Max smiled at Stewart and looked into her eyes, searching his mind for words to express what he was feeling. In the end he merely nodded politely, unable to find what he needed to say. Stewart returned his nod and said, "Don't worry Max, I know. You've been a good partner. I love you too."
The group fighting Sentry had a brief moment of clarity, of knowing that they had fought when called upon and somehow understanding at the last second that the fight was over and they had won.
Ruben's bomb exploded.
There were two waves to the bomb that those in the fight noticed immediately. The first was a blast that virtually destroyed every atom of material that it came into contact with, including the physical beings of those fighting in the warehouse. The combatants were not destroyed on a spiritual plane and the fight continued at another level even as the explosion destroyed their surroundings.
The second wave created by the blast sucked material into the point of the explosion to fill the vacuum of the first wave. Unlike the airburst in Denver, this bomb created a crater, reshaping the coastline into a new harbor that was a quarter mile deep. At the edges of the explosion there was an eerily clear demarcation where the force of the bomb ended. This edge lasted for the merest of seconds before being eroded away as air swept into the void left by the explosion.
Chapter 44 — Ruben
When the apocalypse started trash service ended. For Sentry the trash creation didn't stop and the alley behind the warehouse was piled so high with rubbish, including the bodies of his failed experiments and other humans. The last body had been placed there more than two months before, so the smell was almost tolerable when Ruben opted to hide the bomb among the rubbish. His angelic voices hadn't given him any instruction on where to place it, he was getting the sense, more and more, that the advice they were giving was not with an eye towards the future, but with the best information available at the present.
He had heard nothing after getting to the clinic, and it was only with much grousing that he was able to convince them to get him to his friends. Once he gave them a new task the angels seemed to get on board with it quickly, leading him to Bill and the others, but also advising him of the terrible danger he was in. Carrying Bill out was much easier than Ruben had imagined, 'I suppose when you are running for your life everything seems easier.'
The angels told him to dodge into a sturdy looking hotel lobby and guided him to an inner office, he had just closed the door in the pitch black room when the bomb detonated, shaking dust loose from around him. Ruben took out a flashlight and made sure the walls weren't ready to collapse. There were no cracks and the ceiling looked sound, so Ruben angled a chair in front of the door and sat down in it. Bill was unconscious on the desk in front of him. The man had been convulsing as Ruben carried him, and then became unduly hot, now he just looked like he was unconscious.
Ruben dozed off and didn't wake up until Bill shook him awake. The old man's hand reached for the gun on his hip and automatically pulled out his knife when he discovered his pistol was missing. 'I ditched my pistol in the car. Old habits die hard.' Bill was staring at him intently. There was a light sitting on the desk where Ruben had put Bill when they came in. 'The man does not look happy.'
"You left him." Bill stated.
Ruben nodded, there was no use denying it. Bill didn't seem angry; instead he seemed unreadable, cold, as if made of stone. With a barked sob Bill turned and smashed both hands down on the heavy desk behind him. The light went flying and pieces of the desk went bounced throughout the office, embedding themselves in the walls. The light hit the floor and rocked back and forth until it lay pointing in Ruben's direction.
Bill walked to the metal filing cabinet and took more of his grief out on it, battering it into a small lump of metal with his bare hands. He left bloody streaks on the cabinet as it was crushed and his flesh parted from hitting the jagged tears his pounding created. When the cabinet was but a small, round lump he knocked a set of shelving off of the wall, breaking them with such ease that Ruben couldn't help but laugh. This got Bill's attention and he whirled on the older man.
"Why did you leave him? It should have been me!"
Ruben shrugged, "He told me to take you and go."
"He was my best friend!"
"I gathered that. How are your hands?"
Bill held his fists up in front of him, the blood was still wet, but he wasn't bleeding anymore. With one hand he wiped the other off, revealing whole flesh that appeared never to have been damaged.
"They're fine." Bill sighed and kicked through the debris to another office chair. "What are we going to do, Ruben?"
"I have a car. We can take it and go."
Bill leaned forward and put his head on his hands, "I can't go back. Not without Max. How will I look his kids in the eye?"
"You love them like you loved Max, you raise them and someday you tell them what happened."
"I don't even know what happened." Bill muttered.
Ruben let him sit brooding for a few minutes, then stood and kicked the chair he had been sitting in away from the door.
"What are you doing?" Bill asked.
"Me? Nothing. We, however, are leaving."
Ruben stepped outside and examined the building, it still looked sound, but the windows had all been blown out. Moving into the street he found the entire area was a rubble strewn mess. The facings of most of the buildings had been torn off, littering the streets with chunks of brick and slivers of glass. Without a word Ruben set off towards the house where he had left the car. Bill followed, looking, hoping, they would run into something to kill.
The streets were empty. It was still raining, but the downpour had ended. Ruben and Bill trudged through the wet until they arrived at a yellow house across from a big box store. Bill followed Ruben inside, where the old man made a beeline for the garage. There was a hybrid car sitting in the space closest to the door to the house. Ruben struggled to get the garage door up and then gestured at Bill to get into the vehicle.
"Where are we going?"
"I want to check the crash. See if Javier is dead or just, you know, all stiff again."
"Right. Okay, then what?"
"Then? I don't really know Bill, let's get to Javier and figure out what to do from there."
It wasn't a long drive. Ruben pulled onto the highway and drove at a sedate pace to the west. At every overpass he slowed down to a crawl until he was the road was still sound. When they found where the highway had been knocked out, Ruben took the long, broad ramp down to the street level where the crumpled ruins of the patrol cars sat.
Bill and Ruben got out of the car and approached the body of Javier, which was where the zombies had left it. Something was nagging Bill, he approached the body suspiciously, looking around and eyeing Ruben.
"You bailed out of the car. Did you stick around to see them shoot Javier?"
"No."
"Okay, so how…"
"No. I don't feel much like going into this right now. Not here, not with all these people. Check him."
"All what people?" Bill asked.
Ruben gestured at the body and turned to face the trunk of the closest patrol car. He stared at the empty space.
"He's all hard again, Ruben. I think that means he will make it." Bill said pulling his hands away from Javier, taking a glance at Ruben, Bill looked to where the man was staring. He didn't see anything at first, but after a moment his vision started to blur slightly and he thought he saw something there. From his position on the ground he picked up a small chunk of concrete and tossed it at the blob. The concrete bounced off of something well before it hit the patrol car.