The Last Man: Part Eight

John and I left the family once my strength had returned. We followed utility tunnels and sewers; the viscera of the Corporation, running far below city streets. They were low forcing us to bend a bit. Not much but enough to slow our progress. There was no light, but for the murky yellow Kinetic lamps that came on overhead as we passed. The oval lamps, affixed at inrevals at the top of the sewers, flickered to the point of failure, their haphazard rhythm conspiring with the pain in my head to make me queasy and unsteady. It was like trudging through a diseased mind, or the fading memories of a dying soul.

I could discern no true direction, and had the impression of winding and doubling back numerous times. Our feet splashed through ankle deep water and muck. The scented sea was a distant memory here, replaced by the pungent bite of human waste and general decay. I tripped, slid and stumbled past dark and lifeless shapes that I preferred not to think too much about. The walls and ceiling pressed in upon me, their crushing weight felt fully in my chest. One hand strained to the wall, the other reassured my latent terrors upon John Brown’s shoulder.

In time we came upon the stinking fetid carcass of a wild dog. I might have missed it, as my eyes, unaccustomed to the quality of darkness here, were all but useless. John stopped suddenly before the carcass, catching me before I spilled forward into the mess. He reached down and lifted the dripping mess with a frown. The flesh had been picked from the head and neck. The naked skull dangled by sinewy strands. Fat white maggots boiled and dripped in clumps from beneath the matted brown fur.

“No good,” he said, keeping his voice at barely a whisper. Even still the sound carried a great distance. “Makes for good warm coverings. Better for a fresh kill.”

“You kill them?”

“It’s them or us. Mangy things hunt in packs. When they have got the hunger I seen these take down a big strong fellow once.”

“We won’t see any?” I asked. Suddenly even the tiniest sound became ravenous dog packs. I wished for a weapon, while looking continuously over my shoulder.

“Who can say?”

“A disgusting mess,” I remarked, the acidic bite of bile rising in my throat.

“This one still good for something.”

He carried it little farther on where milky-gray daylight flooded into the sewer from a drainage pipe. City sounds roared from the hole, familiar sounds that, after the sea, now seemed wholly obscene and abusive. The shadows from an heavy iron grate covering the opening were etched upon the gray-green concrete walls, and across the rust colored sludge flowing at the bottom of the sewer.

John motioned for me to remain behind. Suddenly he ran towards the hole, holding the carcass out to one side, his arm cocked back and ready. His strides were calculated and powerful. Each footfall came down hard, splashing loudly. Just shy of the hole his arm drew back farther, the skull bouncing wildly. With a mighty groan John flung the carcass up onto a high ledge within the hole. Without losing stride he dodged into the shadows at the far side of the hole and turned with a satisfied expression.

My eyes rose to the dripping carcass. The skull and one leg were draped over the edge. The remains were quickly set upon by a slimy fat brown rats seeming to materialize from nowhere. With that John Brown quickly waved me over. I hurried past the hole, but slipped. He reached out and caught me, drawing us both to the shadows beside the hole.

“I don’t understand?’

“Come,” he said, leading me cautiously to the hole. Just above our heads the swarming rats fought over the rotting flesh, angrily glaring swiping and hissing at one another. A little higher I could make out the blue light of Sentinel. John Brown pulled me back away from the hole.

“Sentinel not so smarts as it like to thinks. The primitive thoughts of them rats confuses Sentinel. Just hears all sorts of gibberish.”

“Clever,” I remarked, as we moved deeper into the bowels of the city.

The sewer narrowed. The ceiling was much lower than before. It is impossible to tell where or how far we had gone. The pain had returned to my head with a fury. Not as bad as before, but enough to become a burden and cause John Brown to wait for me to rally myself several times. I was reaching the limits of my endurance. The throbbing pain drove my head down almost rhythmically. I groaned and told John Brown I could go no farther.

“Please, I am begging,” I moaned, falling against the cold, moss-slicked wall. He came over as I slid to my knees. My eyes searched his for a moment. “Forgive me. I’m still not so strong.”

I fought for breath in that transient grave. My eyes turned upwards, my mouth agape in a silent scream. I would have scratched and dug my way to daylight. A cold sweat ran in rivers down my body.

John could see that I was struggling. He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Pull yourself together.”

I could have died there. I could have stopped my heart simply by wishing it so. What life remained in me seemed intent on pulling itself free from the world. I held tight to his strong arm, staring deeply into his eyes, begging silently for rescue. Life and death were equal agents, both fighting in every cell of my weary being for ultimate victory. As for my part I was entirely undecided.

“I wasn’t… I am not prepared…” I stammered.

“No worries, this is the place we were arriving at.”

“Where?”

“Come, for to see.”

I could see nothing but the endless dark, and the sewer running off into that nothingness. I managed to reach my feet, still using the walls for support. John started off again, but I refused to move at first. He paused and turned, an odd grin betraying a certain strain to his patience. I looked up and back through the passage and, seeing nothing still, believed that one or both of us had lost his mind.

There was a sudden sound from behind. It was far away, but closing quickly. Not the splashing of water, like footfalls, but a swishing sort of sound. It was the sound of something large moving quick and effortless through the sewer.

John stood and drew a long knife hidden in his clothing. There were more sounds now, the same sounds coming straight at us from the opposite direction. John moved to the middle of the sewer, turning his body to meet whichever threat reached him first.

His eyes widened at something terrifying and unseen. The knife dropped from his hand into the muck, as though any resistance was a futile and ridiculous gesture. He stumbled back, turned and was quickly engulfed in darkness. A muffled cry went out, but was quickly cut short.

Alone, I turned. All thoughts disappeared in a fog of terror, replaced by terrible and desperate visions of all manner of horrors. The sounds were much closer now. My hands clenched instinctively, the blood running from them, turning the knuckles cold. I resolved to fight, and fight until the last breath and last drop of blood left my body.

Two great beasts emerged from the dark, rising on two legs. Their mouths were open revealing huge razor sharp teeth. Their eyes were cold and as black, perhaps blacker, than the tunnel itself. They were covered in long thick fur in patches of beige and brown and black. A moment later I felt a knife point at my back.

The Last Man: Part Seven

Refugees, I thought? The people of the low city reminded me of images I had seen in books of Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first and Twenty-second Century wars and brutality. The faces were the same almost a millennium later. There I found the faces of Jews, Lakota, Palestinians, Rwandans, Afghans, and so many more displaced and destroyed by Human selfishness and ambivalence. It wasn’t a single look. Some were hardened, others hopeless, other were beyond hopeless to a place all their own, and a few steeled and dangerous. Most were a mixture of all these and more.

They watched me curiously as I passed. John Brown leaned and nodded towards a group of women observing from a distance. There were six of them altogether. Each carried an axe, or machete o pointed weapon of some sort. Theirs was far from curiosity, and instead were dangerous and even threatening.

“Best keeping your nuts clear from them,” cautioned John Brown, offering a reassuring wave to the band.

“Who are they?”

He did not answer. He only shook a finger in the air and continued through the makeshift community.

In the half light my relatively clean Associate’s clothing stood out and created something of a stir. But then something odd occurred. As I passed people stood and removed their hoods or whatever covered their heads and faces. I might have believed I had gone back to a time before racial homogenization. This was the ancient world man had endeavored to erase and deny. This was the lie of modern genetic engineering. There were Asian, Middle eastern, Hispanic, Polynesian, and many different indigenous faces. There were white, deformed, crippled and the old; everything but a face such as mine. Despite that I was awestruck. This was a decrepit rabble, and as such they were flawed to perfection. This was humanity for all of its many faces, and not the fraudulent utopian illusion of the Corporation.

We wandered back to the passage way, and the place I had emerged into this new world. Two huts build from wood and pieces of fabric stood close together. I studied and admired their construction. Despite appearances the round structures were quite sturdily built. Each held a basic pole frame. The fabric, found sheets of plastic or tarpaulin covered the tops. Panels of wood, plastic, sheet or corrugated metal provided the walls and helped to cut wind for those inside. Everything in this world smelled of wood smoke.

John Brown enjoyed the blessings of a large family. Families had long ago been eradicated by the Corporation as impediments to production and interference in education. I had come to admire this ancient and antiquated concept in books I discovered in the archives. This partnership of souls seemed to steel the passion and vision of history’s greatest men and women. I envied John Brown deeply from the moment his wife and I were introduced.

She held an aboriginal beauty, with long straight black hair and a round face. She was a small woman, nearly dripping with jewelry and precious stones I guessed were centuries old. Many of the women adorned themselves in this way, I had noticed. There was a terrific wisdom in her eyes, something that reminded me of the writings of Miss Alice Walker. It was not the wisdom of logic one might find in a scientist or a physician. It was an insightful wisdom, as though she was more looking through me.

Alice walker held a prominent position at the head of the fire. John Brown found a place next to her. It was less a subservient place as a less prominent one. Clearly Alice walker was the head of the family, a position she seemed well suited to hold, and respectful enough to warrant. Her parents were old and frail. Grandmother cradled a baby lovingly. I guessed the child was much less than a year of age. The child, like the little girl from the archives, was the mirror image of Alice walker.

They were sitting around a small fire. Small orange flames licked from beneath a piece of timber taken from the shore Pieces of dried moss her regularly fed into the fire beneath a pot of simmering stew. White tendrils of smoke curled into the air where they were promptly whipped by the sea breeze. That smoke held the same spicy, ocean scent I had awakened to earlier. Upon a flat stone beside the fire was a small stack of golden brown flatbread. The family made a space for me, allowing for my extra long legs. The grandmother ladled the brown stew with pieces of white fish meat and smell bits of vegetables into a bowl and handed it across to me.

“You’ll forgive the husband I have chosen,” she said with a good-natured scolding. “This was made to honor you as our guest, and as gesture.”

“Gesture?” I asked.

“All was explained by him. He acted imprudently, but quite understandably. This is our act of contrition,” she said. “To make peace between our houses.”

John Brown nodded abashedly and pursed his lips. “By sharing a meal with us you accept our amends.”

“Indeed,” I replied.

The family watched with a curious amusement as I tipped the bowl and took that first mouthful of warm soup. The taste was strange and harsh at first. It held the essence of the sea. More than that, I could discern layers, as each of the ingredients vied for prominence on my tongue. With each mouthful one of these new spices warmed the back of my throat. The soup quickly restored my strength.

“Very different, eh?” the grandfather smiled knowingly.

“Quite different,” I replied.

“Good?” asked grandma, almost proudly.

“Not sure yet.”

“Much better for you than that recycled chemical crap from the Corporation,” The gruff old man spat into the fire. The others smiled broadly. Their faces glowed by the crimson light of the fire. I believe I smiled as well, warmed a bit by the old man’s fiery spirit. I bit into smoky bit of fish.

“Never experienced anything…”

Grandpa reached over and tugged lightly at my cheek. “Made of blood and meat, child. This food is for the life, a good long life. Corporation food only to keep you productive till it’s time for your reclamation.”

In truth I was still undecided whether or not I liked the soup. It was far different from anything I had ever experienced, and yet, as I finished the last of it I was already longing for more. It was everything the Corporation’s black paste and yellow crackers were not. The stew was substantial, and I could admit for the first time at truly feeling satisfied from a meal. Tipping my head back I let the final bit drip into my open mouth, as though I was a starving man, as though my very existence depended on every drop and every morsel.

“May I ask why,” began Alice walker, “the Corporation didn’t send you for reclamation long ago?’

“I expect they will.”

“Maybe you ought to remain here in that case.”

“The Corporation has seen fit to put me on trial,” I said. “I have a chance to argue my existence; to stand for something.”

“Only to be condemned in the end,” said John Brown.

“Aren’t we all ultimately condemned?” I replied “Seems to me that the key is in the higher purpose we fight to attain.”

“But you are one man alone.”

“I am always one man alone.”

“But isn’t the key to pass on in peace rather than persecution?”

“One never has that choice.”

Argument was an art in the low city. It had been honed and celebrated and revered to the point of religion. Argument was less a tool for vanquishing or embarrassing an opponent. Instead it was meant to uncover the flaw in one’s own logic, or the boundaries of their ignorance. It was a keen exercise that made me battle my own thought for every strategically chosen word. It was brilliant as I prepared to match wits in court with the Corporation.

“I am sorry,” grandfather shook his head. He leaned forward a bit, his hands before him, as though tracing each word, as a sculptor might massage a piece of clay. He was adamant over his point. “Associates have no believe in god. You are raised as slaves and drones to live and be reclaimed by the Corporation. If existence and non-existence are equal concepts then why should any of this matter to you? Live, eat, work, screw, shit, if that crap allows you to, and then when it is your time for reclamation, so be it!”

He was right, and it seemed at first an impossible question.. I felt trapped by it, and knew if I could not discern a proper response it would be impossible to stand before the judges of the Corporation. The old man knew I was trapped and smiled broadly at his apparent victory. The others whispered and nodded, as though this was all a game. I looked around the fire and felt the warm rush of embarrassment rise to my cheeks.

What did it really matter? It was true what the old man said. Under the Corporation existence and non-existence, life and death were identical. The individual held no more importance or significance that a single corpuscle among billions rushing blind in their duties through a body. Death itself was inconsequential. Death itself was a moment, and not an eternity. I recalled something I had read by a late Twentieth Century thinker, Steven Wright:

…Everyone dies suddenly. You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re dead.”

Those words led me to a single conclusion. It led me to the idea that to live is to struggle, and that in not struggling is the real death. I would fight and continue to fight and remain fighting, even in the face of unmatchable eternity. The old man had gloated over his victory a bit too prematurely.

“Because I am,” I replied. The old man leaned back to consider the point. After an excruciating moment he offered a respectable nod.

“Go on,” he said. “You have my attention.

“Indeed,” Alice Walker added.

“I am, and I need to know at the end of these days that my struggle had real value.”

“But what value,” John Brown offered, “if you finis h this world as a slave?”

“Value that I refused to relinquish an inch in my struggle for freedom.”

“To what end?” asked Grandma.

“The fight is the end.”

“Not the destination?” she pressed to concept.

“The ultimate destination for us all is death. I suppose then to that end.”

The Last Man: Part Six

There was no telling for sure just how long I had been out that second time. When I awoke the pain had subsided, only to be replaced by hunger and thirst. My throat burned and I felt terribly weak. Furthermore I was drenched in sweat from lingering chills that ravaged me in unconsciousness. The girl was standing over me. I managed a smile before she ran to fetch her father. Even the simple act of smiling was almost too much.

John Brown returned a moment later. He placed a hand on my chest to prevent me from getting up, which doubtless took him very little effort. His manner was courteous and sympathetic. He took the rag from beneath my head and gently wiped my forehead and cheeks. I held his wrist as he drew away. Never had I known such tenderness, and I was not prepared to let it go too soon.

“Afraid that clomp did a bad one for you,” he said, pulling me up to a sitting position. “Best sit tight until the life comes back to you.”

I nodded, far too frail for much else. I could manage but a single word.

“Water,” I said hoarsely.

“Go fetch some drinking water,” he motioned to the child.

She was back in an instant with a small pale blue plastic dish, the kind assigned to Associates for drinking. It was chipped at the rim in several spots and smudged with black charcoal fingerprints. She held it too my lips. I cradled it with her small hands and gulped down the coldest water I had ever tasted. Much of it ran down my beard and down my neck to stain my shirt.

“Thirsty, eh?” John Brown chuckled.

“How long was I out?”

“Long time,” he said. I could see that it had worried him somewhat.

John Brown helped me to sit. The pain had retreated to the sizeable lump at the back of my skull. Not that it would remain content there. It was an ember that was all but exhausted, awaiting the kindling of my exhaustion to erupt in a new conflagration.

“A little weak,” I said fighting the swelling in my throat. I took another sip of water,

John brown slipped an arm around my waist and helped me to stand. “Feel something better when you get some sustenance down your tube.”

My legs were fools, refusing any command or memory that the rightful place for a man is one two feet- or in the grave. It was strange to be held strongly by my assailant and savior. As I held tight to his waist the former seemed the remotest possibility. He half carried me through the door and down a short passage to a wide chamber that opened to the sea.

The ceiling here was much higher, yet low enough that if I stretched enough I could certainly have touched the soot-stained concrete. It was much higher nearer to the sea, extending part way out over the littered shoreline. The place was swathed in a sort of permanent twilight. The floor gave way to a pebbled beach. The air was filled with a mixture of the sea, struggling humanity and wood smoke.

An amber sun sat low, peaking to one side of the chamber. Suspended in a copper sky, the fattened disk threw shadows from hundreds of great supports that held the city. It took some time before my eyes adjusted enough to notice clusters of people and small shelters behind each support. The shelters were small and primitive and hasty, as if they might be torn down at a moment’s notice and moved quickly. As for the people, I could tell nothing of them except that there were hundreds or perhaps thousands. For the moment they were shapes and demons, as unconcerned of me as I was curious of them. I knew nothing of their lives or their existence, and therefore, in that ignorance, they were nothing (and perhaps even an enemy).

For the moment I was more enthralled with the sea. In this light it appeared as dull bronze. Long slow lazy waves pressed steadily towards shore. There was a great expanse of refuse and detritus that formed something of a barrier between the sea and the shore. Further out it rose and fell with the incoming waves. Along the beach it surged and retreated with a crackling, chattering sound. Choked within this mass the hull of a ship rotted and rusted silently.

I was finding my feet more easily now. Not well, but better. Still I braced against a support. Steadier now, I drew away from John Brown and his daughter and went down to the shore. Above me the city appeared as a great towering wall, like pictures I had seen of glaciers preparing to calve into the sea.

For a time I could only stare, awestruck. Oh, the hours and days and years I had stared from my window at the sea. This was a moment I wished to bask in as long as I could. John came up behind me. I spoke without taking my eyes off the incredible expanse before me. The sun played like topaz jewels upon the waves.

“Never been this close to the sea before,” I gasped. I glanced back at John brown. He smiled warmly at the comment. “I’ve only seen it from high above.”

I found a solemn eternal power to the sea. The concept of god had been dismissed and discredited a thousand years earlier. Those myriad references in ancient texts were merely romantic and curious notions to me, just as the Egyptian or Greek Gods must have seemed to Twentieth or Twenty-first century men. But owing to the seas’ absolute authority, and the primordial intimacy it seduced in me, I could hardly discount the possibility of god. Something of the sea touched deeper than Sentinel or the Corporation could ever aspire to.

I moved closer to the water’s edge. I could stand better on my own now, finding strength as I drew in the sea with deep long breaths. The ruins, far out to sea, seemed so much closer. They were a destination far more attainable than I had previously entertained. I imagined falling into the sea and floating there. Invariably the waves would draw me to the crumbling towers. Black and brown hands would reach out and bring me safely and surely into their embrace.

“Do you know anything of those ruins?” I asked John Brown. The girl hugged his side. Her eyes were far away and sleepy. None of this interested her much, that much was certain.

“Afraid not.”


“Does anyone know? Has anyone been there?” I almost felt my eagerness and curiosity running away with me, a natural response at being so close to them.

“Maybe there is one who knows, but I don’t…”

“Who? I must know. Please.”

“A member of the Jurga,” he replied grudgingly. “Best to let some things be alone.”

“Can I go there?”

“Maybe this idea not so good one.”

“I beg you.””

“Papa,” said the girl sympathetically, “my belly wants food.”

He lovingly stoked her cheek and motioned for me to follow. I could see better now, as we climbed back up the beach. I could see better, and not just with my eyes. John Brown led me in a lazy sort of way through that community of shadows, past ramshackle huts and small groups gathered around smoldering fires. I paused and looked back at the distant ruins, my heart bursting from my chest and rushing out across those bronze seas and knew I must find a way.