Monsters of the Apocalypse

by Rawlins, Jordan

  "That's unacceptable. This feed is our greatest enemy; this city is hacking it and broadcasting it. We need to stop them. I want that broadcast stopped and then I want Nestor Bravo dead. Understand?"

  "I understand, but that's not possible."

  "I'll tell you what's not possible, Miho. Mutant cannibals walking the Earth and Nestor Bravo being alive, that's impossible. But, here we are. So let me make this a little simpler, Ms. Walker. Nestor Bravo needs to be dead and no one can know that we did it. Make it look like mutants did it, if you can't… well… I'm just not quite sure what other use I would have for you. Are we clear?"

  Miho lowered her tablet to her side and looked into October's eyes. She tilted her head and studied the ceiling, thoughtfully, and then returned her gaze to his with a smile. "Yes, sir. Very well."

  Chapter 75

  ***

  Nestor stopped and looked down on the town.

  "What is it?"

  "It's a town, Caleb."

  "What is it you're looking at?"

  "The town, Caleb. I'm looking at the town," Nestor said flatly.

  "Thanks, this has been enlightening."

  "Look there, see that? By the doorway? Footprints. There's someone here. Maybe more than one. Probably more. I don't see any bodies or corpses. Someone has either cleaned up the town or…"

  "Or eaten the dead."

  "You ready to use that gun, you think? Has the practice helped?"

  "I guess."

  "Let's hope so."

  Nestor went down to his stomach and began sighting his rifle.

  "If it comes down to shooting I'll shoot, but if you can use your brain to keep it from turning into a bloodbath, Caleb, I'd appreciate it. We are invading their turf after all."

  "Wait, what's happening?"

  "For a week two of us have been eating the stores I'd set aside just for me. We need food. There's something down there. You go down and figure out what's what. I'll be up here with the rifle. This is the high ground, good visibility. Take a long look, anyplace you can't see from up here, don't go there, or I can't cover you."

  "Why don't you go down and I'll stay up here? Come on, this is your thing, Nestor, I'm not… I'll stay up here."

  "You ever kill anybody before?"

  "No."

  "Well, if I'm gonna put my life in a sniper's hands I want to know he can pull the trigger and not miss. You don't have to worry. I don't hesitate and I don't miss."

  Caleb stared at the town silently, but did not move.

  "Look at me, Caleb, you'll be fine. This is a precaution, chances are they're gonna be more scared of you than you are of them."

  "I don't think I can do this, Nestor."

  "Caleb, you are either useful or you're not. Having someone to watch my back is a good idea, so I've put up with you. Having someone who I have to watch over on top of myself is stupid. It's time for you to prove yourself. It's a world that is going to involve a whole lot of killing. You're going to be on one side or the other. A predator or prey. You can't be in between. There's no more in between in this world. You can do this."

  Caleb looked from Nestor down to the town. He took a deep breath and, as instructed, noted where his lines of sight died. Then he walked down the hill and stopped. There was a sound somewhere. He couldn't say what it was, a door catching a breeze, the foundation of a house settling, a mutant grinding its teeth or the sound of a rifle taking aim on his head.

  Caleb tried to breathe, to feel the air coming into his lungs and then releasing. The town came into bright focus. He'd read about the clarity of war, the clarity of the moment before death, the clarity of enlightenment. Until this moment he'd assumed they were different, unique. Now he could only hope. He forced his foot in front of the other. Stopping as a door began to open.

  The door seemed to open impossibly slow, with the head of the mutant coming into view long after Caleb had raised his H and K. He double-checked to make sure his safety was off.

  "Stop, stop right there."

  "Why? Why should I?"

  "Because I'll shoot you."

  "Why? This is my home, I live here. You are the intruder. You came to my street. I did nothing to encourage you to come here. Nor did I threaten you now that you've come here and yet, you would shoot me?"

  "I don't want to. I just… I need food. I don't eat the same food as you. I'm not going to take anything that's of use to you, Mr. …Mutant."

  "We aren't so different then, are we? You and I? We are both here, we are both hungry."

  "One step closer and you drop," Caleb said with a quavering voice.

  "Oh yes? Your hand is shaking, you don't look confident human. Does he comrades?"

  It was then that Caleb sensed the shadows in the periphery of his eyes. He allowed himself a quick glance to see the three mutants to his right and one to his left, closing in.

  Caleb tried to focus on his breathing as he squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 76

  ***

  Jacob swaggered out of his tent with his newly trimmed hair. Arian followed with a slight tremor of excitement pulsing through him in anticipation of what was to come. The whole army was waiting, surrounding a small and growling group of mutants. There were five mutants in the angry group, all a head taller than Jacob. They were rough looking. Their leather tatters showing that they had most likely been bikers in their past humanity. Jacob looked almost comical with his theatrically coifed hair towering over his, now mutated but still oddly attractive, face and his suit newly hemmed to fit his mutant form.

  "Gentlemen, I hear you are unhappy."

  "This isn't funny, Jacob. We know what you're hiding?"

  "Do you? What is that?"

  "You have a cure to this disease!"

  The mutant who was doing the speaking moved forward so that only a foot of air separated him and Jacob. The other four rebel mutants were slowly fanning out beside the brash leader, their fangs glistening.

  "I do, but it's not ready yet."

  "Not ready?! The doctor has already used it! He's human again! He did this to us and you let him be cured first?!"

  "No, moron. I made him use himself as a guinea pig to prove to me it worked. Which it seems to, but I'm not totally convinced. So, what we're going to do is continue our little march and when I'm satisfied that the time is right, I'll give you all back your humanity. Okay?"

  The large leader of the rebel mutants roared loudly into the air, his claws turned palms up to the sky. The other four behind him growled their support. A murmur of excitement rippled through the crowd. Most of the Mutant Army stood a comfortable distance back from the argument. Arian noticed among the excited mutants the Shadow Army Indians casually watching with amusement.

  "Not okay," the rebel said after his roar finally died. "You have no right to withhold from us!"

  "But, it's my cure. I kidnapped Dr. Thomas, I extorted him to do the work. I poisoned him. I did everything. What have you done?"

  "I've followed you blindly, like all of us, and why? Without these giant Indians and that fellow with the brands you'd be nothing! You're just a pretty little rich boy who wants to be king!"

  "I am King."

  "Earn it with blood then!"

  Jacob smiled and removed his coat.

  "Just you? I thought you had four supporters here? How does that work? I kill you and they go back to following me? No, no, no, that will never do. I'm afraid I'm going to have to fight all five of you at the same time, right? What do you think, soldiers?! Do you want to see Jacob the Mutant King fight five huge monsters at once?!"

  Arian instinctually let out the first cheer, but as his own voice disappeared into the chorus that grew around him, he realized that his excitement wasn't from the hope of Jacob performing another spectacle, but a new hope. A hope that Jacob would lose. Arian watched as Jacob shifted around the circle in the stance and cadence of a knife fighter, his favored knife replaced by his large claws. As he moved around the circle Jacob momentarily glanced
into Arian's eyes and Arian was certain that his hope was futile. Jacob was not going to lose.

  The leader of the rebel mutants charged forward and swung his right claw with a roar, which Jacob quickly ducked. Jacob spun behind the larger mutant and as he did his claws opened the back of the rebel's knees. The rebel collapsed to the ground and Jacob laughingly ripped off his head as the next two rebels charged. Jacob casually tossed the head into the air, leapt forward and flew over the two aggressor's lunges. He spun in the air between them and landed gracefully on his feet. As they turned around he reached out and opened both of their throats, which exploded into fountains of blood.

  Arian stood apart while the army screamed with blood lust and frenzy, except for the Shadow Army who stood among them. The Indians stood quietly contemplative, as if in prayer, while Jacob, by any definition their Messiah, danced death into the last two rebels, playing with them, dodging their claws by inches, smiling at their frustration, and then finally with a combination of slashes so fast as to be only a blur, he cut them both clean in half.

  Jacob had replaced his coat before letting forth a bellowing laugh that rang through the surrounding abandoned sprawl. As the sound disappeared into echoes in the night Jacob looked at Arian and smiled.

  Chapter 77

  ***

  "You look good, Sergeant. How do you feel?"

  "Good, thank you, ma'am."

  "Not ma'am, it's Miho. How is your unit?"

  "Good men. The best."

  Miho glanced at the men who stood at attention in the barracks.

  "I doubt that. Well, it's time. Are you ready for your orders?"

  "Of course, Miho."

  "Good. You are to night-parachute onto the mainland. Once there, you will, by staying in contact with me, put yourself into the path of Nestor Bravo."

  "Nestor Bravo? The Nestor Bravo?" the sergeant gasped.

  "Is there a problem?" Miho asked as the men throughout the barracks shifted nervously.

  "He's Nestor Bravo, the soldier from "The Night of a Hundred Bullets!" You need a thousand men to kill him!"

  Agent Flores' laughter cut through the room and drew the eyes of the soldiers. The big Indian had sat himself in the corner of the barracks and was leaning his chair back against the wall.

  "A man in a tower with a sniper rifle and a clear range of sight takes some killing," Flores' deep bass boomed through the room. "A man, sick, half-starved, slowed by age and injury, wandering the sprawl of a dead civilization with a half-wit at his side, when you are many and have superior firepower, shouldn't pose too much of a problem."

  The sergeant glared over at the bigger man.

  "I don't see you volunteering to come with us. If you're so eager to kill Nestor Bravo why don't you go?"

  Flores lowered his chair and grabbed a large duffel bag that had been lying beside him and brought it over to the sergeant with a smile.

  "When the time comes for Nestor Bravo to die, I will most certainly be there," Flores smiled.

  Chapter 78

  ***

  Caleb was still shaking, still in the same spot, surrounded by the bodies of dead mutants when Nestor returned from scavenging the market. Nestor reached out and placed a firm hand on Caleb's shoulder and gave him a shake.

  "You're okay. You're alive. You did good."

  "Did I kill him?"

  "You slowed him down so he didn't kill you, Caleb, I took the kill shot. Does that make it better?"

  “Not really."

  "Oh. Well then, yeah, you killed the shit out of that mutant. Come on. It'll be dark soon. Let's find a place to sleep."

  Nestor walked out of the town at a quick pace that Caleb tried to match with his still unsteady feet.

  "I killed him. He was living his life, I came into his town and I killed him."

  "Caleb, relax, it's over now."

  Caleb stopped and vomited against a dead tree. Nestor stood there and let Caleb shake.

  "I'm sorry. You think I'm weak."

  "No, Caleb, I don't."

  "You're first time… did you throw up?"

  Nestor scanned the sky while Caleb retched again. He turned back around and helped Caleb back up.

  "No, it was never like that for me, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. Come on, one foot in front of the other."

  That night Nestor found himself surprised how much he missed Caleb's inane chatter, but he didn't force it. He knew that for some men these things took time and he knew that it didn't mean they wouldn't turn out, in the end, to be someone you'd want beside you in battle. Nestor had been impressed by the way Caleb had shot the mutant back in the village. He hadn't turned away. He had faced it head on. Hands shake from adrenaline, legs from fear, and Caleb's legs hadn't moved an inch when he fired his first shot.

  "I can’t stop my hands... they keep shaking.”

  “Shakings good, Caleb. Dead peoples' hands don’t shake. The truth of it is that most of the signs of being alive are awful. They’re fear, sweat, bleeding, cruelty, violence, pain.”

  “What about love and joy and laughter?”

  Nestor spat into the fire and then looked into the flames.

  “I suppose. I suppose for some people.”

  “Yeah, those would be happy people, Nestor. You know, the ones who don’t dwell on the misery and pain of it all. There has been, in the history of mankind, a place for a person that had some fun between birth and death. I mean, that wasn’t behavior that was necessarily frowned upon, being happy or remembering good times. And I would make the argument, that if you can’t remember life before the hordes of flesh-eating mutants, if you can’t remember life ever being worth living, what the hell are you fighting for?!”

  Nestor understood that the rage that was coming at him was the verbal result of trauma and adrenaline and so he didn't take it personally. There were only so many things Nestor understood, but he knew to a certainty, without having to look, that by shouting Caleb had stopped his hands from shaking.

  “Caleb, I know what I'm fighting for. I'm fighting because I made a promise to a girl, and because a guy shot me, and blew up my country, and turned my countrymen into mutants. I’m fighting because I want to watch him suffocate on his own blood as it fills his lungs.”

  “Wow, that actually made you smile. That was like the closest I’ve ever seen to you happy. Nestor, you are a terrifying person.”

  Chapter 79

  ***

  Arian sat at the fire with Dr. Thomas. Several of the nearby neighborhoods' larger mansions had been taken over by the mutants in the name of a raging orgy of destruction and violence that had followed Jacob's killing of the rebels. The screams of the celebration were vicious and loud. At the most distant edge of the firelight a few of the Indians stood among themselves, Jacob was gone, disappeared into the night.

  "Jacob fights well."

  "Yes," Arian laughed, "quite well."

  "Oh, a silly thing to say I suppose. He was an Alpha of course but… he was so much smaller and outnumbered. Without a gun, you would think he would have been unable to fair so well."

  "His specialty was always knives. For a time he was the Alpha instructor in Apache Knife Fighting. They say an Apache would carry thirteen knives on his person, so it couldn't be much of a change. Ten claws, claws are just a bunch of knives I guess."

  "Apache Knife Fighting? Weren't the Comanche's enemies with the Apache's? Isn't that a problem for the Comanche?"

  Arian raised his eyes from the fire and stared at the man.

  "Comanche?"

  "Yes, the Shadow Army soldiers. Jacob said they were Comanche."

  "The Comanche were a small tribe, in stature I mean. Their abilities on horseback made them great warriors, not their physical size. Those aren't Comanche, Doc."

  "So, it was a lie? Then, how did they actually come to be in the Shadow Army?"

  "I don't know really. They don't talk much or have names, which is all just so that they look cool, if you ask me. Nameless Soldiers in a
Shadow Army. The only one of them who ever talked much is with October Carnegie now."

  "So you have no idea?"

  "I've heard many stories, Doc. Some say the government at one point wanted to test out a gene modification to make super soldiers and they wanted to test it on people who were too poor and underrepresented to complain if it went wrong. At that time there was no one who better fit that description than the Seminole Nation. Some say the Rothschild family was behind the program and it was Cherokees. Some say they were Apache, others Sioux. Some say they're robots. Some people say they are from a bunch of different tribes and are just a bunch of guys who wanted money and Jacob gave them a lot.

  Arian paused and stared into the fire, the burning light painful to his sensitive eyes, but he let the pain grow for a little longer before lowering his eyes to the ground.

  "Or, maybe they were like me," Arian said, raising his stinging eyes to stare into the darkness beyond the camp. "Maybe they were mercenaries born into the wrong time. Maybe they were men who had no other abilities than to kill, but who wanted to be warriors, not murderers. Heroes, not monsters. Just soldiers looking for a battle in a world where there weren't any. I don't know, it could be any of those. Well… the robot thing probably isn't true."

  "Why would Jacob say they were Comanche who wanted revenge? Why would he lie about that?"

  "Why does Jacob do anything? He's insane."

  "Why, Arian," Arian grew stiff at the sound of Jacob's voice behind him, "what an awful thing to say."

  Arian awaited the impact of claws, but none came. Jacob chuckled softly and leaned over the fire to light his cigar. An explosion rocked the town behind them followed by the cheers of the Mutant Army.

  "They're destroying that town! Shouldn't you stop them soon, sir?"

  "No, Doc," Jacob shrugged, his eyes stuck on Arian's. "Why bother? The homes they destroy have no value. The dead bodies they devour would only rot. No, we let them rage tonight, it will make tomorrow easier."