“Thank you. I appreciate your courage. It can’t be easy after all you’ve been through.”
We kept our eyes on the Seraphim as we passed through the fringes of the horde, populated as usual by recluses and eccentrics not tolerated by the main column. Physically, these people seemed fairly intact, just a little less focused on their pursuit of the great dust storm.
An eighth Seraph appeared around the edge of the Horus, trailing the others. The sheath of dust enveloping the storm had peeled away to allow us a glimpse of its internal structure, most notably the core of downward thrusting winds that met the ground in a continuous explosion. The weirdly bright core contrasted with its black and brown vestments. Only moments later, the shroud swung back around to obscure.
We pushed on through to the core of the column, reaching a contingent of marchers who were earnest and even desperate in their pursuit of the Horus, but lagged due to various infirmities—unsound limbs and joints, broken backs and necks. They could walk okay, just not as fast as the fittest in the horde. From the wear and tear on their hides, some of them had been chasing the Horus for a very long time.
“We have to move back,” I said. “These people look way too healthy.”
“Better for me,” said Olivier. “I can blend better with the cripples.”
The crowd parted for us as we picked our way back through the flow. We drew plenty of worried or annoyed glances, but no one challenged us.
Brian kept gazing up to the rim of the plateau where the seven Seraphs had flown and where his escort awaited.
“We’re being followed,” said Olivier.
I glanced back over my shoulder. A pair of bone-wielders were threading their way through the masses. They didn’t look that sure of themselves. Protectors-in-training maybe, perhaps left behind for a reason.
“I don’t see a Hashmal with them,” said Brian.
“No worries,” said Olivier. “I can handle them.”
We reached a mass of limping, lurching wretches more reminiscent of the group in which I had glimpsed Karla with from the Singularity, their powers of locomotion compromised by serious injuries.
Some recoiled from us, minds scarred perhaps by the acts of violence that had ruined their bodies. One man had little left but bones and sinew and shreds of skin. And yet he walked.
An eyeless woman recoiled from us as if she could see, suggesting that eyes had nothing to do with sight in this world. Not surprising. For most of us, biology was a sham in this realm, flesh little more than a frame to hang a soul. We were basically zombies, even the prettiest of us. At least we didn’t eat people.
“Guys … this is the end of the road for me,” said Brian. “That storm’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
“You do what you have to,” I said. “I’ll stick with Mr. Olivier.”
“Oh? What about finding your girl?” said Olivier.
I sighed. “I don’t even know if she’s here. I’m not a hundred percent positive this is the horde I saw.”
We set down the palanquin gently. My arm brushed against the egg. It bristled and hissed at me. I jumped back.
“Don’t worry,” said Olivier. “He won’t bite you.”
A legless man maneuvered past us, remarkably nimble in the way he planted his arms and swung his rump.
“Okay, listen guys. Gotta run,” said Brian, looking all spooked and antsy. “It’s been nice knowing you. Good luck and all.”
“See ya. And thanks … thanks for everything.”
He took off sprinting like the devil was chasing him.
***
I sat cross-legged beside Olivier and his egg, studying every face that passed, lingering on every female form, struggling to remember Karla’s physique. A quartet of ravaged souls, each missing at least one leg, had paused to watch us. They chatted in subdued voices between giving us the evil eye.
“Look! A coffee clache!” said Olivier. “I don’t suppose we’ll be invited.”
“If they don’t move on, I’m gonna give them something to talk about.”
“No worries. They’re harmless. They’re just curious what a big strong man like you is doing back here with a dropout.”
“This is horrible,” I said. “It’s a parade of horrors. I don’t see why they put up with all this marching.”
“What do you want?” said Olivier. “They are pilgrims.”
“They can’t all believe, can they?”
“What other choice do they have?”
“Well, there’s Tiamat.”
“That place is not for everyone,” said Olivier. “I can certainly vouch for that.”
He caught me staring into the passing crowd.
“This girl of yours. What does she look like?”
I drew a blank. I knew I would recognize Karla’s face the instant I saw it, but for some reason I couldn’t think of how to describe it to Olivier. I couldn’t even summon more than a fuzzy, wavering image of her in my mind’s eye.
What did that mean? Was she not important to me after all? Or did we simply not have enough time together for her visage to indelibly penetrate my psyche? Maybe it was the mind’s way of protecting one from pining for someone you had loved and lost. Though, I could picture my dad’s face from his bushy eyebrows to the pores on his nose. Mom? I didn’t want to think about what had happened to her.
“I … don’t know,” I said, finally. “She’s probably gray … like you … like everybody else.”
Olivier squished his eyes and looked askance at me. “Well, that’s not very helpful.”
High above us, looking like one of those deep sea birds that rarely touches down on land, the eighth Seraph altered course and descended in a long, lazy spiral. Its body combined with the long and slender middle wings made a cross in the sky, with the subwings adding embellishments.
With horror, I saw that his course was converging with Brian’s. The anomaly of an able-bodied soul fleeing from the Horus had attracted its attention. Our escort was still hunkered down in some dunes just below the rim of the depression. I doubted they would be much help against a Seraph.
A hubbub passed up and down the column. The approach of a Seraph was clearly a momentous occasion.
“Mr. Olivier? We’ve got a problem.”
“Oh?”
“A Seraph is going after Brian.”
“Too bad. That’s his problem. We didn’t ask him to leave.”
“But … we have to help him.”
“We can’t. It will draw attention to us.”
“But he’s a sitting duck!”
“Actually, he seems to be running quite well. He seems fit enough to dodge. And if he can’t. Oh well.” Olivier must have seen the disgust on my face. “Listen. I can barely hold myself together as things stand. I would not last in a tussle.”
“What about your familiar, your … egg?”
He shook his head. “Can’t afford to deplete it. I may need it for myself. And I need it strong … as strong as possible.”
“Someone’s got to help him!” I shot to my feet and starting running after Brian who was already leaving the edge of the horde and was halfway to the rim. The bone wielders who had been watching us, followed after me warily. He was pretty far away, but I shouted after him anyway.
“Brian! Watch out! Up high!”
He kept on running, giving no indication that he had heard me. But escort up on the rim, leaping and waving their staffs, managed to get his attention. Brian wheeled around, looking upward, just as the Seraph swooped low and with a brittle pop, let loose a swarm of objects that organized themselves a hive of angry hornets. Brian tried to evade them, veering hard to the right and hard to the left in an attempt to shake them. But the intelligent swarm reacted and followed his every move.
Realizing his plight, he spun around to face them, spraying a feeble cloud of his own conjurings from his staff. They managed to deflect the leading elements of the Seraph’s swarm but the rest tore through his porous shield and slamme
d into him. Brian roared and collapsed, his legs bending grotesquely as if suddenly rendered boneless.
I stopped running at the edge of the horde. “Jesus Christ!”
The Seraph so far hadn’t even noticed me as it landed gracefully between me and Brian. The harness burst open and the angel stepped out of his wings, his entire body enveloped by a misty bubble that glowed, almost like a halo.
A familiar feeling boiled deep inside me. I stalked after him full of piss and vinegar. I liked Brian and it pained me to see him hurt like that.
The Seraph strolled right up to Brian and kicked away his staff as Brian quivered on the ground. He was speaking to Brian. From this distance, I could make out the stern and mocking tone of his voice but not his words.
I stuck out my arm and pointed my finger at him, not quite knowing yet what I expected to accomplish. I was flustered, discombobulated, consumed by hate and revenge both for Brian and for that arrow still stuck through my middle. This time that familiar loosening drew from far beyond my core, deep into the marrow of my bones.
Brian stared straight at me, his eyes wide with terror. The Seraph turned to see what he was looking at and the instant he did, my will burst free. I pictured an arrow and an arrow it became, a lance of energy aimed straight for his chest.
The Seraph calmly twitched his weapon and my arrow curled aside like a Frisbee caught in a stiff breeze. His weapon, the same kind of bristly thing the fallen Seraph had possessed pointed my way.
I panicked, struggling to conjure another burst, but my fear stifled any possibility of a second volley. I had shot my wad and that was that.
But my arrow, though it hadn’t struck the Seraph, it had somehow pierced his bubble and a plume of gas was jetting out the exit hole. As the air gushed out, the bubble rapidly shrank.
The Seraph panicked and tried to mend the tear, but the bubble continued to contract until it was flush against his skin. He gasped and collapsed to his knees, shivering uncontrollably. He tried pointing his weapon at me but his arm jerked too hard to aim it properly.
Confidence restored, I strode right up to him, pointing my finger. My will gathered and loosened inside me, ready for another blast, if needed.
It wasn’t required. Scaly crystals of frost formed on the Seraph’s face and hands. His eyes glazed over in a permanent stare of incredulity. He keeled over into the dust.
I kept my eyes on his weapon. I wanted it, even if I had to snap his fingers off to get it.
“James?” A voice with a familiar lilt came out of the small crowd who had paused to witness the spectacle.
And there she was, one leg limp and dangling, her arm around the shoulder of a slender girl with a mangled foot.
The joy that rose in me at the sight of Karla was curtailed by the rictus of horror and disgust distorting her face. She spat her words at me, spacing them for emphasis.
“You … freaking … idiot! What the hell are you doing here? You … son ... of ... a ... bitch! Why? Why do you come?”
And before I could hug her or kiss her or utter a single word in my defense, I blinked out of this realm. Just like that.
Chapter 42: Amy
High above the depression, the Horus hunkered down like a tethered beast, grinding its stalk into the bedrock, flaunting its power, howling, roaring, taunting all who approached. Karla felt like an Eloi responding to the Morlocks’ siren. Arm in arm with a fellow cripple, she limped after it, her mind resolute, her heart equivocal.
She should have had nothing to lose, nothing to fear. The Deeps was not a tolerable place. Any change was a change for the better. The Hashmallim promised the Horus was a step up in the universe, but could they really be trusted? But who cares if it was a portal to some place worse? At least it would be different. Not this Arbuda—the cold hell of the Hindus—as some of the more negative nabobs in the crowd liked to call it.
But inside her, another smaller voice of dissent said no. Maybe it was better to roam. Though all this futile wandering got tiresome, at least she knew what to expect here. She would not complain if the Horus turned fickle. She could simply return to this hopeless but comfortable limbo.
She took some comfort in the storm’s history of quirky, unpredictable movement. She had never seen it sustain a steady course or linger very long in one location, especially not with a mass of humanity about to cross its doorstep. Rarely did it sample more than a taste of each horde before slinking off like some runaway groom.
Every step she took, her knee crunched like a sack of shattered marbles. At least the joint worked. No swelling. No pain. A small consolation for the permanent damage, but the implications were huge, making the difference between independence and immobility.
Gasps propagated up and down the column. A gap had appeared in the curtain dust and cloud shrouding the Horus, providing a rare glimpse of its inner structure—braided cords like bundles of rope, writhing like a nest of snakes. And then even that peeled away, revealing the brilliant shaft of its central vortex. Streaked with hints of turquoise and gold, it glowed as if illuminated from within by worlds beyond. It peered out like some reptilian iris until a wall of cloud drew the veil closed.
Fellow cripple Amy rested her arm on Karla’s shoulder. “You would think … if that was such a good place, if we were being rewarded, God would have made it pretty.”
“Maybe it’s pretty on the inside,” said Karla.
“Or we don’t deserve pretty.”
Seven pale specks emerged from the haze, darting through the outer bands of the storm, further exciting her fellow chasers. The Seraphim, normally as rare as raindrops, had been numerous of late. Necks craned en masse to track their flight over the depression.
“Look at that! A whole flock of bird men,” said Amy. “What the heck’s going on? They going south for the winter?”
“I wish you would not call them that,” Karla whispered. “It is disrespectful. They are not ducks. They are angels. And not only angels, but Seraphs.”
“Listen to you, Miss Goody Two-shoes. What’s gotten into you?”
Karla shrugged. “People overhear. People report … to Junger.”
Amy sighed. “You’d think these dead people would mind their own business.”
“I don’t blame them. People are desperate. Eager to please.”
“Been a while since the hash goons came around. Wonder what’s up.”
“Please! They are Hashmallim. They are angels as well.”
“Pfft! Yeah, right. Angels. In name alone.”
“Let’s not talk about it here. People are looking at us.”
“So let them. No need to be so paranoid. Not everybody’s a rat, you know.”
“It’s not that they are rats. They see what Junger does. They fear him.”
“And what’s with the caste system? I would have expected more equality.”
“You know nothing about angels, do you?” Karla could say that, because she knew plenty. The ex-nun who had provided her Sedevacantist catechism had fancied herself an angelologist. Sister Beatrice’s detailed taxonomy of the afterlife had thus far proven remarkably accurate.
“What do you want from a heathen?” said Amy.
“You are no heathen. You told me you are a Presbyterian.”
“Yeah. A Presbyterian atheist.”
“That’s an oxymoron.”
“Not really. I only went for the social aspects—the church picnics and all. Never cared much for the holy mumbo jumbo.”
“But now you know, some of the mumbo jumbo is true.”
“Is it really?” Amy bugged her eyes out at Karla. “No one ever told me there’d be seven layers of Purgatory and no Heaven, no Hell?”
“Of course there is Heaven. Why else are we marching?”
“I’m … not so sure anymore.”
“The place of the Seraphim and the Hashmallim. That must be Heaven, no?”
“Hope not. It’d be no place I’d want to go.”
“Why not?”
r /> “Because it’s full of hash goons. Worse than here. And bird people.”
“Please! They are Hashmallin and Seraphim. Angels. Call them by their right name.”
“They don’t behave like angels,” said Amy. She kept her eyes locked on the bright speck as it looped a broad spiral through the sky. “Frankly, they remind me more of vultures.”
“You are a troublemaker,” said Karla. “Keep your voice down.”
“Look! There’s another!” said Amy, as an eighth speck appeared from behind the storm.
Despite their frequent spats, Karla was glad to have found Amy. She never had a real girlfriend growing up. She had female acquaintances, but never a confidante her own age, outside Papa’s church, with whom she could share her deepest existential doubts.
Amy was American, but had spent a year in Rome as an exchange student about the same time Karla had lived there with Isobel and her father. They might have even crossed paths in Vatican City, though in those days Papa rarely let her out of the flat unaccompanied.
Step and swing. Step and swing. Arm in arm, that was the system that Amy and Karla had worked out for walking. Their bad legs were lashed together with a leather thong of dubious origin. They took turns stepping with their one good leg. And then together they would swing their bad legs forward. It was like a dance. One. Two. Swing. One. Two. Swing.
For some reason the Hashmallim took no issue with two cripples helping each other, but Heaven forbid an able-bodied person aid an invalid. Their edicts made no sense. Why not maximize the number of souls capable of seeking the Horus? Why did they insist every able body look out for themselves and themselves alone?
They approached a man hunched over on the ground, sobbing dryly.
“Uh-oh. Looks like Twinkle Toes took a fall,” said Amy.
They didn’t know his real name, but they knew him well as a cocky, mischievous fellow. Both of his feet had been severed at the ankles, but for the longest time he had managed to balance atop his stubs and outpace many intact souls. But now one of his shins had cracked and splintered. The absence of pain likely accelerated his degradation, letting him push his physique beyond what it could mechanically endure.
“I am surprised he lasted this long,” said Karla.
They passed him by without a word. The man did not even look up at them.
Countless souls had dropped out since Karla had joined the march. Only the constant recruitment of new souls from the barrens kept their numbers from dwindling away to nothing. If she and Amy didn’t reach the Horus this time around, it was inevitable that they too would eventually join the dropouts littering the wake of the horde. Their injuries only hastened this prospect.