Out of Exodia by Debra Chapoton Page A

rituals. The general repeated the directive through
an intercommunication system and within moments the entire city was
armed and stationed at perimeter exits. They believed they would
easily girdle the invaders, take the advantage, and squeeze the
Reds into deadly submission.
    The Director covered his silvery head
with an old motorcycle helmet and followed the tall general to the
western exit, the one that was best hidden and most easily
defended.
    * * *
    “ We’re gonna make it,”
Lydia breathes at my side. “We’ll cross and go on and they can just
stay hidden.”
    Her optimism sharply contradicts the
suspicions I have as I now step more lightly, afraid the ground
might cave in. We hit the midway point and the cloud ahead drops
lower, loiters at the western edge, then falls like a wall of fog
to stop our progress.
    A great number of the horses have lost
their riders or freed themselves of lead lines and are now trotting
off, heading to their well-remembered home. A bit of panic is
setting in among the women. A quick regret flashes across my mind:
I should have used the rod, let it snake into the ground, tunnel to
the center and blow their caves to pieces.
    Despite the noise around me I hear the
click and clatter of dozens of metal doors thrown back. The sound
reverberates, popping left and right, front and back, then randomly
around. Within seconds warriors appear, stripes on some faces,
helmets on others, lances and swords and spears outnumbering the
deadly gray barrels of their ancient guns.
    We are surrounded by an orange and
black army.
    They fire first; a quick round of
bullets goes wild above our heads. Hair-raising screams and vicious
threats precede the sounds of our answering attack: single shots
and nano-gun fire.
    Through the cloud appears the tallest
man I’ve ever encountered, flanked by men with weapons I’ve never
seen before.
    Time slows for us, but stops for them.
We take our clearest aim, our sharpest shots. Our marksmen are
precise. I raise the rod, but it makes no difference. I stab it
into the ground and pillage my pack for a weapon. Lydia races to
the center, pulling children into trembling piles. She along with
her mother and her friends cover the small bodies with their
own.
    Both sides quickly exhaust supplies of
precious gunpowder and the battle takes an awkward pause. Josh and
Blake and Herb and Harmon and every able man who bears a faux sword
pushes out from our circle and strikes with surety and ease while
our enemy’s army crumbles.
    The cloud spreads above us, drops like
a murky blanket, and shrouds the dead and the living. The enemy
stumbles through, turns on its own people, kills blindly. And
wrongly. I can see through the mist and vapor; I battle with men
who cannot see me raise my arm. They swerve and parry in frantic
defense, but they lose. I disarm them one by one and use their
strange weapons on the next wave.
    It seems that only minutes have passed,
but the sun no longer lingers above the veiling cloud which now
rises high. Hues of hot orange and red and deepest purple frame the
sunset. My eyes and ears settle on new sights and sounds. Blood
upon my hands. Streaks of tears and dirt on Lydia’s face, but
thankfully no blood. Sobbing children. Harmon’s shirt is dark with
stains, but the blood isn’t his. Blake, Teague, Marilyn, Mira, even
Eugene, all are laughing in a way that mimics madness, but they’re
not hurt, not bleeding. Safe. Everyone is safe.
    I check quickly. There’s no more
fighting anywhere. The bodies that surround us, men, women, even
children, all lie still and broken. Dead. Every cave dweller is
dead.
    I don’t find even one Red who was
killed though many do have injuries, some quite bad.
    Suddenly the cloud shimmers and I hear
the hum from Malcolm’s machine. I spot him sitting on a heap of
bags, fiddling with levers on the chest and petting the sides of
the thrumming box. The cloud moves around to the north side. It
settles there as if to guide us to