Apocalypse's Prelude

by Carl Damen

  Melana rolled her eyes and let a small smile play around her lips. She had gotten a sneak peek at what was on the agenda for the Senate this morning, and knew Terstein's writers would be flogged for his out-of date fact..

  "But you, you the Americans, you America, decided he couldn't get away with it! You got your congress to impeach him, you let the world know that you will not sit idly by and let your country be taken away from you!"

  More cheers.

  "But it's not enough! Not enough to treat the symptoms of corruption! You must root out the corruption! And these people," he gestured at his guests, "these people are willing to help you! This is a global world, a world where brother helps brother, sister helps sister. While you, America, find and uproot corruption in your country, these people are willing to help you!"

  He stepped back and gestured to the man standing to his left. "This is Ahmad Mokri, the Iranian ambassador to you, America. He is not you, he does not make decisions for you. But he, and the nation he represents, are willing to help you. He has been working with the United Nations to find a way to help America return to what it once was: a nation by the people, for the people, of the people!"

  He paused, clearly expecting a cheer, but received confused muttering. They came to hear Terstein, and no one else. For her part, Melana was quietly pleased that the normal agenda had changed.

  Mokri stepped forward and cleared his throat. "The Defenders." His voice echoed over the crowd. "These people, these victims of paranoid imperialism, represent a great threat to your nation. Not in terms of the actions they can perform, but in terms of the governmental corruption they represent. The highest levels of your government, the people you have placed in the highest positions of trust, have betrayed you. They claim they are now willing to police themselves, to clean the corruption from their own halls of government.

  "But as anyone knows, letting a criminal punish himself is a useless task. As my esteemed colleague Senator Terstein has already stated, it is up to you, America, to make sure that this happens. The United Nations is ready and willing to help you work through your problems, to investigate those in high office, to find those responsible for this miscarriage of justice."

  He paused and took a few breaths. "But it is up to you. You must decide if you want the U.N. to step in and help you. If you do, then you must convince the guilty parties, those who are currently in power, to let us in to help!"

  The crowd exploded into cheers once more, but with far less enthusiasm then before. As the cheers died down, one male voice could be heard, clear and loud: "Don't tell us what to do, you goddamn sand nigger!"

  The crowd instantly fell silent, and Melana briefly wondered if the comment had been picked up by any microphones.

  "Melana!"

  She jumped, and dug at her mic's response button. "What?"

  "What the hell is going on?"

  "It's better if you—"

  "Excuse me!" Terstein had retaken the front of the steps, and addressed himself to the place in the center of the crowd where the offending comment had come from. "There is no need for that kind of—"

  "Fuck off, nigger!"

  This outburst prompted an instantaneous response. People all around the offender began to yell curses, to push together at the central spot where they assumed the man to be. In moments the sounds of struggle could be heard.

  "People, please! There is no need for—"

  "Melana! Back on you!"

  Melana swung back to the camera.

  "Melana! What's going on there?"

  "Someone in the audience appears to be picking a fight, Jim. There have been racial slurs made, as well as strong language—"

  She fell silent as a gunshot rang out. Slow news day—she needed a slow news day.

  "Shots have been fired, Jim! Shots have been fired. Uh, uh, please stay with us here at AmeriNews as we bring you live coverage of events here—"

  She was a political correspondent, not a beat reporter! She wasn't supposed to deal with... with actual danger!

  Terstein was yelling, but no one was listening. The outer edges of the crowd were dissolving away from the nucleus, but there were so many people that movement was all but impossible.

  "Steig!"

  "Eh?"

  "Handheld, now!"

  Steig grabbed the camera, unhooked it from its tripod and hoisted it onto his shoulder.

  "We're going in." Melana turned and began to jog the short distance to the crowd, then tried, with little progress, to work her way further into the crowd.

  "Slow down, I'm losing you!"

  She ignored Steig, confident that he would find appropriate video, and spoke into her mic. "I'm in the crowd, trying to see if I can find the source of the gunshots."

  As she spoke, she tried to ignore her director. "Melana, damn it, now is not the time for heroics. Do you hear me? Pull out—"

  She pulled the tiny speaker from her ear; not what the director meant, but close enough.

  The crowd pressed in around her, and she thought she caught a flash of blood. "I'm getting closer to the source of the gunshots. I don't know at this time how many are injured, but I believe at least one person has been shot."

  Daytime Emmy, daytime Emmy, daytime Emmy—

  New screams broke out, this time from the edges. She tried to turn, but the crowd was too closely packed-in. For the moment, she was stuck in the crowd, pushed from every direction.

  A moment later she felt the pressure behind her lessen enough that she was able to turn, and came face to face with an E.H.U.D. The soldier was surging forward, his focus intent on the source of the gunshots. As he passed, his immense shoulder armor pushed into Melana's chest, and she fell back, quickly becoming tangled in the legs around her.

  The crowd, panicked above, was even more chaotic below, verging on a stampede. Melana tried to stand, to avoid being crushed, but kept slipping back down whenever she pushed herself up. Her arms were trembling, and she found it hard to breath. This was completely different from the reporting she was used to.

  A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and a burst of adrenaline rushed through her. She was now able to rise and turn partway around, and found the E.H.U.D. standing above her, trying to pull her to her feet even as the crowd around her tried to run both from the shooters and the soldiers.

  The soldier spoke, his voice difficult to make out through the screams of the crowd. "C'mon, ma'am, it's not safe."

  The helmet floated above her, blocking out her vision of anything else. The dead rectangles of eyes stared into her, through her, pulling her in and dropping her out in another place, another time...

  The soldier spoke again, his voice marginally different this time. "C'mon, you fucking bitch. Again!"

  He straightened, the helmet pulling back to reveal the world around them: Dark, cold. The lowest circle of hell, poured from concrete and lit only by a thin fluorescent strip recessed in the ceiling.

  Melana sat on the floor, breathing heavily, her chest bruised and face bleeding from the soldier's attack.

  "Again!"

  The soldier took another step back, and Melana slowly rolled over and pushed up into a kneeling position. She didn't want to give him another chance to hurt her. It was bad enough that she had no clothes, that he could leer at her from the anonymity of his helmet. But she would not let him hurt her.

  "You really think you can get out of this?" Other words went unsaid. You're even stupider than I thought...

  The soldier rushed forward, swinging his knee upward and into her chin. She jerked backwards, her knees stretching painfully and her head crashing down on concrete.

  Basic training filtered past the pain... Jaw, broken. Several teeth shattered, the back of her head split. She wasn't sure what was wrong with her knees, but she was certain that the joints were torn.

  "Get up..."

  No. No...

  "GET UP!"

  No!

  Get up!

  Without meaning to, but certainly
not regretting the action, her leg shot up, the knee clicking painfully into place as she kicked the soldier in the chest, sending him flying backwards and into the wall.

  As he slumped to the ground, Melana screamed, letting out her pain, her shame at giving into what he wanted...

  She let the scream peter out, gasped for breath, searched out her body for the pain, tried to fix it—

  "Good."

  The soldier stood over her again. This time, at least, there was a gash ripped in his armor.

  "Good."

  He leaned in, grabbed her shoulder, pulled her roughly to her feet. She felt her left leg dangle uselessly, felt cold air against the fresh wound on the back of her head—

  And felt someone behind her supporting her weight. "Are you alright?"

  The room was gone; Melana was back in the crowd. Around her was panic, in front of her was the soldier who had accidentally knocked her down. He glanced her over, saw that she was able to stand, and pushed deeper to where the shots had been fired.

  Melana stood shaking, unable—unwilling—to move. She thought she didn't know what happened, hoped desperately that she didn't, but deep down knew what had just happened to her.

  Someone pushed at her, and she began to march slowly forward.

  She knew what had happened...

  She felt a vibration on her arm, and looked down to see her in-ear speaker twitching wildly. As soon as it was re-inserted, she heard the chaos back in the studio.

  "What the fuck is she doing? Steig, see if you can find her—"

  "I'm trying to get this shot!"

  "Fuck! Okay, get the shot, we'll try to get someone out there—"

  The speaker was back out of her ear.

  Around her, the crowd finished its collapse into absolute chaos, but Melana was insulated from it by the chaos in her own mind. She tried to deny what had just happened, but with every step more memories—memories like the combat with the E.H.U.D.—came to the surface.

  By the time she had wandered out of the Mall, she was confident in what she had been—still was.

  A Defender.

  Hours later, and Melana was standing in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. Her appearance—ear-length hair, healthy skin, rumpled suit—once so familiar, now seemed hopelessly alien.

  She saw another woman looking out at her from the mirror: bald, naked, all traces of fat gone, flesh pulled unnaturally close to the skeleton beneath. A rotted corpse, wrapped in leather.

  The Melana in the room untucked her shirt and pulled it up, exposing a knot of scars that twisted across her abdomen. She ran her fingers along the scars, reading them like braille, feeling the story written in her skin. The touch recalled a set of memories, dim and growing dimmer...

  At grandmother's house, four years old. Gramaime's dog, a pit bull, rushing at her, digging into her, pulling her apart-

  No other memories of the dog, though, just the one incident...

  Another set of memories were embedded in the scar; fresher memories, clearer. Not a child but a young woman, the woman staring out of the mirror. Standing then—now—in a dark room, red lights pulsing from the far wall. She crouched on the rough floor, feeling the cold air surrounding her, chilling every inch of skin. Behind her was waiting, apprehension, hope the test would go well. Ahead was pain, confusion... hunger. In her was nothing. She had been empty for such a long time.

  Green light flashed from the far wall. Light mixed with sound as dogs came tearing through a gate, yelping and yipping, desperate for the meat crouched in front of them.

  Melana knew instinctively what she should do, her reaction bolstered by a year of near-constant training. But she chose to remain still, inactive. The only way out of this room was death: the dogs', or her own. She had no desire to kill again... and her death might be an improvement.

  The fear and disappointment behind her arrived at the same instant as the dogs. The largest in the pack—it looked perversely like a golden retriever—rammed its muzzle into her unscarred belly, teeth digging into virgin flesh, rubbing against the liver. She fell, the rough concrete biting into her back even as the dogs bit into her front.

  A fog descended over her mind, shutting out the dogs and the people behind her, until only two minds were left outside hers.

  The first mind was nominally human, but its thoughts were nearly identical to those of the dogs. It wanted—needed—her death, longing for it and finding excitement at her pain. This was the mind behind the armor, the one who had knocked her down again, and again, and again and—

  The other mind was the polar opposite. It was calloused, yes, unyielding, yet compassionate. It brooked no rebellion to its will, but it was ready to help those who needed it. This mind was Allen.

  Don't focus on the dogs... Focus on yourself...

  Don't want to... Just want to die...

  NO! If you die, you've been a waste! There's so much in you... If you live, it will come out... If you live, you will be so much more...

  She couldn't say no. He believed in her, as she believed in him.

  Everyone believed in him.

  What do I do?

  Find your strengths... Your arms are clear... Attack the biggest threat first...

  Claws and teeth were locked into her legs—painful, but not immediately deadly. Old Yeller, though, eye-deep in her intestines—

  All the pain, all the fear, wicked out to her fingertips, stayed and built as an electric charge. She swung her arms up and in, energy jumping from her fingers to the dog's head. It pulled back, pieces of Melana dripping from its jaws. She struck again, felt the dog's mind flash brilliantly before falling dark.

  The two dogs on her legs sensed the death of their leader and looked up, unsure if their prey was still worth the risk.

  Taking hold of this uncertainty, Melana followed it back to the simple minds that generated it. It only took a single push and—she was free.

  Not free yet...

  Allen... Let me sleep...

  You sleep now, you die... Take stock... What do you have?

  Allen...

  What do you have?

  She wanted to ignore him. Would ignore him, would fall back into the void... But there was the other mind, and she felt its disappointment in the pain not experienced, the grudging contentment that at least Melana would not survive her victory.

  If she died, this mind won. She couldn't allow it to win.

  Okay, focus. What did she have? No strength, no energy, no intestines—focus.

  Dog meat. She had at least forty pounds of dog meat.

  She felt the weight of the still warm carcass laying between her legs, partially propped up on her belly. She pushed her mind in deeper, feeling the fur, muscle, individual protein chains. Acids breaking off, microscopic bits coming free and floating down to connect to her, building bridges across the wound, bringing the sides closer, sealing her stomach with a knot of scars.

  There was a burst of rage from one mind, a vortex of hate and disappointment. And from Allen...

  From Allen was pride.

  And from Melana's own mind, fear. She was scared.

  Scarred.

  How could she ever have forgotten this?

  "She didn't even have a dog, did she?"

  Back in her bedroom, Melana didn't turn. She had been peripherally aware of the man behind her for some time, but had chosen not to knowledge him yet. To do so would be to fully give into the madness begun by the run-in with the E.H.U.D.

  She couldn't put it off any longer.

  "She raised rabbits."

  The man nodded. "I thought so."

  "How long have you been following me?"

  Rather than answering in words the man—Vince—opened his mind to her, flooding her with a string of images, emotions—

  "Stop."

  There was nothing.

  "I'm not ready for that yet. Just use words."

  "Suit yourself."

  In the mirror, she could see Vince shifting, sitt
ing straighter, bringing himself back to what had once been the real world.

  In that other world, the one belonging to the Melana in the mirror, Vince had been a friend, an ally. Perhaps... lover? No, lover wasn't the right word. There was no romantic connection there. They had copulated—that precise, mechanical word clearly described the simple need fulfillment of their relationship. He hadn't been the only one to fulfill that need. There hadn't been much else to do in the early days of the program; it was that or give into the fear, the survival-mode desperation.