Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy)

by Jonathan R. Stanley

  Sabetha clenches her jaw.

  Ezra stands up slowly and says, “There are more forces at work in the city than us. We’ve lost perspective on a lot of things, but we can’t forget that.

  “You all have lost more in the past two nights than I will ever be capable of possessing, and for me to attempt to understand that would be a graver insult than dismissing it. But if you want to move quickly, or get something done, and especially if you want my help, you’re going to have to let go of the ‘what if’s’. Too much is at stake.”

  I storm out of the room. Roger follows me into the main library where I grab a cart of books and hurl it at a shelf, knocking it over and spilling tomes and papers everywhere. Roger stands dumbstruck at the far edge of the room. I have just desecrated what he has always seen as a hallowed temple.

  “All these books. All these fucking books and records!” I yell. “For what? What good did it ever do anyone?”

  “Would you calm down,” Sabetha yells, forcing her way past Roger as she enters the room. Corbin and lastly Ezra arrive behind her. From his arms, the cat lets out a growl like a panther.

  “What are we going to do about this?” Sabetha demands.

  I go to speak but realize I would only repeat Roger’s earlier question: What can we do?

  “We are going to do something, right?” She presses.

  “And piss her off even more?” I ask, motioning to the sky.

  “You can’t be serious! We thought we came here to regroup. You’re just going to lie down? Central is on the verge of mass rioting!”

  “It’s already begun,” Ezra says, nodding towards a small TV by the cash register. “Riots started at sunset.”

  “Maybe this is supposed to happen,” I throw back at them. “Maybe Gothica is supposed to die.”

  “Oh, nice, Delano. Our life is fucked, so why should the world go on, right?” Sabetha snaps.

  “I give up!” I scream at her and everyone goes silent.

  The paper in the ransacked books creaks so softly only I can hear it. The filaments in the light bulbs hum. My heart beats strongly but I feel like it’s empty, or beating softly inside a hollowed husk which makes it echo. I feel despair. I feel human again.

  Corbin and Roger stand there like children watching their parents fight for the first time. Suddenly Ezra says, very plainly, “You didn’t kill them, Delano.”

  Roger and Corbin flinch as I pull my gun on him. “One more word, and I swear I’ll find a way.”

  The cat growls again from his arms.

  Corbin tries to calm me down. “Maybe she’s right, Delano. Maybe it isn’t our fault.”

  Ezra doesn’t even break his gaze before replying to Corbin. “I didn’t say that. We all share fault by way of our lifelong complacency, but no one of us perpetrated this atrocity, nor willfully stood by to let it happen. Delano least of all.”

  I struggle with the gun, squeezing it so hard it shakes and the polycarbonate grip cracks. “What about the cults, huh? What about the hundreds of people I’ve killed in the past decade alone?” Tears have to be streaming down my face but I can’t even feel them. I feel too hot in my skin, like I’m still smoldering from the fire. “What about all the times I interfered? I started the first blood war for fuck’s sake! You don’t think that kharma piles up?”

  He nods. “I do. Enough to save you.”

  I scream at the top of my lungs and kick over another book shelf, breaking the frame in half. Standing there for a moment, I think about the pain on my body, the searing pain that runs along the surface of me. I want it to hurt so bad it reaches the pain I feel much deeper down, and I want them to connect and intertwine. In a few seconds, things become less hazy to me. I take in the smell of the open books and moldy paper. I think about Lori and the last time I saw her before she died. She seemed like she knew it was going to happen, like she had accepted it. Until this very moment, I hated her for that. But now I understand. I’m not as noble as she is. If anything it’s the exact opposite. This world is going to burn and I am going to die. I don’t care about anyone or anything anymore. I am truly free. There is nothing left holding me back, keeping me rooted to morality or sanity or the people of this city.

  I let out a controlled, calm breath and then nod to myself.

  Yes there is. I am more than the constraints which guided my life till now. More than those who pillage at the slightest lack of law. I know more about choice than that. I know the power of it better than anyone else. Like a priest turned atheist overnight, I have come to find that my convictions are rooted in something deeper than god, that they remain even in His absence, even if I don’t understand how yet.

  I stood by once. No more.

  I need a shower and to get out of these blood-soaked clothes. After shouldering past Ezra and heading up stairs, I get into the bathroom where I hear Roger, downstairs, ask, “So what’s going to happen?”

  Sabetha answers in my absence. “We’re going back into Central. Get some rest.”

  The following day proves thoroughly useful in calming tempers. We feel hidden and isolated, safe from the distant chaos. I spend the day in Ezra’s basement using his workshop to alter my sword. It gives me time to finally make that adjustment I’ve been thinking about doing for so long.

  My idea, which becomes a reality by evening, is to replace the handle of my khopesh sword with a framework that will hold my pistol. The handle of the gun replaces the handle of the sword and the barrel becomes a forward protruding hilt. I can remove the gun and replace it with the normal hand grip or combine them into a gun-sword. As I take off the faded, welding face-shield and set down the welding torch, I begin to wonder about the true nature of kharma. Everything seems so contrary to what it has always been, or at least what we thought it had always been.

  Corbin disturbs my thought at the foot of the basement stairs. “After we help you with the riots,” he begins, “Roger and me want to find the source of this. Ezra’s clairvoyance might find clues in the clouds, but this has to have a source here in Gothica.”

  “A source?” I ask suspiciously. This was not Corbin’s idea.

  “Yeah. Ezra and I were talking about it. Well, Ezra was talking about it. He said it’s like the water cycle.”

  “The water cycle,” I repeat patronizingly.

  “Yeah, you know: water evaporates, goes into the clouds, then it rains? Well, it’s like that with kharma too. So there has to be a pollutant down here that’s causing this extreme backlash.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose and squint. Yeah, I think to myself, Gothica’s hundred-million residents. With a shake of my head I reply, “Well, get going then. No need to waste any more time here.”

  Corbin is shocked. “But what about the riots?”

  “Sabetha and I will handle it. To be clear though, I think you’re on the hunt for a unicorn.”

  Corbin looks at the floor, embarrassed by his own gullibility and the enthusiasm he showed.

  “But at the very least, you can do some recon while you’re looking. We need to know about the cults and how the rest of the city is reacting.”

  “I hate to do this to you.”

  “For me,” I say. “We need to reestablish some sort of network – get a broader view of the city, and Ezra meditating won’t do that. You’re more level headed than me right now anyway.”

  He’s smiles, trying to be modest. “Ah, that’s not true. You just want to be the one to declare martial law.”

  “It’s been a life-long dream.”

  “I figure Roger an’ I’ll start here and sweep south-west till we reach Sogot, then circle north into Central. With any luck we’ll arrive with some answers.”

  “Good luck,” I say.

  “You too.”

  At sunset, Roger and Corbin leave in their van. They’ll go back to their house to stock up on supplies and then begin the “search.” Betha and I prepare to depart as well. I take my sword out of the vice and walk casually from the basement to the front door
, giving Ez little more than a nod before pulling it open.

  “Delano,” he says, and I stop and turn. “It’s a struggle for balance.”

  My mind is foggy and I’m not in the mood for philosophy. “What is?” I ask tiredly.

  “Everything.”

  I shrug it off and get into the car, but despite myself, his words stick with me. Sabetha gives him a proper goodbye and then slides into the driver’s seat.

  Hours later, lying awake in the car, I feel raw and entirely overwhelmed. I can’t rationalize it, blame it on manifestations or kharma or fate, or even someone else, but I’m afraid. I am simply afraid – the way a child would be and, as I am coming to feel about all things, the way a mortal would.

  This long forgotten fear though, is freeing. I feel empowered by it – the immediacy it promotes – and my chance to risk everything for a revolution. At the next gas station I pick up a pay phone and make some calls. The first person I contact is Val to tell him we’re on our way home, and to meet us there. Next, I call Lezar, who agrees to let us hire Bullworth. We’ll need him.

  “Lezar was happy to hear we’re alive,” I say to Sabetha as we leave the gas station.

  “Both of us?” she asks dryly, dabbing a few drops of type o negative blood off her blouse with a napkin.

  I give a small laugh, more like a sigh, and then begin to think about strategies for containing the riots. After only a few minutes though, Sabetha interrupts my thoughts. “Delano?”

  I remain silent, wondering if she’ll need me to respond before she continues. After a couple seconds of tension, I sense her insecurity and respond. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think more of those things will attack you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they did what they were supposed to… maybe they didn’t finish the job. Either way, we keep moving forward.” As if the sounds of gunfire and sirens as we reenter Central weren’t enough, my somber tone does little to reassure her.

  Fifteen

  We hug the coastal streets and then cut inland towards our apartment, avoiding most of the centralized chaos but still catching glimpses of anarchy on the streets. Isolated incidents of looting and reckless violence are already spreading to the outskirts of the borough while fires glow on the outskirts of Neo Gothica.

  Nearing the apartment we see a shootout inside a fast food restaurant between two groups of contractors, just getting off site. A big burly guy is inside with two hideous-looking teenagers, one of which looks like a badger with messed up teeth. Maybe they suspect him of being something. Whatever the reason the three are gunned down by four other men. Most Gothicans own metal but now it seems they’re carrying, even on their errands, and aren’t hesitant to pull at the slightest suspicion.

  Back at the apartment, we pick up Val and head back to the streets.

  “So where are we going?” Val asks leaning forward from the back seat.

  “The bank. We need to buy a workhorse. Something armored.”

  “For what?” He thinks were planning a job, a mission, a single task.

  “Martial law.”

  He sinks back into his seat, shocked. A few seconds later he sits forward again, “I know some people.”

  “I’m counting on it. We’ll need equipment and vehicles but nothing from my old contacts. I want to keep a low profile for as long as possible.” I hand him a list scribbled down on the back of a gas station receipt.

  At the bank I request a private room with a phone and sit Val in it. The bank manager, who I have known for his whole life, empties the safes into duffle bags which we load into the car. He wipes the security tapes as soon as we leave.

  “Head to Garrison Private Security,” Val says looking over a piece of bank stationary on which he wrote some notes.

  For what I have agreed to pay, Garrison PS, a small security company, agrees to hand over their two vehicles, an armored truck and an armored limo, on the spot. We drive the company’s armored truck and limo, with the logos hastily spray-painted black, off the lot. Betha takes Rolla back to the apartment to meet Bullworth while Val and I take the new vehicles to a place at the docks. There, I pose as a wealthy investor looking to outfit my body guards for “the impending war with Satan’s army,” as the sensationalist media has been calling it. I introduce Val as my head of security.

  We’re taken onto a moth-balled cargo ship where the dense fog that covers the coast of Gothica at all times – the reason for one-in-three ships running aground en route from north to south – has settled on every deck. We make our way to the forward hold, a massive open space three stories deep with cranes on the top deck overhead.

  I survey the dank, eerie space. Much of the wooden crates have begun to mold and the poorly kept metal shipping containers show signs of rust. “Get some men down here, would you?” I ask the seller snootily. He’s an average ilk with a wool cap rolled up over his ears and a blue overcoat.

  A group of workers arrive and help Val as he takes what we want and loads it into wooden crates on a platform suspended from a crane. I keep up the act, prodding at the men to make sure the platform is balanced so when the boom raises it out of the hold and onto the dock, nothing falls off. I simply won’t be held financially responsible were such an event to occur.

  The first crate contains six AK-47 assault rifles with ten-thousand jacketed hollow point rounds and three-hundred-thirty magazines. Next, six Thompson submachine guns with round drum magazines, ten modded 1911 .45 caliber pistols with six-inch barrels and fourteen-round clips and five-thousand jacketed hallow point rounds. Thirdly, a crate with an assortment of mountable optics, sound and flash suppressors, forward grips, speed loaders, two cleaning kits and a set of gun-smithing tools. And in a crate of its own, a six shot, revolving grenade launcher, with 36 tear gas rounds, and 12 high explosive.

  If for any reason, Val should have to neutralize a target from a distance, I get him a Barrett “light-fifty” bull pup sniper rifle. Being a rare find, the seller has only one, so I can’t double up as I’d like to. That is to say, if Val breaks it, he doesn’t get to play with it anymore. The seller also has just one box of 25 depleted-uranium rounds to go with it which should come in handy if our target is behind… well anything less than a couple feet of concrete. Hopefully we won’t need any more ammo for that beastly instrument, especially since I’d like to keep collateral damage to a minimum – hence 36 tear gas grenades, and only 12 high explosive. If we never use any of the big stuff, I’ll feel a whole lot better.

  While looking around, I see two boxes of zinc-powder, door-breeching rounds for a 12 gauge. I have a three shot, pistol-grip pump at home for just such occasions, but I might as well get the extra ammo while I’m here, so I point it out to one of the workers. As for the heavy gun I intend to have mounted on the armored car, I pick out a Cynthecorp military grade belt fed medium machine gun. I get 25 boxes of disintegrating-link ammunition, along with a swivel mount.

  Into the next three crates, we cram the following: 15 fixed blade fighting knives; 2 differentially-tempered katanas; 2 blackened, bolo machetes; 2 fiberglass-stock fireman’s axes; 4 crowbars; 20 four-cell aluminum LED flashlights; 2 magnesium strips with strikers; 6 thirty-foot spools of varying speed combustible fuses; 16 road flares; 48 glow sticks; 4 impact resistant, six-volt lanterns; 1 riot shield, 6 pair of Kevlar gloves, 2 “cocktail” boxes of pain killers, common prescriptions, antibiotics, insulin, epinephrine, morphine, anesthetics, and diagnostic testing solutions and strips; 24 five-hundred milliliter bags of saline and 24 of dextrose solutions; 12 two-hundred-fifty milliliter units of AB positive plasma; 4 eight ounce bottles of rubbing alcohol.

  2 trauma kits each containing: an AED; hemostatic compounds; sutures; needles and dissolvable thread; gauze pads; dressings; biohazard bags and bins; disposable razors; anti-bacterial soap; medical tape; ace bandages; oral airways; an assortment of scalpels, forceps, clamps, shears, and a bone saw; battery operated, fingertip pulse oximeters with alarms for flat liners; portable blood pressure moni
tors; disposable thermometer strips; flexible aluminum splints; assorted syringes, tubes, a mini centrifuge, and tourniquets; cotton balls and swabs; two stethoscopes; cold compresses; latex gloves; face masks; aprons; a gurney, and one of those lights on a stick the doctor uses to look in your ear.

  “Anything else?” asks the seller.

  “Bring me another pallet.” I tell him, and twirl my hand clockwise as a sign to the crane operator to raise the first platform.

  Binoculars, collapsible shovels, hand-held multitools, Mylar and wool blankets, radios, head sets, batteries of every kind, battery chargers, handcuffs, zip ties, bull horns, nylon rope, chain, pad locks, harnesses, electrical tape, duct tape – lots and lots of duct tape, spray paint, hazmat suits, gas masks, two home tool kits with 24v screw guns, two mechanical tool kits, fifty pounds of two-and-half-inch wood screws, an assortment of nut-washer-bolt sets of varying length, a circular saw, a carpenter’s all-in-one tool, oxy-acetylene apparatus with welding and cutting torches, fire extinguishers, run-flat tires for the truck and limo, and water ionizing water filters.

  “I’m looking into buying some more materials,” I say as the second pallet rises out of the hold.

  “It would be easier to take the ship back with you. I’m cleaned out for god knows how long.”

  “Can I trust you to acquire some more mundane equipment to be shipped to locations I specify.”

  “Money up front, no guarantees on anything strange.”

  “Just one odd request,” I reply. “I simply want to have fewer parties to deal with, you understand. I’ll pay for the convenience.”

  “Start with the strange item.”

  “CSG34 Polly-mor armor plating, in this quantity, to an address I will specify within the next twelve hours.”

  He nods in agreement. “And?”

  “Two gasoline generators, six five gallon steel gasoline containers, a forty gallon hot water heater, one of each of the tools on this list along with a pallet each of the rest of the household goods also listed there.” I hand him a sheet of paper which he looks over twice then tacitly agrees to. “As soon as we agree on a price, I can send those other crates down to the dock to be loaded,” he says.