Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy)

by Jonathan R. Stanley

  I will not make a mistake like that again.

  Val and I have to wait to get the armored truck until sunset. We drive in the limo to the second garage where the shop owner springs a new condition on us. If we want it now, he’s going to have it towed to a nearby junkyard. He turned that truck into a tank and doesn’t want anyone tracing its destructive path back to him. I agree and follow him to the junk yard, where, hidden by piles of trash and scrap metal, we begin to outfit the truck vault with supplies we brought in the limo.

  Virtually all portable medical supplies will be stored in the limousine while most of the weapons get secured to the inside walls of the armored car. Val stands in the center of the vault and inspects the shop’s handiwork. The ceiling has had a rectangular box welded to it with the bottom open. Inside is the Cynthecorp issue chaingun and mount. Along the roof, just aft, is a pocket hatch that slides open – like a moon roof but three-inch thick steel. Standing inside on a suspended railing, a person can unlock the hatch for the machinegun and lift it out of its compartment. The rig’s not perfect, since without climbing out onto the roof, it can’t sight targets forty-five degrees directly behind, and it has a three-sixty blind spot if targets get too close, but I then again I don’t see it retreating from many situations or being easily overrun. Val checks that the hatches are properly lubricated and then runs through the process of readying the gun several times. Finally he lays a length of ammunition into the adjacent container, locks the receiver bolt back, opens the case, puts the end round in the tray groove, closes the case, and drops the bolt forward.

  As I start the limo, Sabetha pulls up in Rolla with Bullworth. He gets out and stretches his legs as Val crawls through a small doorway between the cab and the vault and gets into the driver’s seat of the armored truck. Bullworth gets in next to him with a fire axe across his lap.

  We head for a section of town I scouted earlier. It’s been hit hard once, and I figure change has already left its scar. I don’t have much more criteria, but I figure if people see chyldrin and gazers eating their neighbors followed by chyldrin and gazers defending their homes, it might make the kind of impression we’re going for.

  Before even arriving in our destined section of town though, we can see orange-lit smoke pluming over the horizon of rooftops. “It’s a big one,” Sabetha says to herself as we get closer.

  “Shit...” We’re late.

  Half a block of row-houses has caught fire and created a massive brick stove. The entire neighborhood is at risk if the fire company doesn’t put out the blaze soon, and as we arrive, we can see one fire engine and six ilk firemen feverishly attempting to stifle the flames at the edge. It’s a hopeless battle. I radio Val in the truck from the mounted two-way on my dashboard. “Stay here till the firemen have things under control.”

  We’re all glued to the window, Sabetha especially. The fire reflects in her eyes and pangs of empathy burn inside her. I watch the firemen for a moment and somehow know they are not doing this because someone in the neighborhood has a contract with the fire company. The free-market model upon which Gothica is based would be hard pressed to explain such an occurrence. Looking at the building with my supernatural sight I can spot several asphyxiated ilk being burned alive. I put the radio to my mouth. “It’s too late for this one.”

  Suddenly, I become aware of a gathering presence. A large group of supernaturals are arriving across the street through a wide alley way. I hurl the v-eight into a frenzied burn out and spin the limo around so that it’s blocking off half of the alley with the length of the vehicle. Before I have to say a word, Val follows behind me and walls off the rest of the street with the armored truck. Sabetha stops Rolla in the street and gets out. She walks over to the firemen who are looking at us defiantly, two of them holding axes, prepared to defend the other four on the hoses. They’ve been attacked before, but won’t go down without a fight. “Stay on the hoses,” she commands then puts her back to them to face the barricade we’ve created.

  Inside the alley, a horde of chyldrin continues to gather. They look angry that someone is putting out their bonfire, and even more angry that they have just been blocked in.

  Val throws open the top hatch of the armored car and emerges with the chain gun pointing into the alley. It gives some of them pause. I walk around to the front of the truck and see Bullworth emerging. The phase of the moon won’t let him transform to full millitus, but as a warrior, he has honed his ability to embrace his beast none-the-less. Though still human, his skin looks like a thin cloth stretched taught over the fibers of his muscles. His chest is covered in fur and his eyes display a bestial hunger. In one of his clawed, hairy hands he holds his axe like hatchet, the other hand flexing open and closed like its hungry.

  “Haven’t you heard?” one among the crowd yells. “The clouds are falling. We do what we want now.”

  I slide my gun through the handle of my khopesh sword and secure it with an extended magazine. Time to see if it works. “Kill them,” I say. “We need to make an example.”

  I level the gun sword sideways at the one who spoke and drop him with two rounds to the head. The second shot can’t be heard though, Val’s machine gun drowning out all other noise with its sustained percussion of thunder. I take the moment of surprise and hop over the limo and into the alley.

  To avoid the spray, the chyldrin scurry along the walls like cockroaches and leap into the air. Three aim to land on Val. To their surprise and the relief of those still in the alley, his stream of bullets lifts up and follows the most immediate threat. The high velocity bullets punch right through the soft flesh targets, creating apple sized vortexes, miniature explosions, inside of the tissue. The voluminous holes created in the undead carcasses incapacitate two of the chyldrin but the third lands just behind the arc of the mount’s reach. Val quickly drops the gun, which automatically falls back into its recess, and ducks into the vault of the armored car. He grabs the handle on the hatch and begins to slide it close, but the chyld gets its fingers inside at the last second. Having predicted this event in my designs, I had the hatch close on a handcuff-like mechanism that only lets it open if the person inside disengages a track of thick steel hooks. Knowing that he is safe but in the hopes of preserving the integrity of the truck, Val grabs a machete off the vault wall and calmly cleaves the through chyld’s fingers. He then closes the hatch, drops down off the ledge, pulls an AK47 off the wall and thrusts it through a gun port.

  Outside, I raise my weapon and begin to weave in and out of people, the blade carving into the collective body of the crowd. I use triangular foot patterns to work the outside angles of my opponents, gripping wrists, shoulders and arms with my free hand and manipulating them just long enough to use my short sword for a crippling blow. Sometimes I go for the head and neck, but mostly I take off an arm at the elbow, or a leg at the knee, then leave whomever to bleed out.

  Experimenting with the gun sword to the rattle of Val’s AK, I quickly find that my new weapon works just as planned. I can use the trigger guard to roll the sword over into a dagger hold or even spin it around for a saw blade effect that is very effective for bypassing a blocked weapon. When facing the only remotely skilled fighter in the group, I end the clinch by simply pulling the trigger a few times and then opening him across the abdomen.

  Bullworth’s approach to combat is less precise but effective nonetheless. He reaches out and pulls back chunks of whatever his hybrid claw-hands find, while simultaneously splitting bodies with his axe. This grip and rip style of fighting is utterly stomach churning to watch, for it holds back nothing. Bull is like a chef mashing meatballs in his hands with no qualms about what his paws happen to catch. Far from frenzied, he is cold to the process, desensitized to the devastation he wreaks on others.

  His thumb, by chance, slips inside a chyld’s mouth along the cheek. The other fingers wrap around the thick muscles near the spine at base of the neck. With leverage from the axe handle along the temple, Bullworth pulls off the side
of the chyld’s face, the flesh ripping as easily as a plastic garbage bag with a snare in it.

  As a result of his increasingly horrifying appearance – a massive axe wielding beast, covered in gore – I find myself facing the majority of the now terrified throng.

  The few that get past us, once intent on killing the firemen, are stopped, nearly without effort, by Sabetha and her red-tinted nails. She uses her outstretched fingers like bladed fans or sometimes like a snakes head, striking out suddenly to cripple an opponent with deep puncture wounds. She keeps away from grappling but will gladly slip her hand between ribs, wrist deep. Most opponents don’t see it the first time. It looks like a simple strike but then a second afterwards, a geyser of blood and organs shoots out of the gouge.

  The battle quickly wanes but I can’t let them surrender as much as they beg for it. I drag my blade down one chyld who has dropped to her knees and cut her outstretched arm down the middle to the shoulder; three fingers on one side, two on the other. Bullworth doesn’t stop either, searching about the blood soaked alley for those I had left to bleed and ending their existences with a decisive chop or three.

  A second fire engine soon arrives and after some reassurance from the first crew, they all begin to contain the fire. We let them to do their work, then drive to a nearby carwash and hose down the vehicles and Bullworth before patrolling for the rest of the night. There are a few more kills and a chase, but no major fires or large engagements. We can only hope this remains the trend.

  Just before dawn, as the city is once again filled with smoke from extinguished flames, we return home. I think back to yesterday and how I felt when I first looked at the smoke along the streets and the scars of change. I think about who I was yesterday – the merit of all my actions up until that morning – and who I am today, and I smile.

  Seventeen

  “Things are not going well, Ez. How about you? Taking some aspirin for your headaches? I know how taxing meditation can be,” I sneer into the phone.

  “Delano, I’m trying to help.”

  “Well, stop. I have fires starting all over central and from what Corbin tells me, Sogot isn’t far away.”

  “I know.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “To tell you that this is a war of kharma.”

  “I’m well aware – being one of the people brave enough to risk his own.”

  “Listen, we will all be required to fight, but this conflict cannot be won by fighting alone. It’s more important now that you help Corbin.”

  I pull the receiver away from my ear and look at it disbelievingly, then hang up as he continues talking.

  I run my hands through my hair and sigh so deep I have to take a seat. Val sits across the kitchen table. He’s got several cases of ammunition in front of him and is using a spring-depressor to quickly load magazines.

  “Anything new?” Sabetha asks, coming in through the front door with Bullworth. It’s getting close to his bite phase, and him being able to transform into a millitus is about the only good news I can think of.

  “Corbin and Roger have made their way through West and now South Gothica. They called earlier to confirm that everything is going to shit, and – no surprise – there’s no single source.”

  “What about his calculations? Anything enlightening?” She asks.

  “The data he’s collected has a larger margin of error than anyone would like, but yes, we have gleaned a few things from his statistics. As it turns out, this is a lot less like the Blood Wars than we had anticipated.”

  “In what way?” She takes off her coat and hangs it in the closet.

  “Well that dissenting opinion we were hoping for in Lezar is rampant,” I reply. “But in everyone. Chyldrin want to kill gazers and vice versa, and of course the ilk are fighting to survive, but it’s not a strictly biological split. Chyldrin also want to kill other chyldrin, gazers, gazers, and so on. Far from the Blood Wars’ unifying effect on the species, there’s complete division. No one sees this as a war of two armies; one winning necessitating the other’s destruction.”

  Val chimes in. “Well that’s good though, isn’t it?”

  “Hardly. With the Blood Wars, you had a few main leaders to convince or kill to end things. The way it looks now, each person, each family or at most, neighborhood feels like the rest of the world is against them. This has become an entirely different battle and if I had to guess it’s in large part because the entire ilk population is involved. They are by far the most populous and their fear translates into a lot of kharma.”

  “How does this affect our plans?” Sabetha wants to know.

  “You will keep up with patrols.”

  She squints at me. “While you do what, exactly?”

  “Go investigate the biggest influence on the ilk population.”

  “The media?” Val says, shocked.

  I shake my head no, then point upwards.

  Sabetha blurts it out. “Cynthecorp? Delano please, getting rid of Cynthecorp isn’t going to do anything.”

  “I’m flattered, but I don’t think I can topple Cynthecorp by myself – not in a day at least. This is strictly recon. We need to know what they’re up to since the attack on Pantheon.”

  “Delano,” Sabetha persists. “You know how they are. They’re not going to risk anything for Gothicans.”

  “I know. That’s what I’m afraid of. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  Finally, a task at which I am guaranteed to be successful: reconnaissance. With pockets full of money I take to the street. I hold up at gun point the first car to pass me, discreetly hand the owner a stack of bills and confiscate his car. In a few hours I’m back in Neo Gothica and shortly afterwards, I’m outside one of the old safe houses. It’s been sectioned off with crime scene tape and a few PIPERs are patrolling the upstairs. I grab some equipment from under their noses and then head to the basement.

  Trying to sneak in through a checkpoint along the emerald rim briefly crosses my mind, but I can’t risk getting rejected, captured, or killed. All the top agents are combing surrounding areas so I’ll bet they have Hoplite patrolling the fence. And I’m not going to fuck with even one of those guys alone.

  No, instead, I decided back during the car ride that my answer would lay underground. The safe houses don’t have secret passage ways leading into Neo Square or anything, but what they do have is a sewage hookup. Anything going under the fence, big enough to walk through, is as guarded as the topside – in fact more so in case of tunnel dweller attacks, but all I need is enough room to crawl through… slither even.

  After sloshing around the sewers outside the edge of Neo Square for a couple hours, I find a suitable pipe and judge it to head towards what’s left of Pantheon Theatre. I cut the elbow joint off the pipe with a torch, secure the torch to my chest with duct tape and then slip inside.

  I’m not claustrophobic, but after about three hundred feet in, unable to touch my knees to my chest, wiggle my arms forward or backwards from my shoulders, or to lift my nostrils more than a few inches above the sewage, and I’m starting to get a little… uncomfortable. After cutting through a few metal grates, with great difficulty, I might add, I gladly reach the end. I was lucky. I could have hit a sharp turn and had to slither backwards to get out, but by the grace of the consciousness I find myself in an overflow tank. Many more, smaller pipes lead out of the tank in all directions.

  My feet touch down on the soft things that settle at the bottom of sewers and I stand up, waist deep. Above me is a passage leading to a manhole cover and, with a little more exertion, I find myself peeking down a busy avenue of Neo Square from under a big, round, metal cover. Unable to emerge from the middle of the street without attracting a whole lot of attention, I wait there till morning when traffic starts to back up. When a box truck stops over me, I pull myself under it and then, a few blocks later roll out into the back alley behind a row of restaurants. The smell of dumpsters will mask me till I can clean myself off.


  By mid-morning I’m in a new suit with a stolen ID and just outside Cynthecorp Tower. Unfortunately, Hoplite, the most elite squadron of Cyncurity is guarding the complex – not the emerald rim like I had originally thought. I won’t be able to get in. At least not through the lobby…

  The following morning, I buy a limo ride back to the apartment and spend the interim going over the files I’ve collected. Though the majority of them are downright boring when looked at individually, they reveal a rather disturbing trend when read together; disturbing enough for me to use the car phone to call Ezra.

  I get back to the apartment by ten AM and considering that I haven’t slept much more than a few hours since the reckoning, I down a handful of sleeping pills with a whiskey bottle chaser and pass out. My metabolism requires nothing less. Sabetha impatiently wakes me just after sunset. “So?” she says, tapping her foot.

  I wipe my eyes and sit up in bed. Val is in the doorway polishing a pistol while Sabetha waits by my dresser. She looks pissed.

  “All right, gimme a minute,” I grumble.

  In the kitchen, over a bowl of my favorite cereal, I tell them my findings. “Cynthecorp has no idea what’s going on or what to do about it. They’ve fallen back on the Theta Contingency.”

  “Oh shit,” Val says, his face going dead. He used to work for cyncurity, so he knows what this means.

  “What is the Theta Contingency?” Bullworth asks.

  Val answers quickly. “It puts all agents on independent standby. They’re to act as if there’s been a violent coup of the government and every channel has been compromised. All agents are to use guerilla warfare to disrupt any attempts by supernaturals to establish any form of control while other aspects of the corporation re-establish power.”

  “I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” I say, to Val’s stammering shock.