Nemesis: Book Four Read online

  That little bit actually separated Wren from the rest. He didn't need to understand anything; he heard the words on the television and knew they were all complete bullshit. Speculation of a nuclear meltdown in Savannah—but the President was supposed to speak on it this morning, to give everyone some clarity on the subject. Wren didn't need to be a political genius to understand the talking points were already disseminated to the networks; all of them said the same things.

  The group had bought two motel rooms at some local mom and pop place. They paid cash and in the night moved Michael's sleeping body into Wren's room. They all huddled in his room now, waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for sleep to mercifully take them away, waiting for Michael to wake up, waiting for this to be over. They all waited for something, though none of them spoke about it. Only the television ruled over their silence, a small thing that looked like it had been bought in the nineties.

  "They're lying," Rita said. "Just blatantly lying to everyone."

  She had announced this fact three times already. Wren didn't respond, and neither did anyone else. He didn't know what to say, and truly didn't know why it amazed her so much.

  He did look over at her for a second. She showered when they first arrived, in her and Glen's room, so she looked a lot better than when they found her. The bruises had faded some, for both her and Julie. Wren hadn't thought much about other people over the past decade. Instead, he sat in his trailer and thought about how he would love to be like Rita and Glenn. Love to be married and live in a normal house without a huge ape wrestling him to the ground every single day.

  And now he looked at her, and wondered what in the hell he had been thinking.

  This woman… was an idiot. He didn't know any other way to say it, and truly, he didn't like saying it. Glen was okay. He had lost a lot of the strength that pulled them through back in Grayson, but he held up long enough to find Michael and his own son. Rita? Wren's goddamn son was still unconscious, and if Wren were to pull his eyes open, he would see nothing but white orbs looking back at him. Yet she was concerned about the lies on the television, as if that affected any of them at all. The pretty woman sitting behind the desk and reading a teleprompter could say whatever the fuck she wanted; it wouldn’t bring Michael back. It wouldn’t bring Rita's son back either, who might be just a shade more here than Wren's.

  Is that fair? Linda said.

  Probably not. The woman, as well as the rest of them, had been through a tragedy none ever expected to experience, all in the course of a few days, but Wren wasn't sitting here concerned with the bimbo on the television. He was holding it together.

  Your hatred of her isn't going to bring Michael back to you, either, Linda said.

  And that shut him up.

  "I think we should call the police," Rita said.

  Wren's eyes widened, still looking at her.

  "Do what?" he said.

  "Call the cops. We're not in Georgia. We need to let them know what is really going on."

  Wren looked to Glenn, wanting to know if he thought his wife as stupid as Wren did. "You hearing this?"

  Glenn opened his eyes. They had been closed for quite some time, but Wren knew he wasn't sleeping. No one in this room was sleeping besides Michael (and that's not sleep, honey).

  "We're not calling the cops," Glenn said, pulling himself up a bit in the chair.

  "Why not?" Rita asked. "How could it hurt?"

  "There's a reason the story is changing, Rita. It doesn't matter if we got on a loudspeaker and rode around the streets of Tennessee letting everyone know the truth. All that would happen is the six of us would end up dead."

  Thank God, Wren thought. This was the man that Wren needed with him, not the one looking like he was dozing off in a chair.

  Rita said nothing. She just turned back to the television, apparently content to hate what they said, but continued listening to it.

  "Bryan," Glenn said. "How are you feeling?"

  Bryan was as fucked up as Rita was stupid, at least that was Wren's sober opinion. He didn't care in the slightest about Rita, but Bryan mattered a great deal to him—mattered more by the hour. Bryan was beyond despondent. He didn't talk. Didn't respond to Julie's touches. He did nothing but stare at the television. And yet there wasn't anything anyone could do for him. A doctor, maybe? But that meant they had to tell someone something, and when all the cards were dealt, the truth was that Bryan had been through perhaps the most traumatic episode of everyone, and regardless of what they told a doctor—he would know Bryan was damaged, which lead to hospitalization. Wren couldn't do any of that right now; he had to be here for Michael, had to see if his child woke up.

  And yet, out of everyone in this room besides his son, he felt for Bryan.

  "I'm okay," Bryan said, not looking over to his father.

  Minutes passed as silence took over again.

  Wren watched as Bryan stood up, not saying anything, and left the motel room.

  * * *

  Bryan stood in the motel breezeway, looking out at the parking lot. Sixty bucks a room bought you views like this, he supposed. The pavement was cracked, the parking space lines faded, and every car in the lot looking like it might get five hundred bucks if deemed totaled.

  Bryan didn't want to hear his dad asking any more questions. He didn't want to hear his mother's disbelief at the television either. He didn't want to have Wren's eyes falling on him from time to time, and he didn't know what to say to Julie at all.

  The whole room, and everyone in it, made him uncomfortable. It made him itch, made him want to run, to get away from everyone that he had grown up around.

  Except for Michael.

  Bryan never imagined he would think something so insane, but there it was, all the same. He wanted to go back to the Ether, to that gray place Morena first took them to. He wanted to go back because Michael was there, still. Since climbing out of that hole in the woods, he only felt normal when around Michael. He didn't know what was happening to Michael, only that in his friend's presence, things felt somewhat okay. They felt like maybe he could find his way back to normal. Here, in reality, he only felt the shards of broken glass cutting him from the inside. Tearing him up.

  Bryan couldn’t find his way back to the Ether, though.

  Michael had to return; that was the only way, and Bryan couldn't help him. Bryan could do nothing but sit in the room and listen to the television drone on and on. Michael wasn't dead, though. Bryan didn't think it was possible to be alive here and dead over there, in that space. His body still breathed, even if shallowly and without sound. Whatever was happening, he was still alive.

  Bryan heard the door behind him open, realizing for the first time that he was leaning face first against the wall, resting his head against his arm.

  The door closed softly.

  "Hey," Julie said.

  Bryan didn't turn around, didn't pick his head up. "Hey," he said.

  "I…" Julie tried to talk, but the single word died shortly after exiting her mouth. Neither of them said anything for a moment, Julie not venturing to touch Bryan. That was new, Bryan recognized. Since he showed back up, since they found him on the road and pulled him into the car, she had constantly tried to be around him. Constantly tried to touch, if not talk. Since they pulled up at this motel though, that ended. She was distant. So were his parents. Distant from him and distant from the others too.

  "I don't know what to say, Bryan. I want to be there for you, but I can't. You won't let me. I don't even know what you're feeling."

  A month ago, his biggest concern had been how to keep Julie and Michael together, how to keep them being friends. Describing the distance between there and now seemed impossible, and he was supposed to somehow explain what kept him out here on this breezeway while the rest of his family remained inside?

  "I want to help," she said.

  "I don't know either," he said. "I don't know anything except that Thera is dead and that Michael is in some strange shadow
world. I don't even know how to explain it better than that…." His voice faded in the hallway and tears pressed hot against his eyelids, threatening to fall on his face.

  He heard Julie walk closer to him, though still not touching.

  "I just want you to know I'm here. I mean…." She laughed, a real laugh—one that seemed to mock everything happening. "I don't have any idea if we'll live through tomorrow. From what you're saying, I don't know if anyone on this planet will live much longer."

  She sat down beside him, facing the motel room.

  "I wanted everything planned out. I wanted college, and you, and a good job, and then kids one day. I wanted what everyone wants. That's all gone, though, now. My parents…." Her voice cracked as she said it, but she didn't move her hands to her face.

  A deep guilt settled in the middle of Bryan's stomach. Her parents. Dead. He sat outside by himself, his head against a wall, while Julie would never speak to her parents again. Had he asked how she felt? Had he followed her anywhere, to ask any questions, to understand at all what she was going through? His parents still lived, were still breathing, and yet he took no stock in it. Indeed, he couldn't stand being around them, and yet his girlfriend of years didn't have parents anymore. She was alone, at least as alone as he was himself, but yet he remained in his own head.

  "It's all gone," she repeated, having no idea the thoughts moving through his head. "And I guess the only connection I really have to any of that is you, Bryan. You and Michael. But something is different with him, has been different since… since you showed back up." She looked up at him. "I can't help you, and I know that. Not any more than you can help me. But I can be here, Bryan. I can be someone to talk to, and I want to do that, because if I don't, then there's nothing left. That's what I realized. There's nothing left if our communication is dead."

  "He has to come back," Bryan said. "Michael has to come back."

  He didn't look down at Julie, just kept his eyes closed leaning against his forearm. He knew by her pause, though, that she was surprised.

  "Why?" she said after a second.

  "Because I'm not sure anyone else on Earth is going to live if he doesn't."

  * * *

  The needles bloomed like black roses in Michael's skin, each one carrying a poison that he felt seeping into his hand. His own blood picked the poison up and swept it through his body, where it infected the cells moving around it. Michael felt all of this, like some kind of detailed map inside his body, one that he could follow in intricate detail.

  He felt it moving through him, and yet that wasn't what he concerned himself with.

  Because he saw for the first time. He saw what Bryan had seen, what Bryan tried to tell him about. The poison moving through him was imprinting on him, leaving memories, leaving knowledge.

  He saw her.

  Morena.

  Mother.

  He understood Bryan's fear. He understood why Thera died. He understood why the ground shook and the dirt beneath their feet was displaced by white strands. Because of her.

  Michael fought the poison, fought it even while he relished in the knowledge given to him. He knew that this floating thing in front of him was taking over, possessing him. He had been drawn here, to this magnificent being, and he understood why now, because he, Briten, drew Michael. He called for Michael—Briten, his name is Briten—for this very reason, because he needed passage. His body, the one hanging, was nearly dead.

  Why? Why did he need passage?

  The answer struck Michael like lightning strikes a metal pole sticking up alone from the ground. Bright and fantastic, followed by silence and electrically charged air.

  This creature loved the other.

  Her husband? Was that the truth? Michael thought so, though the words jumbled inside him, even as the poison traveled up his arm, spreading to his heart, to his head.

  He loves her. He loves her more than I ever loved Thera. He loves her more than I loved my mother. Michael didn't know if he had ever seen such a connection as the one he now witnessed. Flashes of memory passed over to him, colors everywhere—Auras, Michael. They're Auras—and violence. Something happened to these two, and now they were separated. He on this side and she on the other.

  He wants to get back to her. That's all he wants, and he's going to use me to do it.

  Michael had walked the entire way here with a sense of calm. He had traveled in reality while colors floated around him as if he was on some LSD trip—while the rest of his group could barely hold it together, he stayed level-headed. Now, as this stranger took over his body, fear finally took hold. Fear of the relationship he saw between the two of them, fear of what it meant for him to be wrapped up in it, to be used as an intermediary. Fear because he recognized that this thing would dispose of him with a blink if it meant moving closer to his love. Michael started fighting, tried to gain control again. Tried to will his body to reject the poison, to eject it out the same thousand holes it entered through.

  He knew he would lose the battle, though.

  He knew that this creature's will wouldn't be bent. Not for him, not for anyone except perhaps the being he loved.

  Michael let go, and a world of red grabbed hold.

  * * *

  The President Addresses The Associated Press

  “Hi, everyone. I appreciate you all coming on such short notice, but I need to tell the American people what is happening in Georgia. I was alerted two days ago by my security counsel that there had been a nuclear reactor leak in Savannah, Georgia. Now, that’s a town on the coast of Georgia, with access to both the Atlantic ocean and the rest of our nation.

  “Georgia Power did not adequately quarantine the area in the first hour of the meltdown, and consequently, radiation began to pour into our atmosphere as well as the ocean. I reacted decisively once this was known, ordering an immediate evacuation of the entire state. I would like to thank Georgia’s Governor and his entire staff for their willingness to work so easily with us on this. It saved lives.

  “I want to be clear about what we’re doing. We are working around the clock, over a thousand man hours each day, working to control this reactor’s release, and we’re about twenty-four hours from having it completely contained.

  “I know that people are going to want to know what it means to them, what it means to their health, to their families, to their livelihood.

  “I want to say this once, and I want to say it firmly: Georgia will be livable again within the next two months. The nuclear material at the plant was one with a very, very short half-life, meaning that the radiation will be at undetectable levels in sixty days.

  “So far, there have been no deaths or radiation poisoning from the reactor. If God is willing, there will be none in the future.

  “The EPA acted quickly to contain this and remove the American people from harm’s way.

  “Now my administration is going to act quickly to make sure that everyone displaced from their home, from their jobs, are completely reimbursed. For too long in America, corporations have taken advantage of the American people, the very people that pay their salaries. It’s not going to happen any longer, especially not with this horrible and dangerous situation. Georgia Power will pay for all the harm they’ve caused. They will pay any medical bill that comes up. They will pay for the living arrangements of those displaced, for the lost wages, and anything else that their carelessness has caused.”

  17

  After the Destruction of Bynimian

  Helos looked at The Makers.

  No intergalactic sign told her she had arrived at the feet of gods, but then gods needed no sign. Helos knew she was in front of The Makers because….

  One knew when one looked at forever. Like love, like the love her daughter felt for Briten, no one needed describe those feelings to Morena for her to identify love. Helos was perhaps the first Bynum ever to see the creators of all.

  She stood in the middle of a globe, a circular shape encapsulating her form. Across t
he surface of the circle the colors of black and white moved interchangeably. They flowed into one another, creating gray, and back out again, taking on their original shades. The globe was massive, appearing limitless, and yet Helos felt she could reach out and touch the side, could stick her finger right into the swirling colors.

  Were they The Makers? The colors? Were those the auras of gods?

  Quiet, she told herself. It is not your time to think. It is your time to observe, and wait.

  So she did, inside the massive ball, not wondering what came next, not making judgments. Only watching. Helos knew of the universe, knew that if you started traveling in a straight line across it, eventually—just like on a planet—you would return to your starting point. That's what she thought of as she looked upon the black entity that held her the way an ocean holds a grain of salt. That this thing was somehow the universe, and she was somehow seeing it from a vantage point that allowed her to see everything. Always expanding, always closed.

  Time passed, slow or fast it didn't matter. At some point, different portions of the moving colors began to light up, brightening as if someone turned a light on behind them. They stayed bright for a few seconds, and then returned to their normal state.

  They're talking, Helos thought. They're communicating with each other. They're watching me and communicating. Nothing told her if any of that was true, but it felt so.

  Why have you brought me here, out of death? She asked the globe.

  The entirety of it lit all at once, blinding her, forcing Helos down into a subjugated stance. She tried to shield herself from the light shining all around, from the heat emanating. It burned, and she thought, calmly, that this was the end. The Makers brought her back from death simply to kill her again. She didn't panic, didn't try to run or mount a counterattack.