by Casey Herzog
“Oh, come on Russ! Take a guess!”
The natural right side of the man’s face hardened. He didn’t need to think things through. There were only two likely names hanging in the air, two people that he could be interested in that were still out there: the same bastards he had been hunting since he’d emerged from the ruins of his fortress.
“It’s the man and the boy, isn’t it?”
The medic’s eyes widened, and he feigned shock.
“On your first try, too!” He laughed right in Russell’s face and the warlord strained forward again in an attempt to free his metal arm. “Don’t bother, friend,” Cross continued, “We’ve made sure you won’t get away from us. We want you to be around for as long as possible. By the end, you’ll even be thanking us for all of this!”
A familiar rasping voice echoed from nearby and Russell glanced up to see his new captor giving orders to his men. His metal fingers formed an angry fist that would easily smash a human skull to pieces with enough force. He had long lost his real arm in combat, but that hadn’t stopped him from getting a new and improved one to replace it.
“Lord,” Reiner hissed with a mocking sneer, “It’s time to ride. As you may have been told, we’re all now seeking out the same people. A sweet coincidence, one could say. I may even give you a chance to hurt the man; it’s the boy I want.”
“I’m going to kill you, Reiner. Remember that. It is going to be very painful, and I won’t make it quick. I’ll probably make a mess of you with my fists, but—”
The boot slammed into his face, throwing him back onto the ground behind him.
“Pick him up,” the Whisperer growled before throwing a hard punch into the natural half of Russell’s face. The warlord spat blood onto the dusty ground, but managed to smile by the time they put him back on his knees once more. “Your empty threats will only bring you misfortune. I have no time for this; throw him into the truck and keep him under close watch.”
Two men came forward and picked Russell up by the arms. He grinned widely at Reiner and stared deeply into the man’s blue eyes.
“This isn’t over.”
The henchmen pulled him to his feet and dragged him to the truck, launching him inside as roughly as he could. Russell began to laugh, his wounded mouth trickling blood onto the metal floor of the truck and his bionic eye twitching and whirring as he studied the weaponry of his captors. His cackling laughter lasted for long after they sat down with him and slammed the doors shut, disconnecting him from the outside world.
The truck’s engine roared, and together with a group of motorcycles escorting them, the group set off towards their destination: the main outpost from which their enemies had come.
Finally they knew where Ayia’s attackers were.
“It’s time to make it rain blood,” the Whisperer said softly, and his men roared forward on their bikes.
Dante’s heart pounded, but he couldn’t find it in him to humiliate himself any further by showing it. His escorts had already seen him at his weakest and most afraid — enough was enough.
“What’s on your mind, boy?” the man on the other side of the speaker asked, clearly interested in finding out what was going through the healer’s mind, but Dante was as cool as the ice forming on the outside of the truck.
“It’s a bit cruel, what we just saw, I mean, but other than that it was interesting.” He sat back down and let the blanket slip off him as he admired the view outside. He could see the lands beyond the wall properly now: tall mountains with a thin layer of snow on the highest peaks; a blue sky with certain white clouds streaking across it, the sight of trees which looked like the ‘pines’ Callum had spoken of before. His heart skipped a beat as he heard the singing of a bird that flew above them. Dante’s heart warmed, despite its thundering beat, and he knew that the effects of environmental remediation were taking place here — the University had either developed or acquired a method of cleansing the world of the destructive side-effects the Outsider bombing had caused.
It made Dante feel fortunate of just being there, despite his fears.
“I’m amazed, to say the least,” he managed to say.
“You should be. You haven’t seen anything yet, though.”
The healer smiled. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, he felt he had a reason to be positive about something. If he could bring his own healing ability to the University and combine it with their ability to make the world a better and safer place, there could be amazing times coming for this generation, the generation of the survivors who had inherited the planet.
“I frankly can’t wait to see the rest.”
It didn’t take long for him to do so. The barren wastelands lying under the dark, featureless sky soon began to transform into more fertile lands, and Dante pressed himself against the window as soon as he caught sight of something he had never expected to see on the surface of the world.
“Grass,” he breathed, and goose bumps rose on his neck. “Are we far away? I wouldn’t mind walking the rest of the way now,” he laughed. With grass came other vegetation, and he caught sight of a distant line of trees ahead. The road seemed to lower into a tunnel further forward, and he saw a bullet train shoot past in front of them. “Wow.”
“We’re still not close enough for that, Dante, and if you’re wondering about the train — it travels across the campus. You’ll get to used it soon.”
The truck finally descended down into the tunnel, and the world surrounding them was left behind.
Suddenly everything became dark and the only light around the truck came from their own headlights. The healer knew they had finally arrived. What had once been a simple idea in Callum’s head was now becoming a reality: he was at the University, against all odds. It was now up to him alone to achieve whatever came next. Let’s make the soldier proud, he thought.
The truck disappeared from around him before he could realize it.
Dante cried out, but the sound of his own voice never left his lips. He wasn’t just sitting in the darkness; it smothered him and entered his nose, mouth and lungs. The cold was gone, replaced by an empty feeling of nothingness. The healer was terrified, his hands reaching out to grab something and comfort himself with the sensation of something real in his grip, but there was nothing there.
It only got worse a moment later when a foreign presence slipped into his mind and he felt it begin to search for something within. No, he pleaded, please stop…
Clearly, it searched for something specific; a moment that Dante didn’t want to recall, a memory that he had long pushed back into the deepest depths of his mind to a place where he wouldn’t need to find it unless he was really looking for it.
Dante cried out and struggled at first but it was futile. Finally, he surrendered himself helplessly and faced what was coming. The long-dead memory began to flow back, and the healer sensed the foreign presence emit a pulse of emotion in his mind.
It was victorious.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
~Genaro~
*Five Years Ago*
The five-year-old boy was uncomfortable, but then again so was everyone else inside the truck where he sat. He did his best not to complain or fidget too much, but they had been riding non-stop for days, and he wasn’t feeling in a good mood.
The middle-aged woman he was sitting next to put an arm around him and smiled wearily. Margaret had done what she could to feed the young healer, but she herself had been starving lately. The convoy, so fortunate in previous months, had been on an unlucky run of sorts, coming across empty towns and sacked cities whenever they went out on a search. Despite their attempts to ration food, it was getting desperate. Whispered rumors began to spread about the man in charge leaving sick people behind or maybe separating the group in two factions, but nothing official had been said yet.
Dante was little, but he knew that something was going on. He wasn’t dumb, much less blind. A couple of other children he had previously played with had recently
stopped showing up, and he knew they were probably too sick or too weak to strain themselves. The healer wished he could do something more, but his abilities could only ease the pain that a starving person felt, not give them the necessary nourishment that a human body required. They wouldn’t get sick as long as he saw to them, but their bodies still wore their way down to the bone.
“Is Ali going to die?” he asked quietly. “I don’t want to keep healing him.” The boy looked scared and Margaret understood. She had seen what happened when Dante kept healing a starving person past the point of no return. Their body strained to stay alive until it was little more than a sack of breathing bones. Eventually though, everybody had to die. Healed or not.
“I’ll see what I can do. His mother has to understand that there’s no way back. The most merciful thing to be done is just let him rest.” Margaret had taken care of Dante for two years now, her experience as a nurse blending well with the boy’s gifts. She taught him about so many things, greatly appreciating the boy’s ability to absorb information like a sponge. Both of them were fiercely loved within the nomadic community, and she held a place among the higher ranks.
‘The Convoyans’, they called themselves, a party of around one hundred and twenty — a number which varied almost weekly due to new arrivals, departures or death — which had been formed a long time ago by former state governor, Toby MacFarlane, a courageous politician who had personally fought the Outsiders when a small force of them arrived on his state capital city’s streets; his closest friends and family members also heard the call to arms and managed to force the aliens into a retreat.
The first few years of traveling had been good. Those lost souls found on the roads and wastelands were added to the group, and the men and women who thought they could take from the convoy were quickly taken care of and destroyed. Toby was by no means a weak-willed man and the oldest Convoyans had witnessed several executions in their time. One had even been that of the governor’s old friend who had attempted to sell the group out to a raiding group of bandits who called themselves ‘The Ascended’.
“Dante, I’ve heard bad things about the city we’re heading into, so I need you to be alert at all times and carry your club close to you.” Margaret had fashioned a small child-sized club for the boy so that he could defend himself from any threat that got too close. He was already practicing with it daily, and she felt grateful that he had taken the situation seriously. “Please, we need to remain together no matter what.” She took out her gun and checked it for the hundredth time.
“I will, mommy, don’t worry.” Her loving smile made him blush. He rarely used the term, but Marge was like his very own mother, a woman who had been taking care of him since he was three years old. His memory was fuzzy beyond a certain point, but she had been with him when he had needed her the most. She had even kept him alive in particularly hairy situations, such as when the convoy had been assaulted by the aforementioned bandit crew. That day Dante had watched her kill a man who attempted to kidnap him: only then had he understood what the new world was like.
“Good.” She produced something from her jacket pocket then, and he shook his head.
“That’s yours. I’m not eating it.” He hadn’t noticed what time it was, but Margaret always ensured him a daily snack. “You look too skinny, Marge. I don’t want you to be my next patient. MacFarlane and the rest need you around.”
Marge sighed. Dante was too much of a stubborn boy to argue. She unwrapped the chocolate and nibbled on it before putting it away.
“Less than an hour away now, finally!” the driver cried from the front of the vehicle. The woman and child sat up straighter and felt relief wash over them. Endless traveling was really killing morale, and they were also quite vulnerable on the roads. It was mostly within the cities where they found some sort of safety, only when it wasn’t already occupied with mutants or bandits.
Genaro was no such safe place: Dante had heard the tales of how an entire Coalition force had been using it as a base of operations when part of the global bombing hit it head-on, causing them to either die horrific deaths or suffer the consequences of long and short-term mutation. Many civilians attempted escape, but those soldiers still able enough to lift a gun emptied their magazines into the backs of the fleeing men, women, and children. They could not be allowed to leave, especially when nobody knew if the diseases they carried were contagious.
At first, the remaining Coalition forces were forced to fight their own mutated comrades in desperate skirmishes, their hands trembling as they fired at friends, superiors and even family who had been fighting at their side until then. Unfortunately though, the sub-humans were simply too numerous. They overran the untainted soldiers’ positions and slaughtered them all down to one man. Or so they say. There was a famous cult legend about a sniper named Gulley who still hunted out on the tall towers of the dead city, killing his comrades one by one in an attempt to bring their new terrible existences to an end and ‘save’ them, so to speak. When his mission ended, he would take his own life and finally be freed.
At least that’s what the stories say. Dante asked Margaret about it, and she scowled.
“Where the heck did you hear about this? Horrible tales for children, simply horrible.” She hugged him close and shook her head in annoyance. If there was one thing the healer didn’t like about his foster mother, it was that she often tried her hardest to shield things from him. Even when it’s clear that I’m not a normal child and can cope with learning such information, he thought. But that was probably the exact reason why she did it — any other five-year-old would have sobbed in fear if he or she had heard the story, and about how so many people died.
The convoy didn’t take long to stop when the city came into view. It was nighttime, and the world was darker than it had the right to be. Unlike many other cities of Earth’s ruins, Genaro didn’t even have a single bulb or torch lit, not even a little fire burning anywhere that could reveal something within its pitch-black interior. The trailer trucks, cars, bikes and military-type vehicles that composed the Convoyan driving force gathered in a strong two-layered circle that ensured protection from outside forces while its passengers slowly exited and began to form a circle to hear what MacFarlane was about to say.
“Convoyans, I am happy you are all well after this journey of so many hours. The city of Genaro now stands ahead of us, and we bear witness to its great expanse. Its dark towers and mutant-infested streets loom ahead like an ugly threat, but we must be brave and persistent in our mission.” He made a signal, and a few of his hardest soldiers came forth with powerful lamps. Two of them even carried flamethrowers. “The darkness shall be pushed back so that we may pick apart the city and find everything we require. We no longer have the opportunity to keep traveling blindly through the wastelands, spending our resources and consuming our supplies. It’s Genaro or bust.”
Margaret stepped forward.
“Is a scout force being sent forward? I shouldn’t need to remind everyone what’s awaiting us in that city: one of the most numerous mutant forces this side of the Atlantic. Can we give a thought to an actual plan for not getting massacred?”
Toby laughed. Dante knew the man appreciated her opinion and respected her words. Margaret had often been a moral compass to the group, and now she had him to worry about as well. The governor looked at Dante and seemed to understand why she was being so cautious. The healer felt the man make a decision in his mind at that very moment, one he might not have made if not for Marge’s intervention.
“Yes, you’re right. We’ll need a few men and women inside before we actually storm the place. However, most if not all of us will have to enter the city if we want to pull this off. Nobody stays behind without a proper, valid reason. The mutants must die, and it will have to be us that kill them. Complete extermination, ladies and gents — I’m counting on you all.”
Everyone returned to their vehicles, their palms sweaty, but their hearts filled with hope. If the
y could tame Genaro, perhaps there was hope of establishing a base of operations there, or at least nearby. Trade routes could follow with other communities, and perhaps even a new metropolis would be born, one that could become the first thriving city in the area.
Dante couldn’t help but continue his daydream about the mysterious sniper, imagining him as a hooded and masked soldier who sprinted from tower to tower, putting rounds in his distant comrades’ heads and offering them a prayer as their lives reached their end. None could catch him; much less stop the specter that hunted in the darkness. He has to exist, surely?
The engines were kept quiet and the convoy slipped quietly into the borders of the city. The infiltrators were sent forward with silenced firearms and flares to signal all clear, caution, or danger. The healer looked around him a minute later. In the back of the truck everyone was grabbing their weapons and preparing to be sent out once the scouts were back. Some looked hopeful, others fearful. One of the men even carried a sick grin, as if he was excited at the thought of killing sub-humans.
The wait wasn’t easy. Margaret kept chatting away to keep everyone calm, but eventually it wasn’t enough, and she became silent. Even Dante himself was not very confident that they were going to be able to pull off their mission without horrible losses. The city was foreign territory to them, yet the sub-humans had spent their untainted and mutated lives in the place, meaning that the enemy would always have an advantage over the Convoyans in that respect.