Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods (16 page)

It's surprising what people will do when they have no choice.

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It was over quickly, Byakhee slipping from the shadows behind Pike's Market to collect Brian and his would-be rebels. There was a burst of gunfire, then a single report as Beth Antonelli shot Rosa and Carlos, then turned her pistol on herself. Brave woman. The rest were dragged out of their hiding places, struggling in the Byakhees' rubbery grasp. There were a few hundred all told – more than enough to fill the tithe.

New Brighton would be safe for another five years.

The Lieutenant waved, and most of the Byakhee clawed their way into the sky, cradling their screaming charges with the tender care usually reserved for heirlooms or newborn babies.

Two remained.

"You bastard," Brian gritted out as the Byakhee holding him flopped forward.

Up close, I couldn't focus on the creature, my eyes watering as if I were looking at the sun. I met Brian's hateful gaze, surprised that I felt nothing.

"Did you plan it from the beginning?" he asked.

"No." It wasn't a lie – I hadn't planned anything. "There was just no other way."

He sagged in the creature's coils. I could've kept talking, could've rationalized my actions by explaining there was no Northern Resistance, but that wouldn't have helped either of us. I could see in his eyes that he'd always known. There was no future, no hope, nothing outside the malign indifference of the Great Old Ones. Not for us, at least. Our only choice was to forget the past, to become what we needed to be to survive. My son was proof of that.

"You promised." I turned to the Lieutenant as the Byakhee holding Brian took flight.

"All yours." He smiled at Shelly even though his eyes were squeezed shut, then did a crisp about-face and made his way back up McNaughton Avenue. The Byakhee set her down almost gingerly before skittering after the Lieutenant, leaving us alone in the deserted parking lot.

Shelly slapped my hand away, and spit in my face when I knelt. Her fingernails left ragged marks on my cheek as she pushed me away. She took a few steps, then turned back and tried to say something, all that came out was a garbled shout.  

"I did it for you and Ronny," I said, knowing it would fester.

I hadn't seen Shelly this furious since prom. She took a step toward me, hands balled into fists, then with a disgusted groan, she turned and ran back toward the alley.

I didn't follow. There was no point. She would come back – there was nowhere to run. In time, we might even be a family again.

It's surprising what people can learn to accept, even love, when they've got no choice.

In the distance, the low hiss of wind through the leaves mingled with the shrieks of the rebels and ecstatic howls of my former comrades. For once, their calls were not for me. I'd had enough war, enough madness, but even if I'd wanted to return, they wouldn't have accepted me.

There was no room for cowards in the Yellow Guard.

by Jason Vanhee
 

They crept out just before dawn, when the light was brittle and the air was cold as the vastness of space. George’s breath fogged up the air as he trailed behind his mother, her hand absently and loosely holding his. There were nine of them, all gathered at Mama’s house to go out to church.

“You need to be very quiet, George,” his mother had said. “Just keep yourself hushed up, and it’ll all be fine.”

He knew that wasn’t true, though. He was eleven, not a little kid any more, and he knew they couldn’t just go out to church if they wanted to. Every time they’d had services, they had gone in the middle of the night, and to a quiet, empty old church way off in the ruins, where there was sometimes an old man who had been a preacher to talk about God to them. But this time, they were headed to their old church—not George’s church, though he’d seen it plenty. His mother’s church. And that wouldn’t work at all.

First, the church was closed, and second, there wasn’t a reverend, and third, the masters would be mad. So he’d told Mama that he didn’t want to go because he didn’t want to get in trouble. It was almost worth it just to go outside, because he wasn’t let out very often; the masters liked young children, they said.

“Oh, you don’t want to go? You want to go to hell, maybe?”

“I think maybe we’re already in hell, Lou,” Uncle Jimmy said to Mama. He was younger than Mama by about ten years, and he had been only a little older than George was now when it happened. When
they
came out the sky. People said he hadn’t been quite right ever since. George liked him well enough: he played with models of old things, cars and trains and stuff, and could get them to work sometimes.

“Even if I was in hell, I’d pray to Jesus all the same,” Mama said, and she snapped at George to get on his coat and hat and don’t forget his gloves, and that was the end of him staying home.

The city was quiet. Mostly it was quiet all the time, since there weren’t too many souls left in the place to make noise. Half the buildings were falling right down, and another quarter were well on their way. Here and there, you could tell someone still lived in a place, or worked in it, if you could say anyone worked much anymore. And from one or two of those buildings, down front stairs that creaked and thumped, and with their faces hidden behind scarves, came more folks to join Mama’s little group.

Sunday morning, and they were off to church.

“Why we got to go to church at all?” George asked.

“Because the Lord above says we ought to,” his Mama hissed back at him.

“There’s not a Lord above anymore, is there, not unless you mean—” Before he could say the name, Mama had whipped about and slapped her hand over his mouth.

“Don’t you say that name, George, not out in the street, not when we’re trying to be quiet and not call any attention at all. You understand, boy?”

He nodded behind her mittened hand, staring up at her eyes, which were narrowed in her soft face. Her skin was starting to look a little ashy, he thought, but it was still smoother than most ladies’ her age. She was a pretty lady, his Mama, and he was proud of that. But she could look really angry when she wanted to, and right then she did, so when she pulled her hand away, he didn’t say anything else.

“I’m speaking of the Lord God, Jesus himself, who saves us all with his sacrifice, and not any old foolishness like they get to talking to in the streets these days. And my God wants me to go to church, and for you to come along too, you hear me?”

He just nodded again dumbly and let her lead him on again, catching up with the straggling group ahead of them.

They were two blocks away from the church when the first trouble came. A tall old man, his hair gone mostly white and heading way back on his head, stood on his porch in a bathrobe with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. “You all should be in bed,” he shouted out at them. “What you doing up? You think you’re going to church?”

There were nearly thirty of them now, hurrying along the street, and they didn’t respond to the man on his porch, only murmured to each other things like
Don’t pay him any mind
, and
Everyone just keep walking
.

“You think they don’t know you’re out? You think you’re sneaky? I see you, Miss Lou, and your brother James. I see you, Martin Washington. I know your names.”

“God bless you,” Mama called out.

“God? You think God cares? You think that one they got up to the mountain, that He didn’t eat God up for breakfast a long time ago?” But they were past the old man’s house, and he was falling behind them. “When the masters come, you’ll forget all about this foolishness, but not in time.” The man’s deep voice resounded down the street like some kind of prophet, but that was the last of him.

George lifted up his eyes from the worn tips of his shoes where they’d been resting. He wondered about the boy who’d owned the shoes before; probably he’d been dead for fifteen years or more, George guessed. Dead since the masters came down from the sky. He wondered if the boy had been dragged out to church by his mother when it wasn’t even daylight yet, not really. He bet, back in those days, boys didn’t have to go to church unless they wanted to.

“Don’t let him scare any of you. If they really knew we were up and about, we’d none of us be here. You think the Mayor’s just going to let us go to church and all, if she knew we were going?” Mama’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, but in the quiet of the morning, just shoes slapping down on the broken pavement and the faint puff of breath and the wicking of fabric against fabric, her words carried to everyone, and they nodded and said it was true, and a few of them thanked God and blessed Miss Lou.

They turned the last corner. The church still stood, and George had always wondered why the Mayor hadn’t just torn it down, or why the masters hadn’t got rid of it a long time ago. They knocked down buildings whenever it suited them, and surely it would suit them to have the church gone, as much as they didn’t like it. This was the first time George and his folk had been to church in this building, but other people used it: they heard the stories. It wasn’t the first time the old Congregational Church had been put to good purposes, or even the tenth. George half suspected his Mama had been to services there a time or two, and finally got up the nerve to put one together herself.

“Lord have mercy, they know.” That from Uncle Jimmy, who was shaking and not just from the cold. “We’re in for it now.”

On the steps of the church were six people. George didn’t know them all, but he knew two of them: big, heavy Lawrence White, who was the Police Chief and used to be a soldier when there were soldiers still; and beside him, in a fancy fur coat and with her hair straightened and pulled back, and looking even smoother and prettier than Mama, the Mayor. Everyone just called her that: Mayor; but she had a name, and it was Martha Washington, and Mama said she was Martin Washington’s sister. She had her gloved hands clasped in front of her, and she was staring right at George, it seemed like. He shuddered from his tip to his toes from the dark eyed stare. The other four had billy clubs and masks on their faces, wood masks carved to look a little like the masters: curves and feelers and tentacles, like something from up out of the sea. Everyone said they came from the sky, from the stars, but maybe there was water up there, too.

The Mayor lifted a bullhorn to her mouth and her voice echoed out to them. “You all need to go home, right now, or there will be trouble.”

Hands reached out and touched, grasped. The group of thirty anchored each other, and held. George was in the middle, behind his mother, looking between her and Mister Washington to the church’s boarded-up front not fifty feet away. His free hand had been taken up by Monica, a girl three years younger than him who clutched desperately and leaned into the older boy. “It’ll be all right,” he whispered down to her, though he didn’t really think it would be. He just wanted to go home.

“We’re going to church, Martha,” Mister Washington shouted. “It’s Sunday.”

“No one’s going to church, and it’s not Sunday. We don’t have that day anymore. You go on home, Martin, and maybe we can pretend none of this happened.”

“It is Sunday, whatever you want to call it instead, Martha. Now get out of the way. God is calling us to our real home.” Martin took a step forward, the whole group shifting a little as he did.

The Mayor passed the bullhorn back to White and drew off her gloves one after the other, revealing her dark hands with one gold ring on each. Those twisted bands of metal seemed to curve in ways George’s eyes couldn’t follow, clearly visible even from this distance.

“We don’t have to be afraid of her. The Lord is with us,” Mama said.

“Yes, Lou, Jesus is with us.” Uncle Jimmy, his voice shaking. “Oh, help me believe it, Lou. Help me.”

“Let’s sing,” Mama said, and then she raised her voice, just one voice for a moment and then they all started in, singing
We Shall Overcome
. George swallowed as they started, but he chimed in on the third line, “We shall overcome, some day.”

They started forward, Martin Washington again taking the first step and then rest of them pulled along by their shared hands. The song was echoing over the empty streets now.

The Mayor clasped her hands and bowed her head, as if in prayer. The four policemen stepped down and drew back their clubs, but didn’t come any closer than the lowest stair. And then the Mayor lifted up her head, frowning. She looked so sad, George thought.

A faint thrumming inserted itself into the music, a low bass kind of noise that disjointed everything. A few singers fell out, uncertain, and the chorus stumbled. Only Mama’s voice kept on full strength, an anchor for people to find their way to. They started back to the verse, coming together, drawing closer…

The air shimmered in front of the Mayor, on the sidewalk below the steps of the church, and then... something was there, something that caused the song to turn to shrieks and gasps, but only for an instant. One of the masters had come, and it was just like the old man said: they forgot. Time ceased to exist, their minds went away and hid. A cloud of darkness and confusion passed over George’s mind, but he thought, somewhere far off, he heard screaming and that something was hurting his hand.

George came to himself still standing, his lips still moving silently in the words of the song:
deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome.
There was silence about him for a moment as he opened his eyes, saw the clubs coming down on some of the marchers, and wood biting into flesh without making a sound. His hands were empty. His mother was down on the ground before him, blood on her cheek and her lips, writhing, but still singing, he thought. His other hand ached but—the girl, Monica, she was just gone. They had taken her, he knew. They liked little kids, the masters, everyone knew that.

Sound rolled back in, the crack of clubs on weak bodies, the screaming of humans battered and broken, and the song, still resounding on the street in fragments and pieces, in whispers and gasps.

George looked at the Mayor, drawing on her gloves with that look of deep sadness still in her eyes, and something else, something like fear, maybe. Her lips moved, and though she was ten yards off and he shouldn’t have been able to tell what she was saying, it was clear as day.

Go home, George.

He thought of Monica vanished, and of Mama down on the cracked pavement, on the frost, writhing and still singing. He dropped to his knees beside her, and took up her hand, and he opened his mouth to call out the words of the song with his mother.

“We are not afraid, we are not afraid.”

The Mayor shook her head, and George smiled around the words he sang, and then a club cracked into his head.