by David Beers
Caesar was dead, and he knew it. Knew it well.
And then the blizzard disappeared. His vision cleared; he watched as Jerry moved.
The speed was almost incomprehensible. Jerry’s hands grabbed the static cloud trying to replace Caesar’s own flesh and pulled with such force that Caesar felt certain his own skin would rip off. He watched as electricity rippled across Jerry’s body, literal lightning currents rolling up his arms and under the shirt he wore. His body flexed underneath the currents, tensing up, but he didn’t stop pulling. His teeth gritted and the flesh on his mouth rippled as the currents moved further upward.
With a final tug, the cold blanket was off Caesar, leaving him sitting there staring stupidly as Jerry struggled with the entity. The ghost that took no shape. It continued its electrocution but now turned the force it had used against Caesar on Jerry, wrapping around him, embracing Jerry’s pulling, slipping around him like a glove.
Jerry stopped struggling, letting the electricity flow over him as well as the cloud.
“NO!” Caesar shouted, watching as Jerry stood paralyzed, the thing covering him, moving underneath his shirt and pants so that it wrapped around his skin. Caesar stood, but could do nothing. The static cloud ate Jerry’s entire body.
Fingers wrapped in off-white flexed into a fist and Jerry’s head—although none of his actual flesh or hair was visible—titled towards the ceiling.
Currents rose off his body, now rippling outward from the white cloud that surrounded him. That had become him. Both electrocuting him and smothering him. Smothering the man that had just walked Caesar from a desert to a city, from the life of a sheep to the life of a wolf. Ending right before his eyes, right here on this train before they ever even had a chance.
Caesar thought it was electricity at first, his eyes telling him that he saw the currents rolling out into the air, perhaps trying to find him, perhaps trying to kill him next. Except it wasn’t. The cloud, the static, was dissipating, drifting out into the air like seeds on a dandelion. The electricity still rolled across Jerry’s body, but lessening, turning into sparks rather than currents. Caesar watched as Jerry’s flesh appeared again, old and cracked, but a million times better than the digital snow.
Within a few seconds only Jerry remained. The entity which had wrapped around him gone.
Caesar collapsed on the seat.
He remembered looking at Jerry, watching him as he fell to one knee, his body shaking, barely able to hold himself up. And then Caesar saw only blackness.
* * *
Caesar didn’t even know what had to happen. He didn’t have a clue.
Manny knew. Manny knew well what was expected of Caesar and it was that reason, perhaps more than any other, that Manny wasn’t in Caesar’s place right now. That Manny was here at the bunker while Caesar traveled with Jerry.
Jerry had asked Manny, asked him right up front if it was something he thought he could do. If it was something he would do, because if he didn’t, then he couldn’t lead. He wouldn’t be able to do what was needed because he wouldn’t have the capabilities.
Manny told him no, and now he sat in front of his wife, their child in a highchair sipping on juice, instead of with the man who had brought him into The Named, had made him part of The Eight.
“He’ll be okay, right?” Brandi asked. She hadn’t asked about Jerry before this. Manny spent the last week in a world full of anger, perhaps even depression, which he hadn’t experienced before. This was the first time he had even sat with her, the first time he came out of the room he hid in, really. She hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t tried to barge in, and Manny was grateful for that. Although, he didn’t think she understood the complete reasons behind it all. Not from this question. She thought he was worried for Jerry, and he was, but that was only a part of the whole thing.
“I don’t know,” he said. He reached over and poked Dustin gently in his cheek, the child smiling at his father’s attention.
“He’s so young, you know? I can’t believe Jerry is taking him out there this soon.”
Manny turned his head and looked at his wife, slowly, like he wasn’t exactly sure what was before him.
“What?” He asked.
“Caesar. He’s not even thirty-five. Taking him back into a city, basically naked? It just seems like a huge risk, especially if Caesar is what Jerry says he is.”
She didn’t have a clue. Not a fucking clue as to what was going on in his head. She was worried about Caesar, about the guy brought in from the outside to save everyone, the entire world. Not their true leader. Not Manny’s mentor. Everyone’s mentor.
“Not concerned about Jerry?” Manny asked, trying to hide the disgust he felt. He wouldn’t disrespect his wife, wouldn’t show the anger he felt inside.
“Jerry? He’ll be fine. Nothing’s going to happen to him. Caesar, though, he’s...just so green. Isn’t that what was wrong with you? With all of you? Most of The Eight have been gone for the past couple days, scared, I guess. You’re all worried about Caesar, right?”
The others did the same? Went and hid from the world?
“Wait, the rest of The Eight haven’t been in touch with anyone?”
“Paige and one or two others. I think maybe Tim. For the most part, they kind of all disappeared, though.”
Manny looked back at his son, a bit surprised. He knew he was angry at the whole thing but he hadn’t known anyone else felt the same. “No, I’m not worried about Caesar, Brandi. I’m worried about Jerry.”
His wife didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Why?”
“Because I think he’s risking his life for a fraud. Caesar isn’t the one we’ve been looking for and Jerry doesn’t see it. He’s going to get himself killed for someone who doesn’t deserve it, and we’re all going to be sitting here wondering what to do next, where to go, and none of us will be able to do it without Jerry.”
Manny stood up from the table. He’d come out because he couldn’t sit in that room forever, because he needed to be a father and a husband and the world didn’t stop simply because Jerry left with Caesar. The anger though, these thoughts, they hadn’t lessened. If anything, they’d grown, now to the point that he was saying them aloud to his wife. He loved Brandi, but she wasn’t his confidant. Jerry was. He took thoughts like these directly to Jerry and made his case to their leader, not to his wife. Jerry wasn’t listening any longer though. Jerry had made up his mind and there wasn’t any turning him from it. So now Manny did what? Turned to his wife? Voiced these feelings to someone that couldn’t do a thing about them?
There was hope though, some at least.
Manny knew what Caesar had to commit to even though Caesar didn’t. Jerry hadn’t told him. Jerry would show him, that’s the way he wanted to do it, hoping that in showing him what was necessary Caesar would make the decision that Manny hadn’t been able to. If Caesar couldn’t make that decision either, then it was all over. Someone else would be chosen and Jerry’s delusion of this one guy, this one person being their savior, would fade. Someone would save them, but it wouldn’t be Caesar.
Chapter Eleven
Caesar woke.
The room before him was only that, a room, nothing else. No furniture, a single light above, and concrete beneath him.
He rolled over, feeling the hardness underneath him for the first time, understanding that he didn’t even have a shirt to rest his head on.
Where’s Jerry? His mind flipped on the same as a light-switch, suddenly roaring and ready to go, remembering what happened on the train, remembering just before the blackness that Jerry had nearly collapsed.
He sat up, his body sore but not slowing down.
Jerry sat in a corner, his knees bent and his arms at his side.
“You’ve been asleep for a few hours. We’re safe here.”
Caesar blinked. Jerry looked different. Nothing that someone who didn’t know him could point out, but different still. Older, if that was even possible. Aged
, like a building that weathers the climate for centuries.
“Are you okay?” He asked. Jerry had done something, had pulled that thing off him and put it on himself, and then...killed it? Is that what he did? Was the thing even alive to be killed?
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“What happened? You look different, Jerry. You look, I don’t know, not hurt, but...tired,” Caesar said, standing up, his legs aching.
“I guess I am. That thing, I should have seen it, but I didn’t. It was waiting on us. I don’t know if The Genesis put it there or if they’re simply having those things ride trains now hoping to find us, but it was waiting. If The Genesis put it there, we’re in trouble, Caesar. I won’t sit here and tell you any differently. That means it knows where we’re headed. It would know why we’re here and things a lot worse than that will be waiting.”
“The hell was it?”
Jerry brought his hands to his knees and used his right to pick at his left, absently, like he didn’t know he was even doing it. His dry skin flaked off into the air. “The Genesis calls it a blanket. It’s an application, one of the many humans don’t know about. The Genesis used it a long time ago for exactly what you just saw. It lays in wait, for certain persons programmed inside it. It actually picks up your scent, basically, able to register the air you breathe out of your lungs, able to pinpoint you. I think it has something like a mile radius. It moves through the air like any other application, but when it finds you, it envelops you and in the end, would have picked you up like a piece of furniture and carried you to wherever The Genesis wanted you. They used it for dignitaries and things like that during the original purge. Most have probably been decommissioned, although The Genesis might be creating more now. I would, if I was it.”
Caesar listened, taking in the words, almost unable to believe it. “It was waiting on us? Does that mean The Genesis knows we’re here now? Did it communicate back?”
“I don’t think so. It was an old model. It was focused only on us, and planned on communicating back as soon as we were secured. The thing was as old as me, Caesar. A newer model would have connected instantaneously.”
“What did you do to it? What did it do to you?” He walked across the room toward Jerry’s corner.
Jerry tapped on his temple. “The chip. For a brief period all those years ago, I reversed it and was able to travel along The Genesis’ neural pathways. I know a lot because I had access to a lot of information. That thing, the blanket, it’s pure electricity. When it gripped onto me, I basically brought it inside of me because of the metal on my body. I broke it apart, separating the electrons from each other. It couldn’t hold together any longer once it sunk in. Like lightning striking the ground.”
“It took a toll?” Caesar asked. He didn’t need an answer. He saw what Jerry paid, like a fucking price tag hanging off him.
“Yeah. That much electricity flowing through anyone will take a toll. Take what you want, just pay for it, I guess,” he said.
Caesar looked down at the ground. “What’s next?”
“You saw what I did on the train?”
Caesar nodded, not looking up.
“What would have happened if I wasn’t there?”
He tilted his head so that his eyes saw Jerry again. “I would have died.”
“Yeah. You would have. I might not always be here, Caesar. Even that, at this stage in my life, has weakened me. I won’t be here forever.”
Caesar didn’t say anything, knowing the old man would continue.
“What I am, this body, this metal mixed with flesh, if you want to win this, you’ll have to become it. You’ll have to graft your body to a metal frame. It’s not just for things like the blanket, but for others that you’re going to come up against. Applications that take physical form are stronger and faster than humans. You won’t be able to stop them in your current body and I might not be able to save you next time. If you die, Caesar, this is over. No one at the bunker has the ability to do what I’m asking, none of them will create the body that is needed.”
Caesar looked over the old man, his eyes looking at the frail arms and the dry skin. The gray hair. Had he not seen what happened on the train—the way he pulled that thing from him when Caesar couldn’t move an inch, and the way he allowed it to flow through his body without killing him—he wouldn’t believe a thing Jerry said. The man looked, simply, old. Not powerful. Not capable of destroying anything.
“Why won’t they create it? Why won’t Manny?”
“Because once you start, you lose control of the process. The first piece is putting a chip in your head like mine and then infusing your skeleton with bits of metal. The way it’s done changes your actual genetic makeup. Your body will prefer the metal, prefer the machinery, because it sees it as more sustainable. Which it is. You’ll stop creating flesh, Caesar. Your body will turn itself into a machine. After a thousand years, I might be five percent human. By doing this, you won’t die of natural causes, at least not until long after everyone you’ve ever met has died. It’s too much for a lot of people to handle, becoming this.”
His hands opened up, as if showcasing his body.
“We probably won’t live that long anyway, Jerry. The Genesis will probably kill us before I ever have to worry about living forever, right?”
* * *
“What are they going to do to the guy when they find him?” Leon asked.
Paige stood at the sink, washing her dishes. The rag was warm against her skin and the water almost hot as it poured from the faucet. She held a pot in her left hand and the rag in her right, but she stopped scrubbing when he asked the question.
“Try to get the information out of him, I guess,” she said.
She didn’t turn around but listened as Leon pulled a chair up to the table behind her, the one she had just eaten at.
“And if the guy won’t give it to him, then what?”
What was he in here asking her for? Leon Bastille was what Paige called a forced guest. He couldn’t leave but was only allowed to stay because of everyone’s grace, of Jerry’s grace. Why did he think she had the answers to these things? She wasn’t the one out there with them, she hadn’t been chosen as the one that would lead them through The Genesis. She was a member of The Eight, and at this point, that meant she listened to Jerry.
Calm down, she thought.
He wasn’t asking anything unreasonable, and logically, she knew that. She didn’t like Leon Bastille because his actions killed that little girl. Killed Laura. Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut and his bitch wife ended up getting a lot of people murdered. That’s where this came from, not from him asking a simple question.
Jerry allowed him to stay. Caesar allowed him to live. That’s enough.
“I imagine they’ll make him. I’m not sure they have much of a choice,” she said.
“By hurting him?”
She started scrubbing the pot again. “Yeah, that’s what I would do.”
“Would you?”
Paige turned around. “Yeah. I would.” The two stared at each other for a second before Leon dropped his eyes to the table, his finger picking at some invisible spot on the wood.
“Talk to me about Caesar,” he said after a few seconds.
She laughed, her hands stopping their work again. Talk to him about Caesar? The balls on this guy were so large they probably had a gravitational pull. The dumbest person in the entire compound, by a long shot, but he didn’t seem to get it or didn’t seem to care. He never seemed to care, and part of that was endearing, she couldn’t deny it. Brave or stupid, he went on with his life as if he belonged here.
“About what?”
“Did you really just turn off those feelings you had for him?”
She looked down at the suds in the sink. “I was acting. I was doing what I had to do to bring him back to us.”
“But you slept with him right?”
She nodded.
“And there was nothing to it? No f
eelings, it was just an act? Like a—“
Paige smiled in spite of what the man was saying. “Don’t you dare call me a prostitute,” she finished for him.
“Well, there was nothing between you guys though?”
She dropped the pot and rag into the sink and turned around to face him again. He didn’t look away this time. “I care about Jerry. I love Jerry. I care about The Eight. I love them. I love the people that live here. What I did when I went to the city was for them. Not for Caesar. I needed to know him better. I needed to know what he would do. I don’t hate Caesar, but am I in love with him? No.”
Are you lying, little girl? A piece of her mind asked, but she ignored it.
Leon smiled, surprisingly. “I’m in love with him, I suppose. I don’t have anyone else to love, so why not make it him?”
They both continued looking at each other.
“Do you think Jerry is right?” He asked.
He was dumb, but firing on all cylinders right now. Asking questions that Paige didn’t want to answer and yet questions that her subconscious wrestled with. Was Jerry right? Or was he a fool? That’s what The Eight couldn’t decide, or rather The Seven. Some believed and some didn’t, and where did she fall? Honestly. Not what Jerry said and not what she brought back from the city in the form of feelings for Caesar. What did she really think? Were they hitching their cart to a horse that would fail long before it finished its travels? She told Jerry and Caesar to go, that she thought they would be fine, that they should be the ones to do this. She said it because...
Because why?
“I don’t know,” she answered. She moved away from the sink, wiping her wet hands on her jeans, and sat at the table next to Leon. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I don’t know if I believe Jerry. Caesar doesn’t either.”
There weren’t any lies in this man. He was open, sitting at the table, and trying to be honest with her. Trying to figure out his own feelings about this whole thing he had half thrust himself into and been half dragged into.
“I want him to be,” Paige said.
“Why?”