The Apocalypse Script

by Samuel Fort

  Chapter 45 - Resurrection

  Ben rose from the floor very slowly, unsure which way was up. When he finally got his bearings he gripped the edge of the cabinet behind him and pulled until he was upright. He fell backwards against the glass lid.

  He scanned the room for Ridley but the man was gone. The door to the vault was open and he could see the wall of the cave beyond, gray and moist beneath the bright illumination of the fluorescent lights. Thrown over the metal door was the yellow robe the scribe had been wearing.

  “Ridley!” the man yelled. His voice echoed through the cave and came back to him twice but there was no other sound.

  He struggled to push back the seemingly infinite number of thoughts that had sprung to life when Ridley had resurrected the Empyrean language that had lain dormant in his brain for the past twenty years. Alien thoughts now swarmed restively between his conscious and subconscious and he knew instinctively that if he failed to contain them, and they flooded into his conscious mind, he might lose his grip on reality.

  It wasn’t easy resisting their call. It was like looking at a painting and trying to see only the strokes of paint and not the subject, or staring at an image on a monitor and trying to see only a collection of pixels and not the image they formed. For almost anyone else it would have been impossible. It was only an accident of nature, he knew, that allowed his brain to deconstruct the whole for his protection. It was, he thought, the very trait that allowed him to comprehend the Empyrean Glossa.

  He checked his watch and saw that it was after nine o’clock in the evening, but the day, thankfully, was unchanged. He walked stiltedly toward the door and proceeded across the metal grates and up the spiral staircase to the hotel.

  Ridley had told him - hadn’t he? - what would transpire this night. What was supposed to transpire, at least. If everything had gone according to plan, Lord Disparthian and Lilian should at this moment be together with Fiela in the Great Hall savoring their victory over the forces of Moros and Nizrok.

  That was what the scribe had told him, wasn’t it? Ben thought he had said more. Something about treachery, but by that point the researcher’s mind had begun to shut down. His mental circuit breakers had been flipped, one by one, by the Empyrean invasion, until there was no activity at all.

  He had been rebooted.

  Ben increased his pace as he ascended the stairs. Pushing the door at the top open, he slid into the corridor and trotted toward the Great Hall, looking into each room he passed, but seeing no one. Steepleguard was deathly quiet except for the faraway voice of a man delivering some kind of speech.

  That was to be expected, right? It’s probably one of Lilian’s supporters waxing poetic about the woman and her family. Then he smelled the spent gunpowder and heard Lilian’s voice and he knew from the sound that she was in distress.

  Ben picked up speed and took the next corner, the one that led into the kitchen, fast, but he came to a screeching halt when he saw two other men headed his way. Big men who wore body armor and carried guns. Men in tattered and mismatched uniforms.

  Rebels, he assumed. Maqtu.

  They saw him, too, and he heard one of the men say excitedly, “It’s the Ardoon king!” in Agati.

  In Agati, Ben marveled. I can understand Agati?

  The question evaporated when he heard the other Maqtu yell, “Kill him!”

  The first soldier raised his rifle. The former Marine jumped to one side, taking cover behind one of the kitchen islands as a tile backsplash behind him exploded.

  The island that separated him from the rebels was the portable variety, elevated two inches off the floor by casters. From his prone position Ben could see the boots of the Maqtu as they walked toward him. Each was approaching from a different side and both were now ten feet away. He noticed potato peels around him and looked up hopefully.

  A black handle dangled over the lip of the island’s counter. He shot a hand up and grabbed it.

  Oh please oh please oh please don’t be a potato peeler.

  It was a cleaver.

  Thank you, God!

  The rebels were five feet away now. He pushed the island experimentally. It moved. He crouched directly behind it and counted. One, two, three – now.

  He rolled to his right and blindly swung the cleaver across the floor in front of him even as he kicked his feet out and forced the island to the left. The Maqtu who had been approaching from the left side screamed in pain and fury when the corner of the island rammed his groin. As he did so, the business end of the cleaver sliced into the Achilles tendon of the other man, who screamed far louder and collapsed to the ground.

  Without hesitation, Ben jerked the cleaver out and swung at the man’s leg again like a lumberjack hacking at a tree. The next swing hit the rebel’s femoral artery and a spray of blood showered Ben and everything around him. A third swing exposed the man’s intestines, and he was out. The artery continued to pump out showers of blood rhythmically, like Old Faithful with a prostate issue.

  Unfortunately, the other rebel had recovered while the linguist was hacking at his comrade. He was now bearing down on Ben, who saw there was no possibility that he could unsling the fallen rebel’s weapon in time to use it.

  “Wait!” Ben yelled. It was an instinctive command born of desperation, a command meant to buy him a few more seconds so he could develop a plan. It was exactly what any person about to be killed would be expected to say to his executioner.

  But in this case, unlike almost any other, it worked. The Maqtu stood above him, rifle to his shoulder, and waited.

  Ben plowed his heels into the floor and pushed backwards. He expected that at any moment the Maqtu would chuckle and finish him.

  But he didn’t.

  The researcher rose slowly to his feet and carefully moved the cleaver behind his back. He was mystified as to why he wasn’t dead yet and confused at the yelling he heard from down the corridor. Somewhere, he heard a pistol shot, and then two more. Trying to come to grips with the situation, he said, “Whose side are you on?”

  The rebel said, “I serve Sibelius.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” replied Ben, preparing to hurl the cleaver at the man. “Who does he serve?”

  “Lord Moros.”

  Ben froze. “The Maqtu serve Lord Moros?”

  “We do now.”

  “Where is Lilian?” When the man didn’t answer, he ventured, “Lilitu of Sargon?”

  “In the Great Hall, bowing before Lord Moros. She’s about to get a ripe good beating.”

  Ben tried to control his shock. “And Fiela? Is she a prisoner, too?”

  There was another shot fired somewhere inside Steepleguard, followed by the sound of automatic weapons. Then it was quiet again.

  “No,” said the man, his finger still on the trigger. “She went down like a trooper, that one. Must’ve taken out a whole squad by herself.”

  “She’s dead?” Ben growled, moving toward the man. He no longer cared about the gun that was pointed at him.

  “Curled up like a kitten next to the stage. She was a pretty thing.”

  Ben didn’t hear the last bit of banter because at that moment the rage was forming inside him, a rage that brushed aside the muddling thoughts of the Empyrean and the confusing events of the past week and his concerns about his future. It was a rage that vaporized every thought in its path and in its wake left only clarity.

  The epiphany was complete.

  He pushed aside the barrel of the Maqtu’s rifle and slammed the blade into the man’s shoulder and spoke the words to him. Without hesitation and with pure joy, the rebel, a cleaver buried in his shoulder, ran past Ben, through the kitchen, through the patio doors, through a gate, and into the courtyard. There, he put the barrel of his rifle into his mouth and gleefully pulled the trigger.