by Alan D Jones
Chapter 10 - Old Wounds
June, 1981
Sadness and Melancholy are not the same. The former is regret for what was, where the latter is a longing for what could be.
Just before sunrise, Deborah, Cil, and Joe turned onto Auburn Avenue in the battered blue pickup truck. Sarah and Ruth Ann followed close behind in an older foreign sports car. Sarah was driving. Both vehicles stopped in a set of shadows between the streetlights.
Cil pointed out, “There it is.”
The “it” Cil was referring to was the building that the Council of Nob had purchased nearly twenty years earlier. It was where they held their meetings during the time they were based in Atlanta and where Deborah had gone with Elisa when she was a little girl. The Council still owned the building.
Joe grunted, “Yes, I see it. Where do you want me to park?”
“This is good,” Cil said.
Cil nudged Deborah, “Ruth Ann and I will go around to the back entrance and cause a commotion. That should draw some of the guards from the front. Then you and Sarah go in hand to hand, as best you can, through the front. Our intelligence tells us that all of the portals were moved to the conference room some time ago after repeated flooding in the basement. When you get to the conference room, destroy all of the mirrors on the walls and all of the free standing ones except for the one to Elisa’s paradise.”
“Got it,” Deborah said as she exited the truck.
Deborah motioned for Sarah to follow her up the street to the Council’s old lodge. Cil and Ruth headed down an alley towards the back of the buildings on that block. Although the sisters had planned this mission earlier, Deborah repeated Cil’s instructions to Sarah as they walked along the sidewalk. They stopped at the bus stop right before the lodge’s entrance. They could see armed men in black suits with ear pieces milling about the lobby. The Council no longer met regularly at this location but they still used it for storage.
A militia of Isadora’s walking dead remained on site as protection. The dead were under the command of human lieutenants who typically set up in the lobby or the break room. The four lieutenants in the lobby looked like Secret Service agents.
Deborah and Sarah stood outside pretending to wait for a bus as they each slipped on a pair of gloves. The sisters slyly watched the lobby. Then they heard the sound of a disturbance coming from behind the building. Two of the men immediately exited the lobby. The remaining two moved to the windows and closed the blinds. That was Deborah and Sarah’s cue.
Both women were dressed in short sun dresses with black leggings. They quickly turned and walked towards the front door. The sisters wanted to refrain from using their powers within the building because the building also served as an arms cache for the Council. Deborah reached the door first and, seeing that it was locked, nodded towards Sarah. She lifted her shades slightly and a burst of white hot heat shot out. The bolt and lock melted away and dripped to the ground. The sisters looked around quickly then Deborah pushed the door open. The stunned lieutenants reached for their guns, but Sarah disarmed them with her smile, as was her way, until she and Deborah were upon them.
Deborah cupped her hands and slammed them over the ears of the man on the left. Sarah karate-chopped the one on the right in the throat and hit him across his glass jaw with a wheel house kick. Deborah brought her foe down by slamming his face down into her knee. In moments, both of men lay unconscious on the floor. Deborah and Sarah quickly unzipped their sun dresses revealing their fitted black full-body tights underneath. Deborah strapped the golden bow of Athena, which she’d managed to hide under her dress, to her back. They laid their dresses on the front desk and moved towards an internal door. Deborah took the lead; Sarah followed. Deborah opened the door to the hallway that led to the conference room. There were four sentries in the hallway, two near the stairs and two at the end of the hall outside of the conference room. Each walking corpse stood about six foot four and weighed between 250 to 300 pounds. They all had a hunger for human flesh.
First, they had to disable the two undead guarding the stairwell. The sisters had no intention of going upstairs or into the basement but, by being in the hallway, these guys were in the way. Deborah went invisible before running and sliding between the legs of the first monstrosity and springing up in front of the second one. Using the base of her hand, she landed an uppercut beneath its chin as she revealed herself.
Sarah executed a perfect leg sweep on the first beast toppling it to the floor. She jumped on top of it pounding blows into its eyes. Though it couldn’t feel pain from her blows, it still could not see without its eyes.
Just as Deborah and Sarah were incapacitating the first two guards, the two overgrown zombies guarding the conference room door rushed towards them. These two had been fitted with long, sharp steel fingernails and iron teeth. Deborah had no time or room to sling a golden arrow before the first creature was upon her. The beast swung at her. She ducked but not before one of his razor sharp talons scratched her chin.
She nodded her head and questioned the abomination, “So, it’s like that, huh?”
Deborah unleashed a barrage of blows against her opponent. Still, he stood. She ran past him towards the Boardroom and he followed in close pursuit. But, rather than going through the door, Deborah ran towards the corner, bounded up the wall to the side wall, then moved back toward the monster. From there, she kicked him in the head so hard that several of his iron teeth flew from his mouth. The sentry hit the floor.
Sarah leapt on the back of her opponent’s neck and placed her hands on either side of his head to scorch him into submission.
Sarah said to her sister, “You know you could have done that a lot easier by at least staying invisible?”
Deborah smiled, “Yes, but you know….”
All the sisters knew that Deborah liked to fight. She was an “I wish you would” chick, as some like to say. It also seemed that she was always trying to prove that she was just as tough as Cil.
As the sisters entered the Boardroom, Deborah exclaimed, “Whoa. It’s been so many years.”
The room was filled with mirrors. There were several large mirrors on the walls, but most were free standing full-length mirrors. All of the mirrors were draped with a heavy cloth. Blocking light into the mirrors shut down the portals. But this place held more than simply inter-dimensional gateways. It did and would always hold a certain sadness for each of the sisters. For Deborah, it was a bitter sadness.
Sarah seeking to move things along said, “Hey, I’m going to turn the lights up just a bit in here so that we can see what we’re doing. Then we can pull these covers off of each of these mirrors and you can tell me which one is the portal to Aunt Elisa’s paradise.”
Deborah shook her head as if loosening cobwebs and replied softly, “Okay.”
The two of them began pulling the cloths from each of the mirrors. After all the cloths were removed, they stood back to survey the room. It was amazing. Each mirror represented a portal to new and amazing worlds. There were some worlds where all they could see was mist. Others were glistening cities of light. Still others seemed to be pure darkness. But, there was one mirror, framed in cherry wood, that led to a world that appeared much like earth. It was a world where everything had two shadows. From where they stood, it looked like paradise.
Deborah called out, “That one. That’s it.”
Sarah instructed her sister, “Alright, pull that one into the hallway and I’ll get started here.”
She then removed her shades looked at each mirror. As she did, each mirror began to melt. She radiated something akin to a microwave at each one. She was almost finished when the doors to the conference room opened. Her three sisters stepped in. They were protected from the radiation by one of Ruth’s blue shields. They watched as the images on the three wall mirrors on the left wall, one by one, distorted, drooped and ran to the floor in small reflective rivulets. When Sarah gave the all-clear sign to her siblings, Ru
th lowered her shield.
They picked up the one mirror they’d spared and carried it down the hallway. Instinctively, they stopped at the stairwell. Each of them took a deep breath. All were thinking of the events that took place at the bottom of those stairs nearly twenty years earlier. In spite of themselves, tears began to flow.
Cil said through her tears, “It’s alright. Let it go. It’s okay.”
Deborah asked, “Can we go down there?”
Cil responded, “No, not right now, we don’t have time. But, when we’re done, we’ll come back. And we’ll get all of these munitions and chemicals out of here as well.”
They picked up the mirror again and marched off through the foyer. Once outside, Cil motioned for Joe to drive up to meet them.
Joe immediately jumped out of the truck took the mirror from the women and laid it in the bed of his truck. He took a heavy moving blanket and placed it over the mirror. After securing everything, he hopped back into the driver’s seat.
“It was hard going back in there, huh?”
Cil only nodded.
Deborah looked back at the building and replied simply “Yes…”
THE BOOK OF
ELISA
