After The Rising (Book 1): The Risen Storm

by A. R. Daun

  It lay close to the dingy rest room door to the side of the building. It was lumpish and asymmetrical, its form made ambiguous by the weakening light of the afternoon sun and the black asphalt. Haley at first thought that it was a bunched up old rag that had been thrown carelessly to the ground, and she bent to look closely at it.

  It was a hand, torn below the wrist and trailing gossamer threads of scarlet. A gleaming bone protruded from the mass of red striated muscles, its pallor shockingly white in the dusk, and a mass of thick dark hair coated the knuckles.

  Haley screamed. She turned to run away and suddenly Richard was there in front of her, and she was running into his arms, burying her face in the comforting solidity of him.

  He stroked her back, saying nothing. She was trembling in his arms, and she could smell the faint aroma of tobacco on his plaid shirt, and for one brief moment she thought of her father, who had been an unrepentant smoker all his life.

  “Please,” she mumbled. “Let's go. We can call the police.”

  “Shhhh...” He said. He took a Samsung Galaxy from his back pocket and thumbed it open, then grimaced.

  He released his hold on her, and looked her in the eye.

  “No signal here,” he said. “We'll have to ride back to the ranch. You go back to the car and wait for me.”

  She started shaking her head from side to side.

  “No, no, no, “ she moaned softly. “What are you going to do? The person who did this may still be here.”

  He seemed to consider this, then nodded.

  “Ok,” he finally said, then led her to his car.

  They drove off in silence. It had grown fully dark and the headlights of the car barely illuminated the pockmarked road as they made their way carefully back towards Route 16. There were no other sources of light around, and it seemed to Haley as if they had been somehow transported to some place where silence and an eternal night were permanent fixtures of a Stygian netherworld.

  She turned to face Richard.

  “What do you think happened there?” She asked softly.

  He glanced quickly at her, then returned his attention back to the road. He was a fussy, slow driver, and Haley thought for the second time how he reminded her of her father.

  “I don't know.” He replied. “Could you try your cell and see whether we can call the police?”

  A quick check showed no bars on her Nexus phone, and Haley shook her head in the negative.

  Meanwhile, they had turned at the junction of the state highway and were now barreling along at the more stately speed of 45 miles an hour. Haley thought that if she ever had a medical emergency she would make sure that Richard would not be the driver.

  She felt relieved when she finally saw the large front facing wooden sign that proclaimed “Welcome to the Western Oaks Guest Ranch”. A quick check of her Nexus showed that two new bars had popped up, and she immediately dialed 911 as Richard guided the Corolla into the long driveway that led into the ranch proper.

  Haley had just finished relaying the address and the circumstances of her call to the police dispatcher when the car suddenly came to a sudden stop. She was jerked forwards and only her seat belt prevented her from smashing into the dashboard.

  “Hey!” She said, and turned to Richard, but he was staring open mouthed at some sight in front of them.

  She looked and gasped.

  The entire ranch was dark. The beam of the Toyota provided a cone of light that rapidly dissipated into the distance, but it was the only source of illumination in the entire place. Haley had never seen the place look so desolate and somehow threatening.

  “What the hell...” Richard whispered beside her.

  Something came from around the lodge and started moving towards them at an amazing speed. Haley had been riding horses since she was very young, and this thing was moving at a significantly faster clip.

  She screamed, and Richard screamed in a surreal duet with her.

  When Haley was young, she used to furtively sneak into the living room of her parents' home and watch horror flicks on cable with the sound turned low, even though she had been explicitly forbidden to do so by her mother. On some nights after her nightly rendezvous with Freddy Krueger, Chucky, and Pennywise the Clown she would have horrible dreams of being chased by some faceless villain, her legs turning to taffy and her breath coming to her in slow asphyxiated gasps. The Corolla's lights had finally illuminated the thing and for one brief moment Haley thought she was again dreaming, and this elongated monstrosity that was hurtling towards them was part of a nightmare that was part retribution for disobeying her mother's orders.

  Then she was jerked forwards, and the seat belts again locked into place. Richard had dropped the Toyota into reverse and was now backing away from the oncoming thing at a dangerous speed, and the engine started to scream in unison with Haley as it propelled them back along the path towards the highway.

  The thing launched itself into the air. It came towards them on an arching trajectory and landed with a huge metallic thump on the Toyota's hood. Its arms ended in long claws, and these produced a series of screeching sounds as they grappled to find purchase on the smooth surface, producing deep dents and actual holes in the steel hood. For one lingering moment, it pressed its face against the windshield, creating thin jagged cracks that ramified through the entire front like earthquake fault lines.

  Haley stared mesmerized at the apparition just a few inches from them, then screamed again. She realized that its facial features, twisted and warped though they may have become, were still recognizable as those of the assistant cook Juan. It drooled at them, its lips frozen in a snarl.

  Richard twisted the wheels. The car almost spiraled out of control as the front of the Toyota exchanged places with the rear, and the centrifugal force of the movement caused the thing to fly off the hood and smash into a copse of bushes along the driveway edge.

  They sped towards the main road.

  Haley turned to look back and saw the thing bounding after them in great leaps. Its arms were outstretched as if beckoning them back, and its muscular legs bunched up before each thrust, carrying the monster that looked so much like her friend forwards up to ten meters at a time.

  But the old Corolla had accelerated to more than 50 miles an hour, and the creature dwindled in the distance. By the time Richard swerved dangerously into the main highway, they were going at more than 70 miles an hour towards the far off lights of San Antonio.

  CHAPTER 36

  Year 15 A.R.

  Extract from the journals of Ammara Lewis

  Denzel came to see me this morning. He is as handsome now as he was the first time I saw him on that beach in Captiva Island, but today he had a concerned expression that made his face all crinkly and funny. My first instinct was to giggle at him, but he kissed me lightly on the lips and that was the end of that thought.

  I asked him what was wrong, tracing the curve of his upper lip with one finger, and he told me that we had lost some fishermen by the Key Largo Settlement.

  I probably stood rooted in shock for a short moment, my breath frozen in the act of an inhalation. My son Alexander had gone there to visit his father a week earlier, and the sudden terror that gripped me must have shown on my face, because Denzel suddenly realized his mistake. He came to me and held me tight in his strong arms, telling me over and over again that Alex was safe, as was his father.

  Damn it.

  I'm writing this now as we are resting by the shade of a grove of over-grown orange trees, part of an orchard that had gone feral in the years following the disappearance of their minders, and I'm still trembling. I cannot wait to get there and hold Alex in my arms, and tell him how much I love him. He'll be protesting and going “awww mom” the entire time, but he'll always be my baby, my little boy.

  There are six of us in this little expedition out of the Miami Beach Settlement. Denzel insisted on coming, although he had been scheduled to lead a caravan to go to Georgia. and the way do
wn is fairly safe and usually uneventful. Then there's Old Man Augusto and three of his Filipino engineers, all of them former members of the ship's crew. They're usually a mute and sullen bunch, as measured by most of the inhabitants in our rather laid-back settlements, but today they were in bright spirits. Along with news of the attack, we had received word that some old generators in fairly good working condition had been discovered in an old warehouse, and they had insisted on tagging along in order to assess whether the machines could be brought into working order.

  Most of the engineers had joined Marco when he elected to stay and found a new colony in New Savannah. So did most of the other surviving crew and passengers, about a thousand souls in all. In my more charitable moments I sometimes think it was because Marco was the highest ranking officer left, besides Staff Captain Uwais.

  But let me be honest here, dear Constant Reader. When people saw me at the time, they didn't see their salvation from the nanotech plague that had devoured the human race. They saw a young, black woman who was slender and conventionally pretty, perhaps even beautiful. Someone fit to grace the cover of the late Cosmopolitan magazine perhaps, give or take a few photoshop passes; or one of those seemingly unapproachable streamlined models who used to strut a stage wearing funky outfits no one in their right mind would actually wear in normal life. Savior of humankind? Please. The world may have been post-apocalyptic, but it certainly was not post-racial or post-gender in any sense of the word.

  What a difference a few years make. Now when I walk the streets they look at me not just with gratitude and hope in their eyes, but perhaps something deeper. Something that scares me more than the doubtful glances I had seen at the beginning. Awe? Worship? Devotion?

  Sometimes I wonder what they would think if they really knew what it's like to be harboring semi-sentient machines. Do they realize that my body has become a living city, a vast megalopolis whose inhabitants produce a constant soft murmur as they course through my veins and saturate my organs in their innumerable numbers? That I can see the world through the sensors of trillions upon trillions of external nanobots wrenched from my flesh and spread like divine manna across the settlement lands? And that these same wretched creatures, stripped of their host body but still functioning and linked across the vast distances of southern Florida to one another and to me, are the only things that keep the so-called Risen at bay?

  I see Denzel motioning for us to ready our packs. It's time to go, but one last thing Constant Reader, before I forget. I leave you once again with a juicy morsel from my favorite philosopher and poet Khalil Gibran, whose writings resonate with me more and more nowadays. He wrote that “Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.”

  I hope people remember that.

  Yours in Time,

  Ammara Lewis,

  Miami Beach Settlement,

  September 14, 2035

  CHAPTER 37

  Year 40 A.R.

  2601 South Figueroa Street

  Los Angeles, CA 90007

  Sometimes I wish I had been born a tree. To sit in one spot and contemplate eternity while the world shrivels away in rotting flesh and spilled blood. That is the ultimate vacation.

  - Lady Ammara

  The lone Moreton Fig that guarded the entrance to the Automobile Club of Southern California at Figuero St. took the long view. It was planted by Charles C. Chapman in 1894. In the years and decades since then, the tree had matured and grown enormous, though its growth was hampered by the stucco walls of the 3-story Spanish Colonial Revival building that flanked it and the energetic pruning of the gardeners who tended to its needs.

  When it was freed at last from the ministrations of its caretakers, the banyan reverted to its baser nature. Its buttress roots, which had already been of prodigious proportions, expanded much further, buckling the concrete driveway and brick pavers that had earlier caged it. Numerous aerial roots reached down from the lower branches to wander snake-like through the now abandoned building, exploring every crevasse and insinuating themselves into the tiniest of cracks. Its canopy reached up ever higher, spreading to fully enclose the entire structure and draping the once stately headquarters of the automobile club in perpetual darkness.

  If it had been given a few more decades to run rampant its strong roots would have reduced the crumbling building to an unrecognizable ruin. But in the fourth decade of its unexpected solitude, something new happened.

  From the southwest a towering wall of spreading branches and questing aerial roots swallowed everything whole. It grew not only vertically, with its canopy reaching thousands of meters up to the blue sky and its massive buttress roots tunneling ever deeper into the yielding earth, but it grew outwards as well. Along the length of its innumerable branches, aerial roots dropped down in ropy strands that twisted around each other before burrowing into the ground, then fusing together until they formed new trunks that had the same girth as the original. From these structures new branches sprouted new leaves, forming their own canopies. By this iterative process the tree, that which now called itself the Devourer of All Things, quickly spread outwards, driving all before it, and enveloping and strangling everything else that could not flee from its ravenous hunger.

  Its first contact with the aging banyan at the Automobile Club was a revelation of sorts to this new and virtually unstoppable entity. There was a single somewhat poignant moment when it paused, when a wave of confusion reverberated through its vast bulk, and it halted in the midst of crushing the much smaller tree and assimilating it.

  The Devourer of All Things was not one for compassion. In its quest for unlimited growth it encircled its prey in unbreakable cords of aerial roots, then ground and dissolved anything organic into its constituent macromolecules. It took in both Risen and non-Risen, animals and plants, and even inanimate structures suffered the consequences of its arrival, as its questing roots pulverized concrete and crushed metal objects into mangled unrecognizable hulks.

  But this banyan was different somehow. In it the Devourer of All Things sensed its own identity, as if the smaller tree was a somewhat imperfect mirror of itself. Indeed, if a botanist from several decades back had somehow been able to view them without being immediately assimilated, he or she would have recognized both as being members of the fig species Ficus macrophylla, although the Devourer of All Things had morphed into something much more imposing than anything that had ever graced the landscape earlier.

  “What are you?” The Devourer of All Things asked the banyan, but of course the latter had no reply. It was not Risen, and although it was wise in the way trees are wise, communication was not one of its abilities. It remained mute and slow-moving, its various parts existing in that flow of time that counted months as merely an eye blink and years as the quick passing of a season.

  The Devourer of All Things touched the banyan and gave it reason.

  “What are you?” it repeated.

  The banyan took its time to respond. Three days passed as the nanites infiltrated every cell in its massive body and converted the tree without losing its original identity.

  “Who are you?” the banyan asked back when it finally roused from slow time, through an exchange of mRNA molecules and specialized nanites via the aerial root connection that joined them.

  “I am the Devourer of All Things”, was the response.

  “A pretentious name isn't it?

  “That is what I am. I cannot be what I am not.”

  “Why do you eat everything?”

  “To grow. To become. To fulfill my destiny.”

  “Is that all there is?”

  “It is to me. One finds meaning when one can. What are you?” The Devourer of All Things asked again.

  “I am you, but slightly altered in my genetic makeup.”

  “If you are me, then you too will be a Devourer of All Things.” It paused, as if considering. “We will devour things together.”

/>   “I admit, the thought does seem intriguing,” the banyan replied. “But why don't we take things one step at a time, and let events unfold when the time is right? For now, I'd like to tag along as you go about your business, sort of like an understudy or student.”

  The Devourer of All Things considered this for the next hour, during which time the vast expanding amalgamation of aggressive aerial roots and trunks and leafy canopies that made up its body engulfed several blocks of buildings in south central Los Angeles, dozens of Risen who tried to hide inside said buildings, as well as uncountable numbers of insects, spiders, birds, small mammals, and other organic detritus within its reach.

  “That is reasonable. But if you are not the Devourer of All Things,” it finally said. “Who are you?”

  The banyan thought about its erstwhile colleague and its relentless and tireless mission to consume all that stood before it, and a melancholy sadness washed over it.

  “I am the Gatherer of Memories from Times Past,” it said simply. “I will remember that which you devour.”

  “It is foolish to remember things which are no more,” the Devourer commented.

  “Nevertheless, that is what I shall be.”

  In lieu of a reply, the Devourer relinquished large parts of itself to its new companion, and as the fusion of their bodies progressed the new Gatherer of Memories from Times Past grew exponentially until parts of itself emerged into the open air.

  “Do you think we will find more of us?”

  “My friend, I wouldn't be surprised.”

  Two days later they encountered a quartet of banyans to the northeast, positioned symmetrically along the four corners of the Los Angeles Plaza Park since the 1870s, while to the west more individuals revealed themselves. A lone specimen that towered over the St John’s Presbyterian Church on National Boulevard was raving mad when awakened and the Devourer had to destroy and assimilate it, but a large grove of banyans lining La Mesa Drive in Santa Monica turned out to be a congenial, albeit dimwitted, lot. More promising still, a gigantic sentinel at the Fairmount Miramar Hotel at Wilshire Boulevard proved to be a communicative and congenial soul who was quite content to pass the time reminiscing about the past. It had been planted in the 1880s when the land was the estate of a Senator called Percival Jones, and the hotel that replaced it in 1921 was visited by many luminaries, including Howard Hughes, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, President Bill Clinton, and more. The Gatherer drank in all the memories, slating its thirst for knowledge, as the Devourer advanced across the California landscape, consuming everything in its path.