The Only Human

by Rick Mofina

  “But I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “You don’t want to go to the Pit!”

  “What’s that?”

  “Listen to me! Say you’re sixteen and in good health!”

  “Okay.”

  The line moved to the next section, to guards with clipboards.

  “You, one nine fifty-seven P!” A guard barked at Ty. “Age?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Any health problems?”

  “No.”

  “You’re on the work detail! Go with that group, hurry!”

  Guards yelled at Ty’s line as they trotted to the next section, a larger marshalling area where they formed lines four deep. They waited for nearly thirty minutes in the semi-darkness before more guards, new ones, emerged, flanked by gargoyles.

  “This is the dawning of The Trembling!” A guard barked. “Human reign of the planet has ceased! You will never escape this place! You will work. The longest you will survive is a month. Then you will be replaced.”

  “What about seeing our families?” One prisoner asked.

  “Shut up!” A guard yelled. “Who said that?”

  The air tensed as the guards found the guilty man, punching him while they hauled him to the front under the approving gaze of gargoyles.

  “Take him to the Pit!” A head guard ordered.

  The man was dragged off as the guard looked over the group. “Now the rest of you will set out to work immediately.”

  Ty estimated that there were about two hundred men and women in his new group. They marched a great distance down the water-soaked pathway to another tunnel where they heard the clink and clang of metal against rock.

  They came upon a large section where hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners were tunneling, breaking rock with picks and shoveling it into coal cars that other prisoners pushed with great effort down tracks that led to another tunnel.

  “One nine fifty-seven P! Take a shovel and work in teams with the breaker and the pusher. Fill the car to the top, move in an empty car then roll the full one down the track to the belt. Switch jobs every hour when we tell you! No talking! Break the rules and it’s the Pit for you!”

  Ty took hold of the shovel and strained to lift his first blade-full of stones. Water slicked the tunnel which was ribbed with black, gray and shining layered rock. The constant seepage had turned the earth under everyone’s feet to mud making it difficult to work without slipping.

  In a short time, Ty’s arms, legs and back began aching. When an hour had passed and he took up the pick he welcomed the change. It meant using different muscles. But his relief was short-lived. Within minutes it became a challenge for Ty to heft and swing the pick. When his turn came to push the loaded car along the tracks, he was certain a brake had locked because it wouldn’t budge.

  Guards berated him, threatening to send him to the Pit, until he finally found the strength to move the car. He rolled it along the designated track and into the tunnel with a roaring conveyer, where other prisoners took charge. The car was hydraulically coupled, hoisted, and its contents dumped onto a conveyor to be crushed for making concrete.

  The trip back to the work area was Ty’s only chance to rest.

  Hour after hour passed; without a break, without food and without water. As the labor took its toll, prisoner’s lost all track of time. A bell sounded and their shift ended. Guards marched them to another tunnel, which turned out to be their barracks. The ground resembled a boardwalk, with long running rows of wood about seven feet wide. Every three feet a number was painted.

  “Find your number!” Guards yelled. “That is your bed. You will be fed. Then you sleep to the bell for breakfast and work!”

  Ty found his bed. There was no mattress, no blanket, no pillow, only wooden planks. Exhausted, dirty and wet, Ty was happy to sit on his bed. At least it was dry. He noticed that some of the prisoners, those who seemed to have been here longest, were quietly talking to each other.

  “Where do we shower and brush our teeth?” Ty whispered to the man beside him.

  “Tomorrow. Every second day. Les Larkin. Twenty-one ninety K.”

  “Ty Price.”

  They shook hands then Ty saw a woman with a large pail distributing buns while guards and gargoyles watched. Each prisoner got two. Ty found they were hard, stale with bluish spots of mould.

  “The food comes from dumpsters on the surface,” Les said.

  Ty was so hungry he picked off the mould and bit half of his first bun.

  “Easy,” Les said. “Always save some food in your pocket.”

  Another woman came by with a large water bottle strapped to her back with a hose and nozzle mechanism. She gave each prisoner a cup full before moving on.

  “I’m an accountant from Hartford, Connecticut,” Les said, chewing his bun slowly. “I was on a double-decker tour bus with my wife when they said they had motor trouble and drove us to a rail yard to get on a new bus. It all seemed normal. Then they said the plan changed and they put us all on a train and brought us to this hell. I haven’t seen my wife since. The same thing happened to Vivian here.”

  An older woman beside Les got closer to Ty.

  “My apartment building in Brooklyn was evacuated, supposedly because of a gas main break!” Vivian kept her voice hushed. “What a crock! They took our bus to Manhattan, to the rail yards a few blocks from Penn. They said they were taking us to a shelter but they put us on a train here. No one can believe this! A gargoyle uprising! We’re all trapped in a nightmare! Nobody saw it coming!”

  A man from the next row joined them, keeping his voice low.

  “Steve Thompson, retired cop from Newark. I was on the Staten Island Ferry when I got transported here. Look, the word we’re getting from other tunnels, coming in from new arrivals from the surface, is that the invasion and gargoyle infiltration, of police, fire, paramedics, and most government services, is spreading to Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. I heard that one guy, a French pilot, who was on the tour bus, said that he thinks it’s happening in Paris, London, across Europe, too!”

  “Dear Lord!” Vivian said. “Somebody better do something to stop this or we’re done! Human beings are through!”

  “The latest intell is,” Steve stopped, looked around, to ensure no one could overhear, “is talk of a liberator, a person or force, who knows exactly how to end The Trembling!”

  Vivian shut her eyes to absorb the thought.

  “I pray with all my heart its true, because,” she covered her face with her hands, “because I haven’t seen my daughter, Emily, since they brought us here. I’m so scared they took her to the Pit.”

  Les comforted her then turned to Ty.

  “You just arrived. What’ve you heard on the surface, Ty?”

  Before he could answer a guard’s voice reverberated in the barracks.

  “Sleep! No talking!”

  Guards patrolled the boardwalk as everyone retreated to their space and thoughts. Ty struggled against his tears, the pain of his aching body and his anguish over not knowing the fate of his parents and Ella.

  Then he grew angry. First, at himself for stupidly walking into this situation then at the gargoyles who were destroying his world.

  This isn’t over and I’m not giving up without a fight.

  Ty reached for the incantation and in the weak, ambient light read the rune version phonetically over and over and over until he fell asleep.

  23

  A sudden pain in Ty’s leg jerked him awake from a dead sleep.

  Near him, a guard whacked Les Larkin with his club.

  “Didn’t you hear the bell? Get up, slobs!”

  The guard continued down the boardwalk, striking others, even those who’d awakened. Les sat up rubbing his thigh. “There’s no bell,” he whispered. “They wake us this way to break and control us.”

  “We’ve learned that the guards are convicts,” Steve added. “They were serving life for violent crimes, like murder and r
ape. The gargoyles infiltrated prisons, got them out and put them to work here.”

  Ty joined a line of prisoners marching to an area that reeked – the latrine. Here, there was no privacy as men urinated in ditches while others, along with the women, used buckets. There were newspapers to wipe themselves. The overriding need of bodily functions superseded shame.

  Ty left the latrine pushing back his disgust and returned to his space with the others for breakfast.

  Two girls were distributing donuts, bread slices and muffins. Some had already been partially eaten. When Ty looked up to receive a muffin with a bite taken out of it, he glimpsed the girl’s face and his heart skipped.

  “Ella!” he whispered.

  Her eyes widened upon recognizing him. Tears webbed down her dirt-streaked face. When Ty reached up to brush them, he saw bruises on her lower jaw, then others on her neck and arms.

  “Oh Ty, I’m so scared!”

  He could hardly hear her soft voice.

  “Please,” she said. “Please make it all stop. Please!”

  He wrapped his arms around her.

  “I’ll do it, Ella I promise, I’ll do it!”

  Suddenly they heard approaching footsteps.

  “You two! Stand apart!” Guards ordered.

  As one guard raised his arm to strike Ella, Ty shielded her and took the blow which came with such force he fell to his knees.

  “You got five seconds to get up!” The guard shouted. “Or you go to the Pit, you worm! Five – four – three – two –”

  Ella helped Ty to his feet.

  The guard glared at them, then glanced to the nearest gargoyle for any indication of sending Ty to the Pit, or sparing him. A moment passed, the guard spit on the ground. Ty was to be spared.

  “Both of you get to work!”

  Ty fell into line with the other prisoners and they resumed their drudgery. His second day went by like his first. The third day dragged by like the others and each successive day passed in the same way until he started losing count. With each day, his muscles ached a little less and hardened. But he was also losing weight. At times he had to struggle to stay alert, to seize any opportunity to act. But sadly, as one day bled into another, he felt his chances were slipping away.

  As time rolled by, the people he knew, Les, Vivian and Steve had eventually vanished. Were they sent to other work details? Or were they sent to the Pit? Ty never knew. At the same time, the trains, crammed with new arrivals, kept coming.

  One morning the guards selected Ty, and about twenty-five other prisoners, to stay behind. Foreboding filled the horrid air as they waited at attention. After the larger work group had marched off into the tunnel, a guard spoke.

  “You lucky maggots have been selected for your new assignment in The Great Works!”

  Ty’s new detail marched to a tunnel he’d never seen before. There they and their guards boarded flat bed rail cars, powered by prisoners pumping a handcar mechanism. They travelled on a special track through a tunnel network.

  “We’re under Manhattan’s east side,” a prisoner told Ty. “The rumors say they’ve hijacked the Second Avenue Subway construction project and built a network of new secret tunnels.”

  When the small train stopped, they hopped off and made their way along a connecting tunnel that opened to a site that filled them with awe. The Great Works was a massive cavernous area of jaw-dropping proportion, easily rivaling the stadium in New Jersey where he saw the Jets and Giants play.

  The center was occupied with the construction of a colossal object, appearing to be a gigantic statue. It consisted of several sections, laced with multi-leveled scaffolding. The workers were ant-like against the enormity of the creation. Ty estimated a thousand prisoners toiling amid the clamor of equipment and boom of guards issuing orders through a loudspeaker system.

  At the extreme end, the object’s huge completed top segment rested on a column rising gloriously over the activity. Ty figured they were constructing the largest gargoyle of all time. This top section, as big as an apartment building, was the massive horned reptilian head, wrapped with demonic scaling, its feral jaws jutting, and ferocious eyes raging with fury as it glared down upon all who stood before it.

  “This is the great monument they worship, the son of Lucifer, prince of gargoyles,” one prisoner said as the group tramped down the pathway to the construction site.

  They were immediately put to work tasked with emptying heavy sand bags onto a conveyor belt, which moved the sand to the mixer for making concrete. Each prisoner took one end of a bag, hefted it to the belt’s blade table, which sliced the bag. Then they shook it empty, discarded it and repeated the process.

  As his day progressed, Ty realized that working conditions were better here than tunneling. Physically, he managed the work better. Here, they were given more breaks for water and food.

  Ty adjusted to the new routine. As the days passed he felt stronger and sharper. At every turn he searched for ways to escape and remove the curse.

  But it was futile.

  The guards and demons were vigilant.

  One day during a lunch break as Ty ate half of a stale club sandwich, he noticed a man sitting nearby eating slowly. Something about him was familiar. Careful not to attract the attention of guards, Ty moved closer to get a better look at him. Ty recognized the man’s eyes, the man’s face.

  Oh my God!

  “Dad!”

  24

  The man was Ty’s father.

  At the same time he was a stranger. His face bore new lines, as if he’d aged. He looked smaller, his spirit was gone, leaving him with sunken, darkened eyes but they brightened the instant he saw his son.

  “Ty!” He embraced him, patting his back gently. “Ty, oh, it’s so good to see you!” He looked him over. “I wish it were anywhere but here; but you’re okay?”

  “I’m okay, dad. Are you okay?”

  “I’m tired, very tired, but I carry on. We all carry on.”

  “Dad, where’s mom?”

  The light that had risen in his father’s eyes faltered and he looked off at nothing.

  “She’s not here. I know that she was arrested but I don’t know where they took her.”

  When his dad looked back at him, blinking several times, Ty sensed he wasn’t telling him the truth.

  “Ty, I didn’t know what had happened to you, son,” his dad said. “I was sick with worry. I’m happy to see you!”

  “I’m happy to see you too, dad.”

  “It seems like a lifetime ago when police came to my office, telling me that you’d been in an accident, a serious one. I had to go with them right away, but it was a ruse and I was put on a train and brought here.”

  “Did they tell you why?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone talk to you about my great-great grandfather?”

  “Which one? On your mom’s side, or my side?”

  “Robert Price, who helped build the first skyscrapers in the city.”

  “No, son, why?”

  Ty wanted to tell his dad about Professor Blair, about the curse but didn’t know where to begin. He glanced around and kept his voice low.

  “Dad, there might be a way to stop all this. It’s all a curse and I can remove it!”

  “Ty, that’s a fantasy. It’s not possible. It’s over, the gargoyles have won. Humans have lost.” He indicated the Great Works. “Look at what they’ve done so far! No one can stop them!”

  “But we can’t give up hope, dad! Listen, there’s a way!”

  “Son, working here I’ve overheard a lot from the top guards about more details of this uprising.”

  “Tell me what you heard.”

  “This big monument they’re building with slave labor will replace the Statue of Liberty, and will be three times the size. It will celebrate their conquest and the new age of The Trembling. And there’s another huge subterranean area here where they’re building another colossal statue to replace the Washington Monument,
in Washington, D.C.”

  “So it’s spreading.”

  “New York is the spark of their uprising but yes it’s spreading around the world. There are plans to erect monstrous gargoyle monuments in other cities; one to go atop the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, one to go atop the clock at Westminster in London, one to replace the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, one to replace the statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and several to crown the pyramids in Egypt. There will be others going up around the globe.”

  “This is bad.”

  “It gets worse. They plan to put humans on ships to be relocated to remote regions. Word is they’ve already sent an advance slave ship to prepare new solar-powered settlements in the Arctic and Antarctica. Humans will be forced to harvest resources used to fuel the uprising. Other slave ships will go to other uninhabited corners of the earth. And they have special plans for those sent to the Pit.”

  “Dad, there’s a way to end this! You have to believe me!”

  “Ty, listen to me, son! The human race is in the process of being conquered and enslaved, and nothing can stop it. That’s the horrible truth. We have to do what we can to survive while remembering all the good we had in our lives, okay?”

  No, it’s not okay!

  But Ty said nothing.

  “I’m going to be reassigned,” his dad said. “I’m going to be moved.”

  “Where? I want to go with you!”

  “I don’t know where but you can’t come, son. You know the rules.”

  Prisoners were beginning to move, the lunch break was ending.

  “Dad, tell me the truth: where’s mom?”

  His father’s Adam’s apple rose and fell as he looked at him for a moment.

  “They took her to the Pit, son.”

  “Is she still there?”

  Tears rolled down his father’s face.

  “I wish I could turn back time, Ty. Our divorce was a mistake. We had problems, but we should’ve tried harder to work them out because deep down I loved her and I know she loved me.”