We round a corner at a run, at least as much as we can muster. I want to put the greatest distance between us and the Reclamation Center, but every step and every heart beat seems an eternity. If it is to be destroyed, and the fighting a diversion to draw in the greatest number of Section Twenty-one troops for slaughter, then I can only conclude that as the battle wanes that the end is near. The gunfire comes in wild spasms, with pauses coming longer and longer.
Desiree holds weakly to my side. If not for me her legs would not be enough to hold her. Her bare feet slip and trip as she fights ground over glass and the refuse of war. The narcotic is wearing off slowly, awakening pain from her battered and burned body. She shouts and slips from my arms, tumbling heavily to the street.
“We have to keep moving,” I draw her into my arms. Desiree presses her face into my chest.
“I can’t go any farther.”
“You must.”
“To where?”
I help her to stand again then lift her partially into my arms. There are troops around the next corner. Down another street there are still more. Section Twenty-one has sealed off the area around the Reclamation Center. Desiree and I take refuge in a deep doorway as I try to figure an escape.
“The sewers!” I exclaim, keeping my voice low to avoid attracting the troops. “We have to find a way to the sewers.”
“I can’t go any father,” Desiree gasps, slumping to the door.
I look up and down the street. We have barely gone more than a few blocks from the Reclamation Center. It rises monstrous and large at the end of the street. The entrance is crowded with Corporation troops. There is no particular urgency to their movements. In the doorway Desiree is huddled beneath the trooper’s jacket, shivering terribly.
“There has to be an entrance nearby,” I return to Desiree, rubbing her arms to warm her.
“I’m freezing,” she moans.
“We have to keep moving,” I urge, wiping dust and sweat from her face.
“Please,” she begs.
I take the trousers and boots from a dead soldier. Desiree dresses quickly, cinching the waist with a simple knot. She falls into my arms, her eyes alive with uncertainty. I know at that moment we have run out of time. Some reflective echo of the unfolding universe betrays the upheaval a moment before it happens. My gut tightens and the air freezes in my throat. Not that knowing offers any greater advantage. No king or general or messiah could confront this moment any better or any worse…
Friday, December 4, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-four
There a blistering gun battle near the Reclamation Center. It sounds like thousands of bits of glass being crushed. Dull hollow explosions punctuate the fighting, joined in awful chorus of the murdering airships on the coast. I pause in the doorway of my building and can see that parts of the city have gone unnaturally dark.
Further on I pass a naked man in a doorway. He is curled gently, an arm across his belly. His feet are bloody and there is a bullet wound through his forehead. A trickled of blood runs across his forehead and across one temple. But for that the lonesome figure appears asleep. On the next block I find a man and woman cowering and disoriented. They huddle against the wall, their faces emptied of any emotion, with only a jacket from a fallen trooper to keep them warm. At the end of the street the front of a Section Twenty-one transport has been shredded by a bomb. Flames pour from the rear compartment, consuming the troops inside, still sitting in their seats.
The scene before the Reclamation Center is far ghastlier. Bodies are piled at the wide, arched entrance. A crimson river floods into the street. Great concrete pillars to either side are chewed and pitted by shrapnel and bullets. A transport lies overturned. The bodies of Low City rebels and Corporation troops are scattered everywhere, many in deadly embrace. The continuing battle thunders from within the building.
Near the entrance I find one of the rebels still alive. I recognize her from the sewers. Kneeling I gently lift her head. Her eyes, distant and confused, find mine.
“Why did you come here?” she coughs. There is blood on her lips. More trickles across her cheek, running wet and wrm over my fingers.
“Why did you?” I ask.
She coughs heavily, bringing a wave of terrible pain that wracks her broken body. She squeezes the back of my arm tightly, and then relaxes as the pain, or the worst of it, passes.
“There was no choice,” she says, her voice fading steadily. I sweep back the hair from her tortured and perspired brow.
“Yes,” I say, simply.
She coughs again, more violent and more exhaustive this time. There is sudden alarm in her young face. Not a realization she is dying. There is no doubt about that. The bullets had all but cut her in half, enough that her legs have fallen unnaturally to one side. No, the alarm, I believe, is more a precise understanding of just how little time remains her.
“You have to go, get away from here,” she says. “There isn’t much time.”
As if to underscore the urgency in her voice the earth shudders powerfully. Across the city a giant tower collapses into a cloud of dust and smoke and flame.
She looks to the roar following a moment later. I know already this is the fate about to befall the Reclamation Center. Now that knowledge grows to an urgency. It thunders away in my chest.
Her expression transforms to something puzzling and curious. And for a moment we are an island apart from the battle. It is not something dark or reflective of the cruelty done her body. Nor is it filtered through some ultimate betrayal of personal dreams or aspirations. It is apart from those things, as if the body and its desires are inconsequential. It comes to her like a recognition, like an idea just occurring to her. She reaches up and touches my cheek.
“You’ve come for…” she says. “What’s the word? I can’t think of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Help me to say it.”
“Love?”
“Yes,” she says at hardly a whisper as her body goes limp. She almost smiles, and seems lifted by the word; by a single ancient word. The light fades from her eyes. She gives a final sigh and manages the word one last time. “Love.”
THE LAST MAN
Part Thirty-four
The battle in the Reclamation Center builds to a deafening crescendo. Fate screams in my ear, warning me that death hunts me every moment. It’s shrill fingers would drag me away to cower someplace. Intellect is of limited value. It favors all too often the weaker elements of my heart. What is death? Why should I care, rushing headlong through smoke, climbing over bodies, pressing through fleeing Associates? I am a man with purpose, and in that purpose death is only a minor consideration. The fear that accompanies the threat of death is merely a hindrance.
The great hall is a confusion of images and moments. Near the furnaces the main force of Low City rebels is cornered and under siege in a frantic and desperate hand to hand struggle. Associates, rebels and soldiers alike throw themselves into the flames, animated and dejected fully by the all consuming violence around them. There are masses of bodies, the terrified and hopeless, clustered together so tightly one might believe they are fused. Others pass as a blur as they rush headlong from the fighting. Smoke fills the tragic hall. Bullets chop the air. Cries and moans arise each time one finds a victim.
I realize it is almost impossible to find Desiree here, even if she remains alive. The nearer the furnaces the fewer living souls I find, and my hopelessness rises in direct proportion. There is a terrible grinding and cracking sound as one of the furnaces slips open, its flames curling towards the ceiling hundreds of feet in the air. It boils out to set alight dozens of fighters still locked in combat, like some great amber flood. The battle continues unabated, those at the front unaware comrades and enemies behind have been consumed, and those being consumed unwilling to abandon the fight before the very moment of death.
Even here, some distance away, the heat drives me back. I shield myself with an arm and turn away, tripping and sprawling across the blood-drenched floor among a confusion of limbs. Behind me the furnace dissolves in a roiling ball of flame, swallowing the fighting there. It continues elsewhere, smaller battles, but every bit as bitter and unrelenting everywhere in the hall.
There is a woman beside me, dead from a terrific head wound. The hair covers her face completely. My blood runs cold at the prospect that it could be Desiree. I reach out to brush the hair from her face. My fingers tremble, hovering near her face. Just then hands grab my tunic and turn me over. My instinct is to fight, but I hesitate.
“Desiree!” I exclaim.
She is nude and covered with blood. It drips from her fingers and covers one hip. Desiree’s hair is singed on one side. The side of her body is burned red, and beginning to blister on her shoulder and arm. I can only surmise that she was close to Reclamation when the fighting broke out. I pull her to the wall and help to cover her with a fallen trooper’s jacket. She is trembling terribly and seems disoriented and dulled. No doubt the lingering affects of the drug administered before being thrown into the furnaces.
“You’re hurt?” I shout above the din. Even then I can hardly be heard. She stares at me blankly, and shrugs.
The rebels are nearly finished. More troops pour into the hall until the rebels, those who are still alive, are hopelessly outnumbered. Still they fight on, even taunting and encouraging the Corporation troops. In the confusion Desiree and I slip from the hall into the street.
Further on I pass a naked man in a doorway. He is curled gently, an arm across his belly. His feet are bloody and there is a bullet wound through his forehead. A trickled of blood runs across his forehead and across one temple. But for that the lonesome figure appears asleep. On the next block I find a man and woman cowering and disoriented. They huddle against the wall, their faces emptied of any emotion, with only a jacket from a fallen trooper to keep them warm. At the end of the street the front of a Section Twenty-one transport has been shredded by a bomb. Flames pour from the rear compartment, consuming the troops inside, still sitting in their seats.
The scene before the Reclamation Center is far ghastlier. Bodies are piled at the wide, arched entrance. A crimson river floods into the street. Great concrete pillars to either side are chewed and pitted by shrapnel and bullets. A transport lies overturned. The bodies of Low City rebels and Corporation troops are scattered everywhere, many in deadly embrace. The continuing battle thunders from within the building.
Near the entrance I find one of the rebels still alive. I recognize her from the sewers. Kneeling I gently lift her head. Her eyes, distant and confused, find mine.
“Why did you come here?” she coughs. There is blood on her lips. More trickles across her cheek, running wet and wrm over my fingers.
“Why did you?” I ask.
She coughs heavily, bringing a wave of terrible pain that wracks her broken body. She squeezes the back of my arm tightly, and then relaxes as the pain, or the worst of it, passes.
“There was no choice,” she says, her voice fading steadily. I sweep back the hair from her tortured and perspired brow.
“Yes,” I say, simply.
She coughs again, more violent and more exhaustive this time. There is sudden alarm in her young face. Not a realization she is dying. There is no doubt about that. The bullets had all but cut her in half, enough that her legs have fallen unnaturally to one side. No, the alarm, I believe, is more a precise understanding of just how little time remains her.
“You have to go, get away from here,” she says. “There isn’t much time.”
As if to underscore the urgency in her voice the earth shudders powerfully. Across the city a giant tower collapses into a cloud of dust and smoke and flame.
She looks to the roar following a moment later. I know already this is the fate about to befall the Reclamation Center. Now that knowledge grows to an urgency. It thunders away in my chest.
Her expression transforms to something puzzling and curious. And for a moment we are an island apart from the battle. It is not something dark or reflective of the cruelty done her body. Nor is it filtered through some ultimate betrayal of personal dreams or aspirations. It is apart from those things, as if the body and its desires are inconsequential. It comes to her like a recognition, like an idea just occurring to her. She reaches up and touches my cheek.
“You’ve come for…” she says. “What’s the word? I can’t think of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Help me to say it.”
“Love?”
“Yes,” she says at hardly a whisper as her body goes limp. She almost smiles, and seems lifted by the word; by a single ancient word. The light fades from her eyes. She gives a final sigh and manages the word one last time. “Love.”
THE LAST MAN
Part Thirty-four
The battle in the Reclamation Center builds to a deafening crescendo. Fate screams in my ear, warning me that death hunts me every moment. It’s shrill fingers would drag me away to cower someplace. Intellect is of limited value. It favors all too often the weaker elements of my heart. What is death? Why should I care, rushing headlong through smoke, climbing over bodies, pressing through fleeing Associates? I am a man with purpose, and in that purpose death is only a minor consideration. The fear that accompanies the threat of death is merely a hindrance.
The great hall is a confusion of images and moments. Near the furnaces the main force of Low City rebels is cornered and under siege in a frantic and desperate hand to hand struggle. Associates, rebels and soldiers alike throw themselves into the flames, animated and dejected fully by the all consuming violence around them. There are masses of bodies, the terrified and hopeless, clustered together so tightly one might believe they are fused. Others pass as a blur as they rush headlong from the fighting. Smoke fills the tragic hall. Bullets chop the air. Cries and moans arise each time one finds a victim.
I realize it is almost impossible to find Desiree here, even if she remains alive. The nearer the furnaces the fewer living souls I find, and my hopelessness rises in direct proportion. There is a terrible grinding and cracking sound as one of the furnaces slips open, its flames curling towards the ceiling hundreds of feet in the air. It boils out to set alight dozens of fighters still locked in combat, like some great amber flood. The battle continues unabated, those at the front unaware comrades and enemies behind have been consumed, and those being consumed unwilling to abandon the fight before the very moment of death.
Even here, some distance away, the heat drives me back. I shield myself with an arm and turn away, tripping and sprawling across the blood-drenched floor among a confusion of limbs. Behind me the furnace dissolves in a roiling ball of flame, swallowing the fighting there. It continues elsewhere, smaller battles, but every bit as bitter and unrelenting everywhere in the hall.
There is a woman beside me, dead from a terrific head wound. The hair covers her face completely. My blood runs cold at the prospect that it could be Desiree. I reach out to brush the hair from her face. My fingers tremble, hovering near her face. Just then hands grab my tunic and turn me over. My instinct is to fight, but I hesitate.
“Desiree!” I exclaim.
She is nude and covered with blood. It drips from her fingers and covers one hip. Desiree’s hair is singed on one side. The side of her body is burned red, and beginning to blister on her shoulder and arm. I can only surmise that she was close to Reclamation when the fighting broke out. I pull her to the wall and help to cover her with a fallen trooper’s jacket. She is trembling terribly and seems disoriented and dulled. No doubt the lingering affects of the drug administered before being thrown into the furnaces.
“You’re hurt?” I shout above the din. Even then I can hardly be heard. She stares at me blankly, and shrugs.
The rebels are nearly finished. More troops pour into the hall until the rebels, those who are still alive, are hopelessly outnumbered. Still they fight on, even taunting and encouraging the Corporation troops. In the confusion Desiree and I slip from the hall into the street.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-three
There a blistering gun battle near the Reclamation Center. It sounds like thousands of bits of glass being crushed. Dull hollow explosions punctuate the fighting, joined in awful chorus of the murdering airships on the coast. I pause in the doorway of my building and can see that parts of the city have gone unnaturally dark.
Further on I pass a naked man in a doorway. He is curled gently, an arm across his belly. His feet are bloody and there is a bullet wound through his forehead. A trickled of blood runs across his forehead and across one temple. But for that the lonesome figure appears asleep. On the next block I find a man and woman cowering and disoriented. They huddle against the wall, their faces emptied of any emotion, with only a jacket from a fallen trooper to keep them warm. At the end of the street the front of a Section Twenty-one transport has been shredded by a bomb. Flames pour from the rear compartment, consuming the troops inside, still sitting in their seats.
The scene before the Reclamation Center is far ghastlier. Bodies are piled at the wide, arched entrance. A crimson river floods into the street. Great concrete pillars to either side are chewed and pitted by shrapnel and bullets. A transport lies overturned. The bodies of Low City rebels and Corporation troops are scattered everywhere, many in deadly embrace. The continuing battle thunders from within the building.
Near the entrance I find one of the rebels still alive. I recognize her from the sewers. Kneeling I gently lift her head. Her eyes, distant and confused, find mine.
“Why did you come here?” she coughs. There is blood on her lips. More trickles across her cheek, running wet and wrm over my fingers.
“Why did you?” I ask.
She coughs heavily, bringing a wave of terrible pain that wracks her broken body. She squeezes the back of my arm tightly, and then relaxes as the pain, or the worst of it, passes.
“There was no choice,” she says, her voice fading steadily. I sweep back the hair from her tortured and perspired brow.
“Yes,” I say, simply.
She coughs again, more violent and more exhaustive this time. There is sudden alarm in her young face. Not a realization she is dying. There is no doubt about that. The bullets had all but cut her in half, enough that her legs have fallen unnaturally to one side. No, the alarm, I believe, is more a precise understanding of just how little time remains her.
“You have to go, get away from here,” she says. “There isn’t much time.”
As if to underscore the urgency in her voice the earth shudders powerfully. Across the city a giant tower collapses into a cloud of dust and smoke and flame.
She looks to the roar following a moment later. I know already this is the fate about to befall the Reclamation Center. Now that knowledge grows to an urgency. It thunders away in my chest.
Her expression transforms to something puzzling and curious. And for a moment we are an island apart from the battle. It is not something dark or reflective of the cruelty done her body. Nor is it filtered through some ultimate betrayal of personal dreams or aspirations. It is apart from those things, as if the body and its desires are inconsequential. It comes to her like a recognition, like an idea just occurring to her. She reaches up and touches my cheek.
“You’ve come for…” she says. “What’s the word? I can’t think of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Help me to say it.”
“Love?”
“Yes,” she says at hardly a whisper as her body goes limp. She almost smiles, and seems lifted by the word; by a single ancient word. The light fades from her eyes. She gives a final sigh and manages the word one last time. “Love.”
Further on I pass a naked man in a doorway. He is curled gently, an arm across his belly. His feet are bloody and there is a bullet wound through his forehead. A trickled of blood runs across his forehead and across one temple. But for that the lonesome figure appears asleep. On the next block I find a man and woman cowering and disoriented. They huddle against the wall, their faces emptied of any emotion, with only a jacket from a fallen trooper to keep them warm. At the end of the street the front of a Section Twenty-one transport has been shredded by a bomb. Flames pour from the rear compartment, consuming the troops inside, still sitting in their seats.
The scene before the Reclamation Center is far ghastlier. Bodies are piled at the wide, arched entrance. A crimson river floods into the street. Great concrete pillars to either side are chewed and pitted by shrapnel and bullets. A transport lies overturned. The bodies of Low City rebels and Corporation troops are scattered everywhere, many in deadly embrace. The continuing battle thunders from within the building.
Near the entrance I find one of the rebels still alive. I recognize her from the sewers. Kneeling I gently lift her head. Her eyes, distant and confused, find mine.
“Why did you come here?” she coughs. There is blood on her lips. More trickles across her cheek, running wet and wrm over my fingers.
“Why did you?” I ask.
She coughs heavily, bringing a wave of terrible pain that wracks her broken body. She squeezes the back of my arm tightly, and then relaxes as the pain, or the worst of it, passes.
“There was no choice,” she says, her voice fading steadily. I sweep back the hair from her tortured and perspired brow.
“Yes,” I say, simply.
She coughs again, more violent and more exhaustive this time. There is sudden alarm in her young face. Not a realization she is dying. There is no doubt about that. The bullets had all but cut her in half, enough that her legs have fallen unnaturally to one side. No, the alarm, I believe, is more a precise understanding of just how little time remains her.
“You have to go, get away from here,” she says. “There isn’t much time.”
As if to underscore the urgency in her voice the earth shudders powerfully. Across the city a giant tower collapses into a cloud of dust and smoke and flame.
She looks to the roar following a moment later. I know already this is the fate about to befall the Reclamation Center. Now that knowledge grows to an urgency. It thunders away in my chest.
Her expression transforms to something puzzling and curious. And for a moment we are an island apart from the battle. It is not something dark or reflective of the cruelty done her body. Nor is it filtered through some ultimate betrayal of personal dreams or aspirations. It is apart from those things, as if the body and its desires are inconsequential. It comes to her like a recognition, like an idea just occurring to her. She reaches up and touches my cheek.
“You’ve come for…” she says. “What’s the word? I can’t think of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Help me to say it.”
“Love?”
“Yes,” she says at hardly a whisper as her body goes limp. She almost smiles, and seems lifted by the word; by a single ancient word. The light fades from her eyes. She gives a final sigh and manages the word one last time. “Love.”
Monday, November 30, 2009
THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-two
There are undeniable risks. Perhaps I will fail, be captured by Section Twenty-one, or will be killed in the impending battle between the Corporation and the Low City. All those possibilities seem inconsequential now. Those other fates seem so small compared with the prospect of losing her. If that qualifies as that relic called love then so be it! Perhaps I am following a fool’s dream. What is the alternative? A man fails to dare his dreams is a heretic to his own ideology.
I am not so eager to say goodbye to the young woman. Something in her face causes me to believe she would feel the same. A face reflects the sins of a life, and hers was innocent and pure. There is a simple wisdom that, even now, lingers.
Rising slowly I glance up at the sea wall and the city stretching along the coast. I look down upon the girl then reach down to cover her face. There are easily hundreds dead nearby and scattered along the shoreline. Many thousands more are sure to follow, but it is her face that becomes the symbol of this tragedy. A quiet mournful moan escapes my lips. I turn and start for the archives.
The city is deathly still. The battle in the sewers seems to have abated or paused, but there is a tension to the air. The shadows are dramatic, swathing the street in deep angular shadows, where the air is much colder. A Sentinel on the corner is dark, which is a strange thing. Slipping from doorway to doorway along empty streets, scurrying across channels of daylight I find every Sentinel dark. Two Section Twenty-one transports roar past. I hide in a doorway until they are gone, and make my way quickly to the flat and Desiree.
The door to my flat is wide open. The white sheet from the bed lies at the door, and I know instantly. Inside a chair is overturned in the center of the room. Her shoes remain neatly beside the door. On the table is a small slip of paper. It only confirms what I already know.
MANDATE FOR RECLAMATION
DESIREE 664212
REPORT IMMEDIATELY
I am certain she did not report voluntarily. Section Twenty-one came for her immediately as a means of getting at me. She struggled, which tells me waited and hoped I would return. The question is how long ago they took her. Whether it was minutes or hours ago is impossible to say.
I fall against the window, certain I will die without her. The glass cools my forehead. Misty white clouds sweep low over the turquoise sea. In gaps and moments I can see the ruins, seeming more distant than ever. From the corner of my eye I spy a flash of orange near the Reclamation Center. A boiling mushroom cloud of smoke rises into the air. Raging fires throw their wildly dancing light across the broad brick face of the Reclamation Center. Farther up the coast Corporation airships dart madly, pouring rockets and death upon the refugees fleeing the Low City.
I am not so eager to say goodbye to the young woman. Something in her face causes me to believe she would feel the same. A face reflects the sins of a life, and hers was innocent and pure. There is a simple wisdom that, even now, lingers.
Rising slowly I glance up at the sea wall and the city stretching along the coast. I look down upon the girl then reach down to cover her face. There are easily hundreds dead nearby and scattered along the shoreline. Many thousands more are sure to follow, but it is her face that becomes the symbol of this tragedy. A quiet mournful moan escapes my lips. I turn and start for the archives.
The city is deathly still. The battle in the sewers seems to have abated or paused, but there is a tension to the air. The shadows are dramatic, swathing the street in deep angular shadows, where the air is much colder. A Sentinel on the corner is dark, which is a strange thing. Slipping from doorway to doorway along empty streets, scurrying across channels of daylight I find every Sentinel dark. Two Section Twenty-one transports roar past. I hide in a doorway until they are gone, and make my way quickly to the flat and Desiree.
The door to my flat is wide open. The white sheet from the bed lies at the door, and I know instantly. Inside a chair is overturned in the center of the room. Her shoes remain neatly beside the door. On the table is a small slip of paper. It only confirms what I already know.
MANDATE FOR RECLAMATION
DESIREE 664212
REPORT IMMEDIATELY
I am certain she did not report voluntarily. Section Twenty-one came for her immediately as a means of getting at me. She struggled, which tells me waited and hoped I would return. The question is how long ago they took her. Whether it was minutes or hours ago is impossible to say.
I fall against the window, certain I will die without her. The glass cools my forehead. Misty white clouds sweep low over the turquoise sea. In gaps and moments I can see the ruins, seeming more distant than ever. From the corner of my eye I spy a flash of orange near the Reclamation Center. A boiling mushroom cloud of smoke rises into the air. Raging fires throw their wildly dancing light across the broad brick face of the Reclamation Center. Farther up the coast Corporation airships dart madly, pouring rockets and death upon the refugees fleeing the Low City.
THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty_one
I am momentarily alone among the dead and dying. What became of the Rebel Leader is only a guess. As the battle erupted she was spirited away by several bodyguards. Perhaps she lies among the scattered dead. If true I can only imagine if that will stop the attack against the Reclamation Center. Perhaps it will only interrupt the attack, or maybe her followers will continue the work in her name. Who can say?
The moment feels tentative. This chance at freedom feels fleeting, I can feel it constricting rapidly to trap me. But I have this moment, and I will be damned that I will have it taken from me.
I am decided. I have decided, as I pick my way through the sewers back towards the beach, John Brown and the others. I will escape the city and find some way to reach the ruins. I want no part of this war and no part of the Corporation. Comes a time when a body must decide for itself, for its own good and for its need. I am decided, and freedom is the course I have decided upon.
There is fighting on the beach as well. It comes sudden and shocking, with screams and cries filling those rare gaps in the shooting. The sounds hold a different character than the battle behind me. It feels crueler and malicious. It feels like a crime. I wait until the shooting has ended before continuing.
When I reach the sewer’s end I pause, still keeping to the shadows. The bite of spent gunpowder fills the air, and stings at my eyes and throat. The troops have moved off. Smoke still hangs in ghastly gray shrouds. It scatters the blood red sunset into lazily drifting shafts that fall upon countless dead scattered and heaped upon the beach. Hardly the scene of a battle, this was murder, pure and simple.
Doubtless this was revenge for the commander and his troops, whose bodies would brazenly have been laid out in the archive as a message to others. And so Section Twenty-one and the Corporation decided on a punishing course, but this carnage only predicts retribution from the Low City; the next link in an endless chain. Such is the path when vengeance masquerading as justice becomes the final motivation.
The dead are not even scattered, as if they had attempted some defense, or failing that, an escape. The bodies are piled near posts or where parents had fallen on children in a vain attempt at protection. Skulls are blasted open, faces shot away, limbs shattered, and bodies torn open. The stink of ripped innards fills the air already. Other victims were trapped at the shoreline before being cut down.
I run to the water’s edge, climbing over rocks and several bodies to reach the old row boat I had seen earlier. A young woman lies in the boat. Her lovely light brown face is turned skyward, as if she has merely fallen back in gentle repose to ponder the heavens. Her auburn eyes are open, but dull and lifeless. One arm is outstretched towards the bow of the boat. The other lies across her forehead. Long straight black hair is splayed in all directions. The poor woman’s feet dangle over the side of the boat, hovering just above the sand. One crude rubber sandal is missing. A bullet has pierced her body just above the left breast. There is little blood, but for a smudge across her cheek.
Strange, I think, gently lifting her into my arms, that lifeless as she is I still find a connection to her. Lifeless as she is I am alternately mournful, curious and afraid. I might easily believe she is used up, that death is nothing more than a sudden cessation of a vast and incredibly complex electro-chemical equation. As I carry her up the beach I am haunted that there must be something more. It becomes a matter beyond science and mere logic. Whether that portends something outside this world or is a product of my ego I cannot say for sure. In that gap I find room and cause for speculation and (dare I resurrect an ancient word) faith. Logic of course, tells me otherwise, but the simple fact that I treat her body with such gentleness challenges that notion completely.
There is something in her face that reminds me of Desiree. I place her gently upon the soft sand in a sheltered part of the beach. Here she is protected on all sides by rocks, and separated from the brutality beyond. It seems fitting given the peace upon her face.
Wetting my thumb, I smudge away the dried blood upon her cheek. Near the boat I find a crumpled cloak. It covers a bundle of food and a jug of tea. I place them in the boat and carry the cloak back to the girl’s body.
I wrap her carefully, as if she had laid down for a nap. Her face is left exposed, at least for now. With both hands cupped I cover the ends with sand and stones to secure the blanket in place. With that I close her eyes and sit back, looking out across the sea now stilled in a lessening wind. At that, engulfed in silence, thoughts rise like a storm.
I sigh deeply. It is at once a cleansing and sorrowful breath. And my thoughts return to Desiree. It occurs to me that a man alone upon the sea has infinite directions, but no true purpose. Desiree, I decide gives me purpose, will the ruins offer only direction. These things I want are all too feeble without her. Want without purpose is merely desire, and desire can never quench the soul. At the end of all these thoughts I come to a resolution, and that is to convince Desiree to come with me.
The moment feels tentative. This chance at freedom feels fleeting, I can feel it constricting rapidly to trap me. But I have this moment, and I will be damned that I will have it taken from me.
I am decided. I have decided, as I pick my way through the sewers back towards the beach, John Brown and the others. I will escape the city and find some way to reach the ruins. I want no part of this war and no part of the Corporation. Comes a time when a body must decide for itself, for its own good and for its need. I am decided, and freedom is the course I have decided upon.
There is fighting on the beach as well. It comes sudden and shocking, with screams and cries filling those rare gaps in the shooting. The sounds hold a different character than the battle behind me. It feels crueler and malicious. It feels like a crime. I wait until the shooting has ended before continuing.
When I reach the sewer’s end I pause, still keeping to the shadows. The bite of spent gunpowder fills the air, and stings at my eyes and throat. The troops have moved off. Smoke still hangs in ghastly gray shrouds. It scatters the blood red sunset into lazily drifting shafts that fall upon countless dead scattered and heaped upon the beach. Hardly the scene of a battle, this was murder, pure and simple.
Doubtless this was revenge for the commander and his troops, whose bodies would brazenly have been laid out in the archive as a message to others. And so Section Twenty-one and the Corporation decided on a punishing course, but this carnage only predicts retribution from the Low City; the next link in an endless chain. Such is the path when vengeance masquerading as justice becomes the final motivation.
The dead are not even scattered, as if they had attempted some defense, or failing that, an escape. The bodies are piled near posts or where parents had fallen on children in a vain attempt at protection. Skulls are blasted open, faces shot away, limbs shattered, and bodies torn open. The stink of ripped innards fills the air already. Other victims were trapped at the shoreline before being cut down.
I run to the water’s edge, climbing over rocks and several bodies to reach the old row boat I had seen earlier. A young woman lies in the boat. Her lovely light brown face is turned skyward, as if she has merely fallen back in gentle repose to ponder the heavens. Her auburn eyes are open, but dull and lifeless. One arm is outstretched towards the bow of the boat. The other lies across her forehead. Long straight black hair is splayed in all directions. The poor woman’s feet dangle over the side of the boat, hovering just above the sand. One crude rubber sandal is missing. A bullet has pierced her body just above the left breast. There is little blood, but for a smudge across her cheek.
Strange, I think, gently lifting her into my arms, that lifeless as she is I still find a connection to her. Lifeless as she is I am alternately mournful, curious and afraid. I might easily believe she is used up, that death is nothing more than a sudden cessation of a vast and incredibly complex electro-chemical equation. As I carry her up the beach I am haunted that there must be something more. It becomes a matter beyond science and mere logic. Whether that portends something outside this world or is a product of my ego I cannot say for sure. In that gap I find room and cause for speculation and (dare I resurrect an ancient word) faith. Logic of course, tells me otherwise, but the simple fact that I treat her body with such gentleness challenges that notion completely.
There is something in her face that reminds me of Desiree. I place her gently upon the soft sand in a sheltered part of the beach. Here she is protected on all sides by rocks, and separated from the brutality beyond. It seems fitting given the peace upon her face.
Wetting my thumb, I smudge away the dried blood upon her cheek. Near the boat I find a crumpled cloak. It covers a bundle of food and a jug of tea. I place them in the boat and carry the cloak back to the girl’s body.
I wrap her carefully, as if she had laid down for a nap. Her face is left exposed, at least for now. With both hands cupped I cover the ends with sand and stones to secure the blanket in place. With that I close her eyes and sit back, looking out across the sea now stilled in a lessening wind. At that, engulfed in silence, thoughts rise like a storm.
I sigh deeply. It is at once a cleansing and sorrowful breath. And my thoughts return to Desiree. It occurs to me that a man alone upon the sea has infinite directions, but no true purpose. Desiree, I decide gives me purpose, will the ruins offer only direction. These things I want are all too feeble without her. Want without purpose is merely desire, and desire can never quench the soul. At the end of all these thoughts I come to a resolution, and that is to convince Desiree to come with me.
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