Monsters of the Apocalypse (8 page)

"What
now, Jacob?" Arian asked as Jacob poured whiskey onto the ice that lay in
the base of the two crystal glasses.

"Now,
you and the others, get some sleep if you can. Drink if you can't.
I want a word alone with Dr. Thomas."

Arian nodded
and left the room as Jacob brought a glass over to Dr. Thomas and sat down in a
chair across from him. Jacob took a sip of his own whiskey and
smiled. In the floor to ceiling windows behind Jacob was a city that Dr.
Thomas had never seen. It stretched out for miles. He knew that at
any moment the missiles would fall, but somehow, Jacob seemed more frightening.

"Are
you sure we're safe here?"

"Yes I
am, Doc, this is one of October Carnegie's favorite apartments. He'll
make sure it's unharmed, untargeted and undamaged. And in addition, he's
made it fallout proof."

"No, is
he really that crazy?"

"Makes
sense really. He plans on coming back here one day. Of course, it
does let those of us who oppose him know where we can all meet up and regroup
safely. He had it fitted to resist radiation and all. This
apartment, this neighborhood, is in fact one of the most heavily protected
places in America. There are at least three different nuclear bunkers in
a square mile."

Dr. Thomas
saw the sweat beading on Jacob's forehead.

"Are
you nervous, Jacob?"

"Nervous,
no. I have a fever. I have
the
fever," he smiled.
"Do you have anyone out there, Doc? Out in the world?"

"A
daughter. On The Island."

"Ah!
That's why you did it? To save your daughter - you killed
everybody."

"You
don't understand a father's love, Jacob."

"No?
You know me so well, do you?" Jacob leaned forward and glared at Dr.
Thomas with a violence that seemed to fill the room. In the silence of
the moment the ice hitting the sides of the glass in the shaking doctor's hand
was deafening. Jacob took a moment and then slouched back comfortably in
his chair, again the smile stretching across his face. "In fact, I have a
daughter myself. I had thought I was unlucky, in that I couldn't have a
second over the years, turns out it was a miracle I ever had one. When
she was born I held her in my hands and I loved her. I loved her in a way
that scared me. And, then I realized that this love was my
weakness. That all of the horrible men in this world, who wanted to use
me, stop me, kill me - they would use this love against me. Just like
with you."

Jacob stood
up and turned away, his back slumped uncharacteristically, as if tired and old,
as he moved to look out the giant windows.

"Oh
yes, Doc, I understand your love. But, you are a selfish man and you
wanted your love. I'm a disciplined man," Jacob sighed.
"So, I gave her and her mother, the woman I loved, to a friend to
hide. To hide away from me and everything else. To keep them
safe. My love never forgave me. My daughter grew up without me,
but… well, parenthood is selfish business and I… I'm a soldier."

"Your
daughter is out there?"

The man
watched as Jacob pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He
struggled to get a cigarette out of the pack as he stared out the window that
was filling with the bright flashes of explosion. Jacob became nothing
but a silhouette as the first missile hit close by. Dr. Thomas closed his
eyes against the flash. When he opened them it was bright, a manmade
daytime now out the window. Jacob had turned his back on the destruction
and was staring at Dr. Thomas, all signs of weariness and age now gone from his
face and replaced, once again, by the laughing smile.

"I
don't understand. Is there something I don't know, Jacob?"

"Many
things I'd expect, but to what specifically are you referring?"

"You're
smiling. With all that horror out there, you're smiling."

Jacob
finally held the pack up to his mouth and pulled out a single cigarette with
his lips. He then pulled the cigarette out of his mouth with fingers that
he inspected as if they were new or foreign. When he looked back up Dr.
Thomas it was with a troubling calm when juxtaposed by the glowing mushroom
clouds that backlit him. He moved slowly toward Dr. Thomas.

"After
I became public enemy number one, when the army was sent full force after me, I
fled into the night. I knew that there was no one who would take me
in. To harbor me was certain death. I had no hope. I came to
terms with my certain death… but then I came to the Comanche Reservation and
they took me in. I told them that I would be the death of them, but they
just smiled. They smiled and made me make a promise. When I began
to fight back, when I began the Shadow War against The Government, I tried to
leave the Comanche behind. They were lucky to have lived as long as they
had, but they just smiled, reminded me of what I'd promised and fought
alongside me."

Jacob
struggled to reach a hand into the breast pocket of his beautiful suit.

"In the
next few days mankind will be saved, if it is saved, by smiling Comanche.
Those smiling men have been leading the inoculated, and those left behind, from
the cities to underground bunkers and subway tunnels, military compounds and
bomb shelters. Most of those smiling men will die. I know this
because I know them. I know that despite my orders they will continue out
into the chaos and the fires and the explosions in order to save more, and they
will die in that action. Tonight the Shadow Army is dying with a big
smile on their face."

Jacob sat
back down in the chair and carefully ran his hand over his hair.

"They
are dying and smiling because I promised that finally they would have revenge
on those who destroyed their people and land hundreds of years ago. I
promised and because of that, they know that their death won't be in
vain. Because I promised, they know that each person they saved will be
worth the trouble. Because I promised, they know that I will never kneel
or hesitate or stop until everyone on The Island, the people who've killed my
people and destroyed my country, just like they did the Comanche, will fall to
their knees and beg for mercy. I'm smiling, because I intend to keep that
promise."

Jacob now
stood over Dr. Thomas, who managed with some difficulty to take a sip of his
drink.

"How?"

"One
step at a time," Jacob smiled, his hand coming out of his pocket with a
lighter awkwardly held.

"Your
first step?"

Jacob,
cigarette in his mouth, brought up the lighter with stiff fingers and barely
achieved the process of lighting it.

"I'm
infected, I need a cure. My men are infected, they need a cure. You
don't want to die in agony… you need to find a cure."

The lighter
fell to the ground and lay shaking between the two men who looked down at the
floor, away from the chaos that continued unabated outside, rumbling through
the ground and into their chests. Jacob looked at his hands, newly stiff
and gnarled.

"That's
curious."

“Incoming
Ballistic Missiles detected. Impact in seven minutes. Prepare for
sealing in five minutes.”

Nestor looked
up briefly at the ceiling speakers before he finished breaking the chair that
held him. Once free, he checked his wounds and though none of them felt
good, none of them were fatal. He managed to stand up and move down the
halls.

He found an
emergency kit under a sink in a bathroom.

"Three
minutes."

Nestor,
moving with difficulty, barely able to hold the emergency kit in his weakened
state as he moved, made it out the front door with thirty seconds left.

Outside of the
door he saw a gym bag, black and large, with a card place neatly on top.
Nestor removed the card and squinted.

“Best of
luck, Nestor,” the card read in small neatly printed letters.

Inside the
gym bag he found a 9mm Beretta pistol, 8 clips, two weeks' worth of military
field rations, a water filtration system, a first aid kit, a compass, a map of
the surrounding area, a carton of cigarettes, a Leatherman and his old Special
Forces knife that had been on him when he was shot.

Nestor
stared at the bag in disbelief, until he was brought back to the moment by the
sound of the door sealing behind him. He looked up at the sky above, blue
for the last time, before the first missile hit off in the distance. The
impact of the missile shook the ground and laid him flat. His world
turned bright white with a sickly yellow tinge and then it was nothing but
darkness.

"The problem is
recognition. To be recognized as the smartest person alive one must spend
time doing parlor tricks for idiots. To be recognized as the strongest
man alive you have to lift things for the enjoyment of gawking people with
cameras and chicken legs. To be recognized as the greatest man alive you
have to make life better for the pathetic masses that are too lazy to help
themselves, much less do what you tell them. Recognition takes time,
which means that when you finally get it, you aren't all that you could have
been. You're not as great as your potential had been, because you had to
slow down and make your case to all the idiots living their sad little lives in
small apartments and bad clothes. But, at the same time, what's the point
of being the best if no one knows it?

"Life without recognition
is no fun at all. Of course, every now and then, someone thinks they've
found a shortcut to recognition - that's where genocide, war and drum solos
come from."

- Jacob
Rothschild, "Thoughts on The Art of Ruling"

It seemed a lifetime,
but when the ground finally stopped shaking Nestor forced himself to sit
up. He quickly took in his still and quiet surroundings before opening up
the first aid kit and attending to the spots where he was bleeding.
Nestor poured alcohol on his bullet wounds. Once they all seemed to be
bleeding without obstruction or taint, he took a needle and thread and started
sewing. He worked steadily and efficiently, focusing completely on the
perfect stitches, the flawed wounds becoming perfect lines. He finished
the stitches and then cleaned his scratches and lesser wounds. He felt
what was left of his ear without too much sorrow. Once everything was
clean again, he took more paper towels and alcohol and re-cleaned his wounds,
most of which still seeped blood. He felt weak and wanted nothing more
than to sleep, but he forced himself to stand.

Nestor could
feel the heat from the radiation that was now mushrooming through the air above
him. He looked into the sky and frowned to see a sickly color in all
directions. He spat on the ground with a shrug. He squinted from
the pulsing manmade suns where the missiles had hit on the horizon. He
struggled to breathe as the burning winds carried black soot into his
pores.

There now
were two men alive who were responsible for the marks on his skin.
October Carnegie and Jacob Rothschild. There was nothing that Nestor
could do to reverse what Carnegie and his Islanders had done to the sky or the
land, or what Carnegie and Rothschild had done to his skin… so he turned his
back on Camp David and started walking west in order to make them pay for it.

After an
hour he fell for the first time and passed out.

He didn't
know where it was he was lying when he came to, but he quickly was able to make
out due west and moved on. The woods slowly grew sparse and gave way to
roads and innocuous white buildings. Soon there were fires
everywhere and Nestor knew he had reached a town, or a city. There were
sobs and screams, but Nestor couldn't place any of the sound. He
struggled to find a voice that cried out over and over, but never got any
closer before it went silent.

Nestor crept
onto the porch of an old Victorian house and coughed up ash.

He crawled
into the house and, finding it empty, went upstairs and lay in a bed and tried
to ignore the sick feeling of dust settling into his lungs and stomach.
Behind his eyes a migraine began beating with bright red pulses. The air
seemed to get thicker until breathing was almost impossible. Finally
Nestor p
assed out from a lack of oxygen without any
struggle or complaint.

October sat
on the edge of his bed, his hands shaking. He had been to the Island's
Presidential Mansion a month ago, for the ribbon cutting. In that time,
all of his possessions had been moved in and unpacked, placed with care.
Just like him. If a man were to sit in this mansion and not look at any
screen, he could fool himself into believing this was a real home, a normal
place in a normal moment. He could convince himself that outside life was
continuing on in a normal way.

October had
looked at a screen though.

The screen
only showed clouds of sickly yellow… and fire… endless fire. The military
drones that supplied the images didn't bother with sound, but if there was any,
you could easily guess it would be screaming.

"Are
you okay, Mr. President?"

"History
is going to remember this day, Miho. How will they see me?"

"You
get to decide that, sir. You get to spend the rest of your life making a
case for what you've done here."

"And
what about all the people who died? Who will make their case?"

"You
get to do that to. The victor writes the history books. During the
Revolutionary War the British seized New York. It burned down before they
could do anything with, or to it. It was remembered as this fortunate
event for the Americans, maybe an accident, perhaps God's will - but it was
Washington's will. George Washington burned it down rather than let the
British have it. When he won the war no one held it against him or
brought it up."

"Did I
win though? I mean, I don't feel like I won. Or maybe I do. I
don't know. I didn't think I would feel so depressed."

"Well,
Mr. President, one never knows if they like killing hundreds of millions of
people until they've tried it, do they?"

October
looked up at Miho's face. Unreadable. No sign of sarcasm or humor,
no sign of sympathy either. He looked back down at his hands.

“What now?”

“What do you
mean, Mr. President?”

“What comes
next?”

"Nothing
that can't wait. The world isn't going to move for a while. You
could rest. You should rest. When the world starts again it won't
be easy."

"Do you
have any numbers for me? How many dead?"

"None
that are concrete. They are appearing to be… high. As
planned."

October stood
up and looked out the window of his bedroom. Below him stretched a large,
well-manicured green lawn. A brick pathway cut through the middle of it
to the outer gate. On the other side of the gate was Carnegie Way, the
main thoroughfare of The Island. No one walked the streets or looked out
the windows of the building across the road, Founders' Hall. A cloudbank
had rolled in and blocked the view of the distant mainland, but there was a
glow that pulsed menacingly behind it.

"What
have we done? God forgive us for what we've done," October said as
he reached out and grabbed a hold of the windowsill to support himself.
From the shaking of his back and shoulders Miho suspected that he was
crying. She quickly looked down at the screen of her tablet and headed
towards the door. She stopped in the doorway and turned back to the man
who still leaned heavily against the windowpane, facing the unseen destruction
of mankind.

"It
will take a few more days to finish counting the dead. Sleep well, Mr.
President."