Banshee (22 page)

Underneath: The Last Day

Hunting turned out to be fishing, and even that was absurdly easy. Two hours after descending the hardscrabble mount of their camp, an aching French and Saavin approached a shallow stream that ran down a gradual plain to empty into the quiet enormity of the freshwater sea. With a gimlet eye covering both bodies of water, French approached, only to find the stream teeming with cave trout, fat and unafraid. With two quick strikes of his spear, and one by Saavin, their hunger was assured defeat. He started a small hot fire in the vast, silent space, and then began examining a small log that rested nearby. It had been tumbled smooth by the waters, and French rolled it carefully in one hand. His smile was broad and genuine as he plucked something from the wood.

“Morels. Looks like we eat well today. And tomorrow.” His grin was suffused with triumph. He held out the curious mushroom to Saavin, who looked at with suspicion.

“Are you sure that’s edible? It looks like a witch’s hat made from brown twine.” She examined the bizarre mushroom closely and amended her judgment. “Rotten twine at that.”

“Smell it before you condemn this noble fungus to doom. It’s the finest remaining species in the Bulwark. Maybe even before the invasions.” He smiled optimistically at Saavin, who raised a skeptical brow but leaned in to sniff the alleged delicacy.

After a brief, intense inhalation, she smiled. “That’s nice. It’s—I can’t think of anything like it.”

“Nor have you tasted anything like it before. People used to hunt these things like prized game. Now, they’re everywhere. There’s something about the world now that fungi find amenable to their colonization.” His face grew hard for a moment, and he added, “Not all of the fungi are good. But this one is. Let’s clean the fish and eat. I need something that doesn’t taste like an old pair of shoes.”

Saavin pointed at the morels in his hand. “Too late for that, but I’ll eat it regardless.”

After a few minutes of sizzling, the lush, earthy flavors of the morels drifted around them like a cloud. The fish fillets were pearlescent and firm, and they ate in companionable silence, tilting their heads back with eyes closed in appreciation of their meal. The unsettling quiet of the cave was broken by tiny pops as the fire died, ending with an angry hiss as the last coals began to turn white. In a space of such size, noise was consumed by the myriad of angles and distance, leaving a feeling of desolation that danced just outside their senses The mixed gloom of blue and green lights closed in around them like a night on the prairie above.

“Are you alone for the same reason I am?” Saavin asked into the still.

French’s eyes lifted slowly to regard her with cool appraisal. The normal control of his face slipped as he reassessed her intuition. He didn’t insult her by asking for clarification.

“You’re too young to be considered a spinster.” He deflected for a moment to choose his words with care.

“So are you,” Saavin snapped before her hand flew to her mouth. “Sorry.”

French waved dismissively. “Handling her memory like glass isn’t going to bring her back.” He looked into the waves of light that pulsed high above like aurora borealis. “I know I couldn’t have saved her, no matter how much I love to fight. She wasn’t made for this world. She was gentle.”

Saavin looked at him with soft eyes and gave a wan smile. “There were a lot of people like her. I think that the only survivors are too tough to be good friends, sometimes. That’s why my dragon is so dedicated to me, I think.”

“Why you? Why Banshee?”

Her shoulders twitched with the ghost of a shrug. “We’re alike. We both love the fight, and we know the truth about what’s happening.”

“Which is?” French asked. He was looking for confirmation, not revelation.

She delivered. “We’re losing. So, yeah, when you ask if we’re along for the same reason. . . . yeah, I am. I’m twenty. I don’t want to have even more to lose than my own life. Than Banshee. I don’t have any more to give than that.” Saavin scuffed at a bone chip that shone pale near her black-armored foot. “What are you going to give? To New Madrid?” Her gaze was level and frank.

“I’m not giving New Madrid anything, it’s only a beginning. We
are
losing, even though it seems like we have stable pockets of humanity, but the truth is we’re one accident away from being erased. I know that, because I saw it happen. The only way to win is to become so enormous that they can’t hurt us anymore. We have to grow. We have to reclaim what was ours, and we can build it with tough people still left after the first sixty years of this bloodbath,” French said, with the fervor of a true believer.

“And you’re the person to do it?” Her brow arched with mild derision. Such delusions of grandeur seemed outside his normal personality.

“No.” He shook his head decisively. “I am
one
of the people who can start the process. This war goes over the horizon of my life. I’d be vain and stupid to think otherwise.” A lithe blue insect with an impeller for a tail flew past them, darting up and away into the murk of the thin clouds that drifted overhead. It was an alien comment on their human discussion, and they both smiled.

She stood, stretching her long legs with a grimace. “I’ll be here for the fight. I like the idea, and you’re going to need help. Now let’s go blast this place and bring the mountain down on their heads.”

His answering smile was brilliant in the phosphorous light. “Just so.”

Dragons

“Seven billion people died from vanity. Wait, that isn’t entirely true; if I were a coroner, I may have put the cause of death as avarice or even pettiness. Perhaps even outright evil if one believed in such things. As a scientist, I didn’t have time for the supernatural. My demons were United Nations wonks declaring every single shard of pottery to be a World Heritage Site before closing it entirely to research. Their goal wasn’t to preserve the past; it was merely to avoid being seen as bigoted against cultures that couldn’t defend themselves against the curiosity of well-funded investigators, no matter where they hailed from. If they were European or American, then the archaeologists or paleontologists were immediately suspect, and incredible evidence was wrapped snugly in the jargon of institutional graft and bribery. If you couldn’t pay, there was no digging, and eventually, the locals would scour the site you had painstakingly uncovered right down the bedrock. The items would be for sale online in less than a day, and gone to private collections, never to be seen again, in less than week. It was a plundering of the most ancient secrets our world had to offer, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“I soldiered on, partially due to some unspent grant money and my third divorce, but also for love. I loved fieldwork. I always had. There was something about being the first to shine lights on something that had once been a wonder, but was now buried in muck and fig roots, lost somehow between drought or war and left to molder unseen. My own wanderlust and funding led me to a meaningless project on an unnamed island in the Southern Ocean. I was to excavate the area where a dragon had risen; it seemed that there were carved stones intimating some sort of human presence well under the surface of the uninhabited rocky outcropping. The island itself served no other purpose than threatening ships and collecting flotsam; it even failed miserably as a windbreak. I arrived via a research vessel that rolled no less than thirty degrees with each wave for what seemed a month, my sea sickness having progressed well past what one might call a malady. I was nearly dead with dehydration, despite the best efforts of the quite competent ships’ doctor, a Russian woman who gave me the most relentless care I’ve ever known. Her refusal to let me simply flop to the deck and surrender was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And the worst.

“Professionally, it was the discovery of a lifetime, hell, of a dozen lifetimes. For in that strip of frigid water known as the Roaring Forties, that island held not one secret, but dozens. A medium male dragon named Fabian had emerged from the center of the island, leaving a slumping hole and causing a landslide that led to the collapse of a minor volcanic shield remnant. When asked about his place of birth, so to speak, the enigmatic Fabian simply demurred, flicking one blue wing in the direction of the island and telling all who asked, ‘If you wish to know so badly, you may visit of your own accord.’ His distaste for the desolate rock was legendary, and there was only one solution to answer persistent rumors that were only inflamed by a series of grainy satellite images seeming to reveal a stone arch of indeterminate age. Two months later, I stood at the edge of the pit with three assistants, my Russian doctor, and hope that at the very least I would survive the howling winds of the Southern Ocean. The island was raw, the wind was frigid, and the sea a merciless spume of icy droplets that soaked me to the skin despite the finest foul weather gear money could buy.

“I forgot all of it when I looked into that scarred hole in the ground. Where the dragon emerged was clear; his claws had raked the stones with astounding power, and the cavity, presumably from his tons of mass, had collapsed and begun the process of deterioration that ran roughshod over the pit. Beneath Fabian’s former crèche was something entirely unexpected. My heart leapt as a tingle of dread climbed my spine in a most unwelcome touch, for in the dying light of that weak sun, an arch climbed up out of the stygian unknown before fading into obscurity under the angled shadows. The sun struggled to pierce beyond the first half of the walls descending downward, and a faint odor of antiquity drifted upward in subtle warning.

“My eyes lit upon the arch, and the world fell away. The relic was certainly hand carved. Blackened with age, it was covered in a series of frescoes that were clearly visible, even from my vantage point. I think I stopped breathing altogether, jolted from my reverie only by my doctor, Luba, who touched my arm gently. The Russian woman peered into the depths, assessed the twisting serpents that were carved into the arch of stone, and looked at me with something between pity and fear.

“‘I think you are glad that I did not let you give up and die, but as for me, I am not so sure,’ Luba said, then turned away from the site and crossed herself in the manner of a lapsed Eastern Orthodox sinner who was faced with a childhood fear. Her sudden renewal of faith led me to take another long look at the bas reliefs before I rigged some means to descend the twenty feet to the uppermost reaches of the arch. I was weak, thirsty, and my eyes wept at the mercy of the hissing winds, but in ten minutes, I was descending on brilliant red climbing rope to hang twisting slowly above the curved stones that were more alien than the dragon that had emerged ten yards away. Hoarfrost and dirt partially filled the gyrating designs, but it was clearly a story. A history, if you will, and I am skilled at deciphering histories.

“In seconds I knew I would need none of my nuanced abilities to discern what this column of stone was intended to do. After a brief lowering to the bottom sections, I had the burly assistants pull me up at a steady rate as I photographed each scene, my stomach roiling with the clear meaning of images that bordered on insanity. When I reached the lip, I disentangled myself from the harness and walked swiftly from the darkening hole. I rousted everyone from the island, using my authority to its limit, and we were churning the waters once again in less than an hour. Luba regarded me with suspicion for some time before she approached me with a cup of broth, placing it before me without a word.

“‘Will you tell others what you have seen?’ she asked, and I knew she was asking a series of questions in that one sentence. Would I risk my tenure and reputation on the findings in a place so remote it was unlikely that anyone would verify anything I claimed? Was I ready for the knife fight atmosphere of academia, in which ideas were torn apart, along with careers, simply for presenting evidence outside the current, profitable orthodoxy? Was I a fool? And, perhaps most importantly, did I believe my eyes?

“The answer was simple, despite the underlying truth of her question. I was fifty-five years old. I was nearing retirement, and I lived in a world where dragons—who spoke, no less—were emerging from the ground and calmly informing humanity that a war with hell was just over the horizon. In that context, my decision was exceedingly easy. I didn’t present my beliefs for peer review. I wrote no stodgy paper or treatise. I merely compiled my pictures, labeled my interpretations, and dumped the entire thing online.

“In days, four other well-respected scientists cut through the blizzard of doubt with similar reports of their own. Like me, they found their sites in remote areas. Like me, there was a clear narrative rendered in stone, although in the Welsh site there was an inlay of wood that was thousands of years old, preserved in some heretofore unknown method using smeared animal fat and ashes. All of our findings were nearly identical, save one terrible difference, but before I comment on what variations we found, it helps to understand the story. Simply put, each cave had an ever-expanding column or arch that was carved from the beginning of recorded time, and possibly well before our accepted version of that timeline. The Welsh site was dated at more than 14,000 B.C.E., and that’s being generously skeptical. It could be much older. The story begins with mankind learning to build and grow crops. He masters the animals, and then turns his eyes to the heavens where he begins to ask basic questions about what it means to be human. Then, as he is on the cusp of something great, building a civilization without compare, the gates of hell open and he is cast down to the depths again to be enslaved, and eaten, and degraded beyond recognition.

“Then, to the horror of everyone who read the stones, the cycle begins anew, and man begins the long climb back to where he once was, doing so without the knowledge that under his feet lurk the beasts that will once again feast on the bones of his achievements. It happened time and again, an oscillating cycle of triumph and blood that was left undiscovered by the enormity of the crime; what man could not reclaim from the depths of legend and time, he was doomed to experience again when the whims of demons needed satisfaction.

“I’d gotten noisily sick in my office when I realized what we were. Cattle. We were pets, sheep, clever toys, and we were allowed to flourish and reach heavenward only at the pleasure of some unseen malefactor for whom all of the pain and blood in the universe were not enough.

“I cast my doubt aside that day and, while I did not believe that there must be a supreme being, I knew without a doubt that there was an ultimate evil, and the dragons had come to fight it by our side.” —Dr. Alec Gauthier

—Bulwark Archival Materials, Access Date 96 A.R.