by Terry Brooks
He was through the fence in moments, a Knight of the Word in full-blown frenzy, as savage and unpredictable as the creatures he hunted. Feeders appeared as if by magic, swirling all around him, hundreds strong, hungry and expectant. Cringing prisoners scattered before him in all directions, howling in fear. Once-men came at him in waves, firing their weapons, trying to bring him down. But ordinary weapons were no match for his staff, and he scattered them like leaves. He moved deliberately from fence to fence, from tower to tower, from one building to the next, sending everything up in flames.
He kept his eyes peeled for a demon, but none approached. He was lucky this night, but then luck was a part of what kept him alive.
The once-men were falling back, losing heart in the face of his wildness and seeming invulnerability. Their mad eyes and sharp faces lost their hard edge and turned frightened. Soon they were fleeing into the night, seeking shelter in the darkness. The camp’s prisoners flooded through the shattered fences after them, hundreds of men, women, and children. Strange skeletal apparitions, they fled through the brightness of the flames without fully understanding what was happening or where they were fleeing. It didn’t matter to the Knight of the Word. It only mattered that they run and keep running and never come back.
When the camp was in flames and the pens emptied, he turned his attention to the isolated cluster of cabins that sat deliberately untouched at the very center. He stared at the ramshackle structures, and his rage drained away with the slow onset of his horror at what must happen next. He hesitated, a mix of almost unbearable sadness and disgust welling up inside him.
Then Michael’s voice reached out to him from the long-ago.
Don’t think about it. Don’t try to make sense of it. Do what you must.
He took a deep, steadying breath and started forward.
“COME LOOK, BOY. Come see what hides here in the darkness.”
Michael stands waiting on him near the shadows from which the hissing and mewling issues, his face carved of granite, his words hardedged and commanding. Nevertheless, Logan hesitates before advancing, knowing he should flee, that what he is about to see will scar him forever. But there is no running away from this, and he comes forward as bidden.
As he does so, the things hiding in the darkness slowly begin to take shape.
His breath catches in his throat and his chest tightens.
They are children, he sees. Or what once were children and now are something bordering on the demonic. Their arms and legs have grown disproportionate to their bodies, made long and crooked, and their hands end in claws. Their backs arch like those of cornered cats as they twist and writhe angrily. Their faces are distorted and maddened, cheeks hollow, chins narrow and sharp, noses flattened to almost nothing, ears split as if with knives, eyes yellow slits that are mirrors of their souls, mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth and tongues that protrude and lick the air. They are manifestations of evil, of the monsters to which they have fallen prey.
He tries to ask what has been done to them, but words fail him. He cannot speak, cannot do anything but stare at these creatures that once were children like him.
“They have been changed by experimentation,” Michael tells him. “They cannot be saved.”
But they must be saved, the boy thinks, looking quickly at the older man for a better answer. No child should be allowed to come to this! No child should be consigned to this hell!
Michael is not looking at him. He is looking at the demon children, at the monsters huddled before him. There is such blackness in that look that it seems those upon which it is cast must succumb to its intensity and weight. Yet they continue to arch their backs and hiss and mewl and crouch in the shadows, little nightmares.
Michael points his weapon at them. “Go outside now, boy. Wait for me there.”
He does as he is told, moving on wooden legs, wanting desperately to turn back, to stop what is about to happen, but unable to do so. He reaches the door and looks out into the night. The fires of the camp burn all about him, their flames a hellish crimson against the smoky black. Dark forms rush here and there, faceless wraiths in flight. He hesitates for a moment, realizing with new insight what has become of his world.
Madness.
There is a burst of automatic weapons fire from behind him and then silence.
HE SET FIRE to the cabins when he was finished, working quickly and efficiently, shutting off his emotions as he moved from building to building, taking refuge in the mechanics of his work. The feeders went with him, frenzied shadows in the red glare of the flames. He tried to ignore them and couldn’t. He wished them dead, but that was pointless. Feeders were a force of nature. Only when he was done and walking away did they abandon him, content to frolic in the carnage. He glanced back once to be certain that the cabins were burning, that what lay lifeless inside would be consumed, then quickened his pace until he was through the collapsed fence and moving back toward the AV. Neither the prisoners he had freed nor the once-men that had held them captive were in sight. It was as if both had disappeared in the smoke and flames.
He climbed into the AV and sat staring at nothing. The rage that had earlier consumed him was gone. His wildness had dissipated and his emotions had cooled. He felt detached from his dreams and purged of his madness. He could barely remember having come here. The events that had transpired were a hazy swirl of unconnected images that lacked an identifiable center. His staff was a quiet presence at his side, emptied of magic, cleansed of killing fire.
But as he shifted in his seat, metal fastenings scraped against the door and suddenly he could hear anew the hissing and mewling of the demon children.
He started up the AV’s engine and wheeled away into the darkness, accelerating back across the flats toward the westbound highway. The roar of the Lightning’s big engine drowned out the sounds that had surfaced in his mind, but the damage was done. Tears filled his eyes as he drove, and the momentary peace he had found was gone.
How had Michael endured this for as long as he had? No wonder it had consumed him. It would consume anyone sooner or later, even a Knight of the Word. He wondered if that was what happened to all Knights of the Word whom the demons had failed to destroy. He wondered if it would happen to him, and then he wondered if it mattered.
He had asked it of Two Bears, and now he asked it again of himself.
Was he the last of his kind?
He could provide no answer. Dispirited and weary, he drove on through the night and the silence.
C ONTRARY TO HIS fears, Logan Tom was not the last of the Knights of the Word. Another remained.
Her name was Angel Perez.
She stood deep in the shadows of a building alcove and looked past the blackened storefronts lining both sides of the street toward the fighting. The Anaheim compound was under attack by demons and once-men, an army of such size and ferocity that it seemed a miracle the defenders had not succumbed months ago when first placed under siege. She had warned them then that they should make their escape and flee north, that they couldn’t win if they insisted on holing up behind their compound walls. They couldn’t win if they didn’t engage in guerrilla warfare. She had told them this over and over, warning them what would happen if they refused to listen.
They hadn’t, of course. They couldn’t make themselves listen. She was a Knight of the Word and understood the danger far better than they, but it didn’t matter. They had made up their minds. They stayed behind their walls, blind to the inevitable.
Now the inevitable had arrived. All of the city’s compounds were gone but this one. She had just come from the Coliseum, one of eight she had spent almost a year trying to help. But she was only one person, and she couldn’t be everywhere at once. The Coliseum had fallen last night at dusk. She had been on her feet for the better part of the last three days, for the better part of a week before that, and for the better part of the month before that. She couldn’t say when she had last slept more than four hours at a time. Everyth
ing about the last several months, about the fighting and the dying and the terror and the madness, was a blur of images and sounds that denied her even the smallest measure of peace. It cloaked her like a second skin, a constant presence, an unforgettable memory.
She should have left months ago. She knew what was coming, and she should have left. Nevertheless, she had stayed. This was her home, too.
She took a moment longer to consider how she could best help the doomed people trapped inside this last compound. She already knew the answer. She had known it for weeks and had made her plans accordingly. She could not save them all, so she would save those who most needed saving. It had been her mission from the beginning, and she had worked hard to fulfill it as the army of demons and once-men overran each compound. This would be her final effort.
She slipped from her hiding place and started toward the chaos. Darting from one hiding place to the next, she scanned the street ahead, searching for movement. The buildings that lined the broken stretch of concrete were silent and empty, their windows broken out, their doors hanging loose or gone completely, walls blackened by fire and soot. Once they had been high-end shops and professional offices, but that was a long time ago.
Angel was small and compact, much stronger than her size would indicate, much better conditioned, fit enough that she could hold her own against almost anyone or anything, a fact she had proved repeatedly. Her battles with the demons and once-men were legendary, although the number of witnesses who could testify to this had dwindled considerably. With her thick black hair, deep brown skin, and sloped features, she had a distinctively Latina look, but she did not think of herself that way. She thought of herself in a different way entirely.
Born in East LA, in one of the poorest sections of the city, she had found her identity early. Her parents had been illegals who had crossed the border when borders no longer meant anything, seeking sanctuary from the madness that had already engulfed their home country. They had lived long enough to give birth to Angel and to see her reach early childhood, then succumbed to one of the plagues. She had grown up on the streets, like any number of others, poor and uneducated and homeless. She should have died, but she had not. She had dug deep down inside herself to find reservoirs of strength she hadn’t known she possessed, and she survived.
She caught sight of the feeders now, their shadowy forms flitting past open doors and windows, racing toward the compound’s besieged gates. Her mood darkened further. They were always there, always watching and waiting. She had learned to live with it, but not to like it. Even knowing their purpose, she still didn’t understand what feeders were or what had created them. Were they made of something substantive? They fed on the darker emotions of human beings, but there was no reason for shadows to require food. There were so many of them it seemed impossible they could avoid detection, yet no human could see them save those few like herself.
She particularly hated the way they swarmed about her when she engaged in battle against the demons and once-men. She could feel them in the way she could feel a spider crawling on her skin. Even though they were only shadows. How could something that was only a shadow—little more than a darkness on the air—make you feel that it was alive?
Her attention shifted to the battle. Thousands of feeders swarmed at the base of the compound walls, climbing over the bodies of the dead and wounded, feeding on their pain and misery. They were everywhere, black shapes twisting and writhing as they fought to get at the living. There were so many that in places it was impossible for her to see anything else. Beneath their dark mass, humans and once-men fought for survival.
And the once-men were winning. Their army was vast and purposeful, their assault inexorable. Makeshift siege towers had been rolled forward, long scaling ladders had been thrown up, and battering rams were hammering at the reinforced iron gates. It was an all-out assault, one that in the end would succeed. In other times and places, this army had possessed artillery and had used it against the compounds it had besieged. But the mechanized weapons had slowly failed or fallen apart as conditions worsened and war matériel was used up or destroyed. Everything was rudimentary now, sliding back toward the medieval. But that didn’t mean the army was any less successful. Ask those who had fought against it in the other compounds, if you could find any still alive. It didn’t make any difference what kinds of war machines were used; the once-men held the advantage. They were not shut away inside compound walls. They were not afraid of dying. They were not even sane. Their madness and their bloodlust drove them.
And they had that old man to lead them.
She paused in the lee of an alleyway, not two blocks distant now from where the battle raged, close enough that she could make out the rage in the faces of the combatants and see the blood that soaked their clothing. She looked down momentarily at the rune-carved staff she carried in her hands, its burnished surface as black and depthless as a night pool. She could help those men and women who defended the compound. She commanded power enough to scatter the once-men like dried leaves, but she must not give in to the temptation to do so. She had not come here for that and could not afford to allow herself to become distracted. Besides, any summoning of the staff’s magic would alert the demons, and the demons were already hunting for her.
Especially that old man.
Robert had warned her of him last year, just before the end, when he had gone to make a final stand with the defenders of the New Mexico and Arizona compounds. The old man had brought this same army to their walls and laid siege, hemming them in, closing off any escape. Robert had done what he could, but a single Knight of the Word was not enough—not then and not now. She had known Robert for five years, had fought beside him in Denver and might have fallen in love if the times had been different and falling in love had been a reasonable thing to do. Robert was tough physically and mentally, a better fighter than she was. But it hadn’t been enough to save him.
In his final messages, the ones sent by carrier pigeon, he had described the old man so that she could not mistake him when he reached Los Angeles, as Robert knew by then he would. Tall and stooped, wrapped in a long gray cloak and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, he was the personification of evil. The eyes were what you remembered, Robert wrote. Hard as steel, so cold you could feel them burn your skin, but empty of everything human when they looked at you.
There were rumors about him even before Robert’s letters. A demon whose special skills lay in tracking down Knights of the Word, he had been hunting and killing them for years. She did not know how many the old man had dispatched besides Robert, but it was more than a handful. Eventually he would come hunting for her.
But she would not be so easily trapped, she thought, and her hands tightened anew on her staff.
She darted from her hiding place and sprinted back down the street and then onto a side street, dodging debris and the shells of burned-out cars to reach the entrance to the hotel that lay just outside the Anaheim compound perimeter.
FIFTY YARDS BACK from where the once-men battered at the main gates of the compound, the old man stood watching. Wrapped in his gray cloak and shadowed by his slouch-brimmed hat, he had the look of Gandalf until you got close enough to see his face and feel the weight of those eyes. Then you knew for certain he wasn’t a wizard seeking to convey the One Ring to Mount Doom, but a creature fallen under its terrible spell, his soul forever lost.
The old man didn’t know about Gandalf or the One Ring and wouldn’t have cared about either if he had. He was a demon, and humans were his prey. He had been there at the fall, when the first real cracks had begun to appear in civilization’s weakening façade. He had been there in the time of Nest Freemark, when the gypsy morph had come into being. He had been there for centuries before that, a constant presence in the fabric of the world. He had been there long enough that he had forgotten completely the shedding of his human skin. As a demon, he viewed humankind as anathema, a plague upon the earth, an infection that required eradication.<
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But the old man was different from others of his kind. He was driven not by base instincts. Most demons self-destructed early and spectacularly, turned mad by their emotional excesses. His own struggle was of a different kind. He was not motivated by a desire for revenge or personal gratification or to prove himself or leave his mark upon the earth. What drove him, what consumed him as no fire could, was an insatiable desire to expose the deep and pervasive failings of humanity, and so prove irrefutably that his choice to remove himself from the species had been the right one.
He had made the decision early on to trade his humanity for a demon soul. He had never felt comfortable in his temporal skin, never accepted that he was meant to be nothing more than a brief presence in the firmament of life, here for only a moment, gone forever. Embracing the Void was a fair exchange for the depth of power his new identity offered, and he had never regretted his decision. He found his demon life fascinating. He was given countless opportunities to explore the nature of his former species. Peel back the layers of their skin and the discoveries proved endlessly surprising. All that was needed on his part was to figure out fresh ways to go about testing his theories.
It had taken him centuries to find the perfect way, but in the end, with the collapse of civilization, he had done so.
The slave camps had been his idea, his laboratory for experimentation. Breeding and genetic alteration could tell you so much about a species. The possibilities were unlimited; the results were quite astonishing. It was amazing to him even now what he had been able to do. Destruction of the human race was the ultimate goal, but there was no reason to rush the process.
