The Portal in the Forest (11 page)

On instinct, I chopped down and practically
broke the hand of the fourteen-year-old boy in front of me. He
dropped his flashlight - now emanating darkness instead of light -
and screamed in pain. The opening of the portal had drawn all
attention and all flashlight beams, and that was the only reason
any of us were still alive. How many seconds, minimum, was it,
before the darkness entity could jump again? Christ… "Drop your
flashlights and run! Stay out of the beams! If that darkness
touches you, you're -"

Before I could finish my sentence, the ground
began shaking more violently, and that same ripping sound
multiplied many times over. In the air, spread out across the
clearing, I saw a string of portals opening…
into
our
world.

Their training forgotten, the kids stood and
stared.

"
Drop your flashlights and get the hell
out of here!
" I screamed. My shrill, furious, and terrified
tone goaded them into action. As a group, they dropped their
flashlights, but they still stood in place. "We did this, we
trained for this," I told them insistently. "I know it's dark, but
we did the run blind, remember? The hypothetical sight-stealer? You
did it once, and you're going to have to do it again,
right
now.
I'll take care of this."

Unable to wait any longer, I quickly kicked
all the flashlights until they pointed away from us - just as the
darkness entity leapt to another beam. "Go! Just go!" I screamed,
and they all recoiled… and, finally, they turned and began running
away together.

On a hunch, I picked up one of the lights and
used my precious seconds between darkness-leaps to shine a beam
across the portals.

Along the middle of the clearing, torsos,
legs, and the occasional head appeared under my light - and
only
under my light. Rotted, leering faces shuffled toward
me, briefly visible as I illuminated them.

Beginning to comprehend how much trouble we
were in, I began to retreat… but… no… I needed a plan… this was
worse than the end of the world… these portals were opening from
every world I'd brought the book through, a falling out from the
damage I'd caused. The threats from those places knew about me,
knew about
us
, and they were going to come through and… harm
my kids.

No. Not after all this. I can't let this
happen.

The darkness entity jumped to another
flashlight beam.

I looked up. Fueled by portal winds, the sky
was excessively tumultuous and cloudy. Night had just fallen, and
no stars were out… thus the pitch black run the children would have
to make on their own… but it was only a matter of time before a
star glinted through the heavens, or a plane flew overhead, or some
other disastrous light source presented itself for the darkness
entity.

And invisible corpse-creatures were crossing
the clearing toward me, even now…

What else? Would the iWorker hegemony send
through men carrying mind-controlling light lances? Was that
cleansing wall of fire going to erupt out of a random portal at any
moment?

I grimaced. For the moment, I had two
apocalypses to deal with, and I'd have to worry about those when
the time came.

What did I have? Several flashlights, one of
which contained a biologic-disintegrating darkness entity, a
multi-dimensional information device that spoke to souls, and…
looking down at my backpack… a shoe with unknown special dirt on
it.

Quickly grabbing the shoe, I stuck it
awkwardly in a jacket pocket.

Next, I regarded the flashlights. The proper
course of action would be to turn them all off and annihilate the
darkness entity, unless…

Turning them all off except the one
containing it, and one other, I stuffed the flashlights in various
pockets. Holding the two forward - one dark, and one light - I
shined them both ahead.

And I leapt back immediately. The invisible
corpse-creatures had only been a few feet away. Under the swath of
my light beam, I saw hundreds… and, under the following swath of my
darkness beam, those hundreds disintegrated with odd spectral
screams.

Jump.
The darkness began shining out
from my other beam. I couldn't afford very many of these before it
found a world-ending alternate destination to jump to. Count… one,
two, three, four…

As fast as the darkness beam could
disintegrate them, more semi-visible corpses shambled out of the
widening portal. How many
were
there?

Billions, I imagined.

More began shambling out of nearby entrance
portals as they grew larger. I backed up, increasingly pushed back
by the semi-circle flow of rotting bodies. Worse, I had to shine my
light all around constantly, for fear that some of the invisible
attackers were coming around from behind.

This was a forceful but losing strategy.

Ok, retreat to the hill, and think…

Jump.

Fifty-four seconds. Was that the minimum
number of seconds? Could not remembering such a small detail
actually get us all killed?! I hobbled up that large hill, familiar
with it even in darkness. My sprained wrist ached with the weight
of the flashlight, and I had to walk extra awkwardly not to spill
any flashlights - or the shoe - from my pockets, so my hurt foot
began going numb. My pulled spine, too, began protesting
fiercely.

I was grimly certain that, if I got rid of
the darkness entity, I wouldn't be able to outrun the invisible
corpses. I had to make a stand… somehow or another.

Coming across the top of the hill, and
ducking backward beneath an irregular rift across the path at head
height, I was startled to hear voices right behind me.

"What the hell is going on down there?" Danny
asked, peering over the edge of the hill.

Thomas crouched on my other side.

All the other children had fled, as I'd
ordered. "Why are you two still here?" I demanded.

"Because I hate going home," Danny countered.
"Or maybe, we couldn't let you die out here. You're kind of a
mess."

Thomas gulped and nodded.

I nodded, mental gears turning furiously.
They'd made their choice, and now it was up to me to protect them.
I kept shining the darkness beam down along the hill, vaporizing
row after row of oncoming corpses, but something in my mind was
screaming a warning…

I glanced up at the horizon.

The Blue Ridge Mountains.

We could see the mountain range from here.
We'd always been able to.

My eyes lit on a single orange speck high up
on the horizon - a campfire? The headlights of a car?

It didn't matter.

Thirty-eight, thirty-nine…

Reacting with all the adrenaline my body
could spare, I thrust the darkness-bound flashlight into the
irregular rift just above our heads… and let it go.

My hand came back bruised and battered from
the tidal forces within, but… that portal was outgoing, to that
sunny grassy haven, and the darkness entity would not be able to
return. Hopefully, it was night and cloudy there, too, and the
entity would have nowhere to go at all. If not… well, now, we
couldn't use the portals as an escape ourselves, either.

One apocalypse down. How many more to go?

"What'd you do that for?!" Danny shouted.
Both he and Thomas grabbed flashlights from my pockets and shined
them around.

A crowd of half-illuminated corpses had made
it most of the way up the hill.

"What now?" Thomas asked, shaking.

Gunfire rang out from somewhere in the forest
to our left, and I saw red light sliding across the treetops. "Oh
my god, they're really doing it…" I realized aloud. The iWorker
hegemony had done exactly what I'd feared. I imagined that
organized men with guns were approaching from the left even as we
listened… and they were able to see the invisible corpses because
of the programming devices they'd brought. They could never defeat
the billions of rotting puppets flooding in through the portals,
but they could certainly present their own threat. "Don't let that
red light reach your eyes. It'll mind-control you!"

"Seriously?" Danny asked, starkly
terrified.

Thomas held his head in his hands.

To our right, gigantic columns of flame
suddenly tore up into the sky, shooting out in random directions as
the portals from the obsidian world fluctuated. "Time to go," I
ordered quickly, happy that I'd gotten rid of the darkness entity
at the right time. This situation was way beyond us, though, and I
feared all was lost.

And what was so special about this
fucking
shoe
I'd been lugging around? Why had the information demon
wanted its partner?

The two boys helped me up, and we slogged
away together, moving slightly faster than I could have on my own.
We no longer moved in darkness, but in fluctuating firelight, as
the forest acquired cleansing flames and spread them with aplomb.
That shifting light illuminated numerous corpses trailing us, but I
still kept my flashlight tuned around us, just in case.

Where were we even going? The suburb was no
safe haven, even though that was where I'd always told the children
to run. The iWorker battalions would reach it, or the legions of
the undead, or the cleansing flames would kill everyone
regardless…

As we limped away in grim panic, an
unexpected sight caught my eye.

Maybe a hundred feet away in the forest,
illuminated by firelight, several humanoid figures walked at a pace
I recognized. Sealed in black, they moved at just about four miles
an hour. There were two tall figures, and one small one - a
child.

I couldn't help but laugh. So there
had
been survivors on the obsidian world, after all, despite
the magnitude of evil humanity had perpetrated upon itself there.
How long had they been walking? Did their entire culture, now,
revolve around walking ever east, ever away from the
globe-encircling cleansing flames? How many times had they walked
the world 'round?

I wondered if the people on the Moon had
never been able to return because these stoic human beings had
refused to fall, and kept the bacteria with them as a giant
screw you
to those that had consigned them to die.

Our
Armageddon had been
their
escape. They looked around in wonder at the forest, even as they
continued walking. I was sure they could do nothing to help us, but
I wished them luck all the same.

The boys both trembled with exhaustion and
fear. I had to keep their minds occupied while I tried to come up
with something, anything… "Danny, why did you hit Thomas?"

"He tried to take the book through on his
own, somewhere dangerous," my second explained. "I had to do it,
for his own good."

Thomas looked up at me from under my arm as
we limped forward.

"Is that right?" I asked him. "I guess I kind
of assumed one of your parents hit you, when you wanted to sleep in
an abandoned house instead of at home. Danny, are Thomas' parents
abusive?"

"I dunno," he replied. "I never met 'em. He's
a new kid, remember?"

I nodded. "I remember how he was an outsider,
when I first came around."

Thomas looked strictly ahead, a worried
expression on his face.

I pulled us all to a halt, suddenly grimly
certain about something. "Thomas, where do you live?"

He gulped, and said nothing, instead watching
us both with fear.

"We'd never hurt you," I told him. "It's
you
, isn't it? You showed up at the same time as the portal,
and you kept following me in, helping out…"

"I just wanna go," he suddenly blurted, on
the verge of tears. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen. I
can't control it well at all. And that thing, that book, made
everything go crazy."

"Did it make the destinations worse?" I
asked. "Or was that because… of how you felt when I came
around?"

His face screwed up even more, and a few
tears began running down his cheeks in the half-illumination of the
distant fires. "I just miss my mom," he admitted. "And to have you
around, acting like her, taking care of people… of me…"

"Of course," I replied, hugging him tight.
"If you stick with me, I'll always keep you safe."

He sniffled. "Really? Why would you do
that?"

"You lost a mother, but I lost a child. I
don't think there's anybody more suited to take care of you. Our
two pains can cancel each other out, if we let them. But right now,
you need to protect
me
…" I looked over at Danny. "And your
new family. All these kids. They're your new swarm."

Thomas laughed despite himself, and wiped his
eyes.

I let the words fall slowly. "But right now,
you have to turn off those portals. The gunfire's stopped, so I'm
guessing the iWorker men have retreated… for the moment. They'll be
back when they formulate a plan. The mind behind those
corpse-things is on the other side of their portal, and the
cleansing fire comes from the other side, too. If you shut down the
portals
right now
, we might all just survive the night."

"I don't know if I can," he said with a
worried sob. "It's… an emotional thing… and I need to be calm… and
feel safe…"

I looked around, understanding how hard it
would be to concentrate in a forest filled with approaching
invisible corpses and belching flames. "Would it help if you
understood just how far I would go to protect you? Just how
much
I mean it when I say I would never leave you?"

"Those are just words…
she
promised,
too… and then she died…"

I handed him the book. "Souls can't lie. Take
a look at
my
story, and you'll understand."

He did. Danny and I watched as the
light-being in the form of a boy - the light-being that had just
been trying to go home all this time - read my story, the one I'd
been running from for far too long. The moments spent standing in
place were long, and our seconds of safety were few, but it was the
only way for him to understand.