The Fire and the Free City

by Eric Wood

  Abigail worked the lid of the canteen with one hand and brought it to her lips, drinking deeply of its contents. Roach blanched and looked away. She could guess what was inside the canteen — campfire tales, and all that — but her stomach was unsettled enough as it was.

  "How is your arm?" Roach asked, wincing as she eyed the bloodied limb from the corner of her eye. "It doesn't look...great."

  Its contents empty, Abigail tossed the canteen aside. "It will be fine," she said. She got to her feet, looking down darkly at the limp Reaper. "Now, let's see how well you heal without a head." She pulled the curved blade free from the man's chest and looked toward Roach. "Hold his head back, would you?" she asked, as casually as if she was asking Roach to pass the salt. "My other hand still isn't working properly."

  Roach looked at Abigail, then at the Reaper, her eyes going wide — half with horror and half with curiosity. "You're not really going to —"

  Abigail's body stiffened, and a moment later Roach heard the sound of people approaching. A lot of people.

  "What happened to that rifle?" Abigail asked.

  They heard shouts, and then gunfire. Strangely, it was coming from both behind them and in front of them.

  They both dove to the ground.

  "They're shooting at each other. I think," Roach said.

  Abigail nodded. "Five shooters on one side," she said, cocking her head and listening. "Six on the other. Now five on that side."

  Roach realized Abigail was able, even with her injuries, to pick out each individual shooter solely by her sense of hearing. She could've probably pointed out where each of them was located, too. Roach wondered what else this small, strange person was capable of. If they made it out of this, perhaps she would ask her.

  "Three now on that side," Abigail said. "The good news is that's the side our friends came from."

  That doesn’t mean the other side is friendly, Roach thought. She was unarmed, and she had no idea how much mettle Abigail had left. She looked around and found the rifle she had just lost; it lay only a few feet away.

  Scrambling low along the ground, she made her way to the discarded weapon. She scooped it off the ground and rushed back toward Abigail and cover. Easy as that, she thought. Then, something hard and hot smashed into her shoulder.

  She stumbled and lost her grip on the rifle. It was too late to try and pick it up; she needed to get back to cover before —

  She lost her footing and fell forward, colliding headfirst with the very tree she was trying to hide behind. She found herself lying on the ground, with damp, musty-smelling leaves pressed against her cheek. She suddenly felt very tired. Maybe she would just rest her eyes for a few seconds...

  Her vision returned, though she could only see out of one eye. She understood that the other was pressed into the dirt, along with that side of her face, but she found that she didn't have the strength to move.

  The shooting had stopped. From her vantage point on the ground, she could see Abigail standing a few feet away. She had her injured arm cradled to her chest and was looking at something past Roach's eye-line. Roach heard footsteps approach. She wanted to turn herself over, to get up and see who Abigail was staring at with a typical mix of wariness and contempt. She wanted to do all this, but she found she was just too tired to move. No, she would just lie here a bit longer...

  "I'd say thanks for the help, but I'm not sure help is what you came here to offer," she heard Abigail say.

  "Come on now," the other voice, female, answered. "Where is the trust? Without my help, you'd probably already be dead." Roach recognized the voice, but she couldn't yet place it.

  "What are you doing out here?" Abigail asked.

  "Well, as you said, it wasn't exactly to help," the other voice said. To someone else, she called, "Is the other one still alive?"

  Roach felt a foot tap her in the stomach. The first time gently, the second much harder. She closed her eyes and played dead.

  "She's not moving," the one just above her said. "She's got quite the hole in her back, doesn't look like it’s bleeding anymore. Seems like she's dead."

  "Why don't you check and make sure," the first voice sneered. "If it's not too much trouble, that is."

  The one above her scoffed. A moment later Roach felt something small and hard — likely the end of a rifle barrel — prod at her wound. An electric shock of pain bloomed and erupted out to the ends of her body; it took every bit of control she had not to react. If she hadn't already been so weak, she wouldn't have been able to keep still.

  "Yep, she's dead."

  Roach realized her weakness might have just saved her life — a strange, unfamiliar concept. She continued to play dead.

  "Abigail, how about you hand over that data drive so we can all get back to civilization?"

  "What data drive?" Abigail said.

  "Come on now, love, we both know you have it, just like we both know that no matter how much you'd like to, you can't get to me before my men fill you full of holes. So, let’s say we skip this whole song and dance and just go right to the end?"

  "When did you switch sides, Elena?" Abigail asked. "Was it after you and Sam went into Roosevelt's, or was it before?"

  Elena. Of course, Roach thought. She had never liked that bitch.

  "It was before, wasn't it," Abigail continued. "I thought you got out of there way too easy. Now here you are, trading out Ki's tattooed lackeys for Roosevelt's black-masked thugs. I'll tell you what, you want the data drive? Why don't you come over here and take it?"

  "Fair enough," Elena said.

  A single shot rang out. Abigail let out a slow breath through her mouth, like she was relaxing some long-held tension. She coughed, and blood dribbled down her chin. She raised a hand to her neck, just under the jawline. Blood, bright and red, flowed through the gaps in her fingers, slowly at first and then in great waves. She fell to her knees, then pitched face-first onto the ground.

  Elena walked over to Abigail's body, scrounging around in her pockets until she located the data drive. She took it, stood up and looked it over. "Like I would really work for Roosevelt," Elena muttered. She shook her head and walked away, chuckling to herself.

  "What about the bodies?" one of Elena's soldiers asked.

  "Eh, leave them. Our great and wise benefactor will be here with his army soon enough. If he wants the remains, he can clean them up himself."

  40

  Solomon looked over the burning remnants of the city and felt nothing.

  Upwards of one thousand Uninfected had lived inside Boulder's walls. Now they were all dead. Perhaps a small handful had escaped the chaos and destruction Solomon's Ravager army had brought down upon them, but he doubted it was many. When it came to killing, Ravagers were nothing if not thorough.

  "The city is destroyed," Deacon told him, somewhat superfluously.

  "Yes, Deacon," Solomon replied, "I can see that."

  "What now?"

  What now indeed. Now, it was nearly time to move on to the true prize: Cheyenne.

  Still, no reason not to placate the Ravagers somewhat. It would only cost him a day, and according to his sources, he was still running ahead of schedule. That was the nice thing about Ravagers. Promise them mayhem and plunder, and they get moving in a hurry.

  "Give the Ravagers one day to finish their revel, and then we march north," Solomon said.

  North, toward his destiny. North, toward his revenge.

  PART FOUR

  THE FIRE RISES

  41

  Before

  "Today, Dr. Solomon, the fire rises."

  With a gasp he lurched awake. Somewhere high above, the alarm siren sounded, again and again.

  Every time the klaxon blared, Dr. Solomon was reminded of the fact that their lab contained the most dangerous bio-engineered agents in the entire world. And now with project director Walker apparently having gone insane... Solomon hesitated to even imagine a worst-case scenario.

  Jed's lackeys — two of the l
arger scientists, Gibbs and Wilkerson — had shoved Solomon in a storage closet and locked the door about a half hour ago. Fifteen minutes ago, the alarm had started its whine.

  Solomon decided he was through waiting for a rescue he was increasingly certain was never going to come. If he wanted to get free, and to have any chance of stopping whatever was happening, he would have to do it himself.

  Bracing himself on the knob, Solomon lowered his shoulder and slammed into the door. It didn't budge. He tried again, and then a third time, still without success. He decided he would have to take a different tack. He rifled around the storage room's contents until he found objects that were close enough facsimiles to the tools he needed. Then he proceeded to disassemble the door’s handle, and the lock within.

  Ten minutes later, Dr. Solomon was free from the storage closet. The lab beyond, which he expected to be in chaos, was instead seemingly abandoned. He dashed across the lab's main room and toward the viral storage vaults. Along the way, he passed another scientist, Dr. Abaddon: for a brief moment he worried that he would have to fight off his colleague. Dr. Solomon had never been in a fight before, and aside from some light jogging and an exercise video he sometimes followed at home, didn't really engage in much physical activity. It turned out that he needn't have worried. Dr. Abaddon was in the midst of a hacking coughing fit that had him nearly incapacitated. He was only able to wheeze out two words when Dr. Solomon stopped to attend to him: "Testing area."

  There was nothing Dr. Solomon could do for his colleague beyond helping him to a comfortable sitting position against one of the lab walls. He needed to get to the testing lab, everything else was far less important.

  In retrospect, he probably should have been more concerned with why Dr. Abaddon seemed so sick. Normally, he would have. Right now, though, blinded by fear and adrenaline, all he could think of was getting to Jed and stopping whatever the director had set into motion.

  He had just entered the testing labs when his coughing began. Heavy, wracking things, each cough rattling his whole body, as if his lungs were trying to dislodge from his chest. A particularly hard cough caused him to fall to his knees; his vision briefly turned red, but he marshaled his strength and forced himself back to his feet. He had to keep moving forward.

  He staggered to the glass wall enclosing the testing labs, his head spinning and his vision blurring in-and-out of focus. Jed was inside, along with six other scientists, all members of Project Zeus. They were each lying on a medical table, their eyes closed, IV lines running into their arms.

  He's not testing the agent, Dr. Solomon realized, he's using it on himself. Madness suddenly seemed too feeble of a word to describe what was happening. But what could he do to stop it? Perhaps there was one thing, if only she —

  The lab spun a final time, and then went black as Dr. Solomon lost consciousness.

  Now

  Solomon had gone out on his own three days ago. He was ranging far ahead of his slowly moving Ravager army. It would be some time before it arrived at Cheyenne, but before it did, Solomon had someone he very much wanted to speak with.

  Now, in the deepest part of night, he walked slowly through the thin forest, which was as well-lit to him as it would look to an Uninfected at noon. He couldn't see Jed's army, but he could hear it, and he could smell it. It was close. Cheyenne was close as well, close enough that Solomon's target was likewise certain to be out in front of his forces alone. Alone was good; the conversation he was to have with Jed was long overdue, and it was one that needed no distractions.

  A familiar scent, underneath that of the forest and the distant army, caught Solomon's attention. He was here. Solomon looked around as surreptitiously as was possible. It wasn't that he was worried about Jed attacking him; Solomon's concern was much more mundane, and much more petty. He didn't want to appear weak or frightened in front of his one-time supervisor and current enemy.

  "Is that you, Epimetheus?" The voice spoke from behind a tree a half-dozen yards away. Solomon winced, frustrated that Jed had located him first. Well, no matter; the important thing was the man was here, and he was alone.

  Solomon abandoned stealth and strode toward the source of Jed's voice. "Still using those ridiculous Greek names, I see. What did you like to call yourself? Prometheus?"

  Jed stepped out to face him. The two stood just a few feet from one another, staring at each other in the pitch dark, each knowing quite well the other could see them just fine. "They're more appropriate now than ever, I think," Jed said. "Perhaps you're just upset you were saddled with the name of the foolish brother. No matter how apt the moniker may be."

  Solomon regarded Jed without emotion. The man hadn't changed one iota in all these years. Not in appearance, and not in attitude. "So we're brothers now, Jed?"

  "Well, it is a figure of speech. We did help usher this world into being together, did we not? Perhaps that makes us brothers of a kind. Albeit estranged."

  "Estranged is putting it lightly," Solomon said, working hard to maintain his calm. "And as I recall, it was you, and you alone, that destroyed our world."

  "Oh, don't be melodramatic," Jed scoffed. "The world is no more destroyed now than it was the day I pulled the trigger on the great fire that was Project Pandora. This isn't the world I made, my dear Epimetheus. No, that world is yet to come. All I did was light the fire, burning down the dead brush so overdue for cleansing."

  "You still think that was what you did?"

  "Of course. Yes, the younger ones might believe the Old World was better, but we know the truth. That world was ready to die on its own, to collapse into chaos due to nothing but its own tangled, flawed web of decadent, decaying systems. I merely hastened its demise. I harnessed it so that the coming troubles would not be for nothing. They would serve to usher in a better world."

  "And that's what this is?" Solomon asked. "A better world?"

  "You seem to be thriving, despite your pessimistic attitude," Jed noted. "I see that hasn't changed in the intervening years."

  "And I see your arrogance hasn't lessened any either," Solomon said.

  "You always had a lack of vision, Epimetheus; even Project Mars needed my help to truly make it sing."

  "And you always had a lack of restraint, Prometheus, which is why you're still flailing in the dark, trying to perfect a formula that will never be perfected. If you live a thousand years, you will never achieve what you are after. You do know that, right?"

  Jed raised an eyebrow. "Are you quite certain of that?"

  "So, you have perfected it?" Solomon asked, before realizing the answer to his own question. "No, you haven't. That's why you came to Cheyenne. It comes back to that damned data drive. Those experiments, in that pit beneath Jackson. The boy still has it. Is that the only reason you are so insistent on getting your young Scout back, Jed? Hmmm, I wonder."

  "Enough," Jed said. "I assume you came here for a reason. So, out with it: what do you want?"

  Solomon smiled thinly. "Maybe I came here to kill you, Jed."

  "You're welcome to try if you really believe you can," Jed answered, unfazed.

  It was a hollow threat, and they both knew it. Even when Solomon had fought Abigail for the last time, he hadn't really expected that either of them would be killed. If he fought Jed right now, the opposite was likely. The two of them, quite likely evenly matched, would tear each other apart: they would both be dead by morning. Still, Solomon was tempted. But no, he had a plan, and he would stick with it. That didn't mean he couldn't needle his old rival a bit first.

  "Perhaps I only stopped by to say 'hi' on my way to see another old friend," Solomon said. "When is the last time you spoke with Pandora, Jed?"

  "If you just came here to threaten me, Epimetheus, you should have stopped with the threat to kill me. It's more believable. You would no more volunteer to see her alone than I would."

  This was also true. Dr. Prometheus here might be a deadly adversary, but at least he was one that could be predicted. Pandora,
on the other hand, had passed through insanity and on to something far more frightening since the Horsemen outbreak. In fact, the only thing Solomon thought could really threaten his ultimate plan was if the coming conflict roused her down from her mountain and into the fray.

  "That's what I thought," Jed said. "I knew you were uncouth, Solomon, and ultimately a coward, but you never struck me as suicidal."

  "I suppose that is still to be determined, Prometheus. The truth is, we both know war is coming. I just wanted the chance to look you in the eyes one last time. Before."

  "Well, I won't say it's been a pleasure, Epimetheus, but it has been interesting. I suspect we will see each other again soon. Yes, the war is coming. Soon now. As I told you, once upon a time: the fire always rises."

  "It rises, yes," Solomon said. "And it burns. More, perhaps, than you may intend." He nodded to his onetime colleague, onetime friend, his expression neutral. "See you at the war, Dr. Walker."

  But Jed was already gone.

  42

  A horrible, ragged gasp pulled Roach back to consciousness.

  At first, she thought the noise had come from her. Considering the pain searing her shoulder and pounding inside her head, she certainly felt capable of making it. But then she heard it again, sourced somewhere to her left.

  Was Abigail still alive? Considering the amount of blood she’d lost from Elena's gunshot, that didn't just seem unlikely, it seemed impossible. Yet someone was alive over there, and they — like her — were definitely waking up.

  With a heavy grunt and a good deal of fresh pain, Roach lifted herself off of her stomach and sat up into a kneeling position. She had no idea how much time had passed since Elena had left them for dead, but a quick glance upward showed that the sun hadn't moved far across the sky. She wiped free the dirt and leaves that had stuck to her face and decided she should probably check on Abigail. At the moment, another hike sounded like about the least pleasant activity she could imagine. Unfortunately, they needed to get back to the city and alert everyone to what had happened. For all she knew, Elena was on her way to kill Rend and Sam right now.