Out of Exodia (13 page)

* * *

“
We’re gonna make it,”
Lydia breathes at my side. “We’ll cross and go on and they can just
stay hidden.”

Her optimism sharply contradicts the
suspicions I have as I now step more lightly, afraid the ground
might cave in. We hit the midway point and the cloud ahead drops
lower, loiters at the western edge, then falls like a wall of fog
to stop our progress.

A great number of the horses have lost
their riders or freed themselves of lead lines and are now trotting
off, heading to their well-remembered home. A bit of panic is
setting in among the women. A quick regret flashes across my mind:
I should have used the rod, let it snake into the ground, tunnel to
the center and blow their caves to pieces.

Despite the noise around me I hear the
click and clatter of dozens of metal doors thrown back. The sound
reverberates, popping left and right, front and back, then randomly
around. Within seconds warriors appear, stripes on some faces,
helmets on others, lances and swords and spears outnumbering the
deadly gray barrels of their ancient guns.

We are surrounded by an orange and
black army.

They fire first; a quick round of
bullets goes wild above our heads. Hair-raising screams and vicious
threats precede the sounds of our answering attack: single shots
and nano-gun fire.

Through the cloud appears the tallest
man I’ve ever encountered, flanked by men with weapons I’ve never
seen before.

Time slows for us, but stops for them.
We take our clearest aim, our sharpest shots. Our marksmen are
precise. I raise the rod, but it makes no difference. I stab it
into the ground and pillage my pack for a weapon. Lydia races to
the center, pulling children into trembling piles. She along with
her mother and her friends cover the small bodies with their
own.

Both sides quickly exhaust supplies of
precious gunpowder and the battle takes an awkward pause. Josh and
Blake and Herb and Harmon and every able man who bears a faux sword
pushes out from our circle and strikes with surety and ease while
our enemy’s army crumbles.

The cloud spreads above us, drops like
a murky blanket, and shrouds the dead and the living. The enemy
stumbles through, turns on its own people, kills blindly. And
wrongly. I can see through the mist and vapor; I battle with men
who cannot see me raise my arm. They swerve and parry in frantic
defense, but they lose. I disarm them one by one and use their
strange weapons on the next wave.

It seems that only minutes have passed,
but the sun no longer lingers above the veiling cloud which now
rises high. Hues of hot orange and red and deepest purple frame the
sunset. My eyes and ears settle on new sights and sounds. Blood
upon my hands. Streaks of tears and dirt on Lydia’s face, but
thankfully no blood. Sobbing children. Harmon’s shirt is dark with
stains, but the blood isn’t his. Blake, Teague, Marilyn, Mira, even
Eugene, all are laughing in a way that mimics madness, but they’re
not hurt, not bleeding. Safe. Everyone is safe.

I check quickly. There’s no more
fighting anywhere. The bodies that surround us, men, women, even
children, all lie still and broken. Dead. Every cave dweller is
dead.

I don’t find even one Red who was
killed though many do have injuries, some quite bad.

Suddenly the cloud shimmers and I hear
the hum from Malcolm’s machine. I spot him sitting on a heap of
bags, fiddling with levers on the chest and petting the sides of
the thrumming box. The cloud moves around to the north side. It
settles there as if to guide us to the hidden stables and the main
entrance.

A victory cheer goes up. Everyone
believes we have vanquished this foe so they shout to one another,
daring to go down under.

A nod from me is all it takes and our
circle explodes. Men step on corpses, women run around them,
children hop over the dead, and surge toward the various doors that
are embedded in the ground. A few women produce banners from their
packs, waving them wildly. The bit of breeze they make sends the
scent of death to my nose – blood and flesh and sweat, gunpowder
and guts. But there are no keening cries from widows or orphans. No
mourners for these cave-dwellers. Unless they’ve left those too
weak or sick or young or old beneath this battle ground.

“
This way,” Lydia says. I
release the rod from the ground as she takes my other hand and
pulls me toward the two large barriers she’d pointed out before.
This entrance to the city catches the last rays of light. We reach
the doors that other Reds have already pulled wide. They’ve gone
from heart-pounding fear in battle, to conquering champions, to
parading victors in a short quantity of time. They stream down the
steps, confident they’ll meet no resistance, but their weapons are
ready just the same. In no time at all Lydia and I are the only
ones topside.

I put my hand on the plaque and feel
the metal’s warmth. I read the inscription.

“
This was built nearly
fifty years ago.”

“
That’s what I told you.”
Lydia smiles. “Twenty forty-nine.”

I run my fingers over the numbers,
leaving a smudge of blood. I stand still, my breathing tamed, my
violent hands subdued, and rub the numbers that hide a message. Two
oh four nine. I see it now. Honor unto wife. Maybe I need to change
our promise to wait until we reach that faraway land; perhaps I
need to make Lydia my wife before we leave here.

I scan the short inscription below the
date, a vaguely poetic verse, and find the very line that sanctions
this amendment:

Built to save from icy
breath of winter heat

And killing swell of frozen
night,

This city of Proserpina
saves her citizens from

Heaven’s changing rains
and

Its fanged dew.

Whatever victory
celebration that transpires below will shift its morbid theme when
I propose a
wedding
feast
.

Part II 2097

Chapter 10 The Second Start

From the tenth page of the
second Ledger:

Some married, some gave
birth, some died, and all were fed with food from the
highest.

WE’VE BEEN FOURTEEN months
in this underground city. Lydia and I were not wed that first
night. I went to
Jenny
to ask her blessing, to ask if she’d approve a marriage
between her daughter and me, and to suggest a wedding feast because
I’d seen the letters on the plaque change before my eyes,
from
its fanged dew
to
wedding feast
. She told me that Blake just proposed to Onita. There was
already a ceremony planned, she said, and she was sure that my
premonition concerned her friend Onita and not her daughter. She
couldn’t bless our union, she told me, until I had fulfilled my
destiny. I stayed away from Lydia for a while.

The wedding feast lasted seven days and
nights as the cloud remained stationed above the entrance. No
packages of meat dropped that first evening and no loaves of bread
fell the next morning. But the wedding celebration included gorging
ourselves on the fresh fruits and vegetables we found below. The
citizens of Proserpina didn’t deserve our nickname of cave-dwellers
since their city was better than anything we had in Exodia. They
had refrigeration as well as cellars filled with cheeses and meats
and wines. We decimated their supplies completely during that first
week. On the eighth morning the bread dropped from the skies again,
but the cloud didn’t lead us away.

The second week we spent settling in
more permanently, learning the workings of the heating and venting
and how the water was supplied. We memorized the layout of the
massive underground tunnels and rooms. Families adjusted to the
communal dwellings though there were several disputes at first
regarding the largest apartments. Piles of the more personal
possessions of those we’d crushed began to block the
hallways—statuettes, costumes, crystals—and then those idols and
clothes disappeared as if they walked off on their own, claimed by
Reds inclined to embrace a darker culture.

Lydia chose for us a trio of rooms that
are more than we need and quite comfortable. A private exit brings
us up and into the horses’ enclosure. The strange idols and chains
and leather contraptions in our rooms I carried to the manure pile
myself the second week. Lydia spends her days caring for the
animals while I devote much of my time in the only real library
I’ve ever been in.

Fourteen months underground. Today I
begin as I have for the last four hundred and twenty-seven days by
finding Malcolm and walking up the main entrance steps with him,
the hum of his box telling me nothing except that it still runs.
The cloud neither lifts nor moves nor changes color.

Loaves plunk to the earth, cartwheeling
and tumbling till they roll to a stop against a rock, a bush, or a
foot. Even I am bored of this same diet day in and day out, but my
health is good and all our people look trim and fit. I brush the
dirt from a small loaf and take an unhappy bite, lift my face to
the skies with the intention of swearing at the unfailing hand that
feeds us, but instead of cursing I clamp my jaw tight as I glimpse
a streak of whiteness trailing behind an airplane. The plane
circles high above, turns north, and grows smaller. I should give
up trying to understand this long delay, but—

Doors clang open around the fields and
children run out wagging banners behind them and chase around in a
new game, snatching a bite from as many loaves as they can before
their parents emerge and holler reprimands.

“
Bram!” Malcolm’s throaty
call directs my gaze first to him and then to the cloud, which
lifts in a trembling roll and moves toward the northern border as
if straining like a dog on a leash.

The kids notice the cloud’s movement,
too, and begin to shout, but it’s the parents’ declarations that
surprise me. I hear the annoyance in their voices; they’ve become
accustomed to a lazy life and dread another lengthy trek, burdened
with their things, sleeping on the ground, risking encounters with
hostile clans. Some claim they’ve had visions of Truslow’s new army
marching forth. They’re sure we’d be safer underground and
hidden.

Our numbers have grown by twenty-four
this past year, twenty seven births and three natural deaths.
Mothers hold newborns in their arms; last year’s babies now toddle;
the toddlers run. Seven couples married after Blake and Onita,
including my brother Harmon. He took an interest in Marilyn before
we left the twelve springs. Now they’re expecting their first
child. Even Josh got married, and rather quickly, after my sister
ended their courtship.

People are comfortable living beneath
the surface. Too comfortable.

Eugene Hoi emerges and stares at the
shimmering cloud, spits on the brown earth, and tears the banner
that Onita made from where it was attached to the hinge of the
door. He begins to fold it, then his folding turns to angry
crumpling. He drops it to the ground.

Malcolm glares at him and grunts again.
“Knew it had to happen sooner or later. Just when I was gettin’
used to clean clothes and a dry bed.”