Then the waves were gone, morphed into something else entirely, into Posiedon, a vision of the deity’s upper-half emerging from a violent whirlpool. Poseidon had the ripped torso and tanned flesh of a warrior, his muscles thumping at the golden skin of four arms. At the end of each arm were small, snake-like creatures where the fingers should have been. The snakes were eyeless, faceless, just snapping jaws full of fangs. Long, flowing, white-grey hair fell at the sides of the black holes representing his eyes, and brushed around gritted teeth and iron jaw line of a man who could have just as easily have been forty, as four hundred, or four thousand years-old. Poseidon raised his trident to the heavens and stabbed its prongs into the crisp shell of a spider’s belly. It cracked like an eggshell, spilling thousands of smaller spiders down onto Noah. The General kicked, and thrashed, and batted away the spiders, but they fell and fell in a constant, never-ending shower. The fuzz of their long, multi-jointed legs crawled along his arms and face. They made a sticky, sucking noise as they moved, sinking their clawed teeth into his neck and shoulders, and looking out at the resulting blood flow through perfectly round eyes, glistening in green and black. He screamed, and clawed, and shook. He reached out for Poseidon’s trident, hoping to use the weapon to fend off the creatures. Poseidon handed it to him freely, but, in Noah’s grip, the trident only turned into to the leg of another spider, this one a giant, drooling demon bug, which turned on Noah and swallowed him whole.

  LXI.

  By the way his muscles hurt, and the way sweat ran over the disfigured composition of lacerations and bruises on his skin, David could not be certain that the mental and emotional wall he had struck had not actually been a physical wall, too. It seemed to have materialised from the darkness of the cell, bringing a painful halt to his spill down the stairs.

  He was sore, that was for sure. Every part of him hurt in some fashion or another, but the physical suffering did not consume him as much as the emotional exhaustion. All the things that had happened recently -both those he had caused and those he had simply reacted to- no longer seemed surreal or crazy. They were all real. And scary. The way he organised his thoughts, it was as though the momentum that had carried him this far had suddenly petered out at the top of those stairs. There, the only thing left to do, the only thing he could ever possibly do, and now wondered if he was destined to do all along, was to fall down, down and down into the cell.

  ‘You idiot,’ he cursed out loud. ‘You stupid, son of a bitch. What the hell were you thinking? She was right, you know. This whole thing isn’t for you. Why did you never listen, man? People like you don't do things like this, David. People like you stay where you’re supposed to stay, plodding on from one day to the next, working a steady job and playing video games. You were supposed to stay out of the way, man, just like she said. Stay out of the way, and let other people deal with making things happen. That's what you were supposed to do, you stupid idiot. Stay home, be a good boy, don't cause any trouble.

  ‘And there was me thinking maybe I was different, that maybe I was the one who was gonna do something above and beyond what was expected, that I was the one who would do something that mattered, that would do something big. Yeah right, something big. Got my wish, didn’t I? This whole damn thing is a lot bigger than me.’

  He looked around, up and then down, studying the imaginary brick wall. It had emerged as a wedge, an obstacle, a barrier between where he was -namely on his way to get help for The General- and where he wanted to be, back home on Earth, having brought a sober and lucid Noah Fallon with him. If there was ever a time when he was going to do it, this big and all-important thing he had once felt destined to do, that time was now. His gaze remained set on the edge of the imaginary wall before him. He saw a figure sat on top of it, legs dangling like a child on a swing, fingers gripping the ledge, its eyes hysterical and its smile mocking. It was a vague, murky figure, that David saw at least was the image of Mrs. Sherri Attreus. The broad strokes of her fading Yorkshire dialect cut across his thoughts.

  Alright then David, this is what you wanted. Here, here's your chance, lad. Prove me wrong, I dare you. Get out there and do it. It’s only thanks to me and your bloody father that you’ve even made it this far. I hope you know that, son. I hope you realize just how much we’ve been responsible for driving you here. You do, don’t you? But now it's all down to you, and you're chickening out, just like you and I both knew you would, didn’t we?

  Yes, I knew all along. I tried to protect you, son, I really did. I told you to put your crazy ideas to bed, get a job, be normal, but you wouldn’t listen, would you? And now it's do-or-die, isn’t it? Now or never, you bloody fool.

  And you're crumbling, aren't you, lad? You've just realised how bloody big this is, how after this, everything changes for you. There's no going back now, no going back to spending your days fixing jetcars and playing video games and dreaming.

  There's either success or there’s failure. If you succeed, your life is going to be different in a way that you can't even imagine. If you fail, well, there's always insanity and death to look forward to. It’s worse too, because you're already pre-programmed for failure, aren’t you, son? As much as you tried to fight it, you stubborn little so-and-so, you knew it deep down.

  As much as you shut off when I tried to warn you, as much as you insisted on being different, and as much as you tried to hold on to this mad fantasy of yours, you were doomed from the start, because even if you were too bloody pig-headed to realise it, something I said did sink in. It sunk in, and it stuck, and it's still there. Oh yes, it's there, buried somewhere within you, my voice, my words, this idea that you, David Attreus, are not supposed to succeed, that even getting this far is wrong, that it isn't supposed to be.

  Deep down somewhere, you hear me, lad, and because you hear me, your subconscious knows that any kind of success, above and beyond daily survival, is not for you. That same subconscious, which to you looks like me and your father, will not let you succeed. There's only so long that you can get away with doing something your subconscious knows isn't right, and it looks like your time has run out, laddy.

  This is it for you. This is too big for you, and you know it. You've always known it, haven't you? God, what a bloody idiot you are, David. Look what happens when you disobey me. Look at you now, locked in a cell where the best possible outcome is a quick death.

  And I suppose you want me to say that I’m proud of you, don’t you? You want me to say that at least you did your very best, and that I’m proud of you for at least trying. Don’t be so stupid, David! You know I wouldn’t say that even if I was soppy love drunk and had only hours to live.

  You’re a stupid fool, David Attreus. A stupid, bloody fool! It serves you bloody well right for playing around, lost in your mad fantasies and stupid dreams, and fancy, unrealistic ideas. This is where that leads you David, nowhere. Are you happy now?

  David lashed out at nothing with an outstretched foot, and punched the flat of his left palm with his right hand.

  ‘No!’ he yelled. ‘No! For God’s sake, no!’

  Adrenaline and anger surged through him, and would have made him do something crazy had a second, much calmer voice, not spoken to him.

  ‘Alright. Jeez, brah.’

  David's heart pounced into his throat. A bowling ball splashed into his belly. His legs bolted and he caught his chin painfully on his kneecaps, smacking his teeth together in a hollow bite.

  ‘Son of a bitch, you scared the life out of me,’ he told Sol through steadying breaths.

  The big wrestler crawled to knees, leaning forward with one arm in front of him, the other dangling lifelessly by his chest.

  ‘Where you are you, Davey?’ he asked.

  ‘Here,’ David offered.

  He moved his arm in the direction of Sol's voice.

  ‘Where's here?’

  ‘Stick your arm out, numb nuts.’

  Sol tried, grimaced, and wrenched his arm back again.

  ‘I can’t,’ he winced. ‘I think it’s broken.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Am I sure? Argh, shit. No I ain’t sure, Davey. Do I look like the doctor to you?’

  David thought about Rochelle. She smiled, softly and lovingly in his mind’s eye. The memory of her laughter calmed him.

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  LXII.

  Rochelle did not look too much like a doctor, either. Still unconscious, her leg had dropped from the armrest. She now lay sprawled out in the gangway, as though mimicking the chalk outline of a murder victim from a bad TV cop show. Her lips pursed. A small puff of air escaped with a delicate hiss. Her eyelids were shut, blind to the sight of Noah, on his knees beside her.

  The horror had thrown him from his makeshift bed, knocking Rochelle’s leg from the armrest in the process. He now knelt in front of the seat with his arms bent at right angles on the cushion. If Rochelle had been awake, she would have seen hims struggle to climb onto the back seat, but she may not have seen the vacant look in his eyes, telling the story of a man whose mind had evacuated his body.

  Noah was not climbing onto the sick-stained back seat of a stolen jetcoach. He was climbing through the stinking entrails of the giant spider that had swallowed him whole. The world around him was black and red, a gloomy tunnel of spider flesh, swimming in viscera that squelched and burst beneath his hands and knees. Something was chasing him. He did not know what, or who, it was, but it was getting closer, breathing in short bursts that sounded like the huffing of a steam engine gaining motion.

  He moved faster, squirming his way through the arachnid’s windpipe, and finding himself in its mouth, staring out at a radiant light through mountains of teeth. Moving quickly, he raced on all fours towards the light, lumbering over the spiders fangs, and collapsing out of its mouth onto hot desert sand.

  LXIV.

  Following David’s directions, Sol clambered over and sat beside him. Their backs rested against a wall, this one real, with clammy stones covered in moss. David looked towards his imaginary wall and watched it dissolve into nothing, taking the figure of his mother with it.

  Overcome with the pain of his broken arm, Sol reached out for David’s fingers and squeezed.

  ‘Ah, Christ!’ yelped David ‘What are you doing, man?’

  ‘Sorry,brah. Didn't mean to hurt ya,’

  ‘No, of course you didn't.’

  Sol sucked air through his teeth. He ran his fingers over the bruise on the back of his head and hugged himself with his one good arm, pressing his fingers into the slashes and bumps of his shoulder blades.

  ‘Hey c'mon, Davey. Are you always this cranky?'

  ‘Cranky? Sol, man, we just got thrown down the stairs by a couple of morons with guns. Do you think my reaction is somehow inappropriate?’

  ‘No, OK. I get it, that sucked. We didn't expect that. Thing is, brah, it's happened now. We can't go back. There's no miracle in the world that can send us back in time to make it unhappen. So just cool it, OK? Cool it, and tell me what the hell we're gonna do about this situation?’

  ‘Me?’ David shrieked. ‘Why is it up to me to figure out what we're gonna do?’

  Sol smacked the palm of his hand against his forehand and let it slide down his face.

  ‘Because that's your job here, that’s why,’ he sighed. ‘I don't know what kind of crazy sadistic god thought it a good idea to bring the four of us together, but whoever He is, that’s what He did.

  ‘It’s probably because he sees how bad this so-called planet has turned. Yeah, that's it, He looks down on Asylonia and He thinks “Damn, brah, that place is messed up. Dumb humans, thinking they can duplicate my life’s work just like that.”

  ‘And then he remembers that there's a bunch of us who shouldn't be here, who should be back home on Earth. He figures that the only way for the four of us to get to where we're supposed to be going is to go there together. Don’t ask me why, brah -God’s got a damn weird sense of humor, that’s what my momma always used to say- but that's what He did, right, Davey? The Kid, The Doctor, The Wrestler, The General, He brought us together and said “Alright assholes, you want off this spinning pile of hellshit, you gotta work together.”

  ‘The doc, she'll get her chance to do what she does best when we get to that hospital. She'll straighten the damn drunk out, fix up my arm and your little boo-boo, and we're good to go. We need somebody to take care of us, that's Doctor Love...That's Rochelle. Me? I'm the obligatory meathead, aren't I? We need a bit of muscle? Here I am, dude, ripping doors off the get-away ride, catching your ass when we fall down stairs so that you don't break every damn bone in your body. Yep, that's me, The Mighty Sol, hired meat. Damn, even the drunk got his part to play.’

  ‘Noah?’

  There was less aggression in David's voice now. He could see some semblance of sense in what Sol was saying. It comforted him as much as it intrigued him.

  ‘What's Noah's part? He's the reason we're in this mess.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Sol smiled. ‘He's the reason we're all together. Like I said, brah, The Big Man wants us all off this planet as a group, so how does he do that? Sends up the one kid who gives a crap enough to do the damn near impossible. He throws Noah in my path and Rochelle in yours, and then BOOM, it all goes hella crazy with those assholes back in town, and here we are, the four of us together, the only aliens on a planet full of every species in the universe. Look at us, thrown together at the mercy of The Powers That Be so that we can escape this mess of a place and get our asses home. Ya get it, Davey? We gotta do this together. Noah may be a pain in my ass, but I wouldn't even have a chance of getting home if it weren't for him, and Rochelle, and you.’

  David sighed again and buried his head in his hands.

  ‘Yeah, alright, me. What can I do? You've got a point with The General, he brought us together and he didn't even know it, but that's because he's The General. That's what he does. He saves people, it's in his blood and...’

  ‘...And in yours too, Lieutenant Attreus.’

  ‘Hey now...’

  ‘Hey now what, Davey? The General is out of action, we're a man down, and, like it or not buddy, you're the guy who piloted a spaceship to Asylonia to rescue him. You've already done more than anybody in the United Earth Force. You, Davey Boy, you did that, but your mission ain't over yet, brah. You gotta lead us out of this shit. We trust you.’

  ‘But...’

  David’s eyes flushed hot and damp. His heart swelled in his mouth.

  ‘But nothin', Lieutenant. You're in charge here. You got us this far, and now you gotta get us the rest of the way. Nobody else on Earth could’ve gotten us here or else they would have done so by now, don't you think? You put a little bit of hope in that doctor's heart, dude. Nobody else could’ve done that, not even the doc herself. If she could, she would’ve done so by now, don't you think? You got rid of those assholes that attacked us in the alleyway, and you came up with the idea to get us on that coach. All of this so far has been down to you, Davey. I put my trust in you to get us out of this mess, somehow.’

  David wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffled.

  ‘Alright,’ he sighed. "We might have to shoot a few people though.’

  Sol rubbed his broken arm and grinned.

  ‘That's OK, brah,’ he said. ‘I figured as much.’

  LXV.

  Noah did not know if he was dreaming again of things which would never happen, or only remembering things that already had. All he knew was that what he was seeing and experiencing was not real. He knew this because he could see himself moving around, floating above the scene as though in an outer-body experience.

  Yet it could not have been an outer-body experience, for the body which lay quaking in a cold sweat on the back seat of the jetcoach, wearing wet jeans, a stained, black t-shirt and a crumpled leather jacket, was not the same as the body he observed below him. That was a strong, muscular body with tanned skin, wearing a sleeveless black shirt, army-green combat pants, and black patrol boots which made a dull crunching sound as they ran over the dry surface, kicking up dust and stone. His face was hidden by a metallic-grey helmet which covered his head, neck and face, with a visor sliding down to protect his eyes.

  He was running through a desert not unlike the one outside jetcoach window. He carried a grenade launcher in his right hand, whilst using his left to make signals, directing a platoon of six identically-dressed soldiers towards the outer wall of some nameless city. The wall was bigger than any he had ever seen, made of smooth, dusty sandstone which curved round and out of their vision. He stopped just a few feet away from it and flung both his arms out by his sides, ordering his men to hold it there, get behind him, stay quiet.

  The faceless soldiers did as they were ordered, crouching in genuflection, and aiming their submachine guns to the ledge of the wall.

 

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