Extinction (3 page)

A line of rubble rose within the inner city, cutting that section off from its outskirts. This was the wall that Raine built; Makara had told me about it. There were hundreds of buildings – maybe thousands. It was hard to imagine millions of people going in and out of them, hard to imagine that chaotic stream, each person making his or her own choices, millions of them every second. If it were
that
chaotic, surely everyone would have gotten stuck down there. Maybe they did. I guessed that was why they made traffic lights, highways, lanes on the road. Maybe they had ways to control the chaos, but even all the control in the world couldn’t stop certain things.

Like death from the sky.

There were thousands of buildings, for sure. Some were tall, like the ones in Vegas, but there were more of them here. Blocks of these towers stood to the north, in the center of the city. I thought Vegas had been big, but it didn’t compare to this fallen monstrosity. The buildings, small and large, stretched as far as the eye could see – north, south, and east as far as the mountains. It had been its own form of Blight, maybe. How much larger would Los Angeles be today if Ragnarok hadn’t fallen? Would our cities have consumed the world?

Los Angeles had been one of the biggest, busiest, and richest cities in the world. And, funnily enough, it still was. More people lived here than any other place in the Wasteland. I imagined those early days after Ragnarok, the panicked survivors. There must have been millions, then. Gangs would have formed shortly after, warring for supplies.

I was glad not to have lived here during the Chaos Years. I thought of Char and Marcus.
They
had lived during those times, but I hadn’t asked about them.

The dim, setting sun was the source of all life. When its light had been obscured by the dust kicked up by Ragnarok, the world entered a darkness from which it hadn’t emerged. Los Angeles’s population had tumbled from the millions to mere thousands. Many had probably fled into the eastern hills, hoping to find salvation there. But they only found a world of death. Only the Bunkers had been safe, for a time, but even they couldn’t escape.

Los Angeles was the hub of the Wasteland. It was where most of the people lived, where fates were determined for the rest of us. Whoever controlled Los Angeles controlled the Wasteland, because whoever controlled Los Angeles ruled the majority of the Wasteland’s people. Most of those people were slaves, and only a few were the gang members who ruled them. The Lost Angels were no more, and it seemed doubtful that they would last much longer.

This massive city would crumble mostly to dust in the coming decades. The towers would fall from the passage of time and the shaking of the earth. When they finally
did
fall, it was possible no human eye would see them collapse.

Assuming we survived this, we had to rebuild
sometime.
We couldn’t just leech off the remains of a world fading further and further into time. If we did, we’d be reduced to savages and cavemen centuries from now. Perhaps we already
were
at that point. One day we would forget what those towers were, thinking they were constructed by gods...

“It’s time to go.”

Maxillo had spoken behind me. Below, on a long, curving drive that disappeared beneath the building, several all-terrain vehicles drove up.

LAX, I realized. We had landed on top of the airport terminal.

The vehicles were all black and had skulls painted on their doors, crisscrossed by scythes. Their engines whined high like a plague of insects. Lean, long-haired men toting rifles poked out from windows.

The Reapers were here.

Next to me, Ashton’s breath caught. But he wasn’t looking ahead at the Reapers. He was looking behind the terminal.

I turned, gazing past the Praetorians, past Augustus, toward the runways of LAX – where I saw thousands upon thousands of Augustus’s legionaries camped. Hundreds of canvas tents had been pitched in perfect lines, and countless fires glowed red in the evening. A tall fence surrounded the army in a perfect square. It was impossible to guess how many were in there.

Augustus stepped forward, face grim. He nodded at Maxillo.

“This way.”

Maxillo headed left, where a stairwell surfaced on the roof. The Reapers’ vehicles pulled to a stop in front of the terminal, idling. Was Carin Black among them?

I guessed I would find out in a few minutes.

W
e descended the stairwell. Maxillo led the way with a flashlight, illuminating dusty corners and grimy walls. Violent paintings coated the faded, sickly yellow of walls: fires, guns, blood, stick figures, and falling buildings. And scythes. It was art for a new age.

We rounded the stairs three times before exiting into the airport lobby. I had never been inside anything so large besides Bunker One. The ceiling stretched high above, lost to darkness. The architecture was curved and jarring; it was hard to believe what we had once been capable of building. Soot stained the once glossy white floor, the sites of previous fires. Red light filtered thinly through the entrance, doing little to illuminate the cavernous space.

I briefly thought of breaking free and running. It might be easy to lose myself in the dark labyrinth of terminals and tunnels. Ashton and Anna could run with me.

That could never happen, though. We were far outnumbered, and would be shot long before we could escape. We had to face whatever was coming.

We reached the sliding glass doors that had been busted open long ago. Broken glass littered the floor, crunching under our boots. Jagged edges still clung to the doorframes, sharp as the day of their breaking.

We stepped past the doors and into the faint crimson light, where the train of six black Recons idled on the drive. Four Reapers stood in front of the lead vehicle, facing us. Two held rifles in both hands, while another had his strapped to his back.

A squat man, shaved bald, stepped forward from the group. His face was all hard lines, his body chiseled angles. A long, black beard grew from his chin and stopped at his chest.

His beady eyes glanced over the three of us before settling on Augustus. He pointed at us with his chin.

“This is them?”

Maxillo stepped forward. “You dare address the Emperor directly, barbarian?”

Several other Praetorians flanked Maxillo, hands on their holsters. Behind him, his lackeys stiffened.

The Reaper smiled. “Warlord Black told me to bring the prisoners to the Citadel. He didn’t tell me who I was supposed to deal with.”

“He will discuss this with Black,” Maxillo said.  “Not you, worm.”

“I have my orders to bring them to the Citadel,” the man said, with his yellow smile. “The Warlord wants to question them personally.”

“We are meeting between here and my camp, on the runways,” Augustus said. “As previously agreed.”

The Reapers standing behind the stocky man glowered. The other Reapers, still in their Recons, stared at Maxillo with malice. The Praetorians and the Reapers were evenly matched in numbers. If it came to blows, I had no idea what would happen, or who would win.

One of the other Reapers addressed Maxillo. “Be careful who you insult, guard boy. Onyx is Carin Black’s own son.”

Maxillo’s face reddened while Augustus held up a hand.

“Peace, Maxillo,” the Emperor said. “If Carin wishes to question the prisoners, I will allow it at the meeting – which is still set to take place outside my camp in about an hour’s time.” Augustus looked at Onyx. “You can let your father know. I see no reason for this audience to continue.”

Onyx’s face reddened – it was obvious he had expected his father’s words to carry more weight.

Before turning to go, Onyx’s dark eyes settled on Anna. My hand reached for my holster, only to find it empty.

“I know you,” Onyx said. “You are Char’s famous samurai bodyguard.”

“What of it?”

“You killed several of our assassins months back.”

“Glad to see my work hasn’t gone unnoticed,” Anna said.

“Several of those men were my friends.”

Anna laughed. “Friends? I can see how you’d think that. I see that you don’t just look like a toad; you have the intelligence of one, too.”

The toad’s face reddened, but before he could give his own retort, Augustus raised his hand.

“Enough. We leave now.”

As one, the Praetorians filed up, forming a box around us. Still, Anna and Onyx stared one another down.

All the while on the spaceship, I had imagined that Emperor Augustus and Carin Black would be good buddies. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Tensions were high between the two supposed allies.

Augustus turned to one of his Praetorians, a blond man who might have been second-in-command, after Maxillo. The Emperor said something to him in Spanish.

The man nodded before gathering a few men and leading them back into the terminal. I supposed they were going to stand guard over the spaceship. I noticed then that Jonas wasn’t with us. He must have stayed on board, in case he needed to make a quick getaway.

As the Reapers pulled away in a whirl of dust and an angry blaring of engines, Augustus nodded to Maxillo. “Lead on.”

The Praetorians marched in unison alongside the building. We moved along with them, locked in their protective box. As the last of the Reapers left the airport drive and zoomed into the city streets, the sky dimmed into dusk.

“Toad, huh?” I asked.

Anna shrugged. “Some people just infect your brain with what they say. I’m literally dumber for having listened to that idiot.”

I chuckled. “We can’t just start a war by offending people.”

“Something tells me there’s going to be a war, no matter what I say.”

I wondered why Augustus parked his spaceship on top of the airport terminal building, rather than in front of his camp, which seemed much safer to me. Maybe it was just a way for him to show Black that the airport was under his control, and that he wasn’t going to be confined to the small area around his camp.

Five minutes later, we arrived at the gates of Augustus’s camp. The wooden walls were at least ten feet high, with watchtowers along their length. The army must have carried a lot of its supplies with it, and it was hard to imagine how they could have built such fortifications in a short length of time.

The gates squealed open, revealing the bustling camp within. We walked inside and I took in my surroundings. Now, with dusk, many of the legionaries were cooking and eating around campfires. Horses were tied up in stables, and we even passed a pen filled with pigs. Merchants and shopkeepers had supplies displayed on tables in front of their tents – anything from food to boots to trinkets. I realized then that it wasn’t just an army here. An entire community had followed the soldiers in order to make a few batts.

Augustus’s eyes seemed content, even reminiscent, as he watched the camp.

“When I was a young man in Mexico,” he said, “Ragnarok had just fallen. My people were afraid. I knew we had to be the strongest if we were to survive. To the north was Old Mexico, the Federal District. They fought us in those days, even though the world had ended. That was my first campaign. I took my soldiers, went north across the mountains in the springtime. It seems so long ago. The Federalists fought to the last man. Now, Federal is one of our biggest provinces.”

Augustus told this story not in a proud way. To him, it was just a story, one of the many great things he had done in his life.

“I remember entering the Presidential Palace in victory, and how the President, old even then, dropped to his knees. A man who had chased and attacked me for so many years, before the Rock fell, was expecting my judgment.” Augustus smiled in memory. “He was a brave man and he met my eyes with such hatred. I told him not to kneel like some warlord or barbarian – many of whom I had crushed. This man was a rival worthy of respect. So, I told him to fight for me. He agreed. I let him keep his kingdom, his estates, his women and children. We conquered much together – Jalisco, Oaxaca. He died, twenty years ago. I spared no expense for his funeral, and gave games in his memory at the
Coleseo,
newly constructed then.”

Augustus sighed, as if he knew those glory days were now past and never to be reawakened. Our war was different from all his others, because the end goal was not wealth and power, but survival. The glory years were gone.

It looked as if Augustus was going to say more, but instead he remained thoughtful. We walked on.

I didn’t really know why Augustus told this story, but I think it was intended mainly for Ashton. Some things only made sense to old men. Old memories from an Old World didn’t mean much to me. Augustus was a drug lord in his youth, one who had fought the government so much that he had even formed his own country, and that before Ragnarok came down. Augustus was a warrior, much more than he was a builder. For centuries he would be remembered. Stories would be told of him, and children would be named after him.

That was, if we survived all this.

Even with Augustus’s power, it would be a while before he got his fight. If the Empire and the Reapers were still allies, then there was no force in the Wasteland that could oppose them – besides Askala and the
Radaskim.
The Wasteland resistance had failed, so the only two important powers left were the Empire and the Reapers, and having them share the same city with no one to fight was a disaster waiting to happen.

“Will there be war?” I asked. “I mean, between the Empire and the Reapers?”

Augustus shook his head. “I must do whatever I can to stop that. There
cannot
be war until the Great Blight is dealt with. Carin knows this as much as me. I don’t think Carin will attack, but he’s getting restless. He’s making more demands. I have more soldiers, but he has better weaponry, hoarded over the years from the nearby military bases. All the same, I fear he might be planning to use the
Radaskim
as the anvil, and himself as the hammer, while not realizing the foolishness of such a move.”

Augustus’s speaking about the
Radaskim,
using that word, made me realize he was up to speed. Ashton had probably updated him at some point while we were in the sky.