Warlord: Dervish (26 page)

The white man who’d faced decapitation stared into the sky, awe and terror in his eyes. Aware of Jason’s presence on the roof behind him, he turned, babbling in Chinese.

“I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

Jason searched for a way out. He trotted around the four corners of the roof, looking down into the sands which filled the alleyways and street. He didn’t recall this house being detached from its neighbors, yet the nearest roof to his was a good six foot jump over boiling dust.

A final volley from an AK sounded beneath them.

“We gotta jump!” Jason yelled at the crying man. He arched his cupped hand, conveying the substance of his words. The other man shook his head vigorously, tears flying from his cheeks.

A sound on the stairs.

Jason backed up, taking the man by the sleeve of his shirt, one guarded eye cast over his shoulder at the door…

The sand between them and the next roof lifted like a curtain, obstructing their jump.

…something was coming through the stairwell, out onto the roof…

Jason bolted, dragging the other man along, forcing him to run—

…a dervish broke from the stairwell, a blur of movement…

—the edge of the roof beneath their feet and they leaped—

…until it froze, its blazing eyes watching them vanish.

—vaulting through the sand, across the void. Jason lost his grip on the man as they fell, knowing he wasn’t going to make it to the other roof, his eyes clenched shut against the wind and dirt. The jump dragged on, seeming to take forever, and it dawned on Jason that he stood on firm ground, that he stood without having landed. As he registered this, yet another impossibility, he expected to be overwhelmed by the sand, to be swept off his feet in its rush and crushed to the ground beneath its weight, buried, or skewered on the wicked blades of the ruby-eyed apparitions haunting the mists.

When none of this occurred, Jason lowered his arms from where he’d covered his face and risked opening his eyes. It was remarkably calm within the sandstorm.

Sand particles swirled in front of him like clouds, and though the sand obscured his sight—limiting visibility to his arms’ length—it did not blind him or even irritate his eyes. Indeed, it was as if the dust and sand somehow did not touch his eyes or face or, looking down on himself, his body. And Jason realized then he’d been breathing the entire time without inhaling the granular matter.

Or had he?

It occurred to him that he wasn’t breathing and yet he had breath. And it wasn’t that he had breath…respiration was not needed here, wherever
here
was, wherever he was. The impossibility of it, the unimaginable nature of this existence did not register with Jason. He accepted it as a given, a condition accompanying his present state and form, a condition requiring no reflection.

what do you fear the most

He passed through the nebulosity, arms outstretched.

let me tell ya Jay

Voices known and unrecognized reached his ears from the mists, snippets of conversation—
consider me the Grand Inquisitor—
the voices disembodied, floating past him, through him—
sometimes you just gotta let go

A shadow loomed from the sand. Jason stood before an enormous barrier, Hescos loaded with rock and sand. Atop the barrier a machine gun nested, unmanned. He recognized it as an M240B, a weapon he’d trained on once. The sand above the encampment was darker, a bearer of dark omens. He circled the barrier, keeping the machine gun in his sight.

Get on that hog
. Jason found himself confronted by his sergeant. But how was that possible? In another situation, another time and place, the improbability of it all would crush him, yet he was okay with it here, untroubled, accepting.

You feelin
’
okay, Jay
? Had Mook’s mouth moved? Had his sergeant asked it aloud, or had Jason somehow
known
what the man was thinking. Why weren’t these even questions in his mind any longer?

Get-up-on-that-hog-Jason

No. Had he thought it or said it? Didn’t matter. The look on Mook’s face, disbelief turning to anger and then the sergeant’s visage morphing to Hess’, the major standing with his hands on his hips, face reddened, apoplectic. And before Hess could speak he rippled from his boots to his head, an image wavering, and he was no more. A rush of static from the area where the entity—Mook? Hess?—had stood.

You juiced they shit

Tucker was next to him.

When Jason went to reply, Tucker’s face wavered and was replaced by Bronson’s, and Bronson was talking to him—
one song main
—until his features faded, merging into a succession of students Jason had taught, their faces familiar if their names were forgotten, and he realized names did not always matter, that some experiences in life could not be nailed down with words, could not be recounted coherently after the fact. He felt there was some wisdom in this realization, some closure, and then a student’s visage gave to Rudy’s and the kid looked at him squarely and said,
I’m tired old man, I’m going to sit down here a minute
, except Rudy was talking to Jason without words and Jason was hearing him without listening.

The kid settled into a bucket seat—
no one’s going to hurt you here
—that had materialized in the middle of nowhere, and promptly melted into the chair, becoming a part of it, like when he’d been blasted and burned inside the Humvee, though this was nowhere near as violent and painful and final. Rudy’s garbled voice rose from the chair,
look at this
, as though the chair itself were talking, but no one was speaking and a white compact car rolled towards them—
Let’s light ‘em up
—the M240B looming above—
no wait—
the passenger side window rolling down, revealing a little girl in her mother’s arms. Jason studied them as they passed, the little girl turning into Bronson’s Chandra, and Chandra was dressed in a bee costume, Aspen holding her, her face cold and beautiful and then Chandra was one of Jason’s own kids and Aspen his ex-wife and Jason told her he was sorry, he was
so sorry
, sorry that he wasn’t much of a dad, that he hadn’t been much of a husband, and she said that she couldn’t say he was or that any of it—everything that had happened between them—was alright but that didn’t matter because it was okay,
it’s okay Jason
and Jason, walking besides the car, speaking into the window, told his kid I love you and your sister, things just didn’t work out between your mom and me, I tried, we know you did dad, the woman with the child transforming into an insurgent, a malicious smile as he triggered the car bomb, Jason thrown to the ground, the heat at his back, a rush of particles stinging his face, though when he looked up there was no flaming wreckage and the sand had gone, replaced by snow, cold flakes burning his face, snow all around him, little Jason lying in it in his jacket and hat and gloves.

I’ll tell you what Jay
, not Uncle Ritchie with his hands on his hips, but Kaku, Kaku is the key to this.
I market in probabilities
. He has the answers.

You’re not gonna find him here, said the seat.

What was that
…the car burned. I told you no one could hurt you here, Jay. But I felt the heat. You felt a star die.
14 billion years ago
:
all this was set in motion
. The car was gone, a star collapsed into a black hole.
The probability of this occurrence was initiated, though its realization in the present moment is no less unique
. You won’t find him here, Jay.
Where
. It won’t be long now, Jay—
is this the present moment?
—you’re almost like them. Like them. THEM.

No
! He raced ahead, leaving the chair that was Rudy but not Rudy, the car that had collapsed into a singularity, speeding through the sand-the mists-the clouds, everything getting heavier, impeding his motion. He felt bloated and massive, and looking back he saw he was stretched out like putty. He moved his arms as if in slow motion, swimming, there was no surface beneath him, bursts of gunfire, he was falling through the sand, voices, the crack of a rifle,

3,793rd Iteration

Jason landed, a crumpled, inglorious heap. He was on the rooftop of a three story building, gunfire blaring around him. Rolling onto his back, he watched the amaranthine wormhole he’d dropped from sputter and close, disappearing.

Fleegle and Snork circulated the four walls of the roof, rising and firing ragged bursts from their AKs into the street. An incensed-looking black child with a gold tooth did likewise, racing from wall to wall, firing his Kalashnikov, swapping out banana magazines from a chest pouch. The boy had looped tourniquets around his arms at the shoulders, at his thighs above the knees. Heavy incoming fire drove them all down behind the wall.

An unbarred spiral galaxy shone in the sky. The bright nucleus comprised a large central bulge ringed with dust. A dark smudge marked a prominent dust lane in its inclined disk. It resembled a nuclear detonation in space, caught in freeze frame.

“Where the fuck did he come from?” Snork exclaimed, looking at Jason. The mercenaries sat with their backs to the wall, busying themselves with their rifles, rounds pouring in over their heads like a swarm of angry hornets. The gold-toothed kid sprinted recklessly from one corner of the roof to another, sending wild bursts back down at whoever was firing on them.

Fleegle looked up from inserting a fresh 40mm grenade into the GP-30 attached to the barrel of his rifle, considering Jason. “Who cares?” His hands were slick with blood, his own, and they slipped off the grenade launcher. “Grab a weapon,” he called to Jason, indicating the bodies of a half dozen boy soldiers, their assault rifles scattered about the roof, “and start laying down some fire!”

A round caught the black kid in the arm, knocking him back. His upper torso bloodied, a berserk look in his eyes, the boy bounded back, the AK braced sideways. He blazed away, cursing at those in the street. He tightened the bandage around his freshly wounded arm before he reloaded. Concrete fragments chipped off the wall before him but the kid never ducked or sought cover. He rushed to the next wall and unleashed a wild burst.

Jason struggled to comprehend what was happening and where he was. He knew
where
he was. On a roof with Fleegle and Snork…and the mercs had apparently teamed up with the boy soldiers. On the roof of a three story house, when the roof of the house he’d leapt from had only been
two
stories. None of it made sense. None of it! His leap, whatever the hell had unfolded in the sand, this city, the thing in the sky he’d come out of, the sky above him now: none of it.

“Grab a rifle!”

“The fuck is wrong with you?” bellowed Snork. “You heard the man!”

Jason scanned the roof, saw what he wanted and squat-walked to it. A discarded M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Loops of 5.56mm ammunition were draped around it. Straightening the ammo belts, Jason ducked his head under the sling, hefting the SAW. Before he got a chance to fire it, the gunfire in the street was replaced by the echoes of retreating feet.

“They do that,” Snork peaked over the wall. “Pussies.” He straightened up and looked at Jason. “Where’d you come from?”

“You saw him just as I did, Snork.” Fleegle remarked matter-of-factly. “He came outta that thing in the sky, thing that ain’t there no more.” The merc with the mustache turned to Jason. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah, you too.” Jason joined them at the wall.

The black kid was stalking around the roof, cursing and huffing, waving his AK in the air belligerently, inviting anyone down on the street to take a shot at him.

Fleegle sat with his back to the parapet. “Got a smoke?” he asked Jason.

“No.”

“Now that he’s here,” Fleegle told Snork, “I’ll prep the Javelin.” He called to the boy and the two of them disappeared down the stairs into the house.

Jason gambled a look into the street. “Stupid fucks just want to die today,” Snork commented, reloading an AK. Dozens of bullet riddled bodies lay strewn in the dirt of the road, draped in doorways and windows. Smoke wafted from under the hood of a pickup truck that rested unmoving on four flat tires. Tires burned in the street, palls of thick black smoke wafting into the sky. The facades of the visible homes defaced, sections of concrete blown out. In the distance a squat, rectangular building pulsed red.

Snork changed magazines on AKs, stacking them barrel-up against the wall next to his position. Jason noticed there were other rifles similarly positioned at the other walls.

“You guys been up here awhile?”

The mercenary retrieved his M24. “Motherfucking ragheads,” he told Jason, hunkering down close to him, looking out on the street. “Watch this.” The merc sighted through the scope affixed to his sniper rifle. “They do this shit…” A robed woman, her face covered, stepped through the carnage, approaching their house “…watch, I’m
not
gonna waste her ass just so you can see this bullshit.” As soon as he’d finished saying it, the woman ducked away, the gunman hiding behind her loosing a volley of 7.62mm. Fleegle’s rifle cracked. The man sat down where he was, head and shoulders slumped.

“Idiots.” Fleegle worked the bolt on the rifle. “They done this…” The woman fled back the way she’d come “…I don’t know—fifteen, twenty times since yesterday.” There was a puff of air between her robed shoulders and a spray of red on the ground in front of her as she collapsed. “The fuck they thinking?” Fleegle ejected another spent round.

“You seen the Roman soldiers yet?” Jason asked.

“Pussies. You seen the Mechs?”

“Them big robot things? Yeah.”

“They
ain’t
.” Jason became aware that Snork was studying him. “Hey, you know, you
do
look like shit. The fuck is going on with your—”

His words were cut off by shouts in the street.

“Oh shit!” Snork sounded excited. “Here they come!”

Black clad insurgents streamed onto the road. They didn’t seem to aim their AKs as they filled the air with hot lead. Jason rose, pouring gunfire back at them. They were ready targets, fans of blood spraying, bodies dropping among plumes of dirt. Others shuddered, catching rounds, somehow continuing to the next doorway, finding cover behind the dead truck. Jagged shards of masonry burst from the wall in front of Jason and he concentrated his plunging fire upon those who stubbornly stayed their ground, foolish enough to trade shots with him instead of seeking any modicum of cover.

Ducking and weaving, Jason trailed ammunition links behind him as he hustled to another part of the roof. Snork was firing AKs at the insurgents, picking up a new rifle when one emptied. Jason peered cautiously into the street and didn’t see anyone beneath him. He leaned over the wall and let rip, shell casings and links ejected out of the SAW, geysers of dust walking up the street and through human targets, their rifles pitched into the air as their bodies sank to the road.

There were people firing from the second floor of the house beneath him.

When Jason sank down against the wall, the barrel of his light machine gun was glowing red. Concrete dust misted the air. “I need another barrel for this!” Jason yelled above the incoming rounds snapping over their heads.

“Downstairs!” Snork dropped a taped mag, flipped it over and slapped it home. “Seriously,” the mercenary shouted. “The fuck
is
wrong with you?” He stood and fired out half a magazine before sitting back down. “You look in a mirror lately? Your eyes…
Down
!”

The red, spiraling glow of an RPG spun towards them, corkscrewing over the roof, exploding somewhere out of sight.

Fleegle and the gold-toothed kid returned to the roof, lugging the oversized launcher tubes and command launch unit of a FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile. Jason abandoned the SAW on the rooftop, snatching up the nearest AK, checking that its magazine was full.

“What’s going on here Fleegle?” he hollered at the other man over the fracas.

“You want to know what’s going on here?” Fleegle was at work on the Javelin’s CLU, his hands on the grips. The black kid pulled the pins from hand grenades and flung them as far as he could into the street. “We’re going to blow that building over there—” Fleegle nodded in the direction of the red pulsing structure “—and then we’re out.”

“We’re out where?”

“Called in a casevac, we’re getting our wounded the fuck out of Dodge.”

“We got comms?”

“Not now.
Had
‘em though. Bingo got through…” Fleegle attached a launch tube to the CLU “…hot miked that bitch ‘til someone complained, probably some rear-echelon motherfucker.”

“What’s he say?”

“ETA twenty-twenty five minutes, give or take. Not that we can tell time, our watches are fucked.”

“Yeah. You think that thing is going to fire?” The Javelin’s targeting and launch system were dependent on sophisticated electronics. If their watches were on the fritz…

“Fired before. I know, makes no sense.”

Snork criss-crossed the roof, firing the AKs he’d placed, changing places when return fire honed in on his position. The black kid took a round in his other arm and dropped the grenade he was about to toss. He scooped it up and lobbed it off the roof before it exploded.

“What about air support?”

“We tried to get on guard too. Nothing.” Fleegle cocked an eye towards the sombrero galaxy above them. “We ain’t got shit in the skies here anyhow.”

“The fuck is up with that sky?”

“The fuck is up with any of this?”

“We got wounded downstairs?”

Fleegle nodded. “A prisoner too.”

“What’s with the black kids?” The boy with the gold-tooth tightened the tourniquet around his other arm, staunching the flow of blood from that limb.

“Well, at least they ain’t trying to kill us. Hey…” Fleegle shouldered the Javelin. “You want to know what it costs to fire one of these things?” He didn’t wait for Jason to reply. “Forty grand a rocket.
Forty grand
. You believe that?”

Jason would be damned if he’d be Fleegle and Snork’s battle buddy. He needed to get downstairs and see about finding a new barrel for the SAW. He raced to the pillbox-like structure encasing the stairs and scrambled down.

The second floor of the building was part triage, part bunker. The wall of one room that Jason passed was blown out. Bricks and chunks of masonry littered the floor. African kids hugged the sides of the crumpled wall, firing into the street. One of them took a head shot and flopped belly up.

More kids were darting about the corridor Jason traversed, yelling to one another, toting their AKs and RPGs, dashing up and down the hall from room to room, firing out windows, breaking to their next position.

They’d gathered the wounded in an airy central room, most well away from a pile of rubble that had been a wall.

Jason spotted the mercs easily because they stood out in contrast to the tiny forms of the boy soldiers. They were off to the side of the collapsed wall, where Drooper could overwatch the street. He had one hand around the pistol grip of a SAW, its bipod wedged in the debris. Belts of ammunition accordioned about the two men on the bloodied floor. Drooper’s free hand was pressed to Bingo’s neck, keeping the blood-soaked bandages in place there. Bingo was in no shape to handle a weapon. His face was waxen, fresh blood caked with cruor in his facial hair. He lay across Drooper, trying to stem the blood flowing profusely from his friend’s leg.

The color was fading from Bingo’s face, but his eyes…his eyes were red-tinted. Neither man acknowledged Jason’s presence. Drooper fired a seemingly random burst down into the street, shell casings tinkling across the floor and bricks.

In the middle of the room, a dozen or more African boys lay on their backs. They bore a horrendous array of bullet wounds and gashes, their shredded limbs broken, bones and metal sticking out of their bodies. A few were plugged with IVs, the bags jury-rigged to hang from broken furniture. A boy with twitchy eyes had an angiocatheter in his bloody chest, allowing air to escape his chest cavity. Another kid gasped shallow breaths, his stomach swollen from internal bleeding. The boy soldiers dashing through the room slipped in the blood on the floor.

Overhead a
whoosh
, the Javelin firing.

Jason didn’t know what to do. He felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of dead and dying children in the room.