2013: The Aftermath

by Shane McKenzie

  Chris snorted. “Well, try to be a little more careful with your wardrobe. You almost took my head off this morning.”

  Mike delivered a light jab to Chris’s shoulder. “Buck up, mamma’s boy. Yours wasn’t one of the heads I took off today.”

  Chris grinned. He was only teasing Mike about the axe. Most of the volunteers defending the monastery-hospital carried swords. They were retro weapons, but undeniably effective in close quarters. Mike was the exception. Of only mediocre skill with a blade, the man was a veritable angel of death with an axe in his hands. Had Mike wished to join the prowess-worshiping retros, he would have made battle captain at the very least.

  Cold grief twisted Chris’s stomach. Such pondering always led to thoughts of Rachael, his late wife. Stowing the oilcloth, he sheathed his sword and stood.

  The retros’ fires extended far into the distance, distant pinpricks marking the edges of the horde. In the darkness, Chris often imagined the monastery a ship sailing upon an ocean of stars, a perilous voyage, and one that would eventually claim them all.

  “Why do you think it happened?” Chris asked suddenly. “Was it V-day, or were we always headed down this road?”

  V-day, the day a suicide cult of a thousand martyrs detonated anthrax bombs in every major city in the world. The technology-hating retros had been a growing movement even then, but V-day had been gasoline to the flame of their cause. Pointing to the millions of victims claimed in the attack, the retros convinced the confused and grief-stricken masses that technology itself was the enemy. After all, wielding a sword instead of a bomb, how many innocents could one madman harm before he was brought down?

  It was like a plague. Gun and ammunition factories burned first, but that was just the beginning. Soon power plants, laboratories, hospitals, and schools were laid waste in the retros’ fervor for peace and security.

  Mike’s expression hardened. “Who cares why?” His eyes were chips of grey ice, his voice like frozen iron. “The bastards took my Susie. For that, I’ll drown them all in blood.”

  Chris leaned against the battlements. He should have known better than to ask such a question. Mike’s daughter had been diabetic. She’d needed the insulin some of those doomed facilities had produced. He had tried to bring her there, to the monastery hospital, for treatment. But there were no cars anymore, no planes. Susie hadn’t survived the journey.

  Chris understood Mike’s thirst for revenge. After all, the retros had cost him his wife. But all the bloodshed, the constant fighting, the screams—sweet heaven, the screams—it was wearing him down. Sometimes, he could barely remember what it had been like before all this, what his life had been like when Rachael was still alive.

  Mike was different. Too much death was an alien concept to him. He was a furnace of rage fueled on death, a living curse on the retros with only one purpose: to kill every one of them.

  A horn sounded and a ladder-carrying horde surged out of the darkness toward the monastery.

  Chris snatched up his rifle. “It’s a night attack! Everyone to the wall!”

  The alarm went up. Men came rushing up from the courtyard to join the defenders already on the battlements.

  Chris drew a bead on a bearded man carrying a ladder. He fired and a cloud of dirty, grey smoke exploded from his rifle.

  The popping-crack of Mike’s rifle sounded a moment later.

  Reversing the still-smoking gun, Chris reached into his pouch for a reload. Pushing the paper-wrapped combination of gunpowder, wadding, and ball into the barrel, he packed it down with his ramrod.

  The staccato of rifle fire echoed around him as he worked. He moved quickly, efficiently, but by the time he’d finished, men and women in medieval chainmail were already scrambling up rickety ladders they’d placed against the wall.

  “On your left!” shouted Mike.

  A helmeted head popped up in front of Chris. He fired from the hip, blowing a neat hole in the retro’s cheek. The man fell back, knocking another from the ladder as he tumbled to the hard earth below. More retros crowded below, jostling each other in their haste to reach the monastery’s defenders.

  With no time to reload, Chris tossed the muzzleloader aside and whipped out his sword.

  Mike followed suit, discarding his gun in favor of his fearsome axe.

  Chris rolled his shoulders, loosening the muscles of his chest and back. “Time to make the donuts.”

  Mike gave him an odd look. “What?”

  “Nothing.” A greasy hand grasped the battlements. Chris hacked down, nearly severing it at the wrist. “Just something I heard once.”

  A retro with a graying trident beard was next to gain the battlements.

  Mike’s axe whistled out, caving in the bearded man’s chest before exiting in a bloody spray. “You’re a weird one, Chris. That’s what I like about you.”

  Chris’s answering grin was tight. Weaving under a short spear capped with a point of dented black iron, he opened the wielder’s throat with a neat backhand.

  Shouts of alarm intermingled with cries of battle and pain along the entire wall.

  The watch commander, a balding man with a drinker’s paunch, shouted encouragements from the courtyard. “Hold them, men! The eggs are on the way!”

  Chris grimaced. As if any of them needed reminding. The retros outnumbered the defenders a hundred to one. If they didn’t hold the retros at the wall, the monastery would fall in minutes. The homemade nail bombs, called eggs by the soldiers, were the only reason the monastery still stood.

  Eggs, Chris thought, a stupid name for a device of death. Rachael would be horrified. She had always wanted chickens, mostly to see the chicks hatch. Why would anyone name a…

  A spear sliced Chris’s cheek. Snagging the shaft in his free hand, he snarled and rammed his sword into a man’s belly. The retro shrieked, tumbling from the wall into the courtyard. Three more took his place.

  As men died screaming, attackers and defenders alike, Chris thought of Rachael and chickens as he weaved and struck.

  The retros were good fighters, tough. Most of them trained for many hours a day in hand-to-hand combat. However, Chris had an edge. The quasi-religion of the retros devoted much to the archaic notion of honorable combat. They sought personal glory in fair, albeit brutal, battle.

  Chris fought dirty.

  A howling retro with a spiked mohawk swung his mace at Chris’s skull. Dropping to his knees, Chris jabbed his sword into mohawk’s groin. Twisting the blade, he yanked it out.

  A lighter blade slashed his shoulder.

  Chris spun on one knee, hamstringing the one who’d cut him. The fighter fell next to him, and Chris smashed the hilt of his sword into the retro’s throat.

  The retro gagged, looked at him. It was Rachael.

  Chris dropped his sword. “No. It can’t be.”

  Rachael stared at him, a faint smile touching her rose-colored lips. Her hair was spun auburn, long and healthy, just as it was before she got sick. She was alive! Pure joy covered Chris like sunshine breaking the clouds, drowning the clouds of death and pain in which he’d stood for far too long.

  “What are you doing, you idiot?” Mike roared. “Pick up your sword!”

  Chris blinked and Rachael disappeared, replaced by a sallow-skinned woman with reddish hair and bulging eyes glazing over in death. The world crashed in, suffocating him in a harsh wave of reality. It was a dream. It was all a dream.

  Five feet away, Mike fought a thick knot of retros that had cleared a space on the wall. Ignoring their blades, he hacked and slew like a berserker of legend. “Come on, you bastards! Come and get it!”

  Tears filled Chris’s eyes. “No. No.” Hot anger birthed in the ashes of joy, fierce as a volcano, as the sun. He scooped up his sword. “No!”

  A retro came up behind Mike with a dagger raised high. Chris put his sword into the man’s kidney, tore it free, and moved to the next.

  A brave fighter leapt forward, sticking a short sword into Mike’s side. With
out missing a beat, Mike cut the man’s head from his shoulders and kicked the corpse from his path.

  A deafening explosion rocked the stones beneath Chris’s feet. Steadying himself, he looked up and saw cast iron balls arcing up from the monastery tower.

  Fired by old-style catapults, the nail bombs came crashing down on the retros outside the monastery where they blossomed into violent explosions of hot shrapnel.

  In seconds, scores were torn to ragged pieces, and they were the lucky ones. In the hurricane of metal, hundreds were left maimed. Absent limbs, or blinded by the fire, their piteous cries competed with the explosions.

  More eggs fell, exploding just outside the walls.

  Speeding bits of metal struck bright sparks from the battlements near Chris. This was the point where he and other defenders usually took cover. But there were still retros on the wall.

  Mike cut and slew, seemingly unfazed by either explosions or shrapnel. He was covered in blood, and he was laughing.

  A hard fist of bitter shame closed on Chris’s heart. “Forgive me, Rachael.” Tightening his hold on his sword, he charged to Mike’s aid.

  ***

  “Don’t move,” Watson said.

  Chris tried not to grimace as the young surgeon sewed the gash in his cheek.

  After a few minutes, Watson snipped the end of the last stitch with a pair of surgical scissors. “There. That should do it.”

  Chris placed his tongue gingerly against the inside of his cheek. The gash tasted salty and raw, but the tiny bumps of stitching were small and evenly spaced. “Nice job, doc,” he said, wincing as the stitches pulled tight. Reaching for his shirt, he stood. “Guess I’ll be getting back to the wall.”

  “Not just yet.” Watson lifted a syringe from the counter. Removing the plastic cap, he tapped the side of the glass syringe to clear any bubbles.

  Chris made a sour face. Mike had warned him about this latest round of immunizations. “Is that really necessary, Joe?”

  Joe Watson, a twenty-something med student turned surgeon when the world went mad, smiled knowingly. “I’ll never understand you, Chris. You face the retros’ spears without flinching, but you’re petrified by the sight of a little needle.”

  “That may be true,” Chris retorted, “but I get to hit the retros back.”

  Joe chuckled as he rubbed Chris’s arm with an alcohol-soaked swab. “Well, don’t get too excited. This is the last for awhile.” He jabbed the syringe into Chris’s flesh and pushed down the plunger. “And, believe me, this is one shot you don’t want to skip.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Joe tossed the spent syringe onto the counter. “We lost more men today. More men than we can afford.”

  Chris shrugged on his shirt. “The night assault caught us by surprise, doc. By the time the eggs hit, the retros were already on the wall. Clearing off the straggles cost us.”

  Joe’s hand slapped down on the counter. A jar of cotton balls overturned, spilling white fluffs across the floor. “It wasn’t just the surprise, Chris, and you know it! The men are stretched too thin. There aren’t enough of you left to hold the wall.”

  Chris frowned. He’d known Joe for three years now, and he’d never seen the man so downhearted. Maybe he wasn’t the only one growing sick of all the killing. “We’re all tired, worn to the bone. On the wall today, I thought I saw...” He swallowed down on the sudden dryness in his throat. “Come on, Joe, it’s not the end of the world.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  An icy chill touched Chris’s spine. “All right, what’s going on?”

  Joe met his eyes for a moment, then quickly crossed the room and shut the door.

  “You’re starting to freak me out, Joe.”

  “Good. I’d hate to be the only one.” Joe shot a nervous glance toward the door. “This is between you and me, okay? If the committee knew we spoke...”

  “For cripes sake, just spill it already!”

  “We’re nearly out of nail bombs.”

  Chris’s stomach twisted into an uncomfortable knot. “Are we manufacturing more?”

  Joe shook his head. “We don’t have the materials. Even if we did, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the retros. They’re wearing us down, Chris, bleeding us dry one man at a time.”

  Chris considered the problem as he cinched his belt. Joe had a point. The monastery only had so many soldiers, and the retros were like a never-ending tide. Without reinforcements, they weren’t going to last much longer, eggs or no eggs.

  “I assume the committee has a plan,” he said at last. “Do we fight to the finish, or abandon the wall at night and sneak through the lines?”

  “Neither,” Joe replied seriously. “There hasn’t been word from another outpost in months. The knowledge stored in this facility is irreplaceable. The committee has determined that this monastery must be held, no matter the cost.”

  Chris sniffed. “I hate to rain on their parade, but it doesn’t look like the committee will have much say in the matter.”

  Joe licked his lips. “Steps are already being taken. For example, that injection I gave you, it’s a retrovirus.”

  “A what?”

  “A retrovirus,” Joe repeated. “It’s designed to counteract a—”

  The door flew open and a portly man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles stepped into the room. “Dr. Watson, you’re needed in surgery.”

  “Dr. Olsten,” Joe sputtered. “I was just—”

  Olsten’s eyes hardened. “Immediately,” he said frostily.

  Joe lowered his gaze. “Of course, doctor. Make sure you keep those stitches clean, Chris.”

  “No problem, doc. See ya.”

  Joe made a hasty exit, and Olsten turned his attention to Chris.

  “We need this room for patients, soldier. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  Chris smiled, but the grin never touched his eyes. “That’s right, I’m supposed to be protecting you and your egghead buddies from the raving lunatics outside.” He picked up his sword and walked toward the door. “I’d better be getting back to it.”

  Olsten frowned. “I’d watch that mouth of yours, soldier. Someday it’s going to land you in trouble, trouble no amount of your barbaric sword swinging can get you out of.”

  Chris’s eyes went cold. “Is that so?” His sword leapt from the sheath, the whistling point freezing in the air an inch from the doctor’s pasty throat. “That’s the nice thing about swords, doc. More often than not, ‘someday’ becomes ‘right now’.”

  His great jowls quivering, Olsten backed away. “Please,” he whimpered.

  Chris chuckled grimly. “To think I’m risking my life to protect spineless worms like you. At least the retros have guts.” Sheathing his blade in one smooth motion, he turned his back on the fat doctor and started down the hall. “If she were alive, I don’t know if she’d laugh or cry.”

  ***

  “Fire!”

  A popping staccato rang out from the wall. Thirty or so of the retros that were charging toward the monastery fell to the rippling fire.

  “Reload!” the watch commander bellowed.

  Reversing his rifle, Chris removed one of the five reloads he had left from his pouch. “I always wonder why the retros bother with these day attacks. We can see them coming a long way off. It gives us more time to shoot, and they hardly ever make it to the wall.”

  Mike shrugged as he tapped down his own reload with his ramrod. “Maybe they’re testing us. God knows, they have more men than we have bullets.”

  They and the rest of the defenders leveled their guns on the retros below.

  “Fire!”

  Chris squeezed the trigger and another cloud of grey smoke erupted from the barrel of his gun.

  “Reloa–Belay that, men! Eggs inbound! Take cover!”

  Chris and every other man on the wall hit the deck in a clattering wave. Covering his ears, he waited as pounding explosions shook the wall. When the explosions ceased, he counted to thirty before s
tanding up to take stock of the carnage.

  ***

  Outside the monastery, the retros had retreated, leaving smoking bodies and limbs strewn across the cratered earth. Some of the dismembered were crying out pitiably, others simply wept.

  Bile, hot and sour, rose up in Chris’s throat.

  Mike slapped his shoulder companionably. “One thing about retros, they’re sure good at dying.”