Monsters of the Apocalypse (22 page)

Jacob swaggered out of his tent
with his newly trimmed hair. Arian followed with a slight tremor of
excitement pulsing through him in anticipation of what was to come. The
whole army was waiting, surrounding a small and growling group of
mutants. There were five mutants in the angry group, all a head taller
than Jacob. They were rough looking. Their leather tatters showing
that they had most likely been bikers in their past humanity. Jacob
looked almost comical with his theatrically coifed hair towering over his, now
mutated but still oddly attractive, face and his suit newly hemmed to fit his
mutant form.

"Gentlemen, I hear you are
unhappy."

"This isn't funny, Jacob.
We know what you're hiding?"

"Do you? What is
that?"

"You have a cure to this
disease!"

The mutant who was doing the
speaking moved forward so that only a foot of air separated him and
Jacob. The other four rebel mutants were slowly fanning out beside the
brash leader, their fangs glistening.

"I do, but it's not ready
yet."

"Not ready?! The
doctor has already used it! He's human again! He did this to us and
you let him be cured first?!"

"No, moron. I made him
use himself as a guinea pig to prove to me it worked. Which it seems to,
but I'm not totally convinced. So, what we're going to do is continue our
little march and when I'm satisfied that the time is right, I'll give you all
back your humanity. Okay?"

The large leader of the rebel
mutants roared loudly into the air, his claws turned palms up to the sky.
The other four behind him growled their support. A murmur of excitement
rippled through the crowd. Most of the Mutant Army stood a comfortable
distance back from the argument. Arian noticed among the excited mutants
the Shadow Army Indians casually watching with amusement.

"Not okay," the rebel
said after his roar finally died. "You have no right to withhold
from us!"

"But, it's my cure. I kidnapped
Dr. Thomas, I extorted him to do the work. I poisoned him. I did
everything. What have you done?"

"I've followed you blindly,
like all of us, and why? Without these giant Indians and that fellow with
the brands you'd be nothing! You're just a pretty little rich boy who
wants to be king!"

"I am King."

"Earn it with blood
then!"

Jacob smiled and removed his
coat.

"Just you? I thought
you had four supporters here? How does that work? I kill you and
they go back to following me? No, no, no, that will never do. I'm
afraid I'm going to have to fight all five of you at the same time,
right? What do you think, soldiers?! Do you want to see Jacob the
Mutant King fight five huge monsters at once?!"

Arian instinctually let out the
first cheer, but as his own voice disappeared into the chorus that grew around
him, he realized that his excitement wasn't from the hope of Jacob performing
another spectacle, but a new hope. A hope that Jacob would lose.
Arian watched as Jacob shifted around the circle in the stance and cadence of a
knife fighter, his favored knife replaced by his large claws. As he moved
around the circle Jacob momentarily glanced into Arian's eyes and Arian was
certain that his hope was futile. Jacob was not going to lose.

The leader of the rebel mutants
charged forward and swung his right claw with a roar, which Jacob quickly
ducked. Jacob spun behind the larger mutant and as he did his claws
opened the back of the rebel's knees. The rebel collapsed to the ground
and Jacob laughingly ripped off his head as the next two rebels charged.
Jacob casually tossed the head into the air, leapt forward and flew over
the two aggressor's lunges. He spun in the air between them and landed
gracefully on his feet. As they turned around he reached out and opened
both of their throats, which exploded into fountains of blood.

Arian stood apart while the army
screamed with blood lust and frenzy, except for the Shadow Army who stood among
them. The Indians stood quietly contemplative, as if in prayer, while
Jacob, by any definition their Messiah, danced death into the last two rebels,
playing with them, dodging their claws by inches, smiling at their frustration,
and then finally with a combination of slashes so fast as to be only a blur, he
cut them both clean in half.

Jacob had replaced his coat
before letting forth a bellowing laugh that rang through the surrounding
abandoned sprawl
.
As the sound disappeared into echoes in the night Jacob looked at Arian and
smiled.

"You look good,
Sergeant. How do you feel?"

"Good, thank you,
ma'am."

"Not ma'am, it's Miho.
How is your unit?"

"Good men. The
best."

Miho glanced at the men who stood
at attention in the barracks.

"I doubt that. Well,
it's time. Are you ready for your orders?"

"Of course, Miho."

"Good. You are to
night-parachute onto the mainland. Once there, you will, by staying in
contact with me, put yourself into the path of Nestor Bravo."

"Nestor Bravo?
The
Nestor Bravo?" the sergeant gasped.

"Is there a problem?"
Miho asked as the men throughout the barracks shifted nervously.

"He's Nestor Bravo, the
soldier from "The Night of a Hundred Bullets!" You need a
thousand men to kill him!"

Agent Flores' laughter cut
through the room and drew the eyes of the soldiers. The big Indian had
sat himself in the corner of the barracks and was leaning his chair back
against the wall.

"A man in a tower with a
sniper rifle and a clear range of sight takes some killing," Flores' deep
bass boomed through the room. "A man, sick, half-starved, slowed by
age and injury, wandering the sprawl of a dead civilization with a half-wit at
his side, when you are many and have superior firepower, shouldn't pose too
much of a problem."

The sergeant glared over at the
bigger man.

"I don't see you volunteering
to come with us. If you're so eager to kill Nestor Bravo why don't you
go?"

Flores lowered his chair and
grabbed a large duffel bag that had been lying beside him and brought it over
to the sergeant with a smile.

"When the time comes for
Nestor Bravo to die, I will most certainly be there," Flores smiled.

Caleb was
still shaking, still in the same spot, surrounded by the bodies of dead mutants
when Nestor returned from scavenging the market. Nestor reached out and
placed a firm hand on Caleb's shoulder and gave him a shake.

"You're
okay. You're alive. You did good."

"Did I
kill him?"

"You
slowed him down so he didn't kill you, Caleb, I took the kill shot. Does
that make it better?"

“Not
really."

"Oh.
Well then, yeah, you killed the shit out of that mutant. Come on.
It'll be dark soon. Let's find a place to sleep."

Nestor
walked out of the town at a quick pace that Caleb tried to match with his still
unsteady feet.

"I
killed him. He was living his life, I came into his town and I killed
him."

"Caleb,
relax, it's over now."

Caleb
stopped and vomited against a dead tree. Nestor stood there and let Caleb
shake.

"I'm
sorry. You think I'm weak."

"No,
Caleb, I don't."

"You're
first time… did you throw up?"

Nestor
scanned the sky while Caleb retched again. He turned back around and
helped Caleb back up.

"No, it
was never like that for me, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. Come
on, one foot in front of the other."

That night
Nestor found himself surprised how much he missed Caleb's inane chatter, but he
didn't force it. He knew that for some men these things took time and he
knew that it didn't mean they wouldn't turn out, in the end, to be someone
you'd want beside you in battle. Nestor had been impressed by the way
Caleb had shot the mutant back in the village. He hadn't turned
away. He had faced it head on. Hands shake from adrenaline, legs
from fear, and Caleb's legs hadn't moved an inch when he fired his first shot.

"I
can’t stop my hands... they keep shaking.”

“Shakings
good, Caleb. Dead peoples' hands don’t shake. The truth of it is
that most of the signs of being alive are awful. They’re fear, sweat,
bleeding, cruelty, violence, pain.”

“What about
love and joy and laughter?”

Nestor spat
into the fire and then looked into the flames.

“I
suppose. I suppose for some people.”

“Yeah, those
would be happy people, Nestor. You know, the ones who don’t dwell on the
misery and pain of it all. There has been, in the history of mankind, a
place for a person that had some fun between birth and death. I mean,
that wasn’t behavior that was necessarily frowned upon, being happy or
remembering good times. And I would make the argument, that if you can’t
remember life before the hordes of flesh-eating mutants, if you can’t remember
life ever being worth living, what the hell are you fighting for?!”

Nestor
understood that the rage that was coming at him was the verbal result of trauma
and adrenaline and so he didn't take it personally. There were only so many
things Nestor understood, but he knew to a certainty, without having to look,
that by shouting Caleb had stopped his hands from shaking.

“Caleb, I
know what I'm fighting for. I'm fighting because I made a promise to a
girl, and because a guy shot me, and blew up my country, and turned my
countrymen into mutants. I’m fighting because I want to watch him
suffocate on his own blood as it fills his lungs.”

“Wow, that
actually made you smile. That was like the closest I’ve ever seen to you
happy. Nestor, you are a terrifying person.”

Arian sat at the fire with Dr.
Thomas. Several of the nearby neighborhoods' larger mansions had been
taken over by the mutants in the name of a raging orgy of destruction and violence
that had followed Jacob's killing of the rebels. The screams of the
celebration were vicious and loud. At the most distant edge of the
firelight a few of the Indians stood among themselves, Jacob was gone,
disappeared into the night.

"Jacob fights well."

"Yes," Arian laughed,
"quite well."

"Oh, a silly thing to say I
suppose. He was an Alpha of course but… he was so much smaller and
outnumbered. Without a gun, you would think he would have been unable to
fair so well."

"His specialty was always
knives. For a time he was the Alpha instructor in Apache Knife
Fighting. They say an Apache would carry thirteen knives on his person,
so it couldn't be much of a change. Ten claws, claws are just a bunch of
knives I guess."

"Apache Knife
Fighting? Weren't the Comanche's enemies with the Apache's? Isn't
that a problem for the Comanche?"

Arian raised his eyes from the
fire and stared at the man.

"Comanche?"

"Yes, the Shadow Army
soldiers. Jacob said they were Comanche."

"The Comanche were a small
tribe, in stature I mean. Their abilities on horseback made them great
warriors, not their physical size. Those aren't Comanche, Doc."

"So, it was a lie?
Then, how did they actually come to be in the Shadow Army?"

"I don't know really.
They don't talk much or have names, which is all just so that they look cool,
if you ask me. Nameless Soldiers in a Shadow Army. The only one of
them who ever talked much is with October Carnegie now."

"So you have no idea?"

"I've heard many stories,
Doc. Some say the government at one point wanted to test out a gene
modification to make super soldiers and they wanted to test it on people who
were too poor and underrepresented to complain if it went wrong. At that
time there was no one who better fit that description than the Seminole
Nation. Some say the Rothschild family was behind the program and it was
Cherokees. Some say they were Apache, others Sioux. Some say
they're robots. Some people say they are from a bunch of different tribes
and are just a bunch of guys who wanted money and Jacob gave them a lot.

Arian paused and stared into the
fire, the burning light painful to his sensitive eyes, but he let the pain grow
for a little longer before lowering his eyes to the ground.

"Or, maybe they were like
me," Arian said, raising his stinging eyes to stare into the darkness
beyond the camp. "Maybe they were mercenaries born into the wrong
time. Maybe they were men who had no other abilities than to kill, but
who wanted to be warriors, not murderers. Heroes, not monsters.
Just soldiers looking for a battle in a world where there weren't
any. I don't know, it could be any of those. Well… the robot
thing probably isn't true."

"Why would Jacob say they
were Comanche who wanted revenge? Why would he lie about that?"

"Why does Jacob do
anything? He's insane."

"Why, Arian," Arian
grew stiff at the sound of Jacob's voice behind him, "what an awful thing
to say."

Arian awaited the impact of
claws, but none came. Jacob chuckled softly and leaned over the fire to
light his cigar. An explosion rocked the town behind them followed by the
cheers of the Mutant Army.

"They're destroying that
town! Shouldn't you stop them soon, sir?"

"No, Doc," Jacob
shrugged, his eyes stuck on Arian's. "Why bother? The homes they
destroy have no value. The dead bodies they devour would only rot.
No, we let them rage tonight, it will make tomorrow easier."

Jacob smiled and blew smoke into
the air, as Arian struggled to return the even unblinking gaze.

"What happens
tomorrow?"

"Well, Dr. Thomas, we
disappear for awhile. We move, as quietly and quickly as we can.
There is almost nothing we can do to change what will happen next. To
show ourselves now would be a disaster. So, we must make sure that when
we finally do, we are where we need to be."

"Which is where?" Dr.
Thomas asked, less out of curiosity then out of discomfort from the intensity
of the staring match that was occurring between the two mutants with whom he
shared the fire.

"Los Angeles. That is
where the human survivors are being taken by Bragg. There is a
considerable tunnel system, the nuclear fallout will be less there. It
will be Los Angeles where we will go and make our stand against the
humans."

"And what of Nestor?"
Arian hissed.

"Oh Nestor," Jacob
chuckled, "I forgot to tell you, Arian, news arrived. Plans have
been put into action. We should have Nestor in our hands presently.
What say you and me take a walk, old friend?"

Arian stood up in silence and
followed Jacob into the darkness of the night, leaving Dr. Thomas alone at the
fire.