Earthbound Chapter 20: To Rebuild a Kingdom
“Well, Rinehart, I’d say the mission was a success,” Piper Robins said, pulling a jar from the compartment in the cockpit.
“I’d say so, too, Pipes.” Bear Rinehart floated toward her, knocking the jar from her hand. It gently floated to the ceiling. “Oops—such a clutz,” Bear chuckled.
Matthews turned around in the pilot’s chair, punching in a few numbers. “Oh, would ya get a room?”
The ship shook as if it hit something. Red lights began flashing.
Putting on a face of concentration, Bear pushed past Piper and sat down in his chair. “What do you have, Matthews?”
“Asteroid strike. Came out of nowhere. We’re losing oxygen to the main tank rapidly.”
Bear pulled up the controls to the tanks and switched to the back-up tanks.
Piper sat down in the seat next to Bear and pulled up the ship’s diagnostics. She began crunching numbers to see how much oxygen they had lost, and how much they had remaining.
“Are you okay, Piper?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “The jar broke on impact, and a shard of glass cut my cheek. It’ll be fine.” She put her pencil down. “We won’t be, though.”
The rest of the crew gave her a worried look.
“There isn’t enough oxygen left in the tanks to make the journey home. We must have been running off of the secondary tanks instead of the main tanks. With the main tanks out, we only have enough oxygen for one of us to make it back, and that’s if we put on the suits and use the tanks in those for the last week.”
Matthews cursed under his breath. “Do we have a procedure for this?”
“No,” Bear replied.
“I’ll do it,” Matthews said. I have nothing to live for. No one to go back home to. I lived to be in space, and that’s what I did. After fifty-two years of performing missions, I’d say that my time is up,” he added with a cough. “That sample is getting everywhere…”
Bear coughed. “Piper, I want you to go on.”
“I can’t live without you, Bear.”
“I love you, too,” he said. Tears began to flow down his cheeks. “But I want you to keep going. You were my everything. You were what I was coming back to. I found my place with you.”
The lovers held each other’s gaze for a moment, tears flowing. They embraced in one last kiss and fell into a hug.
At length, Matthews and Rinehart began to head for the medical bay. “I love you,” Bear said as he left.
“I love you, too.”
A couple of weeks later, the ship landed. A welcome crew gathered around the ship. “There has been radio silence for quite some time. Let’s hope for the best, fellas.”
Two hulks of men pulled the lever on the door. Slowly, the door creaked open. Red lights flashed and a foul stench emanated from the interior. “Sir, we have a problem.”
The administrator walked up to the door to find the nearly completely eaten corpse of Piper lying on the ground. Her rib cage was fully exposed and cracked open. The only identifying feature left on the corpse was a badge a few feet away and the hair on her head. Blood covered the floor and was splattered on the walls.
“Matthews seemed unstable, but I didn’t expect this from him…” the administrator mumbled to himself.
The burly men put one hand on their pistols. The biggest put one foot through the door. An inhuman roar erupted through the air. A decomposing Bear jumped onto the man and sunk his teeth into his neck. Half of Bear’s skull was exposed, his left hand fell off long ago, and his shins were completely exposed. The man being attacked fired several shots at Bear to no effect.
Matthews screamed and dove at the administrator, scratching at his face with the exposed tips of his phalanges.
Having killed one already, Bear jumped onto the other burly man who was in the middle of reloading his weapon, shoving a finger deep into his eye and pulling it out. Every man present with a gun began shooting to no avail. Those who didn’t screamed and ran. Others, paralized with fear, became the next prey. Killing and jumping to the next victim, the bloodshed didn’t stop. As Bear and Matthews moved on, more undead joined the mayhem, leaving an unstoppable path of destruction.
*****
It was like day one all over again. The undead sprinting around like crazed lunatics, seemingly with no logical thought other than to kill, eat, and destroy. The only difference was that they were not deteriorating. So, once the destruction overcame the living, it would just be an endless battle of madman versus madman. Tearing each and every one limb from limb. How could this be possible? They were peaceful but moments ago. Was it all a façade that no one saw through? Surely that could not be the case. Perhaps Charon just had that effect and influence over others.
André stepped into the light with a twisted smile. Elizabeth looked him up and down, calculating. She tried to calm her breathing to no effect. Her hand bumped into something pointy on the dresser. She clasped her hand around it and hoped for the best, pushing her shoulders back to make herself seem more confident.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” André began. “You cured yourself? Such a shame.” He twirled his mustache and turned away from Elizabeth pensively. His eye gleamed, and his tight smile broadened. “Maybe your beloved would still be living.”
In a fit of rage, Elizabeth threw the object towards André. In a flash, he caught it within millimeters of his eye. It was a pair of sewing shears. “Pitiful attempt, mademoiselle. Let’s make this quick, shall we?”
He lunged at her, tossing the shears to the side and grabbing at her hair as she ducked beneath him and threw him over his shoulder like a lineman. Thanks, Dad, she thought, for wanting a boy.
Elizabeth jumped for the door. She twisted the knob and fell forward with the door. André had grabbed her by the heels, sending her to the floor. She clawed at the carpet on the other side of the door, trying her best to get away.
“NO!” she shrieked as she was pulled further through the door. She held onto the frame for a second. Grabbing something she had left for herself outside the door, she allowed André to pull her through the door. Expecting an unarmed Elizabeth to be pinned helplessly to the floor, he was unsuspecting of the needle coming towards his neck. It sunk deep into his artery. He screamed as Elizabeth injected him with the cure. She began to laugh, partially from relief, and partially because of her foresight.
The cure took effect quickly. Elizabeth took the needle from his throat and watched as blood slowly spurted from his neck.
*****
Margo collapsed to the ground, her head pounding like a drum. She threw up as the world spun around her.
“You put up a good fight,” Charon said, “but we’re not quite done yet.”
Margo looked up, her arms shaking as she held herself up on all fours. The light blinded her, but slowly Charon’s outstretched arm came into focus. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet and wrapped her arm around him.
“You’ll recover quickly. We need to find Cory.”
“What… about… the others?” Margo asked between deep, shaky breaths.
“We'll find them. Everything will be okay. Come on, we can’t let the horde get to us.”
“Stop!” Margo yelled. “What’s going on?”
“André and Cory attacked us. We were put under their control, and for the last hour you and I have been fighting against their control. Very taxing, but we’re alive, and I would like to keep it that way,” Charon replied. He started walking forward again, pulling Margo along.
“What’s the plan?”
“We need to find Elizabeth. She killed André. And somehow she killed Sekhmet, his symbiote.”
*****
Kill. Destroy. Kill. Destroy. Kill. Destroy. Kill. Destroy.
Meat. Flesh.
Clint’s eyes shot open. He rolled over and stood up as the swarm of undead rushed past him. Cory’s commands did not affect him at first, but as he slowly realized what had happened, the effects caused him to turn around and start running like the others.
He was dead.
Meat. Flesh.
Clint licked his lips, seeing the body of an innocent bystander trampled on the ground. But Cory had more specific plans embedded in the simple mantra floating through his mind.
Kill. Destroy.
Clint saw a group of undead attacking a living civilian. He jumped on top of the pile. He swung at an undead, resisting Cory’s influence, but his arm fell short as if it weighed several hundred pounds. Clint went tense, fighting the urges that consumed him. He screamed as he lost control, his muscles relaxing before tearing into the flesh of the innocent living.
Clint had no control over anything but his eyes. He felt helpless. He was fully aware, and yet fully powerless. He was trapped in a void, watching through a window someone else live their life with his body.
As soon as the civilian fell limp, Clint’s head turned away from the body. He began to run with the rest of the crowd, stopping to sniff for more flesh to consume. More people to kill. He hated the savage instincts that Cory was forcing upon him. His fragile mind, however, could not fight against the will of Cory and his symbiote, Crusis. Whatever made these seemingly sentient undead more powerful than the others, Clint could not quite find out; but he was determined to make it through this alive. He was determined to fight against Crusis’s will as hard as he could possibly manage.
He caught the scent of something that made his mouth water. Tender… Juicy… the savage within him thought.
His eyes scanned the area rapidly, trying to locate the scent. Clint’s heart dropped as he saw what he was smelling. Using all of his will power, he told his body to stop, but it would not. He focused hard on his humanity, but to no effect. He tried screaming to no avail. There was nothing he could do to stop what was coming.
Clint barged through the door of the nursery. Small children huddled behind chairs and toy forts.
“Stay back!” a woman called, waving a lighter at Clint. “They're just kids. If you have any humanity left in you, please, not the children!”
Slowly, Clint crept forward. He snarled at the woman as she crawled further into a corner, two children hiding behind her with their hands covering their eyes. “They’re just kids!” she sobbed.
Clint focused every fiber of his being on not letting himself move. His body slowly struggled against him, taking one strained step after another as if he were fighting against some sort of force field.
Clint slapped the lighter out of the woman’s hand. She shrieked and slapped him in the face. He shook his head and growled furiously.
“S-SSSTOP!” he managed to scream, but instantly lost control. His teeth sunk into the neck of the woman. He tossed her body to the side and lifted up one of the children behind her. The room erupted in screams as Clint ran from child to child, making sure that none were able to escape. Tears began to stream down his face. Never would he be able to forgive himself for this. How could he live with doing something so vile?
*****
Elizabeth had no other options. The undead infiltrated the house not long after André was killed. She was on the roof, sitting on the top of the hatch, hoping that the horde would not be strong enough to lift it up with her on top of it. Wishful thinking, sure, but it was worth a shot while she gathered her bearings.
She could jump to the next roof, but surely, with her backpack, the undead would catch up to her rapidly. The ground was no safer by any means. There were undead everywhere, running every which way.
The thudding beneath her stopped. She sighed deeply, hoping that this would potentially give her a chance to think a little more clearly.
If I ran that way, I would be able to—
Her thoughts were cut off when the door she was sitting on shook violently. It shook violently once more. Then it shot upwards, sending her sprawling across the roof. Shards of wood rained down around her. Without hesitation, she began her sprint. She jumped to the next roof, then the next, then the next. Every muscle in her body ached as she ran and jumped with everything she had, fueled purely by adrenaline. As she ran across the next roof, she knew the gap was far too large for her to jump across, but she could hear the horde behind her. She jumped, closing her eyes and praying that her feet would find solid ground.
She knew she was falling immediately. Before she hit the ground, hands shot up to catch her. Her pursuers jumped after her, but they were carried away by the horde. Elizabeth opened her eyes. She was placed down in the center of a circle of undead, all of whom were protecting a very familiar face.
“Jules!” Elizabeth screamed, hugging him tightly.
“Elizabeth! You’re alive! Thank God!”
They held their embrace for several long moments before Elizabeth pulled away to ask, “But, how? Why aren’t they trying to kill us?”
“You killed André, and in doing so, you freed Margo and Charon. Margo and Charon freed us!” one of the undead answered excitedly. “They are looking for you. They’ll be here soon.”
“Speaking of the devil,” another undead chimed in.
Margo and Charon ran into the circle.
“Lizzie!” Margo exclaimed, hugging her like a loved one who just returned from war.
Charon cleared his throat.
“Sorry. Right. We need the cure.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I’m not making that mistake again. It’s also my last one.”
“I need you to trust me, Elizabeth. It’s our only shot!”
Elizabeth searched through her backpack and reluctantly pulled out the cure vile.
“I need you to remember something, Lizzie,” Margo said, stuffing the vile into a pocket. “If we win this, it’s because of you. You are the reason Charon and I are back in the fight. We love you. We’ll see you on the other side.”
Margo and Charon turned from the group and began their run towards Cory.
“Good luck!” Elizabeth called.
Margo slowed down and turned around. “Stay safe!” She gave one last smile before turning around and catching up to Charon.
“We can do this,” Charon said.
“We can do this,” Margo repeated, placing her hand in his. “What about Clint? What about the chaos?”
“We can’t afford to do anything about them,” Charon replied sorrowfully. “Protecting Lizzie and Jules is already taking too much of an effort.” The wave of undead formed a bubble around them as they ran, the undead changing their path to avoid getting in Margo and Charon’s way. “If we are to defeat Crusis, we are going to need as much of our mind as possible. Crusis is the one thing that stands between us and peace: redemption.”
“I just worry about Clint. I know how much torment he is going through right now. I can feel it.”
“He’s strong. Stronger than the others. He won’t be able to escape the influence, but he is doing his best. You must remember that others are struggling just as he is.”
Margo nodded. Clenching her jaw in determination, she picked up her pace.
As they rounded a corner, they could see Cory sitting atop an orange 1977 C3 Corvette with side pipes. A beauty of a car that no one could wrap their minds around how it could possibly still be operational all these hundreds of years later. Cory’s eyes were closed, but Margo and Charon knew that he knew exactly where they were standing.
His legs were crossed Indian style, his arms were lying across his thighs as if he were meditating. His lip twitched as Margo and Charon drew near. When they were within fifty feet of him, his eyes shot open and narrowed onto them. Twenty-five feet later, Margo and Charon slid to a stop.
The three stared each other in the eyes for several long moments.
“Just give up,” Cory said at length.
“Is this what utopia looks like to you, Cory?”
He chuckled to himself. “Oh, this? This is chaos. Beautiful chaos, isn’t it? All along, this is what I truly wanted. I wanted everyone to know just how I felt. All of my pain, my anger, my instability… Now everyone can feel it. Now everyone gets to know all that I have been through. I have peace while the rest of you have nothing. Thanks to Crusis, I’m whole. He and I… we aren’t that much different.”
“You don’t have to do this!” Margo replied. “You can still redeem yourself.”
“Re-DEEM myself!? Why would I want to redeem myself!?” Cory yelled, violently jumping off of the car and to his feet. There was a fire in his eyes that Margo had never before seen. “This is my destiny!!! You are the only two people in my way. You are just trying to steal it for yourselves!”
He let out a guttural roar and charged at Charon and Margo. At the same time, the horde of undead began reaching out to them and pulling them to the ground. Scores of arms wrapped around their limbs and pinned them to the ground. Cory first jumped on Margo, punching her repeatedly. The undead pinning her down released her, and Charon tackled Cory. Margo quickly stood up. The horde quickly closed back in on the trio.
Margo began fighting undead as they tried to steal the cure from her. She tried to force them away, but her power only worked momentarily. Crusis was a powerful enemy.
The horde piled on top of her. Teeth and nails sunk into her flesh as she fell to the ground. Trying to stand and trying to will the undead off of her, she screamed. She felt the cure fall from her pocket.
*****
Clint threw the last child to the ground. Blood was pooled all across the room. He caught a reflection of himself in the mirror. Blood dripped from his chin and was splattered across his face. There was a gash across his temple from when a kid had thrown a Tonka truck at him. A single tear streamed down his face, leaving one clean streak on his face. At that moment, the woman struggled to her feet.
She looked at Clint, then at the bloody mess around her. She collapsed to her knees, tears pouring from her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. She hugged the nearest child to her chest. After a moment, the tears stopped, and a wild look came across her eyes.
In that moment, she stood up and ran out of the nursery, growling and sniffing the air. Clint followed after her. He could smell two adults nearby. Determining the direction from which the scent was the strongest, he began to run towards them. He found a circle of undead fighting against the horde. In the middle of them were two people: a man and a woman. Jules and Elizabeth.
He got down on all fours and ran towards them. He jumped onto the back of one of the undead and jumped over the protective circle. Jules and Elizabeth screamed as Clint came down on them. He smacked Jules across the face and jumped at Elizabeth, tackling her to the floor. Jules quickly recovered, only to be caught around the throat by Clint’s hand. He began to squeeze, using his thumb to press hard below his Adam’s apple. Clint placed one foot on a squirming, scratching, and screaming Elizabeth. He picked up a large rock and prepared to come down on her head with it. Reeling back with all his might, Clint started the arc down towards her temple.
*****
Charon wiped some blood from his lip and kicked Cory in the face. He crawled between the legs of the undead. They reached down and scratched at him, but he shot up before they could do anything else. He heard the clink of a vile being dropped and lunged towards it without thinking. He heard Margo’s scream.
“It’s right here!” Charon called, holding the cure over his head and jumping to a clearing.
The horde picked themselves off of Margo and chased after Charon. Looking up, all she could see was Charon’s hand holding the vile high above the horde slowly sinking down.
She jumped to her feet, only to be tackled by Cory. He sat on her waist and punched her face repeatedly. She tried to fight back, but her arms were pinned down by his knees.
She closed her eyes. Concentrating. Trying to make some sort of move.
The frightened faces of Elizabeth and Jules crossed her face as Clint jumped on top of them.
Frederick’s lifeless form lay crumpled under feet.
Then she saw Charon struggle to his feet. Determination in his eyes as he struggled beneath the weight of the undead piling atop him and dragging him down. His arm lifted above the horde once more. He threw the vile.
In a desperate attempt, Margo threw her shoulder up, managing to throw Cory off balance enough to free her arm. Her hand closed around the vile and she shoved the needle directly into Cory’s neck.
“NOOOOOOOO!!!” he screamed, pulling the needle from his neck and collapsing to the ground next to Margo. He slammed it on the ground and placed his hands on his face, screaming bloody murder.
The undead stopped in their tracks and fell to the ground. A heavily panting Charon was on his knees sweating profusely. He made eye contact with Margo. She wiped the blood from her eyes and stood up. In unison, Charon and Margo ran towards each other and fell into an embrace.
“I love you,” Margo said between sobs.
“I love you, too,” Charon said.
Margo threw her arms around his neck and leaned in for a kiss.
*****
Clint was horrified with his actions. He let go of Jules’ throat and dropped the rock to the side. He looked into Elizabeth’s scared eyes. He looked at Jules, hunched over on the ground, heaving in and out, trying to fill his lungs.
He put his head down and ran. How could he possibly live with what he had just done?
“W—wait!” Elizabeth managed to call out.
“Leave… him…” Jules said between breaths. “He’ll… be… back.”
The undead around them were all collapsed on the ground. Their eyes were closed, and their bellies could be seen slowly filling up and deflating, indicating that they were still breathing.
“Look.” Elizabeth pointed towards one specific undead. His body was lying crumpled, bloody, and beaten.
“Fred…” Jules said.
“He must have died trying to protect us.”
Jules and Elizabeth lowered their heads in a moment of silence.
*****
Cory curled up in a ball, hands on his head as he sobbed. “Not the voices. I can’t deal with the voices.”
Breaking from their embrace, Charon and Margo walked over to the disturbed man.
“They won’t stop,” he said. “I can’t deal with the voices!”
“We can get you help, Cory,” Margo said.
“No, you can’t. You don’t understand. No one can understand. They say that I can never be fixed. I can never be whole.”
Margo placed a hand on his shoulder.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” he spat out venomously.
He picked up a rock and began banging it on his temple. When Margo caught his wrist, he swung at her.
“You don’t understand,” he said, pulling his knees to his chest and staring off vacantly. “No one can understand.”
“What should we do?” Margo asked.
“I’m not sure. Look at him. He’s miserable. If we leave him alone, he’s just going to kill himself.”
“But he doesn’t want our help.”
“So we force it on him, I guess. He has been cured. There is no way for him to be infected again that we know of, and if he does, Crusis is dead. We won the centuries long war between our kingdoms. If he gets infected again, he won’t have the powers he once had, and he will likely be more benevolent by then, assuming our help worked.”
Margo put her arm around Cory. “Everything will be okay.”
Charon looked at the destruction around him and let out a deep sigh. “It’s all gone,” he said.
Smoke wafted up from his community. Buildings had collapsed, windows were broken. All that could be heard were the sounds of the crackling fires. It was eerily silent. The sun was hidden behind an overcast sky. Jules and Elizabeth walked up behind the trio and sat with them.
“Clint ran off,” Elizabeth said.
“He just needs some time alone,” Charon said. “If you had done the things he did and seen the things he saw, you wouldn’t be the same either. He’s strong. He’ll be back.”
“So, what’s next?” Jules asked. Undead slowly began to rise, scratching their heads and looking around at the rubble that was left of the once beautiful city.
Margo tightened her grip around Charon’s hand and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“We rebuild.”