Armageddon's Children

  If it ever came together at all.

  It was more than an hour later when they reached another crossroads, a new highway intersecting the one on which they traveled, this one running east to west from the plains into the mountains. The speaker came back to the AV and bowed. “The pass lies that way,” he said, pointing up the crossroads and toward the peaks. “Should we come with you?”

  Logan shook his head. “You have done more than enough to help me.”

  “The other man asked us to go with him so that he could be certain of the way,” the speaker explained.

  Logan frowned. “Have others like me come through here?”

  The speaker nodded. “Only the one, more than two years ago. He carried a staff like yours. We did not recognize him. We did not understand who he was. We challenged him, and he revealed himself to us through use of his magic. Thirty lives were taken in payment for our foolishness. It was a necessary lesson, he said.”

  A rogue Knight. Logan had heard of them, a few only, men and women who had lost their way and their belief and become demons themselves. It was rare, but in the madness of the apocalypse, it happened.

  “No lives are required here,” he assured the speaker and those others pressed close enough to hear.

  A murmuring rose from those gathered, borne on a wave of gratitude. Logan shook his head.

  “Will you tell the spirits when you see them that we remain faithful?” another asked, one whose face beneath the patches of hair was deeply wrinkled and spotted with age. “Will you tell them we are grateful for their protection?”

  Several answers came to mind, but he said only, “I will tell them.”

  He left them clustered at the base of the mountains, gathered together at the crossroads, a collection of strange creatures with strange ideas. He felt oddly ashamed of himself for playing into their fantasies about mountain spirits, but he couldn’t think of a better way to handle things. They seemed convinced that such spirits existed, and it would have been foolish for him to try to convince them otherwise. Even so, he didn’t like pretending at things he knew weren’t true.

  He drove ahead through the darkness along a road that was mostly clear, a two-lane concrete ribbon that wound upward through foothills toward a black massing of jagged peaks. He should have waited until daybreak to attempt this drive, but he was anxious to get on with things. He could see well enough by moonlight to find his way, and if he drove slowly and carefully he should be able to reach the other side before morning and could sleep then.

  “As long as there isn’t another slide blocking my way,” he muttered. Then he smiled. “Or unfriendly mountain spirits who don’t appreciate my passing through.”

  He considered throwing the finger bones again, but it didn’t seem necessary at this point. What he was looking for was somewhere on the other side of the Rockies, so he might as well wait until he had crossed to reevaluate which way he needed to go. Unless something drastic changed, he was headed into the northwest part of the country or maybe even into Canada. There was nothing to say that the gypsy morph hadn’t chosen to hide outside the United States. Boundaries didn’t mean much at this point. Less still, if you were a creature of magic.

  Or a wielder of magic, like himself. That was what the Spider had called him. But he knew what he was. He was a hollowed-out shell that had been infused with fresh purpose and a cause. He was a dead man brought back to life by an encounter with the Word. He was an orphan lost in a world of orphans, but unlike so many, he had been found. He was not a wielder of magic; he was its servant.

  He ate a little and drank from a water bottle as he drove, keeping his eyes on the road and his attention on the task at hand. The road twisted and turned through the rocks, and now and again he encountered massive boulders hunkered down like predators to block his path. The air turned sharp and cold as he ascended, and breathing became more difficult. He was up about a mile by now, and light-headedness brought on by the thinning air forced him to concentrate harder. He was deep in the mountains, no longer climbing but simply navigating through narrow defiles and towering peaks, a solitary sojourner in an empty land.

  Then fog began to gather and settle in about him, a thin blanket at first that quickly thickened to something much more unsettling. There was no reason for fog to appear this high up on a night that had been clear and in weather that had been untroubled. He watched it tighten like a shroud, shortening his vision to less than fifty feet, then thirty, and finally to ten. He slowed the AV to a crawl, switched on the fog lights, and waited patiently for the heavy mist to break. It did not; if anything, it got worse. Time passed, a steady unraveling of minutes that left him numbed and weary. He blinked against his sleepiness, sipping at the water bottle, humming tunelessly. His thoughts drifted and scattered like dried leaves blown in the wind.

  You should have listened to them, a voice said suddenly.

  He glanced over and found Michael sitting in the passenger’s seat, rigid and unmoving, eyes directed straight ahead. He stared for a minute, and then looked back to the road.

  “You aren’t here. I’m imagining you,” he replied.

  There was no response. He glanced over, and Michael was gone. He felt a chill run down his back as he realized what had just happened. The change in altitude coupled with exhaustion was causing his mind to play tricks on him. He took a deep, steadying breath and let it out, nosing the car ahead. The fog couldn’t go on for much longer; it had to break soon.

  I wouldn’t be too sure of that, boy, Michael said.

  He was back in the passenger’s seat, his craggy profile expressionless as he sat staring out at the night, hands resting comfortably in his lap atop his Ronin. Logan risked a quick glance over, unable to help himself, feeling the cold seep back into his bones. There was a pale light all around Michael, a hint of something otherworldly, of an ethereal quality that living things did not possess.

  Mountain spirits, he thought in disbelief, then cast the thought away.

  “You’re dead, Michael,” he said. “Have the decency to stay that way.”

  Beside him, Michael shimmered and vanished. Maybe that was all it took, he thought. Just tell them to go away and they would. He smiled despite the shiver that swept through him. Very accommodating, these mountain spirits.

  He glanced back at the empty seat several times after that, trying to prevent any reappearance by telling himself that if he kept watch, it wouldn’t happen. He was anxious to get clear of this fog and these mountains now, to get far away from them. Then he could get some sleep and stop hallucinating. He hadn’t realized how tired he was, and when he coupled that with the traveling conditions and his mental state, he could understand why he was seeing dead people.

  I don’t think you should keep going this way, a new voice said. I think you should turn back. This road doesn’t belong to the living, Logan.

  His father was sitting next to him now, a less clear apparition than Michael, but real enough that it caused him to start. His father wouldn’t look at him, staring straight ahead as Michael had, an ethereal presence that suggested he could vanish in an instant’s time. As Logan continued to stare at him, he did just that. He shimmered, melted into mist, and was gone.

  And Logan looked back at the highway just in time to slam on the brakes and swerve to avoid a huge boulder blocking the center of the road. The Lightning skidded along the moisture-dampened road toward a low guardrail and a drop that fell away into blackness. Logan pumped the brakes and pulled the wheel all the way over so that the vehicle was sliding sideways and out of control.

  It stopped beside the guardrail with inches to spare. The engine killed with a grunt, and the steady hum turned to a soft ticking in the night silence. Logan sat without moving, staring at nothing. He closed his eyes and waited for his heart to slow and his breathing to steady. It was all right now, he told himself. But maybe he had to stop after all. Maybe there was nothing for it but to wait for morning and to try to sleep until then.

  No
rest for the wicked, whispered Michael.

  No rest for the living, said his father.

  He sighed and opened his eyes. There was no one there. He was alone, locked inside the AV, the soft lights of the dash and the slow ticking of the engine the only signs of life.

  Outside the AV, the fog was closing in like a living thing, tendrils tightening about the vehicle, shutting off the sky and the earth, wrapping like a spider’s webbing. At first, he thought he was mistaking what he was seeing. It was so deliberate, so purposeful. But then everything disappeared in a sheet of damp white, and he knew that despite what common sense and reason told him, there was something out there and it was trying to take control.

  Should have turned around, said Michael.

  Never should have come, said his father.

  Faces began to appear outside the AV, ghostly apparitions that materialized one by one and then pressed close to the window glass. Eyes as blank as bare walls peered from faces etched by pain and suffering. Such eyes could not see, and yet it felt as if they did. Hands reached out and brushed the glass, and he flinched. They were all around the Lightning now, and their numbers were increasing by the minute. He reached quickly for the starter, intending to get out of there. But the motor would not catch. It would not even turn over. The vehicle was dead.

  He sat staring at the controls, and then looked up again at the faces. He recognized the ones closest. They were the faces of men and women he had fought beside while he was with Michael. They were the faces of slaves and victims he somehow remembered out of so many he had tried to free. All of them were dead now. He knew it instinctively, not just from their apparitional appearance, but from what he felt inside, too. They were ghosts, and they were there to haunt him.

  But what did they want?

  Two new faces came into view, sliding through the crowd until they were right up against the driver’s window. His throat tightened. It was his older brother Tyler and sister Megan, gone all these years, their faces unchanged, frozen in time. They stared at him blankly, dead-eyed and directionless, but aware, too. They knew he was there, inside the Lightning. Like all the others, they had come looking. Like all the others, their need was a mystery he could not decipher.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. They were not going to disappear like Michael and his father. They were more than smoke and mist, more than insubstantial specters, more even than ghosts conjured by imagination. They were creatures of magic and spirit life, brought to him to achieve something, and they would not depart until he responded to their presence.

  He opened his eyes and stared out at them. Sometimes you had to confront the dead as well as the living, the past as well as the future. Sometimes the two were so inextricably interlocked that there was little to distinguish between them. It was so here. Mountain spirits or something more insidious, there was a joining that reasoning and common sense could not undo.

  He seized his staff, opened the door, and stepped outside the AV to confront whatever waited.

  The outside air hit him with a blast of cold that nearly knocked him backward, an icy rush that cut right to his bones. The wind was blowing hard, something he hadn’t realized before because its force was having no effect at all on the ghosts crowded around him. They neither advanced nor gave way as he emerged, but held their ground and swung their blind gazes in his general direction. A few lifted their hands as if to touch him, but their efforts were feeble and more demonstrative of need than intention. Shivering in the sharp chill of the wind, he brought the black staff around in front of him, letting the natural light reflect off its surface. The wind howled in response—or perhaps it was the ghosts—and the deeply etched runes flared with inner light, with their infused magic, fiery and bright.

  The spirits of the dead fell back, and for an instant Logan believed they would disperse. But in the distance behind them and farther up the road, a strange darkness had begun to gather. More ghosts were emerging from its roiling mass, pressing forward to join those already surrounding him. He watched them approach, half disbelieving what he was seeing, half recognizing the inevitable. The dead had not appeared of their own volition; the dead never did. They were either summoned or sent; he knew that much from his time as a Knight of the Word.

  But what was the source of the darkness to which they were responding?

  He gripped the black staff and started forward, pushing through the gathering of spirits, their white emptiness giving way, their ephemeral presence dissipating and re-forming as he passed. Only a confrontation with their source would resolve what was happening. If he was to break free of this—whatever this was—he would have to face down the thing that was causing it, the darkness from which these spirits emerged. It hung thick and impenetrable as he approached, but even as he reached its edges he still could not put a name to it.

  He brought up the staff, its magic already summoned and flowing over him in a bluish light, encasing him in its armor. He felt the warmth of its protection enclose him and was reassured. He lashed out at the blackness, ripping at it as he would a piece of cloth. It split apart easily, unable to hold together, collapsing before him, and a fierce joy engulfed him, a sense of empowerment.

  But the split lasted only a moment, and then almost effortlessly the blackness repaired itself, the jagged tear resealing. More ghosts emerged from its dark breast. More faces pressed forward. Again, he attacked. Again, the blackness split apart and again quickly resealed and re-formed, unaffected. If anything, the roiling mass appeared to be an even larger and more inexorable presence.

  Now the hands of the dead were touching him. He could feel them stroking his body, their fingers as cold and icy as the mountain wind. He could feel their chill dampness against his skin; he could feel it through his clothing. The effect was unpleasant and oddly debilitating. He could feel his strength eroding, bleeding away.

  Angry now, he tried a different approach. Instead of a tearing, rending attack, he used the magic like a huge windmill in an attempt to sweep the blackness away. His efforts worked. The wind he generated exploded the dark mass, and the fire burned what remained to shards of smoke. He stood watching in the aftermath, breathing hard. Nothing of the darkness remained. The way forward was clear.

  But then the ghosts of the dead pressed up against him anew, touching him everywhere, more insistent now, more demanding, and he saw that the blackness was beginning to re-form. He stood stunned as it tightened and grew ever larger, pressing toward him, the empty-eyed ghosts pouring from its opaque center in knots. There were so many now that they were tumbling over one another in their efforts to reach him. The entire pass was filled with them.

  He experienced a sudden panic, and he understood its source immediately. He had thought he would always be ready for the unexpected when it surfaced. He had told himself that he would know instinctively what to do when threatened. But he was lost here; he was adrift without a lifeline. His attempt at attacking the blackness, at causing it to dissipate or erode, was yielding nothing at all, and he did not know what to do about it.

  He took an involuntary step backward. Something about the way he was fighting this battle was doing more harm than good, and if he didn’t discover what it was, he was going to lose.

  He gathered his thoughts, tightened his resolve, and pushed back the feelings of fear and doubt. He had survived too many fights to lose this one. He was a Knight of the Word, and he would not give way.

  He stared at the darkness, and then turned his attention to the white, empty faces surrounding him. Perhaps the spirits of the dead were not as invulnerable as their source. He went into their midst, fighting back against his revulsion, armoring himself against the touch of their fingers, speaking words of magic to banish them. He used the fire of the staff to sweep aside each as he passed, and to his satisfaction they began to disappear, one after the other. He did not look to see how many were still coming, but kept his eyes on those pressing closest, looking at each, recognizing each, knowing he must acknowledge them if
they were to be sent back to where they belonged.

  He did not know for how long or to how many he did this; he lost track of time and numbers and simply kept pressing ahead. The faces came and went in a wash, so many he remembered, so many he had known. He said good-bye to each as the fire consumed them, facing down the emotions that welled up within him. What he felt was a cold certainty, a hard-edged understanding of what he was doing to himself by banishing them. He was losing his past; he was giving up his memories. With the disappearance of each white face, he let go of a little more of what he remembered.

  He understood now that he was the one who had summoned them, perhaps without realizing it, perhaps with help from whatever lived in these mountains. The darkness was his, the past carried on his shoulders, memories of the dead, of those he had known and cared about and could not forget. They weighed on him; they haunted him. He had kept them shut away until tonight, then set them free. There would be no peace for him until they were locked away again, this time for good.

  The mass of white faces thinned to only a few. His brother and little sister were before him now, their blank stares sad and lost in a way he could hardly stand. He reached for them and touched them fearlessly, letting the terrible sensation of their presence wash over him as he sent the fire of the staff through their empty forms until they slowly faded away. Dead and gone, he realized, never to return. Already, their faces were so vague in his mind that he could not reconstruct their features.

  When he stood alone finally, the darkness that had blocked the pass had dissipated entirely. Nothing remained but rock and cold and black night. He stood looking at nothing, and then turned back to the AV. His father and Michael stood beside it, white and ephemeral, the last of his ghosts. They were staring not at him, but at something beyond him, something he could not see. He did not hesitate, but walked over to where they waited and touched each in turn with his magic, saying good-bye. They did not speak to him or look at him. They simply stood before him as if awaiting the inevitable. Then the staff swept through them, and they, too, were gone.