CHAPTER 9: Shanice

  A few days earlier:

  Shanice Brown had successfully herded fifty-six sightseers onto her bus. It was the early route, which meant that it was all elderly people, as most folks wouldn’t be standing in line in the dark to see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon if they weren’t up by 4 a.m. every day as it was. These were her favorite tours to run, though. The customers were quiet, whispering in hushed tones, “oohing” and “aahing” at one of God’s most wondrous sights… the sunrise coming up over the crest of the earth, observed over the Grand Canyon. Twenty-seven years driving this bus, and she was still amazed at its beauty, each and every day. Unlike later tours, all the guests were orderly, if a bit slow of foot, but they were all seated and prepared for departure at 6 a.m. on the dot. Shanice was a big fan of punctuality, and deviation from her schedule by even one minute would grate on her nerves the rest of the day.

  It was thirty-four minutes from the Grand Canyon Tours terminal to Lipan Point, with sunrise that day coming at 6:42 a.m. No time to wait for stragglers, but as usual with the old folks, there were none. Her thermos of coffee by her side, just the way she liked it: 50% half and half, 25% sugar, and 25% coffee. She showed a huge, genuine smile that took no practice at all to her guests and informed them it was time to depart. Many of them even gave a polite little clap. She sat down, buckled up, and gave the cross hanging from her neck a quick peck as she whispered the same prayer she always did before departing; for a safe journey for the tour, and a safe day for her son, Dr. Reggie J. Brown MD, a surgeon and trauma care expert at his hospital in Flagstaff.

  Tucking the necklace away, Shanice released the brakes, and off they went, headed south, then east towards Lipan Point. Not two minutes after turning east on Highway 64, the System message had appeared in front of her like a heads-up display on her windshield. Many long years of careful driving prevented her from slamming on the brakes, but she immediately glided to the shoulder, braking as hard as her training and experience would allow. She read the message twice, then studied the passengers in the rear-view mirror. She noticed that many had a confused look on their faces, but none of them seemed overly upset or agitated, but the pawing at the air by a few at least confirmed that she was not going crazy, that they were seeing it as well. Most of them, anyhow… probably a third of them were just glancing out the dark windows, apparently wondering why the bus had stopped. Not knowing what else to do, Shanice released the brakes after the message went away and got back on the road. She was behind schedule.

  Fifteen minutes later her cellphone rang. It was Reggie. She knew he would never call her while she was driving unless it was an emergency, and with that strange message she had seen earlier, she did the unthinkable. She answered her phone while driving her bus, full of guests. Even her hands-free, Bluetooth-connected phone call was a violation that could end with termination, but maybe it was time to retire anyhow. He was frantic. Reggie was yelling at people, running; she could hear doors slamming and people screaming. He was trying to tell her that the world was going crazy at the hospital, with people killing each other left and right. He was crying, saying that he had done it. He had taken several people off life support to get his quota. He said that if the power was going out that they would die anyhow, hoping that would be something God would forgive him for. He was begging her to find a way, begging her to do the unthinkable… to kill. Reggie told her he was headed north to her while his car would still work, but it was over eighty miles, and with the chaos, he did not know how long it might take him to get there. He told her he would meet her at the campground where they would camp when he was a kid. He was in the middle of telling her he loved her when the phone cut out. She had never said a word other than “hello”, too shocked by what he was saying to interrupt. She kept driving in a complete state of shock, barely seeing the road in front of her.

  Shanicee had to kill three people in the next forty minutes or she would be gone forever. She hadn’t known what to believe when she had read the System message, but her boy had told her it was true. He was the smartest person she had ever known, and she trusted him without question. But… to break the sixth commandment? To kill not just one other human being, but three? She felt as if she were about to have a heart attack. She pressed number two on her speed dial, Pastor Jenkins’s personal cell phone number. It went straight to voicemail without even ringing. She left a hysterical, if whispered, message begging him to call her back and give her some guidance, then hung up. Pastor Jenkins would not help her through this. She had to decide. She had to decide to kill or die. After a few minutes of introspection and deep breaths, she decided she was okay with death. She had lived a good life, and maybe it was just her time. She knew she had a place in heaven waiting for her, so she would continue to Lipan Point. She would go home to God while watching one of his greatest works unfold in front of her. Mind made up, a deep sense of peace came over her, and she smiled, once again focused on the road ahead of her.

  Her sense of peace didn’t last long, however. She kept having these intrusive thoughts about the wording they used in the message; recycled. Not killed, but recycled. Did that mean that she wouldn’t be truly dead? Would it somehow prevent her from reaching God’s embrace? Perhaps even her eternal soul would be taken… enslaved somehow? Her panic was in full control by the time she turned onto Lipan Point Road, just a quarter of a mile from one of the most beautiful vistas in all creation. Mind on autopilot, she committed another termination-level offense without a second thought… she broke the 25 mph speed limit on the narrow, winding road. The passengers were finally showing some signs of life as she took the curves at 45 mph; they were first complaining about a brilliant flash of light from the left side of the bus, then about the unsafe driving of the driver, and how they were going to be filing a complaint immediately upon their return. As she took the final curve at 50 mph, Shanice aimed the bus at a large gap in the ever present line of cars at the vista, put the bus in neutral, opened the door, then, with tears streaming down her face, gave her passengers one final look before she jumped out the now open door.

  She landed hard on the dusty ground before rolling and tumbling into the narrow parking area. Ignoring her wounds, very lucky to only have some scrapes and what felt like a bit of an ankle sprain, she turned her head towards the west, eyes following the bus as it busted through the barricade and over the cliff, carrying 56 souls to Jesus. “May God forgive me for what I have done.” She whispered. At that very moment, the first rays of dawn began streaming over the canyon walls, bathing the area in beautiful golden light bouncing off the red clay cliffs of the canyon tops, seeming to give her the answer she was desperate for. Had he understood? Had he forgiven her? Only a mushroom-shaped silhouette far to the west interrupted the beautiful dawn light. She whispered a prayer of thanks as she let her head hang down.

  That was when Shanice realized she wasn’t alone. A couple, hard to make out with the sunrise at their backs, was walking towards her at a brisk pace, footsteps crunching in the coarse gravel. Their postures were slightly bent, arms stretched out as if they were about to help an old lady stand up. Then they were close enough to see, maybe thirty or forty feet away, when she noticed the blood. Both of them were spattered head to toe with it. The man held a tire iron; the woman was holding a rock the size of a grapefruit.

  Shanice wasn’t ten feet from the photo spot, and twenty from the trailhead. The photo spot had one heck of a railing. The trail did not. It had only a large sign; warning of the risk of death if you proceeded beyond that point. Shanice had warned her guests for twenty-seven years that if you went past that sign that only God could save you, cause gravity surely wouldn’t.

  She was still practically on all fours as she hit the trailhead, grabbing the sign to come fully upright as she ran past it, chugging away for all she was worth, she hit the first switchback at a dead run, shoes skidding in powdered rock. Already out of breath, the air was thin and cold, stabbing her lungs with every desperate inhale. Behind her, the couple’s voices echoed through the canyon like the baying hunting dogs, incomprehensible shrieks and grunts. Time was running out. “One more! Just one more!” Shanice heard. They were close, close enough that she could hear the slap of their sneakers on stone, the rasp of their breathing, harsh and quick.

  Shanice had never been a runner, not even as a kid. Her knees were built for sitting behind the wheel of a bus and kneeling at a church pew, not for sprinting down what amounted to a goat path. The first drop in the trail nearly cost her her life. She windmilled, stumbled, kept upright by sheer terror and the memory of her son yelling in her ear, telling her to survive.

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  The dawn was spectacular, bloody and wild—sunlight ricocheting off the canyon walls, marred now only by the great plume of black smoke coming from the remains of the tour bus far below. One hand clutching the cross at her throat, she ran. Ran and prayed: not for victory, not for mercy, but just to keep running.

  On the third switchback, the woman had finally gained enough ground, the man not two steps behind her. The woman was screaming, but it wasn’t words anymore, just a high-pitched squeal. She had caught the older woman. She grabbed at Shanice’s jacket and got a fistful of black nylon before gravity reached out and snatched them all.

  Shanice landed hard on her backside; more than a little extra padding probably all that kept her from a shattered tailbone. Her head bounced off a rock, and for a second her world blinked out. When it came back, everything was spinning and sideways—sky, rock, woman, man, all tumbling together. She saw the woman, arms windmilling, perched on her tiptoes. Eyes wide with the certainty of what was about to happen. She caught nothing. Her partner crashed into her, and they went over the lip together, a single, shrieking silhouette framed in fire and smoke as they followed nearly the same path as the bus.

  After a muted “thump”, the quiet became absolute except for the cracking and spitting fire that enveloped the tour bus. Even the ever-present wind seemed to hold its breath. Her hands shook so badly she could barely grope for the cross somehow still at her neck. Fingers running over it, feeling its familiar edge, she laughed. It was a dry, cracked noise—half sob, half relief—but laughter all the same. Maybe God had a sense of humor. A glowing green number: “58” was hovering in her peripheral vision.

  When she finally stood, everything ached. Her palms were shredded, blood slicking the lines. Her left ankle was swelling fast and angry, but it would hold. She took one cautious step after another, favoring the right foot, and limped to where they’d gone over. Maybe eighty feet below, a broken bush and two unmoving shapes lay in the rocks, perhaps twenty feet shy of the burning bus. Their arms were tangled around each other like lovers gone to sleep. Shanice did not hate them for what they had tried to do. She had no power to forgive their sins, but she forgave them for what they had tried to do to her. She understood. She couldn’t condemn them for something that she had just done fifty-six times over. Now fifty-eight.

  Shanice looked back up the trail and saw a man leaning over the photo spot railing, staring directly at her. He pushed away from the rail in a hurry. She started running. Her sprained, perhaps broken, ankle would barely support her weight, but she moved anyhow. She used her arms, pushing forward on the wall to her right, and made it to a low outcropping before her foot finally quit for good. She crawled on hands and knees under the ledge, which seemed to go back much further than it had any right to. She could hear the footsteps now, loose scree and gravel tumbling as the man bolted down the switchbacks, curses echoing off the rock faces. He was close and would be on her in seconds. She stopped moving and did her best to hold her breath.

  Shanice pressed her face to the cold rock, heart hammering, and waited. She could smell herself—fear, blood, old-lady sweat and the tang of her shattered nerves—and she wondered if the man could smell her too. For an eternity, there was nothing. Then a single boot scraped right above her; a rain of dust floated down in front of her face. She grabbed her nose to prevent a sneeze.

  “Where did you go, you fat bitch?” The voice was soft and breathless, but she could hear the exhaustion in it. Maybe he had hurt himself in the chase. She clutched the cross so hard that it left a mark on her palm.

  He stood there, muttering to himself, for at least a minute. She counted the seconds in time with her own pulse, probably four beats per second, willing her body to dissolve into the stone. At last, she heard him grunt, spit, and turn away. The footsteps faded up the trail, slow now, each step a labor. Shanice waited, but her left foot was swelling rapidly, and every twitch sent a lightning bolt up her leg. She would have wept, but there were no tears left.

  When she finally moved, it was like crawling through a meat grinder. She shimmied deeper under the outcropping, hoping to find shelter or at least a place to die without being found. What she found instead was a hole in the shadows, just wide enough for her to wedge herself through. It was a cave, or maybe the mouth of one, that she navigated mostly by feel; the early dawn doing next to nothing to illuminate a path. Caves in the canyon were not something the locals typically thought of as safe havens. They were the home of snakes, scorpions, and spiders. Nothing a sixty-two-year-old bus driver should mess with, but with visitors up top swapping cameras for tire irons, she’d take the risk.

  The crawling took almost all her strength, but the further she dragged herself, the less she cared about the pain. It was almost a relief, taking her mind off other, less pleasant thoughts. The cave floor was smooth sand, and the walls were close enough that she could rest her head against one between her slow forward movements. After less than ten feet, the light was completely gone, and she was moving on faith, letting the rough surface of the walls scrape open her scalp and shoulders.

  The tunnel got wider, then turned sharply left, and suddenly she was in what felt like a chamber… the air just felt different, bigger somehow. An absolute blackness that seemed to swallow not just her, but the world behind her, wrapped them up like her favorite quilt. She lay on her back, staring up at nothing, her heartbeat so loud in her ears that she swore she could hear it echo off the rock walls around her. She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down, trying to understand what was happening and why. How could God allow this to happen? She sighed and chided herself. Who was she to question God’s plan?

  A few minutes later, sitting in pitch blackness, the System message came. She had survived the purge. Shanice screamed as pain tore at her entire body, and she went out like a light. Some time later, she did not know how long; she awoke. She felt marginally better, but still unwilling to crawl back to the surface. Instead, she lay there in the darkness for what felt like hours, exploring the interface and the System the God had chosen for her. According to her new interface, she had not only survived but excelled. Shanice became a Cleric. She now had mana and magic spells. She was out of her depth by a million miles, but if this was God’s plan, she was going to give it every bit of study and dedication as she had her Bible.

  NAME: Shanice Brown

  RACE: Human

  CLASS: Cleric

  LEVEL: 1

  MANA to next level: 0/500

  Strength: 7

  Agility: 8

  Vitality: 9

  Perception: 6

  Intelligence: 13 - Current mana capacity: 130 mana

  Absorption: 11 - Current mana absorption: 110 mana per hour

  Stat points available: 0

  Abilities:

  Lesser Heal: (upgradeable) A ranged heal restoring 5 vitality over 3 seconds. Cost - 5 mana Cooldown - 5 seconds.

  Lay on Hands: (upgradeable) A contact heal restoring 25 Vitality instantly. Cost - 30 mana Cooldown - 60 minutes.

  Cleanse: (upgradeable) A ranged spell that attempts to remove 1 negative effect from the target every 3 seconds for 9 seconds. Cost - 10 mana. Cooldown - 1 minute.

  She had put quite a few stat points into her physical stats, knowing that an overweight woman of 62 years was not long for this world without some serious physical improvements. Beyond that, she instantly recognized the importance of Absorption, but felt that she had to put a few points into intelligence because all the regen in the world was pointless if you could not hold it.

  After some thorough testing of her abilities on herself, and feeling like she was fifty again, Shanice stood and ventured deeper into the cave. Oddly enough, she could actually see now, with a brighter glow coming from around the next bend. She moved slowly forward, creeping up to and finally peeking around the corner to find the source of the light. Her jaw dropped as she couldn’t believe what she saw. Instead of a dark, musty cave, the space opened up into what looked like the open-air world up above, blue-gray skies and trees as far as the eye could see. How in the world had she gone around the corner in a shallow cave just off the trail in the Grand Canyon, and stepped into what looked like the pictures she had seen of the Amazon forest? She stood transfixed for what felt like a solid minute before moving. Creeping forward, not knowing what to expect, but knowing that she was pretty much defenseless, she bent to grab a solid-looking branch that was lying on the ground. She was still crouched, hand on the branch, when she saw the eyes. Green, almost glowing eyes in a patch of pure black, level with her own. She froze, staring at the motionless eyes, not daring to move a muscle. Then the blackness sprang towards her. She screamed, turned on her heel, and ran as fast as she could back the way she had come.

  Something tore at her, causing a guttural scream to tear from her lips. Hot pain, like she had never believed possible, blossomed from her back as she reached the corner leading back towards the cave entrance. As she rounded the corner, a message popped up in her vision.

  “Are you certain that you wish to exit the Cursed Village Dungeon? Exiting at any point other than the pillar in the central village will deposit you in a safe zone selected at random, along with a random time delay penalty of between one and seven days. If you wish to exit at the same geographical position from which you entered, please proceed to the Central Village Pillar. Exit here? YES/NO. Another streak of unbearable pain ran down her back as she mentally slammed the YES button, having caught ‘safe zone’ and not much else in the message as her body was being shredded.

  Still running at an astonishing speed for a woman of her age and size, her next step had her slamming into a (luckily unlocked) door, then a chair, followed by a quick trip to a polished tile floor.