Matthew Tysz - The Last City of America

There was usually more to accompany the story Dr. Iris so hated. Barnabas would take his audience on a tour through his observations of the success in his teenage years, sports stars and actors in his twenties, corporate tycoons and Wall Street barons in his thirties and forties. Then there came a time when Barnabas grew just wise enough to realize that poor people could be happy too. Of course, he didn’t word it like that; it was only Iris’s interpretation. Barnabas called it a machine through which all men—the rich and the poor, admirers and the admired—pass blindly, accepting their place, doing as they are told in the shadow of society.

But today, thankfully, the story ended where it usually only began, with a few happy teenagers enjoying their summer.

Barnabas turned to his colleague with eyes Dr. Iris hated looking at. Bright, demonic eyes. “Do you know what happened to those teenagers when my Hephaestus raped the world?”

Iris uttered, “What?”

Eyes wide and focused, Barnabas shook his head slowly. “…They Grew old and died.”

“But the world is miserable now , Barney, we—”

“It wasn’t good enough!” Barnabas flipped a table filled with chemicals. Even at an age most people never saw, Barnabas was a strong man. “Teenagers across the globe spent their lives playing games and singing songs and fucking on the waterfront until they died smiling ! I never got the chance to make them suffer!” Another table went over.

“But Barney,” Iris knew how to calm his colleague down. “Do you remember Kansas City?”

Barnabas stopped as he was about to take a yardstick to some glassware. All the muscles on his face gave way at once. He lifted his eyes to the vaulted ceiling, sighed. “Kansas City… Oh God… Kansas City.”

Iris continued. “Do you remember how the government didn’t even bother to rescue them?”

“That should have been the world, Richard…”

“But it can be, Barney.”

“It’s too late !” Barnabas completed his task with the yardstick. “How could I have been so stupid ! Oh, to be able to just reset the whole God damn thing…”

“But you can, Barnabas,” said Iris. “Lift the virus. Let the population regrow. Let this event become nothing more than a bump in human history. Then things will get better.”

“Age will take me long before that happens. I need to find someone… someone who understands… someone who knows what it is to own them all.”

Iris had finally found a segue to a new topic. “Well, I’m not sure I’ve hit the mark as far as that goes, but I’ve recently enrolled a young student. Younger than we normally accept, yet there lies more potential in him than in any student twice his age.”

Barnabas dropped the yardstick and grunted. “Well, how old is he?”

“Fourteen.”

“What’s his name?”

Rush University was an elite school of medicine back before the Founding dragged the remnants of Old America to the Seven Cities. Today, Rush remained an institution that people gave everything to become a part of. It boasted a squadron of the most brilliant doctors in the world.

But its greatest feats were never boasted.

Ministrare per scientiam remained the university’s motto. Harold Del Meethia pondered it every night as he stood on Herb Tower, gazing at the sea of lights that captivated travelers for miles, lights that competed in an epic show with the full moon.

Chicago was a beautiful city.

Fortunately, most of the travelers knew what kind of place Chicago was.

Harold saw so much of himself in it. He could almost see his face reflected in the skyline. Willis Tower was flooded with light, the host no doubt dancing on its rooftop until the early hours of tomorrow.

The Chicago government was disorganized to laughs. Most dictatorships were. Most governments were. None of them really did survive the apocalypse, after all.

Harold thought harder as he gazed deeper into the city, hypnotized by the headlights dancing around the highest tower in the land.

At about this time, agents of the host were walking the streets, enforcing curfew, screaming obscenities through every open window for delight, the host dancing all the while high above them all. Some of these agents were collecting the children of citizens who failed to show up to their assigned rallies. It amazed Harold that there were parents who still made that mistake, even among so many. Their children—and there was always at least one—would march naked down the streets for hours starting midday.

God, but was that a beautiful skyline…

Part of the city’s beauty came from the Wall of the Host that encapsulated Chicago in a varying radius of up to three miles. On its own, the wall was nothing of appeal, but the lights were dazzling; blue beams shot from the metal husk to the stars every quarter-mile or so.

The wall had three great gates: the north gate at Kennedy Expressway, the west at Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway, and the south at Dan Ryan Expressway. Nobody went near them, neither from within nor outside the wall. Every city had a means of keeping the skytakers of the city proper separate from the shadowpastors; only Chicago had an actual wall. And only in Chicago were the shadowpastors happier to be where they were than the skytakers.

Harold took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. A soft breeze swept from below. He was suddenly bathed in the smell of a clean hospital. He breathed it in and let it out slowly. He needed that.

Barnabas would be dead before long, and Harold had promised him something big. Was he the man to deliver it in exactly the way Barnabas desired?

He could be. He had been. But at an early age, Harold decided not to live by a method he knew to be incorrect. Would it serve him better to be good, to author and abide by some moral code? Or would it be childish to let any of that get in the way of science? Why destroy the world? Why save it?

Barnabas was difficult to understand. But being hard to understand didn’t make him wrong.

Harold was born in Pittsburgh, where he lived until high school age. When a doctor was to be trained there, his or her lessons began at that age and with an exam. Of that exam, there was only one question.

Why do you wish to become a doctor?

There were only two choices.

A— To help my fellow man: the individual and the world.

B— Other.

Those who selected option B were usually sent to Chicago if they showed competence. Harold was one of these. “Other” is an easy answer. The problem was, Harold still did not know what his version of the word entailed. He knew he was smarter than most men, and he knew he worked hard to make it into Rush, where all the secrets of the world were kept. It was the one place in Chicago where people lived without fear of the host; things tend to become easier in an autocracy when you promise its leader eternal life. Harold was proud to be the heir to an institution where that promise was only half-empty.

He set his elbows on the railing.

Through it all, one thing was clear…

Chicago was as beautiful as it was ugly.

Indianapolis was an empty city, like all but seven others.

Its population that evening was one: a man in a brown leather jacket and a black scarf, cruising in a red convertible with the roof down and a grin on his face. The moon was so bright, he didn’t even need headlights.

He turned up the radio. His favorite song was on: static.

He came to a traffic light as he exited downtown on the intersection of Meridian and St. Clair. He was surrounded by a mall, a library, and what looked like an old church. In his mind, the light turned yellow, then red. He stopped. He looked around at the empty buildings and pothole-filled streets. The weeds rose high above the spider cracks. His grin sharpened.