by Greg Dragon
“Shh, shh, Jazz,” she said, choosing to abbreviate her name in that tender moment. “I want you to rest, so that you can be healthy. We want our bubbly Jasmine back, good and whole.”
The girl smiled wide, the way she always did when it was genuine, and then closed her eyes to sleep. Isobel sat next to Alysia and hugged her close, and Koko hovered, looking angrier than they had ever seen her before.
“I want to hunt it down and kill it. Let me hunt it down and kill it, CeeCee. It cannot get away with this, not with what it did to you and Jasmine. Flying around to use the unfair odds to beat us. The lost have no honor, so I should be free to find it and kill it where it sleeps,” she said.
“Come here, Koko, come here, sister. Come and sit with us so that Jazz can feel your warmth. I know that you are upset, but we shouldn’t be rash, especially when many people are relying on us.” Koko hesitated and then inhaled and twirled into a fall. It was a masterful move as she ended up in a seated position, close enough to Alysia’s side to make an embrace.
“You girls did well. I know that none of you have fought the lost. You probably didn’t expect to be up against them until Chaos makes the call, but you chose to come with me, to be my arms, to help me save my world. I just want you to know that I won’t take it for granted.”
They hugged each other close while Jasmine slept and before long they began to feel warm; the shared demon blood was doing something from the way they connected.
“How did you know, CeeCee?” Isobel asked, her eyes wide with surprise.
“I—I really didn’t know we could do this. I know that as humans we can use one another to stay warm, but this… this is just wonderful. It’s as if we are recharging one another, just by being so close,” she said. They all smiled, feeling the connection, the energy, and the warmth. After a time it moved from a physical comfort to a mental one, and Alysia felt the stress, the worry, and the nagging memories of her mother fall to the side to be replaced with blessed nothing. It was a small island of peace in a gigantic world of terror, and the girls held onto it, losing track of all space and time.
When Alysia opened her eyes it was getting dark, and Tracy was standing with her rifle at her side, staring at them.
“Tracy?” Alysia asked, groggy and confused as to where she was.
“I didn’t want to wake you girls,” Tracy replied in a hushed tone. “You all looked so peaceful, plus, I didn’t know whether it was some sort of ritual you all had to finish, or if you were doing something to resurrect that poor girl or something.”
“She isn’t dead, it’s okay,” Alysia said as she shifted her weight slightly to try to not wake the other girls. “We all can heal from the blood of the Dra’yr. But it’s a slow process, nothing like that demon we fought.”
“Look CeeCee, I—” she started, and Alysia wondered what she was about to say. “About me and James, I—I know that you don’t approve, and…” She sighed and shook her head. “I…I—”
“My mother’s corpse wasn’t even cold before you two decided to become a thing, Tracy. How in all the world of sense am I ever going to be cool with that? If you were in my place, and I yours … wait, no that’s gross and weird. You know what I mean, though. Not cool, man, not cool. I can’t even freaking look at you, or him, now. You were like a friend of mine, and you screwed me.”
“I know, I know, and Jimmy said—ugh, I don’t know what to say. Can we ever be friends again? Can you ever forgive us for, for, y’know?”
Alysia was about to shrug the girls off and tear into Tracy when she saw a light switch on in one of the standing buildings about fifteen floors up. She shook the girls awake and woke up Jasmine. They all stood and looked up in anticipation of something bad.
“We got shelter!” James Knight yelled from across the rubble, and Alysia thanked God for allowing them the good fortune of finding a place.
“That Jaime is annoying but he’s useful,” Tracy said, as if she had forgotten their conversation. She started trudging back towards the building, and the girls supported Jasmine and followed behind her as Alysia stewed.
They climbed the stairs to the floor where the light was showing, and they found Jaime and James, setting up the bed for Jasmine to rest.
“How is there light?” Alysia asked as they lay her down and began treating her open wounds.
“I found some bulb droids in a building downstairs. Most of them were busted up and out of juice, but a lot of them still work. Plus I got us these,” he said, and he held up a fist full of flares and fire-starters. “Some higher power is looking out for us. The only thing missing now out of your list of doom, CeeCee, is some actual food. The way everything looks, people set up here for a time. Some of these rooms are bound to have supplies, things we can use. I feel like there was a whole community surviving here at one time, hiding from the demons. Something drove them out. Maybe it was our demon friend, but they left in a hurry. That’s how I got the bulb droids.”
“Are there any other droids, or battery-operated devices around that are still functional?” Tracy asked.
Jaime shook his head and then shrugged slowly. “I only glanced in the rooms since I was just trying to make sure that we could be safe up here. If we have the time, we can all do some real digging. Kick down a few doors, grab some stores, and see if we can find anything else from the old world that still has power in it. What do you say, Knights? Sound like a plan?” Jaime asked, looking at the two of them as they exchanged glances.
“Where’d that demon go?” James asked. “There’s no point in us getting comfortable up here if he’ll be back looking to finish what he started.”
“As long as I have the Twilight Sword, he will avoid me at all costs,” Alysia said. “We are safe here; he won’t come back to fight us all on the same battleground … not unless he’s stupid, and he didn’t strike me as being stupid. Isobel and Koko are fast, deadly, and resourceful. They can go out tomorrow to see what they can find for food. The rest of us can go from room to room, salvaging what we can.”
They all nodded and then separated to set up camp, supply stashes, and make themselves comfortable. Alysia removed her tattered cloak and her boots, and then lay on the floor next to Jasmine, holding her close to try and generate the heat again. She didn’t know when it was that she passed out, but for the rest of her team and family, she was out the moment she lay down.
~ * ~ * ~
The next day they got up and went door to door, looking for anything that could be used by their group to eat, stay warm, or pass the time. The building was an old bank building, and they were in the offices that stood on the fifteenth floor. They used the cubicle partitions to set up rooms, and James and Tracy began to dismantle the old chairs and couches to set up beds for all of them.
The girls of the Bloody Garot took to the streets to scrounge for food. Isobel was left behind to take care of Jasmine, while Alysia and Koko tore New York apart, looking for hard rations. When they came back, they had cans of beans, salted meat, and a small deer. It took the entire day for them to make the floor into a proper camp, but by the time it was dark again their spirits were up.
“Whoever said that a couple of soft, city-bred Yankees could never survive the apocalypse was out of their mind,” Tracy joked, but half of them didn’t understand it, so they just laughed to make her feel better.
James created a fire inside of a metal bin that he found, and they gathered around it to talk and thaw out their frozen limbs from the day.
“How long do we plan to stay up here?” Tracy asked.
“I dunno,” James said, looking over at Alysia as if to urge her to speak up.
“I think this is it,” she said quietly.
“What do you mean?” Tracy said.
“I think we need to make this place comfy, get situated, and make it into our home base for a while. We drove the demon out that was stationed here, and eventually the girls and I will have to find him and finish him off. If we keep moving around together, trav
ersing into unknown territory and whatnot, then the same thing that happened to Jazz will happen to the rest of us.”
Tracy made to say something but Alysia shot her a glance to keep her quiet. “Hear me out; I’ve given this a lot of thought since we got here. If we can have a home base, we can become hunters instead of the hunted. This building has many floors, and it’s empty and we are high up. If we get attacked, we can defend ourselves here; and if we rescue people, they can be taken care of here too.”
“Yeah with all the tons of food and supplies that we have here, right CeeCee?” Jaime asked sarcastically.
“No, Jaime, I get it. We will have to keep stocking up and preparing for the weeks to come. Once we are good with supplies, living items, and Jasmine is healthy, then we can start working on finding the demons to destroy. We travel out, kill them, and then come back to rest and recuperate. If we’re constantly moving about, camping out in the open, and traveling together, they will seek us out and kill all of you. I couldn’t live with myself if that were to happen.”
They sat around the fire, letting her words sink in. Nobody had any objections. It sounded good to have a place to call home instead of the constant traveling they had been doing.
The next morning, James went with Koko to do the scavenging run, and Isobel assisted Tracy in working on the place. Alysia went up to the rooftop to make sure nothing was camping there, and Jaime began working on what he called a “heater” out of the frozen machinery that stood exposed on the first floor.
When they reconvened for lunch—roasted venison with a side of boiled kidney beans—Alysia walked into one of the offices and found a tall window to start looking out. Jaime got up and followed her inside, as he wanted to try and cheer her up.
“CeeCee, how come you’re so good at fighting? I know that your father put you in martial arts classes and all of that, but you’re ridiculous. How come you aren’t some sort of world champion kendo master or something?” Jaime asked as they stood by the window, watching the snow as it fell.
“I don’t know. I was kind of a natural when I started playing with swords. Dad thought it was some sort of amazing thing, so he got me a real tutor for private lessons. Funny thing is that I hated him for it; the lessons were hard and I thought that it was the most worthless thing to put time into.”
“You turned out pretty good for someone who half-assed her training,” he said with a smirk.
“I never said I half-assed anything. The training was my escape, and I used it to keep my mind off of many other things going on around me. I don’t mean that I hated my dad. Never that. What I mean is that I wished I could be like the other girls… back then. I was a bit of an outcast in my school, and I couldn’t ever share my personal life with them. What was I gonna say? ‘Hey I’m Alysia and I get to go home and punch a heavy bag tonight?’ Yeeeaaah.”
“Does your dad know that you had it hard?” he asked.
Alysia shrugged. “My dad did several tours as a Special Forces soldier. I’m not gonna go tell him that a bunch of little girls not wanting to play with me was hard. Plus, I know now that everything he has done was for my safety. If I hadn’t been trained to fight back when people pushed, I would have been dead that first night when the creatures came.” She stopped and looked at him, which made him uncomfortable since she never was one to give him eye contact. “I’ve noticed something,” she said.
“What, do I have something on my face?” Jaime asked while simultaneously touching his cheeks to see if anything was there.
“We’re always discussing me, and I don’t know the first thing about you. Same goes for Tracy, and my dad. Everyone here is a closed book, except for me. I just whined to you about being an outcast kid. I must be losing my mind.”
Jaime didn’t say anything, just rubbed his head and watched the snow. Alysia was expecting him to start his life story, but he merely stood there, watching the flakes fall.
“Do you not trust me?” she finally said.
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, of course I trust you. What kind of group would we be if we didn’t have trust? I’m just private is all. Plus, women like to be the ones talking; all men know that. It’s why we shut the hell up and let you all have the microphone.”
Alysia’s brows knit together so hard that they looked like deep fissures in her forehead. She hated the generalization, especially when she wasn’t the standard mold of woman. “Hey, we’re not all like that. Tell me about yourself or I’ll keep on bringing it up until you do.”
“Jesus Christ, Alysia, you can’t ever back down, can you?” he asked and she batted her eyes and smiled at him. The sight of her tiny fangs reminded him of what she had been through and the fight with the demon stood out fresh in his mind. “Okay, fine, what do you want to know?” he finally said, and she pumped her fist happily at having won.
“Where were you born?”
“Jacksonville, Florida,” he said, in a way that indicated that he wasn’t proud of it.
“Where were you when this all began?” she asked.
“Here in New York with my girlfriend. We were at the theater when a giant decided to come through and kill a couple hundred people. What’s funny is that we thought it was part of the movie. Vorlak’s Last Ride. You seen that one?” Alysia shook her head. “Oh well, it was cheesy as hell, but yeah, there’s a scene where the mech pilot decides to land his ship in Centurion form, and it was in full 4DX, so we were confused when he came crashing through.”
“Where’s your girlfriend now?” Alysia asked.
“She died, but not in the theater. Man, we booked it out of there so fast and that silly girl wanted to stop and turn in her 4DX helmet. Can you believe that? That was Marlene though, lawful till it hurt. That’s how I know she’s in heaven.”
Alysia didn’t know what to say. She had always wondered where Jaime was from, and with him talking, she wanted to press him for more. But death was never an easy subject, even now when it was the end of the world. “I’m sorry.” She said.
“We all die, it was just her time. What’s funny is that old Debdan—remember him, my buddy?” Alysia nodded and he continued. “He was in the toilet when it happened. He came out to get his girl, but she had taken off without him. That boy never had the best of luck, especially when it came to women. But I remember how paranoid and scared he was when we finally got somewhere safe. He kept saying ‘Jaime, as long as I didn’t die on the toilet man, as long as I didn’t die on the toilet.’” Then he busted out laughing. It seemed to be the funniest thing to him and Alysia didn’t know whether it was okay for her to laugh as well, or if it was simply how he chose to deal with everything that had happened.
Tracy walked over to them and sat on a desk. She had cut her hair into a short bob, and with her neck exposed she looked beautiful. Jaime stared at her and forgot what he was saying to Alysia, and it was extremely evident that he was very attracted to her. “So, Tracy, you and Mr. Knight, huh? Seeding the barren earth? We haven’t seen the two of you all morning. Out ‘scouting’ again, or was he helping you to—”
“I swear to god, Jaime, if it wasn’t for the situation, I would throw your narrow ass out the window right now. Mind your own damn business, and have some respect!” she yelled at him and then stormed out of the room.
Alysia tried to hide at smile at their exchange because if there was anyone that could set Tracy McLeay off, it was Jaime.
“You like her, huh?” Alysia teased, and she watched the sarcastic smirk fall from his face.
“You do realize that she and your dad are … together, right?” he said to her. “Weren’t you going to kick her ass for that?”
Alysia thought about it and shrugged. “It’s very disrespectful, and I think she owes me a huge apology for taking advantage of him. But I’m leaving that up to her to do. I see the way she acts, how she refuses to look me in the eye, and I know she feels guilty for what she’s doing. We’ll have the talk when she’s ready. I’ve already given my dad
a piece of my mind.”
“I did notice that the Knight bond has been a bit frayed since we arrived. You two gonna be all right—”
“He’s my father. We have to be!” Alysia spat, and shook her head at the situation. “You know, if there is a chance that we go back in time if we manage to beat the demons, Dad’s gonna feel really bad for this whole Tracy situation.”
“Is that what you think will happen, if we win?” Jaime asked, perking up at the chance that she would say yes.
“Lord Chaos didn’t answer me when I asked him, yet here we stand, thirty years after the fallout and you and I haven’t aged a day. That makes me think we were teleported forward, to this time, when the demons are comfortable and have their guard down. If Chaos can send us forward, why can’t he send us back?”
Jaime shook his head at her. “Because he could use his magic to stop us from aging, keep us buried in the rubble for thirty years, and then wake us up at the time that he did. I wouldn’t bet on the time travel, CeeCee. I don’t want to make you sad, but if he had that power, wouldn’t he use it to win his war?”
“Yeah, that would make sense,” Alysia said sadly, then turned to watch the snow mimic her hopes as they fell to their demise from the heavens. “I wonder if little Maria and her mom are okay,” she said after a while, and Jaime didn’t know how to answer.
“Where do you think that thing went?” Jaime asked.
“What thing?” Alysia asked, annoyed at the way he kept jumping from subject to subject.
“The demon. You won the fight but he ran off somewhere, no doubt healing. Do you think it will come back? To find you. I mean, like, it has to be enraged by what you did to it,” he said.
“He will keep running, I think. Actually, I’m quite sure of it. I could see the fear in his eyes when I cut him with the Twilight Sword, and when he realized that I was not quite human.”
“Come on CeeCee, you’re still human,” Jaime began.
