Michael Sullivan - Hollow World

“Go! Go! Go!” they both began to yell as it neared the opening to space.

They watched it pass through the field and continue drifting at the same snail’s pace, but now through a field of stars. With a popping crack! the portal, just like its predecessor, collapsed.

Ellis looked over at Pax. “We’re alive.”

Ellis and Pax arrived at Firestone Farm with a full force of twenty geomancers, including Geo-1 and Geo-12. It was believed that despite their indenture to Warren Eckard, the Cult of Ren , as Pax had dubbed it, would still be cowed by the awe-inspiring presence of an army of geomancers. Ellis imagined geomancers as some kind of cross between Tibetan monks and the firefighters of 9/11.

Once his eyes adjusted from the incandescent radiance that was the Geomancy Institute to the moonlight of the rural Midwest, Ellis saw that the farm was dark except for a single light that burned in the kitchen of the farmhouse. He also noticed, with some concern, that even the crickets had stopped their noise. In all the time he had been there, the crickets and frogs had been an overwhelming soundtrack. As they all stepped onto the surface of the world, they were greeted by only wind, rustling leaves. Ellis got the impression that the geomancers didn’t get out much. They stared at their surroundings like Iowans in Manhattan. A bunch of mad-scientists dressed in lab coats and safety glasses, they gathered before the open portal until it winked out, leaving them in darkness.

The farm felt different. The house, the road, the barn, even the fields had always been a virtual postcard from home. Ellis followed the line of the wooden fence, getting his bearings. As he did, he noted the dark loft-eyes of the barn and the field of corn. It all reminded him of a Stephen King novel. Something bad had happened there.

They were all still looking around when Ellis heard Pax suck in a breath. He followed the line of sight and saw the body on the side of the porch. Four steps later, Ellis could read the name ROB on the blood-soaked shirt.

“Another,” Geo-1 said, pointing down the lane to where another body lay.

Holding his gun in both hands again, and keeping an eye to the fields, Ellis walked down and turned the body over. It was Bob. Clutched in his hand was a pair of bloodstained sheep shears.

They all waited before the porch. No one wanted to go inside. Geomancers fought a daily, high-stakes battle with the primordial powers of a thermal dynamic planet, but two dead bodies in front of a farmhouse had left them helpless. Ellis wasn’t a cop, and had never served in the military, but he was from Detroit. This was his landscape, his jurisdiction, and that made it his job to look inside.

He advanced, holding his arms bent, the barrel pointing up the same way Jaclyn Smith used to in Charlie’s Angels. Why he didn’t think of Mannix , Adam-12, or Hill Street Blues, he didn’t understand. The door was open, and Ellis rotated in with extended arms, sweeping the room. He looked down the sights of the gun, still drawing from his vast repertoire of television, movies, and crime novels.

At first he thought the kitchen was empty. A wheezing sound told him otherwise.

His view was hindered the moment he stepped in front of the hurricane lamp mounted next to the door frame. The room became a frightening shadow play of his own silhouette. Scaring himself, but also knowing anyone waiting would realize where he was, Ellis felt his palms sweating again as he moved around the table, searching for the source of the wheezing. Three slow sidesteps later he found Yal seated against the lower cabinets, head slumped, chin to chest. Blood dribbled out of Yal’s mouth, soaking the white Amish shirt.

Movement behind him galloped his heart. Ellis turned, only to see Pax leading the geomancers in.

“It’s Yal,” Ellis said, and without knowing why, except that he felt more was needed, added, “Yal was a cook—the one who designed the minlatta we ate.”

With a face filled with dread and concern, Pax knelt down. “Still alive.” Pax touched Yal’s cheek, and the cook’s eyes slowly opened.

“We should get Yal to the ISP,” Geo-1 said. A portal popped open between the table and the iron stove. One of the geomancers went through. Soon after, three ISP associates rushed back out, carrying a stretcher device. Pax stayed with Yal until they sent the cook through the portal.

Ellis had other responsibilities, and searched the rooms. The Civil War funeral parlor was empty. The table and Warren’s chair were overturned. The main floor was clear, leaving him with the stairs. They creaked with Ellis’s weight. Great , he thought, nothing like announcing myself to the crazy at the top of the stairs with Warren’s hunting rifle.

He climbed with his back sliding up the wall, his arms out, aiming up the steps. His new heart was pumping hard, his stomach climbing its own set of steps up his throat. At the top of the stairs he found Hig, stabbed to death.

He entered Warren’s old bedroom and was carefully peering under the bed when Pax entered. “Pol and Dex are gone.”

“How do—”

“Yal,” Pax replied to the question he was about to ask. “Couldn’t talk, but I was able to see what happened.”

Pax sat on the bed, looking sick. Ellis put his pistol down and sat alongside, close enough that their shoulders touched.

“What did happen?” Ellis asked.

“Yal thinks Dex started it. Sabotaged Ren’s Port-a-Call, locking it—that’s why I had such trouble. I’ve been using POCs for centuries, and I had trouble figuring it out. Ren didn’t have a chance. If everything went according to plan, Ren would have died along with the rest of us. That would have left just those here on the farm—perfectly positioned to survive a holocaust—and whatever few survivors that might have escaped. Ren and Pol had both expected there would be some, but assumed they wouldn’t survive without the infrastructure of Hollow World. They had planned to hunt down and kill those who did, tracking them by their chips.”

“So Dex double-crossed Warren?”

“Hard to say. Yal doesn’t understand it, really. Maybe Dex and Pol were working together to take control, or they might have both been out for themselves, looking to double-cross the other. All Yal knows is that once it was revealed that Warren was dead, that his POC had been sabotaged, everyone started fighting.”

“Survival of the fittest,” Ellis said thoughtfully. “Warren got his wish. He wanted to toughen them up, teach them the value of conflict, the value of reaching for the top. They learned well. So, where are Pol and Dex?”

Pax’s head shook. “Yal doesn’t know—just saw portals open. Yal expected to die—would have, too, if we hadn’t come along.”

“Will Yal be all right?”

“Physically, but Yal’s having trouble understanding their deception. People from Hollow World aren’t used to such behavior—Yal never saw it coming.”

Ellis sighed. “You can never tell what a person is thinking.”

Pax looked at him with a sad face. “I can.”

By the time they returned downstairs, more ISP associates were on the scene and most of the geomancers were gone.

“So, will this be the end of it?” one of the ISP associates asked.

“Cha!” Pax greeted the physician with a warm hug. “You got here fast.”

“Went to the ISP after the evac was canceled. Figured there might be injuries. People being careless with their POCs because of the alarm. So I was there when the accident alert was triggered.”