“They’re alive,” MJ said in a hushed tone. “They’re still alive.”
“This is it, this is what we were looking for,” Alistair replied.
MJ clenched her jaw then wrapped her fingers around her rifle as she stared down below. Swarms of people were milling about, covered in filth, dressed like a scene from a Mad Max film. They were tattered, they were rugged, but they were alive. It wasn’t what she expected but the world wasn’t over yet.
“It’s crazy,” MJ grumbled then gagged on the rest of her words.
There was a sharp prick at the back of her neck then a gravelly voice boomed. “Don’t move!”
CHAPTER 14
FIRST BLOOD
“Shut up!” a tall, slender man snapped and shoved Alistair in the back.
He stumbled over a rock and fell forward before the rope tied between him and the others snagged tight. They were all bound together, connected at their wrists. The sense of desperation was palpable as they navigated the narrow trail, clumsily stepping on one another with the threat of death lingering behind them.
A rugged man, clad in brown leather pants, and a tattered white shirt ushered them forward. He had a chainmail vest over his torso and armor plates covering his forearms. His grimy hands clenched a jagged spear while the dozen men behind him held the guns they’d taken from MJ and her team.
“You okay?” Daniel asked and helped Alistair straighten himself.
“I said quiet!” the man growled and whacked the stick-side of his spear into Daniel’s shoulder.
Seething, Daniel turned his head and glared at the man, but quickly looked away. With rage speeding through his veins, he continued down the winding path. Every step took them further into the nightmare that had once been their home. Every step a closer view of the new world order.
The sheds they’d seen from above were residences for the masses that lingered down in the pit. The conditions were worse than any third world country and harkened back to a time before mankind knew better. Filth blanketed everything, layers of mud and soot so thick you could scoop it into your hand. Depression was everywhere, the only thing more dismal than the buildings were the occupants.
The people were dressed in grungy rags, their faces stained with the life they’d been forced to live. Red dirt was caked to their skin like paint, trapped beneath their fingernails, clumped into their hair. They poked their heads out and sniffed as MJ and the others passed. Beady eyes scanned the foreign invaders like they’d never seen humans before. How had five years made things so different?
Once they reached the bottom of the quarry, they stopped outside of a shack dressed with animal skins and bones dangling from the roof. Shadows moved just out of sight and muted voices spoke in a sing-song tone that sent chills through the air.
A drum beat thrummed from somewhere deep within a cave to the side as fire spewed from smoke stacks that loomed overhead. Workers crated off mounds of dirt and rock, hollowing out tunnels that branched off in various directions. They moved with a purpose, the purpose of someone that knew what would happen if they didn’t.
Bands of sunburnt men wheeled in carts, overflowing with all the scrap metal they could find. Out of sight, wielders crafted weapons and body armor out of it. They bent metal beams and flattened thick plates to be used for all sorts of things. It was a civilization that was very much thriving.
With an ear-splitting grumble, a truck rolled to a stop a few yards away. A wave of acrid smoke seethed from the tailpipe as it idled like an angry demon. The matte-black pickup sat on mud tires that were as tall as man. The windows and doors were covered in armor and spikes jutted out from the hood like a porcupine.
Alistair glanced sideways at the monstrosity and swallowed down a ball of fear. He tried to be brave, tried to stare unflinching as danger circled around them. But he was scared and the quiver that rumbled through his body was certain to betray him.
“What do you want?” a cranky old woman asked as she looked up and scanned the man in front of her with disdain.
She was sitting on a deflated tire chewing on a bone that looked terrifyingly familiar. Her skin was taut and leathery like an old lizard or a purse that’d been left in the sun. What was left of her thin, gray hair was clinging onto her head, revealing a scalp covered in liver spots and discolored moles. She surveyed the group with dull gray eyes then looked back to the man that brought them and raised her voice.
“I said what do you want, Barnaby?”
“I need to see him,” the man replied with a noticeable shudder in his voice.
“He ain’t for bothering right now. In there with them Klosterman sisters. Gonna be a while.”
“Oh damn, Sarah. This is important.”
“I suppose it is, you bring these freshies all the way down here. You know what we do with the clean ones. Ain’t seen clean ones like these in a while though, all fresh with their fancy clothes.”
“He needs to see them,” Barnaby pleaded again.
“I’ll be deciding what he needs to see. Your time for making demands is gone now, ain’t it?”
“They came from… you know where,” he replied and tipped his head to the side.
Sarah’s face suddenly changed from aloof to complete panic. She jumped up from the tire at a speed that didn’t suit her body then slung the animal-skinned drapes to the side and disappeared into the darkness.
Moments later she returned, followed by a tall, shirtless man dressed in loose brown pants and a bear-skin robe. His red hair was long and curly and his tanned skin was covered in sweat and dirt. A holster with two rusted knives hung from his waist and as he stepped outside, he pulled one out and rubbed the blade against his coarse beard.
“What do we have here?” the man asked then took his robe off and tossed it to Sarah.
“M…Mo…Moses,” Barnaby muttered. “I brought ‘em right here, right away. Just as quick as I could.”
Moses smiled and started to circle the group. He looked them up and down, chuckling as he considered each of them one by one. His eyes lingered on Cindy a little longer than the rest of them, she lowered her head and turned to the side.
“So, what is this, Barnaby? Got a few freshies and think I’m just gonna forgive what you did?”
“No…God, no, Moses. I found these and brought them for you, they-, they ain’t freshies, though. They’re from somewhere else.”
Moses grinned then turned back to examine the group again. He cocked his head to the side and pulled at the coarse hair on his chin. “So, you’ve crawled from under your rock, have you? Not what you were expecting is it?”
MJ swallowed but didn’t reply. She turned her head and looked around the quarry then stared back to Moses in defiance.
“You don’t need to answer,” he continued. “We were left and this is what came out of it. We didn’t have your bunkers or hiding places.” Moses raised his hands wide and spun. “We rose from the ashes like a mighty phoenix and built something greater. I culled the masses, pulled them from the fires and handed them redemption.”
His voice carried across the wind like a megaphone. Suddenly, people started to gather around him in a semi-circle as he spoke. They crept from tiny holes, from the dilapidated sheds, swarming at the sound of Moses’ commanding voice. A sea of eyes looked up at him in wonder, hanging on every word that left his crackling lips.
“Blessed are we, Moses,” a lady in her early twenties shouted. She was dressed in rags and covered in the red dirt like everything else. “Blessed are we to have you!”
Her cries were echoed as more and more people huddled near. Moses smiled, his eyes jittering back and forth from his assembly of followers to MJ and the others. The more people arrived the louder, more brazen he became.
“We’ve had to protect ourselves from outsiders before, we will do it again. Our lord, our savior demands our obedience. He demands sacrifice! The earth must be nourished with the blood of the wicked. Lest we spur the Earth God’s wrath again.”
; “Wait,” MJ started. “What is this?”
“This? This is how we deal with your kind. This is how we stay safe.”
“Our kind?”
“Yes, your kind. Do you deny it, do you deny what you are?”
“We…we’re survivors,” Jacob said before MJ could answer.
“No! We are survivors!” Moses roared. With the devil in his eyes, he snarled then lurched back and drove the rusted dagger into Jacob’s stomach. “We are survivors!”
CHAPTER 15
REGRET IS FOR THE DEAD
“We should’ve never let them go,” Amber said in a low voice. She rubbed her hand across Trevor’s forehead and wiped the long, brown locks to the side.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Ashley replied. “Someone had to do it. MJ will keep them safe.”
“Who’s gonna keep MJ safe?”
“They will. I…they’ll keep her safe.”
Amber sighed and turned back to Trevor. She’d made it a point to come and see him every day. He was still in a coma but she thought by talking to him she could bring him back. It was worth trying and it helped her feel like she wasn’t so helpless.
It was still hard to believe that Trevor had tried to kill himself. He’d seemed to happy all the time. He spent most days telling jokes or trying to push Craig’s buttons. No one knew he’d gone to such a dark place.
Amber reached out and stroked her hand across Trevor’s face. “Keep fighting,” she said softly. “We still need you here.”
“How’s Chloe doing?” Ashley asked.
“Quiet,” Amber responded without looking up. “Spends a lot of time with Grayson. I’m happy for her, they need each other right now. We all need each other.”
“I wonder what it’s like up there. It’s been so long and so much has changed. You think there were any survivors?”
“We’ll find out soon.”
“I guess so.”
For the next few minutes they sat in silence. They’d come to find that they didn’t have much in common outside of Daniel and Alistair. But still, they’d grown accustom to each other and even sitting with one another in silence was better than being alone.
There was a dreary mood all around the egg. It was a cloud of depression that no one spoke about but everyone knew was there. They were living on borrowed time, any day everything could fail and they’d be cast back into the world they’d tried to escape from.
Trevor had seemed like the only one immune to that. But the signs were there if they’d only paid attention. Humans weren’t meant to live without the sun. It was unnatural and among the tragedies that they’d experienced, Trevor’s probably made the most sense.
“I’m gonna go check on David and Charlie. Those kids always seem to fall through the cracks with everything going on,” Ashley said, breaking the silence.
“I feel bad for them. This isn’t the kind of place a kid should have to grow up.”
“This isn’t the kind of place for anyone. We failed.”
Amber turned to face Ashley and squinted her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we failed. We had one world, one planet to hold onto and we killed it. Now look at us.”
“We didn’t kill the planet, Ashley. Things just happen.”
“We happened!”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a scientist but things happen. We can’t control it all.”
Ashley made a huffing sound and cut her eyes. “We played our part, we definitely played our part.”
Amber frowned and lowered her heard. “Let’s just not do this, okay?”
“Sure,” Ashley replied as she stood up. “I’ll be back in a little while. You want me to bring you something?”
“Another blanket.”
“Okay.” Ashley turned and started for the door. She’d just reached the handle when she heard a cart crash to the ground and Amber let out a high-pitched yelp. “What the hell?” she called out and whirled around.
Amber was standing beside Trevor’s bed with a crazed look on her face. Trevor was sitting up, staring across the room like he’d seen a ghost. He cleared his throat then ran his hands through is ruffled hair.
“Where’s my brother?” he asked.
CHAPTER 16
DESPOT OF THE WICKED
“Feed him to the Vees!” Moses bellowed in a booming, hysterical voice.
Barnaby cut the rope from Jacob’s hand then grabbed him by the arms and dragged him off. Jacob moaned and pushed his hands against the leaking hole in his stomach. MJ tried to reach out and grab him, but another man kicked her in the back and she fell.
Moses smiled then licked blood from his knife and stowed it back into his belt. He snapped his fingers and Sarah quickly handed him his robe and shrank away. He shivered as he slid the ridiculous garb over his shoulders.
“You asshole!” Alistair growled.
He lunged at the guard as Daniel helped MJ to her feet. Laughing, the guard cracked Alistair in the face with his elbow and sent him stumbling backward. He spat blood onto the ground and rubbed his face with the back of his hand.
The guard advanced and whipped his spear around, knocking Alistair off his feet. In a flash, he closed the distance and stepped his mud-covered boot onto Alistair’s neck. Smiling, he pushed the tip of the spear against his skin until a trickle of blood ran down his throat.
“Wait!” Moses snapped. “Bring them. Let them watch.”
The guard pulled his spear away and stabbed it into the ground. “You heard him, on your feet!”
They hurried them into a clearing with a ring of rocks positioned in the center. Moses was standing atop a wooden platform with Jacob at his feet. Blood soaked the boards and dripped down the steps onto the ground as Jacob groaned in pain.
The area was set up like an amphitheater with Moses in the middle and a growing crowd staring down with greedy eyes. The acrid smoke from the factories wafted across the ground and a nervous anticipation grew with each passing second. They’d done this many times before.
With a unified gasp from the crowd, the guards pulled back a tarp covering the ground inside of the rocks. It revealed a pit about the size of a swimming pool. The top was covered with beams of metal, wielded together, and a mass of tangled limbs swirled from beneath it.
“Please…no,” Jacob pleaded, as he looked down into the darkness in front of him.
A hand shot up through the gap and an inhuman cackle vibrated the air. A swarm of hair and claws rustled beneath the suddenly insignificant iron rods and booming growls of creatures absent of any humanity reverberated through the ground.
A chill ran up Alistair’s arm as MJ tensed up beside him. The crowd jeered and she glared at them with disgust then leaned into Alistair.
“They have people down there,” she whispered. “What used to be people.”
The Vees, vultures, men who Moses had cast out of his new society. They’d been branded and banished from the new world and forced to live in the darkness of the pit. The only time they saw light was for feeding and the only thing they were allowed to eat were the unlucky few that Moses chose to sacrifice to the Earth God.
Jacob scrambled across the platform and latched onto Moses’ leg. He was too weak to stand and as his life continued to fade, he cried out, begging for mercy. He was dying, but the last thing he wanted was to find out what happened down in the pit.
“This-this trash brought his filth into our home,” Moses said to the teeming masses. “His blood has nourished the land and now his flesh must be given. Our God must have his sacrifice!”
“Sacrifice! Sacrifice!” the sea of grime-covered faces chanted.
Moses smiled then looked down at Jacob in disgust. “Your blood, your sacrifice, will continue to keep us safe.”
“No!” MJ cried out. “Don’t do this.”
“Silence!” one of the guards growled.
He kneed MJ in the stomach and she doubled over. Before Alistai
r or Daniel could protest, they were whacked over the head with a bow staff and fell silent. Cindy had already shrunk to nothing on the ground with her eyes squeezed shut. Jacob was alone, and there was no help coming.
“People of this great city, when I fell into your world you welcomed me, welcomed the Earth God and all he has shown us. But now these imposters, these charlatans seek to spread their lies.”
“Liars!” a woman shouted as the growing crowd swayed back and forth. “Let the Vees have them!”
Moses smiled, scanning the crowd with adoration. “Strip these imposters, show them for the frauds they are.”
Barnaby and the others shoved them to the ground and stripped their suits off. They tried to resist but it was pointless and only earned them a beating for their efforts. Tired and defeated they lay naked in the sand, encircled by Moses’ henchmen.
“That’s better, much better,” Moses said then raised his knife into the air. “Hail to the Earth God!”
In unison they all bent a knee and lowered their heads. Moses smiled as he held the tarnished metal above his face. It was more than just a knife, to the people it was everything, it was what made Moses king.
“You’re fucking crazy!” MJ barked.
“Open it,” Moses ordered, ignoring her. “Open it now!”
Scurrying, Barnaby pulled open the gate to an ensemble of screams. The Vees yelped and snapped, reaching into the air, grabbing at anything that came near, but the pit was just deep enough to keep them contained. Even so, Barnaby jumped back and peddled away, knowing that any time the pit opened, no one was safe.
“Any last words?” Moses asked with a devious grin.
Jacob pushed himself onto his knees and swallowed. He looked up at Moses and took a deep breath, but before he could speak, Moses kicked him in the chest. Jacob toppled over and fell off the platform, landing into the hands of the Vees.
He vanished immediately into the horde of gnashing teeth and ripping claws. He managed a muffled shriek before they tore him limb from limb and his voice fell silent forever. The crowd broke into cheers as Cindy fell face first into the sand in an uncontrollable sob.
Deconstruction- The Complete series Box Set Page 92
