Legacy Of Ashes

by Ric Beard

  He returned her gaze, and his face turned sad.

  “You’re changed. I see it.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “You’ve been through hell.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking into his bloodshot eyes. “So have you.”

  He nodded and led her into the living room after pouring her a mug of hot tea. They sat on his sofa.

  “When did you leave the service?” she asked, sipping carefully on her tea.

  “A month later, I went to work as a contractor, survival training. Wilderness training. I also volunteered. I trained kids in the virtual rooms over at Virtual Escapes.”

  “Virtual Escapes, don’t they do—”

  “Yeah. But I talked a woman over there into it. Priss. She donated time on her rig.”

  “That’s great.” She put a hand on his. “Really great.”

  “But it didn’t fill the hole,” he said, tearing up again. “God, I can’t believe you’re sitting next to me, Reagan. I was enraged when they denied my request. I took it all the way up the chain of command to the mayor. He wouldn’t even see me at first. I threatened to go to the media and talk about how he abandoned—”

  “I know. It’s not your fault.”

  “I called him a cunt in his office. Then he sent his cronies over, and they suggested that perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to return to town hall or to go to the media and take on the most powerful man in the world. They suggested that it was my fault you were taken, anyway. That maybe the papers would like to hear how I abandoned my partner.”

  “I don’t blame you, Kade. There was nothing you could do to make it right because there was no right. In a way, I was lucky to have survived.”

  “Lucky? Lucky? Shit!”

  He sniffled again and they turned silent for a moment before Reagan continued.

  “There was nothing you could do without getting yourself killed.”

  “But there was. There was. And I did.”

  “What?” she said, setting her tea cup on the compressed glass table. “What do you mean?”

  “When they came and threatened me, I was distraught. I wanted to kill someone. Like I said, volunteering wasn’t filling the hole, so I took advantage of an opportunity to make the mayor and his cronies pay. I was with the kids at Virtual Escapes, and this woman walked in. She did security contracting work for JenCorp. She donated time, too.” He swiveled his knees toward her and took both her hands. “She changed the whole game for me, made me feel like I was part of something, again.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Her name is Lexi Shaw.”

  He told her everything he could in the short time they had. He told her how Lexi had come to him, saying she heard his story from men and women in the forces when Lexi trained with them. They were just as disturbed as he was, especially considering who Reagan was. They didn’t think it was right that the mayor was using SecServices as his personal goons and that pulling the road crews home was an abuse of his power. They thought the will of the people should be his first priority.

  “So, we started The Underground.”

  “What, an underground movement? How many of you?” Reagan asked.

  “The more people who knew our secret, the more likely our secret would get out. We each created a bunch of user handles and start falsifying conversations on a virtual network Miles constructed called the DarkWeb.”

  “Miles? Oh, shit! Lucian! I met him on the road, but had no idea...”

  “So he is alive!”

  “Yes. Beaten all to hell, but he’s alive.”

  “Damn. I’m glad to hear it.” Kade shook his head back and forth. “Well, that guy knows code. By piggybacking on existing data lines and the city wireless system, we could reach anywhere in the city. Fucking genius. Lexi’s no slouch, either. She’s a tactician. They made me feel important again, made me feel like we could make a difference.”

  He read the look of concern that washed over Reagan’s face.

  “What?”

  “Are you trying to get killed? You know what my father—”

  “You don’t understand. When I say Miles—Lucian, whatever—is a genius, I mean certified. If you knew his history…”

  “It’s still dangerous.”

  “Reagan, come on. You were in the same history classes I was. The founders showed us the errors of the Oil Age civilizations so we wouldn’t repeat their mistakes. How else were we going to rub out corruption? The mayor’s thugs showing up at my door were nothing less than proof that shit had gone too far.”

  Reagan was short on time. The badlanders were coming. But the change in him since he’d answered the door was unmistakable. He’d gone from sullen and sad with a hollow look in his eyes, to energized and vibrant. This Underground was his life, now.

  Reagan had known Lexi Shaw. She’s trained with her unit while working in security at JenCorp. They hadn’t spent much time together, but Reagan remembered her being a crack shot and stunningly agile in hand-to-hand. Someone like that working with an Underground movement? It was too much information. She was having problems keeping her head straight.

  “Then your father forced our hands,” Reynolds continued, unabated. “He found out who Miles was and tried to have him killed. So, Lexi came and told me that Miles would sacrifice himself and cause a commotion that got the whole city’s attention. She made up an anonymous source and gave her boss at JenCorp the details of an underground conversation she’d actually taken part in.

  “JenCorp would have to report the conversation to the city. It was the law, and Blake Jensen, being the tight-ass he was, would want to protect the precious company his father had built up from scratch and entrusted to him. We carried out two attacks.”

  “Attacks?” Reagan asked. “What?”

  “We made sure no one was hurt. Give me some credit. Lexi disbursed a dose of Diamond Sky by hacking into a drone flying over the city, blacking it out to its controllers for fifteen minutes, exiting the city through an old aqueduct, planting the drug in its launch tubes, and then setting it to fly over the shopping district. It went off without a hitch. It was the perfect indication to the people of Triangle City that the mayor wasn’t keeping them safe.”

  Kade told her how he blew up the oil truck. To his surprise, Reagan laughed. Then he told her how Lexi and he had planned the attack on Mikael during his announcement speech to really inflame the city’s new paranoia against the mayor.

  “Brilliant. Where do you think Lexi and Lucian are from?”

  “They’re part of some sort of community, but they say it’s not a township or anything. They’re off the cities’ radars. Totally autonomous. They call themselves The Foundation. You know, like the foundation upon which the new world will be built or something hokey. But it’s not hokey.”

  “Lucian helped me get here. A woman I met out on the road after I was rescued gave us an armed escort to Asheville Township. She’s one of theirs. That compound must be where they were headed with Miles when we parted ways in Asheville early today.”

  “Oh? Well, shit. Maybe you should be telling me about them. I’ve only met Lexi and Miles.”

  “I don’t know much about them. I spent most of my time en route with this guy who knew them from way back, but hadn’t seen them since.”

  Not knowing what Kade did or didn’t know about Sean, Jenna, and Lucian, she wasn’t sure how much to say.

  Wait, is Lexi Shaw over a hundred years old, too?

  The thought was mind rattling.

  They sat in silence for a while. Reynolds walked over to the window and tapped one of the vertical blinds. They slowly opened, revealing snowfall outside.

  “The snow seems to extend later into each year.”

  “Yeah,” she sighed. It was comforting that he knew her well enough to give her that moment of silence and change the subject. He was like coming home.

  Reagan looked up at him. “There’s so much to tell, but we don’t have time. I need your help.”

>   “Anything,” he said. “I mean it. Anything.”

  Preparations were made. Then they stood at his front door and stared at each other for a long moment. Reagan peered into his eyes, taking a mental snapshot of the familiar curve of his nose, even the dangle of his earlobes. An urge pinched at her brain.

  “Got a smoke?” Reagan asked.

  “Sure,” Kade replied.

  And she knew she loved him.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Curtains

  Lexi passed over the threshold to her apartment and barked a command. The lights slowly illuminated the hallway; the orange trim that lined the baseboards below and the molding above slowly changed to green. She turned left around the corner by the kitchen and entered her bedroom at the end of the hallway.

  “Curtains,” she said. Curtains began to slowly close on her bedroom window. She slammed the door shut and slapped the wall behind. She barked a voice command with an access code and a panel slid open, revealing the hidden storage compartment. She pulled out a large, sturdy green backpack with black trim, dropped it onto the bed, and tapped a button. Panels slid open on either side of the backpack, and Lexi started shuffling around the inside.

  There were three water canisters, two compressed element suits in drawstring bags, twelve packs of dehydrated food, a pulse pistol, and a long range, disassembled pulse rifle. It was rightfully the property of JenCorp, but she didn’t really give a shit. Neither would JenCorp.

  She walked into the bathroom at the end of the hallway outside her bedroom. A soft orange light glowed from the toilet bowl, and the overhead L.E.D.s slowly increased intensity. She unzipped her suit from neck to waist, pulled it off of her shoulders, wiggled it down, and squatted to relieve herself, her torso screaming. It felt like she hadn’t gone in days. As she peed, she looked down at her body. Bruises lined her flesh in dark purple, fist-sized splotches with brownish purple webs crawling outward. She gave a tentative rub to one particularly black one to the left of her stomach, winced and jerked her hand away.

  When she was finished, she pushed herself up. There was a short whoosh of water flushing, and the lights went out behind her as she walked back into the hallway. She went back to the bedroom and pulled the pack open to retrieve ointment that would numb the bruises. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she applied it gently, wincing as her fingers rubbed it into her skin. A final box waited in the cubby behind the door. The hypodermic inside promised her half a day’s relief from the soreness in her muscles that the topical ointment couldn’t reach. She decided to save it until she knew she needed it and tossed it in the backpack.

  When she was finished, she looked around the room one more time, knowing she would never see it again. Grabbing the pack from the bed, she walked back to the front door and turned around. Her living room. The dusty mantle. The dead plants with their brown, rubbery stems hanging down like locks of loosely braided hair. Her thick, wonderfully dark curtains.

  Good bye.

  She checked her glasses.

  It was 12:10, and Mikael had an appearance in twenty minutes. Lexi Shaw’s final public appearance in Triangle City. Time to hustle.

  Part Nineteen

  Triangle City

  Chapter Eighty

  A Little Revenge

  He could see the snow through the window a story above. Clicking echoed through the space as the vampire’s shoes made slow, deliberate contact with the concrete floors as he circled Sean. “Truly extraordinary. So, tell me, how old are you, really?”

  “Old enough to fuck your mother,” Sean said.

  “How witty,” Morgan droned, drawing out the second word.

  “Well, if you like that one...”

  “I never knew my mother,” Morgan said, ignoring Sean, “but I’m sure she would’ve enjoyed a young buck like you, had she lived through childbirth. I’m sure she would have found you delicious.”

  “Imagine the relief she must feel if she’s looking down on you. Can you imagine if she’d actually raised a dirt bag like you and had to live with it?”

  “So, what? Ninety-five? One hundred years old?”

  “Do I look that old to you?”

  The man circled in front of Sean and grabbed the front of his shirt. He lifted it, revealing the six pack and unscarred skin beneath.

  “Not at all. But that’s rather the point. There’s no point in playing coy with me, however. We know exactly what you are.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Morgan released the shirt and stepped back to appraise Sean as a whole, as if he were considering the purchase of a service bot.

  “Alexandra said the rumors started years ago.” He raised his hands and sang, “The man who doesn’t age! You were like a legend. Born over 100 years ago. An urban legend, you would have called it, right?”

  Sean didn’t answer.

  “What did you all call him?” Morgan tapped a finger on his lips. “Sasquatch, yes? You bounced in and out of existence, showing up here and there. And do you know what gave you away?”

  Sean didn’t answer. He performed his best impression of a bored person, though his screaming head made it difficult.

  “Cousins.”

  “‘The fuck are you talking about?”

  “You were in Twin Falls, something close to ten years, right? A woman named Irene fell in love with you. Do you remember Irene?”

  Sean looked at him and then away again.

  “Ah, yes. So, you left quite the impression on the town, quite the legacy. But you vanished. After ten years, poof! Gone as suddenly as you had come, leaving poor Irene behind, childless, and in her late thirties. Coincidentally, the town folk started murmuring about how you stayed so young.

  “But then you popped up again, six years later in a little place called Paradise Valley. It was a tiny place, yes?” When Sean didn’t respond, he continued. “When you arrived, a family from there had just braved the wild to travel to Twin Falls to be with a dying relative. Then they came back some years later with stories from Twin Falls and learned you had arrived. Suspicions arose and poof! You vanished.”

  He locked eyes with Sean’s.

  “Did you know, Mister Stone, that you have a follower? A man named George DuPont has been going from township to township out west, documenting your story. He plans to publish it in OK City. You will be famous, no doubt.”

  “You’re delusional, Count Dracula.”

  “That’s the second time this week someone called me that. So hurtful. But do we really have to continue the game, Mister Stone? Fine.” He paced again. “Not the type to make the same mistake twice, you began changing your name. But twenty years after you’d first arrived in Twin Falls, you popped up in Mill City, impregnated the leader’s daughter, and were badly beaten. Against the protests of the young woman, who was entirely too young for you. But isn’t everyone entirely too young for you?” He gave Sean’s face two playful slaps. Sean suppressed a scowl, opting instead to continue the expression of disinterest. “They tied you up—so I guess your current quandary doesn’t generate any unique feeling—and beat you pretty good. Feel free to stop me when our research proves incorrect.”

  “I don’t know who or what you’re talking about. Sounds like a fairy tale to me.”

  “So convincing, Mister Stone.” Morgan rubbed his hands together and continued to circle Sean as he spoke. “So, she came in the night and cut you down, didn’t she? This young woman you fancied. Did you know she never confessed to helping you?

  “But her father wasn’t convinced the sire of his daughter’s child should be allowed to walk away, unscathed. He was a devout man, as you know, as was this little community. So, he sent men out. He sent word along the trails to townships, and word even reached into the city. This is when Mister DuPont heard of you.

  “In a world where records are so slowly rebuilt, if they are recovered at all, it’s easy to lose track of events. But the Holy Bible itself was constructed of oral tradition, wasn’t it?
”

  “That’s probably why it was so full of shit,” Sean muttered.

  “So were some of the stories of your travels. Trying to pull out what was real from legend was a formidable task. Sure, you changed your name. You tried to keep it on the down low. But your nature always took over, didn’t it? You saved a girl from a pack of coyotes near Carson City, endearing the citizens to you. It sounds like some old fable, doesn’t it?”

  “Wasn’t me. I don’t tend to stick my neck out.”

  Morgan ignored him. “But where were you for the year between your beating in Mill City and your stint in Carson City?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I wanted to know how old you are. That’s what I asked, right?”

  “Then what? What happens after that?”

  “The man standing behind you will take blood samples.”

  Sean spun his head over his shoulder, but he could only see the man behind him with his peripheral vision. He looked short, thin and was wearing white.

  “Why do you want blood samples?”

  “You’re not that stupid. Don’t waste my time.” He tapped his glasses, looked up and to the right. “I don’t have much left.” He centered himself directly in front of Sean. “Carson City, Bridgeport, Sonora, Barstow, Flagstaff—we know you do not age.”

  “Who is we?”

  “I have to say I am disappointed. I’ve waited some time to meet you. I’ve gone to some lengths to bring you here in one piece, to learn your story. I had looked forward to hearing your story from your own lips; otherwise I would’ve simply had you killed and taken what I wanted.”

  “Probably would’ve been easier,” Sean spat.

  “Classy,” Morgan said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to share your story for my journal? It is, after all, some story. Coyotes, town building, successfully defending against superior Horde forces throughout the west; I would love to have it from your own lips.”