The Overlord: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel

by Jared Paul

  A cry broke the silence, "Fire in the hole!"

  It was Zero's squad. Azure had setup demolitions on the first generator and the charges had been compelled. In its boom, neither Deadstock nor the Commander flinched in the explosion. We all ducked and crouched for cover, but the Overlord and Zero stood all the way through.

  After the Blood Tech generator was turned to dust, its upward energy abruptly ceased. Up, high in the sky, we could see that a whole third of the Spider's Shield had gone down as it vanished in the clouds. There were only two thirds left to go.

  As the dust settled, Zero turned his attention to his squad and upsettingly barked out, "Azure Squad, move out."

  "Ivory, move out," Sentria said next as she directed her squad up the concrete roofs. The last one up, she paused out of view of her two subordinates. Alone, she peered out across the waters as if she was about to have a serious conversation with its endlessness.

  "This is Sentria," she spoke into her radio as she looked out into the distance. "Begin the countdown."

  I wondered what kind of countdown she was talking about. More so, who was she even talking to? Had she made contact with the flagship or was it someone else? Nobody else seemed to notice the secluded communication, much less care. She was a Squad Captain, a Top Bunk. I was just a lowly Bottom Bunk, so I wrote it off as just another example of being left out of the loop. Still, why had she stared at the ocean so ominously?

  Before I could drift too far into speculation, the Overlord shifted my attention back to present matters. "Violet Squad, prepare to infiltrate the island."

  Dispersing with our assault rifles readied and a Space Wizard at our head, Violet Squad stormed deeper into the complex. Through a threatening entrance, black as a moonless night, the Overlord set our squad on a course of its own. Separated from the other squads, we dove into the depths of Fever Island, that mysterious realm of the unknown Underlord.

  9

  THE ECHO

  Into the very gut of the island, the Overlord led us. It was dark and creepy in the maze of inner structures. Worse, our night vision was being jammed and it was no glitch. Somebody knew we were down there.

  Though I had been eager to serve directly under the Overlord, I began to develop a certain longing in that darkness. I longed to be outside in the daylight with Sentria and Commander Zero. At least they could see their enemy.

  Further on in the dark complex, we entered into a wide storage room. It was lit well, but Deadstock didn't like the look of it and neither did I. It gave off the feeling of being watched. At the very least, however, I could finally see the back of my own hand again. Even in the light, though, there was still no sign of anything or anyone. Concrete support columns and old shipping crates could have been providing adequate cover for any combatants that were hiding in the storage room.

  The overhead lights began to flicker. Our faces grew worried. The flickering then grew increasingly sporadic. Looking around, there was no clear way out of the room.

  A drop of sweat dripped down my brow, stinging into my eyes with no way to wipe it out. I ripped off my helmet and gasped in my blind panic, rubbing my face clear of any further interferences.

  "Get your helmet back on," yelled Deadstock back to me.

  Before I had the chance, the lights shut completely off. The storage room went completely black. The only thing that could be seen was the neon glow of our suits. Caught off guard out in the open, we would be easy targets.

  The Overlord bellowed out to us, "Find cover!"

  Shots then crisscrossed all over our position. It was the dreaded islanders. Nix and I darted for any kind of shelter nearby as hyper rounds began to fly across the room. I quickly threw myself behind a crate. I wasn't positive, but I was pretty sure I'd been hit since I'd heard something clang pretty hard against my back.

  From cover behind blocks to cover behind pillars, everyone in that stockroom engaged their respective enemies in a firefight. I was exchanging rounds with some islanders across the room while Nix was throwing grenades into their cornered safe zones. Nothing seemed to be working, though. Nobody on either side was advancing.

  Under the safety of cover, we weren't progressing and neither were the wasteland thugs, much less hitting anything. That is, until the Overlord stepped out from behind a support column and sauntered down the middle of the room without a hint of a flinch. His presence glowed bright and illuminated the whole room while he unleashed the powerful wallops of his famous sidearm, the Dragon's Throat. His shots never left any exit wounds. His hits never left any survivors. Like little bombs going off inside them, the islanders were blown to pieces with every round fired from his pistol. It shattered their cover to mere rubble and left their flesh to little more than ash.

  At the time, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I was in awe as he just marched over to them in the range of fire without any worry of getting hit, himself. He didn't even sustain any damage in his advancement. I think it's because his opponents feared him. Even Nix and I were on the fence about whether we should fear or trust him. We mostly combined the two feelings and the result was respect, plain and simple.

  There were times when I believed that fear could be used as the greatest of weapons, but there in that storage room, I saw it as a shield. The fear protected him because it surrounded him with respect. In the face of danger, the Overlord was being safeguarded in a veil of reverence from his enemies. He was invincible. His victims screamed and wailed for mercy though every pop, pop, pop.

  He eventually ran out of ammo. The heated guns of the islanders soon ran cold as well. Before anyone had time to reload, the stringy ravagers began to attack the Overlord by hand, one on one. What they didn't know was that the Overlord was even more ruthless with a blade in close combat than he was with a bullet. Gloriously, he unsheathed his legendary knife, the Dragon's Tooth, and proceeded to cut and stab his assailants.

  We of Violet Squad were of little help to him. In risk of hitting Deadstock, we couldn't get a single shot in. Besides that, we didn't want to get too close. He was like a wild animal out for the kill. I dared not interfere with that enraged beast, nor did Nix. I couldn't safely predict what would happen if I came up next to its deadly jaws.

  Using his magnetic glove, he began to lob the knife this way and that into the attackers that were further away. Without fail, the blade's hilt would always return to his hand. Between the knife throws, it wasn't long until a couple enemies had found the time to reload. Flanking the Overlord, they fired upon him from either side. It was like time slowed down as the hyper bullets inbounded toward him, but just as he was about to be shot, the Overlord shattered into a billion, pixelated shards. In a weaving, he vanished into thin air. The rounds zipped through the pixel remnants of his intangible matter. Without any kind of target between them, both opposite shooters fell from the other's bullet. When their bodies hit the ground, the Overlord took his cue to reappear.

  He stood alone for a fleeting moment, his eyes and suit glowing in the dark over the carnage. As he did, I thought to myself, "The legend has come to life. If ever the tales of the Evening Galaxy proved to be true, that truth was standing before me now. He is the Space Wizard."

  Of course, I knew there was no magic in the universe and knew there never would be. There was only science around us, but that science had forsaken the living as only the dead were left in its wake. The Overlord was one such ghost of science. I couldn't see his tortured face in the shadows, but he let out a sigh that let me know what he might look like standing there in that storage room. It was a tired and strenuous sigh. It wasn't of body, but of spirt. Clearly, death was beginning to take hold of him from the inside. In a sense, the killing was killing him.

  The space cleared, Nix soon found a jammer on one of the dead islanders. Upon turning it off, the lights came flickering back on. The light revealed the aftermath of the bloody encounter.

  There was something odd about the fresh corpses about us. Their lifeless eyes were bright green. H
airless, their skin was afflicted with all manners of boils and tumors. Some had extra fingers. Some had extra limbs. One even had a third eye.

  They were all men in the beginning stages of radiation sickness. Whether they were born that way or if it was a result of exposure, we had just killed off beings that were already struggling to live. They would've all become brainless monsters within a year, the Echoes of tomorrow. Still, I took pity. All they had done was defend themselves and their turf. Without any further details, all I can say is that we quickly left after we saw what remained of them. Without lingering for another moment, we departed from the storage room tomb.

  Down a dim and stank corridor beyond, our night vision was finally coming in clear. We were well on our way when bits of concrete and dust suddenly sprinkled down from the mildewed ceiling above our heads. Throughout the inner halls of the island complex, a growling echo had found its way to our location. In all likelihood, the blast was a detonation being setoff. At least that's what it sounded like, but it could've been anything. It might've been the discharge of one of those radiation rifles that Zero had mentioned. It also just might've been the unstable island, itself, falling apart with every step that we took.

  The Overlord threw up his right fist at some ninety degrees from his shoulder. It was the signal to the squad to hold our position until he deemed the path was safe to proceed ahead. When the concrete ceased its rumbling, his fist returned to his side while his thumb tucked back into his belt. He never had his weapon out like everybody else. The Overlord simply kept his hand near the Dragon's Throat's holster. His other hand always maintained a grip on the hilt of his knife that was kept sheathed and ready above his thigh.

  "Wonder what that could've been?" he asked himself as he messed around with his radio earpiece, fidgeting and tuning. He adjusted the volume and tried switching through different channels. No matter what, static still remained. "I can't get through to the other squads. There's no signal down here."

  "What do you think it was?" I decided to speak. I figured we might as well make conversation. We hadn't seen any action in a short while and there didn't seem to be any sign of anything exciting happening anytime soon.

  "I don't know, but I don't like it," he made known. "Let's hope it was just Ivory or Azure getting things done up there."

  After only a single encounter with the islanders, we wandered the depths of the island with little difficulty for some time. Commander Zero and the others, however, were running into all sorts of excitement up on the outer areas above. The old Australian that I knew as Fossil, who had survived all the way through the mission to Fever Island, would later tell me about the adventures going on up there. He was in his little brother Zero’s squad and he barely made it out alive.

  As squads Azure and Ivory combed every inch of the exterior perimeters, radio chatter was coming in heavy from the "Lunar Wrath." Apparently, the islanders didn't want to stick around to meet the fate of the Thrall forces, what little was left of us. Most of the Echoes had called it a day and were making a run for it.

  The Far Stranger's voice from the "Lunar Wrath" called out into every earpiece. "Eyes on islanders fleeing main complex. Multiple escape crafts in sight. Headed straight for your position."

  Out of nowhere, crude aircrafts streaked out across the island's horizon. They were disk-shaped vessels, smoothly floating and rotating like the flying saucers of childhood stories. Fast was their flight, but black was the smoke trailing behind them. As the crafts span wildly through the air, the disks were sputtering out dark fumes from every circumference. Fossil told it best when he described the noise being let out by the flying vessels. He said it was comparable to the coughs of a dying man mixed in with the endless hum of a jet engine.

  Zero barked into his radio. "Far Stranger, maneuver to take them down! Do not let them get away!"

  "Yes, sir," complied the synthetic intelligence. "Initiating offensive procedures now."

  With the first generator down, the Spider's Shield had been left with a large gap in its web. The trajectory of the escape crafts were heading for the breach, but it proved to be a futile attempt. From the Spider's Shield opening came our fierce flagship as it descend from the clouds with a crack of lightning. Nothing could take that ship down and nothing was certainly getting past it intact.

  The bellowing engines of the circular metal heaps plumed over Commander Zero and the rest of the legion. As they passed from above, they rained down fire upon the two squads below. Everyone, except for the Commander, scattered like ants from an anthill after a rock is thrown into its midst. The crafts were shelling down all around Zero, but he remained, holding fast out in the open.

  He roared into his radio, "We're taking heavy fire! Destroy them, now! Fire all cannons! Fire! Fire!"

  The rusty squadron of islanders flew on toward our flagship and attempted to engage in an aerial dogfight. It was of no use. The "Lunar Wrath" took every hit like mere darts to bedrock. From the sleek contours of the crescent ship, an assortment of pointed cannons jutted out from its sharp surface in reply. The guns of the Thralldom sent out a violent volley. The fleeing disks ignited in the barrage, each exploding into a thousand fiery sections. Any chance for their escape was shattered.

  The "Lunar Wrath" then pulled back into the concealment of the clouds as most of the falling infernos sank into the surrounding ocean. A few crafts had been shot while still over the island. One in particular went spinning down to where Zero was standing.

  The squads had to test their chances, once again, as they dodged and ducked away from the deadly wreckage that was dropping out of the sky. Zero boldly remained where he stood as the burning metal split apart and scraped across the concrete at either side of him. It was like he could survive anything without any distraction of fear. I think that's why people followed him with unfailing allegiance. According to his older brother Fossil, it's why he was called Zero. He was a man truly without fear. Fossil confirmed that even as boys, his brother had zero fear of anything or anyone.

  The Commander lurched out of the searing destruction and proceeded to scavenge the wreck. Either Zero knew something or he suspected something. Either way, he found something. There, in the wreckage, was a lucky, or maybe not so lucky, survivor from the crash.

  Somehow, the survivor and his hat had survived. It looked like a bamboo hat worn by the various Asians of old, only it appeared to be made out of something much stronger. While Zero pulled away the steaming debris from around the man, the survivor began muttering something beneath his breath. His eyes were shut and clearly in a lot of pain as he spoke. It sounded like Japanese, but none of the Thralls were able to accurately translate. Zero then prepared to execute, not really out of mercy, but mainly to just finish the job.

  Before the Commander could even fire, the charred islander yelped out a long and loud battle cry, finally opening a pair of green eyes that revealed a crazed willingness to fight. The survivor looked up from the sights of Zero’s Brawler gun and unveiled an armament of his own that had been kept hidden next to him. From behind a smoking fragment of his fallen ship, he pulled out a radiation rifle and pointed it up toward Zero.

  It was a primitive weapon, made out of bits of pipe and other pieces of junk. Nonetheless, it was a lethal device. Zero knew that even if he succeeded in firing first, he wouldn’t survive if the survivor happened to pull the rifle’s trigger.

  The Commander tackled him, struggling to grab the gun as he warned the others, "Pull back! He's got a radiation rifle!"

  Both of the squads obeyed, worried and fearful. Zero seemed outmatched in a fierce wrestle. The survivor knew how to defend himself using martial arts, skills from the old world that only a few had not forgotten. Zero had a few tricks of his own, however. Using his brute strength alone, he finally managed to nab the gun out of the enemy's hands. The survivor then replied with the slash of a katana that had been strapped to his waist. The Japanese sword cut open Zero's helmet, nearly taking off his face as the sliced shards
went flying off from his head.

  Zero took it personally as he growled and unleashed a blade of his own. The short weapon always gave his opponents a sense of false confidence, until he would whip the blade out into the air and unfurl the full length of the retractable blade. The mere sight of his massive machete was enough for anyone to surrender, but the man with the strange hat didn't give up so easily. The survivor had the advantage of both hands while Zero had to make due with holding the radiation rifle in one hand and his machete in the other. The two warriors then fought for what seemed like forever as they kicked, hacked, and defended.

  "Just shoot him already," Fossil impatiently pleaded.

  He may have spoken too soon as a burst of energy suddenly erupted from their midst. It was the rifle. A wide ray of white light had shot out into the air after a loud mechanical blare almost blew out everyone's eardrums. Fortunately, the weapon had shot straight up and missed any targets on the island, whether they were living or not.

  For the sparring foes, the unexpected blast had sent them both flying backward away from each other. In the confusion, the survivor scurried off out of reach and activated some sort of control hut from the concrete. It rose up from the ground and revealed a paneled pedestal of switches, levers, and buttons. The survivor activated something from the hut and a wailing alarm cranked out over the entire island.

  Atop a nearby pole, a rusty loudspeaker was crackling out. It was the source of the howling alarm. A begrudged Fossil shot the speaker to silence, but the alarm continued in an echo from elsewhere. The whole island was on full alert and nobody knew what it meant or what would come of it.

  They found their answer when the concrete beneath their feet began to split open. The legion stood to either side as the ground spread apart and hydraulic openings revealed flooded chambers beneath. The water below was dark and murky, almost poisoned looking. It was nothing like the ocean beyond.