The Last Chronicles of Pete Mersill

by David Millican

window and used the box springs and frame to hold it in place.

  I’d been asleep for about an hour when I felt the presence of the Fetches outside the room. I looked between the front door and the back balcony doors. I hadn’t blocked them off because it was my first escape route. If the back had been blocked I would have gone through the adjoining room’s front door. But they were out front so I slipped out back and over the railing. Dropping to the ground I ran under them, hoping they wouldn’t fall on me from above, and on to my motorcycle without incident.

  Alric was there again. There was a darkness about him as I watched him fade in my rear-view mirror. He had become something more than a Fetch. He’d joined with something evil and it was corrupting his already corrupted essence.

  In my fear and lack of sleep I forgot to keep an eye on the speedometer and you already know about the running out of gas. I took all the scotch I could carry from the Liquors & Country Hams store and waited for them to kill me. I deserved to die so I didn’t run anymore, but I wasn’t brave enough to face it sober.

  But as you can see by this journal, they didn’t come for me. Not then, not till now. The greater Fetches rose up and killed Nicole and Ghanka. They liked being able to control the lesser Fetches but didn’t like someone having the ability to control them. They had learned how to feed off the entire population of Earth as well as how to keep themselves from moving on. That was all they thought they needed. Turns out Nicole was the one tracking me and without her, I was just another human in a sea of humans. I sat there for two days, three sheets to the wind, maybe four. I don’t really know what that phrase means; I was drunk is my point.

  My reprieve from the death sentence, my new lease on life didn’t have much of an effect on me. I sat and I drank and I ate country ham. It was going to be a race to see who killed me first, alcohol, dehydration, or heart attack. They never got to the finish line because Sara, yes Sara of all people, found me and cleaned me up.

  There was no love in the action, she had been rejected by her now almost neutered men who had no need for their shiny toy. She thought I was the best chance at keeping her alive and free from the influence of her Fetch. Clever girl traced me through my phone and took me back to the mountain camp. To her dismay the wards didn’t include her, I don’t understand the magic so don’t ask me why, and I couldn’t kill her Fetch without killing her.

  That’s when I decided to become a Fetch hunter. The world was heating up, the forests and rivers receding, and everything was turning to refuse in a hot minute. The mystics explained that before the Fetches made their move, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of different magical creatures out there. They didn’t fight each other, they didn’t bother each other because they were evenly balanced. Each creature maintained its territory and they kept the Earth from dying. Now the Fetches had unbalanced everything pushed the others out. Well, I do have to own up to my part in the destruction.

  So, the only way I could see to save humanity, the planet, was to kill Fetches. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill lesser Fetches by killing their humans first. So the mystics, led by Hyan, made me a map. A magical map no less but I wasn’t up to mischief. I was up to murder. It would show the humans who had become aware of their Fetches and joined with them. Greater Fetches had no humans and so no presence that the mystics could track. But where the Greaters gathered, humans became aware of their Fetches. Most chose to join rather than be drained of their life. Those humans I didn’t have a problem killing.

  Maybe I should have a problem. Maybe I should be sympathetic to their dilemma but I’m not. I never claimed to be a saint. I have only one goal. One. Give my little girl a better life. And if you stand in the way of that, if you choose them over us, I’ll put a bullet in your brain and then rinse and repeat with your Fetch. And I still sleep at night. Yeah, I’m that kind of screwed-up.

  Anyway, I finally ended up in Phoenix. I spent the last twenty years travelling the world righting my wrong one Fetch at a time. Except there is no righting my wrong. No matter how many I kill, millions upon millions of people died for my mistake. And now billions suffer because of it. There is no redemption for me, there is no happy ending. There is no love for Pete. Sorry, had to lighten the tone a little.

  And now, after all these years, I have finally drawn the attention of the Greater Fetches. In total I’ve killed maybe a hundred of them over that time, out of a couple thousand. But something changed, something made them sit up and take notice of me. Don’t know what it was. Their minds are as alien to us as ours are to them. So we moved to the most sunbaked patch of ground that still has a city on it. Fetches don’t like the heat, it affects their power somehow. Well, that’s not exactly true. They don’t like extremes of temperatures, hot or cold.

  It’s one of the reasons that most of the legends about them come from temperate places like Ireland and Scotland. They were strongest there. But now the world is brown, water has moved north, and much of the planet is uninhabited. And it’s in those places that the other hunters gather, the rebels make their stand. There aren’t any others like me, they’re just normal folk doing their best to fight back. They can’t leave the deserts though, or the Greaters will suck their life from them. So, they gather in back alleys of abandoned cities hoping for a miracle.

  Suckers that they are they thought it was me. ‘Nope,’ I told them. ‘I’m just a mirage.’ They didn’t think that was funny. I didn’t care. Sara, who’s tagged along with me all these years because she has nowhere else to go, laughed. She does have her bright spots every now and again. I was only in Phoenix to lay low. I was sure that if I didn’t make a move for a couple of months the heat would die down and I could get back to work. Pun most definitely intended.

  There were plenty of abandoned houses and I even found some solar panels and a window unit air conditioner. We slept in the walk in closet off the master bedroom. It was the only place that didn’t have an external wall or window and could be closed up. I punched a hole through the dry wall and used a rusted saw I found in the living room as decoration to cut back the two by fours. I slid the air conditioner in and hooked the solar panels up to the fancy battery system.

  Three months passed like that, us sleeping in a tiny cool room, foraging in the wilds and trashcans for food. Unfortunately killing Fetches didn’t pay too well. Especially since the people I freed from the Fetches were usually dead, too. When I got a greater, people would share stuff with us but I had trouble with rationing. So, we lived like hunter/gatherers but what I hunted you couldn’t eat.

  I found a few more a/c units that were fixable. I wasn’t great at mechanic stuff but several of my jobs had required me to be a jack of all trades, so I got the job done. We took them down to the bazaar to trade for food and water. I only had one set of solar panels though so three of the a/c’s wouldn’t bring in much. But the moment we rode my old motorcycle into the square I knew there was a problem.

  Everyone was looking at us, at me. Phoenix was a lawless, transitional town and it wasn’t unusual for people to come and go without warning. I shouldn’t have stood out in a crowd of strangers but every eye was on me. I left Sara with the bike and threaded my way to a church at the south end of the bazaar. Inside was a local rebel group and they were waiting for me.

  “You have a bounty on your head.”

  “How much?”

  “A spot in one of the Overlords resorts.” The wiry, dirty speaker leaned in, “for life.”

  “And do any of you intend to collect on this bounty?”

  “No, sir,” The speaker said. “That sounds like about the worst thing I can imagine. Living next to them day after day being able to do nothing about it.”

  “Why not? Why couldn’t you kill them?”

  “You know why.”

  “I wasn’t sure if you did. So what’s going to happen?”

  “Get out of here. They said someone’s coming to collect but from what I hear, it’s something rather than someone.”

>   “How long?”

  “Three days ago. We would’ve told you sooner but we didn’t know where you were squatting.” He sat down on his chair.

  “No problem. Thanks for the heads up. Can I get an escort back through the crowd?”

  “No need. They know if they try to collect, we’ll make sure they never make it out alive.”

  “I got good stuff. You’ll want it. Plus, what I’ve got out at the house.” I gave them the address and they sent someone with me to protect the a/c systems.

  I didn’t run back but I didn’t slow down for anyone either. The bike had just under a full tank and I headed out on I-10 for Los Angeles. There was a large grouping of targets there, probably several Greaters. They wouldn’t expect me to go on the attack. We came across a band of shippers headed north and I sent Sara with them. Marissa still lived in the mountains and I sent a note saying she should help her mother. Sara protested, which shocked me to no end, but when I told her I was on my way to die, she relented.

  Following the map I found myself at the old Capital Records building. How cliché. I pulled out the charm Hyan had made for me, trapping all the Fetches in a half mile radius on this plane and went to work. There were ten Greaters in the building, I could feel them upstairs, which made