From Oblivion's Ashes

by Nyman, Michael E. A.

  “Here,” Kumar said, pointing with his laser.

  “Oh dear God,” Krissy said, covering her mouth. “There’s at least twenty people up there!”

  “More, actually,” Valerie said. “Probably a lot more. This is just one of the rooms on one of the top floors. We saw other silhouettes as we flew the drone around the tower, but our power was running low, and we’d learned enough to come and make a report. But if that room was any indication, there could be as many as a hundred people trapped up there. Smart people too, including, I would guess, the genius who set it all up. Sound like somebody we could use?”

  “Possibly,” Elizabeth admitted, “but how on Earth are we supposed to rescue them with only one vehicle?”

  Elizabeth refused to call Crapmobile by its name.

  “We’re already experiencing shortages,” she continued, “and may not be able to feed ourselves through the winter. What time we have left is needed for our own survival. Forget the zombies. Our people will die of exposure if we don’t get our habitats built before the first snowfall. And we’re supposed to use what precious time and resources we still have to go charging into a Swarm – a super-Swarm, no less – to rescue an unknown number of mouths to feed?”

  “I hate to admit it,” Torstein said, “but she has a point.”

  “Maybe when Marshal gets back,” Krissy suggested. “They’ll have extra engines for extra vehicles, and more of the slaughterhouse survivors will be back on their feet, which solves the problem of manpower. Can’t they hold out until then?”

  “Kumar?” Valerie said.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” the young programmer answered. He tapped at the keyboard, and the screen was divided into quarters. Each quarter of the screen showed a view of the McLennan building, save the bottom right.

  “This view on the top right shows the building from the footage we first took back when we discovered the place a week ago. The Swarm is localized in the square, away from the building, which is the only reason it’s still standing. But that doesn’t mean that it’s gotten away clean. Look at the angle of the cornice relative to the buildings behind it.”

  “Looks fine to me,” Eric answered.

  “Does it?” Kumar tapped some keys. “Okay. Then, look at it now.”

  Eric’s eyes widened, but he said nothing.

  “Holy crap,” Mike said, waking up from his nap in the back.

  “Oh shit,” Brian said, peering forward. “Is that...”

  “Yes,” Kumar answered. “That is the building listing to the right approximately six degrees off of center. This fourth frame here shows the support columns that the undead took out which caused the crucial shift in weight. In their indiscriminate rampage, the undead are literally bringing the house down. Now, I’m no engineer, but what we’re seeing… it can’t be good, right?”

  Torstein got to his feet and approached the screen so that he could examine the picture more closely.

  “This pillar here,” he muttered, and his fingers trailed along the screen. “See those cracks? That’s the red flag, right there. Every building above ten stories is built to be able to shift a little without falling. Wind, expansion and contraction, where the sun hits one side of the building before noon, then the other side after… they have to be able to adjust to a little bit of shift. But these cracks here show that there’s stress being put on the opposite columns. This building wants to fall down, and it probably will. Left alone, it could take a year, a month, maybe less. I can’t say for sure, but a few thousand zombies still at work ripping up the rest of the foundations can’t be helping. Taking that into consideration, if I were placing a bet, I wouldn’t give them more than a few days.”

  “Before anyone else speaks,” Valerie broke in, “I’d like to take a moment to remind you of Marshal’s standing mandate: the most valuable resource or salvage is and will always be people. We all owe our lives to this mission statement, and we won’t abandon it now, simply because he’s not here. We need to save those people, or at least, we need to try.”

  “Is that your decision then?” Elizabeth asked. “Risk everyone’s life for a bunch of strangers we don’t even know?”

  “You mean,” Valerie said sharply, “like Eric did in the subway tunnel? And like Marshal did for everyone still alive today? Didn’t we rescue you, Liz?”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out as she seemed to reconsider in mid-retort. Finally, she shook her head.

  “Okay,” she said, spreading her hands. “You got me. I can admit when I’m wrong. But I also know when I’m right, and if we’re going to do this, we need to be certain. We’ll need a plan, and we’ll need a lot of spare manpower, and we’ll need-”

  “Let me look it over first, Elizabeth,” Eric interrupted. “Restrictions understood. I have a few ideas that might pan out, but I just need to work on the logistics. If I could borrow Kumar, I think that I might have a working plan by the end of the day.”

  “Thank you, Eric,” Valerie said, putting a grateful hand on his forearm. “I’m giving you Crapmobile. Krissy? I have a list for you in my office. For the time being, you and Paul will be our community’s only scavenge slash taxi service, but you’re to be at Eric’s beck and call.”

  Krissy nodded absently, still staring at the frozen television screen. Distracted, she got to her feet and signaled to Paul. Paul nodded back, and raised his voice.

  “The bus to First Canadian will be leaving in ten minutes.”

  Angie lay in bed, watching an episode of How I Met Your Mother on the flat screen that Luca had mounted on the wall. A half-eaten bowl of dried-up pasta and a glass of water sat forgotten on the stand by her bedside. As she watched the ‘Slaps-giving’ episode, she thought she could feel a sense of peace flowing into and out of her chest at last. The zombie outer world could have been a million miles away.

  The cold metal of a knife slowly inserted itself under the flesh of her eye.

  She spasmed at the touch, and jerked awake to find herself alone in her bedroom. The room was haunted only by the sound of her own breath.

  A knock at the door caused her to sit bolt upright.

  “Marshal?” she asked hopefully, before realizing that it was far too soon for him to have returned.

  “Ahh. No. Sorry,” a muffled voice answered. “It’s… it’s just God. May I come in?”

  For a few irritated seconds, Angie considered telling the crazy old man to go away. People had been coming to see her, thanking her, telling her how brave she was, ever since they’d gotten back from the slaughterhouse. It always made her feel awkward and, nice as they were, she would have preferred it if they would just leave her alone.

  She sighed, got up, and went over to the door. Much as she wanted to be alone, she always found it difficult to be rude to God. Whatever his delusions, there was something about him that was difficult to dislike. He had a peculiar friendliness about him that made him easy to talk to, and a way of looking at things that could take your mind off whatever problem you were chewing on. As crazy went, his affliction was pretty mild, and he was somehow more humble than anyone with a God complex had a right to be.

  “Ah!” the old man exclaimed, smiling brightly as the door swung open. Then his face fell. “I’m not disturbing you at all, am I? It’s just that I have a present for you, and I’m not certain when I’ll have a chance to come back this way. It’s very busy at the hospital, you understand.”

  Angie offered him a faint smile. “It’s okay. I was just hanging out.”

  “Excellent.” God peered at the television screen. “Watching television, eh? Oh! Slaps-giving! Yes, this is one of my favorites, too! Do you mind if I watch with you?”

  Angie shrugged and flung herself back on the bed.

  God sat down in Angie’s desk chair, leaned back, and together the two of them watched a half hour of television. Nothing much was said between the two of them, except at the end, when God commented on how wonderful Thanksgiving actually was.
>
  “When you think how it started out as a kind of ‘death-dinner’ between the colonists and the natives,” he said, scratching his beard, “it’s sort of amazing that it shaped up into such a ‘feel-good’ holiday. But then, that’s often the case. I mean, Christmas is all about a kid, starving and penniless in a manger. Solution? A holiday devoted to giving presents. Easter is all about the murder of the Son of God. Culminating in? It’s a holiday where we hand out chocolate and candy. And don’t even get me started on Remembrance Day. Or Hanukah. A holiday that starts out with an oil shortage in the Middle East, am I right? Anyway, it just goes to show you how good things can often evolve straight out of the bad.”

  “Uh huh,” Angie answered, not really interested. “You said something about having a present for me.”

  “Eh?” God frowned, rubbing his forehead. “Oh! Right, of course! Yes.”

  He reached into his jacket and pulled out a rectangular object wrapped in plain, brown paper and handed it to her.

  “It seems,” he said, “that you and I have something in common. Marshal told me how much you love fairy tales, so I got you that. Go on. Open it.”

  “God is a lover of fairy tales?” Angie asked, tearing away the paper.

  “Of course, I am,” God answered, looking offended that there could be any doubt. “Are you kidding me? I love stories. Stories are what I’m all about, especially fairy stories.”

  Angie finished unwrapping the gift.

  “McPherson’s Book of Irish Tales” she read. “Thanks.”

  “Right?” God said excitedly. “Those guys could really spin a yarn. They had giants! Of course, officially, I’m not in favor of giants. Book of Enoch, the Nephilim, and all that. But those Irish! Giant warriors! Giant cows! I’m kind of amazed there wasn’t a Saturday morning cartoon!”

  “I don’t suppose you know any stories about monsters,” Angie asked, putting the book on her bedside table. “It’s just… Lately, I’ve had a lot of… well, nightmares about monsters. Or maybe it’s just monster people. It’s kind of hard to tell the difference.”

  God’s expression turned serious.

  “Yes,” he said. “I heard about your experience in the slaughterhouse.”

  “She’s still out there,” Angie blurted out. “She snuck up on me twice, God! I went around, fooling all the zombies, making Marshal proud of me… and she just…”

  Angie’s voice faded out, like a radio losing its signal.

  “It’s sad that the world has to be that way,” God said, shaking his head.

  “She wanted to cut out my eyeball.” Angie felt tears in her eyes. “She would have, if Jackie hadn’t stopped her.”

  God nodded. He reached out to place his hand over hers.

  Angie yanked her hand away, and then felt embarrassed. She looked up into God’s eyes apologetically.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that-”

  “No need to apologize, young lady,” God said, looking at her sternly. “There are no easy answers to the problems you’re struggling to digest. It takes more than a sympathetic hand to resolve them. I confess, I’m at a loss as to what to suggest. What you’re looking for lies deep inside you, my dear girl, and I can’t be the one to find it for you.”

  To her complete surprise, Angie began to cry.

  “Hey, now,” God said. “It’s not all bad. The world can be cruel, but there’s always something good, right in front of you, waiting for you to reach out and grab it. The bad things, the things we fear, they’re just a curtain. We push them aside, and the light will come streaming in.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Angie sobbed, wiping away her tears. “I want to be brave. Marshal saved me, but I don’t want to be saved. I want to be brave! I want to be able to stand up to the monsters of the world. But… but…”

  God sighed. “We all do, sweetheart. But that’s just the world. There are monsters everywhere, and there’s little the good people can do, except pick up their swords and deal with them as best they can. Whether it’s the monster under the bed, or the monster in the dark, or hunger, or cancer, or loneliness, or the distorted self, the demons hunt us in between the tombstones of our lives, and it’s the hardest thing we’ll ever do, to be grateful for their menace. Love your monsters, Angie. In the end, it’s their tenacity that helps to make us who we are.”

  He sagged in his chair, and rubbed his thinning white hair.

  Then, all of a sudden, he grinned.

  “You know,” he said, “it reminds me… I do know a story about monsters. Would you like to hear it? After all, for all my good intentions, my gift didn’t go down so well. Maybe I can make up for it.”

  “No, no,” Angie said, picking up and clutching the book to her chest. “I love my new book. Sorry if I’m… I mean, I’d love to hear the story, but please don’t think that I don’t love my present. Please, God. I’m just…”

  She wiped her cheeks again and tried to smile.

  “Tell me your story, God,” she said with more composure.

  God smiled at her.

  “You, my dear,” he said, “are a miracle. I’d love to take credit, but I’m a little uncertain at the moment, so I can’t be sure. But whether or not you are my making, I want you to know how… exciting you are. Really, child, you are a delight.”

  “Thank you,” Angie said, a bit confused.

  He sat up in the chair, holding both hands up in front of him.

  “Once upon a time,” he began, “there was a Kingdom of Princesses. One of these Princesses - we will call her Princess Hope – was, despite the fact that she lived in a land of Princesses, the only daughter of the King and Queen. Every day, inside the walls of their wondrous land, she and the other Princesses would gather together and make decisions about the Kingdom. Sometimes, these decisions were very important, like the one to make all the waters sparkle, or to make all the palaces luminous and glow against the horizon at night. Thanks to the Princesses, the roads were paved with Lapis, and the sidewalks with rose quartz. It was a magical place, where every rooftop shimmered in the twilight, the mane of every horse and pony fluttered like silk in the wind, and the dressmakers were very successful.”

  “Sounds horrible,” Angie said.

  “Oh, but it wasn’t,” God insisted. “You see, there were so many kinds of Princesses, as different and as beautiful as snowflakes in winter. Some lived in dark, brooding castles, with vampires and ghosts, wearing dark ball gowns and topaz tiaras, while others lived in glittering palaces on hilltop mews, with unicorns and fairies for company. Each and every Princess was beautiful beyond all imagining, some with flowing blonde hair and eyes like green jewels, and others with lustrous black hair that cupped their heads like raven feathers. Inside the walls, the Princesses reigned supreme, and anything under the sky and beneath the Moon was possible.”

  There was a pause in the story, and God’s face seemed to darken.

  “However, all that was inside the walls. Outside was the realm of Monsters. Princess Hope’s father had warned her about the Monsters, with whom the Kingdom had a loose sort of treaty. You see, the Monsters were the most dangerous creatures in all the world. Lions and crocodiles, tigers and serpents, and all the great beasts of the sea, had learned to fear the terrible power of the Monsters. Even against the forces of Nature... Earthquakes, Typhoons, Ice Storms, Volcanoes, and runaway Infernos, the Monsters had emerged triumphant.

  “When she was very young, Princess Hope would stand upon the walls and look out upon the Wilderness where the Monsters ruled. Sometimes gigantic, occasionally horned and fanged, and always hairy, they would gather in groups, tearing down trees, ripping up the Earth, and leveling whole regions of the world. It seemed there was nothing they could not fight and nothing they could not destroy. And when there was nothing else to fight, they fought each other.

  “Princess Hope wondered sometimes why the Kingdom hadn’t been swallowed up by the Monsters. She asked her father, the King, who seemed confused by the q
uestion and once again warned her to be careful around Monsters. She asked her mother, the Queen, who laughed and, with the hint of a twinkle in her eye, informed her that not only were Monsters stupid, but that a clever Princess need not fear Monsters any more than a lion tamer need fear lions.

  “This answer made Princess Hope feel better, since she knew she was a clever Princess.

  “It was only after a few years of this that Princess Hope made a startling discovery. Monsters, it turned out, were at least as fascinated with Princesses as Princesses were with Monsters. All the while, while Princesses had been watching them, they’d been watching back. Indeed, some of them struck out from the Monster herds to pay a peculiar sort of homage to some of the older Princesses. They would even, sometimes, compete with each other for the privilege. It became a game among the Princesses to show off their Monsters, and in some cases, a way of establishing status.”

  “Are Monsters supposed to be men?” Angie asked, pinching up her face. “If they are, then it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Actually,” God said, “it’s a little more complicated than that. Do you always try and skip ahead to the ending?”

  “Yes,” Angie said.

  “Yes?” God sighed. “Well, so do I, I suppose. Anyway, where was I? Right. The discovery changed how Princess Hope saw things. Monsters, it seemed, had conquered the World, and Princesses had conquered the Monsters. Using their savage strength and cunning, Monsters built all types of structures, wrested precious minerals and resources from the Earth, chased away deadly or poisonous animals, and performed tricks, all in an effort to impress the Princesses. In fact, it sometimes seemed that, when not away being Monsters and doing other Monster things, the Monsters spent their lives seeking favor from Princesses.

  “Of course, in the beginning, Princess Hope quite rightly decided that she wanted nothing to do with the creatures. After all, Monsters were big, hairy, smelly, uncivilized savages that knew nothing about the finer points of color coordination, or ballroom dancing, or poetry, or any of the many things that Princesses enjoyed. Oh, she could see that they had their uses, but as a companion, Monsters seemed utterly bankrupt.