by Kyle West
We left the house and made our way back to Orion. As we weaved between the buildings and stepped onto the highway, I looked toward the right.
To see a man standing there.
Julian and Anna pulled up beside me, and the three of us faced the man. He wore all black – pants, collared shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat; a black duster jacket, the tails of which blew in the wind. A long, scraggly red beard fell down his chest, and eyes as blue as ice stared at us. He wore a belt, on which a handgun was holstered.
The man didn’t move, but I moved my hand to my Beretta.
In the end, the man advanced toward us, slowly.
“Stay there,” I called. “And don’t move. Put your gun on the ground. Slowly.”
The man paused. After a long, watchful moment, he reached for his gun belt, slowly, and removed it. The belt contained not one, but two holsters, one for each side. Next, he shucked his duster, revealing a rifle strapped to his back. He took the strap and the rifle off, laying them on the dirt at his feet.
“Jesus,” Julian said.
The man reached into his left boot, and withdrew a long dagger. He set the dagger on the highway before him. Holding out his gloved hands, he advanced forward, one step at a time.
When he was about twenty-five feet away, Anna called out.
“That’s far enough.”
The man stared at her with those blue eyes. A long moment passed before anyone spoke again.
“Do you recognize this guy?” I asked Anna.
To the side, I saw her shake her head.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The man’s gaze focused on me. Even if he had removed every weapon, he was still dangerous. The way he carried himself, the way he looked at me, told me that. It was impossible to live this long alone and not know how to kill.
“My name...” the man said, slowly and drawing it out in a raspy voice, “is not your concern. I’m the Last Man of Last Town. That’s all you need to know.”
“What do you want from us, Last Man?” Anna asked.
The Last Man stood as still as a statue.
“For you to leave,” he said. “No man can walk inside these walls. I drove the Reapers out, and I will drive you out.”
The man didn’t seem to be concerned with the fact that we had a spaceship. That seemed strange in itself. It meant that nothing was important to him but what he said. He wanted us out.
“We’re leaving now,” Anna said.
The man’s eyes focused on Anna.
“I know your face,” he said. “But I don’t know from where.”
Anna looked at him, not letting her guard down. “Did you live here, Last Man?”
The man gave the slightest of nods. “Yes. They all died. I remember it like yesterday. I left this place a village, and returned to find it a graveyard.”
“What is your name, Last Man?” Anna said. “I lived here a long time ago, but haven’t been back until today.”
“Yours first, girl,” the man said, in a harsh tone. “I tire of people and their tricks.”
“Anna,” he said. “My mother was Heather. My father, Ben. We lived at the crossways. The north side.”
The man was silent for a long time. His posture relaxed, ever so slightly. But he was by no means less dangerous.
“Yes. You’re Ben’s girl, alright. You have his eyes. His fierceness. There’s no doubting it.” He spat at the ground. “Ben’s dead, now. I thought you were, too.”
“Now tell me who you are.”
“Victor.”
“Victor,” Anna said. “I don’t know that name.”
“Few did,” Victor said. “I was a hunter, far away from the town. It doesn’t surprise me I escaped your notice. But if ever you ate some wild game in this place...it might have been by my shot that it came to be.”
“And you live here, in this place?” Anna asked.
Victor shrugged. “It is better than the west, with the Reapers. And better than the east, with its death. Here, there is a spring, and food in the hills for a man who knows where to look.”
“And what do you do, when you’re not hunting game?” Anna asked.
“I hunt men. Reapers, mostly. I hunt them where I find them. I think they avoid this place, now. They say it’s haunted.”
Victor gave the tiniest trace of a smile.
“There will be plenty of Reapers today,” I said. “They’re coming from Los Angeles.”
“Why?”
“They are making a final stand,” Anna said. “The Empire. The Angels. The Reapers. If that stand isn’t made together, then the monsters will win.”
Victor gave a bitter laugh. “Angels. An Angel hasn’t walked this town in five years.”
“The Angels have reformed,” I said. “We’re three of them.”
“Is that so?” Victor gave us an appraising look, but it was hard to tell whether or not he approved. “No true Angel would work with a Reaper.”
“They would,” I said. “If the world were ending.”
The man gave a bitter laugh. “The world has already ended, boy. The Old World has passed, and if one day no man wakes to see the new, I won’t grieve for it. Man, monster, what’s the difference?”
I realized we were speaking with a man who saw no good in this world, who saw no reason to fight for it. There was little we could do to change the mind of such a person. He had suffered more than his share of evils, and those evils had broken him.
“There’s still hope, Victor,” Anna said. “Just as you believed I was dead, in truth, I was alive. Just as you believe that we are all going to die, and that we are deserving of that death, we believe you’re wrong. My friends and I worked hard to get everyone to stand together. Many have died to make it happen. This is our last chance to make a difference, and every man’s support counts. Even yours.”
The man merely stood and watched us. It was hard to guess at his age – he could have been thirty, or sixty. The face was red, wind-chapped, weather-beaten.
After a long while, he nodded.
“So you say.”
“The army will be passing through here this afternoon,” Anna said. “If you change your mind...ask for Char.”
The man looked at Anna for a long time, before giving a slow nod.
She turned to us. “Come on. We should get moving.”
We turned back to the ship. As we ascended the boarding ramp, I looked back one last time. He stood there, the wind blowing the tails of his duster. He raised a single hand in farewell. The eyes were sad. Watchful.
We entered the ship and once more took to the air.
***
We flew eastward beyond the mountains, right over the border of the Great Blight. Anna lowered the ship to better survey the xenofungal surface, but the terrain below was empty.
When Anna veered north, Makara’s voice came through the dash.
“Alright. Sam and I have connected the ship’s drive to the Bunker’s grid. We’re en route to Level Three.”
“Copy that,” Anna said,
We continued our recon, scanning the Great Blight in a wide arc. From time to time we’d see evidence of xenolife – crawlers running in small packs, swarms of birds, even a Behemoth or two – but nothing approaching the size of the Radaskim horde.
Anna switched frequencies to Augustus’s line.
“Not seeing anything, Augustus,” Anna said. “Just a few crawlers here and there, about what you’d expect from the Great Blight. I think you guys will be good.”
“Copy that. The troops are in eastern L.A. right now. We should make it to the pass this afternoon.”
“Great. Listen...”
Augustus waited, but Anna hesitated to speak. I knew she was about to tell him about the man, Victor. In the end, though, she shook her head.
“Just be careful. You’re clear all the way past the mountains.”
“Thank you, Anna.”
Augustus cut out, and we continued with our recon.
Chapter 10
Thirty minutes later, we still hadn’t heard from Makara or Samuel.
Anna, Julian, and I watched the Great Blight from an altitude of two thousand feet
“We should have heard from them by now,” I said.
“I’ll call them again,” Anna said.
Once the line was established, nothing answered but silence. I had no idea why they weren’t picking up.
I was beginning to wonder if some of those Lords had survived...
“Something’s wrong,” I said
“Let me call Michael’s line,” Anna said.
She switched frequencies. “Michael? You have a copy, over?”
Again, silence was the only answer.
“The army won’t be here until nightfall,” Julian said. “Plenty of time to get there and back.”
Anna and I looked at each other. Wasn’t this just overreacting? We were supposed to be watching the Great Blight, but there was nothing here. If Makara, Samuel, and Michael weren’t answering, something might be wrong.
“We can be there in an hour,” Anna said, thinking.
“There’s no harm in going to check,” I said. “Orion is fast. We’ll be there and back in a couple of hours.”
Anna thought for a moment, at last turning the ship and pointing it to the north. She increased the speed to full, and all of us were pushed back into our seats.
“Hopefully, this is nothing,” she said. “We’ll keep calling as we head north. It’ll take forty-five minutes to get there. If they don’t answer in that time...”
She left the rest unsaid as we sped over the Great Blight.
***
During the journey, we repeatedly called Samuel, Makara, and Michael. Each time, there was no response, and I became increasingly worried.
As we traveled north, the clouds hung gray and heavy over the mountains. Most of the time, we couldn’t see the land below. We kept well above the mountains, only descending once we were close.
By the time we reached the Bunker, the air had cleared, revealing the large mountain 84 was housed in. Anna angled Perseus toward the mountainside, where the hangar opened vertically to the air. The entrance tunnel led straight down into darkness.
“Control, this is Anna aboard the Orion. Do you have a copy?”
“Orion?” a man’s voice responded. “What are you doing here?”
“Clear us to land,” Anna said. “There’s something we want to check on.”
“You’re cleared,” the man said. “You can park next to Perseus.”
“Where’s the crew’s location?”
“You mean Makara and them? They went up a while ago. Why?”
“Up to Level Three?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “Is something wrong?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we’re here.”
Anna lowered the ship vertically over the hangar opening. As we descended, the darkness was replaced with the dim fluorescence of the hangar below. I looked down to see people watching our approach from the hangar floor. Perseus was parked nearby.
“They’re here, alright,” I said.
Neither Anna nor Julian said anything as Perseus landed on the floor. We unstrapped ourselves and headed to the wardroom to exit the ship.
When we entered the hangar bay, Lauren was waiting at the bottom of the ramp, flanked by several civilians.
“What on Earth are you doing here?” she asked, arms crossed. “You’re supposed to be with the army.”
“Makara, Samuel, and Michael weren’t answering their calls,” Anna said. “We came to investigate.”
Lauren frowned, puzzled. “Aren’t you overreacting a bit? They went up to Level Three not an hour ago. What could have possibly happened?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said. “Probably nothing. But it’s unlike any of them to go so long without answering. We decided not to take the chance.”
“We shouldn’t be long,” I said.
By now, a large crowd had gathered around us, asking questions, but we pressed through and headed to the stairs.
“Wait!” Lauren said.
We stopped, and turned around.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We need you to stay here and watch over our people.”
She laughed in disbelief. “Alex, you don’t tell me what to do.”
“All we know is,” Anna said, “Makara said she’d call us from the control room first thing.” She looked at Lauren pointedly. “That hasn’t happened, and it’s not like Makara to forget something that important.”
“I’m sure something came up, or...”
“That’s what we think, too,” Anna said. “Still, better safe than sorry.”
“If that’s what you think, then I’m going, too.”
“Lauren,” Anna said. “Please. Stay here. We won’t be long, and we need someone to watch over these people.”
“You think it’ll be dangerous?”
I decided to share my earlier thought. “It’s possible some of the Lords were left behind. We just don’t know what it could be. That’s why we’re going up.”
“We’ll be back soon,” Julian said.
Before she could protest further, we turned and headed toward the stairs that would lead up to Level Nineteen. Lauren harrumphed behind us. I turned to see her walking away.
As Anna dug out a flashlight to light the way, Julian spoke.
“Do you really think there’s a danger?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s no reason to think there is. But still, sometimes you just get a feeling about something...if you ignore feelings like that, you’ll be sorry.”
“I feel the same way,” Anna said.
We ran up the steps until we reached Level Ten, where we had to take a corridor to the other side in order to continue our ascent. We were gasping for breath by the time we started climbing the stairs again. Only our flashlights lit the complete darkness until we arrived at Level Three, where the power was on.
“Looks like they’re here,” I said.
As we headed to the Command Center, the corridors were quiet and cold. My apprehension increased as we walked on. We turned onto the final corridor that led to the Command Center. From there, it was a straight shot to the railing overhanging the control room below.
We ran along the corridor until we reached the railing. There, Michael stood alone behind one of the computers, typing. There was no sign of Makara or Samuel.
“Michael?” I called.
He tensed a moment before turning his head, showing only the left side of his face.
“The silos are almost fully online,” he said. “It took it a while to reroute power from Orion’s drive.”
“Where are Makara and Samuel?”
“Down below,” he said. “Making sure the power flows smoothly.”
There was an edge to his voice that made me stiffen a bit.
“Down below? What do you mean?”
Michael seemed annoyed by our presence, turning back to face the computer.
“Yeah. At the fusion reactor. We couldn’t get enough power, but Samuel must have been successful.” He paused. “It’s working now.”
I looked at Anna and Julian. We knew something wasn’t right.
“None of you answered our calls,” I said.
“They’re too far underground to get reception, Alex. And me...well, I left my radio back on the ship.” He forced a smile. “Sorry to have caused such a scare.”
Something about this wasn’t adding up. It was his manner, his tone...it was very unlike Michael. If things were going to take a little longer, Makara would have let us know.
“The Command Center has a direct line to the outside,” I said. “Why didn’t you establish a connection?”
“I’m busy here, Alex,” Michael said.
I just stared at him, shocked. Now, I absolutely knew something wasn’t right.
“Michael,” Julian said.
; At Julian’s voice, Michael turned. There was a strange look in his brown eyes. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. They say the eyes are windows to the soul. Only I saw no soul, nothing that was Michael. The eyes were dead, emotionless. A chill came over me.
“What happened, Michael?” Julian asked.
There were too many things going wrong, too many things being shrugged off.
Everything clicked at once. I raised my Beretta.
“Step away from the computer, Michael.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “Alex, what are you doing?”
I didn’t know how it happened, but the answer seemed obvious.
“He has a writhe.”
As if he didn’t have a gun pointed at him, Michael merely continued to type, a smile playing on his lips.
“You won’t kill me, Alex. If you kill me, you let her win.”
Now, both Julian and Anna drew their handguns, pointing them at Michael’s back.
“I’m warning you!” I said. “Step away!”
“Michael, please,” Julian said. “Step away from the computer. You don’t want to do this.”
The wall screen flashed on, displaying a map of the United States. Several lines arced from Bunker 84 to Los Angeles.
“You’re reprogramming the flight path of the nukes,” I said. “What did you do to Makara and Samuel?”
Michael didn’t answer. He merely continued to work.
“Michael, step away!” Anna yelled.
“Do you really think I could stop myself, even if I wanted to?” he said. “I can only do what she says. You know that. So why do you threaten me? If you don’t want these nukes going off on the army, then pull the goddamn trigger. It’s what Michael would want.”
There were only two options before us. Let Michael live, and have him destroy the entire army. Or shoot him, right here, right now.
I decided to buy more time. I wasn’t going to shoot him unless I absolutely had to.
“What did you do with them, Michael?”
“I did what I had to,” he said. “All I needed was Samuel’s clearance. After that...she showed me the rest.”
I felt a sick twisting in my gut such as I had ever known. How long had that writhe been living in his head, unknown even to him, waiting for the right moment to strike? Ruth’s going unconscious was, in a way, a red herring. It made us think no one else on the crew could be infected. And now, the writhe had led Michael to where it mattered.
