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.