Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

He stood on the track in the center. Two tunnels stood on one side, one on the other. All were dark and silent. There was no soot in the one that led to Chicago, nor was there the smell of a train. There were no records of anything leaving Pittsburgh for Chicago. Was it conclusive? No. But what was left to check?

“Okay…” Adrian sighed. “It looks like we’re done here. I’ll apologize to Larson and we’ll all go home.”

“Best make it public, my lord.” his adviser suggested.

The men turned at his command, started back up the stairs to the platform. Their feet rumbled rhythmically against the metal. It almost sounded like a locomotive.

“Stop!” Adrian called from the top of the stairs. His men obeyed. But the sound didn’t stop. He turned. It was coming from the tunnel marked ‘Chicago.’”

Adrian shuffled past his men up the stairs, keeping his eyes on the tunnel, the sound rising. He stepped onto the platform, walked to the edge.

A massive, smoking pillar of steel rolled from the tunnel. Clouds filled the courtyard. The sky disappeared. The courtyard disappeared. There was silence as the train came to a stop. The smoke dispersed. And there it sat.

Adrian’s men raised their guns. He looked around. Skylord Larson had been with them, but was gone now. Adrian turned to the first cargo hold. He tried to slide it open. “Somebody come pop this lock.”

The lock was shot, and the door was opened. The car seemed empty, but it was too dark to know for sure.

“It looks ready for a new shipment,” said Adrian’s adviser, who had followed him into the car. “I’m sure Larson’s long gone by now.”

Adrian nodded. “I’ll find him. In the meantime, make sure this train stays here.”

His adviser hesitated. “Do you hear that, sir?”

Adrian did. It came from the end of the car, where no one could see. It was muttering. Even as it grew louder, he couldn’t make it out. It was foreign. Maybe tribal.

“Sunt non unum sed multa… Sunt non unum sed multa…”

Both men turned. Five talons punched through the adviser’s back. A beastly, hog-headed figure stood from the shadows and lifted him like steak on a fork, flung him against the wall. It stepped toward Adrian. Adrian fired, evading. He tripped on the way out. The beast stood over him. All the men outside fired at it. It recoiled as Adrian crawled beneath the line of fire. The beast drew back into the darkness of the car. Silence again.

Adrian stood. “Did you kill it?”

“We must have, sir,” a sergeant called back.

“Get a grenade in there,” said Adrian.

One of the men came forward, shouted a warning as the small bomb left his hand and flew into the car. They waited.

Nothing.

A brutal shriek echoed from the tunnel, where half the train remained. It startled the men, who kept their guns high in all directions.

One of the cars burst at the top, splinters raining back down. Two beasts crawled onto the roof. Another burst, then another. They sprung from the train, into the windows of the villa all around them.

Some of the beasts stayed. They hurled their massive bodies onto the platform, screaming.

Adrian’s men scattered, firing.

A beast grabbed one of Adrian’s men by the ankle, hurled him at a squad across the platform.

Adrian ran back into the villa, where his men had retreated to shooting through the windows.

One of the hog-heads burst through the glass, injured. The men inside finished it off with what remained in their clips. The beast lay dead, and the men kept firing into the courtyard.

Adrian approached the corpse. The beast had been shot in every part of its body. But the blood came mostly from its waist. He pointed this out to the men around him, then screamed it into his radio until his throat went sore.

He ran into one of the lavish halls with red carpeting. He knew his way around by now. Larson’s office was close. If the hog-heads were protecting him, he might still be there. Even if he wasn’t, Adrian wanted the city intercom. He had no idea what he was going to say to the people. At the very least, a warning.

He turned a corner into another hall. On the end, another hog-head. Badly injured, but still on its feet. It revealed in its hand the grenade that never went off. It wound for a throw. Adrian shot it in the waist. The beast recoiled, dropping the grenade. The grenade exploded. The beast fell.

Adrian sprinted past the carcass and found the door to Larson’s office, threw his body against it and the door flung open.

Larson’s ass was in his chair. But his head was in the hand of yet another hog-head. It tossed the head to the floor in front of Adrian.

“He thought this trap was for you,” it said. “The people of Pittsburgh are scattering into the country, where they will be gathered to build the City of Man.”

Adrian aimed. “Not if I gather them first.”

The hog-head leaped onto the desk and sprung forward. Adrian fired at its waist, dodging the pounce, kept firing. The hog-head staggered to the wall, dropped to its knees.

Adrian walked to Larson’s desk, kicked aside the chair filled with the skylord’s headless body. He put his hand on the phone, shot the hog-head five more times. It slumped on its side. Adrian picked up the phone.

“Citizens of Pittsburgh. We can protect you. Leave the city through Penn Lincoln Parkway. We will be there. We’ll keep you safe from these things. Please come as soon as you can.”

Adrian repeated the location and left the office. There was no shooting anymore, but he was in no less of a hurry. He gathered his men, who were prepared for another attack.

“The mansion’s empty,” said Adrian. “We have to go—let’s move!”

Most of the men survived the hog-heads. They loaded the trucks they had arrived in, and sped to Penn Lincoln Parkway. They stopped less than a mile outside the city.

As they fortified their position, they smelled fire. Then they saw smoke. Then they saw flames.

People showed up, but not nearly as many as Adrian hoped or expected. Not many at all. And of them, few sought shelter in Adrian’s protection. They just kept running.

Adrian expected his encampment would become a target to the hog-heads. Not one showed up, even when the sun began to set. In that time, five thousand people gathered, and the sunset was blocked by smoke.

The skylord of Baltimore revealed who he was to the people. He told them that his city had suffered a similar fate at the hands of the same man.

“But there is a place for us not far from Baltimore,” he told them. “We’ll wait here a while longer until your families and friends have joined us. Then we’ll leave this place.”

They had more than enough time to assemble. There was no one left at the wall to fire at them. In that mile-long stretch, there was no more wall. Just a smoking trail of metal. Eglin’s air force circled over the city, suppressing any defense the host had left. She was elated to see how many men were still alive.

Angela called a Humvee over to her, ordered the driver to plow over the remnants of the wall, and her army to follow.

The soldiers of Baltimore and mercenaries from across America flowed into the city. Chicago gunmen fired from windows. Rockets and machine guns fired back. Snipers poked at their ranks from the rooftops. Baltimore started occupying the buildings, throwing the garrison out through the windows.

Angela, whose truck was backed by several others, sped through the streets of Chicago.

She spent a lot of time before the battle thinking about where Grakus might be. With Willis tower destroyed, there was a host of places he could be hiding. But Angela hadn’t spent a sleepless night thinking about a host—she spent it thinking about Grakus, who would have chosen a place no one would expect. A place already renovated with good communication and supplies. A place where he could be close to Harold.