by catt dahman
Anders smiled since they had argued this many times before, “No, he isn’t. Zane is just a child born of a human man and woman, but smart, strong parents who have taught him well.”
“Have you seen the signs?”
“Yes, today a Lyssa virus hit Europe, and it sounds like what Diana predicted,” Anders told them. “It’s already untreatable, incurable, and spreading rapidly.”
“Then, we should get to the caves soon with the rest of the supplies,” Danny said, squeezing his wife’s hand.
“In a bit there will be fire…bombs falling; we need to be ready for that…” Anders told them, “and one day, Danny will lead Zane out to help the survivors get organized and make a better world.”
“Zane isn’t magic,” Leandra said, “and they don’t go without me.”
Anders looked at her, “Well, of course, he isn’t. He doesn’t have magic powers or abilities…no way…but in a world that allows the evil of walking dead, there is a balance, and maybe it will allow some of his goodness to help others…that is all. It’s balance, Leandra. Lucas wasn’t…the devil.”
Ariel huffed, “He acted like it.”
“So do many mortal men. Mankind hardly needs another Lucifer, a fallen angel, running about and doing evil when man does enough evil on his own. Really, we mortals have evil and bad deeds all in the bag…” Anders was calm. “Who needs monsters when we have serial killers and nuclear bombs?”
They retreated to the caves that were not just holes in the earth, but complex systems and rooms of comfort among the rocks. The thirty-eight of them had no contact with the outside, and yet, Diamond Flux, also known as Red, came calling to infect them.
No one was spared from the disease.
People were nursed but went into comas only to awaken in a fury and had to be put down and then buried.
In a short time, only seven of the family was left.
“I think it’s strange that those left are the ones closest to Zane,” Danny said. He and Leandra, Anders, Fred, Ariel, Zane, and Gabe remained.
Gabe was a giant of a man who had not spoken a word since joining them but was a hard worker, always cheerful, and always eager to help the children who needed him. Zane adored the man.
Anders only knew the man had been terribly injured years before and that his name was Gabe; there was no visible reason that should keep him from speaking.
Gabriel?
16
The Dark
Although the night was wickedly dark, Lucas could see Pascal standing in profile, watching everything around him. He was a beautiful child.
For so long, he had searched for the mother, the vessel for his son, fooled over and over. He looked in many places: Los Angeles and Miami, Helsinki, all over Canada, in Berlin, in alleys of the worst places in China, in Tokyo and Paris, in small towns in Australia and villages in Africa.
Repeatedly, he caught the scent, but ended up slaughtering the women, sending bones and blood all over, in his fury at being tricked time and time again. Hundreds died by his hand.
Then he found fair Leandra, feared it was too late, but found he was just in time. In her, he had planted his perfect seed to grow. Danny’s child was the one who was too late. He would have enjoyed a willing partner, but rape was within his enjoyments.
Lucas had always enjoyed the pain and misery of others, had known for a long time it was his special purpose in life to inflict as much pain as he could, and had always felt that he must find the best womb, a special one, for his son.
Over the years, as he had shared his violence with the innocent and meek, he had also enjoyed covering his strong body with tattoos as he waited for his own glory. Dragons of every kind covered his body like a mask of color.
Yes, there were times, when catastrophes made the human race weep and when evildoers killed and tortured many, but those times were too far and few between; he wanted to roll and cover himself with human misery.
Lucas didn’t recall abuse as a child or mistreatment by society, but he just remembered always feeling rage that was only tempered by blood games and screams. Society called his type psychopaths or sociopaths. He laughed at that. He was just a man who enjoyed power and the grief and misery of other people.
He never remembered feeling any other way, and his parents, other than making sure he was isolated from petty other children and ensuring his excellent education with private tutors, ignored him as he crept around the huge family mansion, filled with libraries and elegant furnishings.
After his parents burned to death in the home, he had shivered in happiness, going out into the world where he had enough money never to have to work.
He had run across Dianna in an old, musty library, and had spoken a little to her as they exchanged recommendations of tomes still available to be read in their original Greek forms, and had known at once that she was special.
For some reason, unknown to him, she made him nervous which was an unusual feeling, but he had, over the years, just kept a quiet watch over her.
When she left the family for a while, he had caught her unaware, dispatching her violently, and burying her corpse in the woods for animals to feast on. But the humming feeling he felt in his body made him rethink a few things and made him go to where her family lived; there he found delightful Leandra.
It was a bit of a bother that his child hadn’t killed the other in Leandra’s womb. She was from a line of strong, talented, good women, but Lucas knew that the edge given the light child was because of his father, Danny. No one even suspected how strong Danny’s spirit was. The damned light child was blessed with strength from both sides of his family.
During the night that the boys were born, wolves howled while a thousand dragons roared in the blackest of nights.
Lucas had felt hatred for the light child’s parents but had been satisfied himself with simply taking his child away. He was the crow. The scorpion. He was the snake and dragon.
In Los Angeles, he fed his son from the desperation, violence, and hopelessness on the streets. Every murder, each suicide, all the cruelty, and depravity was candy to be sucked. Pascal, as he called his son, was a smart child, very quiet, and watchful.
When Pascal was three, the child’s face began to change: to draw up and wither, as did his leg, causing him to limp a little. The doctors could find nothing with their tests, and Lucas stopped asking them as his son evolved, reining in a desire to cut the doctors to ribbons. Pascal’s eye dried up, vanishing into the socket. His hair was shot through with pure white as if a dragon’s breath had brushed over him. The child’s skin looked scaled at times.
Lucas knew most would say it was an illness. But in his mind, it was a message and one he shared with his son. The father glorified the child when pets went missing and when the boy hit or pinched others; he fed the sociopath within the child. He taught him magic tricks, simple slights of hand trickery that would amaze most.
But it wasn’t magic; it was fate that spared them when the Red came and took so many. They had immunity. Lucas and Pascal moaned and hissed right back at the walking undead when they moved east, always east, following some radio signal in their minds that they could almost hear.
Sometimes, Lucas slashed at the zombies and bashed in their skulls for fun, and sometimes he stole people from their camps, during the night to spook the others.
They found survivors along the way, bawdy, loose woman, hardened, cruel men, and even children with steely, cold eyes that were mesmerized by the little magic tricks and promises of glory and redemption against the rest of the world. They wanted all the resources and treasures left. Lucas collected the shady characters like trading cards.
He enjoyed it all as the pièce de résistance… da bomb diggity, and the greatest of all time.
Lucas was excited to see that all of his past and all of his hard work that he had accomplished made the group of society’s rejects ripe for him to lead as they reaped the world. Why be one of the many worshipers when he could be king?
>
Pascal said he could creep into people’s dreams and see into their hearts, which kind of made Lucas feel weird, but he was okay with a heads up on who should join them. He knew the dragon was with them and to stay away from wolves.
They had an interesting group forming: one or two former military, some convicts and guards, petty criminals, drug dealers, a former evangelist who had a taste for young children, a man who had once been beloved, but had eaten of human flesh and was a broken spirit, a man who wore yellow-tinted Hank Williams, Junior, glasses, a new cannibal named Frank, and some scientists. Those with bitter hearts, no hope, the lazy and proud, the wealthy, and angry all joined them.
This night, Lucas watched Pascal again, as the boy in the moonlight giggled, raising his arms in a jerky manner; one arm was shriveled a bit and one was beautifully formed.
Lucas moved closer.
Was Pascal pretending to conduct an orchestra?He was on a little rise, and beneath him was an old cemetery. Clothes had rotted away, bones showed yellowy, and a little hair stuck to old skulls. Pascal hummed from a music video he had once seen: Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The choreography was out of sync and jerky as the skeletons danced while the child hummed.
Lucas stepped back until he was again in shadows; he walked back to their camp.
“We lost men in Hot Springs, Sir.”
Lucas stared at him. “You come back to me with defeat?” He thought he would slice and dice the man’s throat right there while painting himself with the blood. Instead, gritting his teeth, he ordered the man to bring others and come see what Pascal was doing.
The man did as asked, and all of the followers stared with their jaws hanging open. It was a good trick to show the people how much power he and his son might wield. They all watched as the boy hummed louder, waving at them to kick and jerk their heads as he giggled at the dance.
People sank to their knees, as they rightly should. They knew Pascal and Lucas were the inheritors of the world and that they could only hope to ride the proverbial coattails.
They knelt.
And they watched the magical boy in the intermittent moonlight as he made the bones dance.
17
Zane
Had Leandra done as Anders said and taken Zane south, alone, they might have avoided the trouble, but Leandra loved her child and refused, and Danny wouldn’t side against his wife. Besides, it was all predestined.
Leandra was still afraid of what Anders called white magic and wanted her son to be normal, no matter how abnormal the world had turned. It was with great reluctance that she didn’t grab Zane away from Anders when the two were deep in conversation.
Anders said they needed to go south. Leandra said that if that were the direction in order to have Zane do magic and lead people, then she would take her son and disappear first. “I don’t give a damn about my grandmother’s so-called prophecies; this is my son, and nothing is predestined, and I will take him and go where we won’t be found. I refuse to allow it.”
“Everything she predicted has happened.”
“I don’t care.”
“Anders, please, if things happen, they happen, but let Zane be,” Fred urged.
Leandra allowed them to travel south since it would be warmer, but she watched closely. They had to fight zombies many times, but she saw nothing resembling magic since they had barely gotten away each time. All she wanted was for her child to be normal and not fight some battles of good and evil.
“Something’s wrong.” Fred hugged Ariel closer to his body.
“Always something wrong in these little towns.”
“It smells like death,” Anders said, “burned meat.”
“Hey, I never thought anyone would show up,” declared a boy who came from behind a building. “I’m Cedric.”
“Hi, are you alone?”
“Am I ever,” the boy answered. He looked about fourteen, strong and healthy.
“Been quiet today?” Anders asked.
“Dangerous out there, you have guns?”
Danny felt a chill rush down his spine. “We’re pretty well armed.”
“Good. Crazies everywhere,” the boy said, “scary world now. We could be chatting normal like this, and even I could be one of those nuts. Right?”
Fred gave Danny a worried glance as he turned casually, intending to pull out a gun, but as he looked back, there stood a boy with a keloid scar and a .45 pointed his way. “I’m Nate.”
The teen, Cedric, now took his own gun out.
“How can we help you, Brother?” Fred asked.
“I’m not your brother; just because we have the same skin color don’t mean shit, Brother.”
“You want food? Women?” Ariel asked.
“Naw, we ain’t rapers. We intend to give you a fair trial, right, compadres?”
“Right, Carl.”
“Trial? For what?” Danny exploded. “We aren’t criminals.”
“You’ll have to wait until you’re formally accused,” Cedric told them.
Nate smiled as they held guns on the group.
Another came forward, and they greeted him by name: Jimmy.
The guns seemed to be aimed at Zane, and no one offered them a fight, but allowed handcuffs and ropes to be put on their wrists.
Carl took time to beat at big Gabriel with a baseball bat; he took the blows to his broad back and arms without a sound. After he hit Gabe a few times, Carl turned and hit the rest, driving Danny to his knees.
“Leave my son alone,” he warned them.
“Shut up, prisoner. You are now charged with criminal mischief, attempted escape, treason, and attempted assault.”
“And back talk,” Cedric added.
“You’re all crazy.”
“Verbal assault. Verbal assault. Verbal assault,” Carl chanted.
Nate put ropes on Zane, making Leandra fight back until they could club her to her knees. “Let’s go, prisoners.” At least she had kicked them.
Zane cried with fear.
The teens shoved and kicked them across the street to the big, old courthouse. If one fell, he or she was yanked brutally back up and pushed again.
The stairs were especially hard to climb with hands handcuffed or tied behind them, so they fell to their knees often. When they got to the second floor, their knees were bruised from falling on them, their legs were like jelly, wrists chafed and bleeding, and their arms ached from being jerked and pulled around.
Their footfalls echoed. “We sound sad,” Zane said.
They were ushered into the lavish courtroom that smelled like lemon oil and time.Plush green carpet was on the floor, dark green cushions covered the seats, and stained glass was set above the regular windows; wood gleamed. A boy, in the judge’s seat, his face and eyes wrapped in dirty bandages, raised his head as they entered. It was obvious he had been flash blinded when the bombs hit or something like that.
Nate ordered them to be seated and then yelled, “Hear ye, hear ye, welcome you sinners to the bad ass court of Tevin, the blind, the most badass of all badass judges, all praise the deliverer of the innocent and coolest dude of the bench, the ice, ice baby of Missouri, and the best mutter futter of the land. Halleluiah, Amen, and hot diggity damn.”
Danny shot the others a questioning glance. Nothing made sense.
“What are these guilty people accused of?”
Jimmy joined in, finally speaking, “Assault, attempted escape, and being ignorant fuckers.”
“Show them the lines.”
One by one, the prisoners were sent to look out the window and into the courtyard below. At first, Leandra didn’t understand other than the poles that held dogs nailed to them. She shuddered. No, they were monkeys. No. They were shriveled, burned humans. She groaned with fear.
“What do you want? We have no problems with you,” Ariel shouted.
Carl popped her in her face, making her nose explode with blood.
Danny wondered why they had given in and not fought these fools
to the death? “Just get on with it,” he said hollowly.
“Him first,” Nate pushed Fred forward, “I’ll be your defense attorney.”
Fred had a glimmer of hope; he was a good speaker and got along with kids. Maybe he could talk their way out of this even though these kids seemed crazy.
“State your sinning name.”
“Fred,” he said as he took a seat.
Nate held up a skull and told him, “Swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, or have a goose shoved up your dick hole?”
“Sure,” Fred agreed.
Nate rubbed an imaginary beard with one hand, “Now Fred, please tell this court the order in which the ingredients of a tequila shooter are consumed.”
“Huh?” Fred felt his own jaw drop.
“Please answer,” Tevin instructed him.
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“We’re waiting.”
“Salt, tequila, lime.”
Nate nodded, “Thank you, and you may step down.”
“Please step down.”
Fred did, shown back to his seat by Nate.
“Guilty,” Tevin snapped the gavel down hard.
“You’re insane,” Fred yelled. Nate popped him on the head with a club.
“You,” Cedric said, pointing at Ariel.
She glared at the boys. “You are all vicious little pricks,” she told them. But she stated her name and swore to tell the truth. Maybe this was a sick joke and these boys hadn’t burned those people on poles; maybe they wanted to scare them; maybe it would be okay.
“Can you please tell this court what Snow White’s cat’s name was?”
“She didn’t even have a cat,” Ariel snarled.
“Let the record state Ariel was a smart ass,” Cedric asked.
“So stated.”
“Now, double or nothing…what was Snow White’s sister’s name?”
“Rose Red.”
“Let the record show she supported the red virus killing everyone.”
“I did not,” Ariel screamed, “what is wrong with you?”
“You said red.”
“You asked me.”
