Underworld Earth Read online

  With nothing left to hold me up, I collapse to the ground beside him in endless sobbing.

  Maternity is a bleak affair.

  “Samantha.”

  The world is dead. Not in the metaphorical, doomsday sense when people try to convince you to see things their way, issuing grave warnings of what might happen if you don’t. No. The world is actually dead, with bodies turning to fertilizer inside abandoned buildings in every city on Earth.

  And by some fucking twist of fate, I survived.

  I survived, so I could see what the end of the world entails. Loss. Looters. Immortals who transport people in clouds. Child soldiers in southwestern America. Men in airports who can’t take a little hunger and post-trauma, attempting to strangle you on the side of a highway.

  “Samantha.”

  Parents who kill their children, like me.

  It was a mistake.

  An unacceptable mistake.

  In my cache of confused memories, compiled as I lay choking in a field over Mark’s dead body, a much different scene plays. Called to the hospital late at night, my hair was out of place and I walked with a cane, making my rush to the hospital more strenuous after receiving a sobering phone call.

  Hi, I told the nurse at the station, I got a call about Nathan Wallace? I’m his mother, Sam.

  Of course, the nurse said, as if she knew exactly who I was. A doctor will speak with you momentarily.

  I didn’t know at that point. I hadn’t seen my twenty-one-year-old son’s body, mangled in a collision with a tractor trailer. Unprepared to handle the news, I waited, humming to myself as I lowered myself into a plastic chair using the cane.

  A few minutes later, a gruff doctor in a white coat would open his mouth, changing my world forever.

  I am not sure which memory is worse.

  “Sam!”

  Harper kneels beside me, cocking her head to meet my line of vision.

  “Don’t ask if I’m okay,” I tell her. “Please. I don’t know if I can hit you, but if you ask, I might try.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I’m sorry about Nathan.”

  “I don’t want to hear that, either.”

  “Okay then,” Harper replies, “I think I know someone who can help you.”

  This woman is not going to leave me alone. I sit up where I crumpled in a ball beside my son’s corpse. None of my emotions benefit from the change in posture.

  “You think anybody can help me, Harper? My family is dead. The only reason I went to Haven is because I felt guilt over my sister having to watch our mom die. If I had just... been selfish, none of this might have happened!”

  “It was an accident, Samantha.” Her assurances mean nothing, but she keeps offering them. “Come on, I know someone who can help you understand what’s happened.”

  “What’s happened?” I snort. “What’s happened, Harper? My son is dead. My husband is dead. What is left that could possibly make this better?”

  “Well,” she says, “I never said it would make it better. To be honest, I don’t think much will. But if you want to help me, there are some bad people that need to be taken care of. Fairly certain it will let you get some aggression out.”

  She begins walking away, leaving me to convulse underneath a canopy of stars. Nothing could ever, as Harper says, atone for such a heinous act. His eyes are glued open but half-shut, a blank stare lost under a thick film of expressionless horror. Unsure how long I have laid here since Harper turned her back on Younglight, strolling into the open desert, I sit up on my knees, using shaking arms for support.

  I don’t know who the angel thinks could explain this better than my eyes have. She cannot stand here and tell me senses lie; that all the trauma of the last twenty minutes --maybe an hour, from the feel of it-- can be summed up by a stranger. And still, curiosity gets the better of me, and I find Harper staring into the endless wasteland behind Younglight. We would do well to learn from its centuries of inhospitable experience and apply it to universal suffering.

  Human beings were never the smartest monkey in the evolutionary tree, so that may be hoping for too much.

  “You ready?” Harper asks.

  “As ever. Although, I’m not sure your friends will convince me this is part of some grand plan. If it is, I might just punch them.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about grand plans, but he sure has some explaining to do.”

  “‘He?”

  Harper smirks.

  “I have a feeling you two have met before. Come on. Time is short.”

  The wisps of darkness that carried us halfway across the country in the span of a second appear. Wrapping us in the same dark cloud, I may not ever get used to teleportation as a form of travel. Its thick arms embrace us, blacking out the Arizona night. Soon, my baby boy’s body is gone and I’m no longer forced to face the gravity of my error. Separating from him leaves me weightless.

  I couldn’t care less about what lay on the other side of Harper’s darkness. The world collapses into tendrils of smoke around us, and I wait to see what kind of savior will greet me on the other side.

  All I can think of is Nathan, and the mistake I will never be able to forgive myself for.

  Paradise Lost

  Samantha

  Once upon a time, I had a future.

  It wasn’t glamorous by any means. My husband spent too many hours away from home, making it possible; I spent too much time worrying, which prevented some obstacles and created unforeseen others. My son Nathan spent too much time getting into trouble, pulling us off-course. There were times I thought the future might darken; those were only storms passing through. There were doubts and fears and regret but all were outweighed by the optimism that this wasn’t all for nothing.

  All my life, the idea of something following it—a fairy man in the sky, eternal damnation or purgatory itself—was laughable. A subscriber of evolution, I believed in evolving from matter into monkeys, into humans, and returning to ash and matter later on. People disputed this, of course; the opiate of the masses refused to be cut with logic and science, resulting in many of my fellow Americans denying the more rational schools of thought.

  Apparently, I was wrong. There is an entire world I had no idea existed. Greeted by a starlit canopy not unlike the one over Arizona’s night sky, Harper is gone. My skin is clammy, but my heart does not pound in a way only dying inspires. Adjusting senses identify translucent walls that don’t seem present.

  And standing in the middle of it all, a face I never expected to see again is adorned in a modest suit. The bearded figure stands before me, hands clasped at his waist.

  “Tim?”

  Though much different from the man in my memory, he reflects none of the panicked, schizophrenic tendencies I knew him for. There are no questions flooding the expression that once assumed I had all the answers; those tables flipped a long time ago.

  “Hello, Samantha,” he says.

  “Where am I?”

  “You are in the Arcway. It is my creation, and the most positive influence I have had in this role.”

  “This... role?”

  Tim smiles, but there is no joy to it.

  “There is much to explain since we were last in Haven together. Now that you have reclaimed your original memories, it will not take long to reconstruct them in full. But in the interest of saving time, I will say this.

  “When I left Haven, the authorities could never find me because I was transported to another plane of existence. It was there, Samantha, I met your son.”

  “Nathan?”

  “Yes,” Tim says. “Along with Harper, he helped defeat the monster that destroyed Haven after you dispatched Campbell Madison. It killed his men, levelled houses and opened a portal to another world. This world, the one now in my charge.”

  “Wait a second,” I say. “Another plane of existence? What does that even mean?”

  “It would take more time to explain than we have to save your hometown and, by extension, all of exist
ence. But for all intents and purposes, I became Death in place of Hale. I tried to do a much less brutal job of it. Some questionable choices were made, but,” he smiles, more genuinely, “nobody is perfect, I suppose.”

  This is insane.

  “Screw-ups?”

  Tim shakes his head.

  “Again Samantha, it would take more time than we presently have. The point is, although Nathan’s death in Younglight was tragic, it does not change the fact that was not the real Nathan Wallace.”

  Don’t you say his fucking name.

  “Your son,” Tim explains, “died in 2028 in a traffic collision with an eighteen-wheeler—ten years from now. I know this, because he woke up in the Shroud, not a kilometer from where I did.”

  “What do you mean, woke up? Is he still alive? Can I see him?”

  In a timeline returning to me in bits and pieces, I left this man for dead as I came down on the paramilitary group holding Haven hostage—and then he disappeared without a fucking trace.

  In this timeline, he has all the information I need to make peace with Nathan’s death. Every time I close my eyes, he gasps for breath in my arms, and I refuse to believe that my baby was not real.

  Not for a goddamn second.

  “No, Sam,” Tim replies, “Nathan has been gone from this plane a long, long time. His soul woke in the Shroud with us, but unlike Harper and I, did not leave. Had he not made the choices he did, none of us would have.

  “I realize this is confusing, because you have been living with a copy of your son’s memory, but just like all the others Harper was sent to dispatch, they are little more than doppelgangers. Regardless how real they might seem.”

  “Fuck you,” I say. As he spoke, I have listened, measuring breaths; fighting the film of water collecting in my eyes. “Tell yourself whatever you need to, Tim, but the boy I have to bury now is real to me as anything. I won’t tolerate you undermining his memory with assertions he’s some fucking copy!”

  “Fair,” he concedes, staring at the ground. When we lock eyes again, I look for any sign of the man I met while Campbell Madison lorded over Haven, but there are none. His eyes reflect inconvenient truths, no use for denial that become a habit to the rest of us.

  “So, what are we doing here, then?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Be straight with me, Tim,” I say. “For some obscene reason, you feel entitled to my help. After watching my only child die, being forced to confront the fact I’ve been living inside... an illusion! You still want my help, don’t you?”

  “Samantha—” he says.

  “No, no! I already did this, Tim! I already saved this stupid town once, and I still lost Nathan for it! Tell me, you motherfucker—why should I do it again? Why?”

  “Because,” says a third voice, appearing behind me, “if you don’t, Samantha, the world will never be what it was.”

  Harper joins Tim’s side. Backs to a canopy of darkness, these two beings are leagues above my petty existence. It makes no sense why they need me.

  “Yeah?” I say. “And what the fuck makes it worth saving? In one version, my husband dies horribly. In another, he leaves me for some exotic whore! My son dies in both versions, and I am left alone. Tell me, either of you; what reason on Earth do I have to help you now?”

  In every possible scenario, I will lose everything I ever cared about. Once upon a time, the future was bright, but it is overcast now, and may never know a sunny day again. There are no consolations from either of them.

  Just as I think this conversation has no resolution, Harper speaks.

  “Your son was one of the best men I ever knew. I told you that in the graveyard, remember? In Connecticut.

  “When we were in the Shroud, he always made the right decision. The honorable decision, even when I couldn’t. And he just... thought so highly of you.”

  The memory is vague. Set about three months after Nathan’s original death, the cane compensated for the injuries sustained saving Haven. From what I remember of the day—only hours ago, the memory was inaccessible—both the young women who came to see me at his headstone looked completely sweet and in love, and I had no judgement for them.

  Allegedly immortal, nothing of the composed woman from a Connecticut cemetery remains. And that, somewhat, buys my confidence as the suited man breaks his silence.

  “Haven needs your help, Samantha. We need to put a stop to Victor Quinn and Sydney Mayhew. If we don’t, this reconfiguration of history may never be undone.”

  I spent a decade running from my problems out of fear they would someday run away from me. As the true chain of events shows, the alternate reality version of Samantha Wallace wasn’t wrong to think that way.

  The time for running is over. Knowing my son died a hero is a small consolation but will never relieve the weight of my actions or his loss. But I can still help forge a world he would have been much safer in. I can still make a difference, taking out the people threatening its safety.

  Salvation is a bleak affair.

  Tim

  The path into darkness is lined with a thousand blinding lights.

  I had every noble intention in becoming Death. On the shores of the Timestream—where I only tasted brutality endured by the woman standing beside me—trees divided from the water by a strip of beach were burnt and charred. The basin itself, no different than a lake extending from sandy shores, was emptied of its enchanted depths. Only a crevice of rock the currents previously covered remained. It sloped downward from all sides, meeting at a crater in the center, but even that held puddles in comparison to its volume of water.

  What happened? I asked the flickering cosmic being. She looked at the previously unbreakable blue sky, now black with gangrene of a rotting illusion. The site called Valhalla was damaged beyond repair, its resident critters cooked to a crisp where a forest full of them once greeted us.

  The sword used to kill Hale, she explained, powered the Timestream. Removing it gave me the power to defeat him but sentenced the device to be destroyed.

  A fair compromise, I said.

  She chuckled. I did not know how long she had left; without the locket, gifted to the now-departed Harper, her manifestation quickly waned.

  What’s so funny?

  Olivia shook her head.

  Fairness, she replied, that is a utopian ideal.

  Utopian?

  There is no balance that includes fairness. One man’s balance is another injustice. To correct it for the latter, the first man would have to lose something.

  Pretty cynical, I replied. The sword in her hand was long, rounded like a katana, but its former glow was purged from the steel. It was simply cold and dead, as I had been since my wife’s passing, and Olivia had probably felt long before that.

  For what it’s worth, I told the flickering woman with a troubled expression, staring helplessly into the emptied Timestream; I forgive you for impersonating Hannah.

  Judging by the change in her demeanor, it was the kindest thing I could have said. Our history was sordid, soured by her choices. My anger had not helped, but was well-earned, culminating in a tenuous respect for her methods.

  Are you ready? she asked, freed of guilt infecting our conversations since she revealed that deception in a cave outside Haven. Between Harper and I, one of us had to become Death. In that moment, I could not remember what prompted me to volunteer, other than panic enveloping my younger companion at the news one of us would have to stay behind.

  I did not know what becoming Death entailed, or how I would feel after it was said and done. But she drove the sword through my chest, and there was no time to fear the unknown. I collapsed to the ground. When I woke, Olivia had vanished. The sword was the only trace of her, fallen where she stood.

  From that moment, calling Olivia’s name on a beach infected with my dried blood, I was the destroyer of worlds. Inspecting every inch of my body, there was no wound. Whatever occurred between being impaled by a katana and looking in every direc
tion for a sign of her, there was only white noise.

  Many years later, I approach the hospital bedside I have long watched over, unnoticed by the woman breathing into a cloudy respirator. Her hair has greyed further since I left her. Beyond the window, rounds of gunfire erupt; concerned parties trade bullets with opposing forces in the street below. Were the Arcway still in my control, I would wander among them, claiming souls who are struck and left to die in the Capitol’s streets.

  Alas, I am Death in name only.

  Ethereal hands around the bar of Ramona’s bedrail, the flickering woman is at the front of my mind.

  “It has been twenty-three years since that day,” I say aloud. The only person in my vicinity is the woman whose life I forfeited with short-sightedness. On her back, clasped hands at the sternum rise and fall with shallow breaths.

  “Now, you are stuck between life and death. In twenty-three years, nobody has been able to wake you, nor spare you this horrible state. All the best years of your life wiped out... because of me.”

  A familiar sensation, though long absent from my unbreakable composure since becoming Death, tries to force its way through. I reject its mere possibility, because emotion of any kind is long forgotten.

  “I once told you that we made the right choice bringing you back. I genuinely thought there would be a new slate for you after that. I did not expect this at all.”

  There is always a solution, the flickering woman told me, standing inside a decomposing illusion before she drove a sword through my abdomen with no warning whatsoever. The problem is, solutions require sacrifice.

  “Even if you wake, Ramona, I am not asking your forgiveness. But... there is something I must do if I am to live with myself for everything I have caused."

  Most people are not willing to put those solutions ahead of their own best interests.

  “It is,” I say, pushing down the wavering voice and shortness of breath, “time to stop running, Ro. Time to be held accountable for our... my mistake. I should have never interfered but I did. And now, I have to face up to my decision, right?”