War_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

When he finally stopped, he found Maygar staring at him, his brown eyes holding a worry and grief almost on the surface. Revik looked away from him, but found himself seeing more of the same, seemingly in every face around him. He fielded sympathetic looks on dirty, haggard faces. He counted them, tried to decide if it would be enough, or if that even mattered anymore.

  Eight infiltrators.

  Eleven with him, Maygar and Jon.

  Cass would have more. She would have whoever Shadow gave her. She would have Terian, possibly Ditrini and those five from the sewers. She’d have more from Black Arrow. She’d likely have members of Salinse’s network, and other renegades from the Lao Hu.

  Whatever they had, it wouldn’t be enough.

  Nothing they had, nothing they could bring, would be enough.

  Revik no longer cared.

  Pushing it from his mind, he reminded himself it didn’t matter. He couldn’t be rational about this, not anymore. He didn’t even want to be. He was long past that stripped-down logic he’d managed to hold onto in the sewers.

  He was going to tear Cass apart with his bare hands.

  He would kill anyone who had touched his wife––any one of them who had helped make Allie feel those things he’d felt on her in the dark.

  Hearing his wife scream for him, he’d had to fight to keep from screaming himself. He couldn’t pick out enough specifics to know what he was afraid of, apart from her fear. He couldn’t see where she was. He just knew they’d broken her.

  They’d broken her, left her in the dark.

  She’d been lost, terrified out of her mind, and not only for herself.

  Whatever they’d done to her, he’d visit it upon them a thousandfold.

  He’d never rest again, not until it was done.

  He must have made a noise at one point, because Jorag was rubbing his back again with strong strokes of his hand, half-supporting him now, and Oli gave him a frightened look from where she walked ahead, an automatic rifle slung over her shoulder.

  Jon looked at him, too, but Revik couldn’t read anything in the other man’s face, couldn’t meet any of their gazes as they gave him nervous looks, as if he were already a ghost.

  Revik wouldn’t let himself think about anything he felt on them. He wouldn’t let himself waste a single flicker of his light on them, whether they helped him or not. He threw everything he had at Allie. He strained towards her with all of his being: trying to give her light, love, reassurance, anything he had, everything he had, already knowing she wouldn’t feel it, that it would never be enough.

  She screamed again, and her anguish broke over him.

  Lost in the dark.

  She was lost in the dark.

  Revik could barely see by the time they led him to the lone plane standing on the tarmac. He had no idea where he was, or anything apart from that scream he could hear in the dark.

  48

  GOING HOME

  SOMEONE SHOOK HIM back to consciousness.

  Revik opened his eyes, feeling like his face and jaw had been encased in cement.

  A different face hung over him, eyes shining faintly in low light and blocking the rest of his vision. Revik moved fast, and without thought… like an animal, breaking out of his stupor as if he’d been hit with an electric prod instead of touched gently with a bare hand.

  As a result, he jerked his hurt leg, too hard, slamming it into the armrest of the plane seat and nearly losing consciousness when pain ran jagged lines through his light. He groaned, panting, and glanced up to see Jon’s face.

  The man looked paler and more haggard than Revik had ever seen him.

  “Gods, Revik. I’m sorry.”

  Revik shook his head, gripping the armrests and gritting his teeth as he waited for the pain to subside. As soon as he could take a breath, he spoke. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s all right. Talk to me. Where are we?”

  “Twenty minutes to landing,” Jon said at once.

  Revik nodded, feeling the sickness in his chest worsen.

  He’d asked Wreg to knock him out.

  He knew he wouldn’t sleep if they didn’t force it on him, and he knew his light wouldn’t replenish much at all if he didn’t sleep, even with help. He’d forced himself to catalogue his injuries before Wreg did it. He also allowed them to clean him up, give him light, and do what they could to patch him up so he could start to heal.

  He’d found most of what he expected to find.

  He’d found a few surprises, too.

  He’d broken one of his hands, and hadn’t even noticed––probably when Ditrini slammed his bound arms into the pipe wall. He hadn’t felt it with his circulation cut off from the binders, but as soon as they’d given him a sedative from the plane’s medical stores, he realized he could barely move his fingers, even to put on his seatbelt.

  They’d put a field dressing and a splint on that, taping it up to where the pain was at least bearable. They cleaned up his face and stitched the cuts under his eye, over his eye and one at his hair line. They’d taped up the broken ribs, and his leg. They used the hand-held to assess the damage to his organs, and to look for any internal bleeding.

  He was lucky as hell there wasn’t anything significant; he was mostly just bruised badly, including his kidneys and liver. The doc told him he might get some blood in his urine and feces, but to let him know if it started to hurt significantly more than it already did.

  They iced his face and jaw––the latter of which, the hand-held told him was fractured, which he’d more or less expected.

  He’d lost a few teeth; again, not a surprise.

  Apart from trying to pull himself together physically, Revik couldn’t do anything during the flight anyway, and he didn’t want to dream. He didn’t want to feel anything more from Cass, or even from Allie, not until he could see her with his own eyes.

  So he told Wreg to knock him out, which the muscular seer did, seemingly with relief.

  “Any news?” Revik managed, fighting to clear his throat. “Balidor?”

  Jon handed him a glass of something.

  Revik didn’t hesitate. He drank it, closing his eyes as he tilted his head back. It was bourbon, a fact for which he was beyond grateful. He handed the empty glass to Jon, nodding a thanks, even as Jon handed him a water bottle next.

  “Drink that one, too,” Jon advised. “All of it. You lost a lot of blood. The tech put iron in it, along with a few other things.”

  Revik nodded, twisting off the cap.

  He drank that down almost as fast as he had the bourbon, gasping a little for breath as he finished. He did all of it with the emotionlessness of tending to a needed machine. Rubbing his unbroken hand through his hair, he tossed the empty bottle on the seat next to him, then clicked his fingers at Jon.

  “News,” he said again.

  He watched with narrow eyes as Jon poured him another glass of bourbon, handing it to him wordlessly. Jon watched Revik drink it before he began to speak.

  “Balidor’s pretty sure Ditrini got away,” Jon said, his voice sounding like a military report, almost like how Wreg would have said it. “No news on Feigran. Or Shadow. Gar and Vikram determined the telecast really did take place in D.C., and was broadcast live, just like it appeared. According to some of Balidor’s contacts, Shadow’s team left from there before the wave hit. He’s thinking they might have gone to ground again.” Jon hesitated. “…He also thinks it’s unlikely they’ll be staying long in San Francisco. He’s found no evidence of a base there, and it’s been hit hard by earthquakes, and at least one tsunami of their own.”

  Revik nodded, finishing off the last swallow of bourbon before he handed Jon the glass. Jon gave him another bottle of water and Revik opened the top, speaking without looking up.

  “What about the hotel?”

  While Revik drank, Jon gave a single nod, seer-fashion.

  “They managed to reinforce the fields enough to keep the building structurally sound. The basement and all the sub-levels
flooded, of course. They lost most of the armory, and worse, from their perspective, the majority of the stored seeds and perishable food. They’re hoping they can salvage some of that when the water recedes, but they have to assume the worst. There’s some talk of moving operations, but, of course, that will take time.”

  Revik nodded, only half hearing this.

  “Casualties?” he said.

  Jon hesitated until Revik looked up.

  Frowning at whatever he saw in Revik’s face, he shrugged with one hand.

  “Which place, man? What number? They estimate they lost at least a hundred thousand in Manhattan itself. At the hotel, they’ve confirmed at least a dozen seer deaths. Maybe double that number of humans. Most of the humans we lost were on the List.”

  Revik nodded, feeling nothing as he stared at the floor.

  “What does Balidor think?” he said. “About the imprints I sent him?”

  Jon exhaled, shaking his head. “He doesn’t know, man. No one does. It doesn’t look good, but you already knew that.”

  Hesitating, he seemed on the verge of asking something, then changed his mind.

  “What?” Revik looked up, then found he knew what the other man wanted to ask. “How soon before I start to die after Allie does? If it’s anything like last time, I’ll have a few days before I start to really feel it. Weeks before it starts to kill me. Anything else?”

  “Revik, man. Gods, I––”

  “If you say you’re sorry again, Jon, I’ll break your arm.” Revik said it without feeling, but the other man tensed, leaning back instinctively. “…She’s not dead,” he added, staring at the floor. “I’ll tell you if that happens, okay?”

  Jon swallowed, hard enough that Revik heard it.

  He didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see the man’s tears any more than he wanted to hear him apologize again. He shut out everything as he stared at the cabin floor, wondering just how much he could drink before it stopped being helpful and started getting in his way.

  Deciding he didn’t want to test that, either, he didn’t move, or look up.

  A few minutes later, he felt Jon move away.

  OLI AND JORAG landed the plane at approximately one o’clock that morning, after stopping to refuel once in Denver, then going the rest of the way to the San Francisco International airport.

  The airport itself was completely deserted.

  No one worked the control tower, of course, but the runways themselves were also unlit and all of them nearly got killed when Jorag initially guided them to the wrong approach and landed on a piece of tarmac covered over in a scattering of empty and deserted commercial planes.

  He caught the mistake before they would have crashed, and Oli pulled them up and around for another try, at which time they found an empty lane.

  Well, more or less. Empty of big objects, anyway. Revik heard them talking about bodies and cars scattered over the runway, but nothing that prevented them from landing.

  Finding transportation into the city itself was harder.

  Revik followed after the rest of them as they looked for cars that hadn’t had all of their gas siphoned. Eventually someone, maybe Loki, stumbled across an electric vehicle with its battery intact. They still had to wait while Wreg and the others found an outlet to charge it enough to get them into the city proper.

  Wreg eventually gave the order to roll it through one of the shattered glass walls of the airport itself, where they parked it and promptly found an industrial outlet that still seemed to be connected to whatever remained of the grid.

  Even so, they all knew it would be a one-way trip.

  While the battery charged, Wreg and Illeg were already discussing the fact that they would need to find another way out after they’d found Allie. Of course, the bigger issue was the plane. They’d probably spend a good five or six hours siphoning fuel off the remaining commercial aircraft to get enough to fly back across the country––unless they managed to find one in reasonable condition and already fueled that they could just steal.

  Of course, that assumed returning to New York even made sense.

  Revik overheard Wreg and Jon talking about the possibility of bringing the rest of their New York contingent further west, instead. Not to San Francisco itself, but maybe to one of the inland states like Montana or Colorado, or even further north, to Canada.

  That, or perhaps they could go east, in the direction of Europe, or Asia.

  Everyone seemed to agree they’d be better off finding somewhere a bit off the coast and with some altitude, where they were less likely to be vulnerable to the coastal storms, including the earthquake-generated tsunamis, which were pounding the Pacific coast almost as hard as they were the Atlantic.

  Everyone also seemed to agree that those problems would only be worse in the areas where the tectonic plates intersected.

  Like San Francisco, for example.

  Or really anywhere in the Northwest, since Jorag and Neela had seen feed stories about volcanos going active all along the Cascades, the mountain range that ran through the middle of Oregon and Washington.

  Revik couldn’t make himself care about any of this.

  He focused on finding them a car.

  He continued to limp through the parking structure even while they charged the electric one, looking for anything that might get them there sooner. He even considered trying to walk towards the city, but the others convinced him to wait, reminding him he wouldn’t do Allie much good if he got shot by vigilante humans.

  After all, anyone might recognize his face from wanted postings on the feeds.

  Hell, even if they just ID’d him as seer, they’d probably kill him.

  So he waited. He was standing by one of the large windows inside the airport, smoking a hiri someone had given him, when Wreg finally approached him.

  “We’re ready, Nenz,” he said.

  Revik didn’t speak.

  Dropping the hiri to the tile floor, he crushed it with the ball of his foot, using the motion to pivot in the direction of the car. Pulling his weight along with guard rails where he could, he limped back in the direction of the glass doors alongside Wreg, doing his best to shut off his mind, and even his light.

  He couldn’t feel her anymore.

  If he couldn’t feel her, he didn’t want to feel anything.

  He still couldn’t be sure if she was dead, if they’d just put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger, but he didn’t think so. Even if they’d put the collar to end all collars on her, he was pretty sure he would have felt that, if they’d already ended both of their lives.

  Well, all three of their lives now.

  Pushing the thought away, like he had the other several dozen times it tried to rise, he told himself none of it mattered now.

  He knew where she was.

  That mattered.

  He sat in the front seat while Jon drove.

  The car was a hatchback, thank the gods, or they might have had to leave some of them behind, or maybe tie them to the roof. As it was, Oli sat on Revik’s lap, and Wreg, Illeg, Neela, Jorag, Maygar, Loki and Jax crammed into the back seat and trunk, which they’d enlarged by ripping out the back seats and laying cushions directly on the floor.

  The car’s chassis likely scraped the asphalt as they drove.

  It made sense to have Jon drive.

  He knew the city better than any of them, even Revik, who probably would have insisted on driving himself if he hadn’t known that his leg would make it impossible for him to do it safely. So he sat there instead, gritting his teeth as he stared out the window, clutching the handle of the door as he forced himself to remain silent and not wince whenever Oli shifted her weight onto his hurt leg.

  The car seemed to go excruciatingly slow.

  Revik knew it didn’t, really.

  He watched the scenery flow by the car’s window and windshield, fighting to breathe, to remain silent. He didn’t speak, only ground his teeth when they were forced to slow down, usually to
circle around stopped cars and other debris cluttering stretches of road. At one point, Wreg and several other infiltrators had to push a group of humans out of their way, when they came across a barricade and an ambush set up to catch any road traffic.

  From what Wreg picked up off their leader’s mind, the sale of passengers was now of primary interest, in addition to the car itself and whatever they might have on them deemed of value in this new world. That list prioritized weapons, food and fuel, but could include just about anything, including their clothes, shoes, even their teeth.

  Seers were live-capture priorities, too.

  Revik watched the overly thin and sick-minded humans pull down their own roadblock, eyes glassy from the pushes of Oli, Jorag, Loki, Illeg and Wreg. He watched them do it, silent, and knew if he had access to the telekinesis, he would have killed them by now, and not only because of what Wreg told them.

  He couldn’t even make himself feel bad about it.

  Whoever they were, they didn’t seem to be doing themselves a lot of favors anyway––much less the other members of their race.

  It took time to get into the city, though, given delays, debris and marauding humans.

  It was more time that Revik could really handle at that point.

  He didn’t try to mark that time himself, not in actual increments, not even by the sun rising slowly over the horizon. He tried not to think about it at all, since there was nothing he could do to speed the process, or to make himself feel better about each minute that slipped by. Even so, he knew more than an hour passed between when they first entered the freeway and when they finally rounded the last curve before the city’s main skyline exploded into view.

  That skyline was almost unrecognizable, even though it had been less than a month since Revik last saw it. The deterioration had accelerated, and now it looked like there’d been more than one major military skirmish here, too.

  Windows were broken out even on the highest floors of the downtown skyscrapers, and smoke rose in black and brown clouds over at least six parts of the city. The early morning sun shone through a layer of reddish-brown haze that now lay over most of the downtown area, and into the west and east.