mean, to our Earth? Green Earth?"
"I don't know," he said. "And you don't have to whisper. Their engines are almost as loud as your snoring. Almost."
She gasped. "I do not snore!"
"Sure, and you don't kick me in your sleep either."
She snorted. "Be glad I don't drool in my sleep."
"You do! I nearly drowned last night."
They lay for a long while, watching the saucers drain from the city. Finally the portal closed, leaving only a handful of saucers over Gehenna. Marco and Addy stood up again.
"We're too late," Addy said, lowering her head. "We came here to kill the Oracle. To stop him from opening portals. Fuck!" She lifted a rock and hurled it. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. We're too late! Just a few hours too late! The city is right goddamn there, and we missed our chance."
She was right, Marco realized. They had come here to kill the Tick-Tock King, the oracle who lived in the pyramid, to stop him from opening the time portals. But now the saucers were flying to Green Earth. The battle must be raging there already—or had, a million years ago.
Despair filled Marco. He fell to his knees.
Too late. We failed. We let Earth fall.
"We're fucked, Poet." Addy grabbed him. "We're fucked! What the hell do we do now?"
He closed his eyes. His mind rumbled like the saucers.
Breathe.
He breathed through his gas mask.
Just be.
He sank into Deep Being.
His thoughts stormed above his consciousness like the eternal clouds of this world. He examined them. Anxieties. Plans forming and collapsing. Memories.
"We might still have a chance," he finally said. He opened his eyes and stared at Addy's beaked gas mask. "Lailani told us that the Tick-Tock King does more than open portals. That's the easy part. He does something far more complicated. He prevents or fixes paradoxes."
"So the fuck what?" Addy said.
"Addy, think about it," Marco said. "The guy just sent thousands of saucers a million years back in time. That's thousands of chances to create paradoxes. Fuck, one of those grays steps on a goddamn butterfly, it can ripple across time and destroy this city. The Tick-Tock King monitors it all, according to Lailani. He views the past through his crystals. If he senses a paradox looming, he nips it in the bud. If the paradox appears, he fixes it."
Addy groaned. "So?"
"So if we kill him, it's Paradox Central," Marco said.
Addy gasped. "You mean—tons of dead butterflies all over the place?"
"Well, something like that. It's dangerous changing the past. Changing the future—sure, no problem, we do that all the time. But change even something small in the past, you can fuck up your own timeline." Marco adjusted his gas mask. "We know that some humans survived this long, evolving into those cannibals we saw. Suppose one of those cannibals changed the course of gray history—say, organized a rebellion, or assassinated a gray prince, or bred with a gray to create—"
"Ooh, gray porn!" Addy's eyes lit up.
Marco rolled his eyes. "Yes, lovely. Anyway, the grays can't go back now and kill that cannibal's human ancestor. Or they'll be fucking up their own history. Paradox."
Addy frowned and scratched her chin. "But Poet. They're going to change their entire history. They're going to change everything. If the grays conquer Green Earth, they'll just go live there, right? Their whole history is rewritten. Their whole existence becomes a paradox."
Marco had to consider this. "You're right," he said tentatively. "Maybe
if the grays conquer Green Earth, all this—this nightmare we're in—vanishes. Maybe as it crumbles, all the grays who are still here—the civilians—quickly fly through the portal. This world falls apart, sucked into a paradox vortex. And the grays live happily ever after on Green Earth, far from the destruction. But that's conjecture. I just don't know. Even Professor Isaac struggled with this stuff."
"My brain hurts," Addy said.
"Mine too," Marco confessed. "Time travel is complicated and messy. It can tear apart spacetime and mend it in strange ways. The Tick-Tock King has it all worked out though. He's pulling the strings. Detecting paradoxes. Fixing holes in spacetime. Diverting the flow of time to suit his purposes. All this complicated shit? He controls it. All those saucers we saw flying back home? If we kill the Oracle, they're like bees without a queen."
"And if we kill him," Addy said, "maybe we'll create a paradox so huge it'll destroy not just Black Earth but Green Earth too. Fuck, it might just destroy the entire galaxy, past and present."
Marco inhaled deeply. "Maybe. But remember, Professor Isaac looked at this. He gave us the go-ahead. We're far enough in the future that even if we create a massive paradox, something truly astronomical, it'll tear through spacetime here, but Green Earth, a million years ago, will be okay."
"We might not be okay," Addy said softly. "If we create a paradox that destroys this place, we go down with it."
Marco nodded. He spoke softly. "We go down with it."
Addy sighed. "Well, fuck it. Who wants to grow old anyway, right? I'll die with a belly full of hot dogs, a head drunk with beer, and my best buddy by my side. Oh, and we'll go down saving the world. What more can a girl ask for, right?"
Marco nodded. His throat was tight. "If we go down, it's together. I can think of no better way to die." He tightened his lips and blinked rapidly. "Now come on, Ads. Let's get this over with. We've got a monster to kill."
They walked toward the city.
A wall surrounded Gehenna, towering and carved of dark stone. Upon it were engraved ancient curses, the letters the height of men. Guards stood atop the wall—gray soldiers in armor, holding electrical rods. The gatehouse loomed, shaped like the snarling maw of a beast. Grays guarded the gateway, black eyes peering through holes in their massive helmets.
Here goes nothing, Marco thought.
He and Addy walked toward the gatehouse, their gas masks' beaks thrusting out from their shadowy hoods. They were short for grays. But they had constructed platform heels for their boots, and they walked stooped to further mask their height. Their heads were too small too. But inside their hoods, they wore their spacesuit helmets, creating large, fake craniums. When Marco looked at Addy, he could see nothing but a tall, humpbacked figure, a plague doctor with a huge head. He had to peer closely to see the human eyes behind her gas mask lenses.
So long as we don't make eye contact, we're fine, he thought, struggling to control his fear. Trembling would not help.
They approached the gatehouse, shuffling, hunched over. The guards stared at them, blocking their passage. The grays spoke in their harsh language.
Marco gulped. Every instinct screamed to draw his rifle from under his robes, to slay these guards. But that would bring the wrath of the city upon him.
Instead, he coughed.
He shuffled forward, robes swishing, and coughed again.
The guards shouted something and stepped back.
Addy followed his lead. She too straggled forward, moving in lurching, twisting steps like Igor approaching Dr. Frankenstein. She too coughed. She reached up as if she would pull off her gas mask.
The guards were grumbling and muttering. Marco could imagine what they were saying: Damn morticians infected with rot!
One guard spoke to his comrades. They stepped aside. Marco and Addy walked between them, gas masks jangling, robes swishing.
Finally, after so many days in the badlands, they entered Gehenna.
We made it, Marco thought, breath rattling inside his beak. We're actually here. We're so close to the end.
A boulevard spread before them, paved with dark asphalt. Rows of arches rose along the avenue like ribs. Along the roadsides rose statues of deformed gods: women with a hundred bare breasts and demonic faces; nude men with serpents growing from their loins; pregnant females with opened bellies, revealing anguished fetuses; and leering grays with long tongues, hooves, and massive hearts that actually beat upon their stone chests, dripping blood. Beyond the statues spread the dark city, a hive of factories, towers, temples, and obelisks engraved with glyphs.
And there were grays here. Countless grays.
The creatures walked along the streets, some naked, others wearing armor. They sat in taverns, drinking blood from living snakes. They squealed in brothels. They blew horns in temples and bowed before their idols. As Marco and Addy walked along the boulevard, they gazed around with wide eyes, silent, staring, overwhelmed.
"It's ancient Egypt meets Vegas," Addy whispered. "And they elected Lucifer as mayor."
"That's one way to describe it," Marco whispered back. "Now hush. Let's make a beeline to the pyramid."
They kept walking down the boulevard, mimicking the shuffling gait of the grays. Their beaks and metal claws clanked. Thousands of grays moved around them. One wretched, wrinkled creature was feeding on a baby as he walked down the street, the blood dripping down his chin. Three grays stood in an alleyway, torturing what looked like a mutated cat, stoning the poor animal and laughing. Through the window of one shop, Marco saw an elderly gray, her breasts pendulous, cut into the chest of a living humanoid, pull out the organs, and add them to a pot. Other grays picked at the cauldron, feeding.
Marco's belly rumbled. He definitely didn't want to know where those sausages had come from.
Most of the grays here, however, were soldiers. Thousands of them filled the city, marching and drilling. They held electrical guns and spears. They wore burnished armor, and helmets hid their faces, leaving openings for only the soulless black eyes. Red and blue gems on their breastplates formed ankhs. Some of them rode flaming chariots pulled by mechanical horses. Others operated mechas shaped like scorpions, each machine the size of an elephant.
They haven't even sent everything to Earth yet, Marco thought. First they're tenderizing Green Earth with their saucers. Then the ground invasion will begin. He gritted his teeth. But we will stop them.
He looked up toward Golgoloth. The pyramid loomed ahead, shadowing the city. Several saucers still hovered above it, guardians of the temple. Marco wondered about the war on Green Earth. Was the battle still raging in some alternate timeline? Would the rest of this city soon board the last saucers and fly back to Green Earth, to enslave humanity, to claim Marco's home?
As Addy and he walked closer, Marco frowned. Two massive guardians stood outside the pyramid, arms raised, hands touching, forming an archway. The guardians stood taller than the obelisks and towers around them, as large as the smashed mechas. At first Marco thought them statues. But now he saw that they were moving, staring from side to side. Both guardians were humanoid, mummified, wrapped in shrouds. The wrappings seemed ancient, tattered, falling loose to reveal dry flesh. Even from here, still a couple of kilometers away, their stench hit Marco, infiltrating his gas mask.
"The fuck?" Addy said. "Giant mummies?"
"So it would seem," said Marco.
Addy cringed. "I was wrong. It's not Lucifer who's the mayor. It's Vincent Fucking Price."
Marco smiled thinly. "Our disguises have worked so far. The mummies might let us pass too."
"Might?" Addy said.
"If they don't, we take them down," Marco said. "We've got grenades and railguns under our robes, and we've fought big dudes before. But I'd rather sneak than fight. Come on, Ads. We're almost there. Let's get this over with."
They kept walking down the boulevard, passing under the archways and between the obelisks and statues, heading closer to the pyramid. On the way, they passed by a la
rge building lined with columns. From inside rose groans and grunts.
Marco peered between the columns. The building was a brothel, its halls exposed to the city, its sins on display. Inside, gray soldiers and monks were copulating with female grays, with squealing humanoids, with twisted animals. Some grays gathered around the brothel to watch. Even Addy, who had joked about the lurid parchments at the crematorium, grimaced and looked away.
"Hurry up, Poet," she whispered. "Let's get the hell past this place."
As they were rushing by the brothel, a scream pierced the air.
A human scream.
Marco paused and turned back toward the brothel.
Several grays were manhandling a human girl. Not one of the pale, mutated humanoids Marco had seen in the wilderness. A real human. A woman from back home. The grays must have kidnapped her like they had kidnapped Steve, had kidnapped so many others from Green Earth.
Marco stood, staring, clenching his fists. Fury rose in him. The grays dragged the human into the brothel, laughing, leering. Their claws tore at her clothes, exposing the nakedness. The woman screamed and wept, struggling to free herself, to cover her breasts. Her back was turned to Marco, but he saw flowing black hair, a slender frame. She was young and fair.
Addy stared, sneering. Then she looked away. She grabbed Marco's hand.
"We can't save her," she whispered. "We have to keep going. To the pyramid. We'll save her by destroying this entire fucking city."
But Marco stood frozen. Was Addy right? The grays were now dragging the human toward a bed. He knew what would happen next. How could he abandon the woman, leave her to be raped and brutalized? When her torment ended, would she be forced to bare a hybrid child, or would she be nailed into an ankh and tortured?
Maybe Addy is right, he thought. Maybe we have to sacrifice her to save the world. Ben-Ari would tell me that.
He was about to walk away, shame inside him, when the woman turned her head, and Marco saw her face.
His heart shattered.
His breath died.
He stared, barely comprehending, barely believing.
Earth Eternal (Earthrise Book 9) Page 20
