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by Adrien Walker
Gabriel Benson stood before the man, though man wasn’t entirely accurate. No new title existed, nothing with which to call himself, Gabriel knew it to be intentional. The man, or rather, the rebel, was no longer a man. He transformed, changing himself down to the bone. He became thin, almost to the point of appearing impossibly so. The skin decayed, peeled back over muscle, both now green. The bones, visible across much of his appearance, especially in his limbs, and those that constructed his rib cage, became black. His eyes evolved into two black balls resting in a head so deteriorated it was essentially a green skull. And so he was named, for his very appearance. Green Skull. The rebel leader, the forefather of the coming race. But it had yet to arrive, and therefore remained nameless.
Green Skull slowly dressed himself, pulling his black military garments over his body, slipping each limb carefully into the cloth, then zipping up along the center to unite two sides of a large symbol: a hand, green like his flesh, painted across his chest.
Gabriel observed his leader with reverence, ensuring he withheld any affect of disgust. In truth, he hadn’t much to repress, having been predisposed to much of Green Skull’s body already. As the rebel leader’s closest commander, Gabriel observed the intimate thoughts of Green Skull in rare moments. Green Skull offered little, but what comfort Green Skull could show in the company of others, Gabriel stood as sole confidant.
“Don’t fret, it’s not your future,” Green Skull hissed, his voice pouring through the holes in his neck as much as it emitted from his mouth. With absent lips, the flesh shriveled back over his teeth, though with remarkably coherent speech, trained so with diligence. Discipline attracted Gabriel to the man in the first place. A quality lacking in Diamond City’s Scouts. His disenchantment with humanity’s final bastion began months prior, when corruption led to his abdication. In circles of other dissenters, he first heard of the half-zombie. Of course, they abandoned the term, since pledging their allegiance to the Green Hand rebellion. As Gabriel stared into the black eyes of his leader he thought back to their meeting and the months leading to this moment. A lifetime, a friendship, an education. Everything wrapped into it, and now he gave his body over to it all. He would be the first.
“I’m not afraid,” Gabriel replied, his broad chest raised. His body appeared nearly a perfect opposite to Green Skull. Gabriel’s massive frame stretched six and a half feet tall. Vibrant flesh wrapped it, a red which deepened with any expression. Large muscles adorned his structure, and his posture accentuated his strength. Yet he banished arrogance as he stood in the center of the room, a dimly lit section of tunnel far beneath the city. Its grim quality shown across its walls, covered in decades old filth, and in the flickering light dangling from a rope above, running off siphoned power from the city of their betrayal. Yet, in Gabriel’s eyes, he enshrined the setting with glory.
Other men stood huddled around, the inner circle chosen in accordance with Gabriel and Green Skull’s private discussions on loyalty and value. They watched the ceremony, both with eagerness and a sense of curiosity for the thing they all promised to partake in. In some of their hearts, no doubt, some fear lingered. Gabriel knew, he’d experienced it himself. He assuaged it the closer to Green Skull he grew.
An elderly man, the only other standout beside Green Skull, cautiously handled a concoction on a table off center in the room. His back curved into a hunch, impeding his arm’s fluidity, though his fingers acted with a finesse unmatched. His eyes followed them, transferring the fluids from a variety of sources into a funnel which wound them through tubing into a final destination, a small bowl beneath the chemistry set-up. He watched the liquids religiously as they combined, a black, thick liquid, funneling into a thinner red, a pristine white, and finally a cloudy green which dominated the ultimate mixture with its glowing hue. The room’s collective gaze fell upon him in the silence after Green Skull redressed, though he continued unfazed, ensuring his measurements for the final cocktail. Once it completed, he gave a solitary nod towards Green Skull, who then raised his hand and lowered it, signalling to Gabriel.
A deep breath entered Gabriel’s nose, a now sweaty appendage that he could feel radiating with heat as he turned bright red. His heart slammed against his rib cage with each beat. It wasn’t fear. He had erased it. It was exhilaration.
He turned and raised his leg onto the edge of a small, rectangular table behind him. Its metal surface chilled his back as he laid onto it, though the sweat continued to roll along his flesh, cooling once it met with the table. Green Skull fastened a series of restraints, dismissing the others from doing so. He methodically wrapped the leather bindings around Gabriel’s wrists and ankles, tightening, then checked with Gabriel to guarantee they were fastened well. For each, Gabriel offered a tug, then nodded to the adequacy of his restraints. When he finished, Green Skull laid his boney hand across Gabriel’s bare chest, planting it there. Gabriel felt the rough edges where the bones of each knuckle wore against one another, the smooth texture of the muscles that bound them, the rough flesh that scarcely remained, stretched over bits of palm. The hand tapped against him, as Green Skull lowered his mouth to Gabriel’s ear. “This was all just a vessel,” he whispered.
Gabriel released his breath. “On its way to the ultimate.”
Green Skull nodded and the smallest curl appeared at the corner of Gabriel’s mouth. Then Green Skull looked up to the elderly man and called him forth by his name. “Dr. Gregory McIntyre.” He stepped back, inviting the doctor to the side of the restrained Gabriel Benson. “Please escort Commander Benson into the First Generation.”
The doctor rounded the edge of the metal table atop which Gabriel lay naked and restrained. In his right hand, Gregory’s long, thin fingers wrapped around a syringe and its barrel, filled with the concoction. As he lowered the pointed end towards Gabriel’s bulging vein running through the inside of his elbow, pulsating with increased bloodflow, lifting and lowering the flesh running over it, Gabriel had the instinct to twist the frail doctor’s arm and snap it from his body.
A strange thought, he considered, unable to trace its origin, but its presence influenced the muscles of his arm, which flexed against the restraints. He gritted his teeth, blowing air through his nostrils, hot as it washed over his upper lip, trying in essence to expel the blasphemous thought. His eyes rolled over to the men in attendance, their curious gazes falling on his every motion. Several suddenly wore concern, watching the lurching motion of their commander. Their feet tapped nervously, some turned unconsciously, several more grimaced.
Gabriel took a deep breath, in through his nose, the sweat dripping from its end, falling within. Then he exhaled, pushing out a long breath through his pursed lips.
He turned his arm, commanding it with strained effort, both against the restraints and his instincts, to better position it for the needle. He sought to erase the previous weakness, to show the men he was ready, that it was mere eagerness. He was not frightened. Fear no longer existed within his heart, which pounded louder against his chest, and now in his ears. No. More. Fear.
His nose pushed the air out from his chest in short bursts, the sweat ran along the bridge like a river in the valley above his upper lip. He ground his upper and lower jaws. Gregory stared into his eyes with hesitation.
Shaking, Gabriel pushed the inside of his elbow up nearer to the needle’s point.
“Doctor,” he spoke, quietly urging.
Gregory looked over to Green Skull, who returned his stare without a change in presentation. He stood with arms crossed, chin raise, posture perfect, and eyes black watching unwaveringly. Gabriel twisted his head to view his leader, an upside down portrait of the rebel he had followed into this moment, whose speeches on the evolution of humanity into its next phase and the sacrifices required for its transition lit a fire in his mind. His skull felt aflame now, his flesh checkered with beads of perspiration, his scalp itchy.
He felt a pinch and then a rush. He tore his eyes away from Green Skull towards his arm, watching while the concoction was thrust into his vein by the depressing thumb of Dr. Gregory McIntyre, hunched closer, watching intently.
Then the heat, the fire, the sweat, the heartbeat, went cold, like the sweat beads against the table. The room disappeared behind a cloud of black, and he saw, for a moment, a visage of himself, naked, small, being swallowed in the dark. He thought he could hear his own voice calling to him, cursing, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. When he was gone from sight, the world returned, still.
He looked around at the wide eyes as he took his first breath as a member of the first generation. Though, as the air rushed through his nose, he felt the flesh, the cartilage deteriorate, rapidly caving, then molting, like snakeskin, drifting off his face with his exhale. His eyes felt pressured, his vision was wider, deeper. He lifted his head from the back of the table to peer down along his body. His flesh was grey, its previous reddened color rushing away towards his feet as the new tone conquered him.
Gregory cautiously unlatched Gabriel’s right arm, then shuffled back, watching Gabriel’s eyes. Then, after a moment, Gregory rushed towards the other side. Gabriel paused him, raising his right hand. The doctor stopped, staring back at Green Skull, who remained statuesque. Gabriel looked down at the restraint, then flexed his arm. He pulled against it, snarling with effort, but in a pair of seconds he was freed of his own volition. The action repeated twice more for his ankles, which he threw over the edge to hop off the table.
He was different, he knew this, he could feel it. He could feel a surge of power filling his body, his muscles made more efficient, just as he had been told they would be. His vision contained the ability to analyze his environment, counting its elements, and categorizing the terrain, just as he had expected. His hearing, too, improved, listening to the hum of the electricity as it powered the lights, following its buzz through the roof above him.
He changed, and yet, as he stared into the aghast expressions of the men in the room, desperate to hide their emotions but failing to do so, he didn’t feel so detached. He felt as though a mirror would reveal the same shock in his face, in spite of its new appearance. He knew their thoughts and heard the same in his own mind.
His eyes found a young man at the front, his tiny frame shivering at the sight of the creature before him. Gabriel stepped closer towards him, finding him more a boy than a man. He gravitated towards him for reasons unknown, though in his posture attempted to convey an intention of assuaging fear. Then he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the boy. Through the uniform, he could feel the heat, his palm experienced the intensity of the boy’s heart. And in feeling the fear in the boy, he could feel none of the sensations in himself. His heartbeat was missing, there was only cold in his flesh. All the impassioned sensations in the moments before the needle plunged into his vein, all the distinctly human feelings that flooded his body with warmth and tingling, vanished. And Commander Benson knew they were never to return.
He suddenly felt miles from the boy, despite their contact. He lowered his hand, dropped his arm to his side, then lifted his chin.
“We are the harbingers of the future race, son,” he told the boy, words spoken now from the truth that replaced his heartbeat. He spoke rhetoric, almost meaningless, and yet the only meaning in the world. It fuelled him before, fed his loyalty through his heart, through his love. These things became trite now. His body was just a vessel. Its creations of humanity were false idols, used for their own demise.
He wanted to laugh, how much sense it made now, in the absence of all what drove him to it. But humor, too, seemed moot.
He really only felt work now, and the desire to complete it.
He felt Green Skull behind him, lifting the sleeves of his commander’s uniform to feed his arms through. He allowed Green Skull to lift it over his body, zipping the center up from his belly to his neck, adorning his chest with the Green Hand emblem.
“Your commanding officer, gentlemen. Commander Benson.”
Slowly, the men in attendance began to clap, first a hollow gesture, then building, accompanied with hollers and whistles, their human naivete on exhibition. Commander Benson and Green Skull exchanged knowing glances. Then the leader stepped forth, joining his newly inducted commander at his side.
“Now, are there any in attendance who do not wish to proceed? Here today are those most loyal to the Green Hand, our personally chosen, selected for their loyalty, their value, and their determination for the cause. If even one of you is to shy from this, it would destroy the ranks before we ever had a chance. So, understand this. I will dismiss you, but you must approach now.”
Commander Benson watched the crowd grow silent as Green Skull paced behind him, hands cradling one another behind his back. The men strained to reflect their devotion, though there was not one among them who hadn’t perspired to a degree that it dripped along their bright flesh, a telltale sign of their inner world, racing with emotion, with fear intermingling. Moments, only, and yet a vast gulf separated Commander Benson from the lot.
A trembling man stepped forth, his chin shivering, chattering his teeth in a grating rhythm to Commander Benson’s new hearing.
“Harold Usadel.” Green Skull approached the man, observing him from an inch’s distance. “You wish not to proceed.”
The rebel scout nodded his head, then burst into tears. The men behind him grinned, several laughing. Green Skull stepped forth, past Harold and in towards their faces.
“Not one of you hasn’t what Harold shows us now. It is the pity of the human race, and an unfortunate burden for those beneath its banner.” Green Skull rested his stripped hand onto Harold’s shoulder as it quivered with the boy’s sobbing. In a whispered tone, and hung head, Green Skull spoke more gently into Harold’s ear, “What I wouldn’t give to feel as you do again, and feel it for the rest of my days.” He sighed. “But I have given and will continue to give so much more for something immensely greater.” Green Skull caught Commander Benson’s eye once more, a glance and a brief communication. Green Skull lifted his hand from Harold’s shoulder and addressed the crowd, “Evolution is sacrifice.”
Commander Benson clapped his fists into the sides of Harold’s skull, cracking it and causing blood to rush from his eye sockets as their stare went blank. His body dropped to the floor. Commander Benson looked into it crumpled at his feet. He felt nothing. His only thought came as the consideration of his own like fate at some future time.
Then he observed a subsequent thought. Between then and now, there was much work to be done.
-o-
Adrien Walker is the writer of post-apocalyptic, thriller, horror, and scifi books that seek to capture dark thematic elements and explore them to their wildest conclusions. From zombies lumbering about a barren landscape, to a space station floating in the vastness of space, he explores the nature of species, of humanity, and what it means to be alive. He loves works that do the same, introducing questions that have audiences scratching their skulls for days.
Homepage: https://adrienwalker.com
Mailing List: https://adrienwalker.com/books/zevolution-series/first-generation
