to light the night
PRESENT
Eli saw death in the darkness—scarred horses brittle to the bone ridden by men who might as well have been necrotic corpses—and readied his revolver.
He counted five of them. Maybe six or seven, even. Something blurred by their rear but in the black of midnight it was tough to see if it was anything more than the wind playing tricks. They all wore tattered charcoal robes that were cloudy with smatterings of ash and didn’t say anything. They just marched, like drones, in pursuit of their Prophet, sticking to a tight, arrowhead formation.
the Prophet led them. He was an imposing figure, a statue of muscle with an iron-will glare that warned his word was final. He carried a staff of rebar long enough that, even as he lashed his heavy hand against his dying steed, still scraped across the asphalt below. At its top perched a skull, left to rot and decay, strips of flesh falling off. From its mouth extended a hooked, rusted-blade stained with blood. The weapon, a scythe, made him resemble the reaper himself.
Unlike the others, the Prophet’s robe was undone, exposing his pallid skin. Across it were a lifetime of gnarled gashes left to heal naturally, improperly, still bubbled with dried, blackened blood. Slashes wormed over his ribcage, wound around his arms, and tugged the tissues of his neck inward. This was the price of his leadership—to head a troop of Moon Sirens was to write a story of blood.
Blood spilled. Blood spent. Blood consumed.
Ahead of them all stumbled a shackled Prisoner who had been badly beaten. A waterfall of crimson, tar-like sludge from deep within his belly poured from between his swollen, purple lips as he looked to the ground, watching his feet sink into the shifting sands. Tears ran down his bruised cheeks as he kept his hands on his ventilator, sucking on it like he wasn’t getting enough air from it. Eli knew what was happening. Had seen it once before, long ago, when he was too tiny to wield a gun.
When a Siren did wrong, their punishment was the Judgement of the moon. At midnight, when it reached its apex, the sinner was cast out into the dryness of the desert and left to writhe. If they could stomach the oxygen-less air and breathe through the ash clotting their throat, then they were Fated and brought back into the group with good graces. If they perished…
…then they perished.
Eli watched this from the confines of a convenience store that wasn’t so convenient anymore. It, like everything else in the world that had lost its sun, had been swallowed by the ash. To even get in, he had to climb through a hole in the roof and scuttle his way underneath a counter, across a floor tiled with shattered glass. But he was safe. Hidden. He could see them, they couldn’t see him, and that meant he had time to think.
Time that was quickly waning.
The troop had, upon descending a dune of ash, come to a standstill in the middle of the sand-swept town. The Sirens eyed their disciple with disgust, but the Prisoner had turned to face his master, staring at him with pleading eyes. He followed along some sort of ritual, waving his hands through all the stages of the moon, crescent, full, and so on, then held his palms out to the Prophet, who was unhooking a vial of…something from his belt.
“Embrace pain,” the Prophet growled.
“Embrace pain,” the Prisoner repeated.
With that, the Prophet popped the cork off the vial, tilted it over, and poured it across the back of the Prisoner’s hands. Whatever the substance was, it wasn’t meant to be handled so carelessly—it seared the man’s flesh, bubbling his skin into scarlet pustules like the top of a Muscovy duck’s bill. His knees buckled, but he didn’t scream. He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth, enduring.
Embracing pain.
Eli took a deep breath and steadied his gun. Everything told him to run. To get up and get out before he was spotted. His brother, Mallard, would’ve already yanked him to his feet and rung his palm across his cheek for even entertaining the idea of interrupting the ritual. His mission was too important to get sidetracked with other people’s lives—he had his own to worry about.
But when the Prophet reached down and ripped the ventilator free of the Prisoner’s face, forcing him to inhale the miasma, Eli knew this wasn’t something he could move on from. He had been born into a dying world, yes, but taught endlessly to believe it could return to something beautiful, and sometimes, beauty took a little bit of blood.
“Here we go again, Lullaby.”
Looking into the darkness, he fired without mercy.
PAST
Eli perched atop the obelisk and, through a pair of dust-speckled binoculars, gazed down a stone path beaten-in by a parade of horse hooves. Once, he imagined, this place was important. A hub of commerce with merry men bustling to-and-fro to deliver news about this-or-that. Now, it was nothing.
Everything was nothing.
The wind swept up the cinders of a forgotten land. Out there, in the emptiness, was a world left to die. Buildings forged through years of labor, decaying. Cars with hundreds of years of innovation building to them, rusting. Bodies someone had carried within them for nine months, rotting. When you’re dead, nothing else matters. Your life, your legacy—it all just becomes ash left to the wind.
But Eli had hope. Hell, sometimes that was all he had. So, he kept his eyes glued to the binoculars, scouring the empty dunes, praying to see even a twitch of movement that wasn’t the frenzied winds. They whistled through the cracks in the abandoned homes, shaking the uneven stone monument he balanced atop of. A tangle of fabric, the knotted remnants of a flag, blew in front of him. He batted it away and cast his gaze out once again, caught glimpse of a withered tree casting off its limbs, letting its branches plume the ash below.
Everything else remained still.
He let out a deep huff. His throat was scratchy, sore, and he didn’t doubt if he spoke, his voice would be hoarse and wounded. He had been out here too long, gawking at the gloaming and praying. He pawed at his ventilator, which never left his face when he was outdoors, and turned the knob on the underside of the chin. This loosened the chokehold the metal ring had on tube which supplied him oxygen, allowing him to heave further into his reserves. His lungs swelled, stinging his raw flesh. He took one more hefty breath, renewing his stiff muscles, then clambered down off the obelisk. Soon the moon would sink. He didn’t want to be out here when it did.
He zipped up his jacket. It was brown leather and faded, patched on the elbows with stitched-up pockets so nobody could grab hold of them, then wrapped his blanket around his face to keep the winds, which were picking up, from slicing him with debris. Finally, he crammed into his boots. Truthfully, he shouldn’t ever have taken them off. Touching the bare land, the soot soil, was dangerous. But…
Sometimes, man, life ain’t about staying safe. We got these precautions, these rules…but when the ash can sweep us away any day it wants, sometimes you gotta live a little, even if it ain’t safe. Just ask the old folks. They’re buried under thirty feet of the junk, probably wishing they did everything they ain’t.
His brother, Mallard, was often too brash to take seriously. But sometimes, he spoke great sense, and about half the time, Eli listened to him.
As Eli cast one last look out at the ash, he wished Mallard were here, prattling on in his ear. He wished he wasn’t lumbering up the beaten cobblestone road toward home by himself. He wished…well, he wished a lot of things, and had a lot of hope they would come true, too.
Even if they never did, one needed hope. If they didn’t have it, then they didn’t have a reason to get out of bed, and in a world of lifeless, gunmetal gray…one needed a reason to live.
It was a stone’s throw journey to home, yet Eli walked it with careful respect. He kept his eyes low, watching his feet, and swept his arms, and the blanket which ran down his back like a cloak, side-to-side. Ash blustered away, revealing the potholes and chunks of rubble hidden underneath. The potholes were remnants of when it was once well-traveled; the rubble were pieces of the watchtower it led up to, discarded and spread down the mountain. Each day, another chunk of it fell. Eventually, he knew, the whole thing would come down, and though it wasn’t much, least not compared to the cloud-punchers out in the buried cities, Eli had passed under it almost every morning and evening he had been alive—if it left…
As he plodded along, he wondered if, when it finally collapsed, he would feel the same as everyone else had when the world ended. Would he reminisce about the watchtower? Would he tell stories about it? He wasn’t sure. There weren’t many stories to tell. It was just…always there. He cast a long look up at it. A life like his, so full of loss, had taught him to appreciate things while they were still around.
“Smile for what you got, ignore what you don’t,” he muttered. “Right, Mallard?”
Only the winds answered, shuddering the beams which lined the road, still carrying banners adorned with insignias for a fallen nation. Eli clapped his hand against one before pushing through the heavy iron door of the watchtower, then cast a final look over his shoulder. Down the way, the moon’s bottom half was fading, obscured by shattered buildings of the city which slumped into one another, nothing but heaping piles of junk at this point. In a few moments, true darkness would come. When it did…
…well, he was lucky to have a home to return to. Some didn’t. Those that didn’t suffered a fate he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.
He pushed his shoulder against the heavy iron door. It was fraught with wounds—slashes, scratches, and dents from combats lost to history. Once, this tower had been worth killing over. Now its door creaked as its hinges ground into one another, showering him with rust. Inside was nothing special. Old bones and fallen stones. Nothing that mattered and, once he closed himself in, nothing he could see. Appearances scarcely mattered in a world that always remained unknown, hidden by gloom.
He put one hand to the stone wall, keeping himself in check. The last thing he wanted to was fumble around and bump into something he never knew was there. With the other he reached out and batted through the air until he hit the first of the Guiders—bits of metal he salvaged from the scrap heaps spread around the city. They were busted and cheap, unusable in any real sense. But when strung together like this, they rattled upon impact, and with zero visibility, sound and memory was everything. This first one told him exactly what he needed to know. The hatch, which led into the tower’s cellar, was straight below.
One, two, three, four, he counted carefully as he descended the steps. Not out-loud. Never out-loud. This close to the surface, the clanging metals could be mistaken as accidents of the wind. But a voice was clear-cut, recognizable, and would draw who knows what out of the night like buzzards. Five, six, seven, he continued on, all the way up to ten. His outstretched hands found another Guider. The second one meant he needed to turn left. The third one, which was at the end of the hall, meant it was time to turn right.
This was why he had called the watchtower home. Once, Eli guessed, this cellar had been a barracks, a place where troops could rest, resupply, and even train. Some rooms housed racks of claymores and crossbows long untouched, while others were crammed with racks of moth-eaten cots. When he had first discovered this place, he had used his last piece of charcoal to roam its maze-like halls and map them all out. Nowadays he barely even needed the Guiders but used them to minimize risk. If an unknowing soul wandered into here? Well, at best they’d get lost, frustrated, and luck their way back out. At worst they would meet the fatal end of one of the many traps he had planted throughout, putting those old blades and bows to good use.
Thankfully, that hadn’t ever happened, and probably ever wouldn’t. Most around his age had only lived so long because they knew not to wander into blind spots, and while he had shot folk down before, Eli’s heart wasn’t so calloused that killing wouldn’t wound it. He was twelve when he had shot his first man and hadn’t ever forgotten it. The blood staining the blanket wrapped around his face wouldn’t ever let him.
It was kill or be killed, Mallard had said, heaving Eli out of the ash as he sobbed. We ain’t want no fight, he brought it with us. We chose to live, he chose to die—so it goes.
The final Guider hung down in front of a dense, leaden door that a cannonball couldn’t bust down, maybe even a bullet couldn’t pierce, he wasn’t sure. When he had first found it, he had struck it with a sword, and not even a scratch was made, which was good enough for him. When its rounded, ship-wheel-handle was spun around, it gave way to what he presumed was once a jail cell for the rowdy soldiers after a night of heavy drinking. Now it was ‘home.’
Light seeped out from underneath it—the only unnatural light Eli had seen all day. It was mint green, incandescently shimmering with bits of golden glimmer. Even just this sliver of it, cut off and dulled by the drab door, it was enough to twinge his unaccustomed eyes. He scrubbed them, then blinked a few times and pulled the goggles out of his pocket. Luminescence was a blessing, one his body would never learn to truly appreciate. He, unlike Mallard, hadn’t been born under its grace.
He put the goggles on. He hated wearing them. They were weighty and uncomfortable, made to match the head of someone with a more chiseled skull, and felt like a brick hanging off his face. Over the years, they’d picked up the grime of the ash, stained sallow, as during the worst storms they did their duty in shielding his eyes. They weathered the terrible nearly every day so that, every once in a while, he could glimpse beauty.
Steam seeped off the door-handle and Eli knew from experience it could sear off and cook flesh in an instant. He wrapped the blanket around his hands and cranked it around slowly, letting the sweltering air leak out rather than rush out in a painful huff. Even with the ventilator on, the acrid chemical stench which festered in the room found its way into his lungs. Each breath buckled his knees as the poison wormed its way into his already damaged system. Lingering here was deathly and yet, this was where miracles were made.
Gears ground against one another, and pistons knocked sprockets into place. Basters, plastic balls with needle noses, sucked up fluids, some viscus, some drippy, and squirted them into different vials which were then mixed together. Metal gnashed on metal, making noises like teeth sinking into bone, so all-encompassing that when Eli let go of the door, and it slammed shut, he didn’t even notice.
He cut a swift path through the room, crunching discarded bolts and gears which had been shaken off their machines under his boots. He had to crouch as he walked, using his arms to lift the tubes, most of which he had retrieved out of car-engines, out of his way. They transported concoctions which Eli did not know the origins or even purpose of—he was a scavenger, good at exploring and finding useful things in the rubble and surviving while doing so. All this stuff, this…science…well, he couldn’t scarcely make heads or tails of it, though he knew that one day, if they wanted to keep this up, he would have to.
Toward the furthest wall of the room, past the iron bars which once kept people trapped in, sat a murmuring man who hadn’t left of his own accord in some odd five years. He was sunken into a cot which had been chopped in half and stacked atop itself into a makeshift chair, pawing at a machine whose many levers and buttons moved the tubes, basters, pistons, and what-have-you scattered around the room. As Eli approached, he did not turn his head nor even talk. He was fixated on the machine, on finishing his duty.
“Father,” he said. “Mallard…still hasn’t come home.”
“Hmph,” was the only thought the old man spared, but Eli couldn’t blame him. He didn’t doubt his father’s heart was wounded at the idea of one of his boys missing, but even that hoarse huff had him choking out phlegm flaked with blood, hacking all over his withered, liver-spotted hands. He tried saying something else—but he couldn’t muster more than a whisper. His poor lungs had been polluted beyond repair.
He put a hand to his father’s back. His skin was weaker than wet paper and even the tiniest bit of force would cause the grooves of his spine to tear it. His father was a man who was knocking on death’s door—a man whose ambition had stolen the light out of his eyes and given it to the world. Every breath he took was belabored and dry, a wheeze with barely enough force behind it to make it past his chapped lips.
Even his hair, which once hung down his back and matched the color of beach-sand, hung in greasy tangles, bits of sludge splattered onto it like putty. Once, long ago, he had kept it braided. Once, long ago, he had been handsome. Or so Mallard had told him.
“Aaaah,” his father said, slowly retracting his calloused hands from the machine as it began to rumble. “Aaaaah, aaaaah.”
Eli darted forward, wrapping his arms around the machine in a bear-hug. It rocked side-to-side, threatening to tip over, and it took all his strength to keep it muscled to the ground. It, like everything else in this room, was crafted out of junk, and as it buckled, it tossed away pieces of its frame, axles and bearings and fasteners clinking as they showered the stone floor. Eventually the scrap giant calmed down, slowly to nothing more than a steady thrum. His arms were blown out, too weak to do anything but fall down as he stumbled back, looking at his father.
“Does this mean…it’s done?” he said.
His father nodded, then put his hands on either end of the cot and pushed himself toward the machine. He traced a finger through the air for a second, searching for the right button, which Eli noted was marble-sized pearl in the bottom right corner of the dashboard, and pushed it inward. With a clink, the machine warbled again, and Eli jumped forward only to be stopped by the old man, who shook his head.
An odd combination of noises played out—things within the machine were shifting. Then, with a gasp of that same minty glimmer which had welcomed him into the room, its head spun round before popping off like the top of a thermos. Out of it, raised by two auburn belts which were frayed and littered with burnt streaks, arose a cannister which resembled a battery, only it was large enough to be slung over one’s back and see-through. Inside an emerald liquid splashed around, deeply verdant despite the softer hue of the light rippling off it.
Eli reached out carefully and, with his hands still trapped in the blanket, for the cannister’s chemicals were harsh enough to eat straight down through bone, he removed it from the belts. It was lighter than it looked, barely as heavy as the guns which hung around his waist, yet he cradled it like a newborn he was afraid to drop, pulling it close to his chest. If an outsider witnessed this, they might be fooled into believing he actually was carrying a child—he admired the thing not like a hunk of metal, but rather a marvelous feat he was in awe of, like its mere existence was, simply, amazing.
Inside sloshed a concoction of substances with names Eli couldn’t pronounce. His father had come to this combination, which he had narrowed down to exact numbers and percentages that he had scraped sloppily into the stone walls around him, through tireless research. For most of Eli’s adult life, while he and Mallard had been out exploring and retrieving, he had secluded himself in here, nose smudged to the ink of the dirty tomes they had snatched out of crumbled libraries.
And this…this was what he had come to.
Altilium.
Mallard had told him that, when he was a kid, before everything turned to ash, they had called these batteries. They were tiny, then, though, and you crammed them into things small-enough to fit in your hand to give them the energy they needed to come alive. Some people had big ones, though. They sat outside, or in basements, and made an awful lot of noise as they worked hard to power entire houses. They were called generators, and people used to have to kick them on when it stormed, back when it ‘rained.’
It looks kinda like a battery, Mallard had said once, as they were helping their father unload one of the earliest failed prototypes. Those had been tough to carry, awkwardly shaped and dense enough to require two sets of hands. They had lobbed them into the traveler’s tunnel down the road which was meant to be a swift way through the mountain. Now it was toxic, boarded up, and forgotten. But it acts kinda like a generator. Better than any I ever seen, too, and that’s ‘cuz pops is a genius. He ain’t need thousands of years of technology, just his own two hands and some bright ideas.
This ‘generator’, if used properly, could awaken sleeping machinery—could turn back on the lights they once, long ago, took for granted.
With light came safety. With light, they could claw their way back to normalcy.
Eli jostled the cannister onto his back, slipping his arms through the braided cords dangling from its sides. He already knew where this batch of Altilium was headed. Weeks ago, when his father had told him he was close to finishing brewing it, he had traveled out west, through the boundless tundra. Often, he avoided this direction because it had once been a desert, and that meant undesirable. It was prone to empty stretches of nothing between singular, abandoned homes.
But, huddled in an old trading post, he had found a group of survivors working fruitlessly to repair a train stuck in its station. They believe that, if they revive the train system, they revive everything. With safe transportation, the world could start to heal, maybe even grow anew. That was what Martin, the man who led them, had told Eli, his face full of hope.
Sometimes, hope was all you needed.
He just prayed he wasn’t too late. That they had somehow beaten the odds and survived.
A feeling swelled within him. One might interpret it as fear. He chose to call it determination, for it got him moving, hurrying toward the door. There was no time to waste. “I’mgoingfather,” he said in one rushed breath. “IfMallardreturnstellhim—”
But before he could get past the first set of dangling tubes, the old man grabbed weakly as his wrist. “Aaaaaah. Aaaaaaah!”
Eli looked back at his father. The man’s entire body vibrated. The sheer act of grabbing something with intent was like striking metal on metal, and as the shocks coursed through his atrophied muscles, he gritted his plaque-ridden teeth. When finally he tried speaking, nothing came out but a sputter of phlegmy blood. The words sat, like the lump of a mouse fallen victim to a snake, in his throat.
There was little Eli knew about his father that wasn’t passed down by his brother. Once, in the Old World, they had called him Buck, and he had been an electrician, and on Friday nights he drank beer and watched (more often listened to) something called ‘baseball.’ But Eli never knew anyone resembling that. The man who had raised him was no man at all, rather a machine, and that machine was shutting down.
He continued to wheeze, struggling to even breathe, and soon he was convulsing, entire body juddering in the chair as he struggled to kick himself away from death’s door. There was a moment where Eli did nothing, unsure of whether to let him drift away and finally be at peace or save him just to suffer further. Then he reached down, gripping the sandalwood handle of his revolver. This was no way for a man to go.
Once again, though, he was stopped by his father’s grasp. The old man fought through spasms which poured foam out his mouth just to finally spit out: “Eli.”
Eli abandoned his revolver, lunging forward and pressing both hands to his father’s chest, then began alternating between pushing air out of his lungs and pumping air back into them. It took several tries before the old man began hacking up blood clotted with bits of necrotic flesh and when finally he came to a stop, still, he fell against his son, scarcely awake, soaked in stinking sweat.
He had to fight for each breath, but he had survived.
Eli eased him back against the cool wall, which he hoped would help alleviate the scorching fever which had consumed him. Reaching into the knapsack around his waist, he removed a bundle of cloth and two thermoses of filtered water. Every morning, he went to the well and fished out buckets of water for the both of them, filtering out the ash before dispensing them into these thermoses. The first he poured over his father’s burning skin. The second he poured down his father’s burning throat. Then, using the cloth, he blotted off the bloody leftover vomit.
His father ceased trying to talk, slumping back into the stained cot. Words came to his mind, and it was clear he agonized over all things unsaid in his long life…but the toxins had taken their toll. In pursuit of his dream of bringing things back to how they used to be, he had stripped himself of everything that made him human, and now, with the two of them alone, no Mallard connecting them to the past, there was no Eli, no Buck, no Old World or New World—they were just Boy and Old Man bound together by the same goal.
The old man’s eyes lingered on the Altilium. These cannisters were what his entire life had amounted to. Eli put a hand on his father’s shoulder and stared deeply at him. They would never have the connection he always wished for, the ‘family’ Mallard had always reminisced so fondly about, but there was still love between them. “I’m going to take this somewhere safe,” he said. “To the west, I’ve found a town, and they imagine trains coming back to life, carrying people from city to city. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?”
His father grinned, cracking open his chapped lips. Blood spilled down his chin, dripped onto the cot, but he didn’t care. Maybe as a boy he had taken the train every day. Or maybe he had only done so once, as an adult, and stumbled into the love of his life. Eli didn’t know. Maybe, even, he was just happy to remember a time when things were normal.
“When I return, you’re going to teach me the means to handle all this machinery myself,” Eli said. “You’re going to explain the numbers, and the compounds, and…well, everything. Does that sound all right?”
The old man’s grin faded, but not because of displeasure. His head was drooping, he was snoring—his body was too tired to keep up. Eli neverminded that. Somewhere, deep within the soul, he knew the old man could still hear him, and so he hunched down, staring seriously at him.
“But you have to live, understand? You have to live.”
With that, Eli lowered his father, laying him down gingerly onto the cot. The man’s chest pulsed slowly with each belabored breath, and he set the thermos down next to him before heading through the barracks and preparing him a few more glasses of water and a few meals worth of food, all of which he put into a box next to the bed. If by the time those ran out he couldn’t retrieve more on his own, he wasn’t going to make it anyway, so Eli stabbed a blade into the top of the box, because no living soul deserved to suffer the grueling death of starvation.
When morning came, Eli sat atop the watchtower, peering through his binoculars and watching as the moon came back over the horizon, rising over the mountains to the north. He had spent the entire night preparing, crafting bullets and sewing patches onto his worn clothes, and with the first hint of night-break, it was time to set back out into the world with no sun.
Eli’s boots, rugged leather with metal plates sewn on top their lips, kicked through the bones of the Old World as he trudged across the rusted rooftops of cars sunken into the soot. Filling them were the skeletons of those left to freeze, rot, then wither to dust. He didn’t look at them. He didn’t think about them. He just marched on through the eternal night, accompanied only by the sounds of swirling wind and the whir of his ventilator.
The dunes shifted all around him. What was once paper, what was once wood, was now pale smoke destined to be forever swung around by the wind. When the sun blinked out, plunging the world into instant darkness, the Year of Scorching commenced, and almost everything that could be burnt, was. Now what were they left with? Mountains of cinders which buried the empty homes. Miasma clotted air sucked-dry of almost all oxygen. A world where a tree was a gift from God.
Those banners that hung from the obelisks leading to the watchtower would be gold to some people, but Eli had been raised in the dark—it was what he knew.
He kept his head clear as he trudged on. He didn’t pay any mind to the corroded road signs he couldn’t read, directions for cars which wouldn’t ever start again, nor did he dwell on the fact that he had already spent ten years of his life making journeys like this, stamping footprints into ash spread over a world he missed the boat on. People like Mallard had memories, but what were his? This. Treks into the unknown. Death around every corner. Somehow, he always did it with a smile.
“’Cuz what’s the point of letting it get you down, right, Mallard?” Eli said. “Least we march with a purpose.”
‘Least we march with a purpose’ was one of those get-you-through-the-day sayings. Mallard had come up with it; Eli had perfected the art of muttering it. Whenever things got too tough, the simple act of repeating it was a good way to bring himself back to reality. Things had gone sour everywhere. You had old skinny zombies shambling around, stuck on what used to be, and new kids who never knew what was playing in the toxic sands. Most were just trying to survive. Searching for food to fill their belly and a blanket to wrap around their shivering skin. But them? They were actually doing something.
“Least we march with a purpose,” Eli said again.
Their purpose was slung across his back, hefty enough to sag him forward as he lumbered on—the Altilium.
And it was a dangerous purpose. A purpose which would, if he let it, get him killed. A purpose which may have already gotten Mallard killed. A purpose whose radiant warmth bathed him in sticky sweat as its glow cut incandescently through the midnight. A purpose whose shine was like a lighthouse, no, a flare, warning all those hidden in the rubble that something unnatural was wandering through the wastes.
Out there, prying eyes he hoped he wouldn’t ever come face-to-face with were gawking at him. Among the ashes, scavenged binoculars were being jammed against sand-stuck faces. Some folks were just nosy, curious as to what it was that was breaking through the mindlessness of everyday survival. Others, though? They would see the peculiar sight as treasure. Something they didn’t know nothing about but wanted to get their grubby little hands on. It was them he had to be worried about—them who kept his hustling along without breaking pace.
He left the roadway behind, vaulting over a bent guardrail, replacing uneven asphalt which stabbed into the rubber sole of his boots with ash that they sunk into. Between the cities there were empty stretches of nothing not even the bravest would traverse. Out there, everything turned to ash. The signs, the cars, the buildings, the people—all just dust in the wind. You kicked your feet through it. You shook it off your clothes, smudged it off your pallid skin. Grains of it slipped through gaps in your ventilator and eventually glued together into pebbles. In time, you grew more used to the taste of sediment gritted between your teeth than fresh water.
What he was walking into was The Nothing.
And every time he did, he wondered if he was ever going to find his way back out.
PRESENT
The first bullet whizzed through the wind-swept air and disappeared into the midnight, deftly dodged by the Prophet, who abandoned his horse in favor of fleeing on foot. Eli didn’t hesitate to hammer the trigger again as soon as Lullaby’s chamber snapped into place. When you committed to death, you couldn’t be stingy with chaos.
The second bullet hit bang-on. One of the disciples heads exploded into a fountain of gore, brain-matter painting chalky Earth as he fell from his mount, dead-weight.
Four left; four scattering, running every which way as they sought cover. The Prisoner lay writhing, clawing at his throat with one hand, reaching up toward the moon, grasping, gasping, for penance. This was why Mallard wouldn’t have thrust into this situation—there was no way of saving the man without exposing himself.
You’re in the shit now. Mallard’s voice cut through his head clearly as if he was standing next to him. So, what do you do?
“Move faster, think smarter, fight harder,” Eli muttered. “Just like you always said.”
Even if it meant putting everything on the line, he was going to save the Prisoner. Or at least, goddammit, he was going to try.
He yanked the Altilium off his back. Here, in the shadows, its glow bounced off the cracked glass and dented cans, the tipped-over-cash-register and the metal chair that had been smashed into the counter. Truthfully, whether he shot at them or not, they were always destined to meet because of…this. The Altilium, it stood against everything they killed for, and merely possessing it was enough to make Eli more than just a pariah in their eyes—he was the doom-bringer, the angel of darkness, the Anti-Christ.
They worshipped the moon, believing it to have bested the sun in a conflict that raged since time immemorial, and now devoted their beings to culling those who attempted to return the light. Eli had only encountered them twice. Once, as a boy, he had witnessed a ritual such as this and done nothing. Then, just a year ago, he had journeyed to a nearby settlement, wanting to deliver them an Altilium cannister that would’ve allowed them to power an ancient factory, and arrived too late to do anything.
Everyone had been slaughtered. Gutted like cattle, their organs left in a jellied pile to rot, their bodies strung up by the machinery they so desperately hoped to reawaken. He had spent the night burying each of them, digging his hands into the ash as he laid them to rest. Ever since that day, he had known battling the Moon Sirens was inevitable—they were opposing forces fighting for the world’s future.
He walked with the light; They walked with the night.
Only one could prevail.
He took off his jacket, wrapped it and tied it around the Altilium, then slid it into one of the A.C. vents low to the floor, pushing it in as deeply as he could. Its glow could only be suppressed so much, but really, he was just aiming to keep it out of harm’s way. A slash in just the right spot could turn it into a veritable bomb, and then they’d all die for nothing.
A rush of footsteps filled the air. The Sirens were closing in. He needed to move.
Eli pulled himself out of the cramped rubble crawlspace and went barreling out the door, into The Nothing. Guttural screeches filled the air, along with the clang of metal-on-metal. He didn’t look back. There was no point. He was locked in, focused on the writhing man. Anything that slowed him down would get him killed.
One of the Sirens emerged ahead of him, leaping over the remnants of a scorched car, clutching the stem of a road-sign. It was a woman with stitched-lips. Blood bubbled between them like foam from a rabid animal. She charged at him with murderous intent, seeking nothing more than his total annihilation—his existence was an abject affront to her to her God and he needed abolished.
Eli snapped Lullaby upward and hammered the trigger. A bullet tore into her shoulder but that didn’t stop her. She swung the pole down, thwacking the spot where he just was, and he whirled around, gripping the revolver with both hands, aiming square at her throat. He had three shots left in the chamber, six more bullets rattling around in his pouch. He couldn’t afford to waste one so he steadied himself, took a deep breath, and only fired when he knew it would kill.
His next shot ripped into her jugular, severing her carotid artery. She fell to the ground soaked in her own spurting blood, and he kept his pace, leaping over her spasming body. It seemed cold to disregard her death like she was not a person at all, but when all this was over, if he was alive, he would pray for those lost, maybe even return to bury them. Vicious as he thought them, he knew this wasn’t their fault. They, like everyone else, were just searching for meaning in this lost world and had been swindled into believing there was only one path to walk down.
By the time he skidded into the dust next to the Prisoner, the man was curled into a ball, choking on his ash-clotted spit and digging his nails into his thorax, stripping away tangles of flesh as easily as tears tatters of cloth in two. His clothes were dripping crimson, his body sticky and smeared with his own death. Yet the tears in his eyes told the story of a man who wasn’t ready to die.
“I’m here to save you,” Eli said, unwrapping the ventilator cords which were wound around his neck, pulling the tubes off his belt, the mask off his face. The Prisoner shook his head and spat out something unintelligible, raising his blood-soaked hands, trying to fight back. But he was too weak to do anything. Eli pushed his arms away and pressed the mask to his mouth. “Breathe. Breathe. You don’t want to die, quit lying to yourself.”
Horse-hooves pounded into the Earth like thunder. Eli lifted his head. In the distance, two blurs cascaded toward them, only visible because their blades glinted in the moonlight. As they drew closer, he made out bits of bone dangling from their horses necks. Metal pins, busted-up hunks of scrap, stabbed into their overworked, bleeding muscles. In this bastard cult, even the animals were punished for any indiscretions.
His lungs were already constricting, flood with ash which turned them into heavy sandbags in his chest. Still, he raised Lullaby and gripped it with both hands, letting out slow, pained breathes as he steadied his aim. He closed his eyes briefly, taking himself back to a time when he was ten, and it was his birthday, and Mallard had just gifted him the revolver. He was standing behind him, helping him hold it, teaching him how to use it. They were shooting stacks of armor he had set up in the cellar of the watchtower.
This revolver is an extension of yourself, Eli. Don’t think of it as a weapon—think of it as you would a hand or leg, because out there, in the ash, it’s damn near more important. Don’t rush to empty its chamber. Take a deep breath, feel the air around you, and only fire when it feels right. Don’t shoot to scare; shoot to kill.
Eli clicked Lullaby’s trigger twice, emptying the chamber, hitting both targets with perfect precision. One caught a bullet to the heart, the other to the eye. One slumped forward onto his horse, one fell backward off of it. Both were dead. That was all that mattered. That ten-year-old boy would’ve been frightened to see how easily he could kill now. Out here, in the Nothing, a life could end with just a snap of a finger, every decision pulling you out of death’s waters or plunging you headfirst into them.
He stumbled to his knees and pawed at the Prisoner. The man had stabilized but fallen unconscious, and Eli was close to doing the same, gritty bits of ash coalescing in his throat, clogging it with globs of spit-soaked blood. He dug the ventilator’s tube out the sand and beat the dust away only to find the needle of the gauge stuck firmly at zero. The Prisoner’s desperate huffing and puffing as he fought for his life had drained it entirely.
He was still alive, but soon he wouldn’t be—and neither would Eli.
“Gonna…get us out…” Eli grunted. “Gonna…gonna…”
His thoughts were a mess. Even grabbing and parsing one of them was like fishing in a swamp. But he knew he needed to get them air. That was the priority. The Sirens he just shot…they had ventilators. They had to. If they weren’t ruined, they could use them, get to safety, figure something out then…
He hoofed his elbows under the Prisoner’s armpits and pulled his back into his chest, dragging him back, toward the corpses. The world was blinking in-and-out of existence, spinning in a nauseating whirlwind that got sandier with each step, like he was sinking further into the ash, being condemned to its depths. The skeletons of the dead, long-lost were clawing at his ankles, grabbing him, wanting him…
Without a mask, you’ve maybe got five minutes, Mallard once told him. Any longer, you might still be standing, but your brain will start turning to mush. And once a part of your mind melts, there ain’t no getting it back. You start feeling that happening…you spare yourself. You shoot to kill.
Eli closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. The pains splitting through his body were agonizing, making every step a labor he didn’t know if he’d be able to repeat. But he didn’t think about that. He focused on the thought of the settlement illuminating the darkness, full of light, and laughter, and love. He imagined the train rattling down the tracks, carrying bundles of people excited to meet up with other settlements. Once this project got started, it could spiral quickly, maybe even endlessly. Using the trains, he could carry Altilium further, quicker, more safely. They could bring organization to this whole task and maybe stamp out the Sirens through pure hard work alone.
Those thoughts…they kept him moving, pushing through, struggling against the will of his own body and the plea of death himself who kept the door wide opening, beckoning him to step on through and relieve himself of suffering. He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t. If he was going to meet his end, it wouldn’t be by giving up—he’d rather melt his mind than kiss Lullaby goodbye.
“By the name of the Moon, I christen thee ‘enemy.’”
The voice was booming and brought with it a ferocious gust of wind that just might have been the wrath of God himself. Eli lost his grip on the Prisoner, slammed to the ground roughly enough that somewhere in his side, something cracked and poked into his muscle, sending electric volts of pain shooting through his entire left side. He lifted his head to see the Prophet rushing toward him, rebar-scythe drawn back, ready to strike. It took every ounce of energy he had to push to his feet and stumble away as the man slashed, and slashed, and slashed, sending ash flying.
He fumbled around the pouch dangling from his waste, finding a handful of bullets before losing his balance and scattering them all across a dune he went rolling back-first down, reigniting that blinding pang in his side, pushing that cracked-free bone deeper and deeper into flesh it wasn’t ever meant to co-mingle with. A stone wall broke his fall and knocked a clump of sticky sediment out of his throat. He still clung to one bullet and with what little sense he still had left, he tried jamming it into the chamber—but the Prophet appeared over him, holding his rebar-scythe upside-down and guillotining it toward his neck.
Eli reactionarily snapped his hands out, blocking the attack with Lullaby. Its barrel sunk inward, bending, as cracks splintered its wooden handle, but he continued to push back with all his might, trying to load the bullet, fumbling it against the hole, unable to push it through, clank, clank, clank. The Prophet put his foot to the back of the scythe’s blade, giving him more leverage, jamming the revolver into Eli’s neck. The bastard’s eyes were glossy, swollen with black blots and trapped under a film of grey goo. It was no wonder the moon was his everything—it was likely all he could see.
It was the only thing Eli could see, too. Might just be the last thing he would ever see. It hung high in the sky, over The Prophet’s shoulder, a beacon that was steadily dimming, swallowing the world in a darkness that, for him, was destined to be eternal. The scythe was drawing closer. The light was fading. Closer. Fading. Closer…fading…clo…fad…
.
..
…
A rush of air. A heartbeat. A breath. Stabbing pain, a shattered rib. Another rush of air. Quicker heartbeat. Another breath, another two, three, four. Chilly air. Ash sticking to his sweaty cheeks. Another rush of air, another series of breaths. Twitching fingers. Clenching fist. Another rush of air…
…then Eli opened his eyes.
Hunched over him, wearing a sand-stained ventilator, soaked in blood, was the Prisoner. His pupils were dilated, his hands were unsteady, shaking like they were about to fall off as he removed them from Eli’s cheeks, leaving him with a ventilator of his own. Then, the man snapped his head to the side, watching as the Prophet clambered back to his feet. There was a gash on his head, a bent pipe on the ground. The Prisoner had stuck him with it once but abandoned it in favor of Lullaby. He raised the gun, clicked the trigger. Nothing happened. Click, click. Nothing happened.
Rearing back, he threw Lullaby at The Prophet, who came charging forward, gripping the scythe with both hands, prepared to slash the man straight in two.
Eli’s lungs were stuttering back to life, feeling returning to his numb body. But he hadn’t yet gained back the trust of his nerves that he would do right with the body he had been gifted. It was like suffering from sleep paralysis. No matter what he told his limbs to do, they only caught bits of the message. If he thought lift my arm, it lifted a finger, maybe twitched an odd toe. He was forced to watch his savior barely survive the onslaught of his former master, sacrificing hunk of flesh after hunk of flesh to dodge the would-be fatal blows. By the time Eli felt himself regaining control, the Prisoner was too exhausted to keep up, stumbling over his own feet, forearms skinned to the bone.
“In shunning your pain, you have shunned your honor; the Moon rejects its blessing upon you.”
The Prophet aimed to kill; the Prophet swung his scythe in a wide arc that would slice the Prisoner in two. The man barely dodged, knees kissing the ground because of pure weariness. He scrambled away just as Eli scrambled to his feet, pins and needles shooting across his skin as his nerves jumpstarted every sleeping muscle to spring back into action. He snatched up Lullaby but didn’t plan to fight—they were losing, their bodies too weak from the absence of oxygen. They needed to run.
He grabbed the back of the Prisoner’s tattered shirt and yanked him along. “Move, move, move!”
The Prophet cracked his neck, his shoulders, his wrists. He had hidden behind his disciples, using their lives to drain the strength, the will, from his opposition. Now this was child’s play. He was a wolf stalking a stuck pig. “The Moon bears you no ill will, children of the New Age, yet you betray what little light it gifts you. Thus, perish.”
Eli knew better than to run blindly into the unknown. The expanse was endless, ever-shifting, and all-too-samey to risk charging into it without any charted course. But the snarling Prophet, who continued to slash at the air behind them, chopped through any other option with each strike. So Eli kept on, pulling with him a man who was steadily becoming dead weight, not looking over his shoulder, head further and further from the convenience store, from the Altilium, from ever reaching the settlement, from ever seeing his father again.
Nasty thoughts picked at his brain like buzzards. He shook them off as he waved his hand ahead of himself, beating away blowing grains of ash. He had to, somehow, cling to hope, and believe he wasn’t going to meet his end out here, in the middle of nowhere, lost and frozen, all alone. Things would work out. They had to. Maybe they hadn’t for Mallard. Maybe they wouldn’t for his father. But they would for him.
That was when he saw it.
Out in the distance, at the base of hummock of debris where crashed cars lay piled atop crumbled stone supports from a stretch of collapsed highway, swelled a cloud of ash blotted with thousands of beady white eyes. Eli knew well what he was looking at, though he hadn’t ever encountered them himself. His brother had plenty of stories about them, some of near death, and had always said: when you see them swarm, do not panic. Draw them to what they desire most and then seclude yourself from its embrace—the light.
What surged toward him was a mob running with little regard for their bodies, tripping over one another, tearing at each other’s skin, as they fought to be at the head of the herd. It was like a pack of enraged bulls speeding toward an aggressor, yet in reality, they had seen the battle, the flying bullets, maybe even the Altilium long ago, before the fighting had even started, and were determined to reach it, swarm it, devour it. These were the raving mad, the uncouth, the deranged.
These poor souls were known as The Lost—those who had fallen off the beaten path and found themselves stuck outside when the moon descended, swallowed by absolute darkness. One night of this was enough to pull a couple screws loose. But this horde…who knew how long some of them had been shambling along, bound to their brethren by an unconscious desire to find light and keep it all to themselves.
To call them “human” was a mistake, for they were no longer alive. They breathed, and their hearts beat, but now they were part of The Nothing, an effigy to the bones buried underneath it, zombified husks who did not feel or think—just wandered, endlessly, searching for something they would never truly find.
A plan formed in Eli’s mind in an instant. It was stupid, rash, and would likely end with him dead anyway. But he had to hope it would work. That was all he could do. He looked back at the Prisoner, who was barely able to keep himself upright. “I’ve got a plan,” he said. “A plan that will get me killed if you don’t help.”
“You saved my life,” the Prisoner said. “I’ll save yours.”
Eli nodded. “I’m going to rush him. When I shoot my gun, you grab me and take off running, back toward the convenience store. If this works, we’ll both live.”
“And if it doesn’t, we both die.” The Prisoner nodded. There wasn’t a better option.
Eli smirked. Up ahead, The Lost were closing in. Within the next twenty seconds, they’d be tearing into him, clawing at his flesh like a bunch of rabid animals. “So, we only got one shot. Let’s hope it works.”
With that, Eli let go of the Prisoner, skidded to a halt, and spun around. The Prophet was even closer than he had expected, mere inches from being able to slash him with his scythe, and so he had to act all at once. He went running toward robed-crusader, fumbling his last bullet out of his pouch and into the chamber. The gap between them was cut in half by the time he raised the gun and took aim, but then, it was too late. The scythe found his hip, slicing straight through the bone above his groin and into his belly-fat. He fell forward, chest-against-chest, and the Prophet put a hand on his back, snarling as he drew the blade out and, along with it, a gurgle of blackened blood.
“How sweet the kiss of death must taste. Hopefully, in the bliss of the eternal night, you find the blessing of the Moon.”
Eli put his own hand against the Prophet’s back. “And hopefully in the belly of The Lost, you realize how worthless all this bullshit you spout really is.”
With that, Eli pushed off the Prophet and, with both hands, pressed Lullaby to the ventilator tube wrapped around the man’s midsection and fired. The bullet ripped through the metal, and out of the gash came a spout of flames which chewed across his robe, melting his skin. Soon, the Prophet’s entire body was consumed by the fire, and just as the thunderous stomps of The Lost flooded his ears, he found himself yanked out of harm’s way, given a front-row-seat to the Moon Siren’s last moments as the horde swallowed him, gnawing, thrashing, ripping, flesh and bone, never minding the scorching pain, hoping to catch fire themselves, hoping to harness, and keep, and contain, some of the light.
Soon, the man was gone. The Lost too. All that was left was blood and fire, screams and cries, and as Eli’s vision blurred, his own life-force seeping out of the gaping wound in his gut, he couldn’t help but wonder one thing.
What if Mallard was in that pile, howling in pain as his flesh was seared into ash?
Eli had to hope he wasn’t. All he had was hope.
FUTURE
Eli had been kissed by Death himself, bearing wounds destined to send him straight to the reaper’s doorstep—yet, he clung to life, refusing to give in.
He thrashed through the pool of nothingness that was his subconscious, assailed by the murmurs of the undead. They beckoned him to join them. To give up on his quest, which had brought him so much misery, and find peace in eternal sleep. But on he fought, snatching at the tangled threads of his own memories, and soon, the moans of the passed-on were drowned out by laughter of passed-by days.
He wasn’t ready to die yet. Not even close.
Eli awoke with a jolt—lightning bolts of pain ripped through his nerves, spasming his muscles against the bone, knocking them back to life as he clawed at his ventilator. It was there, and full, and he heaved at it like there wasn’t enough air in all existence to satisfy his aching lungs. The world spun circles around him, mind jarred by returning to a life it had anticipated leaving behind, whirling his thoughts up into a messy cyclone which made even the tiniest movements a significant labor.
He…lifted his head. He…looked side-to-side. He…was in the convenience store. Beneath him…was his cloak, his jacket, bundled together into a makeshift bed. He…dropped back onto it. Too rough. Another round of pain. If the first was a thunderstorm, jabbing into him all over, this was a tsunami, coming in agonizing waves which all rushed out from his midriff.
He writhed on the floor, rolling back and forth, sucking his lips inward as he struggled to suppress a scream. His eyes flooded with tears, smearing everything together, and it only settled once he did—when he stopped moving, so did the tsunami, the thunderstorm, the world, his thoughts. For a few minutes, he just lay there, recovering, soaked in sticky sweat. Then, his eyes roamed down, toward his belly.
His shirt had been opened, ripped straight up the middle, and where the Prophet had dug his scythe into him ran a wavey ant-trail of tied-together-yarn, the same color of his cloak, likely pulled from it. His skin looked mangled, lumpy and uneven, stained black with days-old blood, but it had been sutured back together. He ran his fingertips over it very gently, still wincing as he traced along the grooves. It was sealed tight. So long as he didn’t push it too hard, he didn’t have to worry about gushing.
“Goddamn, you’re actually awake,” said someone from behind. “Considering the blood you’d lost, I’d call that a miracle!”
Eli tried to thrust up, a reactionary action from years of training himself to stay on constant guard, and found himself doubling over in pain, clutching his gut, praying it wasn’t slick with blood. As he huffed, a man crouched in front of him—the Prisoner. His own wounds had been dealt with accordingly. Heavy strips of cloth were wrapped around his arms and his neck. He held out a bottle of whiskey.
“Drink this. I promise, it’ll help. If it doesn’t, it’ll at least sting the hell out of your throat, which will take your mind off the burning in your gut.”
He wasn’t about to argue with the man who wasn’t doubled over in pain. Eli snatched up the bottle and took a long swig. He knew it wouldn’t be a miracle cure, wouldn’t flood his stomach and suck away all the suffering, but it helped. Only a little, but enough for him to shift back onto his butt, lean his back against one of the metal shelves composing the aisle, and return to rest.
“Don’t taste too good, does it? Never did, but even worse now that it’s been sitting, cork-half-out, letting the air lick it for god-knows-how-many-years. I found it under one of the floor tiles. I guess some bastard had a tough time working here and felt the need to polish his lips. Go on, drink all you want. I used most of it to clean our wounds, but we should be in the clear now, so long as we’re careful.”
The Prisoner took a seat across from Eli, coming down onto the ground slowly. Despite his rambling, it was clear he was hurting too. Every little movement of his had a hng or a ungh. Eli took another swig. This one pushed the pain even further back, clouding his mind with a pleasant haze of wistfulness.
“Thanks,” he said. “I don’t know much about closing wounds, but you did a fine job.”
“Well, I know a lot about closing up wounds, and let me tell you, that is a shit job,” the Prisoner said. “These old hands, they’re shaky, too unsteady to even tie a knot properly. Once, I was a surgeon. Now? Shit, I’m barely anything. Barely alive.”
He nodded toward Eli. “But I am, and it’s all because of you.”
Eli didn’t respond. Didn’t even look at the man. His mind was wandering, his eyes too. He peered through the gaps in the aisle’s shelving, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Altilium’s radiant glow sneaking out from behind the front counter. Just because he had beaten the Prophet didn’t mean the man couldn’t have gotten rid of it. If he had come here first, he could have easily hocked it out into the Nothing. Or, worse, he could’ve destroyed it, smashing it to pieces, popping the top off and letting the fluid ooze away…
“It’s still there,” the Prisoner said, slicing into Eli’s thoughts. “Bundled-up, hidden away, just as you left it. I unwrapped it, gawked at it, then put it back.”
A wave of relief washed over Eli. “Good. Good.”
He then reached over, offering the whiskey to the Prisoner. In this barren land, it was tough to trust anyone, especially someone who just a bit ago was working with the people trying their hardest to kill you. But the Moon Sirens had tried to finish him off, too, and an enemy wouldn’t have stitched up his wounds like this. “I’m Eli,” he said.
The Prisoner took the bottle, gave it a look, understanding it as the peace-offering it was, then took a swig. After wiping his lips, he said: “I’m Ray. Raymund Jonas. Just call me Ray.”
“Okay, Ray, now we know a little more about each other. My brother always said that to learn someone’s name was to keep it alive. If we went our separate ways, I might never hear from you again. But I’ll always remember Ray, that tough dude who saved my life, and so in a way, you’ll keep living, even if a day from now, you’re swallowed by ash.”
“Your brother was a smart man, Eli,” Ray said. “Eli, Eli, Eli.”
He let the name roll off his tongue a few more times, like he was committing it to memory, then he shifted, reaching out and waggling a finger at him. “What is that thing hidden in there?” he asked. “It’s something special, isn’t it? Something that smart brother of yours would’ve called you stupid for leaving behind to save a chump like me?”
Eli tried to cobble together the right words, but he always struggled to explain the Altilium. Anytime he reached a settlement, whenever they wanted to know just what it was he was bringing, he always just told them to wait and see. That no word could do it the justice it deserved. But one always popped into mind as the closest you could get, and so he said it now: “Magic.”
“Magic,” Ray said. “Eli, Eli, Eli—what are you gonna do with it?”
Eli chuckled. “Save the world, I guess. Or at least take a step in the right direction.”
Silence dawned between them, hushed by the wind whipping the ash outside. For a few minutes, neither man said anything. They just sat in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the still moving world outside, beckoning them to get back to it. To leave the walls of the convenience store and keep on keeping on.
Finally, with a deep sigh, Ray said: “I joined the Moon Sirens after they slaughtered a caravan I was traveling with. When it came my time to do the killing, I couldn’t.”
“That’s why that cast you out?”
“Yeah. Said I was fit to worship their god, but not serve it.”
“Did you really want to die?”
Another round of silence.
Then, Ray jabbed his hand out and wrapped it around Eli’s wrist. The back of it was still bubbled with pus-filled pockets, boiled from the Prophet’s acid. “I wanted to die because as they went around, slaughtering those poor folk, I just sat and watched, too scared. First the caravan, then a settlement of folk just trying to get by. These fucking blisters…they’re a reminder of what I didn’t do.”
Eli shifted closer to him, ignoring the pain sparking in his gut. He wanted to see Ray’s face. To talk to him, man-to-man, and absorb every ounce of his story. “And what are you going to do now?”
“I…fuck, man. I want to live. I want to be like you.” Ray lifted that hand, jabbed a finger into Eli’s chest. “You risked everything to save me. Your life, sure, but whatever cause you’re devoted to, too. You were brave. You were a hero. I’ve never been that. Not fucking once.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
Ray cocked a brow at Eli.
“You saved me,” he said. “When the Prophet was bearing his scythe down, about to chop my head off, you knocked him off. Maybe before that you were a man with no courage, maybe now you’re a man just starting to get some courage—but you’ve got some and that can’t be denied.”
Ray sat on this for a few seconds. “I want to do something. I want to help people, like you. I want to save the world.”
Eli smiled at him. Wherever Mallard was, dead or alive, he hoped he would be smiling too. “Well then, Ray, buckle-up. Because I have got a lot to tell you about.”
“What do I need to do?”
Eli took the whiskey from him, took a long swig of it, and said: “First off—you just gotta have a little bit of hope.”
THE END