All he could see was his father kneeling over him, pinning his arms to the ground with his knees, bludgeoning his face. Over and over. Fists striking like bricks. That image melted away into that of a beaten man sprawled across his bed with the upper half of his cranium dripping back down from the ceiling. Maybe there had been some regret, a small fraction of a conscience after all. Or maybe, after so many poundings, that was the only way his father could think of to hurt him even more.
He couldn’t think about that now. He wasn’t his father. He would never be like his old man. Never!
There was still Jill to think about. And the baby. He had handled the news as poorly as he possibly could have. How must he have looked, standing there slack-jawed with that abject look of horror on his face? He could see how scared she was, but all he could think of was himself. How would this affect him? Stupid, stupid! She needed him now more than ever—both of them—and he had reacted like a selfish jerk.
How could she be so sure she was pregnant anyway? It had only been a couple days since their rendezvous on the beach. She couldn’t have run down to the convenience store to grab a pregnancy test.
There he went being selfish again. If anyone could know, it was Jill. She could see the future in her visions after all, but why had she needed to tell him at that precise moment? All that could possible do was add more stress to an already—
Stop it! Stop it! He chastened himself. This wasn’t just about him. This was about Jill and the baby. This was about his—
“Family,” he said aloud, the wind rushing past stealing away the word.
His breath froze in his chest, but a sensation of warmth spread through him. He was going to have a family. He wasn’t going to be a father, but a daddy. There was going to be a helpless life depending upon him for everything. A life that was part-him and part-Jill, a wondrous soul preparing to be birthed into a nightmarish wasteland.
Calmness washed over him. He knew right then and there that he would do absolutely anything to protect that child. Their child.
He felt Jill draped over him from behind, her chest shuddering as she cried, her face pressed into his shoulder to muffle her sobs so he wouldn’t hear. What had he done? How could he have hurt her so? Perhaps he hadn’t struck her, but he knew that his silence had been an emotional lashing no less painful.
Lowering his right hand to his lap, he gave her clasped hands a gentle squeeze, hoping for now it would be enough.
He couldn’t help thinking that somewhere in that belly pressed against the small of his back was a rapidly dividing cluster of cells no larger than the head of a pushpin, defying the odds in its quest for life. Would it have its mother’s eyes and his dark hair? He hoped it wouldn’t have his nose for sure. In his mind he saw a perfect being, little pink arms and legs, a downy shock of blond hair on her head. Her head? Until that point he’d never imagined it might be a girl. He could do this. He could be strong. Strong enough to face the battle ahead and strong enough to overcome his genetics.
He was going to be a dad.
Tears rolled down his cheeks, streaking back toward his ears.
The motorcycle raced around a bend in the highway, leaving the foothills behind. The city stretched out before them, the horizon marred by haphazardly deconstructed buildings and the scorched remains of hundred-year-old trees. There, dead ahead at the end of the road, which now appeared far too short, was the ominous tower. Even in his imagination it hadn’t appeared nearly as dark and foreboding, a malignancy rising from a dying land. His heart rate accelerated and he nearly slammed into the back of a pickup before regaining command of the bike and centering himself to the middle of the road.
Half a mile ahead he could see the glow of Evelyn’s taillight against the glare of the rising sun, which stained the sky the color of blood. Every nerve in his body screamed at once for him to turn around, but his sister was somewhere ahead. He couldn’t abandon her to her fate, but at the same time, he was suddenly torn between responsibilities. He couldn’t abide anything happening to Jill and their child either. What was he supposed to do? If he turned back, his actions could potentially damn them all, but if he proceeded he could jeopardize the new life entrusted to him. He wasn’t prepared to make such a monumental decision.
He instinctively hit the brakes when he saw the blinding flash of light ahead. It looked like a shooting star had torn through the atmosphere and slammed to the road ahead. No, not a star. The sudden brilliance had left an arched tracer across his vision, a lingering rainbow of orange that originated from the far side of a fallen building and a copse of burned trees, beyond which smoke rose unbidden, imbued with the same fiery hue.
A rush of liquid fire far ahead lifted a car from the road and tossed it onto the far shoulder to bound down the incline.
“Missy!” Mare screamed, pinning the gas and rocketing forward.
“Mare, no!” Jill screamed from behind him. “Please don’t! You can’t—!”
But her voice was swept away by the buzz of the engines and the wind, which seemed to grow steadily warmer as they raced toward her worst nightmare.
VIII
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
PHOENIX REFUSED TO CLOSE HIS EYES, EVEN THOUGH THE PAIN WAS SO great that keeping them open strained his failing reserves. Nor did he allow them the satisfaction of his cries. Not so much as a whimper parted his lips. He had passed all of his power to those that needed it most, leaving him a simple, and all-too-human, vessel of flesh and bone. His strength had abandoned him long ago.
All that remained now was to die.
He could feel the blood rolling along his arms and down his legs, patterning his chest where it fell from his chin. Keeping his head raised placed enormous pressure on his neck, but he needed to see the sky. He had spent so many years in the darkness with only spider web-riddled floorboards above, that to lose sight of the sky now would be the fatal injury. Besides, looking down, seeing what they were doing to him, would only break him, absolving him of his vow to not give them the satisfaction of hearing his agony manifested through pain-laced sobs.
The distant mountains stood proudly against the remainder of the night, slowly slinking away with the last of the stars. A cloud of smoke rose from the lake of fire, imbued with a warm glow that at the moment appeared beautiful. Overhead, wispy clouds spanned the perfect blue like stretched cotton balls, their bellies taking on the colors of the sunrise, a muted pink like the rosy blush in Missy’s cheeks. His sweet Miss—
He bit his lip to stifle a scream. The rush of pain was so intense that he knew if death didn’t claim him soon, they would beat him, body and soul.
Focusing again on the sky through tear-blurred eyes, he wondered how far the atmosphere reached toward the heavens. At what point did the blue give way to the blackness of space? Was it abrupt like dousing a light or was it a gradual transition of grays? He hoped he would find out, that when his soul was separated from his defiled carcass he would be able to soar like a bird over the earth, banking on the gentle currents, exploring a world he had only recently discovered existed at all.
A ripping sound he felt as much as heard forced his eyes shut, a flood of crimson squirting through his bared teeth. He coughed and a cloud of blood exploded into the air.
The muscles in his neck finally gave out, dropping his chin to his chest. He mourned the loss of the precious sky, but soon enough he would be there, unbridled of his torment. With his head down, there was no holding back the tears he had been able to dam thus far. They carved pink trails through the scarlet dots and spatters on his cheeks. His long, bloody bangs peeled away from his face to dangle limply before him, dripping steadily across his vision as he looked from the corner of his right eye. A length of rebar had been driven through his palm and one of the rivet holes in the horizontal iron beam, and bent behind to hold it in place. A crown of jagged bone ringed the pulpy juncture. His fingers had curled inward like a dead spider’s legs. He tried to move them, but they were unresponsive, hi
s efforts instead pumping fluid from the wound. All of the tendons and muscles in his arms were stretched taut, his own weight threatening to snap his elbow and dislocate his shoulder. A glance from the corner of his left eye confirmed the other hand to be staked as well, the fingers already beginning to turn blue. His vision swam and his eyes fell again to the ground. Consciousness fled momentarily, but the pain brought it back.
His shirt had been shredded to tatters. The flesh on his chest hadn’t fared much better. The skin had been peeled away from the muscles in slow, deliberate fashion, but the meat had been savagely slashed by the same claws that had painstakingly skinned him. Death had wanted him to fight, but Phoenix had faced his foe in silence. In a furor, the beast had finally lashed out against him, giving up on the slow torture meant to draw out his power, and reverting to the animalistic thrashing. Phoenix drew some small measure of satisfaction from the fact that he hadn't caved. He couldn’t see Death now, but he could still hear the demon breathing. He no longer had the strength to even move his eyes to look toward the sound.
Phoenix sighed, but the sound it produced was a wet burble.
Darkness closed in upon him, creeping from the periphery. He wanted to close his eyes to welcome it, but his eyelids felt glued in place. Long, thin legs that no longer looked as though they belonged to him dangled below, his knobby knees bowed outward, feet run through atop one another with a single metal spike. Below, the scorched rubble glimmered with the sunlight reflecting from the massive deluge of blood.
The darkness gently accepted him in the form of Missy, her arms spread wide, drawing him to her chest. He could feel himself smiling to match the expression on her face, her eyes full of warmth. Behind them, a light pulled at him, drawing him nearer and nearer, into her and then through—
“Not yet!” Death raged, forcing his head back, claws buried into his cheeks. The wounds barely bled at all.
Phoenix saw a flash of glowering red eyes and a tangle of sharp teeth, and then they were gone.
“No!” Death tore through Phoenix’s flimsy flesh, exposing his mandible and teeth. He drew back his arms and slashed over and over, tearing away chunks of muscle until the ribs showed, but Phoenix’s body merely sagged further. “You can’t do this! The battle has to be ours! I cannot accept…”
The voice faded to a whisper, and then to the sound of wind rushing past. The world fell away beneath him as he ascended, drawn toward a light as bright as the sun on wings made of clouds.
Chapter 8
I
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
MISSY AFFIXED HER STARE TO THE WRETCHED TOWER STANDING AGAINST the horizon, despite the stinging glare of the sun rising behind it. There was no doubt in her mind that Phoenix was already there. She screamed in futility, her face drenched with tears. She was too late. Every bone in her body ached. Her chest heaved, barely able to take in the short, choppy breaths preceding hyperventilation and the panic attack threatening to overwhelm her. Only moments prior she had been struck by an intense sorrow, a physical blow akin to slamming the speeding bike into a brick wall, which nearly toppled her from the seat. She had known immediately what had caused the sensation, but she struggled to rationalize it, to deny the feeling of being shattered like a porcelain doll.
I gave you my heart, Phoenix’s voice whispered in her mind.
And that was precisely what she had felt breaking.
She screamed again, driving on instinct, slaloming the bike through the vehicular wreckage. Pushing it as fast as she dared, she watched the lone standing skyscraper growing closer too slowly through tear-blurred eyes. There was nothing she could do. Her only remaining option was to accept that the love of her short life was dead, but she would sooner die herself than give up the slim hope to which she clung, no matter how irrational it seemed.
So intently had she been drawn to the tower that she didn’t notice the strange orange glow through the dead trees and rubble. Her distracted mind ignored the smell of smoke and the thickening clouds until they drifted across the road, obscuring her vision. There was always smoke. Always fire. Always death. Her subconscious was so well adapted it didn’t even trigger her internal alarm until it was too late.
A wash of flaming magma arched over the highway ahead, appearing to hover like a rainbow made of wet paint before splashing back down. It spattered the already cooked cars and covered the asphalt no more than twenty yards ahead.
Missy jammed the brakes. The tires screamed as they bled rubber onto the pavement and the rear wheel skipped side to side. Her thoughts raced. She scanned the road ahead for a way around the stream of lava now crossing all of the lanes. Nothing. She nearly laid the bike down, knowing full well the consequences of skidding down the asphalt on her back, but the bike came to a screeching halt before she reached the fiery crack. The magma was already slowly draining back down the shoulder to the right, returning to a massive lake of flames shrouded beneath a layer of smoke.
Something black breached the surface at the center, fading in and out of the swirling smoke. It emerged from beneath so slowly that she questioned whether or not it was truly moving at all. Details were hazy, but it looked almost like a great black cross.
Until it opened its eyes.
Missy screamed when those blazing embers fixed upon her. A rush of fire raced up the creature’s body until it was alive with flames. It raised both arms straight up over its head, and what looked like steel in a smelting pot bubbled from its palms.
Missy spun the motorcycle around so fast she nearly dropped it on its side. She barely kept it level enough to launch it back down the highway in the direction from which she had come.
The Leviathan jerked its arms down to shoulder level and fired a flume of magma at the road directly behind her. It hit with such force that it launched one of the dead cars from the road, sending it flipping through the air to tumble over the median.
She saw the others speeding toward her, the reflection of the fire on their faces. She waved madly at them to turn back, but they either couldn’t see or misinterpreted the gesture.
A quick glance to her left. The creature was sprinting across the surface of the lake, nearly paralleling her progress, a cape of fire trailing behind it like the tail of a meteorite.
Missy screamed and waved her arm above her head to ward the others off, but it was too late.
Another arc of fire shot out over the highway behind them, splashing down on the pavement to block their retreat.
To her right, the east- and westbound lanes were divided by a waist-high cement guardrail. There was only one way they could cross over it, and in the time it took all of them to lift the motorcycles over one by one, they would be burned alive. They were going to have to abandon the bikes and try to outrace the beast on foot, but with as far as that thing could shoot those flames, even that seemed like suicide. But it was their only—
The sky directly overhead grew bright. She didn’t need to look up to know why; droplets of lava were already patterning the road in front of her. Ducking her head, she prayed and sped straight ahead. The magma spattered the ground behind her. Streaks of the splashing flames lit up the corners of her vision and she screamed, expecting any second to feel the skin on her back burning, but there was no pain.
It was herding them.
With the molten lava still burbling on the road, they couldn’t escape the way they had come, and they were cut off from downtown. Crossing the median was out of the question as more and more fire landed on the westbound lanes. They were boxed in. There was nowhere else to go. Soon enough it was going to kill them all. Only one option remained, and even that was a stall tactic at best.
She jerked the handles to the left and sped toward the lake, where the flaming shadow now stood on the fiery waves, the smoke again closing in around it. Gravel flew from her tires as she raced down the shoulder to the front of the demolished warehouse. The entire building leaned away from the lake, the western half by the parking lot collapsed flat. Black
ened corrugated aluminum and crushed cinderblocks were piled across what had once been the back door, covering the cement pad where there had been a picnic table for the employees, enclosed by a now absent fence. The steel door had snapped from its hinges and stood crookedly, granting a triangular entrance into the darkness.
Locking up the brakes, she skidded to a halt and leapt from the bike, which clattered to the ground behind her.
The others were already halfway down the shoulder and closing fast.
She looked back to the blazing lake in time to see the creature slowly sinking into it, hip deep, then chest. Finally, its head vanished from sight, no longer betraying its location.
“Hurry!” she screamed, turning back in the direction of the road.
Adam and Evelyn were already off their bikes and squeezing through the gap into the building with Ray and Jake right behind.
“Get in there!” Mare shouted, turning her and shoving her toward the building in one motion. He pushed Jill into the building from behind, and followed her into the darkness.
He turned, grabbed hold of the door, and tried to jerk it back closed, but he lacked the leverage. Groaning and growling, he only managed to tug it a couple of inches before it stopped again.
Shouting in frustration, his eyes were drawn to the shore of the lake thirty feet away, and to the sudden movement of something cresting the surface from beneath.
II
THE CHILD HAD DIED TOO EASILY. HE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE PUT up a fight, to have raged against him in his pain. He was supposed to have begged for his life, to have bargained for salvation. With his dying breath he should have cursed the Lord, who had allowed him to be killed in such a manner. He should have been broken, his mind shattered, his soul tainted by doubt and anger, sent back to God blackened and ugly, a final message delivered to the Maker who may have summoned Death, but who could no longer stand in his way. Death’s time was now, but somehow the victory felt hollow.
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