Monsters of the Apocalypse (28 page)

"I don't claim to be
innocent in all that has happened. What I claim to be innocent of: is
malice. Malice for any other living soul," October crooned into the
microphone. "The late Jacob Rothschild would have you believe that
things are simple, they are not. Sacrifices must be made.
Unpleasant decisions must be made and must be made based on the information at
hand at the moment of greatest need and that is what I did. I made the
hard decisions."

October paused for effect and
passed his smiling gaze over the room, which is when he first noticed the
women. Four of the pregnant women were now walking slowly down the
aisles. Bragg and one woman were all that were left on the stage with
October. October briefly glanced back at Bragg, whose confused expression
matched the feeling behind his own plastic smile.

"I uh… I uh..," October struggled to regain his place on the
teleprompter which sat there frozen.

In the Tunnel Hall the people
watched enraptured, even those who had been part of the Mutant Army didn't know
what would come next, other than what had been promised by Jacob the first
night in the big white tent: "a new beginning."

Behind the curtains, Miho
glanced down at her tablet screen where she watched a security camera feed that
showed a single boat coming ashore, unnoticed. The military had been
ordered to their barracks to watch this historic event. The drones that
patrolled the shore had been grounded on the order of the President - an order
that had been communicated to the drone technicians by Miho Walker.

"I uh… well… I was the man
in charge. I was the leader. And I led," October felt the
anxiety lessen as he fell back into the speech, only to have his attention
again broken by the presence of the fifth pregnant woman, now standing beside
him. "I uh…"

The pregnant woman double checked
her watch, smiled sweetly and kissed October long on the lips.

"This, Mr. President, is for
my three children that died in your nuclear holocaust," she said softly.

Outside of Founders' Hall, Jacob
and his Shadow Army got off their boat and moved down the empty docks.
They walked slowly up Carnegie Way towards Founders' Hall. The alarm on
Jacob's watch rang out. He stopped, checked the time, just to be sure,
and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a small detonator with a
picture of a smiling pink cat on its side.

"Boom," he said simply
and then pushed the button down.

Inside Founders' Hall, the
pregnant women exploded into large clouds of gas that filled the hall.
The crowd, the President, Bragg, the military, the potent women in their
barracks and the survivors in Tunnel Hall all gasped in shock, but, it was only
those in Founders' Hall whose gasps filled their lungs with infectious gas.

There was a momentary, choking,
silence in Founders' Hall that was only broken when Miho's laugh carried out
from behind her gas mask as she moved through the curtain and walked slowly to
center stage.

October, doubled over choking,
looked at up at her, the questions he couldn’t force through the toxic gas in
his lungs, were in his eyes. She ignored him and walked to the podium in
the growing chaos. Bragg moved to rise from the ground as he coughed, but
Agent Flores, wearing a gas mask, appeared on the stage and placed a firm hand
on Bragg's shoulder to stop him. Miho moved up to the microphone and
continued her giggling as the last of the gas dissipated into
nothingness. Once the appropriate amount of time had passed she removed
the mask and smiled down on the choking audience.

“Remain
calm. You can relax. You can know that it’s over. The war
that began centuries ago is over. The gas in your lungs is an airborne
version of The Shot, the same poison you gave to your own people. The
effect will be the same. The same mutation that you’ve heard of on the
mainland is now pulsing through your body. It's true. It's
real. It's all real. The hunger that you are soon to feel growing
deep inside you is real. But, before you panic at that, understand that we,
those of us who follow Jacob Rothschild, have a cure, an antidote," she
paused and turned and looked at Bragg. "Though, some of you will
refuse it."

She frowned
at Bragg and then turned back to the audience, still ignoring October who was
now forcing himself to stand up straight.

"We
intend to sell it to you. The price will be high, though not fatal… but,
we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For the time being let’s start
somewhere simple. Just go ahead and kneel.”

She turned
to October, her smile fading into viciousness, as she repeated the command.

"Kneel,
Mr. President."

And whether
it was fear, or sickness, the gas choking his lungs, or simply a habit
ingrained over the years, October Carnegie did as Miho told him - and
kneeled. Miho turned back to the camera and smiled.

"Welcome
to a new beginning. Welcome to the New World Order."

The doors of
the hall flew open. Jacob and his Shadow Army walked in.

"Jacob?"
October hissed, his face turning up from where it had been pressed against the
floor.

"Hello,
October."

"You
did all this?"

"No.
You did a lot of it."

"You're
dead!"

"No.
Um… no, I'm not," Jacob said with a crinkling of his brow.
"That was a... you know… lie. I need you to figure this all
out quicker, October. Otherwise we'll be doing this all night."

"Doing
what?"

"Taking
away the power of you and the Islanders and returning it to the people."

Jacob moved
around October and stepped beside Miho. He looked into the camera and
smiled.

"Ladies
and Gentlemen, my name is Jacob Rothschild. I stand here as proof to
those who don't yet believe it, that I do indeed have a cure," he held his
inoculation scar next to his face. "And, it's yours. The cure
is yours, a gift from me to you. And, news upon news, along with curing
you of being a man-eating mutant, this cure gives you potency. So, you
might just say, humanity is having a good day. To my friends in The
Island military barracks watching this, fear not. You didn't know what
was planned, and even if you did, what could you have done? No, no, no,
for you we have a wonderful system all set up, to bring you potency as well,
and unlike these monsters, for you, no kneeling required. Women of The
Island potency barracks, fear not, no longer are you to be looked at as tools,
or machines for making humans, you are free to love if, and when, and whom you
wish. To my friends in the tunnels beneath Los Angeles, tomorrow looks to
be a beautiful day, go out and get some sun. Hello America, go ahead and
smile, this is supposed to be fun."

An Indian
turned off the camera and as the little red light went out Jacob sat down on
the edge of the stage, next to the kneeling October.

"I win,
October. Nobody likes you."

October's
body shook as he began to cry with high pitched sobs.

"I
don't understand, you're the son of Rothschild and a Moreno," he whined.
"I'm the son of a Kennedy and a Carnegie. Our bloodlines go
back intertwining like a vine for centuries, before Caleb, from the birth of
the modern era! You and I share blood. We are practically
cousins! We went to the same boarding schools, colleges, we were in the
same military unit… we're practically brothers by shared experience, if not by
blood. How could you do this to our kind?"

"A
girl," Jacob said lighting a cigarette as the Shadow Army led the choking
audience out of the room at gunpoint. Miho sat down beside Bragg and put
an affectionate hand on his stunned shoulder. Flores, after a nod to Miho
and Jacob moved off to join his fellow Shadow Army members outside.

"A
girl?"

"She
died in the name of everything that we aren't, October. She died fighting
everything that we've done to this world. Those bloodlines that some
ancestor of ours bought or married into, they were long ago tainted, turned
from blue to black with the sins of greed. We are now paying for the sins
of our fathers and the sins of our grandfathers and the sins of our own black
hearts, brother."

"No.
I am, Jacob. I'm paying for it. The Islanders are. Not
you."

Jacob
laughed and stood back up.

"For
twenty years I have been hunted and called traitor. You poisoned me and
doomed me to die. I wandered the wastes with the curse of your hunger for
power poisoning my blood and you say I didn't suffer?! My love gone,
daughter gone, friend gone," Jacob kicked October in the face so hard that
blood came pouring out of his nose. "But, you are right, it's not
enough, not near enough, not after what my father did and his father before
him. Rest assured, before this is over my penance will be paid. Of
course, you won't be here to see it."

Jacob
knocked out October's front teeth with another kick.

"Please,
have mercy!"

"Oh
October, please," Jacob roared with laughter.

"How
can you laugh? How can you be so cruel?"

"You
know what your problem is, October? I mean, yes, you're cruel and stupid,
fat and lazy, weak and hateful, dishonest and incompetent, but I can forgive
all that. Your problem is that you just have no sense of humor."

October grew
still. His vision blurred. His hands balled into tight fists and
distantly he heard himself scream as he rose to his feet and charged at the
blurry form that was Jacob Rothschild. As the towering bulk of October
charged forward, the small lithe frame of Jacob gracefully ducked under large
outstretched arms, stepped to the left and kicked at the side of October's
knee, breaking it with a loud crack. October fell to the ground with a
scream. His vision returned as Jacob leaned down and looked into
October's face. Jacob laughed and kicked October in the face hard.

Jacob's
laughter and the sound of his own eye-socket breaking were the last things
October heard as he passed out from agonizing pain.

***

Jacob's story was the more
important one. He was, arguably the greatest man of his time, and so his
is the greater story. But, like all great men's stories, it's complex in
its morality. At the end of great men's stories you're always left
wondering, how much of it was luck and timing? How much of his success
was really just reckless indifference for those around them that happened to
pay off?

Nestor's story is
easier. He didn't do much and he said less. He was a man who moved
across a place, things tried to stop him, he moved past them and when he got to
the end, he disappeared. The reason people like the story of Nestor Bravo
isn't because it's that important. It's because his story is, in the end,
exactly the same as theirs.

-
President Nevers, "Thoughts on The Art of Ruling"

The
screams began as a whisper on the wind, carried over the walls of the fortress
to the little computer room in the high tower. The screams turned into a
roar so slowly that the two soldiers in the tower didn't even notice the exact
moment of the change. One moment the screams were a hiss easily ignored,
the next they were all that there was. People can learn to turn off
constant things. It's when the constant goes silent that people start to
take notice.

It was
when the screams stopped that Nestor knew the end had come.

He sat up
in the middle of the night and listened to the new silence. His hand
reached out instinctively for his gun as he peaked over the window and glanced
below.

"Well, will you look at
that? The army's here."

"Ours?"

"No, theirs," Nestor
said and then spat onto the ground to his side.

"Shit. Weren't the other
Alpha's supposed to have killed them?"

"That was the plan, but
you know what they say about plans. Don't suppose you could speed this
up, rich boy?"

"Sorry, Nestor, you're
gonna have to kill them all."

"We only have a hundred
bullets."

"How many of them are
there?"

"More than a
hundred. Don't suppose you could hurry that up, do you, rich boy?"

"Sorry, Nestor.
We're gonna have to die."

Nestor nodded, took aim and
killed a soldier who was glassing the tower with binoculars. In the
silence that followed his shot he heard the hum of the computer's fan. He
glanced at Jacob who stared at the screen, cigarette resting handsomely in the
corner of his mouth.

"Shouldn't you be
typing?"

"That's not how it
works."

"In movies, hackers
always type fast."

"In movies the heroes
always live."

Nestor laughed and killed
another man below them. For the next ten minutes things stayed the same:
Nestor shot the occasional soldier who showed more than a half an inch of vital
organ while Jacob endlessly smoked, unblinking.

"Nestor, my girlfriend is
pregnant. I haven't told anyone."

"I didn't know you had a
girlfriend."

"I do. Her name's
Christy. She's amazing. She's carrying my child."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you, Nestor.
I would have liked to have seen my child. That would have been a lot of
fun for me."

Nestor only nodded and then
put his eye back to the scope.

When the laughter first
started Nestor flinched, thinking that someone had crept into the room behind
him, but he found that it came from Jacob. Jacob's smile had grown large
as he laughed, tears in his eyes.

"What's so funny, rich
boy?"

"We're gonna die so
horribly. Do you realize that?! Do you realize how horrible it's
gonna be when they kill us?" Jacob said through his hysterics.

"I've never heard you
laugh like that. Hardly ever heard you laugh, actually. That's
funny to you, rich boy?"

Jacob turned to Nestor, eyes
watery with the tears of laughter.

"Didn't you always say I
needed to work on my sense of humor, Nestor?"

Nestor smiled at Jacob who
turned back to the computer and replaced the cigarette into his mouth.
Nestor watched his quietly chuckling friend for a few more moments before
looking back down at the advancing men in the courtyard below. Nestor
focused on his breathing and looked for the point of most vulnerability.
He saw the place where his bullet would kill the most men and then squeezed the
trigger and put it there.

Nestor's head hurt so bad that he
couldn't keep his eyes open, but nonetheless, he was awake. He could hear
movement. A fire. Panting. The draw of a cigar. He
focused on his breathing and tried to sit up, but the pain was so intense that
he blacked out.

When he next came to, he managed
to get a glimpse of a mutant face over him, a look of concern on it, before the
pain shut his eyes again.

"Don't try to sit up again,
Nestor. Not yet. Here this will help with the pain."

Nestor felt the nauseating sensation
of an injection in his arm. Warmth came from a spot inside his arm, just
below the elbow and radiated out until his body seemed a warm and hospitable
place. In time he opened his eyes and looked at the mutant who sat beside
him. The mutant smiled.

"What did you do to
me?"

"My doctor, he took out your
camera, Nestor, and the microphones. You're free."

Nestor squinted at the smiling
mutant. The mutant's hair was perfect.

"Jacob?"

"Yes, Nestor, it's me,"
the mutant laughed.

"What's going on?"

"I'm sorry, old friend, but
I had to take you out of the equation for awhile. I'm going to have to
leave you here. You'll be safe I think, you have your wolf, your guns are
here and Utah is safe. You know, the Mormon Church, it instructed its
followers to not get The Shot. Your buddy Bragg is a Mormon.
Anyway, because of that, there aren't many mutants in Utah. Not much of
anything in Utah anymore to be perfectly honest."

"I hate… I…"

"I know. I know how
you hate the high desert. But, well, the whole world is uncomfortable,
why shouldn't you be?"

"Why? Why here?"

"I need time, Nestor.
Time to finish up. I can't do that with you in the picture. It's a
long walk from here to L.A. It'll keep you away long enough, but keep you
going, keep you mad. It'll be terrible for you, being out here like
this. Why is it that you hate the high desert so much? What
happened to you out here?"

Nestor didn’t respond.

"Oh fine. Man of
mystery till the end. Well, hold on to that anger. Remember who put
you here. If you weren't already going to, that will make you come for
me. In time, you will arrive in L.A. for me and, in time, that will be
what I need."

"What are you doing?
What…"

Jacob laughed quietly and puffed
on his cigar.

"There won't be any more
wars after this, Nestor, you know? They say that every war, but this
time… this is it. This is the last time the world will need men like me
and you. Our time is passing. My life's work is coming to
fruition. This last battle, when I win it, will be the end of all of
it. This is the end of war, of their control, of me, of you. All my
life and here it is. Despite all I've done to get here, it still makes me
sad to see it end. Especially, I'm sad when I see what it means for
you. If there was another way, believe me, I would take it, but, you and
I both know how this has to end. It always ends one way for men like
us."

Jacob finished his cigar and
stood up. He smiled down at Nestor.

"Jacob, please, don't leave
me out here."

"I have to. I'm
sorry."

"I'll kill you. I
swear I'll kill you."

"Okay.
Come kill me. I'll be in L.A. When you get there, just ask for the
man in charge."

"This
isn't funny, Jacob."

"Not
yet, but in time, who knows? Some things that are terrible in the moment
are hysterical when you look back, like, take getting an erection at a Jr. High
School dance for example, funny now, right? Maybe, this is just like
that."

Nestor began
slipping out of consciousness as Jacob turned and headed back to his car.

"See
you in L.A., Nestor."