“Wake up, buddy. Dane! Come on!” Jeff shouted at his unconscious friend as he carried him as best as he could amid the slaughter and debris. He kept his distance from the other humans fleeing the scene so that he wouldn’t create too inviting of a target for attack, but he wasn’t moving fast enough. He risked a glance over his shoulder to survey the area where the giant feet of the Apostle had crushed Chad’s neighbor’s house.
A woman he recognized as Alex ducked out from behind the crumbling wall of a building that had been destroyed and partially rebuilt a handful of times. Her hair fluttered in the air behind her as she ran for her life, a few steps behind Jeff. She carried a small bag, likely containing all the food and water she had to her name.
She was going to die. He knew it. She needed to slide behind the rusted remains of an old sedan to her right and run north until a larger pack of humans would draw the Apostle’s attention away from her. If she did that, she’d make it. He knew it. He could see the events play out in his mind. He wanted to scream to her, to tell her what to do, but that wouldn’t save Alex.
Air materialized into energy around her arms and neck, snapping her into place. She was too close to the Apostle. They could manipulate the environment with molecular precision within short distances; it was one of the countless feats of science that were so beyond human comprehension that many worshiped the Apostles as deities and their technological weapons as divine power. It was hard to fault those who did so.
The woman shrieked in horror as the impossibly tall robot shined a light on Alex, reducing her body to dust. Jeff wanted to stop running, to turn around, to fight the Apostle that effortlessly destroyed everything he had ever known, but he couldn’t. It would mean death for his friend, a friend who had shared his vow to protect his family and each other until the end.
It seemed impossible that any mere human had ever dared to challenge these perfect creatures. Jeff had never cared for history, but that was mostly because all the old men around the fire had always told their own versions of the downfall of humankind and their tussles with the warring Apostles. Listening to people pine away about the past never made things better now.
“Jeff . . .” Dane said just as Jeff felt his friend regaining consciousness on his shoulder.
“You’re still alive. Can you run?”
“What?”
“Can you run?” Jeff shouted as he turned down a street that was already littered with bodies and flaming buildings. There weren’t many people still alive as far as Jeff could see, which meant he was likely only a few moments away from being sliced himself.
“Left! Left!” Dane shouted, and Jeff obediently cut hard to the left, dodging a laser that cut into the old pavement with a hiss. A leech shot over his head with a hum, apparently uninterested in circling around for another shot. There were certain advantages to being an insignificant species on this planet; as far as most Apostles and their leeches were concerned, humans weren’t worth the effort to kill.
“Can you run?” Jeff asked again. He couldn’t even hear himself sucking in as much air as he could as he moved Dane from his shoulder and set him down. He looked over his shoulder; behind him, he could see the legs of the robotic god crushing the largest coalition community in a hundred miles.
“Faster than you, like always,” Dane said. The words were what he would have expected to hear from Dane, but the tone wasn’t anything close to normal.
“Good—stay close. We might be able to make it out.”
“Where’s Chad?” Dane asked as he held his head.
“Just stay close.” Jeff sprinted from between the houses and into the open, heading back toward the new crater that filled the space where he had won his fight not long ago. The earth beneath him looked like a cutting board, with deep lines sliced into it, and the body of one of his neighbors usually accompanied each cut.
“Thanks for not leaving me,” Dane said between gasps. They were sprinting hard, and Jeff was already winded, so he grunted in response.
“I figured there was no point in starting to leave you behind now.”
They were fighting for their lives, and Jeff’s instincts hit him far harder than any of the shockwaves had. A leech was going to cut Dane’s head off. He knew it as clearly as he had known he was going to win his fight with Canon. The world seemed to slow as Jeff looked over to his friend and saw a leech cruising toward them. He had lost one brother today; he wasn’t going to lose another. Jeff dove at his friend, pushing him out of the way of the red laser, successfully knocking him aside and saving Dane’s life.
It wasn’t until Jeff hit the ground that he realized that the laser had missed Dane, but he hadn’t been so fortunate. He screamed in agony as his blurred vision found his left arm steaming in the middle of the street, several feet from where he lay. The leech buzzed by overhead and out of sight.
He pushed through the pain, trying to force himself up, but his legs weren’t working correctly. He managed to get some leverage with his right arm and pushed himself up to where he could see that his left leg had been cut off at the thigh. He dropped his head to the ground, unable to keep himself upright at the sight. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to pass out. But he didn’t want to die—not like this.
“Dane! Dane!” Jeff grabbed at his friend as his face appeared above him.
“Jeff . . .” Dane seemed to say, but Jeff was having a hard time hearing. He continued to try to pull at his friend as if he were the only thing that could save him from drowning in the terror of the moment.
Dane fought off Jeff’s hands and tried to calm him, but he was beyond consoling.
“We have to go! Dane! We have to go! Pick me up! We can make it! We can make it!” They could make it. The slaughter was mostly over; with his insight, he knew that Dane could carry him out of this deathtrap. But they needed to go—now.
Dane looked over his shoulder and moved away from him, but Jeff pulled at him.
“Dane, we have to go! Dane!”
His friend said something, but the buzzing in his ears and the panic in his own voice drowned it out. Dane grabbed his hand, squeezed it one last time, and then ran away, leaving Jeff for dead in the middle of the broken street.
“Don’t leave me! Come back . . . I saved you! I saved you!” But his friend was gone, and there was no one left to hear his screams except the towering, hawklike face of the Apostle, which seemed to look over at him for a moment, its burning red eyes focusing on him long enough for Jeff to know that he wasn’t worth its time to kill. The Apostle floated into the darkening sky, its glowing red accents making it look like the devil itself, and drifted away seemingly without a care, apparently satisfied with its slaughter. Dozens of leeches shot over Jeff’s head as its wings reassembled on its back.
It passed out of sight silently a minute later, leaving another forgettable human massacre behind. Everyone had said the Apostles didn’t bother with humans anymore, except for the vagrants, of course, but here Jeff was, about to die a meaningless death after failing to protect his family and being betrayed by his best friend, after one of them took had taken notice of the earth’s formerly dominant species.
He wanted to rest, to wither away and join the community that had kept him alive all of these years, a community that he had helped to rebuild almost a decade ago. But he couldn’t. His entire life had been a struggle, a fight like all the others in which he was the underdog, but he’d never lost a fight, and he wasn’t going to lose this one without giving all the effort he could muster.
He had always known he would die; everyone died. Most people didn’t even make it to their twenties. If disease or Apostles didn’t kill you, other humans would. The world was a brutal, unforgiving place, but he was going to survive in it for at least a little longer.
Jeff reached out with his remaining arm, found a crack in the weathered street, and pulled himself forward with a scream. Every part of his body begged him to stop, but he found another crack and pulled again. He refused to think about h
ow many pulls it would take or how long it might be until he found someone who could help him. Instead, he screamed again as he dragged his body across the ground.
A sonic boom echoed over what was left of Fifth Springs. It washed over his body as he stared up into the dimly lit sky. A solid white Apostle in human form, only ten times the size, with radiant force-field wings, flew through the air, streaking west across the sky. Trails of burning air followed after it, leaving a beautiful scar across the evening sky.
It didn’t make any sense. The first Apostle could have killed them all from a distance or electrified the air. A second Apostle certainly wasn’t needed to finish off Fifth Springs. Jeff wanted to be upset about the pleasure the two Apostles must have taken in his pain, but he didn’t have room for any more rage. Jeff pulled himself forward again.
It was hard to believe that everything he had known was gone and that everyone he had loved was dead. Despite his agony, the thought kept surfacing to the top of his mind, with images of Chad running into his exploding home and Dane staring down at Jeff’s helpless body. The anger he felt powered him forward, slowly, across the dark town, now only illuminated by the fires that found enough structure to keep burning. His lungs burned from effort and smoke, but he continued.
He dragged himself for what seemed like an eternity. Every inch was torment; every second a reminder of what he had lost. His mind was numb from the never-ending pain by the time the sun appeared over the horizon.
Jeff shrugged off the first sounds of voices that he heard, deciding it was his mind playing a cruel trick on him, but after a minute, he could deny it no longer.
“Help,” he tried to shout, but his throat was dry, and he almost choked on his words. He kept trying as the voices grew louder.
“Hey! It’s that fighter.”
“Look at him. Got chewed up real good.”
Jeff forced himself up on his right arm, overcome with emotion at finding salvation against the odds.
“Help . . .”
“The lout is still kickin’,” said a thick man with horrible teeth and no hair on a burned patch on the left side of his head. The man was standing directly above him, the silver brave patch clearly visible on his left collarbone and his worn particle assault rifle resting loosely in his hands.
“No, he ain’t. Only got one leg,” a younger brave said from a few feet away.
They both laughed like it was the funniest joke they had heard all day. Jeff’s head hurt, and his throat felt like it had burned down with the rest of their community.
“Please . . .”
The soldiers stopped laughing and looked at each other. The older brave stepped away, and they whispered together for a minute.
“Please,” Jeff repeated. Speaking made him cough, and that caused the rest of his body to shudder in pain.
The braves stood straight as an antigravity vehicle floated past them. Seated on top of it were Mayor Gunn, a portly man with a nasty temper, and his family. His wife was good-looking but not so good-looking as to be considered exceptional, and his two children were reading well-kept books. Half a dozen braves jogged beside them in their mismatched uniforms with spotty armor.
“No can do, kid,” the old brave said. “Couldn’t carry you over to Townend. Wouldn’t do it even if I could. Tell me, though, did ya win that fight?”
“Come on—just put him out of his misery, Sean. We’re going to fall behind,” the younger brave said.
“Where . . . were you?” Jeff asked, but speaking was hard. He wanted to scream at them, to call them cowards for not attacking the Apostle like they had signed up for. From what Jeff could see, none of the braves had done a thing during the massacre, and the mayor looked as though he hadn’t missed a minute of sleep.
They had all the weapons. They were the only ones who could slow that thing down, even if for a minute, and they didn’t. Instead, they had let it enjoy itself while they hid. They were sworn to sacrifice their lives to give the people of Fifth Springs a chance if a warlord, leech, or Apostle attacked, but it was clear they had shirked their duty while the innocent died.
“Don’t see how that matters to ya at this point,” Sean said. He pulled a long metal knife from his side.
“Coward,” Jeff managed to say.
Sean froze and stared down at Jeff with anger in his eyes. He slowly slid the knife back into its holder.
“You be the courageous one,” Sean said. He pulled a small knife from his boot and placed it in Jeff’s only hand. Jeff tried to spit at the man, but he didn’t have the liquids to pull it off. Jeff longed for his old body; he could have taught the man a lesson.
“Go on, then,” Sean said. He pulled Jeff’s arm up so that the knife was pressed against Jeff’s throat.
Jeff wanted to do it, to spite the man. The knife trembled in his weak hand, brushing against his blood- and dirt-covered skin. But he couldn’t bring himself to force the blade into his own throat. Some part of him still held on to his thread of life. As bitter as his life had been and no matter how bleak the future seemed, he had never thrown in the towel on a fight.
“Sean, we gotta get going,” the other man called. He was already walking away, apparently not interested enough in the situation to keep watching.
“That’s what I thought,” Sean said as he let go of Jeff’s arm and walked after his fellow brave.
3 A NEW PROJECT
“IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I’ve seen anything like this,” Carlee said as she finished looking over another victim. The damage was catastrophic, and it reminded her of how things used to be when the Apostles still warred with one another during the Ascension.
“I’ve seen worse,” Stefani said. She kept her sniper rifle up as she scanned the area. Her hood provided a level of camouflage that made Carlee’s old friend look like a ghost with a vendetta.
“There must have been thousands of people who lived here . . . and from the size of the prints, it must have been a first-generation Apostle. I don’t understand this.”
“They kill people. Not much to understand about it.”
“But why come down here and do this when there hasn’t been an Apostle out this way in years? Why do it by hand? And why be so precise? It didn’t leave anyone alive.”
“Almost no one,” Stefani said. “I got a read on someone not far from here.”
Carlee took one last look at the ten-foot-deep footprint in the middle of the shattered asphalt and followed the reading with her hood. A human was still alive, not too far from them. A golden indicator bounced in her vision, noting where the poor soul was.
“Let me guess—we have to go help it,” Stefani said. The lack of enthusiasm in her voice wasn’t surprising. Stefani had never enjoyed what she called Carlee’s projects, but Carlee had never enjoyed shooting people, so they made a good team.
“You read my mind.”
“Jane sent us out here to try to gather some clues about what happened, not to come back with another one of your projects.”
“We help people; I don’t need to remind you or Jane about that.” Carlee pushed toward the lone survivor with a sense of urgency. Given the nature of the deceased in the area, she wasn’t particularly hopeful about the status of the person her hood was leading them to.
“Take it easy,” Stefani said from a few steps behind.
“I think our new friend would appreciate it if we hurried.”
“And I’d appreciate it if—”
Carlee activated her gloves with a mental twitch, and two of the energy pistols strapped to her sides flew to her hands. She rolled forward as a leech rose from the ground in front of her and fired a red laser right through where her heart had been a moment before. She pulled up and aimed at the leech, but it exploded as an energy blast from Stefani’s rifle hit it in the side.
“—we could slow down,” Stefani finished. “In case you didn’t know, there’s something bad hiding behind the rubble.”
“Point taken,” Carlee said. “And thank you.”<
br />
“You don’t need to thank me, Carl.”
“But I always will.” She smiled at her friend. They had been together for years, and Carlee had stopped counting how many times Stefani had saved her life a long time ago. She returned the favor often enough, but it didn’t put her in any less of debt to her companion, who was far more loyal than Carlee deserved.
“Touching,” Stefani said. She didn’t lower her gun as they continued forward. It only took them a few minutes to reach their target, and luckily, no other leeches tried to kill them on the way.
“There he is.” Carlee rushed over to the man sprawled out in the road. He was missing an arm and a leg, and from his appearance, it looked like a miracle that his heart was still beating. Her hood scanned him over, popping up information about his vitals and blood counts.
“You sure know how to pick ’em,” Stefani said.
“It’s not as bad as it looks. He hasn’t lost much blood, his brain looks in good shape, and his vitals look stable.”
“That’s great news.” Stefani was too distracted looking for any other leeches to pay much attention to what Carlee was saying. That was fine; it wouldn’t do Carlee any good to save the man only to have a leech sneak up behind them.
“I think he might be in good enough shape to walk if we can wake him up. We’d have to get him some crutches, but I think we can work with this.” Carlee said.
“Why do you think that leech was waiting there for us?” Stefani asked, apparently uninterested in talking about the survivor when there were other matters at hand. “It’s not like them to just sit around waiting like that. It almost felt like a trap.”
“Now who is the one being paranoid?” Carlee checked the man over one more time before gently lifting his head and stroking his cheek. He was likely going to be in a state of shock when she woke him, so she took care to make it as gentle as possible. It wasn’t the first time she’d found people like this.
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