Monsters of the Apocalypse (11 page)

Nestor
walked. Street to street. Town to town. He tried to stick to
the suburbs, the cities having been the main targets of the missiles and the
EMPC's. The innards of parking structures had wiped out city
blocks. People seemed to have tried to outdrive the missiles, dying in
the inferno of their cars, lining the freeways with a charred memory of the
commutes of a destroyed world. Electronic stores had been another
tinderbox when the blasts came and the fires they started still blazed
unchecked in every town. He avoided the cities because they held nothing
but devastation, shallow graves and no survivors he could find.

When he came
to the military base he found it mostly deserted. A few charred corpses
remained, the unfortunate grunts left on guard duty 'til the end. There
had been looting, but a military base wasn't a simple thing to loot if you'd
never lived on one. Nestor had spent years in a place just like
this. It was here that he replaced his boots and sleeping gear. It
was here that he replaced the weapons that he had scavenged and been left with,
with two Colt 1911 pistols and a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. He
kept his knife.

Not long
after the military base, in some suburb in Maryland, the survivors became more
common and visible. It was here that Nestor began to suspect a change in
mankind. If he stayed in a place more than a day it got worse. At
first he thought it was him, some form of contagious disease he was infecting
those around him with, so he stayed distant. In time he came to realize
that it wasn't him, it was something else.

Outside of a
suburb of some eastern town, Nestor climbed the branches of an oak that was
still standing in the memory of a neighborhood park. The underground
sprinklers had exploded, making a lake of sorts in the middle of the
park. This water led Nestor to believe someone would arrive here
eventually to drink. He waited. Soon enough a man appeared on the
horizon and headed towards the park.

The man
filled two canteens that he pulled from a backpack. The man was jittery
and nervous. He washed his face in the water and then suddenly
stopped. He jerked his head up and stared around him. Nestor
wondered if it was his own gaze that the man was feeling. The man reached
in his backpack and pulled out a revolver. Nestor tried to ease deeper
into the branch he laid upon. It was then that another man came sprinting
over the horizon. The sprinter came on inhumanely fast at the man with
the revolver and as he did Nestor saw that the sprinter wasn't quite human.
The sprinter's hands seemed to be claws, his mouth filled with fangs. He
was disproportionally large and muscular and his eyes and skin reflected the
light in a disconcerting way. The revolver cracked, but no shots landed
and before Nestor had even registered what was happening, the sprinter lunged
forward, knocking the gun from the man's hand and sprawling him on the ground
beneath him.

Without
hesitation the sprinter began to eat the man.

Nestor took
aim through the scope on his rifle. He picked the sprinter's chest, the
largest target available, and fired a shot. The sprinter fell back from
the impact, but when he sat up there was only a surface wound, a small amount
of blood over white, unbroken bone. The sprinter looked up at the tree
where Nestor was perched, and though the distance was great, Nestor could tell
he had been seen. As the sprinter stood back up, Nestor took aim at his
forehead and fired off another shot. Again the impact knocked the
sprinter down, but again he got back up and now the sprinter was growling and
running at Nestor.

"Shit."

Nestor
thought back to the crazy man that he'd killed in the suburbs. He took
aim on the eye of the sprinter. At the speed the sprinter was running his
eye was a hard target, but Nestor didn't miss and the sprinter fell to the
ground. This time he didn't move.

Nestor
jumped out of the tree and walked over to the corpse of the sprinter and looked
it over. He pulled out his knife and bent over when he became aware of
the screaming. He walked over to the man by the lake who laid,
half-eaten, bleeding into the water. Nestor reached down and put a hand
on the man's shoulder, which seemed to calm him down.

"Where
is it?"

"Dead,"
Nestor replied.

"I shot
it but… the bullets did nothing."

"I
know. It doesn't seem possible."

"What
are they?" the man moaned.

"I
don't know."

"They
eat people. Cannibals. Mutant cannibals. How could this have…
how could this have happened?"

The man died
before Nestor could reply, though he had no answer to offer. He closed
the man's eyes and then walked back to the other corpse and pulled out his
knife. He decided to put a bullet in the mutant's other eye out of
caution before he started dissecting him.

"I think if you saw what I'd
done you'd be really impressed, Nicolette! I found this code right…"

"Look, I'm sorry,
Caleb," Nicolette interrupted, her voice quavering, a tear in her eye,
"but this was a mistake."

"You're kidding."

"You don't understand,
Caleb, I like you, but, we just met at a really hard time for me. I just
got out of a serious relationship. I'm a mess and I sort of need to sort
that out before I can really be with anyone. It's not fair to either of
us."

Caleb stared at Nicolette in
silence, disbelief on his face.

"Nicolette… The world was
blown up. It's a hard time for everyone. No one is in a good place
right now, they're in bunkers."

"But for me, it's even
worse," she said with a loud sigh, hands on her hips. "You see
one of the reasons I became a musician is because I have these thoughts that I
need to express, but I always date men who don't listen. I've been trying
to find myself through music because I've been trapped in my
relationships."

She nodded her head as if she'd
made a solid point, one easily understood. Caleb's eyes just got wider.

"You're kidding me,
right? I mean, you couldn't possibly be this self-involved."

"Oh I'm sorry, Caleb,
because I won't sleep with you I'm self-involved?!"

"You did sleep with
me! It was good… I thought. Did you really forget or are you just
being mean?"

"That's not the point,
Caleb! Why did you call me self-involved?!"

"No, you're self-involved
because humankind is hardly cold and you're dealing with stupid relationship
issues from the past. And projecting them. In a bunker. Under
a nuclear wasteland! Who said anything about a long-term relationship
here? We'll probably be dead really soon!"

"So what, I should stay with
you? We should just settle?!"

"No. I'm not saying
that. I'm not settling, Nicolette. I saw you long ago, across a
room, and I've loved you since. I want to be with you," Caleb moved
towards her with his crooked smile. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder
and she smiled at him. "I don't think it needs to be this complicated."

She tossed his hand off her arm
and stormed to the door and then turned back.

"I'm complicated,
Caleb. My mother bought me therapy she was so concerned about me.
I'm so just… tortured, my life has been so hard… and this whole Armageddon
thing just came at a bad time and I think I'm getting my period."

"This isn't happening.
How can this be happening?" Caleb laughed.

"It's not funny,
Caleb. This is serious!"

"No. It's not.
None of this is. How did you not gain perspective when the world as we
know it ended?"

She laughed and opened the door.

"It's like you said, Caleb,
my world didn't end. My world is still here. I'm still growing, and
I just don't think there's a place for you in my world right now. But
maybe… look… I just needed someone to keep me warm when the world ended.
Now the world's still turning and I need something more but, you're
still just someone. I need more than just someone."

Caleb watched her walk out the
door for the last time and was almost too confused to be hurt. Almost.

October sat
in his office and looked out over The Island. There were barracks on each
side of The Island. Simple, but efficient in design. One for young
potent women, one for soldiers. In between were fancier, more elaborately
designed homes for the Founders and their associates. October turned his
back, sat down and finished his plate of pasta. As he chewed he stared at
the black screen. Nestor would be up soon October knew. Nestor
hardly ever slept and when he did it was brief, so October watched the feed
even while Nestor slept. He secretly wondered if at some point he would
be able to see the man's dreams.

And if he
did, he wondered if he'd be dying painfully in them.

October had
known Nestor to some degree for just over twenty years. During that time
he'd seen the man silently and passively kill more people than most
diseases. There had never though, in that time, been a moment where
October had seen Nestor mad. The man killed of necessity and duty, never
anger, but October was sensing that Nestor was angry about the whole Apocalypse
thing, and he seemed to be walking west.

"I wish
I hadn't tried to take off his pants."

"Sir?"
Miho was now sitting bolt upright and staring at October who had forgotten that
she was even in the room.

"Nothing,
Miho. Just thinking."

"About
what? Who's pants did you try and take off?"

"I said
forget about it, Miho. Forget about it."

Miho
shrugged and returned to her tablet while October wiped his plate clean with a
piece of bread.

"Oh my
God!" Miho shouted at the tablet.

"What?"
October spun to Miho. "What is it?"

"Mr.
President, I think the satellite feed has just been hacked."

"How do
you know?"

"Look…"
she pointed at the wall. He turned and looked across the room at the
screen that had only moments ago been the pink hued blackness of Nestor's
eyelids. Now, imposed on top of it was the image of a hand, middle finger
raised.

It dissolved
away as Nestor opened his eyes.

There was a
knock at the door. The man didn't move.

“Hello?
Are you home?”

Again the
man held perfectly still. The door slammed open and in the doorway stood
a mutant. The mutant wore a beautiful suit, a little too small. His
hair was perfect.

"What
are you doing in here?! What do you want?!" The man screamed while
brandishing a baseball bat in his sweatsuit. The mutant seemed to have
caught him midway through a meal of cold canned chili.

"There's
a little spot across the way that everyone seems to be going," the mutant
said moving further into the room. "They walk down this street, and
they get to this spot and they turn right, where a bunch of men with guns let
them into a building. I went ahead and turned left. You see, I
could smell you, which is a new ability I seem to have, and I thought, maybe
this guy could tell me what goes on over there, in that building with the men,
with the guns."

“You... you
are a mutant!”

“You can
call me Jacob though. You know, if you just burned some wood, you
wouldn't have to eat that cold.”

“Please
don’t eat me!”

Jacob smiled
and stared at the little man.

“Huh.
That's it! I didn't know exactly why I came over here, but now I
do. You're right. I do want to eat you. Interesting.
How do you think I should…”

"Please…
please…"

"Hey, don't
make me the bad guy, you suggested it. In the next life when a monster
knocks on the door, don't bring up eating you. It gives them ideas."

Jacob
advanced on the man who swung his bat lamely. Jacob caught it
thoughtlessly and tossed it aside.

"I hope
one day the man you go to eat is Nestor Bravo you mutant scum!"

Jacob
stopped in his tracks.

"What
did you say?"

"You'll
burn in hell you mutant!"

"Oh.
Okay."

Jacob looked
around the apartment and sat down.

"Why
did you say that thing about Nestor Bravo?"

"What?"

"You
were going to die, in your last breath you didn't curse me with God's wrath, or
call for Jesus, you used Nestor Bravo's name instead. Why did you do
that?"

"I
don't know really. I guess I just finished reading about him and he was
on my mind."

Jacob no
longer felt that he knew his own face, there had been such odd changes, but he
suspected that he was unsuccessful in hiding his confusion as he continued on.

"May I
see where you read about him?"

The man got
up and returned with a pamphlet, a rudely drafted little book. On the
cover it said, "The Walk of Nestor Bravo." Jacob opened it with
some degree of difficulty and read this:

"Nestor
was always tired, never hungry. He traveled constantly. He slept
outdoors. Too many things inside those walls that he didn't want to see.
He'd found children burned in their beds. Their toys perfect and
intact. Little black skeletons holding fluffy white stuffed animals.

This was
the neutron bomb. Islanders, killing the people, but keeping the things
so they'd have something to play with when they returned.

The
closest he came to helping anyone was when he killed suffering people.
The first man was still the only one who'd tried to attack him. But,
since then, he'd begun wearing a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, not only
to breathe, but also to hide his face. A self-made turban to hide his
head from the radiation glow.

Most were
so sick, so disoriented they didn't even notice him as he passed in the
street. He kept his head down and walked. He kept a bullet in the
chamber and the safety off.

He slept
for an hour and in his dreams he walked and ached just the same. He couldn't
keep food down. He only had water for days. Time blurred. In
the dark of night Nestor cast no shadow and made no sound. But he did not
sleep and he moved on. The night had no stars or moon. His eyes saw
little, and for that he was glad. He could smell the death all the
same. He could always smell it.

He didn't
flinch at trees that looked like men or buildings that held eyes that looked
into the night for food. He moved through the night and found comfort in
the blackness of it all, peace in the silence.

His path
was lined with bodies, though in truth, it had been before any of this.
Nestor Bravo had wanted to kill a man once upon a time. Before he was a
man, he'd wanted to kill one. His fingers had calluses that were formed
with last breaths. His scars nothing but choices made.

Nestor
knew he was walking. Nestor knew that he was walking because he felt the
ground under his feet when he stepped and felt it fall away when he lifted his
foot again. Nestor knew it was night because it was dark. Nestor
knew he was alive because his body was racked with pain and suffering.
Nestor knew he was Nestor Bravo because that day he'd watched someone die
because of it."

Jacob set
the book down and tapped his knee, staring into the man's terrified face.

"I
don't suppose you smoke?"

"No."

"Shame.
Where'd you get this?"

"The
Syndicate. I traded for it. Honest."

"The Syndicate?
Who are they?"

"They're
the ones in the building across the street. They run the city."

Jacob smiled
at the man and growled, "Who are they?"

"I
don't know who they were before, but now they're the guys with anything you
need. Drugs, food, weapons…"

"And
books about Nestor Bravo?"

"They
have a connection to Nevers."

"Nevers?"

"The
hacker who hacked the satellite feed. The story goes that, like, a day
after the missiles dropped, maybe a week, this guy had hacked it. Or
woman. No one really knows. No one knows why they call themselves
Nevers. But, there's someone who hacked Nestor's feed, that's for
sure."

"He
hacked The Feed? Genius. And now he writes books… somewhat
competently."

"No,
he… he hacked it. The Syndicate, they're the only ones he's given the
code to in town, or they bought the permission to have it or something, so they
can see it too. They make recordings. They edit out the boring
stuff - him going to the bathroom or whatever. Then they sell them.
If you can't afford one of those, or if you didn't know to put your tablet or
computer in lead, so you don't have one, you buy one of these. It's not
the same. A couple nights a week they do screenings, so I've seen
the best parts. I just don't own it."

Jacob tried
very hard to keep his hands from shaking with excitement.

"I need
you to take me to meet this Syndicate."

"They'll
kill you. They'll kill me for bringing you to them."

"Why?"

"You're
one of the mutants. The Syndicate makes a lot of its money protecting
survivors from mutants."

"So
there are many like me…"

"Everyone
who got The Shot."

"The
city is dividing then? Between those who got The Shot, the mutants like
you say, and those who didn't?"

"Between
predator and prey, yeah."

"This
seems quick. What is it? Three weeks since the missiles came and
the town has come out and divided?"

"No, we
were the first, you see. October brought the inoculation here
first. He likes this town. He has a penthouse a little way from
here. We were injected first. People had started changing before
the missiles, but no one was listening. How could anyone believe us
anyway? When the missiles came it was a relief, because the mutants
disappeared. Then they came back and it was the Syndicate who saved us
from them."

"So
none of the Syndicate got The Shot?"

"I
guess not. I'm sorry, but they won't help a mutant."

"My,
my, things move fast," Jacob mused. He got up and looked over the
apartment.

"Okay,
what's your name?"

"Coughlin."

"Coughlin,
why didn't you get The Shot?"

"I was
out of town on work. I wanted to when I got back, I was signed up to, but
they stopped giving them before my time came. Then before the missiles
dropped an Indian from Jacob Rothschild's Shadow Army came and… I'm rambling…
are you going to eat me?"

"Huh.
Coughlin, I need you to look at me, not my teeth or the sallow color of my
skin. Ignore the hands, look at my face, my hair and think really hard
about where you've seen me before."

The man
stared and slowly understanding crossed his face.

"You're
Jacob Rothschild?!"

"Yes."

"You're
Jacob! If it wasn't for your men I'd be…"

"Yes,
now, I need you to get me to the Syndicate or, you know, I'll suck the marrow
out of your neck for dinner."