"Creator? You mean...God?"
He shrugs. "At one time, your kind thought of him that way. Before you killed him."
How is that possible?
"We've done our best to try to persuade you, Milton. We came close to dominating your mind, but you're stronger than we expected. We didn't foresee that, not after all you've been through. You've led a real messed-up life. And her influence hasn't helped matters any."
Julia? But no, she's not Julia, not really, just like he's not Jackson.
"What is she?"
"She's like me in many ways—a more domesticated version, if you will. We're polar opposites when it comes to our views on humankind. What's left of it, anyway. She thinks you have a chance at survival on this rock, that somehow, maybe with her help, you'll be able to make it. She's an optimist." He sighs, sounding like he pities her. "I'm a realist, Milton. I've seen your future. Yes, you'll survive—for a time. But you'll suffer incredibly in the end, and you'll die. All of you. Your species will be wiped out completely. In time, there won't be a trace left on the earth. You'll destroy yourselves all over again. It's what you do best."
I don't believe it. They had it all planned out for us, those government geniuses. They kept us alive, and we made it. There are enough of us now to start over. I just have to find them, the other survivors like Daiyna and Luther and Samson. They can reproduce, and there must be others like them somewhere. None of them seemed like the type to give up on the future.
The Preserve may be gone, but there have to be other areas that weren't affected on D-Day. Maybe on other continents—Eurasia, or Africa. What about the seas? We could live on boats and fish with nets and poles. Seafood used to be illegal, but those laws don't apply to us anymore. We're in charge now. We can fish—unless the nuclear winters killed all the fish.
"You're having a tough time accepting it," he breaks the silence. "Understandable."
I glare at him. "You don't know the future. You're not God. I don't know what you are exactly, but you don't know what we're capable of."
"Unfortunately, I do," he says, his features sagging. "All too well." He stares at me until I drop my gaze. "While the worst of it came twenty of your years ago, by no means is it over. There will be more death and bloodshed. It's the way of your accursed kind. As long as you roam this earth, you'll wreak havoc on it and on each other."
I don't have to listen to this. He's not real. I should just ignore him, pretend he's not there. Because he's not, not really.
I turn away and climb back into the crevice, then race through it and out of the cave, passing swiftly over the bodies without even touching down. I half-run, half-fly over them, the green glowstick guiding me until I'm outside in the blinding sunlight. I snap on my face shield quickly and pocket the glowstick. A moment later, I'm back with Julia—or whatever she is—right where I left her.
"No one?" She rests her hand on my chest.
"Who are you? What are you?"
"I think he's waking up." Jackson suddenly appears beside me, sprouting up out of the ground again. That trick is already old.
I focus only on Julia, taking her by the shoulders. "I know you're not her—not really—"
"Figured that out all by himself." Jackson snickers.
"You're not like him. You're different somehow. You want us to survive on what's left of this messed-up planet."
She nods. "Yes, Milton. Of course I do."
"That's why you gave us these abilities, right?" She nods again, so I plunge onward, "So tell me who you are. What do you want with me? Why me? What do you want me to do? Why am I seeing and hearing you like this?"
The warmth from her hand is unmistakable—through the glove, through my jumpsuit, straight to my chest. It slows my racing heart. She comforts me like she did in the bunker when I was afraid of the dark. I would hold her close, and we'd lie together that way for hours. But this isn't Julia.
I don't care. I still love her.
"You're approaching a very important choice, Milton. One that only you can make. It will affect many lives and will change the course of the earth's future." She takes my hand and squeezes it. "But you don't have to be afraid. I sense the fear in you, and I know where it comes from. It comes from a lie. You don't have to believe it."
I'm a killer.
"It's the truth." Jackson pats me on the back. "The past speaks for itself. Survival of the fittest, as nature intended. Survivor's guilt is a natural part of it. But you can make amends."
How can I? I let them all die.
She squeezes my hand, brings my attention back to her. "Stay with me, Milton. Live now, not in the past. This is who you are, and you want to live. You want to survive."
"You want to pay for what you've done." He pats my shoulder with his heavy paw. "It's only right. Why should you live free and easy on this rock after you killed so many people? You'd hate yourself every day—more than you do already. You'd be miserable."
What's the alternative? I'm miserable enough as it is. Except when I'm with her. With Julia here, I could be happy. But this isn't real. She isn't Julia.
What's she saying now?
"—need your help, Milton. Bad things are happening. Evil men are hurting your friends. Luther and Daiyna—"
"They're not your friends. They never trusted you. You were an outsider."
"She saved you, Milton. From him." She faces Jackson.
"What?" He snorts. "I wasn't going to kill him!"
"You tell so many lies, you start believing them yourself." She turns back to me. "Daiyna rescued you, don't you remember? And when the mutants shot you, it was Samson and Plato who carried you deep into the cavern to tend to your wound. Rip watched over you. Luther prayed for you." She takes me by the shoulders now. "They are your friends, Milton. And they need you now more than ever before."
They needed me. I remember that clearly. They tried to convince me to join them, to help them fight the cannibals, to disarm the freaks with my superspeed and hand over all the weapons. To even the odds. But I refused.
My eyes drift to the sand formations around us. What would I find if I brushed away the layers of sand and ash? More mutants frozen in death? Jeeps without hope of ever running again?
"Why didn't you take them out before?" I face Jackson. "Why did you let those people die?"
"Who said I had anything to do with it?" he retorts.
"You did." Didn't he? Or was it Julia who said he did? Everything was becoming clearer for a moment there.
"Have you ever happened to look over your shoulder when you've taken off, Mr. Speedy?" He chuckles. "You kick up quite a wake."
Does he mean I smothered all the freaks when I passed through?
"He doesn't want you to survive—any of you, human or daemon." She shakes her head at him. "He would be just as content if you all killed each other."
"Not true," Jackson counters. "It doesn't make me happy at all. But that doesn't change the way things are. It's human nature. They can't be changed, no matter how many special abilities you give them. They're still cursed, doomed to repeat the past."
She squeezes my shoulders with surprising strength. "You can save them, Milton. Only you. There's no one else."
"Or you can put them out of their misery," Jackson says. "You'd be doing them a favor. Believe me, when you see what's going down in Eden, you'll want to put an end to it once and for all."
"I know you want to live, Milton," she implores me.
"But you can't live with guilt. Better to go out in a blaze of glory, save the world from itself." He squeezes my shoulder and steps away.
She presses herself against me, and I hold her feebly. "Regain what you've lost," she whispers. "Be the man I know you are!"
She breaks away. My arms are empty without her. I don't know what they're talking about; most of it makes no sense at all. But I get the idea she wants me to rescue the others while he wants me to blow them up. Something like that.
"So…" I shrug. "Where are they?"
Weird.
But it gets worse. At the same moment that he dives out of sight into the ground and races away to the northeast, she shoots up into the sky, flying as fast as a rocket, almost out of sight before I know what they're doing.
They're giving me a choice to follow one or the other.
It's a no-brainer. I keep my eyes on Julia and take off running after the crack that splits the earth in Jackson's wake. I put out my arms and will myself upward, and for a moment or two my trajectory changes. My boots leave the ground mid-stride and drift through the air.
But then I land—very hard. I flip forward and tumble five or six times, cursing with every somersault across the unforgiving ground until my momentum finally dies out.
I get up and try again, but the results are the same. And the pain is worse this time. Now Julia's out of sight. But I can catch up, I know I can.
I break into another run at superspeed and veer to the right, up a rocky knoll and off the peak of it, launching myself into the air. This time when my boots leave the earth, they don't come crashing back down.
Now I'm flying.
And it is awesome.
The ground below drops away, but I can still see the jagged crack that Jackson—or whatever he is—makes across the surface from underneath. I follow, glancing above me, hoping to spot Julia. But she's gone.
For good? I sure hope not. I can't lose her again.
I reach forward into the air that whips past me, flattening my suit against my body, cold despite the sun's scorching rays. In a burst of speed, I fly faster in the direction of my outstretched arm. I try my other arm and achieve the same result.
So this is how I change direction... And this is how I increase my speed. Wow. She was right. It's exhilarating.
But this can't really be happening. I've dreamed of flying all my life—and now I am? It's got to be a dream. My unconscious subconscious or something is exerting itself in strange new ways, manifesting repressed desires.
Julia and Jackson have been in my head all this time. None of it was real.
He's waking up, Jackson said. What if I'm asleep somewhere—or still in that coma?
Below, the split in the earth reaches what looks like the sprawling remains of a large city, and there it stops. At the same time, a shape passes through the air in the distance, descending rapidly. Julia.
I reach after her, and within moments I'm right behind her, blasting through the sky. She doesn't glance back, doesn't acknowledge me. Maybe she's concentrating. Maybe I should, too. I didn't land so well the last time, and I'm going ten times faster now.
What's that up ahead? Twisted steel in the middle of the air? She catches onto it and lands with ease like a bird touching down, both boots making contact. Then she looks back at me and holds out her hand.
"Slow down!"
How? I take her forearm, and she clasps onto mine as I whip past. Her grip is strong, but not strong enough to keep me from swinging sideways and pulling her with me. She falls off the mangled steel, but quickly rights herself in mid-air, holding onto me with both hands like a life guard rescuing someone from the deep end of a pool. I feel myself slow as we whirl around and around, and she guides me onto another length of dust-caked steel a few meters lower than where she originally landed. She keeps a tight hold on me as I find my bearings.
"You caught up." She giggles.
"Yeah..." I nod, sucking down air. "I really need to work on the landing."
"This wasn't the easiest spot to touch down."
She's right. We're sitting on what's left of a skyscraper. Jackson stands with his hands on his hips, head thrown back to face us from the ground below. We're at least thirty meters above him.
"All done showing off?" he calls. "You kill yourself, you're no good to either of us!"
She pats me on the thigh and calls down, "I think he did well."
Sure I did. Without her, I probably would have slammed into one of the steel supports and plummeted to my death like a bird shot down from the sky.
"So now what?" I wish I could see her eyes. I have a feeling I won't be seeing them again anytime soon.
She nods slowly, like she knows what I'm thinking. She hugs my arm and points down to where Jackson stands. Beside him, what looks like an open manhole gapes in the middle of the dusty street. The heavy cover has already been slid aside.
"He'll show you how to get—"
"Where am I going?"
"To Eden, Milton."
They mentioned that before, but I didn't understand. The word sounds familiar, from an old bedtime story maybe, long before D-Day.
"He'll tell you where to go, as far as he knows. We've never been there ourselves."
"Why not?"
"We can't." She pauses. "We move through air, Milton, through earth. Eden... It's encased in concrete and steel, human-made materials, and the air has been altered. It's unnatural." She squeezes my arm. "That's why you never met us while you were in the bunker."
"And that's why you need me to go to this place. Because you can't." I would be the astute one, that's for sure.
She giggles again, and I don't ever want to forget the sound. "You're catching on." Then her tone changes. "But you have to hurry. We don't know exactly what's going on down there, but it's not good. The daemon minds are difficult to read, yet we've been able to learn enough. Your friends are in grave danger, and you're the only one who can save them. You must go. Now."
She steps off the beam and glides down toward Jackson. Without taking the time to think better of it, I follow. That's when my stomach seizes up and my heart lurches. But instead of falling to my death, I manage to float after her like a bird, soaring to the ground where I land with only a slight stumble this time.
"Quick learner," Jackson mutters. He points into the manhole. "Down you go."
I face Julia. "Will I see you again—ever?"
Her face shield mirrors my own. "That will depend on the choice you make."
Haven't I already made my choice—to go to this Eden place? What other choice is there? What's she talking about?
"You'll know it when you see it," Jackson says, seeming to read my mind. "A nuclear reactor has a way of standing out like a sore thumb." He chuckles mildly. "Rigging it to blow should be easy enough. Just think of it as the ultimate reset button."
Part VI
Revelations
13 Willard
Six Months after All-Clear
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It could be the title of my memoir—or my epistle. I listen to the hum of the reactor below us, vibrating the steel beneath my boots. Then I toss the book back onto the stack. "Is this all they found?"
Jamison nods, glancing down at the crate of green hardbounds on the floor between us. "Want them to keep looking?"
War and Peace. I trace the embossed title with my finger and can't help but smile. It's fitting. Apropos.
I hear one of them grunt—or snort—from across the main floor. Four of them stand just inside the south tunnel, their heads hanging low to shield their lidless eyes from Eden's lights. The small red bulbs on their collars blink intermittently, pulsing with the programmed setting that holds them in a catatonic state.
Perch and two others stand by with weapons drawn, leveled on the mutos. Perch carries the remote, but he favors the shock prod dangling from his belt. He enjoys it maybe a little too much, but he's not hurting anybody.
They're just dogs, after all.
"Brand new. Like everything else we've found." Jamison squints at me with a sudden thought. "Why'd those government scientists want us to head up to the Preserve after All-Clear? Everything we need to start over is right here!"
I've trained him well. The others, too. You'd think we have a hive mind or something by the way we all tend to stay on the same page these days.
"Send them out for another run. Have 'em finish off the south sector." I wat
ch them. Stoop-shouldered creatures with deformed, lumpy-muscled arms hanging low at their sides. Like apes. "Let's see what else they find."
It'll be getting dark. While it's bright as day here in Eden, night will be coming on strong out there. But Jamison already knows what to do.
"We'll switch the cameras over to night vision."
Good boy. I nod and he salutes—something new they've started doing. Can't say that I mind it. He takes off in an easy jog, looking like a second-stage student warming up for a track meet. I don't know how he's done it, but Jamison has managed to hang onto a youth that's passed the rest of us by. Maybe it comes from having a clear conscience. Bet he sleeps like a baby every night.
He heads over to Perch and the others, and they quickly adjust the cameras on the mutos' collars, then back away. The freaks don't even seem to notice. The collars are a godsend, and that's a fact. Wish we'd come up with them sooner, but better late than never at all.
Perch activates the remote and whips out his prod, jamming it into each of the dogs' sides with a vengeance. He curses them as they cringe and stagger away, lumbering off into the blackness of the tunnel beyond the reach of Eden's lights. Jamison turns my way once they're gone and gives me a double thumbs-up.
Now we watch and wait.
My attention is drawn back to the box of books. Somebody twenty years ago thought these titles were worth publishing, defying a UW mandate. Brand new, never read. It's like they were made just for us. Printed off in secret probably, then buried beneath the rubble in sublevel storerooms. The food and supplies we've found have made sense. Of course there'd be underground warehouses full of that stuff. But illegal books? What was the point?
I bend down to heave the crate against my chest and feel my back pull, then pop. That can't be good. I'm not like Jamison at all. I've probably aged ten years in the past months since All-Clear. One of the banes of leadership. God knows, it hasn't been easy.
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