Since I knew there was a time before, I’ve wanted it, but that was child’s hope; even as a boy I wanted a dream. I wanted some divine being to enter from heaven and tell us all how it should be, but that wasn’t something I could ever count on—of course. Is there a god? I think so. I’ve seen those things and if they exist, then surely there’s a maker on the other end of it—god made both the light and the dark if the word’s to be believed and all we can hope for is a glimpse of the former. Even for a second.
The streets were soaked with blood and so many artillery rounds were fired into the sky—many I witnessed missed Leviathan—that I forgot what silence was like (not to mention the screams and there was a lot of that).
In the scrambling, I found I was reentering deeper into Golgotha and that wasn’t good. There was the ever-present thought that Maron was around every corner; the man had haunted my thoughts for longer that he should have and every time it was like an overwhelming force. It was simple enough after all, he was a piece of the past, a piece I could theoretically reach out and touch and that was what kept me to him.
In the fray of bolting citizens, I pressed myself to the exterior of a wall—I’d neared the stairs which once led to my apartment—and I kept out of the way of those that mindlessly went; some of those which rushed from the onslaught were those afflicted with skitterbugs and many of them either hobbled on blackened legs or—and this was rare—comrades or family helped to carry those which could not carry themselves. It was a baffling sight. A man carried a woman like a child (her toes had fallen off and her legs were black to the knees) and though he strode on with her, his own boots were caked with a mixture of blood and earth. An older girl led a young boy from the whirlwind of dust which was kicked up in the square; the boy’s eyes were whited, and his hands were curled to his chest, discolored. People, whatever duality there is, cared. There was not a drop of the apathy I’d learned and encouraged in myself.
I chewed like a mad dog through my bindings, and it was of little use; I yanked at the cord which secured my hands together and received rope burn in return. “Bitch!” I cussed the thing, but the flames in the sky were so loud, the bangs and vibrations from the artillery consumed all so it was like yelling in a barrel. I swung my hands out in front of me, feeling useless and felt a sudden urge to try again. I bit into the cord and repetitively motioned my jaw against the pressure of the cord, like I was going to saw through it with my teeth. Ha! Another yank is what brought my left hand free, but not without tearing a triangle of skin away from my wrist.
The cord dropped to my feet, and I looked around; a woman brushed past me, nearly toppled over my foot and I caught her by the wrist before she went head-over. She violently thrust from my grasp and screamed something at me. Another bout of flames burst from Leviathan’s maw as it circle-dove overhead. The heatwave from the blast exploded across my face so that I recoiled from the sky itself till I was on the ground, and I pushed myself from the earth and ran half dog-like from my place there at the wall. Where? It was hard to say where when every person that touched-by seemed to send me in another direction; in the madness, it was impossible to tell my course.
With time and effort, I found my way to the opening where the hydro towers were, three pillars which rose above Golgotha’s skyline, each one a testament to human resilience—engineers laborers toiled untold hours under Lady’s father to construct them. The hydro towers exploded into rubble as Leviathan slammed into them. Rock rained down as cutting shards and destructive boulders. A man lay beside my feet where he'd been pinned by the onslaught—white concrete kept him there by his chest—he gasped for air and blood already formed around him. In a moment, I looked away at the dying man, his half-whited eyes bulging at me. Meat hung from the left side of another man’s face as he cradled his head in his hand and moved like he was stoned and sat among the stomping feet; he slumped into the spot he sat and did not move till others came by him in a hurry and he simply fell onto his side like a toy animal.
The screams were too much. I looked to the towers, the nubs which had broken away like bad teeth against the red sky, and whole people fell alongside the rubble, limbs and showers of blood and Leviathan latched atop the towers and rocked its massive body so that the structures slipped directly from their foundations and tumbled over like pins. I ran and again there was nothing but chaos, nothing but mind-numbing wilder thoughts—it was grim and there wasn’t a place for coherency; it was all snaps of images.
In the mess of bumbling limbs, I pushed through to the hall of Bosses and there were people there already, rushing the stairs; the ground shook and I assumed it must’ve been the towers. The things demolished all in their path, and briefly, I saw the ramshackle structures which normally stood in their shadows come slanting over and people leapt from those places too and landed poorly and there was a cacophony of tremors through the earth—it felt as though hell should open.
The steps at the base of the hall were flooded and it was a fight to climb them as legs came high up from ahead and swiped at those behind and I kept my hands ahead of me to block whatever foot may come my way.
Wall men stood ready with their rifles at the tops of those steps and fired their weapons indiscriminately into the crowd. Bodies, big and small, piled atop the steps after a brief bullet dance and it came that I wasn’t only climbing stairs, but corpses; the warmth of their flesh as I clawed ahead remained and blood fog hung in the air. That grouping of wall men, casually lined before the doors of the hall were overtaken and they disappeared, their rifles cackled and came alive with muzzle flashes and the animal hands of the horde brought them to ground.
Us, the horde, funneled through those front doors and for a moment, in the thick walls of the hall, the outside world audibly disappeared; the blood and dust remained, but it was quieter save the shuffling feet and cusses of passersby I was carried deeper.
Those that worked the underground went quickly and I followed, and those ignorant followed for the sake of survival and it was not long till we stumbled into the Boss’s lair. With room, people dispersed like water through the tunnels and found dark recesses to tend their wounds or mourn whatever was lost and the explosive open air had been fully replaced by the quiet black oppressive mumbles of people taking stock of all those that had died. And all those that would. Every few moments, the walls shook, and dust fell from the ceiling fixtures.
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A few haggard folks moved to the doorway which led to the damp room which led to the kitchen, and they slammed the door shut and latched it and began to check adjacent rooms for things to barricade the way.
“Stop!” said a man in the dim flickering underground light—I was surprised to see the man was me, “Leave it open! Others might need help.” I retraced my steps to the small faction that’d gathered there at the doorway. “You can’t just let them die out there. Let them in.”
“Shut up!” a skinny girl with her hair pulled back on her malnourished skull spoke gruffly; she choked, coughed—dust clung to her clothes—she’d been near the collapse of the hydro towers if I guessed. “Step off, or I’ll—
“Or you’ll what?” I shouted.
The girl put up her fists, two lumpy stones, and in stupid response I closed the distance between us. With speed, her fist met my nose, and I stumbled back on my heel.
Without hesitation, I brought up my own hands and landed a blow to her stomach. She craned forward, gasped on repeat, and took a knee.
Blood wet my upper lip, and I wiped it away with my forearm.
“Move,” I said to the others by the door; there were two: a woman and a boy that was nearly a man.
The boy charged headstrongly, attempted a kick and I easily shoved his small frame against the tunnel wall; the hard metal sounded a meaty thud against his body and the woman launched unseen at me, raked her nails down the back of my neck, and tore at my collar. I kept a forearm to the boy’s throat and rocked his head with my free elbow. Once he wept and spit red, I let him go; the boy slid into a sit and I spun on the woman, shoving her away. My left leg began to give, and I used the wall over the boy’s head as support. I swung at her with a wild claw and my fingertips grazed her nose as she fell away to the opposite wall.
“Stop it!” I shouted.
She launched at me, and my leg gave out under her tackle, and I stumbled half-on the boy, my feet kicked helplessly at her, and the boy regained his composure and began to crawl towards me. We wrestled and then the girl I’d knocked in the gut rejoined the fray. I was done. They had me pinned and spat curses at me and took turns shoving my head into the floor.
“You’re going to get us killed,” shouted the woman, “Are you stupid?”
I grinded my teeth and tried to throw them off; I was overpowered and easily pressed down again.
The overhead lights flickered with another deep earthy vibration and the trio let go of me in an instant—I came up swinging my arms like crazy and as I went to kneel before propelling myself to stand, a hand rested on my shoulder. I spun on the hand and was met with the black mouth of a 9mm pistol—that froze me fast.
The owner of the weapon—a wall man by the look of her fatigues—motioned for me to stand and I did. Her eyes were far off and nervous and the metal shook in her outstretched hand. “Against the wall!” she barked at us; she was small-framed and youthful but full grown, and I could easily push her out of my way if not for the pistol. We went to the wall, and she moved to the door while keeping the gun drawn on us. She watched us and glanced at the door. “It’s latched! Who latched the door?” She asked.
No one spoke. The other three looked to their feet; I initially refused to rat, and snorted blood—my nose throbbed and by touch I could tell it swelled already.
“Well? Why’s it closed?” she asked the question more like a desperate child than a person with control. “C’mon!” The 9mm rolled limply on her wrist as she said the word, like she was attempting to draw the confession from us with the motion.
“There’s an attack. They’re killing everyone,” said the boy.
The girl and woman nodded.
“Who?” asked the wall man.
“Demons, muties,” said the boy, “Big stuff. Everyone’s dying.”
The ground shook as if to emphasize his point.
The wall man studied us for a moment, lingering last on me and for the longest and she took a long breath and let the sigh out dramatically slow. “I know you,” she motioned at me with the gun, “You’re that maniac. The one that tried to murder everyone.” Her eyes fell then returned and she put her weight on the door while maintaining the barrel of the gun eye-level in my direction.
“I ain’t gonna’ hurt anyone,” said. I briefly thought about smiling but decided that’d look worse.
“How do I know that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said the boy, “He tried to kill us already!” His voice cracked with adolescence; the blood I’d spilled from his mouth coated the front of his holey shirt.
The trio nodded all together—everyone agreed that I was a maniac killer.
“They latched it,” I said, “Cowards.”
A thump came from the other side of the door which frightened the wall man and she leapt from the spot she’d leaned—it took several full seconds to realize her gun went off; there was a flash, and my ears rang. I stumbled from the knot of people and slunk a couple of feet from the space by the door. The girl—the one I gut-punched—collapsed to the floor while holding the right side of her face. The women crowded the girl, panicked, the boy sprinted past me and disappeared deeper into the underground, and the wall man stood there with a wretched blank expression. There was a long moment which hung in the air; I could not hear and then it came back, and it was the girl’s screams I heard first.
Upon stepping to them, I saw the prone girl had been shot just so—through the cheek. Her eyes rolled from likely spinal damage; whatever the angle, it seemed to have ripped through irreparable nerves and she bled a lot. There wasn’t any hope for that girl.
“Well,” I said to the wall man, “Finish it. No reason to make her suffer.”
The girl on the ground writhed unnaturally and caterwauled while the woman by her side attempted to calm her.
Greater became the sound of the belabored hands on the other side of the door; then a hollow-sounding gunshot came from the other side; were they shooting the door? Or each other? Another round—human screams.
The wall man shook her head. “I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”
I tried to hold the wall man’s gaze, but she didn’t seem able.
With speed, I moved to the wall man, reached for the gun which dangled helpless by her side—her initial response was to flinch, pull the weapon from my reach; our eyes locked and I clenched my jaw. She could’ve killed me. There wouldn’t have been surprise from me if she had.
She let go of the gun and I nodded, and she nodded and the woman kneeling by the girl threw herself over her. “Please,” protested the woman, “Please don’t!”
With the aid of the pistol, I was given space, and nothing was said. I mentally prepared myself for the ringing which accompanied gunfire in small spaces, even tilted my head away with my free palm up and took aim and the girl jerked once then went still.
With the ringing going and sound returning, the drumming on the door returned, as well as the quiet weeps of the woman; she crawled to the wayside of the hall, pressed her back against the wall and rested her chin on her knees with her arms around her shins. She didn’t rock to or fro and hardly made any noise at all. But the small and quiet sobs remained faintly there.