Night of Endless Portals

A few people had managed to calm the crowd down during my brief convalescence. I had expected chaos and rioting. As if the victims of the arcane eruptions took a breath and held it, serenity locked their reactions in check.

Some unknown virus, an irritant to the lining of the delicate public airways had infected the crowd as Malia and I raced for the carpark. The intermittent screams that had stolen Malia’s focus grew in frequency now. People shifted like white blood cells through the veins, masses glutting the spaces between debris and portions of broken buildings. Even without the devastation around us, the pathways would have been clotted with bodies. But now both the living and the dead made even the shortest routes dangerous.

Where I had been Malia’s protector at the outset of the eruptions, she now became mine. Maybe it was racist of me to pin her martial prowess on her asiatic features, but whatever the stereotype she met it. As the crowds had given me space after learning my academic career was over, so to they avoided Malia as she swung fists and delivered kicks to anyone who tried to impede our movement or, God forbid, attack us.

What martial training I’d received had been seven years ago and involved swords. All of that considered, I was atrocious with my weapons then and failed to keep up with the training my parents insisted on. The roving groups of people recovered from their mental shocks far more quickly than I did. Malia dragged me toward her car and still my brain latched onto the impossibility before me: my mother and father weren’t insane, they weren’t liars and grifters. They were one hundred percent right.

Sludge from almost a decade of familial loathing, regrets and therapy clogged my brain as surely as the people ahead of us clogged our path. Malia turned and twisted, ever keeping her hand on my jacket as she sped through them toward her goal.

Screams, louder and closer than any so far ripped me out of my mental meanderings. People scrambled over fallen pieces of building, trampling each other in the crush of humanity as they fled before us. I opened my mouth to say something to Malia when she froze herself.

A black sea of bugs the size of Pomeranians rolled toward us like a blackened wave of chitin and pincers. Anyone who fell before that wave twitched and screamed as the collection of bugs overwhelmed them. The old wives’ tales about piranha eating a hog in seconds flashed uselessly through my brain as bugs reduced their victims to bone in moments, hardly pausing as they overwhelmed the people who they consumed.

Malia froze in shock, a disturbing mirror of a few of the bugs’ victims who were consumed from the feet first. I shouted at her to move, but she appeared to chant something as she dissolved into a swarm herself. Tearing myself away from her, I added my desperate screams to the crowd around. At the same time, Malia as a tornado spun into the oncoming bugs and tossed them high into the sky, spitting them in every direction and smashing a few together into jagged pieces of chitin and goo.

Once again, the white-skinned woman appeared before me. This time she faced away, transparent and staring forward at the ensuing calamity. Seconds after the last of the swarm of bugs vanished, Malia as a dust devil continued. She tore into the oncoming crowd with the same vengeance and mindless consumption as the bugs.

Together, the white-skinned woman and I reached out toward Malia. Where a rainbow sun shone from the phantom woman’s heart, a ruby moon shone from the center of Malia as a tornado. With a single hand, the white-skinned woman and I reached out and tapped Malia’s heart. Raw, urgent compassion drained away Malia’s fear and rage. We found and implanted the same distant calm I’d felt watching the previous events flow by.

Though she lifted other people easily, Malia couldn’t budge me or the white-skinned stranger. Instead, with our hands clasped around her heart, we pulled Malia back down to the ground. Reaching up to her own heart, and through it to mine, the white-skinned woman plucked away one of the alien rays of light. She merged it with the red fury of Malia’s hear and the ruby turned dun, like the strange ray shaded it.

Withdrawing our hand quickly, the white-skinned woman and I stepped back and watched as the sands and mystical winds resolved back into Malia’s shape. She retained her clothing, but now a terrified expression graced her face, turning her tanned skin pale as she reached up and felt her cheek.

“Who are you? What happened to me?”

“I am Yeshe Tsogyal, and you have been touched by the Beyond. Do not fear for your heart is a pure thing.” I opened my arms, slightly behind those of Yeshe Tsogyal and took Malia into my embrace. Around us the madness continued unabated, though now a far larger no-man’s land had been cut about us.

I could feel Malia shaking as the white-skinned woman, Yeshe Tsogyal, dissipated. With a short crash, my feet landed on the ground and I stumbled backward. Malia looked up at me and shoved herself away. “Where did she go?”

I raised my hands. “If you mean the lady with the bleach white skin, I don’t know. But she’s gone now. How are you?”

Malia took a brief look around herself, hand rising to her mouth as she surveyed the swath of destruction she’d cut through the small courtyard. “We need to find my car. Soon.”

I kept my mouth shut. Yeshe’s appearance had cleared my head. This was a disaster of epic proportions. A car would only hinder us now. What we really needed was a…

I grabbed Malia’s hand, who jerked herself away as she ran. “Stop! Let’s grab one of these bikes!” Whatever had laid waste to the surroundings had upended a long series of bicycles, only a few of which remained anchored to the steel bar. After jerking her hand away, Malia turned and regarded the bikes. “We can go to a lot more places with a bike than with a car. And a bike doesn’t need fuel.”

This wasn’t born of my parent’s supposed paranoia or stories. This particular piece of advice came from a steady diet of zombie movies. Nothing beat a bicycle for transportation in an apocalypse.

“But…” Malia clenched her fists at her side and looked back at the panicking crowd. I followed her gaze to find a renewed wave of some sort tossing people into the air at a steady pace. A large group of people screaming and running for their lives charged toward us and made Malia’s decision for her. “Fine. Grab a bike quickly!”

I found one with a simple chain lock that had slipped off of the torn security bar. Picking it up, I regretted my decision at once. Riding a bicycle wasn’t as easy as the saying suggested. I fell over before I managed to pedal once, skinning my knee in the process and tearing a hole in my pants.

Malia helped me up, her gaze half focused on the oncoming surge of humanity. We had maybe twenty seconds before either the people overwhelmed us or whatever chasing them broke through and did the same.

Slowly, painfully, I managed to pedal the bicycle away from the crashed collection of its fellows and pump myself after Malia. The sorry state of my body held me back, but I was already moving faster than I could run. We wove our way through empty streets and buildings that had not lost most of their upper floors. A few blocks from campus, the city looked utterly different. No titan had ripped their way through the structures here and no otherworldly monsters fed on the citizens.

If not for the screams, sirens and crashing sounds from the nearby streets, we would almost be forgiven if we’d though the disaster confined to the campus.

Malia collapsed against a brick wall and I rolled to a stop behind her, barely keeping myself from skidding over and colliding with her.

“What in the fuck is happening?” Malia held her shoulders, clutching at them as if to confirm they were real. “What happened to me back there?”

I had a theory on that, but now was not the time to share. “I don’t know. A titan, monsters from hell? It’s… I need to get my sister.”

“What?”

“My sister! She’s in elementary school! I need to go get her!”

Malia grabbed my jacket. “What did you do to me?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about! I didn’t do anything to you. I mean, I guess I saved you.” The words sounded as absurd to me as they appeared to sound to Malia.

She released my jacket and grabbed her head with her hands. “I have to be going crazy… this is some kind of, I’ve been drugged…”

I grabbed her forearms. “Malia. Please listen to me. This is really happening, but we’re going to be okay.” She laughed at me, but I didn’t give up. One of the only things that my parents had managed to instill in me that took was a flat refusal to panic. “I’m serious. We have bicycles and a plan. It’s time to go.” Swallowing, I kept myself from continuing on and scaring her with, “before they get to us.” If my mom and dad were right, this was only the beginning. Demons, magic, and the gods themselves would rise before a week was over. The stories came back to me: more than half the planet would die, whole institutions would come crumbling down, and my family was supposed to help the world rebuild.

It sounded insane even as an elementary school kid myself. But now it was real. I bent my knees to stare into Malia’s eyes. “We can help each other, right?”

“Who was that other woman, Yeshe…”

“I don’t know, but she helped us, right? Maybe she’ll keep helping us. But we need to get moving now.”

When she focused on my eyes, I knew I’d reached through to Malia. She nodded and wiped her eyes. “You said something about a sister?”

“Yeah, she’s seven and she’s got to be terrified out of her mind right now. Help me find her?”

Malia cleaned her face off on her sleeve. “Let’s get moving then. No reason to stand around talking.”

She hopped on her bike and I did the same. Using the wall to keep my balance, we navigated around trash cans and bits of broken shipping pallets as we made our way to the end of the alley. I’d spent a good deal of time ferrying my sister to school and back, and Gramps lived near campus, so her school was close by too. As a result, we made good time toward Tia’s elementary.

On the way, we passed long lines of abandoned cars, on one part of the road some incredible force had smashed its way between the vehicles, tossing them in every direction out of its path. We moved swiftly by. I don’t know about Malia, but I kept my attention carefully off of those tossed cars. After the first mangled corpse I’d seen within, I couldn’t keep staring. Those bodies bothered me more than the stripped skeletal remains of the people eaten by the monstrous bugs.

Gasoline hung in the air, making the atmosphere cloying as we pedaled through the streets. Few people lingered in the open now, having decided that their homes were far safer than the open. It stupefied me; most of the films depicted people running out of their houses into the streets. But this made sense in a way. The attacks were so abrupt, so destructive, that it was hard to miss them. And one could watch the streets as easily from a window as from the porch.

Besides, the particular route Malia and I chose had been subject to massive devastation. Most people avoided it — I guessed — because of how stark the ruination had become. Or maybe they were smarter than we were.

As we neared Tia’s elementary, the crowds grew thicker. I realized then that the elementary schools were disaster relief areas. It made perfect sense for people to congregate there. My original supposition had been dead wrong and for the first time in five years, I wished my mom and dad were still around. They would have aimed straight for the school, not just because Tia was here, but because emergency response would be too.

Firemen and police officers directed people toward the school, many of them bore haunted expressions, as if they’d seen whatever it was that tossed cars over the road like toothpicks in the wind.

“I’m looking for my sister! She’s supposed to be inside!” I ran up ahead of Malia to reach the first uniformed officer I could find.

“The students are in the gymnasium.” The officer hardly looked at the two of us after her initial examination. She kept her hand on her sidearm and eyed the oncoming cars and people on foot. It looked as though she knew what lurked in the distance and wasn’t going to let any of it reach her.

I’d expected to have to wait outside, so I counted the officer’s distraction as a good thing and charged on. Before I crossed the halfway mark a massive explosion from behind us, deeper in the city sent a shockwave crashing over us. It knocked me over and sent my bike careening into Malia’s. When I stood, I had trouble hearing over the ringing sound and the pressure in my chest made it hard to breath.

Looking behind us, a towering inferno rose high into the air near the center of town, not far from where campus stood. The police woman behind us sat on her ass and fumbled with her gun as if she might take a shot at the spiraling flames in the center of Austin.

Malia helped me up and untangled out bikes while I remained distracted by the cop and the inferno. Ahead of us, a few windows had shattered from the impact, but no one stood at those windows looking out. That wasn’t the gym anyway.

As soon as Tia returned to my brain, I leant Malia a hand with the bikes and managed to get them fully separated. We ran toward the gym, afraid that some new event would send us flying into the sky like Dorothy toward Oz.

When I stepped into the gym, I found a few hundred kids huddled around mats near the center of the building. A stout woman with a bright orange poncho stopped us. “This area is for students… you need first aid?” She pointed to my jeans where my knee still bled.

“Yeah, and I’m looking for my kid sister, Tia…”

I barely finished my sentence before a shout from the assembled kids rang through the room. “Harlan! You came for me!”

Despite the feeble efforts of the teachers, Tia shot up from her mat and cleared the woman with the orange poncho. Most of the others wore desperate, terrified expressions. But Tia looked her usual bright, sunny self. She hadn’t left the house with pigtails that morning, which mean she probably nicked a pair of hair ties from the bathroom and used them to do her own hair. Considering the circumstances, I didn’t care. I ruffled her head. “Hey kiddo. Of course I came for you.”

“Who’s this girl?” Tia wrinkled her nose at Malia.

Snickering, Malia bent down and said, “I’m the girl your brother saved. It’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand to Tia, who examined it before she hugged Malia.

“Thank you!” Malia glanced up at me, but I shrugged at her. Tia could be an odd duck when she wanted.

During our brief greeting the adult in charge managed to scare up some first aid supplies for me. She sprayed down my knee and wiped it away. “Huh.”

I looked down through the hole in my pants and found the site completely uninjured. Once the blood was gone, I appeared whole. I wasn’t about to complain that my knee was fine. “I guess I knelt down in some… it doesn’t matter.”

“We can’t stay here, Tia.” According to the stories, pandemonium would take the populated places. People who dwelt in the backwoods, on farms and ranches would fare better than people cooped up in cities. The magic and the monsters congregated around people, the more concentrated the latter, the more violent and intense the former.

“This is an emergency situation, we can’t let you take anyone away.” The stout woman set her first aid supplies aside and rested her hands on her hips. “And it’s safer for you to stay here anyway.”

Tia looked up at the woman with a dubious expression on her face. “I trust you, brother!”

When a seven-year-old looks at me with that pure an expression of faith, I can’t deny her. I doubted anyone could.

Biting my lip, I struggled to remember some of the useful bits of information from mom and dad’s stories. As if bidden by my thoughts, my phone rang. I pulled it out with tremors in my hand. A phone call from the dead would not be out of place in the world anymore.

But it was a contact I never expected to hear from, not until the end of the world. “Alaric.” I picked up the phone and guessed correctly at what he would say.

“It’s begun. Where are you, Harlan? Where’s your sister?”

“We’re together at her school.” I read the address off to him from memory.

“Good, stay together, I’m on my way to find you.” He hung up without further pleasantries and left me holding my phone with a whole room full of people staring at me.

I eyed the officious woman with her orange poncho. “We’re staying here.” I patted Tia on the head. “Where’s your mat, kiddo?”

The adult didn’t try to stop me from sitting down with my sister and taking our place among the rest of the kids. Two hours had already gone by since the titan attacked my school, since the end of the world began. And it felt more like a school assembly and I was entirely out of place.

Malia on the other hand fit right in. After Tia’s initial doubt, she all but adopted the strange woman into her club. She introduced her other friends, many of which had gathered around Tia. “This is my big brother Harlan. He’s in college for science!”

A small chorus of “oohs” rose up and a pang ran through my chest. I wasn’t going to correct Tia and embarrass her by pointing out that I was about to fail out of college. Or that there was really no college for me to go back to. Fortunately, she moved on from me. “What do you do, Malia?”

“Well,” I was suddenly reminded of my counsellor. “I am a graduate student.”

“Oooh, what’s that mean?”

Malia grinned and shook her head, her dark hair cascaded forward as if to curtain her eyes. “It means I’m in… seventeenth grade. Something like that.”

I spoke up. At least I knew this one. “It means Malia’s already graduated from college, but came back to study extra stuff.” I turned to her, “are you getting you Phd?”

She shrugged and her eyes flicked toward the ruins of our school. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Which was a roundabout way of saying, “not any more.”

“What’s happening outside?” A toe-headed boy raised his hand and leaned forward. He pointed toward my pants with his question and I blanched.

“That is… um.”

Malia saved me. “There’s an emergency outside. People are scared and confused.”

“But why?”

I stammered out a response when Tia raised her hand and said, “let’s play a game! The teacher took away my phone, but grandpa says “always pack a deck of cards,” so I did!” Tia reached into her backpack and removed a deck of cards that looked like it had been purloined out of a drawer in Gramps’s kitchen.

“Teach us to play something!”

The irony of Tia lugging around a deck of cards during the end times without knowing the rules to a single game made me start laughing. I was still laughing when the building began to shake, such that I had no idea what was happening until the screaming started.