by Robert Brown
Cora stands, walks over to Grace, picks her up and swiftly places her to stand in front of Greg and Evelyn. “Yesterday, this was what Lilly looked like. You would never lift a finger to harm Grace, and you would have never contemplated hurting Lilly. Even without looking into your minds, I know you would have endured any hardship or pain to protect your own child as would I.
“The people who chose to murder their nation’s children are the same ones that would have been human slave owners had they mutated. Evil is written into some people’s DNA and there is only one way to deal with that type of sickness. Eradication.
“I have the unique ability to do exactly what you asked. Last month, I was elected President of the United World Mutant States. Within human history, I am in actuality the first leader of the world outside of the non-mutated human territories. With all of the power and discretion that provides me, I would not lift a finger to help any of those evil monsters. They will be relocated to France, Ukraine, Vietnam and South Africa, and even in those regions, they will have more land than their sparse numbers will know what to do with.”
Evelyn stands up and places a hand on Cora’s arm. “What our governments do are not always the choice of the people. Please consider looking for parents or families that were wronged by the decisions to murder their children.”
Tears are streaming down her cheeks. “I have checked, Evelyn. For fourteen months, we have been over there, and I scanned every bit of territory I could in between diplomatic meetings and events. They are all dead. The decent humans were all murdered or who they were as people was destroyed by the violence of the last decade. I searched for any innocent or trustworthy human that I could reach outside of our territories and they simply do not exist.
“I’m afraid the same thing will happen everywhere when the human numbers start to significantly drop off. People reached a turning point in their hope for survival when they realized nothing they do would return things to the way they once were.”
Chapter Forty
Telomere
Great Plains Territory
The arrival of the blue haze brought with it one change to the human condition which they have been unable to reverse. The technological advancements they created were all dependent upon an intricate and fragile distribution structure which allowed necessary products to be delivered anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours. That system came crashing to a halt when the children mutated and enslaved the world’s adults. It will never recover.
In contrast, the speed and strength of vampires and other mutants allowed them to create a new infrastructure not reliant on roads, rails, and mechanical air travel. Delivery of goods between mutant areas rivals that of the pre-change world. One aspect of existence the children were not willing to give up was communications. Computer and phone research and development continued and was encouraged even in the backdrop of humanities enslavement and the war.
Dr. Tatyana Usachova chose to live in the mutant territories when they separated. Following the mutants was a requirement of her field of study, but she would have chosen the mutant territories anyway over having to work in research for the human government.
Tatyana works in one of the larger research and development labs in the mutant-held Plains Territory. Her area of study, while not as exciting and geared toward entertainment, has always been given priority. She continues to study the effects and changes the haze has caused.
“It’s good to see you again, Cora.”
Dr. Usachova is greeted with silence as The Angel and her daughter stand just inside the door of her lab.
“Oh please, Cora, don’t stare at me like that, you’re going to give me a complex.”
“I’m sorry, Tatyana, I didn’t mean to stare. I wasn’t aware so much time has passed.”
“It has only been five years I think, although I would have liked to see you sooner. Don’t worry about how I look, the dramatic shift is in my personal grooming rather than a stark change that happened since you last saw me.”
“I don’t understand, what happened to your hair?”
The golden blonde of the doctor’s hair has been replaced with a dull gray. There are noticeable lines by her eyes and some slight wrinkling of the skin on her neck.
“I am fifty-six years old, young lady. A few years ago, I decided to stop fighting the hands of time and gave up coloring my hair. I imagine hair coloring will eventually be only for entertainment for you lucky youngsters who don’t age.”
The doctor walks up and places a hand on The Angel’s cheek and caresses it.
“Amazing. Your skin is still as soft as a newborn’s.” She steps back a few paces and adjusts her glasses. “You haven’t aged at all either. Please excuse my excitement. It is one thing to see what is happening in my calculations and lab tests but quite another to see and touch a living example of immortality.”
Cora smiles at the woman while she directs her daughter to a chair and gives her a book to read.
“I wanted to visit you sooner, but there were so many things to do.”
“Yes, I heard. Congratulations, Madam President. Leader of the planet now, how quickly things change in this new world of ours.”
“I’m just the president of the mutant territories.”
“Please, I’m on your side, Cora. I know better than most the hopeless condition of humankind. Our days are few and waning fast, this is the dawn of your time. You are the president of the only society that truly matters anymore and you know it.” Her smile is genuine and warm. “I am glad you came to see me. There is something you particularly will need to address as the new president: overpopulation.
“You mutants are repopulating almost as fast as we are dying out. I know the effects of Shatterbones causes tremendous strain on your bodies, but as you know with Grace, it isn’t only your muscles and bones that go through significant changes. Your kind mutate during and because of puberty, which causes your hormones to surge and has resulted in an unprecedented rise in population growth.
“As you recall, we were able to eliminate the behemoth mutations by testing for trisomy disorders in gestation so they won’t be at issue. This problem of overpopulation also isn’t a concern among the giant or werewolf populations because they are aging normally. It is something specific to you vampires which you will need to address immediately, or your population growth will lead to conflict over resources and possibly future wars.
“You need to find a way to slow down the amount of children vampires are having. Without killing each other on battlefields, I am concerned that none of you will die. You must understand what would happen to any species that continually produces children and no one ages or dies after they mutate. It is an exponential growth pattern that cannot continue without disastrous results.
“I have been studying the genetic make-up of vampires to look for anomalies, but even in looking at your chromosomes telomeres, not enough time has passed for any noticeable change to have occurred.”
Cora looks at the doctor with a blank expression, still seemingly fixated on the gray color of her hair.
“Damn it, Cora, just read my mind already. I love your self-restraint, but sometimes you make it so difficult for me to explain things to you.”
Cora searches the research in Usachova’s mind without going into her personal thoughts. The doctor has always been a trusted friend to The Angel and the mutants. She vowed to give the doctor the only gift of value she felt she could offer: privacy.
“So telomeres determine lifespan?”
“Yes, they deteriorate in all living beings; however, I have mixed results in detecting any changes in mutants. Unfortunately, it will take another ten years before I am able to make a more concrete determination of whether you will live forever or are only aging at an extremely slow level.
“Cora, you need to prepare yourself and the others. I am getting old and so are your parents. You must make sure you visit them often and avoid surrounding yourself with only those that look young f
orever. It would be a greater tragedy than you realize if your perpetual youth allows you to lose track of time and miss the passing of a loved one.”
Chapter Forty-One
The Nature of Man is War
Twenty-One Years Post Haze
Europe
In the years since The Shattering Event ended, the absence of man’s dependence on technology has helped the quality of the air the most. The night is a comfortable fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and the sky is clear for miles.
Industrial pollutants no longer fill city skies with brown filth that must be blown away by winds or washed out of the sky by a decent rain. In this modern time, the only pollutant one would normally find to bar being able to see for miles and miles is the smoke from an occasional fire from accident or nature. Tonight, visual acuity is unparalleled.
Flying high above Spain, Cora, her four siblings, and their children, all watch the events occurring on the ground several miles below them. Without a cloud in the sky and the moon high and full, they are all able to see the blurred movements of the mutants on the streets below and those in the air around them. The giants are conspicuously absent as they have decided to remain neutral during this conflict.
Alejandro Salazar runs with blurring speed among the soldiers battling in the streets of Madrid. Heads are removed and upper torsos separate from their lower halves everywhere he runs with his blades. He moves with a graceful ease through the carnage around him until two axes from each side of the narrow roadway cleave him into thirds.
Vampire conflicts have increased this past year. Aggressions acted out on jealousies over the most favored land tracts and arguments of favoritism by this arch-vampire or another.
The pettiness of humanity failed to mutate away like our ability to endure sunlight. How cruel life seems to be.
The words are directed to The Angel’s mind from another group of arch-vampires. They are nearly a mile away, also flying high above the battlefield. Like Cora’s family, the other small group is hovering amidst the chaotic battle surrounding them with no threat being made in their direction or any notice to their presence at all.
Swords are slashing and bodies are falling mere feet from The Angel, but she is not involved in this fight. She has brought her family to witness what the future of mutated humanity has to offer if steps aren’t taken to help guide them out of their personal grievances.
With the help of the ones she loves, they created a mental barrier around themselves, rendering them invisible to the fighting hordes around them. The vampire that spoke through The Angel’s mind must have similar powers to her own to be able to observe the battle without becoming involved.
This bloodshed has more to do with us than what they claim outwardly; we need to meet and discuss this issue, The Angel responds in thought.
Seeing enough of this senseless fighting, Cora signals to her family she is ready to leave, and they fly higher toward the stars to clear the large open air fighting arena. One final thought she sends to her friends still below. Gather those with our powers that are likeminded, we will meet in Odessa in one month.
Odessa is human territory.
Yes, but they have no electricity and are all nearly gone now. They won’t be concerned with our arrival, even if they discover we are there, which I doubt. We must meet in a place that the others wouldn’t think to go, my suggestions won’t be welcomed by them.
*
It is a miserable night for travel but the best circumstances for stealth. The supercell storm over Ukraine is bleeding rain through the sky as if the world’s rivers have taken flight. The new moon is unnecessarily blanketing the area above the clouds in blackness, yet the few inches of visibility blink into blinding brightness with each of the many lighting flashes that occur.
Landing on the runway of Odessa’s long-abandoned international airport, several families are carrying wounded participants who were unable to make it through the lightning storm without being struck.
“You picked a hell of a night to meet like this,” Viktor Kalinich exclaims.
Representing the Russian territories, Viktor smiles with his arms outstretched while he remains standing in the heavy downpour. The others are gathered near him, but under the roof of a partially collapsed airplane hangar.
“I didn’t think this area had such severe weather,” one of the Indian representatives mentions while rubbing the large smoldering burn hole in their stomach. “I thought that lightning bolt was going to kill me.”
The Angel smiles at the gathering of thirty arch-vampire families from around the globe. “I am sorry to put you through such a treacherous journey. I didn’t want prying eyes to interrupt our meeting, so I asked my daughter Grace to enhance the weather for us.”
“That’s impossible!” Viktor booms with laughter as he walks out of the rain. “Your daughter was born after the haze.”
“She was born after the haze but was conceived before it left the Earth. I am aware that no mutant conceived after the haze has had psychic powers; that is the main reason I wanted to meet with all of you.”
“I am calling bullshit. No vampire can control the weather, and no vampire born after the haze has had powers.”
Knowing her daughter’s spirit, The Angel steps away from Viktor as do the rest of Grace’s relatives. Seconds later, the hangar is lit up with a brilliant flash as a lightning bolt arcs under the roof and strikes Viktor in his backside, throwing him across the room.
Screaming in pain and holding onto his butt, most of the people in attendance stand in silent shock while the others who are more familiar with Grace, smile or laugh at Viktor’s misfortune.
“Why would you hit me there? I won’t be able to sit for a week now.”
“I didn’t want to hurt your wings,” is the soft reply she gives with her diminutive voice.
“How have you managed to keep her powers a secret? The others already consider our abilities to be reckless and possibly dangerous; they won’t like knowing she has such a capacity to manipulate nature.”
“The others won’t know.” The fierceness of Cora’s angered words impacts each of the vampires physically. They all recoil a few steps as if she slammed their heads with a hammer.
“You fear my daughter’s strength. The wingless vampires fear arch-vampires. The winged vampires without psychic gifts fear our collective abilities. Fear and jealousy are what these new battles are all about. All of you here represent the best of what The Shattering Event had to offer. You all have powers of varying degrees, and yet you chose to use them to fight for freedom instead of enslavement. You picked the path of greatest resistance by believing human and mutant kind should rise or fall of their own accord and based on their own decisions.
“Even with your benevolence, the other vampires grow jealous and suspicious of our abilities. They are beginning to think they should kill us because we can influence situations and outcomes in ways they cannot.
“The wars they are fighting now over land and prestige will turn toward ridding the Earth of the people standing in this room within the next year. We must take action now, or we will be hunted down and exterminated.”
Sophie Morgan of the English Territory steps forward. “What do you know that makes the others a danger? I was with you over Madrid. Many of us are able to create protective areas around ourselves preventing other vampires from even noticing us let alone being able to cause us harm.”
“There are thirty families here, yet there are forty-two more that were not invited by any of us. Each of you knows why they were not chosen to attend. They have been using their powers to influence runners and fliers to fight in efforts to gain lands and riches. So none of us like or appreciate the judgment of those who weren’t invited. Their powers have also diminished after the haze, and they have family members who have no powers at all. I understand that some of their abilities continue to wane as the years pass, just as some of ours have grown. I think their diminishing ability to influence others is the cause of t
heir lust to increase territorial holdings.
“They are the ultimate threat to us, not the average runner or flier whom we can block. Those families with remaining strengths will move to eliminate us one at a time until we are all gone. They don’t like the fact that they will eventually have no powers and are not willing to allow us to remain alive while we have ours.”
“Are you suggesting we go to war?”
“I am suggesting we are already at war. They are currently thinking about coming after us but have not yet declared or organized a plan to do so. What I recommend is a two-part strategy, both of which go against the ideals of non-interference which we have strived for.
“First, we turn the soldiers against their masters. The warring arch-vampires have been using them to claim territory. They have chosen to waste the lives of decent vampires for selfish means, and we can manipulate the thoughts of those soldiers to go after the ones sending them to war.
“This means we can make efforts to kill them now, or we must continually scan the remaining arch-vampire families for their intentions. Orders to have them killed will be issued if they are deciding to come after us. Either way, we are reinforcing the fear which they already have; we are using our powers to eliminate them.
“In the larger scheme of things, until this point in time, we have left them alone while we should have intervened earlier. We have allowed them to do things that were agreed by all mutants would not be tolerated. Controlling other vampires to use in battle is justification enough to put them to death. In part, I blame myself for retiring from the presidency too soon. I should have remained longer to ensure our new society was better established.”
“To that point, Cora, the president is obviously not here, so I assume we will we go after him and his family? He is the one that has allowed these conflicts to go on unchallenged.”
