Apocalypse Machine (18 page)

“Including a way off of this thing.”

“That…would be good.” I tug at my glove, removing it from my right hand. It’s a tight fit because of the bandage covering my scorched skin, and it hurts as I remove it, but I manage to free my hand a moment later. My fingers tingle as blood rushes back into the digits. I hadn’t realized how tight the gloves were.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“I want to know if it feels similar to what I touched in Iceland.” My bare hand stretches out for the rough, black and red surface. “Things like texture and temperature might not seem important now, but—”

My skin makes contact.

“But what?” I hear Graham ask, but his voice sounds funny.

Distant.

Spoken through a wall or a tin can.

I blink, and in the micro-moment of time, the hard black shell sprouts a layer of lush green grass.

My hand snaps up, the tickle of the thin blades still on my skin.

What the…

I look up.

The aberration is gone, and Graham with it, replaced by a sweeping mountainous landscape worthy of Yellowstone Park, but totally unrecognizable.

It’s happening again
, I think.
Another vision.

And then I feel it. A presence, rumbling through the very air itself, filling the valley below with the sound of a waterfall. There is either a flood behind me, or the figure in black. I remain locked in place, quivering, not wanting to confront either possibility, despite the fact that I know this isn’t reality.

Then something grips my shoulder, and the rushing water voice says, “Let it burn.”

18

“I don’t
want
it to burn.” This shred of defiance feels like the opening salvo of a battle. But nothing happens, to me, or to the forest spread out before me. The pressure on my shoulder is gone. The weighty presence is gone.

I spin around, confirming that I’m alone, standing atop a gray stone cliff, framed by trees all around, the scent of pine and earth tickling my nose. Despite the physical relief I feel at the smoky figure’s absence, I’m struck by a strange sense of profound loss.

What’s the point of it all?
I think.

Pebbles beat out a rhythm as they bounce down the cliff, knocked free by my feet, shuffling closer to the edge.

I
want
to jump.

I’m an emptied vessel.

Without purpose.

“This isn’t real,” I tell myself, forcing thoughts of Mina, Bell and the boys into my head. They’re real. My family is real.

But you left them
, my inner monologue says, mirroring the sentiment of the now-deceased Army Ranger who questioned me on the C-130. And like that man, who I did not know, my inner monologue’s painful accuracy cuts deep.

As hope leaves my heart, the world around me changes. Pine needles brown at the fringes of several trees, spreading steadily upward. Dead limbs crack and fall away. The brown spreads through the forest like a disease, consuming life, both plant and animal, rotting the ground and then the very air itself, once fragrant, but now death-scented.

The world is dying.

I’m letting it die.

I’m
killing
it.

Burn it,
I think.
Let it burn.

A sudden heat blossoms in my right hand, burning my flesh.

The glowing orange rod is there once more.

“Remove your disgrace from the Earth.” The rumbling voice shakes my insides with its sudden and insistent return. But it also fills me again, returning purpose and focus. “Make things anew.”

“How?” I ask without turning around, still afraid to experience the presence directly.

The voice is silent. I already know the answer.

“Let it burn,” I say, hefting the rod up like a javelin. “Burn it to the ground. Burn it all.”

Two quick steps take me to the cliff’s edge. I lean my body forward, thrusting my arm out and loose the spear with all my strength and best intentions. The orange rod reminds me of the glowing-hot tracer rounds used to track the trajectory of fired bullets. Following its course through the air is easy. Despite the distance, it soars out over the valley, descending toward the dried out, rotted land below.

The rod pierces the earth, stabbing into the dead land. The brown debris surrounding it smolders and then bursts into flames. The blaze spreads quickly, sliding out in all directions, leaving a ring of charred black in its wake.

The fire spreads faster than the rot, catching, devouring and digesting it, until all that remains is ash.

When the fire continues, consuming the living world beyond the spreading death, I start to doubt what I’ve done. Animals scurry from the forest. I hadn’t seen them there! The flames catch them, igniting them one by one, with the sudden deadly efficiency of moths striking a bug zapper. They shriek, leap and ignite. By the time they hit the ground again, they’re nothing more than charred remains, reduced to their most basic chemical elements.

“No,” I say, tears in my eyes.

A rabbit springs into the air, trying to vault the flames. Its outstretched body clears the flickering orange, but the heat alone set the soft fur alight. The shriek of its passing lasts just a moment, but it’s enough to fully break my resolve. “No!”

The fire spreads toward the horizon, filling the air with smoke and cries of anguish. Heat surrounds me as flames lick up the cliff side and then lunge into the forest behind me.

My legs give way.

Hard rock digs into my bare knees, and for the first time since this vision began, I realize that I am once again naked and shameless. Blood flows from my scraped flesh, oozing out into the rocky crags. I feel no pain. Only sorrow at the world’s passing.

“Do not despair,” the voice says. “Rebirth requires sacrifice.”

“Requires death, you mean.” The words are an accusation. “Murder. Genocide.”

I think my words, burning with anger and accuracy will put the presence on the defensive. That it will learn the error of its ways and recant. I have come to believe, after all, that I am communicating with the aberration. Why it’s bothering to show me these visions, I don’t know, but some small part of me hopes it can be reasoned with.

But then it adds to my list of accusations, revealing it fully understands the scope of what it’s doing. “Extinction.”

I turn to face the figure, thrusting my index finger toward its smoke covered face. “You don’t have to do this! We don’t deserve this! What gives you the right!”

Unaffected by my tirade, the figure, which is now really just a spectral, undefined head and a limbless body, tilts its head. “The machine is fueled by destruction.”

The machine.

The smoky figure spoke of it in the first vision, too. Ike called it ‘the ancient.’ But am I speaking to the machine? Is that what’s walking across Europe? Maybe the machine is what woke the massive creature? Or Kiljan’s blood. Or the ice ax assault? Did that small scale attack trigger a war?

None of this makes sense.

But I know it’s wrong.

“Destroying a species isn’t—”

“It is the world that burns,” the figure says. “Not a single species.”

I’m speaking with a sociopath intent on scouring all life from the planet. The depth of its hatred and loathing unhinge me, and words I haven’t used since becoming involved with Bell rise from the depths and hiss through my lips. “Jesus fucking Chri—”

The figure billows out like a predatory bird, unfurling its wings, flaring with primal rage. “Fool!” For a flickering moment, I see past its smoky veil, seeing luminous eyes that tear through me—body and soul. Then it descends, lifting me off the cliff and propelling me over the side. Gravity takes hold with sickening quickness, pulling me toward the scorched earth below.

I look back at the figure standing above me on the cliff, its ominous shape taking on the figure of a man once more. It seems satisfied with my fate, watching me plummet to my death.

But will I die?

This is a vision
, I think.

I’m still riding on the machine’s back. Still with Graham. Perhaps unconscious, but in no immediate danger, if you ignore the potential for radioactive fallout. But last time this happened, I was only unconscious for a few seconds, and speaking out loud.

“Veneno mundi,” I whisper, the words yanked away by the wind whipping past me.

Poisoned world.

The machine is fueled by destruction.

I feel the realization tickling my mind a moment before I strike the ground.

Bones break. Everywhere.

My insides liquefy and ooze from pores and burst skin.

And yet, I live. I can hear. And see. And think, despite the fact that I can feel my brain slipping out of my opened skull.

The taste of ash is dry on my tongue. The land around me is charred and dead.

But no longer poisoned,
I think, my impending epiphany returning.

The ash twitches.

A coil of green pushes up through it, into the sun.

Leaves sprout.

The plant grows.

Life from death. Rebirth. Poison defeated.

Bare feet step beside the plant, flexing, digging in the ash the way a child does sand at the beach.

I turn my eyes—the only part of me that can still move—up. Two slender legs give way to a naked body that I recognize before my gaze reaches the face. But when I see Mina’s kind eyes looking down at me, they’re framed by wrinkles. Like with the vision of Ike and Ishah, she has aged.

“Do you understand now?”

“Why are you here?” I ask, and then I address the presence, who I can no longer feel, but who I suspect can still hear me just fine. “Why show me her?”

Mina crouches down beside my dying body. She caresses my cheek with the back of her hand.

The vision fractures, and I see other realities.

An endless green, living ocean. I can feel the toxicity emanating from it.

I know what this is. The Great Oxygenation Event. The very first mass extinction on Earth. Massive amounts of photosynthetic organisms bloomed in the oceans, covering the planet, releasing vast amounts of free oxygen, which was toxic to the anaerobic organisms that populated the Earth 2.3 billion years ago. Nearly all life on Earth was killed, until suddenly, something shifted. The photosynthetic organisms’ numbers were greatly reduced, and life was allowed to flourish and evolve once more.

A green wave, hundreds of feet tall, surges through the ocean, heading directly for me. My eyes follow the cresting form toward the top, where the sun glows brightly, blotting out the shape of something massive, moving through the water, shedding waves of material from its back with every step.

The vision within a vision ends when Mina pulls her hand away from my skin. Her fingers come away bloody. “Quid futurum sit. Erit.”

She stands, looking like she wants to say something else, but then her face twists up in fear and anger, and she screams at me.

“Science guy! Get the
fuck
up!”