The Last Survivors (Book 6): The Last Conquest

by Bobby Adair

Melora sighed. "There was another reason I wanted to count the bodies."

  Ivory stopped what he was doing and paid closer attention. "Were you looking for a relative?"

  "No. All of Ella's family—my family—are dead. They were killed when Blackthorn spiked them." Melora sighed. "I was looking for someone else."

  "Who?"

  "Bray."

  Ivory furrowed his brow. "You think he might've come back to Brighton?"

  "I don't think; I know. I saw him when we were out in those woods shooting at the demons, Ivory. He was on a horse. I don't think you saw him, but I did."

  "He was fighting the demons?" Ivory asked with surprise. "Or what was he doing there?"

  "I don't know. I only saw him for a few moments. But I shot him, Ivory. I shot him, for what he did to Ella." Melora watched Ivory's reaction. She lowered her head, looking sideways at Ivory. She seemed guiltier for keeping her secret than for what she'd done.

  "Most of the wounded were consumed by demons," Ivory said, as he thought about it. "He probably died."

  "I didn't find his body when we were out looking. That's why I was out there. I wanted to make sure he was dead."

  Ivory nodded slowly as he took a seat across from her.

  "He deserved it, for what he did," Ivory said, taking her hands. "He killed your mother. That's reason enough." Ivory watched her. "I still feel bad about Ella, about William—"

  "Don't, Ivory. " Melora looked away before she could finish the sentence. "I can't talk about it anymore. Jingo was right. There was nothing more we could do for William. Just like he said. But I think there are things we can do here."

  Ivory reached across the table, taking her hand. "I agree with you." He looked around the room, then at the table, remembering the conversation he'd had with Beck. "A while ago, Beck offered me a way into the Academy. I wasn't convinced, at the time, but with Jingo here, it might be different. He has hundreds of year's worth of knowledge. He's like an encyclopedia."

  "A what?"

  Ivory laughed. "I'll explain it to you, some time."

  Melora nodded. "You'd better." She smiled.

  "I want to believe things will be better for us here."

  "I hope they will be."

  "We should get some sleep. We haven't gotten more than a few hours, in the past few days."

  "I think you're right," Melora said. "I don't even remember what a bed looks like."

  Chapter 108: Fitz

  The world was blanketed in a layer of fresh white snow. The clouds were the color of dirty cotton pulled over the sky, hiding the blue and the sinking afternoon sun.

  Only the people of Brighton brought color to the world, wrapped in their winter clothes, with cheeks red from the cold as they massed in the square.

  Over the heads of the women, men, and children, a haze of white hung in the air as their breath froze into fog, like the quiet hate that murmured between them, perhaps afraid to voice it out loud, perhaps ashamed of the choice they'd each made.

  Branches and twigs covered the Cleansing platform, where generations of women had been shamed in their nudity before a thousand leering men as they were fondled and judged, crying out of fear that the pyre might take their loved ones. It was the place where Fitz pierced Tenbrook's intimate flesh with a razor-edged sword to make him feel the emasculating retribution of Brighton's oppressed meek, showing him their anger and strength.

  For every woman in Brighton, the Cleansing Platform was the deepest pit of Brighton's shameful soul.

  Father Winthrop stood at the top, not presiding over the affair, but tied naked to a pole for all to see. His face was a mask of scabs and oozing bites centered by the gaping hole of his sinus cavities where his nose used to be. Most of his fingers and toes had been bitten off. Whatever parts of him weren't scabbed were bruised. What wasn't bruised was crusted in filth, mud from the battlefield, or filth of his own making.

  Even with a nearly unrecognizable face, everyone knew the body on the pole belonged to Father Winthrop, Councilman, Bishop of Brighton, erstwhile deity, self-proclaimed god of war, who hung there like a captured animal, suffering the vindictive blood lust of thousands.

  The crowd stood far back from the pile of wood. They'd all seen their share of pyre deaths. They knew how those flames could singe anyone who dared loiter too close.

  Only Fitz stood in that barren circle, one woman, alone with her torch, to face that grotesque monster. It was her choice, her responsibility to take the final step away from Brighton's dark past into its ambiguous future. She had to touch flame to wood and make it real. It was the moment the door behind closed and the path ahead opened up.

  She suffered no qualms about what was about to happen. She wanted it. The people of Brighton chose it.

  With the massive pile of green wood they'd collected, Fitz knew they wanted something more than just death.

  They wanted Winthrop to suffer, and to suffer long.

  Everyone in Brighton knew that dry kindling and seasoned logs burned the fastest, making the hottest flame. Everyone was an expert in pyre preparation, even those who had never built one. They all knew dry wood paved the quickest path to death once the flames started.

  And they all knew where to place that first torch. Lighting dry wood all around the base would start the fire in earnest, and bring the fastest death, minimizing the victim's suffering.

  But to put the torch at the top of the woodpile, especially a green woodpile, was a punishment saved for the Council's most hated victims. That kind of fire might burn all through the afternoon, slowly roasting instead of immolating, taking hours for its flames to roar hot enough to kill.

  Alone, with the torch in her hand and the snowflakes drifting slowly down, Fitz climbed to the top of the pile, taking care where she placed each foot, making sure each step was solid.

  With one eye swollen shut, Winthrop watched the torch out of the other. His breath hissed through his gaping sinuses, and he moaned words in a language no one spoke.

  After climbing as high as she could venture, Fitz stopped, close enough to smell the stench of a man shitting down his legs, close enough that the puss and blood blew out in a mist from the wound on Winthrop's face and moistened her skin.

  Enough demon gore had splattered Fitz the day before that such things no longer made her squeamish.

  "Winthrop, do you understand what is about to happen?"

  Winthrop's good eye spun wildly in its socket as he tried to find lucidity. After a long, uncomfortable moment, the eye settled on Fitz and Winthrop's head leaned toward her.

  "Do you understand why you've earned this?" asked Fitz.

  Winthrop's mouth slopped open and closed. His lips formed shapes around silent words, and then he stiffened.

  For a moment, Fitz thought he'd just lucked into dying.

  And then he spoke.

  "I know you," Winthrop chortled, surprising Fitz with his sudden coherence. "You foul slut. You're no banshee. No Blackthorn ghoul. You're that stupid whore that Franklin burdened me with."

  "I am what your malice made me," Fitz told him, feeling not anger but resolve. She waved her empty hand at the survivors of the war, who were all spread out in the square, all fixated, quiet. "We are all what you made us: dirt scratchers, pig chasers, ignorant peasants, and worthless whores. But we are Brighton. We're better than you. We are tomorrow's light."

  Fitz held the flame close to Winthrop's face to give him a taste of what was to come. "You are yesterday's ash."

  He wailed.

  She dropped the torch onto the green wood near the top of the pile and turned to climb down, not looking back as Winthrop bellowed and the fire crackled on green twigs, slowly, ever so slowly, spreading.

  Fitz crossed the width of the barren stone circle around the pyre and only turned around to watch when she was among her people.

  Everyone looked on, patient.

  They waited.

  Eventually, the flames, small and yellow, found their way to lick Winthrop's da
maged feet and he screamed in a shriek more shrill than any young girl.

  Chapter 109: Oliver

  At the edge of the square, sitting on the steps of the Temple as the wind caught in the stone walls and whipped white flakes and gray ash around them, Oliver and Jingo watched black smoke rise into the sky, the result of Winthrop's fat burning off in the fire.

  He'd screamed for such a long time, longer than anyone Oliver had ever heard on the pyre, so long that it made Oliver feel ashamed for taking part in such a cruel spectacle by having added his own green branch.

  "Have you ever seen somebody burn?" Oliver asked.

  "Not since the fall," answered Jingo, as he adjusted his hood over his head. "But back then, and in the years since, I believe I've witnessed every kind of cruelty a man can do to a man."

  "Does it make you feel bad?"

  Jingo nodded.

  "Everyone must feel bad about it, right?" Oliver asked.

  Jingo said, "Not always, but they should."

  "Then why do it?"

  "Why do we do such things?" asked Jingo. "Why did you do it?"

  "I added a branch to the pile this morning when I heard they'd burn him if the pyre was big enough. I sat here most of the day, watching the pile of wood grow." Oliver clasped his hands together and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, still unable to take his eyes off Winthrop's flaming corpse. "I didn't feel wicked when I did it. Winthrop was a terrible, cruel, disgusting pig of a man. He's done things to me, to Franklin, to Fitz… He doesn't deserve to be alive."

  "But?" Jingo asked.

  "I didn't think I would feel so bad when Winthrop burned," said Oliver. "I thought it would feel like all the other times, when I looked at the clouds and pretended it wasn't happening. But I helped put Winthrop on the pyre. I put my branch in the pile. That means I'm partially responsible."

  "That's okay," Jingo told him. "It's good that you feel this way."

  "Why?"

  "Because it means you are human," answered Jingo. "A good person. You feel empathy for others. Some of these others feel it, too, I hope. It means Brighton doesn't have to be a cruel place that kills its people. It means there's hope for the future."

  "It hurts when you see people burn," said Oliver. "When you hear them scream. Growing up with it, it seemed normal. I hated it, but I got used to it."

  "I'm not blaming you for being born here," Jingo said.

  "I've been coming to the square since I was a baby, I guess." Oliver nodded at the square. "They did the Cleansings twice a year. Did I tell you that?"

  Jingo nodded again.

  "When my mom and dad burned, I cried. I wasn't supposed to, but I did." Oliver looked away with shame.

  "Everybody cries." Jingo patted Oliver on the back. "It's normal. It's healthy."

  "In Brighton, we aren't supposed to."

  "I know. I never understood that." Jingo shrugged.

  Oliver watched the fire burn a bit more before saying, "Minister Beck doesn't seem like an evil man, but he was part of the Council. For all my life, he sat up there on the dais while they put people on the pyre. Do you think he's empathetic? Do you think he's evil?"

  "What do you think?"

  "If you'd asked me two days ago, when we were in the forest, or at the settlement by the sea, I'd have said he was my friend." Oliver looked over at Jingo. "Do you think he'd say the same about me?"

  Jingo nodded. "Now that you're back in Brighton, are you saying you don't believe he's your friend anymore?"

  "Now that we're back, it's like he's not the same friend that escaped with me from the demon battle on that hill and saved my life in the river. It feels like he's Minister Beck again, and maybe he's a monster, because he did his part to make Brighton the place it was."

  "Maybe," said Jingo, taking a long pause before proceeding. "But do you ever wonder if Brighton's past was cruel because it had to be?"

  Oliver snapped his head around to look at Jingo. "Evil? Cruel?"

  "Perhaps." Jingo shrugged. "I've learned many things through all my years, both by reading and by watching people behave, and it doesn't matter how much one knows. Sometimes the right answer is still difficult to find. Did you know there were once seven billion people on the Earth?"

  "Billion?" Oliver asked. "I can't even picture what that means."

  "Of course not. It is an unimaginable number, even for me. Now, if our little part of the world is indicative of how the rest of the world fared over these past three centuries, I'd guess there are less than a million people on the whole planet. Maybe fewer. That's one person today for every seven thousand that were alive in the days when I was a young man. If Brighton suffered a proportionate loss of life today, do you know how many people would still be alive in this city?"

  "No." Oliver's head was swirling with numbers he was trying to figure his way through.

  "Three."

  "No."

  "I'm serious," said Jingo. "Just three."

  "That doesn't seem possible."

  "But it is what has happened." Jingo straightened up and stretched his back. Sitting on the stone steps wasn't comfortable. "Which makes me think those three people would be pretty special."

  "I guess," Oliver agreed.

  "It makes me believe that the million people still left on Earth are extraordinary. It makes me think that it's easy for us to condemn their choices, like we're doing now, but we'd be wrong to do so."

  "Why?"

  "As cruel as Brighton's choices were in the past, maybe they were the choices that helped people survive."

  "I think you talk in circles sometimes," said Oliver.

  "It's okay to believe the past is cruel and still hope for a better future," said Jingo. "Just be careful when you judge others for their choices. Winthrop was part of Brighton's cruel past. And maybe because of him, the cruelty lasted longer than it should have. You and Brighton have chosen to put that past behind you. Perhaps you should not judge yourself, or others, too harshly in this circumstance. Focus instead on what you can do to make the future you want for the children you will one day have."

  "I like that idea," Oliver said, looking up at the snow falling from the sky. He put up his palm, catching a snowflake in his hand.

  "You know what?" said Jingo. "So do I."

  Chapter 110: Bray

  Snow came the first night they stayed in the parking garage, leaving the forest peaceful and white.

  With the sky still overcast and threatening to drop more snow, Bray and Kirby decided to stay another night. Bray's wound needed time to scab over and stop bleeding, and none of them wanted to get caught with no shelter should the weather turn into a blizzard.

  The sun was setting as Bray, Kirby, and William climbed to the roof to catch a last glimpse of the horizon before they retired to one of the lower floors. All around them were blueberry bushes and small trees that had lost their leaves for the winter, leaving their gray branches standing against the white. Most of the tall brown grass stood through the snow, giving the horses something to graze on without risking the dangers of the woods all around them.

  "How's your shoulder?" Kirby asked.

  "I'll survive." Bray shrugged his good shoulder as he cleaned the wound. "At least, if you what you told me is true about gunshot wounds."

  "Every one is different, but I think you'll be fine. It will probably just hurt like hell as it heals." Kirby smirked as she pulled out a flask and started drinking from it. "Believe me."

  Bray didn't have to believe.

  He knew.

  After a while, William left their sides to explore the rooftop, as he'd been doing for most of the day and previous night, in between tracking game in the forest and making sure they had enough to eat. Bray and Kirby remained near the roof's edge.

  "It looks like you taught him well when you were with him before," Kirby said.

  "He really took to tracking, when I was traveling with him and his mother."

  "And he's good at hunting," Kirby said. "I've neve
r seen a kid eat so much rabbit in so few bites."

  "I'm sure he's eating better now than when he was with the army. Did I tell you what they ate?"

  "I don't want to know." Kirby made a face.

  Bray gave a sideways smile at William, who was studying one of the half-frozen blueberry bushes across the rooftop nostalgically. Bray and Kirby looked past the tips of the trees at the mountains stretching across the horizon. Another long day was slowly turning to night.

  "I haven't said anything more about his mother," Bray said quietly, after a long pause.

  Kirby sighed as she took another sip from her flask. "Don't rush it. He's been through enough."

  "Yeah, he has," Bray said. "And I still need to tell him Melora shot me." Bray grimaced.

  "We'll have plenty of time to talk to him later."

  Bray couldn't help his grin.

  "What's so funny?" Kirby demanded.

  "You said 'we.' Does that mean you're traveling with us?"

  "For now," Kirby said evasively. "But I'm not giving you my guns." She laughed. "We'll see what happens. I'll come with you for a while, as long as you still promise to give me Blackthorn when I leave."

  "Give you who?"

  "The horse," Kirby said, annoyed.

  "About that…" Bray smirked as he recalled one of his lies.

  "That's not really the horse's name, is it?" Kirby deduced, with a knowing glance.

  "No," he admitted.

  Bray kept his smile as Kirby looked out over the horizon. William interrupted the silence by rushing over to them and pointing off the rooftop. "Over there!" he cried. "Look!"

  Bray and Kirby got to their feet, startled enough to reach for their weapons. But William wasn't pointing out danger. He was pointing at something else. Tiny specks of snow were falling from the sky, landing on their clothing and coating the rooftop.

  "It's snowing again," Bray said.

  "It's beautiful from up here," Kirby said, spinning and looking at the sky.

  Bray dusted some of the small, white specks from his shirt.

  "I'm not showing you the snow," William said. "Over there."

  He pointed again. This time they saw what he was looking at. Deep in the distance, in the direction of Brighton, gray smoke billowed into the sky. Even without being next to it, Bray could already recall the acrid smell of charred skin that probably accompanied it.