The Ten Thousand

by Doug Felton

  “Go,” Zeke yelled to his team, expecting them to split to the left and right, heading around either side of the seating. But before they could, one of them jerked backward and fell to the ground, a wound spilling blood across his chest. Then, another spun in place, falling face forward. Behind him, Sandra cried out. He looked back to see her holding a wounded arm. Another guard fell, and she ran toward the back of the stage, disappearing from his sight. The other guards ducked for cover, and Zeke expected the next bullet to be for him, but it never came.

  Whoever was shooting could have taken him out twice now, but hadn’t. Pressing his luck, Zeke ran up the aisle in front of him toward the spot Raisa had disappeared over the wall. He hit the last row at full speed, planting his hands on the top of the back wall, vaulting himself over. Landing on the ground, he did a quick survey of his surroundings. Those who had been sitting on the wall, now lay at its base where they had fallen. Zeke checked one and found a pulse. So, they’re not dead. Good.

  In front of him, Raisa was running east towards the buildings of downtown. Even without the normally crowded streets, that would give her too many hiding places. Zeke ran after her, pushing his body to its limit. The five hundred yards from the amphitheater to the edge of the park passed by in a blur, but Raisa had too much of a head start for Zeke to catch her before she disappeared behind the first building bordering the park.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Raisa looked over her shoulder as she stepped into the shadow of the building. Zeke was right behind her, just as she’d hoped. She didn’t know how long the Ten Thousand would be out, and she wanted to draw him away from them before they came around.

  As much as she hated to climb another building, a rooftop would be her best bet against Zeke. They were equally strong thanks to his drug, but Raisa was a more experienced fighter. A flat roof with little to hide behind would work to her advantage. On the ground there were too many shadows and crevasses that he could use to even the odds.

  Raisa looked up as she ran, trying to remember what the roofs of the various buildings were like. She considered which ones she could most easily climb.

  There. In front of her, three blocks ahead was the one she was looking for. It was a tall dark-colored building with lots of windows, each one set back just enough to give her something to grab hold of as she scaled the side.

  Raisa sprinted toward the building, looking over her shoulder again. This time Zeke wasn’t behind her. She paused, scanning the shadows for any movement. Where is he?

  Turning back, she ran toward the building. As she passed an alley on the left, Zeke appeared out of the darkness, slamming into her with enough force to send her through the plate-glass window of the shop across the street. Pain exploded all over her body, and her face burned from a thousand cuts. Right away, the electric ants went to work, and Raisa pushed herself to her feet.

  She was in a restaurant, among overturned tables. As Zeke charged through the shattered window, Raisa took hold of a table and swung it at him with all her might. The impact and sound of crushing bones made Raisa wince. Zeke landed in a heap, arms twisted in unnatural angles. He cried out in pain, and, for an instant, Raisa felt sorry for him. She shook her head to clear the thought and steeled herself to finish the job, walking to him with a deliberate gait that matched her resolve.

  From the corner of her eye, Raisa glimpsed a figure moving fast. By the time she turned her head to get a better look, it was too late; he was on her. It was Hudson Phoenix. He bowled into her, sending them both to the floor. Raisa hit her head on the way down, temporarily stunning her. When her head cleared, Hudson had pinned her down and was reaching for the handle of her sword sticking out from beneath her jacket. She fought, trying to push his hand away. That earned her a punch to the face. She was strong, but so was he, and he had the advantage. Raisa tried to bite his arm, but couldn’t reach it.

  Eventually, he got hold of the sword and pulled it from its scabbard. Pushing off of her, he scrambled to his feet, standing over her with a victor’s smile on his face. He understands how this works, Raisa thought. The only way to kill her was to damage a vital organ badly enough that death would occur before her body could repair it. Decapitating her would do the job. She wondered if that was what he was about to do.

  The whole thought-process took less than two seconds, but it felt like an eternity. Long enough for Raisa to consider how she would escape the immediate danger she faced. It had never occurred to her she would die before killing Zeke, so she assumed she’d survive Hudson’s attack. Only she couldn’t see how. Hudson had the sword raised high above his head, and, even though he appeared to be moving in slow motion, so was she. She pushed against the floor, trying to move out of the way of the oncoming blade, but her body reacted as slowly as Hudson. Raisa wouldn’t make it out of the way in time.

  She closed her eyes, wondering if death would hurt, almost grateful that it was over. She regretted that Zeke was still alive, but she trusted Josh to finish the mission. At the sound of a loud grunt, her eyes open. Josh had slammed into Hudson’s back, and the sword went wide, but not wide enough. It sliced off the top of Raisa’s ear and buried itself in the muscle connecting the shoulder and the neck. Raisa cried out in pain.

  Josh’s impact carried Hudson over another set of tables and landed them both on the floor. Josh jumped to his feet and grabbed the sword, pulling it from Raisa’s neck and turned back to Hudson. Raisa couldn’t see Hudson beyond the overturned tables, but she could see Josh raise the sword and bring it down twice.

  He stepped over the tables and put a hand out for Raisa. She took it and stood, looking around the restaurant. Zeke was gone.

  “Your neck is healing,” Josh said, “but I am afraid part of your ear is missing.”

  Raisa touched it, feeling the flat edge where a curve should have been. “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “We need to find Zeke. He’s wounded, but it wasn’t fatal.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’ll find you,” Josh said. “He can’t have you running around, fouling up his plans. All we need to do is make sure he knows where you are.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Zeke stumbled through the street, his arms hanging by his side, looking for a place to hide. He needed to lie low while he healed. His arms had straightened, and the bones were mending, but at the moment, they were useless to him. An alley on the left provided the cover he needed, so he ducked into it and sat behind a stack of boxes.

  Hudson had saved his life, and Zeke wondered if it had cost him his own. There were two dozen immortals that Zeke had recruited early on, all of them like Hudson. He hadn’t manipulated them with drugs because they were already onboard with Zeke’s vision for the future. He knew that all the Ten Thousand would soon see things his way, not because he was so persuasive, but because the drugs would create new neural pathways, the longer they influenced their thinking.

  All of that was contingent on eliminating Queen Raisa, and that meant finding her. No doubt she wanted to kill him, so she wouldn’t be hard to find. The problem was that she was no longer alone. One on one, Zeke felt confident, but not against two of them.

  He activated his comm, chose the contact he wanted, using his implanted microchip, and spoke. “Give me visual control of the drone.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said.

  Right away, an aerial shot from a drone overhead filled his vision. The rest of the New World drones were being controlled by the military, but not this one. When Zeke had declared there would be no military resistance as the Ten Thousand arrived in Pittsburgh, the military chiefs made a case for sending drones as cover, just in case. Zeke was already stretching the limits of credibility so, to keep them happy, he had agreed. He seized the opportunity and put one of his private drones among the others. To keep the military from interfering or seeing too much of what happened on the ground, Zeke had his tech crew scramble the frequency the military used to communicate with their drones. The folks at the Pentagon would be too
busy working through what appeared to be intermittent signal failures to keep up with what was happening on the ground.

  Zeke studied the display in front of him and moved the drone over his position. Once he got acclimated to what he was looking at, he found the restaurant he and Raisa had been in and moved out in concentric circles, looking for her. Since the streets were nearly empty, any movement caught his attention. He saw a few of his men moving through the streets, either looking for him or Raisa or both. Zeke brought the drone around again in a wider arc, and this time, he saw her. She was climbing the side of a building, close to the restaurant. And she was alone. Maybe Hudson had been able to kill Raisa’s companion after all.

  Zeke considered contacting his men to join him as he went after Raisa, but decided against it. He wanted this to be his victory, and his alone. He’d create a story to explain Raisa’s death, but knowing he had killed her would legitimize his reign, even if only in his own mind. Besides, he wasn’t sure his men would survive on the roof. There was a sniper somewhere in the city, and he was on Raisa’s side. Zeke hadn’t figured out why he wasn’t a target, but there had to be a reason.

  Stretching his arms with some lingering pain, Zeke started toward the building Raisa was scaling. By the time he reached it, he hoped his arms would be strong enough to support the climb.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Raisa was forty floors up the building when she saw the drone fix on her position. She paused, wondering if it would shoot her. When it didn’t, she kept climbing, hoping that she had gotten Zeke’s attention. Another ten floors and she saw him approach the building, leaping as high as he could and grabbing hold. Only he couldn’t keep his grip, and he fell to the ground. His arms must not have been strong enough yet. He tried again, this time starting to climb at ground level. He took it slow at first, but as he went, he got faster. His strength was returning.

  Raisa reached the top of the building, which was over sixty floors tall. She sat against the far wall, conserving her energy while she waited for Zeke. Minutes ticked by, and Zeke never appeared. Maybe he’d fallen again. If he fell from high enough, he might already be dead. Raisa got to her feet and approached the edge of the roof, looking over with caution. Zeke wasn’t climbing, and he wasn’t lying dead on the ground.

  Raisa heard the shuffle of feet a second before she felt something wrap around her neck. A hand was on her back, and whatever it was around her neck tightened. Raisa fought for breath but couldn’t get any air into her lungs, which began to burn.

  Her assailant shoved her to her hands and knees on the concrete rooftop. Zeke put his mouth next to her ear and said, “I tried. I tried to get you to listen to reason. I tried to get you to see my vision, but you wouldn’t. Why?” he yelled at her. “Now, I have to kill you.”

  Raisa reached behind her with one hand searching for a foot or a leg, anything she could use to take him down, but found nothing useful. Her vision narrowed, the edges becoming dark. How long can a person go without oxygen? Five or ten minutes at most for a normal person, but what about someone like her? Would she last any longer? She wasn’t so sure. Her body couldn’t repair the damage done to her brain without oxygen, no matter how fast it worked.

  In a desperate attempt to change the dynamics of the situation, Raisa threw both of her hands out to the side and stretched her body out, as if she were pretending to be an airplane. Now the only thing holding her torso off of the roof was the object around her neck. In one motion, she threw her right hand under her, and twisted her torso clockwise, trying to create enough momentum to pull Zeke off balance, or maybe get a solid hit to his head. Raisa got a little of both. As she twisted her body, she felt him take a step to adjust his stance. It wasn’t much, but, at the same time, her fist connected with his temple. He lost his grip and took another step to keep his balance. With more mobility, Raisa swung her leg, taking out one of his and sending Zeke to the rooftop.

  She pulled the makeshift noose from around her neck and found that it was a belt. Zeke scrambled to his feet, and Raisa did the same. On the other side of the roof, Josh stood watching, arms crossed.

  Zeke looked confused. “What are you waiting for? Have you given up on her too?”

  “I told Josh not to interfere,” she said. “I want to kill you all by myself.”

  “Yes,” Zeke said, “I know the feeling, but you will not prevail. And you,” he said to Josh, “you will not interfere.”

  “She already told you she doesn’t want me to.”

  “But I know your kind, Josh. You won’t let her die.”

  Josh didn’t respond.

  “So, to make sure you don’t interfere . . .” As Zeke spoke, the drone he controlled flew close and trained its weapons on Josh. “Everything it sees, I see. You make a move to save her, and I will kill you.”

  As Zeke turned his gaze toward Josh, Raisa reached for her sword. As she got it out of the scabbard, he charged her, knocking it out of her hand. It clinked on the rooftop near the edge as their bodies collided. Raisa fell on her back, using her momentum and her legs to swing Zeke over her head as Elliot had done the previous night. He landed hard but was on his feet as Raisa scrambled to hers.

  “We can do this all day,” she said. “You know as well as I do what it will take to stop either of us.”

  “That's why you brought the sword? To chop off my head?” Zeke asked.

  “It was very effective in dealing with your father,” Raisa said.

  As they talked, they moved around each other in circles. Raisa kept an eye on the sword. Neither one of them could get close enough to pick it up without opening themselves to the other’s attack. Raisa didn’t need the sword, but she wanted Zeke to focus on it for the moment.

  “I will grow bored with this in time,” Zeke said, “and if I do, I will just have my drone kill your boyfriend and then kill you. So why don’t we make it a real fight?”

  Heat burned in Raisa’s throat at the way Zeke dishonored Alexander’s memory. She kept moving in a circle, bringing herself close to the sword once again. She could see that Zeke was reading her intention to reach for it. Perfect. When she got close enough, she turned her back and bent over for the sword. As expected, Zeke charged her. He would reach her before she could pick it up, but then, picking it up wasn’t her goal.

  Anger surged in her muscles and nerves as Zeke’s body collided with hers. Raisa closed her eyes, conjuring the kind, strong face of her husband. The thought of him pushed Raisa to finish it. She let Zeke’s momentum throw her against the waist-high wall as she crouched and then used that momentum to lift him up and over the edge of the roof.

  Raisa stood and turned to watch Zeke fall, only to find Josh holding him by the wrist, dangling him over the edge.

  Chapter Forty

  Zeke hung by one hand, sixty floors above the street. Josh was holding his wrist with a firm grip. He didn’t understand why Josh would save him, but he intended to make sure he didn’t let go. Zeke still had control of his drone, but while he was hanging like that, it was no use to him. If he killed Josh, he’d fall. If he killed Raisa, Josh would let him go.

  “You’ve won,” Josh said to Raisa. “You don’t need to end it like this.”

  Zeke masked his face in desperation, his eyes pleading. He didn’t say a word. Contrition is often best expressed in silence.

  Raisa picked up the sword and then looked over the edge at Zeke.

  “You killed my husband. You took my throne. You ruined any hope of a future in the New World for the Ten Thousand. Why should I spare your life?”

  Zeke shook his head, willing tears to drip from his eyes. He didn’t care if he lived or died, except dying meant he’d lost, and Zeke never lost.

  “I am so sorry,” he said, surprising himself at how childlike he sounded. “It didn’t start out like this. I just wanted to do something great, like you. But somehow, it became something more than that, something bad.”

  “You didn’t mean for Alexander to die?” Raisa a
sked. Zeke caught a hint of sympathy in her voice.

  “No, no. Never. I thought if I created a conflict that would force you to keep the Ten Thousand together, but it was never supposed to turn out this way.”

  One key to being a good liar was telling half the truth. Zeke walked that fine line like a high-wire artist.

  When Raisa didn’t respond, he said through tears, “If dying would allow me to undo what I’ve done, I would gladly die. But it won’t so, please, don’t kill me. Punish me however you see fit, but please spare my life.”

  Raisa looked down at Zeke for a long time, not saying anything. He searched her eyes for a hint of what she might do.

  Finally, she said, “You regret what you’ve done?”

  Zeke couldn’t believe it. This was why Raisa was not fit to be queen. She was weak.

  “Yes,” he said. “More than I can say.”

  A smile crossed Raisa’s face, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “I don’t believe you,” she said and swung the sword cleanly severing Zeke’s hand and wrist from his arm.

  It happened so fast Zeke didn’t feel any pain. He watched as Raisa and Josh sped away from him, Josh still holding his severed hand. How had he misread her so badly? As the building flew past him, Zeke consoled himself with the thought that he had changed Queen Raisa. He had pulled something dark from within her. She’s more like me than she knows. It was the last thought he ever had.

  Chapter Forty-One