The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League (13 page)

He could see over some of the bony masses, but couldn’t see the figure.

The feeling was so strong.

In a ravine a few hundred metres away there was movement, something dark, which had to be the pursuer.

He climbed down the ridge, and jumped onto the spongy ridge and slid off onto the ground.

He began running to where the figure was.

He needed to confront it and see who or what it is.

There it was.

As he approached the figure began to come closer as well. Its white face tilted to the side, curiously.

The fleshy gully was a little soft under his feet and slowed his movement to a jog, but he got close enough that he could feel the presence all around him.

As Athan pushed past a final skeletal outcrop he found he was approaching the dark spectre and there was only flat ground dividing them.

It was moving toward him at a casual pace.

Very quickly they were face to face on an open plane of leathery skin. The figure was the same height as Athan, in a long black hooded cloak like a monk. It wore a white mask with tiny eye slots, concealing any features.

It stood still in front of Athan, examining him.

They were both silent as they stood facing each other, one a dark reflection of the other.

The air around them felt charged.

Athan had a prickling feeling in his fingertips.

What’s happening?

Rubbing his thumb and fingers together he almost could feel the static.

There was a tension like two magnets repelling and attracting at the same time. Athan almost felt a little dizzy.

“We can’t stare at each other forever.” Athan crossed his arms. “Tell me who you are.”

The creature pointed a black-gloved hand at Athan. “I know who you are, Sleepwalker.” The voice belonged to a man.

“You know me? You speak English?” Athan stepped back cautiously.

The being crossed its arms in a very human fashion.

The white mask remained still and expressionless. Like a hockey mask half concealed by the hood.

Athan had been coming to this place for years, it was like his home and now a masked man was standing in front of him. He felt the heat rise in his cheeks with anger. Athan stepped forward extending an accusing finger.

“This is
my
space.
Tell me who you are!
Why are you here?”

The being’s head tilted slightly, amused.

“You need to speak.” Athan hissed through his teeth.

“Why?”

“Who are you? And how did you get to this place? I thought I was the only one who could get here.”

It shook its head. “I don’t answer to you, Sleepwalker, or to anyone else. How about I ask you, how you are here? What are
you
doing in this place?”

“Me?” Athan shook his head. “This is my…”

“
Your
what? You think this place belongs to you? That’s really interesting, because I thought this place was
mine
.” The cloaked man stared expressionless.

“You are a Post-Human, like me, aren’t you? Why haven’t I seen you before? And your ability must be the same as mine.” Athan stepped closer. “I thought all Post-Human abilities were different…”

The man threw a punch at Athan’s face and knocked him to the ground.

Athan collapsed with a dull thump, shocked to find himself so vulnerable.

He touched his stinging face and found that his lip was bleeding.

“You just don’t shut up.” The cloaked figure shook his head and flexed the fingers in his black glove.

It hit him again in the face.

The man was fast. Really fast.

Athan sat on the ground stunned.

“I have had a very long day and I don’t have time for your pointless questions. But I am glad that I have bumped into you.” The cloaked figure stepped closer and Athan shuffled back. “You see, Sleepwalker, I’ve just solved a little dilemma I’ve been having. It’s you isn’t it?”

Athan looked around for something to defend himself with.

“You are the one, aren’t you? Undoing all of our hard work! You meddling little bastard.”

It threw another punch, but Athan knocked it aside.

“That’s about right. Cat got your tongue, eh? We’ve been hunting you, you know? You’re the one who has been waking up all those stiffs. It’s been an annoyance to say the least, but I’ve had people take care of it.”

“What? The coma patients?” Athan was still tongue-tied.

The cloaked man nodded. “It makes sense though, that you are the one responsible. I’d always wondered what you were capable of. And I guess it was only a matter of time before you showed your face again. But meddling with our affairs? You’re out of your depth, my friend. You are throwing yourself in front the semi-trailer of progress.” He chuckled. “What I’m telling you is that you are going to get crushed. And soon you Post-Humans will be nothing but genetic defects that we will identify and abort before you even get a chance to become an arse itch.” The man laughed behind the mask.

Athan shuffled back on his hands and the cloaked man stepped closer. “I’m going to enjoy killing you. I wonder what happens when you die here?”

The being flexed his fingers in the black gloves.

“Who the hell are you?” Athan muttered through a bruised mouth as he shuffled back further.

There was a door forming, he could feel it, just a metre or so out of reach.

It was as if the landscape could feel his need for an escape and was making the trap door in the ground behind him to save his life.

He was almost there.

The being stiffened, its head tilting to the side as if had become aware of something.

It could feel the door forming as well.

“Oh, you think you are leaving? Not till we are done. You will rot here. We can’t have you doing any more damage,” he snarled.

“What do you…” Athan slipped back into the void, before he could finish his question and was dropped out into a busy street behind a mother of three pushing a pram.

He looked about frantically; he couldn’t run here, he had to jump back into another mind.

The being was following, he could feel it.

He leaped clumsily into a tattooed man in a black jacket, probably a biker, but a mind is a door, he couldn’t afford to be fussy.

Stepping out of a lattice of greenish bone in the dark, he looked about and saw no one.

He felt for the nearest exit.

Several metres away, on the ground at the foot of an edifice that looked like a bent arm he sensed another door.

He jogged over and looked back to where he had stepped through.

The black clad figure had just come through and was looking about.

“Sleepwalker!”

Athan dropped into the new doorway, hoping that the creature couldn’t tell which door he’d entered.

Fluorescent light.

He found himself tripping out in front of a teenage boy staring at the front covers of women’s health magazines in the supermarket, hoping his mother didn’t see. Athan, tumbling out of nowhere startled them both.

The mother gabbed her son by the collar and pulled him away from the man, who was dusting himself off and getting his bearings.

“Drugs,” the woman hissed to boy.

Athan bolted down the aisle to the check-outs and jumped into a young woman unloading her trolley.

He stepped out of a ravine wall that looked like it was made from a series of vertebral columns.

Need another door.

The land around him was ridged and sharp. Spiny hedges that looked like deer’s antlers confronted him. He looked about in a panic for another doorway amongst coral-like forest.

There!

A door only a few metres away.

He got to it and dived through.

He hoped the figure in black couldn’t follow him; he couldn’t risk using Belinda’s mind and leading the being straight to them. Not until they knew more about him, or
it
.

Though, Brad at least had a gun.

He was beginning to tire.

He couldn’t keep it up for too much longer.

Athan found himself on the asphalt footpath that surrounded Lake Wendouree in the centre of Ballarat. He was lying on the ground behind a young man who was running the lake’s perimeter, already disappearing around the bend.

Athan got up, dusted himself off and began to run in the opposite direction, towards two young women who were doing their morning exercise.

Either one would do.

He was back in the organic world.

He sat with relief on a skeletal precipice overlooking an ocean of soft skin that was slowly pulling itself taut, before loosening.

He took a deep breath, straightened his clothes and rubbed his aching jaw. He had not been hurt for a long time. The worst pain he had felt was from the headaches he had been getting since rescuing people from their own minds.

The white glow was descending over the organic landscape, soon it would be the dark time, where tiny luminous slits would open in the skeletal cliffs and casting eerie lights over the seething soft landscape.

Brad
, Athan thought clearly.

He needed a door.

An awareness of Belinda’s mind grew in his senses.

Her exit was not a far walk, just further along the ridge.

Good, he needed company, which was a new sensation for him.

ATHAN STUMBLED THROUGH Belinda’s subconscious and out into the room where she had been working on the computer.

He looked up at the ceiling and cringed as the throb of pain in his face began to flare.

Belinda glared down at him.

He pulled himself up off the floor, panting.

“What the hell, Athan? What did I say about…”

Athan held up a hand apologetically. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have a choice. I need to see Brad.”

Belinda shook her head and turned back to her computer gesturing toward the other room.

When Brad saw Athan enter the room he told him to sit down while he hurried to the kitchen. When he returned he held out two pain killers for him, then handed him a warm mug of chai.

Athan raised a brow at the strong spicy scent of the drink, but gratefully took the two pills.

“She is going through an ‘experimental hot drink’ fad,” Brad said apologetically.

“And what’s that exactly?” Athan muttered as he took a sip of the fragrant tea.

“It involves buying a whole collection of different teas and coffees and forcing them on me, like I’m a guinea pig,” Brad said with a smile. “I don’t really mind. Trying new things is good. It keeps things interesting while we are locked in this dungeon so much of the time. Plus it takes her mind off her Uni work.”

“This chai stuff is pretty damn good.”

“Glad you like it. Personally I find the scent more attractive than the taste,” Brad sipped.

Athan sat back into the lounge and rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. “Despite all this craziness,” Athan said after a couple of sips, “I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you again. I think I became accustomed to being lonely,” he said as he watched Brad collect a few papers before taking a seat on the lounge opposite.

“Like when we found you?” Brad said fondly. “Ian and I were so proud of what we were building. And the work it took to track you down was tedious.”

Athan chuckled. “Yeah, I knew how to hide in a hurry. Thankfully, I still do.” Athan became grave. “I had to do it again.”

“PHC got wind of you?” Brad said straightening himself with interest.

Belinda stepped out of the bedroom with her empty mug and looked at the serious expressions on the faces of the two men.

“Well you boys look glum. Do you need toasties to cheer you up?” The two men stared up at her like starving puppies. “Seriously, you guys are making them on your own though. I’m out of depressionville.” She gathered a few notebooks from near one of the televisions and slid them into her backpack.

Athan stifled a laugh, and Brad smiled broadly.

“I think we can handle it.” Brad nodded.

“Doubt it, babe.” Belinda chuckled. “This guy knows everything except what we have in the fridge.” She gestured at Athan grinning on the lounge. “Ham and cheese. Middle shelf. See you later.”

“Perfect. Thank you,” Athan said.

Belinda collected her Uni books and her backpack and left the two men to talk.

Athan took a deep breath. “It wasn’t PHC. It was that black figure in the other plane.”

“It’s real then?”

“
He’s
real, and I’m fairly sure it was a person. He was wearing a mask and he was dressed like a monk.” Athan reached for a pencil and the note pad that was on the desk beside the lounge. He sketched the character as best as he could remember, then handed the pad to Brad who looked at it with curiosity.

“You haven’t forgotten how to draw Athan, it’s very good. This is your mystery figure? He looks like one of those faceless creatures from the deeper realm you described, but this is not the first time I’ve seen this.”

“You recognise him?” Athan was shocked.

“I recognize this.” Brad drew an invisible circle around the sketch. “This
symbol
, this
character
. It is old, very old.”

Brad turned to one of his monitors and lowered it and began to type into a search bar.

A collection of images loaded.

Brad clicked on one.

It was a stone frieze from a Mayan temple.

He clicked on another image and dragged it next to the first. It was another stone frieze from a Hindu temple.

Lastly he opened a third image. It was a Byzantine mosaic.

A figure appeared robed in two of the images and dressed in bone in the Mayan frieze. Its face was blank.

“That’s him, Brad, that’s the guy. Why is he depicted here?” Athan’s eyes were wide as he examined the detail.

“In the religions of nearly all societies there are two polar opposites. Light and dark. Good and bad.”

Athan nodded.

Brad continued. “This guy is in nearly every religious text or narrative on the planet. He is not the embodiment of evil; he’s not one of the four horsemen. He’s the initiator.”

“Initiator?”

“Well, that’s not what he is called, that was his job description.
He
or
it
has been labeled many things by many different cultures, but his job was always the same. He would appear and bring the dark with him. He was the herald of the end times. Bringer of the Dark. The Preist of Pestilence. This character represents the beginning of great change and upheaval in human society.” Brad examined the sketch Athan had made again. “This is not good.”