Babylon Terminal Page 14

  “What do you think?” I finally said. “Is this the Promised Land?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Or are we in Hell?”

  “Hell’s dreams maybe,” he said in his typical monotone.

  “You didn’t have to kill them.”

  Again, he gave no reply.

  “They could’ve taken me to Julia.”

  “There is no Promised Land, Monk. There is no Hell.” His long dark hair blew in the wind. “There might not even be a Julia.”

  “She’s here.”

  “Don’t matter.”

  “It’s all that matters.”

  “She’s just one more invisible, merciless god.”

  I wanted to say something like it didn’t have to be this way or it didn’t have to come to this, but we both knew that was a lie. This was exactly how it had to be. Neither of us was ever going back, and we both knew that too. Heaven or Hell, none of that mattered now, neither one had any use for our kind.

  “Say your prayers to her then,” he told me. “Tell her your sins.”

  I held the ax tight. “She is my sin.”

  Shadow slowly turned and looked out at the hills. I followed his gaze.

  More jungle-dwellers, too many to count, dotted the landscape, standing in lines across the hills and in the flatland between us and them. All with the blood along their faces, all carrying weapons, they neither moved nor made a sound. It was as if they’d appeared out of thin air.

  I looked behind us. Even more had formed a line along the edge of the jungle.

  Shadow and I exchanged glances.

  With a long sigh, he shrugged off his coat and let it fall to the ground along with his bow and quiver of arrows. With surprising care, he removed his hat, placed it atop his coat, then pulled back his hair and let it fall behind his shoulders. He noticed one particularly wet patch of blood on his shirt, and dabbed his thumb in it. Without a word, he painted a cross with it that ran from his forehead down along the bridge of his nose. He then tore open his shirt, pulled it off and tossed it into the grass.

  I wondered if the cross meant anything to him or if it was just a mark of war.

  I wondered who his gods were, or if he had any.

  Shadow looked at me and winked. With his tomahawk in one hand and large hunting knife in the other, he began a purposeful walk through the grass toward those along the edge of the hills and forest beyond.

  I stayed where I was.

  They killed him at the edge of the tall grass, beat him to death with their makeshift axes and clubs, stabbed him with their spears and knives, kicked and punched and beat him until he was dead.

  But not before he’d taken out at least a dozen of them.

  Then they came for me.

  I would fight no more. If Julia was a prophet, then surely I was no longer a destroyer but instead a missionary, her disciple in this place of unimaginable wonder.

  Tossing the ax away, I fell to my knees, closed my eyes, and just as Shadow had told me, prayed to my god and confessed to her my sins.

  16

  Julia was wrong. She’d always claimed we couldn’t dream, not here, not now. But I did dream. Like before, I dreamed. I dreamed of this place. I dreamed of her.

  Breaking through the edge of the jungle, she made her way toward me with a slow and languid gait, her hair draping her face, beautiful eyes bright but saddled with black bags, remnants of her journey, I suspected. Clad in a loincloth and bra made of animal skin, she looked as if she hadn’t slept well in some time. She stopped short of me and smiled cautiously.

  It broke what was left of my heart.

  The others were there too, the jungle-dwellers, close and attentive.

  “Julia,” I said softly, wanting to be sure it was really her.

  She opened her arms, and I closed the distance between us in a single step, crashing into her arms and taking her into mine as our cheeks met and I whispered to her how much I loved her, how much I’d missed her.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said, her lips brushing my ear.

  Her voice sounded different, deeper and raspier than normal, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was to take hold of her and feel her against me.

  “Did you really think I’d ever stop looking for you?”

  Julia answered with a kiss. Her lips, chapped and dry, pressed hard against my own. We kissed with a passion and need that, until that moment, I hadn’t been sure I’d ever know again. Her tongue slid into my mouth and met mine, and I held her tighter, my arms pressing her harder and harder against me.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered a moment later. “But there was no other way.”

  We separated enough to look each other in the eye.

  “You know that,” she added, “don’t you?”

  In those beautiful and tired eyes, I saw truth.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I ran a hand along the side of her face. “But how did you survive?”

  “There were times I was sure I wouldn’t. I traveled mostly in the light, and slept in darkness whenever I could. And then, the children.”

  “The ones who surround their village with heads on spikes…”

  “We all do what we feel we must to survive.”

  “You lied to them.”

  “No.”

  “You won’t be back for them. You’re no fairy godmother.”

  “I’m strong, more powerful than you think. My magic always has been.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, so I indicated the others with a slight nod of my head. “Runners?”

  “Those that survived and made it this far, yes.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “Why should there be anything wrong with them?”

  “They way they look, the—the blood from their eyes, it—”

  “The light. It changes you.”

  I thought of the inhabitants of Photas, the City of the Night Sleepers. Horrible, what the light had done to them. “We have to talk,” I said. “Alone.”

  “They’re just watching over me.”

  “You don’t need protection from me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The question hurt but I understood why she needed to ask it. I nodded, held her face in my hands and kissed her again. Hand-in-hand, we strolled along the water’s edge, moving slowly across the beach. “It’s real,” she said. “All of it.”

  “You know others are on their way to this place,” I said quietly. “They’re coming after me and you and everyone else here, and they won’t stop until we’re all terminated and this place is destroyed. You know that, don’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Julia said whimsically, as if she no longer had a care in the world. “Even if they survive the journey, it changes you.”

  “Not them.”

  “You’ll see,” she said, leaning into me and resting her head on my shoulder as we walked along the wet sand. “Everything’s changed.”

  “We can never go back.”

  “Would you want to? Even if you could, would you want to?”

  My head spinning, I tightened my grip on her as we left the sand and walked over an embankment, across a dune and down the other side. There, we found a patch of jungle. It was amazing, unlike anything I’d ever seen. The sounds and smells and sights—the animals—real, living animals not assigned to a dream or never seen unless as food, but alive and thriving—all of it an impossible fantasy come true right before my eyes.

  Within minutes, we stepped out and into a peaceful lagoon encircled by more jungle. The beauty here was even more pronounced than the beach from which we’d come. More coconut palms swayed in the slow, warm breeze, exotic flowers and plants spotted the edges of the jungle, and the same white sand and perfectly clear water glistened in the bright sunshine, the latter teeming with colorful fish unlike any I had ever seen. In the distance, deeper into the jungle, the sound of a waterfall echoed through the lagoon.

  The others were
still with us, tagging along from behind, and every now and then I’d hear them snickering or whispering amongst themselves. But my focus was on Julia. Despite how horrible her trek must have been, she seemed exhausted but unhurt. She bore no wounds except for a bruise or scrape here or there, but nothing significant or worrisome.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  Rather than answer, Julia smiled dreamily and led me into the heart of the lagoon, where the village these runners had made for themselves came into view.

  A series of huts had been constructed twenty or so yards into the jungle, along with another larger building, all of them situated in a cleared open area. Perhaps fifty people in all, nearly every race and color was represented, and while there were a handful of older people, everyone else was young. A group of men walked by us, glancing at me with suspicion but general disinterest as they grabbed spears and headed out into the water, presumably to fish. Others were working at various chores, some boiling rice and other edibles in large pots, leaving me to wonder where these things came from or how they obtained them, while others still lounged about, some in handmade hammocks strung between trees and others lying out on the sandy beach.

  “Doesn’t seem possible this many could’ve made it.”

  “They’ve been lying to all of us, even you.”

  “So this is the Promised Land then?” I asked. “This is paradise?”

  “Some think so,” she said.

  “But not you?”

  Julia shook her head, traced the sand at our feet with her toe. “This is something in between. The Promised Land lies on the other side of the ocean.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was right about this, wasn’t I?”

  “Why don’t they all go there then? Why do so many stay?”

  She smiled. “Staying here doesn’t require faith, only acceptance.”

  “What if there’s nothing beyond the ocean?”

  “You used to tell me there was no ocean.”

  “Why have you stayed then?”

  “Maybe I was waiting for you.” She slung an arm around my shoulder. “Or maybe I’m already gone.”

  “Am I dreaming?” I asked.

  “Not yet, my love…not yet.”

  “So what happens then?”

  “When?”

  “When…if…we reach the Promised Land?”

  Julia licked her lips and stared off into the jungle as if her answer resided there. “Life,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Real life, do you understand? Then, and only then, will we dream. They’ll be our servants, and we’ll live in the light. And in those dreams, our dreams, we’ll be free.”

  I watched as she broke away from me, stepped into the lagoon and pushed off, swimming deeper into the clear water. The others remained behind me, standing guard, and I felt their contempt. I knew what they wanted to do to me, and perhaps I deserved it. Who could say? Maybe none of us were ever truly forgiven for anything.

  Maybe we shouldn’t be.

  Pain slams my skull.

  Something tickled my eyebrow, and I felt it run along the side of my face. I knew it was blood, I didn’t have to check, didn’t have to run my fingers through it or even look. I stood there and let it flow.

  Julia, on her back now, kicked and drifted deeper into the lagoon.

  Are you all right?

  I wanted to drop into the water too. I wanted to swim out to where she was and join her, to put my arms around her and feel her wet skin against mine. But instead, my legs buckled and I fell to my knees as the blood flowed over my eyes, blinding me. A metallic taste ran across my lips, into my mouth, coated my tongue and throat.

  Can you hear me?

  Why was Julia still swimming, I wondered?

  Everything begins to bend and move, and the pain grows even worse.

  Why wasn’t she with me, holding me, helping me, saving me?

  Can you hear me?

  I’d come so far, so goddamn far to find her, to rescue us both.

  Nearby, I heard the waterfall splashing, but all I could think about was the city, with its darkness and rain and violence, and the cramped little apartment Julia and I had once called home. Me, a man of rules, procedure and death. She, a woman existing to inhabit the dreams and nightmares of others. And now we were the others.

  Who inhabited our dreams then? Who haunted our nightmares?

  I opened my eyes and saw the jungle-dwellers closing on me, running through the tall grass, their bloodstained weapons raised above their heads, ready to smash me to pieces as they had Shadow.

  Like so much water running between my fingers and dripping from my hands, I couldn’t hold on to Julia. She slipped away, across that lagoon and back into memory, the paradise replaced with a field of tall grass swaying in a warm ocean wind.

  Savage cries of vengeance and cruelty swirled around me like blood in the water. The water in my dreams…

  The sun turned bloody and red, then slowly black. Rotten. Diseased.

  “What is the price?” I heard Julia ask, her breath hot and sensuous in my ear. “What is the price of our addictions, our dreams?”

  Not darkness, but light.

  17

  Sitting at a dressing table, clad in her flimsy nightgown, Julia looks back over her shoulder at me as the darkness grows stronger. Everything blurs and shakes.

  “Are you all right?”

  Canned laughter coming from a small black-and-white television in the corner absorbs the sound of her voice. Rabbit ear antennas sit atop the television, but the screen is filled with snow, the signal so distorted it’s imperceptible. Odd sounds leak from the television along with the robotic laughter, barely human gibberish filtered through odd, rumbling, machine-like noises. Julia turns away, looks at me through the mirror over the dressing table. “Can you hear me?” she asks bitterly.

  Everything begins to bend and move, and terrible pain fires through my skull.

  The world liquefies, and with a thunderous roar, becomes something else.

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

  * * *

  My body was limp and useless, but I could still raise my head enough to see beyond the bow of the small boat I found myself in. Unsure if I’d crawled onto it or had been placed here, I lay on my stomach in a pool of my own blood, bobbing along the waves. The darkness was almost complete, and a heavy fog wrapped everything else in its mystery. I coughed, tasted blood and bile, blinked the same from my eyes, and squinted into the semi-darkness ahead. Was there something there, or just more night and ocean?

  In the silence of sorrow, I am a forgotten and soulless old man, sitting in my chair, my legs covered with a blanket. I cannot breathe as I should, as I need to, and as I fall away from that little white room I thought so safe, away from Julia and her dressing table and her flimsy nightgown, the symbols and signs are everywhere, flooding back into my mind in a violent rush of madness. And concealed in all this lunacy are the tricks that make me numb to the night, at least for a time, and protect me from the dark, deadly and depraved streets of my home.

  Despite horrific pain, I managed to pull an arm free from beneath me. Reaching for the darkness ahead with broken fingers slick with blood, I tried to touch the form I was so certain I could see wrapped in the slowly drifting mist and fog. Julia, standing on nearby land, or perhaps floating above the ocean waves like the dispossessed deity she’d become.

  “Have you ever listened to the stories about the world of light?” she asked, her voice ghostly and distant. “I mean really listened.”

  I tried to touch her, to extend my arm far enough into the fog to feel her with my fingertips, but she was too far away, grinning at me now as if insane.

  She just kept laughing.

  “Help me,” I gasped, as the pain in my face and head grew worse, and blood erupted from my lips in a thick crimson spray. “Help me…”

  Like a madwoman.

  The fog engulfed her, sw
allowed her whole, and slowly became a rain of blood. My blood, flying and bursting from me with each swing of their horrible clubs, each stab and slash of their spears. These were not waves, but slowly swaying stalks of grass.

  Amidst nearly unimaginable pain and violence, my eyes rolled to white as I felt the last remnants of a dying sun pulse against my bloodied face.

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

  Yes.

  From the alleged safety of my chair, I look into Julia’s eyes. The sadness in her face is gone, and this time, as she sits at her dressing table, she smiles as if she hasn’t a care in the world.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  I think of my mother, Gideon, who is not really my mother, in her abandoned library, and wish for a moment I could throw off this blanket and go to her, rest my head on her shoulder and feel her arms around me as she tells me everything will be all right.

  I think of Julia’s mother, Lenore, who is not really her mother, surrounded by her depravity and dead flies, and wish I could go to her and tell her it’s not her fault, that she never had any choice.

  None of us do.

  I think of my childhood, which was never truly my own, and my puppy, and how I loved him. How I would give anything to feel his cold wet nose against my face just one more time, and forget all about what was waiting for me beyond those memories.

  But these are the dreams of a much younger man. My dreams betray me, as they betray us all, drifting up from the filthy gutters and rain-soaked, darkened alleys, searching for the light, the sun, that which is warm and comforting and safe and certain and clean. Even though the light does horrible things to those in the dark, because truth is its weapon, and it is lethal.