Babylon Terminal Read online

  The moment I saw it, the strange ethereal chanting I’d heard out in the storm resumed, barely audible but unmistakable. It stirred something deep within me, and the closer I got to the room at the end of the hallway the stronger it became. I continued toward it, the heels of my boots clicking along the glass beneath my feet as I went, and soon realized the person sitting at that table was an old man. His back was to me, but I could see he was dressed in moccasin slippers and a silk robe with flannel pajamas beneath. His hair was white as talcum powder and very thin on top, his balding head pale and littered with sizable brown age spots. The room, which was otherwise empty, was constructed entirely of glistening ice.

  With equal parts fascination and fear, I stepped into the room.

  If the old man noticed me, he gave no indication, so I moved around the side of the table for a better look at him. He was just sitting there, his sad eyes staring straight ahead, this impossibly ancient man, face hollow and ravaged with age and wrinkles, his body frail and thin. The chanting grew louder, as did the howling wind beyond the walls of this curious place. I reached out for the old man, cautiously, and when my hand came to rest on his bony shoulder, he tried to slowly turn and look at me, but his neck appeared too stiff to allow it, so his eyes slid toward me instead. He seemed to be struggling to breathe, his aged lungs unable to draw anything but wheezing, erratic gulps of air. His eyes narrowed, as if he were losing sight of me, then his face twisted into a strange expression of disbelief, made all the more powerful and profound because I knew in that moment of absolute madness, my expression was no different.

  The old man was me.

  And I was he.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Julia’s voice, from somewhere close by, echoed through the room and beyond, emanating from deep within this chamber of ice and dreams.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked again, urgently this time. “Can you hear me?”

  As the palace began to quake, and the ice cracked and crumbled all around us, the endless dreams, nightmares and players closed on me, so many faces and scenarios exploding across the walls and ceilings and floors, distorted and ghoulish flashes in a demented funhouse of mirrors. I stumbled over to the front of the table, reached out and cupped the old man’s face—my face—in my hands. I wanted to will away our pain, but all I saw in those sad eyes was confusion and terror.

  The violent rumbling and the din of shattering glass, ice and crystal grew worse, the cries of infinite dreams raining down on us, lethal as any act of violence I had ever committed.

  With a thunderous roar, the world liquefied and became something else.

  Alone in the room, sitting at the table, I looked down at my trembling hands, now old and stained with liver spots, the flesh thin and pale. I could barely draw breath. My vision was weak, and my body fragile and hopelessly decrepit with age. Yet from somewhere within my muddled mind, there came a moment of lucidity, and I understood everything.

  Everything…and nothing at all…

  Gone were the dreams and the crystal palace of mirrors and ice. It was only a nondescript room now, a small black-and-white television sitting atop a rickety table in the corner. Rabbit ear antennas protruded from the top of the television, but the modest screen was fuzzy with wavy lines and crackling snow, the signal so distorted it was imperceptible. Strangely inexact sounds leaked from the television, gibberish that barely sounded human filtered through odd, rumbling, machine-like noises.

  And then, unlike any I’d ever experienced before, came total…utter…silence.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “No,” I whispered, the words slashing across my tongue like razors, “I can’t.”

  14

  My gradual apocalypse in full bloom, the world twisted and surged into a fiery wasteland void of not only the dreams that for so long had defined it, but the merchants of those dreams, the performers within them who existed for the benefit of those in the light. What the hell was I then? What had I ever really been, a ghost, someone else’s vague memory at the outskirts of a nightmare that plagued them in the dark, a whisper in the night, one more flame in a larger, all-encompassing fire raining down on the dark, misty, dirty streets of Babylon?

  Yet it was not fire that fell from the dark skies in my mind at all. It was blood.

  A liquid sky of blood, spraying down onto us like the gruesome rain it was.

  Tangled together, our mouths locked and our nude bodies slick and wet and covered in glistening crimson, we were almost beautiful, Julia and I, clinging to each other like the desperate and troubled lovers we’d always been. No words were spoken. No lies were told, no promises broken. Instead, I closed my eyes and allowed the blood and her touch to lead me to my sorrow…through my sorrow…

  I could still taste her on my lips, on my tongue and the back of my throat as night gave way to the light. Was this really the end of the world? I couldn’t be sure.

  Something warm pulsed against my face. It felt like love, perhaps even safety.

  As my eyes opened, they focused on the greenest, most beautiful grass I’d ever seen. An enormous field of it, slanted downward and continuing along flat ground for far as I could see, the tall beautiful stalks swayed gracefully in a gentle but steady warm wind. Lying at the edge of the field, legs curled up against me and my arms hugging myself tight, I turned my head, and squinting against the bright light, looked behind me.

  In the distance, the mountains from which I’d come.

  I rolled over onto my back, stretching out my arms and legs. The pain was still there but far weaker than before. My eyes blinked, tearing in the brightness and warmth washing down over me from above.

  If we knew the sun, do you think we’d miss it?

  Shielding my eyes with my forearm, I struggled to my feet. My legs were still a bit shaky but much stronger than before. My trench coat hung on me, long and heavy and hot. I reached for my leg. The holster and shotgun were gone. I checked my coat pockets. No revolver. Frantically, I searched the ground nearby but found nothing.

  There’s a place where birds sing in flight, gentle wind blows and the air is fresh and clean.

  My weapons, I—I couldn’t be without my weapons, I—

  You can feel the sun as it warms you…

  I looked to the sky. What was happening? Where the hell was I?

  …and no one is afraid. At least not all the time.

  “Fairy tales,” I muttered.

  No. It’s true.

  “Bedtime stories for the feeble-minded.”

  They stole it from us. And we let them.

  Turning, I staggered down deeper into the field and onto flatter land. The farther I went, the stronger I felt and the faster I moved through the beautiful knee-high grass. The air here was different, crisp and new and filled with the aroma of salt, and as it filled my lungs it made me cough, expelling the phlegm cigarettes had left deep within them.

  Soon, I’d broken into a full run, my coat, filthy and battered and flapping behind me like a cape, and in the sunshine and warmth, I ran like a child, effortlessly and with an abandon I had never before known.

  Free. I felt absolutely free.

  The field seemed to last forever, but so did my stamina and strength as I ran, farther and farther through the grass until I could see in the distance, a cliff where the field ended and turned to sand. I increased speed, galloping through the grass as fast as my legs would carry me.

  When I eventually reached the massive cliff, I slowed to a walk and carefully approached the edge.

  Below lay the most amazing thing I had ever laid eyes on.

  A beach that went on on for miles, the sand a brilliant white, coconut palm trees scattered throughout, and beyond it, something I’d only seen before in movies or read about in books, something I hadn’t believed really existed here. An ocean, with the clearest, cleanest water I’d ever seen, and above it, a bright blue cloudless sky that looked as if it stretched on for all eternity. In awe before this impossibly bea
utiful dream, I dropped and knelt before it like the breathtaking deity it was.

  A heightened sense of awareness grabbed hold of me, and I remembered things. Ghostly voices and images flashed in my mind, reminding me of a life I’d lived before while offering glimpses of another existence that had only just begun. Was one life and the other death? One a waking life of clarity and the other a nightmare draped in troubled sleep? I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. All I knew for sure was that this light, this…sunshine…was different than any I’d ever known or experienced before. A creation of night, I’d never been comfortable outside my city of darkness, but in this light, and amidst such beauty, I didn’t want to sleep, didn’t feel as if I ought to sleep. Instead, I wanted to absorb it directly into me, drink it into my pores and feel its warmth transform me. But what would my metamorphosis entail? What would it transform me into?

  As I watched the water, the waves rolling into the white sandy shore, I wondered if perhaps it had already happened and I was only now becoming aware of it. Emotions welled in me, and I wanted to weep, to kneel there on the edge of that cliff in the presence of these things I had for so long convinced myself were myths and cry like a child. But no tears came. Instead, I tilted back my head and let the warm breeze blow across my face and through my hair.

  In time, I stood up and made my way carefully down the side of the cliffs to the beach below. The long white sands stretched into the sun, and the palm trees dotting the beach continued into the jungle beyond.

  I’d begun to sweat profusely in the heat, so I pulled off my coat and let it drop to the sand, then rolled up my sleeves and looked around.

  That’s when I saw them, watching me from the edge of the jungle.

  Instinctively, I reached for weapons that were no longer there. Maybe I wasn’t changed after all. I’d know soon enough. So would they.

  I counted six of them. They remained where they were, silent and unmoving, until I took a few steps toward them. Then they emerged from the jungle slowly but purposefully, this small and primitive-looking band of barefoot, bare-chested men with sinewy builds. Clad only in crude loincloths of battered animal hide, their hair was unkempt, their skin tanned a deep brown, and swaths of dark crimson streaks stained their faces like war paint, running from the bottoms of their eyes, across their cheeks and down across their chins. In their hands they carried makeshift clubs fashioned from stone, wood or bone. Even in this new world, the violence was never far, always lingering in the shadows, waiting for its chance. I didn’t fear it—I never had—it was my game, and much as I no longer wanted to play, I was ready if need be. More ready than any of them, in fact, and I could only hope they realized that.

  On the sand, they formed a single line across from me, but none of them spoke a word. They simply stared at me, as if trying to determine the level of threat I represented, so I maintained as relaxed a posture as possible, my expression neutral.

  At this closer angle, I realized it wasn’t red paint on their faces, but dried blood that had leaked from their eyes. More Night Sleepers, living in this sunshine and bright light of what I was sure they believed could only be their salvation.

  Horrific, what the light did to them.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  They said nothing.

  “I’m looking for Julia. My wife, Julia, I’m looking for her. Do you understand?”

  One of them, a young man with wild and bushy dark hair barely contained by a headband of torn and faded cloth, glanced down at my coat, then back at me, his eyes glassy, intense but distant and ringed with crusted blood.

  After a moment, he exchanged uncertain glances with the others.

  “No weapons.” I opened my hands and held out my arms to prove I wasn’t concealing anything. “I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

  Had I wanted to, I could’ve disarmed one, then likely killed the rest. I could’ve turned this beautiful beach into a slaughterhouse before they even knew what hit them. I could’ve forced them to take me to Julia. I could’ve brought them so much pain they’d beg me for death. But at that point, unless my hand was forced, I wanted no part of violence anymore.

  With the mesmerizing sound of ocean gently lapping nearby shore, I recalled the dream Julia said I could not have had, that I didn’t have. The dream of the beach, the people peering out at me from the jungle, all of it happening exactly as it had in my mind all those days ago. And as this realization took hold, I prepared myself for Julia’s emergence from the jungle.

  Instead, something else appeared from the cliffs behind me, surging through the air with a strange audible whine before slamming into the side of the first man’s neck and exploding out the other side.

  His eyes widened in disbelief and shock as he dropped his club and brought his hands to this throat. An arrow had been shot through his neck and was lodged there, glistening with blood in the brilliant sunshine.

  15

  I blinked the blood from my eyes, brought a hand to my face and wiped the rest away as the man collapsed to the sand and the others scattered, unsure of what was happening.

  One of them came at me. I grabbed his hand, bent it at the wrist and gave it a savage twist, pulling him into me until I could get my other arm around his throat and face him outward, toward the cliffs. Using him as a shield, more arrows rained down from above. One, and then another, and then another still, being shot in rapid-fire succession.

  Another man was struck in the center of his chest. He staggered back into the surf, then fell into the shallow ocean at the water’s edge.

  As I choked the man I had a hold of into unconsciousness, I squinted through the sun at the cliffs above, but the shooter was already gone, already on the move toward the beach and jungle. I knew of only one person who used a bow, and if I was right, we were all dead. I let the man go, laying him down in the sand.

  The other three men had run back into the jungle, perhaps for cover, perhaps to find and bring back more of their kind.

  I searched the immediate area and found a crude ax made of stone and bone one of them had dropped. Snatching it up, I tested the weight and action with a few quick swings, and then took off along the waterline in a low crouch, watching the jungle as best I could until I’d reached a cluster of boulders in the shallow water.

  Sliding behind them, I leaned back against the nearest one until I’d caught my breath. My hand was covered in blood, so I bent down and dipped it in the ocean. The water was cool but not cold. It washed me clean. The blood coiled and drifted away on the tide, turning and twisting like the living thing it was.

  I peered around the side of the rocks. But for the three bodies farther down the beach, the sand was empty. I snuck out, keeping low, and hurried between the boulders, across a small section of sand and into the jungle, continuing on despite having no idea where I was headed. Ignoring the branches and leaves tearing at me as I went, I increased speed, running harder and deeper into the lush foliage, bloody visions exploding through my shredded mind as I went.

  After several minutes I emerged from the thick jungle and found myself on the side of a hill, a large area of grassy land before me with a forest beyond. There seemed no sign of human life here, no hint that this land was tamed or inhabited by anyone.

  But there were others, and they were near. I could feel them.

  I could also feel Shadow. He was watching me.

  Dropping down, I spun and slowly took in the panorama. The incessant brightness made it difficult to see any great distance, and everything here was green and distracting. Blinking and rubbing at my eyes, I managed to gain my bearings, then tried to determine which direction Shadow would come from.

  Had he traversed the side of the cliffs then cut directly into the jungle, as I suspected, he was likely either behind me or to my left. Either way, he’d still be in the jungle and not yet to the grassy hills. The others had likely continued on in the direction I was now facing, though I saw no trace of them. Still, the grass beyond the slope w
here I was crouched was even higher—roughly to my waist—so it could’ve easily concealed them had they chosen to hide there.

  I waited. I watched.

  One of the jungle-dwellers appeared near the bottom of the slope. Standing slowly, he emerged from the grass. Facing the section of jungle to my left, he opened wide his arms, as if in welcome, then tilted his head back and stared at the sun.

  An arrow appeared, suddenly, in his upper chest. He stood, unmoving, arms still out wide. Another missile struck an inch or so next to the first, and this time the man fell back, straight as a board, swallowed by the swaying grass.

  The last two were up and running, exploding out of the grass and charging toward the jungle from which the arrows had come. Their brother had sacrificed himself to draw out the shooter, and fast and hard as they were running, I knew they’d never make it.

  One was down seconds later, an arrow in his eye that left him spinning and wailing before dropping into the tall grass and going quiet. The second, and last of the band that had initially approached me, continued the charge, swinging a club over his head and releasing a primal scream even when Shadow stepped from the jungle to show himself.

  I stood up, watched.

  Still in his trench coat, Shadow carefully slung his bow around his shoulder and onto his back, then pulled a tomahawk from his belt and stood his ground, waiting for the man to reach him. When he did, he easily sidestepped him and brought the tomahawk around and down into the center of the man’s back. As he fell, Shadow went with him, landing on his knees only to yank the blade free, then slam it down again, this time into the back of the man’s skull.

  After a moment, he stood up, wiped the blade on the side of his coat, then slid the tomahawk back into his belt. He straightened his hat so the brim would shield the sun and better hide his dark eyes. Then he started toward me.

  I stayed where I was, the ax held down by my side.

  When he was within a few feet of me, he stopped. We stared at each other a while. Neither of us spoke. The wind picked up, blowing in off the nearby ocean and sending the tall grass swaying back and forth. Shadow was spattered with blood but didn’t seem to mind. Like me, he’d been through an unimaginable ordeal to get here, and it showed, but he was still the same stone-cold killer he’d always been. He hadn’t come through pristine, but nothing ever fazed Shadow. Nothing ever would.