Doria Falls Read online

  Suddenly, a hand grabbed my ankle and I jerked away from the grasping fingers.

  “Oliver, what are you doing?”

  The young voice was immediately recognizable and I turned back to see my friend crouched behind me—Logan.

  “I’m—I’m hiding,” I replied.

  “Not very good. I found you.”

  “I wasn’t hiding from you. I was hiding from my mother.”

  “I heard yells and screams.” Logan tried to look past me, but I blocked his view as much as I could with my body.

  “There was a fight.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I dunno. Kafka and someone.”

  “This fire stinks. And it’s hurting my eyes. Wanna get outta here?” Logan turned and scooted on the crunchy coals. “You coming?”

  “Yeah,” I said and scooted after him. “Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in, ah, forever.” I remembered Cornelius mentioning that his son had died unexpectedly in the city they’d traveled to and I knew that had meant that he wasn’t coming home. Logan was gone somewhere and I wouldn’t be able to see my friend again—like Jeremy’s dad, he was gone, too. Dead.

  “My father took me to this city with castles like the sun and towers so high I couldn’t see the tops. It was bigger than big. It was the biggest! He tried to leave me with a family, his friends, but the joke’s on him—I followed him home.”

  “Yeah…” I said as we climbed out of the fireplace into an empty study bright with large windows and a silver chandelier of elaborately placed floating orbs. “Good one.”

  We both coughed as smoke crept into the room. It slithered through the air and seeped out the black-glass framed window. There was no glass in the window, just the framing—black glass cubes made to look like shiny rocks.

  My eyes and nose stung, so I made my way for the heavy wooden door. Logan followed.

  I didn’t hear Mom calling for me any longer. She may have given up looking for me entirely, knowing I’d find my way back to our quarters eventually. My stomach growled. Eventually would more likely be soon.

  “Where you going now?” Logan asked as I heaved the giant door open. The hinges groaned as I used all my strength just to open it enough to slip through.

  “Back home,” I said. “I don’t want my mother to send Father after me.”

  “Luckily, my father doesn’t even know to look for me.”

  “Why don’t you come back with me?”

  “That’ll just get me in trouble. I’m not supposed to be here, remember?”

  “So what are you gonna do?” I asked, propping the door open with my back.

  Logan squeezed past me instead of holding the door for himself. But I didn’t mind; I felt bad for him and I couldn’t even tell him why.

  “I dunno. I’ll hide out. Get by. I’m a Lorne;” he said proudly. “I can take care of myself.”

  I never knew Logan’s mother, I just knew that she was gone. Besides the nursemaids, his father was all he had.

  I pushed off the door to let it close with a thunderous bang that echoed down the hallway. A line of open windows across the way showed the deep orange horizon of an evening’s arrival. Twinkling starlight embedded into the cavernous ceiling lit the hallway nearly as much as the orb chandeliers in the rooms.

  “How will you get food?” I asked.

  “I’ll find some. I can sneak in and out of the kitchen like a cat.”

  “What if I bring you some after supper?”

  “That would be good. I’m not a very good cat.”

  “I know,” I said with a smile. “You’re a cat with four left paws.”

  Logan threw a punch at my shoulder, but missed. He was slow and awkward, and I felt bad for him. I landed a fist on the middle of his back.

  “That’s why I’ll bring you food. Where you gonna be?”

  “I’ll call to you,” he said and I knew I’d be able to find him easily as long as no one else was listening in. With a mischievous wave, Logan scampered down the hallway and into the shadows.

  4

  Contact

  “Wake up!” Jeremy slapped me on the chest.

  My eyes jerked open expecting another attack. Desiree was already awake, looking at me.

  “Damn, Oliver. You sleep like the dead,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, ripped out of my dream so fast it took me a moment to remember where my real life had left off.

  “Look.” Jeremy pointed at the windshield, out at a post-apocalyptic cityscape beyond.

  We were on one of the major freeways leading into Provex City, the one I had driven with Mr. Gordon before when we came searching for Desiree. We were on the freeway, surrounded by other hover cars—all stopped—with people all around us exiting their cars, looking lost, scared, and dumbfounded. From cars abandoned behind us, more people walked past our stranded car. Mr. Gordon had gone as far as he could go. There was only a sea of useless cars in front of us. This was not rush-hour traffic. This freeway was completely shut down.

  Beyond the rows and rows of cars before us extended a precarious braid of twisted metal high into the air. And past the metal braid laid what was left of a monorail train, on its side and held off the ground by riding on the shoulders of unsuspecting cars. Smoke plumed in the wake of the carnage.

  “This is bad,” Jeremy said solemnly.

  “It’s time to proceed on foot,” Mr. Gordon said and opened his driver’s side door.

  “How far are we going?” Richard asked.

  “Farther than I had planned to go on foot, but what other option do we have?”

  “We can head home,” Richard said.

  “Not one of our options,” Mr. Gordon said.

  “And why is that?” Richard slammed his door upon getting out of the car.

  “Because I can’t go home,” I said. Richard was standing alone by this point; the rest of us gathered around Mr. Gordon. “You can. You can look after Mom and tell her we’re safe.”

  “This is not safe,” Richard said throwing his arms up to gesture at all the chaos surrounding us. “This is a warzone.”

  “And we are at war,” Mr. Gordon said. “Look around you, Richard. This is not an act of God. This is an act of war. And unfortunately, Oliver is a key player in this war. He can’t go home because he has created an invisible barrier for himself. There is nothing you or I or he can do about it now. You just have to accept it ‘as is’ and continue with us or go home.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “Ask for this? I know. And I wouldn’t fault you for leaving now. Go home to your wife. Let Helen know her boys are safe. Tell her they are with Oliver’s father and that we can make arrangements for her when I can guarantee safe passage, not before. Nicholae went to great lengths to keep her and the boys safe and it would put everyone in great jeopardy to reunite them now.”

  “Reunite them…” Richard looked crestfallen. He looked like he wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t escape his tongue.

  I didn’t know what to say, either. I thought my world was turned upside down, but Richard was completely blindsided, which I’m sure took him immediately back to his accident.

  “I can take you home,” Mr. Gordon said softly, which sounded eerily peaceful amongst all the wreckage. “I can help you forget, you and Helen if you prefer—and we can reintroduce ourselves to each other at a future time, when hopefully this battle is behind us.”

  Richard looked down, out at the bleak and crackling horizon, and then back at each of us. Finally he spoke. “How do I know that hasn’t happened already, that I couldn’t handle it and opted out before? How do I know next time will be any better? I can’t stand to think I’ve been confronted with this ultimatum before—and—and I chose not to remember.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “But how do I know that! How can you guarantee me that?” Richard was trying his very best to remain strong, but soon succumbed to inevitable tears.

  “You just have to trust
me,” Mr. Gordon said. “I brought you to your boys. They’re right here in front of you. I haven’t played you false, and I won’t. You have my word.”

  Richard put a fist to his mouth and sucked in a deep breath.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “We’re good. Really.”

  “I do, Oliver.”

  Desiree stepped forward and extended a hand. Richard joined the rest of us, gave Desiree’s hand a quick squeeze, and let it go.

  “Thank you,” he said and put an arm around Jeremy’s shoulder.

  “It’s going to be all right,” Jeremy said.

  “I know.”

  Mr. Gordon led the way through the exodus of people abandoning their cars. Most of the people nearby were drawn to the train wreckage a quarter mile ahead. We waded past empty cars, some with doors left wide open, causing the door-ajar alarm to beep wildly until the battery finally died. Fallen cups, wrappers, blankets, action figures, and stuffed animals littered the ground. There seemed to be no time to pick up anything except the children refusing to walk in a panic. I felt the small stuffed Frolics head sticking out of my front pocket to make sure he was still with me. The tablet made my lower back stiff, and again, the discomfort reminded me that I hadn’t lost it or left it behind.

  As the train carcass drew closer in sight, I started to see how its mangled guts had spilled onto the crushed cars beneath it and surrounding concrete. Several of the train cars were on fire, which had spread to the actual cars supporting them. There were no emergency vehicles nearby. I could hear far-off sirens, but who knew where they were headed. All around the wreckage were people bloody and crying, burned and unconscious, trapped and screaming. Where train cars ended and hover cars began in some spots was almost undistinguishable. There were people helping the victims, but there were many victims beyond help. This was a warzone.

  Everyone in the group jumped at an explosion by the front train car, raining flaming projectiles on nearby pedestrians.

  “What can we do?” Desiree asked.

  “We can keep moving,” Mr. Gordon said, his face aglow from the pockets of fire. “We can help these people by continuing onward and do what we can to stop this from happening again.”

  “What are the odds of an earthquake like this happening again anytime soon?” Jeremy asked.

  “This wasn’t a random event…” Before Mr. Gordon had finished his sentence, all the fires from the train and cars dwindled and died at once. The cries, screams, shouts from everyone scurrying to help and be helped seemed to multiply by ten without the crackling flames.

  We crossed a middle-aged man smeared with blood and burn blisters lying on the concrete. His right arm was twisted behind his back in a grotesque fashion. With one eye swollen shut, he gazed up at us with his one good eye, fearful and uncertain. His lips moved, but no audible sound escaped them.

  Mr. Gordon bent down and put an ear to the man’s blood-crusted lips. After a few moments, Mr. Gordon pulled his head away and said, “Let me help you up, my friend.”

  He rolled the man’s body to one side, freeing his trapped arm, and pulled it straight. The man cringed and closed his sole functioning eye, but only for a second. Mr. Gordon continued to pull the man’s arm like he wanted him to stand up—and then the man did.

  “How do you feel?” Mr. Gordon asked. He placed a palm on the man’s swollen shut eye, pressed harder than what looked comfortable, and took it away to reveal a perfectly healthy eye underneath.

  “I feel—I feel good, I think…” The man could barely speak.

  He looked at each of us like we were the ghosts of long-dead relatives coming to take him to the next life. It was probably the same look I had on my face when I witnessed Mr. Gordon heal himself for the first time in his classroom: The bloody scissors with no wound left to show where the blood had come from.

  “Who are you?” the man asked.

  “Just a friend. A traveler. Helping another friend in need,” Mr. Gordon said. “Which is exactly what I expect from you. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” the man simply answered. He turned awkwardly, obviously still dazed, and walked purposefully toward the highest concentration of screaming.

  “He will be our extension of helping hands while we continue into the city,” Mr. Gordon said. “He won’t even know where his newfound knowledge came from, but he’ll be able to singlehandedly help a lot of people.”

  “And the fires?” Jeremy asked.

  “That gives him a greater chance to reach more people. It was the least I could do.”

  “Why can’t you just heal everyone in the area at one time?” I asked.

  “Like I’ve told you before, I can do quite a bit, but I still have my limitations.”

  “I thought limitations were only an illusion.”

  “They are, but if any part of you believes the illusion, then the illusion becomes real.” Mr. Gordon stepped over the pool of blood left behind from the once fallen man and continued to guide us through the chaos.

  We marched slowly down the jammed freeway. Once the wreckage of the monorail train was far behind us, the freeway became a graveyard of forsaken cars. There were less people on the road, less life, just metal boxes of emptiness.

  Desiree never left my side and rarely let go of my hand. Much of the time she squeezed more than was comfortable. I thought her arm would fatigue, but she kept right on squeezing. Several times I saw her shake her head like she was checking for a headache or fighting drowsiness. However, I had a strong feeling of what it really meant. Reid had returned and Desiree was fighting with her or the imagery of her captivity. I massaged the back of her hand with my thumb to show her that I was still here, that she wasn’t alone. She looked up at me and smiled, and I knew the storm had passed for now.

  We traveled as a silent band of explorers. There was no small talk, no chit-chat, only the focus of pushing forward through the pieces that remained of Provex City and beyond. The glistening buildings were no longer whole but stood like a platoon of undead soldiers with gaping holes in their bodies. About half of the buildings were still fully illuminated, but many of them flickered. The other half were snuffed out entirely. The streets were littered with debris from the falling heavens and more people trying to make sense of it all. Surprisingly, no building had fallen, but there were plenty standing precariously on their foundations.

  “I can’t believe this,” Desiree said. “We were just here yesterday and everything was fine.”

  And it was still hard to believe it had been less than 24 hours since rescuing Desiree from the clutches of her ravenous mirror—and escaping mine for that matter.

  “Great change usually happens in a moment—the moment where there is no turning back,” Mr. Gordon said.

  “Back home, there seemed to be no damage,” Richard said. “Just another earthquake that we barely even notice anymore. Daniel, you said there may be more coming. Well, I hope this was the big one.”

  “Me, too,” Desiree said.

  Mr. Gordon didn’t answer. Like always, he knew more than he was telling us. This wasn’t a random event? Accidents don’t just happen? The Lornes—specifically Kafka Lorne—was behind this somehow. I knew it, but I didn’t know how.

  Kafka couldn’t have the power to create earthquakes, could he? That would be too much. I’d seen a lot of impossible things, but this was something I couldn’t wrap my mind around. He couldn’t hold that much power over so many people. I was sure of it. I was sure. I was…

  We walked along the base of a canyon with unsteady walls. Not much debris still fell, but every so often we’d be jolted to a more anxious level of awareness with the sound of another crash somewhere in our vicinity. All of the emergency vehicles seemed to be in the city, trying to restore some sense of order here first. The peacekeepers were everywhere now, rushing into buildings to recover whomever they could find and dragging bodies out of the street. On the sidewalks lay rows and rows of bodies covered with white sheets—oddly white—with no stain
s from bodily fluids seeping through. Gazing upon those sheets was far better than on the unattended bodies we passed in the street, lying on the ground in unnatural contortions and ensnared within mangled cars.

  From the freeway until now, we had been walking for hours without stopping. The brisk pace of our travel and the emergence of the morning sun at our backs warmed me up. It would be an official day of recovery, and at least the weather would be in everyone’s favor. However, our pace had slowed in the last hour, so unless we were close, we’d have to break soon or I’d be carrying Desiree, and I had real reservations with how long I could manage that. Her weariness showed with how her steps hit the pavement in sporadic successions, but she didn’t complain. She marched on like a real soldier.

  A familiar sight caught my eye, and I turned to see the coffee shop I’d visited several times before, Café Ynez, once with Desiree and once with Mr. Gordon—each time meeting up with Darius Fitz.

  The shop was dark, all the storefront windows shattered, and everything inside trashed. The café had already been looted, destroyed, and left for dead, much like the rest of the city. It looked empty now, except for a few stray pets and birds, which was the best luck we could ask for.

  I tapped Mr. Gordon on the shoulder “Should we take a five-minute break?”

  “Yes,” Jeremy sighed. “I didn’t want to be the one to say something, but I’m starving.”

  “My feet are killing me,” Desiree said.

  Richard didn’t say anything, but leaned against what was left of the outdoor patio railing, exhaling long and heavy breaths.

  Mr. Gordon nodded and led the way into the dark and dirty store. Jeremy and Richard grabbed what was left of the boxed treats, Desiree and I went behind the counter, and Mr. Gordon disappeared into the back storage room.

  The coffeemakers and espresso machines didn’t work, but we found premade iced tea and cartons of juice that would be perfectly fine at room temperature. All the bottled water seemed to be gone, but the faucets still worked, so I filled a few large plastic cups.