Might's Odyssey (The Event Book 2) (4 page)

Might stood alert watching to see if the creature would rise and try to attack him again. It remained motionless. He looked at his fist in wonder. Had he really hit it that hard?

Shrugging he started for the hover cycle. It was probably best to get out of here while he still could before the damn thing came to. Reaching the hover cycle, he pulled it up and pushed the start button. It made a clunking sound and became silent.

Dread surged on his insides. No this was not happening. He tried the button again but there was no response. How was he going to get to the biosphere without the hover cycle? He did not even have a Digi-map or something he could use to plot the coordinates so he could walk to it.

Sighing deeply, he started to strip the hover cycles of his weapons and the cooler he had gotten from Neamo. It seemed he was on foot from here on out. Eleyon spoke as he started to walk away.

“Carry it__”

He paused startled.

“Why should I carry it?”

Eleyon did not answer. Might waited a bit and tried again.

“Eleyon, why do you want me to carry the hover cycle? I have very little food and water, so I have to conserve my energy. Why should I waste energy carrying the hover cycle?”

A long pause followed his query. Just when he felt Eleyon was not going to answer, he spoke again.

“You are close to one of earth’s abandoned cities. A small part of the hover cycle is damaged. You will find the tools and part you need to fix it in the city.”

Might frowned when he heard the word earth. What was earth? The onboard computer on the hover cycle had typed out the same thing. He decided to ask.

“Eleyon what is earth?”

Eleyon did not respond. Something told Might after a couple seconds of waiting that he was not going to. Still frowning, Might walked back to the hover cycle and began strapping his guns and food back onto it. He glanced at the giant creature he had sucker punched as he worked. It remained motionless. When he was done, he lifted the hover cycle as if it weighed no more than a broomstick and hefted it on his shoulder. He walked forward sighing deeply as he did so.

Visibility grew poorer the further away he got. The green cloudy atmosphere had become thicker. If it was possible to measure the level of radiation by how cloudy the air was, it would mean that no one would last a minute if they took the contaminated air into their lungs.

The war after the event was, as he understood it, several centuries ago. If this section of Nephilim still remained irradiated centuries after, he hated to thick how many weapons of mass destruction the military used.

He couldn’t help wondering whether the military personnel at the time were retarded. Did they not realize that they were destroying the world they lived in? If you sacrificed all to battle an enemy, what would be left for you to survive and build on?

‘Maybe they felt they had no choice.’ A soft voice in his subconscious answered him. A great wave of sadness flooded his insides at those words. Yeah maybe they felt they had no choice.

That thought made him curious about the ether-tome. What was it? What force could lay waste to an entire world? That however wasn’t the only puzzling question. How was it impervious to the most lethal weapons ever created?

General Holdstatt’s weary face flashed before his eyes at that instant and he grew sadder still. He remembered all too clearly the sadness, failure and loss he saw lurking in the old man’s eyes. He had the helpless look of a man whose world was crumbling around him and was helpless to do anything about it. Even though he knew Holdstatt was dead, he could not help feeling sorry for him.

The sudden clearing of the air around him brought him out of his reverie. Visibility improved tremendously. His strides grew longer, as a sense of purpose filled him. If Swift could escape from this dreary world, then he would too. And nothing the dark forces of the ether-tome could do would stop him.

The green cloudiness disappeared making everything around him clear. A few hundred miles away, at the opposite horizon lay a cluster of buildings, almost completely buried in fine desert sand.

His frown deepened as he hurried towards them. He glanced up at the blue-black sky as he walked. There was no sun; whether it lurked beyond the thick cloud cover was what he did not know. There were no stars either, just a black emptiness that was disconcerting to say the least.

It took him almost two hours of walking to reach the first building. He examined it carefully, realizing that it must have been some sort of high-rise once. Now only ten stories were visible to the eye. The rest were buried beneath the sand.

He walked through the cluster of buildings examining each one in turn. The words on the remains of a signboard attached to the side of one of the buildings made him pause.

Ucky fried chicken

Ucky fried chicken? What in the world was that? Shrugging he walked forward. There were more than two dozen tee junctions leading off into several different directions. When he reached the sixth one, he was tempted to branch off and find out where it led. As he turned to do so, Eleyon spoke.

“Keep going straight__ the building you are looking for is the last one on your left.”

“Noted!” Might muttered, walking forward with more purposeful strides.

Another fifteen minutes of walking brought him before the last building on his left. Twelve stories rose above the fine white sand. The sides of the building were dull and faded. Almost nothing remained of the paint, except a few strips whose color was undeterminable.

“Top floor.”

Might nodded setting the hover cycle down. Taking a deep breath, he punched a hole in the wall and walked in. As he entered the gloom-filled interior, it occurred to him that he should have been a bit more careful. Only God knew how long these buildings had stood here. He could easily have brought the whole thing crashing down on him.

He stood in a wide corridor. To his left were a pair of twin doors, which had the words elevator written over them. He sniffed in disgust as he looked at them. The words made no sense to him. A narrow staircase lay to his right. Frowning he walked towards it.

The climb up the stairs took about ten minutes. He was a bit disconcerted when he noticed the building swayed slightly with each step that he took. Something told him it would not remain standing for long.

He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the final floor. There was a wide door ahead. It had R&D level written over it.

His frown became harder. Just like the words downstairs, these ones did not make sense either. Knocking the door down took almost no time at all. He gasped when he saw the strange contraptions lurking behind it.

Directly ahead were a couple of cylindrical shaped pods, about nine feet tall. Inside each pod was a strange reptilian kind of creature. It looked like a six-foot tall lizard standing on its legs. The liquid it was immersed in was a greenish red color, with tiny yellow disgusting looking flakes floating around in the center of it.

There was a sign on the pod. He walked closer to get a better look. The iron strip stuck to the side of the pod was faded and blackened. The words written on it barely visible. They looked more like chicken scratches than anything else.

Reptilian predator appearing after the first wave of the ether-tome hit the eastern seaboard.

Might’s eyes narrowed. Mordecai said something to Swift when they reached Gethsemane. He remembered the words as if he heard them just yesterday. According to Mordecai, the darkness that poured out of the ether brought many strange creatures that were not there in the beginning.

The giant metallic beings they fought on the plain of white bones, the skeleton creatures riding on skeleton fire breathing mounts, the elementals and dozen others to name a few. So, he was looking at the first strange creature to appear in Nephilim after the darkness from the ether was released. 

Around him were dozens of strange machines and instruments that had no rhyme or reason. To his left was what looked like an oven. Something on his insides compelled him to go and take a closer look. He was about to tear the front of it off when ___

“Leave that bit. What you need lies at the back.”

Still frowning, Might leaned over the front of it and looked at the back. There was a large cylinder attached to the bottom of it plugged into the back by several large yellow jumper cables. Might’s eyes widened. Maybe that was its power source.

“Disconnect the cables very gently.”

He nodded and reached for the cables, pulling them out one by one. When he had them all undone, he slid the cylinder into the pouch on the side of his biomechanical suit and waited poised to receive more instructions from Eleyon. None came.

Turning around he examined the room more carefully. There was a large wardrobe like structure built into the wall on his right. It also had a keycard touch screen beside its door. Something drew him to it. A quick pull ripped the doors off their hinges and a thick cloud of dust wafted out of the opening.

When the dust cleared, he saw twenty black containers sitting in the center of the wardrobe. The containers were tube shaped, four feet tall and looked a bit like flasks.

“Pick one__”

“Yes sir__” Might murmured lifting one of the containers and tucking it under his left arm.

He caught a slight movement out of the corner of one eye and whirled around as something leaped on him sinking razor its razor sharp teeth into his right shoulder. He leapt back crashing into the wardrobe, breaking it into two dozen pieces.

The flask he carried dropped as he reached up and grabbed what was biting him around the neck. Prying it off his shoulder, he examined it, shocked to see it was exactly like the reptilian creatures in the pods.

Four more were crouched six feet in front of him prepared to spring. He flung the one he held in his hand at the others as they sprang. They collided in mid air and scattered to the four winds.

Snatching the flask, he raced for the staircase. The ground just before the staircase began to froth and bubble as if a fire burned beneath its depths. A humanoid whose body was made of flaming magmatic rock burst out of the floor a few seconds later facing him with a roar.

He remembered what Brainwave called it. He was looking at an elemental. The elemental towered over him by at least a foot and was almost six times as broad he was. Its fist suddenly swelled growing to fifteen times its normal size before it rammed it into his mid section.

The force of the blow lifted him off his feet and flung him at the opposing wall. He went through it with a loud bang and plummeted twenty feet to the desert sand below.

Brushing dirt from the visor of his helmet, Might leaped to his feet as the elemental leaped down after him. The hover cycle lay ten paces away. He could not allow the damn creature anywhere near it.

Tossing the cylinder and the flask aside, he swung a huge fist at the elemental. The elemental’s falling body and his fist connected with a loud boom. The force of the blow flung the elemental miles into the sky, scattering hundreds of tiny pieces of magmatic rock in a wide arc.

Might waited as it started to fall. As he swung his fist again, a flaming pulse of energy surrounded it. This time when it hit the elemental, its body shattered into a million pieces.

Several answering roars from the left made him whirl around. Three elementals stood ten paces away. Two were made of rock, the third of fire.

The fire one attacked first. It leapt forward firing long bursts of its element. Might raised both hands to shield his face from the blasts. He kept a tiny space between his arms to see how close the damn thing was getting. When he came within reach, he reached forward and grabbed it driving several hard punches into its head, which dissolved into a thick cloud of ash.

He flung the rest of its body at the others as it turned to ash. The ash cloud that permeated the air blinded them for a few much needed moments, allowing him to leap high into the air and smash his large fists into their heads crumbling them like powder.

He could hear the hissing cries of rage above. They sounded quite displeased. Racing to the hover cycle, he knelt down examining the engines carefully.

Directly beneath the thick engine block was a cylinder exactly like the one he had taken from the R&D level upstairs. He quickly disconnected it and replaced it with the new one. Close to that was tiny hole covered by a tightly screwed cap.

“Unscrew the cap and pour the contents of the flask into it.”

Working fast, Might quickly did as he was told. When he had the cap screwed back, he waited to see whether he would receive any more instructions.

When none came, he climbed on the hover cycle and pressed the start button. The engine roared to life with the onboard computer coming on simultaneously. The path to the Biosphere was accurately plotted. Revving the hover cycle’s engines, Might sped off into the distance with the roars of the reptilian creatures fading away behind him. 

Gbenga sighed looking up at the front door of his house. His driver cast several puzzled looks at him when he made no move to exit the car.

“Is everything alright sir?” He asked quietly glancing back at his employer.

“Everything is fine George__” He was about to add ‘just have a lot on my mind.’ When it occurred to him that he did not need to explain himself to his employee. If he chose to sit in the car all day long who was the man to question him. 

His eyes once again drifted to the front door ten paces away. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door of the white S Class Mercedes Benz grabbing his bag and cane as he did so.

Throwing the strap of his bag over his shoulder, he leaned down heavily on the cane and limped to the front door. The pain in his knee was still excruciating. The doctors said it would fade in time and had given him pain medication to help cope until it did.

His eyes hardened as he remembered the doctor’s words. It had been almost three months since he woke up from his coma. It frustrated him that he was still this dependent on the cane. That however, was not the only frustrating thing about his slow recovery. He usually had strange bouts of weakness. When this happened, he found it very difficult to breathe.

It occurred on a regular basis the first few days after his discharge from the hospital. Its occurrence became less frequent after the first few weeks. The doctors also said that would fade with time.

He curled his fingers around the curved handle of the door. Turning it slowly he walked into the foyer. High ceilings, glittering crystal chandeliers and white tex-cote painted walls greeted his eyes.

To his right was a long winding staircase, which had thick red carpeting covering its entire length. He took the stairs slowly, his left hand gripping the shiny ebony banister. He paused remembering Seyi’s words about the food in the microwave.

A sigh burst from his lips. He realized he did not have the strength to go back down to the kitchen. Continuing up the stairs slowly, he gritted his teeth as slivers of sharp pain raced up and down his right leg.

The staircase opened into a large sitting room that had six black leather chairs arranged in a semi circle around a sixty-inch LG flat screen 3D TV. He made his way to the three-seater one and collapsed on it with his breath coming in short shallow bursts.

His breathing gradually slowed and his heart rate steadied. Sitting up slowly he leaned down and reached for the door of the tiny refrigerated box beside the three-seater sofa. He had had it installed after his return from the hospital. Opening it, he took a bottle of cold water reaching into his left jacket pocket at the same time.

He brought out a sachet of tiny red and green pills. Removing one of each, he put the pills in his mouth and took a long swig of the cold water before he lay down again.

The pain started to recede almost immediately. A small smile lifted the corners of his lips. He called them his wonder pills and as expected, they did not disappoint him.

His smile faded as he considered this. The speed at which the pain always receded made him fearful that he was getting addicted to the pills. His eyes drifted to the TV. The stabilizer on the floor beside the TV had a green light shinning from it. His eyes widened when he saw it. Seyi left the switch on. How come?

She usually switched it off on purpose to make things as difficult for him as she could. At least that was what he thought anyway. Since he made the mistake of telling her about the impending global apocalypse, she had become less concerned about his well-being. So what changed today? Unwilling to dwell on it any further, he picked up the remote control on the stool in front of him and turned the TV and decoder on.

It took about six minutes for the decoder to boot up and it automatically tuned to CNN. They were showing a CNN news special, a special broadcast about the life and times of who else? Gerald summers. Gbenga watched for a couple of minutes and quickly became bored. They were not saying anything he did not already know.

Switching off the TV, he rose up and limped to the door on his right. It led to his study. Opening it, he limped to the large mahogany desk and sank into the beige leather chair behind it.

The top of the desk was covered with stacks of newspaper clips and cuttings. There were also printed files from Google and Wikipedia chronicling the life of Gerald Summers. He knew almost everything there was to know about the man. He knew about his life as a child, where he went to school, his home life and so on.

According to most reports, Gerald didn’t have a happy childhood. His parents separated when he was very young. He stayed with his father who was not around that much because of his business. His mother remarried and did not want to have anything to do with him. That was until he won his first Nobel Prize.

Gbenga realized that if he did not know what the man was going to do, he would really have admired him. Gerald was a person worthy of any man’s emulation. He had overcome many family and emotional challenges that turned people into wrecks, druggies or worse. He’d risen above all that to impact the lives of millions across the globe surprising even himself in the process.

His was the sort of success story everyone liked hearing. The phone on his desk rang at that instant startling him. He checked the caller ID and sighed. Reaching for it, he raised the receiver to his ear slowly.

“Hello sir__”

“Hello Gbenga__ you didn’t come in for our session today. I just wanted to find out whether everything is ok.”

A long pause ensured before Gbenga spoke. “I kind of forgot doc. Today was very busy for me.”

There was another pause.

“Do you want me to come over?”

Several seconds passed as Gbenga considered it. Did he want to spend two or three hours going over his feelings and insecurities right now? He was tempted to say no, but realized that he could really do with some company.

“Yes you can come over.”

“Ok__” The man on the other end said sounding pleased. “Will be there in about an hour or so.

Gbenga sighed and put down the phone’s receiver settling down to wait. Being a man of means granted you several privileges. One of such privileges was having your very own psychologist at your disposal. He did not have to go and see the man if he did not want to. The man was more than willing to come to him.

Bayo Ajibade was a man he had not known until about two months ago. The hospital recommended him when it became obvious he was having difficulty adjusting to life after his accident. That was what they thought anyway. No one knew that his emotional state had been completely fine before he found out that the event he had seen in his coma was going to happen.

Angry did not even begin to describe what he felt when Seyi informed him that the psychologist would be coming in to see him. She was the one who told the hospital management that he was having difficulty adjusting. He knew why she did that of course.

In her own words “__ why won’t I Gbenga? You are losing it. You need help.”

For the first week, he blatantly refused to see him. Then one day, without warning the man walked into his study during one of his frantic online searches into the life of Gerald Summers. Gbenga cringed remembering the way he yelled at the man, calling him all sorts of names and threatening to throw him out of his house.

Bayo remained silent through his tirade. He just sat there, looking at him with those understanding eyes. What made Gbenga eventually accept his counsel was unlike Seyi, he did not dismiss his claims about the event and the danger it posed to humanity.

Gbenga still couldn’t decide whether the man believed his story or was simply patronizing him. Whatever the case was, he felt relieved to be able to share his fears with someone who wouldn’t call him crazy and look at him as if he had lost his mind.

Something occurred to him as he thought this and he leaned forward in his chair, clicking on the firefox button on his desktop. He went to Google and typed in ‘vision like experiences in coma’.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at the search results. Nothing of interest came up. Sighing, he typed in another search. ‘End time prophesies’. A million more results came up. He scrolled through with his hard gaze becoming harder. One of the search results caught his eye immediately, called the legend of Dream-walkers. Still frowning he clicked on it.