I've died twice, traveled through time, stopped an alien invasion, and battled just about every terrible being that hell could puke onto the surface of the Earth, but despite those facts, this man could still make me feel like a pathetic fat kid. It really pissed me off. My entire life I had striven to make him proud. I had failed every step of the way. No matter what I did, I would never measure up to his impossible ideals of what it meant to be a real man.
But no more. I knew what I was. And I didn't have to take his shit anymore. I was going to make him understand. He was on my turf now. "Listen, Dad," I said as I reached across the table and grabbed him by the arm. "I-"
Black energy crackled inside my skull.
"Damn it, boys. That was pathetic," I shouted at my sons as I threw my own pack down. Personally, I was exhausted, but I wasn't about to let them know it. They could never see weakness as an option. The boys were big and strong for their ages, but I had overloaded their bags on purpose. I knew that they had to be hurting bad by now. "That was slow." I made a big show of looking at my dive watch. "We only averaged thirteen minutes a mile. Thirteen!"
"It was straight uphill!" Owen protested. He had to pause, pull out his asthma inhaler and take a deep puff. He didn't use it nearly as much as he had when he was younger, but we were several thousand feet higher in elevation than he was used to.
"And the ground was all loose," David whined. "My feet hurt."
Damn right their feet hurt. My feet were killing me, and I had done forced marches most of my life. They were only fourteen and eleven. Their pack straps had probably abraded right through the skin of their shoulders by now. "You think if the enemy were right behind us they'd be complaining? Hell no, they would've chased us down, raped us to death, then cut us into steaks and eaten us."
"But ‘the enemy' aren't chasing us, Dad. This was supposed to be a camping trip." My oldest gestured around the mountainside. He had always been a smartass. The kid was incapable of knowing when to shut up. Despite how I was always farming him out to the neighbors for adult-level manual labor, and he was strong as hell, the boy was still pudgy. He paused to wipe the sweat off his face with his tee shirt, not that it would do much good, since his shirt was already totally saturated.
David started crying. "I can smell Mom's cooking. Camp's right there. Can I go sit down now?"
"Yeah, go," I jerked a thumb back toward camp. I could smell it too, and my stomach rumbled. "And don't be such a baby." I felt like a complete asshole as I said it, but I had started having the dream again, at least once a week now. Some nights I couldn't sleep at all, even when the dream didn't come, just because I couldn't get it out of my mind. I didn't pretend to understand the dream, but I knew it was true. My children couldn't afford to be weak.
"Dude, drop your pack. I'll take it," Owen offered to his brother as he glared at me. Yeah, the boy may be chunky, but he'd inherited my mean streak. Good. Let him be angry. It gave him something to focus on. David shrugged out of the pack and handed it to his big brother. Owen cradled it in his arms as David ran for our campsite.
"This was supposed to be a fun weekend," he said.
"Fun is relative," I answered. "Having the strength and the knowledge to survive anything the world throws at you isn't supposed to be fun. But it makes you a man. So man up and quit your crying."
"You don't always have to be such a jerk." Owen spat as he walked away.
If only you knew, boy…if only you knew.
I took my time following them into camp. The forest was actually very peaceful as sunset approached. He was right. This was supposed to have been a vacation. I had retired from the Army a few years ago, and was now working as a bookkeeper, of all the idiotic things…So it wasn't like I got to spend a lot of time in the great outdoors anymore.
My wife was waiting for me, arms folded, scowling, her blonde hair pulled up underneath a handkerchief. She smelled like wood smoke.
"Keeping the home fires burning, huh?" I joked.
She didn't think I was funny. "Ten miles? You made them walk ten miles, and after skipping lunch?" She had grown up in a home where they often went hungry because of Communist ineptitude. To my wife, missing a meal as an American was a serious offense, because this was the Land of the Free, damn it.
"I have to do stuff like this…You know it."
God bless her, she at least believed me. "You've been distant lately. The dream again?"
"It's been bad." The sound of an acoustic guitar started back at the tent. It was actually rather good. David certainly had a gift for that silly thing.
Ilyana nodded slowly, understanding. She was as pretty as the day I had first seen her, sneaking her dissident family over from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. "You know that I trust you, but what if you're mistaken? Your children think you're a beast, you know. You push them too hard. And what if you're wrong?"
"I pray every day that I'm wrong." I bit my lip. Saying this made my voice tremble and break, and tears welled up involuntarily in my eyes. "But I know I'm not. I hear the war drums. Some day one of those boys will be known as the god slayer and that's before it even gets really rough."
No father should have to know that it is his son's job to die saving the world.
Dad can cry?
I was back in the room, still clutching Dad's arm. I let go, shocked by how hard I had been squeezing. There was an imprint on his forearm and he looked at me, stunned.
"Son, what's wrong?"
It was the same thing that had happened a few days ago with Agent Myers. Somehow I was seeing other people's memories. I shook my head. Only a few seconds had passed. I was nauseous and dizzy. When I closed my eyes hard I could still see the lightning shapes moving in the corners. They slowly dissipated. Stupid artifact. This vision brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Forces of Evil.
One of his sons had to save the world? I already had. Mordechai had told me that I had been picked before I was born for that job. How had Dad known so long ago? "You had a dream?" I asked. "What's this dream show you?"
Dad was confused. "What are you talking about?"
I began to babble. "All these years, the way you treated us, the stuff you taught us. The shooting, the fighting, the survival skills, it was all because of a dream? God slayer?"
My normally imperturbable old man suddenly looked like he had stuck his finger in a light socket. "How do you know about that?" he demanded.
"Tell me!" I shouted. This startled Mom and Julie.
Dad shoved himself back from the table and stood. "No!" he bellowed. "You can't know about that. You can never know."
"Calm down, dear, remember your condition," Mom scolded.
My father began to pace like a caged bear. It was almost like he was nervous. But that was impossible. "I kept it from you, because…I was scared." He had never said that phrase ever before. Auhangamea Pitt was scared of nothing, or at least that's what I had told myself my entire life. "I was scared for you, even before you were born. I didn't want to believe the promise. It was just too terrible, but in the back of my mind, it was always there, so I tried to get you ready. That was my duty. The dream taught me what I had to do. Preparing you boys was my calling. That's why I've done what I've done. That's why I got so mad at David when he ran away. I was so fixated on this that I chased my own son away, and when that happened, I swore that I would forget about the damn dream and never talk about it again. You were grown, and I'd done my best, so my job was finished."