A black semicircle opened in the center of the room. It looked like the same portal the woman with her silver dragon sent the Titan back through. I wasn’t entirely sure how that worked, but I grabbed Tia in one hand and Malia in the other. Hoisting the former under my arm, I moved with purpose as a figure rolled into the room through the portal.
He came up onto both legs without disturbing the position of his hat in the least. I spared the man from the portal only the slightest glance as I moved with purpose out of the gymnasium, shouting to the people around me to flee as I did. The stranger and his Stetson hat raced by me. A short demon-looking monster with vestigial wings, a curled pig tail, and blue skin loped after the stranger as if chasing him.
Tentacles shot out of the portal into the crowd and snatched up people left and right of me. The small demon flew back shouting and waving its arms as a tentacle whipped it off of its feet. It flailed its arms and screamed the whole time it was pulled back toward the portal. I regretted looking over my shoulder to watch the little imp vanish into the portal because I noticed two kids hoisted off of their feet along with the imp.
“Get my sister out of here!” I shouted to Malia at the same time I handed Tia over like a satchel. The seven-year old held her hand to her belly and moaned as I passed her over. Malia stood there for less time than it took me to turn all of the way around and grab a fire extinguisher near the table where the stout adult had abandoned her wards. “I’ve lost my fucking mind.” I muttered to myself as I sprinted toward the portal and the two kids about to be pulled inside.
I prayed my white-skinned hallucination partner would join the party any time now as I hefted the extinguisher and brought it down on the base of a tentacle near the portal. An unearthly vibration rocked through the floor as the tentacle dropped the screaming boy near me and retracted back into the portal. No time to check on him — if he screamed, he was alive — I turned to the remaining girl about to enter the surface of the portal.
Nothing I could do would stop the monster from pulling her into its personal hells cape and all I could think of was that I hoped she’d die quickly. At the same time as I stared after her unable to help, a figure shot past me toward the portal leaping with practiced moves. A steel arc later, passing so near the portal’s surface to send ripples through the black void, Alaric my cousin caught the girl before she hit the floor and spun. “Grab the one you saved and move, Harlan!”
He tucked the girl into his chest as he darted away from the mouth of the portal. The little boy I’d helped lay on the ground cradling his hand and crawling away from smaller tentacles which writhed on the floor. I’d never experienced an earthquake, but now the vibrations in the floor made me think I had. Glass shattered around us and cracks wriggled through the floor as if the portal monster had sent tentacles rippling through the ground.
I stumbled once as the boy I’d grabbed bit my inner elbow. But I didn’t drop him as I bumbled my way out of the gym. Portions of the walls crumbled as I fled, cinderblocks cascaded down like the proverbial lemmings off a cliff. None of them struck me or the child I carried, though I spotted the corpse of the stout administration woman right at the exit to the gym.
“Get back! Don’t stop out here!” I screamed at the people milling about and added my voice to Alaric’s, who waved the slowly growing crowd away from the portal.
Malia waited for me with Tia in her arms. “Who’s that?” She pointed as she matched my desperate, but languid pace.
“My cousin. Follow him!” I swerved to follow my own advice and struggled to keep up with Malia and Alaric.
The boy I carried bit me again and I shrugged it off. I couldn’t really blame him. But a pair of adults cut off my retreat toward Alaric and the van behind him. “Billy! You saved Billy!” For all I know they planned to eat the strange kid I bore in my arms, but he’d already bitten me twice, so I wasn’t going to cling to him.
“You can have him!” I stopped just long enough to push the boy into the waiting arms of his parents. He kicked me in the thigh as a parting gift for my trouble. The parents hunched over their son while I shouted at them to get the fuck out of there.
I still don’t know if they listened.
Alaric stood at the side of a blue van with a sliding door motioning to me and Malia. She made it into the van with Tia in her arms a solid thirty seconds before I did. Based on the terrified expression on Malia’s face, my own flight might have been fatally delayed by Billy and his folks. With people staring over my head in stunned horror, I poured every last iota of strength into my legs and jumped for the van. By the time I reached the door, Alaric had already transitioned to the driver’s seat through the back.
The rear wheels squealed as the van fishtailed away. My shoes dragged over the asphalt as Malia wrapped her hand in my jacket and helped me stick to the van. Of all three people in the van as Malia dragged me in, only Tia ignored the carnage of the school behind us. She sat doubled over with her hands clutching her stomach and mumbling.
“Shit Harlan, don’t cut it so close next time!” Alaric whooped as he glanced in the rear view mirror at me.
I ignored him and turned back to the elementary school. A mass of tentacles fanned out over a small piece of the horizon. They looked like a wormy peacock spreading his tail feathers in triumph. As we sped away, the mass of tentacles grew larger and larger; more of the beast emerged from the portal. I threw up on the floor of Alaric’s van next to a set of cardboard boxes with medieval weapons in them.
I didn’t know much about cars. They needed gas to run, oil for some reason, and if the tires blew out while driving, you swerved into a ditch. But I did learn that Harlan’s van had some kind of special suspension in the wheels that let it move over rough terrain. He and Malia carried on an involved conversation over cars while I cleaned up the mess I’d made on the floor.
Tia slept the whole ride out of Austin as we headed north. According to Alaric, we’d find a small enclave of people there who could help us. He kept his language vague enough to leave Malia in the dark about our histories. Like me, Alaric’s parents had taught him about the impending apocalypse. Unlike me, Alaric ate every bit of it up. He was the model child, studying survival and martial arts like he’d been bred to it. Malia and any other red-blooded human woman who saw him would probably not mind the sight, he was a good looking dude with a fit body.
Once I was done cleaning the mess up from the van, I lay back near Tia, keeping an eye on her while trying not to listen to Malia and Alaric flirted in the front seat. I’d saved my sister and some anonymous boy. I could only hope he and his parents had escaped the otherworldly tentacle monster before it finished emerging.
“Hey Harlan, heads up.” Alaric called to me as Malia crawled up into the passenger’s seat.
I followed Alaric’s hand to find a police roadblock in place. “What’s that?”
“Looks like cops. Keep an eye out and be ready man, okay?” I had no idea what that meant. Should I grab a crossbow or something else? I didn’t have time to clarify as Alaric slowed for the police officers waving to us and rolled his window down. “What can I do for you, officer?”
“We’ve closed off this part of Lamar. You’ll need to turn around.”
Alaric chuckled and glanced at Malia. “My family’s back there man. Anyway we can get through here?”
“No. This place is off limits. You need to turn around now.”
Some part of the officer’s tone raised the hackles on the back of my neck. I shifted and looked over the dash at the barricade. One policeman held a shotgun in his hand, with the stock resting on his thigh. A dark stain spread out from the side of the policeman’s ill fitting uniform and he smiled as the light glinted off of his glasses.
“Are you sure there’s nothing we can do?” Alaric nodded his head toward the back of the cab. “We got some good shit back here.”
Of course my cousin had noticed the discrepancies before I did. The fake cop next to our window leaned in and waved his partner over. That dark stain on the partner’s uniform accompanied several small holes that became apparent when the cop turned. Alaric waved to both of them as he handed something to Malia while he shifted to the side of his van. He nodded at me and winked as he turned and faced me.
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I had no idea what he was trying to say, so I picked up the first thing to come to hand from the cardboard box: it was an unwieldy flail with a heavy ball on the end of its chain. Alaric raised his voice and unlocked the van door as the partner fake-cop took up a position on the right side of the van, blocked my view of Malia from the passenger’s seat.
She rolled her window down and waved with her fingers to the fake cop, who smirked at her while Alaric opened the side of the van.
“Now what are you folks going to show us?” The first fake cop raised his hands to his sunglasses as Alaric stuck a pistol in his face.
I’d been raised around guns, even fired a few in the course of my life. But I’d never had a pistol discharged a few feet from my head without wearing ear protection. No one warns you on TV how loud pistols are in real life, without proper protection. My head rang like Alaric had whipped me with the butt of his gun.
My world blurred as the mangled faceless “cop” toppled over from where Alaric had shot him. Another shot rang out from the cab, sounding like some kind of dull thump. A bullet ricochetted off the ground at the feet of the shotgun wielding fake cop. He twitched from the near miss and fumbled with his shotgun as Malia let off nearly a dozen more shots. Not one of them met their mark, but they kept the shotgun user from bringing his weapon to bear until Alaric managed to hop out of the van and put two rounds in the shotgun user’s chest.
A soft keening tickled the back of my head as I clutched my head. Malia left the van with all speed as Alaric snatched the shotgun off of the second fake cop. They spoke quickly to each other, as if they’d rehearsed the moves. Malia turned around the side of the van and pulled the sidearm from the first man Alaric shot. At the same time, Alaric returned to the van, gave me a thumbs up and laid the shotgun down carefully at my feet.
I recoiled from the gun, what had been a fascinating indulgence shifted to an object of fear and terror in seconds. The thought of the shotgun hitting my shoe made me queasy. Alaric motioned to Malia, who shifted to the driver’s seat after she deposited the first man’s gun in the cardboard box where I’d pulled the flail. That particular weapon lay at my feet next to the shotgun and I couldn’t remember dropping it in the moment.
Alaric opened the trunk of both police cars as Malia inched the van forward. He waved to me and I followed his summon, still too disoriented to refuse. He stuffed my outstretched arms with first aid supplies and boxes. I lugged them back to the van where I found Tia screaming her throat out. At that moment, I connected the faint keening to Tia. When I hit the van, I dropped the boxes on the floor and went to my kid sister, she pointed behind us and mouthed words I couldn’t quite make out with the ringing in my ears. But the way she pointed at the fallen men behind us told me enough.
I patted her on the head and hugged her, trying to reassure her that those men were not good people. Tia hadn’t seen what Alaric and I had, and as young as she was, I doubted she would have made the same connection. She calmed down slowly, not helped by Alaric’s reappearance with a pistol in his hand. He shielded his eyes as he looked in at us and nodded.
He slapped the top of the van and Malia pulled through the space Alaric had created in the police barricade. As Alaric slid the van door closed, my hearing started to return. At the same time, the rest of my senses began to work again. The smell of sewage and burned explosives filled the van. The former was fresher — if that word even fit — than the latter.
“Keep sharp people, that just may have been the first of our problems. I thought it would take longer to start.” Alaric took his place at the passenger’s seat, his pistol still in his grip. He waved his hand in front of his face. “Whew Harlan, did you shit yourself?”
I hadn’t, but the smell hit me again and Tia raised her eyes to meet mine. She had. “Hey Alaric, can we stop at a gas station or something?”
He looked back at me and I tilted my head toward Tia, being as subtle as I could. It might have been petty, but I wasn’t trying to embarrass her. Alaric chewed the corner of his mouth and shook his head. “No can do, man. Not right now anyway. When we make it to the monastery, sure.”
A monastery. Of course Alaric would have some place setup as his base of operations in the event of an emergency, and of course it would be a monastery. Cars burned to the sides of the road as we made our way over the street.
Alaric stayed quiet while I sat in the back with Tia and bore the smell. Malia and Alaric scanned the streets and businesses to either side. A few figures darted between buildings, fading into the trees and back out again. They moved in the opposite direction of our van and ignored us. What had happened here to cause this kind of carnage in hours? In a way, the toppled over, burning cars reminded me of the flying cars from campus, but this looked more like days or even weeks post-event than the same day.
“I think a portal opened up nearby and let a bunch of Mad Max motherfuckers in.” Alaric whispered as if to answer my question. I raised my head at his spontaneous exposition and found Malia tapping him on the shoulder. “I’m just guessing, of course.”
None of those “Mad Max motherfuckers” appeared before Alaric had Malia slow the van. The monastery was a tall white stone building situated behind wrought iron fences with brick bases. Men wearing red robe-like outfits watched the gates with automatic rifles over their shoulders. Behind them, the squat white stone building that comprised the monastery sat like a toad with an opened mouth waiting for us. The men with the rifles approached our van with their guns pointed at us. If the two fake cops had moved like them, we would have all died. Malia raised her hands, and Alaric waved her down.
“It’s us, Kim, let us through, man.”
Kim, the rifleman who’d approached Alaric’s side of the van spoke to his companion in a language I couldn’t understand. What struck me as odd was that I could almost understand it, like the word-breaks and meanings lay just beyond my grasp, waiting for me to reach out and pluck them from the ether. I shook my head as the men opened the gate and waved us forward.
“What is this place, Alaric?” Malia leaned forward as my cousin directed her to a carpark filled with off road vehicles. I seconded her question; this place looked more like a paramilitary camp than a temple.
“Let’s get Tia cleaned up and drop off our spare weapons. Answers can come later.” Alaric hopped out of the car before Tia could force more information from him. She glared after him with her mouth pressed together. After a moment’s pause, she turned the van off and scrambled out of the driver’s seat.
I picked Tia up, and carried her after Malia, who’s help Tia would need unless there were a bunch of other women sitting inside ready to help a seven-year old girl change her pants. Fortunately for Tia and me, Malia waited for us. “We need to get a change of clothes and a restroom, right?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
Malia looked around at the white halls surrounding us. “I bet we can find that here. Hell, we might find anything we need here, right?”
She eyed me as if I knew the answer to that question. I shrugged. “Beats me, never been here before in my life.”
Tia refused to let me out of earshot, so I waited outside the bathroom while Malia helped her change and clean up. A kindly old woman who spoke broken English handed us a pair of pants and a red robe that matched the two gun-toting guys outside. She also set us up with a bunch of disinfecting wipes and led us to the bathroom.
With Tia changed out of her soiled clothes, the three of us followed red cloth hangings though the monastery back to the residential areas. We stepped into a large meeting room and I found a pair of familiar faces. Alaric sat in conference with an old white-haired man with cobalt-blue eyes. He looked up and grinned at Tia when she shouted, “grandpa,” and raced away from Malia and me to hug him.
Malia mouthed “grandpa?” to me at that, but I motioned to the old man with a sweep of my hand. She wasn’t too far behind me in terms of knowledge. I’d never encountered my grandfather in the midst of a bunch of religious monks, and as far as I knew, Alaric didn’t spend much time around Gramps. It turned out I was wrong on both counts.
Gramps lifted Tia up in his arms and she squealed as if today had already transformed into a vague and mystical journey in her head. I wasn’t inclined to ruin her impression, assuming I was right about it.
“Well done, Harlan.” Gramps winked at me with a nod and for the first time since the world imploded, I felt a sense of pride and relief. “You too, Alaric. I guess the plan went off without too much trouble?”
Harlan shrugged. “I found them, didn’t I?”
“What the hell is going on you two?” Malia looked between Gramps and Alaric and then back to me as if she’d forgotten for a moment how involved I’d been.
Gramps waved to me. “Tell her boy. Or you want me?”
I held out my hand, returning his invitation. “Go for it old man.”
He snorted and looked over Malia. “It’s not the end of the world, if that’s what you think. More like a very special kind of beginning.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Myth has returned to the world, girl. Myth, magic and monsters out of fantasy. All of them have made their resurgence starting this morning. The signs… well I don’t think we need much in the way of signs with the fucking portals opening everywhere.”
Malia turned to me. “He’s serious?”
I raised my hands. “You’ve seen the same things I’ve seen, Malia.”
She clenched her fists and shook her head. “And you knew about this?”
Alaric spoke up. “Oh no, little Harlan broke faith. He hasn’t believed in this since he was ten.”
“Ten?” Malia stared between the two of us, still trying to process what we were saying. I couldn’t blame her. My parents told me Santa Claus was fake when I was ten, but dragons, demons and magic were real.
“Look, I thought this shit was all… madness spouted by my mom and dad. When they died, I kind of left this crazy shit behind me.”
“But you knew?” Malia glared at me. “How do we fix it?” She folded her arms in front of her chest.
Gramps chuckled. “I like you girl. But there’s no fixing this. No one even knows why it’s happened. But the traditions are clear: it’s inevitable and the best thing we can do here is survive.”
Stomping her foot, Malia left the room rather than continue an argument she wouldn’t win. In her place, I might have run from the whole building. The fact she raged off deeper into the monastery spoke volumes of her character.
“Now we have some matters to discuss, don’t we?” Gramps’s eyes glittered in the soft fluorescent light of the meeting room.