Extinction (24 page)

Ashton just stared out the dark windshield, at the stars.

“I don’t see why he chose a young buck like you, instead of an old fart like me,” he finally said. “What do
I
have to live for? I’ve done my living. I’ve had a long life, mostly full of sorrow. But some good moments, too. The Rock changed everything, kid. Those
Radaskim
ruined billions of lives at a single stroke. The lucky ones died. God, ain’t that the truth. I must have wished a hundred times to have been one of them.”

Ashton took another sip of coffee before continuing.

“But I had twenty years of the good life. I was young, like you, even though I’m the only one to remember it. Sometimes I doubt it, though. Was that
really
me? That kid, riding the bike, going camping, sneaking into movies? If no one else believes it happened, why should I?”

I smiled. “You’re rambling, old man.”

“Bah. You don’t know enough to become a god.”

“You do, though?”

Ashton chuckled. “Hell, no. Nor would I ever want to. But if someone has to do it...why
not
the old man?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I’d wish it on anyone.”

“That’s because you’re too noble. What about the girl?”

“Anna? Why would I wish it on her?”

“No, not that. That’s what being young is about. You’re supposed to fall in love and do crazy, stupid things. Things that don’t make any logical sense. As an old man, it’s my job to shake my head at the stupid crap kids do. You don’t do that stuff, though. Please, can you just do something stupid, so I can shake my fist at you?”

I stared at Ashton, blankly, not really sure what he was talking about.

“Bah. You don’t know anything. All I’m trying to say is...when you’re doing what the Wanderer told you to do, you’re not just giving up your life. You’re giving up your right to be young.”

“I feel like being young was never a right,” I said. “It was a privilege. And it ended when the door of Bunker 108 opened.”

Ashton grunted. “Maybe so, Alex. Just because the world is unjust doesn’t mean we have to sit back and accept it. You know...maybe Anna’s right. Maybe there
is
another way we don’t know about. Maybe...”

First Anna, now Ashton? I wondered who would be next.

“I don’t think there is another way, Ashton. I wish there was, but people have a history of believing what they prefer to be true.”

Ashton shook his head. “Maybe you aren’t as young as I thought.”

Ashton sounded kind of sad when he said that. His eyes were full of remembrance, as if he was thinking about when he was young, back when kids had the luxury of being kids.

“You’ll never know,” Ashton said. “You’ll never know what it was like to go to school, to ask a girl to a dance, to ride your bike in neighborhood streets, to explore forests like they were some lost world that only you knew. To drive your car for the first time. College.”

“Is that what kids did, back then?”

“It’s what
I
did. I sometimes wonder if it was all just a dream.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. “I’ve seen movies where that sort of stuff happened, so it had to have happened. Right?”

Ashton nodded. “Yeah. It did happen. You’re still a kid, you know? But you don’t act like it. None of you do. You are as much adults as anyone I knew. That’s what scares me. It’s not normal and never will be, in my mind.”

“It’s normal now,” I said.

“What about Anna, though? Don’t you love her? Would you go to the end and die, even if she didn’t want it?”

That made me go quiet. Ashton had pinpointed something that had been troubling me greatly. He waited for my answer, and I had no idea what to say.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said. “I don’t want
anything
to happen. I...I do love her. Admitting that is hard, because I know what it means. I’m convinced that I’m the only one who can stop this. The Wanderer said that much. I know Anna will never be okay with that. I don’t know if I am. But I see no choice. The other choice is the world ending, just as every world the
Radaskim
have invaded has ended. I can’t let that happen. I mean, what would
you
do?”

Ashton sighed. “No matter how old you get, kid...there’s always going to be questions that can never be answered. Sometimes, age just makes the questions all the more perplexing. I worked my ass off, raised my family, all to make the questions go away. I buried myself in work. And they always remained, those questions, haunting me like ghosts. Most people ignore them and just go on with their lives. That’s what I tried to do. Your question, about what you should do...I don’t have the answer. You don’t have the answer. Even the goddamn Wanderer didn’t have an answer. Didn’t you ask him that, when you and Anna went to go see him? What did he say?”

I smiled. “A whole lot of nothing.”

“See? If a
god
doesn’t know, doesn’t that tell you something? It all rests on
you
to figure out the rest of the riddle. Whatever happens, I wouldn’t blame you either way. When you go to the heart of darkness, when you are facing down Askala, it’s just going to be you and her. And you’re not going to know anything more than you know now.”

“Thanks for reminding me.”

“Some answers just don’t come, kid, no matter how much you ask them, no matter how much you think about them. Take it from an old man.” He held up the thermos. “More coffee?”

Ashton refilled my cup, and we stared out into the starry night. After a while, he turned off the lights, so that we could see the stars more fully. The stars were bright before, but now they were
magnificent.

“The Wanderer said something,” I said. “He said you were supposed to look to the stars when you were in a hole. That’s all I feel I can do. I have to hope, even if there’s no reason for it. People need hope like the lungs need air.”

Ashton slurped on his coffee. “Aye, you’re right about that. What are you hoping for, Alex?”

I took a sip of coffee, and thought for a moment. “I’m just hoping I don’t mess anything up. I hope, when the end comes, I can figure out how to save my scrawny hide. I hope I can find a way to make Anna happy, and take away all her worry and pain.”

Ashton said nothing – he only listened.

“I know,” I said. “There are some things you can mess up, and some things you just can’t. There are the doors you can’t come back from.”

I looked at the clock on the dash. It was 04:00.

I stood to leave the bridge. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“Where you off to?”

“Breakfast.”

I just couldn’t talk about what I had to do anymore. I’d have plenty of time to think about that in the coming days.

W
e landed in the streets of downtown Los Angeles. Morning had just dawned, casting the eastern clouds a dull red.

We left the ship, stepping out into the cool, dry air, finding the streets a chaotic mess of rubble, ash, and purple blood. Corpses of dead crawlers lined the streets, some still twitching. Severed limbs and spindly legs were scattered among the refuse. Behind our landing site, the once-white U.S. Bank Tower rose into the morning air.

“Augustus is in there with the Reapers now,” Makara said.

“Is that where we’re headed?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

Everyone walked toward the tower, picking our way through rubble and monster remains.
Radaskim
dragons swooped the sky above, from time to time, still placid. It seemed as if the creatures had turned to our side for good from the Wanderer’s sacrifice – it wasn’t just temporary. Or at least, that was what I hoped. They could switch back at any moment. If they did, there wasn’t much we could do about it.

We entered the wide glass doors of the building, finding ourselves in a dim lobby. There, Augustus and Black stood face-to-face, deliberating in the center of the lobby floor. Praetorians lined up behind Augustus, while Black’s elite guards backed him up. The Reapers, however, were without weapons. It looked as if Augustus was having his way with Los Angeles after all.

Char stood next to me and spoke in his low voice.

“Come on, kid. These talks will be long.”

He led me out from the lobby of the building, stepping through the open door and into the red-lit street outside. I wondered what he wanted to talk about.

The formed-up legions parted for us as we headed east down rubble-strewn streets. Parts of the tall buildings of downtown had crumbled, forming piles of debris. Many buildings’ sides were wasted and black, the result of a fire long ago. Even the sides of the white tower had been charred, though it seemed to have mostly escaped the damage. Sand covered much of the street. In places, asphalt and faded yellow paint showed through the dirt.

Random streets and intersections had been blocked off – either in preparation for the
Radaskim’s
attack, or from some earlier time. Beneath a pile of rubble lay some large bones from a creature I couldn’t identify –they’d been there for a while. Toward the east, brown mountains walled in the Los Angeles Basin. Their tops were lost to thick red clouds.

A few blocks to the east, an enormous dragon wheeled above some buildings, settling on the precipice of a crumbled freeway. Another dragon screeched in the air, settling nearby the first. The large one – almost as big as Chaos had been – was dark gray, almost black. The smaller dragon was crimson in hue. Their long, serpent-like necks turned toward us.

“What are we going to do about these dragons?”

That was something we had to figure out. “We might want to get closer.”

“It’s like they’re waiting for something,” Char said.

“Or someone,” I said. “Maybe they’re looking for the Wanderer.”

“The Wanderer’s gone. They’re looking for you, kid.”

“I know,” I said. “Somehow, this is working differently than we expected. The dragons have stayed on our side.”

“They could turn any second,” Char said. “That’s what the Wanderer said, isn’t it?”

Yeah, that was true.

“Alex!”

The sound of footsteps came from behind. I turned to see Anna sliding to a stop, kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Couldn’t wait for me, could you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “You snooze, you lose.”

She forced a frown. “I don’t think that saying really works in this situation.”

“You know what I mean.”

Char just watched both of us, shaking his head.

“Whatever,” Anna said. Her eyes gazed ahead to the dragons. “I want to see one of those things up close. Plus, you need your bodyguard.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” I said.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Before I could respond, Char cut in.

“Shall we?”

We turned back to the dragons perched on the edge of the freeway. They continued to watch.

We walked forward once more. The dragons swarmed the sky, circling above the eastern side of the decayed cityscape. They seemed to be gathering above the large, dark dragon.

“I wonder what they’re doing,” Anna asked.

Char watched as well, narrowing his eyes to see into the distance. “It sure is something.”

“It’s like...” Anna paused mid-sentence. “It’s like this world isn’t ours anymore, you know?”

Anna was right. Even if we somehow defeated Askala and the
Radaskim
were stopped, against all odds, I had no idea what the future would look like. The
Elekai
would live among us, I supposed. The Old World would crumble completely to dust, leaving humanity to live among an alien race. We’d probably never be able to rebuild – not to the level of the Old World. I imagined that all traces of that world would be buried and gone, in a few centuries. I’d be long dead by then, and so would everyone else. But it was the future we fought for – the only future we knew.

***

W
e reached the overpass. The dragons remained still, so still that they could have been confused for statues. Up close, however, there was no way these creatures were anything but real. Sharp talons enclosed the concrete railing on the freeway's side, which was riddled with cracks and caked with dust. The dragons’ scales shimmered in the dull red sunlight, crimson for the smaller one, and dark gray, almost black, for the large one. From those scales rose sharp spikes from the creatures’ backs and tails.

These creatures of conquest and brutality were under the command of the
Elekai.
Which meant that I could control them.

Or, so the theory went.

As Char and I stood, staring, I definitely had my doubts. It seemed impossible that I could control these beasts – especially the big one. Those whitened eyes stared at me with such hatred – especially from the dark one.

I guessed there was nothing to do but try.

“I need to get up close,” I said.

“There's an on-ramp that way,” Char said, pointing to our left.

We walked in that direction as the dragons looked on.

“This is crazy,” Char said.

“I know,” I said. “Crazy times call for crazy measures.”

Char grunted in response.

Anna walked on my other side. She seemed tense, and it was probably all she could do to not draw her katana. A blade wouldn’t do much good against a dragon.

We reached the on-ramp. It was a short climb to the battered highway above. The charred shell of a sedan blocked the on-ramp horizontally. Flecks of turquoise paint clung to its chassis.

We went around the car and reached the top of the highway, turning to where the dragons roosted. Their heads swiveled upon stalk-like necks toward our position. Even with dusty distance, their white eyes glowed. Though these creatures were on our side, just seeing them stare at me sent a chill down my spine. There was something
different
about these dragons. I could feel the violence boiling within them. It was hard to imagine these dragons getting along with the
Elekai
ones, especially when their allegiance might only be temporary.

Anna, at last, unsheathed her blade. The dragons gave no reaction. More dragons wheeled above, a menacing foreground against the dilapidated towers of downtown Los Angeles. A chilly wind gusted, stinging with dry cold. About twelve dragons flew above our heads like vultures. I wondered if this was some sort of trap; were they pretending to be friendly, only to deliver a death blow? The possibility, or perhaps, the
probability
, didn't escape my mind.