by Wayne Hill
However, the Nirmana are singularly unaware that this alternate version of Earth is the worst possible version of Earth. Had they known this they would have launched their survival pods in any direction save towards prison planet Earth.
8
In the universe that Splinter had painfully and skilfully escaped from, Jonesy is having a bad day. Three deaths this morning and four deaths, so far, this evening. Jonesy feels obliged to bury these patrons. Jonesy feels like shit. Without Splinter’s help, the burials were the last thing he wanted to do with his remaining time on this planet. But, then again, if he didn’t do it, it wouldn’t get done.
Bunch of lazy good-for-nothings, Jonesy thinks about the still living patrons still drinking inside O’Shea’s. All bicker, bicker, bicker but — when it comes to any real graft — where are they? Nowhere to be seen. Lazy fuckers. Splinter, Hector or Bowdon usually took care of the dark business of the cemetery duties but, when they were away, who else was there ...?
Jonsey pauses in his digging, wiping the sweat from his brow and leaning his insubstantial weight on the spade’s rickety handle. Where are ya, lad? wonders Jonesy, as he stares vaguely up at the stars.
The folks that had died today were all friends. They were people who he had suffered with, laughed with, sang with, fought alongside. People about which he had only fond memories — mostly. It seems to Jonesy that every day he loses another friend, another part of himself. How long could he tolerate it? How long did he even have left?
He sighs, climbing from the freshly dug grave to collect another corpse. Well, there was nothing he could do. They were dead now. Lost to the Dionysius virus, in a way. They had taken their own lives, or each other’s. He could not blame them. Who wants to wait until your private parts shoot off or your brain melts. Only people slightly insane to start with survive this level of prolonged pissedness. Probably only half a percent. Half a percent that are in possession of the obduracy that’s partly genetic, mostly willpower. Demented, but powerful, willpower.
Jonesy knows why the young woman he carries now killed herself. And he did not blame her in the slightest.
But he did not understand. Not really. Who can understand death but the despairing, the poorly, the pained or the souls that are halfway between realities? He was never one of these. He is just a barman, born and bred, with a dead friend over his shoulder. He is, in his own inimical way, mourning a life: lost laughs and tears, unfinished stories, conversations never to be had; another empty barstool.
Jonesy finishes his grave duty, in both senses, and looks out over the makeshift cemetery. We’re running out of room, he thinks. The distance between the graves was shrinking rapidly. I wonder who will bury me? Not Splinter. I wouldn’t want the lad to do that. Lad? He smiled and shook his head wistfully. Splinter hadn’t been a lad for a long time but, to Jonesy, Splinter would always be that naïve, love-smitten teenager.
Jonesy absently caresses the pearl handle of the six-shooter holstered at his waist. He has a well-known love for old western films. His collection of cinematic antiquity is his pride and joy — hence the cinema room upstairs in the pub. And he guards his memorabilia jealously. As he puts it, ‘I stole it first, and stealing from a thief is just bad form.’
With a final glance over his shoulder at the packed graveyard, as if something might have changed, Jonesy goes back into O’Shea’s. The barroom is busy, as usual, and there is excited speculation on the tales and treasure Splinter and the lads would return with.
Jonesy starts to get one of his bad feelings. He can always sense trouble and troublemakers. He thinks again of Splinter. The way the boy was when he met him, his temper, the way he was when he lost his love, how the boy became a man and how that man became a legend amongst the convicts, a devil to those who crossed his path. Usually, when he thinks about Splinter, he gets a warm feeling in his stomach — an unusual feeling for the brutal old man. But now, the only feeling he was getting was a strange hollow feeling, like someone had whipped the ground away from under his feet. He distinctly feels something bad on the horizon. Not knowing why, but always trusting his gut, Jonesy strides through the bustling pub with his usual bandy-legged swagger and out of the pub’s saloon doors into the dark.
He breathes in the ozone tang of the coming storm, soothed by its familiar earthiness.
Then he sees a dim figure in the distance, a silhouette seemingly emerging from within the storm. It appears to be carrying knives. A lot of knives. Jonesy’s thumb flicks open the clip of his leather gun holster.
The spiky silhouette halted just outside the light coming from the pub.
“Get the fuck out of here, ya drunken bum!” Jonesy shouts over the din from the barroom in his more-than-threatening Belfast growl. He steps down from the stoop, out into the pattering rain — the gentle vanguard of the coming maelstrom — doing shooing motions with his arms, as if to scare away an unwanted racoon. The figure did not move.
“I said get the fuck out of here!” Jonesy repeats, whipping out his Colt Peacemaker.
“Put that away, old man, before you hurt someone!” the figure says, starting to close the distance between them.
“Hey boy! Da fuck you say?” Jonesy fires off three shots in quick succession before there is a shink sound ... and his beloved weapon falls apart in his hand. Jonesy pointlessly continues pulling the trigger on what remains of his pistol as he feels a razor-sharp blade tilt his chin up.
“What the fuck?” exclaims Jonesy.
“I’m looking for Jonesy. I have news of Splinter,” says a gravelly voice from behind Jonesy. Jonesy was no amateur when it came to fighting, but the speed at which this encounter had ended worried him. He had not even gotten a good look at the person, let alone seen how he had avoided those bullets. His assailants voice was also unnerving.
“No Jonesy here, fella,” says Jonesy. “Calm down, man. No need for all of ... this.”
“Splinter described this Jonesy as a ‘mean old bastard with a love for old fashioned guns.’”
“No. I’ve still no idea what yer talking about, son, but, if you don’t take that fuckin’ knife away from my throat, I’ll stick it where the sun doesn’t shine!”
Talon drops his finger-blade a little, but smiles, knowing he had indeed found Splinter’s Jonesy. This was the man that Splinter had called ‘the most dangerous person’ he had ever met. Talon thought how many stories he had heard about this drunken, frail-looking old man: how many fights the young Tommy Salem has lost to this ‘devious shit’ — as Astilla had colourfully described him.
Talon was disappointed. He had easily bested this man. Perhaps, he thought, I should give this Jonesy a taste of the playful torture he bestowed on the young Astilla. Talon grins his plate-bone smile as he thinks of an easy way to annoy this truculent man.
“Fair enough,” Talon says removing the blade from Jonesy’s neck. “I understand where I’ve gone wrong. I can clearly hear that you don’t have a northern Irish accent. Splinter fondly impersonated it on many, many occasions. No. Your accent is more Australian. Perhaps ... a touch of French?”
“Australian? French?” roars Jonesy and mule-kicks Talon in the groin.
Talon — for all his alien speed, extraordinary strength, and disturbing outward appearance — had extremely normal human genitals. Talon exhaled all the air from his body and fell to his knees, whimpering slightly. This was the first time in more than a century that he had felt such excruciating pain. Unable to nurse his pain, without running the risk of castrating himself, he merely grips the muddy earth with his talons. Knife-like fingers had many utilitarian drawbacks.
He was trying to will the pain away when his head is pulled backwards by one of his head horns and Jonesy’s bowie knife pricked his neck.
“Jonesy, Jonesy! I’m Talon! I’m a friend! A friend!”
“I know who ya are, ya horned devil! Now tell me that I’m not an Australasian French man.”
“Alright, you win, you’re an Irish man.”
<
br /> “Say Ulsterman,” Jonesy says pushing on the blade at Talon’s throat, threatening to puncture it.
“Ulsterman, Jonesy! You’re an Ulsterman.”
“Good,” says Jonesy removing the knife from Talon’s neck and releasing his grip on Talon’s horns. “Now you owe me a new six-shooter and a fuckin explanation about what’s going on with Splinter.”
Jonesy carefully helps Talon to his feet.
“He saved us, Jonesy,” Talon says, as, in the distance, familiar piratical shapes emerge from the darkness. “He saved all of us.”
Talon hands Jonesy Splinter’s dented tear-flask.
“Sweet Jesus,” whispers Jonesy, tracing the beautifully depicted face of Marie-Ann O’Shea. This could only mean one thing. His friend was gone. Forever.
“He said you would know what to do with this.”
Before Jonesy could ask about the danger that Splinter had saved them from — and, more importantly, what had happened to it — the sky above them was set ablaze. The Nirmanan spaceship, fires raging all over its gargantuan surface, rumbled through the storm clouds gathering above them.
“That seems about right,” nods Jonesy watching the giant fiery comet tear through the sky. The patrons of O’Shea’s staggered out to join the returning space pirates, all of them intently watching the fireball’s progress.
“Hmm. The northern cliffs. It looks like it will crash near them northern cliffs,” Jonesy muses. He turns to further question Talon, but the demon is gone. Jonesy had felt a brief draft of air. Looking down at the ground, where Talon had been standing only seconds before, deep claw-grooves were cut into the dirt.
“Hey Jonesy —” says Lemon, accompanied (as always) by Pug — “what have you got there?”
“Mind your own fuckin’ business, ya ugly bastard!”
Turning away from the annoying pair, Jonesy is glad it is raining. The rain hides the tears he sheds for one of his dearest friends. He feels the intense need to punch someone. I wish that speedy little bastard, Talon, had not been in such a hurry, he thinks morosely. He would have made a decent opponent.
Someone tries to swipe Splinter’s metal flask from Jonesy’s hand; no doubt thinking it contains some variety of alcohol. Jonesy brings his elbow sharply upwards into the prospective thief’s jaw. The young perp is knocked from his feet onto his backside. He remains there for a few moments, squirming in the mud, rubbing his chin — surprised, offended, stupid-looking. He attempts to get up, drunkenly eager to fight Jonesy, slips and falls backwards. This only makes the youth angrier.
Jonesy laughs, inflaming matters further.
“You're out of yer depth, son,” he cautions. “Wise up. Last warning.”
The young aggressor has no idea who Jonesy is, and Jonesy does not care — he has his fight. The snarling kid charges, looking to bring Jonesy down with a rugby tackle. Jonesy sidesteps the clumsy attack and sharply chops down on the back of the diving boy’s neck.
Jonesy watches the dead body twitch for a while.
He once again wishes that Talon would have stuck around a little longer. Jonesy is in the mood for chaos, blood ... war.
9
The Nirmanan spaceship crash-landed in the sea, two miles out from the northern cliff face inhabited by Talon’s clan. The clan members watch with awe as the giant behemoth of the sky explodes into the sea causing tsunami-like waves to crash against the cliffs, flooding the lowest cave homes.
Aliens had come to prison planet Earth.
Onboard the Nirmanan craft, their leader sat on a flickering, light-filled throne, the rest of the large control room buzzing with activity. His head in his hands, he lets out a scream of frustration as his second-in-command lists the damage to the craft that Splinter had inflicted. Tommy Salem may have found his own twisted Nirvana, but the Nirmana would not be defeated.
The Nirmana leader springs to his feet and hails the entire craft.
“Comrades, that which we have suffered for many millennia to find is not yet unreachable. We shall search the facility where Tommy Salem was raised and search for memories of the mind that we require. We must tear this land apart looking for anyone with which he may have communed. We shall yet find a way out of Samsāra.”
The leader then despatches all his available troops ashore. Their instructions are to return with suitable individuals to interrogate ... and annihilate everyone, and everything, else.
THE CRASH OF THE NIRMANAN ship causes something ancient to stir in the depths of the island. There is a tunnel system throughout the island landmass that remains of Earth. It is off-limits to non-Guardians and unknown to many who have lived within the safety of the Drumcroon facility in the last few hundred years. The layout of the Island tunnel system was much like the ramification of veins on a leaf, or the skeleton of a fish. The central tunnel runs the full length of the island, from the far east to the far west — although this tunnel stops a few miles out from the fortified barricades of the Lanes, where the granite batholith there was deemed too labour intensive to tunnel through.
After leaving Splinter’s crabby old friend, Talon soon finds himself at a secret tunnel entrance, near the Lanes.
Talon had helped Tommy long ago in his mission to purloin expensive equipment from the Drumcroon facilty so he could complete his transformation into Splinter Salem. Talon had run the tunnels to get the equipment used to replace Tommy’s arm with something that would protect him. He had used the tunnel systems, as it was the fastest way to traverse the island, but he had had more time to plan that run. Talon has valuable knowledge of the Barrenite’s Days of Celebration, the religious holidays where they went above ground during the day to worship and, at night, gathered in the main chamber and feasted on animals, vegetables, and ... unfortunates. Talon was there at the start of their wicked rule and so he knows the Barrenite routine. On that occasion he had minimised the chances of meeting Barrenites and had completed the trip in under four hours.
Watching the destroyed ship heading towards his home, Talon suspects that its contents will be far from benign. Knowing he needs to get to Daria as fast as he can, a tunnel run becomes his only viable option. He just hopes Thankwell can keep his daughter safe until he arrives.
Talon paces around, taking in deep breaths of fresh sea air. He knows he will soon be surrounded by the old rotten smells of the tunnels: must, mould, rot, decay, and that smell of death that a certain part of him still craves. Talon lashes out at the thin air with lethal kicks and decapitating hand chops, limbering up for his blind, unplanned tunnel run. Deep down, this feels almost like a suicide mission. But he must reach his beloved Daria. Talon knows the tunnels would be crawling with Barrenites and his one chance is speed combined with extreme violence. He needs to strike fast, killing as he runs, dodging where he can.
The main chamber in the middle of the island is his main worry. There is no way around it. It is designed that way. There resided his brother and sisters, the remaining Dehas.
Talon takes a few deeper breaths and then speeds down into the graduated darkness.
Screams erupt almost immediately, accompanied by the whooshing of claws and the gurgling sound of lost throats. His blades tearing through bones, tendons, muscles and entrails, Talon runs through the tunnels. Using his clawed feet, he weaves down earthen passageways, running on floors, walls, roofs.
He enters the main tunnel running at a speed he has never dared push his abnormal body to before. His muscles burn, his lungs seem on fire, blood and ichor covers him like a liquid cloak which streams out behind him.
Behind is only carnage: confusion, corpses, and body parts. Mutilated and injured Barrenites are running and crawling around in Talon’s wake, clawing and biting their brothers and sisters, trying to beat the hurricane of razor blades that is Secretas to the central cavern — trying, somehow, to warn their leaders.
Talon speeds on, a whirlwind of blades, a tornado of death. Fast approaching the central cave, he meets greater resistance, greater numbers of Barrenite
s, which slows him down significantly. Memories as well as Barrenites assault him and, with each step, every slice of his lethal bone blades, it increasingly seems like he is fighting his inner demon, his alternate self: Secretas.
Just before the main cavern was a secret tunnel that Talon himself had created near the roof of the tunnel. Talon needed a break. He needed air, he was wounded and just needed some more time. Turning a quick blind turn and with no Barrenites in sight — perhaps they were massing inside the hall itself — Talon scrambles up the wall, over an outcropping boulder near the roof, and into his tunnel. Pausing near the tunnel entrance, his chest heaving with exertion, covered in blood — some of which was his own — he can hear Barrenites gathering below, fighting amongst themselves and accusing one another of letting the invader slip by.
Moving carefully, Talon crawls the hundred or so feet through the narrow dirt tunnel and out of the gorse-covered tunnel exit. His energy ebbs away, like wine from a punctured bladder, and he collapses on his back, breath rasping from his lungs. He is used up, and he is barely halfway to his goal. His rune-inscribed flesh is covered with blood, his questing fingertips discover a large slash across his stomach and fragments of bone jutting from his skin in various places. He lets his breathing calm — soothed by the clean, earthy air and the chirping, snuffling, and rustling of the forest’s nocturnal creatures.
Listening to the life of the forest, Talon whispers a small invocation. He does not know exactly to whom, or what, he was appealing because he did not believe in any god. Perhaps he was petitioning some balancing universal force. The elements, perhaps, or Nature itself.
“If anything is there,” he says to the night, “and you can hear me, help me. Help me. I need your help. You owe me that much, at least. And, if you are there and can help, but choose not to, then fuck you! I’ll do this myself!”
With a barely supressed scream, Talon pulls a particularly large bone fragment out from where it was embedded in his shoulder and tosses the blood-slicked item away. Focussing on his pain — using it, and his anger, to fill his bloodstream with adrenaline once more — he clamps his plate-bone teeth together and rushes back down the secret tunnel to resume his suicidal dash towards his clan, towards Daria.
