Against the Eldest Flame (Doc Vandal Adventures Book 1)

by Dave Robinson

  “Seems? Don’t you know?”

  Kehla stopped, and pointed at the nearest building. They were in another alleyway between the green stone buildings. Most were featureless walls, but there were a few narrow doors and low wide windows with volcanic glass. Nothing was proportioned for gorillas. Everything was made for people who were both thinner and shorter. Kehla’s eyes were level with the tops of the windows, and most of the males would have to stoop to look.

  “We didn’t build this,” she said. “The city was here long before we learned to talk.”

  She looked like she was about to explain more, but shouts from the next street caught her attention.

  “Not now,” Kehla hissed, pushing Doc towards one of the doors.

  In a matter of moments they were inside, and Kehla had slipped a bar across the door. They were only just in time, as the voices grew louder outside. Doc raised a finger to his lips for quiet, then grinned as he met Kehla’s eyes because she was doing exactly the same thing.

  The humor lasted only a moment, before he pushed himself against the wall behind the door, doing his best to stay out of sight of the windows. As the voices got louder, the burning in his left arm began to pulse in a slow rhythm. Taking a deep breath, Doc tried to calm his mind, forcing himself not to move.

  Open the door…. A thought crawled up from his wrist. Open the door and return to me… You cannot resist… I will have you…. Slipping down to just above a trance, Doc entered a self-hypnotic state where he could envision his body from the outside.

  From that state he could see the energy crawling through his arm, attempting to make his fingers flex, but doing no more than making his pinky twitch. Go out… Surrender to me…. The silent voice grew louder in his head, but even as its exhortations grew stronger the attempts to move his hand grew weaker. As he exercised more control over his breathing, the voice began to fade away.

  Keeping the mental barrier in place, he moved his attention outward, away from his body. A band of carvings along the wall caught his eye. The style reminded Doc of nothing so much as Egyptian tomb paintings, but with dinosaurs like the ones that had captured them earlier instead of humans. Like the Egyptians, the depictions showed various individuals performing normal activities of their daily lives, hunting, herding, farming, fishing with nets.

  As he scanned the wall one particular scene drew his attention. A small group of dinosaurs were gathered around a fire, no a flame, floating in mid-air. Most had shields, or double-bladed spears; to Doc’s eye they looked almost like they were herding or guarding the flame. The one exception was the largest; it stood apart from the others, marked by a headdress, and instead of a weapon, it had a net that seemed to come from an amulet it held in one hand.

  By this point, the voices outside had become loud enough that Doc could make out the odd word, drawing him back from his examination of the carvings. It was a mixture of English and German, and the walls were doing a good enough job of deadening the sound that he couldn’t make out all the details, but it seemed they were looking for him, not his companions.

  As best he could tell, there were two schools of thought. One group wanted to keep searching, while the others argued it was only a matter of time before the taint grew strong enough to draw him back to the Eldest Flame.

  After a few minutes the group moved off and Doc gave a sigh of relief. Whatever the Flame had slipped inside him was self-contained. It couldn’t communicate with anyone else. It was another half hour before Kehla unlatched the door and led him back outside.

  “Let’s go, we have a safe house.”

  Doc nodded and followed his new allies into the depths of the alien city.

  #

  Vic pushed back her empty bowl of gruel and belched softly. Sucking her fingers clean she caught a little of the taste, reminding her more of thin glue than real food. Her grandmother wouldn’t have approved, but Vic had much preferred eating with her fingers to the funnel their guards had used on Gus. At least they had been fed; bad food was better than no food. The sound of scraping wood caught her attention, and she looked up to see a squad of guards come through the outer door into the corridor between the cells. Gorillas marching still looked strange, but at least they weren’t goose-stepping. Half the squad pointed their rifles at the cells as the remainder paired off and went to the doors; one with the key, the other with a truncheon.

  “Stand away from the door,” the one with the truncheon growled, smacking it menacingly into his palm.

  Seeing the rifle barrels staring at her, Vic followed instructions.

  After unlocking the door, the gorilla put the key away and then both of them entered her cell. They moved around behind Vic and clamped their massive hands around her arms; before lifting her off her feet and carrying her out of the cell. It was all she could do not to gasp as her feet left the ground.

  The two gorillas handled her effortlessly, carrying her out through the wide cell door as if she was weightless. Vic thought about struggling, but the moment she tensed she realized she had no traction, making her absolutely helpless even if she were as strong as Gus. The gorillas carrying her didn’t say anything; they just squeezed a little tighter.

  Vic gasped at the pain.

  “Stop it,” the one to her right ordered. “Show goes on even if we break your arms.”

  Fighting the urge to spit in his face, Vic forced herself to calm down. She took a deep breath, then slowly looked around, trying not to twist too much. Just ahead, she could see two more guards with Gilly dangling between them. He looked like crap, not that he had had much of a chance to recover from the plane crash. Still, he had the energy to turn around to face her for just a moment and grin at her.

  It wasn’t much, but it made her feel better to know he was still up for the fight.

  As for Gus, they were taking him much more seriously than a couple of humans. His chains were hung over a crossbar with a dull clank, and then locked into place. Nobody held him, instead the guards were pulling him along with iron bars that hooked into the end of the crossbar. The look in his eye was enough to make Vic forget her own pain.

  The guards marched down a flagstoned hallway, Gus dragging along behind. It was huge, at least fifteen feet high and wide, made from the same green stone as the buildings outside. A small breeze carried the unmistakable scent of unwashed gorillas. A set of iron-bound wooden double doors marked the end of the hall, locked with a three-inch-thick bar of cold iron.

  Two guards separated from the rest and went to the ends of the bar, while others leveled their weapons. Vic found herself dropped unceremoniously in front of the door, barely keeping her feet. Gilly landed beside her a moment later.

  The two guards lifted the bar free with effort, then stepped out of the way. Another pushed the door open, its hinges creaking as it moved.

  “In you go!” A heavy hand in the small of her back pushed Vic forward and she stumbled into the darkness. Gilly stumbled beside her while Gus followed behind, dragging his chains like some hairy Jacob Marley.

  Something flew through the closing door, clinking off the flagstones in front of Vic. “There’s the key if you want it.”

  Behind the closed door the bar thudded into place with an air of finality. They were in a large room, dimly lit through the gaps in a portcullis at the far end. Faint rustling sounds and low breathing told Vic they were not alone. There were gorillas in the darkness; some sitting like shadows against the wall, others moving in the shadows behind the door. The scene reminded her of the first time she suited up for field hockey, the lone Russian girl in an English girls’ school.

  As her eyes adjusted, Vic noticed many of those in the shadows were starting to move towards her, easing their way forwards. Vic knelt, wanting to free Gus, but before she could reach the key a hairy arm flashed out in front of her and plucked it off the floor.

  “Gustar? Is that you?” The speaker was a solidly built youngish gorilla, shorter and broader than Gus. Dark eyes met Vic’s green, as he held t
he key like a talisman.

  “Of course it’s me,” Gus replied. “Who else would they stuff in here with a load of chains?” He smiled just enough to show a little bit of teeth. “I think it’s rather a compliment.”

  Vic stood up straight and crossed her arms. “A-hem. Would someone mind telling me just what’s going on?”

  “This young fellow is Jevan,” Gus said, inclining his head towards the gorilla with the key. “He’s about to unlock my chains. Aren’t you, Jevan?”

  “Fine,” the youth said; and then moved stiffly to undo Gus’s bonds.

  It was all Vic could do to stifle a grin. Despite all appearances, Jevan reminded her of one of her younger cousins suddenly faced with his big brother. The youth’s reaction seemed to have been the catalyst for the others, as they started moving and talking among themselves with one or two looking at the humans. Vic stood back and watched; Gus seemed to know their fellow prisoners and that let her check on Gilly.

  The injured man had gone over to a bucket of water in the corner, and was drinking deeply from a metal cup. He was clumsy enough that some of the water splashed over his face, soaking the bandage around his neck. At least he seemed a little closer to the old Gilly, which took a weight off Vic’s shoulders. Somewhat more confident, she turned back to Gus who was now standing and chatting with Jevan, the chains neatly coiled in a heap around his ankles.

  “So, are you going give me that explanation now?” Vic tapped her toe on the stone.

  “Well…” Jevan began. “We’re dissidents…”

  “Who the Eldest Flame is going to publicly execute in the arena for the benefit of society.” Gus interrupted in his most professorial tone. “It’s one cultural affectation I found it easy to live without.”

  The elder gorilla gestured towards the portcullis as if it was a blackboard. “The arena beyond those bars is where we’re all destined to die.” He sighed. “I really thought I had escaped for good.”

  “I know why we’re here,” Vic said, following her words with a sigh of her own. Sometimes Gus really did like to belabor the obvious. “But what’s this about dissidents? And how do you all speak English, anyway?”

  Jevan glanced towards Gus, then swept his arm around the cell. “We want to be our own masters. We don’t want to serve the Eldest Flame, or these brown shirts who seem to be climbing in its favor.”

  Vic laughed. “I’m Russian, I know what dissidents are.”

  “As for the language, the Eldest Flame taught us. I don’t know why it picked this one, but we had no speech of our own, and couldn’t form our predecessors’ language. It was difficult enough to change our throats to speak this one.”

  “Slow down,” Gus said. “It’s a lot for a human to take in all at once.”

  Vic shot Gus a look, and then nodded, hugging her arms against her chest. She’d known Gus for years, and seen gorillas in Nazi uniforms on the newsreels, but all she’d noticed was that they’d become a lot more common in the last few years. There were rumors that one of those Thule Society expeditions the Nazis sent everywhere had found an advanced tribe, but from what she was seeing, there was a lot more to it than just a small tribe.

  These gorillas had been artificially enhanced by something not of this Earth and she had no idea why. Vic ground her teeth in frustration; she might be about to die in an African arena but damnit she was going to make it as hard as possible for the flaming asshole that put her there. Besides, she wasn’t dead yet and she’d been in a lot of worse situations and made it out alive. This was just one more kick at the can.

  A creak called her attention over her shoulder to where the door was opening. A small squad of brown-shirted guards marched in, rifles leveled.

  “Time to die.”

  #

  Doc was already most of the way through his morning routine by the time the others started moving. He’d been a little stiff at first; the mattress they’d given him was the wrong proportion for a human being, though his new companions seemed to sleep well enough on the circular pads. It wasn’t long before the stiffness disappeared, only to be replaced by something far more disturbing.

  At first it was nothing, just a band of warmth in his wrist where the Eldest Flame had caught him, but as he warmed up it grew stronger. First a tingling, then an itching, before settling into a burning sensation pulsing in time to a distant heartbeat. Everything beyond the band was dulled, as if the sensations were being diverted. He still had full control, but his sense of touch was much less sensitive than normal.

  As he worked his fingers, he started to feel something else. Faint lines of warmth crawling up his arm, carrying the promise of pain. The voice was coming back, weaker than before. It was tickling at the edge of his thoughts, trying to break in. If not for his mental discipline, it would probably have taken his mind already.

  “Are you all right?” Kehla’s voice filtered into his consciousness. “You’ve been standing there for over an hour.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Doc said. “I was just meditating.” He turned towards the door. “How long?”

  Kehla gestured to where the others were strapping weapons to their bodies. “We need to leave in the next hour. Should have plenty of time to get to the arena.”

  Doc nodded. “Do you have anything for me?”

  “I have another pistol,” she said. “If you can handle it.”

  “I should be able to.” He smiled as he took the weapon. It was just like the one she had been carrying the other day. A massive revolver with six 12-gauge shells in the cylinder. It was the kind of thing that would break most men’s wrists, and even for Doc it was a two handed weapon. The belt was long enough to hang off his shoulder, and there were another two dozen rounds pushed through the loops.

  “Try not to use it.” Kehla gave him a knife the size of a short sword. “This is quieter.”

  By the time he had everything adjusted to his frame, everyone else was ready. Doc took the hooded robe one of the gorillas handed him, and slipped it over his head. If he stayed close and hunched over, he might not look too much out of place.

  They slipped out of the safe house in single file, a young male in the lead, and Doc just behind Kehla. The city was again almost deserted, though Doc wasn’t sure how much of that impression came from the route. The shortness of the shadows told him it was close to noon, and as their wandering path took them deeper into the city he began to wonder if they would be too late.

  “How much longer?” he whispered to Kehla when a turn in the route let him catch up and walk beside her for a short distance.

  “Not long,” she replied. “We don’t want to get stopped on the way.”

  She was right, it wasn’t much longer before they came to a stop just inside an alley. They were at the back of the arena, and to Doc’s surprise, there was no one around. “Where are the guards?”

  “There aren’t any.”

  Doc lifted an eyebrow, and then leaned forward to look both directions down the street. There was nothing but white moss and green stone anywhere in sight. “If there are no guards, then why the roundabout route? And why aren’t there any guards.”

  “The Flame doesn’t have enough followers left to guard this entrance. Not when everyone’s supposed to be inside. All we really had to worry about were the roving patrols.”

  “All right.” Doc loosened his weapons and took another look down the street. No one was there. Except for the faint noises coming from the arena they could have been the only ones in the city. Across the street he could see a door, one that was easily large enough for two gorillas to walk abreast, beside it a window that was less than two feet square. The odd thing was that the window was less than a foot off the ground.

  “Here I go.” Doc put his head down and slipped across the street. The moss cushioned his steps, making it easy to stay quiet, but he couldn’t avoid a sense of nervousness. It was too easy. Kehla was telling the truth, he knew that, but getting here had been easier than it should have been.

&nbs
p; With a mental reminder not to look a gift horse in the mouth, he reached the doorway and knelt down beside the window. It was barred, but the bars were set into a framework inside the window, not the stone itself. The latch was just in sight behind the bars and over to one side.

  Reaching in, he tried to flip the latch open; it was locked. Doc glanced back across the way, and saw that Kehla was waving to him to hurry up. After one more check of the street, he pulled a lock pick out of his belt.

  From where he stood, the angle was wrong for his right hand, so he slipped the pick to his left. A moment later it was on the ground. Puzzled, he reached down to pick it up, only to find he couldn’t close his hand. The pick was right there, shining against the moss, but his hand would not close around it. Then the pain came.

  No…. The voice echoed up from his arm. Do not fight, surrender…. Each silent word was accompanied by a burning wave of pain.

  Doc ignored the words, concentrating on his hand. Most of the pain was concentrated in his wrist, acting like a barrier between his brain and his fingers. Closing his eyes, he focused his attention on moving the fingers of his left hand, one at a time. First the forefinger; he managed a twitch, which was immediately followed by a rush of pain. Reaching into himself, he let the pain wash through his mind, then went to close his thumb against his finger.

  More pain shot up his arm, and he gritted his teeth. He would not give in.

  “Hey!” A voice echoed from the end of the street. “What are you doing?”

  Doc lost his precarious control of his hand as his eyes shot open. Half a dozen heavily armed brown shirts came towards him. Doc rose to his feet, turning to keep his face in the shadow of his hood. Even hunched over, he was too tall for a gorilla, but it was the best he could do. The pain had receded, but his left arm still tingled, reminding him he was no longer in complete control of his body.

  Slowly he eased his right hand back, reaching for the hidden pistol. He was going to have to try the shot-revolver one-handed and hope he could manage the recoil.