Monsters of the Apocalypse

by Rawlins, Jordan

  "Are you trying to die?" Nestor said his finger tightening on the trigger.

  "No! It was a thing! A conspiracy thing. Except, it wasn't all wrong. I mean the lizard people thing that was wrong… probably. But there are underground cities. A few of them. The rich elite, before The Island, they had an escape plan to the underground in the case of a nuclear attack. It's where some of us live now. Ironic right? These guys designed these underground cities to be un-attackable, so now they can't attack us."

  "How'd you find out about them?"

  "Jacob did. He had his men show the local people how to get there."

  The man kept his eyes focused on Nestor's gun.

  "My name's Caleb."

  "So?"

  "I thought it might humanize me if I had a name. I thought that it might make you less likely to kill me if you knew my name."

  "Shockingly poor logic. Where’s this underground city?"

  "It's impenetrable."

  "Then I'll knock."

  "Why do you want to go there?"

  "I was thinking, I'd stop them from broadcasting my feed so that mutants and lunatics would stop hunting me."

  "I can't let you do that."

  Nestor took a moment and thought about this. He pushed the barrel of the gun against the man's head.

  "You sure about that, Caleb?"

  "Yes."

  "You want me to protect you, but you won't do anything for me? Look, there's a world of mutants hunting me because of this hacker asshole. You're going to take me to him or I'm going to kill you very slowly."

  "Okay, Nestor, you know… this isn't going how I thought it would go… let's just go separate ways."

  "Very. Slowly."

  "Fine. Whatever."

  "You think I can't get the answer out of you?"

  "I'm sure you can, but I can't just give it up," the man said with a shaking voice. "I made a promise. You'll have to kill me."

  "Okay, any last words, Caleb?"

  "Yeah, actually. Mary, I know you're watching. I love you, now look away. I don't want you to see this."

  Nestor frowned at Caleb. Caleb closed his eyes.

  Chapter 70

  ***

  The door shattered and Arian walked into the room. The man was able to get two shots off before Arian disarmed him with a backhanded slap. Arian, unharmed from the bullets, clenched a single claw around the man's neck and lifted him off the ground. The man grabbed onto Arian's wrist and struggled to lift enough of his own weight to keep from choking to death.

  "I'm hungry. You are going to answer my questions, quickly and honestly or I'm going to eat you. Are we clear?"

  "Please, I'm a priest. A man of God, to eat me would be a sin!"

  "And if you weren't a priest? Would it be a sin to eat you?"

  "Yes," the man mumbled.

  "Then why mention it?"

  The man struggled for a response, but failed to say a word.

  "Okie doke. That's the first question I've asked that you've failed to answer. The next time that happens I will eat you. Now, if I wanted to have sex, to buy sex, in this fair metropolis, where would I go?"

  "No woman would have sex with a demon like you!"

  Arian tilted his head in thought as he tightened his grip slightly and listened to the man choking.

  "Well, that wasn't quite not answering, but it wasn't really a very good answer. Let's try again, we are living in a manmade hell, there are all manner of terrible things to be found. Where would I find someone selling women?"

  Arian released his grip enough that the man was able to gasp in a breath of air. The man took a moment and then shook his head solemnly.

  "I've heard, I mean I've never been there, but I've heard that in the old Ghibli building there's a man like that. I'm not sure though, you see I'm a…"

  "Priest. Yeah. You mentioned that. What denomination?"

  "Catholic," the man struggled out.

  "Say a prayer. A Hail Mary, say one of those."

  "I… I…" the man stuttered, his eyes wide in terror.

  "You can't because you're lying. You're not a priest. You shouldn't lie about things like that, it's a sin. Now, if you'll excuse me," Arian set the man back down on the ground and headed towards the shattered door.

  The man fell to the ground and prayed. It wasn’t a proper prayer because he'd never learned how, but the gratitude was genuine which he hoped counted for something.

  Outside of the apartment building Arian stopped and leaned against a wall, his head was swimming with bloodlust and the scent of the terrified man he'd left behind him. Every part of his body cried out for him to go back and sink his teeth into the man's flesh and let the warm salty blood burst into his mouth. His hands shook with a desire to rip tendons and muscles, to crack open the bright white bone that lay beneath the nearby flesh… but Arian resisted and moved towards the Ghibli building.

  When he arrived he smelled a combination of dirty human flesh and perfume. The combination made him nauseous. He looked through teary eyes at the large, two-story building from an alley across the street. The man had told the truth. The pimp made no sign of hiding his business, leaning auspiciously against a wall in a white track suit smoking a cigarette as two older, underdressed, women stood talking beside him. The women's eyes were heavily made up and scared.

  Arian took a few moments to make sure that he had gathered in the scene in its entirety. Once he was certain there was no other threat than the gun that bulged in the waistband of the man's pants, an electricity shot through Arian, bringing him a fantastic clarity. His logical thoughts slowly faded to somewhere distant as the hunger for flesh and the desire for the hunt spread out and dominated his mind. Then he was running. Running fast, a full sprint, each leg pushing as hard as it could against the cold cement below. His arms pumped mechanically, his claws spread wide.

  The pimp struggled to remove the gun from his waistband to shoot the charging mutant, but Arian ripped his arm off before he was able to take aim. Arian could sense in a distant way that he was roaring like an animal as he slammed his claws into the pimp's stomach beneath his ribs, hooked his claws up and then pulled back hard, cracking away the bone and slicing through flesh. The blood that sprayed out coated everything and filled the air with a red mist as Arian began to feed and the women ran off shrieking.

  When Arian was finished he walked slowly back to the mutant camp and was careful to avoid anything that would reflect his own monstrous image back to himself, though he doubted he'd be able to see anything through his tears.

  Chapter 71

  ***

  "I thought you'd forgotten about me," the mutant hissed.

  "No. Just been busy playing politics. You did well, soldier," Miho said sitting in a chair across from the mutant who sat on his bed. Flores was beside him tapping the syringe to prep it for injection.

  "So you really have a cure?"

  "Seems so. You're the second person to take it. The first was a success."

  Flores injected the mutant and then moved to his normal spot behind Miho.

  "What now?"

  "It'll take a week, maybe two, but you'll be back to human. At which point, I have another job for you."

  "Wait, the deal was, I kill those people and you cure me. That was the deal."

  "That was the deal," Miho shrugged. "Now we're making a new deal. You're going to go back to being a soldier. You'll tell people that you've been running recon missions all this time. I'll pull strings and get you your own unit and all the perks of your new higher rank of Sergeant."

  "Okay, that sounds good, but what do I have to do for you?"

  "Whatever I tell you to."

  "And if I don't? If I say no?"

  Miho leaned forward and smiled.

  "That's your choice. I once showed you a list of people who made that same choice. Keep that in mind."

  She sat up, smoothed out her dress and left. Flores was a step behind her.

  Chapter 72

  ***
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  Nestor hadn't moved and Caleb hadn't opened his eyes.

  "Mary is the girl you slept with?"

  "No, she's a kid. Kind of an adopted daughter. I said I'd protect her."

  Nestor lowered his gun.

  "And she's the hacker?"

  Caleb, after a long pause, nodded.

  "Shit. Of course, it was just some dumb kid messing around. Shit. Okay, I'll make you a deal. Take me to this underground city and I'll just shut down the hacking abilities, break the computers or whatever. I won't hurt the girl and then I'll move on."

  "Sorry, Nestor. If she wasn't the hacker, she'd just be a pretty little girl in all of this madness and terror. You know how that ends. I said I'd protect her. She's like a daughter to me… I… you wouldn't understand."

  Nestor turned and looked at the passing water. It was muddy and dark. The depth was impossible to tell, but the current was fast. He looked up at the horizon and then checked the sky, gauging the time by the muted glow of the sun.

  "Nestor, you're on a delay, but not that long of a delay. Mutants are chasing you. I can hold out long enough that they get here and kill you before you find out where the city is. I know I can."

  Nestor nodded his head, considering.

  "Walk."

  Caleb stared at him in surprise.

  "Really? You're taking me with you?"

  "Walk. That way," Nestor said pointing towards the river.

  "How can you tell that it's not too deep?"

  "I can't. I can't tell what a mine looks like either. So you start walking and I'll be right behind you."

  Caleb stared for a moment until Nestor raised his gun again and then Caleb stepped into the water.

  It was night when Nestor finally allowed them to stop and setup camp. Caleb had been unable to light the fire with only flint, but after watching Nestor he seemed to get it. Nestor made them dinner from his stores while Caleb dried his clothes and continued a constant stream of inane chatter that Nestor basically ignored.

  After dinner Nestor quietly cleaned his guns while Caleb looked on.

  “You're just like a video game character or something, Nestor. You’ve got the scars and the tattoos... I bet you sleep for like two hours and then wake up in a cold sweat haunted by your past, but, you know, in a cool way.”

  “You don't make a lot of sense, Caleb.”

  “You don’t understand what it’s like. What it was like, for guys like me. Staying up all night, numb, just day-dreaming these things that... You know what the thing is with the media? With porn and 3D movies and all, it lets you know what you're missing. It lets you know how unexciting your girlfriend is in bed, how tough you aren't or how cool you'll never be.”

  "You should talk less. Quiet people get shot in the face less often than loud people.”

  Caleb frowned nervously.

  “So, you weren’t the one on the Alpha Team who gave the inspiring speeches then?”

  "No."

  Nestor held out his hand and Caleb looked at it questioningly.

  "The gun you have poorly hidden in the back of your pants, give it to me so I can clean it."

  "You knew I had it? Why didn't you take it away so I couldn't shoot you?"

  Nestor continued his blank stare until Caleb handed the gun over with a laugh. Nestor took the gun apart with a quiet efficiency.

  "You sure like guns. Guess that's why you were a soldier. That's smart, making a career out of what you liked. I bartended. I was a waiter. A janitor. I worked afterschool day care at an elementary school. I didn’t really have any career though. I worked at places where I could work the least while I was working. Work the least shifts and still make enough dough to live."

  "Sounds boring."

  "It was. Life is. It was. Not anymore I guess, but it was. Don't you think?"

  Nestor reassembled Caleb's pistol and then handed it back to him before settling into his sleeping bag.

  "No, I never found life boring. Then again, someone has always been trying to kill me, as long as I can remember."

  "Famous Chinese curse: may you live an interesting life," Caleb said, trying to make himself comfortable on a stretched out blanket that Nestor had given him.

  "In interesting times. May you live in interesting times, is the curse," Nestor said rolling over, away from Caleb and the fire.

  "You've heard it!"

  "Yeah, a Chinese guy said it to me once… right before I killed him."

  Chapter 73

  ***

  Jacob was having his hair cut by Dr. Thomas when Arian entered the tent. The sound of the raised voices outside was drowned out by the high volume of the screen that Jacob was watching.

  "Arian, you're back. How was trolling for hookers?"

  Arian ignored the remark, though he wondered how Jacob always knew where he'd been and what he'd done.

  "Jacob, we have a situation."

  "Do we? Before we get to that, I need to tell you something. It turns out that October Carnegie has killed all of the Founders and now holds absolute power over The Island."

  "Jesus, without that distraction he might turn his attention to us," Arian said, momentarily forgetting what was happening outside.

  "What "us"? The government thinks they made us up, that we don't exist. He does though," Jacob pointed at Nestor on the screen, "so we need him to be alive, don't you think?"

  "Okay, so we need to let it be known that we don't want Caleb killed. Negate the rumor about the peace treaty."

  "I agree. We should tell everybody. How do you suggest we do that, Arian?"

  "Well…"

  "I know, let's catch Nestor, cut his head off and use the feed to tell everyone not to cut his head off," Jacob laughed.

  "What about catching him and just telling him."

  "First of all, catching Nestor is not easy and once you've caught him, not dying is even harder. Second, we need him out there, distracting the Islanders from us. We are hardly an army yet. One drone attack and we are no more. He distracts from us. Because October Carnegie invented the lie of a mutant army, when he hears about us, he won't believe it… unless he hears about it, from us. We can't be on Nestor's feed. And, without an army, I'm not going anywhere near Nestor."

  "I thought you two were friends."

  "What does that have to do with anything?"

  "Well, he won't kill you since your friends."

  Jacob laughed for a very long time.

  "That wolf is so cool. We should get wolves," Jacob said pointing at the screen.

  "I'm sorry, Jacob? Did you just say, 'we should get wolves'?"

  "Yeah. Not too short on the sides, Doc."

  "Yes sir," Dr. Thomas said.

  "I have to admit Doc, your ability as a stylist is almost as valuable as your ability to cure mutation. Not a day goes by where I don't look at my hair and thank God that I didn't slit your throat with a very dull knife."

  "I thank God for that too."

  "Haircuts, one of the first things to go after the Apocalypse. Such a shame to lose something so human. No other animal does it. But someone, thousands and thousands of years ago looked at all of that hair, dangling down to their ass and said, 'I think I'd like to have bangs.' Changed the world. You never know when you're going to change the world, that’s the thing."

  The commotion grew outside and brought Arian back to the moment.

  "That reminds me, sir, we have situation. Some of the men went nosing around and they saw the containers. They've noticed that Dr. Thomas had regressed back to human. And, well, there are some boys outside who want a word."

  "Oh dear," Jacob sighed. "No Indians I hope?"

  "No, no. But, some of them are pretty big, pretty mean."

  "You don't say? Well, I guess I should go talk to them, huh?"

  "I could go kill them all if you want."

  "Thanks, Arian, but sometimes being the King means getting your hands dirty. Doc, do my sideburns real quick."

  Arian nodded and sat down watching Nestor's
feed as the sounds of discontent grew louder.

  Chapter 74

  ***

  October had been in his room for two days. Paralyzed. Vanderbilt's blood was still on his hands, though it had turned an ugly dry brown now. The paralyses had come in stages. First there was a stillness that came with the realization of absolute power. Then the stillness had moved into the register of immobility as he succumbed to the awe that his own station induced. The final step into paralyses had come when he realized that there was nowhere else to climb, no higher peak, nothing left to do, but fall.

  The screen, which was always on, brought a twisted comfort to October. It gave a desired distraction. It allowed him to disappear into the travels of Nestor Bravo and escape his own reality. But, always in the background was the knowledge that Nestor didn't walk without purpose or deadly cause, and that October was his destination. He heard Miho's voice from time to time, and from it knew that someone else was in the room. The plates of food became empty and then disappeared, so he knew that a service staff was still present, but nothing stuck or registered. Life had become a narrow peak that was too small to comfortably balance on and in every direction was a terrible death should he falter.

  All in all, he'd had better weekends.

  What brought him back was the image of Miho's ass. Having dropped something she'd bent over, her skirt tightening over the curve of her ass, rising almost to the point of revelation and then she had turned and looked into his prying eyes and in that moment he found himself a ball of nervous and awkward motion and activity.

  "Well… does this fidgeting mean that you are ready to get to work, Mr. President?"

  "Quite, quite. Indeed, I have been deep in thought. I apologize. Heavy is the head that wears the crown and all."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Tell me about this underground city, Miho. The one this Caleb guy is from?" he said gesturing to the screen.

  "Like he said, designed by an early form of the Founders. In Ohio we believe. There are several. Also, like he said, impenetrable."