by David Beers
Theo was fine, even if his purpose had been served already. He could keep watching over this destruction, for a little while at least, but soon everyone in this city would be dead. Already, the people who took the pills were turning on each other, the anger not just holding itself to the people who hadn't taken the 'anti-virus'. Murder would go on and on until there was no one left to murder, and Theo didn't need to preside over it all. The fun part with him would be to see whether he self-destructed or whether Mock would need to do it.
Time would tell.
* * *
Fuck Mock.
Theo stood outside of the apartment complex because Mock sat behind a desk, and Theo wouldn't behave the same as that thing. He wasn't going to sit behind his desk while Andrew and The Insane went inside this complex and murdered everyone they could find. He stood behind the crowd, on top of a train that he had stopped for this very purpose. He looked out at the people around him—hundreds, at least. They held weapons Theo hadn't known existed, things he couldn't describe besides relating them to other objects. One looked like a box, but he knew that no one showed up to this thing to kill with a box. Whatever was inside that little nicety would probably do a lot of damage.
Everyone stared forward, not bothering to look back at Theo—all of them a silent mass of rage. It had been easy to get them all here, with more arriving every second. The first people, those at the front, would probably end up trampled, killed by those that came after. Did they know that or were they too worked up to even care? What did it matter? Theo hoped they were trampled. Hoped that the people inside were prepared to fight this group, though he knew they weren't.
Most of them were probably hiding inside their apartments, hoping not to be found. He could see a small group standing in the lobby, weapons in their own hands, but they would be murdered in moments. The people out here were battle scarred. The people out here were bloodthirsty. The people inside were scared and weak, and this would end quickly. Painfully.
You don't have to do this. You can tell them no. You can have them turn on you and cut you down and be done with the whole thing, the whole mess. Just say no.
He wanted to. He truly did. He didn't want to watch this. He'd seen enough death. He had caused enough. And with each person that died because of him, he felt his life growing that much cheaper. He sold his soul already, so why keep piling on the bodies? Why put more on his shoulders? His life was already over and he knew it. There wasn't any way he made it out alive, so he was just trying for a few more days. Just trying to hold on a bit longer.
If the ends justified the means, then all he was doing was justifying his own death with the death of others. Pointless.
And yet, he wouldn’t tell them no. He wouldn’t say anything like that to these people. He was going to let them head inside and do their work, while he sat outside and watched.
Theo sighed.
Enough thinking. If he didn't give the go ahead, these people would end up rushing in on their own, taking what little power he now held with them.
He nodded to the man standing next to him.
"TAKE THEM!" The man shouted into a small globe he held. The sound echoed out of the globe booming across the crowd of people.
The first row surged forward, smashing into the doors that on normal days would have opened automatically. This wasn't a normal day, however. Those doors were locked, though the people doing the locking must have known it wouldn't help. The first five or six hacked away at the digitally made doors, trying to break through the electrical currents that kept out the elements and unwanted guests. A solid minute of banging put huge holes in the see-through doors, and in another thirty seconds, the holes fell away, leaving room for people to begin stepping through.
None of them stepped through, however. The crowd behind the first group pushed forward, slamming their own comrades through the doors, causing them to sprawl forward onto the hard lobby floor in front of them. No one reached down to pick them up. No one even looked at the people they just sentenced to death. They ran forward, weapons brandished, and met the small group there to fend off the horde of anger.
Theo watched it all from the safety of his train. He watched as more and more piled into the building, killing their perceived enemy, killing their friends. Killing everyone they could, because what else was there anymore? After a few minutes, as the group began to disperse into the building, moving upwards, away from Theo's eyesight, he hopped off the top of the train and walked around to its front doors. They opened and he stepped in, moving to a seat in the middle of the train. He sat down and listened to the screams echoing out of the building, hearing glass breaking as windows shattered and bodies were tossed out of them. Hearing the thuds as those same bodies hit the ground with tremendous force.
* * *
Caesar stood in the corner of the lobby. A group of thirty stood in the middle, but they barely noticed him. They must have thought he lived here, and he wasn't posing a threat like the people outside, so what did he really matter?
Caesar brought his group of three to his parents' apartment complex a few hours before. He hadn't marched up to the apartment immediately because of the buzz moving through the place. People were rushing in and out, weapons being carried in. He sat in the lobby and listened to the people as they spoke, doing his best to look worried. A man not nervous right now would be noticed, because everyone else was terrified. They all wanted out, but had nowhere to go.
"Someone on the sixtieth floor. I heard his cousin turned him in, said he was part of The Named, and now we all are, apparently."
The words transferred from one occupant to another, and Caesar heard them all. An assault was being planned, an assault on this building, on the inhabitants.
I can't kill Manny and then try to get the three of them out of here safely, not if it's as bad as these people think it will be, he told Grace.
"You're probably right."
So just wait?
"I would. See what happens, then decide whether to come back or stay. Manny can probably protect them if that's what he wants to do."
And if he doesn't? Caesar asked.
"There aren't any certainties here."
He knew she was right. It would take more than a few minutes to dispatch Manny and then he would have to navigate whatever happened down here, and he had no idea what that would look like. If Manny barricaded himself in up there, he could probably withstand whatever these people brought. Caesar couldn't imagine a reason why Manny would want to let the mob outside kill his prizes, besides the fact that he was insane—which was a pretty big reason. Still, barricaded in with Manny, Paige and Leon would most likely survive. Out in the open with Caesar? He just didn't know if he could protect them, and what good would it do to march up there and grab them only to have them all die in this lobby?
Caesar decided to wait, to watch what happened down here, to better understand just what the hell was going on. Manny wasn't going to kill them, not until Caesar showed up and he had the chance to show off all his hatred in one gallant effort.
Still, even after hearing the fear in the people around him, the ferocity of the attack still shocked him.
Caesar pushed Bradley up to the ceiling, away from any possibility of him being harmed. He didn't care if Bradley died; he cared that he might need him at some point and wouldn't have him. Grace stayed with him, next to his ear, as the creatures that had once been human swarmed forward. It's not that they looked different; of course they didn't—they all were normal looking people, but the similarities seemed to end there. These things battered at the digital doors with a hate that Caesar thought resembled Manny, resembled his insatiable need to hurt Caesar. And these people? What did they want? To hurt whoever was inside of this place. Nothing else. Just to hurt and hurt and hurt.
Their faces twisted into gross caricatures of what they should have been. Their mouths bent and their faces seemed to crack with the lines creasing across their skin. Veins poked out across their foreheads
and arms as they pummeled the doors in front of them, wanting desperately to get inside.
The chip in Caesar's brain allowed him to take this all in calmly, allowed him to contrast the people trying to get in with the people trying to keep them out. The ones inside, they were frightened. They knew death had arrived and it wasn't just knocking on the door, but trying to bulldoze right through it. Trying to take them all in one large swallow, where they would fall down and down its black esophagus until they reached its stomach—which was a cold, cold place. They held their weapons, but their grips weren't from anger, but fear. Sweat on their palms and face instead of veins pumping with hot blood. The people standing thirty feet from Caesar would fight, but they would die. That was clear, and everyone involved knew it.
The doors started cracking, the digital code built to withstand the elements unable to handle this assault. A few more moments and everything would begin in earnest.
Caesar watched as the doors fell and then the people attacking them fell, watched as brothers and sisters in arms ran over them without a second thought, their heads being repeatedly slammed into the cold floor until their blood was the first to streak the clean lobby.
The two sides met, brandishing weapons that ranged from a thousand years old to things that might have been created last night inside random apartments.
"Do something," Grace said, her voice as frightened as Caesar had ever heard it.
Do what?
"Help them. Try to help them. They're going to be massacred."
Caesar had come here to find those he loved and bring them out. Not to save this apartment complex from assault. Not to put himself in danger, something that might prevent him from saving Paige or destroying The Genesis.
I didn't come here to save these people, he said.
"You can't just watch this happen."
Caesar stepped forward and thrust his mind out across the lobby. He grabbed on to the crowd rushing in, grabbed on to their minds and started turning them. They went after each other—the blood and cries pouring out of people changed from those who lived in this place to those invading.
He had never stretched himself like this, grabbing onto at first tens of individuals, but stretching and stretching until a hundred were under his control, two hundred, but more kept coming, more kept rushing forward, not even seeing that those who went first were now trying to kill them, not seeing and not caring, because they hacked at whoever looked like the enemy. Caesar couldn't focus on any one person, couldn't turn his eyes to actually view these individual battles because he would lose control of the entire war.
For each new person that entered, he stretched himself, grabbing control of their mind until his own was full of nothing but the thoughts of the insane. He couldn't think; he could only react, finding more and turning them on each other, but his limits were near. He knew that he wouldn't be able to push this any further, knew that he would lose control and this place would be lost.
"WATCH OUT!" Grace shouted at him, slicing through the insanity that possessed his mind.
He saw the woman then, somehow missing her as she marched toward him, brandishing a metal pipe with three knives strapped to the end, the lights from above casting long dagger shadows onto the floor. He didn't have control of her, had missed her as his mind scrambled to gather the ever increasing number. She hadn't missed him though. She saw him and was coming to kill him, to push those pointed instruments of death into his gut.
Everything else disappeared, his hold on the hundreds of people in here, because he had seconds to make the connection with the woman in front of him.
His mind found hers as she rammed the metal pole forward, found hers as the knives moved within six inches of his body.
He stopped them, her mind screaming at him, refusing to believe that she wasn't going to have her conquest, that she wouldn’t see his blood leak out.
The war in the lobby started afresh, with the people that he had controlled barely missing a beat as they turned back around and began going after their original targets. Whatever had stopped them wasn't important anymore. All that mattered was murder. Caesar looked at the woman in front of him, her body still lunging forward, holding her there and listening as she screamed inside his own head, not understanding why she couldn't kill him. There was no saving her. There was no bringing her back from this place her mind now called home.
Caesar stepped forward and pulled one of the knives from the metal pole. He brought it up to the woman’s face, both of them staring in each other’s eyes.
Quickly, he thought, and then ran the knife across the woman's throat.
Her blood flooded out in a gush, falling to the floor like a red waterfall. He listened as her mind quieted; she didn’t stop raging, but sounded as if something was pulling the rage away, further and further down a long corridor, until nothing could be heard, and Caesar held a dead person.
His mind released her and she collapsed to the floor.
He looked up at the crowd before him. Too many. Far too many. Maybe close to eight hundred people in this small place, all of them hacking and shooting and any other verb that allowed one to kill another. He couldn't hold them, he could do nothing for this place, and he saw eyes falling on him. Saw eyes and heard thoughts that wanted his blood to spill too. Caesar grabbed Bradley and began pushing forward, moving through the blood and bodies, towards the door, out of this place, throwing those that came at him away, moving those in front of him with the power of a sledge hammer. He had to get out. He had to find safety.
He reached the door, pushing people away from him, creating a path across the waves still trying to enter, until he finally stood on the street.
He saw the train in front of him, sitting there, not moving, not loading passengers. A man sat in there alone, looking out at the mess before him. A man wearing a black suit with a red symbol across his chest. Caesar saw the peace sign and knew what it meant.
* * *
The doors parted for Manny and he stepped outside into the hallway. He had heard the noises from inside his apartment, had watched the battle from his entertainment center. He didn't know what the hell the whole thing was about but found himself growing more and more curious as the noises grew louder outside. Caesar had been downstairs; Manny saw that in the entertainment center as well. He'd been there for a while, waiting and watching. Manny had hoped he would come up, his excitement increasing until he thought he would bolt from his spot on the couch and go meet him. He hadn't though; he couldn't. He needed Caesar to find his way up here, he needed Caesar to see what Manny had done to those he loved. This wasn't just about killing Caesar, it was about making him hurt first.
Manny watched as Caesar shifted the battle for a bit, watched as those bent on killing the inhabitants turned on each other. It was impressive, to say the least, seeing the whole tide of the fight change almost at once, people just turning their backs on those that they were in mortal combat with to fight someone unsuspecting. Manny had never attempted something like it, never even thought to. He controlled the people here with him, but what Caesar did downstairs was different, much more so. Manny knew the strength it took to move two people for hours on end, but to grasp a few hundred, controlling all of their motions at once?
Doubt began creeping in, but he shoved it away. There wasn't anything to worry about. He had his wife and son, and when Caesar arrived, Manny would kill him. And if he couldn't kill him, then The Genesis would assist. It would have to.
For one terrifying second, Manny thought his enemy would die, and he watched as the woman came within inches of murdering Caesar. Even then though, Caesar performed. He gave up control over the crowd for control over the woman, and with a ruthlessness Manny admired, Caesar killed her.
Manny kept watching the battle until there was nothing left to watch, until the mob moved through the lobby and surged upwards, ready to move through the apartments. He listened as the roar grew louder, and now he wanted to see it for himself.
A wom
an was being dragged from her apartment by her hair, screaming savagely. Another woman sidestepped the screaming lady as she went back into the apartment, probably to see if there was anyone else to find. The man doing the dragging brought her down the hall, arriving at a window overlooking clouds. He picked the woman up and threw with a strength that Manny imagined could only be accomplished when one had a massive adrenaline load coursing through their body. The woman collided with the window, breaking it, and falling, her screams fading immediately as the wind picked them up and swept them out of earshot.
The man turned back around and looked at Manny. Manny didn't move; he was genuinely curious about what would happen next. He didn't know he was smiling, didn't know he had been smiling for the entire three hours he watched this massacre unfold. Maybe the man at the end of the hall saw that smile and knew what rested beneath, maybe he recognized the madness because it lived in him as well. Or maybe he just thought Manny was too fucking big to mess with.
Either way, he went back to the apartment he had pulled the screaming woman from, obviously intent on making sure not a single person inside continued breathing.
Manny watched for a few more minutes as people continued to come out of the elevators, continued breaking down doors and killing, killing, killing. After a while, Manny turned back and walked into his apartment. It was interesting, what was happening around him, but overall un-concerning. He had his family inside this place and no one was going to bother him. If they did, he'd make an example out of the first few, and that would keep them at bay. Nope, all that mattered to Manny was what was inside this apartment—that and when Caesar would return.
Chapter Five
The Life of Caesar Wells
I suppose I need to take some time to describe what happened to me in that apartment. I don't want to, really. I don't want to relive it. I don't want to think about it, think about what he did to me or what he did to Paige. Jerry, in all honesty, got the better end of the deal. His horrors were quick.