Epoch (14 page)

Big Tom’s house was surprisingly undemolished. It was damaged, of course, and the inside was a mess of fallen dishes and overturned furniture. The house itself remained standing, however, like most of the homes in Big Tom’s neighborhood. Being so small and dilapidated anyway, there wasn’t much left for the earthquake to do.

His parents weren’t at home. Both had two jobs, and would have been at one or the other when the quake hit. With the phone lines down, there was no way to find out if they had survived. The same was true, Vincent realized, of his own parents. Even Barnaby looked close to tears at the possible fate of his father.

They set up camp in Big Tom’s basement. Grimbowl stood guard over Rennik, who’d been ordered not to move the moment they arrived. Optar stood before the demon and asked him questions about Alphega Corp. Rennik answered the questions, but his attention was focused on the corner of the room where several boxes were stacked. Some of the boxes had fallen and broken open, and cans of bug spray lay scattered around on the floor. Rennik eyed them with obvious terror; every single can appeared to be intact and usable.

Chanteuse’s mother looked after the pixies, laying them down on a small, grubby mattress that turned out to be Big Tom’s bed. Vincent, Big Tom, and Barnaby sat on the other end of the mattress, watching the interrogation. Rennik spoke a lot of strange mumbo jumbo that made no sense to the boys but seemed perfectly clear to the elves.

Vincent looked around, and noticed Chanteuse and Max weren’t downstairs with the rest of them. He heard a noise from the main floor, so he went upstairs to investigate.

Halfway up he found Max sat on the stairs, reading a book. Vincent blinked in surprise; it was the very same book Max had once scolded Vincent and Big Tom for reading. It was the
Prisons & Poltergeists Book of Creatures
, a volume of information that supplemented the Prisons & Poltergeists role-playing game.

Vincent and Big Tom had never actually played—the Triumvirate forbade it, and Big Tom couldn’t afford all the extra materials. Big Tom had acquired the book as a birthday present from a cousin who had given up the game and wanted to get rid of his books. Big Tom had brought it over one day to show Vincent, and when Max had seen them reading it he’d raised an almighty stink.

“‘Beware yea of doctrines of demons,’” Max had quoted, “‘lest they lead your soul astray.’”

And now he was reading it. Filling his mind with evil images, as it were. Vincent could have pointed this out, but the look on his brother’s face changed his mind.

“What’s wrong, Max?” he asked, sitting down beside him.

“Oh, hello Vincent,” Max said. “I was just … trying to understand.”

“Understand what?” Vincent asked, but he suspected he already knew the answer. Max’s worldview had taken a tremendous pounding over the last day and a half, after all.

“These creatures,” Max said. “This book talks about pixies and trolls and elves. Look here,” he tapped a picture of a creature with the body of a horse, but the upper half of a man where its head should have been. “This is a centaur.”

“Nod and Clara told me about centaurs,” Vincent said, looking at the picture. “So that’s what they look like.”

“It says here they are very intelligent and spiritual creatures,” Max went on, “but also headstrong, arrogant, and set in their ways. I’m like this centaur, aren’t I?”

Vincent opened his mouth to speak, then chose to say nothing once more.

“I was arrogant,” Max told him. “I thought I knew everything. What was good, what was evil,” he tapped the book and gave a small smile, acknowledging their past dispute. “Lately, however, the Triumvirate have opened my eyes. And they did it through you, Vincent.”

“Me?” Vincent asked.

“You brought me into this,” Max reminded him. “Thanks to you, I learned there is so much more to life than I’d thought. Creatures I’d believed evil, people like your friend Chanteuse. She’s a witch, but she is such a good soul. I just ... ” He waved the book while searching for words. “I just want to understand this new world.”

“It’s not that new,” Vincent pointed out. “Okay, the world is about to end, that’s new. Except it isn’t, it’s been going on for epochs now … The point is, creatures like Nod and Grimbowl have been here for a long time. And if the Triumvirate are really all-powerful ... ”

“Of course they are!” Max snapped.

“ ... then they know all about pixies and elves and centaurs, too,” Vincent finished. “So it’s all okay.”

Max stared at his brother for a long moment, then shook his head.

“I never thought I would say this,” he said, “but you are very wise, little brother.”

Vincent blushed, and felt a tear forming in his left eye. That was the nicest thing his brother had ever said to him.

“Keep reading,” Vincent said. “I’m going to go check on Chanteuse.”

• • •

Chanteuse was making tea. She’d waded across a floor so dirty the broken dishes and spilled cutlery were hardly noticeable. She held the kettle in the sink, and was trying to get water out of the taps when Vincent found her. On the kitchen counter was a box of the cheapest tea available. It was high in caffeine and low on taste, and was the type of tea Chanteuse would never drink even if the world were ending. Which of course it was.

“What’s wrong?” Vincent asked. He’d expected she would be catching up with her mother. It wasn’t every day you learned your mom was a troll, after all.

“There doesn’t seem to be any water,” Chanteuse said, twisting the taps off. “Perhaps they have some bottled water in the fridge.”

“Not likely,” Vincent said. “Not when it’s free out of the tap. Big Tom’s family never had money for that kind of stuff. They even eat their cereal with tapwater.”

“They seem to have plenty of money for insect spray,” she said, her voice harsh.

Vincent thought he understood what was troubling her. When he’d sneezed out his obyon, she had set the ladybug free. Chanteuse loved the natural world, and considered the killing of bugs to be wrong.

“They really do hate cockroaches,” Vincent said, watching as one scuttled across the floor. “But we won’t use it on bugs. We’re going to ... ”

“You’re going to kill that helpless creature downstairs,” Chanteuse said, still with her back to him.

“You mean Rennik?” Vincent said. “But he’s a demon. He’s bad. They all are.”

“They are living creatures, Vincent!” Chanteuse said, turning and facing him. Her eyes blazed with such fury that Vincent took an involuntary step back. “Bad or not, they are part of the natural world. They serve a function, horrible though it might be, and we have no right to kill them.”

Vincent gulped, but then he straightened and stood tall. He’d learned to stand up to his many enemies over the years, but standing up to a friend was much harder. Seeing her like this was heartbreaking, but that didn’t change the way things were. Or what had to be done.

“Chanteuse,” Vincent said, “these living-thing-part-of-the-natural-world creatures’ function is to exterminate all life as we know it. Natural or not, they are bad news. And in case you didn’t realize it, we are part of the natural world, too. We deserve to survive just as much as they do.”

“Do we?” Chanteuse asked him. “Humans have been polluting and destroying this planet for centuries, Vincent. We’ve destroyed rainforests and our ozone layer, we’ve driven entire species to extinction, we’ve taken every gift Mother Earth has given us and spoiled them, then thrown them back in Her face. Perhaps,” she turned away, paused. “Perhaps we don’t deserve to survive.”

Vincent thought about that for a moment.

“Yes we do, Chanteuse,” he said. “We have just as much right to survive as every other animal. Yes, we pollute. Yes, we fight. But we’ve accomplished so much. We’ve traveled around the solar system, we’ve developed great technology ... ”

“And what has all that gotten us?” Chanteuse said. “Haven’t I taught you anything, Vincent? Human beings have abandoned their natural roots, forgotten how to commune with nature ... ”

“Because that’s the way we are,” Barnaby said as he emerged from the stairwell, causing Vincent and Chanteuse to jump. “Man, you Mother Earth-loving tree-huggers make me sick. It’s called progress, lady. Survival of the fittest.”

“Nobody asked you for your opinion, jerkwad,” Vincent said.

“Well, you’re getting it,” Barnaby said, pushing past him to face Chanteuse. “We humans have one purpose, and one purpose alone: survival. Sometimes bad things have to be done to make sure we survive, like chopping down trees for wood or nuking people before they nuke us. And don’t give me that garbage about forgetting our natural roots. We don’t have any. We evolved because we were the strongest species around. And if we can find a way to survive now, it’s because we’re still the strongest.”

“You poor child,” Chanteuse said. “Have you no compassion for anything?”

“Nope,” Barnaby said. “You can’t spend compassion. I’m out for number one. And that’s why I’ll survive while you get eaten by the demons you’re trying to save.”

Chanteuse opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. What could she say?

“At least she cares,” Vincent said. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

“That’s my point, loser,” Barnaby said. “I don’t care, and if you want to get off this rock before more demons come, you’d better ditch the witch and think about your own skin.”

Barnaby turned and went back downstairs, stepping on a cockroach as he did so. Vincent resisted the urge to slug him, and asked himself again why he’d let Barnaby tag along. It had just seemed wrong to abandon him after they’d escaped the ruined hospital. They all stood a better chance of survival if they stuck together, Vincent knew, so Barnaby would probably die if made to fend for himself. He’d lost his bodyguards and possibly his father, so allowing Barnaby into the group was the moral choice. If only the jerk would pretend to be grateful for it.

And, jerk though Barnaby was, Vincent couldn’t ignore what he’d said.

“He’s got a point,” he told Chanteuse. “We have to look out for ourselves. I want to live through this, and I’m sure you do, too.”

“Not if it means hurting other creatures,” she replied. “That is wrong, Vincent. And I want no part of it.”

Chanteuse turned back to her tea. Vincent stared helplessly at her back a few moments longer, then he turned and went back down the stairs.

“Aww,” said Barnaby. “Did you and the nature freak break up?”

“Shut up,” Vincent said, glaring at him.

“Or what?” Barnaby challenged, smiling his patented bully smirk.

“Or we’ll kick your butt,” Big Tom said, walking over to Vincent’s side.

“Nah, he’s not worth it,” Vincent said. “Besides, I already punched him out once today, remember? That didn’t improve him at all.”

“Come on, Vincent,” Big Tom said. “We owe him a knuckle sandwich.”

“That won’t solve anything,” Vincent said.

“It’ll make us feel better,” Big Tom said.

Vincent thought about that for a moment.

“Good point,” he said. “Shall we?”

“Hey, wait a second … ” Barnaby said, his smirk vanishing as Vincent and Big Tom laid into him with both fists.

“Keep it down, you two,” Clara called over her shoulder.

“Try to beat him up quietly,” Nod added.

Barnaby tried to fight back, but without his bodyguards he was no match at all. He covered his head with his arms and whimpered, probably wishing it would end soon.

“Cut that out,” said Miss Sloam, grabbing both boys by the backs of their shirts and hauling them into the air. “We’ve got enough problems without you boys fighting. If you must, take it outside.”

The wind chose that moment to howl menacingly. A blast of thunder came a moment later, and the house shook.

“Nah, we’re done,” Big Tom said, and Miss Sloam released them.

The wind howled again, and then the rain came. It hammered the house like machine gun bullets, but wasn’t loud enough to cover a deafening boom of thunder.

“Uh oh,” Clara said, flying to the window. “The bad weather has started.”

“What was your first clue?” Grimbowl asked.

Here we go, Vincent thought. From here on out, it’s going to be one long series of mad dashes to the finish line. He could only hope and pray the finish line would still be there when they arrived.