Armageddon's Children

by Terry Brooks

  “Did you hear me?” he snaps at Logan, angry now.

  “All dead, I think,” Logan answers. “I’m not sure. I haven’t had time to check.”

  Michael shrugs. There is a dangerous glint in his eye. “Wilson’s group is gone, too. Mine is hacked to pieces. They really made a mess of us.” He looks at the prisoners, shakes his head, and mutters something unintelligible. Taking it as an indication he should continue with his efforts, Logan places the iron bar back inside the chain loop and starts to apply pressure. “Leave them!” Michael orders instantly.

  Logan turns, not sure he has heard correctly. “But they—”

  “Leave them!” Michael roars. He flings his injured arm toward the cage with such force that droplets of blood fly everywhere. “Leave them where they are. Leave them to rot!”

  Logan shakes his head in disbelief. “But they’re caged.”

  The other stares at him blankly, and then starts to laugh. “Don’t you get it? They’re where they deserve to be!” The laughter dies into something that might be a sob. “All we do for them, all we give up, and for what? So that they can run like sheep to be gathered up again? So that they can go back to being stupid and helpless? Look at them! They make me sick!”

  “Michael, it’s not their fault—”

  “Shut up!” Michael screams at him, and all of a sudden the Ronin is pointing at his midsection. “Don’t defend them! They killed your friends, your comrades, all the people who made a difference in your life! They killed them just as surely as if they pulled the trigger!”

  Logan doesn’t know what to do—except that he knows not to make any sudden moves with the Ronin pointing at him. He could argue that it is Michael who has chosen to attack Midline. He could point out that they all came here willingly, knowing the risk. But Michael’s face tells him that he isn’t going to listen to those arguments. He is barely listening to anything at this point.

  “All right, Michael,” he says gently, lifting one hand just a fraction of an inch in a placating gesture. “Let’s just go. Let’s gather everybody up and get out of here. We can talk about it later.”

  But Michael shakes his head slowly, and the insanity reflected in his eyes is bright and ungovernable. “No, it all ends here, Logan. It all ends tonight. This is as far as we go.” He shakes his head, and the Ronin dips slightly. “I’ve had enough, boy. I don’t want to live another day in this damned world. I don’t want to endure one more moment of it. I should have killed us both years ago for all the difference it’s made.”

  Logan feels a chill in the pit of his stomach. “Michael, that’s crazy! Listen to what you’re saying!”

  “I saved your life; I can take it away.” The Ronin is pointing directly at him again; Michael’s arm is steady as he aims it. “Think about it. Think about how hopeless it is! We’ve lost everything tonight—people, weapons, machines, all of it. Look at me; I probably won’t live another day, and if I do I’ll never be the same. If we don’t end it here, we’ll be caught and thrown into the camps. We’ll end up just like that!” He gestures again toward the prisoners in the cage. “I made up my mind a long time ago that I wouldn’t let that happen.”

  “But these people need our help! What about all the others like them?”

  Michael shakes his head once more. “I don’t care about them. What happens to them doesn’t matter. What happens to us does. You and me, now that Fresh is gone. I have to protect us. I promised you I would, when you were still a boy. We’ve had a good run, but the time has come to step out of the race.”

  Logan is holding the Scattershot down by his side. Michael is going to kill him, and there isn’t a chance in the world he will be able to raise his weapon and fire it in time to save himself. He catches glimpses of the prisoners huddling at the back of the cages, eyes wild with fear. No help there. He watches the smoke of battle ebb and flow through the building’s deep interior, but nothing else moves. No help there, either.

  “Michael, don’t do this,” he begs. “Put down the weapon and talk to me. Think it through. There has to be another way.”

  “There is no other way!” Michael screams.

  Logan doesn’t stop to think after that. He simply acts. He shifts his gaze past Michael’s left shoulder, as if catching sight of something, and says in a hushed voice, “Demon.”

  Acting instinctively, Michael wheels and fires, the Ronin spraying bullets everywhere. Logan does not hesitate. He brings up the Scattershot and levels it. Michael is already turning back, realizing he has been tricked, when the Scattershot discharges its load into his chest. The force of the blow throws him back half a dozen feet and leaves him sprawled on the concrete floor.

  For a moment, Logan cannot move. He cannot believe what he has done. The echoes of gunfire and the moaning of the prisoners waft through the building. “Michael,” he whispers.

  Maybe there is still time to help him. Maybe he can still be saved.

  But by the time Logan reaches him, Michael is already dead.

  IN THE AFTERMATH, it feels to him as if he has lost everything. Unable to make himself leave, he kneels next to Michael’s body for much longer than is safe. Finally, hearing shots in the distance, he regains sufficient presence of mind to realize that he needs to flee. Then he remembers the prisoners still locked in the cages, still trapped and helpless. Using the iron bar, he snaps the chains, flings open the doors, and watches them bolt. When the last of them disappears, he slings Michael’s body over his shoulder, picks up the Scattershot and the Ronin, and walks through the drifting smoke and the bodies of the dead into the night.

  He finds Grayling outside, another man hanging on to him for support, the two of them working their way toward the only truck still intact. Grayling looks at him, sees whom he is carrying, and stops. When Logan gets close enough, the big man asks him where he is going. Away, he answers. It’s over. And keeps walking as the other calls after him, Good luck.

  He finds the Lightning parked back in the trees where Michael has left it. Michael always drives it on these raids, to the attacks and then back, his own personal transport. Sometimes he lets Logan ride with him—more often than not since losing Fresh. Once or twice, he has even told Logan that one day the Lightning will be his. One day, it seems, has arrived. Logan knows the codes that release the locks and disarm the security system, and he uses that knowledge now. Then he puts Michael in the back and drives away.

  When he is far enough out in the middle of nowhere—so far out that he doesn’t know for sure where he is—he parks, takes out a shovel, digs a grave that is both deep and wide, and lays Michael within. After he has covered up the body, he sits by the grave site and tries to think things through.

  Had it really been necessary to kill Michael? He asks himself this question over and over. He agonizes over the possibility that there might have been another way, a way he should have found, a way that would have kept the one person he cared about alive. But it happened so fast, and at the time he had been so sure. If he didn’t kill Michael, Michael was going to kill him. Michael had gone native; he had gone over the wall and into the wilderness, and he wasn’t coming out. His mind had snapped for reasons that Logan could only guess at, and nothing he did on that night—and perhaps for many nights before then—had been rational.

  Logan would have done anything to save Michael. Anything. But he failed to act quickly enough, and so Michael is gone. He cries, thinking of it. It seems unfair, wrong. Michael did so much for others, for all those men, women, and children consigned to a living hell in the camps, to lives of slavery and worse. Only Michael tried to do anything to help them, to give them a chance at life. Someone should have done something for him in return.

  No, not someone, he corrects quickly. Himself. He should have done something for Michael. But he didn’t. Didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know how to do it. And now it is too late.

  When dawn breaks in a thin leaden line across a sky so overcast it feels as if it is pressing down against the earth l
ike the hand of judgment, he is forced to confront his future. With Michael dead and his followers dead or scattered, Logan has nowhere to go. He doesn’t even know what to do, for that matter. Carry on Michael’s work? Attacking the slave camps seems endless and ultimately not enough to make a difference. One man is not enough to attack the slave camps in any case. One man is not enough to do anything in this world.

  So he wanders for weeks, driving aimlessly, until finally the Lady appears to tell him what it is that he is needed to do.

  THE MEMORY CAME and went like the passing of a cloud’s shadow across the earth, and Logan Tom found himself staring once more at the wall of rock that blocked the pass. A gust of wind blew sharp and chill against his face, and the deep silence of the mountains pressed close in the wake of the memory’s passing. He stood where he was for a moment, collecting his thoughts, then turned away. Memories could take you outside yourself, but they couldn’t keep you there for long. He walked back to the Lightning, climbed inside, and started the engine. In minutes, he was winding his way back down the mountainside. His mouth tightened against his thoughts. One thing he had learned that Michael had not. No matter how bad things looked, there was always another way.

  He descended out of the pass, traveling east back down through the foothills toward the flats. He drove as swiftly as the condition of the highway would allow, watching the daylight begin to fail with nighttime’s approach. He would have to decide soon whether to turn north or south to find a way through the mountains. He knew there were several major passes that led over, but not which ones were still accessible.

  When he reached what appeared to be a major crossroads, he stopped and threw the finger bones once more. The bones writhed and wriggled on the square of black cloth and formed themselves into fingers that by compass reckoning pointed northwest. He put the bones away and turned the Lightning north. This road was smaller, its surface badly eroded by time and weather. He had to travel more slowly as a consequence, and the light soon faded to a thick, hazy gray, leaving behind a world of shadows and furtive movements.

  He had almost decided that he had gone as far as it was possible to go without unnecessary risk when the road ahead turned into a morass of dark obstacles that forced him to slow to a crawl. Old vehicles, pieces of fencing, and farm equipment littered a road surface already pocked and cracked. There was room to get around, but only barely.

  Then there was no room at all, as dozens of dark, furtive figures materialized out of the dark to surround him.

  T HE FIGURES SEEMED to rise out of the earth like wraiths, their insubstantial forms composed of shadows and secrets, their movements quick and furtive. They did not approach in upright fashion, but in a crouched, crab-like scuttle. It was dark enough by now that he couldn’t make out their features, hazy enough that it was like peering through smoke. He was not using the AV’s headlights, and there was little natural light to provide any other form of illumination. As the figures drew nearer he could tell that they were human in shape, but lean and corded and crooked-limbed. They wore ragged clothing and clutched staffs and clubs rather than automatic weapons. They seemed curious rather than threatening, so he sat quietly and waited for them to reach the AV.

  As the first of them did so, tentatively running slender hands over the smooth metal of the hood, the light from the sunset revealed a face and arms covered with patches of dark hair, suggestive of a creature more simian than human.

  Spiders, Logan realized.

  He hadn’t seen any since Chicago, but he knew of them. One of several kinds of mutants, Spiders were humans infected by poisons or chemicals or radiation—depending on whom you believed—and physically altered as a consequence. Some claimed their minds had been altered, as well, but he had never seen any proof of this. Then again, Spiders were shy and reclusive, so it was difficult to know for sure. In Logan’s twenty-eight years, he had encountered them no more than a handful of times. He had never spoken to one, or even seen one this close up.

  The face peered in at him, features still clearly human within patches of black facial hair that coated everything from forehead to chin. Blue eyes regarded him with a mix of curiosity and hidden intent. Although the face had a feral, animalistic look to it, the eyes revealed intelligence.

  He took a chance and lowered the window. He didn’t say anything; he just nodded his greeting.

  A dozen faces pressed close, and hands reached out to touch his. He did not try to draw away. He let their gnarled, hairy fingers brush against his skin and clothing. He let them peer past him inside the AV. He let them look at everything, giving them time and space.

  At last, the one standing closest asked, “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  The words were intelligible, the speaker’s voice clear. “My name is Logan,” he replied. “I am looking for a way over the mountains.”

  There was a murmuring among the Spiders that he couldn’t follow. The speaker pointed back in the direction from which he had come. “The way over the mountains is behind you.”

  “I couldn’t go that way. The pass I intended to take is blocked by a slide and I cannot get around it. I was hoping to find another. Do you know of one? Is there another north of here?”

  The murmuring resumed, then faded. The speaker leaned in and whispered. “No one can go into the mountains north. That is sacred ground.”

  It was a simple statement of fact, but it was a warning, as well. “Why is it sacred?” he pressed.

  The Spider leaned close. “The spirits live in the mountains. Some are as the wind. Some are flesh and blood. They speak with us when we chant their names. They tell us of their will. We give them offerings and make sacrifices so that they will protect us.”

  The others, standing close behind the speaker, nodded in agreement. Logan could tell that this was serious business for them, that these people regarded their relationship with the spirits of the mountains—whatever they might be—as they would a religion.

  “Will they let no one pass to the other side?” he asked.

  The speaker shook his head, hands making a warding gesture. “You must turn back.”

  Logan sighed. He didn’t know what to do next. He didn’t think reasoning was going to work here. He would have to take a different approach. Or maybe he should just turn around and try to find another way, one that would allow him to avoid this blockade.

  “Do you have an offering so that we may permit you to go?” the speaker continued.

  Oh, so now it’s blackmail, he thought in disgust. He shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. But he wasn’t going to get into a fight if he could avoid it. “Let me get out and see,” he said.

  He opened the door and stepped out of the AV, bringing the black staff with him. As soon as the Spiders got a look at the staff, its carvings clearly visible against the polished surface, there was a collective moan. The entire body moved back from him as if it had been scorched by fire, a scattered few dropping to their knees, one or two actually covering their eyes. Logan froze instantly, not sure what was happening.

  The speaker hunched forward a step, bowing deeply. “You are a magic wielder! Forgive us, please. We did not know.”

  Sorry, sorry, sorry, whispered the cringing forms. Logan looked from face to face in disbelief.

  “Do you require our lives as payment for our foolishness?” the speaker asked softly.

  “No,” Logan said quickly. “No, I don’t require anything. It’s all right.” His mind raced. “I just need you to tell me how to find my way through the mountains.”

  The speaker, head bowed until now, risked a quick glance up. “You would visit with your own kind? I should have realized what you wanted. Of course, of course. We can help you. We can show you where they are. Come this way.”

  He set out at once, the others hastening after him, casting anxious glances back at Logan and the AV. Logan climbed back in the vehicle and started forward once more, working his way through the obstacles, following the dark gathering
that flowed ahead of him. Maybe this was going to work out after all.

  They continued up the road for another two or three miles, the Spiders moving smoothly and easily over the terrain, seemingly tireless, their dark forms scattering out ahead in the deepening dark. He thought to turn on the running lights, but he was afraid that would frighten them. They were clearly a highly superstitious bunch, if they believed in mountain spirits, and he couldn’t be sure what else might disturb them. All he needed to do was find his way into the mountains, and he could leave this business behind. Besides, the sky was sufficiently clear that slivers of moonlight cut through the cloud cover and washed the landscape in a pale soft glow that brightened the path ahead.

  As they traveled, more Spiders joined those already leading the way, until there were easily more than a hundred. They were of all shapes and sizes, probably of all ages, big and little, old and young, and it became clear that word of his coming had spread to the larger community. More appeared with the passing of every minute, materializing out of the dark, come to see the magic wielder. He found himself wondering how large their community was and how distant their village. Did they even have a village? How did they live?

  He knew so little about Spiders, he realized. Tiny splinter groups of mutants ostracized by everyone, they had been forced to make their own way in the larger world. They had survived by burrowing, Michael had told him once. Humans, they had gone to ground when the bombs fell and the radiation poisoned everything. They had survived by living on earth, air, and water that should have killed them, but instead had caused them to mutate. Like the Lizards and the other breeds. Normal humans wanted nothing to do with them; normal humans could not imagine living as mutants did, would not have dreamed even of touching them. Humans had gone one way, mutants another. It remained to be seen how it would all come together down the road.