Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

“I was nothing to you,” he said to her. “It would have been so much easier to let Grakus kill me.” He faced her. “It’s almost as if you had to look for a reason to trust me.”

She was still looking at the painting, but no longer into it. “You were born with the ability to disengage emotion when it gets in your way. You were raised by Barnabas Vulcum. Conditioned to kill when necessary. No one ever told you to care.” She turned to him. “I think you’re looking for reasons too.”

Harold turned away. Back to the mural. “Reasons are forced on me.”

“Would Vulcum have ever needed that excuse? Do you think he would ever feel the way you’re feeling now?”

“You don’t know what I’m feeling.”

Karen turned back to the mural as well. “Evil is welcomed when people are ignored. I think your friend Lord Velys would agree. That’s why I sought to help you. I wouldn’t have bothered if I felt you were anything like Barnabas or even my father.”

He wanted to face her again. He held his face and eyes on the painting, trying to concentrate on his periphery. To see what she might say or do next.

She cared. When she didn’t, she looked for reasons to. She looked for reasons to forgive the crimes anybody else would have slain him for. She looked for reasons to protect him against the most dangerous man in the world.

“Why did you turn down the governorship for so long?” The words just fell out.

She didn’t seem to react emotionally to the question, like she’d been expecting it somehow. “I always wanted to guide my people to a better future. I wanted to do it without giving up my humanity. I didn’t want my family to come apart. I wanted to be a mother. To love a man. To just be a woman. When I realized I had already given all of that away, I took the seat. So much work that nobody else wanted to do. I don’t even know if it was worth it.”

Once more, Harold turned to her. “Your father loved you.”

She turned to him. “And he loved you.”

He didn’t turn away this time. He waited for her to. She did not. The awkwardness didn’t bother him. He stood, enjoying this simple interaction, staring into the eyes of this powerful and good woman.

The front doors shifted as Julian opened them with his hip: a doggy bag in one hand, a tray of coffee in the other. He watched them as he passed silently into the assembly room.

“I guess the meeting’s back on,” said Harold.

Karen nodded.

The two left the mural, made their way together to the war room.

Farmers outside Chicago could hear a steady rumble. They looked to the sky to see where it was coming from. They saw nothing.

Below them, through the long-abandoned Unity Link, marched eighty thousand Chicago soldiers. All black, from the uniforms to the countless tons of hardware. This was the Chicago First Army. It flowed through the subway west. They would rise to the surface near Wichita, halving the time California had to find out the exact direction from which they were coming. The Chicago Second Army—the Tribes of Deseret—had fanned out across the land, impossible to keep track of until they reassembled. When and where that could have been was anybody’s guess.

But for now, that scattered band of unorganized madmen were all the West could see. Harold knew Grakus had something bigger prepared. Something unstoppable. And the West believed him. Francis and Julian had brought the Los Angeles army to the south-eastern border of California. Roger’s army was at the eastern border, hundreds of miles north. Harold was in between them. All had sent scouts to scan the lands for hundreds of miles into the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. The moment whatever Grakus had in store rose from the ground, the West would find them, and their armies would roll.

Parents and young children of Baltimore waved goodbye to nearly every soldier in the city. They were headed West to free a people half a century imprisoned by the hosts.

Adrian led his inspectors toward Pittsburgh. If this was all just a misunderstanding, it was fitting that he apologize to Skylord Larson in person. The invasion of Chicago, he left to his lady.

The Baltimore army was flanked by the mercenaries on one side and the rascals on the other. Angela was in a Hummer between two artillery cannons. They all drove very slowly on I-70. The armies marched across the wasted fields alongside them. They were still days away from Chicago, but Chicago was still days away from the West.

Chicago’s army rose on the third day, and after only an hour was discovered by the West headed toward Los Angeles. Roger and Harold both headed south.

Commander Schmidt was standing in a tower over his runways back in Eglin. He was sure they would win this war. It was after the war that scared him. He didn’t know what the future would bring for Eglin—if a new leader should take it, where that leader would bring it. How Eglin would tie into the progression of the world. Could he ever bring the dream of Tired Eyes to life?

On the morning of the seventh day, the city of Chicago was in sight of Angela’s army, and the army of Chicago was in sight of the West.

The ashes never seemed to clear up.

All of the suburbs were demolished for miles outside the city wall. The rubble lay like snowdrifts ten, sometimes twenty feet high. It would take days for Baltimore to cross it, all the while well in range of Chicago’s own defenses.

He stood on Herb Tower beneath an impenetrable blanket of cloud. It was thickest over the city, as though it all had come from some magical spot above his head. The sunset fought its way through a closing slit between the horizon and the clouds.

Scouts reported that the Baltimore army left their artillery at home to protect it from a ground attack. When the army had fallen into the host’s trap, his air force would roar en mass toward Baltimore.

There was no way this war could end well for humanity. Grakus made sure the conflict would touch every corner of the country. Except Chicago, of course. Chicago was the constant. Evagrius imagined there would be some sort of cleansing. It would be controlled. The broken would be replaced with the fresh—those ripe with the splendor of joyful hope. These would be the ones to show that, even at its best, humanity was unworthy of existence.

One of the host’s advisers came. “Baltimore is almost in position, general,” he said. “Shall we commence fire?”

Evagrius turned his attention from the skyline, looked behind him, past the adviser, to the west. “The sun is fighting for its life,” he said. “Let me watch it die on its own before our smoke fills the sky.”

“Yes, sir.”

Evagrius was never one to fill his lungs with a deep breath of fresh air. Such a feeling never interested him. His bliss came in watching. He looked at the city in front of him. The last city. The crutch for humanity to lean on. And then the crutch would break, and humanity would have nothing except the fate it had chosen for itself.

What a beautiful evening.

Chicago’s farms were empty. The harvest and the livestock were gathered, and a barren plain of upturned dirt lay for many miles outside the city.

They reached the rubble of the suburbs. They would have to scout to find paths through the mess before the tanks could enter. The army of Baltimore made camp along the edge of the rubble, hiding as best they could.

Then the artillery began.

Chicago had waited until Baltimore reached the rubble, even though their range stretched far into the plains. If Baltimore retreated now, they would be exposed in the plain and blown away. But they couldn’t move forward. The explosions were spread wide, clearly intended to scare them more than anything. They blew debris high into the air. Distant bursts rained splinters and pebbles of brick onto their tents.