The pulsating warmth radiated outward from his calf, stretching up his leg and spilling into his pelvis and abdomen. The sickening knots of the septic infection began to resolve. His swelling gut deflated and the pain slowly abated, adding to the clarity breaking through the fog in his mind. He had the element of surprise, but it would only last so long. He needed to take advantage of it right now.
He grabbed her flared sleeve. A sheath of mosquitoes crawled out of the cauterized wound to form a living bandage over the smoking stump. Adam pulled Pestilence toward him until he could grasp her with his other hand, and brought her down on his chest. He wrapped her in an embrace, drawing her cheek to the side of his face and neck. She thrashed against him, issuing a cloud of smoke that made him choke. Her remaining hand found his side and she clawed through his flesh, her fingertips wriggling between his ribs. She screamed into his ear, the sound of a million agitated mosquitoes humming, and snapped at his neck with rotting teeth that latched onto the meat above his clavicle.
Adam cried out and grabbed her by the back of the cloak, clutching the few long strands of hair, wrenching her head away. Her face was covered in blood from the bridge of her nose down, what little skin still remained snapping like bacon in hot grease. She snarled at him, and lunged for his throat again, her scalp tearing off in his hand.
Her heat against his chest was unbearable. The air around them filled with fire, the resultant black smoke swirled by angry insects.
As soon as he felt her teeth sink into his neck, he released her flailing form and closed both hands around her thin throat.
Pestilence gnawed even harder, working into the muscle, but Adam could no longer see her through the smoke. Her body began to spasm, twitching and kicking until she rolled off his chest, falling to the pavement beside him. Flames rose through the seams of her cloak, small at first, but growing larger as they consumed her diminutive form. Adam’s hands closed together around nothing but ash and crunchy bits of vertebrae.
Her teeth gnashed one final time and then stopped altogether. He slid his fingers into her mouth, prying the jaws apart. Her head snapped in half. The mandible remained in his right hand, while the upper portion of the skull fell to the asphalt and shattered.
“Are you all right?” Jake asked, hurrying to his side.
“Yeah,” Adam said, casting aside the lower jaw. “I think so.” The pressure in his skull was gone, but his head still pounded. The tingling sensation was now fading away.
Jake nudged the mandible with his toe and it disintegrated to dust and shards of enamel.
Adam crawled over to where Jill was sprawled on the ground, eyes clenched shut, face a rictus of suffering. He laid his palm on her forehead, felt energy pouring through his fingers, and watched her features slowly soften until she finally opened her eyes and looked up at him. The whites were streaked with red and she appeared disoriented, but at least she would live.
“How are you feeling, kiddo?” he asked, venturing a smile.
“Is she dead?” Jill asked, rubbing at her temples. Adam removed his hand and allowed her to sit up.
He nodded and looked back over his shoulder for Evelyn, who had already helped Ray back to his feet and was leading him in their direction over a carpet of vines that he noticed with a start were slithering across the pavement toward him. He jumped to his feet and ran to her, planted his hands on her cheeks and kissed her.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he gushed, pulling away. “I don’t know what I would have done if—”
“Shhh,” she whispered, silencing him with a kiss.
The sound of crying drifted to them from down the street.
“There’s Missy,” Jake called, running toward her. His tiny footfalls echoed in the silence.
“I don’t see Phoenix,” Evelyn whispered.
“Neither do—”
Adam’s words were drowned out by a hissing sound like a stadium filled with an enraged crowd. The ground trembled beneath his feet. He looked skyward to the top of the tower. There was a flash of crimson against an ebon shadow.
Chapter 10
I
The Ruins of Denver, Colorado
PLEASE,” MISSY SOBBED, STROKING PHOENIX’S SALLOW CHEEK. “PLEASE don’t leave me.”
His skin was cool, his mouth expressionless. His open eyes stared right through her.
“Why didn’t you just wait for us? We could have faced this together. You didn’t have to do this by yourself. You didn’t have to die…”
She knew that the others were in trouble behind her, somewhere deep down, but she was lost in her grief. First her brother, and now Phoenix. There was nothing left for her. Nothing at all. Her world had come to an end in the span of an hour. If she could just curl up with Phoenix and die, she would. No more suffering. No more pain. Wherever they were now, she wanted to be there, too.
Her body grew numb. She lowered herself to the ground beside Phoenix’s corpse, draping her arm across his chest and looking at his profile through tear-blurred eyes as he stared lifelessly to the heavens.
It will be easier for you later. If you hate me, Phoenix had said. But she couldn’t. Not even now. Even were she able to, the pain would have been no less. He had known. He had known all along that this was his fate, to die at the hands of the adversary. What an awful burden it must have been, and still he had tried to spare her from the pain, preferring a destiny of dying alone to causing her the heartache she felt now.
The world around her ceased to exist. The sound of footsteps racing through the devastation toward her, the hissing sound that shook the heavens…none of it filtered through the crippling sorrow. Voices called for her, but she didn’t hear them over her unconscious sobs.
If she could have given her life for Phoenix’s, she would have gladly done so in a heartbeat. She closed her eyes and tried to will him to live, but when she opened them again, his skin appeared even more waxen. She wished she could hear his voice, if only one last time.
Yours is the most special gift I can possibly give, the only thing I have of any worth, he had said. I gave you my heart.
She sobbed anew at the memory, the pain in her chest more than she could bear.
“And I gave you mine,” she whispered, her lips grazing his cold ear. Her palm slid down his chest, rising and falling over the ragged edges of the lacerations to settle just to the left of his sternum. “I love you with all my heart. It’s yours. My love. My life. Everything.”
His chest jumped ever so slightly beneath her hand.
She looked up and saw the others running toward her, their footsteps pounding the ground.
“Oh, God,” Evelyn gasped. She knelt beside Missy and placed a hand on the younger girl’s shoulder. “Come on, Missy. We have to keep moving.”
Missy acknowledged her with a shrug, refusing to relinquish her final embrace with the love of her short life.
His chest twitched again, but this time there was no one running. They all stood still over her. She held her breath and watched his thorax for the slightest hint of movement, scouring his rent flesh—
Was there blood in that gash? A faint glimmer of sunlight on fresh fluid?
“We can’t stay here,” Jake said, looking up to the top of the tower, where he could no longer see the scarlet-eyed shadow.
“Help me get her to her feet,” Adam said, stepping over Phoenix’s sprawled legs. He reached beneath Missy’s arm—
“No!” she wailed, slapping his hand away.
It wasn’t just the one gash. It was all of them. The slowly welling fluid, the moistening lips of the wounds.
“Help him!” Missy shouted up into Adam’s face.
“I’ll try,” was all Adam could muster. He had no idea how this healing power of his worked, but he had been unable to resurrect Mare. From the look of Phoenix, not only had he been bled dry, but he had been dead for a while.
He reached out, placed his hand beside Missy’s, and immediately recoiled. Had he felt movement? He set his pal
m down again. Yes. He was certain of it. There had been little more than a meek contraction of muscle, but he had felt it all the same. He had seen enough corpses in his time to be able to recognize one immediately, and Phoenix had been unmistakably dead.
His fingertips tingled against Phoenix’s skin, which began to warm. Was it because of the contact with his flesh, or was it possible that—?
Blood raced to the surface from the deep wounds, overflowing the formerly gaping seams.
“Is he—?” Evelyn gasped, crouching by Phoenix’s head and placing her first two fingers on his neck to feel for a pulse. His veins plumped to the surface, a faint blue web that intensified steadily until it was bright green and covered the entirety of his flesh. Then, as quickly as they had risen, the glowing, pulsating veins faded back into his flesh. Had a measure of color returned to his ghastly white skin?
“Please,” Jake said, nervously pacing behind them, unable to look away from the skyscraper. The roof was conspicuously empty. The black man must be somewhere in the shadowed floors beneath, working his way down to the ground floor, soon to come for them. His gaze ticked from one darkened window to the next, searching. “I can’t see him anymore! We can’t stay here any longer!”
Ray gave the boy’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before kneeling beside Phoenix as well. He understood what was happening now. He gently rested his palm over the bridge of Phoenix’s nose, covering his eyes. As soon as their skin touched, the flames extinguished in Ray’s eyes, again leaving only those awful hollow sockets. The heat seared his hand and fire rose through the gaps between his fingers. He jerked his hand away.
* * *
Phoenix’s eyes snapped open, foot-long flames rising from orbits still rolled back in his head. His pink irises slowly migrated down from inside his skull, dousing the fire.
“Oh, God,” Missy moaned. “Thank you. Thank you.” She kissed Phoenix on the cheek and repeatedly squeezed him to her.
He looked at each of them in turn, trying to rationalize what had happened. Images flashed through his mind. His head rocking back to look into the heavens as stakes were driven through his hands. Claws like knives slashing his chest. Vision fading, breath escaping him. A hideous black face with eyes of blood hissing in rage as his soul flew from its cage of flesh.
Gasping, he bolted upright, knocking Missy off of him and pawing at his chest. It felt as though ants were crawling all over him, pinching, biting, stinging. The lacerations drew closed under his hands, every nerve ending first tingling and then returning to life with the pain formerly spared him by death.
“He was dead,” Adam said, shaking his head. “You were dead.”
Phoenix struggled to his feet, swaying. He was dizzy and confused, but one thought cut through the riot of memories and emotions.
“You all need to leave now,” he rasped, his throat parched. He turned to face the tower, looking over Missy’s shoulder. His bare chest and arms stippled with goose bumps, a shiver rippling through him. “Please…leave now.”
II
DEATH STOOD BACK FROM THE WINDOW, BATHED IN THE SHADOWS OF THE throne room, watching them gather down there in the street from the anonymity of darkness. His eyes glowed a deep red just shy of black, his interlaced teeth bared in rage. The memory of watching Pestilence and Famine fall was a fresh wound. He had never even considered the possibility they might fail. They should have been far stronger than their human opposition, but at least now everything made some sort of sense. The boy had succumbed to his torture so easily because he had passed his power into his friends, hidden it inside them. But the child was still dead. That much, at least, had gone according to plan. Now he had but to slaughter those that remained. They had tipped their hand too soon. He was now well aware of what they could do and would be prepared for them.
Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a habitation of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, a cage for every unclean and hated bird, the Arabic voice whispered. This time it sounded as though it originated from without, echoing from the hidden corners of the room.
He hissed in anger and kicked the piles of bones, comforted by the sounds of cracking skulls and fracturing ribs. Calcium dust filled the stale air. He forced himself to calm, resuming control of his faculties, breathing in the intoxicating scent of the dried flesh and the rotting meat on the bones, the ripe smell of death.
Death couldn’t deny the unmitigated truth of the voice’s words. He was the lord of a wasteland, a master without servants. When he finished off the survivors, the world would indeed be his to rule, but without subjects to reign over, it would be a hollow victory. He had burned most of the animals. How long would it take, how many eons would pass, before those that remained evolved into anything worthy of his rule? The scorched earth was soon to be his, but for what? He felt great pride in beating the Lord, in laying claim to the disorder he had been birthed to cull, but it was all for naught if there was nothing left to worship him, to fear him, to make him into a god.
Rocking back, he opened his jaws to expel another hiss, but stopped.
His thin, clear eyelids snapped down over his blazing irises and then back into his head. A wicked grin split his cheeks, and again, he looked down toward the courtyard below.
He had allowed the rage and bloodlust to cloud his judgment, blinding him from the obvious. So enrapt was he with reaching for the sun that he hadn’t contemplated the moon. Killing the remaining humans had been a foregone conclusion in his quest to remake the dominant species in the bowels of the building, but his creations were all now deceased, as well as his means of creating more. His brother and sister could no longer do more than rot into the ground. But that didn’t mean that no one remained to rule.
He wouldn’t kill all of the humans. Just a few. He would leave breeding pairs to propagate like livestock. They would prosper in oppression, and from their constant terror, he would draw his strength. They would worship him with their dread, pray to him with their screams.
All was not lost, it seemed. Victory was still firmly in his grasp.
The wind arose with a howl, shrieking through the shattered windows in the tongues of the dead.
He reveled in the outrage of the heavens, but there was no longer anything anyone could do to halt his ascension.
All that remained now was a vulgar display of power, a decisive act to put the fear of their new god into those who would deny him his triumph.
A lone figure broke away from the congregation below and sprinted toward his monstrous castle.
His ferocious smile widened even more as he turned from the window and headed back to the stairwell. He climbed upward to the roof, to take his place on the stage for all to see.
Let the foolish attacker come. He would butcher him in front of their eyes, and in doing so, would claim the remainder as his own.
III
HE COULDN’T SAY GOODBYE. NOT AGAIN. TO EVEN TRY WOULD BE BRANDISHING a blade that could cut deeper than his death would.
Instead, Phoenix shoved through them, and ran toward the courtyard where he had sacrificed his life in vain once. This time though, this time the result would be different. He now knew what he must do.
Missy’s screams filled the air, drowning out the shouts of the others.
The cross, marred by his crusted blood, flew past as he weaved around the piles of rubble and dashed through the empty doorframe into the darkness. Guided by instinct, he crossed a lobby marked only by the broken and disheveled remains of the former furnishings and into a narrowed section now more tunnel than hallway, past elevator doors hanging askew and opening only to a shadowy fall to the sublevels, and to a steel door that had been thrown away from the threshold it had once barred. He climbed the stairs two at a time, ducking beneath exposed girders and fallen sections of the ceiling, dodging slanted segments where the cement steps had fractured and crumbled away. The stench of fecal matter was a presence around him, the ultimate decay of the remains of humanity processed through the guts
of the Swarm. After a moment, he no longer smelled it, no longer tasted the veil of dust hovering over him in the vertical chute untouched by airflow. His sole focus was on maintaining his grasp on the railing and propelling himself higher, rounding the landings and hurtling upward.
The air grew colder by the second, but he no longer cared.
Soon this would all end.
Missy’s cries echoed from far below as she finally found the entryway to the stairwell. He wanted to call to her, to tell her to flee this dreary place of death, that everything was finally going to be all right, but he knew his voice would only spur her on, and he needed every step of the head start he had. This all needed to be over before she reached the roof. He couldn’t abide the prospect of risking her life.
He lightened his tread, shifting his weight forward to run on his toes so his pounding footfalls wouldn’t echo back down to her, though he was certain she already knew where he was and would move heaven and earth to reach him. And he loved her all the more for it. That was why he had to face Death now. For Missy. For all of them.
Higher and higher he climbed, every muscle in his legs burning from the exertion. He couldn’t afford to slow, even though his lungs ached and his head swam from dizziness and the vertigo of spiraling into the suffocating darkness. His body was no longer of any consequence. That much he had learned on the other side of mortality, where, for an eternity that passed in the single beat of his heart, he had known such beauty and peace. It had hurt to be summoned back to his frail flesh, but all the while he had known it was his lot, for voices like the tinkling of fluted crystal goblets had told him so from a blinding light that had been both simultaneously warm and frigid. They had promised him that death was only transitory, while resurrection was everlasting. A paradox defined not in terms of blood and tissue, but in words only the soul could understand. He lived again so that he could die again, the act of his ultimate sacrifice in exchange for life eternal. But more than that, his death would bring life to a world on the brink of eradication, to those for whom he would gladly suffer a million torturous bloodlettings if only to offer them the invisible mist of hope.
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