Archon of the Covenant (13 page)

The brink of the overpass had been bolstered with sandbags and machine gun nests – an impromptu and unadorned checkpoint, blocking all travel south. They moved off the highway and into the gravel, in between mile marker 57 and the guardrail, and headed towards the off-ramp. They got onto San Xavier Road heading southwest. They passed ruined farmlands and caved-in Spanish hovels. The sentinel hit another intersection – Little Nogales Dr. – and headed north. They drove on in silence in the fading light until they came before some white visage standing starkly in the waste before them, rising up into the night sky. The sentinel lit its LED lamp and illuminated the façade just ahead. A white glow of winter walls, awoken in the luminescence. There stood an intricate, pale monument in the desert. Moorish buttresses and balustrade lined an alcazar from one great tower to the next, and on around ad infinitum. An alabaster dome rose into the black, supported by the high arches and squinches of Baroque masonry. A series of sandy walls lined the perimeter and the coat of arms of St. Francis greeted them in the half-light. This white palace in the Sonoran solitude. The white dove of the desert. The Mission San Xavier del Bac.

The girl rubbed her eyes, staring up at the face of the cathedral. They stood there, in the dust, looking up at the entranceway – a twisting, chiseled archway watched by statues of Mary and Joseph set inlaid above the thick, wooden door. The sentinel scanned the interior and perimeter – devoid of life. It reviewed the satellite data – a significant weather pattern was moving in. She asked:

“What is this place?”

“This is where we’ll shelter for the night.”

They rolled forward towards the archway. The moon was cresting in the east, a crescent scythe swinging slowly in the cool air of dusk. They came to the weathered, wooden door – the sentinel’s tire rubbing up against it, casting it ajar. It pushed forward and the giant mesquite portal swung slowly open. The latch was broken off – pushed in by some blunt force. They entered the church, lighting up the nave and the altar at the far side of the antechamber. The moonlight cast its glow from their wake and then vanished as the wooden door closed on its own behind them. The girl unbuckled her belt and slid off the sentinel’s frame. She approached the battered, chipped pew – the row of small wooden benches just beyond the vestibule. She slid her hand along the arched seatbacks, pacing from right to left, as the sentinel scanned the door. It panned around, analyzing the flaws and damage done to the ancient door. It stood there, dead rabbit in hand, as the girl gazed at the darkened altar, barely lit by the cracked, high rose windows lining the dome. The sentinel dropped the rabbit carcass and turned to the corner – a clutter of old student desks and broken pews were piled high. DDC39 rolled over to the pile and pulled a series of beams, legs, and desk joints towards the door – twisting, pinning, and creasing them into the egress until it was firmly blocked. It turned its attention back to the girl, who was tiptoeing gingerly up the narrow aisle, her right leg limping.

She had sidled up to the altar steps, gazing up at the ornate reredos looming over them in the dark. The carved woodwork stretched from the base to the ceiling – Spanish saints inlaid into walls, reaching out from the niches above them. A patchwork of mosaics and iconography surrounded the dais, lining the womb of the room like a corrugated tomb. The sentinel rolled up behind the girl dragging a broken chair, the legs screeching along behind it, then dropped it before her upon the cracked, Spanish tiles. It spoke to her in a calm, softened voice:

“Look for matches near the altar. And bring a bible down from the pulpit.”

She turned her gaze to the sentinel, who shined its LED lamp on her face. They looked upon each other in the half-light of the mission ruin. She turned her head to her side, looking quizzically at the altar, before getting up and rummaging about the dais. She found a long stem lighter and an old Spanish copy of the King James bible.

That night, the girl helped the sentinel skin the jackrabbit – holding tightly on it as the machine clutched the other end, rolling backwards. The skin ripped from tissue and the girl stood there holding the carcass from its downy ears, sinewy haunches gleaming in the LED lamp. She lit the bible and they built a fire before the altar from the kindling of the broken desks, billowy smoke rising up through the dome and escaping into the cracks of the rose windows above. The sentinel taught the girl how to clean the dead rabbit, watching as she lifted it above the fire with a broken candlesnuffer. She sat there, smiling, plucking pieces of charred rabbit haunch off the bone, and gulping another cup of water from the sentinel’s tank. She looked up at an oil painting on the wall, lit by the flickering tongues of the fire.

“What is that?”

The sentinel turned and analyzed the somber, iconic scene depicted in the painting.

“It’s the ark of the covenant, being carried to the Promised Land.”

“Why?”

“They believed the covenant was God’s instructions for mankind, and they had to protect it. It was their exodus. An old legend.”

“It’s in this castle with us?”

“No. The ark was lost. But it’s just a story.”

She listened and eagerly wanted to hear more, but the sentinel did not understand how important it was for her to hear a story. With eyes wide, she sat transfixed on the painting, looking back at the machine. As she did, she kneaded a soreness in her right leg. DDC39 looked down at her and spoke:

“You were limping. Are you injured?”

“I’m okay. I just have a weird thing with my leg. I was born with a bone in my left leg just a bit longer than the right. And so I wear a special shoe for it. Do you have any problems with your legs?”

“I have axels. They’re okay.”

“Can you tell me the rest of the ark story?”

“Another time, perhaps. I need to shut down for the night. Can you watch over the fire? Make sure to be safe?”

“I’m always safe.”

“And you won’t wander off?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Stay here with me and shout if you are afraid.”

She stretched her legs out before the flickering coals and looked up at the reredos, spanning up the sacristy, gilded in gold leaf. The bas-relief shimmered in the glow of the dying flame. Becca watched the shadow play on the church wall and wondered:

“Do you have dreams?”

“No. It’s time to rest now.”

“Okay. Good night 39.”

“Good night Becca.”

The sentinel rolled to the southern side of the building, just beneath the painting, and positioned its frame forward. It looked up at the high north window near the ceiling, adjusting itself incrementally in each direction until it got the position it wanted. The girl sat by the fire, looking into the flames, before getting up and curling beneath the sentinel’s tri-axel, wrapping herself in the blanket she held, gripping the cup tightly. The flames lapping at the pile of kindling subsided to red embers and the church darkened, consuming them in the abyss of the past. The lost memories of the Jesuits and Tohono O’Oodham, relegated to handprints and claw marks in the alabaster. The kingdom of heaven faded into the ornate walls as the light inside vanished and the moonlight crept in, bathing the pews in a snowy hue. The sentinel initiated its shutdown procedure.

• Solar power cell – 1%. Solar armor – 81%.
  
• Drivetrain – operational
  
• Visual/cortico/thermal/radar optics – operational
  
• HD/
  Comms – disrupted
  
• Water – 68%. Napalm – 100%
  
• Railgun – 22% capacity
  
• JE –
  religious questions arise; no logical conclusion
  
• Shutting down core operation
  and initiating battery recharge
  

10. The Wolf is Mine

Dawn arrived with the dead moon in its jaws. It entered the church through the high windows and kept vigil, old star in the lonesome valley. A column of light fell down upon the sentinel, resting on its solar plate and warming the girl who slumbered beneath its frame. The dark wilderness of the empty church whispered the creaks and moans of oblivion - the fossil blood of creation, from the hands of one carpenter to the next. Starmaker out there, somewhere. From the old infinity of the shadow’s heartbeat came a howl of the desperate. A thrashing animal lost in the void. There was a pair of eyes sinking into the sleeping mind of the girl. An ocular tension riling the sensory levers of the machine, too. The clicking and clacking of a rattling shell. A broken heart, sent back and returned, bloodied but stubborn. One drop of the truth.

The girl woke. Her eyes opened into the half-light of the church, glancing around the apse. Old saints in repose, pointing at nothing, casting blessings upon the silence. She wriggled free of her blanket and tiptoed through the aisle, peeking into the corners, peering into the shadow of the transepts. In the dark of the sacristy, some portal beckoned the girl. A panel held up an icon of Santiago on pilgrimage – it appeared to be ajar. She walked past the chancel, under the watchful eyes of the old intercessors, and pulled open the hidden door. She walked through a long hall leading her to the mission school, passing by the inner courtyard, and stepping into the warmth of the eastern wall.

She exited the church through a side door and found herself in the cool air of the Sonoran aurora. She rubbed her eyes and stared back in wonder at the heat rising in the east. A thicket of saguaros on a distant ridge obscured the sun and spun a dim veil on the desert floor. The girl lifted her hand to brow, shading the light falling into her view, and looked out to the crossed arms of the cacti on the knoll. There, in the distance, the sad eyes of her dream burned back at her beneath the crucifex of the waste. And then it was gone. Again. She peered out in the rising sun, looking for it once more. She kept looking for it. Was it something real?

The desert floor was filled with wells of mud – liquid topsoil drenched from a midnight downpour, circling the roots of creation. She leapt from one dry patch of aridisol to the next, steadying herself on her awkward right leg, and ducked into a dense mound of graythorn. She looked around, brushing the blonde hair back from her face, and ducked down into the shrubs to pee. The wind listed through the eastern ridge – petals of bahia rolling past her feet.

A crack of branches broke into the calm nearby. Once more. The girl froze in the weeds and looked straight, looked left, and then behind her. The spindly graythorn rustled in the wind, pinning into her side. She winced in pain but made not a sound. The air settled and the branches of the brush fell still. A solitary Gambel’s Quail darted out from the thicket just behind the girl. A trio of baby quail raced out after the adult, following it into a line of desert willow to the east, little top knots bobbing in unison. The girl sighed, pulling her waistband back up. She laughed aloud, to no one, and knelt forward to crawl out of the graythorn.

She walked back across the sodden wild, crisscrossing the web of dust and mud, stepping high over peppergrass and trodding past a soiled, trampled patch of chicory. As she got near to the door, she paused – rattled by some question, something out of place. She turned back to the flattened chicory and saw its white petals stamped into the soil. She looked at her path out to the graythorn and back to where she stood now – steps away from the door. All about the chicory, on either side of her path, a trail of muddy footprints vectored out in every direction – passing from dust into mud and back into dust. Silt splattered lines intertwining with the pools of wet clay in the hard-packed land.

She took another step back. The sun was cresting now in the east. A warmth fell upon her feet and the sod basins around her. The still pool beside her rippled. The clods of mud broke on the surface and a jaw craned open above the layer of thick pitch. A gasp of air sucked into the gaping maw and it settled back under the surface – a pair of nostrils protruding just above the surface, spits of air firing out. She looked around at the other mud holes – they too trembled and moved in the dawn. A hand shot out of one nearby – grabbing a quail that wandered too close. A revin splashed up from the pit, covered in a thick layer of mud, hair matted in clumps of dripping clay. Its mouth broke open and, in a wild gust of feathers, sunk the flapping bird into its teeth, ripping breast from bone. The revin sat there in the pool, gnawing at the torn bird, feathers clinging to the side of its muddied face. It stopped, eyes opening and looking up slowly at the girl, statuesque in the daylight shining upon her like a flood lamp against the pale eastern wall of the mission. A hand shot out from the pool beside her and clamped down hard on her ankle. She cried out. A piercing shriek. From each pool, revins emerged, splashing forth from their mud slumber, shivering in the cool morning. The revin with the bird, its muddied skin now drying and cracking in the sun, pointed at her and gurgled out a garbled shout.

The revin grasping at her leg stood slowly in the pit, its waist still submerged as it rose. Its eyes opened, filth weeping forth into eyelids – a coruscate hellion in ochre and umber. She cried out again – her scream piercing the daybreak. Time slowed. The day went silent. The blood rushed out and she went pale as the revin raised its other hand towards her neck – mud dripping on her sweatshirt from the open fist.

In the distance, from the graythorn thicket, those searing eyes burned like daylight stars in the dark void of the brush. The eyes emerged from the chaparral, revealing a dusty coat of fur, a gaunt face, and a dark mane. The Mexican Wolf bounded forth, darting between the revins as they emerged from their sub-firma slumber. They saw the creature and jaws fell open. Their faces twisted up and they clenched their fists, reaching out for its legs as it loped past.

The girl pleaded as the revin reached its fingers around her neck, clenching down. Her cry was cut short as her esophagus constricted around the grasp of the diseased creature. The once-thinking. It looked her in the eyes and saw her brow widen with fear. She tried to mouth a simple “no” but the revin just grinned at her misfortune. It meant to take her life. To punish her.

The wolf leapt into the aurora and the girl looked up at the momentary eclipse caught high in her vision, in the timeless halcyon of her fading breath. The revin felt it too – this shadow falling on its back. It began to turn but the wolf crashed into its spine, sinking jaws into the blistered nape of the sopping hominid. The revin let go of the girl and thrashed about, reaching back for the wolf as it started to fall back into the pit, its shrill roars deafening the still air of the waste. The wolf sank its jaws deeper and the spinning sent it twirling around the revin’s abdomen like a tether ball – flesh ripping open on the muddy neck as it craned around, grime and blood sputtering outward. The revin reached forward, trying to push this specter off. But the wolf’s incisors were sinking into its soft cervix. Death was now in the eyes of the revin. It fell back into the mud and the wolf bit down. There was a snap and a spray of red in the air, covering the ashen face of the wolf. The revin submerged in the mire and the other revins, now standing on the contours of their silt dens, looked on as their kin gurgled in the pit. The wolf sidled backwards with the girl, who clambered upright and inched back towards the door as well. The revins tensed up and rushed at the pair of creatures looking forth, sunrise glaring brightly in their vision. They surrounded them from all sides. The girl reached out and placed her hand on the back of the wolf and it looked up at her, claret dripping from its muzzle.

A hand whipped into the air and snagged the girl by her shoulder. It was the sentinel. It pulled her backwards into the doorway and let her go before speeding back towards the open door. The wolf sprinted in after them and disappeared into the rear of the complex. The sentinel slammed its front tire into the hatch, crashing it shut. Its shadow hand gripped on to the tiny bolt latch and pulled the lock, jarring it into the metal strike plate and twisting it into a mangled mess. The revins bashed at the weathered portal from the other side – peels of white paint popping off from the inner chamber where they braced.

“Get back into the church!”

The girl stood there, paralyzed with fear at the fragile door being torn to pieces from the other side. The sentinel positioned its railgun from left to right, leveling it with the revins on the other side, and looked back at her. It spoke softly now:

“Please.”

She nodded at the machine before running full sprint past the interior courtyard, back into the chancel. She found the row of wooden pews beneath the full glow of early morning light, falling through the rose windows, and ducked beneath. The interior of the pale mission rang with the bodies crashing against the walls just outside. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head and hummed some lost tune aloud, matching the rhythm of the cries outside with intermittent crescendos in her song. The Mexican Wolf crawled along the underside of the pews and lay next to her, watching the dark portal hidden in the sacristy.

Several minutes went past before the sentinel finally came darting into the crossing. The cries outside had grown louder. There was now a furious assault on the main oak door at the narthex. DDC39 rolled over to the girl and the wolf loped off in the shadows of the western transept. She looked up at the machine from under the pews.

“Are we safe?”

“No. We are in danger, Becca.”

“How many are there?”

“More than a hundred. I can’t tell for sure. They’re everywhere.”

“Can’t we leave?”

“Not yet. I need more time to charge. Stay here - stay hidden.”

The sentinel turned back to the reredos and faced the small portal from whence they had just returned. It darted back to the panel and slammed it shut with its front tire. Swiftly twisting on its base, the sentinel turned and reached its hand out to the wooden altar, grabbing it by the underside and dragging it across the apse. It screeched across the tile floor before slamming into the chipped, fresco panel in a plume of dust. The din of the revin horde outside crashed about the exterior façade in waves – high tide of the unthinking about the lighthouse in the desert. The relative quiet of their sanctuary burned away as the cries and shouts increased, getting closer. The massive, mesquite doors at the front began to rattle, then shook violently – the obstruction propped against it beginning to shift along the dirty floor and a slight crack appearing where they began to slowly slide open. The dirty, broken fingers of the mass outside crept into the cracks – nails peeled back, blisters opening on the splintered wood. The sentinel sped over to the front and bolstered the obstruction alongside its frame, leaning into the barricade as the hands crept in, swatting at the wooden pile just inside. From the other side of the room, a furious rattling on the frescoed panel sent a wooden statue of Santiago, perched just inside, crashing to the ground. The hidden door began to push open – the altar tipping back, lifting off of one side. The girl shouted:

“They’re coming in!”

The sentinel turned its railgun and optics back to the altar. A dark face peered back at the machine from the portal, a densely happy sneer. With one more push, the altar would be tipped over.

The shouts from each side of the mission echoed throughout the nave, bouncing off the high cupola and shaking the canvases lining the gray walls. The uproar had reached its crescendo. The sentinel rolled back over to the girl and leaned down to her, beneath the pews.

“Okay. This is it. Hop on and close your eyes.”

She crawled out from underneath and quickly climbed aboard the rumble seat, strapping the seatbelt into place, stuffing the cup in her front pocket and wedging the blanket behind her. She looked over to see the altar shoving inward just behind them – one mud-caked arm reaching in, grabbing at the frayed cloth atop the wooden altar.

And then the front of the church became suddenly quiet – the hands at the front doors slipping out and disappearing. The barricade fell still. A single cry came from just on the other side of the panel door, deep in the hallway beyond. And then a different noise welled up. Some panic was ensuing amongst the unseen throng. The shouts of the revins distanced – they were backing away from the wall. There was a moment of silence. From high up, outside the rose windows lining the smaller domes, some soft whir could be heard on the horizon, arcing the sky from one side of the mission until it faded in the reach on the other side.