The Alpha and the Omega: An absurd philosophical tale about God, the end of the world, and what's on the other planets (20 page)

“We’re wasting our energy. We should be resting up for the battle.”

They continued shoveling. Then, a little while later, came Father Kai, with news from the other world.

“Well what did he say?” Zack asked.

“There’s nothing he can do. He won’t give us any additional volunteers; he said it would be too much of an advantage. We’re not supposed to have any supernatural powers here. I’m afraid we’re on our own.”

“Did he at least tell you if there really is an army headed here?” Zack asked.

“He would not answer. He said that such knowledge is as supernatural a power as any.”

“Ok, thanks.”

They continued shoveling, and the sun slowly made its way to the top of the giant glass sphere that the Limbeans believed was their world. Sweat drenched Zack’s cloak, and the dolphin emblem on the front melted downward in sour desolation. His arms were sore, and his throat was parched.

“Maybe there is no army,” Zack said to Lucky. “Wouldn’t it be here by now? How could the vultures have gotten so far ahead of them?”

“I don’t know man.”

They continued shoveling. It was afternoon now, and it felt like they were hardly making any progress at all. Most of the barricade had gone up in the very beginning, and the shoveling and rock gathering that had followed contributed very little, very slowly. Zack looked at his hands; several blisters were developing. Then he looked up at the vultures, ever present, and thought of the little brown bird that had pecked at his ants on the hilltop. He wished that he could somehow give the villagers iron exoskeletons and poison stinger tails. But he could not.

They continued shoveling. And then, finally, late in the afternoon, they heard it – the sound that had made Zack so grateful that he was a mere tourist when he had heard it that very first day, now multiplied several hundred times: coyotes, from the north. The riders had come.

“To arms, to arms!” Sacat cried, as he and the other soldiers ran up and down the barricade distributing spears. There were
only enough swords and shields for the soldiers, and so everyone else would face the riders with nothing more between him and the coyotes’ giant razor teeth than a pointy rock tied to the end of a stick. “Women and children inside the village!”

“Lilly, you have to leave,” Zack said.

“No way, I can fight.”

“Lilly, Sacat would never allow it. It’s against Limbean culture.” Zack began preparing his arguments, but Lilly knew he was right.

“Ok,” she said. “But first, let me show you a few quick things.” She grabbed his spear. “Ok, now… no wait, this isn’t going to work at all. Hmmm.” She walked over to the barricade and ran her eyes across it.

“What are you doing?”

“What Sacat should’ve had all the men do several hours ago,” she said, pulling a loose piece of wood off of an old cart. “This barricade is useless, any idiot can see that. You need shields more than an old garbage heap; they’re dogs, not horses – they’ll climb right over.”

“I know, I’ve been saying that all day.”

“Yeah. Ok look. Keep your shield here, see? And hold your spear like this, overhand, directly against the top of the shield, see? Then thrust like this.”

“Ok, but –”

“Have the other men form a tight line and do the same. Then, when they break your ranks, move like this.” She bent her legs like a mantis and circled. “See? Dodge, parry, thrust! Dodge, parry, thrust!”

Several of the men, including Sacat, stared.

“Or give ‘em one of these… dodge… dodge… dodge, parry, spin-duck-thrust!!”

“Where did you learn that Lilly?”

“College fencing.”

“There’s no shield in fencing, how do you know –”

“I just know Zack! There’s no ti–”

“I said women inside the village!” Sacat snarled. “This is war! Not a dance festival!”

“Ok, I’m going,” Lilly said, handing the wooden implements back to Zack. “Give ‘em hell soldiers!”

Lilly departed, and seconds later, the riders appeared on the horizon, in the hundreds. The village was outnumbered in addition to being outmatched, and as the enemy began to take shape, Zack saw that they were in no great hurry. Clearly, they would dictate the terms of the battle.

“All right everyone,” Lucky trumpeted, as loudly as he could, “I know something about dogs, and I know how we can beat them. When they attack, they will attack with their jaws first. So hold your weapons close and wait until the last minute, at which point you will have a chance to spear them directly through the neck.”

Sacat grimaced.

“If they are upon you, and you have no other defense, try hitting them in the nose or screaming in their ear – they have very sensitive hearing.”

“That will be enough,” Sacat growled. “My men have been fighting the dogs for many years before you came, and they will continue fighting them for many years after you have left. I am the commander here, not you.”

Lucky was quiet. Then, much to everyone’s surprise, so were the riders, who halted one mile away from the barricade, only to wait in deathly silence. For several long minutes, nothing happened, and Zack shuddered. Then, just
when he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore, the howling resumed, louder than the banshee, thicker than thunder – hundreds and hundreds of brutish, visceral, animal voices – driving away the last remaining traces of any religious faith that still clung to the village. Then, more silence. Then, in unison, the riders began their devil’s prayer: “Hrash og! Hrash og! Hrash og!”

A great wail went out from the village, and the riders advanced once more, chanting louder and louder: “HRASH OG! HRASH OG! HRASH OG!” Zack tightened his grip on his makeshift shield. He knew the meaning of the words as well as any of the villagers, but nothing that God could have taught him would ever have prepared him for the experience of hearing them in that way, uttered by those men, in that accent. “Hrash” meant dog, and “og” meant meat. “HRASH OG! HRASH OG! HRASH OG!” The chant reached a fever-pitch, and the army advanced directly toward the barricade, as if to say, ‘We do not care: build your fences; try as you may; we will stampede all like lava over dandelions!’

The men clutched their swords and spears, and Zack glanced to his right, noticing soldier Klatu for the first time, out of his element, gripped in bald, unabashed fear.

“Zack,” Lucky whispered, “is Sacat going to say anything to rally the troops? Look at them, they’re petrified.”

“I don’t know. He should.”

The army stopped about a hundred yards away, and the men waited.

“Well I can’t take this anymore,” Lucky said. “All right men,” he bellowed. “On this day, the enemy is great, but remember that what we fight for is –”

“Silence, you fool!” Sacat barked, raising his arm, and with it, the bows of several of his archers. “I am Chieftain, not you. One more outburst like that, and it will be your last.”

Lucky stood down, and Zack turned back to the enemy, and a sight that defied all logic. It was something from a dream – a chilling, otherworldly apparition that somehow, more than anything else that he had seen since leaving the world of subways and coffee stains, knocked him back to childhood, where any wonderful or horrible thing was possible. It was a single rider, shadowy in the sun behind it, moving across the army’s front line… in the outline of a coyote riding another coyote.

Zack was bewildered, but as he quickly discovered, the rider had a very human voice, and nothing about him was suitable for children. “I am General Kerberus!” he announced. “I am terror personified, and I give you this one last chance to save yourselves. Defectors, come to my army, and you can be the hrash rather than the og.”

One lone villager sprinted across the barricade, and with a downward stare and a callous flick of his left hand, Sacat gave Sot his orders. The young Captain looked back at his Chieftain, and for half a second, almost imperceptibly, squinted his eyes as if to question why the task had fallen to him. Then he took off, catching the runner exactly halfway between the barricade and the hostile army to claim him back for the village. Once his sword was red, and there were no longer any defectors, he turned to head back. But it was too late. Kerberus was there, and as Sot raised his sword to the neck of Kerberus’s canine steed, Kerberus swung his sword downward and deflected the blow, and the coyote’s teeth found Sot’s flesh.

The coyote was the most terrible and magnificent beast that Zack had ever seen. It was six feet of towering menace with bulging muscles; dagger-sized teeth; pointy ears; grey, white, and brown fur; and ghostly reptilian, yellow-green eyes. It moved quickly and powerfully, and Sot screamed in agony as it ripped the muscles off of his bones and dug into his bowels, while Sacat did nothing. Surely it could have easily taken Sot’s throat first, but surely Kerberus had trained it not to – for moments like this.

Yes, Kerberus told no lie when he proclaimed himself terror. He was in fact a man, but a freakishly large, strong one, with leathery, sun-stained skin covered in scars, shining black armor befitting of an ancient Greek champion, and of course, that one article that did not appear in any history, legend, or fantasy that Zack had ever come across: his coyote-head headdress. It was real. And, except for the human face looking out from the dark shade between its jaws, approximated the visage of the wild animal that served as Kerberus’s legs with disturbing gravity – right down to those haunting, yellow-green eyes.

When the dog had finally had his fill, Kerberus spoke again. “Where is the Chieftain? Where is Sacat?”

Sacat slowly climbed to the top of the barricade. “I am here.”

“Listen carefully. I will offer King Sork’s terms only once. My army will spare the rest of your men today, and your village, if and only if, you give me the fountain… and the Makains.”

No one spoke.

“Well?”

“I accept,” Sacat said. And then, not more than three seconds later, at least a dozen men behind the barricade dropped to the ground, limp, unconscious, and useless, like so many empty puppets. The men looked all around them in panic. Then another dozen dropped. They were the male volunteers, fleeing back to Heaven.

“Oh my brothers, how can you abandon us now!” Klatu cried, to Kerberus’s ignorant laughter.

Then Zack rotated his head and found five angry spears pointed directly at it, and his fear turned to sadness. Just yesterday the villagers had been his guests in the Great Hall, but now they were his adversaries, and Zack and the other remaining Makains were caught between two armies.

Kerberus’s troops marched everyone into the village and ordered them to sit in a large circle in front of the Church. Everywhere were the bodies of the female volunteers, their operators apparently no braver than their male counterparts. Zack pushed his way toward Lilly and sat down.

“Zack, we have to
do something
,” she said.

Kerberus walked to the center of the circle and removed his grim hat to reveal a face as harsh as the surrounding desert landscape, and the villagers cowered. “Where is the head priest?”

Father Kai rose, unwavering, stoic. “I do not fear you,” he said, “for I am a Makain, and I know that after death, clear blue waters and skies await me.”

“Fear this!” Kerberus said, knocking him several feet backward with a fist to the face.

Then Lilly stood. “You will never silence us. We speak for God! We speak for justice! We speak –”

Kerberus drew his sword and paced to the spot where Tarta was sitting – her arms desperately swathing baby Klatan. “I am in control of this village now! You
will
be silent. You
will
do as I say. Or you will drown in each other’s blood.”

Lilly sat down.

Then Kerberus walked over to Father Kai and handed him the sword.

Father Kai looked down at it in his hand; then he looked back up at Kerberus.

“Try it,” Kerberus said, with an ominous smile.

Father Kai did not move a muscle.

“Now,” he said, pointing toward the Church, “run my sword through each one of those pretty blue windows.”

Slowly, calmly, and without emotion, Father Kai sent each one of the watery images splashing to the sand in blue, green, and white fragments.

Then Kerberus snatched his sword back and pushed Father Kai to the ground. “Now, where are the Makains?”

“Kosos,” Sacat said, “come forward.” Her face trembled. Nevertheless, she named each and every Makain in turn, starting with the Church leaders, and finishing with the children. As she spoke, Kerberus’s men chained them up, ankle to ankle, wrist to wrist. There were nearly seventy of them; only one member of the congregation was missing.

“Santar!” Sacat screamed, as loud as he could. “Where is the little boy Santar?” No one knew, and this was one of the few silver-linings that Zack could find. The other, was the fact that Kosos did not name Tarta and Klatan. Thank God they had never officially joined the Church.

The entire crowd waited while several soldiers and villagers unsuccessfully searched Santar’s house, but he was worth
no more effort than this, and soon, Kerberus and his captains were examining the fountain while Sork’s other minions tormented the prisoners. They laughed, jeered, poked, and prodded, and one of the more creative ones even used black war paint to smear legs and jaws on the dolphins adorning the Makain’s clothing, so as to change them into coyotes.

Zack, chained behind Klatu and in front of Santanodis, Santar’s recently converted father, distracted himself by counting the remaining volunteers from Heaven. There were only five: himself, Father Kai, Lilly, Lucky, and remarkably, Debbie Parsons. Wow, Zack thought, that little guilt trip Lilly laid on her really took its toll.

When Kerberus returned, his men affixed large animal-hide backpacks to the prisoners. Then they marched them through the Great Hall, where they filled every jug and canteen they could find and loaded them into the backpacks. The weight was crushing; Zack felt like he was carrying a hundred pounds.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Kerberus said to Sacat, as they were finishing, “I’ll take your woman too.” They chained Kosos to the group, and Sacat did nothing, even when one of the men approached with a backpack to Kerberus’s, “No, I think I’d like to keep this specimen in good condition.”