Out of Exodia (25 page)

One snake thrusts itself at Billy,
lightning fast, and sinks its teeth into his ankle. Billy wails in
agony, bends to swing his knife, but his arm goes limp; he tumbles
forward. The snake springs back and strikes again, lancing both
fangs into his neck. Billy lies silenced, eyes wide, lashes
fluttering. No one moves to help him, not with that green viper
slithering across his chest. All attention rivets to Jules and Sam
who screech in tandem as the two remaining snakes attack them just
above their shoes.

“
Ankle Asps,” someone
murmurs. I hear the name and instantly see an anagram: slap snake.
I wonder if that’s a sign, a way to kill them perhaps.

Jules and Sam writhe in pain and rather
than go to their aid most Reds turn away.

Lydia tells me she wants to find her
mother, but I don’t want her to leave my side. I feel my belt sack
for my knives, a short pathetic blade that once gave me a little
courage against a wild dog, and a longer, sharper hunting dagger of
cold pre-Suppression steel. I pull that one out and unsheathe it.
Before I take two steps a greater alarm sounds as those who fled
into the woods or toward the lake return with shouts that more
snakes appear wherever they turn. Dozens. Hundreds.

I hurry my steps toward Jules, Sam, and
Billy. Josh reaches Billy’s lifeless body before I do and swipes
the air above his chest. The blade meets the striking snake and
severs its head. I see how Josh aims for where the snake will be
instead of where it is. I quickly do the same to the snakes that
guard Jules and Sam. The men have no strength to thank me with more
than a groan.

“
Blake, Asher! Move these
two to my cabin.” I look back at Lydia. “Go with them. Make sure
the windows are shut tight.”

I twist around and almost trip over a
ten year old boy who grabs at my sleeve. “Sir, Teague knows of
Ankle Asps.” I barely comprehend his message before the kid’s
father rushes past and snags the boy.

Sir, Teague knows of Ankle
Asps
. Slap snake was too easy, but this
phrase unravels almost as easily:
A plague
of snakes strikes now
.

So I was wrong. This is the plague, the
judgment on the Reds who won’t trust enough to accept the paradise
that is promised to us. I can only hope we don’t all die from the
excruciating venom.

Sharp screams assault my ears and Lydia
follows me as I run from tent to tent, forest to lake, path to
road, always too late to help another victim other than to slash
insanely at yet another asp. We find women sobbing, clutching
ankles, men rolling in the dirt, surrendering to multiple bites.
Dying. It seems that there are only a few of us trying to thwart
this plague. Knives, faux swords. The guns are useless without
steady hands and perfect aim.

“
The rod.” Lydia points.
Harmon has the rod and he kicks a hole in the ground with his heel
then grinds the end down until it stands on its own. He flicks a
switch and waits. Nothing happens. No ultrasonic waves, no
electromagnetic radiation, no sub-sonic pulse, nothing to repel the
snakes or kill them.

My mind races for a solution. I cast my
eyes around on every person and thing until I settle on Malcolm’s
box. He’s left it sitting unguarded next to the meeting tent and he
has run away.

I hurry to the box, hesitate when I
remember what’s hidden inside. I refrain from touching it, but
right here, right in the open where everyone can see me and think
I’m crazy, I kneel down next to the box, close my eyes and
talk.

“
What do I do? Please do
not destroy all of us this way. Think of the giants in that land.
They’ve heard that we follow you. If you destroy us with this venom
they will hear reports of this, too, and they will believe that you
could not deliver on your promise.”

I feel the warmth of a tear slip from
my eye. “And Exodia will hear. Please, please. Just love us.
Forgive us.” I let myself fold over, groaning, hardly conscious of
my whimpering. My forehead rests on the box.

And I hear something. It’s
not like the voice on the mountain or the hum of the box. It
doesn’t resonate or boom through my bones, but thoughts fill my
head as if I already had the knowledge.
He
who belongs to Him hears what He says. He who does not belong to
Him does not hear Him
. As soon as it is
completely clear to me I jump up to find Eugene.

* * *

Barrett’s father took an axe and
chopped down two strong saplings as Bram had directed him. He laid
the poles on the ground and used some frayed rope to bind the
shorter one across the longer one. Eugene melted the gold again,
but under Bram’s orders this time, making a bronze-colored serpent
to hang on the poles.

When they both finished they took the
T-shaped structure to the highest point in the camp, dug a hole,
and set the pole upright. The golden snake was
breathtaking.

“
Reminds me of something,”
Barrett’s father said.

“
Me, too. From
pre-Suppression days. Churches. Crosses. Old religious
superstitions.” Eugene coughed out the last words, a guilty shudder
added to the shivers he felt.

“
I think we lost something
immensely important after the Suppression.”

Eugene snorted. “Don’t know what good
this’ll do.” He looked around for live snakes, but saw none. “Is
this the mother snake or something? Supposed to attract all the
other ones?” He mumbled an objection under his breath.

Barrett’s father quirked his mouth.
“Bram said anyone who gets bitten just has to come here and look up
at this, then they won’t die. Boy, gotta take that one on more than
a little faith. Sounds outlandish.” He started down the path,
called back, “But what else do we have to look to for salvation
these days?”

Eugene knew the answer to that but
rather than tell Barrett’s father he kept the hand-me-down
knowledge to himself. “You won’t find me putting my faith in
something hanging from a cross,” he muttered. His pockets were full
of the gold he hadn’t melted.

* * *

Two days of fending off snakes left a
count of forty-seven dead including Jules, Sam, Billy, and others
who, Bram and Harmon noticed, spoke loudest against claiming their
new land. Three hundred seventy-seven Reds who were bitten and then
looked on the bronze figure of the snake lived. It was totally
preposterous, but whether it was psychosomatic, miraculous, or the
dawning of some inexplicable twenty-second century medicine it
worked. Even Eugene found the faith he needed when an asp punctured
the skin on his calf. He crawled up the hill and raised his eyes.
Later, when he walked down the hill he went looking for Barrett’s
father to speak to him of the long ago things he’d
memorized.

* * *

On the third day the horses were
rounded up, the last of the dead were buried, and the judges had
everyone convinced that the Reds would conquer the giants. It was
slow going to leave the campground. Many families grieved for the
loved ones they’d lost and buried beside the lake. There was little
of the usual dancing that the young ones, usually led by Mira, had
always before enjoyed at the start of each leg of their long
journey. This time the move had a mixture of trepidation and
grudging expectancy. Most people consciously repressed the sparks
of joy that they wanted to feel now that they believed they were
close to the end of their journey. They moved ahead under the
escort of the radiant cloud. Malcolm limped, not from any residual
effects of a snake bite—he was in the vast majority of Reds who
weren’t bitten—but from twisting his ankle when he ran from the
first snake encounter.

* * *

Lydia and I walk beside Harmon and his
family. We all lead our horses up the same road we’d tramped this
summer, past the spot where I married Lydia, and veer off northward
according to Josh and Blake’s directions. We tramp for hours, our
trail of Red men, women, children, and horses lengthening with the
shadows. The cloud bristles above us, fluttering in the same breeze
that meets our faces. By late afternoon there’s a hint of chill in
the air and something else.

“
Do you smell that?” I say
to my brother. He shakes his head.

We walk maybe a mile further and a
stronger scent of that odd something in the wind brings back a
memory of the first time I fled Exodia. I reach for Lydia’s
hand.

“
I think we’re going to run
into some of Ronel’s people. Remember Vinn and Carter?”

She frowns and nods, drops my hand, but
not before I sense her confusion, thoughts of Barrett, and her
earliest attraction to him and to me. I’m touched and want to pull
her close, but she needs her private thoughts to remain private and
so I don’t take her hand again.

“
You smell them?” she
asks.

I feel like I should sneeze as an
answer. The odor of death is so strong in my nostrils now that I’m
surprised complaints aren’t echoing through our ranks. I wonder if
I should ride ahead and warn those in front that our visitors won’t
be hostile.

“
Yeah, I smell them. I
wonder why we haven’t encountered them before now. Bad as they
stink this could be a good sign. I’m going to ride ahead and meet
them.”

I mount my horse, give a quick
explanation to Harmon and ride around the families who have now
stopped to collect the dinner packages that begin dropping from the
sky. I find Josh and Blake beyond the front of the cloud, their new
horses acting skittish.

“
They smell some old
friends of mine,” I tell the leaders. “Unfortunately the horses
don’t know there’s nothing to fear.”

No sooner do I say that than we hear
singing. We look to the right where there’s an abandoned farmhouse
and forty or fifty people file out from behind it, singing that old
song that every Red but me has known all their lives.

The Reds behind me are startled, some
draw weapons. I’m quick to assure them that these are friendlies.
The meat that had been landing at our feet stops. A second course
showers at our guests’ feet. I coax my horse into a trot and hurry
to greet my old friends.

“
Ho, Dalton,” Vinn calls
out as the singing stops right at my name.

“
It’s Bram O’Shea now.” My
horse circles to a stop, uneasy with Vinn’s reeking stink. “Aren’t
you ever going to bathe?” I laugh at him. “I’ve been smelling you
for miles.”

“
It keeps the enemies
away,” Vinn says. “My friends don’t mind.” He nods toward Carter
and the rest. I think how glad Malcolm will be to see them all and
I wonder which one is his son.

I dismount and stick an elbow toward
Vinn. He taps it with his own and I say, “Happy to see you’ve
recovered.”

“
It was pretty bad, but
Carter got me back in one piece. Just took a while to heal.” He
cracks a grin. “We’ve been tracking your progress. Pretty
circuitous route you’ve been taking. Like a squirrel lookin’ for a
nut.”

“
I guess we had some
lessons to learn. Did you know there are giant gemfries in the land
Ronel expects us to inhabit?”

“
Yup. Shouldn’t be a
problem now that you’ve got us with you. We’ve even dyed our
elbows.”

While we talk his group begins to
mingle with the Reds who’ve followed me. It doesn’t take long for
us to grow accustomed to Vinn’s stink. Most of his group joins in
and eats the food that’s been dropped. Lydia appears at my side and
greets the two men she’d met before. There’s a quiet pain as we
tell them of Barrett’s death, then, as if to balance out the
heartache, Carter calls over his shoulder, “Raul, bring the
kids.”

My heart begins to pound. My former
father-in-law, Raul Luna, face and hands covered with burn scars,
limps forward, two little ones—my sons—are in his arms. My chest is
ready to burst; the bruising thuds are wonderfully welcome. My
sons!

They are blurry bits of heaven. Eli’s
fuzzy blond hair frames his baby face; his cheeks are almost too
chubby. He holds my gaze, unafraid. But Gresham, who favors me with
his dark hair and deep blue eyes, turns his head to look in the
other direction, to look for his mother, I think. I put my hand on
his small back and read his confusion: he wants Kassandra, misses
her.

“
Raul?” I move my hand to
his shoulder and I know instantly what has happened. There’s been a
fire. He saved the boys but not their mother. Even with that touch
of knowledge I don’t believe it. I step back and search the faces
of Vinn and Carter’s people. They look away from me, step aside and
let two people come through. I see two blond heads at the back of
the crowd and then I see Katie moving forward. She pulls someone’s
hand, the other blond. But it’s a man and not Kassandra.

“
Kassandra is … gone,” Raul
says, his voice resigned. “All I have left is Katie, her new
husband … and these boys.”

I don’t know what to say, but suddenly
there is another hand in mine. I read Lydia’s pure empathy and
speak her words; make them my own, “I’m so, so sorry. I suffer with
you, Raul, though I can’t imagine your pain. May you find your
strength in loving my sons. Please stay and go into the new land
with us. We’ll be your family.” And then I think of something on my
own that I can say. I whisper the God-inspired words of comfort in
Raul’s ear. He nods. It’s as I suspected: he’s already trusted that
truth.