John Brosnan - The Sky Lords

She hesitated when she saw Ezekiel’s mechanical hand still lying on the floor of the elevator. Then she stepped over it and kicked it out into the living room with the toe of her boot. The door closed.

When the door opened again Jan was dazzled by bright sunlight. Then she gagged as the stench of the fungus hit her. She was tempted to put the hood back on but feared it would restrict her vision and hearing. She wanted to be fully alert for any sign of Ezekiel.

The alley between the stones was empty. She emerged cautiously from the elevator, the laser in her hands. The projectile weapon remained strapped over her shoulder. Slowly she retraced her footsteps of nineteen days ago until the spot where Milo died was visible once again. She hesitated by the great block of white stone, still expecting the cyberoid to leap shrieking into view at any moment.

Finally, she approached the site of Milo’s death. There was nothing left of him but bones. Animals had eaten his flesh, insects had stripped the remaining organic matter from his bones.

His bones gleamed.

She squatted down beside them. They weren’t ordinary bones. They seemed to be made of a mixture of metal and some other material. None of them had been damaged by Ezekiel’s onslaught. Even Milo’s skull was intact. It had a bluish sheen to it, as did his other bones.

She reached out with tentative fingers and touched it. Then she came to a decision, hooked a finger through one of the eye sockets and picked it up. It was very light. She stood and, after a cautious scan of the nearby trees, took off her pack and put Milo’s skull inside it. Then she shouldered her pack again and headed towards the city.

It was mid-afternoon when she reached the outskirts of the city. She had got that far without serious incident, with the exception of an encounter with one of the big reptiles. It had come lumbering towards her through the trees, but she had fired the laser at it and the thing had abruptly collapsed into a twitching heap when it was still some fifty feet away. There had been no sign of Ezekiel, but Jan couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was near. And following her.

The outskirts of the city consisted of the ruins of private dwelling places set in their own rather spacious grounds. The fungus, she noticed, didn’t grow in the same profusion as it did in the woods. She paused to rest, sitting down on the remains of a stone wall. She propped the laser up alongside her then took one of the canteens out of the back-pack and had a drink of water.

Some minutes later she decided to push on but before she did she pulled the hood on and sealed it. Maybe it would do her no good at all, or maybe it was too late and one of the designer plagues was already at work inside her body, but it was better than nothing.

As Jan walked she kept turning to look behind her, the laser at the ready. She would give Ezekiel, or anything else for that matter, no chance of catching her by surprise. Occasionally she also looked upwards but the clear sky remained devoid of Sky Lords.

The further she penetrated into the city the less fungus there was. It was as if even those loathsome growths shunned this place of such awful death. It was hot wearing the hood and sweat streamed down her face but she was determined to keep it on. What she would do when she became desperate for a drink of water, or needed to take a pee, she would worry about later.

She was passing vehicles now. Some had wheels but many didn’t and she wondered how the latter managed to move about. She peered into their interiors occasionally, but there was no trace left of their long-dead owners apart from scraps of clothing. Yet the upholstery on the seats looked almost new.

The buildings grew higher and closer together as she continued onwards. Jan could still see the upper part of the Sky Tower looming ahead of her but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. With alarm, she realized the sun would be going down soon.

Her footsteps on the strange surface of the roadway echoed back and forth from the walls and façades of the buildings. She kept to the middle of the road, nervously eyeing the darkened doorways and blank windows. The feeling that she was being watched was getting stronger. Jan stopped and listened carefully. Surely if Ezekiel was close by she would hear its heavy tread. But there was no sound at all. She continued on, keeping a tight grip on the laser, which provided a certain comfort.

The sun sank behind the tall buildings. Long shadows filled the artificial valley she moved through. Jan wished Milo was with her, despite everything she had felt about him. She thought of his skull resting in her backpack and wondered again why she had decided to take it. Probably because she felt she owed something to his memory. …

Her head was aching. Was it the first symptom of plague? She was thirsty too. If she was sick it wasn’t going to make any difference if she removed the hood to drink some water.

She resisted the temptation. Darkness quickly fell and she stopped to remove the recharged flashlight that Carl had provided her with. It was difficult holding it and the laser together, but the powerful beam of light reassured her as she swept it back and forth ahead of her. But the feeling that she was being watched remained.

Jan was exhausted by the time she entered the plaza in which stood the Sky Tower. She rocked back dizzily on her heels as she tilted back her head and stared up at it. How on earth was she going to get to its summit? There were glass cylinders on its side which were obviously exterior elevators, but without any power source they were useless.

As she walked across the plaza, which was covered in different coloured tiles illustrated with drawings of balloons similar to the ones used by the Bandalans, she became aware that a fountain was working. She stopped again and stared at it. As she wondered how it operated after all this time she became even more acutely aware of her thirst.

She turned away from it and continued on towards the Sky Tower. The base of the Tower, she saw, was open on all sides—supported by a series of pillars that appeared to be ridiculously thin to be the foundations of such an immense structure. Jan climbed up some steps and went inside. She swept the beam about. The lobby was empty apart from a circular elevator and a staircase that led up into the ceiling. She went to the stairs and sat down on the bottom one. She intended to rest for a while and then begin the long climb. She hoped that the stairs continued all the way to the top, otherwise she didn’t know what she was going to do.

Jan awoke with a start. She hadn’t meant to go to sleep. She sat up and felt for the laser and the flashlight. She found the flashlight. The laser was nowhere to be found.

As a flutter of panic began to grow in her stomach she switched on the flashlight. The beam illuminated a large form sitting on the lobby floor about ten feet away. The laser lay beside it.

It was the black panther.

The panther’s eyes glowed yellow in the beam of the flashlight. It was sitting on its haunches like a house cat, its front legs straight. It seemed to be grinning at her, as it had on that day so long ago.

Jan was overcome with shock. She couldn’t understand how the panther could be here in this city hundreds of miles from where Minerva had stood. The Mother God was surely punishing her for some sin she had committed. Punishing her …? No … mocking her.

She considered reaching for the projectile weapon still strapped over her shoulder, but knew that the panther could be on her before she could unstrap it and aim. And there was the possibility that the thing wouldn’t even work. She had her swords but, again, in the time it took to draw one of them the panther could easily attack her. She glanced wistfully at the laser by the panther’s front foot. The panther glanced at it too then casually put its paw on the weapon. It said, in its familiar sibilant hiss, “Nasssty thing. Don’t like. You won’t touch.”