The Last Everything

by Frank Kennedy

  “With this power, you could see the colonies of Earth though you be light-years and a literal universe away. You are the beginning and the end, and there are only nine others like you. Small, but an army of staggering power when combined.

  “These are the things you must know, Jamie. Why else would men risk everything to destroy you, while others will go to any length to protect the program until it fulfills its mission? I will not try to guard your feelings any longer. You will listen to me, Jamie, and you will do as I say. We must leave here. The shadows are coming. You can feel them, see them. They must not be given the chance to destroy you before the appointed time.”

  Jamie saw the eyes of a gentle mother morph into beads of madness. He stepped back from her, but not out of fear. He boiled with unexpected excitement. She was right: He heard their footsteps, just like when he sensed them nearby in the forest. The shadows were coming. Bidwell.

  “I can’t get out,” he said. “I don’t know how.”

  “Allow the Jewel to guide you. It will show you how to see beyond the physical world. All matter is born of the universe; it can be decimated by that same universe. Turn around and face the door, and you will see the possibilities. It is time to leave.”

  He grabbed for the doorknob but felt nothing. Then, unable to look down, Jamie felt a liquid encase his hand as if he were washing it in frigid soap and water. Somewhere in his mind he saw the components of a lock and heard Lydia whispering in his ear.

  “Grab the tumbler. Release it. Yes. That’s the way.”

  Just like that, shadows drifted away like fog burned off by the morning sun, and the door cracked open. Jamie pulled back his hand and looked down to see a blurred convolution of his fingers intertwined with the lock’s components. Horrified, he yanked his hand away, and the sensation of soap and water disappeared.

  “It’s happening,” he whispered. “I’m changing.”

  “No,” Lydia said. “You’re learning.”

  Jamie pulled back the door and expected to see the deputy outside, but no one was stationed there. The room from which he emerged was located at the end of the corridor. To his left and directly across, another hallway led to the rear past the holding cells. Jamie heard contentious voices not far away, all of them familiar.

  When he leaned all the way into the hall, he saw the deputy who twice locked the door. The short man, perhaps in his mid-twenties with a razor-thin mustache and gelled black hair combed with precision, appeared distracted by the voices.

  Jamie focused on the deputy’s gun.

  Lydia’s icy grip encircled Jamie’s neck, and his rage grew.

  “He is in your way,” she said. “He will try to stop you. Kill him.”

  Every part of him said this obstacle must be eliminated, so Jamie allowed rage to carry him on with the speed and agility of a leopard.

  The deputy didn’t see it coming.

  54

  S AMMIE THOUGHT SHE had an excellent jailbreak plan in mind until Agent Hedgecock appeared in the lobby, cell phone glued to his ear. As soon as the man’s eyes met hers, Sammie changed her plans, opened the waiting-room door, and turned to Michael.

  “I’ll deal with Agent Hedgecock,” she whispered. “You’ve got to distract the other one. The deputy behind the counter. OK, Coop?”

  He hesitated to nod but did so with a visible lump in his throat. Sammie opened the door and made a beeline for Hedgecock, who now headed toward her with purpose.

  “Agent, Michael and I have been talking and …”

  He raised a hand. “That will be all, Miss Huggins.” Hedgecock turned to Martha Lynn, the deputy behind the counter. “Deputy, please escort these two to a cell at once.”

  The room exploded with voices speaking over each other. Martha Lynn boomed her objections, and Sammie insisted this was an outrage, that Hedgecock had no right to do that, let alone to hold her cousin John for questioning. Hedgecock glared.

  “John?” He said. “Don’t you mean Jamie?”

  Sammie didn’t blink. She put the pieces together; the phone call must have blown Sammie’s tall tale out of the water. She wanted to curse; if only she had five more minutes. For an instant, she darted her eyes toward Michael, who knew the gig was up.

  Martha Lynn tried to intervene again. “Agent, let’s cool our britches and talk this out. Now why do you want to put these children in holding? They ain’t done a thing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Hedgecock never took his eyes off Sammie. “Familiar song, Deputy. For the moment, consider the charge obstruction of justice. You may have heard: There are bodies scattered over three counties.” His eyes, now cold and dark, latched onto Sammie just long enough for her to realize she stood on the precipice. “The other charges,” the agent continued, “in due course. The boy in the back is not this girl’s cousin. Isn’t that right, Samantha?”

  Michael whispered, “Oh, shit. We’re deep in it now.”

  He turned again to Martha Lynn, whose eyes darted between him and Sammie. Michael took a step closer to her and said Hedgecock was full of crap. They were victims, he insisted.

  “You don’t understand anything,” Sammie told Hedgecock before turning to the deputy. “He’s making a huge mistake, Martha Lynn. Please. We’re not the bad guys.”

  “Do we need to cuff you?” Hedgecock asked.

  He didn’t receive an answer. Another voice groaned halfway down the corridor near the interrogation room. Hedgecock swung about and saw the disturbance when Michael, Martha Lynn, and Sammie did. Hedgecock reached for his holstered pistol.

  Jamie was scrapping with a deputy. Jamie, who was easily six inches taller, had one arm wrapped about the deputy’s throat as he reached for the man’s service revolver with the other. The officer yelled for assistance, but Jamie threw him against the wall, leveled him with a hard left cross and reached down for the weapon as the deputy slid shaken to the floor.

  Hedgecock unholstered his pistol and aimed, yelling for Jamie to drop and place his hands behind his head. Simultaneously, Martha Lynn reached for her weapon. None of them was as fast as Sammie, who reacted with a single Chancellor-trained maneuver that stung Hedgecock behind both knee caps and allowed her to grab the pistol before he knew what happened. Hedgecock fell to his knees in a moan, and Martha Lynn turned her revolver toward Sammie, who aimed squarely at the agent’s head.

  “No, child,” Martha Lynn said. “You don’t wanna do this, baby.”

  “You don’t understand,” Sammie said, “and I don’t have time to explain.” She turned to Michael. “Give him your pistol. Do it. Now.”

  “No, ma’am, I will not.”

  “I don’t want to hurt anybody. But I swear to you, I’ll shoot him. All you have to do is let the three of us go. You’ll never see us again.”

  From the corner of his eye, Michael saw Jamie stand up with the other deputy’s revolver. However, Michael’s focus changed at once.

  Martha Lynn’s blood-chilling scream signaled the end to their dubious escape plan. Michael heard the destructor coming before he saw it. Sammie swung on her heels, and Hedgecock rose, prepared to jump her.

  The double glass doors of the Austin Springs Police Department were no match for a giant black SUV driven by an ex-track coach born in the Collectorate. The oversized car brought hell on wheels as it barreled through the entrance, shattering the doors, sending a swarm of glass toward everyone in the lobby. The doors broke from their jambs, their steel frames bounding forward along with debris from the ceiling and either wall.

  Sparks flew, tires squealed, and one door frame flew end-over-end, smacking Martha Lynn and Michael simultaneously, while the other landed on the SUV’s hood. Sammie threw one hand over her face and turned away from the flying glass, but not fast enough. Something blunt pounded her back, and the momentum threw her forward. She fell into Hedgecock, who was on his feet, scrambling. She lost the pistol and saw nothing but tiny pieces of glass as she fell. All at once, both hands exploded in pain, and a
great shadow fell upon her.

  The SUV swerved, coming to a stop at a forty-five degree angle to the welcome counter. Sammie smelled gas and looked directly up at the vehicle’s grille, which was mangled. The rest of her lay under the monster. For an instant, the room fell silent save the hum of the SUV’s engine and the tinkling of more glass upon the floor.

  The silence turned into chaos. Sammie heard the driver-side door open and looked over her shoulder to see two feet in black shoes standing firm. Agent Hedgecock, dazed and sporting a small cut on his forehead, scrambled past Sammie and reached for the pistol she lost. He tried to rise.

  Hedgecock was halfway to his feet before the lobby erupted in the thunder of automatic-weapons fire. He contorted like a marionette and collapsed in a heap, his body riddled in bullets, his eyes staring into forever.

  Sammie got a glimpse of Michael’s legs as her friend scrambled behind the counter. She heard Martha Lynn ranting into a phone that they were under attack and an officer was down. The driver unloaded his M16 on that area. Bullets pounded and ricocheted, papers flew, more glass shattered.

  Sammie never felt so helpless. The pistol lay next to Hedgecock’s body, five feet away. She would have to crawl over glass to reach it, but Sammie saw no other option. The driver was rounding the vehicle and would see her in seconds. She had to reach. She had to reach.

  55

  H AIR FELL IN his face, but nothing disrupted his aim. Jamie was one with the deputy’s revolver as he fired in rapid succession, moving steadily forward all the while. He put three bullets into Arthur Tynes, who grunted and collapsed a few feet from Sammie. Jamie pressed forward. Machine-gun fire raged from the rear of the station, and Arthur did not stay down.

  Jamie’s anger became a perfectly-focused tunnel. He did not recognize the man who was once his running mentor. Rather, he saw a beast who would kill Sammie if given the chance. Jamie pulled the trigger five times. Blood sprayed against the wall behind Arthur, who crumpled in a heap with bullet holes in his face.

  An instinct driven by the Jewel told him to make sure the lobby was secure. He scanned the now-jammed entrance. Behind the counter, the large black deputy who gave him a t-shirt fired toward the rear, where light shown in through an opened door.

  Michael raced out from the counter, stained in Arthur’s blood.

  “Gonna need a new coach, dude,” he said through his jitters.

  Jamie lowered his weapon as he stepped on glass without care, reached down and grabbed Sammie’s hand. He felt nothing beyond a vague sense of responsibility to his friends.

  “C’mon,” he whispered. “We have to go.” As he grabbed hold of her bloody left hand, she screamed in agony, but he reassured her, “They’ll heal. Just hold me.”

  As she stood up, however, bullets flew again, this time from the far end of the corridor in the direction of the cells.

  The smaller deputy who lost his revolver to Jamie was racing toward the carnage at the base of the SUV. He screamed, demanding everyone stay down. Somewhere in mid-sentence, however, he contorted as two bullets exited through his chest. He fell face-first. Behind him, Jennifer Bowman advanced with an M16.

  Jamie pushed the hair from his face and whispered to Sammie.

  “I’m out of bullets. Give it to me.”

  She laid the pistol in his hands. He told her to get down. As Jamie aimed his pistol over Sammie and knew the Jewel would help him take out the advancing attacker, he heard another jolt of weapons fire from behind the counter. The large deputy, Martha Lynn, screamed as she rose up and let loose her fury upon the intruders trying to enter through the back door. She gasped at one point like a child receiving a penicillin shot then collapsed.

  Jamie turned the pistol down the corridor. As the first bullets from the M16 missed high, Jamie again tapped into the Jewel’s self-preservation program. He saw a tunnel through a wreath of blackness. At the heart of that tunnel, he saw the intruder’s eyes. He kept a steady hand, allowed himself to indulge in his own rage, and fired two shots. Jennifer Bowman swayed, dropped her weapon and grabbed her face, which opened up as the second bullet cracked her left cheek. She fell.

  Jamie didn’t waste a second. He reached down and grabbed the driver’s M16, which he slung over his shoulder. He checked the clip in his pistol and handed the weapon to Michael.

  He sensed other shadows close by, coming in through the rear. He allowed the Jewel to see beyond these walls, but the results were murky, more intuition than anything. He had to get his friends out of here.

  He swung about, saw Jennifer’s rifle lying in the corridor next to the dead deputy and knew what had to be done. As soon as he was sure Sammie was OK, he pointed to the corridor, told them to take the first left past the jail cells and then …

  “Be ready for anything,” he said without emotion.

  Michael didn’t respond. Jamie saw the look of awe and terror in his best friend’s eyes. They were surrounded by splattered blood that was in large part his own doing. Jamie felt nothing.

  He grabbed the other M16 and handed it to Sammie as they passed cells and threw open the back door. They heard a thunderous slam not far away, followed by brief automatic weapons fire. Once outside, they scanned the largely empty lot behind the station.

  “Where now?” Michael asked.

  “A car,” Jamie said. “Any car. We’ve gotta get out of town.”

  They twisted about, weapons hot, looking for signs of the enemy as well as an opportunity for a quick theft. What they found instead was a patrol car covered in water and soap suds, clearly in the process of being washed. Beside the car, a hose spilled water next to the body of a black-haired boy perhaps no older than Jamie. The boy’s blood intermingled with the water and formed a river of swirling red along the pavement.

  “Oh, hell,” Michael muttered. “They’re killing everybody.”

  Jamie heard the shadows coming. The Bidwells. He told his friends to duck behind the patrol car. As if on cue, Agatha and Christian Bidwell raced out the other rear door. Jamie raised the M16 and prepared to take out his final living enemies. Christian opened fire, blowing out the car’s tires and shattering its windshield.

  56

  S AMMIE DROPPED IN a defensive crouch alongside Michael and Jamie. She despised the notion of being taken down by a Bidwell even more annoying than Agatha. Eight times she trained in the Louisiana bayou alongside Christian, who pronounced on their second outing that he would take her virginity within the year. She was 13 at the time and unimpressed.

  Still, she had to be practical. She looked for the most likely exit strategy and pointed toward the town park adjacent to the ASPD parking lot.

  “There,” she said over the hail of bullets. “That’s where we have to be. We’re too exposed out here. More police are bound to show up any second. I’ll provide cover. Pin these two down. You guys know how to steal a car, so do it. I’ll catch up to you.”

  She didn’t wait for her friends to protest. Sammie leaped into a semi-exposed position and laid covering fire on the Bidwells, who found themselves pinned down behind an air-conditioning unit. When Jamie and Michael took her cue and raced in a crouch toward the park, which was covered in a heavy canopy of trees, Sammie decided to take the offensive.

  Her father’s favorite motto was, “No surrender, no retreat.” She refused to disappoint Daddy again. She embraced the seductive beauty of her rifle and allowed all the Chancellor training and cold-blooded philosophy of her father to guide her.

  The screams of desperate, fleeing townsfolk echoed from the park as the report of high-powered weapons ended the ageless peace of Austin Springs. She exchanged more volleys then made up her mind.

  “You would have been proud, Daddy,” she said as she advanced.

  With visions of a downed helicopter buoying her ego, Sammie stepped from the patrol car into an exposed position. She ran laterally across the parking lot, firing every few steps, until Christian rose and fired back.

  As she aimed to return fire, Sa
mmie knew her entire life led here. Her father said a true soldier of the Guard not only knew how to kill without mercy but also mock those he was about to kill. Through this, he told her, the lesser castes were kept in place.

  Stand in the open, he told her during discussions of tactical strategy. Show them you are unafraid and will defeat them anyway. They will cower before such courage.

  Those words lifted her. I am a Chancellor. Thank you, Daddy.

  Her body jerked as she fired. Christian twitched as Sammie shot the rifle out of his hands. He dove for cover to retrieve the weapon. She saw Agatha’s head peek around the corner of the AC unit, and she prepared to make a final, decisive assault on their position. If she never got a chance to see the Collectorate, at least she would truly understand what it was like to be a member of the Unification Guard.

  Her legs did not take her forward, however. Her vision blurred. Only as the sound of a speeding car screeched yards behind her, did Sammie look down and see the bloody hole in her belly. She wobbled and fell to her knees. As she swooned, she saw both Bidwells rise from behind their protective shield and take aim.

  Bullets whizzed past her, but they were not from the Bidwells. A car screamed to a stop behind her. Two doors opened, and the thunderous blasts of rifles shouted into her ears. Someone’s left arm wrapped around her, and that same savior’s right arm stretched forward, an M16 blazing at the end of it. She felt sleepy.

  57

  A minute earlier, the owner of a Cadillac convertible fled as Jamie and Michael approached with weapons extended. As the best friends jumped in, Michael said:

  “You couldn’t have asked that dude for the keys?”

  His words fell flat when he saw what Jamie was doing.

  “Holy shit on a …” Michael muttered as he fell into his seat.

  Only when Jamie pushed his hair from his face and looked to the ignition did he realize his right hand was buried inside the machine, as if welded to it. He saw inside the device, positioned his fingers around the starter mechanism, and turned. The convertible roared into life.