Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

Bullets streamed from along the top of the wall toward the edge of the sea of ruined suburbia, and in turn from the rubble to the wall. Her army used rockets to take out the gun nests. The wall used rockets to pound away at everything below them. There was a lot more fire coming from the wall, and a lot less men up there hiding from the bullets down here.

The tanks were the biggest target. If she let them keep on firing, she could lose them all. If she pulled them back, she could lose the entire army in a fruitless gunfight.

The tanks kept firing.

The section of the wall in front of her focused its fire to flatten a house that hadn’t fully been destroyed. A handful of her men leaped from it as it collapsed.

The tanks ran out of ammo. They began to pull back.

Angela crawled to the side of her mound and peered briefly at the wall.

There was a hole. It was small, as she expected. And sloppy. It was enough to get the army through, but not before being whittled to a fraction by the enemies still flooding the wall. And soon, whatever forces were guarding the gates would be rushing to defend that breach.

“Tell us what to do, my lady,” her captain called to her.

Angela looked back at the wall. She took three shots at a sniper. She was sure she got him. Then she was back behind cover, and the sniper she killed, if she killed him, had been replaced by ten more.

The top of her mound exploded like a volcano. Rubble and dirt fell on them.

She looked to the sky. Yellow streaks of evening cut across the blackness. “I don’t know…” she said to herself. Then to the captain, “Tell the men to keep in cover! Low-risk shots only!”

It didn’t seem to make a difference. Every passing second brought at least one casualty. The reports overlapped. A hundred men were dying every minute.

Explosions came closer, like the battle was shrinking all around. Like there was no one else to kill but her. It grew louder. She couldn’t think, even if she had any plans left. She couldn’t tell if the men she sat shoulder-to-shoulder with were still alive. She didn’t know how she ever heard her radio that moment. On an emergency frequency, a voice came through to reach her.

“Lady Velys… come in, Lady Velys…”

Angela put the radio to her mouth. “Who is this?”

“Flight Commander Marko Moretti, Eglin Air Force Base. Lord Velys has given us your location. Clear the area—bombers en route to the wall.”

The radio returned to casualty reports. But those were slowing down. And so was the shooting. All the sound the battle once yielded was being replaced by a rumble. It grew to a roar. All combatants stopped and looked at the sky. Men on the wall started to run.

Melanie was beautiful when she was young. Even at eighty, she had a grace unmatched by women of any generation. And in her age, she held a respect among her people unmatched by any man.

She was the single mother of three boys and a girl. All were less than ten when a man made a promise to her. He said he would make her life better. That man was the first host of Chicago. The city went dark as he deceived her and everyone around her. He died powerful, and gave power to his son. At least the second host was honest; you can’t break promises you never made. Finally, the third host: different than the other two, but no better for the people. That host, Melanie believed, would be the last.

She walked the empty streets, approached the wall. She saw the soldiers running. She heard the great army outside.

When Melanie was a little girl, she remembered having snacks with her sisters and parents after dinner. That was how important togetherness was to her family—that even snacks could only be enjoyed in one another’s company.

Having been so young, she thought this was the norm, that togetherness meant everything to everybody. She tried to push it on her children. But she couldn’t make them understand why. The world she was trying to build for them at home was too alien from the one they knew everyday—the one the hosts had built for them.

Although there was no father in their lives, no husband in Melanie’s, she felt as though there were—one who never allowed her to teach her children what love was.

When the city finally made it too difficult to be a mother, to be a child, Melanie’s children left her at an early age to start families of their own, falling in line with the other desolate faces of a godless world. It broke her heart over time, through so many lonely birthday celebrations, until all her hair had gone white.

But what it took her all those years to realize was that no mother, single or with husband, had kept her children as long as she had. Her grandchildren could run when their peers were still crawling, could read and write when those much older hadn’t even memorized the alphabet. They made each other smile, even if for a short time in their lives. They had those memories to hold through everything the city put them through. And so did their parents. And all of it came from their grandmother.

Those who knew this about Melanie, and many did, loved her for it. Even those who never met her, who never saw her face. Silently, she inspired mothers and fathers across the city, encouraged those able to have children to have them, those who found themselves accidentally pregnant to carry through, and those who found parenthood impossible to keep trying. Melanie’s legend saved more lives than she would ever know.

They were all children, the people of Chicago: all of them abused by the same father, the same husband. So many of these people would never know what it meant to make a discovery, make a work of art, make love. They could not express themselves, even so much as to cry to the world for help. To turn to God. To look inside themselves.

Melanie stood before the vacant wall as the fury of the army outside shook the street beneath her.

So what was it to be? Were they here to free her children? Control them? Destroy them? Was there a better future for these sons and daughters of Chicago, or worse?

Jets soared over the wall. Over her. The wall exploded.

She was deafened by the sound. All she could see was light. The fire came forward and took her.

His men spent the night and most of the next day searching Skylord Larson’s home. Soldiers lifted every dresser in the villa, opened every drawer; technicians scrolled through towers of data, recovering deleted files.

It was the train station Adrian really wanted to see. But that part had to wait. Apparently, a shipment of Manhattanite refugees was arriving to take residence in Pittsburgh.

“Soldiers of Baltimore isn’t the recommended welcome, wouldn’t you agree, my lord?”

At first, it seemed obvious that Larson was stalling for time to have the station cleaned. But nobody came to clean it. Adrian and his men kept their eyes on the courtyard, often passing one of the many windows overlooking it. It remained empty through the night. Whatever the true reason, the delay had given Adrian time to contact Eglin and make sure they were helping his wife.

He also had spoken with his father in-law that night, who gave him the news that Chicago had destroyed Baltimore. But Aden was quick to add that most had survived, and were on their way to a new beginning. Adrian was relieved to hear it, and looked forward to reuniting with his family and his people as soon as this matter in Pittsburgh was resolved.

In the afternoon, Larson came to Adrian. “The train has been delayed, my lord. We’ve decided to give our Manhattan relief efforts a little more time there.”

“Good,” Adrian tried to hide his interest in the subject. He gathered his men in that small station in the courtyard of the villa.