Pursuit of the Apocalypse (2 page)

She slinked around the door. The corset ribbon swayed back and forth in rhythm with her hips. One of the garter straps in the back popped free of the stocking and snapped her in the ass.

She squealed and grabbed for it. Halfway through she tried to turn it into a sexy squeal by adding a little giggle to the end, but there was no doubt in her mind that she was tossing this entire getup away when this was done.

He didn’t laugh at her squeal so she assumed it must have worked.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think? Are you glad you said, ‘I do’?”

His only response was a deep breath followed by a tired snore that she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life.

April stomped next to the bed and snapped on the table lamp that cast a gentle light across half of the bed. There he lay, facedown, asleep in his tuxedo.

She wanted to be angry with him, but she was too tired and only sighed. She would be angry tomorrow. She stepped to the window and looked out over the falls.

Lit in a horrible rainbow of lights, the falls roared on. Placing her hand on the window she could feel the sound vibrating in the pane. She watched in wonder. They were an unstoppable force of nature. Just like she had wanted. Long after she and her husband were gone, the water would rush on.

“They really are amazing,” she whispered to herself.

The colorful lights snapped off and the night swallowed the falls.

“Oh, well,” she sighed. “Time to wake the asshole up.”

# # #

T
he Great Lord Invictus stood in front of the mirror and lifted the ceremonial armor of Alasis into place across his back. He pulled the strap across his chest to fasten it into place. The elastic strap slipped from his fingers and snapped him in the nipple.

He cursed the armor and rubbed at the red mark that it left. Why did it have to be so complicated? He wished he could have the designer executed, again, but one could only be thrown over Niagara Falls so many times.

He spun around trying to find the strap that had disappeared behind his back before groaning that this was really a two-person job.

His fingers finally found the strap and he fastened the plate into place. The chest plate went on next. Polished to a high sheen, it reflected the mirror’s image back and produced a thousand versions of him that shrunk off to infinity. The army in the mirror danced as he shifted the plate back and forth trying to find some degree of comfort within the metal shell. It caught a hair on his chest and ripped it free. He grimaced and sighed.

Invictus picked up the helmet and studied the bloodstain across the temple. The rust colored smear that trailed behind the bullet hole had started to fade again. He would have to have someone touch it up. It was too important to go unseen. It marked his day of ascension. The day he first stood before his people as their Great Lord. The day they tried to kill him.

The assassin’s aim had been perfect. She had struck Invictus in the temple and pierced the helmet. It should have killed him, but the metal slowed the bullet enough that his head was able to stop the round.

His men had wrestled her to the ground and, as blood ran from his head and down the helmet, he gave his speech to an astonished and fearful crowd. Since that day he had refused to have the helmet replaced or repaired. Instead he insisted on retouching the trail of blood whenever it began to fade. It was an important reminder to his people that he was as unstoppable as the falls.

He set the helmet on his head and backed into the cape. The cape was ridiculous. Crimson fabric draped from armored shoulders twice as broad as his own. He pulled the clasp around his neck and studied his appearance in the mirror. Terrifying. Monstrous. Imposing and perfect. He was the perfect image of power and fear. The Great Lord Invictus turned sideways and shuffled through the bathroom door into the Honeymoon suite.

Lackeys, toadies, aides, and assistants leapt to their feet and showered him with platitudes as he strode across the room. He ignored their flattery. He trusted none of it. Their words were weakened by overuse and drowned out by the roar of the falls below.

Invictus stepped up to the shattered window and listened to the mighty current that swept the river over the falls in the darkness. They crashed in a thunderous mist more than a hundred feet below, their impact made all the louder as the falling Niagara River beat against the hulls of a dozen derelict ships that had succumbed to their power.

He could feel the sound a dozen stories up and he closed his eyes to take it in. This was his true power. The world had come to an end, but the river still flowed, and because of him the generators still turned. He was the man at the switch controlling the comfort of the people of Alasis. Thanks to him, the lights still worked. But, they only worked when he said.

“Light them up,” Invictus said to no man in particular.

Several men in the room shouted his order repeatedly. It was relayed several times to the lighthouse down the river, and the multicolored lights lit the breadth of Horseshoe Falls.

The panoramic illumination showed the true power of the water as it plunged more than one hundred eighty feet into a mist that masked perilous rocks and dangerous eddies. But everyone could see the boats.

In the years since the end of time, the captainless ships had been at the mercy of the wind and weather of the Great Lakes. Pulled by the powerful force of the river, hundreds of ships left adrift would each one day find their way to the base of the falls in a pile of twisted metal.

An even dozen had fallen in the past, and one more now teetered on the edge waiting to join the others in the pile below. This is why they were here.

“How many ride the falls tonight?” Invictus asked.

“There are one hundred and thirty-six, Lord Invictus.”

“And what are their crimes?”

A nearby toady pulled a sheet of paper from inside his shirt. “Mostly Fair Share violations. One for, umm, denouncing your name. And, several for High Treason against the state.” He tucked the paper away.

“And the Prairie Dog?”

The toady turned the paper over several times as if the information would appear. “I ... I don’t see that on the list, Lord Invictus.”

The Great Lord turned his head. It was difficult in the ceremonial garb and the pain entered his voice as anger. “And why would it be on your list?”

“I ... I don’t know, Lord Invictus. I ...”

“Praetor,” Invictus called.

The man that answered the call was built solid and strode through the room confident that every man present would move from his path. He, too, wore a crimson cape, but in a more practical fashion. It hung from a single shoulder and fell only to his waist.

He said nothing as he joined Invictus at the shattered window.

“Is he on board?” the Great Lord asked.

“He is.”

“And he never talked?”

“No. Name, rank, blah, blah, blah. Nothing else.”

“Seems like a perfectly good waste of torture,” Invictus said.

“This should make the other one talk.”

“It had better. I want to know where they’re coming from. They keep sticking their heads up thinking they still run the world. I run the world.” Invictus grabbed a lackey by the shirt, yanked him close and screamed in his face. “I run the world!”

He shoved the lackey into a group of toadies and delighted as they spilled across the hotel room floor. Invictus stepped toward the shattered window and spoke. “Turn it on.”

With this command, a spotlight boomed to life twelve stories below, the cameras activated and the Great Lord Invictus filled a screen thirteen stories tall on the exterior of the hotel.

Beyond the lights, beyond the falls, they were out there in the streets watching and listening. His image was on a thousand screens and his voice was broadcast to every street. When he spoke, his voice drowned out the roar of the falls themselves.

“Loyal citizens of Alasis. We gather tonight to celebrate the passing of the old. What once was teeters once more on the precipice of tomorrow. The old ways are gone. Swept away by a violent progress that has left only the most capable of mankind to continue on. This is good. And so once again we celebrate the passing of the age of ignorance.”

The colored lights on the falls vanished and were replaced by several spotlights that focused on the derelict ship at the top of the falls. Invictus’s image faded from the screen and was replaced by live footage of the ship.

Invictus could not hear them cheer. But they always cheered. Though they didn’t always cheer his policies, and they didn’t always cheer his rule, everyone enjoyed watching a ship plummet over the falls.

It was the same every time. As soon as a ship entered the channel, festival preparations began. Parties would occur all week as scavenger crews captured the vessel and stripped the hulk of any valuables. Cargo, engine parts, wiring; everything that could be used was taken from the ship.

The new “crew” was then placed aboard and it was set back into the current to await its fate at the edge of the falls.

“With this passing comes a new judgment,” Invictus continued. “As you know, the crew of this vessel are men and women accused of transgressions against the new world. Our world. They have chosen themselves over others. They have committed crimes against the greater good. But we are not monsters here. As we all survived the fall of the old world only to rise up and prove our worth to one another, they too shall be given the chance to fall and rise again. For he who survives the fall is worthy of our favor.”

He let his words hang in the air for only a moment before whispering into the microphone. “Let them fall.”

Fireworks exploded over the falls. Bright reds, brilliant whites, and somber blues burst in quick succession as the cannons once used for New Year’s celebrations fired into the sky. Thunder ripped above as each rocket exploded. Then there was another blast that did not belong to the display.

The explosive charge severed the cables that held the ship back from its final voyage and the vessel began to move.

“Give me their terror,” Invictus said to a man behind a control board.

A second later the mammoth screen displayed a close-up of the men and women on the deck of the ship. For many, their first instinct was to run aft. Others clung to the rail as the ship tipped nose first into the horseshoe.

The panic grew as the rear of the ship towered over the bow. Those that had run began to fall free of the deck and into the mist below.

The ship followed and twenty thousand tons, give or take an engine’s weight, dropped into the mist. The bow drove a hundred feet deep into the plunge pool and brought the ship to a sudden stop, causing steel to scream and the hull to buckle.

Those that were left on board were torn from the railings and thrown down to the waters to meet their fates.

For a moment everything stopped and the ship hung propped against the falls as if it was there to stay. But the river always gets its way, and the current built up behind the wreck and shoved the ship sideways. Gravity took it from there as the vessel collapsed into the pool and took its place in the pile of wreckage.

Invictus turned the microphone on and let it give a squelch before he spoke. “We shall now look for the strong.” He turned the mic off again and turned to his director. “Show me the applause.”

The man in charge of the video board hesitated. “Lord Invictus, I ... I can’t.”

Invictus stormed across the room and backhanded the director across the face. “Show me!”

The director hung his head and hit the switch.

Invictus strode back to the window and looked at the board. The crowds were there. But they were not cheering. The raucous applause that naturally followed such gleeful destruction was not there. The masses stood silently with a finger to their lips.

“What is this?” Invictus shouted.

“You know what this is,” the praetor said.

“That fucking librarian,” Invictus whispered. “I thought we settled this. They’ve been told!”

“They have,” said the praetor.

“They carried books so I burned the books. I burned all the books.”

“Do you want us to start burning their fingers?”

Invictus was on the praetor before he could respond. The Great Lord crushed the man’s nose beneath a fist. He grabbed the strap that held the man’s cape in place and dragged him to the open window.

Invictus struck him every time he tried to pull away. “You know what I want. I want that piece of shit here. I want his head in a bucket to show all the people down there that I am not to be challenged.” He forced the praetor off balance and held him from the abyss with a single fist. “And I want a praetor that gives me what I want.”

“We sent men. We’ve offered money. It’s only a matter of time.”

Invictus grabbed the man’s jaw and twisted his head to the right so he could see the silent crowd on the screen. “Does it look like we have time? What about Christopher?”

“We haven’t heard from him since he found the Librarian in Texas. He’ll get him. He’ll bring him. He’ll be here. Please don’t let me go!”

Invictus pulled him back in the window until they were face to face. “Texas is gone! Alasis is all there is! I am all there is! I am the master of our fates!” He leaned the man out the window. “You’ve forgotten too much, praetor.”

The praetor screamed as Invictus opened the hasp of the cape and let him fall to the concrete below.

The room was silent as Lord Invictus stood at the window with the crimson cape flowing in his hand, but the room was not still. The toadies, lackeys, aides, and assistants quietly shuffled around the room. Some moved closer to the man at the window while others inched closer to the door.

When Invictus finally turned, he pointed to the praetor’s second in command and held out the cape.

The soldier stepped forward and accepted the garment and the title, responsibility, and repercussions that came with it.

“It’s time to put this issue to rest, praetor.” Invictus walked towards the door. “Send out the Skinners.”

The orders were given, and within an hour a column of vehicles left Alasis. Battlewagons, War Chariots, Fight Cycles, Stick Ups, Murder Machines, Slug Bugs, minivans, and sedans of all sizes drove out of the city.