Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (24 page)

“He’ll still fuck you up, kid,” said Phage. “Stay right here.”

Phage looked at Phoe and pointed at Mayfly.

“Make sure he stays right here,” he commanded Phoe.

Phoe nodded and then Phage whistled at Geryon in back. The masked spanner came to the front of the RV and clicked twice before listening to the injured creature’s movements. Geryon then got out of the vehicle and confronted the berserker head-on. The injured berserker was slow, but had Geryon’s height and was nearly twice as broad. Geryon, blind and masked, started to click rapidly and dodged the charging berserker with ease.

Mayfly had fought Geryon once before and knew the berserker didn’t stand a chance, but the berserker didn’t understand that and became angry. The creature swung four times at Geryon and caught only air, and after a fifth miss
, Geryon swung his arms together and generated a sonic boom that pushed the berserker off the road. Geryon approached the felled dead creature to do more work on him, but Phage called him back.

“We got to go, bro,” said Phage. “You’ll have plenty more opportunities to fight.”

Geryon came back into the RV and Mayfly sped off, leaving the two unmoving berserkers behind them.

“He’ll have plenty more opportunities, because like it or not
, there’s a war coming,” said Phage.

“A man said the same thing,” said Mayfly. “A human called Freeman Rajter told us that right before he died.”

“Rajter, I heard of him … shame he passed. That coot was crazy,” said Phage with a laugh. “I mean that in a good way; he was crazy for living in this frozen shithole but rational about everything else, and he was right about the war.”

“I don’t understand how a war will come,” said Mayfly. “I mean
, we’ve got a handful of spanners on our side, and so does Juan. Fight, sure, but battle? I don’t see how.”

“That’s what the legend says
, kid, so you gotta be ready for it, like it or not,” said Phage. “And like it or not, Geryon, Phoe and I are on
your side
, kid. You’re gonna have to learn to count on us, because when Juan’s army comes, you’re gonna have no one else.”

/***/

Hours later, the sun came up and Phoe broke her silence.

“What do you know about Adam?” she asked Mayfly.

Mayfly smiled and then looked at Phage, who was sleeping loudly; he had a hacking cough that occasionally caused his body to spasm, but he was asleep.

“A lot,” said Mayfly.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but Adam once told me I knew him better than his siblings did,” said Mayfly.

“Did I know him?” asked Phoe.

“Yeah,” said Mayfly. “He sheltered you, but didn’t reveal everything, like a father
wouldn’t. But he spoke of you all the time to me, and when we free him, he’ll be really happy to see you.”

“Why?” asked Phoe. “What have I done for him? Or for anyone?”

“I honestly don’t know Adam’s thinking,” said Mayfly with a smile, “but I do know that he has a hard time connecting to people, even me. One way or another, he connected with you, sometimes as his sister, sometimes as his daughter, but for whatever reason, you reached him in a way that no one else could.”

Phoe thought of that for a moment, watching the forest pass them by.

“Wouldn’t it hurt, seeing your daughter die time and time again?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Mayfly, “but he told me it was worth it. You experienced everything in life for the first time, and that’s the one part of life he couldn’t experience for himself.”

“But I died,” said Phoe.

“And you always came back,” said Mayfly, “to see everything for the first time, over and over again.”

Phoe thought for a moment and then nodded. She was about to say something when Phage, now awake, interrupted from the back seat.

“That’s a rosy picture of our brother Adam, but it’s not the whole story,” said Phage.

Mayfly didn’t want to argue, so he let Phage speak.

“Adam gets bored with his own life
, so he lives through you,” said Phage, looking at Phoe. “Even though
he knows
it means you’re gonna end up burning.”

“She’s a phoenix-
class spanner, and that’s what
she does
,” said Mayfly. “
You
kill people, and she’s reborn through fire; that’s what your classes
do
.”

“Bullshit,” said Phage. “I don’t kill anymore, at least not innocents, and she’s avoided her destiny so far. You should have realized that when she was
taking those wolves off your back.”

Mayfly could easily beat Phage with rhetoric, but chose not to; Phage’s argument held truth. Adam wasn’t a bad man, but he wasn’t without contradictions
, and his treatment of Phoe left many questions unanswered.
We have bigger things to worry about than Adam’s intentions, however,
thought Mayfly.
Whatever the case, don’t worry about this
,
not here and not now.

“It is what it is, Phage
,” said Mayfly, “but Adam’s done a lot for us, and we need to rescue him. He’s probably under the earth right now, because that’s what Juan’s people would do. He’s buried and we need to find him as fast as we can. Everything else is secondary.”

“Amen to that,” said Phage with a smile.

They drove in silence for another ten minutes before Phoe spoke again.

“
How did we begin?” asked Phoe. “How did our family begin?”

Phage laughed.

“Our beginning,” said Phage. “That was a long time ago, and I’m a little hazy on the details. Why don’t you field this one, Mayfly?”

“He didn’t tell me much,” said Mayfly. “He said he doesn’t recall a childhood; his memory only goes back
eight thousand years. As far as he knows, he’s always been this way.”

“Sounds like Adam,” said Phage, shaking his head
. “So much experience, but naïve to the hard truths of this world.”

“The
hard truths
?” asked Phoe.

“Yep,” said Phage. “Starting with his claim that he’s
always been
this way. What was he, born full-grown? Or was he always here in the first place, even before the fucking universe began? What do you think, Mayfly, was he
always this way
? Me, was I always this way?”

“I don’t know,” said Mayfly, taking Phage’s bait. “What do you think?”

“I think there’s only one answer to his past, perhaps all our pasts,” said Phage.

Phage took out a cigarette, lit it, took a drag and then coughed violently for a moment before taking another smoke.

“I don’t remember that long ago, but my memory’s never been that good. But our dear Adam’s got a perfect memory; he’s a tree-class spanner and they don’t forget
shit
,” said Phage. “And there’s
one way
to make a tree-class spanner forget shit, and that’s to erase their memory, and there’s only
one way
to erase their memory.”

“Burial,” said Phoe.

“For a hundred fucking years,” said Phage. “Bury a tree for a century and he emerges full grown, but anew. Juan Ponce ain’t a tree, so he kept his memories when they buried him, but Adam’s class? They come out like a baby, with no language, no nothin’.”

Phage smoked a cigarette and let the empty morning road pass them by for a few minutes.

“So when a guy like Adam can’t remember a childhood, what does that tell you?” asked Phage.

“Someone buried him once before,” said Phoe.

“About eight thousand and one hundred years ago someone did just that,” said Phage with a dry smile. “And eight thousand one hundred years later, our dear brother is right back where he started, under a ton of dirt.”

Mayfly drove for a moment and then rolled down his window to let Phage’s smoke clear.

“That’s a scary story,” said Mayfly, “but it doesn’t affect us now.”

Phage took another long drag off his cigarette, opened his window and blew the smoke outside.

“It absolutely affects us now,” said Phage, “because Adam’s our leader in this little quest, and he’s currently living the nightmare that’s addled his brain for the last 8,000 years. We’ll find him and dig him up, but he won’t be the same. He ain’t gonna be the Adam you know and love; his memory won’t be wiped, but he’s gonna be a little crazy.”

Mayfly looked straight ahead and saw in the mirror that Phage’s eyes glowed a veiny red for a brief moment.
Phage is mortal now, but he’s still a spanner,
thought Mayfly.
And he might be right about this.

“We’re all gonna help you in this upcoming war
, kid, but you’re gonna need Adam,” said Phage. “We’re gonna find a shell of a man under the ground, but we need Adam at full strength.”

“How do we get him back to full strength?” asked Mayfly.

“You’re the one with the three-hundred IQ, so you gotta figure it out,” said Phage. “And do it quick, because you ain’t got much time left. If your heart stops before Adam’s fixed, we might as well leave him planted and turn the Fountain over to Juan Ponce right now.”

Phage isn’t politic with his words, but he’s right. I’ve got to help Adam and I’m on borrowed time,
thought Mayfly.
All of us are on borrowed time.

/***/

They drove back to the ruins of Rajter’s compound and it was covered with snow. Adam’s mound wasn’t too hard to find in daylight; there was a pile of smooth, frozen dirt near where they had left Adam.
Juan’s crew has powers, but they always leave an opening for us,
thought Mayfly.
Maybe this legend is meant to be.

Mayfly came up with a solution to dig in the frozen earth; they gathered wood from the wreckage of Freeman Rajter’s compound and built a bonfire over the mound. Geryon fled into the forest immediately, preferring to deal with predatory creatures and the cold rather than face
more flames.

After covering Adam’s burial site completely, Phoe let her eyes glow and set the wood ablaze. The bonfire burned so hot that the fire was
pure white and dazzled brightly, even against the noonday sun. They let it burn completely and then used some of Freeman Rajter’s shovels to dig through the dirt as it was still smoldering.

The icy ground had softened and they found Adam after an hour, buried without a coffin, still tied to a chair, twitching but unable to speak.

“You’re safe now,” said Mayfly.

Phage took a stick and prodded Adam a couple of times, but he still didn’t speak. Phoe knelt beside Adam and put her hand on his head, and Adam quivered slightly in response. His eyes focused on her and then glowed dimly in recognition.

“He’s gonna be all right; it might take some rehab, but our dear brother’s gonna be all right,” said Phage. “I don’t know what lies ahead of us, be it prophecy or war, but whatever it is, it’s gonna happen. So stay alive, Mayfly, because whatever happens, it’s gonna be
big
.”

PART III

A BATTLE AT THE EDGE OF THE
WORLD

THE DEVIL’S ARMY

Balthasar had
commanded a guard to whip him again, this time in private. The session lasted an hour, and by the end Balthasar couldn’t move. He had ordered the guard to strike him until he became unresponsive, so the guard continued and Balthasar woke up eight hours later, sore and stiff, but healed. Juan, of course, was in his room when Balthasar awoke, and of course was drinking Malbec.

“I forbade you to self-flagellate, and yet you still do it,” said Juan. “Tell me why.”

Balthasar wouldn’t speak.

“Perhaps you think you failed because the Fountain slipped through your fingers?”

Balthasar didn’t respond, and after a moment Juan nodded.

“I’m disappointed, of course, but the Fountain was destined to escape you,” said Juan. “And though I would have preferred that you would have brought me Adam in shackles, you made the only choice. Adam is craftier than you realize, and you wouldn’t have made the journey back down here without him escaping. You did the only thing you could do with Adam.”

Balthasar drank another swig of Malbec.

“We
’ll find him, wherever he is,” said Juan. “If he’s still buried, we’ll ensure that he stays buried, and if he’s escaped, we’ll put him under such torment that he’ll long for the dirt again.”

Juan took out a
bottle of tequila from under Balthasar’s desk, a special bottle that Balthasar had hidden, telling no one. He offered Balthasar a glass, and Balthasar assented. He got past the initial bite of the drink, and then savored the taste for a moment before facing Juan.

“My self-pity is pointless,” said Balthasar. “I understand this now.”

“Do you?” asked Juan. “Because I don’t think you do.”

“Perhaps I don’t,” said Balthasar. “Please elucidate.”

Juan drank his Malbec and smiled.

“It’s all coming together,” said Juan. “Our small failures aren’t due to incompetence, but rather to destiny. Everything is leading us to war … everything! Think of it
: Our blur came back with heavy burns, beaten by a
phoenix-class
spanner! You let the Fountain slip away even though you were attacking a hovel! These things don’t just happen to us, not with the means at our disposal.”

Balthasar nodded.

“The Arawak legend appears to be coming true,” said Juan. “Somehow, someway, we’re destined for war and must prepare accordingly. No schemes, no legerdemain, no midnight kidnappings; we’ll allow the spider-wolves to track the Fountain north, and we’ll then bring our army to meet her. There will be a war, and that war will determine the world’s future; there is no other way.”

Juan walked around Balthasar and then looked down the back of his shirt to inspect the wounds from the whip, almost healed but still raw.

“
That
is why I want you to stop this pointless self-flagellation, Balthasar,” said Juan. “There are conflicting demons within you that you care not to reveal, discuss or even
acknowledge,
but you must bring them out now and quash them. You are about to fight an
external and real
war with two sides, and there’s no room for an emotional war within your soul. Can you quash the demons inside of you, whatever they may be?”

“Of course
, sir,” said Balthasar.

“Good,” said Juan. “Now come with me; we’re going to gauge the strength of the army that we have
now
.”

/***/

The guards had brought temporary walls to the compound’s gymnasium and placed them on the floor until it turned into a gladiatorial pit. Juan and Balthasar sat in the upper edges of the gymnasium and waited for Cannon to enter, and when he came in he was grumpy, seemingly indifferent to the fact that he was about to fight for his life. Cannon usually slept until noon, so it had taken Blur some time to rouse him from his sleep, and the kid now rubbed his eyes with acne-covered hands.

“Now
, Cannon, you’re about to face quite a few opponents and they’ll be angry; are you ready to fight them?” asked Juan from his perch in the gymnasium.

“Whatever,” said Cannon, still rubbing his eyes.

Juan nodded to Balthasar, and Balthasar nodded to the guards on the gymnasium floor, who released a door to let the populous through. They spilled in through the makeshift gates towards Cannon with their usual zeal to swarm and beat anyone who was different than them.

They outnumbered Cannon fifty to one, but he was too strong to be cornered and too quick for them to grab onto him. Cannon was now half-awake and swung his fists clumsily, landing every third punch with devastating force. Each time his fists connected, a member of the populous went flying into a wall, with some body part being smashed so badly that they were unable to return.

The populous continued to swarm without fear, but Cannon was fully awake now and started to connect more punches, and soon he began to chip away at their collective psyche. After a minute they began to fight with a bit of caution. They finally managed to corner him in a coordinated attack, but Cannon wriggled and shook them off, ten bodies in all.
This is like a grown man being attacked by housecats,
thought Balthasar.
If he were outnumbered a thousand to one, they still wouldn’t stand a chance.

After twenty members of the populous were on the ground
, writhing in agony with bones crushed and joints displaced, the thirty remaining members began to disperse, running desperately for an exit and finding none. Cannon chased a few down and pounded them until they were still, but the remaining populous were running too haphazardly and he was having a hard time focusing on one. The pit looked as if it held children playing a game of tag.

“Stop this farce immediately,” whispered Juan.

Balthasar signaled the guards to end the melee and they nodded, obediently but cautiously walking onto the floor to tell Cannon that the fight was over. Cannon was too wrapped up in the moment to notice them, but after smashing two more members of the populous he saw the guards and knelt down, sweat soaking his cut-off shirt. The guards yelled at the surviving populous in the terse, commanding tongue to which they responded and ordered them to return to their holding cells. Cannon looked in the upper decks for Balthasar, seeking his approval. Balthasar shot down a quick nod and that was enough for Cannon, who left the pit while the guards set up a triage for his victims.

Balthasar looked to the side and found that Juan was gone; he had already retreated to his quarters.

/***/

As usual Juan was neither mad nor disappointed; he had expected this small failure and had a backup plan. They were about to go to war
with an army that couldn’t take down an overgrown teenager, but Juan didn’t seem concerned. This time Juan drank tequila and offered a glass to Balthasar, who accepted without hesitation.

“When I was buried, my compatriot Hernán Cortés was conquering the land that yielded this drink,” said Juan. “It was said that he
burned the boats
, do you know the story?”

Balthasar did, but allowed Juan to indulge in telling the tale.

“Cortés was an ambitious soldier of Spain much like myself, only his regiment happened to land south of Hispaniola, in the Yucatán. But unlike our party, he didn’t meet an assortment of unrelated tribes; Cortés faced an
empire
.

“He approached the Aztec kingdom of
three hundred thousand with only a few hundred men on his own side—starving, scurvied and mutinous men, no less. When his army refused to take on the Montezuma and threatened to hang him, Cortés burned his own ships so that his troops had only one option to survive: go forward and fight the Aztecs until they were conquered.”

Juan sipped the
tequila, pointed at the Aztec imagery on the bottle of tequila and laughed.

“Of course, this is a drastic oversimplification of what happened; perhaps the legend of boat burning is an outright lie. But the point is this
: back then, all you needed to conquer an empire was a few weapons, some diseases, and in the case of Cortés, an environment of desperation. Legend of burning boats or not, his army of a few hundred men conquered the Aztecs, and now Montezuma’s ziggurats grace only bottles of tequila.”

Juan smiled and then sipped
from his glass.

“Do you know what really allowed Cortés
to conquer the Aztecs?”

“Please tell me, sir,” said Balthasar.

“The same thing that allowed us to succeed,” said Juan. “He was the first ashore.”

Juan drained his glass and poured another.

“Cortés faced an empire, but Montezuma was prepared to fall to whoever fought them first. Cortés was not David fighting Goliath. The Aztec empire was surrounded by enemies waiting to turn the tables on their oppressors, and the Aztecs were inferior of weapon and had no protection against disease. If it were not Cortés, it would have been whoever came next.

“And if Hernán
had been born a century later, or perhaps even a decade hence, he would have failed. Times changed quickly; the Aztecs fell, mixed their blood with the Europeans and centuries later, Mexico tore free from Spain. Life became too complex for a man to conquer a nation simply by burning his boats.”

Juan took another sip of his
tequila.

“The same is true for us,” said Juan. “We’re no longer the first ashore, and the plans that helped us five centuries ago would fail today; we can’t achieve our goal simply by arriving at the battle with a horde of populous. The populous can
’t even conquer one of our own!”

“This is true,” said Balthasar, not able to think of anything else to say in response.

Juan bid Balthasar to drink his tequila and he did so, after which Juan poured Balthasar another glass and then stared again at the Aztec ziggurat on the tequila bottle’s label.

“But Cortés burned his boats and won,” said Juan, his voice trailing off. “Perhaps he
might
have won ten years hence, a century hence, or even today. He was a crafty son-of-a-bitch, and maybe he would have found a way. Maybe we need to think like Cortés and burn our boats, metaphorically.”

“Sir?” asked Balthasar.

“We need to raise an army, Balthasar,” said Juan, “a
real
army; not just the populous. We must raise an army that will fight as fiercely as Cortés’s army did when he destroyed his ships.”

Balthasar had nothing to say to Juan in response.

“We will do this by raising the
Devil’s army
from the ground,” said Juan. “The Devil’s army will have but two options: fight for us, or go back to Hell from whence they came. Their boats will already be burnt; do you understand this?”

Balthasar said nothing.

“Forgive me if I speak in strange metaphors,” said Juan. “All will become understood as our plan progresses. But you must understand that I can’t implement this plan without you, Balthasar. Would you like to know how we’ll raise the Devil’s army?”

“Of course, sir,” said Balthasar.

“Splendid,” said Juan. “Then come with me to our compound’s basement.”

/***/

They stood in front of an empty deep fryer in the basement that Balthasar had bought to cook meals for Cannon. It was a silver metal cylinder, about a meter in height and less than half that in width. Juan turned a switch at the bottom and a flame at the base began to heat the oil inside.

“When you buried Adam, how did it make you feel?” asked Juan.

“Sir?”

“How did it make you
feel
, Balthasar?” asked Juan. “Did you enjoy putting him under the ground and condemning him to a cruel fate? Be honest; I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“No
, sir,” said Balthasar. “But I did what needed to be done.”

“You acted bravely, much as Judas Iscariot did.”

“Sir?”

Juan laughed and turned
up the flame in the deep fryer.

“I apologize for yet another odd metaphor, but in these times, historical analogy is incredibly important,” said Juan. “So I ask, and please be honest, what do you think of Judas Iscariot?”

“He betrayed our Savior and is a scoundrel, sir,” said Balthasar. “I do not think him brave.”

“I disagree,” said Juan. “Judas Iscariot is a hero; think of it. For Jesus to become our Savior,
he couldn’t turn himself in; he
had to be betrayed
.
So he chose his strongest disciple, Judas, to do it; Judas would help Jesus to the cross, and in exchange Judas would get a mere thirty pieces of silver, a hangman’s noose, and a name that would be cursed for eternity. The other disciples did nothing and now enjoy noble places in history, but Judas did what
had to be
done and if he hadn’t, we’d still be worshipping Jupiter and Apollo!”

“A fascinating viewpoint, sir,” said Balthasar, wondering what this all had to do with the deep fryer in front of
them.