From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  His first book, With Your Shield, based in the Four Horsemen military sci-fi universe, was a great way to start. He has been a professional software developer for over 20 years and is familiar with what can be done with a computer and applied that to the universe. Alex will continue writing both science fiction and fantasy, many of the stories being inspired by his experiences from his career in programming, or gaming with either pencil and paper, or online.

  Alex lives in Columbia, South Carolina with his family. Follow Alex on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/alexrathauthor or his website https://alexrathauthor.com/.

  * * * * *

  Bloody Monday by David Alan Jones

  Monday Fulcher wiped sweat from his eyes with a handkerchief and took a swig of cool water from his tin cup. He and Mr. Elmar had finished hanging the last of the slate roof tiles on Elmar’s house an hour before sunset, and the result looked fine in the fading summer light.

  “Never knew you used hooks to put up slate.” Mr. Elmar refilled his cup from the bucket on the sawhorse and drained it. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  “My father. He worked for Obsidian before the Fall but did odd jobs on the side.” Monday gestured at the roof. “This sort of thing came in handy after the war.”

  “I’ll say.” Elmar, who looked to be in his late forties or early fifties, grinned as he leaned back to take in the repairs. “This is some fine work, Monday. You sure you can’t—”

  “Hello the Elmar house! Anyone about?” The voice, high and feminine, echoed from the front yard.

  Elmar’s grin widened, his blue eyes full of delighted recognition. “We’re round back!” He turned that grin on Monday, who felt his cheeks flush. “Bet I know who that is.”

  A tall, raven-haired woman, slim as a spring doe, rounded the corner, her white sundress flapping in the evening breeze. She smiled when she caught sight of the men and quickened her pace, a covered basket bouncing on one arm. A teenage boy, five years her junior and whipcord thin, trailed after her.

  Despite his best efforts, Monday couldn’t fight his grin at seeing her.

  “Three days’ work and three days’ worth of visits,” Elmar whispered from the corner of his mouth. “I think the girl’s smitten.”

  “Never would have guessed she had a thing for old men like you,” Monday said. “It’s gross if you ask me.”

  Elmar punched Monday playfully on the shoulder before turning to the newcomers, his grin going all toothy. “Laney and Driscoll Berckman, as I live and breathe, what a surprise it is to see you here.”

  Laney’s brown eyes looked at Elmar, but the winsome smile never left her lips. “I’ll have you know, Roy Elmar, I have perfectly legitimate business coming here. We heard Denise is feeling poorly, and Mama sent these.” She pulled back the cloth on her basket to reveal a dozen molasses cookies. Their scent perfumed the air.

  Elmar reached for one, but Laney slapped his hand.

  “These are for your sick wife.” She covered the basket and shoved it into the grinning man’s clutches. “She better get the first one, or I’m telling Mama.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Elmar sketched the old Obsidian corporate salute, straight fingers touching his graying temple. “Thank you, ma’am. Wouldn’t want to cross Mama Berckman, ma’am.”

  Less than a week working for Roy Elmar, and Monday felt he had known the aging farmer all his life. The Fall had been hard on everyone, but while some men fell to avarice and rapine, people like Elmar clung to their humor and humanity to see them through. Life hadn’t always afforded Monday that choice when it came to dealing with people, but of the two outlooks, he preferred the humor.

  “My mama wants to know if you’d like to have supper with us tonight, Monday?” Something fragile replaced the faux sternness in Laney’s expression when she turned to him—fragile and expectant.

  “I’d love to, but I need to clean up first—been working on the roof all day.” Monday knew he smelled, but Laney didn’t seem to mind.

  “We have a tub. Clean up at our house.”

  “And after supper, we can play football.” Driscoll, Laney’s youngest brother, looked as excited about inviting Monday over as his sister did. “We’ll get a game up with the Fishbourne boys. There’s five of them and, sometimes, even their daddy plays if he’s in the mood. We got battery lights. We can make it like a real NFL game.”

  At twenty-five, Monday had never seen an NFL game outside of old recordings. He doubted Driscoll had ever seen those and yet, years after professional sports had died away with the old world, people remained loyal to their teams. He had played the game often in his travels along the gulf coast, wherever enough people had the food and freedom to enjoy it, usually after a good harvest or wedding or some other celebration.

  “Count me in.” Monday gave Driscoll a fist bump, and the boy beamed like a kid half his age.

  “We’d better scamper if you’re going to get cleaned up before Mama’s done with supper.” Laney gestured east toward the town.

  “You good with the roof, Mr. Elmar?” Monday asked.

  “Unless it leaks come the first storm, then I’ll have to track you down.”

  “That might be a month from now. Who knows where I’ll be by then?”

  “I have a feeling I know exactly where you’ll be a month from now—a year from now too, I bet.” Elmar double pumped his bushy eyebrows.

  Monday’s ears burned, and Laney’s smile grew sly.

  Driscoll cocked his head to one side, his brows drawn down. “Where’s that, Mr. Elmar?”

  “Don’t listen to that old coot.” Laney gave Elmar a backhanded slap on the arm and drew her little brother away by the hand. “Bye Roy. Tell Denise I said get well quickest.”

  “Will do. And you take care of Monday. He’s promised to mend some pots for us before he leaves town...if he leaves town.”

  Monday followed Laney and Driscoll through the tall grass in Elmar’s lawn. The old man had an electric mower, but its battery had died years ago. Monday had tried to fix it, but there was no way to replace the cells, and he didn’t know how to make the chemicals for them. Bahia grass seeds clung to his rough pants and the hem of Laney’s skirt.

  The village of Prosperity stood northwest of what had been Augusta, Georgia, some 20-odd years ago. Like all settled areas of any real size, its urban sprawl had become part of the unending cityscape painted across the United States’ eastern coast from Maine to Florida by the mid-2030s. Born a few scant years before the Fall and the Great Corporate War that prompted it, Monday had never known that world. He had grown up in a land of encroaching nature, decaying infrastructure, and the cool winds of nuclear winter that shortened the growing season and sent people to their graves for want of calories.

  Thank God, the cooling had ended over the past several years, lengthening the seasons back to their pre-Fall durations. Though radiation remained a concern, Monday and most people like him understood little enough about that invisible killer to worry about it day-to-day. He knew to stay away from the great metropolises—Atlanta, Miami, Charlotte—but otherwise lived his life. Cancer could strike anyone, anytime, why go around worrying about it?

  They followed a cracked and pitted road, more dirt than asphalt, until they passed under a wooden arch with the words, Welcome to Prosperity, carved into its face. Unlike the road, the arch looked well cared for, its bright yellow letters shining in the slanting light. Houses, both old world and new, lined the street where children ran in happy delight, scampering past horse drawn wagons made from old trucks. Monday took care to avoid stepping in sheep dung left by a herd ahead of them.

  In five years tramping from the gulf coast of Florida to the Mexican border and even up the Mississippi, once, out of curiosity, Monday had rarely seen a town so isolated, yet so full of vigor as Prosperity. Their Chief Executive, CEO Hansen, whom Monday had done some tinker work for earlier in the week, attributed their success to co-op farming and the principle of incentivized trade—what he termed “
loyalty to capitalism in its finest tradition.” Monday had refrained from telling the man true capitalism would have seen the co-op disbanded in lieu of individual ownership, but that sort of free market enterprise had died with the rise of corporate governance long before the Fall. Incentivized trade, or the lowering of individual taxes based on a person’s turnover volume in goods and services, had replaced free-form capitalism even in the minds of former Americans during the twenties. Discussing it would have made for an interesting debate, but it wasn’t one Monday was about to start in the small town currently providing his room and board.

  They passed through Prosperity’s central square, where stood a statue of Lars Holden, the founder of Obsidian Corporation, cast in copper. He looked like a brooding man in his twentieth century suit and tie, his metal lips hinting at a perpetual sneer. Monday avoided looking at the statue’s eyes; they always seemed to follow him. He instead gazed about, taking in the bustling town with its happy people.

  “You mind if we make a stop?” Laney pointed to a crowd, made up of mostly kids, gathered in front of Prosperity’s Incorporated Church of God.

  Monday shrugged. “Not at all. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing good.” Driscoll hung his head, his previous exuberance leeched away. He fell back a pace or two but followed them across the church yard dappled with shade from ancient oak trees.

  Laney smacked her lips at her little brother. “Blood rite’s come around. All the kids are taking their turns, and Driscoll’s yet to go. I told Mama I’d bring him by on our way back. She can’t stand watching.”

  “Blood rite?”

  “Yeah.” Laney twisted her pretty lips to one side, watching Monday closely. “You never heard of it before?”

  He shook his head, and a chill walked down his back.

  “It’s a tradition, that’s all.” Laney slipped an arm through Monday’s, drawing him close. Strictly speaking, the church and town council frowned on public displays of affection between unmarried citizens, but Laney’s status as a Berckman gave her some clout. She grinned up at Monday, and he couldn’t help but grin back.

  A few of the gathered teens looked scandalized, mostly the boys. The girls giggled and put their heads together to whisper.

  Someone had flung the church’s double doors, made of two-inch-thick mahogany banded in steel, open so Monday could see inside. A short, dour man dressed in a rough spun suit, complemented by a marigold-colored tie, stood in front of the inner vestibule doors, his face a study in stoicism. Every few minutes, someone would knock from the inside, prompting the tacit man to step aside to admit another kid and his or her parents. The people entering gave him a wide berth as if they expected him to reach out and throttle them if they came too close.

  “What happens in there?” Monday nodded toward the church’s hidden sanctuary.

  “Didn’t they have church where you grew up?” Laney’s dark eyebrows lifted as she turned to regard him.

  “Yeah. My parents took me to church when they could—when we had enough food to eat, and the warlords weren’t battling over who owned what road in town.” Monday took a step forward as another kid moved inside ahead of them. “But that was all singing and praising and passing the plate. We didn’t have anything called a blood rite.”

  “That’s odd. You mean, you didn’t have any blessed souls in your town?”

  Monday shook his head. “What’s that?”

  “I am, for one, and...” Discreetly, like a girl pointing out the thief who has stolen her favorite piece of jewelry, Laney indicated the man guarding the church’s inner doors. “So’s he. His name’s Wyatt Cross, but everybody calls him Crank.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because he’s the strongest man in Georgia.” Driscoll kept his voice pitched low, never looking at the aforementioned Crank. “He passed the blood rite when he was fifteen—made him the way he is now. He can lift a liquor barrel straight over his head, no sweat. That’s 600 pounds.”

  Monday gave a low whistle. He had heard of people who could do that sort of thing, Agents of the old corps—people augmented to be faster, stronger, and smarter than the average person. He had never met one in the flesh though.

  “I take it he worked for Obsidian before the Fall?” Monday took a longer look at Crank and shook his head. “But he doesn’t look that old. How’d he get the nanites?”

  “He’s not that old.” Laney lifted an eyebrow. “And what are nanites?”

  Someone, a girl by the sound of it, screamed in agony behind the vestibule doors, cutting Monday off before he could answer. All conversation ceased. Everyone, including Laney and Driscoll, dropped their gazes to the ground, until the muffled voice ebbed into a raspy moan and eventually petered out.

  “You should look down when they scream,” Laney said.

  Monday, his mouth suddenly gone dry, watched her brown eyes. “Why should any of these kids be screaming?”

  They had neared the door. Laney touched her pretty lips with a finger and nodded minutely at Crank. “Be patient, you’ll see.”

  Driscoll, his face blanched of color, refused to meet Monday’s eyes. The boy looked stricken.

  A strapping young man, and what must have been his father, entered the church next, leaving a confused Monday, a solemn Laney, and a shaken Driscoll facing Crank and his mysterious doors. The man stood maybe 5’5,” a full foot shorter than Monday, but what Crank lacked in height, he made up for in girth. He regarded Monday without blinking, his dark eyes as animated as a couple of river stones.

  Others had filled in the line. It stretched to the church’s wrought iron fence and beyond. Chattering gaggles of teens, accompanied by guardians of every age from young mothers to gray-haired biddies, stood talking in quiet voices. Some appeared frightened, like Driscoll, and others were as giddy as children before a harvest festival, but most looked bored as is the wont of every teenager. Monday assumed each of them knew what lay behind the vestibule doors, yet their varied reactions left him in deepening confusion. What could so excite, frighten, and utterly bore these kids?

  Soon the knock came, and the silent Crank made way. Laney took Driscoll’s hand to lead him like a reluctant puppy to a bath. Monday followed, his heart in his throat. Together, they entered an echoing chamber filled with threadbare pews, their burgundy cushions worn thin by the long application of parishioners’ backsides. The scent of blood hung in the air so thickly it made Monday’s nose wrinkle.

  An empty wooden pulpit dominated the far end of the room, its forlorn microphone glinting in the light cast by chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Below the pulpit, affixed to a dais, stood an altar made of burnished wood. A rectangle of black cloth lay unrolled on the altar. Eight precisely sewn pockets on the cloth held knives of varying types and sizes, from a scalpel to the type of infantry blade contract soldiers carried during the war years.

  Whereas the previous bouts of screaming from this room had put Monday on edge, the sight of those instruments hardwired a jolt of panic straight into his hindbrain. Nonetheless, he strove to keep his face placid.

  Five people, all of whom Monday recognized as members of Prosperity’s town council, stood in a semicircle behind the altar. CEO Hansen, at the center of the gathering, lifted his eyebrows upon recognizing Monday but gave him an appreciative nod. Laney and Driscoll’s father, Willis Berckman, looked less pleased to see an interloper accompanying his children. The others wore bland expressions that told Monday nothing.

  “Approach, Driscoll Berckman, and those who accompany you,” intoned CEO Hansen in the practiced voice of memorized speech.

  Driscoll shuffled hesitantly forward, his round eyes fixed on the altar, or more rightly, the many knives. A pillow lay before the altar. He knelt, fingers laced and resting on his chest as if in supplication. Part of Monday yearned to take the teen by the arm and drag him away from this place as fast as they could go, but he had a feeling Laney wouldn’t approve. She wore a tranquil expression, eyes half-lidded, fine fe
atures unmarred by even a hint of worry.

  “The time of the blood rite has arrived once again, Driscoll.” CEO Hansen looked down his hooked nose at the boy, like a teacher imparting ancient wisdom to a pupil. “Your mother and father assure me you have reached the age of the letting. Are you now 15 years old?”

  Driscoll swallowed, and his throat clicked in the silence. “Yes, sir.”

  “And have you the scars of a previous rite upon your arms?”

  The boy held his arms aloft, wrists up. They looked as pale and smooth as bone. “I have no scars, sir.”

  All those gathered, besides Monday, mimicked Driscoll by raising their arms in a like manner. Scars, some pink and livid, some faint with the passage of time, marked one or both of their arms, except for Willis Berckman’s, whose arms bore open cuts that seeped blood.

  Laney, her scars on display, looked questioningly at Monday, who hadn’t moved, and he shook his head.

  “Monday wouldn’t know about the blood rite, Laney.” CEO Hansen made a gesture and everyone put their arms down, including Driscoll. “It isn’t practiced outside Prosperity.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “You shouldn’t have brought him here. Not without asking first.” Willis Berckman glowered at his daughter. His granite face creased into a frown so deep, Monday thought his forehead might cave in from the stress.

  “She didn’t know, Wil,” Hansen said. “Besides, Monday’s been a real help about town these last few weeks. I have no qualms with his learning about the rite, especially if he’s apt to settle down with your daughter.”

  “That remains to be seen.” Willis fixed Monday with that stern look of disapproval every suitor has faced since humans started walking upright.