by Guy James
Sven growled again and began to move toward Milt. He stopped after several paces, keeping his distance from the mass of infected between Milt and him.
“So,” Milt said, “I must take that as confirmation that your prior growl was also directed at me. How unfortunate.” Milt’s shoulders slumped. “Believe me, Sven, I understand your reaction. It is perfectly natural given what we have all been through together. It is quite appropriate, even…in the human context, anyway. Though I had hoped for something different, it was my hope that was misplaced. The fault of this most grandiose of misunderstandings lies not with you…no, not in the slightest does it lie with you.”
Sven opened his mouth, as if to say something, or to growl again, but nothing came out of his mouth besides steam. The inside of his mask fogged up.
Milt watched the steam dissipate, and, once Sven had closed his mouth again said, “You are speechless, to be sure, at taking in the stateliness of the tapestry that has been laid out before you—spread out beneath your feet, one might even venture to say.”
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Sven said, launching spittle into the mask. “You killed…you killed…Evan…and... What are you doing here?”
Milt sighed. “I understand that reaction also. However, I dare say that I had hoped you would have forgiven me for that by now. I take it that your hate-filled tone is a clear indicator of an absence of any such forgiveness. That too is unfortunate. Yet, I am here to explain the evolution to you and to all of those who will listen. Look around you, dear, noble, warrior Sven. Look at the grandeur of the events that now unfold around you, before your very eyes.”
“Why…” Sven managed, “why aren’t you dead? Why do you look like that? Are you…like them?”
“Yes, this is exactly the mode of discourse for which I had hoped: a dialogue between two great warriors, two great but humble servants of humanity’s final evolution.”
“You’re infected,” Sven yelled, his voice breaking. “You were infected in Virginia. How did you survive so long?”
“That is correct,” Milt said. “It is accurate to say that I am infected. However, it is not so simple as that, for I am not like those you see around you now. I…I am evolved.”
Sven stared at him.
Milt nodded. “Yes, your astonishment is plain and needs no verbal confirmation.”
Milt waited for a moment, but Sven only continued to stare.
“Very well, I stand wholeheartedly behind the import of my previous sentence.” Milt shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “There is a great deal for us to discuss and consider; truths that I must reveal to you, truths that will likely shake the very core of your beliefs about all that you know.”
Sven glared for a moment longer, then said, “Why don’t you come down here and we can talk about it right now?” He raised a machete.
“Clearly,” Milt said, “given the undeniably visceral tone of your reaction, this is neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. Our minds shall meet, that much I promise you, but not at this precise time or in this precise place.”
“Get off that thing and come down here!” Sven yelled, brandishing the machete that he had raised. Sven stepped backward to stay out of reach of the throng that separated him from Milt.
Milt saw something stir in Sven’s backpack.
“Is it the feline?” Milt whispered to himself. “Certainly not…no, certainly that cannot be. Why would the animal be out here with him? Does he keep it at the office?”
“Come down here!” Sven yelled, and backed away from the gathering of infected New Yorkers again. They were gaining ground on him.
“I acknowledge your request,” Milt said, “but I do not acquiesce to it. Instead, I shall await you at your apartment, which I understand is in Sutton Place. Until we meet again, or, as the French are known to say: au revoir.”
“Don’t you dare go there!” Sven yelled, his face twisting with rage. “Don’t you dare!”
Milt averted his eyes from Sven, got the Segway going again, and accelerated up Broadway.
“This is truly a wondrous contrivance,” Milt mumbled, “and I must say that the all-wheel drive is an absolute must for this frigid weather.”
Milt went on mumbling, as he was trying, without any success, to distract himself from the encounter with Sven. It had become apparent that Sven’s conversion would not be the moderately uncomplicated feat that Milt had envisioned.
“That is alright,” Milt mumbled. “I shall adapt to this development. It is an impediment, that much is true, but it is by no measure a fatal one. He shall understand all of this as I do, in the natural course of things, as I have no doubt that he must.”
When Milt was halfway across an ice sheet that spanned the intersection of Broadway and 14th Street, the Segway lost maneuverability. The vehicle, with Milt on top of it, began to wobble wildly.
54
The gargantuan semi-zombie called Milt screamed. He tried to regain control of the Segway. As Milt glided wobblingly through the intersection, screaming, the evolvers around him took notice of the noise.
The evolvers that Milt had set loose upon New York turned toward him, paused in their usually unremitting shambling, and watched their creator’s vehicle tip much too far and then separate itself from said creator, who proceeded to fly through the air a short distance before slamming down onto the ice and sliding the rest of the way through the intersection, his ignoble, mechanical steed sliding behind him.
Milt came to a stop at the curb at the northwest corner of the intersection. The Segway skidded to a halt by his side.
“Dastardly, felonious contraption,” he muttered. Milt slowly raised his head to see if he was being watched. He felt self-conscious and nervous, even in the world that he had remodeled in the image of the virus’s evolutionary goals—goals that he shared.
Milt gasped. To his horror, he saw that the evolvers were watching him.
He wiped the startled expression from his face.
“Go about your business,” Milt bellowed. “See to evolving the landscape around you, per your collective job description.”
To Milt’s surprise, the evolvers obeyed. They did return to their business.
Seeing this filled Milt with pride, and he shrugged off the tumble that he had just taken. He got to his feet in belabored movements, brushed the snow from his coat and pants, and righted the Segway.
“And naught but a scratch on my person,” he announced, but then quickly revised this assessment upon looking at his hands and feeling about himself. “No, not even a naught scratch on my person. It appears that I am quite impervious.”
Grinning, Milt mounted his mechanical steed once more and resumed his journey northward.
“Sven shall see,” Milt whispered to himself, “that the deed that I sought to do is right, that I have taken the correct course of action in doing said deed, and that I have guided the whole of the world onto such right course toward the accomplishment of said deed. I believe that Jane shall comprehend this more swiftly than Sven, for she is, from what I remember, of an intellectual sort.”
Milt began to lose himself in self-admiration as he progressed in his northbound gliding, his coat flapping wildly behind him and affording a tail to the moving union that he made with the Segway. The billowing of the coat exposed the hydration canister that Milt wore on his back, and icy snowflakes plinked into the canister to create a background noise that Milt found inspirational.
“Yes, dear evolvers,” he whispered, “take this realm to a higher place, transform it into the land that it deserves to be: cleared of the undesirables and populated solely by those who are worthy of its treasures. Know that though you may disappear after the completion of your role, you have achieved a greater state than you could ever have hoped for in your former lives. This is the freedom that all creatures deserve: driven by the evolutionary impulse alone, freed from any and all social norms regarding what and how to eat, what and how to think, what to wear,
how to live, freed from all inhibitions. You now move with a grand purpose, far beyond any your society had fathomed for you. You move toward the perfection that is evolution. You hasten it now like no other evolutionary hastening in history, like no other plague, like no other war. This…this is the ultimate winnowing.”
Milt snorted. “It is a short life that remains for most of you, to be sure, but a short amount of time spent free, in the pursuit of your true purpose, is far superior to a great length of time spent trapped and suffocating beneath the plastic surface of societal expectations.”
Freezing snow plinked against Milt’s hydration canister in increasingly rapid succession. He picked up speed, maneuvering through and around the throngs of evolvers, all of whom were hard at work tracking un-evolved humans to evolve.
“I must admit I was incorrect with regard to the mind meld. Even though those among you who were just now watching me gave the appearance of heeding my words, I know that I am unable to influence the specifics of your movement directly. Even so, dear and great evolvers, you remain a part of me, a projection of my own incomparable prowess. I, with your unrelenting assistance, have changed the world forever, and I must admit, blasphemous though it may be to utter, or, perhaps, even to contemplate, that my current state of existence is a great many degrees more rewarding than my heroic second life as the World of Warcraft’s Miltimore the Sword-Wielder, expert fighter and sword handler.”
Milt pondered what he had just said for several moments, letting the sound of the zipping Segway and plinking snow wash over him and immerse him in…in…what was it?
“My third life!” Milt bellowed, attracting some rotten stares from the evolvers toiling gorily in the streets. “That is what I now live: a third life, as the greatest evolver of all time: the bringer of the evolution itself.” He paused for effect “Yes! Evolution will be kept down no longer. I shall lead all of you to victory, and you shall need little guidance, as you are stronger than your predecessors in Virginia were—though perhaps a tad more brittle…like peanut brittle…but that is no matter—made stronger and more elaborate by a virus enhanced by my own genes. This enhancement that I have bestowed…it is the pride of my life…the pride of all of my lives.”
After this proclamation, Milt again strained his mind in an effort to telepathically influence the movement patterns of the evolvers in the streets. After several unsuccessful attempts, he said, “Very well. The time to cease my wishful attempts is truly upon me. Farewell to you, hopes of a Vulcan mind meld, farewell.”
55
CITY HALL PARK, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Sven was standing a few feet away from the side entrance to City Hall. Large snowflakes fell on and around him, framing him in winter.
He stood there, frozen, with a contorted look of recognition on his face.
“Ivan,” he whispered. “This is so much worse than Charlottesville. And what is Milt doing here? He must be here for revenge, for revenge against…”
Sven cursed and his shoulders slumped. “I should have talked to him. If he’s back, after being taken away by the infected in Charlottesville…he might know something about what’s going on now.” He shook his head. “I should have talked to him.”
Sven took a deep breath and refocused on his surroundings.
The infected surrounded Sven, bobbing in and out of sight everywhere he turned, like he was treading water in an infected sea. The virus’s uncoordinated victims were on every corner, in every crosswalk, and in every car.
Among the infected, individuals and small groups of uninfected humans ran, terror-stricken, through the streets. Most never made it out of Sven’s field of vision. They were picked off by the infected who were working to fortify the virus’s growing ranks. Sven tried to call out to some of the uninfected he saw, but his words only increased their panic and drove them to run faster into the virus’s clutches.
Some uninfected humans did escape Sven’s field of vision intact, turning a corner or running into a street and behind a truck. Most of these disappearances were followed by screams. The screams reminded Sven of his own mortality, which he knew he might confront at any moment.
Ambulances and police vehicles littered the street. Emergency sirens blared through the distortion of the shifting wind, punctuated by infernal moans and unanswered cries for help.
It was a bright painting of chaos, and Sven had drawn himself right into it. But he had had to, he had had to get out of—
Sven’s new landscape had found him as soon as he had stepped out of City Hall, and it had reacted to his presence. When Milt had arrived, waves of infected had already been closing in around Sven, and he had been forced to maneuver among the infected during Milt’s monologue so that he and Ivan would remain safely out of reach of the virus. In doing so, Sven had found a soft spot, a sort of dead zone on the street where he could stand without attracting attention, and he had remained there after Milt took off on his Segway.
“What could he possibly want to talk with us about?” Sven said, a little too loudly.
A middle-aged infected couple reacted to his words and began to turn toward him. As if prompted by the couple’s movements, other infected New Yorkers on the street began to reroute their shuffling gaits in Sven’s direction.
Sven cursed. “So much for not attracting attention.”
The infected began to close in around him, and he was once more struck by the gravity of an outbreak in New York City, by the sheer enormity of it. “How could it have happened so quickly? So suddenly?”
The cold air bit through the adrenalin that was pumping through Sven’s body and he felt the chill night work its way down into his bones. His mind filled with thoughts of freezing to death, becoming a human popsicle to be munched on by the hungry infected. He tried, with limited success, to push the thoughts away.
Sven’s gaze was drawn to the billowing American flag in City Hall Park. The wind was whipping the flag this way and that, as if it were intent on tearing the flag from its pole. Sven’s eyes lingered on the spot beside the flagpole. The snow accumulation on the ground there was noticeably shallow when compared with the accumulation around it.
It seemed to Sven like the perfect spot from which to—
“You shouldn’t be down there,” someone yelled from above Sven. “Listen to Sven and get inside.”
The infected couple shambling toward Sven paused for a moment before resuming their shamble.
Sven looked up the façade of the building across the street from him. He thought he could see movement in one of the windows, but he couldn’t be sure through the haze of the storm.
“Sven is dead,” someone else yelled from the building next to the one Sven was watching. “We’ll all be dead soon. Sooner than you think.” The words were followed by laughter. The laughter was cut off by a fit of coughing and a metallic clatter.
The infected couple shambling toward Sven paused again, for a longer moment this time.
Sven took the opportunity, motivated by instinct. The decision to attack at that instant wasn’t a conscious one, but was a reaction of Sven’s fighting self to the rhythm that it perceived in the environment. The pause of the infected couple had created a vacuum into which to move, and Sven was now flowing into it.
He let his hands, each of which was holding a machete, drop to his sides. Then he lunged forward and stabbed, sinking a blade into each middle-aged neck until only the hilts of the knives were visible.
The skewered infected couple hung in suspended animation for a brief moment. Then Sven withdrew the knives and the couple fell to the snow-covered pavement at Sven’s feet.
Sven stood over their twitching corpses, waiting for the voices from the buildings to come again, but no more came. He wanted to call out to whoever was up there, but he couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself, and he didn’t know what he would say.
More of the street-walking infected turned toward him. They were distributed around him at varying distances, as if he were the epicent
er of the infection itself, though he remained uninfected.
“Am I the infection?” Sven whispered. “Is it me?” The strangeness of the thought—the certainty in that moment that it was true—made him sway.
Ivan yowled, and Sven remembered the cat...and that neither he nor Ivan could possibly have brought the infection.
“It’s too cold for us to stay out here,” Sven said, turning around in a circle to get his bearings. “Me in a suit and you in that backpack...we’ll freeze to death.”
Sven spotted two sizeable breaks in the clumps of infected that were moving toward him. He set his sights squarely on one and strode toward it.
56
“The next street will be clearer,” Sven said to himself, “and we’ll find a way uptown.”
A high-pitched scream cut through the air.
Sven whirled and saw a woman, almost a full block away. The infected had her. They were pulling on her limbs and clawing at her face, each of them more desperate than the last to sink their teeth into her flesh.
Sven instinctively lunged toward her, but then stopped himself. The infected were already tearing her face and neck apart with their teeth. She was beyond help. She was beyond—
Sven almost tore through the lining of his pocket to get his smart phone out. “Jane…”
He dialed Jane and put the phone to his ear.
There was no ring.
He turned back around. The gap between the masses of infected that he had had his sights on was filling rapidly.
There was still no ring.
He glanced sideways, in the direction where the other gap had been.
There was still n—
Ivan skittered in the backpack, and Sven, catching a glimpse of a reaching infected arm in his peripheral vision, sidestepped, turned, and swung freely with a machete.
The smart phone flew into the air.
A head—belonging to the infected man that had been reaching for Sven—was sliced clean off and sent rolling in the snow. The man’s headless body fell backward and sent a spray of snow upward from the ground, shrouding the body in a white haze.
