Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

  The slam of a truck door, once, twice…

  Two shapes moving toward the Mustang, walking back across the blacktop, tall dark shapes that scraped the sky…

  Jason fumbling for cover, wallowing on the scorching asphalt…

  One of the shapes lifting a long thin stick that cracked and spat fire, and pain…

  Jason wiped blood from his eye in time to see the gun aimed at him from a stone’s throw away, and he felt the hammer blow in his shoulder that knocked him flat again until he realized he was lying on his shotgun, yeah, that’s what was giving his back so much grief. He brought it out front and chambered a shell in the same motion, aimed with a guess and a prayer, and let it roar. The recoil sent him back with as much force as had the rifle bullet, and his last conscious thought was that he’d seen one of them, the bastard who’d shot him, go flopping back limp, and that he’d at least gone down fighting.

  Tomahawk staggered out on his side in time to see the exchange of fire between Jason and the other two, watched the blast from Jason’s shotgun lift one off his feet and pepper the other one with a few stray pellets. The man seemed to lose his nerve for a moment, going white beneath red stubble that covered both his head and his cheeks, wiping at the blood that had splashed him.

  Tomahawk stopped for a moment, staring him down with the eyes of an eagle. The M16 was in the wreckage of the car, but Tomahawk decided he’d leave it there. Now it was one on one, and the purer of the two souls would win. He felt steady as a rock, a walking mountain, and as he moved forward, his eyes ablaze with fury, he unsnapped the leather sheath tied to his belt.

  The last raider lifted his arm, trembling, and extended a revolver. He thumbed back the hammer, the cylinder turning into place with an ominous click.

  No fear, no slowing. Instead, Tomahawk quickened his pace as he closed the distance, staring without quailing into the face of what might’ve been his death, in the proper hands, but not those hands. He didn’t flinch when one finger tensed over the trigger and pulled, and when he felt a scalding flame trace the edge of his cheek he knew the moment was his, even before the man jerked the trigger a second time and the hammer dropped on an empty shell.

  The man accepted death without dignity, turning to run and bleating like a sheep as Tomahawk reached to his belt and withdrew the balanced stone ax. He held it high for one long moment, twisting his fingers into the redheaded man’s shirt collar, and then whipping it down to lop off a crude chunk of scalp and skull. The man uttered one last guttural cry and fell without grace into a heap, arms and legs spasming one moment, still the next.

  And Tomahawk, the victor, stood still and silent under a huge blue Texas sky, Route 6 stretching before and behind him, low stone bluffs framing him as pillars had once framed Samson…and he recalled this place from before, many months ago. Helping out an ex-army sergeant with a broken-down truck.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said quietly to the warm corpses he stood over. “Now I remember.”

  He turned, sheathing the tomahawk after wiping the grisly residue onto one of the dead men’s shirts. He hurried back to Jason, who lay unconscious beside what remained of his car, blood soaking his thigh, his shoulder.

  Even through the beard and long hair, Tomahawk could see that this kid was no killer at heart…just a guy with a conscience who had it in him to rise to the occasion without thinking of the cost. The decency was still there, alongside the wrath, and the spirit that knew the difference.

  Orenda.

  In no way would he allow this man to die, so long as he still breathed.

  He fished the first aid kit from the jumbled trash inside the Mustang and patched him up the best he could, tightly wrapping the wounds with thick bandages to staunch the blood. Then he crawled halfway through the car’s window and grabbed for the CB microphone. No guarantees that the Highway King or any of the others would hear him, but…

  The CB was just so much useless junk, pulverized during their rollover and now attached to the car by no more than a single wire.

  “On our own now,” he said to the unconscious Jason, squatting between him and the car for a moment. For the first time he felt the blood running down his own face, droplets staining his shirt. He laid a gentle hand on Jason’s bad shoulder, the left. “But now I think I remember.”

  Tomahawk searched the interior of the car, going over it as quickly as he could, grabbing the guns and slinging them around his neck. The first aid kit he stuck in the waistband of his jeans; they didn’t fit as snugly as they used to. Anything else? A wineskin filled with water, an unopened can of Spam.

  There was only one more thing he could carry.

  Tomahawk stooped and bore Jason in his arms, heaving and wobbling under the hundred and forty-five pounds, the least Jason had weighed since he was fifteen years old. Tomahawk straightened up, tossing his hair back from his face, and the weight didn’t seem so bad anymore.

  Pointing himself in the general direction of the lowering sun, he began to walk.

  The road sometimes set before a man was anything but fair, but that didn’t mean it shouldn’t be traveled. If he was lucky enough to finish the trip, then he could know that he beat the test. And if he wasn’t, he could at least know he’d done his best.

  Tomahawk didn’t look back.

  FIFTH EPOCH

  SOJOURN

  August 1988

  1

  Erika was back on caca patrol, as it had come to be known among the Brannigan’s clan: the most distasteful of all duties, the daily emptying of the five chemical toilets…sliding out the bottom reservoirs, capping them, and hauling them out to the parking garage. They were then driven a block away and the blue liquid was dumped into a sewer opening. The reservoirs were then taken to be washed.

  “Thursday,” said Colleen, the other of the Chosen Two for this week. They were halfway across the bridge to the parking garage, the reservoirs sloshing on a wheeled cart, like a hotel luggage trolley, that had come from women’s wear. “Three more days of this shit.”

  “Keeps us humble,” Erika said.

  “As if we need that.”

  Erika nodded, said no more. She felt civil enough, but wasn’t in the mood for small talk, and if Colleen was anything, she was perceptive. Colleen didn’t press.

  Six weeks, Erika thought as the Jeep spiraled down the ramps to street level. Nothing for six weeks.

  The month and a half since the Plague Day celebration had felt like the longest stretch of time since Jason had left. For the first time, Jay wasn’t always first in line among her thoughts upon awakening in the mornings. Peter Solomon was beating him to it about three days a week.

  It’s wrong, I shouldn’t think of him and wonder what he’s like, it’s wrong, more than wrong, it’s BAD. Yet there he was, etched into vivid memory and bursting with dark promises and arcane secrets. But I can’t help it. So I’m sorry, Jay, I’m so so sorry. I can’t help what I think.

  No doubt she’d betrayed that wonder to him the day they’d come to Brannigan’s. Why else would he stare up at her the next night while making love (no, love had no part in that) to another woman? And that taunting grin on his face, as if the woman on the field were merely a substitute. Hadn’t her hair been the same color, in thinking back? And the same length?

  It’s me he wants, she thought as she and Colleen pulled out onto the street. And God help me, a part of me wants him. Because I think he may be like me in ways no one else is. So he wouldn’t want me in spite of what I am, like Jason…it’s because of what I am.

  Six weeks of nothing after that night. Probably the worst torment of all, the not knowing, the constant expectation of something to happen. Because Peter Solomon was not the type to let something be idly forgotten.

  During this time Erika had at least had the self-awareness to realize that history was repeating itself. She was finding herself in the midst
of an attraction based on all the wrong foundations. Only this time the stakes were infinitely higher. It didn’t stop at her emotions, her body, her dignity. Her life and the lives of everyone else might be part of the bargain.

  I’ve got to leave here, she thought. Please, Jay, please come through for us. Because he was the reality. The rest were just daydreams and nightmares. Please.

  Colleen had stopped the Jeep beside the sewer grate before Erika spoke again. “How much more waiting do you think Jack and Rich are willing to do?”

  Colleen gave her a funny look, as if she needed Erika to explain herself further.

  “They can’t wait for Jason forever. Someday they’re going to decide enough time has passed, and it’s time to try something else. Start out without anyplace in mind, maybe, but just go.”

  Colleen wrinkled her nose. “They’re not that heartless. They wouldn’t just turn their backs on him.”

  “But what would you do eventually? If he never shows up again?”

  They got out of the Jeep and started lugging the reservoirs over to the grate.

  “We should’ve set a time limit,” Erika went on. “Every four months, every six months, every whatever, he comes back. ‘Hey guys, sorry, I haven’t found anything yet, but don’t give up, I’ll go back out and keep looking.’ That way we’d know. But we didn’t even think to do it that way. How stupid could we be? Something could happen to him and we’d never know.”

  Colleen didn’t touch this one. “Anyway, what’s the rush these days? Those people haven’t bothered us for a month and a half.”

  Erika shook her head, wiped sweat from her brow with the top of her forearm. “It never lasts. And it gets worse every time.” And they’re slowly wearing some of us down in other ways.

  Colleen didn’t answer, just set the last of the toilet reservoirs down and began uncapping them. Bent over, she looked up at Erika with a mixture of empathy and dread in her eyes. A thick, humid August wind blew over them, bearing the dust and debris of a dead city.

  “Sometimes I miss him so bad it’s a physical ache,” Erika said. “And sometimes it feels like he was just a nice dream I once had.”

  Colleen stepped forward, hugging her close. Erika clung tightly for several moments, not knowing what it was about Colleen that kicked her courage up a notch. Faith, naiveté, whatever it was, she wished she had a little more within herself.

  But some people see too much, she knew. And it never leaves them.

  They stepped apart and began emptying the reservoirs into the sewer grate. Blue waste glugged and splashed a few feet below.

  Though they seemed to come from all around, Erika wasn’t even aware of them until she heard the scuff of footsteps. She looked up and froze. Four of them in all, they came from around the edge of the corner building…out a shop doorway…from a car that had always looked deserted. They closed in, knowing they had the upper hand, arrogant and so damnably sure of themselves, and she knew that her routine with Colleen must’ve been too predictable these past few days.

  The broken-nosed man, Lucas, rushed in beside a balding, spectacled man who was fussing with a zippered vinyl pouch. Erika dropped an empty reservoir to the pavement, ready to sprint the few yards back to the Jeep. But Lucas had her by the wrist by then, and the bald man pulled something from his pouch, something cylindrical and clear, and he’d slipped it into the crook of her arm before she even had a chance to pull away. A prick of pain speared through skin and vein.

  drugging me

  Erika whirled, hair whipping across her face, and bounced her small fist across the face of the man who’d injected her. Several feet away she saw one of them recoil in disgust as Colleen splashed him with one of the reservoir’s contents. He sputtered blue swill from his mouth and lost his lunch down the front of his shirt, then followed it to the street when she swung the half-full container against the side of his head.

  “GO!” Erika shouted, but Colleen stood her ground, reluctant to abandon her.

  The other three men had their hands full restraining her. She felt herself fading, but realized they seemed a lot more interested in her than Colleen.

  “JUST GO!” she shouted again, clawing for a few more seconds, for a little more time to keep them occupied, and it was enough. Colleen ran for the Jeep, calling out that they’d get her back, they’d get her back, and screeched away in reverse.

  A warble of sounds clogged Erika’s ears, as her head lolled on her neck. The feeling was leaving her fingers, her hands, her feet. Her sight blurred out of focus, then the street began to tilt beneath her.

  * *

  Whatever they’d pumped into her arm had left Erika’s head throbbing like a rotten tooth. Her throat was dry and sore from sleeping it off with her mouth open.

  She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth as awareness returned from a vertical climb. Her wrists, ankles…she was tied to a bed with nylon rope. Then she realized that, except for a towel tossed over her hips, she was naked from the waist down. Her headache was joined by a sinking, queasy stomach.

  This had to be a room in the Omni. The passage of time was as blurry as her eyesight, but from the looks of the sunlight at the window, moving past the mauve curtain, she guessed it to be late afternoon.

  Besides her head, her left arm ached where they’d injected her. The least of her worries. The rest would be clarified soon enough.

  Did they rape me while I was out? she wondered. She concentrated on herself down below, dreading the first sensation she might feel, telltale warmth or wetness or aches they might have left behind. And she felt none of it. No…I don’t think they did. Thank God for small favors.

  Even if the future held no guarantees.

  Erika sensed him before she heard his footsteps out in the hall. She felt it in the air, in instincts running to her core, understood it the way a dog hears the inaudible and knows if it’s family or foe. Him. And she tensed.

  The door opened and Peter Solomon shut it behind him. Nobody to precede him, no one to prepare the way. And there he stood, a small nylon bag hanging from one hand. It could’ve held heaven or hell.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” she heard herself saying.

  He smiled and his radiant blue eyes crawled over her in a way that was sexual and was then again something more. It transcended the physical. In her present state, any man could force a meshing of their bodies. But this fellow could manage so much more.

  This man could rape her soul.

  Free will was gone, choice no longer hers. She was Solomon’s, as surely as she’d long ago wished that Jason would grab her and save her all the worry and deliberation. The feeling of submission wasn’t nearly as debasing as she’d thought it might be. It was a relief, in a way.

  Solomon set the nylon bag atop a glass-topped table. He dragged a fat-armed chair over beside the bed and sat down. “Sorry about the arm,” he said. “We figured it was best, keep people from getting hurt. Not that it worked. Poor Perry Denton. Remember him from down in the street, the one with the hypo? You broke his nose. And the one who took the shitbox to the head…the less about him, the better.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Solomon laughed. “Vindictive and dangerous. That’s an endearing combination. But I digress.” He leaned forward and tapped her on one breast. His touch was cold, so very cold. Not in temperature, but his essence as a whole. There was nothing for her in that touch, nothing given of himself. He took, and that was all. All for himself.

  “We should get closer, you and I,” he said.

  And next he fucks me. Okay, just go on and get it over with. Erika squeezed her eyes shut, felt the tight nylon ropes bite dully into her. She tried to shut her mind off, blank it out. See nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, think nothing.

  But then he surprised her by pulling back into the chair. She slowly reopened her eyes, saw him steepling his
fingers.

  “Who do you think I am?” He stared quizzically at her. “Come on, ten points. Who am I?”

  What was this, a trick question? “Umm…Peter Solomon?”

  He sighed and twisted his mouth to one side, rolled his eyes. “Incomplete, no points.” He frowned a moment, staring askance and drumming his fingertips on the chair arm. Then he met her gaze again. “I’m Alexander the Great. I’m Napoleon. I’m Genghis Khan and King Saul and Vlad the Impaler and Irwin Rommel.” He paused a beat to let it sink in. “I’m the distillation of all those masterminds. They’re all up here.” He tapped his head and winked.

  Erika watched and listened incredulously as, before her eyes, fantasy and reality blew apart in opposite directions.

  Dear God, help me out of this. He’s completely insane.

  Her head, in spite of everything, felt clearer than it had in weeks. That hesitant attraction to this man—those fantasies about how they might’ve been much the same under the skull—had been a product of the old Erika, the one she’d left behind in Spanish Lake. The Erika who could’ve qualified as a case study in Smart Women, Foolish Choices. She thought she’d gotten beyond that, but apparently she’d had a relapse. True, Solomon was attractive in a forbidden sort of way. Dangerous. Thrilling.

  And utterly bugnuts, to boot, now that she could truly see him close up. He hid it well, and made it work for him. He may have even possessed a certain kind of genius. But no one thinks himself saner than a madman.

  “It’s a heavy burden to carry sometimes,” he said, “but I’ve always been up to it. And I don’t often find someone I feel like confiding that to. So consider yourself a very honored person.”

  Sure, lucky me. “But why me? I don’t understand that.”