Vomiting blood and bile, he gagged and dropped to his knees, but the others were on me now, punching and kicking and knocking me to the ground. I rolled away best I could as a huge mallet one of them was carrying crashed the ground again and again in my wake, missing me several times by mere inches. I came to a stop once I reached the dirt, and rolled onto my back. By then I’d managed to pull the revolver free of my coat and was already firing.
The first shot hit the man with the mallet directly in the forehead. He fell, but two more took his place. In rapid succession, I fired the remaining five bullets I had left. Two rounds missed, one took down another attacker, hitting him in the eye and blowing out a good chunk of the back of his skull, and the other three hit the last of them, littering his torso with wounds.
I scrambled to my feet. The man was badly wounded but still attempting to get to his feet, so I kicked him in the side of the head, and once he was on his back, found the severed arm of his cohort, pried the ax from its dead fingers, then returned and slammed it down into his skull until he stopped moving and the top of his head had become a bloody, frothy mess.
Stumbling away, I looked to the road. This wasn’t over yet. The motorcycle had turned and was headed back for me a second time. Still clutching the bloody ax, I readied myself.
The motorcycle closed on me faster than I thought possible, blowing by as the driver screamed like the madman he was. The chain flew in the air, this time hitting me in the shoulder with such force it knocked me off my feet and sent me sprawling back into the dirt. Pain exploded through my shoulder, shooting up into my neck and down the length of my arm into my hand. A tingling sensation followed and my arm went limp.
I got to my knees in time to see him coming back around for another run at me.
My arm dangling dead at my side, I managed to get back to my feet. With my good arm, I timed it, waiting as if I’d resigned myself to being executed by him on this pass. But when he was close enough, I threw the ax directly at his head.
He was so close I could see his eyes widen as he realized the blade spinning through the air at him was not going to miss. At his speed there was no way he could stop, so he did the only thing he could do, which was to ditch the bike and throw himself off the back of it before the ax buried itself in his face.
He toppled onto the highway and bounced, tumbling about as the motorcycle crashed onto its side and skidded away along with him. Spraying the road with debris, both motorcycle and rider finally came to a stop a distance away.
The bike was still running, but the man, lying in the fetal position on the pavement a few feet from it, wasn’t moving. I looked around to make sure there weren’t any more of them. The road and flatlands were empty and still. The night was almost gone.
Gathering up my revolver and shotgun with my good arm, I staggered down the road toward the fallen rider. When I got there, I realized he was in bad shape and broken up, but alive. He looked up at me with his crazy eyes and laughed. Then he made a strange sucking sound, as if he were trying to taste me, or perhaps the remnants on his lips of what had once been Dingo.
He wasn’t going anywhere ever again, and we both knew it.
There was no way Julia could’ve survived an attack from these madmen, so all I could hope was that she’d been lucky and passed through here unnoticed.
Or maybe she didn’t need luck. Maybe something greater guided and protected her, and she was everything those sad and forgotten children believed she was.
I was beginning to wonder.
The rider snarled at me and said something unintelligible, bringing me back.
It wasn’t easy, but I managed to reload the shotgun with one hand.
Then I spattered his head all over the pavement and walked back to my car.
My ride was dead as the bloody bodies all around me. I’d be walking from now on. I fell back against it like the old friend it was and tried to collect myself, but wasn’t sure how much more I could take. I still couldn’t feel or move my arm, and the rest of my body was giving out too. Exhausted, hungry, drained and injured, I could barely think straight. For the first time since I was a child, or what I remembered to be my childhood anyway, I felt like crying, letting go and allowing every scrap of emotion to flow from me like water.
I smoked a couple cigarettes instead. After cleaning the machete off on one of their coats, I slid it into my belt, then searched the bodies for anything I could use. I came up empty, but when I searched the motorcycle, I found a full canteen in its saddlebag. After smelling and tasting a drop from my fingertip, I determined it was only water and seemed safe to drink. I took a long pull and felt almost immediately revitalized.
But the feeling was short-lived.
The breeze picked up, cold and harsh. In the growing light, beyond the edge of the highway and in the distance, a range of mountains dominated the horizon. I needed to sleep, but I needed Julia more, and while I’d handled this band of marauders, there were almost certainly many more in the area. The only sign of Dingo was the blood on the road, so it was likely a larger group had taken him down, brought his body to some nearby camp where he was slaughtered and eaten, and then this smaller patrol had returned to the scene to scavenge whatever else they could use. Evidently I’d come upon Dingo’s car at the worst possible time, and now that none of these crazies would be returning to their brood, sooner than later, others would come looking for them. I had to put as much distance between me and this bloody scene as quickly as possible.
I pictured Julia out here all alone, traversing the vast stretch of empty flatland leading to the horizon. If she’d made it this far, there was nowhere else to go, no other direction that made sense, so with what little resolve and strength I had left, I walked toward those mountains.
And whatever awaited me on the other side.
13
Hobbled with my leg injury and with one arm all but useless, I walked on, trying not to think about the pain and exhaustion, and ignoring the quiet voice in my head that kept insisting I should stop, lie down for a while, and sleep. The day had come, but here, in the mountains, things were different. By the time I’d reached the base of the range, it had begun to snow. I’d seen snow before, of course, in the city, though out here it was more ominous. It clouded the sky and left the world in neither the darkness I was used to nor the total daylight forbidden to my kind. Instead, I found myself wandering through a strange chasm between the two, and the higher into the mountains I climbed, the heavier the snow became and the lower the temperature dropped.
I cursed myself for not taking some of the marauders’ coats, they’d have come in handy for extra insulation and warmth, but I’d had no idea it would be snowing here, much less to this degree. Besides, in my decrepit state, I could barely carry my own things. For Christ’s sake, I could scarcely walk. And it was getting worse.
My breath churned from my lungs in living clouds, mixed with the blowing snow and increasingly heavy winds. The snow became deeper. I pressed on.
There was nothing here but frozen ground, uneven terrain, snow and ice. I felt like the last living thing in this terrible world of ours. Eventually, I found a jutting section of rock overhanging the entrance to a small cave. I ducked inside to find a clear and empty space that looked to have at one point been part of a larger cave system. Rocks had fallen and slid down from above long ago, blocking the entrance from the rest. What remained was a cramped space not even high enough for me to stand in and barely deep enough to accommodate me. But it was shelter from the wind and snow, if not the cold. From hands and knees, I collapsed onto my side, out of breath and racked with pain, I lay there, curled up into myself and doing my best to stay warm.
I slept. Though I couldn’t be sure how long I was out, it seemed both a long time and not nearly enough, as I came awake coughing and shivering violently. My eyes took a while to focus, and at first I was unsure of where I was. When I remembered, I pushed myself upright as far as I could without hitting my head on the rocky ce
iling above me, and looked out at the storm.
But there was no storm. I could hear it, but a wall of snow now blocked the entrance I’d crawled through. Despite the pain, I managed to maneuver myself onto my back, and kicked the snow out with my boots. It was a crusty and frozen skin that fell away easily, and I was immediately met with a stinging gust of wind and a burst of fresh snowflakes blowing in from outside.
I took a sip of water from the canteen, then tried to move my damaged arm. I could flex my fingers and feel my hand; that was about it. The arm itself was still dead, though a pulsing pain pounded steadily in my shoulder. My injured leg was stiff and sore, but at least I was able to bend my knee without unbearable pain.
I crawled out of the cave and into the darkness. I lay there a moment, and considered letting the storm take me. I was so goddamn tired I didn’t want to fight anymore. I wanted to sleep, but I knew if I did now, I’d freeze to death out here, so I pushed myself to my feet, brushed the excess snow from my body and looked around as best I could. In the dark and such extreme cold, it was difficult to tell where my breath ended and the garlands of snow falling all around me began.
Teeth chattering, I hobbled through the snow, hopeful I’d continued in the same direction as before. Within minutes my eyes were crusted with snow and ice and I was shivering so violently I was having trouble controlling my body.
Hugging myself tight, I tucked chin to chest and pushed on. I was walking uphill at a steeper angle than before, and with my bad leg it was difficult to get enough push to drive myself through the deep snow at such an incline. But somehow I managed to stagger forward into this hell of ice and snow.
As the wind cut through me like a razor, I grimaced as another series of violent shivers throttled me. As I reached up to paw snow from my frost-covered face, I felt the ground give way beneath me. Falling. I was falling through the darkness and snow.
I landed hard on my back and lay there motionless, weak and in pain.
Coughing, I watched the flakes descending on me, blowing all about, and this time wasn’t sure I could get back up. I struggled for breath, was finally able to draw some, then coughed again and without thinking about it, was suddenly rolling over onto my hands and knees.
Get up. Get up or you’ll die here. You’ll fall asleep and die here.
I got back to my feet.
Trying to find my bearings in the curtains of snow, all I knew for sure was that I’d somehow made it to the other side of the incline, as the ground pitched sharply downward now.
I swayed with the wind, nearly collapsed but remained upright.
Trudging forward, my feet sunk deeper into the snow as I went, and I had the sensation that at any moment I might pitch forward and tumble helplessly down the steep mountainside and into the darkness.
Defiantly, I pushed deeper into the tempest.
Trapped in the storm, time lost all meaning. I might’ve been lumbering through the snow for hours or moments, I could no longer be sure. What I did know was that my lungs had begun to burn and ache, my heart was hammering my chest and my eyes stung so badly I could only open them in brief intervals before they began to tear and close again on their own.
Although my lips were badly cracked and my exposed flesh was burned and raw, most of the sensation in my body was gone. The only real pain I still felt was a sharp throbbing beneath my skull and deep inside my head. Fear was the only thing that kept me going, because I knew if I fell now, I’d never be able to get back up and the storm would take me.
Suddenly the wind changed, not in velocity, but in the way it sounded. By rote, I kept moving, staggering forward, but there was something more now. I could hear it, somewhere out there in the night, carried on this frozen wind.
Singing, the most beautiful singing I’d ever heard. Like the chanting of angels, if such things existed, ever had or ever could, it had an undeniably ethereal quality, and I found myself drawn to it. But I couldn’t figure out exactly where it was coming from. It might’ve been behind me but could’ve emanated from the darkness ahead of me. It was as if the voices were born of the night and snow, swirling around with those endless flakes of ice bursting and dancing in the darkness.
I reached out a shaking hand, pushing it up into the air as if to grab hold of the beautiful sound. There seemed no end or beginning to the storm, to the night or even to me. The singing grew louder and even more beautiful.
Within the darkness, I thought I saw something. Blinking and wiping my eyes, I stumbled forward, closer to it, but it still seemed the same distance away. Two, three, perhaps more, dark figures, silhouettes barely discernible in the night, stood in a row, watching me.
I began to laugh, though I had no idea why.
Was I hallucinating? Was my mind slowly dying and playing tricks on me?
An odd sensation came over me, and it wasn’t until I’d hit the snow that I realized I’d dropped to my knees. Swaying, my eyes barely open, I strained to see through the storm. But the figures were gone, and instead, something else caught my attention.
In the flakes, written on them, was something more…
A palace, unlike anything I’d ever seen or even imagined, appeared before me in the distance, emerging from the walls of snow like a mirage. Made entirely of ice and crystals, mirrors and dreams, it was the most beautiful and terrifying thing I’d ever seen.
I fell forward, flopping onto my belly in the snow. Lying there on my stomach, I felt my body begin to convulse and seize. I crawled forward, toward that mysterious palace in the ice, digging my hands into the blankets of snow and pulling myself closer.
Light…Light…There’s a light, I…I see a light…
Within the darkness, it emanated from the crystal palace of ice and dreams. I squinted through the snow and tried to focus on it, reaching out for it with my good arm, but then a sudden burst of heavy snow engulfed me, and everything vanished in the whiteout.
All that remained was the bitter cold, and the sound of those Heavenly chants.
* * *
When I awakened, although I was warm, the only thing I heard was a muffled, though steady and howling wind. My eyes opened but sight came to me gradually, painfully, my eyelids flaking and crackling free as I blinked. Blood, ice or both slid along my cheeks. As my vision slowly returned, I understood why the wind sounded distant. It was outside, beyond the walls of the room in which I found myself.
Lying on my back in a bed of sorts, I was covered with thick animal furs for blankets, in a small though magnificent room of crystals, ice and mirrors.
And I was not alone.
Three figures stood just beyond the foot of my bed, shrouded in long, dark hooded robes. I could not see their faces, and their hands were tucked into the wide sleeves of their robes. I swallowed, gagged and coughed a moment, the sound ricocheting along the beautiful and glistening walls. I struggled to bring the beings before me into better focus.
“Where am I?” I asked, my voice raw, weak and unfamiliar.
The strange hooded figures offered no response.
“Who are you?”
Again, there was no reply.
“Am I…alive?” I bit my lip in the hopes of preventing it from trembling.
Things moved along the mirrors and in the reflections of the crystals and ice. The dreams and nightmares of the living and dead, playing out before me, here, in this strange little room, and beyond, in the hallways of glass and ice I could now make out behind my shrouded hosts.
“Julia,” I gasped. “Julia…”
The figures turned in unison, and shuffled out of the room.
“Wait,” I said, sitting up. The furs slid down, and I realized I was nude. My shoulder and arm were hideously bruised from the chain that had struck me, but I could feel and move both again, albeit with soreness, and I was clean, my other wounds tended to. Had they bathed me?
Light-headed, I gathered one of the furs around me and climbed out of bed, my bare feet cold against a floor of ice. My clothes were fol
ded neatly on an ornate chair of glass in the corner, my boots standing next to it. Hurriedly, I dressed, watching the dreams play out before me in the mirrors. What was this palace of dreams, of ice and glass and crystal? Who were these beings that saved me, who ironically enough, looked like monks? I listened. No sound but for the wind outside. This was a place of silence, like a monastery or a church. Although I’d never set foot in either one, I knew of such things, and had once terminated a runner on the steps of an old church in the bowels of the city. But none of that mattered now. This place was unlike any other.
Once dressed, I checked my coat before pulling it on, but could not locate any of my weapons. A quick look around the small room turned up nothing. I’d always felt incomplete without my weapons, but for some reason in this strange place I did not.
While neither my legs nor my balance were back to normal, they were much better, and I was able to walk through the open doorway and into the hall without fear of collapsing.
Mirrors lined the walls, ceiling, even the floor. And on those mirrors all the dreams and nightmares one could imagine silently played continuously, like an endless loop of film. The hallway was long and narrow, a house of mirrors and sparkling crystal, and at the end it branched off into several additional hallways.
Disoriented, I was unsure of which path to take, so I hesitated and watched the stories unfolding all around me. And then at the end of one hallway, I noticed something that set it apart from the others. A room, and in that room a figure, sitting at a table, its back to me.
Babylon Terminal Page 12
