Monsters of the Apocalypse (20 page)

"What
are you accusing us of, Mr. President?"

"I'm
accusing you of being in league with the mutants, was that not clear?"

"How
dare you?!" Chen Hintao screamed. "Our families were the main
investors that allowed for there to be a place for mankind to live and
survive! We created The Island! Without us all of mankind would be
on the mainland dying out!"

"Yes,
but, you and your families are also all here and well, while your enemies are
all dead. Your enemies were all eaten by a mutant. It doesn't take
a genius to put this together. You rose up and challenged my authority
and those who allied themselves with me, suffered tragic losses. Those
allied with you, did not. Correct?"

"Yes,
but…"

"But
Nothing! You smuggled a mutant onto The Island. You put the whole
of mankind's survival at risk for a petty grab at power. You betrayed
humankind!"

Silence rang
across the hall. The people who gathered in the seats that surrounded the
makeshift courtroom stared on in horror. October turned with a flourish,
hands held wide. He passed his eyes over the assembled crowd. He
stopped and looked into the camera lens below the small red light.

"We
didn't build a courthouse on The Island. We had thought there'd be no
need. We wrote no laws, for the laws of The United States of America move
with its people. They're in their hearts wherever fate takes them.
We may not all agree on what's best for the people, but we all do agree
on the importance of the people, of the survival of the people. I have
had to make choices that have brought me to my knees, alone and tortured.
For the good of my kind I put my soul at peril. Perhaps I shall not get
it back, but such is the price of leadership in times like this. Before
you, before us, stands a question of the greatest simplicity: what is to be
done with those who put their own power above the survival of their own
kind? What is to be done to the traitors in our
midst?!"

The chant
started with the simple statement of one young and beautiful red-haired girl.

"Hang
them."

When the
chant had grown so loud that it rang out overwhelmingly like the roar of
thunder, October turned and faced the last living Founders.

"You
won't get away with this, October," Anderson Vanderbilt shouted.
"You're insane. The people will not let you have absolute
power! They will revolt, they will rise up!"

"No I
think not, Anderson. I'm the one who's protecting them from mutants and
traitors like you. They love me for it."

"They
tolerate you, October. It's Nestor that they love and no degree of
cleverness can save you from the death he's bringing for you."

October
blinked twice to try and regain focus to his eyes. He felt his hands wrap
around the fragileness of a human throat. He heard a gurgle that was
silenced by a snap as his hands closed painfully around the neck. He felt
the spray of blood hit his face and cover his hands. When October finally
managed to focus his vision, he was looking at the dead face of Anderson
Vanderbilt, his head tilted lamely to the side, his throat mangled and bloody,
crushed by October shaking hands. The chant had grown into a bloodthirsty
roar behind him. October dropped Vanderbilt as Flores grabbed him and
moved him quickly through the crowd that swarmed forward to get to the
Founders.

The Founders
screamed as the mob carried them outside.

"I
really think that speech was going pretty well there!" October shouted to
Miho.

"Yes,
very presidential, sir!" she shouted back.

"It
kind of took a turn when I blacked out with rage and choked Vanderbilt to
death."

"Not
quite as presidential, no," she agreed.

The
gallows had been built only a day earlier. The workmanship had been of
quality though and when October arrived into the safety of the Presidential
Mansion, he looked down from his office windows, down to Carnegie Way, where
the crowd gathered around the hanging forms, dangling in the wind, of all who
had stood beside him in the beginning.

"How are you going to die exactly?" Nestor asked.

"Well,
there are mines. You can't see them, but they'll tear you in half.
I've been walking slowly. I've been lucky. Then there are the
mutant cannibals. I think it might be better on that side of the river,
but I can't tell how deep it is and I don't swim real good. Plus… I'm
starving."

"I'm
sure you'll be fine. You've survived on your own this long."

"No, I
haven't. If you leave me here I'll die, Nestor."

"How
did you even get here if you're this incompetent? How are you not dead
yet?" Nestor asked with growing suspicion.

"I
lived in an underground city."

"Why'd
you leave?"

"I had
to. I was… they were going to kill me."

"Why?"

"I
slept with the wrong woman."

"Ah.
Things never change, huh?"

The man
scrunched his face in disbelief and glanced at the endless wasteland around
them.

"They
sort of change."

"Well,
look, I know Bragg, and I'm sure that he'll let you return to your city,"
Nestor shrugged.

"The
city isn't affiliated with Bragg."

"How
does it survive then? Why don't the mutants get in there?"

"There's
an agreement. They…" the man seemed to struggle with whether or not
to say the next thing.

Nestor
scanned the horizon again; they still seemed to be alone. He pulled his
handgun and pointed it at the man’s head.

"Please
don’t do that."

"What's
the agreement?"

"Could
you put down the gun?"

"No."

"Fine.
A member of the town hacked your feed. If it wasn’t for him, only the
government could watch this right here, but, he hacked it, so everyone can
watch you kill me."

"And
the mutants are grateful?"

"Something
like that."

"And
The Island, why doesn't The Island bomb it?"

"Did
you ever hear about the tunnels under the Denver Airport? The ones where
the reptilian overlords live?"

"Are
you trying to die?" Nestor said his finger tightening on the trigger.

"No!
It was a thing! A conspiracy thing. Except, it wasn't all
wrong. I mean the lizard people thing that was wrong… probably. But
there are underground cities. A few of them. The rich elite, before
The Island, they had an escape plan to the underground in the case of a nuclear
attack. It's where some of us live now. Ironic right? These
guys designed these underground cities to be un-attackable, so now they can't
attack us."

"How'd
you find out about them?"

"Jacob
did. He had his men show the local people how to get there."

The man kept
his eyes focused on Nestor's gun.

"My
name's Caleb."

"So?"

"I
thought it might humanize me if I had a name. I thought that it might
make you less likely to kill me if you knew my name."

"Shockingly
poor logic. Where’s this underground city?"

"It's
impenetrable."

"Then
I'll knock."

"Why do
you want to go there?"

"I was
thinking, I'd stop them from broadcasting my feed so that mutants and lunatics
would stop hunting me."

"I
can't let you do that."

Nestor took
a moment and thought about this. He pushed the barrel of the gun against
the man's head.

"You
sure about that, Caleb?"

"Yes."

"You
want me to protect you, but you won't do anything for me? Look, there's a
world of mutants hunting me because of this hacker asshole. You're going
to take me to him or I'm going to kill you very slowly."

"Okay,
Nestor, you know… this isn't going how I thought it would go… let's just go
separate ways."

"Very.
Slowly."

"Fine.
Whatever."

"You
think I can't get the answer out of you?"

"I'm sure
you can, but I can't just give it up," the man said with a shaking
voice. "I made a promise. You'll have to kill me."

"Okay,
any last words, Caleb?"

"Yeah,
actually. Mary, I know you're watching. I love you, now look away.
I don't want you to see this."

Nestor
frowned at Caleb. Caleb closed his eyes.

The door shattered and Arian
walked into the room. The man was able to get two shots off before Arian
disarmed him with a backhanded slap. Arian, unharmed from the bullets,
clenched a single claw around the man's neck and lifted him off the
ground. The man grabbed onto Arian's wrist and struggled to lift enough
of his own weight to keep from choking to death.

"I'm hungry. You are going to answer my
questions, quickly and honestly or I'm going to eat you. Are we
clear?"

"Please, I'm a priest. A man of God, to eat me
would be a sin!"

"And if you weren't a priest? Would it be a sin
to eat you?"

"Yes," the man mumbled.

"Then why mention it?"

The man struggled for a response, but failed to say a word.

"Okie doke. That's the first question I've asked
that you've failed to answer. The next time that happens I will eat
you. Now, if I wanted to have sex, to buy sex, in this fair metropolis,
where would I go?"

"No woman would have sex with a demon like you!"

Arian tilted his head in thought as he tightened his grip
slightly and listened to the man choking.

"Well, that wasn't quite
not
answering, but it
wasn't really a very good answer. Let's try again, we are living in a
manmade hell, there are all manner of terrible things to be found. Where
would I find someone selling women?"

Arian released his grip enough that the man was able to gasp
in a breath of air. The man took a moment and then shook his head
solemnly.

"I've heard, I mean I've never been there, but I've
heard that in the old Ghibli building there's a man like that. I'm not
sure though, you see I'm a…"

"Priest. Yeah. You mentioned that.
What denomination?"

"Catholic," the man struggled out.

"Say a prayer. A Hail Mary, say one of
those."

"I… I…" the man stuttered, his eyes wide in
terror.

"You can't because you're lying. You're not a
priest. You shouldn't lie about things like that, it's a sin. Now,
if you'll excuse me," Arian set the man back down on the ground and headed
towards the shattered door.

The man fell to the ground and prayed. It wasn’t a
proper prayer because he'd never learned how, but the gratitude was genuine
which he hoped counted for something.

Outside of the apartment building Arian stopped and leaned
against a wall, his head was swimming with bloodlust and the scent of the
terrified man he'd left behind him. Every part of his body cried out for
him to go back and sink his teeth into the man's flesh and let the warm salty
blood burst into his mouth. His hands shook with a desire to rip tendons
and muscles, to crack open the bright white bone that lay beneath the nearby
flesh… but Arian resisted and moved towards the Ghibli building.

When he arrived he smelled a combination of dirty human flesh
and perfume. The combination made him nauseous. He looked through
teary eyes at the large, two-story building from an alley across the
street. The man had told the truth. The pimp made no sign of hiding
his business, leaning auspiciously against a wall in a white track suit smoking
a cigarette as two older, underdressed, women stood talking beside him.
The women's eyes were heavily made up and scared.

Arian took a few moments to make sure that he had gathered
in the scene in its entirety. Once he was certain there was no other
threat than the gun that bulged in the waistband of the man's pants, an
electricity shot through Arian, bringing him a fantastic clarity. His
logical thoughts slowly faded to somewhere distant as the hunger for flesh and
the desire for the hunt spread out and dominated his mind. Then he was
running. Running fast, a full sprint, each leg pushing as hard as it
could against the cold cement below. His arms pumped mechanically, his
claws spread wide.

The pimp struggled to remove the gun from his waistband to
shoot the charging mutant, but Arian ripped his arm off before he was able to
take aim. Arian could sense in a distant way that he was roaring like an
animal as he slammed his claws into the pimp's stomach beneath his ribs, hooked
his claws up and then pulled back hard, cracking away the bone and slicing
through flesh. The blood that sprayed out coated everything and filled
the air with a red mist as Arian began to feed and the women ran off shrieking.

When Arian was finished he walked slowly back to the mutant
camp and was careful to avoid anything that would reflect his own monstrous
image back to himself, though he doubted he'd be able to see anything through
his tears.

"I thought you'd forgotten
about me," the mutant hissed.

"No. Just been busy
playing politics. You did well, soldier," Miho said sitting in a
chair across from the mutant who sat on his bed. Flores was beside him
tapping the syringe to prep it for injection.

"So you really have a
cure?"

"Seems so. You're the
second person to take it. The first was a success."

Flores injected the mutant and
then moved to his normal spot behind Miho.

"What now?"

"It'll take a week, maybe
two, but you'll be back to human. At which point, I have another job for
you."

"Wait, the deal was, I kill
those people and you cure me. That was the deal."

"That was the deal,"
Miho shrugged. "Now we're making a new deal. You're going to
go back to being a soldier. You'll tell people that you've been running
recon missions all this time. I'll pull strings and get you your own unit
and all the perks of your new higher rank of Sergeant."

"Okay, that sounds good, but
what do I have to do for you?"

"Whatever I tell you
to."

"And if I don't? If I
say no?"

Miho leaned forward and smiled.

"That's your choice. I
once showed you a list of people who made that same choice. Keep that in
mind."

She sat up, smoothed out her
dress and left. Flores was a step behind her.