THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-seven

The flames jump, crackling and roaring to a blaze that reach skyward, where the scorched concrete ceiling bends them back, like the liquid petals of a flower. I shield myself from the scorching heat, yet cannot take my eyes from the pages curling and blackening in the flame. Like the archives, and the volumes rotting there, here is a history lost. It seems a terrible crime, for how can a man rightly comprehend his fate without memory of his past?

Around us is a wild scene. It is the frenetic preparations for a final great battle to be joined against the Corporation. Many of the warriors brandish captured section Twenty-one weapons. They appear fierce in wolf skins and pieces of body armor. That wall of odd bricks is almost gone. A dozen or so children wait to shuttle the final loads somewhere deep beneath the city. Aids rush in and out begging orders and instructions. Bethune is well prepared, dispatching them to their urgent duties without hesitation and without the slightest indecision.

“We’re prepared,” she says with a weighted sigh.

“You’ll strike the Corporation?”

“It has always been A strategy. Would I choose such a terrible outcome? Of course not, but often in war the time and place of battle is chosen by the enemy. It is necessary to strike them before they strike us.”

“All of your people are fleeing along the coast,” emotion rises in my voice.

“Far too dangerous to remain,” she says.”I have my fighters.”

“The Corporation will butcher them out in the open!”

“Do you believe I would send them to be martyred lightly? The Corporation already makes it clear they mean to exterminate us. Better to die for a cause than for nothing.”

“The Corporation has no official policy about the Low City.”

“By their actions and their lieutenants their policy it only too clear,” she turns away.

“This is the wrong path,” I say, taking her arm and turning her back to me. She pulls away, glaring angrily at my unforgivable breach. Several guards rush forward, drawing blades. Bethune waves them away.

“In desperate times the wrong path is all too often the only path.”

I can see that it is pointless to argue. She is decided. The events have run away from any one person's ability to stop them. They have gained a character of their own, like the fire, ready to consume all the stands before it; innocent or guilty. I might strike Bethune down (and be slain by her guards) but the moment has even fled and outgrown her significance.

“I am sorry for you,” I say, “but more sorry for the innocent on both sides who will suffer most."

Her acts, I assert, are criminal, and not at all worthy of Mary McLeod Bethune’s association. True enough, this memory proves a malleable substance, fully at the beckoning and blunder of the owner. I had learned to alter mine, concealing true identities from the Corporation of those I felt were just. All that was now changed, and so Bethune’s identity was returned to its rightful place in history and in my memory. If Sentinel sought I would make no effort to protect her at all. I turned and started to leave. The guards block my path. I turn, finding the rebel leader’s immoveable gaze.