by Isaac Nasri
“Get on up Brett,” Robert’s voice calls out. “Let’s go.”
The human looks over his shoulder, sighing anxiously toward Robert’s being. The latter beckons his wounded companion with the nudge of his shoulder. The two now stood alike in their late sixties, letting time rest its hands without reluctance. Cicadas glide past his light short-cut hair, not being held back by the man’s arcane presence.
Wayne shoots a glance at the Oni. The vibrancy stood nonexistent underneath the flat watercourse, and his melancholic reflection, minus Robert, flutters visibly. Taking the blade in his hand, he rises but moans lightly to the piercing throb in his shin. He stares downward at his laceration, taking a couple of breaths, and drags himself.
“It’s been a long time, Robert,” Wayne acknowledges quietly.
His boots splash with each trudge and the Oni drags. Meanwhile, Robert leads upfront, scanning the creek’s stillness, and his lips twitch behind the bushy beard, giving him semblance to a modern-day Viking. Wayne’s skin cools, and he looks over his right. Robert grunts repeatedly.
“Don’t look back, son,” Robert advises in his stroll.
Wayne holds his gaze, letting Robert’s words sink in before drawing his eye ahead. Whatever pain that existed in his ocular has diminished. Leaves descend. He motions, letting his ears tuned to the creek’s buzzing.
Chapter 34
Driving warily on Glover Road, Alana turns her head leeward around the woods, hearing her stomach grumble to the number of cyborgs on the grass, crawling on their bellies. One of them leans on the side of his shoulder, enervated and heaving to the strange entity that’s drained the chakra out of him. Silence creeps its way in the unnerving street, and she shakes her head.
It’s over. Damn.
Her eyes stung, and she sniffs loudly. What happened last night perturbed her like a storm, and Alana struggled to escape its clouds. It shook her to how far she came to situate herself in the eviscerated wasteland that was once the District of Columbia. Hours without laying her head down, and this is what her infected boyfriend’s footsteps have led her to. The terror has ended, and she had no idea how. Perhaps Alana should be thankful she ended intact, a lucky woman, or a survivor at best. However, the thought of respite seemed asinine to her. What was there for her to rejoice? She could not even bring herself to tell about the loss she endured yesterday.
Alana’s throat twists as he mutters Troy’s name constantly. That gets interrupted when she shoots her glance at an alarm. The computer stands to where the radio is planted, and she holds her breath to the swift varnish of the orange signal on Military Road. Discovering her reach, she presses down on the acceleration pedal, and her truck rushes past the trees. Light reaches in, and her head gleams.
She exhales what she witnesses. Blocks away at Military Road, soldiers, most likely human, march at the derelict street, rushing toward others on the ground. A throng of dire voices claps from afar. White quad drones trail behind them and circle around the bodies. The color around Alana’s view disappears, and she shoves a hand over the panel’s blank screen. Her eyes pierce with glass.
Oh god. They’s got him!
Touching a hand to the bruise on her lip, Alana’s throat chokes. She leans her arms on the wheel, letting the tears flow as she sobs uncontrollably on the seat. Her lips drench in the sodium, and the drops plunge onto her palm. Wallowed in her pain, she sinks to Troy’s wraith standing next to her in the pallid zone. Alana takes an eager step, arching a hand until her heart shatters. The Virtual draws away, drifting from her view like a phantom, and she found herself isolated in the space. Moments recollect in a flash, and her lips tingle to the reminiscence of their kiss, darkening the area around her. She’s done and cherished so much only to end like this. Troy was finally gone. The inevitability didn’t seem fair. It angered her to the core.
Snot flows from Alana’s nostrils, and she sniffs. She looks away from the anterior view and buries her head. Alana never seemed so vulnerable, a child once more against the very thing that spat at her; the very same thing that ousted Troy, her own boyfriend, like trash. Nobody could change that.
***
Surviving troopers scatter the wasted streets on Military Road. Barging from one of the ram shackled homes, several armed comrades follow behind a soldier carrying a mutilated resident’s body in his arms. Ash riddles the trooper’s bleak face.
“Don’t worry. Cyborgs are all worn down in the city as well,” a soldier behind the lead carrier states, with phone pressed near his lips.
Meanwhile, Wayne stood motionless like a statue that’s lost its purpose of expression. A quad drone flashes its eye and floats inside the senior care home that was previously invaded. The wrap conceals where his left eye once stood, and a small ounce of blood stains the fabric. He looks down at his bandaged hand, glimpsing at the broken remnants of his fallen goddaughter’s bracelet and his chest thaws. Wayne raises his head, balling his hand softly, and looks at the back of a young, bald towering man, standing about six and four inches and in khakis, shivering. Protruding from his gray polo’s collar, a forked scar glistens visibly at the side of his neck. The two men stood not too far from each other, and the young man’s back faces Wayne.
So this is her younger brother.
Soriana lauded about her brother’s name to him then, cherishing the games they played at home. Now here that young man stood and torn from the one adorned family that was lost.
Cicadas glide over Moses as he stood in place, neighboring with his elder sister’s soulless body on the bed. Manuel and his wife stood nonexistent next to the sibling. The Pokémon pendant around his neck swings, and water drops dripple on the sheet. Wayne witnesses Soriana lying like an empty shell, upper body barely armored. Her eyes sealed and olive skin barren in ash and bruises. A scorched puncture displays above her bosoms and wrist. Her hairstreak flies to the street’s short breeze. A white sheet covers over her calves. Muffling in his stiff lament, Moses cradles Soriana’s cold hand, allowing his tears to stream down his chin and slither onto her palm.
The sun opens halfway in the clouds, and the concrete illuminates slightly. Wayne lowers his head, staring at his reflection mirroring at the sword till he winces to someone’s tap.
“Sorry about that,” an armed soldier pardoned rapidly in a raspy voice. Her almond hair’s a cropped cut, giving her a slight boyish feature. Rips reveal at the shins of her camo pants. She closes up the pistol on her belt and nods her head reluctantly. “You must be the CIA—I mean Wayne.”
Wayne turns his head, and his lips sink as he dimly responds, “Yes.”
“Jennifer.”
Behind Jennifer, two federal agents lay a fellow man on top of a car hood, and one of them mends his bleeding foot with a wrap. A helmeted soldier steps back from a cyborg’s unconscious body and drags him by the bionic ankle. Blood snakes on the concrete. The damage seen was ubiquitous, and infrastructure crumbled. Wayne didn’t know what to make of this.
Wayne catches Jennifer’s focus direct forward, facing a grieving Moses. His back still faces the two officers as he wipes his face, followed by another series of snivels. Jennifer takes a step near Wayne and strokes her forehead.
“He was with me,” she says, facing Moses. “The suspect—the killer’s been dealt with. It…”
She sighs and looks down to wipe her eye. Moses never retracts his gaze even as the two spoke. Wayne and her exchange glances. The former sets his boot on the blade, moving it away, and he steps close. Wayne looks up at the grieving man’s elevated frame, raising a hand and setting it on his right shoulder. Glass disintegrates, and he sets a hand at his facial bandage. Without a glance, Wayne can feel Moses’s body vibrate, and his teeth are clenching in his sobs.
His goddaughter lays still and supine on the roller bed, with the life having exited out of her physical existence. The sun gains radius above, illuminating Soriana’s body, and her face meets the light. No matter the memories that rush by in Wayne’s head, nothing will u
ndo the severance that was done. Life can be so fragile to the point where all that mattered was the value left behind. Soriana suffered enough. As excruciating as the realization is to Wayne, she’s in a better place now.
You can rest. The fight’s over.
Wayne grabs the blanket with one hand, concealing Soriana halfway over her lower body. He witnesses Moses’ tears land on the sheet, and the material soaks. Wayne hardens his grip on Moses, realizing he had an onus. He may not identify with the human giant that well, but tomorrow or soon, that will change. Moses was lost now, a loner without filial foundation. No amount of tears will revive the sister he adulated. It was up to Wayne to lead the way.
“What’s next?” he hears Jennifer question with uncertainty.
Silence lingers. Moreci’s final words reach, causing Wayne’s muscles to shrivel. Wayne turns his head, letting go of Moses shoulder and meeting Jennifer’s sorrowful gaze behind him with cogitation. The two stood in proximity. A white fog obscures his mind, and he grunts. Wayne glances at the cicadas flying about above the recuperating people, with one landing near his shoulder and then downward.
He opens his palm. The bracelet’s pieces scatter visibly, and its ruby crescent shines in the mounting sunlight.