The Zygan Emprise: Renegade Paladins and Abyssal Redemption (39 page)

I opened my eyes as I felt the steep curve of
the field lessen and our descent slow. We splashed into directly
into a lake tinted chartreuse and ecru, and, fortunately, rose to
the surface without needing to tread water. Or whatever this creamy
liquid was.

“The nutrients will diffuse through your
skin,” said a gravelly voice as we bobbed on the pond’s surface.
“We will not have time to stop for din.”

I swum around and faced the six-foot frog
that sat cross-legged on an enormous lily pad. Not a Zygan species,
for sure, I quickly assessed, wishing I had my stun gun. Or my
Ergal.

“Really?” I mustered. Or my wits.

Fortunately, Spud had his. Wits, I mean.
“Agriarctos sent us. I apologize for our tardiness.”

“No time for sorry. Hop on to my lorry.”

Spud and I each pulled ourselves onto the
lily pad and bookended Mr. Giant Frog. I offered my hand. “Shiloh
Rush. William Escott. And you are?”

“Robert,” the frog croaked, as he leaned over
and brushed my fingers with his nippy lips.

I stifled a giggle. My Mingferplatoi Academy
classmate Sarion the joker would’ve started calling Robert
“Ribbit”, of course. Damn, I missed Sarion. And the rest of the
team of Academy dropouts. After the “Lost Boys” had helped us
rescue Yeshua, they’d snuck off to explore M81 and M82, galaxies
beyond Zygfed. Would that I could contact them to help us rescue
John now.

My gurgle choked in my throat as the lily pad
shot off on the surface of the lake like a speedboat. As we bounced
on the pond’s gentle swells, the lake of “nutrients” started to
grow smaller and smaller, until it was only a drop at our
nutrient-caked feet. Ribbit was right. I wasn’t hungry at all.

“Flurry, scurry, hurry,” our Frog guide
chided.

“You made the pond shrink?” I jumped off the
lily pad onto a winding amber stone path that stretched out before
us, gingerly avoiding a three inch winged lizard that scurried by
my toes.

“No go,” Robert returned as he started ahead
down the trail. “You grew big. Mega’ing, dig?”

Spud raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.” Spud
trotted up to Robert. “I assume we should now follow you along this
icterine adobe path?”

“Aye, guy.” The Frog returned as took a giant
leap forward.

“You have
got
to be kidding,” I
grumbled, as I hopped on the yellow bricks to catch up with Robert
and Spud. “And don’t anybody ask me to sing. I am not my sister
Kris.”

Both of my companions stared at me with
puzzled expressions. I sighed, and, confusing them even more, began
to literally skip ahead of them both, raising my arms in a cheer
and crying, “Road Trip!”

* * *

On the Yellow Brick Road—present day

“Halt!”

“Who is John Galt?” I ventured, but the
elephantine cockroach didn’t smile.

“A fantasy figure bred by an overreaction to
a forced communal society that ignored the realities of
self-preservation tendencies and familial and tribal
competitiveness. If you please,” the cockroach responded with a
small bow. “Now who are you?” His antennae dangled over his eyes
like a brutal frown.

Well, at least he wasn’t a rhyme freak like
Robert. “Shiloh Rush,” I said, fingers instinctively feeling for
the Ergal that I knew wasn’t in my pocket.

The cockroach frowned even more. “Have not
read of you. What is your book?”

“Where Angels Fear to Tread,” I mumbled. More
loudly: “Unfortunately, not enough have read of me.” Or watched me,
judging by the mediocre Season 1 ratings for our show, Singularity
TV’s science fiction adventure
Bulwark
.

Spud stepped up beside me. “William
Escott.”

There’s
a smile. A grin, even. Never
thought I’d see that on a cockroach.

“Yes, I have always believed that you are
real, and not just a brilliant figment of the doctor’s imagination.
I would love to pick your luminous brain. Figuratively, of course,”
the giant cockroach cackled before turning to Robert and adding,
“May I be the tin man?”

“I suppose you can,” the Frog returned
warily. “But, don’t wait, we can’t be late.” He tugged at Spud and
“John Galt”, pulling them forward down the road.

“I thought the tin man needed a heart,” I
said to no one in particular, revving up my trot once again.

“You’re right,” said a tiny, pale,
pointy-eared elf as he leapt onto my left shoulder from the
adjacent grassy border. “NoOne at your service.
I’m
the one
who needs a name.”

“What?” I pulled him into my palm so he
wouldn’t fall off as I upped my jogging pace.

“Until I get a name, I answer to no one.”

I grinned. “You sound like me.” In genial
Frank Baum mode, I yielded to my training in Catascope 101, Lesson
4: Go with the flow. “Okay, NoOne. Welcome to the team. Any idea
where we’re headed?”

NoOne hesitated before answering. “The yellow
brick road ends at the Gates of Hades. But I expect we’ll probably
layover in Azgaror until we can finagle an invitation.”

‘Hades’ I remembered from my Academy Terran
mythology uploads. The underground world where the souls of the
dead languished. A slightly less painful version of Hell. Swell.
And ‘Azgaror’ didn’t seem entirely unfamiliar either, but, I
couldn’t place the reference. Damn! I was naked without my
Ergal.

Forcing a smile, I gently placed NoOne in my
jeans pocket, leaving his head and arms hanging over the rim so he
could see, and set off to catch up to the others. “John Galt” and
Spud were already in deep conversation; I overheard a few words
about ‘analysis and synthesis’ as I passed. Spud seemed to have
found a soulmate, much to the distress of Robert whose features
expressed annoyance at their less than snappy pace.

“Are we going to Azgareur?” I asked our Frog
leader, trying to mimic NoOne’s pronunciation.

Robert frowned. “Our path will not bend until
we reach the end,” he replied as he hopped past us several
yards.

“If it involves a wizard behind a curtain,
I’m warning you, I’m done,” I grumbled.

“There are no wizards in Azgaror,” John Galt
interjected. “Rather an overused literary trope recently. Along
with vampires, zombies, and elves.” He frowned at NoOne. “No
offense.”

“NoOne is offended,” the elf returned.

“In Norse mythology, the city of Azgaror is
the location of the Valholler, where the Valkyries fly heroes slain
in combat,” Spud added. “It is the divine abode of the god
Odin.”

Show off. “So why would we care about that
allusion?” I muttered.

“Because, Rush, Valhalla, the warriors’
promised land, is analogous to Level 3.”

My eyes met Spud’s. He nodded, and added,
“And I should not be surprised to find traces of your brother, or,
for that matter, of Theodore Benedict at its gates.”

Chapter 5

And The Beats Go On

Maryland—eight years ago

My brother John first took me camping in the
Appalachians in the autumn when I was ten. Grandpa Alexander had
died a few months earlier, and the atmosphere at home was still
funereal. John had just turned 18, and, with help from Connie and
George, had been tasked with raising the rest of us six. I’m close
to his age today, and I couldn’t imagine taking on that kind of
responsibility myself—not now, not ever.

My memories of the trip unfortunately aren’t
as sharp as I hoped. I can visualize the lush, brilliantly colored
foliage, with hundreds of shades red, orange, yellow, and green
greeting us as we walked through the tree-lined trails. I also
remember my having to run to keep up with John, taller than me by a
foot, with his long, lanky legs. The sky through the trees was
overcast, and the weather was nippy, even with my down jacket and
corduroys to stave off wind chill. There was a faint pine scent in
the air, air so clean it seemed to scrub my nostrils every time I
breathed.

We set up a tent in a small clearing next to
a rocky ledge that gave us a view of the green valley below. John
lit a campfire, and I do remember lying next to the flames,
enveloped in warmth, my head on his knee, gazing up at the night
sky and the constellations in space. Awed by the panorama of the
heavens above us, I asked John, “Is that where Grandpa Alexander
is?”

John didn’t respond for what seemed like a
very long time. “I’d like to think so,” he finally whispered, “but
more likely there’s nothing but a vast darkness surrounding our
Earthly oasis which sadly can’t nourish our souls.”

“But what about the stars,” I protested.

“Brimstone and Fire,” John said with a faint
smile.

“Then where is Heaven?”

“That, Shiloh, is a question for the ages,”
John admitted. “If you ask me,” he tapped his temple gently with
his index finger, “heaven is right here.”

“On Earth?”

“Sometimes,” he said softly, as he turned to
stoke the campfire. “Have you ever eaten s’mores?”

* * *

On the Yellow Brick Road—present day

“Now what do we do?” NoOne’s voice was an
octave higher than its usual high pitch.

The pine scent was fading as our Frog leader
walked back towards us. “No time for fear, we can’t stay here.”

Our winding path had brought us to the rim of
a thick forest. The entrance to the woods that stretched before us
was dimly lit by the light of a trio of moons. Beyond loomed only
darkness. No tall redwoods to blaze our trail, no leafy maples to
cushion our tired soles. Just twisted brambly branches sporting
violaceous leaves, taunting us as we tentatively inched closer. I
took a quick look around, expecting Tim Burton to pop out of the
shadows and yell “Cut!”.

“Aha!” cried John Galt, startling us all.
“Just in time. Nothing more boring than reading interminable
stretches of text describing scenic journeys without confrontations
and crises,” he added. “We are not avatars in a travelogue.”

“Don’t be so sure,” NoOne piped in from my
hips.

“Will everybody stop going meta!” I cried.
“Please. If we continuously ponder the meaning of our existence we
will never get
any
where.” Seeing John Galt open his labrum
again I raised a hand in protest. “You’ve read the book, J.G..
Robert is right. We have to charge forward already.”

A tap on my shoulder. Spud leaned into my ear
and whispered. “Without Ergals or stun guns, we may be at a
disadvantage up ahead. Catascope 101, Lesson 3. Should we not pause
to gather some defensive weapons? Just in case.

I grinned, “Hey, I’ve read the book, too.
But, I think we’ll be all right. Remember
,
we’re the heroes,
and
they’re
the red shirts,” I nodded at our traveling
companions. “If
they’re
okay with pressing on…”

“Actually,
our
uniforms on
Bulwark
are burgundy,” Spud protested, referring to the
costumes he and I wear as space agents on our TV series. “That is a
shade of red.”

But I had already surged ahead. Taking Robert
by his webbed hand, I started chanting a marching song I had
learned as a child from John, stepping one foot in front of the
other in cadence to the rhythm of the words.

“Left, right, left. Beat, Left, right left.
Beat. I left my wife and 48 kids and an old gray mare and a peanut
stand and I do right, right, right from the country from where I
came from, right foot, left foot, skip by jingo, left, left.”

* * *

My own voice had dropped to a whisper after
we had proceeded about a mile into the forest. I could hear few
sounds except the crackling of our footsteps and an ominous
throbbing that seemed to be growing louder and louder as we plunged
deeper into the darkness.

Robert had stepped aside and let John Galt
and his compound eyes take the lead, as his vision was the most
penetrating in the gloom. Having a giant cockroach as your front
man was probably not a bad defense strategy either against who- or
what-ever might attack us.

The yellow bricks under our feet looked
grayish in the dark; a contrast to the twisted tree trunks that
stood guard like a black fence on both sides of the road, vibrating
with ever greater intensity. My adrenaline levels were at max, my
heart beating out of my chest in sync with the din, as we tiptoed
through the forest, ducking our heads to avoid frequent low-hanging
branches that we feared would come alive and grab us by the hair.
Or in John Galt’s case, the antennae.

After another torturous mile, J.G. spotted a
clearing up ahead, lit by the moons through a gap in the trees. As
we approached, the throbbing sound increased to a deafening booming
that forced me to clutch at my ears to block out the agony. A
musical sting worthy of an epic film score crescendoed around us,
and, at its peak, I opened my mouth to scream.

But instead, silence. Once we stepped inside
the clearing, the cacophony abruptly stopped. No music, no
throbbing, no noises. All we could hear was the sound of our
breathing and our pounding hearts. The rays of moonlight bathing us
in luster were a welcome relief after our arduous trek in the
gloom. This haven might in fact be a comfortable place for us to
rest and spend the night.

I turned to the Frog. “Robert, how about
we—AHHHHH!” The pain in my side was paralyzing. I looked down to
see blood dripping down my leg, gushing from a small bite wound at
my waist.

Spud’s cry was at a lower register, but just
as loud. Brushing at my hip, I spun around to witness my partner
being shielded by John Galt’s exoskeleton, then screamed, “Oh, my
God!”, as the cockroach shouted, “Dinner! I love brains!” and sank
his mandible and denticles into Spud’s bloodied blond hair. From
the corner of my eye, I saw a flushed NoOne leap off my hip onto
Robert’s warty back and start stabbing his vertebrae with
vampire-sized canine teeth.