by J. Thorn
Shallna was waiting on the other side of the wall. The stainless steel elevator doors remained closed and shiny, in stark contrast to the aged and decrepit appearance of the rest of the city. Kole tried pulling the doors apart with his hands but could not move them.
“Thought maybe the orb could run the cable up for us if I could get the door open.” Kole smiled but Shallna’s face remained hidden beneath his hood.
“You should be making the climb on your own, but I feel as though you may need assistance carrying the orb. Deva did not need me or the orb by his last reversion.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get up there.”
This would be Shallna’s final climb. If he was able to help Kole protect the cauldron from Samuel, his duty would be fulfilled and he would be released from the Great Cycle. The numbers of the horde swelled and the number of reversions shrunk, all of which was evidence the reversions were reverting. They were winding down.
Before an hour elapsed, Kole and Shallna emerged from the dark tower of stairs and onto the observation deck of the skyscraper. The cloud had not reached them yet, affording them an expansive view of the wasteland below. Shallna rested Kole’s staff against the wall.
“Nope, not Chicago,” Kole said.
The sands spread out to the north much like Lake Michigan did beneath the Sears Tower but that was where the similarity ended. The Chicago skyline was a ragged outline of hundreds of buildings. This one loomed over less than a dozen. They stretched upward in vertical lines and several canted to the side like rotting teeth. Kole saw birds swooping from the top of one to another with nothing but sand on the ground between them. The rooftops and decks of the other buildings were all covered in sand and only one antenna remained, a relic from the time of broadcasting and global entertainment. The height was dizzying and Kole noticed Shallna remained close to the wall, unwilling or unable to step forward and gaze upon the landscape.
“The cauldron,” Shallna said.
Kole looked around. Unlike the other buildings they entered, this one had no garbage or artifacts on the floor. Sand blew through and left patches on the tile floor but nothing else was around.
“Where is it?”
Shallna pointed to his left. Kole turned and saw what was once an observation deck. A floor grid made of steel extended beyond the edge of the building and a pit sat in the center. The cauldron looked like a backyard fire pit with a rounded steel-mesh cover on top. When Kole put a foot on to the grid, flames shot from the cauldron and the orb vibrated inside of the bag.
“Not really like the last cauldron, the one at the peak.”
“Each reversion is unique,” Shallna said.
Kole took another step forward until he could see the street hundreds of feet below.
“That wind starts kicking up the way it did with Devster and shit’s gonna get hairy up here.”
Shallna did not reply but kept his back fixed to the interior wall.
Chapter 15
“I wanna go over there.”
“You have to say with me, hon. We don’t know what’s in here. If we get separated we might not find each other again.”
Tommy looked at Lindsay and folded his arms.
“I wanna go over there,” he said again. Tommy pointed to a hallway leading into the loading docks of the building where tractor trailers would have backed up to get their shipments. The rear of the warehouse was dark even though the roof was compromised. Most of the gashes were in the front part of the building, not the back.
“Come with me,” Lindsay said. She pulled on his right shoulder and Tommy held his ground.
“No.”
Lindsay took her hands off of his shoulder and stepped back. She was twice his size and three times as strong but she could not bring herself to overpower him physically.
“If we find something cool where I want to look, I promise you can keep it.”
I’m not a retard no matter what Dad calls me, Tommy thought. Don’t you lie to me.
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
“Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”
He laughed at Lindsay’s sing-songy shtick but did not step toward her.
I don’t want to hurt her. I like her.
“Promise?” he asked.
“Yes,” Lindsay said.
Tommy gave in and followed Lindsay in the opposite direction. They walked away from the loading docks and into a tight maze of offices. The walls appeared to be put up as temporary partitions to create individual office cubicles out of a larger room. Some leaned in, the nails in the top rail of two by fours wasted away, no longer keeping the partition attached.
Lindsay stepped over parts of a chair and the base of a water cooler, a two-faucet handle with specks of red and blue on them. She kicked at a pile of papers with perforated edges. The weathering effects of the reversion were not as pronounced the deeper they went into the structure. The wind and sand erosion had difficulty navigating around inner walls and doors.
“See anything?” she asked.
Tommy crept up behind her as she bent down to look at an object on the floor. He could see the elastic band of her panties and the smooth, white skin of Lindsay’s hips. Tommy felt that familiar bulge in his pants, the same one that appeared when he was watching Mara in the shower.
“Tommy. You there?”
“Yeah. I don’t see nuthin,” he said. Tommy’s eyes were fixed on Lindsay’s lower back and he moved closer. He inhaled the faint scent of campfire smoke as he stood over her, a few inches from her long, brown hair.
Lindsay stood and Tommy backed up wearing a smile.
“I thought it was a knife or something but it was a ruler. We aren’t exactly going to measure someone to death, are we?” she asked.
Tommy watched her toss the ruler into the darkness where it clanged against another metal object and echoed throughout the room. He knew Lindsay left her bow in the main space of the building and he also knew she did not have any other weapons on her.
“I’m hungry,” Tommy said.
“Me too,” Lindsay said.
“Let’s look somewhere else.”
Lindsay turned a corner and led them into a break room. In the cabinets on the floor below the sink were eating utensils.
Tommy ran to the sink and ripped open a drawer. The silverware rattled and Lindsay came running after him. Tommy turned around holding a nine inch paring knife in his right hand.
“This is a good weapon, right? I could cut somebody bad with it.”
“Yes, Tommy. You could. You could also accidentally hurt yourself with it. That blade is probably sharp. How about you hand it to me and I’ll hold it for you?”
Tommy gripped the handle tighter and took a step towards Lindsay with the knife pointed at her chest.
“I can hold it myself. I’m not a little kid.”
“I know that,” Lindsay said. She took a step backwards until her back hit the door. “Nobody said you’re a little kid.”
“Samuel hates me,” Tommy said. “He doesn’t want to be my friend.”
Lindsay inhaled and pushed her shoulders into the door. It would not move and Tommy took a step closer.
“But he likes you. If I hurt you, it’d be like hurting him.” Tommy was now standing in front of Lindsay and she looked into his empty eyes. She spread her feet apart and balled her hands into fists.
“You don’t want to hurt me Tommy,” Lindsay said.
“You’re right. I don’t. I like you. You make me feel warm and stuff.”
Lindsay could not see the erection in his pants.
“Here.”
Tommy turned the blade inward and gave the handle of the knife to Lindsay. She stopped breathing until his hand completely released it. Tommy took a step back and waited.
“Thanks, honey.”
“You’re welcome. You can protect us both with it.”
“I will,” Lindsay said. “I promise I’ll protect you.”
She turn
ed and opened the break room door and took a step into the corridor with the knife in her hand. Lindsay did not see the Swiss Army Knife Tommy concealed in the palm of his right hand.
***
Samuel heard them moving through the building. Lindsay and Tommy made noises like the ornery pipes of a boiler, clicking and clanging in the distance. He tried to stay focused on finding anything of use in the warehouse but the kid kept interrupting his train of thought. Something about Tommy made Samuel fearful.
For several minutes after Lindsay led Tommy toward the back of the warehouse, Samuel remained still, listening. Besides filtering out the noise they were making, he thought the winds were blowing harder. More sand was being pushed through the tears in the roof and floating down into the warehouse. Samuel decided he had to get moving and try to find a weapon. Lindsay had the bow and that would be great at a distance, but Samuel felt as though the fight would get personal, close, deadly. He wanted to find something that would be easy to handle, yet effective, such as a knife, baseball bat or pipe. He thought he was most likely to find a pipe although a knife would not be out of the realm of possibility.
He stepped down a hallway leading away from the rear of the building and guessed he was approaching the manager’s office. The door was open and a desk sat to the left with the remains of a telephone line dangling from a hole in the wall. Samuel imagined a gray-haired woman with cat glasses and bright red lipstick answering calls and scheduling appointments.
He moved past it and stepped into a larger office. Another desk, considerably bigger, sat against the back wall. It stretched from the doorway of a private bathroom to the other wall, about six feet. A swivel chair sat behind it and several framed pictures were still on the walls. Whatever transpired in the reversion and in this particular warehouse did not make it this deep. Even the magazines on the coffee table were untouched. Samuel went to look at them and realized time had taken its toll after all. The colored print on the cover had faded away. He stared down at a bluish swirl of ancient ink.
Samuel saw a tiny bar tucked behind the door and enough light filtered in from the hallway for him to see a dozen bottles standing on the top of it. He walked over and picked up the first one. It was empty, the labels disintegrated. Samuel wasn’t sure whether the effects of the reversion broke things down faster, whether the city was abandoned long ago or whether it was always like this. In the end it didn’t matter. His guesses and thoughts were another subtle distraction caused by the reversion to keep him from the peak, from the cauldron. He shook the curiosity from his head and refocused.
Samuel walked to the desk and pulled open the first drawer. He sifted through business artifacts of the twentieth century, including things like pens, staplers and tape. They were all in varying states of decomposition, some crumbled into dust as he touched them. Samuel pulled another drawer and something shiny caught his eye. He reached down and found an old-fashioned letter opener with a mother of pearl handle and a long blade. Samuel felt for Scout in his pocket, never sure if the knife would be there, but it was. Nevertheless, he needed something with a longer reach, something that could save his life.
He turned around and started to walk out when he thought he heard breathing. Samuel stopped and listened. Someone else was in the room.
“I’m armed and I’ll attack first. You should know that,” Samuel said.
He waited for a response, his eyes scanning the room as quickly as he could but seeing nothing.
“Well?”
“The boy,” a voice said. “The boy is a threat.”
“Deva?” Samuel asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” Deva said.
Samuel shook his head and spun around. He could not see anyone else.
“Where are you? Am I dreaming?”
“Listen, Samuel,” Deva said. “You must know your ahimsa lies with the cauldron. You must make it there and face your brother. It is for this reason I have come to warn you of another threat.”
“Tommy?” Samuel asked.
“Yes.”
“But he’s just a kid.”
“He is coming for you, Samuel. The boy is seeking revenge.”
“For what?” Samuel asked.
“For one of the sins of your past, one committed in a multiverse of another time and place.”
Samuel leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Speaking with Deva in a dream was unsettling enough, but having a regular conversation with the entity now was even more so.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Tommy,” Deva said. “Tommy was Mara’s brother.”
Samuel shook and a quizzical look ran across his face. He looked at his feet and then at the ceiling for the answer and neither provided it.
“So?”
“She was picking him up from hockey practice, Samuel. He was in the backseat of her car when you ran into them with yours.”
***
“Did you find anything?”
Lindsay held up the knife. Tommy walked a few paces behind her as they approached Samuel in the middle of the warehouse. The wind intensified and the walls rumbled while sand continued to sift through the tears in the roof. It layered a fresh dusting on the floor like the winter’s first snow. Samuel wiped his face and hoped Lindsay would not see his puffy eyes and red face. He did not want to have to first deny he was crying and then explain why.
“You?” she asked.
“Nothing I wanted to find.”
Lindsay turned her head sideways and was about to ask Samuel what he meant but Tommy stepped between them.
“I’m hungry,” he said.
Samuel looked down and his eyes met Tommy’s. He felt as though he was looking right through the boy and into an empty soul.
“There isn’t anything to eat here. We’ll have to get moving towards downtown and maybe we’ll find something there.”
“I want something to eat now,” Tommy said.
“Honey, Samuel’s right. There isn’t anything here.”
She squatted down and used her hand to push the hair off his forehead. Tommy smiled at her and Lindsay returned it but Samuel crossed his arms and shook his head.
“Okay,” Tommy said.
Lindsay stood up and turned to face Samuel.
“Now what? Are we moving out?”
“Lindsay, I think there’s something we should talk about.”
She tilted her head sideways. “Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Samuel said.
Tommy began to hum.
“Something happened to me. Because of me.”
The humming became louder and Tommy walked around Lindsay until he was standing between them. He started prancing around and flailing his arms in an exaggerated dance.
“Tommy, stop. I can’t hear Samuel,” Lindsay said.
Tommy ignored her and was now singing gibberish in random melodies. Kole planted the command inside of Tommy’s head.
Cut him. Cut the motherfucker, now.
“I have to talk to you alone,” Samuel said, now screaming over Tommy.
“About what?” Lindsay asked.
“Me. And Tommy.”
Before she could reply Tommy slid on the sand-covered floor and fell into Samuel’s leg.
Tommy had the Swiss Army Knife in his hand, the blade out and pointed at Samuel. He lunged at the man from the ground and slid the blade across Samuel’s calf. Although it did not severe the muscle, the blade cut Samuel’s leg and opened a flap of skin. Samuel fell to the ground and Tommy stepped on the injured leg.
Lindsay stood, paralyzed. She reacted to threats in the reversion like a true warrior, her mind taking over in times of stress. But this situation did not register as a possible outcome and therefore she could not move. Samuel reached up and grabbed Tommy’s ankle. He spun the boy’s foot until his ankle cracked and popped under the strain. Tommy collapsed next to Samuel in the sand, hunks of glass and other refuse on the warehouse floor.
> Samuel reached over and grabbed Tommy by the arm, but he shook loose. The boy landed a punch on Samuel’s left eye. Samuel hit Tommy in the face and the boy fell, the back of his head slamming off the concrete floor with a thud. He twitched a few times and then remained still. Lindsay’s mouth hung open as she watched Samuel get up. He stumbled a few feet and collapsed near Tommy. Samuel put his face up to Tommy’s open mouth and laid his head on the boy’s chest. He looked at Lindsay and shook his head.
“He’s dead?” she asked.
Samuel nodded.
“You fucking killed him. How could you fucking kill a kid?” Lindsay asked. She took three steps backwards as tears filled her eyes.
“Lindsay, listen,” Samuel said. The pain of his bleeding leg and swollen eye competed for his attention. “There were things about him you didn’t know. He was going to kill me.”
“With what, Samuel?”
“He had a knife. He slashed me.”
“You were rolling around in broken glass. That’s how you were cut.”
“No. It happened so fast you didn’t see it. He slashed me with something sharp.”
“Where is it then, Samuel? Where’s the knife?”
He dropped to his knees and used his hands to brush the sand away. Chunks of glass stuck in his fingers as he searched for the weapon he knew Tommy had.
“I felt it and I saw the motion of his arm. He was trying to kill me.”
“I can’t fucking believe this,” Lindsay said. She dropped to the floor and used her heels to push against the wall then dropped her head down between her legs.
Samuel looked around and could not find a weapon. He was sure Tommy attacked him with something but doubt crept in like the sand through the roof. With each passing moment, Samuel wondered if he imagined the whole thing. He remembered Tommy falling and he felt the burning sensation on his calf. He wondered if it was possible that he was cut open as a result of rolling around on the floor in broken glass. Samuel looked at Tommy’s body and saw both of the boy’s palms were open and empty.
What the fuck? Samuel thought. I must have lost my mind.
Lindsay began to sob and the winds shook the warehouse.
“It is the reversion working to immobilize you. Get to the cauldron, Samuel.”
