Forget the dog’s cousin’s bone, thought Billy. Vester looks like a dog who just found out his dinner kibbles were actually made of his immediate family.
“But that’s not going to happen. No slaughters here,” Vester said a little too brightly. Then he grew almost pensive, and in a voice that made Billy feel like he was almost speaking against his will, he added, “Besides, we might have a surprise or two up our sleeves.”
“What do you mean?” asked Billy.
“Something Fulgora’s been cooking up,” answered Vester. “It’s part of what she was doing while all of us were stuck on Dark Isle.”
“What is it?” asked Billy, intrigued.
Vester shook his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. Fulgora made me swear secrecy.”
“Come on, Vester.”
“Nope,” the fireman shook his head. He clearly wanted to tell Billy, but just as clearly was somewhat proud that he had been taken into the Red Lady’s confidence enough to be trusted with private information.
“Come on,” said Vester, changing the subject. “What say you and I go and watch rock giants building some walls?”
And so they did. Billy traveled over much of Powers Island in the coming days, usually at Vester’s or Mrs. Russet’s side as one or the other of them traveled somewhere to check on preparations. Rock giants were indeed building huge battlements on one side of the island, great walls that looked like they grew out of the living rocks of the mountain range close to them. Billy thought the enormous rock Fizzles were amazing to watch, the huge craggy forms plucking up rocks the size of houses as though they were light as cotton candy, then plunking them down on the ground in enormous piles. Vester told him, however, that these would be a last line of defense in the event that the Darksiders somehow broke through the Accounting Room defenses and overran the island. The Dawnwalkers would fall back slowly, trying to resist over every foot of land on the island, and then would finally take refuge in the mountainous battlements, and lose themselves long enough to flee, to Transport to somewhere else…where they would then be most likely hunted for the rest of their very short lives.
After Vester shared this with Billy, the huge walls didn’t seem quite so neat anymore.
But day and night, hour by hour, Billy never saw any let up. The Red Powers on the island placed burning pyres every couple hundred feet, which Billy understood from watching Fulgora’s Challenge in Powers Stadium would be the equivalent of ammo dumps: they would allow the Red Powers on the island easy access to the flames they would need to cast their attack spells. Brown Powers were everywhere, carving roads out of the bedrock of the island with their bare hands, preparing for supply routes and roads that might be needed in the event of a slow fallback. The Grays patrolled the skies, flying about like man-sized insects, and cultivated rain clouds that could be brought to bear against attackers, slowing them down and giving time for counter-attacks to be launched. And the Green Powers cultivated enormous gardens that grew from seed to vine to flower to fruit in seconds, laying up vast quantities of foodstuffs that would be needed in the event of long term fighting or if there should be any kind of a siege.
Billy was fascinated by all of it. The rock giants building their walls, fire Fizzles of various sizes patrolling the island like walking bombs, gusts of wind being used to move huge bales of supplies from place to place. But as interesting as it was, there was also a disquieting sense of desperation to it, and Billy slowly began to understand something:
It wasn’t just Vester. None of the Dawnwalkers expected to win.
Even with the bottleneck giving them a clear tactical advantage, even with the extra time they gained because of the way the minutes passed on Powers Island, even with the knowledge that they were fighting for a good cause, Billy could sense an undercurrent of hopelessness. Everyone was going through the motions, but Billy sensed they were doing it mostly because people don’t willingly walk to their deaths, even when those deaths are all but certain.
So this is what they felt like at the Alamo, thought Billy on more than one occasion.
But he didn’t mention it aloud, though the feeling weighed heavily on him. Vester seemed to know Billy’s thoughts, and occasionally would say something clearly meant to cheer Billy up. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” the fireman was continually saying. But Billy knew that whenever a grown-up said that, it meant that they were really worried about the opposite being true.
Only Fulgora seemed to both grasp and fully accept the likelihood of their fates. Once, Billy overheard a short Red Power break down in front of her, crying about the fact that it was hopeless and they were all doomed. Fulgora slapped the man sharply. “We’re doomed from the day we’re born. We begin dying the moment we start our lives,” she said bitingly. “Whether it be here, or in our beds in a hundred years, the place and the time matter nothing. All that does matter is how we face Doom when he comes for us, whether we choose to look him in the eye and spit at him, or crawl in the sand like worms. He will take us either way, but one way we at least have our dignity.”
“But, I don’t want to die,” said the babbling Power.
“Nor do I,” said Fulgora. “But we can’t always have everything we want, can we?”
Strangely, though her words were the most pessimistic of any of Billy’s friends, he was more comforted by her honesty than by the too-chipper tone Ivy always got in her voice when he came near, or by Tempus’s insistence on listing his favorite restaurants and then telling Billy he was going to take him to one of them on each of Billy’s birthdays for the rest of his life.
Fulgora knows it’s hopeless, Billy thought. And she doesn’t care. Because it’s not the winning that matters, it’s the fight.
This thought was oddly calming. He didn’t have any powers to his name. He didn’t know what Message he was supposed to provide, if any. He couldn’t do much of anything to help his friends get ready for battle.
But he would fight, just the same. And when it happened, the fight would be all that mattered. The result would be almost an afterthought.
So Billy toured the island with his friends, occasionally helping in a non-Power-like way, digging with his bare hands or laboriously carrying buckets of Green-grown fruits from place to place. It made him feel good to contribute, even in this small manner, and his friends seemed to appreciate it, too. Occasionally in the days that passed he thought of his parents. He wished he could see them again. If he did, he would thank them once more for his birthday watch, and then thank them once more for every other gift they had ever given him. He would let them know that he loved them. Especially his father, whom he was coming to appreciate more and more in the days on the island. Not all fights are physical battles, he realized. Some people fight to put food on their families’ tables, and to make a better tomorrow. So his father was a warrior just as much as any of the people around Billy now, and just as much deserving of his respect. Because even though his father was not his friend, he had always provided for and protected his family to the best of his ability.
So I will tell him, Billy said to himself. When I get back, I’ll tell him I understand, and thank him for being who he is, and teaching me to be the good man I will one day become.
But the words sounded hollow in his mind, just as Tempus’s birthday plans for the next hundred years had sounded.
The fight, Billy thought again. Win or lose is not important. Not right now, anyway. What’s important is picking our battles, picking the right battle, and standing for it to the end.
And so Billy passed his days, knowing himself to be a lone unDetermined boy on an island of Powers, until one day several weeks after they had come back to the island. He was sitting on the ground near the Diamond Dais, listening to Mrs. Russet and Fulgora argue over the fine points of warfare. Mrs. Russet kept pulling the Book of the Earth out of the ground and reading obscure historical passages about So-and-So’s army, or the Battle of This-or-That. Fulgora, for her part, kept screaming about h
ow Mrs. Russet’s methods were historically accurate but no longer the cutting edge of warfare. And Vester and Ivy kept trying to get between the two strong-willed Councilors and keep the peace, and repeatedly being threatened with combustion or having the ground swallow them for their troubles.
He heard all of it, but Billy had to admit to himself wasn’t really giving the argument much attention. Rather, he was staring at the crystal shard in the middle of the Diamond Dais. It was twilight, and the last pale rays of sunlight on the island lightly kissed the shard, shattering into thousands of tiny rainbows before disappearing as the sun dipped below the ocean and night claimed the island. Billy watched the lights disappear from the shard, watched it grow dark as the rest of the sky, and felt himself almost dozing, as though hypnotized by the light display he had seen, and lulled into sleep by the approaching darkness.
Then Billy heard a noise. It was muffled but powerful, like a nuclear explosion a thousand miles underwater. The noise repeated itself, and this time the entire tower pulsed. It didn’t quake on its moorings, nothing like the day that the zombies had attacked, but Billy jerked into complete wakefulness as he felt the tremor roll through the tall edifice.
“What was that?” asked Ivy.
Everyone on the tower top grew silent and still as a statue. They all listened, waiting for the noise to repeat, but it didn’t.
Still, another noise was heard: the noise of one of the elevators sliding up through the floor of the tower top and whispering open. The elevators had improved in temperament over the past weeks as they realized that the Darksiders were no longer in charge of the island. But then they had apparently heard some Dawnwalkers talking about everyone’s impending doom and had immediately gotten quiet again. Billy had tried to jolly a few of them out of their gloom, but finally had stopped when one of them said point blank to Billy, “Look, you seem nice enough and all, but if you’re all going to get wiped out in the next few days, it’s probably best that we not get too personal with you guys, all right?”
“Uh, sure,” said Billy.
“Good,” said the elevator. “That’s why we’re not even calling anyone by their names any more, to avoid attachment.”
“What?” asked Billy, still dumbfounded that even the elevators thought the Darksiders’ triumph was a foregone conclusion.
“Like you, for instance,” replied the elevator. “We all know your name is Billy Jones, but what we call you amongst ourselves is Boy Number 3583Q.”
“3583Q?” Billy repeated.
“Yeah,” said the elevator in the closest thing to a cheery tone that Billy had heard from them since the Darksiders had first assumed control of the island. “You know, like rats.”
“Rats?” Billy said, his head spinning.
“Like with scientists,” clarified the elevator. “I mean, no one wants to take ‘Fluffy’ out and inject him with something that might make him lose all his fur or something. But you can give White Rat Number 3583Q a shot of whatever and not feel bad about it at all.”
Thankfully, the doors of the elevator had opened at that point and Billy had been able to get out without going any farther along on that particular line of discussion. But the conversation had stuck with him, and he had avoided the elevators since then.
Now, however, the elevator that was opening at the top of the tower had his complete attention. Three Powers—Napalm, Bellestus, and another Red Power—staggered out of the elevator. These three, Billy knew, had been in the Accounting Room, serving on guard duty. Now, something was clearly very wrong with them. Fulgora was on her feet in an instant, rushing to them in a flash of red armor. All three of the arriving Powers looked like they might fall over at any second.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“They… they came,” wheezed Bellestus in a frightened English accent, his bobby’s uniform smudged and dirty. His eyes bugged out of his head with fear, exhaustion clear on his face.
“What do you mean they came?” demanded Fulgora. She shook Bellestus, but the Gray Power’s eyes closed and he either fell asleep in exhaustion from overuse of his powers, or fell unconscious because of something more malignant.
The low, intrusive thud happened again. Fulgora whipped around to Napalm, who was holding up the remaining Red Power, an old woman who Billy knew was named Ursula. “What happened, Napalm?” she demanded. “Is the attack under way? Are they storming the Accounting Room?” Without waiting for answer, she whirled to Vester and snapped, “Call up the special forces squad we prepared for the bottleneck defense.”
Vester whirled immediately to comply, but Napalm weakly said, “Wait.”
Vester stopped. Fulgora wasn’t happy. “We can’t wait. We have to act. If the Darksiders have come, we have to get everyone we can into the Accounting Room to stop them.”
“That’s just it,” said Napalm. He weaved on his feet as though he too was about to pass out. But at the last second he managed to steady himself. “They came into the Accounting Room, and we were waiting.”
“How many of them arrived in the room?” demanded Fulgora. “And why did you abandon your posts?”
“Only three came through,” said Napalm. “And we didn’t abandon our posts.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying?” screamed Fulgora, almost enraged at the fact that she wasn’t getting answers as fast as she wanted them.
“Take it easy, Fulgora,” murmured Mrs. Russet. “We need speed, not panic.”
“I don’t panic,” said Fulgora. But she closed her mouth and let Mrs. Russet continue the talk with the other Red.
“There were only three Darksiders?” asked Mrs. Russet.
Napalm nodded. As he did so, Ursula, the other Red Power that Billy thought looked like a barracuda with tennis shoes on—spoke. “Only three. But that was enough.” She shuddered. “It was Wolfen. Wolfen, and Eva Black, and her son.”
“And they fought you?” prompted Mrs. Russet.
“No,” said the tall Red woman. “No, there was no fight.” She laughed to herself, and Billy could see terror in Ursula’s eyes. “They just appeared, and before we could say a word they had us at their feet, cowering.”
“The Dread,” said Mrs. Russet quietly.
“More than that,” replied Napalm. “More than just Dread. This was something worse.”
“But you got away,” said Mrs. Russet.
Again Ursula shook her head. “We didn’t get away. They let us go,” she said.
“Why?” said Mrs. Russet.
Napalm wrung his hands and looked up at the night sky. He suddenly looked to Billy like a little boy about to ask his parents not to turn the lights out at bed time, because the monster under the bed might eat him. “They let us go because they wanted us to tell you something,” he said.
“What?” demanded Mrs. Russet.
Billy felt his insides curl in on themselves. He could sense that something terrible was coming.
“They wanted us to tell you that…that…,” began Napalm. But before he finished his thought, he screamed. The scream was long and horrible, seeming to go on forever before he finally fell to the ground and was still.
Billy couldn’t be sure, but he thought Napalm was dead.
Then Billy found out that the Red Power wasn’t dead. It was much worse. With a shudder, Napalm’s body twitched as though it was being electrified. At the same time, all the lights—torches mostly—that had illuminated the area on top of the tower flickered and went out. The Diamond Dais glowed with an inner light, but the illumination was dim, allowing Billy to see little.
Still, what he saw was enough. Enough and too much. The Red Power who had once been strong enough to Challenge Fulgora continued twitching and convulsing. Then, in the dim light, Billy could see Napalm’s skin…changing. It looked like it had liquefied, crawling over itself in a flowing pattern, while still managing to cling to the underlying musculature. Then the skin solidified, and Billy could see it was now a latticework. A lace pattern he had seen bef
ore. Napalm was gone, and the body that now climbed slowly to its feet was a creature made of tiny bones. As it stood, a small form flickered up from its shoulder.
The Death’s Head Moth, Billy realized. It must have come up with Napalm and the others, and done this to him.
Billy tensed, ready to run if the deadly insect should swoop toward him, but the infernal creature just landed on what had been Napalm. The new-born creature of Dark looked at them all impassively, the power of speech gone from Napalm—or what had once been Napalm—in his new, horrifying state.
Everyone was silent for a moment, dumbstruck by what they had just seen.
“What is this?” whispered Fulgora finally.
“I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Russet quietly. She was looking around them, and Billy could see how tense she was. Then a chill wind whipped up. Lightning ripped through the night sky, illuminating the top of the tower. Billy and the others were standing in the pillbox that Mrs. Russet had constructed, but suddenly a flash of lightning crashed into the structure, reducing it instantly to an ash-like dust that rained down on their heads.
The lightning continued, and in a sudden brief flash of strobing light, Billy could see something. Something terrible, something awful, something impossible. One moment the top of the tower was dark and mostly deserted, just Billy, Mrs. Russet, Fulgora, Vester, Ivy, the two unconscious Powers who were left from the Accounting Room, and the new Death’s Head Power that had once been Napalm. No one else.
Then the lightning came. It flashed, and then darkness fell. An instant later there was another illuminating flash, and this time Billy and his friends were no longer alone.
Darksiders were among them. Everywhere. The Dark Powers had just appeared among the Dawnwalkers on the tower, in the time it took for the lightning to erupt across the sky and then disappear again.
And, at their head, close enough to Billy that he could smell the Power’s fetid breath when he spoke, was Wolfen. And right behind him stood Eva Black and her son Cameron, both of them glaring murderously at Billy.
Billy: Messenger of Powers Page 45
