Ch.3

 

                                     These leaves fall to Earth,

Brittle whispers of what was

Dancing down to death.

 

 

            She continued calling in vain. She knew the only residents of these houses and schools were confused and lost souls. Souls who had lost their bodies far too soon, and far too fast, and now they were wandering purgatory helplessly…aimlessly. The phone droned in her ear. God, it was such a lonely and despairing sound. God, why? Why have you done this? What is your reasoning here? She pleaded to a God she had never really worshipped. Is this Karma? Have I done something wrong? She always blamed herself, even for the world’s problems. It’s all her fault; it’s always her fault. Hot tears ran down her face and for once she didn’t care. She made no effort to stop their flow; she let them come.

“ Lycoris?” Lee’s voice came from out side the office and broke her train of frantic thought.

“ Ye-yes sir?” she stammered, foolishly trying to gather the last remnants of her self.

“ Have you reached any one?”

“ No. No one. They’re all gone sir! All of them! I say we leave, now!” She slammed down the phone in retaliation. It crashed and clanged. Lee rushed into the room and looked at her in shock and distaste.

“ Control.” He said. Control. All his words were so final. Everything was a command, never a question, or even a comment. Then she began to think, how many times has he ever asked how I was? How often has he shone that he truly, genuinely cares? She knew the numbers were low; but he was her master, she loved him. He was a father to her when her own father left. On that cold August day that she will never forget, so many years ago when her father turned his back on her and left her alone to die a grievously slow, emotional death. Lee’s eyes were transfixed on Lycoris. They probed and studied her. She hated being under his gaze for long; she knew his eyes saw it all. They saw her pale face and chestnut hair with honey highlights. They saw her cool cornflower eyes, as gray as November skies. They saw her fear and her doubt all wrapped in an unbalanced mess of emotion. His gaze fell. He said nothing.

            “ Master, I’m…sorry.” She whispered, and the rivulets of sorrow began to flow again.

“ I can’t control…I have no control!”

“ Stop it!” he barked and walked out of the room. His voice sounded in her ears and ricocheted through her mind, and like a shotgun shell, exploded in her soul. She followed slowly and hesitantly. Deep down she knew why his words were always so hard. He had to control, he could leave no time for mourning. If he let her cry, she would lose all sense of her self. She knew there was a method behind his madness, but she still hated it.

Hideo was writing a list of supplies and singing to him self. How can he sing at a time like this? She wondered. “ Ok,” he said, and tapped the paper with the tip of his pencil. “We have to gather supplies. Lycoris, you go to the mall and get all the necessities: food, coolers, water, bedding, maybe a tent or something and also cooking utensils. Lee, you go to Walmart and get similar things. I’ll go and get a car for us.”

“ A car, but there are no running gas stations.” Lycoris said as she tied her shoes.

“ I’ll worry about that, you guys just get the things.” He stood up and headed for the door.

“ Pack light you guys, we can’t have a lot of s**t slowing us down. We have to be able to run at any given moment.”

“ Where are we going?” Asked Lee.

“ To find Grand Master Park. And then to Whispers.” 

 

            Out side it was hazy and humid. The air was thick and calm. Rain still fell lightly and a mist covered the land. “A storm is coming.” Hideo said, “And not just a light rain storm, but a great thunder storm. High winds, hard rain, thunder enough to make to you deaf, and lightning that’ll make you blind.” Lycoris looked up.

“ How do you know it’ll be that bad?” she asked.

“ Because, I’ve never been wrong before.” He cast a guile glance at her. He was so mysterious, and so strange. “Now, this means our time is short, so hurry. When you’re done you both should wait at the main entrances and I’ll get you from there. I’ll give you both an hour and a half. No longer.”

Lee and Lycoris stood in the road and watched as Hideo left to the Car Dealership across the street. The morning was dim and gray. The sun was lost behind curtains of mournful clouds. Lycoris began to walk to the hick mall that she knew so well. She remembered all the times when she and her friends met up here to hang out. She remembered when the security officers kicked them out for “Disruptive behavior” and she remembered the only time the mall was really alive was around Christmas time. She sighed as she reminisced and began to cry again.

           

            Gathering the necessities was hardly a chore. It wasn’t difficult and it wasn’t long before Lycoris had three carts full from Kmart. She stood patiently in the breezeway of the mall as thunderous rain incessantly pelted the world.

She waited. Her mind was clear, but not from serenity or peace; her mind was numb. That’s all it was. Numb. She began to worry, What if they forgot me? What if Hideo lied? How can I trust him, when I don’t even know him? Oh, What time is it? In her mind her voice quivered as she thought that last question. She had taken a watch to avoid this very state of panic that gripped her. Clocks and time, however, seemed futile. She was lost in a twilight zone, that gray area between the starting of and stopping of time. In this interval, time neither passed nor froze. It simply hung there, hovering in a state of suspended animation. Purgatory. Yes, that was it, a surreal purgatory in which her life was put on hold.

           

 

The rain fell uniformly outside. It didn’t stop. It wasn’t controlled by human hands, and thus could not be destroyed by them. Life had nothing to do with humanity’s living. This revelation dawned on her, and surprisingly she was unmoved by it. It was as though she had always known this philosophy, and that by now it was a matter of fact.

The splashing of heavy wheels through the murky puddles disrupted her isolating thoughts and emotions. Hideo was there; horn blazing through the silence in her soul, like a beacon of faint hope. “ Get in!” he yelled and Lee jumped out of the hefty SUV.

“ Damn Lycoris, I said the necessities…not the whole damn store!” Hideo exclaimed as he got out and inspected the carts full of sopping goods. He gingerly held up a dripping case of Tampons. He raised an eyebrow. “ What?” She yelled over the thunder,

“ They’re necessary for me!” Lee nodded, and then shook his head in amusement.

“ Yeah, but there’s like…fifteen cases here! You need that much!”

“ If you were a woman, you’d understand!” Lycoris took the case and threw it roughly in the back. “ I also got some cloths.” She said, arms crossed.

“ I see that…” Hideo’s head was buried, rummaging through the carts. He held up some lacey undergarments. “ Ay-cha!” Lee turned his head with his usual exclamation. “ How necessary were these?” Hideo questioned.

“ Oh shut up Hideo! My life may be put on hold, but it’s not over! They were so cute I couldn’t resist. There’s no harm in grabbing some nice things too! Besides, they’d just go to waste other wise.” She took the panties and tossed them in too. “ Are you finished?” she grumbled. “ Yeah, every one in.” Lee and Lycoris piled in the back.

            They drove for hours, deeper and deeper into the Pennsylvanian valleys, their SUV following the dips and turns of the hilly countryside. They knew Grand Master wouldn’t be in Erie. His home and Erie school would be the first places they would look. Lycoris lazily cast a glance out the tinted window. A hot sun was shinning here and warped the road with lapping waves of raw, humid heat. It was only February but the heat made it feel like late July. “ Where can we possibly look?” she asked, her eyes fixed to the asphalt speeding by like a long belt sander. Hideo let loose a heavy sigh as he leaned back in the seat. “ I don’t know.” He said, “ I just don’t know…” She looked up at Lee. He was silent, no doubt pondering the fate of his family. His brother in Georgia, and his parents back home in South Korea, must have been hit by the toxic storm that was plaguing the Earth. Nowhere was safe from it. What’s happening in South Korea? She thought as she studied his pensive face.

 Though the rain hadn’t stopped, all was shrouded in an ominous quiet. Everything seemed so peaceful, and Lycoris sat enthralled by the beauty of the Appalachian Mountains. They loomed ahead, a great crown of mist and cloud hung about their peaks. So majestic, so powerful, this was the first time in all her life she ever saw them this close. Golden rays bathed them, streaming through a few breaks in the cloud cover, and in the far distance heat waves made them dance. They gave her the rejuvenation her spirit so desperately needed.“ Amazing…” She whispered,“ maybe there is hope…”

 

 

 

 

Their steps echoed through the dark, dismal halls. The guards were silent, and with solemn eyes Grand Master Dong Park walked the claustrophobic hall to his fate. His limbs were bound by ancient chains so sullied and rusted they must have been from the Inquisition. The jagged shackles cut into his wrists and ankles, making him bleed.            “ An’cha!” A guard barked and kicked out his knees. He lowered his head in a weak bow. There, before his oppressor, he sat unflinching and patient. However, his mind raced as he awaited further instruction.

            “ You may only see the Lord’s feet, never his face. You may speak only when directly told to. You will tell all the Lord wishes you to tell him. If you refuse the Lord, you all perish; you’re family and you. Your wife, your little son and your three beautiful daughters. Is this clear?”

He said nothing. “ Is this clear?” the man yelled with more urgency. “ Yes”.

            A long silence followed as Park waited for the Lord to address him. He was a high martial artist, Park was, and he knew the Lord would want his services. “ You,” the Lord spoke slowly, his voice was light and hallow. It sounded like thoughts inside a head, not yet fully manifested into solid sound. “ You know why you are here. You know you have ability that I seek. Do you not?”

“ I am only one of many martial artists. There are many who are just as skilled as I, and more.”

“ True. But you have one attribute that they do not. And what is more, you have a direct link to the one mortal who greatly interests me.”

Park was temped to look into his face, to see the eyes of this man, if that was what he was. Park wasn’t sure what this “Lord” was. He surely didn’t seem human. Park could sense a great and terrible power within him; he knew whatever he was, he was a force to be reckoned with.

“ Do you know who this link is?” He asked; his words dripped like poison from a serpent’s tongue.

Park was silent.

“ I believe her name is Lycoris Tsugani. A student of yours.”

Park’s eyes dilated. A sudden cold over took him, followed by mental paralysis. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think.

With blank eyes he stared into nothing. Lycoris, what could they want with her?

           

            “ There, people!” Hideo yelled; his voice woke the two from a nice sleep. For once Lycoris was not troubled by dreams. Lee looked out the window, all the rain had dried and the farmlands were replaced with corner stores and streetlights.

 “ Where are we?” he asked, still half dreaming.

“ I’m not too sure… but I think we’re in Maine.”

“ Main?” Lycoris jumped, “ Wow! How long did we sleep?”

“ Many hours, I’m not too sure how many.” Hideo slanted his eyes. He hated using his powers, especially so often. But this is different; he thought to himself, the situation demands it!

“ At any rate, if we can find a ship sturdy enough to cross the ocean, we can get to England. There we’ll find a branch of Whispers, if the city hasn’t been destroyed.”

“ What if the city has been destroyed? What do we do then?” Lee asked.

“ We go on to the next one, in Paris. But Europe has been hit hard by N.K. Its probably been under N.K. control for some time now.”

“ What makes you say that?” Lycoris said lazily with a yawn, she still wasn’t fully awake.

“ They didn’t stop them from coming here.” Hideo parked the car in front of an old motel. It was run down and ransacked. The doors were falling from their hinges and the dirt-laden windows were cracked and opaque with grime. They stepped lightly in through the doorway and looked around. The place was pitch black and smelt of burning wood and mildew. “ Hello?” Lycoris yelled as she walked a little further.

“ Aint nobody home!” A crackling voice came from the bowels of the old Inn. It sounded to be a woman, but they weren’t completely sure.

“ Now get!” A crumpled creature limped out of the darkness. She wore a threadbare nightgown and a smoking cigarette hung lamely from the corner of her mouth.

“ Excuse us, we were looking for a place to stay for the night.” Hideo said in his most polite voice.

“ Then keep a lookin’!” She barked, “ There aint no place here for you dirty Chincs! Now Get!” They stood stupidly before the old woman as she smoked and coughed, waiting for them go. In the dark she looked pathetic and yet still menacing. “ Well?” she asked,

“ What in the Hell are you waitin’ for?”

“ In all do respect, we’re not Chinese. I’m Japanese and he is Korean…”

“ I don’t give a damn! You Asian b*****s came here and did this to my Inn!” She threw her hands up to show the deteriorating interior around them. “ And you came here, killin’ and what, even took Walter!” She broke into a sob. Clearly she was talking about what the N.K. had done to the town. They turned and looked at one another. “ Who is Walter?” Lee asked.

“ Walter! My baby! My only! They took my Walter!” Lycoris began to take a few steps back, “ Maybe we should go,” she whispered to Hideo. He nodded and they slowly crept away.

 

            They left the old woman sobbing in her sordid home and calling after them with wailing despair and damning them to every hell. Twilight had diminished into dusk and the air was cooler. Hideo looked around, the town had survived pretty well, but then N.K. didn’t destroy property, they simply took the people. “ Well, at least some people have survived.” He said as he looked at the strangers as they walked slowly by. Each one looked at the three with fearful eyes.

“ Lycoris, go up to that man and see if he knows where we can go.” He said over his shoulder. She looked up, hesitated a moment, then walked over.

“ Excuse me sir?” She said timidly. The man turned and looked.

“ What?” His voice was tired and emotionless.

“ Do you know of any where good to stay the night? My friends and I are very tired. We came all the from Ohio and we need rest.” The man was silent a moment, then he began to laugh loudly.

“ Any where good? What, you here on vacation? I’ll tell you a good place! Sleeping in the ground with my Wife and baby girl!” She stepped back. They’re all mad! She thought to herself as she watched the man laugh. She began to run away, behind her she heard him yelling after her: “ In the ground! With my Wife and Girl!” Over and over he yelled, like a broken record.