Armageddon's Children (16 page)

Logan looks at the children and wishes he had never seen them. He wishes Michael had not brought him here, that he had been left behind. He wishes he could sink into the floor and disappear. He knows he will never forget this moment. He knows it will haunt him forever.

“They are kept alive for various reasons,” Michael says softly. “Some for work. Some for experiments. Some for things I cannot bear to speak about.”

Logan understands. He draws a long, slow breath and exhales. He thinks he will be sick to his stomach, and he fights it down. He swallows and straightens.

Michael’s hand closes on his shoulder and tightens. “We shall set most of them free and hope that some will survive.” He pauses. “Most of them, but not all.”

He moves to the farthest corner of the room, the corner that is darkest. As he nears, a hissing, mewling sound rises from the shadows.

What happens next is indescribable.

LOGAN WOKE SWEATING
and disoriented in the backseat of the Lightning, thrashing beneath the light blanket as if jolted by a charge from an electric prod. The dream of the slave camp, of what Michael had brought him to see, was right in front of him, painted on a canvas of darkness and air, blood red and razor sharp.

Madness,
he screamed in the silence of his mind and was filled with sudden, ungovernable anger.

It happened then as it always happened, a sudden shift of emotions that took him from simmer straight to white-hot. The canvas of the dream expanded until it was all he could see. Memories of every atrocity he had witnessed since his boyhood surfaced like a swarm of angry bees from the dark place in his mind to which he had consigned them, and a quick, hard burn of rage tore through him. He was suddenly unable to focus on anything but his horror of the slave camp he had passed by only hours before, unable to think with anything remotely resembling dispassion, unable to bring reason or common sense to bear. His rage was all-consuming. It swept through him in seconds, took control of him completely, and left him with a single thought.

Destroy it!

Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he crawled into the driver’s seat, shut down the perimeter alarms, started the engine, and wheeled the AV about. Forgotten was his promise to himself that he would not let anything jeopardize his search for the gypsy morph. Abandoned was the quest that had brought him to this place and time. His rage washed all of it away, swept it aside as if it were unimportant and replaced it with an inexorable determination to go back to that camp and do what he knew was needed.

Because there was no one else to help those imprisoned in that camp. Because he knew what was being done to them, and he could not abide it.

He took the highway back to the cutoff, back to where he could see the glow from the fires of the camp, and turned toward them, anger flooding through him like molten lava. He switched on the AV’s weapons, setting them to the armed position. His rune-carved staff rested on the seat beside him, ready to employ. He might have taken time to make better preparations, but his rage would not allow for it. It demanded that he hurry, that he act now. It demanded that he cast aside reason and let impulse rule.

He blew over the flats toward the now-visible camp like an avenging angel, his inner fire a match for the flames that burned in the perimeter pits. He had reached the walls almost before the guards could comprehend what he was about, too close for them to bring their heavy weapons to bear. He attacked the towers with the long-barreled flechettes that elevated from their fender housings, shards of iron cutting apart the walls and occupants that warded them as if both were made of thin paper. He swung the AV around after taking down two, left it in idle, and sprang to the ground before the fencing and rolled razor wire, his staff in hand. They were shooting at him now with their automatic weapons, but he was already shielded by the magic of his staff, an impregnable force of nature. He strode forward, his staff sweeping along the fencing and wire in a line of fire that melted everything it touched. Inside, the prisoners were screaming and crying, thinking it was they who were under attack, they who were meant to die. He could not stop to tell them otherwise. He could only act, and act quickly.

He was through the fence in moments, a Knight of the Word in full-blown frenzy, as savage and unpredictable as the creatures he hunted. Feeders appeared as if by magic, swirling all around him, hundreds strong, hungry and expectant. Cringing prisoners scattered before him in all directions, howling in fear. Once-men came at him in waves, firing their weapons, trying to bring him down. But ordinary weapons were no match for his staff, and he scattered them like leaves. He moved deliberately from fence to fence, from tower to tower, from one building to the next, sending everything up in flames.

He kept his eyes peeled for a demon, but none approached. He was lucky this night, but then luck was a part of what kept him alive.

The once-men were falling back, losing heart in the face of his wildness and seeming invulnerability. Their mad eyes and sharp faces lost their hard edge and turned frightened. Soon they were fleeing into the night, seeking shelter in the darkness. The camp’s prisoners flooded through the shattered fences after them, hundreds of men, women, and children. Strange skeletal apparitions, they fled through the brightness of the flames without fully understanding what was happening or where they were fleeing. It didn’t matter to the Knight of the Word. It only mattered that they run and keep running and never come back.

When the camp was in flames and the pens emptied, he turned his attention to the isolated cluster of cabins that sat deliberately untouched at the very center. He stared at the ramshackle structures, and his rage drained away with the slow onset of his horror at what must happen next. He hesitated, a mix of almost unbearable sadness and disgust welling up inside him.

Then Michael’s voice reached out to him from the long-ago.

Don’t think about it. Don’t try to make sense of it. Do what you must.

He took a deep, steadying breath and started forward.

“
COME LOOK
,
BOY
.
Come see what hides here in the darkness.”

Michael stands waiting on him near the shadows from which the hissing and mewling issues, his face carved of granite, his words hardedged and commanding. Nevertheless, Logan hesitates before advancing, knowing he should flee, that what he is about to see will scar him forever. But there is no running away from this, and he comes forward as bidden.

As he does so, the things hiding in the darkness slowly begin to take shape.

His breath catches in his throat and his chest tightens.

They are children, he sees. Or what once were children and now are something bordering on the demonic. Their arms and legs have grown disproportionate to their bodies, made long and crooked, and their hands end in claws. Their backs arch like those of cornered cats as they twist and writhe angrily. Their faces are distorted and maddened, cheeks hollow, chins narrow and sharp, noses flattened to almost nothing, ears split as if with knives, eyes yellow slits that are mirrors of their souls, mouths filled with needle-sharp teeth and tongues that protrude and lick the air. They are manifestations of evil, of the monsters to which they have fallen prey.

He tries to ask what has been done to them, but words fail him. He cannot speak, cannot do anything but stare at these creatures that once were children like him.

“They have been changed by experimentation,” Michael tells him. “They cannot be saved.”

But they must be saved,
the boy thinks, looking quickly at the older man for a better answer.
No child should be allowed to come to this! No child should be consigned to this hell!

Michael is not looking at him. He is looking at the demon children, at the monsters huddled before him. There is such blackness in that look that it seems those upon which it is cast must succumb to its intensity and weight. Yet they continue to arch their backs and hiss and mewl and crouch in the shadows, little nightmares.

Michael points his weapon at them. “Go outside now, boy. Wait for me there.”

He does as he is told, moving on wooden legs, wanting desperately to turn back, to stop what is about to happen, but unable to do so. He reaches the door and looks out into the night. The fires of the camp burn all about him, their flames a hellish crimson against the smoky black. Dark forms rush here and there, faceless wraiths in flight. He hesitates for a moment, realizing with new insight what has become of his world.

Madness.

There is a burst of automatic weapons fire from behind him and then silence.

HE SET FIRE
to the cabins when he was finished, working quickly and efficiently, shutting off his emotions as he moved from building to building, taking refuge in the mechanics of his work. The feeders went with him, frenzied shadows in the red glare of the flames. He tried to ignore them and couldn’t. He wished them dead, but that was pointless. Feeders were a force of nature. Only when he was done and walking away did they abandon him, content to frolic in the carnage. He glanced back once to be certain that the cabins were burning, that what lay lifeless inside would be consumed, then quickened his pace until he was through the collapsed fence and moving back toward the AV. Neither the prisoners he had freed nor the once-men that had held them captive were in sight. It was as if both had disappeared in the smoke and flames.

He climbed into the AV and sat staring at nothing. The rage that had earlier consumed him was gone. His wildness had dissipated and his emotions had cooled. He felt detached from his dreams and purged of his madness. He could barely remember having come here. The events that had transpired were a hazy swirl of unconnected images that lacked an identifiable center. His staff was a quiet presence at his side, emptied of magic, cleansed of killing fire.

But as he shifted in his seat, metal fastenings scraped against the door and suddenly he could hear anew the hissing and mewling of the demon children.

He started up the AV’s engine and wheeled away into the darkness, accelerating back across the flats toward the westbound highway. The roar of the Lightning’s big engine drowned out the sounds that had surfaced in his mind, but the damage was done. Tears filled his eyes as he drove, and the momentary peace he had found was gone.

How had Michael endured this for as long as he had? No wonder it had consumed him. It would consume anyone sooner or later, even a Knight of the Word. He wondered if that was what happened to all Knights of the Word whom the demons had failed to destroy. He wondered if it would happen to him, and then he wondered if it mattered.

He had asked it of Two Bears, and now he asked it again of himself.

Was he the last of his kind?

He could provide no answer. Dispirited and weary, he drove on through the night and the silence.