Ascendant: The Complete Edition

by Richard Denoncourt

  A moment later, a series of explosions rocked the People’s Republic, and the crowd cheered.

  Chapter 25

  A stiff desert wind rolled across the plains, making the old shack creak.

  Beyond the two-room structure, by a grove of bending Ironwood trees, a man was on his knees above a raised patch of earth. A grave marker stood at the opposite end, little more than a plank of wood that had been stuck into the earth. A single word had been carved into it:

  MOTHER

  William Casmas scratched his beard as he knelt before the grave. He’d been there for hours, barely speaking, only half-aware of the sinking sun and the way his stomach was clamoring for food. He would fast throughout the rest of the day in mourning.

  “You were always there for me, Momma,” he said. “With you gone, I guess I have to move on from this place. So be it.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at the shack where he and his mother had lived for the past ten years since leaving Gulch. The place had been abandoned when they’d found it, almost in ruins, but together they had fixed it up into a nice, cozy little home that would stand for the next twenty years if people left it alone. He’d miss the place.

  “Anyway, I guess this is goodbye.” He lowered himself over the foot of the grave and kissed the packed soil.

  With barely a sigh of effort, he brought his long, lanky body into a standing position and stretched. Showers were hard to come by here in the flatlands, and he smelled like the boiled onion and mushroom stew his mother had often made for supper. He craved some of that stew right now as he limped toward the shack, favoring his devil’s foot.

  The next morning he awoke to the chirping of birds. As he got up, his metal cot made the same squeaking noises it had made since he was a child. His mother had hated that sound, though she had never bothered William about it despite how it would always wake her up in the mornings. She had liked to sleep in late, often waking up hours after the sun had risen above the horizon. His mother loved her sleep.

  And yet they never skipped their daily training sessions, and she never failed to accompany him into the neighboring towns to steal the food that kept them alive. If not for her strength and daring, they would have starved a long time ago. Without her guidance, William would never have learned to use his ability at will.

  He ate a quick breakfast of boiled oat mash, salted kale, and an egg. Then he washed up as best as he could with a half-filled bucket of warm water, after which he scented himself with dried flower petals his mother had gathered the week before, so he wouldn’t smell too bad out on the highway. Trucks were chugging by more frequently these days, many of them not even guarded. That was a good sign; people were dropping their defenses now that all the major slaver settlements had been wiped out. Hopefully getting a ride eastward wouldn’t be too difficult.

  Out on the highway, William had to wait an hour before the first truck appeared on the horizon, going eastward along the cracked pavement. He’d been sitting in the shade cast by the shell of an old, sun-bleached car. The highway was full of these relics, all of them picked clean of anything that might be of use or value. They looked sad sitting out here in the sun. As rumor had it, the New Dallas Republic, now under the control of Michael Cairne, had programs in which these cars could be recycled and restored. But it was probably just a rumor. Who could possibly make use of these empty, rusted shells?

  Stop, stop, stop, he projected, easing the driver’s mind into submission.

  The vehicle slowed to a full stop before him.

  “Well,” the driver said, as William climbed inside. “That was strange.”

  “What was?” William said.

  The driver frowned at him. “I was gonna keep right on going, but—”

  “But what?” William said, narrowing his eyes.

  You can trust me, he sent.

  “Ah, never mind. What’s your name, pardner?”

  “William Casmas. And you, sir?”

  “Just call me Clayton. Ever’body does. You headin’ into New Dallas? That’s where I’m going to apply for my citizenship. Only twelve more hours ’til we get there, by my measure.”

  “Sounds good, Clayton. Take me there.”

  The man had a broad, bearded face, hair as brown as dirt, and twinkly eyes that spoke of an easygoing temperament. He was dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans, probably a farmer looking for a better life in the city. Ever since Michael had taken power, taxes in the NDR had reached an all-time low, sending the economy to heights it had never seen before. His massive army had focused on keeping away raiders and paramilitary groups, making the cities of the NDR extraordinarily safe and its people free to do as they wished.

  This farmer and his homely little truck were probably on their way southeast to take advantage of that. Too bad he wouldn’t get the chance.

  “You lookin’ for work once you get into the city?” Clayton said.

  William slid his right hand into his pocket. “Maybe. Why, Clayton? What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, I got a cousin who just opened up a grocery store right downtown. He pays a fair wage, could use a decent set of hands. I’ll introduce you to him if you’re interested. He and I are gonna be partners.”

  “I don’t know if that’ll work out, Clayton, old buddy.”

  “Why’s that?” Clayton glanced at him, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m not going to New Dallas to find work, old buddy.”

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” Clayton said with a nervous chuckle. “I only just met you, pal.”

  William shrugged. “Just trying to be friendly, I guess.”

  He flashed a pleasant smile at the man. Clayton nodded once and turned his eyes back to the road, clenching and unclenching his rugged hands over the steering wheel. “If you don’t mind me askin’, Will, why else would you be going to New Dallas if not to find work?”

  William chuckled as he stared out the dusty window at the flatlands beyond.

  “Well, Clayton, the truth is, I’m going there to destroy it.”

  Clayton whipped his head around in time to see the screwdriver slip out of William’s pocket. By then it was too late. William stabbed the blade into Clayton’s esophagus, then yanked it out and stabbed the man again. Blood sprayed out of him, tickling William’s face.

  As Clayton howled and struggled, William managed to reach over and swing open the driver’s-side door. A current of air entered the truck as it careened to the right and swiped the shell of an abandoned car. Clayton tried to claw at William’s face, but William was too quick for him and caught the man’s hands while managing the steering wheel with his right elbow.

  Thankfully, Clayton wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. Placing his right hand on the steering wheel to steady it, William used his other arm to push the man through the open door. Clayton held on to the frame, eager to stay in no matter what.

  Let go, Clayton…

  The man lost his grasp and all William needed was a single shove to get him to tip out of the truck and slam into the concrete divider. The screwdriver followed after him.

  Alone now, William closed the door and took a deep breath as he steadied the truck. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror, saw the blood spray on his face, and smiled.

  Only twelve more hours, Clayton had claimed. Twelve hours away from a new life, and a vengeance William could already taste.

  He flipped on the radio and bypassed static-ridden NDR news stations until he heard voices.

  “…drafted by Cairne himself to allow privatization of several government services, including domestic security…”

  “…God-damned anarchist bastards runnin’ this country…”

  “…bring back democratic elections, because if we can’t vote for the way this country should be run, what rights do we really have?”

  “…just unfair that some children, like Sebastian Cairne, are fortunate enough to study at this new academy simply because their families have money. Eve
ryone should equally have the right to take advantage of…”

  Sebastian.

  William had heard that name before. It was the name of his half-brother, the only other child his mother had ever brought into this world. The boy was famous, the only known son of Michael Cairne, a music prodigy with a talent unlike anything the country had ever seen. William and his mother had heard one of his songs on the radio once, an original piano composition that had brought tears to her eyes.

  “He’s my son, too,” she had said, sobbing. “They stole him from us, William. Your own baby brother.”

  William had grown up being jealous of a boy he didn’t even know.

  And what should he do with the little brat when he found him? Slit his throat? Take him under his wing? Turn him against his own father? Or maybe he’d sell him to one of the slaver settlements in Old New York. A child with those kinds of abilities could be worth a pretty penny.

  So many possibilities existed. He would decide later, after establishing himself in his new home. Only then could he really figure out what the next step would be.

  The voices on the radio were starting to bore him. He scanned past them, finally settling on a station that played bluegrass. A man strumming away on a banjo sang in a high voice about a girl who’d gotten away. It was a nice tune—sad but upbeat. It mirrored exactly how William felt: sad about his mother’s death, but upbeat about the opportunities just over the horizon.

  “This one’s for you, Momma,” he said and began to whistle the tune.

  He forgot about the blood drying on his hands and face. All he could think about in his excitement was a picture he’d seen once of the New Dallas skyline. He’d found a poster of the city in the master bedroom of a house he and his mother had robbed in his boyhood.

  The memory of those towers had always fascinated him. For the next few hours, as he listened to the radio and whistled along, he imagined what city people must be like.

  Finally, after all these years of living in a barren wasteland, he, William Casmas, was going to see the New Dallas Republic.

  He was going to see it burn.

  THE END

  ~

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  Read on for a sample of TRAINLAND, a horror thriller about a grieving father who follows the ghost of his four-year-old daughter into a New York City subway tunnel, and discovers another world…

  TRAINLAND

  By Richard Denoncourt

  Chapter 1

  When Jack Devins opened his eyes to find himself leaning over the tracks, a subway train coasting toward him fast enough to kill, his first thought was: Not again.

  Blinded by the train’s headlights, he flung himself backward and landed painfully on his hip. The shock tore through his body. He watched in stunned silence as the train whipped by, a smear of metal and light that slowed with a grinding screech. It could have been his body being torn apart by those wheels. Jesus.

  He was still too stunned to make sense of what had just happened. All he knew was that things were getting out of control. This was the fourth blackout, and he wasn’t even drunk. He never was, though his drinking had increased in the past few months. He also never remembered how the blackouts started, but each one ended in a train station. They were getting worse; the next time, he might not be so lucky.

  Picking himself up, he glanced through the windows and saw empty seats. The whole train was empty, not a living soul anywhere to be seen, including on the platform. Above him, the night sky was open and black, as if the world had been swallowed up by a beast. He was outdoors on one of those elevated train platforms that crossed over the street—strange since he couldn’t remember having used one of these in years. Where was he?

  “Stay clear o’ the closin’ doors,” a voice over the speakers said, and the train was off again, on its path toward the lights of Manhattan, where it too would be swallowed up. An empty subway train in New York City. Unbelievable.

  He looked at his watch and wasn’t surprised to find that it was 1:20. It was always 1:20 when he came out of a blackout. It had been exactly 1:20 the first time, when he’d woken up on a bench in that station up in Harlem. It had been 1:20 the second time, when he had snapped awake standing in front of a security booth, a police officer frowning at him above a half-eaten hot dog. And it had been 1:20—always 1-fucking-20—the third time, when he had opened his eyes to find himself lying flat on his back inside the F train at the Roosevelt Island stop, a half dozen people bent over him to see what was wrong.

  Tonight, the station sign told him he was above Steinway St. He vaguely remembered where that was. Somewhere in Queens, not too deep, only a few stops away from Manhattan. But he lived in Brooklyn, which was all the way on the other side of the city.

  He picked up his briefcase, realized he was still dressed in his suit and tie from work, and headed toward the stairs.

  He was forgetting something.

  Kelly’s picture.

  He searched the ground by his shoes and saw nothing except a few cigarette butts and a crumpled beer can. It was the picture he always carried in his wallet, the last one they’d taken of his daughter before the accident. He must have dropped it this time. Usually it was in his hand when he came out of a blackout.

  The accident—it was when everything changed.

  “Looking for this?”

  Jack was so startled he almost dropped his briefcase. The man who had spoken was standing a few feet away, almost invisible against the darkness of the tracks stretching away in the background. His voice had sounded raspy and worn, almost like Jack’s grandfather had sounded months before dying of lung cancer. The man wore a dirty, tattered cloak with a hood that obscured his face.

  “Who are you?” Jack said.

  “Here,” the man said, holding out something thin and glossy.

  His daughter’s picture. And yet Jack couldn’t bring himself to step toward the man and grab it. For one thing, the man’s hand looked like a fried chicken wing. It was missing most of its fingers, and the skin was wrinkled and brown, not the effect of old age but of a terrible fire that had licked away most of the skin. He smelled like sweat and something else—a mushroomy smell that Jack associated with decay.

  And he was wearing a mask.

  “Take it,” he said.

  Jack searched for the man’s eyes behind the mask. The light falling from the nearby station lamp illuminated only half of his body, barely enough for Jack to see how dirty and scratched the mask was. It also illuminated one of the man’s eyes, which was small and yellow, surrounded by skin that matched his hands in texture. The fire must have been a bad one for it to scar his hands and his face like that.

  “It’s OK,” he told Jack. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Jack whipped his hand forward and caught the picture just as the man was letting go of it. He inspected it to make sure it was Kelly. Satisfied after seeing his daughter’s grinning face, he pulled out his wallet and stuffed the picture inside. When he looked back at the man, who was obviously homeless, he felt a stab of pity.

  “Here,” Jack said, removing a twenty-dollar bill from the wallet. “It’s the least I can do. Thanks.”

  The man reached out with one of his ruined hands and took the bill. He brought it up to two tiny slits in the mask where nostrils should be and sniffed it like he was considering taking a bite out of it.

  Then he held the bill out toward the tracks and let go.

  Paralyzed by his own confusion—and curiosity, he had to admit—Jack watched the bill flutter through the air, twisting and twirling like it was dancing with the wind, until it disappeared into the darkness of the tracks below.

  “Where I’m from, I don’t need money,” the man said. “I also don’t need to tell you that
life is precious and short. Especially yours.”

  Jack scowled at him. He’d gotten the wrong impression; maybe this man was more sinister than he’d thought. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re searching for something,” the man said, narrowing his yellow eyes, his voice sounding like a boot scraping gravel. “Who’s the girl in the picture? Did she die? Was it suicide? Because if it was, I can show you where she ended up.”

  Suicide? She had only been four years old.

  “God damn you,” Jack said, his eyes filling with hot tears. “You have no right, no God damned right to talk about my daughter like that.”

  The man stepped toward Jack, who immediately backed away toward the stairs leading down to the street.

  “I can help you,” the man said. “She’s calling to you. I can show you the way to save her. Tell me your name. I just need your name.”

  “No,” Jack said, still clutching his briefcase. He thought about swinging it at the man, right in that covered head, maybe sending him over the edge, straight into the tracks. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  The man lurched toward him. “Please, please listen to me…”

  He reached out with a single, misshapen hand. Jack didn’t think about his next move; he simply turned and bolted for the stairs.

  “Wait!” the man called after him. “Let me help you!”

  The man’s footsteps followed Jack as he ran across the platform. Maybe there were people down there, a cop, someone who could help him keep this man away from him—this phantom who knew too many things about Jack’s life.

  He threw a quick glance over his shoulder, saw a pair of brown, fingerless hands reaching for him, and made a desperate leap toward the stairs.

  He made the first three steps with no problem but slipped on the fourth. He turned and grabbed the handrail as he fell, twisting until he could see the sky above the tracks, its cloud cover blacking out the stars. The handrail caught against his armpit, and he managed to latch on to it and half-tumble, half-slide down the rest of the stairs.