Destiny of Icarus

Destiny of Icarus

By Richard Paul

Hundreds of bullets filled the sky in search of hard grey-brown flesh in which to burry themselves. Most flew harmlessly through the air to eventually fall out of the sky or collide with something which had already been destroyed. The bullets were fired by men and women who had no business on a battlefield. These were accountants, bus drivers, students, builders. There were no soldiers in this group. Fear and desperation was guiding the hands of these people, and so rushed and uncertain shots sent the bullets away from the enemy.

Another of the darts struck the neck of a woman who was standing only four or five meters from Nathan. The darts were too small and too quick for the human eye to see, but he’d seen no end of people suddenly switch from panicked motion to icy stillness in the middle of a fire fight and each time the result had been the same. Instinctively, he took two rushed steps backwards and ducked.

The woman exploded moments later. A momentary flash and then the people’s screams took on a deeper note of horror as they were showered with bloodied shreds of tissue and bone fragments.

He’d known this would happen. He’d seen it happen. It always fucking happened and would happen again in a matter of seconds. Maybe it would happen to him. Despite this the scene still hit him like the piece of skull that had grazed his forehead. His arms started to shake, the submachine gun or whatever it was in his hand, he didn’t know guns, tried valiantly to escape his weakened grip.

The group was falling to pieces. In his field of vision Nathan could clearly see two people running down the debris laden street in a hopeless attempt to reach safety. No doubt there were more runners behind him. When the Haltheeth V’kai were done with the main body of targets then they’d hunt down the deserters. Battles in this war, if you could it a war, were either won or lost. There were never any stalemates, no partial victories, certainly no human survivors should they form the losing side, save one.

Forcing what will power and energy he had left into his arm, Nathan let loose a shaky stream of gunfire at a hazy brown and grey shape that was moving unhurriedly down the street in the direction of the frightened mass. With the sun in his eyes it was difficult for him to make out any useful information such as whether he was actually landing hits on the creature. Whether he was or not wouldn’t make much difference just yet. Each enemy could take a lot of punishment before it finally went down.

Another dart had struck another citizen-soldier, and the remnants of the man’s femur whizzed in front of Nathan’s eyes. He parted with an inaudible scream and his forced grip on the weapon in his hand promptly collapsed, as did his legs. He fell to his knees, his nerve wracked body seemed almost grateful that it didn’t have to stand anymore.

Another explosion sent blood and bone flying onto the remaining half dozen humans. Nathan closed his eyes and tried desperately with the remaining threads of rationality he had left to focus on the advancing enemies. Rational thought however and any trace of focus had been pushed aside by directionless terror.

Get out! Get out now!

“Not yet!” Nathan screamed in response, the force of the shout seared his throat but the noise was inaudible. He promised himself that he’d fight to the end this time. He promised himself that he would keep it together and start doing some damage to the Haltheeth V’kai. He’d promised David that he’d make up for what happened, though neither of them really believed that would happen.

Get out of here! The voice of reason screamed again. Maybe that was the best course of action. He wasn’t doing any good here, he needed to retreat, pull himself together and then come back stronger. Soon he’d be ready, soon he’d be able to stand his ground and then he’d make them pay properly.

Still shaking, but energised by the fury of his latest failure, Nathan reached forward for the gun. Maybe he could kill his former target first at least. Maybe he couldn’t but he had to do something.

The beast was closer now, close enough for Nathan to clearly see the terrifying shape of the hunter race that were picking casually at the leftovers of humanity with each passing day. The 7ft tall bipedal furless wolf was perhaps seven metres away. It was staring at him. It had noticed the scent of one who was different, just like before. This smell confused him, he was off balance.

Nathan screamed in anger and with all his remaining energy scooped the gun from the floor with both hands, pointed it at the demon staring at him and fired. It jerked visibly under the impacts and in some places blood began to seep through the punctures in its chest. It showed no signs of falling however.

Abruptly, the sound of Nathan’s gun changed from a series of violent bangs to a series of timid clicks. After this revelation had sluggishly set in, the fact that he could hear this change instead of screaming and gunfire informed him that all of his comrades were gone.

His target started moving towards him again. It was moving slowly, still staring at him with the knowledge that something about this prey creature was different from the others.

Nathan’s short lived bravado and outrage vanished with the last of his bullets. He was alone with the enemy, his weapon was out of ammo and he’d be dead before he had the change to reload it. There was nothing else he could do. It was time to leave.

He closed his eyes and focused on the small, ever-present light in his mind’s eye. It started to grow instantly, he’d done this so many times now that it was as automatic an action as walking. The light continued to grow until it was all he could see. Presumably it had engulfed him and with any luck its close proximity to the Haltheeth V’kai soldiers would result in their catching fire, though that wasn’t too likely.

After a few seconds in which no claws or sharp instruments pierced his skin, the fear gave way to relief. He’d escaped. The enemy’s confusion and subsequent hesitation had given him the time he needed to turn tail and run back home. Soon the wolves that had been staring at him with inquisitive eyes would start hunting down those that had run. These men and women would spend the rest of their short lives as target practice or if they were really lucky, an evening meal.

He however, was safe. That realisation was as comforting and painful as it had been at least twenty times before.

The light began to fade. Vague shapes punched their way through the bright glow and Nathan soon found himself standing in his bedroom. The streets outside were undamaged and filled with a typical afternoon crowd of careless pedestrians, unmolested by any unworldly beasts. The buildings stood tall and the streets were littered with KFC packaging as opposed to debris from shattered houses.

Safe, shocked and now utterly exhausted, Nathan collapsed on the uncomfortable laminate floor and lay shaking as the terrible impact of what he’d just been through, which he thought he’d have grown accustomed to by now, filled his mind. Soon enough the sound of outraged growls that had followed him all the way home died down and Nathan was left to suffer in silence.

_____________________________________________________________________

He was still shaking in the shower, his body’s response to the impact of someone else’s blood or brain tissue against his skin. It seemed that no matter how many times he tore at the same patch on his forehead or arms, he could not convince himself that he was clean. No doubt there was more to it then that. Nathan didn’t understand how the body worked and what threads of knowledge he possessed about psychology consisted of some barely remembered quotations from Frasier.

He was terrified, that much was certain. He’d thrown himself into the post apocalyptic dimension of slaughter once again and once again he’d run screaming home to the safety of his modest abode. No nasty killer-beasts here. Although in his current state of mind that fact wouldn’t stop him from checking behind him every few moments.

He’d crossed over at least two dozen times now. More then half of those trips had ended as badly as his last one and each time he returned from one of those he’d gone through the same dark, ghastly ritual that he was going through now. Letting the terror and revulsion slowly seep away so that he could go back later and try again.

He should have been getting stronger. That was a thought that resounded endlessly in his mind. After so many battles, after two assisted Haltheeth V’kai fatalities and the blood of countless fallen comrades, (if he could call them that), splattered over his face he felt that he should gradually have gotten used to the whole thing. That wasn’t what was happening though. He was still the same weak, hopeless excuse for a warrior that he was when he first arrived in the other world and found himself running for his life with a furless, wolf shaped alien hot on his heels.

Rightfully he should be dead. His was a charmed life however, as whatever higher power that had seen fit to equip him with the ability to cross to this other dimension had in the process given him an ideal escape route from otherwise inescapable situations. The Haltheeth V’kai knew that something was different about him. It intrigued them, and this typically caused their weapons to strike elsewhere and their inquisitive eyes to focus on him for long enough for him to make his escape.

But if he wasn’t getting stronger, if he couldn’t fight properly then what was the point of this gift? What use was he to the men and women being torn apart on their ruined world?

He had to keep trying. If he was at least there, fighting or at least standing beside the survivors of humanity then at least he might be of some help to someone.

Deciding that he was clean enough, even if he didn’t feel it, Nathan pushed himself up onto his trembling legs, one hand wrapped around the curtain rail for support and the other reaching slowly and unsteadily for the shower’s ‘off’ switch.

It was 2:00AM on Sunday morning. He’d been in the other world roughly four hours, he’d been in the shower for two. Tomorrow, or for the rest of the day or whatever he’d stay home. He’d recuperate and ready himself to go back on Monday evening. Maybe next time it would be different.

_____________________________________________________________________

Nathan! Where are you? They’re right behind me man. Where the hell are you?

Exhausted as he was, Nathan hadn’t expected to get any sleep tonight. Still, his brain was willing to seep into a level of weary, detached consciousness which allowed David to visit.

This was becoming something of a tradition.
“That’s not what you said.” Nathan slurred in reply.
No, not really. Nathan replied to himself. He knew that David hadn’t taken up residence in his head and he wasn’t about to personify a subconscious manifestation of his guilt. But it’s a little more personal this way. Makes for a better opening line I think.

Nathan turned on his side and tried to force the bothersome voice away. It wasn’t long however before he began to doze off again, at which point David reappeared.
No luck this time either eh? Aren’t you ever going to avenge me?
“No.”
Well, at least you didn’t try and save anyone this time. We both know how well that turned out don’t we?
“Ah fuck off.”
Hey, I’m not blaming you. I mean things wouldn’t have been any different if we’d stayed and fought right? Your heart was in the right place. It’s not like you intentionally left me behind to die is it?

Those and several other such sentiments were the same meaningless arguments that Nathan had repeated to himself over and over again for a month. They hadn’t done anything to alleviate his guilt over what happened and now it seemed they were being used against him.
“For fuck’s sake! Alright then, what would you have done?”

Silence was his answer, it was always the answer when he asked that question, partly because his anger always forced him back into the waking world where David’s voice was blissfully absent, but also because there was no answer. He and David had been pursued by the Haltheeth V’kai, he’d tried to escape back to his world and take David with him. Instead he escaped and David’s confused screams for help and then screams of pain were the only things that followed him home.

This experience, though doubtlessly his most unpleasant, had taught Nathan what happened when he made friends in the other world. It hadn’t taken him long to go back into the fight afterwards. He found it was easier to fight, (though by no means easy), now that he truly hated his enemy.

After a few minutes on uneasy silence, Nathan felt his eyelids begin to grow heavier and soon he was on his way to drifting into a nervous semi-unconsciousness once again.

He had maybe three minutes of rest before David and a dozen other familiar voices began to part with their dying screams. These sounds were awkward and incongruous without the accompanying sound of wolfish growls or weapon’s fire. They were more then enough to hurl him into a seated position, gaping in sudden terror.

It was then he decided that the near impossible task of sleep wasn’t worth the effort. Feeling about wearily in the darkness, Nathan grabbed the remote on his windowsill, pointed it at the TV and listened intently to an early morning documentary about osmosis or some such, something which seemed designed to help insomniacs in their uphill struggle.

_____________________________________________________________________

Sunday, 8:52 AM

Nathan woke up gradually and was amazed to discover that he’d actually been able to get to sleep. For once it seemed, the nightmares had passed him by and a relatively dreamless though short lived sleep had deposited him in an almost sunny Sunday morning.

On the street outside, the sound of passing cars and the occasional pedestrian yelling at their dog or child for charging in the way of one of the aforementioned cars was a welcoming change from the sounds of slaughter that Nathan had grown accustomed to. As familiar as these sounds of home should have been to him, they now felt alien and distant. To him, this world had become nothing more then a place to eat, sleep and rest before he thrust himself back into a world of war which by this point had such a hold on him that it seemed more like home.

Having said that however, it was moments like this, the blissful few moments of semi-conscious contemplation that could almost make him believe that the other world, the Haltheeth V’kai, the death and all of it was nothing but a bothersome dream that had got out of hand. It was during moments like this that the temptation to forget the whole thing and stay on his own relatively peaceful planet where the buildings were still standing and people only occasionally exploded was strongest.
But the more he pushed himself back into this world the more jagged and ill fitting it was. Clichéd though it may sound, he didn’t belong here. He lived alone, had virtually nothing in common with any of his friends, (a fact which had become doubly true nowadays what with the war).

His life, in short, was pointless. He had a dead end job selling home insurance to unfriendly people over the telephone. His earthly concerns began and ended with piling debts which were likely to remain with him for the rest of his life. The most exciting thing to ever happen to him in the last four years was winning £50 in a raffle.
Hardly a riveting back story for an inter-dimensional warrior is it? Nathan was under no delusions that he had a right to such a title, at least not yet. But if nothing else his presence and the limited assistance he provided on the battlefield was something worthwhile wasn’t it? His accomplishments so far weren’t much to shout about but he was still fighting. It was certainly more then he would ever achieve in his ordinary life.

Through the light, or the portal or whatever term best suited it, he’d found a way to escape the monotonous drudgery and as much as it was killing him, or as likely as it was to get him killed, he couldn’t turn away now.

No, the only way to go now was forward, but not yet. Now there were things to be done. He had a tax return form that needed sorting out and was almost out of toilet paper. Stupid though it sounded, hell stupid though it was in comparison, he couldn’t ignore his life in this world.

_____________________________________________________________________

Tuesday 12:13PM

“For Christ’s sake Alice, why do you ask these things?”
“You’ve asked me that before.”
“So I’ll ask it again. Whatever any of us did in the past is over now. Don’t you get that? It’s all gone. No more KFC, no more Starbucks, no Sunday morning lie ins. All we’ve got now is the fucking wolves. We get up, we shoot at the dogs, some of us die and the rest of us come back here and eat this crap, watch the occasional fist fight and wait for it to all start again. That’s all any of us have left, so why drag poor sods like these back through everything they’ve lost? No offence.”

This last remark was addressed to Nathan and the woman sitting next to him. He made a non committal gesture of acknowledgement with a mouth full of stew which tasted like weak gravy which had been overloaded with salt.
“They’ve taken a lot from us, that’s true.” Alice replied in a tone which suggested she’d had this conversation before.
“They’ve taken everything from us.” The second woman said, Nathan never did find out her name.
“No, if they’d taken everything from us then we wouldn’t still be fighting them would we? We’d march into the streets and let them finish us off.”
“I thought that was what we were doing.” Nathan added, “We go out into the streets and give them a load of bodies for the cooking pot each day.”
“We’re not the only ones who are dying out there.” Alice snapped back, waving a gloved hand at a wall mounted light which had been made from the skull of a dead Haltheeth V’kai.
“Yeah they’re pretty.” The other man, (Carl) replied, “But the facts are the facts. They’ve got a lot more of our skulls. Or more likely they’ve got a lot more little bits of our skulls then we have wall lamps.”
“That’s not the point. So many people here are sitting around like zombies, fighting because they’ve got nothing better to do. Most people have willingly handed over their souls to the Haltheeth V’kai. They’re too afraid to feel hope and so they don’t feel anything. I ask people what I ask them to remind them that they still have a self to speak of.”

Nathan nodded noncommittally. Zombies seemed to constitute a large percentage of this Britain’s human population and in all likelihood the same true the world over. By the time Nathan first arrived on this new Earth humanity had already fled to hastily built underground shelters like this one. From what he could gleam from overheard conversations, the Haltheeth V’kai came in force from God only knew where. Someone claimed that five hundred million people were killed in the first day, another person said the figure was closer to two billion. Nathan had no idea what the actual number was but the truth was that in a handful of days, the cities of the Earth were reduced to the same collection of rubble piles that Nathan saw on the streets outside.

Humanity was swept aside like dust, and then as the invading hordes stood virtually unopposed, they vanished. The titanic or possibly lithe war machines of the Haltheeth V’kai, (accounts differed), vanished and all that was left were the hunters and a few hundred thousand convenient human targets for them to play with.

Now, with one possible exception in the form of this Alice woman, humanity seemed to be waiting for the end. Maybe death was all that they had left to look forward to. Ineffectual fighting and constant death seemed to be the way of mankind now. As endings go, Nathan couldn’t help but feel somewhat queasy when he realised that humanity was going the way of the Dodo, ill-prepared by evolution, it was unable to protect itself from those that hunted it to extinction.

He pushed such thoughts away as far as they would go, focusing instead on the memory of his first (assisted) Haltheeth V’kai kill. Unlike the Dodo, humanity was taking some of its hunters out with it, and the future was far from certain. Nathan didn’t have all the answers, he didn’t know what was going to happen in the future or how the fight was going in the rest of the world. Maybe one day, something could be salvaged. Maybe they’d drive the Haltheeth V’kai from this planet and rebuild some semblance of society.

The key word of course was ‘maybe’. Nothing was ever certain, and despite his best efforts, Nathan’s would be encouraging thoughts did nothing to reassure him. Perhaps the aura of resignation that hung over the compound like a noose had affected him too.

_____________________________________________________________________

There was a body in the men’s room. One man, looking almost dignified in his blood stained grey and blue infantry uniform had decided not to wait for the Haltheeth V’kai to finish him off. So, in the spacious bathroom that could accommodate about fifty men at a time, he’d put a gun to the back of his head and pulled the trigger.

This was anything but a rarity in this world, suicide was as common in the bunkers as rats were on the streets. Some people preferred to go out fighting, other people chose to believe that things might one day go back to the way they were, once the Haltheeth V’kai were dealt with. Others had given up all hope like the guy with half his head in the urinal and decided to end their seemingly hopeless existence the quick way.

People were casually wandering in and out of the toilet, using the urinals and paying the corpse little heed. For many people squeamishness was a thing of the past, for others it had driven them insane. Nathan leaned closer to the second category, but he wasn’t too far gone yet, and that at least was something he could be proud of.

The idea of peeing in the company of the deceased seemed more then a little disrespectful however, and he opted to use one of the stalls.

From somewhere on his right, a hoarse shout which Nathan soon identified as ‘I am the one and only’ echoed throughout the toilet. The singer, if he could be called that, sounded drunk.

Interestingly, toilet cubicles were the closest thing that any of this bunker’s nine hundred denizens had left to privacy. Nathan almost laughed at this thought, until he realised just why this was exactly. The truth of existence in this world tended to suffocate anything humorous, or maybe it was just him.

Without washing his hands, (a bad habit he’d obtained over time in public toilets), Nathan returned to one of the cavernous halls and began to make his way through the crowds, he received a few indignant glares as he stepped over and in same cases on some of the many seated individuals.

The patch of relatively empty space in the corner which he’d left only moments before was still relatively empty, and there was at least an hour left before they’d start calling on the registered volunteers for patrol sweeps. There wasn’t much to do except sit, wait and maybe chat about the generally shitty state of the universe with another of the endless horde of strangers that surrounded him.

Or at least that how it should have been, instead what happened was that the ceiling vanished.

The bunker was almost half a mile underground, it had been converted from an abandoned mine turned museum and additional compartments had been hastily built into it when more and more people had flocked here. Now it seemed that the Earth over the entire bunker had been removed, how this had been done was anyone’s guess. There was no cave in, no visible signs of burn marks or stress to suggest any kind of drilling or pyrotechnics, the Earth above them had simply vanished.

What started as an uneasy murmur quickly escalated to a unanimous cry of panic from everyone in the hall. Everyone knew exactly what had caused this, there was no other explanation.

A flash of sunlight reflected off of a number of silver points caught Nathan’s eye as he gaped up in horror at the impossible spectacle above. For a brief moment he thought that rainwater was beginning to fall into the now exposed bunker. As he noticed a man standing not two feet in front of him stop his screaming and clutch his shoulder in sudden terror, Nathan realised what it actually was that was falling on them all.

In groups of fours and fives, men and women began to explode, their bloody remnants showering those that had escaped the first wave of darts that had been fired at them. The screams took on an extra note of horror as people either felt someone else’s remains on their face or just realised that they were being attacked.

People were trying to run now, great crowds were making their way to the exit, no doubt some had been cast to the floor and were now being trampled to death. In this panicked mentality these people were more like beasts then humans, and that made their eventual deaths all the easier.

Nathan found staying calm marginally more easy, the reason of course being his handy albeit inexplicable escape route. Looking around him, seeing that there was nothing he could do and furthermore having no great desire to stick around anyway considering the terrifying scene that was unfolding, he decided to retreat. He needed to get the hell out of here before the second wave of darts started its descent.

He closed his eyes and pushed himself back against the wall, a reflex action from subconscious part of his brain that seemingly wanted to hide as he made his escape.

He could see the light, but it was dimmer now, as he reached out for it, it seemed to shy away. It had never done this before. It was almost as if it didn’t want Nathan to return to his world.

Don’t be ridiculous, he said to himself, this is just nerves, but we don’t have time for this. Concentrate!

To the screams, growls could now also be heard. The Haltheeth V’kai were in the room, he didn’t dare open his eyes to see what exactly they might be doing, but it didn’t take a genius to guess what it would be.

He concentrated, for long, agonising seconds the light still shied away, sitting just out of reach in the depths of Nathan’s mind. Eventually however, he managed to reach down deep enough to touch it, and slowly, much slower then usual, it began to engulf him.

Nathan could feel himself slipping away from this horrifying scene, as he looked around the hall which was now beginning to fade out to an all consuming white light, he saw another fifty or so people burst open. Instinctively he snapped his eyes closed again and held then tightly together. That was however until he felt a sharp pain in the pits of his stomach, sharper then anything he’d ever felt before.

At first he thought his body was reacting violently to the bloody scene and that any minute he would cast forth his lunch into the dimensional portal, when he peered through his narrowed eyes however, he realised that the light that should be taking him home was now gone, he was firmly rooted in the other world once more, with the claws of a Haltheeth V’kai buried in his gut.

Shock and blind terror began to well up inside Nathan at this sight, as the beast pulled its arm out of his gut, Nathan saw the light that he’d relied on so many times before to save him was now sitting peaceably in the bloodied hand of the enemy. He slid down the wall he was leaning in to what was almost a seated position, his hands cradling his gut and trying in vain to stop the flow of blood. There was no escape now, the light was gone and he was stuck here, bleeding to death. This time he knew he was gone, it wasn’t just an uncertain and potentially escapable worry. Part of him thought that he should feel an eerie calm at this revelation, but he didn’t. All he felt was terrified, as well as the searing pain in his stomach.

In his field of vision, he could see seven other Haltheeth V’kai gathered around the light in the palm of their comrade’s paw. They were growling some incomprehensible dialect to themselves and all were grinning a wolfish grin.

Before the claws had effectively tore all his prior thoughts out of him, Nathan had distantly thought that this shouldn’t be happening. This wasn’t the way the Haltheeth V’kai worked. They were hunters, they preferred that their prey could fight back. This senseless slaughter seemed completely out of character. So why the sudden shift?

The light began to grow again, a tiny flicker of hope that many this was all some kind of hallucination and that he really was going home came to Nathan and left just as quickly as he realised that the seven Haltheeth V’kai, and no shortage of the others who were now scattered around the hall, (God only knew how they got in so quickly), disappeared from view in the warm, white light that rightfully should have sent Nathan back to his home world.

As his vision began to grow darker, one final idea came to him. The light, the portal or whatever it was, if the Haltheeth V’kai had it, and could use it the same way he did.

Oh God, holy fucking Christ that can’t be right. This can’t be happening!

As the grim realisation that Haltheeth V’kai warriors were now on their way to his world, using the light that had brought him here and within their reach in the first place, Nathan found himself re-evaluating what his destiny might actually be during the last few seconds of his life.

The End