I looked down the long line of Reapers. Seeing so many assembled together disturbed me. So many hungry Reapers. How many Old Ones and Defectives did each one need to eat every day to sustain themselves? And what would they consume once the Old Ones had all been harvested?
Culled Hemis, perhaps? Would they simply expand their definition of Defectives? Thinking of Bern as Reaper food made me burn inside.
As the utter magnitude of this atrocity struck me, my ire boiled over. Whatever were they thinking, taming these disgusting beasts? They should have been left behind in the tunnels. I don’t care how noble they considered their aims. Heaven, even a pseudo-Heaven, should have no place for a Reaper.
I felt that sword pressing flat against my back, and felt an urge to use it. I looked back down at Mr. O fishing through heaps of silt-encrusted driftwood and the most outrageous idea came to me.
“Hey Urszula, when we finish this loop, don’t go back on patrol. I want to go there.” I swept out my arm and pointed to the second Neueden.”
“Have you changed your mind? Are you … you are giving up?”
“No way. On the contrary.”
***
Urszula took a lot of convincing. She was understandably skeptical about my plan. I made her land among the mantids so we could hash things out face to face.
“Are you sure you could make it happen again?” she said.
“I did it once,” I said, shrugging.
“How many do you think you can revive?”
“Dunno. How many do you think we need?”
“That depends on your strategy and their strength—how well they can fight. They will have to find and create scepters, which are likely to be substandard. They are so desiccated. They are probably weak when their souls first return.”
“Yeah, but not for long. I mean, look at Mr. O. He look weak to you?”
Mr. O, calm as ever, brushed silt off a club-like length of driftwood he had pulled from the riverbank.
“How long did it take for him to reach this state?” said Urszula.
“Once the bees found him, I don’t know, maybe half an hour.”
“That quickly?”
“Would have been quicker if the bees had reached him right away.”
“Oh, I don’t know about this,” said Urszula. “I smell a fiasco.”
Mr. O pointed his crude scepter at a dead tree. A shock wave exploded from the shaft and struck the tree, snapping its limbs and peeling off its bark. Maybe it wasn’t as potent as Urszula’s or maybe he was just rusty, but it seemed to channel his will just fine.
Urszula shared our discussion with him. He nodded his head plenty, he but betrayed no emotions. I could see a solemn determination in his eyes. I took that as an endorsement.
“For a diversion, we may not need many souls,” said Urszula. “A handful may suffice. For a raid on Frelsi, we will need more. How many do you think you can manage to revive?”
“Not sure. But you get those bees lined up and we’ll see.”
Trisk left his mantid and made his way over to us.
“You all are plotting something, I can tell.”
“Never mind, Trisk,” said Urszula. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it’s a raid, I want in.”
“There’s no raid … we’re just ... speculating.”
“It involves this Old One, doesn’t it?” said Trisk. “He must command some nasty spell craft.”
“Oh yes,” said Urszula. “He can peel the bark off a tree from ten paces. It’s terrifying.”
A shout rang up and Urszula flinched. I thought an attack was underway but the mantid riders were staring towards the mesa. Six mantids came gliding down, landing on the broad flat behind a berm the defenders had raised up behind the riverbank.
“Is it Yaqob?” I said.
“No,” said Urszula. “But some of my sisters and brothers have had a change of heart, it seems.”
“So, are you raiding or not?” said Trisk, impatiently.
Urszula grinned and this time, I got a full-on view of it. It stunned to see her face transformed from its normal grimace.
“Yes,” said Urszula “And you’re welcome to join us.” She clicked her tongue and called Lalibela over.
***
Trisk and Mr. O followed our lead on the backs of their mantids. Urszula had Lalibela loop back repeatedly to allow them to keep up with us. A mantid could only fly a mile or two at a time before having to land.
As we split from the already sparse gathering of aerial defenders, the first of the alates—ant princesses and princes—took flight from their mounds, dispersing with the wind away from the central massif and out over the tablelands. They were like living lifeboats, really. The future of the colony depended on their success. Their queen mother was likely doomed if the Frelsians won the day.
A wave of spikers came bounding across the flood plain, arching their hairless backs like naked weasels. As they crossed the first channel, a platoon of soldier ants and beetles burst out of concealment from the riverbank to greet them.
The beetles were the same burly creatures I had seen rolling boulders down the vale. Their clubbed antennae sampled the air expectantly. They stood shoulder to shoulder, shielding the ants, as a pack of spikers slammed into them, some of them shattering their lance-like snouts. The thick, slanting armor on these beetles could probably deflect bullets.
While the beetles held the spikers at bay, the swift and agile soldier ants went to work clipping spikers in two with their massive, scissors-like mandibles. For a time they wreaked havoc until enough spikers squeezed past the beetles and could attack the insects from the rear, going after their less armored abdomens.
It took three impaling to take down a soldier ant, maybe ten to fell a beetle. But one by one, the insects collapsed.
Having slaughtered the entire pack of spikers, the survivors retreated in the face of a second onslaught galloping into the river channel. But another contingent of beetles and ants was waiting to spring their surprise a little farther up the river bank.
These spikers served as shock troops, softening up the opposition for the main attack. Pack after eager pack was being released for battle, some turning on their handlers with ghastly results.
I don’t know how many ambushes the insects could mount, but it seemed the spikers alone could wear them down by attrition. Once defeated, there would be nothing to slow the waiting army of Reapers and Hemis.
We crossed back over the foothills, again swinging wide of the attack force. The columns of foot soldiers we had seen before had now taken up positions behind the armored Reapers. Those in front carried long poleaxes and pikes, but they were followed by groups carrying miscellaneous guns, crossbows as well as some bizarre and un-nameable projectile launchers.
Behind the main force, a band of reserves had gathered, and behind them a large group of gaudily-attired Freesouls crowded the top a small butte to watch the battle, many carrying opera glasses. Their fashions included helms and ornate halberds and intricate chain mail.
It seemed like half of Frelsi’s Hemis was involved in the attack and half of the Sanctuary was down here watching. I wondered if my mom was down there among them. The old Darlene would never have stood for this crap. But something told me, the old Darlene was no more.
The sight of a dragonfly and two mantids coming at them fast made the crowd scatter in confusion. One man fell and tumbled down the face of the butte to the rocks below. A group of reservists rushed to his aid.
From their midst, another untethered harpoon missile came hurling up at us.
“Urszula!”
“I see it,” she said, sending Lalibela into a dive.
The missile twisted its path to follow us around until its momentum petered out and it fell harmlessly into the scrub forest below.
Lalibela swooped low to the ground, spooking a detachment of foot soldiers that seemed to have gone astray. She soared away before they could even react, but Urszula let loo
se a blast of plasma that set the forest on fire and gave them something to remember us by.
We let the mantids catch up, stopping for a brief rest on an unoccupied slope before continuing on up the mountain. When the spires of Frelsi came into view, Lalibela veered rightward towards the ruins that shared the other end of the plateau—the second Neueden, only a few kilometers away from Frelsi’s eastern wall.
Carts stacked neatly with mummies destined for the Reaper pens lined the road. The Frelsians had probably pre-staged them in anticipation of having to feed a herd of hungry Reapers after the battle. I wondered if they allowed their Reapers to prey on their own fallen soldiers.
Neueden Two was much more denuded of vegetation than it had been in the few short days since I had last visited. The Hemi crews had been busy with their clearing.
We landed on the road that joined the old city with the new. A gang of workers dropped their tools and fled the instant they saw us. Their guards, shocked into momentary inaction, followed not far behind them.
But their tall-booted overseer—a Freesoul, if her feathered hat and natty attire were any indication—stood her ground. She spouted curses and raised her staff, swirling it as if she were stirring a cauldron. The brush piles rose, brambles, branches and stumps arranging themselves into towers that consolidated into a vaguely human form about twenty feet tall, with a humped posture and dangly arms that made it first look like a monster chimpanzee and, as it lengthened, a shaggy, green Sasquatch.
The brush monster gave a dry, crackly roar like a hurricane blowing through a forest and came after us. It swung its burly fist at Seraf, who dodged aside nimbly and took to the air, slashing at the creature’s face with her claws.
“Seraf! Back!” shouted Urszula, scepter raised. The creature lunged towards me. I scrambled to unstrap my sword, but tripped on a rock and stumbled into a ditch.
Three nearly simultaneous blasts issued from the scepters of Urszula, Trisk and Mr. O, blowing the creature’s torso into fiery splinters. Its parts lost their connection and animation and collapsed to the ground back into the brush piles that had spawned it.
Floundering on the ground, I had my sword out and was doing my own bit of stirring and swirling, though with no idea what I expected to happen. These actions did nothing but make me look foolish.
The overseer went after Urszula, extending her staff full out until it shuddered in her arms and a purplish plasma gathered around its tip. Before she could release it, a batch of sizzling green plasma surged from Urszula’s scepter.
The purple blob expanded into an umbrella-like shield that blew Urszula’s volley apart. This shimmering parasol sustained long enough to neutralize follow-up shots from Trisk and Mr. O. And as soon as it collapsed, more purple plasma accumulated around the overseer’s staff.
I needed a focus. Something to disturb me, make me angry. It was no use trying to work myself into an artificial tizzy; I needed something real, something righteous, something that would overwhelm my fear. This overseer lady had skills on the order of Victoria. There was no telling what would come out of that staff next.
My gaze flitted about and homed in on those tall, glossy boots. They were like jackboots, the kind motorcycle cops wore … and Nazi Storm Troopers … and shaved head, gay bashing skinheads. I remembered an incident in the park back in Ft. Pierce. A gang of skinheads were running from a kid about my age, crying in the dirt, nose broken, face bloody, F-A-G-O-T scrawled with a sharpie across the rainbow on the front of his T-shirt.
One of the skinheads guffawed like a donkey as he ran, chains jingling at his hip, knee length boots clomping against the walk.
That little bit of remembrance gave me the edge I needed to grip my rage. I focused my will through the point of my sword, homing in on the top cuffs of her shiny boots. They responded, growing upward and outward. She tried to kick them off as they crept up her thighs and intruded on her crotch. Eyes bugging, she slipped a blade from a sheath strapped to her waist and tried slicing them off.
The slit fused together and kept growing, the two boots merging into a single sheath that pried the staff from her grip and pinned her arms to her sides. The blade poked through the leather and squirted away like a watermelon seed.
The leather continued up and over her head. She stumbled around, tripping on the brush underfoot. Trisk ran over and gave her a shove. She toppled into an old foundation hole. Urszula sent a sticky bolo whirling her way to bind her more thoroughly. Mr. O hopped into the foundation and retrieved her staff, but he kept his club as well. His smile had grown a shade less vague.
“You have an interesting method of fighting,” said Urszula.
“Believe me; I had no idea that was gonna happen.”
“Whatever works,” she said, with a shrug.
The Hemis had retreated halfway to Frelsi by now and continued at a dead run. They were probably newbies or else they would have been conscripted for the battle. I doubt any of them had ever seen a Duster up close before.
The guards had paused to watch the outcome of our little tussle, but they too resumed their flight.
Urszula strode up to a cart stacked high with mummies and lowered the back gate. That action alone brought back a bittersweet memory of my dad’s old F150. I wondered how that old truck was doing. Was it still in Pittsburgh or was it in the service of that Cleveland cartel.
“Do it,” said Urszula. “Raise them.”
“Are we sure we want to do this?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, we’re sure. Do it! Now!”
I looked over at Mr. O, half expecting him to object, but he had his arms folded around his knobby scepter. Trisk paced back and forth in nervous anticipation.
“Well, do it already!” Urszula shouted.
“Okay … uh … now I don’t quite remember how I got it to work last time.”
Urszula started swearing—I’m pretty sure that’s what she was doing—in that Duster tongue.
I poked the sword at the cart and gave it a swirl, the way I usually do, like a kid playing Harry Potter with a pretend wand. Only, the five pound sword made it a little more awkward.
Nothing happened the first time, so I tried again, freeing my thoughts, letting them narrow and focus along the path of least resistance. The timbers of the cart began to creak. The smooth planks lining the sides became all warped and knobby. The bumps differentiated into buds. The buds in turn elongated into stems. Green twigs slithered out from each node and developed their own side shoots and leaves.
“Very clever,” said Urszula. “But not exactly what we are looking for. You were thinking of the cart for some reason. Focus on the souls within.”
Thinking of my Dad’s old pickup had funneled all my mental energy on the cart rather than its contents. The fix was simple. I thought of Dad and how I wished I could raise him up from wherever his soul had ended up.
And that was a powerful feeling. It poured forth from my very bones, from every cell in my body that shared his DNA. I could see him standing in our back yard and me as a toddler, running up to him, and him swooping me up into his arms with the giddy glee of a proud, new parent.
And then, with my sword quivering from the strain, the whole cartload of those carcasses started to squirm. Urszula hopped up and pulled several up off the top of the heap and eased them down off the cart. They were three or four bodies thick, and all of them commenced to cough and grumble and scream at once.
“Help me!” said Urszula.
I went over and pulled writhing bodies off the cart and set them down in the grass that grew between the cart tracks. We lined up twenty of them. Some argued violently with Urszula in their cryptic tongue. And like Mr. O, many of them cried, but quickly pulled it together as Urszula explained the situation to them, pointing her scepter across the valley where flashes and crackles like lightning and thunder emanated from the base of the tablelands.
One at a time, they rose like nursing home patients who had been bedridden for weeks. And as soon as they d
id, a swarm of bees descended out of nowhere, knocking Old Ones down, scrambling over their chests, disgorging their sticky cargoes.
“We need to help them find scepters,” said Urszula, rummaging through the brush piles for lengths of wood, stout and potent enough to channel the force of a soul.
A sapling crackled and gave me a shock when I tried picking it up. I tossed it away like a hot potato.
“No! Keep that one. It has some residual craft left in it, from the woman.”
Trisk retrieved it and tossed to a man who staggered under the weight of three bees vying to perch on his shoulders.
Urszula’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Here is another cart, and this one, I see, has warriors.”
Many of these mummies had a leathery armor sheathing their skin, bony plates protruding from a top layer worn away by the elements.
“Do it again!” said Urszula. “Quickly!”
I pointed my sword and thought of Dad … and Mom.
Chapter 42: Breakout
They wound up and down the narrow streets behind the church, but there was no sign of Sturgie.
“Where the heck did that boy run off to?” said Renfrew.
A kernel of dread germinated in Karla. “I hope … they didn’t take him.”
They turned a corner to find a sweaty and flustered-looking security guard waddling down the lane, night stick and canister dangling from his harness. He paused to examine an alley.
“Don’t stare. Eyes straight ahead,” said Karla, as they rolled past.
Jessica’s phone went off. Karla snatched it up to find a breathless Sturgie on the other end.
“Morrison’s supermarket. Eastgate,” he said, and hung up.
Karla knew the location well. It was only two blocks from her house, the same grocery store she had visited the day James confronted her on the sidewalk. What a strange and potent mixture of excitement and despair he had evoked. Seeing him in this world and in the flesh seemed less real than seeing him in the Liminality.
“Take a right here and then the second left,” she barked.
They found Sturgie slinking in the door well of a dry cleaner’s shop. He rushed to the car huffing and puffing and flopped into the backseat beside Karla.