Samuel thought it was a shadow, at first. Then, he realized that there was blood leaking from Henry’s nose. The technician unconsciously reached up, wiped at it, and looked down at his gleaming fingers.
“Huh. Don’t remember getting hit. Aiden must have gotten one in on me.”
Samuel felt Gorman’s eyes on him. He turned his head, and nodded.
Henry’s eyes opened wide as understanding shined in. “Oh, I see!” he said, still inspecting his finger tips. “It’s happening! I was wondering when it would be my turn! How exciting!” Then he looked up, the wonder left him, and his face grew pensive. “It’s too bad...I would really like to just sit on my butt and wait to be taken. But, that’s not why I’m here. I’ll get there either way, I suppose.”
Samuel knew that they were running out of time. He also knew there was no way all of them were going to make it out of that room, alive. The other four Council members had backed all the way up to the window, by now, and Councilman Gray specifically was hiding behind his contemporary, Will Spencer, gripping the somber-faced, larger man’s robes with white-knuckled hands. Councilwoman Kay had tears running down her cheeks. Councilwoman Warden was staring defiantly, but the sweat on her forehead revealed that she was fighting a battle against her own fear.
Samuel couldn’t help them. Against what he knew to be right, he mentally sacrificed them to their fate, and was glad that his father had had the good sense to stay close to the door with him. In those few seconds, he didn’t know if he was being cowardly, or being brave.
“Well,” Henry sighed. “I guess there’s no point in drawing this out.”
Samuel saw his eyes grow colder. Their time had run out.
Henry sprang into the room, raising the trigger high. Councilwoman Kay started screaming. Councilman Gray gripped his counterpart’s robe tighter, and added his voice to hers, letting loose his own, shrill shriek.
Samuel understood at once what Henry was trying to do. He was putting himself in the middle of them, trying to do the most damage he could. He could have tried to stop the suicidal man from entering the room...could have gone for the hand that was holding the trigger to try to save them all. But he just couldn’t see himself wrestling his former friend to the ground, and avoiding the detonation of the bomb at the same time. Henry’s thumb was hovering an inch above that horrible red button; there was no way Samuel could prevent him from pressing it.
And so, instead of meaningless heroics, he went the way of the survivalist, even as he cursed himself as a bastard for doing it. Samuel stepped out of Henry’s way, letting the technician bolt past him unimpeded. In the same movement, he reached out and grabbed a handful of his father’s robes...high, close to his neck.
Then, he pulled with everything he had, toward the still-open door, hoping with every fiber of himself that he was close enough to make it. His father stumbled after him...almost yanked off his feet. Samuel knew that it would be painful for the old man, but saving his life was the priority, not making him comfortable while he did it.
The only problem was his father’s ailing knee. Gorman hobbled along with him, unsteady...his unsure steps sending him careening forward, dangerously close to collapsing.
Come on, old man...don’t you dare fall down!
Samuel got his wish; somehow, Gorman kept moving his legs and stayed up, furiously using his crutch for support. Samuel used all of his concentration to get to the door with his father in tow. He used as much efficiency of movement as he could, fearing that at any second he would feel the heat of the explosion at his back and the concussion that would tear him apart.
Two steps to the door.
One.
He pivoted his body as the last moment, using his leverage to practically hurl his father out the door ahead of him. Gorman, already struggling to keep his balance from Samuel’s frantic pulling, now lost all equilibrium and went sailing through the open door, arms flailing and crutch clattering, and crashed to the floor outside the room. Samuel heard the air whoosh out of the older man’s lungs as his body roughly hit the floor. He winced, but recognized that being gentle also meant being slow, and right now slow would kill them both. Gorman could have all his breath knocked from his lungs, but as long as he was on the other side of the wall, there was a chance he would breathe again.
With his father out of immediate danger, he now thought of himself. He threw his body at the open portal, tensing up against the explosion that he was sure was coming for him.
As he was leaping out of the room, just before he cleared the door and dropped behind the wall, he used the smallest fraction of a second to look behind him into Gorman’s office. The vision he beheld burned itself into the folds of his mind, and he knew that, however short his life would be after that point, he would hate himself for what he saw...for what he couldn’t prevent.
Henry, standing in front of the desk, lifting the trigger higher, the tendons in the hand that held it pushing out against his skin as he closed his grip and brought his thumb down on the button. The four Council members before him, terror gripping them as they faced the certainty that their lives were coming to an end.
I’m sorry.
Henry pushed his button, and exploded.
A white light lit up the hallway, and a millisecond later the air became a solid thing and hammered the wall at his back. He didn’t remember being tossed into the air; he only remembered connecting with the opposite wall, bodily, and falling to the floor in a heap of battered skin, muscle, and bones, landing on his stomach. A fireball gushed out of the door through which they’d fled and it filled the hallway with its inferno, like a passage had opened to the molten core of the planet itself and emptied its contents inside the Dome. His back was blasted by the heat as it seared up his spine and over his shoulders, licking at his hair, tasting him. It flared down the hall in both directions, ravenous for more to feast on...oxygen to burn or meat to cook. Samuel pressed his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut against it, gaining whatever feeble protection he could from it.
The roar receded as quickly as it had come, but it had left his head ringing. He opened his eyes, noting his ability to do so as a good sign that he wasn’t dead yet, and tried to get his bearings. When his vision came into focus, it looked like he was in a different place.
He may have been in the same hallway, curled up on the floor in a body that felt like it was made of jelly, but everything around him had been transformed. The walls were a giant scorch-mark, and he could hear fires crackling all around him. His back still felt like it was on fire—every nerve ending was screaming. In addition, being tossed around and baked by the explosion had been the worst thing in the world for his migraine; it was now coming back at him with full force, like some over-enthusiastic person was striking a gong inside his head, again and again.
Samuel fought his way up from the agony and chaos in his head, and through the difficulty of focusing his eyesight. He struggled with the arduous task of looking around, a simple movement that he would never take for granted, again. Fresh waves of pain crackled through his neck and his back.
The crumpled, face-down form of his father was laid out before him, an arm’s-length away. He wasn’t moving.
Samuel felt a new sense of urgency at the sight of Gorman’s still form. He found the strength and the pain tolerance to get up to his hands and knees, and shuffle forward until he could reach the man. He grasped his father’s shoulder and turned him over, fearing the worst.
Gorman’s face wore the same soot as the walls. There was a gash on his cheek—probably gained from Samuel’s desperate shove out the door—but other than that he appeared unhurt...merely unconscious. His chest was still rising and falling. Samuel felt a sudden urge to give thanks for this, even though he didn’t know who to thank. But it seemed that it couldn’t do any harm, so he uttered his gratitude anyway, just in case it counted for something.
He got to his feet, trying to ignore the knives in his legs, and took a look at where the doo
r to Gorman’s office used to be. The force of the explosion had ripped the door itself free, and deposited it in a ruined, twisted heap against the opposite wall. The opening was certainly no longer door-shaped, having yielded to the sheer force of the blast. It looked more oval, now. The walls bowed outward, but hadn’t completely given way. The fact that they’d held was the reason he was alive.
He gingerly made his way to the door, not really knowing why. Maybe it was misplaced hope, or maybe morbid curiosity. Whatever it was, whatever impulse caused him to look inside the office, he abandoned it immediately when he saw what the bomb had done to the interior of the room.
The window had been no match for it whatsoever, and was completely blown away. A stiff breeze was now blowing in, feeding the still-smoldering fires on the walls and the floor. The sparse furniture was unrecognizable as such, having been decimated by the blast and thrown into every corner of the room. He searched the wreckage for any signs of life, in case a miracle had occurred and anyone had survived. It took less than a second, when he saw the gory remains, scattered about and only barely discernible as human, to confirm that there were no survivors. Only he and his father had cheated death.
There was a rustle of movement at his back. He turned around, and saw that his father was struggling to his feet, with what appeared to be monumental effort. Samuel rushed to his side and helped him stand, looking him over in concern.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gorman replied, gritting his teeth. “Although not so much that I can’t stand up. What about the others? Did they...?”
He trailed off. His voice was only barely hopeful. His eyes were not.
Samuel didn’t say anything, couldn’t make himself use the only words that could answer his father’s question. He could only shake his head.
The anguish in Gorman’s face was virulent. Samuel felt it in himself also, amplified in the way that pain could be when seen through a loved one.
“Father,” he said, his voice choking, “I...I’m so sorry. Henry...he...I had no idea....”
“Stop it, Sam. I told you, don’t go taking responsibility for the actions of another. You weren’t the one who pushed that button. That man worked with you for years. If you didn’t see it coming, then he was a master at his craft. It wasn’t just you he fooled. It was all of us. If you’re at fault, then so am I.”
Samuel nodded weakly, even though he felt it was a lie.
“At least we know who our saboteur was,” Gorman continued, darkly. “The world will be better, having rid itself of him. As for the others....” He trailed off and hung his head.
Samuel’s thoughts were coalescing. An alarm went off in his head. It came back to him in a flash.
Kelly!
“We can’t do any good here,” he said. “We have to get downstairs to help keep Tristan away from the gate controls.”
“Quite right,” Gorman said with determination. “Mourning the dead is an activity of convenience. Tomorrow I will curse myself for not preventing this barbarity; today, we have to do our best to prevent more from happening. Let’s go.”
They shambled away, arms around one another, holding each other up. His father’s words were motivating, but as they limped along Samuel could feel the fatigue in Gorman’s body, the toll of loss on his face. Samuel afforded himself one last glace at the ruins behind him, feeling like he’d left his soul in that room. He thought of the Henry Goodwin that he’d come to know before his real self had been revealed...the jovial, joking man that had been his friend. He grieved for that man, regardless of how real he had or had not been.
* * *
Chapter 41 – Ejelano
Ejelano woke up to the sounds of the voice, screaming at him.
HEY! WAKE THE FUCK UP! COME ON, MAN...START YOUR ENGINES! WE’RE LOSING TIME! YOU DON’T GET TO TAKE A NAP RIGHT NOW, DAMN IT!
He struggled to his feet, blinking away the haze.
“How...how long was I out?”
TOO LONG! LOOK AT THE HORIZON!
He did. At first he didn’t see it, but the more he concentrated, the more aware of it he was. Where the steel-gray of the sky met the sickly charcoal of the land, there it was, a light band defining a dreadful, encircling border...the wall of a prison that was steadily shrinking around him, from all directions at once. Ever-hungry. Ever-eating.
The White was coming.
“How long until it gets here?” he asked. His forehead was slick and cool with dread.
AN HOUR. MAYBE. YOU WANT TO SIT AND TALK ABOUT IT FOR A WHILE?
He walked forward with a fresh sense of necessity, until he could reach out and touch the smooth metal of the massive door. He sensed the strength in the structure, and it gave him an uncommon feeling of doubt.
Ejelano had been given considerable power by the spirit, but even he had his limits. His real strength had always been in the use of his messengers, the ones he could call from the sky. They were excellent at penetrating most anything that his prey chose to hide behind, and once inside, they metamorphosed into the real instruments of his power. They were extensions of himself in almost every way. He saw what they saw, heard and felt what they did.
He had a measure of control over them, but only so long as there were prey to hunt. His punishment, after all, was to keep killing until there were none left. The messengers acted as his hands, and so when they were splashed with crimson, so were his. He had been given the most efficient way to kill, while preserving the killing’s personal aspect...the face-to-face. The spirit had told him before that making him witness each death was completely by design. He had to look into the eyes of every single man, woman, and child that he cut down, and watch as the life left them.
But, without the kill, the messengers were just mindless drones, and by no means could he call them his allies. After every hunt, no matter how much he might exert his will over them, he would invariably lose control as their murderous frenzy lost its outlet and built up in the empty vessels that served as their minds, eventually overriding his commands. Once unshackled from his bidding, they would swarm him, turn on him...the only thing left to kill...and he would have to dispose of them with his hands and his teeth.
Their singular nature rendered them unsuitable for higher-minded, collaborative tasks, such as tearing down gates set into the impregnable walls of fortresses. To summon them outside the wall, with no access to the interior, would be useless. He wouldn’t be their master...he’d be their enemy.
Yet, they were aerial creatures in their primary state and so, historically, most walls had been no issue for them. Ejelano sensed the crackling, electric shield that hovered over the base.
It was time to test its resilience.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, as he’d done innumerably through the illimitable well of time he’d endured. He thought of war. He thought of famine and pestilence, of loss and regret. He thought of disorder, of the blinking out of every star and the silence of the void. He thought of all these things and more, and above him, in the black miasma that was his eons-long companion, something began to stir. To take shape. To seethe.
Hundreds of his messengers, the crows, descended out of the black mass that tethered itself to him, their eyes swallowing light and their beaks open and screeching. They could sense blood, and needed no encouragement to go forth, spill it upon the ground, and bathe in it until they were drenched in it. For them, obstacles were only a temporary aggravation.
They dove, falling upon the Spire like dark angels. They came like a patch of the darkest night. They called for death.
The cloud of demonic birds clashed against the shield. A flurry of flashing sparks arched upward like ground-based bolts of lightning, rendering the mid-day sky even more brilliant. The air came alive with discharging voltage...Ejelano could feel it on his skin and through every quivering hair on his body.
The crows may have been supernatural in origin, but they were still flesh and blood, and thereby affected by physical things
just as any other earthly creature would be. And so, when they passed through the buzzing plane of the shield...when the megawatts of electrical energy charged through their bodies...they were instantly destroyed. The nauseating stench of cooking meat and feathers filled the nostrils of anyone still outside the Dome, as the legion of messengers fell to the stalwart power of the crackling protector.
Connected to them as he was, Ejelano felt what they felt. Their nerves were his nerves. Consequently, the full brunt of the shield filled his body just as it did theirs. He collapsed to the ground and writhed about, twitching and shrieking, finding no escape from the agony that bolted through every fiber, every cell of his unearthly body.
As each crow perished and its physical form was dispatched, its essence was free to return to the shapeless, liquid blackness above, ready to be reincarnated for equally black deeds at the whim of its master. After the last one was disposed of, Ejelano’s misery mercifully ended, and he was left prostrate on the ground, panting for breath.
WHOA. THAT’S NEW.
The shield...it’s too strong...I can’t get through it. And there’s no way I’m getting through that gate by myself. Isn’t there anything you can do?
OKAY, FIRST OF ALL I DON’T LIKE YOUR NEGATIVE-NANCY ATTITUDE. YOU’LL NEVER GET ANYWHERE IN THIS WORLD THINKING LIKE THAT.
SECOND...NO, I CAN’T DO ANYTHING MORE. I’M ALREADY RED-LINING ON THE POWER I’M GIVING YOU; ANY MORE AND I’D RISK FRYING YOUR BRAIN.
THIRD, DON’T GIVE UP JUST YET. I HAVE A BIT OF AN ACE UP MY SLEEVE.
A what?
AN ACE. UP MY—IT’S AN EXPRESSION. Y’KNOW, THE CARD GAME? OKAY, YOU KNOW WHAT? FORGET IT. NOT IMPORTANT. WHAT I MEAN IS THAT I’VE GOT A GUY WORKING FOR US ON THE INSIDE. I’VE HAD HIM MARINATING FOR QUITE SOME TIME, ACTUALLY. STARTED WITH HIS DAD. HE’S TOTALLY ON OUR TEAM. HE’S THE BACK-UP PLAN.
The Footsteps of Cain Page 30
