The Dark River

by John Twelve Hawks

  Gabriel stepped onto the top of the concrete wall and looked over at the next building. It’s too far, he thought. Much too far.

  The wolves raised their weapons and started toward him.

  27

  T wo of the Tabula mercenaries hiked up the slope to the helicopters and returned with a portable electric generator. The generator was placed near the storage hut and attached to a sodium light. Michael glanced upward. The thousands of stars visible in the night sky resembled little chips of ice. It was very cold now, and the moisture from everyone’s lungs left a faint haze in the air.

  Michael was disappointed that neither Gabriel nor his father was on the island, but the operation wasn’t a complete failure. Perhaps the team would find documents or information on a computer that would lead them to a more promising target. Word would get back to Mrs. Brewster that he had brought in the splicers and demanded an aggressive approach to searching the huts. The Brethren liked people who took charge.

  He sat down on a slab of limestone and watched Boone give orders to his men. When the backscatter device told them that the person inside the hut was neutralized, a man with an ax attacked the heavy oak door. Boone told the mercenary to stop working when he had chopped a jagged hole about two feet square. A moment later, one of the baboons peered out of the hole like a curious dog. Boone shot the animal in the head.

  The two remaining splicers inside the hut began calling to each other. They were clever enough to sense danger and stay away from the hole. The man with the ax resumed his work. Fifteen minutes later he had completely destroyed the door. Boone’s men moved cautiously, pushing away storage containers and raising their shotguns before edging inside. Michael heard more shrieks and then gunshots.

  One of Boone’s men had started a fire in the cooking hut and served mugs of tea to the others. Michael used the cup to warm his cold hands while he waited for more information. Ten minutes later, Boone walked out through the wrecked door. Boone was smiling and moving his body in a confident way, as if he had somehow regained his power. He accepted a cup of tea and strolled over to Michael.

  “Is the Harlequin dead?” Michael asked.

  “Maya wasn’t in the building. It was a young woman from Los Angeles named Victory From Sin Fraser.” Boone chuckled. “That name always amused me.”

  “And she was the only person in the building?”

  “Oh, someone else was there. Down in the cellar.” Boone hesitated for a few seconds, enjoying the tension in Michael’s face. “We just found your father. That is…your father’s body.”

  Michael took a flashlight from one of the mercenaries and followed Boone into the storage hut. The floor and walls were splattered with blood, still bright red and glistening. A plastic cloth covered the four dead splicers. A second cloth covered Victory Fraser, but Michael could see the scuffed soles of her shoes.

  They climbed down a staircase to a cellar with a gravel floor and passed through a door into a side room. Matthew Corrigan lay on a stone slab with a white muslin cloth over his legs. As Michael looked down at the body, images from the past overwhelmed him with an unexpected force. He remembered his father weeding the garden behind the farmhouse, driving the family’s battered pickup truck, and sharpening a carving knife for a Christmas turkey. He remembered his father chopping wood on a winter’s day, the snow clinging to his long brown hair as the blade of his ax rose up against the sky. Those childhood days were gone now. Gone forever. But the memories still had the power to move Michael—and that made him angry.

  “He’s not dead,” Boone explained. “I got the medical kit stethoscope and heard a heartbeat. This is how you look when you cross over to another world.”

  Michael resented Boone’s cocky smile and his insinuating tone of voice. “All right, you found him,” he said. “Now get out of here.”

  “For what reason?”

  “I don’t need a reason. If you want to keep your job, I would recommend you show some respect to a representative of the executive board. Go upstairs and leave me alone.”

  Boone’s mouth became a tight line, but he nodded and left the cellar. Michael could hear the other men walking around the storage hut and pushing boxes against the wall. Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he gazed down at Matthew Corrigan. When Michael was growing up in South Dakota, adults always said that Gabriel looked like their father. Although Matthew’s hair was gray and his face was deeply lined, Michael could now see the resemblance. He wondered if there was any truth to the rumor picked up by Tabula computers. Had Gabriel been on this island and had he discovered the body?

  “Can you hear me?” Michael asked his father. “Can…you…hear…me?”

  No response. He touched his father’s throat and pushed hard. For a second, he thought he felt the flutter of a pulse. If he got rid of the flashlight he could squeeze the throat with both hands. Even if your Light was traveling through another realm, your body could die in this world. No one would stop him from killing Matthew. No one would criticize his judgment. Mrs. Brewster would see his action as another demonstration of his loyalty to the cause.

  Michael placed the flashlight on the ledge in the wall and stepped closer to his father’s body. His breath appeared and then vanished in the cold air. In his entire life, he had never felt so completely focused on the moment. Do it, Michael thought. He ran away fifteen years ago. Now he can disappear forever.

  He reached out again and peeled back his father’s eyelid. A blue eye stared back at him with no spark of life in its dark pupil. Michael felt as if he were looking at a dead man—and that was the problem. In one world or another, he wanted to confront his father and force him to admit that he had abandoned his family. Destroying this empty shell meant nothing; it would never provide him with satisfaction.

  A memory flashed through his mind of a schoolyard fight back in South Dakota when he was a teenager. After Michael had punched and kicked his opponent, the other boy had fallen to the ground and covered his face with his hands. But that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t what he was looking for. He wanted complete surrender. Fear.

  He retrieved the flashlight and walked upstairs to the blood-covered room where Boone and two mercenaries were waiting. “Load the body into one of the helicopters,” Michael told them. “We’re taking him off this island.”

  28

  T he wolves waited until Gabriel stepped back onto the roof and then they grabbed him. His arms were forced behind his back, his wrists tied with a length of wire, and his eyes blindfolded with a torn shirt. When the Traveler could no longer defend himself, one of the wolves punched him in the throat. Gabriel fell onto the tar-paper roof and tried to roll up into a ball as the wolves began kicking him in the chest and stomach. He was blind and desperate, gasping for air.

  Someone swung a club at the base of his spine, and a wave of pain surged through every part of his body. Gabriel heard voices talking about the school. Take him to the school. Hands pulled him to his feet and dragged him down the marble staircase. Out on the street, he kept stumbling and tripping over chunks of rubble. He tried to remember where they were going. Left turn. Right turn. Stop. But the pain made it difficult to think. Finally, he was guided up another staircase and taken into a room with a smooth tile floor. The electric cord was untied and replaced with handcuffs. A shackle was fastened around his neck, and he was chained to a steel ring bolted into the floor.

  The Traveler’s body was sore, and he could feel dry blood on his face and hands. Images of the river, the shattered bridge, the gas flares burning among the ruined buildings overwhelmed his thoughts. After a while he fell into an uneasy sleep, waking up with a start when he heard the clang of the door swinging open. Hands pulled off his blindfold and he found himself looking at the black man wearing the white lab coat and the man with the braided blond hair. “You can’t get out of this building,” the blond man told him. “You got no life—unless we give it back to you.”

  As the wolves took off his shackles, Gabriel glanced
around the room. He saw a teacher’s desk and an old-fashioned blackboard. A cardboard alphabet had been fastened to the wall, but some of the faded green letters dangled upside down, held by one last remaining pin.

  “You’re coming with us,” the black man said. “The commissioner wants to meet you.”

  Holding Gabriel’s arms, the two wolves pulled him into the hallway. The three-story building had brick walls and small windows covered with shutters. During some stage of the endless fighting, the wolves had converted the school into a fort, dormitory, storage house, and prison. Who was the commissioner? Gabriel wondered. He had to be bigger and stronger and even more vicious than the men who swaggered down the hallway with clubs and knives hanging from their belts.

  They turned a corner, passed through some swinging doors, and stepped into a large room that had once been the school’s auditorium. Curving rows of wooden seats faced a stage. A steel pipe ran across the stage and fed gas into an L-shaped fixture that burned with a bright flame. Two benches were placed near the back wall; the wolves sat there like petitioners outside the door of a king.

  At the center of the stage was a large table stacked with manila folders and black ledger books. The man sitting behind the table wore a dark blue business suit, a white shirt, and a red bow tie. He was thin and bald and his face radiated self-righteousness. Even from a distance, Gabriel felt like this man knew all the regulations and he was prepared to enforce them in every possible way. There would be no negotiations or concessions. Everyone was guilty—and they would be punished.

  Gabriel’s two guards stopped halfway down the aisle and waited for the commissioner to conclude his interview with a large man who was holding a gunnysack wet with blood. One of the commissioner’s assistants counted the objects inside the sack and then whispered a number.

  “Very good.” The commissioner’s voice was strong and purposeful. “You may receive your food allocation.”

  The man with the sack left the stage as the commissioner entered a number in a black ledger. Ignoring the other petitioners, the two wolves led Gabriel up a ramp to the stage and forced him to sit on a wooden stool in front of the desk. The commissioner closed his ledger and looked up at this new problem.

  “Well, it’s our visitor from somewhere else. I’ve been told that your name is Gabriel. Is that accurate information?”

  Gabriel stayed silent until the blond man jabbed him in the back with a club.

  “That’s correct. And who are you?”

  “My predecessors were fond of grandiose and meaningless titles like major general or chief of staff. Indeed, one man called himself president for life. Of course, he lasted only five days. After much thought, I’ve chosen a more modest title. I’m the commissioner for patrols in this sector of the city.”

  Gabriel nodded, but stayed silent. The gas flare burning behind him made a hushing sound.

  “Visitors from the outside have appeared in the city, but you’re the first one I’ve encountered. So who are you and how did you get here?”

  “I’m just like everyone else,” Gabriel said. “I opened my eyes and found myself beside the river.”

  “I don’t believe that.” The commissioner of patrols got up from the desk. Gabriel saw that he had a revolver in his belt. He snapped his fingers and one of his assistants hurried over with a second stool. The commissioner sat down close to Gabriel, leaned forward, and whispered.

  “Some say that a divine power will rescue the final group of survivors. Of course, it’s in my interest to encourage such hopeful fantasies. But it’s my belief that we’ve been condemned to slaughter one another over and over again until the end of time. That means I’m here forever, unless I find a way out.”

  “Is this the only city in this world?”

  “Of course not. Before the sky darkened, you could see other islands farther down the river. But my assumption is that they were only other hells, perhaps with inhabitants from different cultures or different historical eras. But all the islands are the same—a place where souls are condemned to repeat this cycle forever.”

  “If you let me explore the Island, I could look for a passageway out.”

  “Yes, you’d like that. Wouldn’t you?” The commissioner stood up and snapped his fingers again. “Please bring the special chair.”

  One of the assistants ran away and returned with an old-fashioned wheelchair—an elaborate construction made of bentwood, a wicker seat, and rubber tires. The handcuffs were removed from Gabriel’s wrists. Using nylon rope and lengths of electric cord, the petitioners tied Gabriel’s arms and legs to the frame of the chair. The commissioner of patrols watched this process, occasionally telling his men to add a few extra knots.

  “You’re the leader here,” Gabriel said. “So why can’t you stop the killing?”

  “I can’t get rid of the anger and hatred. I can only channel it in various directions. I’ve survived because I’m able to define our enemies—the degenerate forms of life that must be exterminated. Right now, we’re hunting down the cockroaches that conceal themselves in the darkness.”

  The commissioner walked down the ramp. The blond man followed him, pushing Gabriel in the wheelchair. Once again, they passed down the school’s ground-floor hallway. The wolves waiting there lowered their heads slightly when the commissioner of patrols walked past them. If he saw some trace of disloyalty in their eyes, then they would immediately become his enemies.

  At the end of the hallway, the commissioner took a key out of his pocket and unlocked a black door. “Stay here,” he told the blond man, then pushed Gabriel through the open doorway.

  They were in a large room filled with rows of green metal file cabinets. A few of the drawers had been pulled out and the contents dumped on the floor. Gabriel looked down and saw school grades, test results, and teacher comments. Some of the files were stained with blood.

  “All these cabinets contain student files,” the commissioner explained. “There are no children on the Island, but when we woke up that first morning this was a real school. There was chalk for the blackboards, paper and pencils, and canned food in the student cafeteria. Little details like that increase the level of cruelty. We didn’t just destroy an imaginary city, but a real place with stoplights and ice-cream parlors.”

  “Is that why you brought me here?”

  The commissioner of patrols pushed Gabriel past the file cabinets. Two small gas flares were burning from wall pipes, but the light was almost overcome by the shadows in the room. “There’s a reason why I picked this school as my headquarters. All the stories about visitors are connected to this room. There’s something special about this particular location, but I haven’t been able to discover the secret.”

  They reached a central work area with tables, trays, and metal chairs. Gabriel was captive in the wheelchair, but he moved his head around, searching for the patch of infinite black space that would provide a passageway back to the Fourth Realm.

  “If visitors can travel to this world, then there has to be a way out. Where is it, Gabriel? You have to tell me.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s not an acceptable response. You need to listen to me clearly. At this point, I can see only two possibilities. You’re either my only hope for escape, or you’re a threat to my survival. I do not have the time, or the inclination, to guess which option is correct.” The commissioner drew his revolver and pointed it at Gabriel’s head. “There are three bullets in this gun—probably the last three bullets that exist on this island. Don’t make me waste one of them killing you.”

  29

  M aya was still carrying the snub-nosed revolver she had acquired back in New York. The weapon determined her choice of transportation. Avoiding airports, she used a rural bus, a ferryboat, and a train to travel from Ireland to London. She arrived at Victoria Station in the middle of the night without a clear idea of how to find Gabriel. Before he left Skellig Columba, he had promised to contact the Free Runners, so Maya decided t
o drop by Vine House on the South Bank. Perhaps Jugger and his friends would know if Gabriel was still in the city.

  She crossed the Thames and walked up Langley Lane toward Bonnington Square. The streets were empty at this late hour, but she could see the glow of televisions in darkened rooms. Maya passed some renovated terrace houses and a redbrick school built in the Victorian era that had been transformed into an upscale apartment building. In such surroundings, the Vine House looked like a shabby old man surrounded by well-dressed bankers and barristers.

  When Maya reached the six-foot-high stone wall that surrounded the garden at Vine House, she smelled a harsh odor that reminded her of a trash fire. The Harlequin stopped and peered around the corner of the house. No one was on the sidewalk or sitting in the little garden at the center of the square. The neighborhood seemed safe until she noticed two men sitting in a florist’s delivery van parked near the end of the block. Maya doubted that anyone had ordered a dozen red roses to be delivered at one o’clock in the morning.

  There was no entrance to the back garden from Langley Lane, so she grabbed the top of the stone wall and pulled herself over. The burning smell grew stronger, but she still couldn’t see a fire. Light came from a streetlamp and the new moon glowing in the western sky. As quietly as possible, she moved down the garden pathway to the back of the house, found the door unlocked, and eased it open.

  Smoke surged out of the open doorway and flowed around her like a flood of foul gray water. Maya stumbled backward, coughing and waving her hands. Vine House was on fire, and the eighteenth-century oak beams and floorboards gave off as much smoke as a coal pit burning underground.

  Where were the Free Runners? Had they fled the house or were they dead? Falling on her hands and knees, Maya crawled into the ground-floor hallway. A door on the left led to the empty kitchen. A door on the right opened to a bedroom with a single electric lamp that gave off a feeble point of light within the darkness.