The Brothers Locke, page 5
“Ape? That was a rather lazy insult. More like… buffalo butt.”
“Neanderthal.”
“Blunt skull.”
“Knuckle dragging nutter.”
“Bad breath bulky boo boo!”
“What are you two blabbering on about?” came Bulk’s heavy voice from behind them.
The brothers turned to him with grins on their faces. He hadn’t heard what they said, but he suspected whatever it was, it wasn’t too kind. Bulk’s forehead wrinkled and his hairline shifted downward as he grunted at the boys.
“Y’all really trying my patience, ya know? We’re out of here as soon as Kale and Jocelyn are finished. Bando! Get this jeep started. We’re leaving,” Bulk ordered.
Mouth’s grin turned to a frown, “You know we can’t do that.”
“I say we’re leaving and we’re leaving. Got it?”
“Okay, let’s just think about this. You are missing someone just like we are. Wouldn’t it make sense for us to wait here so they both can come back?” Echo tried to reason, standing between Bulk Brown and his increasingly agitated brother.
“Actually, no. There’s more going on than you know. We have to get moving. Just get in the jeep. You don’t have to worry about your brother.”
“That’s not good enough!” Mouth shouted. “He could be hurt.”
“And Dana will take care of him. Trust me. We need to go. She knows what to do.”
With that, Bulk waved to Bando who had given him a thumbs-up on the vehicle. He turned the key and the jeep started up, coughing out a cloud of black smoke as it did. Kale and Jocelyn brought the last pieces of salvage to the jeep and carefully placed them inside. Mouth and Echo just stood there in defiance. They were not going to leave. There was no way.
“He’s really not that bad a guy,” Kale said to the brothers.
“Yeah, he’s just leaking kindness,” scoffed Mouth.
Jocelyn added, “If you get to know him, he really isn’t that bad. Bulk is rough around the edges and grumpy at the best of times, but he’s got a good soul.”
“You really think we’re leaving our brother out here in Black Harvester Forest?” protested Echo.
“Bulk knows what he’s doing, guys. Believe me, we know that first hand,” said Kale.
The two teenagers entered the jeep and strapped themselves into their seats. Mouth and Echo stared at each other, each one wondering what the other thought. Should they trust these people, a group named Solas that they had never heard of before and so far hadn’t shown any great reason to trust them? Sure, they had saved them from Von Strauss but that didn’t mean they had the their best interests in mind.
“Are you two getting in or are we going to have to force you?” Bulk called out from the passenger’s seat.
“I don’t like this, Echo,” said Mouth.
“We don’t have a choice. And I don’t feel like getting tied to this jeep, so let’s just go with them and hope these kids are telling the truth about this Bulk Brown guy.”
Mouth twisted his lip and chewed on the idea. His gut told him it wasn’t right to leave his brother out here. But perhaps these people could be trusted with this at least. Besides, a part of him wanted to see what this was really all about and there was only one way to find out.
“Twelve hours,” Mouth said to Echo. “If they haven’t done anything in twelve hours, I don’t care what that ape says—”
“Bad breath bulky,” Echo chimed in.
“—we’re going to find Sharp on our own.”
Mouth and Echo entered the jeep but not without Mouth giving Bulk Brown the most serious of glares. At that moment, Bulk gained a small measure of respect for the boys.
***
About twenty minutes after being patched up, the pain in Sharp’s leg was beginning to abate. Dana had a few sticks of a granola snack in her pack and gave one to Sharp, but it wasn’t nearly enough for him to be satiated. He hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours and after all the running, explosions, confrontations, and confusion, he was famished. Still, some food is better than no food.
Dana was not eating. She had her eyes trained on the perimeter of their tree perch. Although she wasn’t expecting any danger, it was still best to keep an eye open. This forest was dangerous and there were unseen threats everywhere.
“If I didn’t know that this place was so perilous I would think it was peaceful,” Dana commented. “It’s dark. It’s quiet. I like that.”
“You like dark and quiet?” Sharp signed.
“Sometimes. No one can see you, right? Some people think it’s scary because they can’t see and all they can do is hear. For me, it means they can’t see me. It can be an advantage.”
Sharp shrugged his shoulders and looked off in another direction. Forms were moving off in the distance and even though he could see what most of them were with his enhanced vision, there were a couple forms that were odd to him. Some were shrouded in darkness so they appeared as oily shadows moving across the ground. Others were blinking in and out of his vision, like they were whole one moment and dissipated the next.
“You know we’re not the bad guys here, Sharp?” Dana asked him out of the blue.
He turned back to her. She was focused on a piece of bark that had broken off from her climb up. She twirled it between her fingers like a souvenir.
“The Dea is a cold place sometimes. And not just here in the West. The East isn’t the bastion of truth and happiness that they try to make it seem. I never really bought the whole ‘the West is evil, the East is good’ thing. There are quite a few horrific people I’ve met from the East. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that there are actual demons in the West and that big disgusting cesspool of corruption called Avidity certainly gives the West an advantage in the scumbag department, but things aren’t so black and white.”
Dana reached into her jacket and pulled out folded map. She carefully unfolded it and Sharp could see why. The thing was tattered and worn; its edges curled and its surface dotted with stains and smudges. It looked like it would fly out of her hands if a strong enough breeze came along.
“They make it seem like it is when you look at this though,” Dana said.
Sharp moved a bit closer to Dana to see the map. He hadn’t seen a full map of the Dea in a long time and there were so many places he had never seen. The Locke Brothers had been to both sides of this map but had only seen a select few places in their travels. The world was so expansive he doubted if anyone had actually visited every spot on the map.
The creative hand that had penned this map made it in brilliant colors: the West surrounded by the night sky and a quarter moon while the East sat on a background of fluffy clouds and a brilliant sun. All of the famed locations Sharp had heard about growing up were represented here, from Odim’s Spire, a giant diamond pyramid dead-center in the snowy north, to the towering skyscrapers of Avidity, to more joyful spots like the carnival city Cirque De Babel and the candy-filled Confection Fields. There were other places he didn’t recognize, like the empty abyss that hung off the bottom edge of the West and the dolphin fin shaped structure in the northwest that he swore had a smile drawn on it. But there, split into two halves by the Lake of Drowned Souls, was their location: Black Harvester Forest.
“It’s beautiful when you look at it as a whole. But see that dividing line of clouds snaking through the middle? That’s supposed to represent the division between the light and the dark. What this map doesn’t tell you, though, is that the position of those clouds changes often. Visually it’s nice, but that’s not reality.”
“Have you been there?” Sharp asked.
“Along the borders? Many times. I’ve seen more of the Dea than anyone could imagine. If there’s one thing I can tell you for certain, it’s even more wondrous than it seems on this piece of paper. It’s our world and even though it’s not perfect, it is worth saving.”
“Saving?” Sharp signed.
Dana let her words linger with him. So there was more to this than Sharp knew, but saving the world? That seemed a bit of a stretch. Avidity was into corruption and power and money, not world destruction. He didn’t want to protest any further as Dana seemed disinterested in giving him any more information. Frankly, it scared him a little.
“You sound doubtful and hopeful at the same time,” Sharp signed to Dana.
“You could say that. I’ve seen some pretty horrible things. Maybe it makes me jaded.”
“What horrible things?”
Dana tried to smile away his question but Sharp’s piercing almond eyes wouldn’t let her shy away from his question. She paused before answering.
“I’ll tell you this, when people have expectations of you because of things other people told them or what they want to believe you are, it’s a burden. A dangerous burden. Some people look to you and see someone who can fix all their problems, and that’s a bad thing. Others look at you and see someone who is a threat.”
She pushed the sleeve of her jacket down to expose her left shoulder. Sharp saw the scars there, jagged and ugly. “I’ve had to learn that other people just want to use you ultimately, especially if they think you’re special. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m sure you and your brothers know that. I imagine you’ve been used more times than you can count.”
Sharp nodded in agreement. He began to think about what he and his brothers had endured since they were very young. Even with all the uniqueness the Dea offered, being triplets with the ironic abilities and disabilities they possessed made them targets for ridicule and abuse. The only time they felt in control of themselves was when they were trying to be thieves or running with mercenaries that used them for their unique talents. Was either better in the long run?
“Just know that even though Solas needs you, we have no intention to use you like expendable fodder. You’ll find out more when we join up with the team again.”
Sharp pushed Dana back against the bark of the tree, keeping them both out of the limited light from the moon above. Dana began to protest when Sharp put his index finger to his lips and then pointed down to the ground below. She turned her head to see what he was pointing to and realized why he had moved so suddenly.
“I never thought I’d see them,” signed Sharp.
A stream of blue-black light flowed across the moss covered ground beneath Dana and Sharp. A river of luminescence was pouring through the foliage, brilliantly bright blues and greens glowing in the blackness of the forest with a darker substance at its core. As the stream progressed, larger forms could be seen within, motes darting up from and down into the glowing current like fireflies dancing over a lake. Later, full apparitions appeared, shining even brighter in the dark of the forest, bathing every bark and branch in the same haunting cerulean.
“It’s the dead, heading back to the Lake of Drowned Souls,” Dana commented. “It’s a first for me. Be glad we’re up here and they can’t see us. To be caught in the Stream of the Dead is to join them in the journey, they say.”
After a minute, the stream ended. All that was left behind was the fading illumination on the nearby trees and the smell of jasmine lingering in the air. A peculiar scent, Sharp thought. It reinforced the experience as being both terrifying and beautiful.
“We’ve got about an hour until your leg should be feeling better,” said Dana. “We will be on our way then.”
“On our way where?” asked Sharp.
“To meet the others. They took the jeep to our next stop, if Bulk followed the plan, which I’m sure he did. We are going to take a different route.”
She paused for a moment to observe Sharp’s surprised expression.
“Did you think we were just going to stay here? No, I know where they’re going. The plan was supposed to be that I separate from the group and meet them there afterwards, as backup in case something went wrong. Bulk has to get there by tomorrow morning though. He’s carrying something too important to wait.”
***
Dawn, or what passed for dawn in the West, was creeping up on the Solas crew as they emerged from the forest and into the plains beyond. They were heading north to a destination still not revealed to Echo and Mouth, but the brothers would not stop trying to find an advantage, a chance, an opportunity of some kind to get out of their present situation.
Even though they doubted that Solas had malicious intentions for them, they still were not too keen on leaving their brother behind with a stranger. They were also suspicious of why they were needed. No one would talk and the uneasiness of having no answers to their questions was grinding away at their minds like a toothpick being slowly pressed into a skull.
“We’re running low on fuel,” Bando said to Bulk. “How much farther?”
“Not far?” Bulk answered, a map in one hand and a cigar in the other. “I know you didn’t want to be back in the field, but I appreciate it. Believe me, wrangling all these youngin’s by myself would have been torture.”
“Well us oldheads need to stay together, right?”
“Hey, you remember back about two years ago? We were locked up in the East because of some crap job we did for the Council.”
Bando laughed, “Yeah, yeah, I remember that run. You left me to do all the hard work myself.”
“Oh no no no no, brother,” Bulk sarcastically replied. “I did what’s called in higher and more learned circles ‘self-preservation’.”
Bulk snickered to himself as he twirled his cigar between his fingers. Bando couldn’t help but laugh. The two had history, although sporadic. For some eight years, they had been paired up under one banner or another doing odd jobs for powerful men and women. They’d do a job for a few weeks and afterwards would not see one another for years. In the last year, Bulk had taken up a new job in the East that was very cushy, but he refused to tell Bando exactly what it was.
“That’s all before you became soft,” Bando said. “And soft for you is bad for me. It means I’ll be doing double the work on this job.”
“Please!” Bulk protested. “Remember who took down those Rensom a few hours ago while you were crying on the ground over a scratch.”
“I wasn’t crying.”
“I saw a tear.”
“Then you need to get your eyes checked. I wasn’t crying.”
“No, I saw a tear, I’m sure.”
“And you took down one Rensom, it’s not like they’re smart or anything.”
“Smart enough to knock your big behind on the ground…”
“That’s not how it went.”
“... crying …”
“Not at all.”
“... asking for your mommy.”
Bando gave Bulk a playful, but powerful, jab to the shoulder. Bulk immediately protested and grabbed at his arm with a wince.
“Man, stop playing around with your big ol’ hands… hitting me in the shoulder, you must be crazy… just because you’re mad.”
Bando smirked, “Is that a tear I see?”
The two went quiet for a second and then started laughing. Bulk took another puff of his cigar and threw what remained out the window. His arm was still a bit sore from the giant’s playful punch but it was all in good fun.
“Old people,” Echo muttered to himself.
“Keep it quiet back there,” Bulk admonished him. “This is grown folks talk.”
“If you say so,” Echo responded.
“What did they say? I couldn’t hear,” Mouth asked his brother whose hearing was many times stronger than his own.
“Nothing important. Just old men trying to be funny.”
“I cannot wait to get this over with,” Bulk said. “You two have done nothing but cry since we picked you up. And ‘you’re welcome,’ by the way, for saving you from Von Strauss.”
“Oh, we’re appreciative,” Mouth responded. “We’d be more appreciative if you told us where we’re going.”
“We’re here,” Bando said with perfect timing.
The jeep had pulled up to a dusty outpost surrounded by barren land and tumbleweeds. The wind had picked up and was pushing swirls of sand into the air. Echo and Mouth got out of the jeep first and looked around to see if they recognized anything here. There was nothing but golden-brown dirt and the red sky of the West, darkened by the grey clouds that hung overhead.
Before them was a lone building, its sides reinforced with rusted metal and its windows boarded up with lazily nailed wooden planks. The strong winds pushed against the little shack, causing its windmill to spin and the metal to creak and moan. Bulk and Bando calmly walked towards the structure with curiosity and caution. Jocelyn and Kale went about the business of removing equipment from the jeep.
“You two stay out here,” Bulk said to the teens. “This kind of thing ain’t for you.”
Echo noted the warning, “And what about us? We can stay out here too?”
“Yeah, your summer home is looking a bit raggedy there, Bulk,” Mouth added.
“You two are the reason we’re here in the first place. You wanted to know where we were going. This is it.”
One of the metal sides of the building fell off and skittered across the ground. Mouth watched it blow away and crossed his arms.
“You have got to be kidding,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s time for you to level with us. What is this?” Echo said.
Bulk and Bando glared at each other for a moment. With a huff, Bulk walked towards the brothers and reached into his pocket. Startled at his sudden move, Echo and Mouth backed away from him. He raised his hand to assure them that he wasn’t going to harm them and then pulled an object from his pocket.
“This,” he said as he showed them a clear memory cube.
“And what’s on that?” Mouth asked.
“Information about what you stole from Avidity. We had hoped to have both to give to these guys but we’ll have to negotiate since you lost the box.”
Echo saw fit to argue. “Uh, we didn’t lose it. We were almost killed for it.”
“We got double-crossed,” Mouth added. “They tried to pay us scraps for what it’s worth.”
