inherit the earth

by Hunter

  Here, within the shadow of that wall, the hulking edifice had taken on a very different appearance. Kim could see the cracks in the masonry and the gaps where siege engines had taken their toll. Not far to his left, an entire section of stone blocks had collapsed inward, weeds springing up between the scattered stones

  The flames atop the battlements no longer bore the appearance of watchfires, but rather seemed to be the smoldering remains of bodies left to bum at their posts.

  Kim was aware that a significant shift had taken place around him, but could not say for certain when he had crossed the threshold. His every instinct screamed for him to turn around now. To try to find his way back. To put as much distance as he could between himself and the site of this massacre. But something compelled him forward.

  That something crouched just a few yards ahead of him, wearing the form of a fallen angel.

  Kim was close enough that he could hear the voice of the angel now, crooning softly to itself. And always the unmistakable sound of a baby crying.

  “One day, ” the whispered voice promised softly and intently. “One day, all of this will be yours. ” Kim could now make out the bundle that the angel cradled in its arms. It was wrapped in bloodstained bandages and old newspapers. The bundle squirmed incessantly and cried. He could barely make out the baby’s smudged face nestled among the layers of soiled wrappings.

  He was close enough now that, if he dared, he might reach out a hand and wipe the dirt from the infants face. He instinctively bent closer, but his attention was diverted by the baby’s newspaper bunting. There, at the infant’s breast, an off-center headline proudly proclaimed, “Inherit the Earth. ”

  Kim reeled. Uncomprehendingly, he looked up into the angel’s face as if he might find the answers he sought written there. The angel turned on him a look that was filled with pity. Its eyes were as deep and as wide and as devoid of life as the gulfs between the stars. Kim felt himself reeling, falling.

  He felt a great circle of blazing darkness opening up before him. It began with a pinprick. A singularity of infinitely dense blackness that swelled, expanding outward in concentric circles. Soon it was past him, washing over and enveloping him. Pressing on unchecked. Soon, its leading edge would swallow the horizon. He may have screamed.

  Kim came to himself, forehead pressed against the monitor screen. A blazing white circle of light narrowed to a pinprick directly between his eyes. His thumb still rested against the power switch after having manually killed the computer for the second time this evening.

  This morning, Kim corrected himself with a groan. He pushed himself back upright and glanced over at the bedside clock. 7: 14 AM. Not good..

  His head ached as if he had been hit in the forehead with a hammer. He extricated himself from the chair and staggered off the kitchen, stumbling over a knot of cable. He found a clean-looking mug on the counter and poured himself a cup of last-night’s coffee.

  The cold and bitterness helped. The caffeine didn’t hurt either. After a few minutes, the pounding in his head receded a pace.

  He wasn’t entirely sure what had happened to him at the firewall, but he knew he had been given a great gift. A vision. He knew now what he had to do.

  Returning to the computer, he logged onto the list.

  To: hunter. list@hunter-net. org

  From: Witness1

  Subject: Credo (long)

  I have just posted the transcripts of the so-called Advocate Debates in their entirety. I must tell you that do so with some trepidation. I cannot say for certain how Xterminator may have come across these postings, but I will not denounce either him or them. On the contrary, I assure you that they are quite authentic.

  That said, you should know that these “debates” do not reflect any conversations that took place here on hunters-net. Rather, they are transcripts of internal dialogs. These are the things that keep me up nights.

  I have grappled with the Messenger’s imperative - Inherit the Earth — each night since my imbuing. To me, these postings read like an indictment, a litany of my own inner doubts and fears.

  Now I do have a theory as to how Xterminator may have become privy to these nocturnal tossing and turnings of mine. When his first posts appeared, I commented that I thought he was just some kind of troll - trying to bait me, to get under my skin. At you read this, some of you, no doubt, are thinking that I spoke truer than I knew. Some of us have had first-hand experience with creatures who ride our dreams, stealing our nocturnal thoughts or worse, visiting upon us our worst fears. I have even heard them called ‘trolls’ or ‘goblins’ for lack of a better term.

  Let me say that I do not believe Xterminator to be such a creature. He is a troll, certainly, but in the metaphorical sense only. I think that it would be more accurate to say that his discovery comes from another source. You see, we serve the same patron, he and I - a being or beings who have proven themselves not above a bit of kicking down the doors of our cherished self-delusions to deliver their imperative call-to-arms. Inherit the Earth.

  I can’t say that I particularly like Xterminator, or that I approve of his approach or methodology. But I guess, in the long run, my personal likes and dislikes are just that - personal. They don’t - and shouldn’t — really figure into it. The Messengers chose me to deliver an ultimatum for them. Why? I don’t know. If there is something special about me, I for one can’t imagine what that might be. So who am I to say that they cannot chose somebody else - somebody like Xterminator — to carry the message the next leg of the journey.

  I do believe that it is time (perhaps long past time) that we got some of this out in the open and that more able minds than mine were brought to bear on the question of our quest — of its meaning. Of its implications for us, our world and our future. So let’s talk a little bit about Inheriting the Earth — about what it means and does not mean.

  As “Advocate2” points out, “Inherit” is not much of a call-to-arms. Maybe that’s because I’m not much of a warrior. But still you have to wonder. Are we being summoned to sit idly by and wait for our inheritance to come to us? Are we not imbued with these terrifying gifts in order to use them - to bring them to bear upon our foes?

  The call to “inherit” is far too patient for many of us. It implies a generations-long approach to the problem. And frankly, we have not been around for generations. All evidence suggests that the Imbued are a very recent solution to an age-old problem.

  But is this really our calling? Milton tells us “They also serve who stand and wait. ” A noble sentiment, but is this the kind of service the Imbued are called to? I do not think that it is.

  Unfortunately, the alternative is even less appealing. Perhaps, as Advocate points out, we are called upon to speed the course of our inheritance. To cut away the dead wood of the previous generation that we might bring about the new world which is our birthright. To my mind, this argument amounts to little more than a call to murder, if not to patricide. Who must die so that we, the Imbued, may Inherit the Earth?

  Is it our biological parents? I am afraid that any argument that we will Inherit the Earth from our human forebears boils down to a rather distasteful eugenics. The Imbued have been gifted with powers that set us above normal humans and thus it is our destiny to supplant them. To become the Master Race. We have heard this type of propaganda before. I know I do not have to remind you that it is even more heinous in practice than it is in theory.

  From whom, then, are we to Inherit the Earth? From the monsters? The rots, for example, seem to have insinuated themselves into every strata of human society. Sometimes it appears as if they must surely rule the world by puppet strings. But are we the heirs of the walking dead? And can we deal with the consequences of such an assertion? My gut turns to think that we are ourselves no better than the monsters that we fight. But what if it’s worse than that, what if we are monsters. Just another form of sociopathic predator? Another threat to humankind?

  Or what if (a wicked thought) we are me
rely the creations of the undying? Their constructs, their offspring, their pawns. We flatter ourselves to think that we can see the “truth” of their existence - or that we could ever do anything about it. Anything that they did not chose for us to do…

  In the debate transcripts you will see further suggestions, insinuations that we are something more monstrous still. From a biblical point of view, this world - and all material things — is the domain of the Devil. Are the Imbued truly heirs to that kingdom? Are we the sons and daughters of the infernal powers?

  I, for one, do not think so. I will tell you what I think. My credo. You may take it for what it’s worth.

  I had a revelation tonight. I saw a world in which the hunt had run its course, played itself out to its logical conclusion. It was a world where our strongest defenses had been tested — and overcome. I walked through the remnants of a vast battlefield, making my way through a landscape of rubble and ashes. From atop the last ruined battlement, our burning bodies sent an oily black smoke heavenwards, like stillborn prayers.

  I came upon a figure there, huddled in the shadow of the ruined wall. It was a downtrodden angel - fallen, wounded, dying. In its arms, it held a small bundle - a child — wrapped in bloodstained bandages and old newspapers. “Someday, ” the angel whispered, “all of this will be yours. ”

  And as I peered more closely at the frail shivering child, I saw what the angel had wrapped it in, to protect it against the cold and the worse ravages of the aftermath. The headline of its makeshift blanket read, Inherit the Earth.

  I know now that I am not the child of my human parents. At least, I no longer am. They do not belong here with me in this world, the world of the breached walls and burning bodies. I would not wish this on them - not for all the world.

  I am not the child of the monsters — the rots, the ghosts, the restless dead. I see them for what they are and I judge them by their actions and the suffering and carnage that follows their every move.

  I am not the child of Satan or the devil or the powers of darkness or whatever you would call them. I will stand firm against the darkness. I will cry against the dying of the light. I will resist the infernal world, the world that I know must come, with every ounce of strength remaining to me.

  I know what I am. I am the child of that one, fallen, bedraggled angel. I call them, the Messengers, you may know them by another name. These angels do not own this earth; they do not rule over it. That is not at all the sense in which we are called to Inherit it.

  Rather, we are called to inherit their responsibility for the earth —for its protection. I believe we are called to live here in the midst of the carnage and to comb through the wreckage of the field of battle. I believe it is our appointed task to search out that which has fallen in the midst of the massacre, but is not of the massacre.

  We are not given these gifts to slay monsters. Any idiot with a gun can slay monsters. Rather, we are called upon to gather together a remnant, a core of all that is good or strong or pure or just or beautiful or true or stubborn — and to pull it up out of the muck. To make sure it is not crushed underfoot. To ensure that it endures. Whatever else might happen, whatever the cost, we must see that the essential outlives us.

  For me, hunter-net has always been the sieve with which I sift through the ashes. Please know that I am fiercely proud of each and every one of you that I have found here.

  Inherit the Earth,

  —Witness1

  In my dream, I was a monster. Though my crimes are hazy, I leave three bodies in a burning wood but save an infant to devour later. Then imaginary pains awaken me, a tidal wave of boiling kitchen grease launched by a nightmare. My body dodges into reality, and I open my eyes on the floor. My elbow bleeds. I run my hands over the scars on my face and neck.

  The lights are off in my bedroom, and the sun is setting. The heater exploded three days ago. Snow covers New York — twelve inches in Central Park. I crawl through the room, feeling for the rug. My fingers collect bunches of shag as I pull it toward me and wrap myself in its warmth. Soon I’m dreaming again.

  There are three names I never say out loud. The first is the name of the man who shot John Lennon outside the Dakota apartments. He wanted to add his name to the Beaties’ legend, so he deserves to disappear into anonymity. The second I call “The Pig, ” though I have known his true name most of my life. He was a butcher from my town. In the prison camps, he raped my sister, my mother and me. He raped all the girls from my neighborhood. From his neighborhood. Goran scarred my body, but the Pig scarred my soul. For that, he should be obliterated along with John Lennon’s assassin.

  The third name I do not speak aloud is my own. I hide my name and protect it like a hunted child, like a secret baby Moses. I hunt monsters and am sometimes a monster myself. My name is my darkest secret. My fellow hunters know me as Dictatrix11. A few, the trusted and the dead, know that my first name is Anna.

  When I wake up again, on the floor, wrapped in the rug from my parent’s home in Yugoslavia, it is night. My apartment has only gotten colder, but I am covered in sweat. My elbow has begun to heal. The blood is dry and a sore stiffness has set in. I hope that the healing leaves a scar to remind me that, on New Year’s Eve in the year 2000, while the rest of the world toasted the next thousand years with lovers and friends, I had a fitful sleep. I lift myself up and feel my way through the darkness to the shower.

  Hot water rains down on me. Hot water undiluted by cold. Other people might find it uncomfortable to move from freezing to burning so fast, but certain regions of my body are impervious to pain. Scars mark these places. Still wet, I turn off the water and brush my teeth. I dry my hair and comb it as best I can. There are no mirrors in my bathroom, no mirrors anywhere in my apartment. I get dressed, grab the heaviest of my fifteen coats, and lock my door.

  The parking garage beneath my building is almost as dark as my apartment. The lights that haven’t been broken have yet to come on. The spaces between the cars, and the unlit comers and stairwells, could conceal every rapist, mugger and car-jacker in the city, but I am too well armed to be scared. I find my Audi on the second level. I open the unlocked door.

  New York City celebrates. I hear illegal fireworks in Little Italy, a few blocks away. Though the sidewalks are slushy and the air rolls off the ocean like an icy wall, revelers — bundled up and mittened and red-nosed — move through the city with the anticipation that something great is about to happen, that some moment is about to be checked off the schedule of the universe. But my car is a cryogenic tomb. I turn up the heater full-blast, hoping that the tiny heating coil will soon produce warmth. Outside they shout. I shiver.

  The New York Public Library is closed when I pull into one of the employee parking spots. I swipe my security card and unlock the door. The library, at least, is warm, but no scholars come to explore the stacks, no bums huddle in the periodical section. I turn on the first-floor lights and head for the computer banks.

  A flashlight winds its way down the stairs. It shines in my face.

  “No parties tonight, Ms. Suljic? ”

  “I’ll just be a minute, Mr. Chapman. ”

  The Titles and Claims index comes up with 27 buildings owned by Julius Hathaway. I’m not sure that Julius Hathaway exists, and I don’t care. He is the name behind the shell company Hathaway Realty, the public face of the creature I will destroy tonight. Though its sins demand that its name be erased from human memory, that is not the reason I do not speak the name. I do not know it, so I have invented a handle for the fiend. I call it Lord Chernobyl, for the vast scope of its feeding. I have hunted it through Staten

  Island and the Bronx. I watched as it disposed of bodies in a junkyard in New Jersey. In Providence, the only place we ever met face-to-face, it called me a deformed whore. I called it an endangered species.

  The list of buildings owned by Julius Hathaway is familiar to me. I have studied it many times. I have been to many of them. Lord Chernobyl was there at the shotgun house on
Mulberry Street, and at the abandoned White Castle on 75th, and he drank from the pit of blood in the warehouse near the Brooklyn Waterfront — three places with only Julius Hathaway in common. I remember the tenement in Queens and the removals company near Hell’s Kitchen. Those, I burned down myself. Lord Chernobyl must think I am a creature of its ilk, the way I appear at its resting places and storehouses as soon as it relocates them. Though I sometimes feel more in common with the fiend than with mankind — especially on nights like New Year’s Eve at the turn of the millennium — my comprehensive knowledge of its warrens isn’t some gift from the Messengers. Rather, it is an object lesson for all bloodsuckers: Don’t fuck with a researcher for the New York Public Library.

  But one entry on the Hathaway list is new to me — a space in a strip mall in East Harlem, a pizza place with upstairs office space, lost in bankruptcy and acquired immediately after the foreclosure by Hathaway. A great place to ring in the new year.

  As soon as the lights go out in the office above Ola’s Pizzeria, a blue 1983 Chevrolet Caprice Classic peels out of a parking space in reverse and speeds out of the parking lot. I think Lord

  Chernobyl has gotten the drop on me, but then I see its two servants walk outside and lock down the cages that protect the windows. I’ve seen them before — one is a man, early 30s, with dark hair down to his shoulders, and turtleshell glasses with round lenses. He carries a bulky gym bag in his right hand. Judging by his uneven shoulders and the way he supports the bag with his leg, it is heavy.

  The other servant is much younger, a girl, an apparent teenager. She’s wrapped up in a trenchcoat and a scarf, with huge glasses and black gloves, wearing a colorful chapeau that was perhaps designed for Rastafarians. She carries numerous smaller bags — a purse, an overstuffed pillowcase, a square box for storing files. Another gym bag slung is over her shoulder. Though the strip mall is dark, it looks like the girl’s concealing something under her coat as well.