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We landed in the center of the highway running through town, where the army would be passing through later this afternoon. It was still morning, so we had plenty of time to complete the recon, but all the same, I knew Augustus wouldn’t be happy with this hiatus.
We disembarked and found ourselves standing in the center of a town in shambles. Watchtowers on stilts rose from the eastern and western palisades. The wooden buildings were deteriorating into the dust. Most of the squat buildings lined the highway itself, or were even built on top of it. Last Town had arisen after Ragnarok’s fall – set in the pass connecting the Wasteland to the city, it was well situated to take advantage of the trade routes that arose out of the Chaos Years. For almost two decades, the town thrived, especially when protected by Raine and the Lost Angels.
However, after the Lost Angels fell, the Reapers had conquered Last Town five years ago. It had then been maintained as an outpost of the Reapers, but at the moment, the entire town was abandoned. Anna and her mother escaped this place five years ago, but her father had died in the fighting.
“This way,” she said.
She led Julian and me between two buildings. We climbed over piles of wood and rubble. Most of the buildings looked as if they could collapse at any moment. I began to wonder how Anna knew where she was going.
After I thought about it for a moment, I realized that I could close my eyes and see every angle, intersection, and corridor in Bunker 108. There was something about growing up somewhere that made that place stick with you for the rest of your life, even if you never saw it again.
It was the same for Anna; she knew exactly where she was going, and it wasn’t long before we stopped in front of a small wooden house.
“This is it,” she said.
Or, at least, what remained of a small wooden house. One of its walls had completely collapsed. Inside, I could see splintered chairs, an upturned table, and two cast-iron pots strewn among the debris.
Anna stepped over the shattered wall and walked on the debris-covered floor. The roof had collapsed some time ago.
“My dad built this place when I was little. He was good with that sort of thing. Putting things together. Making things work.” She paused. “Of course, it’s different now. I wasn’t expecting to find much here. My mom and dad both scavenged. The L.A. ruins, mostly. The Angels made it safe to do that sort of thing, and the town saw some prosperity for a time. There was plenty to eat.”
Julian and I listened as Anna walked to one of the corners.
“My bed was here,” she said. “We called it a bed, but it was really more of a pallet. And it got cold. We had a chimney, but firewood was hard to come by. A man named Harold would chop some for us.”
“Would chop it?” Julian asked.
“Yeah. Pun not intended.” She frowned. “I didn’t realize it then, but we had a nice community here. You always take what you have for granted until it’s no longer there. When you’re a kid, you don’t think about the future. We are free to enjoy life, each moment, at least until something goes wrong.” She paused again. “It was all snatched away in a single night. And everything changed.”
Even though I was married to Anna, there was so much I still didn’t know about her. So much I wanted to know. When you were running and fighting for your life, it was sometimes hard to find the time to just...talk. Be still. Listen.
“I remember always wanting to have brothers and sisters, growing up.” She paused. “But looking back, maybe being alone wasn’t such a bad thing.”
“I thought the same thing,” I said. “After my mom died, my dad never remarried, even though I wanted him to.”
“I think...my parents might have tried. But for one reason or another, it never happened. Such things can’t be explained. We had no doctors, and few knew how to use medicine. They were precious, always guarded. The property of the Wise.” She sighed. “You never realize when you’re happy. Until you aren’t. I was happy, until the Reapers came. They killed, they raped, they burned. The dream ended, and somehow, my mom and I were spared, but after the next few years of our life, death might have been preferable. We lived through hell, on the edge of starvation and sanity. I was only twelve. Twelve.”
There were now tears in her eyes. I went over to her, and held her in my arms.
When she had gained control, she continued.
“Sometimes, I wonder how I made it. There were so many times I should have died. But I never did. Even when mom died. I’d survive, keep feeding myself for another day, and wonder why I was doing it. You ever have that?”
I nodded, saying nothing. Julian was also nodding.
“That house, right there,” Anna said, pointing past the crumbled wall. “That’s where Jason and Gwen lived. They were family friends. He kept an orchard, on the heights, in an old greenhouse. Gwen was a scavenger, like my parents.”
“How many lived here?” Julian asked.
“Two hundred, maybe. Of those two hundred, I don’t know how many died. I don’t know how many were taken as slaves. And I don’t know how many of those are still alive today. There’s me, so there’s that.”
“You made it,” I said.
“Yeah. I did. For the longest time, I didn’t believe it was worth it. Especially when mom died. Some disease took her life, but in the end, that’s not surprising. Finding food was hard, and when we did find it, a lot of the time it wasn’t good to eat. We ate it anyway, because we had no choice.” She paused. “We would read to each other, at night. It kept the darkness at bay. Books were the only escape. We’d find them everywhere. Of all the items we found, they were the most ignored, except when people needed something to light a fire. We never burned books. It seemed a travesty, to destroy all these words from a better time. A wiser time. And one day, they might all be gone.”
“What did you do?” Julian asked. “When she died?”
“What any of us would do. I cried. I cried until nothing came, until every ounce of my soul was emptied and dried on the cold, harsh rocks. And I walked. I ate. I did not smile. I did not remember. By that time, I’d found the blade, and books that showed me some basic forms. I practiced endlessly, moving only when I had to. I...killed my first man, when I was fourteen.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m saying all these things, things I told myself I’d never relive.”
“It’s alright,” I said.
She looked at me in a way that said she wasn’t sure if that was true.
“We are the sum of our experiences,” Anna said. “No more, no less. But I’d like to believe there’s something more to all of us. That we have the strength to defy our experiences and rise above them, to push back against the world that has treated us so cruelly. To hold out arms and make it a better place to live. Sometimes, all that gets lost in the madness. It all gets overwhelmed. Yet, here we are. Still standing.”
Julian and I merely stood, listening.
“There are things we’d all rather forget,” Anna went on. “But we can’t. The pain becomes a part of us. There were times where that was all there was. That’s the way the world is. You can see beauty, or you can see ugliness. You can even see both, if you want to. Even without the Radaskim, this world would be a dark place. But even in the ruins, a flower can bloom. Even in a land without the sun.”
“It will,” I said. “It’s what we’re fighting for.”
I followed Anna’s gaze, and was struck to see what she was looking at. Her word choice turned out not to be merely metaphorical.
In a crack of the concrete, a green stem rose, studded with thorns; at its end a red bud bloomed. A rose in the ruins. How it existed or even grew here, I had no idea. But there it was.
“Some miracles do exist,” she said. “Jason grew roses like these, and even five years later, they’re still here.” She looked at me. “Life is as fragile as it is resilient. We’re built to survive. We’re built to endure. No matter what happens, as long we don’t quit, we’ll find a way. Even if we cry...we don’t cry to quit. We cry to go on.”
We stayed in the house another few minutes. Anna just stood, looking with reminiscent eyes as if seeing through time. She saw things far beyond what Julian and I could see. Ghosts. Memories. Laughter.
She turned, taking my hand.
“Alright. We’ve seen enough.”
We left the house and made our way back to Orion. As we weaved between the buildings and stepped onto the highway, I looked toward the right.
To see a man standing there.
Julian and Anna pulled up beside me, and the three of us faced the man. He wore all black – pants, collared shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat; a black duster jacket, the tails of which blew in the wind. A long, scraggly red beard fell down his chest, and eyes as blue as ice stared at us. He wore a belt, on which a handgun was holstered.
The man didn’t move, but I moved my hand to my Beretta.
In the end, the man advanced toward us, slowly.
“Stay there,” I called. “And don’t move. Put your gun on the ground. Slowly.”
The man paused. After a long, watchful moment, he reached for his gun belt, slowly, and removed it. The belt contained not one, but two holsters, one for each side. Next, he shucked his duster, revealing a rifle strapped to his back. He took the strap and the rifle off, laying them on the dirt at his feet.
“Jesus,” Julian said.
The man reached into his left boot, and withdrew a long dagger. He set the dagger on the highway before him. Holding out his gloved hands, he advanced forward, one step at a time.
When he was about twenty-five feet away, Anna called out.
“That’s far enough.”
The man stared at her with those blue eyes. A long moment passed before anyone spoke again.
“Do you recognize this guy?” I asked Anna.
To the side, I saw her shake her head.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The man’s gaze focused on me. Even if he had removed every weapon, he was still dangerous. The way he carried himself, the way he looked at me, told me that. It was impossible to live this long alone and not know how to kill.
“My name...” the man said, slowly and drawing it out in a raspy voice, “is not your concern. I’m the Last Man of Last Town. That’s all you need to know.”
“What do you want from us, Last Man?” Anna asked.
The Last Man stood as still as a statue.
“For you to leave,” he said. “No man can walk inside these walls. I drove the Reapers out, and I will drive you out.”
The man didn’t seem to be concerned with the fact that we had a spaceship. That seemed strange in itself. It meant that nothing was important to him but what he said. He wanted us out.
“We’re leaving now,” Anna said.
The man’s eyes focused on Anna.
“I know your face,” he said. “But I don’t know from where.”
Anna looked at him, not letting her guard down. “Did you live here, Last Man?”
The man gave the slightest of nods. “Yes. They all died. I remember it like yesterday. I left this place a village, and returned to find it a graveyard.”
“What is your name, Last Man?” Anna said. “I lived here a long time ago, but haven’t been back until today.”
“Yours first, girl,” the man said, in a harsh tone. “I tire of people and their tricks.”
“Anna,” he said. “My mother was Heather. My father, Ben. We lived at the crossways. The north side.”
The man was silent for a long time. His posture relaxed, ever so slightly. But he was by no means less dangerous.
“Yes. You’re Ben’s girl, alright. You have his eyes. His fierceness. There’s no doubting it.” He spat at the ground. “Ben’s dead, now. I thought you were, too.”
“Now tell me who you are.”
“Victor.”
“Victor,” Anna said. “I don’t know that name.”
“Few did,” Victor said. “I was a hunter, far away from the town. It doesn’t surprise me I escaped your notice. But if ever you ate some wild game in this place...it might have been by my shot that it came to be.”
“And you live here, in this place?” Anna asked.
Victor shrugged. “It is better than the west, with the Reapers. And better than the east, with its death. Here, there is a spring, and food in the hills for a man who knows where to look.”
“And what do you do, when you’re not hunting game?” Anna asked.
“I hunt men. Reapers, mostly. I hunt them where I find them. I think they avoid this place, now. They say it’s haunted.”
Victor gave the tiniest trace of a smile.
“There will be plenty of Reapers today,” I said. “They’re coming from Los Angeles.”
“Why?”
“They are making a final stand,” Anna said. “The Empire. The Angels. The Reapers. If that stand isn’t made together, then the monsters will win.”
Victor gave a bitter laugh. “Angels. An Angel hasn’t walked this town in five years.”
“The Angels have reformed,” I said. “We’re three of them.”
“Is that so?” Victor gave us an appraising look, but it was hard to tell whether or not he approved. “No true Angel would work with a Reaper.”
“They would,” I said. “If the world were ending.”
The man gave a bitter laugh. “The world has already ended, boy. The Old World has passed, and if one day no man wakes to see the new, I won’t grieve for it. Man, monster, what’s the difference?”
I realized we were speaking with a man who saw no good in this world, who saw no reason to fight for it. There was little we could do to change the mind of such a person. He had suffered more than his share of evils, and those evils had broken him.
“There’s still hope, Victor,” Anna said. “Just as you believed I was dead, in truth, I was alive. Just as you believe that we are all going to die, and that we are deserving of that death, we believe you’re wrong. My friends and I worked hard to get everyone to stand together. Many have died to make it happen. This is our last chance to make a difference, and every man’s support counts. Even yours.”
The man merely stood and watched us. It was hard to guess at his age – he could have been thirty, or sixty. The face was red, wind-chapped, weather-beaten.
After a long while, he nodded.
“So you say.”
“The army will be passing through here this afternoon,” Anna said. “If you change your mind...ask for Char.”
The man looked at Anna for a long time, before giving a slow nod.
She turned to us. “Come on. We should get moving.”
We turned back to the ship. As we ascended the boarding ramp, I looked back one last time. He stood there, the wind blowing the tails of his duster. He raised a single hand in farewell. The eyes were sad. Watchful.
We entered the ship and once more took to the air.
***
WE FLEW EASTWARD BEYOND the mountains, right over the border of the Great Blight. Anna lowered the ship to better survey the xenofungal surface, but the terrain below was empty.
When Anna veered north, Makara’s voice came through the dash.
“Alright. Sam and I have connected the ship’s drive to the Bunker’s grid. We’re en route to Level Three.”
“Copy that,” Anna said,
We continued our recon, scanning the Great Blight in a wide arc. From time to time we’d see evidence of xenolife – crawlers running in small packs, swarms of birds, even a Behemoth or two – but nothing approaching the size of the Radaskim horde.
Anna switched frequencies to Augustus’s line.
“Not seeing anything, Augustus,” Anna said. “Just a few crawlers here and there, about what you’d expect from the Great Blight. I think you guys will be good.”
“Copy that. The troops are in eastern L.A. right now. We should make it to the pass this afternoon.”
“Great. Listen...”
Augustus waited, but Anna hesitated to speak. I knew she was about to tell him about the man, Victor. In the end, though, she shook her head.
“Just be careful. You’re clear all the way past the mountains.”
“Thank you, Anna.”
Augustus cut out, and we continued with our recon.