by Shawn Mackey
I brushed off the filth and searched the building’s interior. A flight of stairs led to a second floor no longer in existence, so I trudged toward the front entrance through loose papers and broken bottles and more bricks. The door had no knob to turn. Careful not to push too hard, I pressed my fingertips against it, knowing it was probably as brittle as the wall. It swayed outward, scarcely hanging to the hinges. I wasted no time getting outside before the decrepit structure could finish collapsing. As I stepped away, the door fell, but the rest stood for the time being.
The words LAST CITY were crudely painted on every billboard and a few buildings. Every man and woman seemed to be making repairs. The children swept the filthy streets while their parents cemented bricks to shattered walls and shingled broken roofs. If the shambles lived up to its namesake, I doubted anything remained outside its borders.
The people were too weary to question. My destination was on the furthest side of the city, leaving me less time than usual. It would be a long and tedious walk. Block after block was the same dreary inhabitants, all too melancholy to feign conversation with each other. To their credit, they were thoroughly productive in their labor. In the short time I’d spent in the city, the workers seemed to have made decent progress.
And then I reached the halfway point. Rows of crosses poking out of an endless sea of rubble divided the two districts. The graves were fashioned from wood, wicker, plastic, metal, and every amalgam of scrounged materials. With no dirt to bury their dead, they were reduced to pulverized brick and cement. I walked along the middle path of the graveyard, focusing straight ahead. I grew dizzy simply peering at the countless lines of crosses, so vast they likely went on for miles.
In the distance, I spotted a rickety area that resembled a poor suburban town, with dilapidated apartment complexes and collapsed houses. Rather than fixing their decimated homes, the inhabitants sat on their property looking dejected. It was understandable. The other side had abundant resources to rebuild; the smaller district had little more than broken wood and a few screws lying around. Still, the people made no effort to do anything, appearing more dead than alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few were corpses, starved to death while gazing at the remnants of their homes.
One young man stood out from the others. Judging from his size and stature, I pegged him as sixteen or seventeen years old. He rummaged through a pile of dusty bricks, each motion more fluid and lifelike than the surrounding people. I watched the scavenging boy for a few minutes before approaching him. I was going to wait and see if he’d find whatever he was looking for, but my curiosity got the best of me.
“What are you doing?” I asked. He nearly fell over from the shock of my voice. When he saw my face, his eyes went wide. As he neared, his astonishment shrank to disappointment.
“You looked like somebody I knew,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
“I get that sometimes. What happened to this place?”
“Same thing that happened everywhere,” the boy said, his eyes trailing back to the rubble. “You been in a coma the last few years?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“I just walked past thousands of graves, so I’m not in the mood to joke. Can you fill me in? The short version will suffice.”
“You’re not going to believe me.”
“Let’s start simple. What’s your name?”
“Jeffrey.”
“Which one of these fine houses belongs to you, Jeffrey?”
“I thought you weren’t in the mood to joke.”
“Just trying not to sound grim. What happened and why wouldn’t I believe you?”
“You see that skyscraper?” he said, pointing toward the tallest building in the other district. I had to cup my eyes to get a decent look. The tip had fallen, but the majority was still intact. “Something came out of the ocean. Twice that size at least.”
“I believe you. I can’t imagine it, but I do believe you. Go on.”
“A giant monster,” he said, then continued after a long pause: “It’s hard to describe, mostly because I don’t want to think about it. It’s been three years. Feels a lot longer but that’s what people say. Thing annihilated every city. Why not all the calendars? Anyway, it started with a small one. About the size of a bus. It washed up on a beach and started eating people. It was killed by the National Guard within a few hours. Before anyone could really grasp the situation, its mother came looking for it. The whole world was turned upside down that day.”
“Was there any resistance?”
“Yeah, and there still is,” he said, nodding toward the larger district. “An air base. Too bad the thing swats jets like flies. They distract it enough to keep on moving. At least that’s another thing people say. The monster’s not stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“Three quarters of the world’s population died in the first week. Numbers got lower because most knew there was no stopping it, so they went into hiding. The rest tried to rebuild. A few cities even finished. When the people started to flock to those places, it came back and wrecked everything. The survivors found another spot and it happened again.”
“Sounds too methodical for an animal.”
“It’s no animal. Not a mutant or some alien either. It’s a monster. Plain and simple.”
“How many places do you think go by the name Last City?”
“I don’t know. This has always been my home. My family died in the first attack. We used to live in the rich neighborhood. Money doesn’t mean a damn thing anymore, though you wouldn’t be able to tell by the comparison.”
“Looks like the people here just gave up.”
"No way," he said, pointing down the street. "There's a difference between giving up and just not being able to go on. Just look at them."
They were no longer the lost souls I'd seen when I entered the city. A one-legged man hobbled along on a crutch, past a bald woman wearing an eye patch. Across the street, a child with no arms rested his head on his mother's lap. She gently stroked his ragged hair, the flesh of her face contorted and purple with severe burns.
"I didn't mean to sound harsh."
"The people on the other side of the city never rebuild here. They'd rather let us rot."
“Us? You live here?”
“Until there’s no place to live, which won’t be long if it decides to hit this side of the city. The monster knows when we’re rebuilding, and since we haven’t made much progress here, it sticks to the other side. You see, we’re just a game, but sooner or later it’s going to get bored and finish us all for good.”
“What makes you so sure it has a motive?”
“We’ve been hit every few weeks, right when we’re about to finish rebuilding. There’s never been an exception. That’s more than a hundred times. If it could laugh, it’d be laughing.”
“Why did you choose to stay here? Doesn’t seem much safer.”
“To rebuild.”
“Isn’t that a bad idea?”
“It probably is,” he said, kneeling over the pile of debris. He picked out a few nails, mostly rusty and bent. “I don’t want these people to die without a roof over their heads. They don’t want to either. Just look at them.”
“Like the living dead,” I muttered. Jeffrey nodded and pulled a hammer out of his back pocket to pry nails from broken boards. “Need any help?”
“Sure,” he said, jutting his thumb toward an area across the street. I finally noticed the frame of what appeared to be the beginning of a wooden shed. “Find a hammer.”
“I have a hammer,” said a decrepit old man perched on a broken lawn chair. His countenance was obscured by wrinkles. “It used to be my son’s. Promise to return it when you’re done.”
“Sure,” Jeffrey said, peering into the leather satchel next to the already sleeping old man. He took out the hammer and gave it to me. “I got enough nails now. You ready to get working?”
“Ready.”
The old m
an continued snoring as we hammered pieces of wood into the thin frame. It seemed silly to build such a delicate structure in the remains of all those skyscrapers. I’d grown used to these kinds of absurdities, so I didn’t bother to question Jeffrey and helped him along. Maybe the monster was an elaborate tale to gain my assistance building a simple shed.
“Let me help,” a voice peeped from behind me. It was a little boy, no higher than my waist. Two others, dragging along wooden planks in both hands, came and joined his side. I acknowledged them with a shrug. They were too young for construction work, but their assistance cheered up Jeffrey.
The legless man watched as we put together a makeshift wall. He pointed at us with a grin, causing a small group of young men around Jeffrey's age to join. One of them pushed a wheelbarrow full of bricks and another carried a tub of cement. They wasted no time laying out the foundation for an adjacent wall—the beginnings of what promised to be a strange-looking house.
An alarm blared so loud I nearly hammered one of the children's fingers by mistake. All the volunteers fled, leaving Jeffrey and me with very little progress. I opened my mouth to comment, though I doubt even a shout could be heard over the shrill alarm. The ground shook violently, and I caught Jeffrey as he stumbled. The next quake sent us both to our knees. The pavement seemed like it was about to crack. Our silly makeshift wall had already collapsed. With the next quake, the siren cut short. I waited for my ears to stop ringing.
“What does that mean?” I asked. Jeffrey merely pointed to the sky. A dozen jets soared in a triangular formation over the city. They flew out of sight in an instant.
“It's coming,” he said.
Each quake drastically increased in power. We were left on our stomachs. Jeffrey covered his head while I peered at our surroundings. The shanty town had already been reduced to rubble and dust, and the larger buildings across the city shook at their foundations. Windows shattered and shards of glass rained on helpless civilians. One of the buildings was on the verge of collapsing entirely.
Half the jets returned to the city. They swerved into a complete turn, then back into the fray. A massive boulder flew through the sky and smashed into the formation's center, annihilating two of the fighters and sending another crashing into the streets below. A deep howl, nearly as loud as the siren, left the entire city silent.
Jeffrey shook violently, a soft sob escaping his lips. A booming roar followed each quake. I nervously gazed upward to find the source and caught the briefest glimpse of the massive creature before closing my eyes with a shudder.
It was certainly a monster. It towered above the city; the tip of the pink fin atop its head was closer to the clouds than the ground. If not for its hunched posture, the monster may have breached the sky. As Jeffrey related, the tip of the tallest building reached its waist.
I couldn't bring myself to linger on the creature's face: huge white eyes and a mouth large enough to swallow a tower. Its bottom jaw was abnormally long, lined with thousands of skinny fangs. The teeth were too disproportionate for the monster to close its mouth. Whenever it let loose a roar, the bottom jaw opened wider, exposing the back of the creature's bony throat.
The air reeked of dead fish and an indescribable foulness. I gagged and nearly vomited from the stench. Jeffrey plugged his nose and buried his face in his other arm. The quakes had grown so severe that the pavement started to crack. I half expected the street to split in two.
“We need to get out of here,” I shouted. Jeffrey wildly shook his head.
The monster lumbered through the city, demolishing a portion with each step. The remaining jets circled it, unloading missiles and gunfire. This had no effect on the beast. It seemed to mockingly endure every attack, neither flinching nor retaliating. One of the jets collided into the monster's face. The exploding plane didn't leave a blemish on the reddish scales, nor did it garner a reaction.
The entire section of the city was completely engulfed in black smoke, but the giant cloud wasn't enough to obscure the monster. It continued to pass through the city, plowing through buildings and shaking the ground with each stomp.
“I don't think it's going to come this way,” I said. Jeffrey finally lifted his head to watch the carnage. We both slowly rose to our knees as the monster reached the edge of the city.
The smoke cleared, leaving a clear view of the warpath. Not a single structure remained intact. The city had been utterly decimated. Around us was relatively the same, though there hadn't been much to destroy. The people gradually rose to their feet as the monster passed Last City's outskirts. Their homes were a paradise compared to the burning rubble left in the behemoth's trail.
“How are they going to rebuild?” I asked.
“I don't know,” Jeffrey said, his eyes wide and his mouth taut. After a few seconds, a tiny, almost invisible smile crossed his lips. With a grunt, he eventually added: “They won't get any help from me. They had it coming. Don’t you think so?”
“Right,” I replied.
Jeffrey laughed maliciously—full of mockery and spite—as the monster faded on the horizon. Indignation had been satiated on two accounts that day, and as quickly as it had been destroyed, Last City disappeared.
Chapter 9:
Valhalla
I found myself in the center of a warzone. The deafening sounds of puttering gunfire filled the air, and artillery blasts on stone walls sprayed a lethal combination of burning shrapnel and chunks of rock. Two men garbed in gray fatigues felt the brunt of one of these explosions, which ripped out the vitals of one and sent the other onto the dirt, howling in pain while clutching his bloody knee. A fence lined with barbed wire cordoned off that section of the battlefield. I carefully climbed the fence, attempting to avoid the wire. As I pushed it downward and started to heave myself over, a bullet narrowly missed my hand, severing the wire and my grip on it. I fell on the other side of the fence, but not unscathed: a barb had sliced deep into my palm, and I had a scratch across my stomach and another above a knee.
I fled toward the wounded man as bullets continued to whiz past. I paused long enough to spot the source of the gunfire and noticed a bunker far to the south. The barrel of a rifle poked through its window. A red laser hovered around the center of my chest and stopped right at the heart. I ran to the left, near the screaming man, and behind a broken pillar belonging to an annihilated building, which was little more than sizzling rubble. I tried whistling at the soldier to get his attention, but he was too overwhelmed by his pain. The laser hovered around his head, and the next shot cut off his pitiful moans.
Another artillery round landed on the already ruined building to my right. I shielded my head in time to avoid a barrage of smoldering rocks pelting my skull, but took a fist-sized stone to the gut, as well as a few smaller ones to the hands, which were covering my face. Blood seeped into one of my eyes, disorienting me even further. The constant explosions had taken a toll on my hearing, leaving me with a splitting headache to go with the bodily injuries. I would have killed for a few bandages and some ear plugs.
It was time to find a new hiding spot. In the northeast, two soldiers hid behind an overturned truck. One of them returned fire on the bunker while the other tinkered with some sort of device that initially appeared to be a bomb. As he fiddled around with one of the wires, I noticed the massive steel cannon a few paces south of them come to life and point toward the bunker. Within moments, a shrill-sounding white beam burst from the cannon, leaving me temporarily blind and deaf. When I regained my senses, I saw a large crater where the bunker once stood.
The cannon slowly shifted toward the east, where the artillery rounds seemed to be bombarding us. Another round landed near the vehicle. The explosion’s force toppled it over, smashing into the armed soldier. The other seized him by the legs and dragged him back behind the mangled vehicle. As he went to retrieve the device, a red laser shined around his face. By the time he noticed it, a bullet passed right through his eye. The body slumped next to the wounded man, wh
o seemed to compose himself better than the previous. He snatched the device and moved out of my sight.
I peered behind the pillar and saw the sniper sprinting across the field. Our assailant, a woman dressed in crimson uniform and a black beret, dashed behind an abandoned bunker on the other side of the barbed wire fence. The large cannon proceeded to move once again. The sniper ran toward the fence and procured a pair of wire cutters, snipping away while her head rapidly scanned the area. The cannon’s barrel slowly turned to its target as she clipped a small passage. She burrowed under the fence as it proceeded to load and darted toward the right side of the field, near the adjacent ruin, then fell to her knees and aimed her rifle at the truck. I wasn’t sure if she could see her target from that spot, but I wasn’t going to risk giving her a precious few seconds to stop the cannon. I crossed the field and tackled her just as her next shot went off.
The bullet hit its target but the cannon still fired. The explosion was as disorienting as the last, though it didn’t have that effect on my adversary. She planted the tip of a knife into my shoulder and slashed downward, quickly pulled it out, and then plunged it into my gut. That last bit was my limit. I sprawled out, clutching the wound while the woman got back on her feet. She pulled a pistol from her hip and placed the barrel between my eyes.
A shot fired, drenching my face and neck with copious amounts of blood and leaving me blinded. If not for the heavy weight of the woman’s body landing on top of me, I would have thought myself dead. Through cloudy vision, I saw a gaping hole just below her shoulders, though not quite at the heart. I pushed off her body, gushing blood from her nose and lips, yet still clinging to a trace of life. Her glazed eyes focused on mine in contempt. I would have put the women out of her misery if I had the means to do so. Instead, I lay beside her, wondering if I’d expire before her.
