The once bright and gleaming Park Tower was a blackened finger pointing to the sky. Fire had consumed much of the building, gutting it, leaving hundreds of charred corpses inside like it was some oversized piñata of death.
A small army of hatchlings worked through the rubble, all with one specific task: find the body of Cooper Mitchell. Only then would Steve know he was truly safe.
“Doctor-General Ellis,” Steve said. “Do you really think we’ll recover Cooper’s body?”
Ellis’s eyes flicked to the pistol strapped to Steve’s thigh. For some reason, the man always seemed to think he was moments from being shot.
“If Cooper is in there, he’s probably too burned to be recognizable,” Ellis said. “But we do have to try, Emperor. If I can get him to my labs, maybe I can find a cure.”
If the good doctor-general didn’t get infected himself and die in the process, of course.
Steve again stared into the crater. Unseen planes had dropped the bombs. One second everything had been fine, the next, all crazy explosions and total chaos. Steve wasn’t sure how many of his people had died. Maybe the late General Brownstone should have spread them out a little bit more. Live and learn.
Poor General Brownstone. She’d been close to the hotel, directing the third wave when the bombs hit. At least someone had found her head.
That left Steve with no option but to make Ellis head of the army. Ellis didn’t have the mind for the job, but he’d do until Steve found a soldier with command experience who had actually lived through the night. Steve had thought of giving McMasters the job, but he didn’t trust the man — maybe McMasters was thinking of taking over.
Actually, when it came to the power structure, it was better to be safe than sorry. Steve made a mental note to kill McMasters later.
The bombs had been a brilliant stroke, he had to admit; they had wiped out most of his organized army. He was still the emperor, but now what he ruled was little more than a mob.
He had to start over. Start over somewhere else. He was lucky the humans hadn’t used a nuke. That luck wouldn’t last long.
“Master of Logistics, it’s time we looked at moving on. I don’t care for big cities anymore.”
McMasters slipped a little on the concrete, regained his balance. “Yes, Emperor. General Brownstone’s evacuation plan hasn’t been affected. She organized caches of working vehicles. We could start clearing out a road, have the trucks and buses moving out in about four or five hours?”
Damn, but that was a big crater. Whatever had dropped the bomb that made it might still be up there, looking down, waiting for the next target.
“Make it so,” Steve said. “But Doctor-General Ellis and I won’t be with that group. General Brownstone had motorcycles as well, did she not?”
McMasters nodded. “She had a few caches of those as well. I know some are at the parking garage at Saint Joseph’s Hospital, up north in the Boystown neighborhood.”
Perfect. That location was five miles from where Steve stood, far enough to survive the worst effects of a large nuke if the humans decided to drop one on downtown Chicago.
“Start the exodus,” he said. “I want hundreds of vehicles leaving at the same time, heading south, east and west.”
Steve had wanted to rule from Chicago, but clearly that was not God’s will. In a few hours, the Chosen Ones would radiate outward, drawing attention while he and a few others slipped away to the north, using motorcycles to navigate through the congested roads. He would find a place to hide for a while, and let things run their course.
Humanity couldn’t last that much longer. And when they were gone, Emperor Steve Stanton would begin again.
A LAST KISS
His fingers flexed around the knife’s handle. So light in his hand, so heavy on his soul.
This had to be done. Clarence knew that.
Roth and Bosh had found a ladder. They’d used pantyhose to strap Margaret to it, her back against the rungs, then tied each end of the ladder to a clothing rack. Her face was about two feet closer to the ground than her feet. Below her head, they’d put a scuffed, yellow plastic mop bucket.
Margaret saw him coming. She was still gagged. Her eyes flicked to the knife in his hand, then widened with both fear and anger. She chewed on the gag, made noises that were pleas, or curses, or probably both. Her body lurched against the restraints. The ladder and clothing racks rattled, but didn’t budge.
What, had he thought that Margaret would go easy? Had he thought that at the last moment, she might accept this fate, look at him lovingly, forgive him for what must be done? Maybe in that Candyland vision, he’d remove her gag and she would whisper how she loved him, how she was sorry it had to be this way but she was so grateful he was taking away her pain.
That wasn’t going to happen.
This would not be nice.
This would not be easy.
Margaret Montoya, or whatever had taken her over, didn’t want to die. Just like any person, any animal, she wanted to live.
Clarence walked closer.
Her eyes narrowed. She screamed, a sound of desperate rage. The gag muffled some of it, but only some.
No. He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.
Clarence turned to leave, but stopped short — Klimas was standing just a few feet away. Had he been there the whole time? The SEAL nodded in man-to-man understanding. He extended his hand, palm up.
“Give me the knife,” he said. “Take a walk. No shame in it — she’s your wife.”
Clarence looked at the extended hand. Then he looked at the knife. No, it had to be him.
“Was,” he said. “Was my wife.”
He turned again, faced her, forced his feet to move.
Margaret’s body shook, this time from sobs. Tears filled her eyes, ran down her forehead to vanish in her dark hair. She drew a ragged breath in through her nose, paused, then screamed again.
Reality slurred for a moment. Everything shifted. He’d met her five years ago, fallen in love with her almost immediately. So brilliant, so hardworking, so utterly committed to doing whatever it took to get the job done. And what a job that had been.
She’d fallen for him almost as fast. For a while, things had been perfect. They had been so happy together. They thought they had all the time in the world.
They didn’t. No one did. Ever.
No matter how much time you have, that time always runs out.
Clarence stepped forward.
Her screams grew more ragged as vocal cords gave way. She thrashed harder, so hard the whole ladder rattled, but the SEALS knew their business when it came to tying knots.
He reached out with the knife. The blade shook madly, so much so that it looked like a prop made out of rubber.
He was Abraham, ordered by God to sacrifice his own son. Only God wasn’t here, and no one was going to appear in a cloud of holy light and tell him it had just been a test of his devotion.
Clarence started to talk, but his throat tightened and he choked on the words. He swallowed hard and tried again.
“Good-bye, my love.”
He pressed the edge of the blade against her throat. She screamed and screamed, she chewed madly on the gag, she jerked and kicked and fought for life.
Clarence closed his eyes.
He pushed up as hard as he could and slid the knife forward, felt the blade slice deep. The ladder rattled harder than ever. Still pressing up, he pulled the blade back, felt it bite into tendons and ligaments. Hers wasn’t the first throat he’d cut. It wasn’t like the movies — one slash didn’t do it, you had to saw a bit to get at those arteries.