David Dunwoody - Empire's End

Adam grabbed the cane and snapped it in two inside his body. Eviscerato grunted. Adam plowed his feet into the rotter’s teeth.

The Petrified Man grabbed Adam’s head and jerked him straight up, bringing him back down on a sharp knee, driving a spur of bone deep into his back.

Adam was pounded into the floor. The Petrified Man stood on the back of his head and started grinding his face down. And somewhere, Lily was still screaming.

He cried out her name. His head was going to be pulped any second, the Petrified Man digging his heel into the base of it.

Then the pressure eased off. The zombie stepped back. Adam was able, painfully, to turn his head ninety degrees and look up. And he saw the Petrified Man standing there, a dull stare on its face, the point of the scythe protruding from its groin.

Lily released the blade and stumbled back. The zombie turned toward her, stiffly, hands grasping at the blade in the small of its back. Then it teetered and came down like a redwood.

Eviscerato spread his arms and roared. He ran at the girl.

Adam caught his ankle and brought him crashing down. Adam leapt onto the King of the Dead’s back and locked his arms like a vise around the rotter’s neck.

He pressed his lips to the hollow of Eviscerato’s ear. “Never again,” he growled. And he wrenched with all his might.

The zombie’s spitting head separated from his shoulders, and a geyser of foul waste spewed forth from the stump of his neck. His eyes turned white and lolled in his skull, and his mouth dropped open, as if to utter final words. But there were none. He would die, this time, without ceremony.

Adam stood, clutching the head, and gripped it in both hands. He stared into Eviscerato’s hateful face. “Never again.”

And he knelt over the Petrified Man’s corpse and staked the head on the end of the scythe. A grating howl sounded as whatever was inside of the King took leave of his corrupt crown.

Adam fell on his back. Lily threw herself on him. “No!”

“I’m all right,” he whispered. “I just need… a moment…”

A pillar of flame passed through the entrance and into the station. Lily shook Adam. “Get up! Hurry!”

Adam rolled over onto his elbows and saw the Omega shuffling toward them, reduced nearly to a skeleton by the fire covering it but still coming, the rage of a thousand million forcing its withered limbs to move.

Adam rose, clutching Lily to his breast.

The Omega stopped a few yards from them. Its head rolled uncertainly on a brittle neck, and a cry of despair emanated from the center of the thing — a thousand million wicked souls consumed by their cosmic failure.

The Omega exploded.

Adam covered Lily in his cloak and closed his eyes to the hail of burning bones. They rained over him, tinkling on the floor; then it was over.

He hustled her out of the station and into the street. Neither saying a word, they made their way back to the Hummer.

Adam opened the back door, and Lily cradled Voorhees’ head. “We can go now,” she said.

“Are they all dead?” he rasped.

“Those that aren’t soon will be,” Adam said.

“The people? All the people?”

Adam didn’t answer.

“Rome is ash, then.” Voorhees’ words whistled through bloody teeth.

Adam didn’t reply to that either. Something more pressing had suddenly dawned on him.

He was supposed to appoint a replacement, wasn’t he? A new sentinel, to keep the order. That the thought hadn’t crossed his mind until now told him what he needed to do. He looked at the detective — what was left of him. This world had worn Voorhees down, reduced him to a shade. There was nothing more he could do while bound to this coil.

Adam placed his hand on Voorhees’ shoulder. “I have an offer for you. A job, if you’re interested.”

Voorhees shook his head. “I think I’d rather just die, friend.”

A tiny cloud of breath escaped the cop’s pale lips. Then no more.

“But…” Adam shook his head. “You were the one. I chose you.”

Lily hugged his back. “I chose you ,” she said softly.

He turned to her. “What?”

She was glowing.

A soft aura — like a cloak of white — covered her figure. She smiled up at him, then looked down at her hands in wonder.

“You?” Adam stammered. “But you’re — you’re— a child. ”

“You were too, once,” Lily said. And it all came back to him.

A kingdom in the east… he a young boy, working in his grandfather’s fields. He’d seen her there, the woman in white, and had known she was Death. Terrified at first, he’d told his grandfather and fled to the city. And that was where she awaited him.

And she’d told him, and made him understand why it was him, and he now knew what it was that had stirred deep in his soul, had made him restless all throughout his young life. Now he knew why he stared every night at the stars. They had beckoned, as she had; no longer afraid, he had taken her hands in his and accepted.

“A child,” Adam whispered. Lily took his hands in hers.

“I’ll always be here,” she said, “whenever you need me. Just call me.”

“ Lilith, ” he breathed. She nodded with a smile.

He knew she wouldn’t remember. Not at first. Perhaps later, with the passing of these strange aeons, they would find each other again, and he would tell her the story — her story.

Then she stepped through him, through space, and went to the place from whence he’d come.

Gaylen crumbled to the earth.

As dawn broke, Jeff Cullen breathed in the cloying scent of death and coughed loudly. Perched in the back of a Jeep, he called to the nearest soldier on the city perimeter. “How long do you suppose we need to stay out here?”

“You can go anytime you want,” the soldier muttered. “Your job’s done.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Cullen snapped. “May I remind you that I am—”

He was grabbed from behind and thrown to the ground. The tip of a blade carved from bone pressed into his throat.

A charred man in soot-stained robes knelt over the senator. “You did this?”

Cullen started to scream and felt the point of the blade bite into his flesh. “Oh God. Lower your weapons!” he called to the soldiers around him. “Stay back! Lower your weapons!” But not a single one of them had raised his or her gun anyway.

“How many people did you kill today?” Adam snarled.

“I — we had to do it! We did it for the other cities! My job is to serve the greater good! That’s what I did!”

Adam came close enough for Cullen to smell his burnt flesh. He turned the blade as if readying to strike. Cullen’s rhetoric broke down into senseless babble.

“Resign your post,” Adam rasped. “No more. Never again.”

The senator nodded quickly. “Yes. Yes! Of course I will. I should. I’m sorry, so sorry…

Adam rose and was gone.

Soldiers looked down at Cullen with contempt. Surely they didn’t take what he’d said seriously, about resigning… but they were walking away from him now, and ignoring his pitiful cries.

Others glanced around in confusion at the man in white’s departure. One pointed toward the horizon.

The man in white sat on a pale horse. He raised his scythe into the air, a salute — then rode out of sight.

There was much work to be done.

The air was musty and stale, choking Ryland with every ragged breath. Seated on a rickety old chair before a table coated with dust, he imagined he was in the waiting room of a mausoleum. He’d been here two hours. Seemed the Reaper was overbooked today.