The Overlord: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Jared Paul

  THE OVERLORD

  By Jared Paul

  1

  THE WASTELAND

  Tonight, the evening sun sets over miles of wreckage and ruin. It stretches across scorched sands and black waves. A battle took place here not long ago. The remains serve as the only view that my holding cell has to offer. It's a reminder of the things I've done and the things I've taken part in.

  The name’s Solomon Boone. I'm nineteen. A prisoner, I'm currently sitting here in the brig of the United Corps aerial flagship, the "Beast of Burden." Under the jurisdiction of the Free World, I'm awaiting the results of a hearing. Labeled a war criminal, I know in my heart that I’ve never killed anyone who hasn't first tried to kill me.

  I'm told that I'll be in this paint chipped cell for some time and that as long as I'm here, I should make an account of the things I’ve seen. It's part of a new movement to create an existing history. Ever since the Last War, or the "apocalypse" as the wanderers of the wasteland called it, humanity hasn't felt the need to keep a record of its own demise. Now that hope exists, history can exist. After all, what's the point of history if not the hope for a better tomorrow?

  This account is just a single vein to a greater artery that leads to a greater heart. I can only hope to show the way just as it was shown to me. There may be more questions than there are answers, but unanswered is usually how life turns out. I'll start with the end of what was and make my way to the beginning of what is now.

  This wasn't the future we had hoped for. Not that I'd know any different. Nineteen years ago, I was born in the hopeless wasteland. I'm told that the old world was full of strange inventions and ideas, full of people. By my eighteenth birthday, all that was left of humanity were three prospects, if you can even call them that. They were more like three ultimatums to me.

  One, I could join up with the United Corps, with their patched uniforms and frayed berets. The Free World's upholders, the Corps aimed to rebuild the planet as it once was. Their government's operation was based off what was passed down from the obsolete republics of the old world, most notably the United States of America.

  The Corps first came to life as a result of the finality of the Last War. A handful of U.S. Marines was all that was left of the Free World's forces. The Marines fought to keep us from the brink of extinction, helping to build a new world that exists today. "Semper Fidelis." It's what the Marines used to say, a Latin phrase of a promise to always be faithful to the very end. After the war was over, the Marines banded together with whatever survivors they could find. Giving up old borders and loyalties, the collective became known as the United Corps.

  Their survival stemmed a torch of freedom, or at the very least, the dream of freedom. They never seemed to get anything done in the years that followed the Last War, but I've a feeling that's all about to change. However, there's still too much to tell on what's happened to start speculating on what might come to pass.

  As for the people that the Corps swore to protect, their only desire was to farm and build lives of their own. Republic or not, nobody wanted to build a new empire. Not that there's anything wrong with that. People should have the right to be kept safe while equally being left alone. My only problem with that belief was that nobody ever dreamed anymore.

  Without dreams, I had grown up in one of the struggling settlements of the United Corps. The government's only involvement was to protect us from the rogue inhabitants of the wasteland that would often attempt raids on our community. In my mind, the Corps never seemed to be much good for anything else.

  Maybe I was wrong to be discontented, but with long days of working my younger years away, I longed for something that could offer me more than the content little slum around me. I wanted to dream. One day, a dream came. How was I to know that it was secretly a nightmare in disguise? It was the second ultimatum that I'd be faced with and it was far more tempting than the first. I was so eager, ready to take anything over rotting away in the farms of the Corps.

  Every year, crystalline ships would descend from the sky in a spectacle of thunder and flash. From these aerial crafts, advanced warriors would jump down. Finest soldiers I'd ever seen. They were all shielded in sleek, translucent armor with enticing weaponry hanging in their reach.

  These cutting edge soldiers always came to disperse food, water, and medical supplies to the various settlements. Many in the wasteland would refuse their generosity, for these soldiers were Thralls, slaves by choice to a bygone cult that promised a coming peace. The Thralls never came as neighbors. They only ever came to market their ways, alluring the young to join them.

  They were not held in high regard with the older generations. Those old enough to remember knew all too well what the Thralldom had done. The wasteland that I had grown up in was a constant reminder.

  Nuclear fallout. The Thralls never sent a single nuke, though. It was everyone else who was responsible for the wasteland we now call home. Our weapons of mass destruction proved to be a foolish attempt to destroy the Thralldom's reign of terror, but something had to be done. I'm just sorry so many had to live through horror, see it and survive.

  Once a great empire, the powerful Thralldom was the accidental genesis of a young American scientist, an ex-militant turned humble humanitarian. The older generations describe him with skin as dark as midnight and a soothing voice that sounded like it could be from anywhere in the world, yet nowhere in particular. His name was Dr. Deadstock, but the scarred world knew him better as the Overlord. When civilization ran out of its precious oil, Deadstock made a saving discovery. He found that the most powerful fuel on this planet had actually been inside of us all along. It was our own living blood cells.

  The idea behind the Blood Tech was intended to be minimal, a few milligrams from an ample source of volunteers. It was to be just enough to carry society on, but the world wasn't all reasonable people. There were still barbaric places hidden across the globe, veiled by an age of consumerism and apathy. When men of greed figured out that the blood of a neighbor could power a whole city, well, I'll just leave it to imagination.

  A solution was presented to stop the murder. Always a humanitarian, first and foremost, Dr. Deadstock assembled a crew to peacefully end the violence. Along with his assistant, a man he confided in by the name of Chokeberry, they formed a way to control the Blood Tech. It was a key of sorts, a battery heart called the Wandering Star.

  Whoever had the Wandering Star in their possession could essentially switch the planet's power on and off. Deadstock and Chokeberry hoped the device would resolve the thirst for blood, give the greedy something to fear. As they had learned before, though, the world wasn't all reasonable people.

  Every nation, every order, every agenda of the less civilized sectors of the globe wanted the Wandering Star for itself. I say less civilized for lack of a better term. Even the first world countries weren't deserving of a more superior title. They practically stood by and watched as smaller countries used genocide as an excuse to solve an energy crisis.

  Once again, Dr. Deadstock took it upon himself to create a solution. Setting aside his pacifist ways, the former humanitarian hired a mercenary to force a way of peace. He was known as Commander Zero. A man without fear, he was a relentless soldier and a dangerous radical. The days of the Blood Tech had given rise to a new kind of passion, a worship of energy. Zero was such a worshipper. To be sure, it was nothing more than a cult, crowned with its own set of false prophecies.

  Gathering every radical that shared his motivations, Zero paved the way for a different kind of soldier. Under Deadstock's leadership, this new army weaponized the Blood Tech to wage a war in which no one would know how to fight against it.
With the Wandering Star on their side, the Commander led his forces over everything and everyone that he deemed a pollution to the purity of the Blood Tech's power. Zero was sanctioning war crimes, all in the name of Dr. Deadstock.

  Such crimes disgusted the elite nations that had abstained from the bloodshed. It was at this time that people began classifying Commander Zero and his fellow worshipers as slaves, a kingdom of Thralls with Deadstock at its very head. Whether he wanted it or not, he had become the Overlord of the Thralldom.

  As for Chokeberry, Deadstock's confidant, he tried to convince the Thralls to finish the war, to aim their power at the first world countries that were now standing in their way. Deadstock didn't agree, of course, but that didn't stop Chokeberry from persuading Zero to try. The stage had already been set and the curtains weren't about to simply close.

  The first world countries rallied against the Thralldom as a global struggle, the Last War, commenced. Though the Thralls were outnumbered, their power was seemingly unlimited. The Blood Tech drove their ships, their guns, even their very bullets. Their supplies were endless and their strategies were unstoppable. Unfortunately, their opposition knew of only one way to fight back, atomic weaponry.

  Populations went into hiding as every missile silo that the elite nations could get their hands on was emptied. Ever the more advanced, though, the Thralldom endured despite a global nuclear disaster. The Thralls had taken to the skies, launching in their celestial ships while atoms split apart below them. When the bulk of the radiation subsided, they returned to the surface and found a much different world.

  Guarded by the Marines, the remains of humanity emerged from their shelters and stations. Refugees to their own planet, all of mankind was nearly defenseless. Before Zero and the Thralls had the chance to finish off their old enemies, Dr. Deadstock came forward with his final solution. He realized that the only way to save what was left was to take away what was killing it.

  In regret, the Overlord left in a celestial ship for deep space, taking with him the heart of the Blood Tech, the Wandering Star. Without it, the Thralls were just another army, same odds of surviving in the wasteland as anybody else. They playing field had been equaled.

  That was nearly twenty years ago, and nobody has ever found a trace of the Overlord since. Commander Zero always promised the Thralls that their true power would one day be restored, that a Space Wizard from the reaches of the Evening Galaxy would return the energy that was taken from them, the prized Wandering Star. They searched the cosmos for any sign of him, but it was just a false prophecy for the sake of propaganda. Its only service was to keep the Thralldom together as they worked alongside old enemies, bringing stability to a world in ruins.

  Nobody knew what to do with a planet they had all had a hand in destroying, so they decided to reconstruct. In this necessity, many thought of Commander Zero like a father and they, his children. The developing Free World, on the other hand, kept a safe distance, cooperating only with caution. As they rebuilt and innovated a conjoined new world, the Thralldom took control of the water while the Free World held all the food. To survive, they'd both have to get along if they wanted the resource of the other.

  Abandoning my own settlement for the energy cult of the Thralldom might seem improbable, but it was a genuine ultimatum that I was faced with. Marching up to youths like myself, the Thralls would make an offer for enlistment. The offer wasn't easily resisted by the mind of an impoverished youth. Few ever said no to the temptation of luxury and security that was stored up in the Lair of Thralldom.

  The third and last ultimatum that I was faced with was far simpler than joining up with the likes of the Corps or the Thralls. This final choice had only one requirement, to lose all hope entirely. The third ultimatum was merely to die out in the wasteland.

  Roamers would often make attempts at traversing the endless desert, looking for the leftover odds and ends of the Last War. It was a war that somehow destroyed everything, yet managed to leave so much behind for the taking. There were many treasures out in the dangers of the wilderness and they usually came at a great cost. Most of the time, the finder of a treasure would have to pay for it with their very life. Scavenger or raider, whatever one chose to do out in the wasteland, death would always find them quickly. The treasures they'd find would soon be forgotten with them.

  Out there, those who didn't die gave rise to a distant distortion of themselves. We call them Echoes. During the Last War, the atomic weaponry left a wilderness ripe with radiation. If it hadn't killed those who'd ventured into its breath, it had turned them into something worse, a living mutation. Slimy skin and bright green eyes indicated the gradual effect. That, and an unquenchable thirst for fresh flesh, human or otherwise.

  I stayed clear of the outer wasteland, choosing life as most people do, but there's a mark on my arm that says different. The skin of my upper arm is branded with a triangle where a flame sits suspended over its highest peak. At this time, I'm one of the only people left in the whole world with this mark, the mark of the Thralldom.

  Yes, I was a Thrall. In some way, I still am. Some would say I was a servant of slavery and greed. I say I was just a kid who wanted to see something different, something new.

  I wanted to dream, feel hope. The Thralldom promised me that I would if I joined them. I, and others like me, only enlisted in the pursuit of peace, but the Thralldom was built with a more nefarious plan in mind. Its pursuit was the ultimate peace known as death. We youths never saw it coming. We had been too discontent with our upbringings, leading us to be too awestruck with the Thralls to notice the corruption within.

  Though I am only a year older than when I joined, whenever I look back, I see just how young I really was as opposed to how old I feel now. Though the Thralls are all gone now, there were many of us back then. We were a sleeping army. We were waiting. We were waiting for him, the Space Wizard.

  The Thralls would have accomplished their extremist goal a long time ago had it not been for the intervention of the Overlord, may he journey in light. However, some would say that he was to blame for the Last War in the first place. Even so, it was him alone who managed to bring it to an end.

  The Overlord chose to spare humanity by giving up his own. That's why kids like me joined up with the Thralldom. We held the Overlord as our hero. We coveted to be part of that force for good that had won the day all those twenty years ago, before we were even born. That's what kids like me wanted to believe, anyway. For all anybody knew, the Overlord was just a slave to his own designs, a man who only managed to save himself.

  2

  THE SPACE WIZARD

  The Lair of the Thralldom was bordered by a post-volcanic forest. It was a protected paradise, one of the few expanses left on the earth that could still sustain life. Because it was so valuable, the forest was forbidden. Serving as a boundary, the Thralls never entered there, nor did the outside world.

  Most of my service was clocked in those woods. Secret patrols kept people from coming and going, but my job wasn't nearly as interesting or as mobile. I was always stuck in one spot, standing guard over a cache hidden in the woods. Covered in moss and sunken into the ground was a sealed warehouse. It wasn't very big, but it had a musty odor that extended much larger than its own dimensions.

  Situated away from the Lair, nobody of lower rank knew for sure what was being kept inside or why. We all had our suspicions, though. The inactive Blood Tech had to have been put somewhere. Why not here?

  All the same, none of us knew what the Blood Tech even looked like. A dormant stockpile of weapons, maybe? I, for one, wouldn't be able to recognize anything if I saw it.

  Protecting something that I couldn't see, I paced back and forth in front of its sealed door more times than I can ever care to count. The secrets that laid beyond the locks would drive me mad for hours. There was really nothing else to think about, for nothing ever happened in those woods.

  Always it was silent, until an omen came to me through the trees. I
t was the clamor of a continuous rattle, banging at intervals nearby. The beat was odd, it didn't sound like metal or wood being smashed about. It sounded like bones.

  I investigated. Quietly, I snuck into a clearing and discovered the source of the violent rhythm. Two bucks were facing off, their ornate antlers locked. Probably the last of their kind, it was a beastly duel. Hooves tore into the soft, dew-covered earth. Bulging muscles popped from their backs. Mouths flowed with froth as they heaved grunts of fury.

  Again and again, they clashed until their antlers cracked and splintered, each losing a cherished armament. With shattered barbs, they pierced each other with broken spokes. Throats impaled and heads speared, the two brothers fell in defeat from one another. A deadly stalemate, the wild had shown me its omen.

  Examining the fresh carcasses, I picked up one of the antler's barbs that had broken off. Deciding to keep it, I took it as a reminder to myself that there's still some life left in this ruined world, even if it's fragile life at that. Taking the fragment back with me to my post, time continued so mundanely that I could hear every drop of water running off of every leaf. It was then that the warehouse door creaked opened all by itself. My skin practically jumped out of my armor when I heard the cache break its own seal.

  An ominous, synthetic voice then began to stutter through some old speakers beyond the darkness of the entrance. Breaking static, the voice came in clear, "This is the Far Stranger. Logging in. Acquiring connection. Activating the Blood Tech to standby. Energy system is fully operational."

  The Far Stranger was the Overlord's personal artificial intelligence, designed to speak for the functions of the Blood Tech as well as maintain control over the use of the Wandering Star. In short, the intelligence served as a sort of regulator. Yet, the Overlord had taken the Far Stranger with him when he left for deep space. What was that synthetic life form doing back on Earth?

  I didn't know it at the time, but up in the sky was the answer to my question. A fiery object came billowing down in thick smoke, streaming from the heavens uncontrollably toward the ground below. I soon lost sight of it and its noise ceased to ricochet toward my position. Something arrived and that something crashed.