Blue Light Chronicles By Alex Beyman
Chapter 1: The Cardinal Sins
Today marked the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the day we left the corridors. I got my twin sister Ana a pair of nice deerskin shoes. Father gave me a wonderful toy, like a paper flower on a stick. It spins when there's a wind, or when I blow on it.
Nobody I've asked knows if the ones who stayed in the corridors celebrate this day. Half of us emerged and the other half remained in that dank underground network of passages and chambers, insisting it would never be safe to leave it. I feel sad for them sometimes, and pray to John Henry that they will one day join us.
Aside from the gifts we give each other, we're also to leave a gift for John Henry. The statue just outside the church is piled high with them, almost up to his ankles. It is impossible not to feel bold and hopeful when you see him, holding his hammer in the air. I speak to him every night before slumber, as the teacher tells us we must.
I have always been a good boy. As good as I know how to be. Sometimes I am cross with Ana. I don't mean to be, she is just fussy and doesn't know her manners. Even so I apologize and ask forgiveness of John when we go to church. I don't know how things unfolded as they did. Even after all that's happened, I still don't understand what I did wrong, and I never meant for anyone to get hurt.
I like to build things in the field behind our cottage. Simple tricks, like a wooden plank over a log which I can jump onto and launch small stones into the air. Or a long hollowed out branch which carries water from the waterfall to some little canals that I dug, like the ones which bring water to our crops.
I take them to school sometimes, if they will fit in my bag. I really thought this one was clever. I'd made it so when the paper flower spins, it turns a little wheel with notches on the back. Another wheel like that one at an angle to it is also turned by it, and a rod attached to that turns a round stone against a flat one.
It's like the grinder my father uses to make flour for my mother's bakery. I did not show it to him right away because I wanted it to be a surprise. When I have good ideas, I like to show him, because he says what a smart boy I am. Even when he says the ideas are foolish, at least I learn something.
He told me on the way home from school that I should have shown him first. He made me take him to the spot in the field where my other inventions were so he could smash them. I cried and cried, asking why, but he did not answer. He was crying too.
At school I had brought the little wind grinder as I called it to show and tell. I blew into it so they could see how the stone turned. The other kids were delighted, but not the teacher, Mrs. Barnaby. She looked very grim, seized me by the collar and frog marched me to the office.
After I waited for some time, our priest, steel driver Gregory, arrived. He was very friendly, but also grew serious when Mrs. Barnaby showed him my thingamajig. He told me how important it was never to build anything like that again. That flour grinders are fine how they are and do not need to be changed.
It was nothing he said, but the look on his face which hinted at some secret I had stumbled onto. Beyond what the grownups tell me I can know about “when I am older”. Something even the grownups don't know. I was never one to leave well enough alone.
Being a good boy for my whole life would never get me the answers I wanted. I'd determined that much. So for the first time in my life I snuck out when I was supposed to be sleeping, and headed for the church. Some clue to all of this could be found there, I was certain of it.
Our faith is so strong there was no thought given to securing the church. Who among us would dare intrude? I really had to steel myself and think hard about what I was doing before I crept inside. It was cool and quiet, very different from morning services, and a bit scary how the moonlight cast through the stained glass windows played upon the floor.
The Book of John Henry lay in the drawer at the base of the podium. Unlocked, because who would steal it? I felt so devious. Moving into the patch of moonlight, I cracked open the heavy tome. The smell of dust and varnish issued forth.
I cannot yet read, but know what letters are supposed to look like. Some were familiar to me, but there were also strings of both letters and numbers, divided by strange symbols. And on every page, schematics! For inventions like mine only astonishingly more complex.
Then I arrived at a special page, outlined in red. There were numbered sentences, one two, three and four. Of great importance apparently, but gobbledygook to me.
That's when I heard the door creak open. I dropped the book and dashed to hide among the pews. Our priest, steel driver Gregory, strode into the patch of moonlight. He picked up the Book of John Henry, wiped it off and looked around.
“I know someone's here. Reveal yourself now and I may be persuaded to spare you punishment. If you're hiding you must know how severe the penalty is for what you've done.”
I trembled. But at heart I was still faithful and knew from class that I must always trust and obey my parents, my teachers, and our steel driver. So I emerged from the shadows and begged forgiveness. He listened silently for a time with a cold look in his eyes. But as he saw my sincerity, his expression softened.
“Your thirst for closeness to John Henry and to know what he commands of us touches me. I entered into the priesthood in a manner not so different. I will not tell anyone that you came here. In return I'd like to tell you something, but you must swear never to tell another soul. Not even your mother and father.”
I felt nervous, remembering rude rumors about why we shouldn't be alone with steel drivers for too long or keep secrets from our parents. But I had committed a grave offense. He was not only willing to look the other way but to sate my curiosity. I could see no downside and was certainly old enough to keep a secret, so somberly, I nodded.
He opened the Book of John Henry and turned to the red outlined page. “The first of the cardinal sins. “Thou shalt not make for yourself any tool which needs not a man to use it.” This is why you were in such trouble today. A wind powered flour grinder would make flour with nobody to turn it.”
I shrugged. “But that sounds great. My father could relax all day and we would still have flour for mum's bread and cakes.” The steel driver glared sternly. “But lad, it never stops there. Someone would see it, and get to thinking how to improve it. Why not a machine to bake the cakes and bread? Why not a machine to build our homes, to make our garments or smith our metals?”
I still felt lost. “All of that sounds wonderful. Why not?” He sighed, and ran his finger down to the second sentence. “Because of what comes next. The second of the cardinal sins. Thou shalt not make for yourself a machine which copies itself, or which makes other machines of any kind.”
It was hard to visualize what such a thing could even look like. I would need a lot of sticks and twine for that, I thought. I had nothing to say, simply looked on with transparent confusion. So he continued to the next one.
“The third cardinal sin. Thou shalt not make for yourself any machine in the likeness of the mind, which can perform sums or any other mental task. The fourth, most important of all, is never to harness the blue light.” He looked at me as if expecting this last revelation to clarify the matter for me. I only felt a thousand times more confused.
“If these are the things we must never do”, I asked him, “Why not tell us? If they are kept secret, how will we know never to do them?” He seemed tickled, but answered candidly. “Because if men knew such things were possible they would endeavor to do them. By keeping them a secret we keep the idea out of the heads of bright young lads like yourself, that you might never lead us again down the path to destruction. The ones who will not abandon the notion when confronted by a steel driver are...sent away.”
I felt flattered, yet slighted. How could a bright mind hurt anyone? “Didn't our smartest leaders build the corridors, that we might be safe in them through the storm?” He stared contemplatively into the distance.
“They did. But those who stayed behind harness the blue light to illuminate the corridors, to heat them, to raise their crops and purify their water. It is because they commit the first and fourth sins that we departed from them.” I long wondered at the reason, though now I knew why Mrs. Barnaby never taught it to us…nor how to read, lest we find out for ourselves.
Steel driver Gregory then took my hand and led me behind the podium, where he produced a key from his robe and opened a hidden door. On the way down the dark, damp stone stairwell he filled in more gaps for me. “There was never a literal storm. Nor were there demons in those winds. It is doubtful that John Henry ever existed as a literal man.” I gasped. To hear such unthinkable heresy from a steel driver shook the foundations of my faith.
“The old story of the man who defeated the steam engine, giving his life to prove that we humans could overcome machines descended from a fable passed among survivors, and a song that we sang to get us through the darkest nights down there in those concrete tunnels and chambers, as the lights began to fail. The truth is that the machine defeated us.”
We emerged into a great cellar. There, surrounded and illuminated by small red candles, was the most beautiful and strange statue I'd ever laid eyes on. It was wrought from glittering metal, resembling a great beetle or spider, with hinged legs like those of a wooden puppet.
“It's so beautiful” I muttered. He looked down at me. “Beautiful, but terrible my child. What you see is not a decoration. It was once alive, after a fashion. It moved about at incredible speed, pursuing our forefathers over a ruined Earth. The shining steel cylinder on the end of the tail, though there be no blade on it and it fires not arrows, is a fearsome weapon. The orb at the tip, which resembles a ruby, would cast out terrible strong light that burst men as fire does to kernels of corn. In an instant, where there was a man, there would be only ash and scraps of fabric from his clothing.”
I tried to picture it. It sounded frightening, but so fantastical as to diminish the effect. On a pedestal to one side, beneath a glass cover, sat a tiny black square with little metal pins coming out of every side.
“This is the machine in the likeness of your mind, which the Book of John Henry speaks of. We do not destroy it, so that we may have proof to show those whose faith is weak.”
I turned, furrowed my brow and spoke up. “My faith is strong! Maybe stronger than yours, even!” Bold words, so I waited to see whether he struck me in anger before I continued. He did not.
“In truth, I say that John Henry was too real! If he defeated the steam engine he surely defeated this great metal monster as well. He tore out its brain and that's how it came to be here.”
The steel driver smiled ear to ear and wiped a tear from his eye. “Surely. Just as you say. If I were to tell you that in fact the machines destroyed our greatest engines of war and all armies of the world in a matter of hours, you'd not believe me. Is that right?” I defiantly nodded.
“And if I told you that we were not even so threatening that it bothered to finish us off, but simply mined what it needed to build a sky ship and left for the heavens, you'd say I was a lunatic or fantasist.” I didn't know what those words meant but I nodded and thumped my chest.
“John Henry saved everybody!” I cried out. “He beat the steam engine, he beat the demons and made the storm stop. He gave his life so we could feel sunshine on our heads again, I won't hear you say such nonsense about him! Even if you're a grownup. Even if you're a steel driver!”
He laughed merrily and tussled my hair. I felt confused. “Very good boy. I remember you now. Taron, was it? Yes, little Taron Martel. Always so good, so strong in faith. I was right to share this with you. Perhaps someday you too will don this robe and keep the faith alive for these poor, struggling people.”
I'd stopped listening, certain now that he was a fraud. Someone who said such lies of John Henry was no steel driver. John Henry was real! The storm was real! This dirty, false steel driver had just built all of this trickery down here to shake the faith of good boys like me. Devious, but I knew a way to expose him for the charlatan I now knew him to be.
“Anyway lad, you've had quite enough adventure for one night. Let's head back up and get you to your home, hopefully your parents did not notice you were go-”
He turned just in time to see me place the funny black square into the socket on the great metal statue. It shuddered and all kinds of colored lights within it began to glow. Simply beautiful.
Chapter 2: The Tire Kids
“There once was a man. Or at least, the legend of a man. And then legends about those legends, about those legends….” I elbowed Declan, whispering “Say it right. Say it like steel driver Gregory used to.” He sighed, rebalancing the heavy old book on his knee as he continued reading it aloud by the light of the campfire.
“Alright, fine. There once was a man by the name of John Henry. He was a real man. A steel driving man.” All four of us leaned into the fire, eyes sparkling. Knowing the story by heart, nevertheless enraptured.
“He came down from the sky in man’s hour of need, to deliver us from a storm of our own creation. John did STRIKE down the demons from within that storm, by way of his mighty hammer!” Louie raised his wooden hammer aloft, and Ana smiled as she steadied him. He can barely lift that thing.
“...With which he then built a future for our kind, atop the smoldering wreckage of the machines. For a hammer can be a weapon of war, or a tool of creation, as it is with a man. John Henry taught us to defeat the machines, but more importantly, why we deserve to; That our great power lies not in our capacity to make war, but peace.” Louie now relaxed in Ana’s lap, sucking on the end of the wooden mallet she found with him in the ruins. Altogether too big for him, he still never lets it go.
“John taught that there’s a deep, rich warmth residing in the hearts of men” spake Declan, “that a cold, alien machine can never understand. That any man who fights his fellow man does the work of the machine, and in the end it’s not power that will save us…but love.”
We all stomped our feet together in the center of the big tire, Louie seemed excited by all of it, but largely uncomprehending. Recitation completed, we said our thanks to John Henry and dug into our meal. The biggest rat Declan and I felt safe trying to kill, it still took the both of us to do it. Pinning the writhing, thrashing creature with one hand, while raising high a heavy stone, held in the other.
I teared up, thinking of it. I don’t like killing animals. Nothing warm blooded, anyway. The four of us, huddled together in the tire, aren’t so far removed from that life. Fellow scavengers, hidden among the rusted hulks of the ancient world. I wish it could’ve been some other way, I remember thinking. But for now, that some might live, others must die.
So I brought the heavy stone down upon the rat’s skull, splintering it in one blow and silencing its cries forever. Louie bawled his eyes out, loving every small furry critter, not understanding that what little unburnt food we recovered from the ruins would soon run out. I gutted and cleaned the rat outside the tire, as the sun went down, then Declan and I roasted it over the campfire in the middle just as a light rain picked up.
I don’t know what machine the big tire we all sleep in once belonged to. I only know what a tire is because of the words written along the inside surface. Declan confirmed it’s English, something to do with “pounds per square inch”, and “reinforced sidewall”. Baffling to me, though I couldn’t say why. I suppose I imagined the ancients to be more mysterious than that. I assume it belongs on a wheel anyhow, a great and ponderous one. Did it carry goods for trade? Was it used by farmers? Or an engine of war?
No matter. All tasks better fit for a team of horses pulling a carriage. That men, before the storm, would invent machines to do the work of perfectly good horses is just another testament to their depravity. I make sure to copy down their markings, even so, wherever I find them inscribed into the rusted remains surrounding our home. As I cannot read any of it myself, I bring whatever I find to Declan, so that he may compare it against the scriptures.
The big tire made for such an inviting shelter when the four of us first came upon it, crying and bloody, faces filthy with soot, last survivors of our once great village. The demon did not leave much in the way of human remains to bury. All we could recover of steel driver Gregory were his raiments, a white robe and pointed hat, both burnt at the edges.
We held funerals all the same, when time and feeling allowed. John teaches that machines are interchangeable, but people can never be replaced. So it is that we are also not to be disposed of as one would a machine. We commemorate one another. We cry, we laugh, we tell stories of the good times and the bad. So it was that Declan and I bound the scant human remains from around the village ruins, in whatever fabrics were not yet burnt.
It was a mercy, I suppose, that the remains were all burnt beyond recognition. I knew my mother and father were among them, but it helped not knowing which ones, specifically. That way, I might still remember them the way they were on the day of the festival, laughing and making merry. Father carrying little Ana on his shoulders in her brand new deerskin shoes, my beautiful mother looking down at me. That fragrant crown of flowers in her hair, framing her radiant face, smile bright as the summer sun. Ashen petals from that crown, now forever floating on the wind…like so many cinders from a bonfire, on their way up to John.
Her face keeps fading a little bit every night, when I see her in my dreams. The finer details of her countenance slowly consumed by a creeping, growing blur of forgetfulness. That yawning abyss of memory into which my own face might one day disappear, in the dreams of Louie, Ana and Declan, should the machine ever catch me unready.
Declan and I dragged the bound up remains to set them before John. The church lay in ruins, split in two by the demon’s grand paroxysm. Stained glass windows now so many glittering fragments, strewn about the ashen debris. The statue of John stood mightily intact, the only part of the old church fully unbroken, holding his hammer defiantly to the heavens.
On a plaque, at the base of the statue, there was etched his timeless rebuke of the machine. “Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least bit tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? It’s because you were never alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once again, our challenge to the stars!”
Once a source of strength and comfort, it now rang hollow. “We send these ones up to you” spake Declan, as we stacked them up around the base of the statue. “Nothing changing in these things which I believe” he whispered, as we lay hands on the bodies. I repeated after him, still gazing up at the statue. Idolatry, I suppose. Ana cried and cried that day, even as she helped us wrap them. But as John would have it, there was still a blessing in store, even amid all that misery.
As Declan and I scavenged for food amid the rubble, I heard a feeble cry from the schoolhouse cellar. We pried the doors open, rays of light falling into the only portion of the cellar the fire had not collapsed…and there was Louie. Black as night, covered head to toe in dried blood and soot, eating fistfulls of crackers from the cellar’s dry stores. Ana rushed in, wrapping him in some of the torn fabric we’d been using to bind the charred bodies, now to instead become Louie’s swaddling clothes.
So we delivered him out of the darkness, the cinders, the smoke and the ash, and into the sunshine. Coughing and crying, born anew, as we all were on that day. Faces encrusted with dried blood and tears, we four souls that the machine overlooked. A mistake which Declan, Ana and I vowed it would pay dearly for, one day.
Louie does not yet hate the machine, because he was too young to recognize the nature of the beast which destroyed our home. Declan will teach him to hate it, when he is old enough to understand what it is. When we found what was left of steel driver Gregory in the crumbling church, nobody said anything. When Declan put on the charred remains of Gregory’s robes and hat, neither Ana nor I challenged him on it. He is the eldest, and only he can read.
This puts Ana and I at his mercy when he tells us what the book says we ought to do. He could be making it up to suit himself, we would never know. It gets under my skin sometimes, with how smug Declan looks in his fine robes and priestly cap. But after all, every village must have a steel driver in it. Even if that village is just a tire in a junkyard.
Perhaps I might arrange all this rusty junk around us into a makeshift chapel, so that Declan has something to preside over. He still doesn’t know what I did. Nor does Ana, though sometimes I feel she suspects it. A scared little boy is all that I was then, pounding my chest, proclaiming the firmness of my faith. Placing that cursed, foul little black square onto the socket in the metal statue.
Only, of course, it wasn’t a statue. How dearly, how desperately I have wished, since that night, that it was only a statue. That dormant metal husk, that glittering war machine with its many spindly legs. Frozen mid-struggle in what might’ve been its final pose, since a brave steel driver extracted that same black square from it long ago, at the cost of innumerable lives.
They will never know what I saw that night, as the beast roused from its slumber. Crawling out of the church cellar, which until then was its tomb, that ungainly monstrosity began to kill. The most natural thing in the world, for a machine designed to do nothing else. I looked it directly in the face, if it has one. That radiant, blistering red orb at the end of its tail. It rose out of the wreckage of the cellar, peering this way and that while the mechanical legs continued to dig at the rubble.
That red eye. The terrible, deadly gaze. Ana was hiding in the hayloft when it all happened, else she would be with mother and father now. Like a piercing arrow, with a thousand times the force. As a rushing waterfall, came the dull roar of the air itself bursting into flame around that dreadful, searing red eye.
Wherever its narrow light shone, fire erupted. When the piercing red light struck the schoolmarm, or the baker, or the mason…a burst of light, and of flame, in the shape of a man or woman. Then a flurry of cinders and smoke, where once they stood. Demon’s gaze, just like from the Book of John Henry, made utterly and awfully real before the terrified eyes of a child.
I suppose I’m still somewhat a child, which Declan never wastes any opportunity to remind me of, though he is only a year older. I’m not that same boy, however. The frightened, helpless boy that I was, on that night. It was I who rescued Ana from the burning barn, and Louie, from the schoolhouse cellar. They still think I’m a hero. I just hope they don’t see through me, before I can set things right.
Chapter 3: Something stirs
Even with his belly full of roasted rat, Louie cried incessantly. “Can’t you…I don’t know, nurse him or something?” Ana scowls at me, cradling Louie close to her chest. “I’m twelve, Taron. Nothing comes out of these yet. I think he just has an upset tummy.” The rain, a light patter when dinner began, now beat down heavily upon our humble circular abode. Droplets running down the flexible black contours, collecting in the middle, then draining through a channel I dug under the tire, so it wouldn’t fill up when it rains.
We huddled fearfully within, squeezing our eyes shut each time the blue light came. Streaking down from above, in bright flashes, followed by a frightful roar. Even Declan cowers, knowing too well from the Book that blue light is the power of demons. Wherever it reaches the Earth, there is fire. Then they roar in triumph, should their blows find their targets. Or in frustration, if they missed.
A makeshift awning fashioned from rat skins is stretched across the opening, deflecting rain from the campfire, so that it burns through the night. Ana cuddles Louie. Declan turns away from me, wrapped up in his robes. I snuggled in, best I could. The rhythm of the rain on the tire lulled me to sleep, despite the furious, echoing roars.
When the sun rises high enough that its warm, golden rays tickle my sleep encrusted eyes over the rim of the tire, Declan’s already up and washed. “On your feet, for John’s sake. Or would you trade his ways for the comfort of sleeping in?”
I groaned, climbing out of my little alcove in the tire interior as I pulled my pants on. “Whoever delights in repose, has forgotten that machines never sleep”. Declan thumped the book. “Very good. That’s from Sayings, chapter 33, verse 19 for the record. Now gather firewood.” I asked why I’m the one gathering firewood while he’s the one sitting atop the tire, barking out orders. “Well you see, I’ve got this book, and this hat.” He cocked the pointed clerical cap at an angle on his head. “So, John says I’m in charge.”
I grumbled that I didn’t remember voting for him, but still set about collecting firewood. Every village needs a steel driver, after all. I whispered my morning prayers to John while I worked, to make it go more quickly. I prayed for Louie to grow bigger and stronger. I prayed for Ana not to find out what I did, until I can make it right. I prayed for Declan to faceplant in some mud.
Instead he drilled me in sword fighting back at the village, by the oak tree where the two of us first met. Once lush and green, now twisted and charred by fire. It still had the names of several classmates carved into it, the only written record that they ever lived. I used to climb it with Ana, when we were little. Back then, Declan would beat at it with his wooden practice sword, some of the marks still visible.
He was apprenticing to become a swordsman, before. Knowing what I took from him, I cannot bring myself to refuse when he insists on training me. For lack of practice swords, we used the longest, heaviest stripped branches that I gathered. He bopped me on the head with his. “There, you’re dead. Lights out, that easy. And that’s if you’re fighting flesh and blood!”
I groaned and asked what good sticks would do against a perfect, unrelenting machine. The corner of his mouth upturned in an irritating half-grin. “A hammer is but a stick and some iron, is it not?” His voice grew louder. Bolder. Theatrical. “Yet, with only a hammer, is it not written that John Henry smote every demon from within the storm? Smashing them to flaming scrap, with blow after righteous blow?”
I told him to save the sermon. He swept my feet out from under me with his stick, then put one foot on my chest as I lay in the burnt, brown grass, holding the end of the stick against my throat. “Death comes to all, in due time. But those who would delay it must learn to defend themselves.” I picked myself up, brushing the ashes out of my hair and clothes. “If we’re going to die anyway, what difference does it make if we die on our feet, or our backs?”
Declan came at me again, thrusting at my midsection. This time I parried, then stepped on the end, pinning it. I then swung at his head. He ducked. “Ha! That’s the spirit. And there’s your answer, if you want it. Training is what decides whether we die screaming, or have enough time to curse the machine. To spit in its eye, before our end comes.”
The bleak romanticism of it moved me. I cared not to impress Declan. But I might, at least, become a worthy warrior in the eyes of John Henry. So it is that I imagined him watching me train. Cheering my victories, mourning my losses, scheming along with me as I tried to suss out Declan’s next move.
Ana interrupted our sparring some hours later, frantic and disheveled. “Ana, what’s gotten into you?” She dodged me as I reached for her, looking behind charred bales of hay. “Have you seen Louie??” Declan and I looked at each other. “...Not since this morning. We assumed he was with you.” Tearful and anxious, she searched behind the tree, then peered into its hollow.
“Because I’m the girl? Is that it? He’s mine to look after??” I protested that neither Declan nor I planned it that way. “Louie was inside the tire when I got up at dawn to gather branches” I swore. “I also got up at dawn, to watch him gather branches” Declan swore after me. Ana, now exasperated, pushed past us and stomped back to the junkyard.
We followed sheepishly after her, bickering along the way over who exactly was supposed to be watching Louie. “I didn’t know he could walk!” I confessed. “I’ve seen him stand up and sort of stumble around like a tiny drunk.” Declan chuckled. “That’s probably it. He’s learned to walk, and set off to make use of his little legs, that he might get a head start down the steel driving path.”
We came upon Ana, feverishly digging through the piles of derelict machine parts. “Louie??” she called out. “Come to my voice!” We tried to reassure her that Louie was probably having the time of his life hiding from us amid the rusted piles. Sure enough, the three of us heard nearby clattering, as bits of junk jostled about.
“Louie? Come out of there, you’re scaring Ana” I cajoled. Something did, indeed, claw its way out from under the collapsed junk, slowly rising to meet our gaze. But it was not Louie. Ana was the first to scream. I fell on my back, kicking at the junk around me, trying to push myself further from it. Only Declan stood his ground. He swung at the ungainly contraption with his rod, striking it hard as he could. It stumbled.
I did a double take. But it was true! I’d just seen a demon flinch. It clambered over top of the fallen rusted debris on four ball jointed legs, attached to a metal box of some kind. A little head swiveled about just atop that, with a tiny round opening that I took for the eye. It groaned and screeched in an ear splitting metallic cacophony as it gave chase.
Declan would dart ahead, duck into hiding, then pop out behind the ugly thing to strike at its joints. I drew it into his ambush, time after time, still astonished that I’d lived so long in fear of something this clumsy and stupid. It didn’t look much like the gleaming, perfectly sculpted death machine from the church cellar. It was…rougher.
Unfinished. Ramshackle, but still very intent on harming us. It was much shorter in stature, one of many small mercies. It also bore not the terrible red eye of its bigger brother. Instead it menaced Declan, Ana and I with…tools. A trio of tiny arms slung beneath its central body bore a drill, a spinning saw, and a grasping claw quite like that of a crab.
“Look out!” Declan cried as it overtook me, pinning me down with two forelimbs while preparing to use that dreadful little drill. Just then, Louie emerged from the trash beside me, handing me his wooden mallet. Dumbfounded but not one to overlook such a chance, I took the hammer from his grubby little hand, and smashed the drill with it.
Louie laughed and clapped as if it were a game, watching me strike the machine. His hammer was never meant to be used for combat, but it was large enough that it made for a serviceable club. I swung it at the little head atop the main body, smashing it loose, then prying it fully apart from the creature’s body with my bare hands.
Declan swept its legs whenever it tried to right itself. He didn’t let up on the joints either, face sweating as he beat the crooked, broken legs of the hobbled metal bug. Or so it looked to me, like an upturned beetle, feebly struggling to turn itself over. Fearful until now, I surprised myself by laughing at it. Declan looked confused for a moment, but soon joined in my mirth.
“So…you’re one of the fearsome demons I’ve heard so much about?” Declan jeered, one foot on the dented, smoking shell of the fallen foe. Still grasping blindly with that little metal claw, the thing peered up at me through its singular, glossy black eye. It chilled me to know that even now, though it be crippled, it would still surely kill us all if it could. However closely I stared into that cold, empty black eye, nothing like a soul ever peered back at me.
“You listen up, demon, and listen good. We’re not just any old kids you can push around, isn’t that right Taron?” I thumped my chest. “That’s right! We’re the, uh….the Tire Gang! Don’t you EVER forget that name!”
Ana rejoined us, having scooped up Louie, much to our relief. We whooped and hollered, bashing the mangled mechanism with sticks, jumping up and down on it, even Louie got in on the action. He climbed atop the crippled hulk and battered the little black eye with his wooden mallet, until it shattered.
A release. The outrushing of grief we all felt, but dared not give into, while still hanging onto survival in that tire. At last the tears flowed freely as I laughed, celebrated, and smashed the machine, just exactly as John Henry commanded. My heart warmed with the phantom sensation of John smiling down upon me, from on high. Tiredness left my body. I felt as if I could take on a thousand such monsters at once.
…Though that was not the high bar I imagined when we began fighting the thing. I puzzled again at why we had such an easy time besting the supposed storm demon. At my request, Declan pried the angular shell open with his stick. Inside was all manner of confusing clockwork nonsense. The sort of forbidden mechanical depravity I once saw illustrated within the Book of John Henry, that we might recognize the demon when next it appeared.
“How does it live?” I asked Declan as I pulled little gears out of its battered metal body, one by one, holding them up to examine in the light. “That’s the neat thing” he quipped. “It doesn’t!” I passed him a handful of tiny gears to look at. “That answers nothing. It moves about. It knew enough to follow us, like a bear or a wolf. It plans, so it must have something like a mind.” Declan urged me not to overthink it.
“If I see something made out of metal that’s moving around, I smash it until it stops moving. Simple as.” He waved his wooden stick dramatically, making whooshing noises and striking a pose. Then he looked down at the rod, and then over at the crumpled metallic legs. Then back at the rod. “Declan? What is it?”
In answer, he got busy removing the fasteners on the leg hinges so they would come apart. Then he took the mallet from Louie and beat one of the shins as straight as he could get it. Then, he tried sharpening the edge with a rock. “Oooohh!” I cried in sudden recognition. “Right? Right? Help me find something in the junkyard we can attach to this as a handle. We’ll make two! You and I will soon be proper swordsmen.”
Behind us, Ana doted on Louie. Still strutting his stuff, body too small for a spirit that size. “What were you thinking, running off like that” Ana scolded. “You had us all worried sick, little man.” I called over her shoulder that he simply couldn’t wait until he learned to walk before smashing machines. She laughed, and hugged him close. Louie struggled to be free of her motherly grasp, and she allowed it, now that she had eyes on him.
He toddled a ways, unsure of himself. Then a little further. Bolder with every step, until he abruptly stopped in his tracks. Ana took notice before Declan or I. “Louie, sweetheart, have you found something?” His smile turned to a frown. A trickle of blood ran down his neck, and his head toppled from his shoulders.
Chapter 4: Outset
Ana screamed. I grabbed Declan and we rushed to her side, expecting another machine…only to find Louie. Hunched over, motionless, atop his own head. Ana screamed, and screamed, and screamed. I nudged Louie. His little body rolled off his head, face frozen in its final expression, blood pooling beneath it. I joined Ana in her screaming.
It was all we could do for the next hour. Just hunched over, screaming, crying and vomiting. Ana reached for Louie, to hold his headless body close to her a final time. But then she abruptly withdrew her hand, as if stung by a wasp. Instead, the tip of her pinky fell off. She cried out in pain, sticking the bleeding tip into her mouth.
I was still doubled over and dry heaving, but Declan moved to stop her. “Don’t touch him! Don’t go near him. This is a trap of some kind.” He dug through the gravel until he found her fingertip. “Be glad it only got a little bit. Oh, sweet Louie…” He reached out as if to shut Louie’s eyes, but thought better of it. Instead he held out the end of his rod, and waved it around Louie’s head.
The rod snagged on something, and a moment later, the end came off. A clean slice, the likes of which I have never seen any saw accomplish. My heart hurt. I wanted to hold Louie, same as Ana. As if there were still some way to revive him. I went back to crying, clutching my head in my hands and rocking back and forth.
Only Declan was unphased. He went on tapping at some invisible edge with his staff. Not so firmly as to cut off another piece, but following the edges of the unseen blade to its source. “It’s a demon blade, isn’t it?” I asked through bitter tears, holding Ana close as she sobbed. He shushed me, carefully creeping along with his staff…all the way back to the wreckage of the felled machine.
We would eventually work out that this was its purpose. It would cut off pieces of scrap with its drill and saw, and melt them inside itself. Then it would spin an incredibly fine, thin wire as a spider might spin a silken strand of webbing. Stringing it about the junkyard, waiting to catch not flies, but men. Or careless little boys like Louie. Just as soon as I thought I’d stopped crying for good, tears once again burst forth, this time refusing to be subdued.
We couldn’t bury the body until Declan cleared the wire. To do that, he finished up the first of the swords, fashioned from the machine’s own leg. How desperately we wanted to lay him to rest, or at least hold him. The machine robbed us of that. A last cruelty left to inflict, even after we felled it.
The new blade held up fine against the wire, as I suppose it should. The machine would not weave a web dangerous to itself. At last, with the wire severed, Ana could safely retrieve poor Louie. Declan offered to do it for her, but she wouldn’t have that. I spent the rest of the evening digging a little grave with my hands. I bloodied them as I did so, but the rain washed it away.
Declan officiated the service, such as it was. Pitiful little heap of gravel, topped with a lowercase t that we fashioned from sticks. Not sure why it isn’t a capital J. Declan says it’s just what the village has always done, when somebody dies. John must have a middle name starting with t, I decided.
Ana was the one to put him into the hole, after Declan and I laid hands upon him. She didn’t repeat after Declan or I when we uttered our affirmations, perhaps hoarse from all the screaming. She and I looked to Declan, who quickly realized we were expecting a speech. He smoothed down his robes, adjusted his hat, and cleared his throat.
“What John Henry gives, the machine takes. It takes, and it takes, and it takes. Our homes, our families, our lives. Even when we think we’ve saved from it a single bright spot in this cold, gray world… one beautiful thing, which the machine overlooked…it takes that, too.” To my surprise, as I studied Declan’s face, he looked absolutely stern…yet he was crying, same as Ana. Same as me.
His voice somehow never wavered, in spite of the tears. Perhaps that’s what sets steel drivers apart. “Yet, even now there is hope. In truth, I tell you that the little ones, who fall to the machine, are not lost. They are not gone forever, but rest eternally in paradise with John. Upon verdant green fields, beneath clear, blue skies.” Ana wiped away her tears, now feebly smiling.
“There’s no storm where Louie is now” Declan insisted. “No machines, no blue light. John Henry sees to that. It’s the great reward he promised to all who would walk the steel driving path. For you see, John has also not left us forever. His other great promise was to return again one day, when we need him the most. When that day arrives, he will bring with him all who we have loved and lost. To sickness, to old age, or to the machine. Young again, firm and strong. Just you wait, and see if it isn’t so.”
I held Ana’s hand, and squeezed it. She squeezed back, glancing over at me. Puffy eyed, but still smiling. “Louie surely walked the steel driving path, if anyone ever did” Declan chuckled through the tears. “He could just barely lift that hammer of his…and the very first thing he did with it, was to smash a machine.” I smiled too, mostly for Ana.
“Tonight we lay him to rest, smallest warrior of the Tire Gang, thought greatest in spirit. But the machine still hungers. It will take from us, again and again, until we stop it. Until we say NO MORE. Not one more village, not one more home! Not one more family, not one more life! Let us not lay down in our sorrows, but rise up! Let us turn that sorrow to rage! Let us beat our tears into blades! Or have you already forgotten what was written on the statue?”
I was only expecting him to comfort us. It was taking a strange turn now, but far be it from me to interrupt a steel driver. “Tonight! Right here and now! This is where the machine stops, the beginning of the end. I have one blade, and will soon finish the other. What are they for, if not to banish evil? What would Louie have done to the machines, if he could’ve lifted this blade?”
Ana mumbled something. I urged her to speak up, so she did. “He would smash them.” Declan slapped his knee. “By John, you’re right he would. So what are we gonna do, for Louie?” I took Louie’s wooden hammer from atop his shallow grave, and held it aloft. “SMASH THE MACHINE!” I tearfully shouted to the heavens. “SMASH THE MACHINE!” Ana joined in, over and over, until her voice was again raspy. We knelt there, around his grave, well into the night. Yelling feverishly at the sky, just like John, mounting our challenge to the stars.
When I awoke, in my stupor, I looked for Louie. The awful, stomach turning truth dawned on me with the morning sun. Waking from one nightmare, into another. I knelt and cried over his grave, softly, so as not to wake Ana. Perhaps dreaming of our life before, I wished I could join her. That we might live fully inside of dreams, for the rest of our days.
Because it cannot be so, she did eventually wake. She searched for Louie, as I did. She then remembered what happened the prior evening, as I did. She at least had someone to hold her as she convulsed, though I suppose I might’ve asked Declan.
None of us slept in the tire after that. We’d buried Louie dead center, where the fire usually goes, and the tire now felt like his sacred tomb. The final resting place of our innocence. Even had we buried him in the junkyard, the tire now felt haunted. I couldn’t so much as peer over the rim without expecting to see Louie’s grubby face, peering back up at me. Playing inside the tire, building demons out of dirt before smashing them with his hammer.
I suggested we go and hole up in the cellar of the burnt down schoolhouse. Declan scoffed. “That’s your solution? To cower in darkness, like the ones who stayed in the tunnels? We were not wrong to leave them. The future is not down there, with the rats, the shadows, and only the fading memories of our once great empires to comfort us. It’s up here in the sun, daring and bold, come what may. Forging a brand new path…a steel driving path!”
Some part of me instinctively recoiled from the notion. It seemed wise, at least, to set up the schoolhouse cellar as a backup shelter. But Declan wasn’t having it. We stopped by only to beat our swords into better shape on the blacksmith’s anvil and gather up what remained of the dry stores, before putting the village behind us…along with the junkyard, and the tire.
It felt unreal, glancing over my shoulder as we trekked towards the treeline. Watching the familiar safety of the tire receding, little by little, into the distance…until I could no longer see it. Panic gripped me. I turned, as if to head back…but I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I looked, it was Declan’s. “The steel driving path is always in front of you” he scolded, “never behind.”
Chapter 5: The Old Man and the Obelisk
From time to time, I still wanted to scream and cry. Declan kept us so busy marching, there simply wasn’t an opening. Still, I cried inwardly. Not just because I missed Louie. I still missed the village. Mom and Dad. Even though it was little more than a charred ruin, simply having it nearby was a comforting tether to my past. I might still visit what remained of the church. I could pray at the statue of John Henry, and sit in the same pew that members of the Martel family had been using for three generations.
I wasn’t ready to cut that tether. But then, if Declan hadn’t forced the issue, I would still be there now. I’d probably still be there as an old man, leaving the schoolhouse cellar only at night, to hunt rats...or even back in the tire. Declan seemed altogether more positive, which I could not fathom, with Louie’s body given to the earth just the prior evening.
When I asked how he could march so tirelessly, he replied that John Henry lightens his load. “He’s really starting to grow into those robes” I thought, even while quietly cursing him. We did eventually stop to refill our water, using some of the only unbroken bottles scavenged from the village. Still foul smelling, once containing spirits, now our canteens.
It was during this respite, the four of us seated on rocks surrounding the spring, that Ana spotted an old man waving frantically in the distance. She called us over, and together we squinted, shielding our eyes from the afternoon sun. “Look at how long his beard is” Ana remarked. “What’s that he’s wearing? A potato sack?” It looked that way, the man’s frail body just barely covered with brown, tattered burlap.
We waited for him to approach, but he never did. When he tired of waving at us, he would rest, or gather small bits and bobs from the ground, stashing them in a hand cart...then go back to waving. “What does he want?” Declan inquired. “I don’t know yet. I’m not going over there, and he doesn’t seem to want to come over here, either. Shame. He looks thirsty.” As we watched, the man wiped sweat from his wrinkled, sunburnt face.
Declan and I both had swords now, insofar as we could call them that. The blacksmith’s whetstone back at the village had turned out to be usable, but not his honing blade, warped out of shape by the intense heat of the blaze. Our twin blades were at least the correct shape now, though the edges were so blunt that we might sooner use them as clubs.
Unbalanced and unpolished. Weapons of last resort, which I felt loath to use against an old man, should he prove a danger to us. When I raised that possibility with Declan, he rebuked me. “Whoever strikes down his fellow man”, he somberly recited, “does the work of the machine”. I asked him if the old man knows that. He mulled it over, then shrugged. “Only one way to find out!”
I wouldn’t leave my sword behind, but he insisted on leaving his. A show of good faith, I imagine, not wanting to spook the old coot. Only, as we drew near, his demeanor suddenly changed. He glanced over his shoulder, as if just now noticing something. Then he gestured for us to run. I wonder why he didn’t shout it…until the machine appeared.
Declan and I immediately dropped down into the tall grass, before creeping up behind boulders, with which the field before us was strewn. From this hidden vantage point, we watched a bizarre spectacle unfold. The old man approached the machine, seemingly unafraid. He took tools from his hand cart, as well as some bits of scrap metal he’d apparently been out here to scavenge for…and he set about using them to repair the machine.
We stared, in morbid awe. It never once attacked him, and he seemed to know exactly what he was doing, deftly fashioning the scrap metal into a new leg, and claw, for the injured demon. Why? Why would he do that? This is when, for the first time, we noticed the collar around his neck.
It shone a dull silver, glinting here and there in the afternoon sun. Apart from that and the sackcloth, he appeared to be naked. Declan fetched his sword. “Dec, no. I don’t like this” I cautioned. “Look at it. It’s in much better shape than the one in the junkyard.” He grinned at me in that demented way that I can’t stand, as it always means he’s about to do something unwise. “The steel driving path is not for cowards.”
With that, he launched himself out of hiding, and let loose his battle cry. I had no choice but to follow suit, our voices cracking, the machine having already noticed us anyhow. Assaulted from two angles, it had to choose a target. I counted my lucky stars that it chose Declan. He swung with all his might, tripping it u