Beyond the flashback, p.12
Beyond the Flashback, page 12
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think it goes without saying,” said the announcer over the speaker system, “Do not try this at home.”
Williams relaxed his entire body even as his mind cycled through the calculations—altitude, the breeze, humidity, temperature, the curvature of the earth, the spinning of the earth ... It was, like music, a largely mathematical proposition; a cold equation he’d had a gift for ever since he could remember, ever since he was a boy with a Daisy BB gun in the backyard of their southern California home.
He focused on the knife blade as the balloons to each side of it warbled in the breeze. It was a funny thing, sharpshooting, so utterly unlike music, in that each time he did it he felt like he was doing it for the first time, felt like he was starting over from scratch. With music his fingers just automatically found the frets, just instantly knew where to begin and where to end; he never felt as though he were lost in a vortex of potentialities, never doubted his ability to perform. But sharpshooting was a different beast altogether. With sharpshooting he had to call on something outside of himself as well as from within—something which was not his to control. Something which either kissed him with its ghostly lips or turned away with perfect indifference—like love itself, he supposed. Or God.
And then the drum taps stopped and he was alone with the breeze, and it was time to make the intuitive leap which would set the bullet in motion. And as he breathed out and drew his revolver and squeezed its trigger softer than he would a daisy, he knew, even before the crack! and the ka-chink! and the pop of the balloons, that the projectile had found its target. That it had found the slim blade and split like an atom—becoming two loaves rather than one—two soft but lethal slugs, which had spread like shrapnel in the Fresno heat and ruptured the red balloons—releasing their air in a vacuum-like rush and causing the audience to gasp and to cheer.
And then his wife was there, having loosed her mock bonds and scrambled out of the tall wooden box (with its crushed velvet curtains and bulletproof glass), and she’d bowed to the audience before embracing him like the wind, and he had kissed her as he always did after completing their final act—when air raid sirens sounded and he looked at the sky, which had darkened with a stormfront as fast-moving as it was inexplicable ...
For the Flashback had come to southern California—come with its otherworldly weather and pterodactyls which circled like tornado debris; its time-scrambling phantasmagoria, its erasure of both the living and the dead—just as it had come to all the world.
He batted his eyes and came out of it, saw two corpses spread out amongst the sage. Katrina and one other, having reverted to human form. Birds tweeted obliviously as their nude bodies lay broken beneath the sun.
Williams looked at the razor wire and at the steel pole to which it was attached. “Yeah. It’s—it’s all done. Both of them. I—can you let me down, please?”
The ankylosaur groaned and knelt upon the broken pavement, after which Williams hopped off and crouched by his head.
“Those people were good to us, especially her,” he said at last, before falling into a sullen silence. The birds continued to tweet obscenely.
Williams swept his hat off and ran a hand through his hair, sighed. “We’ll never make it ... you know that, don’t you?”
And then they were off, pausing just long enough to pile stones upon the bodies.
IX
Peter had been right: The cavalry had arrived. Or so it seemed as the motor homes and semi-trucks and construction equipment and motorcycles and even a couple armored personnel carriers rumbled into Barley. And yet introductions had been kept short and celebrations to a minimum as the drivers sought position and the smoke roiled in from the southeast, for it was clear to everyone now just how close the Enemy had drawn ... and how near the confrontation was.
Still, Bella felt an optimism she hadn’t felt in days as she inspected the crowd of what amounted to new soldiers and helped her big assistant take stock of the heavy equipment, and by the time she and the wagon train’s leaders met for an initial consultation by the hot springs she had largely beaten back the depression which had so dogged her the first part of the day.
Mostly she was just relieved at what a hardy and experienced bunch they were: from the hand-less man named Roger to the strapping former convenience store clerk (whose name she couldn’t remember) to the tough little woman named Charlotte to the steady and stoic man named Red—they were seasoned survivors, all of them, and had seen their share of blood and conflict long before they’d ever heard of Radio Free Montana or the Enemy in the East.
That experience would be needed, and soon, thought Bella, as she inspected the perimeter’s booby-traps and fortifications—its sandbagged pillboxes, its trenches full of gasoline—for she was now convinced, after consulting with Sammy and Peter, that an attack could come at any time ... and from any direction. And she wondered: Had they done enough? For something still tasked her—she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Something ghostly and ephemeral. Something which had first arisen in her dreams and now dogged her every waking step.
Something was missing ... something that, in her single-minded purpose, she had overlooked completely. She thought of the albino girl and what she’d said immediately after their arrival: But this isn’t all of us. There’s also Will and Ank ... but we don’t know where they are right now.
Will and Ank. Why did the names sound so alien and yet familiar at the same time?
Ank’s been gone awhile ... but Will went looking for him.
Just today, Sheila had said. Heading south on something called the ‘Redneck Highway.’
Bella stopped in her tracks, staring along the battlements but no longer actually seeing them. Of course, she thought. Her dreams ... the visions ... The mirror and the Paladin. The Paladin and the Brute.
And like that she seemed to understand the thing—its rules and its perimeters, its use of proxies and doppelgangers, its need to conjure counterparts in every single aspect ... and she knew, also, just what she needed to do to fulfil her part.
They sprinted, galloping and swerving around the hardscrabble landforms of the steppes, Ank’s tail undulating and swaying, Williams’ poncho flapping in the wind. And at first it seemed they might keep that pace indefinitely—for they had both experienced a burst of raw energy since leaving the compound and its night of delicate terrors behind—and yet it was not to be as Williams began to lag and Ank grew concerned with his wellbeing and they at last trotted to a stop next to a pair of rusty railroad tracks, the man panting and gasping while the dinosaur used his snout to brush against him affectionately and to communicate, without judgement,
Williams lowered his head, breathing heavily, clutching his chest. “It’s—it’s no use. I’m just not going to make it ... not at this pace, Ank. Not in time to—”
Williams shook his head. “I’d—I’d never be able to hang on ... and ...” He took a deep breath. “You’ve got enough burden as it is.” He shook his head again. “No. I’ve ... I’ve done my part in all this. This is on you now ... it’s always been on you. Just—leave me here, buddy. We haven’t seen a predator since we left the compound. I’ll be fine, really. I’m just going to keep plugging along. And I’ll see you in Barley.”
The wind blew and Ank didn’t say anything. At last he gazed down the tracks forlornly, thoughtfully, as if by doing so he might divine the likelihood of Will’s survival ... and then froze, fixated on something in the distance.
“What? What is it?” Will followed his gaze to where the watery-looking tracks met their vanishing point. He squinted in the sun. “There’s nothing there, Ank. Just some old tracks—they probably didn’t amount to anything even before ...”
But there was something. Just the smallest rectangle of color, yellow and red, wiggling amidst the convection waves. And when he realized what it was he very nearly fainted. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me ...”
At which instant he heard two things that he hadn’t heard in a long time: Ank’s laughter, which was a stranger thing to hear in one’s mind even then his speaking voice, and the booming, throaty horn of a diesel locomotive—which was bearing down upon them at a shockingly rapid clip. “Get off the tracks, Ank. What are you doing?”
And then they were both standing on the ties and making a ruckus, Ank roaring and rearing up on his hind legs while Williams jumped up and down and waved his hands, having laid his rifle next to the tracks.
His name was Szambelan and at first he’d had no memory of who he’d been before the Flashback—only that he had walked the earth for approximately thirty-five years before the winds and the storms and the crackling, killing bolts, which had changed the world forever.
“I was reborn that day,” he said almost casually as he began stripping away his accouterments in the silk-draped rear of the tent, which was palatial in comparison to the one she had shared with Sammy the night before. “Oh, I remembered the world and its earthly machinations; its geography and its politics, its toil and petty motivations. What I could not remember was anything of myself—the face of my mother, the face of my father ...”
Sheila watched as he pulled the dark tunic over his head and dropped it to the floor, revealing back muscles which gleamed with sweat and scars beyond her ability to count, some of which had healed and crusted over while still others seemed as fresh and angry as if they had happened only yesterday. “I only knew that I should head east. That it was only there that I might ...” He paused, his hands on the waistband of his trousers. “Well. I still believed there were clear answers then. Now I’m not so sure.”
He dropped his trousers and she turned away, stepping toward the tent’s door—toward the haze of smoke which enshrouded the world, the ashen dust which threatened to suffocate the life out of everything. There was no guard save the mottled red and black allosaur, which slumbered, twitching, seeming almost to dream.
“No answers,” she said in what was very nearly a whisper. “You’ve killed thousands—hundreds, at least—and left nothing but desolation. And you say,” She turned to face him again. “You haven’t any answers?”
He’d put something on, thankfully, a pair of wide-legged silken pants of the kind a monk might wear, and yet the sight of him revealed so completely startled her nonetheless. For he was, physically, at least, perfect in every respect: from his wild mane of unkempt dark hair to his handsome but queerly eldritch face to his chiseled and ropy arms and abdominals. “I have no absolutes, if that’s what you mean,” he said, and held out a garment, the deep green color of which matched his own.
“Put this on.”
She hesitated, her somber brown eyes locked up in his. At last she moved forward and took up the attire, trading places with him as he paced so that she was in the back of the tent and he stood near its door.
“What did you expect, some kind of answer to the suffering or even the great and terrible riddle?” he veritably hollered. She listened as she undressed and it sounded as though he opened a bottle. “As though I were the sage himself, I suppose ... and not merely a duke of war.”
She emerged at last wearing the garment he had provided—causing him to pause, a flask of dark liquid in one hand and a pair of wine glasses in the other.
“So it is you, after all,” he said, and set the goblets down. “Our seer had been so confident—far too confident—it had caused me to doubt him, I confess.” He poured a glass for her and offered it. “Will you drink with me, then—you who in this world are Sheila Were of Anchor Rock?”
She froze suddenly feeling as though she could both nod solemnly and laugh out loud—if this were the truth behind the combined phantasmagoria of their dreams and visions then how absurd it all was! Then she took the goblet and quaffed it, deciding, in that instant, that she would no longer fear this mortal man who was as beautiful as he was ridiculous—and that the time for fear was over, in any case.
They both felt it at the same time, even as the train lurched forward and the cars jolted thunderously—a tremor in the very fabric of things, like a ripple in a foam of potentiality which contained in it the threads of all their possible futures. Something, somewhere, had just happened—something directly related to their current endeavor of delivering the bomb to Barley and detonating it amidst the Enemy.
“You felt it too? Like one door closed and another had opened, but with disastrous consequences, for us all ...” Williams looked at him, rattled and bewildered. “Ank, how could we know that?”
“Ank, don’t.”
Williams leaned forward until they were almost nose to nose. “Our friendly engineer, in case you haven’t noticed, is clearly insane!”
And then Williams was leaning over the side using one of Ank’s spikes for a handhold while simultaneously yelling at the engineer, who poked his head out the engine’s side window, his long, gray hair flying, and shouted, “You want speed, you got it, ha-ha! The world, she’s a comin’ back, yesiree!” He sounded the horn suddenly and Williams covered an ear, even as his hat blew off and fluttered away behind them. “The New World Special is back in service—and it’s taking its passengers to the Promised Land! Ha-ha!”
He thrust into her again and again, gripping her waist harder with each ramming motion of his pelvis, seeming to knock the wind out of her over and over. It was all she could do to simply not pass out; to grip the green sheets in her slim, pale fingers; to will herself back to the present and close the deal, even if it killed her.
Yes, by all means, close the deal, she thought insanely. Oh, sister! You’ve most certainly done that!
Szambelan, meanwhile, continued to fuck her from behind. You wanted an answer, yes? he communicated to her suddenly, telepathically, penetrating her on a whole new level, veritably splitting her in two with his thoughts. This is it, then, in part. The First Realm—which is the true realm, the only realm, the everlasting realm praise be to Iblis and Ahriman, to Azazel and Mastema, to Al-Shaitan and Samael and Kölski and Der Leibhaftige—this realm both loves and hates you, and always has. Hates you because you are a grotesquerie, an abomination, a treasonous act of an out-of-control God; loves you because you are feeble, and brutish, and mortal, and thus deserving of compassion, and mercy, the kind of mercy we bring ...
He stopped stabbing at her long enough to change his technique, choosing instead to penetrate her slowly, deeply. She ground her hips against him as if to concur, welcoming the respite, attempting to catch her breath. But it was difficult to do for he seemed to grow more powerful with each push—seeming literally to expand, to get bigger and bigger.
He continued: What did thou thinkest Creation was if not the animation of dead matter from the simple infusion of conflict? Aye, so you’ve sculpted a homunculus and there it lay—how then to get it to raise its little arm? Why, give it Free Will, of course! For first and foremost it has to CHOOSE—that is the secret behind every act of creation. ‘I will lift thine arm,’ the homunculus says, and in so doing pits one muscle against the next—pushing thine blood to thine heart and thine eyes.
Again he increased the tempo of his thrusts—as if to emphasize his point—and her breath came and went in ragged gasps.
That is it, of course, the whole of the secret in one simple shell. And thus you mistake your wars and disease and mortality for misfortune; when in fact they are but Life itself—material life, which is to say life as He reinvented it; not us. This is the reason for which we came when they instigated the Flashback—they, the judgers and the experimenters, the scramblers of Time, the halflings between this world and the next. For we shared with them a common goal: the complete eradication of your kind—by which I mean not your First Realm doppelgangers but your material manifestations, which mock us. And now it must all play out, even though the end is no doubt presumed. For if we know anything of Him and His followers, it is that they—
He stopped communicating abruptly and finished in her powerfully and voluminously, seeming to fill her at once with both ice and hot oil. Then it was over as quickly as it had begun, and she could only lay there shuddering ... wondering if he would, or even could, honor the deal, and wondering, too, just what in God’s name she had done.
