The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two (53 page)

“Jack?” The voice was Oliver’s.

“No.” Updike could say nothing more. Pain
hammered a hot nail into his eye. He was lying on his back. His bed
was moving, bouncing. A thin pillow did not help him. It felt like
his skull was shattering. He was in a transport. Where were they
going?

“It’s me Jack!” Oliver knelt over him.

“Yes.” Updike searched, found the proper
answer and repeated it again. “Yes.”

“It’s a dream. A bad dream.” Oliver pulled a
bottle of painkillers from Updike’s pack and fidgeted with a
canteen. Water spilled on the preacher’s chest. “How many have
you—oh Jack!”

“No! Don’t be ridiculous!” His voice was
brittle. “I’m sorry, Oliver. You’re right. I’ve been pushing myself
too hard!” He kept one hand pressed against his left eye, levered
himself into a sitting position with the other. Yes, he was in his
transport. He’d climbed in when General Bolton ordered the
transports and mechanized units to take as many soldiers toward the
plains as possible. City Defenders were falling back—likely to
other poorly prepared defenses.

Bolton wanted to take the momentum forward.
The rest of the infantry could make their best time and arrive in a
second wave over the next few hours. General Carstair’s force would
be in position by sunrise. Lorenzo had managed to rally his people
and would arrive the following day with 110,000 infantry.

“Jack.” Oliver whispered, the transport
lurched and he steadied himself against the bed. “You’re not
getting any better.”

“I’ll be fine.” He picked up a bottle,
quickly read the label. “Damn things give me nightmares.” He saw
that his statement did nothing to reassure so he changed the topic.
“Almost there?”

“I’ve got bad news.” Oliver’s dead face held
vital sadness.

“What?” His friend’s urgency was a silent
shout.

“Able is missing.” Moisture clouded the dead
man’s eyes.

“Missing?” Updike echoed. Then, an image—a
memory floated across his mind’s eye—a scene: Stoneworthy stood by
his transport just after the battle. The dead minister looked too
vulnerable, too small despite his height to carry the heroic legend
others had bestowed upon him. The battle had left his suit in
tatters. Stoneworthy had come to him with anxious expectations. He
had said that he couldn’t keep killing. Army of God they may be,
but their most vital weapon was the Word. And the City Defenders
deserved to hear it.

Updike had declined Stoneworthy’s request to
parley with the City under a flag of truce. The time for talk was
over. The moneylenders chose to fight God’s rule, and He had sent
an army to punish them. Stoneworthy had seemed to
acquiesce—perhaps. Updike had been in too much pain to argue his
point more finely. The minister saw this, and Updike thought he
relented. Stoneworthy had smiled, nodded his head, and gave his
blessing before leaving the tent. And now he was missing.

“Damn it let this end!” Updike groaned as the
transport slowed. His discomfort settled on him like old age.

75 – Return to the Tower

The visors on the Authority Enforcers’
helmets bore little resemblance to the gothic iron masks that
dominated the first fifty years after the Change. Those were molded
into likenesses of human faces to protect the wearer’s identity and
intimidate any they approached. These new versions were plain
shovel blades of polished steel—their surfaces broken by a thin
eye-slit of bulletproof glass. An Enforcer sat on either side of
him. Their protective body armor wedged him uncomfortably into
place. His hands were cuffed in his lap. The transport was lightly
armored and offered windows on either side. The drivers were hidden
away behind a heavy door.

Stoneworthy had stolen away from the Army of
God about an hour before. His heart was sick with guilt at ignoring
Updike’s assertion that it was too late for parley. But the
minister could not ignore the lessons he had learned in battle. War
was too easy—and the doubt in the faces of the men he had killed
begged discussion. Sinners they were; animals they were not. Men of
God had to allow their enemies time to repent. They could die later
if need be.

Fifteen minutes had passed since his capture.
The darkness had provided him cover from his own advance scouts
after slipping into the shadow while thousands of tireless workers
cleared the highway. The infantry and mechanized units would move
forward soon after.

Stoneworthy found his walk immensely
fulfilling. There were few sounds: wind pulled at the odd tree,
ruffled grass; rain pattered in fits and starts. The relative
silence encouraged a contemplative state in him and he remembered
his time in the wilderness so long ago, when he learned of his
mission to build the Tower. Even though he had been naked against
the night, the time seemed somehow simpler.

He knew he was doing the right thing. Gabriel
had commanded an Old Testament style Holy War, and Stoneworthy
believed in the cause, but he could not entirely set aside the
teachings of the New Testament. Truly just men could not forget the
lessons of Christ.

City Defender scouts had called out to him
before he stumbled upon their position. They were frightened and
Stoneworthy hoped he had not underestimated their terror. They
jammed their gun barrels into his face and brutally pushed him to
the ground, the whole time bolstering their courage with the
derogatory names: “Fucking zombie!” They kicked him numerous times.
“Coming after our brains!” The soldiers laughed and dragged him to
his feet before knocking him to the ground again. “It ain’t your
world no more bone-bag!”

They delivered him to a forward command post
where a surprised Colonel Menedez recognized him from police
reports. “It is a pity, Reverend Stoneworthy. You have done so much
for this City.” A military man, Menedez could not forget his fallen
comrades. “But you picked the wrong fucking side!”

Menedez contacted City Authority. Enforcers
had been placed in the ranks of the City Defenders—as acting
Military Liaisons—and a pair of them whisked him away in a speedy
transport.

The sky was dark as they approached the
City—and as always, Stoneworthy was impressed with his
accomplishment. He had to crane his neck to see Archangel Tower
flying free of the City’s Carapace almost half again as tall.
Neighboring structures were dwarfed by its size. How often he had
wished to see the Tower’s pinnacle in full sunlight. It was a dream
that he hoped parley could make real.

The transports approached the City’s western
gates on Level Zero. They had to negotiate enormous barricades of
concrete slab and sandbags. Two mammoth doors swung open with
ominous silence. In all the history of the City they had never been
closed and locked. Overhead, another highway exited through the
wall with gates of its own, and another soared over that.

As they passed through, Stoneworthy saw
twenty tanks and support troops clustered around the open space
inside the wall. And as the doors swung shut behind him, the
minister caught the first hint of a dilemma.

It was unlikely that he’d be allowed to leave
the City now that he was privy to some of its defenses. The idea
held no anxiety for him. He expected to be treated as a prisoner of
war and allowed the basics despite his dead state. And such a
setting would allow him to spread the word. His guards said little
to him for the remainder of the trip and rather than draw
conversation out of them, he used the time to collect his
thoughts.

When he had first approached the City
Defender scouts, he had asked to speak with Mayor
Barnstable—perhaps naively. He had been a humble minister so long
that he didn’t quite fathom the size of the applecart he and Updike
had upset. When the transport roared past City Hall, the minister
understood that he had grossly underestimated the situation.

Stoneworthy had met the Prime on a number of
occasions, he worked in the same building after all—though the
Prime was said to spend a good deal of his time in seclusion, or
traveling back and forth by airship to Europrime and the other more
distant nations where meetings between ruling corporations took
place.

By manipulating an International Credit Co.
grant that would finance the final construction of the Tower, the
Prime had secured the top Sunsight floors for Central Authority
Headquarters. They already controlled most of the Tower office
space from Zero to Level Two, so it became a sore point for the
minister, though he had tried to look at it philosophically.
Archangel Tower was completed and the arrangement had worked well
enough for the past few decades. It also allowed him to keep a wary
eye on the politicians. He had been disturbed by some of the design
alterations ordered by the Prime, but seventy-five years of Tower
building left the minister anxious to finish.

The Prime was a large man who wore a straight
bang of black hair over a heavy-set face that was predisposed to
blotching and blushing. The man was intelligent, and had an
orator’s gift for communication. Stoneworthy often found himself
caught up by his broadcasts. His message was usually about keeping
Westprime safe from foreign influence. He railed bombastically
about the citizen’s duty to stand against the mystery of the
Change. Despite his patriotism, the minister always felt
uncomfortable around him. Perhaps it was his skin—that had a pale
oily look to it, or it might have been his anxious restlessness—the
Prime had a shifty frenetic quality that belied his bulk.

As they rumbled up Skyway Three and drove
onto Tower Avenue, Stoneworthy glanced out at pedestrians. There
were fewer than usual for neighborhoods this far downtown, and
those he did see scurried between City Defender checkpoints. They
had a stooped frightened look to them that caused embarrassment to
burn his cheeks. He was partly responsible for their fears.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, already
guessing the destination.

“Prime wants you,” the Enforcer on his left
said. His voice sounded mechanical.

Stoneworthy didn’t like the idea of the Prime
“wanting” him, but he did know the man personally if not well. The
top was the best place to start a dialogue. And then he flushed
again. What was he saying? The street was the best place for the
Word to be spoken. The average man’s soul needed to understand the
Army of God. Hadn’t he started building the Tower on these very
streets? Hadn’t he first met Karen there? Then he thought of his
friend and closed his eyes in prayer.

It was too late to take the message to the
street. Perhaps, this was the example of the necessity of
leadership. The people already knew the message, now they needed to
be led. If only the Prime could be made to understand. He had
authority to countermand the mayor’s orders—even Central Authority
rulings. Speaking to him would have the greatest impact. The Army
of God was poised to strike. He couldn’t delay.

Stoneworthy had felt somewhat remiss that he
and Updike did not bring the ultimatum to the Prime in the first
place. But the preacher told him that their issue was with the City
not all of Westprime and approaching the mayor would not be seen as
an open challenge to the Prime’s authority. Stoneworthy wished the
ultimatum had been better received. The Prime was a shrewd
businessman and politician though. The army at the gates would get
him to deal. And it was the only way he could hang onto any of the
wealth he had.

The transport approached the high Tower Wall
and passed the spear-point gates that protected the grounds. The
soldiers were dressed in the livery of Central Authority. A wide
circling drive guided them to one of many official entrances.
Stoneworthy stepped out after his guards and looked up. The height
was dizzying. Even against the gray concrete of the level overhead,
the Tower was beautiful.

“There you are.” His voice was choked with
emotion. “I’m home.” His breath sat heavy in his chest.

76 – Rearguard

Conan was backtracking and struggling with
the possibility that he was disobeying orders. Mr. Jay had told him
to help stragglers, and to some degree, since he wasn’t with the
rest, the magician could be called a straggler.
Bend
.
Fold
.
Twist the yak-yak
. It didn’t sit well with him,
since Mr. Jay had trusted the little fighter with an important and
puffed-up position, but he couldn’t shake a nagging gut-wrench that
his only grownup friend was in trouble. Hours had passed.

So he left the Quinlan boys to keep the path
open for all the slow-kids who were ready to make the trek and run.
Liz was out in the service tunnels pointing the Squeakers out of
the Tower by Sophie’s secret way. He thought about the spooky girl
and counted her lost among the stragglers doing her willowy dance
or other tweedle-dum. She was just another good reason to sprint
back and have a look-see and listen.

Mr. Jay’s work was ongoing, that much was
plain as a nose out of place. As Conan made his way back among the
empty dormitories, he passed a constant flow of white-shirted kids
flying down the dark like paper airplanes. They all wanted to ask
him questions and delay his mission, but all he had time for was a
quick series of grunt-grunts and much point-point-pointing with his
kill-flower back the way he came. All the boys looked at his
murder-fist with
can-I-have-it stares
and Conan swelled.
Helping Mr. Jay was the only thing on his mind.
Worry
.
Shiver
.
Ghak
!

He didn’t know how many forever kids were
stuffed into the Tower but he knew the longer Mr. Jay worked to cut
them free, the more danger he’d be in. And the more he’d need
Conan’s slash and thrust of the blade-bloom.

The little fighter wondered about the power
that the magician had already used, and hoped that Mr. Jay had not
over-guessed himself. Conan had done it before, thinking he could
fight men with guns and he had lucky-missed-me scars to prove it.
The Tower was sure to be full of unseen dangers, and powers that no
one ever guessed of in their wildest bed-wet.