THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-five

“We’re leaving the city, fleeing up the coast,” says Alice Walker, as I warm myself at the fire. Her husband is tending to the wound on my neck. It is deep enough that he must stitch it closed. A curative tea numbs the pain enough as John Brown pinches the wound closed and works the needle through the torn flesh.

It was he who rallied my rescue. He was rummaging in the Archives when I burst in, chased by Section Twenty-one. I don’t thank him, as there is nothing to celebrate or be thankful in the deaths of others. It was only what had to be done. Now it remains to be seen what the Corporation will do. The exodus of the Low City has little to do with that particular act. The family, all of the clans are already or nearly prepared to leave.

Some have already begun to move. They are not the first. Hundreds have piled up on the beach, bottlenecked as these apparent refugees make their way along the narrow, debris strewn shore. They are deathly silent in that endeavor, the few words spoken to comfort children.

“Strange through all this,” I say soberly, “I count you as a dear friend.”

The tension of the moment was fully evident in John Brown’s face. His wife looked over at the remark, as she prepared for the journey. Unlike John, she could find no cause to smile. She hauled a heavy satchel onto her shoulders.

“Nothing some Associate knows for friends.”

“I know enough to feel indebted to you and your family, and to worry over your journey.”

“No worries,” he says. “Body’s needs to do what they needs to do, and these bodies needs to go.”

“Where will you go?”

Alice walker helped her mother to stand. She is pale and terribly weak. Though I do not notice, John confides she had a stroke the night before and has been thoroughly disoriented and confused. Fear she will not survive the journey but do not say so. Alice heaves bundle onto her back and shakes her head, straining under the weight of her burden. “We are eternal refugees, the forever pawns of war. We would we go when there is no place for us?”

“Do your time in this world good to come along,” John brown offers.

The offer was a tempting one, to remain among these good people. I could well imagine a place among them. I could well imagine a life in which color or difference or handicap was less point for disagreement as an opportunity for perspective. But I felt pulled to those ruins far out to see, though that fate was far less certain.

“You will forgive me?” I said, taking his hands in mine, clasping them tightly.

“Your ruins?” He replied.

“I must know.”

I watch them leave and take their place among hundreds pressing towards the shore. Many more remain, no doubt waiting until the others had moved on. I hardly knew them. I hardly knew anything of their lives and suffering. Their culture and way of life is so fundamentally different then mine. There can be no doubt my caring for these people. Our lives and fates were intertwined, and that was not a deliberate happenstance, at least not for any of us. No man is ever lone, except in his own heart. We were all tumbled madly in the whirlwind of life and fate, thrown together as random assemblages, tasked by burdens and pleasures with making the best of things as they come. As I turned away and started for the sewers I already missed them terribly.

THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-four

It is a frigid evening, requiring a jacket and gloves. My warm breaths rise ghostly-white before the wind along the narrow boulevard tears them to pieces. I pause on the street and linger at the glow of the atrium atop the building high above the street. The street is dark and deserted, but for the dull bluish glow of a Sentinel on the corner. The Reclamation Center churns onward, spewing hideous clouds of black smoke. A brisk southern wind whips the smoke earthward in dark tendrils, like death’s insatiable fingers ravenous for more souls.

There is a vehicle at the corner. It is dark, but I can make out 2 figures inside. It is an unnatural thing, and I am certain they have come for me. Whether they will arrest me, or simply observe to be sure I reach court in the morning is impossible to say. What is certain is that they are there to ensure the court’s sentence is carried out.

My thoughts threaten to run away on their own, as the fever of encroaching and unstoppable fate takes hold. I look again to the Sentinel on the corner. Fearing my own thoughts will betray me I remove my gloves and stuff them in a pocket. The icy cold wind biting at my fingers succeeds in diverting my thoughts.

I turn away from the dark vehicle and start up the empty street. The doors to the vehicle open and close quickly. There are footsteps behind me, not close, but near enough. At the corner I pause, my heart seized with fear, the blood in my veins colder than that howling wind. A Sentinal is above me. Raising my hands I let the cold stab deep into the flesh. Half a block away another car pulls to a stop. Four Section Twenty-one troopers step into the street. One of them is the commander who oversaw my beating days before. His words return to me, and I am sure he relishes this opportunity to indulge his sadism. The moment is decided for me. I have only too choices. One is submission. I choose the other.

Without thought I am running across the street, chased by the commander and his men. They are trained and bred for this, and I am nothing against anyone of them, let alone half a dozen. There is but one chance, and that is to reach the archive building. I can hear them close behind, but to look back now would prove fatal. A slip, a misstep or a stumble and I am lost. Rounding a corner the archive building is just ahead. I can see the inky blackness of the entrance. A downhill slope gives me a moment’s advantage with my longer stride.

They know. They know by now I have no intention of surrendering. I have no intention of going quietly to Reclamation. They know that by now and will kill me here on the street. That much I know.

They are slower through the narrow passages beneath the archive building. They are unsure in the darkness, and nearly trip and fall over one another, but they are closer now than before. Rounding a corner one of them grabs my collar, but trips and falls, taking down several around him.

Throwing myself hard against the door, I spill forward into the rancid water and muck, barely managing to keep my feet. The humidity and rot of the archives hits me like a wall. I am still fighting to get my footing when the troopers burst through the door behind me. They have me, I feel sure, my mind and body swimming in amber, but the racket sets the archives alive. Clouds and swarms of flying, slithering and creeping things slow my pursuers, long enough for me to reach the top of the first pile.

The storm swirls around me as well, blinding me, causing me to stumble and fall just as a hail of bullets cuts the air overhead. A ricochet cuts my neck, and warm blood spills down my body. It knocks me sideways where I flail and tumble into the hole at the back of the archive. For a moment I feel suspended in air before landing with a bone-jarring thud.

It the darkness I have only a vague impression what direction I am going. That darkness is all but absolute, and made all the more disorienting as my arms and legs grudgingly accept my shouts to reach the dull pale light ahead, which I pray is the beach and the rescuing numbers of the Low City. Troopers are dropping through the hole behind me one at a time. I crawl and reach feebly for the light ahead, unable to find my feet.

In an instant the first trooper is upon me and I am thrown hard against the wall. Undeterred, for the moment, I lunge for the light before the sharp end of a heavy boot finds my chest, ripping the air from my lungs and folding me in a heap against the wall. Before I can even moan gloved hands grab my throat. Their murderous pressure is calculated by my unseen assassin. When at last he hisses through gritted teeth the voice of the Commander is unmistakable.

“Think we wouldn’t meet again?” he spits. “You’ve become the purpose of my existence. Now I’ll correct a genetic mistake and rub you out of the Universe.” He shouted up the others. “Quick, a light down here so I can enjoy the fear in his eyes as I squeeze the life from him!”

Several lanterns come on, but the vision is hardly what any of us expected. There, at both ends of the passage is a wall of faces, like beautiful demons lusting for some long deserved justice. The Commander’s hold on my neck softens, but did not release me, as if he holds me hostage, or might chose out of spite that I precede him into death. Still, I might have rejoiced at being rescued, but the faces of the troopers, their expressions at the end of all hope, is sobering. They are the faces of men who understand that death is at hand, and that resistance only succeeds in prolonging the pain and humiliation of that lamentable end.

The Commander, for all his hate and hubris, is not so quick to concede, even as I can see the rising desperation in his eyes. The fear he relished to find in my eyes now filled his own as his men are consumed and dispatched by those dark demons with little more than pathetic gasps or muffled cries.

With that he releases me and stands straight. Climbing to my feet I find his eyes. What I find there sweeps me into the abject lonesomeness of his position. Yet, his eyes remain burgeoning with defiance and pride. His body is resigned perhaps to fate, though it is plain to see that his spirit will not so easily concede.

“Think that I would beg or be driven mad by this feeble assertion against the Corporation?” he laughs darkly. “I am a soldier, and for my enemy I have nothing but contempt. So I am killed. That’s a soldier’s lot.”

“To what end?” It seems unsympathetic arguing this with a doomed man.

“I fight for an ideal.”

“And what of the Low City?”

“The Corporation represents modernity; a progression. As for your chosen friends, the New Man has always eradicated the regressives.” His eyes search mine. I long to find an inkling, the slightest desire for mercy. “So I am dead, but one day these terrorists will go too far. And you, you have chosen your side as well. That will be your fate.”

I turn away, pressing through the demon faces in the passage. Pausing I look back at the Commander. He stands alone, his head bowed. I turn away as the crowd moves in upon him. I have no interest in seeing the man die.

THE LAST MAN:Part Twenty-three

He offers his hand, staring at it as I allow it to hang in space between us. I could let it be, wondering whether he will retract it with a measure of disappointment or with disdain. I could ignore it and teach him a lesson. But what lesson? Do I teach him that he represents power and that offering his hand in friendship reflects his power and undermines my own? Do I teach him there is no bridge between what he represents and what I stand for? But what of us as men?

I take his hand. His grasp is sincere and firm. The pressure, the connection fills me. So simple, yet there it is. I study the connection and revel in it. It is an interpretation, a matter of the heart whether I have taken his hand or accepted it.

“…a revolutionary is always willing to be audacious,” I begin, finding Huey Newton’s words, “to take great risks-to dare to struggle, dare to win.”

“You’ve dared.”

“I continue to dare.”

“Even in the face of certain defeat?” he asks.

“I am one man,” I reply. “A man alone is always defeated. Then again, a man alone has nothing to lose but his dignity, and I will defend that to the last.”

He smiles, almost sadly. “You were marked from the start.”

I ponder the words a few moments and nod slowly. “How much longer do I have?”

His head snaps sharply. I avoid his eyes. The man from the corporation leans closer.

“You have some plan. You will try to escape, won't you?”

I shake my head. “I've come too far to divulge my intentions so easily.”

He laughs out loud. “But you have! You've revealed everything!”

“Think what you want.” He knows, and it infuriates me. I look away.

“Section 21 will come for you tomorrow morning. They will take you straight to court. There will be a pronouncement of guilt and then sentencing.”

“What sentence?” I ask calmly, though I fear my heart may burst at any moment.

“The only one that can be pronounced.”

My head and heart sink. What is at the end of all hope? When precisely is that realization? Certainly it is not a repose for the dead. It must be the when nothing more can be done, or with the besieging of sanity. Perhaps I am an island, and hopelessness is the ocean. The ocean swells now over my shores. But if the ocean is hopelessness, then the breath in my lungs, the swelling of my heart is a boat, and a small chance for escape.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he says with a deep sadness. It is something I have not seen in him before. “It should be comforting to know your fate so fully. Mine is not so easy.”

“No?”

“I’m dying,” he says, quite by surprise. “Cancer.”
“Cancer?” I repeat quietly. He laughs, more to himself.

“A genetic disorder. Isn’t that funny?”

“So what of your line?”

“Oh, I have been cloned. He’s a bright young boy, with a future I can only dream of.”

I stand and look down upon him. His eyes are soft blue pools that threaten to burst and rush over his tightening cheeks. It makes me terribly sad. Not for me but for him. This time my hand extends first. He takes and holds it tightly. He lays the other hand over them. His eyes are there for the longest time.

“Then I suppose this is goodbye,” I say.

“Is it a curse or a blessing that we believe our lives must account for something?” he says. “All this was created not by one for one, but by many for many. When the cell asserts itself against the body we call that cancer and cut it away.”

“And do you believe yourself a cancer?” I ask.

“Is that a flaw?’

“It may well be a burden.”

“Isn’t that the same?”

I let his hand fall, and embrace his eyes with mine. With that I smile triumphantly.

“Only for you,” I say. “And only for the Corporation.”

He nods thoughtfully and stands.

“Come,” he says, “I’ll see you home. Not so eager to say goodbye just yet.”

“You’ll forgive me,” I tell him, brushing my finger tips along his sleeve, “but I am.”