“What’s happening?” His fight with Michael had done something to him. He had recreated his body but it was powered by the power the Omniscient Man had given him.
He looked at the finite gems over the remains of the rebels bodies. He stopped himself from grabbing them. He couldn’t use the finite gems in fear of persecution.
He was never going to feel again.
Kevan suddenly yelled out. Screaming and thrashing on the wet ground.
August kneeled beside Kevan and held him. “I’m sorry, Kevan. I’m sorry.”
He held onto him with all his might as Kevan thrashed and screamed in his arms. His mind lost and unknown to the world around him.
“I’m sorry, Kevan. It’s going to be okay.” But it wasn’t. It was never going to be okay again.
August cried as the rain washed his tears away.
19
The Cost of Never Letting Go
After August killed God, life went on. At least, the very concept of living went on in the first four months after the gods fell.
At first, there was cheering in the streets, the gods were dead. They were free. Humanity was finally free at last.
They could rise up, the limit wasn’t the sky anymore, but the sky was the limit. The only thing that could have held them back were their own limitations, and not the ones that were once forced upon them by the gods.
The symbol of their oppression, the tower of Ifor, was torn down only a day after the gods fell.
But soon, after all the cheering and celebration had finally ended, the realities of their situation had begun to set in. The consequences of what they had just done were finally coming to light.
All around the world, as animals were slaughtered for food, as the injured and diseased neared death, as the old breathed past their last breaths, as women gave one last push to birth their children. Pig heads continued to squeal as they were cut off, the old and diseased moaned as their bodies stunk and decayed, the horribly mangled continued to scream in pain as their arms, legs, and spines were twisted and contorted in every which way, the newborns never wailed their first cry as they were stillborn.
The screaming lasted for months as life never ceased to live. And never sparked to begin.
August’s eyes trailed along the convenient store aisles. The rows were sparse and food was nonchalantly arranged. The freezer aisle was empty. There was no meat and barely anything else. He glanced at the basket he held in his hand.
It held a box of cereal and some milk. That would have to do.
August walked up to the cashier. “When will your next shipment of meat come in? My iron count is low.”
“Never. The interim president announced a halt to all meat production and slaughtering until the dead can rest again.”
“Dammit.”
“It seems Heaven is full, so the dead must walk the Earth.”
“They’re not walking, they’re just lying around screaming all day. And apparently forcing new diet choices on me.”
“Whatever. Nobody wants to eat meat that’s still alive. Even if it is cut up in pieces.”
“That does nothing to satisfy my bacon urge.”
“If you want meat that badly, then I know of a guy who froze hundreds of pounds of meat before the gods were killed. He has beef, pork, chicken, you name it. But it comes at a high price.”
“No. I’m good.”
“I’m thinking of closing up shop anyways and leaving for the country. I imagine as the years go by, the smell of this city will get worse. When millions upon millions fill up the scream farms with no screaming babies to grow old to take care of them. I don’t want to be here for that.”
August shrugged. “How much?”
“Four hundred.”
“Four hundred! Are you out of your fucking mind? This should be two hundred at most.”
“No. Our money system is fucked because nobody is dying. If you want to know fucked, try owning a small business during the end of the world.”
August looked inside his wallet. He only had $350. Queen’s eyes smiled back at him from one of the bills. He put it away. No cereal for him.
The cashier sighed. “I’ll take whatever you have.”
“Thanks,” August said as he gave the cashier his money. “My brother killed Queen, you know.”
“Yeah, and I’m the god of war.” He rang him up.
August’s shoes stuck on the ground as he walked on the sidewalk in downtown LA. He heard a slopping sound every time his foot raised.
The sidewalk was disgusting. All kinds of sick and barely-dried mess filled them. The air stunk of rot and excrement.
A gust of wind blew hundreds of pieces of trash and dead vegetation into the air around him. The dead crops of the farms up north blew into the city and throughout California every morning.
The scarce amount of cars that did drive by, had their windows up and doors locked.
The windows and doors of the businesses around him had been barred and locked with wood.
He was near a scream factory. He could taste it on his tongue. A place where the dead were taken to be examined and stored until a solution was found to release them from the living.
The turnaround rate for the workers there was high, as most were driven mad by the constant howls of their occupants. The factories were springing up everywhere as the living kept dying but never got past the die part.
Millions were transported daily. At this rate, the world would be overrun with the undying. And with no babies being born, the world was going to get very lonely for the living.
August would have heard the howls of the factories from the street, but the constant riots in the distance overwhelmed them.
Someone threw a brick into a window and then a Molotov cocktail. It exploded, blowing that person into the street. More rioters came up and helped the person up. They then ran to the next building and did the same thing.
August kept his head down and walked past them. Whatever the rioters were doing wasn't his business. But if they wanted to make it his business, he had a pistol in his back pocket.
The rioting was worse than before the gods fell. There was chaos in the streets of every major city in the world.
The rioters’ anger had nowhere to go. They had no gods or God to blame for their problems. For the dead not dying.
So they destroyed the things closest to them.
August continued his walk; he noticed the street to his left was blocked off. He walked over and saw an election panel taking place.
The world’s government was still new and they needed people to run it. This was the human race’s first major election.
A man was on a pedestal speaking to the crowd. “We already drove the rebels into hiding. But I promise that if you elect me, I will prosecute the rebels to the full extent of my power, to answer for the hell they've put the world through.”
Someone from the crowd yelled, “The world is being thrown into chaos, what will you do to stop it?”
“I will…”
August shut out the elective’s words. He saw the need for validation in his eyes. The fear of what lay ahead. The despair that he wouldn’t be able to save the world. August could see through the lies he told the crowd.
He had the same cowardly eyes as his father’s.
August continued down the street and stopped again. He looked at a giant display above him. It was on a building and broadcasted the news. A few people around him watched, as well.
He was hesitating. He didn’t want to return home. But he stayed and watched anyway.
The newscaster was giving a report. “Breaking news. The interim president announced the closure of all the public beaches in the country. They have become uninhabitable as thousands of undying fish and sea animals have come ashore.”
The broadcast showed a video of a beach. Thousands of rotting fish covered the sands, rotting but never dying. The undying. The waves that crashed into the shore were brownish-red. Hundreds of birds swarmed
over the fish, eating, picking at their flesh.
The camera zoomed in to a fish opening and closing its mouth. Its eyes were eaten out and its body picked clean of flesh, leaving only its skeleton. Struggling to breathe the air of the land, too weak to make it back into the water.
“Shipping routes have been affected by the incidents, forcing smaller shipping companies to go out of business, as most ports have become overfilled with the undying sea life.”
August shuddered. The world was going to hell. Eventually, it would be overrun with this nightmare.
“Fucking rebels,” a man said next to August. “It’s all their faults.”
August shook his head and walked off. No. It wasn’t their fault. Just his.
The door slammed closed as August walked into his small apartment. He set his groceries down in the kitchen.
Kevan sat on the couch, staring at the wall. That was all he did now. Not that he could do much anymore.
Drool dripped out of his mouth. August grabbed a paper towel from the kitchen and wiped it away.
“Au…gust,” Kevan’s voice came out as a slur.
“Hey, bro. I got your favorite cereal.”
Kevan grunted. August sighed. Some days were better than others.
Kevan had remembered very little. He remembered August’s name. That he was family. But he hadn’t remembered what August had done. The reason he was like this.
The sins he’d committed.
Some nights, he would wake up yelling his wife and kids’ names. Luna, Chris and Melissa.
They thought he was dead. August couldn’t let them see him in that state. As a shell of his former self.
They could take some of the burden of care off of August. But that burden was his to take. He was the one who did this to him.
Brought him back with a partial soul.
August wasn’t sure how partial his soul was. Some days, it seemed like he was becoming more aware of the world, able to speak in full sentences. He would wake up and surprise August in his awareness.
They would sit on the couch and watch TV. He never spoke with the fervor he had before. He was slower, had trouble putting together his words. But it was enough.
But then there were the bad days, when Kevan got violent, and August would have to wrestle him into a hold and rock him to sleep.
He hated those days, he never knew when they were coming.
Aside from that, Kevan was still his little brother. He would never leave his side.
August could take the pain of Kevan’s thrashing as he had lost all the feeling in his body. He hadn’t felt warmth since he had held Sara in his dream in the Wavering Radiant. Even though it was an illusion, he had still felt something.
August always thought back to his original plan, the one he said he’d do after killing God. To kill himself.
The urge was stronger now, as the world was spinning into hell, as his vision was lost of color, his world lost of feeling. But with the dead not dying and his brother in the state he was in, it was a selfish thought he never let linger on.
August sat next to Kevan and turned on the TV. The news was on, talking about how the world was in a complete hell. Truthfully, to August, the news was getting old.
August sat there, watching the TV as the sun set. Hoping that Kevan would speak to him. That it was one of his good days. But the hours melted away and no words were spoken.
Kevan stood up, “Sleep.”
August led him to his room and into his bed. The room stank, as some nights he forgot to go to the bathroom. But August was used to the stench. It was still better than outside.
August slowly closed Kevan’s door, leaving it cracked open so the light from the hallway could get in.
August thought about getting some sleep, as well. He looked out the window in the living room. He heard faint howls. The scream factories.
The night was never silent as the howls of the dead never let them rest. If the dead never rested, why should he?
There was a knock at the door. He answered it.
“Lucas, how’s it going?”
“Not good. Couldn’t sleep. You know, the howling and all,” Lucas said. He wore a mask covering the bottom half of his face.
“So you came to bother me?”
“Do you want to go to a kill show tonight?”
August paused. He had heard about the kill shows. About what happened at them.
“How are you getting in?”
“I used to be a rebel, remember?” Lucas was the first rebel to make it to the rooftop after August had killed God.
He was one of Kevan’s lieutenants. August, in a moment of weakness, had told him what he’d done. Killing God and bringing back his brother from the dead.
Kevan had apparently saved Lucas from himself. Saving him from the Bay of Apes, and from himself when he attempted to commit suicide. Kevan gave him a reason to live. A reason to fight. A position with the rebels.
With Kevan unfit to lead, Lucas became the rebel leader and disbanded them after the tremendous backlash they felt after taking down Ifor.
With nothing to do, he had helped August with Kevan. He had set up a new identity for them, gotten them an apartment, and helped with supplies from time to time, even though August said he didn’t need his help.
He was a good friend now.
August said, “Sure, I’ll go. But let’s make it quick.”
“Good, here.” Lucas handed him a face mask. “For the smell.”
It was a few minutes after August left. Kevan crept out of his room muttering, “Luna,” and walked through the front door.
August and Lucas walked into a large warehouse. In the middle of it was a large circular area, one story deep, surrounded by rails. There were a large amount of people looking down around them. They found an empty spot and looked down.
In the circular area was a large square hole in the ground, about a foot deep. Decaying people on stretchers were being led into the area through a metal door.
August pulled up his face mask, trying to cover the stench. It was the undying. Being led by what August guessed were their relatives. Some of them had tears in their eyes as they placed the undying’s head in the square hole, with their bodies hanging out of it.
Above them hung a giant square cement block.
“Aw, fuck,” August muttered as he realized what the kill method was.
“It’s the only way to stop the breathing. By total annihilation of the head or by fire,” Lucas said.
“I think I would rather go by fire. This is pretty fucked.”
“I think it would be quicker to go by smashing. I mean, with fire, you can feel every inch of it burning you to death. Plus, there have been reports of the howling getting stronger when they’ve been engulfed in flames. They are still alive after all, until the fire is done with them.”
“Yeah, but…” August looked down at one of the undying. Her eyes hadn’t rotted out yet. She had a thousand-yard stare. There was no fear in her eyes, there was… nothing. “Are they really dead?”
“That’s why these are controversial. If their souls had nowhere to go before they were crushed, does that mean that when they are, they will wander the world forever? Will they get no eternal rest? Or worst, will they cease to exist because they can’t get to the Radiant?”
“I try not to think about it. I’ll leave the big questions up to you.”
“I see no problem with it. To give the body its rest. They would live forever anyways if they stayed here. So what if their souls journey the world for all eternity? It’s better than being in an unmovable rotting husk of your former self.”
“Like I said. The questions are up to you.”
A man in red robes walked out into the area below. He gave a spiel about releasing the spirit from an unfit body and ordered the cement block down.
“Cut it!” he yelled. The block fell fast and August looked away as he heard a splat.
Luna started to boil some water in her kitche
n. She heard a lamp fall down in the living room. “Dammit,” she muttered.
She went into the living room and picked up her son from the crime scene and placed him in a corner. “I told you to sit still. Now stay here until I tell you to move.” She looked around the living room. “Now, where is your sister?”
There was a knock on the door. Luna paused. There was another knock. Luna ran into her room and into her closet. On the top shelf, she pushed aside a box of Kevan’s clothes and pulled out a gun case.
Luna crept up to the door and looked into the peep hole. “Who is it?” she asked.
“Luna.”
She could barely hear the man. His face was shrouded in the darkness.
“Go away if you don’t want anything.”
“Luna.”
She heard it this time. She almost dropped her gun. “No…”
“Luna,” the man said again.
Luna swung open the door and the man stood in front of her. He wore a grey hooded jacket. “Kevan…”
“Luna…” He looked at her, his eyes dead of emotion. She could finally see his face.
“Kevan!” She hugged him and started to cry into his chest. “I thought you were dead…”
“Luna…” A bright blue light appeared in his hand. The Omniscient Man’s power.
* * *
To Kevan, all he heard were screams. What are you doing? And pleas for him to stop. He didn’t know what he was doing or why he was doing it. But when he finished, the tattered thoughts in the back of his head, the ones that were paining him, tearing apart at his very soul, finally stopped.
As he stood, covered in blood, over the remains of his wife and kids, some of the awareness of the world finally came back to him.
The erratic thoughts of his wife and kids had kept him up at night. Wracking his mind with an intense emotional pain. And now that they were dead, that pain was finally gone. Only to be replaced with something else, as he realized what he had done.
Their screams were forever etched in his memories, and they never stopped yelling.
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