Antioch

  Drake fumbled with the spent stripper clips. Once the line was firing at full speed and every shot started in the bag it would become a challenge just to keep Biggs in bullets. The bag was a chaotic position under pressure with desperate hands grasping at the slick cartridges. Drake dropped them even under ideal conditions, such as right then. One hit the wood and rolled behind him. When he turned around to get it, he saw a rotten arm jutting up from where the ladder met the pier.

  “Wungamung! GUM!” He slapped at Andalynn’s rear. She shot a frown at him and then her face twisted at the wet, quivering thing that was pulling itself onto the boards, coming out of its skin like a molting insect. Its smoke bled into their company on the wind from the sea.

  Andalynn raced toward it, shouting, “Hold your breath! Hold your breath! Six! Six!” She stomped on its arm to hold it in place, pulled her right hip’s revolver and emptied it into the ghoul’s face. The blasts splattered rancid flesh and ink. She fired until she felt the thing relax and then took her weight away. It fell as a limp corpse, careening off the ladder before splashing into the water below.

  She was trembling, reloading and still holding her breath when she heard someone cough. Andalynn turned and her eyes went wide under the gore-speckled goggles. It was Biggs. She said, “Biggs? Biggs?” She couldn’t believe it. Everyone stared at him.

  Ditch became so upset he almost threw his rifle off the pier. “Aaah, come on! Swimmin? Climbin’ ladders? Aaah! Whatever, man!”

  The smoke burrowed into Biggs’ mouth and throat like tiny cactus spines. He sighed and shook his head. It made sense to him that he’d catch it then, just when he’d started wanting to live again. It was fine. If he stayed calm, he’d have an hour, maybe two. He’d use it to do what he could for his friends.

  Biggs looked back at Andalynn - the goggles and surgeon’s cover - the face of death. When one of them caught the rot, that mask tended to be the last thing they saw. He said, “It’s in deep. Gon’ ride it out, alright?” She nodded in a strange way, like she’d lost her balance. He turned and pumped his index finger at Meroe. “Stay on it.”

  Grim, they leveled their rifles again. Andalynn remained at the ladder to look out over their heads. Her strong voice broke when she said, “Twelve, one…”

  6 Devil’s Mark

  A dried mixture of mud and ink crumbled from Michael as he walked through Meroe’s sunlit silence. It should have been a bustling, happy town. The cobbled path passed deserted homes and businesses before branching from the main road and expanding into a circular courtyard, the marketplace. A stone well stood in the center, its small, wooden roof angled and shingled in the fashion of the surrounding storefronts. And next to that stood a ghoul.

  Michael paused in plain sight, watching. Unaware of him, it stooped and picked up something small and shiny from near the base of the well. Then it teetered back and forth until the object fell from its senseless fingers. The ghoul bent to retrieve it and resumed teetering only to drop it once more.

  Michael set down his scabbard. He shouted, “Here, devil!” It turned and lurched toward him. He lopped off its upper right half, strode through the smoke and arcing fluid and started looking for what it had been playing with.

  It was a copper coin. Michael picked it up, wondering what sort of fascination it could have held for that mindless monster. Then he heard shuffling sounds from the narrow lanes all around. More were coming. Stepping out of the shadows and into the day, the ghouls were a rotten mockery of the old marketplace. Michael charged.

  The courtyard became a slaughterhouse and the former residents of Meroe herded themselves into it like bloodthirsty cattle. Michael met them, shouting, “Come, devils!” And they came - in dense, tripping crowds - to be cut down two at a time in the alley’s mouths by that unstoppable sledgehammer of a sword. Michael shouted and swung for what felt like hours and kept shouting long after the last had fallen.

  ***

  Smoke swept north from log jams of carnage in the courtyard, the bodies of hundreds. Ink lined the awnings, posts and walls and diffused with the rainwater in the cobblestones’ grooves. A lonely screaking came from the well’s winch as Michael cranked up the bucket.

  He lifted it to his mouth and drank brackish water from it. Traces of the ghouls’ rot fizzled in his throat and stomach, cleansed by riin. Michael poured the water over himself, bathing as much of the encrusted mud and remains from his habit as he could.

  The ghoul’s coin sparkled in the water at his feet. He picked it up again, the majestic impression of Gabriel’s profile on it in low relief. That was how Meroe had honored their favorite son’s ordination. Michael remembered Gabriel saying, it might be the least of our currency, but it’s good enough for a squad of herring or a bag of taffy. Gabriel wouldn’t have preferred to be on one of the more valuable coins, he just liked to point out that he wasn’t. Michael didn’t want to think about telling him. He set the coin on the well’s stone lip and left.

  The cobblestones ended there. Wood planks paved the ways through town to the coast. Following one in, Michael was about to start shouting again when he heard strange noises coming from the harbor, like small thunder calls. He broke into a run.

  As he neared the source of the mysterious sounds, he found corpses where the cottages stopped. Rounding the corner of a dead bait shop, he discovered a field of fallen ghouls between the buildings and the piers. Smoke drifted up out of curious holes in their backs and chests. Michael went out to investigate...

  Bullets punched through his mail, broken ringlets, chunks of flesh and blood following them out. A shot grazed his left cheek, shattering his jaw near the ear. His vision went dark. Then he was on his hands and knees with a powerful urge to let go and to sleep, his life falling out of him.

  Michael had to concentrate to open the way. At that moment, he couldn’t have recalled his own name. He would have bled to death then if not for a strange bit of luck. A bullet hit short into the boards, ate through the ground and shot back out at a quarter of its speed. It struck Michael above the knee, burrowed the length of his thigh and lodged itself next to the bone. The painful jolt woke him up like a slap to the face. He remembered what to do. Light beaming from his wounds, he brought up one foot and tried to stand.

  Biggs coughed and missed again, hitting Michael in a low rib and flooring him. Biggs’ aim was off without steady breath and he was frustrated. It was bad enough he was about to die, he didn’t want to die a bad shot. He kicked out the case, locked the bolt and aligned his sights, a hair’s breadth up and to the left; the bullet would drift from there to the head. He knew the wind and the distance, if he could just keep from coughing during his squeeze...

  Andalynn shouted, “Down, down, down, down!” Biggs took his finger off the trigger. The others complained.

  “What’re you do’n?”

  “That turkey isn’t down, man!”

  “Yeah, Biggs is on point!”

  Andalynn had moved her spyglass back to Michael because there were no other targets and she wanted to watch one die. But, she saw something different in the way he moved, something other than blind determination - self-preservation. She said, “That is not a bauran!”

  They watched through their scopes. Michael regained his feet and ran for cover in the bait shop. The sailor’s jaws dropped.

  “We shot a guy, man!”

  “There’s no way to cross the smoke...”

  “That guy’s gonna die.”

  Andalynn said, “No! You do not see? He came through town. Only someone like Zeke could have done that!” She pushed out in front of them and fanned her arms, shouting verbose apologies across the killing field, “It was not our intention to fire upon you! Please disregard that act of aggression!” The rest of them dropped their rifles and started waving and shouting as well.

  Michael peeked out of the broken window. On the end of a pier, about two hundred yards away, there were people waving and shouting - living people. He couldn’t make out what they were say
ing. He knelt, contemplating the holes in the corpses outside and the damage in his body. They’d done it… He didn’t know how or who they were, but he was sure they’d mistaken him for a devil.

  He leaned halfway out of the bait shop’s doorway and waved back. They responded with more enthusiastic waves and shouts. It was a friendly standoff that lasted for a tense minute. Then Michael went out to them, jogging right through the smoke. The sailors were astonished.

  “Man, look at this guy…”

  “Cap was tellin’ the truth.”

  “Unprecedented!”

  As Michael approached, the sailors saw evidence of their accuracy. Finger-width holes riddled his armor and an evil scar carved a trench from his mustache to the back of his neck. But, there were no open wounds.

  Andalynn uncovered her face. Captain had told them the people of Meroe spoke Continental, the language of the Great Nations, so she’d written and practiced a formal introduction for their arrival. She could deliver it impressively but right then had no time for diplomacy. She dragged Biggs forward and shouted in long, loud syllables, hoping the native would understand, “WE - HAVE - AN - INJURED - MAN!”

  Michael was taken aback; they were outlandish! Despite the masks, he’d never seen such color in hair and skin… and that woman’s accent! Also, it may have been an accident, but after what they’d done to him he’d expected to hear quite a few apologies. Putting all of that aside, he gave Andalynn a courteous nod and said, “Excuse me then, young lady.” He lifted his left hand, unfastening the gauntlet from the sleeve, and said to Biggs, “May I offer you hospital, sir?”

  The way Michael spoke surprised them. Oversea, it would have been described as quaint.

  Biggs said, “Uh... alright,” but he didn’t think Michael was quaint. Michael looked like a diabolically polite proctologist. And Biggs had just put him in a pickle with a Springstien BOSS. He had to guess what Michael meant by hospital.

  Michael said, “Here, you’ll want to lie down,” and helped him to the ground. The rest of them gathered around, removing their masks. Michael laid his hand on Biggs’ forehead and then, before opening the way, took some extra time to examine riin’s natural reflection in him.

  It radiated from the smoke’s infections, surrounded a lump of metal in his hip, like the one in Michael’s leg, and showed an extensive cancer branching through his body in ghostly veins. Michael had seen cancer many times before, but never one like that in someone so young; Biggs seemed to be in his early twenties but would have died from it within a month. Despite the curious ailment, Biggs was only a man. Michael flooded him with riin.

  Biggs’ eyes rolled back and his body went stiff. A brief, red glow pulsed once under the skin where the cancer had been. The sailors had never seen anything like it.

  “Oh no, Biggs is dead!”

  “Nah, man, that’s like, a knock-out or somethin.”

  “Unreal…”

  Biggs regained consciousness about a minute later and found his friends surrounding him and staring. He said, “What… what’s go’n on?” Andalynn was kneeling beside him, holding his hand.

  Drake said, “Now he’s got amnesia!”

  Michael wasn’t familiar with the term. He was familiar with that sort of reaction, though, and tried to reassure them all. “This is normal, don’t worry.”

  Amazed, Ditch tapped Drake’s chest with the back of his hand. “See, pinhead, I told you. He got knocked out! I seen guys go out like that a hundred times, just, you know, not from gettin’ hospital’d.”

  Andalynn helped him sit up. “Everything is under control, Biggs. We are safe. How do you feel?”

  Biggs was dazed but he said, “I’m alright.” Then he tensed, noticing his mask was off. So were theirs - naked air. He was scared but at the same time felt strong and healthy, like an oppressive weight had been lifted off of him. He couldn’t remember past being a part of the line on the pier. The others had to tell him what had happened. Biggs turned a huge smile on Michael and said, “Thanks, mister!” The sailors cheered and patted Biggs and Michael on the back.

  Michael smiled too. “You’re welcome.” He didn’t share any of what he’d discovered in Biggs, the bullet or the cancer, because he didn’t want to discourage any of the others from cooperating with his examinations. “Is anyone else hurt?”

  Drake raised his hand. “Ooh me, do me!”

  Michael motioned him over. Ditch pointed and cackled when Drake passed out. Michael recommended they all receive hospital, saying it was healthy… and customary. They submitted to him with introductions, apologies and gratitude.

  None of them looked older than their early twenties, no more than children to Michael, but inside they showed peculiar signs of age. The first had been Biggs’ cancer but then Ditch, though shaven, had John’s horseshoe patterned baldness in his scalp. Andalynn was somewhat menopausal. Individually they would have been no more than intriguing abnormalities but across a group like that Michael found them especially curious.

  The sailors whooped and congratulated one another as they regained consciousness. They discussed their next move and waved at their friends on the Grace, who they knew were watching from afar.

  “This is astounding!”

  “We can sleep on land again!”

  “We’re finally here!”

  Michael couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you all mad? You can’t stay in Meroe! Hundreds of people have died here! It isn’t safe! You have to go back where you came from!” Confounded by them, he said, “Where did you come from?” and thought, and why are you waving at the sea? Michael looked out over the water. When he saw their distantly anchored ship, his mouth fell open; he’d seen the impossible.

  The sailors exchanged ominous glances. Andalynn took a folded note out of her pocket and handed it to him. “Michael, we are the crew of the refugee vessel, Grace, sailing out of the Great Nations. This is a message from Zeke.”

  Michael accepted it mid-stun. “Zeke?”

  Andalynn said, “We do not know what that letter contains. None of us can read those symbols. We have been instructed to present it to the Circle. You are a member of the Circle, are you not?”

  Michael nodded, surprised she’d named his order. That wasn’t even common knowledge in Antioch. Then, upon unfolding the note, he was shocked to find three short lines and a signature in sacred script:

  Armageddon is arrived.

  Break your silence.

  Open the library.

  Ezekiel

  Only those ordained in the church knew the script, and he’d never heard of Ezekiel. Michael sat down on a pier post and studied the note. He rubbed it in his fingers, put his hand through his hair, looked around and then read it again. “I… I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. You’ve honestly come from oversea?”

  Ditch said, “Yeah, man...” The sailors had crossed the third meridian. It had never been done before, as far as they knew, but it certainly wasn’t considered impossible - not like what Zeke and Michael could do. For Michael’s people, sailors and pirates from oversea were very much like wizards and pixies; it was generally accepted those things didn’t exist and seeing them was the mark of a loon or a rube. And for a man of the church, the contents of the note were just as challenging.

  Michael didn’t know where to begin. He gestured out at the smoking corpses. “What… What have you seen of this devilry… where you’re from?”

  Andalynn said, “We have been at sea for eleven months. This is what became of the world we left behind.”

  7 Ghost Ship

  Biggs motioned at the note. “Well, what’s it say?” They were all curious. They were a miserable year’s worth of curious.

  Michael weighed the note in his hand. “It says you must all come with me to Antioch.” The instructions and the circumstances were difficult for him to accept. “I never believed in people oversea. Now you’re telling me they’re all gone because of this plague. I’m afraid no one has escaped Meroe
.”

  The sailors had been living in spite of the bauran for months but Michael was just beginning to comprehend the devastation. Andalynn remembered that moment of realization. She spoke, believing if they were to be welcome they had to help. “You said hundreds of people have died. That cannot account for this entire town. Where are the others?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where they are.” Michael put his head in his hands, trying to think of the right thing to do. “And while I sit here the smoke carries on the wind.”

  Biggs said, “Might be some over at the other boat.”

  Michael looked up at him. “What other boat?”

  “We aint the first ones to get here. There’s another boat over yonder up the coast. Zeke sent more’n us.”

  Michael stood up. “The survivors could be there!”

  ***

  The high, rocky coast overlooked an endless, crashing ocean to the south. The cliffs appeared to thrust out of the water. Michael and the sailors traveled the ridge, searching for a safe way down. The second ship was still farther east and a long swim out as well.

  Climbing back up from another dead end, Michael said, “What is that name you call them, bauran?”

  Andalynn said, “It means deaf ones.”

  He paused. “But they’re not deaf.”

  “No, they are not. It is morbid humor.”

  Michael frowned and moved on to the next possible descent. “Tell me about this Zeke.”

  Andalynn said, “We know very little about him, actually. Our memories of him, collectively, are muddled. I did not understand why that was until having just now experienced the effect of your ability.”

  Drake said, “Whoa, you’re right. That’s why!”

  Ditch said, “Good job, man. Way to keep up.”

  Michael said, “What can you tell me about him?”

  Biggs said, “Cap’s only one remembers talkin’ to him. Said he’s in a big hurry, worry’n ‘bout the others gon’ die.”