From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  “What is going on here?” Monday asked.

  CEO Hansen held up a hand. “This is holy ground. Not the place for questions. All will be revealed in due time. For now, satisfy yourself with witnessing the proceedings without interference.”

  Monday shut his mouth and gave the town chief a nod, though he refused to make any such promises aloud, not even for the sake of tricking Hansen or Old Man Berckman.

  “Driscoll,” Hansen held a hand out to the boy. “Give us your arm.”

  Slowly, with a noticeable tremble in his limbs, Driscoll proffered his right arm. CEO Hansen straightened it across the table and held it fast by the wrist.

  Without conscious thought, Monday started forward. This insanity couldn’t go on. But Laney stayed him with a touch. He looked at her, incredulous, and she shook her head. Reluctantly, Monday stilled, but his heart thumped in his chest and his nostrils flared.

  While the CEO held Driscoll’s hand in place, one of the other council members, a middle-aged woman with dirty blonde hair to her waist, slowly, almost lovingly, withdrew the scalpel from the assorted knives on the altar. It gleamed in the battery-powered light thrown by the chandeliers.

  Driscoll fidgeted, his body wracked by a series of shuddering tremors. He tried in vain to pull free, but CEO Hansen proved too strong. The boy’s eyes rolled back in his head like those of a frightened horse, his mouth a rictus of horror. He began to cry.

  “Stop this foolishness, boy.” Willis Berckman wrinkled his nose at his youngest child as if he had smelled something rank. “Would you defile God’s plan?”

  Driscoll settled a bit, but seemed incapable of fully quelling his body’s involuntary struggles.

  “Don’t worry, son,” said the woman with the scalpel, “I’ll make this quick.” True to her word, she slashed a diagonal cut across Driscoll’s exposed arm with lightning quickness. The razor’s edge cut so fast and so cleanly the wound did not immediately bleed, as if the boy’s body hadn’t had time to react.

  Driscoll groaned and turned his face away from the wound as blood finally began to well, then spill down his forearm. To his credit, he did not scream or continue to cry, but instead held his breath and bit his lip.

  Paying him no mind, the woman sliced open her own arm with the surgical blade, cutting along a slightly raised scar with the accuracy of long practice. Quickly, like a woman trying to ignite a fire on a windy day, she bent forward and squeezed several drops of blood from her cut into his.

  Monday felt his eyes go wide. Had these backwardass people never heard of germs? Laney, he could understand. She had grown up after the Fall, so maybe no one had ever taught her. But CEO Hansen? Willis Berckman? They had lived in the era of organ transplants and vaccines and all the other medical marvels of the lost age. They knew the risks of sharing blood in such a fashion.

  “Stop this.” Monday started forward. Laney tried to stop him, but he brushed her hands away. “You’ll give the kid an infection doing that. And it’s not like you have antibiotics lying around. You’re going to kill him.”

  Driscoll moaned again and tried to jerk his arm away from Hansen, though he met with as much success as before.

  “Shut your vile mouth.” Willis Berckman rounded the altar to square off with Monday. Though by no means a large man, and old at 53 compared to Monday’s 25 years, Berckman nevertheless carried himself with an undeniable confidence. A leading figure in town, and the richest man by far, he had likely never had someone stand up to him.

  That was about to change.

  Monday didn’t give the older man a chance to keep talking. Whatever words they might have traded would have come to nothing. It wasn’t like Monday could have reasoned Willis or any of the town councilors out of this disgusting ritual. Sometimes, a good thumping beat any words, no matter how reasoned or eloquent.

  It would have been a knockout blow, the right hand haymaker Monday threw from his hip aimed at Willis Berckman’s temple. Monday experienced a moment of intense regret as his knuckles flew. Whatever romance might have been growing between him and Laney would likely wither after he laid her father out on the church carpet. A shame really, he was sweet on the girl, but principle beat emotion. At least, that was what Monday’s father had taught him.

  Willis rocked back a quarter of an inch the instant before Monday’s punch would have struck him. Instead of sending the older man to the floor, the wild miss threw Monday off balance so that he spun half around and almost lost his footing.

  A rare smile creased Willis’ lips. Before Monday had fully regained his balance, the old man pummeled him with a right to the ribs, followed by a left hook that caught Monday on the cheek. His head flew back, and his vision sparkled with a thousand dancing spots in blue and black and green. Monday plopped onto his ass, as shocked and confused as he had ever been in his life.

  “Laney, keep that young buck over there, you hear?” Willis called over his shoulder as he strode back to the altar. “Ain’t none of this his business.”

  “Don’t move. Just watch.” Laney knelt by Monday’s side to fan him with a hymnal she had scrounged from the front pew. The air felt good but did little to assuage the throbbing pain in Monday’s ribs and face or his complete bewilderment. Had a man twice his age put him on the floor with two punches?

  As if this sort of thing happened every day, the rest of the council continued the blood rite. The other two men from the group had taken their turns cutting their arms to drizzle blood over Driscoll’s wound. To Monday’s astonishment, the woman who had taken the first turn showed no sign of injury on her previously cut arm. Her wound had healed to its former white scar. And, even as he watched, the other councilors’ cuts sealed themselves.

  “You’re all Agents?” Monday turned his gaze from one councilor to the next.

  “Don’t be a fool.” Willis Berckman drew a polished hunting knife from the assortment of blades on the altar, his lips bunched into a sneer for Monday. With a workman’s precision, he widened the wound on his forearm and let the resulting blood drop onto his son’s arm. “Not one of us was ever an Agent for any of those goddam, Satan-spawned, imposters.”

  Monday shook his head. “Then how do you have healing nanites?”

  CEO Hansen favored Monday with a look of pity as he traded places with Willis to hold Driscoll still. “The blessed souls you see here have nothing to do with pre-Fall technologies. Your nanites, as you call them, are an abomination before God. We received our blessings through the blood rite from our former pastor, Thomas of Atlanta. He died some years ago, but not before he taught us God’s true message of corporate unification. Some are blessed souls, destined for management, but most will fill the ranks of the great enterprise. In the end, all must serve.”

  Like the others before him, Hansen sliced his flesh to squeeze a few drops of blood onto the shivering Driscoll’s arm.

  Where before the boy had remained still, Hansen’s blood seemed to burn Driscoll. His face turned a livid white, and his eyes grew wide. In agony, he lifted his face to the ceiling and howled.

  “Hah! We might have a taker.” Willis socked CEO Hansen on the arm, and the town leader smiled.

  Monday tried to stand up, but Laney leaned on his shoulders to hold him down.

  “Please don’t interfere,” she whispered. “This is a good thing. I guess it might look perfectly horrid, seeing it for the first time, but Driscoll could become a manager if the blood takes.”

  “This is wrong!” Monday shook his head at her. “It’s not a gift from God. It’s nanites—tiny machines designed for someone else. Passing them this way is dangerous. If the nanites don’t kill him, some infection likely will. How many children die from this?”

  “Only a handful every few years. Most have no reaction whatsoever. But don’t you see? It’s worth it. If Driscoll gets CEO Hansen’s strength, he’ll become an asset to the town.”

  “And if he dies?”

  Laney pursed her lips and looked away.

  Monday p
ushed to his feet despite her weight. “You’re gambling with these kids’ lives. I don’t know much about nanites—I know they can do amazing things when programmed for a specific body—but forcing them into someone like this is wrong.”

  “Blasphemy!” Willis Berckman’s face went red with anger, the veins in his neck standing out like saplings trapped beneath his flesh. “The holy blood divines God’s will. One day, the leaders spawned in this land shall unite the world under His divine corporate direction.”

  Laney tried in vain to draw Monday back, and though part of him wanted to allow it—her father had outmatched him once already—he couldn’t let this go on. He strode forward, fists clenched at his sides.

  He had underestimated Willis before. He wouldn’t make that mistake a second time. Five years on the road had left their mark on Monday. He knew a thing or two about fighting, about using his strengths to their best advantage. Right now, his main strength lay in his opponents’ underestimating him. Willis had gotten the jump on Monday the first time, and likely as not, the lot of them considered him a pushover.

  Time to prove them wrong.

  “Let Driscoll go.” Monday put as much menace and rage as he could muster into the words without yelling.

  “Not a quick study, are you, boy?” Willis Berckman rounded the altar, jaw set, blood running down his mangled arm.

  “Your nanites aren’t the healing kind, eh?” Monday darted his gaze at Willis’s leaking wound. “Or are they so old they’re worn out?”

  A flash of anger sizzled its way across Willis’s face, and he bared his teeth. “The blessed blood doesn’t work the same—”

  Monday twisted his hips with all his might to fetch Willis a solid left hook to the chin. The sound of it reverberated through the church’s high rafters.

  CRACK!

  Laney yelped behind him, but Monday didn’t look around. Without a second’s hesitation, he twisted back the other direction to deliver a straight right to Willis’s nose, which sounded almost as loud as the first blow. Though the old man was already stumbling toward the altar, Monday refused to relent. He followed his opponent in and buried his left fist in Willis’s ribs.

  Willis choked out a cry of pain, his eyes wide, his arrogant sneer replaced by a look of utter shock and outrage.

  Never one to lose an advantage, Monday took two handfuls of Willis’s hair, drew him in, and delivered a thudding knee strike to his already broken nose. Supposedly holy blood spurted from the wound, and Willis collapsed on the church’s threadbare burgundy carpet like a sack of sticks.

  “Stop it! Please, stop it, Monday!” Laney rushed to her father’s side. The dazed man looked up at her with all the recognition of a snake.

  “I’m sorry, but this can’t go on.” Monday turned his attention to CEO Hansen and his fellow councilors, his natural fear overcome by righteous indignation. Fully prepared to fight every one of them, if need be, he stopped short at what he found.

  From somewhere, Monday guessed a lower shelf on the altar, Hansen had produced an assault rifle. It looked like the sort contract soldiers for the big corporations, Obsidian most likely, carried into battle near the end of modern civilization. Monday had never owned one himself, ammunition was hard to come by outside the private armies run by warlords, but he had traveled enough to see them in action. Set to full auto, that sort of gun could saw a grown man in half, before he could think to duck.

  Monday started to lift his hands in the air, but he never got the chance.

  The rifle coughed three times, producing a sound much quieter than he would have expected. Each blast sent a jolt through Monday’s chest and abdomen followed by boneshaking tremors that reverberated from his skull to his heels. Still, he felt no immediate pain, not even when he crashed to the floor.

  For a moment that was neither long nor short, but merely a moment like any other he had experienced in his life, Monday lay in perfect silence staring at the church’s ceiling, feeling nothing.

  Nothing, until he tried to draw a breath.

  A searing heat exploded in Monday’s chest. Something liquid, yet seemingly immovable blocked his efforts. He could feel it gushing about under his sternum, then up his throat, hot and viscous. The pressure squeezed his airway down to the width of a pea.

  “No!” Driscoll shouted. At last free of his captors, the boy wobbled on unsteady legs toward Monday and sprawled on the ground, his wounded arm leaking blood. Undeterred, he crawled the rest of the way to reach Monday. He stared into his stricken friend’s face, his own complexion as pale as noonday clouds.

  Laney screamed and, turning from her father’s side, leaned over Monday, opposite her brother. Her look of bewilderment so transformed her face, it caused Monday to momentarily forget his pain. She took his hand, tears coursing down her cheeks, and he squeezed with what little strength he had left.

  If Monday was to die like this, at least he knew he had done the right thing. He had defended those who knew no better. Perhaps possessing nanites was something worth risking a life, but only an informed one. Kids like Driscoll didn’t deserve death based on superstitious lies.

  “No.” Laney’s bottom lip trembled. She shook her head as if negating what her eyes plainly saw.

  “Move away from him, Laney.” CEO Hansen had come around the altar with the others in tow. He looked down at Monday with disdain. “He’s a heretic, girl. He profaned our sacred rite, and now he’s paying God’s price.”

  Laney froze like a machine whose battery has been removed. Something steely formed in her eyes, a cold crystalline thing full of icy rage. She lifted that gaze to Hansen. “He speaks the truth, doesn’t he?”

  “No. He’s a liar.”

  “Then why shoot him? If you have the truth, what have you to fear from a lie?”

  Hansen stood mute, lost for words. His gaze darted to Willis who had begun to rouse. “Look what he did to your father, yet you defend him?”

  “I’ll do more than that.” Quick as thunder, Laney had the altar cloth full of blades in her hands. From it, she drew what Monday’s father would have called a fish knife, a thin bit of metal about the length of his middle finger with a razor sharp edge. Before any of the councilors could react, she had drawn the knife down the thin white scar on her forearm. Its edge bit deep, drawing forth a flow of dark red blood that spurted in time with Laney’s racing heart.

  “No!” CEO Hansen threw his rifle aside in a doomed bid to reach the girl.

  Ignoring him, ignoring everything, Laney sprawled across Monday like a lover starved for the object of her affections, her bleeding arm outstretched in benediction.

  Monday watched everything in a daze, the pain in his chest and stomach so immense they had ceased to register with him as signals emanating from his body. They had become something external to his person like a towering mountain, a building storm, a sea stretched out upon a strand. And though he yearned to share Laney’s ardor, his vision had grown dark around the edges. He could feel his consciousness slipping away.

  He shut his eyes against the world, likely for the last time, and drew in a shuddering breath, taking solace in the weight of Laney’s lithe form atop him. Slowly he exhaled, with no plans to breathe again.

  That was when the burning in Monday’s chest transformed. It grew more acute and less abstract from one fluttering beat of his heart to the next. Something akin to acid poured into the wound above his sternum, burning as it spread through his veins. His eyes flew open, and his slowly expelled breath became a scream of agony.

  No longer was Monday’s pain a curious artifact to be examined from afar. The burning chewed into the core of him, far worse than the bullets that had lately taken up residence in his flesh. He would gladly take a thousand bullets if it meant an end to the fire now spreading through his guts and into his extremities.

  “The blood!” Laney screamed to be heard over Monday’s howls. “It’s taking to him. Do you see?”

  CEO Hansen, who must have retrieved his rifle during Monda
y’s excursion to hell, pressed the barrel to Monday’s forehead. “All I see is a blasphemer.” He pulled the trigger.

  The rifle clicked empty.

  “He is a manager!” Laney scrambled toward Hansen in a weak attempt to snatch his weapon, but he avoided her.

  She must have lost too much blood. Even in the throes of cataclysmic pain, Monday struggled to reach for her, to make her bind her wounds before she could bleed out.

  “He’s no manager, girl. He’s a pretender, a child of the lie. And he will be dealt with as such.” CEO Hansen spun the rifle around in one smooth motion and brought it down like a hammer on Monday’s head.

  * * *

  The cloying smell of turned earth and sawdust filled Monday’s sinuses. With them came a thumping-scratching sound that roused him from unconsciousness into a world of perfect dark. He tried to move, but found himself confined by walls on every side. In a panic, he tried to sit up, but his already aching head collided with a wooden barrier, sending a fresh bolt of pain through his skull and down his spine. Groaning, he flopped back into the dark, his freshet of energy sapped.

  “Monday?” Laney’s muffled voice originated somewhere outside the confines of his tiny cell.

  “I’m here,” Monday croaked. “I can’t see. I can’t move!”

  “Stay still. We’ll get the lid open.”

  Lid?

  Monday pressed a hand against the barrier above him—rough wood, splintery but solid. Try as he might, it refused to budge. His arms shook with fatigue from the effort. Whatever sort of box CEO Hansen and the others had put him in, they must have nailed the top shut. He shuddered, for he could feel the walls closing in on him, threatening to crush him under the weight of the Earth, itself.

  Monday squeezed his eyes shut, taking comfort in the feel of blocking the world from his inner self. Despite his pounding heart, he forced himself to take slow, measured breaths.

  He doubted the Prosperity town council had the means to bury him a thousand feet underground, no matter what horrid images his panicked brain might conjure up. The sound of Laney’s voice proved that much. Yes, he might be in a coffin, an idea that sent chills through his bones, but if so, it was one made of wood and, therefore, fragile. He needed to remain calm, conserve his air, and wait for rescue.