The Day of the Nefilim (28 page)

Sahrin was in a bad way. A bullet had mangled her shoulder, and she was so covered in blood that it was impossible to tell whether she had other injuries as well.

Bark felt as though he hadn’t slept in days. He collapsed in a corner, and the scene in front of him faded into blackness as he fell into a fitful sleep. Almost immediately, he found himself in the middle of a dream.

Colors swirled around him like a whirlpool. He feared for a moment that he was about to be carried away somewhere. Just as his fear was about to subside, the kaleidoscope shattered with a noise that reverberated through his mind. Its pieces fell away like a collapsing hillside.

He was standing on a flat plain, surrounded by a mass of people that reached to the horizon in every direction. They were crowded together so tightly that it would have been difficult for any of them to move, but none of them were trying. They were standing still, as though waiting patiently for something to arrive or something to happen. The air was heavy, boiling with an expectancy heated by a sun that burned high in the clear sky.

Not far from where Bark stood, a pyramid rose out of the crowd, towering above everything around it. It emanated a sense of mystery, something slow and heavy that caused Bark’s head to throb as the waves resonated inside him. He felt drawn to it, and began pushing his way through the crowd. They didn’t resist him, but just stood still as though they were incapable of even registering his presence. They swayed like trees as he forced his way through them, the call of the pyramid urging him on.

Finally, he was at the base of the pyramid. It was large, much taller now than it had seemed before. He ran along the length of one of its sides. The crowd made way for him now, clearing a path as if to encourage him now that he was close to his goal.

At the corner of the pyramid, he came to an area enclosed by a stone wall. He found an opening in it and looked down a flight of steps into a sunken courtyard. The sun burned his skin. A woman in a flowing gown stood in the middle of the courtyard. She had one hand on the head of a large animal standing beside her. Both of them, the woman and the animal, were looking up at Bark.

In the next instant, he was standing beside them. The woman took his hand.

“Come with me, Bark. I want to show you something.” The animal nuzzled his other hand and licked his fingers with a warm, rough tongue.

Together they led Bark to an opening in the base of the pyramid, and stood aside as he entered. It smelled of dust, and age, and neglect. When Bark became accustomed to the meager light coming from the doorway, he saw that he was not alone. There were a dozen or so people lounging around on the dirty floor. In front of each of them, a screen flickered dully, showing a listless gray static that seemed entirely at home in these surroundings. The place smelled like a urinal.

“What is this place? Who are these people?” he asked.

The woman didn’t answer. One of the figures on the floor looked up at him and spoke.

“You must come here very quickly; as soon as you can. There is no time to waste. It is very important. Bad things will befall us all if you don’t come.”

Bark was confused, and in his dream state, the confusion was amplified, so that it became vague and sharp and relentless, all at the same time. “Come where?” he asked.

“To save us all, and to save yourself,” said the figure.

“But from what?”

“From those who seek to impose a new order. From the future.”

“A lot of things seem to need saving. Where are you?”

“At the center.”

The center… Bark thought of the place underground where the mutants had been attacked. “Are you underground? Where the mutants live?”

“No,” the figure said. “The mountain!”

Bark didn’t know anything about any mountain. Before he could ask what the figure meant, he was outside again. The woman was beside him again. The pyramid was gone, and where it had been a hill now stood, looming over them, its peak hidden among clouds that now filled the sky.

“What’s this?” he asked. “Is this the mountain?” The animal circled him, it head lowered towards his feet.

“A mountain like the one you must go to,” replied the woman.

“Oh. I see.”

“No, you don’t. But when you wake up, ask your friends.”

“You mean this isn’t a dream?”

The woman laughed lightly. “Of course not,” and then as though the two statements were connected, “…look around you.”

Bark looked. Through the clouds, he could see the mountain erupting, spewing clouds of ash that spread out and settled over the surrounding plain.

Where before the plain had been covered with people, it was now covered for as far as he could see with bodies. They had been dead for a long time. Flesh gray and slippery with decay fell from bones into a thick soup of putrefying liquid, which Bark, suddenly horrified, realized he was standing up to his knees in. His mind reeled. This had to be a dream, despite what the woman had said. The smell of rotting flesh was so strong that it stung his eyes. He felt his throat convulsing. The mass of bodies disappeared over the horizon in every direction, as though there could be not a speck of land anywhere that was not covered by it.

He spun around towards the woman, but she was gone. He looked for the mountain that had been the hill that had been the pyramid, somehow expecting to find comfort in its presence, but it too was gone. Then he threw his head back and howled, so loudly that he thought he would tear something in his throat, and he hoped that the noise and the agony and the stench would wake him, but when he lowered his eyes from the dark clouds above him, nothing had changed except that a warm sickly rain had started to fall.

The slime in which he stood had become warmer as well, but it was the heat of decay, and it made his own flesh, the only living matter in the universe, shriek and shrink, and try to crawl away from the sensation.

A dark shape appeared on the horizon. It was heading towards him, growing in size as it came gliding across the sea of bodies.

Then the object was much nearer. It was his own ship. Its boards were broken, and its hull rotten and wet with the same dark decay that ravaged the bodies through which it sailed, as though they were the waves of a dark ocean.

There was no one on board. It was a ghost ship, piloted by no one, and propelled by a wind that did not exist. Even if there had been a wind, it could have had no effect, for the sails were rotten rags hanging from the masts.

As Bark watched the apparition move past him, the memory of his ship – the real ship, the one that was lying in pieces on the ice – rose in his mind. The realization caught him like a trap, and he was instantly thrown out of the vision as though some god had found him watching something he should not have seen…

His eyes sprang open. He sat up with a start. His skin was cold with sweat, and his heart was pounding. For a few seconds, the reek of the sea of bodies lingered in his senses. Reina and Thead were leaning over him.

“What is it?”

Bark quickly overcame his confusion. “A dream, that’s all. Nothing. It was nothing.”

“A bad one, by the sound of it.” Reina touched his arm. “We’ve been through the mill, haven’t we?”

“We certainly have,” said Thead.

Reina turned and looked at Thead blankly, without saying anything. She shared Sahrin’s distrust of him. She didn’t have anything concrete to base her feeling on, but she had felt it, nevertheless.

Bark sat up. “Do either of you know anything about a mountain?”

“I was held prisoner inside a mountain,” said Thead. “It was hollow, and they had built an entire city inside it. There were thousands of people there. Scientists, soldiers, and workers. It was impressive.”

“Will Anak or Nibat know where it is?”

“I should think so. It’s the center of the UN operations. Why?”

Bark turned towards the pilots. “Because that is where we are going.”

“No, no,” stammered Thead, suddenly worried. “You don’t want to do that.”

But no one was listening to him.

* * *

THE PAST FEW DAYS had been full of heady excitement. Everything had gone according to plan; the Secretary-General couldn’t remember a time when he had enjoyed life so much.

With his new emergency powers, he had been able to settle many old scores, and he had found it wonderfully amusing to see those who feared that they might be on his list run for cover. He’d never suspected that there would be so many of them. Of course, once they ran, he had them hunted down, just to see what they had been hiding.

But more importantly, the Nefilim had been contained, and split into factions. For a race with their level of technology, they had
no
idea of tactics.

And the bulk of the Earth’s population, confused by the photon belt and terrified of the vessels that had appeared above the world’s cities when the light had returned, had been only too happy to believe what they were told. Apart from which, most of them were getting hungry. There had been those who hadn’t played along, of course, but the process of rounding up the dissidents and troublemakers was going smoothly.

But this morning, things had taken a turn for the worse. The Secretary-General had been awakened early by reports of problems.

A delegation of nervous generals came into his office while he had been in his daily meeting with the Nefilim leader. There were problems with the grid.

Sections of it were falling apart, the generals said, as though it was being distorted by some influence. It was almost as though it was unraveling, said the squat, chain-smoking general Nguyen, who had distinguished himself a few years ago by subduing the Siberian region, and was now proving his worth in the southern parts of what had once been the United States.

The Secretary-General folded his hands behind his head and narrowed his eyes into tight, untrusting slits. That the grid should function properly was vital to his plans. He asked the generals what had been going on.

Fliers had been crashing, and some of the new equipment, including weaponry, was failing, they said. It hadn’t been widespread at first, so initially it had been thought that the equipment was at fault, but in the last few hours there had been more crashes, and the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. It was obvious now that the cause of the problems was the grid itself. The Nefilim scientists had confirmed it.

“But
why
is it the grid?” hissed the Secretary-General, looking sideways at the Nefilim and wondering darkly whether there might not be some treachery afoot.

‘
Our old enemies,’
the alien thought.
‘They’ve been a problem for us since we created them. It is the mutants and their stream. You have not been successful at stopping the seed crystals being put in place, and now it is growing, pushing our own grid aside.’

“But we only found out about the fucking thing by accident!” the Secretary-General raged, spraying the alien with spit. “And if we hadn’t tortured a few prisoners we took during the raid on their underground shit hole, we still wouldn’t know about it!”

The Nefilim, who thought that the Secretary-General was a particularly disgusting specimen, even for a human, said nothing, and kept its thoughts to itself.

“You mean their system is more powerful than yours?” the Secretary-General added, belatedly realizing the implications of what the alien had said.

“The mutant stream grows.” The alien was using its voice. “It is its nature, it is like a living thing. Our grid needs control. Theirs grows.”

The Secretary-General dismissed the generals, sending them back to their commands. He sent the Nefilim away as well. The alien gave him the creeps, with its dry leathery skin, its black eyes and gaunt features, and the way it could read your mind and put its own thoughts into yours.
But,
he consoled himself,
the Nefilim haven’t been so clever after all. Our satellites had been ready for the invasion fleet from their pox-ridden planet.

He wondered how the Nefilim would react to the visit they would be getting in the near future. When they saw a fleet of their own ships coming towards their planet, of course they wouldn’t suspect anything, especially when some of our Nefilim contact them and tell them that they’re coming home.
And then we’ll show the boneheads how to organize an invasion,
he laughed to himself.

His smile faded. He was getting ahead of himself. These problems were serious. With the old technology useless because of the belt, the Nefilim grid was essential. The mutant thing would have to be destroyed. The mutants would have to be destroyed. Every last one of them.

He leaned as far towards to the intercom as his bulk would allow him. “Get me the Vice-Secretary.”

There was a slight pause, then “Which one – which Vice-Secretary do you want, Secretary-General?”

A moist smile curled his lips. Which one, indeed? They were both so dedicated, and so sweet. “Either one,” he replied, his mood briefly elevated by recollections of warm flesh.

When the call came through a few minutes later, it was Theo. He looked tired.

“Good morning, Vice-Secretary,” the Secretary-General crooned.

“Good afternoon, Secretary-General.”

“How are things going, Theo?”

The Vice-Secretary paused and looked at the screen for a second. “Well enough. There was some resistance, but it’s being… what…?” – he smiled off camera – “yes… neutralized. As we speak.” There was laughter from somewhere beside him.

“Very good. Do whatever is necessary. And the camps?”

“Filling up, Secretary-General. The trains have been running around the clock. The resettlement areas are filling up, but the prison camps are already overcrowded.”