Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (27 page)

Julian lashed out with his right foot. Even though he was only fourteen, he was already a bear prowling the mountains amongst shorn-down sheep. He had grabbed up Kel-ee-kni with the same bravado that would have been required for simply standing there empty-handed and then, with only a sample of his assault level, knocked aside the nearest Kalkars.

“No, you can’t!” screamed one of the Kalkars, but there was nothing around to prove that he could possibly do otherwise.

Tearing, snarling, ripping through his opponents, Julian set to work on them. He had a sword and a gun, but wasn’t even bothering to touch the latter. Instead, he carved through the Kalkars with nothing but sheer determined gusto. By the time he had gutted the fifth one, the first was still sinking to the ground with a look of great surprise upon his face. In all, it couldn’t have been more than ten seconds for Julian 6th to carve our assailants to pieces.

He whirled and saw Kel-ee-kni back up, her hands in the air, her eyes wide with fear. At the same time, though, there was still determination. “My . . . my son, Orthis, will destroy you!” she cried out. “No matter what you do to me! No matter how determined you are to battle me! No matter how—!”

“Oh my God,” muttered Julian, who had clearly had enough. He took two quick steps and swung his left fist around. He struck her squarely in the jaw, and she went down, hitting the side of her head on the rock as she fell. She lay there, arms and legs splayed to either side, and he stood over her with his sword pointed squarely at her throat. “Shall I dispose of her, Mother?” he asked. The tone of his voice was utterly bland: I could have ordered her spared or gutted and it would have made not the slightest difference to him.

That awareness was too much for me to bear. “Let her be,” I said finally.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. With any luck, this will be the last we see of her.”

He shrugged and returned the sword to its scabbard. Then he unslung a bag from his shoulder and opened it for me to inspect. There was much fresh meat within; my son had been busy.

I should have seen it as nothing more than a collection of food to be added to our larder. Instead, I took one look at it and began to sob. Immediately, obviously concerned that he had committed some great wrong, Julian moved to comfort me. I pushed him away even as I pulled myself together. “You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s me. I’m just thinking of how proud your father would be of you. And I . . .” The tears began rolling down my face.

Julian 6th reached over and rubbed away the tears, smiling at me gently. “Let’s go,” was all he said.

We went.

I do not know why I feel the way that I do.

There is a dull ache in my side, one that had not been there before. I have felt it more than once in recent days, and I simply cannot understand why it keeps turning up.

It haunts me in my dreams, and I am even aware of it when I am awake. I scratch at it and there is nothing there, yet it continues to pursue me.

And through it all, there is my Julian 5th. I see him standing not far away, gazing upon me, reaching out to me. Curiously his face keeps changing, and sometimes he is Julian 5th, and other times the Ninth, and still other times the Third. He smiles to me, and I smile back, never knowing or understanding his reasons for being in the vicinity.

Why is he here? Why has he come?

No answers. Only more questions.

* * *

The cabin is quite small, and yet it has served us well over the years.

We have traveled from one end of the country to the other and have taken up residence at the New York/Ontario border. Not that it makes much difference anymore which side of the lakes we’re on. We are all of us, all of us, Kalkars.

And we feel good about that.

We have to. Because otherwise we are dead.

Not that any of
us
are feeling good about it, you understand. There are those of us, a precious few, who remain opposed to the situation in front of us. The Kalkars, our assailants from the Moon, have continued to rain down upon us, more and more showing up every year. Millions in all, leaving all of us to wonder where in the hell can they be coming from? I cannot fathom it. No one can. In the end, it is not ours to fathom, but merely to live with.

As for us, we endeavor to live as far from it as possible.

The woods around Niagara Falls remain relatively indifferent to those of us choosing to live around there. We had discovered our particular haven about a year or so after we avoided capture in the lower west end of Canada and instead made our way to the far east. Day after day after day we had lived outside or in caves or in small homes whose owners would, however temporarily, allow us to stay with them before insisting we moved on. How could we do otherwise, especially when Julian would start talking about overcoming the enemy and reestablishing a world for humanity? No one wanted to hear such talk. It made them nervous. And each time we would excuse ourselves and thank the people for whatever small amenities they could provide us, and each time Julian would subsequently apologize to me for talking us out of yet another home.

Yet I could never blame him. He was far too much like his father. I swore I could see the changes in his muscled body with every passing day. Within that first year of our journeying across the southern border of Canada, I watched him mature until he was within an inch or so of his father’s growth. The following year he continued to grow and kept doing so. By the time he reached sixteen years of age, he had reached his full height of six and a half feet tall: taller and broader than his father by a good few inches.

Look at him,
the ghost of Julian would remark to me. As each year continued to pass and Julian 6th grew stronger and more powerful, filling out his body, his father, Julian 5th would remark to me about it.
Look how strong and powerful he is. His time is going to be ready before you know it.

And I would do the same thing I always did. I would sit there and shake my head and respond with determination, “No. He will not be you, Julian. The battle is done and the fight lost. He will live out his life and that will be that.”

You know it will never be that,
replied Julian’s ghost, who seemed to have an inordinate amount of interest in him.

We had taken up residence in the small cabin after the first year of our journey on foot. The first couple of times the Kalkar reavers had pursued us, but by the third month of our drive, they seemed to have given up on us. Their concerns were with weightier matters, like keeping an eye on the world around them. Still, when we found the empty house up in the Canadian forest, some distance away from Niagara, we were initially unsettled by it. Who knew to whom it belonged?

As it turned out, it belonged to us. The day we found it, or more accurately the evening we found it, we tapped gently on the door and awaited a response. When none was forthcoming, we entered the room slowly, glancing around to see what we could see. The place was well stocked and there were gun bits and such that would enable continued hunting for food as needed. We glanced at each other and wondered aloud where the owner of the shack might be.

Turns out we found him easily enough when we wandered into the bedroom. There was Mister Whomever-Had-Been-There, and now would not be anymore. The good lord had called him home, and we had no idea what the reason for it might have been. All we knew was that it hadn’t been all that long ago, and that was to our advantage. We removed him from his previous place of residence and buried him not all that far away, but with enough depth to hide any perceptions of him.

And that had been that. No one had come around for another six months after that, and when they did, all they found was some harmless older woman and her son, who was, at the time, growing like a weed.

We presented a united front. We gave food where we could. We sent people on their way.

If they refused to go, we would kill them. Chop them to bits and bury them a distance from the cabin.

That was our lives.

Year passed into year and we were content with that, or at least I was. The voice of Julian 5th would continue to seek me out on occasion, but I would turn away from it. I had no desire to leap into battle. Julian 6th, he certainly did, but he would not take the step unless I approved it. Which is not to say that we did not discuss it. “Mother!” he would say to me in mounting exasperation, “how can we do this? How can we simply sit by and allow the bastards to take over our world?” And we would talk about it back and forth, but every time it came down to the exact same observation from me: “It’s already done. Now we simply ride it out.”

And it was true. No one, not even Julian 6th, could deny it. The hundreds upon thousands of aggressive Moon Men had seen to it. Had we been up and running at the beginning, we might have been able to thwart it. As it was now, all we could do was ride matters out and wait for . . .

For what?

I had no clue.

And then one day . . .

. . . things changed.

A number of years had passed. Julian was well into his twenties, and he was as big and strong as I had ever seen him. He continued to work with his sword, every single day, two solid hours. He could whip the blade around so quickly that I almost never saw it. He kept a gun at his hip and would occasionally practice his marksmanship with it, although that wasn’t quite as necessary, since his aim was so redoubtable. By this point in time he almost never spoke of taking up the banner against the Kalkars, because he knew I would never approve of it. Several times over the years he had spoken of simply leaving me to my own devices while he went off to do what had to be done. In those instances, I would simply shrug and tell him to follow his instincts. Yet every time he would reconsider his options and remain with me.

I was grateful for having that elevated position in his opinion.

The day when things changed, however, happened when I was sitting in our cabin, making brownies. An utterly routine thing to be undertaking, I know. But who could have been aware of the changes that were about to befall us?

There was a sharp knock at the door. Immediately I took a gun in my hand, something small but accurate. I then went to the door and stood to one side, casting my voice so that if someone shot through, they’d have nothing but emptiness to greet them and a .45 to spit back into their faces. “Who is it?” I called, my voice wavering falsely.

“Help me,” came the whispered response. “Help me . . . please . . .” and that was followed by a most audible thud.

I knew I was taking a chance, but I didn’t see as to how I had any choice. Sliding the gun into my back pocket, I hauled open the door and looked down. There was a young man there, roughly Julian’s age, and he seemed badly injured. He was clutching at his shoulder and grimacing. “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry,” he managed to say, and then his eyes rolled up and he sank quickly into unconsciousness.

By the time Julian 6th came home from hunting, he was astounded to see the young man seated upon the living room couch. The young man’s eyes widened when he saw Julian studying him. I had helped him to sit up, and he was dabbing at some blood that had dried upon his forehead. His shoulder was already bandaged up. “Are you . . . ?” he began to ask, but then couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

“Am I who?” said Julian.

“Are you . . .” He took a deep breath and then let it out. “Are you Julian 6th?” Quickly he added, before Julian could respond, “Please don’t consider me forward for asking such an obvious question. I know that it couldn’t be you. There is no way that—”

God bless my son for his inability to lie. A wise young man would have known enough to say, “Get out before I throw you out.” But not my Julian, no. Instead, with a look of deepest surprise, he said, “Yes! Why, yes, I am Julian 6th.”

The young man who had come to us out of nowhere grasped at his heart as if the fondest stroke of luck had been granted. “I don’t believe it. Is it true—?”

“Yes, it’s true, and this is my mother, Nah-ee-lah. Which leaves us the question of—?”

“Oh, of course!” The new arrival appeared mortified. “I am Stubs.”

“You don’t look like a Stubs.”

Stubs merely shrugged. “We are what we are. I was given the name over twenty years ago. I suppose my parents believed it fit me back then. But now . . . Gods, I still cannot believe it.”

“Believe it and speak quickly, Stubs, because there are none who know that my mother and I reside here.” There was an edge of severity to his voice. “We live in peace . . .”

“Then you live in a fool’s paradise!” said Stubs urgently. “I tell you right now that there are people who continue to search for you. They remember who you are and what you are capable of. And more to the point, they will be more than happy to dispose of you once and for all. This you cannot allow.”

“What are you saying?” Justin seemed utterly bewildered at what Stubs was telling him.

“Do you see these?” He pointed to the injuries on his body. “These are from people who attempted to avail themselves upon me. These are from people who tried to injure me once they found out about my mission! The world
needs
you, Julian! And you as well, ma’am,” he added in quick acknowledgment of my presence.