David Simpson - Post-Human Trilogy

Lieutenant Patrick entered the room, short of breath, with Alejandra close behind and equally winded after their double-time trip across the complex. “What the hell happened?”

The young guard who’d been incapacitated by Thel stepped forward immediately and eagerly like a younger sibling, happy that an authoritarian parent had returned to dole out justice. “I’m sorry, sir. One of them attacked me and escaped.”

“ Attacked you?” Old-timer exclaimed. “That’s rather dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Stay out of this, calculator-head!” the young guard shot back, his voice filled with vitriol.

The lieutenant was silent for a moment, his jaw tight as he glared at each man, frustrated that he could not even sleep without the situation seemingly going to hell. “Private,” the lieutenant, began, addressing the young guard, “you’re dismissed.”

“But Lieutenant, I—”

“Dismissed!” the lieutenant repeated through clenched teeth.

The young guard caught his tongue before replying, held his breath, glared at Old-timer, and left the room.

When the door clicked shut, the lieutenant swore and grunted in frustration, balling his hands into tight fists and resisting the urge to punch the wall. “When the general hears about this…”

Old-timer and the others remained quiet as the lieutenant paced back and forth over the concrete floor, breathing heavily like an angry bull in a pen. He turned the situation over in his mind, putting his hand on the back of his neck and pulling at it with a purpose. He quickly turned to Old-timer. “You promised me I could trust you.”

“You can trust us,” Old-timer assured him.

“What? How can you possibly say that? You attacked one of my men!” the lieutenant replied indignantly.

“I didn’t attack anyone,” Old-timer answered back.

“Let’s not play with semantics!”

“That was a one-time thing, Lieutenant. Thel and James have a special connection. She should have been allowed to stay with him. It was unnecessary to keep us all trapped here together so one of us would have to escape .”

“That’s easy for you to say! You’re not the chickens in the henhouse with five foxes wandering around!”

The lieutenant’s metaphor fell to the floor like a mid-April snowfall, perplexing and ugly.

“He means your powers make us all vulnerable,” Alejandra intervened. “The people who know you are here are terrified. Thel’s march through the complex guarantees that everyone will know you are here now, spreading the terror farther,” she explained.

“I understand,” Old-timer replied, “and this won’t happen again. I promise you, our abilities are nothing to fear. We would never use them against you. We will only protect you.”

Old-timer’s words seemed to catch in the lieutenant’s mind like a splinter, and he paused a moment, mulling something over as he began to pace again, this time much more plaintively. “Protect us, eh?” he said to the three outsiders. “Okay. Okay. So you don’t want to be penned in a room—you don’t want to hurt us? Prove it. Protect us. I’m placing you on recon duty with Alejandra, starting now.”

“What?” Rich asked, seemingly choking on the saliva in his newly moist mouth while Alejandra smiled faintly.

“You will work three-hour shifts in a rotation. You’ll be paired with one of my men.”

“Hey, hold it, bud. We’re not in your army,” Rich replied.

“We don’t take orders from you,” Djanet echoed.

“You said you want to help. You want to protect us? Then start doing it. You can cover a larger perimeter than any of us can, and you can protect my people if there is anything hostile out there.”

“You’ve lost your mind. If you think we’re gonna—” Rich began before Old-timer stepped in.

“No, he’s right.”

“You have to be kidding me!” Rich replied, after sharing the shock with Djanet in exchanged expressions of dismay.

“They saved James. They saved us too. We owe them. It’s time to earn our keep.”

“Oh, man,” Rich sighed as he turned away, kicking the dust up from the concrete floor on his way back to his cot.

“Okay. I’m ready,” Old-timer announced to the lieutenant before exiting with Alejandra.

Old-timer took a moment to survey the sludgy moonscape in the wake of the end of civilization. He turned his head 180 degrees to absorb the miserable panorama. The colossal cloud of black destruction still hung heavily like a rotting body over the region and gave no sign of abating. The sun bled orange somewhere behind the black curtain, but its rays couldn’t penetrate. “What is our objective?” Old-timer asked Alejandra.

“We’re here to report if we see anything—anything at all.”

“That sounds like it might be a little boring.”

“It wasn’t last night,” Alejandra replied with a slight smile. She hoisted her rifle over her shoulder and set out to climb a nearby hill.

Old-timer trudged over the unnatural surface, following close behind her for a few minutes in silence, before stopping altogether. “This air…is hard to breathe,” he commented.

“Just take it easy, or you might get sick. Let me know if you get tired.” Alejandra turned and began deftly stepping up the hill again.

Old-timer watched her as she walked, deer-like, and thought to himself, Should I? “Oh what the hell?” he said under his breath before lifting off and flying to catch up to Alejandra. “I’ve got a better idea,” Old-timer said as he expanded his magnetic field so it caught Alejandra like a web and carried her off the ground.

“Oh my God!” She gasped as he gained altitude and let her float under him.

He didn’t physically touch her; rather, he allowed her to glide by herself over the grayish terrain.

“It’s like I’m flying.”

“Not quite. It’s too bad you can’t control it. The feeling of freedom is incredible,” Old-timer said gently.

“What do you mean?” Alejandra rolled onto her back, wearing a smile, relaxing on her cushion of magnetic energy. “I can just point!” She rolled back onto her stomach and pointed to the left.

Old-timer veered to the left until she retracted her finger. She pointed to the right, and he steered to her whim over a rocky stretch at the foot of a large embankment. Alejandra guided him towards it, finding a fissure that opened into a small cavern. “I could never have seen this any other way—a new perspective,” she said.

Old-timer smiled for a moment, but then he remembered. He should not be feeling so —electric . She was an empath—she would feel it too.

“No, no, please don’t do that, Craig. Don’t let your doubts get in the way.”

“I can’t help it,” he replied. Before he knew what was happening, he saw Alejandra gesticulating wildly; he had taken his eye off of her for a moment, perhaps out of shame, and missed her directions.

“Craig!” she finally shouted before they bounced off the far wall of the cavern and ricocheted down to the ground. Alejandra was thrown against Old-timer, and he held her in his arms as he disengaged his cocoon.

“You’re a terrible driver,” she said to him.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “Are you going to let me go?” she asked, smiling again. It was as if the smile controlled him. He shook his head slightly and released her from his arms. Alejandra turned to another fissure in the cavern and looked at the obscured sun as it tried to burn through the blackness. “It’s an amazing color, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Old-timer agreed. He looked at the bloodied orb and watched the black smoke as it rolled and wafted with a putrid thickness. For a moment, the smoke seemed to form a mask across the eyes of the sun, as though the orb were a thief.