Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (26 page)

My first thought is that the media’s hysterics are just in response to the extreme events of the past few days.  But the truth is, Gothica has always been numbed and poisoned by the punditry.  Just three men control all the news organizations in Gothica and it only takes one of those men – a single person – to make a lie into truth in the minds of a hundred million people. 

It makes me wonder for a moment, if we should be nurturing the bottom of society or culling the top?  After all, what more power could one person have than to change the reality of others through stubborn repetitious jabbering?  Was Gothica’s reality not the product of such distortions – someone
willing
reality to be contrary to itself… and winning?  I scribble down the three men’s names and then begin to make a short list of who would be easiest to blackmail, or most valuable to our cause to kill.

It makes me realize the options that are available to me.  I could shut down the entire media empire as it currently exists.  But where to stop?  Is my moral compass accurate enough?  Am I the best or the
worst
person to be doing this?

For so long I thought that Gothicans weren’t capable of anything else and that this pyramid of haves and have-nots built on deceit and extortion was inevitable.  For not the first time, but the first time of any significance, I feel like one of the only people in the city who wants something other than cycle.  A great ambivalence about my mission washes over me.  Do I
want
to save these people?  Do they want to be saved?  Can they be?  Do they deserve this terrible fate?  Do I?

The phone rings in the background and Val answers it.  He says nothing, then hangs up.  “Limo’s ready.”

Dying trying is as good a death as any.

B
efore the cash gets within three blocks of the garage, I inspect the work, which, to the trade school’s credit, was done well and done quickly.  I can instantly tell whether the materials they used were the ones I specified, the quality of their welding, the PSI in the tires, and so on.  The armor plating, a polymer weave I had shipped to them from our friend at the docks, will obliterate our fuel efficiency but soak repeat hits from any small arms fire found on the street.  The windows have been replaced with the same stuff and aluminum ribs have been added to allow the roof to support more weight should she roll over.  The suspension took an overhaul and the standard tires were replaced with auxiliary-supported run-flats.  I wanted a self-sealing fuel tank like we have on Rolla, but none could be found. 

I call Betha to come by and drop off payment once I have given it a thorough inspection.  She stops only for a second, hands me the suitcase, and then speeds off to beat the sunrise.  I talk to the shop manager, telling him that he has done a great service for the city, even if he was just looking for a paycheck.  He has good kids working for him, too.  I give him a
phone number.  If they need something in the days to come, when money has become less valuable than fresh water, I will do my best to help them. 

Every night will be like this, building something, pushing it uphill, generating momentum.  A little goodwill or even some hope could have far reaching results in the weeks to come.  No doubt, the resources I had shipped to the school and the money I dropped on this little project will add weight to my promise.  I take the limo, a lumbering beast, out and drive it around the area, not heading home just yet.  I want to scout out some trouble spots and plan tonight’s itinerary. 

Within three miles I come across a hard-hit neighborhood.  There’s no shortage of visible damage, and smoke drifts through the streets from the ashes of last night’s fires.  Where once there was oneness, blocks after blocks of boxy warehouses and tenement buildings, strip malls, and brick store fronts, there is now an anarchic character carved into the city’s flesh.  Blood and ash stain the surface of Central Gothica.  Windows are shattered, doors hang by single hinges, and not a few buildings have been gutted by flames.  As if society has already broken down, no PIPERs or ambulance drivers are present.  Many residents are dead.  Others have lasted the sleepless night behind barricaded doors while predators pounded and scratched to get in.  Yet the daylight brings silence; a brief reprieve from the hellish storms of night.

What all of this means and how it will affect so many lives is unfathomable to me.  It’s futile to try to imagine a world beyond cycle but I can’t help it.  It’s been my job to interpret events and predict outcomes for a more than a few lifetimes.  While lost in thought, I drive by an alley way and see a familiar spot.  It was the same place where Isaac died during his darkening on that first night.  I think back to how I felt watching it all from the rooftop.  I
couldn’t
help him, I told myself then.   

I will not make a mistake like that again.

V
al and I have to wait to get the armored truck until sunset.  We drive in the limo to the second garage where the shop owner springs a new condition on us.  If we want it now, he’s going to have it towed to a nearby junkyard.  He turned that truck into a tank and doesn’t want anyone tracing its destructive path back to him.  I agree and follow him to the junk yard, where, hidden by piles of trash and scrap metal, we begin to outfit the truck vault with supplies we brought in the limo. 

Virtually all portable medical supplies will be stored in the limousine while most of the weapons get secured to the inside walls of the armored car.  Val stands in the center of the vault and inspects the shop’s handiwork.  The ceiling has had a rectangular box welded to it with the bottom open.  Inside is the Cynthecorp issue chaingun and mount.  Along the roof, just aft, is a pocket hatch that slides open – like a moon roof but three-inch thick steel.  Standing inside on a suspended railing, a person can unlock the hatch for the machinegun and lift it out of its compartment.  The rig’s not perfect, since without climbing out onto the roof, it can’t sight targets forty-five degrees directly behind, and
it has a three-sixty blind spot if targets get too close, but I then again I don’t see it retreating from many situations or being easily overrun.  Val checks that the hatches are properly lubricated and then runs through the process of readying the gun several times.  Finally he lays a length of ammunition into the adjacent container, locks the receiver bolt back, opens the case, puts the end round in the tray groove, closes the case, and drops the bolt forward.

As I start the limo, Sabetha pulls up in Rolla with Bullworth.  He gets out and stretches his legs as Val crawls through a small doorway between the cab and the vault and gets into the driver’s seat of the armored truck.  Bullworth gets in next to him with a fire axe across his lap. 

We head for a section of town I scouted earlier.  It’s been hit hard once, and I figure change has already left its scar.  I don’t have much more criteria, but I figure if people see chyldrin and gazers eating their neighbors followed by chyldrin and gazers defending their homes, it might make the kind of impression we’re going for.

Before even arriving in our destined section of town though, we can see orange-lit smoke pluming over the horizon of rooftops.  “It’s a big one,” Sabetha says to herself as we get closer. 

“Shit...”  We’re late.

Half a block of row-houses has caught fire and created a massive brick stove.  The entire neighborhood is at risk if the fire company doesn’t put out the blaze soon, and as we arrive, we can see one fire engine and six ilk firemen feverishly attempting to stifle the flames at
the edge.  It’s a hopeless battle.  I radio Val in the truck from the mounted two-way on my dashboard.  “Stay here till the firemen have things under control.”

We’re all glued to the window, Sabetha especially.  The fire reflects in her eyes and pangs of empathy burn inside her.  I watch the firemen for a moment and somehow know they are not doing this because someone in the neighborhood has a contract with the fire company.  The free-market model upon which Gothica is based would be hard pressed to explain such an occurrence.  Looking at the building with my supernatural sight I can spot several asphyxiated ilk being burned alive.  I put the radio to my mouth.  “It’s too late for this one.”

Suddenly, I become aware of a gathering presence.  A large group of supernaturals are arriving across the street through a wide alley way.  I hurl the v-eight into a frenzied burn out and spin the limo around so that it’s blocking off half of the alley with the length of the vehicle.  Before I have to say a word, Val follows behind me and walls off the rest of the street with the armored truck.  Sabetha stops Rolla in the street and gets out.  She walks over to the firemen who are looking at us defiantly, two of them holding axes, prepared to defend the other four on the hoses.  They’ve been attacked before, but won’t go down without a fight.  “Stay on the hoses,” she commands then puts her back to them to face the barricade we’ve created.

Inside the alley, a horde of chyldrin continues to gather.  They look angry that someone is putting out their bonfire, and even more angry that they have just been blocked in.

Val throws open the top hatch of the armored car and emerges with the chain gun pointing into the alley.  It gives some of them pause.  I walk around to the front of the truck and see Bullworth emerging.  The phase of the moon won’t let him transform to full millitus, but as a warrior, he has honed his ability to embrace his beast none-the-less.  Though still human, his skin looks like a thin cloth stretched taught over the fibers of his muscles.  His chest is covered in fur and his eyes display a bestial hunger.  In one of his clawed, hairy hands he holds his axe like hatchet, the other hand flexing open and closed like its hungry.

“Haven’t you heard?” one among the crowd yells.  “The clouds are falling.  We do what we want now.”  

I slide my gun through the handle of my khopesh sword and secure it with an extended magazine.  Time to see if it works.  “Kill them,” I say.  “We need to make an example.” 

I level the gun sword sideways at the one who spoke and drop him with two rounds to the head.  The second shot can’t be heard though, Val’s machine gun drowning out all other noise with its sustained percussion of thunder.  I take the moment of surprise and hop over the limo and into the alley.

To avoid the spray, the chyldrin scurry along the walls like cockroaches and leap into the air.  Three aim to land on Val.  To their surprise and the relief of those still in the alley, his stream of bullets lifts up and follows the most immediate threat.  The high velocity bullets punch right through the soft flesh targets, creating apple sized vortexes, miniature explosions, inside of the tissue.  The voluminous holes created in the undead carcasses incapacitate two of the chyldrin but the third lands just behind the arc of the mount’s reach.  Val quickly drops the gun, which automatically falls back into its recess, and ducks into the vault of the armored car.  He grabs the handle on the hatch and begins to slide it close, but the chyld gets its fingers inside at the last second.  Having predicted this event in my designs, I had the hatch close on a handcuff-like mechanism that only lets it open if the person inside disengages a track of thick steel hooks.  Knowing that he is safe but in the hopes of preserving the integrity of the truck, Val grabs a machete off the vault wall and calmly cleaves the through chyld’s fingers.  He then closes the hatch, drops down off the ledge, pulls an AK47 off the wall and thrusts it through a gun port. 

Outside, I raise my weapon and begin to weave in and out of people, the blade carving into the collective body of the crowd.  I use triangular foot patterns to work the outside angles of my opponents, gripping wrists, shoulders and arms with my free hand and manipulating them just long enough to use my short sword for a crippling blow.  Sometimes I go for the head and neck, but mostly I take off an arm at the elbow, or a leg at the knee, then leave whomever to bleed out. 

Experimenting with the gun sword to the rattle of Val’s AK, I quickly find that my new weapon works just as planned.  I can use the trigger guard to roll the sword over into a dagger hold or even spin it around for a saw blade effect that is very effective for bypassing a blocked weapon.  When facing the only remotely skilled fighter in the group, I end the clinch by simply pulling the trigger a few times and then opening him across the abdomen.

Bullworth’s approach to combat is less precise but effective nonetheless.  He reaches out and pulls back chunks of whatever his hybrid claw-hands find, while simultaneously splitting bodies with his axe.  This grip and rip style of fighting is utterly stomach churning to watch, for it holds back nothing.  Bull is like a chef mashing meatballs in his hands with no qualms about what his paws happen to catch.  Far from frenzied, he is cold to the process, desensitized to the devastation he wreaks on others.

His thumb, by chance, slips inside a chyld’s mouth along the cheek.  The other fingers wrap around the thick muscles near the spine at base of the neck.  With leverage from the axe handle along the temple, Bullworth pulls off the side of the chyld’s face, the flesh ripping as easily as a plastic garbage bag with a snare in it.  

As a result of his increasingly horrifying appearance – a massive axe wielding beast, covered in gore – I find myself facing the majority of the now terrified throng.

The few that get past us, once intent on killing the firemen, are stopped, nearly without effort, by Sabetha and her red-tinted nails.  She uses her outstretched fingers like bladed fans or sometimes like a snakes head, striking out suddenly to cripple an opponent with deep puncture wounds.  She keeps away from grappling but will gladly slip her hand between ribs, wrist deep.  Most opponents don’t see it the first time.  It looks like a simple strike but then a second afterwards, a geyser of blood and organs shoots out of the gouge.