by David Beers
Everything was destroyed. Nothing left. He couldn't even see Keke's body through the smoke. Grace lay in there somewhere as dead as everything else inside.
He turned from the room, taking his eyes away from the apartment they had shared for a short time. Taking his eyes from the bleakness, from the room that now matched the black sky.
He swallowed, feeling the heat from the inside of the apartment baking his back. Burning his back. If he woke up tomorrow, without a doubt it would be tender to the touch, perhaps worse than that. The tears in his eyes finally spilled over onto his cheeks. He hadn't meant this to happen. For so long he had gone forward without a care as to what happened to Grace, either thinking he could keep her safe or simply considering the end of his plight. He hadn't kept her safe, and for what? He didn't have a clue as to how this would end. Only that everything which once surrounded him was gone, that he was alone. The Named, a thing of the past. His loved ones across the street in a fortress he couldn't breach. The ones that followed him now passed from this world, their remains behind him mixing with the ash on the floor.
Caesar was wrong about one aspect. He could breach the fortress.
Whatever else happened, he would get inside that fortress and tear the whole goddamn thing down.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Why couldn't he just die? Why had he been built this way, nearly indestructible? Jerry lay in the hall nearly decapitated, able to talk and think, but unable to die. It was madness, something only The Genesis could have created. A creature that begged for death but would never be allowed it.
Jerry came to that conclusion early in the morning—he was doomed to live. That whatever else happened to anyone he knew, he would keep on living, keep on enduring. He hated it.
Paige was dead. He heard the entire thing from his small corner of the world. Listened as Manny raged, watched as he walked back into the bedroom and found the dead baby. Leon wasn't dead yet, but would be soon enough—Jerry held no doubt about that. He would die in the most horrible fashion imaginable while Jerry lay here and listened to the whole goddamn thing.
Paige is dead and you're sitting here worrying about yourself. Somewhere at the bottom of this building, rats are chewing on her body, and you're thinking about how you can't die?
Yes, he lay here wishing he would die, wishing the blackness he knew for a brief time as they traveled across the desert would return. Would take over so that he didn't have to witness any more of this. The friend, the mentee he helped raise, destroying everything. Forcing those that once cared for him to catapult themselves to their death thousands of feet below. His mind could scold him all it wanted, but it couldn't change the current situation. It couldn't bring Paige back to life. It couldn't cure Manny. It couldn't even sew back on one of Leon's ears.
Caesar said he was coming, but Jerry didn't think it was true. Not that Caesar had left, but that he was dead, the same as Paige. Maybe there was an afterlife and maybe they somehow found each other in it. If Caesar wasn't dead, then he would be here. If he wasn't dead, then he would be trying to save them. No one was coming, though, and that meant Caesar must be dead. With him gone, all was lost. Whatever was happening outside, whatever Manny was railing on about now, it would soon consume them all. Something to do with the sky turning black, and part of Jerry wished he could stand up and see it. Part of him wanted to watch the world consume itself, which from everything he could tell, was the plan. The world deserved it. All those goddamn people down on the streets, they deserved to die. Manny deserved to die. Jerry deserved to die. Because it had been his job to deliver all of them, even those down there looking up into the blackened sky. It was his job to deliver Manny to the promised land, just as it was Moses' job all those years ago.
There was no promised land.
Or maybe they had arrived at it.
Maybe only hell was promised to the human species.
Either way, Jerry didn't want to live in it anymore. He wanted peace, finally. He wanted to lie down on the same street as Paige and let the rats tear at his much tougher skin, as long as he didn't have to feel anymore, to think anymore, to recognize how badly he failed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Life of Caesar Wells
And now, we're nearly at the end of Caesar's journey. I think you're seeing now that this won't end well. I think I've told a story that many will find hard to fathom; such things could never happen. Someone like Caesar can't exist. What happens next, it isn't pretty—it makes everything that came before look like a fairytale.
I've kept my own philosophy out of this. I'm simple when compared to Caesar. My mind wasn't made like his; no one's was. My mind was made to follow orders, I think, like the rest of humanity. Caesar's was made to give them. I don't know if he would ever admit that, because it seems so antithetical to his entire purpose. He doesn't want anyone giving orders, but yet, that's why he was put here. I hold no doubt about that now, that there was a purpose for Caesar's birth. Not for mine, probably not even for Jerry. Caesar though? There was a reason for all this. A reason for the death of entire populations. The reason for Paige's fall. The reason for what happened to Jerry. That reason was Caesar, his existence. Even his parents, he was the reason behind their end.
Because he had to be. None of the rest of us ever mattered. We were merely stage props to bring him down the path he had to travel. We were there to direct him, like signs, even though none of us knew it. Even Paige, in her deepening love, was little more than a way for The Genesis to reach him. To teach him.
My philosophy. Jesus, like you care. But I saw the whole thing. I walked down that path with Caesar, if off to the side. So I'll say my piece before we finish this trek.
April, my wife, believed wholeheartedly in The Genesis. She believed in it as fervently as any poor worshipper of Christ centuries ago. If we followed it, if we believed in it, then all would be okay. Perhaps we would even live forever, as The Genesis kept eradicating diseases. To her, The Genesis wasn't everything, it was the only thing. I was, unfortunately, just a way to help her praise The Genesis. It took me a long time to realize that; she never cared about me the way I did her. I imagine a lot of people in this world are exactly like that. Probably a majority of them.
And on the other side of the spectrum, we have Caesar. Someone dedicated to a different ideal, but no less dedicated. Everyone around him ended up hurt irrevocably. And while it may weigh on him differently than it did April, he still kept going.
And me? I'm in the middle. The steady-Eddy. I worship nothing, and the closest thing I feel to fanaticism is my feelings toward Caesar. Both my wife and he had important things to say, things they felt were worth dying for, and me? I wouldn't have died for The Genesis or for its destruction. What would I die for then? And what does that say about me?
Paige. I would have taken her place. I would have been raped and I would have thrown myself from that window so that she didn't have to.
Caesar. I would have laid my own life down for his, in whatever capacity he needed it. Not because I believed in his purpose, or because I wanted to see The Genesis fall, but because I loved him.
April. Even now, realizing how little I actually meant to her, I would have taken her wounds and made them my own. I would have bled out in our apartment, my brain matter spread out across everything.
The only cause I'm willing to die for is love, I suppose. That's where I fall on this spectrum. All of Jerry's beliefs, and Caesar's will, and April's stupidity—none of that ever mattered to me. For so long I wanted to be like them; I admired them, I suppose, and their conviction. Now, I look at them and everything they have, and everything they've done to those around them, and I wonder, what's left? The answer is obvious. For all their desires and triumphs, and struggles, they've sacrificed everything. They've given up everyone and everything that mattered. Will Caesar see what he worked so hard for? Will he be rewarded for it? What's the old saying—what does a man have if he gains the world, but loses his soul? I don't know the answer to
the question, and I'm not being coy. Caesar is an entity unto himself, beyond anything else I've ever seen or truly contemplated. I'm not fit to judge him fully. I will say, though, that while I would die for him, I wouldn't trade places with him. I wouldn't cast everything I ever knew to hell. That's my philosophy: Sometimes, just living with those you love is worth more than the world and everything in it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Caesar stood outside of the tower, the same one he had entered countless times, the same one he came home to when his parents lived there.
Other people stood outside too, holding phosphorescent lights in their hands, giving the place an eerily cheery glow. They all stared up at the sky, but as he passed, they saw what he wore. He moved through them without care, his shoulder knocking people to the ground as he went. A murmur started, one that grew as he pushed forward. Anger, the same anger that he had seen on the roof, the same anger that he had witnessed when he came here days ago—the anger born from ego. The anger born from a place that craves, and wants, and when it doesn't get it—hates.
Caesar no longer cared.
He reached the entrance; guards still stood there, holding weapons, and huge machines were stationed on the walls. Machines that were meant to kill him if he showed up. They didn't recognize him of course, all they saw was his black suit. But still, the murmur growing behind him said that this man wasn't right. That even though he wore the black suit with the red sign on it, he had offended, he had angered those that called this place home.
The two guards looked at him.
"What happened to the other guy?" One of them asked.
Caesar used his mind to take the man’s hands, putting the weapon he held to his head, and made him pull the trigger. A bright light shot out from the hole in the weapon, immediately piercing through the man's chin and entering his skull. The light lit his head up like a bulb. Beautiful and brief, the man collapsed to the ground, all his vital signs flatlining. The other guard raised his weapon but it was far too late for that. His chest lit up with the same bright light and then he fell, his eyes staring up at the sky, just as he had been before Caesar arrived.
Caesar didn't stop, but walked through the open doors. He heard the crowd behind him, and knew they would come soon. He reached out for the weapons hanging next to the door and turned them on the crowd. The machines were large circles, and on the inside a flat, tan piece of machinery that moved the ring on the surrounding it. The ring contained tiny holes, and as Caesar examined the machine, he saw what would happen. The people outside hadn't moved yet, because they now saw the weapons they installed looking at them, those tiny holes staring out like an infinite number of eyes. Caesar turned around for a second, wanting to see the people before he killed them. He wished there was a hell to send them to, because they surely deserved it. Their eyes were wide, fearful. The rage he engendered when he pushed through gone as they looked at something ready to take their life, something that appeared alive and looking at them.
There was nothing to say to the crowd. They had reached their bottom long before this moment, and no truth that Caesar could speak would change what they were. Animals. They would have torn Keke apart and destroyed Grace the same as The Genesis. They were The Genesis, and they deserved their death.
He let the tiny holes release their black magic. Tiny pellets, like very small, smooth rocks, flew out of the machine at rapid speed. Thousands emptying out each second, mowing down the people standing there, behaving like cows. The pellets tore their faces apart, split their skulls open a hundred times before they hit the ground. Caesar watched, continuing to control the machines, continuing to kill. Children and women fell the same as men, all of them with their eyes and mouths open in a state of shock because this couldn't happen here. This couldn't happen to them. The Genesis wouldn't let it.
It took thirty seconds, and a crowd of two hundred lay in front of Caesar, a mist of blood floating above them. The small pellets rolled along the street, so many of them that it sounded like wheels grating across concrete. He stared at their remains for a second, wanting to take the picture in, wanting to see his work so that he could remember it. These people, the ones that brought down the world, dead, lying in their own blood.
He turned his back and walked into the lobby. More were coming, he was sure of it, and when they saw him, they would see their death just as those outside had. Everyone in this place would die, and then Manny would die too.
* * *
Manny sat in his room, the same one the baby died in. He was in bed, his back pressed against the headboard, and watching the holograms shooting out simultaneously from the ceiling and floor. He had been watching the street for the past hour, watching all the idiots outside stare up into the sky as if God would tell them what was going on. Manny didn't know what was going on, and he didn't really care either. He was tired of waiting on Caesar, tired of fucking around with Leon and Jerry. He wanted this to end, and the color of the sky didn't matter one bit. He was considering syncing down in the lobby, asking The Genesis just what the fuck was going on with Caesar. He hadn't been focused on it before; he had been too wrapped up with his idea of a child and a wife and a goddamn happy life. Now that all of that nonsense was over, he could think of nothing else besides Caesar. Besides Caesar's death.
Jerry didn't even matter at this point. A hunk of metal lying in the hallway, something Manny would dispose of shortly. There wasn't any point in torturing either Jerry or Leon anymore. There was nothing left to be done. They were shells of what they had once been.
He was just about to stand up, take an elevator down, and see what exactly the hell was going on with Caesar when the man showed up.
Manny watched with growing wonder as he stormed through the group standing in front of him. People falling and the crowd parting as he forced his way through. Was this the man he'd last seen on that table, back before Manny became what he was now? It couldn't be. Not with the way he looked, not with the way he discarded those in front of him.
This was the man Jerry had spoken about. The one to lead them all, to their destination, to a Genesis free world.
Manny stood up and walked to the front of the bed.
"Zoom," he said, and the hologram grew larger, so that he and Caesar stood toe to toe. Caesar looked forward, at something Manny couldn't see, unconcerned with anyone around him.
Manny smiled the same insane smile that he first showed when he stepped in front of Caesar so long ago, when Caesar thought he would steal The Tourist. He smiled, feeling immensely happy that this man had arrived, that the true murderer of his wife and child had finally showed.
He watched as Caesar killed the guards with that same look of unconcern, no more than wiping dust from a fixture. He watched as Caesar ripped into the people in front of the building, tore them open in hundreds of ways, watched him stand there and just stare. When he was finished and the dead lay both face down and face up in the street, their limbs and bodies crisscrossing one another, Caesar turned and walked further into the building.
He had come for Manny, and by God, Manny had waited a long time.
He walked from the room and out into the hallway. Jerry lay there, in the exact same place he had lain since they arrived. His head still detached, his eye still staring listlessly at the floor.
"Jerry," Manny said, the wicked smile not having faded a bit. "Your boy's here. Caesar. He's downstairs causing quite a ruckus. I'm going to go kill him; how does that sound?"
A moan started coming from Jerry's mouth, though it sounded like it would turn into words fairly soon. It took the old man sometime to get up and running now.
"No need, Jerry. No need to waste your breath."
Manny walked down the hall and when he got to Jerry, he lifted his foot high in the air and slammed it down on Jerry's skull. He repeated the action over and over, until the floor beneath was nothing but a mixture of wires, blood, and the single black orb that had sat in Jerry's skull for a thousand years.
&nbs
p; * * *
Leon watched the madman leave the apartment. He didn't know where Manny was headed or what he had planned, only glad to see him leave. Except this time, he saw something out of his peripheral that he didn't like. He had seen Manny raise his foot up and down, heard the noise of things cracking, breaking, and no other sounds. Then Manny left and Leon was alone, unable to move or talk.
Had he really seen that?
Were those sounds Jerry? Had Manny just stomped him to death?
Tears came to Leon's eyes, unbidden but unstoppable. He could sit here and deny it all he wanted, but that wouldn't change the truth of what happened. Jerry was in the hall, and in the hall Manny slammed his foot down repeatedly, and all the sounds were Jerry's body breaking.
It came at once, Leon's release, and all thoughts of Jerry or his death disappeared like smoke in a strong wind. His body fell back on the couch, the rigidness that had held him together now gone. His head lay to the side on the back of the couch, and his eyes moved freely. Manny had released him. For whatever reason, Manny had let him go.
Jerry, his mind snapped back into place. He had to check on Jerry, had to see for sure if what he thought was true.
He fell from the couch, not even trying to stand, not trying to use muscles that could barely hold him up while sitting. He didn't look at his hands or the rest of his flesh, didn't worry about the broken glass cutting into him as he army-crawled across the room. All of it was only part of this life, something he had grown accustomed to. His only thought of finding Jerry, because someone needed to be alive with him. He couldn't be alone. He couldn't be the only person still here with this monster.
Someone had to be alive with him, had to survive this.
He dragged himself across the room and into the beginning of the hallway. He needn't go any further. He could see Jerry's limp body lying in the hallway, and more importantly, he could see Jerry's head. Or what was left of it. Even the wires were smashed clean into the floor. Jerry didn't have a head; the thing in its place was a memory of Jerry, the pieces that made him up, but the sum was always greater than the parts.