by Dan Kemp
After a while, James stood, his body as strong and as young as it ever was, but the world around him was dead.
***
James crested the hill. On the horizon he could see smoke rising above what looked to be a small town. He closed his eyes for a moment, appreciating the breeze as it ruffled his hair.
The grass atop the hill was charred and dead, the cherry blossom tree which normally shaded it burned to a stump. James felt a tug in his chest at the sight of it. He sighed and knelt down, his palms pressed into the dirt. He let some of his energy flow into the soil, and the grass began to turn green. The stump stretched upward, splintering into hundreds of tiny branches, then cherry blossoms sprouted anew from the branches of the new tree. James smiled, feeling a tear pull at the corner of his eye, but he held it back. If he couldn't save the world, at least he could save this small place.
The headstones sat where they always had, to his relief. He brushed back his hair as he approached. Three unimposing, aged marble stones emerged slightly crooked from the ground.
Joseph Brooker
1835 – 1891
So read the left-most tombstone. Its grave was empty, of course. James had never been able to recover the body, though he happily put down the beast that had killed him. There, next to Joe's, sat his wife's stone. Even if he couldn’t recover his friend’s body, at least he’d given him a symbolic place by her side.
Mary Brooker (née Miller)
1842-1890
Horror and death followed James everywhere he went. For so long he had thought himself cursed. It turned out that curse was real, and it had a name. Martin, or so he'd called himself of late. What he truly wanted, James was only now beginning to fully understand.
James had gone by many names himself. In the earliest days he had needed no name at all. As time went on: Nasha, Iakobus, Lucius, Hank, Wilhelm, Ronny, James. Dozens more he could not easily remember.
He knelt before Joseph's headstone.
I'm sorry, my friend. I failed you. I failed everyone.
Tears trickled down his cheek as he took a step to the right.
Hope Thompson (née Brooker)
1870 – 1903
"I'm here, love," he said quietly, taking a seat in the dirt next to her grave and laying a hand against her tombstone. The wind rustled the leaves of the tree above him. James breathed deep and could taste the smoke from that faraway fire.
Of course, this grave was empty too.
It wasn't long before James heard the rumble of another engine approaching. It came near and then finally stopped. A few minutes passed, and then she came over the top of the hill. She wore a purple dress, slightly scuffed and marked from her journey. Her brown hair blew in the wind. She smiled at him.
It had been far too long, but she looked every bit as beautiful as he remembered her. As beautiful as she had been on the day he married her, many, many years ago. He stood up, fixing his hair as he rose, a bit of anxiety catching in his chest once again.
"Hope," he said, smiling.
Act Two
Two years later
Dorian
"We found them, sir."
The young scout was somewhat breathless, his face nervous, as he made his report over the steady rumble of Dorian's motorcycle. "They've got two watchmen posted on the road a mile ahead."
"How heavily fortified are they?" Dorian asked.
"Not very. Just some chain-link fence around a couple old shacks. Ten men at most."
Dorian nodded. "Alright. Let's go."
The young man ran off as Dorian revved his engine. A light, warm summer rain was falling like a mist. Other than Dorian and the fifteen men behind him, the road was barren, as it always was these days.
Another bike rumbled up alongside him, the deep, throaty sound of its engine easily recognizable.
"Shall I ride ahead?" Kristof asked. A cigarette hung limply from his mouth, and his dark sunglasses reflected Dorian's own face back at him. He wore his ragged dirty blond hair in a ponytail, under a bright green patterned bandanna.
"Yeah," Dorian said. "Take one more."
Without another word, Kristof signaled to another rider and the two sped off into the distance. Dorian gave them a minute's head start, sitting quietly amidst the chorus of idling engines behind him before he throttled his own bike and followed.
The breeze cooled his brow, which despite the light rain had begun to sweat. To his right, a dense, endless forest whipped by as he rode. To his left, featureless flat grassland gave the illusion he might not be moving at all.
Just as the scout had said, the convoy soon came upon a small guard post a mile down the road, no more than a wooden barricade across the asphalt and two men behind it. Dorian held a hand up, letting his bike roll to a stop only a few feet away.
The men regarded him without reaction, assault rifles cradled in their arms. The sun glinted off both their wrists. From where he sat, Dorian could see the broken iron shackles each wore, typical of members of the Church.
"I hear you've got some medicine," Dorian said.
"We do not share," one answered, his voice without inflection, as if he were reading phonetically in a language he didn’t understand.
"Shame. Neither do I."
Two shots rang out. Sniper fire from Kristof, who was likely hidden somewhere among the trees, echoed across the deserted plains. The two guards hit the ground, a faint red mist hovering in the air where they had stood.
One of his men ran over and began to drag the barricade off the road. Meanwhile, Dorian rolled up and examined the dead men. Each lay motionless, bits of brain and shattered skull strewn about the hot asphalt around them.
“Fucking idiots,” Dorian said, and they were quickly back on their way.
Dorian's wasn’t often a stealthy approach these days. Another half mile down the road, it was clear the gunfire had been heard. As Dorian and his retinue came near, a hail of bullets pinged off the asphalt in front of them.
Dorian slid his bike to a stop. Ahead, he could see them: a handful of men and women with rifles, firing at him through a chain fence. He heard a shot from the trees nearby and saw a woman behind the fence go down. The others scrambled for what little cover they could find, but they were very exposed.
Dorian slid a walkie-talkie from a holster at his waist. "Bring up the ram," he said.
"Yes, sir," was the reply.
Dorian simply sat and waited, just out of range of the defenders' rifles.
The ram, as he had called it, was simply a pickup truck fortified with steel on its fender and bulletproof glass windows. They couldn't afford to use the gas for bringing it along unless he knew it was needed, so one man hung back waiting for his order.
The ram arrived now, speeding past Dorian and leaving black smoke in its wake. It plowed through the chain fence, crushing a man as it went. Dorian whistled to his men and followed close behind.
Just outside the fence, he leapt off his bike, drawing two six-shot revolvers from his hips and clambering over the crumpled fence. The truck sat idling, its front end punched straight through the wall of a shack. Bullets bounced ineffectually off its windows.
Dorian shot a man from behind as he dropped down off the fence, the man’s head bursting with a sick squish before he slumped to the ground. His presence now noticed, Dorian fired at two more cultists as they turned to shoot at him. His men were streaming in behind him now, and the fight was quickly done.
In a way, Dorian was disappointed. Clearly this outpost held little worth protecting. The Church was capable of putting up a much better fight than this.
The ram reversed, pulling out of the hole in the wall and allowing him room to enter. Some radio equipment was piled on a table, and one of his men was already sifting through it. They would take whatever was worth keeping and leave the rest. Dorian's attention was drawn to a map pinned on the wall. After a moment, he was able to identify his current location, though it was not clearly marked as such. On the map, it was a plai
n black dot with the label of "Waystation 27."
Dotted lines and arrows connected this place to others like it, and larger markers as well. He noticed warehouses and routing hubs. The nearest spot, just ten miles east, was another small dot labeled 'recruitment camp'. A large bold star near Somerset was marked 'headquarters'. Dorian traced the distance. 45 miles from here. Maybe he'd find a real fight there.
Dorian pulled the map carefully off the wall and folded it up before slipping it into his pocket.
"Dorian!" someone called from across the room. It was Kristof, whom Dorian hadn't noticed arrive. He was standing behind another man who was working on cracking a safe. As Dorian joined them, the safe swung open with a creak. He leaned over and peered inside. A couple dozen large bottles of pills and medicine vials were stuffed inside.
"Not bad," he said, glancing at Kristof, who shook his head in reply. His sunglasses were propped up on his bandanna now, revealing his ruined left eye. It sat blankly in its socket, the iris milky and the surrounding skin scarred. As always, the sight of it made Dorian slightly uneasy.
"Load it up," Kristof said. "The doc will be happy with this."
"Mr. Black, sir." Another man was calling for him, this time from the doorway.
"What is it?"
"You need to see this. In the other building."
Dorian followed him out and into the other flimsy tin-walled shack. Thick iron bars ran floor to ceiling, dividing the single room inside. Behind the bars, half a dozen people were huddled against the wall. "Get that door open," Dorian said.
"I've got the key," said one man, who was digging through a desk drawer in the entryway. Dorian took the key from him and turned it in the iron gate with a clunk, letting the gate swing wide.
"No, please," came a soft, cracking voice from across the holding cell as he entered, his footsteps soft on the dirt floor.
"We're not going to hurt you," Dorian said. "The people who were keeping you here are dead."
They were hidden under thin ragged blankets, most of them. When he spoke, they peeked out at him with some hesitation. A young girl, no older than twenty, sat closest to him; she was dirty and her face was marked with old bruises. All of them wore tattered gray rags.
"Sick motherfuckers," came Kristof's voice from behind him.
"Where did you come from?" Dorian asked the girl, crouching down to meet her gaze.
"Morgantown," she said, the same voice he had heard on entering the cell. "My family got separated. I was going south with a friend, when they took me. They killed him."
"Thank you, sir," another girl was saying. "Do you have any food, any water?"
At this, the other prisoners began murmuring as well. They were all young women, Dorian noticed, all pretty if you pictured them without the caked-on grime, bruises and cuts.
"Not with us," Dorian said.
"Shall we bring them back?" Kristof asked. He was smoking again, and blew a pume of smoke up toward the ceiling.
"Back where?" one of the captives asked.
Dorian ignored the question for now. "What's your name? What did you do, before?" Dorian asked the girl he had been speaking to.
"Lisa. I just started college when it happened."
"What about the rest of you? Jobs, skills?"
"I was an accountant," said one young woman in the back.
"Not much use for accountants these days," Dorian said to Kristof. "Any thoughts?"
"Yes," Kristof replied. "Plenty of book-keeping to be done."
Dorian regarded him for a moment, considering what he'd said. Kristof, despite his rough outward appearance, could be too soft at times. Dorian couldn't be sure if the man really had such a need or if he was just making excuses. "Alright,” he said.
"I'm a nurse," another woman said. The rest were silent.
"You two," Dorian said, pointing to the nurse and accountant. "Come on, my men will take you back. We have a safe place, if you want it. Kristof, give the rest a weapon each. You're all free to go, but you can't come with us." He turned and left the cell.
"Dorian," Kristof said. He turned back to him, seeing the man's same old disapproving glare in his mind before his eyes found it on Kristof's face. "Come on. They've been through enough."
"Everyone has," Dorian said. "This isn't a time for charity." Kristof fixed him with his one good eye, the other staring blankly at nothing as it always did.
"I'll sponsor this one," he finally said. "Lisa, right?" The girl nodded.
Dorian sighed. This simply wasn’t worth the argument, and he couldn’t afford to piss Kristof off too much. "Fine. She's your problem."
***
The sun had set by now, and the convoy was nearly back home. The long and empty highway had now fallen dark and was lit only by the headlights of their bikes, the road's scattered streetlights long lifeless. The forest, which now flanked both sides of the road, was a black and looming specter all around them.
Finally, a light came into view on the horizon, the first glimpse of home. The sight of it lifted his spirits, but these were just as quickly deflated as a dull boom shook the ground beneath him, leaving his bike shuddering slightly between his legs.
Fuck me, he thought. He felt a gnawing in his stomach and twisted the throttle, speeding ahead. His men did the same, each of them recognizing the danger.
Another boom now, closer. Ahead, the light grew steadily, but slowly, brighter. He willed his bike to move faster, but it would not.
Heavy, seismic footsteps were falling now and then a crash, and screams. The trees behind him splintered as the great beast crashed through them.
"It's a Rex!" someone screamed. He heard gunfire behind, some of his men taking futile aim at the monster. The dinosaur charged through their ranks as they passed, trampling one man and his bike underfoot and sending another tumbling helplessly through the air until he hit a tree with a crack. The dreadful creature fell back as they raced away, its attention turned to the bodies of the men left behind.
God damnit, Dorian thought, averting his eyes from the sight behind him and back onto the road. Of course, they all knew the risks of going outside the walls, but their deaths would feel less in vain if his intel hadn't been such a bust. Rather than a stockpile of supplies, he would come back with a handful of meds and a couple of questionably useful women. And two less fighting men.
Nevertheless, his racing heart finally began to slow, and the light on the horizon came steadily forward to meet him.
Floodlights illuminated the ground outside the gates. Fifteen foot tall walls, a massive patchwork of metal and masonry, loomed over the road. Above, watchmen could be seen by the lights mounted on their weapons. No sooner had he arrived than he heard the metallic whir and grind as the gates retracted. In front of the walls, an old wooden sign read:
Black
Deep Creek
The word 'black' looked as though it didn’t belong, painted in white above the former name of this place. But it was his now. He rode past the gates and into the town, hearing those heavy metal doors sliding back over the asphalt behind him. When they were closed, he felt a weight lift off of him.
Within the walls, it was another world entirely. Smooth, fresh, black asphalt roads ran in three directions away from the entrance. Streetlights cast a soft light down over the sidewalk, where a young couple was strolling hand in hand. Dorian took a deep, pleasant breath of the evening air.
Dorian rode down the street to his right, returning a wave from a man as he passed. On one side of the road, scaffolding and construction equipment clung to the side of a building. The town had come a long way, but this was still a common sight in Black Creek. On the other side of the road, two young men were throwing a football in a small park.
He left his bike in a parking area a short way down the road. It was quiet at this end of town, with few streetlights to light his way as he headed toward home. It was a modest, two-story brick house, though still larger than most other buildings in town. He let himself through
the small black iron gate and unlocked the door.
It was warm inside. Dorian flipped the switch by the door and lights flickered to life down the entry hallway. The thermostat read 78, so he set it down to 72.
The air conditioning kicked on with a hum overhead as he slipped his shoes off by the doorway. He made for the bedroom, eager to remove his bulky leather clothing. He did so, making sure to grab the map from his pants pocket, before changing into shorts and a tight T-shirt.
