THE LAST MAN: Part Forty-two

I climb slowly to my feet. As I draw Desiree up, still shielding her with my body, it seems impossible we are still alive. Desiree is already pulling me towards the sewer, knowing full well this could be our last chance for escape. At the entrance to the alley I spot movement among the dead. I pull away from Desiree. Her fingers linger at the end of our touch. Her face fully reflects the urgency of this moment, but I have to go.

“Please, I beg you,” she pleads.

“One moment is all I ask.”

I take her in my arms and look purposefully into her tortured eyes. We both look to gunfire out in the street. The sound comes nearer with each passing heartbeat. Her fingers grip the sleeves of my tunic tightly, as if she might drag me away if all else fails.

“If something happens,” I tell her, “follow the sewer to the coast. You will find…”

“I won’t, not without you!”

“You must,” I say, pulling away. It takes every ounce of strength and courage I can muster her. We may only have this one chance, but I have to go.

I follow the wall to the top of the alley. In the street, a few yards away the Man from the Corporation lies bleeding. Bullets have pierced his body crossways from hip to shoulder. I am amazed he is still alive. Seeing me he musters the strength for an ironic smile. At the end of the street, in the direction of the Reclamation Center, Section Twenty-one troops loyal to him are fighting a losing battle against the Minister’s forces. Bullets rip at the air overhead and skip at the street close by.

Ignoring the fighting I kneel beside him. Gently I lay my hand upon his shoulder. It is cold to the touch. Already I can feel the life fleeing from his body.

“Seems as though I am the one eager to say goodbye now,” he says weakly.

A cross the street a man stumbles from the fight and collapses against the wall. The street battle reaches its climax. The man from the Corporation looks past me to the ultramarine sky, and the torn layers of smoke and dust.

“Does it hurt terribly?”

His eyes find mine. “I did not believe I would see you again. Don’t ascribe any purposefulness in saving you, if that is in fact what I’ve done.”

“Still, I owe you a debt, my friend.”

The word seems to catch him a moment. It seems to rescue him from the finality of the moment, more than he rescued Desiree and me from the Minister’s bullet.

“It is I who owe you a debt.” I said. “In the atrium you said something I did not understand. You said that a man alone is always defeated, but that a man alone has nothing to lose but his dignity, and that he will defend to the last.”

“I did.”

“But not all men. It takes an uncommon character.”

“Or a common man in an uncommon situation.”

“Perhaps if that were truer we would live in a very different world. I believe you are the last man…my friend”

Only a hand full of his loyal men remain now. They have retreated to doorways around us. At the top of the street, seeming to rise from the lingering smoke and haze from the Reclamation Center, an armored troop carrier creeps forward spitting fire around the street.

“Anything I can do for you?” I ask.

He looks to Desiree. There is a lonesome look to his eyes, as though he realizes something he has always missed but only now discovered. With his final breaths he reaches up and touches my face.

“She is waiting for you,” he says, breathing heavier and more erratic now. “See how she looks at you? That better world awaits if the two of you can find it.”

With that he is gone. As I close his eyes I know he meant less of the physical world than of something more. I am coming to a definition of love in Desiree. Implied in that word is the hope of a different world, if we can find it.

THE LAST MAN: part Forty-one

Desiree and I are led from the building. My steps are weighted with stone, each one more humiliating than the next. I am impotent, struggling for a rationalization as to why I do not fight back. There is a part of me that believes an honorable death resisting would be better than a fool’s pointless and passive death. That part of me is a hostage to moments that wash one to the next, fluid like waves. I am suspended in them, unable to do anything but be carried forward towards death.

As we are leaving I spy two other ministers jut arriving. I could perhaps find something sinister in their presence. By their appearance I could believe they are too well prepared for all this. The Woman from Security and Resource does not notice me. The man from Efficiency and Entertainment seems surprised to find me here. His eyes follow me before they disappear inside.

Around the corner is a small alley. It is bounded by tall buildings on two sides, and at the back by the sea wall. There is a sewer near the sea wall. I have a mind to through myself over the edge, with full realization I could be seriously hurt. Still, despite that, it might prove my last chance for escape. I fear that I may never see the ruins, but I cannot and will not abandon Desiree, not so long as I can still draw breath.

“Stop there,” says the Minister. We turn, pausing to meet one another’s eyes, as though saying goodbye. I take her hand in mine. She squeezes it tightly and takes a deep stuttering breath. I cannot breathe, my throat growing dry. The minister comes forward and raises his pistol at Desiree. I pull her my chest, bringing her head to my chest, my gaze filled with contempt for the commander.

“If you shoot we die together,” I say bitterly. My intention is rob him fully of even the slightest satisfaction. With that I close my eyes, fully expecting the burning hot stab of the bullet. Desiree and I pull her tightly to me, and breathe in the dusty scent of her hair, savoring that smell in the face of eternity.

“Makes no difference to me,” he says.

There is a sudden volley of shots from beyond the alley. The shot from the Minster’s bullet explodes, but I am already pushing Desiree to the ground. The round goes wide, slapping against the seawall. I cover her with my body. More shots thunder in the alley, the air momentarily alive with bullets.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, the shooting stops. I look up cautiously, still shielding Desiree. The air in the alley swims and is bitter with spent gunpowder. The bodies of Section Twenty-one men litter the ground. There is more fighting in the distance near the command center. Beside me the Minister is all but dead yet. He lies on his stomach, a bullet through his neck. He gurgles and chokes out his final breaths. Life runs away from him like the river of blood to the sewer.

THE LAST MAN: Part Forty

“Is there any hope for us?” Desiree asks. How do I answer that question? Her eyes tear me to pieces. I would do anything to save her from all of this, but I am at the end of hope as well. Do I tell her what I honestly believe, that we will meet our end with a bullet? Do I implore her to go bravely with me to that end? Perhaps the illusion of hope is the best answer. In any case silence is the wrong answer, but the only one I can muster.

“During the attack I saw one of them,” she begins. “It was a young woman. She tackled a man almost twice her size and killed him with her bare hands not three feet away from me. When she had finished she sat astride his body and our eyes met…the, the…her eyes, they were so filled with life and power. I am sad I will not live a life like that.”

There is a sound at the door. It opens to the Minister from Police. Desiree stands as several of his men enter the room. The Minister enters, pacing back and forth a moment. He glances up at us from time to time. His expression is snug and self-satisfied. I hold Desiree’s arms. I fear it is more for my own faltering confidence than for her.

“You are a cleaver one,” says the Minister, still pacing. His hands are clasped behind his back. “I have seen many Associates resist Reclamation, but none so manipulative as you.”

“You can let us go,” I assert, feebly. “What are we to you?”

“What was it you said at your trial? Oh, yes, that no man can adequately proclaim his right to exist to another. You said it was a matter of perspective, and that perspectives are, by their nature, limited and biased. Isn’t that what you said?”

I do not answer. He continues.

“If that is truly how you believe, then you must concede that the argument falls both ways. Indeed, then you must accept that the perspective with the greatest power will carry the most weight. My perspective is to carry out the Reclamation Mandate for both of you without delay.”

“To what purpose?” asks Desiree. I can feel her trembling. There is a different quality to her voice, a stronger quality that sets my blood on fire. I cannot help but smile.

The Minister chafes at her perceived insolence. He is quiet a moment, as if the thought had not occurred to him before, at least not beyond the egotistical wish for revenge. His eyes rise accusingly to mine.

“Your presence is an infection that must be cut out of the body. Look at the effect you have had upon her.”

“We will leave the city, as I said, and never return,” I say.

He moves around behind me. I turn, straining to see him without letting go of Desiree. “Reclamation is the backbone of the Corporation. There is no better time to reassert that Mandate, and I can think of no one better to begin that process than you and your cohort.” He motions to the troopers. “Take them outside into the street.”

THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-nine

We are taken to what appears to be a command center some distance away from the blast zone. My impression is that it is far too organized to have been thrown together since the fighting began hardly more than two days before. It is as if they were expecting at least some aspect of this, although they also seem to have been surprised by the magnitude of the destruction. Even here the damage is breathtaking.

The immensity of the blast is reflected everywhere. Walls and streets are fractured. Windows are shattered, filling the streets with a dusky scattered amaretto glow from their reflected light. Walls are cracked and buckled, and in one building part of a wall has collapsed into the street. Section Twenty-one soldiers herds Associates from the area. Many of those Associates bear terrible wounds caused by flying glass and debris.

I feel everything is lost as Desiree and I are shoved through a door and down a long corridor. I half hoped for some chance that we might escape, as I had done in the sewers. That fading opportunity screams in my chest, settling as a dull fever. I am holding Desiree’s hand, almost too tightly. I refuse to let on how hopeless this all seems, though a part of me believes that she already knows. For her sake I portray ultimate confidence, if only because I owe her a measure of doubt about our fate, in the belief that she may find a bit of hope. It is nothing, really. It is a diversion from the fate.

The door closes behind us. The sound of the latch catching slices through me like a knife. It feels final. Both Desiree and I turn at the sound, eyeing it for a moment. Her shoulder is against mine, and I want to believe that reality is as malleable as memory. I want to believe that it is some long carried illness afflicting humanity since the dawn of time. Oh, that I could break free of that affliction at this moment, if for no other reason than to spare myself the pain and dread in Desiree’s face.

The room is poorly lit. A single kinetic light on the ceiling comes to life when it senses our movement. It is old and covered with layer of dust that bleeds from the sides of the bulb. The light is feeble and does little more that allows us to see one another. That light concerts with the ancient stale air of the room. A large old fashioned Sentinel is dark and lifeless on the wall above the door. Its blue glass face is shattered on one side. There is a single overturned chair in the corner that I can well imagine as been there for ages.

I pull the chair from the corner and set it down in the center of the room for Desiree. The wooden legs scrape loudly across the concrete floor. Desiree sits and throws her arms around my waist, as if it might save her from tumbling off the edge of the world. I pull her closer, soothed by her warm cheek against my stomach. She looks up at me, her eyes wanting pools waiting to be filled with hope and promise.

“Is it true,” she asks, “about the exile decree?”

I am lost for a proper answer. My heart tears itself to pieces. “Do you regret now that I came back for you?”

She looks away to the door, and then up to the broken Sentinel out of habit. “When I was in the Reclamation Center I felt so terribly alone. I thought, is this all there is; to live and to die? After I undressed and got into queue I was given a small cup of red liquid. It was sweet and syrupy, but had a bitter taste afterward. I knew it was a drug. I knew I was about to die and happily took that drug so there would be no pain. I could see the furnaces now. It was chaos, pure insanity, not like the Corporation’s illusion of efficiency before. The shouts of the men at the furnaces, the roar of the furnaces, the shuffling of a thousand bare feet. I was at the end, about to be Reclaimed when the attack began. It was bewildering, especially from the drug. They appeared from everywhere, up from the floor, from above, almost seeming to materialize from the air. Section Twenty-one was helpless at first. They were slaughtered. I thought they would free us, but then more Section Twenty-one soldiers appeared, prepared for battle.”

“They were expecting an attack,” I observe.

“There were too many,” she continues. They were shooting everyone. There was panic. Some Associates ran into the furnaces to escape. Many around me were cut down. I hid under bodies until…” Desiree buries her head in her hands and weeps. Kneeling I cradle her face and whisper softly to her tear streaked cheek.

“I love you,” I say, with only the vaguest impression of what that means.

THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-eight

"Spared the furnaces,” sneers the Man from Police, one of the judges of my so-called trial. Gone are the robes he wore for the trial. He is dressed in the dark Section Twenty-one uniform, with helmet and goggles around his neck. He is weighted heavily by body armor, to the extent that his smaller frame (much smaller and weaker then the troops bred for his command) frame. A pistol sits in the holster across his body.

“You will not escape a bullet,” he says.

“What have I done?” I say, drawing Desiree behind me. “Nothing!”

“Call it maintaining the public order,” he replies. The Man from Police unsnaps the pistol and draws it from the holster. He holds it against his thigh.

“On whose authority?”

“I am the Minister of Police. I don’t need anyone’s authority.” He motions to the Reclamation Center, or what remains. “Especially after what your friends in the Low City have perpetrated.”

“I have not taken any sides in this conflict.”

He scoffs. “No one holds that luxury any longer, even if I could believe you weren’t somehow complicit.”

His finger slips over the trigger guard. There is nowhere for Desiree and I to go. We stand at the edge of the crater. Death is certain, no matter how good the Minister’s aim is. He raises the gun, aiming it at us from the hip. Slowly he pulls the slide back to chamber a round.

“But you have not heard?” I say. He pauses, lowering the weapon a little.

“Heard what?”

“The exile order.”

“Exile order?”

“From the Corporation. They have ordered that I be exiled from the city.”

“You must think me a fool,” he says. “I have never heard of such a thing.”

“Fair enough,” I reply, “but what sort of example will the Corporation make of a Minister who takes it upon himself to countermand a decree?”

He thinks for a moment. I know he believes it is a ruse, but it creates enough doubt that he relents.

“I will make the call. For now you enjoy a temporary stay of execution, but when I confirm what I already know I will shoot her first so that you may see her die.”

THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-seven

There is nothing to do but cover Desiree with my own body. It is a feeble gesture, given the magnitude of the disaster, but I would wish for her to survive if there had to be a choice. This moment of uncertainty, this is the moment in which the miniscule nature of human existence is suddenly laid bare. It is at this moment, when I am prepared to sacrifice everything for another soul, that I feel more human than ever before.

The street buckles violently beside us, the ground and pavement are suddenly uprooted and twists towards the building and the doorway. For its part the ground beneath the building collapses. With a grunting, leveling sound the sudden shock resonates through the building. For now the structure holds as Desiree and I find ourselves in something of a protected little pocket. It leans so precariously, however, that I have little faith it will last much longer. When the worst is over I push myself from Desiree.

“Are you all right?” I ask. As I stand dust and rock cascades from my shoulders and hair.

“I think so.” Desiree looks past me towards the Reclamation Center. What she sees fills her face with a sort of disbelieving horror. She rises slowly, keeping her back to the wall. I turn as the dust and smoke clears.

My eyes go quite out of habit to the place the smoke stacks have occupied my whole life. But there is nothing there any longer, but a ghostly pillar of steadily shrinking black smoke. It is as if the pillars were pulled from around that smoke, and now unconstrained it drifts free. The Reclamation Center has been obliterated, replaced by a mammoth smoldering heat. It rises to an uneven peak from the center of a huge crater a hundred feet deep. I climb up to the street and go to the crater’s edge. I am taken aback by a powerful and pervasive silence.

Desiree joins me a moment later, pressing herself to my shoulder. A lingering glance betrays something far beyond the limits of language. Thousands are dead within that wreckage, but the magnitude is impossible to fathom. It becomes a very personal thing for that simple fact of the limits of human comprehension, fully skewing any true and just comprehension.

There I a sound behind us. The sound of many hurried footsteps tears Desiree and I from the remains of the Reclamation Center. We turn, suddenly confronted by a dozen or more Section Twenty-one troopers. They are as stoic as ever, as if this disaster bears no greater significance than their regular tasks. One of them steps forward. I recognize him instantly.

THE LAST MAN: Part Thirty-six

The whole city seems to groan and heave, driven by a rapidly expanding thunder far beneath the earth. It builds with some unfathomable pressure, straining the earth until it can no longer be contained. All around the Reclamation Center the earthy opens like a violent concrete flower. Great gray concrete petals rise vertically before tearing themselves to pieces. A great eruption of smoke and flame carries bodies, vehicles and bodies skyward.

For a moment, amid this calamity, the Reclamation Center seems defiant. Even as the walls are swallowed in the eruption those towering smokestacks remain unbowed. They continue pouring thick black smoke into the air, oblivious to everything but their singular hideous purpose.

For a moment it seems all but certain that the rebels have squandered their chance. But then the center stack wavers and falters, like a prize fighter taking a fatal blow. It bends and dissolves in the middle with a piercing crack. In quick succession the others follow, twisting fluidly as they slip from view in pillars of smoke.

The sound, the sound! The death sounds of the Reclamation Center are as solid as a wall. Not a singular mass of sound, but a collection of sounds, of thunderous groans and murderous screeches. It sounds like some great beast being felled by a pack of ravenous and vicious wolves.

The sounds fade, echoing away through the city streets. It is replaced by the patter and hiss of brick and stone, the remains of the reclamation center falling like hail. In time that fades too, becoming a silence as deep and breathless and full as death. Dust and smoke hangs heavy as a shroud, blotting the thin cold arctic night.