Terry Brooks - Running With The Demon

But he will not die tonight, he thinks. He carries in his hands the gleaming, rune–carved staff of magic that the Lady gave him all those years ago, wielding it as Arthur would Excalibur, believing there are no numbers great enough to stand against him or weapons strong enough to destroy him or evil dark enough to expunge the light of his magic. It is the legacy of his failure, the talisman bequeathed to him when nothing remained but the battle itself. He will fight on because fighting is all that is left. He is strong, pure, and fixed of purpose. He is a knight–errant adrift on a quest of his own making. He is Don Quixote tilting at windmills with no hope of finding peace.

He slows now to a walk, close enough to the pens to be able to see the smoky light of the torches that illuminate the compound. He has never been here before, but he knows what he will find. He has seen others of the same sort in other cities. They are all the same–makeshift enclosures into which humans have been herded and shut away. Men, women, and children run to ground and enslaved, there to be separated and processed, to be designated for a purpose, to be used and debilitated and ultimately destroyed. It is the way the world is now, the way it has been for more than seven years. All of the cities of America are either armed camps or ruins. Nuclear missiles and poison gas and defoliant were used early, when there were still governments and armies to wield them. Then the missiles and gas and defoliant were discarded in favor of more personal, rudimentary weapons as the governments and armies disintegrated and the level of savagery rose. Washington was obliterated. New York City tore itself apart. Atlanta, Houston, and Denver built walls and stockpiled weapons and began systematically to annihilate anyone who came close. Los Angeles and Chicago became killing grounds for the demons and their followers. Sides were chosen and battles fought at every turn. Reason gave way to bloodlust and was lost.

There are places somewhere, the Knight has heard, where the madness is still held at bay, but he has not found them. Some are in other countries, but he does not know where. Technology is fragmented and does not function in a dependable manner. Airplanes no longer fly, ships no longer sail, and trains no longer run. Knowledge dissipates with the passing of every day and the death of every man. The Void has no interest in technology because technology furthers progress. The demons multiply, and their purpose now is to break down what remains of human reason and to put an end to any resistance. Little stands in their way. The madness that marked the beginning of the end continues to grow.

But the Knight fights on, a solitary champion for the Word, shackled to his fate as punishment for his failure to prevent the madness from taking hold when he still had a chance to do so. He goes from city to city, from armed camp to armed camp, freeing those poor creatures imprisoned by the slave pens, hoping that some few will manage to escape to a better place, that one or two will somehow make a difference in the terrible battle being fought. He has no specific expectations. Hope of any sort is a luxury he cannot afford. He must carry on because he has pledged to do so. There is nothing else left for him. There is nothing else that matters.

John Ross slows to a steady walk, holding the staff crosswise before him with both hands. He remembers what it was like when the staff was his walking stick and gave support against his limp. But his dreams have ended and his future has become his present. Tomorrow's madness has become today's. The limp has disappeared, and he is transformed. The staff is now his sword and shield; he is infused with its power and made strong. The magic he had feared to use before is now used freely. It is a measure of his service that there are no longer any constraints placed on him, but it is also a mark of his failure.

Ahead, the torchlight grows brighter. The tools of living have become rudimentary once more. There is no electricity to power streetlamps, no fuel for turbines or generators, almost no coal or oil left to burn. There is no running water. There is no sewage or garbage disposal. There are few automobiles that run and few roads that will support them. The concrete of the streets is cracked and broken. Patches of grass and scrub push through. The earth slowly reclaims its own.

He slides to one side to keep within the shadows. He is not afraid, but there is an advantage- in surprise. The feeders peering out at him draw back, wary. They sense that he can see them when most others cannot–even those who have fallen victim to the madness and serve the demons, even those the feeders rely upon to sustain them. Their numbers are huge now, grown so vast that there is not a darkened corner anywhere in which they do not lurk. They have bred in a frenzy as the mad-, ness consumed mankind, but of late their breeding has slowed. Some will begin to disappear soon, for the dwindling population of humans cannot continue to support them. With the passage of time the balance will shift back again, and the world will begin anew. But it is too late for civilization. Civilization is finished. Men are diminished, reduced to the level of animals. Rebirth, when it comes, will be a crapshoot.

He wonders momentarily how bad it is elsewhere in the world. He does not know for certain. He has heard it is not good, that what began in America spread more quickly elsewhere, that what took seed slowly here finds more fertile soil abroad. He believes that every country is under assault and that most are overrun. He believes that the destruction is widespread. He has not been visited by the Lady in a long time. He has seen no evidence that she still exists. He has heard nothing from the Word.

He approaches the pens now, a sprawling maze of wire mesh fences and gates behind which the humans are imprisoned. Torches smoke and blaze on tall stanchions, revealing the extent of the misery visited on the captives. Men, women, and children, all ages, races, and creeds–they have been flushed from their hiding places in the surrounding countryside, rounded up and herded like cattle into the pens, squeezed together with no thought for their comfort or their needs, provided with just enough of what they require to remain alive. They are used for work and breeding until they are no longer strong enough, and then they are exterminated. Their keepers are once–men, humans who have succumbed to the madness that the demons foster everywhere, the madness that was before isolated and is now rampant. Once it was accepted that all men were created equal, but that is no longer so. Humanity has evolved into two separate and distinct life–forms, strong and weak, hunter and hunted. The Void holds sway; the Word lies dormant. The once–men have given way completely to their darker impulses and now think only to survive, even at the cost of the lives of their fellow men, even at the peril of their souls. Given time, some few will evolve to become demons themselves. The feeders dine upon their victims, finding sustenance in the commission of atrocities so terrible that it is difficult even to contemplate them. It must have been like this in the concentration camps of old. But John Ross cannot imagine it.

He is close enough now that he can see the faces of the captives. They peer out at him from behind the wire, their eyes dull and empty. They are naked mostly, thrust up against the wire by those who push from behind, waiting for the night to end and the day to begin, waiting without hope or reason or purpose. They mewl and they cry and they curl up in fear. They scratch themselves endlessly. He can hardly bear to look on them, but he forces himself to do so, for they are the legacy of his failure. Once–men stand armed and ready in watchtowers all about the compound, holding automatic weapons. Weapons are still plentiful in this post–apocalyptic world, a paradox. Sentries patrol the perimeter of the compound. John Ross has come up on them so quickly that they are just now realizing he is there. Some turn to look, some swing their weapons about menacingly. But he is only one man, alone and unarmed. They are not alarmed. They are no better now at recognizing what will destroy them than they were when the first of the demons came among them all those years ago.