The Footsteps of Cain

by Derek Kohlhagen

  But now that he knew, now that everything was clear, he wouldn’t have much time. He needed to act fast.

  The copies below, the ones trying to get in, reached a new level in their hysteria. They clubbed the metal with a new rage; Samuel could tell that the crumpling hatch wouldn’t withstand them much longer.

  He disengaged from Kelly’s embrace and took her by the shoulders, looking into her eyes with an intensity sown from his newfound insight.

  “Kelly, listen to me. I’m going to be taken, soon...like Ronny was. Before I do, before I go, I have to tell you something. And when I do that, the thing that’s infected me will infect you, too. But I have to do it now, before it’s too late. I think it’ll be...better. Better than here. I can’t leave you in the hands of those monsters.”

  There were so many things in her face. Uncertainty. Fear. Love.

  “I...I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  He raised his hands to cradle her face.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course,” she said, without hesitation. The flickerings of resolve began to reemerge on her face.

  He smiled. There on the wall, facing down the final erosion of everything there was, the beasts on the ground screaming for their blood on one side and on the other...annihilation, eternity, or an illogical mix of each...their hearts merged. They melded together like two perfectly crafted, complementary parts, like they had been born together, separated, and now rejoined at long last.

  He pulled her to him and pressed his lips to hers with desperate passion, and she pushed back against him with her own, wild abandon, pursuing his mouth like he was the only life preserver within hundreds of miles of open sea. There was a sudden smear of moisture on his cheeks, and he realized that she was crying. She trembled deliciously in his arms, and he felt what he was sure she felt, like there was a heart between them that was pumping them both full of the same, complex mix of emotions...fear and love, dismay and elation. He held on to her like a man cradling the only thing in the world he treasured, and she reciprocated.

  Down on the first level of the tower, the hatch gave in. There was a loud, metal clank and crash, and then Samuel could hear the impostors flooding in, stumbling over one another to get at the treasure they so yearned for, the one that was now so rare and valuable. He heard their feet hit the stairs and their snarling echoing up through the structure, the sound seeking out his senses just as the fiends inside sought his flesh.

  He pulled back, and again his eyes locked with hers.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her.

  She nodded, filling him with all the courage he needed, and more.

  “Yes.”

  He leaned close again and brought his lips close to her ear. Then, he whispered something. It wasn’t long and drawn out. It was a simple, single sentence, and the words he used for it were few and direct.

  When he’d finished imparting the message, the one to end all others for both of them, he felt her body jump and her breathing quicken.

  “Oh, my God....” she said in wonder. “I...I think I knew it.”

  The creatures on the stairwell pounded their way up. Any moment now, and they’d be reaching the top floor, with clear access to the catwalk. To them.

  Kelly started to laugh, the sound in utter contrast to the chaos around them.

  “I think I’ve always known. It’s been in front of me the whole time...so close I didn’t notice it enough to take a good look at it. It’s the missing piece.” She pressed a hand against her head. “Ahh. It hurts like a bastard, though.”

  “I know. Don’t worry...it won’t last long.”

  The first one burst up from the stairs onto the metal grating of the top floor of the tower. When it saw them, it screeched in unholy celebration. More emerged behind it. They surged forward, with their black eyes and red talons.

  Neither Samuel nor Kelly paid them any mind.

  She twitched in his embrace, gasping.

  “I thin-...I -hink it’- -appen-ng....” she said.

  He felt it, also. She was flickering in and out. The White surged in him at that moment, and he blinked in and out just as she was...rapidly, like he was seeing the world through a camera with a malfunctioning, overactive shutter. They clutched at one another, in the diminishing time that they inhabited their physical bodies.

  Samuel wasn’t frightened of it, anymore. Quite the contrary, he urged it on, rooted for the thing that had terrified the skin off of him before he’d beheld its true nature.

  No, there was no fear. There was only acceptance. Surrender. It was like going home...like he was returning to the place that had made him, to a time before he’d been born.

  He clenched his teeth, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  The demon nearest him shot out a filthy hand. Time slowed down to a crawl. The very tip of its red claw brushed Samuel’s shirt sleeve...clutching, grasping...the same thing that a young version of himself had felt in the cab of a speeding truck, long ago...the same horror he’d dreamed about all the years in between.

  But this time, Samuel was not afraid.

  Blink.

  * * *

  Chapter 52 – Ejelano

  Ejelano looked on as the man and the woman on the wall, the last of their kind, vanished into thin air. His messengers, having been so close but then so cruelly robbed of their kill, howled at the white, blank sky with frustration and lost control, some of them shaking the railing, while others clawed at their own skin or attacked one another until they were smeared and bleeding.

  Ejelano, the original, searched the catwalk with his eyes, where the two humans had stood just a scant moment before. He’d seen nothing like it, in all of his long travels, and was disturbed to his very core by the veiled explanation he could not penetrate.

  “Where did they go? What happened to them?”

  WE’LL GET TO THAT IN A SECOND. FOR NOW, YOU SHOULD BE CELEBRATING! YOU DID IT, MY BOY! A WHOLE WORLD...WORM FOOD! GREAT JOB! I HAVE TO ADMIT, I REALLY WASN’T SURE THAT YOU WERE GOING TO BE ABLE TO PULL IT OFF. YOU’RE A TOUCHY, FEELY KIND OF GUY...NOT AN OUNCE OF PSYCHO IN YOU, I NOW ADMIT...AND NOW THAT IT’S OVER I THINK I CAN TELL YOU THAT MOST OF THE GUYS IN THE OFFICE HAD MONEY ON YOU TO FAIL. WE HAD A POOL GOING. THOSE SHIT-HEELS ARE GOING TO BE SO SCRUMPTIOUSLY PISSED OFF! BUT, WHATEVER...NEVER MIND THEM...LOOK AT YOU! HOW DOES IT FEEL, MAN? HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE DONE?

  The spirit’s question dashed his mind with cold water and pulled his perspective up to orbit, and for the first time he felt the enormity of it.

  It was true. He was finished.

  He stood atop a mountain of bodies; a dead species. His species. He’d killed them all...every last one of them. It was surely the most ambitious undertaking in all the history of the world, and it had been he who’d accomplished it. It was too much...too big...to fit in his head...like trying to view the entirety of a planet while he was standing on the surface. There was only so much he could view of the whole. It was good, because he suspected that if he swallowed all of it at once he would choke on it and die.

  How did he feel?

  He’d walked (one foot, and then the other) for twenty-thousand years.

  He’d seen humanity rise out of infancy and claim the planet, even as he worked to exterminate it...back before he’d grown powerful enough to affect the inertia of its growth. Back when he could only nip and peck, and take one at a time.

  He’d been alive so long that he didn’t have a chance to remember ninety-nine percent of what he’d seen or done, partly due to the voice’s meddling, and partly due to the natural process of forgetting the events of his life in the finite, limited storage box of his brain. His imperfect memory was only one of the very few things in him that could still be called “natural”.

  How did he feel?

  He’d cycled in and out of apathy, vacillated between tortuous self-loathing and self-pity. He’d entered his land of demented rationalization many times, trying to think of the people he was slaughtering lik
e they were animals, only to invariably lose the delusion and feel it break every time he’d seen the light leave their all-too-human eyes.

  How many times had he been shown that nightmarish vision of Lena, lashed to the tree, the flames licking at her feet or worse, whenever he thought he couldn’t go on? And then after, when his will was broken and he’d succumbed to the unalterable whip-crack of the task, feeling the cold hand of guilt as she steadily slipped from his mind despite every effort he made to preserve her, piece by piece, until she was more of an idea than a person, more concept than flesh and blood. Having the unanswerable question enter his head...wondering whether it was better to remember her and see her burn...or forget her completely.

  How did he feel?

  He’d been a murderer. An inmate. A marathon man. He’d seen the plants die, watched as the animals followed. He’d witnessed the rising madness in humankind as it came to grips with its own inescapable extinction, observed nature’s paradox in it as it trampled its nurturing instinct and consumed its own body for sustenance, even as it spasmed for the final time and death descended.

  He’d been and done all of this, endured all of its circular cycle of numbness and eye-gouging agony, and how did he feel?

  He opened his mouth.

  “I feel....”

  YEAH?

  “Old. I feel so...old.”

  The voice answered him with uncharacteristic silence. Ejelano’s words hung in the air, and what was left of the world seemed to hush itself in acknowledgment, if only for a short few seconds.

  Then, his introspection interrupted, he felt the tremor before he heard the sound, like a thousand elephants falling off a cliff.

  OH, SHIT. WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT?

  It was the central, domed building. The whole thing, from the ground level to the top of the central scaffolding, was listing away from him. The White had digested half of the external wall and the dwellings on the other side, and now it was starting on the main course. As the supporting foundation was steadily eaten away, the structure heaved and shook, almost like it was fighting for its own survival...like it was trying to dig its feet into solid earth that no longer existed. Cracks appeared, branching over the metallic skin of the thing like craggy bolts of black lightning, the internal superstructure losing the battle against physical forces that it was never built to weather. A storm of sparks flashed through the dark interior as the electrical cables stretched and split, and a dirty mixture of dust and billowing smoke from the fires within rose from the helpless building like a soul leaving its dying body.

  Somewhere inside, the main drill shaft bent and broke apart, and the once-so-proud, lofty lattice of interwoven steel came crashing down, inverted dish and all, slicing through the Dome and leaving a dark gash where it tore through the sloping wall.

  And then, the entirety of the gigantic edifice began to slide down and away from Ejelano, grinding and rumbling. There was no soil beneath for it to dig roots into, only abyss and oblivion, and so away it slipped into the silky embrace of the expanse. It fell in one piece, holding together in death as it had in life, giving out one final shriek of grinding metal to remind any who remained of what it had once been. At long last, released from its centuries-long servitude, it fell. Ejelano watched it go, from outside and within, where a great many of his messengers were now trapped. The many lenses of their perspectives, his eyes through their eyes, winked out as they were steadily crushed by the twisting, falling wreckage. Eventually his perception of it was gone as it was, at long last, erased from time and memory.

  Another clamor rose behind him and he whirled to see that the last fragments of the wall and the great gate were also being claimed by the void. He felt the wind of its passing sucking at him, beckoning him toward what had been reduced to only a bare edge of ground, and an unobstructed view to the malevolent, omnipresent White.

  There was nothing between it and him, now. Without the larger structures to block his view, it was even more apparent to him now that he stood on an island...one that was perched precariously over the terrible vastness...one that was shrinking. If something didn’t happen soon to save him, he literally wouldn’t have any ground to stand on.

  The voice echoed in his head.

  HUH. YOU DON’T SEE THAT EVERY DAY.

  “What do I do now? What do I do now!?”

  WELL, THERE IS THE MATTER OF YOUR BUDDIES, HERE.

  Sure enough, the remainder of his messengers, his impostors—the ones who hadn’t met their fate in the Dome or on the wall—had gathered near him. There weren’t many of them...maybe twenty or twenty-five. With everything that was happening, he’d truthfully forgotten about them.

  They’d arranged themselves around him in a semi-circular group, cornering him, pinning him against the edge. He was trapped.

  He reflexively tensed his body, preparing for the battle that always came after the hunt. But, this time, something was different. They looked his way with...of all things...calm. He froze, and his brows narrowed in suspicion.

  What new manner of game is this?

  He’d never seen them anything but angry, frenzied...filled with blood-lust. But not this time. For some unknown reason, this time it was different. Each face held the same blank expression, almost like they didn’t notice his presence at all. It was...eerie.

  He shook off his uneasy thoughts. He didn’t have time. It had to be a trick. He lowered himself, gathering his weight around his center of gravity, and anticipated their assault.

  In the past, they’d all come at once. Sometimes there had been thousands. The worst it had ever gotten, the really big groups, had taken him months—biting, tearing, wrenching and twisting—to emerge victorious from the mountain of their stinking, bloated bodies.

  Twenty-five he could do. Twenty-five he could dispatch in a few seconds.

  He braced himself.

  “Come on then, demons.”

  They came. But, not as he expected. Not with aggression or malice. They approached him, their posture relaxed...none of them, not even one so much as raising a hand. And when they reached him, they never even stopped. They just went on by, unbelievably...one by one. Ejelano didn’t even have to step out of the way.

  They kept going until they got to the edge of nothingness, and then, without hesitation, they stepped off. Five and then ten, and then twenty willingly cast themselves down into the void, without so much as a single evident care for their own safety. The last thing he saw of them was their fluttering hair, blown about by the gusty wind, before they disappeared beyond the crumbling brink. Not one of them looked back.

  He was baffled.

  “What...why did they do that?”

  The voice answered him, thoughtful.

  IT’S THE WHITE. IT CALLS THEM BACK TO IT.

  “Calls them...?”

  He felt it in his brain, waving off his question.

  NO TIME. THERE’S ONE LAST THING TO FINISH UP.

  “Finish? Finish what? Speak plainly, damn you! I am finished! I killed them all, just as you asked! Every last one! They’re all dead!”

  WE’LL SEE.

  Ejelano was pondering the spirit’s enigmatic reply, when the air before him began to shimmer, as if a hundred fireflies had been released. They danced and mingled with one another, leaving tracers in his vision and dizzying him. Then, the space between them started to take form and become solid, and all at once he was looking at a primitive dwelling, with oiled animal skins for walls and broad leaves arranged over the top in layers to form the roof. It was well-constructed and ancient, a simple relic of a much simpler time...humankind’s relative infancy, when it was only just first discovering the definition of community—of civilization—before he’d been changed into the thing he was now.

  What was more, the modest hut was...familiar. Personal.

  “This is...was...mine,” he said, peering at the conjured building. “I...I lived here.”

  The spirit’s surprise simmered across his mind.

  HUH
. YOU REMEMBERED. THAT’S...DIFFERENT.

  It was then that Ejelano started to feel...strange. His senses started to flicker and diminish, and there was an ache that was starting to grow in his chest.

  OKAY, SO, FOR THIS, I’M GOING TO NEED TO TAKE BACK SOME STUFF. THIS PART WON’T BE FUN FOR YOU, I’M AFRAID.

  The ache rose sharply, until he was clutching at himself, as if he could find the source and pluck it out. He fell heavily to his knees and doubled over.

  “Arrgghh! What’s...happening to me!?”

  OH, STOP IT, YA BIG BABY. IT’LL BE OVER IN A SECOND.

  His vision and hearing faded further. He looked down at his chest, and was amazed to see the brightness in the hollow decreasing, as well. The hole itself, the gaping emptiness that he’d carried with him for an eternity...it was shrinking!

  Healthy skin and flesh generated and grew, filling in the empty space with something natural...something human. The pain was of a special sort...it also was familiar. It whispered from his past, from his origin. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure; a pain like this had baptized him into his new life as a world-killer. The pain had returned; he was transforming again, but...unlike in the beginning...this time he was becoming something lesser. Something smaller.

  The hollow diminished, and with it the glow, until finally it winked out of existence and the gap closed. What had once been a ghastly hole was left as unmarred, bronzed skin. He could feel bone and muscle knitting together, filling him in until he was solid flesh, all the way through. There was a presence...a wholeness...in his chest that he hadn’t felt since the beginning.

  Suddenly it was over. The pain subsided.

  He began to get woozy, and spots popped into his vision.