Fade Read online

  FADE

  Chad West

  Copyright © 2016 Chad West

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One: Earths

  Chapter Two: Normal

  Chapter Three: Home

  Chapter Four: Watched

  Chapter Five: Taken

  Chapter Six: Preparations

  Chapter Seven: Reunion

  Chapter Eight: Golem

  Chapter Nine: Shelter

  Chapter Ten: Propositions

  Chapter Eleven: Changes

  Chapter Twelve: Wanting

  Chapter Thirteen: Omega

  Chapter Fourteen: Consequences

  Chapter Fifteen: Lost

  Chapter Sixteen: Journey

  Chapter Seventeen: Rags

  Chapter Eighteen: Blood

  Chapter Ninteen: Guardian

  Chapter Twenty: Round One

  Chapter Twenty-One: Resurrection

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Redemption

  About the Author

  All rights reserved. Except for the use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without the express permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, names, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Chris B., for long lunches in your car, and plenty of cigarettes smoked listening to me prattle on about my idea for this story, and helping shape it in its infancy. Jenni, for reading an earlier draft and giving me encouragement I needed. And everyone whose hands this manuscript went through, especially Lauren, for your last minute edits.

  ONE

  Jonas stood on the grounds of the abandoned college they had made their base, an old gymnasium at his back (maybe the most important gymnasium in the world). Smoke stung his eyes, but the distant, burning buildings gave the gift of light: a hellish, undulating sheen that made the dark campus look as though it were breathing. Jonas squinted to take advantage of that frail light, hoping to see her before he saw them; hoping the soldiers would hold back the Fade just a little longer. He cradled a radio in both hands, rubbing it absently with his thumbs, willing his wife's voice to sound through it.

  They called him a hero because he could once collapse walls with a thought, calm crowds without a word; Jonas had used those abilities to enforce the law. But there were men attached to those faraway sounds of battle, many with lesser abilities than he’d once had, and they were throwing themselves at the Fade like cordwood into flame. They were the brave. Handing their lives to these aliens so that a handful of people they barely knew might have a chance at a new life. They were the heroes.

  Now, all he could do was watch, knowing the people these brave men were dying for might already be dead. That his greatest contribution to the war against these invaders since having his powers torn from his head was falling apart as he stood by. It was probably psychosomatic—that's what his doctors told him—but, at times like these, the scar on his head seemed to burn.

  The Fade, who had brought all this death, had also brought knowledge. After centuries of watching the skies, they had one day opened, and the Fade marched out. For several years, they butchered their way through thousands of cities. But there were worlds other than this; there were Earths other than this—a multiverse of parallel worlds, just out of reach. Even the Fade didn't know this. But Jonas had discovered it because of them. Under other circumstances, it might have been the most important scientific discovery of the new century. But, in their war with these implausibly mighty giants, these amoral bastards, that knowledge had been reduced to little more than fodder for an escape plan to get the innocent out of harm’s way. An escape plan that the Fade were very close to obliterating.

  The dorms had been destroyed in the first few minutes of the attack less than an hour before. Their light burned brightest, crying failure. There was no way of knowing if Iris had been able to use her abilities to transport them out. Jonas glanced at the silent radio, then back to the dim horizon. He’d sent his wife and four others to find out, and to retrieve any survivors. There had been so many children. He felt as though he could see all their faces now. Crying, and bleeding.

  There was no more waiting. He pulled the radio to his mouth, tried to call Elizabeth, but all he got was that strange, familiar squeal that told him the Fade were blocking their transmissions. His heart seemed to rise into his throat, and he dropped the radio. It split in two on the sidewalk with a plastic chuckle. Jonas looked over his shoulder, to the gym where Elizabeth was supposed to gather the survivors, but it was too dark to see inside. He tensed to run that way.

  “Jonas!” an oversized man yelled. When Jonas turned, dozens of the dark aliens were coming into view over the horizon. Flashes of blue from the powered armor they wore streaked the night as they approached. Blood painted the left side of the man’s face as he flew toward Jonas, pointing back, his hands crackling with power. “They’ve broke the line, Jonas! Tell Elizabeth not to bring the civilians here; they’re not safe anymore!”

  Jonas started to tell him the Fade had blocked communication, but the man turned, setting his eyes on the advancing horde, and raised those hands, releasing a loud gust of energy. Dozens of the Fade warriors became charred remains. (Few people were powerful enough to breach the protection that armor provided. It was probably the only reason this man had survived to warn him, Jonas thought.) The front of the Admissions Building across the street also disintegrated with that blast, crumbling in on itself. The flagpole that had stood in front of it lay on the ground, the flag black and still. The streets boiled in places. Still, dozens more Fade filled in the gaps, trampling the remains of the others.

  There was no more time. Jonas turned, running to where Elizabeth and the others would be, picturing them just out of sight in the dark (if they weren't, it was over). The rest of the campus burned behind him. His plan had been the answer for thousands who’d been promised escape from the war. Whether Elizabeth was inside or not, he knew she did not have thousands with her. The Fade had crushed what might have been humanity's final hope of survival in less than an hour.

  The Fade had long abandoned this area of the country after laying waste to its inhabitants at the beginning of the war. So, it made it a perfect staging ground for Project Omega, which some saw as a final desperate act of a people who had given up. Jonas saw it as a way to save thousands of lives in a unique way before laying down their final hand in the war. Their final and most important hand, because if their last play failed, the human race was doomed. If that happened, his plan would assure that at least some of them survived. That would serve as a type of victory. But somehow the Fade had found out.

  Jonas did not know how that happened, and he tried to stop thinking about what they had lost as he bolted inside. Entering through the back door at the same time was his wife. He found he could breathe again as he moved toward her. The door closed behind them as he reached her, a handful of women and children trailing her. He stopped. “Iris? Is she coming with more?” His voice cracked. He knew the answer.

  Jonas’ wife, a thin woman with a matted mop of blond hair sticking to her face, shook her head. Jonas deflated, accepting that this was it. He raised a numb arm toward a door marked stairs at the rear of the room and they moved. A pale redhead stumbled, almost dropping her little girl. “Angela,” she said, pulling the girl so tight against her chest Jonas thought she might call out in protest. But the child burrowed even closer. Jonas fell back a little to help her along, noticing the deep cherry patch on the lower back of her shirt.

  “Don’t worr
y. We’re almost there,” he said.

  The room smelled of a locker room. The sound of battle above surrounded them in horrible echoes. Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed. The building shook at a muffled boom and another of the women screeched, causing her child to do the same.

  Jonas moved them into what had been a storage room. An emergency transport took up one entire wall. It looked a mess—a large pad lying on the floor, wires shooting out like wild hairs. He would’ve almost been afraid to trust it if he hadn't put it together himself. It wouldn’t take them across the universe, but it would get them to a machine that could—ending part one of Project Omega.

  They all stepped onto the pad; a curved door closed them in. “Code B-7423-Jonas." A beep followed and he continued: "Omega Site.” Jonas huffed at the machine, staring hard at the redhead who was bent over, her teeth clenched. “Give me Angela,” he said.

  She shook her head and pressed her face against the child’s.

  A pale blue light burst into the small pod, and the door slid open again. In that instant, they had traveled miles. “Just a few more minutes,” Jonas said, and the redhead looked up, blew a damp strand out of her face and nodded.

  As they stepped out, Jonas latched onto a dark-haired woman’s arm. His eyes went to the pale redhead, then to her again. “Danna, she needs some of your blood to heal her wound. Quick. I’m going to disable the transport so they can’t follow us.”

  Jonas watched as the women and children made their way down the bright white of the hall to the one room on that floor. Then he yanked the cover from the control panel beside the transporter, some of the drywall crumbling away with it. It was one of the many helpful pieces of equipment they’d managed to put together from technology they’d stolen from the Fade over the years. It was the best they could manufacture during wartime, but not near as powerful as the machines that brought the Fade to Earth. But they’d managed to put their hands on one of those as well, and it sat right below them—the centerpiece of Project Omega.

  The plan had seemed foolproof. They wouldn’t just escape to some other world where Aern and his army of Fade could follow. They would go to a parallel Earth and, if things went according to plan, the Fade wouldn’t even know how to follow. They had hoped thousands of civilians would be saved by the move. But all they had succeeded in doing, it seemed, was putting the civilians in one, convenient location for the Fade to slaughter. Not to mention the hundreds who had sacrificed their lives to make this failure possible. But even before the Fade had ruined their plan he had not been able to force himself to believe that this other Earth would make them safe. If the last three years of war had taught him anything, it was that nowhere was safe.

  ***

  For some reason, Kyle Garner slipped into his thoughts as Jonas worked. Kyle had been the first of his unit to fall before the invading forces. They hadn’t known the Fade were so strong. Kyle had just wanted to stop the massacre of innocent lives. The rest of them had been pushed back, but Kyle dove into the crowd of alien beings. What must have been fifty of those bastards lay dead in his wake, but then they’d pulled him apart. None of those who had fought beside him had ever seen Kyle with as much as a bloodied nose after the worst of fights. So, to see that horror was, for many, to lose hope. It was that day, that moment, that Jonas himself realized, watching the masses of alien warriors still pour through that blue rift rising from the horizon, that Kyle Garner would be a rule, not an exception.

  He started to replace the cover, his work done, then dropped it with a sigh. The world he lived in wasn’t a place for order anymore. Chaos was the sovereign ruler now. Weren't they about to go ahead with a plan which had become the child of chaos? Was he foolish to go through with it for so few? Were his detractors right that he was so convicted they had lost that saving a precious few felt like the only remaining victory? Whoever was right here he was. This was all he had and no amount of philosophizing would change that.

  Five-hundred and seventy-three. That was the number of just the children that were supposed to be leaving for the other Earth. Some of them had been outside, playing, feeling safe again, when the Fade attacked. Six months of planning and secrecy and just days to go before the first wave was sent, and the Fade had somehow found them. Some filthy traitor had sold all those little souls and every parent who was to make the trip for a comfortable position in the inevitable kingdom they saw coming. But, they’d been so careful who knew. Jonas shook the thought from his head—no time—but it went right on floating around as he started toward the others.

  Jonas reminded himself that even if just one of them got away—one child—it would still be worth it. Also, if this worked, the enemy’s technology would be damaged beyond repair because he had stood. One man. Like Kyle, he stood. They had all stood, hadn’t they? Not one of the troops had ran when the children were in danger. Jonas sighed. Perhaps there was that. If this planet fell, at least there was that.

  Explosion. Jonas’ body took flight into a wall. The building shook. Came a sickening roar from up the hall. Clambering to his feet, he shot to where the women and children were. The large conference room was in shambles. One of the women was already buried under the rubble of a demolished wall on which one of the five Golems—those nauseating giants, flesh hanging from their bloated bodies as if it would slough off at any moment—stood battling the others. The Wraith wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Jonas!” He was grateful to see his wife still alive. She called to him, getting to her feet, her palm against a bleeding forehead. “Save the children!”

  “I’m here, Elizabeth!” He watched her use her own mental abilities to create out of the wreckage two, large humanoid shapes, formed of fallen stone and metal. Elizabeth gritted her teeth, and she and her stone and metal puppets began to attack the Golems.

  A few of the Fade warriors were more machine than flesh, their physical beings not quite present in this dimension. They were the Fade’s spies, and because of their ghost-like appearances, the humans began calling them Wraiths. They weren’t much in a fight, but along with the Wraith's own technologically-enabled mental abilities, they had a single weapon. They could emit nanites which infected the bodies of nearby humans, destroying higher brain functions, but mutating those bodies for strength and size, creating formidable, but ill-formed slaves: the Golems they called them.

  “Get the kids and go, Jonas!” Elizabeth yelled.

  Jonas already had the three children who emerged from the rising filth and concrete dust. (He had picked out four tiny shadows lying limp in the rubble.) He almost broke then and there, but ran with the remaining children into the stairwell that had almost been blocked by the damage. The Golem had caved in the roof above them. It was amazing any of them had survived. He stopped there, holding the children close. “I won’t leave without you, Elizabeth!”

  The dark-haired Danna crashed into another of the Golems, sending them both flying up and out of the room. The redhead, her arms ablaze, ignited the head of another of the creatures in a relentless barrage of flames. Its sick arms flailed and then it slumped to the ground, a sizzling mess. The redhead turned her attention to another of the Golems, but stumbled, crying out from the pain of her wound. She looked far too pale and sick for the fight. She shuffled against a wall, grabbing at her back. “If you don’t go now,” the redhead said to Jonas, “this is all been for nothing.”

  Another of the women had started for the redhead to help when one of the Golems yanked her up, stuffing her left side in its slobbering maw. Her entire body crackled with electricity, igniting a blast that blinded them all for an instant, exploding the Golem’s head. But it was too late. Her limp form sailed across the room.

  Jonas became aware that the woman might have lived if he still had the full brunt of his own powers at his disposal. Sure, millions of others might live because they were taken away—because he had time to help formulate the plan—but that was no comfort as he watched her tattered remains slump onto the floor, her 10-yea
r-old lying under the rubble a few feet away.

  Danna wobbled back in, “that one’s dow—” She saw her friend's body and fell to her knees. “Why are you still here? Get the children out. There are more coming.”

  Jonas’ eyes went to his wife who was now cradling the redhead. Elizabeth spoke, holding in her tears. “We can’t go.” Her eyes were wild, as if the words were holding a gun to her head, forcing her to say them. “We have to hold them back. You know we do.”

  Jonas held his baby daughter against his shoulder, crying, as the other two little girls held to his legs. “Shh, Lucy,” he said, herding them down the stairs. The words came perfunctorily, his nerves sizzling. Then he was staring at the fabled machine on the floor in front of them.

  It was small enough to fit in a backpack, yet it had brought a world of horror to them. Now, though, the portal might be their world’s great hope. It would keep these remaining children away from the diseased life they’d faced for the past few years and, if the rest of the plan worked, the changes they had made to its power down sequence would deal a major blow to the enemy. When they were safe where they were going, the portal’s last gust of energy would power a very specific cascading EMP that would leave the weapons and armor that gave the Fade such an advantage defunct. For the first time, the battlefield might be balanced, maybe even tilted a little in their favor.

  A small, blue circle opened in the room. Without hesitating, he began to walk the three girls through the portal. Angela wailed, but followed nonetheless. Cynthia, her pale face dripping with tears, pulled at his hand, reaching out, crying for her mother as they disappeared into the light.

  TWO

  Cynthia stared up at the sky thinking nothing ever changed. Haircuts and language maybe, but life was what life had always been. That she ached for more was some cosmic joke on humanity. Drugs helped. But when there were no drugs, smoking helped. That’s what she and her best friend Jan did while everyone else swept crepe paper and glitter from below the cardboard Eiffel Tower in the gym. They had slipped out when Mrs. Walker began throwing her hands up and gasping for air because they’d ran out of red masking tape. This was forever where Cynthia saw herself and somehow where she always ended up—just outside of where she was expected to be.