MirrorWorld Part 31

She chuckles, pats my knees, and grunts as she stands. Despite the news she's just delivered, I'm out in five minutes.

Cobb wakes me as we begin our approach. I look out the windows, shifting my vision into the mirror world. The world above is purple, the land below hues of darkness, pocked by several small colonies, almost the size of houses, but nothing significant. In the real world, it's all swamp. Our approach to the airport brings us in east of the city, and flying around it for a look will take time we don't have. We'll recon from the ground, I decide.

According to Allenby and corroborated by my returning memory, Lyons had identified New Orleans as the location for what could be the largest Dread colony in North America. Allenby believes he's out to destroy it with the hopes that the loss of a large colony will essentially switch off the smaller colonies and hordes of Dread in the same way that the destruction of our local colony did to the Dread in the area. But it's not really the colony that needs to be destroyed, it's the Dread mole hiding inside. They're the task-masters. If he's right, and this can be done, it could work, instantly freeing the United States from their influence. But then what? Could we act fast enough to free other nations, focusing on the ones with nuclear a.r.s.enals? Or would the attack have the same effect on the Dread as the nuclear a.s.saults on Nagasaki and Hiroshima had on World War II imperial j.a.pan? That's what he's hoping for, I think, and wonder if I shouldn't resume my roll in his plan-after Maya is secured.

Knowing New Orleans might someday become a target, Lyons kept a fleet of oscillium-encased vehicles in the company's private hangar. One of them, a red SUV, is waiting for us. As the door opens and the staircase descends toward the tarmac, I take my first breath of city air tinged with the rot and salt of the nearby bayou and ocean. The familiar smell brings back memories of my honeymoon and nearly relaxes me.

Ed Blair gives me a slap on the shoulder. "Let's move." He flew in the c.o.c.kpit, making sure the pilots went where they were supposed to. Had they received conflicting orders from Lyons or his friends in the military, they would have completed the flight at gunpoint. The short man hurries down the stairs, gets behind the wheel, and starts the engine.

"Here," Cobb says, handing me the black duffel bag that holds my a.s.sortment of weapons.

"You can wait here," I tell him. "Stay with Allenby."

He lifts a large first-aid kit complete with a portable defibrillator and gives it a pat. "You might need me. And your aunt is fine here without me."

"But not well enough to join you?" she asks from the top of the stairs.

"Not a chance," I say. "That's a bad wound and if you move around too much, you're going to reopen-"

"I'm a doctor," Allenby grumbles. "And I can-"

"You're also on morphine."

"Oh," she says, and grins. "That's why I feel so good."

"Riiight," Cobb says.

I head back up the stairs and help Allenby to a seat. "I'll be fine. I'm going to find her and bring her back."

She smiles and pats my face twice. "Always such a good boy. Don't dally."

I kiss her forehead and head back to the door, stopping to glare at the two pilots looking back out of the c.o.c.kpit. "If she leaves this plane, it'll become your coffin."

Their rapid nodding reminds me of bobbleheads.

The SUV horn honks twice, beckoning me down the stairs. Blair is all business.

We drive in silence, following interstate 10 west, heading toward the tracker's mirror-world position and avoiding the clogged streets of the city's core, where large angry crowds fight each other, loot storefronts, and burn the city. Police vehicles, SWAT trucks, and other emergency responders are everywhere, sirens blaring, lights flashing, racing in multiple directions. I can't tell if they're helping or simply joining the fray. There's more tension in the air than humidity. But there's no sign of the Dread. I have no doubt that they're out there, moving among the crowds, but they leave the SUV alone.

We exit the highway, turning left past a car that's been left to smolder. Whatever happened here has moved on to another part of the city.

"Whoa," Blair says as we pa.s.s under the highway. "That's not good, right?"

I look ahead. There's a cemetery on the right, known as a "city of the dead" in this part of the world because of the rows of sun-bleached, aboveground tombs. New Orleans is below sea level, built atop land that should be a swamp. Dig a few feet down and you hit the water table. So you have three options for burying the dead: weigh the bodies down and let them sink through the four feet of water filling their six-foot grave, bury the dead in shallow graves to be uncovered by harsh weather and floods, or build them a concrete, granite, and marble city aboveground. Since no one wants moist cadavers floating around the city every time it floods, the dead reside in endless rows of bleak structures ranging from economy stacks to opulent mansions, the inequality in life retained in death.

But this city of the dead is not our destination. That doesn't mean it's not populated or a risk, however.

I steel myself for a fright and gaze into the mirror dimension, noting that the shift in my vision now causes no pain at all.

There's a colony at the center of the graveyard. A small one. And while the swamp has been held at bay in our dimension, the mirror world is under a layer of water. Trees, laden with heavy coils of black gunk, rise from the liquid, which is reflecting the dark purple sky. Despite all the water, there isn't a ripple of movement. There are no Dread here and haven't been anytime recently.

"They're everywhere," Cobb says as we pa.s.s another small colony. I look ahead, to the right, and see more, all just as empty as the first. Turning my eyes back to the real world, I see what Cobb does. Cemetery after cemetery. Drawn to bury our dead on the colonies, this stretch of swamp held back by concrete has become littered with tombs and mausoleums. Tall willow trees, heavy with hanging Spanish moss, sway in the wind, creating a landscape that is eerily similar to the mirror world. I find myself trying to slip farther out of that place, but the trees are here, rooted in my home frequencies. There's no escaping them.

"It's just up ahead," Blair says, turning right. The tracking device last showed Maya in this part of the city. It uses GPS positioning, so once she was pulled back into the mirror world, it stopped working and, since there are no satellites in the mirror world, won't work there, either. If we get within a half mile, a local transmitter in the embedded device will do the job, but until then we're relying on her last-known location.

"Stop," I say. "Pull over."

He stops short of a bridge that crosses one of many ocean inlets cutting into the city. On the other side of the bridge is St. Louis Cemetery No. 3. Of the three big cemeteries in New Orleans, this is the largest and most opulent in terms of crypt construction. Just two miles from the French Quarter, it was flooded during Hurricane Katrina, but, thanks to the heavy stone tombs, the dead stayed where they were supposed to.

I climb out of the car, eyes on the still-distant cemetery. It's a typical summertime New Orleans day. Mid-nineties. Humid. The sky is blue and clear. But there's no denying something feels off. While this part of the city is relatively quiet, I can hear sirens in the distance. The drone of an angry crowd rises and falls with the wind.

But not here.

I take a deep breath, count to seven, let it out for seven, and then let myself see the mirror world again.

Something's wrong.

I climb atop the SUV, its roof bending beneath my feet. I have a clear view of the mirror world beyond the inlet, which is now pea-soup green and clogged with glowing seaweedlike veins extending out of the muddy banks.

"What is it?" Cobb asks. I hear his voice and the car door opening, the shift of the vehicle beneath my feet as he exits, but I can't see him. "What do you see?"

"This can't be the right place," I say. There's a colony, but it's just like the others, small, devoid of life, and partially lost to the swamp. Abandoned. I turn to look at Cobb but forget to shift my vision.

That's when I see it.

The colony.

It's so vast that I take a step back and slip on the SUV's windshield. I tumble back with a shout, landing on the hood and rolling to the concrete. When I open my eyes, I'm under the bleak water of the mirror world. For a moment, I panic, but then remember that I'm only seeing this world. I haven't fully entered it yet. I shift my vision back to the real world and stare at the blue sky above.

Blair and Cobb appear above me, their concerned looks blocking out the sky.

"What happened?" Blair asks.

"It's not at the cemetery," I say, and point back the way we came. "It's behind us."

They both turn around.

"The park?" Cobb asks.

Maya and I spent two full days exploring the park and its variety of tourist-friendly locals. Twice the size of New York's Central Park, the thirteen-hundred-acre City Park is a ma.s.sive collection of park greens, willow and oak trees, two stadiums, botanical gardens, an art museum, Storyland for the kids, a lake, several golf courses, and more, all featuring New Orleans's telltale old-world style mixed with hints of bayou. In the mirror dimension, it's populated by one single structure.

The colony.

The structure is ma.s.sive, resembling a half-sized black and gray version of Australia's Ayers Rock-Uluru to the natives-an 1,100-foot-tall, six-mile-circ.u.mference sandstone formation. While Uluru rises from the flat plains of the bush, the colony is partially concealed by the tree-laden swamp, but it still manages to tower above it all. While looking at the closer, smaller colonies, I'd missed the one looming over them all, so big that it could be mistaken for landscape. I hadn't seen it before because the cemeteries and smaller colonies kept my eyes on the right side of the road.

Several of the large six-winged centipede Dread lazily circle the perimeter above the colony. A few mothmen, just distant specks, flit about, entering and leaving the colony via one of many tunnels hewn in the outer wall. The base of the structure is hidden from me by the vast swampy jungle that is the mirror world.

I slip my vision back into the real world. Instead of the colony, I see a straight road leading to the New Orleans Museum of Art, which, with its Roman-style columns, looks like it would be more at home in Washington, D.C. Three colorful banners hang behind the columns like an afterthought, added when someone realized the parliamentesque style of the exterior didn't scream, "art." Beyond the museum is the park: endless trees with hints of buildings hidden within. I shiver at the idea that all the people using this park, to play with their children, watch a game, or experience a little culture, are surrounded by Dread, unknowingly moving through the heart of a colony. Of course, this also explains the many reports of hauntings within the park, and probably accounts for the prevalence of black magic, voodoo, and New Orleans's dark history.

"Are you okay?" Cobb asks, helping me to my feet.

I take stock of my body, paying attention to aches and pains, and find ... nothing. "I'm ... fine."

He shakes his head, unbelieving. "Don't be macho." He reaches for my head, pulls me down to inspect the fresh st.i.tches. "What the ... this was a good gash, right?"

I never saw it, but remember the tree branch cracking against the top of my head. "Allenby st.i.tched it?"

"But there's no wound," he says. "There's just a line of st.i.tches. Lift your shirt."

I comply and am surprised when Cobb flinches away from me. "Holy s.h.i.t."

I don't look. I can't. "I'm still changing, right? Becoming like them?"

He shakes his head. "You look ... normal. Better than normal." He motions for me to look, and I do. My body is healed. No cuts. No sc.r.a.pes. No scabs. And the vast amount of bruising covering my torso is gone. I might not look like a Dread, but this kind of healing must come from them. And now that I'm thinking about it, I feel stronger and more energized than I can remember feeling ever before.

"So, I guess that's good news," he says, then changes topics, perhaps sensing my discomfort. "What did you see?"

"You don't want to know." I head for the back of the SUV, pop the back door, and open my gear bag.

Before I can dig inside, Blair steps up next to me, holding out a smartphone. "Still nothing on the local tracking app, but-"

The phone chimes. We all flinch.

"It's got a signal," Blair says, as I take the device.

A map of New Orleans centered on my location is displayed on the phone. A blue dot reveals my position just before the bridge. Using my thumb to move the map, I scroll upward. A red dot appears, dead center in the park, on the north end of Scout Island, surrounded by Couturie Forest, the only swath of forested bayou to be found in the city. On the plus side, she's not far. Not so much on the plus side, it's going to be a slog reaching her, in either dimension. Despite the good news of locating Maya, something confuses me. "This is more than a half mile away."

Blair looks at the screen without taking it from me. "It's a GPS signal. She's in our frequency again."

Why? I think. What's the point in bringing her back and forth between frequencies? The answer is obvious. "They're luring us in."

"Us?" Cobb says, sounding as worried as I feel. None of us wants to walk into a trap.

"Lyons," I say, hoping I'm right. "They don't just know he's coming; they want him, too."

A sudden chill runs over my arms. The hair stands on end.

"Do you feel that?" Cobb asks.

I don't answer.

I can't.

The Dread are near, and some unlocked primal part of my mind says that if I acknowledge their presence, they'll acknowledge mine in a horrible way. It turns out, that is their intention, regardless of my actions.

"Ah!" Blair shouts. He's by the driver's-side door, looking about for something that isn't there, or at least can't be seen. I haven't shifted my vision yet, but I know we're not alone.

Suddenly, Blair starts scratching at his face, like someone's just dumped a bucket of spiders over him. He shouts and hops, his cries warbling. For a moment, I'm paralyzed as fear spilling over from Blair takes hold. He screams, and it feels like a lightning bolt has struck my chest.

I hate fear. Even more than the Dread, it is my enemy.

"What do we do to our enemies?" The voice belongs to a drill sergeant, his words returning as a fresh memory.

"Kill them," I respond, both in memory and in the present. "f.u.c.king kill them."

I step around the side of the SUV, weapons forgotten, fists clenched, but am stopped by Blair. He levels a shaking handgun toward my chest. I nearly retreat but manage to stand my ground. A subtle shift in the frequency of my vision reveals Blair's company. A Medusa-hands has its tendrils buried deep in his head while a mothman hovers above, whispering waves of fear into the man, the little limbs lining its abdomen shaking frantically. It's a lethal combination, and for a moment, I think it's directed toward me. But it's not.

"Don't let ... them ... win." They're Blair's last words before he turns the gun on himself and pulls the trigger.

The sharp report of the handgun and sight of this brave man's brains bursting out of his skull both increase my fear and galvanize my course of action. With a scream, I charge, lunging at the Medusa-hands as it retracts its tendrils from Blair's head.

Halfway to the creature, I realize I probably should have taken a weapon. But it's too late now. I'm committed. And I'm not exactly defenseless.

I leap into the air, painlessly shift my body between frequencies to the world between-which I note is a mix of Dread world trees and New Orleans city-c.o.c.k my fist back, and drive it into the bottom of the thing's triangular head, impacting the yellow vein-covered flesh beneath two of its four eyes. The impact is solid. The monster flails away, sliding smoothly at first but then stumbling and falling. As it falls, the black shroud covering its lower limbs falls aside, revealing at least twenty thin, triple-jointed legs, all ending in sharp barbs.

If the Medusa-hands were alone, there might be time to rush back and grab a gun or knife, but it's not alone, and there isn't time. Before I can even think about what to do next, a wave of fear tears through me, scouring away my fragile emotional defenses the way a nuclear blast would remove my skin.

But I stand against it. Maybe it's the rage, or the part of me that's becoming more Dread, but the fear, while powerful, doesn't completely undo me. It does, however, freeze me in place, all my energy going toward overcoming the effect.

A memory surfaces. My first kiss with Maya. In the rain. Like some Hollywood cliche except soaking wet, cold, and out of our heads in love. I scream, but not in fear. A vibration moves through my body, curbing the effect of the Dread's influence. When my mind clears enough, I turn my eyes up toward the mothman. It's ten feet away, four wings beating, hovering beyond the reach of my physical body. Its four red eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. I'm not sure the things can even blink, but this slight expression of emotion, of doubt, in the monster's split-pupil eyes is the last bit of encouragement I need.

I stand on shaking legs. Feels like I'm lifting a bulldozer. But the harder I fight, the less the weight, until suddenly I'm free. Like a snapped elastic band, the wave of fear generated by the mothman pulls back, the whisper cut short, pursued by an attack of my own. My body buzzes with energy, static whispering-roaring. And the Dread ... it arches back and clutches its head. The furiously beating wings go rigid and the monster plunges from the sky, landing in a heap. The pain of pushing fear is gone, replaced by a sense of power.

I slip back into the real world for a moment to check on Cobb.

He gasps at my return, clutching the side of the SUV, Faithful in hand. But rather than take the weapon from him, I decide to enable his recovery from the fear effect. "Cobb, I'm going to bring one of them to you! Get ready for a fight!"

"What?" he shouts in what I now easily recognize as terror.

I slip back into the world between and bend over the recovering mothman, grasping its arm, which is covered in short, thick hairs. I pull it up, lean back hard, and propel the thing toward the side of the SUV. Before letting go, I force it into our reality and slam it into the vehicle. It crashes against the door and falls to its hands and knees.

Cobb shouts in surprise, jumping back, but quickly realizes the monster isn't affecting him. With a battle cry, Cobb raises the machete into the air.

I don't watch it come down. Back in the world between, the Medusa-hands is back on its many feet, scrabbling toward me over pavement, tendrils stretching for my head. There's no avoiding it-by conventional means. I slip fully out of the world between and dive forward, pa.s.sing through the Dread's location. I feel a chill through my body, but nothing more. I roll to my feet just as I reenter the world between, coming up behind the not-so-spry Dread.

I sweep its legs out, snapping some of them. The Dread retreats fully to the mirror world before hitting the ground, and I follow it. The thing lands with a splash, much of it now underwater. I jump on its chest, which feels like thin skin wrapped over bony nodules, and stare into its yellow eyes, seething with anger.

Tendrils snake out of the water, glowing yellow, eager to influence my thoughts. I don't give it the chance. A burst of fear, sent into the thing's core, makes it shake. The four eyes widen, just a touch, the rectangular pupils narrowing.

Armed only with my bare hands, I flicker out of the mirror dimension, punch downward into empty s.p.a.ce, and then reappear atop the Dread. My fist has occupied the s.p.a.ce at the center of the Medusa-hands's head, shifting matter, destroying stationary matter. I splay my fingers out, further shredding the Dread's brain. The monster spasms and falls still.

Then I'm back in the real world, no trace of gore coming with me. That is, until I turn around. Bloodred gore, glowing and inhuman, covers the street. The mothman lies beside the SUV, hacked to pieces. Cobb stands there, breathing hard, Faithful in hand.

"Feel better?" I ask him.

"Much," he says.

I push the mothman parts back into the mirror dimension. I don't think seeing a dead bogeyman lying in the streets of New Orleans would do anyone any good. When I'm done, I turn my attention to Blair. He's definitely dead. I place my hand on his chest, offer up a prayer for his soul, and hide his body beneath the waters of the Dread world swamp.