Worlds War One

xvi [Callie]

"Impossible," Autumn Loloma whispered as they stepped through a clearing in the overgrowth and stared at the structure in front of them.

Callie checked with Quest, who shrugged. This was the woman who had recently found out she was a Ghost. Now she commented on the integrity of the scene right in front of their eyes. Autumn, for effect, lost a little of her substantiality, winking out of existence for a moment.

Impossible.

Being the daughter of a blind man came with occasional occurrences of "Oh, no he didn't." When she was six, Callie had teased Robbie Rubnutz about his last name while her father waited way across the entire playground. She'd thought it was impossible when her father's face suddenly revealed he'd heard her every word, and she had been in B-I-G trouble. Or when Ryan Reyes had told her to take a hike when Callie had texted him to ask him to the Fantasy Ball in middle school. She had been at a sleepover at Stacy Mellow's across the street, and yet her father had shown up at the Mellows' house as Callie was softly sobbing in Stacy's bedroom.

Then there had been the time when she was eighteen and had impaled herself on a broken branch while they'd been camping at a cabin up on Mt. Shasta. Callie had started bleeding out, and they hadn't been able to get a cell signal. She hadn't been able to walk with a stick sticking out of her side. Allen Golden had climbed behind the wheel of their car. "You can't," Callie had hissed, the pain almost making her blackout. "You guide me," her Dad had decided. She'd thought it was impossible. They'd made it a mile and a half before he'd crashed into a pine at about six miles an hour. Luckily, a Ranger had found them not two minutes later and rushed Callie to the hospital. It had been impossible after all. But for a little while, it hadn't been.

Now, for a while, the impossible wasn't.

The Cathedral of the Key was entirely unlike the church where Callie had attended catechism. The building from her youth had featured windows with ornate keystones, grand sculptures of the apostles arranged along the four exterior walls recessed into alcoves in the brick, and a bell tower that would ring out a splendid tone every fifteen minutes. A priest would stand at the door greeting worshippers, and the nuns would scurry to and fro preparing for Mass. People of all ages and races had mingled like a well-met community.

Standing before Callie now was an affront to all those places of worship. Carcasses of rotting critters dangled from the eaves like ornamentation on the entrance to Hell, warning off any comers lest they find their same fate within. Apertures shaped like screaming maws made a non-symmetrical arrangement along each wall. Something other than brick or board made the structure, a substance recalling scabs that cracked open here and there, excreting ooze. Small pebbly pieces yellowed and sharp tiled the entrance, which Callie discovered upon closer inspection were individual teeth.

"This looks like a shrine to Johnny Rotten," Quest said, putting Callie's thoughts into words.

"Mot has no fascination with death, Private Ramírez," Saanvi said. "He is simply the purveyor of rot and decay. The act of dying is transitory, and the shell left afterward is like an empty pop can left behind after the drink has been drunk. Johnny Rotten is simply responsible for recycling. A sanitation worker doesn't have a shrine to plastic bottles and cardboard boxes. We only call Rotten's minions 'undead' and 'zombies' because they no longer live. What we have here has nothing to do with death. This has everything to do with the killing."

Callie shuddered.

Ji stepped cautiously forward, examining the stinking corpses of raccoons and squirrels and the occasional deer ornamenting the roofline. "This isn't some fortress full of more zombies like Wang?"

"It is a fortress," Saanvi answered, "but not for more minions of Mot."

"If not zombies, then what are we up against?" Fox asked.

"I'm starting to get some pretty bad Clive Barker vibes here," Callie quipped.

"The Flock maintains the Cathedral. The members call themselves the Birds of Paradise. The Flock is a dangerous cult that will defend the Key with their lives. I need to speak with the big bird in hopes of brokering a peaceful solution," Saanvi said.

"The big Bird? Are you telling me we went through all of that just to figure out how to get to Sesame Street?" Ji quipped.

Saanvi glared. She believed in many things that Callie had thought impossible, but apparently, she didn't believe in puns.

"The Flock. The Birds of Paradise," Callie asked. "Are they Human? Ghosts? Something else? What are we talking about here?"

"I could tell you. I could warn you. But you wouldn't understand. Sometimes, you have to see it to believe it."

Somewhere inside the Cathedral came the sound of something sinister. Callie pictured a dying bird trapped inside of an eggshell, the talon scratching against the interior surface, the sound of nails on a chalkboard accompanied by a screaming, scraping screech that shrieked like a banshee giving its final wail. The scabs of the surface of the Cathedral split and wept, thick runnels of yellow and green pus rolling down the exterior in mucus tears.

Callie had visions of monsters and myths marauding through her mind. In a world so vast, anything now seemed possible. The limits of unlikely were now woefully finite. It seemed anything became possible, and her imagination expanded to fill in the newly extended borders. Callie felt cold with fear.

"What are we going to see inside?" Callie asked.

Saanvi glanced at her sideways, and Callie finally saw something in her eyes besides unwavering confidence and smug superiority. The civvie looked suspicious of what was next.

"Terrible things," she whispered, low enough so Drill would not start running.

Callie checked on the massive man acting as second-in-command, who appeared barely in charge of making his bladder hold it together.

Lieutenant Robinson stepped in front of the gathered squad. "I'm leaving two soldiers outside as backup in case things go bad once we're inside. Drill, you stand sentry with Private Golden. Patrol the perimeter as a pair. Stay together. Ms. Loloma, I need someone to stay with them in case we need to radio back. I'd rather leave a civvie and take the rest of my soldiers inside."

"I'd rather stay outside, anyway," Autumn said.

Lieutenant Robinson nodded. Drill appeared relieved. Autumn took the sat-phone from the lieutenant. Callie wasn't sure how she felt about being relegated to the exterior, babysitting the biggest man she'd ever been with in the field. Whatever was inside might be terrible, but she had already seen impossible. Was terrible any worse?

But soon enough—when Fox and Ji were racing each other out of the toothy door and screaming like sorority girls in an Eighties slasher flick while shooting at things Callie couldn't have ever imagined—she will understand terrible was infinitely worse than impossible.